initial commit of ebook 33579HEADmain

10 files changed, 24610 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6833f05
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.gitattributes
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+* text=auto
+*.txt text
+*.md text
diff --git a/33579-8.txt b/33579-8.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7d1319a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/33579-8.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,8240 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Last Words, by Stephen Crane
+
+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: Last Words
+
+Author: Stephen Crane
+
+Release Date: August 30, 2010 [EBook #33579]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LAST WORDS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was
+produced from scanned images of public domain material
+from the Internet Archive.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+LAST WORDS
+
+BY
+
+STEPHEN CRANE
+
+AUTHOR OF
+
+"RED BADGE OF COURAGE," "ACTIVE SERVICE," "PICTURES OF WAR,"
+
+"THE THIRD VIOLET," "THE OPEN BOAT,"
+
+"WOUNDS IN THE RAIN," ETC.
+
+London
+
+DIGBY, LONG & CO.
+
+18 Bouverie Street, Fleet Street, E. C.
+
+1902
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                           PAGE
+
+   THE RELUCTANT VOYAGERS                     1
+
+   SPITZBERGEN TALES--
+     THE KICKING TWELFTH                     35
+     THE UPTURNED FACE                       52
+     THE SHRAPNEL OF THEIR FRIENDS           59
+     "AND IF HE WILLS, WE MUST DIE"          69
+
+   WYOMING VALLEY TALES--
+     THE SURRENDER OF FORTY FORT             81
+     "OL' BENNET" AND THE INDIANS            88
+     THE BATTLE OF FORTY FORT                99
+
+   LONDON IMPRESSIONS                       110
+
+   NEW YORK SKETCHES--
+     GREAT-GRIEF'S HOLIDAY DINNER           133
+     THE SILVER PAGEANT                     145
+     A STREET SCENE                         148
+     MINETTA LANE                           154
+     ROOF GARDENS                           166
+     IN THE BROADWAY CARS                   173
+
+   THE ASSASSINS IN MODERN BATTLES          181
+
+   IRISH NOTES--
+     AN OLD MAN GOES WOOING                 193
+     BALLYDEHOB                             198
+     THE ROYAL IRISH CONSTABULARY           203
+     A FISHING VILLAGE                      207
+
+   SULLIVAN COUNTY SKETCHES--
+     FOUR MEN IN A CAVE                     217
+     THE MESMERIC MOUNTAIN                  225
+
+   MISCELLANEOUS--
+     THE SQUIRE'S MADNESS                   231
+     A DESERTION                            245
+     HOW THE DONKEY LIFTED THE HILLS        252
+     A MAN BY THE NAME OF MUD               258
+     A POKER GAME                           263
+     THE SNAKE                              268
+     A SELF-MADE MAN                        273
+     A TALE OF MERE CHANCE                  282
+     AT CLANCY'S WAKE                       288
+     AN EPISODE OF WAR                      294
+     THE VOICE OF THE MOUNTAIN              301
+     WHY DID THE YOUNG CLERK SWEAR?         306
+     THE VICTORY OF THE MOON                315
+
+
+
+
+LAST WORDS
+
+
+
+
+THE RELUCTANT VOYAGERS
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+Two men sat by the sea waves.
+
+"Well, I know I'm not handsome," said one gloomily. He was poking holes
+in the sand with a discontented cane.
+
+The companion was watching the waves play. He seemed overcome with
+perspiring discomfort as a man who is resolved to set another man right.
+
+Suddenly his mouth turned into a straight line. "To be sure you are
+not," he cried vehemently. "You look like thunder. I do not desire to be
+unpleasant, but I must assure you that your freckled skin continually
+reminds spectators of white wall paper with gilt roses on it. The top of
+your head looks like a little wooden plate. And your figure--heavens!"
+
+For a time they were silent. They stared at the waves that purred near
+their feet like sleepy sea-kittens.
+
+Finally the first man spoke.
+
+"Well," said he, defiantly, "what of it?"
+
+"What of it," exploded the other. "Why, it means that you'd look like
+blazes in a bathing-suit."
+
+They were again silent. The freckled man seemed ashamed. His tall
+companion glowered at the scenery.
+
+"I am decided," said the freckled man suddenly. He got boldly up from
+the sand and strode away. The tall man followed, walking sarcastically
+and glaring down at the round, resolute figure before him.
+
+A bath-clerk was looking at the world with superior eyes through a hole
+in a board. To him the freckled man made application, waving his hands
+over his person in illustration of a snug fit. The bath-clerk thought
+profoundly. Eventually, he handed out a blue bundle with an air of
+having phenomenally solved the freckled man's dimensions.
+
+The latter resumed his resolute stride.
+
+"See here," said the tall man, following him, "I bet you've got a
+regular toga, you know. That fellow couldn't tell--"
+
+"Yes, he could," interrupted the freckled man, "I saw correct
+mathematics in his eyes."
+
+"Well, supposin' he has missed your size. Supposin'--"
+
+"Tom," again interrupted the other, "produce your proud clothes and
+we'll go in."
+
+The tall man swore bitterly. He went to one of a row of little wooden
+boxes and shut himself in it. His companion repaired to a similar box.
+
+At first he felt like an opulent monk in a too-small cell, and he turned
+round two or three times to see if he could. He arrived finally into his
+bathing-dress. Immediately he dropped gasping upon a three-cornered
+bench. The suit fell in folds about his reclining form. There was
+silence, save for the caressing calls of the waves without.
+
+Then he heard two shoes drop on the floor in one of the little coops. He
+began to clamour at the boards like a penitent at an unforgiving door.
+
+"Tom," called he, "Tom--"
+
+A voice of wrath, muffled by cloth, came through the walls. "You go t'
+blazes!"
+
+The freckled man began to groan, taking the occupants of the entire row
+of coops into his confidence.
+
+"Stop your noise," angrily cried the tall man from his hidden den. "You
+rented the bathing-suit, didn't you? Then--"
+
+"It ain't a bathing-suit," shouted the freckled man at the boards. "It's
+an auditorium, a ballroom, or something. It ain't a bathing-suit."
+
+The tall man came out of his box. His suit looked like blue skin. He
+walked with grandeur down the alley between the rows of coops. Stopping
+in front of his friend's door, he rapped on it with passionate
+knuckles.
+
+"Come out of there, y' ol' fool," said he, in an enraged whisper. "It's
+only your accursed vanity. Wear it anyhow. What difference does it make?
+I never saw such a vain ol' idiot!"
+
+As he was storming the door opened, and his friend confronted him. The
+tall man's legs gave way, and he fell against the opposite door.
+
+The freckled man regarded him sternly.
+
+"You're an ass," he said.
+
+His back curved in scorn. He walked majestically down the alley. There
+was pride in the way his chubby feet patted the boards. The tall man
+followed, weakly, his eyes riveted upon the figure ahead.
+
+As a disguise the freckled man had adopted the stomach of importance. He
+moved with an air of some sort of procession, across a board walk, down
+some steps, and out upon the sand.
+
+There was a pug dog and three old women on a bench, a man and a maid
+with a book and a parasol, a seagull drifting high in the wind, and a
+distant, tremendous meeting of sea and sky. Down on the wet sand stood a
+girl being wooed by the breakers.
+
+The freckled man moved with stately tread along the beach. The tall man,
+numb with amazement, came in the rear. They neared the girl.
+
+Suddenly the tall man was seized with convulsions. He laughed, and the
+girl turned her head.
+
+She perceived the freckled man in the bathing-suit. An expression of
+wonderment overspread her charming face. It changed in a moment to a
+pearly smile.
+
+This smile seemed to smite the freckled man. He obviously tried to swell
+and fit his suit. Then he turned a shrivelling glance upon his
+companion, and fled up the beach. The tall man ran after him, pursuing
+with mocking cries that tingled his flesh like stings of insects. He
+seemed to be trying to lead the way out of the world. But at last he
+stopped and faced about.
+
+"Tom Sharp," said he, between his clenched teeth, "you are an
+unutterable wretch! I could grind your bones under my heel."
+
+The tall man was in a trance, with glazed eyes fixed on the
+bathing-dress. He seemed to be murmuring: "Oh, good Lord! Oh, good Lord!
+I never saw such a suit!"
+
+The freckled man made the gesture of an assassin.
+
+"Tom Sharp, you--"
+
+The other was still murmuring: "Oh, good Lord! I never saw such a suit!
+I never--"
+
+The freckled man ran down into the sea.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+The cool, swirling waters took his temper from him, and it became a
+thing that is lost in the ocean. The tall man floundered in, and the two
+forgot and rollicked in the waves.
+
+The freckled man, in endeavouring to escape from mankind, had left all
+save a solitary fisherman under a large hat, and three boys in
+bathing-dress, laughing and splashing upon a raft made of old spars.
+
+The two men swam softly over the ground swells.
+
+The three boys dived from their raft, and turned their jolly faces
+shorewards. It twisted slowly around and around, and began to move
+seaward on some unknown voyage. The freckled man laid his face to the
+water and swam toward the raft with a practised stroke. The tall man
+followed, his bended arm appearing and disappearing with the precision
+of machinery.
+
+The craft crept away, slowly and wearily, as if luring. The little
+wooden plate on the freckled man's head looked at the shore like a
+round, brown eye, but his gaze was fixed on the raft that slyly appeared
+to be waiting. The tall man used the little wooden plate as a beacon.
+
+At length the freckled man reached the raft and climbed aboard. He lay
+down on his back and puffed. His bathing-dress spread about him like a
+dead balloon. The tall man came, snorted, shook his tangled locks and
+lay down by the side of his companion.
+
+They were overcome with a delicious drowsiness. The planks of the raft
+seemed to fit their tired limbs. They gazed dreamily up into the vast
+sky of summer.
+
+"This is great," said the tall man. His companion grunted blissfully.
+
+Gentle hands from the sea rocked their craft and lulled them to peace.
+Lapping waves sang little rippling sea-songs about them. The two men
+issued contented groans.
+
+"Tom," said the freckled man.
+
+"What?" said the other.
+
+"This is great."
+
+They lay and thought.
+
+A fish-hawk, soaring, suddenly turned and darted at the waves. The tall
+man indolently twisted his head and watched the bird plunge its claws
+into the water. It heavily arose with a silver gleaming fish.
+
+"That bird has got his feet wet again. It's a shame," murmured the tall
+man sleepily. "He must suffer from an endless cold in the head. He
+should wear rubber boots. They'd look great, too. If I was him,
+I'd--Great Scott!"
+
+He has partly arisen, and was looking at the shore.
+
+He began to scream. "Ted! Ted! Ted! Look!"
+
+"What's matter?" dreamily spoke the freckled man. "You remind me of when
+I put the bird-shot in your leg." He giggled softly.
+
+The agitated tall man made a gesture of supreme eloquence. His companion
+up-reared and turned a startled gaze shoreward.
+
+"Lord," he roared, as if stabbed.
+
+The land was a long, brown streak with a rim of green, in which sparkled
+the tin roofs of huge hotels. The hands from the sea had pushed them
+away. The two men sprang erect, and did a little dance of perturbation.
+
+"What shall we do? What shall we do?" moaned the freckled man, wriggling
+fantastically in his dead balloon.
+
+The changing shore seemed to fascinate the tall man, and for a time he
+did not speak.
+
+Suddenly he concluded his minuet of horror. He wheeled about and faced
+the freckled man. He elaborately folded his arms.
+
+"So," he said, in slow, formidable tones. "So! This all comes from your
+accursed vanity, your bathing-suit, your idiocy; you have murdered your
+best friend."
+
+He turned away. His companion reeled as if stricken by an unexpected
+arm.
+
+He stretched out his hands. "Tom, Tom," wailed he, beseechingly, "don't
+be such a fool."
+
+The broad back of his friend was occupied by a contemptuous sneer.
+
+Three ships fell off the horizon. Landward, the hues were blending. The
+whistle of a locomotive sounded from an infinite distance as if tooting
+in heaven.
+
+"Tom! Tom! My dear boy," quavered the freckled man, "don't speak that
+way to me."
+
+"Oh, no, of course not," said the other, still facing away and throwing
+the words over his shoulder. "You suppose I am going to accept all this
+calmly, don't you? Not make the slightest objection? Make no protest at
+all, hey?"
+
+"Well, I--I--" began the freckled man.
+
+The tall man's wrath suddenly exploded. "You've abducted me! That's the
+whole amount of it! You've abducted me!"
+
+"I ain't," protested the freckled man. "You must think I'm a fool."
+
+The tall man swore, and sitting down, dangled his legs angrily in the
+water. Natural law compelled his companion to occupy the other end of
+the raft.
+
+Over the waters little shoals of fish spluttered, raising tiny tempests.
+Languid jelly-fish floated near, tremulously waving a thousand legs. A
+row of porpoises trundled along like a procession of cog-wheels. The
+sky became greyed save where over the land sunset colours were
+assembling.
+
+The two voyagers, back to back and at either end of the raft, quarrelled
+at length.
+
+"What did you want to follow me for?" demanded the freckled man in a
+voice of indignation.
+
+"If your figure hadn't been so like a bottle, we wouldn't be here,"
+replied the tall man.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+The fires in the west blazed away, and solemnity spread over the sea.
+Electric lights began to blink like eyes. Night menaced the voyagers
+with a dangerous darkness, and fear came to bind their souls together.
+They huddled fraternally in the middle of the raft.
+
+"I feel like a molecule," said the freckled man in subdued tones.
+
+"I'd give two dollars for a cigar," muttered the tall man.
+
+A V-shaped flock of ducks flew towards Barnegat, between the voyagers
+and a remnant of yellow sky. Shadows and winds came from the vanished
+eastern horizon.
+
+"I think I hear voices," said the freckled man.
+
+"That Dollie Ramsdell was an awfully nice girl," said the tall man.
+
+When the coldness of the sea night came to them, the freckled man found
+he could by a peculiar movement of his legs and arms encase himself in
+his bathing-dress. The tall man was compelled to whistle and shiver. As
+night settled finally over the sea, red and green lights began to dot
+the blackness. There were mysterious shadows between the waves.
+
+"I see things comin'," murmured the freckled man.
+
+"I wish I hadn't ordered that new dress-suit for the hop to-morrow
+night," said the tall man reflectively.
+
+The sea became uneasy and heaved painfully, like a lost bosom, when
+little forgotten heart-bells try to chime with a pure sound. The
+voyagers cringed at magnified foam on distant wave crests. A moon came
+and looked at them.
+
+"Somebody's here," whispered the freckled man.
+
+"I wish I had an almanac," remarked the tall man, regarding the moon.
+
+Presently they fell to staring at the red and green lights that twinkled
+about them.
+
+"Providence will not leave us," asserted the freckled man.
+
+"Oh, we'll be picked up shortly. I owe money," said the tall man.
+
+He began to thrum on an imaginary banjo.
+
+"I have heard," said he, suddenly, "that captains with healthy ships
+beneath their feet will never turn back after having once started on a
+voyage. In that case we will be rescued by some ship bound for the
+golden seas of the south. Then, you'll be up to some of your confounded
+devilment, and we'll get put off. They'll maroon us! That's what they'll
+do! They'll maroon us! On an island with palm trees and sun-kissed
+maidens and all that. Sun-kissed maidens, eh? Great! They'd--"
+
+He suddenly ceased and turned to stone. At a distance a great, green eye
+was contemplating the sea wanderers.
+
+They stood up and did another dance. As they watched the eye grew
+larger.
+
+Directly the form of a phantom-like ship came into view. About the
+great, green eye there bobbed small yellow dots. The wanderers could
+hear a far-away creaking of unseen tackle and flapping of shadowy sails.
+There came the melody of the waters as the ship's prow thrusted its way.
+
+The tall man delivered an oration.
+
+"Ha!" he exclaimed, "here comes our rescuers. The brave fellows! How I
+long to take the manly captain by the hand! You will soon see a white
+boat with a star on its bow drop from the side of yon ship. Kind sailors
+in blue and white will help us into the boat and conduct our wasted
+frames to the quarter-deck, where the handsome, bearded captain, with
+gold bands all around, will welcome us. Then in the hard-oak cabin,
+while the wine gurgles and the Havana's glow, we'll tell our tale of
+peril and privation."
+
+The ship came on like a black hurrying animal with froth-filled maw. The
+two wanderers stood up and clasped hands. Then they howled out a wild
+duet that rang over the wastes of sea.
+
+The cries seemed to strike the ship.
+
+Men with boots on yelled and ran about the deck. They picked up heavy
+articles and threw them down. They yelled more. After hideous creakings
+and flappings, the vessel stood still.
+
+In the meantime the wanderers had been chanting their song for help. Out
+in the blackness they beckoned to the ship and coaxed.
+
+A voice came to them.
+
+"Hello," it said.
+
+They puffed out their cheeks and began to shout. "Hello! Hello! Hello!"
+
+"Wot do yeh want?" said the voice.
+
+The two wanderers gazed at each other, and sat suddenly down on the
+raft. Some pall came sweeping over the sky and quenched their stars.
+
+But almost the tall man got up and brawled miscellaneous information. He
+stamped his foot, and frowning into the night, swore threateningly.
+
+The vessel seemed fearful of these moaning voices that called from a
+hidden cavern of the water. And now one voice was filled with a menace.
+A number of men with enormous limbs that threw vast shadows over the sea
+as the lanterns flickered, held a debate and made gestures.
+
+Off in the darkness, the tall man began to clamour like a mob. The
+freckled man sat in astounded silence, with his legs weak.
+
+After a time one of the men of enormous limbs seized a rope that was
+tugging at the stern and drew a small boat from the shadows. Three
+giants clambered in and rowed cautiously toward the raft. Silver water
+flashed in the gloom as the oars dipped.
+
+About fifty feet from the raft the boat stopped. "Who er you?" asked a
+voice.
+
+The tall man braced himself and explained. He drew vivid pictures, his
+twirling fingers illustrating like live brushes.
+
+"Oh," said the three giants.
+
+The voyagers deserted the raft. They looked back, feeling in their
+hearts a mite of tenderness for the wet planks. Later, they wriggled up
+the side of the vessel and climbed over the railing.
+
+On deck they met a man.
+
+He held a lantern to their faces. "Got any chewin' tewbacca?" he
+inquired.
+
+"No," said the tall man, "we ain't."
+
+The man had a bronze face and solitary whiskers. Peculiar lines about
+his mouth were shaped into an eternal smile of derision. His feet were
+bare, and clung handily to crevices.
+
+Fearful trousers were supported by a piece of suspender that went up the
+wrong side of his chest and came down the right side of his back,
+dividing him into triangles.
+
+"Ezekiel P. Sanford, capt'in, schooner 'Mary Jones,' of N'yack, N.Y.,
+genelmen," he said.
+
+"Ah!" said the tall man, "delighted, I'm sure."
+
+There were a few moments of silence. The giants were hovering in the
+gloom and staring.
+
+Suddenly astonishment exploded the captain.
+
+"Wot th' devil--" he shouted, "wot th' devil yeh got on?"
+
+"Bathing-suits," said the tall man.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+The schooner went on. The two voyagers sat down and watched. After a
+time they began to shiver. The soft blackness of the summer night passed
+away, and grey mists writhed over the sea. Soon lights of early dawn
+went changing across the sky, and the twin beacons on the highlands grew
+dim and sparkling faintly, as if a monster were dying. The dawn
+penetrated the marrow of the two men in bathing-dress.
+
+The captain used to pause opposite them, hitch one hand in his
+suspender, and laugh.
+
+"Well, I be dog-hanged," he frequently said.
+
+The tall man grew furious. He snarled in a mad undertone to his
+companion. "This rescue ain't right. If I had known--"
+
+He suddenly paused, transfixed by the captain's suspender. "It's goin'
+to break," cried he, in an ecstatic whisper. His eyes grew large with
+excitement as he watched the captain laugh. "It'll break in a minute,
+sure."
+
+But the commander of the schooner recovered, and invited them to drink
+and eat. They followed him along the deck, and fell down a square black
+hole into the cabin.
+
+It was a little den, with walls of a vanished whiteness. A lamp shed an
+orange light. In a sort of recess two little beds were hiding. A wooden
+table, immovable, as if the craft had been builded around it, sat in the
+middle of the floor. Overhead the square hole was studded with a dozen
+stars. A foot-worn ladder led to the heavens.
+
+The captain produced ponderous crackers and some cold broiled ham. Then
+he vanished in the firmament like a fantastic comet.
+
+The freckled man sat quite contentedly like a stout squaw in a blanket.
+The tall man walked about the cabin and sniffed. He was angered at the
+crudeness of the rescue, and his shrinking clothes made him feel too
+large. He contemplated his unhappy state.
+
+Suddenly, he broke out. "I won't stand this, I tell you! Heavens and
+earth, look at the--say, what in the blazes did you want to get me in
+this thing for, anyhow? You're a fine old duffer, you are! Look at that
+ham!"
+
+The freckled man grunted. He seemed somewhat blissful. He was seated
+upon a bench, comfortably enwrapped in his bathing-dress.
+
+The tall man stormed about the cabin.
+
+"This is an outrage! I'll see the captain! I'll tell him what I think
+of--"
+
+He was interrupted by a pair of legs that appeared among the stars. The
+captain came down the ladder. He brought a coffee pot from the sky.
+
+The tall man bristled forward. He was going to denounce everything.
+
+The captain was intent upon the coffee pot, balancing it carefully, and
+leaving his unguided feet to find the steps of the ladder.
+
+But the wrath of the tall man faded. He twirled his fingers in
+excitement, and renewed his ecstatic whisperings to the freckled man.
+
+"It's going to break! Look, quick, look! It'll break in a minute!"
+
+He was transfixed with interest, forgetting his wrongs in staring at the
+perilous passage.
+
+But the captain arrived on the floor with triumphant suspenders.
+
+"Well," said he, "after yeh have eat, maybe ye'd like t'sleep some! If
+so, yeh can sleep on them beds."
+
+The tall man made no reply, save in a strained undertone. "It'll break
+in about a minute! Look, Ted, look quick!"
+
+The freckled man glanced in a little bed on which were heaped boots and
+oilskins. He made a courteous gesture.
+
+"My dear sir, we could not think of depriving you of your beds. No,
+indeed. Just a couple of blankets if you have them, and we'll sleep very
+comfortable on these benches."
+
+The captain protested, politely twisting his back and bobbing his head.
+The suspenders tugged and creaked. The tall man partially suppressed a
+cry, and took a step forward.
+
+The freckled man was sleepily insistent, and shortly the captain gave
+over his deprecatory contortions. He fetched a pink quilt with yellow
+dots on it to the freckled man, and a black one with red roses on it to
+the tall man.
+
+Again he vanished in the firmament. The tall man gazed until the last
+remnant of trousers disappeared from the sky. Then he wrapped himself up
+in his quilt and lay down. The freckled man was puffing contentedly,
+swathed like an infant. The yellow polka-dots rose and fell on the vast
+pink of his chest.
+
+The wanderers slept. In the quiet could be heard the groanings of
+timbers as the sea seemed to crunch them together. The lapping of water
+along the vessel's side sounded like gaspings. An hundred spirits of the
+wind had got their wings entangled in the rigging, and, in soft voices,
+were pleading to be loosened.
+
+The freckled man was awakened by a foreign noise. He opened his eyes and
+saw his companion standing by his couch.
+
+His comrade's face was wane with suffering. His eyes glowed in the
+darkness. He raised his arms, spreading them out like a clergyman at a
+grave. He groaned deep in his chest.
+
+"Good Lord!" yelled the freckled man, starting up. "Tom, Tom, what's th'
+matter?"
+
+The tall man spoke in a fearful voice. "To New York," he said, "to New
+York in our bathing-suits."
+
+The freckled man sank back. The shadows of the cabin threw mysteries
+about the figure of the tall man, arrayed like some ancient and potent
+astrologer in the black quilt with the red roses on it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+Directly the tall man went and lay down and began to groan.
+
+The freckled man felt the miseries of the world upon him. He grew angry
+at the tall man awakening him. They quarrelled.
+
+"Well," said the tall man, finally, "we're in a fix."
+
+"I know that," said the other, sharply.
+
+They regarded the ceiling in silence.
+
+"What in the thunder are we going to do?" demanded the tall man, after a
+time. His companion was still silent. "Say," repeated he, angrily, "what
+in the thunder are we going to do?"
+
+"I'm sure I don't know," said the freckled man in a dismal voice.
+
+"Well, think of something," roared the other. "Think of something, you
+old fool. You don't want to make any more idiots of yourself, do you?"
+
+"I ain't made an idiot of myself."
+
+"Well, think. Know anybody in the city?"
+
+"I know a fellow up in Harlem," said the freckled man.
+
+"You know a fellow up in Harlem," howled the tall man. "Up in Harlem!
+How the dickens are we to--say, you're crazy!"
+
+"We can take a cab," cried the other, waxing indignant.
+
+The tall man grew suddenly calm. "Do you know any one else?" he asked,
+measuredly.
+
+"I know another fellow somewhere on Park Place."
+
+"Somewhere on Park Place," repeated the tall man in an unnatural manner.
+"Somewhere on Park Place." With an air of sublime resignation he turned
+his face to the wall.
+
+The freckled man sat erect and frowned in the direction of his
+companion. "Well, now, I suppose you are going to sulk. You make me ill!
+It's the best we can do, ain't it? Hire a cab and go look that fellow up
+on Park--What's that? You can't afford it? What nonsense! You are
+getting--Oh! Well, maybe we can beg some clothes of the captain. Eh? Did
+I see 'im. Certainly, I saw 'im. Yes, it is improbable that a man who
+wears trousers like that can have clothes to lend. No, I won't wear
+oilskins and a sou'-wester. To Athens? Of course not! I don't know where
+it is. Do you? I thought not. With all your grumbling about other
+people, you never know anything important yourself. What? Broadway? I'll
+be hanged first. We can get off at Harlem, man alive. There are no cabs
+in Harlem. I don't think we can bribe a sailor to take us ashore and
+bring a cab to the dock, for the very simple reason that we have nothing
+to bribe him with. What? No, of course not. See here, Tom Sharp, don't
+you swear at me like that. I won't have it. What's that? I ain't,
+either. I ain't. What? I am not. It's no such thing. I ain't. I've got
+more than you have, anyway. Well, you ain't doing anything so very
+brilliant yourself--just lying there and cussin'." At length the tall
+man feigned to prodigiously snore. The freckled man thought with such
+vigour that he fell asleep.
+
+After a time he dreamed that he was in a forest where bass drums grew on
+trees. There came a strong wind that banged the fruit about like empty
+pods. A frightful din was in his ears.
+
+He awoke to find the captain of the schooner standing over him.
+
+"We're at New York now," said the captain, raising his voice above the
+thumping and banging that was being done on deck, "an' I s'pose you
+fellers wanta go ashore." He chuckled in an exasperating manner. "Jes'
+sing out when yeh wanta go," he added, leering at the freckled man.
+
+The tall man awoke, came over and grasped the captain by the throat.
+
+"If you laugh again I'll kill you," he said.
+
+The captain gurgled and waved his legs and arms.
+
+"In the first place," the tall man continued, "you rescued us in a
+deucedly shabby manner. It makes me ill to think of it. I've a mind to
+mop you 'round just for that. In the second place, your vessel is bound
+for Athens, N.Y., and there's no sense in it. Now, will you or will you
+not turn this ship about and take us back where our clothes are, or to
+Philadelphia, where we belong?"
+
+He furiously shook the captain. Then he eased his grip and awaited a
+reply.
+
+"I can't," yelled the captain, "I can't. This vessel don't belong to me.
+I've got to--"
+
+"Well, then," interrupted the tall man, "can you lend us some clothes?"
+
+"Hain't got none," replied the captain, promptly. His face was red, and
+his eyes were glaring.
+
+"Well, then," said the tall man, "can you lend us some money?"
+
+"Hain't got none," replied the captain, promptly. Something overcame him
+and he laughed.
+
+"Thunderation," roared the tall man. He seized the captain, who began to
+have wriggling contortions. The tall man kneaded him as if he were
+biscuits. "You infernal scoundrel," he bellowed, "this whole affair is
+some wretched plot, and you are in it. I am about to kill you."
+
+The solitary whisker of the captain did acrobatic feats like a strange
+demon upon his chin. His eyes stood perilously from his head. The
+suspender wheezed and tugged like the tackle of a sail.
+
+Suddenly the tall man released his hold. Great expectancy sat upon his
+features. "It's going to break," he cried, rubbing his hands.
+
+But the captain howled and vanished in the sky.
+
+The freckled man then came forward. He appeared filled with sarcasm.
+
+"So!" said he. "So, you've settled the matter. The captain is the only
+man in the world who can help us, and I daresay he'll do anything he can
+now."
+
+"That's all right," said the tall man. "If you don't like the way I run
+things you shouldn't have come on this trip at all."
+
+They had another quarrel.
+
+At the end of it they went on deck. The captain stood at the stern
+addressing the bow with opprobrious language. When he perceived the
+voyagers he began to fling his fists about in the air.
+
+"I'm goin' to put yeh off," he yelled. The wanderers stared at each
+other.
+
+"Hum," said the tall man.
+
+The freckled man looked at his companion. "He's going to put us off, you
+see," he said, complacently.
+
+The tall man began to walk about and move his shoulders. "I'd like to
+see you do it," he said, defiantly.
+
+The captain tugged at a rope. A boat came at his bidding.
+
+"I'd like to see you do it," the tall man repeated, continually. An
+imperturbable man in rubber boots climbed down in the boat and seized
+the oars. The captain motioned downward. His whisker had a triumphant
+appearance.
+
+The two wanderers looked at the boat. "I guess we'll have to get in,"
+murmured the freckled man.
+
+The tall man was standing like a granite column. "I won't," said he. "I
+won't! I don't care what you do, but I won't!"
+
+"Well, but--" expostulated the other. They held a furious debate.
+
+In the meantime the captain was darting about making sinister gestures,
+but the back of the tall man held him at bay. The crew, much depleted by
+the departure of the imperturbable man into the boat, looked on from the
+bow.
+
+"You're a fool," the freckled man concluded his argument.
+
+"So?" inquired the tall man, highly exasperated.
+
+"So? Well, if you think you're so bright, we'll go in the boat, and then
+you'll see."
+
+He climbed down into the craft and seated himself in an ominous manner
+at the stern.
+
+"You'll see," he said to his companion, as the latter floundered heavily
+down. "You'll see!"
+
+The man in rubber boots calmly rowed the boat toward the shore. As they
+went, the captain leaned over the railing and laughed. The freckled man
+was seated very victoriously.
+
+"Well, wasn't this the right thing after all?" he inquired in a pleasant
+voice. The tall man made no reply.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+As they neared the dock something seemed suddenly to occur to the
+freckled man.
+
+"Great heavens," he murmured. He stared at the approaching shore.
+
+"My, what a plight, Tommy," he quavered.
+
+"Do you think so?" spoke up the tall man, "Why, I really thought you
+liked it." He laughed in a hard voice. "Lord, what a figure you'll cut."
+
+This laugh jarred the freckled man's soul. He became mad.
+
+"Thunderation, turn the boat around," he roared. "Turn 'er round, quick.
+Man alive, we can't--turn 'er round, d'ye hear."
+
+The tall man in the stern gazed at his companion with glowing eyes.
+
+"Certainly not," he said. "We're going on. You insisted upon it." He
+began to prod his companion with words.
+
+The freckled man stood up and waved his arms.
+
+"Sit down," said the tall man. "You'll tip the boat over."
+
+The other man began to shout.
+
+"Sit down," said the tall man again.
+
+Words bubbled from the freckled man's mouth. There was a little torrent
+of sentences that almost choked him. And he protested passionately with
+his hands.
+
+But the boat went on to the shadow of the docks. The tall man was intent
+upon balancing it as it rocked dangerously during his comrade's oration.
+
+"Sit down," he continually repeated.
+
+"I won't," raged the freckled man. "I won't do anything." The boat
+wobbled with these words.
+
+"Say," he continued, addressing the oarsman, "just turn this boat round,
+will you. Where in the thunder are you taking us to, anyhow?"
+
+The oarsman looked at the sky and thought. Finally he spoke. "I'm doin'
+what the cap'n sed."
+
+"Well, what in th' blazes do I care what the cap'n sed?" demanded the
+freckled man. He took a violent step. "You just turn this round or--"
+
+The small craft reeled. Over one side water came flashing in. The
+freckled man cried out in fear, and gave a jump to the other side. The
+tall man roared orders, and the oarsman made efforts. The boat acted for
+a moment like an animal on a slackened wire. Then it upset.
+
+"Sit down," said the tall man, in a final roar as he was plunged into
+the water. The oarsman dropped his oars to grapple with the gunwale. He
+went down saying unknown words. The freckled man's explanation or
+apology was strangled by the water.
+
+Two or three tugs let off whistles of astonishment, and continued on
+their paths. A man dosing on a dock aroused and began to caper. The
+passengers of a ferry-boat all ran to the near railing.
+
+A miraculous person in a small boat was bobbing on the waves near the
+piers. He sculled hastily toward the scene. It was a swirl of waters in
+the midst of which the dark bottom of the boat appeared, whale-like.
+
+Two heads suddenly came up. "839," said the freckled man, chokingly.
+"That's it! 839!"
+
+"What is?" said the tall man.
+
+"That's the number of that feller on Park Place. I just remembered."
+
+"You're the bloomingest--" the tall man said.
+
+"It wasn't my fault," interrupted his companion. "If you hadn't--" He
+tried to gesticulate, but one hand held to the keel of the boat, and
+the other was supporting the form of the oarsman. The latter had fought
+a battle with his immense rubber boots and had been conquered.
+
+The rescuer in the other small boat came fiercely. As his craft glided
+up, he reached out and grasped the tall man by the collar and dragged
+him into the boat, interrupting what was, under the circumstances, a
+very brilliant flow of rhetoric directed at the freckled man. The
+oarsman of the wrecked craft was taken tenderly over the gunwale and
+laid in the bottom of the boat. Puffing and blowing, the freckled man
+climbed in.
+
+"You'll upset this one before we can get ashore," the other voyager
+remarked.
+
+As they turned toward the land they saw that the nearest dock was lined
+with people. The freckled man gave a little moan.
+
+But the staring eyes of the crowd were fixed on the limp form of the man
+in rubber boots. A hundred hands reached down to help lift the body up.
+On the dock some men grabbed it and began to beat it and roll it. A
+policeman tossed the spectators about. Each individual in the heaving
+crowd sought to fasten his eyes on the blue-tinted face of the man in
+the rubber boots. They surged to and fro, while the policeman beat them
+indiscriminately.
+
+The wanderers came modestly up the dock and gazed shrinkingly at the
+throng. They stood for a moment, holding their breath to see the first
+finger of amazement levelled at them.
+
+But the crowd bended and surged in absorbing anxiety to view the man in
+rubber boots, whose face fascinated them. The sea-wanderers were as
+though they were not there.
+
+They stood without the jam and whispered hurriedly.
+
+"839," said the freckled man.
+
+"All right," said the tall man.
+
+Under the pommeling hands the oarsman showed signs of life. The voyagers
+watched him make a protesting kick at the leg of the crowd, the while
+uttering angry groans.
+
+"He's better," said the tall man, softly; "let's make off."
+
+Together they stole noiselessly up the dock. Directly in front of it
+they found a row of six cabs.
+
+The drivers on top were filled with a mighty curiosity. They had driven
+hurriedly from the adjacent ferry-house when they had seen the first
+running sign of an accident. They were straining on their toes and
+gazing at the tossing backs of the men in the crowd.
+
+The wanderers made a little detour, and then went rapidly towards a
+cab. They stopped in front of it and looked up.
+
+"Driver," called the tall man, softly.
+
+The man was intent.
+
+"Driver," breathed the freckled man. They stood for a moment and gazed
+imploringly.
+
+The cabman suddenly moved his feet. "By Jimmy, I bet he's a gonner," he
+said, in an ecstacy, and he again relapsed into a statue.
+
+The freckled man groaned and wrung his hands. The tall man climbed into
+the cab.
+
+"Come in here," he said to his companion. The freckled man climbed in,
+and the tall man reached over and pulled the door shut. Then he put his
+head out the window.
+
+"Driver," he roared, sternly, "839 Park Place--and quick."
+
+The driver looked down and met the eye of the tall man. "Eh?--Oh--839?
+Park Place? Yessir." He reluctantly gave his horse a clump on the back.
+As the conveyance rattled off the wanderers huddled back among the dingy
+cushions and heaved great breaths of relief.
+
+"Well, it's all over," said the freckled man, finally. "We're about out
+of it. And quicker than I expected. Much quicker. It looked to me
+sometimes that we were doomed. I am thankful to find it not so. I am
+rejoiced. And I hope and trust that you--well, I don't wish,
+to--perhaps it is not the proper time to--that is, I don't wish to
+intrude a moral at an inopportune moment, but, my dear, dear fellow, I
+think the time is ripe to point out to you that your obstinacy, your
+selfishness, your villainous temper, and your various other faults can
+make it just as unpleasant for your ownself, my dear boy, as they
+frequently do for other people. You can see what you brought us to, and
+I most sincerely hope, my dear, dear fellow, that I shall soon see those
+signs in you which shall lead me to believe that you have become a wiser
+man."
+
+
+
+
+SPITZBERGEN TALES
+
+
+
+
+THE KICKING TWELFTH
+
+
+The Spitzbergen army was backed by tradition of centuries of victory. In
+its chronicles, occasional defeats were not printed in italics, but were
+likely to appear as glorious stands against overwhelming odds. A
+favourite way to dispose of them was frankly to attribute them to the
+blunders of the civilian heads of government. This was very good for the
+army, and probably no army had more self-confidence. When it was
+announced that an expeditionary force was to be sent to Rostina to
+chastise an impudent people, a hundred barrack squares filled with
+excited men, and a hundred sergeant-majors hurried silently through the
+groups, and succeeded in looking as if they were the repositories of the
+secrets of empire. Officers on leave sped joyfully back to their
+harness, and recruits were abused with unflagging devotion by every man,
+from colonels to privates of experience.
+
+The Twelfth Regiment of the Line--the Kicking Twelfth--was consumed with
+a dread that it was not to be included in the expedition, and the
+regiment formed itself into an informal indignation meeting. Just as
+they had proved that a great outrage was about to be perpetrated,
+warning orders arrived to hold themselves in readiness for active
+service abroad--in Rostina. The barrack yard was in a flash transferred
+into a blue-and-buff pandemonium, and the official bugle itself hardly
+had power to quell the glad disturbance.
+
+Thus it was that early in the spring the Kicking Twelfth--sixteen
+hundred men in service equipment--found itself crawling along a road in
+Rostina. They did not form part of the main force, but belonged to a
+column of four regiments of foot, two batteries of field guns, a battery
+of mountain howitzers, a regiment of horse, and a company of engineers.
+Nothing had happened. The long column had crawled without amusement of
+any kind through a broad green valley. Big white farm-houses dotted the
+slopes; but there was no sign of man or beast, and no smoke from the
+chimneys. The column was operating from its own base, and its general
+was expected to form a junction with the main body at a given point.
+
+A squadron of the cavalry was fanned out ahead, scouting, and day by day
+the trudging infantry watched the blue uniforms of the horsemen as they
+came and went. Sometimes there would sound the faint thuds of a few
+shots, but the cavalry was unable to find anything to engage.
+
+The Twelfth had no record of foreign service, and it could hardly be
+said that it had served as a unit in the great civil war, when His
+Majesty the King had whipped the Pretender. At that time the regiment
+had suffered from two opinions, so that it was impossible for either
+side to depend upon it. Many men had deserted to the standard of the
+Pretender, and a number of officers had drawn their swords for him. When
+the King, a thorough soldier, looked at the remnant, he saw that they
+lacked the spirit to be of great help to him in the tremendous battles
+which he was waging for his throne. And so this emaciated Twelfth was
+sent off to a corner of the kingdom to guard a dockyard, where some of
+the officers so plainly expressed their disapproval of this policy that
+the regiment received its steadfast name, the Kicking Twelfth.
+
+At the time of which I am writing the Twelfth had a few veteran officers
+and well-bitten sergeants; but the body of the regiment was composed of
+men who had never heard a shot fired excepting on the rifle-range. But
+it was an experience for which they longed, and when the moment came for
+the corps' cry--"Kim up, the Kickers"--there was not likely to be a man
+who would not go tumbling after his leaders.
+
+Young Timothy Lean was a second lieutenant in the first company of the
+third battalion, and just at this time he was pattering along at the
+flank of the men, keeping a fatherly lookout for boots that hurt and
+packs that sagged. He was extremely bored. The mere far-away sound of
+desultory shooting was not war as he had been led to believe it.
+
+It did not appear that behind that freckled face and under that red hair
+there was a mind which dreamed of blood. He was not extremely anxious to
+kill somebody, but he was very fond of soldiering--it had been the
+career of his father and of his grandfather--and he understood that the
+profession of arms lost much of its point unless a man shot at people
+and had people shoot at him. Strolling in the sun through a practically
+deserted country might be a proper occupation for a divinity student on
+a vacation, but the soul of Timothy Lean was in revolt at it. Some times
+at night he would go morosely to the camp of the cavalry and hear the
+infant subalterns laughingly exaggerate the comedy side of the
+adventures which they had had out with small patrols far ahead. Lean
+would sit and listen in glum silence to these tales, and dislike the
+young officers--many of them old military school friends--for having had
+experience in modern warfare.
+
+"Anyhow," he said savagely, "presently you'll be getting into a lot of
+trouble, and then the Foot will have to come along and pull you out. We
+always do. That's history."
+
+"Oh, we can take care of ourselves," said the Cavalry, with good-natured
+understanding of his mood.
+
+But the next day even Lean blessed the cavalry, for excited troopers
+came whirling back from the front, bending over their speeding horses,
+and shouting wildly and hoarsely for the infantry to clear the way. Men
+yelled at them from the roadside as courier followed courier, and from
+the distance ahead sounded in quick succession six booms from field
+guns. The information possessed by the couriers was no longer precious.
+Everybody knew what a battery meant when it spoke. The bugles cried out,
+and the long column jolted into a halt. Old Colonel Sponge went bouncing
+in his saddle back to see the general, and the regiment sat down in the
+grass by the roadside, and waited in silence. Presently the second
+squadron of the cavalry trotted off along the road in a cloud of dust,
+and in due time old Colonel Sponge came bouncing back, and palavered his
+three majors and his adjutant. Then there was more talk by the majors,
+and gradually through the correct channels spread information which in
+due time reached Timothy Lean.
+
+The enemy, 5000 strong, occupied a pass at the head of the valley some
+four miles beyond. They had three batteries well posted. Their infantry
+was entrenched. The ground in their front was crossed and lined with
+many ditches and hedges; but the enemy's batteries were so posted that
+it was doubtful if a ditch would ever prove convenient as shelter for
+the Spitzbergen infantry.
+
+There was a fair position for the Spitzbergen artillery 2300 yards from
+the enemy. The cavalry had succeeded in driving the enemy's skirmishers
+back upon the main body; but, of course, had only tried to worry them a
+little. The position was almost inaccessible on the enemy's right, owing
+to steep hills, which had been crowned by small parties of infantry. The
+enemy's left, although guarded by a much larger force, was approachable,
+and might be flanked. This was what the cavalry had to say, and it added
+briefly a report of two troopers killed and five wounded.
+
+Whereupon Major-General Richie, commanding a force of 7500 men of His
+Majesty of Spitzbergen, set in motion, with a few simple words, the
+machinery which would launch his army at the enemy. The Twelfth
+understood the orders when they saw the smart young aide approaching old
+Colonel Sponge, and they rose as one man, apparently afraid that they
+would be late. There was a clank of accoutrements. Men shrugged their
+shoulders tighter against their packs, and thrusting their thumbs
+between their belts and their tunics, they wriggled into a closer fit
+with regard to the heavy ammunition equipment. It is curious to note
+that almost every man took off his cap, and looked contemplatively into
+it as if to read a maker's name. Then they replaced their caps with
+great care. There was little talking, and it was not observable that a
+single soldier handed a token or left a comrade with a message to be
+delivered in case he should be killed. They did not seem to think of
+being killed; they seemed absorbed in a desire to know what would
+happen, and how it would look when it was happening. Men glanced
+continually at their officers in a plain desire to be quick to
+understand the very first order that would be given; and officers looked
+gravely at their men, measuring them, feeling their temper, worrying
+about them.
+
+A bugle called; there were sharp cries, and the Kicking Twelfth was off
+to battle.
+
+The regiment had the right of line in the infantry brigade, and the men
+tramped noisily along the white road, every eye was strained ahead; but,
+after all, there was nothing to be seen but a dozen farms--in short, a
+country-side. It resembled the scenery in Spitzbergen; every man in the
+Kicking Twelfth had often confronted a dozen such farms with a composure
+which amounted to indifference. But still down the road came galloping
+troopers, who delivered information to Colonel Sponge and then galloped
+on. In time the Twelfth came to the top of a rise, and below them on
+the plain was the heavy black streak of a Spitzbergen squadron, and
+behind the squadron loomed the grey bare hill of the Rostina position.
+
+There was a little of skirmish firing. The Twelfth reached a knoll,
+which the officers easily recognised as the place described by the
+cavalry as suitable for the Spitzbergen guns. The men swarmed up it in a
+peculiar formation. They resembled a crowd coming off a race track; but,
+nevertheless, there was no stray sheep. It was simply that the ground on
+which actual battles are fought is not like a chess board. And after
+them came swinging a six-gun battery, the guns wagging from side to side
+as the long line turned out of the road, and the drivers using their
+whips as the leading horses scrambled at the hill. The halted Twelfth
+lifted its voice and spoke amiably, but with point, to the battery.
+
+"Go on, Guns! We'll take care of you. Don't be afraid. Give it to them!"
+The teams--lead, swing and wheel--struggled and slipped over the steep
+and uneven ground; and the gunners, as they clung to their springless
+positions, wore their usual and natural airs of unhappiness. They made
+no reply to the infantry. Once upon the top of the hill, however, these
+guns were unlimbered in a flash, and directly the infantry could hear
+the loud voice of an officer drawling out the time for fuses. A moment
+later the first 3·2 bellowed out, and there could be heard the swish and
+the snarl of a fleeting shell.
+
+Colonel Sponge and a number of officers climbed to the battery's
+position; but the men of the regiment sat in the shelter of the hill,
+like so many blindfolded people, and wondered what they would have been
+able to see if they had been officers. Sometimes the shells of the enemy
+came sweeping over the top of the hill, and burst in great brown
+explosions in the fields to the rear. The men looked after them and
+laughed. To the rear could be seen also the mountain battery coming at a
+comic trot, with every man obviously in a deep rage with every mule. If
+a man can put in long service with a mule battery and come out of it
+with an amiable disposition, he should be presented with a medal
+weighing many ounces. After the mule battery came a long black winding
+thing, which was three regiments of Spitzbergen infantry; and at the
+backs of them and to the right was an inky square, which was the
+remaining Spitzbergen guns. General Richie and his staff clattered up
+the hill. The blindfolded Twelfth sat still. The inky square suddenly
+became a long racing line. The howitzers joined their little bark to the
+thunder of the guns on the hill, and the three regiments of infantry
+came on. The Twelfth sat still.
+
+Of a sudden a bugle rang its warning, and the officers shouted. Some
+used the old cry, "Attention! Kim up, the Kickers!"--and the Twelfth
+knew that it had been told to go on. The majority of the men expected to
+see great things as soon as they rounded the shoulder of the hill; but
+there was nothing to be seen save a complicated plain and the grey
+knolls occupied by the enemy. Many company commanders in low voices
+worked at their men, and said things which do not appear in the written
+reports. They talked soothingly; they talked indignantly; and they
+talked always like fathers. And the men heard no sentences completely;
+they heard no specific direction, these wide-eyed men. They understood
+that there was being delivered some kind of exhortation to do as they
+had been taught, and they also understood that a superior intelligence
+was anxious over their behaviour and welfare.
+
+There was a great deal of floundering through hedges, climbing of walls
+and jumping of ditches. Curiously original privates tried to find new
+and easier ways for themselves, instead of following the men in front of
+them. Officers had short fits of fury over these people. The more
+originality they possessed, the more likely they were to become
+separated from their companies. Colonel Sponge was making an exciting
+progress on a big charger. When the first song of the bullets came from
+above, the men wondered why he sat so high; the charger seemed as tall
+as the Eiffel Tower. But if he was high in the air, he had a fine view,
+and that supposedly is why people ascend the Eiffel Tower. Very often he
+had been a joke to them, but when they saw this fat, old gentleman so
+coolly treating the strange new missiles which hummed in the air, it
+struck them suddenly that they had wronged him seriously; and a man who
+could attain the command of a Spitzbergen regiment was entitled to
+general respect. And they gave him a sudden, quick affection--an
+affection that would make them follow him heartily, trustfully,
+grandly--this fat, old gentleman, seated on a too-big horse. In a flash
+his tousled grey head, his short, thick legs, even his paunch, had
+become specially and humorously endeared to them. And this is the way of
+soldiers.
+
+But still the Twelfth had not yet come to the place where tumbling
+bodies begin their test of the very heart of a regiment. They backed
+through more hedges, jumped more ditches, slid over more walls. The
+Rostina artillery had seemed to be asleep; but suddenly the guns aroused
+like dogs from their kennels, and around the Twelfth there began a wild,
+swift screeching. There arose cries to hurry, to come on; and, as the
+rifle bullets began to plunge into them, the men saw the high,
+formidable hills of the enemy's right, and perfectly understood that
+they were doomed to storm them. The cheering thing was the sudden
+beginning of a tremendous uproar on the enemy's left.
+
+Every man ran, hard, tense, breathless. When they reached the foot of
+the hills, they thought they had won the charge already, but they were
+electrified to see officers above them waving their swords and yelling
+with anger, surprise, and shame. With a long murmurous outcry the
+Twelfth began to climb the hill; and as they went and fell, they could
+hear frenzied shouts--"Kim up, the Kickers!" The pace was slow. It was
+like the rising of a tide; it was determined, almost relentless in its
+appearance, but it was slow. If a man fell there was a chance that he
+would land twenty yards below the point where he was hit. The Kickers
+crawled, their rifles in their left hands as they pulled and tugged
+themselves up with their right hands. Ever arose the shout, "Kim up, the
+Kickers!" Timothy Lean, his face flaming, his eyes wild, yelled it back
+as if he were delivering the gospel.
+
+The Kickers came up. The enemy--they had been in small force, thinking
+the hills safe enough from attack--retreated quickly from this
+preposterous advance, and not a bayonet in the Twelfth saw blood;
+bayonets very seldom do.
+
+The homing of this successful charge wore an unromantic aspect. About
+twenty windless men suddenly arrived, and threw themselves upon the
+crest of the hill, and breathed. And these twenty were joined by others,
+and still others, until almost 1100 men of the Twelfth lay upon the
+hilltop, while the regiment's track was marked by body after body, in
+groups and singly. The first officer--perchance the first man, one never
+can be certain--the first officer to gain the top of the hill was
+Timothy Lean, and such was the situation that he had the honour to
+receive his colonel with a bashful salute.
+
+The regiment knew exactly what it had done; it did not have to wait to
+be told by the Spitzbergen newspapers. It had taken a formidable
+position with the loss of about five hundred men, and it knew it. It
+knew, too, that it was great glory for the Kicking Twelfth; and as the
+men lay rolling on their bellies, they expressed their joy in a wild
+cry--"Kim up, the Kickers!" For a moment there was nothing but joy, and
+then suddenly company commanders were besieged by men who wished to go
+down the path of the charge and look for their mates. The answers were
+without the quality of mercy; they were short, snapped, quick words,
+"No; you can't."
+
+The attack on the enemy's left was sounding in great rolling crashes.
+The shells in their flight through the air made a noise as of red-hot
+iron plunged into water, and stray bullets nipped near the ears of the
+Kickers.
+
+The Kickers looked and saw. The battle was below them. The enemy were
+indicated by a long, noisy line of gossamer smoke, although there could
+be seen a toy battery with tiny men employed at the guns. All over the
+field the shrapnel was bursting, making quick bulbs of white smoke. Far
+away, two regiments of Spitzbergen infantry were charging, and at the
+distance this charge looked like a casual stroll. It appeared that small
+black groups of men were walking meditatively toward the Rostina
+entrenchments.
+
+There would have been orders given sooner to the Twelfth, but
+unfortunately Colonel Sponge arrived on top of the hill without a breath
+of wind in his body. He could not have given an order to save the
+regiment from being wiped off the earth. Finally he was able to gasp out
+something and point at the enemy. Timothy Lean ran along the line
+yelling to the men to sight at 800 yards; and like a slow and ponderous
+machine the regiment again went to work. The fire flanked a great part
+of the enemy's trenches.
+
+It could be said that there were only two prominent points of view
+expressed by the men after their victorious arrival on the crest. One
+was defined in the exulting use of the corps' cry. The other was a
+grief-stricken murmur which is invariably heard after a fight--"My God,
+we're all cut to pieces!"
+
+Colonel Sponge sat on the ground and impatiently waited for his wind to
+return. As soon as it did, he arose and cried out, "Form up, and we'll
+charge again! We will win this battle as soon as we can hit them!" The
+shouts of the officers sounded wild, like men yelling on ship-board in a
+gale. And the obedient Kickers arose for their task. It was running down
+hill this time. The mob of panting men poured over the stones.
+
+But the enemy had not been blind to the great advantage gained by the
+Twelfth, and they now turned upon them a desperate fire of small arms.
+Men fell in every imaginable way, and their accoutrements rattled on the
+rocky ground. Some landed with a crash, floored by some tremendous
+blows; others dropped gently down like sacks of meal; with others, it
+would positively appear that some spirit had suddenly seized them by
+their ankles and jerked their legs from under them. Many officers were
+down, but Colonel Sponge, stuttering and blowing, was still upright. He
+was almost the last man in the charge, but not to his shame, rather to
+his stumpy legs. At one time it seemed that the assault would be lost.
+The effect of the fire was somewhat as if a terrible cyclone were
+blowing in the men's faces. They wavered, lowering their heads and
+shouldering weakly, as if it were impossible to make headway against the
+wind of battle. It was the moment of despair, the moment of the heroism
+which comes to the chosen of the war-god.
+
+The colonel's cry broke and screeched absolute hatred; other officers
+simply howled; and the men, silent, debased, seemed to tighten their
+muscles for one last effort. Again they pushed against this mysterious
+power of the air, and once more the regiment was charging. Timothy Lean,
+agile and strong, was well in advance; and afterwards he reflected that
+the men who had been nearest to him were an old grizzled sergeant who
+would have gone to hell for the honour of the regiment, and a pie-faced
+lad who had been obliged to lie about his age in order to get into the
+army.
+
+There was no shock of meeting. The Twelfth came down on a corner of the
+trenches, and as soon as the enemy had ascertained that the Twelfth was
+certain to arrive, they scuttled out, running close to the earth and
+spending no time in glances backward. In these days it is not discreet
+to wait for a charge to come home. You observe the charge, you attempt
+to stop it, and if you find that you can't, it is better to retire
+immediately to some other place. The Rostina soldiers were not heroes,
+perhaps, but they were men of sense. A maddened and badly-frightened mob
+of Kickers came tumbling into the trench, and shot at the backs of
+fleeing men. And at that very moment the action was won, and won by the
+Kickers. The enemy's flank was entirely crippled, and, knowing this, he
+did not await further and more disastrous information. The Twelfth
+looked at themselves and knew that they had a record. They sat down and
+grinned patronisingly as they saw the batteries galloping to advance
+position to shell the retreat, and they really laughed as the cavalry
+swept tumultuously forward.
+
+The Twelfth had no more concern with the battle. They had won it, and
+the subsequent proceedings were only amusing.
+
+There was a call from the flank, and the men wearily adjusted themselves
+as General Richie, stern and grim as a Roman, looked with his straight
+glance at a hammered and thin and dirty line of figures, which was His
+Majesty's Twelfth Regiment of the Line. When opposite old Colonel
+Sponge, a podgy figure standing at attention, the general's face set in
+still more grim and stern lines. He took off his helmet. "Kim up, the
+Kickers!" said he. He replaced his helmet and rode off. Down the cheeks
+of the little fat colonel rolled tears. He stood like a stone for a long
+moment, and wheeled in supreme wrath upon his surprised adjutant.
+"Delahaye, you d--d fool, don't stand there staring like a monkey! Go,
+tell young Lean I want to see him." The adjutant jumped as if he were on
+springs, and went after Lean. That young officer presented himself
+directly, his face covered with disgraceful smudges, and he had also
+torn his breeches. He had never seen the colonel in such a rage. "Lean,
+you young whelp! you--you're a good boy." And even as the general had
+turned away from the colonel, the colonel turned away from the
+lieutenant.
+
+
+
+
+THE UPTURNED FACE.
+
+
+"What will we do now?" said the adjutant, troubled and excited.
+
+"Bury him," said Timothy Lean.
+
+The two officers looked down close to their toes where lay the body of
+their comrade. The face was chalk-blue; gleaming eyes stared at the sky.
+Over the two upright figures was a windy sound of bullets, and on the
+top of the hill Lean's prostrate company of Spitzbergen infantry was
+firing measured volleys.
+
+"Don't you think it would be better--" began the adjutant, "we might
+leave him until to-morrow."
+
+"No," said Lean. "I can't hold that post an hour longer. I've got to
+fall back, and we've got to bury old Bill."
+
+"Of course," said the adjutant, at once. "Your men got intrenching
+tools?"
+
+Lean shouted back to his little line, and two men came slowly, one with
+a pick, one with a shovel. They started in the direction of the Rostina
+sharpshooters. Bullets cracked near their ears. "Dig here," said Lean
+gruffly. The men, thus caused to lower their glances to the turf, became
+hurried and frightened merely because they could not look to see whence
+the bullets came. The dull beat of the pick striking the earth sounded
+amid the swift snap of close bullets. Presently the other private began
+to shovel.
+
+"I suppose," said the adjutant, slowly, "we'd better search his clothes
+for--things."
+
+Lean nodded. Together in curious abstraction they looked at the body.
+Then Lean stirred his shoulders suddenly, arousing himself.
+
+"Yes," he said, "we'd better see what he's got." He dropped to his
+knees, and his hands approached the body of the dead officer. But his
+hands wavered over the buttons of the tunic. The first button was
+brick-red with drying blood, and he did not seem to dare touch it.
+
+"Go on," said the adjutant, hoarsely.
+
+Lean stretched his wooden hand, and his fingers fumbled the
+blood-stained buttons. At last he rose with ghastly face. He had
+gathered a watch, a whistle, a pipe, a tobacco pouch, a handkerchief, a
+little case of cards and papers. He looked at the adjutant. There was a
+silence. The adjutant was feeling that he had been a coward to make Lean
+do all the grizzly business.
+
+"Well," said Lean, "that's all, I think. You have his sword and
+revolver?"
+
+"Yes," said the adjutant, his face working, and then he burst out in a
+sudden strange fury at the two privates. "Why don't you hurry up with
+that grave? What are you doing, anyhow? Hurry, do you hear? I never saw
+such stupid--"
+
+Even as he cried out in his passion the two men were labouring for their
+lives. Ever overhead the bullets were spitting.
+
+The grave was finished. It was not a masterpiece--a poor little shallow
+thing. Lean and the adjutant again looked at each other in a curious
+silent communication.
+
+Suddenly the adjutant croaked out a weird laugh. It was a terrible
+laugh, which had its origin in that part of the mind which is first
+moved by the singing of the nerves. "Well," he said, humorously to Lean,
+"I suppose we had best tumble him in."
+
+"Yes," said Lean. The two privates stood waiting, bent over their
+implements. "I suppose," said Lean, "it would be better if we laid him
+in ourselves."
+
+"Yes," said the adjutant. Then apparently remembering that he had made
+Lean search the body, he stooped with great fortitude and took hold of
+the dead officer's clothing. Lean joined him. Both were particular that
+their fingers should not feel the corpse. They tugged away; the corpse
+lifted, heaved, toppled, flopped into the grave, and the two officers,
+straightening, looked again at each other--they were always looking at
+each other. They sighed with relief.
+
+The adjutant said, "I suppose we should--we should say something. Do you
+know the service, Tim?"
+
+"They don't read the service until the grave is filled in," said Lean,
+pressing his lips to an academic expression.
+
+"Don't they?" said the adjutant, shocked that he had made the mistake.
+
+"Oh, well," he cried, suddenly, "let us--let us say something--while he
+can hear us."
+
+"All right," said Lean. "Do you know the service?"
+
+"I can't remember a line of it," said the adjutant.
+
+Lean was extremely dubious. "I can repeat two lines, but--"
+
+"Well, do it," said the adjutant. "Go as far as you can. That's better
+than nothing. And the beasts have got our range exactly."
+
+Lean looked at his two men. "Attention," he barked. The privates came to
+attention with a click, looking much aggrieved. The adjutant lowered his
+helmet to his knee. Lean, bareheaded, stood over the grave. The Rostina
+sharpshooters fired briskly.
+
+"Oh Father, our friend has sunk in the deep waters of death, but his
+spirit has leaped toward Thee as the bubble arises from the lips of the
+drowning. Perceive, we beseech, Oh Father, the little flying bubble,
+and--"
+
+Lean, although husky and ashamed, had suffered no hesitation up to this
+point, but he stopped with a hopeless feeling and looked at the corpse.
+
+The adjutant moved uneasily. "And from Thy superb heights--" he began,
+and then he too came to an end.
+
+"And from Thy superb heights," said Lean.
+
+The adjutant suddenly remembered a phrase in the back part of the
+Spitzbergen burial service, and he exploited it with the triumphant
+manner of a man who has recalled everything, and can go on.
+
+"Oh God, have mercy--"
+
+"Oh God, have mercy--" said Lean.
+
+"Mercy," repeated the adjutant, in quick failure.
+
+"Mercy," said Lean. And then he was moved by some violence of feeling,
+for he turned suddenly upon his two men and tigerishly said, "Throw the
+dirt in."
+
+The fire of the Rostina sharpshooters was accurate and continuous.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One of the aggrieved privates came forward with his shovel. He lifted
+his first shovel-load of earth, and for a moment of inexplicable
+hesitation it was held poised above this corpse, which from its
+chalk-blue face looked keenly out from the grave. Then the soldier
+emptied his shovel on--on the feet.
+
+Timothy Lean felt as if tons had been swiftly lifted from off his
+forehead. He had felt that perhaps the private might empty the shovel
+on--on the face. It had been emptied on the feet. There was a great
+point gained there--ha, ha!--the first shovelful had been emptied on the
+feet. How satisfactory!
+
+The adjutant began to babble. "Well, of course--a man we've messed with
+all these years--impossible--you can't, you know, leave your intimate
+friends rotting on the field. Go on, for God's sake, and shovel, you."
+
+The man with the shovel suddenly ducked, grabbed his left arm with his
+right hand, and looked at his officer for orders. Lean picked the shovel
+from the ground. "Go to the rear," he said to the wounded man. He also
+addressed the other private. "You get under cover, too; I'll finish this
+business."
+
+The wounded man scrambled hard still for the top of the ridge without
+devoting any glances to the direction from whence the bullets came, and
+the other man followed at an equal pace; but he was different, in that
+he looked back anxiously three times.
+
+This is merely the way--often--of the hit and unhit.
+
+Timothy Lean filled the shovel, hesitated, and then in a movement which
+was like a gesture of abhorrence he flung the dirt into the grave, and
+as it landed it made a sound--plop. Lean suddenly stopped and mopped his
+brow--a tired labourer.
+
+"Perhaps we have been wrong," said the adjutant. His glance wavered
+stupidly. "It might have been better if we hadn't buried him just at
+this time. Of course, if we advance to-morrow the body would have
+been--"
+
+"Damn you," said Lean, "shut your mouth." He was not the senior officer.
+
+He again filled the shovel and flung the earth. Always the earth made
+that sound--plop. For a space Lean worked frantically, like a man
+digging himself out of danger.
+
+Soon there was nothing to be seen but the chalk-blue face. Lean filled
+the shovel. "Good God," he cried to the adjutant. "Why didn't you turn
+him somehow when you put him in? This--" Then Lean began to stutter.
+
+The adjutant understood. He was pale to the lips. "Go on, man," he
+cried, beseechingly, almost in a shout. Lean swung back the shovel. It
+went forward in a pendulum curve. When the earth landed it made a
+sound--plop.
+
+
+
+
+THE SHRAPNEL OF THEIR FRIENDS.
+
+
+From over the knolls came the tiny sound of a cavalry bugle singing out
+the recall, and later, detached parties of His Majesty's 2nd Hussars
+came trotting back to where the Spitzbergen infantry sat complacently on
+the captured Rostina position. The horsemen were well pleased, and they
+told how they had ridden thrice through the helterskelter of the fleeing
+enemy. They had ultimately been checked by the great truth, and when a
+good enemy runs away in daylight he sooner or later finds a place where
+he fetches up with a jolt, and turns face the pursuit--notably if it is
+a cavalry pursuit. The Hussars had discreetly withdrawn, displaying no
+foolish pride of corps at that time.
+
+There was a general admission that the Kicking Twelfth had taken the
+chief honours of the day, but the artillery added that if the guns had
+not shelled so accurately the Twelfth's charge could not have been made
+so successfully, and the three other regiments of infantry, of course,
+did not conceal their feelings, that their attack on the enemy's left
+had withdrawn many rifles that would have been pelting at the Twelfth.
+The cavalry simply said that but for them the victory would not have
+been complete.
+
+Corps' prides met each other face to face at every step, but the Kickers
+smiled easily and indulgently. A few recruits bragged, but they bragged
+because they were recruits. The older men did not wish it to appear that
+they were surprised and rejoicing at the performance of the regiment. If
+they were congratulated they simply smirked, suggesting that the ability
+of the Twelfth had been long known to them, and that the charge had been
+a little thing, you know, just turned off in the way of an afternoon's
+work.
+
+Major-General Richie encamped his troops on the position which they had
+from the enemy. Old Colonel Sponge of the Twelfth redistributed his
+officers, and the losses had been so great that Timothy Lean got command
+of a company. It was not much of a company. Fifty-three smudged and
+sweating men faced their new commander. The company had gone into action
+with a strength of eighty-six. The heart of Timothy Lean beat high with
+pride. He intended to be some day a general, and if he ever became a
+general, that moment of promotion was not equal in joy to the moment
+when he looked at his new possession of fifty-three vagabonds. He
+scanned the faces, and recognised with satisfaction one old sergeant and
+two bright young corporals. "Now," said he to himself, "I have here a
+snug little body of men with which I can do something." In him burned
+the usual fierce fire to make them the best company in the regiment. He
+had adopted them; they were his men. "I will do what I can for you," he
+said. "Do you the same for me."
+
+The Twelfth bivouacked on the ridge. Little fires were built, and there
+appeared among the men innumerable blackened tin cups, which were so
+treasured that a faint suspicion in connection with the loss of one
+could bring on the grimmest of fights. Meantime certain of the privates
+silently readjusted their kits as their names were called out by the
+sergeants. These were the men condemned to picket duty after a hard day
+of marching and fighting. The dusk came slowly, and the colour of the
+countless fires, spotting the ridge and the plain, grew in the falling
+darkness. Far-away pickets fired at something.
+
+One by one the men's heads were lowered to the earth until the ridge was
+marked by two long shadowy rows of men. Here and there an officer sat
+musing in his dark cloak with a ray of a weakening fire gleaming on his
+sword-hilt. From the plain there came at times the sound of battery
+horses moving restlessly at their tethers, and one could imagine he
+heard the throaty, grumbling curse of the drivers. The moon died swiftly
+through flying light clouds. Far-away pickets fired at something.
+
+In the morning the infantry and guns breakfasted to the music of a
+racket between the cavalry and the enemy, which was taking place some
+miles up the valley.
+
+The ambitious Hussars had apparently stirred some kind of a hornet's
+nest, and they were having a good fight with no officious friends near
+enough to interfere. The remainder of the army looked toward the fight
+musingly over the tops of tin cups. In time the column crawled lazily
+forward to see.
+
+The Twelfth, as it crawled, saw a regiment deploy to the right, and saw
+a battery dash to take position. The cavalry jingled back grinning with
+pride and expecting to be greatly admired. Presently the Twelfth was
+bidden to take seat by the roadside and await its turn. Instantly the
+wise men--and there were more than three--came out of the east and
+announced that they had divined the whole plan. The Kicking Twelfth was
+to be held in reserve until the critical moment of the fight, and then
+they were to be sent forward to win a victory. In corroboration, they
+pointed to the fact that the general in command was sticking close to
+them, in order, they said, to give the word quickly at the proper
+moment. And in truth, on a small hill to the right, Major-General Richie
+sat on his horse and used his glasses, while back of him his staff and
+the orderlies bestrode their champing, dancing mounts.
+
+It is always good to look hard at a general, and the Kickers were
+transfixed with interest. The wise men again came out of the east and
+told what was inside the Richie head, but even the wise men wondered
+what was inside the Richie head.
+
+Suddenly an exciting thing happened. To the left and ahead was a
+pounding Spitzbergen battery, and a toy suddenly appeared on the slope
+behind the guns. The toy was a man with a flag--the flag was white save
+for a square of red in the centre. And this toy began to wig-wag
+wag-wig, and it spoke to General Richie under the authority of the
+captain of the battery. It said: "The 88th are being driven on my centre
+and right."
+
+Now, when the Kicking Twelfth had left Spitzbergen there was an average
+of six signalmen in each company. A proportion of these signallers had
+been destroyed in the first engagement, but enough remained so that the
+Kicking Twelfth read, as a unit, the news of the 88th. The word ran
+quickly. "The 88th are being driven on my centre and right."
+
+Richie rode to where Colonel Sponge sat aloft on his big horse, and a
+moment later a cry ran along the column: "Kim up, the Kickers." A large
+number of the men were already in the road, hitching and twisting at
+their belts and packs. The Kickers moved forward.
+
+They deployed and passed in a straggling line through the battery, and
+to the left and right of it. The gunners called out to them carefully,
+telling them not to be afraid.
+
+The scene before them was startling. They were facing a country cut up
+by many steep-sided ravines, and over the resultant hills were
+retreating little squads of the 88th. The Twelfth laughed in its
+exultation. The men could now tell by the volume of fire that the 88th
+were retreating for reasons which were not sufficiently expressed in the
+noise of the Rostina shooting. Held together by the bugle, the Kickers
+swarmed up the first hill and laid on the crest. Parties of the 88th
+went through their lines, and the Twelfth told them coarsely its several
+opinions. The sights were clicked up to 600 yards, and, with a crashing
+volley, the regiment entered its second battle.
+
+A thousand yards away on the right the cavalry and a regiment of
+infantry were creeping onward. Sponge decided not to be backward, and
+the bugle told the Twelfth to go ahead once more. The Twelfth charged,
+followed by a rabble of rallied men of the 88th, who were crying aloud
+that it had been all a mistake.
+
+A charge in these days is not a running match. Those splendid pictures
+of levelled bayonets, dashing at headlong pace towards the closed ranks
+of the enemy are absurd as soon as they are mistaken for the actuality
+of the present. In these days charges are likely to cover at least the
+half of a mile, and to go at the pace exhibited in the pictures a man
+would be obliged to have a little steam engine inside of him.
+
+The charge of the Kicking Twelfth somewhat resembled the advance of a
+great crowd of beaters who, for some reason, passionately desired to
+start the game. Men stumbled; men fell; men swore; there were cries:
+"This way!" "Come this way!" "Don't go that way!" "You can't get up that
+way!" Over the rocks the Twelfth scrambled, red in the face, sweating
+and angry. Soldiers fell because they were struck by bullets, and
+because they had not an ounce of strength left in them. Colonel Sponge,
+with a face like a red cushion, was being dragged windless up the steeps
+by devoted and athletic men. Three of the older captains lay afar back,
+and swearing with their eyes because their tongues were temporarily out
+of service.
+
+And yet-and-yet, the speed of the charge was slow. From the position of
+the battery, it looked as if the Kickers were taking a walk over some
+extremely difficult country.
+
+The regiment ascended a superior height, and found trenches and dead
+men. They took seat with the dead, satisfied with this company until
+they could get their wind. For thirty minutes purple-faced stragglers
+rejoined from the rear. Colonel Sponge looked behind him, and saw that
+Richie, with his staff, had approached by another route, and had
+evidently been near enough to see the full extent of the Kickers'
+exertions. Presently Richie began to pick a way for his horse towards
+the captured position. He disappeared in a gully between two hills.
+
+Now it came to pass that a Spitzbergen battery on the far right took
+occasion to mistake the identity of the Kicking Twelfth, and the captain
+of these guns, not having anything to occupy him in front, directed his
+six 3·2's upon the ridge where the tired Kickers lay side by side with
+the Rostina dead. A shrapnel came swinging over the Kickers, seething
+and fuming. It burst directly over the trenches, and the shrapnel, of
+course, scattered forward, hurting nobody. But a man screamed out to his
+officer: "By God, sir, that is one of our own batteries!" The whole line
+quivered with fright. Five more shells streaked overhead, and one flung
+its hail into the middle of the 3rd battalion's line, and the Kicking
+Twelfth shuddered to the very centre of its heart, and arose, like one
+man, and fled.
+
+Colonel Sponge, fighting, frothing at the month, dealing blows with his
+fist right and left, found himself confronting a fury on horseback.
+Richie was as pale as death, and his eyes sent out sparks. "What does
+this conduct mean?" he flashed out between his fastened teeth.
+
+Sponge could only gurgle: "The battery--the battery--the battery!"
+
+"The battery?" cried Richie, in a voice which sounded like pistol shots.
+"Are you afraid of the guns you almost took yesterday? Go back there,
+you white-livered cowards! You swine! You dogs! Curs! Curs! Curs! Go
+back there!"
+
+Most of the men halted and crouched under the lashing tongue of their
+maddened general. But one man found desperate speech, and yelled:
+"General, it is our own battery that is firing on us!"
+
+Many say that the General's face tightened until it looked like a mask.
+The Kicking Twelfth retired to a comfortable place, where they were only
+under the fire of the Rostina artillery. The men saw a staff officer
+riding over the obstructions in a manner calculated to break his neck
+directly.
+
+The Kickers were aggrieved, but the heart of the colonel was cut in
+twain. He even babbled to his major, talking like a man who is about to
+die of simple rage. "Did you hear what he said to me? Did you hear what
+he called us? _Did you hear what he called us?_"
+
+The majors searched their minds for words to heal a deep wound.
+
+The Twelfth received orders to go into camp upon the hill where they had
+been insulted. Old Sponge looked as if he were about to knock the aide
+out of the saddle, but he saluted, and took the regiment back to the
+temporary companionship of the Rostina dead.
+
+Major-General Richie never apologised to Colonel Sponge. When you are a
+commanding officer you do not adopt the custom of apologising for the
+wrong done to your subordinates. You ride away; and they understand, and
+are confident of the restitution to honour. Richie never opened his
+stern, young lips to Sponge in reference to the scene near the hill of
+the Rostina dead, but in time there was a general order No. 20, which
+spoke definitely of the gallantry of His Majesty's 12th regiment of the
+line and its colonel. In the end Sponge was given a high decoration,
+because he had been badly used by Richie on that day. Richie knew that
+it is hard for men to withstand the shrapnel of their friends.
+
+A few days later the Kickers, marching in column on the road, came upon
+their friend the battery, halted in a field; and they addressed the
+battery, and the captain of the battery blanched to the tips of his
+ears. But the men of the battery told the Kickers to go to the
+devil--frankly, freely, placidly, told the Kickers to go to the devil.
+
+And this story proves that it is sometimes better to be a private.
+
+
+
+
+"AND IF HE WILLS, WE MUST DIE."
+
+
+A sergeant, a corporal, and fourteen men of the Twelfth Regiment of the
+Line had been sent out to occupy a house on the main highway. They would
+be at least a half of a mile in advance of any other picket of their own
+people. Sergeant Morton was deeply angry at being sent on this duty. He
+said that he was over-worked. There were at least two sergeants, he
+claimed furiously, whose turn it should have been to go on this arduous
+mission. He was treated unfairly; he was abused by his superiors; why
+did any damned fool ever join the army? As for him he would get out of
+it as soon as possible; he was sick of it; the life of a dog. All this
+he said to the corporal, who listened attentively, giving grunts of
+respectful assent. On the way to this post two privates took occasion to
+drop to the rear and pilfer in the orchard of a deserted plantation.
+When the sergeant discovered this absence, he grew black with a rage
+which was an accumulation of all his irritations. "Run, you!" he howled.
+"Bring them here! I'll show them--" A private ran swiftly to the rear.
+The remainder of the squad began to shout nervously at the two
+delinquents, whose figures they could see in the deep shade of the
+orchard, hurriedly picking fruit from the ground and cramming it within
+their shirts, next to their skins. The beseeching cries of their
+comrades stirred the criminals more than did the barking of the
+sergeant. They ran to rejoin the squad, while holding their loaded
+bosoms and with their mouths open with aggrieved explanations.
+
+Jones faced the sergeant with a horrible cancer marked in bumps on his
+left side. The disease of Patterson showed quite around the front of his
+waist in many protuberances. "A nice pair!" said the sergeant, with
+sudden frigidity. "You're the kind of soldiers a man wants to choose for
+a dangerous outpost duty, ain't you?"
+
+The two privates stood at attention, still looking much aggrieved. "We
+only--" began Jones huskily.
+
+"Oh, you 'only!'" cried the sergeant. "Yes, you 'only.' I know all
+about that. But if you think you are going to trifle with me--"
+
+A moment later the squad moved on towards its station. Behind the
+sergeant's back Jones and Patterson were slyly passing apples and pears
+to their friends while the sergeant expounded eloquently to the corporal
+"You see what kind of men are in the army now. Why, when I joined the
+regiment it was a very different thing, I can tell you. Then a sergeant
+had some authority, and if a man disobeyed orders, he had a very small
+chance of escaping something extremely serious. But now! Good God! If I
+report these men, the captain will look over a lot of beastly orderly
+sheets and say--'Haw, eh, well, Sergeant Morton, these men seem to have
+very good records; very good records, indeed. I can't be too hard on
+them; no, not too hard.'" Continued the sergeant: "I tell you, Flagler,
+the army is no place for a decent man."
+
+Flagler, the corporal, answered with a sincerity of appreciation which
+with him had become a science. "I think you are right, sergeant," he
+answered.
+
+Behind them the privates mumbled discreetly. "Damn this sergeant of
+ours. He thinks we are made of wood. I don't see any reason for all this
+strictness when we are on active service. It isn't like being at home in
+barracks! There is no great harm in a couple of men dropping out to
+raid an orchard of the enemy when all the world knows that we haven't
+had a decent meal in twenty days."
+
+The reddened face of Sergeant Morton suddenly showed to the rear. "A
+little more marching and less talking," he said.
+
+When he came to the house he had been ordered to occupy the sergeant
+sniffed with disdain. "These people must have lived like cattle," he
+said angrily. To be sure, the place was not alluring. The ground floor
+had been used for the housing of cattle, and it was dark and terrible. A
+flight of steps led to the lofty first floor, which was denuded but
+respectable. The sergeant's visage lightened when he saw the strong
+walls of stone and cement. "Unless they turn guns on us, they will never
+get us out of here," he said cheerfully to the squad. The men, anxious
+to keep him in an amiable mood, all hurriedly grinned and seemed very
+appreciative and pleased. "I'll make this into a fortress," he
+announced. He sent Jones and Patterson, the two orchard thiefs, out on
+sentry-duty. He worked the others, then, until he could think of no more
+things to tell them to do. Afterwards he went forth, with a
+major-general's serious scowl, and examined the ground in front of his
+position. In returning he came upon a sentry, Jones, munching an apple.
+He sternly commanded him to throw it away.
+
+The men spread their blankets on the floors of the bare rooms, and
+putting their packs under their heads and lighting their pipes, they
+lived in easy peace. Bees hummed in the garden, and a scent of flowers
+came through the open window. A great fan-shaped bit of sunshine smote
+the face of one man, and he indolently cursed as he moved his primitive
+bed to a shadier place.
+
+Another private explained to a comrade: "This is all nonsense anyhow. No
+sense in occupying this post. They--"
+
+"But, of course," said the corporal, "when she told me herself that she
+cared more for me than she did for him, I wasn't going to stand any of
+his talk--" The corporal's listener was so sleepy that he could only
+grunt his sympathy.
+
+There was a sudden little spatter of shooting. A cry from Jones rang
+out. With no intermediate scrambling, the sergeant leaped straight to
+his feet. "Now," he cried, "let us see what you are made of! If," he
+added bitterly, "you are made of anything!"
+
+A man yelled: "Good God, can't you see you're all tangled up in my
+cartridge belt?"
+
+Another man yelled: "Keep off my legs! Can't you walk on the floor?"
+
+To the windows there was a blind rush of slumberous men, who brushed
+hair from their eyes even as they made ready their rifles. Jones and
+Patterson came stumbling up the steps, crying dreadful information.
+Already the enemy's bullets were spitting and singing over the house.
+
+The sergeant suddenly was stiff and cold with a sense of the importance
+of the thing. "Wait until you see one," he drawled loudly and calmly,
+"then shoot."
+
+For some moments the enemy's bullets swung swifter than lightning over
+the house without anybody being able to discover a target. In this
+interval a man was shot in the throat. He gurgled, and then lay down on
+the floor. The blood slowly waved down the brown skin of his neck while
+he looked meekly at his comrades.
+
+There was a howl. "There they are! There they come!" The rifles
+crackled. A light smoke drifted idly through the rooms. There was a
+strong odour as if from burnt paper and the powder of fire-crackers. The
+men were silent. Through the windows and about the house the bullets of
+an entirely invisible enemy moaned, hummed, spat, burst, and sang.
+
+The men began to curse. "Why can't we see them?" they muttered through
+their teeth. The sergeant was still frigid. He answered soothingly as if
+he were directly reprehensible for this behaviour of the enemy. "Wait a
+moment. You will soon be able to see them. There! Give it to them." A
+little skirt of black figures had appeared in a field. It was really
+like shooting at an upright needle from the full length of a ball-room.
+But the men's spirits improved as soon as the enemy--this mysterious
+enemy--became a tangible thing, and far off. They had believed the foe
+to be shooting at them from the adjacent garden.
+
+"Now," said the sergeant ambitiously, "we can beat them off easily if
+you men are good enough."
+
+A man called out in a tone of quick, great interest. "See that fellow on
+horseback, Bill? Isn't he on horseback? I thought he was on horseback."
+
+There was a fusilade against another side of the house. The sergeant
+dashed into the room which commanded that situation. He found a dead
+soldier on the floor. He rushed out howling: "When was Knowles killed?
+When was Knowles killed? Damn it, when was Knowles killed?" It was
+absolutely essential to find out the exact moment this man died. A
+blackened private turned upon his sergeant and demanded: "How in hell do
+I know?" Sergeant Morton had a sense of anger so brief that in the next
+second he cried: "Patterson!" He had even forgotten his vital interest
+in the time of Knowles' death.
+
+"Yes?" said Patterson, his face set with some deep-rooted quality of
+determination. Still, he was a mere farm boy.
+
+"Go in to Knowles' window and shoot at those people," said the sergeant
+hoarsely. Afterwards he coughed. Some of the fumes of the fight had made
+way to his lungs.
+
+Patterson looked at the door into this other room. He looked at it as if
+he suspected it was to be his death-chamber. Then he entered and stood
+across the body of Knowles and fired vigorously into a group of plum
+trees.
+
+"They can't take this house," declared the sergeant in a contemptuous
+and argumentative tone. He was apparently replying to somebody. The man
+who had been shot in the throat looked up at him. Eight men were firing
+from the windows. The sergeant detected in a corner three wounded men
+talking together feebly. "Don't you think there is anything to do?" he
+bawled. "Go and get Knowles' cartridges and give them to somebody who
+can use them! Take Simpson's too." The man who had been shot in the
+throat looked at him. Of the three wounded men who had been talking, one
+said: "My leg is all doubled up under me, sergeant." He spoke
+apologetically.
+
+Meantime the sergeant was re-loading his rifle. His foot slipped in the
+blood of the man who had been shot in the throat, and the military boot
+made a greasy red streak on the floor.
+
+"Why, we can hold this place," shouted the sergeant jubilantly. "Who
+says we can't?"
+
+Corporal Flagler suddenly spun away from his window and fell in a heap.
+
+"Sergeant," murmured a man as he dropped to a seat on the floor out of
+danger, "I can't stand this. I swear I can't. I think we should run
+away."
+
+Morton, with the kindly eyes of a good shepherd, looked at the man. "You
+are afraid, Johnston, you are afraid," he said softly. The man struggled
+to his feet, cast upon the sergeant a gaze full of admiration, reproach,
+and despair, and returned to his post. A moment later he pitched
+forward, and thereafter his body hung out of the window, his arms
+straight and the fists clenched. Incidentally this corpse was pierced
+afterwards by chance three times by bullets of the enemy.
+
+The sergeant laid his rifle against the stone-work of the window-frame
+and shot with care until his magazine was empty. Behind him a man,
+simply grazed on the elbow, was wildly sobbing like a girl. "Damn it,
+shut up," said Morton, without turning his head. Before him was a vista
+of a garden, fields, clumps of trees, woods, populated at the time with
+little fleeting figures.
+
+He grew furious. "Why didn't he send me orders?" he cried aloud. The
+emphasis on the word "he" was impressive. A mile back on the road a
+galloper of the Hussars lay dead beside his dead horse.
+
+The man who had been grazed on the elbow still set up his bleat.
+Morton's fury veered to this soldier. "Can't you shut up? Can't you shut
+up? Can't you shut up? Fight! That's the thing to do. Fight!"
+
+A bullet struck Morton, and he fell upon the man who had been shot in
+the throat. There was a sickening moment. Then the sergeant rolled off
+to a position upon the blood floor. He turned himself with a last effort
+until he could look at the wounded who were able to look at him.
+
+"Kim up, the Kickers," he said thickly. His arms weakened and he dropped
+on his face.
+
+After an interval a young subaltern of the enemy's infantry, followed by
+his eager men, burst into this reeking interior. But just over the
+threshold he halted before the scene of blood and death. He turned with
+a shrug to his sergeant. "God, I should have estimated them at least one
+hundred strong."
+
+
+
+
+WYOMING VALLEY TALES
+
+
+
+
+I.--THE SURRENDER OF FORTY FORT.
+
+
+Immediately after the battle of 3rd July, my mother said, "We had best
+take the children and go into the Fort."
+
+But my father replied, "I will not go. I will not leave my property. All
+that I have in the world is here, and if the savages destroy it they may
+as well destroy me also."
+
+My mother said no other word. Our household was ever given to stern
+silence, and such was my training that it did not occur to me to reflect
+that if my father cared for his property it was not my property, and I
+was entitled to care somewhat for my life.
+
+Colonel Denison was true to the word which he had passed to me at the
+Fort before the battle. He sent a messenger to my father, and this
+messenger stood in the middle of our living-room and spake with a clear,
+indifferent voice. "Colonel Denison bids me come here and say that John
+Bennet is a wicked man, and the blood of his own children will be upon
+his head." As usual, my father said nothing. After the messenger had
+gone, he remained silent for hours in his chair by the fire, and this
+stillness was so impressive to his family that even my mother walked on
+tip-toe as she went about her work. After this long time my father said,
+"Mary!"
+
+Mother halted and looked at him. Father spoke slowly, and as if every
+word was wrested from him with violent pangs. "Mary, you take the girls
+and go to the Fort. I and Solomon and Andrew will go over the mountain
+to Stroudsberg."
+
+Immediately my mother called us all to set about packing such things as
+could be taken to the Fort. And by nightfall we had seen them within its
+pallisade, and my father, myself, and my little brother Andrew, who was
+only eleven years old, were off over the hills on a long march to the
+Delaware settlements. Father and I had our rifles, but we seldom dared
+to fire them, because of the roving bands of Indians. We lived as well
+as we could on blackberries and raspberries. For the most part, poor
+little Andrew rode first on the back of my father and then on my back.
+He was a good little man, and only cried when he would wake in the dead
+of night very cold and very hungry. Then my father would wrap him in an
+old grey coat that was so famous in the Wyoming country that there was
+not even an Indian who did not know of it. But this act he did without
+any direct display of tenderness, for the fear, I suppose, that he
+would weaken little Andrew's growing manhood. Now, in these days of
+safety, and even luxury, I often marvel at the iron spirit of the people
+of my young days. My father, without his coat and no doubt very cold,
+would then sometimes begin to pray to his God in the wilderness, but in
+low voice, because of the Indians. It was July, but even July nights are
+cold in the pine mountains, breathing a chill which goes straight to the
+bones.
+
+But it is not my intention to give in this section the ordinary
+adventures of the masculine part of my family. As a matter of fact, my
+mother and the girls were undergoing in Forty Fort trials which made as
+nothing the happenings on our journey, which ended in safety.
+
+My mother and her small flock were no sooner established in the crude
+quarters within the pallisade than negotiations were opened between
+Colonel Denison and Colonel Zebulon Butler on the American side, and
+"Indian Butler" on the British side, for the capitulation of the Fort
+with such arms and military stores as it contained, the lives of the
+settlers to be strictly preserved. But "Indian Butler" did not seem to
+feel free to promise safety for the lives of the Continental Butler and
+the pathetic little fragment of the regular troops. These men always
+fought so well against the Indians that whenever the Indians could get
+them at their mercy there was small chances of anything but a massacre.
+So every regular left before the surrender; and I fancy that Colonel
+Zebulon Butler considered himself a much-abused man, for if we had left
+ourselves entirely under his direction there is no doubt but what we
+could have saved the valley. He had taken us out on 3rd July because our
+militia officers had almost threatened him. In the end he had said,
+"Very well, I can go as far as any of you." I was always on Butler's
+side of the argument, but owing to the singular arrangement of
+circumstances, my opinion at the age of sixteen counted upon neither the
+one side nor the other.
+
+The Fort was left in charge of Colonel Denison. He had stipulated before
+the surrender that no Indians should be allowed to enter the stockade
+and molest these poor families of women whose fathers and brothers were
+either dead or fled over the mountains, unless their physical debility
+had been such that they were able neither to get killed in the battle
+nor to take the long trail to the Delaware. Of course, this excepts
+those men who were with Washington.
+
+For several days the Indians, obedient to the British officers, kept out
+of the Fort, but soon they began to enter in small bands and went
+sniffing and poking in every corner to find plunder. Our people had
+hidden everything as well as they were able, and for a period little was
+stolen. My mother told me that the first thing of importance to go was
+Colonel Denison's hunting shirt, made of "fine forty" linen. It had a
+double cape, and was fringed about the cape and about the wristbands.
+Colonel Denison at the time was in my mother's cabin. An Indian entered,
+and, rolling a thieving eye about the place, sighted first of all the
+remarkable shirt which Colonel Denison was wearing. He seized the shirt
+and began to tug, while the Colonel backed away, tugging and protesting
+at the same time. The women folk saw at once that the Colonel would be
+tomahawked if he did not give up his shirt, and they begged him to do
+it. He finally elected not to be tomahawked, and came out of his shirt.
+While my mother unbuttoned the wristbands, the Colonel cleverly dropped
+into the lap of a certain Polly Thornton a large packet of Continental
+bills, and his money was thus saved for the settlers.
+
+Colonel Denison had several stormy interviews with "Indian Butler," and
+the British commander finally ended in frankly declaring that he could
+do nothing with the Indians at all. They were beyond control, and the
+defenceless people in the Fort would have to take the consequence. I do
+not mean that Colonel Denison was trying to recover his shirt; I mean
+that he was objecting to a situation which was now almost unendurable. I
+wish to record also that the Colonel lost a large beaver hat. In both
+cases he willed to be tomahawked and killed rather than suffer the
+indignity, but mother prevailed over him. I must confess to this
+discreet age that my mother engaged in fisticuffs with a squaw. This
+squaw came into the cabin, and, without preliminary discussion,
+attempted to drag from my mother the petticoat she was wearing. My
+mother forgot the fine advice she had given to Colonel Denison. She
+proceeded to beat the squaw out of the cabin, and although the squaw
+appealed to some warriors who were standing without the warriors only
+laughed, and my mother kept her petticoat.
+
+The Indians took the feather beds of the people, and, ripping them open,
+flung the feathers broadcast. Then they stuffed these sacks full of
+plunder, and flung them across the backs of such of the settlers' horses
+as they had been able to find. In the old days my mother had had a side
+saddle, of which she was very proud when she rode to meeting on it. She
+had also a brilliant scarlet cloak, which every lady had in those days,
+and which I can remember as one of the admirations of my childhood. One
+day my mother had the satisfaction of seeing a squaw ride off from the
+Fort with this prize saddle reversed on a small nag, and with the proud
+squaw thus mounted wearing the scarlet cloak, also reversed. My sister
+Martha told me afterwards that they laughed, even in their misfortunes.
+A little later they had the satisfaction of seeing the smoke from our
+house and barn arising over the tops of the trees.
+
+When the Indians first began their pillaging, an old Mr. Sutton, who
+occupied a cabin near my mother's cabin, anticipated them by donning all
+his best clothes. He had had a theory that the Americans would be free
+to retain the clothes that they wore. And his best happened to be a suit
+of Quaker grey, from beaver to boots, in which he had been married. Not
+long afterwards my mother and my sisters saw passing the door an Indian
+arrayed in Quaker grey, from beaver to boots. The only odd thing which
+impressed them was that the Indian had appended to the dress a long
+string of Yankee scalps. Sutton was a good Quaker, and if he had been
+wearing the suit there would have been no string of scalps.
+
+They were, in fact, badgered, insulted, robbed by the Indians so openly
+that the British officers would not come into the Fort at all. They
+stayed in their camp, affecting to be ignorant of what was happening. It
+was about all they could do. The Indians had only one idea of war, and
+it was impossible to reason with them when they were flushed with
+victory and stolen rum.
+
+The hand of fate fell heavily upon one rogue whose ambition it was to
+drink everything that the Fort contained. One day he inadvertently came
+upon a bottle of spirits of camphor, and in a few hours he was dead.
+
+But it was known that General Washington contemplated sending a strong
+expedition into the valley, to clear it of the invaders and thrash them.
+Soon there were no enemies in the country save small roving parties of
+Indians, who prevented work in the fields and burned whatever cabins
+that earlier torches had missed.
+
+The first large party to come into the valley was composed mainly of
+Captain Spaulding's company of regulars, and at its head rode Colonel
+Zebulon Butler. My father, myself, and little Andrew returned with this
+party to set to work immediately to build out of nothing a prosperity
+similar to that which had vanished in the smoke.
+
+
+
+
+II.--"OL' BENNET" AND THE INDIANS.
+
+
+My father was so well known of the Indians that, as I was saying, his
+old grey coat was a sign through the northern country. I know of no
+reason for this save that he was honest and obstreperously minded his
+own affairs, and could fling a tomahawk better than the best Indian. I
+will not declare upon how hard it is for a man to be honest and to mind
+his own affairs, but I fully know that it is hard to throw a tomahawk as
+my father threw it, straighter than a bullet from a duelling pistol. He
+had always dealt fairly with the Indians, and I cannot tell why they
+paled him so bitterly, unless it was that when an Indian went foolishly
+drunk my father would deplore it with his foot, if it so happened that
+the drunkenness was done in our cabin. It is true to say that when the
+war came, a singular large number of kicked Indians journeyed from the
+Canadas to re-visit with torch and knife the scenes of the kicking.
+
+If people had thoroughly known my father he would have had no enemies.
+He was the best of men. He had a code of behaviour for himself, and for
+the whole world as well. If people wished his good opinion they only had
+to do exactly as he did, and to have his views. I remember that once my
+sister Martha made me a waistcoat of rabbits' skins, and generally it
+was considered a great ornament. But one day my father espied me in it,
+and commanded me to remove it for ever. Its appearance was indecent, he
+said, and such a garment tainted the soul of him who wore it. In the
+ensuing fortnight a poor pedlar arrived from the Delaware, who had
+suffered great misfortunes in the snows. My father fed him and warmed
+him, and when he gratefully departed, gave him the rabbits' skin
+waistcoat, and the poor man went off clothed indecently in a garment
+that would taint his soul. Afterwards, in a daring mood, I asked my
+father why he had so cursed this pedlar, and he recommended that I
+should study my Bible more closely, and there read that my own devious
+ways should be mended before I sought to judge the enlightened acts of
+my elders. He set me to ploughing the upper twelve acres, and I was
+hardly allowed to loose my grip of the plough handles until every furrow
+was drawn.
+
+The Indians called my father "Ol' Bennet," and he was known broadcast as
+a man whose doom was sealed when the redskins caught him. As I have
+said, the feeling is inexplicable to me. But Indians who had been
+ill-used and maltreated by downright ruffians, against whom revenge
+could with a kind of propriety be directed--many of these Indians
+avowedly gave up a genuine wrong in order to direct a fuller attention
+to the getting of my father's scalp. This most unfair disposition of the
+Indians was a great, deep anxiety to all of us up to the time when
+General Sullivan and his avenging army marched through the valley and
+swept our tormentors afar.
+
+And yet great calamities could happen in our valley even after the
+coming and passing of General Sullivan. We were partly mistaken in our
+gladness. The British force of Loyalists and Indians met Sullivan in one
+battle, and finding themselves over-matched and beaten, they scattered
+in all directions. The Loyalists, for the most part, went home, but the
+Indians cleverly broke up into small bands, and General Sullivan's army
+had no sooner marched beyond the Wyoming Valley than some of these small
+bands were back into the valley plundering outlying cabins and shooting
+people from the thickets and woods that bordered the fields.
+
+General Sullivan had left a garrison at Wilkesbarre, and at this time we
+lived in its strong shadow. It was too formidable for the Indians to
+attack, and it could protect all who valued protection enough to remain
+under its wings, but it could do little against the flying small bands.
+My father chafed in the shelter of the garrison. His best lands lay
+beyond Forty Fort, and he wanted to be at his ploughing. He made several
+brief references to his ploughing that led us to believe that his
+ploughing was the fundamental principle of life. None of us saw any
+means of contending him. My sister Martha began to weep, but it no more
+mattered than if she had began to laugh. My mother said nothing. Aye, my
+wonderful mother said nothing. My father said he would go plough some of
+the land above Forty Fort. Immediately this was with us some sort of a
+law. It was like a rain, or a wind, or a drought.
+
+He went, of course. My young brother Andrew went with him, and he took
+the new span of oxen and a horse. They began to plough a meadow which
+lay in a bend of the river above Forty Fort. Andrew rode the horse
+hitched ahead of the oxen. At a certain thicket the horse shied so that
+little Andrew was almost thrown down. My father seemed to have begun a
+period of apprehension at this time, but it was of no service. Four
+Indians suddenly appeared out of the thicket. Swiftly, and in silence,
+they pounced with tomahawk, rifle, and knife upon my father and my
+brother, and in a moment they were captives of the redskins--that fate
+whose very phrasing was a thrill to the heart of every colonist. It
+spelled death, or that horrible simple absence, vacancy, mystery, which
+is harder than death.
+
+As for us, he had told my mother that if he and Andrew were not returned
+at sundown she might construe a calamity. So at sundown we gave the news
+to the Fort, and directly we heard the alarm gun booming out across the
+dusk like a salute to the death of my father, a solemn, final
+declaration. At the sound of this gun my sisters all began newly to
+weep. It simply defined our misfortune. In the morning a party was sent
+out, which came upon the deserted plough, the oxen calmly munching, and
+the horse still excited and affrighted. The soldiers found the trail of
+four Indians. They followed the trail some distance over the mountains,
+but the redskins with their captives had a long start, and pursuit was
+but useless. The result of this expedition was that we knew at least
+that father and Andrew had not been massacred immediately. But in those
+days this was a most meagre consolation. It was better to wish them well
+dead.
+
+My father and Andrew were hurried over the hills at a terrible pace by
+the four Indians. Andrew told me afterwards that he could think
+sometimes that he was dreaming of being carried off by goblins. The
+redskins said no word, and their mocassined feet made no sound. They
+were like evil spirits. But it was as he caught glimpses of father's
+pale face, every wrinkle in it deepened and hardened, that Andrew saw
+everything in its light. And Andrew was but thirteen years old. It is a
+tender age at which to be burned at the stake.
+
+In time the party came upon two more Indians, who had as a prisoner a
+man named Lebbeus Hammond. He had left Wilkesbarre in search of a
+strayed horse. He was riding the animal back to the Fort when the
+Indians caught him. He and my father knew each other well, and their
+greeting was like them.
+
+"What! Hammond! You here?"
+
+"Yes, I'm here."
+
+As the march was resumed, the principal Indian bestrode Hammond's horse,
+but the horse was very high-nerved and scared, and the bridle was only a
+temporary one made from hickory withes. There was no saddle. And so
+finally the principal Indian came off with a crash, alighting with
+exceeding severity upon his head. When he got upon his feet he was in
+such a rage that the three captives thought to see him dash his tomahawk
+into the skull of the trembling horse, and, indeed, his arm was raised
+for the blow, but suddenly he thought better of it. He had been touched
+by a real point of Indian inspiration. The party was passing a swamp at
+the time, so he mired the horse almost up to its eyes, and left it to
+the long death.
+
+I had said that my father was well known of the Indians, and yet I have
+to announce that none of his six captors knew him. To them he was a
+complete stranger, for upon camping the first night they left my father
+unbound. If they had had any idea that he was "Ol' Bennet" they would
+never have left him unbound. He suggested to Hammond that they try to
+escape that night, but Hammond seemed not to care to try it yet.
+
+In time they met a party of over forty Indians, commanded by a Loyalist.
+In that band there were many who knew my father. They cried out with
+rejoicing when they perceived him. "Ha!" they shouted, "Ol' Bennet!"
+They danced about him, making gestures expressive of the torture. Later
+in the day my father accidentally pulled a button from his coat, and an
+Indian took it from him.
+
+My father asked to be allowed to have it again, for he was a very
+careful man, and in those days all good husbands were trained to bring
+home the loose buttons. The Indians laughed, and explained that a man
+who was to die at Wyallusing--one day's march--need not be particular
+about a button.
+
+The three prisoners were now sent off in care of seven Indians, while
+the Loyalist took the remainder of his men down the valley to further
+harass the settlers. The seven Indians were now very careful of my
+father, allowing him scarce a wink. Their tomahawks came up at the
+slightest sign. At the camp that night they bade the prisoners lie down,
+and then placed poles across them. An Indian lay upon either end of
+these poles. My father managed, however, to let Hammond know that he was
+determined to make an attempt to escape. There was only one night
+between him and the stake, and he was resolved to make what use he could
+of it. Hammond seems to have been dubious from the start, but the men of
+that time were not daunted by broad risks. In his opinion the rising
+would be a failure, but this did not prevent him from agreeing to rise
+with his friend. My brother Andrew was not considered at all. No one
+asked him if he wanted to rise against the Indians. He was only a boy,
+and supposed to obey his elders. So, as none asked his views, he kept
+them to himself; but I wager you he listened, all ears, to the furtive
+consultations, consultations which were mere casual phrases at times,
+and at other times swift, brief sentences shot out in a whisper.
+
+The band of seven Indians relaxed in vigilance as they approached their
+own country, and on the last night from Wyallusing the Indian part of
+the camp seemed much inclined to take deep slumber after the long and
+rapid journey. The prisoners were held to the ground by poles as on the
+previous night, and then the Indians pulled their blankets over their
+heads and passed into heavy sleep. One old warrior sat by the fire as
+guard, but he seems to have been a singularly inefficient man, for he
+was continuously drowsing, and if the captives could have got rid of the
+poles across their chests and legs they would have made their flight
+sooner.
+
+The camp was on a mountain side amid a forest of lofty pines. The night
+was very cold, and the blasts of wind swept down upon the crackling,
+resinous fire. A few stars peeped through the feathery pine branches.
+Deep in some gulch could be heard the roar of a mountain stream. At one
+o'clock in the morning three of the Indians arose, and, releasing the
+prisoners, commanded them to mend the fire. The prisoners brought dead
+pine branches; the ancient warrior on watch sleepily picked away with
+his knife at the deer's head which he had roasted; the other Indians
+retired again to their blankets, perhaps each depending upon the other
+for the exercise of precautions. It was a tremendously slack business;
+the Indians were feeling security because they knew that the prisoners
+were too wise to try to run away.
+
+The warrior on watch mumbled placidly to himself as he picked at the
+deer's head. Then he drowsed again, just the short nap of a man who had
+been up too long. My father stepped quickly to a spear, and backed away
+from the Indian; then he drove it straight through his chest. The Indian
+raised himself spasmodically, and then collapsed into that camp fire
+which the captives had made burn so brilliantly, and as he fell he
+screamed. Instantly his blanket, his hair, he himself began to burn, and
+over him was my father tugging frantically to get the spear out again.
+
+My father did not recover the spear. It had so gone through the old
+warrior that it could not readily be withdrawn, and my father left it.
+
+The scream of the watchman instantly aroused the other warriors, who, as
+they scrambled in their blankets, found over them a terrible
+white-lipped creature with an axe--an axe, the most appallingly brutal
+of weapons. Hammond buried his weapon in the head of the leader of the
+Indians even as the man gave out his first great cry. The second blow
+missed an agile warrior's head, but caught him in the nape of the neck,
+and he swung, to bury his face in the red-hot ashes at the edge of the
+fire.
+
+Meanwhile my brother Andrew had been gallantly snapping empty guns. In
+fact he snapped three empty guns at the Indians, who were in the purest
+panic. He did not snap the fourth gun, but took it by the barrel, and,
+seeing a warrior rush past him, he cracked his skull with the clubbed
+weapon. He told me, however, that his snapping of the empty guns was
+very effective, because it made the Indians jump and dodge.
+
+Well, this slaughter continued in the red glare of the fire on the
+lonely mountain side until two shrieking creatures ran off through the
+trees, but even then my father hurled a tomahawk with all his strength.
+It struck one of the fleeing Indians on the shoulder. His blanket
+dropped from him, and he ran on practically naked.
+
+The three whites looked at each other, breathing deeply. Their work was
+plain to them in the five dead and dying Indians underfoot. They hastily
+gathered weapons and mocassins, and in six minutes from the time when my
+father had hurled the spear through the Indian sentinel they had started
+to make their way back to the settlements, leaving the camp fire to burn
+out its short career alone amid the dead.
+
+
+
+
+III.--THE BATTLE OF FORTY FORT.
+
+
+The Congress, sitting at Philadelphia, had voted our Wyoming country two
+companies of infantry for its protection against the Indians, with the
+single provision that we raise the men and arm them ourselves. This was
+not too brave a gift, but no one could blame the poor Congress, and
+indeed one could wonder that they found occasion to think of us at all,
+since at the time every gentleman of them had his coat-tails gathered
+high in his hands in readiness for flight to Baltimore. But our two
+companies of foot were no sooner drilled, equipped, and in readiness to
+defend the colony when they were ordered off down to the Jerseys to join
+General Washington. So it can be seen what service Congress did us in
+the way of protection. Thus the Wyoming Valley, sixty miles deep in the
+wilderness, held its log-houses full of little besides mothers, maids,
+and children. To the clamour against this situation the badgered
+Congress could only reply by the issue of another generous order,
+directing that one full company of foot be raised in the town of
+Westmoreland for the defence of said town, and that the said company
+find their own arms, ammunition, and blankets. Even people with our
+sense of humour could not laugh at this joke.
+
+When the first two companies were forming, I had thought to join one,
+but my father forbade me, saying that I was too young, although I was
+full sixteen, tall, and very strong. So it turned out that I was not off
+fighting with Washington's army when Butler with his rangers and Indians
+raided Wyoming. Perhaps I was in the better place to do my duty, if I
+could.
+
+When wandering Indians visited the settlements, their drunkenness and
+insolence were extreme, but the few white men remained calm, and often
+enough pretended oblivion to insults which, because of their wives and
+families, they dared not attempt to avenge. In my own family, my
+father's imperturbability was scarce superior to my mother's coolness,
+and such was our faith in them that we twelve children also seemed to be
+fearless. Neighbour after neighbour came to my father in despair of the
+defenceless condition of the valley, declaring that they were about to
+leave everything and flee over the mountains to Stroudsberg. My father
+always wished them God-speed and said no more. If they urged him to fly
+also, he usually walked away from them.
+
+Finally there came a time when all the Indians vanished. We rather would
+have had them tipsy and impudent in the settlements; we knew what their
+disappearance portended. It was the serious sign. Too soon the news came
+that "Indian Butler" was on his way.
+
+The valley was vastly excited. People with their smaller possessions
+flocked into the block-houses, and militia officers rode everywhere to
+rally every man. A small force of Continentals--regulars of the
+line--had joined our people, and the little army was now under the
+command of a Continental officer, Major Zebulon Butler.
+
+I had thought that with all this hubbub of an impending life and death
+struggle in the valley that my father would allow the work of our farm
+to slacken. But in this I was notably mistaken. The milking and the
+feeding and the work in the fields went on as if there never had been an
+Indian south of the Canadas. My mother and my sisters continued to cook,
+to wash, to churn, to spin, to dye, to mend, to make soap, to make maple
+sugar. Just before the break of each day, my younger brother Andrew and
+myself tumbled out for some eighteen hours' work, and woe to us if we
+departed the length of a dog's tail from the laws which our father had
+laid down. It was a life with which I was familiar, but it did seem to
+me that with the Indians almost upon us he might have allowed me, at
+least, to go to the Fort and see our men drilling.
+
+But one morning we aroused as usual at his call at the foot of the
+ladder, and, dressing more quickly than Andrew, I climbed down from the
+loft to find my father seated by a blazing fire reading by its light in
+his Bible.
+
+"Son," said he.
+
+"Yes, father?"
+
+"Go and fight."
+
+Without a word more I made hasty preparation. It was the first time in
+my life that I had a feeling that my father would change his mind. So
+strong was this fear that I did not even risk a good-bye to my mother
+and sisters. At the end of the clearing I looked back. The door of the
+house was open, and in the blazing light of the fire I saw my father
+seated as I had left him.
+
+At Forty Fort I found between three and four hundred under arms, while
+the stockade itself was crowded with old men, and women and children.
+Many of my acquaintances welcomed me; indeed, I seemed to know everybody
+save a number of the Continental officers. Colonel Zebulon Butler was in
+chief command, while directly under him was Colonel Denison, a man of
+the valley, and much respected. Colonel Denison asked news of my father,
+whose temper he well knew. He said to me--"If God spares Nathan Denison
+I shall tell that obstinate old fool my true opinion of him. He will get
+himself and all his family butchered and scalped."
+
+I joined Captain Bidlack's company for the reason that a number of my
+friends were in it. Every morning we were paraded and drilled in the
+open ground before the Fort, and I learned to present arms and to keep
+my heels together, although to this day I have never been able to see
+any point to these accomplishments, and there was very little of the
+presenting of arms or of the keeping together of heels in the battle
+which followed these drills. I may say truly that I would now be much
+more grateful to Captain Bidlack if he had taught us to run like a wild
+horse.
+
+There was considerable friction between the officers of our militia and
+the Continental officers. I believe the Continental officers had stated
+themselves as being in favour of a cautious policy, whereas the men of
+the valley were almost unanimous in their desire to meet "Indian Butler"
+more than half way. They knew the country, they said, and they knew the
+Indians, and they deduced that the proper plan was to march forth and
+attack the British force near the head of the valley. Some of the more
+hot-headed ones rather openly taunted the Continentals, but these
+veterans of Washington's army remained silent and composed amid more or
+less wildness of talk. My own concealed opinions were that, although our
+people were brave and determined, they had much better allow the
+Continental officers to manage the valley's affairs.
+
+At the end of June, we heard the news that Colonel John Butler, with
+some four hundred British and Colonial troops, which he called the
+Rangers, and with about five hundred Indians, had entered the valley at
+its head and taken Fort Wintermoot after an opposition of a perfunctory
+character. I could present arms very well, but I do not think that I
+could yet keep my heels together. But "Indian Butler" was marching upon
+us, and even Captain Bidlack refrained from being annoyed at my
+refractory heels.
+
+The officers held councils of war, but in truth both fort and camp rang
+with a discussion in which everybody joined with great vigour and
+endurance. I may except the Continental officers, who told us what they
+thought we should do, and then, declaring that there was no more to be
+said, remained in a silence which I thought was rather grim. The result
+was that on the 3rd of July our force of about 300 men marched away,
+amid the roll of drums and the proud career of flags, to meet "Indian
+Butler" and his two kinds of savages. There yet remains with me a vivid
+recollection of a close row of faces above the stockade of Forty Fort
+which viewed our departure with that profound anxiety which only an
+imminent danger of murder and scalping can produce. I myself was never
+particularly afraid of the Indians, for to my mind the great and almost
+the only military virtue of the Indians was that they were silent men
+in the woods. If they were met squarely on terms approaching equality,
+they could always be whipped. But it was another matter to a fort filled
+with women and children and cripples, to whom the coming of the Indians
+spelled pillage, arson, and massacre. The British sent against us in
+those days some curious upholders of the honour of the King, and
+although Indian Butler, who usually led them, afterwards contended that
+everything was performed with decency and care for the rules, we always
+found that such of our dead whose bodies we recovered invariably lacked
+hair on the tops of their heads, and if worse wasn't done to them we
+wouldn't even use the word mutilate.
+
+Colonel Zebulon Butler rode along the column when we halted once for
+water. I looked at him eagerly, hoping to read in his face some sign of
+his opinions. But on the soldierly mask I could read nothing, although I
+am certain now that he felt that the fools among us were going to get us
+well beaten. But there was no vacillation in the direction of our march.
+We went straight until we could hear through the woods the infrequent
+shots of our leading party at retreating Indian scouts.
+
+Our Colonel Butler then sent forward four of his best officers, who
+reconnoitered the ground in the enemy's front like so many engineers
+marking the place for a bastion. Then each of the six companies were
+told their place in the line. We of Captain Bidlack's company were on
+the extreme right. Then we formed in line and marched into battle, with
+me burning with the high resolve to kill Indian Butler and bear his
+sword into Forty Fort, while at the same time I was much shaken that one
+of Indian Butler's Indians might interfere with the noble plan. We moved
+stealthily among the pine trees, and I could not forbear looking
+constantly to right and left to make certain that everybody was of the
+same mind about this advance. With our Captain Bidlack was Captain
+Durkee of the regulars. He was also a valley man, and it seemed that
+every time I looked behind me I met the calm eye of this officer, and I
+came to refrain from looking behind me.
+
+Still, I was very anxious to shoot Indians, and if I had doubted my
+ability in this direction I would have done myself a great injustice,
+for I could drive a nail to the head with a rifle ball at respectable
+range. I contend that I was not at all afraid of the enemy, but I much
+feared that certain of my comrades would change their minds about the
+expediency of battle on the 3rd July, 1778.
+
+But our company was as steady and straight as a fence. I do not know who
+first saw dodging figures in the shadows of the trees in our front. The
+first fire we received, however, was from our flank, where some hidden
+Indians were yelling and firing, firing and yelling. We did not mind
+the war-whoops. We had heard too many drunken Indians in the settlements
+before the war. They wounded the lieutenant of the company next to ours,
+and a moment later they killed Captain Durkee. But we were steadily
+advancing and firing regular volleys into the shifting frieze of figures
+before us. The Indians gave their cries as if the imps of Hades had
+given tongue to their emotions. They fell back before us so rapidly and
+so cleverly that one had to watch his chance as the Indians sped from
+tree to tree. I had a sudden burst of rapture that they were beaten, and
+this was accentuated when I stepped over the body of an Indian whose
+forehead had a hole in it as squarely in the middle as if the location
+had been previously surveyed. In short, we were doing extremely well.
+
+Soon we began to see the slower figures of white men through the trees,
+and it is only honest to say that they were easier to shoot. I myself
+caught sight of a fine officer in a uniform that seemed of green and
+buff. His sword-belt was fastened by a great shining brass plate, and,
+no longer feeling the elegancies of marksmanship, I fired at the brass
+plate. Such was the conformation of the ground between us that he
+disappeared as if he had sunk in the sea. We, all of us, were loading
+behind the trees and then charging ahead with fullest confidence.
+
+But suddenly from our own left came wild cries from our men, while at
+the same time the yells of Indians redoubled in that direction. Our rush
+checked itself instinctively. The cries rolled toward us. Once I heard a
+word that sounded like "Quarte." Then, to be truthful, our line wavered.
+I heard Captain Bidlack give an angry and despairing shout, and I think
+he was killed before he finished it.
+
+In a word, our left wing had gone to pieces. It was in complete rout. I
+know not the truth of the matter; but it seems that Colonel Denison had
+given an order which was misinterpreted for the order to retreat. At any
+rate, there can be no doubt of how fast the left wing ran away.
+
+We ran away too. The company on our immediate left was the company of
+regulars, and I remember some red-faced and powder-stained men bellowing
+at me contemptuously. That company stayed, and, for the most part, died.
+I don't know what they mustered when we left the Fort, but from the
+battle eleven worn and ragged men emerged. In my running was wisdom. The
+country was suddenly full of fleet Indians, upon us with the tomahawk.
+Behind me as I ran I could hear the screams of men cleaved to the earth.
+I think the first things that most of us discarded were our rifles.
+Afterward, upon serious reflection, I could not recall where I gave my
+rifle to the grass.
+
+I ran for the river. I saw some of our own men running ahead of me and I
+envied them. My point of contact with the river was the top of a high
+bank. But I did not hesitate to leap for the water with all my ounces of
+muscle. I struck out strongly for the other shore. I expected to be shot
+in the water. Up stream, and down stream, I could hear the crack of
+rifles, but none of the enemy seemed to be paying direct heed to me. I
+swam so well that I was soon able to put my feet on the slippery round
+stones and wade. When I reached a certain sandy beach, I lay down and
+puffed and blew my exhaustion. I watched the scene on the river. Indians
+appeared in groups on the opposite bank, firing at various heads of my
+comrades, who, like me, had chosen the Susquehanna as their refuge. I
+saw more than one hand fling up and the head turn sideways and sink.
+
+I set out for home. I set out for home in that perfect spirit of
+dependence which I had always felt toward my father and my mother. When
+I arrived I found nobody in the living room but my father seated in his
+great chair and reading his Bible, even as I had left him.
+
+The whole shame of the business came upon me suddenly. "Father," I
+choked out, "we have been beaten."
+
+"Aye," said he, "I expected it."
+
+
+
+
+LONDON IMPRESSIONS.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+London at first consisted of a porter with the most charming manners in
+the world, and a cabman with a supreme intelligence, both observing my
+profound ignorance without contempt or humour of any kind observable in
+their manners. It was in a great resounding vault of a place where there
+were many people who had come home, and I was displeased because they
+knew the detail of the business, whereas I was confronting the
+inscrutable. This made them appear very stony-hearted to the sufferings
+of one of whose existence, to be sure, they were entirely unaware, and I
+remember taking great pleasure in disliking them heartily for it. I was
+in an agony of mind over my baggage, or my luggage, or my--perhaps it is
+well to shy around this terrible international question; but I remember
+that when I was a lad I was told that there was a whole nation that said
+luggage instead of baggage, and my boyish mind was filled at the time
+with incredulity and scorn. In the present case it was a thing that I
+understood to involve the most hideous confessions of imbecility on my
+part, because I had evidently to go out to some obscure point and espy
+it and claim it, and take trouble for it; and I would rather have had my
+pockets filled with bread and cheese, and had no baggage at all.
+
+Mind you, this was not at all a homage that I was paying to London. I
+was paying homage to a new game. A man properly lazy does not like new
+experiences until they become old ones. Moreover, I have been taught
+that a man, any man, who has a thousand times more points of information
+on a certain thing than I have will bully me because of it, and pour his
+advantages upon my bowed head until I am drenched with his superiority.
+It was in my education to concede some licence of the kind in this case,
+but the holy father of a porter and the saintly cabman occupied the
+middle distance imperturbably, and did not come down from their hills to
+clout me with knowledge. From this fact I experienced a criminal
+elation. I lost view of the idea that if I had been brow-beaten by
+porters and cabmen from one end of the United States to the other end I
+should warmly like it, because in numbers they are superior to me, and
+collectively they can have a great deal of fun out of a matter that
+would merely afford me the glee of the latent butcher.
+
+This London, composed of a porter and a cabman, stood to me subtly as a
+benefactor. I had scanned the drama, and found that I did not believe
+that the mood of the men emanated unduly from the feature that there was
+probably more shillings to the square inch of me than there were
+shillings to the square inch of them. Nor yet was it any manner of
+palpable warm-heartedness or other natural virtue. But it was a perfect
+artificial virtue; it was drill, plain, simple drill. And now was I glad
+of their drilling, and vividly approved of it, because I saw that it was
+good for me. Whether it was good or bad for the porter and the cabman I
+could not know; but that point, mark you, came within the pale, of my
+respectable rumination.
+
+I am sure that it would have been more correct for me to have alighted
+upon St. Paul's and described no emotion until I was overcome by the
+Thames Embankment and the Houses of Parliament. But as a matter of fact
+I did not see them for some days, and at this time they did not concern
+me at all. I was born in London at a railroad station, and my new vision
+encompassed a porter and a cabman. They deeply absorbed me in new
+phenomena, and I did not then care to see the Thames Embankment nor the
+Houses of Parliament. I considered the porter and the cabman to be more
+important.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+The cab finally rolled out of the gas-lit vault into a vast expanse of
+gloom. This changed to the shadowy lines of a street that was like a
+passage in a monstrous cave. The lamps winking here and there resembled
+the little gleams at the caps of the miners. They were not very
+competent illuminations at best, merely being little pale flares of gas
+that at their most heroic periods could only display one fact concerning
+this tunnel--the fact of general direction. But at any rate I should
+have liked to have observed the dejection of a search-light if it had
+been called upon to attempt to bore through this atmosphere. In it each
+man sat in his own little cylinder of vision, so to speak. It was not so
+small as a sentry-box nor so large as a circus tent, but the walls were
+opaque, and what was passing beyond the dimensions of his cylinder no
+man knew.
+
+It was evident that the paving was very greasy, but all the cabs that
+passed through my cylinder were going at a round trot, while the wheels,
+shod in rubber, whirred merely like bicycles. The hoofs of the animals
+themselves did not make that wild clatter which I knew so well. New
+York, in fact, roars always like ten thousand devils. We have ingenuous
+and simple ways of making a din in New York that cause the stranger to
+conclude that each citizen is obliged by statute to provide himself with
+a pair of cymbals and a drum. If anything by chance can be turned into a
+noise it is promptly turned. We are engaged in the development of a
+human creature with very large, sturdy, and doubly-fortified ears.
+
+It was not too late at night, but this London moved with the decorum and
+caution of an undertaker. There was a silence, and yet there was no
+silence. There was a low drone, perhaps a humming contributed inevitably
+by closely-gathered thousands, and yet on second thoughts it was to me
+silence. I had perched my ears for the note of London, the sound made
+simply by the existence of five million people in one place. I had
+imagined something deep, vastly deep, a bass from a mythical organ, but
+found, as far as I was concerned, only a silence.
+
+New York in numbers is a mighty city, and all day and all night it cries
+its loud, fierce, aspiring cry, a noise of men beating upon barrels, a
+noise of men beating upon tin, a terrific racket that assails the abject
+skies. No one of us seemed to question this row as a certain consequence
+of three or four million people living together and scuffling for coin,
+with more agility, perhaps, but otherwise in the usual way. However,
+after this easy silence of London, which in numbers is a mightier city,
+I began to feel that there was a seduction in this idea of necessity.
+Our noise in New York was not a consequence of our rapidity at all. It
+was a consequence of our bad pavements.
+
+Any brigade of artillery in Europe that would love to assemble its
+batteries, and then go on a gallop over the land, thundering and
+thundering, would give up the idea of thunder at once if it could hear
+Tim Mulligan drive a beer waggon along one of the side streets of
+cobbled New York.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+Finally, a great thing came to pass. The cab horse, proceeding at a
+sharp trot, found himself suddenly at the top of an incline, where
+through the rain the pavement shone like an expanse of ice. It looked to
+me as if there was going to be a tumble. In an accident of such a kind a
+hansom becomes really a cannon in which a man finds that he has paid
+shillings for the privilege of serving as a projectile. I was making a
+rapid calculation of the arc that I would describe in my flight, when
+the horse met his crisis with a masterly device that I could not have
+imagined. He tranquilly braced his four feet like a bundle of stakes,
+and then, with a gentle gaiety of demeanour, he slid swiftly and
+gracefully to the bottom of the hill as if he had been a toboggan. When
+the incline ended he caught his gait again with great dexterity, and
+went pattering off through another tunnel.
+
+I at once looked upon myself as being singularly blessed by this sight.
+This horse had evidently originated this system of skating as a
+diversion, or, more probably, as a precaution against the slippery
+pavement; and he was, of course, the inventor and sole proprietor--two
+terms that are not always in conjunction. It surely was not to be
+supposed that there could be two skaters like him in the world. He
+deserved to be known and publicly praised for this accomplishment. It
+was worthy of many records and exhibitions. But when the cab arrived at
+a place where some dipping streets met, and the flaming front of a
+music-hall temporarily widened my cylinder, behold there were many cabs,
+and as the moment of necessity came the horses were all skaters. They
+were gliding in all directions. It might have been a rink. A great
+omnibus was hailed by a hand under an umbrella on the side walk, and the
+dignified horses bidden to halt from their trot did not waste time in
+wild and unseemly spasms. They, too, braced their legs and slid gravely
+to the end of their momentum.
+
+It was not the feat, but it was the word which had at this time the
+power to conjure memories of skating parties on moonlit lakes, with
+laughter ringing over the ice, and a great red bonfire on the shore
+among the hemlocks.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+A terrible thing in nature is the fall of a horse in his harness. It is
+a tragedy. Despite their skill in skating there was that about the
+pavement on the rainy evening which filled me with expectations of
+horses going headlong. Finally it happened just in front. There was a
+shout and a tangle in the darkness, and presently a prostrate cab horse
+came within my cylinder. The accident having been a complete success and
+altogether concluded, a voice from the side walk said, "_Look_ out, now!
+_Be_ more careful, can't you?"
+
+I remember a constituent of a Congressman at Washington who had tried in
+vain to bore this Congressman with a wild project of some kind. The
+Congressman eluded him with skill, and his rage and despair ultimately
+culminated in the supreme grievance that he could not even get near
+enough to the Congressman to tell him to go to Hades.
+
+This cabman should have felt the same desire to strangle this man who
+spoke from the side walk. He was plainly impotent; he was deprived of
+the power of looking out. There was nothing now for which to look out.
+The man on the side walk had dragged a corpse from a pond and said to
+it, "_Be_ more careful, can't you, or you'll drown?" My cabman pulled up
+and addressed a few words of reproach to the other. Three or four
+figures loomed into my cylinder, and as they appeared spoke to the
+author or the victim of the calamity in varied terms of displeasure.
+Each of these reproaches was couched in terms that defined the situation
+as impending. No blind man could have conceived that the precipitate
+phrase of the incident was absolutely closed. "_Look_ out now, cawnt
+you?" And there was nothing in his mind which approached these
+sentiments near enough to tell them to go to Hades.
+
+However, it needed only an ear to know presently that these expressions
+were formulæ. It was merely the obligatory dance which the Indians had
+to perform before they went to war. These men had come to help, but as a
+regular and traditional preliminary they had first to display to this
+cabman their idea of his ignominy.
+
+The different thing in the affair was the silence of the victim. He
+retorted never a word. This, too, to me seemed to be an obedience to a
+recognised form. He was the visible criminal, if there was a criminal,
+and there was born of it a privilege for them.
+
+They unfastened the proper straps and hauled back the cab. They fetched
+a mat from some obscure place of succour, and pushed it carefully under
+the prostrate thing. From this panting, quivering mass they suddenly and
+emphatically reconstructed a horse. As each man turned to go his way he
+delivered some superior caution to the cabman while the latter buckled
+his harness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+There was to be noticed in this band of rescuers a young man in evening
+clothes and top-hat. Now, in America a young man in evening clothes and
+a top-hat may be a terrible object. He is not likely to do violence, but
+he is likely to do impassivity and indifference to the point where they
+become worse than violence. There are certain of the more idle phases of
+civilisation to which America has not yet awakened--and it is a matter
+of no moment if she remains unaware. This matter of hats is one of them.
+I recall a legend recited to me by an esteemed friend, ex-Sheriff of Tin
+Can, Nevada. Jim Cortright, one of the best gun-fighters in town, went
+on a journey to Chicago, and while there he procured a top-hat. He was
+quite sure how Tin Can would accept this innovation, but he relied on
+the celerity with which he could get a six-shooter in action. One Sunday
+Jim examined his guns with his usual care, placed the top-hat on the
+back of his head, and sauntered coolly out into the streets of Tin Can.
+
+Now, while Jim was in Chicago some progressive citizen had decided that
+Tin Can needed a bowling alley. The carpenters went to work the next
+morning, and an order for the balls and pins was telegraphed to Denver.
+In three days the whole population was concentrated at the new alley
+betting their outfits and their lives.
+
+It has since been accounted very unfortunate that Jim Cortright had not
+learned of bowling alleys at his mother's knee nor even later in the
+mines. This portion of his mind was singularly belated. He might have
+been an Apache for all he knew of bowling alleys.
+
+In his careless stroll through the town, his hands not far from his belt
+and his eyes going sideways in order to see who would shoot first at the
+hat, he came upon this long, low shanty where Tin Can was betting itself
+hoarse over a game between a team from the ranks of Excelsior Hose
+Company No. 1 and a team composed from the _habitues_ of the "Red Light"
+saloon.
+
+Jim, in blank ignorance of bowling phenomena, wandered casually through
+a little door into what must always be termed the wrong end of a
+bowling alley. Of course, he saw that the supreme moment had come. They
+were not only shooting at the hat and at him, but the low-down cusses
+were using the most extraordinary and hellish ammunition. Still,
+perfectly undaunted, however, Jim retorted with his two Colts, and
+killed three of the best bowlers in Tin Can.
+
+The ex-Sheriff vouched for this story. He himself had gone headlong
+through the door at the firing of the first shot with that simple
+courtesy which leads Western men to donate the fighters plenty of room.
+He said that afterwards the hat was the cause of a number of other
+fights, and that finally a delegation of prominent citizens were obliged
+to wait upon Cortright and ask him if he wouldn't take that thing away
+somewhere and bury it. Jim pointed out to them that it was his hat, and
+that he would regard it as a cowardly concession if he submitted to
+their dictation in the matter of his headgear. He added that he purposed
+to continue to wear his top-hat on every occasion when he happened to
+feel that the wearing of a top-hat was a joy and a solace to him.
+
+The delegation sadly retired, and announced to the town that Jim
+Cortright had openly defied them, and had declared his purpose of
+forcing his top-hat on the pained attention of Tin Can whenever he
+chose. Jim Cortright's plug hat became a phrase with considerable
+meaning to it.
+
+However, the whole affair ended in a great passionate outburst of
+popular revolution. Spike Foster was a friend of Cortright, and one day,
+when the latter was indisposed, Spike came to him and borrowed the hat.
+He had been drinking heavily at the "Red Light," and was in a supremely
+reckless mood. With the terrible gear hanging jauntily over his eye and
+his two guns drawn, he walked straight out into the middle of the square
+in front of the Palace Hotel, and drew the attention of all Tin Can by a
+blood-curdling imitation of the yowl of a mountain lion.
+
+This was when the long-suffering populace arose as one man. The top-hat
+had been flaunted once too often. When Spike Foster's friends came to
+carry him away they found nearly a hundred and fifty men shooting busily
+at a mark--and the mark was the hat.
+
+My informant told me that he believed he owed his popularity in Tin Can,
+and subsequently his election to the distinguished office of Sheriff, to
+the active and prominent part he had taken in the proceedings.
+
+The enmity to the top-hat expressed by the convincing anecdote exists in
+the American West at present, I think, in the perfection of its
+strength; but disapproval is not now displayed by volleys from the
+citizens, save in the most aggravating cases. It is at present usually a
+matter of mere jibe and general contempt. The East, however, despite a
+great deal of kicking and gouging, is having the top-hat stuffed slowly
+and carefully down its throat, and there now exist many young men who
+consider that they could not successfully conduct their lives without
+this furniture.
+
+To speak generally, I should say that the headgear then supplies them
+with a kind of ferocity of indifference. There is fire, sword, and
+pestilence in the way they heed only themselves. Philosophy should
+always know that indifference is a militant thing. It batters down the
+walls of cities, and murders the women and children amid flames and the
+purloining of altar vessels. When it goes away it leaves smoking ruins,
+where lie citizens bayoneted through the throat. It is not a children's
+pastime like mere highway robbery.
+
+Consequently in America we may be much afraid of these young men. We
+dive down valleys so that we may not kow-tow. It is a fearsome thing.
+
+Taught thus a deep fear of the top-hat in its effect upon youth, I was
+not prepared for the move of this particular young man when the
+cab-horse fell. In fact, I grovelled in my corner that I might not see
+the cruel stateliness of his passing. But in the meantime he had
+crossed the street, and contributed the strength of his back and some
+advice, as well as the formal address, to the cabman on the importance
+of looking out immediately.
+
+I felt that I was making a notable collection. I had a new kind of
+porter, a cylinder of vision, horses that could skate, and now I added a
+young man in a top-hat who would tacitly admit that the beings around
+him were alive. He was not walking a churchyard filled with inferior
+headstones. He was walking the world, where there were people, many
+people.
+
+But later I took him out of the collection. I thought he had rebelled
+against the manner of a class, but I soon discovered that the top-hat
+was not the property of a class. It was the property of rogues, clerks,
+theatrical agents, damned seducers, poor men, nobles, and others. In
+fact, it was the universal rigging. It was the only hat; all other forms
+might as well be named ham, or chops, or oysters. I retracted my
+admiration of the young man because he may have been merely a rogue.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+There was a window whereat an enterprising man by dodging two placards
+and a calendar was entitled to view a young woman. She was dejectedly
+writing in a large book. She was ultimately induced to open the window a
+trifle. "What nyme, please?" she said wearily. I was surprised to hear
+this language from her. I had expected to be addressed on a submarine
+topic. I have seen shell fishes sadly writing in large books at the
+bottom of a gloomy aquarium who could not ask me what was my "nyme."
+
+At the end of the hall there was a grim portal marked "Lift." I pressed
+an electric button and heard an answering tinkle in the heavens. There
+was an upholstered settle near at hand, and I discovered the reason. A
+deer-stalking peace drooped upon everything, and in it a man could
+invoke the passing of a lazy pageant of twenty years of his life.
+
+The dignity of a coffin being lowered into a grave surrounded the
+ultimate appearance of the lift. The expert we in America call the
+elevator-boy stepped from the car, took three paces forward, faced to
+attention, and saluted. This elevator-boy could not have been less than
+sixty years of age; a great white beard streamed towards his belt. I saw
+that the lift had been longer on its voyage than I had suspected.
+
+Later in our upward progress a natural event would have been an
+establishment of social relations. Two enemies imprisoned together
+during the still hours of a balloon journey would, I believe, suffer a
+mental amalgamation. The overhang of a common fate, a great principal
+fact, can make an equality and a truce between any pair. Yet, when I
+disembarked, a final survey of the grey beard made me recall that I had
+failed even to ask the boy whether he had not taken probably three trips
+on this lift.
+
+My windows overlooked simply a great sea of night, in which were
+swimming little gas fishes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+I have of late been led to wistfully reflect that many of the
+illustrators are very clever. In an impatience, which was denoted by a
+certain economy of apparel, I went to a window to look upon day-lit
+London. There were the 'buses parading the streets with the miens of
+elephants. There were the police looking precisely as I had been
+informed by the prints. There were the sandwich-men. There was almost
+everything.
+
+But the artists had not told me the sound of London. Now, in New York
+the artists are able to pourtray sound, because in New York a dray is
+not a dray at all; it is a great potent noise hauled by two or more
+horses. When a magazine containing an illustration of a New York street
+is sent to me, I always know it beforehand. I can hear it coming
+through the mails. As I have said previously, this which I must call
+sound of London was to me only a silence.
+
+Later, in front of the hotel a cabman that I hailed said to me--"Are you
+gowing far, sir? I've got a byby here, and want to giv'er a bit of a
+blough." This impressed me as being probably a quotation from an early
+Egyptian poet, but I learned soon enough that the word "byby" was the
+name of some kind or condition of horse. The cabman's next remark was
+addressed to a boy who took a perilous dive between the byby's nose and
+a cab in front. "That's roight. Put your head in there and get it
+jammed--a whackin good place for it, I should think." Although the tone
+was low and circumspect, I have never heard a better off-handed
+declamation. Every word was cut clear of disreputable alliances with its
+neighbours. The whole thing was as clean as a row of pewter mugs. The
+influence of indignation upon the voice caused me to reflect that we
+might devise a mechanical means of inflaming some in that constellation
+of mummers which is the heritage of the Anglo-Saxon race.
+
+Then I saw the drilling of vehicles by two policemen. There were four
+torrents converging at a point, and when four torrents converge at one
+point engineering experts buy tickets for another place.
+
+But here, again, it was drill, plain, simple drill. I must not falter
+in saying that I think the management of the traffic--as the phrase
+goes--to be distinctly illuminating and wonderful. The police were not
+ruffled and exasperated. They were as peaceful as two cows in a pasture.
+
+I remember once remarking that mankind, with all its boasted modern
+progress, had not yet been able to invent a turnstile that will commute
+in fractions. I have now learned that 756 rights-of-way cannot operate
+simultaneously at one point. Right-of-way, like fighting women, requires
+space. Even two rights-of-way can make a scene which is only suited to
+the tastes of an ancient public.
+
+This truth was very evidently recognised. There was only one
+right-of-way at a time. The police did not look behind them to see if
+their orders were to be obeyed; they knew they were to be obeyed. These
+four torrents were drilling like four battalions. The two blue-cloth men
+manoeuvred them in solemn, abiding peace, the silence of London.
+
+I thought at first that it was the intellect of the individual, but I
+looked at one constable closely and his face was as afire with
+intelligence as a flannel pin-cushion. It was not the police, and it was
+not the crowd. It was the police and the crowd. Again, it was drill.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+I have never been in the habit of reading signs. I don't like to read
+signs. I have never met a man that liked to read signs. I once invented
+a creature who could play the piano with a hammer, and I mentioned him
+to a professor in Harvard University whose peculiarity was Sanscrit. He
+had the same interest in my invention that I have in a certain kind of
+mustard. And yet this mustard has become a part of me. Or, I have become
+a part of this mustard. Further, I know more of an ink, a brand of hams,
+a kind of cigarette, and a novelist than any man living. I went by train
+to see a friend in the country, and after passing through a patent
+mucilage, some more hams, a South African Investment Company, a Parisian
+millinery firm, and a comic journal, I alighted at a new and original
+kind of corset. On my return journey the road almost continuously ran
+through soap.
+
+I have accumulated superior information concerning these things, because
+I am at their mercy. If I want to know where I am I must find the
+definitive sign. This accounts for my glib use of the word mucilage, as
+well as the titles of other staples.
+
+I suppose even the Briton in mixing his life must sometimes consult the
+labels on 'buses and streets and stations, even as the chemist consults
+the labels on his bottles and boxes. A brave man would possibly affirm
+that this was suggested by the existence of the labels.
+
+The reason that I did not learn more about hams and mucilage in New York
+seems to me to be partly due to the fact that the British advertiser is
+allowed to exercise an unbridled strategy in his attack with his new
+corset or whatever upon the defensive public. He knows that the
+vulnerable point is the informatory sign which the citizen must, of
+course, use for his guidance, and then, with horse, foot, guns, corsets,
+hams, mucilage, investment companies, and all, he hurls himself at the
+point.
+
+Meanwhile I have discovered a way to make the Sanscrit scholar heed my
+creature who plays the piano with a hammer.
+
+
+
+
+NEW YORK SKETCHES
+
+STORIES TOLD BY AN ARTIST IN NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+A TALE ABOUT HOW "GREAT GRIEF" GOT HIS HOLIDAY DINNER.
+
+
+Wrinkles had been peering into the little dry-goods box that acted as a
+cupboard.
+
+"There are only two eggs and a half of a loaf of bread left," he
+announced brutally.
+
+"Heavens!" said Warwickson, from where he lay smoking on the bed. He
+spoke in his usual dismal voice. By it he had earned his popular name of
+Great Grief.
+
+Wrinkles was a thrifty soul. A sight of an almost bare cupboard maddened
+him. Even when he was not hungry, the ghosts of his careful ancestors
+caused him to rebel against it. He sat down with a virtuous air. "Well,
+what are we going to do?" he demanded of the others. It is good to be
+the thrifty man in a crowd of unsuccessful artists, for then you can
+keep the others from starving peacefully. "What are we going to do?"
+
+"Oh, shut up, Wrinkles," said Grief from the bed. "You make me think."
+
+Little Pennoyer, with head bended afar down, had been busily scratching
+away at a pen and ink drawing. He looked up from his board to utter his
+plaintive optimism.
+
+"The _Monthly Amazement_ may pay me to-morrow. They ought to. I've
+waited over three months now. I'm going down there to-morrow, and
+perhaps I'll get it."
+
+His friends listened to him tolerantly, but at last Wrinkles could not
+omit a scornful giggle. He was such an old man, almost twenty-eight, and
+he had seen so many little boys be brave. "Oh, no doubt, Penny, old
+man." Over on the bed Grief croaked deep down in his throat. Nothing was
+said for a long time thereafter.
+
+The crash of the New York streets came faintly. Occasionally one could
+hear the tramp of feet in the intricate corridors of this begrimed
+building that squatted, slumbering and aged, between two exalted
+commercial structures that would have had to bend afar down to perceive
+it. The light snow beat pattering into the window corners, and made
+vague and grey the vista of chimneys and roofs. Often the wind scurried
+swiftly and raised a long cry.
+
+Great Grief leaned upon his elbow. "See to the fire, will you,
+Wrinkles?"
+
+Wrinkles pulled the coal-box out from under the bed and threw open the
+stove door preparatory to shovelling some fuel. A red glare plunged in
+the first faint shadow of dusk. Little Pennoyer threw down his pen and
+tossed his drawing over on the wonderful heap of stuff that hid the
+table. "It's too dark to work." He lit his pipe and walked about,
+stretching his shoulders like a man whose labour was valuable.
+
+When dusk came it saddened these youths. The solemnity of darkness
+always caused them to ponder. "Light the gas, Wrinkles," said Grief.
+
+The flood of orange light showed clearly the dull walls lined with
+scratches, the tousled bed in one corner, the mass of boxes and trunks
+in another, the little fierce stove, and the wonderful table. Moreover,
+there were some wine-coloured draperies flung in some places, and on a
+shelf, high up, there was a plaster cast dark with dust in the creases.
+A long stove-pipe wandered off in the wrong direction, and then twined
+impulsively toward a hole in the wall. There were some extensive cobwebs
+on the ceilings.
+
+"Well, let's eat," said Grief.
+
+Later, there came a sad knock at the door. Wrinkles, arranging a tin
+pail on the stove, little Pennoyer busy at slicing the bread, and Great
+Grief affixing the rubber tube to the gas stove, yelled: "Come in!"
+
+The door opened and Corinson entered dejectedly. His overcoat was very
+new. Wrinkles flashed an envious glance at it, but almost immediately he
+cried: "Hello, Corrie, old boy!"
+
+Corinson sat down and felt around among the pipes until he found a good
+one. Great Grief had fixed the coffee to boil on the gas stove, but he
+had to watch it closely, for the rubber tube was short, and a chair was
+balanced on a trunk, and then the gas stove was balanced on the chair.
+Coffee making was a feat.
+
+"Well," said Grief, with his back turned, "how goes it, Corrie? How's
+Art, hey?" He fastened a terrible emphasis upon the word.
+
+"Crayon portraits," said Corinson.
+
+"What?" They turned towards him with one movement, as if from a lever
+connection. Little Pennoyer dropped his knife.
+
+"Crayon portraits," repeated Corinson. He smoked away in profound
+cynicism. "Fifteen dollars a week or more this time of year, you know."
+He smiled at them like a man of courage.
+
+Little Pennoyer picked up his knife again. "Well, I'll be blowed," said
+Wrinkles. Feeling it incumbent upon him to think, he dropped into a
+chair and began to play serenades on his guitar and watch to see when
+the water for the eggs would boil. It was a habitual pose.
+
+Great Grief, however, seemed to observe something bitter in the affair.
+"When did you discover that you couldn't draw?" he said stiffly.
+
+"I haven't discovered it yet," replied Corinson, with a serene air. "I
+merely discovered that I would rather eat."
+
+"Oh!" said Grief.
+
+"Hand me the eggs, Grief," said Wrinkles. "The water's boiling."
+
+Little Pennoyer burst into the conversation. "We'd ask you to dinner,
+Corrie, but there's only three of us and there's two eggs. I dropped a
+piece of bread on the floor, too. I'd shy one."
+
+"That's all right, Penny," said the other; "don't trouble yourself. You
+artists should never be hospitable. I'm going anyway. I've got to make a
+call. Well, good night, boys. I've got to make a call. Drop in and see
+me."
+
+When the door closed upon him, Grief said: "The coffee's done; I hate
+that fellow. That overcoat cost thirty dollars, if it cost a red. His
+egotism is so tranquil. It isn't like yours, Wrinkles. He--"
+
+The door opened again and Corinson thrust in his head. "Say, you
+fellows, you know it's Thanksgiving to-morrow?"
+
+"Well, what of it?" demanded Grief.
+
+Little Pennoyer said: "Yes, I know it is, Corrie, I thought of it this
+morning."
+
+"Well, come out and have a table d'hote with me to-morrow night. I'll
+blow you off in good style."
+
+While Wrinkles played an exuberant air on his guitar, little Pennoyer
+did part of a ballet. They cried ecstatically: "Will we? Well, I guess
+yes?"
+
+When they were alone again, Grief said: "I'm not going, anyhow. I hate
+that fellow."
+
+"Oh, fiddle," said Wrinkles. "You're an infernal crank. And besides,
+where's your dinner coming from to-morrow night if you don't go? Tell me
+that."
+
+Little Pennoyer said: "Yes, that's so, Grief. Where's your dinner coming
+from if you don't go?"
+
+Grief said: "Well, I hate him, anyhow."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+AS TO PAYMENT OF THE RENT.
+
+Little Pennoyer's four dollars could not last for ever. When he received
+it he and Wrinkles and Great Grief went to a table d'hote. Afterwards
+little Pennoyer discovered that only two dollars and a half remained. A
+small magazine away down town had accepted one out of the six drawings
+that he had taken them, and later had given him four dollars for it.
+Penny was so disheartened when he saw that his money was not going to
+last for ever, that even with two dollars and a half in his pockets, he
+felt much worse than when he was penniless, for at that time he
+anticipated twenty-four. Wrinkles lectured upon "Finance."
+
+Great Grief said nothing, for it was established that when he received
+six dollar cheques from comic weeklies he dreamed of renting studios at
+seventy-five dollars per month, and was likely to go out and buy five
+dollars' worth of second-hand curtains and plaster casts.
+
+When he had money Penny always hated the cluttered den in the old
+building. He desired to go out and breathe boastfully like a man. But he
+obeyed Wrinkles, the elder and the wise, and if you had visited that
+room about ten o'clock of a morning or about seven of an evening you
+would have thought that rye bread, frankfurters, and potato salad from
+Second Avenue were the only foods in the world.
+
+Purple Sanderson lived there too, but then he really ate. He had learned
+parts of the gasfitter's trade before he came to be such a great artist,
+and when his opinions disagreed with that of every art manager in New
+York, he went to see a plumber, a friend of his, for whose opinion he
+had a great respect. In consequence, he frequented a very great
+restaurant on Twenty-third Street, and sometimes on Saturday nights he
+openly scorned his companions.
+
+Purple was a good fellow, Grief said, but one of his singularly bad
+traits was that he always remembered everything. One night, not long
+after little Pennoyer's great discovery, Purple came in, and as he was
+neatly hanging up his coat, said: "Well, the rent will be due in four
+days."
+
+"Will it?" demanded Penny, astounded. Penny was always astounded when
+the rent came due. It seemed to him the most extraordinary occurrence.
+
+"Certainly it will," said Purple, with the irritated air of a superior
+financial man.
+
+"My soul!" said Wrinkles.
+
+Great Grief lay on the bed smoking a pipe and waiting for fame. "Oh, go
+home, Purple. You resent something. It wasn't me, it was the calendar."
+
+"Try and be serious a moment, Grief."
+
+"You're a fool, Purple."
+
+Penny spoke from where he was at work. "Well, if those _Amazement
+Magazine_ people pay me when they said they would I'll have money then."
+
+"So you will, dear," said Grief, satirically. "You'll have money to
+burn. Did the _Amazement_ people ever pay you when they said they
+would? You're wonderfully important all of a sudden, it seems to me. You
+talk like an artist."
+
+Wrinkles, too, smiled at little Pennoyer. "The _Established Magazine_
+people wanted Penny to hire models and make a try for them too. It will
+only cost him a big blue chip. By the time he has invested all the money
+he hasn't got and the rent is two weeks' overdue, he will be able to
+tell the landlord to wait seven months until the Monday morning after
+the publication. Go ahead, Penny."
+
+It was the habit to make game of little Pennoyer. He was always having
+gorgeous opportunities, with no opportunity to take advantage of his
+opportunities.
+
+Penny smiled at them, his tiny, tiny smile of courage.
+
+"You're a confident little cuss," observed Grief, irrelevantly.
+
+"Well, the world has no objection to your being confident also, Grief,"
+said Purple.
+
+"Hasn't it?" said Grief. "Well, I want to know."
+
+Wrinkles could not be light-spirited long. He was obliged to despair
+when occasion offered. At last he sank down in a chair and seized his
+guitar.
+
+"Well, what's to be done?" he said. He began to play mournfully.
+
+"Throw Purple out," mumbled Grief from the bed.
+
+"Are you fairly certain that you will have money then, Penny?" asked
+Purple.
+
+Little Pennoyer looked apprehensive. "Well, I don't know," he said.
+
+And then began that memorable discussion, great in four minds. The
+tobacco was of the "Long John" brand. It smelled like burning mummies.
+
+
+A DINNER ON SUNDAY EVENING.
+
+Once Purple Sanderson went to his home in St. Lawrence county to enjoy
+some country air, and, incidentally, to explain his life failure to his
+people. Previously, Great Grief had given him odds that he would return
+sooner than he had planned, and everybody said that Grief had a good
+bet. It is not a glorious pastime, this explaining of life failures.
+
+Later, Great Grief and Wrinkles went to Haverstraw to visit Grief's
+cousin and sketch. Little Pennoyer was disheartened, for it is bad to be
+imprisoned in brick and dust and cobbles when your ear can hear in the
+distance the harmony of the summer sunlight upon leaf and blade of
+green. Besides, he did not hear Wrinkles and Grief discoursing and
+quarrelling in the den, and Purple coming in at six o'clock with
+contempt.
+
+On Friday afternoon he discovered that he only had fifty cents to last
+until Saturday morning, when he was to get his cheque from the _Gamin_.
+He was an artful little man by this time, however, and it is as true as
+the sky that when he walked toward the _Gamin_ office on Saturday he had
+twenty cents remaining.
+
+The cashier nodded his regrets, "Very sorry, Mr.--er--Pennoyer, but our
+pay-day, you know, is on Monday. Come around any time after ten."
+
+"Oh, it don't matter," said Penny. As he walked along on his return he
+reflected deeply how he could invest his twenty cents in food to last
+until Monday morning any time after ten. He bought two coffee cakes in a
+third avenue bakery. They were very beautiful. Each had a hole in the
+centre, and a handsome scallop all around the edges.
+
+Penny took great care of those cakes. At odd times he would rise from
+his work and go to see that no escape had been made. On Sunday he got up
+at noon and compressed breakfast and noon into one meal. Afterwards he
+had almost three-quarters of a cake still left to him. He congratulated
+himself that with strategy he could make it endure until Monday morning
+any time after ten.
+
+At three in the afternoon there came a faint-hearted knock. "Come in,"
+said Penny. The door opened and old Tim Connegan, who was trying to be a
+model, looked in apprehensively. "I beg pardon, sir," he said at once.
+
+"Come in, Tim, you old thief," said Penny. Tim entered slowly and
+bashfully. "Sit down," said Penny. Tim sat down and began to rub his
+knees, for rheumatism had a mighty hold upon him.
+
+Penny lit his pipe and crossed his legs. "Well, how goes it?"
+
+Tim moved his square jaw upward and flashed Penny a little glance.
+
+"Bad?" said Penny.
+
+The old man raised his hand impressively. "I've been to every studio in
+the hull city, and I never see such absences in my life. What with the
+seashore and the mountains, and this and that resort, I think all the
+models will be starved by fall. I found one man in up on Fifty-seventh
+Street. He ses to me: 'Come around Tuesday--I may want yez and I may
+not.' That was last week. You know, I live down on the Bowery, Mr.
+Pennoyer, and when I got up there on Tuesday, he ses: 'Confound you, are
+you here again?' ses he. I went and sat down in the park, for I was too
+tired for the walk back. And there you are, Mr. Pennoyer. What with
+trampin' around to look for men that are thousand miles away, I'm near
+dead."
+
+"It's hard," said Penny.
+
+"It is, sir. I hope they'll come back soon. The summer is the death of
+us all, sir; it is. Sure, I never know where my next meal is coming
+until I get it. That's true."
+
+"Had anything to-day?"
+
+"Yes, sir, a little."
+
+"How much?"
+
+"Well, sir, a lady gave me a cup of coffee this morning. It was good,
+too, I'm telling you."
+
+Penny went to his cupboard. When he returned, he said: "Here's some
+cake."
+
+Tim thrust forward his hands, palms erect. "Oh, now, Mr. Pennoyer, I
+couldn't. You--"
+
+"Go ahead. What's the odds?"
+
+"Oh, now."
+
+"Go ahead, you old bat."
+
+Penny smoked.
+
+When Tim was going out, he turned to grow eloquent again. "Well, I can't
+tell you how much I'm obliged to you, Mr. Pennoyer. You--"
+
+"Don't mention it, old man."
+
+Penny smoked.
+
+
+
+
+THE SILVER PAGEANT.
+
+
+"It's rotten," said Grief.
+
+"Oh, it's fair, old man. Still, I would not call it a great contribution
+to American art," said Wrinkles.
+
+"You've got a good thing, Gaunt, if you go at it right," said little
+Pennoyer.
+
+These were all volunteer orations. The boys had come in one by one and
+spoken their opinions. Gaunt listened to them no more than if they had
+been so many match-peddlers. He never heard anything close at hand, and
+he never saw anything excepting that which transpired across a mystic
+wide sea. The shadow of his thoughts was in his eyes, a little grey
+mist, and, when what you said to him had passed out of your mind, he
+asked: "Wha--a--at?" It was understood that Gaunt was very good to
+tolerate the presence of the universe, which was noisy and interested in
+itself. All the younger men, moved by an instinct of faith, declared
+that he would one day be a great artist if he would only move faster
+than a pyramid. In the meantime he did not hear their voices.
+Occasionally when he saw a man take vivid pleasure in life, he faintly
+evinced an admiration. It seemed to strike him as a feat. As for him, he
+was watching that silver pageant across a sea.
+
+When he came from Paris to New York somebody told him that he must make
+his living. He went to see some book publishers, and talked to them in
+his manner--as if he had just been stunned. At last one of them gave him
+drawings to do, and it did not surprise him. It was merely as if rain
+had come down.
+
+Great Grief went to see him in his studio, and returned to the den to
+say: "Gaunt is working in his sleep. Somebody ought to set fire to him."
+
+It was then that the others went over and smoked, and gave their
+opinions of a drawing. Wrinkles said: "Are you really looking at it,
+Gaunt? I don't think you've seen it yet, Gaunt?"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Why don't you look at it?"
+
+When Wrinkles departed, the model, who was resting at that time,
+followed him into the hall and waved his arms in rage. "That feller's
+crazy. Yeh ought t' see--" and he recited lists of all the wrongs that
+can come to models.
+
+It was a superstitious little band over in the den. They talked often of
+Gaunt. "He's got pictures in his eyes," said Wrinkles. They had expected
+genius to blindly stumble at the perface and ceremonies of the world,
+and each new flounder by Gaunt made a stir in the den. It awed them, and
+they waited.
+
+At last one morning Gaunt burst into the room. They were all as dead
+men.
+
+"I'm going to paint a picture." The mist in his eyes was pierced by a
+Coverian gleam. His gestures were wild and extravagant. Grief stretched
+out smoking on the bed, Wrinkles and little Pennoyer working at their
+drawing-boards tilted against the table--were suddenly frozen. If bronze
+statues had come and danced heavily before them, they could not have
+been thrilled further.
+
+Gaunt tried to tell them of something, but it became knotted in his
+throat, and then suddenly he dashed out again.
+
+Later they went earnestly over to Gaunt's studio. Perhaps he would tell
+them of what he saw across the sea.
+
+He lay dead upon the floor. There was a little grey mist before his
+eyes.
+
+When they finally arrived home that night they took a long time to
+undress for bed, and then came the moment when they waited for some one
+to put out the gas. Grief said at last, with the air of a man whose
+brain is desperately driven: "I wonder--I--what do you suppose he was
+going to paint?"
+
+Wrinkles reached and turned out the gas, and from the sudden profound
+darkness, he said: "There is a mistake. He couldn't have had pictures in
+his eyes."
+
+
+
+
+A STREET SCENE IN NEW YORK.
+
+
+The man and the boy conversed in Italian, mumbling the soft syllables
+and making little, quick egotistical gestures. Suddenly the man glared
+and wavered on his limbs for a moment as if some blinding light had
+flashed before his vision; then he swayed like a drunken man and fell.
+The boy grasped his arm convulsively, and made an attempt to support his
+companion so that the body slid to the side-walk with an easy motion
+like a corpse sinking into the sea. The boy screamed.
+
+Instantly people from all directions turned their gaze upon that figure
+prone upon the side-walk. In a moment there was a dodging, peering,
+pushing crowd about the man. A volley of questions, replies,
+speculations flew to and fro among all the bobbing heads.
+
+"What's th' matter? what's th' matter?"
+
+"Oh, a jag, I guess!"
+
+"Aw, he's got a fit!"
+
+"What's th' matter? what's th' matter?"
+
+Two streams of people coming from different directions met at this point
+to form a great crowd. Others came from across the street.
+
+Down under their feet, almost lost under this mass of people, lay a man,
+hidden in the shadows caused by their forms, which, in fact, barely
+allowed a particle of light to pass between them. Those in the foremost
+rank bended down eagerly, anxious to see everything. Others behind them
+crowded savagely like starving men fighting for bread. Always, the
+question could be heard flying in the air. "What's th' matter." Some,
+near to the body, and perhaps feeling the danger of being forced over
+upon it, twisted their heads and protested violently to those unheeding
+ones who were scuffling in the rear: "Say, quit yer shovin', can't yeh?
+What do yeh want, anyhow? Quit!"
+
+Somebody back in the throng suddenly said: "Say, young feller, cheese
+that pushin'! I ain't no peach!"
+
+Another voice said: "Well, dat's all right--"
+
+The boy who had been with the Italian was standing helplessly, a
+frightened look in his eyes, and holding the man's hand. Sometimes he
+looked about him dumbly, with indefinite hope, as if he expected sudden
+assistance to come from the clouds. The men about him frequently jostled
+him until he was obliged to put his hand upon the breast of the body to
+maintain his balance. Those nearest the man upon the sidewalk at first
+saw his body go through a singular contortion. It was as if an invisible
+hand had reached up from the earth and had seized him by the hair. He
+seemed dragged slowly, pitilessly backward, while his body stiffened
+convulsively, his hands clenched, and his arms swung rigidly upward.
+Through his pallid, half-closed lids one could see the steel-coloured,
+assassin-like gleam of his eye, that shone with a mystic light as a
+corpse might glare at those live ones who seemed about to trample it
+under foot. As for the men near, they hung back, appearing as if they
+expected it might spring erect and grab them. Their eyes, however, were
+held in a spell of fascination. They scarce seemed to breathe. They were
+contemplating a depth into which a human being had sunk, and the marvel
+of this mystery of life or death held them chained. Occasionally from
+the rear a man came thrusting his way impetuously, satisfied that there
+was a horror to be seen, and apparently insane to get a view of it.
+More self-contained men swore at these persons when they tread upon
+their toes.
+
+The street cars jingled past this scene in endless parade. Occasionally,
+down where the elevated road crossed the street, one could hear
+sometimes a thunder, suddenly begun and suddenly ended. Over the heads
+of the crowd hung an immovable canvas sign: "Regular Dinner twenty
+cents."
+
+The body on the pave seemed like a bit of debris sunk in this human
+ocean.
+
+But after the first spasm of curiosity had passed away, there were those
+in the crowd who began to bethink themselves of some way to help. A
+voice called out: "Rub his wrists." The boy and a man on the other side
+of the body began to rub the wrists and slap the palms of the man. A
+tall German suddenly appeared, and resolutely began to push the crowd
+back. "Get back there--get back," he repeated continually while he
+pushed at them. He seemed to have authority; the crowd obeyed him. He
+and another man knelt down by the man in the darkness and loosened his
+shirt at the throat. Once they struck a match and held it close to the
+man's face. This livid visage suddenly appearing under their feet in the
+light of the match's yellow glare, made the crowd shudder. Half
+articulate exclamations could be heard. There were men who nearly
+created a riot in the madness of their desire to see the thing.
+
+Meanwhile others had been questioning the boy. "What's his name? Where
+does he live?"
+
+Then a policeman appeared. The first part of this little drama had gone
+on without his assistance, but now he came, striding swiftly, his helmet
+towering over the crowd and shading that impenetrable police face. He
+charged the crowd as if he were a squadron of Irish Lancers. The people
+fairly withered before this onslaught. Occasionally he shouted: "Come,
+make way there. Come, now!" He was evidently a man whose life was
+half-pestered out of him by people who were sufficiently unreasonable
+and stupid as to insist on walking in the streets. He felt the rage
+toward them that a placid cow feels toward the flies that hover in
+clouds and disturb its repose. When he arrived at the centre of the
+crowd he first said, threateningly: "What's th' matter here?" And then
+when he saw that human bit of wreckage at the bottom of the sea of men,
+he said to it: "Come, git up out that! Git out a here!"
+
+Whereupon hands were raised in the crowd and a volley of decorated
+information was blazed at the officer.
+
+"Ah, he's got a fit, can't yeh see?"
+
+"He's got a fit!"
+
+"What th'ell yeh doin'? Leave 'im be!"
+
+The policeman menaced with a glance the crowd from whose safe precincts
+the defiant voices had emerged.
+
+A doctor had come. He and the policeman bended down at the man's side.
+Occasionally the officer reared up to create room. The crowd fell away
+before his admonitions, his threats, his sarcastic questions, and before
+the sweep of those two huge buckskin gloves.
+
+At last the peering ones saw the man on the side-walk begin to breathe
+heavily, strainedly, as if he had just come to the surface from some
+deep water. He uttered a low cry in his foreign way. It was like a
+baby's squeal or the side wail of a little storm-tossed kitten. As this
+cry went forth to all those eager ears the jostling, crowding
+recommenced again furiously, until the doctor was obliged to yell
+warningly a dozen times. The policeman had gone to send the ambulance
+call.
+
+Then a man struck another match, and in its meagre light the doctor felt
+the skull of the prostrate man carefully to discover if any wound had
+been caused by his fall to the stone side-walk. The crowd pressed and
+crushed again. It was as if they fully expected to see blood by the
+light of the match, and the desire made them appear almost insane. The
+policeman returned and fought with them. The doctor looked up
+occasionally to scold and demand room.
+
+At last, out of the faint haze of light far up the street, there came
+the sound of a gong beating rapidly. A monstrous truck loaded to the sky
+with barrels scurried to one side with marvellous agility. And then the
+black waggon, with its gleam of gold lettering and bright brass gong,
+clattered into view, the horse galloping. A young man, as imperturbable
+almost as if he were at a picnic, sat upon the rear seat. When they
+picked up the limp body, from which came little moans and howls, the
+crowd almost turned into a mob. When the ambulance started on its
+banging and clanging return, they stood and gazed until it was quite out
+of sight. Some resumed their way with an air of relief. Others still
+continued to stare after the vanished ambulance and its burden as if
+they had been cheated, as if the curtain had been rung down on a tragedy
+that was but half completed; and this impenetrable blanket intervening
+between a sufferer and their curiosity seemed to make them feel an
+injustice.
+
+
+
+
+MINETTA LANE, NEW YORK.
+
+
+ITS WORST DAYS HAVE NOW PASSED AWAY. BUT ITS INHABITANTS STILL INCLUDE
+MANY WHOSE DEEDS ARE EVIL.
+
+
+THE CELEBRATED RESORT OF MAMMY ROSS.
+
+
+Minetta Lane is a small and becobbled valley between hills and dingy
+brick. At night the street lamps, burning dimly, cause the shadows to
+be important, and in the gloom one sees groups of quietly conversant
+negroes, with occasionally the gleam of a passing growler. Everything is
+vaguely outlined and of uncertain identity, unless, indeed, it be the
+flashing buttons and shield of the policeman on his coast. The Sixth
+Avenue horse-cars jingle past one end of the lane, and a block eastward
+the little thoroughfare ends in the darkness of M'Dougall Street.
+
+One wonders how such an insignificant alley could get such an assuredly
+large reputation, but, as a matter of fact, Minetta Lane and Minetta
+Street, which leads from it southward to Bleecker Street, were, until a
+few years ago, two of the most enthusiastically murderous thoroughfares
+in New York. Bleecker Street, M'Dougall Street, and nearly all the
+streets thereabouts were most unmistakably bad; the other streets went
+away and hid. To gain a reputation in Minetta Lane in those days a man
+was obliged to commit a number of furious crimes, and no celebrity was
+more important than the man who had a good honest killing to his credit.
+The inhabitants, for the most part, were negroes, and they represented
+the very worst element of their race. The razor habit clung to them with
+the tenacity of an epidemic, and every night the uneven cobbles felt
+blood. Minetta Lane was not a public thoroughfare at this period. It was
+a street set apart, a refuge for criminals. Thieves came here
+preferably with their gains, and almost any day peculiar sentences
+passed among the inhabitants. "Big Jim turned a thousand last night."
+"No-Toe's made another haul." And the worshipful citizens would make
+haste to be present at the consequent revel.
+
+As has been said, Minetta Lane was then no thoroughfare. A peaceable
+citizen chose to make a circuit rather than venture through this place,
+that swarmed with the most dangerous people in the city. Indeed, the
+thieves of the district used to say: "Once get in the lane and you're
+all right." Even a policeman in chase of a criminal would probably shy
+away instead of pursuing him into the lane. The odds were too great
+against a lone officer.
+
+Sailors, and any men who might appear to have money about them, were
+welcomed with all proper ceremony at the terrible dens of the lane. At
+departure they were fortunate if they still retained their teeth. It was
+the custom to leave very little else to them. There was every facility
+for the capture of coin, from trap-doors to plain ordinary knock-out
+drops.
+
+And yet Minetta Lane is built on the grave of Minetta Brook, where, in
+olden times, lovers walked under the willows on the bank, and Minetta
+Lane, in later times, was the home of many of the best families of the
+town.
+
+A negro named Bloodthirsty was perhaps the most luminous figure of
+Minetta Lane's aggregation of desperadoes. Bloodthirsty supposedly is
+alive now, but he has vanished from the lane. The police want him for
+murder. Bloodthirsty is a large negro, and very hideous. He has a
+rolling eye that shows white at the wrong time, and his neck, under the
+jaw, is dreadfully scarred and pitted.
+
+Bloodthirsty was particularly eloquent when drunk, and in the wildness
+of a spree he would rave so graphically about gore that even the
+habitated wool of old timers would stand straight.
+
+Bloodthirsty meant most of it, too. That is why his orations were
+impressive. His remarks were usually followed by the wide, lightning
+sweep of his razor. None cared to exchange epithets with Bloodthirsty. A
+man in a boiler iron suit would walk down to City Hall and look at the
+clock before he would ask the time of day from the single-minded and
+ingenuous Bloodthirsty.
+
+After Bloodthirsty, in combative importance, came No-Toe Charley.
+Singularly enough, Charley was called No-Toe Charley because he did not
+have a toe on his feet. Charley was a small negro, and his manner of
+amusement befitting a smaller man. Charley was more wise, more sly, more
+round-about than the other man. The path of his crimes was like a
+corkscrew in architecture, and his method led him to make many tunnels.
+With all his cleverness, however, No-Toe was finally induced to pay a
+visit to the gentlemen in the grim, grey building up the river--Sing
+Sing.
+
+Black-Cat was another famous bandit who made the land his home.
+Black-Cat is dead. Jube Tyler has been sent to prison, and after
+mentioning the recent disappearance of Old Man Spriggs it may be said
+that the lane is now destitute of the men who once crowned it with a
+glory of crime. It is hardly essential to mention Guinea Johnson.
+
+Guinea is not a great figure. Guinea is just an ordinary little crook.
+Sometimes Guinea pays a visit to his friends, the other little crooks
+who make homes in the lane, but he himself does not live there, and with
+him out of it there is now no one whose industry's unlawfulness has yet
+earned him the dignity of a nickname. Indeed, it is difficult to find
+people now who remember the old gorgeous days, although it is but two
+years since the lane shone with sin like a new head-light. But after a
+search the reporter found three.
+
+Mammy Ross is one of the last relics of the days of slaughter still
+living there. Her weird history also reaches back to the blossoming of
+the first members of the Whyo gang in the Old Sixth Ward, and her mind
+is stored with bloody memories. She at one time kept a sailors'
+boarding-house near the Tombs prison, and the accounts of all the
+festive crimes of that neighbourhood in ancient years roll easily from
+her tongue. They killed a sailor man every day, and pedestrians went
+about the streets wearing stoves for fear of the handy knives. At the
+present day the route to Mammy's home is up a flight of grimy stairs
+that are pasted on the outside of an old and tottering frame house. Then
+there is a hall blacker than a wolf's throat, and this hall leads to a
+little kitchen where Mammy usually sits groaning by the fire. She is, of
+course, very old, and she is also very fat. She seems always to be in
+great pain. She says she is suffering from "de very las' dregs of de
+yaller fever."
+
+During the first part of a reporter's recent visit, old Mammy seemed
+most dolefully oppressed by her various diseases. Her great body shook
+and her teeth clicked spasmodically during her long and painful
+respirations. From time to time she reached her trembling hand and drew
+a shawl closer about her shoulders. She presented as true a picture of a
+person undergoing steady, unchangeable, chronic pain as a patent
+medicine firm could wish to discover for miraculous purposes. She
+breathed like a fish thrown out on the bank, and her old head
+continually quivered in the nervous tremors of the extremely aged and
+debilitated person. Meanwhile her daughter hung over the stove and
+placidly cooked sausages.
+
+Appeals were made to the old woman's memory. Various personages who had
+been sublime figures of crime in the long-gone days were mentioned to
+her, and presently her eyes began to brighten. Her head no longer
+quivered. She seemed to lose for a period her sense of pain in the
+gentle excitement caused by the invocation of the spirits of her memory.
+
+It appears that she had had a historic quarrel with Apple Mag. She first
+recited the prowess of Apple Mag; how this emphatic lady used to argue
+with paving stones, carving knives, and bricks. Then she told of the
+quarrel; what Mag said; what she said. It seems that they cited each
+other as spectacles of sin and corruption in more fully explanatory
+terms than are commonly known to be possible. But it was one of Mammy's
+most gorgeous recollections, and, as she told it, a smile widened over
+her face.
+
+Finally she explained her celebrated retort to one of the most
+illustrious thugs that had blessed the city in bygone days. "Ah says to
+'im, ah says: 'You--you'll die in yer boots like Gallopin'
+Thompson--dat's what you'll do. You des min' dat', honey. Ah got o'ny
+one chile, an' he ain't nuthin' but er cripple; but le'me tel' you, man,
+dat boy'll live t' pick de feathers f'm de goose dat'll eat de grass dat
+grows over your grave, man.' Dat's what I tol' 'm. But--law sake--how I
+know dat in less'n three day, dat man be lying in de gutter wif a knife
+stickin' out'n his back. Lawd, no, I sholy never s'pected noting like
+dat."
+
+These reminiscences, at once maimed and reconstructed, have been
+treasured by old Mammy as carefully, as tenderly, as if they were the
+various little tokens of an early love. She applies the same
+black-handed sentiment to them, and, as she sits groaning by the fire,
+it is plainly to be seen that there is only one food for her ancient
+brain, and that is the recollection of the beautiful fights and murders
+of the past.
+
+On the other side of the lane, but near Mammy's house, Pop Babcock keeps
+a restaurant. Pop says it is a restaurant, and so it must be one; but
+you could pass there ninety times each day and never know you were
+passing a restaurant. There is one obscure little window in the
+basement, and if you went close and peered in you might, after a time,
+be able to make out a small, dusty sign, lying amid jars on a dusty
+shelf. This sign reads: "Oysters in every style." If you are of a
+gambling turn of mind, you will probably stand out in the street and bet
+yourself black in the face that there isn't an oyster within a hundred
+yards. But Pop Babcock made that sign, and Pop Babcock could not tell an
+untruth. Pop is a model of all the virtues which an inventive fate has
+made for us. He says so.
+
+As far as goes the management of Pop's restaurant, it differs from
+Sherry's. In the first place, the door is always kept locked. The
+wardmen of the Fifteenth precinct have a way of prowling through the
+restaurant almost every night, and Pop keeps the door locked in order to
+keep out the objectionable people that cause the wardmen's visits. He
+says so. The cooking stove is located in the main room of the
+restaurant, and it is placed in such a strategic manner that it occupies
+about all the space that is not already occupied by a table, a bench,
+and two chairs. The table will, on a pinch, furnish room for the plates
+of two people if they are willing to crowd. Pop says he is the best cook
+in the world.
+
+When questioned concerning the present condition of the lane, Pop said:
+"Quiet! Quiet! Lo'd save us, maybe it ain't. Quiet! Quiet!" His emphasis
+was arranged crescendo, until the last word was really a vocal
+explosion. "Why, dish er' lane ain't nohow like what it uster be--no,
+indeed it ain't. No, sir. 'Deed it ain't. Why, I kin remember when dey
+was a-cuttin' an' a-slashin' long yere all night. 'Deed dey wos. My-my,
+dem times was different. Dat der Kent, he kep' de place at Green Gate
+cou't down yer ol' Mammy's--an' he was a hard baby--'deed he was--an'
+ol' Black-Cat an' ol' Bloodthirsty, dey was a-comin' round yere
+a-cuttin', an' a-slashin', an' a-cuttin', an' a-slashin'. Didn't dar'
+say boo to a goose in dose days, dat you didn't, less'n you lookin' fer
+a scrap. No, sir." Then he gave information concerning his own prowess
+at that time. Pop is about as tall as a picket of an undersized fence.
+"But dey didn't have nothin' ter say ter me. No, sir, 'deed dey didn't.
+I would lay down fer none of 'em. No, sir. Dey knew my gait, 'deed dey
+did. Man, man, many's de time I buck up agin 'em."
+
+At this time Pop had three customers in his place, one asleep on the
+bench, one asleep on two chairs, and one asleep on the floor behind the
+stove.
+
+But there is one who lends dignity of the real bevel-edged type to
+Minetta Lane, and that man is Hank Anderson. Hank, of course, does not
+live in the lane, but the shadows of his social perfections fall upon it
+as refreshingly as a morning dew.
+
+Hank gave a dance twice in each week at a hall hard by in M'Dougall
+Street, and the dusky aristocracy of the neighbourhood know their
+guiding beacon. Moreover, Hank holds an annual ball in Forty-fourth
+Street. Also, he gives a picnic each year to the Montezuma Club, when he
+again appears as a guiding beacon. This picnic is usually held on a
+barge, and the excursion is a very joyous one. Some years ago it
+required the entire reserve squad of an up-town police precinct to
+properly control the enthusiasm of the gay picnickers, but that was an
+exceptional exuberance, and no measure of Hank's ability for management.
+
+He is really a great manager. He was Boss Tweed's body-servant in the
+days when Tweed was a political prince, and any one who saw Bill Tweed
+through a spy-glass learned the science of leading, pulling, driving,
+and hauling men in a way to keep the men ignorant of it. Hank imbibed
+from this fount of knowledge, and he applied his information in Thompson
+Street. Thompson Street salaamed. Presently he bore a proud title: "The
+Mayor of Thompson Street." Dignities from the principal political
+organisations of the city adorned his brow, and he speedily became
+illustrious.
+
+Hank knew the lane well in its direful days. As for the inhabitants, he
+kept clear of them, and yet in touch with them, according to a method
+that he might have learned in the Sixth ward. The Sixth ward was a good
+place in which to learn that trick. Anderson can tell many strange tales
+and good of the lane, and he tells them in the graphic way of his class.
+"Why, they could steal your shirt without moving a wrinkle on it."
+
+The killing of Joe Carey was the last murder that happened in the
+Minettas. Carey had what might be called a mixed-ale difference with a
+man named Kenny. They went out to the middle of Minetta Street to
+affably fight it out and determine the justice of the question.
+
+In the scrimmage Kenny drew a knife, thrust quickly, and Carey fell.
+Kenny had not gone a hundred feet before he ran into the arms of a
+policeman.
+
+There is probably no street in New York where the police keep closer
+watch than they do in Minetta Lane. There was a time when the
+inhabitants had a profound and reasonable contempt for the public
+guardians, but they have it no longer apparently. Any citizen can walk
+through there at any time in perfect safety, unless, perhaps, he should
+happen to get too frivolous. To be strictly accurate, the change began
+under the reign of police Captain Chapman. Under Captain Groo, a
+commander of the Fifteenth precinct, the lane donned a complete new
+garb. Its denizens brag now of its peace, precisely as they once bragged
+of its war. It is no more a bloody lane. The song of the razor is seldom
+heard. There are still toughs and semi-toughs galore in it, but they
+can't get a chance with the copper looking the other way. Groo got the
+poor lane by the throat. If a man should insist upon becoming a victim
+of the badger game, he could probably succeed, upon search in Minetta
+Lane, as indeed, he could on any of the great avenues, but then Minetta
+Lane is not supposed to be a pearly street of Paradise.
+
+In the meantime the Italians have begun to dispute the possession of the
+lane with the negroes. Green Gate Court is filled with them now, and a
+row of houses near the M'Dougall Street corner is occupied entirely by
+Italian families. None of them seem to be over fond of the old Mulberry
+Bend fashion of life, and there are no cutting affrays among them worth
+mentioning. It is the original negro element that makes the trouble when
+there is trouble.
+
+But they are happy in this condition are these people. The most
+extraordinary quality of the negro is his enormous capacity for
+happiness under most adverse circumstances. Minetta Lane is a place of
+poverty and sin, but these influences cannot destroy the broad smile of
+the negro--a vain and simple child, but happy. They all smile here, the
+most evil as well as the poorest. Knowing the negro, one always expects
+laughter from him, be he ever so poor, but it was a new experience to
+see a broad grin on the face of the devil. Even old Pop Babcock had a
+laugh as fine and mellow as would be the sound of falling glass, broken
+saints from high windows, in the silence of some great cathedral's
+hollow.
+
+
+
+
+THE ROOF GARDENS AND GARDENERS OF NEW YORK.
+
+A PHASE OF NEW YORK LIFE AS SEEN BY A CLOSE OBSERVER.
+
+
+When the hot weather comes the roof gardens burst into full bloom, and
+if an inhabitant of Chicago should take flight on his wings over this
+city, he would observe six or eight flashing spots in the darkness,
+spots as radiant as crowns. These are the roof gardens, and if a giant
+had flung a handful of monstrous golden coins upon the sombre-shadowed
+city he could not have benefited the metropolis more, although he would
+not have given the same opportunity to various commercial aspirants to
+charge a price and a half for everything. There are two classes of
+men--reporters and central office detectives--who do not mind these
+prices because they are very prodigal of their money.
+
+Now is the time of the girl with the copper voice, the Irishman with
+circular whiskers, and the minstrel who had a reputation in 1833. To the
+street the noise of the band comes down on the wind in fitful gusts, and
+at the brilliantly illuminated rail there is suggestion of many straw
+hats.
+
+One of the main features of the roof garden is the waiter, who stands
+directly in front of you whenever anything interesting transpires on the
+stage. This waiter is three hundred feet high and seventy-two feet wide.
+His finger can block your view of the golden-haired _soubrette_, and
+when he waves his arm the stage disappears as if by a miracle. What
+particularly fascinates you is his lack of self-appreciation. He doesn't
+know that his length over all is three hundred feet, and that his beam
+is seventy-two feet. He only knows that while the golden-haired
+_soubrette_ is singing her first verse he is depositing beer on the
+table before some thirsty New Yorkers. He only knows that during the
+third verse the thirsty New Yorkers object to the roof-garden prices. He
+does not know that behind him are some fifty citizens who ordinarily
+would not give three whoops to see the golden-haired _soubrette_, but
+who, under these particular circumstances, are kept from swift
+assassination by sheer force of the human will. He gives an impressive
+exhibition of a man who is regardless of consequences, oblivious to
+everything save his task, which is to provide beer. Some day there may
+be a wholesale massacre of roof-garden waiters, but they will die with
+astonished faces and with questions on their lips. Skulls so steadfastly
+opaque defy axes, or any of the other methods which the populace
+occasionally use to cure colossal stupidity.
+
+Between numbers on an ordinary roof-garden programme, the orchestra
+sometimes plays what the more enlightened and wary citizens of the town
+call a "beer overture." But, for reasons which no civil service
+commission could give, the waiter does not choose this time to serve the
+thirsty. No; he waits until the golden-haired _soubrette_ appears, he
+waits until the haggard audience has goaded itself into some interest in
+the proceedings. Then he gets under way. Then he comes forth and blots
+out the stage. In case of war, all roof-garden waiters should be
+recruited in a special regiment and sent out in advance of everything.
+There is a peculiar quality of bullet-proofness about them which would
+turn a projectile pale.
+
+If you have strategy enough in your soul you may gain furtive glimpses
+of the stage, despite the efforts of the waiters, and then, with
+something to engage the attention when the attention grows weary of the
+mystic wind, the flashing yellow lights, the music, and the undertone of
+the far street's roar, you should be happy.
+
+Far up into the night there is a wildness, a temper to the air which
+suggests tossing tree boughs and the swift rustle of grass. The New
+Yorker, whose business will not allow him to go out to nature, perhaps,
+appreciates these little opportunities to go up to nature, although
+doubtless he thinks he goes to see the show.
+
+One season two new roof gardens have opened. The one at the top of Grand
+Central Palace is large enough for a regimental drill room. The band is
+imprisoned still higher in a turreted affair, and a person who prefers
+gentle and unobtrusive amusement can gain deep pleasure and satisfaction
+from watching the leader of this band gesticulating upon the heavens.
+His figure is silhouetted beautifully against the sky, and every gesture
+in which he wrings noise from his band is interestingly accentuated.
+
+The other new roof garden was Oscar Hammerstein's Olympia, which blazes
+on Broadway.
+
+Oscar originally made a great reputation for getting out injunctions.
+All court judges in New York worked overtime when Oscar was in this
+business. He enjoined everybody in sight. He had a special machine
+made--"Drop a nickel in the judge and get an injunction." Then he sent a
+man to Washington for twenty-two thousand dollars' worth of nickels. In
+Harlem, where he then lived, it rained orders of the court every day at
+twelve o'clock. The street-cleaning commission was obliged to enlist a
+special force to deal with Oscar's injunctions. Citizens meeting on the
+street never said: "Good morning, how do you feel to-day?" They always
+said: "Good morning, have you been enjoined yet to-day?" When a man
+perhaps wished to enter a little game of draw, the universal form was
+changed when he sent a note to his wife: "Dear Louise, I have received
+an order of the court restraining me from coming home to dinner
+to-night. Yours, George."
+
+But Oscar changed. He smashed his machine, girded himself, and resolved
+to provide the public with amusement. And now we see this great mind
+applying itself to a roof garden with the same unflagging industry and
+boundless energy which had previously expressed itself in injunctions.
+The Olympia, his new roof garden, is a feat. It has an exuberance which
+reminds one of the Union Depot train-shed of some western city. The
+steel arches of the roof make a wide and splendid sweep, and over in the
+corner there are real swans swimming in real water. The whole structure
+glares like a conflagration with the countless electric lights. Oscar
+has caused the execution of decorative paintings upon the walls. If he
+had caused the execution of the decorative painters he would have done
+better; but a man who has devoted the greater part of his life to the
+propagation of injunctions is not supposed to understand that wall
+decoration which appears to have been done with a nozzle is worse than
+none. But if carpers say that Oscar failed in his landscapes, none can
+say that he failed in his measurements of the popular mind. The people
+come in swarms to the Olympia. Two elevators are busy at conveying them
+to where the cool and steady night-wind insults the straw hat; and the
+scene here during the popular part of the evening is perhaps more gaudy
+and dazzling than any other in New York.
+
+The bicycle has attained an economic position of vast importance. The
+roof garden ought to attain such a position, and it doubtless will
+soon--as we give it the opportunity it desires.
+
+The Arab or the Moor probably invented the roof garden in some long-gone
+centuries, and they are at this day inveterate roof gardeners. The
+American, surprisingly belated--for him, has but recently seized upon
+the idea, and its development here has been only partial. The
+possibilities of the roof garden are still unknown.
+
+Here is a vast city in which thousands of people in summer half stifle,
+cry out continually for air, fresher air. Just above their heads is what
+might be called a county of unoccupied land. It is not ridiculously
+small when compared with the area of New York county itself. But it is
+as lonely as a desert, this region of roofs. It is as untrodden as the
+corners of Arizona. Unless a man be a roof gardener, he knows
+practically nothing of this land.
+
+Down in the slums necessity forces a solution of problems. It drives the
+people to the roofs. An evening upon a tenement roof with the great
+golden march of the stars across the sky, and Johnnie gone for a pail of
+beer, is not so bad if you have never seen the mountains nor heard, to
+your heart, the slow, sad song of the pines.
+
+
+
+
+IN THE BROADWAY CARS.
+
+PANORAMA OF A DAY FROM THE DOWN-TOWN RUSH OF THE MORNING TO THE
+UNINTERRUPTED WHIRR OF THE CABLE AT NIGHT--THE MAN, AND THE WOMAN, AND
+THE CONDUCTOR.
+
+
+The cable cars come down Broadway as the waters come down at Lodore.
+Years ago Father Knickerbocker had convulsions when it was proposed to
+lay impious rails on his sacred thoroughfare. At the present day the
+cars, by force of column and numbers, almost dominate the great street,
+and the eye of even an old New Yorker is held by these long yellow
+monsters which prowl intently up and down, up and down, in a mystic
+search.
+
+In the grey of the morning they come out of the up-town, bearing
+janitors, porters, all that class which carries the keys to set alive
+the great down-town. Later, they shower clerks. Later still, they shower
+more clerks. And the thermometer which is attached to a conductor's
+temper is steadily rising, rising, and the blissful time arrives when
+everybody hangs to a strap and stands on his neighbour's toes. Ten
+o'clock comes, and the Broadway cars, as well as elevated cars, horse
+cars, and ferryboats innumerable, heave sighs of relief. They have
+filled lower New York with a vast army of men who will chase to and fro
+and amuse themselves until almost nightfall.
+
+The cable car's pulse drops to normal. But the conductor's pulse begins
+now to beat in split seconds. He has come to the crisis in his day's
+agony. He is now to be overwhelmed with feminine shoppers. They all are
+going to give him two-dollar bills to change. They all are going to
+threaten to report him. He passes his hand across his brow and curses
+his beard from black to grey and from grey to black.
+
+Men and women have different ways of hailing a car. A man--if he is not
+an old choleric gentleman, who owns not this road but some other
+road--throws up a timid finger, and appears to believe that the King of
+Abyssinia is careering past on his war-chariot, and only his opinion of
+other people's Americanism keeps him from deep salaams. The gripman
+usually jerks his thumb over his shoulder and indicates the next car,
+which is three miles away. Then the man catches the last platform, goes
+into the car, climbs upon some one's toes, opens his morning paper, and
+is happy.
+
+When a woman hails a car there is no question of its being the King of
+Abyssinia's war-chariot. She has bought the car for three dollars and
+ninety-eight cents. The conductor owes his position to her, and the
+gripman's mother does her laundry. No captain in the Royal Horse
+Artillery ever stops his battery from going through a stone house in a
+way to equal her manner of bringing that car back on its haunches. Then
+she walks leisurely forward, and after scanning the step to see if there
+is any mud upon it, and opening her pocket-book to make sure of a
+two-dollar bill, she says: "Do you give transfers down Twenty-eighth
+Street?"
+
+Some time the conductor breaks the bell strap when he pulls it under
+these conditions. Then, as the car goes on, he goes and bullies some
+person who had nothing to do with the affair.
+
+The car sweeps on its diagonal path through the Tenderloin with its
+hotels, its theatres, its flower shops, its 10,000,000 actors who played
+with Booth and Barret. It passes Madison Square and enters the gorge
+made by the towering walls of great shops. It sweeps around the double
+curve at Union Square and Fourteenth Street, and a life insurance agent
+falls in a fit as the car dashes over the crossing, narrowly missing
+three old ladies, two old gentlemen, a newly-married couple, a sandwich
+man, a newsboy, and a dog. At Grace Church the conductor has an
+altercation with a brave and reckless passenger who beards him in his
+own car, and at Canal Street he takes dire vengeance by tumbling a
+drunken man on to the pavement. Meanwhile, the gripman has become
+involved with countless truck drivers, and inch by inch, foot by foot,
+he fights his way to City Hall Park. On past the Post Office the car
+goes, with the gripman getting advice, admonition, personal comment, an
+invitation to fight from the drivers, until Battery Park appears at the
+foot of the slope, and as the car goes sedately around the curve the
+burnished shield of the bay shines through the trees.
+
+It is a great ride, full of exciting actions. Those inexperienced
+persons who have been merely chased by Indians know little of the
+dramatic quality which life may hold for them. These jungle of men and
+vehicles, these cañons of streets, these lofty mountains of iron and cut
+stone--a ride through them affords plenty of excitement. And no lone
+panther's howl is more serious in intention than the howl of the truck
+driver when the cable car bumps one of his rear wheels.
+
+Owing to a strange humour of the gods that make our comfort, sailor hats
+with wide brims come into vogue whenever we are all engaged in hanging
+to cable-car straps. There is only one more serious combination known to
+science, but a trial of it is at this day impossible. If a troupe of
+Elizabethan courtiers in large ruffs should board a cable car, the
+complication would be a very awesome one, and the profanity would be in
+old English, but very inspiring. However, the combination of
+wide-brimmed hats and crowded cable cars is tremendous in its power to
+cause misery to the patient New York public.
+
+Suppose you are in a cable car, clutching for life and family a creaking
+strap from overhead. At your shoulder is a little dude in a very
+wide-brimmed straw hat with a red band. If you were in your senses you
+would recognise this flaming band as an omen of blood. But you are not
+in your senses; you are in a Broadway cable car. You are not supposed to
+have any senses. From the forward end you hear the gripman uttering
+shrill whoops and running over citizens. Suddenly the car comes to a
+curve. Making a swift running start, it turns three hand-springs, throws
+a cart wheel for luck, bounds into the air, hurls six passengers over
+the nearest building, and comes down a-straddle of the track. That is
+the way in which we turn curves in New York.
+
+Meanwhile, during the car's gamboling, the corrugated rim of the dude's
+hat has swept naturally across your neck, and has left nothing for your
+head to do but to quit your shoulders. As the car roars your head falls
+into the waiting arms of the proper authorities. The dude is dead;
+everything is dead. The interior of the car resembles the scene of the
+battle of Wounded Knee, but this gives you small satisfaction.
+
+There was once a person possessing a fund of uncanny humour who greatly
+desired to import from past ages a corps of knights in full armour. He
+then purposed to pack the warriors into a cable car and send them around
+a curve. He thought that he could gain much pleasure by standing near
+and listening to the wild clash of steel upon steel--the tumult of
+mailed heads striking together, the bitter grind of armoured legs
+bending the wrong way. He thought that this would teach them that war is
+grim.
+
+Towards evening, when the tides of travel set northward, it is curious
+to see how the gripman and conductor reverse their tempers. Their
+dispositions flop over like patent signals. During the down-trip they
+had in mind always the advantages of being at Battery Park. A perpetual
+picture of the blessings of Battery Park was before them, and every
+delay made them fume--made this picture all the more alluring. Now the
+delights of up-town appear to them. They have reversed the signs on the
+cars; they have reversed their aspirations. Battery Park has been gained
+and forgotten. There is a new goal. Here is a perpetual illustration
+which the philosophers of New York may use.
+
+In the Tenderloin, the place of theatres, and of the restaurant where
+gayer New York does her dining, the cable cars in the evening carry a
+stratum of society which looks like a new one, but it is of the familiar
+strata in other clothes. It is just as good as a new stratum, however,
+for in evening dress the average man feels that he has gone up three
+pegs in the social scale, and there is considerable evening dress about
+a Broadway car in the evening. A car with its electric lamp resembles a
+brilliantly-lighted salon, and the atmosphere grows just a trifle
+strained. People sit more rigidly, and glance sidewise, perhaps, as if
+each was positive of possessing social value, but was doubtful of all
+others. The conductor says: "Ah, gwan. Git off th' earth." But this is
+to a man at Canal Street. That shows his versatility. He stands on the
+platform and beams in a modest and polite manner into the car. He notes
+a lifted finger and grabs swiftly for the bell strap. He reaches down to
+help a woman aboard. Perhaps his demeanour is a reflection of the manner
+of the people in the car. No one is in a mad New York hurry; no one is
+fretting and muttering; no one is perched upon his neighbour's toes.
+Moreover, the Tenderloin is a glory at night. Broadway of late years has
+fallen heir to countless signs illuminated with red, blue, green, and
+gold electric lamps, and the people certainly fly to these as the moths
+go to a candle. And perhaps the gods have allowed this opportunity to
+observe and study the best-dressed crowds in the world to operate upon
+the conductor until his mood is to treat us with care and mildness.
+
+Late at night, after the diners and theatre-goers have been lost in
+Harlem, various inebriate persons may perchance emerge from the darker
+regions of Sixth Avenue and swing their arms solemnly at the gripman. If
+the Broadway cars run for the next 7000 years this will be the only time
+when one New Yorker will address another in public without an excuse
+sent direct from heaven. In these cars late at night it is not
+impossible that some fearless drunkard will attempt to inaugurate a
+general conversation. He is quite willing to devote his ability to the
+affair. He tells of the fun he thinks he has had; describes his
+feelings; recounts stories of his dim past. None reply, although all
+listen with every ear. The rake probably ends by borrowing a match,
+lighting a cigar, and entering into a wrangle with the conductor with an
+_abandon_, a ferocity, and a courage that do not come to us when we are
+sober.
+
+In the meantime the figures on the street grow fewer and fewer.
+Strolling policemen test the locks of the great dark-fronted stores.
+Nighthawk cabs whirl by the cars on their mysterious errands. Finally
+the cars themselves depart in the way of the citizen, and for the few
+hours before dawn a new sound comes into the still thoroughfare--the
+cable whirring in its channel underground.
+
+
+
+
+THE ASSASSIN IN MODERN BATTLES.
+
+THE TORPEDO BOAT DESTROYERS THAT "PERFORM IN THE DARKNESS. AN ACT WHICH
+IS MORE PECULIARLY MURDEROUS THAN MOST THINGS IN WAR."
+
+
+In the past century the gallant aristocracy of London liked to travel
+down the south bank of the Thames to Greenwich Hospital, where venerable
+pensioners of the crown were ready to hire telescopes at a penny each,
+and with these telescopes the lords and ladies were able to view at a
+better advantage the dried and enchained corpses of pirates hanging from
+the gibbets on the Isle of Dogs. In those times the dismal marsh was
+inhabited solely by the clanking figures whose feet moved in the wind
+like rather poorly-constructed weather cocks.
+
+But even the Isle of Dogs could not escape the appetite of an expanding
+London. Thousands of souls now live on it, and it has changed its
+character from that of a place of execution, with mist, wet with fever,
+coiling forever from the mire and wandering among the black gibbets, to
+that of an ordinary, squalid, nauseating slum of London, whose streets
+bear a faint resemblance to that part of Avenue A which lies directly
+above Sixtieth Street in New York.
+
+Down near the water front one finds a long brick building,
+three-storeyed and signless, which shuts off all view of the river. The
+windows, as well as the bricks, are very dirty, and you see no sign of
+life, unless some smudged workman dodges in through a little door. The
+place might be a factory for the making of lamps or stair rods, or any
+ordinary commercial thing. As a matter of fact, the building fronts the
+shipyard of Yarrow, the builder of torpedo boats, the maker of knives
+for the nations, the man who provides everybody with a certain kind of
+efficient weapon. One then remembers that if Russia fights England,
+Yarrow meets Yarrow; if Germany fights France, Yarrow meets Yarrow; if
+Chili fights Argentina, Yarrow meets Yarrow.
+
+Besides the above-mentioned countries Yarrow has built torpedo boats for
+Italy, Austria, Holland, Japan, China, Ecuador, Brazil, Costa Rica, and
+Spain. There is a keeper of a great shop in London who is known as the
+Universal Provider. If a general conflagration of war should break out
+in the world, Yarrow would be known as one of the Universal Warriors,
+for it would practically be a battle between Yarrow, Armstrong, Krupp,
+and a few other firms. This is what makes interesting the dinginess of
+the cantonment on the Isle of Dogs.
+
+The great Yarrow forte is to build speedy steamers of a tonnage of not
+more than 240 tons. This practically includes only yachts, launches,
+tugs, torpedo boat destroyers, torpedo boats, and of late
+shallow-draught gunboats for service on the Nile, Congo, and Niger. Some
+of the gunboats that shelled the dervishes from the banks of the Nile
+below Khartoum were built by Yarrow. Yarrow is always in action
+somewhere. Even if the firm's boats do not appear in every coming sea
+combat, the ideas of the firm will, for many nations, notably France and
+Germany, have bought specimens of the best models of Yarrow construction
+in order to reduplicate and reduplicate them in their own yards.
+
+When the great fever to possess torpedo boats came upon the Powers of
+Europe, England was at first left far in the rear. Either Germany or
+France to-day has in her fleet more torpedo boats than has England. The
+British tar is a hard man to oust out of a habit. He had a habit of
+thinking that his battleships and cruisers were the final thing in naval
+construction. He scoffed at the advent of the torpedo boat. He did not
+scoff intelligently but because, mainly, he hated to be forced to change
+his ways.
+
+You will usually find an Englishman balking and kicking at innovation up
+to the last moment. It takes him some years to get an idea into his
+head, and when finally it is inserted, he not only respects it, he
+reveres it. The Londoners have a fire brigade which would interest the
+ghost of a Babylonian, as an example of how much the method of
+extinguishing fires could degenerate in two thousand years, and in 1897,
+when a terrible fire devastated a part of the city, some voices were
+raised challenging the efficiency of the fire brigade. But that part of
+the London County Council which corresponds to fire commissioners in
+United States laid their hands upon their hearts and solemnly assured
+the public that they had investigated the matter, and had found the
+London fire brigade to be as good as any in the world. There were some
+isolated cases of dissent, but the great English public as a whole
+placidly accepted these assurances concerning the activity of the
+honoured corps.
+
+For a long time England blundered in the same way over the matter of
+torpedo boats. They were authoritatively informed that there was nothing
+in all the talk about torpedo boats. Then came a great popular uproar,
+in which people tumbled over each other to get to the doors of the
+Admiralty and howl about torpedo boats. It was an awakening as
+unreasonable as had been the previous indifference and contempt. Then
+England began to build. She has never overtaken France or Germany in the
+number of torpedo boats, but she now heads the world with her
+collection of that marvel of marine architecture--the torpedo boat
+destroyer. She has about sixty-five of these vessels now in commission,
+and has about as many more in course of building.
+
+People ordinarily have a false idea of the appearance of a destroyer.
+The common type is longer than an ordinary gunboat--a long, low,
+graceful thing, flying through the water at fabulous speed, with a great
+curve of water some yards back of the bow, and smoke flying horizontally
+from the three or four stacks.
+
+Bushing this way and that way, circling, dodging, turning, they are like
+demons.
+
+The best kind of modern destroyer has a length of 220 feet, with a beam
+of 26½ feet. The horse-power is about 6500, driving the boat at a
+speed of thirty-one knots or more. The engines are triple-expansion,
+with water tube boilers. They carry from 70 to 100 tons of coal, and at
+a speed of eight or nine knots can keep the sea for a week; so they are
+independent of coaling in a voyage of between 1300 and 1500 miles. They
+carry a crew of three or four officers, and about forty men.
+
+They are armed usually with one twelve-pounder gun, and from three to
+five six-pounder guns, besides their equipment of torpedoes. Their hulls
+and top hamper are painted olive, buff, or preferably slate, in order to
+make them hard to find with the eye at sea.
+
+Their principal functions, theoretically, are to discover and kill the
+enemy's torpedo boats, guard and scout for the main squadron, and
+perform messenger service. However, they are also torpedo boats of a
+most formidable kind, and in action will be found carrying out the
+torpedo boat idea in an expanded form. Four destroyers of this type
+building at the Yarrow yards were for Japan (1898).
+
+The modern European ideal of a torpedo boat is a craft 152 feet long,
+with a beam of 15¼ feet. When the boat is fully loaded a speed of 24
+knots is derived from her 2000 horse-power engines. The destroyers are
+twin screw, whereas the torpedo boats are commonly propelled by a single
+screw. The speed of twenty knots is for a run of three hours. These
+boats are not designed to keep at sea for any great length of time, and
+cannot raid toward a distant coast without the constant attendance of a
+cruiser to keep them in coal and provisions. Primarily they are for
+defence. Even with destroyers, England, in lately reinforcing her
+foreign stations, has seen fit to send cruisers in order to provide help
+for them in stormy weather.
+
+Some years ago it was thought the proper thing to equip torpedo craft
+with rudders, which would enable them to turn in their own length when
+running at full speed. Yarrow found this to result in too much broken
+steering gear, and the firm's boats now have smaller rudders, which
+enable them to turn in a larger circle.
+
+At one time a torpedo boat steaming at her best gait always carried a
+great bone in her teeth. During manoeuvres the watch on the deck of a
+battleship often discovered the approach of the little enemy by the
+great white wave which the boat rolled at her bows during her headlong
+rush. This was mainly because the old-fashioned boats carried two
+torpedo tubes set in the bows, and the bows were consequently bluff.
+
+The modern boat carries the great part of her armament amidships and
+astern on swivels, and her bow is like a dagger. With no more bow-waves,
+and with these phantom colours of buff, olive, bottle-green, or slate,
+the principal foe to a safe attack at night is bad firing in the
+stoke-room, which might cause flames to leap out of the stacks.
+
+A captain of an English battleship recently remarked: "See those five
+destroyers lying there? Well, if they should attack me I would sink four
+of them, but the fifth one would sink me."
+
+This was repeated to Yarrow's manager, who said: "He wouldn't sink four
+of them if the attack were at night and the boats were shrewdly and
+courageously handled." Anyhow, the captain's remark goes to show the
+wholesome respect which the great battleship has for these little
+fliers.
+
+The Yarrow people say there is no sense in a torpedo flotilla attack on
+anything save vessels. A modern fortification is never built near enough
+to the water for a torpedo explosion to injure it, and, although some
+old stone flush-with-the-water castle might be badly crumpled, it would
+harm nobody in particular, even if the assault were wholly successful.
+
+Of course, if a torpedo boat could get a chance at piers and dock gates
+they would make a disturbance, but the chance is extremely remote if the
+defenders have ordinary vigilance and some rapid fire guns. In harbour
+defence the searchlight would naturally play a most important part,
+whereas at sea experts are beginning to doubt its use as an auxiliary to
+the rapid fire guns against torpedo boats. About half the time it does
+little more than betray the position of the ship. On the other hand, a
+port cannot conceal its position anyhow, and searchlights would be
+invaluable for sweeping the narrow channels.
+
+There could be only one direction from which the assault could come, and
+all the odds would be in favour of the guns on shore. A torpedo boat
+commander knows this perfectly. What he wants is a ship off at sea with
+a nervous crew staring into the encircling darkness from any point in
+which the terror might be coming.
+
+Hi, then, for a grand, bold, silent rush and the assassin-like stab.
+
+In stormy weather life on board a torpedo boat is not amusing. They
+tumble about like bucking bronchos, especially if they are going at
+anything like speed. Everything is battened down as if it were soldered,
+and the watch below feel that they are living in a football, which is
+being kicked every way at once.
+
+And finally, while Yarrow and other great builders can make torpedo
+craft which are wonders of speed and manoeuvring power, they cannot
+make that high spirit of daring and hardihood which is essential to a
+success.
+
+That must exist in the mind of some young lieutenant who, knowing well
+that if he is detected, a shot or so from a rapid fire gun will cripple
+him if it does not sink him absolutely, nevertheless goes creeping off
+to sea to find a huge antagonist and perform stealthily in the darkness
+an act which is more peculiarly murderous than most things in war.
+
+If a torpedo boat is caught within range in daylight, the fighting is
+all over before it begins. Any common little gunboat can dispose of it
+in a moment if the gunnery is not too Chinese.
+
+
+
+
+IRISH NOTES
+
+
+
+
+I.--AN OLD MAN GOES WOOING.
+
+
+The melancholy fisherman made his way through a street that was mainly
+as dark as a tunnel. Sometimes an open door threw a rectangle of light
+upon the pavement, and within the cottages were scenes of working women
+and men, who comfortably smoked and talked. From them came the sounds of
+laughter and the babble of children. Each time the old man passed
+through one of the radiant zones the light etched his face in profile
+with touches flaming and sombre until there was a resemblance to a stern
+and mournful Dante portrait.
+
+Once a whistling lad came through the darkness. He peered intently for
+purposes of recognition. "Good avenin', Mickey," he cried cheerfully.
+The old man responded with a groan, which intimated that the lamentable
+reckless optimism of the youth had forced from him an expression of an
+emotion that he had been enduring in saintly patience and silence. He
+continued his pilgrimage toward the kitchen of the village inn.
+
+The kitchen is a great and worthy place. The long range with its lurid
+heat continually emits the fragrance of broiling fish, roasting mutton,
+joints, and fowl. The high black ceiling is ornamented with hams and
+flitches of bacon. There is a long, dark bench against one wall, and it
+is fronted by a dark table, handy for glasses of stout. On an old
+mahogany dresser rows of plates face the distant range, and reflect the
+red shine of the peat. Smoke which has in it the odour of an American
+forest fire eddies through the air. The great stones of the floor are
+scarred by the black mud from the inn yard. And here the gossip of a
+country-side goes on amid the sizzle of broiling fish and the loud
+protesting splutter of joints taken from the oven.
+
+When the old man reached the door of this paradise, he stopped for a
+moment with his finger on the latch. He sighed deeply; evidently he was
+undergoing some lachrymose reflection. For somewhere overhead in the inn
+he could hear the wild clamour of dining pig-buyers, men who were come
+for the pig fair to be held on the morrow. Evidently in the little
+parlour of the inn these men were dining amid an uproar of shouted jests
+and laughter. The revelry sounded like the fighting of two mobs amid a
+rain of missiles and crash of shop windows. The old man raised his hand
+as if, unseen there in the darkness, he was going to solemnly damn the
+dinner of the pig-buyers.
+
+Within the kitchen Nora, tall, strong, intrepid, approached the fiery
+stove in the manner of a boxer. Her left arm was held high to guard her
+face, which was already crimson from the blaze. With a flourish of her
+apron she achieved a great brown humming joint from the oven, and,
+emerging a glowing and triumphant figure from the steam and smoke and
+rapid play of heat, she slid the pan upon the table, even as she saw the
+old man standing within the room and lugubriously cleaning the mud from
+his boots. "Tis you, Mickey?" she said.
+
+He made no reply until he had found his way to the long bench. "It is,"
+he said then. It was clear that in the girl's opinion he had gained some
+kind of strategic advantage. The sanctity of her kitchen was
+successfully violated, but the old man betrayed no elation. Lifting one
+knee and placing it over the other, he grunted in the blissful weariness
+of a venerable labourer returned to his own fireside. He coughed
+dismally. "Ah, 'tis no good a man gits from fishin' these days. I moind
+the toimes whin they would be hoppin' up clear o' the wather, there was
+that little room fur thim. I would be likin' a bottle o' stout."
+
+"Niver fear you, Mickey," answered the girl. Swinging here and there in
+the glare of the fire, Nora, with her towering figure and bare brawny
+arms, was like a feminine blacksmith at a forge. The old man, pallid,
+emaciated, watched her from the shadows at the other side of the room.
+The lines from the sides of his nose to the corners of his mouth sank
+low to an expression of despair deeper than any moans. He should have
+been painted upon the door of a tomb with wringing willows arched above
+him and men in grey robes slowly booming the drums of death. Finally he
+spoke. "I would be likin' a bottle o' stout, Nora, me girrl," he said.
+
+"Niver fear you, Mickey," again she replied with cheerful obstinacy. She
+was admiring her famous roast, which now sat in its platter on the rack
+over the range. There was a lull in her tumultuous duties. The old man
+coughed and moved his foot with a scraping sound on the stones. The
+noise of dining pig-buyers, now heard through doors and winding
+corridors of the inn, was a roll of far-away storm.
+
+A woman in a dark dress entered the kitchen and keenly examined the
+roast and Nora's other feats. "Mickey here would be wantin' a bottle o'
+stout," said the girl to her mistress. The woman turned towards the
+spectral figure in the gloom, and regarded it quietly with a clear eye.
+"Have yez the money, Mickey?" repeated the woman of the house.
+
+Profoundly embittered, he replied in short terms, "I have."
+
+"There now," cried Nora, in astonishment and admiration. Poising a large
+iron spoon, she was motionless, staring with open mouth at the old man.
+He searched his pockets slowly during a complete silence in the kitchen.
+He brought forth two coppers and laid them sadly, reproachfully, and yet
+defiantly on the table.
+
+"There now," cried Nora, stupefied.
+
+They brought him a bottle of the black brew, and Nora poured it out for
+him with her own red hand, which looked to be as broad as his chest. A
+collar of brown foam curled at the top of the glass. With measured
+moments the old man filled a short pipe. There came a sudden howl from
+another part of the inn. One of the pig-buyers was at the head of the
+stairs bawling for the mistress. The two women hurriedly freighted
+themselves with the roast and the vegetables, and sprang with them to
+placate the pig-buyers. Alone, the old man studied the gleam of the fire
+on the floor. It faded and brightened in the way of lightning at the
+horizon's edge.
+
+When Nora returned, the strapping grenadier of a girl was blushing and
+giggling. The pig-buyers had been humorous. "I moind the toime--" began
+the man sorrowfully. "I moind the toime whin yea was a wee bit of a
+girrl, Nora, an' wouldn't be havin' words wid min loike thim buyers."
+
+"I moind the toime whin yea could attind to your own affairs, ye ould
+skileton," said the girl promptly. He made a gesture, which may have
+expressed his stirring grief at the levity of the new generation, and
+then lapsed into another stillness.
+
+The girl, a giantess, carrying, lifting, pushing, an incarnation of
+dauntless labour, changing the look of the whole kitchen with a moment's
+manipulation of her great arms, did not heed the old man for a long
+time. When she finally glanced toward him, she saw that he was sunk
+forward with his grey face on his arms. A growl of heavy breathing
+ascended. He was asleep.
+
+She marched to him and put both hands to his collar. Despite his feeble
+and dreamy protestations, she dragged him out from behind the table and
+across the floor. She opened the door and thrust him into the night.
+
+
+
+
+II.--BALLYDEHOB.
+
+
+The illimitable inventive incapacity of the excursion companies has made
+many circular paths throughout Ireland, and on these well-pounded roads
+the guardians of the touring public may be seen drilling the little
+travellers in squads. To rise in rebellion, to face the superior clerk
+in his bureau, to endure his smile of pity and derision, and finally to
+wring freedom from him, is as difficult in some parts of Ireland as it
+is in all parts of Switzerland. To see the tourists chained in gangs
+and taken to see the Lakes of Killarney is a sad spectacle, because
+these people believe that they are learning Ireland, even as men believe
+that they are studying America when they contemplate the Niagara Falls.
+
+But afterwards, if one escapes, one can go forth, unguided, untaught and
+alone, and look at Ireland. The joys of the pig-market, the delirium of
+a little tap-room filled with brogue, the fierce excitement of viewing
+the Royal Irish Constabulary fishing for trout, the whole quaint and
+primitive machinery of the peasant life--its melancholy, its sunshine,
+its humour--all this is then the property of the man who breaks like a
+Texan steer out of the pens and corrals of the tourist agencies. For
+what syndicate of maiden ladies--it is these who masquerade as tourist
+agencies--what syndicate of maiden ladies knows of the existence, for
+instance, of Ballydehob?
+
+One has a sense of disclosure at writing the name of Ballydehob. It was
+really a valuable secret. There is in Ballydehob not one thing that is
+commonly pointed out to the stranger as a thing worthy of a half-tone
+reproduction in a book. There is no cascade, no peak, no lake, no guide
+with a fund of useless information, no gamins practised in the seduction
+of tourists. It is not an exhibit, an entry for a prize, like a heap of
+melons or cow. It is simply an Irish village wherein live some three
+hundred Irish and four constables.
+
+If one or two prayer-towers spindled above Ballydehob it would be a
+perfect Turkish village. The red tiles and red bricks of England do not
+appear at all. The houses are low, with soiled white walls. The doors
+open abruptly upon dark old rooms. Here and there in the street is some
+crude cobbling done with round stones taken from the bed of a brook. At
+times there is a great deal of mud. Chickens depredate warily about the
+doorsteps, and intent pigs emerge for plunder from the alleys. It is
+unavoidable to admit that many people would consider Ballydehob quite
+too grimy.
+
+Nobody lives here that has money. The average English tradesman with his
+back-breaking respect for this class, his reflex contempt for that
+class, his reverence for the tin gods, could here be a commercial lord
+and bully the people in one or two ways, until they were thrown back
+upon the defence which is always near them, the ability to cut his skin
+into strips with a wit that would be a foreign tongue to him. For amid
+his wrongs and his rights and his failures--his colossal failures--the
+Irishman retains this delicate blade for his enemies, for his friends,
+for himself, the ancestral dagger of fast sharp speaking from fast sharp
+seeing--an inheritance which could move the world. And the Royal Irish
+Constabulary fished for trout in the adjacent streams.
+
+Mrs. Kearney keeps the hotel. In Ireland male innkeepers die young.
+Apparently they succumb to conviviality when it is presented to them in
+the guise of a business duty. Naturally honest, temperate men, their
+consciences are lulled to false security by this idea of hard drinking
+being necessary to the successful keeping of a public-house. It is very
+terrible.
+
+But they invariably leave behind them capable widows, women who do not
+recognise conviviality as a business obligation. And so all through
+Ireland one finds these brisk widows keeping hotels with a precision
+that is almost military.
+
+In Kearney's there is always a wonderful collection of old women, bent
+figures shrouded in shawls who reach up scrawny fingers to take their
+little purchases from Mary Agnes, who presides sometimes at the bar, but
+more often at the shop that fronts it in the same room. In the gloom of
+a late afternoon these old women are as mystic as the swinging, chanting
+witches on a dark stage when the thunder-drum rolls and the lightning
+flashes by schedule. When a grey rain sweeps through the narrow street
+of Ballydehob, and makes heavy shadows in Kearney's tap-room, these old
+creatures, with their high mournful voices, and the mystery of their
+shawls, their moans and aged mutterings when they are obliged to take a
+step, raise the dead superstitions from the bottom of a man's mind.
+
+"My boy," remarked my London friend cheerfully, "these might have
+furnished sons to be Aldermen or Congressmen in the great city of New
+York."
+
+"Aldermen or Congressmen of the great city of New York always take care
+of their mothers," I answered meekly.
+
+On a barrel, over in a corner, sat a yellow-bearded Irish farmer in
+tattered clothes who wished to exchange views on the Armenian massacres.
+He had much information and a number of theories in regard to them. He
+also advanced the opinion that the chief political aim of Russia at
+present is in the direction of China, and that it behoved other Powers
+to keep an eye on her. He thought the revolutionists in Cuba would never
+accept autonomy at the hands of Spain. His pipe glowed comfortably from
+his corner; waving the tuppenny glass of stout in the air, he discoursed
+on the business of the remote ends of the earth with the glibness of a
+fourth secretary of Legation. Here was a little farmer, digging betimes
+in a forlorn patch of wet ground, a man to whom a sudden two shillings
+would appear as a miracle, a ragged, unkempt peasant, whose mind roamed
+the world like the soul of a lost diplomat. This unschooled man believed
+that the earth was a sphere inhabited by men that are alike in the
+essentials, different in the manners, the little manners, which are
+accounted of such great importance by the emaciated. He was to a degree
+capable of knowing that he lived on a sphere and not on the apex of a
+triangle.
+
+And yet, when the talk had turned another corner, he confidently assured
+the assembled company that a hair from a horse's tail when thrown in a
+brook would turn shortly to an eel.
+
+
+
+
+III.--THE ROYAL IRISH CONSTABULARY.
+
+
+The newspapers called it a Veritable Arsenal. There was a description of
+how the sergeant of Constabulary had bent an ear to receive whispered
+information of the concealed arms, and had then marched his men swiftly
+and by night to surround a certain house. The search elicited a
+double-barrelled breech-loading shot-gun, some empty shells, powder,
+shot, and a loading machine. The point of it was that some of the Irish
+papers called it a Veritable Arsenal, and appeared to congratulate the
+Government upon having strangled another unhappy rebellion in its nest.
+They floundered and misnamed and mis-reasoned, and made a spectacle of
+the great modern craft of journalism, until the affair of this poor
+poacher was too absurd to be pitiable, and Englishmen over their coffee
+next morning must have almost believed that the prompt action of the
+Constabulary had quelled a rising. Thus it is that the Irish fight the
+Irish.
+
+One cannot look Ireland straight in the face without seeing a great many
+constables. The country is dotted with little garrisons. It must have
+been said a thousand times that there is an absolute military
+occupation. The fact is too plain.
+
+The constable himself becomes a figure interesting in its isolation. He
+has in most cases a social position which is somewhat analogous to that
+of a Turk in Thessaly. But then, in the same way, the Turk has the
+Turkish army. He can have battalions as companions and make the
+acquaintance of brigades. The constable has the Constabulary, it is
+true; but to be cooped with three or four others in a small white-washed
+iron-bound house on some bleak country side is not an exact parallel to
+the Thessalian situation. It looks to be a life that is infinitely
+lonely, ascetic, and barren. Two keepers of a lighthouse at a bitter end
+of land in a remote sea will, if they are properly let alone, make a
+murder in time. Five constables imprisoned 'mid a folk that will not
+turn a face toward them, five constables planted in a populated silence,
+may develop an acute and vivid economy, dwell in scowling dislike. A
+religious asylum in a snow-buried mountain pass will breed conspiring
+monks. A separated people will beget an egotism that is almost titanic.
+A world floating distinctly in space will call itself the only world.
+The progression is perfect.
+
+But the constables take the second degree. They are next to the
+lighthouse keepers. The national custom of meeting stranger and friend
+alike on the road with a cheery greeting like "God save you" is too
+kindly and human a habit not to be missed. But all through the South of
+Ireland one sees the peasant turn his eyes pretentiously to the side of
+the road at the passing of the constable. It seemed to be generally
+understood that to note the presence of a constable was to make a
+conventional error. None looked, nodded, or gave sign. There was a line
+drawn so sternly that it reared like a fence. Of course, any police
+force in any part of the world can gather at its heels a riff-raff of
+people, fawning always on a hand licensed to strike that would be larger
+than the army of the Potomac, but of these one ordinarily sees little.
+The mass of the Irish strictly obey the stern tenet. One hears often of
+the ostracism or other punishment that befell some girl who was caught
+flirting with a constable.
+
+Naturally the constable retreats to his pride. He is commonly a
+soldierly-looking chap, straight, lean, long-strided, well set-up. His
+little saucer of a forage cap sits obediently on his ear, as it does for
+the British soldier. He swings a little cane. He takes his medicine with
+a calm and hard face, and evidently stares full into every eye. But it
+is singular to find in the situation of the Royal Irish Constabulary the
+quality of pathos.
+
+It is not known if these places in the South of Ireland are called
+disturbed districts. Over them hangs the peace of Surrey, but the word
+disturbance has an elastic arrangement by which it can be made to cover
+anything. All of the villages visited garrisoned from four to ten men.
+They lived comfortably in their white houses, strolled in pairs over the
+country roads, picked blackberries, and fished for trout. If at some
+time there came a crisis, one man was more than enough to surround it.
+The remaining nine add dignity to the scene. The crisis chiefly
+consisted of occasional drunken men who were unable to understand the
+local geography on Saturday nights.
+
+The note continually struck was that each group of constables lived on a
+little social island, and there was no boat to take them off. There has
+been no such marooning since the days of the pirates. The sequestration
+must be complete when a man with a dinky little cap on his ear is not
+allowed to talk to the girls.
+
+But they fish for trout. Isaac Walton is the father of the Royal Irish
+Constabulary. They could be seen on any fine day whipping the streams
+from source to mouth. There was one venerable sergeant who made a rod
+less than a yard long. With a line of about the same length attached to
+this rod, he hunted the gorse-hung banks of the little streams in the
+hills. An eight-inch ribbon of water lined with masses of heather and
+gorse will be accounted contemptible by a fisherman with an ordinary
+rod. But it was the pleasure of the sergeant to lay on his stomach at
+the side of such a stream and carefully, inch by inch, scout his hook
+through the pools. He probably caught more trout than any three men in
+county Cork. He fished more than any twelve men in the county Cork. Some
+people had never seen him in any other posture but that of crowding
+forward on his stomach to peer into a pool. They did not believe the
+rumour that he sometimes stood or walked like a human.
+
+
+
+
+IV.--A FISHING VILLAGE.
+
+
+The brook curved down over the rocks, innocent and white, until it faced
+a little strand of smooth gravel and flat stones. It turned then to the
+left, and thereafter its guilty current was tinged with the pink of
+diluted blood. Boulders standing neck-deep in the water were rimmed with
+red; they wore bloody collars whose tops marked the supreme instant of
+some tragic movement of the stream. In the pale green shallows of the
+bay's edge, the outward flow from the criminal little brook was as
+eloquently marked as if a long crimson carpet had been laid upon the
+waters. The scene of the carnage was the strand of smooth gravel and
+flat stones, and the fruit of the carnage was cleaned mackerel.
+
+Far to the south, where the slate of the sea and the grey of the sky
+wove together, could be seen Fastnet Rock, a mere button on the moving,
+shimmering cloth, while a liner, no larger than a needle, spun a thread
+of smoke aslant. The gulls swept screaming along the dull line of the
+other shore of roaring Water Bay, and near the mouth of the brook
+circled among the fishing boats that lay at anchor, their brown,
+leathery sails idle and straight. The wheeling, shrieking tumultuous
+birds stared with their hideous unblinking eyes at the Capers--men from
+Cape Clear--who prowled to and fro on the decks amid shouts and the
+creak of the tackle. Shoreward, a little shrivelled man, overcome by a
+profound melancholy, fished hopelessly from the end of the pier. Back of
+him, on a hillside, sat a white village, nestled among more trees than
+is common in this part of Southern Ireland.
+
+A dinghy sculled by a youth in a blue jersey wobbled rapidly past the
+pier-head and stopped at the foot of the moss-green, dank, stone steps,
+where the waves were making slow but regular leaps to mount higher, and
+then falling back gurgling, choking, and waving the long, dark seaweeds.
+The melancholy fisherman walked over to the top of the steps. The young
+man was fastening the painter of his boat in an iron ring. In the dinghy
+were three round baskets heaped high with mackerel. They glittered like
+masses of new silver coin at times, and then other lights of faint
+carmine and peacock blue would chase across the sides of the fish in a
+radiance that was finer than silver.
+
+The melancholy fisherman looked at this wealth. He shook his head
+mournfully. "Ah, now, Denny. This would not be a very good kill."
+
+The young man snorted indignantly at his fellow-townsman. "This will be
+th' bist kill th' year, Mickey. Go along now."
+
+The melancholy old man became immersed in deeper gloom. "Shure I have
+been in th' way of seein' miny a grand day whin th' fish was runnin'
+sthrong in these wathers, but there will be no more big kills here. No
+more. No more." At the last his voice was only a dismal croak.
+
+"Come along outa that now, Mickey," cried the youth impatiently. "Come
+away wid you."
+
+"All gone now. A-ll go-o-ne now!" The old man wagged his grey head, and,
+standing over the baskets of fishes, groaned as Mordecai groaned for his
+people.
+
+"'Tis you would be cryin' out, Mickey, whativer," said the youth with
+scorn. He was giving his basket into the hands of five incompetent but
+jovial little boys to carry to a waiting donkey cart.
+
+"An' why should I not?" said the old man sternly. "Me--in want--"
+
+As the youth swung his boat swiftly out toward an anchored smack, he
+made answer in a softer tone. "Shure, if yez got for th' askin', 'tis
+you, Mickey, that would niver be in want." The melancholy old man
+returned to his line. And the only moral in this incident is that the
+young man is the type that America procures from Ireland, and the old
+man is one of the home types, bent, pallid, hungry, disheartened, with a
+vision that magnifies with a microscope glance any fly-wing of
+misfortune, and heroically and conscientiously invents disasters for the
+future. Usually the thing that remains to one of this type is a sympathy
+as quick and acute for others as is his pity for himself.
+
+The donkey with his cart-load of gleaming fish, and escorted by the
+whooping and laughing boys, galloped along the quay and up a street of
+the village until he was turned off at the gravelly strand, at the point
+where the colour of the brook was changing. Here twenty people of both
+sexes and all ages were preparing the fish for market. The mackerel,
+beautiful as fire-etched salvers, first were passed to a long table,
+around which worked as many women as could have elbow room. Each one
+could clean a fish with two motions of the knife. Then the washers, men
+who stood over the troughs filled with running water from the brook,
+soused the fish until the outlet became a sinister element that in an
+instant changed the brook from a happy thing of gorse and heather of the
+hills to an evil stream, sullen and reddened. After being washed, the
+fish were carried to a group of girls with knives, who made the cuts
+that enabled each fish to flatten out in the manner known of the
+breakfast table. And after the girls came the men and boys, who rubbed
+each fish thoroughly with great handfuls of coarse salt, which was
+whiter than snow, and shone in the daylight from a multitude of gleaming
+points, diamond-like. Last came the packers, drilled in the art of
+getting neither too few nor too many mackerel into a barrel, sprinkling
+constantly prodigal layers of brilliant salt. There were many
+intermediate corps of boys and girls carrying fish from point to point,
+and sometimes building them in stacks convenient to the hands of the
+more important labourers.
+
+A vast tree hung its branches over the place. The leaves made a shadow
+that was religious in its effect, as if the spot was a chapel
+consecrated to labour. There was a hush upon the devotees. The women at
+the large table worked intently, steadfastly, with bowed heads. Their
+old petticoats were tucked high, showing the coarse brogans which they
+wore--and the visible ankles were proportioned to the brogans as the
+diameter of a straw is to that of a half-crown. The national red
+under-petticoat was a fundamental part of the scene.
+
+Just over the wall, in the sloping street, could be seen the bejerseyed
+Capers, brawny, and with shocks of yellow beard. They paced slowly to
+and fro amid the geese and children. They, too, spoke little, even to
+each other; they smoked short pipes in saturnine dignity and silence. It
+was the fish. They who go with nets upon the reeling sea grow still with
+the mystery and solemnity of the trade. It was Brittany; the first
+respectable catch of the year had changed this garrulous Irish hamlet
+into a hamlet of Brittany.
+
+The Capers were waiting for high tide. It had seemed for a long time
+that, for the south of Ireland, the mackerel had fled in company with
+potato; but here, at any rate, was a temporary success, and the occasion
+was momentous. A strolling Caper took his pipe and pointed with the stem
+out upon the bay. There was little wind, but an ambitious skipper had
+raised his anchor, and the craft, her strained brown sails idly
+swinging, was drifting away on the first oily turn of the tide.
+
+On the top of the pier the figure of the melancholy old man was
+portrayed upon the polished water. He was still dangling his line
+hopelessly. He gazed down into the misty water. Once he stirred and
+murmured: "Bad luck to thim." Otherwise he seemed to remain motionless
+for hours. One by one the fishing-boats floated away. The brook changed
+its colour, and in the dusk showed a tumble of pearly white among the
+rocks.
+
+A cold night wind, sweeping transversely across the pier, awakened
+perhaps the rheumatism in the old man's bones. He arose and, mumbling
+and grumbling, began to wind his line. The waves were lashing the
+stones. He moved off towards the intense darkness of the village
+streets.
+
+
+
+
+SULLIVAN COUNTY SKETCHES
+
+
+
+
+FOUR MEN IN A CAVE.
+
+LIKEWISE FOUR QUEENS, AND A SULLIVAN COUNTY HERMIT.
+
+
+The moon rested for a moment on the top of a tall pine on a hill.
+
+The little man was standing in front of the campfire making orations to
+his companions.
+
+"We can tell a great tale when we get back to the city if we investigate
+this thing," said he, in conclusion.
+
+They were won.
+
+The little man was determined to explore a cave, because its black mouth
+had gaped at him. The four men took lighted pine-knot and clambered over
+boulders down a hill. In a thicket on the mountainside lay a little
+tilted hole. At its side they halted.
+
+"Well?" said the little man.
+
+They fought for last place and the little man was overwhelmed. He tried
+to struggle from under by crying that if the fat, pudgy man came after,
+he would be corked. But he finally administered a cursing over his
+shoulder and crawled into the hole. His companions gingerly followed.
+
+A passage, the floor of damp clay and pebbles, the walls slimy,
+green-mossed, and dripping, sloped downward. In the cave atmosphere the
+torches became studies in red blaze and black smoke.
+
+"Ho!" cried the little man, stifled and bedraggled, "let's go back." His
+companions were not brave. They were last. The next one to the little
+man pushed him on, so the little man said sulphurous words and
+cautiously continued his crawl.
+
+Things that hung seemed to be on the wet, uneven ceiling, ready to drop
+upon the men's bare necks. Under their hands the clammy floor seemed
+alive and writhing. When the little man endeavoured to stand erect the
+ceiling forced him down. Knobs and points came out and punched him. His
+clothes were wet and mud-covered, and his eyes, nearly blinded by smoke,
+tried to pierce the darkness always before his torch.
+
+"Oh, I say, you fellows, let's go back," cried he. At that moment he
+caught the gleam of trembling light in the blurred shadows before him.
+
+"Ho!" he said, "here's another way out."
+
+The passage turned abruptly. The little man put one hand around the
+corner, but it touched nothing. He investigated and discovered that the
+little corridor took a sudden dip down a hill. At the bottom shone a
+yellow light.
+
+The little man wriggled painfully about, and descended feet in advance.
+The others followed his plan. All picked their way with anxious care.
+The traitorous rocks rolled from beneath the little man's feet and
+roared thunderously below him. Lesser stone, loosened by the men above
+him, hit him on the back. He gained seemingly firm foothold, and,
+turning half-way about, swore redly at his companions for dolts and
+careless fools. The pudgy man sat, puffing and perspiring, high in the
+rear of the procession. The fumes and smoke from four pine-knots were in
+his blood. Cinders and sparks lay thick in his eyes and hair. The pause
+of the little man angered him.
+
+"Go on, you fool," he shouted. "Poor, painted man, you are afraid."
+
+"Ho!" said the little man. "Come down here and go on yourself,
+imbecile!"
+
+The pudgy man vibrated with passion. He leaned downward. "Idiot--!"
+
+He was interrupted by one of his feet which flew out and crashed into
+the man in front of and below. It is not well to quarrel upon a slippery
+incline, when the unknown is below. The fat man, having lost the support
+of one pillar-like foot, lurched forward. His body smote the next man,
+who hurtled into the next man. Then they all fell upon the cursing
+little man.
+
+They slid in a body down over the slippery, slimy floor of the passage.
+The stone avenue must have wibble-wobbled with the rush of this ball of
+tangled men and strangled cries. The torches went out with the combined
+assault upon the little man. The adventurers whirled to the unknown in
+darkness. The little man felt that he was pitching to death, but even in
+his convolutions he bit and scratched at his companions, for he was
+satisfied that it was their fault. The swirling mass went some twenty
+feet, and lit upon a level, dry place in a strong, yellow light of
+candles. It dissolved and became eyes.
+
+The four men lay in a heap upon the floor of a grey chamber. A small
+fire smouldered in the corner, the smoke disappearing in a crack. In
+another corner was a bed of faded hemlock boughs and two blankets.
+Cooking utensils and clothes lay about, with boxes and a barrel.
+
+Of these things the four men took small cognisance. The pudgy man did
+not curse the little man, nor did the little swear, in the abstract.
+Eight widened eyes were fixed upon the centre of the room of rocks.
+
+A great, grey stone, cut squarely, like an altar, sat in the middle of
+the floor. Over it burned three candles, in swaying tin cups hung from
+the ceiling. Before it, with what seemed to be a small volume clasped in
+his yellow fingers, stood a man. He was an infinitely sallow person in
+the brown-checked shirt of the ploughs and cows. The rest of his apparel
+was boots. A long grey beard dangled from his chin. He fixed glinting,
+fiery eyes upon the heap of men, and remained motionless. Fascinated,
+their tongues cleaving, their blood cold, they arose to their feet. The
+gleaming glance of the recluse swept slowly over the group until it
+found the face of the little man. There it stayed and burned.
+
+The little man shrivelled and crumpled as the dried leaf under the
+glass.
+
+Finally, the recluse slowly, deeply spoke. It was a true voice from a
+cave, cold, solemn, and damp.
+
+"It's your ante," he said.
+
+"What?" said the little man.
+
+The hermit tilted his beard and laughed a laugh that was either the
+chatter of a banshee in a storm or the rattle of pebbles in a tin box.
+His visitors' flesh seemed ready to drop from their bones.
+
+They huddled together and cast fearful eyes over their shoulders. They
+whispered.
+
+"A vampire!" said one.
+
+"A ghoul!" said another.
+
+"A Druid before the sacrifice," murmured another.
+
+"The shade of an Aztec witch doctor," said the little man.
+
+As they looked, the inscrutable face underwent a change. It became a
+livid background for his eyes, which blazed at the little man like
+impassioned carbuncles. His voice arose to a howl of ferocity. "It's
+your ante!" With a panther-like motion he drew a long, thin knife and
+advanced, stooping. Two cadaverous hounds came from nowhere, and,
+scowling and growling, made desperate feints at the little man's legs.
+His quaking companions pushed him forward.
+
+Tremblingly he put his hand to his pocket.
+
+"How much?" he said, with a shivering look at the knife that glittered.
+
+The carbuncles faded.
+
+"Three dollars," said the hermit, in sepulchral tones which rang against
+the walls and among the passages, awakening long-dead spirits with
+voices. The shaking little man took a roll of bills from a pocket and
+placed "three ones" upon the altar-like stone. The recluse looked at the
+little volume with reverence in his eyes. It was a pack of playing
+cards.
+
+Under the three swinging candles, upon the altar-like stone, the grey
+beard and the agonised little man played at poker. The three other men
+crouched in a corner, and stared with eyes that gleamed with terror.
+Before them sat the cadaverous hounds licking their red lips. The
+candles burned low, and began to flicker. The fire in the corner
+expired.
+
+Finally, the game came to a point where the little man laid down his
+hand and quavered: "I can't call you this time, sir. I'm dead broke."
+
+"What?" shrieked the recluse. "Not call me! Villain! Dastard! Cur! I
+have four queens, miscreant." His voice grew so mighty that it could not
+fit his throat. He choked, wrestling with his lungs for a moment. Then
+the power of his body was concentrated in a word: "Go!"
+
+He pointed a quivering, yellow finger at a wide crack in the rock. The
+little man threw himself at it with a howl. His erstwhile frozen
+companions felt their blood throb again. With great bounds they plunged
+after the little man. A minute of scrambling, falling, and pushing
+brought them to open air. They climbed the distance to their camp in
+furious springs.
+
+The sky in the east was a lurid yellow. In the west the footprints of
+departing night lay on the pine trees. In front of their replenished
+camp fire sat John Willerkins, the guide.
+
+"Hello!" he shouted at their approach. "Be you fellers ready to go deer
+huntin'?"
+
+Without replying, they stopped and debated among themselves in whispers.
+
+Finally, the pudgy man came forward.
+
+"John," he inquired, "do you know anything peculiar about this cave
+below here?"
+
+"Yes," said Willerkins at once; "Tom Gardner."
+
+"What?" said the pudgy man.
+
+"Tom Gardner."
+
+"How's that?"
+
+"Well, you see," said Willerkins slowly, as he took dignified pulls at
+his pipe, "Tom Gardner was once a fambly man, who lived in these here
+parts on a nice leetle farm. He uster go away to the city orften, and
+one time he got a-gamblin' in one of them there dens. He wentter the
+dickens right quick then. At last he kum home one time and tol' his
+folks he had up and sold the farm and all he had in the worl'. His
+leetle wife she died then. Tom he went crazy, and soon after--"
+
+The narrative was interrupted by the little man, who became possessed of
+devils.
+
+"I wouldn't give a cuss if he had left me 'nough money to get home on
+the doggoned, grey-haired red pirate," he shrilled, in a seething
+sentence. The pudgy man gazed at the little man calmly and sneeringly.
+
+"Oh, well," he said, "we can tell a great tale when we get back to the
+city after having investigated this thing."
+
+"Go to the devil," replied the little man.
+
+
+
+
+THE MESMERIC MOUNTAIN.
+
+A TALE OF SULLIVAN COUNTY.
+
+
+On the brow of a pine-plumed hillock there sat a little man with his
+back against a tree. A venerable pipe hung from his mouth, and
+smoke-wreaths curled slowly skyward. He was muttering to himself with
+his eyes fixed on an irregular black opening in the green wall of forest
+at the foot of the hill. Two vague waggon ruts led into the shadows. The
+little man took his pipe in his hands and addressed the listening pines.
+
+"I wonder what the devil it leads to," said he.
+
+A grey, fat rabbit came lazily from a thicket and sat in the opening.
+Softly stroking his stomach with his paw, he looked at the little man in
+a thoughtful manner. The little man threw a stone, and the rabbit
+blinked and ran through an opening. Green, shadowy portals seemed to
+close behind him.
+
+The little man started. "He's gone down that roadway," he said, with
+ecstatic mystery to the pines. He sat a long time and contemplated the
+door to the forest. Finally, he arose, and awakening his limbs, started
+away. But he stopped and looked back.
+
+"I can't imagine what it leads to," muttered he. He trudged over the
+brown mats of pine needles, to where, in a fringe of laurel, a tent was
+pitched, and merry flames caroused about some logs. A pudgy man was
+fuming over a collection of tin dishes. He came forward and waved a
+plate furiously in the little man's face.
+
+"I've washed the dishes for three days. What do you think I am--"
+
+He ended a red oration with a roar: "Damned if I do it any more."
+
+The little man gazed dim-eyed away. "I've been wonderin' what it leads
+to."
+
+"What?"
+
+"That road out yonder. I've been wonderin' what it leads to. Maybe, some
+discovery or something," said the little man.
+
+The pudgy man laughed. "You're an idiot. It leads to ol' Jim Boyd's over
+on the Lumberland Pike."
+
+"Ho!" said the little man, "I don't believe that."
+
+The pudgy man swore. "Fool, what does it lead to, then?"
+
+"I don't know just what, but I'm sure it leads to something great or
+something. It looks like it."
+
+While the pudgy man was cursing, two more men came from obscurity with
+fish dangling from birch twigs. The pudgy man made an obviously
+herculean struggle and a meal was prepared. As he was drinking his cup
+of coffee, he suddenly spilled it and swore. The little man was
+wandering off.
+
+"He's gone to look at that hole," cried the pudgy man.
+
+The little man went to the edge of the pine-plumed hillock, and, sitting
+down, began to make smoke and regard the door to the forest. There was
+stillness for an hour. Compact clouds hung unstirred in the sky. The
+pines stood motionless, and pondering.
+
+Suddenly the little man slapped his knee and bit his tongue. He stood up
+and determinedly filled his pipe, rolling his eye over the bowl to the
+doorway. Keeping his eyes fixed he slid dangerously to the foot of the
+hillock and walked down the waggon ruts. A moment later he passed from
+the noise of the sunshine to the gloom of the woods.
+
+The green portals closed, shutting out live things. The little man
+trudged on alone.
+
+Tall tangled grass grew in the roadway, and the trees bended obstructing
+branches. The little man followed on over pine-clothed ridges and down
+through water-soaked swales. His shoes were cut by rocks of the
+mountains, and he sank ankle-deep in mud and moss of swamps. A curve
+just ahead lured him miles.
+
+Finally, as he wended the side of a ridge, the road disappeared from
+beneath his feet. He battled with hordes of ignorant bushes on his way
+to knolls and solitary trees which invited him. Once he came to a tall,
+bearded pine. He climbed it, and perceived in the distance a peak. He
+uttered an ejaculation and fell out.
+
+He scrambled to his feet, and said: "That's Jones's Mountain, I guess.
+It's about six miles from our camp as the crow flies."
+
+He changed his course away from the mountain, and attacked the bushes
+again. He climbed over great logs, golden-brown in decay, and was
+opposed by thickets of dark-green laurel. A brook slid through the ooze
+of a swamp; cedars and hemlocks hung their sprays to the edges of pools.
+
+The little man began to stagger in his walk. After a time he stopped and
+mopped his brow.
+
+"My legs are about to shrivel up and drop off," he said.... "Still if I
+keep on in this direction, I am safe to strike the Lumberland Pike
+before sundown."
+
+He dived at a clump of tag-alders, and emerging, confronted Jones's
+Mountain.
+
+The wanderer sat down in a clear place and fixed his eyes on the summit.
+His mouth opened widely, and his body swayed at times. The little man
+and the peak stared in silence.
+
+A lazy lake lay asleep near the foot of the mountain. In its bed of
+water-grass some frogs leered at the sky and crooned. The sun sank in
+red silence, and the shadows of the pines grew formidable. The expectant
+hush of evening, as if some thing were going to sing a hymn, fell upon
+the peak and the little man.
+
+A leaping pickerel off on the water created a silver circle that was
+lost in black shadows. The little man shook himself and started to his
+feet, crying: "For the love of Mike, there's eyes in this mountain! I
+feel 'em! Eyes!"
+
+He fell on his face.
+
+When he looked again, he immediately sprang erect and ran.
+
+"It's comin'!"
+
+The mountain was approaching.
+
+The little man scurried, sobbing through the thick growth. He felt his
+brain turning to water. He vanquished brambles with mighty bounds.
+
+But after a time he came again to the foot of the mountain.
+
+"God!" he howled, "it's been follerin' me." He grovelled.
+
+Casting his eyes upward made circles swirl in his blood.
+
+"I'm shackled I guess," he moaned. As he felt the heel of the mountain
+about crush his head, he sprang again to his feet. He grasped a handful
+of small stones and hurled them.
+
+"Damn you," he shrieked loudly. The pebbles rang against the face of the
+mountain.
+
+The little man then made an attack. He climbed with hands and feet
+wildly. Brambles forced him back and stones slid from beneath his feet.
+The peak swayed and tottered, and was ever about to smite with a granite
+arm. The summit was a blaze of red wrath.
+
+But the little man at last reached the top. Immediately he swaggered
+with valour to the edge of the cliff. His hands were scornfully in his
+pockets.
+
+He gazed at the western horizon, edged sharply against a yellow sky.
+"Ho!" he said. "There's Boyd's house and the Lumberland Pike."
+
+The mountain under his feet was motionless.
+
+
+
+
+MISCELLANEOUS
+
+
+
+
+THE SQUIRE'S MADNESS.
+
+
+Linton was in his study remote from the interference of domestic sounds.
+He was writing verses. He was not a poet in the strict sense of the
+word, because he had eight hundred a year and a manor-house in Sussex.
+But he was devoted, at any rate, and no happiness was for him equal to
+the happiness of an imprisonment in this lonely study. His place had
+been a semi-fortified house in the good days when every gentleman was
+either abroad with a bared sword hunting his neighbours or behind
+oak-and-iron doors and three-feet walls while his neighbours hunted him.
+But in the life of Linton it may be said that the only part of the house
+which remained true to the idea of fortification was the study, which
+was free only to Linton's wife and certain terriers. The necessary
+appearance from time to time of a servant always grated upon Linton as
+much as if from time to time somebody had in the most well-bred way
+flung a brick through the little panes of his window.
+
+This window looked forth upon a wide valley of hop-fields and
+sheep-pastures, dipping and rising this way and that way, but always a
+valley until it reached a high far away ridge upon which stood the
+upright figure of a windmill, usually making rapid gestures as if it
+were an excited sentry warning the old grey house of coming danger. A
+little to the right, on a knoll, red chimneys and parts of red-tiled
+roofs appeared among trees, and the venerable square tower of the
+village church rose above them.
+
+For ten years Linton had left vacant Oldrestham Hall, and when at last
+it became known that he and his wife were to return from an
+incomprehensible wandering, the village, which for four centuries had
+turned a feudal eye toward the Hall, was wrung with a prospect of
+change, a proper change. The great family pew in Oldrestham church would
+be occupied each Sunday morning by a fat, happy-faced, utterly
+squire-looking man, who would be dutifully at his post when the parish
+was stirred by a subscription list. Then, for the first time in many
+years, the hunters would ride in the early morning merrily out through
+the park, and there would be also shooting parties, and in the summer
+groups of charming ladies would be seen walking the terrace, laughing on
+the lawns and in the rose gardens. The village expected to have the
+perfectly legal and fascinating privilege of discussing the performances
+of its own gentry.
+
+The first intimation of calamity was in the news that Linton had rented
+all the shooting. This prepared the people for the blow, and it fell
+when they sighted the master of Oldrestham Hall. The older villagers
+remembered then that there had been nothing in the youthful Linton to
+promise a fat, happy-faced, dignified, hunting, shooting over-lord, but
+still they could not but resent the appearance of the new squire. There
+was no conceivable reason for his looking like a gaunt ascetic, who
+would surprise nobody if he borrowed a sixpence from the first yokel he
+met in the lanes.
+
+Linton was in truth three inches more than six feet in height, but he
+had bowed himself to five feet eleven inches. His hair shocked out in
+front like hay, and under it were two spectacled eyes which never seemed
+to regard anything with particular attention. His face was pale and full
+of hollows, and the mouth apparently had no expression save a chronic
+pout of the under-lip. His hands were large and raw boned but uncannily
+white. His whole bent body was thin as that of a man from a long
+sick-bed, and all was finished by two feet which for size could not be
+matched in the county.
+
+He was very awkward, but apparently it was not so much a physical
+characteristic as it was a mental inability to consider where he was
+going or what he was doing. For instance, when passing through a gate it
+was not uncommon for him to knock his side viciously against one of the
+posts. This was because he dreamed almost always, and if there had been
+forty gates in a row he would not then have noted them more than he did
+the one. As far as the villagers and farmers were concerned he never
+came out of this manner save in wide-apart cases, when he had forced
+upon him either some great exhibition of stupidity or some faint
+indication of double-dealing, and then this smouldering man flared out
+encrimsoning his immediate surrounding with a brief fire of ancestral
+anger. But the lapse back to indifference was more surprising. It was
+far quicker than the flare in the beginning. His feeling was suddenly
+ashes at the moment when one was certain it would lick the sky.
+
+Some of the villagers asserted that he was mad. They argued it long in
+the manner of their kind, repeating, repeating, and repeating, and when
+an opinion confusingly rational appeared they merely shook their heads
+in pig-like obstinacy. Anyhow, it was historically clear that no such
+squire had before been in the line of Lintons of Oldrestham Hall, and
+the present incumbent was a shock.
+
+The servants at the Hall--notably those who lived in the
+country-side--came in for a lot of questioning, and none were found too
+backward in explaining many things which they themselves did not
+understand. The household was most irregular. They all confessed that it
+was really so uncustomary that they did not know but what they would
+have to give notice. The master was probably the most extraordinary man
+in the whole world. The butler said that Linton would drink beer with
+his meals day in and day out like any carrier resting at a pot-house. It
+didn't matter even if the meal were dinner. Then suddenly he would
+change his tastes to the most valuable wines, and in ten days would make
+the wine-cellar look as if it had been wrecked at sea. What was to be
+done with a gentleman of that kind? The butler said for his part he
+wanted a master with habits, and he protested that Linton did not have a
+habit to his name, at least, none that could properly be called a habit.
+
+Barring the cook, the entire establishment agreed categorically with the
+butler. The cook didn't agree because she was a very good cook indeed,
+which she thought entitled her to be extremely aloof from the other
+servants' hall opinions.
+
+As for the squire's lady, they described her as being not much different
+from the master. At least she gave support to his most unusual manner of
+life, and evidently believed that whatever he chose to do was quite
+correct.
+
+Linton had written--
+
+    "The garlands of her hair are snakes,
+     Black and bitter are her hating eyes,
+     A cry the windy death-hall makes,
+     O, love, deliver us.
+     The flung cup rolls to her sandal's tip,
+     His arm--"
+
+Whereupon his thought fumed over the next two lines, coursing like
+greyhounds, after a fugitive vision of a writhening lover with the foam
+of poison on his lips dying at the feet of the woman. Linton arose, lit
+a cigarette, placed it on the window ledge, took another cigarette,
+looked blindly for the matches, thrust a spiral of paper into the flame
+of the log fire, lit the second cigarette, placed it toppling on a book
+and began a search among his pipes for one that would draw well. He
+gazed at his pictures, at the books on the shelves, out at the green
+spread of country-side, all without taking mental note. At the window
+ledge he came upon the first cigarette, and in a matter of fact way he
+returned it to his lips, having forgotten that he had forgotten it.
+
+There was a sound of steps on the stone floor of the quaint little
+passage that led down to his study, and turning from the window he saw
+that his wife had entered the room and was looking at him strangely.
+
+"Jack," she said in a low voice, "what is the matter?"
+
+His eyes were burning out from under his shock of hair with a fierceness
+that belied his feeling of simple surprise. "Nothing is the matter," he
+answered. "Why do you ask?"
+
+She seemed immensely concerned, but she was visibly endeavouring to
+hide her concern as well as to abate it.
+
+"I--I thought you acted queerly."
+
+He answered: "Why no. I'm not acting queerly. On the contrary," he added
+smiling, "I'm in one of my most rational moods."
+
+Her look of alarm did not subside. She continued to regard him with the
+same stare. She was silent for a time and did not move. His own thoughts
+had quite returned to a contemplation of a poisoned lover, and he did
+not note the manner of his wife. Suddenly she came to him, and laying a
+hand on his arm said, "Jack, you are ill?"
+
+"Why no, dear," he said with a first impatience, "I'm not ill at all. I
+never felt better in my life." And his mind beleaguered by this
+pointless talk strove to break through to its old contemplation of the
+poisoned lover. "Hear what I have written." Then he read--
+
+    "The garlands of her hair are snakes,
+     Black and bitter are her hating eyes,
+     A cry the windy death-hall makes,
+     O, love, deliver us.
+     The flung cup rolls to her sandal's tip,
+     His arm--"
+
+Linton said: "I can't seem to get the lines to describe the man who is
+dying of the poison on the floor before her. Really I'm having a time
+with it. What a bore. Sometimes I can write like mad and other times I
+don't seem to have an intelligent idea in my head."
+
+He felt his wife's hand tighten on his arm and he looked into her face.
+It was so alight with horror that it brought him sharply out of his
+dreams. "Jack," she repeated tremulously, "you are ill."
+
+He opened his eyes in wonder. "Ill! ill? No; not in the least!"
+
+"Yes, you are ill. I can see it in your eyes. You--act so strangely."
+
+"Act strangely? Why, my dear, what have I done? I feel quite well.
+Indeed, I was never more fit in my life."
+
+As he spoke he threw himself into a large wing chair and looked up at
+his wife, who stood gazing at him from the other side of the black oak
+table upon which Linton wrote his verses.
+
+"Jack, dear," she almost whispered, "I have noticed it for days," and
+she leaned across the table to look more intently into his face. "Yes,
+your eyes grow more fixed every day--you--you--your head, does it ache,
+dear?"
+
+Linton arose from his chair and came around the big table toward his
+wife. As he approached her, an expression akin to terror crossed her
+face and she drew back as in fear, holding out both hands to ward him
+off.
+
+He had been smiling in the manner of a man reassuring a frightened
+child, but at her shrinking from his outstretched hand he stopped in
+amazement. "Why, Grace, what is it? tell me."
+
+She was glaring at him, her eyes wide with misery. Linton moved his left
+hand across his face, unconsciously trying to brush from it that which
+alarmed her.
+
+"Oh, Jack, you must see some one; I am wretched about you. You are ill!"
+
+"Why, my dear wife," he said, "I am quite, quite well; I am anxious to
+finish these verses but words won't come somehow, the man dying--"
+
+"Yes, that is it, you cannot remember, you see that you cannot remember.
+You must see a doctor. We will go up to town at once," she answered
+quickly.
+
+"'Tis true," he thought, "that my memory is not as good as it used to
+be. I cannot remember dates, and words won't fit in somehow. Perhaps I
+don't take enough exercise, dear; is that what worries you?" he asked.
+
+"Yes, yes, dear, you do not go out enough," said his wife. "You cling to
+this room as the ivy clings to the walls--but we must go to London, you
+_must_ see some one; promise me that you will go, that you will go
+immediately."
+
+Again Linton saw his wife look at him as one looks at a creature of
+pity. The faint lines from her nose to the corners of her mouth
+deepened as if she were in physical pain; her eyes, open to their
+fullest extent, had in them the expression of a mother watching her
+dying babe. What was this strange wall that had suddenly raised itself
+between them? Was he ill? No; he never was in better health in his life.
+He found himself vainly searching for aches in his bones. Again he
+brushed away this thing which seemed to be upon his face. There must be
+something on my face, he thought, else why does she look at me with such
+hopeless despair in her eyes; these kindly eyes that had hitherto been
+so responsive to each glance of his own. _Why_ did she think that he was
+ill? She who knew well his every mood. _Was he mad?_ Did this thing of
+the poisoned cup that rolled to her sandal's tip--and her eyes, her
+hating eyes, mean that his--no, it could not be. He fumbled among the
+papers on the table for a cigarette. He could not find one. He walked to
+the huge fireplace and peered near-sightedly at the ashes on the hearth.
+
+"What, what do you want, Jack? Be careful! The fire!" cried his wife.
+
+"Why, I want a cigarette," he said.
+
+She started, as if he had spoken roughly to her. "I will get you some,
+wait, sit quietly, I will bring you some," she replied as she hastened
+through the small passage-way up the stone steps that led from his
+study.
+
+Linton stood with his back still bent, in the posture of a man picking
+something from the ground. He did not turn from the fireplace until the
+echo of his wife's foot-fall on the stone floors had died away. Then he
+straightened himself and said, "Well, I'm damned!" And Linton was not a
+man who swore.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A month later the Squire and his wife were on their way to London to
+consult the great brain specialist, Doctor Redmond. Linton now believed
+that "something" was wrong with him. His wife's anxiety, which she could
+no longer conceal, forced him to this conclusion; "something" was wrong.
+Until these few last weeks Linton's wife had managed her household with
+the care and wisdom of a Chatelaine of mediæval times. Each day was
+planned for certain duties in house or village. She had theories as to
+the management and education of the village children, and this work
+occupied much of her time. She was the antithesis of her husband. He, a
+weaver of dream-stories, she of that type of woman who has ideas of the
+emancipation of women and who believe the problem could be solved by
+training the minds of the next generation of mothers. Linton was not
+interested in these questions, but he would smile indulgently at his
+wife as she talked of the equality of mind of the sexes and the public
+part in the world's history which would be played by the women of the
+future.
+
+There was no talk of this kind now. The household management fell into
+the hands of servants. Night and day his wife watched Linton. He would
+awaken in the night to find her face close to his own, her eyes burning
+with feverish anxiety.
+
+"What is it, Grace?" he would cry, "have I said anything? What is the
+reason you watch me in this fashion, dear?"
+
+And she would sob, "Jack, you are ill, dear, you are ill; we must go to
+town, we must, indeed."
+
+Then he would soothe her with fond words and promise that he would go to
+London.
+
+This present journey was the outcome of those weeks of watching and fear
+in Linton's wife's mind.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Linton's wife was trembling violently as he helped her down from the cab
+in front of Doctor Redmond's door. They had made an appointment, so that
+they were sure of little delay before the portentous interview.
+
+A small page in blue livery opened the door and ushered them into a
+waiting-room. Mrs. Linton dropped heavily into a chair, looking with a
+frightened air from side to side and biting her under lip nervously.
+She was moaning half under her breath, "Oh, Jack, you are ill, you are
+ill."
+
+A short stout man with clean-shaven face and scanty black hair entered
+the room. His nose was huge and misshapen and his mouth was a straight
+firm line. Overhanging black brows tried in vain to shadow the piercing
+dark eyes, that darted questioning looks at every one, seeming to search
+for hidden thoughts as a flash-light from the conning tower of a ship
+searches for the enemy in time of war.
+
+He advanced toward Mrs. Linton with outstretched hand. "Mrs. Linton?" he
+said. "Ah!"
+
+She almost jumped from her chair as he came near her, crying, "Oh,
+doctor, my husband is ill, very ill, very ill!"
+
+Again Doctor Redmond with his eyes fixed upon her face ejaculated, "Ah!"
+Turning to Linton he said, "Please wait here, Squire; I will first talk
+to your wife. Will you step into my study, madam?" he said to Mrs.
+Linton, bowing courteously.
+
+Linton's wife ran into the room which the doctor pointed toward as his
+study.
+
+Linton waited. He moved softly about the room looking at the photographs
+of Greek ruins which adorned the walls. He stopped finally before a
+large picture of the Gate of Hadrian. He travelled once more into his
+dream country. His fancy painted in the figures of men and women who had
+passed through that gate. He had forgotten his fear of the blotting out
+of his mind that could conjure these glowing colours. He had forgotten
+himself.
+
+From this dream he was recalled to the present by a hand being placed
+gently upon his arm. He half turned and saw the doctor regarding him
+with sympathetic eyes.
+
+"Come, my dear sir, come into my study," said the doctor. "I have asked
+your wife to await us here." Linton then turned fully toward the centre
+of the room and found that his wife was seated quietly by a table.
+Doctor Redmond bowed low to Mrs. Linton as he passed her, and Linton
+waved his hand, smiled, and said, "Only a moment, dear." She did not
+reply. The door closed behind them.
+
+"Be seated, my dear sir," said the doctor, drawing forward a chair, "be
+seated. I want to say something to you, but you must drink this first."
+He handed Linton a small glass of brandy.
+
+Linton sat down, took the glass mechanically, and gulped the brandy in
+one great swallow. The doctor stood by the mantel and said slowly, "I
+rejoice to say to you, sir, that I have never met a man more sound
+mentally than yourself"--
+
+Linton half started from his chair.
+
+"Stop!" said the doctor, "I have not yet finished--but it is my painful
+duty to tell you the truth--It is your WIFE WHO IS MAD! MAD AS A
+HATTER!"
+
+
+
+
+A DESERTION.
+
+
+The yellow gas-light that came with an effect of difficulty through the
+dust-stained windows on either side of the door, gave strange hues to
+the faces and forms of the three women who stood gabbling in the
+hall-way of the tenement. They made rapid gestures, and in the
+background their enormous shadows mingled in terrific conflict.
+
+"Aye, she ain't so good as he thinks she is, I'll bet. He can watch over
+'er an' take care of 'er all he pleases, but when she wants t' fool 'im,
+she'll fool 'im. An' how does he know she ain't foolin' 'im now?"
+
+"Oh, he thinks he's keepin' 'er from goin' t' th' bad, he does. Oh, yes.
+He ses she's too purty t' let run round alone. Too purty! Huh! My
+Sadie--"
+
+"Well, he keeps a clost watch on 'er, you bet. O'ny las' week, she met
+my boy Tim on th' stairs, an' Tim hadn't said two words to 'er b'fore
+th' ol' man begin to holler. 'Dorter, dorter, come here, come here!'"
+
+At this moment a young girl entered from the street, and it was evident
+from the injured expression suddenly assumed by the three gossipers that
+she had been the object of their discussion. She passed them with a
+slight nod, and they swung about into a row to stare after her.
+
+On her way up the long flights the girl unfastened her veil. One could
+then clearly see the beauty of her eyes, but there was in them a certain
+furtiveness that came near to marring the effects. It was a peculiar
+fixture of gaze, brought from the street, as of one who there saw a
+succession of passing dangers with menaces aligned at every corner.
+
+On the top floor, she pushed open a door and then paused on the
+threshold, confronting an interior that appeared black and flat like a
+curtain. Perhaps some girlish idea of hobgoblins assailed her then, for
+she called in a little breathless voice, "Daddie!"
+
+There was no reply. The fire in the cooking-stove in the room crackled
+at spasmodic intervals. One lid was misplaced, and the girl could now
+see that this fact created a little flushed crescent upon the ceiling.
+Also, a series of tiny windows in the stove caused patches of red upon
+the floor. Otherwise, the room was heavily draped with shadows.
+
+The girl called again, "Daddie!"
+
+Yet there was no reply.
+
+"Oh, Daddie!"
+
+Presently she laughed as one familiar with the humours of an old man.
+"Oh, I guess yer cussin' mad about yer supper, dad," she said, and she
+almost entered the room, but suddenly faltered, overcome by a feminine
+instinct to fly from this black interior, peopled with imagined dangers.
+
+Again she called, "Daddie!" Her voice had an accent of appeal. It was as
+if she knew she was foolish but yet felt obliged to insist upon being
+reassured. "Oh, daddie!"
+
+Of a sudden a cry of relief, a feminine announcement that the stars
+still hung, burst from her. For, according to some mystic process, the
+smouldering coals of the fire went aflame with sudden, fierce
+brilliance, splashing parts of the walls, the floor, the crude
+furniture, with a hue of blood-red. And in the light of this dramatic
+outburst of light, the girl saw her father seated at a table with his
+back turned toward her.
+
+She entered the room, then, with an aggrieved air, her logic evidently
+concluding that somebody was to blame for her nervous fright. "Oh, yer
+on'y sulkin' 'bout yer supper. I thought mebbe ye'd gone somewheres."
+
+Her father made no reply. She went over to a shelf in the corner, and,
+taking a little lamp, she lit it and put it where it would give her
+light as she took off her hat and jacket in front of the tiny mirror.
+Presently, she began to bustle among the cooking utensils that were
+crowded into the sink, and as she worked she rattled talk at her father,
+apparently disdaining his mood.
+
+"I'd 'a come home earlier t'night, dad, o'ny that fly foreman, he kep'
+me in th' shop 'til half-past six. What a fool. He came t' me, yeh know,
+an' he ses, 'Nell, I wanta give yeh some brotherly advice.' Oh, I know
+him an' his brotherly advice. 'I wanta give yeh some brotherly advice.
+Yer too purty, Nell,' he ses, 't' be workin' in this shop an' paradin'
+through the streets alone, without somebody t' give yeh good brotherly
+advice, an' I wanta warn yeh, Nell. I'm a bad man, but I ain't as bad as
+some, an' I wanta warn yeh.' 'Oh, g'long 'bout yer business,' I ses. I
+know 'im. He's like all of 'em, o'ny he's a little slyer. I know 'im.
+'You g'long 'bout yer business,' I ses. Well, he ses after a while that
+he guessed some evenin' he'd come up an' see me. 'Oh, yeh will,' I ses,
+'yeh will? Well, you jest let my ol' man ketch yeh comin' foolin' 'round
+our place. Yeh'll wish yeh went t' some other girl t' give brotherly
+advice.' 'What th' 'ell do I care fer yer father?' he ses. 'What's he t'
+me?' 'If he throws yeh down stairs, yeh'll care for 'im,' I ses. 'Well,'
+he ses, 'I'll come when 'e ain't in, b' Gawd, I'll come when 'e ain't
+in.' 'Oh, he's allus in when it means takin' care 'a me,' I ses. 'Don't
+yeh fergit it either. When it comes t' takin' care 'a his dorter, he's
+right on deck every single possible time.'"
+
+After a time, she turned and addressed cheery words to the old man.
+"Hurry up th' fire, daddie! We'll have supper pretty soon."
+
+But still her father was silent, and his form in its sullen posture was
+motionless.
+
+At this, the girl seemed to see the need of the inauguration of a
+feminine war against a man out of temper. She approached him breathing
+soft, coaxing syllables.
+
+"Daddie! Oh, Daddie! O--o--oh, Daddie!"
+
+It was apparent from a subtle quality of valour in her tones that this
+manner of onslaught upon his moods had usually been successful, but
+to-night it had no quick effect. The words, coming from her lips, were
+like the refrain of an old ballad, but the man remained stolid.
+
+"Daddie! My Daddie! Oh, Daddie are yeh mad at me, really--truly mad at
+me!"
+
+She touched him lightly upon the arm. Should he have turned then he
+would have seen the fresh, laughing face, with dew-sparkling eyes, close
+to his own.
+
+"Oh, Daddie! My Daddie! Pretty Daddie!"
+
+She stole her arm about his neck, and then slowly bended her face toward
+his. It was the action of a queen who knows that she reigns
+notwithstanding irritations, trials, tempests.
+
+But suddenly, from this position, she leaped backward with the mad
+energy of a frightened colt. Her face was in this instant turned to a
+grey, featureless thing of horror. A yell, wild and hoarse as a
+brute-cry, burst from her. "Daddie!" She flung herself to a place near
+the door, where she remained, crouching, her eyes staring at the
+motionless figure, spattered by the quivering flashes from the fire. Her
+arms extended, and her frantic fingers at once besought and repelled.
+There was in them an expression of eagerness to caress and an expression
+of the most intense loathing. And the girl's hair that had been a
+splendour, was in these moments changed to a disordered mass that hung
+and swayed in witchlike fashion.
+
+Again, a terrible cry burst from her. It was more than the shriek of
+agony--it was directed, personal, addressed to him in the chair, the
+first word of a tragic conversation with the dead.
+
+It seemed that when she had put her arm about its neck, she had jostled
+the corpse in such a way, that now she and it were face to face. The
+attitude expressed an intention of arising from the table. The eyes,
+fixed upon hers, were filled with an unspeakable hatred.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The cries of the girl aroused thunders in the tenement. There was a loud
+slamming of doors, and presently there was a roar of feet upon the
+boards of the stairway. Voices rang out sharply.
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"What's th' matter?"
+
+"He's killin' her!"
+
+"Slug 'im with anythin' yeh kin lay hold of, Jack."
+
+But over all this came the shrill shrewish tones of a woman. "Ah, th'
+damned ol' fool, he's drivin' 'er inteh th' street--that's what he's
+doin.' He's drivin' 'er inteh th' street."
+
+
+
+
+HOW THE DONKEY LIFTED THE HILLS.
+
+
+Many people suppose that the donkey is lazy. This is a great mistake. It
+is his pride.
+
+Years ago, there was nobody quite so fine as the donkey. He was a great
+swell in those times. No one could express an opinion of anything
+without the donkey showing where he was in it. No one could mention the
+name of an important personage without the donkey declaring how well he
+knew him.
+
+The donkey was, above all things, a proud and aristocratic beast.
+
+One day a party of animals were discussing one thing and another, until
+finally the conversation drifted around to mythology.
+
+"I have always admired that giant, Atlas," observed the ox in the course
+of the conversation. "It was amazing how he could carry things."
+
+"Oh, yes, Atlas," said the donkey, "I knew him very well. I once met a
+man and we got talking of Atlas. I expressed my admiration for the giant
+and my desire to meet him some day, if possible. Whereupon the man said
+there was nothing quite so easy. He was sure that his dear friend,
+Atlas, would be happy to meet so charming a donkey. Was I at leisure
+next Monday? Well, then, could I dine with him upon that date? So, you
+see, it was all arranged. I found Atlas to be a very pleasant fellow."
+
+"It has always been a wonder to me how he could have carried the earth
+on his back," said the horse.
+
+"Oh, my dear sir, nothing is more simple," cried the donkey. "One has
+only to make up one's mind to it, and then--do it. That is all. I am
+quite sure that if I wished I could carry a range of mountains upon my
+back."
+
+All the others said, "Oh, my!"
+
+"Yes, I could," asserted the donkey, stoutly. "It is merely a question
+of making up one's mind. I will bet."
+
+"I will wager also," said the horse. "I will wager my ears that you
+can't carry a range of mountains upon your back."
+
+"Done," cried the donkey.
+
+Forthwith the party of animals set out for the mountains. Suddenly,
+however, the donkey paused and said, "Oh, but look here. Who will place
+this range of mountains upon my back? Surely I can not be expected to do
+the loading also."
+
+Here was a great question. The party consulted. At length the ox said,
+"We will have to ask some men to shovel the mountain upon the donkey's
+back."
+
+Most of the others clapped their hoofs or their paws and cried, "Ah,
+that is the thing."
+
+The horse, however, shook his head doubtfully. "I don't know about these
+men. They are very sly. They will introduce some deviltry into the
+affair."
+
+"Why, how silly," said the donkey. "Apparently you do not understand
+men. They are the most gentle, guileless creatures."
+
+"Well," retorted the horse, "I will doubtless be able to escape since I
+am not to be encumbered with any mountains. Proceed."
+
+The donkey smiled in derision at these observations by the horse.
+
+Presently they came upon some men who were labouring away like mad,
+digging ditches, felling trees, gathering fruits, carrying water,
+building huts.
+
+"Look at these men, would you," said the horse. "Can you trust them
+after this exhibition of their depravity? See how each one selfishly--"
+
+The donkey interrupted with a loud laugh.
+
+"What nonsense!"
+
+And then he cried out to the men, "Ho, my friends, will you please come
+and shovel a range of mountains upon my back?"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Will you please come and shovel a range of mountains upon my back?"
+
+The men were silent for a time. Then they went apart and debated. They
+gesticulated a great deal.
+
+Some apparently said one thing and some another. At last they paused and
+one of their number came forward.
+
+"Why do you wish a range of mountains shovelled upon your back?"
+
+"It is a wager," cried the donkey.
+
+The men consulted again. And as the discussion became older, their heads
+went closer and closer together, until they merely whispered, and did
+not gesticulate at all. Ultimately they cried, "Yes, certainly we will
+shovel a range of mountains upon your back for you."
+
+"Ah, thanks," said the donkey.
+
+"Here is surely some deviltry," said the horse behind his hoof to the
+ox.
+
+The entire party proceeded then to the mountains. The donkey drew a long
+breath and braced his legs.
+
+"Are you ready?" asked the men.
+
+"All ready," cried the donkey.
+
+The men began to shovel.
+
+The dirt and stones flew over the donkey's back in showers. It was not
+long before his legs were hidden. Presently only his neck and head
+remained in view. Then at last this wise donkey vanished. There had
+been made no great effect upon the range of mountains. They still
+towered toward the sky.
+
+The watching crowd saw a heap of dirt and stones make a little movement
+and then was heard a muffled cry. "Enough! Enough! It was not two ranges
+of mountains! It is not fair! It is not fair!"
+
+But the men only laughed as they shovelled on.
+
+"Enough! Enough! Oh, woe is me--thirty snow-capped peaks upon my little
+back. Ah, these false, false men! Oh, virtuous, wise, and holy men,
+desist."
+
+The men again laughed. They were as busy as fiends with their shovels.
+
+"Ah, brutal, cowardly, accursed men; ah, good, gentle, and holy men,
+please remove some of those damnable peaks. I will adore your beautiful
+shovels forever. I will be slave to the beckoning of your little
+fingers. I will no longer be my own donkey--I will be your donkey."
+
+The men burst into a triumphant shout and ceased shovelling.
+
+"Swear it, mountain-carrier."
+
+"I swear! I swear! I swear!"
+
+The other animals scampered away then, for these men in their plots and
+plans were very terrible. "Poor old foolish fellow," cried the horse;
+"he may keep his ears. He will need them to hear and count the blows
+that are now to fall upon him."
+
+The men unearthed the donkey. They beat him with their shovels. "Ho,
+come on, slave." Encrusted with earth, yellow-eyed from fright, the
+donkey limped toward his prison. His ears hung down like leaves of the
+plantain during the great rain.
+
+So, now, when you see a donkey with a church, a palace, and three
+villages upon his back, and he goes with infinite slowness, moving but
+one leg at a time, do not think him lazy. It is his pride.
+
+
+
+
+A MAN BY THE NAME OF MUD.
+
+
+Deep in a leather chair, the Kid sat looking out at where the rain
+slanted before the dull brown houses and hammered swiftly upon an
+occasional lonely cab. The happy crackle from the great and glittering
+fireplace behind him had evidently no meaning of content for him. He
+appeared morose and unapproachable, and when a man appears morose and
+unapproachable it is a fine chance for his intimate friends. Three or
+four of them discovered his mood, and so hastened to be obnoxious.
+
+"What's wrong, Kid? Lost your thirst?"
+
+"He can never be happy again. He has lost his thirst."
+
+"That's right, Kid. When you quarrel with a man who can whip you, resort
+to sarcastic reflection and distance."
+
+They cackled away persistently, but the Kid was mute and continued to
+stare gloomily at the street.
+
+Once a man who had been writing letters looked up and said, "I saw your
+friend at the Comique the other night." He waited a moment and then
+added, "In back."
+
+The Kid wheeled about in his chair at this information, and all the
+others saw then that it was important. One man said with deep
+intelligence, "Ho, ho, a woman, hey? A woman's come between the two
+Kids. A woman. Great, eh?" The Kid launched a glare of scorn across the
+room, and then turned again to a contemplation of the rain. His friends
+continued to do all in their power to worry him, but they fell
+ultimately before his impregnable silence.
+
+As it happened, he had not been brooding upon his friend's mysterious
+absence at all. He had been concerned with himself. Once in a while he
+seemed to perceive certain futilities and lapsed them immediately into a
+state of voiceless dejection. These moods were not frequent.
+
+An unexplained thing in his mind, however, was greatly enlightened by
+the words of the gossip. He turned then from his harrowing scrutiny of
+the amount of pleasure he achieved from living, and settled into a
+comfortable reflection upon the state of his comrade, the other Kid.
+
+Perhaps it could be indicated in this fashion: "Went to Comique, I
+suppose. Saw girl. Secondary part, probably. Thought her rather natural.
+Went to Comique again. Went again. One time happened to meet omnipotent
+and good-natured friend. Broached subject to him with great caution.
+Friend said--'Why, certainly, my boy, come round to-night, and I'll take
+you in back. Remember, it's against all rules, but I think that in your
+case, etc.' Kid went. Chorus girls winked same old wink. 'Here's another
+dude on the prowl.' Kid aware of this, swearing under his breath and
+looking very stiff. Meets girl. Knew beforehand that the footlights
+might have sold him, but finds her very charming. Does not say single
+thing to her which she naturally expected to hear. Makes no reference to
+her beauty nor her voice--if she has any. Perhaps takes it for granted
+that she knows. Girl don't exactly love this attitude, but then feels
+admiration, because after all she can't tell whether he thinks her nice
+or whether he don't. New scheme this. Worked by occasional guys in Rome
+and Egypt, but still, new scheme. Kid goes away. Girl thinks. Later,
+nails omnipotent and good-natured friend. 'Who was that you brought
+back?' 'Oh, him? Why, he--' Describes the Kid's wealth, feats, and
+virtues--virtues of disposition. Girl propounds clever question--'Why
+did he wish to meet me?' Omnipotent person says, 'Damned if I know.'"
+
+Later, Kid asks girl to supper. Not wildly anxious, but very evident
+that he asks her because he likes her. Girl accepts; goes to supper. Kid
+very good comrade and kind. Girl begins to think that here at last is a
+man who understands her. Details ambitions--long, wonderful ambitions.
+Explains her points of superiority over the other girls of stage. Says
+their lives disgust her. She wants to work and study and make something
+of herself. Kid smokes vast number of cigarettes. Displays and feels
+deep sympathy. Recalls, but faintly, that he has heard it on previous
+occasions. They have an awfully good time. Part at last in front of
+apartment house. "Good-night, old chap." "Good-night." Squeeze hands
+hard. Kid has no information at all about kissing her good-night, but
+don't even try. Noble youth. Wise youth. Kid goes home and smokes. Feels
+strong desire to kill people who say intolerable things of the girl in
+rows. "Narrow, mean, stupid, ignorant, damnable people." Contemplates
+the broad, fine liberality of his experienced mind.
+
+Kid and girl become very chumy. Kid like a brother. Listens to her
+troubles. Takes her out to supper regularly and regularly. Chorus girls
+now tacitly recognise him as the main guy. Sometimes, may be, girl's
+mother sick. Can't go to supper. Kid always very noble. Understands
+perfectly the probabilities of there being others. Lays for 'em, but
+makes no discoveries. Begins to wonder whether he is a winner or whether
+she is a girl of marvellous cleverness. Can't tell. Maintains himself
+with dignity, however. Only occasionally inveighs against the men who
+prey upon the girls of the stage. Still noble.
+
+Time goes on. Kid grows less noble. Perhaps decides not to be noble at
+all, or as little as he can. Still inveighs against the men who prey
+upon the girls of the stage. Thinks the girl stunning. Wants to be dead
+sure there are no others. Once suspects it, and immediately makes the
+colossal mistake of his life. Takes the girl to task. Girl won't stand
+it for a minute. Harangues him. Kid surrenders and pleads with
+her--pleads with her. Kid's name is mud.
+
+
+
+
+A POKER GAME.
+
+
+Usually a poker game is a picture of peace. There is no drama so
+low-voiced and serene and monotonous. If an amateur loser does not
+softly curse, there is no orchestral support. Here is one of the most
+exciting and absorbing occupations known to intelligent American
+manhood; here a year's reflection is compressed into a moment of
+thought; here the nerves may stand on end and scream to themselves, but
+a tranquillity as from heaven is only interrupted by the click of chips.
+The higher the stakes the more quiet the scene; this is a law that
+applies everywhere save on the stage.
+
+And yet sometimes in a poker game things happen. Everybody remembers the
+celebrated corner on bay rum that was triumphantly consummated by Robert
+F. Cinch, of Chicago, assisted by the United States Courts and whatever
+other federal power he needed. Robert F. Cinch enjoyed his victory four
+months. Then he died, and young Bobbie Cinch came to New York in order
+to more clearly demonstrate that there was a good deal of fun in
+twenty-two million dollars.
+
+Old Henry Spuytendyvil owns all the real estate in New York save that
+previously appropriated by the hospitals and Central Park. He had been a
+friend of Bob's father. When Bob appeared in New York, Spuytendyvil
+entertained him correctly. It came to pass that they just naturally
+played poker.
+
+One night they were having a small game in an up-town hotel. There were
+five of them, including two lawyers and a politician. The stakes
+depended on the ability of the individual fortune.
+
+Bobbie Cinch had won rather heavily. He was as generous as sunshine, and
+when luck chases a generous man it chases him hard, even though he
+cannot bet with all the skill of his opponents.
+
+Old Spuytendyvil had lost a considerable amount. One of the lawyers from
+time to time smiled quietly, because he knew Spuytendyvil well, and he
+knew that anything with the name of loss attached to it sliced the old
+man's heart into sections.
+
+At midnight Archie Bracketts, the actor, came into the room. "How you
+holding 'em, Bob?" said he.
+
+"Pretty well," said Bob.
+
+"Having any luck, Mr. Spuytendyvil?"
+
+"Blooming bad," grunted the old man.
+
+Bracketts laughed and put his foot on the round of Spuytendyvil's chair.
+"There," said he, "I'll queer your luck for you." Spuytendyvil sat at
+the end of the table. "Bobbie," said the actor, presently, as young
+Cinch won another pot, "I guess I better knock your luck." So he took
+his foot from the old man's chair and placed it on Bob's chair. The lad
+grinned good-naturedly and said he didn't care.
+
+Bracketts was in a position to scan both of the hands. It was Bob's
+ante, and old Spuytendyvil threw in a red chip. Everybody passed out up
+to Bobbie. He filled in the pot and drew a card.
+
+Spuytendyvil drew a card. Bracketts, looking over his shoulder, saw him
+holding the ten, nine, eight, and seven of diamonds. Theatrically
+speaking, straight flushes are as frequent as berries on a juniper tree,
+but as a matter of truth the reason that straight flushes are so admired
+is because they are not as common as berries on a juniper tree.
+Bracketts stared; drew a cigar slowly from his pocket, and placing it
+between his teeth forgot its existence.
+
+Bobbie was the only other stayer. Bracketts flashed an eye for the lad's
+hand and saw the nine, eight, six, and five of hearts. Now, there are
+but six hundred and forty-five emotions possible to the human mind, and
+Bracketts immediately had them all. Under the impression that he had
+finished his cigar, he took it from his mouth and tossed it toward the
+grate without turning his eyes to follow its flight.
+
+There happened to be a complete silence around the green-clothed table.
+Spuytendyvil was studying his hand with a kind of contemptuous smile,
+but in his eyes there perhaps was to be seen a cold, stern light
+expressing something sinister and relentless.
+
+Young Bob sat as he had sat. As the pause grew longer, he looked up once
+inquiringly at Spuytendyvil.
+
+The old man reached for a white chip. "Well, mine are worth about that
+much," said he, tossing it into the pot. Thereupon he leaned back
+comfortably in his chair and renewed his stare at the five straight
+diamond. Young Bob extended his hand leisurely toward his stack. It
+occurred to Bracketts that he was smoking, but he found no cigar in his
+mouth.
+
+The lad fingered his chips and looked pensively at his hand. The silence
+of those moments oppressed Bracketts like the smoke from a
+conflagration.
+
+Bobbie Cinch continued for some moments to coolly observe his cards. At
+last he breathed a little sigh and said, "Well, Mr. Spuytendyvil, I
+can't play a sure thing against you." He threw in a white chip. "I'll
+just call you. I've got a straight flush." He faced down his cards.
+
+Old Spuytendyvil's fear, horror, and rage could only be equalled in
+volume to a small explosion of gasolene. He dashed his cards upon the
+table. "There!" he shouted, glaring frightfully at Bobbie. "I've got a
+straight flush, too! And mine is Jack high!"
+
+Bobbie was at first paralysed with amazement, but in a moment he
+recovered, and apparently observing something amusing in the situation
+he grinned.
+
+Archie Bracketts, having burst his bond of silence, yelled for joy and
+relief. He smote Bobbie on the shoulder. "Bob, my boy," he cried
+exuberantly, "you're no gambler, but you're a mighty good fellow, and if
+you hadn't been you would be losing a good many dollars this minute."
+
+Old Spuytendyvil glowered at Bracketts. "Stop making such an infernal
+din, will you, Archie," he said morosely. His throat seemed filled with
+pounded glass. "Pass the whisky."
+
+
+
+
+THE SNAKE.
+
+
+Where the path wended across the ridge, the bushes of huckle-berry and
+sweet fern swarmed at it in two curling waves until it was a mere
+winding line traced through a tangle. There was no interference by
+clouds, and as the rays of the sun fell full upon the ridge, they called
+into voice innumerable insects which chanted the heat of the summer day
+in steady, throbbing, unending chorus.
+
+A man and a dog came from the laurel thickets of the valley where the
+white brook brawled with the rocks. They followed the deep line of the
+path across the ridge. The dog--a large lemon and white setter--walked,
+tranquilly meditative, at his master's heels.
+
+Suddenly from some unknown and yet near place in advance there came a
+dry, shrill whistling rattle that smote motion instantly from the limbs
+of the man and the dog. Like the fingers of a sudden death, this sound
+seemed to touch the man at the nape of the neck, at the top of the
+spine, and change him, as swift as thought, to a statue of listening
+horror, surprise, rage. The dog, too--the same icy hand was laid upon
+him, and he stood crouched and quivering, his jaw dropping, the froth of
+terror upon his lips, the light of hatred in his eyes.
+
+Slowly the man moved his hands toward the bushes, but his glance did not
+turn from the place made sinister by the warning rattle. His fingers,
+unguided, sought for a stick of weight and strength. Presently they
+closed about one that seemed adequate, and holding this weapon poised
+before him, the man moved slowly forward, glaring. The dog with his
+nervous nostrils fairly fluttering moved warily, one foot at a time,
+after his master.
+
+But when the man came upon the snake, his body underwent a shock as if
+from a revelation, as if after all he had been ambushed. With a blanched
+face, he sprang forward, and his breath came in strained gasps, his
+chest heaving as if he were in the performance of an extraordinary
+muscular trial. His arm with the stick made a spasmodic, defensive
+gesture.
+
+The snake had apparently been crossing the path in some mystic travel
+when to his sense there came the knowledge of the coming of his foes.
+The dull vibration perhaps informed him, and he flung his body to face
+the danger. He had no knowledge of paths; he had no wit to tell him to
+slink noiselessly into the bushes. He knew that his implacable enemies
+were approaching; no doubt they were seeking him, hunting him. And so
+he cried his cry, an incredibly swift jangle of tiny bells, as burdened
+with pathos as the hammering upon quaint cymbals by the Chinese at
+war--for, indeed, it was usually his death-music.
+
+"Beware! Beware! Beware!"
+
+The man and the snake confronted each other. In the man's eyes were
+hatred and fear. In the snake's eyes were hatred and fear. These enemies
+manoeuvred, each preparing to kill. It was to be a battle without
+mercy. Neither knew of mercy for such a situation. In the man was all
+the wild strength of the terror of his ancestors, of his race, of his
+kind. A deadly repulsion had been handed from man to man through long
+dim centuries. This was another detail of a war that had begun evidently
+when first there were men and snakes. Individuals who do not participate
+in this strife incur the investigations of scientists. Once there was a
+man and a snake who were friends, and at the end, the man lay dead with
+the marks of the snake's caress just over his East Indian heart. In the
+formation of devices, hideous and horrible, Nature reached her supreme
+point in the making of the snake, so that priests who really paint hell
+well fill it with snakes instead of fire. These curving forms, these
+scintillant s create at once, upon sight, more relentless
+animosities than do shake barbaric tribes. To be born a snake is to be
+thrust into a place a-swarm with formidable foes. To gain an
+appreciation of it, view hell as pictured by priests who are really
+skilful.
+
+As for this snake in the pathway, there was a double curve some inches
+back of its head, which, merely by the potency of its lines, made the
+man feel with tenfold eloquence the touch of the death-fingers at the
+nape of his neck. The reptile's head was waving slowly from side to side
+and its hot eyes flashed like little murder-lights. Always in the air
+was the dry, shrill whistling of the rattles.
+
+"Beware! Beware! Beware!"
+
+The man made a preliminary feint with his stick. Instantly the snake's
+heavy head and neck were bended back on the double curve and instantly
+the snake's body shot forward in a low, straight, hard spring. The man
+jumped with a convulsive chatter and swung his stick. The blind,
+sweeping blow fell upon the snake's head and hurled him so that
+steel-coloured plates were for a moment uppermost. But he rallied
+swiftly, agilely, and again the head and neck bended back to the double
+curve, and the steaming, wide-open mouth made its desperate effort to
+reach its enemy. This attack, it could be seen, was despairing, but it
+was nevertheless impetuous, gallant, ferocious, of the same quality as
+the charge of the lone chief when the walls of white faces close upon
+him in the mountains. The stick swung unerringly again, and the snake,
+mutilated, torn, whirled himself into the last coil.
+
+And now the man went sheer raving mad from the emotions of his
+forefathers and from his own. He came to close quarters. He gripped the
+stick with his two hands and made it speed like a flail. The snake,
+tumbling in the anguish of final despair, fought, bit, flung itself upon
+this stick which was taking his life.
+
+At the end, the man clutched his stick and stood watching in silence.
+The dog came slowly and with infinite caution stretched his nose
+forward, sniffing. The hair upon his neck and back moved and ruffled as
+if a sharp wind was blowing. The last muscular quivers of the snake were
+causing the rattles to still sound their treble cry, the shrill, ringing
+war chant and hymn of the grave of the thing that faces foes at once
+countless, implacable, and superior.
+
+"Well, Rover," said the man, turning to the dog with a grin of victory,
+"we'll carry Mr. Snake home to show the girls."
+
+His hands still trembled from the strain of the encounter, but he pried
+with his stick under the body of the snake and hoisted the limp thing
+upon it. He resumed his march along the path, and the dog walked,
+tranquilly meditative, at his master's heels.
+
+
+
+
+A SELF-MADE MAN.
+
+AN EXAMPLE OF SUCCESS THAT ANY ONE CAN FOLLOW.
+
+
+Tom had a hole in his shoe. It was very round and very uncomfortable,
+particularly when he went on wet pavements. Rainy days made him feel
+that he was walking on frozen dollars, although he had only to think for
+a moment to discover he was not.
+
+He used up almost two packs of playing cards by means of putting four
+cards at a time inside his shoe as a sort of temporary sole, which
+usually lasted about half a day. Once he put in four aces for luck. He
+went down town that morning and got refused work. He thought it wasn't a
+very extraordinary performance for a young man of ability, and he was
+not sorry that night to find his packs were entirely out of aces.
+
+One day Tom was strolling down Broadway. He was in pursuit of work,
+although his pace was slow. He had found that he must take the matter
+coolly. So he puffed tenderly at a cigarette and walked as if he owned
+stock. He imitated success so successfully, that if it wasn't for the
+constant reminder (king, queen, deuce, and tray) in his shoe, he would
+have gone into a store and bought something.
+
+He had borrowed five cents that morning off his landlady, for his mouth
+craved tobacco. Although he owed her much for board, she had unlimited
+confidence in him, because his stock of self-assurance was very large
+indeed. And as it increased in a proper ratio with the amount of his
+bills, his relations with her seemed on a firm basis. So he strolled
+along and smoked with his confidence in fortune in nowise impaired by
+his financial condition.
+
+Of a sudden he perceived on old man seated upon a railing and smoking a
+clay pipe.
+
+He stopped to look, because he wasn't in a hurry, and because it was an
+unusual thing on Broadway to see old men seated upon railings and
+smoking clay pipes.
+
+And to his surprise the old man regarded him very intently in return. He
+stared, with a wistful expression, into Tom's face, and he clasped his
+hands in trembling excitement.
+
+Tom was filled with astonishment at the old man's strange demeanour. He
+stood puffing at his cigarette, and tried to understand matters.
+Failing, he threw his cigarette away, took a fresh one from his pocket,
+and approached the old man.
+
+"Got a match?" he inquired, pleasantly.
+
+The old man, much agitated, nearly fell from the railing as he leaned
+dangerously forward.
+
+"Sonny, can you read?" he demanded in a quavering voice.
+
+"Certainly, I can," said Tom, encouragingly. He waived the affair of the
+match.
+
+The old man fumbled in his pocket. "You look honest, sonny. I've been
+looking for an honest feller fur a'most a week. I've set on this railing
+fur six days," he cried, plaintively.
+
+He drew forth a letter and handed it to Tom. "Read it fur me, sonny,
+read it," he said, coaxingly.
+
+Tom took the letter and leaned back against the railings. As he opened
+it and prepared to read, the old man wriggled like a child at a
+forbidden feast.
+
+Thundering trucks made frequent interruptions, and seven men in a hurry
+jogged Tom's elbow, but he succeeded in reading what follows:--
+
+
+                Office of Ketchum R. Jones, Attorney-at-Law,
+                      Tin Can, Nevada, May 19, 18--.
+
+                         Rufus Wilkins, Esq.
+
+
+     Dear Sir,--I have as yet received no acknowledgment of the draft
+     from the sale of the north section lots, which I forwarded to you
+     on 25th June. I would request an immediate reply concerning it.
+
+     Since my last I have sold the three corner lots at five thousand
+     each. The city grew so rapidly in that direction that they were
+     surrounded by brick stores almost before you would know it. I have
+     also sold for four thousand dollars the ten acres of out-laying
+     sage bush, which you once foolishly tried to give away. Mr.
+     Simpson, of Boston, bought the tract. He is very shrewd, no doubt,
+     but he hasn't been in the west long. Still, I think if he holds it
+     for about a thousand years, he may come out all right.
+
+     I worked him with the projected-horse-car-line gag.
+
+     Inform me of the address of your New York attorneys, and I will
+     send on the papers. Pray do not neglect to write me concerning the
+     draft sent on 25th June.
+
+     In conclusion, I might say that if you have any eastern friends who
+     are after good western investments inform them of the glorious
+     future of Tin Can. We now have three railroads, a bank, an electric
+     light plant, a projected horse-car line, and an art society. Also,
+     a saw manufactory, a patent car-wheel mill, and a Methodist Church.
+     Tin Can is marching forward to take her proud stand as the
+     metropolis of the west. The rose-hued future holds no glories to
+     which Tin Can does not--
+
+Tom stopped abruptly. "I guess the important part of the letter came
+first," he said.
+
+"Yes," cried the old man, "I've heard enough. It is just as I thought.
+George has robbed his dad."
+
+The old man's frail body quivered with grief. Two tears trickled slowly
+down the furrows of his face.
+
+"Come, come, now," said Tom, patting him tenderly on the back. "Brace
+up, old feller. What you want to do is to get a lawyer and go put the
+screws on George."
+
+"Is it really?" asked the old man, eagerly.
+
+"Certainly, it is," said Tom.
+
+"All right," cried the old man, with enthusiasm. "Tell me where to get
+one." He slid down from the railing and prepared to start off.
+
+Tom reflected. "Well," he said, finally, "I might do for one myself."
+
+"What," shouted the old man in a voice of admiration, "are you a lawyer
+as well as a reader?"
+
+"Well," said Tom again, "I might appear to advantage as one. All you
+need is a big front," he added, slowly. He was a profane young man.
+
+The old man seized him by the arm. "Come on, then," he cried, "and we'll
+go put the screws on George."
+
+Tom permitted himself to be dragged by the weak arms of his companion
+around a corner and along a side street. As they proceeded, he was
+internally bracing himself for a struggle, and putting large bales of
+self-assurance around where they would be likely to obstruct the advance
+of discovery and defeat.
+
+By the time they reached a brown-stone house, hidden away in a street of
+shops and warehouses, his mental balance was so admirable that he seemed
+to be in possession of enough information and brains to ruin half of the
+city, and he was no more concerned about the king, queen, deuce, and
+tray than if they had been discards that didn't fit his draw. He infused
+so much confidence and courage into his companion, that the old man went
+along the street, breathing war, like a decrepit hound on the scent of
+new blood.
+
+He ambled up the steps of the brown-stone house as if he were charging
+earthworks. He unlocked the door and they passed along a dark hallway.
+In a rear room they found a man seated at table engaged with a very late
+breakfast. He had a diamond in his shirt front and a bit of egg on his
+cuff.
+
+"George," said the old man in a fierce voice that came from his aged
+throat with a sound like the crackle of burning twigs, "here's my
+lawyer, Mr. er--ah--Smith, and we want to know what you did with the
+draft that was sent on 25th June."
+
+The old man delivered the words as if each one was a musket shot.
+George's coffee spilled softly upon the tablecover, and his fingers
+worked convulsively upon a slice of bread. He turned a white, astonished
+face toward the old man and the intrepid Thomas.
+
+The latter, straight and tall, with a highly legal air, stood at the old
+man's side. His glowing eyes were fixed upon the face of the man at the
+table. They seemed like two little detective cameras taking pictures of
+the other man's thoughts.
+
+"Father, what d--do you mean," faltered George, totally unable to
+withstand the two cameras and the highly legal air.
+
+"What do I mean?" said the old man with a feeble roar as from an ancient
+lion. "I mean that draft--that's what I mean. Give it up or
+we'll--we'll"--he paused to gain courage by a glance at the formidable
+figure at his side--"we'll put the screws on you."
+
+"Well, I was--I was only borrowin' it for 'bout a month," said George.
+
+"Ah," said Tom.
+
+George started, glared at Tom, and then began to shiver like an animal
+with a broken back. There were a few moments of silence. The old man was
+fumbling about in his mind for more imprecations. George was wilting and
+turning limp before the glittering orbs of the valiant attorney. The
+latter, content with the exalted advantage he had gained by the use of
+the expression "Ah," spoke no more, but continued to stare.
+
+"Well," said George, finally, in a weak voice, "I s'pose I can give you
+a cheque for it, 'though I was only borrowin' it for 'bout a month. I
+don't think you have treated me fairly, father, with your lawyers and
+your threats, and all that. But I'll give you the cheque."
+
+The old man turned to his attorney. "Well?" he asked.
+
+Tom looked at the son and held an impressive debate with himself. "I
+think we may accept the cheque," he said coldly after a time.
+
+George arose and tottered across the room. He drew a cheque that made
+the attorney's heart come privately into his mouth. As he and his
+client passed triumphantly out, he turned a last highly legal glare upon
+George that reduced that individual to a mere paste.
+
+On the side-walk the old man went into a spasm of delight and called his
+attorney all the admiring and endearing names there were to be had.
+
+"Lord, how you settled him," he cried ecstatically.
+
+They walked slowly back toward Broadway. "The scoundrel," murmured the
+old man. "I'll never see 'im again. I'll desert 'im. I'll find a nice
+quiet boarding-place and--"
+
+"That's all right," said Tom. "I know one. I'll take you right up,"
+which he did.
+
+He came near being happy ever after. The old man lived at advanced rates
+in the front room at Tom's boarding-house. And the latter basked in the
+proprietress' smiles, which had a commercial value, and were a great
+improvement on many we see.
+
+The old man, with his quantities of sage bush, thought Thomas owned all
+the virtues mentioned in high-class literature, and his opinion, too,
+was of commercial value. Also, he knew a man who knew another man who
+received an impetus which made him engage Thomas on terms that were
+highly satisfactory. Then it was that the latter learned he had not
+succeeded sooner because he did not know a man who knew another man.
+
+So it came to pass that Tom grew to be Thomas G. Somebody. He achieved
+that position in life from which he could hold out for good wines when
+he went to poor restaurants. His name became entangled with the name of
+Wilkins in the ownership of vast and valuable tracts of sage bush in Tin
+Can, Nevada.
+
+At the present day he is so great that he lunches frugally at high
+prices. His fame has spread through the land as a man who carved his way
+to fortune with no help but his undaunted pluck, his tireless energy,
+and his sterling integrity.
+
+Newspapers apply to him now, and he writes long signed articles to
+struggling young men, in which he gives the best possible advice as to
+how to become wealthy. In these articles, he, in a burst of
+glorification, cites the king, queen, deuce, and tray, the four aces,
+and all that. He alludes tenderly to the nickel he borrowed and spent
+for cigarettes as the foundation of his fortune.
+
+"To succeed in life," he writes, "the youth of America have only to see
+an old man seated upon a railing and smoking a clay pipe. Then go up and
+ask him for a match."
+
+
+
+
+A TALE OF MERE CHANCE.
+
+BEING AN ACCOUNT OF THE PURSUIT OF THE TILES, THE STATEMENT OF THE
+CLOCK, AND THE GRIP OF A COAT OF ORANGE SPOTS, TOGETHER WITH SOME
+CRITICISM OF A DETECTIVE SAID TO BE CARVED FROM AN OLD TABLE-LEG.
+
+
+Yes, my friend, I killed the man, but I would not have been detected in
+it were it not for some very extraordinary circumstances. I had long
+considered this deed, but I am a delicate and sensitive person, you
+understand, and I hesitated over it as the diver hesitates on the brink
+of a dark and icy mountain pool. A thought of the shock of the contact
+holds one back.
+
+As I was passing his house one morning, I said to myself, "Well, at any
+rate, if she loves him, it will not be for long." And after that
+decision I was not myself, but a sort of a machine.
+
+I rang the bell and the servants admitted me to the drawing-room. I
+waited there while the old tall clock placidly ticked its speech of
+time. The rigid and austere chairs remained in possession of their
+singular imperturbability, although, of course, they were aware of my
+purpose, but the little white tiles of the floor whispered one to
+another and looked at me. Presently he entered the room, and I, drawing
+my revolver, shot him. He screamed--you know that scream--mostly
+amazement--and as he fell forward his blood was upon the little white
+tiles. They huddled and covered their eyes from this rain. It seemed to
+me that the old clock stopped ticking as a man may gasp in the middle of
+a sentence, and a chair threw itself in my way as I sprang toward the
+door.
+
+A moment later, I was walking down the street, tranquil, you understand,
+and I said to myself, "It is done. Long years from this day I will say
+to her that it was I who killed him. After time has eaten the conscience
+of the thing, she will admire my courage."
+
+I was elated that the affair had gone off so smoothly, and I felt like
+returning home and taking a long, full sleep, like a tired working man.
+When people passed me, I contemplated their stupidity with a sense of
+satisfaction.
+
+But those accursed little white tiles.
+
+I heard a shrill crying and chattering behind me, and, looking back, I
+saw them, blood-stained and impassioned, raising their little hands and
+screaming "Murder! It was he!" I have said that they had little hands. I
+am not sure of it, but they had some means of indicating me as
+unerringly as pointing fingers. As for their movement, they swept along
+as easily as dry, light leaves are carried by the wind. Always they were
+shrilly piping their song of my guilt.
+
+My friend, may it never be your fortune to be pursued by a crowd of
+little blood-stained tiles. I used a thousand means to be free from the
+clash-clash of these tiny feet. I ran through the world at my best
+speed, but it was no better than that of an ox, while they, my pursuers,
+were always fresh, eager, relentless.
+
+I am an ingenious person, and I used every trick that a desperate,
+fertile man can invent. Hundreds of times I had almost evaded them when
+some smouldering, neglected spark would blaze up and discover me.
+
+I felt that the eye of conviction would have no terrors for me, but the
+eyes of suspicion which I saw in city after city, on road after road,
+drove me to the verge of going forward and saying, "Yes, I have
+murdered."
+
+People would see the following, clamorous troops of blood-stained tiles,
+and give me piercing glances, so that these swords played continually at
+my heart. But we are a decorous race, thank God. It is very vulgar to
+apprehend murderers on the public streets. We have learned correct
+manners from the English. Besides, who can be sure of the meaning of
+clamouring tiles? It might be merely a trick in politics.
+
+Detectives? What are detectives? Oh, yes, I have read of them and their
+deeds, when I come to think of it. The prehistoric races must have been
+remarkable. I have never been able to understand how the detective
+navigated in stone boats. Still, specimens of their pottery excavated in
+Taumalipas show a remarkable knowledge of mechanics. I remember the
+little hydraulic--what's that? Well, what you say may be true, my
+friend, but I think you dream.
+
+The little stained tiles. My friend, I stopped in an inn at the ends of
+the earth, and in the morning they were there flying like little birds
+and pecking at my window.
+
+I should have escaped. Heavens, I should have escaped. What was more
+simple? I murdered and then walked into the world, which is wide and
+intricate.
+
+Do you know that my own clock assisted in the hunting of me? They asked
+what time I left my home that morning, and it replied at once,
+"Half-after eight." The watch of a man I had chanced to pass near the
+house of the crime told the people "Seven minutes after nine." And, of
+course, the tall, old clock in the drawing-room went about day after day
+repeating, "Eighteen minutes after nine."
+
+Do you say that the man who caught me was very clever? My friend, I have
+lived long, and he was the most incredible blockhead of my experience.
+An enslaved, dust-eating Mexican vaquero wouldn't hitch his pony to such
+a man. Do you think he deserves credit for my capture? If he had been as
+pervading as the atmosphere, he would never have caught me. If he was a
+detective, as you say, I could carve a better one from an old table-leg.
+But the tiles. That is another matter. At night I think they flew in
+long high flock, like pigeons. In the day, little mad things, they
+murmured on my trail like frothy-mouthed weasels.
+
+I see that you note these great, round, vividly orange spots on my coat.
+Of course, even if the detective were really carved from an old
+table-leg, he could hardly fail to apprehend a man thus badged. As sores
+come upon one in the plague so came these spots upon my coat. When I
+discovered them, I made effort to free myself of this coat. I tore,
+tugged, wrenched at it, but around my shoulders it was like a grip of a
+dead man's arms. Do you know that I have plunged into a thousand lakes?
+I have smeared this coat with a thousand paints. But day and night the
+spots burn like lights. I might walk from this jail to-day if I could
+rid myself of this coat, but it clings--clings--clings.
+
+At any rate, the person you call a detective was not so clever to
+discover a man in a coat of spotted orange, followed by shrieking,
+blood-stained tiles. Yes, that noise from the corridor is most peculiar.
+But they are always there, muttering and watching, clashing and
+jostling. It sounds as if the dishes of Hades were being washed. Yet I
+have become used to it. Once, indeed, in the night, I cried out to them,
+"In God's name, go away, little blood-stained tiles." But they doggedly
+answered, "It is the law."
+
+
+
+
+AT CLANCY'S WAKE.
+
+
+SCENE--_Room in the house of the lamented Clancy. The curtains are
+pulled down. A perfume of old roses and whisky hangs in the air. A
+weeping woman in black it seated at a table in the centre. A group of
+wide-eyed children are sobbing in a corner. Down the side of the room is
+a row of mourning friends of the family. Through an open door can be
+seen, half hidden in shadows, the silver and black of a coffin._
+
+
+WIDOW--Oh, wirra, wirra, wirra!
+
+CHILDREN--B-b boo-hoo-hoo!
+
+FRIENDS (_conversing in low tones_)--Yis, Moike Clancy was a foine mahn,
+sure! None betther! No, I don't t'ink so. Did he? Sure, all th'
+elictions! He was th' bist in the warrud! He licked 'im widin an inch of
+his loife, aisy, an' th' other wan a big, shtrappin' buck of a mahn, an'
+him jes' free of th' pneumonia! Yis, he did! They carried th' warrud by
+six hunder! Yis, he was a foine mahn. None betther. Gawd sav' 'im!
+
+(_Enter_ Mr. SLICK, _of the "Daily Blanket," shown in by a maid-servant,
+whose hair has become disarranged through much tear-shedding. He is
+attired in a suit of grey check, and wears a red rose in his
+buttonhole._)
+
+Mr. SLICK--Good afternoon, Mrs. Clancy. This is a sad misfortune for
+you, isn't it?
+
+WIDOW--Oh, indade, indade, young mahn, me poor heart is bruk.
+
+Mr. SLICK--Very sad, Mrs. Clancy. A great misfortune, I'm sure. Now,
+Mrs. Clancy, I've called to--
+
+WIDOW--Little did I t'ink, young mahn, win they brought poor Moike in
+that it was th' lasht!
+
+Mr. SLICK (_with conviction_)--True! True! Very true, indeed. It was a
+great grief to you, Mrs. Clancy. I've called this morning, Mrs. Clancy,
+to see if I could get from you a short obituary notice for the _Blanket_
+if you could--
+
+WIDOW--An' his hid was done up in a rag, an' he was cursin' frightful. A
+damned Oytalian lit fall th' hod as Moike was walkin' pasht as dacint as
+you plaze. Win they carried 'im in, him all bloody, an' ravin' tur'ble
+'bout Oytalians, me heart was near bruk, but I niver tawt--I niver
+tawt--I--I niver--(_Breaks forth into a long, forlorn cry. The children
+join in, and the chorus echoes wailfully through the rooms._)
+
+Mr. SLICK (_as the yell, in a measure, ceases_)--Yes, indeed, a sad, sad
+affair. A terrible misfortune. Now, Mrs. Clancy--
+
+WIDOW (_turning suddenly_)--Mary Ann. Where's thot lazy divil of a Mary
+Ann? (_As the servant appears._) Mary Ann, bring th' bottle! Give th'
+gintlemin a dhrink!... Here's to Hiven savin' yez, young mahn.
+(_Drinks._)
+
+Mr. SLICK (_drinks_)--A noble whisky, Mrs. Clancy. Many thanks. Now,
+Mrs. Clancy--
+
+WIDOW--Take anodder wan! Take anodder wan! (_Fills his glass._)
+
+Mr. SLICK (_impatiently_)--Yes, certainly, Mrs. Clancy, certainly. (_He
+drinks._) Now, could you tell me, Mrs. Clancy, where your late husband
+was--
+
+WIDOW--Who--Moike? Oh, young mahn, yez can just say thot he was the
+foinest mahn livin' an' breathin', an' niver a wan in th' warrud was
+betther. Oh, but he had th' tindther heart for 'is fambly, he did. Don't
+I remimber win he clipped little Patsey wid th' bottle, an' didn't he
+buy th' big rockin'-horse th' minit he got sober? Sure he did. Pass th'
+bottle, Mary Ann! (_Pours a beer-glass about half-full for her guest._)
+
+Mr. SLICK (_taking a seat_)--True, Mr. Clancy was a fine man, Mrs.
+Clancy--a _very_ fine man. Now, I--
+
+WIDOW (_plaintively_)--An' don't yez loike th' rum? Dhrink th' rum,
+mahn! It was me own Moike's fav'rite bran'. Well I remimber win he
+fotched it home, an' half th' demijohn gone a'ready, an' him a-cursin'
+up th' stairs as dhrunk as Gawd plazed. It was a--Dhrink th' rum, young
+mahn, dhrink th' rum! If he cud see yez now, Moike Clancy wud git up
+from 'is--
+
+Mr. SLICK (_desperately_)--Very well, very well, Mrs. Clancy. Here's
+your good health. Now, can you tell me, Mrs. Clancy, when was Mr. Clancy
+born?
+
+WIDOW--Win was he borrun. Sure, divil a bit do I care win he was borrun.
+He was th' good mahn to me an' his childher; an' Gawd knows I don't care
+win he was borrun. Mary Ann, pass th' bottle! Wud yez kape th' gintlemin
+starvin' for a dhrink here in Moike Clancy's own house? Gawd save yez.
+
+(_When the bottle appears she pours a huge quantity out for her guest_.)
+
+Mr. SLICK--Well, then, Mrs. Clancy, _where_ was he born?
+
+WIDOW (_staring_)--In Oirland, mahn, in Oirland! Where did yez t'ink?
+(_Then, in sudden, wheedling tones._) An' ain't yez goin' to dhrink th'
+rum? Are yez goin' to shirk th' good whisky what was th' pride of
+Moike's life, an' him gettin' full on it an' breakin' th' furnitir t'ree
+nights a week hard-runnin'? Shame an yez, an' Gawd save yer soul. Dhrink
+it oop now, there's a dear, dhrink it oop now, an' say: "Moike Clancy,
+be all th' powers in th' shky, Hiven sind yez rist!"
+
+Mr. SLICK--(_to himself_)--Holy smoke! (_He drinks, then regards the
+glass for a long time._) ... Well, now, Mrs. Clancy, give me your
+attention for a moment, please. When did--
+
+WIDOW--An' oh, but he was a power in th' warrud! Divil a mahn cud vote
+right widout Moike Clancy at 'is elbow. An' in th' calkus, sure didn't
+Mulrooney git th' nominashun jes' by raison of Moike's atthackin' th'
+opposashun wid th' shtove-poker. Mulrooney got it as aisy as dhirt, wid
+Moike rowlin' under th' tayble wid th' other candeedate. He was a good
+sit'zen, was Moike--divil a wan betther.
+
+Mr. SLICK _spends some minutes in collecting his faculties_.
+
+Mr. SLICK (_after he decides that he has them collected_)--Yes, yes,
+Mrs. Clancy, your husband's h-highly successful pol-pol-political career
+was w-well known to the public; but what I want to know is--what I want
+to know--(_Pauses to consider._)
+
+WIDOW (_finally_)--Pass th' glasses, Mary Ann, yez lazy divil; give th'
+gintlemin a dhrink! Here (_tendering him a glass_), take anodder wan to
+Moike Clancy, an' Gawd save yez for yer koindness to a poor widee woman!
+
+Mr. SLICK (_after solemnly regarding the glass_)--Certainly, I--I'll
+take a drink. Certainly, M--Mish Clanshy. Yes, certainly, Mish Clanshy.
+Now, Mish Clanshy, w-w-wash was Mr. Clanshy's n-name before he married
+you, Mish Clanshy?
+
+WIDOW (_astonished_)--Why, divil a bit else but Clancy.
+
+Mr. SLICK (_after reflection_)--Well, but I mean--I mean, Mish Clanshy,
+I mean--what was date of birth? Did marry you 'fore then, or d-did marry
+you when 'e was born in N' York, Mish Clanshy?
+
+WIDOW--Phwat th' divil--
+
+Mr. SLICK (_with dignity_)--Ansher my queshuns, pleash, Mish Clanshy.
+Did 'e bring chil'en withum f'm Irelan', or was you, after married in N'
+York, mother those chil'en 'e brought f'm Irelan'?
+
+WIDOW--Be th' powers above, I--
+
+Mr. SLICK (_with gentle patience_)--I don't shink y' unnerstan' m'
+queshuns, Mish Clanshy. What I wanna fin' out is, what was 'e born in N'
+York for when he, before zat, came f'm Irelan'? Dash what puzzels me.
+I-I'm completely puzzled. An' alsho, I wanna fin' out--I wanna fin' out,
+if poshble--zat is, if it's poshble shing, I wanna fin' out--I wanna
+fin' out--if poshble--I wanna-shay, who the blazesh is dead here,
+anyhow?
+
+
+
+
+AN EPISODE OF WAR.
+
+
+The lieutenant's rubber blanket lay on the ground, and upon it he had
+poured the company's supply of coffee. Corporals and other
+representatives of the grimy and hot-throated men who lined the
+breastwork had come for each squad's portion.
+
+The lieutenant was frowning and serious at this task of division. His
+lips pursed as he drew with his sword various crevices in the heap until
+brown squares of coffee, astoundingly equal in size, appeared on the
+blanket. He was on the verge of a great triumph in mathematics, and the
+corporals were thronging forward, each to reap a little square, when
+suddenly the lieutenant cried out and looked quickly at a man near him
+as if he suspected it was a case of personal assault. The others cried
+out also when they saw blood upon the lieutenant's sleeve.
+
+He has winced like a man stung, swayed dangerously, and then
+straightened. The sound of his hoarse breathing was plainly audible. He
+looked sadly, mystically, over the breastwork at the green face of a
+wood, where now were many little puffs of white smoke. During this
+moment the men about him gazed statue-like and silent, astonished and
+awed by this catastrophe which happened when catastrophes were not
+expected--when they had leisure to observe it.
+
+As the lieutenant stared at the wood, they too swung their heads, so
+that for another instant all hands, still silent, contemplated the
+distant forest as if their minds were fixed upon the mystery of a
+bullet's journey.
+
+The officer had, of course, been compelled to take his sword into his
+left hand. He did not hold it by the hilt. He gripped it at the middle
+of the blade, awkwardly. Turning his eyes from the hostile wood, he
+looked at the sword as he held it there, and seemed puzzled as to what
+to do with it, where to put it. In short, this weapon had of a sudden
+become a strange thing to him. He looked at it in a kind of
+stupefaction, as if he had been endowed with a trident, a sceptre, or a
+spade.
+
+Finally he tried to sheath it. To sheath a sword held by the left hand,
+at the middle of the blade, in a scabbard hung at the left hip, is a
+feat worthy of a sawdust ring. This wounded officer engaged in a
+desperate struggle with the sword and the wobbling scabbard, and during
+the time of it he breathed like a wrestler.
+
+But at this instant the men, the spectators, awoke from their stone-like
+poses and crowded forward sympathetically. The orderly-sergeant took
+the sword and tenderly placed it in the scabbard. At the time, he leaned
+nervously backward, and did not allow even his finger to brush the body
+of the lieutenant. A wound gives strange dignity to him who bears it.
+Well men shy from this new and terrible majesty. It is as if the wounded
+man's hand is upon the curtain which hangs before the revelations of all
+existence--the meaning of ants, potentates, wars, cities, sunshine,
+snow, a feather dropped from a bird's wing; and the power of it sheds
+radiance upon a bloody form, and makes the other men understand
+sometimes that they are little. His comrades look at him with large eyes
+thoughtfully. Moreover, they fear vaguely that the weight of a finger
+upon him might send him headlong, precipitate the tragedy, hurl him at
+once into the dim, grey unknown. And so the orderly-sergeant, while
+sheathing the sword, leaned nervously backward.
+
+There were others who proffered assistance. One timidly presented his
+shoulder and asked the lieutenant if he cared to lean upon it, but the
+latter waved him away mournfully. He wore the look of one who knows he
+is the victim of a terrible disease and understands his helplessness. He
+again stared over the breastwork at the forest, and then turning went
+slowly rearward. He held his right wrist tenderly in his left hand as if
+the wounded arm was made of very brittle glass.
+
+And the men in silence stared at the wood, then at the departing
+lieutenant--then at the wood, then at the lieutenant.
+
+As the wounded officer passed from the line of battle, he was enabled to
+see many things which as a participant in the fight were unknown to him.
+He saw a general on a black horse gazing over the lines of blue infantry
+at the green woods which veiled his problems. An aide galloped
+furiously, dragged his horse suddenly to a halt, saluted, and presented
+a paper. It was, for a wonder, precisely like an historical painting.
+
+To the rear of the general and his staff a group, composed of a bugler,
+two or three orderlies, and the bearer of the corps standard, all upon
+maniacal horses, were working like slaves to hold their ground, preserve
+their respectful interval, while the shells boomed in the air about
+them, and caused their chargers to make furious quivering leaps.
+
+A battery, a tumultuous and shining mass, was swirling toward the right.
+The wild thud of hoofs, the cries of the riders shouting blame and
+praise, menace and encouragement, and, last, the roar of the wheels, the
+slant of the glistening guns, brought the lieutenant to an intent pause.
+The battery swept in curves that stirred the heart; it made halts as
+dramatic as the crash of a wave on the rocks, and when it fled onward,
+this aggregation of wheels, levers, motors, had a beautiful unity, as
+if it were a missile. The sound of it was a war-chorus that reached into
+the depths of man's emotion.
+
+The lieutenant, still holding his arm as if it were of glass, stood
+watching this battery until all detail of it was lost, save the figures
+of the riders, which rose and fell and waved lashes over the black mass.
+
+Later, he turned his eyes toward the battle where the shooting sometimes
+crackled like bush-fires, sometimes sputtered with exasperating
+irregularity, and sometimes reverberated like the thunder. He saw the
+smoke rolling upward and saw crowds of men who ran and cheered, or stood
+and blazed away at the inscrutable distance.
+
+He came upon some stragglers, and they told him how to find the field
+hospital. They described its exact location. In fact, these men, no
+longer having part in the battle, knew more of it than others. They told
+the performance of every corps, every division, the opinion of every
+general. The lieutenant, carrying his wounded arm rearward, looked upon
+them with wonder.
+
+At the roadside a brigade was making coffee and buzzing with talk like a
+girls' boarding-school. Several officers came out to him and inquired
+concerning things of which he knew nothing. One, seeing his arm, began
+to scold. "Why, man, that's no way to do. You want to fix that thing."
+He appropriated the lieutenant and the lieutenant's wound. He cut the
+sleeve and laid bare the arm, every nerve of which softly fluttered
+under his touch. He bound his handkerchief over the wound, scolding away
+in the meantime. His tone allowed one to think that he was in the habit
+of being wounded every day. The lieutenant hung his head, feeling, in
+this presence, that he did not know how to be correctly wounded.
+
+The low white tents of the hospital were grouped around an old
+school-house. There was here a singular commotion. In the foreground two
+ambulances interlocked wheels in the deep mud. The drivers were tossing
+the blame of it back and forth, gesticulating and berating, while from
+the ambulances, both crammed with wounded, there came an occasional
+groan. An interminable crowd of bandaged men were coming and going.
+Great numbers sat under the trees nursing heads or arms or legs. There
+was a dispute of some kind raging on the steps of the school-house.
+Sitting with his back against a tree a man with a face as grey as a new
+army blanket was serenely smoking a corn-cob pipe. The lieutenant wished
+to rush forward and inform him that he was dying.
+
+A busy surgeon was passing near the lieutenant. "Good-morning," he said,
+with a friendly smile. Then he caught sight of the lieutenant's arm and
+his face at once changed. "Well, let's have a look at it." He seemed
+possessed suddenly of a great contempt for the lieutenant. This wound
+evidently placed the latter on a very low social plane. The doctor cried
+out impatiently, "What mutton-head had tied it up that way anyhow?" The
+lieutenant answered, "Oh, a man."
+
+When the wound was disclosed the doctor fingered it disdainfully.
+"Humph," he said. "You come along with me and I'll 'tend to you." His
+voice contained the same scorn as if he were saying, "You will have to
+go to jail."
+
+The lieutenant had been very meek, but now his face flushed, and he
+looked into the doctor's eyes. "I guess I won't have it amputated," he
+said.
+
+"Nonsense, man! Nonsense! Nonsense!" cried the doctor. "Come along, now.
+I won't amputate it. Come along. Don't be a baby."
+
+"Let go of me," said the lieutenant, holding back wrathfully, his glance
+fixed upon the door of the old school-house, as sinister to him as the
+portals of death.
+
+And this is the story of how the lieutenant lost his arm. When he
+reached home, his sisters, his mother, his wife, sobbed for a long time
+at the sight of the flat sleeve. "Oh, well," he said, standing
+shamefaced amid these tears, "I don't suppose it matters so much as all
+that."
+
+
+
+
+THE VOICE OF THE MOUNTAIN.
+
+
+The old man Popocatepetl was seated on a high rock with his white mantle
+about his shoulders. He looked at the sky, he looked at the sea, he
+looked at the land--nowhere could he see any food. And he was very
+hungry, too.
+
+Who can understand the agony of a creature whose stomach is as large as
+a thousand churches, when this same stomach is as empty as a broken
+water jar?
+
+He looked longingly at some island in the sea. "Ah, those flat cakes! If
+I had them." He stared at storm-clouds in the sky. "Ah, what a drink is
+there." But the King of Everything, you know, had forbidden the old man
+Popocatepetl to move at all, because he feared that every footprint
+would make a great hole in the land. So the old fellow was obliged to
+sit still and wait for his food to come within reach. Any one who has
+tried this plan knows what intervals lie between meals.
+
+Once his friend, the little eagle, flew near, and Popocatepetl called to
+him. "Ho, tiny bird, come and consider with me as to how I shall be
+fed."
+
+The little eagle came and spread his legs apart and considered manfully,
+but he could do nothing with the situation. "You see," he said, "this is
+no ordinary hunger which one goat will suffice--"
+
+Popocatepetl groaned an assent.
+
+"--but it is an enormous affair," continued the little eagle, "which
+requires something like a dozen stars. I don't see what can be done
+unless we get that little creature of the earth--that little animal with
+two arms, two legs, one head, and a very brave air, to invent something.
+He is said to be very wise."
+
+"Who claims it for him?" asked Popocatepetl.
+
+"He claims it for himself," responded the eagle.
+
+"Well, summon him. Let us see. He is doubtless a kind little animal, and
+when he sees my distress he will invent something."
+
+"Good!" The eagle flew until he discovered one of these small creatures.
+"Oh, tiny animal, the great chief Popocatepetl summons you!"
+
+"Does he, indeed!"
+
+"Popocatepetl, the great chief," said the eagle again, thinking that the
+little animal had not heard rightly.
+
+"Well, and why does he summon me?"
+
+"Because he is in distress, and he needs your assistance."
+
+The little animal reflected for a time, and then said, "I will go."
+
+When Popocatepetl perceived the little animal and the eagle he stretched
+forth his great, solemn arms. "Oh, blessed little animal with two arms,
+two legs, a head, and a very brave air, help me in my agony. Behold I,
+Popocatepetl, who saw the King of Everything fashioning the stars, I,
+who knew the sun in his childhood, I, Popocatepetl, appeal to you,
+little animal. I am hungry."
+
+After a while the little animal asked: "How much will you pay?"
+
+"Pay?" said Popocatepetl.
+
+"Pay?" said the eagle.
+
+"Assuredly," quoth the little animal, "pay!"
+
+"But," demanded Popocatepetl, "were you never hungry? I tell you I am
+hungry, and is your first word then 'pay'?"
+
+The little animal turned coldly away. "Oh, Popocatepetl, how much wisdom
+has flown past you since you saw the King of Everything fashioning the
+stars and since you knew the sun in his childhood? I said pay, and,
+moreover, your distress measures my price. It is our law. Yet it is true
+that we did not see the King of Everything fashioning the stars. Nor did
+we know the sun in his childhood."
+
+Then did Popocatepetl roar and shake in his rage. "Oh,
+louse--louse--louse! Let us bargain then! How much for your blood?" Over
+the little animal hung death.
+
+But he instantly bowed himself and prayed: "Popocatepetl, the great, you
+who saw the King of Everything fashioning the stars, and who knew the
+sun in his childhood, forgive this poor little animal. Your sacred
+hunger shall be my care. I am your servant."
+
+"It is well," said Popocatepetl at once, for his spirit was ever kindly.
+"And now, what will you do?"
+
+The little animal put his hand upon his chin and reflected. "Well, it
+seems you are hungry, and the King of Everything has forbidden you to go
+for food in fear that your monstrous feet will riddle the earth with
+holes. What you need is a pair of wings."
+
+"A pair of wings!" cried Popocatepetl delightedly.
+
+"A pair of wings!" screamed the eagle in joy.
+
+"How very simple, after all."
+
+"And yet how wise!"
+
+"But," said Popocatepetl, after the first outburst, "who can make me
+these wings?"
+
+The little animal replied: "I and my kind are great, because at times we
+can make one mind control a hundred thousand bodies. This is the secret
+of our performance. It will be nothing for us to make wings for even
+you, great Popocatepetl. I and my kind will come"--continued the crafty,
+little animal--"we will come and dwell on this beautiful plain that
+stretches from the sea to the sea, and we will make wings for you."
+
+Popocatepetl wished to embrace the little animal. "Oh, glorious! Oh,
+best of little brutes! Run! run! run! Summon your kind, dwell in the
+plain and make me wings. Ah, when once Popocatepetl can soar on his
+wings from star to star, then, indeed--"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Poor old stupid Popocatepetl! The little animal summoned his kind, they
+dwelt on the plains, they made this and they made that, but they made no
+wings for Popocatepetl.
+
+And sometimes when the thunderous voice of the old peak rolls and rolls,
+if you know that tongue, you can hear him say: "Oh, traitor! Traitor!
+Traitor! Where are my wings? My wings, traitor! I am hungry! Where are
+my wings?"
+
+But the little animal merely places his finger beside his nose and
+winks.
+
+"Your wings, indeed, fool! Sit still and howl for them! Old idiot!"
+
+
+
+
+WHY DID THE YOUNG CLERK SWEAR?
+
+OR, THE UNSATISFACTORY FRENCH.
+
+
+All was silent in the little gent's furnishing store. A lonely clerk
+with a blonde moustache and a red necktie raised a languid hand to his
+brow and brushed back a dangling lock. He yawned and gazed gloomily at
+the blurred panes of the windows.
+
+Without, the wind and rain came swirling round the brick buildings and
+went sweeping over the streets. A horse-car rumbled stolidly by. In the
+mud on the pavements, a few pedestrians struggled with excited
+umbrellas.
+
+"The deuce!" remarked the clerk. "I'd give ten dollars if somebody would
+come in and buy something, if 'twere only cotton socks."
+
+He waited amid the shadows of the grey afternoon. No customers came. He
+heaved a long sigh and sat down on a high stool. From beneath a stack of
+unlaundried shirts he drew a French novel with a picture on the cover.
+He yawned again, glanced lazily toward the street, and settled himself
+as comfortable as the gods would let him upon the high stool.
+
+He opened the book and began to read. Soon it could have been noticed
+that his blonde moustache took on a curl of enthusiasm, and the
+refractory locks on his brow showed symptoms of soft agitation.
+
+"Silvere did not see the young girl for some days," read the clerk. "He
+was miserable. He seemed always to inhale that subtle perfume from her
+hair. At night he saw her eyes in the stars.
+
+"His dreams were troubled. He watched the house. Heloise did not appear.
+One day he met Vibert. Vibert wore a black frock-coat. There were
+wine-stains on the right breast. His collar was soiled. He had not
+shaved.
+
+"Silvere burst into tears. 'I love her! I love her! I shall die!' Vibert
+laughed scornfully. His necktie was second-hand. Idiotic, this boy in
+love. Fool! Simpleton! But at last he pitied him. She goes to the
+music-teacher's every morning. Silly Silvere embraced him.
+
+"The next day Silvere waited at the street corner. A vendor was selling
+chestnuts. Two gamins were fighting in an alley. A woman was scrubbing
+some steps. This great Paris throbbed with life.
+
+"Heloise came. She did not perceive Silvere. She passed with a happy
+smile on her face. She looked fresh, fair, innocent. Silvere felt
+himself swooning. 'Ah, my God!'
+
+"She crossed the street. The young man received a shock that sent the
+warm blood to his brain. It had been raining. There was mud. With one
+slender hand Heloise lifted her skirts. Silvere leaning forward, saw
+her--"
+
+A young man in a wet mackintosh came into the little gent's furnishing
+store.
+
+"Ah, beg pardon," said he to the clerk, "but do you have an agency for a
+steam laundry here? I have been patronising a Chinaman down th' avenue
+for some time, but he--what? No? You have none here? Well, why don't you
+start one, anyhow? It'd be a good thing in this neighbourhood. I live
+just round the corner, and it'd be a great thing for me. I know lots of
+people who would--what? Oh, you don't? Oh!"
+
+As the young man in the wet mackintosh retreated, the clerk with a
+blonde moustache made a hungry grab at the novel. He continued to read:
+"Handkerchief fall in a puddle. Silvere sprang forward. He picked up the
+handkerchief. Their eyes met. As he returned the handkerchief, their
+hands touched. The young girl smiled. Silvere was in ecstacies. 'Ah, my
+God!'
+
+"A baker opposite was quarrelling over two sous with an old woman.
+
+"A grey-haired veteran with a medal upon his breast and a butcher's boy
+were watching a dog-fight. The smell of dead animals came from adjacent
+slaughter-houses. The letters on the sign over the tinsmith's shop on
+the corner shone redly like great clots of blood. It was hell on roller
+skates."
+
+Here the clerk skipped some seventeen chapters descriptive of a number
+of intricate money transactions, the moles on the neck of a Parisian
+dressmaker, the process of making brandy, the milk-leg of Silvere's
+aunt, life in the coal-pits, and scenes in the Chamber of Deputies. In
+these chapters the reputation of the architect of Charlemagne's palace
+was vindicated, and it was explained why Heloise's grandmother didn't
+keep her stockings pulled up.
+
+Then he proceeded: "Heloise went to the country. The next day Silvere
+followed. They met in the fields. The young girl had donned the garb of
+the peasants. She blushed. She looked fresh, fair, innocent. Silvere
+felt faint with rapture. 'Ah, my God!'
+
+"She had been running. Out of breath, she sank down in the hay. She held
+out her hand. 'I am so glad to see you.' Silvere was enchanted at this
+vision. He bended toward her. Suddenly he burst into tears. 'I love you!
+I love you! I love you!' he stammered.
+
+"A row of red and white shirts hung on a line some distance away. The
+third shirt from the left had a button off the neck. A cat on the rear
+steps of a cottage near the shirt was drinking milk from a platter. The
+north-east portion of the platter had a crack in it.
+
+"'Heloise!' Silvere was murmuring hoarsely. He leaned toward her until
+his warm breath moved the curls on her neck. 'Heloise!' murmured Jean."
+
+"Young man," said an elderly gentleman with a dripping umbrella to the
+clerk with a blonde moustache, "have you any night-shirts open front and
+back? Eh? Night-shirts open front and back, I said. D'you hear, eh?
+_Night-shirts open front and back._ Well, then, why didn't you say so?
+It would pay you to be a trifle more polite, young man. When you get as
+old as I am, you will find out that it pays to--what? I didn't see you
+adding any column of figures. In that case I am sorry. You have no
+night-shirts open front and back, eh? Well, good-day."
+
+As the elderly gentleman vanished, the clerk with a blonde moustache
+grasped the novel like some famished animal. He read on: "A peasant
+stood before the two children. He wrung his hands. 'Have you seen a
+stray cow?' 'No,' cried the children in the same breath. The peasant
+wept. He wrung his hands. It was a supreme moment.
+
+"'She loves me!' cried Silvere to himself, as he changed his clothes for
+dinner.
+
+"It was evening. The children sat by the fire-place. Heloise wore a
+gown of clinging white. She looked fresh, fair, innocent. Silvere was in
+raptures. 'Ah, my God!'
+
+"Old Jean, the peasant, saw nothing. He was mending harness. The fire
+crackled in the fire-place. The children loved each other. Through the
+open door to the kitchen came the sound of old Marie shrilly cursing the
+geese who wished to enter. In front of the window two pigs were
+quarrelling over a vegetable. Cattle were lowing in a distant field. A
+hay-waggon creaked slowly past. Thirty-two chickens were asleep in the
+branches of a tree. This subtle atmosphere had a mighty effect upon
+Heloise. It was beating down her self-control. She felt herself going.
+She was choking.
+
+"The young girl made an effort. She stood up. 'Good-night, I must go.'
+Silvere took her hand. 'Heloise,' he murmured. Outside the two pigs were
+fighting.
+
+"A warm blush overspread the young girl's face. She turned wet eyes
+toward her lover. She looked fresh, fair, innocent. Silvere was
+maddened. 'Ah, my God!'
+
+"Suddenly the young girl began to tremble. She tried vainly to withdraw
+her hand. But her knee--"
+
+"I wish to get my husband some shirts," said a shopping-woman with six
+bundles. The clerk with a blonde moustache made a private gesture of
+despair, and rapidly spread a score of different-patterned shirts upon
+the counter. "He's very particular about his shirts," said the
+shopping-woman. "Oh, I don't think any of these will do. Don't you keep
+the Invincible brand? He only wears that kind. He says they fit him
+better. And he's very particular about his shirts. What? You don't keep
+them? No? Well, how much do you think they would come at?" "Haven't the
+slightest idea." "Well, I suppose I must go somewhere else, then. Um,
+good-day."
+
+The clerk with the blonde moustache was about to make further private
+gestures of despair, when the shopping-woman with six bundles turned and
+went out. His fingers instantly closed nervously over the book. He drew
+it from its hiding-place, and opened it at the place where he had
+ceased. His hungry eyes seemed to eat the words upon the page. He
+continued: "--struck cruelly against a chair. It seemed to awaken her.
+She started. She burst from the young man's arms. Outside the two pigs
+were grunting amiably.
+
+"Silvere took his candle. He went toward his room. He was in despair.
+'Ah, my God!'
+
+"He met the young girl on the stairs. He took her hand. Tears were
+raining down his face. 'Heloise!' he murmured.
+
+"The young girl shivered. As Silvere put his arms about her, she
+faintly resisted. This embrace seemed to sap her life. She wished to
+die. Her thoughts flew back to the old well and the broken hayrakes at
+Plassans.
+
+"The young girl looked fresh, fair, innocent 'Heloise!' murmured
+Silvere. The children exchanged a long, clinging kiss. It seemed to
+unite their souls.
+
+"The young girl was swooning. Her head sank on the young man's shoulder.
+There was nothing in space except these warm kisses on her neck. Silvere
+enfolded her. 'Ah, my God!'"
+
+"Say, young fellow," said a youth with a tilted cigar to the clerk with
+a blonde moustache, "where th'll is Billie Carcart's joint round here?
+Know?"
+
+"Next corner," said the clerk fiercely.
+
+"Oh, th'll," said the youth, "yehs needn't git gay. See! When a feller
+asts a civil question yehs needn't git gay. See! Th'll!"
+
+The youth stood and looked aggressive for a moment. Then he went away.
+
+The clerk seemed almost to leap upon the book. His feverish fingers
+twirled the pages. When he found his place he glued his eyes to it. He
+read:
+
+"Then a great flash of lightning illumined the hall-way. It threw livid
+hues over a row of flowerpots in the window-seat. Thunder shook the
+house to its foundation. From the kitchen arose the voice of old Marie
+in prayer.
+
+"Heloise screamed. She wrenched herself from the young man's arms. She
+sprang inside her room. She locked the door. She flung herself face
+downward on the bed. She burst into tears. She looked fresh, fair,
+innocent.
+
+"The rain pattering upon the thatched roof sounded in the stillness like
+the footsteps of spirits. In the sky toward Paris there shone a crimson
+light.
+
+"The chickens had all fallen from the tree. They stood, sadly, in a
+puddle. The two pigs were asleep under the porch.
+
+"Upstairs, in the hall-way, Silvers was furious."
+
+The clerk with a blonde moustache gave here a wild scream of
+disappointment. He madly hurled the novel with the picture on the cover
+from him. He stood up and said: "Damn!"
+
+
+
+
+THE VICTORY OF THE MOON.
+
+
+The Strong Man of the Hills lost his wife. Immediately he went abroad,
+calling aloud. The people all crouched afar in the dark of their huts,
+and cried to him when he was yet a long distance away: "No, no, great
+chief, we have not even seen the imprint of your wife's sandal in the
+sand. If we had seen it, you would have found us bowed down in worship
+before the marks of her ten glorious brown toes, for we are but poor
+devils of Indians, and the grandeur of the sun rays on her hair would
+have turned our eyes to dust."
+
+"Her toes are not brown. They are pink," said the Strong Man from the
+Hills. "Therefore do I believe that you speak the truth when you say you
+have not seen her, good little men of the valley. In this matter of her
+great loveliness, however, you speak a little too strongly. As she is no
+longer among my possessions, I have no mind to hear her praised.
+Whereabouts is the best man of you?"
+
+None of them had stomach for this honour at the time. They surmised that
+the Strong Man of the Hills had some plan for combat, and they knew
+that the best of them would have in this encounter only the strength of
+the meat in the grip of the fire. "Great King," they said, in one voice,
+"there is no best man here."
+
+"How is this?" roared the Strong Man. "There must be one who excels. It
+is a law. Let him step forward then."
+
+But they solemnly shook their heads. "There is no best man here."
+
+The Strong Man turned upon them so furiously that many fell to the
+ground. "There must be one. Let him step forward." Shivering, they
+huddled together and tried, in their fear, to thrust each other toward
+the Strong Man.
+
+At this time a young philosopher approached the throng slowly. The
+philosophers of that age were all young men in the full heat of life.
+The old greybeards were, for the most part, very stupid, and were so
+accounted.
+
+"Strong Man from the Hills," said the young philosopher, "go to yonder
+brook and bathe. Then come and eat of this fruit. Then gaze for a time
+at the blue sky and the green earth. Afterward I have something to say
+to you."
+
+"You are not so wise that I am obliged to bathe before listening to
+you?" demanded the Strong Man, insolently.
+
+"No," said the young philosopher. All the people thought this reply very
+strange.
+
+"Why, then, must I bathe and eat of fruit and gaze at the earth and the
+sky?"
+
+"Because they are pleasant things to do."
+
+"Have I, do you think, any thirst at this time for pleasant things?"
+
+"Bathe, eat, gaze," said the young philosopher with a gesture.
+
+The Strong Man did, indeed, whirl his bronzed and terrible limbs in the
+silver water. Then he lay in the shadow of a tree and ate the cool fruit
+and gazed at the sky and the earth. "This is a fine comfort," he said.
+After a time he suddenly struck his forehead with his finger. "By the
+way, did I tell you that my wife had fled from me?"
+
+"I know it," said the young philosopher.
+
+Later the Strong Man slept peacefully. The young philosopher smiled.
+
+But in the night the little men of the valley came clamouring: "Oh,
+Strong Man of the Hills, the moon derides you!"
+
+The philosopher went to them in the darkness. "Be still, little people.
+It is nothing. The derision of the moon is nothing."
+
+But the little men of the valley would not cease their uproar. "Oh,
+Strong Man! Strong Man, awake! Awake! The moon derides you!"
+
+Then the Strong Man aroused and shook his locks away from his eyes.
+"What is it, good little men of the valley?"
+
+"Oh, Strong Man, the moon derides you! Oh, Strong Man!"
+
+The Strong Man looked, and there, indeed, was the moon laughing down at
+him. He sprang to his feet and roared. "Ah, old, fat, lump of moon, you
+laugh! Have you seen my wife?"
+
+The moon said no word, but merely smiled in a way that was like a flash
+of silver bars.
+
+"Well, then, moon, take this home to her," thundered the Strong Man, and
+he hurled his spear.
+
+The moon clapped both hands to its eye, and cried: "Oh! Oh!"
+
+The little people of the valley cried: "Oh, this is terrible, Strong
+Man! He has smitten our sacred moon in the eye!"
+
+The young philosopher cried nothing at all.
+
+The Strong Man threw his coat of crimson feathers upon the ground. He
+took his knife and felt its edge. "Look you, philosopher," he said. "I
+have lost my wife, and the bath, the meal of fruit in the shade, the
+sight of sky and earth are still good to me, but when this false moon
+derides me, there must be a killing."
+
+"I understand you," said the young philosopher.
+
+The Strong Man ran off into the night. The little men of the valley
+clapped their hands in ecstacy and terror. "Ah! ah! what a battle will
+there be!"
+
+The Strong Man went into his own hills and gathered there many great
+rocks and trunks of trees. It was strange to see him erect upon a peak
+of the mountains and hurling these things at the moon. He kept the air
+full of them.
+
+"Fat moon, come closer," he shouted. "Come closer, and let it be my
+knife against your knife. Oh, to think that we are obliged to tolerate
+such an old, fat, stupid, lazy, good-for-nothing moon. You are ugly as
+death, while I--Oh, moon, you stole my beloved, and it was nothing, but
+when you stole my beloved and laughed at me, it became another matter.
+And yet you are so ugly, so fat, so stupid, so lazy, so
+good-for-nothing. Ah, I shall go mad! Come closer, moon, and let me
+examine your round, grey skull with this club."
+
+And he always kept the air full of great missiles.
+
+The moon merely laughed, and said: "Why should I come closer?"
+
+Wildly did the Strong Man pile rock upon rock. He builded him a tower
+that was the father of all towers. It made the mountains to appear to be
+babes. Upon the summit of it he swung his great club and flourished his
+knife.
+
+The little men in the valley far below beheld a great storm, and at the
+end of it they said: "Look, the moon is dead." The cry went to and fro
+on the earth: "The moon is dead!"
+
+The Strong Man went to the home of the moon. She, the sought one, lay
+upon a cloud, and her little foot dangled over the side of it. The
+Strong Man took this little foot in his two hands and kissed it. "Ah,
+beloved!" he moaned, "I would rather this little foot was upon my dead
+neck than that moon should ever have the privilege of seeing it."
+
+She leaned over the edge of the cloud and gazed at him. "How dusty you
+are. Why do you puff so? Veritably, you are an ordinary person. Why did
+I ever find you interesting?"
+
+The Strong Man flung his knife into the air and turned back toward the
+earth. "If the young philosopher had been at my elbow," he reflected,
+bitterly, "I would doubtless have gone at the matter in another way.
+What does my strength avail me in this contest?"
+
+The battered moon, limping homeward, replied to the Strong Man from the
+Hills: "Aye, surely. My weakness is in this thing as strong as your
+strength. I am victor with ugliness, my age, my stoutness, my laziness,
+my good-for-nothingness. Woman is woman. Men are equal in everything
+save good fortune. I envy you not."
+
+
+THE END.
+
+Printed by WM. HODGE & CO., Glasgow and Edinburgh.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Typographical errors corrected by the transcriber of etext:
+
+flowerplots=>flowerpots, coming tower=>conning tower, troup=>troupe
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Last Words, by Stephen Crane
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LAST WORDS ***
+
+***** This file should be named 33579-8.txt or 33579-8.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/3/3/5/7/33579/
+
+Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was
+produced from scanned images of public domain material
+from the Internet Archive.)
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+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
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/33579-8.zip b/33579-8.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e70951a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/33579-8.zip
diff --git a/33579-h.zip b/33579-h.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1953310
--- /dev/null
+++ b/33579-h.zip
diff --git a/33579-h/33579-h.htm b/33579-h/33579-h.htm
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..38e1106
--- /dev/null
+++ b/33579-h/33579-h.htm
@@ -0,0 +1,8114 @@
+<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en" xml:lang="en">
+  <head>
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" />
+<title>
+  The Project Gutenberg eBook of Last Words, by Stephen Crane.
+</title>
+<style type="text/css">
+ p {margin-top:.75em;text-align:justify;margin-bottom:.75em;text-indent:2%;}
+
+.ast {text-align:center;text-indent:0%;letter-spacing:15px;font-weight:bold;}
+
+.c {text-align:center;text-indent:0%;}
+
+.imagecenterd {text-align:center;text-indent:0%;margin:auto;}
+
+.cb {text-align:center;text-indent:0%;font-weight:bold;}
+
+ h1,h2,h3 {margin-top:15%;text-align:center;clear:both;}
+
+.top5 {margin-top:5%;}
+
+.top15 {margin-top:15%;}
+
+ hr {width:50%;margin:2em auto 2em auto;clear:both;color:black;}
+
+ table {margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;border:none;text-align:left;}
+
+ body{margin-left:10%;margin-right:10%;background:#fdfdfd;color:black;font-family:"Times New Roman", serif;font-size:medium;}
+
+.ov {text-decoration:overline;}
+
+a:link {background-color:#ffffff;color:blue;text-decoration:none;}
+
+  link {background-color:#ffffff;color:blue;text-decoration:none;}
+
+a:visited {background-color:#ffffff;color:purple;text-decoration:none;}
+
+a:hover {background-color:#ffffff;color:#FF0000;text-decoration:underline;}
+
+.smcap  {font-variant:small-caps;font-size:95%;}
+
+ img {border:none;}
+
+.blockquot{margin:8% auto 8% auto;font-size:90%;}
+
+.sml {font-size:80%; text-indent:5%;}
+</style>
+  </head>
+<body>
+
+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Last Words, by Stephen Crane
+
+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: Last Words
+
+Author: Stephen Crane
+
+Release Date: August 30, 2010 [EBook #33579]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LAST WORDS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was
+produced from scanned images of public domain material
+from the Internet Archive.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="imagecenterd" style="width: 340px;">
+<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="340" height="550"
+id="coverpage" alt="bookcover" title="bookcover" />
+</div>
+
+<h1>LAST WORDS</h1>
+
+<h2>STEPHEN CRANE</h2>
+
+<p class="cb">Author of<br/>
+"RED BADGE OF COURAGE," "ACTIVE SERVICE," "PICTURES OF WAR,"<br />
+"THE THIRD VIOLET," "THE OPEN BOAT,"<br />"WOUNDS IN THE RAIN," ETC.</p>
+
+<p class="cb top15">London<br />
+DIGBY, LONG &amp; CO.<br />
+18 Bouverie Street, Fleet Street, E. C.<br />
+1902</p>
+
+<h3><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS</h3>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1" summary="contents">
+<tr valign="bottom"><td align="right" colspan="3"><small>PAGE</small></td></tr>
+<tr valign="bottom"><td colspan="2">THE RELUCTANT VOYAGERS</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_001">1</a></td></tr>
+<tr valign="bottom"><td>&nbsp; &nbsp;</td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr valign="bottom"><td colspan="2">SPITZBERGEN TALES&mdash;</td></tr>
+<tr valign="bottom"><td>&nbsp;</td><td class="sml">THE KICKING TWELFTH</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_035">35</a></td></tr>
+<tr valign="bottom"><td>&nbsp;</td><td class="sml">THE UPTURNED FACE</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_052">52</a></td></tr>
+<tr valign="bottom"><td>&nbsp;</td><td class="sml">THE SHRAPNEL OF THEIR FRIENDS</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_059">59</a></td></tr>
+<tr valign="bottom"><td>&nbsp;</td><td class="sml">"AND IF HE WILLS, WE MUST DIE"</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_069">69</a></td></tr>
+<tr valign="bottom"><td>&nbsp;</td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr valign="bottom"><td colspan="2">WYOMING VALLEY TALES&mdash;</td></tr>
+<tr valign="bottom"><td>&nbsp;</td><td class="sml">THE SURRENDER OF FORTY FORT</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_081">81</a></td></tr>
+<tr valign="bottom"><td>&nbsp;</td><td class="sml">"OL' BENNET" AND THE INDIANS</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_088">88</a></td></tr>
+<tr valign="bottom"><td>&nbsp;</td><td class="sml">THE BATTLE OF FORTY FORT</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_099">99</a></td></tr>
+<tr valign="bottom"><td>&nbsp;</td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr valign="bottom"><td colspan="2" class="smcap">London Impressions</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_110">110</a></td></tr>
+<tr valign="bottom"><td>&nbsp;</td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr valign="bottom"><td colspan="2">NEW YORK SKETCHES&mdash;</td></tr>
+<tr valign="bottom"><td>&nbsp;</td><td class="sml">GREAT-GRIEF'S HOLIDAY DINNER</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_133">133</a></td></tr>
+<tr valign="bottom"><td>&nbsp;</td><td class="sml">THE SILVER PAGEANT</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_145">145</a></td></tr>
+<tr valign="bottom"><td>&nbsp;</td><td class="sml">A STREET SCENE</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_148">148</a></td></tr>
+<tr valign="bottom"><td>&nbsp;</td><td class="sml">MINETTA LANE</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_154">154</a></td></tr>
+<tr valign="bottom"><td>&nbsp;</td><td class="sml">ROOF GARDENS</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_166">166</a></td></tr>
+<tr valign="bottom"><td>&nbsp;</td><td class="sml">IN THE BROADWAY CARS</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_173">173</a></td></tr>
+<tr valign="bottom"><td>&nbsp;</td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr valign="bottom"><td colspan="2" class="smcap">The Assassins in Modern Battles</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_181">181</a></td></tr>
+<tr valign="bottom"><td>&nbsp;</td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr valign="bottom"><td colspan="2">IRISH NOTES&mdash;</td></tr>
+<tr valign="bottom"><td>&nbsp;</td><td class="sml">AN OLD MAN GOES WOOING</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_193">193</a></td></tr>
+<tr valign="bottom"><td>&nbsp;</td><td class="sml">BALLYDEHOB</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_198">198</a></td></tr>
+<tr valign="bottom"><td>&nbsp;</td><td class="sml">THE ROYAL IRISH CONSTABULARY</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_203">203</a></td></tr>
+<tr valign="bottom"><td>&nbsp;</td><td class="sml">A FISHING VILLAGE</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_207">207</a></td></tr>
+<tr valign="bottom"><td>&nbsp;</td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr valign="bottom"><td colspan="2">SULLIVAN COUNTY SKETCHES&mdash;</td></tr>
+<tr valign="bottom"><td>&nbsp;</td><td class="sml">FOUR MEN IN A CAVE</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_217">217</a></td></tr>
+<tr valign="bottom"><td>&nbsp;</td><td class="sml">THE MESMERIC MOUNTAIN</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_225">225</a></td></tr>
+<tr valign="bottom"><td>&nbsp;</td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr valign="bottom"><td colspan="2">MISCELLANEOUS&mdash;</td></tr>
+<tr valign="bottom"><td>&nbsp;</td><td class="smcap">The Squire's Madness</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_231">231</a></td></tr>
+<tr valign="bottom"><td>&nbsp;</td><td class="smcap">A Desertion</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_245">245</a></td></tr>
+<tr valign="bottom"><td>&nbsp;</td><td class="smcap">How the Donkey Lifted the Hills</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_252">252</a></td></tr>
+<tr valign="bottom"><td>&nbsp;</td><td class="smcap">A Man by the Name of Mud</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_258">258</a></td></tr>
+<tr valign="bottom"><td>&nbsp;</td><td class="smcap">A Poker Game</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_263">263</a></td></tr>
+<tr valign="bottom"><td>&nbsp;</td><td class="smcap">The Snake</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_268">268</a></td></tr>
+<tr valign="bottom"><td>&nbsp;</td><td class="smcap">A Self-Made Man</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_273">273</a></td></tr>
+<tr valign="bottom"><td>&nbsp;</td><td class="smcap">A Tale of Mere Chance</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_282">282</a></td></tr>
+<tr valign="bottom"><td>&nbsp;</td><td class="smcap">At Clancy's Wake</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_288">288</a></td></tr>
+<tr valign="bottom"><td>&nbsp;</td><td class="smcap">An Episode of War</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_294">294</a></td></tr>
+<tr valign="bottom"><td>&nbsp;</td><td class="smcap">The Voice of the Mountain</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_301">301</a></td></tr>
+<tr valign="bottom"><td>&nbsp;</td><td class="smcap">Why Did the Young Clerk Swear? &nbsp; &nbsp;</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_306">306</a></td></tr>
+<tr valign="bottom"><td>&nbsp;</td><td class="smcap">The Victory of the Moon</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_315">315</a></td></tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<p><a name="page_001" id="page_001"></a></p>
+
+<h1>LAST WORDS</h1>
+
+<h3><a name="THE_RELUCTANT_VOYAGERS" id="THE_RELUCTANT_VOYAGERS"></a>THE RELUCTANT VOYAGERS</h3>
+
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I.</h3>
+
+<p>Two men sat by the sea waves.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I know I'm not handsome," said one gloomily. He was poking holes
+in the sand with a discontented cane.</p>
+
+<p>The companion was watching the waves play. He seemed overcome with
+perspiring discomfort as a man who is resolved to set another man right.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly his mouth turned into a straight line. "To be sure you are
+not," he cried vehemently. "You look like thunder. I do not desire to be
+unpleasant, but I must assure you that your freckled skin continually
+reminds spectators of white wall paper with gilt roses on it. The top of
+your head looks like a little wooden plate. And your figure&mdash;heavens!"</p>
+
+<p>For a time they were silent. They stared at the waves that purred near
+their feet like sleepy sea-kittens.</p>
+
+<p>Finally the first man spoke.<a name="page_002" id="page_002"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Well," said he, defiantly, "what of it?"</p>
+
+<p>"What of it," exploded the other. "Why, it means that you'd look like
+blazes in a bathing-suit."</p>
+
+<p>They were again silent. The freckled man seemed ashamed. His tall
+companion glowered at the scenery.</p>
+
+<p>"I am decided," said the freckled man suddenly. He got boldly up from
+the sand and strode away. The tall man followed, walking sarcastically
+and glaring down at the round, resolute figure before him.</p>
+
+<p>A bath-clerk was looking at the world with superior eyes through a hole
+in a board. To him the freckled man made application, waving his hands
+over his person in illustration of a snug fit. The bath-clerk thought
+profoundly. Eventually, he handed out a blue bundle with an air of
+having phenomenally solved the freckled man's dimensions.</p>
+
+<p>The latter resumed his resolute stride.</p>
+
+<p>"See here," said the tall man, following him, "I bet you've got a
+regular toga, you know. That fellow couldn't tell&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, he could," interrupted the freckled man, "I saw correct
+mathematics in his eyes."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, supposin' he has missed your size. Supposin'&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Tom," again interrupted the other, "produce your proud clothes and
+we'll go in."<a name="page_003" id="page_003"></a></p>
+
+<p>The tall man swore bitterly. He went to one of a row of little wooden
+boxes and shut himself in it. His companion repaired to a similar box.</p>
+
+<p>At first he felt like an opulent monk in a too-small cell, and he turned
+round two or three times to see if he could. He arrived finally into his
+bathing-dress. Immediately he dropped gasping upon a three-cornered
+bench. The suit fell in folds about his reclining form. There was
+silence, save for the caressing calls of the waves without.</p>
+
+<p>Then he heard two shoes drop on the floor in one of the little coops. He
+began to clamour at the boards like a penitent at an unforgiving door.</p>
+
+<p>"Tom," called he, "Tom&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>A voice of wrath, muffled by cloth, came through the walls. "You go t'
+blazes!"</p>
+
+<p>The freckled man began to groan, taking the occupants of the entire row
+of coops into his confidence.</p>
+
+<p>"Stop your noise," angrily cried the tall man from his hidden den. "You
+rented the bathing-suit, didn't you? Then&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"It ain't a bathing-suit," shouted the freckled man at the boards. "It's
+an auditorium, a ballroom, or something. It ain't a bathing-suit."</p>
+
+<p>The tall man came out of his box. His suit looked like blue skin. He
+walked with grandeur down the alley between the rows of coops. Stopping
+in front of his friend's door, he rapped on it with passionate
+knuckles.<a name="page_004" id="page_004"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Come out of there, y' ol' fool," said he, in an enraged whisper. "It's
+only your accursed vanity. Wear it anyhow. What difference does it make?
+I never saw such a vain ol' idiot!"</p>
+
+<p>As he was storming the door opened, and his friend confronted him. The
+tall man's legs gave way, and he fell against the opposite door.</p>
+
+<p>The freckled man regarded him sternly.</p>
+
+<p>"You're an ass," he said.</p>
+
+<p>His back curved in scorn. He walked majestically down the alley. There
+was pride in the way his chubby feet patted the boards. The tall man
+followed, weakly, his eyes riveted upon the figure ahead.</p>
+
+<p>As a disguise the freckled man had adopted the stomach of importance. He
+moved with an air of some sort of procession, across a board walk, down
+some steps, and out upon the sand.</p>
+
+<p>There was a pug dog and three old women on a bench, a man and a maid
+with a book and a parasol, a seagull drifting high in the wind, and a
+distant, tremendous meeting of sea and sky. Down on the wet sand stood a
+girl being wooed by the breakers.</p>
+
+<p>The freckled man moved with stately tread along the beach. The tall man,
+numb with amazement, came in the rear. They neared the girl.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly the tall man was seized with convulsions. He laughed, and the
+girl turned her head.<a name="page_005" id="page_005"></a></p>
+
+<p>She perceived the freckled man in the bathing-suit. An expression of
+wonderment overspread her charming face. It changed in a moment to a
+pearly smile.</p>
+
+<p>This smile seemed to smite the freckled man. He obviously tried to swell
+and fit his suit. Then he turned a shrivelling glance upon his
+companion, and fled up the beach. The tall man ran after him, pursuing
+with mocking cries that tingled his flesh like stings of insects. He
+seemed to be trying to lead the way out of the world. But at last he
+stopped and faced about.</p>
+
+<p>"Tom Sharp," said he, between his clenched teeth, "you are an
+unutterable wretch! I could grind your bones under my heel."</p>
+
+<p>The tall man was in a trance, with glazed eyes fixed on the
+bathing-dress. He seemed to be murmuring: "Oh, good Lord! Oh, good Lord!
+I never saw such a suit!"</p>
+
+<p>The freckled man made the gesture of an assassin.</p>
+
+<p>"Tom Sharp, you&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The other was still murmuring: "Oh, good Lord! I never saw such a suit!
+I never&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The freckled man ran down into the sea.<a name="page_006" id="page_006"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II.</h3>
+
+<p>The cool, swirling waters took his temper from him, and it became a
+thing that is lost in the ocean. The tall man floundered in, and the two
+forgot and rollicked in the waves.</p>
+
+<p>The freckled man, in endeavouring to escape from mankind, had left all
+save a solitary fisherman under a large hat, and three boys in
+bathing-dress, laughing and splashing upon a raft made of old spars.</p>
+
+<p>The two men swam softly over the ground swells.</p>
+
+<p>The three boys dived from their raft, and turned their jolly faces
+shorewards. It twisted slowly around and around, and began to move
+seaward on some unknown voyage. The freckled man laid his face to the
+water and swam toward the raft with a practised stroke. The tall man
+followed, his bended arm appearing and disappearing with the precision
+of machinery.</p>
+
+<p>The craft crept away, slowly and wearily, as if luring. The little
+wooden plate on the freckled man's head looked at the shore like a
+round, brown eye, but his gaze was fixed on the raft that slyly appeared
+to be waiting. The tall man used the little wooden plate as a beacon.</p>
+
+<p>At length the freckled man reached the raft and climbed aboard. He lay
+down on his back and<a name="page_007" id="page_007"></a> puffed. His bathing-dress spread about him like a
+dead balloon. The tall man came, snorted, shook his tangled locks and
+lay down by the side of his companion.</p>
+
+<p>They were overcome with a delicious drowsiness. The planks of the raft
+seemed to fit their tired limbs. They gazed dreamily up into the vast
+sky of summer.</p>
+
+<p>"This is great," said the tall man. His companion grunted blissfully.</p>
+
+<p>Gentle hands from the sea rocked their craft and lulled them to peace.
+Lapping waves sang little rippling sea-songs about them. The two men
+issued contented groans.</p>
+
+<p>"Tom," said the freckled man.</p>
+
+<p>"What?" said the other.</p>
+
+<p>"This is great."</p>
+
+<p>They lay and thought.</p>
+
+<p>A fish-hawk, soaring, suddenly turned and darted at the waves. The tall
+man indolently twisted his head and watched the bird plunge its claws
+into the water. It heavily arose with a silver gleaming fish.</p>
+
+<p>"That bird has got his feet wet again. It's a shame," murmured the tall
+man sleepily. "He must suffer from an endless cold in the head. He
+should wear rubber boots. They'd look great, too. If I was him,
+I'd&mdash;Great Scott!"</p>
+
+<p>He has partly arisen, and was looking at the shore.<a name="page_008" id="page_008"></a></p>
+
+<p>He began to scream. "Ted! Ted! Ted! Look!"</p>
+
+<p>"What's matter?" dreamily spoke the freckled man. "You remind me of when
+I put the bird-shot in your leg." He giggled softly.</p>
+
+<p>The agitated tall man made a gesture of supreme eloquence. His companion
+up-reared and turned a startled gaze shoreward.</p>
+
+<p>"Lord," he roared, as if stabbed.</p>
+
+<p>The land was a long, brown streak with a rim of green, in which sparkled
+the tin roofs of huge hotels. The hands from the sea had pushed them
+away. The two men sprang erect, and did a little dance of perturbation.</p>
+
+<p>"What shall we do? What shall we do?" moaned the freckled man, wriggling
+fantastically in his dead balloon.</p>
+
+<p>The changing shore seemed to fascinate the tall man, and for a time he
+did not speak.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly he concluded his minuet of horror. He wheeled about and faced
+the freckled man. He elaborately folded his arms.</p>
+
+<p>"So," he said, in slow, formidable tones. "So! This all comes from your
+accursed vanity, your bathing-suit, your idiocy; you have murdered your
+best friend."</p>
+
+<p>He turned away. His companion reeled as if stricken by an unexpected
+arm.<a name="page_009" id="page_009"></a></p>
+
+<p>He stretched out his hands. "Tom, Tom," wailed he, beseechingly, "don't
+be such a fool."</p>
+
+<p>The broad back of his friend was occupied by a contemptuous sneer.</p>
+
+<p>Three ships fell off the horizon. Landward, the hues were blending. The
+whistle of a locomotive sounded from an infinite distance as if tooting
+in heaven.</p>
+
+<p>"Tom! Tom! My dear boy," quavered the freckled man, "don't speak that
+way to me."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, of course not," said the other, still facing away and throwing
+the words over his shoulder. "You suppose I am going to accept all this
+calmly, don't you? Not make the slightest objection? Make no protest at
+all, hey?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I&mdash;I&mdash;" began the freckled man.</p>
+
+<p>The tall man's wrath suddenly exploded. "You've abducted me! That's the
+whole amount of it! You've abducted me!"</p>
+
+<p>"I ain't," protested the freckled man. "You must think I'm a fool."</p>
+
+<p>The tall man swore, and sitting down, dangled his legs angrily in the
+water. Natural law compelled his companion to occupy the other end of
+the raft.</p>
+
+<p>Over the waters little shoals of fish spluttered, raising tiny tempests.
+Languid jelly-fish floated near, tremulously waving a thousand legs. A
+row<a name="page_010" id="page_010"></a> of porpoises trundled along like a procession of cog-wheels. The
+sky became greyed save where over the land sunset colours were
+assembling.</p>
+
+<p>The two voyagers, back to back and at either end of the raft, quarrelled
+at length.</p>
+
+<p>"What did you want to follow me for?" demanded the freckled man in a
+voice of indignation.</p>
+
+<p>"If your figure hadn't been so like a bottle, we wouldn't be here,"
+replied the tall man.</p>
+
+<h3>CHAPTER III.</h3>
+
+<p>The fires in the west blazed away, and solemnity spread over the sea.
+Electric lights began to blink like eyes. Night menaced the voyagers
+with a dangerous darkness, and fear came to bind their souls together.
+They huddled fraternally in the middle of the raft.</p>
+
+<p>"I feel like a molecule," said the freckled man in subdued tones.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd give two dollars for a cigar," muttered the tall man.</p>
+
+<p>A V-shaped flock of ducks flew towards Barnegat, between the voyagers
+and a remnant of yellow sky. Shadows and winds came from the vanished
+eastern horizon.</p>
+
+<p>"I think I hear voices," said the freckled man.<a name="page_011" id="page_011"></a></p>
+
+<p>"That Dollie Ramsdell was an awfully nice girl," said the tall man.</p>
+
+<p>When the coldness of the sea night came to them, the freckled man found
+he could by a peculiar movement of his legs and arms encase himself in
+his bathing-dress. The tall man was compelled to whistle and shiver. As
+night settled finally over the sea, red and green lights began to dot
+the blackness. There were mysterious shadows between the waves.</p>
+
+<p>"I see things comin'," murmured the freckled man.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish I hadn't ordered that new dress-suit for the hop to-morrow
+night," said the tall man reflectively.</p>
+
+<p>The sea became uneasy and heaved painfully, like a lost bosom, when
+little forgotten heart-bells try to chime with a pure sound. The
+voyagers cringed at magnified foam on distant wave crests. A moon came
+and looked at them.</p>
+
+<p>"Somebody's here," whispered the freckled man.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish I had an almanac," remarked the tall man, regarding the moon.</p>
+
+<p>Presently they fell to staring at the red and green lights that twinkled
+about them.</p>
+
+<p>"Providence will not leave us," asserted the freckled man.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, we'll be picked up shortly. I owe money," said the tall man.<a name="page_012" id="page_012"></a></p>
+
+<p>He began to thrum on an imaginary banjo.</p>
+
+<p>"I have heard," said he, suddenly, "that captains with healthy ships
+beneath their feet will never turn back after having once started on a
+voyage. In that case we will be rescued by some ship bound for the
+golden seas of the south. Then, you'll be up to some of your confounded
+devilment, and we'll get put off. They'll maroon us! That's what they'll
+do! They'll maroon us! On an island with palm trees and sun-kissed
+maidens and all that. Sun-kissed maidens, eh? Great! They'd&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He suddenly ceased and turned to stone. At a distance a great, green eye
+was contemplating the sea wanderers.</p>
+
+<p>They stood up and did another dance. As they watched the eye grew
+larger.</p>
+
+<p>Directly the form of a phantom-like ship came into view. About the
+great, green eye there bobbed small yellow dots. The wanderers could
+hear a far-away creaking of unseen tackle and flapping of shadowy sails.
+There came the melody of the waters as the ship's prow thrusted its way.</p>
+
+<p>The tall man delivered an oration.</p>
+
+<p>"Ha!" he exclaimed, "here comes our rescuers. The brave fellows! How I
+long to take the manly captain by the hand! You will soon see a white
+boat with a star on its bow drop from the side of yon ship. Kind sailors
+in blue and white will help<a name="page_013" id="page_013"></a> us into the boat and conduct our wasted
+frames to the quarter-deck, where the handsome, bearded captain, with
+gold bands all around, will welcome us. Then in the hard-oak cabin,
+while the wine gurgles and the Havana's glow, we'll tell our tale of
+peril and privation."</p>
+
+<p>The ship came on like a black hurrying animal with froth-filled maw. The
+two wanderers stood up and clasped hands. Then they howled out a wild
+duet that rang over the wastes of sea.</p>
+
+<p>The cries seemed to strike the ship.</p>
+
+<p>Men with boots on yelled and ran about the deck. They picked up heavy
+articles and threw them down. They yelled more. After hideous creakings
+and flappings, the vessel stood still.</p>
+
+<p>In the meantime the wanderers had been chanting their song for help. Out
+in the blackness they beckoned to the ship and coaxed.</p>
+
+<p>A voice came to them.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello," it said.</p>
+
+<p>They puffed out their cheeks and began to shout. "Hello! Hello! Hello!"</p>
+
+<p>"Wot do yeh want?" said the voice.</p>
+
+<p>The two wanderers gazed at each other, and sat suddenly down on the
+raft. Some pall came sweeping over the sky and quenched their stars.</p>
+
+<p>But almost the tall man got up and brawled miscellaneous information. He
+stamped his foot, and frowning into the night, swore threateningly.<a name="page_014" id="page_014"></a></p>
+
+<p>The vessel seemed fearful of these moaning voices that called from a
+hidden cavern of the water. And now one voice was filled with a menace.
+A number of men with enormous limbs that threw vast shadows over the sea
+as the lanterns flickered, held a debate and made gestures.</p>
+
+<p>Off in the darkness, the tall man began to clamour like a mob. The
+freckled man sat in astounded silence, with his legs weak.</p>
+
+<p>After a time one of the men of enormous limbs seized a rope that was
+tugging at the stern and drew a small boat from the shadows. Three
+giants clambered in and rowed cautiously toward the raft. Silver water
+flashed in the gloom as the oars dipped.</p>
+
+<p>About fifty feet from the raft the boat stopped. "Who er you?" asked a
+voice.</p>
+
+<p>The tall man braced himself and explained. He drew vivid pictures, his
+twirling fingers illustrating like live brushes.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," said the three giants.</p>
+
+<p>The voyagers deserted the raft. They looked back, feeling in their
+hearts a mite of tenderness for the wet planks. Later, they wriggled up
+the side of the vessel and climbed over the railing.</p>
+
+<p>On deck they met a man.</p>
+
+<p>He held a lantern to their faces. "Got any chewin' tewbacca?" he
+inquired.</p>
+
+<p>"No," said the tall man, "we ain't."<a name="page_015" id="page_015"></a></p>
+
+<p>The man had a bronze face and solitary whiskers. Peculiar lines about
+his mouth were shaped into an eternal smile of derision. His feet were
+bare, and clung handily to crevices.</p>
+
+<p>Fearful trousers were supported by a piece of suspender that went up the
+wrong side of his chest and came down the right side of his back,
+dividing him into triangles.</p>
+
+<p>"Ezekiel P. Sanford, capt'in, schooner 'Mary Jones,' of N'yack, N.Y.,
+genelmen," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" said the tall man, "delighted, I'm sure."</p>
+
+<p>There were a few moments of silence. The giants were hovering in the
+gloom and staring.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly astonishment exploded the captain.</p>
+
+<p>"Wot th' devil&mdash;" he shouted, "wot th' devil yeh got on?"</p>
+
+<p>"Bathing-suits," said the tall man.</p>
+
+<h3>CHAPTER IV.</h3>
+
+<p>The schooner went on. The two voyagers sat down and watched. After a
+time they began to shiver. The soft blackness of the summer night passed
+away, and grey mists writhed over the sea. Soon lights of early dawn
+went changing across the sky, and the twin beacons on the highlands grew
+dim and sparkling faintly, as if a monster were<a name="page_016" id="page_016"></a> dying. The dawn
+penetrated the marrow of the two men in bathing-dress.</p>
+
+<p>The captain used to pause opposite them, hitch one hand in his
+suspender, and laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I be dog-hanged," he frequently said.</p>
+
+<p>The tall man grew furious. He snarled in a mad undertone to his
+companion. "This rescue ain't right. If I had known&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He suddenly paused, transfixed by the captain's suspender. "It's goin'
+to break," cried he, in an ecstatic whisper. His eyes grew large with
+excitement as he watched the captain laugh. "It'll break in a minute,
+sure."</p>
+
+<p>But the commander of the schooner recovered, and invited them to drink
+and eat. They followed him along the deck, and fell down a square black
+hole into the cabin.</p>
+
+<p>It was a little den, with walls of a vanished whiteness. A lamp shed an
+orange light. In a sort of recess two little beds were hiding. A wooden
+table, immovable, as if the craft had been builded around it, sat in the
+middle of the floor. Overhead the square hole was studded with a dozen
+stars. A foot-worn ladder led to the heavens.</p>
+
+<p>The captain produced ponderous crackers and some cold broiled ham. Then
+he vanished in the firmament like a fantastic comet.</p>
+
+<p>The freckled man sat quite contentedly like a<a name="page_017" id="page_017"></a> stout squaw in a blanket.
+The tall man walked about the cabin and sniffed. He was angered at the
+crudeness of the rescue, and his shrinking clothes made him feel too
+large. He contemplated his unhappy state.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly, he broke out. "I won't stand this, I tell you! Heavens and
+earth, look at the&mdash;say, what in the blazes did you want to get me in
+this thing for, anyhow? You're a fine old duffer, you are! Look at that
+ham!"</p>
+
+<p>The freckled man grunted. He seemed somewhat blissful. He was seated
+upon a bench, comfortably enwrapped in his bathing-dress.</p>
+
+<p>The tall man stormed about the cabin.</p>
+
+<p>"This is an outrage! I'll see the captain! I'll tell him what I think
+of&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He was interrupted by a pair of legs that appeared among the stars. The
+captain came down the ladder. He brought a coffee pot from the sky.</p>
+
+<p>The tall man bristled forward. He was going to denounce everything.</p>
+
+<p>The captain was intent upon the coffee pot, balancing it carefully, and
+leaving his unguided feet to find the steps of the ladder.</p>
+
+<p>But the wrath of the tall man faded. He twirled his fingers in
+excitement, and renewed his ecstatic whisperings to the freckled man.<a name="page_018" id="page_018"></a></p>
+
+<p>"It's going to break! Look, quick, look! It'll break in a minute!"</p>
+
+<p>He was transfixed with interest, forgetting his wrongs in staring at the
+perilous passage.</p>
+
+<p>But the captain arrived on the floor with triumphant suspenders.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said he, "after yeh have eat, maybe ye'd like t'sleep some! If
+so, yeh can sleep on them beds."</p>
+
+<p>The tall man made no reply, save in a strained undertone. "It'll break
+in about a minute! Look, Ted, look quick!"</p>
+
+<p>The freckled man glanced in a little bed on which were heaped boots and
+oilskins. He made a courteous gesture.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear sir, we could not think of depriving you of your beds. No,
+indeed. Just a couple of blankets if you have them, and we'll sleep very
+comfortable on these benches."</p>
+
+<p>The captain protested, politely twisting his back and bobbing his head.
+The suspenders tugged and creaked. The tall man partially suppressed a
+cry, and took a step forward.</p>
+
+<p>The freckled man was sleepily insistent, and shortly the captain gave
+over his deprecatory contortions. He fetched a pink quilt with yellow
+dots on it to the freckled man, and a black one with red roses on it to
+the tall man.<a name="page_019" id="page_019"></a></p>
+
+<p>Again he vanished in the firmament. The tall man gazed until the last
+remnant of trousers disappeared from the sky. Then he wrapped himself up
+in his quilt and lay down. The freckled man was puffing contentedly,
+swathed like an infant. The yellow polka-dots rose and fell on the vast
+pink of his chest.</p>
+
+<p>The wanderers slept. In the quiet could be heard the groanings of
+timbers as the sea seemed to crunch them together. The lapping of water
+along the vessel's side sounded like gaspings. An hundred spirits of the
+wind had got their wings entangled in the rigging, and, in soft voices,
+were pleading to be loosened.</p>
+
+<p>The freckled man was awakened by a foreign noise. He opened his eyes and
+saw his companion standing by his couch.</p>
+
+<p>His comrade's face was wane with suffering. His eyes glowed in the
+darkness. He raised his arms, spreading them out like a clergyman at a
+grave. He groaned deep in his chest.</p>
+
+<p>"Good Lord!" yelled the freckled man, starting up. "Tom, Tom, what's th'
+matter?"</p>
+
+<p>The tall man spoke in a fearful voice. "To New York," he said, "to New
+York in our bathing-suits."</p>
+
+<p>The freckled man sank back. The shadows of the cabin threw mysteries
+about the figure of the tall man, arrayed like some ancient and potent
+astrologer in the black quilt with the red roses on it.<a name="page_020" id="page_020"></a></p>
+
+<h3>CHAPTER V.</h3>
+
+<p>Directly the tall man went and lay down and began to groan.</p>
+
+<p>The freckled man felt the miseries of the world upon him. He grew angry
+at the tall man awakening him. They quarrelled.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said the tall man, finally, "we're in a fix."</p>
+
+<p>"I know that," said the other, sharply.</p>
+
+<p>They regarded the ceiling in silence.</p>
+
+<p>"What in the thunder are we going to do?" demanded the tall man, after a
+time. His companion was still silent. "Say," repeated he, angrily, "what
+in the thunder are we going to do?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure I don't know," said the freckled man in a dismal voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, think of something," roared the other. "Think of something, you
+old fool. You don't want to make any more idiots of yourself, do you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I ain't made an idiot of myself."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, think. Know anybody in the city?"</p>
+
+<p>"I know a fellow up in Harlem," said the freckled man.</p>
+
+<p>"You know a fellow up in Harlem," howled the<a name="page_021" id="page_021"></a> tall man. "Up in Harlem!
+How the dickens are we to&mdash;say, you're crazy!"</p>
+
+<p>"We can take a cab," cried the other, waxing indignant.</p>
+
+<p>The tall man grew suddenly calm. "Do you know any one else?" he asked,
+measuredly.</p>
+
+<p>"I know another fellow somewhere on Park Place."</p>
+
+<p>"Somewhere on Park Place," repeated the tall man in an unnatural manner.
+"Somewhere on Park Place." With an air of sublime resignation he turned
+his face to the wall.</p>
+
+<p>The freckled man sat erect and frowned in the direction of his
+companion. "Well, now, I suppose you are going to sulk. You make me ill!
+It's the best we can do, ain't it? Hire a cab and go look that fellow up
+on Park&mdash;What's that? You can't afford it? What nonsense! You are
+getting&mdash;Oh! Well, maybe we can beg some clothes of the captain. Eh? Did
+I see 'im. Certainly, I saw 'im. Yes, it is improbable that a man who
+wears trousers like that can have clothes to lend. No, I won't wear
+oilskins and a sou'-wester. To Athens? Of course not! I don't know where
+it is. Do you? I thought not. With all your grumbling about other
+people, you never know anything important yourself. What? Broadway? I'll
+be hanged first. We can get off at Harlem, man<a name="page_022" id="page_022"></a> alive. There are no cabs
+in Harlem. I don't think we can bribe a sailor to take us ashore and
+bring a cab to the dock, for the very simple reason that we have nothing
+to bribe him with. What? No, of course not. See here, Tom Sharp, don't
+you swear at me like that. I won't have it. What's that? I ain't,
+either. I ain't. What? I am not. It's no such thing. I ain't. I've got
+more than you have, anyway. Well, you ain't doing anything so very
+brilliant yourself&mdash;just lying there and cussin'." At length the tall
+man feigned to prodigiously snore. The freckled man thought with such
+vigour that he fell asleep.</p>
+
+<p>After a time he dreamed that he was in a forest where bass drums grew on
+trees. There came a strong wind that banged the fruit about like empty
+pods. A frightful din was in his ears.</p>
+
+<p>He awoke to find the captain of the schooner standing over him.</p>
+
+<p>"We're at New York now," said the captain, raising his voice above the
+thumping and banging that was being done on deck, "an' I s'pose you
+fellers wanta go ashore." He chuckled in an exasperating manner. "Jes'
+sing out when yeh wanta go," he added, leering at the freckled man.</p>
+
+<p>The tall man awoke, came over and grasped the captain by the throat.</p>
+
+<p>"If you laugh again I'll kill you," he said.<a name="page_023" id="page_023"></a></p>
+
+<p>The captain gurgled and waved his legs and arms.</p>
+
+<p>"In the first place," the tall man continued, "you rescued us in a
+deucedly shabby manner. It makes me ill to think of it. I've a mind to
+mop you 'round just for that. In the second place, your vessel is bound
+for Athens, N.Y., and there's no sense in it. Now, will you or will you
+not turn this ship about and take us back where our clothes are, or to
+Philadelphia, where we belong?"</p>
+
+<p>He furiously shook the captain. Then he eased his grip and awaited a
+reply.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't," yelled the captain, "I can't. This vessel don't belong to me.
+I've got to&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then," interrupted the tall man, "can you lend us some clothes?"</p>
+
+<p>"Hain't got none," replied the captain, promptly. His face was red, and
+his eyes were glaring.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then," said the tall man, "can you lend us some money?"</p>
+
+<p>"Hain't got none," replied the captain, promptly. Something overcame him
+and he laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"Thunderation," roared the tall man. He seized the captain, who began to
+have wriggling contortions. The tall man kneaded him as if he were
+biscuits. "You infernal scoundrel," he bellowed, "this whole affair is
+some wretched plot, and you are in it. I am about to kill you."<a name="page_024" id="page_024"></a></p>
+
+<p>The solitary whisker of the captain did acrobatic feats like a strange
+demon upon his chin. His eyes stood perilously from his head. The
+suspender wheezed and tugged like the tackle of a sail.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly the tall man released his hold. Great expectancy sat upon his
+features. "It's going to break," he cried, rubbing his hands.</p>
+
+<p>But the captain howled and vanished in the sky.</p>
+
+<p>The freckled man then came forward. He appeared filled with sarcasm.</p>
+
+<p>"So!" said he. "So, you've settled the matter. The captain is the only
+man in the world who can help us, and I daresay he'll do anything he can
+now."</p>
+
+<p>"That's all right," said the tall man. "If you don't like the way I run
+things you shouldn't have come on this trip at all."</p>
+
+<p>They had another quarrel.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of it they went on deck. The captain stood at the stern
+addressing the bow with opprobrious language. When he perceived the
+voyagers he began to fling his fists about in the air.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm goin' to put yeh off," he yelled. The wanderers stared at each
+other.</p>
+
+<p>"Hum," said the tall man.</p>
+
+<p>The freckled man looked at his companion. "He's going to put us off, you
+see," he said, complacently.<a name="page_025" id="page_025"></a></p>
+
+<p>The tall man began to walk about and move his shoulders. "I'd like to
+see you do it," he said, defiantly.</p>
+
+<p>The captain tugged at a rope. A boat came at his bidding.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd like to see you do it," the tall man repeated, continually. An
+imperturbable man in rubber boots climbed down in the boat and seized
+the oars. The captain motioned downward. His whisker had a triumphant
+appearance.</p>
+
+<p>The two wanderers looked at the boat. "I guess we'll have to get in,"
+murmured the freckled man.</p>
+
+<p>The tall man was standing like a granite column. "I won't," said he. "I
+won't! I don't care what you do, but I won't!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, but&mdash;" expostulated the other. They held a furious debate.</p>
+
+<p>In the meantime the captain was darting about making sinister gestures,
+but the back of the tall man held him at bay. The crew, much depleted by
+the departure of the imperturbable man into the boat, looked on from the
+bow.</p>
+
+<p>"You're a fool," the freckled man concluded his argument.</p>
+
+<p>"So?" inquired the tall man, highly exasperated.</p>
+
+<p>"So? Well, if you think you're so bright, we'll go in the boat, and then
+you'll see."</p>
+
+<p>He climbed down into the craft and seated himself in an ominous manner
+at the stern.<a name="page_026" id="page_026"></a></p>
+
+<p>"You'll see," he said to his companion, as the latter floundered heavily
+down. "You'll see!"</p>
+
+<p>The man in rubber boots calmly rowed the boat toward the shore. As they
+went, the captain leaned over the railing and laughed. The freckled man
+was seated very victoriously.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, wasn't this the right thing after all?" he inquired in a pleasant
+voice. The tall man made no reply.</p>
+
+<h3>CHAPTER VI.</h3>
+
+<p>As they neared the dock something seemed suddenly to occur to the
+freckled man.</p>
+
+<p>"Great heavens," he murmured. He stared at the approaching shore.</p>
+
+<p>"My, what a plight, Tommy," he quavered.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think so?" spoke up the tall man, "Why, I really thought you
+liked it." He laughed in a hard voice. "Lord, what a figure you'll cut."</p>
+
+<p>This laugh jarred the freckled man's soul. He became mad.</p>
+
+<p>"Thunderation, turn the boat around," he roared. "Turn 'er round, quick.
+Man alive, we can't&mdash;turn 'er round, d'ye hear."</p>
+
+<p>The tall man in the stern gazed at his companion with glowing eyes.<a name="page_027" id="page_027"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Certainly not," he said. "We're going on. You insisted upon it." He
+began to prod his companion with words.</p>
+
+<p>The freckled man stood up and waved his arms.</p>
+
+<p>"Sit down," said the tall man. "You'll tip the boat over."</p>
+
+<p>The other man began to shout.</p>
+
+<p>"Sit down," said the tall man again.</p>
+
+<p>Words bubbled from the freckled man's mouth. There was a little torrent
+of sentences that almost choked him. And he protested passionately with
+his hands.</p>
+
+<p>But the boat went on to the shadow of the docks. The tall man was intent
+upon balancing it as it rocked dangerously during his comrade's oration.</p>
+
+<p>"Sit down," he continually repeated.</p>
+
+<p>"I won't," raged the freckled man. "I won't do anything." The boat
+wobbled with these words.</p>
+
+<p>"Say," he continued, addressing the oarsman, "just turn this boat round,
+will you. Where in the thunder are you taking us to, anyhow?"</p>
+
+<p>The oarsman looked at the sky and thought. Finally he spoke. "I'm doin'
+what the cap'n sed."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what in th' blazes do I care what the cap'n sed?" demanded the
+freckled man. He took a violent step. "You just turn this round or&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The small craft reeled. Over one side water came flashing in. The
+freckled man cried out in<a name="page_028" id="page_028"></a> fear, and gave a jump to the other side. The
+tall man roared orders, and the oarsman made efforts. The boat acted for
+a moment like an animal on a slackened wire. Then it upset.</p>
+
+<p>"Sit down," said the tall man, in a final roar as he was plunged into
+the water. The oarsman dropped his oars to grapple with the gunwale. He
+went down saying unknown words. The freckled man's explanation or
+apology was strangled by the water.</p>
+
+<p>Two or three tugs let off whistles of astonishment, and continued on
+their paths. A man dosing on a dock aroused and began to caper. The
+passengers of a ferry-boat all ran to the near railing.</p>
+
+<p>A miraculous person in a small boat was bobbing on the waves near the
+piers. He sculled hastily toward the scene. It was a swirl of waters in
+the midst of which the dark bottom of the boat appeared, whale-like.</p>
+
+<p>Two heads suddenly came up. "839," said the freckled man, chokingly.
+"That's it! 839!"</p>
+
+<p>"What is?" said the tall man.</p>
+
+<p>"That's the number of that feller on Park Place. I just remembered."</p>
+
+<p>"You're the bloomingest&mdash;" the tall man said.</p>
+
+<p>"It wasn't my fault," interrupted his companion. "If you hadn't&mdash;" He
+tried to gesticulate, but one<a name="page_029" id="page_029"></a> hand held to the keel of the boat, and
+the other was supporting the form of the oarsman. The latter had fought
+a battle with his immense rubber boots and had been conquered.</p>
+
+<p>The rescuer in the other small boat came fiercely. As his craft glided
+up, he reached out and grasped the tall man by the collar and dragged
+him into the boat, interrupting what was, under the circumstances, a
+very brilliant flow of rhetoric directed at the freckled man. The
+oarsman of the wrecked craft was taken tenderly over the gunwale and
+laid in the bottom of the boat. Puffing and blowing, the freckled man
+climbed in.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll upset this one before we can get ashore," the other voyager
+remarked.</p>
+
+<p>As they turned toward the land they saw that the nearest dock was lined
+with people. The freckled man gave a little moan.</p>
+
+<p>But the staring eyes of the crowd were fixed on the limp form of the man
+in rubber boots. A hundred hands reached down to help lift the body up.
+On the dock some men grabbed it and began to beat it and roll it. A
+policeman tossed the spectators about. Each individual in the heaving
+crowd sought to fasten his eyes on the blue-tinted face of the man in
+the rubber boots. They surged to and fro, while the policeman beat them
+indiscriminately.<a name="page_030" id="page_030"></a></p>
+
+<p>The wanderers came modestly up the dock and gazed shrinkingly at the
+throng. They stood for a moment, holding their breath to see the first
+finger of amazement levelled at them.</p>
+
+<p>But the crowd bended and surged in absorbing anxiety to view the man in
+rubber boots, whose face fascinated them. The sea-wanderers were as
+though they were not there.</p>
+
+<p>They stood without the jam and whispered hurriedly.</p>
+
+<p>"839," said the freckled man.</p>
+
+<p>"All right," said the tall man.</p>
+
+<p>Under the pommeling hands the oarsman showed signs of life. The voyagers
+watched him make a protesting kick at the leg of the crowd, the while
+uttering angry groans.</p>
+
+<p>"He's better," said the tall man, softly; "let's make off."</p>
+
+<p>Together they stole noiselessly up the dock. Directly in front of it
+they found a row of six cabs.</p>
+
+<p>The drivers on top were filled with a mighty curiosity. They had driven
+hurriedly from the adjacent ferry-house when they had seen the first
+running sign of an accident. They were straining on their toes and
+gazing at the tossing backs of the men in the crowd.</p>
+
+<p>The wanderers made a little detour, and then<a name="page_031" id="page_031"></a> went rapidly towards a
+cab. They stopped in front of it and looked up.</p>
+
+<p>"Driver," called the tall man, softly.</p>
+
+<p>The man was intent.</p>
+
+<p>"Driver," breathed the freckled man. They stood for a moment and gazed
+imploringly.</p>
+
+<p>The cabman suddenly moved his feet. "By Jimmy, I bet he's a gonner," he
+said, in an ecstacy, and he again relapsed into a statue.</p>
+
+<p>The freckled man groaned and wrung his hands. The tall man climbed into
+the cab.</p>
+
+<p>"Come in here," he said to his companion. The freckled man climbed in,
+and the tall man reached over and pulled the door shut. Then he put his
+head out the window.</p>
+
+<p>"Driver," he roared, sternly, "839 Park Place&mdash;and quick."</p>
+
+<p>The driver looked down and met the eye of the tall man. "Eh?&mdash;Oh&mdash;839?
+Park Place? Yessir." He reluctantly gave his horse a clump on the back.
+As the conveyance rattled off the wanderers huddled back among the dingy
+cushions and heaved great breaths of relief.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it's all over," said the freckled man, finally. "We're about out
+of it. And quicker than I expected. Much quicker. It looked to me
+sometimes that we were doomed. I am thankful to find it not so. I am
+rejoiced. And I hope and<a name="page_032" id="page_032"></a> trust that you&mdash;well, I don't wish,
+to&mdash;perhaps it is not the proper time to&mdash;that is, I don't wish to
+intrude a moral at an inopportune moment, but, my dear, dear fellow, I
+think the time is ripe to point out to you that your obstinacy, your
+selfishness, your villainous temper, and your various other faults can
+make it just as unpleasant for your ownself, my dear boy, as they
+frequently do for other people. You can see what you brought us to, and
+I most sincerely hope, my dear, dear fellow, that I shall soon see those
+signs in you which shall lead me to believe that you have become a wiser
+man."<a name="page_033" id="page_033"></a></p>
+
+<h2><a name="SPITZBERGEN_TALES" id="SPITZBERGEN_TALES"></a>SPITZBERGEN TALES</h2>
+
+<p><a name="page_034" id="page_034"></a></p>
+
+<p><a name="page_035" id="page_035"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="THE_KICKING_TWELFTH" id="THE_KICKING_TWELFTH"></a>THE KICKING TWELFTH</h3>
+
+<p>The Spitzbergen army was backed by tradition of centuries of victory. In
+its chronicles, occasional defeats were not printed in italics, but were
+likely to appear as glorious stands against overwhelming odds. A
+favourite way to dispose of them was frankly to attribute them to the
+blunders of the civilian heads of government. This was very good for the
+army, and probably no army had more self-confidence. When it was
+announced that an expeditionary force was to be sent to Rostina to
+chastise an impudent people, a hundred barrack squares filled with
+excited men, and a hundred sergeant-majors hurried silently through the
+groups, and succeeded in looking as if they were the repositories of the
+secrets of empire. Officers on leave sped joyfully back to their
+harness, and recruits were abused with unflagging devotion by every man,
+from colonels to privates of experience.</p>
+
+<p>The Twelfth Regiment of the Line&mdash;the Kicking Twelfth&mdash;was consumed with
+a dread that it was not to be included in the expedition, and the
+regiment<a name="page_036" id="page_036"></a> formed itself into an informal indignation meeting. Just as
+they had proved that a great outrage was about to be perpetrated,
+warning orders arrived to hold themselves in readiness for active
+service abroad&mdash;in Rostina. The barrack yard was in a flash transferred
+into a blue-and-buff pandemonium, and the official bugle itself hardly
+had power to quell the glad disturbance.</p>
+
+<p>Thus it was that early in the spring the Kicking Twelfth&mdash;sixteen
+hundred men in service equipment&mdash;found itself crawling along a road in
+Rostina. They did not form part of the main force, but belonged to a
+column of four regiments of foot, two batteries of field guns, a battery
+of mountain howitzers, a regiment of horse, and a company of engineers.
+Nothing had happened. The long column had crawled without amusement of
+any kind through a broad green valley. Big white farm-houses dotted the
+slopes; but there was no sign of man or beast, and no smoke from the
+chimneys. The column was operating from its own base, and its general
+was expected to form a junction with the main body at a given point.</p>
+
+<p>A squadron of the cavalry was fanned out ahead, scouting, and day by day
+the trudging infantry watched the blue uniforms of the horsemen as they
+came and went. Sometimes there would sound the faint thuds of a few
+shots, but the cavalry was unable to find anything to engage.<a name="page_037" id="page_037"></a></p>
+
+<p>The Twelfth had no record of foreign service, and it could hardly be
+said that it had served as a unit in the great civil war, when His
+Majesty the King had whipped the Pretender. At that time the regiment
+had suffered from two opinions, so that it was impossible for either
+side to depend upon it. Many men had deserted to the standard of the
+Pretender, and a number of officers had drawn their swords for him. When
+the King, a thorough soldier, looked at the remnant, he saw that they
+lacked the spirit to be of great help to him in the tremendous battles
+which he was waging for his throne. And so this emaciated Twelfth was
+sent off to a corner of the kingdom to guard a dockyard, where some of
+the officers so plainly expressed their disapproval of this policy that
+the regiment received its steadfast name, the Kicking Twelfth.</p>
+
+<p>At the time of which I am writing the Twelfth had a few veteran officers
+and well-bitten sergeants; but the body of the regiment was composed of
+men who had never heard a shot fired excepting on the rifle-range. But
+it was an experience for which they longed, and when the moment came for
+the corps' cry&mdash;"Kim up, the Kickers"&mdash;there was not likely to be a man
+who would not go tumbling after his leaders.</p>
+
+<p>Young Timothy Lean was a second lieutenant in the first company of the
+third battalion, and just<a name="page_038" id="page_038"></a> at this time he was pattering along at the
+flank of the men, keeping a fatherly lookout for boots that hurt and
+packs that sagged. He was extremely bored. The mere far-away sound of
+desultory shooting was not war as he had been led to believe it.</p>
+
+<p>It did not appear that behind that freckled face and under that red hair
+there was a mind which dreamed of blood. He was not extremely anxious to
+kill somebody, but he was very fond of soldiering&mdash;it had been the
+career of his father and of his grandfather&mdash;and he understood that the
+profession of arms lost much of its point unless a man shot at people
+and had people shoot at him. Strolling in the sun through a practically
+deserted country might be a proper occupation for a divinity student on
+a vacation, but the soul of Timothy Lean was in revolt at it. Some times
+at night he would go morosely to the camp of the cavalry and hear the
+infant subalterns laughingly exaggerate the comedy side of the
+adventures which they had had out with small patrols far ahead. Lean
+would sit and listen in glum silence to these tales, and dislike the
+young officers&mdash;many of them old military school friends&mdash;for having had
+experience in modern warfare.</p>
+
+<p>"Anyhow," he said savagely, "presently you'll be getting into a lot of
+trouble, and then the Foot will have to come along and pull you out. We
+always do. That's history."<a name="page_039" id="page_039"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Oh, we can take care of ourselves," said the Cavalry, with good-natured
+understanding of his mood.</p>
+
+<p>But the next day even Lean blessed the cavalry, for excited troopers
+came whirling back from the front, bending over their speeding horses,
+and shouting wildly and hoarsely for the infantry to clear the way. Men
+yelled at them from the roadside as courier followed courier, and from
+the distance ahead sounded in quick succession six booms from field
+guns. The information possessed by the couriers was no longer precious.
+Everybody knew what a battery meant when it spoke. The bugles cried out,
+and the long column jolted into a halt. Old Colonel Sponge went bouncing
+in his saddle back to see the general, and the regiment sat down in the
+grass by the roadside, and waited in silence. Presently the second
+squadron of the cavalry trotted off along the road in a cloud of dust,
+and in due time old Colonel Sponge came bouncing back, and palavered his
+three majors and his adjutant. Then there was more talk by the majors,
+and gradually through the correct channels spread information which in
+due time reached Timothy Lean.</p>
+
+<p>The enemy, 5000 strong, occupied a pass at the head of the valley some
+four miles beyond. They had three batteries well posted. Their infantry
+was entrenched. The ground in their front was crossed<a name="page_040" id="page_040"></a> and lined with
+many ditches and hedges; but the enemy's batteries were so posted that
+it was doubtful if a ditch would ever prove convenient as shelter for
+the Spitzbergen infantry.</p>
+
+<p>There was a fair position for the Spitzbergen artillery 2300 yards from
+the enemy. The cavalry had succeeded in driving the enemy's skirmishers
+back upon the main body; but, of course, had only tried to worry them a
+little. The position was almost inaccessible on the enemy's right, owing
+to steep hills, which had been crowned by small parties of infantry. The
+enemy's left, although guarded by a much larger force, was approachable,
+and might be flanked. This was what the cavalry had to say, and it added
+briefly a report of two troopers killed and five wounded.</p>
+
+<p>Whereupon Major-General Richie, commanding a force of 7500 men of His
+Majesty of Spitzbergen, set in motion, with a few simple words, the
+machinery which would launch his army at the enemy. The Twelfth
+understood the orders when they saw the smart young aide approaching old
+Colonel Sponge, and they rose as one man, apparently afraid that they
+would be late. There was a clank of accoutrements. Men shrugged their
+shoulders tighter against their packs, and thrusting their thumbs
+between their belts and their tunics, they wriggled into a closer fit
+with regard to the heavy ammunition<a name="page_041" id="page_041"></a> equipment. It is curious to note
+that almost every man took off his cap, and looked contemplatively into
+it as if to read a maker's name. Then they replaced their caps with
+great care. There was little talking, and it was not observable that a
+single soldier handed a token or left a comrade with a message to be
+delivered in case he should be killed. They did not seem to think of
+being killed; they seemed absorbed in a desire to know what would
+happen, and how it would look when it was happening. Men glanced
+continually at their officers in a plain desire to be quick to
+understand the very first order that would be given; and officers looked
+gravely at their men, measuring them, feeling their temper, worrying
+about them.</p>
+
+<p>A bugle called; there were sharp cries, and the Kicking Twelfth was off
+to battle.</p>
+
+<p>The regiment had the right of line in the infantry brigade, and the men
+tramped noisily along the white road, every eye was strained ahead; but,
+after all, there was nothing to be seen but a dozen farms&mdash;in short, a
+country-side. It resembled the scenery in Spitzbergen; every man in the
+Kicking Twelfth had often confronted a dozen such farms with a composure
+which amounted to indifference. But still down the road came galloping
+troopers, who delivered information to Colonel Sponge and then galloped
+on. In time the Twelfth came to<a name="page_042" id="page_042"></a> the top of a rise, and below them on
+the plain was the heavy black streak of a Spitzbergen squadron, and
+behind the squadron loomed the grey bare hill of the Rostina position.</p>
+
+<p>There was a little of skirmish firing. The Twelfth reached a knoll,
+which the officers easily recognised as the place described by the
+cavalry as suitable for the Spitzbergen guns. The men swarmed up it in a
+peculiar formation. They resembled a crowd coming off a race track; but,
+nevertheless, there was no stray sheep. It was simply that the ground on
+which actual battles are fought is not like a chess board. And after
+them came swinging a six-gun battery, the guns wagging from side to side
+as the long line turned out of the road, and the drivers using their
+whips as the leading horses scrambled at the hill. The halted Twelfth
+lifted its voice and spoke amiably, but with point, to the battery.</p>
+
+<p>"Go on, Guns! We'll take care of you. Don't be afraid. Give it to them!"
+The teams&mdash;lead, swing and wheel&mdash;struggled and slipped over the steep
+and uneven ground; and the gunners, as they clung to their springless
+positions, wore their usual and natural airs of unhappiness. They made
+no reply to the infantry. Once upon the top of the hill, however, these
+guns were unlimbered in a flash, and directly the infantry could hear
+the loud voice of an officer drawling out the time for fuses. A<a name="page_043" id="page_043"></a> moment
+later the first 3·2 bellowed out, and there could be heard the swish and
+the snarl of a fleeting shell.</p>
+
+<p>Colonel Sponge and a number of officers climbed to the battery's
+position; but the men of the regiment sat in the shelter of the hill,
+like so many blindfolded people, and wondered what they would have been
+able to see if they had been officers. Sometimes the shells of the enemy
+came sweeping over the top of the hill, and burst in great brown
+explosions in the fields to the rear. The men looked after them and
+laughed. To the rear could be seen also the mountain battery coming at a
+comic trot, with every man obviously in a deep rage with every mule. If
+a man can put in long service with a mule battery and come out of it
+with an amiable disposition, he should be presented with a medal
+weighing many ounces. After the mule battery came a long black winding
+thing, which was three regiments of Spitzbergen infantry; and at the
+backs of them and to the right was an inky square, which was the
+remaining Spitzbergen guns. General Richie and his staff clattered up
+the hill. The blindfolded Twelfth sat still. The inky square suddenly
+became a long racing line. The howitzers joined their little bark to the
+thunder of the guns on the hill, and the three regiments of infantry
+came on. The Twelfth sat still.<a name="page_044" id="page_044"></a></p>
+
+<p>Of a sudden a bugle rang its warning, and the officers shouted. Some
+used the old cry, "Attention! Kim up, the Kickers!"&mdash;and the Twelfth
+knew that it had been told to go on. The majority of the men expected to
+see great things as soon as they rounded the shoulder of the hill; but
+there was nothing to be seen save a complicated plain and the grey
+knolls occupied by the enemy. Many company commanders in low voices
+worked at their men, and said things which do not appear in the written
+reports. They talked soothingly; they talked indignantly; and they
+talked always like fathers. And the men heard no sentences completely;
+they heard no specific direction, these wide-eyed men. They understood
+that there was being delivered some kind of exhortation to do as they
+had been taught, and they also understood that a superior intelligence
+was anxious over their behaviour and welfare.</p>
+
+<p>There was a great deal of floundering through hedges, climbing of walls
+and jumping of ditches. Curiously original privates tried to find new
+and easier ways for themselves, instead of following the men in front of
+them. Officers had short fits of fury over these people. The more
+originality they possessed, the more likely they were to become
+separated from their companies. Colonel Sponge was making an exciting
+progress on a big charger.<a name="page_045" id="page_045"></a> When the first song of the bullets came from
+above, the men wondered why he sat so high; the charger seemed as tall
+as the Eiffel Tower. But if he was high in the air, he had a fine view,
+and that supposedly is why people ascend the Eiffel Tower. Very often he
+had been a joke to them, but when they saw this fat, old gentleman so
+coolly treating the strange new missiles which hummed in the air, it
+struck them suddenly that they had wronged him seriously; and a man who
+could attain the command of a Spitzbergen regiment was entitled to
+general respect. And they gave him a sudden, quick affection&mdash;an
+affection that would make them follow him heartily, trustfully,
+grandly&mdash;this fat, old gentleman, seated on a too-big horse. In a flash
+his tousled grey head, his short, thick legs, even his paunch, had
+become specially and humorously endeared to them. And this is the way of
+soldiers.</p>
+
+<p>But still the Twelfth had not yet come to the place where tumbling
+bodies begin their test of the very heart of a regiment. They backed
+through more hedges, jumped more ditches, slid over more walls. The
+Rostina artillery had seemed to be asleep; but suddenly the guns aroused
+like dogs from their kennels, and around the Twelfth there began a wild,
+swift screeching. There arose cries to hurry, to come on; and, as the
+rifle bullets began to plunge into them, the men saw the high,
+formidable<a name="page_046" id="page_046"></a> hills of the enemy's right, and perfectly understood that
+they were doomed to storm them. The cheering thing was the sudden
+beginning of a tremendous uproar on the enemy's left.</p>
+
+<p>Every man ran, hard, tense, breathless. When they reached the foot of
+the hills, they thought they had won the charge already, but they were
+electrified to see officers above them waving their swords and yelling
+with anger, surprise, and shame. With a long murmurous outcry the
+Twelfth began to climb the hill; and as they went and fell, they could
+hear frenzied shouts&mdash;"Kim up, the Kickers!" The pace was slow. It was
+like the rising of a tide; it was determined, almost relentless in its
+appearance, but it was slow. If a man fell there was a chance that he
+would land twenty yards below the point where he was hit. The Kickers
+crawled, their rifles in their left hands as they pulled and tugged
+themselves up with their right hands. Ever arose the shout, "Kim up, the
+Kickers!" Timothy Lean, his face flaming, his eyes wild, yelled it back
+as if he were delivering the gospel.</p>
+
+<p>The Kickers came up. The enemy&mdash;they had been in small force, thinking
+the hills safe enough from attack&mdash;retreated quickly from this
+preposterous advance, and not a bayonet in the Twelfth saw blood;
+bayonets very seldom do.</p>
+
+<p>The homing of this successful charge wore an<a name="page_047" id="page_047"></a> unromantic aspect. About
+twenty windless men suddenly arrived, and threw themselves upon the
+crest of the hill, and breathed. And these twenty were joined by others,
+and still others, until almost 1100 men of the Twelfth lay upon the
+hilltop, while the regiment's track was marked by body after body, in
+groups and singly. The first officer&mdash;perchance the first man, one never
+can be certain&mdash;the first officer to gain the top of the hill was
+Timothy Lean, and such was the situation that he had the honour to
+receive his colonel with a bashful salute.</p>
+
+<p>The regiment knew exactly what it had done; it did not have to wait to
+be told by the Spitzbergen newspapers. It had taken a formidable
+position with the loss of about five hundred men, and it knew it. It
+knew, too, that it was great glory for the Kicking Twelfth; and as the
+men lay rolling on their bellies, they expressed their joy in a wild
+cry&mdash;"Kim up, the Kickers!" For a moment there was nothing but joy, and
+then suddenly company commanders were besieged by men who wished to go
+down the path of the charge and look for their mates. The answers were
+without the quality of mercy; they were short, snapped, quick words,
+"No; you can't."</p>
+
+<p>The attack on the enemy's left was sounding in great rolling crashes.
+The shells in their flight through the air made a noise as of red-hot
+iron plunged into water, and stray bullets nipped near the ears of the
+Kickers.<a name="page_048" id="page_048"></a></p>
+
+<p>The Kickers looked and saw. The battle was below them. The enemy were
+indicated by a long, noisy line of gossamer smoke, although there could
+be seen a toy battery with tiny men employed at the guns. All over the
+field the shrapnel was bursting, making quick bulbs of white smoke. Far
+away, two regiments of Spitzbergen infantry were charging, and at the
+distance this charge looked like a casual stroll. It appeared that small
+black groups of men were walking meditatively toward the Rostina
+entrenchments.</p>
+
+<p>There would have been orders given sooner to the Twelfth, but
+unfortunately Colonel Sponge arrived on top of the hill without a breath
+of wind in his body. He could not have given an order to save the
+regiment from being wiped off the earth. Finally he was able to gasp out
+something and point at the enemy. Timothy Lean ran along the line
+yelling to the men to sight at 800 yards; and like a slow and ponderous
+machine the regiment again went to work. The fire flanked a great part
+of the enemy's trenches.</p>
+
+<p>It could be said that there were only two prominent points of view
+expressed by the men after their victorious arrival on the crest. One
+was defined in the exulting use of the corps' cry. The other was a
+grief-stricken murmur which is invariably heard after a fight&mdash;"My God,
+we're all cut to pieces!"<a name="page_049" id="page_049"></a></p>
+
+<p>Colonel Sponge sat on the ground and impatiently waited for his wind to
+return. As soon as it did, he arose and cried out, "Form up, and we'll
+charge again! We will win this battle as soon as we can hit them!" The
+shouts of the officers sounded wild, like men yelling on ship-board in a
+gale. And the obedient Kickers arose for their task. It was running down
+hill this time. The mob of panting men poured over the stones.</p>
+
+<p>But the enemy had not been blind to the great advantage gained by the
+Twelfth, and they now turned upon them a desperate fire of small arms.
+Men fell in every imaginable way, and their accoutrements rattled on the
+rocky ground. Some landed with a crash, floored by some tremendous
+blows; others dropped gently down like sacks of meal; with others, it
+would positively appear that some spirit had suddenly seized them by
+their ankles and jerked their legs from under them. Many officers were
+down, but Colonel Sponge, stuttering and blowing, was still upright. He
+was almost the last man in the charge, but not to his shame, rather to
+his stumpy legs. At one time it seemed that the assault would be lost.
+The effect of the fire was somewhat as if a terrible cyclone were
+blowing in the men's faces. They wavered, lowering their heads and
+shouldering weakly, as if it were impossible to make headway against the
+wind of battle. It was the<a name="page_050" id="page_050"></a> moment of despair, the moment of the heroism
+which comes to the chosen of the war-god.</p>
+
+<p>The colonel's cry broke and screeched absolute hatred; other officers
+simply howled; and the men, silent, debased, seemed to tighten their
+muscles for one last effort. Again they pushed against this mysterious
+power of the air, and once more the regiment was charging. Timothy Lean,
+agile and strong, was well in advance; and afterwards he reflected that
+the men who had been nearest to him were an old grizzled sergeant who
+would have gone to hell for the honour of the regiment, and a pie-faced
+lad who had been obliged to lie about his age in order to get into the
+army.</p>
+
+<p>There was no shock of meeting. The Twelfth came down on a corner of the
+trenches, and as soon as the enemy had ascertained that the Twelfth was
+certain to arrive, they scuttled out, running close to the earth and
+spending no time in glances backward. In these days it is not discreet
+to wait for a charge to come home. You observe the charge, you attempt
+to stop it, and if you find that you can't, it is better to retire
+immediately to some other place. The Rostina soldiers were not heroes,
+perhaps, but they were men of sense. A maddened and badly-frightened mob
+of Kickers came tumbling into the trench, and shot at the backs of
+fleeing men. And at that very moment the action was won, and won<a name="page_051" id="page_051"></a> by the
+Kickers. The enemy's flank was entirely crippled, and, knowing this, he
+did not await further and more disastrous information. The Twelfth
+looked at themselves and knew that they had a record. They sat down and
+grinned patronisingly as they saw the batteries galloping to advance
+position to shell the retreat, and they really laughed as the cavalry
+swept tumultuously forward.</p>
+
+<p>The Twelfth had no more concern with the battle. They had won it, and
+the subsequent proceedings were only amusing.</p>
+
+<p>There was a call from the flank, and the men wearily adjusted themselves
+as General Richie, stern and grim as a Roman, looked with his straight
+glance at a hammered and thin and dirty line of figures, which was His
+Majesty's Twelfth Regiment of the Line. When opposite old Colonel
+Sponge, a podgy figure standing at attention, the general's face set in
+still more grim and stern lines. He took off his helmet. "Kim up, the
+Kickers!" said he. He replaced his helmet and rode off. Down the cheeks
+of the little fat colonel rolled tears. He stood like a stone for a long
+moment, and wheeled in supreme wrath upon his surprised adjutant.
+"Delahaye, you d&mdash;d fool, don't stand there staring like a monkey! Go,
+tell young Lean I want to see him." The adjutant jumped as if he were on
+springs, and went after Lean. That young officer presented himself<a name="page_052" id="page_052"></a>
+directly, his face covered with disgraceful smudges, and he had also
+torn his breeches. He had never seen the colonel in such a rage. "Lean,
+you young whelp! you&mdash;you're a good boy." And even as the general had
+turned away from the colonel, the colonel turned away from the
+lieutenant.</p>
+
+<h3><a name="THE_UPTURNED_FACE" id="THE_UPTURNED_FACE"></a>THE UPTURNED FACE.</h3>
+
+<p>"What will we do now?" said the adjutant, troubled and excited.</p>
+
+<p>"Bury him," said Timothy Lean.</p>
+
+<p>The two officers looked down close to their toes where lay the body of
+their comrade. The face was chalk-blue; gleaming eyes stared at the sky.
+Over the two upright figures was a windy sound of bullets, and on the
+top of the hill Lean's prostrate company of Spitzbergen infantry was
+firing measured volleys.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you think it would be better&mdash;" began the adjutant, "we might
+leave him until to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Lean. "I can't hold that post an hour longer. I've got to
+fall back, and we've got to bury old Bill."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course," said the adjutant, at once. "Your men got intrenching
+tools?"<a name="page_053" id="page_053"></a></p>
+
+<p>Lean shouted back to his little line, and two men came slowly, one with
+a pick, one with a shovel. They started in the direction of the Rostina
+sharpshooters. Bullets cracked near their ears. "Dig here," said Lean
+gruffly. The men, thus caused to lower their glances to the turf, became
+hurried and frightened merely because they could not look to see whence
+the bullets came. The dull beat of the pick striking the earth sounded
+amid the swift snap of close bullets. Presently the other private began
+to shovel.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose," said the adjutant, slowly, "we'd better search his clothes
+for&mdash;things."</p>
+
+<p>Lean nodded. Together in curious abstraction they looked at the body.
+Then Lean stirred his shoulders suddenly, arousing himself.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he said, "we'd better see what he's got." He dropped to his
+knees, and his hands approached the body of the dead officer. But his
+hands wavered over the buttons of the tunic. The first button was
+brick-red with drying blood, and he did not seem to dare touch it.</p>
+
+<p>"Go on," said the adjutant, hoarsely.</p>
+
+<p>Lean stretched his wooden hand, and his fingers fumbled the
+blood-stained buttons. At last he rose with ghastly face. He had
+gathered a watch, a whistle, a pipe, a tobacco pouch, a handkerchief, a
+little case of cards and papers. He looked at the<a name="page_054" id="page_054"></a> adjutant. There was a
+silence. The adjutant was feeling that he had been a coward to make Lean
+do all the grizzly business.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Lean, "that's all, I think. You have his sword and
+revolver?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said the adjutant, his face working, and then he burst out in a
+sudden strange fury at the two privates. "Why don't you hurry up with
+that grave? What are you doing, anyhow? Hurry, do you hear? I never saw
+such stupid&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Even as he cried out in his passion the two men were labouring for their
+lives. Ever overhead the bullets were spitting.</p>
+
+<p>The grave was finished. It was not a masterpiece&mdash;a poor little shallow
+thing. Lean and the adjutant again looked at each other in a curious
+silent communication.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly the adjutant croaked out a weird laugh. It was a terrible
+laugh, which had its origin in that part of the mind which is first
+moved by the singing of the nerves. "Well," he said, humorously to Lean,
+"I suppose we had best tumble him in."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Lean. The two privates stood waiting, bent over their
+implements. "I suppose," said Lean, "it would be better if we laid him
+in ourselves."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said the adjutant. Then apparently remembering<a name="page_055" id="page_055"></a> that he had made
+Lean search the body, he stooped with great fortitude and took hold of
+the dead officer's clothing. Lean joined him. Both were particular that
+their fingers should not feel the corpse. They tugged away; the corpse
+lifted, heaved, toppled, flopped into the grave, and the two officers,
+straightening, looked again at each other&mdash;they were always looking at
+each other. They sighed with relief.</p>
+
+<p>The adjutant said, "I suppose we should&mdash;we should say something. Do you
+know the service, Tim?"</p>
+
+<p>"They don't read the service until the grave is filled in," said Lean,
+pressing his lips to an academic expression.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't they?" said the adjutant, shocked that he had made the mistake.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, well," he cried, suddenly, "let us&mdash;let us say something&mdash;while he
+can hear us."</p>
+
+<p>"All right," said Lean. "Do you know the service?"</p>
+
+<p>"I can't remember a line of it," said the adjutant.</p>
+
+<p>Lean was extremely dubious. "I can repeat two lines, but&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, do it," said the adjutant. "Go as far as you can. That's better
+than nothing. And the beasts have got our range exactly."<a name="page_056" id="page_056"></a></p>
+
+<p>Lean looked at his two men. "Attention," he barked. The privates came to
+attention with a click, looking much aggrieved. The adjutant lowered his
+helmet to his knee. Lean, bareheaded, stood over the grave. The Rostina
+sharpshooters fired briskly.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh Father, our friend has sunk in the deep waters of death, but his
+spirit has leaped toward Thee as the bubble arises from the lips of the
+drowning. Perceive, we beseech, Oh Father, the little flying bubble,
+and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Lean, although husky and ashamed, had suffered no hesitation up to this
+point, but he stopped with a hopeless feeling and looked at the corpse.</p>
+
+<p>The adjutant moved uneasily. "And from Thy superb heights&mdash;" he began,
+and then he too came to an end.</p>
+
+<p>"And from Thy superb heights," said Lean.</p>
+
+<p>The adjutant suddenly remembered a phrase in the back part of the
+Spitzbergen burial service, and he exploited it with the triumphant
+manner of a man who has recalled everything, and can go on.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh God, have mercy&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh God, have mercy&mdash;" said Lean.</p>
+
+<p>"Mercy," repeated the adjutant, in quick failure.</p>
+
+<p>"Mercy," said Lean. And then he was moved by some violence of feeling,
+for he turned suddenly upon his two men and tigerishly said, "Throw the
+dirt in."<a name="page_057" id="page_057"></a></p>
+
+<p>The fire of the Rostina sharpshooters was accurate and continuous.</p>
+
+<p class="ast">* * * * * * *</p>
+
+<p>One of the aggrieved privates came forward with his shovel. He lifted
+his first shovel-load of earth, and for a moment of inexplicable
+hesitation it was held poised above this corpse, which from its
+chalk-blue face looked keenly out from the grave. Then the soldier
+emptied his shovel on&mdash;on the feet.</p>
+
+<p>Timothy Lean felt as if tons had been swiftly lifted from off his
+forehead. He had felt that perhaps the private might empty the shovel
+on&mdash;on the face. It had been emptied on the feet. There was a great
+point gained there&mdash;ha, ha!&mdash;the first shovelful had been emptied on the
+feet. How satisfactory!</p>
+
+<p>The adjutant began to babble. "Well, of course&mdash;a man we've messed with
+all these years&mdash;impossible&mdash;you can't, you know, leave your intimate
+friends rotting on the field. Go on, for God's sake, and shovel, you."</p>
+
+<p>The man with the shovel suddenly ducked, grabbed his left arm with his
+right hand, and looked at his officer for orders. Lean picked the shovel
+from the ground. "Go to the rear," he said to the wounded man. He also
+addressed the other private. "You get under cover, too; I'll finish this
+business."<a name="page_058" id="page_058"></a></p>
+
+<p>The wounded man scrambled hard still for the top of the ridge without
+devoting any glances to the direction from whence the bullets came, and
+the other man followed at an equal pace; but he was different, in that
+he looked back anxiously three times.</p>
+
+<p>This is merely the way&mdash;often&mdash;of the hit and unhit.</p>
+
+<p>Timothy Lean filled the shovel, hesitated, and then in a movement which
+was like a gesture of abhorrence he flung the dirt into the grave, and
+as it landed it made a sound&mdash;plop. Lean suddenly stopped and mopped his
+brow&mdash;a tired labourer.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps we have been wrong," said the adjutant. His glance wavered
+stupidly. "It might have been better if we hadn't buried him just at
+this time. Of course, if we advance to-morrow the body would have
+been&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Damn you," said Lean, "shut your mouth." He was not the senior officer.</p>
+
+<p>He again filled the shovel and flung the earth. Always the earth made
+that sound&mdash;plop. For a space Lean worked frantically, like a man
+digging himself out of danger.</p>
+
+<p>Soon there was nothing to be seen but the chalk-blue face. Lean filled
+the shovel. "Good God," he cried to the adjutant. "Why didn't you turn
+him somehow when you put him in? This&mdash;" Then Lean began to stutter.<a name="page_059" id="page_059"></a></p>
+
+<p>The adjutant understood. He was pale to the lips. "Go on, man," he
+cried, beseechingly, almost in a shout. Lean swung back the shovel. It
+went forward in a pendulum curve. When the earth landed it made a
+sound&mdash;plop.</p>
+
+<h3><a name="THE_SHRAPNEL_OF_THEIR_FRIENDS" id="THE_SHRAPNEL_OF_THEIR_FRIENDS"></a>THE SHRAPNEL OF THEIR FRIENDS.</h3>
+
+<p>From over the knolls came the tiny sound of a cavalry bugle singing out
+the recall, and later, detached parties of His Majesty's 2nd Hussars
+came trotting back to where the Spitzbergen infantry sat complacently on
+the captured Rostina position. The horsemen were well pleased, and they
+told how they had ridden thrice through the helterskelter of the fleeing
+enemy. They had ultimately been checked by the great truth, and when a
+good enemy runs away in daylight he sooner or later finds a place where
+he fetches up with a jolt, and turns face the pursuit&mdash;notably if it is
+a cavalry pursuit. The Hussars had discreetly withdrawn, displaying no
+foolish pride of corps at that time.</p>
+
+<p>There was a general admission that the Kicking Twelfth had taken the
+chief honours of the day, but the artillery added that if the guns had
+not shelled so accurately the Twelfth's charge could not<a name="page_060" id="page_060"></a> have been made
+so successfully, and the three other regiments of infantry, of course,
+did not conceal their feelings, that their attack on the enemy's left
+had withdrawn many rifles that would have been pelting at the Twelfth.
+The cavalry simply said that but for them the victory would not have
+been complete.</p>
+
+<p>Corps' prides met each other face to face at every step, but the Kickers
+smiled easily and indulgently. A few recruits bragged, but they bragged
+because they were recruits. The older men did not wish it to appear that
+they were surprised and rejoicing at the performance of the regiment. If
+they were congratulated they simply smirked, suggesting that the ability
+of the Twelfth had been long known to them, and that the charge had been
+a little thing, you know, just turned off in the way of an afternoon's
+work.</p>
+
+<p>Major-General Richie encamped his troops on the position which they had
+from the enemy. Old Colonel Sponge of the Twelfth redistributed his
+officers, and the losses had been so great that Timothy Lean got command
+of a company. It was not much of a company. Fifty-three smudged and
+sweating men faced their new commander. The company had gone into action
+with a strength of eighty-six. The heart of Timothy Lean beat high with
+pride. He intended to be some<a name="page_061" id="page_061"></a> day a general, and if he ever became a
+general, that moment of promotion was not equal in joy to the moment
+when he looked at his new possession of fifty-three vagabonds. He
+scanned the faces, and recognised with satisfaction one old sergeant and
+two bright young corporals. "Now," said he to himself, "I have here a
+snug little body of men with which I can do something." In him burned
+the usual fierce fire to make them the best company in the regiment. He
+had adopted them; they were his men. "I will do what I can for you," he
+said. "Do you the same for me."</p>
+
+<p>The Twelfth bivouacked on the ridge. Little fires were built, and there
+appeared among the men innumerable blackened tin cups, which were so
+treasured that a faint suspicion in connection with the loss of one
+could bring on the grimmest of fights. Meantime certain of the privates
+silently readjusted their kits as their names were called out by the
+sergeants. These were the men condemned to picket duty after a hard day
+of marching and fighting. The dusk came slowly, and the colour of the
+countless fires, spotting the ridge and the plain, grew in the falling
+darkness. Far-away pickets fired at something.</p>
+
+<p>One by one the men's heads were lowered to the earth until the ridge was
+marked by two long shadowy rows of men. Here and there an officer sat<a name="page_062" id="page_062"></a>
+musing in his dark cloak with a ray of a weakening fire gleaming on his
+sword-hilt. From the plain there came at times the sound of battery
+horses moving restlessly at their tethers, and one could imagine he
+heard the throaty, grumbling curse of the drivers. The moon died swiftly
+through flying light clouds. Far-away pickets fired at something.</p>
+
+<p>In the morning the infantry and guns breakfasted to the music of a
+racket between the cavalry and the enemy, which was taking place some
+miles up the valley.</p>
+
+<p>The ambitious Hussars had apparently stirred some kind of a hornet's
+nest, and they were having a good fight with no officious friends near
+enough to interfere. The remainder of the army looked toward the fight
+musingly over the tops of tin cups. In time the column crawled lazily
+forward to see.</p>
+
+<p>The Twelfth, as it crawled, saw a regiment deploy to the right, and saw
+a battery dash to take position. The cavalry jingled back grinning with
+pride and expecting to be greatly admired. Presently the Twelfth was
+bidden to take seat by the roadside and await its turn. Instantly the
+wise men&mdash;and there were more than three&mdash;came out of the east and
+announced that they had divined the whole plan. The Kicking Twelfth was
+to be held in reserve until the critical moment of the fight, and then
+they were to be sent forward to win a victory. In corroboration, <a name="page_063" id="page_063"></a>they
+pointed to the fact that the general in command was sticking close to
+them, in order, they said, to give the word quickly at the proper
+moment. And in truth, on a small hill to the right, Major-General Richie
+sat on his horse and used his glasses, while back of him his staff and
+the orderlies bestrode their champing, dancing mounts.</p>
+
+<p>It is always good to look hard at a general, and the Kickers were
+transfixed with interest. The wise men again came out of the east and
+told what was inside the Richie head, but even the wise men wondered
+what was inside the Richie head.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly an exciting thing happened. To the left and ahead was a
+pounding Spitzbergen battery, and a toy suddenly appeared on the slope
+behind the guns. The toy was a man with a flag&mdash;the flag was white save
+for a square of red in the centre. And this toy began to wig-wag
+wag-wig, and it spoke to General Richie under the authority of the
+captain of the battery. It said: "The 88th are being driven on my centre
+and right."</p>
+
+<p>Now, when the Kicking Twelfth had left Spitzbergen there was an average
+of six signalmen in each company. A proportion of these signallers had
+been destroyed in the first engagement, but enough remained so that the
+Kicking Twelfth read, as a unit, the news of the 88th. The word ran
+quickly. "The 88th are being driven on my centre and right."<a name="page_064" id="page_064"></a></p>
+
+<p>Richie rode to where Colonel Sponge sat aloft on his big horse, and a
+moment later a cry ran along the column: "Kim up, the Kickers." A large
+number of the men were already in the road, hitching and twisting at
+their belts and packs. The Kickers moved forward.</p>
+
+<p>They deployed and passed in a straggling line through the battery, and
+to the left and right of it. The gunners called out to them carefully,
+telling them not to be afraid.</p>
+
+<p>The scene before them was startling. They were facing a country cut up
+by many steep-sided ravines, and over the resultant hills were
+retreating little squads of the 88th. The Twelfth laughed in its
+exultation. The men could now tell by the volume of fire that the 88th
+were retreating for reasons which were not sufficiently expressed in the
+noise of the Rostina shooting. Held together by the bugle, the Kickers
+swarmed up the first hill and laid on the crest. Parties of the 88th
+went through their lines, and the Twelfth told them coarsely its several
+opinions. The sights were clicked up to 600 yards, and, with a crashing
+volley, the regiment entered its second battle.</p>
+
+<p>A thousand yards away on the right the cavalry and a regiment of
+infantry were creeping onward. Sponge decided not to be backward, and
+the bugle told the Twelfth to go ahead once more. The<a name="page_065" id="page_065"></a> Twelfth charged,
+followed by a rabble of rallied men of the 88th, who were crying aloud
+that it had been all a mistake.</p>
+
+<p>A charge in these days is not a running match. Those splendid pictures
+of levelled bayonets, dashing at headlong pace towards the closed ranks
+of the enemy are absurd as soon as they are mistaken for the actuality
+of the present. In these days charges are likely to cover at least the
+half of a mile, and to go at the pace exhibited in the pictures a man
+would be obliged to have a little steam engine inside of him.</p>
+
+<p>The charge of the Kicking Twelfth somewhat resembled the advance of a
+great crowd of beaters who, for some reason, passionately desired to
+start the game. Men stumbled; men fell; men swore; there were cries:
+"This way!" "Come this way!" "Don't go that way!" "You can't get up that
+way!" Over the rocks the Twelfth scrambled, red in the face, sweating
+and angry. Soldiers fell because they were struck by bullets, and
+because they had not an ounce of strength left in them. Colonel Sponge,
+with a face like a red cushion, was being dragged windless up the steeps
+by devoted and athletic men. Three of the older captains lay afar back,
+and swearing with their eyes because their tongues were temporarily out
+of service.</p>
+
+<p>And yet-and-yet, the speed of the charge was slow.<a name="page_066" id="page_066"></a> From the position of
+the battery, it looked as if the Kickers were taking a walk over some
+extremely difficult country.</p>
+
+<p>The regiment ascended a superior height, and found trenches and dead
+men. They took seat with the dead, satisfied with this company until
+they could get their wind. For thirty minutes purple-faced stragglers
+rejoined from the rear. Colonel Sponge looked behind him, and saw that
+Richie, with his staff, had approached by another route, and had
+evidently been near enough to see the full extent of the Kickers'
+exertions. Presently Richie began to pick a way for his horse towards
+the captured position. He disappeared in a gully between two hills.</p>
+
+<p>Now it came to pass that a Spitzbergen battery on the far right took
+occasion to mistake the identity of the Kicking Twelfth, and the captain
+of these guns, not having anything to occupy him in front, directed his
+six 3·2's upon the ridge where the tired Kickers lay side by side with
+the Rostina dead. A shrapnel came swinging over the Kickers, seething
+and fuming. It burst directly over the trenches, and the shrapnel, of
+course, scattered forward, hurting nobody. But a man screamed out to his
+officer: "By God, sir, that is one of our own batteries!" The whole line
+quivered with fright. Five more shells streaked overhead, and one flung<a name="page_067" id="page_067"></a>
+its hail into the middle of the 3rd battalion's line, and the Kicking
+Twelfth shuddered to the very centre of its heart, and arose, like one
+man, and fled.</p>
+
+<p>Colonel Sponge, fighting, frothing at the month, dealing blows with his
+fist right and left, found himself confronting a fury on horseback.
+Richie was as pale as death, and his eyes sent out sparks. "What does
+this conduct mean?" he flashed out between his fastened teeth.</p>
+
+<p>Sponge could only gurgle: "The battery&mdash;the battery&mdash;the battery!"</p>
+
+<p>"The battery?" cried Richie, in a voice which sounded like pistol shots.
+"Are you afraid of the guns you almost took yesterday? Go back there,
+you white-livered cowards! You swine! You dogs! Curs! Curs! Curs! Go
+back there!"</p>
+
+<p>Most of the men halted and crouched under the lashing tongue of their
+maddened general. But one man found desperate speech, and yelled:
+"General, it is our own battery that is firing on us!"</p>
+
+<p>Many say that the General's face tightened until it looked like a mask.
+The Kicking Twelfth retired to a comfortable place, where they were only
+under the fire of the Rostina artillery. The men saw a staff officer
+riding over the obstructions in a manner calculated to break his neck
+directly.<a name="page_068" id="page_068"></a></p>
+
+<p>The Kickers were aggrieved, but the heart of the colonel was cut in
+twain. He even babbled to his major, talking like a man who is about to
+die of simple rage. "Did you hear what he said to me? Did you hear what
+he called us? <i>Did you hear what he called us?</i>"</p>
+
+<p>The majors searched their minds for words to heal a deep wound.</p>
+
+<p>The Twelfth received orders to go into camp upon the hill where they had
+been insulted. Old Sponge looked as if he were about to knock the aide
+out of the saddle, but he saluted, and took the regiment back to the
+temporary companionship of the Rostina dead.</p>
+
+<p>Major-General Richie never apologised to Colonel Sponge. When you are a
+commanding officer you do not adopt the custom of apologising for the
+wrong done to your subordinates. You ride away; and they understand, and
+are confident of the restitution to honour. Richie never opened his
+stern, young lips to Sponge in reference to the scene near the hill of
+the Rostina dead, but in time there was a general order No. 20, which
+spoke definitely of the gallantry of His Majesty's 12th regiment of the
+line and its colonel. In the end Sponge was given a high decoration,
+because he had been badly used by Richie on that day. Richie knew that
+it is hard for men to withstand the shrapnel of their friends.<a name="page_069" id="page_069"></a></p>
+
+<p>A few days later the Kickers, marching in column on the road, came upon
+their friend the battery, halted in a field; and they addressed the
+battery, and the captain of the battery blanched to the tips of his
+ears. But the men of the battery told the Kickers to go to the
+devil&mdash;frankly, freely, placidly, told the Kickers to go to the devil.</p>
+
+<p>And this story proves that it is sometimes better to be a private.</p>
+
+<h3><a name="AND_IF_HE_WILLS_WE_MUST_DIE" id="AND_IF_HE_WILLS_WE_MUST_DIE"></a>"AND IF HE WILLS, WE MUST DIE."</h3>
+
+<p>A sergeant, a corporal, and fourteen men of the Twelfth Regiment of the
+Line had been sent out to occupy a house on the main highway. They would
+be at least a half of a mile in advance of any other picket of their own
+people. Sergeant Morton was deeply angry at being sent on this duty. He
+said that he was over-worked. There were at least two sergeants, he
+claimed furiously, whose turn it should have been to go on this arduous
+mission. He was treated unfairly; he was abused by his superiors; why
+did any damned fool ever join the army? As for him he would get out of
+it as soon as possible; he was sick of it; the life of a dog. All this
+he said to the corporal, who listened attentively, giving<a name="page_070" id="page_070"></a> grunts of
+respectful assent. On the way to this post two privates took occasion to
+drop to the rear and pilfer in the orchard of a deserted plantation.
+When the sergeant discovered this absence, he grew black with a rage
+which was an accumulation of all his irritations. "Run, you!" he howled.
+"Bring them here! I'll show them&mdash;" A private ran swiftly to the rear.
+The remainder of the squad began to shout nervously at the two
+delinquents, whose figures they could see in the deep shade of the
+orchard, hurriedly picking fruit from the ground and cramming it within
+their shirts, next to their skins. The beseeching cries of their
+comrades stirred the criminals more than did the barking of the
+sergeant. They ran to rejoin the squad, while holding their loaded
+bosoms and with their mouths open with aggrieved explanations.</p>
+
+<p>Jones faced the sergeant with a horrible cancer marked in bumps on his
+left side. The disease of Patterson showed quite around the front of his
+waist in many protuberances. "A nice pair!" said the sergeant, with
+sudden frigidity. "You're the kind of soldiers a man wants to choose for
+a dangerous outpost duty, ain't you?"</p>
+
+<p>The two privates stood at attention, still looking much aggrieved. "We
+only&mdash;" began Jones huskily.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you 'only!'" cried the sergeant. "Yes, you<a name="page_071" id="page_071"></a> 'only.' I know all
+about that. But if you think you are going to trifle with me&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>A moment later the squad moved on towards its station. Behind the
+sergeant's back Jones and Patterson were slyly passing apples and pears
+to their friends while the sergeant expounded eloquently to the corporal
+"You see what kind of men are in the army now. Why, when I joined the
+regiment it was a very different thing, I can tell you. Then a sergeant
+had some authority, and if a man disobeyed orders, he had a very small
+chance of escaping something extremely serious. But now! Good God! If I
+report these men, the captain will look over a lot of beastly orderly
+sheets and say&mdash;'Haw, eh, well, Sergeant Morton, these men seem to have
+very good records; very good records, indeed. I can't be too hard on
+them; no, not too hard.'" Continued the sergeant: "I tell you, Flagler,
+the army is no place for a decent man."</p>
+
+<p>Flagler, the corporal, answered with a sincerity of appreciation which
+with him had become a science. "I think you are right, sergeant," he
+answered.</p>
+
+<p>Behind them the privates mumbled discreetly. "Damn this sergeant of
+ours. He thinks we are made of wood. I don't see any reason for all this
+strictness when we are on active service. It isn't like being at home in
+barracks! There is no great<a name="page_072" id="page_072"></a> harm in a couple of men dropping out to
+raid an orchard of the enemy when all the world knows that we haven't
+had a decent meal in twenty days."</p>
+
+<p>The reddened face of Sergeant Morton suddenly showed to the rear. "A
+little more marching and less talking," he said.</p>
+
+<p>When he came to the house he had been ordered to occupy the sergeant
+sniffed with disdain. "These people must have lived like cattle," he
+said angrily. To be sure, the place was not alluring. The ground floor
+had been used for the housing of cattle, and it was dark and terrible. A
+flight of steps led to the lofty first floor, which was denuded but
+respectable. The sergeant's visage lightened when he saw the strong
+walls of stone and cement. "Unless they turn guns on us, they will never
+get us out of here," he said cheerfully to the squad. The men, anxious
+to keep him in an amiable mood, all hurriedly grinned and seemed very
+appreciative and pleased. "I'll make this into a fortress," he
+announced. He sent Jones and Patterson, the two orchard thiefs, out on
+sentry-duty. He worked the others, then, until he could think of no more
+things to tell them to do. Afterwards he went forth, with a
+major-general's serious scowl, and examined the ground in front of his
+position. In returning he came upon a sentry, Jones, munching an apple.
+He sternly commanded him to throw it away.<a name="page_073" id="page_073"></a></p>
+
+<p>The men spread their blankets on the floors of the bare rooms, and
+putting their packs under their heads and lighting their pipes, they
+lived in easy peace. Bees hummed in the garden, and a scent of flowers
+came through the open window. A great fan-shaped bit of sunshine smote
+the face of one man, and he indolently cursed as he moved his primitive
+bed to a shadier place.</p>
+
+<p>Another private explained to a comrade: "This is all nonsense anyhow. No
+sense in occupying this post. They&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But, of course," said the corporal, "when she told me herself that she
+cared more for me than she did for him, I wasn't going to stand any of
+his talk&mdash;" The corporal's listener was so sleepy that he could only
+grunt his sympathy.</p>
+
+<p>There was a sudden little spatter of shooting. A cry from Jones rang
+out. With no intermediate scrambling, the sergeant leaped straight to
+his feet. "Now," he cried, "let us see what you are made of! If," he
+added bitterly, "you are made of anything!"</p>
+
+<p>A man yelled: "Good God, can't you see you're all tangled up in my
+cartridge belt?"</p>
+
+<p>Another man yelled: "Keep off my legs! Can't you walk on the floor?"</p>
+
+<p>To the windows there was a blind rush of slumberous men, who brushed
+hair from their eyes even as they made ready their rifles. Jones and
+Patterson<a name="page_074" id="page_074"></a> came stumbling up the steps, crying dreadful information.
+Already the enemy's bullets were spitting and singing over the house.</p>
+
+<p>The sergeant suddenly was stiff and cold with a sense of the importance
+of the thing. "Wait until you see one," he drawled loudly and calmly,
+"then shoot."</p>
+
+<p>For some moments the enemy's bullets swung swifter than lightning over
+the house without anybody being able to discover a target. In this
+interval a man was shot in the throat. He gurgled, and then lay down on
+the floor. The blood slowly waved down the brown skin of his neck while
+he looked meekly at his comrades.</p>
+
+<p>There was a howl. "There they are! There they come!" The rifles
+crackled. A light smoke drifted idly through the rooms. There was a
+strong odour as if from burnt paper and the powder of fire-crackers. The
+men were silent. Through the windows and about the house the bullets of
+an entirely invisible enemy moaned, hummed, spat, burst, and sang.</p>
+
+<p>The men began to curse. "Why can't we see them?" they muttered through
+their teeth. The sergeant was still frigid. He answered soothingly as if
+he were directly reprehensible for this behaviour of the enemy. "Wait a
+moment. You will soon be able to see them. There! Give it to them." A<a name="page_075" id="page_075"></a>
+little skirt of black figures had appeared in a field. It was really
+like shooting at an upright needle from the full length of a ball-room.
+But the men's spirits improved as soon as the enemy&mdash;this mysterious
+enemy&mdash;became a tangible thing, and far off. They had believed the foe
+to be shooting at them from the adjacent garden.</p>
+
+<p>"Now," said the sergeant ambitiously, "we can beat them off easily if
+you men are good enough."</p>
+
+<p>A man called out in a tone of quick, great interest. "See that fellow on
+horseback, Bill? Isn't he on horseback? I thought he was on horseback."</p>
+
+<p>There was a fusilade against another side of the house. The sergeant
+dashed into the room which commanded that situation. He found a dead
+soldier on the floor. He rushed out howling: "When was Knowles killed?
+When was Knowles killed? Damn it, when was Knowles killed?" It was
+absolutely essential to find out the exact moment this man died. A
+blackened private turned upon his sergeant and demanded: "How in hell do
+I know?" Sergeant Morton had a sense of anger so brief that in the next
+second he cried: "Patterson!" He had even forgotten his vital interest
+in the time of Knowles' death.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes?" said Patterson, his face set with some deep-rooted quality of
+determination. Still, he was a mere farm boy.<a name="page_076" id="page_076"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Go in to Knowles' window and shoot at those people," said the sergeant
+hoarsely. Afterwards he coughed. Some of the fumes of the fight had made
+way to his lungs.</p>
+
+<p>Patterson looked at the door into this other room. He looked at it as if
+he suspected it was to be his death-chamber. Then he entered and stood
+across the body of Knowles and fired vigorously into a group of plum
+trees.</p>
+
+<p>"They can't take this house," declared the sergeant in a contemptuous
+and argumentative tone. He was apparently replying to somebody. The man
+who had been shot in the throat looked up at him. Eight men were firing
+from the windows. The sergeant detected in a corner three wounded men
+talking together feebly. "Don't you think there is anything to do?" he
+bawled. "Go and get Knowles' cartridges and give them to somebody who
+can use them! Take Simpson's too." The man who had been shot in the
+throat looked at him. Of the three wounded men who had been talking, one
+said: "My leg is all doubled up under me, sergeant." He spoke
+apologetically.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime the sergeant was re-loading his rifle. His foot slipped in the
+blood of the man who had been shot in the throat, and the military boot
+made a greasy red streak on the floor.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, we can hold this place," shouted the sergeant jubilantly. "Who
+says we can't?"<a name="page_077" id="page_077"></a></p>
+
+<p>Corporal Flagler suddenly spun away from his window and fell in a heap.</p>
+
+<p>"Sergeant," murmured a man as he dropped to a seat on the floor out of
+danger, "I can't stand this. I swear I can't. I think we should run
+away."</p>
+
+<p>Morton, with the kindly eyes of a good shepherd, looked at the man. "You
+are afraid, Johnston, you are afraid," he said softly. The man struggled
+to his feet, cast upon the sergeant a gaze full of admiration, reproach,
+and despair, and returned to his post. A moment later he pitched
+forward, and thereafter his body hung out of the window, his arms
+straight and the fists clenched. Incidentally this corpse was pierced
+afterwards by chance three times by bullets of the enemy.</p>
+
+<p>The sergeant laid his rifle against the stone-work of the window-frame
+and shot with care until his magazine was empty. Behind him a man,
+simply grazed on the elbow, was wildly sobbing like a girl. "Damn it,
+shut up," said Morton, without turning his head. Before him was a vista
+of a garden, fields, clumps of trees, woods, populated at the time with
+little fleeting figures.</p>
+
+<p>He grew furious. "Why didn't he send me orders?" he cried aloud. The
+emphasis on the word "he" was impressive. A mile back on the road a
+galloper of the Hussars lay dead beside his dead horse.<a name="page_078" id="page_078"></a></p>
+
+<p>The man who had been grazed on the elbow still set up his bleat.
+Morton's fury veered to this soldier. "Can't you shut up? Can't you shut
+up? Can't you shut up? Fight! That's the thing to do. Fight!"</p>
+
+<p>A bullet struck Morton, and he fell upon the man who had been shot in
+the throat. There was a sickening moment. Then the sergeant rolled off
+to a position upon the blood floor. He turned himself with a last effort
+until he could look at the wounded who were able to look at him.</p>
+
+<p>"Kim up, the Kickers," he said thickly. His arms weakened and he dropped
+on his face.</p>
+
+<p>After an interval a young subaltern of the enemy's infantry, followed by
+his eager men, burst into this reeking interior. But just over the
+threshold he halted before the scene of blood and death. He turned with
+a shrug to his sergeant. "God, I should have estimated them at least one
+hundred strong."<a name="page_079" id="page_079"></a></p>
+
+<h2><a name="WYOMING_VALLEY_TALES" id="WYOMING_VALLEY_TALES"></a>WYOMING VALLEY TALES</h2>
+
+<p><a name="page_080" id="page_080"></a></p>
+
+<p><a name="page_081" id="page_081"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="I_THE_SURRENDER_OF_FORTY_FORT" id="I_THE_SURRENDER_OF_FORTY_FORT"></a>I.&mdash;THE SURRENDER OF FORTY FORT.</h3>
+
+<p>Immediately after the battle of 3rd July, my mother said, "We had best
+take the children and go into the Fort."</p>
+
+<p>But my father replied, "I will not go. I will not leave my property. All
+that I have in the world is here, and if the savages destroy it they may
+as well destroy me also."</p>
+
+<p>My mother said no other word. Our household was ever given to stern
+silence, and such was my training that it did not occur to me to reflect
+that if my father cared for his property it was not my property, and I
+was entitled to care somewhat for my life.</p>
+
+<p>Colonel Denison was true to the word which he had passed to me at the
+Fort before the battle. He sent a messenger to my father, and this
+messenger stood in the middle of our living-room and spake with a clear,
+indifferent voice. "Colonel Denison bids me come here and say that John
+Bennet is a wicked man, and the blood of his own children will be upon
+his head." As usual, my father said<a name="page_082" id="page_082"></a> nothing. After the messenger had
+gone, he remained silent for hours in his chair by the fire, and this
+stillness was so impressive to his family that even my mother walked on
+tip-toe as she went about her work. After this long time my father said,
+"Mary!"</p>
+
+<p>Mother halted and looked at him. Father spoke slowly, and as if every
+word was wrested from him with violent pangs. "Mary, you take the girls
+and go to the Fort. I and Solomon and Andrew will go over the mountain
+to Stroudsberg."</p>
+
+<p>Immediately my mother called us all to set about packing such things as
+could be taken to the Fort. And by nightfall we had seen them within its
+pallisade, and my father, myself, and my little brother Andrew, who was
+only eleven years old, were off over the hills on a long march to the
+Delaware settlements. Father and I had our rifles, but we seldom dared
+to fire them, because of the roving bands of Indians. We lived as well
+as we could on blackberries and raspberries. For the most part, poor
+little Andrew rode first on the back of my father and then on my back.
+He was a good little man, and only cried when he would wake in the dead
+of night very cold and very hungry. Then my father would wrap him in an
+old grey coat that was so famous in the Wyoming country that there was
+not even an Indian who did not know of it. But this act he did without
+any direct display of tenderness, for the fear, I suppose, that he
+would<a name="page_083" id="page_083"></a> weaken little Andrew's growing manhood. Now, in these days of
+safety, and even luxury, I often marvel at the iron spirit of the people
+of my young days. My father, without his coat and no doubt very cold,
+would then sometimes begin to pray to his God in the wilderness, but in
+low voice, because of the Indians. It was July, but even July nights are
+cold in the pine mountains, breathing a chill which goes straight to the
+bones.</p>
+
+<p>But it is not my intention to give in this section the ordinary
+adventures of the masculine part of my family. As a matter of fact, my
+mother and the girls were undergoing in Forty Fort trials which made as
+nothing the happenings on our journey, which ended in safety.</p>
+
+<p>My mother and her small flock were no sooner established in the crude
+quarters within the pallisade than negotiations were opened between
+Colonel Denison and Colonel Zebulon Butler on the American side, and
+"Indian Butler" on the British side, for the capitulation of the Fort
+with such arms and military stores as it contained, the lives of the
+settlers to be strictly preserved. But "Indian Butler" did not seem to
+feel free to promise safety for the lives of the Continental Butler and
+the pathetic little fragment of the regular troops. These men always
+fought so well against the Indians that whenever the Indians could get
+them at their mercy there was small chances<a name="page_084" id="page_084"></a> of anything but a massacre.
+So every regular left before the surrender; and I fancy that Colonel
+Zebulon Butler considered himself a much-abused man, for if we had left
+ourselves entirely under his direction there is no doubt but what we
+could have saved the valley. He had taken us out on 3rd July because our
+militia officers had almost threatened him. In the end he had said,
+"Very well, I can go as far as any of you." I was always on Butler's
+side of the argument, but owing to the singular arrangement of
+circumstances, my opinion at the age of sixteen counted upon neither the
+one side nor the other.</p>
+
+<p>The Fort was left in charge of Colonel Denison. He had stipulated before
+the surrender that no Indians should be allowed to enter the stockade
+and molest these poor families of women whose fathers and brothers were
+either dead or fled over the mountains, unless their physical debility
+had been such that they were able neither to get killed in the battle
+nor to take the long trail to the Delaware. Of course, this excepts
+those men who were with Washington.</p>
+
+<p>For several days the Indians, obedient to the British officers, kept out
+of the Fort, but soon they began to enter in small bands and went
+sniffing and poking in every corner to find plunder. Our people had
+hidden everything as well as they were able, and for a period little was
+stolen. My mother told me that<a name="page_085" id="page_085"></a> the first thing of importance to go was
+Colonel Denison's hunting shirt, made of "fine forty" linen. It had a
+double cape, and was fringed about the cape and about the wristbands.
+Colonel Denison at the time was in my mother's cabin. An Indian entered,
+and, rolling a thieving eye about the place, sighted first of all the
+remarkable shirt which Colonel Denison was wearing. He seized the shirt
+and began to tug, while the Colonel backed away, tugging and protesting
+at the same time. The women folk saw at once that the Colonel would be
+tomahawked if he did not give up his shirt, and they begged him to do
+it. He finally elected not to be tomahawked, and came out of his shirt.
+While my mother unbuttoned the wristbands, the Colonel cleverly dropped
+into the lap of a certain Polly Thornton a large packet of Continental
+bills, and his money was thus saved for the settlers.</p>
+
+<p>Colonel Denison had several stormy interviews with "Indian Butler," and
+the British commander finally ended in frankly declaring that he could
+do nothing with the Indians at all. They were beyond control, and the
+defenceless people in the Fort would have to take the consequence. I do
+not mean that Colonel Denison was trying to recover his shirt; I mean
+that he was objecting to a situation which was now almost unendurable. I
+wish to record also that the Colonel lost a large beaver hat. In both
+cases he willed to<a name="page_086" id="page_086"></a> be tomahawked and killed rather than suffer the
+indignity, but mother prevailed over him. I must confess to this
+discreet age that my mother engaged in fisticuffs with a squaw. This
+squaw came into the cabin, and, without preliminary discussion,
+attempted to drag from my mother the petticoat she was wearing. My
+mother forgot the fine advice she had given to Colonel Denison. She
+proceeded to beat the squaw out of the cabin, and although the squaw
+appealed to some warriors who were standing without the warriors only
+laughed, and my mother kept her petticoat.</p>
+
+<p>The Indians took the feather beds of the people, and, ripping them open,
+flung the feathers broadcast. Then they stuffed these sacks full of
+plunder, and flung them across the backs of such of the settlers' horses
+as they had been able to find. In the old days my mother had had a side
+saddle, of which she was very proud when she rode to meeting on it. She
+had also a brilliant scarlet cloak, which every lady had in those days,
+and which I can remember as one of the admirations of my childhood. One
+day my mother had the satisfaction of seeing a squaw ride off from the
+Fort with this prize saddle reversed on a small nag, and with the proud
+squaw thus mounted wearing the scarlet cloak, also reversed. My sister
+Martha told me afterwards that they laughed, even in their misfortunes.
+A little later they had the satisfaction of seeing the smoke from our
+house and barn arising over the tops of the trees.<a name="page_087" id="page_087"></a></p>
+
+<p>When the Indians first began their pillaging, an old Mr. Sutton, who
+occupied a cabin near my mother's cabin, anticipated them by donning all
+his best clothes. He had had a theory that the Americans would be free
+to retain the clothes that they wore. And his best happened to be a suit
+of Quaker grey, from beaver to boots, in which he had been married. Not
+long afterwards my mother and my sisters saw passing the door an Indian
+arrayed in Quaker grey, from beaver to boots. The only odd thing which
+impressed them was that the Indian had appended to the dress a long
+string of Yankee scalps. Sutton was a good Quaker, and if he had been
+wearing the suit there would have been no string of scalps.</p>
+
+<p>They were, in fact, badgered, insulted, robbed by the Indians so openly
+that the British officers would not come into the Fort at all. They
+stayed in their camp, affecting to be ignorant of what was happening. It
+was about all they could do. The Indians had only one idea of war, and
+it was impossible to reason with them when they were flushed with
+victory and stolen rum.</p>
+
+<p>The hand of fate fell heavily upon one rogue whose ambition it was to
+drink everything that the Fort contained. One day he inadvertently came
+upon a bottle of spirits of camphor, and in a few hours he was dead.</p>
+
+<p>But it was known that General Washington contemplated<a name="page_088" id="page_088"></a> sending a strong
+expedition into the valley, to clear it of the invaders and thrash them.
+Soon there were no enemies in the country save small roving parties of
+Indians, who prevented work in the fields and burned whatever cabins
+that earlier torches had missed.</p>
+
+<p>The first large party to come into the valley was composed mainly of
+Captain Spaulding's company of regulars, and at its head rode Colonel
+Zebulon Butler. My father, myself, and little Andrew returned with this
+party to set to work immediately to build out of nothing a prosperity
+similar to that which had vanished in the smoke.</p>
+
+<h3><a name="II_OL_BENNET_AND_THE_INDIANS" id="II_OL_BENNET_AND_THE_INDIANS"></a>II.&mdash;"OL' BENNET" AND THE INDIANS.</h3>
+
+<p>My father was so well known of the Indians that, as I was saying, his
+old grey coat was a sign through the northern country. I know of no
+reason for this save that he was honest and obstreperously minded his
+own affairs, and could fling a tomahawk better than the best Indian. I
+will not declare upon how hard it is for a man to be honest and to mind
+his own affairs, but I fully know that it is hard to throw a tomahawk as
+my father threw it, straighter than a bullet from a duelling pistol. He
+had always<a name="page_089" id="page_089"></a> dealt fairly with the Indians, and I cannot tell why they
+paled him so bitterly, unless it was that when an Indian went foolishly
+drunk my father would deplore it with his foot, if it so happened that
+the drunkenness was done in our cabin. It is true to say that when the
+war came, a singular large number of kicked Indians journeyed from the
+Canadas to re-visit with torch and knife the scenes of the kicking.</p>
+
+<p>If people had thoroughly known my father he would have had no enemies.
+He was the best of men. He had a code of behaviour for himself, and for
+the whole world as well. If people wished his good opinion they only had
+to do exactly as he did, and to have his views. I remember that once my
+sister Martha made me a waistcoat of rabbits' skins, and generally it
+was considered a great ornament. But one day my father espied me in it,
+and commanded me to remove it for ever. Its appearance was indecent, he
+said, and such a garment tainted the soul of him who wore it. In the
+ensuing fortnight a poor pedlar arrived from the Delaware, who had
+suffered great misfortunes in the snows. My father fed him and warmed
+him, and when he gratefully departed, gave him the rabbits' skin
+waistcoat, and the poor man went off clothed indecently in a garment
+that would taint his soul. Afterwards, in a daring mood, I asked my
+father why he had so<a name="page_090" id="page_090"></a> cursed this pedlar, and he recommended that I
+should study my Bible more closely, and there read that my own devious
+ways should be mended before I sought to judge the enlightened acts of
+my elders. He set me to ploughing the upper twelve acres, and I was
+hardly allowed to loose my grip of the plough handles until every furrow
+was drawn.</p>
+
+<p>The Indians called my father "Ol' Bennet," and he was known broadcast as
+a man whose doom was sealed when the redskins caught him. As I have
+said, the feeling is inexplicable to me. But Indians who had been
+ill-used and maltreated by downright ruffians, against whom revenge
+could with a kind of propriety be directed&mdash;many of these Indians
+avowedly gave up a genuine wrong in order to direct a fuller attention
+to the getting of my father's scalp. This most unfair disposition of the
+Indians was a great, deep anxiety to all of us up to the time when
+General Sullivan and his avenging army marched through the valley and
+swept our tormentors afar.</p>
+
+<p>And yet great calamities could happen in our valley even after the
+coming and passing of General Sullivan. We were partly mistaken in our
+gladness. The British force of Loyalists and Indians met Sullivan in one
+battle, and finding themselves over-matched and beaten, they scattered
+in all directions. The Loyalists, for the most part, went home, but<a name="page_091" id="page_091"></a> the
+Indians cleverly broke up into small bands, and General Sullivan's army
+had no sooner marched beyond the Wyoming Valley than some of these small
+bands were back into the valley plundering outlying cabins and shooting
+people from the thickets and woods that bordered the fields.</p>
+
+<p>General Sullivan had left a garrison at Wilkesbarre, and at this time we
+lived in its strong shadow. It was too formidable for the Indians to
+attack, and it could protect all who valued protection enough to remain
+under its wings, but it could do little against the flying small bands.
+My father chafed in the shelter of the garrison. His best lands lay
+beyond Forty Fort, and he wanted to be at his ploughing. He made several
+brief references to his ploughing that led us to believe that his
+ploughing was the fundamental principle of life. None of us saw any
+means of contending him. My sister Martha began to weep, but it no more
+mattered than if she had began to laugh. My mother said nothing. Aye, my
+wonderful mother said nothing. My father said he would go plough some of
+the land above Forty Fort. Immediately this was with us some sort of a
+law. It was like a rain, or a wind, or a drought.</p>
+
+<p>He went, of course. My young brother Andrew went with him, and he took
+the new span of oxen and a horse. They began to plough a meadow which
+lay in a bend of the river above Forty Fort. Andrew<a name="page_092" id="page_092"></a> rode the horse
+hitched ahead of the oxen. At a certain thicket the horse shied so that
+little Andrew was almost thrown down. My father seemed to have begun a
+period of apprehension at this time, but it was of no service. Four
+Indians suddenly appeared out of the thicket. Swiftly, and in silence,
+they pounced with tomahawk, rifle, and knife upon my father and my
+brother, and in a moment they were captives of the redskins&mdash;that fate
+whose very phrasing was a thrill to the heart of every colonist. It
+spelled death, or that horrible simple absence, vacancy, mystery, which
+is harder than death.</p>
+
+<p>As for us, he had told my mother that if he and Andrew were not returned
+at sundown she might construe a calamity. So at sundown we gave the news
+to the Fort, and directly we heard the alarm gun booming out across the
+dusk like a salute to the death of my father, a solemn, final
+declaration. At the sound of this gun my sisters all began newly to
+weep. It simply defined our misfortune. In the morning a party was sent
+out, which came upon the deserted plough, the oxen calmly munching, and
+the horse still excited and affrighted. The soldiers found the trail of
+four Indians. They followed the trail some distance over the mountains,
+but the redskins with their captives had a long start, and pursuit was
+but useless. The result of this expedition was that we knew at least
+that father and Andrew had not<a name="page_093" id="page_093"></a> been massacred immediately. But in those
+days this was a most meagre consolation. It was better to wish them well
+dead.</p>
+
+<p>My father and Andrew were hurried over the hills at a terrible pace by
+the four Indians. Andrew told me afterwards that he could think
+sometimes that he was dreaming of being carried off by goblins. The
+redskins said no word, and their mocassined feet made no sound. They
+were like evil spirits. But it was as he caught glimpses of father's
+pale face, every wrinkle in it deepened and hardened, that Andrew saw
+everything in its light. And Andrew was but thirteen years old. It is a
+tender age at which to be burned at the stake.</p>
+
+<p>In time the party came upon two more Indians, who had as a prisoner a
+man named Lebbeus Hammond. He had left Wilkesbarre in search of a
+strayed horse. He was riding the animal back to the Fort when the
+Indians caught him. He and my father knew each other well, and their
+greeting was like them.</p>
+
+<p>"What! Hammond! You here?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I'm here."</p>
+
+<p>As the march was resumed, the principal Indian bestrode Hammond's horse,
+but the horse was very high-nerved and scared, and the bridle was only a
+temporary one made from hickory withes. There was no saddle. And so
+finally the principal Indian<a name="page_094" id="page_094"></a> came off with a crash, alighting with
+exceeding severity upon his head. When he got upon his feet he was in
+such a rage that the three captives thought to see him dash his tomahawk
+into the skull of the trembling horse, and, indeed, his arm was raised
+for the blow, but suddenly he thought better of it. He had been touched
+by a real point of Indian inspiration. The party was passing a swamp at
+the time, so he mired the horse almost up to its eyes, and left it to
+the long death.</p>
+
+<p>I had said that my father was well known of the Indians, and yet I have
+to announce that none of his six captors knew him. To them he was a
+complete stranger, for upon camping the first night they left my father
+unbound. If they had had any idea that he was "Ol' Bennet" they would
+never have left him unbound. He suggested to Hammond that they try to
+escape that night, but Hammond seemed not to care to try it yet.</p>
+
+<p>In time they met a party of over forty Indians, commanded by a Loyalist.
+In that band there were many who knew my father. They cried out with
+rejoicing when they perceived him. "Ha!" they shouted, "Ol' Bennet!"
+They danced about him, making gestures expressive of the torture. Later
+in the day my father accidentally pulled a button from his coat, and an
+Indian took it from him.<a name="page_095" id="page_095"></a></p>
+
+<p>My father asked to be allowed to have it again, for he was a very
+careful man, and in those days all good husbands were trained to bring
+home the loose buttons. The Indians laughed, and explained that a man
+who was to die at Wyallusing&mdash;one day's march&mdash;need not be particular
+about a button.</p>
+
+<p>The three prisoners were now sent off in care of seven Indians, while
+the Loyalist took the remainder of his men down the valley to further
+harass the settlers. The seven Indians were now very careful of my
+father, allowing him scarce a wink. Their tomahawks came up at the
+slightest sign. At the camp that night they bade the prisoners lie down,
+and then placed poles across them. An Indian lay upon either end of
+these poles. My father managed, however, to let Hammond know that he was
+determined to make an attempt to escape. There was only one night
+between him and the stake, and he was resolved to make what use he could
+of it. Hammond seems to have been dubious from the start, but the men of
+that time were not daunted by broad risks. In his opinion the rising
+would be a failure, but this did not prevent him from agreeing to rise
+with his friend. My brother Andrew was not considered at all. No one
+asked him if he wanted to rise against the Indians. He was only a boy,
+and supposed to obey his elders. So, as none asked his views, he kept
+them to himself; but I<a name="page_096" id="page_096"></a> wager you he listened, all ears, to the furtive
+consultations, consultations which were mere casual phrases at times,
+and at other times swift, brief sentences shot out in a whisper.</p>
+
+<p>The band of seven Indians relaxed in vigilance as they approached their
+own country, and on the last night from Wyallusing the Indian part of
+the camp seemed much inclined to take deep slumber after the long and
+rapid journey. The prisoners were held to the ground by poles as on the
+previous night, and then the Indians pulled their blankets over their
+heads and passed into heavy sleep. One old warrior sat by the fire as
+guard, but he seems to have been a singularly inefficient man, for he
+was continuously drowsing, and if the captives could have got rid of the
+poles across their chests and legs they would have made their flight
+sooner.</p>
+
+<p>The camp was on a mountain side amid a forest of lofty pines. The night
+was very cold, and the blasts of wind swept down upon the crackling,
+resinous fire. A few stars peeped through the feathery pine branches.
+Deep in some gulch could be heard the roar of a mountain stream. At one
+o'clock in the morning three of the Indians arose, and, releasing the
+prisoners, commanded them to mend the fire. The prisoners brought dead
+pine branches; the ancient warrior on watch sleepily picked away with
+his knife at the deer's head which<a name="page_097" id="page_097"></a> he had roasted; the other Indians
+retired again to their blankets, perhaps each depending upon the other
+for the exercise of precautions. It was a tremendously slack business;
+the Indians were feeling security because they knew that the prisoners
+were too wise to try to run away.</p>
+
+<p>The warrior on watch mumbled placidly to himself as he picked at the
+deer's head. Then he drowsed again, just the short nap of a man who had
+been up too long. My father stepped quickly to a spear, and backed away
+from the Indian; then he drove it straight through his chest. The Indian
+raised himself spasmodically, and then collapsed into that camp fire
+which the captives had made burn so brilliantly, and as he fell he
+screamed. Instantly his blanket, his hair, he himself began to burn, and
+over him was my father tugging frantically to get the spear out again.</p>
+
+<p>My father did not recover the spear. It had so gone through the old
+warrior that it could not readily be withdrawn, and my father left it.</p>
+
+<p>The scream of the watchman instantly aroused the other warriors, who, as
+they scrambled in their blankets, found over them a terrible
+white-lipped creature with an axe&mdash;an axe, the most appallingly brutal
+of weapons. Hammond buried his weapon in the head of the leader of the
+Indians even as the man gave out his first great cry. The second blow<a name="page_098" id="page_098"></a>
+missed an agile warrior's head, but caught him in the nape of the neck,
+and he swung, to bury his face in the red-hot ashes at the edge of the
+fire.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile my brother Andrew had been gallantly snapping empty guns. In
+fact he snapped three empty guns at the Indians, who were in the purest
+panic. He did not snap the fourth gun, but took it by the barrel, and,
+seeing a warrior rush past him, he cracked his skull with the clubbed
+weapon. He told me, however, that his snapping of the empty guns was
+very effective, because it made the Indians jump and dodge.</p>
+
+<p>Well, this slaughter continued in the red glare of the fire on the
+lonely mountain side until two shrieking creatures ran off through the
+trees, but even then my father hurled a tomahawk with all his strength.
+It struck one of the fleeing Indians on the shoulder. His blanket
+dropped from him, and he ran on practically naked.</p>
+
+<p>The three whites looked at each other, breathing deeply. Their work was
+plain to them in the five dead and dying Indians underfoot. They hastily
+gathered weapons and mocassins, and in six minutes from the time when my
+father had hurled the spear through the Indian sentinel they had started
+to make their way back to the settlements, leaving the camp fire to burn
+out its short career alone amid the dead.<a name="page_099" id="page_099"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="III_THE_BATTLE_OF_FORTY_FORT" id="III_THE_BATTLE_OF_FORTY_FORT"></a>III.&mdash;THE BATTLE OF FORTY FORT.</h3>
+
+<p>The Congress, sitting at Philadelphia, had voted our Wyoming country two
+companies of infantry for its protection against the Indians, with the
+single provision that we raise the men and arm them ourselves. This was
+not too brave a gift, but no one could blame the poor Congress, and
+indeed one could wonder that they found occasion to think of us at all,
+since at the time every gentleman of them had his coat-tails gathered
+high in his hands in readiness for flight to Baltimore. But our two
+companies of foot were no sooner drilled, equipped, and in readiness to
+defend the colony when they were ordered off down to the Jerseys to join
+General Washington. So it can be seen what service Congress did us in
+the way of protection. Thus the Wyoming Valley, sixty miles deep in the
+wilderness, held its log-houses full of little besides mothers, maids,
+and children. To the clamour against this situation the badgered
+Congress could only reply by the issue of another generous order,
+directing that one full company of foot be raised in the town of
+Westmoreland for the defence of said town, and that the said company
+find their own arms, ammunition, and blankets. Even people with our
+sense of humour could not laugh at this joke.<a name="page_100" id="page_100"></a></p>
+
+<p>When the first two companies were forming, I had thought to join one,
+but my father forbade me, saying that I was too young, although I was
+full sixteen, tall, and very strong. So it turned out that I was not off
+fighting with Washington's army when Butler with his rangers and Indians
+raided Wyoming. Perhaps I was in the better place to do my duty, if I
+could.</p>
+
+<p>When wandering Indians visited the settlements, their drunkenness and
+insolence were extreme, but the few white men remained calm, and often
+enough pretended oblivion to insults which, because of their wives and
+families, they dared not attempt to avenge. In my own family, my
+father's imperturbability was scarce superior to my mother's coolness,
+and such was our faith in them that we twelve children also seemed to be
+fearless. Neighbour after neighbour came to my father in despair of the
+defenceless condition of the valley, declaring that they were about to
+leave everything and flee over the mountains to Stroudsberg. My father
+always wished them God-speed and said no more. If they urged him to fly
+also, he usually walked away from them.</p>
+
+<p>Finally there came a time when all the Indians vanished. We rather would
+have had them tipsy and impudent in the settlements; we knew what their
+disappearance portended. It was the serious sign. Too soon the news came
+that "Indian Butler" was on his way.<a name="page_101" id="page_101"></a></p>
+
+<p>The valley was vastly excited. People with their smaller possessions
+flocked into the block-houses, and militia officers rode everywhere to
+rally every man. A small force of Continentals&mdash;regulars of the
+line&mdash;had joined our people, and the little army was now under the
+command of a Continental officer, Major Zebulon Butler.</p>
+
+<p>I had thought that with all this hubbub of an impending life and death
+struggle in the valley that my father would allow the work of our farm
+to slacken. But in this I was notably mistaken. The milking and the
+feeding and the work in the fields went on as if there never had been an
+Indian south of the Canadas. My mother and my sisters continued to cook,
+to wash, to churn, to spin, to dye, to mend, to make soap, to make maple
+sugar. Just before the break of each day, my younger brother Andrew and
+myself tumbled out for some eighteen hours' work, and woe to us if we
+departed the length of a dog's tail from the laws which our father had
+laid down. It was a life with which I was familiar, but it did seem to
+me that with the Indians almost upon us he might have allowed me, at
+least, to go to the Fort and see our men drilling.</p>
+
+<p>But one morning we aroused as usual at his call at the foot of the
+ladder, and, dressing more quickly than Andrew, I climbed down from the
+loft to find<a name="page_102" id="page_102"></a> my father seated by a blazing fire reading by its light in
+his Bible.</p>
+
+<p>"Son," said he.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, father?"</p>
+
+<p>"Go and fight."</p>
+
+<p>Without a word more I made hasty preparation. It was the first time in
+my life that I had a feeling that my father would change his mind. So
+strong was this fear that I did not even risk a good-bye to my mother
+and sisters. At the end of the clearing I looked back. The door of the
+house was open, and in the blazing light of the fire I saw my father
+seated as I had left him.</p>
+
+<p>At Forty Fort I found between three and four hundred under arms, while
+the stockade itself was crowded with old men, and women and children.
+Many of my acquaintances welcomed me; indeed, I seemed to know everybody
+save a number of the Continental officers. Colonel Zebulon Butler was in
+chief command, while directly under him was Colonel Denison, a man of
+the valley, and much respected. Colonel Denison asked news of my father,
+whose temper he well knew. He said to me&mdash;"If God spares Nathan Denison
+I shall tell that obstinate old fool my true opinion of him. He will get
+himself and all his family butchered and scalped."</p>
+
+<p>I joined Captain Bidlack's company for the reason <a name="page_103" id="page_103"></a>that a number of my
+friends were in it. Every morning we were paraded and drilled in the
+open ground before the Fort, and I learned to present arms and to keep
+my heels together, although to this day I have never been able to see
+any point to these accomplishments, and there was very little of the
+presenting of arms or of the keeping together of heels in the battle
+which followed these drills. I may say truly that I would now be much
+more grateful to Captain Bidlack if he had taught us to run like a wild
+horse.</p>
+
+<p>There was considerable friction between the officers of our militia and
+the Continental officers. I believe the Continental officers had stated
+themselves as being in favour of a cautious policy, whereas the men of
+the valley were almost unanimous in their desire to meet "Indian Butler"
+more than half way. They knew the country, they said, and they knew the
+Indians, and they deduced that the proper plan was to march forth and
+attack the British force near the head of the valley. Some of the more
+hot-headed ones rather openly taunted the Continentals, but these
+veterans of Washington's army remained silent and composed amid more or
+less wildness of talk. My own concealed opinions were that, although our
+people were brave and determined, they had much better allow the
+Continental officers to manage the valley's affairs.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of June, we heard the news that<a name="page_104" id="page_104"></a> Colonel John Butler, with
+some four hundred British and Colonial troops, which he called the
+Rangers, and with about five hundred Indians, had entered the valley at
+its head and taken Fort Wintermoot after an opposition of a perfunctory
+character. I could present arms very well, but I do not think that I
+could yet keep my heels together. But "Indian Butler" was marching upon
+us, and even Captain Bidlack refrained from being annoyed at my
+refractory heels.</p>
+
+<p>The officers held councils of war, but in truth both fort and camp rang
+with a discussion in which everybody joined with great vigour and
+endurance. I may except the Continental officers, who told us what they
+thought we should do, and then, declaring that there was no more to be
+said, remained in a silence which I thought was rather grim. The result
+was that on the 3rd of July our force of about 300 men marched away,
+amid the roll of drums and the proud career of flags, to meet "Indian
+Butler" and his two kinds of savages. There yet remains with me a vivid
+recollection of a close row of faces above the stockade of Forty Fort
+which viewed our departure with that profound anxiety which only an
+imminent danger of murder and scalping can produce. I myself was never
+particularly afraid of the Indians, for to my mind the great and almost
+the only military virtue of the Indians was that they were<a name="page_105" id="page_105"></a> silent men
+in the woods. If they were met squarely on terms approaching equality,
+they could always be whipped. But it was another matter to a fort filled
+with women and children and cripples, to whom the coming of the Indians
+spelled pillage, arson, and massacre. The British sent against us in
+those days some curious upholders of the honour of the King, and
+although Indian Butler, who usually led them, afterwards contended that
+everything was performed with decency and care for the rules, we always
+found that such of our dead whose bodies we recovered invariably lacked
+hair on the tops of their heads, and if worse wasn't done to them we
+wouldn't even use the word mutilate.</p>
+
+<p>Colonel Zebulon Butler rode along the column when we halted once for
+water. I looked at him eagerly, hoping to read in his face some sign of
+his opinions. But on the soldierly mask I could read nothing, although I
+am certain now that he felt that the fools among us were going to get us
+well beaten. But there was no vacillation in the direction of our march.
+We went straight until we could hear through the woods the infrequent
+shots of our leading party at retreating Indian scouts.</p>
+
+<p>Our Colonel Butler then sent forward four of his best officers, who
+reconnoitered the ground in the enemy's front like so many engineers
+marking the place for a bastion. Then each of the six companies<a name="page_106" id="page_106"></a> were
+told their place in the line. We of Captain Bidlack's company were on
+the extreme right. Then we formed in line and marched into battle, with
+me burning with the high resolve to kill Indian Butler and bear his
+sword into Forty Fort, while at the same time I was much shaken that one
+of Indian Butler's Indians might interfere with the noble plan. We moved
+stealthily among the pine trees, and I could not forbear looking
+constantly to right and left to make certain that everybody was of the
+same mind about this advance. With our Captain Bidlack was Captain
+Durkee of the regulars. He was also a valley man, and it seemed that
+every time I looked behind me I met the calm eye of this officer, and I
+came to refrain from looking behind me.</p>
+
+<p>Still, I was very anxious to shoot Indians, and if I had doubted my
+ability in this direction I would have done myself a great injustice,
+for I could drive a nail to the head with a rifle ball at respectable
+range. I contend that I was not at all afraid of the enemy, but I much
+feared that certain of my comrades would change their minds about the
+expediency of battle on the 3rd July, 1778.</p>
+
+<p>But our company was as steady and straight as a fence. I do not know who
+first saw dodging figures in the shadows of the trees in our front. The
+first fire we received, however, was from our flank, where some hidden
+Indians were yelling and firing, firing<a name="page_107" id="page_107"></a> and yelling. We did not mind
+the war-whoops. We had heard too many drunken Indians in the settlements
+before the war. They wounded the lieutenant of the company next to ours,
+and a moment later they killed Captain Durkee. But we were steadily
+advancing and firing regular volleys into the shifting frieze of figures
+before us. The Indians gave their cries as if the imps of Hades had
+given tongue to their emotions. They fell back before us so rapidly and
+so cleverly that one had to watch his chance as the Indians sped from
+tree to tree. I had a sudden burst of rapture that they were beaten, and
+this was accentuated when I stepped over the body of an Indian whose
+forehead had a hole in it as squarely in the middle as if the location
+had been previously surveyed. In short, we were doing extremely well.</p>
+
+<p>Soon we began to see the slower figures of white men through the trees,
+and it is only honest to say that they were easier to shoot. I myself
+caught sight of a fine officer in a uniform that seemed of green and
+buff. His sword-belt was fastened by a great shining brass plate, and,
+no longer feeling the elegancies of marksmanship, I fired at the brass
+plate. Such was the conformation of the ground between us that he
+disappeared as if he had sunk in the sea. We, all of us, were loading
+behind the trees and then charging ahead with fullest confidence.<a name="page_108" id="page_108"></a></p>
+
+<p>But suddenly from our own left came wild cries from our men, while at
+the same time the yells of Indians redoubled in that direction. Our rush
+checked itself instinctively. The cries rolled toward us. Once I heard a
+word that sounded like "Quarte." Then, to be truthful, our line wavered.
+I heard Captain Bidlack give an angry and despairing shout, and I think
+he was killed before he finished it.</p>
+
+<p>In a word, our left wing had gone to pieces. It was in complete rout. I
+know not the truth of the matter; but it seems that Colonel Denison had
+given an order which was misinterpreted for the order to retreat. At any
+rate, there can be no doubt of how fast the left wing ran away.</p>
+
+<p>We ran away too. The company on our immediate left was the company of
+regulars, and I remember some red-faced and powder-stained men bellowing
+at me contemptuously. That company stayed, and, for the most part, died.
+I don't know what they mustered when we left the Fort, but from the
+battle eleven worn and ragged men emerged. In my running was wisdom. The
+country was suddenly full of fleet Indians, upon us with the tomahawk.
+Behind me as I ran I could hear the screams of men cleaved to the earth.
+I think the first things that most of us discarded were our rifles.
+Afterward, upon serious reflection, I could not recall where I gave my
+rifle to the grass.<a name="page_109" id="page_109"></a></p>
+
+<p>I ran for the river. I saw some of our own men running ahead of me and I
+envied them. My point of contact with the river was the top of a high
+bank. But I did not hesitate to leap for the water with all my ounces of
+muscle. I struck out strongly for the other shore. I expected to be shot
+in the water. Up stream, and down stream, I could hear the crack of
+rifles, but none of the enemy seemed to be paying direct heed to me. I
+swam so well that I was soon able to put my feet on the slippery round
+stones and wade. When I reached a certain sandy beach, I lay down and
+puffed and blew my exhaustion. I watched the scene on the river. Indians
+appeared in groups on the opposite bank, firing at various heads of my
+comrades, who, like me, had chosen the Susquehanna as their refuge. I
+saw more than one hand fling up and the head turn sideways and sink.</p>
+
+<p>I set out for home. I set out for home in that perfect spirit of
+dependence which I had always felt toward my father and my mother. When
+I arrived I found nobody in the living room but my father seated in his
+great chair and reading his Bible, even as I had left him.</p>
+
+<p>The whole shame of the business came upon me suddenly. "Father," I
+choked out, "we have been beaten."</p>
+
+<p>"Aye," said he, "I expected it."<a name="page_110" id="page_110"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="LONDON_IMPRESSIONS" id="LONDON_IMPRESSIONS"></a>LONDON IMPRESSIONS.</h3>
+
+<h3 class="top5">CHAPTER I.</h3>
+
+<p>London at first consisted of a porter with the most charming manners in
+the world, and a cabman with a supreme intelligence, both observing my
+profound ignorance without contempt or humour of any kind observable in
+their manners. It was in a great resounding vault of a place where there
+were many people who had come home, and I was displeased because they
+knew the detail of the business, whereas I was confronting the
+inscrutable. This made them appear very stony-hearted to the sufferings
+of one of whose existence, to be sure, they were entirely unaware, and I
+remember taking great pleasure in disliking them heartily for it. I was
+in an agony of mind over my baggage, or my luggage, or my&mdash;perhaps it is
+well to shy around this terrible international question; but I remember
+that when I was a lad I was told that there was a whole nation that said
+luggage instead of baggage, and my boyish mind was filled at the time
+with incredulity and scorn. In the present case it was a thing that I
+understood to involve the most hideous confessions of imbecility<a name="page_111" id="page_111"></a> on my
+part, because I had evidently to go out to some obscure point and espy
+it and claim it, and take trouble for it; and I would rather have had my
+pockets filled with bread and cheese, and had no baggage at all.</p>
+
+<p>Mind you, this was not at all a homage that I was paying to London. I
+was paying homage to a new game. A man properly lazy does not like new
+experiences until they become old ones. Moreover, I have been taught
+that a man, any man, who has a thousand times more points of information
+on a certain thing than I have will bully me because of it, and pour his
+advantages upon my bowed head until I am drenched with his superiority.
+It was in my education to concede some licence of the kind in this case,
+but the holy father of a porter and the saintly cabman occupied the
+middle distance imperturbably, and did not come down from their hills to
+clout me with knowledge. From this fact I experienced a criminal
+elation. I lost view of the idea that if I had been brow-beaten by
+porters and cabmen from one end of the United States to the other end I
+should warmly like it, because in numbers they are superior to me, and
+collectively they can have a great deal of fun out of a matter that
+would merely afford me the glee of the latent butcher.</p>
+
+<p>This London, composed of a porter and a cabman,<a name="page_112" id="page_112"></a> stood to me subtly as a
+benefactor. I had scanned the drama, and found that I did not believe
+that the mood of the men emanated unduly from the feature that there was
+probably more shillings to the square inch of me than there were
+shillings to the square inch of them. Nor yet was it any manner of
+palpable warm-heartedness or other natural virtue. But it was a perfect
+artificial virtue; it was drill, plain, simple drill. And now was I glad
+of their drilling, and vividly approved of it, because I saw that it was
+good for me. Whether it was good or bad for the porter and the cabman I
+could not know; but that point, mark you, came within the pale, of my
+respectable rumination.</p>
+
+<p>I am sure that it would have been more correct for me to have alighted
+upon St. Paul's and described no emotion until I was overcome by the
+Thames Embankment and the Houses of Parliament. But as a matter of fact
+I did not see them for some days, and at this time they did not concern
+me at all. I was born in London at a railroad station, and my new vision
+encompassed a porter and a cabman. They deeply absorbed me in new
+phenomena, and I did not then care to see the Thames Embankment nor the
+Houses of Parliament. I considered the porter and the cabman to be more
+important.<a name="page_113" id="page_113"></a></p>
+
+<h3>CHAPTER II.</h3>
+
+<p>The cab finally rolled out of the gas-lit vault into a vast expanse of
+gloom. This changed to the shadowy lines of a street that was like a
+passage in a monstrous cave. The lamps winking here and there resembled
+the little gleams at the caps of the miners. They were not very
+competent illuminations at best, merely being little pale flares of gas
+that at their most heroic periods could only display one fact concerning
+this tunnel&mdash;the fact of general direction. But at any rate I should
+have liked to have observed the dejection of a search-light if it had
+been called upon to attempt to bore through this atmosphere. In it each
+man sat in his own little cylinder of vision, so to speak. It was not so
+small as a sentry-box nor so large as a circus tent, but the walls were
+opaque, and what was passing beyond the dimensions of his cylinder no
+man knew.</p>
+
+<p>It was evident that the paving was very greasy, but all the cabs that
+passed through my cylinder were going at a round trot, while the wheels,
+shod in rubber, whirred merely like bicycles. The hoofs of the animals
+themselves did not make that wild clatter which I knew so well. New
+York, in fact, roars always like ten thousand devils. We have ingenuous
+and simple ways of making a din in New<a name="page_114" id="page_114"></a> York that cause the stranger to
+conclude that each citizen is obliged by statute to provide himself with
+a pair of cymbals and a drum. If anything by chance can be turned into a
+noise it is promptly turned. We are engaged in the development of a
+human creature with very large, sturdy, and doubly-fortified ears.</p>
+
+<p>It was not too late at night, but this London moved with the decorum and
+caution of an undertaker. There was a silence, and yet there was no
+silence. There was a low drone, perhaps a humming contributed inevitably
+by closely-gathered thousands, and yet on second thoughts it was to me
+silence. I had perched my ears for the note of London, the sound made
+simply by the existence of five million people in one place. I had
+imagined something deep, vastly deep, a bass from a mythical organ, but
+found, as far as I was concerned, only a silence.</p>
+
+<p>New York in numbers is a mighty city, and all day and all night it cries
+its loud, fierce, aspiring cry, a noise of men beating upon barrels, a
+noise of men beating upon tin, a terrific racket that assails the abject
+skies. No one of us seemed to question this row as a certain consequence
+of three or four million people living together and scuffling for coin,
+with more agility, perhaps, but otherwise in the usual way. However,
+after this easy silence of<a name="page_115" id="page_115"></a> London, which in numbers is a mightier city,
+I began to feel that there was a seduction in this idea of necessity.
+Our noise in New York was not a consequence of our rapidity at all. It
+was a consequence of our bad pavements.</p>
+
+<p>Any brigade of artillery in Europe that would love to assemble its
+batteries, and then go on a gallop over the land, thundering and
+thundering, would give up the idea of thunder at once if it could hear
+Tim Mulligan drive a beer waggon along one of the side streets of
+cobbled New York.</p>
+
+<h3>CHAPTER III.</h3>
+
+<p>Finally, a great thing came to pass. The cab horse, proceeding at a
+sharp trot, found himself suddenly at the top of an incline, where
+through the rain the pavement shone like an expanse of ice. It looked to
+me as if there was going to be a tumble. In an accident of such a kind a
+hansom becomes really a cannon in which a man finds that he has paid
+shillings for the privilege of serving as a projectile. I was making a
+rapid calculation of the arc that I would describe in my flight, when
+the horse met his crisis with a masterly device that I could not have
+imagined. He tranquilly braced his four feet like a bundle of stakes,
+and then, with a gentle gaiety<a name="page_116" id="page_116"></a> of demeanour, he slid swiftly and
+gracefully to the bottom of the hill as if he had been a toboggan. When
+the incline ended he caught his gait again with great dexterity, and
+went pattering off through another tunnel.</p>
+
+<p>I at once looked upon myself as being singularly blessed by this sight.
+This horse had evidently originated this system of skating as a
+diversion, or, more probably, as a precaution against the slippery
+pavement; and he was, of course, the inventor and sole proprietor&mdash;two
+terms that are not always in conjunction. It surely was not to be
+supposed that there could be two skaters like him in the world. He
+deserved to be known and publicly praised for this accomplishment. It
+was worthy of many records and exhibitions. But when the cab arrived at
+a place where some dipping streets met, and the flaming front of a
+music-hall temporarily widened my cylinder, behold there were many cabs,
+and as the moment of necessity came the horses were all skaters. They
+were gliding in all directions. It might have been a rink. A great
+omnibus was hailed by a hand under an umbrella on the side walk, and the
+dignified horses bidden to halt from their trot did not waste time in
+wild and unseemly spasms. They, too, braced their legs and slid gravely
+to the end of their momentum.</p>
+
+<p>It was not the feat, but it was the word which<a name="page_117" id="page_117"></a> had at this time the
+power to conjure memories of skating parties on moonlit lakes, with
+laughter ringing over the ice, and a great red bonfire on the shore
+among the hemlocks.</p>
+
+<h3>CHAPTER IV.</h3>
+
+<p>A terrible thing in nature is the fall of a horse in his harness. It is
+a tragedy. Despite their skill in skating there was that about the
+pavement on the rainy evening which filled me with expectations of
+horses going headlong. Finally it happened just in front. There was a
+shout and a tangle in the darkness, and presently a prostrate cab horse
+came within my cylinder. The accident having been a complete success and
+altogether concluded, a voice from the side walk said, "<i>Look</i> out, now!
+<i>Be</i> more careful, can't you?"</p>
+
+<p>I remember a constituent of a Congressman at Washington who had tried in
+vain to bore this Congressman with a wild project of some kind. The
+Congressman eluded him with skill, and his rage and despair ultimately
+culminated in the supreme grievance that he could not even get near
+enough to the Congressman to tell him to go to Hades.</p>
+
+<p>This cabman should have felt the same desire to strangle this man who
+spoke from the side walk.<a name="page_118" id="page_118"></a> He was plainly impotent; he was deprived of
+the power of looking out. There was nothing now for which to look out.
+The man on the side walk had dragged a corpse from a pond and said to
+it, "<i>Be</i> more careful, can't you, or you'll drown?" My cabman pulled up
+and addressed a few words of reproach to the other. Three or four
+figures loomed into my cylinder, and as they appeared spoke to the
+author or the victim of the calamity in varied terms of displeasure.
+Each of these reproaches was couched in terms that defined the situation
+as impending. No blind man could have conceived that the precipitate
+phrase of the incident was absolutely closed. "<i>Look</i> out now, cawnt
+you?" And there was nothing in his mind which approached these
+sentiments near enough to tell them to go to Hades.</p>
+
+<p>However, it needed only an ear to know presently that these expressions
+were formulæ. It was merely the obligatory dance which the Indians had
+to perform before they went to war. These men had come to help, but as a
+regular and traditional preliminary they had first to display to this
+cabman their idea of his ignominy.</p>
+
+<p>The different thing in the affair was the silence of the victim. He
+retorted never a word. This, too, to me seemed to be an obedience to a
+recognised form. He was the visible criminal, if there was a criminal,
+and there was born of it a privilege for them.<a name="page_119" id="page_119"></a></p>
+
+<p>They unfastened the proper straps and hauled back the cab. They fetched
+a mat from some obscure place of succour, and pushed it carefully under
+the prostrate thing. From this panting, quivering mass they suddenly and
+emphatically reconstructed a horse. As each man turned to go his way he
+delivered some superior caution to the cabman while the latter buckled
+his harness.</p>
+
+<h3>CHAPTER V.</h3>
+
+<p>There was to be noticed in this band of rescuers a young man in evening
+clothes and top-hat. Now, in America a young man in evening clothes and
+a top-hat may be a terrible object. He is not likely to do violence, but
+he is likely to do impassivity and indifference to the point where they
+become worse than violence. There are certain of the more idle phases of
+civilisation to which America has not yet awakened&mdash;and it is a matter
+of no moment if she remains unaware. This matter of hats is one of them.
+I recall a legend recited to me by an esteemed friend, ex-Sheriff of Tin
+Can, Nevada. Jim Cortright, one of the best gun-fighters in town, went
+on a journey to Chicago, and while there he procured a top-hat. He was
+quite sure how Tin Can would accept this innovation, but he relied on<a name="page_120" id="page_120"></a>
+the celerity with which he could get a six-shooter in action. One Sunday
+Jim examined his guns with his usual care, placed the top-hat on the
+back of his head, and sauntered coolly out into the streets of Tin Can.</p>
+
+<p>Now, while Jim was in Chicago some progressive citizen had decided that
+Tin Can needed a bowling alley. The carpenters went to work the next
+morning, and an order for the balls and pins was telegraphed to Denver.
+In three days the whole population was concentrated at the new alley
+betting their outfits and their lives.</p>
+
+<p>It has since been accounted very unfortunate that Jim Cortright had not
+learned of bowling alleys at his mother's knee nor even later in the
+mines. This portion of his mind was singularly belated. He might have
+been an Apache for all he knew of bowling alleys.</p>
+
+<p>In his careless stroll through the town, his hands not far from his belt
+and his eyes going sideways in order to see who would shoot first at the
+hat, he came upon this long, low shanty where Tin Can was betting itself
+hoarse over a game between a team from the ranks of Excelsior Hose
+Company No. 1 and a team composed from the <i>habitues</i> of the "Red Light"
+saloon.</p>
+
+<p>Jim, in blank ignorance of bowling phenomena, wandered casually through
+a little door into what<a name="page_121" id="page_121"></a> must always be termed the wrong end of a
+bowling alley. Of course, he saw that the supreme moment had come. They
+were not only shooting at the hat and at him, but the low-down cusses
+were using the most extraordinary and hellish ammunition. Still,
+perfectly undaunted, however, Jim retorted with his two Colts, and
+killed three of the best bowlers in Tin Can.</p>
+
+<p>The ex-Sheriff vouched for this story. He himself had gone headlong
+through the door at the firing of the first shot with that simple
+courtesy which leads Western men to donate the fighters plenty of room.
+He said that afterwards the hat was the cause of a number of other
+fights, and that finally a delegation of prominent citizens were obliged
+to wait upon Cortright and ask him if he wouldn't take that thing away
+somewhere and bury it. Jim pointed out to them that it was his hat, and
+that he would regard it as a cowardly concession if he submitted to
+their dictation in the matter of his headgear. He added that he purposed
+to continue to wear his top-hat on every occasion when he happened to
+feel that the wearing of a top-hat was a joy and a solace to him.</p>
+
+<p>The delegation sadly retired, and announced to the town that Jim
+Cortright had openly defied them, and had declared his purpose of
+forcing his top-hat on the pained attention of Tin Can whenever he<a name="page_122" id="page_122"></a>
+chose. Jim Cortright's plug hat became a phrase with considerable
+meaning to it.</p>
+
+<p>However, the whole affair ended in a great passionate outburst of
+popular revolution. Spike Foster was a friend of Cortright, and one day,
+when the latter was indisposed, Spike came to him and borrowed the hat.
+He had been drinking heavily at the "Red Light," and was in a supremely
+reckless mood. With the terrible gear hanging jauntily over his eye and
+his two guns drawn, he walked straight out into the middle of the square
+in front of the Palace Hotel, and drew the attention of all Tin Can by a
+blood-curdling imitation of the yowl of a mountain lion.</p>
+
+<p>This was when the long-suffering populace arose as one man. The top-hat
+had been flaunted once too often. When Spike Foster's friends came to
+carry him away they found nearly a hundred and fifty men shooting busily
+at a mark&mdash;and the mark was the hat.</p>
+
+<p>My informant told me that he believed he owed his popularity in Tin Can,
+and subsequently his election to the distinguished office of Sheriff, to
+the active and prominent part he had taken in the proceedings.</p>
+
+<p>The enmity to the top-hat expressed by the convincing anecdote exists in
+the American West at present, I think, in the perfection of its
+strength; but<a name="page_123" id="page_123"></a> disapproval is not now displayed by volleys from the
+citizens, save in the most aggravating cases. It is at present usually a
+matter of mere jibe and general contempt. The East, however, despite a
+great deal of kicking and gouging, is having the top-hat stuffed slowly
+and carefully down its throat, and there now exist many young men who
+consider that they could not successfully conduct their lives without
+this furniture.</p>
+
+<p>To speak generally, I should say that the headgear then supplies them
+with a kind of ferocity of indifference. There is fire, sword, and
+pestilence in the way they heed only themselves. Philosophy should
+always know that indifference is a militant thing. It batters down the
+walls of cities, and murders the women and children amid flames and the
+purloining of altar vessels. When it goes away it leaves smoking ruins,
+where lie citizens bayoneted through the throat. It is not a children's
+pastime like mere highway robbery.</p>
+
+<p>Consequently in America we may be much afraid of these young men. We
+dive down valleys so that we may not kow-tow. It is a fearsome thing.</p>
+
+<p>Taught thus a deep fear of the top-hat in its effect upon youth, I was
+not prepared for the move of this particular young man when the
+cab-horse fell. In fact, I grovelled in my corner that I might not see
+the cruel stateliness of his passing. But in the<a name="page_124" id="page_124"></a> meantime he had
+crossed the street, and contributed the strength of his back and some
+advice, as well as the formal address, to the cabman on the importance
+of looking out immediately.</p>
+
+<p>I felt that I was making a notable collection. I had a new kind of
+porter, a cylinder of vision, horses that could skate, and now I added a
+young man in a top-hat who would tacitly admit that the beings around
+him were alive. He was not walking a churchyard filled with inferior
+headstones. He was walking the world, where there were people, many
+people.</p>
+
+<p>But later I took him out of the collection. I thought he had rebelled
+against the manner of a class, but I soon discovered that the top-hat
+was not the property of a class. It was the property of rogues, clerks,
+theatrical agents, damned seducers, poor men, nobles, and others. In
+fact, it was the universal rigging. It was the only hat; all other forms
+might as well be named ham, or chops, or oysters. I retracted my
+admiration of the young man because he may have been merely a rogue.</p>
+
+<h3>CHAPTER VI.</h3>
+
+<p>There was a window whereat an enterprising man by dodging two placards
+and a calendar was entitled<a name="page_125" id="page_125"></a> to view a young woman. She was dejectedly
+writing in a large book. She was ultimately induced to open the window a
+trifle. "What nyme, please?" she said wearily. I was surprised to hear
+this language from her. I had expected to be addressed on a submarine
+topic. I have seen shell fishes sadly writing in large books at the
+bottom of a gloomy aquarium who could not ask me what was my "nyme."</p>
+
+<p>At the end of the hall there was a grim portal marked "Lift." I pressed
+an electric button and heard an answering tinkle in the heavens. There
+was an upholstered settle near at hand, and I discovered the reason. A
+deer-stalking peace drooped upon everything, and in it a man could
+invoke the passing of a lazy pageant of twenty years of his life.</p>
+
+<p>The dignity of a coffin being lowered into a grave surrounded the
+ultimate appearance of the lift. The expert we in America call the
+elevator-boy stepped from the car, took three paces forward, faced to
+attention, and saluted. This elevator-boy could not have been less than
+sixty years of age; a great white beard streamed towards his belt. I saw
+that the lift had been longer on its voyage than I had suspected.</p>
+
+<p>Later in our upward progress a natural event would have been an
+establishment of social relations. Two enemies imprisoned together
+during the still hours of a balloon journey would, I believe, suffer<a name="page_126" id="page_126"></a> a
+mental amalgamation. The overhang of a common fate, a great principal
+fact, can make an equality and a truce between any pair. Yet, when I
+disembarked, a final survey of the grey beard made me recall that I had
+failed even to ask the boy whether he had not taken probably three trips
+on this lift.</p>
+
+<p>My windows overlooked simply a great sea of night, in which were
+swimming little gas fishes.</p>
+
+<h3>CHAPTER VII.</h3>
+
+<p>I have of late been led to wistfully reflect that many of the
+illustrators are very clever. In an impatience, which was denoted by a
+certain economy of apparel, I went to a window to look upon day-lit
+London. There were the 'buses parading the streets with the miens of
+elephants. There were the police looking precisely as I had been
+informed by the prints. There were the sandwich-men. There was almost
+everything.</p>
+
+<p>But the artists had not told me the sound of London. Now, in New York
+the artists are able to pourtray sound, because in New York a dray is
+not a dray at all; it is a great potent noise hauled by two or more
+horses. When a magazine containing an illustration of a New York street
+is sent to me, I always know it beforehand. I can hear it coming<a name="page_127" id="page_127"></a>
+through the mails. As I have said previously, this which I must call
+sound of London was to me only a silence.</p>
+
+<p>Later, in front of the hotel a cabman that I hailed said to me&mdash;"Are you
+gowing far, sir? I've got a byby here, and want to giv'er a bit of a
+blough." This impressed me as being probably a quotation from an early
+Egyptian poet, but I learned soon enough that the word "byby" was the
+name of some kind or condition of horse. The cabman's next remark was
+addressed to a boy who took a perilous dive between the byby's nose and
+a cab in front. "That's roight. Put your head in there and get it
+jammed&mdash;a whackin good place for it, I should think." Although the tone
+was low and circumspect, I have never heard a better off-handed
+declamation. Every word was cut clear of disreputable alliances with its
+neighbours. The whole thing was as clean as a row of pewter mugs. The
+influence of indignation upon the voice caused me to reflect that we
+might devise a mechanical means of inflaming some in that constellation
+of mummers which is the heritage of the Anglo-Saxon race.</p>
+
+<p>Then I saw the drilling of vehicles by two policemen. There were four
+torrents converging at a point, and when four torrents converge at one
+point engineering experts buy tickets for another place.</p>
+
+<p>But here, again, it was drill, plain, simple drill.<a name="page_128" id="page_128"></a> I must not falter
+in saying that I think the management of the traffic&mdash;as the phrase
+goes&mdash;to be distinctly illuminating and wonderful. The police were not
+ruffled and exasperated. They were as peaceful as two cows in a pasture.</p>
+
+<p>I remember once remarking that mankind, with all its boasted modern
+progress, had not yet been able to invent a turnstile that will commute
+in fractions. I have now learned that 756 rights-of-way cannot operate
+simultaneously at one point. Right-of-way, like fighting women, requires
+space. Even two rights-of-way can make a scene which is only suited to
+the tastes of an ancient public.</p>
+
+<p>This truth was very evidently recognised. There was only one
+right-of-way at a time. The police did not look behind them to see if
+their orders were to be obeyed; they knew they were to be obeyed. These
+four torrents were drilling like four battalions. The two blue-cloth men
+man&oelig;uvred them in solemn, abiding peace, the silence of London.</p>
+
+<p>I thought at first that it was the intellect of the individual, but I
+looked at one constable closely and his face was as afire with
+intelligence as a flannel pin-cushion. It was not the police, and it was
+not the crowd. It was the police and the crowd. Again, it was drill.<a name="page_129" id="page_129"></a></p>
+
+<h3>CHAPTER VIII.</h3>
+
+<p>I have never been in the habit of reading signs. I don't like to read
+signs. I have never met a man that liked to read signs. I once invented
+a creature who could play the piano with a hammer, and I mentioned him
+to a professor in Harvard University whose peculiarity was Sanscrit. He
+had the same interest in my invention that I have in a certain kind of
+mustard. And yet this mustard has become a part of me. Or, I have become
+a part of this mustard. Further, I know more of an ink, a brand of hams,
+a kind of cigarette, and a novelist than any man living. I went by train
+to see a friend in the country, and after passing through a patent
+mucilage, some more hams, a South African Investment Company, a Parisian
+millinery firm, and a comic journal, I alighted at a new and original
+kind of corset. On my return journey the road almost continuously ran
+through soap.</p>
+
+<p>I have accumulated superior information concerning these things, because
+I am at their mercy. If I want to know where I am I must find the
+definitive sign. This accounts for my glib use of the word mucilage, as
+well as the titles of other staples.</p>
+
+<p>I suppose even the Briton in mixing his life must<a name="page_130" id="page_130"></a> sometimes consult the
+labels on 'buses and streets and stations, even as the chemist consults
+the labels on his bottles and boxes. A brave man would possibly affirm
+that this was suggested by the existence of the labels.</p>
+
+<p>The reason that I did not learn more about hams and mucilage in New York
+seems to me to be partly due to the fact that the British advertiser is
+allowed to exercise an unbridled strategy in his attack with his new
+corset or whatever upon the defensive public. He knows that the
+vulnerable point is the informatory sign which the citizen must, of
+course, use for his guidance, and then, with horse, foot, guns, corsets,
+hams, mucilage, investment companies, and all, he hurls himself at the
+point.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile I have discovered a way to make the Sanscrit scholar heed my
+creature who plays the piano with a hammer.<a name="page_131" id="page_131"></a></p>
+
+<h2><a name="NEW_YORK_SKETCHES" id="NEW_YORK_SKETCHES"></a>NEW YORK SKETCHES</h2>
+
+<h3><a name="STORIES_TOLD_BY_AN_ARTIST_IN_NEW_YORK" id="STORIES_TOLD_BY_AN_ARTIST_IN_NEW_YORK"></a>STORIES TOLD BY AN ARTIST IN NEW YORK</h3>
+
+<p><a name="page_132" id="page_132"></a></p>
+
+<p><a name="page_133" id="page_133"></a></p>
+
+<p class="cb"><a name="A_Tale_about_How_Great_Grief_got_His_Holiday_Dinner" id="A_Tale_about_How_Great_Grief_got_His_Holiday_Dinner"></a><span class="smcap">A Tale about How "Great Grief" got His Holiday Dinner.</span></p>
+
+<p>Wrinkles had been peering into the little dry-goods box that acted as a
+cupboard.</p>
+
+<p>"There are only two eggs and a half of a loaf of bread left," he
+announced brutally.</p>
+
+<p>"Heavens!" said Warwickson, from where he lay smoking on the bed. He
+spoke in his usual dismal voice. By it he had earned his popular name of
+Great Grief.</p>
+
+<p>Wrinkles was a thrifty soul. A sight of an almost bare cupboard maddened
+him. Even when he was not hungry, the ghosts of his careful ancestors
+caused him to rebel against it. He sat down with a virtuous air. "Well,
+what are we going to do?" he demanded of the others. It is good to be
+the thrifty man in a crowd of unsuccessful artists, for then you can
+keep the others from starving peacefully. "What are we going to do?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, shut up, Wrinkles," said Grief from the bed. "You make me think."<a name="page_134" id="page_134"></a></p>
+
+<p>Little Pennoyer, with head bended afar down, had been busily scratching
+away at a pen and ink drawing. He looked up from his board to utter his
+plaintive optimism.</p>
+
+<p>"The <i>Monthly Amazement</i> may pay me to-morrow. They ought to. I've
+waited over three months now. I'm going down there to-morrow, and
+perhaps I'll get it."</p>
+
+<p>His friends listened to him tolerantly, but at last Wrinkles could not
+omit a scornful giggle. He was such an old man, almost twenty-eight, and
+he had seen so many little boys be brave. "Oh, no doubt, Penny, old
+man." Over on the bed Grief croaked deep down in his throat. Nothing was
+said for a long time thereafter.</p>
+
+<p>The crash of the New York streets came faintly. Occasionally one could
+hear the tramp of feet in the intricate corridors of this begrimed
+building that squatted, slumbering and aged, between two exalted
+commercial structures that would have had to bend afar down to perceive
+it. The light snow beat pattering into the window corners, and made
+vague and grey the vista of chimneys and roofs. Often the wind scurried
+swiftly and raised a long cry.</p>
+
+<p>Great Grief leaned upon his elbow. "See to the fire, will you,
+Wrinkles?"</p>
+
+<p>Wrinkles pulled the coal-box out from under the bed and threw open the
+stove door preparatory to<a name="page_135" id="page_135"></a> shovelling some fuel. A red glare plunged in
+the first faint shadow of dusk. Little Pennoyer threw down his pen and
+tossed his drawing over on the wonderful heap of stuff that hid the
+table. "It's too dark to work." He lit his pipe and walked about,
+stretching his shoulders like a man whose labour was valuable.</p>
+
+<p>When dusk came it saddened these youths. The solemnity of darkness
+always caused them to ponder. "Light the gas, Wrinkles," said Grief.</p>
+
+<p>The flood of orange light showed clearly the dull walls lined with
+scratches, the tousled bed in one corner, the mass of boxes and trunks
+in another, the little fierce stove, and the wonderful table. Moreover,
+there were some wine-coloured draperies flung in some places, and on a
+shelf, high up, there was a plaster cast dark with dust in the creases.
+A long stove-pipe wandered off in the wrong direction, and then twined
+impulsively toward a hole in the wall. There were some extensive cobwebs
+on the ceilings.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, let's eat," said Grief.</p>
+
+<p>Later, there came a sad knock at the door. Wrinkles, arranging a tin
+pail on the stove, little Pennoyer busy at slicing the bread, and Great
+Grief affixing the rubber tube to the gas stove, yelled: "Come in!"</p>
+
+<p>The door opened and Corinson entered dejectedly.<a name="page_136" id="page_136"></a> His overcoat was very
+new. Wrinkles flashed an envious glance at it, but almost immediately he
+cried: "Hello, Corrie, old boy!"</p>
+
+<p>Corinson sat down and felt around among the pipes until he found a good
+one. Great Grief had fixed the coffee to boil on the gas stove, but he
+had to watch it closely, for the rubber tube was short, and a chair was
+balanced on a trunk, and then the gas stove was balanced on the chair.
+Coffee making was a feat.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Grief, with his back turned, "how goes it, Corrie? How's
+Art, hey?" He fastened a terrible emphasis upon the word.</p>
+
+<p>"Crayon portraits," said Corinson.</p>
+
+<p>"What?" They turned towards him with one movement, as if from a lever
+connection. Little Pennoyer dropped his knife.</p>
+
+<p>"Crayon portraits," repeated Corinson. He smoked away in profound
+cynicism. "Fifteen dollars a week or more this time of year, you know."
+He smiled at them like a man of courage.</p>
+
+<p>Little Pennoyer picked up his knife again. "Well, I'll be blowed," said
+Wrinkles. Feeling it incumbent upon him to think, he dropped into a
+chair and began to play serenades on his guitar and watch to see when
+the water for the eggs would boil. It was a habitual pose.</p>
+
+<p>Great Grief, however, seemed to observe something<a name="page_137" id="page_137"></a> bitter in the affair.
+"When did you discover that you couldn't draw?" he said stiffly.</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't discovered it yet," replied Corinson, with a serene air. "I
+merely discovered that I would rather eat."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" said Grief.</p>
+
+<p>"Hand me the eggs, Grief," said Wrinkles. "The water's boiling."</p>
+
+<p>Little Pennoyer burst into the conversation. "We'd ask you to dinner,
+Corrie, but there's only three of us and there's two eggs. I dropped a
+piece of bread on the floor, too. I'd shy one."</p>
+
+<p>"That's all right, Penny," said the other; "don't trouble yourself. You
+artists should never be hospitable. I'm going anyway. I've got to make a
+call. Well, good night, boys. I've got to make a call. Drop in and see
+me."</p>
+
+<p>When the door closed upon him, Grief said: "The coffee's done; I hate
+that fellow. That overcoat cost thirty dollars, if it cost a red. His
+egotism is so tranquil. It isn't like yours, Wrinkles. He&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The door opened again and Corinson thrust in his head. "Say, you
+fellows, you know it's Thanksgiving to-morrow?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what of it?" demanded Grief.</p>
+
+<p>Little Pennoyer said: "Yes, I know it is, Corrie, I thought of it this
+morning."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, come out and have a table d'hote with<a name="page_138" id="page_138"></a> me to-morrow night. I'll
+blow you off in good style."</p>
+
+<p>While Wrinkles played an exuberant air on his guitar, little Pennoyer
+did part of a ballet. They cried ecstatically: "Will we? Well, I guess
+yes?"</p>
+
+<p>When they were alone again, Grief said: "I'm not going, anyhow. I hate
+that fellow."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, fiddle," said Wrinkles. "You're an infernal crank. And besides,
+where's your dinner coming from to-morrow night if you don't go? Tell me
+that."</p>
+
+<p>Little Pennoyer said: "Yes, that's so, Grief. Where's your dinner coming
+from if you don't go?"</p>
+
+<p>Grief said: "Well, I hate him, anyhow."</p>
+
+<p class="ast">* * * * * * *</p>
+
+<p class="cb top5"><span class="smcap">As to Payment of the Rent.</span></p>
+
+<p>Little Pennoyer's four dollars could not last for ever. When he received
+it he and Wrinkles and Great Grief went to a table d'hote. Afterwards
+little Pennoyer discovered that only two dollars and a half remained. A
+small magazine away down town had accepted one out of the six drawings
+that he had taken them, and later had given him four dollars for it.
+Penny was so disheartened when he saw that his money was not going to
+last for ever, that even with two dollars and a half in his pockets, he
+felt<a name="page_139" id="page_139"></a> much worse than when he was penniless, for at that time he
+anticipated twenty-four. Wrinkles lectured upon "Finance."</p>
+
+<p>Great Grief said nothing, for it was established that when he received
+six dollar cheques from comic weeklies he dreamed of renting studios at
+seventy-five dollars per month, and was likely to go out and buy five
+dollars' worth of second-hand curtains and plaster casts.</p>
+
+<p>When he had money Penny always hated the cluttered den in the old
+building. He desired to go out and breathe boastfully like a man. But he
+obeyed Wrinkles, the elder and the wise, and if you had visited that
+room about ten o'clock of a morning or about seven of an evening you
+would have thought that rye bread, frankfurters, and potato salad from
+Second Avenue were the only foods in the world.</p>
+
+<p>Purple Sanderson lived there too, but then he really ate. He had learned
+parts of the gasfitter's trade before he came to be such a great artist,
+and when his opinions disagreed with that of every art manager in New
+York, he went to see a plumber, a friend of his, for whose opinion he
+had a great respect. In consequence, he frequented a very great
+restaurant on Twenty-third Street, and sometimes on Saturday nights he
+openly scorned his companions.</p>
+
+<p>Purple was a good fellow, Grief said, but one of his singularly bad
+traits was that he always remembered<a name="page_140" id="page_140"></a> everything. One night, not long
+after little Pennoyer's great discovery, Purple came in, and as he was
+neatly hanging up his coat, said: "Well, the rent will be due in four
+days."</p>
+
+<p>"Will it?" demanded Penny, astounded. Penny was always astounded when
+the rent came due. It seemed to him the most extraordinary occurrence.</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly it will," said Purple, with the irritated air of a superior
+financial man.</p>
+
+<p>"My soul!" said Wrinkles.</p>
+
+<p>Great Grief lay on the bed smoking a pipe and waiting for fame. "Oh, go
+home, Purple. You resent something. It wasn't me, it was the calendar."</p>
+
+<p>"Try and be serious a moment, Grief."</p>
+
+<p>"You're a fool, Purple."</p>
+
+<p>Penny spoke from where he was at work. "Well, if those <i>Amazement
+Magazine</i> people pay me when they said they would I'll have money then."</p>
+
+<p>"So you will, dear," said Grief, satirically. "You'll have money to
+burn. Did the <i>Amazement</i> people ever pay you when they said they
+would? You're wonderfully important all of a sudden, it seems to me. You
+talk like an artist."</p>
+
+<p>Wrinkles, too, smiled at little Pennoyer. "The <i>Established Magazine</i>
+people wanted Penny to hire models and make a try for them too. It will
+only cost him a big blue chip. By the time he has invested all the money
+he hasn't got and the rent is two<a name="page_141" id="page_141"></a> weeks' overdue, he will be able to
+tell the landlord to wait seven months until the Monday morning after
+the publication. Go ahead, Penny."</p>
+
+<p>It was the habit to make game of little Pennoyer. He was always having
+gorgeous opportunities, with no opportunity to take advantage of his
+opportunities.</p>
+
+<p>Penny smiled at them, his tiny, tiny smile of courage.</p>
+
+<p>"You're a confident little cuss," observed Grief, irrelevantly.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, the world has no objection to your being confident also, Grief,"
+said Purple.</p>
+
+<p>"Hasn't it?" said Grief. "Well, I want to know."</p>
+
+<p>Wrinkles could not be light-spirited long. He was obliged to despair
+when occasion offered. At last he sank down in a chair and seized his
+guitar.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what's to be done?" he said. He began to play mournfully.</p>
+
+<p>"Throw Purple out," mumbled Grief from the bed.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you fairly certain that you will have money then, Penny?" asked
+Purple.</p>
+
+<p>Little Pennoyer looked apprehensive. "Well, I don't know," he said.</p>
+
+<p>And then began that memorable discussion, great in four minds. The
+tobacco was of the "Long John" brand. It smelled like burning mummies.<a name="page_142" id="page_142"></a></p>
+
+<p class="cb smcap">A Dinner on Sunday Evening.</p>
+
+<p>Once Purple Sanderson went to his home in St. Lawrence county to enjoy
+some country air, and, incidentally, to explain his life failure to his
+people. Previously, Great Grief had given him odds that he would return
+sooner than he had planned, and everybody said that Grief had a good
+bet. It is not a glorious pastime, this explaining of life failures.</p>
+
+<p>Later, Great Grief and Wrinkles went to Haverstraw to visit Grief's
+cousin and sketch. Little Pennoyer was disheartened, for it is bad to be
+imprisoned in brick and dust and cobbles when your ear can hear in the
+distance the harmony of the summer sunlight upon leaf and blade of
+green. Besides, he did not hear Wrinkles and Grief discoursing and
+quarrelling in the den, and Purple coming in at six o'clock with
+contempt.</p>
+
+<p>On Friday afternoon he discovered that he only had fifty cents to last
+until Saturday morning, when he was to get his cheque from the <i>Gamin</i>.
+He was an artful little man by this time, however, and it is as true as
+the sky that when he walked toward the <i>Gamin</i> office on Saturday he had
+twenty cents remaining.</p>
+
+<p>The cashier nodded his regrets, "Very sorry, Mr.&mdash;er&mdash;Pennoyer, but our
+pay-day, you know, is on Monday. Come around any time after ten."<a name="page_143" id="page_143"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it don't matter," said Penny. As he walked along on his return he
+reflected deeply how he could invest his twenty cents in food to last
+until Monday morning any time after ten. He bought two coffee cakes in a
+third avenue bakery. They were very beautiful. Each had a hole in the
+centre, and a handsome scallop all around the edges.</p>
+
+<p>Penny took great care of those cakes. At odd times he would rise from
+his work and go to see that no escape had been made. On Sunday he got up
+at noon and compressed breakfast and noon into one meal. Afterwards he
+had almost three-quarters of a cake still left to him. He congratulated
+himself that with strategy he could make it endure until Monday morning
+any time after ten.</p>
+
+<p>At three in the afternoon there came a faint-hearted knock. "Come in,"
+said Penny. The door opened and old Tim Connegan, who was trying to be a
+model, looked in apprehensively. "I beg pardon, sir," he said at once.</p>
+
+<p>"Come in, Tim, you old thief," said Penny. Tim entered slowly and
+bashfully. "Sit down," said Penny. Tim sat down and began to rub his
+knees, for rheumatism had a mighty hold upon him.</p>
+
+<p>Penny lit his pipe and crossed his legs. "Well, how goes it?"</p>
+
+<p>Tim moved his square jaw upward and flashed Penny a little glance.<a name="page_144" id="page_144"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Bad?" said Penny.</p>
+
+<p>The old man raised his hand impressively. "I've been to every studio in
+the hull city, and I never see such absences in my life. What with the
+seashore and the mountains, and this and that resort, I think all the
+models will be starved by fall. I found one man in up on Fifty-seventh
+Street. He ses to me: 'Come around Tuesday&mdash;I may want yez and I may
+not.' That was last week. You know, I live down on the Bowery, Mr.
+Pennoyer, and when I got up there on Tuesday, he ses: 'Confound you, are
+you here again?' ses he. I went and sat down in the park, for I was too
+tired for the walk back. And there you are, Mr. Pennoyer. What with
+trampin' around to look for men that are thousand miles away, I'm near
+dead."</p>
+
+<p>"It's hard," said Penny.</p>
+
+<p>"It is, sir. I hope they'll come back soon. The summer is the death of
+us all, sir; it is. Sure, I never know where my next meal is coming
+until I get it. That's true."</p>
+
+<p>"Had anything to-day?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir, a little."</p>
+
+<p>"How much?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, sir, a lady gave me a cup of coffee this morning. It was good,
+too, I'm telling you."</p>
+
+<p>Penny went to his cupboard. When he returned, he said: "Here's some
+cake."<a name="page_145" id="page_145"></a></p>
+
+<p>Tim thrust forward his hands, palms erect. "Oh, now, Mr. Pennoyer, I
+couldn't. You&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Go ahead. What's the odds?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, now."</p>
+
+<p>"Go ahead, you old bat."</p>
+
+<p>Penny smoked.</p>
+
+<p>When Tim was going out, he turned to grow eloquent again. "Well, I can't
+tell you how much I'm obliged to you, Mr. Pennoyer. You&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't mention it, old man."</p>
+
+<p>Penny smoked.</p>
+
+<h3><a name="THE_SILVER_PAGEANT" id="THE_SILVER_PAGEANT"></a>THE SILVER PAGEANT.</h3>
+
+<p>"It's rotten," said Grief.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it's fair, old man. Still, I would not call it a great contribution
+to American art," said Wrinkles.</p>
+
+<p>"You've got a good thing, Gaunt, if you go at it right," said little
+Pennoyer.</p>
+
+<p>These were all volunteer orations. The boys had come in one by one and
+spoken their opinions. Gaunt listened to them no more than if they had
+been so many match-peddlers. He never heard anything close at hand, and
+he never saw anything excepting that which transpired across a mystic
+wide sea. The shadow of his thoughts was in his<a name="page_146" id="page_146"></a> eyes, a little grey
+mist, and, when what you said to him had passed out of your mind, he
+asked: "Wha&mdash;a&mdash;at?" It was understood that Gaunt was very good to
+tolerate the presence of the universe, which was noisy and interested in
+itself. All the younger men, moved by an instinct of faith, declared
+that he would one day be a great artist if he would only move faster
+than a pyramid. In the meantime he did not hear their voices.
+Occasionally when he saw a man take vivid pleasure in life, he faintly
+evinced an admiration. It seemed to strike him as a feat. As for him, he
+was watching that silver pageant across a sea.</p>
+
+<p>When he came from Paris to New York somebody told him that he must make
+his living. He went to see some book publishers, and talked to them in
+his manner&mdash;as if he had just been stunned. At last one of them gave him
+drawings to do, and it did not surprise him. It was merely as if rain
+had come down.</p>
+
+<p>Great Grief went to see him in his studio, and returned to the den to
+say: "Gaunt is working in his sleep. Somebody ought to set fire to him."</p>
+
+<p>It was then that the others went over and smoked, and gave their
+opinions of a drawing. Wrinkles said: "Are you really looking at it,
+Gaunt? I don't think you've seen it yet, Gaunt?"</p>
+
+<p>"What?"<a name="page_147" id="page_147"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you look at it?"</p>
+
+<p>When Wrinkles departed, the model, who was resting at that time,
+followed him into the hall and waved his arms in rage. "That feller's
+crazy. Yeh ought t' see&mdash;" and he recited lists of all the wrongs that
+can come to models.</p>
+
+<p>It was a superstitious little band over in the den. They talked often of
+Gaunt. "He's got pictures in his eyes," said Wrinkles. They had expected
+genius to blindly stumble at the perface and ceremonies of the world,
+and each new flounder by Gaunt made a stir in the den. It awed them, and
+they waited.</p>
+
+<p>At last one morning Gaunt burst into the room. They were all as dead
+men.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going to paint a picture." The mist in his eyes was pierced by a
+Coverian gleam. His gestures were wild and extravagant. Grief stretched
+out smoking on the bed, Wrinkles and little Pennoyer working at their
+drawing-boards tilted against the table&mdash;were suddenly frozen. If bronze
+statues had come and danced heavily before them, they could not have
+been thrilled further.</p>
+
+<p>Gaunt tried to tell them of something, but it became knotted in his
+throat, and then suddenly he dashed out again.</p>
+
+<p>Later they went earnestly over to Gaunt's studio. Perhaps he would tell
+them of what he saw across the sea.<a name="page_148" id="page_148"></a></p>
+
+<p>He lay dead upon the floor. There was a little grey mist before his
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>When they finally arrived home that night they took a long time to
+undress for bed, and then came the moment when they waited for some one
+to put out the gas. Grief said at last, with the air of a man whose
+brain is desperately driven: "I wonder&mdash;I&mdash;what do you suppose he was
+going to paint?"</p>
+
+<p>Wrinkles reached and turned out the gas, and from the sudden profound
+darkness, he said: "There is a mistake. He couldn't have had pictures in
+his eyes."</p>
+
+<h3><a name="A_STREET_SCENE_IN_NEW_YORK" id="A_STREET_SCENE_IN_NEW_YORK"></a>A STREET SCENE IN NEW YORK.</h3>
+
+<p>The man and the boy conversed in Italian, mumbling the soft syllables
+and making little, quick egotistical gestures. Suddenly the man glared
+and wavered on his limbs for a moment as if some blinding light had
+flashed before his vision; then he swayed like a drunken man and fell.
+The boy grasped his arm convulsively, and made an attempt to support his
+companion so that the body slid to the side-walk with an easy motion
+like a corpse sinking into the sea. The boy screamed.</p>
+
+<p>Instantly people from all directions turned their gaze upon that figure
+prone upon the side-walk. In<a name="page_149" id="page_149"></a> a moment there was a dodging, peering,
+pushing crowd about the man. A volley of questions, replies,
+speculations flew to and fro among all the bobbing heads.</p>
+
+<p>"What's th' matter? what's th' matter?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, a jag, I guess!"</p>
+
+<p>"Aw, he's got a fit!"</p>
+
+<p>"What's th' matter? what's th' matter?"</p>
+
+<p>Two streams of people coming from different directions met at this point
+to form a great crowd. Others came from across the street.</p>
+
+<p>Down under their feet, almost lost under this mass of people, lay a man,
+hidden in the shadows caused by their forms, which, in fact, barely
+allowed a particle of light to pass between them. Those in the foremost
+rank bended down eagerly, anxious to see everything. Others behind them
+crowded savagely like starving men fighting for bread. Always, the
+question could be heard flying in the air. "What's th' matter." Some,
+near to the body, and perhaps feeling the danger of being forced over
+upon it, twisted their heads and protested violently to those unheeding
+ones who were scuffling in the rear: "Say, quit yer shovin', can't yeh?
+What do yeh want, anyhow? Quit!"</p>
+
+<p>Somebody back in the throng suddenly said: "Say, young feller, cheese
+that pushin'! I ain't no peach!"<a name="page_150" id="page_150"></a></p>
+
+<p>Another voice said: "Well, dat's all right&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The boy who had been with the Italian was standing helplessly, a
+frightened look in his eyes, and holding the man's hand. Sometimes he
+looked about him dumbly, with indefinite hope, as if he expected sudden
+assistance to come from the clouds. The men about him frequently jostled
+him until he was obliged to put his hand upon the breast of the body to
+maintain his balance. Those nearest the man upon the sidewalk at first
+saw his body go through a singular contortion. It was as if an invisible
+hand had reached up from the earth and had seized him by the hair. He
+seemed dragged slowly, pitilessly backward, while his body stiffened
+convulsively, his hands clenched, and his arms swung rigidly upward.
+Through his pallid, half-closed lids one could see the steel-coloured,
+assassin-like gleam of his eye, that shone with a mystic light as a
+corpse might glare at those live ones who seemed about to trample it
+under foot. As for the men near, they hung back, appearing as if they
+expected it might spring erect and grab them. Their eyes, however, were
+held in a spell of fascination. They scarce seemed to breathe. They were
+contemplating a depth into which a human being had sunk, and the marvel
+of this mystery of life or death held them chained. Occasionally from
+the rear a man came thrusting his way impetuously, satisfied that there
+was a horror to be seen, and apparently insane to get a view of it.<a name="page_151" id="page_151"></a>
+More self-contained men swore at these persons when they tread upon
+their toes.</p>
+
+<p>The street cars jingled past this scene in endless parade. Occasionally,
+down where the elevated road crossed the street, one could hear
+sometimes a thunder, suddenly begun and suddenly ended. Over the heads
+of the crowd hung an immovable canvas sign: "Regular Dinner twenty
+cents."</p>
+
+<p>The body on the pave seemed like a bit of debris sunk in this human
+ocean.</p>
+
+<p>But after the first spasm of curiosity had passed away, there were those
+in the crowd who began to bethink themselves of some way to help. A
+voice called out: "Rub his wrists." The boy and a man on the other side
+of the body began to rub the wrists and slap the palms of the man. A
+tall German suddenly appeared, and resolutely began to push the crowd
+back. "Get back there&mdash;get back," he repeated continually while he
+pushed at them. He seemed to have authority; the crowd obeyed him. He
+and another man knelt down by the man in the darkness and loosened his
+shirt at the throat. Once they struck a match and held it close to the
+man's face. This livid visage suddenly appearing under their feet in the
+light of the match's yellow glare, made the crowd shudder. Half
+articulate exclamations could be heard. There were men who nearly
+created a riot in the madness of their desire to see the thing.<a name="page_152" id="page_152"></a></p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile others had been questioning the boy. "What's his name? Where
+does he live?"</p>
+
+<p>Then a policeman appeared. The first part of this little drama had gone
+on without his assistance, but now he came, striding swiftly, his helmet
+towering over the crowd and shading that impenetrable police face. He
+charged the crowd as if he were a squadron of Irish Lancers. The people
+fairly withered before this onslaught. Occasionally he shouted: "Come,
+make way there. Come, now!" He was evidently a man whose life was
+half-pestered out of him by people who were sufficiently unreasonable
+and stupid as to insist on walking in the streets. He felt the rage
+toward them that a placid cow feels toward the flies that hover in
+clouds and disturb its repose. When he arrived at the centre of the
+crowd he first said, threateningly: "What's th' matter here?" And then
+when he saw that human bit of wreckage at the bottom of the sea of men,
+he said to it: "Come, git up out that! Git out a here!"</p>
+
+<p>Whereupon hands were raised in the crowd and a volley of decorated
+information was blazed at the officer.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, he's got a fit, can't yeh see?"</p>
+
+<p>"He's got a fit!"</p>
+
+<p>"What th'ell yeh doin'? Leave 'im be!"</p>
+
+<p>The policeman menaced with a glance the crowd from whose safe precincts
+the defiant voices had emerged.<a name="page_153" id="page_153"></a></p>
+
+<p>A doctor had come. He and the policeman bended down at the man's side.
+Occasionally the officer reared up to create room. The crowd fell away
+before his admonitions, his threats, his sarcastic questions, and before
+the sweep of those two huge buckskin gloves.</p>
+
+<p>At last the peering ones saw the man on the side-walk begin to breathe
+heavily, strainedly, as if he had just come to the surface from some
+deep water. He uttered a low cry in his foreign way. It was like a
+baby's squeal or the side wail of a little storm-tossed kitten. As this
+cry went forth to all those eager ears the jostling, crowding
+recommenced again furiously, until the doctor was obliged to yell
+warningly a dozen times. The policeman had gone to send the ambulance
+call.</p>
+
+<p>Then a man struck another match, and in its meagre light the doctor felt
+the skull of the prostrate man carefully to discover if any wound had
+been caused by his fall to the stone side-walk. The crowd pressed and
+crushed again. It was as if they fully expected to see blood by the
+light of the match, and the desire made them appear almost insane. The
+policeman returned and fought with them. The doctor looked up
+occasionally to scold and demand room.</p>
+
+<p>At last, out of the faint haze of light far up the street, there came
+the sound of a gong beating rapidly. A monstrous truck loaded to the sky
+with<a name="page_154" id="page_154"></a> barrels scurried to one side with marvellous agility. And then the
+black waggon, with its gleam of gold lettering and bright brass gong,
+clattered into view, the horse galloping. A young man, as imperturbable
+almost as if he were at a picnic, sat upon the rear seat. When they
+picked up the limp body, from which came little moans and howls, the
+crowd almost turned into a mob. When the ambulance started on its
+banging and clanging return, they stood and gazed until it was quite out
+of sight. Some resumed their way with an air of relief. Others still
+continued to stare after the vanished ambulance and its burden as if
+they had been cheated, as if the curtain had been rung down on a tragedy
+that was but half completed; and this impenetrable blanket intervening
+between a sufferer and their curiosity seemed to make them feel an
+injustice.</p>
+
+<h3><a name="MINETTA_LANE_NEW_YORK" id="MINETTA_LANE_NEW_YORK"></a>MINETTA LANE, NEW YORK.</h3>
+
+<p class="cb smcap">Its Worst Days have Now Passed Away.<br /><br />But its Inhabitants Still Include
+Many whose Deeds are Evil.<br /><br />The Celebrated Resort of Mammy Ross.</p>
+
+<p>Minetta Lane is a small and becobbled valley between hills and dingy
+brick. At night the street lamps, burning dimly, cause the shadows to
+be<a name="page_155" id="page_155"></a> important, and in the gloom one sees groups of quietly conversant
+negroes, with occasionally the gleam of a passing growler. Everything is
+vaguely outlined and of uncertain identity, unless, indeed, it be the
+flashing buttons and shield of the policeman on his coast. The Sixth
+Avenue horse-cars jingle past one end of the lane, and a block eastward
+the little thoroughfare ends in the darkness of M'Dougall Street.</p>
+
+<p>One wonders how such an insignificant alley could get such an assuredly
+large reputation, but, as a matter of fact, Minetta Lane and Minetta
+Street, which leads from it southward to Bleecker Street, were, until a
+few years ago, two of the most enthusiastically murderous thoroughfares
+in New York. Bleecker Street, M'Dougall Street, and nearly all the
+streets thereabouts were most unmistakably bad; the other streets went
+away and hid. To gain a reputation in Minetta Lane in those days a man
+was obliged to commit a number of furious crimes, and no celebrity was
+more important than the man who had a good honest killing to his credit.
+The inhabitants, for the most part, were negroes, and they represented
+the very worst element of their race. The razor habit clung to them with
+the tenacity of an epidemic, and every night the uneven cobbles felt
+blood. Minetta Lane was not a public thoroughfare at this period. It was
+a street set apart, a refuge for<a name="page_156" id="page_156"></a> criminals. Thieves came here
+preferably with their gains, and almost any day peculiar sentences
+passed among the inhabitants. "Big Jim turned a thousand last night."
+"No-Toe's made another haul." And the worshipful citizens would make
+haste to be present at the consequent revel.</p>
+
+<p>As has been said, Minetta Lane was then no thoroughfare. A peaceable
+citizen chose to make a circuit rather than venture through this place,
+that swarmed with the most dangerous people in the city. Indeed, the
+thieves of the district used to say: "Once get in the lane and you're
+all right." Even a policeman in chase of a criminal would probably shy
+away instead of pursuing him into the lane. The odds were too great
+against a lone officer.</p>
+
+<p>Sailors, and any men who might appear to have money about them, were
+welcomed with all proper ceremony at the terrible dens of the lane. At
+departure they were fortunate if they still retained their teeth. It was
+the custom to leave very little else to them. There was every facility
+for the capture of coin, from trap-doors to plain ordinary knock-out
+drops.</p>
+
+<p>And yet Minetta Lane is built on the grave of Minetta Brook, where, in
+olden times, lovers walked under the willows on the bank, and Minetta
+Lane, in later times, was the home of many of the best families of the
+town.<a name="page_157" id="page_157"></a></p>
+
+<p>A negro named Bloodthirsty was perhaps the most luminous figure of
+Minetta Lane's aggregation of desperadoes. Bloodthirsty supposedly is
+alive now, but he has vanished from the lane. The police want him for
+murder. Bloodthirsty is a large negro, and very hideous. He has a
+rolling eye that shows white at the wrong time, and his neck, under the
+jaw, is dreadfully scarred and pitted.</p>
+
+<p>Bloodthirsty was particularly eloquent when drunk, and in the wildness
+of a spree he would rave so graphically about gore that even the
+habitated wool of old timers would stand straight.</p>
+
+<p>Bloodthirsty meant most of it, too. That is why his orations were
+impressive. His remarks were usually followed by the wide, lightning
+sweep of his razor. None cared to exchange epithets with Bloodthirsty. A
+man in a boiler iron suit would walk down to City Hall and look at the
+clock before he would ask the time of day from the single-minded and
+ingenuous Bloodthirsty.</p>
+
+<p>After Bloodthirsty, in combative importance, came No-Toe Charley.
+Singularly enough, Charley was called No-Toe Charley because he did not
+have a toe on his feet. Charley was a small negro, and his manner of
+amusement befitting a smaller man. Charley was more wise, more sly, more
+round-about than the other man. The path of his crimes was like a
+corkscrew in architecture, and his method led<a name="page_158" id="page_158"></a> him to make many tunnels.
+With all his cleverness, however, No-Toe was finally induced to pay a
+visit to the gentlemen in the grim, grey building up the river&mdash;Sing
+Sing.</p>
+
+<p>Black-Cat was another famous bandit who made the land his home.
+Black-Cat is dead. Jube Tyler has been sent to prison, and after
+mentioning the recent disappearance of Old Man Spriggs it may be said
+that the lane is now destitute of the men who once crowned it with a
+glory of crime. It is hardly essential to mention Guinea Johnson.</p>
+
+<p>Guinea is not a great figure. Guinea is just an ordinary little crook.
+Sometimes Guinea pays a visit to his friends, the other little crooks
+who make homes in the lane, but he himself does not live there, and with
+him out of it there is now no one whose industry's unlawfulness has yet
+earned him the dignity of a nickname. Indeed, it is difficult to find
+people now who remember the old gorgeous days, although it is but two
+years since the lane shone with sin like a new head-light. But after a
+search the reporter found three.</p>
+
+<p>Mammy Ross is one of the last relics of the days of slaughter still
+living there. Her weird history also reaches back to the blossoming of
+the first members of the Whyo gang in the Old Sixth Ward, and her mind
+is stored with bloody memories. She at one time kept a sailors'
+boarding-house near the<a name="page_159" id="page_159"></a> Tombs prison, and the accounts of all the
+festive crimes of that neighbourhood in ancient years roll easily from
+her tongue. They killed a sailor man every day, and pedestrians went
+about the streets wearing stoves for fear of the handy knives. At the
+present day the route to Mammy's home is up a flight of grimy stairs
+that are pasted on the outside of an old and tottering frame house. Then
+there is a hall blacker than a wolf's throat, and this hall leads to a
+little kitchen where Mammy usually sits groaning by the fire. She is, of
+course, very old, and she is also very fat. She seems always to be in
+great pain. She says she is suffering from "de very las' dregs of de
+yaller fever."</p>
+
+<p>During the first part of a reporter's recent visit, old Mammy seemed
+most dolefully oppressed by her various diseases. Her great body shook
+and her teeth clicked spasmodically during her long and painful
+respirations. From time to time she reached her trembling hand and drew
+a shawl closer about her shoulders. She presented as true a picture of a
+person undergoing steady, unchangeable, chronic pain as a patent
+medicine firm could wish to discover for miraculous purposes. She
+breathed like a fish thrown out on the bank, and her old head
+continually quivered in the nervous tremors of the extremely aged and
+debilitated person. Meanwhile her daughter hung over the stove and
+placidly cooked sausages.<a name="page_160" id="page_160"></a></p>
+
+<p>Appeals were made to the old woman's memory. Various personages who had
+been sublime figures of crime in the long-gone days were mentioned to
+her, and presently her eyes began to brighten. Her head no longer
+quivered. She seemed to lose for a period her sense of pain in the
+gentle excitement caused by the invocation of the spirits of her memory.</p>
+
+<p>It appears that she had had a historic quarrel with Apple Mag. She first
+recited the prowess of Apple Mag; how this emphatic lady used to argue
+with paving stones, carving knives, and bricks. Then she told of the
+quarrel; what Mag said; what she said. It seems that they cited each
+other as spectacles of sin and corruption in more fully explanatory
+terms than are commonly known to be possible. But it was one of Mammy's
+most gorgeous recollections, and, as she told it, a smile widened over
+her face.</p>
+
+<p>Finally she explained her celebrated retort to one of the most
+illustrious thugs that had blessed the city in bygone days. "Ah says to
+'im, ah says: 'You&mdash;you'll die in yer boots like Gallopin'
+Thompson&mdash;dat's what you'll do. You des min' dat', honey. Ah got o'ny
+one chile, an' he ain't nuthin' but er cripple; but le'me tel' you, man,
+dat boy'll live t' pick de feathers f'm de goose dat'll eat de grass dat
+grows over your grave, man.' Dat's what I tol' 'm. But&mdash;law sake&mdash;how I
+know dat in less'n three day, dat man be lying in de gutter wif a knife
+stickin'<a name="page_161" id="page_161"></a> out'n his back. Lawd, no, I sholy never s'pected noting like
+dat."</p>
+
+<p>These reminiscences, at once maimed and reconstructed, have been
+treasured by old Mammy as carefully, as tenderly, as if they were the
+various little tokens of an early love. She applies the same
+black-handed sentiment to them, and, as she sits groaning by the fire,
+it is plainly to be seen that there is only one food for her ancient
+brain, and that is the recollection of the beautiful fights and murders
+of the past.</p>
+
+<p>On the other side of the lane, but near Mammy's house, Pop Babcock keeps
+a restaurant. Pop says it is a restaurant, and so it must be one; but
+you could pass there ninety times each day and never know you were
+passing a restaurant. There is one obscure little window in the
+basement, and if you went close and peered in you might, after a time,
+be able to make out a small, dusty sign, lying amid jars on a dusty
+shelf. This sign reads: "Oysters in every style." If you are of a
+gambling turn of mind, you will probably stand out in the street and bet
+yourself black in the face that there isn't an oyster within a hundred
+yards. But Pop Babcock made that sign, and Pop Babcock could not tell an
+untruth. Pop is a model of all the virtues which an inventive fate has
+made for us. He says so.</p>
+
+<p>As far as goes the management of Pop's restaurant,<a name="page_162" id="page_162"></a> it differs from
+Sherry's. In the first place, the door is always kept locked. The
+wardmen of the Fifteenth precinct have a way of prowling through the
+restaurant almost every night, and Pop keeps the door locked in order to
+keep out the objectionable people that cause the wardmen's visits. He
+says so. The cooking stove is located in the main room of the
+restaurant, and it is placed in such a strategic manner that it occupies
+about all the space that is not already occupied by a table, a bench,
+and two chairs. The table will, on a pinch, furnish room for the plates
+of two people if they are willing to crowd. Pop says he is the best cook
+in the world.</p>
+
+<p>When questioned concerning the present condition of the lane, Pop said:
+"Quiet! Quiet! Lo'd save us, maybe it ain't. Quiet! Quiet!" His emphasis
+was arranged crescendo, until the last word was really a vocal
+explosion. "Why, dish er' lane ain't nohow like what it uster be&mdash;no,
+indeed it ain't. No, sir. 'Deed it ain't. Why, I kin remember when dey
+was a-cuttin' an' a-slashin' long yere all night. 'Deed dey wos. My-my,
+dem times was different. Dat der Kent, he kep' de place at Green Gate
+cou't down yer ol' Mammy's&mdash;an' he was a hard baby&mdash;'deed he was&mdash;an'
+ol' Black-Cat an' ol' Bloodthirsty, dey was a-comin' round yere
+a-cuttin', an' a-slashin', an' a-cuttin', an' a-slashin'. Didn't dar'
+say boo to a goose in dose days, dat you didn't, less'n you lookin' fer
+a scrap. No, sir." Then he gave<a name="page_163" id="page_163"></a> information concerning his own prowess
+at that time. Pop is about as tall as a picket of an undersized fence.
+"But dey didn't have nothin' ter say ter me. No, sir, 'deed dey didn't.
+I would lay down fer none of 'em. No, sir. Dey knew my gait, 'deed dey
+did. Man, man, many's de time I buck up agin 'em."</p>
+
+<p>At this time Pop had three customers in his place, one asleep on the
+bench, one asleep on two chairs, and one asleep on the floor behind the
+stove.</p>
+
+<p>But there is one who lends dignity of the real bevel-edged type to
+Minetta Lane, and that man is Hank Anderson. Hank, of course, does not
+live in the lane, but the shadows of his social perfections fall upon it
+as refreshingly as a morning dew.</p>
+
+<p>Hank gave a dance twice in each week at a hall hard by in M'Dougall
+Street, and the dusky aristocracy of the neighbourhood know their
+guiding beacon. Moreover, Hank holds an annual ball in Forty-fourth
+Street. Also, he gives a picnic each year to the Montezuma Club, when he
+again appears as a guiding beacon. This picnic is usually held on a
+barge, and the excursion is a very joyous one. Some years ago it
+required the entire reserve squad of an up-town police precinct to
+properly control the enthusiasm of the gay picnickers, but that was an
+exceptional exuberance, and no measure of Hank's ability for management.</p>
+
+<p><a name="page_164" id="page_164"></a>He is really a great manager. He was Boss Tweed's body-servant in the
+days when Tweed was a political prince, and any one who saw Bill Tweed
+through a spy-glass learned the science of leading, pulling, driving,
+and hauling men in a way to keep the men ignorant of it. Hank imbibed
+from this fount of knowledge, and he applied his information in Thompson
+Street. Thompson Street salaamed. Presently he bore a proud title: "The
+Mayor of Thompson Street." Dignities from the principal political
+organisations of the city adorned his brow, and he speedily became
+illustrious.</p>
+
+<p>Hank knew the lane well in its direful days. As for the inhabitants, he
+kept clear of them, and yet in touch with them, according to a method
+that he might have learned in the Sixth ward. The Sixth ward was a good
+place in which to learn that trick. Anderson can tell many strange tales
+and good of the lane, and he tells them in the graphic way of his class.
+"Why, they could steal your shirt without moving a wrinkle on it."</p>
+
+<p>The killing of Joe Carey was the last murder that happened in the
+Minettas. Carey had what might be called a mixed-ale difference with a
+man named Kenny. They went out to the middle of Minetta Street to
+affably fight it out and determine the justice of the question.</p>
+
+<p>In the scrimmage Kenny drew a knife, thrust quickly, and Carey fell.
+Kenny had not gone a hundred feet before he ran into the arms of a
+policeman.<a name="page_165" id="page_165"></a></p>
+
+<p>There is probably no street in New York where the police keep closer
+watch than they do in Minetta Lane. There was a time when the
+inhabitants had a profound and reasonable contempt for the public
+guardians, but they have it no longer apparently. Any citizen can walk
+through there at any time in perfect safety, unless, perhaps, he should
+happen to get too frivolous. To be strictly accurate, the change began
+under the reign of police Captain Chapman. Under Captain Groo, a
+commander of the Fifteenth precinct, the lane donned a complete new
+garb. Its denizens brag now of its peace, precisely as they once bragged
+of its war. It is no more a bloody lane. The song of the razor is seldom
+heard. There are still toughs and semi-toughs galore in it, but they
+can't get a chance with the copper looking the other way. Groo got the
+poor lane by the throat. If a man should insist upon becoming a victim
+of the badger game, he could probably succeed, upon search in Minetta
+Lane, as indeed, he could on any of the great avenues, but then Minetta
+Lane is not supposed to be a pearly street of Paradise.</p>
+
+<p>In the meantime the Italians have begun to dispute the possession of the
+lane with the negroes. Green Gate Court is filled with them now, and a
+row of houses near the M'Dougall Street corner is occupied entirely by
+Italian families. None of them seem to be over fond of the old Mulberry
+Bend<a name="page_166" id="page_166"></a> fashion of life, and there are no cutting affrays among them worth
+mentioning. It is the original negro element that makes the trouble when
+there is trouble.</p>
+
+<p>But they are happy in this condition are these people. The most
+extraordinary quality of the negro is his enormous capacity for
+happiness under most adverse circumstances. Minetta Lane is a place of
+poverty and sin, but these influences cannot destroy the broad smile of
+the negro&mdash;a vain and simple child, but happy. They all smile here, the
+most evil as well as the poorest. Knowing the negro, one always expects
+laughter from him, be he ever so poor, but it was a new experience to
+see a broad grin on the face of the devil. Even old Pop Babcock had a
+laugh as fine and mellow as would be the sound of falling glass, broken
+saints from high windows, in the silence of some great cathedral's
+hollow.</p>
+
+<h3><a name="THE_ROOF_GARDENS_AND_GARDENERS_OF_NEW_YORK" id="THE_ROOF_GARDENS_AND_GARDENERS_OF_NEW_YORK"></a>THE ROOF GARDENS AND GARDENERS OF NEW YORK.</h3>
+
+<p class="cb smcap">A Phase of New York Life as Seen by a Close Observer.</p>
+
+<p>When the hot weather comes the roof gardens burst into full bloom, and
+if an inhabitant of Chicago should take flight on his wings over this
+city, he<a name="page_167" id="page_167"></a> would observe six or eight flashing spots in the darkness,
+spots as radiant as crowns. These are the roof gardens, and if a giant
+had flung a handful of monstrous golden coins upon the sombre-shadowed
+city he could not have benefited the metropolis more, although he would
+not have given the same opportunity to various commercial aspirants to
+charge a price and a half for everything. There are two classes of
+men&mdash;reporters and central office detectives&mdash;who do not mind these
+prices because they are very prodigal of their money.</p>
+
+<p>Now is the time of the girl with the copper voice, the Irishman with
+circular whiskers, and the minstrel who had a reputation in 1833. To the
+street the noise of the band comes down on the wind in fitful gusts, and
+at the brilliantly illuminated rail there is suggestion of many straw
+hats.</p>
+
+<p>One of the main features of the roof garden is the waiter, who stands
+directly in front of you whenever anything interesting transpires on the
+stage. This waiter is three hundred feet high and seventy-two feet wide.
+His finger can block your view of the golden-haired <i>soubrette</i>, and
+when he waves his arm the stage disappears as if by a miracle. What
+particularly fascinates you is his lack of self-appreciation. He doesn't
+know that his length over all is three hundred feet, and that his beam
+is seventy-two feet. He only knows that while the<a name="page_168" id="page_168"></a> golden-haired
+<i>soubrette</i> is singing her first verse he is depositing beer on the
+table before some thirsty New Yorkers. He only knows that during the
+third verse the thirsty New Yorkers object to the roof-garden prices. He
+does not know that behind him are some fifty citizens who ordinarily
+would not give three whoops to see the golden-haired <i>soubrette</i>, but
+who, under these particular circumstances, are kept from swift
+assassination by sheer force of the human will. He gives an impressive
+exhibition of a man who is regardless of consequences, oblivious to
+everything save his task, which is to provide beer. Some day there may
+be a wholesale massacre of roof-garden waiters, but they will die with
+astonished faces and with questions on their lips. Skulls so steadfastly
+opaque defy axes, or any of the other methods which the populace
+occasionally use to cure colossal stupidity.</p>
+
+<p>Between numbers on an ordinary roof-garden programme, the orchestra
+sometimes plays what the more enlightened and wary citizens of the town
+call a "beer overture." But, for reasons which no civil service
+commission could give, the waiter does not choose this time to serve the
+thirsty. No; he waits until the golden-haired <i>soubrette</i> appears, he
+waits until the haggard audience has goaded itself into some interest in
+the proceedings. Then he gets under way. Then he comes forth and blots
+out<a name="page_169" id="page_169"></a> the stage. In case of war, all roof-garden waiters should be
+recruited in a special regiment and sent out in advance of everything.
+There is a peculiar quality of bullet-proofness about them which would
+turn a projectile pale.</p>
+
+<p>If you have strategy enough in your soul you may gain furtive glimpses
+of the stage, despite the efforts of the waiters, and then, with
+something to engage the attention when the attention grows weary of the
+mystic wind, the flashing yellow lights, the music, and the undertone of
+the far street's roar, you should be happy.</p>
+
+<p>Far up into the night there is a wildness, a temper to the air which
+suggests tossing tree boughs and the swift rustle of grass. The New
+Yorker, whose business will not allow him to go out to nature, perhaps,
+appreciates these little opportunities to go up to nature, although
+doubtless he thinks he goes to see the show.</p>
+
+<p>One season two new roof gardens have opened. The one at the top of Grand
+Central Palace is large enough for a regimental drill room. The band is
+imprisoned still higher in a turreted affair, and a person who prefers
+gentle and unobtrusive amusement can gain deep pleasure and satisfaction
+from watching the leader of this band gesticulating upon the heavens.
+His figure is silhouetted beautifully against the sky, and every gesture
+in which he<a name="page_170" id="page_170"></a> wrings noise from his band is interestingly accentuated.</p>
+
+<p>The other new roof garden was Oscar Hammerstein's Olympia, which blazes
+on Broadway.</p>
+
+<p>Oscar originally made a great reputation for getting out injunctions.
+All court judges in New York worked overtime when Oscar was in this
+business. He enjoined everybody in sight. He had a special machine
+made&mdash;"Drop a nickel in the judge and get an injunction." Then he sent a
+man to Washington for twenty-two thousand dollars' worth of nickels. In
+Harlem, where he then lived, it rained orders of the court every day at
+twelve o'clock. The street-cleaning commission was obliged to enlist a
+special force to deal with Oscar's injunctions. Citizens meeting on the
+street never said: "Good morning, how do you feel to-day?" They always
+said: "Good morning, have you been enjoined yet to-day?" When a man
+perhaps wished to enter a little game of draw, the universal form was
+changed when he sent a note to his wife: "Dear Louise, I have received
+an order of the court restraining me from coming home to dinner
+to-night. Yours, George."</p>
+
+<p>But Oscar changed. He smashed his machine, girded himself, and resolved
+to provide the public with amusement. And now we see this great mind
+applying itself to a roof garden with the same<a name="page_171" id="page_171"></a> unflagging industry and
+boundless energy which had previously expressed itself in injunctions.
+The Olympia, his new roof garden, is a feat. It has an exuberance which
+reminds one of the Union Depot train-shed of some western city. The
+steel arches of the roof make a wide and splendid sweep, and over in the
+corner there are real swans swimming in real water. The whole structure
+glares like a conflagration with the countless electric lights. Oscar
+has caused the execution of decorative paintings upon the walls. If he
+had caused the execution of the decorative painters he would have done
+better; but a man who has devoted the greater part of his life to the
+propagation of injunctions is not supposed to understand that wall
+decoration which appears to have been done with a nozzle is worse than
+none. But if carpers say that Oscar failed in his landscapes, none can
+say that he failed in his measurements of the popular mind. The people
+come in swarms to the Olympia. Two elevators are busy at conveying them
+to where the cool and steady night-wind insults the straw hat; and the
+scene here during the popular part of the evening is perhaps more gaudy
+and dazzling than any other in New York.</p>
+
+<p>The bicycle has attained an economic position of vast importance. The
+roof garden ought to attain such a position, and it doubtless will
+soon&mdash;as we give it the opportunity it desires.<a name="page_172" id="page_172"></a></p>
+
+<p>The Arab or the Moor probably invented the roof garden in some long-gone
+centuries, and they are at this day inveterate roof gardeners. The
+American, surprisingly belated&mdash;for him, has but recently seized upon
+the idea, and its development here has been only partial. The
+possibilities of the roof garden are still unknown.</p>
+
+<p>Here is a vast city in which thousands of people in summer half stifle,
+cry out continually for air, fresher air. Just above their heads is what
+might be called a county of unoccupied land. It is not ridiculously
+small when compared with the area of New York county itself. But it is
+as lonely as a desert, this region of roofs. It is as untrodden as the
+corners of Arizona. Unless a man be a roof gardener, he knows
+practically nothing of this land.</p>
+
+<p>Down in the slums necessity forces a solution of problems. It drives the
+people to the roofs. An evening upon a tenement roof with the great
+golden march of the stars across the sky, and Johnnie gone for a pail of
+beer, is not so bad if you have never seen the mountains nor heard, to
+your heart, the slow, sad song of the pines.<a name="page_173" id="page_173"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="IN_THE_BROADWAY_CARS" id="IN_THE_BROADWAY_CARS"></a>IN THE BROADWAY CARS.</h3>
+
+<p class="cb smcap">Panorama of a Day from the Down-town Rush of the Morning to the
+Uninterrupted Whirr of the Cable at Night&mdash;The Man, and the Woman, and
+the Conductor.</p>
+
+<p>The cable cars come down Broadway as the waters come down at Lodore.
+Years ago Father Knickerbocker had convulsions when it was proposed to
+lay impious rails on his sacred thoroughfare. At the present day the
+cars, by force of column and numbers, almost dominate the great street,
+and the eye of even an old New Yorker is held by these long yellow
+monsters which prowl intently up and down, up and down, in a mystic
+search.</p>
+
+<p>In the grey of the morning they come out of the up-town, bearing
+janitors, porters, all that class which carries the keys to set alive
+the great down-town. Later, they shower clerks. Later still, they shower
+more clerks. And the thermometer which is attached to a conductor's
+temper is steadily rising, rising, and the blissful time arrives when
+everybody hangs to a strap and stands on his neighbour's toes. Ten
+o'clock comes, and the Broadway cars, as well as elevated cars, horse
+cars, and ferryboats innumerable, heave sighs of relief. They have
+filled lower<a name="page_174" id="page_174"></a> New York with a vast army of men who will chase to and fro
+and amuse themselves until almost nightfall.</p>
+
+<p>The cable car's pulse drops to normal. But the conductor's pulse begins
+now to beat in split seconds. He has come to the crisis in his day's
+agony. He is now to be overwhelmed with feminine shoppers. They all are
+going to give him two-dollar bills to change. They all are going to
+threaten to report him. He passes his hand across his brow and curses
+his beard from black to grey and from grey to black.</p>
+
+<p>Men and women have different ways of hailing a car. A man&mdash;if he is not
+an old choleric gentleman, who owns not this road but some other
+road&mdash;throws up a timid finger, and appears to believe that the King of
+Abyssinia is careering past on his war-chariot, and only his opinion of
+other people's Americanism keeps him from deep salaams. The gripman
+usually jerks his thumb over his shoulder and indicates the next car,
+which is three miles away. Then the man catches the last platform, goes
+into the car, climbs upon some one's toes, opens his morning paper, and
+is happy.</p>
+
+<p>When a woman hails a car there is no question of its being the King of
+Abyssinia's war-chariot. She has bought the car for three dollars and
+ninety-eight cents. The conductor owes his position to her, and<a name="page_175" id="page_175"></a> the
+gripman's mother does her laundry. No captain in the Royal Horse
+Artillery ever stops his battery from going through a stone house in a
+way to equal her manner of bringing that car back on its haunches. Then
+she walks leisurely forward, and after scanning the step to see if there
+is any mud upon it, and opening her pocket-book to make sure of a
+two-dollar bill, she says: "Do you give transfers down Twenty-eighth
+Street?"</p>
+
+<p>Some time the conductor breaks the bell strap when he pulls it under
+these conditions. Then, as the car goes on, he goes and bullies some
+person who had nothing to do with the affair.</p>
+
+<p>The car sweeps on its diagonal path through the Tenderloin with its
+hotels, its theatres, its flower shops, its 10,000,000 actors who played
+with Booth and Barret. It passes Madison Square and enters the gorge
+made by the towering walls of great shops. It sweeps around the double
+curve at Union Square and Fourteenth Street, and a life insurance agent
+falls in a fit as the car dashes over the crossing, narrowly missing
+three old ladies, two old gentlemen, a newly-married couple, a sandwich
+man, a newsboy, and a dog. At Grace Church the conductor has an
+altercation with a brave and reckless passenger who beards him in his
+own car, and at Canal Street he takes dire vengeance by tumbling a
+drunken man on to the pavement. Meanwhile, the<a name="page_176" id="page_176"></a> gripman has become
+involved with countless truck drivers, and inch by inch, foot by foot,
+he fights his way to City Hall Park. On past the Post Office the car
+goes, with the gripman getting advice, admonition, personal comment, an
+invitation to fight from the drivers, until Battery Park appears at the
+foot of the slope, and as the car goes sedately around the curve the
+burnished shield of the bay shines through the trees.</p>
+
+<p>It is a great ride, full of exciting actions. Those inexperienced
+persons who have been merely chased by Indians know little of the
+dramatic quality which life may hold for them. These jungle of men and
+vehicles, these cañons of streets, these lofty mountains of iron and cut
+stone&mdash;a ride through them affords plenty of excitement. And no lone
+panther's howl is more serious in intention than the howl of the truck
+driver when the cable car bumps one of his rear wheels.</p>
+
+<p>Owing to a strange humour of the gods that make our comfort, sailor hats
+with wide brims come into vogue whenever we are all engaged in hanging
+to cable-car straps. There is only one more serious combination known to
+science, but a trial of it is at this day impossible. If a troupe of
+Elizabethan courtiers in large ruffs should board a cable car, the
+complication would be a very awesome one, and the profanity would be in
+old English, but very<a name="page_177" id="page_177"></a> inspiring. However, the combination of
+wide-brimmed hats and crowded cable cars is tremendous in its power to
+cause misery to the patient New York public.</p>
+
+<p>Suppose you are in a cable car, clutching for life and family a creaking
+strap from overhead. At your shoulder is a little dude in a very
+wide-brimmed straw hat with a red band. If you were in your senses you
+would recognise this flaming band as an omen of blood. But you are not
+in your senses; you are in a Broadway cable car. You are not supposed to
+have any senses. From the forward end you hear the gripman uttering
+shrill whoops and running over citizens. Suddenly the car comes to a
+curve. Making a swift running start, it turns three hand-springs, throws
+a cart wheel for luck, bounds into the air, hurls six passengers over
+the nearest building, and comes down a-straddle of the track. That is
+the way in which we turn curves in New York.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, during the car's gamboling, the corrugated rim of the dude's
+hat has swept naturally across your neck, and has left nothing for your
+head to do but to quit your shoulders. As the car roars your head falls
+into the waiting arms of the proper authorities. The dude is dead;
+everything is dead. The interior of the car resembles the<a name="page_178" id="page_178"></a> scene of the
+battle of Wounded Knee, but this gives you small satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>There was once a person possessing a fund of uncanny humour who greatly
+desired to import from past ages a corps of knights in full armour. He
+then purposed to pack the warriors into a cable car and send them around
+a curve. He thought that he could gain much pleasure by standing near
+and listening to the wild clash of steel upon steel&mdash;the tumult of
+mailed heads striking together, the bitter grind of armoured legs
+bending the wrong way. He thought that this would teach them that war is
+grim.</p>
+
+<p>Towards evening, when the tides of travel set northward, it is curious
+to see how the gripman and conductor reverse their tempers. Their
+dispositions flop over like patent signals. During the down-trip they
+had in mind always the advantages of being at Battery Park. A perpetual
+picture of the blessings of Battery Park was before them, and every
+delay made them fume&mdash;made this picture all the more alluring. Now the
+delights of up-town appear to them. They have reversed the signs on the
+cars; they have reversed their aspirations. Battery Park has been gained
+and forgotten. There is a new goal. Here is a perpetual illustration
+which the philosophers of New York may use.</p>
+
+<p>In the Tenderloin, the place of theatres, and of<a name="page_179" id="page_179"></a> the restaurant where
+gayer New York does her dining, the cable cars in the evening carry a
+stratum of society which looks like a new one, but it is of the familiar
+strata in other clothes. It is just as good as a new stratum, however,
+for in evening dress the average man feels that he has gone up three
+pegs in the social scale, and there is considerable evening dress about
+a Broadway car in the evening. A car with its electric lamp resembles a
+brilliantly-lighted salon, and the atmosphere grows just a trifle
+strained. People sit more rigidly, and glance sidewise, perhaps, as if
+each was positive of possessing social value, but was doubtful of all
+others. The conductor says: "Ah, gwan. Git off th' earth." But this is
+to a man at Canal Street. That shows his versatility. He stands on the
+platform and beams in a modest and polite manner into the car. He notes
+a lifted finger and grabs swiftly for the bell strap. He reaches down to
+help a woman aboard. Perhaps his demeanour is a reflection of the manner
+of the people in the car. No one is in a mad New York hurry; no one is
+fretting and muttering; no one is perched upon his neighbour's toes.
+Moreover, the Tenderloin is a glory at night. Broadway of late years has
+fallen heir to countless signs illuminated with red, blue, green, and
+gold electric lamps, and the people certainly fly to these as the moths
+go to a candle. And perhaps the gods have allowed this opportunity to
+observe and study<a name="page_180" id="page_180"></a> the best-dressed crowds in the world to operate upon
+the conductor until his mood is to treat us with care and mildness.</p>
+
+<p>Late at night, after the diners and theatre-goers have been lost in
+Harlem, various inebriate persons may perchance emerge from the darker
+regions of Sixth Avenue and swing their arms solemnly at the gripman. If
+the Broadway cars run for the next 7000 years this will be the only time
+when one New Yorker will address another in public without an excuse
+sent direct from heaven. In these cars late at night it is not
+impossible that some fearless drunkard will attempt to inaugurate a
+general conversation. He is quite willing to devote his ability to the
+affair. He tells of the fun he thinks he has had; describes his
+feelings; recounts stories of his dim past. None reply, although all
+listen with every ear. The rake probably ends by borrowing a match,
+lighting a cigar, and entering into a wrangle with the conductor with an
+<i>abandon</i>, a ferocity, and a courage that do not come to us when we are
+sober.</p>
+
+<p>In the meantime the figures on the street grow fewer and fewer.
+Strolling policemen test the locks of the great dark-fronted stores.
+Nighthawk cabs whirl by the cars on their mysterious errands. Finally
+the cars themselves depart in the way of the citizen, and for the few
+hours before dawn a new sound comes into the still thoroughfare&mdash;the
+cable whirring in its channel underground.<a name="page_181" id="page_181"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="THE_ASSASSIN_IN_MODERN_BATTLES" id="THE_ASSASSIN_IN_MODERN_BATTLES"></a>THE ASSASSIN IN MODERN BATTLES.</h3>
+
+<p class="cb smcap">The Torpedo Boat Destroyers that "Perform in the Darkness. An Act which
+Is more Peculiarly Murderous than most Things in War."</p>
+
+<p>In the past century the gallant aristocracy of London liked to travel
+down the south bank of the Thames to Greenwich Hospital, where venerable
+pensioners of the crown were ready to hire telescopes at a penny each,
+and with these telescopes the lords and ladies were able to view at a
+better advantage the dried and enchained corpses of pirates hanging from
+the gibbets on the Isle of Dogs. In those times the dismal marsh was
+inhabited solely by the clanking figures whose feet moved in the wind
+like rather poorly-constructed weather cocks.</p>
+
+<p>But even the Isle of Dogs could not escape the appetite of an expanding
+London. Thousands of souls now live on it, and it has changed its
+character from that of a place of execution, with mist, wet with fever,
+coiling forever from the mire and wandering among the black gibbets, to
+that of an ordinary, squalid, nauseating slum of London, whose<a name="page_182" id="page_182"></a> streets
+bear a faint resemblance to that part of Avenue A which lies directly
+above Sixtieth Street in New York.</p>
+
+<p>Down near the water front one finds a long brick building,
+three-storeyed and signless, which shuts off all view of the river. The
+windows, as well as the bricks, are very dirty, and you see no sign of
+life, unless some smudged workman dodges in through a little door. The
+place might be a factory for the making of lamps or stair rods, or any
+ordinary commercial thing. As a matter of fact, the building fronts the
+shipyard of Yarrow, the builder of torpedo boats, the maker of knives
+for the nations, the man who provides everybody with a certain kind of
+efficient weapon. One then remembers that if Russia fights England,
+Yarrow meets Yarrow; if Germany fights France, Yarrow meets Yarrow; if
+Chili fights Argentina, Yarrow meets Yarrow.</p>
+
+<p>Besides the above-mentioned countries Yarrow has built torpedo boats for
+Italy, Austria, Holland, Japan, China, Ecuador, Brazil, Costa Rica, and
+Spain. There is a keeper of a great shop in London who is known as the
+Universal Provider. If a general conflagration of war should break out
+in the world, Yarrow would be known as one of the Universal Warriors,
+for it would practically be a battle between Yarrow, Armstrong, Krupp,
+and a few other firms. This is what makes interesting the dinginess of
+the cantonment on the Isle of Dogs.<a name="page_183" id="page_183"></a></p>
+
+<p>The great Yarrow forte is to build speedy steamers of a tonnage of not
+more than 240 tons. This practically includes only yachts, launches,
+tugs, torpedo boat destroyers, torpedo boats, and of late
+shallow-draught gunboats for service on the Nile, Congo, and Niger. Some
+of the gunboats that shelled the dervishes from the banks of the Nile
+below Khartoum were built by Yarrow. Yarrow is always in action
+somewhere. Even if the firm's boats do not appear in every coming sea
+combat, the ideas of the firm will, for many nations, notably France and
+Germany, have bought specimens of the best models of Yarrow construction
+in order to reduplicate and reduplicate them in their own yards.</p>
+
+<p>When the great fever to possess torpedo boats came upon the Powers of
+Europe, England was at first left far in the rear. Either Germany or
+France to-day has in her fleet more torpedo boats than has England. The
+British tar is a hard man to oust out of a habit. He had a habit of
+thinking that his battleships and cruisers were the final thing in naval
+construction. He scoffed at the advent of the torpedo boat. He did not
+scoff intelligently but because, mainly, he hated to be forced to change
+his ways.</p>
+
+<p>You will usually find an Englishman balking and kicking at innovation up
+to the last moment. It takes him some years to get an idea into his
+head,<a name="page_184" id="page_184"></a> and when finally it is inserted, he not only respects it, he
+reveres it. The Londoners have a fire brigade which would interest the
+ghost of a Babylonian, as an example of how much the method of
+extinguishing fires could degenerate in two thousand years, and in 1897,
+when a terrible fire devastated a part of the city, some voices were
+raised challenging the efficiency of the fire brigade. But that part of
+the London County Council which corresponds to fire commissioners in
+United States laid their hands upon their hearts and solemnly assured
+the public that they had investigated the matter, and had found the
+London fire brigade to be as good as any in the world. There were some
+isolated cases of dissent, but the great English public as a whole
+placidly accepted these assurances concerning the activity of the
+honoured corps.</p>
+
+<p>For a long time England blundered in the same way over the matter of
+torpedo boats. They were authoritatively informed that there was nothing
+in all the talk about torpedo boats. Then came a great popular uproar,
+in which people tumbled over each other to get to the doors of the
+Admiralty and howl about torpedo boats. It was an awakening as
+unreasonable as had been the previous indifference and contempt. Then
+England began to build. She has never overtaken France or Germany in the
+number of torpedo boats, but she now heads the world<a name="page_185" id="page_185"></a> with her
+collection of that marvel of marine architecture&mdash;the torpedo boat
+destroyer. She has about sixty-five of these vessels now in commission,
+and has about as many more in course of building.</p>
+
+<p>People ordinarily have a false idea of the appearance of a destroyer.
+The common type is longer than an ordinary gunboat&mdash;a long, low,
+graceful thing, flying through the water at fabulous speed, with a great
+curve of water some yards back of the bow, and smoke flying horizontally
+from the three or four stacks.</p>
+
+<p>Bushing this way and that way, circling, dodging, turning, they are like
+demons.</p>
+
+<p>The best kind of modern destroyer has a length of 220 feet, with a beam
+of 26&frac12; feet. The horse-power is about 6500, driving the boat at a
+speed of thirty-one knots or more. The engines are triple-expansion,
+with water tube boilers. They carry from 70 to 100 tons of coal, and at
+a speed of eight or nine knots can keep the sea for a week; so they are
+independent of coaling in a voyage of between 1300 and 1500 miles. They
+carry a crew of three or four officers, and about forty men.</p>
+
+<p>They are armed usually with one twelve-pounder gun, and from three to
+five six-pounder guns, besides their equipment of torpedoes. Their hulls
+and top hamper are painted olive, buff, or preferably slate, in order to
+make them hard to find with the eye at sea.<a name="page_186" id="page_186"></a></p>
+
+<p>Their principal functions, theoretically, are to discover and kill the
+enemy's torpedo boats, guard and scout for the main squadron, and
+perform messenger service. However, they are also torpedo boats of a
+most formidable kind, and in action will be found carrying out the
+torpedo boat idea in an expanded form. Four destroyers of this type
+building at the Yarrow yards were for Japan (1898).</p>
+
+<p>The modern European ideal of a torpedo boat is a craft 152 feet long,
+with a beam of 15&frac14; feet. When the boat is fully loaded a speed of 24
+knots is derived from her 2000 horse-power engines. The destroyers are
+twin screw, whereas the torpedo boats are commonly propelled by a single
+screw. The speed of twenty knots is for a run of three hours. These
+boats are not designed to keep at sea for any great length of time, and
+cannot raid toward a distant coast without the constant attendance of a
+cruiser to keep them in coal and provisions. Primarily they are for
+defence. Even with destroyers, England, in lately reinforcing her
+foreign stations, has seen fit to send cruisers in order to provide help
+for them in stormy weather.</p>
+
+<p>Some years ago it was thought the proper thing to equip torpedo craft
+with rudders, which would enable them to turn in their own length when
+running at full speed. Yarrow found this to result in too much broken
+steering gear, and the firm's<a name="page_187" id="page_187"></a> boats now have smaller rudders, which
+enable them to turn in a larger circle.</p>
+
+<p>At one time a torpedo boat steaming at her best gait always carried a
+great bone in her teeth. During man&oelig;uvres the watch on the deck of a
+battleship often discovered the approach of the little enemy by the
+great white wave which the boat rolled at her bows during her headlong
+rush. This was mainly because the old-fashioned boats carried two
+torpedo tubes set in the bows, and the bows were consequently bluff.</p>
+
+<p>The modern boat carries the great part of her armament amidships and
+astern on swivels, and her bow is like a dagger. With no more bow-waves,
+and with these phantom colours of buff, olive, bottle-green, or slate,
+the principal foe to a safe attack at night is bad firing in the
+stoke-room, which might cause flames to leap out of the stacks.</p>
+
+<p>A captain of an English battleship recently remarked: "See those five
+destroyers lying there? Well, if they should attack me I would sink four
+of them, but the fifth one would sink me."</p>
+
+<p>This was repeated to Yarrow's manager, who said: "He wouldn't sink four
+of them if the attack were at night and the boats were shrewdly and
+courageously handled." Anyhow, the captain's remark goes to show the
+wholesome respect which the great battleship has for these little
+fliers.<a name="page_188" id="page_188"></a></p>
+
+<p>The Yarrow people say there is no sense in a torpedo flotilla attack on
+anything save vessels. A modern fortification is never built near enough
+to the water for a torpedo explosion to injure it, and, although some
+old stone flush-with-the-water castle might be badly crumpled, it would
+harm nobody in particular, even if the assault were wholly successful.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, if a torpedo boat could get a chance at piers and dock gates
+they would make a disturbance, but the chance is extremely remote if the
+defenders have ordinary vigilance and some rapid fire guns. In harbour
+defence the searchlight would naturally play a most important part,
+whereas at sea experts are beginning to doubt its use as an auxiliary to
+the rapid fire guns against torpedo boats. About half the time it does
+little more than betray the position of the ship. On the other hand, a
+port cannot conceal its position anyhow, and searchlights would be
+invaluable for sweeping the narrow channels.</p>
+
+<p>There could be only one direction from which the assault could come, and
+all the odds would be in favour of the guns on shore. A torpedo boat
+commander knows this perfectly. What he wants is a ship off at sea with
+a nervous crew staring into the encircling darkness from any point in
+which the terror might be coming.</p>
+
+<p>Hi, then, for a grand, bold, silent rush and the assassin-like stab.<a name="page_189" id="page_189"></a></p>
+
+<p>In stormy weather life on board a torpedo boat is not amusing. They
+tumble about like bucking bronchos, especially if they are going at
+anything like speed. Everything is battened down as if it were soldered,
+and the watch below feel that they are living in a football, which is
+being kicked every way at once.</p>
+
+<p>And finally, while Yarrow and other great builders can make torpedo
+craft which are wonders of speed and man&oelig;uvring power, they cannot
+make that high spirit of daring and hardihood which is essential to a
+success.</p>
+
+<p>That must exist in the mind of some young lieutenant who, knowing well
+that if he is detected, a shot or so from a rapid fire gun will cripple
+him if it does not sink him absolutely, nevertheless goes creeping off
+to sea to find a huge antagonist and perform stealthily in the darkness
+an act which is more peculiarly murderous than most things in war.</p>
+
+<p>If a torpedo boat is caught within range in daylight, the fighting is
+all over before it begins. Any common little gunboat can dispose of it
+in a moment if the gunnery is not too Chinese.</p>
+
+<p><a name="page_190" id="page_190"></a></p>
+
+<p><a name="page_191" id="page_191"></a></p>
+
+<h2><a name="IRISH_NOTES" id="IRISH_NOTES"></a>IRISH NOTES</h2>
+
+<p><a name="page_192" id="page_192"></a></p>
+
+<p><a name="page_193" id="page_193"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="AN_OLD_MAN_GOES_WOOING" id="AN_OLD_MAN_GOES_WOOING"></a>I.&mdash;AN OLD MAN GOES WOOING.</h3>
+
+<p>The melancholy fisherman made his way through a street that was mainly
+as dark as a tunnel. Sometimes an open door threw a rectangle of light
+upon the pavement, and within the cottages were scenes of working women
+and men, who comfortably smoked and talked. From them came the sounds of
+laughter and the babble of children. Each time the old man passed
+through one of the radiant zones the light etched his face in profile
+with touches flaming and sombre until there was a resemblance to a stern
+and mournful Dante portrait.</p>
+
+<p>Once a whistling lad came through the darkness. He peered intently for
+purposes of recognition. "Good avenin', Mickey," he cried cheerfully.
+The old man responded with a groan, which intimated that the lamentable
+reckless optimism of the youth had forced from him an expression of an
+emotion that he had been enduring in saintly patience and silence. He
+continued his pilgrimage toward the kitchen of the village inn.</p>
+
+<p>The kitchen is a great and worthy place. The long range with its lurid
+heat continually emits the<a name="page_194" id="page_194"></a> fragrance of broiling fish, roasting mutton,
+joints, and fowl. The high black ceiling is ornamented with hams and
+flitches of bacon. There is a long, dark bench against one wall, and it
+is fronted by a dark table, handy for glasses of stout. On an old
+mahogany dresser rows of plates face the distant range, and reflect the
+red shine of the peat. Smoke which has in it the odour of an American
+forest fire eddies through the air. The great stones of the floor are
+scarred by the black mud from the inn yard. And here the gossip of a
+country-side goes on amid the sizzle of broiling fish and the loud
+protesting splutter of joints taken from the oven.</p>
+
+<p>When the old man reached the door of this paradise, he stopped for a
+moment with his finger on the latch. He sighed deeply; evidently he was
+undergoing some lachrymose reflection. For somewhere overhead in the inn
+he could hear the wild clamour of dining pig-buyers, men who were come
+for the pig fair to be held on the morrow. Evidently in the little
+parlour of the inn these men were dining amid an uproar of shouted jests
+and laughter. The revelry sounded like the fighting of two mobs amid a
+rain of missiles and crash of shop windows. The old man raised his hand
+as if, unseen there in the darkness, he was going to solemnly damn the
+dinner of the pig-buyers.</p>
+
+<p>Within the kitchen Nora, tall, strong, intrepid,<a name="page_195" id="page_195"></a> approached the fiery
+stove in the manner of a boxer. Her left arm was held high to guard her
+face, which was already crimson from the blaze. With a flourish of her
+apron she achieved a great brown humming joint from the oven, and,
+emerging a glowing and triumphant figure from the steam and smoke and
+rapid play of heat, she slid the pan upon the table, even as she saw the
+old man standing within the room and lugubriously cleaning the mud from
+his boots. "Tis you, Mickey?" she said.</p>
+
+<p>He made no reply until he had found his way to the long bench. "It is,"
+he said then. It was clear that in the girl's opinion he had gained some
+kind of strategic advantage. The sanctity of her kitchen was
+successfully violated, but the old man betrayed no elation. Lifting one
+knee and placing it over the other, he grunted in the blissful weariness
+of a venerable labourer returned to his own fireside. He coughed
+dismally. "Ah, 'tis no good a man gits from fishin' these days. I moind
+the toimes whin they would be hoppin' up clear o' the wather, there was
+that little room fur thim. I would be likin' a bottle o' stout."</p>
+
+<p>"Niver fear you, Mickey," answered the girl. Swinging here and there in
+the glare of the fire, Nora, with her towering figure and bare brawny
+arms, was like a feminine blacksmith at a forge. The old man, pallid,
+emaciated, watched her from the<a name="page_196" id="page_196"></a> shadows at the other side of the room.
+The lines from the sides of his nose to the corners of his mouth sank
+low to an expression of despair deeper than any moans. He should have
+been painted upon the door of a tomb with wringing willows arched above
+him and men in grey robes slowly booming the drums of death. Finally he
+spoke. "I would be likin' a bottle o' stout, Nora, me girrl," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Niver fear you, Mickey," again she replied with cheerful obstinacy. She
+was admiring her famous roast, which now sat in its platter on the rack
+over the range. There was a lull in her tumultuous duties. The old man
+coughed and moved his foot with a scraping sound on the stones. The
+noise of dining pig-buyers, now heard through doors and winding
+corridors of the inn, was a roll of far-away storm.</p>
+
+<p>A woman in a dark dress entered the kitchen and keenly examined the
+roast and Nora's other feats. "Mickey here would be wantin' a bottle o'
+stout," said the girl to her mistress. The woman turned towards the
+spectral figure in the gloom, and regarded it quietly with a clear eye.
+"Have yez the money, Mickey?" repeated the woman of the house.</p>
+
+<p>Profoundly embittered, he replied in short terms, "I have."</p>
+
+<p>"There now," cried Nora, in astonishment and admiration. Poising a large
+iron spoon, she was<a name="page_197" id="page_197"></a> motionless, staring with open mouth at the old man.
+He searched his pockets slowly during a complete silence in the kitchen.
+He brought forth two coppers and laid them sadly, reproachfully, and yet
+defiantly on the table.</p>
+
+<p>"There now," cried Nora, stupefied.</p>
+
+<p>They brought him a bottle of the black brew, and Nora poured it out for
+him with her own red hand, which looked to be as broad as his chest. A
+collar of brown foam curled at the top of the glass. With measured
+moments the old man filled a short pipe. There came a sudden howl from
+another part of the inn. One of the pig-buyers was at the head of the
+stairs bawling for the mistress. The two women hurriedly freighted
+themselves with the roast and the vegetables, and sprang with them to
+placate the pig-buyers. Alone, the old man studied the gleam of the fire
+on the floor. It faded and brightened in the way of lightning at the
+horizon's edge.</p>
+
+<p>When Nora returned, the strapping grenadier of a girl was blushing and
+giggling. The pig-buyers had been humorous. "I moind the toime&mdash;" began
+the man sorrowfully. "I moind the toime whin yea was a wee bit of a
+girrl, Nora, an' wouldn't be havin' words wid min loike thim buyers."</p>
+
+<p>"I moind the toime whin yea could attind to your own affairs, ye ould
+skileton," said the girl promptly. He made a gesture, which may have
+expressed his<a name="page_198" id="page_198"></a> stirring grief at the levity of the new generation, and
+then lapsed into another stillness.</p>
+
+<p>The girl, a giantess, carrying, lifting, pushing, an incarnation of
+dauntless labour, changing the look of the whole kitchen with a moment's
+manipulation of her great arms, did not heed the old man for a long
+time. When she finally glanced toward him, she saw that he was sunk
+forward with his grey face on his arms. A growl of heavy breathing
+ascended. He was asleep.</p>
+
+<p>She marched to him and put both hands to his collar. Despite his feeble
+and dreamy protestations, she dragged him out from behind the table and
+across the floor. She opened the door and thrust him into the night.</p>
+
+<h3><a name="II_BALLYDEHOB" id="II_BALLYDEHOB"></a>II.&mdash;BALLYDEHOB.</h3>
+
+<p>The illimitable inventive incapacity of the excursion companies has made
+many circular paths throughout Ireland, and on these well-pounded roads
+the guardians of the touring public may be seen drilling the little
+travellers in squads. To rise in rebellion, to face the superior clerk
+in his bureau, to endure his smile of pity and derision, and finally to
+wring freedom from him, is as difficult in some parts of Ireland as it
+is in all parts of Switzerland. To see the<a name="page_199" id="page_199"></a> tourists chained in gangs
+and taken to see the Lakes of Killarney is a sad spectacle, because
+these people believe that they are learning Ireland, even as men believe
+that they are studying America when they contemplate the Niagara Falls.</p>
+
+<p>But afterwards, if one escapes, one can go forth, unguided, untaught and
+alone, and look at Ireland. The joys of the pig-market, the delirium of
+a little tap-room filled with brogue, the fierce excitement of viewing
+the Royal Irish Constabulary fishing for trout, the whole quaint and
+primitive machinery of the peasant life&mdash;its melancholy, its sunshine,
+its humour&mdash;all this is then the property of the man who breaks like a
+Texan steer out of the pens and corrals of the tourist agencies. For
+what syndicate of maiden ladies&mdash;it is these who masquerade as tourist
+agencies&mdash;what syndicate of maiden ladies knows of the existence, for
+instance, of Ballydehob?</p>
+
+<p>One has a sense of disclosure at writing the name of Ballydehob. It was
+really a valuable secret. There is in Ballydehob not one thing that is
+commonly pointed out to the stranger as a thing worthy of a half-tone
+reproduction in a book. There is no cascade, no peak, no lake, no guide
+with a fund of useless information, no gamins practised in the seduction
+of tourists. It is not an exhibit, an entry for a prize, like a heap of
+melons or cow. It is simply an Irish village wherein live some three
+hundred Irish and four constables.<a name="page_200" id="page_200"></a></p>
+
+<p>If one or two prayer-towers spindled above Ballydehob it would be a
+perfect Turkish village. The red tiles and red bricks of England do not
+appear at all. The houses are low, with soiled white walls. The doors
+open abruptly upon dark old rooms. Here and there in the street is some
+crude cobbling done with round stones taken from the bed of a brook. At
+times there is a great deal of mud. Chickens depredate warily about the
+doorsteps, and intent pigs emerge for plunder from the alleys. It is
+unavoidable to admit that many people would consider Ballydehob quite
+too grimy.</p>
+
+<p>Nobody lives here that has money. The average English tradesman with his
+back-breaking respect for this class, his reflex contempt for that
+class, his reverence for the tin gods, could here be a commercial lord
+and bully the people in one or two ways, until they were thrown back
+upon the defence which is always near them, the ability to cut his skin
+into strips with a wit that would be a foreign tongue to him. For amid
+his wrongs and his rights and his failures&mdash;his colossal failures&mdash;the
+Irishman retains this delicate blade for his enemies, for his friends,
+for himself, the ancestral dagger of fast sharp speaking from fast sharp
+seeing&mdash;an inheritance which could move the world. And the Royal Irish
+Constabulary fished for trout in the adjacent streams.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Kearney keeps the hotel. In Ireland male<a name="page_201" id="page_201"></a> innkeepers die young.
+Apparently they succumb to conviviality when it is presented to them in
+the guise of a business duty. Naturally honest, temperate men, their
+consciences are lulled to false security by this idea of hard drinking
+being necessary to the successful keeping of a public-house. It is very
+terrible.</p>
+
+<p>But they invariably leave behind them capable widows, women who do not
+recognise conviviality as a business obligation. And so all through
+Ireland one finds these brisk widows keeping hotels with a precision
+that is almost military.</p>
+
+<p>In Kearney's there is always a wonderful collection of old women, bent
+figures shrouded in shawls who reach up scrawny fingers to take their
+little purchases from Mary Agnes, who presides sometimes at the bar, but
+more often at the shop that fronts it in the same room. In the gloom of
+a late afternoon these old women are as mystic as the swinging, chanting
+witches on a dark stage when the thunder-drum rolls and the lightning
+flashes by schedule. When a grey rain sweeps through the narrow street
+of Ballydehob, and makes heavy shadows in Kearney's tap-room, these old
+creatures, with their high mournful voices, and the mystery of their
+shawls, their moans and aged mutterings when they are obliged to take a
+step, raise the dead superstitions from the bottom of a man's mind.</p>
+
+<p>"My boy," remarked my London friend cheerfully,<a name="page_202" id="page_202"></a> "these might have
+furnished sons to be Aldermen or Congressmen in the great city of New
+York."</p>
+
+<p>"Aldermen or Congressmen of the great city of New York always take care
+of their mothers," I answered meekly.</p>
+
+<p>On a barrel, over in a corner, sat a yellow-bearded Irish farmer in
+tattered clothes who wished to exchange views on the Armenian massacres.
+He had much information and a number of theories in regard to them. He
+also advanced the opinion that the chief political aim of Russia at
+present is in the direction of China, and that it behoved other Powers
+to keep an eye on her. He thought the revolutionists in Cuba would never
+accept autonomy at the hands of Spain. His pipe glowed comfortably from
+his corner; waving the tuppenny glass of stout in the air, he discoursed
+on the business of the remote ends of the earth with the glibness of a
+fourth secretary of Legation. Here was a little farmer, digging betimes
+in a forlorn patch of wet ground, a man to whom a sudden two shillings
+would appear as a miracle, a ragged, unkempt peasant, whose mind roamed
+the world like the soul of a lost diplomat. This unschooled man believed
+that the earth was a sphere inhabited by men that are alike in the
+essentials, different in the manners, the little manners, which are
+accounted of such great importance by the emaciated. He was to a degree
+capable<a name="page_203" id="page_203"></a> of knowing that he lived on a sphere and not on the apex of a
+triangle.</p>
+
+<p>And yet, when the talk had turned another corner, he confidently assured
+the assembled company that a hair from a horse's tail when thrown in a
+brook would turn shortly to an eel.</p>
+
+<h3><a name="III_THE_ROYAL_IRISH_CONSTABULARY" id="III_THE_ROYAL_IRISH_CONSTABULARY"></a>III.&mdash;THE ROYAL IRISH CONSTABULARY.</h3>
+
+<p>The newspapers called it a Veritable Arsenal. There was a description of
+how the sergeant of Constabulary had bent an ear to receive whispered
+information of the concealed arms, and had then marched his men swiftly
+and by night to surround a certain house. The search elicited a
+double-barrelled breech-loading shot-gun, some empty shells, powder,
+shot, and a loading machine. The point of it was that some of the Irish
+papers called it a Veritable Arsenal, and appeared to congratulate the
+Government upon having strangled another unhappy rebellion in its nest.
+They floundered and misnamed and mis-reasoned, and made a spectacle of
+the great modern craft of journalism, until the affair of this poor
+poacher was too absurd to be pitiable, and Englishmen over their coffee
+next morning must have almost believed that the prompt action of the
+Constabulary<a name="page_204" id="page_204"></a> had quelled a rising. Thus it is that the Irish fight the
+Irish.</p>
+
+<p>One cannot look Ireland straight in the face without seeing a great many
+constables. The country is dotted with little garrisons. It must have
+been said a thousand times that there is an absolute military
+occupation. The fact is too plain.</p>
+
+<p>The constable himself becomes a figure interesting in its isolation. He
+has in most cases a social position which is somewhat analogous to that
+of a Turk in Thessaly. But then, in the same way, the Turk has the
+Turkish army. He can have battalions as companions and make the
+acquaintance of brigades. The constable has the Constabulary, it is
+true; but to be cooped with three or four others in a small white-washed
+iron-bound house on some bleak country side is not an exact parallel to
+the Thessalian situation. It looks to be a life that is infinitely
+lonely, ascetic, and barren. Two keepers of a lighthouse at a bitter end
+of land in a remote sea will, if they are properly let alone, make a
+murder in time. Five constables imprisoned 'mid a folk that will not
+turn a face toward them, five constables planted in a populated silence,
+may develop an acute and vivid economy, dwell in scowling dislike. A
+religious asylum in a snow-buried mountain pass will breed conspiring
+monks. A separated people will beget an egotism that is almost titanic.
+A world<a name="page_205" id="page_205"></a> floating distinctly in space will call itself the only world.
+The progression is perfect.</p>
+
+<p>But the constables take the second degree. They are next to the
+lighthouse keepers. The national custom of meeting stranger and friend
+alike on the road with a cheery greeting like "God save you" is too
+kindly and human a habit not to be missed. But all through the South of
+Ireland one sees the peasant turn his eyes pretentiously to the side of
+the road at the passing of the constable. It seemed to be generally
+understood that to note the presence of a constable was to make a
+conventional error. None looked, nodded, or gave sign. There was a line
+drawn so sternly that it reared like a fence. Of course, any police
+force in any part of the world can gather at its heels a riff-raff of
+people, fawning always on a hand licensed to strike that would be larger
+than the army of the Potomac, but of these one ordinarily sees little.
+The mass of the Irish strictly obey the stern tenet. One hears often of
+the ostracism or other punishment that befell some girl who was caught
+flirting with a constable.</p>
+
+<p>Naturally the constable retreats to his pride. He is commonly a
+soldierly-looking chap, straight, lean, long-strided, well set-up. His
+little saucer of a forage cap sits obediently on his ear, as it does for
+the British soldier. He swings a little cane. He takes his medicine with
+a calm and hard face,<a name="page_206" id="page_206"></a> and evidently stares full into every eye. But it
+is singular to find in the situation of the Royal Irish Constabulary the
+quality of pathos.</p>
+
+<p>It is not known if these places in the South of Ireland are called
+disturbed districts. Over them hangs the peace of Surrey, but the word
+disturbance has an elastic arrangement by which it can be made to cover
+anything. All of the villages visited garrisoned from four to ten men.
+They lived comfortably in their white houses, strolled in pairs over the
+country roads, picked blackberries, and fished for trout. If at some
+time there came a crisis, one man was more than enough to surround it.
+The remaining nine add dignity to the scene. The crisis chiefly
+consisted of occasional drunken men who were unable to understand the
+local geography on Saturday nights.</p>
+
+<p>The note continually struck was that each group of constables lived on a
+little social island, and there was no boat to take them off. There has
+been no such marooning since the days of the pirates. The sequestration
+must be complete when a man with a dinky little cap on his ear is not
+allowed to talk to the girls.</p>
+
+<p>But they fish for trout. Isaac Walton is the father of the Royal Irish
+Constabulary. They could be seen on any fine day whipping the streams
+from source to mouth. There was one venerable sergeant<a name="page_207" id="page_207"></a> who made a rod
+less than a yard long. With a line of about the same length attached to
+this rod, he hunted the gorse-hung banks of the little streams in the
+hills. An eight-inch ribbon of water lined with masses of heather and
+gorse will be accounted contemptible by a fisherman with an ordinary
+rod. But it was the pleasure of the sergeant to lay on his stomach at
+the side of such a stream and carefully, inch by inch, scout his hook
+through the pools. He probably caught more trout than any three men in
+county Cork. He fished more than any twelve men in the county Cork. Some
+people had never seen him in any other posture but that of crowding
+forward on his stomach to peer into a pool. They did not believe the
+rumour that he sometimes stood or walked like a human.</p>
+
+<h3><a name="IV_A_FISHING_VILLAGE" id="IV_A_FISHING_VILLAGE"></a>IV.&mdash;A FISHING VILLAGE.</h3>
+
+<p>The brook curved down over the rocks, innocent and white, until it faced
+a little strand of smooth gravel and flat stones. It turned then to the
+left, and thereafter its guilty current was tinged with the pink of
+diluted blood. Boulders standing neck-deep in the water were rimmed with
+red; they wore bloody collars whose tops marked the supreme instant of
+some tragic movement of the stream. In<a name="page_208" id="page_208"></a> the pale green shallows of the
+bay's edge, the outward flow from the criminal little brook was as
+eloquently marked as if a long crimson carpet had been laid upon the
+waters. The scene of the carnage was the strand of smooth gravel and
+flat stones, and the fruit of the carnage was cleaned mackerel.</p>
+
+<p>Far to the south, where the slate of the sea and the grey of the sky
+wove together, could be seen Fastnet Rock, a mere button on the moving,
+shimmering cloth, while a liner, no larger than a needle, spun a thread
+of smoke aslant. The gulls swept screaming along the dull line of the
+other shore of roaring Water Bay, and near the mouth of the brook
+circled among the fishing boats that lay at anchor, their brown,
+leathery sails idle and straight. The wheeling, shrieking tumultuous
+birds stared with their hideous unblinking eyes at the Capers&mdash;men from
+Cape Clear&mdash;who prowled to and fro on the decks amid shouts and the
+creak of the tackle. Shoreward, a little shrivelled man, overcome by a
+profound melancholy, fished hopelessly from the end of the pier. Back of
+him, on a hillside, sat a white village, nestled among more trees than
+is common in this part of Southern Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>A dinghy sculled by a youth in a blue jersey wobbled rapidly past the
+pier-head and stopped at the foot of the moss-green, dank, stone steps,
+where the waves were making slow but regular leaps to<a name="page_209" id="page_209"></a> mount higher, and
+then falling back gurgling, choking, and waving the long, dark seaweeds.
+The melancholy fisherman walked over to the top of the steps. The young
+man was fastening the painter of his boat in an iron ring. In the dinghy
+were three round baskets heaped high with mackerel. They glittered like
+masses of new silver coin at times, and then other lights of faint
+carmine and peacock blue would chase across the sides of the fish in a
+radiance that was finer than silver.</p>
+
+<p>The melancholy fisherman looked at this wealth. He shook his head
+mournfully. "Ah, now, Denny. This would not be a very good kill."</p>
+
+<p>The young man snorted indignantly at his fellow-townsman. "This will be
+th' bist kill th' year, Mickey. Go along now."</p>
+
+<p>The melancholy old man became immersed in deeper gloom. "Shure I have
+been in th' way of seein' miny a grand day whin th' fish was runnin'
+sthrong in these wathers, but there will be no more big kills here. No
+more. No more." At the last his voice was only a dismal croak.</p>
+
+<p>"Come along outa that now, Mickey," cried the youth impatiently. "Come
+away wid you."</p>
+
+<p>"All gone now. A-ll go-o-ne now!" The old man wagged his grey head, and,
+standing over the baskets of fishes, groaned as Mordecai groaned for his
+people.<a name="page_210" id="page_210"></a></p>
+
+<p>"'Tis you would be cryin' out, Mickey, whativer," said the youth with
+scorn. He was giving his basket into the hands of five incompetent but
+jovial little boys to carry to a waiting donkey cart.</p>
+
+<p>"An' why should I not?" said the old man sternly. "Me&mdash;in want&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>As the youth swung his boat swiftly out toward an anchored smack, he
+made answer in a softer tone. "Shure, if yez got for th' askin', 'tis
+you, Mickey, that would niver be in want." The melancholy old man
+returned to his line. And the only moral in this incident is that the
+young man is the type that America procures from Ireland, and the old
+man is one of the home types, bent, pallid, hungry, disheartened, with a
+vision that magnifies with a microscope glance any fly-wing of
+misfortune, and heroically and conscientiously invents disasters for the
+future. Usually the thing that remains to one of this type is a sympathy
+as quick and acute for others as is his pity for himself.</p>
+
+<p>The donkey with his cart-load of gleaming fish, and escorted by the
+whooping and laughing boys, galloped along the quay and up a street of
+the village until he was turned off at the gravelly strand, at the point
+where the colour of the brook was changing. Here twenty people of both
+sexes and all ages were preparing the fish for market. The mackerel,
+beautiful as fire-etched salvers, first were<a name="page_211" id="page_211"></a> passed to a long table,
+around which worked as many women as could have elbow room. Each one
+could clean a fish with two motions of the knife. Then the washers, men
+who stood over the troughs filled with running water from the brook,
+soused the fish until the outlet became a sinister element that in an
+instant changed the brook from a happy thing of gorse and heather of the
+hills to an evil stream, sullen and reddened. After being washed, the
+fish were carried to a group of girls with knives, who made the cuts
+that enabled each fish to flatten out in the manner known of the
+breakfast table. And after the girls came the men and boys, who rubbed
+each fish thoroughly with great handfuls of coarse salt, which was
+whiter than snow, and shone in the daylight from a multitude of gleaming
+points, diamond-like. Last came the packers, drilled in the art of
+getting neither too few nor too many mackerel into a barrel, sprinkling
+constantly prodigal layers of brilliant salt. There were many
+intermediate corps of boys and girls carrying fish from point to point,
+and sometimes building them in stacks convenient to the hands of the
+more important labourers.</p>
+
+<p>A vast tree hung its branches over the place. The leaves made a shadow
+that was religious in its effect, as if the spot was a chapel
+consecrated to labour. There was a hush upon the devotees. The women at
+the large table worked intently, steadfastly, with<a name="page_212" id="page_212"></a> bowed heads. Their
+old petticoats were tucked high, showing the coarse brogans which they
+wore&mdash;and the visible ankles were proportioned to the brogans as the
+diameter of a straw is to that of a half-crown. The national red
+under-petticoat was a fundamental part of the scene.</p>
+
+<p>Just over the wall, in the sloping street, could be seen the bejerseyed
+Capers, brawny, and with shocks of yellow beard. They paced slowly to
+and fro amid the geese and children. They, too, spoke little, even to
+each other; they smoked short pipes in saturnine dignity and silence. It
+was the fish. They who go with nets upon the reeling sea grow still with
+the mystery and solemnity of the trade. It was Brittany; the first
+respectable catch of the year had changed this garrulous Irish hamlet
+into a hamlet of Brittany.</p>
+
+<p>The Capers were waiting for high tide. It had seemed for a long time
+that, for the south of Ireland, the mackerel had fled in company with
+potato; but here, at any rate, was a temporary success, and the occasion
+was momentous. A strolling Caper took his pipe and pointed with the stem
+out upon the bay. There was little wind, but an ambitious skipper had
+raised his anchor, and the craft, her strained brown sails idly
+swinging, was drifting away on the first oily turn of the tide.</p>
+
+<p>On the top of the pier the figure of the melancholy<a name="page_213" id="page_213"></a> old man was
+portrayed upon the polished water. He was still dangling his line
+hopelessly. He gazed down into the misty water. Once he stirred and
+murmured: "Bad luck to thim." Otherwise he seemed to remain motionless
+for hours. One by one the fishing-boats floated away. The brook changed
+its colour, and in the dusk showed a tumble of pearly white among the
+rocks.</p>
+
+<p>A cold night wind, sweeping transversely across the pier, awakened
+perhaps the rheumatism in the old man's bones. He arose and, mumbling
+and grumbling, began to wind his line. The waves were lashing the
+stones. He moved off towards the intense darkness of the village
+streets.</p>
+
+<p><a name="page_214" id="page_214"></a></p>
+
+<p><a name="page_215" id="page_215"></a></p>
+
+<h2><a name="SULLIVAN_COUNTY_SKETCHES" id="SULLIVAN_COUNTY_SKETCHES"></a>SULLIVAN COUNTY SKETCHES</h2>
+
+<p><a name="page_216" id="page_216"></a></p>
+
+<p><a name="page_217" id="page_217"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="FOUR_MEN_IN_A_CAVE" id="FOUR_MEN_IN_A_CAVE"></a>FOUR MEN IN A CAVE.</h3>
+
+<p class="cb smcap">Likewise Four Queens, and a Sullivan County Hermit.</p>
+
+<p>The moon rested for a moment on the top of a tall pine on a hill.</p>
+
+<p>The little man was standing in front of the campfire making orations to
+his companions.</p>
+
+<p>"We can tell a great tale when we get back to the city if we investigate
+this thing," said he, in conclusion.</p>
+
+<p>They were won.</p>
+
+<p>The little man was determined to explore a cave, because its black mouth
+had gaped at him. The four men took lighted pine-knot and clambered over
+boulders down a hill. In a thicket on the mountainside lay a little
+tilted hole. At its side they halted.</p>
+
+<p>"Well?" said the little man.</p>
+
+<p>They fought for last place and the little man was overwhelmed. He tried
+to struggle from under by crying that if the fat, pudgy man came after,
+he would be corked. But he finally administered a cursing over his
+shoulder and crawled into the hole. His companions gingerly followed.<a name="page_218" id="page_218"></a></p>
+
+<p>A passage, the floor of damp clay and pebbles, the walls slimy,
+green-mossed, and dripping, sloped downward. In the cave atmosphere the
+torches became studies in red blaze and black smoke.</p>
+
+<p>"Ho!" cried the little man, stifled and bedraggled, "let's go back." His
+companions were not brave. They were last. The next one to the little
+man pushed him on, so the little man said sulphurous words and
+cautiously continued his crawl.</p>
+
+<p>Things that hung seemed to be on the wet, uneven ceiling, ready to drop
+upon the men's bare necks. Under their hands the clammy floor seemed
+alive and writhing. When the little man endeavoured to stand erect the
+ceiling forced him down. Knobs and points came out and punched him. His
+clothes were wet and mud-covered, and his eyes, nearly blinded by smoke,
+tried to pierce the darkness always before his torch.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I say, you fellows, let's go back," cried he. At that moment he
+caught the gleam of trembling light in the blurred shadows before him.</p>
+
+<p>"Ho!" he said, "here's another way out."</p>
+
+<p>The passage turned abruptly. The little man put one hand around the
+corner, but it touched nothing. He investigated and discovered that the
+little corridor took a sudden dip down a hill. At the bottom shone a
+yellow light.</p>
+
+<p>The little man wriggled painfully about, and<a name="page_219" id="page_219"></a> descended feet in advance.
+The others followed his plan. All picked their way with anxious care.
+The traitorous rocks rolled from beneath the little man's feet and
+roared thunderously below him. Lesser stone, loosened by the men above
+him, hit him on the back. He gained seemingly firm foothold, and,
+turning half-way about, swore redly at his companions for dolts and
+careless fools. The pudgy man sat, puffing and perspiring, high in the
+rear of the procession. The fumes and smoke from four pine-knots were in
+his blood. Cinders and sparks lay thick in his eyes and hair. The pause
+of the little man angered him.</p>
+
+<p>"Go on, you fool," he shouted. "Poor, painted man, you are afraid."</p>
+
+<p>"Ho!" said the little man. "Come down here and go on yourself,
+imbecile!"</p>
+
+<p>The pudgy man vibrated with passion. He leaned downward. "Idiot&mdash;!"</p>
+
+<p>He was interrupted by one of his feet which flew out and crashed into
+the man in front of and below. It is not well to quarrel upon a slippery
+incline, when the unknown is below. The fat man, having lost the support
+of one pillar-like foot, lurched forward. His body smote the next man,
+who hurtled into the next man. Then they all fell upon the cursing
+little man.</p>
+
+<p>They slid in a body down over the slippery, slimy<a name="page_220" id="page_220"></a> floor of the passage.
+The stone avenue must have wibble-wobbled with the rush of this ball of
+tangled men and strangled cries. The torches went out with the combined
+assault upon the little man. The adventurers whirled to the unknown in
+darkness. The little man felt that he was pitching to death, but even in
+his convolutions he bit and scratched at his companions, for he was
+satisfied that it was their fault. The swirling mass went some twenty
+feet, and lit upon a level, dry place in a strong, yellow light of
+candles. It dissolved and became eyes.</p>
+
+<p>The four men lay in a heap upon the floor of a grey chamber. A small
+fire smouldered in the corner, the smoke disappearing in a crack. In
+another corner was a bed of faded hemlock boughs and two blankets.
+Cooking utensils and clothes lay about, with boxes and a barrel.</p>
+
+<p>Of these things the four men took small cognisance. The pudgy man did
+not curse the little man, nor did the little swear, in the abstract.
+Eight widened eyes were fixed upon the centre of the room of rocks.</p>
+
+<p>A great, grey stone, cut squarely, like an altar, sat in the middle of
+the floor. Over it burned three candles, in swaying tin cups hung from
+the ceiling. Before it, with what seemed to be a small volume clasped in
+his yellow fingers, stood a man. He was<a name="page_221" id="page_221"></a> an infinitely sallow person in
+the brown-checked shirt of the ploughs and cows. The rest of his apparel
+was boots. A long grey beard dangled from his chin. He fixed glinting,
+fiery eyes upon the heap of men, and remained motionless. Fascinated,
+their tongues cleaving, their blood cold, they arose to their feet. The
+gleaming glance of the recluse swept slowly over the group until it
+found the face of the little man. There it stayed and burned.</p>
+
+<p>The little man shrivelled and crumpled as the dried leaf under the
+glass.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, the recluse slowly, deeply spoke. It was a true voice from a
+cave, cold, solemn, and damp.</p>
+
+<p>"It's your ante," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"What?" said the little man.</p>
+
+<p>The hermit tilted his beard and laughed a laugh that was either the
+chatter of a banshee in a storm or the rattle of pebbles in a tin box.
+His visitors' flesh seemed ready to drop from their bones.</p>
+
+<p>They huddled together and cast fearful eyes over their shoulders. They
+whispered.</p>
+
+<p>"A vampire!" said one.</p>
+
+<p>"A ghoul!" said another.</p>
+
+<p>"A Druid before the sacrifice," murmured another.</p>
+
+<p>"The shade of an Aztec witch doctor," said the little man.</p>
+
+<p>As they looked, the inscrutable face underwent<a name="page_222" id="page_222"></a> a change. It became a
+livid background for his eyes, which blazed at the little man like
+impassioned carbuncles. His voice arose to a howl of ferocity. "It's
+your ante!" With a panther-like motion he drew a long, thin knife and
+advanced, stooping. Two cadaverous hounds came from nowhere, and,
+scowling and growling, made desperate feints at the little man's legs.
+His quaking companions pushed him forward.</p>
+
+<p>Tremblingly he put his hand to his pocket.</p>
+
+<p>"How much?" he said, with a shivering look at the knife that glittered.</p>
+
+<p>The carbuncles faded.</p>
+
+<p>"Three dollars," said the hermit, in sepulchral tones which rang against
+the walls and among the passages, awakening long-dead spirits with
+voices. The shaking little man took a roll of bills from a pocket and
+placed "three ones" upon the altar-like stone. The recluse looked at the
+little volume with reverence in his eyes. It was a pack of playing
+cards.</p>
+
+<p>Under the three swinging candles, upon the altar-like stone, the grey
+beard and the agonised little man played at poker. The three other men
+crouched in a corner, and stared with eyes that gleamed with terror.
+Before them sat the cadaverous hounds licking their red lips. The
+candles burned low, and began to flicker. The fire in the corner
+expired.<a name="page_223" id="page_223"></a></p>
+
+<p>Finally, the game came to a point where the little man laid down his
+hand and quavered: "I can't call you this time, sir. I'm dead broke."</p>
+
+<p>"What?" shrieked the recluse. "Not call me! Villain! Dastard! Cur! I
+have four queens, miscreant." His voice grew so mighty that it could not
+fit his throat. He choked, wrestling with his lungs for a moment. Then
+the power of his body was concentrated in a word: "Go!"</p>
+
+<p>He pointed a quivering, yellow finger at a wide crack in the rock. The
+little man threw himself at it with a howl. His erstwhile frozen
+companions felt their blood throb again. With great bounds they plunged
+after the little man. A minute of scrambling, falling, and pushing
+brought them to open air. They climbed the distance to their camp in
+furious springs.</p>
+
+<p>The sky in the east was a lurid yellow. In the west the footprints of
+departing night lay on the pine trees. In front of their replenished
+camp fire sat John Willerkins, the guide.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello!" he shouted at their approach. "Be you fellers ready to go deer
+huntin'?"</p>
+
+<p>Without replying, they stopped and debated among themselves in whispers.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, the pudgy man came forward.</p>
+
+<p>"John," he inquired, "do you know anything peculiar about this cave
+below here?"<a name="page_224" id="page_224"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Willerkins at once; "Tom Gardner."</p>
+
+<p>"What?" said the pudgy man.</p>
+
+<p>"Tom Gardner."</p>
+
+<p>"How's that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you see," said Willerkins slowly, as he took dignified pulls at
+his pipe, "Tom Gardner was once a fambly man, who lived in these here
+parts on a nice leetle farm. He uster go away to the city orften, and
+one time he got a-gamblin' in one of them there dens. He wentter the
+dickens right quick then. At last he kum home one time and tol' his
+folks he had up and sold the farm and all he had in the worl'. His
+leetle wife she died then. Tom he went crazy, and soon after&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The narrative was interrupted by the little man, who became possessed of
+devils.</p>
+
+<p>"I wouldn't give a cuss if he had left me 'nough money to get home on
+the doggoned, grey-haired red pirate," he shrilled, in a seething
+sentence. The pudgy man gazed at the little man calmly and sneeringly.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, well," he said, "we can tell a great tale when we get back to the
+city after having investigated this thing."</p>
+
+<p>"Go to the devil," replied the little man.<a name="page_225" id="page_225"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="THE_MESMERIC_MOUNTAIN" id="THE_MESMERIC_MOUNTAIN"></a>THE MESMERIC MOUNTAIN.</h3>
+
+<p class="cb smcap">A Tale of Sullivan County.</p>
+
+<p>On the brow of a pine-plumed hillock there sat a little man with his
+back against a tree. A venerable pipe hung from his mouth, and
+smoke-wreaths curled slowly skyward. He was muttering to himself with
+his eyes fixed on an irregular black opening in the green wall of forest
+at the foot of the hill. Two vague waggon ruts led into the shadows. The
+little man took his pipe in his hands and addressed the listening pines.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder what the devil it leads to," said he.</p>
+
+<p>A grey, fat rabbit came lazily from a thicket and sat in the opening.
+Softly stroking his stomach with his paw, he looked at the little man in
+a thoughtful manner. The little man threw a stone, and the rabbit
+blinked and ran through an opening. Green, shadowy portals seemed to
+close behind him.</p>
+
+<p>The little man started. "He's gone down that roadway," he said, with
+ecstatic mystery to the pines. He sat a long time and contemplated the
+door to the forest. Finally, he arose, and awakening his limbs, started
+away. But he stopped and looked back.<a name="page_226" id="page_226"></a></p>
+
+<p>"I can't imagine what it leads to," muttered he. He trudged over the
+brown mats of pine needles, to where, in a fringe of laurel, a tent was
+pitched, and merry flames caroused about some logs. A pudgy man was
+fuming over a collection of tin dishes. He came forward and waved a
+plate furiously in the little man's face.</p>
+
+<p>"I've washed the dishes for three days. What do you think I am&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He ended a red oration with a roar: "Damned if I do it any more."</p>
+
+<p>The little man gazed dim-eyed away. "I've been wonderin' what it leads
+to."</p>
+
+<p>"What?"</p>
+
+<p>"That road out yonder. I've been wonderin' what it leads to. Maybe, some
+discovery or something," said the little man.</p>
+
+<p>The pudgy man laughed. "You're an idiot. It leads to ol' Jim Boyd's over
+on the Lumberland Pike."</p>
+
+<p>"Ho!" said the little man, "I don't believe that."</p>
+
+<p>The pudgy man swore. "Fool, what does it lead to, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know just what, but I'm sure it leads to something great or
+something. It looks like it."</p>
+
+<p>While the pudgy man was cursing, two more men came from obscurity with
+fish dangling from<a name="page_227" id="page_227"></a> birch twigs. The pudgy man made an obviously
+herculean struggle and a meal was prepared. As he was drinking his cup
+of coffee, he suddenly spilled it and swore. The little man was
+wandering off.</p>
+
+<p>"He's gone to look at that hole," cried the pudgy man.</p>
+
+<p>The little man went to the edge of the pine-plumed hillock, and, sitting
+down, began to make smoke and regard the door to the forest. There was
+stillness for an hour. Compact clouds hung unstirred in the sky. The
+pines stood motionless, and pondering.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly the little man slapped his knee and bit his tongue. He stood up
+and determinedly filled his pipe, rolling his eye over the bowl to the
+doorway. Keeping his eyes fixed he slid dangerously to the foot of the
+hillock and walked down the waggon ruts. A moment later he passed from
+the noise of the sunshine to the gloom of the woods.</p>
+
+<p>The green portals closed, shutting out live things. The little man
+trudged on alone.</p>
+
+<p>Tall tangled grass grew in the roadway, and the trees bended obstructing
+branches. The little man followed on over pine-clothed ridges and down
+through water-soaked swales. His shoes were cut by rocks of the
+mountains, and he sank ankle-deep in mud and moss of swamps. A curve
+just ahead lured him miles.<a name="page_228" id="page_228"></a></p>
+
+<p>Finally, as he wended the side of a ridge, the road disappeared from
+beneath his feet. He battled with hordes of ignorant bushes on his way
+to knolls and solitary trees which invited him. Once he came to a tall,
+bearded pine. He climbed it, and perceived in the distance a peak. He
+uttered an ejaculation and fell out.</p>
+
+<p>He scrambled to his feet, and said: "That's Jones's Mountain, I guess.
+It's about six miles from our camp as the crow flies."</p>
+
+<p>He changed his course away from the mountain, and attacked the bushes
+again. He climbed over great logs, golden-brown in decay, and was
+opposed by thickets of dark-green laurel. A brook slid through the ooze
+of a swamp; cedars and hemlocks hung their sprays to the edges of pools.</p>
+
+<p>The little man began to stagger in his walk. After a time he stopped and
+mopped his brow.</p>
+
+<p>"My legs are about to shrivel up and drop off," he said.... "Still if I
+keep on in this direction, I am safe to strike the Lumberland Pike
+before sundown."</p>
+
+<p>He dived at a clump of tag-alders, and emerging, confronted Jones's
+Mountain.</p>
+
+<p>The wanderer sat down in a clear place and fixed his eyes on the summit.
+His mouth opened widely, and his body swayed at times. The little man
+and the peak stared in silence.<a name="page_229" id="page_229"></a></p>
+
+<p>A lazy lake lay asleep near the foot of the mountain. In its bed of
+water-grass some frogs leered at the sky and crooned. The sun sank in
+red silence, and the shadows of the pines grew formidable. The expectant
+hush of evening, as if some thing were going to sing a hymn, fell upon
+the peak and the little man.</p>
+
+<p>A leaping pickerel off on the water created a silver circle that was
+lost in black shadows. The little man shook himself and started to his
+feet, crying: "For the love of Mike, there's eyes in this mountain! I
+feel 'em! Eyes!"</p>
+
+<p>He fell on his face.</p>
+
+<p>When he looked again, he immediately sprang erect and ran.</p>
+
+<p>"It's comin'!"</p>
+
+<p>The mountain was approaching.</p>
+
+<p>The little man scurried, sobbing through the thick growth. He felt his
+brain turning to water. He vanquished brambles with mighty bounds.</p>
+
+<p>But after a time he came again to the foot of the mountain.</p>
+
+<p>"God!" he howled, "it's been follerin' me." He grovelled.</p>
+
+<p>Casting his eyes upward made circles swirl in his blood.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm shackled I guess," he moaned. As he felt the heel of the mountain
+about crush his head, he<a name="page_230" id="page_230"></a> sprang again to his feet. He grasped a handful
+of small stones and hurled them.</p>
+
+<p>"Damn you," he shrieked loudly. The pebbles rang against the face of the
+mountain.</p>
+
+<p>The little man then made an attack. He climbed with hands and feet
+wildly. Brambles forced him back and stones slid from beneath his feet.
+The peak swayed and tottered, and was ever about to smite with a granite
+arm. The summit was a blaze of red wrath.</p>
+
+<p>But the little man at last reached the top. Immediately he swaggered
+with valour to the edge of the cliff. His hands were scornfully in his
+pockets.</p>
+
+<p>He gazed at the western horizon, edged sharply against a yellow sky.
+"Ho!" he said. "There's Boyd's house and the Lumberland Pike."</p>
+
+<p>The mountain under his feet was motionless.<a name="page_231" id="page_231"></a></p>
+
+<h2><a name="MISCELLANEOUS" id="MISCELLANEOUS"></a>MISCELLANEOUS</h2>
+
+<h3 class="top5"><a name="THE_SQUIRES_MADNESS" id="THE_SQUIRES_MADNESS"></a>THE SQUIRE'S MADNESS.</h3>
+
+<p>Linton was in his study remote from the interference of domestic sounds.
+He was writing verses. He was not a poet in the strict sense of the
+word, because he had eight hundred a year and a manor-house in Sussex.
+But he was devoted, at any rate, and no happiness was for him equal to
+the happiness of an imprisonment in this lonely study. His place had
+been a semi-fortified house in the good days when every gentleman was
+either abroad with a bared sword hunting his neighbours or behind
+oak-and-iron doors and three-feet walls while his neighbours hunted him.
+But in the life of Linton it may be said that the only part of the house
+which remained true to the idea of fortification was the study, which
+was free only to Linton's wife and certain terriers. The necessary
+appearance from time to time of a servant always grated upon Linton as
+much as if from time to time somebody had in the most well-bred way
+flung a brick through the little panes of his window.</p>
+
+<p>This window looked forth upon a wide valley of<a name="page_232" id="page_232"></a> hop-fields and
+sheep-pastures, dipping and rising this way and that way, but always a
+valley until it reached a high far away ridge upon which stood the
+upright figure of a windmill, usually making rapid gestures as if it
+were an excited sentry warning the old grey house of coming danger. A
+little to the right, on a knoll, red chimneys and parts of red-tiled
+roofs appeared among trees, and the venerable square tower of the
+village church rose above them.</p>
+
+<p>For ten years Linton had left vacant Oldrestham Hall, and when at last
+it became known that he and his wife were to return from an
+incomprehensible wandering, the village, which for four centuries had
+turned a feudal eye toward the Hall, was wrung with a prospect of
+change, a proper change. The great family pew in Oldrestham church would
+be occupied each Sunday morning by a fat, happy-faced, utterly
+squire-looking man, who would be dutifully at his post when the parish
+was stirred by a subscription list. Then, for the first time in many
+years, the hunters would ride in the early morning merrily out through
+the park, and there would be also shooting parties, and in the summer
+groups of charming ladies would be seen walking the terrace, laughing on
+the lawns and in the rose gardens. The village expected to have the
+perfectly legal and fascinating privilege of discussing the performances
+of its own gentry.</p>
+
+<p>The first intimation of calamity was in the news that Linton had rented
+all the shooting. This prepared<a name="page_233" id="page_233"></a> the people for the blow, and it fell
+when they sighted the master of Oldrestham Hall. The older villagers
+remembered then that there had been nothing in the youthful Linton to
+promise a fat, happy-faced, dignified, hunting, shooting over-lord, but
+still they could not but resent the appearance of the new squire. There
+was no conceivable reason for his looking like a gaunt ascetic, who
+would surprise nobody if he borrowed a sixpence from the first yokel he
+met in the lanes.</p>
+
+<p>Linton was in truth three inches more than six feet in height, but he
+had bowed himself to five feet eleven inches. His hair shocked out in
+front like hay, and under it were two spectacled eyes which never seemed
+to regard anything with particular attention. His face was pale and full
+of hollows, and the mouth apparently had no expression save a chronic
+pout of the under-lip. His hands were large and raw boned but uncannily
+white. His whole bent body was thin as that of a man from a long
+sick-bed, and all was finished by two feet which for size could not be
+matched in the county.</p>
+
+<p>He was very awkward, but apparently it was not so much a physical
+characteristic as it was a mental inability to consider where he was
+going or what he was doing. For instance, when passing through a gate it
+was not uncommon for him to knock his side viciously against one of the
+posts. This was because he dreamed almost always, and if there had been<a name="page_234" id="page_234"></a>
+forty gates in a row he would not then have noted them more than he did
+the one. As far as the villagers and farmers were concerned he never
+came out of this manner save in wide-apart cases, when he had forced
+upon him either some great exhibition of stupidity or some faint
+indication of double-dealing, and then this smouldering man flared out
+encrimsoning his immediate surrounding with a brief fire of ancestral
+anger. But the lapse back to indifference was more surprising. It was
+far quicker than the flare in the beginning. His feeling was suddenly
+ashes at the moment when one was certain it would lick the sky.</p>
+
+<p>Some of the villagers asserted that he was mad. They argued it long in
+the manner of their kind, repeating, repeating, and repeating, and when
+an opinion confusingly rational appeared they merely shook their heads
+in pig-like obstinacy. Anyhow, it was historically clear that no such
+squire had before been in the line of Lintons of Oldrestham Hall, and
+the present incumbent was a shock.</p>
+
+<p>The servants at the Hall&mdash;notably those who lived in the
+country-side&mdash;came in for a lot of questioning, and none were found too
+backward in explaining many things which they themselves did not
+understand. The household was most irregular. They all confessed that it
+was really so uncustomary that they did not know but what they would
+have to give <a name="page_235" id="page_235"></a>notice. The master was probably the most extraordinary man
+in the whole world. The butler said that Linton would drink beer with
+his meals day in and day out like any carrier resting at a pot-house. It
+didn't matter even if the meal were dinner. Then suddenly he would
+change his tastes to the most valuable wines, and in ten days would make
+the wine-cellar look as if it had been wrecked at sea. What was to be
+done with a gentleman of that kind? The butler said for his part he
+wanted a master with habits, and he protested that Linton did not have a
+habit to his name, at least, none that could properly be called a habit.</p>
+
+<p>Barring the cook, the entire establishment agreed categorically with the
+butler. The cook didn't agree because she was a very good cook indeed,
+which she thought entitled her to be extremely aloof from the other
+servants' hall opinions.</p>
+
+<p>As for the squire's lady, they described her as being not much different
+from the master. At least she gave support to his most unusual manner of
+life, and evidently believed that whatever he chose to do was quite
+correct.</p>
+
+<p>Linton had written&mdash;</p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="poetry">
+<tr><td align="left">"The garlands of her hair are snakes,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span style="margin-left: .25em;">Black and bitter are her hating eyes,</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span style="margin-left: .25em;">A cry the windy death-hall makes,</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span style="margin-left: .25em;">O, love, deliver us.</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span style="margin-left: .25em;">The flung cup rolls to her sandal's tip,</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span style="margin-left: .25em;">His arm&mdash;"</span></td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>Whereupon his thought fumed over the next two lines, coursing like
+greyhounds, after a fugitive vision of a writhening lover with the foam
+of poison on his lips dying at the feet of the woman. Linton arose, lit
+a cigarette, placed it on the window ledge, took another cigarette,
+looked blindly for the matches, thrust a spiral of paper into the flame
+of the log fire, lit the second cigarette, placed it toppling on a book
+and began a search among his pipes for one that would draw well. He
+gazed at his pictures, at the books on the shelves, out at the green
+spread of country-side, all without taking mental note. At the window
+ledge he came upon the first cigarette, and in a matter of fact way he
+returned it to his lips, having forgotten that he had forgotten it.</p>
+
+<p>There was a sound of steps on the stone floor of the quaint little
+passage that led down to his study, and turning from the window he saw
+that his wife had entered the room and was looking at him strangely.</p>
+
+<p>"Jack," she said in a low voice, "what is the matter?"</p>
+
+<p>His eyes were burning out from under his shock of hair with a fierceness
+that belied his feeling of simple surprise. "Nothing is the matter," he
+answered. "Why do you ask?"</p>
+
+<p>She seemed immensely concerned, but she was<a name="page_237" id="page_237"></a> visibly endeavouring to
+hide her concern as well as to abate it.</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I thought you acted queerly."</p>
+
+<p>He answered: "Why no. I'm not acting queerly. On the contrary," he added
+smiling, "I'm in one of my most rational moods."</p>
+
+<p>Her look of alarm did not subside. She continued to regard him with the
+same stare. She was silent for a time and did not move. His own thoughts
+had quite returned to a contemplation of a poisoned lover, and he did
+not note the manner of his wife. Suddenly she came to him, and laying a
+hand on his arm said, "Jack, you are ill?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why no, dear," he said with a first impatience, "I'm not ill at all. I
+never felt better in my life." And his mind beleaguered by this
+pointless talk strove to break through to its old contemplation of the
+poisoned lover. "Hear what I have written." Then he read&mdash;</p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="poetry">
+<tr><td align="left">"The garlands of her hair are snakes,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span style="margin-left: .25em;">Black and bitter are her hating eyes,</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span style="margin-left: .25em;">A cry the windy death-hall makes,</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span style="margin-left: .25em;">O, love, deliver us.</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span style="margin-left: .25em;">The flung cup rolls to her sandal's tip,</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span style="margin-left: .25em;">His arm&mdash;"</span></td></tr>
+</table>
+<p>Linton said: "I can't seem to get the lines to describe the man who is
+dying of the poison on the floor before her. Really I'm having a time
+with it.<a name="page_238" id="page_238"></a> What a bore. Sometimes I can write like mad and other times I
+don't seem to have an intelligent idea in my head."</p>
+
+<p>He felt his wife's hand tighten on his arm and he looked into her face.
+It was so alight with horror that it brought him sharply out of his
+dreams. "Jack," she repeated tremulously, "you are ill."</p>
+
+<p>He opened his eyes in wonder. "Ill! ill? No; not in the least!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, you are ill. I can see it in your eyes. You&mdash;act so strangely."</p>
+
+<p>"Act strangely? Why, my dear, what have I done? I feel quite well.
+Indeed, I was never more fit in my life."</p>
+
+<p>As he spoke he threw himself into a large wing chair and looked up at
+his wife, who stood gazing at him from the other side of the black oak
+table upon which Linton wrote his verses.</p>
+
+<p>"Jack, dear," she almost whispered, "I have noticed it for days," and
+she leaned across the table to look more intently into his face. "Yes,
+your eyes grow more fixed every day&mdash;you&mdash;you&mdash;your head, does it ache,
+dear?"</p>
+
+<p>Linton arose from his chair and came around the big table toward his
+wife. As he approached her, an expression akin to terror crossed her
+face and she drew back as in fear, holding out both hands to ward him
+off.<a name="page_239" id="page_239"></a></p>
+
+<p>He had been smiling in the manner of a man reassuring a frightened
+child, but at her shrinking from his outstretched hand he stopped in
+amazement. "Why, Grace, what is it? tell me."</p>
+
+<p>She was glaring at him, her eyes wide with misery. Linton moved his left
+hand across his face, unconsciously trying to brush from it that which
+alarmed her.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Jack, you must see some one; I am wretched about you. You are ill!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, my dear wife," he said, "I am quite, quite well; I am anxious to
+finish these verses but words won't come somehow, the man dying&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, that is it, you cannot remember, you see that you cannot remember.
+You must see a doctor. We will go up to town at once," she answered
+quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"'Tis true," he thought, "that my memory is not as good as it used to
+be. I cannot remember dates, and words won't fit in somehow. Perhaps I
+don't take enough exercise, dear; is that what worries you?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes, dear, you do not go out enough," said his wife. "You cling to
+this room as the ivy clings to the walls&mdash;but we must go to London, you
+<i>must</i> see some one; promise me that you will go, that you will go
+immediately."</p>
+
+<p>Again Linton saw his wife look at him as one looks at a creature of
+pity. The faint lines from her<a name="page_240" id="page_240"></a> nose to the corners of her mouth
+deepened as if she were in physical pain; her eyes, open to their
+fullest extent, had in them the expression of a mother watching her
+dying babe. What was this strange wall that had suddenly raised itself
+between them? Was he ill? No; he never was in better health in his life.
+He found himself vainly searching for aches in his bones. Again he
+brushed away this thing which seemed to be upon his face. There must be
+something on my face, he thought, else why does she look at me with such
+hopeless despair in her eyes; these kindly eyes that had hitherto been
+so responsive to each glance of his own. <i>Why</i> did she think that he was
+ill? She who knew well his every mood. <i>Was he mad?</i> Did this thing of
+the poisoned cup that rolled to her sandal's tip&mdash;and her eyes, her
+hating eyes, mean that his&mdash;no, it could not be. He fumbled among the
+papers on the table for a cigarette. He could not find one. He walked to
+the huge fireplace and peered near-sightedly at the ashes on the hearth.</p>
+
+<p>"What, what do you want, Jack? Be careful! The fire!" cried his wife.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, I want a cigarette," he said.</p>
+
+<p>She started, as if he had spoken roughly to her. "I will get you some,
+wait, sit quietly, I will bring you some," she replied as she hastened
+through the small passage-way up the stone steps that led from his
+study.<a name="page_241" id="page_241"></a></p>
+
+<p>Linton stood with his back still bent, in the posture of a man picking
+something from the ground. He did not turn from the fireplace until the
+echo of his wife's foot-fall on the stone floors had died away. Then he
+straightened himself and said, "Well, I'm damned!" And Linton was not a
+man who swore.</p>
+
+<p class="ast">* * * * * * *</p>
+
+<p>A month later the Squire and his wife were on their way to London to
+consult the great brain specialist, Doctor Redmond. Linton now believed
+that "something" was wrong with him. His wife's anxiety, which she could
+no longer conceal, forced him to this conclusion; "something" was wrong.
+Until these few last weeks Linton's wife had managed her household with
+the care and wisdom of a Chatelaine of mediæval times. Each day was
+planned for certain duties in house or village. She had theories as to
+the management and education of the village children, and this work
+occupied much of her time. She was the antithesis of her husband. He, a
+weaver of dream-stories, she of that type of woman who has ideas of the
+emancipation of women and who believe the problem could be solved by
+training the minds of the next generation of mothers. Linton was not
+interested in these questions, but he would smile indulgently at his
+wife as she talked of the equality<a name="page_242" id="page_242"></a> of mind of the sexes and the public
+part in the world's history which would be played by the women of the
+future.</p>
+
+<p>There was no talk of this kind now. The household management fell into
+the hands of servants. Night and day his wife watched Linton. He would
+awaken in the night to find her face close to his own, her eyes burning
+with feverish anxiety.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it, Grace?" he would cry, "have I said anything? What is the
+reason you watch me in this fashion, dear?"</p>
+
+<p>And she would sob, "Jack, you are ill, dear, you are ill; we must go to
+town, we must, indeed."</p>
+
+<p>Then he would soothe her with fond words and promise that he would go to
+London.</p>
+
+<p>This present journey was the outcome of those weeks of watching and fear
+in Linton's wife's mind.</p>
+
+<p class="ast">* * * * * * *</p>
+
+<p>Linton's wife was trembling violently as he helped her down from the cab
+in front of Doctor Redmond's door. They had made an appointment, so that
+they were sure of little delay before the portentous interview.</p>
+
+<p>A small page in blue livery opened the door and ushered them into a
+waiting-room. Mrs. Linton dropped heavily into a chair, looking with a
+frightened air from side to side and biting her under<a name="page_243" id="page_243"></a> lip nervously.
+She was moaning half under her breath, "Oh, Jack, you are ill, you are
+ill."</p>
+
+<p>A short stout man with clean-shaven face and scanty black hair entered
+the room. His nose was huge and misshapen and his mouth was a straight
+firm line. Overhanging black brows tried in vain to shadow the piercing
+dark eyes, that darted questioning looks at every one, seeming to search
+for hidden thoughts as a flash-light from the conning tower of a ship
+searches for the enemy in time of war.</p>
+
+<p>He advanced toward Mrs. Linton with outstretched hand. "Mrs. Linton?" he
+said. "Ah!"</p>
+
+<p>She almost jumped from her chair as he came near her, crying, "Oh,
+doctor, my husband is ill, very ill, very ill!"</p>
+
+<p>Again Doctor Redmond with his eyes fixed upon her face ejaculated, "Ah!"
+Turning to Linton he said, "Please wait here, Squire; I will first talk
+to your wife. Will you step into my study, madam?" he said to Mrs.
+Linton, bowing courteously.</p>
+
+<p>Linton's wife ran into the room which the doctor pointed toward as his
+study.</p>
+
+<p>Linton waited. He moved softly about the room looking at the photographs
+of Greek ruins which adorned the walls. He stopped finally before a
+large picture of the Gate of Hadrian. He travelled once <a name="page_244" id="page_244"></a>more into his
+dream country. His fancy painted in the figures of men and women who had
+passed through that gate. He had forgotten his fear of the blotting out
+of his mind that could conjure these glowing colours. He had forgotten
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>From this dream he was recalled to the present by a hand being placed
+gently upon his arm. He half turned and saw the doctor regarding him
+with sympathetic eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, my dear sir, come into my study," said the doctor. "I have asked
+your wife to await us here." Linton then turned fully toward the centre
+of the room and found that his wife was seated quietly by a table.
+Doctor Redmond bowed low to Mrs. Linton as he passed her, and Linton
+waved his hand, smiled, and said, "Only a moment, dear." She did not
+reply. The door closed behind them.</p>
+
+<p>"Be seated, my dear sir," said the doctor, drawing forward a chair, "be
+seated. I want to say something to you, but you must drink this first."
+He handed Linton a small glass of brandy.</p>
+
+<p>Linton sat down, took the glass mechanically, and gulped the brandy in
+one great swallow. The doctor stood by the mantel and said slowly, "I
+rejoice to say to you, sir, that I have never met a man more sound
+mentally than yourself"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Linton half started from his chair.</p>
+
+<p>"Stop!" said the doctor, "I have not yet finished&mdash;but it is my painful
+duty to tell you the truth&mdash;It is your <span class="smcap">Wife who is Mad! <span style="margin-left: 2em;">Mad</span> as a
+Hatter!</span>"<a name="page_245" id="page_245"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="A_DESERTION" id="A_DESERTION"></a>A DESERTION.</h3>
+
+<p>The yellow gas-light that came with an effect of difficulty through the
+dust-stained windows on either side of the door, gave strange hues to
+the faces and forms of the three women who stood gabbling in the
+hall-way of the tenement. They made rapid gestures, and in the
+background their enormous shadows mingled in terrific conflict.</p>
+
+<p>"Aye, she ain't so good as he thinks she is, I'll bet. He can watch over
+'er an' take care of 'er all he pleases, but when she wants t' fool 'im,
+she'll fool 'im. An' how does he know she ain't foolin' 'im now?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, he thinks he's keepin' 'er from goin' t' th' bad, he does. Oh, yes.
+He ses she's too purty t' let run round alone. Too purty! Huh! My
+Sadie&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, he keeps a clost watch on 'er, you bet. O'ny las' week, she met
+my boy Tim on th' stairs, an' Tim hadn't said two words to 'er b'fore
+th' ol' man begin to holler. 'Dorter, dorter, come here, come here!'"</p>
+
+<p>At this moment a young girl entered from the<a name="page_246" id="page_246"></a> street, and it was evident
+from the injured expression suddenly assumed by the three gossipers that
+she had been the object of their discussion. She passed them with a
+slight nod, and they swung about into a row to stare after her.</p>
+
+<p>On her way up the long flights the girl unfastened her veil. One could
+then clearly see the beauty of her eyes, but there was in them a certain
+furtiveness that came near to marring the effects. It was a peculiar
+fixture of gaze, brought from the street, as of one who there saw a
+succession of passing dangers with menaces aligned at every corner.</p>
+
+<p>On the top floor, she pushed open a door and then paused on the
+threshold, confronting an interior that appeared black and flat like a
+curtain. Perhaps some girlish idea of hobgoblins assailed her then, for
+she called in a little breathless voice, "Daddie!"</p>
+
+<p>There was no reply. The fire in the cooking-stove in the room crackled
+at spasmodic intervals. One lid was misplaced, and the girl could now
+see that this fact created a little flushed crescent upon the ceiling.
+Also, a series of tiny windows in the stove caused patches of red upon
+the floor. Otherwise, the room was heavily draped with shadows.</p>
+
+<p>The girl called again, "Daddie!"</p>
+
+<p>Yet there was no reply.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Daddie!"</p>
+
+<p>Presently she laughed as one familiar with the<a name="page_247" id="page_247"></a> humours of an old man.
+"Oh, I guess yer cussin' mad about yer supper, dad," she said, and she
+almost entered the room, but suddenly faltered, overcome by a feminine
+instinct to fly from this black interior, peopled with imagined dangers.</p>
+
+<p>Again she called, "Daddie!" Her voice had an accent of appeal. It was as
+if she knew she was foolish but yet felt obliged to insist upon being
+reassured. "Oh, daddie!"</p>
+
+<p>Of a sudden a cry of relief, a feminine announcement that the stars
+still hung, burst from her. For, according to some mystic process, the
+smouldering coals of the fire went aflame with sudden, fierce
+brilliance, splashing parts of the walls, the floor, the crude
+furniture, with a hue of blood-red. And in the light of this dramatic
+outburst of light, the girl saw her father seated at a table with his
+back turned toward her.</p>
+
+<p>She entered the room, then, with an aggrieved air, her logic evidently
+concluding that somebody was to blame for her nervous fright. "Oh, yer
+on'y sulkin' 'bout yer supper. I thought mebbe ye'd gone somewheres."</p>
+
+<p>Her father made no reply. She went over to a shelf in the corner, and,
+taking a little lamp, she lit it and put it where it would give her
+light as she took off her hat and jacket in front of the tiny mirror.
+Presently, she began to bustle among the<a name="page_248" id="page_248"></a> cooking utensils that were
+crowded into the sink, and as she worked she rattled talk at her father,
+apparently disdaining his mood.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd 'a come home earlier t'night, dad, o'ny that fly foreman, he kep'
+me in th' shop 'til half-past six. What a fool. He came t' me, yeh know,
+an' he ses, 'Nell, I wanta give yeh some brotherly advice.' Oh, I know
+him an' his brotherly advice. 'I wanta give yeh some brotherly advice.
+Yer too purty, Nell,' he ses, 't' be workin' in this shop an' paradin'
+through the streets alone, without somebody t' give yeh good brotherly
+advice, an' I wanta warn yeh, Nell. I'm a bad man, but I ain't as bad as
+some, an' I wanta warn yeh.' 'Oh, g'long 'bout yer business,' I ses. I
+know 'im. He's like all of 'em, o'ny he's a little slyer. I know 'im.
+'You g'long 'bout yer business,' I ses. Well, he ses after a while that
+he guessed some evenin' he'd come up an' see me. 'Oh, yeh will,' I ses,
+'yeh will? Well, you jest let my ol' man ketch yeh comin' foolin' 'round
+our place. Yeh'll wish yeh went t' some other girl t' give brotherly
+advice.' 'What th' 'ell do I care fer yer father?' he ses. 'What's he t'
+me?' 'If he throws yeh down stairs, yeh'll care for 'im,' I ses. 'Well,'
+he ses, 'I'll come when 'e ain't in, b' Gawd, I'll come when 'e ain't
+in.' 'Oh, he's allus in when it means takin' care 'a me,' I ses. 'Don't
+yeh fergit it either. When it comes t' takin' care<a name="page_249" id="page_249"></a> 'a his dorter, he's
+right on deck every single possible time.'"</p>
+
+<p>After a time, she turned and addressed cheery words to the old man.
+"Hurry up th' fire, daddie! We'll have supper pretty soon."</p>
+
+<p>But still her father was silent, and his form in its sullen posture was
+motionless.</p>
+
+<p>At this, the girl seemed to see the need of the inauguration of a
+feminine war against a man out of temper. She approached him breathing
+soft, coaxing syllables.</p>
+
+<p>"Daddie! Oh, Daddie! O&mdash;o&mdash;oh, Daddie!"</p>
+
+<p>It was apparent from a subtle quality of valour in her tones that this
+manner of onslaught upon his moods had usually been successful, but
+to-night it had no quick effect. The words, coming from her lips, were
+like the refrain of an old ballad, but the man remained stolid.</p>
+
+<p>"Daddie! My Daddie! Oh, Daddie are yeh mad at me, really&mdash;truly mad at
+me!"</p>
+
+<p>She touched him lightly upon the arm. Should he have turned then he
+would have seen the fresh, laughing face, with dew-sparkling eyes, close
+to his own.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Daddie! My Daddie! Pretty Daddie!"</p>
+
+<p>She stole her arm about his neck, and then slowly bended her face toward
+his. It was the action of a queen who knows that she reigns
+notwithstanding irritations, trials, tempests.<a name="page_250" id="page_250"></a></p>
+
+<p>But suddenly, from this position, she leaped backward with the mad
+energy of a frightened colt. Her face was in this instant turned to a
+grey, featureless thing of horror. A yell, wild and hoarse as a
+brute-cry, burst from her. "Daddie!" She flung herself to a place near
+the door, where she remained, crouching, her eyes staring at the
+motionless figure, spattered by the quivering flashes from the fire. Her
+arms extended, and her frantic fingers at once besought and repelled.
+There was in them an expression of eagerness to caress and an expression
+of the most intense loathing. And the girl's hair that had been a
+splendour, was in these moments changed to a disordered mass that hung
+and swayed in witchlike fashion.</p>
+
+<p>Again, a terrible cry burst from her. It was more than the shriek of
+agony&mdash;it was directed, personal, addressed to him in the chair, the
+first word of a tragic conversation with the dead.</p>
+
+<p>It seemed that when she had put her arm about its neck, she had jostled
+the corpse in such a way, that now she and it were face to face. The
+attitude expressed an intention of arising from the table. The eyes,
+fixed upon hers, were filled with an unspeakable hatred.</p>
+
+<p class="ast">* * * * * * *</p>
+
+<p>The cries of the girl aroused thunders in the tenement. There was a loud
+slamming of doors, and<a name="page_251" id="page_251"></a> presently there was a roar of feet upon the
+boards of the stairway. Voices rang out sharply.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"What's th' matter?"</p>
+
+<p>"He's killin' her!"</p>
+
+<p>"Slug 'im with anythin' yeh kin lay hold of, Jack."</p>
+
+<p>But over all this came the shrill shrewish tones of a woman. "Ah, th'
+damned ol' fool, he's drivin' 'er inteh th' street&mdash;that's what he's
+doin.' He's drivin' 'er inteh th' street."<a name="page_252" id="page_252"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="HOW_THE_DONKEY_LIFTED_THE_HILLS" id="HOW_THE_DONKEY_LIFTED_THE_HILLS"></a>HOW THE DONKEY LIFTED THE HILLS.</h3>
+
+<p>Many people suppose that the donkey is lazy. This is a great mistake. It
+is his pride.</p>
+
+<p>Years ago, there was nobody quite so fine as the donkey. He was a great
+swell in those times. No one could express an opinion of anything
+without the donkey showing where he was in it. No one could mention the
+name of an important personage without the donkey declaring how well he
+knew him.</p>
+
+<p>The donkey was, above all things, a proud and aristocratic beast.</p>
+
+<p>One day a party of animals were discussing one thing and another, until
+finally the conversation drifted around to mythology.</p>
+
+<p>"I have always admired that giant, Atlas," observed the ox in the course
+of the conversation. "It was amazing how he could carry things."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, Atlas," said the donkey, "I knew him very well. I once met a
+man and we got talking of Atlas. I expressed my admiration for the giant
+and my desire to meet him some day, if possible. Whereupon the man said
+there was nothing quite so easy. He was sure that his dear friend,
+Atlas,<a name="page_253" id="page_253"></a> would be happy to meet so charming a donkey. Was I at leisure
+next Monday? Well, then, could I dine with him upon that date? So, you
+see, it was all arranged. I found Atlas to be a very pleasant fellow."</p>
+
+<p>"It has always been a wonder to me how he could have carried the earth
+on his back," said the horse.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, my dear sir, nothing is more simple," cried the donkey. "One has
+only to make up one's mind to it, and then&mdash;do it. That is all. I am
+quite sure that if I wished I could carry a range of mountains upon my
+back."</p>
+
+<p>All the others said, "Oh, my!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I could," asserted the donkey, stoutly. "It is merely a question
+of making up one's mind. I will bet."</p>
+
+<p>"I will wager also," said the horse. "I will wager my ears that you
+can't carry a range of mountains upon your back."</p>
+
+<p>"Done," cried the donkey.</p>
+
+<p>Forthwith the party of animals set out for the mountains. Suddenly,
+however, the donkey paused and said, "Oh, but look here. Who will place
+this range of mountains upon my back? Surely I can not be expected to do
+the loading also."</p>
+
+<p>Here was a great question. The party consulted. At length the ox said,
+"We will have to ask some<a name="page_254" id="page_254"></a> men to shovel the mountain upon the donkey's
+back."</p>
+
+<p>Most of the others clapped their hoofs or their paws and cried, "Ah,
+that is the thing."</p>
+
+<p>The horse, however, shook his head doubtfully. "I don't know about these
+men. They are very sly. They will introduce some deviltry into the
+affair."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, how silly," said the donkey. "Apparently you do not understand
+men. They are the most gentle, guileless creatures."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," retorted the horse, "I will doubtless be able to escape since I
+am not to be encumbered with any mountains. Proceed."</p>
+
+<p>The donkey smiled in derision at these observations by the horse.</p>
+
+<p>Presently they came upon some men who were labouring away like mad,
+digging ditches, felling trees, gathering fruits, carrying water,
+building huts.</p>
+
+<p>"Look at these men, would you," said the horse. "Can you trust them
+after this exhibition of their depravity? See how each one selfishly&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The donkey interrupted with a loud laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"What nonsense!"</p>
+
+<p>And then he cried out to the men, "Ho, my friends, will you please come
+and shovel a range of mountains upon my back?"</p>
+
+<p>"What?"</p>
+
+<p>"Will you please come and shovel a range of mountains upon my back?"<a name="page_255" id="page_255"></a></p>
+
+<p>The men were silent for a time. Then they went apart and debated. They
+gesticulated a great deal.</p>
+
+<p>Some apparently said one thing and some another. At last they paused and
+one of their number came forward.</p>
+
+<p>"Why do you wish a range of mountains shovelled upon your back?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is a wager," cried the donkey.</p>
+
+<p>The men consulted again. And as the discussion became older, their heads
+went closer and closer together, until they merely whispered, and did
+not gesticulate at all. Ultimately they cried, "Yes, certainly we will
+shovel a range of mountains upon your back for you."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, thanks," said the donkey.</p>
+
+<p>"Here is surely some deviltry," said the horse behind his hoof to the
+ox.</p>
+
+<p>The entire party proceeded then to the mountains. The donkey drew a long
+breath and braced his legs.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you ready?" asked the men.</p>
+
+<p>"All ready," cried the donkey.</p>
+
+<p>The men began to shovel.</p>
+
+<p>The dirt and stones flew over the donkey's back in showers. It was not
+long before his legs were hidden. Presently only his neck and head
+remained in view. Then at last this wise donkey vanished.<a name="page_256" id="page_256"></a> There had
+been made no great effect upon the range of mountains. They still
+towered toward the sky.</p>
+
+<p>The watching crowd saw a heap of dirt and stones make a little movement
+and then was heard a muffled cry. "Enough! Enough! It was not two ranges
+of mountains! It is not fair! It is not fair!"</p>
+
+<p>But the men only laughed as they shovelled on.</p>
+
+<p>"Enough! Enough! Oh, woe is me&mdash;thirty snow-capped peaks upon my little
+back. Ah, these false, false men! Oh, virtuous, wise, and holy men,
+desist."</p>
+
+<p>The men again laughed. They were as busy as fiends with their shovels.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, brutal, cowardly, accursed men; ah, good, gentle, and holy men,
+please remove some of those damnable peaks. I will adore your beautiful
+shovels forever. I will be slave to the beckoning of your little
+fingers. I will no longer be my own donkey&mdash;I will be your donkey."</p>
+
+<p>The men burst into a triumphant shout and ceased shovelling.</p>
+
+<p>"Swear it, mountain-carrier."</p>
+
+<p>"I swear! I swear! I swear!"</p>
+
+<p>The other animals scampered away then, for these men in their plots and
+plans were very terrible. "Poor old foolish fellow," cried the horse;
+"he may<a name="page_257" id="page_257"></a> keep his ears. He will need them to hear and count the blows
+that are now to fall upon him."</p>
+
+<p>The men unearthed the donkey. They beat him with their shovels. "Ho,
+come on, slave." Encrusted with earth, yellow-eyed from fright, the
+donkey limped toward his prison. His ears hung down like leaves of the
+plantain during the great rain.</p>
+
+<p>So, now, when you see a donkey with a church, a palace, and three
+villages upon his back, and he goes with infinite slowness, moving but
+one leg at a time, do not think him lazy. It is his pride.<a name="page_258" id="page_258"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="A_MAN_BY_THE_NAME_OF_MUD" id="A_MAN_BY_THE_NAME_OF_MUD"></a>A MAN BY THE NAME OF MUD.</h3>
+
+<p>Deep in a leather chair, the Kid sat looking out at where the rain
+slanted before the dull brown houses and hammered swiftly upon an
+occasional lonely cab. The happy crackle from the great and glittering
+fireplace behind him had evidently no meaning of content for him. He
+appeared morose and unapproachable, and when a man appears morose and
+unapproachable it is a fine chance for his intimate friends. Three or
+four of them discovered his mood, and so hastened to be obnoxious.</p>
+
+<p>"What's wrong, Kid? Lost your thirst?"</p>
+
+<p>"He can never be happy again. He has lost his thirst."</p>
+
+<p>"That's right, Kid. When you quarrel with a man who can whip you, resort
+to sarcastic reflection and distance."</p>
+
+<p>They cackled away persistently, but the Kid was mute and continued to
+stare gloomily at the street.</p>
+
+<p>Once a man who had been writing letters looked up and said, "I saw your
+friend at the Comique the other night." He waited a moment and then
+added, "In back."<a name="page_259" id="page_259"></a></p>
+
+<p>The Kid wheeled about in his chair at this information, and all the
+others saw then that it was important. One man said with deep
+intelligence, "Ho, ho, a woman, hey? A woman's come between the two
+Kids. A woman. Great, eh?" The Kid launched a glare of scorn across the
+room, and then turned again to a contemplation of the rain. His friends
+continued to do all in their power to worry him, but they fell
+ultimately before his impregnable silence.</p>
+
+<p>As it happened, he had not been brooding upon his friend's mysterious
+absence at all. He had been concerned with himself. Once in a while he
+seemed to perceive certain futilities and lapsed them immediately into a
+state of voiceless dejection. These moods were not frequent.</p>
+
+<p>An unexplained thing in his mind, however, was greatly enlightened by
+the words of the gossip. He turned then from his harrowing scrutiny of
+the amount of pleasure he achieved from living, and settled into a
+comfortable reflection upon the state of his comrade, the other Kid.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps it could be indicated in this fashion: "Went to Comique, I
+suppose. Saw girl. Secondary part, probably. Thought her rather natural.
+Went to Comique again. Went again. One time happened to meet omnipotent
+and good-natured friend. Broached subject to him with<a name="page_260" id="page_260"></a> great caution.
+Friend said&mdash;'Why, certainly, my boy, come round to-night, and I'll take
+you in back. Remember, it's against all rules, but I think that in your
+case, etc.' Kid went. Chorus girls winked same old wink. 'Here's another
+dude on the prowl.' Kid aware of this, swearing under his breath and
+looking very stiff. Meets girl. Knew beforehand that the footlights
+might have sold him, but finds her very charming. Does not say single
+thing to her which she naturally expected to hear. Makes no reference to
+her beauty nor her voice&mdash;if she has any. Perhaps takes it for granted
+that she knows. Girl don't exactly love this attitude, but then feels
+admiration, because after all she can't tell whether he thinks her nice
+or whether he don't. New scheme this. Worked by occasional guys in Rome
+and Egypt, but still, new scheme. Kid goes away. Girl thinks. Later,
+nails omnipotent and good-natured friend. 'Who was that you brought
+back?' 'Oh, him? Why, he&mdash;' Describes the Kid's wealth, feats, and
+virtues&mdash;virtues of disposition. Girl propounds clever question&mdash;'Why
+did he wish to meet me?' Omnipotent person says, 'Damned if I know.'"</p>
+
+<p>Later, Kid asks girl to supper. Not wildly anxious, but very evident
+that he asks her because he likes her. Girl accepts; goes to supper. Kid
+very good comrade and kind. Girl begins to think<a name="page_261" id="page_261"></a> that here at last is a
+man who understands her. Details ambitions&mdash;long, wonderful ambitions.
+Explains her points of superiority over the other girls of stage. Says
+their lives disgust her. She wants to work and study and make something
+of herself. Kid smokes vast number of cigarettes. Displays and feels
+deep sympathy. Recalls, but faintly, that he has heard it on previous
+occasions. They have an awfully good time. Part at last in front of
+apartment house. "Good-night, old chap." "Good-night." Squeeze hands
+hard. Kid has no information at all about kissing her good-night, but
+don't even try. Noble youth. Wise youth. Kid goes home and smokes. Feels
+strong desire to kill people who say intolerable things of the girl in
+rows. "Narrow, mean, stupid, ignorant, damnable people." Contemplates
+the broad, fine liberality of his experienced mind.</p>
+
+<p>Kid and girl become very chumy. Kid like a brother. Listens to her
+troubles. Takes her out to supper regularly and regularly. Chorus girls
+now tacitly recognise him as the main guy. Sometimes, may be, girl's
+mother sick. Can't go to supper. Kid always very noble. Understands
+perfectly the probabilities of there being others. Lays for 'em, but
+makes no discoveries. Begins to wonder whether he is a winner or whether
+she is a girl of marvellous cleverness.<a name="page_262" id="page_262"></a> Can't tell. Maintains himself
+with dignity, however. Only occasionally inveighs against the men who
+prey upon the girls of the stage. Still noble.</p>
+
+<p>Time goes on. Kid grows less noble. Perhaps decides not to be noble at
+all, or as little as he can. Still inveighs against the men who prey
+upon the girls of the stage. Thinks the girl stunning. Wants to be dead
+sure there are no others. Once suspects it, and immediately makes the
+colossal mistake of his life. Takes the girl to task. Girl won't stand
+it for a minute. Harangues him. Kid surrenders and pleads with
+her&mdash;pleads with her. Kid's name is mud.<a name="page_263" id="page_263"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="A_POKER_GAME" id="A_POKER_GAME"></a>A POKER GAME.</h3>
+
+<p>Usually a poker game is a picture of peace. There is no drama so
+low-voiced and serene and monotonous. If an amateur loser does not
+softly curse, there is no orchestral support. Here is one of the most
+exciting and absorbing occupations known to intelligent American
+manhood; here a year's reflection is compressed into a moment of
+thought; here the nerves may stand on end and scream to themselves, but
+a tranquillity as from heaven is only interrupted by the click of chips.
+The higher the stakes the more quiet the scene; this is a law that
+applies everywhere save on the stage.</p>
+
+<p>And yet sometimes in a poker game things happen. Everybody remembers the
+celebrated corner on bay rum that was triumphantly consummated by Robert
+F. Cinch, of Chicago, assisted by the United States Courts and whatever
+other federal power he needed. Robert F. Cinch enjoyed his victory four
+months. Then he died, and young Bobbie Cinch came to New York in order
+to more clearly demonstrate that there was a good deal of fun in
+twenty-two million dollars.<a name="page_264" id="page_264"></a></p>
+
+<p>Old Henry Spuytendyvil owns all the real estate in New York save that
+previously appropriated by the hospitals and Central Park. He had been a
+friend of Bob's father. When Bob appeared in New York, Spuytendyvil
+entertained him correctly. It came to pass that they just naturally
+played poker.</p>
+
+<p>One night they were having a small game in an up-town hotel. There were
+five of them, including two lawyers and a politician. The stakes
+depended on the ability of the individual fortune.</p>
+
+<p>Bobbie Cinch had won rather heavily. He was as generous as sunshine, and
+when luck chases a generous man it chases him hard, even though he
+cannot bet with all the skill of his opponents.</p>
+
+<p>Old Spuytendyvil had lost a considerable amount. One of the lawyers from
+time to time smiled quietly, because he knew Spuytendyvil well, and he
+knew that anything with the name of loss attached to it sliced the old
+man's heart into sections.</p>
+
+<p>At midnight Archie Bracketts, the actor, came into the room. "How you
+holding 'em, Bob?" said he.</p>
+
+<p>"Pretty well," said Bob.</p>
+
+<p>"Having any luck, Mr. Spuytendyvil?"</p>
+
+<p>"Blooming bad," grunted the old man.</p>
+
+<p>Bracketts laughed and put his foot on the round of Spuytendyvil's chair.
+"There," said he, "I'll queer your luck for you." Spuytendyvil sat at
+the end of the table. "Bobbie," said the actor, presently,<a name="page_265" id="page_265"></a> as young
+Cinch won another pot, "I guess I better knock your luck." So he took
+his foot from the old man's chair and placed it on Bob's chair. The lad
+grinned good-naturedly and said he didn't care.</p>
+
+<p>Bracketts was in a position to scan both of the hands. It was Bob's
+ante, and old Spuytendyvil threw in a red chip. Everybody passed out up
+to Bobbie. He filled in the pot and drew a card.</p>
+
+<p>Spuytendyvil drew a card. Bracketts, looking over his shoulder, saw him
+holding the ten, nine, eight, and seven of diamonds. Theatrically
+speaking, straight flushes are as frequent as berries on a juniper tree,
+but as a matter of truth the reason that straight flushes are so admired
+is because they are not as common as berries on a juniper tree.
+Bracketts stared; drew a cigar slowly from his pocket, and placing it
+between his teeth forgot its existence.</p>
+
+<p>Bobbie was the only other stayer. Bracketts flashed an eye for the lad's
+hand and saw the nine, eight, six, and five of hearts. Now, there are
+but six hundred and forty-five emotions possible to the human mind, and
+Bracketts immediately had them all. Under the impression that he had
+finished his cigar, he took it from his mouth and tossed it toward the
+grate without turning his eyes to follow its flight.</p>
+
+<p>There happened to be a complete silence around<a name="page_266" id="page_266"></a> the green-clothed table.
+Spuytendyvil was studying his hand with a kind of contemptuous smile,
+but in his eyes there perhaps was to be seen a cold, stern light
+expressing something sinister and relentless.</p>
+
+<p>Young Bob sat as he had sat. As the pause grew longer, he looked up once
+inquiringly at Spuytendyvil.</p>
+
+<p>The old man reached for a white chip. "Well, mine are worth about that
+much," said he, tossing it into the pot. Thereupon he leaned back
+comfortably in his chair and renewed his stare at the five straight
+diamond. Young Bob extended his hand leisurely toward his stack. It
+occurred to Bracketts that he was smoking, but he found no cigar in his
+mouth.</p>
+
+<p>The lad fingered his chips and looked pensively at his hand. The silence
+of those moments oppressed Bracketts like the smoke from a
+conflagration.</p>
+
+<p>Bobbie Cinch continued for some moments to coolly observe his cards. At
+last he breathed a little sigh and said, "Well, Mr. Spuytendyvil, I
+can't play a sure thing against you." He threw in a white chip. "I'll
+just call you. I've got a straight flush." He faced down his cards.</p>
+
+<p>Old Spuytendyvil's fear, horror, and rage could only be equalled in
+volume to a small explosion of gasolene. He dashed his cards upon the
+table.<a name="page_267" id="page_267"></a> "There!" he shouted, glaring frightfully at Bobbie. "I've got a
+straight flush, too! And mine is Jack high!"</p>
+
+<p>Bobbie was at first paralysed with amazement, but in a moment he
+recovered, and apparently observing something amusing in the situation
+he grinned.</p>
+
+<p>Archie Bracketts, having burst his bond of silence, yelled for joy and
+relief. He smote Bobbie on the shoulder. "Bob, my boy," he cried
+exuberantly, "you're no gambler, but you're a mighty good fellow, and if
+you hadn't been you would be losing a good many dollars this minute."</p>
+
+<p>Old Spuytendyvil glowered at Bracketts. "Stop making such an infernal
+din, will you, Archie," he said morosely. His throat seemed filled with
+pounded glass. "Pass the whisky."<a name="page_268" id="page_268"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="THE_SNAKE" id="THE_SNAKE"></a>THE SNAKE.</h3>
+
+<p>Where the path wended across the ridge, the bushes of huckle-berry and
+sweet fern swarmed at it in two curling waves until it was a mere
+winding line traced through a tangle. There was no interference by
+clouds, and as the rays of the sun fell full upon the ridge, they called
+into voice innumerable insects which chanted the heat of the summer day
+in steady, throbbing, unending chorus.</p>
+
+<p>A man and a dog came from the laurel thickets of the valley where the
+white brook brawled with the rocks. They followed the deep line of the
+path across the ridge. The dog&mdash;a large lemon and white setter&mdash;walked,
+tranquilly meditative, at his master's heels.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly from some unknown and yet near place in advance there came a
+dry, shrill whistling rattle that smote motion instantly from the limbs
+of the man and the dog. Like the fingers of a sudden death, this sound
+seemed to touch the man at the nape of the neck, at the top of the
+spine, and change him, as swift as thought, to a statue of listening
+horror, surprise, rage. The dog, too&mdash;the same icy<a name="page_269" id="page_269"></a> hand was laid upon
+him, and he stood crouched and quivering, his jaw dropping, the froth of
+terror upon his lips, the light of hatred in his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Slowly the man moved his hands toward the bushes, but his glance did not
+turn from the place made sinister by the warning rattle. His fingers,
+unguided, sought for a stick of weight and strength. Presently they
+closed about one that seemed adequate, and holding this weapon poised
+before him, the man moved slowly forward, glaring. The dog with his
+nervous nostrils fairly fluttering moved warily, one foot at a time,
+after his master.</p>
+
+<p>But when the man came upon the snake, his body underwent a shock as if
+from a revelation, as if after all he had been ambushed. With a blanched
+face, he sprang forward, and his breath came in strained gasps, his
+chest heaving as if he were in the performance of an extraordinary
+muscular trial. His arm with the stick made a spasmodic, defensive
+gesture.</p>
+
+<p>The snake had apparently been crossing the path in some mystic travel
+when to his sense there came the knowledge of the coming of his foes.
+The dull vibration perhaps informed him, and he flung his body to face
+the danger. He had no knowledge of paths; he had no wit to tell him to
+slink noiselessly into the bushes. He knew that his implacable enemies
+were approaching; no doubt they were seeking<a name="page_270" id="page_270"></a> him, hunting him. And so
+he cried his cry, an incredibly swift jangle of tiny bells, as burdened
+with pathos as the hammering upon quaint cymbals by the Chinese at
+war&mdash;for, indeed, it was usually his death-music.</p>
+
+<p>"Beware! Beware! Beware!"</p>
+
+<p>The man and the snake confronted each other. In the man's eyes were
+hatred and fear. In the snake's eyes were hatred and fear. These enemies
+man&oelig;uvred, each preparing to kill. It was to be a battle without
+mercy. Neither knew of mercy for such a situation. In the man was all
+the wild strength of the terror of his ancestors, of his race, of his
+kind. A deadly repulsion had been handed from man to man through long
+dim centuries. This was another detail of a war that had begun evidently
+when first there were men and snakes. Individuals who do not participate
+in this strife incur the investigations of scientists. Once there was a
+man and a snake who were friends, and at the end, the man lay dead with
+the marks of the snake's caress just over his East Indian heart. In the
+formation of devices, hideous and horrible, Nature reached her supreme
+point in the making of the snake, so that priests who really paint hell
+well fill it with snakes instead of fire. These curving forms, these
+scintillant colourings create at once, upon sight, more relentless
+animosities than do shake barbaric tribes. To<a name="page_271" id="page_271"></a> be born a snake is to be
+thrust into a place a-swarm with formidable foes. To gain an
+appreciation of it, view hell as pictured by priests who are really
+skilful.</p>
+
+<p>As for this snake in the pathway, there was a double curve some inches
+back of its head, which, merely by the potency of its lines, made the
+man feel with tenfold eloquence the touch of the death-fingers at the
+nape of his neck. The reptile's head was waving slowly from side to side
+and its hot eyes flashed like little murder-lights. Always in the air
+was the dry, shrill whistling of the rattles.</p>
+
+<p>"Beware! Beware! Beware!"</p>
+
+<p>The man made a preliminary feint with his stick. Instantly the snake's
+heavy head and neck were bended back on the double curve and instantly
+the snake's body shot forward in a low, straight, hard spring. The man
+jumped with a convulsive chatter and swung his stick. The blind,
+sweeping blow fell upon the snake's head and hurled him so that
+steel-coloured plates were for a moment uppermost. But he rallied
+swiftly, agilely, and again the head and neck bended back to the double
+curve, and the steaming, wide-open mouth made its desperate effort to
+reach its enemy. This attack, it could be seen, was despairing, but it
+was nevertheless impetuous, gallant, ferocious, of the same quality as
+the charge of the lone chief when the walls of white faces close<a name="page_272" id="page_272"></a> upon
+him in the mountains. The stick swung unerringly again, and the snake,
+mutilated, torn, whirled himself into the last coil.</p>
+
+<p>And now the man went sheer raving mad from the emotions of his
+forefathers and from his own. He came to close quarters. He gripped the
+stick with his two hands and made it speed like a flail. The snake,
+tumbling in the anguish of final despair, fought, bit, flung itself upon
+this stick which was taking his life.</p>
+
+<p>At the end, the man clutched his stick and stood watching in silence.
+The dog came slowly and with infinite caution stretched his nose
+forward, sniffing. The hair upon his neck and back moved and ruffled as
+if a sharp wind was blowing. The last muscular quivers of the snake were
+causing the rattles to still sound their treble cry, the shrill, ringing
+war chant and hymn of the grave of the thing that faces foes at once
+countless, implacable, and superior.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Rover," said the man, turning to the dog with a grin of victory,
+"we'll carry Mr. Snake home to show the girls."</p>
+
+<p>His hands still trembled from the strain of the encounter, but he pried
+with his stick under the body of the snake and hoisted the limp thing
+upon it. He resumed his march along the path, and the dog walked,
+tranquilly meditative, at his master's heels.<a name="page_273" id="page_273"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="A_SELF-MADE_MAN" id="A_SELF-MADE_MAN"></a>A SELF-MADE MAN.</h3>
+
+<p class="cb smcap">An Example of Success that Any One can Follow.</p>
+
+<p>Tom had a hole in his shoe. It was very round and very uncomfortable,
+particularly when he went on wet pavements. Rainy days made him feel
+that he was walking on frozen dollars, although he had only to think for
+a moment to discover he was not.</p>
+
+<p>He used up almost two packs of playing cards by means of putting four
+cards at a time inside his shoe as a sort of temporary sole, which
+usually lasted about half a day. Once he put in four aces for luck. He
+went down town that morning and got refused work. He thought it wasn't a
+very extraordinary performance for a young man of ability, and he was
+not sorry that night to find his packs were entirely out of aces.</p>
+
+<p>One day Tom was strolling down Broadway. He was in pursuit of work,
+although his pace was slow. He had found that he must take the matter
+coolly. So he puffed tenderly at a cigarette and walked as if he owned
+stock. He imitated success so successfully, that if it wasn't for the
+constant reminder (king, queen, deuce, and tray) in his shoe, he would
+have gone into a store and bought something.<a name="page_274" id="page_274"></a></p>
+
+<p>He had borrowed five cents that morning off his landlady, for his mouth
+craved tobacco. Although he owed her much for board, she had unlimited
+confidence in him, because his stock of self-assurance was very large
+indeed. And as it increased in a proper ratio with the amount of his
+bills, his relations with her seemed on a firm basis. So he strolled
+along and smoked with his confidence in fortune in nowise impaired by
+his financial condition.</p>
+
+<p>Of a sudden he perceived on old man seated upon a railing and smoking a
+clay pipe.</p>
+
+<p>He stopped to look, because he wasn't in a hurry, and because it was an
+unusual thing on Broadway to see old men seated upon railings and
+smoking clay pipes.</p>
+
+<p>And to his surprise the old man regarded him very intently in return. He
+stared, with a wistful expression, into Tom's face, and he clasped his
+hands in trembling excitement.</p>
+
+<p>Tom was filled with astonishment at the old man's strange demeanour. He
+stood puffing at his cigarette, and tried to understand matters.
+Failing, he threw his cigarette away, took a fresh one from his pocket,
+and approached the old man.</p>
+
+<p>"Got a match?" he inquired, pleasantly.</p>
+
+<p>The old man, much agitated, nearly fell from the railing as he leaned
+dangerously forward.</p>
+
+<p>"Sonny, can you read?" he demanded in a quavering voice.<a name="page_275" id="page_275"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, I can," said Tom, encouragingly. He waived the affair of the
+match.</p>
+
+<p>The old man fumbled in his pocket. "You look honest, sonny. I've been
+looking for an honest feller fur a'most a week. I've set on this railing
+fur six days," he cried, plaintively.</p>
+
+<p>He drew forth a letter and handed it to Tom. "Read it fur me, sonny,
+read it," he said, coaxingly.</p>
+
+<p>Tom took the letter and leaned back against the railings. As he opened
+it and prepared to read, the old man wriggled like a child at a
+forbidden feast.</p>
+
+<p>Thundering trucks made frequent interruptions, and seven men in a hurry
+jogged Tom's elbow, but he succeeded in reading what follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p class="c">
+Office of Ketchum R. Jones, Attorney-at-Law,<br />
+Tin Can, Nevada, May 19, 18&mdash;.</p>
+
+<p>Rufus Wilkins, Esq.</p>
+
+<p>Dear Sir,&mdash;I have as yet received no acknowledgment of the draft
+from the sale of the north section lots, which I forwarded to you
+on 25th June. I would request an immediate reply concerning it.</p>
+
+<p>Since my last I have sold the three corner lots at five thousand
+each. The city grew so rapidly in that direction that they were
+surrounded by brick stores almost before you would know it. I have
+also sold for four thousand dollars the ten acres of out-laying
+sage bush, which you once foolishly tried to give away. Mr.
+Simpson, of Boston, bought the tract. He is very shrewd, no doubt,
+but he<a name="page_276" id="page_276"></a> hasn't been in the west long. Still, I think if he holds it
+for about a thousand years, he may come out all right.</p>
+
+<p>I worked him with the projected-horse-car-line gag.</p>
+
+<p>Inform me of the address of your New York attorneys, and I will
+send on the papers. Pray do not neglect to write me concerning the
+draft sent on 25th June.</p>
+
+<p>In conclusion, I might say that if you have any eastern friends who
+are after good western investments inform them of the glorious
+future of Tin Can. We now have three railroads, a bank, an electric
+light plant, a projected horse-car line, and an art society. Also,
+a saw manufactory, a patent car-wheel mill, and a Methodist Church.
+Tin Can is marching forward to take her proud stand as the
+metropolis of the west. The rose-hued future holds no glories to
+which Tin Can does not&mdash;</p></div>
+
+<p>Tom stopped abruptly. "I guess the important part of the letter came
+first," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," cried the old man, "I've heard enough. It is just as I thought.
+George has robbed his dad."</p>
+
+<p>The old man's frail body quivered with grief. Two tears trickled slowly
+down the furrows of his face.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, come, now," said Tom, patting him tenderly on the back. "Brace
+up, old feller. What you want to do is to get a lawyer and go put the
+screws on George."</p>
+
+<p>"Is it really?" asked the old man, eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, it is," said Tom.</p>
+
+<p>"All right," cried the old man, with enthusiasm. "Tell me where to get
+one." He slid down from the railing and prepared to start off.<a name="page_277" id="page_277"></a></p>
+
+<p>Tom reflected. "Well," he said, finally, "I might do for one myself."</p>
+
+<p>"What," shouted the old man in a voice of admiration, "are you a lawyer
+as well as a reader?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Tom again, "I might appear to advantage as one. All you
+need is a big front," he added, slowly. He was a profane young man.</p>
+
+<p>The old man seized him by the arm. "Come on, then," he cried, "and we'll
+go put the screws on George."</p>
+
+<p>Tom permitted himself to be dragged by the weak arms of his companion
+around a corner and along a side street. As they proceeded, he was
+internally bracing himself for a struggle, and putting large bales of
+self-assurance around where they would be likely to obstruct the advance
+of discovery and defeat.</p>
+
+<p>By the time they reached a brown-stone house, hidden away in a street of
+shops and warehouses, his mental balance was so admirable that he seemed
+to be in possession of enough information and brains to ruin half of the
+city, and he was no more concerned about the king, queen, deuce, and
+tray than if they had been discards that didn't fit his draw. He infused
+so much confidence and courage into his companion, that the old man went
+along the street, breathing war, like a decrepit hound on the scent of
+new blood.<a name="page_278" id="page_278"></a></p>
+
+<p>He ambled up the steps of the brown-stone house as if he were charging
+earthworks. He unlocked the door and they passed along a dark hallway.
+In a rear room they found a man seated at table engaged with a very late
+breakfast. He had a diamond in his shirt front and a bit of egg on his
+cuff.</p>
+
+<p>"George," said the old man in a fierce voice that came from his aged
+throat with a sound like the crackle of burning twigs, "here's my
+lawyer, Mr. er&mdash;ah&mdash;Smith, and we want to know what you did with the
+draft that was sent on 25th June."</p>
+
+<p>The old man delivered the words as if each one was a musket shot.
+George's coffee spilled softly upon the tablecover, and his fingers
+worked convulsively upon a slice of bread. He turned a white, astonished
+face toward the old man and the intrepid Thomas.</p>
+
+<p>The latter, straight and tall, with a highly legal air, stood at the old
+man's side. His glowing eyes were fixed upon the face of the man at the
+table. They seemed like two little detective cameras taking pictures of
+the other man's thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>"Father, what d&mdash;do you mean," faltered George, totally unable to
+withstand the two cameras and the highly legal air.</p>
+
+<p>"What do I mean?" said the old man with a feeble roar as from an ancient
+lion. "I mean that draft&mdash;that's what I mean. Give it up or
+we'll&mdash;<a name="page_279" id="page_279"></a>we'll"&mdash;he paused to gain courage by a glance at the formidable
+figure at his side&mdash;"we'll put the screws on you."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I was&mdash;I was only borrowin' it for 'bout a month," said George.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah," said Tom.</p>
+
+<p>George started, glared at Tom, and then began to shiver like an animal
+with a broken back. There were a few moments of silence. The old man was
+fumbling about in his mind for more imprecations. George was wilting and
+turning limp before the glittering orbs of the valiant attorney. The
+latter, content with the exalted advantage he had gained by the use of
+the expression "Ah," spoke no more, but continued to stare.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said George, finally, in a weak voice, "I s'pose I can give you
+a cheque for it, 'though I was only borrowin' it for 'bout a month. I
+don't think you have treated me fairly, father, with your lawyers and
+your threats, and all that. But I'll give you the cheque."</p>
+
+<p>The old man turned to his attorney. "Well?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>Tom looked at the son and held an impressive debate with himself. "I
+think we may accept the cheque," he said coldly after a time.</p>
+
+<p>George arose and tottered across the room. He drew a cheque that made
+the attorney's heart come<a name="page_280" id="page_280"></a> privately into his mouth. As he and his
+client passed triumphantly out, he turned a last highly legal glare upon
+George that reduced that individual to a mere paste.</p>
+
+<p>On the side-walk the old man went into a spasm of delight and called his
+attorney all the admiring and endearing names there were to be had.</p>
+
+<p>"Lord, how you settled him," he cried ecstatically.</p>
+
+<p>They walked slowly back toward Broadway. "The scoundrel," murmured the
+old man. "I'll never see 'im again. I'll desert 'im. I'll find a nice
+quiet boarding-place and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"That's all right," said Tom. "I know one. I'll take you right up,"
+which he did.</p>
+
+<p>He came near being happy ever after. The old man lived at advanced rates
+in the front room at Tom's boarding-house. And the latter basked in the
+proprietress' smiles, which had a commercial value, and were a great
+improvement on many we see.</p>
+
+<p>The old man, with his quantities of sage bush, thought Thomas owned all
+the virtues mentioned in high-class literature, and his opinion, too,
+was of commercial value. Also, he knew a man who knew another man who
+received an impetus which made him engage Thomas on terms that were
+highly satisfactory. Then it was that the latter learned he had not
+succeeded sooner because he did not know a man who knew another man.<a name="page_281" id="page_281"></a></p>
+
+<p>So it came to pass that Tom grew to be Thomas G. Somebody. He achieved
+that position in life from which he could hold out for good wines when
+he went to poor restaurants. His name became entangled with the name of
+Wilkins in the ownership of vast and valuable tracts of sage bush in Tin
+Can, Nevada.</p>
+
+<p>At the present day he is so great that he lunches frugally at high
+prices. His fame has spread through the land as a man who carved his way
+to fortune with no help but his undaunted pluck, his tireless energy,
+and his sterling integrity.</p>
+
+<p>Newspapers apply to him now, and he writes long signed articles to
+struggling young men, in which he gives the best possible advice as to
+how to become wealthy. In these articles, he, in a burst of
+glorification, cites the king, queen, deuce, and tray, the four aces,
+and all that. He alludes tenderly to the nickel he borrowed and spent
+for cigarettes as the foundation of his fortune.</p>
+
+<p>"To succeed in life," he writes, "the youth of America have only to see
+an old man seated upon a railing and smoking a clay pipe. Then go up and
+ask him for a match."<a name="page_282" id="page_282"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="A_TALE_OF_MERE_CHANCE" id="A_TALE_OF_MERE_CHANCE"></a>A TALE OF MERE CHANCE.</h3>
+
+<p class="cb smcap">Being an Account of the Pursuit of the Tiles, the Statement of the
+Clock, and the Grip of a Coat of Orange Spots, together with some
+Criticism of a Detective said to be Carved from an Old Table-leg.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, my friend, I killed the man, but I would not have been detected in
+it were it not for some very extraordinary circumstances. I had long
+considered this deed, but I am a delicate and sensitive person, you
+understand, and I hesitated over it as the diver hesitates on the brink
+of a dark and icy mountain pool. A thought of the shock of the contact
+holds one back.</p>
+
+<p>As I was passing his house one morning, I said to myself, "Well, at any
+rate, if she loves him, it will not be for long." And after that
+decision I was not myself, but a sort of a machine.</p>
+
+<p>I rang the bell and the servants admitted me to the drawing-room. I
+waited there while the old tall clock placidly ticked its speech of
+time. The rigid and austere chairs remained in possession of their
+singular imperturbability, although, of course, they<a name="page_283" id="page_283"></a> were aware of my
+purpose, but the little white tiles of the floor whispered one to
+another and looked at me. Presently he entered the room, and I, drawing
+my revolver, shot him. He screamed&mdash;you know that scream&mdash;mostly
+amazement&mdash;and as he fell forward his blood was upon the little white
+tiles. They huddled and covered their eyes from this rain. It seemed to
+me that the old clock stopped ticking as a man may gasp in the middle of
+a sentence, and a chair threw itself in my way as I sprang toward the
+door.</p>
+
+<p>A moment later, I was walking down the street, tranquil, you understand,
+and I said to myself, "It is done. Long years from this day I will say
+to her that it was I who killed him. After time has eaten the conscience
+of the thing, she will admire my courage."</p>
+
+<p>I was elated that the affair had gone off so smoothly, and I felt like
+returning home and taking a long, full sleep, like a tired working man.
+When people passed me, I contemplated their stupidity with a sense of
+satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>But those accursed little white tiles.</p>
+
+<p>I heard a shrill crying and chattering behind me, and, looking back, I
+saw them, blood-stained and impassioned, raising their little hands and
+screaming "Murder! It was he!" I have said that they had little hands. I
+am not sure of it, but they had some<a name="page_284" id="page_284"></a> means of indicating me as
+unerringly as pointing fingers. As for their movement, they swept along
+as easily as dry, light leaves are carried by the wind. Always they were
+shrilly piping their song of my guilt.</p>
+
+<p>My friend, may it never be your fortune to be pursued by a crowd of
+little blood-stained tiles. I used a thousand means to be free from the
+clash-clash of these tiny feet. I ran through the world at my best
+speed, but it was no better than that of an ox, while they, my pursuers,
+were always fresh, eager, relentless.</p>
+
+<p>I am an ingenious person, and I used every trick that a desperate,
+fertile man can invent. Hundreds of times I had almost evaded them when
+some smouldering, neglected spark would blaze up and discover me.</p>
+
+<p>I felt that the eye of conviction would have no terrors for me, but the
+eyes of suspicion which I saw in city after city, on road after road,
+drove me to the verge of going forward and saying, "Yes, I have
+murdered."</p>
+
+<p>People would see the following, clamorous troops of blood-stained tiles,
+and give me piercing glances, so that these swords played continually at
+my heart. But we are a decorous race, thank God. It is very vulgar to
+apprehend murderers on the public streets. We have learned correct
+manners from the English.<a name="page_285" id="page_285"></a> Besides, who can be sure of the meaning of
+clamouring tiles? It might be merely a trick in politics.</p>
+
+<p>Detectives? What are detectives? Oh, yes, I have read of them and their
+deeds, when I come to think of it. The prehistoric races must have been
+remarkable. I have never been able to understand how the detective
+navigated in stone boats. Still, specimens of their pottery excavated in
+Taumalipas show a remarkable knowledge of mechanics. I remember the
+little hydraulic&mdash;what's that? Well, what you say may be true, my
+friend, but I think you dream.</p>
+
+<p>The little stained tiles. My friend, I stopped in an inn at the ends of
+the earth, and in the morning they were there flying like little birds
+and pecking at my window.</p>
+
+<p>I should have escaped. Heavens, I should have escaped. What was more
+simple? I murdered and then walked into the world, which is wide and
+intricate.</p>
+
+<p>Do you know that my own clock assisted in the hunting of me? They asked
+what time I left my home that morning, and it replied at once,
+"Half-after eight." The watch of a man I had chanced to pass near the
+house of the crime told the people "Seven minutes after nine." And, of
+course, the tall, old clock in the drawing-room went about day after day
+repeating, "Eighteen minutes after nine."<a name="page_286" id="page_286"></a></p>
+
+<p>Do you say that the man who caught me was very clever? My friend, I have
+lived long, and he was the most incredible blockhead of my experience.
+An enslaved, dust-eating Mexican vaquero wouldn't hitch his pony to such
+a man. Do you think he deserves credit for my capture? If he had been as
+pervading as the atmosphere, he would never have caught me. If he was a
+detective, as you say, I could carve a better one from an old table-leg.
+But the tiles. That is another matter. At night I think they flew in
+long high flock, like pigeons. In the day, little mad things, they
+murmured on my trail like frothy-mouthed weasels.</p>
+
+<p>I see that you note these great, round, vividly orange spots on my coat.
+Of course, even if the detective were really carved from an old
+table-leg, he could hardly fail to apprehend a man thus badged. As sores
+come upon one in the plague so came these spots upon my coat. When I
+discovered them, I made effort to free myself of this coat. I tore,
+tugged, wrenched at it, but around my shoulders it was like a grip of a
+dead man's arms. Do you know that I have plunged into a thousand lakes?
+I have smeared this coat with a thousand paints. But day and night the
+spots burn like lights. I might walk from this jail to-day if I could
+rid myself of this coat, but it clings&mdash;clings&mdash;clings.</p>
+
+<p>At any rate, the person you call a detective was<a name="page_287" id="page_287"></a> not so clever to
+discover a man in a coat of spotted orange, followed by shrieking,
+blood-stained tiles. Yes, that noise from the corridor is most peculiar.
+But they are always there, muttering and watching, clashing and
+jostling. It sounds as if the dishes of Hades were being washed. Yet I
+have become used to it. Once, indeed, in the night, I cried out to them,
+"In God's name, go away, little blood-stained tiles." But they doggedly
+answered, "It is the law."<a name="page_288" id="page_288"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="AT_CLANCYS_WAKE" id="AT_CLANCYS_WAKE"></a>AT CLANCY'S WAKE.</h3>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Scene</span>&mdash;<i>Room in the house of the lamented Clancy. The curtains are
+pulled down. A perfume of old roses and whisky hangs in the air. A
+weeping woman in black it seated at a table in the centre. A group of
+wide-eyed children are sobbing in a corner. Down the side of the room is
+a row of mourning friends of the family. Through an open door can be
+seen, half hidden in shadows, the silver and black of a coffin.</i></p>
+
+<p class="top5"><span class="smcap">Widow</span>&mdash;Oh, wirra, wirra, wirra!</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Children</span>&mdash;B-b boo-hoo-hoo!</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Friends</span> (<i>conversing in low tones</i>)&mdash;Yis, Moike Clancy was a foine mahn,
+sure! None betther! No, I don't t'ink so. Did he? Sure, all th'
+elictions! He was th' bist in the warrud! He licked 'im widin an inch of
+his loife, aisy, an' th' other wan a big, shtrappin' buck of a mahn, an'
+him jes' free of th' pneumonia! Yis, he did! They carried th' warrud by
+six hunder! Yis, he was a foine mahn. None betther. Gawd sav' 'im!</p>
+
+<p>(<i>Enter</i> Mr. <span class="smcap">Slick</span>, <i>of the "Daily Blanket," shown in by a maid-servant,
+whose hair has become disarranged through much tear-shedding. He is
+attired<a name="page_289" id="page_289"></a> in a suit of grey check, and wears a red rose in his
+buttonhole.</i>)</p>
+
+<p>Mr. <span class="smcap">Slick</span>&mdash;Good afternoon, Mrs. Clancy. This is a sad misfortune for
+you, isn't it?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Widow</span>&mdash;Oh, indade, indade, young mahn, me poor heart is bruk.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. <span class="smcap">Slick</span>&mdash;Very sad, Mrs. Clancy. A great misfortune, I'm sure. Now,
+Mrs. Clancy, I've called to&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Widow</span>&mdash;Little did I t'ink, young mahn, win they brought poor Moike in
+that it was th' lasht!</p>
+
+<p>Mr. <span class="smcap">Slick</span> (<i>with conviction</i>)&mdash;True! True! Very true, indeed. It was a
+great grief to you, Mrs. Clancy. I've called this morning, Mrs. Clancy,
+to see if I could get from you a short obituary notice for the <i>Blanket</i>
+if you could&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Widow</span>&mdash;An' his hid was done up in a rag, an' he was cursin' frightful. A
+damned Oytalian lit fall th' hod as Moike was walkin' pasht as dacint as
+you plaze. Win they carried 'im in, him all bloody, an' ravin' tur'ble
+'bout Oytalians, me heart was near bruk, but I niver tawt&mdash;I niver
+tawt&mdash;I&mdash;I niver&mdash;(<i>Breaks forth into a long, forlorn cry. The children
+join in, and the chorus echoes wailfully through the rooms.</i>)</p>
+
+<p>Mr. <span class="smcap">Slick</span> (<i>as the yell, in a measure, ceases</i>)&mdash;Yes, indeed, a sad, sad
+affair. A terrible misfortune. Now, Mrs. Clancy&mdash;<a name="page_290" id="page_290"></a></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Widow</span> (<i>turning suddenly</i>)&mdash;Mary Ann. Where's thot lazy divil of a Mary
+Ann? (<i>As the servant appears.</i>) Mary Ann, bring th' bottle! Give th'
+gintlemin a dhrink!... Here's to Hiven savin' yez, young mahn.
+(<i>Drinks.</i>)</p>
+
+<p>Mr. <span class="smcap">Slick</span> (<i>drinks</i>)&mdash;A noble whisky, Mrs. Clancy. Many thanks. Now,
+Mrs. Clancy&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Widow</span>&mdash;Take anodder wan! Take anodder wan! (<i>Fills his glass.</i>)</p>
+
+<p>Mr. <span class="smcap">Slick</span> (<i>impatiently</i>)&mdash;Yes, certainly, Mrs. Clancy, certainly. (<i>He
+drinks.</i>) Now, could you tell me, Mrs. Clancy, where your late husband
+was&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Widow</span>&mdash;Who&mdash;Moike? Oh, young mahn, yez can just say thot he was the
+foinest mahn livin' an' breathin', an' niver a wan in th' warrud was
+betther. Oh, but he had th' tindther heart for 'is fambly, he did. Don't
+I remimber win he clipped little Patsey wid th' bottle, an' didn't he
+buy th' big rockin'-horse th' minit he got sober? Sure he did. Pass th'
+bottle, Mary Ann! (<i>Pours a beer-glass about half-full for her guest.</i>)</p>
+
+<p>Mr. <span class="smcap">Slick</span> (<i>taking a seat</i>)&mdash;True, Mr. Clancy was a fine man, Mrs.
+Clancy&mdash;a <i>very</i> fine man. Now, I&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Widow</span> (<i>plaintively</i>)&mdash;An' don't yez loike th' rum? Dhrink th' rum,
+mahn! It was me own Moike's fav'rite bran'. Well I remimber win he
+fotched it home, an' half th' demijohn gone a'ready, an' him<a name="page_291" id="page_291"></a> a-cursin'
+up th' stairs as dhrunk as Gawd plazed. It was a&mdash;Dhrink th' rum, young
+mahn, dhrink th' rum! If he cud see yez now, Moike Clancy wud git up
+from 'is&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Mr. <span class="smcap">Slick</span> (<i>desperately</i>)&mdash;Very well, very well, Mrs. Clancy. Here's
+your good health. Now, can you tell me, Mrs. Clancy, when was Mr. Clancy
+born?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Widow</span>&mdash;Win was he borrun. Sure, divil a bit do I care win he was borrun.
+He was th' good mahn to me an' his childher; an' Gawd knows I don't care
+win he was borrun. Mary Ann, pass th' bottle! Wud yez kape th' gintlemin
+starvin' for a dhrink here in Moike Clancy's own house? Gawd save yez.</p>
+
+<p>(<i>When the bottle appears she pours a huge quantity out for her guest</i>.)</p>
+
+<p>Mr. <span class="smcap">Slick</span>&mdash;Well, then, Mrs. Clancy, <i>where</i> was he born?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Widow</span> (<i>staring</i>)&mdash;In Oirland, mahn, in Oirland! Where did yez t'ink?
+(<i>Then, in sudden, wheedling tones.</i>) An' ain't yez goin' to dhrink th'
+rum? Are yez goin' to shirk th' good whisky what was th' pride of
+Moike's life, an' him gettin' full on it an' breakin' th' furnitir t'ree
+nights a week hard-runnin'? Shame an yez, an' Gawd save yer soul. Dhrink
+it oop now, there's a dear, dhrink it oop now, an' say: "Moike Clancy,
+be all th' powers in th' shky, Hiven sind yez rist!"<a name="page_292" id="page_292"></a></p>
+
+<p>Mr. <span class="smcap">Slick</span>&mdash;(<i>to himself</i>)&mdash;Holy smoke! (<i>He drinks, then regards the
+glass for a long time.</i>) ... Well, now, Mrs. Clancy, give me your
+attention for a moment, please. When did&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Widow</span>&mdash;An' oh, but he was a power in th' warrud! Divil a mahn cud vote
+right widout Moike Clancy at 'is elbow. An' in th' calkus, sure didn't
+Mulrooney git th' nominashun jes' by raison of Moike's atthackin' th'
+opposashun wid th' shtove-poker. Mulrooney got it as aisy as dhirt, wid
+Moike rowlin' under th' tayble wid th' other candeedate. He was a good
+sit'zen, was Moike&mdash;divil a wan betther.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. <span class="smcap">Slick</span> <i>spends some minutes in collecting his faculties</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. <span class="smcap">Slick</span> (<i>after he decides that he has them collected</i>)&mdash;Yes, yes,
+Mrs. Clancy, your husband's h-highly successful pol-pol-political career
+was w-well known to the public; but what I want to know is&mdash;what I want
+to know&mdash;(<i>Pauses to consider.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Widow</span> (<i>finally</i>)&mdash;Pass th' glasses, Mary Ann, yez lazy divil; give th'
+gintlemin a dhrink! Here (<i>tendering him a glass</i>), take anodder wan to
+Moike Clancy, an' Gawd save yez for yer koindness to a poor widee woman!</p>
+
+<p>Mr. <span class="smcap">Slick</span> (<i>after solemnly regarding the glass</i>)&mdash;Certainly, I&mdash;I'll
+take a drink. Certainly, M&mdash;Mish Clanshy. Yes, certainly, Mish Clanshy.
+Now, Mish<a name="page_293" id="page_293"></a> Clanshy, w-w-wash was Mr. Clanshy's n-name before he married
+you, Mish Clanshy?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Widow</span> (<i>astonished</i>)&mdash;Why, divil a bit else but Clancy.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. <span class="smcap">Slick</span> (<i>after reflection</i>)&mdash;Well, but I mean&mdash;I mean, Mish Clanshy,
+I mean&mdash;what was date of birth? Did marry you 'fore then, or d-did marry
+you when 'e was born in N' York, Mish Clanshy?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Widow</span>&mdash;Phwat th' divil&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Mr. <span class="smcap">Slick</span> (<i>with dignity</i>)&mdash;Ansher my queshuns, pleash, Mish Clanshy.
+Did 'e bring chil'en withum f'm Irelan', or was you, after married in N'
+York, mother those chil'en 'e brought f'm Irelan'?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Widow</span>&mdash;Be th' powers above, I&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Mr. <span class="smcap">Slick</span> (<i>with gentle patience</i>)&mdash;I don't shink y' unnerstan' m'
+queshuns, Mish Clanshy. What I wanna fin' out is, what was 'e born in N'
+York for when he, before zat, came f'm Irelan'? Dash what puzzels me.
+I-I'm completely puzzled. An' alsho, I wanna fin' out&mdash;I wanna fin' out,
+if poshble&mdash;zat is, if it's poshble shing, I wanna fin' out&mdash;I wanna
+fin' out&mdash;if poshble&mdash;I wanna-shay, who the blazesh is dead here,
+anyhow?<a name="page_294" id="page_294"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="AN_EPISODE_OF_WAR" id="AN_EPISODE_OF_WAR"></a>AN EPISODE OF WAR.</h3>
+
+<p>The lieutenant's rubber blanket lay on the ground, and upon it he had
+poured the company's supply of coffee. Corporals and other
+representatives of the grimy and hot-throated men who lined the
+breastwork had come for each squad's portion.</p>
+
+<p>The lieutenant was frowning and serious at this task of division. His
+lips pursed as he drew with his sword various crevices in the heap until
+brown squares of coffee, astoundingly equal in size, appeared on the
+blanket. He was on the verge of a great triumph in mathematics, and the
+corporals were thronging forward, each to reap a little square, when
+suddenly the lieutenant cried out and looked quickly at a man near him
+as if he suspected it was a case of personal assault. The others cried
+out also when they saw blood upon the lieutenant's sleeve.</p>
+
+<p>He has winced like a man stung, swayed dangerously, and then
+straightened. The sound of his hoarse breathing was plainly audible. He
+looked sadly, mystically, over the breastwork at the green face of a
+wood, where now were many little puffs of white smoke. During this
+moment the<a name="page_295" id="page_295"></a> men about him gazed statue-like and silent, astonished and
+awed by this catastrophe which happened when catastrophes were not
+expected&mdash;when they had leisure to observe it.</p>
+
+<p>As the lieutenant stared at the wood, they too swung their heads, so
+that for another instant all hands, still silent, contemplated the
+distant forest as if their minds were fixed upon the mystery of a
+bullet's journey.</p>
+
+<p>The officer had, of course, been compelled to take his sword into his
+left hand. He did not hold it by the hilt. He gripped it at the middle
+of the blade, awkwardly. Turning his eyes from the hostile wood, he
+looked at the sword as he held it there, and seemed puzzled as to what
+to do with it, where to put it. In short, this weapon had of a sudden
+become a strange thing to him. He looked at it in a kind of
+stupefaction, as if he had been endowed with a trident, a sceptre, or a
+spade.</p>
+
+<p>Finally he tried to sheath it. To sheath a sword held by the left hand,
+at the middle of the blade, in a scabbard hung at the left hip, is a
+feat worthy of a sawdust ring. This wounded officer engaged in a
+desperate struggle with the sword and the wobbling scabbard, and during
+the time of it he breathed like a wrestler.</p>
+
+<p>But at this instant the men, the spectators, awoke from their stone-like
+poses and crowded forward<a name="page_296" id="page_296"></a> sympathetically. The orderly-sergeant took
+the sword and tenderly placed it in the scabbard. At the time, he leaned
+nervously backward, and did not allow even his finger to brush the body
+of the lieutenant. A wound gives strange dignity to him who bears it.
+Well men shy from this new and terrible majesty. It is as if the wounded
+man's hand is upon the curtain which hangs before the revelations of all
+existence&mdash;the meaning of ants, potentates, wars, cities, sunshine,
+snow, a feather dropped from a bird's wing; and the power of it sheds
+radiance upon a bloody form, and makes the other men understand
+sometimes that they are little. His comrades look at him with large eyes
+thoughtfully. Moreover, they fear vaguely that the weight of a finger
+upon him might send him headlong, precipitate the tragedy, hurl him at
+once into the dim, grey unknown. And so the orderly-sergeant, while
+sheathing the sword, leaned nervously backward.</p>
+
+<p>There were others who proffered assistance. One timidly presented his
+shoulder and asked the lieutenant if he cared to lean upon it, but the
+latter waved him away mournfully. He wore the look of one who knows he
+is the victim of a terrible disease and understands his helplessness. He
+again stared over the breastwork at the forest, and then turning went
+slowly rearward. He held his right wrist tenderly in his left hand as if
+the wounded arm was made of very brittle glass.<a name="page_297" id="page_297"></a></p>
+
+<p>And the men in silence stared at the wood, then at the departing
+lieutenant&mdash;then at the wood, then at the lieutenant.</p>
+
+<p>As the wounded officer passed from the line of battle, he was enabled to
+see many things which as a participant in the fight were unknown to him.
+He saw a general on a black horse gazing over the lines of blue infantry
+at the green woods which veiled his problems. An aide galloped
+furiously, dragged his horse suddenly to a halt, saluted, and presented
+a paper. It was, for a wonder, precisely like an historical painting.</p>
+
+<p>To the rear of the general and his staff a group, composed of a bugler,
+two or three orderlies, and the bearer of the corps standard, all upon
+maniacal horses, were working like slaves to hold their ground, preserve
+their respectful interval, while the shells boomed in the air about
+them, and caused their chargers to make furious quivering leaps.</p>
+
+<p>A battery, a tumultuous and shining mass, was swirling toward the right.
+The wild thud of hoofs, the cries of the riders shouting blame and
+praise, menace and encouragement, and, last, the roar of the wheels, the
+slant of the glistening guns, brought the lieutenant to an intent pause.
+The battery swept in curves that stirred the heart; it made halts as
+dramatic as the crash of a wave on the rocks, and when it fled onward,
+this aggregation of wheels,<a name="page_298" id="page_298"></a> levers, motors, had a beautiful unity, as
+if it were a missile. The sound of it was a war-chorus that reached into
+the depths of man's emotion.</p>
+
+<p>The lieutenant, still holding his arm as if it were of glass, stood
+watching this battery until all detail of it was lost, save the figures
+of the riders, which rose and fell and waved lashes over the black mass.</p>
+
+<p>Later, he turned his eyes toward the battle where the shooting sometimes
+crackled like bush-fires, sometimes sputtered with exasperating
+irregularity, and sometimes reverberated like the thunder. He saw the
+smoke rolling upward and saw crowds of men who ran and cheered, or stood
+and blazed away at the inscrutable distance.</p>
+
+<p>He came upon some stragglers, and they told him how to find the field
+hospital. They described its exact location. In fact, these men, no
+longer having part in the battle, knew more of it than others. They told
+the performance of every corps, every division, the opinion of every
+general. The lieutenant, carrying his wounded arm rearward, looked upon
+them with wonder.</p>
+
+<p>At the roadside a brigade was making coffee and buzzing with talk like a
+girls' boarding-school. Several officers came out to him and inquired
+concerning things of which he knew nothing. One, seeing his arm, began
+to scold. "Why, man, that's no way to do. You want to fix that thing."
+He<a name="page_299" id="page_299"></a> appropriated the lieutenant and the lieutenant's wound. He cut the
+sleeve and laid bare the arm, every nerve of which softly fluttered
+under his touch. He bound his handkerchief over the wound, scolding away
+in the meantime. His tone allowed one to think that he was in the habit
+of being wounded every day. The lieutenant hung his head, feeling, in
+this presence, that he did not know how to be correctly wounded.</p>
+
+<p>The low white tents of the hospital were grouped around an old
+school-house. There was here a singular commotion. In the foreground two
+ambulances interlocked wheels in the deep mud. The drivers were tossing
+the blame of it back and forth, gesticulating and berating, while from
+the ambulances, both crammed with wounded, there came an occasional
+groan. An interminable crowd of bandaged men were coming and going.
+Great numbers sat under the trees nursing heads or arms or legs. There
+was a dispute of some kind raging on the steps of the school-house.
+Sitting with his back against a tree a man with a face as grey as a new
+army blanket was serenely smoking a corn-cob pipe. The lieutenant wished
+to rush forward and inform him that he was dying.</p>
+
+<p>A busy surgeon was passing near the lieutenant. "Good-morning," he said,
+with a friendly smile. Then he caught sight of the lieutenant's arm and
+his<a name="page_300" id="page_300"></a> face at once changed. "Well, let's have a look at it." He seemed
+possessed suddenly of a great contempt for the lieutenant. This wound
+evidently placed the latter on a very low social plane. The doctor cried
+out impatiently, "What mutton-head had tied it up that way anyhow?" The
+lieutenant answered, "Oh, a man."</p>
+
+<p>When the wound was disclosed the doctor fingered it disdainfully.
+"Humph," he said. "You come along with me and I'll 'tend to you." His
+voice contained the same scorn as if he were saying, "You will have to
+go to jail."</p>
+
+<p>The lieutenant had been very meek, but now his face flushed, and he
+looked into the doctor's eyes. "I guess I won't have it amputated," he
+said.</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense, man! Nonsense! Nonsense!" cried the doctor. "Come along, now.
+I won't amputate it. Come along. Don't be a baby."</p>
+
+<p>"Let go of me," said the lieutenant, holding back wrathfully, his glance
+fixed upon the door of the old school-house, as sinister to him as the
+portals of death.</p>
+
+<p>And this is the story of how the lieutenant lost his arm. When he
+reached home, his sisters, his mother, his wife, sobbed for a long time
+at the sight of the flat sleeve. "Oh, well," he said, standing
+shamefaced amid these tears, "I don't suppose it matters so much as all
+that."<a name="page_301" id="page_301"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="THE_VOICE_OF_THE_MOUNTAIN" id="THE_VOICE_OF_THE_MOUNTAIN"></a>THE VOICE OF THE MOUNTAIN.</h3>
+
+<p>The old man Popocatepetl was seated on a high rock with his white mantle
+about his shoulders. He looked at the sky, he looked at the sea, he
+looked at the land&mdash;nowhere could he see any food. And he was very
+hungry, too.</p>
+
+<p>Who can understand the agony of a creature whose stomach is as large as
+a thousand churches, when this same stomach is as empty as a broken
+water jar?</p>
+
+<p>He looked longingly at some island in the sea. "Ah, those flat cakes! If
+I had them." He stared at storm-clouds in the sky. "Ah, what a drink is
+there." But the King of Everything, you know, had forbidden the old man
+Popocatepetl to move at all, because he feared that every footprint
+would make a great hole in the land. So the old fellow was obliged to
+sit still and wait for his food to come within reach. Any one who has
+tried this plan knows what intervals lie between meals.</p>
+
+<p>Once his friend, the little eagle, flew near, and Popocatepetl called to
+him. "Ho, tiny bird, come and consider with me as to how I shall be
+fed."<a name="page_302" id="page_302"></a></p>
+
+<p>The little eagle came and spread his legs apart and considered manfully,
+but he could do nothing with the situation. "You see," he said, "this is
+no ordinary hunger which one goat will suffice&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Popocatepetl groaned an assent.</p>
+
+<p>"&mdash;but it is an enormous affair," continued the little eagle, "which
+requires something like a dozen stars. I don't see what can be done
+unless we get that little creature of the earth&mdash;that little animal with
+two arms, two legs, one head, and a very brave air, to invent something.
+He is said to be very wise."</p>
+
+<p>"Who claims it for him?" asked Popocatepetl.</p>
+
+<p>"He claims it for himself," responded the eagle.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, summon him. Let us see. He is doubtless a kind little animal, and
+when he sees my distress he will invent something."</p>
+
+<p>"Good!" The eagle flew until he discovered one of these small creatures.
+"Oh, tiny animal, the great chief Popocatepetl summons you!"</p>
+
+<p>"Does he, indeed!"</p>
+
+<p>"Popocatepetl, the great chief," said the eagle again, thinking that the
+little animal had not heard rightly.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, and why does he summon me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because he is in distress, and he needs your assistance."</p>
+
+<p>The little animal reflected for a time, and then said, "I will go."<a name="page_303" id="page_303"></a></p>
+
+<p>When Popocatepetl perceived the little animal and the eagle he stretched
+forth his great, solemn arms. "Oh, blessed little animal with two arms,
+two legs, a head, and a very brave air, help me in my agony. Behold I,
+Popocatepetl, who saw the King of Everything fashioning the stars, I,
+who knew the sun in his childhood, I, Popocatepetl, appeal to you,
+little animal. I am hungry."</p>
+
+<p>After a while the little animal asked: "How much will you pay?"</p>
+
+<p>"Pay?" said Popocatepetl.</p>
+
+<p>"Pay?" said the eagle.</p>
+
+<p>"Assuredly," quoth the little animal, "pay!"</p>
+
+<p>"But," demanded Popocatepetl, "were you never hungry? I tell you I am
+hungry, and is your first word then 'pay'?"</p>
+
+<p>The little animal turned coldly away. "Oh, Popocatepetl, how much wisdom
+has flown past you since you saw the King of Everything fashioning the
+stars and since you knew the sun in his childhood? I said pay, and,
+moreover, your distress measures my price. It is our law. Yet it is true
+that we did not see the King of Everything fashioning the stars. Nor did
+we know the sun in his childhood."</p>
+
+<p>Then did Popocatepetl roar and shake in his rage. "Oh,
+louse&mdash;louse&mdash;louse! Let us bargain then! How much for your blood?" Over
+the little animal hung death.<a name="page_304" id="page_304"></a></p>
+
+<p>But he instantly bowed himself and prayed: "Popocatepetl, the great, you
+who saw the King of Everything fashioning the stars, and who knew the
+sun in his childhood, forgive this poor little animal. Your sacred
+hunger shall be my care. I am your servant."</p>
+
+<p>"It is well," said Popocatepetl at once, for his spirit was ever kindly.
+"And now, what will you do?"</p>
+
+<p>The little animal put his hand upon his chin and reflected. "Well, it
+seems you are hungry, and the King of Everything has forbidden you to go
+for food in fear that your monstrous feet will riddle the earth with
+holes. What you need is a pair of wings."</p>
+
+<p>"A pair of wings!" cried Popocatepetl delightedly.</p>
+
+<p>"A pair of wings!" screamed the eagle in joy.</p>
+
+<p>"How very simple, after all."</p>
+
+<p>"And yet how wise!"</p>
+
+<p>"But," said Popocatepetl, after the first outburst, "who can make me
+these wings?"</p>
+
+<p>The little animal replied: "I and my kind are great, because at times we
+can make one mind control a hundred thousand bodies. This is the secret
+of our performance. It will be nothing for us to make wings for even
+you, great Popocatepetl. I and my kind will come"&mdash;continued the crafty,
+little animal&mdash;"we will come and dwell on this<a name="page_305" id="page_305"></a> beautiful plain that
+stretches from the sea to the sea, and we will make wings for you."</p>
+
+<p>Popocatepetl wished to embrace the little animal. "Oh, glorious! Oh,
+best of little brutes! Run! run! run! Summon your kind, dwell in the
+plain and make me wings. Ah, when once Popocatepetl can soar on his
+wings from star to star, then, indeed&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p class="ast">* * * * * * *</p>
+
+<p>Poor old stupid Popocatepetl! The little animal summoned his kind, they
+dwelt on the plains, they made this and they made that, but they made no
+wings for Popocatepetl.</p>
+
+<p>And sometimes when the thunderous voice of the old peak rolls and rolls,
+if you know that tongue, you can hear him say: "Oh, traitor! Traitor!
+Traitor! Where are my wings? My wings, traitor! I am hungry! Where are
+my wings?"</p>
+
+<p>But the little animal merely places his finger beside his nose and
+winks.</p>
+
+<p>"Your wings, indeed, fool! Sit still and howl for them! Old idiot!"<a name="page_306" id="page_306"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="WHY_DID_THE_YOUNG_CLERK_SWEAR" id="WHY_DID_THE_YOUNG_CLERK_SWEAR"></a>WHY DID THE YOUNG CLERK SWEAR?<br />
+OR, THE UNSATISFACTORY FRENCH.</h3>
+
+<p>All was silent in the little gent's furnishing store. A lonely clerk
+with a blonde moustache and a red necktie raised a languid hand to his
+brow and brushed back a dangling lock. He yawned and gazed gloomily at
+the blurred panes of the windows.</p>
+
+<p>Without, the wind and rain came swirling round the brick buildings and
+went sweeping over the streets. A horse-car rumbled stolidly by. In the
+mud on the pavements, a few pedestrians struggled with excited
+umbrellas.</p>
+
+<p>"The deuce!" remarked the clerk. "I'd give ten dollars if somebody would
+come in and buy something, if 'twere only cotton socks."</p>
+
+<p>He waited amid the shadows of the grey afternoon. No customers came. He
+heaved a long sigh and sat down on a high stool. From beneath a stack of
+unlaundried shirts he drew a French novel with a picture on the cover.
+He yawned again, glanced lazily toward the street, and settled himself
+as comfortable as the gods would let him upon the high stool.<a name="page_307" id="page_307"></a></p>
+
+<p>He opened the book and began to read. Soon it could have been noticed
+that his blonde moustache took on a curl of enthusiasm, and the
+refractory locks on his brow showed symptoms of soft agitation.</p>
+
+<p>"Silvere did not see the young girl for some days," read the clerk. "He
+was miserable. He seemed always to inhale that subtle perfume from her
+hair. At night he saw her eyes in the stars.</p>
+
+<p>"His dreams were troubled. He watched the house. Heloise did not appear.
+One day he met Vibert. Vibert wore a black frock-coat. There were
+wine-stains on the right breast. His collar was soiled. He had not
+shaved.</p>
+
+<p>"Silvere burst into tears. 'I love her! I love her! I shall die!' Vibert
+laughed scornfully. His necktie was second-hand. Idiotic, this boy in
+love. Fool! Simpleton! But at last he pitied him. She goes to the
+music-teacher's every morning. Silly Silvere embraced him.</p>
+
+<p>"The next day Silvere waited at the street corner. A vendor was selling
+chestnuts. Two gamins were fighting in an alley. A woman was scrubbing
+some steps. This great Paris throbbed with life.</p>
+
+<p>"Heloise came. She did not perceive Silvere. She passed with a happy
+smile on her face. She looked fresh, fair, innocent. Silvere felt
+himself swooning. 'Ah, my God!'</p>
+
+<p>"She crossed the street. The young man received<a name="page_308" id="page_308"></a> a shock that sent the
+warm blood to his brain. It had been raining. There was mud. With one
+slender hand Heloise lifted her skirts. Silvere leaning forward, saw
+her&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>A young man in a wet mackintosh came into the little gent's furnishing
+store.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, beg pardon," said he to the clerk, "but do you have an agency for a
+steam laundry here? I have been patronising a Chinaman down th' avenue
+for some time, but he&mdash;what? No? You have none here? Well, why don't you
+start one, anyhow? It'd be a good thing in this neighbourhood. I live
+just round the corner, and it'd be a great thing for me. I know lots of
+people who would&mdash;what? Oh, you don't? Oh!"</p>
+
+<p>As the young man in the wet mackintosh retreated, the clerk with a
+blonde moustache made a hungry grab at the novel. He continued to read:
+"Handkerchief fall in a puddle. Silvere sprang forward. He picked up the
+handkerchief. Their eyes met. As he returned the handkerchief, their
+hands touched. The young girl smiled. Silvere was in ecstacies. 'Ah, my
+God!'</p>
+
+<p>"A baker opposite was quarrelling over two sous with an old woman.</p>
+
+<p>"A grey-haired veteran with a medal upon his breast and a butcher's boy
+were watching a dog-fight. The smell of dead animals came from adjacent<a name="page_309" id="page_309"></a>
+slaughter-houses. The letters on the sign over the tinsmith's shop on
+the corner shone redly like great clots of blood. It was hell on roller
+skates."</p>
+
+<p>Here the clerk skipped some seventeen chapters descriptive of a number
+of intricate money transactions, the moles on the neck of a Parisian
+dressmaker, the process of making brandy, the milk-leg of Silvere's
+aunt, life in the coal-pits, and scenes in the Chamber of Deputies. In
+these chapters the reputation of the architect of Charlemagne's palace
+was vindicated, and it was explained why Heloise's grandmother didn't
+keep her stockings pulled up.</p>
+
+<p>Then he proceeded: "Heloise went to the country. The next day Silvere
+followed. They met in the fields. The young girl had donned the garb of
+the peasants. She blushed. She looked fresh, fair, innocent. Silvere
+felt faint with rapture. 'Ah, my God!'</p>
+
+<p>"She had been running. Out of breath, she sank down in the hay. She held
+out her hand. 'I am so glad to see you.' Silvere was enchanted at this
+vision. He bended toward her. Suddenly he burst into tears. 'I love you!
+I love you! I love you!' he stammered.</p>
+
+<p>"A row of red and white shirts hung on a line some distance away. The
+third shirt from the left had a button off the neck. A cat on the rear
+steps<a name="page_310" id="page_310"></a> of a cottage near the shirt was drinking milk from a platter. The
+north-east portion of the platter had a crack in it.</p>
+
+<p>"'Heloise!' Silvere was murmuring hoarsely. He leaned toward her until
+his warm breath moved the curls on her neck. 'Heloise!' murmured Jean."</p>
+
+<p>"Young man," said an elderly gentleman with a dripping umbrella to the
+clerk with a blonde moustache, "have you any night-shirts open front and
+back? Eh? Night-shirts open front and back, I said. D'you hear, eh?
+<i>Night-shirts open front and back.</i> Well, then, why didn't you say so?
+It would pay you to be a trifle more polite, young man. When you get as
+old as I am, you will find out that it pays to&mdash;what? I didn't see you
+adding any column of figures. In that case I am sorry. You have no
+night-shirts open front and back, eh? Well, good-day."</p>
+
+<p>As the elderly gentleman vanished, the clerk with a blonde moustache
+grasped the novel like some famished animal. He read on: "A peasant
+stood before the two children. He wrung his hands. 'Have you seen a
+stray cow?' 'No,' cried the children in the same breath. The peasant
+wept. He wrung his hands. It was a supreme moment.</p>
+
+<p>"'She loves me!' cried Silvere to himself, as he changed his clothes for
+dinner.</p>
+
+<p>"It was evening. The children sat by the fire-<a name="page_311" id="page_311"></a>place. Heloise wore a
+gown of clinging white. She looked fresh, fair, innocent. Silvere was in
+raptures. 'Ah, my God!'</p>
+
+<p>"Old Jean, the peasant, saw nothing. He was mending harness. The fire
+crackled in the fire-place. The children loved each other. Through the
+open door to the kitchen came the sound of old Marie shrilly cursing the
+geese who wished to enter. In front of the window two pigs were
+quarrelling over a vegetable. Cattle were lowing in a distant field. A
+hay-waggon creaked slowly past. Thirty-two chickens were asleep in the
+branches of a tree. This subtle atmosphere had a mighty effect upon
+Heloise. It was beating down her self-control. She felt herself going.
+She was choking.</p>
+
+<p>"The young girl made an effort. She stood up. 'Good-night, I must go.'
+Silvere took her hand. 'Heloise,' he murmured. Outside the two pigs were
+fighting.</p>
+
+<p>"A warm blush overspread the young girl's face. She turned wet eyes
+toward her lover. She looked fresh, fair, innocent. Silvere was
+maddened. 'Ah, my God!'</p>
+
+<p>"Suddenly the young girl began to tremble. She tried vainly to withdraw
+her hand. But her knee&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I wish to get my husband some shirts," said a shopping-woman with six
+bundles. The clerk with a blonde moustache made a private gesture of
+despair,<a name="page_312" id="page_312"></a> and rapidly spread a score of different-patterned shirts upon
+the counter. "He's very particular about his shirts," said the
+shopping-woman. "Oh, I don't think any of these will do. Don't you keep
+the Invincible brand? He only wears that kind. He says they fit him
+better. And he's very particular about his shirts. What? You don't keep
+them? No? Well, how much do you think they would come at?" "Haven't the
+slightest idea." "Well, I suppose I must go somewhere else, then. Um,
+good-day."</p>
+
+<p>The clerk with the blonde moustache was about to make further private
+gestures of despair, when the shopping-woman with six bundles turned and
+went out. His fingers instantly closed nervously over the book. He drew
+it from its hiding-place, and opened it at the place where he had
+ceased. His hungry eyes seemed to eat the words upon the page. He
+continued: "&mdash;struck cruelly against a chair. It seemed to awaken her.
+She started. She burst from the young man's arms. Outside the two pigs
+were grunting amiably.</p>
+
+<p>"Silvere took his candle. He went toward his room. He was in despair.
+'Ah, my God!'</p>
+
+<p>"He met the young girl on the stairs. He took her hand. Tears were
+raining down his face. 'Heloise!' he murmured.</p>
+
+<p>"The young girl shivered. As Silvere put his<a name="page_313" id="page_313"></a> arms about her, she
+faintly resisted. This embrace seemed to sap her life. She wished to
+die. Her thoughts flew back to the old well and the broken hayrakes at
+Plassans.</p>
+
+<p>"The young girl looked fresh, fair, innocent 'Heloise!' murmured
+Silvere. The children exchanged a long, clinging kiss. It seemed to
+unite their souls.</p>
+
+<p>"The young girl was swooning. Her head sank on the young man's shoulder.
+There was nothing in space except these warm kisses on her neck. Silvere
+enfolded her. 'Ah, my God!'"</p>
+
+<p>"Say, young fellow," said a youth with a tilted cigar to the clerk with
+a blonde moustache, "where th'll is Billie Carcart's joint round here?
+Know?"</p>
+
+<p>"Next corner," said the clerk fiercely.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, th'll," said the youth, "yehs needn't git gay. See! When a feller
+asts a civil question yehs needn't git gay. See! Th'll!"</p>
+
+<p>The youth stood and looked aggressive for a moment. Then he went away.</p>
+
+<p>The clerk seemed almost to leap upon the book. His feverish fingers
+twirled the pages. When he found his place he glued his eyes to it. He
+read:</p>
+
+<p>"Then a great flash of lightning illumined the hall-way. It threw livid
+hues over a row of flowerpots in the window-seat. Thunder shook the
+house to its foundation. From the kitchen arose the voice of old Marie
+in prayer.<a name="page_314" id="page_314"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Heloise screamed. She wrenched herself from the young man's arms. She
+sprang inside her room. She locked the door. She flung herself face
+downward on the bed. She burst into tears. She looked fresh, fair,
+innocent.</p>
+
+<p>"The rain pattering upon the thatched roof sounded in the stillness like
+the footsteps of spirits. In the sky toward Paris there shone a crimson
+light.</p>
+
+<p>"The chickens had all fallen from the tree. They stood, sadly, in a
+puddle. The two pigs were asleep under the porch.</p>
+
+<p>"Upstairs, in the hall-way, Silvers was furious."</p>
+
+<p>The clerk with a blonde moustache gave here a wild scream of
+disappointment. He madly hurled the novel with the picture on the cover
+from him. He stood up and said: "Damn!"<a name="page_315" id="page_315"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="THE_VICTORY_OF_THE_MOON" id="THE_VICTORY_OF_THE_MOON"></a>THE VICTORY OF THE MOON.</h3>
+
+<p>The Strong Man of the Hills lost his wife. Immediately he went abroad,
+calling aloud. The people all crouched afar in the dark of their huts,
+and cried to him when he was yet a long distance away: "No, no, great
+chief, we have not even seen the imprint of your wife's sandal in the
+sand. If we had seen it, you would have found us bowed down in worship
+before the marks of her ten glorious brown toes, for we are but poor
+devils of Indians, and the grandeur of the sun rays on her hair would
+have turned our eyes to dust."</p>
+
+<p>"Her toes are not brown. They are pink," said the Strong Man from the
+Hills. "Therefore do I believe that you speak the truth when you say you
+have not seen her, good little men of the valley. In this matter of her
+great loveliness, however, you speak a little too strongly. As she is no
+longer among my possessions, I have no mind to hear her praised.
+Whereabouts is the best man of you?"</p>
+
+<p>None of them had stomach for this honour at the time. They surmised that
+the Strong Man of the Hills had some plan for combat, and they knew
+that<a name="page_316" id="page_316"></a> the best of them would have in this encounter only the strength of
+the meat in the grip of the fire. "Great King," they said, in one voice,
+"there is no best man here."</p>
+
+<p>"How is this?" roared the Strong Man. "There must be one who excels. It
+is a law. Let him step forward then."</p>
+
+<p>But they solemnly shook their heads. "There is no best man here."</p>
+
+<p>The Strong Man turned upon them so furiously that many fell to the
+ground. "There must be one. Let him step forward." Shivering, they
+huddled together and tried, in their fear, to thrust each other toward
+the Strong Man.</p>
+
+<p>At this time a young philosopher approached the throng slowly. The
+philosophers of that age were all young men in the full heat of life.
+The old greybeards were, for the most part, very stupid, and were so
+accounted.</p>
+
+<p>"Strong Man from the Hills," said the young philosopher, "go to yonder
+brook and bathe. Then come and eat of this fruit. Then gaze for a time
+at the blue sky and the green earth. Afterward I have something to say
+to you."</p>
+
+<p>"You are not so wise that I am obliged to bathe before listening to
+you?" demanded the Strong Man, insolently.</p>
+
+<p>"No," said the young philosopher. All the people thought this reply very
+strange.<a name="page_317" id="page_317"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Why, then, must I bathe and eat of fruit and gaze at the earth and the
+sky?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because they are pleasant things to do."</p>
+
+<p>"Have I, do you think, any thirst at this time for pleasant things?"</p>
+
+<p>"Bathe, eat, gaze," said the young philosopher with a gesture.</p>
+
+<p>The Strong Man did, indeed, whirl his bronzed and terrible limbs in the
+silver water. Then he lay in the shadow of a tree and ate the cool fruit
+and gazed at the sky and the earth. "This is a fine comfort," he said.
+After a time he suddenly struck his forehead with his finger. "By the
+way, did I tell you that my wife had fled from me?"</p>
+
+<p>"I know it," said the young philosopher.</p>
+
+<p>Later the Strong Man slept peacefully. The young philosopher smiled.</p>
+
+<p>But in the night the little men of the valley came clamouring: "Oh,
+Strong Man of the Hills, the moon derides you!"</p>
+
+<p>The philosopher went to them in the darkness. "Be still, little people.
+It is nothing. The derision of the moon is nothing."</p>
+
+<p>But the little men of the valley would not cease their uproar. "Oh,
+Strong Man! Strong Man, awake! Awake! The moon derides you!"</p>
+
+<p>Then the Strong Man aroused and shook his locks away from his eyes.
+"What is it, good little men of the valley?"<a name="page_318" id="page_318"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Strong Man, the moon derides you! Oh, Strong Man!"</p>
+
+<p>The Strong Man looked, and there, indeed, was the moon laughing down at
+him. He sprang to his feet and roared. "Ah, old, fat, lump of moon, you
+laugh! Have you seen my wife?"</p>
+
+<p>The moon said no word, but merely smiled in a way that was like a flash
+of silver bars.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then, moon, take this home to her," thundered the Strong Man, and
+he hurled his spear.</p>
+
+<p>The moon clapped both hands to its eye, and cried: "Oh! Oh!"</p>
+
+<p>The little people of the valley cried: "Oh, this is terrible, Strong
+Man! He has smitten our sacred moon in the eye!"</p>
+
+<p>The young philosopher cried nothing at all.</p>
+
+<p>The Strong Man threw his coat of crimson feathers upon the ground. He
+took his knife and felt its edge. "Look you, philosopher," he said. "I
+have lost my wife, and the bath, the meal of fruit in the shade, the
+sight of sky and earth are still good to me, but when this false moon
+derides me, there must be a killing."</p>
+
+<p>"I understand you," said the young philosopher.</p>
+
+<p>The Strong Man ran off into the night. The little men of the valley
+clapped their hands in ecstacy and terror. "Ah! ah! what a battle will
+there be!"</p>
+
+<p>The Strong Man went into his own hills and<a name="page_319" id="page_319"></a> gathered there many great
+rocks and trunks of trees. It was strange to see him erect upon a peak
+of the mountains and hurling these things at the moon. He kept the air
+full of them.</p>
+
+<p>"Fat moon, come closer," he shouted. "Come closer, and let it be my
+knife against your knife. Oh, to think that we are obliged to tolerate
+such an old, fat, stupid, lazy, good-for-nothing moon. You are ugly as
+death, while I&mdash;Oh, moon, you stole my beloved, and it was nothing, but
+when you stole my beloved and laughed at me, it became another matter.
+And yet you are so ugly, so fat, so stupid, so lazy, so
+good-for-nothing. Ah, I shall go mad! Come closer, moon, and let me
+examine your round, grey skull with this club."</p>
+
+<p>And he always kept the air full of great missiles.</p>
+
+<p>The moon merely laughed, and said: "Why should I come closer?"</p>
+
+<p>Wildly did the Strong Man pile rock upon rock. He builded him a tower
+that was the father of all towers. It made the mountains to appear to be
+babes. Upon the summit of it he swung his great club and flourished his
+knife.</p>
+
+<p>The little men in the valley far below beheld a great storm, and at the
+end of it they said: "Look, the moon is dead." The cry went to and fro
+on the earth: "The moon is dead!"</p>
+
+<p>The Strong Man went to the home of the moon.<a name="page_320" id="page_320"></a> She, the sought one, lay
+upon a cloud, and her little foot dangled over the side of it. The
+Strong Man took this little foot in his two hands and kissed it. "Ah,
+beloved!" he moaned, "I would rather this little foot was upon my dead
+neck than that moon should ever have the privilege of seeing it."</p>
+
+<p>She leaned over the edge of the cloud and gazed at him. "How dusty you
+are. Why do you puff so? Veritably, you are an ordinary person. Why did
+I ever find you interesting?"</p>
+
+<p>The Strong Man flung his knife into the air and turned back toward the
+earth. "If the young philosopher had been at my elbow," he reflected,
+bitterly, "I would doubtless have gone at the matter in another way.
+What does my strength avail me in this contest?"</p>
+
+<p>The battered moon, limping homeward, replied to the Strong Man from the
+Hills: "Aye, surely. My weakness is in this thing as strong as your
+strength. I am victor with ugliness, my age, my stoutness, my laziness,
+my good-for-nothingness. Woman is woman. Men are equal in everything
+save good fortune. I envy you not."</p>
+
+<p class="c top5 smcap">The End.</p>
+
+<p class="c">Printed by <span class="smcap">Wm.</span> <span class="ov"><span class="smcap">Hodge &amp; Co.</span>, Glasgow</span> and Edinburgh.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p class="c">Typographical errors corrected by the transcriber of etext:<br />
+flowerplots=>flowerpots<br />
+coming tower=>conning tower<br />troup=>troupe</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Last Words, by Stephen Crane
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LAST WORDS ***
+
+***** This file should be named 33579-h.htm or 33579-h.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/3/3/5/7/33579/
+
+Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was
+produced from scanned images of public domain material
+from the Internet Archive.)
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+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
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
+
+</pre>
+
+</body>
+</html>
diff --git a/33579-h/images/cover.jpg b/33579-h/images/cover.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..975e8f1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/33579-h/images/cover.jpg
diff --git a/33579.txt b/33579.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c0ad1b3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/33579.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,8240 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Last Words, by Stephen Crane
+
+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: Last Words
+
+Author: Stephen Crane
+
+Release Date: August 30, 2010 [EBook #33579]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LAST WORDS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was
+produced from scanned images of public domain material
+from the Internet Archive.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+LAST WORDS
+
+BY
+
+STEPHEN CRANE
+
+AUTHOR OF
+
+"RED BADGE OF COURAGE," "ACTIVE SERVICE," "PICTURES OF WAR,"
+
+"THE THIRD VIOLET," "THE OPEN BOAT,"
+
+"WOUNDS IN THE RAIN," ETC.
+
+London
+
+DIGBY, LONG & CO.
+
+18 Bouverie Street, Fleet Street, E. C.
+
+1902
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                           PAGE
+
+   THE RELUCTANT VOYAGERS                     1
+
+   SPITZBERGEN TALES--
+     THE KICKING TWELFTH                     35
+     THE UPTURNED FACE                       52
+     THE SHRAPNEL OF THEIR FRIENDS           59
+     "AND IF HE WILLS, WE MUST DIE"          69
+
+   WYOMING VALLEY TALES--
+     THE SURRENDER OF FORTY FORT             81
+     "OL' BENNET" AND THE INDIANS            88
+     THE BATTLE OF FORTY FORT                99
+
+   LONDON IMPRESSIONS                       110
+
+   NEW YORK SKETCHES--
+     GREAT-GRIEF'S HOLIDAY DINNER           133
+     THE SILVER PAGEANT                     145
+     A STREET SCENE                         148
+     MINETTA LANE                           154
+     ROOF GARDENS                           166
+     IN THE BROADWAY CARS                   173
+
+   THE ASSASSINS IN MODERN BATTLES          181
+
+   IRISH NOTES--
+     AN OLD MAN GOES WOOING                 193
+     BALLYDEHOB                             198
+     THE ROYAL IRISH CONSTABULARY           203
+     A FISHING VILLAGE                      207
+
+   SULLIVAN COUNTY SKETCHES--
+     FOUR MEN IN A CAVE                     217
+     THE MESMERIC MOUNTAIN                  225
+
+   MISCELLANEOUS--
+     THE SQUIRE'S MADNESS                   231
+     A DESERTION                            245
+     HOW THE DONKEY LIFTED THE HILLS        252
+     A MAN BY THE NAME OF MUD               258
+     A POKER GAME                           263
+     THE SNAKE                              268
+     A SELF-MADE MAN                        273
+     A TALE OF MERE CHANCE                  282
+     AT CLANCY'S WAKE                       288
+     AN EPISODE OF WAR                      294
+     THE VOICE OF THE MOUNTAIN              301
+     WHY DID THE YOUNG CLERK SWEAR?         306
+     THE VICTORY OF THE MOON                315
+
+
+
+
+LAST WORDS
+
+
+
+
+THE RELUCTANT VOYAGERS
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+Two men sat by the sea waves.
+
+"Well, I know I'm not handsome," said one gloomily. He was poking holes
+in the sand with a discontented cane.
+
+The companion was watching the waves play. He seemed overcome with
+perspiring discomfort as a man who is resolved to set another man right.
+
+Suddenly his mouth turned into a straight line. "To be sure you are
+not," he cried vehemently. "You look like thunder. I do not desire to be
+unpleasant, but I must assure you that your freckled skin continually
+reminds spectators of white wall paper with gilt roses on it. The top of
+your head looks like a little wooden plate. And your figure--heavens!"
+
+For a time they were silent. They stared at the waves that purred near
+their feet like sleepy sea-kittens.
+
+Finally the first man spoke.
+
+"Well," said he, defiantly, "what of it?"
+
+"What of it," exploded the other. "Why, it means that you'd look like
+blazes in a bathing-suit."
+
+They were again silent. The freckled man seemed ashamed. His tall
+companion glowered at the scenery.
+
+"I am decided," said the freckled man suddenly. He got boldly up from
+the sand and strode away. The tall man followed, walking sarcastically
+and glaring down at the round, resolute figure before him.
+
+A bath-clerk was looking at the world with superior eyes through a hole
+in a board. To him the freckled man made application, waving his hands
+over his person in illustration of a snug fit. The bath-clerk thought
+profoundly. Eventually, he handed out a blue bundle with an air of
+having phenomenally solved the freckled man's dimensions.
+
+The latter resumed his resolute stride.
+
+"See here," said the tall man, following him, "I bet you've got a
+regular toga, you know. That fellow couldn't tell--"
+
+"Yes, he could," interrupted the freckled man, "I saw correct
+mathematics in his eyes."
+
+"Well, supposin' he has missed your size. Supposin'--"
+
+"Tom," again interrupted the other, "produce your proud clothes and
+we'll go in."
+
+The tall man swore bitterly. He went to one of a row of little wooden
+boxes and shut himself in it. His companion repaired to a similar box.
+
+At first he felt like an opulent monk in a too-small cell, and he turned
+round two or three times to see if he could. He arrived finally into his
+bathing-dress. Immediately he dropped gasping upon a three-cornered
+bench. The suit fell in folds about his reclining form. There was
+silence, save for the caressing calls of the waves without.
+
+Then he heard two shoes drop on the floor in one of the little coops. He
+began to clamour at the boards like a penitent at an unforgiving door.
+
+"Tom," called he, "Tom--"
+
+A voice of wrath, muffled by cloth, came through the walls. "You go t'
+blazes!"
+
+The freckled man began to groan, taking the occupants of the entire row
+of coops into his confidence.
+
+"Stop your noise," angrily cried the tall man from his hidden den. "You
+rented the bathing-suit, didn't you? Then--"
+
+"It ain't a bathing-suit," shouted the freckled man at the boards. "It's
+an auditorium, a ballroom, or something. It ain't a bathing-suit."
+
+The tall man came out of his box. His suit looked like blue skin. He
+walked with grandeur down the alley between the rows of coops. Stopping
+in front of his friend's door, he rapped on it with passionate
+knuckles.
+
+"Come out of there, y' ol' fool," said he, in an enraged whisper. "It's
+only your accursed vanity. Wear it anyhow. What difference does it make?
+I never saw such a vain ol' idiot!"
+
+As he was storming the door opened, and his friend confronted him. The
+tall man's legs gave way, and he fell against the opposite door.
+
+The freckled man regarded him sternly.
+
+"You're an ass," he said.
+
+His back curved in scorn. He walked majestically down the alley. There
+was pride in the way his chubby feet patted the boards. The tall man
+followed, weakly, his eyes riveted upon the figure ahead.
+
+As a disguise the freckled man had adopted the stomach of importance. He
+moved with an air of some sort of procession, across a board walk, down
+some steps, and out upon the sand.
+
+There was a pug dog and three old women on a bench, a man and a maid
+with a book and a parasol, a seagull drifting high in the wind, and a
+distant, tremendous meeting of sea and sky. Down on the wet sand stood a
+girl being wooed by the breakers.
+
+The freckled man moved with stately tread along the beach. The tall man,
+numb with amazement, came in the rear. They neared the girl.
+
+Suddenly the tall man was seized with convulsions. He laughed, and the
+girl turned her head.
+
+She perceived the freckled man in the bathing-suit. An expression of
+wonderment overspread her charming face. It changed in a moment to a
+pearly smile.
+
+This smile seemed to smite the freckled man. He obviously tried to swell
+and fit his suit. Then he turned a shrivelling glance upon his
+companion, and fled up the beach. The tall man ran after him, pursuing
+with mocking cries that tingled his flesh like stings of insects. He
+seemed to be trying to lead the way out of the world. But at last he
+stopped and faced about.
+
+"Tom Sharp," said he, between his clenched teeth, "you are an
+unutterable wretch! I could grind your bones under my heel."
+
+The tall man was in a trance, with glazed eyes fixed on the
+bathing-dress. He seemed to be murmuring: "Oh, good Lord! Oh, good Lord!
+I never saw such a suit!"
+
+The freckled man made the gesture of an assassin.
+
+"Tom Sharp, you--"
+
+The other was still murmuring: "Oh, good Lord! I never saw such a suit!
+I never--"
+
+The freckled man ran down into the sea.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+The cool, swirling waters took his temper from him, and it became a
+thing that is lost in the ocean. The tall man floundered in, and the two
+forgot and rollicked in the waves.
+
+The freckled man, in endeavouring to escape from mankind, had left all
+save a solitary fisherman under a large hat, and three boys in
+bathing-dress, laughing and splashing upon a raft made of old spars.
+
+The two men swam softly over the ground swells.
+
+The three boys dived from their raft, and turned their jolly faces
+shorewards. It twisted slowly around and around, and began to move
+seaward on some unknown voyage. The freckled man laid his face to the
+water and swam toward the raft with a practised stroke. The tall man
+followed, his bended arm appearing and disappearing with the precision
+of machinery.
+
+The craft crept away, slowly and wearily, as if luring. The little
+wooden plate on the freckled man's head looked at the shore like a
+round, brown eye, but his gaze was fixed on the raft that slyly appeared
+to be waiting. The tall man used the little wooden plate as a beacon.
+
+At length the freckled man reached the raft and climbed aboard. He lay
+down on his back and puffed. His bathing-dress spread about him like a
+dead balloon. The tall man came, snorted, shook his tangled locks and
+lay down by the side of his companion.
+
+They were overcome with a delicious drowsiness. The planks of the raft
+seemed to fit their tired limbs. They gazed dreamily up into the vast
+sky of summer.
+
+"This is great," said the tall man. His companion grunted blissfully.
+
+Gentle hands from the sea rocked their craft and lulled them to peace.
+Lapping waves sang little rippling sea-songs about them. The two men
+issued contented groans.
+
+"Tom," said the freckled man.
+
+"What?" said the other.
+
+"This is great."
+
+They lay and thought.
+
+A fish-hawk, soaring, suddenly turned and darted at the waves. The tall
+man indolently twisted his head and watched the bird plunge its claws
+into the water. It heavily arose with a silver gleaming fish.
+
+"That bird has got his feet wet again. It's a shame," murmured the tall
+man sleepily. "He must suffer from an endless cold in the head. He
+should wear rubber boots. They'd look great, too. If I was him,
+I'd--Great Scott!"
+
+He has partly arisen, and was looking at the shore.
+
+He began to scream. "Ted! Ted! Ted! Look!"
+
+"What's matter?" dreamily spoke the freckled man. "You remind me of when
+I put the bird-shot in your leg." He giggled softly.
+
+The agitated tall man made a gesture of supreme eloquence. His companion
+up-reared and turned a startled gaze shoreward.
+
+"Lord," he roared, as if stabbed.
+
+The land was a long, brown streak with a rim of green, in which sparkled
+the tin roofs of huge hotels. The hands from the sea had pushed them
+away. The two men sprang erect, and did a little dance of perturbation.
+
+"What shall we do? What shall we do?" moaned the freckled man, wriggling
+fantastically in his dead balloon.
+
+The changing shore seemed to fascinate the tall man, and for a time he
+did not speak.
+
+Suddenly he concluded his minuet of horror. He wheeled about and faced
+the freckled man. He elaborately folded his arms.
+
+"So," he said, in slow, formidable tones. "So! This all comes from your
+accursed vanity, your bathing-suit, your idiocy; you have murdered your
+best friend."
+
+He turned away. His companion reeled as if stricken by an unexpected
+arm.
+
+He stretched out his hands. "Tom, Tom," wailed he, beseechingly, "don't
+be such a fool."
+
+The broad back of his friend was occupied by a contemptuous sneer.
+
+Three ships fell off the horizon. Landward, the hues were blending. The
+whistle of a locomotive sounded from an infinite distance as if tooting
+in heaven.
+
+"Tom! Tom! My dear boy," quavered the freckled man, "don't speak that
+way to me."
+
+"Oh, no, of course not," said the other, still facing away and throwing
+the words over his shoulder. "You suppose I am going to accept all this
+calmly, don't you? Not make the slightest objection? Make no protest at
+all, hey?"
+
+"Well, I--I--" began the freckled man.
+
+The tall man's wrath suddenly exploded. "You've abducted me! That's the
+whole amount of it! You've abducted me!"
+
+"I ain't," protested the freckled man. "You must think I'm a fool."
+
+The tall man swore, and sitting down, dangled his legs angrily in the
+water. Natural law compelled his companion to occupy the other end of
+the raft.
+
+Over the waters little shoals of fish spluttered, raising tiny tempests.
+Languid jelly-fish floated near, tremulously waving a thousand legs. A
+row of porpoises trundled along like a procession of cog-wheels. The
+sky became greyed save where over the land sunset colours were
+assembling.
+
+The two voyagers, back to back and at either end of the raft, quarrelled
+at length.
+
+"What did you want to follow me for?" demanded the freckled man in a
+voice of indignation.
+
+"If your figure hadn't been so like a bottle, we wouldn't be here,"
+replied the tall man.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+The fires in the west blazed away, and solemnity spread over the sea.
+Electric lights began to blink like eyes. Night menaced the voyagers
+with a dangerous darkness, and fear came to bind their souls together.
+They huddled fraternally in the middle of the raft.
+
+"I feel like a molecule," said the freckled man in subdued tones.
+
+"I'd give two dollars for a cigar," muttered the tall man.
+
+A V-shaped flock of ducks flew towards Barnegat, between the voyagers
+and a remnant of yellow sky. Shadows and winds came from the vanished
+eastern horizon.
+
+"I think I hear voices," said the freckled man.
+
+"That Dollie Ramsdell was an awfully nice girl," said the tall man.
+
+When the coldness of the sea night came to them, the freckled man found
+he could by a peculiar movement of his legs and arms encase himself in
+his bathing-dress. The tall man was compelled to whistle and shiver. As
+night settled finally over the sea, red and green lights began to dot
+the blackness. There were mysterious shadows between the waves.
+
+"I see things comin'," murmured the freckled man.
+
+"I wish I hadn't ordered that new dress-suit for the hop to-morrow
+night," said the tall man reflectively.
+
+The sea became uneasy and heaved painfully, like a lost bosom, when
+little forgotten heart-bells try to chime with a pure sound. The
+voyagers cringed at magnified foam on distant wave crests. A moon came
+and looked at them.
+
+"Somebody's here," whispered the freckled man.
+
+"I wish I had an almanac," remarked the tall man, regarding the moon.
+
+Presently they fell to staring at the red and green lights that twinkled
+about them.
+
+"Providence will not leave us," asserted the freckled man.
+
+"Oh, we'll be picked up shortly. I owe money," said the tall man.
+
+He began to thrum on an imaginary banjo.
+
+"I have heard," said he, suddenly, "that captains with healthy ships
+beneath their feet will never turn back after having once started on a
+voyage. In that case we will be rescued by some ship bound for the
+golden seas of the south. Then, you'll be up to some of your confounded
+devilment, and we'll get put off. They'll maroon us! That's what they'll
+do! They'll maroon us! On an island with palm trees and sun-kissed
+maidens and all that. Sun-kissed maidens, eh? Great! They'd--"
+
+He suddenly ceased and turned to stone. At a distance a great, green eye
+was contemplating the sea wanderers.
+
+They stood up and did another dance. As they watched the eye grew
+larger.
+
+Directly the form of a phantom-like ship came into view. About the
+great, green eye there bobbed small yellow dots. The wanderers could
+hear a far-away creaking of unseen tackle and flapping of shadowy sails.
+There came the melody of the waters as the ship's prow thrusted its way.
+
+The tall man delivered an oration.
+
+"Ha!" he exclaimed, "here comes our rescuers. The brave fellows! How I
+long to take the manly captain by the hand! You will soon see a white
+boat with a star on its bow drop from the side of yon ship. Kind sailors
+in blue and white will help us into the boat and conduct our wasted
+frames to the quarter-deck, where the handsome, bearded captain, with
+gold bands all around, will welcome us. Then in the hard-oak cabin,
+while the wine gurgles and the Havana's glow, we'll tell our tale of
+peril and privation."
+
+The ship came on like a black hurrying animal with froth-filled maw. The
+two wanderers stood up and clasped hands. Then they howled out a wild
+duet that rang over the wastes of sea.
+
+The cries seemed to strike the ship.
+
+Men with boots on yelled and ran about the deck. They picked up heavy
+articles and threw them down. They yelled more. After hideous creakings
+and flappings, the vessel stood still.
+
+In the meantime the wanderers had been chanting their song for help. Out
+in the blackness they beckoned to the ship and coaxed.
+
+A voice came to them.
+
+"Hello," it said.
+
+They puffed out their cheeks and began to shout. "Hello! Hello! Hello!"
+
+"Wot do yeh want?" said the voice.
+
+The two wanderers gazed at each other, and sat suddenly down on the
+raft. Some pall came sweeping over the sky and quenched their stars.
+
+But almost the tall man got up and brawled miscellaneous information. He
+stamped his foot, and frowning into the night, swore threateningly.
+
+The vessel seemed fearful of these moaning voices that called from a
+hidden cavern of the water. And now one voice was filled with a menace.
+A number of men with enormous limbs that threw vast shadows over the sea
+as the lanterns flickered, held a debate and made gestures.
+
+Off in the darkness, the tall man began to clamour like a mob. The
+freckled man sat in astounded silence, with his legs weak.
+
+After a time one of the men of enormous limbs seized a rope that was
+tugging at the stern and drew a small boat from the shadows. Three
+giants clambered in and rowed cautiously toward the raft. Silver water
+flashed in the gloom as the oars dipped.
+
+About fifty feet from the raft the boat stopped. "Who er you?" asked a
+voice.
+
+The tall man braced himself and explained. He drew vivid pictures, his
+twirling fingers illustrating like live brushes.
+
+"Oh," said the three giants.
+
+The voyagers deserted the raft. They looked back, feeling in their
+hearts a mite of tenderness for the wet planks. Later, they wriggled up
+the side of the vessel and climbed over the railing.
+
+On deck they met a man.
+
+He held a lantern to their faces. "Got any chewin' tewbacca?" he
+inquired.
+
+"No," said the tall man, "we ain't."
+
+The man had a bronze face and solitary whiskers. Peculiar lines about
+his mouth were shaped into an eternal smile of derision. His feet were
+bare, and clung handily to crevices.
+
+Fearful trousers were supported by a piece of suspender that went up the
+wrong side of his chest and came down the right side of his back,
+dividing him into triangles.
+
+"Ezekiel P. Sanford, capt'in, schooner 'Mary Jones,' of N'yack, N.Y.,
+genelmen," he said.
+
+"Ah!" said the tall man, "delighted, I'm sure."
+
+There were a few moments of silence. The giants were hovering in the
+gloom and staring.
+
+Suddenly astonishment exploded the captain.
+
+"Wot th' devil--" he shouted, "wot th' devil yeh got on?"
+
+"Bathing-suits," said the tall man.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+The schooner went on. The two voyagers sat down and watched. After a
+time they began to shiver. The soft blackness of the summer night passed
+away, and grey mists writhed over the sea. Soon lights of early dawn
+went changing across the sky, and the twin beacons on the highlands grew
+dim and sparkling faintly, as if a monster were dying. The dawn
+penetrated the marrow of the two men in bathing-dress.
+
+The captain used to pause opposite them, hitch one hand in his
+suspender, and laugh.
+
+"Well, I be dog-hanged," he frequently said.
+
+The tall man grew furious. He snarled in a mad undertone to his
+companion. "This rescue ain't right. If I had known--"
+
+He suddenly paused, transfixed by the captain's suspender. "It's goin'
+to break," cried he, in an ecstatic whisper. His eyes grew large with
+excitement as he watched the captain laugh. "It'll break in a minute,
+sure."
+
+But the commander of the schooner recovered, and invited them to drink
+and eat. They followed him along the deck, and fell down a square black
+hole into the cabin.
+
+It was a little den, with walls of a vanished whiteness. A lamp shed an
+orange light. In a sort of recess two little beds were hiding. A wooden
+table, immovable, as if the craft had been builded around it, sat in the
+middle of the floor. Overhead the square hole was studded with a dozen
+stars. A foot-worn ladder led to the heavens.
+
+The captain produced ponderous crackers and some cold broiled ham. Then
+he vanished in the firmament like a fantastic comet.
+
+The freckled man sat quite contentedly like a stout squaw in a blanket.
+The tall man walked about the cabin and sniffed. He was angered at the
+crudeness of the rescue, and his shrinking clothes made him feel too
+large. He contemplated his unhappy state.
+
+Suddenly, he broke out. "I won't stand this, I tell you! Heavens and
+earth, look at the--say, what in the blazes did you want to get me in
+this thing for, anyhow? You're a fine old duffer, you are! Look at that
+ham!"
+
+The freckled man grunted. He seemed somewhat blissful. He was seated
+upon a bench, comfortably enwrapped in his bathing-dress.
+
+The tall man stormed about the cabin.
+
+"This is an outrage! I'll see the captain! I'll tell him what I think
+of--"
+
+He was interrupted by a pair of legs that appeared among the stars. The
+captain came down the ladder. He brought a coffee pot from the sky.
+
+The tall man bristled forward. He was going to denounce everything.
+
+The captain was intent upon the coffee pot, balancing it carefully, and
+leaving his unguided feet to find the steps of the ladder.
+
+But the wrath of the tall man faded. He twirled his fingers in
+excitement, and renewed his ecstatic whisperings to the freckled man.
+
+"It's going to break! Look, quick, look! It'll break in a minute!"
+
+He was transfixed with interest, forgetting his wrongs in staring at the
+perilous passage.
+
+But the captain arrived on the floor with triumphant suspenders.
+
+"Well," said he, "after yeh have eat, maybe ye'd like t'sleep some! If
+so, yeh can sleep on them beds."
+
+The tall man made no reply, save in a strained undertone. "It'll break
+in about a minute! Look, Ted, look quick!"
+
+The freckled man glanced in a little bed on which were heaped boots and
+oilskins. He made a courteous gesture.
+
+"My dear sir, we could not think of depriving you of your beds. No,
+indeed. Just a couple of blankets if you have them, and we'll sleep very
+comfortable on these benches."
+
+The captain protested, politely twisting his back and bobbing his head.
+The suspenders tugged and creaked. The tall man partially suppressed a
+cry, and took a step forward.
+
+The freckled man was sleepily insistent, and shortly the captain gave
+over his deprecatory contortions. He fetched a pink quilt with yellow
+dots on it to the freckled man, and a black one with red roses on it to
+the tall man.
+
+Again he vanished in the firmament. The tall man gazed until the last
+remnant of trousers disappeared from the sky. Then he wrapped himself up
+in his quilt and lay down. The freckled man was puffing contentedly,
+swathed like an infant. The yellow polka-dots rose and fell on the vast
+pink of his chest.
+
+The wanderers slept. In the quiet could be heard the groanings of
+timbers as the sea seemed to crunch them together. The lapping of water
+along the vessel's side sounded like gaspings. An hundred spirits of the
+wind had got their wings entangled in the rigging, and, in soft voices,
+were pleading to be loosened.
+
+The freckled man was awakened by a foreign noise. He opened his eyes and
+saw his companion standing by his couch.
+
+His comrade's face was wane with suffering. His eyes glowed in the
+darkness. He raised his arms, spreading them out like a clergyman at a
+grave. He groaned deep in his chest.
+
+"Good Lord!" yelled the freckled man, starting up. "Tom, Tom, what's th'
+matter?"
+
+The tall man spoke in a fearful voice. "To New York," he said, "to New
+York in our bathing-suits."
+
+The freckled man sank back. The shadows of the cabin threw mysteries
+about the figure of the tall man, arrayed like some ancient and potent
+astrologer in the black quilt with the red roses on it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+Directly the tall man went and lay down and began to groan.
+
+The freckled man felt the miseries of the world upon him. He grew angry
+at the tall man awakening him. They quarrelled.
+
+"Well," said the tall man, finally, "we're in a fix."
+
+"I know that," said the other, sharply.
+
+They regarded the ceiling in silence.
+
+"What in the thunder are we going to do?" demanded the tall man, after a
+time. His companion was still silent. "Say," repeated he, angrily, "what
+in the thunder are we going to do?"
+
+"I'm sure I don't know," said the freckled man in a dismal voice.
+
+"Well, think of something," roared the other. "Think of something, you
+old fool. You don't want to make any more idiots of yourself, do you?"
+
+"I ain't made an idiot of myself."
+
+"Well, think. Know anybody in the city?"
+
+"I know a fellow up in Harlem," said the freckled man.
+
+"You know a fellow up in Harlem," howled the tall man. "Up in Harlem!
+How the dickens are we to--say, you're crazy!"
+
+"We can take a cab," cried the other, waxing indignant.
+
+The tall man grew suddenly calm. "Do you know any one else?" he asked,
+measuredly.
+
+"I know another fellow somewhere on Park Place."
+
+"Somewhere on Park Place," repeated the tall man in an unnatural manner.
+"Somewhere on Park Place." With an air of sublime resignation he turned
+his face to the wall.
+
+The freckled man sat erect and frowned in the direction of his
+companion. "Well, now, I suppose you are going to sulk. You make me ill!
+It's the best we can do, ain't it? Hire a cab and go look that fellow up
+on Park--What's that? You can't afford it? What nonsense! You are
+getting--Oh! Well, maybe we can beg some clothes of the captain. Eh? Did
+I see 'im. Certainly, I saw 'im. Yes, it is improbable that a man who
+wears trousers like that can have clothes to lend. No, I won't wear
+oilskins and a sou'-wester. To Athens? Of course not! I don't know where
+it is. Do you? I thought not. With all your grumbling about other
+people, you never know anything important yourself. What? Broadway? I'll
+be hanged first. We can get off at Harlem, man alive. There are no cabs
+in Harlem. I don't think we can bribe a sailor to take us ashore and
+bring a cab to the dock, for the very simple reason that we have nothing
+to bribe him with. What? No, of course not. See here, Tom Sharp, don't
+you swear at me like that. I won't have it. What's that? I ain't,
+either. I ain't. What? I am not. It's no such thing. I ain't. I've got
+more than you have, anyway. Well, you ain't doing anything so very
+brilliant yourself--just lying there and cussin'." At length the tall
+man feigned to prodigiously snore. The freckled man thought with such
+vigour that he fell asleep.
+
+After a time he dreamed that he was in a forest where bass drums grew on
+trees. There came a strong wind that banged the fruit about like empty
+pods. A frightful din was in his ears.
+
+He awoke to find the captain of the schooner standing over him.
+
+"We're at New York now," said the captain, raising his voice above the
+thumping and banging that was being done on deck, "an' I s'pose you
+fellers wanta go ashore." He chuckled in an exasperating manner. "Jes'
+sing out when yeh wanta go," he added, leering at the freckled man.
+
+The tall man awoke, came over and grasped the captain by the throat.
+
+"If you laugh again I'll kill you," he said.
+
+The captain gurgled and waved his legs and arms.
+
+"In the first place," the tall man continued, "you rescued us in a
+deucedly shabby manner. It makes me ill to think of it. I've a mind to
+mop you 'round just for that. In the second place, your vessel is bound
+for Athens, N.Y., and there's no sense in it. Now, will you or will you
+not turn this ship about and take us back where our clothes are, or to
+Philadelphia, where we belong?"
+
+He furiously shook the captain. Then he eased his grip and awaited a
+reply.
+
+"I can't," yelled the captain, "I can't. This vessel don't belong to me.
+I've got to--"
+
+"Well, then," interrupted the tall man, "can you lend us some clothes?"
+
+"Hain't got none," replied the captain, promptly. His face was red, and
+his eyes were glaring.
+
+"Well, then," said the tall man, "can you lend us some money?"
+
+"Hain't got none," replied the captain, promptly. Something overcame him
+and he laughed.
+
+"Thunderation," roared the tall man. He seized the captain, who began to
+have wriggling contortions. The tall man kneaded him as if he were
+biscuits. "You infernal scoundrel," he bellowed, "this whole affair is
+some wretched plot, and you are in it. I am about to kill you."
+
+The solitary whisker of the captain did acrobatic feats like a strange
+demon upon his chin. His eyes stood perilously from his head. The
+suspender wheezed and tugged like the tackle of a sail.
+
+Suddenly the tall man released his hold. Great expectancy sat upon his
+features. "It's going to break," he cried, rubbing his hands.
+
+But the captain howled and vanished in the sky.
+
+The freckled man then came forward. He appeared filled with sarcasm.
+
+"So!" said he. "So, you've settled the matter. The captain is the only
+man in the world who can help us, and I daresay he'll do anything he can
+now."
+
+"That's all right," said the tall man. "If you don't like the way I run
+things you shouldn't have come on this trip at all."
+
+They had another quarrel.
+
+At the end of it they went on deck. The captain stood at the stern
+addressing the bow with opprobrious language. When he perceived the
+voyagers he began to fling his fists about in the air.
+
+"I'm goin' to put yeh off," he yelled. The wanderers stared at each
+other.
+
+"Hum," said the tall man.
+
+The freckled man looked at his companion. "He's going to put us off, you
+see," he said, complacently.
+
+The tall man began to walk about and move his shoulders. "I'd like to
+see you do it," he said, defiantly.
+
+The captain tugged at a rope. A boat came at his bidding.
+
+"I'd like to see you do it," the tall man repeated, continually. An
+imperturbable man in rubber boots climbed down in the boat and seized
+the oars. The captain motioned downward. His whisker had a triumphant
+appearance.
+
+The two wanderers looked at the boat. "I guess we'll have to get in,"
+murmured the freckled man.
+
+The tall man was standing like a granite column. "I won't," said he. "I
+won't! I don't care what you do, but I won't!"
+
+"Well, but--" expostulated the other. They held a furious debate.
+
+In the meantime the captain was darting about making sinister gestures,
+but the back of the tall man held him at bay. The crew, much depleted by
+the departure of the imperturbable man into the boat, looked on from the
+bow.
+
+"You're a fool," the freckled man concluded his argument.
+
+"So?" inquired the tall man, highly exasperated.
+
+"So? Well, if you think you're so bright, we'll go in the boat, and then
+you'll see."
+
+He climbed down into the craft and seated himself in an ominous manner
+at the stern.
+
+"You'll see," he said to his companion, as the latter floundered heavily
+down. "You'll see!"
+
+The man in rubber boots calmly rowed the boat toward the shore. As they
+went, the captain leaned over the railing and laughed. The freckled man
+was seated very victoriously.
+
+"Well, wasn't this the right thing after all?" he inquired in a pleasant
+voice. The tall man made no reply.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+As they neared the dock something seemed suddenly to occur to the
+freckled man.
+
+"Great heavens," he murmured. He stared at the approaching shore.
+
+"My, what a plight, Tommy," he quavered.
+
+"Do you think so?" spoke up the tall man, "Why, I really thought you
+liked it." He laughed in a hard voice. "Lord, what a figure you'll cut."
+
+This laugh jarred the freckled man's soul. He became mad.
+
+"Thunderation, turn the boat around," he roared. "Turn 'er round, quick.
+Man alive, we can't--turn 'er round, d'ye hear."
+
+The tall man in the stern gazed at his companion with glowing eyes.
+
+"Certainly not," he said. "We're going on. You insisted upon it." He
+began to prod his companion with words.
+
+The freckled man stood up and waved his arms.
+
+"Sit down," said the tall man. "You'll tip the boat over."
+
+The other man began to shout.
+
+"Sit down," said the tall man again.
+
+Words bubbled from the freckled man's mouth. There was a little torrent
+of sentences that almost choked him. And he protested passionately with
+his hands.
+
+But the boat went on to the shadow of the docks. The tall man was intent
+upon balancing it as it rocked dangerously during his comrade's oration.
+
+"Sit down," he continually repeated.
+
+"I won't," raged the freckled man. "I won't do anything." The boat
+wobbled with these words.
+
+"Say," he continued, addressing the oarsman, "just turn this boat round,
+will you. Where in the thunder are you taking us to, anyhow?"
+
+The oarsman looked at the sky and thought. Finally he spoke. "I'm doin'
+what the cap'n sed."
+
+"Well, what in th' blazes do I care what the cap'n sed?" demanded the
+freckled man. He took a violent step. "You just turn this round or--"
+
+The small craft reeled. Over one side water came flashing in. The
+freckled man cried out in fear, and gave a jump to the other side. The
+tall man roared orders, and the oarsman made efforts. The boat acted for
+a moment like an animal on a slackened wire. Then it upset.
+
+"Sit down," said the tall man, in a final roar as he was plunged into
+the water. The oarsman dropped his oars to grapple with the gunwale. He
+went down saying unknown words. The freckled man's explanation or
+apology was strangled by the water.
+
+Two or three tugs let off whistles of astonishment, and continued on
+their paths. A man dosing on a dock aroused and began to caper. The
+passengers of a ferry-boat all ran to the near railing.
+
+A miraculous person in a small boat was bobbing on the waves near the
+piers. He sculled hastily toward the scene. It was a swirl of waters in
+the midst of which the dark bottom of the boat appeared, whale-like.
+
+Two heads suddenly came up. "839," said the freckled man, chokingly.
+"That's it! 839!"
+
+"What is?" said the tall man.
+
+"That's the number of that feller on Park Place. I just remembered."
+
+"You're the bloomingest--" the tall man said.
+
+"It wasn't my fault," interrupted his companion. "If you hadn't--" He
+tried to gesticulate, but one hand held to the keel of the boat, and
+the other was supporting the form of the oarsman. The latter had fought
+a battle with his immense rubber boots and had been conquered.
+
+The rescuer in the other small boat came fiercely. As his craft glided
+up, he reached out and grasped the tall man by the collar and dragged
+him into the boat, interrupting what was, under the circumstances, a
+very brilliant flow of rhetoric directed at the freckled man. The
+oarsman of the wrecked craft was taken tenderly over the gunwale and
+laid in the bottom of the boat. Puffing and blowing, the freckled man
+climbed in.
+
+"You'll upset this one before we can get ashore," the other voyager
+remarked.
+
+As they turned toward the land they saw that the nearest dock was lined
+with people. The freckled man gave a little moan.
+
+But the staring eyes of the crowd were fixed on the limp form of the man
+in rubber boots. A hundred hands reached down to help lift the body up.
+On the dock some men grabbed it and began to beat it and roll it. A
+policeman tossed the spectators about. Each individual in the heaving
+crowd sought to fasten his eyes on the blue-tinted face of the man in
+the rubber boots. They surged to and fro, while the policeman beat them
+indiscriminately.
+
+The wanderers came modestly up the dock and gazed shrinkingly at the
+throng. They stood for a moment, holding their breath to see the first
+finger of amazement levelled at them.
+
+But the crowd bended and surged in absorbing anxiety to view the man in
+rubber boots, whose face fascinated them. The sea-wanderers were as
+though they were not there.
+
+They stood without the jam and whispered hurriedly.
+
+"839," said the freckled man.
+
+"All right," said the tall man.
+
+Under the pommeling hands the oarsman showed signs of life. The voyagers
+watched him make a protesting kick at the leg of the crowd, the while
+uttering angry groans.
+
+"He's better," said the tall man, softly; "let's make off."
+
+Together they stole noiselessly up the dock. Directly in front of it
+they found a row of six cabs.
+
+The drivers on top were filled with a mighty curiosity. They had driven
+hurriedly from the adjacent ferry-house when they had seen the first
+running sign of an accident. They were straining on their toes and
+gazing at the tossing backs of the men in the crowd.
+
+The wanderers made a little detour, and then went rapidly towards a
+cab. They stopped in front of it and looked up.
+
+"Driver," called the tall man, softly.
+
+The man was intent.
+
+"Driver," breathed the freckled man. They stood for a moment and gazed
+imploringly.
+
+The cabman suddenly moved his feet. "By Jimmy, I bet he's a gonner," he
+said, in an ecstacy, and he again relapsed into a statue.
+
+The freckled man groaned and wrung his hands. The tall man climbed into
+the cab.
+
+"Come in here," he said to his companion. The freckled man climbed in,
+and the tall man reached over and pulled the door shut. Then he put his
+head out the window.
+
+"Driver," he roared, sternly, "839 Park Place--and quick."
+
+The driver looked down and met the eye of the tall man. "Eh?--Oh--839?
+Park Place? Yessir." He reluctantly gave his horse a clump on the back.
+As the conveyance rattled off the wanderers huddled back among the dingy
+cushions and heaved great breaths of relief.
+
+"Well, it's all over," said the freckled man, finally. "We're about out
+of it. And quicker than I expected. Much quicker. It looked to me
+sometimes that we were doomed. I am thankful to find it not so. I am
+rejoiced. And I hope and trust that you--well, I don't wish,
+to--perhaps it is not the proper time to--that is, I don't wish to
+intrude a moral at an inopportune moment, but, my dear, dear fellow, I
+think the time is ripe to point out to you that your obstinacy, your
+selfishness, your villainous temper, and your various other faults can
+make it just as unpleasant for your ownself, my dear boy, as they
+frequently do for other people. You can see what you brought us to, and
+I most sincerely hope, my dear, dear fellow, that I shall soon see those
+signs in you which shall lead me to believe that you have become a wiser
+man."
+
+
+
+
+SPITZBERGEN TALES
+
+
+
+
+THE KICKING TWELFTH
+
+
+The Spitzbergen army was backed by tradition of centuries of victory. In
+its chronicles, occasional defeats were not printed in italics, but were
+likely to appear as glorious stands against overwhelming odds. A
+favourite way to dispose of them was frankly to attribute them to the
+blunders of the civilian heads of government. This was very good for the
+army, and probably no army had more self-confidence. When it was
+announced that an expeditionary force was to be sent to Rostina to
+chastise an impudent people, a hundred barrack squares filled with
+excited men, and a hundred sergeant-majors hurried silently through the
+groups, and succeeded in looking as if they were the repositories of the
+secrets of empire. Officers on leave sped joyfully back to their
+harness, and recruits were abused with unflagging devotion by every man,
+from colonels to privates of experience.
+
+The Twelfth Regiment of the Line--the Kicking Twelfth--was consumed with
+a dread that it was not to be included in the expedition, and the
+regiment formed itself into an informal indignation meeting. Just as
+they had proved that a great outrage was about to be perpetrated,
+warning orders arrived to hold themselves in readiness for active
+service abroad--in Rostina. The barrack yard was in a flash transferred
+into a blue-and-buff pandemonium, and the official bugle itself hardly
+had power to quell the glad disturbance.
+
+Thus it was that early in the spring the Kicking Twelfth--sixteen
+hundred men in service equipment--found itself crawling along a road in
+Rostina. They did not form part of the main force, but belonged to a
+column of four regiments of foot, two batteries of field guns, a battery
+of mountain howitzers, a regiment of horse, and a company of engineers.
+Nothing had happened. The long column had crawled without amusement of
+any kind through a broad green valley. Big white farm-houses dotted the
+slopes; but there was no sign of man or beast, and no smoke from the
+chimneys. The column was operating from its own base, and its general
+was expected to form a junction with the main body at a given point.
+
+A squadron of the cavalry was fanned out ahead, scouting, and day by day
+the trudging infantry watched the blue uniforms of the horsemen as they
+came and went. Sometimes there would sound the faint thuds of a few
+shots, but the cavalry was unable to find anything to engage.
+
+The Twelfth had no record of foreign service, and it could hardly be
+said that it had served as a unit in the great civil war, when His
+Majesty the King had whipped the Pretender. At that time the regiment
+had suffered from two opinions, so that it was impossible for either
+side to depend upon it. Many men had deserted to the standard of the
+Pretender, and a number of officers had drawn their swords for him. When
+the King, a thorough soldier, looked at the remnant, he saw that they
+lacked the spirit to be of great help to him in the tremendous battles
+which he was waging for his throne. And so this emaciated Twelfth was
+sent off to a corner of the kingdom to guard a dockyard, where some of
+the officers so plainly expressed their disapproval of this policy that
+the regiment received its steadfast name, the Kicking Twelfth.
+
+At the time of which I am writing the Twelfth had a few veteran officers
+and well-bitten sergeants; but the body of the regiment was composed of
+men who had never heard a shot fired excepting on the rifle-range. But
+it was an experience for which they longed, and when the moment came for
+the corps' cry--"Kim up, the Kickers"--there was not likely to be a man
+who would not go tumbling after his leaders.
+
+Young Timothy Lean was a second lieutenant in the first company of the
+third battalion, and just at this time he was pattering along at the
+flank of the men, keeping a fatherly lookout for boots that hurt and
+packs that sagged. He was extremely bored. The mere far-away sound of
+desultory shooting was not war as he had been led to believe it.
+
+It did not appear that behind that freckled face and under that red hair
+there was a mind which dreamed of blood. He was not extremely anxious to
+kill somebody, but he was very fond of soldiering--it had been the
+career of his father and of his grandfather--and he understood that the
+profession of arms lost much of its point unless a man shot at people
+and had people shoot at him. Strolling in the sun through a practically
+deserted country might be a proper occupation for a divinity student on
+a vacation, but the soul of Timothy Lean was in revolt at it. Some times
+at night he would go morosely to the camp of the cavalry and hear the
+infant subalterns laughingly exaggerate the comedy side of the
+adventures which they had had out with small patrols far ahead. Lean
+would sit and listen in glum silence to these tales, and dislike the
+young officers--many of them old military school friends--for having had
+experience in modern warfare.
+
+"Anyhow," he said savagely, "presently you'll be getting into a lot of
+trouble, and then the Foot will have to come along and pull you out. We
+always do. That's history."
+
+"Oh, we can take care of ourselves," said the Cavalry, with good-natured
+understanding of his mood.
+
+But the next day even Lean blessed the cavalry, for excited troopers
+came whirling back from the front, bending over their speeding horses,
+and shouting wildly and hoarsely for the infantry to clear the way. Men
+yelled at them from the roadside as courier followed courier, and from
+the distance ahead sounded in quick succession six booms from field
+guns. The information possessed by the couriers was no longer precious.
+Everybody knew what a battery meant when it spoke. The bugles cried out,
+and the long column jolted into a halt. Old Colonel Sponge went bouncing
+in his saddle back to see the general, and the regiment sat down in the
+grass by the roadside, and waited in silence. Presently the second
+squadron of the cavalry trotted off along the road in a cloud of dust,
+and in due time old Colonel Sponge came bouncing back, and palavered his
+three majors and his adjutant. Then there was more talk by the majors,
+and gradually through the correct channels spread information which in
+due time reached Timothy Lean.
+
+The enemy, 5000 strong, occupied a pass at the head of the valley some
+four miles beyond. They had three batteries well posted. Their infantry
+was entrenched. The ground in their front was crossed and lined with
+many ditches and hedges; but the enemy's batteries were so posted that
+it was doubtful if a ditch would ever prove convenient as shelter for
+the Spitzbergen infantry.
+
+There was a fair position for the Spitzbergen artillery 2300 yards from
+the enemy. The cavalry had succeeded in driving the enemy's skirmishers
+back upon the main body; but, of course, had only tried to worry them a
+little. The position was almost inaccessible on the enemy's right, owing
+to steep hills, which had been crowned by small parties of infantry. The
+enemy's left, although guarded by a much larger force, was approachable,
+and might be flanked. This was what the cavalry had to say, and it added
+briefly a report of two troopers killed and five wounded.
+
+Whereupon Major-General Richie, commanding a force of 7500 men of His
+Majesty of Spitzbergen, set in motion, with a few simple words, the
+machinery which would launch his army at the enemy. The Twelfth
+understood the orders when they saw the smart young aide approaching old
+Colonel Sponge, and they rose as one man, apparently afraid that they
+would be late. There was a clank of accoutrements. Men shrugged their
+shoulders tighter against their packs, and thrusting their thumbs
+between their belts and their tunics, they wriggled into a closer fit
+with regard to the heavy ammunition equipment. It is curious to note
+that almost every man took off his cap, and looked contemplatively into
+it as if to read a maker's name. Then they replaced their caps with
+great care. There was little talking, and it was not observable that a
+single soldier handed a token or left a comrade with a message to be
+delivered in case he should be killed. They did not seem to think of
+being killed; they seemed absorbed in a desire to know what would
+happen, and how it would look when it was happening. Men glanced
+continually at their officers in a plain desire to be quick to
+understand the very first order that would be given; and officers looked
+gravely at their men, measuring them, feeling their temper, worrying
+about them.
+
+A bugle called; there were sharp cries, and the Kicking Twelfth was off
+to battle.
+
+The regiment had the right of line in the infantry brigade, and the men
+tramped noisily along the white road, every eye was strained ahead; but,
+after all, there was nothing to be seen but a dozen farms--in short, a
+country-side. It resembled the scenery in Spitzbergen; every man in the
+Kicking Twelfth had often confronted a dozen such farms with a composure
+which amounted to indifference. But still down the road came galloping
+troopers, who delivered information to Colonel Sponge and then galloped
+on. In time the Twelfth came to the top of a rise, and below them on
+the plain was the heavy black streak of a Spitzbergen squadron, and
+behind the squadron loomed the grey bare hill of the Rostina position.
+
+There was a little of skirmish firing. The Twelfth reached a knoll,
+which the officers easily recognised as the place described by the
+cavalry as suitable for the Spitzbergen guns. The men swarmed up it in a
+peculiar formation. They resembled a crowd coming off a race track; but,
+nevertheless, there was no stray sheep. It was simply that the ground on
+which actual battles are fought is not like a chess board. And after
+them came swinging a six-gun battery, the guns wagging from side to side
+as the long line turned out of the road, and the drivers using their
+whips as the leading horses scrambled at the hill. The halted Twelfth
+lifted its voice and spoke amiably, but with point, to the battery.
+
+"Go on, Guns! We'll take care of you. Don't be afraid. Give it to them!"
+The teams--lead, swing and wheel--struggled and slipped over the steep
+and uneven ground; and the gunners, as they clung to their springless
+positions, wore their usual and natural airs of unhappiness. They made
+no reply to the infantry. Once upon the top of the hill, however, these
+guns were unlimbered in a flash, and directly the infantry could hear
+the loud voice of an officer drawling out the time for fuses. A moment
+later the first 3.2 bellowed out, and there could be heard the swish and
+the snarl of a fleeting shell.
+
+Colonel Sponge and a number of officers climbed to the battery's
+position; but the men of the regiment sat in the shelter of the hill,
+like so many blindfolded people, and wondered what they would have been
+able to see if they had been officers. Sometimes the shells of the enemy
+came sweeping over the top of the hill, and burst in great brown
+explosions in the fields to the rear. The men looked after them and
+laughed. To the rear could be seen also the mountain battery coming at a
+comic trot, with every man obviously in a deep rage with every mule. If
+a man can put in long service with a mule battery and come out of it
+with an amiable disposition, he should be presented with a medal
+weighing many ounces. After the mule battery came a long black winding
+thing, which was three regiments of Spitzbergen infantry; and at the
+backs of them and to the right was an inky square, which was the
+remaining Spitzbergen guns. General Richie and his staff clattered up
+the hill. The blindfolded Twelfth sat still. The inky square suddenly
+became a long racing line. The howitzers joined their little bark to the
+thunder of the guns on the hill, and the three regiments of infantry
+came on. The Twelfth sat still.
+
+Of a sudden a bugle rang its warning, and the officers shouted. Some
+used the old cry, "Attention! Kim up, the Kickers!"--and the Twelfth
+knew that it had been told to go on. The majority of the men expected to
+see great things as soon as they rounded the shoulder of the hill; but
+there was nothing to be seen save a complicated plain and the grey
+knolls occupied by the enemy. Many company commanders in low voices
+worked at their men, and said things which do not appear in the written
+reports. They talked soothingly; they talked indignantly; and they
+talked always like fathers. And the men heard no sentences completely;
+they heard no specific direction, these wide-eyed men. They understood
+that there was being delivered some kind of exhortation to do as they
+had been taught, and they also understood that a superior intelligence
+was anxious over their behaviour and welfare.
+
+There was a great deal of floundering through hedges, climbing of walls
+and jumping of ditches. Curiously original privates tried to find new
+and easier ways for themselves, instead of following the men in front of
+them. Officers had short fits of fury over these people. The more
+originality they possessed, the more likely they were to become
+separated from their companies. Colonel Sponge was making an exciting
+progress on a big charger. When the first song of the bullets came from
+above, the men wondered why he sat so high; the charger seemed as tall
+as the Eiffel Tower. But if he was high in the air, he had a fine view,
+and that supposedly is why people ascend the Eiffel Tower. Very often he
+had been a joke to them, but when they saw this fat, old gentleman so
+coolly treating the strange new missiles which hummed in the air, it
+struck them suddenly that they had wronged him seriously; and a man who
+could attain the command of a Spitzbergen regiment was entitled to
+general respect. And they gave him a sudden, quick affection--an
+affection that would make them follow him heartily, trustfully,
+grandly--this fat, old gentleman, seated on a too-big horse. In a flash
+his tousled grey head, his short, thick legs, even his paunch, had
+become specially and humorously endeared to them. And this is the way of
+soldiers.
+
+But still the Twelfth had not yet come to the place where tumbling
+bodies begin their test of the very heart of a regiment. They backed
+through more hedges, jumped more ditches, slid over more walls. The
+Rostina artillery had seemed to be asleep; but suddenly the guns aroused
+like dogs from their kennels, and around the Twelfth there began a wild,
+swift screeching. There arose cries to hurry, to come on; and, as the
+rifle bullets began to plunge into them, the men saw the high,
+formidable hills of the enemy's right, and perfectly understood that
+they were doomed to storm them. The cheering thing was the sudden
+beginning of a tremendous uproar on the enemy's left.
+
+Every man ran, hard, tense, breathless. When they reached the foot of
+the hills, they thought they had won the charge already, but they were
+electrified to see officers above them waving their swords and yelling
+with anger, surprise, and shame. With a long murmurous outcry the
+Twelfth began to climb the hill; and as they went and fell, they could
+hear frenzied shouts--"Kim up, the Kickers!" The pace was slow. It was
+like the rising of a tide; it was determined, almost relentless in its
+appearance, but it was slow. If a man fell there was a chance that he
+would land twenty yards below the point where he was hit. The Kickers
+crawled, their rifles in their left hands as they pulled and tugged
+themselves up with their right hands. Ever arose the shout, "Kim up, the
+Kickers!" Timothy Lean, his face flaming, his eyes wild, yelled it back
+as if he were delivering the gospel.
+
+The Kickers came up. The enemy--they had been in small force, thinking
+the hills safe enough from attack--retreated quickly from this
+preposterous advance, and not a bayonet in the Twelfth saw blood;
+bayonets very seldom do.
+
+The homing of this successful charge wore an unromantic aspect. About
+twenty windless men suddenly arrived, and threw themselves upon the
+crest of the hill, and breathed. And these twenty were joined by others,
+and still others, until almost 1100 men of the Twelfth lay upon the
+hilltop, while the regiment's track was marked by body after body, in
+groups and singly. The first officer--perchance the first man, one never
+can be certain--the first officer to gain the top of the hill was
+Timothy Lean, and such was the situation that he had the honour to
+receive his colonel with a bashful salute.
+
+The regiment knew exactly what it had done; it did not have to wait to
+be told by the Spitzbergen newspapers. It had taken a formidable
+position with the loss of about five hundred men, and it knew it. It
+knew, too, that it was great glory for the Kicking Twelfth; and as the
+men lay rolling on their bellies, they expressed their joy in a wild
+cry--"Kim up, the Kickers!" For a moment there was nothing but joy, and
+then suddenly company commanders were besieged by men who wished to go
+down the path of the charge and look for their mates. The answers were
+without the quality of mercy; they were short, snapped, quick words,
+"No; you can't."
+
+The attack on the enemy's left was sounding in great rolling crashes.
+The shells in their flight through the air made a noise as of red-hot
+iron plunged into water, and stray bullets nipped near the ears of the
+Kickers.
+
+The Kickers looked and saw. The battle was below them. The enemy were
+indicated by a long, noisy line of gossamer smoke, although there could
+be seen a toy battery with tiny men employed at the guns. All over the
+field the shrapnel was bursting, making quick bulbs of white smoke. Far
+away, two regiments of Spitzbergen infantry were charging, and at the
+distance this charge looked like a casual stroll. It appeared that small
+black groups of men were walking meditatively toward the Rostina
+entrenchments.
+
+There would have been orders given sooner to the Twelfth, but
+unfortunately Colonel Sponge arrived on top of the hill without a breath
+of wind in his body. He could not have given an order to save the
+regiment from being wiped off the earth. Finally he was able to gasp out
+something and point at the enemy. Timothy Lean ran along the line
+yelling to the men to sight at 800 yards; and like a slow and ponderous
+machine the regiment again went to work. The fire flanked a great part
+of the enemy's trenches.
+
+It could be said that there were only two prominent points of view
+expressed by the men after their victorious arrival on the crest. One
+was defined in the exulting use of the corps' cry. The other was a
+grief-stricken murmur which is invariably heard after a fight--"My God,
+we're all cut to pieces!"
+
+Colonel Sponge sat on the ground and impatiently waited for his wind to
+return. As soon as it did, he arose and cried out, "Form up, and we'll
+charge again! We will win this battle as soon as we can hit them!" The
+shouts of the officers sounded wild, like men yelling on ship-board in a
+gale. And the obedient Kickers arose for their task. It was running down
+hill this time. The mob of panting men poured over the stones.
+
+But the enemy had not been blind to the great advantage gained by the
+Twelfth, and they now turned upon them a desperate fire of small arms.
+Men fell in every imaginable way, and their accoutrements rattled on the
+rocky ground. Some landed with a crash, floored by some tremendous
+blows; others dropped gently down like sacks of meal; with others, it
+would positively appear that some spirit had suddenly seized them by
+their ankles and jerked their legs from under them. Many officers were
+down, but Colonel Sponge, stuttering and blowing, was still upright. He
+was almost the last man in the charge, but not to his shame, rather to
+his stumpy legs. At one time it seemed that the assault would be lost.
+The effect of the fire was somewhat as if a terrible cyclone were
+blowing in the men's faces. They wavered, lowering their heads and
+shouldering weakly, as if it were impossible to make headway against the
+wind of battle. It was the moment of despair, the moment of the heroism
+which comes to the chosen of the war-god.
+
+The colonel's cry broke and screeched absolute hatred; other officers
+simply howled; and the men, silent, debased, seemed to tighten their
+muscles for one last effort. Again they pushed against this mysterious
+power of the air, and once more the regiment was charging. Timothy Lean,
+agile and strong, was well in advance; and afterwards he reflected that
+the men who had been nearest to him were an old grizzled sergeant who
+would have gone to hell for the honour of the regiment, and a pie-faced
+lad who had been obliged to lie about his age in order to get into the
+army.
+
+There was no shock of meeting. The Twelfth came down on a corner of the
+trenches, and as soon as the enemy had ascertained that the Twelfth was
+certain to arrive, they scuttled out, running close to the earth and
+spending no time in glances backward. In these days it is not discreet
+to wait for a charge to come home. You observe the charge, you attempt
+to stop it, and if you find that you can't, it is better to retire
+immediately to some other place. The Rostina soldiers were not heroes,
+perhaps, but they were men of sense. A maddened and badly-frightened mob
+of Kickers came tumbling into the trench, and shot at the backs of
+fleeing men. And at that very moment the action was won, and won by the
+Kickers. The enemy's flank was entirely crippled, and, knowing this, he
+did not await further and more disastrous information. The Twelfth
+looked at themselves and knew that they had a record. They sat down and
+grinned patronisingly as they saw the batteries galloping to advance
+position to shell the retreat, and they really laughed as the cavalry
+swept tumultuously forward.
+
+The Twelfth had no more concern with the battle. They had won it, and
+the subsequent proceedings were only amusing.
+
+There was a call from the flank, and the men wearily adjusted themselves
+as General Richie, stern and grim as a Roman, looked with his straight
+glance at a hammered and thin and dirty line of figures, which was His
+Majesty's Twelfth Regiment of the Line. When opposite old Colonel
+Sponge, a podgy figure standing at attention, the general's face set in
+still more grim and stern lines. He took off his helmet. "Kim up, the
+Kickers!" said he. He replaced his helmet and rode off. Down the cheeks
+of the little fat colonel rolled tears. He stood like a stone for a long
+moment, and wheeled in supreme wrath upon his surprised adjutant.
+"Delahaye, you d--d fool, don't stand there staring like a monkey! Go,
+tell young Lean I want to see him." The adjutant jumped as if he were on
+springs, and went after Lean. That young officer presented himself
+directly, his face covered with disgraceful smudges, and he had also
+torn his breeches. He had never seen the colonel in such a rage. "Lean,
+you young whelp! you--you're a good boy." And even as the general had
+turned away from the colonel, the colonel turned away from the
+lieutenant.
+
+
+
+
+THE UPTURNED FACE.
+
+
+"What will we do now?" said the adjutant, troubled and excited.
+
+"Bury him," said Timothy Lean.
+
+The two officers looked down close to their toes where lay the body of
+their comrade. The face was chalk-blue; gleaming eyes stared at the sky.
+Over the two upright figures was a windy sound of bullets, and on the
+top of the hill Lean's prostrate company of Spitzbergen infantry was
+firing measured volleys.
+
+"Don't you think it would be better--" began the adjutant, "we might
+leave him until to-morrow."
+
+"No," said Lean. "I can't hold that post an hour longer. I've got to
+fall back, and we've got to bury old Bill."
+
+"Of course," said the adjutant, at once. "Your men got intrenching
+tools?"
+
+Lean shouted back to his little line, and two men came slowly, one with
+a pick, one with a shovel. They started in the direction of the Rostina
+sharpshooters. Bullets cracked near their ears. "Dig here," said Lean
+gruffly. The men, thus caused to lower their glances to the turf, became
+hurried and frightened merely because they could not look to see whence
+the bullets came. The dull beat of the pick striking the earth sounded
+amid the swift snap of close bullets. Presently the other private began
+to shovel.
+
+"I suppose," said the adjutant, slowly, "we'd better search his clothes
+for--things."
+
+Lean nodded. Together in curious abstraction they looked at the body.
+Then Lean stirred his shoulders suddenly, arousing himself.
+
+"Yes," he said, "we'd better see what he's got." He dropped to his
+knees, and his hands approached the body of the dead officer. But his
+hands wavered over the buttons of the tunic. The first button was
+brick-red with drying blood, and he did not seem to dare touch it.
+
+"Go on," said the adjutant, hoarsely.
+
+Lean stretched his wooden hand, and his fingers fumbled the
+blood-stained buttons. At last he rose with ghastly face. He had
+gathered a watch, a whistle, a pipe, a tobacco pouch, a handkerchief, a
+little case of cards and papers. He looked at the adjutant. There was a
+silence. The adjutant was feeling that he had been a coward to make Lean
+do all the grizzly business.
+
+"Well," said Lean, "that's all, I think. You have his sword and
+revolver?"
+
+"Yes," said the adjutant, his face working, and then he burst out in a
+sudden strange fury at the two privates. "Why don't you hurry up with
+that grave? What are you doing, anyhow? Hurry, do you hear? I never saw
+such stupid--"
+
+Even as he cried out in his passion the two men were labouring for their
+lives. Ever overhead the bullets were spitting.
+
+The grave was finished. It was not a masterpiece--a poor little shallow
+thing. Lean and the adjutant again looked at each other in a curious
+silent communication.
+
+Suddenly the adjutant croaked out a weird laugh. It was a terrible
+laugh, which had its origin in that part of the mind which is first
+moved by the singing of the nerves. "Well," he said, humorously to Lean,
+"I suppose we had best tumble him in."
+
+"Yes," said Lean. The two privates stood waiting, bent over their
+implements. "I suppose," said Lean, "it would be better if we laid him
+in ourselves."
+
+"Yes," said the adjutant. Then apparently remembering that he had made
+Lean search the body, he stooped with great fortitude and took hold of
+the dead officer's clothing. Lean joined him. Both were particular that
+their fingers should not feel the corpse. They tugged away; the corpse
+lifted, heaved, toppled, flopped into the grave, and the two officers,
+straightening, looked again at each other--they were always looking at
+each other. They sighed with relief.
+
+The adjutant said, "I suppose we should--we should say something. Do you
+know the service, Tim?"
+
+"They don't read the service until the grave is filled in," said Lean,
+pressing his lips to an academic expression.
+
+"Don't they?" said the adjutant, shocked that he had made the mistake.
+
+"Oh, well," he cried, suddenly, "let us--let us say something--while he
+can hear us."
+
+"All right," said Lean. "Do you know the service?"
+
+"I can't remember a line of it," said the adjutant.
+
+Lean was extremely dubious. "I can repeat two lines, but--"
+
+"Well, do it," said the adjutant. "Go as far as you can. That's better
+than nothing. And the beasts have got our range exactly."
+
+Lean looked at his two men. "Attention," he barked. The privates came to
+attention with a click, looking much aggrieved. The adjutant lowered his
+helmet to his knee. Lean, bareheaded, stood over the grave. The Rostina
+sharpshooters fired briskly.
+
+"Oh Father, our friend has sunk in the deep waters of death, but his
+spirit has leaped toward Thee as the bubble arises from the lips of the
+drowning. Perceive, we beseech, Oh Father, the little flying bubble,
+and--"
+
+Lean, although husky and ashamed, had suffered no hesitation up to this
+point, but he stopped with a hopeless feeling and looked at the corpse.
+
+The adjutant moved uneasily. "And from Thy superb heights--" he began,
+and then he too came to an end.
+
+"And from Thy superb heights," said Lean.
+
+The adjutant suddenly remembered a phrase in the back part of the
+Spitzbergen burial service, and he exploited it with the triumphant
+manner of a man who has recalled everything, and can go on.
+
+"Oh God, have mercy--"
+
+"Oh God, have mercy--" said Lean.
+
+"Mercy," repeated the adjutant, in quick failure.
+
+"Mercy," said Lean. And then he was moved by some violence of feeling,
+for he turned suddenly upon his two men and tigerishly said, "Throw the
+dirt in."
+
+The fire of the Rostina sharpshooters was accurate and continuous.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One of the aggrieved privates came forward with his shovel. He lifted
+his first shovel-load of earth, and for a moment of inexplicable
+hesitation it was held poised above this corpse, which from its
+chalk-blue face looked keenly out from the grave. Then the soldier
+emptied his shovel on--on the feet.
+
+Timothy Lean felt as if tons had been swiftly lifted from off his
+forehead. He had felt that perhaps the private might empty the shovel
+on--on the face. It had been emptied on the feet. There was a great
+point gained there--ha, ha!--the first shovelful had been emptied on the
+feet. How satisfactory!
+
+The adjutant began to babble. "Well, of course--a man we've messed with
+all these years--impossible--you can't, you know, leave your intimate
+friends rotting on the field. Go on, for God's sake, and shovel, you."
+
+The man with the shovel suddenly ducked, grabbed his left arm with his
+right hand, and looked at his officer for orders. Lean picked the shovel
+from the ground. "Go to the rear," he said to the wounded man. He also
+addressed the other private. "You get under cover, too; I'll finish this
+business."
+
+The wounded man scrambled hard still for the top of the ridge without
+devoting any glances to the direction from whence the bullets came, and
+the other man followed at an equal pace; but he was different, in that
+he looked back anxiously three times.
+
+This is merely the way--often--of the hit and unhit.
+
+Timothy Lean filled the shovel, hesitated, and then in a movement which
+was like a gesture of abhorrence he flung the dirt into the grave, and
+as it landed it made a sound--plop. Lean suddenly stopped and mopped his
+brow--a tired labourer.
+
+"Perhaps we have been wrong," said the adjutant. His glance wavered
+stupidly. "It might have been better if we hadn't buried him just at
+this time. Of course, if we advance to-morrow the body would have
+been--"
+
+"Damn you," said Lean, "shut your mouth." He was not the senior officer.
+
+He again filled the shovel and flung the earth. Always the earth made
+that sound--plop. For a space Lean worked frantically, like a man
+digging himself out of danger.
+
+Soon there was nothing to be seen but the chalk-blue face. Lean filled
+the shovel. "Good God," he cried to the adjutant. "Why didn't you turn
+him somehow when you put him in? This--" Then Lean began to stutter.
+
+The adjutant understood. He was pale to the lips. "Go on, man," he
+cried, beseechingly, almost in a shout. Lean swung back the shovel. It
+went forward in a pendulum curve. When the earth landed it made a
+sound--plop.
+
+
+
+
+THE SHRAPNEL OF THEIR FRIENDS.
+
+
+From over the knolls came the tiny sound of a cavalry bugle singing out
+the recall, and later, detached parties of His Majesty's 2nd Hussars
+came trotting back to where the Spitzbergen infantry sat complacently on
+the captured Rostina position. The horsemen were well pleased, and they
+told how they had ridden thrice through the helterskelter of the fleeing
+enemy. They had ultimately been checked by the great truth, and when a
+good enemy runs away in daylight he sooner or later finds a place where
+he fetches up with a jolt, and turns face the pursuit--notably if it is
+a cavalry pursuit. The Hussars had discreetly withdrawn, displaying no
+foolish pride of corps at that time.
+
+There was a general admission that the Kicking Twelfth had taken the
+chief honours of the day, but the artillery added that if the guns had
+not shelled so accurately the Twelfth's charge could not have been made
+so successfully, and the three other regiments of infantry, of course,
+did not conceal their feelings, that their attack on the enemy's left
+had withdrawn many rifles that would have been pelting at the Twelfth.
+The cavalry simply said that but for them the victory would not have
+been complete.
+
+Corps' prides met each other face to face at every step, but the Kickers
+smiled easily and indulgently. A few recruits bragged, but they bragged
+because they were recruits. The older men did not wish it to appear that
+they were surprised and rejoicing at the performance of the regiment. If
+they were congratulated they simply smirked, suggesting that the ability
+of the Twelfth had been long known to them, and that the charge had been
+a little thing, you know, just turned off in the way of an afternoon's
+work.
+
+Major-General Richie encamped his troops on the position which they had
+from the enemy. Old Colonel Sponge of the Twelfth redistributed his
+officers, and the losses had been so great that Timothy Lean got command
+of a company. It was not much of a company. Fifty-three smudged and
+sweating men faced their new commander. The company had gone into action
+with a strength of eighty-six. The heart of Timothy Lean beat high with
+pride. He intended to be some day a general, and if he ever became a
+general, that moment of promotion was not equal in joy to the moment
+when he looked at his new possession of fifty-three vagabonds. He
+scanned the faces, and recognised with satisfaction one old sergeant and
+two bright young corporals. "Now," said he to himself, "I have here a
+snug little body of men with which I can do something." In him burned
+the usual fierce fire to make them the best company in the regiment. He
+had adopted them; they were his men. "I will do what I can for you," he
+said. "Do you the same for me."
+
+The Twelfth bivouacked on the ridge. Little fires were built, and there
+appeared among the men innumerable blackened tin cups, which were so
+treasured that a faint suspicion in connection with the loss of one
+could bring on the grimmest of fights. Meantime certain of the privates
+silently readjusted their kits as their names were called out by the
+sergeants. These were the men condemned to picket duty after a hard day
+of marching and fighting. The dusk came slowly, and the colour of the
+countless fires, spotting the ridge and the plain, grew in the falling
+darkness. Far-away pickets fired at something.
+
+One by one the men's heads were lowered to the earth until the ridge was
+marked by two long shadowy rows of men. Here and there an officer sat
+musing in his dark cloak with a ray of a weakening fire gleaming on his
+sword-hilt. From the plain there came at times the sound of battery
+horses moving restlessly at their tethers, and one could imagine he
+heard the throaty, grumbling curse of the drivers. The moon died swiftly
+through flying light clouds. Far-away pickets fired at something.
+
+In the morning the infantry and guns breakfasted to the music of a
+racket between the cavalry and the enemy, which was taking place some
+miles up the valley.
+
+The ambitious Hussars had apparently stirred some kind of a hornet's
+nest, and they were having a good fight with no officious friends near
+enough to interfere. The remainder of the army looked toward the fight
+musingly over the tops of tin cups. In time the column crawled lazily
+forward to see.
+
+The Twelfth, as it crawled, saw a regiment deploy to the right, and saw
+a battery dash to take position. The cavalry jingled back grinning with
+pride and expecting to be greatly admired. Presently the Twelfth was
+bidden to take seat by the roadside and await its turn. Instantly the
+wise men--and there were more than three--came out of the east and
+announced that they had divined the whole plan. The Kicking Twelfth was
+to be held in reserve until the critical moment of the fight, and then
+they were to be sent forward to win a victory. In corroboration, they
+pointed to the fact that the general in command was sticking close to
+them, in order, they said, to give the word quickly at the proper
+moment. And in truth, on a small hill to the right, Major-General Richie
+sat on his horse and used his glasses, while back of him his staff and
+the orderlies bestrode their champing, dancing mounts.
+
+It is always good to look hard at a general, and the Kickers were
+transfixed with interest. The wise men again came out of the east and
+told what was inside the Richie head, but even the wise men wondered
+what was inside the Richie head.
+
+Suddenly an exciting thing happened. To the left and ahead was a
+pounding Spitzbergen battery, and a toy suddenly appeared on the slope
+behind the guns. The toy was a man with a flag--the flag was white save
+for a square of red in the centre. And this toy began to wig-wag
+wag-wig, and it spoke to General Richie under the authority of the
+captain of the battery. It said: "The 88th are being driven on my centre
+and right."
+
+Now, when the Kicking Twelfth had left Spitzbergen there was an average
+of six signalmen in each company. A proportion of these signallers had
+been destroyed in the first engagement, but enough remained so that the
+Kicking Twelfth read, as a unit, the news of the 88th. The word ran
+quickly. "The 88th are being driven on my centre and right."
+
+Richie rode to where Colonel Sponge sat aloft on his big horse, and a
+moment later a cry ran along the column: "Kim up, the Kickers." A large
+number of the men were already in the road, hitching and twisting at
+their belts and packs. The Kickers moved forward.
+
+They deployed and passed in a straggling line through the battery, and
+to the left and right of it. The gunners called out to them carefully,
+telling them not to be afraid.
+
+The scene before them was startling. They were facing a country cut up
+by many steep-sided ravines, and over the resultant hills were
+retreating little squads of the 88th. The Twelfth laughed in its
+exultation. The men could now tell by the volume of fire that the 88th
+were retreating for reasons which were not sufficiently expressed in the
+noise of the Rostina shooting. Held together by the bugle, the Kickers
+swarmed up the first hill and laid on the crest. Parties of the 88th
+went through their lines, and the Twelfth told them coarsely its several
+opinions. The sights were clicked up to 600 yards, and, with a crashing
+volley, the regiment entered its second battle.
+
+A thousand yards away on the right the cavalry and a regiment of
+infantry were creeping onward. Sponge decided not to be backward, and
+the bugle told the Twelfth to go ahead once more. The Twelfth charged,
+followed by a rabble of rallied men of the 88th, who were crying aloud
+that it had been all a mistake.
+
+A charge in these days is not a running match. Those splendid pictures
+of levelled bayonets, dashing at headlong pace towards the closed ranks
+of the enemy are absurd as soon as they are mistaken for the actuality
+of the present. In these days charges are likely to cover at least the
+half of a mile, and to go at the pace exhibited in the pictures a man
+would be obliged to have a little steam engine inside of him.
+
+The charge of the Kicking Twelfth somewhat resembled the advance of a
+great crowd of beaters who, for some reason, passionately desired to
+start the game. Men stumbled; men fell; men swore; there were cries:
+"This way!" "Come this way!" "Don't go that way!" "You can't get up that
+way!" Over the rocks the Twelfth scrambled, red in the face, sweating
+and angry. Soldiers fell because they were struck by bullets, and
+because they had not an ounce of strength left in them. Colonel Sponge,
+with a face like a red cushion, was being dragged windless up the steeps
+by devoted and athletic men. Three of the older captains lay afar back,
+and swearing with their eyes because their tongues were temporarily out
+of service.
+
+And yet-and-yet, the speed of the charge was slow. From the position of
+the battery, it looked as if the Kickers were taking a walk over some
+extremely difficult country.
+
+The regiment ascended a superior height, and found trenches and dead
+men. They took seat with the dead, satisfied with this company until
+they could get their wind. For thirty minutes purple-faced stragglers
+rejoined from the rear. Colonel Sponge looked behind him, and saw that
+Richie, with his staff, had approached by another route, and had
+evidently been near enough to see the full extent of the Kickers'
+exertions. Presently Richie began to pick a way for his horse towards
+the captured position. He disappeared in a gully between two hills.
+
+Now it came to pass that a Spitzbergen battery on the far right took
+occasion to mistake the identity of the Kicking Twelfth, and the captain
+of these guns, not having anything to occupy him in front, directed his
+six 3.2's upon the ridge where the tired Kickers lay side by side with
+the Rostina dead. A shrapnel came swinging over the Kickers, seething
+and fuming. It burst directly over the trenches, and the shrapnel, of
+course, scattered forward, hurting nobody. But a man screamed out to his
+officer: "By God, sir, that is one of our own batteries!" The whole line
+quivered with fright. Five more shells streaked overhead, and one flung
+its hail into the middle of the 3rd battalion's line, and the Kicking
+Twelfth shuddered to the very centre of its heart, and arose, like one
+man, and fled.
+
+Colonel Sponge, fighting, frothing at the month, dealing blows with his
+fist right and left, found himself confronting a fury on horseback.
+Richie was as pale as death, and his eyes sent out sparks. "What does
+this conduct mean?" he flashed out between his fastened teeth.
+
+Sponge could only gurgle: "The battery--the battery--the battery!"
+
+"The battery?" cried Richie, in a voice which sounded like pistol shots.
+"Are you afraid of the guns you almost took yesterday? Go back there,
+you white-livered cowards! You swine! You dogs! Curs! Curs! Curs! Go
+back there!"
+
+Most of the men halted and crouched under the lashing tongue of their
+maddened general. But one man found desperate speech, and yelled:
+"General, it is our own battery that is firing on us!"
+
+Many say that the General's face tightened until it looked like a mask.
+The Kicking Twelfth retired to a comfortable place, where they were only
+under the fire of the Rostina artillery. The men saw a staff officer
+riding over the obstructions in a manner calculated to break his neck
+directly.
+
+The Kickers were aggrieved, but the heart of the colonel was cut in
+twain. He even babbled to his major, talking like a man who is about to
+die of simple rage. "Did you hear what he said to me? Did you hear what
+he called us? _Did you hear what he called us?_"
+
+The majors searched their minds for words to heal a deep wound.
+
+The Twelfth received orders to go into camp upon the hill where they had
+been insulted. Old Sponge looked as if he were about to knock the aide
+out of the saddle, but he saluted, and took the regiment back to the
+temporary companionship of the Rostina dead.
+
+Major-General Richie never apologised to Colonel Sponge. When you are a
+commanding officer you do not adopt the custom of apologising for the
+wrong done to your subordinates. You ride away; and they understand, and
+are confident of the restitution to honour. Richie never opened his
+stern, young lips to Sponge in reference to the scene near the hill of
+the Rostina dead, but in time there was a general order No. 20, which
+spoke definitely of the gallantry of His Majesty's 12th regiment of the
+line and its colonel. In the end Sponge was given a high decoration,
+because he had been badly used by Richie on that day. Richie knew that
+it is hard for men to withstand the shrapnel of their friends.
+
+A few days later the Kickers, marching in column on the road, came upon
+their friend the battery, halted in a field; and they addressed the
+battery, and the captain of the battery blanched to the tips of his
+ears. But the men of the battery told the Kickers to go to the
+devil--frankly, freely, placidly, told the Kickers to go to the devil.
+
+And this story proves that it is sometimes better to be a private.
+
+
+
+
+"AND IF HE WILLS, WE MUST DIE."
+
+
+A sergeant, a corporal, and fourteen men of the Twelfth Regiment of the
+Line had been sent out to occupy a house on the main highway. They would
+be at least a half of a mile in advance of any other picket of their own
+people. Sergeant Morton was deeply angry at being sent on this duty. He
+said that he was over-worked. There were at least two sergeants, he
+claimed furiously, whose turn it should have been to go on this arduous
+mission. He was treated unfairly; he was abused by his superiors; why
+did any damned fool ever join the army? As for him he would get out of
+it as soon as possible; he was sick of it; the life of a dog. All this
+he said to the corporal, who listened attentively, giving grunts of
+respectful assent. On the way to this post two privates took occasion to
+drop to the rear and pilfer in the orchard of a deserted plantation.
+When the sergeant discovered this absence, he grew black with a rage
+which was an accumulation of all his irritations. "Run, you!" he howled.
+"Bring them here! I'll show them--" A private ran swiftly to the rear.
+The remainder of the squad began to shout nervously at the two
+delinquents, whose figures they could see in the deep shade of the
+orchard, hurriedly picking fruit from the ground and cramming it within
+their shirts, next to their skins. The beseeching cries of their
+comrades stirred the criminals more than did the barking of the
+sergeant. They ran to rejoin the squad, while holding their loaded
+bosoms and with their mouths open with aggrieved explanations.
+
+Jones faced the sergeant with a horrible cancer marked in bumps on his
+left side. The disease of Patterson showed quite around the front of his
+waist in many protuberances. "A nice pair!" said the sergeant, with
+sudden frigidity. "You're the kind of soldiers a man wants to choose for
+a dangerous outpost duty, ain't you?"
+
+The two privates stood at attention, still looking much aggrieved. "We
+only--" began Jones huskily.
+
+"Oh, you 'only!'" cried the sergeant. "Yes, you 'only.' I know all
+about that. But if you think you are going to trifle with me--"
+
+A moment later the squad moved on towards its station. Behind the
+sergeant's back Jones and Patterson were slyly passing apples and pears
+to their friends while the sergeant expounded eloquently to the corporal
+"You see what kind of men are in the army now. Why, when I joined the
+regiment it was a very different thing, I can tell you. Then a sergeant
+had some authority, and if a man disobeyed orders, he had a very small
+chance of escaping something extremely serious. But now! Good God! If I
+report these men, the captain will look over a lot of beastly orderly
+sheets and say--'Haw, eh, well, Sergeant Morton, these men seem to have
+very good records; very good records, indeed. I can't be too hard on
+them; no, not too hard.'" Continued the sergeant: "I tell you, Flagler,
+the army is no place for a decent man."
+
+Flagler, the corporal, answered with a sincerity of appreciation which
+with him had become a science. "I think you are right, sergeant," he
+answered.
+
+Behind them the privates mumbled discreetly. "Damn this sergeant of
+ours. He thinks we are made of wood. I don't see any reason for all this
+strictness when we are on active service. It isn't like being at home in
+barracks! There is no great harm in a couple of men dropping out to
+raid an orchard of the enemy when all the world knows that we haven't
+had a decent meal in twenty days."
+
+The reddened face of Sergeant Morton suddenly showed to the rear. "A
+little more marching and less talking," he said.
+
+When he came to the house he had been ordered to occupy the sergeant
+sniffed with disdain. "These people must have lived like cattle," he
+said angrily. To be sure, the place was not alluring. The ground floor
+had been used for the housing of cattle, and it was dark and terrible. A
+flight of steps led to the lofty first floor, which was denuded but
+respectable. The sergeant's visage lightened when he saw the strong
+walls of stone and cement. "Unless they turn guns on us, they will never
+get us out of here," he said cheerfully to the squad. The men, anxious
+to keep him in an amiable mood, all hurriedly grinned and seemed very
+appreciative and pleased. "I'll make this into a fortress," he
+announced. He sent Jones and Patterson, the two orchard thiefs, out on
+sentry-duty. He worked the others, then, until he could think of no more
+things to tell them to do. Afterwards he went forth, with a
+major-general's serious scowl, and examined the ground in front of his
+position. In returning he came upon a sentry, Jones, munching an apple.
+He sternly commanded him to throw it away.
+
+The men spread their blankets on the floors of the bare rooms, and
+putting their packs under their heads and lighting their pipes, they
+lived in easy peace. Bees hummed in the garden, and a scent of flowers
+came through the open window. A great fan-shaped bit of sunshine smote
+the face of one man, and he indolently cursed as he moved his primitive
+bed to a shadier place.
+
+Another private explained to a comrade: "This is all nonsense anyhow. No
+sense in occupying this post. They--"
+
+"But, of course," said the corporal, "when she told me herself that she
+cared more for me than she did for him, I wasn't going to stand any of
+his talk--" The corporal's listener was so sleepy that he could only
+grunt his sympathy.
+
+There was a sudden little spatter of shooting. A cry from Jones rang
+out. With no intermediate scrambling, the sergeant leaped straight to
+his feet. "Now," he cried, "let us see what you are made of! If," he
+added bitterly, "you are made of anything!"
+
+A man yelled: "Good God, can't you see you're all tangled up in my
+cartridge belt?"
+
+Another man yelled: "Keep off my legs! Can't you walk on the floor?"
+
+To the windows there was a blind rush of slumberous men, who brushed
+hair from their eyes even as they made ready their rifles. Jones and
+Patterson came stumbling up the steps, crying dreadful information.
+Already the enemy's bullets were spitting and singing over the house.
+
+The sergeant suddenly was stiff and cold with a sense of the importance
+of the thing. "Wait until you see one," he drawled loudly and calmly,
+"then shoot."
+
+For some moments the enemy's bullets swung swifter than lightning over
+the house without anybody being able to discover a target. In this
+interval a man was shot in the throat. He gurgled, and then lay down on
+the floor. The blood slowly waved down the brown skin of his neck while
+he looked meekly at his comrades.
+
+There was a howl. "There they are! There they come!" The rifles
+crackled. A light smoke drifted idly through the rooms. There was a
+strong odour as if from burnt paper and the powder of fire-crackers. The
+men were silent. Through the windows and about the house the bullets of
+an entirely invisible enemy moaned, hummed, spat, burst, and sang.
+
+The men began to curse. "Why can't we see them?" they muttered through
+their teeth. The sergeant was still frigid. He answered soothingly as if
+he were directly reprehensible for this behaviour of the enemy. "Wait a
+moment. You will soon be able to see them. There! Give it to them." A
+little skirt of black figures had appeared in a field. It was really
+like shooting at an upright needle from the full length of a ball-room.
+But the men's spirits improved as soon as the enemy--this mysterious
+enemy--became a tangible thing, and far off. They had believed the foe
+to be shooting at them from the adjacent garden.
+
+"Now," said the sergeant ambitiously, "we can beat them off easily if
+you men are good enough."
+
+A man called out in a tone of quick, great interest. "See that fellow on
+horseback, Bill? Isn't he on horseback? I thought he was on horseback."
+
+There was a fusilade against another side of the house. The sergeant
+dashed into the room which commanded that situation. He found a dead
+soldier on the floor. He rushed out howling: "When was Knowles killed?
+When was Knowles killed? Damn it, when was Knowles killed?" It was
+absolutely essential to find out the exact moment this man died. A
+blackened private turned upon his sergeant and demanded: "How in hell do
+I know?" Sergeant Morton had a sense of anger so brief that in the next
+second he cried: "Patterson!" He had even forgotten his vital interest
+in the time of Knowles' death.
+
+"Yes?" said Patterson, his face set with some deep-rooted quality of
+determination. Still, he was a mere farm boy.
+
+"Go in to Knowles' window and shoot at those people," said the sergeant
+hoarsely. Afterwards he coughed. Some of the fumes of the fight had made
+way to his lungs.
+
+Patterson looked at the door into this other room. He looked at it as if
+he suspected it was to be his death-chamber. Then he entered and stood
+across the body of Knowles and fired vigorously into a group of plum
+trees.
+
+"They can't take this house," declared the sergeant in a contemptuous
+and argumentative tone. He was apparently replying to somebody. The man
+who had been shot in the throat looked up at him. Eight men were firing
+from the windows. The sergeant detected in a corner three wounded men
+talking together feebly. "Don't you think there is anything to do?" he
+bawled. "Go and get Knowles' cartridges and give them to somebody who
+can use them! Take Simpson's too." The man who had been shot in the
+throat looked at him. Of the three wounded men who had been talking, one
+said: "My leg is all doubled up under me, sergeant." He spoke
+apologetically.
+
+Meantime the sergeant was re-loading his rifle. His foot slipped in the
+blood of the man who had been shot in the throat, and the military boot
+made a greasy red streak on the floor.
+
+"Why, we can hold this place," shouted the sergeant jubilantly. "Who
+says we can't?"
+
+Corporal Flagler suddenly spun away from his window and fell in a heap.
+
+"Sergeant," murmured a man as he dropped to a seat on the floor out of
+danger, "I can't stand this. I swear I can't. I think we should run
+away."
+
+Morton, with the kindly eyes of a good shepherd, looked at the man. "You
+are afraid, Johnston, you are afraid," he said softly. The man struggled
+to his feet, cast upon the sergeant a gaze full of admiration, reproach,
+and despair, and returned to his post. A moment later he pitched
+forward, and thereafter his body hung out of the window, his arms
+straight and the fists clenched. Incidentally this corpse was pierced
+afterwards by chance three times by bullets of the enemy.
+
+The sergeant laid his rifle against the stone-work of the window-frame
+and shot with care until his magazine was empty. Behind him a man,
+simply grazed on the elbow, was wildly sobbing like a girl. "Damn it,
+shut up," said Morton, without turning his head. Before him was a vista
+of a garden, fields, clumps of trees, woods, populated at the time with
+little fleeting figures.
+
+He grew furious. "Why didn't he send me orders?" he cried aloud. The
+emphasis on the word "he" was impressive. A mile back on the road a
+galloper of the Hussars lay dead beside his dead horse.
+
+The man who had been grazed on the elbow still set up his bleat.
+Morton's fury veered to this soldier. "Can't you shut up? Can't you shut
+up? Can't you shut up? Fight! That's the thing to do. Fight!"
+
+A bullet struck Morton, and he fell upon the man who had been shot in
+the throat. There was a sickening moment. Then the sergeant rolled off
+to a position upon the blood floor. He turned himself with a last effort
+until he could look at the wounded who were able to look at him.
+
+"Kim up, the Kickers," he said thickly. His arms weakened and he dropped
+on his face.
+
+After an interval a young subaltern of the enemy's infantry, followed by
+his eager men, burst into this reeking interior. But just over the
+threshold he halted before the scene of blood and death. He turned with
+a shrug to his sergeant. "God, I should have estimated them at least one
+hundred strong."
+
+
+
+
+WYOMING VALLEY TALES
+
+
+
+
+I.--THE SURRENDER OF FORTY FORT.
+
+
+Immediately after the battle of 3rd July, my mother said, "We had best
+take the children and go into the Fort."
+
+But my father replied, "I will not go. I will not leave my property. All
+that I have in the world is here, and if the savages destroy it they may
+as well destroy me also."
+
+My mother said no other word. Our household was ever given to stern
+silence, and such was my training that it did not occur to me to reflect
+that if my father cared for his property it was not my property, and I
+was entitled to care somewhat for my life.
+
+Colonel Denison was true to the word which he had passed to me at the
+Fort before the battle. He sent a messenger to my father, and this
+messenger stood in the middle of our living-room and spake with a clear,
+indifferent voice. "Colonel Denison bids me come here and say that John
+Bennet is a wicked man, and the blood of his own children will be upon
+his head." As usual, my father said nothing. After the messenger had
+gone, he remained silent for hours in his chair by the fire, and this
+stillness was so impressive to his family that even my mother walked on
+tip-toe as she went about her work. After this long time my father said,
+"Mary!"
+
+Mother halted and looked at him. Father spoke slowly, and as if every
+word was wrested from him with violent pangs. "Mary, you take the girls
+and go to the Fort. I and Solomon and Andrew will go over the mountain
+to Stroudsberg."
+
+Immediately my mother called us all to set about packing such things as
+could be taken to the Fort. And by nightfall we had seen them within its
+pallisade, and my father, myself, and my little brother Andrew, who was
+only eleven years old, were off over the hills on a long march to the
+Delaware settlements. Father and I had our rifles, but we seldom dared
+to fire them, because of the roving bands of Indians. We lived as well
+as we could on blackberries and raspberries. For the most part, poor
+little Andrew rode first on the back of my father and then on my back.
+He was a good little man, and only cried when he would wake in the dead
+of night very cold and very hungry. Then my father would wrap him in an
+old grey coat that was so famous in the Wyoming country that there was
+not even an Indian who did not know of it. But this act he did without
+any direct display of tenderness, for the fear, I suppose, that he
+would weaken little Andrew's growing manhood. Now, in these days of
+safety, and even luxury, I often marvel at the iron spirit of the people
+of my young days. My father, without his coat and no doubt very cold,
+would then sometimes begin to pray to his God in the wilderness, but in
+low voice, because of the Indians. It was July, but even July nights are
+cold in the pine mountains, breathing a chill which goes straight to the
+bones.
+
+But it is not my intention to give in this section the ordinary
+adventures of the masculine part of my family. As a matter of fact, my
+mother and the girls were undergoing in Forty Fort trials which made as
+nothing the happenings on our journey, which ended in safety.
+
+My mother and her small flock were no sooner established in the crude
+quarters within the pallisade than negotiations were opened between
+Colonel Denison and Colonel Zebulon Butler on the American side, and
+"Indian Butler" on the British side, for the capitulation of the Fort
+with such arms and military stores as it contained, the lives of the
+settlers to be strictly preserved. But "Indian Butler" did not seem to
+feel free to promise safety for the lives of the Continental Butler and
+the pathetic little fragment of the regular troops. These men always
+fought so well against the Indians that whenever the Indians could get
+them at their mercy there was small chances of anything but a massacre.
+So every regular left before the surrender; and I fancy that Colonel
+Zebulon Butler considered himself a much-abused man, for if we had left
+ourselves entirely under his direction there is no doubt but what we
+could have saved the valley. He had taken us out on 3rd July because our
+militia officers had almost threatened him. In the end he had said,
+"Very well, I can go as far as any of you." I was always on Butler's
+side of the argument, but owing to the singular arrangement of
+circumstances, my opinion at the age of sixteen counted upon neither the
+one side nor the other.
+
+The Fort was left in charge of Colonel Denison. He had stipulated before
+the surrender that no Indians should be allowed to enter the stockade
+and molest these poor families of women whose fathers and brothers were
+either dead or fled over the mountains, unless their physical debility
+had been such that they were able neither to get killed in the battle
+nor to take the long trail to the Delaware. Of course, this excepts
+those men who were with Washington.
+
+For several days the Indians, obedient to the British officers, kept out
+of the Fort, but soon they began to enter in small bands and went
+sniffing and poking in every corner to find plunder. Our people had
+hidden everything as well as they were able, and for a period little was
+stolen. My mother told me that the first thing of importance to go was
+Colonel Denison's hunting shirt, made of "fine forty" linen. It had a
+double cape, and was fringed about the cape and about the wristbands.
+Colonel Denison at the time was in my mother's cabin. An Indian entered,
+and, rolling a thieving eye about the place, sighted first of all the
+remarkable shirt which Colonel Denison was wearing. He seized the shirt
+and began to tug, while the Colonel backed away, tugging and protesting
+at the same time. The women folk saw at once that the Colonel would be
+tomahawked if he did not give up his shirt, and they begged him to do
+it. He finally elected not to be tomahawked, and came out of his shirt.
+While my mother unbuttoned the wristbands, the Colonel cleverly dropped
+into the lap of a certain Polly Thornton a large packet of Continental
+bills, and his money was thus saved for the settlers.
+
+Colonel Denison had several stormy interviews with "Indian Butler," and
+the British commander finally ended in frankly declaring that he could
+do nothing with the Indians at all. They were beyond control, and the
+defenceless people in the Fort would have to take the consequence. I do
+not mean that Colonel Denison was trying to recover his shirt; I mean
+that he was objecting to a situation which was now almost unendurable. I
+wish to record also that the Colonel lost a large beaver hat. In both
+cases he willed to be tomahawked and killed rather than suffer the
+indignity, but mother prevailed over him. I must confess to this
+discreet age that my mother engaged in fisticuffs with a squaw. This
+squaw came into the cabin, and, without preliminary discussion,
+attempted to drag from my mother the petticoat she was wearing. My
+mother forgot the fine advice she had given to Colonel Denison. She
+proceeded to beat the squaw out of the cabin, and although the squaw
+appealed to some warriors who were standing without the warriors only
+laughed, and my mother kept her petticoat.
+
+The Indians took the feather beds of the people, and, ripping them open,
+flung the feathers broadcast. Then they stuffed these sacks full of
+plunder, and flung them across the backs of such of the settlers' horses
+as they had been able to find. In the old days my mother had had a side
+saddle, of which she was very proud when she rode to meeting on it. She
+had also a brilliant scarlet cloak, which every lady had in those days,
+and which I can remember as one of the admirations of my childhood. One
+day my mother had the satisfaction of seeing a squaw ride off from the
+Fort with this prize saddle reversed on a small nag, and with the proud
+squaw thus mounted wearing the scarlet cloak, also reversed. My sister
+Martha told me afterwards that they laughed, even in their misfortunes.
+A little later they had the satisfaction of seeing the smoke from our
+house and barn arising over the tops of the trees.
+
+When the Indians first began their pillaging, an old Mr. Sutton, who
+occupied a cabin near my mother's cabin, anticipated them by donning all
+his best clothes. He had had a theory that the Americans would be free
+to retain the clothes that they wore. And his best happened to be a suit
+of Quaker grey, from beaver to boots, in which he had been married. Not
+long afterwards my mother and my sisters saw passing the door an Indian
+arrayed in Quaker grey, from beaver to boots. The only odd thing which
+impressed them was that the Indian had appended to the dress a long
+string of Yankee scalps. Sutton was a good Quaker, and if he had been
+wearing the suit there would have been no string of scalps.
+
+They were, in fact, badgered, insulted, robbed by the Indians so openly
+that the British officers would not come into the Fort at all. They
+stayed in their camp, affecting to be ignorant of what was happening. It
+was about all they could do. The Indians had only one idea of war, and
+it was impossible to reason with them when they were flushed with
+victory and stolen rum.
+
+The hand of fate fell heavily upon one rogue whose ambition it was to
+drink everything that the Fort contained. One day he inadvertently came
+upon a bottle of spirits of camphor, and in a few hours he was dead.
+
+But it was known that General Washington contemplated sending a strong
+expedition into the valley, to clear it of the invaders and thrash them.
+Soon there were no enemies in the country save small roving parties of
+Indians, who prevented work in the fields and burned whatever cabins
+that earlier torches had missed.
+
+The first large party to come into the valley was composed mainly of
+Captain Spaulding's company of regulars, and at its head rode Colonel
+Zebulon Butler. My father, myself, and little Andrew returned with this
+party to set to work immediately to build out of nothing a prosperity
+similar to that which had vanished in the smoke.
+
+
+
+
+II.--"OL' BENNET" AND THE INDIANS.
+
+
+My father was so well known of the Indians that, as I was saying, his
+old grey coat was a sign through the northern country. I know of no
+reason for this save that he was honest and obstreperously minded his
+own affairs, and could fling a tomahawk better than the best Indian. I
+will not declare upon how hard it is for a man to be honest and to mind
+his own affairs, but I fully know that it is hard to throw a tomahawk as
+my father threw it, straighter than a bullet from a duelling pistol. He
+had always dealt fairly with the Indians, and I cannot tell why they
+paled him so bitterly, unless it was that when an Indian went foolishly
+drunk my father would deplore it with his foot, if it so happened that
+the drunkenness was done in our cabin. It is true to say that when the
+war came, a singular large number of kicked Indians journeyed from the
+Canadas to re-visit with torch and knife the scenes of the kicking.
+
+If people had thoroughly known my father he would have had no enemies.
+He was the best of men. He had a code of behaviour for himself, and for
+the whole world as well. If people wished his good opinion they only had
+to do exactly as he did, and to have his views. I remember that once my
+sister Martha made me a waistcoat of rabbits' skins, and generally it
+was considered a great ornament. But one day my father espied me in it,
+and commanded me to remove it for ever. Its appearance was indecent, he
+said, and such a garment tainted the soul of him who wore it. In the
+ensuing fortnight a poor pedlar arrived from the Delaware, who had
+suffered great misfortunes in the snows. My father fed him and warmed
+him, and when he gratefully departed, gave him the rabbits' skin
+waistcoat, and the poor man went off clothed indecently in a garment
+that would taint his soul. Afterwards, in a daring mood, I asked my
+father why he had so cursed this pedlar, and he recommended that I
+should study my Bible more closely, and there read that my own devious
+ways should be mended before I sought to judge the enlightened acts of
+my elders. He set me to ploughing the upper twelve acres, and I was
+hardly allowed to loose my grip of the plough handles until every furrow
+was drawn.
+
+The Indians called my father "Ol' Bennet," and he was known broadcast as
+a man whose doom was sealed when the redskins caught him. As I have
+said, the feeling is inexplicable to me. But Indians who had been
+ill-used and maltreated by downright ruffians, against whom revenge
+could with a kind of propriety be directed--many of these Indians
+avowedly gave up a genuine wrong in order to direct a fuller attention
+to the getting of my father's scalp. This most unfair disposition of the
+Indians was a great, deep anxiety to all of us up to the time when
+General Sullivan and his avenging army marched through the valley and
+swept our tormentors afar.
+
+And yet great calamities could happen in our valley even after the
+coming and passing of General Sullivan. We were partly mistaken in our
+gladness. The British force of Loyalists and Indians met Sullivan in one
+battle, and finding themselves over-matched and beaten, they scattered
+in all directions. The Loyalists, for the most part, went home, but the
+Indians cleverly broke up into small bands, and General Sullivan's army
+had no sooner marched beyond the Wyoming Valley than some of these small
+bands were back into the valley plundering outlying cabins and shooting
+people from the thickets and woods that bordered the fields.
+
+General Sullivan had left a garrison at Wilkesbarre, and at this time we
+lived in its strong shadow. It was too formidable for the Indians to
+attack, and it could protect all who valued protection enough to remain
+under its wings, but it could do little against the flying small bands.
+My father chafed in the shelter of the garrison. His best lands lay
+beyond Forty Fort, and he wanted to be at his ploughing. He made several
+brief references to his ploughing that led us to believe that his
+ploughing was the fundamental principle of life. None of us saw any
+means of contending him. My sister Martha began to weep, but it no more
+mattered than if she had began to laugh. My mother said nothing. Aye, my
+wonderful mother said nothing. My father said he would go plough some of
+the land above Forty Fort. Immediately this was with us some sort of a
+law. It was like a rain, or a wind, or a drought.
+
+He went, of course. My young brother Andrew went with him, and he took
+the new span of oxen and a horse. They began to plough a meadow which
+lay in a bend of the river above Forty Fort. Andrew rode the horse
+hitched ahead of the oxen. At a certain thicket the horse shied so that
+little Andrew was almost thrown down. My father seemed to have begun a
+period of apprehension at this time, but it was of no service. Four
+Indians suddenly appeared out of the thicket. Swiftly, and in silence,
+they pounced with tomahawk, rifle, and knife upon my father and my
+brother, and in a moment they were captives of the redskins--that fate
+whose very phrasing was a thrill to the heart of every colonist. It
+spelled death, or that horrible simple absence, vacancy, mystery, which
+is harder than death.
+
+As for us, he had told my mother that if he and Andrew were not returned
+at sundown she might construe a calamity. So at sundown we gave the news
+to the Fort, and directly we heard the alarm gun booming out across the
+dusk like a salute to the death of my father, a solemn, final
+declaration. At the sound of this gun my sisters all began newly to
+weep. It simply defined our misfortune. In the morning a party was sent
+out, which came upon the deserted plough, the oxen calmly munching, and
+the horse still excited and affrighted. The soldiers found the trail of
+four Indians. They followed the trail some distance over the mountains,
+but the redskins with their captives had a long start, and pursuit was
+but useless. The result of this expedition was that we knew at least
+that father and Andrew had not been massacred immediately. But in those
+days this was a most meagre consolation. It was better to wish them well
+dead.
+
+My father and Andrew were hurried over the hills at a terrible pace by
+the four Indians. Andrew told me afterwards that he could think
+sometimes that he was dreaming of being carried off by goblins. The
+redskins said no word, and their mocassined feet made no sound. They
+were like evil spirits. But it was as he caught glimpses of father's
+pale face, every wrinkle in it deepened and hardened, that Andrew saw
+everything in its light. And Andrew was but thirteen years old. It is a
+tender age at which to be burned at the stake.
+
+In time the party came upon two more Indians, who had as a prisoner a
+man named Lebbeus Hammond. He had left Wilkesbarre in search of a
+strayed horse. He was riding the animal back to the Fort when the
+Indians caught him. He and my father knew each other well, and their
+greeting was like them.
+
+"What! Hammond! You here?"
+
+"Yes, I'm here."
+
+As the march was resumed, the principal Indian bestrode Hammond's horse,
+but the horse was very high-nerved and scared, and the bridle was only a
+temporary one made from hickory withes. There was no saddle. And so
+finally the principal Indian came off with a crash, alighting with
+exceeding severity upon his head. When he got upon his feet he was in
+such a rage that the three captives thought to see him dash his tomahawk
+into the skull of the trembling horse, and, indeed, his arm was raised
+for the blow, but suddenly he thought better of it. He had been touched
+by a real point of Indian inspiration. The party was passing a swamp at
+the time, so he mired the horse almost up to its eyes, and left it to
+the long death.
+
+I had said that my father was well known of the Indians, and yet I have
+to announce that none of his six captors knew him. To them he was a
+complete stranger, for upon camping the first night they left my father
+unbound. If they had had any idea that he was "Ol' Bennet" they would
+never have left him unbound. He suggested to Hammond that they try to
+escape that night, but Hammond seemed not to care to try it yet.
+
+In time they met a party of over forty Indians, commanded by a Loyalist.
+In that band there were many who knew my father. They cried out with
+rejoicing when they perceived him. "Ha!" they shouted, "Ol' Bennet!"
+They danced about him, making gestures expressive of the torture. Later
+in the day my father accidentally pulled a button from his coat, and an
+Indian took it from him.
+
+My father asked to be allowed to have it again, for he was a very
+careful man, and in those days all good husbands were trained to bring
+home the loose buttons. The Indians laughed, and explained that a man
+who was to die at Wyallusing--one day's march--need not be particular
+about a button.
+
+The three prisoners were now sent off in care of seven Indians, while
+the Loyalist took the remainder of his men down the valley to further
+harass the settlers. The seven Indians were now very careful of my
+father, allowing him scarce a wink. Their tomahawks came up at the
+slightest sign. At the camp that night they bade the prisoners lie down,
+and then placed poles across them. An Indian lay upon either end of
+these poles. My father managed, however, to let Hammond know that he was
+determined to make an attempt to escape. There was only one night
+between him and the stake, and he was resolved to make what use he could
+of it. Hammond seems to have been dubious from the start, but the men of
+that time were not daunted by broad risks. In his opinion the rising
+would be a failure, but this did not prevent him from agreeing to rise
+with his friend. My brother Andrew was not considered at all. No one
+asked him if he wanted to rise against the Indians. He was only a boy,
+and supposed to obey his elders. So, as none asked his views, he kept
+them to himself; but I wager you he listened, all ears, to the furtive
+consultations, consultations which were mere casual phrases at times,
+and at other times swift, brief sentences shot out in a whisper.
+
+The band of seven Indians relaxed in vigilance as they approached their
+own country, and on the last night from Wyallusing the Indian part of
+the camp seemed much inclined to take deep slumber after the long and
+rapid journey. The prisoners were held to the ground by poles as on the
+previous night, and then the Indians pulled their blankets over their
+heads and passed into heavy sleep. One old warrior sat by the fire as
+guard, but he seems to have been a singularly inefficient man, for he
+was continuously drowsing, and if the captives could have got rid of the
+poles across their chests and legs they would have made their flight
+sooner.
+
+The camp was on a mountain side amid a forest of lofty pines. The night
+was very cold, and the blasts of wind swept down upon the crackling,
+resinous fire. A few stars peeped through the feathery pine branches.
+Deep in some gulch could be heard the roar of a mountain stream. At one
+o'clock in the morning three of the Indians arose, and, releasing the
+prisoners, commanded them to mend the fire. The prisoners brought dead
+pine branches; the ancient warrior on watch sleepily picked away with
+his knife at the deer's head which he had roasted; the other Indians
+retired again to their blankets, perhaps each depending upon the other
+for the exercise of precautions. It was a tremendously slack business;
+the Indians were feeling security because they knew that the prisoners
+were too wise to try to run away.
+
+The warrior on watch mumbled placidly to himself as he picked at the
+deer's head. Then he drowsed again, just the short nap of a man who had
+been up too long. My father stepped quickly to a spear, and backed away
+from the Indian; then he drove it straight through his chest. The Indian
+raised himself spasmodically, and then collapsed into that camp fire
+which the captives had made burn so brilliantly, and as he fell he
+screamed. Instantly his blanket, his hair, he himself began to burn, and
+over him was my father tugging frantically to get the spear out again.
+
+My father did not recover the spear. It had so gone through the old
+warrior that it could not readily be withdrawn, and my father left it.
+
+The scream of the watchman instantly aroused the other warriors, who, as
+they scrambled in their blankets, found over them a terrible
+white-lipped creature with an axe--an axe, the most appallingly brutal
+of weapons. Hammond buried his weapon in the head of the leader of the
+Indians even as the man gave out his first great cry. The second blow
+missed an agile warrior's head, but caught him in the nape of the neck,
+and he swung, to bury his face in the red-hot ashes at the edge of the
+fire.
+
+Meanwhile my brother Andrew had been gallantly snapping empty guns. In
+fact he snapped three empty guns at the Indians, who were in the purest
+panic. He did not snap the fourth gun, but took it by the barrel, and,
+seeing a warrior rush past him, he cracked his skull with the clubbed
+weapon. He told me, however, that his snapping of the empty guns was
+very effective, because it made the Indians jump and dodge.
+
+Well, this slaughter continued in the red glare of the fire on the
+lonely mountain side until two shrieking creatures ran off through the
+trees, but even then my father hurled a tomahawk with all his strength.
+It struck one of the fleeing Indians on the shoulder. His blanket
+dropped from him, and he ran on practically naked.
+
+The three whites looked at each other, breathing deeply. Their work was
+plain to them in the five dead and dying Indians underfoot. They hastily
+gathered weapons and mocassins, and in six minutes from the time when my
+father had hurled the spear through the Indian sentinel they had started
+to make their way back to the settlements, leaving the camp fire to burn
+out its short career alone amid the dead.
+
+
+
+
+III.--THE BATTLE OF FORTY FORT.
+
+
+The Congress, sitting at Philadelphia, had voted our Wyoming country two
+companies of infantry for its protection against the Indians, with the
+single provision that we raise the men and arm them ourselves. This was
+not too brave a gift, but no one could blame the poor Congress, and
+indeed one could wonder that they found occasion to think of us at all,
+since at the time every gentleman of them had his coat-tails gathered
+high in his hands in readiness for flight to Baltimore. But our two
+companies of foot were no sooner drilled, equipped, and in readiness to
+defend the colony when they were ordered off down to the Jerseys to join
+General Washington. So it can be seen what service Congress did us in
+the way of protection. Thus the Wyoming Valley, sixty miles deep in the
+wilderness, held its log-houses full of little besides mothers, maids,
+and children. To the clamour against this situation the badgered
+Congress could only reply by the issue of another generous order,
+directing that one full company of foot be raised in the town of
+Westmoreland for the defence of said town, and that the said company
+find their own arms, ammunition, and blankets. Even people with our
+sense of humour could not laugh at this joke.
+
+When the first two companies were forming, I had thought to join one,
+but my father forbade me, saying that I was too young, although I was
+full sixteen, tall, and very strong. So it turned out that I was not off
+fighting with Washington's army when Butler with his rangers and Indians
+raided Wyoming. Perhaps I was in the better place to do my duty, if I
+could.
+
+When wandering Indians visited the settlements, their drunkenness and
+insolence were extreme, but the few white men remained calm, and often
+enough pretended oblivion to insults which, because of their wives and
+families, they dared not attempt to avenge. In my own family, my
+father's imperturbability was scarce superior to my mother's coolness,
+and such was our faith in them that we twelve children also seemed to be
+fearless. Neighbour after neighbour came to my father in despair of the
+defenceless condition of the valley, declaring that they were about to
+leave everything and flee over the mountains to Stroudsberg. My father
+always wished them God-speed and said no more. If they urged him to fly
+also, he usually walked away from them.
+
+Finally there came a time when all the Indians vanished. We rather would
+have had them tipsy and impudent in the settlements; we knew what their
+disappearance portended. It was the serious sign. Too soon the news came
+that "Indian Butler" was on his way.
+
+The valley was vastly excited. People with their smaller possessions
+flocked into the block-houses, and militia officers rode everywhere to
+rally every man. A small force of Continentals--regulars of the
+line--had joined our people, and the little army was now under the
+command of a Continental officer, Major Zebulon Butler.
+
+I had thought that with all this hubbub of an impending life and death
+struggle in the valley that my father would allow the work of our farm
+to slacken. But in this I was notably mistaken. The milking and the
+feeding and the work in the fields went on as if there never had been an
+Indian south of the Canadas. My mother and my sisters continued to cook,
+to wash, to churn, to spin, to dye, to mend, to make soap, to make maple
+sugar. Just before the break of each day, my younger brother Andrew and
+myself tumbled out for some eighteen hours' work, and woe to us if we
+departed the length of a dog's tail from the laws which our father had
+laid down. It was a life with which I was familiar, but it did seem to
+me that with the Indians almost upon us he might have allowed me, at
+least, to go to the Fort and see our men drilling.
+
+But one morning we aroused as usual at his call at the foot of the
+ladder, and, dressing more quickly than Andrew, I climbed down from the
+loft to find my father seated by a blazing fire reading by its light in
+his Bible.
+
+"Son," said he.
+
+"Yes, father?"
+
+"Go and fight."
+
+Without a word more I made hasty preparation. It was the first time in
+my life that I had a feeling that my father would change his mind. So
+strong was this fear that I did not even risk a good-bye to my mother
+and sisters. At the end of the clearing I looked back. The door of the
+house was open, and in the blazing light of the fire I saw my father
+seated as I had left him.
+
+At Forty Fort I found between three and four hundred under arms, while
+the stockade itself was crowded with old men, and women and children.
+Many of my acquaintances welcomed me; indeed, I seemed to know everybody
+save a number of the Continental officers. Colonel Zebulon Butler was in
+chief command, while directly under him was Colonel Denison, a man of
+the valley, and much respected. Colonel Denison asked news of my father,
+whose temper he well knew. He said to me--"If God spares Nathan Denison
+I shall tell that obstinate old fool my true opinion of him. He will get
+himself and all his family butchered and scalped."
+
+I joined Captain Bidlack's company for the reason that a number of my
+friends were in it. Every morning we were paraded and drilled in the
+open ground before the Fort, and I learned to present arms and to keep
+my heels together, although to this day I have never been able to see
+any point to these accomplishments, and there was very little of the
+presenting of arms or of the keeping together of heels in the battle
+which followed these drills. I may say truly that I would now be much
+more grateful to Captain Bidlack if he had taught us to run like a wild
+horse.
+
+There was considerable friction between the officers of our militia and
+the Continental officers. I believe the Continental officers had stated
+themselves as being in favour of a cautious policy, whereas the men of
+the valley were almost unanimous in their desire to meet "Indian Butler"
+more than half way. They knew the country, they said, and they knew the
+Indians, and they deduced that the proper plan was to march forth and
+attack the British force near the head of the valley. Some of the more
+hot-headed ones rather openly taunted the Continentals, but these
+veterans of Washington's army remained silent and composed amid more or
+less wildness of talk. My own concealed opinions were that, although our
+people were brave and determined, they had much better allow the
+Continental officers to manage the valley's affairs.
+
+At the end of June, we heard the news that Colonel John Butler, with
+some four hundred British and Colonial troops, which he called the
+Rangers, and with about five hundred Indians, had entered the valley at
+its head and taken Fort Wintermoot after an opposition of a perfunctory
+character. I could present arms very well, but I do not think that I
+could yet keep my heels together. But "Indian Butler" was marching upon
+us, and even Captain Bidlack refrained from being annoyed at my
+refractory heels.
+
+The officers held councils of war, but in truth both fort and camp rang
+with a discussion in which everybody joined with great vigour and
+endurance. I may except the Continental officers, who told us what they
+thought we should do, and then, declaring that there was no more to be
+said, remained in a silence which I thought was rather grim. The result
+was that on the 3rd of July our force of about 300 men marched away,
+amid the roll of drums and the proud career of flags, to meet "Indian
+Butler" and his two kinds of savages. There yet remains with me a vivid
+recollection of a close row of faces above the stockade of Forty Fort
+which viewed our departure with that profound anxiety which only an
+imminent danger of murder and scalping can produce. I myself was never
+particularly afraid of the Indians, for to my mind the great and almost
+the only military virtue of the Indians was that they were silent men
+in the woods. If they were met squarely on terms approaching equality,
+they could always be whipped. But it was another matter to a fort filled
+with women and children and cripples, to whom the coming of the Indians
+spelled pillage, arson, and massacre. The British sent against us in
+those days some curious upholders of the honour of the King, and
+although Indian Butler, who usually led them, afterwards contended that
+everything was performed with decency and care for the rules, we always
+found that such of our dead whose bodies we recovered invariably lacked
+hair on the tops of their heads, and if worse wasn't done to them we
+wouldn't even use the word mutilate.
+
+Colonel Zebulon Butler rode along the column when we halted once for
+water. I looked at him eagerly, hoping to read in his face some sign of
+his opinions. But on the soldierly mask I could read nothing, although I
+am certain now that he felt that the fools among us were going to get us
+well beaten. But there was no vacillation in the direction of our march.
+We went straight until we could hear through the woods the infrequent
+shots of our leading party at retreating Indian scouts.
+
+Our Colonel Butler then sent forward four of his best officers, who
+reconnoitered the ground in the enemy's front like so many engineers
+marking the place for a bastion. Then each of the six companies were
+told their place in the line. We of Captain Bidlack's company were on
+the extreme right. Then we formed in line and marched into battle, with
+me burning with the high resolve to kill Indian Butler and bear his
+sword into Forty Fort, while at the same time I was much shaken that one
+of Indian Butler's Indians might interfere with the noble plan. We moved
+stealthily among the pine trees, and I could not forbear looking
+constantly to right and left to make certain that everybody was of the
+same mind about this advance. With our Captain Bidlack was Captain
+Durkee of the regulars. He was also a valley man, and it seemed that
+every time I looked behind me I met the calm eye of this officer, and I
+came to refrain from looking behind me.
+
+Still, I was very anxious to shoot Indians, and if I had doubted my
+ability in this direction I would have done myself a great injustice,
+for I could drive a nail to the head with a rifle ball at respectable
+range. I contend that I was not at all afraid of the enemy, but I much
+feared that certain of my comrades would change their minds about the
+expediency of battle on the 3rd July, 1778.
+
+But our company was as steady and straight as a fence. I do not know who
+first saw dodging figures in the shadows of the trees in our front. The
+first fire we received, however, was from our flank, where some hidden
+Indians were yelling and firing, firing and yelling. We did not mind
+the war-whoops. We had heard too many drunken Indians in the settlements
+before the war. They wounded the lieutenant of the company next to ours,
+and a moment later they killed Captain Durkee. But we were steadily
+advancing and firing regular volleys into the shifting frieze of figures
+before us. The Indians gave their cries as if the imps of Hades had
+given tongue to their emotions. They fell back before us so rapidly and
+so cleverly that one had to watch his chance as the Indians sped from
+tree to tree. I had a sudden burst of rapture that they were beaten, and
+this was accentuated when I stepped over the body of an Indian whose
+forehead had a hole in it as squarely in the middle as if the location
+had been previously surveyed. In short, we were doing extremely well.
+
+Soon we began to see the slower figures of white men through the trees,
+and it is only honest to say that they were easier to shoot. I myself
+caught sight of a fine officer in a uniform that seemed of green and
+buff. His sword-belt was fastened by a great shining brass plate, and,
+no longer feeling the elegancies of marksmanship, I fired at the brass
+plate. Such was the conformation of the ground between us that he
+disappeared as if he had sunk in the sea. We, all of us, were loading
+behind the trees and then charging ahead with fullest confidence.
+
+But suddenly from our own left came wild cries from our men, while at
+the same time the yells of Indians redoubled in that direction. Our rush
+checked itself instinctively. The cries rolled toward us. Once I heard a
+word that sounded like "Quarte." Then, to be truthful, our line wavered.
+I heard Captain Bidlack give an angry and despairing shout, and I think
+he was killed before he finished it.
+
+In a word, our left wing had gone to pieces. It was in complete rout. I
+know not the truth of the matter; but it seems that Colonel Denison had
+given an order which was misinterpreted for the order to retreat. At any
+rate, there can be no doubt of how fast the left wing ran away.
+
+We ran away too. The company on our immediate left was the company of
+regulars, and I remember some red-faced and powder-stained men bellowing
+at me contemptuously. That company stayed, and, for the most part, died.
+I don't know what they mustered when we left the Fort, but from the
+battle eleven worn and ragged men emerged. In my running was wisdom. The
+country was suddenly full of fleet Indians, upon us with the tomahawk.
+Behind me as I ran I could hear the screams of men cleaved to the earth.
+I think the first things that most of us discarded were our rifles.
+Afterward, upon serious reflection, I could not recall where I gave my
+rifle to the grass.
+
+I ran for the river. I saw some of our own men running ahead of me and I
+envied them. My point of contact with the river was the top of a high
+bank. But I did not hesitate to leap for the water with all my ounces of
+muscle. I struck out strongly for the other shore. I expected to be shot
+in the water. Up stream, and down stream, I could hear the crack of
+rifles, but none of the enemy seemed to be paying direct heed to me. I
+swam so well that I was soon able to put my feet on the slippery round
+stones and wade. When I reached a certain sandy beach, I lay down and
+puffed and blew my exhaustion. I watched the scene on the river. Indians
+appeared in groups on the opposite bank, firing at various heads of my
+comrades, who, like me, had chosen the Susquehanna as their refuge. I
+saw more than one hand fling up and the head turn sideways and sink.
+
+I set out for home. I set out for home in that perfect spirit of
+dependence which I had always felt toward my father and my mother. When
+I arrived I found nobody in the living room but my father seated in his
+great chair and reading his Bible, even as I had left him.
+
+The whole shame of the business came upon me suddenly. "Father," I
+choked out, "we have been beaten."
+
+"Aye," said he, "I expected it."
+
+
+
+
+LONDON IMPRESSIONS.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+London at first consisted of a porter with the most charming manners in
+the world, and a cabman with a supreme intelligence, both observing my
+profound ignorance without contempt or humour of any kind observable in
+their manners. It was in a great resounding vault of a place where there
+were many people who had come home, and I was displeased because they
+knew the detail of the business, whereas I was confronting the
+inscrutable. This made them appear very stony-hearted to the sufferings
+of one of whose existence, to be sure, they were entirely unaware, and I
+remember taking great pleasure in disliking them heartily for it. I was
+in an agony of mind over my baggage, or my luggage, or my--perhaps it is
+well to shy around this terrible international question; but I remember
+that when I was a lad I was told that there was a whole nation that said
+luggage instead of baggage, and my boyish mind was filled at the time
+with incredulity and scorn. In the present case it was a thing that I
+understood to involve the most hideous confessions of imbecility on my
+part, because I had evidently to go out to some obscure point and espy
+it and claim it, and take trouble for it; and I would rather have had my
+pockets filled with bread and cheese, and had no baggage at all.
+
+Mind you, this was not at all a homage that I was paying to London. I
+was paying homage to a new game. A man properly lazy does not like new
+experiences until they become old ones. Moreover, I have been taught
+that a man, any man, who has a thousand times more points of information
+on a certain thing than I have will bully me because of it, and pour his
+advantages upon my bowed head until I am drenched with his superiority.
+It was in my education to concede some licence of the kind in this case,
+but the holy father of a porter and the saintly cabman occupied the
+middle distance imperturbably, and did not come down from their hills to
+clout me with knowledge. From this fact I experienced a criminal
+elation. I lost view of the idea that if I had been brow-beaten by
+porters and cabmen from one end of the United States to the other end I
+should warmly like it, because in numbers they are superior to me, and
+collectively they can have a great deal of fun out of a matter that
+would merely afford me the glee of the latent butcher.
+
+This London, composed of a porter and a cabman, stood to me subtly as a
+benefactor. I had scanned the drama, and found that I did not believe
+that the mood of the men emanated unduly from the feature that there was
+probably more shillings to the square inch of me than there were
+shillings to the square inch of them. Nor yet was it any manner of
+palpable warm-heartedness or other natural virtue. But it was a perfect
+artificial virtue; it was drill, plain, simple drill. And now was I glad
+of their drilling, and vividly approved of it, because I saw that it was
+good for me. Whether it was good or bad for the porter and the cabman I
+could not know; but that point, mark you, came within the pale, of my
+respectable rumination.
+
+I am sure that it would have been more correct for me to have alighted
+upon St. Paul's and described no emotion until I was overcome by the
+Thames Embankment and the Houses of Parliament. But as a matter of fact
+I did not see them for some days, and at this time they did not concern
+me at all. I was born in London at a railroad station, and my new vision
+encompassed a porter and a cabman. They deeply absorbed me in new
+phenomena, and I did not then care to see the Thames Embankment nor the
+Houses of Parliament. I considered the porter and the cabman to be more
+important.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+The cab finally rolled out of the gas-lit vault into a vast expanse of
+gloom. This changed to the shadowy lines of a street that was like a
+passage in a monstrous cave. The lamps winking here and there resembled
+the little gleams at the caps of the miners. They were not very
+competent illuminations at best, merely being little pale flares of gas
+that at their most heroic periods could only display one fact concerning
+this tunnel--the fact of general direction. But at any rate I should
+have liked to have observed the dejection of a search-light if it had
+been called upon to attempt to bore through this atmosphere. In it each
+man sat in his own little cylinder of vision, so to speak. It was not so
+small as a sentry-box nor so large as a circus tent, but the walls were
+opaque, and what was passing beyond the dimensions of his cylinder no
+man knew.
+
+It was evident that the paving was very greasy, but all the cabs that
+passed through my cylinder were going at a round trot, while the wheels,
+shod in rubber, whirred merely like bicycles. The hoofs of the animals
+themselves did not make that wild clatter which I knew so well. New
+York, in fact, roars always like ten thousand devils. We have ingenuous
+and simple ways of making a din in New York that cause the stranger to
+conclude that each citizen is obliged by statute to provide himself with
+a pair of cymbals and a drum. If anything by chance can be turned into a
+noise it is promptly turned. We are engaged in the development of a
+human creature with very large, sturdy, and doubly-fortified ears.
+
+It was not too late at night, but this London moved with the decorum and
+caution of an undertaker. There was a silence, and yet there was no
+silence. There was a low drone, perhaps a humming contributed inevitably
+by closely-gathered thousands, and yet on second thoughts it was to me
+silence. I had perched my ears for the note of London, the sound made
+simply by the existence of five million people in one place. I had
+imagined something deep, vastly deep, a bass from a mythical organ, but
+found, as far as I was concerned, only a silence.
+
+New York in numbers is a mighty city, and all day and all night it cries
+its loud, fierce, aspiring cry, a noise of men beating upon barrels, a
+noise of men beating upon tin, a terrific racket that assails the abject
+skies. No one of us seemed to question this row as a certain consequence
+of three or four million people living together and scuffling for coin,
+with more agility, perhaps, but otherwise in the usual way. However,
+after this easy silence of London, which in numbers is a mightier city,
+I began to feel that there was a seduction in this idea of necessity.
+Our noise in New York was not a consequence of our rapidity at all. It
+was a consequence of our bad pavements.
+
+Any brigade of artillery in Europe that would love to assemble its
+batteries, and then go on a gallop over the land, thundering and
+thundering, would give up the idea of thunder at once if it could hear
+Tim Mulligan drive a beer waggon along one of the side streets of
+cobbled New York.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+Finally, a great thing came to pass. The cab horse, proceeding at a
+sharp trot, found himself suddenly at the top of an incline, where
+through the rain the pavement shone like an expanse of ice. It looked to
+me as if there was going to be a tumble. In an accident of such a kind a
+hansom becomes really a cannon in which a man finds that he has paid
+shillings for the privilege of serving as a projectile. I was making a
+rapid calculation of the arc that I would describe in my flight, when
+the horse met his crisis with a masterly device that I could not have
+imagined. He tranquilly braced his four feet like a bundle of stakes,
+and then, with a gentle gaiety of demeanour, he slid swiftly and
+gracefully to the bottom of the hill as if he had been a toboggan. When
+the incline ended he caught his gait again with great dexterity, and
+went pattering off through another tunnel.
+
+I at once looked upon myself as being singularly blessed by this sight.
+This horse had evidently originated this system of skating as a
+diversion, or, more probably, as a precaution against the slippery
+pavement; and he was, of course, the inventor and sole proprietor--two
+terms that are not always in conjunction. It surely was not to be
+supposed that there could be two skaters like him in the world. He
+deserved to be known and publicly praised for this accomplishment. It
+was worthy of many records and exhibitions. But when the cab arrived at
+a place where some dipping streets met, and the flaming front of a
+music-hall temporarily widened my cylinder, behold there were many cabs,
+and as the moment of necessity came the horses were all skaters. They
+were gliding in all directions. It might have been a rink. A great
+omnibus was hailed by a hand under an umbrella on the side walk, and the
+dignified horses bidden to halt from their trot did not waste time in
+wild and unseemly spasms. They, too, braced their legs and slid gravely
+to the end of their momentum.
+
+It was not the feat, but it was the word which had at this time the
+power to conjure memories of skating parties on moonlit lakes, with
+laughter ringing over the ice, and a great red bonfire on the shore
+among the hemlocks.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+A terrible thing in nature is the fall of a horse in his harness. It is
+a tragedy. Despite their skill in skating there was that about the
+pavement on the rainy evening which filled me with expectations of
+horses going headlong. Finally it happened just in front. There was a
+shout and a tangle in the darkness, and presently a prostrate cab horse
+came within my cylinder. The accident having been a complete success and
+altogether concluded, a voice from the side walk said, "_Look_ out, now!
+_Be_ more careful, can't you?"
+
+I remember a constituent of a Congressman at Washington who had tried in
+vain to bore this Congressman with a wild project of some kind. The
+Congressman eluded him with skill, and his rage and despair ultimately
+culminated in the supreme grievance that he could not even get near
+enough to the Congressman to tell him to go to Hades.
+
+This cabman should have felt the same desire to strangle this man who
+spoke from the side walk. He was plainly impotent; he was deprived of
+the power of looking out. There was nothing now for which to look out.
+The man on the side walk had dragged a corpse from a pond and said to
+it, "_Be_ more careful, can't you, or you'll drown?" My cabman pulled up
+and addressed a few words of reproach to the other. Three or four
+figures loomed into my cylinder, and as they appeared spoke to the
+author or the victim of the calamity in varied terms of displeasure.
+Each of these reproaches was couched in terms that defined the situation
+as impending. No blind man could have conceived that the precipitate
+phrase of the incident was absolutely closed. "_Look_ out now, cawnt
+you?" And there was nothing in his mind which approached these
+sentiments near enough to tell them to go to Hades.
+
+However, it needed only an ear to know presently that these expressions
+were formulae. It was merely the obligatory dance which the Indians had
+to perform before they went to war. These men had come to help, but as a
+regular and traditional preliminary they had first to display to this
+cabman their idea of his ignominy.
+
+The different thing in the affair was the silence of the victim. He
+retorted never a word. This, too, to me seemed to be an obedience to a
+recognised form. He was the visible criminal, if there was a criminal,
+and there was born of it a privilege for them.
+
+They unfastened the proper straps and hauled back the cab. They fetched
+a mat from some obscure place of succour, and pushed it carefully under
+the prostrate thing. From this panting, quivering mass they suddenly and
+emphatically reconstructed a horse. As each man turned to go his way he
+delivered some superior caution to the cabman while the latter buckled
+his harness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+There was to be noticed in this band of rescuers a young man in evening
+clothes and top-hat. Now, in America a young man in evening clothes and
+a top-hat may be a terrible object. He is not likely to do violence, but
+he is likely to do impassivity and indifference to the point where they
+become worse than violence. There are certain of the more idle phases of
+civilisation to which America has not yet awakened--and it is a matter
+of no moment if she remains unaware. This matter of hats is one of them.
+I recall a legend recited to me by an esteemed friend, ex-Sheriff of Tin
+Can, Nevada. Jim Cortright, one of the best gun-fighters in town, went
+on a journey to Chicago, and while there he procured a top-hat. He was
+quite sure how Tin Can would accept this innovation, but he relied on
+the celerity with which he could get a six-shooter in action. One Sunday
+Jim examined his guns with his usual care, placed the top-hat on the
+back of his head, and sauntered coolly out into the streets of Tin Can.
+
+Now, while Jim was in Chicago some progressive citizen had decided that
+Tin Can needed a bowling alley. The carpenters went to work the next
+morning, and an order for the balls and pins was telegraphed to Denver.
+In three days the whole population was concentrated at the new alley
+betting their outfits and their lives.
+
+It has since been accounted very unfortunate that Jim Cortright had not
+learned of bowling alleys at his mother's knee nor even later in the
+mines. This portion of his mind was singularly belated. He might have
+been an Apache for all he knew of bowling alleys.
+
+In his careless stroll through the town, his hands not far from his belt
+and his eyes going sideways in order to see who would shoot first at the
+hat, he came upon this long, low shanty where Tin Can was betting itself
+hoarse over a game between a team from the ranks of Excelsior Hose
+Company No. 1 and a team composed from the _habitues_ of the "Red Light"
+saloon.
+
+Jim, in blank ignorance of bowling phenomena, wandered casually through
+a little door into what must always be termed the wrong end of a
+bowling alley. Of course, he saw that the supreme moment had come. They
+were not only shooting at the hat and at him, but the low-down cusses
+were using the most extraordinary and hellish ammunition. Still,
+perfectly undaunted, however, Jim retorted with his two Colts, and
+killed three of the best bowlers in Tin Can.
+
+The ex-Sheriff vouched for this story. He himself had gone headlong
+through the door at the firing of the first shot with that simple
+courtesy which leads Western men to donate the fighters plenty of room.
+He said that afterwards the hat was the cause of a number of other
+fights, and that finally a delegation of prominent citizens were obliged
+to wait upon Cortright and ask him if he wouldn't take that thing away
+somewhere and bury it. Jim pointed out to them that it was his hat, and
+that he would regard it as a cowardly concession if he submitted to
+their dictation in the matter of his headgear. He added that he purposed
+to continue to wear his top-hat on every occasion when he happened to
+feel that the wearing of a top-hat was a joy and a solace to him.
+
+The delegation sadly retired, and announced to the town that Jim
+Cortright had openly defied them, and had declared his purpose of
+forcing his top-hat on the pained attention of Tin Can whenever he
+chose. Jim Cortright's plug hat became a phrase with considerable
+meaning to it.
+
+However, the whole affair ended in a great passionate outburst of
+popular revolution. Spike Foster was a friend of Cortright, and one day,
+when the latter was indisposed, Spike came to him and borrowed the hat.
+He had been drinking heavily at the "Red Light," and was in a supremely
+reckless mood. With the terrible gear hanging jauntily over his eye and
+his two guns drawn, he walked straight out into the middle of the square
+in front of the Palace Hotel, and drew the attention of all Tin Can by a
+blood-curdling imitation of the yowl of a mountain lion.
+
+This was when the long-suffering populace arose as one man. The top-hat
+had been flaunted once too often. When Spike Foster's friends came to
+carry him away they found nearly a hundred and fifty men shooting busily
+at a mark--and the mark was the hat.
+
+My informant told me that he believed he owed his popularity in Tin Can,
+and subsequently his election to the distinguished office of Sheriff, to
+the active and prominent part he had taken in the proceedings.
+
+The enmity to the top-hat expressed by the convincing anecdote exists in
+the American West at present, I think, in the perfection of its
+strength; but disapproval is not now displayed by volleys from the
+citizens, save in the most aggravating cases. It is at present usually a
+matter of mere jibe and general contempt. The East, however, despite a
+great deal of kicking and gouging, is having the top-hat stuffed slowly
+and carefully down its throat, and there now exist many young men who
+consider that they could not successfully conduct their lives without
+this furniture.
+
+To speak generally, I should say that the headgear then supplies them
+with a kind of ferocity of indifference. There is fire, sword, and
+pestilence in the way they heed only themselves. Philosophy should
+always know that indifference is a militant thing. It batters down the
+walls of cities, and murders the women and children amid flames and the
+purloining of altar vessels. When it goes away it leaves smoking ruins,
+where lie citizens bayoneted through the throat. It is not a children's
+pastime like mere highway robbery.
+
+Consequently in America we may be much afraid of these young men. We
+dive down valleys so that we may not kow-tow. It is a fearsome thing.
+
+Taught thus a deep fear of the top-hat in its effect upon youth, I was
+not prepared for the move of this particular young man when the
+cab-horse fell. In fact, I grovelled in my corner that I might not see
+the cruel stateliness of his passing. But in the meantime he had
+crossed the street, and contributed the strength of his back and some
+advice, as well as the formal address, to the cabman on the importance
+of looking out immediately.
+
+I felt that I was making a notable collection. I had a new kind of
+porter, a cylinder of vision, horses that could skate, and now I added a
+young man in a top-hat who would tacitly admit that the beings around
+him were alive. He was not walking a churchyard filled with inferior
+headstones. He was walking the world, where there were people, many
+people.
+
+But later I took him out of the collection. I thought he had rebelled
+against the manner of a class, but I soon discovered that the top-hat
+was not the property of a class. It was the property of rogues, clerks,
+theatrical agents, damned seducers, poor men, nobles, and others. In
+fact, it was the universal rigging. It was the only hat; all other forms
+might as well be named ham, or chops, or oysters. I retracted my
+admiration of the young man because he may have been merely a rogue.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+There was a window whereat an enterprising man by dodging two placards
+and a calendar was entitled to view a young woman. She was dejectedly
+writing in a large book. She was ultimately induced to open the window a
+trifle. "What nyme, please?" she said wearily. I was surprised to hear
+this language from her. I had expected to be addressed on a submarine
+topic. I have seen shell fishes sadly writing in large books at the
+bottom of a gloomy aquarium who could not ask me what was my "nyme."
+
+At the end of the hall there was a grim portal marked "Lift." I pressed
+an electric button and heard an answering tinkle in the heavens. There
+was an upholstered settle near at hand, and I discovered the reason. A
+deer-stalking peace drooped upon everything, and in it a man could
+invoke the passing of a lazy pageant of twenty years of his life.
+
+The dignity of a coffin being lowered into a grave surrounded the
+ultimate appearance of the lift. The expert we in America call the
+elevator-boy stepped from the car, took three paces forward, faced to
+attention, and saluted. This elevator-boy could not have been less than
+sixty years of age; a great white beard streamed towards his belt. I saw
+that the lift had been longer on its voyage than I had suspected.
+
+Later in our upward progress a natural event would have been an
+establishment of social relations. Two enemies imprisoned together
+during the still hours of a balloon journey would, I believe, suffer a
+mental amalgamation. The overhang of a common fate, a great principal
+fact, can make an equality and a truce between any pair. Yet, when I
+disembarked, a final survey of the grey beard made me recall that I had
+failed even to ask the boy whether he had not taken probably three trips
+on this lift.
+
+My windows overlooked simply a great sea of night, in which were
+swimming little gas fishes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+I have of late been led to wistfully reflect that many of the
+illustrators are very clever. In an impatience, which was denoted by a
+certain economy of apparel, I went to a window to look upon day-lit
+London. There were the 'buses parading the streets with the miens of
+elephants. There were the police looking precisely as I had been
+informed by the prints. There were the sandwich-men. There was almost
+everything.
+
+But the artists had not told me the sound of London. Now, in New York
+the artists are able to pourtray sound, because in New York a dray is
+not a dray at all; it is a great potent noise hauled by two or more
+horses. When a magazine containing an illustration of a New York street
+is sent to me, I always know it beforehand. I can hear it coming
+through the mails. As I have said previously, this which I must call
+sound of London was to me only a silence.
+
+Later, in front of the hotel a cabman that I hailed said to me--"Are you
+gowing far, sir? I've got a byby here, and want to giv'er a bit of a
+blough." This impressed me as being probably a quotation from an early
+Egyptian poet, but I learned soon enough that the word "byby" was the
+name of some kind or condition of horse. The cabman's next remark was
+addressed to a boy who took a perilous dive between the byby's nose and
+a cab in front. "That's roight. Put your head in there and get it
+jammed--a whackin good place for it, I should think." Although the tone
+was low and circumspect, I have never heard a better off-handed
+declamation. Every word was cut clear of disreputable alliances with its
+neighbours. The whole thing was as clean as a row of pewter mugs. The
+influence of indignation upon the voice caused me to reflect that we
+might devise a mechanical means of inflaming some in that constellation
+of mummers which is the heritage of the Anglo-Saxon race.
+
+Then I saw the drilling of vehicles by two policemen. There were four
+torrents converging at a point, and when four torrents converge at one
+point engineering experts buy tickets for another place.
+
+But here, again, it was drill, plain, simple drill. I must not falter
+in saying that I think the management of the traffic--as the phrase
+goes--to be distinctly illuminating and wonderful. The police were not
+ruffled and exasperated. They were as peaceful as two cows in a pasture.
+
+I remember once remarking that mankind, with all its boasted modern
+progress, had not yet been able to invent a turnstile that will commute
+in fractions. I have now learned that 756 rights-of-way cannot operate
+simultaneously at one point. Right-of-way, like fighting women, requires
+space. Even two rights-of-way can make a scene which is only suited to
+the tastes of an ancient public.
+
+This truth was very evidently recognised. There was only one
+right-of-way at a time. The police did not look behind them to see if
+their orders were to be obeyed; they knew they were to be obeyed. These
+four torrents were drilling like four battalions. The two blue-cloth men
+manoeuvred them in solemn, abiding peace, the silence of London.
+
+I thought at first that it was the intellect of the individual, but I
+looked at one constable closely and his face was as afire with
+intelligence as a flannel pin-cushion. It was not the police, and it was
+not the crowd. It was the police and the crowd. Again, it was drill.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+I have never been in the habit of reading signs. I don't like to read
+signs. I have never met a man that liked to read signs. I once invented
+a creature who could play the piano with a hammer, and I mentioned him
+to a professor in Harvard University whose peculiarity was Sanscrit. He
+had the same interest in my invention that I have in a certain kind of
+mustard. And yet this mustard has become a part of me. Or, I have become
+a part of this mustard. Further, I know more of an ink, a brand of hams,
+a kind of cigarette, and a novelist than any man living. I went by train
+to see a friend in the country, and after passing through a patent
+mucilage, some more hams, a South African Investment Company, a Parisian
+millinery firm, and a comic journal, I alighted at a new and original
+kind of corset. On my return journey the road almost continuously ran
+through soap.
+
+I have accumulated superior information concerning these things, because
+I am at their mercy. If I want to know where I am I must find the
+definitive sign. This accounts for my glib use of the word mucilage, as
+well as the titles of other staples.
+
+I suppose even the Briton in mixing his life must sometimes consult the
+labels on 'buses and streets and stations, even as the chemist consults
+the labels on his bottles and boxes. A brave man would possibly affirm
+that this was suggested by the existence of the labels.
+
+The reason that I did not learn more about hams and mucilage in New York
+seems to me to be partly due to the fact that the British advertiser is
+allowed to exercise an unbridled strategy in his attack with his new
+corset or whatever upon the defensive public. He knows that the
+vulnerable point is the informatory sign which the citizen must, of
+course, use for his guidance, and then, with horse, foot, guns, corsets,
+hams, mucilage, investment companies, and all, he hurls himself at the
+point.
+
+Meanwhile I have discovered a way to make the Sanscrit scholar heed my
+creature who plays the piano with a hammer.
+
+
+
+
+NEW YORK SKETCHES
+
+STORIES TOLD BY AN ARTIST IN NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+A TALE ABOUT HOW "GREAT GRIEF" GOT HIS HOLIDAY DINNER.
+
+
+Wrinkles had been peering into the little dry-goods box that acted as a
+cupboard.
+
+"There are only two eggs and a half of a loaf of bread left," he
+announced brutally.
+
+"Heavens!" said Warwickson, from where he lay smoking on the bed. He
+spoke in his usual dismal voice. By it he had earned his popular name of
+Great Grief.
+
+Wrinkles was a thrifty soul. A sight of an almost bare cupboard maddened
+him. Even when he was not hungry, the ghosts of his careful ancestors
+caused him to rebel against it. He sat down with a virtuous air. "Well,
+what are we going to do?" he demanded of the others. It is good to be
+the thrifty man in a crowd of unsuccessful artists, for then you can
+keep the others from starving peacefully. "What are we going to do?"
+
+"Oh, shut up, Wrinkles," said Grief from the bed. "You make me think."
+
+Little Pennoyer, with head bended afar down, had been busily scratching
+away at a pen and ink drawing. He looked up from his board to utter his
+plaintive optimism.
+
+"The _Monthly Amazement_ may pay me to-morrow. They ought to. I've
+waited over three months now. I'm going down there to-morrow, and
+perhaps I'll get it."
+
+His friends listened to him tolerantly, but at last Wrinkles could not
+omit a scornful giggle. He was such an old man, almost twenty-eight, and
+he had seen so many little boys be brave. "Oh, no doubt, Penny, old
+man." Over on the bed Grief croaked deep down in his throat. Nothing was
+said for a long time thereafter.
+
+The crash of the New York streets came faintly. Occasionally one could
+hear the tramp of feet in the intricate corridors of this begrimed
+building that squatted, slumbering and aged, between two exalted
+commercial structures that would have had to bend afar down to perceive
+it. The light snow beat pattering into the window corners, and made
+vague and grey the vista of chimneys and roofs. Often the wind scurried
+swiftly and raised a long cry.
+
+Great Grief leaned upon his elbow. "See to the fire, will you,
+Wrinkles?"
+
+Wrinkles pulled the coal-box out from under the bed and threw open the
+stove door preparatory to shovelling some fuel. A red glare plunged in
+the first faint shadow of dusk. Little Pennoyer threw down his pen and
+tossed his drawing over on the wonderful heap of stuff that hid the
+table. "It's too dark to work." He lit his pipe and walked about,
+stretching his shoulders like a man whose labour was valuable.
+
+When dusk came it saddened these youths. The solemnity of darkness
+always caused them to ponder. "Light the gas, Wrinkles," said Grief.
+
+The flood of orange light showed clearly the dull walls lined with
+scratches, the tousled bed in one corner, the mass of boxes and trunks
+in another, the little fierce stove, and the wonderful table. Moreover,
+there were some wine-coloured draperies flung in some places, and on a
+shelf, high up, there was a plaster cast dark with dust in the creases.
+A long stove-pipe wandered off in the wrong direction, and then twined
+impulsively toward a hole in the wall. There were some extensive cobwebs
+on the ceilings.
+
+"Well, let's eat," said Grief.
+
+Later, there came a sad knock at the door. Wrinkles, arranging a tin
+pail on the stove, little Pennoyer busy at slicing the bread, and Great
+Grief affixing the rubber tube to the gas stove, yelled: "Come in!"
+
+The door opened and Corinson entered dejectedly. His overcoat was very
+new. Wrinkles flashed an envious glance at it, but almost immediately he
+cried: "Hello, Corrie, old boy!"
+
+Corinson sat down and felt around among the pipes until he found a good
+one. Great Grief had fixed the coffee to boil on the gas stove, but he
+had to watch it closely, for the rubber tube was short, and a chair was
+balanced on a trunk, and then the gas stove was balanced on the chair.
+Coffee making was a feat.
+
+"Well," said Grief, with his back turned, "how goes it, Corrie? How's
+Art, hey?" He fastened a terrible emphasis upon the word.
+
+"Crayon portraits," said Corinson.
+
+"What?" They turned towards him with one movement, as if from a lever
+connection. Little Pennoyer dropped his knife.
+
+"Crayon portraits," repeated Corinson. He smoked away in profound
+cynicism. "Fifteen dollars a week or more this time of year, you know."
+He smiled at them like a man of courage.
+
+Little Pennoyer picked up his knife again. "Well, I'll be blowed," said
+Wrinkles. Feeling it incumbent upon him to think, he dropped into a
+chair and began to play serenades on his guitar and watch to see when
+the water for the eggs would boil. It was a habitual pose.
+
+Great Grief, however, seemed to observe something bitter in the affair.
+"When did you discover that you couldn't draw?" he said stiffly.
+
+"I haven't discovered it yet," replied Corinson, with a serene air. "I
+merely discovered that I would rather eat."
+
+"Oh!" said Grief.
+
+"Hand me the eggs, Grief," said Wrinkles. "The water's boiling."
+
+Little Pennoyer burst into the conversation. "We'd ask you to dinner,
+Corrie, but there's only three of us and there's two eggs. I dropped a
+piece of bread on the floor, too. I'd shy one."
+
+"That's all right, Penny," said the other; "don't trouble yourself. You
+artists should never be hospitable. I'm going anyway. I've got to make a
+call. Well, good night, boys. I've got to make a call. Drop in and see
+me."
+
+When the door closed upon him, Grief said: "The coffee's done; I hate
+that fellow. That overcoat cost thirty dollars, if it cost a red. His
+egotism is so tranquil. It isn't like yours, Wrinkles. He--"
+
+The door opened again and Corinson thrust in his head. "Say, you
+fellows, you know it's Thanksgiving to-morrow?"
+
+"Well, what of it?" demanded Grief.
+
+Little Pennoyer said: "Yes, I know it is, Corrie, I thought of it this
+morning."
+
+"Well, come out and have a table d'hote with me to-morrow night. I'll
+blow you off in good style."
+
+While Wrinkles played an exuberant air on his guitar, little Pennoyer
+did part of a ballet. They cried ecstatically: "Will we? Well, I guess
+yes?"
+
+When they were alone again, Grief said: "I'm not going, anyhow. I hate
+that fellow."
+
+"Oh, fiddle," said Wrinkles. "You're an infernal crank. And besides,
+where's your dinner coming from to-morrow night if you don't go? Tell me
+that."
+
+Little Pennoyer said: "Yes, that's so, Grief. Where's your dinner coming
+from if you don't go?"
+
+Grief said: "Well, I hate him, anyhow."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+AS TO PAYMENT OF THE RENT.
+
+Little Pennoyer's four dollars could not last for ever. When he received
+it he and Wrinkles and Great Grief went to a table d'hote. Afterwards
+little Pennoyer discovered that only two dollars and a half remained. A
+small magazine away down town had accepted one out of the six drawings
+that he had taken them, and later had given him four dollars for it.
+Penny was so disheartened when he saw that his money was not going to
+last for ever, that even with two dollars and a half in his pockets, he
+felt much worse than when he was penniless, for at that time he
+anticipated twenty-four. Wrinkles lectured upon "Finance."
+
+Great Grief said nothing, for it was established that when he received
+six dollar cheques from comic weeklies he dreamed of renting studios at
+seventy-five dollars per month, and was likely to go out and buy five
+dollars' worth of second-hand curtains and plaster casts.
+
+When he had money Penny always hated the cluttered den in the old
+building. He desired to go out and breathe boastfully like a man. But he
+obeyed Wrinkles, the elder and the wise, and if you had visited that
+room about ten o'clock of a morning or about seven of an evening you
+would have thought that rye bread, frankfurters, and potato salad from
+Second Avenue were the only foods in the world.
+
+Purple Sanderson lived there too, but then he really ate. He had learned
+parts of the gasfitter's trade before he came to be such a great artist,
+and when his opinions disagreed with that of every art manager in New
+York, he went to see a plumber, a friend of his, for whose opinion he
+had a great respect. In consequence, he frequented a very great
+restaurant on Twenty-third Street, and sometimes on Saturday nights he
+openly scorned his companions.
+
+Purple was a good fellow, Grief said, but one of his singularly bad
+traits was that he always remembered everything. One night, not long
+after little Pennoyer's great discovery, Purple came in, and as he was
+neatly hanging up his coat, said: "Well, the rent will be due in four
+days."
+
+"Will it?" demanded Penny, astounded. Penny was always astounded when
+the rent came due. It seemed to him the most extraordinary occurrence.
+
+"Certainly it will," said Purple, with the irritated air of a superior
+financial man.
+
+"My soul!" said Wrinkles.
+
+Great Grief lay on the bed smoking a pipe and waiting for fame. "Oh, go
+home, Purple. You resent something. It wasn't me, it was the calendar."
+
+"Try and be serious a moment, Grief."
+
+"You're a fool, Purple."
+
+Penny spoke from where he was at work. "Well, if those _Amazement
+Magazine_ people pay me when they said they would I'll have money then."
+
+"So you will, dear," said Grief, satirically. "You'll have money to
+burn. Did the _Amazement_ people ever pay you when they said they
+would? You're wonderfully important all of a sudden, it seems to me. You
+talk like an artist."
+
+Wrinkles, too, smiled at little Pennoyer. "The _Established Magazine_
+people wanted Penny to hire models and make a try for them too. It will
+only cost him a big blue chip. By the time he has invested all the money
+he hasn't got and the rent is two weeks' overdue, he will be able to
+tell the landlord to wait seven months until the Monday morning after
+the publication. Go ahead, Penny."
+
+It was the habit to make game of little Pennoyer. He was always having
+gorgeous opportunities, with no opportunity to take advantage of his
+opportunities.
+
+Penny smiled at them, his tiny, tiny smile of courage.
+
+"You're a confident little cuss," observed Grief, irrelevantly.
+
+"Well, the world has no objection to your being confident also, Grief,"
+said Purple.
+
+"Hasn't it?" said Grief. "Well, I want to know."
+
+Wrinkles could not be light-spirited long. He was obliged to despair
+when occasion offered. At last he sank down in a chair and seized his
+guitar.
+
+"Well, what's to be done?" he said. He began to play mournfully.
+
+"Throw Purple out," mumbled Grief from the bed.
+
+"Are you fairly certain that you will have money then, Penny?" asked
+Purple.
+
+Little Pennoyer looked apprehensive. "Well, I don't know," he said.
+
+And then began that memorable discussion, great in four minds. The
+tobacco was of the "Long John" brand. It smelled like burning mummies.
+
+
+A DINNER ON SUNDAY EVENING.
+
+Once Purple Sanderson went to his home in St. Lawrence county to enjoy
+some country air, and, incidentally, to explain his life failure to his
+people. Previously, Great Grief had given him odds that he would return
+sooner than he had planned, and everybody said that Grief had a good
+bet. It is not a glorious pastime, this explaining of life failures.
+
+Later, Great Grief and Wrinkles went to Haverstraw to visit Grief's
+cousin and sketch. Little Pennoyer was disheartened, for it is bad to be
+imprisoned in brick and dust and cobbles when your ear can hear in the
+distance the harmony of the summer sunlight upon leaf and blade of
+green. Besides, he did not hear Wrinkles and Grief discoursing and
+quarrelling in the den, and Purple coming in at six o'clock with
+contempt.
+
+On Friday afternoon he discovered that he only had fifty cents to last
+until Saturday morning, when he was to get his cheque from the _Gamin_.
+He was an artful little man by this time, however, and it is as true as
+the sky that when he walked toward the _Gamin_ office on Saturday he had
+twenty cents remaining.
+
+The cashier nodded his regrets, "Very sorry, Mr.--er--Pennoyer, but our
+pay-day, you know, is on Monday. Come around any time after ten."
+
+"Oh, it don't matter," said Penny. As he walked along on his return he
+reflected deeply how he could invest his twenty cents in food to last
+until Monday morning any time after ten. He bought two coffee cakes in a
+third avenue bakery. They were very beautiful. Each had a hole in the
+centre, and a handsome scallop all around the edges.
+
+Penny took great care of those cakes. At odd times he would rise from
+his work and go to see that no escape had been made. On Sunday he got up
+at noon and compressed breakfast and noon into one meal. Afterwards he
+had almost three-quarters of a cake still left to him. He congratulated
+himself that with strategy he could make it endure until Monday morning
+any time after ten.
+
+At three in the afternoon there came a faint-hearted knock. "Come in,"
+said Penny. The door opened and old Tim Connegan, who was trying to be a
+model, looked in apprehensively. "I beg pardon, sir," he said at once.
+
+"Come in, Tim, you old thief," said Penny. Tim entered slowly and
+bashfully. "Sit down," said Penny. Tim sat down and began to rub his
+knees, for rheumatism had a mighty hold upon him.
+
+Penny lit his pipe and crossed his legs. "Well, how goes it?"
+
+Tim moved his square jaw upward and flashed Penny a little glance.
+
+"Bad?" said Penny.
+
+The old man raised his hand impressively. "I've been to every studio in
+the hull city, and I never see such absences in my life. What with the
+seashore and the mountains, and this and that resort, I think all the
+models will be starved by fall. I found one man in up on Fifty-seventh
+Street. He ses to me: 'Come around Tuesday--I may want yez and I may
+not.' That was last week. You know, I live down on the Bowery, Mr.
+Pennoyer, and when I got up there on Tuesday, he ses: 'Confound you, are
+you here again?' ses he. I went and sat down in the park, for I was too
+tired for the walk back. And there you are, Mr. Pennoyer. What with
+trampin' around to look for men that are thousand miles away, I'm near
+dead."
+
+"It's hard," said Penny.
+
+"It is, sir. I hope they'll come back soon. The summer is the death of
+us all, sir; it is. Sure, I never know where my next meal is coming
+until I get it. That's true."
+
+"Had anything to-day?"
+
+"Yes, sir, a little."
+
+"How much?"
+
+"Well, sir, a lady gave me a cup of coffee this morning. It was good,
+too, I'm telling you."
+
+Penny went to his cupboard. When he returned, he said: "Here's some
+cake."
+
+Tim thrust forward his hands, palms erect. "Oh, now, Mr. Pennoyer, I
+couldn't. You--"
+
+"Go ahead. What's the odds?"
+
+"Oh, now."
+
+"Go ahead, you old bat."
+
+Penny smoked.
+
+When Tim was going out, he turned to grow eloquent again. "Well, I can't
+tell you how much I'm obliged to you, Mr. Pennoyer. You--"
+
+"Don't mention it, old man."
+
+Penny smoked.
+
+
+
+
+THE SILVER PAGEANT.
+
+
+"It's rotten," said Grief.
+
+"Oh, it's fair, old man. Still, I would not call it a great contribution
+to American art," said Wrinkles.
+
+"You've got a good thing, Gaunt, if you go at it right," said little
+Pennoyer.
+
+These were all volunteer orations. The boys had come in one by one and
+spoken their opinions. Gaunt listened to them no more than if they had
+been so many match-peddlers. He never heard anything close at hand, and
+he never saw anything excepting that which transpired across a mystic
+wide sea. The shadow of his thoughts was in his eyes, a little grey
+mist, and, when what you said to him had passed out of your mind, he
+asked: "Wha--a--at?" It was understood that Gaunt was very good to
+tolerate the presence of the universe, which was noisy and interested in
+itself. All the younger men, moved by an instinct of faith, declared
+that he would one day be a great artist if he would only move faster
+than a pyramid. In the meantime he did not hear their voices.
+Occasionally when he saw a man take vivid pleasure in life, he faintly
+evinced an admiration. It seemed to strike him as a feat. As for him, he
+was watching that silver pageant across a sea.
+
+When he came from Paris to New York somebody told him that he must make
+his living. He went to see some book publishers, and talked to them in
+his manner--as if he had just been stunned. At last one of them gave him
+drawings to do, and it did not surprise him. It was merely as if rain
+had come down.
+
+Great Grief went to see him in his studio, and returned to the den to
+say: "Gaunt is working in his sleep. Somebody ought to set fire to him."
+
+It was then that the others went over and smoked, and gave their
+opinions of a drawing. Wrinkles said: "Are you really looking at it,
+Gaunt? I don't think you've seen it yet, Gaunt?"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Why don't you look at it?"
+
+When Wrinkles departed, the model, who was resting at that time,
+followed him into the hall and waved his arms in rage. "That feller's
+crazy. Yeh ought t' see--" and he recited lists of all the wrongs that
+can come to models.
+
+It was a superstitious little band over in the den. They talked often of
+Gaunt. "He's got pictures in his eyes," said Wrinkles. They had expected
+genius to blindly stumble at the perface and ceremonies of the world,
+and each new flounder by Gaunt made a stir in the den. It awed them, and
+they waited.
+
+At last one morning Gaunt burst into the room. They were all as dead
+men.
+
+"I'm going to paint a picture." The mist in his eyes was pierced by a
+Coverian gleam. His gestures were wild and extravagant. Grief stretched
+out smoking on the bed, Wrinkles and little Pennoyer working at their
+drawing-boards tilted against the table--were suddenly frozen. If bronze
+statues had come and danced heavily before them, they could not have
+been thrilled further.
+
+Gaunt tried to tell them of something, but it became knotted in his
+throat, and then suddenly he dashed out again.
+
+Later they went earnestly over to Gaunt's studio. Perhaps he would tell
+them of what he saw across the sea.
+
+He lay dead upon the floor. There was a little grey mist before his
+eyes.
+
+When they finally arrived home that night they took a long time to
+undress for bed, and then came the moment when they waited for some one
+to put out the gas. Grief said at last, with the air of a man whose
+brain is desperately driven: "I wonder--I--what do you suppose he was
+going to paint?"
+
+Wrinkles reached and turned out the gas, and from the sudden profound
+darkness, he said: "There is a mistake. He couldn't have had pictures in
+his eyes."
+
+
+
+
+A STREET SCENE IN NEW YORK.
+
+
+The man and the boy conversed in Italian, mumbling the soft syllables
+and making little, quick egotistical gestures. Suddenly the man glared
+and wavered on his limbs for a moment as if some blinding light had
+flashed before his vision; then he swayed like a drunken man and fell.
+The boy grasped his arm convulsively, and made an attempt to support his
+companion so that the body slid to the side-walk with an easy motion
+like a corpse sinking into the sea. The boy screamed.
+
+Instantly people from all directions turned their gaze upon that figure
+prone upon the side-walk. In a moment there was a dodging, peering,
+pushing crowd about the man. A volley of questions, replies,
+speculations flew to and fro among all the bobbing heads.
+
+"What's th' matter? what's th' matter?"
+
+"Oh, a jag, I guess!"
+
+"Aw, he's got a fit!"
+
+"What's th' matter? what's th' matter?"
+
+Two streams of people coming from different directions met at this point
+to form a great crowd. Others came from across the street.
+
+Down under their feet, almost lost under this mass of people, lay a man,
+hidden in the shadows caused by their forms, which, in fact, barely
+allowed a particle of light to pass between them. Those in the foremost
+rank bended down eagerly, anxious to see everything. Others behind them
+crowded savagely like starving men fighting for bread. Always, the
+question could be heard flying in the air. "What's th' matter." Some,
+near to the body, and perhaps feeling the danger of being forced over
+upon it, twisted their heads and protested violently to those unheeding
+ones who were scuffling in the rear: "Say, quit yer shovin', can't yeh?
+What do yeh want, anyhow? Quit!"
+
+Somebody back in the throng suddenly said: "Say, young feller, cheese
+that pushin'! I ain't no peach!"
+
+Another voice said: "Well, dat's all right--"
+
+The boy who had been with the Italian was standing helplessly, a
+frightened look in his eyes, and holding the man's hand. Sometimes he
+looked about him dumbly, with indefinite hope, as if he expected sudden
+assistance to come from the clouds. The men about him frequently jostled
+him until he was obliged to put his hand upon the breast of the body to
+maintain his balance. Those nearest the man upon the sidewalk at first
+saw his body go through a singular contortion. It was as if an invisible
+hand had reached up from the earth and had seized him by the hair. He
+seemed dragged slowly, pitilessly backward, while his body stiffened
+convulsively, his hands clenched, and his arms swung rigidly upward.
+Through his pallid, half-closed lids one could see the steel-coloured,
+assassin-like gleam of his eye, that shone with a mystic light as a
+corpse might glare at those live ones who seemed about to trample it
+under foot. As for the men near, they hung back, appearing as if they
+expected it might spring erect and grab them. Their eyes, however, were
+held in a spell of fascination. They scarce seemed to breathe. They were
+contemplating a depth into which a human being had sunk, and the marvel
+of this mystery of life or death held them chained. Occasionally from
+the rear a man came thrusting his way impetuously, satisfied that there
+was a horror to be seen, and apparently insane to get a view of it.
+More self-contained men swore at these persons when they tread upon
+their toes.
+
+The street cars jingled past this scene in endless parade. Occasionally,
+down where the elevated road crossed the street, one could hear
+sometimes a thunder, suddenly begun and suddenly ended. Over the heads
+of the crowd hung an immovable canvas sign: "Regular Dinner twenty
+cents."
+
+The body on the pave seemed like a bit of debris sunk in this human
+ocean.
+
+But after the first spasm of curiosity had passed away, there were those
+in the crowd who began to bethink themselves of some way to help. A
+voice called out: "Rub his wrists." The boy and a man on the other side
+of the body began to rub the wrists and slap the palms of the man. A
+tall German suddenly appeared, and resolutely began to push the crowd
+back. "Get back there--get back," he repeated continually while he
+pushed at them. He seemed to have authority; the crowd obeyed him. He
+and another man knelt down by the man in the darkness and loosened his
+shirt at the throat. Once they struck a match and held it close to the
+man's face. This livid visage suddenly appearing under their feet in the
+light of the match's yellow glare, made the crowd shudder. Half
+articulate exclamations could be heard. There were men who nearly
+created a riot in the madness of their desire to see the thing.
+
+Meanwhile others had been questioning the boy. "What's his name? Where
+does he live?"
+
+Then a policeman appeared. The first part of this little drama had gone
+on without his assistance, but now he came, striding swiftly, his helmet
+towering over the crowd and shading that impenetrable police face. He
+charged the crowd as if he were a squadron of Irish Lancers. The people
+fairly withered before this onslaught. Occasionally he shouted: "Come,
+make way there. Come, now!" He was evidently a man whose life was
+half-pestered out of him by people who were sufficiently unreasonable
+and stupid as to insist on walking in the streets. He felt the rage
+toward them that a placid cow feels toward the flies that hover in
+clouds and disturb its repose. When he arrived at the centre of the
+crowd he first said, threateningly: "What's th' matter here?" And then
+when he saw that human bit of wreckage at the bottom of the sea of men,
+he said to it: "Come, git up out that! Git out a here!"
+
+Whereupon hands were raised in the crowd and a volley of decorated
+information was blazed at the officer.
+
+"Ah, he's got a fit, can't yeh see?"
+
+"He's got a fit!"
+
+"What th'ell yeh doin'? Leave 'im be!"
+
+The policeman menaced with a glance the crowd from whose safe precincts
+the defiant voices had emerged.
+
+A doctor had come. He and the policeman bended down at the man's side.
+Occasionally the officer reared up to create room. The crowd fell away
+before his admonitions, his threats, his sarcastic questions, and before
+the sweep of those two huge buckskin gloves.
+
+At last the peering ones saw the man on the side-walk begin to breathe
+heavily, strainedly, as if he had just come to the surface from some
+deep water. He uttered a low cry in his foreign way. It was like a
+baby's squeal or the side wail of a little storm-tossed kitten. As this
+cry went forth to all those eager ears the jostling, crowding
+recommenced again furiously, until the doctor was obliged to yell
+warningly a dozen times. The policeman had gone to send the ambulance
+call.
+
+Then a man struck another match, and in its meagre light the doctor felt
+the skull of the prostrate man carefully to discover if any wound had
+been caused by his fall to the stone side-walk. The crowd pressed and
+crushed again. It was as if they fully expected to see blood by the
+light of the match, and the desire made them appear almost insane. The
+policeman returned and fought with them. The doctor looked up
+occasionally to scold and demand room.
+
+At last, out of the faint haze of light far up the street, there came
+the sound of a gong beating rapidly. A monstrous truck loaded to the sky
+with barrels scurried to one side with marvellous agility. And then the
+black waggon, with its gleam of gold lettering and bright brass gong,
+clattered into view, the horse galloping. A young man, as imperturbable
+almost as if he were at a picnic, sat upon the rear seat. When they
+picked up the limp body, from which came little moans and howls, the
+crowd almost turned into a mob. When the ambulance started on its
+banging and clanging return, they stood and gazed until it was quite out
+of sight. Some resumed their way with an air of relief. Others still
+continued to stare after the vanished ambulance and its burden as if
+they had been cheated, as if the curtain had been rung down on a tragedy
+that was but half completed; and this impenetrable blanket intervening
+between a sufferer and their curiosity seemed to make them feel an
+injustice.
+
+
+
+
+MINETTA LANE, NEW YORK.
+
+
+ITS WORST DAYS HAVE NOW PASSED AWAY. BUT ITS INHABITANTS STILL INCLUDE
+MANY WHOSE DEEDS ARE EVIL.
+
+
+THE CELEBRATED RESORT OF MAMMY ROSS.
+
+
+Minetta Lane is a small and becobbled valley between hills and dingy
+brick. At night the street lamps, burning dimly, cause the shadows to
+be important, and in the gloom one sees groups of quietly conversant
+negroes, with occasionally the gleam of a passing growler. Everything is
+vaguely outlined and of uncertain identity, unless, indeed, it be the
+flashing buttons and shield of the policeman on his coast. The Sixth
+Avenue horse-cars jingle past one end of the lane, and a block eastward
+the little thoroughfare ends in the darkness of M'Dougall Street.
+
+One wonders how such an insignificant alley could get such an assuredly
+large reputation, but, as a matter of fact, Minetta Lane and Minetta
+Street, which leads from it southward to Bleecker Street, were, until a
+few years ago, two of the most enthusiastically murderous thoroughfares
+in New York. Bleecker Street, M'Dougall Street, and nearly all the
+streets thereabouts were most unmistakably bad; the other streets went
+away and hid. To gain a reputation in Minetta Lane in those days a man
+was obliged to commit a number of furious crimes, and no celebrity was
+more important than the man who had a good honest killing to his credit.
+The inhabitants, for the most part, were negroes, and they represented
+the very worst element of their race. The razor habit clung to them with
+the tenacity of an epidemic, and every night the uneven cobbles felt
+blood. Minetta Lane was not a public thoroughfare at this period. It was
+a street set apart, a refuge for criminals. Thieves came here
+preferably with their gains, and almost any day peculiar sentences
+passed among the inhabitants. "Big Jim turned a thousand last night."
+"No-Toe's made another haul." And the worshipful citizens would make
+haste to be present at the consequent revel.
+
+As has been said, Minetta Lane was then no thoroughfare. A peaceable
+citizen chose to make a circuit rather than venture through this place,
+that swarmed with the most dangerous people in the city. Indeed, the
+thieves of the district used to say: "Once get in the lane and you're
+all right." Even a policeman in chase of a criminal would probably shy
+away instead of pursuing him into the lane. The odds were too great
+against a lone officer.
+
+Sailors, and any men who might appear to have money about them, were
+welcomed with all proper ceremony at the terrible dens of the lane. At
+departure they were fortunate if they still retained their teeth. It was
+the custom to leave very little else to them. There was every facility
+for the capture of coin, from trap-doors to plain ordinary knock-out
+drops.
+
+And yet Minetta Lane is built on the grave of Minetta Brook, where, in
+olden times, lovers walked under the willows on the bank, and Minetta
+Lane, in later times, was the home of many of the best families of the
+town.
+
+A negro named Bloodthirsty was perhaps the most luminous figure of
+Minetta Lane's aggregation of desperadoes. Bloodthirsty supposedly is
+alive now, but he has vanished from the lane. The police want him for
+murder. Bloodthirsty is a large negro, and very hideous. He has a
+rolling eye that shows white at the wrong time, and his neck, under the
+jaw, is dreadfully scarred and pitted.
+
+Bloodthirsty was particularly eloquent when drunk, and in the wildness
+of a spree he would rave so graphically about gore that even the
+habitated wool of old timers would stand straight.
+
+Bloodthirsty meant most of it, too. That is why his orations were
+impressive. His remarks were usually followed by the wide, lightning
+sweep of his razor. None cared to exchange epithets with Bloodthirsty. A
+man in a boiler iron suit would walk down to City Hall and look at the
+clock before he would ask the time of day from the single-minded and
+ingenuous Bloodthirsty.
+
+After Bloodthirsty, in combative importance, came No-Toe Charley.
+Singularly enough, Charley was called No-Toe Charley because he did not
+have a toe on his feet. Charley was a small negro, and his manner of
+amusement befitting a smaller man. Charley was more wise, more sly, more
+round-about than the other man. The path of his crimes was like a
+corkscrew in architecture, and his method led him to make many tunnels.
+With all his cleverness, however, No-Toe was finally induced to pay a
+visit to the gentlemen in the grim, grey building up the river--Sing
+Sing.
+
+Black-Cat was another famous bandit who made the land his home.
+Black-Cat is dead. Jube Tyler has been sent to prison, and after
+mentioning the recent disappearance of Old Man Spriggs it may be said
+that the lane is now destitute of the men who once crowned it with a
+glory of crime. It is hardly essential to mention Guinea Johnson.
+
+Guinea is not a great figure. Guinea is just an ordinary little crook.
+Sometimes Guinea pays a visit to his friends, the other little crooks
+who make homes in the lane, but he himself does not live there, and with
+him out of it there is now no one whose industry's unlawfulness has yet
+earned him the dignity of a nickname. Indeed, it is difficult to find
+people now who remember the old gorgeous days, although it is but two
+years since the lane shone with sin like a new head-light. But after a
+search the reporter found three.
+
+Mammy Ross is one of the last relics of the days of slaughter still
+living there. Her weird history also reaches back to the blossoming of
+the first members of the Whyo gang in the Old Sixth Ward, and her mind
+is stored with bloody memories. She at one time kept a sailors'
+boarding-house near the Tombs prison, and the accounts of all the
+festive crimes of that neighbourhood in ancient years roll easily from
+her tongue. They killed a sailor man every day, and pedestrians went
+about the streets wearing stoves for fear of the handy knives. At the
+present day the route to Mammy's home is up a flight of grimy stairs
+that are pasted on the outside of an old and tottering frame house. Then
+there is a hall blacker than a wolf's throat, and this hall leads to a
+little kitchen where Mammy usually sits groaning by the fire. She is, of
+course, very old, and she is also very fat. She seems always to be in
+great pain. She says she is suffering from "de very las' dregs of de
+yaller fever."
+
+During the first part of a reporter's recent visit, old Mammy seemed
+most dolefully oppressed by her various diseases. Her great body shook
+and her teeth clicked spasmodically during her long and painful
+respirations. From time to time she reached her trembling hand and drew
+a shawl closer about her shoulders. She presented as true a picture of a
+person undergoing steady, unchangeable, chronic pain as a patent
+medicine firm could wish to discover for miraculous purposes. She
+breathed like a fish thrown out on the bank, and her old head
+continually quivered in the nervous tremors of the extremely aged and
+debilitated person. Meanwhile her daughter hung over the stove and
+placidly cooked sausages.
+
+Appeals were made to the old woman's memory. Various personages who had
+been sublime figures of crime in the long-gone days were mentioned to
+her, and presently her eyes began to brighten. Her head no longer
+quivered. She seemed to lose for a period her sense of pain in the
+gentle excitement caused by the invocation of the spirits of her memory.
+
+It appears that she had had a historic quarrel with Apple Mag. She first
+recited the prowess of Apple Mag; how this emphatic lady used to argue
+with paving stones, carving knives, and bricks. Then she told of the
+quarrel; what Mag said; what she said. It seems that they cited each
+other as spectacles of sin and corruption in more fully explanatory
+terms than are commonly known to be possible. But it was one of Mammy's
+most gorgeous recollections, and, as she told it, a smile widened over
+her face.
+
+Finally she explained her celebrated retort to one of the most
+illustrious thugs that had blessed the city in bygone days. "Ah says to
+'im, ah says: 'You--you'll die in yer boots like Gallopin'
+Thompson--dat's what you'll do. You des min' dat', honey. Ah got o'ny
+one chile, an' he ain't nuthin' but er cripple; but le'me tel' you, man,
+dat boy'll live t' pick de feathers f'm de goose dat'll eat de grass dat
+grows over your grave, man.' Dat's what I tol' 'm. But--law sake--how I
+know dat in less'n three day, dat man be lying in de gutter wif a knife
+stickin' out'n his back. Lawd, no, I sholy never s'pected noting like
+dat."
+
+These reminiscences, at once maimed and reconstructed, have been
+treasured by old Mammy as carefully, as tenderly, as if they were the
+various little tokens of an early love. She applies the same
+black-handed sentiment to them, and, as she sits groaning by the fire,
+it is plainly to be seen that there is only one food for her ancient
+brain, and that is the recollection of the beautiful fights and murders
+of the past.
+
+On the other side of the lane, but near Mammy's house, Pop Babcock keeps
+a restaurant. Pop says it is a restaurant, and so it must be one; but
+you could pass there ninety times each day and never know you were
+passing a restaurant. There is one obscure little window in the
+basement, and if you went close and peered in you might, after a time,
+be able to make out a small, dusty sign, lying amid jars on a dusty
+shelf. This sign reads: "Oysters in every style." If you are of a
+gambling turn of mind, you will probably stand out in the street and bet
+yourself black in the face that there isn't an oyster within a hundred
+yards. But Pop Babcock made that sign, and Pop Babcock could not tell an
+untruth. Pop is a model of all the virtues which an inventive fate has
+made for us. He says so.
+
+As far as goes the management of Pop's restaurant, it differs from
+Sherry's. In the first place, the door is always kept locked. The
+wardmen of the Fifteenth precinct have a way of prowling through the
+restaurant almost every night, and Pop keeps the door locked in order to
+keep out the objectionable people that cause the wardmen's visits. He
+says so. The cooking stove is located in the main room of the
+restaurant, and it is placed in such a strategic manner that it occupies
+about all the space that is not already occupied by a table, a bench,
+and two chairs. The table will, on a pinch, furnish room for the plates
+of two people if they are willing to crowd. Pop says he is the best cook
+in the world.
+
+When questioned concerning the present condition of the lane, Pop said:
+"Quiet! Quiet! Lo'd save us, maybe it ain't. Quiet! Quiet!" His emphasis
+was arranged crescendo, until the last word was really a vocal
+explosion. "Why, dish er' lane ain't nohow like what it uster be--no,
+indeed it ain't. No, sir. 'Deed it ain't. Why, I kin remember when dey
+was a-cuttin' an' a-slashin' long yere all night. 'Deed dey wos. My-my,
+dem times was different. Dat der Kent, he kep' de place at Green Gate
+cou't down yer ol' Mammy's--an' he was a hard baby--'deed he was--an'
+ol' Black-Cat an' ol' Bloodthirsty, dey was a-comin' round yere
+a-cuttin', an' a-slashin', an' a-cuttin', an' a-slashin'. Didn't dar'
+say boo to a goose in dose days, dat you didn't, less'n you lookin' fer
+a scrap. No, sir." Then he gave information concerning his own prowess
+at that time. Pop is about as tall as a picket of an undersized fence.
+"But dey didn't have nothin' ter say ter me. No, sir, 'deed dey didn't.
+I would lay down fer none of 'em. No, sir. Dey knew my gait, 'deed dey
+did. Man, man, many's de time I buck up agin 'em."
+
+At this time Pop had three customers in his place, one asleep on the
+bench, one asleep on two chairs, and one asleep on the floor behind the
+stove.
+
+But there is one who lends dignity of the real bevel-edged type to
+Minetta Lane, and that man is Hank Anderson. Hank, of course, does not
+live in the lane, but the shadows of his social perfections fall upon it
+as refreshingly as a morning dew.
+
+Hank gave a dance twice in each week at a hall hard by in M'Dougall
+Street, and the dusky aristocracy of the neighbourhood know their
+guiding beacon. Moreover, Hank holds an annual ball in Forty-fourth
+Street. Also, he gives a picnic each year to the Montezuma Club, when he
+again appears as a guiding beacon. This picnic is usually held on a
+barge, and the excursion is a very joyous one. Some years ago it
+required the entire reserve squad of an up-town police precinct to
+properly control the enthusiasm of the gay picnickers, but that was an
+exceptional exuberance, and no measure of Hank's ability for management.
+
+He is really a great manager. He was Boss Tweed's body-servant in the
+days when Tweed was a political prince, and any one who saw Bill Tweed
+through a spy-glass learned the science of leading, pulling, driving,
+and hauling men in a way to keep the men ignorant of it. Hank imbibed
+from this fount of knowledge, and he applied his information in Thompson
+Street. Thompson Street salaamed. Presently he bore a proud title: "The
+Mayor of Thompson Street." Dignities from the principal political
+organisations of the city adorned his brow, and he speedily became
+illustrious.
+
+Hank knew the lane well in its direful days. As for the inhabitants, he
+kept clear of them, and yet in touch with them, according to a method
+that he might have learned in the Sixth ward. The Sixth ward was a good
+place in which to learn that trick. Anderson can tell many strange tales
+and good of the lane, and he tells them in the graphic way of his class.
+"Why, they could steal your shirt without moving a wrinkle on it."
+
+The killing of Joe Carey was the last murder that happened in the
+Minettas. Carey had what might be called a mixed-ale difference with a
+man named Kenny. They went out to the middle of Minetta Street to
+affably fight it out and determine the justice of the question.
+
+In the scrimmage Kenny drew a knife, thrust quickly, and Carey fell.
+Kenny had not gone a hundred feet before he ran into the arms of a
+policeman.
+
+There is probably no street in New York where the police keep closer
+watch than they do in Minetta Lane. There was a time when the
+inhabitants had a profound and reasonable contempt for the public
+guardians, but they have it no longer apparently. Any citizen can walk
+through there at any time in perfect safety, unless, perhaps, he should
+happen to get too frivolous. To be strictly accurate, the change began
+under the reign of police Captain Chapman. Under Captain Groo, a
+commander of the Fifteenth precinct, the lane donned a complete new
+garb. Its denizens brag now of its peace, precisely as they once bragged
+of its war. It is no more a bloody lane. The song of the razor is seldom
+heard. There are still toughs and semi-toughs galore in it, but they
+can't get a chance with the copper looking the other way. Groo got the
+poor lane by the throat. If a man should insist upon becoming a victim
+of the badger game, he could probably succeed, upon search in Minetta
+Lane, as indeed, he could on any of the great avenues, but then Minetta
+Lane is not supposed to be a pearly street of Paradise.
+
+In the meantime the Italians have begun to dispute the possession of the
+lane with the negroes. Green Gate Court is filled with them now, and a
+row of houses near the M'Dougall Street corner is occupied entirely by
+Italian families. None of them seem to be over fond of the old Mulberry
+Bend fashion of life, and there are no cutting affrays among them worth
+mentioning. It is the original negro element that makes the trouble when
+there is trouble.
+
+But they are happy in this condition are these people. The most
+extraordinary quality of the negro is his enormous capacity for
+happiness under most adverse circumstances. Minetta Lane is a place of
+poverty and sin, but these influences cannot destroy the broad smile of
+the negro--a vain and simple child, but happy. They all smile here, the
+most evil as well as the poorest. Knowing the negro, one always expects
+laughter from him, be he ever so poor, but it was a new experience to
+see a broad grin on the face of the devil. Even old Pop Babcock had a
+laugh as fine and mellow as would be the sound of falling glass, broken
+saints from high windows, in the silence of some great cathedral's
+hollow.
+
+
+
+
+THE ROOF GARDENS AND GARDENERS OF NEW YORK.
+
+A PHASE OF NEW YORK LIFE AS SEEN BY A CLOSE OBSERVER.
+
+
+When the hot weather comes the roof gardens burst into full bloom, and
+if an inhabitant of Chicago should take flight on his wings over this
+city, he would observe six or eight flashing spots in the darkness,
+spots as radiant as crowns. These are the roof gardens, and if a giant
+had flung a handful of monstrous golden coins upon the sombre-shadowed
+city he could not have benefited the metropolis more, although he would
+not have given the same opportunity to various commercial aspirants to
+charge a price and a half for everything. There are two classes of
+men--reporters and central office detectives--who do not mind these
+prices because they are very prodigal of their money.
+
+Now is the time of the girl with the copper voice, the Irishman with
+circular whiskers, and the minstrel who had a reputation in 1833. To the
+street the noise of the band comes down on the wind in fitful gusts, and
+at the brilliantly illuminated rail there is suggestion of many straw
+hats.
+
+One of the main features of the roof garden is the waiter, who stands
+directly in front of you whenever anything interesting transpires on the
+stage. This waiter is three hundred feet high and seventy-two feet wide.
+His finger can block your view of the golden-haired _soubrette_, and
+when he waves his arm the stage disappears as if by a miracle. What
+particularly fascinates you is his lack of self-appreciation. He doesn't
+know that his length over all is three hundred feet, and that his beam
+is seventy-two feet. He only knows that while the golden-haired
+_soubrette_ is singing her first verse he is depositing beer on the
+table before some thirsty New Yorkers. He only knows that during the
+third verse the thirsty New Yorkers object to the roof-garden prices. He
+does not know that behind him are some fifty citizens who ordinarily
+would not give three whoops to see the golden-haired _soubrette_, but
+who, under these particular circumstances, are kept from swift
+assassination by sheer force of the human will. He gives an impressive
+exhibition of a man who is regardless of consequences, oblivious to
+everything save his task, which is to provide beer. Some day there may
+be a wholesale massacre of roof-garden waiters, but they will die with
+astonished faces and with questions on their lips. Skulls so steadfastly
+opaque defy axes, or any of the other methods which the populace
+occasionally use to cure colossal stupidity.
+
+Between numbers on an ordinary roof-garden programme, the orchestra
+sometimes plays what the more enlightened and wary citizens of the town
+call a "beer overture." But, for reasons which no civil service
+commission could give, the waiter does not choose this time to serve the
+thirsty. No; he waits until the golden-haired _soubrette_ appears, he
+waits until the haggard audience has goaded itself into some interest in
+the proceedings. Then he gets under way. Then he comes forth and blots
+out the stage. In case of war, all roof-garden waiters should be
+recruited in a special regiment and sent out in advance of everything.
+There is a peculiar quality of bullet-proofness about them which would
+turn a projectile pale.
+
+If you have strategy enough in your soul you may gain furtive glimpses
+of the stage, despite the efforts of the waiters, and then, with
+something to engage the attention when the attention grows weary of the
+mystic wind, the flashing yellow lights, the music, and the undertone of
+the far street's roar, you should be happy.
+
+Far up into the night there is a wildness, a temper to the air which
+suggests tossing tree boughs and the swift rustle of grass. The New
+Yorker, whose business will not allow him to go out to nature, perhaps,
+appreciates these little opportunities to go up to nature, although
+doubtless he thinks he goes to see the show.
+
+One season two new roof gardens have opened. The one at the top of Grand
+Central Palace is large enough for a regimental drill room. The band is
+imprisoned still higher in a turreted affair, and a person who prefers
+gentle and unobtrusive amusement can gain deep pleasure and satisfaction
+from watching the leader of this band gesticulating upon the heavens.
+His figure is silhouetted beautifully against the sky, and every gesture
+in which he wrings noise from his band is interestingly accentuated.
+
+The other new roof garden was Oscar Hammerstein's Olympia, which blazes
+on Broadway.
+
+Oscar originally made a great reputation for getting out injunctions.
+All court judges in New York worked overtime when Oscar was in this
+business. He enjoined everybody in sight. He had a special machine
+made--"Drop a nickel in the judge and get an injunction." Then he sent a
+man to Washington for twenty-two thousand dollars' worth of nickels. In
+Harlem, where he then lived, it rained orders of the court every day at
+twelve o'clock. The street-cleaning commission was obliged to enlist a
+special force to deal with Oscar's injunctions. Citizens meeting on the
+street never said: "Good morning, how do you feel to-day?" They always
+said: "Good morning, have you been enjoined yet to-day?" When a man
+perhaps wished to enter a little game of draw, the universal form was
+changed when he sent a note to his wife: "Dear Louise, I have received
+an order of the court restraining me from coming home to dinner
+to-night. Yours, George."
+
+But Oscar changed. He smashed his machine, girded himself, and resolved
+to provide the public with amusement. And now we see this great mind
+applying itself to a roof garden with the same unflagging industry and
+boundless energy which had previously expressed itself in injunctions.
+The Olympia, his new roof garden, is a feat. It has an exuberance which
+reminds one of the Union Depot train-shed of some western city. The
+steel arches of the roof make a wide and splendid sweep, and over in the
+corner there are real swans swimming in real water. The whole structure
+glares like a conflagration with the countless electric lights. Oscar
+has caused the execution of decorative paintings upon the walls. If he
+had caused the execution of the decorative painters he would have done
+better; but a man who has devoted the greater part of his life to the
+propagation of injunctions is not supposed to understand that wall
+decoration which appears to have been done with a nozzle is worse than
+none. But if carpers say that Oscar failed in his landscapes, none can
+say that he failed in his measurements of the popular mind. The people
+come in swarms to the Olympia. Two elevators are busy at conveying them
+to where the cool and steady night-wind insults the straw hat; and the
+scene here during the popular part of the evening is perhaps more gaudy
+and dazzling than any other in New York.
+
+The bicycle has attained an economic position of vast importance. The
+roof garden ought to attain such a position, and it doubtless will
+soon--as we give it the opportunity it desires.
+
+The Arab or the Moor probably invented the roof garden in some long-gone
+centuries, and they are at this day inveterate roof gardeners. The
+American, surprisingly belated--for him, has but recently seized upon
+the idea, and its development here has been only partial. The
+possibilities of the roof garden are still unknown.
+
+Here is a vast city in which thousands of people in summer half stifle,
+cry out continually for air, fresher air. Just above their heads is what
+might be called a county of unoccupied land. It is not ridiculously
+small when compared with the area of New York county itself. But it is
+as lonely as a desert, this region of roofs. It is as untrodden as the
+corners of Arizona. Unless a man be a roof gardener, he knows
+practically nothing of this land.
+
+Down in the slums necessity forces a solution of problems. It drives the
+people to the roofs. An evening upon a tenement roof with the great
+golden march of the stars across the sky, and Johnnie gone for a pail of
+beer, is not so bad if you have never seen the mountains nor heard, to
+your heart, the slow, sad song of the pines.
+
+
+
+
+IN THE BROADWAY CARS.
+
+PANORAMA OF A DAY FROM THE DOWN-TOWN RUSH OF THE MORNING TO THE
+UNINTERRUPTED WHIRR OF THE CABLE AT NIGHT--THE MAN, AND THE WOMAN, AND
+THE CONDUCTOR.
+
+
+The cable cars come down Broadway as the waters come down at Lodore.
+Years ago Father Knickerbocker had convulsions when it was proposed to
+lay impious rails on his sacred thoroughfare. At the present day the
+cars, by force of column and numbers, almost dominate the great street,
+and the eye of even an old New Yorker is held by these long yellow
+monsters which prowl intently up and down, up and down, in a mystic
+search.
+
+In the grey of the morning they come out of the up-town, bearing
+janitors, porters, all that class which carries the keys to set alive
+the great down-town. Later, they shower clerks. Later still, they shower
+more clerks. And the thermometer which is attached to a conductor's
+temper is steadily rising, rising, and the blissful time arrives when
+everybody hangs to a strap and stands on his neighbour's toes. Ten
+o'clock comes, and the Broadway cars, as well as elevated cars, horse
+cars, and ferryboats innumerable, heave sighs of relief. They have
+filled lower New York with a vast army of men who will chase to and fro
+and amuse themselves until almost nightfall.
+
+The cable car's pulse drops to normal. But the conductor's pulse begins
+now to beat in split seconds. He has come to the crisis in his day's
+agony. He is now to be overwhelmed with feminine shoppers. They all are
+going to give him two-dollar bills to change. They all are going to
+threaten to report him. He passes his hand across his brow and curses
+his beard from black to grey and from grey to black.
+
+Men and women have different ways of hailing a car. A man--if he is not
+an old choleric gentleman, who owns not this road but some other
+road--throws up a timid finger, and appears to believe that the King of
+Abyssinia is careering past on his war-chariot, and only his opinion of
+other people's Americanism keeps him from deep salaams. The gripman
+usually jerks his thumb over his shoulder and indicates the next car,
+which is three miles away. Then the man catches the last platform, goes
+into the car, climbs upon some one's toes, opens his morning paper, and
+is happy.
+
+When a woman hails a car there is no question of its being the King of
+Abyssinia's war-chariot. She has bought the car for three dollars and
+ninety-eight cents. The conductor owes his position to her, and the
+gripman's mother does her laundry. No captain in the Royal Horse
+Artillery ever stops his battery from going through a stone house in a
+way to equal her manner of bringing that car back on its haunches. Then
+she walks leisurely forward, and after scanning the step to see if there
+is any mud upon it, and opening her pocket-book to make sure of a
+two-dollar bill, she says: "Do you give transfers down Twenty-eighth
+Street?"
+
+Some time the conductor breaks the bell strap when he pulls it under
+these conditions. Then, as the car goes on, he goes and bullies some
+person who had nothing to do with the affair.
+
+The car sweeps on its diagonal path through the Tenderloin with its
+hotels, its theatres, its flower shops, its 10,000,000 actors who played
+with Booth and Barret. It passes Madison Square and enters the gorge
+made by the towering walls of great shops. It sweeps around the double
+curve at Union Square and Fourteenth Street, and a life insurance agent
+falls in a fit as the car dashes over the crossing, narrowly missing
+three old ladies, two old gentlemen, a newly-married couple, a sandwich
+man, a newsboy, and a dog. At Grace Church the conductor has an
+altercation with a brave and reckless passenger who beards him in his
+own car, and at Canal Street he takes dire vengeance by tumbling a
+drunken man on to the pavement. Meanwhile, the gripman has become
+involved with countless truck drivers, and inch by inch, foot by foot,
+he fights his way to City Hall Park. On past the Post Office the car
+goes, with the gripman getting advice, admonition, personal comment, an
+invitation to fight from the drivers, until Battery Park appears at the
+foot of the slope, and as the car goes sedately around the curve the
+burnished shield of the bay shines through the trees.
+
+It is a great ride, full of exciting actions. Those inexperienced
+persons who have been merely chased by Indians know little of the
+dramatic quality which life may hold for them. These jungle of men and
+vehicles, these canyons of streets, these lofty mountains of iron and cut
+stone--a ride through them affords plenty of excitement. And no lone
+panther's howl is more serious in intention than the howl of the truck
+driver when the cable car bumps one of his rear wheels.
+
+Owing to a strange humour of the gods that make our comfort, sailor hats
+with wide brims come into vogue whenever we are all engaged in hanging
+to cable-car straps. There is only one more serious combination known to
+science, but a trial of it is at this day impossible. If a troupe of
+Elizabethan courtiers in large ruffs should board a cable car, the
+complication would be a very awesome one, and the profanity would be in
+old English, but very inspiring. However, the combination of
+wide-brimmed hats and crowded cable cars is tremendous in its power to
+cause misery to the patient New York public.
+
+Suppose you are in a cable car, clutching for life and family a creaking
+strap from overhead. At your shoulder is a little dude in a very
+wide-brimmed straw hat with a red band. If you were in your senses you
+would recognise this flaming band as an omen of blood. But you are not
+in your senses; you are in a Broadway cable car. You are not supposed to
+have any senses. From the forward end you hear the gripman uttering
+shrill whoops and running over citizens. Suddenly the car comes to a
+curve. Making a swift running start, it turns three hand-springs, throws
+a cart wheel for luck, bounds into the air, hurls six passengers over
+the nearest building, and comes down a-straddle of the track. That is
+the way in which we turn curves in New York.
+
+Meanwhile, during the car's gamboling, the corrugated rim of the dude's
+hat has swept naturally across your neck, and has left nothing for your
+head to do but to quit your shoulders. As the car roars your head falls
+into the waiting arms of the proper authorities. The dude is dead;
+everything is dead. The interior of the car resembles the scene of the
+battle of Wounded Knee, but this gives you small satisfaction.
+
+There was once a person possessing a fund of uncanny humour who greatly
+desired to import from past ages a corps of knights in full armour. He
+then purposed to pack the warriors into a cable car and send them around
+a curve. He thought that he could gain much pleasure by standing near
+and listening to the wild clash of steel upon steel--the tumult of
+mailed heads striking together, the bitter grind of armoured legs
+bending the wrong way. He thought that this would teach them that war is
+grim.
+
+Towards evening, when the tides of travel set northward, it is curious
+to see how the gripman and conductor reverse their tempers. Their
+dispositions flop over like patent signals. During the down-trip they
+had in mind always the advantages of being at Battery Park. A perpetual
+picture of the blessings of Battery Park was before them, and every
+delay made them fume--made this picture all the more alluring. Now the
+delights of up-town appear to them. They have reversed the signs on the
+cars; they have reversed their aspirations. Battery Park has been gained
+and forgotten. There is a new goal. Here is a perpetual illustration
+which the philosophers of New York may use.
+
+In the Tenderloin, the place of theatres, and of the restaurant where
+gayer New York does her dining, the cable cars in the evening carry a
+stratum of society which looks like a new one, but it is of the familiar
+strata in other clothes. It is just as good as a new stratum, however,
+for in evening dress the average man feels that he has gone up three
+pegs in the social scale, and there is considerable evening dress about
+a Broadway car in the evening. A car with its electric lamp resembles a
+brilliantly-lighted salon, and the atmosphere grows just a trifle
+strained. People sit more rigidly, and glance sidewise, perhaps, as if
+each was positive of possessing social value, but was doubtful of all
+others. The conductor says: "Ah, gwan. Git off th' earth." But this is
+to a man at Canal Street. That shows his versatility. He stands on the
+platform and beams in a modest and polite manner into the car. He notes
+a lifted finger and grabs swiftly for the bell strap. He reaches down to
+help a woman aboard. Perhaps his demeanour is a reflection of the manner
+of the people in the car. No one is in a mad New York hurry; no one is
+fretting and muttering; no one is perched upon his neighbour's toes.
+Moreover, the Tenderloin is a glory at night. Broadway of late years has
+fallen heir to countless signs illuminated with red, blue, green, and
+gold electric lamps, and the people certainly fly to these as the moths
+go to a candle. And perhaps the gods have allowed this opportunity to
+observe and study the best-dressed crowds in the world to operate upon
+the conductor until his mood is to treat us with care and mildness.
+
+Late at night, after the diners and theatre-goers have been lost in
+Harlem, various inebriate persons may perchance emerge from the darker
+regions of Sixth Avenue and swing their arms solemnly at the gripman. If
+the Broadway cars run for the next 7000 years this will be the only time
+when one New Yorker will address another in public without an excuse
+sent direct from heaven. In these cars late at night it is not
+impossible that some fearless drunkard will attempt to inaugurate a
+general conversation. He is quite willing to devote his ability to the
+affair. He tells of the fun he thinks he has had; describes his
+feelings; recounts stories of his dim past. None reply, although all
+listen with every ear. The rake probably ends by borrowing a match,
+lighting a cigar, and entering into a wrangle with the conductor with an
+_abandon_, a ferocity, and a courage that do not come to us when we are
+sober.
+
+In the meantime the figures on the street grow fewer and fewer.
+Strolling policemen test the locks of the great dark-fronted stores.
+Nighthawk cabs whirl by the cars on their mysterious errands. Finally
+the cars themselves depart in the way of the citizen, and for the few
+hours before dawn a new sound comes into the still thoroughfare--the
+cable whirring in its channel underground.
+
+
+
+
+THE ASSASSIN IN MODERN BATTLES.
+
+THE TORPEDO BOAT DESTROYERS THAT "PERFORM IN THE DARKNESS. AN ACT WHICH
+IS MORE PECULIARLY MURDEROUS THAN MOST THINGS IN WAR."
+
+
+In the past century the gallant aristocracy of London liked to travel
+down the south bank of the Thames to Greenwich Hospital, where venerable
+pensioners of the crown were ready to hire telescopes at a penny each,
+and with these telescopes the lords and ladies were able to view at a
+better advantage the dried and enchained corpses of pirates hanging from
+the gibbets on the Isle of Dogs. In those times the dismal marsh was
+inhabited solely by the clanking figures whose feet moved in the wind
+like rather poorly-constructed weather cocks.
+
+But even the Isle of Dogs could not escape the appetite of an expanding
+London. Thousands of souls now live on it, and it has changed its
+character from that of a place of execution, with mist, wet with fever,
+coiling forever from the mire and wandering among the black gibbets, to
+that of an ordinary, squalid, nauseating slum of London, whose streets
+bear a faint resemblance to that part of Avenue A which lies directly
+above Sixtieth Street in New York.
+
+Down near the water front one finds a long brick building,
+three-storeyed and signless, which shuts off all view of the river. The
+windows, as well as the bricks, are very dirty, and you see no sign of
+life, unless some smudged workman dodges in through a little door. The
+place might be a factory for the making of lamps or stair rods, or any
+ordinary commercial thing. As a matter of fact, the building fronts the
+shipyard of Yarrow, the builder of torpedo boats, the maker of knives
+for the nations, the man who provides everybody with a certain kind of
+efficient weapon. One then remembers that if Russia fights England,
+Yarrow meets Yarrow; if Germany fights France, Yarrow meets Yarrow; if
+Chili fights Argentina, Yarrow meets Yarrow.
+
+Besides the above-mentioned countries Yarrow has built torpedo boats for
+Italy, Austria, Holland, Japan, China, Ecuador, Brazil, Costa Rica, and
+Spain. There is a keeper of a great shop in London who is known as the
+Universal Provider. If a general conflagration of war should break out
+in the world, Yarrow would be known as one of the Universal Warriors,
+for it would practically be a battle between Yarrow, Armstrong, Krupp,
+and a few other firms. This is what makes interesting the dinginess of
+the cantonment on the Isle of Dogs.
+
+The great Yarrow forte is to build speedy steamers of a tonnage of not
+more than 240 tons. This practically includes only yachts, launches,
+tugs, torpedo boat destroyers, torpedo boats, and of late
+shallow-draught gunboats for service on the Nile, Congo, and Niger. Some
+of the gunboats that shelled the dervishes from the banks of the Nile
+below Khartoum were built by Yarrow. Yarrow is always in action
+somewhere. Even if the firm's boats do not appear in every coming sea
+combat, the ideas of the firm will, for many nations, notably France and
+Germany, have bought specimens of the best models of Yarrow construction
+in order to reduplicate and reduplicate them in their own yards.
+
+When the great fever to possess torpedo boats came upon the Powers of
+Europe, England was at first left far in the rear. Either Germany or
+France to-day has in her fleet more torpedo boats than has England. The
+British tar is a hard man to oust out of a habit. He had a habit of
+thinking that his battleships and cruisers were the final thing in naval
+construction. He scoffed at the advent of the torpedo boat. He did not
+scoff intelligently but because, mainly, he hated to be forced to change
+his ways.
+
+You will usually find an Englishman balking and kicking at innovation up
+to the last moment. It takes him some years to get an idea into his
+head, and when finally it is inserted, he not only respects it, he
+reveres it. The Londoners have a fire brigade which would interest the
+ghost of a Babylonian, as an example of how much the method of
+extinguishing fires could degenerate in two thousand years, and in 1897,
+when a terrible fire devastated a part of the city, some voices were
+raised challenging the efficiency of the fire brigade. But that part of
+the London County Council which corresponds to fire commissioners in
+United States laid their hands upon their hearts and solemnly assured
+the public that they had investigated the matter, and had found the
+London fire brigade to be as good as any in the world. There were some
+isolated cases of dissent, but the great English public as a whole
+placidly accepted these assurances concerning the activity of the
+honoured corps.
+
+For a long time England blundered in the same way over the matter of
+torpedo boats. They were authoritatively informed that there was nothing
+in all the talk about torpedo boats. Then came a great popular uproar,
+in which people tumbled over each other to get to the doors of the
+Admiralty and howl about torpedo boats. It was an awakening as
+unreasonable as had been the previous indifference and contempt. Then
+England began to build. She has never overtaken France or Germany in the
+number of torpedo boats, but she now heads the world with her
+collection of that marvel of marine architecture--the torpedo boat
+destroyer. She has about sixty-five of these vessels now in commission,
+and has about as many more in course of building.
+
+People ordinarily have a false idea of the appearance of a destroyer.
+The common type is longer than an ordinary gunboat--a long, low,
+graceful thing, flying through the water at fabulous speed, with a great
+curve of water some yards back of the bow, and smoke flying horizontally
+from the three or four stacks.
+
+Bushing this way and that way, circling, dodging, turning, they are like
+demons.
+
+The best kind of modern destroyer has a length of 220 feet, with a beam
+of 26-1/2 feet. The horse-power is about 6500, driving the boat at a
+speed of thirty-one knots or more. The engines are triple-expansion,
+with water tube boilers. They carry from 70 to 100 tons of coal, and at
+a speed of eight or nine knots can keep the sea for a week; so they are
+independent of coaling in a voyage of between 1300 and 1500 miles. They
+carry a crew of three or four officers, and about forty men.
+
+They are armed usually with one twelve-pounder gun, and from three to
+five six-pounder guns, besides their equipment of torpedoes. Their hulls
+and top hamper are painted olive, buff, or preferably slate, in order to
+make them hard to find with the eye at sea.
+
+Their principal functions, theoretically, are to discover and kill the
+enemy's torpedo boats, guard and scout for the main squadron, and
+perform messenger service. However, they are also torpedo boats of a
+most formidable kind, and in action will be found carrying out the
+torpedo boat idea in an expanded form. Four destroyers of this type
+building at the Yarrow yards were for Japan (1898).
+
+The modern European ideal of a torpedo boat is a craft 152 feet long,
+with a beam of 15-1/4 feet. When the boat is fully loaded a speed of 24
+knots is derived from her 2000 horse-power engines. The destroyers are
+twin screw, whereas the torpedo boats are commonly propelled by a single
+screw. The speed of twenty knots is for a run of three hours. These
+boats are not designed to keep at sea for any great length of time, and
+cannot raid toward a distant coast without the constant attendance of a
+cruiser to keep them in coal and provisions. Primarily they are for
+defence. Even with destroyers, England, in lately reinforcing her
+foreign stations, has seen fit to send cruisers in order to provide help
+for them in stormy weather.
+
+Some years ago it was thought the proper thing to equip torpedo craft
+with rudders, which would enable them to turn in their own length when
+running at full speed. Yarrow found this to result in too much broken
+steering gear, and the firm's boats now have smaller rudders, which
+enable them to turn in a larger circle.
+
+At one time a torpedo boat steaming at her best gait always carried a
+great bone in her teeth. During manoeuvres the watch on the deck of a
+battleship often discovered the approach of the little enemy by the
+great white wave which the boat rolled at her bows during her headlong
+rush. This was mainly because the old-fashioned boats carried two
+torpedo tubes set in the bows, and the bows were consequently bluff.
+
+The modern boat carries the great part of her armament amidships and
+astern on swivels, and her bow is like a dagger. With no more bow-waves,
+and with these phantom colours of buff, olive, bottle-green, or slate,
+the principal foe to a safe attack at night is bad firing in the
+stoke-room, which might cause flames to leap out of the stacks.
+
+A captain of an English battleship recently remarked: "See those five
+destroyers lying there? Well, if they should attack me I would sink four
+of them, but the fifth one would sink me."
+
+This was repeated to Yarrow's manager, who said: "He wouldn't sink four
+of them if the attack were at night and the boats were shrewdly and
+courageously handled." Anyhow, the captain's remark goes to show the
+wholesome respect which the great battleship has for these little
+fliers.
+
+The Yarrow people say there is no sense in a torpedo flotilla attack on
+anything save vessels. A modern fortification is never built near enough
+to the water for a torpedo explosion to injure it, and, although some
+old stone flush-with-the-water castle might be badly crumpled, it would
+harm nobody in particular, even if the assault were wholly successful.
+
+Of course, if a torpedo boat could get a chance at piers and dock gates
+they would make a disturbance, but the chance is extremely remote if the
+defenders have ordinary vigilance and some rapid fire guns. In harbour
+defence the searchlight would naturally play a most important part,
+whereas at sea experts are beginning to doubt its use as an auxiliary to
+the rapid fire guns against torpedo boats. About half the time it does
+little more than betray the position of the ship. On the other hand, a
+port cannot conceal its position anyhow, and searchlights would be
+invaluable for sweeping the narrow channels.
+
+There could be only one direction from which the assault could come, and
+all the odds would be in favour of the guns on shore. A torpedo boat
+commander knows this perfectly. What he wants is a ship off at sea with
+a nervous crew staring into the encircling darkness from any point in
+which the terror might be coming.
+
+Hi, then, for a grand, bold, silent rush and the assassin-like stab.
+
+In stormy weather life on board a torpedo boat is not amusing. They
+tumble about like bucking bronchos, especially if they are going at
+anything like speed. Everything is battened down as if it were soldered,
+and the watch below feel that they are living in a football, which is
+being kicked every way at once.
+
+And finally, while Yarrow and other great builders can make torpedo
+craft which are wonders of speed and manoeuvring power, they cannot
+make that high spirit of daring and hardihood which is essential to a
+success.
+
+That must exist in the mind of some young lieutenant who, knowing well
+that if he is detected, a shot or so from a rapid fire gun will cripple
+him if it does not sink him absolutely, nevertheless goes creeping off
+to sea to find a huge antagonist and perform stealthily in the darkness
+an act which is more peculiarly murderous than most things in war.
+
+If a torpedo boat is caught within range in daylight, the fighting is
+all over before it begins. Any common little gunboat can dispose of it
+in a moment if the gunnery is not too Chinese.
+
+
+
+
+IRISH NOTES
+
+
+
+
+I.--AN OLD MAN GOES WOOING.
+
+
+The melancholy fisherman made his way through a street that was mainly
+as dark as a tunnel. Sometimes an open door threw a rectangle of light
+upon the pavement, and within the cottages were scenes of working women
+and men, who comfortably smoked and talked. From them came the sounds of
+laughter and the babble of children. Each time the old man passed
+through one of the radiant zones the light etched his face in profile
+with touches flaming and sombre until there was a resemblance to a stern
+and mournful Dante portrait.
+
+Once a whistling lad came through the darkness. He peered intently for
+purposes of recognition. "Good avenin', Mickey," he cried cheerfully.
+The old man responded with a groan, which intimated that the lamentable
+reckless optimism of the youth had forced from him an expression of an
+emotion that he had been enduring in saintly patience and silence. He
+continued his pilgrimage toward the kitchen of the village inn.
+
+The kitchen is a great and worthy place. The long range with its lurid
+heat continually emits the fragrance of broiling fish, roasting mutton,
+joints, and fowl. The high black ceiling is ornamented with hams and
+flitches of bacon. There is a long, dark bench against one wall, and it
+is fronted by a dark table, handy for glasses of stout. On an old
+mahogany dresser rows of plates face the distant range, and reflect the
+red shine of the peat. Smoke which has in it the odour of an American
+forest fire eddies through the air. The great stones of the floor are
+scarred by the black mud from the inn yard. And here the gossip of a
+country-side goes on amid the sizzle of broiling fish and the loud
+protesting splutter of joints taken from the oven.
+
+When the old man reached the door of this paradise, he stopped for a
+moment with his finger on the latch. He sighed deeply; evidently he was
+undergoing some lachrymose reflection. For somewhere overhead in the inn
+he could hear the wild clamour of dining pig-buyers, men who were come
+for the pig fair to be held on the morrow. Evidently in the little
+parlour of the inn these men were dining amid an uproar of shouted jests
+and laughter. The revelry sounded like the fighting of two mobs amid a
+rain of missiles and crash of shop windows. The old man raised his hand
+as if, unseen there in the darkness, he was going to solemnly damn the
+dinner of the pig-buyers.
+
+Within the kitchen Nora, tall, strong, intrepid, approached the fiery
+stove in the manner of a boxer. Her left arm was held high to guard her
+face, which was already crimson from the blaze. With a flourish of her
+apron she achieved a great brown humming joint from the oven, and,
+emerging a glowing and triumphant figure from the steam and smoke and
+rapid play of heat, she slid the pan upon the table, even as she saw the
+old man standing within the room and lugubriously cleaning the mud from
+his boots. "Tis you, Mickey?" she said.
+
+He made no reply until he had found his way to the long bench. "It is,"
+he said then. It was clear that in the girl's opinion he had gained some
+kind of strategic advantage. The sanctity of her kitchen was
+successfully violated, but the old man betrayed no elation. Lifting one
+knee and placing it over the other, he grunted in the blissful weariness
+of a venerable labourer returned to his own fireside. He coughed
+dismally. "Ah, 'tis no good a man gits from fishin' these days. I moind
+the toimes whin they would be hoppin' up clear o' the wather, there was
+that little room fur thim. I would be likin' a bottle o' stout."
+
+"Niver fear you, Mickey," answered the girl. Swinging here and there in
+the glare of the fire, Nora, with her towering figure and bare brawny
+arms, was like a feminine blacksmith at a forge. The old man, pallid,
+emaciated, watched her from the shadows at the other side of the room.
+The lines from the sides of his nose to the corners of his mouth sank
+low to an expression of despair deeper than any moans. He should have
+been painted upon the door of a tomb with wringing willows arched above
+him and men in grey robes slowly booming the drums of death. Finally he
+spoke. "I would be likin' a bottle o' stout, Nora, me girrl," he said.
+
+"Niver fear you, Mickey," again she replied with cheerful obstinacy. She
+was admiring her famous roast, which now sat in its platter on the rack
+over the range. There was a lull in her tumultuous duties. The old man
+coughed and moved his foot with a scraping sound on the stones. The
+noise of dining pig-buyers, now heard through doors and winding
+corridors of the inn, was a roll of far-away storm.
+
+A woman in a dark dress entered the kitchen and keenly examined the
+roast and Nora's other feats. "Mickey here would be wantin' a bottle o'
+stout," said the girl to her mistress. The woman turned towards the
+spectral figure in the gloom, and regarded it quietly with a clear eye.
+"Have yez the money, Mickey?" repeated the woman of the house.
+
+Profoundly embittered, he replied in short terms, "I have."
+
+"There now," cried Nora, in astonishment and admiration. Poising a large
+iron spoon, she was motionless, staring with open mouth at the old man.
+He searched his pockets slowly during a complete silence in the kitchen.
+He brought forth two coppers and laid them sadly, reproachfully, and yet
+defiantly on the table.
+
+"There now," cried Nora, stupefied.
+
+They brought him a bottle of the black brew, and Nora poured it out for
+him with her own red hand, which looked to be as broad as his chest. A
+collar of brown foam curled at the top of the glass. With measured
+moments the old man filled a short pipe. There came a sudden howl from
+another part of the inn. One of the pig-buyers was at the head of the
+stairs bawling for the mistress. The two women hurriedly freighted
+themselves with the roast and the vegetables, and sprang with them to
+placate the pig-buyers. Alone, the old man studied the gleam of the fire
+on the floor. It faded and brightened in the way of lightning at the
+horizon's edge.
+
+When Nora returned, the strapping grenadier of a girl was blushing and
+giggling. The pig-buyers had been humorous. "I moind the toime--" began
+the man sorrowfully. "I moind the toime whin yea was a wee bit of a
+girrl, Nora, an' wouldn't be havin' words wid min loike thim buyers."
+
+"I moind the toime whin yea could attind to your own affairs, ye ould
+skileton," said the girl promptly. He made a gesture, which may have
+expressed his stirring grief at the levity of the new generation, and
+then lapsed into another stillness.
+
+The girl, a giantess, carrying, lifting, pushing, an incarnation of
+dauntless labour, changing the look of the whole kitchen with a moment's
+manipulation of her great arms, did not heed the old man for a long
+time. When she finally glanced toward him, she saw that he was sunk
+forward with his grey face on his arms. A growl of heavy breathing
+ascended. He was asleep.
+
+She marched to him and put both hands to his collar. Despite his feeble
+and dreamy protestations, she dragged him out from behind the table and
+across the floor. She opened the door and thrust him into the night.
+
+
+
+
+II.--BALLYDEHOB.
+
+
+The illimitable inventive incapacity of the excursion companies has made
+many circular paths throughout Ireland, and on these well-pounded roads
+the guardians of the touring public may be seen drilling the little
+travellers in squads. To rise in rebellion, to face the superior clerk
+in his bureau, to endure his smile of pity and derision, and finally to
+wring freedom from him, is as difficult in some parts of Ireland as it
+is in all parts of Switzerland. To see the tourists chained in gangs
+and taken to see the Lakes of Killarney is a sad spectacle, because
+these people believe that they are learning Ireland, even as men believe
+that they are studying America when they contemplate the Niagara Falls.
+
+But afterwards, if one escapes, one can go forth, unguided, untaught and
+alone, and look at Ireland. The joys of the pig-market, the delirium of
+a little tap-room filled with brogue, the fierce excitement of viewing
+the Royal Irish Constabulary fishing for trout, the whole quaint and
+primitive machinery of the peasant life--its melancholy, its sunshine,
+its humour--all this is then the property of the man who breaks like a
+Texan steer out of the pens and corrals of the tourist agencies. For
+what syndicate of maiden ladies--it is these who masquerade as tourist
+agencies--what syndicate of maiden ladies knows of the existence, for
+instance, of Ballydehob?
+
+One has a sense of disclosure at writing the name of Ballydehob. It was
+really a valuable secret. There is in Ballydehob not one thing that is
+commonly pointed out to the stranger as a thing worthy of a half-tone
+reproduction in a book. There is no cascade, no peak, no lake, no guide
+with a fund of useless information, no gamins practised in the seduction
+of tourists. It is not an exhibit, an entry for a prize, like a heap of
+melons or cow. It is simply an Irish village wherein live some three
+hundred Irish and four constables.
+
+If one or two prayer-towers spindled above Ballydehob it would be a
+perfect Turkish village. The red tiles and red bricks of England do not
+appear at all. The houses are low, with soiled white walls. The doors
+open abruptly upon dark old rooms. Here and there in the street is some
+crude cobbling done with round stones taken from the bed of a brook. At
+times there is a great deal of mud. Chickens depredate warily about the
+doorsteps, and intent pigs emerge for plunder from the alleys. It is
+unavoidable to admit that many people would consider Ballydehob quite
+too grimy.
+
+Nobody lives here that has money. The average English tradesman with his
+back-breaking respect for this class, his reflex contempt for that
+class, his reverence for the tin gods, could here be a commercial lord
+and bully the people in one or two ways, until they were thrown back
+upon the defence which is always near them, the ability to cut his skin
+into strips with a wit that would be a foreign tongue to him. For amid
+his wrongs and his rights and his failures--his colossal failures--the
+Irishman retains this delicate blade for his enemies, for his friends,
+for himself, the ancestral dagger of fast sharp speaking from fast sharp
+seeing--an inheritance which could move the world. And the Royal Irish
+Constabulary fished for trout in the adjacent streams.
+
+Mrs. Kearney keeps the hotel. In Ireland male innkeepers die young.
+Apparently they succumb to conviviality when it is presented to them in
+the guise of a business duty. Naturally honest, temperate men, their
+consciences are lulled to false security by this idea of hard drinking
+being necessary to the successful keeping of a public-house. It is very
+terrible.
+
+But they invariably leave behind them capable widows, women who do not
+recognise conviviality as a business obligation. And so all through
+Ireland one finds these brisk widows keeping hotels with a precision
+that is almost military.
+
+In Kearney's there is always a wonderful collection of old women, bent
+figures shrouded in shawls who reach up scrawny fingers to take their
+little purchases from Mary Agnes, who presides sometimes at the bar, but
+more often at the shop that fronts it in the same room. In the gloom of
+a late afternoon these old women are as mystic as the swinging, chanting
+witches on a dark stage when the thunder-drum rolls and the lightning
+flashes by schedule. When a grey rain sweeps through the narrow street
+of Ballydehob, and makes heavy shadows in Kearney's tap-room, these old
+creatures, with their high mournful voices, and the mystery of their
+shawls, their moans and aged mutterings when they are obliged to take a
+step, raise the dead superstitions from the bottom of a man's mind.
+
+"My boy," remarked my London friend cheerfully, "these might have
+furnished sons to be Aldermen or Congressmen in the great city of New
+York."
+
+"Aldermen or Congressmen of the great city of New York always take care
+of their mothers," I answered meekly.
+
+On a barrel, over in a corner, sat a yellow-bearded Irish farmer in
+tattered clothes who wished to exchange views on the Armenian massacres.
+He had much information and a number of theories in regard to them. He
+also advanced the opinion that the chief political aim of Russia at
+present is in the direction of China, and that it behoved other Powers
+to keep an eye on her. He thought the revolutionists in Cuba would never
+accept autonomy at the hands of Spain. His pipe glowed comfortably from
+his corner; waving the tuppenny glass of stout in the air, he discoursed
+on the business of the remote ends of the earth with the glibness of a
+fourth secretary of Legation. Here was a little farmer, digging betimes
+in a forlorn patch of wet ground, a man to whom a sudden two shillings
+would appear as a miracle, a ragged, unkempt peasant, whose mind roamed
+the world like the soul of a lost diplomat. This unschooled man believed
+that the earth was a sphere inhabited by men that are alike in the
+essentials, different in the manners, the little manners, which are
+accounted of such great importance by the emaciated. He was to a degree
+capable of knowing that he lived on a sphere and not on the apex of a
+triangle.
+
+And yet, when the talk had turned another corner, he confidently assured
+the assembled company that a hair from a horse's tail when thrown in a
+brook would turn shortly to an eel.
+
+
+
+
+III.--THE ROYAL IRISH CONSTABULARY.
+
+
+The newspapers called it a Veritable Arsenal. There was a description of
+how the sergeant of Constabulary had bent an ear to receive whispered
+information of the concealed arms, and had then marched his men swiftly
+and by night to surround a certain house. The search elicited a
+double-barrelled breech-loading shot-gun, some empty shells, powder,
+shot, and a loading machine. The point of it was that some of the Irish
+papers called it a Veritable Arsenal, and appeared to congratulate the
+Government upon having strangled another unhappy rebellion in its nest.
+They floundered and misnamed and mis-reasoned, and made a spectacle of
+the great modern craft of journalism, until the affair of this poor
+poacher was too absurd to be pitiable, and Englishmen over their coffee
+next morning must have almost believed that the prompt action of the
+Constabulary had quelled a rising. Thus it is that the Irish fight the
+Irish.
+
+One cannot look Ireland straight in the face without seeing a great many
+constables. The country is dotted with little garrisons. It must have
+been said a thousand times that there is an absolute military
+occupation. The fact is too plain.
+
+The constable himself becomes a figure interesting in its isolation. He
+has in most cases a social position which is somewhat analogous to that
+of a Turk in Thessaly. But then, in the same way, the Turk has the
+Turkish army. He can have battalions as companions and make the
+acquaintance of brigades. The constable has the Constabulary, it is
+true; but to be cooped with three or four others in a small white-washed
+iron-bound house on some bleak country side is not an exact parallel to
+the Thessalian situation. It looks to be a life that is infinitely
+lonely, ascetic, and barren. Two keepers of a lighthouse at a bitter end
+of land in a remote sea will, if they are properly let alone, make a
+murder in time. Five constables imprisoned 'mid a folk that will not
+turn a face toward them, five constables planted in a populated silence,
+may develop an acute and vivid economy, dwell in scowling dislike. A
+religious asylum in a snow-buried mountain pass will breed conspiring
+monks. A separated people will beget an egotism that is almost titanic.
+A world floating distinctly in space will call itself the only world.
+The progression is perfect.
+
+But the constables take the second degree. They are next to the
+lighthouse keepers. The national custom of meeting stranger and friend
+alike on the road with a cheery greeting like "God save you" is too
+kindly and human a habit not to be missed. But all through the South of
+Ireland one sees the peasant turn his eyes pretentiously to the side of
+the road at the passing of the constable. It seemed to be generally
+understood that to note the presence of a constable was to make a
+conventional error. None looked, nodded, or gave sign. There was a line
+drawn so sternly that it reared like a fence. Of course, any police
+force in any part of the world can gather at its heels a riff-raff of
+people, fawning always on a hand licensed to strike that would be larger
+than the army of the Potomac, but of these one ordinarily sees little.
+The mass of the Irish strictly obey the stern tenet. One hears often of
+the ostracism or other punishment that befell some girl who was caught
+flirting with a constable.
+
+Naturally the constable retreats to his pride. He is commonly a
+soldierly-looking chap, straight, lean, long-strided, well set-up. His
+little saucer of a forage cap sits obediently on his ear, as it does for
+the British soldier. He swings a little cane. He takes his medicine with
+a calm and hard face, and evidently stares full into every eye. But it
+is singular to find in the situation of the Royal Irish Constabulary the
+quality of pathos.
+
+It is not known if these places in the South of Ireland are called
+disturbed districts. Over them hangs the peace of Surrey, but the word
+disturbance has an elastic arrangement by which it can be made to cover
+anything. All of the villages visited garrisoned from four to ten men.
+They lived comfortably in their white houses, strolled in pairs over the
+country roads, picked blackberries, and fished for trout. If at some
+time there came a crisis, one man was more than enough to surround it.
+The remaining nine add dignity to the scene. The crisis chiefly
+consisted of occasional drunken men who were unable to understand the
+local geography on Saturday nights.
+
+The note continually struck was that each group of constables lived on a
+little social island, and there was no boat to take them off. There has
+been no such marooning since the days of the pirates. The sequestration
+must be complete when a man with a dinky little cap on his ear is not
+allowed to talk to the girls.
+
+But they fish for trout. Isaac Walton is the father of the Royal Irish
+Constabulary. They could be seen on any fine day whipping the streams
+from source to mouth. There was one venerable sergeant who made a rod
+less than a yard long. With a line of about the same length attached to
+this rod, he hunted the gorse-hung banks of the little streams in the
+hills. An eight-inch ribbon of water lined with masses of heather and
+gorse will be accounted contemptible by a fisherman with an ordinary
+rod. But it was the pleasure of the sergeant to lay on his stomach at
+the side of such a stream and carefully, inch by inch, scout his hook
+through the pools. He probably caught more trout than any three men in
+county Cork. He fished more than any twelve men in the county Cork. Some
+people had never seen him in any other posture but that of crowding
+forward on his stomach to peer into a pool. They did not believe the
+rumour that he sometimes stood or walked like a human.
+
+
+
+
+IV.--A FISHING VILLAGE.
+
+
+The brook curved down over the rocks, innocent and white, until it faced
+a little strand of smooth gravel and flat stones. It turned then to the
+left, and thereafter its guilty current was tinged with the pink of
+diluted blood. Boulders standing neck-deep in the water were rimmed with
+red; they wore bloody collars whose tops marked the supreme instant of
+some tragic movement of the stream. In the pale green shallows of the
+bay's edge, the outward flow from the criminal little brook was as
+eloquently marked as if a long crimson carpet had been laid upon the
+waters. The scene of the carnage was the strand of smooth gravel and
+flat stones, and the fruit of the carnage was cleaned mackerel.
+
+Far to the south, where the slate of the sea and the grey of the sky
+wove together, could be seen Fastnet Rock, a mere button on the moving,
+shimmering cloth, while a liner, no larger than a needle, spun a thread
+of smoke aslant. The gulls swept screaming along the dull line of the
+other shore of roaring Water Bay, and near the mouth of the brook
+circled among the fishing boats that lay at anchor, their brown,
+leathery sails idle and straight. The wheeling, shrieking tumultuous
+birds stared with their hideous unblinking eyes at the Capers--men from
+Cape Clear--who prowled to and fro on the decks amid shouts and the
+creak of the tackle. Shoreward, a little shrivelled man, overcome by a
+profound melancholy, fished hopelessly from the end of the pier. Back of
+him, on a hillside, sat a white village, nestled among more trees than
+is common in this part of Southern Ireland.
+
+A dinghy sculled by a youth in a blue jersey wobbled rapidly past the
+pier-head and stopped at the foot of the moss-green, dank, stone steps,
+where the waves were making slow but regular leaps to mount higher, and
+then falling back gurgling, choking, and waving the long, dark seaweeds.
+The melancholy fisherman walked over to the top of the steps. The young
+man was fastening the painter of his boat in an iron ring. In the dinghy
+were three round baskets heaped high with mackerel. They glittered like
+masses of new silver coin at times, and then other lights of faint
+carmine and peacock blue would chase across the sides of the fish in a
+radiance that was finer than silver.
+
+The melancholy fisherman looked at this wealth. He shook his head
+mournfully. "Ah, now, Denny. This would not be a very good kill."
+
+The young man snorted indignantly at his fellow-townsman. "This will be
+th' bist kill th' year, Mickey. Go along now."
+
+The melancholy old man became immersed in deeper gloom. "Shure I have
+been in th' way of seein' miny a grand day whin th' fish was runnin'
+sthrong in these wathers, but there will be no more big kills here. No
+more. No more." At the last his voice was only a dismal croak.
+
+"Come along outa that now, Mickey," cried the youth impatiently. "Come
+away wid you."
+
+"All gone now. A-ll go-o-ne now!" The old man wagged his grey head, and,
+standing over the baskets of fishes, groaned as Mordecai groaned for his
+people.
+
+"'Tis you would be cryin' out, Mickey, whativer," said the youth with
+scorn. He was giving his basket into the hands of five incompetent but
+jovial little boys to carry to a waiting donkey cart.
+
+"An' why should I not?" said the old man sternly. "Me--in want--"
+
+As the youth swung his boat swiftly out toward an anchored smack, he
+made answer in a softer tone. "Shure, if yez got for th' askin', 'tis
+you, Mickey, that would niver be in want." The melancholy old man
+returned to his line. And the only moral in this incident is that the
+young man is the type that America procures from Ireland, and the old
+man is one of the home types, bent, pallid, hungry, disheartened, with a
+vision that magnifies with a microscope glance any fly-wing of
+misfortune, and heroically and conscientiously invents disasters for the
+future. Usually the thing that remains to one of this type is a sympathy
+as quick and acute for others as is his pity for himself.
+
+The donkey with his cart-load of gleaming fish, and escorted by the
+whooping and laughing boys, galloped along the quay and up a street of
+the village until he was turned off at the gravelly strand, at the point
+where the colour of the brook was changing. Here twenty people of both
+sexes and all ages were preparing the fish for market. The mackerel,
+beautiful as fire-etched salvers, first were passed to a long table,
+around which worked as many women as could have elbow room. Each one
+could clean a fish with two motions of the knife. Then the washers, men
+who stood over the troughs filled with running water from the brook,
+soused the fish until the outlet became a sinister element that in an
+instant changed the brook from a happy thing of gorse and heather of the
+hills to an evil stream, sullen and reddened. After being washed, the
+fish were carried to a group of girls with knives, who made the cuts
+that enabled each fish to flatten out in the manner known of the
+breakfast table. And after the girls came the men and boys, who rubbed
+each fish thoroughly with great handfuls of coarse salt, which was
+whiter than snow, and shone in the daylight from a multitude of gleaming
+points, diamond-like. Last came the packers, drilled in the art of
+getting neither too few nor too many mackerel into a barrel, sprinkling
+constantly prodigal layers of brilliant salt. There were many
+intermediate corps of boys and girls carrying fish from point to point,
+and sometimes building them in stacks convenient to the hands of the
+more important labourers.
+
+A vast tree hung its branches over the place. The leaves made a shadow
+that was religious in its effect, as if the spot was a chapel
+consecrated to labour. There was a hush upon the devotees. The women at
+the large table worked intently, steadfastly, with bowed heads. Their
+old petticoats were tucked high, showing the coarse brogans which they
+wore--and the visible ankles were proportioned to the brogans as the
+diameter of a straw is to that of a half-crown. The national red
+under-petticoat was a fundamental part of the scene.
+
+Just over the wall, in the sloping street, could be seen the bejerseyed
+Capers, brawny, and with shocks of yellow beard. They paced slowly to
+and fro amid the geese and children. They, too, spoke little, even to
+each other; they smoked short pipes in saturnine dignity and silence. It
+was the fish. They who go with nets upon the reeling sea grow still with
+the mystery and solemnity of the trade. It was Brittany; the first
+respectable catch of the year had changed this garrulous Irish hamlet
+into a hamlet of Brittany.
+
+The Capers were waiting for high tide. It had seemed for a long time
+that, for the south of Ireland, the mackerel had fled in company with
+potato; but here, at any rate, was a temporary success, and the occasion
+was momentous. A strolling Caper took his pipe and pointed with the stem
+out upon the bay. There was little wind, but an ambitious skipper had
+raised his anchor, and the craft, her strained brown sails idly
+swinging, was drifting away on the first oily turn of the tide.
+
+On the top of the pier the figure of the melancholy old man was
+portrayed upon the polished water. He was still dangling his line
+hopelessly. He gazed down into the misty water. Once he stirred and
+murmured: "Bad luck to thim." Otherwise he seemed to remain motionless
+for hours. One by one the fishing-boats floated away. The brook changed
+its colour, and in the dusk showed a tumble of pearly white among the
+rocks.
+
+A cold night wind, sweeping transversely across the pier, awakened
+perhaps the rheumatism in the old man's bones. He arose and, mumbling
+and grumbling, began to wind his line. The waves were lashing the
+stones. He moved off towards the intense darkness of the village
+streets.
+
+
+
+
+SULLIVAN COUNTY SKETCHES
+
+
+
+
+FOUR MEN IN A CAVE.
+
+LIKEWISE FOUR QUEENS, AND A SULLIVAN COUNTY HERMIT.
+
+
+The moon rested for a moment on the top of a tall pine on a hill.
+
+The little man was standing in front of the campfire making orations to
+his companions.
+
+"We can tell a great tale when we get back to the city if we investigate
+this thing," said he, in conclusion.
+
+They were won.
+
+The little man was determined to explore a cave, because its black mouth
+had gaped at him. The four men took lighted pine-knot and clambered over
+boulders down a hill. In a thicket on the mountainside lay a little
+tilted hole. At its side they halted.
+
+"Well?" said the little man.
+
+They fought for last place and the little man was overwhelmed. He tried
+to struggle from under by crying that if the fat, pudgy man came after,
+he would be corked. But he finally administered a cursing over his
+shoulder and crawled into the hole. His companions gingerly followed.
+
+A passage, the floor of damp clay and pebbles, the walls slimy,
+green-mossed, and dripping, sloped downward. In the cave atmosphere the
+torches became studies in red blaze and black smoke.
+
+"Ho!" cried the little man, stifled and bedraggled, "let's go back." His
+companions were not brave. They were last. The next one to the little
+man pushed him on, so the little man said sulphurous words and
+cautiously continued his crawl.
+
+Things that hung seemed to be on the wet, uneven ceiling, ready to drop
+upon the men's bare necks. Under their hands the clammy floor seemed
+alive and writhing. When the little man endeavoured to stand erect the
+ceiling forced him down. Knobs and points came out and punched him. His
+clothes were wet and mud-covered, and his eyes, nearly blinded by smoke,
+tried to pierce the darkness always before his torch.
+
+"Oh, I say, you fellows, let's go back," cried he. At that moment he
+caught the gleam of trembling light in the blurred shadows before him.
+
+"Ho!" he said, "here's another way out."
+
+The passage turned abruptly. The little man put one hand around the
+corner, but it touched nothing. He investigated and discovered that the
+little corridor took a sudden dip down a hill. At the bottom shone a
+yellow light.
+
+The little man wriggled painfully about, and descended feet in advance.
+The others followed his plan. All picked their way with anxious care.
+The traitorous rocks rolled from beneath the little man's feet and
+roared thunderously below him. Lesser stone, loosened by the men above
+him, hit him on the back. He gained seemingly firm foothold, and,
+turning half-way about, swore redly at his companions for dolts and
+careless fools. The pudgy man sat, puffing and perspiring, high in the
+rear of the procession. The fumes and smoke from four pine-knots were in
+his blood. Cinders and sparks lay thick in his eyes and hair. The pause
+of the little man angered him.
+
+"Go on, you fool," he shouted. "Poor, painted man, you are afraid."
+
+"Ho!" said the little man. "Come down here and go on yourself,
+imbecile!"
+
+The pudgy man vibrated with passion. He leaned downward. "Idiot--!"
+
+He was interrupted by one of his feet which flew out and crashed into
+the man in front of and below. It is not well to quarrel upon a slippery
+incline, when the unknown is below. The fat man, having lost the support
+of one pillar-like foot, lurched forward. His body smote the next man,
+who hurtled into the next man. Then they all fell upon the cursing
+little man.
+
+They slid in a body down over the slippery, slimy floor of the passage.
+The stone avenue must have wibble-wobbled with the rush of this ball of
+tangled men and strangled cries. The torches went out with the combined
+assault upon the little man. The adventurers whirled to the unknown in
+darkness. The little man felt that he was pitching to death, but even in
+his convolutions he bit and scratched at his companions, for he was
+satisfied that it was their fault. The swirling mass went some twenty
+feet, and lit upon a level, dry place in a strong, yellow light of
+candles. It dissolved and became eyes.
+
+The four men lay in a heap upon the floor of a grey chamber. A small
+fire smouldered in the corner, the smoke disappearing in a crack. In
+another corner was a bed of faded hemlock boughs and two blankets.
+Cooking utensils and clothes lay about, with boxes and a barrel.
+
+Of these things the four men took small cognisance. The pudgy man did
+not curse the little man, nor did the little swear, in the abstract.
+Eight widened eyes were fixed upon the centre of the room of rocks.
+
+A great, grey stone, cut squarely, like an altar, sat in the middle of
+the floor. Over it burned three candles, in swaying tin cups hung from
+the ceiling. Before it, with what seemed to be a small volume clasped in
+his yellow fingers, stood a man. He was an infinitely sallow person in
+the brown-checked shirt of the ploughs and cows. The rest of his apparel
+was boots. A long grey beard dangled from his chin. He fixed glinting,
+fiery eyes upon the heap of men, and remained motionless. Fascinated,
+their tongues cleaving, their blood cold, they arose to their feet. The
+gleaming glance of the recluse swept slowly over the group until it
+found the face of the little man. There it stayed and burned.
+
+The little man shrivelled and crumpled as the dried leaf under the
+glass.
+
+Finally, the recluse slowly, deeply spoke. It was a true voice from a
+cave, cold, solemn, and damp.
+
+"It's your ante," he said.
+
+"What?" said the little man.
+
+The hermit tilted his beard and laughed a laugh that was either the
+chatter of a banshee in a storm or the rattle of pebbles in a tin box.
+His visitors' flesh seemed ready to drop from their bones.
+
+They huddled together and cast fearful eyes over their shoulders. They
+whispered.
+
+"A vampire!" said one.
+
+"A ghoul!" said another.
+
+"A Druid before the sacrifice," murmured another.
+
+"The shade of an Aztec witch doctor," said the little man.
+
+As they looked, the inscrutable face underwent a change. It became a
+livid background for his eyes, which blazed at the little man like
+impassioned carbuncles. His voice arose to a howl of ferocity. "It's
+your ante!" With a panther-like motion he drew a long, thin knife and
+advanced, stooping. Two cadaverous hounds came from nowhere, and,
+scowling and growling, made desperate feints at the little man's legs.
+His quaking companions pushed him forward.
+
+Tremblingly he put his hand to his pocket.
+
+"How much?" he said, with a shivering look at the knife that glittered.
+
+The carbuncles faded.
+
+"Three dollars," said the hermit, in sepulchral tones which rang against
+the walls and among the passages, awakening long-dead spirits with
+voices. The shaking little man took a roll of bills from a pocket and
+placed "three ones" upon the altar-like stone. The recluse looked at the
+little volume with reverence in his eyes. It was a pack of playing
+cards.
+
+Under the three swinging candles, upon the altar-like stone, the grey
+beard and the agonised little man played at poker. The three other men
+crouched in a corner, and stared with eyes that gleamed with terror.
+Before them sat the cadaverous hounds licking their red lips. The
+candles burned low, and began to flicker. The fire in the corner
+expired.
+
+Finally, the game came to a point where the little man laid down his
+hand and quavered: "I can't call you this time, sir. I'm dead broke."
+
+"What?" shrieked the recluse. "Not call me! Villain! Dastard! Cur! I
+have four queens, miscreant." His voice grew so mighty that it could not
+fit his throat. He choked, wrestling with his lungs for a moment. Then
+the power of his body was concentrated in a word: "Go!"
+
+He pointed a quivering, yellow finger at a wide crack in the rock. The
+little man threw himself at it with a howl. His erstwhile frozen
+companions felt their blood throb again. With great bounds they plunged
+after the little man. A minute of scrambling, falling, and pushing
+brought them to open air. They climbed the distance to their camp in
+furious springs.
+
+The sky in the east was a lurid yellow. In the west the footprints of
+departing night lay on the pine trees. In front of their replenished
+camp fire sat John Willerkins, the guide.
+
+"Hello!" he shouted at their approach. "Be you fellers ready to go deer
+huntin'?"
+
+Without replying, they stopped and debated among themselves in whispers.
+
+Finally, the pudgy man came forward.
+
+"John," he inquired, "do you know anything peculiar about this cave
+below here?"
+
+"Yes," said Willerkins at once; "Tom Gardner."
+
+"What?" said the pudgy man.
+
+"Tom Gardner."
+
+"How's that?"
+
+"Well, you see," said Willerkins slowly, as he took dignified pulls at
+his pipe, "Tom Gardner was once a fambly man, who lived in these here
+parts on a nice leetle farm. He uster go away to the city orften, and
+one time he got a-gamblin' in one of them there dens. He wentter the
+dickens right quick then. At last he kum home one time and tol' his
+folks he had up and sold the farm and all he had in the worl'. His
+leetle wife she died then. Tom he went crazy, and soon after--"
+
+The narrative was interrupted by the little man, who became possessed of
+devils.
+
+"I wouldn't give a cuss if he had left me 'nough money to get home on
+the doggoned, grey-haired red pirate," he shrilled, in a seething
+sentence. The pudgy man gazed at the little man calmly and sneeringly.
+
+"Oh, well," he said, "we can tell a great tale when we get back to the
+city after having investigated this thing."
+
+"Go to the devil," replied the little man.
+
+
+
+
+THE MESMERIC MOUNTAIN.
+
+A TALE OF SULLIVAN COUNTY.
+
+
+On the brow of a pine-plumed hillock there sat a little man with his
+back against a tree. A venerable pipe hung from his mouth, and
+smoke-wreaths curled slowly skyward. He was muttering to himself with
+his eyes fixed on an irregular black opening in the green wall of forest
+at the foot of the hill. Two vague waggon ruts led into the shadows. The
+little man took his pipe in his hands and addressed the listening pines.
+
+"I wonder what the devil it leads to," said he.
+
+A grey, fat rabbit came lazily from a thicket and sat in the opening.
+Softly stroking his stomach with his paw, he looked at the little man in
+a thoughtful manner. The little man threw a stone, and the rabbit
+blinked and ran through an opening. Green, shadowy portals seemed to
+close behind him.
+
+The little man started. "He's gone down that roadway," he said, with
+ecstatic mystery to the pines. He sat a long time and contemplated the
+door to the forest. Finally, he arose, and awakening his limbs, started
+away. But he stopped and looked back.
+
+"I can't imagine what it leads to," muttered he. He trudged over the
+brown mats of pine needles, to where, in a fringe of laurel, a tent was
+pitched, and merry flames caroused about some logs. A pudgy man was
+fuming over a collection of tin dishes. He came forward and waved a
+plate furiously in the little man's face.
+
+"I've washed the dishes for three days. What do you think I am--"
+
+He ended a red oration with a roar: "Damned if I do it any more."
+
+The little man gazed dim-eyed away. "I've been wonderin' what it leads
+to."
+
+"What?"
+
+"That road out yonder. I've been wonderin' what it leads to. Maybe, some
+discovery or something," said the little man.
+
+The pudgy man laughed. "You're an idiot. It leads to ol' Jim Boyd's over
+on the Lumberland Pike."
+
+"Ho!" said the little man, "I don't believe that."
+
+The pudgy man swore. "Fool, what does it lead to, then?"
+
+"I don't know just what, but I'm sure it leads to something great or
+something. It looks like it."
+
+While the pudgy man was cursing, two more men came from obscurity with
+fish dangling from birch twigs. The pudgy man made an obviously
+herculean struggle and a meal was prepared. As he was drinking his cup
+of coffee, he suddenly spilled it and swore. The little man was
+wandering off.
+
+"He's gone to look at that hole," cried the pudgy man.
+
+The little man went to the edge of the pine-plumed hillock, and, sitting
+down, began to make smoke and regard the door to the forest. There was
+stillness for an hour. Compact clouds hung unstirred in the sky. The
+pines stood motionless, and pondering.
+
+Suddenly the little man slapped his knee and bit his tongue. He stood up
+and determinedly filled his pipe, rolling his eye over the bowl to the
+doorway. Keeping his eyes fixed he slid dangerously to the foot of the
+hillock and walked down the waggon ruts. A moment later he passed from
+the noise of the sunshine to the gloom of the woods.
+
+The green portals closed, shutting out live things. The little man
+trudged on alone.
+
+Tall tangled grass grew in the roadway, and the trees bended obstructing
+branches. The little man followed on over pine-clothed ridges and down
+through water-soaked swales. His shoes were cut by rocks of the
+mountains, and he sank ankle-deep in mud and moss of swamps. A curve
+just ahead lured him miles.
+
+Finally, as he wended the side of a ridge, the road disappeared from
+beneath his feet. He battled with hordes of ignorant bushes on his way
+to knolls and solitary trees which invited him. Once he came to a tall,
+bearded pine. He climbed it, and perceived in the distance a peak. He
+uttered an ejaculation and fell out.
+
+He scrambled to his feet, and said: "That's Jones's Mountain, I guess.
+It's about six miles from our camp as the crow flies."
+
+He changed his course away from the mountain, and attacked the bushes
+again. He climbed over great logs, golden-brown in decay, and was
+opposed by thickets of dark-green laurel. A brook slid through the ooze
+of a swamp; cedars and hemlocks hung their sprays to the edges of pools.
+
+The little man began to stagger in his walk. After a time he stopped and
+mopped his brow.
+
+"My legs are about to shrivel up and drop off," he said.... "Still if I
+keep on in this direction, I am safe to strike the Lumberland Pike
+before sundown."
+
+He dived at a clump of tag-alders, and emerging, confronted Jones's
+Mountain.
+
+The wanderer sat down in a clear place and fixed his eyes on the summit.
+His mouth opened widely, and his body swayed at times. The little man
+and the peak stared in silence.
+
+A lazy lake lay asleep near the foot of the mountain. In its bed of
+water-grass some frogs leered at the sky and crooned. The sun sank in
+red silence, and the shadows of the pines grew formidable. The expectant
+hush of evening, as if some thing were going to sing a hymn, fell upon
+the peak and the little man.
+
+A leaping pickerel off on the water created a silver circle that was
+lost in black shadows. The little man shook himself and started to his
+feet, crying: "For the love of Mike, there's eyes in this mountain! I
+feel 'em! Eyes!"
+
+He fell on his face.
+
+When he looked again, he immediately sprang erect and ran.
+
+"It's comin'!"
+
+The mountain was approaching.
+
+The little man scurried, sobbing through the thick growth. He felt his
+brain turning to water. He vanquished brambles with mighty bounds.
+
+But after a time he came again to the foot of the mountain.
+
+"God!" he howled, "it's been follerin' me." He grovelled.
+
+Casting his eyes upward made circles swirl in his blood.
+
+"I'm shackled I guess," he moaned. As he felt the heel of the mountain
+about crush his head, he sprang again to his feet. He grasped a handful
+of small stones and hurled them.
+
+"Damn you," he shrieked loudly. The pebbles rang against the face of the
+mountain.
+
+The little man then made an attack. He climbed with hands and feet
+wildly. Brambles forced him back and stones slid from beneath his feet.
+The peak swayed and tottered, and was ever about to smite with a granite
+arm. The summit was a blaze of red wrath.
+
+But the little man at last reached the top. Immediately he swaggered
+with valour to the edge of the cliff. His hands were scornfully in his
+pockets.
+
+He gazed at the western horizon, edged sharply against a yellow sky.
+"Ho!" he said. "There's Boyd's house and the Lumberland Pike."
+
+The mountain under his feet was motionless.
+
+
+
+
+MISCELLANEOUS
+
+
+
+
+THE SQUIRE'S MADNESS.
+
+
+Linton was in his study remote from the interference of domestic sounds.
+He was writing verses. He was not a poet in the strict sense of the
+word, because he had eight hundred a year and a manor-house in Sussex.
+But he was devoted, at any rate, and no happiness was for him equal to
+the happiness of an imprisonment in this lonely study. His place had
+been a semi-fortified house in the good days when every gentleman was
+either abroad with a bared sword hunting his neighbours or behind
+oak-and-iron doors and three-feet walls while his neighbours hunted him.
+But in the life of Linton it may be said that the only part of the house
+which remained true to the idea of fortification was the study, which
+was free only to Linton's wife and certain terriers. The necessary
+appearance from time to time of a servant always grated upon Linton as
+much as if from time to time somebody had in the most well-bred way
+flung a brick through the little panes of his window.
+
+This window looked forth upon a wide valley of hop-fields and
+sheep-pastures, dipping and rising this way and that way, but always a
+valley until it reached a high far away ridge upon which stood the
+upright figure of a windmill, usually making rapid gestures as if it
+were an excited sentry warning the old grey house of coming danger. A
+little to the right, on a knoll, red chimneys and parts of red-tiled
+roofs appeared among trees, and the venerable square tower of the
+village church rose above them.
+
+For ten years Linton had left vacant Oldrestham Hall, and when at last
+it became known that he and his wife were to return from an
+incomprehensible wandering, the village, which for four centuries had
+turned a feudal eye toward the Hall, was wrung with a prospect of
+change, a proper change. The great family pew in Oldrestham church would
+be occupied each Sunday morning by a fat, happy-faced, utterly
+squire-looking man, who would be dutifully at his post when the parish
+was stirred by a subscription list. Then, for the first time in many
+years, the hunters would ride in the early morning merrily out through
+the park, and there would be also shooting parties, and in the summer
+groups of charming ladies would be seen walking the terrace, laughing on
+the lawns and in the rose gardens. The village expected to have the
+perfectly legal and fascinating privilege of discussing the performances
+of its own gentry.
+
+The first intimation of calamity was in the news that Linton had rented
+all the shooting. This prepared the people for the blow, and it fell
+when they sighted the master of Oldrestham Hall. The older villagers
+remembered then that there had been nothing in the youthful Linton to
+promise a fat, happy-faced, dignified, hunting, shooting over-lord, but
+still they could not but resent the appearance of the new squire. There
+was no conceivable reason for his looking like a gaunt ascetic, who
+would surprise nobody if he borrowed a sixpence from the first yokel he
+met in the lanes.
+
+Linton was in truth three inches more than six feet in height, but he
+had bowed himself to five feet eleven inches. His hair shocked out in
+front like hay, and under it were two spectacled eyes which never seemed
+to regard anything with particular attention. His face was pale and full
+of hollows, and the mouth apparently had no expression save a chronic
+pout of the under-lip. His hands were large and raw boned but uncannily
+white. His whole bent body was thin as that of a man from a long
+sick-bed, and all was finished by two feet which for size could not be
+matched in the county.
+
+He was very awkward, but apparently it was not so much a physical
+characteristic as it was a mental inability to consider where he was
+going or what he was doing. For instance, when passing through a gate it
+was not uncommon for him to knock his side viciously against one of the
+posts. This was because he dreamed almost always, and if there had been
+forty gates in a row he would not then have noted them more than he did
+the one. As far as the villagers and farmers were concerned he never
+came out of this manner save in wide-apart cases, when he had forced
+upon him either some great exhibition of stupidity or some faint
+indication of double-dealing, and then this smouldering man flared out
+encrimsoning his immediate surrounding with a brief fire of ancestral
+anger. But the lapse back to indifference was more surprising. It was
+far quicker than the flare in the beginning. His feeling was suddenly
+ashes at the moment when one was certain it would lick the sky.
+
+Some of the villagers asserted that he was mad. They argued it long in
+the manner of their kind, repeating, repeating, and repeating, and when
+an opinion confusingly rational appeared they merely shook their heads
+in pig-like obstinacy. Anyhow, it was historically clear that no such
+squire had before been in the line of Lintons of Oldrestham Hall, and
+the present incumbent was a shock.
+
+The servants at the Hall--notably those who lived in the
+country-side--came in for a lot of questioning, and none were found too
+backward in explaining many things which they themselves did not
+understand. The household was most irregular. They all confessed that it
+was really so uncustomary that they did not know but what they would
+have to give notice. The master was probably the most extraordinary man
+in the whole world. The butler said that Linton would drink beer with
+his meals day in and day out like any carrier resting at a pot-house. It
+didn't matter even if the meal were dinner. Then suddenly he would
+change his tastes to the most valuable wines, and in ten days would make
+the wine-cellar look as if it had been wrecked at sea. What was to be
+done with a gentleman of that kind? The butler said for his part he
+wanted a master with habits, and he protested that Linton did not have a
+habit to his name, at least, none that could properly be called a habit.
+
+Barring the cook, the entire establishment agreed categorically with the
+butler. The cook didn't agree because she was a very good cook indeed,
+which she thought entitled her to be extremely aloof from the other
+servants' hall opinions.
+
+As for the squire's lady, they described her as being not much different
+from the master. At least she gave support to his most unusual manner of
+life, and evidently believed that whatever he chose to do was quite
+correct.
+
+Linton had written--
+
+    "The garlands of her hair are snakes,
+     Black and bitter are her hating eyes,
+     A cry the windy death-hall makes,
+     O, love, deliver us.
+     The flung cup rolls to her sandal's tip,
+     His arm--"
+
+Whereupon his thought fumed over the next two lines, coursing like
+greyhounds, after a fugitive vision of a writhening lover with the foam
+of poison on his lips dying at the feet of the woman. Linton arose, lit
+a cigarette, placed it on the window ledge, took another cigarette,
+looked blindly for the matches, thrust a spiral of paper into the flame
+of the log fire, lit the second cigarette, placed it toppling on a book
+and began a search among his pipes for one that would draw well. He
+gazed at his pictures, at the books on the shelves, out at the green
+spread of country-side, all without taking mental note. At the window
+ledge he came upon the first cigarette, and in a matter of fact way he
+returned it to his lips, having forgotten that he had forgotten it.
+
+There was a sound of steps on the stone floor of the quaint little
+passage that led down to his study, and turning from the window he saw
+that his wife had entered the room and was looking at him strangely.
+
+"Jack," she said in a low voice, "what is the matter?"
+
+His eyes were burning out from under his shock of hair with a fierceness
+that belied his feeling of simple surprise. "Nothing is the matter," he
+answered. "Why do you ask?"
+
+She seemed immensely concerned, but she was visibly endeavouring to
+hide her concern as well as to abate it.
+
+"I--I thought you acted queerly."
+
+He answered: "Why no. I'm not acting queerly. On the contrary," he added
+smiling, "I'm in one of my most rational moods."
+
+Her look of alarm did not subside. She continued to regard him with the
+same stare. She was silent for a time and did not move. His own thoughts
+had quite returned to a contemplation of a poisoned lover, and he did
+not note the manner of his wife. Suddenly she came to him, and laying a
+hand on his arm said, "Jack, you are ill?"
+
+"Why no, dear," he said with a first impatience, "I'm not ill at all. I
+never felt better in my life." And his mind beleaguered by this
+pointless talk strove to break through to its old contemplation of the
+poisoned lover. "Hear what I have written." Then he read--
+
+    "The garlands of her hair are snakes,
+     Black and bitter are her hating eyes,
+     A cry the windy death-hall makes,
+     O, love, deliver us.
+     The flung cup rolls to her sandal's tip,
+     His arm--"
+
+Linton said: "I can't seem to get the lines to describe the man who is
+dying of the poison on the floor before her. Really I'm having a time
+with it. What a bore. Sometimes I can write like mad and other times I
+don't seem to have an intelligent idea in my head."
+
+He felt his wife's hand tighten on his arm and he looked into her face.
+It was so alight with horror that it brought him sharply out of his
+dreams. "Jack," she repeated tremulously, "you are ill."
+
+He opened his eyes in wonder. "Ill! ill? No; not in the least!"
+
+"Yes, you are ill. I can see it in your eyes. You--act so strangely."
+
+"Act strangely? Why, my dear, what have I done? I feel quite well.
+Indeed, I was never more fit in my life."
+
+As he spoke he threw himself into a large wing chair and looked up at
+his wife, who stood gazing at him from the other side of the black oak
+table upon which Linton wrote his verses.
+
+"Jack, dear," she almost whispered, "I have noticed it for days," and
+she leaned across the table to look more intently into his face. "Yes,
+your eyes grow more fixed every day--you--you--your head, does it ache,
+dear?"
+
+Linton arose from his chair and came around the big table toward his
+wife. As he approached her, an expression akin to terror crossed her
+face and she drew back as in fear, holding out both hands to ward him
+off.
+
+He had been smiling in the manner of a man reassuring a frightened
+child, but at her shrinking from his outstretched hand he stopped in
+amazement. "Why, Grace, what is it? tell me."
+
+She was glaring at him, her eyes wide with misery. Linton moved his left
+hand across his face, unconsciously trying to brush from it that which
+alarmed her.
+
+"Oh, Jack, you must see some one; I am wretched about you. You are ill!"
+
+"Why, my dear wife," he said, "I am quite, quite well; I am anxious to
+finish these verses but words won't come somehow, the man dying--"
+
+"Yes, that is it, you cannot remember, you see that you cannot remember.
+You must see a doctor. We will go up to town at once," she answered
+quickly.
+
+"'Tis true," he thought, "that my memory is not as good as it used to
+be. I cannot remember dates, and words won't fit in somehow. Perhaps I
+don't take enough exercise, dear; is that what worries you?" he asked.
+
+"Yes, yes, dear, you do not go out enough," said his wife. "You cling to
+this room as the ivy clings to the walls--but we must go to London, you
+_must_ see some one; promise me that you will go, that you will go
+immediately."
+
+Again Linton saw his wife look at him as one looks at a creature of
+pity. The faint lines from her nose to the corners of her mouth
+deepened as if she were in physical pain; her eyes, open to their
+fullest extent, had in them the expression of a mother watching her
+dying babe. What was this strange wall that had suddenly raised itself
+between them? Was he ill? No; he never was in better health in his life.
+He found himself vainly searching for aches in his bones. Again he
+brushed away this thing which seemed to be upon his face. There must be
+something on my face, he thought, else why does she look at me with such
+hopeless despair in her eyes; these kindly eyes that had hitherto been
+so responsive to each glance of his own. _Why_ did she think that he was
+ill? She who knew well his every mood. _Was he mad?_ Did this thing of
+the poisoned cup that rolled to her sandal's tip--and her eyes, her
+hating eyes, mean that his--no, it could not be. He fumbled among the
+papers on the table for a cigarette. He could not find one. He walked to
+the huge fireplace and peered near-sightedly at the ashes on the hearth.
+
+"What, what do you want, Jack? Be careful! The fire!" cried his wife.
+
+"Why, I want a cigarette," he said.
+
+She started, as if he had spoken roughly to her. "I will get you some,
+wait, sit quietly, I will bring you some," she replied as she hastened
+through the small passage-way up the stone steps that led from his
+study.
+
+Linton stood with his back still bent, in the posture of a man picking
+something from the ground. He did not turn from the fireplace until the
+echo of his wife's foot-fall on the stone floors had died away. Then he
+straightened himself and said, "Well, I'm damned!" And Linton was not a
+man who swore.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A month later the Squire and his wife were on their way to London to
+consult the great brain specialist, Doctor Redmond. Linton now believed
+that "something" was wrong with him. His wife's anxiety, which she could
+no longer conceal, forced him to this conclusion; "something" was wrong.
+Until these few last weeks Linton's wife had managed her household with
+the care and wisdom of a Chatelaine of mediaeval times. Each day was
+planned for certain duties in house or village. She had theories as to
+the management and education of the village children, and this work
+occupied much of her time. She was the antithesis of her husband. He, a
+weaver of dream-stories, she of that type of woman who has ideas of the
+emancipation of women and who believe the problem could be solved by
+training the minds of the next generation of mothers. Linton was not
+interested in these questions, but he would smile indulgently at his
+wife as she talked of the equality of mind of the sexes and the public
+part in the world's history which would be played by the women of the
+future.
+
+There was no talk of this kind now. The household management fell into
+the hands of servants. Night and day his wife watched Linton. He would
+awaken in the night to find her face close to his own, her eyes burning
+with feverish anxiety.
+
+"What is it, Grace?" he would cry, "have I said anything? What is the
+reason you watch me in this fashion, dear?"
+
+And she would sob, "Jack, you are ill, dear, you are ill; we must go to
+town, we must, indeed."
+
+Then he would soothe her with fond words and promise that he would go to
+London.
+
+This present journey was the outcome of those weeks of watching and fear
+in Linton's wife's mind.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Linton's wife was trembling violently as he helped her down from the cab
+in front of Doctor Redmond's door. They had made an appointment, so that
+they were sure of little delay before the portentous interview.
+
+A small page in blue livery opened the door and ushered them into a
+waiting-room. Mrs. Linton dropped heavily into a chair, looking with a
+frightened air from side to side and biting her under lip nervously.
+She was moaning half under her breath, "Oh, Jack, you are ill, you are
+ill."
+
+A short stout man with clean-shaven face and scanty black hair entered
+the room. His nose was huge and misshapen and his mouth was a straight
+firm line. Overhanging black brows tried in vain to shadow the piercing
+dark eyes, that darted questioning looks at every one, seeming to search
+for hidden thoughts as a flash-light from the conning tower of a ship
+searches for the enemy in time of war.
+
+He advanced toward Mrs. Linton with outstretched hand. "Mrs. Linton?" he
+said. "Ah!"
+
+She almost jumped from her chair as he came near her, crying, "Oh,
+doctor, my husband is ill, very ill, very ill!"
+
+Again Doctor Redmond with his eyes fixed upon her face ejaculated, "Ah!"
+Turning to Linton he said, "Please wait here, Squire; I will first talk
+to your wife. Will you step into my study, madam?" he said to Mrs.
+Linton, bowing courteously.
+
+Linton's wife ran into the room which the doctor pointed toward as his
+study.
+
+Linton waited. He moved softly about the room looking at the photographs
+of Greek ruins which adorned the walls. He stopped finally before a
+large picture of the Gate of Hadrian. He travelled once more into his
+dream country. His fancy painted in the figures of men and women who had
+passed through that gate. He had forgotten his fear of the blotting out
+of his mind that could conjure these glowing colours. He had forgotten
+himself.
+
+From this dream he was recalled to the present by a hand being placed
+gently upon his arm. He half turned and saw the doctor regarding him
+with sympathetic eyes.
+
+"Come, my dear sir, come into my study," said the doctor. "I have asked
+your wife to await us here." Linton then turned fully toward the centre
+of the room and found that his wife was seated quietly by a table.
+Doctor Redmond bowed low to Mrs. Linton as he passed her, and Linton
+waved his hand, smiled, and said, "Only a moment, dear." She did not
+reply. The door closed behind them.
+
+"Be seated, my dear sir," said the doctor, drawing forward a chair, "be
+seated. I want to say something to you, but you must drink this first."
+He handed Linton a small glass of brandy.
+
+Linton sat down, took the glass mechanically, and gulped the brandy in
+one great swallow. The doctor stood by the mantel and said slowly, "I
+rejoice to say to you, sir, that I have never met a man more sound
+mentally than yourself"--
+
+Linton half started from his chair.
+
+"Stop!" said the doctor, "I have not yet finished--but it is my painful
+duty to tell you the truth--It is your WIFE WHO IS MAD! MAD AS A
+HATTER!"
+
+
+
+
+A DESERTION.
+
+
+The yellow gas-light that came with an effect of difficulty through the
+dust-stained windows on either side of the door, gave strange hues to
+the faces and forms of the three women who stood gabbling in the
+hall-way of the tenement. They made rapid gestures, and in the
+background their enormous shadows mingled in terrific conflict.
+
+"Aye, she ain't so good as he thinks she is, I'll bet. He can watch over
+'er an' take care of 'er all he pleases, but when she wants t' fool 'im,
+she'll fool 'im. An' how does he know she ain't foolin' 'im now?"
+
+"Oh, he thinks he's keepin' 'er from goin' t' th' bad, he does. Oh, yes.
+He ses she's too purty t' let run round alone. Too purty! Huh! My
+Sadie--"
+
+"Well, he keeps a clost watch on 'er, you bet. O'ny las' week, she met
+my boy Tim on th' stairs, an' Tim hadn't said two words to 'er b'fore
+th' ol' man begin to holler. 'Dorter, dorter, come here, come here!'"
+
+At this moment a young girl entered from the street, and it was evident
+from the injured expression suddenly assumed by the three gossipers that
+she had been the object of their discussion. She passed them with a
+slight nod, and they swung about into a row to stare after her.
+
+On her way up the long flights the girl unfastened her veil. One could
+then clearly see the beauty of her eyes, but there was in them a certain
+furtiveness that came near to marring the effects. It was a peculiar
+fixture of gaze, brought from the street, as of one who there saw a
+succession of passing dangers with menaces aligned at every corner.
+
+On the top floor, she pushed open a door and then paused on the
+threshold, confronting an interior that appeared black and flat like a
+curtain. Perhaps some girlish idea of hobgoblins assailed her then, for
+she called in a little breathless voice, "Daddie!"
+
+There was no reply. The fire in the cooking-stove in the room crackled
+at spasmodic intervals. One lid was misplaced, and the girl could now
+see that this fact created a little flushed crescent upon the ceiling.
+Also, a series of tiny windows in the stove caused patches of red upon
+the floor. Otherwise, the room was heavily draped with shadows.
+
+The girl called again, "Daddie!"
+
+Yet there was no reply.
+
+"Oh, Daddie!"
+
+Presently she laughed as one familiar with the humours of an old man.
+"Oh, I guess yer cussin' mad about yer supper, dad," she said, and she
+almost entered the room, but suddenly faltered, overcome by a feminine
+instinct to fly from this black interior, peopled with imagined dangers.
+
+Again she called, "Daddie!" Her voice had an accent of appeal. It was as
+if she knew she was foolish but yet felt obliged to insist upon being
+reassured. "Oh, daddie!"
+
+Of a sudden a cry of relief, a feminine announcement that the stars
+still hung, burst from her. For, according to some mystic process, the
+smouldering coals of the fire went aflame with sudden, fierce
+brilliance, splashing parts of the walls, the floor, the crude
+furniture, with a hue of blood-red. And in the light of this dramatic
+outburst of light, the girl saw her father seated at a table with his
+back turned toward her.
+
+She entered the room, then, with an aggrieved air, her logic evidently
+concluding that somebody was to blame for her nervous fright. "Oh, yer
+on'y sulkin' 'bout yer supper. I thought mebbe ye'd gone somewheres."
+
+Her father made no reply. She went over to a shelf in the corner, and,
+taking a little lamp, she lit it and put it where it would give her
+light as she took off her hat and jacket in front of the tiny mirror.
+Presently, she began to bustle among the cooking utensils that were
+crowded into the sink, and as she worked she rattled talk at her father,
+apparently disdaining his mood.
+
+"I'd 'a come home earlier t'night, dad, o'ny that fly foreman, he kep'
+me in th' shop 'til half-past six. What a fool. He came t' me, yeh know,
+an' he ses, 'Nell, I wanta give yeh some brotherly advice.' Oh, I know
+him an' his brotherly advice. 'I wanta give yeh some brotherly advice.
+Yer too purty, Nell,' he ses, 't' be workin' in this shop an' paradin'
+through the streets alone, without somebody t' give yeh good brotherly
+advice, an' I wanta warn yeh, Nell. I'm a bad man, but I ain't as bad as
+some, an' I wanta warn yeh.' 'Oh, g'long 'bout yer business,' I ses. I
+know 'im. He's like all of 'em, o'ny he's a little slyer. I know 'im.
+'You g'long 'bout yer business,' I ses. Well, he ses after a while that
+he guessed some evenin' he'd come up an' see me. 'Oh, yeh will,' I ses,
+'yeh will? Well, you jest let my ol' man ketch yeh comin' foolin' 'round
+our place. Yeh'll wish yeh went t' some other girl t' give brotherly
+advice.' 'What th' 'ell do I care fer yer father?' he ses. 'What's he t'
+me?' 'If he throws yeh down stairs, yeh'll care for 'im,' I ses. 'Well,'
+he ses, 'I'll come when 'e ain't in, b' Gawd, I'll come when 'e ain't
+in.' 'Oh, he's allus in when it means takin' care 'a me,' I ses. 'Don't
+yeh fergit it either. When it comes t' takin' care 'a his dorter, he's
+right on deck every single possible time.'"
+
+After a time, she turned and addressed cheery words to the old man.
+"Hurry up th' fire, daddie! We'll have supper pretty soon."
+
+But still her father was silent, and his form in its sullen posture was
+motionless.
+
+At this, the girl seemed to see the need of the inauguration of a
+feminine war against a man out of temper. She approached him breathing
+soft, coaxing syllables.
+
+"Daddie! Oh, Daddie! O--o--oh, Daddie!"
+
+It was apparent from a subtle quality of valour in her tones that this
+manner of onslaught upon his moods had usually been successful, but
+to-night it had no quick effect. The words, coming from her lips, were
+like the refrain of an old ballad, but the man remained stolid.
+
+"Daddie! My Daddie! Oh, Daddie are yeh mad at me, really--truly mad at
+me!"
+
+She touched him lightly upon the arm. Should he have turned then he
+would have seen the fresh, laughing face, with dew-sparkling eyes, close
+to his own.
+
+"Oh, Daddie! My Daddie! Pretty Daddie!"
+
+She stole her arm about his neck, and then slowly bended her face toward
+his. It was the action of a queen who knows that she reigns
+notwithstanding irritations, trials, tempests.
+
+But suddenly, from this position, she leaped backward with the mad
+energy of a frightened colt. Her face was in this instant turned to a
+grey, featureless thing of horror. A yell, wild and hoarse as a
+brute-cry, burst from her. "Daddie!" She flung herself to a place near
+the door, where she remained, crouching, her eyes staring at the
+motionless figure, spattered by the quivering flashes from the fire. Her
+arms extended, and her frantic fingers at once besought and repelled.
+There was in them an expression of eagerness to caress and an expression
+of the most intense loathing. And the girl's hair that had been a
+splendour, was in these moments changed to a disordered mass that hung
+and swayed in witchlike fashion.
+
+Again, a terrible cry burst from her. It was more than the shriek of
+agony--it was directed, personal, addressed to him in the chair, the
+first word of a tragic conversation with the dead.
+
+It seemed that when she had put her arm about its neck, she had jostled
+the corpse in such a way, that now she and it were face to face. The
+attitude expressed an intention of arising from the table. The eyes,
+fixed upon hers, were filled with an unspeakable hatred.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The cries of the girl aroused thunders in the tenement. There was a loud
+slamming of doors, and presently there was a roar of feet upon the
+boards of the stairway. Voices rang out sharply.
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"What's th' matter?"
+
+"He's killin' her!"
+
+"Slug 'im with anythin' yeh kin lay hold of, Jack."
+
+But over all this came the shrill shrewish tones of a woman. "Ah, th'
+damned ol' fool, he's drivin' 'er inteh th' street--that's what he's
+doin.' He's drivin' 'er inteh th' street."
+
+
+
+
+HOW THE DONKEY LIFTED THE HILLS.
+
+
+Many people suppose that the donkey is lazy. This is a great mistake. It
+is his pride.
+
+Years ago, there was nobody quite so fine as the donkey. He was a great
+swell in those times. No one could express an opinion of anything
+without the donkey showing where he was in it. No one could mention the
+name of an important personage without the donkey declaring how well he
+knew him.
+
+The donkey was, above all things, a proud and aristocratic beast.
+
+One day a party of animals were discussing one thing and another, until
+finally the conversation drifted around to mythology.
+
+"I have always admired that giant, Atlas," observed the ox in the course
+of the conversation. "It was amazing how he could carry things."
+
+"Oh, yes, Atlas," said the donkey, "I knew him very well. I once met a
+man and we got talking of Atlas. I expressed my admiration for the giant
+and my desire to meet him some day, if possible. Whereupon the man said
+there was nothing quite so easy. He was sure that his dear friend,
+Atlas, would be happy to meet so charming a donkey. Was I at leisure
+next Monday? Well, then, could I dine with him upon that date? So, you
+see, it was all arranged. I found Atlas to be a very pleasant fellow."
+
+"It has always been a wonder to me how he could have carried the earth
+on his back," said the horse.
+
+"Oh, my dear sir, nothing is more simple," cried the donkey. "One has
+only to make up one's mind to it, and then--do it. That is all. I am
+quite sure that if I wished I could carry a range of mountains upon my
+back."
+
+All the others said, "Oh, my!"
+
+"Yes, I could," asserted the donkey, stoutly. "It is merely a question
+of making up one's mind. I will bet."
+
+"I will wager also," said the horse. "I will wager my ears that you
+can't carry a range of mountains upon your back."
+
+"Done," cried the donkey.
+
+Forthwith the party of animals set out for the mountains. Suddenly,
+however, the donkey paused and said, "Oh, but look here. Who will place
+this range of mountains upon my back? Surely I can not be expected to do
+the loading also."
+
+Here was a great question. The party consulted. At length the ox said,
+"We will have to ask some men to shovel the mountain upon the donkey's
+back."
+
+Most of the others clapped their hoofs or their paws and cried, "Ah,
+that is the thing."
+
+The horse, however, shook his head doubtfully. "I don't know about these
+men. They are very sly. They will introduce some deviltry into the
+affair."
+
+"Why, how silly," said the donkey. "Apparently you do not understand
+men. They are the most gentle, guileless creatures."
+
+"Well," retorted the horse, "I will doubtless be able to escape since I
+am not to be encumbered with any mountains. Proceed."
+
+The donkey smiled in derision at these observations by the horse.
+
+Presently they came upon some men who were labouring away like mad,
+digging ditches, felling trees, gathering fruits, carrying water,
+building huts.
+
+"Look at these men, would you," said the horse. "Can you trust them
+after this exhibition of their depravity? See how each one selfishly--"
+
+The donkey interrupted with a loud laugh.
+
+"What nonsense!"
+
+And then he cried out to the men, "Ho, my friends, will you please come
+and shovel a range of mountains upon my back?"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Will you please come and shovel a range of mountains upon my back?"
+
+The men were silent for a time. Then they went apart and debated. They
+gesticulated a great deal.
+
+Some apparently said one thing and some another. At last they paused and
+one of their number came forward.
+
+"Why do you wish a range of mountains shovelled upon your back?"
+
+"It is a wager," cried the donkey.
+
+The men consulted again. And as the discussion became older, their heads
+went closer and closer together, until they merely whispered, and did
+not gesticulate at all. Ultimately they cried, "Yes, certainly we will
+shovel a range of mountains upon your back for you."
+
+"Ah, thanks," said the donkey.
+
+"Here is surely some deviltry," said the horse behind his hoof to the
+ox.
+
+The entire party proceeded then to the mountains. The donkey drew a long
+breath and braced his legs.
+
+"Are you ready?" asked the men.
+
+"All ready," cried the donkey.
+
+The men began to shovel.
+
+The dirt and stones flew over the donkey's back in showers. It was not
+long before his legs were hidden. Presently only his neck and head
+remained in view. Then at last this wise donkey vanished. There had
+been made no great effect upon the range of mountains. They still
+towered toward the sky.
+
+The watching crowd saw a heap of dirt and stones make a little movement
+and then was heard a muffled cry. "Enough! Enough! It was not two ranges
+of mountains! It is not fair! It is not fair!"
+
+But the men only laughed as they shovelled on.
+
+"Enough! Enough! Oh, woe is me--thirty snow-capped peaks upon my little
+back. Ah, these false, false men! Oh, virtuous, wise, and holy men,
+desist."
+
+The men again laughed. They were as busy as fiends with their shovels.
+
+"Ah, brutal, cowardly, accursed men; ah, good, gentle, and holy men,
+please remove some of those damnable peaks. I will adore your beautiful
+shovels forever. I will be slave to the beckoning of your little
+fingers. I will no longer be my own donkey--I will be your donkey."
+
+The men burst into a triumphant shout and ceased shovelling.
+
+"Swear it, mountain-carrier."
+
+"I swear! I swear! I swear!"
+
+The other animals scampered away then, for these men in their plots and
+plans were very terrible. "Poor old foolish fellow," cried the horse;
+"he may keep his ears. He will need them to hear and count the blows
+that are now to fall upon him."
+
+The men unearthed the donkey. They beat him with their shovels. "Ho,
+come on, slave." Encrusted with earth, yellow-eyed from fright, the
+donkey limped toward his prison. His ears hung down like leaves of the
+plantain during the great rain.
+
+So, now, when you see a donkey with a church, a palace, and three
+villages upon his back, and he goes with infinite slowness, moving but
+one leg at a time, do not think him lazy. It is his pride.
+
+
+
+
+A MAN BY THE NAME OF MUD.
+
+
+Deep in a leather chair, the Kid sat looking out at where the rain
+slanted before the dull brown houses and hammered swiftly upon an
+occasional lonely cab. The happy crackle from the great and glittering
+fireplace behind him had evidently no meaning of content for him. He
+appeared morose and unapproachable, and when a man appears morose and
+unapproachable it is a fine chance for his intimate friends. Three or
+four of them discovered his mood, and so hastened to be obnoxious.
+
+"What's wrong, Kid? Lost your thirst?"
+
+"He can never be happy again. He has lost his thirst."
+
+"That's right, Kid. When you quarrel with a man who can whip you, resort
+to sarcastic reflection and distance."
+
+They cackled away persistently, but the Kid was mute and continued to
+stare gloomily at the street.
+
+Once a man who had been writing letters looked up and said, "I saw your
+friend at the Comique the other night." He waited a moment and then
+added, "In back."
+
+The Kid wheeled about in his chair at this information, and all the
+others saw then that it was important. One man said with deep
+intelligence, "Ho, ho, a woman, hey? A woman's come between the two
+Kids. A woman. Great, eh?" The Kid launched a glare of scorn across the
+room, and then turned again to a contemplation of the rain. His friends
+continued to do all in their power to worry him, but they fell
+ultimately before his impregnable silence.
+
+As it happened, he had not been brooding upon his friend's mysterious
+absence at all. He had been concerned with himself. Once in a while he
+seemed to perceive certain futilities and lapsed them immediately into a
+state of voiceless dejection. These moods were not frequent.
+
+An unexplained thing in his mind, however, was greatly enlightened by
+the words of the gossip. He turned then from his harrowing scrutiny of
+the amount of pleasure he achieved from living, and settled into a
+comfortable reflection upon the state of his comrade, the other Kid.
+
+Perhaps it could be indicated in this fashion: "Went to Comique, I
+suppose. Saw girl. Secondary part, probably. Thought her rather natural.
+Went to Comique again. Went again. One time happened to meet omnipotent
+and good-natured friend. Broached subject to him with great caution.
+Friend said--'Why, certainly, my boy, come round to-night, and I'll take
+you in back. Remember, it's against all rules, but I think that in your
+case, etc.' Kid went. Chorus girls winked same old wink. 'Here's another
+dude on the prowl.' Kid aware of this, swearing under his breath and
+looking very stiff. Meets girl. Knew beforehand that the footlights
+might have sold him, but finds her very charming. Does not say single
+thing to her which she naturally expected to hear. Makes no reference to
+her beauty nor her voice--if she has any. Perhaps takes it for granted
+that she knows. Girl don't exactly love this attitude, but then feels
+admiration, because after all she can't tell whether he thinks her nice
+or whether he don't. New scheme this. Worked by occasional guys in Rome
+and Egypt, but still, new scheme. Kid goes away. Girl thinks. Later,
+nails omnipotent and good-natured friend. 'Who was that you brought
+back?' 'Oh, him? Why, he--' Describes the Kid's wealth, feats, and
+virtues--virtues of disposition. Girl propounds clever question--'Why
+did he wish to meet me?' Omnipotent person says, 'Damned if I know.'"
+
+Later, Kid asks girl to supper. Not wildly anxious, but very evident
+that he asks her because he likes her. Girl accepts; goes to supper. Kid
+very good comrade and kind. Girl begins to think that here at last is a
+man who understands her. Details ambitions--long, wonderful ambitions.
+Explains her points of superiority over the other girls of stage. Says
+their lives disgust her. She wants to work and study and make something
+of herself. Kid smokes vast number of cigarettes. Displays and feels
+deep sympathy. Recalls, but faintly, that he has heard it on previous
+occasions. They have an awfully good time. Part at last in front of
+apartment house. "Good-night, old chap." "Good-night." Squeeze hands
+hard. Kid has no information at all about kissing her good-night, but
+don't even try. Noble youth. Wise youth. Kid goes home and smokes. Feels
+strong desire to kill people who say intolerable things of the girl in
+rows. "Narrow, mean, stupid, ignorant, damnable people." Contemplates
+the broad, fine liberality of his experienced mind.
+
+Kid and girl become very chumy. Kid like a brother. Listens to her
+troubles. Takes her out to supper regularly and regularly. Chorus girls
+now tacitly recognise him as the main guy. Sometimes, may be, girl's
+mother sick. Can't go to supper. Kid always very noble. Understands
+perfectly the probabilities of there being others. Lays for 'em, but
+makes no discoveries. Begins to wonder whether he is a winner or whether
+she is a girl of marvellous cleverness. Can't tell. Maintains himself
+with dignity, however. Only occasionally inveighs against the men who
+prey upon the girls of the stage. Still noble.
+
+Time goes on. Kid grows less noble. Perhaps decides not to be noble at
+all, or as little as he can. Still inveighs against the men who prey
+upon the girls of the stage. Thinks the girl stunning. Wants to be dead
+sure there are no others. Once suspects it, and immediately makes the
+colossal mistake of his life. Takes the girl to task. Girl won't stand
+it for a minute. Harangues him. Kid surrenders and pleads with
+her--pleads with her. Kid's name is mud.
+
+
+
+
+A POKER GAME.
+
+
+Usually a poker game is a picture of peace. There is no drama so
+low-voiced and serene and monotonous. If an amateur loser does not
+softly curse, there is no orchestral support. Here is one of the most
+exciting and absorbing occupations known to intelligent American
+manhood; here a year's reflection is compressed into a moment of
+thought; here the nerves may stand on end and scream to themselves, but
+a tranquillity as from heaven is only interrupted by the click of chips.
+The higher the stakes the more quiet the scene; this is a law that
+applies everywhere save on the stage.
+
+And yet sometimes in a poker game things happen. Everybody remembers the
+celebrated corner on bay rum that was triumphantly consummated by Robert
+F. Cinch, of Chicago, assisted by the United States Courts and whatever
+other federal power he needed. Robert F. Cinch enjoyed his victory four
+months. Then he died, and young Bobbie Cinch came to New York in order
+to more clearly demonstrate that there was a good deal of fun in
+twenty-two million dollars.
+
+Old Henry Spuytendyvil owns all the real estate in New York save that
+previously appropriated by the hospitals and Central Park. He had been a
+friend of Bob's father. When Bob appeared in New York, Spuytendyvil
+entertained him correctly. It came to pass that they just naturally
+played poker.
+
+One night they were having a small game in an up-town hotel. There were
+five of them, including two lawyers and a politician. The stakes
+depended on the ability of the individual fortune.
+
+Bobbie Cinch had won rather heavily. He was as generous as sunshine, and
+when luck chases a generous man it chases him hard, even though he
+cannot bet with all the skill of his opponents.
+
+Old Spuytendyvil had lost a considerable amount. One of the lawyers from
+time to time smiled quietly, because he knew Spuytendyvil well, and he
+knew that anything with the name of loss attached to it sliced the old
+man's heart into sections.
+
+At midnight Archie Bracketts, the actor, came into the room. "How you
+holding 'em, Bob?" said he.
+
+"Pretty well," said Bob.
+
+"Having any luck, Mr. Spuytendyvil?"
+
+"Blooming bad," grunted the old man.
+
+Bracketts laughed and put his foot on the round of Spuytendyvil's chair.
+"There," said he, "I'll queer your luck for you." Spuytendyvil sat at
+the end of the table. "Bobbie," said the actor, presently, as young
+Cinch won another pot, "I guess I better knock your luck." So he took
+his foot from the old man's chair and placed it on Bob's chair. The lad
+grinned good-naturedly and said he didn't care.
+
+Bracketts was in a position to scan both of the hands. It was Bob's
+ante, and old Spuytendyvil threw in a red chip. Everybody passed out up
+to Bobbie. He filled in the pot and drew a card.
+
+Spuytendyvil drew a card. Bracketts, looking over his shoulder, saw him
+holding the ten, nine, eight, and seven of diamonds. Theatrically
+speaking, straight flushes are as frequent as berries on a juniper tree,
+but as a matter of truth the reason that straight flushes are so admired
+is because they are not as common as berries on a juniper tree.
+Bracketts stared; drew a cigar slowly from his pocket, and placing it
+between his teeth forgot its existence.
+
+Bobbie was the only other stayer. Bracketts flashed an eye for the lad's
+hand and saw the nine, eight, six, and five of hearts. Now, there are
+but six hundred and forty-five emotions possible to the human mind, and
+Bracketts immediately had them all. Under the impression that he had
+finished his cigar, he took it from his mouth and tossed it toward the
+grate without turning his eyes to follow its flight.
+
+There happened to be a complete silence around the green-clothed table.
+Spuytendyvil was studying his hand with a kind of contemptuous smile,
+but in his eyes there perhaps was to be seen a cold, stern light
+expressing something sinister and relentless.
+
+Young Bob sat as he had sat. As the pause grew longer, he looked up once
+inquiringly at Spuytendyvil.
+
+The old man reached for a white chip. "Well, mine are worth about that
+much," said he, tossing it into the pot. Thereupon he leaned back
+comfortably in his chair and renewed his stare at the five straight
+diamond. Young Bob extended his hand leisurely toward his stack. It
+occurred to Bracketts that he was smoking, but he found no cigar in his
+mouth.
+
+The lad fingered his chips and looked pensively at his hand. The silence
+of those moments oppressed Bracketts like the smoke from a
+conflagration.
+
+Bobbie Cinch continued for some moments to coolly observe his cards. At
+last he breathed a little sigh and said, "Well, Mr. Spuytendyvil, I
+can't play a sure thing against you." He threw in a white chip. "I'll
+just call you. I've got a straight flush." He faced down his cards.
+
+Old Spuytendyvil's fear, horror, and rage could only be equalled in
+volume to a small explosion of gasolene. He dashed his cards upon the
+table. "There!" he shouted, glaring frightfully at Bobbie. "I've got a
+straight flush, too! And mine is Jack high!"
+
+Bobbie was at first paralysed with amazement, but in a moment he
+recovered, and apparently observing something amusing in the situation
+he grinned.
+
+Archie Bracketts, having burst his bond of silence, yelled for joy and
+relief. He smote Bobbie on the shoulder. "Bob, my boy," he cried
+exuberantly, "you're no gambler, but you're a mighty good fellow, and if
+you hadn't been you would be losing a good many dollars this minute."
+
+Old Spuytendyvil glowered at Bracketts. "Stop making such an infernal
+din, will you, Archie," he said morosely. His throat seemed filled with
+pounded glass. "Pass the whisky."
+
+
+
+
+THE SNAKE.
+
+
+Where the path wended across the ridge, the bushes of huckle-berry and
+sweet fern swarmed at it in two curling waves until it was a mere
+winding line traced through a tangle. There was no interference by
+clouds, and as the rays of the sun fell full upon the ridge, they called
+into voice innumerable insects which chanted the heat of the summer day
+in steady, throbbing, unending chorus.
+
+A man and a dog came from the laurel thickets of the valley where the
+white brook brawled with the rocks. They followed the deep line of the
+path across the ridge. The dog--a large lemon and white setter--walked,
+tranquilly meditative, at his master's heels.
+
+Suddenly from some unknown and yet near place in advance there came a
+dry, shrill whistling rattle that smote motion instantly from the limbs
+of the man and the dog. Like the fingers of a sudden death, this sound
+seemed to touch the man at the nape of the neck, at the top of the
+spine, and change him, as swift as thought, to a statue of listening
+horror, surprise, rage. The dog, too--the same icy hand was laid upon
+him, and he stood crouched and quivering, his jaw dropping, the froth of
+terror upon his lips, the light of hatred in his eyes.
+
+Slowly the man moved his hands toward the bushes, but his glance did not
+turn from the place made sinister by the warning rattle. His fingers,
+unguided, sought for a stick of weight and strength. Presently they
+closed about one that seemed adequate, and holding this weapon poised
+before him, the man moved slowly forward, glaring. The dog with his
+nervous nostrils fairly fluttering moved warily, one foot at a time,
+after his master.
+
+But when the man came upon the snake, his body underwent a shock as if
+from a revelation, as if after all he had been ambushed. With a blanched
+face, he sprang forward, and his breath came in strained gasps, his
+chest heaving as if he were in the performance of an extraordinary
+muscular trial. His arm with the stick made a spasmodic, defensive
+gesture.
+
+The snake had apparently been crossing the path in some mystic travel
+when to his sense there came the knowledge of the coming of his foes.
+The dull vibration perhaps informed him, and he flung his body to face
+the danger. He had no knowledge of paths; he had no wit to tell him to
+slink noiselessly into the bushes. He knew that his implacable enemies
+were approaching; no doubt they were seeking him, hunting him. And so
+he cried his cry, an incredibly swift jangle of tiny bells, as burdened
+with pathos as the hammering upon quaint cymbals by the Chinese at
+war--for, indeed, it was usually his death-music.
+
+"Beware! Beware! Beware!"
+
+The man and the snake confronted each other. In the man's eyes were
+hatred and fear. In the snake's eyes were hatred and fear. These enemies
+manoeuvred, each preparing to kill. It was to be a battle without
+mercy. Neither knew of mercy for such a situation. In the man was all
+the wild strength of the terror of his ancestors, of his race, of his
+kind. A deadly repulsion had been handed from man to man through long
+dim centuries. This was another detail of a war that had begun evidently
+when first there were men and snakes. Individuals who do not participate
+in this strife incur the investigations of scientists. Once there was a
+man and a snake who were friends, and at the end, the man lay dead with
+the marks of the snake's caress just over his East Indian heart. In the
+formation of devices, hideous and horrible, Nature reached her supreme
+point in the making of the snake, so that priests who really paint hell
+well fill it with snakes instead of fire. These curving forms, these
+scintillant s create at once, upon sight, more relentless
+animosities than do shake barbaric tribes. To be born a snake is to be
+thrust into a place a-swarm with formidable foes. To gain an
+appreciation of it, view hell as pictured by priests who are really
+skilful.
+
+As for this snake in the pathway, there was a double curve some inches
+back of its head, which, merely by the potency of its lines, made the
+man feel with tenfold eloquence the touch of the death-fingers at the
+nape of his neck. The reptile's head was waving slowly from side to side
+and its hot eyes flashed like little murder-lights. Always in the air
+was the dry, shrill whistling of the rattles.
+
+"Beware! Beware! Beware!"
+
+The man made a preliminary feint with his stick. Instantly the snake's
+heavy head and neck were bended back on the double curve and instantly
+the snake's body shot forward in a low, straight, hard spring. The man
+jumped with a convulsive chatter and swung his stick. The blind,
+sweeping blow fell upon the snake's head and hurled him so that
+steel-coloured plates were for a moment uppermost. But he rallied
+swiftly, agilely, and again the head and neck bended back to the double
+curve, and the steaming, wide-open mouth made its desperate effort to
+reach its enemy. This attack, it could be seen, was despairing, but it
+was nevertheless impetuous, gallant, ferocious, of the same quality as
+the charge of the lone chief when the walls of white faces close upon
+him in the mountains. The stick swung unerringly again, and the snake,
+mutilated, torn, whirled himself into the last coil.
+
+And now the man went sheer raving mad from the emotions of his
+forefathers and from his own. He came to close quarters. He gripped the
+stick with his two hands and made it speed like a flail. The snake,
+tumbling in the anguish of final despair, fought, bit, flung itself upon
+this stick which was taking his life.
+
+At the end, the man clutched his stick and stood watching in silence.
+The dog came slowly and with infinite caution stretched his nose
+forward, sniffing. The hair upon his neck and back moved and ruffled as
+if a sharp wind was blowing. The last muscular quivers of the snake were
+causing the rattles to still sound their treble cry, the shrill, ringing
+war chant and hymn of the grave of the thing that faces foes at once
+countless, implacable, and superior.
+
+"Well, Rover," said the man, turning to the dog with a grin of victory,
+"we'll carry Mr. Snake home to show the girls."
+
+His hands still trembled from the strain of the encounter, but he pried
+with his stick under the body of the snake and hoisted the limp thing
+upon it. He resumed his march along the path, and the dog walked,
+tranquilly meditative, at his master's heels.
+
+
+
+
+A SELF-MADE MAN.
+
+AN EXAMPLE OF SUCCESS THAT ANY ONE CAN FOLLOW.
+
+
+Tom had a hole in his shoe. It was very round and very uncomfortable,
+particularly when he went on wet pavements. Rainy days made him feel
+that he was walking on frozen dollars, although he had only to think for
+a moment to discover he was not.
+
+He used up almost two packs of playing cards by means of putting four
+cards at a time inside his shoe as a sort of temporary sole, which
+usually lasted about half a day. Once he put in four aces for luck. He
+went down town that morning and got refused work. He thought it wasn't a
+very extraordinary performance for a young man of ability, and he was
+not sorry that night to find his packs were entirely out of aces.
+
+One day Tom was strolling down Broadway. He was in pursuit of work,
+although his pace was slow. He had found that he must take the matter
+coolly. So he puffed tenderly at a cigarette and walked as if he owned
+stock. He imitated success so successfully, that if it wasn't for the
+constant reminder (king, queen, deuce, and tray) in his shoe, he would
+have gone into a store and bought something.
+
+He had borrowed five cents that morning off his landlady, for his mouth
+craved tobacco. Although he owed her much for board, she had unlimited
+confidence in him, because his stock of self-assurance was very large
+indeed. And as it increased in a proper ratio with the amount of his
+bills, his relations with her seemed on a firm basis. So he strolled
+along and smoked with his confidence in fortune in nowise impaired by
+his financial condition.
+
+Of a sudden he perceived on old man seated upon a railing and smoking a
+clay pipe.
+
+He stopped to look, because he wasn't in a hurry, and because it was an
+unusual thing on Broadway to see old men seated upon railings and
+smoking clay pipes.
+
+And to his surprise the old man regarded him very intently in return. He
+stared, with a wistful expression, into Tom's face, and he clasped his
+hands in trembling excitement.
+
+Tom was filled with astonishment at the old man's strange demeanour. He
+stood puffing at his cigarette, and tried to understand matters.
+Failing, he threw his cigarette away, took a fresh one from his pocket,
+and approached the old man.
+
+"Got a match?" he inquired, pleasantly.
+
+The old man, much agitated, nearly fell from the railing as he leaned
+dangerously forward.
+
+"Sonny, can you read?" he demanded in a quavering voice.
+
+"Certainly, I can," said Tom, encouragingly. He waived the affair of the
+match.
+
+The old man fumbled in his pocket. "You look honest, sonny. I've been
+looking for an honest feller fur a'most a week. I've set on this railing
+fur six days," he cried, plaintively.
+
+He drew forth a letter and handed it to Tom. "Read it fur me, sonny,
+read it," he said, coaxingly.
+
+Tom took the letter and leaned back against the railings. As he opened
+it and prepared to read, the old man wriggled like a child at a
+forbidden feast.
+
+Thundering trucks made frequent interruptions, and seven men in a hurry
+jogged Tom's elbow, but he succeeded in reading what follows:--
+
+
+                Office of Ketchum R. Jones, Attorney-at-Law,
+                      Tin Can, Nevada, May 19, 18--.
+
+                         Rufus Wilkins, Esq.
+
+
+     Dear Sir,--I have as yet received no acknowledgment of the draft
+     from the sale of the north section lots, which I forwarded to you
+     on 25th June. I would request an immediate reply concerning it.
+
+     Since my last I have sold the three corner lots at five thousand
+     each. The city grew so rapidly in that direction that they were
+     surrounded by brick stores almost before you would know it. I have
+     also sold for four thousand dollars the ten acres of out-laying
+     sage bush, which you once foolishly tried to give away. Mr.
+     Simpson, of Boston, bought the tract. He is very shrewd, no doubt,
+     but he hasn't been in the west long. Still, I think if he holds it
+     for about a thousand years, he may come out all right.
+
+     I worked him with the projected-horse-car-line gag.
+
+     Inform me of the address of your New York attorneys, and I will
+     send on the papers. Pray do not neglect to write me concerning the
+     draft sent on 25th June.
+
+     In conclusion, I might say that if you have any eastern friends who
+     are after good western investments inform them of the glorious
+     future of Tin Can. We now have three railroads, a bank, an electric
+     light plant, a projected horse-car line, and an art society. Also,
+     a saw manufactory, a patent car-wheel mill, and a Methodist Church.
+     Tin Can is marching forward to take her proud stand as the
+     metropolis of the west. The rose-hued future holds no glories to
+     which Tin Can does not--
+
+Tom stopped abruptly. "I guess the important part of the letter came
+first," he said.
+
+"Yes," cried the old man, "I've heard enough. It is just as I thought.
+George has robbed his dad."
+
+The old man's frail body quivered with grief. Two tears trickled slowly
+down the furrows of his face.
+
+"Come, come, now," said Tom, patting him tenderly on the back. "Brace
+up, old feller. What you want to do is to get a lawyer and go put the
+screws on George."
+
+"Is it really?" asked the old man, eagerly.
+
+"Certainly, it is," said Tom.
+
+"All right," cried the old man, with enthusiasm. "Tell me where to get
+one." He slid down from the railing and prepared to start off.
+
+Tom reflected. "Well," he said, finally, "I might do for one myself."
+
+"What," shouted the old man in a voice of admiration, "are you a lawyer
+as well as a reader?"
+
+"Well," said Tom again, "I might appear to advantage as one. All you
+need is a big front," he added, slowly. He was a profane young man.
+
+The old man seized him by the arm. "Come on, then," he cried, "and we'll
+go put the screws on George."
+
+Tom permitted himself to be dragged by the weak arms of his companion
+around a corner and along a side street. As they proceeded, he was
+internally bracing himself for a struggle, and putting large bales of
+self-assurance around where they would be likely to obstruct the advance
+of discovery and defeat.
+
+By the time they reached a brown-stone house, hidden away in a street of
+shops and warehouses, his mental balance was so admirable that he seemed
+to be in possession of enough information and brains to ruin half of the
+city, and he was no more concerned about the king, queen, deuce, and
+tray than if they had been discards that didn't fit his draw. He infused
+so much confidence and courage into his companion, that the old man went
+along the street, breathing war, like a decrepit hound on the scent of
+new blood.
+
+He ambled up the steps of the brown-stone house as if he were charging
+earthworks. He unlocked the door and they passed along a dark hallway.
+In a rear room they found a man seated at table engaged with a very late
+breakfast. He had a diamond in his shirt front and a bit of egg on his
+cuff.
+
+"George," said the old man in a fierce voice that came from his aged
+throat with a sound like the crackle of burning twigs, "here's my
+lawyer, Mr. er--ah--Smith, and we want to know what you did with the
+draft that was sent on 25th June."
+
+The old man delivered the words as if each one was a musket shot.
+George's coffee spilled softly upon the tablecover, and his fingers
+worked convulsively upon a slice of bread. He turned a white, astonished
+face toward the old man and the intrepid Thomas.
+
+The latter, straight and tall, with a highly legal air, stood at the old
+man's side. His glowing eyes were fixed upon the face of the man at the
+table. They seemed like two little detective cameras taking pictures of
+the other man's thoughts.
+
+"Father, what d--do you mean," faltered George, totally unable to
+withstand the two cameras and the highly legal air.
+
+"What do I mean?" said the old man with a feeble roar as from an ancient
+lion. "I mean that draft--that's what I mean. Give it up or
+we'll--we'll"--he paused to gain courage by a glance at the formidable
+figure at his side--"we'll put the screws on you."
+
+"Well, I was--I was only borrowin' it for 'bout a month," said George.
+
+"Ah," said Tom.
+
+George started, glared at Tom, and then began to shiver like an animal
+with a broken back. There were a few moments of silence. The old man was
+fumbling about in his mind for more imprecations. George was wilting and
+turning limp before the glittering orbs of the valiant attorney. The
+latter, content with the exalted advantage he had gained by the use of
+the expression "Ah," spoke no more, but continued to stare.
+
+"Well," said George, finally, in a weak voice, "I s'pose I can give you
+a cheque for it, 'though I was only borrowin' it for 'bout a month. I
+don't think you have treated me fairly, father, with your lawyers and
+your threats, and all that. But I'll give you the cheque."
+
+The old man turned to his attorney. "Well?" he asked.
+
+Tom looked at the son and held an impressive debate with himself. "I
+think we may accept the cheque," he said coldly after a time.
+
+George arose and tottered across the room. He drew a cheque that made
+the attorney's heart come privately into his mouth. As he and his
+client passed triumphantly out, he turned a last highly legal glare upon
+George that reduced that individual to a mere paste.
+
+On the side-walk the old man went into a spasm of delight and called his
+attorney all the admiring and endearing names there were to be had.
+
+"Lord, how you settled him," he cried ecstatically.
+
+They walked slowly back toward Broadway. "The scoundrel," murmured the
+old man. "I'll never see 'im again. I'll desert 'im. I'll find a nice
+quiet boarding-place and--"
+
+"That's all right," said Tom. "I know one. I'll take you right up,"
+which he did.
+
+He came near being happy ever after. The old man lived at advanced rates
+in the front room at Tom's boarding-house. And the latter basked in the
+proprietress' smiles, which had a commercial value, and were a great
+improvement on many we see.
+
+The old man, with his quantities of sage bush, thought Thomas owned all
+the virtues mentioned in high-class literature, and his opinion, too,
+was of commercial value. Also, he knew a man who knew another man who
+received an impetus which made him engage Thomas on terms that were
+highly satisfactory. Then it was that the latter learned he had not
+succeeded sooner because he did not know a man who knew another man.
+
+So it came to pass that Tom grew to be Thomas G. Somebody. He achieved
+that position in life from which he could hold out for good wines when
+he went to poor restaurants. His name became entangled with the name of
+Wilkins in the ownership of vast and valuable tracts of sage bush in Tin
+Can, Nevada.
+
+At the present day he is so great that he lunches frugally at high
+prices. His fame has spread through the land as a man who carved his way
+to fortune with no help but his undaunted pluck, his tireless energy,
+and his sterling integrity.
+
+Newspapers apply to him now, and he writes long signed articles to
+struggling young men, in which he gives the best possible advice as to
+how to become wealthy. In these articles, he, in a burst of
+glorification, cites the king, queen, deuce, and tray, the four aces,
+and all that. He alludes tenderly to the nickel he borrowed and spent
+for cigarettes as the foundation of his fortune.
+
+"To succeed in life," he writes, "the youth of America have only to see
+an old man seated upon a railing and smoking a clay pipe. Then go up and
+ask him for a match."
+
+
+
+
+A TALE OF MERE CHANCE.
+
+BEING AN ACCOUNT OF THE PURSUIT OF THE TILES, THE STATEMENT OF THE
+CLOCK, AND THE GRIP OF A COAT OF ORANGE SPOTS, TOGETHER WITH SOME
+CRITICISM OF A DETECTIVE SAID TO BE CARVED FROM AN OLD TABLE-LEG.
+
+
+Yes, my friend, I killed the man, but I would not have been detected in
+it were it not for some very extraordinary circumstances. I had long
+considered this deed, but I am a delicate and sensitive person, you
+understand, and I hesitated over it as the diver hesitates on the brink
+of a dark and icy mountain pool. A thought of the shock of the contact
+holds one back.
+
+As I was passing his house one morning, I said to myself, "Well, at any
+rate, if she loves him, it will not be for long." And after that
+decision I was not myself, but a sort of a machine.
+
+I rang the bell and the servants admitted me to the drawing-room. I
+waited there while the old tall clock placidly ticked its speech of
+time. The rigid and austere chairs remained in possession of their
+singular imperturbability, although, of course, they were aware of my
+purpose, but the little white tiles of the floor whispered one to
+another and looked at me. Presently he entered the room, and I, drawing
+my revolver, shot him. He screamed--you know that scream--mostly
+amazement--and as he fell forward his blood was upon the little white
+tiles. They huddled and covered their eyes from this rain. It seemed to
+me that the old clock stopped ticking as a man may gasp in the middle of
+a sentence, and a chair threw itself in my way as I sprang toward the
+door.
+
+A moment later, I was walking down the street, tranquil, you understand,
+and I said to myself, "It is done. Long years from this day I will say
+to her that it was I who killed him. After time has eaten the conscience
+of the thing, she will admire my courage."
+
+I was elated that the affair had gone off so smoothly, and I felt like
+returning home and taking a long, full sleep, like a tired working man.
+When people passed me, I contemplated their stupidity with a sense of
+satisfaction.
+
+But those accursed little white tiles.
+
+I heard a shrill crying and chattering behind me, and, looking back, I
+saw them, blood-stained and impassioned, raising their little hands and
+screaming "Murder! It was he!" I have said that they had little hands. I
+am not sure of it, but they had some means of indicating me as
+unerringly as pointing fingers. As for their movement, they swept along
+as easily as dry, light leaves are carried by the wind. Always they were
+shrilly piping their song of my guilt.
+
+My friend, may it never be your fortune to be pursued by a crowd of
+little blood-stained tiles. I used a thousand means to be free from the
+clash-clash of these tiny feet. I ran through the world at my best
+speed, but it was no better than that of an ox, while they, my pursuers,
+were always fresh, eager, relentless.
+
+I am an ingenious person, and I used every trick that a desperate,
+fertile man can invent. Hundreds of times I had almost evaded them when
+some smouldering, neglected spark would blaze up and discover me.
+
+I felt that the eye of conviction would have no terrors for me, but the
+eyes of suspicion which I saw in city after city, on road after road,
+drove me to the verge of going forward and saying, "Yes, I have
+murdered."
+
+People would see the following, clamorous troops of blood-stained tiles,
+and give me piercing glances, so that these swords played continually at
+my heart. But we are a decorous race, thank God. It is very vulgar to
+apprehend murderers on the public streets. We have learned correct
+manners from the English. Besides, who can be sure of the meaning of
+clamouring tiles? It might be merely a trick in politics.
+
+Detectives? What are detectives? Oh, yes, I have read of them and their
+deeds, when I come to think of it. The prehistoric races must have been
+remarkable. I have never been able to understand how the detective
+navigated in stone boats. Still, specimens of their pottery excavated in
+Taumalipas show a remarkable knowledge of mechanics. I remember the
+little hydraulic--what's that? Well, what you say may be true, my
+friend, but I think you dream.
+
+The little stained tiles. My friend, I stopped in an inn at the ends of
+the earth, and in the morning they were there flying like little birds
+and pecking at my window.
+
+I should have escaped. Heavens, I should have escaped. What was more
+simple? I murdered and then walked into the world, which is wide and
+intricate.
+
+Do you know that my own clock assisted in the hunting of me? They asked
+what time I left my home that morning, and it replied at once,
+"Half-after eight." The watch of a man I had chanced to pass near the
+house of the crime told the people "Seven minutes after nine." And, of
+course, the tall, old clock in the drawing-room went about day after day
+repeating, "Eighteen minutes after nine."
+
+Do you say that the man who caught me was very clever? My friend, I have
+lived long, and he was the most incredible blockhead of my experience.
+An enslaved, dust-eating Mexican vaquero wouldn't hitch his pony to such
+a man. Do you think he deserves credit for my capture? If he had been as
+pervading as the atmosphere, he would never have caught me. If he was a
+detective, as you say, I could carve a better one from an old table-leg.
+But the tiles. That is another matter. At night I think they flew in
+long high flock, like pigeons. In the day, little mad things, they
+murmured on my trail like frothy-mouthed weasels.
+
+I see that you note these great, round, vividly orange spots on my coat.
+Of course, even if the detective were really carved from an old
+table-leg, he could hardly fail to apprehend a man thus badged. As sores
+come upon one in the plague so came these spots upon my coat. When I
+discovered them, I made effort to free myself of this coat. I tore,
+tugged, wrenched at it, but around my shoulders it was like a grip of a
+dead man's arms. Do you know that I have plunged into a thousand lakes?
+I have smeared this coat with a thousand paints. But day and night the
+spots burn like lights. I might walk from this jail to-day if I could
+rid myself of this coat, but it clings--clings--clings.
+
+At any rate, the person you call a detective was not so clever to
+discover a man in a coat of spotted orange, followed by shrieking,
+blood-stained tiles. Yes, that noise from the corridor is most peculiar.
+But they are always there, muttering and watching, clashing and
+jostling. It sounds as if the dishes of Hades were being washed. Yet I
+have become used to it. Once, indeed, in the night, I cried out to them,
+"In God's name, go away, little blood-stained tiles." But they doggedly
+answered, "It is the law."
+
+
+
+
+AT CLANCY'S WAKE.
+
+
+SCENE--_Room in the house of the lamented Clancy. The curtains are
+pulled down. A perfume of old roses and whisky hangs in the air. A
+weeping woman in black it seated at a table in the centre. A group of
+wide-eyed children are sobbing in a corner. Down the side of the room is
+a row of mourning friends of the family. Through an open door can be
+seen, half hidden in shadows, the silver and black of a coffin._
+
+
+WIDOW--Oh, wirra, wirra, wirra!
+
+CHILDREN--B-b boo-hoo-hoo!
+
+FRIENDS (_conversing in low tones_)--Yis, Moike Clancy was a foine mahn,
+sure! None betther! No, I don't t'ink so. Did he? Sure, all th'
+elictions! He was th' bist in the warrud! He licked 'im widin an inch of
+his loife, aisy, an' th' other wan a big, shtrappin' buck of a mahn, an'
+him jes' free of th' pneumonia! Yis, he did! They carried th' warrud by
+six hunder! Yis, he was a foine mahn. None betther. Gawd sav' 'im!
+
+(_Enter_ Mr. SLICK, _of the "Daily Blanket," shown in by a maid-servant,
+whose hair has become disarranged through much tear-shedding. He is
+attired in a suit of grey check, and wears a red rose in his
+buttonhole._)
+
+Mr. SLICK--Good afternoon, Mrs. Clancy. This is a sad misfortune for
+you, isn't it?
+
+WIDOW--Oh, indade, indade, young mahn, me poor heart is bruk.
+
+Mr. SLICK--Very sad, Mrs. Clancy. A great misfortune, I'm sure. Now,
+Mrs. Clancy, I've called to--
+
+WIDOW--Little did I t'ink, young mahn, win they brought poor Moike in
+that it was th' lasht!
+
+Mr. SLICK (_with conviction_)--True! True! Very true, indeed. It was a
+great grief to you, Mrs. Clancy. I've called this morning, Mrs. Clancy,
+to see if I could get from you a short obituary notice for the _Blanket_
+if you could--
+
+WIDOW--An' his hid was done up in a rag, an' he was cursin' frightful. A
+damned Oytalian lit fall th' hod as Moike was walkin' pasht as dacint as
+you plaze. Win they carried 'im in, him all bloody, an' ravin' tur'ble
+'bout Oytalians, me heart was near bruk, but I niver tawt--I niver
+tawt--I--I niver--(_Breaks forth into a long, forlorn cry. The children
+join in, and the chorus echoes wailfully through the rooms._)
+
+Mr. SLICK (_as the yell, in a measure, ceases_)--Yes, indeed, a sad, sad
+affair. A terrible misfortune. Now, Mrs. Clancy--
+
+WIDOW (_turning suddenly_)--Mary Ann. Where's thot lazy divil of a Mary
+Ann? (_As the servant appears._) Mary Ann, bring th' bottle! Give th'
+gintlemin a dhrink!... Here's to Hiven savin' yez, young mahn.
+(_Drinks._)
+
+Mr. SLICK (_drinks_)--A noble whisky, Mrs. Clancy. Many thanks. Now,
+Mrs. Clancy--
+
+WIDOW--Take anodder wan! Take anodder wan! (_Fills his glass._)
+
+Mr. SLICK (_impatiently_)--Yes, certainly, Mrs. Clancy, certainly. (_He
+drinks._) Now, could you tell me, Mrs. Clancy, where your late husband
+was--
+
+WIDOW--Who--Moike? Oh, young mahn, yez can just say thot he was the
+foinest mahn livin' an' breathin', an' niver a wan in th' warrud was
+betther. Oh, but he had th' tindther heart for 'is fambly, he did. Don't
+I remimber win he clipped little Patsey wid th' bottle, an' didn't he
+buy th' big rockin'-horse th' minit he got sober? Sure he did. Pass th'
+bottle, Mary Ann! (_Pours a beer-glass about half-full for her guest._)
+
+Mr. SLICK (_taking a seat_)--True, Mr. Clancy was a fine man, Mrs.
+Clancy--a _very_ fine man. Now, I--
+
+WIDOW (_plaintively_)--An' don't yez loike th' rum? Dhrink th' rum,
+mahn! It was me own Moike's fav'rite bran'. Well I remimber win he
+fotched it home, an' half th' demijohn gone a'ready, an' him a-cursin'
+up th' stairs as dhrunk as Gawd plazed. It was a--Dhrink th' rum, young
+mahn, dhrink th' rum! If he cud see yez now, Moike Clancy wud git up
+from 'is--
+
+Mr. SLICK (_desperately_)--Very well, very well, Mrs. Clancy. Here's
+your good health. Now, can you tell me, Mrs. Clancy, when was Mr. Clancy
+born?
+
+WIDOW--Win was he borrun. Sure, divil a bit do I care win he was borrun.
+He was th' good mahn to me an' his childher; an' Gawd knows I don't care
+win he was borrun. Mary Ann, pass th' bottle! Wud yez kape th' gintlemin
+starvin' for a dhrink here in Moike Clancy's own house? Gawd save yez.
+
+(_When the bottle appears she pours a huge quantity out for her guest_.)
+
+Mr. SLICK--Well, then, Mrs. Clancy, _where_ was he born?
+
+WIDOW (_staring_)--In Oirland, mahn, in Oirland! Where did yez t'ink?
+(_Then, in sudden, wheedling tones._) An' ain't yez goin' to dhrink th'
+rum? Are yez goin' to shirk th' good whisky what was th' pride of
+Moike's life, an' him gettin' full on it an' breakin' th' furnitir t'ree
+nights a week hard-runnin'? Shame an yez, an' Gawd save yer soul. Dhrink
+it oop now, there's a dear, dhrink it oop now, an' say: "Moike Clancy,
+be all th' powers in th' shky, Hiven sind yez rist!"
+
+Mr. SLICK--(_to himself_)--Holy smoke! (_He drinks, then regards the
+glass for a long time._) ... Well, now, Mrs. Clancy, give me your
+attention for a moment, please. When did--
+
+WIDOW--An' oh, but he was a power in th' warrud! Divil a mahn cud vote
+right widout Moike Clancy at 'is elbow. An' in th' calkus, sure didn't
+Mulrooney git th' nominashun jes' by raison of Moike's atthackin' th'
+opposashun wid th' shtove-poker. Mulrooney got it as aisy as dhirt, wid
+Moike rowlin' under th' tayble wid th' other candeedate. He was a good
+sit'zen, was Moike--divil a wan betther.
+
+Mr. SLICK _spends some minutes in collecting his faculties_.
+
+Mr. SLICK (_after he decides that he has them collected_)--Yes, yes,
+Mrs. Clancy, your husband's h-highly successful pol-pol-political career
+was w-well known to the public; but what I want to know is--what I want
+to know--(_Pauses to consider._)
+
+WIDOW (_finally_)--Pass th' glasses, Mary Ann, yez lazy divil; give th'
+gintlemin a dhrink! Here (_tendering him a glass_), take anodder wan to
+Moike Clancy, an' Gawd save yez for yer koindness to a poor widee woman!
+
+Mr. SLICK (_after solemnly regarding the glass_)--Certainly, I--I'll
+take a drink. Certainly, M--Mish Clanshy. Yes, certainly, Mish Clanshy.
+Now, Mish Clanshy, w-w-wash was Mr. Clanshy's n-name before he married
+you, Mish Clanshy?
+
+WIDOW (_astonished_)--Why, divil a bit else but Clancy.
+
+Mr. SLICK (_after reflection_)--Well, but I mean--I mean, Mish Clanshy,
+I mean--what was date of birth? Did marry you 'fore then, or d-did marry
+you when 'e was born in N' York, Mish Clanshy?
+
+WIDOW--Phwat th' divil--
+
+Mr. SLICK (_with dignity_)--Ansher my queshuns, pleash, Mish Clanshy.
+Did 'e bring chil'en withum f'm Irelan', or was you, after married in N'
+York, mother those chil'en 'e brought f'm Irelan'?
+
+WIDOW--Be th' powers above, I--
+
+Mr. SLICK (_with gentle patience_)--I don't shink y' unnerstan' m'
+queshuns, Mish Clanshy. What I wanna fin' out is, what was 'e born in N'
+York for when he, before zat, came f'm Irelan'? Dash what puzzels me.
+I-I'm completely puzzled. An' alsho, I wanna fin' out--I wanna fin' out,
+if poshble--zat is, if it's poshble shing, I wanna fin' out--I wanna
+fin' out--if poshble--I wanna-shay, who the blazesh is dead here,
+anyhow?
+
+
+
+
+AN EPISODE OF WAR.
+
+
+The lieutenant's rubber blanket lay on the ground, and upon it he had
+poured the company's supply of coffee. Corporals and other
+representatives of the grimy and hot-throated men who lined the
+breastwork had come for each squad's portion.
+
+The lieutenant was frowning and serious at this task of division. His
+lips pursed as he drew with his sword various crevices in the heap until
+brown squares of coffee, astoundingly equal in size, appeared on the
+blanket. He was on the verge of a great triumph in mathematics, and the
+corporals were thronging forward, each to reap a little square, when
+suddenly the lieutenant cried out and looked quickly at a man near him
+as if he suspected it was a case of personal assault. The others cried
+out also when they saw blood upon the lieutenant's sleeve.
+
+He has winced like a man stung, swayed dangerously, and then
+straightened. The sound of his hoarse breathing was plainly audible. He
+looked sadly, mystically, over the breastwork at the green face of a
+wood, where now were many little puffs of white smoke. During this
+moment the men about him gazed statue-like and silent, astonished and
+awed by this catastrophe which happened when catastrophes were not
+expected--when they had leisure to observe it.
+
+As the lieutenant stared at the wood, they too swung their heads, so
+that for another instant all hands, still silent, contemplated the
+distant forest as if their minds were fixed upon the mystery of a
+bullet's journey.
+
+The officer had, of course, been compelled to take his sword into his
+left hand. He did not hold it by the hilt. He gripped it at the middle
+of the blade, awkwardly. Turning his eyes from the hostile wood, he
+looked at the sword as he held it there, and seemed puzzled as to what
+to do with it, where to put it. In short, this weapon had of a sudden
+become a strange thing to him. He looked at it in a kind of
+stupefaction, as if he had been endowed with a trident, a sceptre, or a
+spade.
+
+Finally he tried to sheath it. To sheath a sword held by the left hand,
+at the middle of the blade, in a scabbard hung at the left hip, is a
+feat worthy of a sawdust ring. This wounded officer engaged in a
+desperate struggle with the sword and the wobbling scabbard, and during
+the time of it he breathed like a wrestler.
+
+But at this instant the men, the spectators, awoke from their stone-like
+poses and crowded forward sympathetically. The orderly-sergeant took
+the sword and tenderly placed it in the scabbard. At the time, he leaned
+nervously backward, and did not allow even his finger to brush the body
+of the lieutenant. A wound gives strange dignity to him who bears it.
+Well men shy from this new and terrible majesty. It is as if the wounded
+man's hand is upon the curtain which hangs before the revelations of all
+existence--the meaning of ants, potentates, wars, cities, sunshine,
+snow, a feather dropped from a bird's wing; and the power of it sheds
+radiance upon a bloody form, and makes the other men understand
+sometimes that they are little. His comrades look at him with large eyes
+thoughtfully. Moreover, they fear vaguely that the weight of a finger
+upon him might send him headlong, precipitate the tragedy, hurl him at
+once into the dim, grey unknown. And so the orderly-sergeant, while
+sheathing the sword, leaned nervously backward.
+
+There were others who proffered assistance. One timidly presented his
+shoulder and asked the lieutenant if he cared to lean upon it, but the
+latter waved him away mournfully. He wore the look of one who knows he
+is the victim of a terrible disease and understands his helplessness. He
+again stared over the breastwork at the forest, and then turning went
+slowly rearward. He held his right wrist tenderly in his left hand as if
+the wounded arm was made of very brittle glass.
+
+And the men in silence stared at the wood, then at the departing
+lieutenant--then at the wood, then at the lieutenant.
+
+As the wounded officer passed from the line of battle, he was enabled to
+see many things which as a participant in the fight were unknown to him.
+He saw a general on a black horse gazing over the lines of blue infantry
+at the green woods which veiled his problems. An aide galloped
+furiously, dragged his horse suddenly to a halt, saluted, and presented
+a paper. It was, for a wonder, precisely like an historical painting.
+
+To the rear of the general and his staff a group, composed of a bugler,
+two or three orderlies, and the bearer of the corps standard, all upon
+maniacal horses, were working like slaves to hold their ground, preserve
+their respectful interval, while the shells boomed in the air about
+them, and caused their chargers to make furious quivering leaps.
+
+A battery, a tumultuous and shining mass, was swirling toward the right.
+The wild thud of hoofs, the cries of the riders shouting blame and
+praise, menace and encouragement, and, last, the roar of the wheels, the
+slant of the glistening guns, brought the lieutenant to an intent pause.
+The battery swept in curves that stirred the heart; it made halts as
+dramatic as the crash of a wave on the rocks, and when it fled onward,
+this aggregation of wheels, levers, motors, had a beautiful unity, as
+if it were a missile. The sound of it was a war-chorus that reached into
+the depths of man's emotion.
+
+The lieutenant, still holding his arm as if it were of glass, stood
+watching this battery until all detail of it was lost, save the figures
+of the riders, which rose and fell and waved lashes over the black mass.
+
+Later, he turned his eyes toward the battle where the shooting sometimes
+crackled like bush-fires, sometimes sputtered with exasperating
+irregularity, and sometimes reverberated like the thunder. He saw the
+smoke rolling upward and saw crowds of men who ran and cheered, or stood
+and blazed away at the inscrutable distance.
+
+He came upon some stragglers, and they told him how to find the field
+hospital. They described its exact location. In fact, these men, no
+longer having part in the battle, knew more of it than others. They told
+the performance of every corps, every division, the opinion of every
+general. The lieutenant, carrying his wounded arm rearward, looked upon
+them with wonder.
+
+At the roadside a brigade was making coffee and buzzing with talk like a
+girls' boarding-school. Several officers came out to him and inquired
+concerning things of which he knew nothing. One, seeing his arm, began
+to scold. "Why, man, that's no way to do. You want to fix that thing."
+He appropriated the lieutenant and the lieutenant's wound. He cut the
+sleeve and laid bare the arm, every nerve of which softly fluttered
+under his touch. He bound his handkerchief over the wound, scolding away
+in the meantime. His tone allowed one to think that he was in the habit
+of being wounded every day. The lieutenant hung his head, feeling, in
+this presence, that he did not know how to be correctly wounded.
+
+The low white tents of the hospital were grouped around an old
+school-house. There was here a singular commotion. In the foreground two
+ambulances interlocked wheels in the deep mud. The drivers were tossing
+the blame of it back and forth, gesticulating and berating, while from
+the ambulances, both crammed with wounded, there came an occasional
+groan. An interminable crowd of bandaged men were coming and going.
+Great numbers sat under the trees nursing heads or arms or legs. There
+was a dispute of some kind raging on the steps of the school-house.
+Sitting with his back against a tree a man with a face as grey as a new
+army blanket was serenely smoking a corn-cob pipe. The lieutenant wished
+to rush forward and inform him that he was dying.
+
+A busy surgeon was passing near the lieutenant. "Good-morning," he said,
+with a friendly smile. Then he caught sight of the lieutenant's arm and
+his face at once changed. "Well, let's have a look at it." He seemed
+possessed suddenly of a great contempt for the lieutenant. This wound
+evidently placed the latter on a very low social plane. The doctor cried
+out impatiently, "What mutton-head had tied it up that way anyhow?" The
+lieutenant answered, "Oh, a man."
+
+When the wound was disclosed the doctor fingered it disdainfully.
+"Humph," he said. "You come along with me and I'll 'tend to you." His
+voice contained the same scorn as if he were saying, "You will have to
+go to jail."
+
+The lieutenant had been very meek, but now his face flushed, and he
+looked into the doctor's eyes. "I guess I won't have it amputated," he
+said.
+
+"Nonsense, man! Nonsense! Nonsense!" cried the doctor. "Come along, now.
+I won't amputate it. Come along. Don't be a baby."
+
+"Let go of me," said the lieutenant, holding back wrathfully, his glance
+fixed upon the door of the old school-house, as sinister to him as the
+portals of death.
+
+And this is the story of how the lieutenant lost his arm. When he
+reached home, his sisters, his mother, his wife, sobbed for a long time
+at the sight of the flat sleeve. "Oh, well," he said, standing
+shamefaced amid these tears, "I don't suppose it matters so much as all
+that."
+
+
+
+
+THE VOICE OF THE MOUNTAIN.
+
+
+The old man Popocatepetl was seated on a high rock with his white mantle
+about his shoulders. He looked at the sky, he looked at the sea, he
+looked at the land--nowhere could he see any food. And he was very
+hungry, too.
+
+Who can understand the agony of a creature whose stomach is as large as
+a thousand churches, when this same stomach is as empty as a broken
+water jar?
+
+He looked longingly at some island in the sea. "Ah, those flat cakes! If
+I had them." He stared at storm-clouds in the sky. "Ah, what a drink is
+there." But the King of Everything, you know, had forbidden the old man
+Popocatepetl to move at all, because he feared that every footprint
+would make a great hole in the land. So the old fellow was obliged to
+sit still and wait for his food to come within reach. Any one who has
+tried this plan knows what intervals lie between meals.
+
+Once his friend, the little eagle, flew near, and Popocatepetl called to
+him. "Ho, tiny bird, come and consider with me as to how I shall be
+fed."
+
+The little eagle came and spread his legs apart and considered manfully,
+but he could do nothing with the situation. "You see," he said, "this is
+no ordinary hunger which one goat will suffice--"
+
+Popocatepetl groaned an assent.
+
+"--but it is an enormous affair," continued the little eagle, "which
+requires something like a dozen stars. I don't see what can be done
+unless we get that little creature of the earth--that little animal with
+two arms, two legs, one head, and a very brave air, to invent something.
+He is said to be very wise."
+
+"Who claims it for him?" asked Popocatepetl.
+
+"He claims it for himself," responded the eagle.
+
+"Well, summon him. Let us see. He is doubtless a kind little animal, and
+when he sees my distress he will invent something."
+
+"Good!" The eagle flew until he discovered one of these small creatures.
+"Oh, tiny animal, the great chief Popocatepetl summons you!"
+
+"Does he, indeed!"
+
+"Popocatepetl, the great chief," said the eagle again, thinking that the
+little animal had not heard rightly.
+
+"Well, and why does he summon me?"
+
+"Because he is in distress, and he needs your assistance."
+
+The little animal reflected for a time, and then said, "I will go."
+
+When Popocatepetl perceived the little animal and the eagle he stretched
+forth his great, solemn arms. "Oh, blessed little animal with two arms,
+two legs, a head, and a very brave air, help me in my agony. Behold I,
+Popocatepetl, who saw the King of Everything fashioning the stars, I,
+who knew the sun in his childhood, I, Popocatepetl, appeal to you,
+little animal. I am hungry."
+
+After a while the little animal asked: "How much will you pay?"
+
+"Pay?" said Popocatepetl.
+
+"Pay?" said the eagle.
+
+"Assuredly," quoth the little animal, "pay!"
+
+"But," demanded Popocatepetl, "were you never hungry? I tell you I am
+hungry, and is your first word then 'pay'?"
+
+The little animal turned coldly away. "Oh, Popocatepetl, how much wisdom
+has flown past you since you saw the King of Everything fashioning the
+stars and since you knew the sun in his childhood? I said pay, and,
+moreover, your distress measures my price. It is our law. Yet it is true
+that we did not see the King of Everything fashioning the stars. Nor did
+we know the sun in his childhood."
+
+Then did Popocatepetl roar and shake in his rage. "Oh,
+louse--louse--louse! Let us bargain then! How much for your blood?" Over
+the little animal hung death.
+
+But he instantly bowed himself and prayed: "Popocatepetl, the great, you
+who saw the King of Everything fashioning the stars, and who knew the
+sun in his childhood, forgive this poor little animal. Your sacred
+hunger shall be my care. I am your servant."
+
+"It is well," said Popocatepetl at once, for his spirit was ever kindly.
+"And now, what will you do?"
+
+The little animal put his hand upon his chin and reflected. "Well, it
+seems you are hungry, and the King of Everything has forbidden you to go
+for food in fear that your monstrous feet will riddle the earth with
+holes. What you need is a pair of wings."
+
+"A pair of wings!" cried Popocatepetl delightedly.
+
+"A pair of wings!" screamed the eagle in joy.
+
+"How very simple, after all."
+
+"And yet how wise!"
+
+"But," said Popocatepetl, after the first outburst, "who can make me
+these wings?"
+
+The little animal replied: "I and my kind are great, because at times we
+can make one mind control a hundred thousand bodies. This is the secret
+of our performance. It will be nothing for us to make wings for even
+you, great Popocatepetl. I and my kind will come"--continued the crafty,
+little animal--"we will come and dwell on this beautiful plain that
+stretches from the sea to the sea, and we will make wings for you."
+
+Popocatepetl wished to embrace the little animal. "Oh, glorious! Oh,
+best of little brutes! Run! run! run! Summon your kind, dwell in the
+plain and make me wings. Ah, when once Popocatepetl can soar on his
+wings from star to star, then, indeed--"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Poor old stupid Popocatepetl! The little animal summoned his kind, they
+dwelt on the plains, they made this and they made that, but they made no
+wings for Popocatepetl.
+
+And sometimes when the thunderous voice of the old peak rolls and rolls,
+if you know that tongue, you can hear him say: "Oh, traitor! Traitor!
+Traitor! Where are my wings? My wings, traitor! I am hungry! Where are
+my wings?"
+
+But the little animal merely places his finger beside his nose and
+winks.
+
+"Your wings, indeed, fool! Sit still and howl for them! Old idiot!"
+
+
+
+
+WHY DID THE YOUNG CLERK SWEAR?
+
+OR, THE UNSATISFACTORY FRENCH.
+
+
+All was silent in the little gent's furnishing store. A lonely clerk
+with a blonde moustache and a red necktie raised a languid hand to his
+brow and brushed back a dangling lock. He yawned and gazed gloomily at
+the blurred panes of the windows.
+
+Without, the wind and rain came swirling round the brick buildings and
+went sweeping over the streets. A horse-car rumbled stolidly by. In the
+mud on the pavements, a few pedestrians struggled with excited
+umbrellas.
+
+"The deuce!" remarked the clerk. "I'd give ten dollars if somebody would
+come in and buy something, if 'twere only cotton socks."
+
+He waited amid the shadows of the grey afternoon. No customers came. He
+heaved a long sigh and sat down on a high stool. From beneath a stack of
+unlaundried shirts he drew a French novel with a picture on the cover.
+He yawned again, glanced lazily toward the street, and settled himself
+as comfortable as the gods would let him upon the high stool.
+
+He opened the book and began to read. Soon it could have been noticed
+that his blonde moustache took on a curl of enthusiasm, and the
+refractory locks on his brow showed symptoms of soft agitation.
+
+"Silvere did not see the young girl for some days," read the clerk. "He
+was miserable. He seemed always to inhale that subtle perfume from her
+hair. At night he saw her eyes in the stars.
+
+"His dreams were troubled. He watched the house. Heloise did not appear.
+One day he met Vibert. Vibert wore a black frock-coat. There were
+wine-stains on the right breast. His collar was soiled. He had not
+shaved.
+
+"Silvere burst into tears. 'I love her! I love her! I shall die!' Vibert
+laughed scornfully. His necktie was second-hand. Idiotic, this boy in
+love. Fool! Simpleton! But at last he pitied him. She goes to the
+music-teacher's every morning. Silly Silvere embraced him.
+
+"The next day Silvere waited at the street corner. A vendor was selling
+chestnuts. Two gamins were fighting in an alley. A woman was scrubbing
+some steps. This great Paris throbbed with life.
+
+"Heloise came. She did not perceive Silvere. She passed with a happy
+smile on her face. She looked fresh, fair, innocent. Silvere felt
+himself swooning. 'Ah, my God!'
+
+"She crossed the street. The young man received a shock that sent the
+warm blood to his brain. It had been raining. There was mud. With one
+slender hand Heloise lifted her skirts. Silvere leaning forward, saw
+her--"
+
+A young man in a wet mackintosh came into the little gent's furnishing
+store.
+
+"Ah, beg pardon," said he to the clerk, "but do you have an agency for a
+steam laundry here? I have been patronising a Chinaman down th' avenue
+for some time, but he--what? No? You have none here? Well, why don't you
+start one, anyhow? It'd be a good thing in this neighbourhood. I live
+just round the corner, and it'd be a great thing for me. I know lots of
+people who would--what? Oh, you don't? Oh!"
+
+As the young man in the wet mackintosh retreated, the clerk with a
+blonde moustache made a hungry grab at the novel. He continued to read:
+"Handkerchief fall in a puddle. Silvere sprang forward. He picked up the
+handkerchief. Their eyes met. As he returned the handkerchief, their
+hands touched. The young girl smiled. Silvere was in ecstacies. 'Ah, my
+God!'
+
+"A baker opposite was quarrelling over two sous with an old woman.
+
+"A grey-haired veteran with a medal upon his breast and a butcher's boy
+were watching a dog-fight. The smell of dead animals came from adjacent
+slaughter-houses. The letters on the sign over the tinsmith's shop on
+the corner shone redly like great clots of blood. It was hell on roller
+skates."
+
+Here the clerk skipped some seventeen chapters descriptive of a number
+of intricate money transactions, the moles on the neck of a Parisian
+dressmaker, the process of making brandy, the milk-leg of Silvere's
+aunt, life in the coal-pits, and scenes in the Chamber of Deputies. In
+these chapters the reputation of the architect of Charlemagne's palace
+was vindicated, and it was explained why Heloise's grandmother didn't
+keep her stockings pulled up.
+
+Then he proceeded: "Heloise went to the country. The next day Silvere
+followed. They met in the fields. The young girl had donned the garb of
+the peasants. She blushed. She looked fresh, fair, innocent. Silvere
+felt faint with rapture. 'Ah, my God!'
+
+"She had been running. Out of breath, she sank down in the hay. She held
+out her hand. 'I am so glad to see you.' Silvere was enchanted at this
+vision. He bended toward her. Suddenly he burst into tears. 'I love you!
+I love you! I love you!' he stammered.
+
+"A row of red and white shirts hung on a line some distance away. The
+third shirt from the left had a button off the neck. A cat on the rear
+steps of a cottage near the shirt was drinking milk from a platter. The
+north-east portion of the platter had a crack in it.
+
+"'Heloise!' Silvere was murmuring hoarsely. He leaned toward her until
+his warm breath moved the curls on her neck. 'Heloise!' murmured Jean."
+
+"Young man," said an elderly gentleman with a dripping umbrella to the
+clerk with a blonde moustache, "have you any night-shirts open front and
+back? Eh? Night-shirts open front and back, I said. D'you hear, eh?
+_Night-shirts open front and back._ Well, then, why didn't you say so?
+It would pay you to be a trifle more polite, young man. When you get as
+old as I am, you will find out that it pays to--what? I didn't see you
+adding any column of figures. In that case I am sorry. You have no
+night-shirts open front and back, eh? Well, good-day."
+
+As the elderly gentleman vanished, the clerk with a blonde moustache
+grasped the novel like some famished animal. He read on: "A peasant
+stood before the two children. He wrung his hands. 'Have you seen a
+stray cow?' 'No,' cried the children in the same breath. The peasant
+wept. He wrung his hands. It was a supreme moment.
+
+"'She loves me!' cried Silvere to himself, as he changed his clothes for
+dinner.
+
+"It was evening. The children sat by the fire-place. Heloise wore a
+gown of clinging white. She looked fresh, fair, innocent. Silvere was in
+raptures. 'Ah, my God!'
+
+"Old Jean, the peasant, saw nothing. He was mending harness. The fire
+crackled in the fire-place. The children loved each other. Through the
+open door to the kitchen came the sound of old Marie shrilly cursing the
+geese who wished to enter. In front of the window two pigs were
+quarrelling over a vegetable. Cattle were lowing in a distant field. A
+hay-waggon creaked slowly past. Thirty-two chickens were asleep in the
+branches of a tree. This subtle atmosphere had a mighty effect upon
+Heloise. It was beating down her self-control. She felt herself going.
+She was choking.
+
+"The young girl made an effort. She stood up. 'Good-night, I must go.'
+Silvere took her hand. 'Heloise,' he murmured. Outside the two pigs were
+fighting.
+
+"A warm blush overspread the young girl's face. She turned wet eyes
+toward her lover. She looked fresh, fair, innocent. Silvere was
+maddened. 'Ah, my God!'
+
+"Suddenly the young girl began to tremble. She tried vainly to withdraw
+her hand. But her knee--"
+
+"I wish to get my husband some shirts," said a shopping-woman with six
+bundles. The clerk with a blonde moustache made a private gesture of
+despair, and rapidly spread a score of different-patterned shirts upon
+the counter. "He's very particular about his shirts," said the
+shopping-woman. "Oh, I don't think any of these will do. Don't you keep
+the Invincible brand? He only wears that kind. He says they fit him
+better. And he's very particular about his shirts. What? You don't keep
+them? No? Well, how much do you think they would come at?" "Haven't the
+slightest idea." "Well, I suppose I must go somewhere else, then. Um,
+good-day."
+
+The clerk with the blonde moustache was about to make further private
+gestures of despair, when the shopping-woman with six bundles turned and
+went out. His fingers instantly closed nervously over the book. He drew
+it from its hiding-place, and opened it at the place where he had
+ceased. His hungry eyes seemed to eat the words upon the page. He
+continued: "--struck cruelly against a chair. It seemed to awaken her.
+She started. She burst from the young man's arms. Outside the two pigs
+were grunting amiably.
+
+"Silvere took his candle. He went toward his room. He was in despair.
+'Ah, my God!'
+
+"He met the young girl on the stairs. He took her hand. Tears were
+raining down his face. 'Heloise!' he murmured.
+
+"The young girl shivered. As Silvere put his arms about her, she
+faintly resisted. This embrace seemed to sap her life. She wished to
+die. Her thoughts flew back to the old well and the broken hayrakes at
+Plassans.
+
+"The young girl looked fresh, fair, innocent 'Heloise!' murmured
+Silvere. The children exchanged a long, clinging kiss. It seemed to
+unite their souls.
+
+"The young girl was swooning. Her head sank on the young man's shoulder.
+There was nothing in space except these warm kisses on her neck. Silvere
+enfolded her. 'Ah, my God!'"
+
+"Say, young fellow," said a youth with a tilted cigar to the clerk with
+a blonde moustache, "where th'll is Billie Carcart's joint round here?
+Know?"
+
+"Next corner," said the clerk fiercely.
+
+"Oh, th'll," said the youth, "yehs needn't git gay. See! When a feller
+asts a civil question yehs needn't git gay. See! Th'll!"
+
+The youth stood and looked aggressive for a moment. Then he went away.
+
+The clerk seemed almost to leap upon the book. His feverish fingers
+twirled the pages. When he found his place he glued his eyes to it. He
+read:
+
+"Then a great flash of lightning illumined the hall-way. It threw livid
+hues over a row of flowerpots in the window-seat. Thunder shook the
+house to its foundation. From the kitchen arose the voice of old Marie
+in prayer.
+
+"Heloise screamed. She wrenched herself from the young man's arms. She
+sprang inside her room. She locked the door. She flung herself face
+downward on the bed. She burst into tears. She looked fresh, fair,
+innocent.
+
+"The rain pattering upon the thatched roof sounded in the stillness like
+the footsteps of spirits. In the sky toward Paris there shone a crimson
+light.
+
+"The chickens had all fallen from the tree. They stood, sadly, in a
+puddle. The two pigs were asleep under the porch.
+
+"Upstairs, in the hall-way, Silvers was furious."
+
+The clerk with a blonde moustache gave here a wild scream of
+disappointment. He madly hurled the novel with the picture on the cover
+from him. He stood up and said: "Damn!"
+
+
+
+
+THE VICTORY OF THE MOON.
+
+
+The Strong Man of the Hills lost his wife. Immediately he went abroad,
+calling aloud. The people all crouched afar in the dark of their huts,
+and cried to him when he was yet a long distance away: "No, no, great
+chief, we have not even seen the imprint of your wife's sandal in the
+sand. If we had seen it, you would have found us bowed down in worship
+before the marks of her ten glorious brown toes, for we are but poor
+devils of Indians, and the grandeur of the sun rays on her hair would
+have turned our eyes to dust."
+
+"Her toes are not brown. They are pink," said the Strong Man from the
+Hills. "Therefore do I believe that you speak the truth when you say you
+have not seen her, good little men of the valley. In this matter of her
+great loveliness, however, you speak a little too strongly. As she is no
+longer among my possessions, I have no mind to hear her praised.
+Whereabouts is the best man of you?"
+
+None of them had stomach for this honour at the time. They surmised that
+the Strong Man of the Hills had some plan for combat, and they knew
+that the best of them would have in this encounter only the strength of
+the meat in the grip of the fire. "Great King," they said, in one voice,
+"there is no best man here."
+
+"How is this?" roared the Strong Man. "There must be one who excels. It
+is a law. Let him step forward then."
+
+But they solemnly shook their heads. "There is no best man here."
+
+The Strong Man turned upon them so furiously that many fell to the
+ground. "There must be one. Let him step forward." Shivering, they
+huddled together and tried, in their fear, to thrust each other toward
+the Strong Man.
+
+At this time a young philosopher approached the throng slowly. The
+philosophers of that age were all young men in the full heat of life.
+The old greybeards were, for the most part, very stupid, and were so
+accounted.
+
+"Strong Man from the Hills," said the young philosopher, "go to yonder
+brook and bathe. Then come and eat of this fruit. Then gaze for a time
+at the blue sky and the green earth. Afterward I have something to say
+to you."
+
+"You are not so wise that I am obliged to bathe before listening to
+you?" demanded the Strong Man, insolently.
+
+"No," said the young philosopher. All the people thought this reply very
+strange.
+
+"Why, then, must I bathe and eat of fruit and gaze at the earth and the
+sky?"
+
+"Because they are pleasant things to do."
+
+"Have I, do you think, any thirst at this time for pleasant things?"
+
+"Bathe, eat, gaze," said the young philosopher with a gesture.
+
+The Strong Man did, indeed, whirl his bronzed and terrible limbs in the
+silver water. Then he lay in the shadow of a tree and ate the cool fruit
+and gazed at the sky and the earth. "This is a fine comfort," he said.
+After a time he suddenly struck his forehead with his finger. "By the
+way, did I tell you that my wife had fled from me?"
+
+"I know it," said the young philosopher.
+
+Later the Strong Man slept peacefully. The young philosopher smiled.
+
+But in the night the little men of the valley came clamouring: "Oh,
+Strong Man of the Hills, the moon derides you!"
+
+The philosopher went to them in the darkness. "Be still, little people.
+It is nothing. The derision of the moon is nothing."
+
+But the little men of the valley would not cease their uproar. "Oh,
+Strong Man! Strong Man, awake! Awake! The moon derides you!"
+
+Then the Strong Man aroused and shook his locks away from his eyes.
+"What is it, good little men of the valley?"
+
+"Oh, Strong Man, the moon derides you! Oh, Strong Man!"
+
+The Strong Man looked, and there, indeed, was the moon laughing down at
+him. He sprang to his feet and roared. "Ah, old, fat, lump of moon, you
+laugh! Have you seen my wife?"
+
+The moon said no word, but merely smiled in a way that was like a flash
+of silver bars.
+
+"Well, then, moon, take this home to her," thundered the Strong Man, and
+he hurled his spear.
+
+The moon clapped both hands to its eye, and cried: "Oh! Oh!"
+
+The little people of the valley cried: "Oh, this is terrible, Strong
+Man! He has smitten our sacred moon in the eye!"
+
+The young philosopher cried nothing at all.
+
+The Strong Man threw his coat of crimson feathers upon the ground. He
+took his knife and felt its edge. "Look you, philosopher," he said. "I
+have lost my wife, and the bath, the meal of fruit in the shade, the
+sight of sky and earth are still good to me, but when this false moon
+derides me, there must be a killing."
+
+"I understand you," said the young philosopher.
+
+The Strong Man ran off into the night. The little men of the valley
+clapped their hands in ecstacy and terror. "Ah! ah! what a battle will
+there be!"
+
+The Strong Man went into his own hills and gathered there many great
+rocks and trunks of trees. It was strange to see him erect upon a peak
+of the mountains and hurling these things at the moon. He kept the air
+full of them.
+
+"Fat moon, come closer," he shouted. "Come closer, and let it be my
+knife against your knife. Oh, to think that we are obliged to tolerate
+such an old, fat, stupid, lazy, good-for-nothing moon. You are ugly as
+death, while I--Oh, moon, you stole my beloved, and it was nothing, but
+when you stole my beloved and laughed at me, it became another matter.
+And yet you are so ugly, so fat, so stupid, so lazy, so
+good-for-nothing. Ah, I shall go mad! Come closer, moon, and let me
+examine your round, grey skull with this club."
+
+And he always kept the air full of great missiles.
+
+The moon merely laughed, and said: "Why should I come closer?"
+
+Wildly did the Strong Man pile rock upon rock. He builded him a tower
+that was the father of all towers. It made the mountains to appear to be
+babes. Upon the summit of it he swung his great club and flourished his
+knife.
+
+The little men in the valley far below beheld a great storm, and at the
+end of it they said: "Look, the moon is dead." The cry went to and fro
+on the earth: "The moon is dead!"
+
+The Strong Man went to the home of the moon. She, the sought one, lay
+upon a cloud, and her little foot dangled over the side of it. The
+Strong Man took this little foot in his two hands and kissed it. "Ah,
+beloved!" he moaned, "I would rather this little foot was upon my dead
+neck than that moon should ever have the privilege of seeing it."
+
+She leaned over the edge of the cloud and gazed at him. "How dusty you
+are. Why do you puff so? Veritably, you are an ordinary person. Why did
+I ever find you interesting?"
+
+The Strong Man flung his knife into the air and turned back toward the
+earth. "If the young philosopher had been at my elbow," he reflected,
+bitterly, "I would doubtless have gone at the matter in another way.
+What does my strength avail me in this contest?"
+
+The battered moon, limping homeward, replied to the Strong Man from the
+Hills: "Aye, surely. My weakness is in this thing as strong as your
+strength. I am victor with ugliness, my age, my stoutness, my laziness,
+my good-for-nothingness. Woman is woman. Men are equal in everything
+save good fortune. I envy you not."
+
+
+THE END.
+
+Printed by WM. HODGE & CO., Glasgow and Edinburgh.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Typographical errors corrected by the transcriber of etext:
+
+flowerplots=>flowerpots, coming tower=>conning tower, troup=>troupe
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Last Words, by Stephen Crane
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LAST WORDS ***
+
+***** This file should be named 33579.txt or 33579.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/3/3/5/7/33579/
+
+Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was
+produced from scanned images of public domain material
+from the Internet Archive.)
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+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
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/33579.zip b/33579.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1d7d1e8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/33579.zip
diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6312041
--- /dev/null
+++ b/LICENSE.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d7c01f0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #33579 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/33579)