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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/35112-8.txt b/35112-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..26f3805 --- /dev/null +++ b/35112-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,10673 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Galaxy, by Various + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Galaxy + Vol. XXIII--March, 1877.--No. 3 + +Author: Various + +Release Date: January 29, 2011 [EBook #35112] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GALAXY *** + + + + +Produced by Carol Ann Brown, Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier +and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +https://www.pgdp.net. + + + + + + + + + + THE GALAXY. + + + + + VOL. XXIII.--MARCH, 1877.--No. 3. + + +Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1877, by SHELDON & +CO., in the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. + + + + + THE ENGLISH PEERAGE. + + +More than one reader must have felt impatient with Milton for spoiling +the fine epitaph on the Marchioness of Winchester with such unfortunate +lines as "A Viscount's daughter, an Earl's heir," and "No Marchioness, +but now a queen." Probably the expressions sounded less absurd to his +contemporaries than they do to us, for titles of nobility, however +unworthily conferred, had more significance in the reign of James I. +than they bear in the reign of Queen Victoria. The memorable despatch in +which Collingwood announced the victory of Trafalgar, and which has been +described by great writers as a masterpiece of simple narration began +with these words: "Sir: The ever to be lamented death of Vice Admiral +Lord Viscount Nelson, in the moment of victory," etc. Now peers of all +ranks, except the highest, are commonly spoken of under the general +designation of "Lord So-and-So," and are rarely accorded in conversation +the honors of "my lord," or "your lordship." Generally speaking, it may +be said that in England titles, like decorations, are still greedily +sought after, but when won are not openly displayed. They are felt by +their bearers to be an anachronism, though no doubt a sufficiently +agreeable one to those most immediately concerned. + +Successive governments give as large a share of patronage to the peers +and baronets, and their kinsfolk, as they reasonably can; while the +Premier is only too glad to select men of rank as his colleagues in the +Cabinet, if they are only possessed of decent abilities, and will +work--for a minister must be a hard worker in these days. Thus, Mr. +Gladstone's administration, the first which was ever designated as +"Radical," contained a large proportion of the aristocratic element in +its ranks, though it was even made a charge against Mr. Gladstone by +conservative and pseudo-liberal papers, that he unjustly deprived the +peerage of its due representation in the Cabinet. + +As a matter of fact, when the Cabinet resigned it consisted of sixteen +members. Of these, eight were peers or sons of peers. Of the remaining +thirty-six Parliamentary members of the administration, fourteen were +peers or sons of peers. Mr. Disraeli's Cabinet numbers but twelve +ministers. Of these six are peers, another is heir presumptive to a +dukedom; while an eighth is a baronet; and of the remaining members of +the administration, nineteen out of thirty-eight are peers, baronets, or +sons of peers. In the army and navy, in the diplomatic service, the +peerage equally secures its full share of prizes; and even in the legal +profession it is far from being a disadvantage to a young barrister that +his name figures in the pages of Burke. In the Church a large proportion +of the best livings are held by members of the same privileged class, +and even the Stock Exchange lately showed itself eager to confer such +honors as were in its gift on a duke's son, who had been courageous +enough to "go into trade." + +The British aristocracy is still, therefore, "a fact," if a favorite +term of Mr. Carlyle's may be permitted in such a connexion, as it +probably may, for the author of "The French Revolution" has himself been +one of the latest eulogists of the governing families of England, and +perhaps a few notes on the origin and history of some of the principal +houses may not be unacceptable to American readers. + +The House of Lords, as at present constituted, consists of something +less than five hundred temporal peers. The first in order of hereditary +precedence, after the princes of the blood royal, is the Duke of +Norfolk, a blameless young gentleman of eight-and-twenty years, and a +zealous Catholic, as it is generally supposed that a Howard is compelled +to be by a mysterious law of his nature. As a matter of fact, however, +no family in England has changed its religion so often. Henry Charles, +thirteenth duke, seceded from the Church of Rome on the occasion of the +papal aggression. He declared himself convinced that "ultramontane +opinions were totally incompatible with allegiance to the sovereign and +the Constitution." The Duke's expression of opinion might have had more +weight with his coreligionists had his own reputation for wisdom stood +higher. But it stood very low. His Grace had made himself very +conspicuous during the agitation for the repeal of the corn laws by +recommending a curry powder of his own manufacture as a substitute for +bread, which singular piece of advice to a starving people earned him +the sobriquet of "Curry Norfolk." Charles, eleventh duke, also renounced +the old faith about the year 1780. He had not yet succeeded to his +title, but was known as the Earl of Surrey; was immediately returned to +Parliament for one of his father's boroughs. (The dukes of Norfolk had +eleven boroughs at their disposition before the passing of the reform +bill.) He was a notable personage in his day, and acted in concert with +the party of Fox. For giving the toast of "The people, our Sovereign," +at a public dinner he was deprived of his lord-lieutenancy and of his +colonelcy of militia. He was remarkable, too, for a dislike of clean +linen, which his friends were grieved to see him carry to excess.[A] +Three other Howards of the same stock are more honorably distinguished +in their country's annals. They are the victor of Flodden and two of his +grandsons; the one the Surrey of history and romance, the other, Charles +Lord Howard of Effingham, the conqueror of the Spanish Armada. The +origin of the family is involved in obscurity, some maintaining that it +sprung from the famous Hereward, the Wake, of whose name they affirm +Howard to be a corruption; while others assert that the word Howard is +neither more nor less than a euphonious form of Hogward, and that the +premier duke and hereditary Earl Marshal of England might ultimately +trace his descent to a swineherd if he were disposed so to do. The first +Howard of whom genealogists can take serious cognizance was a +respectable judge of the court of common pleas in the reigns of Edward +I. and Edward II. (1297-1308). His descendant was ennobled in the reign +of Edward IV. + +[Footnote A: "Did your Grace ever try a clean shirt?" Abernethy is said +to have asked the Duke, who had consulted him on some ailment.] + +Next on the roll of the Lords to the Duke of Norfolk is Edward St. Maur, +the Duke of Somerset, an extremely clever man, "with a passion for +saying disagreeable things." He recently published a smart attack on the +evidences of Christianity, which occasioned not a little difficulty to +some worthy editors. They were sincere Christians, but it jarred against +their feelings to speak harshly of a duke. The St. Maurs (or Seymours) +are of genuine Norman descent, and began to be heard of in the +thirteenth century. They apparently remained estimable till the time of +Henry VIII., when that uxorious monarch married Jane, the daughter of +Sir John Seymour, by whom he became the father of Edward VI. Strangely +enough, Jane's brother, Lord Seymour of Sudeley, afterward married +Henry's widow, and the knot of family relationships becomes a little +complicated in consequence. More inauspicious unions were never +contracted. Lord Seymour was executed by order of his brother, the +Protector (and first Duke of Somerset), and three years later the +Protector's death-warrant was signed by his own nephew. From the close +of this short chronicle of blood, the Seymours practically disappear +from the pages of English history, though Macaulay has left a graphic +picture of that Sir Edward Seymour who was Speaker of the House of +Commons under Charles II., and who proudly replied to William III., when +asked if he belonged to the Duke of Somerset's family, that "the Duke of +Somerset belonged to his family." Francis, fifth duke, was the occasion +of a few days' gossip and much scandal. During his travels in Italy he +visited the convent of the Augustinians at Lerice, where he was foolish +enough to offer an impertinence to some ladies of the family of Botti, +and was shot by an angry Signor Botti a few hours later. His brother +Charles, who succeeded him, is the hero of a less tragic story. His +second wife, Lady Charlotte Finch, once tapped him with her fan, when he +is said to have rebuked her in these terms: "Madam, my first wife was a +Percy, and she never ventured to take such a liberty." He was known +among his contemporaries as "the proud Duke of Somerset." + +The next of the ducal houses in order of precedence traces its descent +from Charles II. and Louisa de Querouaille, "whom our rude ancestors +called Madam Carwell." The Dukes of Richmond have always been known as +honorable gentlemen, but they have left no mark on the political history +of England. The present Duke is perhaps the most distinguished man of +his family, being leader of the Conservative party in the House of +Lords, and, as is generally thought, Mr. Disraeli's destined successor +in the Premiership. The third Duke held high office in the early part of +the reign of George III.; while his nephew, Colonel Lennox, who +afterward succeeded him in the title, had the honor of fighting a duel +with a son of George III. Neither of the combatants suffered any hurt, +and Colonel Lennox was reserved for the most melancholy of deaths; +falling, thirty years after, a victim to hydrophobia, caused by the bite +of a dog. His royal antagonist was Frederic, Duke of York, who +subsequently became Commander-in-Chief of the British army in the most +inglorious period of its annals. Indeed, so disgraceful was his Royal +Highness's conduct of the campaign of 1794, that Pitt demanded one of +two things from the King; viz., either that the Prince should be brought +before a court-martial, or that the Prime Minister should in future have +the right of appointing to great military commands. It must have cost +George III. a bitter pang to accept the latter alternative. + +The Duke of Grafton, who holds the fourth place on Garter's Roll, is +equally descended from his Majesty, King Charles II., of happy memory. +Henry Fitzroy, son of Barbara Villiers (created Duchess of Cleveland), +was raised to the highest rank in the peerage, as Duke of Grafton, in +1675. He was one of the first to desert his uncle's cause in 1688, and +two years later he died a soldier's death under the walls of Cork, +fighting for William III. and the liberties of England. His great +grandson was Augustus Henry, third Duke of Grafton, who may still be +seen gibbeted in the pages of Junius. His Grace was a member of +Chatham's second ministry, and succeeded his chief in the Premiership. +Of other Dukes of Grafton history makes no special mention. + +The fifth of the dukes in order of precedence quarters the royal arms of +France and England, but without the bāton sinister. Henry Charles +Fitzroy Somerset, Duke of Beaufort, is lineally descended from "_old_ +John of Gaunt, time-honored Lancaster" (third son of Edward III.) and +Catherine Swinford. John of Gaunt's children by this union were +afterward legitimatized by act of Parliament. Henry, the second son, +took holy orders, and became Bishop of Lincoln, and afterward of +Winchester, as well as Cardinal and Lord Chancellor. He is the Cardinal +Beaufort who figures in the stately Gallery of Shakespeare. He and his +brothers took the name they bore from the Castle of Beaufort, in Anjou, +the place of their nativity. The Cardinal's elder brother was created +Earl and afterward Marquis of Somerset. His descendant, Henry Beaufort, +Duke of Somerset, fell into the hands of the Yorkists, at the battle of +Hexham, and was succeeded in the family honors by his brother Edmund, +who was soon to share the same fate. With him the legitimate male line +of John of Gaunt became extinct. Duke Henry, however, had left a natural +son, who was called Charles Somerset, and who, to use the appropriate +language of chronological dictionaries, "flourished" in the reigns of +Henry VII. and Henry VIII. He was a brave soldier and a skilful +diplomatist; having been chosen a Knight of the Garter; he was also +appointed captain of the King's Guards for his services. Sir Charles +Somerset obtained in marriage Elizabeth, daughter and heiress of William +Herbert, Earl of Huntingdon, and Lord Herbert of Rayland, Chepston, and +Gower; and, in his wife's right, was summoned to Parliament as Lord +Herbert, in the first year of Henry VIII. In 1514 he was advanced to the +Earldom of Worcester, having previously been constituted Lord +Chamberlain for life, as a reward for the distinguished part he had in +the taking of Terouenne and Tournay. He died in 1526, and was succeeded +by his son. Little is heard of the Somersets--Earls of Worcester--during +the sixteenth century, though the marriage of two ladies of that house +called forth the well-known Epithalamium of Spenser. Henry, the fifth +earl, created Marquis of Worcester by Charles I., is celebrated in +English history for his defence of Rayland castle against the forces of +the Parliament, under Sir Thomas Fairfax. On this subject, Mr. George +MacDonald's last novel of "St. George and St. Michael" may be consulted +with advantage. + +The brave old cavalier did not long survive the surrender and +destruction of his ancestral home. The same year he died, and was +succeeded in his title by his son Edward, the famous author of the +"Century of Inventions." It is scarcely too much to say that had this +man been divested of rank and fortune, and had he been furnished with +the requisite motive for exertion, he might have anticipated the work of +Watt and Stephenson. As it was, the discoveries he made served but to +amuse his leisure hours. The Marquis of Worcester was well-nigh the last +of his race about whose doings his countrymen would much care to be +informed. His son was created Duke of Beaufort in 1682, and with the +attainment of the highest rank in the peerage came a cessation of mental +activity in the family. One more Somerset, however, deserves honorable +mention--Fitzroy, who was aide-de-camp to Wellington, and lost an arm at +Waterloo. Raised to the peerage in 1852 as Lord Raglan, he was named two +years later to the command of the English army in the Crimea. What he +did, and what he did not, in that post, is still remembered. In truth he +was a gallant soldier, distracted by contradictory instructions, feeling +keenly the criticisms of newspaper writers, who complained that one of +the strongest fortresses in the world was not taken in a few weeks. The +siege had lasted eight months, when Lord Raglan resolved to make one +desperate effort to carry the place by assault on the 18th of June, the +fortieth anniversary of Waterloo. The attack failed, and the allies were +repulsed with severe loss. Ten days later the English general succumbed +to sickness and chagrin. + +The Dukes of St. Albans enjoy precedence after the Dukes of Beaufort. +William Amelius Aubrey De Vere Beauclerk, present and tenth duke, is +lineally descended from the Merry Monarch and Nell Gwynn, and through +the marriage of the first duke, from the De Veres, Earls of Oxford. His +Grace is Hereditary Grand Falconer, a pleasant little sinecure of some +$6,000 a year. Of the Dukes of Saint Albans history has nothing to say. +The ninth duke married the widow of Mr. Thomas Coutts, of banking +renown. + +Next on Garter's roll comes the Duke of Leeds, lineally descended from +Thomas Osborne, Earl of Danby and Lord High Treasurer under Charles II., +whom Dutch William afterward made Duke of Leeds. Danby (for he is better +known by this title than by the one which he dishonored) must be +considered to have been an average statesman, and even a patriot, as +public spirit then went. He steadily opposed French influence under +Charles II., and afterward contributed to the success of the Revolution. +He was subsequently impeached by the Commons for taking bribes, but the +principal witness on whom the House relied to substantiate the charge +mysteriously disappeared when most wanted. From that day, however, the +Duke of Leeds was morally extinguished. The subsequent Dukes led worthy +and honorable lives, but were not otherwise notable. The seventh married +(24th of April, 1828) an American lady, Louisa Catharine, third daughter +of Mr. Richard Caton of Maryland, and widow of Sir Felton Bathurst +Hervey. + +The two next of the ducal houses, those of Bedford and Devonshire, are +invested by Whig writers with almost a halo of glory, though in truth +they have produced respectable rather than great men. The beginnings of +the house of Russell are somewhat curious. One of the earliest ancestors +of the family of whom anything is accurately known was Speaker of the +House of Commons in the second and tenth years of Henry VI. His +grandson, John Russell, a gentleman of property, resided at Berwick, +about four miles from Bridport, in the county of Dorset. He was a +bookish man, and would probably never have gone to seek out fortune; but +fortune, as is her wont, came to him in the person of the Archduke +Philip of Austria. This Prince, the son of the reckless Maximilian, +having encountered a violent hurricane in his passage from Flanders to +Spain, was driven into Weymouth, where he landed, and was hospitably +received by a Sir Thomas Trenchard, who immediately wrote to court for +instructions. Meanwhile he deputed his first cousin, Mr. Russell, to +wait upon the Prince. His Highness was so fascinated by the conversation +of Mr. Russell, that he begged that gentleman to accompany him to +Windsor, where he spoke of him in such high terms to the King (Henry +VII.), that the monarch at once took him into his favor. He subsequently +accompanied Henry VIII. in his French wars, and afterward becoming a +supple instrument of his master's ecclesiastical policy, was rewarded +with a peerage and a grant of the Abbey of Tavistock, and the extensive +lands thereto belonging. To these possessions the Protector Somerset +added the monastery of Woburn and the Earldom of Bedford. Nor did the +star of John Russell grow dim under the reign of the Catholic Mary, who +named him Lord Privy Seal, and Ambassador to Spain, to conduct Philip +II. to England. He died in 1555. From him were descended various +Russells who enjoyed as many of the good things of this life as they +could decently lay hands upon, and two of whom were famous men in their +day. William, Lord Russell, is best known to posterity as the husband of +the admirable Rachael Wriothesley, daughter of Thomas, Earl of +Southampton, and widow of Francis, Lord Vaughan. With respect to his +execution there has been some difference of opinion; but the probability +is that it was a judicial murder of the worst kind. Immediately after +the Revolution, Lord Russell's attainder was reversed by Parliament. His +widow survived him forty years, and lived to see George I. on the throne +and the Protestant succession firmly established. What is not so +generally known, perhaps, is that the mother of Lord Russell was the +daughter of Carr, Earl of Somerset, by the divorced wife of Essex. She +was herself a virtuous lady, and is said to have fallen down in a fit +when she first learned the horrible details of her family history. + +Lord Russell's cousin was the victor of La Hogue, created Earl of Orford +in 1697. He died in 1727 without issue, when the title became +extinct--to be renewed fifteen years later in favor of Sir Robert +Walpole. + +Lord Russell's father was created Duke of Bedford by William III., May +11, 1694. He was succeeded by his grandson, Wriothesley, who was married +at the ripe age of fourteen and elevated to a separate peerage the same +year. He had previously been requested to come forward as a candidate +for the county of Middlesex; but the prudent Lady Russell refused to +allow him. In the then state of public opinion he would have been +elected without opposition. + +The eighteenth century was the golden age of Whig families, at least +till George III. became king, and the house of Russell continued to +provide the country with a succession of dignified placemen. John IV., +Duke of Bedford, was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in 1756. In 1762 his +Grace, as the plenipotentiary of England, signed the preliminaries of +peace at Fontainebleau with France and Spain--a work on which he can +scarcely be congratulated, seeing that by it England was juggled out of +nearly every advantage she had won by seven years of victory. The Duke's +son, Francis, called by courtesy Marquis of Tavistock, married Lady +Elizabeth Keppel, who literally died of grief when her husband was +killed by a fall from his horse. Dr. Johnson's characteristic comment on +this event was that if her ladyship had been a poor washerwoman with +twelve children to mind, she would have had no time to die of grief. +Lord Tavistock left three sons, Francis and John, successively fifth and +sixth Dukes of Bedford, and William (posthumous), the unfortunate +nobleman who, within living memory, was murdered by his French valet +Courvoisier. + +John, Earl Russell, the distinguished statesman who "upset the coach," +is a son of the sixth duke, Lord Odo Russell, one of the ablest of +modern diplomatists, a grandson of the same peer. + +On the day after the head of the house of Russell was raised to ducal +rank, the head of the Cavendishes received the same honor, being created +Marquis of Hartington and Duke of Devonshire. This family claims descent +from Sir John Cavendish, Lord Chief Justice of England in 1366, 1373, +and 1377. "In the fourth year of Richard II. his lordship was elected +chancellor of the university of Cambridge, and was next year +commissioned, with Robert de Hales, treasurer of England, to suppress +the insurrection raised in the city of York, in which year the mob, +having risen to the number of fifty thousand, made it a point, +particularly in the county of Suffolk, to plunder and murder the +lawyers; and being incensed in a more than ordinary degree against the +Chief Justice Cavendish, his son John having killed the notorious Wat +Tyler, they seized upon and dragged him, with Sir John of Cambridge, +prior of Bury, into the marketplace of that town, and there caused both +to be beheaded." Thus far Burke, who has small sympathy to bestow on Wat +Tyler, albeit that reformer was murdered in a cowardly way, whether it +were Walworth or Cavendish who struck the blow. "For William Walworth, +mayor of London, having arrested him (Wat Tyler), he furiously struck +the mayor with his dagger, but being armed [_i.e._ the mayor being in +armor], hurt him not; whereupon the mayor, drawing his baselard, +grievously wounded Wat in the neck; in which conflict an esquire of the +King's house, called John Cavendish, drew his sword and wounded him +twice or thrice, even unto death. For which service Cavendish was +knighted in Smithfield, and had a grant of £40 per annum from the King." +The great-great-grandson of this Sir John Cavendish was gentleman usher +to Cardinal Wolsey; after the death of his master King Henry took him +into his own employment, to reward him for the fidelity with which he +had served his former patron. His elder brother William was in 1530 +appointed one of the commissioners for visiting and taking the +surrenders of divers religious houses. Needless to add that from that +day Mr. Cavendish had but to do as the King told him and make his +fortune. Before his death he had begun to build the noble seat of +Chatsworth, in Derbyshire, which his descendants still possess. His +second son, and eventual heir, was created Earl of Devonshire by King +James I. in 1618. The first earl's nephew was the renowned cavalier +general created Marquis and subsequently Duke of Newcastle. He was at +one time governor of the Prince of Wales (afterward Charles II.), and +there is a touching epistle extant in which his youthful charge entreats +the Marquis that he may not be compelled to take physic, which he feels +sure would do him no good. + +William, fourth earl of Devonshire, although raised to a dukedom by +William III., distinguished himself, as did his son, the Marquis of +Hartington, in the House of Commons, by vehement opposition to the +King's retention of his Dutch guards after the conclusion of peace in +1697; and for this uncourtly conduct the country owes them a deep debt +of gratitude. The Dutch guards were not likely to do much harm, but +foreign troops have no business in a free state. + +Henry Cavendish, the eminent chemist and philosopher, was grandson to +the second duke (who married Rachel, daughter of William, Lord Russell). +The present duke was senior wrangler of his year; his eldest son is +leader of the Liberal party in the House of Commons. + +Of the dukes of Marlborough, who are next on the list, it is unnecessary +to say much. All the world knows the strange history of John Churchill, +the noblest and the meanest of mankind. The great duke's only son died +of the smallpox while yet a boy; but his honors were made perpetual in +the female as well as the male line. The present duke is lineally +descended on the father's side from a most worthy country gentleman, Sir +Robert Spencer, of Althorp, raised to the peerage as Lord Spencer by +James I. Lord Spencer's name should be dear to every American for the +friendship he showed his neighbors the Washingtons. The Washingtons had +at one time rather a severe struggle to make both ends meet, but they +saw better days. John Washington, the heir of the house, was knighted +and fought for Charles I. in the civil war. Disgusted with the +commonwealth, he emigrated to America, hearing that men were more loyal +on the other side of the Atlantic. He is commonly believed to have been +the ancestor of George Washington. Such is the irony of fate. + +The second Duke of Marlborough who, when unwell, would limit himself to +a bottle of brandy a day, proved a real source of danger to his country. +When he succeeded to his grandfather's honors in 1733, the faults of the +victor of Blenheim were forgotten and only his surpassing military +achievements remembered. King and people were alike determined to honor +the man who bore his name, and, it was fondly deemed, inherited his +qualities. He was made lord lieutenant of two counties, a knight of the +garter, and promoted to high military command. Having conducted himself +without discredit at Dettingen, he was thought equal to anything, and in +the year 1758 Pitt, who felt kindly toward the Churchills, and who had +been left £10,000 by Duchess Sarah, was so rash as to name him +commander-in-chief of all the British forces in Germany destined to act +under Prince Ferdinand. After all, the appointment did no harm, for the +Duke died the same year. _Exeunt_ the Dukes of Marlborough into infinite +space. Henceforth they and their doings have no more human interest. + +The Dukes of Rutland are another family dating their greatness from a +share in the spoil of the monasteries. Thomas Manners, first Earl of +Rutland, drew one of the best repartees ever made from Sir Thomas More, +then Lord Chancellor. "_Honores mutant mores_," said the Earl to Sir +Thomas in resent for some fancied affront. "Nay, my lord," replied More; +"the pun is better translated into English--Honors change Manners." +Among the descendants of this nobleman two are worthy a passing notice; +viz., John, Marquis of Granby, the most dashing of cavalry officers, +whose bluff features may still be seen on the signboards of many taverns +in England; and Lord John Manners, heir-presumptive to the Dukedom of +Rutland, and a member of the present Cabinet. Lord John is chiefly +famous as the author of a poem in which occur the oft-quoted lines: + + Let arts and learning, laws and commerce die, + But keep us still our old nobility-- + +perhaps the most remarkable sentiment ever uttered even by a young man. +It is fair to Lord John Manners to add that he was a fairly successful +Minister of Public Works under two administrations, showing indeed a +good deal of taste and no contempt at all for the arts. Another Manners +was Archbishop of Canterbury from 1805 to 1828; but beyond having an +income of something like $130,000 punctually during nearly a quarter of +a century, this prelate cannot be considered to have done anything +noteworthy. The Archbishop's son was Speaker of the House of Commons +from 1817 to 1834, and was raised to the peerage in 1835 as Viscount +Canterbury--a peerage being the invariable termination of a modern +Speaker's career. The present Lord Canterbury (his son) has been +Governor of Victoria and two or three other colonies; for men do not +belong to a ducal family for nothing. + +There are but eleven Dukes of England properly so called; that is, Dukes +sitting in the House of Lords as such, and deriving their titles from +creations before the union with Scotland. The Duke of Norfolk, as before +stated, is the first of these, and the Duke of Rutland the last in order +of precedence. The patent of the latter as Duke bears date March 29, +1703. There are also Dukes of Great Britain and of the United Kingdom, +as well as of Scotland and Ireland; but those of the two sister kingdoms +sit by inferior titles among their peers, and all the Dukes not of +England take precedence among each other by somewhat intricate rules of +precedence, into which it is not worth while to enter. The dukedoms are +twenty-eight in all, exclusive of those held by princes of the blood +royal. The honor has been very sparingly bestowed in late years. The +last conferred by George III. was that of Northumberland, the King +refusing to make any more creations, except in favor of his own +descendants. The Prince Regent made Lord Wellington a duke, and after +his accession to the throne raised Lord Buckingham to the same dignity. +William IV. made two more, and her present Majesty has added an equal +number to the list. + +The history of one ducal family is the history of all. They generally +boast a founder of some abilities, and produce one or two men, seldom +more, who leave their mark on the annals of their country. It would be +strange if it were otherwise, considering the enormous opportunities +which a title, joined to fair means, gives to its possessor in England. +The privileges with which acts of Parliament and courtly lawyers in +bygone ages invested the nobility have long since become nominal. A peer +has now no right as such to tender advice to the Queen. If libelled, he +can no more terrify the offender with the penalties of _scandalum +magnatum_, but must content himself with the same remedies as do other +folk; if he cannot be arrested for debt, he shares that privilege with +all the Queen's subjects; and if he continues to be a hereditary member +of the Legislature, it is because the chamber in which he sits has been +reduced to a moderating committee of the sovereign assembly. But the +nameless privileges of persons of rank are great indeed. The army, the +navy, the Church are filled with them or their dependents. Till within +the last few years, the diplomatic service was regarded as their +peculiar property. In the present House of Commons, the second elected +by household suffrage, fully one-third of the members are sons of peers, +baronets, or closely allied by marriage, or otherwise, to the titled +classes. A fair proportion of these are Liberals; the Queen's +son-in-law, Lord Lorne, member for Argyllshire, being a professor of +"Liberal" opinions, as also Lord Stafford, son of the Duke of +Sutherland, and Lord de Gray, son of the Marquis of Ripon. Such Liberals +serve the useful function of "watering" the creed of their party, which +might otherwise prove too strong for the Constitution. Mr. Gladstone and +Mr. Bright would doubtless have gone much further in the path of reform +if unfettered by ducal retainers. + +And yet, though England is still very far from the realization of that +political equality which American citizens enjoy among themselves, and +which is perhaps one of the few ascertainable benefits Frenchmen have +derived from the revolution, there can be no doubt as to the direction +in which England is advancing. Democracy is the goal of the future, and +it is even in sight, though a long way off. For instance, considerable +as is the parliamentary influence of certain noblemen in the present +day, it is influence and no more. Before the Reform act of 1832, the +parliamentary "influence" of a peer, as it was euphemistically termed, +meant that he had the absolute disposal of one or more seats in the +House of Commons. The Duke of Norfolk, as before mentioned, returned +eleven members, the Duke of Richmond three, Lord Buckingham six, the +Duke of Newcastle seven. In the year 1820, out of the twenty-six +prelates sitting in the House of Lords, only six were not directly or +indirectly connected with the peerage; while the value of some of the +sees was enormous. Now public opinion is too formidable to allow of +jobbery that is not very discreetly managed, and a great deal no doubt +is thus managed. But appearances must be kept up. + + E. C. GRENVILLE MURRAY. + + + + +MISS MISANTHROPE. + +BY JUSTIN MCCARTHY. + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + +"OH, MUCH DESIRED PRIZE, SWEET LIBERTY!" + + +The summer had gone and much even of the autumn, and Miss Grey and her +companion were settled in London. Minola had had everything planned out +in her mind before they left Dukes-Keeton, and little Miss Blanchet was +positively awed by her leader's energy, knowledge, and fearlessness. The +first night of their arrival in town they went to a quiet, respectable, +old-fashioned hotel, well known of Keeton folk, where Miss Grey's father +used to stay during his visits to London for many years, and where his +name was still well remembered. Then the two strangers from the country +set out to look for lodgings, and Miss Grey was able to test her +knowledge of London, and satisfy her pride of learning, by conducting +her friend straightway to the region in which she had resolved to make a +home for herself. She had been greatly divided in mind for a while +between Kensington and the West Centre; between the neighborhood of the +South Kensington Museum, the glades of the gardens, and all the charms +of the old court suburb, and the temptations of the National Gallery, +the British Museum, and the old-fashioned squares and houses around the +latter. She decided for the British Museum quarter. Miss Blanchet would +have preferred the brightness and air of fashion which belonged to +Kensington, but Miss Grey ruled that to live somewhere near the British +Museum was more like living in London, and she energetically declared +that she would rather live in Seven Dials than out of London. + +To find a pleasant and suitable lodging would ordinarily have been a +difficulty; for the regular London lodging-house keeper detests the +sight of women, and only likes the gentleman who disappears in the +morning and returns late at night. But luckily there are Keeton folk +everywhere. As a rule nobody is born in London, "except children," as a +lady once remarked. Come up to London from whatever little Keeton you +will, you can find your compatriots settled everywhere in the +metropolis. Miss Grey obtained from the kindly landlady of the +hotel--who had herself been born in Keeton, and was married to a Glasgow +man--a choice of Keeton folk willing to receive respectable and +well-recommended lodgers--"real ladies" especially. Miss Grey, being +cordially vouched for by the landlady as a real lady, found out a Keeton +woman in the West Centre who had a drawing-room and two bedrooms to let. + +Had Miss Grey invented the place it could not have suited her better. It +was an old-fashioned street, running out of a handsome old-fashioned +square. The street was no thoroughfare. Its other end was closed by a +solemn, sombre structure with a portico, and over the portico a plaster +bust of Pallas. This was an institution or foundation of some kind which +had long outlived the uses whereto it had been devoted by its pious +founder. It now had nothing but a library, a lecture hall, an enclosed +garden (into which, happily for her, the windows of Miss Grey's bedroom +looked), an old fountain in the garden, considerable funds, a board of +trustees, and an annual dinner. This place lent an air of severe dignity +to the street, and furthermore kept the street secluded and quiet by +blocking up one of its ends and inviting no traffic. The house in which +our pair of wanderers was lodging was itself old-fashioned, and in a +manner picturesque. It had broad old staircases of stone, and a large +hall and fine rooms. It had once been a noble mansion, and the legend +was that its owner had entertained Dr. Johnson there and Sir Joshua +Reynolds, and that Mrs. Thrale had often been handed up and down that +staircase. Minola loved association with such good company, and it may +be confessed went up and down the stairs several times for no other +purpose whatever than the pleasure of fancying herself following in the +footsteps of bright Mrs. Thrale, with whose wrongs Miss Grey, as a +misanthrope, was especially bound to sympathize. + +The drawing-room happily looked at least aslant over the grass and the +trees of the square. Minola's bedroom, as has been said, looked into the +garden of the institution, with its well-kept walks, its shrubs, and its +old-fashioned fountain, whose quiet plash was always heard in the +seclusion of the back of the house. Had the trunks of the trees been +just a little less blackened by smoke our heroine might well have +fancied, as she looked from her bedroom window of nights, that she was +in some quaint old abode in a quiet country town. But in truth she did +not desire to encourage any such delusion. To feel that she was in the +heart of London was her especial delight. This feeling would have +brightened and glorified a far less attractive place. She used to sit +down alone in her bedroom of nights in order to think quietly to +herself, "Now I am at last really in London; not visiting London, but +living in it." There at least was one dream made real. There was one +ambition crowned. "Come what will," she said to herself, "I am living in +London." In London and freedom she grew more and more healthy and happy. +As a wearied Londoner might have sought out say Keeton, and found new +strength and spirits there, so our Keeton girl, who was somewhat pale +and thin when she sat on the steps of the ducal mausoleum, grew stronger +and brighter every day in the West Centre regions of London. + +A happier, quieter, freer life could hardly be imagined, at least for +her. She spent hours in the National Gallery and the Museum; she walked +with Mary Blanchet in Regent's Park, and delighted to find out new +vistas and glimpses of beauty among the trees there, and to insist that +it was ever so much better than any place in the country. As autumn came +on and the trees grew barer and the skies became of a heavier silver +gray, Minola found greater charms in their softened half tones than the +brighter lights of summer could give. Even when it rained--and it did +rain sometimes--who could fail to see the beauty, all its own, of the +green of grass, and the darker stems and branches of trees, showing +faintly through the veil of the mist and the soft descending shower? It +was, indeed, a delightful Arcadian life. Its simplicity can hardly be +better illustrated than by the fact that our adventurous pair of women +always dined at one o'clock--when they dined at all--off a chop, except +on Sundays, when they invariably had a cold fowl. + +Much as Miss Grey loved London, however, it was still a place made up of +men whom she considered herself bound to dislike, and of women who +depended far too much on these men. Therefore she made studies of scraps +of London life, and amused herself by satirizing them to her friend. + +"I have accomplished a chapter of London, Mary," she said one evening +before their reading had set in. "I have completed my social studies of +our neighbors in Gainsborough Place"--a little street of shops near at +hand. "I am prepared to give you a complete court guide as to the grades +of society there, Mary, so that you may know at once how to demean +yourself to each and all." + +"Do tell me all about it; I should very much like to know." + +"Shall we begin with the highest or the lowest?" + +"I think," Miss Blanchet said with a gentle sigh, expressive of no great +delight in the story of the lower classes, "I would rather you begin low +down, dear, and get done with them first." + +"Very well; now listen. The lowest of all is the butcher. He is a +wealthy man, I am sure, and his daughter, who sits in the little office +in the shop, is a good-looking girl, I think. But in private life nobody +in Gainsborough Place mixes with them on really cordial terms. Their +friends come from other places; from butchers' shops in other streets. +They do occasionally interchange a few courtesies with the family of the +baker; but the baker's wife, though not nearly so rich, rather +patronizes and looks down upon Mrs. Butcher." + +"Dear me!" said the poetess. "What odd people!" + +"Well, the pastry-cook's family will have nothing to do, except in the +way of business, with butcher or baker; but they are very friendly with +the grocer, and they have evenings together. Now the two little old +maids, who keep the stationer's shop where the post-office is, are very +genteel, and have explained to me more than once that they don't feel at +home in this quarter, and that their friends are in the West End. But +they are not well off, poor things, I fear, and they like to spend an +evening now and then with the family of the grocer and the pastry-cook, +who are rather proud to receive them, and can give them the best tea and +Madeira cake; and both the little ladies assure me that nothing can be +more respectable than the families of the pastry-cook and the +grocer--for their station in life, they always add." + +"Oh, of course," Miss Blanchet said, who was listening with great +interest as to a story, having that order of mind to which anything is +welcome that offers itself in narrative form, but not having any +perception of a satirical purpose in the whole explanation. Minola +appreciated the "of course," and somehow became discouraged. + +"Well," she said, "that's nearly all, except for the family of the +chemist, who live next to the little ladies of the post-office, and who +only know even them by sufferance, and would not for all the world have +any social intercourse with any of the others. It's delightful, I think, +to find that London is not one place at all, but only a cluster of +little Keetons. This one street is Keeton to the life, Mary. I want to +pursue my studies deeper though; I want to find out how the gradations +of society go between the mothers of the boy who drives the butcher's +cart, the baker's boy, and pastry-cook's boy." + +"Oh, Minola dear!" + +"You think all this very unpoetic, Mary, and you are shocked at my +interest in these prosaic and lowly details. But it is a study of life, +my dear poetess, and it amuses and instructs me. Only for chance, you +know, I might have been like _that_, and it is a grand thing to learn +one's own superiority." + +"You never could have been like that, Minola; you belong to a different +class." + +"Yes, yes, dear, that is quite true. I belong to the higher classes +entirely; my father was a country architect, my stepfather is a +Nonconformist minister--these are of the aristocracy everywhere." + +"You are a lady--a woman of education, Minola," the poetess said almost +severely. She could not understand how even Miss Grey herself could +disparage Miss Grey and her parentage in jest. + +"I can assure you, dear, that one of the pastry-cook's daughters, whom I +talked with to-day, is a much better educated girl than I am. You should +hear her talk French, Mary. She has been taught in Paris, dear, and +speaks so well that I found it very hard to understand her. She plays +the harp, and knows all about Wagner. I don't. I like her very much, and +she is coming here to take tea with us." + +The poetess was not delighted with this kind of society, but she never +ventured to contradict her leader. + +"You can talk to every one I do really believe," she said. "I find it so +hard to get on with people--with some people." + +"I feel so happy and so free here. I can say all the cynical things that +please me--_you_ don't mind--and I can like or dislike as I choose." + +"I am afraid you dislike more than you like, Minola." + +"I think I could like any one who had some strong purpose in life; not +the getting of money, or making a way in society. There are such, I +suppose; I don't know." + +"When you meet my brother I am sure you will acknowledge that he has a +purpose in life which is not the getting of money," said Miss Blanchet. +"But you don't like men." + +Minola made no reply. Poor little Miss Blanchet felt so kindly to all +the race of men that she did not understand how any woman could really +dislike them. + +"I am going to do something that will please you to-morrow," Miss Grey +said, feeling that she owed her companion some atonement for not warming +to the mention of her brother. "I am positively going to hunt out Lucy +Money. They must have returned by this time." + +This was really very pleasant news for Miss Blanchet. She had been +longing for her friend to renew her acquaintance with Miss Lucy Money, +about whom she had many dreams. It did not occur to Mary Blanchet to +question directly even in her own mind the decrees of Miss Grey, or to +say to herself that the course of life which they were leading was not +the most delightful that could be devised. But, if the little poetess +could have ventured to translate vague yearnings into definite thoughts, +she would, perhaps, have acknowledged to herself a faint desire that the +brilliant passages of the London career she had marked out for herself +in anticipation should come rather more quickly than they just now +seemed likely to do. At present there was not much difference +perceptible to her between London and Duke's-Keeton. Nobody came to see +them. Even her brother had not yet presented himself. Her poem did not +make much progress; there was no great incentive to poetic work. Minola +and she did not know any poets, or artists, or publishers. Mary +Blanchet's poetic tastes were of a somewhat old-fashioned school, and +did not include any particular care for looking at trees, and fields, +and water, and skies, although these objects of natural beauty were made +to figure in the poems a good deal in connection with, and illustrative +of, the emotions of the poetess. Therefore the rambles in the park were +not so delightful to her as to her leader; and when the evening set in, +and Minola and she read to each other, Mary Blanchet was always rather +pleased if an opportunity occurred for interrupting the reading by a +talk. She was particularly anxious that Minola should renew her +acquaintance with her old schoolfellow, Miss Lucy Money, whose father +she understood to be somehow a great sort of person, and through whom +she saw dimly opening up a vista, perhaps the only one for her, into +society and literature. But the Money family were out of town when our +friends came to London, and Miss Blanchet had to wait; and, even when it +was probable that they had returned, Miss Grey did not seem very eager +to renew the acquaintance. Indeed, her resolve to visit Miss Money now +was entirely a good-natured concession to the evident desire of Mary +Blanchet. Minola saw her friend's little ways and weaknesses clearly, +and smiled now and then as she thought of them, and liked her none the +less for them--rather, indeed, felt her breast swell with kindliness and +pity. It pleased her generous heart to gratify her companion in every +way, to find out things that she liked and bring them to her, to study +her little innocent vanities, that she might gratify them. What little +dainties Mary Blanchet liked to have with her tea, what pretty ribbons +she thought it became her to wear--these Miss Grey was always perplexing +herself about. When she found that she liked to be alone sometimes, that +she must have a long walk unaccompanied, that she must have thoughts +which Mary would not care to hear, then she felt a pang of remorse, as +if she were guilty of a breach of true _camaraderie_, and she could not +rest until she had relieved her soul by some special mark of attention +to her friend. On the other hand, Mary Blanchet, for all her dreams and +aspirations, was a sensible and managing little person, who got for Miss +Grey about twice the value that she herself could have obtained out of +her money. This was a fact which Minola always took care to impress upon +her companion, for she dreaded lest Miss Blanchet should feel herself a +dependent. Miss Blanchet, however, in a modest way, knew her value, and +had besides one of the temperaments to which dependence on some really +loved being comes natural, and is inevitable. + +So Minola set out next day, about three o'clock, to look up her +schoolfellow, Miss Lucy Money. She went forth on her mission with some +unwillingness, and with a feeling as if she were abandoning some purpose +or giving up a little of a principle in doing so. "I came to London to +live alone and independent," she said to herself sometimes, "and already +I am going out to seek for acquaintances. Why do I do that? I want +strength of purpose. I am just like everybody else"; and she began, as +was her wont, to scrutinize her own weaknesses, and bear heavily on +them. For, absurd as it may seem, this odd young woman really did +propose to live alone--herself and Mary Blanchet--in London until they +died--alone, that is, so far as social life and acquaintanceships in +society were concerned. Vast and vague schemes for doing good to her +neighbors, and for striving in especial to give a helping hand to +troubled women, were in Miss Grey's plans of life; but society, so +called, was to have no part in them. It did not occur to her that she +was far too handsome a girl to be allowed to put herself thus under an +extinguisher or behind a screen. When people looked after her as she +passed through the streets, she assumed that they noticed some rustic +peculiarity in her dress or her hat, and she felt a contempt for them. +Her love of London did not imply a love of Londoners, whom in general +she thought rude and given to staring. But even if she had thought +people were looking at her because of her figure, her face, her eyes, +her superb hair, she would have felt a contempt for them all the same. +She had a proud indifference to personal beauty, and looked down upon +men whose judgment could be affected by the fact that a woman had finer +eyes, or brighter hair, or a more shapely mould than other women. + +Once Minola was positively on the point of turning back, and renouncing +all claim on the acquaintanceship of her former school companion. She +suddenly remembered, however, that in condemning her own fancied +weakness she had forgotten that her visit was undertaken to oblige Mary +Blanchet. "Poor Mary! I have only one little acquaintanceship that has +anything to do with society, and am I to deny her that chance if she +likes it?" She went on rapidly and resolutely. Sometimes she felt +inclined to blame herself for bringing Mary Blanchet away from Keeton, +although Mary had for years been complaining of her life and her work +there, and beseeching Miss Grey not to leave her behind when she went to +live in London. + +It was a beautiful autumn day. London looks to great advantage on one of +these rare days, and Miss Grey felt her heart swell with mere delight as +she looked from the streets to the sky and from the sky to the streets. +She passed through one or two squares, and stopped to see the sun, +already going down, send its light through the bare branches of the +trees. The western sky was covered with gray, silver-edged clouds, which +brightened into blots of golden fire as they came closer in the track of +the sun. The air was mild, soft, and almost warm. All poets and painters +are full of the autumnal charms of the country; but to certain oddly +constituted minds some street views in London on a fine autumn day have +an unspeakable witchery. Miss Grey walked round and round one of the +squares, and had to remind herself of her purpose on Mary Blanchet's +behalf in order to impel herself on. + +The best of the day had gone, and the early evening was looking somewhat +chill and gloomy between the huge ramparts of the Victoria street houses +by the time that Miss Grey stood in that solemn thoroughfare, and her +heart sank a little as she reached the house where her old school friend +lived. + +"Perhaps Lucy Money is altogether changed," Miss Grey said to herself as +she came up to the door. "Perhaps she won't care about me; perhaps I +shan't like her any more; and perhaps her mamma will think me a dreadful +person for not honoring my stepfather and stepmother. Perhaps there are +brothers--odious, slangy young men, who think girls fall in love with +them. Oh, yes, here is one of them." + +For just as she had rung the bell a hansom cab drove up to the door, and +a tall, dark-complexioned young man leaped out. He raised his hat with +what seemed to Miss Grey something the manner of a foreigner when he saw +her standing at the door, and she felt a momentary thrill of relief, +because, if he was a foreigner, he could not be Lucy Money's brother. +Besides, she knew very well that the great houses in Victoria street +were occupied by several tenants, and there was good hope that the young +man might have business with the upper story, and she with the ground +floor. + +The young man was about to ring the bell, when he stopped and said: + +"Perhaps you have rung already?" + +"Yes, I have rung," Miss Grey coldly replied. + +"This is Mr. Money's, I suppose?" + +"Mr. Money lives here," she answered, with the manner of one resolute to +close the conversation. The young man did not seem in the least +impressed by her tone. + +"Perhaps I have the honor of speaking to Miss Money?" he began, with +delighted eagerness. + +"No. I am not Miss Money," she answered, still in her clear monotone. + +No words could say more distinctly than the young man's expression did, +"I am sorry to hear it." Indeed, no young man in the world going to +visit Mr. Money could have avoided wishing that the young lady then +standing at the door might prove to be Miss Money. + +The door opened, and the young man drew politely back to give Miss Grey +the first chance. She asked for Miss Lucy Money, and the porter rang a +bell for one of Mr. Money's servants. Miss Grey had brought a card with +her, on which she had written over her engraved name, "For Lucy Money," +and beneath it, "Nola," the short rendering of "Minola," which they used +to adopt at school. + +Then the porter looked inquiringly at the other visitor. + +"If Mr. Money is at home," said the latter, "I should be glad to see +him. I find I have forgotten my card case, but my name is Heron--Mr. +Victor Heron; and do, please, try to remember it, and to say it +rightly." + + + + +CHAPTER V. + +MISS GREY'S FIRST CALL. + + +Mr. Money's home, like Mr. Money himself, conveyed to the intelligent +observer an idea of quiet, self-satisfied strength. Mr. Money had one of +the finest and most expensive suites of rooms to be had in the great +Victoria street buildings, and his rooms were furnished handsomely and +richly. He had servants in sober livery, and a carriage for his wife and +daughters, and a little brougham for himself. He made no pretence at +being fashionable; rather indeed seemed to say deliberately, "I am a +plain man and don't care twopence about fashion, and I despise making a +show of being rich; but I am rich enough for all I want, and whatever +money can buy for me I can buy." He would not allow his wife and +daughters to aim at being persons of fashion had they been so inclined, +but they might spend as much money as ever they pleased. He never made a +boast of his original poverty, or the humbleness of his bringing up, nor +put on any vulgar show of rugged independence. The impression he made +upon everybody was that of a completely self-sufficing--we do not say +self-sufficient--man. It was not very clear how he had made his money. +He had been at the head of one of the working departments under the +Government, had somehow fancied himself ill treated, resigned his place, +and, it was understood, had entered into various contracts to do work +for the governments of foreign States. It was certain that Mr. Money was +not a speculator. His name never appeared in the directors' list of any +new company. He could not be called a city man. But it was certain that +he was rich. + +Mr. Money was in Parliament. He was a strong radical in theory, and was +believed to have much stronger opinions than he troubled himself to +express. There was a rough, scornful way about him, as of one who dearly +considered all our existing arrangements merely provisional, and who in +the mean time did not care to occupy himself overmuch with the small +differences between this legislative proposition and that. It was not on +political subjects that he usually spoke. He was a very good speaker, +clear, direct, and expressive in his language, always using plain, +effective words, and always showing a perfect ease in the finishing of +his sentences. There was a savor of literature about him, and it was +evident in many indirect ways that he knew Greek and Latin much better +than most of the university men. The impression he produced was that of +a man who on most subjects knew more than he troubled himself to +display. It seemed as if it would take a very ready speaker indeed to +enter into personal contest with Mr. Money and not get the worst of it. + +He was believed to be very shrewd and clever, and was known to be +liberal of his money. People consulted him about many things, and to +some extent admired him; some were a little afraid of him, and, in +homely phrase, fought shy of him. Perhaps he was thought to be +unscrupulous; perhaps his blunt way of going at the very heart of a +scruple in others made them fancy that he rather despised all moral +conventionalities. Whatever the reason was, a certain class of persons +always rather distrusted Mr. Money, and held aloof even while asking his +advice. No one who had come in his way even for a moment forgot him, or +was confused as to his identity, or failed to form some opinion about or +could have put clearly into words an exact statement of the opinion he +had formed. + +On this particular day of autumn Mr. Money was in his study reading +letters. He was talking to himself in short, blunt sentences over each +letter as he read it, and put it into a pigeonhole, or tore it and threw +it into the waste-paper basket. His sentences were generally concise +judgments pronounced on each correspondent. "Fool." "Blockhead." "Just +so; I expected that of you!" "Yes, yes, he's all right." "That will do." +Sometimes a comment, begun rather gruffly, ended in a good-natured +smile, and sometimes Mr. Money, having read a letter to the close with a +pleased and satisfied expression, suddenly became thoughtful, and leaned +upon his desk, drumming with the finger tips of one hand upon his teeth. + +A servant interrupted his work by bringing him a message and a name. Mr. +Money looked up, said quickly, "Yes, yes; show him in!" and Mr. Victor +Heron was introduced. + +Mr. Money advanced to meet his visitor with an air of cordial welcome. +One peculiarity of Mr. Money's strong, homely face was the singular +sweetness of the smile which it sometimes wore. The full lips parted so +pleasantly, the white teeth shone, and the eyes, that usually seemed +heavy, beamed with so kindly an air, that to youth at least the +influence was for the moment irresistible. Victor Heron's emotional face +sparkled with responsive expression. + +"Well, well; glad to see you, glad to see you. Knew you would come. +Shove away those blue books and sit down. We haven't long got back; but +I tried to find you, and couldn't get at your address. They didn't know +at the Colonial Institute even. And how are you, and what have you been +doing with yourself?" + +"Not much good," Heron replied, thinking as usual of his grievance. "I +couldn't succeed in seeing anybody." + +"Of course not, of course not. I could have told you so. People are not +yet coming back to town, except hard working fellows like me. Have you +been cooling your heels in the antechambers of the Colonial office?" + +"Yes, I have been there a little; not much. I saw it was no use just +yet, and that isn't a kind of occupation I delight in." The young man's +face reddened with the bare memory of his vexation. "I hate that sort of +thing." + +"To go where you know people don't want to see you? Yes, it tries young +and sensitive people a good deal. They've put you off?" + +"As I told you, I have seen nobody yet. But I mean to persevere. They +shall find I am not a man to be got rid of in that way." + +Mr. Money made no observation on this, but went to a drawer in his desk +and took out a little book with pages alphabetically arranged. + +"I have been making inquiries about you," he said, "of various people +who know all about the colonies. Would you like to hear a summary +description of your personal character? Don't be offended--this is a way +I have; the moment a person interests me and seems worth thinking about, +I enter him in my little book here, and sum up his character from my own +observation and from what people tell me. Shall I read it for you? I +wouldn't, you may be sure, if I thought you were anything of a fool." + +This compliment, of course, conquered Heron, who was otherwise a good +deal puzzled. But there was something in Mr. Money's manner with those +in whom he took any interest, that prevented their feeling hurt by his +occasional bluntness. + +"I don't know myself," Heron said. + +"Of course you don't. What busy man, who has to know other people, could +have time to study himself? That work might do for philosophers. I may +teach you something now, and save you the trouble." + +"I suppose I ought to make my own acquaintance," said Heron resignedly, +while much preferring to talk of his grievance. + +"Very good. Now listen. + +"Heron, Victor.--Formerly in administration of St. Xavier's settlements. +Got into difficulty; dropped down. Education good, but literary rather +than businesslike. Plenty of pluck, but wants coolness. Egotistic, but +unselfish. Good deal of talent and go. Very honest, but impracticable. A +good weapon in good hands, but must take care not to be made a +plaything." + +Heron laughed. "It's a little like the sort of thing phrenologists give +people," he said, "but I think it's very flattering. I can assure you, +however, no one shall make a plaything of _me_," he added with emphasis. + +"So we all think, so we all think," Mr. Money said, putting away his +book. "Well, you are going on with this then?" + +"I am going to vindicate my conduct, and compel them to grant me an +inquiry, if you mean that. Nothing on earth shall keep me from that." + +"So, so. Very well. We'll talk about that another time--many other +times; and I may give you some advice, which you needn't take if you +don't like, and I shan't be offended. Now, I want to introduce you to my +wife and my girls, and you must have a cup of tea. Odd, isn't it, to +find men drinking tea at five o'clock in the afternoon? Up at the club, +any day about that hour, you might think we were a drawing-room full of +old spinsters, to hear the rattling of teacups that goes on all around." + +He took Heron's arm in a friendly, dictatorial way, and conducted him to +the drawing-room on the same floor. + +The drawing-room was entered, not by opening a door, but by withdrawing +some folds of a great, heavy, dark-green curtain. Mr. Money drew aside +part of the curtain to make way for his friend; and they both stopped a +moment on the threshold. A peculiar, sweet, half melancholy smile gave a +strange dignity for the moment to Mr. Money's somewhat rough face, and +he gently let the curtain fall. + +"Wasn't there some great person, Mr. Heron--Burke, was it?--who used to +say that whatever troubles he had outside all ceased as he stood at his +own door? Well, I always feel like that when I lift this curtain." + +It was a pretty sight, as he again raised the curtain and led Heron in. +The drawing-room was very large, and was richly, and, as it seemed to +Heron, somewhat oddly furnished. The light in the lower part was faint +and dim, a sort of yellowish twilight, procured by softened lamps. The +upper extremity was steeped in a far brighter light, and displayed to +Heron, almost as on a stage, a little group of women, among whom his +quick eye at once saw the girl who had come up to the door at the same +time with him. She was, indeed, a very conspicuous figure, for she was +seated on a sofa, and one girl sat at her feet, while another stood at +the arm of the sofa and bent over her. An elderly lady, with voluminous +draperies that floated over the floor, was reclining on a low arm-chair, +with her profile turned to Heron. On a fancy table near, a silver +tea-tray glittered. A daintily dressed waiting-maid was serving tea. + +"Take care of the floors as you come along," said Money. "We like to put +rugs, and rolls of carpet, and stools now in all sorts of wrong places, +to trip people up. That shows how artistic we are! Theresa, dear, this +is my friend, Mr. Heron." + +"I am glad to see you, Mr. Heron," said a full, deep, melancholy voice, +and a tall, slender lady partly rose from her chair, then sank again +amid her draperies, bowed a head topped by a tiny lace cap, and held out +to Heron a thin hand covered with rings, and having such bracelets and +dependent chainlets that when Heron gave it even the gentlest pressure, +they rattled like the manacles of a captive. + +"We saw you in Paris, Mr. Heron," the lady graciously said, "but I think +you hardly saw us." + +"These are my daughters, Mr. Heron, Theresa and Lucy. I think them good +girls, though full of nonsense," said Mr. Money. + +Lucy, who had been on a footstool at Miss Grey's feet, gathered herself +up, blushing. She was a pretty girl, with brown, frizzy hair, and wore a +dress which fitted her so closely from neck to hip that she might really +have been, to all seeming, melted or moulded into it. The other young +lady, Theresa, slightly and gravely inclined her head to Mr. Heron, who +at once thought the whole group most delightful and beautiful, and found +his breast filled with a new pride in the loved old England that +produced such homes and furnished them with such women. + +"Dear, darling papa," exclaimed the enthusiastic little Lucy, swooping +at her father, and throwing both arms round his neck, "we have had such +a joy to-day, such a surprise! Don't you see anybody here? Oh, come now, +do use your eyes." + +"I see a young lady whom I have not yet the pleasure of knowing, but +whom I hope you will help me to know, Lucelet." + +Mr. Money turned to Miss Grey with his genial smile. She rose from the +sofa and bowed and waited. She did not as yet quite understand the Money +family, and was not sure whether she ought to like them or not. They +impressed her at first as being far too rich for her taste, and odd and +affected, and she hated affectation. + +"But this is Nola Grey, papa--my dearest old schoolfellow when I was at +Keeton; you must have heard me talk of Nola Grey a thousand times." + +So she dragged her papa up to Nola Grey, whose color grew a little at +this tempestuous kind of welcome. + +"Dare say I did, Lucelet, but Miss Grey, I am sure will excuse me if I +have forgotten; I am very glad to see you, Miss Grey--glad to see any +friend of Lucelet's. So you come from Keeton? That's another reason why +I should be glad to see you, for I just now want to ask a question or +two about Keeton. Sit down." + +Miss Grey allowed herself to be led to a sofa a little distance from +where she had been sitting. Mr. Money sat beside her. + +"Now, Lucelet, I want to ask Miss Grey a sensible question or two, which +I don't think you would care twopence about. Just you go and help our +two Theresas to talk to Mr. Heron." + +"But, papa darling, Miss Grey won't care about what you call sensible +subjects any more than I. She won't know anything about them." + +"Yes, dear, she will; look at her forehead." + +"Oh, I have looked at it! Isn't it beautiful?" + +"I didn't mean that," Mr. Money said with a smile; "I meant that it +looked sensible and thoughtful. Now, go away, Lucelet, like a dear +little girl." + +Miss Grey sat quietly through all this. She was not in the least +offended. Mr. Money seemed to her to be just what a man ought to +be--uncouth, rough, and domineering. She was amused meanwhile to observe +the kind of devotion and enthusiasm with which Mr. Heron was entering +into conversation with Mrs. Money and her elder daughter. That, too, was +just what a man ought to be--a young man--silly in his devotion to +women, unless, perhaps, where the devotion was to be accounted for +otherwise than by silliness, as in a case like the present, where the +unmarried women might be presumed to have large fortunes. So Miss Grey +liked the whole scene. It was as good as a play to her, especially as +good as a play which confirms all one's own theories of life. + +"England, Mr. Heron," said Mrs. Money in her melancholy voice, "is near +her fall." + +"Oh, Mrs. Money, pray pardon me--England! you amaze me--I _am_ +surprised--do forgive me--to hear an Englishwoman say so; our England +with her glorious destiny!" The young man blushed and grew confused. One +might have thought his mother had been called in question or his +sweetheart. + +Mrs. Money shook her head and twirled one of her bracelets. + +"She is near her fall, Mr. Heron! You cannot know. You have lived far +away, and do not see what _we_ see. She has proved faithless to her +mission." + +"Something--yes--there I agree," Mr. Heron eagerly interposed, thinking +of the St. Xavier's settlements. + +"She was the cradle of freedom," Mrs. Money went on. "She ought to have +been always its nursery and home. What have we now, Mr. Heron? A people +absolutely in servitude, the principle of caste everywhere +triumphant--corruption in the aristocracy--corruption in the city. No +man now dares to serve his country except at the penalty of suffering +the blackest ingratitude!" + +Mr. Heron was startled. He did not know that Mrs. Money was arguing only +from the assumption that her husband was a very great man, who would +have done wonderful things for England if a perverse and base ruling +class had not thwarted him, and treated him badly. + +"England," Theresa Money said, smiling sweetly, but with a suffusion of +melancholy, "can hardly be regenerated until she is once more dipped in +the holy well." + +"You see we all think differently, Mr. Heron," said the eager Lucy. +"Mamma thinks we want a republic. Tessy is a saint, and would like to +see roadside shrines." + +"And you?" Heron asked, pleased with the girl's bright eyes and winning +ways. + +"Oh--I only believe in the regeneration of England through the +renaissance of art. So we all have our different theories, you see, but +we all agree to differ, and we don't quarrel much. Papa laughs at us all +when he has time. But just now I am taken up with Nola Grey. If I were a +man, I should make an idol of her. That lovely, statuesque face, that +figure--like the Diana of the Louvre!" + +Mr. Heron looked and admired, but one person's raptures about man or +woman seldom awaken corresponding raptures in impartial breasts. He saw, +however, a handsome, ladylike girl, who conveyed to him a sort of +chilling impression. + +"She was my schoolfellow at Keeton," Lucy went on, "and she was so good +and clever that I adored her then, and I do now again. She has come to +London to live alone, and I am sure she must have some strange and +romantic story." + +Meanwhile Mr. Money, who prefaced his inquiries by telling Miss Grey +that he was always asking information about something, began to put +several questions to her concerning the local magnates, politics, and +parties of Keeton. Minola was rather pleased to be talked to by a man as +if she were a rational creature. Like most girls brought up in a +Nonconformist household in a country town, she had been surrounded by +political talk from her infancy, but unlike most girls, she had +sometimes listened to it and learned to know what it was all about. So +she gave Mr. Money a good deal of information, which he received with an +approbatory "Yes, yes" or an inquiring "So, so" every now and then. + +"You know that there's likely to be a vacancy soon in the +representation-member of Parliament," he added by way of explanation. + +"I know what a vacancy in the representation means," Miss Grey answered +demurely, "but I didn't know there was likely to be one just now. I +don't keep up much correspondence with Keeton. I don't love it." + +"Why not?" + +"Oh, I don't know." + +He smiled. + +"You are smiling because you think that a woman's answer? So it is, Mr. +Money, and I am afraid it isn't true; but I really didn't think of what +I was saying. I _do_ know why I don't care much about Keeton." + +"Yes, yes; well, I dare say you do. But to return, as the books say--do +you know a Mr. Augustus Sheppard?" + +She could not help coloring slightly. "Yes, I know him," and a faint +smile broke over her face in spite of herself. + +"Is he strong in Keeton?" + +"Strong?" + +"Well liked, respectable, a likely kind of man to get good Conservative +support if he stood for Keeton? You don't know, perhaps?" + +"Yes, I think I do know. I believe he wishes to get into Parliament, and +I am sure he is thought highly of. He is a very good man--a man of very +high character," she added emphatically, anxious to repair the mental +wrong doing of thinking him ridiculous and tiresome. + +Just at this moment Mr. Heron rose to take his leave, and Mr. Money left +the room with him, so that the conversation with Miss Grey was broken +off. Then Lucy came to Nola again, and Nola was surrounded by the three +women, who began to lay out various schemes for seeing her often and +making London pleasant to her. Much as our lonely heroine loved her +loneliness, she was greatly touched by their spontaneous kindness, but +she was alarmed by it too. + +A card was brought to Mrs. Money, who passed it on to Lucy. + +"Oh, how delightful!" Lucy exclaimed. "So glad he has come, mamma. Nola, +dear, a poet--a real poet!" + +But Nola would not prolong her visit that day even for a poet. A very +handsome, tall, dark-haired man, who at a distance seemed boyishly +young, and when near looked worn and not very young, was shown in. For +the moment or two that she could see him, Minola thought she had never +seen so self-conceited and affected a creature. She did not hear his +name nor a word he said, but his splendid, dark eyes, deeply set in +hollows, took in every outline of her face and form. She thought him the +poet of a schoolgirl's romance made to order. + +Minola tore herself from the clinging embraces of Lucy, with less +difficulty, perhaps, because of the poet's arrival, to whose society +Lucy was clearly anxious to hasten back. It so happened that Mr. Money +had kept Mr. Heron for a few minutes in talk, and the result was that +exactly as Miss Grey reached the door Mr. Heron arrived there too. They +both came out together, and in a moment they were in the gray +atmosphere, dun lines of houses, and twinkling gaslights of Victoria +street. Minola would much rather have been there alone. + +Victor Heron, however, was full of the antique ideas of man's chivalrous +duty and woman's sweet dependence, which still lingered in the +out-of-the-way colony where he had spent so much of his time. Also, it +must be owned that he had not yet quite got rid of the sense of +responsibility and universal dictatorship belonging to the chief man in +a petty commonwealth. For some time after his return to London he could +hardly see an omnibus horse fall in the street without thinking it was +an occasion which called for some intervention on his part. Therefore, +when Miss Grey and he stood in the street together Mr. Heron at once +assumed that the young woman must, as a matter of course, require his +escort and protection. + +He calmly took his place at her side. Miss Grey was a little surprised, +but said nothing, and they went on. + +"Do you live far from this, Miss Money?" he began. + +"I am not Miss Money. My name is Grey." + +"Of course, yes--I beg your pardon for the mistake. It was only a +mistake of the tongue, for I knew very well that you were not Miss +Money." + +"Thank you." + +"And your first name is so very pretty and peculiar that I could not +have easily forgotten it." + +"I am greatly obliged to my godfathers and godmothers." + +"Did you say that you lived in this quarter, Miss Grey?" + +"No--I did not make any answer; I had not time." + +"I hope you do not live very near," the gallant Heron observed. + +"Why do you hope that?" Miss Grey said, turning her eyes upon him with +an air of cold resolution, which would probably have proved very trying +to a less sincere maker of compliments, even though a far more dexterous +person than Mr. Heron. + +"Of course, because I should have the less of your company." + +"But there is no need of your coming out of your way for me. I don't +require any escort, Mr. Heron." + +"I couldn't think of letting a lady walk home by herself. That would +seem very strange to me. Perhaps you think me old-fashioned or +colonial?" + +"I have heard that you are from the colonies. In London people have not +time to keep up all these pretty forms and ceremonies. We don't any +longer pretend to think that a girl needs to be defended against giants, +or robbers, or mad bulls, when crossing two or three streets in open +day." + +"Well, it is hardly open day now; it is almost quite dark." + +"The lamps are lighted," Miss Gray observed. + +"Yes, if you call that being lighted! You have such bad gas in London. +Why does not somebody stir up people here, and put things to rights? You +seem to me the most patient people in all the world. I wish they would +give me the ruling of this place for about a twelvemonth." + +"I wish they would." + +"Do you?" and he looked at her with a glance of genuine gratitude in his +dark eyes, for he thought she meant to express her entire confidence in +his governing power, and her wish to see him at the head of affairs. +Miss Grey, however, only meant that if he were engaged in directing the +municipal government of London he probably would be rather too busy to +walk with her. + +"Yes," he went on, "you should soon see a change. For instance"--they +were now at the end of Victoria street, near the Abbey--"I would begin +by having a great broad street, like this, running right up from here to +the British Museum. You know where the British Museum is, of course?" + +"Yes; I live near it." + +"Do you really? I am so glad to hear that. I have been there lately very +often. How happy you Londoners are to have such glorious places. In that +reading-room I felt inclined to bless England." + +Miss Grey was now particularly sorry that she had said anything about +her place of residence. Still it did not seem as if much would have been +gained by any reticence unless she could actually dismiss her companion +peremptorily. Mr. Heron was evidently quite resolved to be her escort +all the way along. He was clearly under the impression that he was +making himself very agreeable. The good-natured youth believed he was +doing quite the right thing, and meant it all for the very best, and +therefore could not suppose that any nice girl could fail to accept his +attendance in a kindly spirit. That Miss Grey must be a nice girl he was +perfectly certain, for he had met her at Mr. Money's, and Money was +evidently a fine fellow--a very fine fellow. Miss Grey was very handsome +too, but that did not count for very much with Heron. At least he would +have made himself just as readily, under the circumstances, the escort +of little Miss Blanchet. + +So he talked on about various things--the Moneys, and what charming +people they were! the British Museum, what a noble institution! the +National Gallery, how hideous the building!--why on earth didn't anybody +do something?--the glorious destiny of England--the utter imbecility of +the English Government. + +It was not always quite easy to keep up with his talk, for the streets +were crowded and noisy, and Mr. Heron talked right on through every +interruption. When they came to crossings where the perplexed currents +and counter-currents of traffic on wheels would have made a nervous +person shudder, Mr. Heron coolly took Miss Grey's hand and conducted her +in and out, talking all the while as if they were crossing a ball-room +floor. Minola made it a point of honor not to hesitate, or start, or +show that she had nerves. But when he began to run into politics he +always pulled himself up, for he politely remembered that young ladies +did not care about politics, and so he tried to find some prettier +subject to talk about. Miss Grey understood this perfectly well, and was +amused and contemptuous. + +"I suppose this man must be a person of some brains and sense," she +thought. "He was in command of something somewhere, and I suppose even +the Government he calls so imbecile would not have put him there if he +were a downright fool. But because he talks to a woman, he feels bound +only to talk of trivial things." + +At last the walk came to an end. "Ah, I beg pardon. You live here," Mr. +Heron said. "May I have the honor of calling on your family? I sometimes +come to the Museum, and if I might call, I should be delighted to make +their acquaintance." + +"Thank you," Miss Grey said coldly. "I have no family. My father and +mother are dead." + +"Oh, I am so sorry! I wish I had not asked such a question." He looked +really distressed, and the expression of his eyes had for the first time +a pleasing, softening effect upon Miss Grey. + +"We lodge here all alone--a lady--an old friend of mine--and I. We have +no acquaintances, unless Lucy Money's family may be called so. We read +and study a great deal, and don't go out, and don't see any one." + +"I can quite understand," Mr. Heron answered with grave sympathy. "Of +course you don't care to be intruded on by visitors. I thank you for +having allowed me the pleasure of accompanying you so far." + +He spoke in tones much more deferential than before, for he assumed that +the young lady was lonely and poor. There was something in his manner, +in his eyes, in his grave, respectful voice, which conveyed to Minola +the idea of genuine sympathy, and brought to her, the object of it, a +new conviction that she really was isolated and friendless, and the +springs of her emotions were touched in a moment, and tears flashed in +her eyes. Perhaps Mr. Heron saw them, and felt that he ought not to see +them, for he raised his hat and instantly left her. + +Minola lingered for a moment on the doorstep, in order that she might +recover her expression of cheerfulness before meeting the eyes of Miss +Blanchet. But that little lady had seen her coming to the door, and seen +and marvelled at her escort, and now ran herself and opened the door to +receive her. + +"My dear Minola, do tell me who that handsome young man was! What lovely +dark eyes he had! Where did you meet him? Is he young Mr. Money?" + +The poetess's susceptible bosom still thrilled and throbbed at the +sight, or even the thought, of a handsome young man. She could not +understand how anybody on earth could avoid liking handsome young men. +But in this case a certain doubt and dissatisfaction suddenly dissolved +away into her instinctive gratification at the sight of Minola's escort. +A handsome and young Mr. Money might prove an inconvenient visitor just +at present. + +Minola briefly told her when they were safe in their room. Miss Blanchet +was relieved to find that he was not a young Mr. Money, for a young Mr. +Money, if there were one, would doubtless be rich. + +"Isn't he wonderfully handsome! Such a smile!" + +"I hardly know," Minola said distressedly; "perhaps he is. I really +didn't notice. He goes to the Museum, and I must exile myself from the +place for evermore, or I shall be always meeting him, and be forced to +listen politely to talk about nothing. Mary Blanchet, our days of +freedom are gone! We are getting to know people. I foresaw it. What +shall we do? We must find some other lodgings ever so far away." + +"Do you like Miss Money, dear?" Mary Blanchet asked timidly. + +"Lucy? Oh, yes, very much. But there is Mr. Money; and they are going to +be terribly kind to us; and they have all manner of friends; and what is +to become of my independence? Mary Blanchet, I will _not_ bear it! I +_will_ be independent!" + +"I have news for you, dear," Miss Blanchet said. + +"If it please the destinies, not news of any more friends! Why, we shall +be like the hare in Gay's fable if we go on in this way." + +"Not of any more friends, darling, but of one friend. My brother has +been here." + +"Oh!" + +"Yes; and he is longing to see you." + +Minola sincerely wished she could say that she was longing to see him. +But she could not say it, even to please her friend and comrade. + +"You don't want to see him," said Mary Blanchet in piteous reproach. + +"But you do, dear," Miss Grey said; "and I shall like to see any one, be +sure, who brightens your life." + +This was said with full sincerity, although at the very moment the +whimsical thought passed through her, "We only want Mr. Augustus +Sheppard now to complete our social happiness." + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + +IS THIS ALCESTE? + + +Minola's mind was a good deal disturbed by the various little events of +the day, the incidents and consequences of her first visit in London. +She began to see with much perplexity and disappointment that her life +of lonely independence was likely to be compromised. She was not sure +that she could much like the Moneys, and yet she felt that they were +disposed and determined to be very kind to her. There was something +ridiculous and painful in the fact that Mr. Augustus Sheppard's name was +thrust upon her almost at the first moment of her crossing for the first +time a strange threshold in London; then there was Mary Blanchet's +brother turning up; and Mary Blanchet herself was evidently falling off +from the high design of lonely independence. Again, there was Mr. Heron, +who now knew where she lived, and who often went to the British Museum, +and who might cross her path at any hour. Sweet, lonely freedom, happy +carelessness of action, farewell! + +Mr. Heron was especially a trouble to Minola. The kindly, grave +expression on his face when he heard of her living alone declared, as +nearly as any words could do, that he considered her an object of pity. +Was she an object of pity? Was that the light in which any one could +look at her superb project of playing at a lifelong holiday? And if +people chose to look at it so, what did that matter to her? Are women, +then, the slaves of the opinion of people all around them? "They are," +Minola said to herself in scorn and melancholy--"they are; we are. I am +shaken to the very soul, because a young man, for whose opinion on any +other subject I should not care anything, chooses to look at me with +pity!" + +The night was melancholy. When the outer world was shut out, and the gas +was lighted, and the two women sat down to work and talk, nothing seemed +to Minola quite as it had been. The evident happiness and passing high +spirits of the little poetess oppressed her. Mary Blanchet was so glad +to be making acquaintances, and to have some prospect of seeing the +inside of a London home. Then Minola's kindlier nature returned to her, +and she thought of Mary's delight at seeing her brother, and how unkind +it would be if she, Minola, did not try to enter into her feelings. Her +mind went back to her own brother, to their dear early companionship, +when nothing seemed more natural and more certain than that they two +should walk the world arm-in-arm. Now all that had come to an end--faded +away somehow; and he had gone into the world on his own account, and +made other ties, and forgotten her. But if he were even now to come +back, if she were to hear in the street the sound of the peculiar +whistle with which he always announced his coming to her--oh, how, in +spite of all his forgetfulness and her anger, she would run to him and +throw her arms around his neck! Why should not Mary Blanchet love her +brother, and gladden when he came? + +"What is your brother like, Mary, dear?" she said gently, anxious to +propitiate by voluntarily entering on the topic dearest to her friend. + +"Oh, very handsome--very, very handsome!" + +Miss Grey smiled in spite of herself. + +"Now, Minola, I know what you are smiling at; you think it is my +sisterly nonsense, and all that; but wait until you see." + +"I'll wait," Minola said. + +Miss Grey did not go out the next day as usual, although it was one of +the soft, amber-gray, autumnal days that she loved, and the Regent's +Park would have looked beautiful. She remained nearly all the morning in +her own room, and avoided even Mary Blanchet. Some singular change had +taken place within her, for which she could not account, otherwise than +by assuming that it was begotten of the fear that she would be drawn, +willingly or unwillingly, into uncongenial companionship, and must +renounce her liberty. She was forced into a strange, painful, +self-questioning mood. Was the whole fabric of her self-appointed +happiness and independence only a dream, or, worse than a dream, an +error? So soon to doubt the value and the virtue of the emancipation she +had prayed for and planned for during years? Not often, perhaps, has a +warm-hearted, fanciful, and spirited girl been pressed down by such +peculiar relationship as hers at Keeton lately; a twice removed +stepfather and stepmother, absolutely uncongenial with her, causing her +soul and her youth to congeal amid dull repression. What wonder that to +her all happiness seemed to consist in mere freedom and unrestricted +self-development? And now--so soon--why does she begin to doubt the +reality, the fulfilment of her happiness? Only because an impulsive and +kindly young man, whom she saw for the first time, looked pityingly at +her. This, she said to herself, is what our self-reliance and our +emancipation come to after all. + +It was a positive relief to her, after a futile hour or so of such +questioning, when Mary Blanchet ran up stairs, and with beaming eyes +begged that Minola would come and see her brother. "He is longing to see +you--and you will like him--oh, you will like him, Minola dearest?" she +said beseechingly. + +Miss Gray went down stairs straightway, without stopping to give one +touch to her hair, or one glance at the glass. The little poetess was +waiting a moment, with an involuntary look toward the dressing table, as +if Miss Grey must needs have some business there before she descended, +but Miss Grey thought nothing of the kind, and they went down stairs +together. + +Minola expected, she could not tell why, to see a small and withered man +in Mary Blanchet's brother. When they were entering the drawing-room, he +was looking out of the window, and had his back turned, and she was +surprised to see that he was decidedly tall. When he turned around she +saw not only that he was handsome, but that she had recognized the fact +of his being handsome before. For he was unmistakably the ideal poet of +schoolgirls whom she had met at Mr. Money's house the day before. + +The knowledge produced a sort of embarrassment to begin with. Minola was +about to throw her soul into the sacrifice, and greet her friend's +brother with the utmost cordiality. But she had pictured to herself a +sort of Mary Blanchet in trousers, a gentle, old-fashioned, timid +person, whom, perhaps, the outer world was apt to misprize, if not even +to snub, and whom therefore it became her, Minola Grey, as an enemy and +outlaw of the common world, to receive with double consideration. But +this brilliant, self-conceited, affected, oppressively handsome young +man, on whom she had seen Lucy Money and her mother hanging devotedly, +was quite another sort of person. His presence seemed to overcharge the +room; the scene became all compound of tall, bending form and dark eyes. + +"I am glad to see you, Mr. Blanchet," Miss Grey began, determined not to +be put out by any self-conceited poet and ideal of schoolgirls. "I must +be glad to see you, because you are Mary's brother." + +"You ought rather to be not glad to see me for that reason," he said, +with a deprecating bow and a slight shrug of the shoulders, "for I have +been a very neglectful brother to Mary." + +"So I have heard," Miss Grey said, "but not from Mary. She always +defended you. But I have seen you before, Mr. Blanchet, have I not?" + +"At Mrs. Money's yesterday? Oh, yes; I only saw you, Miss Grey. I went +there to see you, and only in the most literal way got what I wanted." + +"But, Herbert, you never told me that you were going, or that you knew +Mrs. Money," his sister interposed. + +"No, dear; that was an innocent deceit on my part. You told me that Miss +Grey had gone there, and as I knew the Moneys I hurried away there +without telling you. I wanted to know what you were like, Miss Grey, +before seeing my sister again. I hope you are not angry? She is so +devoted to you that she painted you in colors the most bewitching; but I +was afraid her friendship was carrying her away, and I wanted to see for +myself when she was not present." + +Miss Grey remained resolutely silent. She thought this beginning +particularly disagreeable, and began to fear that she should never be +able to like Mary Blanchet's brother. "Oh, why do women have brothers?" +she asked herself. There seemed something dishonest in Mr. Blanchet's +proceeding despite the frank completeness of his confession. + +"Well, Herbert, confess that I didn't do her justice; didn't do her +common justice," the enthusiastic Mary exclaimed. + +"If Miss Grey would not be offended," her brother said, "I would say +that I see in her just the woman capable of doing the kind and generous +things I have heard of." + +"Yes; but we mustn't talk about it," the poetess said, with tears of +gratefulness blinking in her eyes; "and we'll not say a word more about +it, Minola; not a word, indeed, dear." And she put a deprecating little +hand upon Minola's arm. + +Then they all sat down, and Herbert Blanchet began to talk. He talked +very well, and he seemed to have put away most of the airs of +affectation which, even in her very short opportunity of observation, +Minola had seen in him when he was talking to the Money girls. + +"You have travelled a great deal," Miss Grey said. "I envy you." + +"If you call it travelling. I have drifted about the world a good deal, +and seen the wrong sides of everything. I make it pay in a sort of way. +When any place that I know is brought into public notice by a war or +something of the kind, I write about it. Or if a place is not brought +into any present notice by anything, I write about it, and take a +different view from anybody else. I have done particularly well with +Italy, showing that Naples is the ugliest place in all the world; that +the Roman women have shockingly bad figures, and that the climate is +wretched from the Alps to the Straits of Messina. + +"But you don't think that?" Mary Blanchet said wonderingly. + +"Don't I? Well, I don't know. I almost think I do for the moment. One +can get into that frame of mind. Besides, I really don't care about +scenery. I don't observe it as I pass along. And I like to say what +other people don't say, and to see what they don't see. Of course I +don't put my name to any of these things; they are only done to make a +living. I live _on_ such stuff as that. I live _for_ Art." + +"It is glorious to live for art," his sister exclaimed, pressing her +thin, tiny hands together. + +Mr. Blanchet did not seem to care much about his sister's approval. + +"My art isn't yours, Mary," he said, with a pitying smile. "Pictures of +flowers and little children saying their prayers, and nice poems about +good young men and women, are your ideas of painting and poetry, I am +sure. You are a lover of the human race, I know." + +"I hope I love my neighbors," Mary said earnestly. + +"I hope you do, dear. All good little women like you ought to do that. +Do _you_ love your neighbor, Miss Grey?" + +"I don't care much for any one," Miss Grey answered decisively, "except +Mary Blanchet. But I have no particular principle or theory about it, +only that I don't care for people." + +Although Miss Grey had Alceste for her hero, she did not like sham +misanthropy, which she now fancied her visitor was trying to display. +Perhaps too she began to think that his misanthropy rather caricatured +her own. + +Miss Blanchet, on the contrary, was inclined to argue the question, and +to pelt her brother with touching commonplaces. + +"The more we know people," she emphatically declared, "the more good we +see in them. In every heart there is a deep spring of goodness. Oh, +yes!" + +"There isn't in mine, I know," he said. "I speak for myself." + +"For shame, Herbert! How else could you ever feel impelled to try and do +some good for your fellow creatures?" + +"But I don't want to do any good to my fellow creatures. I don't care +about my fellow creatures, and I don't even admit that they are my +fellow creatures, those men and those women too that one sees about. Why +should the common possession of two legs make us fellow creatures with +every man, more than with every bird? No, I don't love the human race at +all." + +"This is nonsense, Minola; you won't believe a word of it," the little +poetess eagerly said, divided between admiration and alarm. + +"You good, little, innocent dear, is it not perfectly true? What did I +ever do for you, let me ask? There, Miss Grey, you see as kind an elder +sister as ever lived. I remember her a perfect mother to me. I dare say +I should have been dead thirty years ago but for her, though whether I +ought to thank her for keeping me alive is another thing. Anyhow, what +was my way of showing my gratitude? As soon as I could shake myself +free, I rambled about the world, a very vagrant, and never took any +thought of her. We are all the same, Miss Grey, believe me--we men." + +"I can well believe it," Miss Grey said. + +"Of course you can. In all our dealings with you women we are just the +same. Our sisters and mothers take trouble without end for us, and cry +their eyes out for us, and we--what do we care? I am not worse than my +neighbors. But if you ask me, do I admire my fellow man, I answer +frankly, no. Not I. What should I admire him for?" + +"One must live for something," the poetess pleaded, much perplexed in +her heart as to what Miss Grey's opinion might be about all this. + +"Of course one must live for art; for music and poetry, and colors and +decoration." + +"And Nature?" Mary Blanchet gently insinuated. + +"Nature--no! Nature is the buxom sweetheart of ploughboy poets. We only +affect to admire Nature because people think we can't be good if we +don't. No one really cares about great cauliflower suns, and startling +contrasts of blazing purple and emerald green. There is nothing really +beautiful in Nature except her decay; her rank weeds, and dank grasses, +and funereal evening glooms." + +While he talked this way he was seated on the piano stool, with his face +turned away from the piano, on whose keys he touched every now and then +with a light and seemingly careless hand, bringing out only a faint note +that seemed to help the conversation rather than to interrupt it. He was +very handsome, Minola could not help thinking, and there was something +in his colorless face and deep eyes that seemed congenial with the talk +of glooms and decay. Still, true to her first feeling toward all men, +Minola was disposed to dislike him, the more especially as he spoke with +an air of easy superiority, as one who would imply that he knew how to +maintain his place above women in creation. + +"I thought all you poets affected to be in love with Nature," she said. +"I mean you younger poets," and she emphasized the word "younger" with a +certain contemptuous tone, which made it just what it meant to +be--"smaller poets." + +"Why younger poets?" + +"Well, because the elder ones I think really were in love with Nature, +and didn't affect anything." + +He smiled pityingly. + +"No," he said decisively, "we don't care about Nature--our school." + +"I am from the country; I don't think I know what your school is." + +"We don't want to be known in the country; we couldn't endure to be +known in the country." + +"But fame?" Minola asked--"does fame not go outside the twelve-mile +radius?" + +"Oh, Miss Grey, do pray excuse me, but you really don't understand us; +we don't want fame. What is fame? Vulgarity made immortal." + +"Then what do you publish for?" + +He rose from his seat and seized his hair with both hands; then +constrained himself to endurance, and sat down again. + +"My dear young lady, we don't publish; we don't intend to publish. No +man in his senses would publish for us if we were never so well +inclined. No one could sell six copies. The great, thick-headed public +couldn't understand us. We are satisfied that the true artist never does +have a public--or look for it. The public can have their Tennysons, and +Brownings, and Swinburnes, and Tuppers, and all that lot----" + +"That lot!" broke in Miss Blanchet, mildly horrified--"that lot! +Browning and Tupper put together!" + +"My dear Mary, I don't know one of these people from another; I never +read any of them now. They are all the same sort of thing to me. These +persons are not artists; they are only men trying to amuse the public. +Some of them, I am told, are positively fond of politics." + +"Don't your school care for politics?" Miss Grey asked, now growing +rather amused. + +"Oh, no; we never trouble ourselves about such things. What can it +matter whether the Reform bill is carried--is there a Reform bill going +on now?--I believe there always is--or what becomes of the Eastern +Question, or whether New Zealand has a constitution? These are questions +for vestrymen, not artists; we don't love man." + +"There I am with you," Miss Grey said; "if that alone were qualification +enough, I should be glad to be one of your fraternity, for I don't love +man; I think he is a poor creature at his best." + +"So do I," said the poet, turning toward her with eyes in which for the +moment a deep and genuine feeling seemed to light up; "the poorest +creature, at his best! Why should any one turn aside for a moment from +his path to help such a thing? What does it matter, the welfare of him +and his pitiful race? Let us sing, and play, and paint, and forget him +and the destiny that he makes such a work about. Wisdom only consists in +shutting our ears to his cries of ambition, and jealousy, and pain, and +being happy in our own way and forgetting him." + +Their eyes met for a moment, and then Minola lowered hers. In that +instant a gleam of sympathy had passed from her eyes into his, and he +knew it. She felt a little humiliated somehow, like a proud fencer +suddenly disarmed at the first touch of his adversary. For, as he was +speaking scorn of the human race, she was saying to herself, "This man, +I do believe, has suffered deeply. He has found people cold, and mean, +and selfish--as _I_ have--and he feels it, and cannot hide it. I did him +wrong; he is not a fribble or sham cynic, only a disappointed dreamer." +The sympathy which she felt showed itself only too quickly in her very +eloquent eyes. + +Herbert Blanchet rose after an instant of silence and took his leave, +asking permission to call again, which Miss Grey would have gladly +refused if she could have stood up against the appealing looks of Mary. +So she had to grant him the permission, thinking as she gave it that +another path of her liberty was closed. + +Mary went to the door with her brother, and, much to Minola's +gratification, remained a long time talking with him there. + +Miss Grey went to the piano and began to sing; softly to herself, that +she might not be heard outside. The short autumnal day was already +closing in London. Out in the country there would be two hours yet of +light before the round, red sun went down behind the sloping fields, +with the fresh upturned earth, and the clumps of trees, but here, in +West-Central regions of London, the autumn day dies in its youth. The +dusk already gathered around the singer, who sang to please or to soothe +herself. In any troubled mood Miss Grey had long been accustomed to +clear her spirits by singing to herself; and on many a long, dull Sunday +at home--in the place that was called her home--she had committed the +not impious fraud of singing her favorite ballads to slow, slow time, +that they might be mistaken for hymns and pass unreproved. Her voice and +way of singing made the song seem like a sweet, plaintive recitative, +just the singing to hear in the "gloaming," to draw a few people hushed +around it, and hold them in suspense, fearful to lose a single note, and +miss the charm of expression. In truth, the charm of it sprang from the +fact that the singer sang to express her own emotions, and thus every +tone had its reality and its meaning. When women sing for a listening +company, they sing conventionally, and in the way that some teacher has +taught, or in what they believe to be the manner of some great artist; +or they sing to somebody or at somebody, and in any case they are away +from that truthfulness which in art is simply the faithful expression of +real emotion. With Minola Grey singing was an end rather than a means; a +relief in itself, a new mood in itself; a passing away from poor and +personal emotions into ideal regions, where melancholy, if it must be, +was always divine; and pain, if it would intrude, was purifying and +ennobling. So, while the little poetess talked with her brother in the +dusk, at the doorway, with the gas lamps just beginning to light the +monotonous street, Minola was singing herself into the pure blue ether, +above the fogs, and clouds, and discordant, selfish voices. + +She came back to earth with something like a heavy fall, as Mary +Blanchet ran in upon her in the dark and exclaimed-- + +"Now, do tell me--how do you like my brother?" + +To say the truth, Miss Grey did not well know. "I wonder is he an +Alceste?" she asked herself. On the whole, his coming had made an +uncomfortable, anxious, uncanny impression upon her, and she looked back +with a kind of hopeless regret on the days when she had London all to +herself, and knew nobody. + + + + +WORDSWORTH'S CORRECTIONS. + + +When an author, in his later editions, departs from his earlier text, he +is apt to reveal some traits of his method and genius that might not +otherwise have been so evident, and a poet's corrections may thus have +more than a merely curious interest. Take Mr. Tennyson's, for instance: +"The Princess," to say nothing of his shorter emended poems, has been, +one might say, rewritten since the first edition, and his corrections +are always interesting. Yet they spring, I think, from a narrower range +of motive than Wordsworth's; they are directed more exclusively toward +the object of artistic finish; they commonly show the poet busied in +casting perfume upon the lily. Take this example from "The Miller's +Daughter." In the first version of that poem, as it appeared in 1842, we +are told that before the heroine's reflection became visible in the +mill-pool-- + + A water-rat from off the bank + Plunged in the stream. + +Later editions give us this more graceful version of what occurred: + + Then leapt a trout. In lazy mood + I watch'd the little circles die; + They passed into the level flood, + And there a vision caught my eye. + +Unquestionably that is an improvement, and of a sort which Wordsworth +was continually making. But Wordsworth's corrections do not merely +illustrate the effort to reach artistic finish, though very many of them +are made with that intent; they have a relation to his theories, tastes, +creeds, to his temperament and training, to his manner of receiving +friendly or hostile criticism; and in comparing these textual variations +we seem to watch the artist at his work--to enter in some sort into his +very consciousness--as we see him manipulating the form or the thought +of his verses: + + Tą dč torneśei, tą dč kollomeleī, + Kaģ gnōmotupeī, k'autonomįzei. + +Nor is this to consider too curiously; Wordsworth himself has invited us +to the task. In his letters as well as in the notes to his poems, +frequent mention is made of these labors of emendation. Writing in 1837 +to Edward Quillinan, he asks him to "take the trouble ... of comparing +the corrections in my last edition [that of 1836] with the text in the +preceding one," "in the correction of which I took great pains," as he +had written to Prof. Reed a month before. And there is ample opportunity +of this sort; I do not know an ampler one of the kind in the works of +any other poet. Tasso's _varię lectiones_ are numerous, but they were +mostly made to conciliate his critics; Milton's are of great interest, +but they are comparatively few in number, and Gray's are fewer still: +Pope's are numerous, but not often interesting; while Tennyson's, as I +have intimated, seem to me to spring from a less serious poetic faculty +than Wordsworth's, and are therefore less significant. But I am anxious +not to claim too much significance for Wordsworth's corrections, for I +can do little more here than to point out some of them, leaving for the +most part their interpretation to the reader. To attempt more than this +would be to enter upon an analysis of Wordsworth's genius, for which +this is not the occasion. + +And yet we shall see, I think, that his genius might be in some sort +"restored," as naturalists say, were it necessary, from these +fragmentary data, for Wordsworth's corrections cover the whole term of +his literary activity. He preferred, one might say, to correct after +publication rather than before; and, revising his youthful writing +during a second and a third generation following, his final texts had +received the benefit of more than half a century of criticism by himself +and others. From the year 1793, in which his first volumes appeared, the +"Evening Walk" and the "Descriptive Sketches," to the year of his death, +1850, he put forth not fewer than twenty-four separate publications in +verse, each of which contained more or less of poetry previously +unpublished; and in the greater number of these texts may be found +variations from the previous readings. The larger part of them, indeed, +are slight--the change of single words, the alteration of phrases, the +transposition of verses or stanzas. And yet few of them, I think, are +quite without interest for persons in whose reading, as Wordsworth +himself expresses it, "poetry has continued to be comprehended as a +study." I have noted some thousands of his corrections; but a copious +citation of them might weary all but actual students of poetic +_technique_, a class that is hardly as numerous, I suspect, as that of +the actual practitioners of poetry, and I will therefore keep mainly to +such _varię lectiones_ as may be referred to motives of more general +interest.[B] + +[Footnote B: After the early poems just mentioned and the "Lyrical +Ballads," 1798 to 1802, the chief editions to be consulted for the +changes of text are the complete editions of 1807, 1815, and 1836, and +the original issues of "The Excursion" (1814), of "The White Doe of +Rylston" (1815), of "Peter Bell," and of "The Waggoner" (1819). +Unfortunately I have not been able to get access to Mr. W. Johnston's +useful collection of Wordsworth's "Earlier Poems" (London, 1857): it +would have lightened the task of collecting the _variantes_, the more +important of which, for the period covered by the collection, are given +in it. But, having gone in nearly every case to the original texts, I +need hardly say that I have been careful to quote them accurately in the +present article.] + +The first question which we naturally ask about Wordsworth's corrections +is this: Were they improvements? My readers will decide for themselves; +for my own part, it seems to me that they generally were improvements; +that Wordsworth bettered his text three times out of four when he +changed it. Nor is this surprising; few admirers of Wordsworth's poetry +will deny that there were many passages quite susceptible of amendment +in it; for that task there was ample room. But on the other hand, it +happened not infrequently, as we might expect, that when the poet +returned, in the critical mood, to mend his first form of expression, he +marred it instead. In the poem, for instance, beginning, "Strange fits +of passion have I known," the second stanza as originally published ran +thus: + + When she I loved was strong and gay, + And like a rose in June, + I to her cottage bent my way, + Beneath the evening moon. + --_Lyrical Ballads_, 1800. + +The passage stood thus for many years, and was finally altered to read: + + When she I loved looked every day + Fresh as a rose in June, + I to her cottage bent my way, + Beneath an evening moon. + +Is there not some loss of vividness here? The later reading is perhaps +the more graceful, and yet the picture seems to me brighter in the early +version. This, too, seems a doubtful improvement; it occurs in "The +Farmer of Tilsbury Vale." Wordsworth wrote at first: + + His staff is a sceptre--his gray hairs a crown: + Erect as a sunflower he stands, and the streak + Of the unfaded rose is expressed on his cheek. + --1815. + +In later editions we read: + + His bright eyes look brighter, set off by the streak + Of the unfaded rose that still blooms on his cheek. + +Here the last line is bettered; but I, for one, am sorry to lose the +sunflower comparison; it is picturesque, and it aptly describes this +hearty child of the earth. + +Look now at the poem "We are Seven," as it began in the "Lyrical +Ballads": + + A simple child, dear brother Jim, + That lightly draws its breath, + And feels its life in every limb-- + What should it know of death? + +It is now sixty years since "dear brother Jim" was dismissed from his +place in these lines--dismissed, perhaps, with the less compunction +because the stanza was written by another hand--Coleridge's--as an +introduction to the rest of the poem. But I think the lines were better +as the young poets first sent them forth. "Brother Jim" had, perhaps, no +clearly demonstrable business in the poem; and yet, having been there, +we miss him now that he is gone. That homely apostrophe had in it the +primitive impulses of the Lake school feeling; the phrase refuses to be +forgotten, and seems to have a persistent life of its own. I have seen +the missing words restored, in pencil marks, to their rightful place in +the text of copies belonging to old-fashioned gentlemen who remembered +the original reading. Nor can we easily deny existence to our "dear +brother Jim"; his name still lingers in our memories, haunting about the +page from which it was excluded long ago; he lives, and deserves to +live, as the symbol of immortal fraternity. + +But as I have said, Wordsworth mended his text oftener than he marred +it, and first by refining upon his descriptions of outward nature. Among +the cases in point, one occurs in a poem entitled "Influences of Natural +objects in calling forth and strengthening the Imagination in Boyhood +and early Youth"--a cumbrous heading enough. May I digress for a moment +upon the unlucky titles which Wordsworth so often prefixed to his poems, +and the improvements occasionally made in them? Surely a less convenient +caption than the one just quoted is not often met with, or a less +attractive one than this other, prefixed to an inscription not very many +times longer than itself: + +"Written at the Request of Sir George Beaumont, Bart., and in his Name, +for an Urn, placed by him at the termination of a newly-planted Avenue +in the same Grounds." + +Titles like these are not only fatiguing in the very reading, a +preliminary disenchantment, but they are not properly names at all; they +are headings, rubrics, captions which do not name. Wordsworth seems to +send forth these unlucky children of the muse with a full description of +their eyes, hair, and complexion, but forgets to christen them; and I +believe that this oversight, though it may not appear a very serious +one, has interfered more than a little with the effectiveness of his +minor poetry, and consequently with the fame and influence of the poet. +For it makes reference to them difficult, almost impossible: how is one +to refer to a favorite passage, for instance, in a poem "Written at the +Request of Sir George Beaumont, Bart., and in his Name, for an Urn, +placed by him at the termination of a newly-planted Avenue in the same +Grounds"? These titles are fit to discourage even the admirers of +Wordsworth, and to repel his intending students; nor will they attract +any one, for they are formless; they are the abstracts of essays, the +_précis_ of an argument, rather than fit designations for works of +poetic art. A considerable number, too, of Wordsworth's minor pieces +remain without name, title, or description of any kind whatever. If that +desirable thing, a satisfactory edition of his poems, should ever +appear, it will be given us by some editor who shall be sensitive to +this northern formlessness, and who may venture, perhaps, to improve the +state of Wordsworth's titles. + +Let me end this digression by noting another singular title, with its +emendation. In the "Lyrical Ballads" of 1798 appeared a poem with this +extraordinary caption: + +"Anecdote for Fathers, shewing how the art of Lying may be taught." + +Now, certainly, Wordsworth did not intend to teach the art of lying, yet +nothing can be clearer than his declaration. He failed to see the +ludicrous meaning of these words, and it took him thirty years, +apparently, to find out what he had said; but he saw it at last, and +dropped the explanatory clause of the title, quoting in its place an apt +motto from Eusebius; and we now read: + +"Anecdote for Fathers. _Retine vim istam, falsa enim dicam, si coges_;" +and the charming story professes no longer to show how boys may be +taught to lie, but to point out the danger of making them lie when you +press them to give reasons for their sentiments. + +And now, returning to the corrections of text in the descriptive +passages, let us note a curious change in the poem already mentioned, +"On the Influence of Natural Objects," etc. Wordsworth is describing the +pleasures of skating; and these are some of them, according to the +passage as originally published in "The Friend": + + Not seldom from the uproar I retired + Into a silent bay--or sportively + Glanced sideway, leaving the tumultuous throng + _To cut across the image of a Star + That gleamed upon the ice._ + +To do this is of course impossible, and the lines which I have +italicized are mere closet description. We cannot skate across the +reflection of a star until we can skate into the end of a rainbow; and +the curious thing is that the so-called "poet of nature" should ever +have fancied, even for a moment at his desk, that he had ever done it. +Clearly, Wordsworth's study was not always out of doors, to use a +favorite phrase of his; on the contrary, this passage is so unreal that +a critic unacquainted with the personal history of the poet might argue +that he had never been on skates--as Coleridge wrote the "Hymn in the +Valley of Chamouni" without ever visiting that valley. But Wordsworth +seems to have found out that his description was false; for he made a +compromise, in the later editions, with the optical law of incidence and +reflection; and we now see him attempting merely, but not achieving, the +impossible thing: + + ----Leaving the tumultuous throng + To cut across the reflex of a star + That fled, and, flying still before me, gleamed + Upon the glassy plain. + +But Wordsworth held stoutly, in the main, to his own experience, his own +impressions; and he did this even to the injury of his descriptions. He +was never, for instance, in sailor's phrase, "off soundings"; he never +saw the mid-ocean; and consequently, when he described Leonard, in the +first edition of "The Brothers," as sailing in mid-ocean, he says that +he gazed upon "the broad green wave and sparkling foam." But he found +out his mistake at last; he was fond of reading voyages and travels, and +he seems to have become convinced finally, perhaps by the testimony of +his sailor brother, that the deep sea was really blue and not green; +that the common epithet was the true one; for he corrected the line to +read "the broad blue wave." + +Let us now examine some of those curiously prosaic passages which +Wordsworth strove faithfully to convert into poetry, and strove with +various success. And first, those famous arithmetical passages in "The +Thorn," one of which stands to-day as it stood in the "Lyrical Ballads." +We still read there, indeed, of + + A beauteous heap, a hill of moss, + Just half a foot in height, + +the precise altitude that Wordsworth gave it in 1798; not an inch to the +critics, he seems to have said. But these other peccant lines in the +preceding stanza he recast, and in a way that is curious to follow: + + And to the left, three yards beyond, + You see a little muddy Pond + Of water never dry: + I've measured it from side to side: + 'Tis three feet long, and two feet wide. + +Of these lines Crabb Robinson said to Wordsworth that "he dared not read +them aloud in company." "They ought to be liked," rejoined the poet. +Well, we may not like them; but they are interesting, for they present a +really instructive specimen of bad art. Clearly enough, here is a poet +in difficulties. The "little muddy pond" was not a pond in nature, but a +pool; and a pool it would have been in verse, but for the particular +exigency--the necessity of rhyming with the word _beyond_. Note now the +honesty of our poet. For rhyme's sake he has temporarily sacrificed +accuracy; he has called a pool a pond; but to show what the piece of +water actually was, that actually it was a pool, though the exigencies +of rhyme had forced him to call it provisionally by another name, he +goes on to give us its accurate measurement, not only from "side to +side," but from end to end as well. "'Tis three feet long and two feet +wide," he tells us; and now his northern conscience is satisfied; he +seems to say, "I was unfortunately compelled to use the wrong word in +this passage, but I make amends at once; these are the precise +dimensions of the object, and you can give it the right name yourself." +This devotion to the topographical truth of the matter was abated, +however, in later editions, perhaps by the derision of the critics. +Wordsworth rewrote the passage, one would say, to please the graces +rather than the mathematical verities; and the lines now read thus: + + You see a little muddy pond + Of water, never dry, + Though but of compass small, and bare + To thirsty suns and parching air. + +Another considerable improvement was made, a little further on, in the +same poem. These are the lines as they ran in the "Lyrical Ballads": + + Poor Martha! on that woful day + A cruel, cruel fire, they say, + Into her bones was sent; + It dried her body like a cinder, + And almost turned her brain to tinder. + --1798. + +Certainly there was room for improvement here; and in the edition of +1815 we find the lines recast as follows: + + A pang of pitiless dismay + Into her soul was sent; + A Fire was kindled in her breast, + Which might not burn itself to rest. + +Or see again this prosaic passage from "The Brothers," as first +published in the "Lyrical Ballads." The lines describe the parting of +James from his companions at a certain rock: + + ----By our shepherds it is call'd the Pillar. + James, pointing to its summit, over which + They all had purposed to return together, + Inform'd them that he there would wait for them; + They parted, and his comrades pass'd that way + Some two hours after, but they did not find him + At the appointed place, a circumstance + Of which they took no heed. + --1800. + +It would occur to few readers to call this poetry were it not visibly +divided into verse; and Wordsworth himself seems to have thought as +much, for after many years he rewrote the passage, condensing and +poetizing it as follows: + + ----By our shepherds it is called THE PILLAR. + Upon its airy summit crowned with heath + The loiterer, not unnoticed by his comrades, + Lay stretched at ease; but, passing by the place + On their return, they found that he was gone. + No ill was feared. + +There are hundreds of corrections in this style; and we naturally ask +what made it necessary for Wordsworth to weed his poetic garden so +often, to amend with care and trouble what some other poets would have +done well at first? We need not hold with some of his critics that +Wordsworth had in any peculiar sense a dual nature, to explain the +amount of prosaic poetry, if I may call it so, that he wrote. No real +poet ever wrote, as I take it, a greater amount of prosaic poetry than +he; and no real poet ever published a greater number of verses that +might fairly be called not only poor poetry, but considered as proof +that their author could not write good poetry at all. + +What critic would believe before the proof, that the poet who had +written the lines just quoted from "The Thorn," and others like them, +could have written also the "Lines to H. C." and "She Was a Phantom of +Delight"? But to inquire at length into this contrast is to inquire into +the deepest traits of Wordsworth's genius. One cause of his prosaic +verse, however, may be mentioned here. Wordsworth had injurious habits +of composition; he dictated his prose to an amanuensis, and he composed +his poems in the fields as he walked. He was thus a libertine of +opportunity, and though he strictly economized his subjects, and made +the least yield him up its utmost, yet he was prodigal in the quantity +of his expression. He did not wait for what are called moments of +inspiration; he was always ready to compose, and thus he composed too +much; he made verses whenever he was out of doors, "murmuring them out" +to the astonishment of the rustics. Doubtless the first factor of genius +is this abundance of power. But, on the other hand, the control, the +direction of power is the first essential to the beauty of the work of +art. "Good men may utter whatever comes uppermost; good poets may not," +says Landor; and the aphorism touches upon a serious fault of +Wordsworth's method. He lacked due power of self-repression; he was too +much interested in his own thoughts to make a sufficiently jealous +choice among them when he came to write them down. Two qualities, +indeed, of his nature he kept in such abeyance, the amative and the +humorous--and he was not without a humorous side--as to express but +little of them in his writings. But he seems to have recorded almost +everything, not humorous or amatory, that came into his mind; and, in +consequence, we feel that his poetry comes perilously near being a +verbatim transcript of his processes of consciousness. But no man's +thought is always sufficiently valuable for a shorthand report; and we +often wish that Wordsworth had reflected, with Herrick, that the poet is +not fitted every day to prophesy: + + No; but when the spirit fills + The fantastic pannicles + Full of fire--then I write + As the Godhead doth indite. + +Does it seem an invidious task to recall the unhappy readings that I +have mentioned--readings abandoned by Wordsworth long ago, and unknown +to many of his younger students? To do it with slighting intent, or from +mere curiosity, would be unworthy; nor will the routine mind be +persuaded that there is anything more than a merely curious interest in +the comparison of editions. We, thinking that Wordsworth cannot really +be understood in a single edition, must leave the routine mind to its +conviction that one text contains all that there is of value in his +poetry. And to offset the ungraceful verses that we have just +considered, let us look at some changes by which Wordsworth has made +fine passages finer still. Of the sonnets published in 1819 with "The +Waggoner," none is more striking, as I think, than the one beginning, +"Eve's lingering clouds extend in solid bars." In it at first he spoke +as follows of the reflection of the heavens at night in perfectly still +water: + + Is it a mirror?--or the nether sphere + Opening its vast abyss, while fancy feeds + On the rich show?--But list! a voice is near; + Great Pan himself low-whispering through the reeds. + +In the later editions this passage is enriched by a grand stroke of +imagination: + + Is it a mirror?--or the nether sphere + Opening to view the abyss in which she feeds + Her own calm fires?--But list! a voice is near; + Great Pan himself low-whispering through the reeds. + +The following change is from the same sonnets; the passage describes a +bright star setting: + + Forfeiting his bright attire, + He burns, transmuted to a sullen fire + That droops and dwindles; and, the appointed debt + To the flying moments paid, is seen no more. + +So in 1819; in later editions we find the passage as follows: + + He burns, transmuted to a dusty fire, + Then pays submissively the appointed debt + To the flying moments, and is seen no more. + +That is scarcely an improvement; but the alteration of epithet is +curious: the substitution of fact for fancy in changing the low star's +"sullen fire" into a "dusty fire." + +Here, again, is a case where the new reading has a fresher phrase than +the old. It occurs in the last stanza of "Rob Roy's Grave," where +Wordsworth spoke thus of the hero's virtues: + + ----Far and near, through vale and hill, + Are faces that attest the same; + And kindle, like a fire new-stirred, + At sound of ROB ROY's name. + +Later, a new line was substituted as follows: + + ----Far and near, through vale and hill, + Are faces that attest the same; + The proud heart flashing through the eyes + At sound of ROB ROY's name. + +And Wordsworth insisted, quite as strongly as his severest critics, upon +finish, upon literary art as discriminable from the substance. While he +was blaming Byron, Campbell, and other eminent poets for its lack, his +assailants were loud in the same charge against him; they protested that +whatever other merits the new poetry might have, that of artistic finish +was surely not one. Jeffrey wrote in 1807 that Wordsworth "scarcely ever +condescended to give the grace of correctness or melody to his +versification." But Wordsworth, in a letter lately first published, +criticises Campbell's "Hohenlinden" in a way that shows him by no means +unstudious of form. He writes thus to Mr. Hamilton:[C] "I remember +Campbell says, in a composition that is overrun with faulty language, +'And dark as winter was the _flow_ of Iser rolling rapidly'; that is, +'flowing rapidly.' The expression ought to have been 'stream' or +'current.' ... These may appear to you frigid criticisms," he adds; "but +depend upon it, no writings will live in which these rules are +disregarded." This is good doctrine, and we have seen Wordsworth +striving to realize it in his practice. He did realize it to a certain +extent; if his style was not always eloquent, not always poetical, it +was generally better English than that of his popular contemporaries. +And yet a critic in "The Dial," following, as recently as 1843, the lead +of Jeffrey in this blame of Wordsworth, could write of him as +follows:[D] "He has the merit of just moral perception, but not that of +deft poetic execution. How would Milton curl his lip at such slip-shod +newspaper style! Many of his poems, as for example the 'Rylstone Doe,' +might be all improvised.... These are such verses as in a just state of +culture should be _vers de Société_, such as every gentleman could +write, but none would think of printing." That passage is worth reading +twice; note the condescension of the praise, the flippancy of the blame, +the inaccurate English and French; and what a jaunty misquotation of +Wordsworth's title! It was not very profitable censure; but Wordsworth +received much criticism by which he was glad to profit. Let us look at +some of the cases in which he turned the strictures of friends or of +enemies to account. The changes that he made in deference to criticism +are striking, and so too are some of the cases in which he refused to +profit by criticism. I will speak of both. + +[Footnote C: "Prose Works," III., 302.] + +[Footnote D: "The Dial," Vol. III., p. 514.] + +Of the former kind are the corrections in "Laodamia." That poem appeared +first in 1815, having been suggested during a course of classical +reading which Wordsworth had taken up for the purpose of directing the +studies of his son. Landor criticised this poem in the first volume of +his "Imaginary Conversations," and in the main very favorably; he makes +Porson say that parts of it "might have been heard with shouts of +rapture in the regions he describes"; he calls it "a composition such as +Sophocles might have delighted to own." But he points out blemishes in +two stanzas, the first and the seventeenth; he blames the execution of +one and the thought of the other. Wordsworth rewrote both of them, and I +quote the second passage as affording the more interesting change. In +the first edition Protesilaus, says the poet, returning from the shades +to visit Laodamia, + + Spake, as a witness, of a second birth + For all that is most perfect upon earth. + +On this Landor remarks, putting the words into Porson's mouth: + + How unseasonable is the allusion to _witness_ and _second_ + birth, which things, however holy and venerable in + themselves, come stinking and reeking to us from the + conventicle. I desire to see Laodamia in the silent and + gloomy mansion of her beloved Protesilaus; not elbowed by + the godly butchers in Tottenham court road, nor smelling + devoutly of ratafia among the sugar bakers' wives at + Blackfriars. + +Wordsworth dropped these lines; and we now read instead, that the hero + + Spake of heroic arts in graver mood + Revived, with finer harmony pursued. + +In the first volume of his "Imaginary Conversations" Landor said of +Wordsworth: "Those who attack him with virulence or with levity are men +of no morality and no reflection." In a later volume, however, Landor +attacks him thus himself, with both virulence and levity, as I fear we +must say, and Wordsworth declined to profit by these later gibing +criticisms, though some of them, and especially those upon the "Anecdote +for Fathers," were valuable, and suggested real improvements of text. In +this attack, which is contained in the second conversation of Southey +and Porson, Landor had noticed Wordsworth's adoption of his earlier +criticism of Laodamia; and this circumstance was probably a reason why +Wordsworth refused to receive further critical favors at his hands. The +poem "Goody Blake and Harry Gill," for instance, sharply criticised by +Landor, stood almost untouched through the editions of fifty years. And +in a letter of 1843, recently published for the first time,[E] +Wordsworth speaks thus severely of an attack made upon his son-in-law, +Edward Quillinan, by Landor: "I should have disapproved of his +[Quillinan's] condescending to notice anything that a man so deplorably +tormented by ungovernable passion as that unhappy creature might eject. +His character may be given in two or three words: a madman, a bad man; +yet a man of genius, as many a madman is." That criticism seems rather +more than righteously severe; but Wordsworth, while he cared little for +the criticism of the reviews, felt keenly the lash of the violent +Landor. The violent Landor we must call him, for violence was the too +dominant trait of his noble genius; and he exasperated Wordsworth, as we +see. But compare what I have just quoted with his familiar remark about +the small critics: "My ears are stone dead to this idle buzz, and my +flesh as insensible as iron to these petty stings." That Wordsworth said +at thirty-six years of age; and here is a striking reminiscence recorded +during his later years, and published in the "Prose Works." At +seventy-one he said to Lady Richardson: + + It would certainly have been a great object to me to have + reaped the profits I should have done from my writings but + for the stupidity of Mr. Gifford and the impertinence of Mr. + Jeffrey. It would have enabled me to purchase many books + which I could not obtain, and I should have gone to Italy + earlier, which I never could afford to do until I was + sixty-five, when Moxon gave me a thousand pounds for my + writings. This was the only kind of injury Mr. Jeffrey did + me, for I immediately perceived that his mind was of that + kind that his individual opinion on poetry was of no + consequence to me whatever; that it was only by the + influence his periodical exercised at the time in preventing + my poems being read and sold that he could injure me.... I + never, therefore, felt his opinion of the slightest value + except in preventing the young of that generation from + receiving impressions which might have been of use to them + through life. + +[Footnote E: "Prose Works," III., 381.] + +This is grand self-confidence; and it is in the same tone that elsewhere +he says: + + Feeling that my writings were founded on what was true and + spiritual in human nature, I knew the time would come when + they must be known. + +In this connexion the English reviews of that time are still interesting +reading, particularly the "Quarterly" and the "Edinburgh." What was +Jeffrey saying in his "organ" during the years of Wordsworth's earlier +fame? In 1807 he described the poem of "The Beggars" as "a very paragon +of silliness and affectation"; and he said of "Alice Fell," "If the +printing of such verses be not felt as an insult on the public taste, we +are afraid it cannot be insulted." Two years later he calls upon the +patrons of the Lake school of poetry to "think with what infinite +contempt the powerful mind of Burns would have perused the story of +Alice Fell and her duffle cloak, of Andrew Jones and the half-crown, or +of little Dan without breeches and his thievish grandfather." Wordsworth +dropped the poem of "Andrew Jones," and never restored it--an omission +almost unique, as we shall see; for he stood by the substance of his +work, if not always by the form, with great pertinacity. He said of +"Alice Fell," in his old age, "It brought upon me a world of ridicule by +the small critics, so that in policy I excluded it from many editions of +my poems, till it was restored at the request of some of my friends." +Wordsworth had no stancher friend, his poetry had no more delicate +critic, than Charles Lamb; and Lamb wrote thus in 1815 to Wordsworth +about "Alice Fell" and the assailants of the poem. He said: "I am glad +that you have not sacrificed a verse to those scoundrels. I would not +have had you offer up the poorest rag that lingered upon the stript +shoulders of little Alice Fell, to have atoned all their malice: I would +not have given 'em a red cloak to save their souls." + +Jeffrey decried two other pieces that rank among the most perfect of +Wordsworth's minor poems, as "stuff about dancing daffodils and sister +Emmelines," and spoke of another, which we count for pure poetry to-day, +as "a rapturous, mystical ode to the cuckoo, in which the author, +striving after force and originality, produces nothing but absurdity." +And he attacked these lines in the "Ode to Duty": + + Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong: + And the most ancient heavens through thee are fresh and strong. + +This, Jeffrey said, is "utterly without meaning: at least we have no +sort of conception in what sense Duty can be said to keep the old skies +_fresh_, and the stars from wrong." We need not be surprised at +Jeffrey's failing to admire these lines: they are transcendentalism, and +it would have troubled Wordsworth himself to render them into the plain +speech which he recommended as the proper diction of poetry. For they +have not a definite translatable content of thought; and we cannot read +them as philosophy or ethics; but as poetry we may feel their power; we +are willing to enjoy them for their own sake, because beauty is enough. +But this Jeffrey did not admit; Jeffrey was not vulnerable by +magnificent phrases, and of course he could not foresee what a power +Wordsworth's transcendentalism was to exert. When the ode "Intimations +of Immortality" first appeared (with the edition of 1807), Jeffrey +called it "the most illegible and unintelligible part of the +publication."[F] The remark need not surprise us. Jeffrey looked for +logical thought in the poem, and logical thought it had not; whatever +else it may contain, it will hardly be said to propound any new +arguments for immortality. But Jeffrey wrote in all sincerity, and later +in his life he read Wordsworth's poetry a second time, with a view to +discover, if he could, the merits which he had failed to see when he +criticised it--the merits which the English public had then found out. +His effort was a failure: for him the primrose remained a primrose to +the last, and nothing more. The acute lawyer was not a poet, nor a judge +of poets; he had an erroneous notion of what the office of poetry is; of +what it has been and will be--to please, to elevate, to suggest, but not +to argue or convince; and to the last he did not get beyond his early +decision, which, in the article just quoted from, runs as follows: + + We think there is every reason to hope that the lamentable + consequences which have resulted from Mr. Wordsworth's open + violation of the established laws of poetry, will operate as + a wholesome warning to those who might otherwise have been + seduced by his example, and be the means of restoring to + that ancient and venerable code its honor and authority. + + +[Footnote F: "Edinburgh Review," October, 1807.] + +But the critic cannot always tell what the new "song is destined to, and +what the stars intend to do." It is now evident enough where the early +assailants of Wordsworth were mistaken; and yet which critic of to-day +would be sure of his ground in a similar case? For the faults of genius +are old, familiar, and easily to be discerned; while, on the other hand, +genius itself is always novel, and therefore may be easily mistaken. It +takes genius to recognize genius; and most of Wordsworth's critics were +not men of genius. Landor, who was one, made a wise remark upon this +point. He said, "To compositions of a new kind, like Wordsworth's, we +come without scales and weights, and without the means of making an +assay." + +But by pointing out his faults, his critics did him and us a service; +and it was one by which the poet profited, as we have seen, in spite of +his independence. + +Let us now look at some of Wordsworth's multiple readings, if we may +call them so--passages, namely, in which he has returned, year after +year, to certain peccant verses, changing them again and again in the +quest of adequate expression. After repeated experiments he sometimes +finds a reading to please himself; sometimes, having allowed a +provisional text to stand throughout many years, he discards it and +returns to the original form; and sometimes, again, he abandons a +passage entirely, after scarring it with a lifetime's emendations. Of +the first sort I will cite three readings of a stanza in "A Poet's +Epitaph." As first published in the "Lyrical Ballads" of 1800, the poem +contained this adjuration to the philosopher "wrapped in his sensual +fleece": + + O turn aside, and take, I pray, + That he below may rest in peace, + Thy pin-point of a soul away! + +Lamb did not like this; and he wrote to Wordsworth: "The 'Poet's +Epitaph' is disfigured, to my taste, by the coarse epithet of +'pin-point' in the sixth stanza." In the edition of 1815 the "coarse +epithet" disappears, and the passage is modified as follows: + + + ----Take, I pray, + That he below may rest in peace, + That abject thing, thy soul, away! + +The years that "bring the philosophic mind" did not, however, reconcile +Wordsworth with the particular "philosopher" here in question. (Sir +Humphrey Davy, as Crabb Robinson, if I am not mistaken, tells us). On +the contrary, the poet devised a still more injurious epithet for that +unhappy physicist; and the passage now reads: + + ----Take, I pray,... + Thy ever-dwindling soul away! + +Another of these multiple corrections has attracted much notice; it +occurs in the successive descriptions of the craft wherein the "Blind +Highland Boy" went sailing. In the first edition of that poem Wordsworth +called it + + A Household Tub, like one of those + Which women use to wash their clothes! + +It would seem difficult to defend this couplet upon any accepted theory +of aesthetics, rhyme, or syntax; and the "Household Tub" provoked quite +naturally a shout of derision from all the critics; it became the +poetical scandal of the day. Jeffery, mindful of "the established laws" +of poetic art, protested that there was nothing, down to the wiping of +shoes, or the evisceration of chickens, which may not be introduced in +poetry, if this is tolerated. The tub, in short, proved intolerable to +the reviewers; and when next the poem appeared in a new edition, that of +1815, Wordsworth transmuted the craft into a green turtle shell, noting +the change as made "upon the suggestion of a Friend": + + The shell of a green Turtle, thin + And hollow: you might sit therein, + It was so wide and deep. + 'Twas even the largest of its kind, + Large, thin, and light as birch tree rind; + So light a shell that it would swim, + And gaily lift its fearless brim + Above the tossing waves. + +Lamb's comment upon this change was as follows: + + I am afraid lest that substitution of a shell (a flat + falsification of the history) for the household implement, + as it stood at first, was a kind of tub thrown out to the + beast, or rather thrown out for him. The tub was a good + honest tub in its place, and nothing could be fairly said + against it. You say you made the alteration for the + "friendly reader," but the "malicious" will take it to + himself. Damn 'em, if you give 'em an inch, etc. + +Wordsworth, however, instead of restoring the old text, went on +amending, and with reason; the reading just given is diffuse. But see +now the third and final form which he gave to the passage. The +sublimation of the Household Tub is now completed; it becomes, at last, + + A shell of ample size, and light + As the pearly car of Amphitrite, + That sportive dolphins draw. + And as a Coracle that braves + On Vaga's breast the fretful waves, + This shell upon the deep would swim. + +Here again are some new readings that Wordsworth discarded after long +trial. A well-known sonnet, one of his earliest, began thus in 1807: + + I grieved for Buonaparte, with a vain + And an unthinking grief! The vital blood + Of that Man's mind, what can it be? What food + Fed his first hopes? What knowledge could he gain? + +In 1815 we find the passage rewritten as follows: + + I grieved for Buonaparte, with a vain + And an unthinking grief! for, who aspires + To genuine greatness but from just desires, + And knowledge such as He could never gain? + +But in the later editions the first reading was restored, except the +words "vital blood," and we now read: + + The tenderest mood + Of that man's mind, what can it be? + +In "The Nightingale" Wordsworth first called that bird "a creature of a +fiery heart"; but in the edition of 1815 it became "a creature of +ebullient heart," a flat disenchantment of the verse. The change was +questioned from the first, as Crabb Robinson tells us, and in later +editions the first reading was restored. A fortunate correction made in +the same edition was retained--the change of "laughing company" to +"jocund company," in "The Daffodils": + + A poet could not but be gay + In such a jocund company. + --1815. + +The poem "Rural Architecture," in the "Lyrical Ballads" of 1800, was +curtailed of its closing stanza in the edition of 1815: + + Some little I've seen of blind boisterous works + In Paris and London, 'mong Christians and Turks, + Spirits busy to do and undo, etc., etc. + +But in Lamb's correspondence of the same year he complains to Wordsworth +that the omission "leaves it [the poem] in my mind less complete," and +the lines were restored in the later editions. Not to differ hastily +with Lamb, the lines yet seem lines to be spared. In the same sentence +he complains that in the new edition there is another "admirable line +gone (or something come instead of it), 'the stone-chat, and the +glancing sandpiper,' which was a line quite alive. I demand these at +your hand." Wordsworth restored the line, and the three versions of the +passage are worth comparison. It is from the "Lines left upon a Seat in +a Yew Tree," and describes a wanderer in the solitude of the country: + + His only visitants a straggling sheep, + The stone-chat, or the glancing sand-piper: + And on these barren rocks, with juniper, + And heath, and thistle, thinly sprinkled o'er, + Fixing his downcast eye, he many an hour + A morbid pleasure nourished. + --"Lyrical Ballads." + +In the second reading he corrects a bad assonance thus: + + His only visitants a straggling sheep, + The stone-chat, or the sand-lark, restless bird, + Piping along the margin of the lake.... + --1815. + +Here the "line quite alive" is gone--to be restored in deference, +apparently, to Lamb's request. Another assonance is got rid of in the +later editions, the "thistle thinly sprinkled o'er," and the passage now +reads melodiously as follows: + + His only visitants a straggling sheep. + The stone-chat, or the glancing sand-piper: + And on these barren rocks, with fern and heath, + And juniper and thistle, sprinkled o'er, + Fixing his downcast eye, he many an hour + A morbid pleasure nourished. + +Wordsworth struck out many lines and stanzas in the course of his +revisions, besides main passages of considerable length, as from the +"Thanksgiving Ode" and the patriotic ode of January, 1816. These +omissions are too long to quote here; but the following lines dropped +from the ode on "Immortality" will have interest; they are not to be +found, I think, in any English edition since that of 1815. Addressing +the child over whom Immortality, in the language of the ode, + + Broods like the Day, a Master o'er a Slave, + A Presence which is not to be put by-- + +this earlier reading continues: + + To whom the grave + Is but a lonely bed without the sense or sight + Of day or the warm light: + A place of thought where we in waiting lie. + +Another notable omitted passage is the introduction to "Dion," published +in 1816: + + Fair is the Swan, whose majesty, prevailing + O'er breezeless water on Locarno's lake.... + +Here nineteen lines full of beauty are sacrificed by Wordsworth in the +interest of the unity of the poem. He struck out, too, some lines from +"The Daisy," "The Thorn," and "Simon Lee," and eight stanzas have +disappeared from "Peter Bell" since the first edition of that poem. +Among them are these grotesque lines, favorites with Charles Lamb: + + Is it a party in a parlour? + Cramm'd just as they on earth were cramm'd-- + Some sipping punch, some sipping tea, + All silent and all damn'd! + +And here are some verses that have interest from the glimpse they give +of Wordsworth's faculty in a field that he declined to cultivate--the +amatory or "fleshly," as it has been conveniently named for us of late. +I quote from that rare book, the "Descriptive Sketches" of 1793; and as +the lines are not included in any edition of his poems, they are +unfamiliar to most readers. But two copies of this book, so far as I +know, exist in this country. One of them, which belonged to the late +Prof. Henry Reed, Wordsworth's American editor, is full of corrections +in Wordsworth's own handwriting; and it is by the courtesy of its +present owner that I am enabled to give here the early text with these +corrections, never before printed. The young Wordsworth takes leave of +Switzerland, at the conclusion of his pedestrian tour, with this glowing +apostrophe: + + ye the + Farewell! those forms that in thy noontide shade + your + Rest near their little plots of oaten glade, + Dark + Those stedfast eyes, that beating breasts inspire, + To throw the "sultry rays" of young Desire; + soft + =Those= lips whose ^ tides of fragrance come and go + Accordant to the cheek's unquiet glow; + Ye warm + Those shadowy breasts In love's soft light array'd + And rising by the moon of passion sway'd.[G] + +[Footnote G: +I venture to note, in passing, a small class of corrections in which the +poet has cleared his text from certain innocencies of expression that +were liable to be misread by persons on the alert for double meanings. +The following are among the Wordsworthian simplicities that have been +amended in the later editions; the reference is made to the octavos of +1815, which may be compared with any of the editions since 1836: + +Vol. I., page 111, "The Brothers," passage beginning, "James, tired +perhaps." + +Vol. I., page 210, "Michael," passage beginning, "Old Michael, while he +was a babe in arms." + +Vol. I., page 223, "Laodamia," stanza beginning, "Be taught, O faithful +Consort."] + +Wordsworth thus dropped, for one reason or another, many passages from +his poems. But did he abandon entire poems? That did not often happen. +He strove patiently to perfect the form of his thought; but he was +unwilling to let the substance of it go. In the seven volumes of his +poetry, as they now stand, but two poems are lacking, to the best of my +knowledge, of all that he ever published. One of these, an unimportant +piece beginning, "The confidence of youth our only art," was printed +with the "Memorials of a Tour on the Continent" (1822), and no longer +appears in the collected editions. The other missing poem, "Andrew +Jones," was abandoned for reasons, as I think, of considerable critical +interest. In the "Lyrical Ballads" it began thus: + + I hate that Andrew Jones: he'll breed + His children up to waste and pillage: + I wish the press-gang or the drum + With its tantara sound would come, + And sweep him from the village! + +This poem may be found (with, slight emendations) as late as the edition +of 1815; but after that date I meet with it nowhere but in foreign +reprints. Why was it dropped? It is doubtless a story of unrelieved +though petty suffering; it corresponds, in small, to what Mr. Matthew +Arnold calls the "poetically faulty" situation of Empedocles, a +situation "in which there is everything to be endured, nothing to be +done." But, on the other hand, that fragment of Ęschylus, the +"Prometheus Bound," in which everything is endured and nothing done, yet +remains a work of the deepest interest: nor need we think that +Wordsworth abandoned his little poem for a reason so refined as that +which led Mr. Arnold to abandon one of his own. There was, as I take it, +a moral reason which led to Wordsworth's decision; namely, that the +story of "Andrew Jones" is told with bitterness of feeling from +beginning to end; and against bitterness of feeling Wordsworth had +recorded, during his earlier years, a striking protest. We shall read it +presently; but first let us couple with the poem a sentence from his +prose--a sentence full of the same feeling, and which was early dropped +for the same reason. We shall find it in the edition of 1815, in the +essay supplementary to the famous Preface of that date. There Wordsworth +turns upon his critics as follows: + +"By what fatality the orb of my genius (for genius none of them seem to +deny me) acts upon these men like the moon upon a certain description of +patients, it would be irksome to enquire: nor would it consist with the +respect which I owe myself to take further notice of opponents whom I +internally despise." + +This is not quite in the vein of the serenely meditative poet; and if we +look back to a time twenty years earlier than this, we shall find that +Wordsworth had reproved his heat beforehand. In 1795, when he first +chose definitely the poet's career, he had written these lines: + + If thou be one whose heart the holy forms + Of young imagination have kept pure, + Stranger! henceforth be warned; and know that pride, + Howe'er disguised in its own majesty, + Is littleness: that he who feels contempt + For any living thing, hath faculties + Which he has never used: that thought with him + Is in its infancy. + +That is the teaching of earlier and serener years, of the time when the +poet was still quietly embayed in youth, when jealous criticism, and +envy, and disappointment were still trials of the future. Youth has its +own passions; but it has also its peculiar serenity; and after +Wordsworth had passed through the stormy years which gave him fame, we +see the maturer man recalling the teaching of his calmer self. It was in +obedience to this, as I believe, that he cancelled the passages that +have just been mentioned; feeling their discord with the pure song of +that early time. + +Let us now look at some of the passages which Wordsworth has emended, +not by taking away from the words of his book, but by adding to them. As +he wrote to Mr. Dyce, he diligently revised the "Excursion," in the +edition of 1827, and got the sense "in several instances, ... into less +room"; and minor changes are to be counted by hundreds. But he made some +additions to this poem, and for significant reasons. + +Readers of Christopher North's essay, in the "Recreations," on "Sacred +Poetry," will remember the long indictment which he there brings against +the earlier poems of Wordsworth; he complains of them as being +irreligious. It is interesting to find the earthly Christopher +displaying the pious zeal of an inquisitor in the matter, declaring that +in all of Wordsworth's writings, up to the "Excursion," "though we have +much fine poetry, and some high philosophy, it would puzzle the most +ingenious to detect much, if any, Christian religion"; and lamenting its +absence even in the "Excursion," in the story of "Margaret," as told in +the first book. This tale Christopher North calls "perhaps the most +elaborate picture he [Wordsworth] ever painted of any conflict within +any one human heart;" but he adds, with how much sincerity we will not +now ask, that it "is, with all its pathos, repulsive to every religious +mind--_that_ being wanting without which the entire representation is +vitiated.... This utter absence of Revealed Religion ... throws over the +whole poem to which the tale of Margaret belongs an unhappy suspicion of +hollowness and insincerity in that poetical religion which at the best +is a sorry substitute indeed for the light that is from heaven." + +That Wordsworth laid to heart this criticism, will appear on comparing +the original passage, as reprobated by Christopher North, with the form +which the poet gave it in the latter editions. Originally the peddler, +finishing the story of "Margaret," moralizes thus: + + My Friend! enough to sorrow you have given; + The purposes of wisdom ask no more: + Be wise and cheerful, and no longer read + The forms of things with an unworthy eye; + She sleeps in the calm earth, and peace is here. + I well remember that those very plumes, + Those weeds, and the high spear-grass on that wall, + By mist and silent raindrops silvered o'er, + As once I passed, into my heart convey'd + So still an image of tranquillity, + So calm and still, and look'd so beautiful + Amid the uneasy thoughts which fill'd my mind, + That what we feel of sorrow and despair + From ruin and from change, and all the griefs + The passing shows of Being leave behind, + Appear'd an idle dream, that could not live + Where meditation was. I turn'd away, + And walk'd along my road in happiness. + +"What meditation?" cries out Christopher North. "Turn thou, O child of a +day, to the New Testament, and therein thou mayest find comfort." And +Wordsworth in his revision made the following additions to this fine +pagan passage: + + ----Enough to sorrow you have given; + The purposes of wisdom ask no more: + Nor more would she have craved as due to one + Who in her worst distress, had often felt + The unbounded might of prayer; and learned, with soul + Fixed on the cross, that consolation springs + From sources deeper far than deepest pain + For the meek sufferer. Why then should we read + The forms of things with an unworthy eye? + She sleeps in the calm earth, and peace is here. + +Then follow the beautiful lines about the weeds, the spear-grass, the +mist and rain-drops, as quoted above; but the close of the passage is +extended as follows: + + ----All the griefs + That passing shows of Being leave behind, + Appeared an idle dream, that could maintain + Nowhere dominion o'er the enlightened spirit + Whose meditative sympathies repose + Upon the breast of Faith. I turned away, + And walked along my road in happiness. + +It remains to be said that a certain number of Wordsworth's poems--and +these were, as we might expect, among his best--have stood unchanged in +all the editions from the first, running the gauntlet of their author's +critical moods for half a century, and coming out untouched at last. I +will not call them uncorrected poems, but rather poems in which all the +needed corrections were made before their first publication, for they +belong to that exquisite class of creations--too small a class, even in +the works of the greatest masters--in which the poet has fused +completely the refractory element of language before pouring it out into +the mould of poetic form. Among these untouched poems are three from the +"Lyrical Ballads"--"A slumber did my spirit seal," "Three years she grew +in sun and shower," and "She dwelt among the untrodden ways"--all +written at the age of twenty-nine; such are the "Yew Tree," written four +years later, and "She was a phantom of delight." Several of the best +sonnets, too, were unchanged; as that on "Westminster Bridge," and +"Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour." + +And lastly, I may mention one or two changes of text which Wordsworth +did not make, but which belong to the class for which careless editors +or proofreaders are responsible. An edition well known to the American +public is especially peccant in this respect; that beautiful line, for +instance, in "The Pet Lamb"-- + + And that green corn all day is rustling in thy ears, + +becomes, + + That green cord all day is rustling in thy ears. + +And here is a really interesting _erratum_; it occurs in the poem of +"The Idiot Boy," where it has stood unnoticed for twenty years and more. +Wordsworth's stanzas, describing the boy's night-long ride under the +moon, "from eight o'clock till five," hearing meanwhile "the owls in +tuneful concert strive," originally put these words into his mouth, the +actual words of his hero, as Wordsworth tells us in a note: + + The cocks did crow to-whoo, to-whoo, + And the Sun did shine so cold, + Thus answered Johnny in his glory. + +But this reading puzzled the proofreader. How could the sun shine at +night? This being clearly impossible, he restored the idiot boy to +partial sanity. He made him say: + + The cocks did crow to-whoo, to-whoo, + And the Moon did shine so cold; + +and the only wonder is that he did not also read, + + The cocks did crow cock-a-doodle-doo. + +Some one proposes, I believe, a similar emendation in "As You Like It," +intending to make the Duke speak better sense than Shakespeare put into +his mouth. He is to say, + + Sermons in books. + Stones in the running brooks, and good in everything. + +But while in the main the text of Shakespeare is bettering under +criticism, Wordsworth is suffering miscorrection; and for the good that +he has to give us we cannot quite dispense with the original editions. + + TITUS MUNSON COAN. + + + + +PORTRAIT D'UNE JEUNE FEMME INCONNUE, + +GALERIE DE FLORENCE. + + + I saw a picture in a gallery: + Go where I will, it still abides with me. + The hair rich brown, one lovely golden tress + Strayed from the braid and touched the loveliness + Of the fair neck, so smooth, so white, so young, + It shamed the pearls a prince's hand had strung. + The dress is white, with here and there a gleam + Of amber brilliant, sunlight on a stream! + And hanging on her arm, a scarf; the thing + About that glorious head and neck to fling, + Protecting from the night, scarlet and black and gold, + And gems are woven in each gleaming fold. + The picture has that gracious air which tells + The hand that painted it was Raphael's. + They know she's beautiful, and know no more. + Thus questioned I, as many did before: + "Why art thou sad, thou delicate, proud face? + Thou art a Dame of bright and cheerful race, + Thy fortunes grand, thy home this Florence fair. + Does an unworthy heart thy palace share? + Or with a soft caprice dost turn from joy, + And play with sorrow as a costly toy? + Or has thy page forgotten, or done worse-- + Failed he to find the fond expected verse + Thy lover promised thee? I know not why + I linger near thee, beautiful and sad, + Yet with such sorrow, who would have thee glad?" + (Is she not gifted with the anointed eye + That sees the trouble of the passer-by?) + "Is thine that great, that tender sympathy + That calls all heart-aches nearer unto thee? + Or a great soul with aspirations rife, + Feeling the insufficiency of this our life? + Thou hast attraction of a grander tone, + Some charm more subtle e'en than beauty's own! + "Though woman throws no greater lure than this, + The lip regretful which we fain would kiss, + The eye made softer by the unfallen tear, + And sunlight brighter for the shadow near. + Why do I ask? will woman ever tell + The secret of the charm that fits her well?" + She did not answer, sweet, mysterious Dame. + I left her sadly, locked in gilded frame. + + M. E. W. S. + + + + +MISS TINSEL. + +A GOLD-MINER'S LOVE STORY.--IN FIVE CHAPTERS. + + + + +CHAPTER I. + +A GOLD-DIGGING RECLUSE. + + +On a knoll, not far from a running stream, was pitched a rough canvas +tent. It was of the "wall" sort, and was pegged to the ground with +strong fastenings. Inside were a hammock, a coarse table, two or three +stools, and some boxes and barrels. There were likewise a gridiron, a +"spider," an iron kettle, some tin dishes and cups, and a pair of +candlesticks of the same material. Outside there was a trench dug, by +way of drainage, so that the floor within was kept hard and dry; but the +floor was of earth merely. There was not a flower, or a picture, or the +least attempt at ornament whatever within the tent. Hence the interior +looked bare, sordid, and forbidding. And yet, grim as it was, the tent +had been the solitary abode of its occupant for many months. In the +midst of gold, in quantity outstripping the wildest dreams of his +boyhood, this man had chosen to be a miser. In the midst of a society +whose reckless joviality and wild profusion were perhaps without +precedent, he had chosen to be a recluse. For this self indulgence he +had to pay a price. But he consoled himself, remembering that a price +has to be paid for everything. + +Chester Harding came to Bullion Flat about a year before. He had no +friends and no money. The former he could do without, he thought, but +the latter was indispensable. So he got work on the Flat, turning a +spade and plying a rocker for five dollars a day. Such work was then +better paid as a rule, but Harding, though diligent and strong, was not +used to toil, and hence was awkward and comparatively inefficient. He +improved with practice and strove doggedly on, never losing a day, +saving every penny, spending nothing for drink or good fellowship, +courting no man's smile, and indifferent to all men's frowns. He was +savagely bent on achieving independence, and in no long time, after a +fashion, he got it. Independence, in this sense, consisted in a share of +a paying claim, and in the whole of a "wall" tent. In the former he dug +and washed, morosely enough, with five or six partners; but he made up +for this enforced and distasteful social attrition by living in his tent +alone. + +Harding was a man getting toward middle life, strongly built, but not +tall, with a grave, handsome face and speech studiously reserved and +cold. He seemed to fear lest he might be thought educated, and, as if to +disarm such a suspicion, his few words were apt to be abrupt and homely. +When he first came to the Flat he had two leathern trunks, and these in +due time were bestowed in the tent on the knoll. One Sunday Harding +opened them. The first contained some respectable garments, such as +might belong to the ordinary wardrobe of a gentleman. There were white +shirts among the rest, and some pairs of kid gloves. Of all these +articles Harding made a pile in the rear of his tent and then +deliberately set them on fire. "I couldn't afford it before," he +muttered. "They might have bought a meal or two if need were; but +now----" To be rich enough to gratify a caprice was clearly very +agreeable to the man; for presently he brought out a number of +books--old favorites obviously--and treated them in the same incendiary +manner. The Shakespeare and the Milton, the Macaulay and the Buckle +spluttered and crackled reproachfully in the flames; yet their destroyer +never winced, but added to the holocaust heaps of letters, and at last +two or three miniatures saved for the fire as a final tid-bit, and gazed +with grim joy as the whole crumbled in the end to powdery ashes. Chester +Harding reserved nothing but one little volume, bound in velvet with +gilt clasps, and one faded old daguerreotype, which he replaced in his +trunk side by side, and then covered quickly so that they should be out +of sight. It seemed to be his wish to hide and to forget every trace of +his past life. + +That life had been a hard and bitter one. From his earliest childhood +Harding had been a victim of the weakness and cruelty of others. A +miserable home, made a hell by drink and contention, was at last broken +up in ruin, and the young man went forth into the world to meet coldness +and injustice at every turn. Suspicion and selfishness are among the +almost certain fruits of an experience like this, and the world is +naturally more ready to condemn such fruits than to find excuses for +them. When Harding found himself unpopular and distrusted he as +naturally shaped his conduct so as to justify its condemnation. +Surrounded from the beginning of his life by bad influences, and by +these almost exclusively, he found little to soften his harsh judgment +of men or to mitigate his resentment for their ill treatment. In time he +fell in with one who with greater strength and higher wisdom might +perhaps have led him up to nobler views and a loftier destiny. For he +loved her deeply and without reservation. But her charms of person found +no counterparts in her mind or heart, and Harding was cheated and +betrayed. To escape old thoughts and associations, and to mend if +possible broken fortunes, he sought the Land of Gold. He had heard that +men were more generous there than elsewhere, less cunning, tricky, and +censorious. Perhaps even he might find average acceptance among new +scenes and among a new people. + +But on the day he landed at San Francisco Harding was robbed by a fellow +traveller, whom he had befriended, of the last penny he had in the +world. The man had shared his stateroom on board the steamer, and knew +that he had a draft on the agent of the Rothschilds. When Harding cashed +his draft he took the proceeds, in gold coin, to his hotel. That night +he was visited by his shipmate, who contrived to steal the belt +containing this little fortune, and to escape with it to the mines. Next +morning Harding sought a near relative, an older man of known wealth, +his sole acquaintance on the Pacific coast. + +"I've come to you," he said, after receiving a somewhat icy greeting, +"to ask you to help me. A serious misfortune has overtaken me, and----" + +"If it's money you want," interrupted the other brusquely, "I've got +none!" + +This was not the usual fashion of the pioneers. Happily most of them +were made of sweeter and kindlier stuff. But the fates had woven out +poor Harding's earlier fortune, and it was all destined to be of the +same harsh, pitiless web. He bowed his head when these words were said +to him, and with the kind of smile angels must most hate to see on the +faces of those so near and so little below them, he went forth in +silence. Next morning he pawned his watch and made his way up into the +mines. + + * * * * * + +"He's cracked; that's what he is," decided Jack Storm. Since the great +find of gold at Bullion Flat there had been a great rush thither from +the immediate neighborhood, and among the rest quite a deputation +arrived from Boone's Bar. Jack was as great a dandy as ever, and still +wore his gaudy Mexican jacket, with its silver bell buttons, his +flapping trousers to match, and his gigantic and carefully nourished +moustache. + +"Cracked!" repeated Mr. Copperas suavely. "Not he. He takes too good +care of his money for that. No, boys, that ain't the trouble. He's been +'chasing the eagle' in times past; the bird has been too many for him, +and now he's playing to get even." + +"Stuff!" gurgled Judge Carboy, unwilling to part by expectoration with +even the smallest product of his favorite quid. "He's done sutthin' he's +ashamed of. No trifle like that, Cop. He's proberly committed a murder +out East. Bime by we'll hear all about it." + +Jack Storm shook his head. "He's worked side by side with me for nigh a +year, and he wouldn't hurt a fly. Besides, it is his turn next week to +go to 'Frisco for stores." + +"What's that to do with it?" queried Mr. Copperas. + +"A durned sight," returned the other. "Ain't they after these cusses +with a sharp stick who've got in hot water at home? And ain't goin' to +'Frisco for such chaps jes' like walkin' into the lion's mouth? Why, +there's honest miners--and them as ain't honest miners, Cop--who'd a +_leetle_ rather not go down to the Bay jes' now, even among the quiet +folks over at Boone's Bar." + +Mr. Copperas coughed uneasily. "So Harding's going down, is he?" he +inquired. "Right off?" + +"Sartain. You'd better take a trip and keep him company." + +There was a murmur of amusement at this. Everybody at the "Bella Union" +knew that something had been in the air touching chirographic exploits +of Mr. Copperas a few years back at New Orleans, and before he kept the +faro bank at Boone's Bar. + +"For my part," put in Jim Blair, who liked to hear injustice done to no +man, "I s'pose there's reasons why a chap might want to live alone, and +yet mightn't a knifed anybody nor robbed 'em either." + +"That's so, Jim," affirmed Judge Carboy oracularly. "No doubt on't. But +when it's so we usually hear what them reasons is. Now, who knows air a +word on 'em in the case afore us? Anyhow, I hope he's good--good as +gold--only we've had our sheer of troubles in the county, and it's well +to look sharp." + +"When I was a little chap," proceeded Jim Blair with retrospective +deliberation, "I lived in a village on the further side o' the Ohio. +Most folks did their business on t'other bank, and went over generally +by the eight o'clock ferry in the mornin.' Now, there was two or three +that didn't; men whose work lay nigher home, or who went later. But the +crowd went over reg'lar at eight. Arter awhile they got awful sot agin +them who didn't go over at the same time. There weren't no hell's +delights you could think of them fellers didn't lay to the men who +didn't travel by the eight boat; and at last, damn me if they didn't +want to lynch 'em!" + +"Lynch 'em for not goin' in the eight boat!" cried the Judge, whose +respect for the majesty of the law always asserted itself, as was meet, +on hearing any tale of its infringement. + +Jim Blair nodded. "Not so much, I reckon, for not goin' in the eight +boat as for not doin' what other folks did. However, them who ever try +to trouble Ches Harding'll have a rough time, I guess." + +"You think he's sech a game fighter?" inquired Jack Storm with lively +interest. + +"That may be too. But what I meant was, there's them on the Flat who +believe in Ches for all his lonesome ways, and won't see him put upon. +For my part I reckon he's more sinned against than sinnin'." + +"I guess you're half right, Jim," admitted Judge Carboy with diplomatic +concession; "more'n half right. But mark my words"--and the Judge's +voice rose to the orotund swell which denoted his purpose to be more +than commonly impressive--"thar'll be the devil's own time on the Flat +some day, and that air duck'll be king pin and starter of it. I never +know'd no such silent, sulky cuss as that moonin' round but that he +kicked up pettikiler h-- in the long run." + +It will be seen from this that there were differences of opinion +respecting Chester Harding at Bullion Flat, and it cannot be denied that +there was some reason for it. + + + + +CHAPTER II. + +MISS TINSEL. + + +It was in a magnificent theatre that Chester Harding first saw her--a +theatre grand in size and tasteful in decoration. It had only lately +been opened, and was one of the lions of the Golden City. Harding went +there to while away an idle hour, and in order, perhaps, that he might +see all there was to be seen before leaving San Francisco. His visit was +one of merest chance, and no trifle had seemed lighter in all his +California life than his straying that night into the Cosmopolitan +Theatre. + +And yet perhaps it was the turning-point in his existence. Others who +were there from Bullion Flat said afterward that from that night Harding +was transfigured. A blaze of chandeliers, with golden fretwork skirting +the galleries and rich dark velvet framing the boxes, could hardly +surprise him. Nor was there much to astonish--whatever there might be to +admire--in the rows of handsomely dressed women who gave brilliancy to +the audience. Neither could the drama itself, which the manager was +pleased to style "a grand legendary fairy spectacle," move Harding +seriously from his equilibrium. All these splendors, together with the +resonant orchestra, the dazzling scenery, rich in Dutch metal and gold +foil, the sanguinary and crested Baron, the villain of the play, the +iridescent youth, its hero, the demons, who went through traps, vampire +and other--one Blood-Red Demon with a long nose being especially +conspicuous--the fairies, who brought order out of chaos--of whom the +"Queen of the Fairy Bower" was the large-limbed and voluptuous +principal--the "Amazonian Phalanx," who went through unheard-of +manoeuvres with massive tin battle axes and spears--all these failed, it +must be owned, to startle Mr. Harding from his propriety. He had seen +such things, or things very like them, before. And yet he was taken off +his feet, to use the metaphor, and swept away captive by a very torrent +of emotion excited by Miss Tinsel. + +She was only a _coryphée_; that is, she was but one among the minor +subordinates of the ballet. Her advent was accomplished as one of the +"Sprites of the Silver Shower." She had to come chassezing down the +stage, and she never raised her eyelids--before most demurely cast +down--until she was close upon the footlights. But when those eyelids +_did_ go up it was--well, as Judge Carboy afterward used to say, it was +just like sunrise over the mountains at Boone's Bar! A girl with a mass +of bright hair, almost red it looked by daylight, and large gray eyes +that looked as black as soot by the gas, but took on more tender hues by +day--a girl with a figure that was simply perfection, and yet one who +with all her archness seemed to have no vanity. She had many dainty +white skirts, one above another like an artichoke, of fluffy and +diaphanous texture, and although these, it cannot be denied, were +perilously short, somehow Miss Tinsel did not look in the least +immodest. + +All the men from Bullion Flat knew it _was_ Miss Tinsel, since the +"Queen of the Fairy Bower" addressed this charming figure more than once +as "Zephyrind," and a reference to the play-bill thereupon at once +established her identity. + +What strange magnetism there was about this girl Harding, and indeed all +who looked at her, found it hard to define. Perhaps, apart from her +lovely eyes and hair and her exquisite figure, it was because she always +seemed to be drawing away that she proved so fascinating. Even when she +advanced straight toward you she seemed for ever to retreat. By what +subtle and skilful instinct of coquetry Miss Tinsel was enabled to +convey this impression cannot here be explained. That she did convey it +was universally admitted. It appeared, however, on inquiry, that her +dramatic powers were of the slightest. Her beauty and charm were such +that the manager would gladly have put her forward could he have seen +his way to do so. But her success had been so moderate, when the +experiment was tried, in one or two of the "walking ladies" of farces, +that it was thought wisest to let her be seen as much and heard as +little as possible. + +When Harding last saw her that night she was going up to Paradise on one +foot, the other pointing vaguely at nothing behind, the intoxicating +eyes turned up with a charming simulation of pious joy, and the cherry +lips curled into a smile that showed plenty of pearls below. She +vanished from his gaze in a glory of red fire, amid the blare of gongs +and trumpets, while the "Blood-Red Demon" went down to the bad place +under the stage through a trap, and the "Queen of the Fairy Bower," with +felicitous compensation, ascended to the heaven of the flies. + +After this tremendous catastrophe Harding went to his hotel and +reflected. + +That a Timon like himself--a misogynist indeed of the first +water--should fall in love at first sight with a ballet girl certainly +furnished matter for reflection. But reflection did not prevent Timon +from seeking an interview with his unconscious enslaver the next day. +Even cold and soured natures may become under some incentives +enthusiastic and ingenious. + +Harding found out where Miss Tinsel lived, learned that she usually came +from rehearsal at about two, called consequently at three, and coolly +sent in his name, telling the servant that the young lady would know who +he was. As he hoped, the device got him admittance. The girl supposed he +was some one from the theatre whose name she had not caught or had +forgotten. + +It was a very plain and humble room, almost us bare and forbidding +perhaps as the inside of Harding's tent on the knoll, and yet how +glorified was the place with the purple atmosphere of romance! + +Miss Tinsel was as simply equipped as her room: a gown of dark stuff +with a bit of color at the throat, and that was all. Harding saw that +she was not quite so perfect physically as he had thought, and this, +strange as it may seem, instantly increased his passion for her. Nothing +could make her figure other than beautiful, or impair the lustre of her +eyes; but the fair creature had a little range of freckles across her +delicate nose and cheeks, and her hair by day appeared, as has been said +before, nearly red. Her natural smile, on the other hand, as +distinguished from her stage smile, which was merely intoxicating, was +almost heavenly; and it was not made less so by an occasional look that +was grave almost to sadness. + +"Sit down." He was standing stock still and silent in the middle of the +room. "You come from the theatre, don't you?" + +It was a sweet voice--sweet and low--too low, in truth, which was one of +the reasons of its failure in the drama--one of those thrilling +contralto voices, most magnetic and charming when heard by one alone, or +close by, but which lost their magnetism and charm if strained to fill +the ears of a crowd. + +"No--yes--that is, I was there last night. I saw you there," he replies +stupidly. + +"Last night? Oh, yes. But why do you want to see me to-day?" + +This is a hard question to answer; so he tries evasion. + +"Did you get a bouquet?" + +"A perfect love--a beauty--it was thrown at my feet; but I gave it to +her of course." + +"Gave it to _her_?" + +"Miss De Montague--don't you know--the 'Queen of the Fairy Bower?' She +gets all the bouquets." + +"Oh, she does, does she?" + +"Certainly. She is the principal, you know. Her engagement calls for all +the bouquets." + +"Even when they are plainly intended for somebody else?" + +"Ah, but they oughtn't to be intended for somebody else. If any one is +so silly as to think somebody else ought to have a bouquet, any one has +to be punished. Then they forfeit him." + +"Forfeit him?" + +"Or his flowers. They always forfeit you in theatres--if you're late at +rehearsal, you know, or if you keep the stage waiting. But then you +needn't mind. Miss De Montague is a dear, good soul. She took the +bouquet for the look of the thing, you know; that's business; but she +gave me half the flowers when we got home." + +"Does she live here then?" + +"Why, to be sure. You know, we always go to the theatre together. Only +for her I should be quite alone." + +"And do you like this kind of thing?" he asks clumsily. + +She bursts into a merry laugh. "Like it? Why, I get my living by it. We +all have to live, you know, and I've no one to look out for me but +myself, and----" + +She pauses suddenly, having caught his eye fixed upon her with a gaze of +passionate admiration. This first calls up the look of gravity we have +spoken of, and then brings the color sharply to her face. It also +reminds her of the somewhat peculiar character of the interview. The +instant after she resumes, as if continuing her sentence, "Did you come +here to ask me that?" + +"No," he replies bluntly. "I never thought of the question until the +moment before I asked it." + +"Please tell me, then," she proceeds, with gathering surprise, "what +_did_ you come for?" + +He hesitates a moment, moved by the superstition or the honest feeling +that he must tell her no word of untruth, and then quietly answers: + +"I am not sure that I know." + +"Not sure that you know?" + +"No." + +"Perhaps, then, you'll go away, and when you _are_ sure----" + +"Come back again?" hazards he. + +"I didn't say that. You look and talk like a gentleman, and if, as I +hope, you are one, you will know that I can't see strangers--people who +have no business with me--and so you must excuse me." She has risen and +moves with some dignity toward the door. + +"One moment," he interposes. "Forgive me; you know for your part that it +is impossible I should wish to offend----" + +"How should I? You come here to me a stranger, and refuse to say what +for." + +"No. I did not refuse. I only said I was not sure that I knew why I +came." + +"Then you must be crazy!" she blurts out impulsively. + +"Perhaps I am. I begin to think so." + +"Then I wish you would go away!" she goes on with apprehension. "I'll +tell you what, Mr. Bellario is here, and he's--oh, terribly strong!" + +"Mr. Bellario?" he echoes. + +"Yes. The 'Blood-Red Demon,' you know. Didn't you see him go through the +traps?" + +Harding laughs, very much amused. "And you mean to threaten me with the +'Blood-Red Demon,' do you?" + +"Oh, no," she responds gently, but again edging toward the door--"not +threaten; but"--in a very conciliatory tone--"if you won't say what you +come for and won't go away----" + +"But I will," he says gravely. + +"Will which?" + +"Will both. I will say what I came for and then I will go away." + +"I don't mean to be rude, you know," she puts in, softening. + +"Nor I. Now I will tell you. I came because I could not possibly stay +away--because you drew me toward you with an irresistible force----" + +"I'm sure I didn't!" she protests indignantly. + +"Unconsciously, of course. You may think me foolish--wild if you please. +I can't help that. You will know better in time. I come to you saying +not a wrong word, thinking not a wrong thought. There is nothing against +me. At home I was a gentleman. I ask leave to visit you, respectfully as +a friend, nothing more." + +"But why?" she asks, bewildered. + +"Because I admire you greatly, inexpressibly, and I must tell you so." +She turns scarlet now. "But I shall never tell you this--not again--or +anything else in words you do not choose to hear. All I ask is the leave +now and then to see and to speak with you." + +This was very embarrassing. Had he said he loved her, and at first +sight, she would have turned him away. She would have distrusted both +his sincerity and his motives. But he did not say this. On the contrary, +he offered in explicit terms, it would seem, not to say it. She +therefore naturally took refuge in generalities. + +"But what you ask won't be possible. What would people say? This is a +very bad, a scandalous country, I mean. What would Miss De Montague +think, or Mr. Bellario?" + +"What people will say or think hardly needs to be considered," said +Harding steadily, "since in a week I shall have gone to my home in the +mines. You won't be troubled with me long--twice more perhaps. Only once +if you prefer it. All shall be exactly as you wish it. Is not that +fair?" + +Miss Tinsel was saved the present necessity for replying to a question +or coping with a situation both of which she found extremely perplexing, +since at this juncture the door opened and admitted the "Queen of the +Fairy Bower" and the "Blood-Red Demon," who had apparently been out for +a morning walk. To Harding's surprise, the "Queen" was a motherly +looking woman of forty-five and the "Demon" a weak-eyed young man, with +a pasty white face, and some fifteen years younger. Both were much +overdressed, and both stared vigorously at Harding--the "Queen" with an +air intended to represent fashionable raillery, the "Demon" with haughty +surprise. But the visitor avoided explanations that might have been +embarrassing by bowing low to the company and passing from the room. + + + + +CHAPTER III. + +THE CUP AND THE LIP. + + +Her real name was Jane Green. But Jane Green would never do for the +play-bill; so the manager, exercising his peculiar and traditional +prerogative, had rechristened the young lady for the histrionic world, +and she appeared as "Aurora Tinsel." A poor, almost friendless girl, she +had left the Atlantic States with an aunt who had been the wife of the +"property man" in the theatre. Soon after the aunt died, and Jane had +gladly accepted the offer of Miss De Montague to live with her, and, by +helping that lady with her dresses, to render an equivalent for her +society and protection. + +Harding was a wise man in his generation, foolish as in some respects he +may appear. We offer no explanation of his swift and unreasoning +infatuation, because it is just such men who do just such rash and +impulsive things. But he was sagacious enough to know that a man who +really wants a woman is less likely to get her by being too quick than +even by being too slow. Women who are interested always maintain the +contrary; but this is because they want to bag their game instantly, +whether they mean to throw it away afterward or not. The sex are not +apt, however, to err by over-rating the value of what they get too +easily, and this Harding was philosopher enough to know. + +Hence, while he again sought Miss Tinsel twice before his departure, and +while his admiration, although respectful, was not concealed, he did not +go so far as to ask the girl to become his wife. It appeared that after +the run of the current spectacle at the theatre a "great tragedian" was +to play an engagement there, and the opportunity was to be taken for the +ballet and pantomime troupe to make a tour of the mines. Miss De +Montague was to go as a chief attraction, and Miss Tinsel was to go +also, and among the places they were to visit was Bullion Flat. + +These plans left open a space of three months, during which Harding +could think of what he was at, and Miss Tinsel could think of what he +meant, and several other persons who were interested could make up their +minds what to do. + +The first step taken by Harding on his return was highly confirmatory, +in the judgment of the Flat, of the opinion expressed by Jack Storm some +time before. A contract was made with a builder, and close by the tent +on the knoll there speedily arose a cottage of fair proportions, which +was evidently meant to supersede the humbler structure which for a year +had formed Harding's home. No one doubted his ability prudently to incur +such an outlay. He had been saving to parsimony, and he had been +prosperous. But why, when a tent had so long sufficed to him, and when +he so disliked to part with money, he should go to so needless an +expense, was so obscure that to accept Jack Storm's solution impugning +Harding's sanity was the easiest and consequently the most popular way +of solving the enigma. + +The cottage was built notwithstanding, and it was soon the subject of +general remark that Harding was becoming more genial and "sociable" than +before. He astonished Judge Carboy and Jim Blair by asking them to drink +one night at the "Bella Union." He smiled affably and passed the time of +day with Jack Storm and his other companions when they met to begin work +on the claim for the day. He ordered champagne for the crowd on the +evening when a green tree was lashed to the rooftree of his cottage on +the knoll; and at last he raised wonder and surprise to their perihelion +by actually giving a housewarming. + +"I know'd it all along," affirmed Judge Carboy that night to his +familiars. They were taking a cocktail at the "Bella Union" by way of +preface to "bucking" against Mr. Copperas's bank--"I know'd it all +along. He's got a wife out East, and she's a comin' out to jine him in +the new house." + +"Is that the 'suthin' you talked of that he was ashamed of, Judge?" +laughed Jim Blair. "It looks like it, for sartin he never said nothin' +about her." + +"A man may git married," retorted the Judge with judicial acumen, "and +yit do suthin' else to be ashamed of, mayn't he? There's been murderers +and horse thieves stretched afore now who had wives, hain't there? And +the last chap the boys hung to a flume up to Redwood, he had three +wives, didn't he? And they all come to the funeral." And with this +triumphant vindication of his position the Judge sternly deposited half +a paper of fine-cut in his mouth and started for the luxurious apartment +of Mr. Copperas. + +Next morning Bullion Flat was in a flurry of excitement and pleasurable +anticipation. The "Grand Cosmopolitan Burlesque, Ballet, and Spectacle +Troupe" had arrived, and were to play in the theatre attached to the +"Bella Union." It was not, however, until the succeeding afternoon that +Chester Harding called upon Miss Tinsel at the same hotel. + +It was a good sign that that young lady crimsoned at the first sight of +him; what she first said was another: + +"You have not been in a hurry," she pouted, "to come and see me." + +"I supposed you would be very busy," said he smiling, and devouring her +with his eyes. "Were you so anxious to have me come?" + +"Anxious?" she repeated; and then added, illogically, "I supposed you +would please yourself." + +He nodded. "And how do you like Bullion Flat?" + +"I think it ever so pretty--only I don't like the earth all torn up, and +such ugly holes and scars." + +"We have to get at the gold, you know," he explained, "even at such a +cost. But the hilltops, anyhow, are spared." + +She looked through a window and pointed at the most picturesque eminence +in the neighborhood--the knoll. "That is your house?" she observed +shyly. + +"Yes. Do you like it?" + +"I think it lovely--situation and all." + +"And how did you know it was mine?" + +"Oh," she said, laughing, "we show-folks see a great many +people--besides being seen by them--and I've heard a lot about you." + +Harding's face darkened a little. "Then you've heard that I'm not much +liked?" + +"I've heard that some say so. But what of that? Miss De Montague says +she wouldn't give a fig for a man everybody speaks well of--and she +quoted something from a comedy--the 'School for Scandal.'" + +"Will you tell me what people say?" he inquired curiously. + +"Oh, that you are gloomy, reserved, and live all alone, and that you +are--are not extravagant, and that you haven't had a very happy life." + +"That last at least, if true, is a misfortune rather than a fault." + +"It's all misfortune, ain't it?" said the girl sagely. "People don't +make themselves. There's Mr. Bellario now. He thinks nature really meant +him for a great warrior--somebody like Napoleon, you know. And instead +of that he's--well, he calls himself a professional gentleman, but the +boys call him a tumbler. I suppose it would be much grander to kill +people than to jump through 'vampire traps'; but you see he didn't get +his choice--any more than I did." + +"Then you didn't want to go on the stage?" + +"No, indeed. It was just for bread. Aunty was a 'second old woman'--and +they got me in for 'utility,' as they call it. There was no one to care +for me, and I was glad to earn an honest living; but like it! Never!" + +"You say there was no one to care for you?" said Harding gently. "Had +you no friends--no parents?" + +Jane reddened painfully, and the sad look came quickly into her face. +"My mother is dead, you see," she replied, with hesitancy, +"and--and--I'd rather not speak of this any more, please." + +"Surely," he exclaimed hastily, "I've no right to catechize you. Pray +forgive my asking at all. I ought to have been more careful. I know what +trouble is, and how to feel for those who suffer." + +She looked at him earnestly. "You have suffered yourself, then--they +were right when they said yours had not been a happy life?" + +"I have no right to whine--but happy--no, far from it." + +Jane's lovely face took on its softest and tenderest expression. + +"They said that lately you have been happier--gayer than ever +before--and that people liked you--oh, ever so much better than they +used to. Why is it that people like those the best who seem to need help +and sympathy the least?" + +Jane leaned from the window as she spoke and toyed with some running +vine that clambered to the casement. The grace and beauty of her figure +were made conspicuous by the movement, and Harding paused a moment +before he replied: + +"People like to be cheerful, I suppose, and people like others to be +like themselves, I know. It is true that I have been unhappy--that my +life has been morose and solitary. How much this has been my own fault +and how much that of others, need not be said. But it is also true that +of late I have been far happier. Shall I tell you why?" + +His voice was deep and earnest, and something in his eyes made the girl +crimson again, and turn her own to the distant hills. + +"If you please," she faltered, in her low, musical contralto. + +"Shall I tell you too why I have built that cottage you are looking at?" +he went on with increasing earnestness. "It is because it has been my +hope, my prayer, that this sad, lonely life of mine was nearly over. It +is because I have believed that after much pain, and doubt, and +bitterness my trust in men might be brought back through my love for a +woman. The cottage--it is for you, Jane. I love you, Jane. Do you hear +me? From the moment I saw you, I loved you. I resolved to ask you to +marry me. Jane, will you do so?" + +While he spoke the color had been fading steadily from her face, and +when he stopped the girl was ashy pale. He looked at her anxiously and +impatiently. + +"I--I--am--so sorry," she muttered at last, as if each word were a +separate pain. + +"Sorry? God! Why?" Then with swift suspicion, "Jane, do you care +for--are you engaged to some one?" + +She shook her head mournfully. + +"Do you see that sun going down over the hills?" She turned her +beautiful eyes full upon Harding as she spoke, with a look of ineffable +tenderness and sorrow. "Well, you must let what you have said go down +with that sun, and never think of it--never speak of it again." + +It was Harding's turn to blanch now, and the blood retreated from his +swarthy cheeks until they looked almost ghastly. + +"Why?" and his voice came involuntarily, almost in a whisper. + +"Do not ask me--have pity--do not ask me." + +"I must ask you," he cried impetuously, "but yet I need not perhaps. You +care for no one else? Then it must be that you do not, you cannot, care +for me. Is that it, Jane?" + +"That is not it." + +"Not it!" he cried joyfully. "Then you _do_ care for me a little--just a +little, Jane?--a little which is to grow into a great deal by and by! +Oh, child, child, think how wretched I have been all these years! Think +how I have waited and waited. I lived for twelve long months, Jane, +alone, without a soul, without even a dog, in a tent on that knoll; and +so hungry, Jane--so hungry for sympathy, for love. It comes to me at +last, dear Jane, what I have longed for and begged for so long. Don't, +don't--as you hope for mercy, don't take it away again!" + +"You are good," she said softly, "whatever they may say. It is good and +noble of you. Why should I tell you lies? I do like you very much, for +all," looking down with a faint blush, "we have met and known each other +so little. But all the same, it cannot be." + +"Cannot again," he cried impatiently. "Once more, I ask you, will you +tell me why not?" + +She looked at him half frightened, for there was something of mastery in +his tone; then, standing erect, and with a positiveness as strong as his +own, she answered, "Because I should disgrace you." + +"Because you are on the stage!" he exclaimed disdainfully. "Is that it?" + +"That is something," returned Jane humbly, "but perhaps not much. I am +hardly important enough to be worth even that sort of reproach. And +besides the people of California are too liberal to apply it. I know I +am only a ballet dancer"--and the poor girl tried to smile here--"and a +pretty bad one at that. But I work hard for an honest living, and no one +can say I have ever disgraced myself." + +"Then how can you disgrace me?" + +"I have begged you not to ask me." + +"I must!" cried Harding passionately; "and I have the right to do so. +Would you have me take your cool 'no' when you care for no one else and +do care for me, and to go my way satisfied? I can't--I won't!" + +"You will be sorry," said Jane pitifully. + +"Let me be. Anything rather than the doubt. Give me the truth." + +"Well then." She turned her back now: and looked from the window with +her grave, sad face, and spoke in a dull, measured way, like the +swinging of a pendulum. "I am a convict's daughter. My father is in the +State prison of New York at Auburn." + +"For what crime?" + +"Murder. It was in the first degree. The Governor commuted it to +imprisonment for life. There were extenuating circumstances. I went down +on my knees and prayed that he might be saved from the gallows." + +"And his victim?" + +"Was his wife--my mother." + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + +A MYSTERY AND A PARTING. + + +The troupe of which Miss De Montague and Mr. Bellario were prime spirits +made a profound impression at Bullion Flat; so profound, in truth, that +before their three nights were over a fresh engagement was made for +their return a fortnight later. It was agreed that at that time, and on +their return from other points, they should appear for an additional +three nights, and thus afford their admirers opportunities for which the +first essay had been insufficient. This arrangement was highly agreeable +to Miss De Montague and Mr. Bellario for reasons largely connected, +respectively, with the excellent cuisine and bar of the Bella Union. +"Why, my dear," observed the lady, "when I fust come up to do the +'legitimate,' fifteen months ago, love nor money could buy a morsel of +supper after the play. We had to do with a pot of ginger, and dig it out +with the Macbeth daggers, and wash it down with bad beer." + +The arrangement was also satisfactory to Miss Tinsel. It seemed well to +her that she should be absent for a time; and yet she could not deny a +feeling of joy over the thought of returning. Her lover had been greatly +shocked by the dismal tale she had recited; but, to the credit of his +manliness, he had refused to accept the facts as conclusive arguments +against his suit. "Was it her fault," argued he, "that her father was a +scoundrel?" Why should stigma or disability of any sort attach to her +for that which she had no hand in, and had been powerless to prevent? On +the contrary, should not the world, or any part of it that might come in +contact with her, treat a helpless and innocent girl with even greater +tenderness and commiseration because of the undeserved and terrible +misfortune that had befallen her? + +Jane had resolved that she ought not to be moved by such arguments, and +yet she could not help liking to hear them. It was in the end agreed +between them--by Harding's earnest entreaties--that she should think the +matter over, and that her final decision should be withheld until the +return of the troupe to perform its second engagement. Jane had talked +with Miss De Montague, who, in spite of some foibles, was a kind-hearted +and right-minded woman, and Miss De Montague had strongly urged that +Jane's sensitiveness was overstrained. If Mr. Harding had been told all +the truth without reserve and he still wished to make Jane his wife, and +Jane wished to marry him, that was enough. To stand about and moon over +it, and wonder or care what people would say, was all fiddle-faddle, and +all sensible people would call it so. Besides, California was different +from other places. It was the custom there to give everybody a chance, +and value them for what they did and what they were _now_--and not for +what other people, or even they themselves, had done before. It is right +to admit that the amiable lady's passion for Mr. Bellario--whose similar +feeling for Miss Tinsel was more than suspected--had something to do +with inspiring all these sage suggestions; but the suggestions were not +deprived of good sense by that. + +During the fortnight that passed between Jane's departure and her return +the cottage that Harding designed for her future home fast approached +completion. Meanwhile its owner's claim was doing better, and his +coffers were consequently fuller than ever before. He resolved that, +come what might, Jane should become his wife; and it was in this frame +of mind that Harding walked out by the riverside on the night the troupe +returned. As before, he resolved not to hurry in his suit, and therefore +determined to omit calling until the following day. + +The night was clear, the stars shining brightly, and the stream ran +gurgling forward with a pleasant sound. Suddenly, as Harding strolled +musing along the bank, some one touched him on the shoulder from behind; +and turning, he beheld the "Blood-Red Demon," Mr. Bellario. That +gentleman wore a long cloak, tossed across his breast and left shoulder, +and a slouched sombrero; and his white, pasty face wore a look of +inscrutable mystery. + +"Hist!" he enjoined in a stage whisper; "all is discovered!" Then he +drew back, with finger on lip, as if to watch the effect of his +revelation. + +"What's the matter?" said Harding. "What do you mean?" + +"Mean! Ha! ha!" and the "Demon" laughed witheringly. "He asks me what I +mean! Mark me," proceeded he, with a sudden transition, "I know your +secret!" + +"Oh, you do, do you? Which one do you mean?" questioned Harding +scornfully. + +"I have neither time nor heart to trifle," said the "Demon," waving his +arm with an air of ineffable majesty. "I shall be brief and to the +point." + +"You'll very much oblige me." + +"Enough. What prompts me to this midnight deed, 'twere bootless now to +ask, and idle to reveal. Therefore to my tale. You are in love with +Aurora--with Miss Tinsel?" + +"By what right----" + +"Spare your reproaches. I am in love with her too!" + +"You?" + +"Is that so strange? Long ere you crossed our path I knew and loved +her. But this is neither here nor there." + +"I should think not." + +"Professionally," continued the "Demon," with great dignity, "she is, of +course, my inferior. Socially--well, you know, I think the damning +family secret----" + +"Whatever that may be, it is no sin of hers. I think you may wisely +leave it a secret--so far, that is, as to omit crying it on the +housetops." + +"Save to yourself and Miss De Montague, no hint of the tragedy has +passed my lips. But to the business between us----" + +"My good sir," said Harding, with irritation, "I know of none, so far. +If you have anything to say to me, I'll listen. If not, I'll pass on." + +"Ha! ha! ha!" laughed the "Demon" with bitter mockery. "I come to serve +ye, and ye would spurn me from yer path! Poor, poor humanity! Why, why +should I laugh when I should rather weep?" + +"I don't know, I'm sure," answered Harding simply, "and I don't want to +be uncivil. But it certainly isn't asking too much to want to know what +you mean." + +"No," responded the "Demon," with melodious sadness--"not too much. +Though every word be torture, yet I will e'en go through the ordeal. +Sir, what I have to say--and it cuts me to the heart to say it--is that +this lady--this young girl--this Aurora Tinsel--is worthy of neither of +us." + +"What!" + +"She is unworthy--lost--and capable of the worst deception!" + +"That's false!" + +"How, sir?" + +"That's false. And you or any one else who says it is a liar!" + +The "Demon" drew suddenly back, clapped his hand to an imaginary sword +hung at his left side--and then thought better of it. + +"Pshaw!" he exclaimed lightly, but keeping at a wary distance from +Harding's reach. "Why should I yield to rage? My prowess is well +known--and, after all, this worthy gentleman speaks in ignorance. Sir," +he added, changing his tone with elaborate and chivalrous grace, "I +speak of what I know, and speak only with the best of motives. But it is +due to you that I offer to make good my words. I can absolutely prove +that what I have said is true." + +"Prove it, how?" + +"By enabling you to witness for yourself that which justifies what I +say." + +"And you can do this?" + +"Almost to a certainty, and probably this very night." + +Harding hesitated. To take the course proposed seemed like doubt, and +doubt was unworthy. To refuse to take that course might subject Jane to +calumny, which he might on the other hand nip in the bud. Presently he +spoke: + +"What do you propose?" + +"That you go with me at once, and judge for yourself. We may fail +tonight, but if so, our success to-morrow will be all but certainty." + +The man's air of conviction was impressive, and Harding, fearful, yet +hoping that he might unearth some strange mistake or deception, agreed +to the plan proposed. It was settled that the two should meet an hour +later at the "Bella Union," and they parted now with that understanding. +Bellario, however, took occasion before leaving his companion to make +his insinuations so far specific as to tell him that Miss Tinsel had +made the acquaintance of a certain handsome, dark-eyed man, who had +followed the troupe ever since it had last been at Bullion Flat; that +this man evidently admired the girl very much, and that she had +encouraged his advances in the most unmistakable manner; that she had +gone so far as to receive her admirer at her room in the hotel, and that +at so late an hour as to excite the censure of the not over-prudish Miss +De Montague; and that, in fine, Miss Tinsel's hitherto spotless name had +been so tarnished by the events of the last fortnight as to make it +certain none would ever again think her the pure girl she had always +hitherto been held to be. + +With the blood tingling through every vein, with nerves at extreme +tension, and a heart full of bitterness, Chester Harding passed away. +Something told him that the tale, black and dismal as it was, was +likewise true. When Jane told him the story of her father's crime and +its punishment, Harding felt as if there had fallen between him and his +prospect of happiness a veil that made it look doubtful and unreal. The +girl's firmness in telling him the truth, and the assertion of her +opinion as to the proper bearing and consequence of that truth on her +relations with Harding, had assuredly deeply impressed and comforted +him. It was something to face, after all, and even in California, this +wedding the child of a murderer and felon. Yet her own perfect goodness +was the justification and would be the reward of such an act. But when +Jane's goodness itself was in question it was no wonder that Harding's +heart sank within him. He was no coward, but his experience had taught +him distrust; and he waited for the stipulated hour to pass in an agony +of doubt and pain. + +The "Bella Union" had two long wings, perhaps thirty feet apart, running +at right angles with its faēade toward the rear. In the second story of +one wing there were sleeping rooms. Both stories of the opposite wing +were occupied by the theatre. The latter was quite dark, and hither +Bellario conducted Harding after they had met in the saloon below. + +"Be silent," whispered the "Demon," when they met--"be silent and +follow." + +Up two winding staircases, then through a long passage, and they stood +in a gallery over the stage and directly facing the other wing. + +"Look!" said the "Demon"; "he's there now!" He still whispered, for the +night was hot and windows were everywhere open. Through one of these +directly opposite Harding distinctly saw Miss Tinsel. She was talking +earnestly with some one not in sight. Harding gazed breathlessly and +listened. Presently a second figure came between the window and the +light within. It was that of a tall, handsome man with dark eyes. He +replied to the girl with earnestness equal to her own, but in tones as +carefully suppressed. As the eyes of the observers got used to the +situation, they descried a bed on the further side of the room. On this +Miss Tinsel, after a time, sat down. The man followed and seated himself +by her side. A moment or two more, and he took both her hands and +clasped them in his own. They still talked, obviously with deep feeling, +and at last Miss Tinsel threw her arms around her companion's neck and +kissed him. + +"Enough," hoarsely exclaimed Harding. "Enough--and more than enough!" + +"You'll wait no longer?" asked the other. + +"Not an instant. Can't you conceive, man--you who profess yourself to +have cared for her--what a hell this is?" + +"I've been through it before," muttered the "Demon," "and the wound +isn't quite so fresh." + +They descended in silence to the saloon, and there Harding spoke more +freely: + +"See here--you've saved me from a great peril--and although I think I +had rather you had shot me outright, you deserve no less gratitude. If +you want help--money--for instance----" + +The "Demon" waved his hand in lofty refusal. + +"As Claude Melnotte says, sir, I gave you revenge--I did not sell it. +There are better men than I in the world, and lots of them. But I try to +do as I would be done by--at least in a scrape like this. I wish you +good night, and I hope you'll take comfort. After a little it'll seem +easier to you. Certainly the ill news should come easier even now than +it would afterward. As Othello says, ''Tis better as it is.'" + +He bowed and passed away. Ascending to the apartment of Miss De +Montague, he made himself so agreeable as to be able to borrow from that +lady a dozen shining eagles; and, thus provided, descended promptly to +Mr. Copperas's bank, where he whiled away the night--assisted by copious +drinks and unlimited cigars--at the enlivening game of faro. + +As for Harding, he went to the bar of the saloon and took what was for +him a stiff glass of brandy. Then he turned abruptly on his heel, and +without sending his name before him, marched straight up to Miss +Tinsel's room. + +She met him at the door with a glad cry--and then shrank back abashed. + +"I see," she murmured, in her low, sweet voice, "you don't care to have +me repulse you again. You have thought it over--and you agree that it is +better not." + +He came just inside the door, but did not sit, although she motioned him +to a chair. + +"I agree," he repeated mechanically--"I agree--with you that it is +better not." Then he looked suspiciously around the room. There was no +one there--but a door opened into another room beyond. Jane followed his +eyes. "That is Miss De Montague's room," she said; "we are always next +to each other." + +"And she is there now?" + +"Yes--with Mr. Bellario--he is calling on her." + +Harding paused a minute, and then went on in a hard, constrained voice, +like one who repeats a disagreeable lesson. + +"I have thought it right to see you--now, for the last time--and say I +think it best--and right--that we should part." + +Jane turned very pale, and the old grave look of hopeless pain came over +her face. But she answered with infinite softness and humility: + +"It is right--you know I thought so from the first. You should not marry +a--a convict's daughter." + +"It is not because you are a convict's daughter." + +"The reason is sufficient." + +"I repel it," he cried vehemently--"I will have none of it--I told you +so before--I repeat it now. Listen," and he crossed the room swiftly and +closed both doors. + +"I loved you for yourself--dearly--dearly. What did it matter to +me--what fault was it of yours--what other people did, or what or where +they were? In this grand, new country, men--some men, at least--have +grown high enough and strong enough to shake off such paltry prejudices +as those. To me they are as nothing." + +"You led me to think so," Jane said gently. + +"Why should I care for your being a ballet-dancer--or for the other +thing, when you had never disgraced yourself? But now it is different." + +"Now it is different!" she echoed in amazement. + +"Different in this," pursued he with growing excitement, "that before +you were a pure girl--pure as snow--everybody said that--and now you +are--are--compromised." + +The blood rushed in a torrent up to her hair. + +"Who says it?" she demanded, now first showing warmth--"who dares say +it?" + +"Alas, Jane," he replied, "don't make things worse by deception at +parting. Let us be at least as we have always been, honest and +unreserved to each other." + +"What you have said just now," said the girl' proudly, "is an insult. +The time has been when you would not have heard another say such +words--either to me or of me; and yet they are as little deserved now as +they have ever been." + +"They are, are they?" he retorted. "Then pray tell me who was that man +you have had here within an hour?" + +She turned deadly white, and opened her lips thrice to speak before the +words would shape themselves. + +"That--man?" + +"Do you deny having a man with you?" + +She shook her head piteously. "No--there was a man here--and with me." + +"Ah, you confess it then," cried he, as if her admission made what he +knew more heinous. "Who was this man? Confess all!" + +"He--he--wanted help--asked for money. He saw me in the play at Boone's +Bar--and thinking me richer than I am, asked me for money." + +Harding laughed scornfully. "And do you expect me to believe this?" + +"It is true," she hurried on nervously. "He said he was desperate and +must have money to get away." + +"Had he any claim upon you?" he asked, scanning her with cold, searching +eyes. + +She hesitated and made answer, "No--none." + +"Yet he pushed his demand with eloquence?" + +"He did." + +"And with success?" + +"I gave him all I had." + +"Even although he had no claim on you?" + +"Yes." + +"Oh, Jane--Jane!" he cried with a burst of bitter sorrow; "why couldn't +you have been truthful to the end? Why--why must you make me look +back--always and only to despise you!" + +She looked at him stonily, but made no reply. + +"Jane, it cuts me to the heart to say it--but I saw you--do you +hear?--saw you. He took both your hands in his--you threw your arms +about his neck and kissed him. Do you deny this?" + +She still looked him straight in the face, but two tears brimmed into +her eyes and rolled slowly down her cheeks. "No, it is true," she then +answered. + +"You own this too," he cried furiously. "Jane, who is this man?" + +She remained silent. + +"I ask you again, Jane--and for the last time--who is this man?" + +"I cannot tell you." + +"You refuse?" + +"I must." + +"Then farewell. We can meet no more." He turned, and stood with his hand +on the door, and with the action the girl's overstrained nerves gave +way. + +"Oh, no, no, no! Oh, Chester, I have loved you so! Don't--for mercy's +sake--don't leave me in anger--when I so need comfort--help--and--p--pity!" + +She fell on her knees by the bed, and with her face in her hands, sobbed +aloud. + +As she did so, a burst of strange, mocking laughter resounded from the +adjoining room, and Harding started as if he had been stung. + +"It must be!" he hissed, all that was hardest and worst in his nature +suddenly possessing him. "After this it would only be torture--to both!" +He bent suddenly and kissed--not her lips, no longer pure--but her +forehead, once, twice, thrice, passionately, and then fled away into the +darkness. + + + + +CHAPTER V. + +GOOD OUT OF EVIL. + + +Harding went up to his lonely tent. Like a wounded animal, he sought his +lair, and the memory of the many solitary hours he had passed there, +even at this sad moment, refreshed his spirit. There he could be +alone--away from men's eyes--free from their curiosity, from their +comments, or, what would be worse, from their pity. + +He had made himself comparatively rich; he had built up a home, as it +were, in the wilderness; he had even tried, and with some success, to +gain men's esteem--and what were all these worth to him now? + +Such bitter thoughts as these filled Harding's mind as he arranged his +coarse pallet, and then, throwing himself upon it, sought to forget his +grief during the short space that remained before daylight. He was +awakened, almost instantly, it seemed to him--although, in fact, three +hours had passed--by the sharp crack of a rifle. Harding leaped up and +ran to his door. + +It was a dull, gray dawn--the sky overcast, but the air free from wind +or rain. A little below Harding's tent there spread a plain about a mile +wide. This extended along the bank of the river, and terminated in a +clump of redwoods which grew far up the mountain beyond. Here and there +on the plain were scattered a few small trees and copses of manzanita; +but for the most part it was clear from the outskirts of the village up +to the redwoods. + +On this plain Harding now saw a remarkable sight. A man was running from +tree to tree, striving always to get nearer the mountain. Perhaps three +hundred yards behind him were five or six armed pursuers trying to close +in on the fugitive, and occasionally firing at him. As Harding gazed, +three shots were discharged in rapid succession. Yet the man still held +on his way, apparently unhurt, and it looked as if he would quickly gain +the cover of the forest. But there was one behind him far swifter than +the rest, who ran like an Indian on the river or further side from +Harding, and who threatened in a few moments to get dangerously near. It +was because this man was so distant from himself that Harding did not at +first recognize his own partner, Jack Storm, although he was in his +usual well known Mexican dress. Now, Storm was the best rifle shot on +Bullion Flat. + +It appeared that the fugitive knew this. At all events, as if suddenly +realizing his peril, he turned and ran straight toward Storm, resolved +to draw his fire, apparently, and by confusing his aim to have a better +chance of escape. Storm's ready rifle flew up to his shoulder instantly, +and Harding saw the pale blue ring of smoke and heard the quick report. +Still the fugitive sped on. He was plainly unscathed, or in any case not +disabled; and in his hand there now flashed a bright something which +Harding knew was a bowie-knife. With that, although the combatants were +a mile away, Harding seized a revolver, and dashed at his highest speed +down the hill. Almost at the same moment, there also started in company +from Bullion Flat three figures on horseback. These were Miss Tinsel, +the "Demon," Mr. Bellario, and Judge Carboy. All who were now making for +the scene of the combat heard in sharp repetition five or six shots from +revolvers; but after the last of these, all was still. When they got to +the spot they found Jack Storm fainting from loss of blood, but hurt +only with flesh wounds; and they were told that the other man, his +opponent, was mortally wounded, and had been taken, by his own request, +up on the mountain side, among the redwoods, to die. + +With a choking cry, Miss Tinsel galloped on, and in a few moments +Chester Harding and she were again face to face over the dying man's +body. Ghastly white as he was, all dabbled with blood, and the foam +oozing from his lips, her lover at once knew Jane's visitor of the night +before. What had happened had been hurriedly revealed to Harding--in +broken whispers by the bystanders--before Jane came up. + +The man had robbed several rooms at the "Bella Union" during the night, +and had succeeded in gathering a large sum. Among the treasures stolen +were all the loose funds belonging to the "Combination Troupe," the +night's winnings of Mr. Copperas's faro bank, and Miss De Montague's +diamonds. But just as the robber, toward daylight, was on the point of +making off in safety, he met a lion in the path in Jack Storm. It +happened that Jack wanted to have a talk with his partner, Harding, and, +as they were then very busy on the claim, made up his mind to compass +this purpose bright and early, before getting to work. Stumbling on the +marauder, the latter was secured after a struggle, and "the boys" +speedily determined to make an example of him. The man begged for a +chance of life, and after some debate, had been given the option of the +halter or running the gauntlet, with three hundred yards' start, in the +way we have described. In the subsequent struggle he had been shot +through the lungs, and terribly cut with his own bowie-knife--wrested +from him by Jack Storm--and his life was now fast ebbing away. + +As she came up Jane sprang from her horse, and threw herself on the +ground beside the dying man. They had propped his head on a hillock of +turf, and some charitable soul had brought water from the river. Judge +Carboy quickly put a flask of brandy to the sufferer's lips, and he +opened his eyes: + +"Ja--Jane," he gasped, "my pretty Jane--this is the end--the end of +it--a dog's death--and deserved, too-but--I--I--always loved you!" + +She burst into tears and began sobbing over him and fondling his head. + +"Don't, darling--don't, little Jenny--it won't be long--I am better +away--better for you--there--there! I'm sliding away somewhere--and----" + +His voice failed, and his dark face began to grow blue. The doctor, who +had ridden hastily up, forced between the man's teeth some strong +restorative. + +"I want you to remember--always--that I was drunk when I did it--drunk +and crazy. I was bad--vile--but not so bad as that. Don't tell who--who +I am. It will only disgrace you--only disgrace you--I'm going, little +Jenny----" + +"Oh, _father_! _father!_" and the poor child bowed down her pretty head +on the breast of the wretched thief and murderer, and wept as if her +heart would break. + +"No--no," he muttered; "no, little Jenny, I'm not worth it. Only--don't +think worse--worse of me than I deserve. Perhaps mother--in heaven--has +forgiven me! She knows--knows--I was mad when I did it." + +"Yes--yes--I shall remember," whispered she, "always. Now don't talk +more--not now." + +"No--I shan't talk--much more"--a strange wan smile came over his +face--"not much more, little Jenny." He put up his hand and stroked her +sunny hair. + +"Tell them about this last--that I was desperate--I had broke jail--knew +the officers were on my track--and was penniless. Give me--more--brandy. +So. Why, I can't see you any more, little Jenny--and yet it is morning, +isn't it, not night!" He gasped for breath and clutched feebly at the +air. "Kiss me--little Jenny--mer--mercy--_Lord Jesus_--better--better +times--hereafter!" + +A shudder, and the man was dead, and Jane was left all alone in the +world. Poor, besotted, frantic Michael Green, all sin-scorched as he +was, had passed from the judgment of men to the more merciful judgment +beyond. Yet the orphan, if alone, lacked neither sympathy nor +protection. Nor did she ever lack from that moment the respect and +confidence of the man of whose heart she had from the first been +mistress. So that the true happiness came in time which is so often the +sweeter for being deferred. + + HENRY SEDLEY. + + + + +DEFEATED. + + + Give me your hand--nay, both, as I confront you. + Let me look in your eyes, as once before. + I gaze, and gaze. Oh, how they change and soften! + I stand within the portal: lo! a door-- + + A door close shut and barred. I knock and listen. + No sound, no answer. Doubtingly I wait. + Oh! for one glance beyond that guarded entrance, + The power that mystic realm to penetrate. + + I touch the barrier with hands entreating, + If it would yield to me, and none beside. + What bitter pain, what sense of loss and failure, + To come so near, and come to be denied! + + Softly I call, but only silence answers-- + Silence, and the quick throbbing of my heart. + Immovable, the frowning bar abideth: + Kneeling, I kiss the threshold and depart. + + MARY L. RITTER. + + + + +SHALL PUNISHMENT PUNISH? + + +It is published that in England a man has been undergoing an aggregate +imprisonment of ten years for breaking a shop window, at different +times, and that when recently pardoned he immediately broke the same +window again for the purpose of being again arrested. One who knows +nothing more than this of the facts cannot presume to determine what +punishment should in justice be given to this particular offender; but +the case is interesting as an extreme example of what frequently occurs +in a less striking degree in this country. Police courts become +acquainted with a class of criminals who would rather go to jail for +their dinner, especially in winter, than earn a dinner by hard work. +They are the confirmed vagabonds from whom the army of summer tramps is +chiefly recruited. They never feel truly virtuous and happy in cold +weather except when they have committed a petty offence and are on the +way to "punishment," which consists in accepting from a thoughtful +public a warm shelter and all the food they want. It is their business +to live, at times if not constantly, in this way. Sending them to jail +for their offences is known by the courts that send them to be nothing +but a sorry farce. + +There is another equally incorrigible class, who commit greater crimes, +but not chiefly for the sake of "punishment." Detectives keep themselves +advised of the sentences of these offenders, and prepare to shadow them +anew whenever they are released from confinement. It is not expected +that incarceration will have any reformatory effect. The question of +reforming them, as of reforming those who offend to get rid of the +trouble of taking care of themselves, comes to be left out of +consideration, after a little experience, by the officers whose duty it +is to deal with them. Only intimidation remains for a considerable +number. With these, rather than with the English window-breaker, should +probably be classed the subject of this item from a late newspaper: +"Charles Dickens is dead, and died of honest work; but the German +prisoner, Charles Langheimer, whom he saw in the penitentiary at +Philadelphia thirty-three years ago, and over whose punishment by +solitary confinement he lamented in 'American Notes,' describing him as +'a picture of forlorn affliction and distress of mind,' still lives at +the age of seventy-five, and has just been sent back to his old quarters +the sixth time, for his chronic offence of petty theft, which has kept +him in jail full half his long life." + +That punishment for crime is necessary, and therefore a public duty, is +admitted, and every community professes to impose it. But what of the +criminals whom punishment as now administered does not punish--who +actually commit crimes for the purpose of receiving it? It would seem +that society has not the power or has not the wisdom to protect itself. +It has the right, of course. It has the power also. + +The law does not succeed in what it attempts and professes to do. At +present when we find a criminal who has sufficient good in him to feel +our methods, we punish him in proportion to his--goodness. When we find +one so vile that our methods are like water on a duck's back, we do not +punish him--except as water punishes a duck. He goes unpunished because +he is so bad, while a better man is punished because he is better. What +is this but rewarding insensibility? It is very creditable to the hearts +of the lawmakers--perhaps--but it is fraud on the community. It is +legalized wickedness. It permits incarnate nuisances to wax fat, and +prey upon honest industry, and increase and multiply, until they become +the only prosperous and protected class. + +It has been suggested that a criminal on his second conviction be deemed +a professional, and incarcerated for life. It would no doubt be cheaper +for the public to shut him up thus and support him permanently. But +there is the objection that the punishment would generally be out of +proportion to the crime, if it were a punishment at all; and if it were +not a punishment, we would be offering a greater premium on vice than we +now are. To punish petty larceny as if it were as great a crime as +manslaughter or murder would be too unjust to be long possible. The case +seems to demand a new medicine rather than a greater dose of one which +has failed when tried in any practicable quantities. + +There is one remedy, so far as the infliction of real punishment is a +remedy, although those who administer justice as above described will +hold up their hands in horror at the mention of it. If it be a fact that +the punishment of criminals is necessary, and if it be a fact that a +class of them is impervious to any punishment except physical pain, then +we are bound to either inflict this pain or else abandon the principle +of punishment. There is no third course if the two facts are +admitted--and to those who will not admit them an unprejudiced reading +of the criminal news of the past three hundred and sixty-five days is +commended. If one man's heart is callous to what will break another's, +all men's backs are of nearly equal tenderness. It is doubtful whether +the whipping-post ever had a fair trial without proving that it might be +made a good thing under such circumstances as we must very soon, if we +do not now, confront. + +The fact that it was once used and then abandoned does not settle the +case. It was erected for those who could have been otherwise dealt with, +and for those who deserved no punishment at all. It was not reserved for +only those deserving punishment, on whom our more refined penalties had +been tried and had failed. It is not a fair trial of it to put it into +the hands of a drunken or passionate ship's captain; or the hands of a +religious bigot; or the hands of a slave-driver; or the hands of a +tyrant or autocrat of any kind; or the hands of an incompetent judge; or +the hands of any judge in a ruder age than this. If an ignorant or +brutal use of it in the past condemns an enlightened use of it now, we +should abandon life-taking and imprisonment, for these have been even +more abused. We have no fear that the death penalty will be misused +hereafter because men have been hung for petty larceny heretofore. When +the lash is wielded by a barbarous hand, as it generally has been, of +course we abhor it. But how about it when the hand of Christ wields it +in the temple? Although the incarnation of charity made him a scourge +for those who needed it, yet we cannot follow His example because +Torquemadas have made scourges for those who did not need them. Such is +the logic of those who would cite the past in this matter. The truth is, +the lash was abandoned in the humane belief that criminals could be +punished without it; and the truth also is, some criminals are now +proving that they cannot be punished without it. + +Go over the subject as we may, we come back to the question, Is the lash +or something equally unrefined necessary to accomplish all the law now +attempts? It must be looked at in the cold light of certain very sad +facts, as well as in the warm blaze of "chromo" civilization. If we are +not yet compelled to answer it in the affirmative, there is so much +evidence pointing toward such an answer, that it is well to consider +very respectfully indeed whatever can be said on the unpopular side. It +need not frighten those who accept the idea so tersely presented by the +Hare Brothers--of which one is strongly reminded by Mr. Greg in the +"Enigmas of Life," although perhaps he does not expressly state it--that +the tendency of civilization is to barbarism. + +Of course flogging is not a panacea; but it is for those who profit by +nothing gentler; and the more enlightened society becomes the more +certainly can these be identified. The generous feeling that has +discontinued it would not cease to be a guarantee against its abuse. Our +courts cannot depart far from public sentiment. We can trust judges and +juries to determine who deserves castigation just as safely as to +determine who deserves imprisonment or death. Most of the censure they +now receive in their treatment of the hopelessly depraved is for their +lenity and not their rigor. There is no offender would not dread and +wish to avoid whipping. Certainly no one would offend for the purpose of +receiving it; and it would probably discourage a man in less than ten +years from breaking the same window. It would be inexpensive, and would +have the merit of being short and sharp, if not decisive. Punishment, +intimidation, is what is here considered, and the point is whether it +shall be administered to all who deserve it, or whether the law society +finds necessary for its protection shall be a falsehood, at war with +itself--a sham. The law cannot shrink from anything that is necessary to +its purpose without impeaching its purpose. + +And is it more inhuman to hurt the back of one who cannot be made to +feel anything else than it is to pain the heart and hurt the soul of one +who can? How can Christians so exalt the flesh above the spirit? They +did not do it in the primitive days of the faith. Is it more barbarous +to scourge the body than to gall it with irons, or poison and debilitate +it by confinement, or wear it out by inches at hard labor? We have not +abolished corporeal punishment--only rejected a form of it which is +frequently more merciful, if more dreaded, than some that are retained. + +All wrongs right themselves by "inhumanity," if permitted to go far +enough. You are told by good authority, and you know without telling, +that if you find a burglar in your house at night, you perform a public +duty by shooting him dead rather than see him escape. From the +humanitarian point of view, this is certainly more dreadful than it +would have been to stop, by flogging, any minor offences that led him +into your house. Indeed, if the penalty for the burglary itself were a +"barbarous" laceration of his back, it would doubtless have more effect +in keeping him from the burglary and from a bloody death, than does the +risk of imprisonment. We must not whip him in obedience to the law, but +we may safely shoot him dead without regard to it. It is our tenderness +that becomes "inhuman" if it be not wisely bestowed. Would it be quite +in keeping with the pretensions of "advanced" civilization to see the +matrons and maids of the rural neighborhoods going about their dairies +and summer kitchens with revolvers in their belts, and bowie-knives in +their bosoms? That is the spectacle the "tramp" nuisance promises to +produce. Would the whipping-post, set up in the slums of the great +cities, where the miscreants among the tramps breed and form their +characters, look any more like barbarism? The voluntary tramp has but +shown the countryman during the summer what the city suffers during the +winter. He is simply trying to distribute and equalize himself, and +while enjoying his country air, collects the same taxes he collects all +the rest of the year in town. Let the city continue to rear him +tenderly, and not hurt his precious carcass, and feed and warm him, and +punish only his sensitive spirit, until the country people get down +their shot-guns and make a barbarous end of him. And this is being true +to the cause of humanity. + +It is noble for the law to withhold its hand when one who has taken a +wrong step can be won back to a good life by other means; and if the +wretches hopelessly saturated with vice can be intimidated by anything +milder than flogging, by all means be mild; but when we find one who +cannot, why not acknowledge the fact and act on it? + +The reason why we do not so act is only a sentimental one. A sentimental +reason, however, may be a very good one. Society feels that it is better +to suffer, and to see its laws become a mockery to this degree, than to +shock its own best instincts. This sentiment that obstructs absolute +vindication of the law is respectable so long as it can be respected +with tolerable safety and public satisfaction. But it interferes with +justice by courtesy, and not by right. It is all very well so long as +society does not complain. But if its mouthpieces are to be believed, +society does complain. The public is not satisfied with the present +punishment of certain offenders--indicated with sufficient accuracy by +the tough old Langheimer and the English window-breaker--and is restive +under the pecuniary burden they impose. + +Although the history of the whipping-post is nearly worthless to one +seeking to know what its value might be under all the favorable +conditions with which it could be surrounded now and here, yet it is +possible to point readily to one trial that should have been, and +probably was, a fair one. A very few years ago--perhaps four or +five--garroting became a terror to the London pedestrian. For assault +and robbery, without intent to kill, the death penalty was too terrible, +and the other penalties failed to intimidate, as they generally do when +the crime is lucrative, easily accomplished, and not immediately +dangerous. It could not be trifled with, and something had to be done. A +"barbarous" whipping of the bare back was resorted to, and garroting +subsided. The result was what the public wanted. Sentimental eyes may +show their whites, horrified hands may go up, floods of twaddle may come +forth in sympathy with the discouraged garroter, but men of common +sense, especially if they have been garroted themselves, will say the +end was worth what it cost, and believe in the inhumanity that achieved +it. + +Nothing has been said of Delaware. No valuable lesson could be drawn +from her without considerable investigation, and perhaps not then. She +may do too much flogging, or she may not do enough. Her ministers of +justice may be models of enlightenment, or they may be models of +debasement. The lash there may be still a class instrument, or it may +not. She has no great city--an exceedingly important consideration--and +two portions of her people are jostling each other as nominal equals in +the race of life, who but the other day held the relation of master and +slave. She is probably not indifferent to a good name, and her retention +of the whip under all the sneers she receives is some evidence that she +at least regards it as still having a defensible use. + + CHAUNCEY HICKOX. + + + + +RENUNCIATION. + + + Could I recall thee from that silent shore + Whence never word may reach our longing ears, + To gaze upon thee thro' my happy tears, + And call thee back to life and joy once more, + Could I refrain? If at my touch Death's door + Would open for thee, and thy glad eyes shine + With swift surprise of life, straight into mine, + And we might dwell with love for evermore, + Could I forbear? God knows, who still denies. + Yet being dead, thou art all mine again: + No fear of change can break that perfect rest, + Nor can I be where thou art not; thine eyes + Smile at me out of heaven, and still my pain, + And the whole pitying earth is at thy breast. + + KATE HILLARD. + + + + +THE EASTERN QUESTION. + + +"The last word in the Eastern Question," said Lord Derby, "is +Constantinople." If for Constantinople we read not merely the city +itself, but that half of Turkey in Europe bordering upon the Black Sea +and the Sea of Marmora, and understand the real point to be, Shall or +shall not Russia have it? we have the whole Eastern Question in a +nutshell. Russia is bound by every consideration of policy and interest +to get it if she can. Great Britain is bound by every consideration of +interest, and even of self-preservation, to prevent it if she can. +Germany, Austria, and France are bound to prevent it, if possible, +unless they can at the same time gain equivalent advantages which shall +leave them relatively to each other, and especially to Russia, not less +powerful than they now are. The other nations of Europe may be left out +of view in considering the question; for their interest in it is less +vital, and they could do little toward the result, except as allies to +one side or the other, in case of a general European war in which the +great Powers should be quite evenly balanced, when their comparatively +small weight might turn the scale. + +A glance at the map will show the paramount importance to Russia of the +acquisition of this territory. Comprising more than half of all Europe, +she is practically cut off from the navigable seas. She has, indeed, a +long coast-line upon the Arctic ocean, but she has there only the +inconsiderable port of Archangel, and this can be reached only by +rounding the North Cape and sailing far within the Arctic Circle, while +the port itself is blocked up by ice seven months of the year. She also +borders for seven hundred miles upon the Baltic and the Gulf of Bothnia; +but here, in the northwestern corner of her territory, she has only two +tolerable ports, Cronstadt and Riga, and these are frozen up for nearly +half the year; but from these ports is carried on three-fourths of her +foreign commerce. She next touches salt water in the Black Sea, almost +1,500 miles from St. Petersburg, on the extreme south of her territory. +This sea, half of whose shores belongs to Russia, is 720 miles long, and +380 miles wide at its broadest point, covering an area, including the +connected Sea of Azof, of nearly 200,000 square miles--more than twice +that of all the great lakes of North America. Russia wishes to be a +great maritime power. The Black Sea has good harbors and abundant +facilities for building ships and exercising fleets. Into it fall all +the great rivers of the southern half of Russia, except the Volga, whose +mouth is in the Caspian; and the Volga may properly be considered a +Black Sea river, for a railway, or perhaps even a canal of a few +leagues, would connect it with the Don and the other rivers of the Black +Sea system. The Black Sea is emphatically a Russian sea; but Russia +enjoys the valuable use of it only by the sufferance of whomsoever holds +Constantinople. By the treaty of Paris, concluded in 1856, after the +reverses of the Crimean war, Russia agreed not to maintain a fleet +there; and it was not till 1870 that taking advantage of the critical +position of the other great Powers, she declared that this article of +the treaty was abrogated. She has now a strong fleet of iron-clads and +other steamers in the sea, but the actual strength of this fleet is +unknown except to herself. It was certainly powerful three years ago, +and is doubtless much more powerful now. A vessel and crew which has +navigated the "Bad Black Sea." as the Turks call it, has nothing to fear +from the broadest ocean. But this sea is liable at any moment to be a +closed one to Russia. No Russian man-of-war has, we believe, ever sailed +into or out of it; no merchantman can enter or leave it except by the +Bosporus and the Dardanelles, which are its gates, and of these gates +Turkey holds the keys. + +The Black Sea is joined to the deep, narrow Sea of Marmora by the +straits of the Bosporus, twenty miles long and from three-quarters of a +mile to two and a half miles wide. Just where the straits open out into +the Sea of Marmora stands Constantinople, a spot marked out by nature as +the one on the whole globe best fitted for the site of a great +metropolis. At its western extremity the Sea of Marmora--about one +hundred miles long, with a maximum breadth of forty-three +miles--contracts into the straits usually called the Dardanelles, which +is properly the name of four castles, which, two on each side, command +the passage, here less than a mile wide. Both straits could easily be so +fortified as to be impassable by the combined navies of the world; and +even now we suppose that only the best armored iron-clads could safely +undertake to force the passage, in or out, of the Dardanelles. + +Let us now consider the fearful preponderance which Russia would gain by +the possession of these straits, including of course that half of +European Turkey bordering upon them. We have seen that the shores of the +Black Sea furnish every facility for the construction of a navy of any +required strength, and its waters afford ample space for its training. +With these approaches in her grasp, Russia might in ten years construct +and discipline her fleet there, perfectly safe from molestation by the +navies of Europe. Fleets built and equipped at Sebastopol, Kherson, and +Nicolaief, could sweep through the Dardanelles, closed to all except +themselves, enter the Archipelago and the Mediterranean, and dominate +over their shores and over the commerce of every nation which has to use +these waters as a highway. In case of its happening at any time to find +itself overmatched, the Russian fleet could repass the gates of the +Dardanelles, and be as safe from pursuit as an army would be if +sheltered behind the rocks of Gibraltar. + +Great Britain would be first and most immediately menaced by this; for a +strong military and naval power established on the Bosporus would hold +in command the shortest way of communication with her possessions in +India. The Czar would hold in control the route by way of the Suez +canal: or at best Great Britain could keep it open only by maintaining a +vastly superior fleet in the Mediterranean; and it would be difficult +for her to maintain there a fleet which would not be practically +overmatched by one which Russia could easily keep up in the Black Sea +and the Sea of Marmora. The days are past when a Hood or a Nelson might +safely risk a battle if the odds against him were much less than two to +one. A British admiral must henceforth make his count upon meeting skill +and seamanship equal to his own, and whatever advantage he gains must be +gained by sheer preponderance of force. + +If Great Britain is to retain her Indian empire, a collision there +between her and Russia is a foregone conclusion. An empire which, under +a succession of sovereigns of very different character, has steadily +pressed its march of conquest through the deserts of Turkistan, will not +be likely to look without longing eyes upon the fertile valley of the +Indus; and here Russia would have a fearful advantage in position. The +Suez route practically closed, as it would be in the event of a war, +Britain could only reach India by the long voyage around the Cape of +Good Hope, while Russia would have broad highways for the march of her +troops to the banks of the Indus, whence she could menace the whole +peninsula of Hindostan. + +We indeed do not think that the possession of her Indian empire adds +anything to the power of Great Britain. She has never derived any direct +revenue from it. The Indian expenditures to-day exceed, and are likely +in the future to exceed, the revenues. All the vast amounts of plunder +and "loot" which individuals, the East India Company, or the Crown have +gained, have cost to get them more than they were worth. Unlike +Australia and the Dominion of Canada, India offers no field for +colonization for men of British blood, where they or their children may +build up a new Britain under strange stars. It has come to be an +accepted fact that Englishmen cannot long retain health and vigor in +India, and that their offspring, born there, rarely survive childhood +unless sent "home" at an early age. Britain holds India purely and +absolutely as a conquered and subjugated territory. Whether British rule +in India is, upon the whole, a blessing or a curse to the natives, is a +matter of grave doubt; that it is most unwillingly borne, is beyond all +question. It is a despotism pure and unmixed, and a despotism of the +most galling kind--a despotism exercised by a horde alien in race and +religion, alien in habits and modes of thought, in life and manners, in +customs and ideas. Macaulay, when in power in India, forty years ago, +said of it the best that can be said: "India cannot have a free +government; but she may have the next best thing--a firm and impartial +despotism." To maintain this despotism, even against the feeble natives +alone, imposes a heavy strain upon the British government. The British +empire in India is only a thin crust overlying a bottomless quagmire, +into which it is in peril of sinking at any moment by a force from above +or an upheaval from below. How nearly this came to pass during the +accidental Sepoy mutiny of twenty years ago, is known to all men. Had +that mutiny chanced to have broken out three years before, during the +Crimean war, it is safe to say that the course of the world's history +would have taken a different turn. Since then Great Britain has +apparently somewhat consolidated this crust, but it is yet thin, and the +weight of Russia thrown upon it could scarcely fail to break it through. + +The commercial value of India to Great Britain is, we think, vastly +exaggerated. India, in proportion to her population, has always been, +and is likely long to be, a very poor country. The trade of Great +Britain with India--exports and imports--is not much greater than that +with France, considerably less than that with Germany, and far less than +that with the United States; and we see no reason to suppose that it is +perceptibly increased by the subjugation of India to the British crown. +India sells to Great Britain what she can, and buys from her what she +wants and can pay for, and would continue to do so in any case. Still, +we do not imagine that the British government or people will ever be +brought to take our view of the value of India to them. It will be held +to the last extremity of the national power, and will only be abandoned +under stress of the direst necessity. And for her secure possession of +India it is absolutely essential, for reasons which have been stated, +that whoever else may have Constantinople in the future, Russia shall +not have it. England's interest in the question is a purely selfish one. +She is content to have the Turks there because for the time being they +keep the Russians out. Whatever worth may formerly have been in the +sentimental averment that it is the duty of the European family of +nations to see to it that no weak member of it is gravely wronged by a +stronger one is past and gone. It is from no love for the Turks that +Great Britain desires that the Sultan should continue to hold at least +nominal sovereignty over Turkey in Europe, and the actual custody of the +keys of the Black Sea. An able English writer says:[H] + + The position of the Turk at Constantinople is no choice of + ours, nor any creation of our policy. We do not maintain him + for any love of himself, nor because we rely on his strength + to guard the post--though that is absurdly underrated. His + corruption and weakness are at least as great an + embarrassment to us as an injury to the nations of his + empire. But the whole Eastern question hangs upon the fact + that he is there, and has been there with a long + prescriptive right which he is not likely to yield, or to + have wrested from his grasp till after a frantic struggle of + despair. Nor is any practical mode apparent by which he will + be soon displaced, save that, after a convulsion which would + involve all Europe, the Czar should be enthroned upon the + Bosporus. To prevent that catastrophe, and to avert the + horrors that must precede it, is our real Eastern policy. + +[Footnote H: "Quarterly Review;" October, 1876.] + +Still more emphatic is the declaration of Lord Derby, the British +Premier, when defending the action of the Government in sending the +Mediterranean fleet, last May, to Besika Bay, at the mouth of the +Dardanelles: "We have in that part of the world great interests which we +must protect.... It is said that we sent the fleet to the Dardanelles to +maintain the Turkish empire. I entirely deny it. _We sent the fleet to +maintain the interests of the British empire._" + +Let us now glance rapidly at Turkey in Europe, the coveted prize in this +case. Nominally, and upon the maps, it comprises all except the southern +apex of the great triangular peninsula bounded on the east by the Black +Sea, the Sea of Marmora, and the Archipelago; on the west by the +Adriatic; on the north, the broad base of the peninsula, it is bounded +by Austria; on the south, the narrow apex, by Greece. Russia touches it +only on the northeast corner. Its area is in round numbers 200,000 +square miles, not differing materially from that of France or Germany, +or about five-sixths of that of Austria. No other part of Europe, of +anything like equal extent, combines so many natural advantages of +geographical position, soil, and climate. The population is variously +estimated at from 13,000,000 upward; we think that 17,000,000 is a +tolerably close approximation. Of these, in round numbers, only about +2,000,000 are Turks, or, as they style themselves, Osmanlis; 11,500,000 +are of various Sclavonic races; 1,500,000 are Albanians; 1,000,000 +Greeks; the remainder Armenians, Jews, and Gipsies. In religion there, +there are about 4,800,000 Mohammedans, nearly half of whom are not +Osmanlis, the remainder being of Sclavonic descent, whose ancestors +embraced Islam in order to save their estates; they are, however, quite +as devoted Mussulmans as are the Osmanlis themselves. There are now +about 12,000,000 Christians, of whom some 11,000,000 belong to the Greek +Church, and nearly 1,000,000 are in communion with the Church of Rome. +The name Ottomans is officially given to all the subjects of the empire, +irrespective of race or religion; all except Mussulmans are specifically +designated as _Rayahs_, "the flock." Nominally, at least, by the new +Constitution promulgated in December, 1876, while Islam is the religion +of the State, all subjects are equal before the law, and all, without +distinction of race or creed, are alike eligible for civil and military +positions. + +But a very considerable part of this territory is not properly included +in the Ottoman empire. The principality of Roumania, in the northeastern +corner, made up of what was formerly known as Wallachia and Moldavia, +with a population of about 4,500,000, is practically independent, under +a prince of the house of Hohenzollern, elected in 1866. It merely +acknowledges the suzerainty of the Sultan, to whom it pays an annual +tribute of some $200,000. Servia, on the north, bordering upon Austria, +with a population something less than 1,500,000, has for years been +really independent, merely paying a tribute of less than $100,000. + +Roumania and Servia are strongly under Russian influence. Besides these +is the little State of Montenegro, on the Adriatic, with a population of +less than 200,000, which disowns the suzerainty of the Sultan, and has +for many months waged a fierce but desultory war against him. + +Of what properly constitutes Turkey in Europe, with a population of some +11,000,000, the following are the principal divisions, designating them +by their former names, by which they are still best known: south of +Roumania, and between the Danube and the Balkhan mountains, is Bulgaria; +south of Bulgaria is Roumelia, in which Constantinople is situated; in +the northwest is Herzegovina; between which and Servia is Bosnia; on the +west, along the Adriatic, is Albania. In estimating the defensive +strength of the Ottoman empire we must take main account of Turkey in +Asia, with a population of some 17,000,000, by far the larger portion of +whom are Osmanlis, devoted to Islam, warlike by nature, and fully +capable, as was shown in the Crimean war, of being moulded into +excellent soldiers. But our present concern is with Turkey in Europe. + +If the ingenuity of man, working through long centuries of misrule, had +set itself to the task of developing a form of government the most +potent for evil and the least powerful for good, the system could not +have been worse than that which exists in European Turkey; and the worst +of it is that no one but the most hopeful optimist can perceive in it +the slightest hope of reform or practical amendment. In theory the +Sultan is the recognized organ of all executive power in the State. The +dignity is hereditary in the house of Osman; but the brother of a +deceased or deposed Sultan takes precedence of the son, as being nearer +in blood to the great founder of the house. A Sultan, therefore, must +see in his brother a possible rival, who must, in case his life is +spared, be kept immured in the seclusion of the harem. A Sultan who +succeeds his brother naturally comes to the throne at a somewhat mature +age, but as ignorant as a babe of all that belongs to the duties of +government; lucky it is if he is not also physically and mentally worn +out by debauchery and excess. Turkish history is full of instances where +one of the first acts of a Sultan has been to order the execution of his +brothers and nephews. Thus Mahmoud II. put to death his infant nephew, +the son of his predecessor, and caused three pregnant inmates of the +harem to be flung into the Bosporus in order to make sure the +destruction of their unborn offspring. The actual task of government is +in some sort divided between the Sultan and the "Porte," a term which is +used to designate the chief dignitaries of the State. The "Sublime +Porte" is the Council of the Grand Vizier, who presides over the Council +of State, consisting of the ministers for home affairs, for foreign +affairs, and for executive acts, with several secretaries, one of whom +is supposed to be answerable that the acts of the ministry are in +conformity with, the supreme law of the Koran. The Porte of the +Defterdar, or Minister of Finance, whose council is styled the "Divan," +consists of several ministers and other functionaries. The "Agha" +formerly comprised many civil and military officials whose duties were +in some way immediately connected with the person of the Sultan, not +very unlike what we call a "kitchen cabinet." The foregoing are all +designated as "Dignitaries of the Pen." The "Dignitaries of the Sword" +are the viceregal and provincial governors, styled pachas and beys. They +are at once civil and military commanders; and, most important of all, +tax-gatherers, and not infrequently farmers as well as receivers of +taxes. If they forward to the Porte the required sum of money, little +care is had as to the manner in which their other duties are performed +or neglected. The manifold extortions of the local pachas keep one part +or another of the empire, not only in Europe, but in Asia, in a state of +perpetual insurrection, of which little is ever heard abroad. + +The Koran is the acknowledged source of all law, civil and +ecclesiastical. Its interpreter is the _Sheikh-ul-Islam_, "the Chief of +the Faithful," sometimes styled the "Grand Mufti." He is the head of the +_Ulemi_, or "Wise Men," comprising the body of great jurists, +theologians, and _literati_, any or all of whom he may summon to his +council. He is appointed for life by the Sultan, and may be removed by +him. His office is in theory, and sometimes in practice, one of great +importance. To him and his council the Sultan is supposed to refer every +act of importance. He does not declare war or conclude peace until the +Grand Mufti has formally pronounced the act "conformable to the law." It +is only in virtue of his _fetwa_, or decree, that the deposition of a +Sultan is legalized. A _fetwa_ from him would summon around the standard +of the Prophet all the fanatical hordes of Islam to fight to the death +against the infidels, in the firm belief that death on the battlefield +is a sure passport to Paradise. With the Koran as the supreme law, and +the Sheikh-ul-Islam its sole interpreter, nothing can be more futile +than the provision of the new Constitution of December, 1876, that "the +prerogatives of the Sultan are those of the constitutional sovereigns of +the West." + +It is necessary here to touch only briefly upon the rise and decline of +the Turkish empire in Europe. The Osmanlis take their name from Osman, +the leader of a Tartar horde driven out from the confines of the Chinese +empire, who overran Asia Minor. His great-grandson, Amurath I., crossed +into Europe, took Adrianople in 1361, and overran Bulgaria and Servia. +Several of his successors pushed far into Hungary and Poland. Mohammed +II. took Constantinople in 1453, and brought the Byzantine empire to a +close. Selim I. (1512-'20) extended his dominion over Mesopotamia, +Syria, and Egypt. Solyman II., "the Magnificent" (1520-1566), raised the +Turkish power to its highest point. He took Buda in 1529; and in 1532 +besieged Vienna with a force of 300,000 men, but was routed by the +Polish John Sobieski, with a force hardly a tenth as great. But for +another half century the Turkish power was sufficient to inspire terror +in all Christendom. With the death of Solyman, the power of the Turks +began to wane, slowly but surely, and at the close of the last century +the expulsion of the Turks from Europe seemed close at hand. The great +wars of the French Revolution gave them a new lease of possession, and +at its close Sultan Mahmoud II., who was by blood half French,[I] +endeavored to introduce reforms which some men hoped and others feared +would restore the Ottoman Empire. But the result showed the +impossibility of patching up rotten garments with new cloth. The Greek +revolution broke out, and at its close the Sultan found himself no match +for his vassal, Mehemet Ali, Pacha of Egypt, and it was only the +intervention of Russia, Austria, and Great Britain which prevented the +Pacha from establishing at Constantinople the seat of a new empire, +which, be it what it might, would not have been Turkish. What were the +reasons of Great Britain and France it is not now easy to say. Those of +Russia are patent: she wanted Constantinople to remain in the hands of +the Turks until she herself was in a position to seize it. From that +time the Ottoman Empire became the "sick man of Europe," around whose +bedside all the other powers were watching, each determined that none of +the others should gain the greater share in his estates when he died. In +1844 they formally adopted him into the family of the nations of Europe, +and promised that his safety should be the common care of all. + +[Footnote I: His mother was a Creole, a native of Martinique, and cousin +of that other Creole who came to be the Empress Josephine. She had been +sent to France to be educated, and on her voyage homeward was captured +by an Algerine pirate who sold her to the Dey, by whom she was sent as a +present to the Sultan, whose favorite Sultana she became.] + +Russia, in the mean while, was busy in endeavoring to make herself the +patron of the Christian subjects of the Sultan, and when the time +appeared ripe, entered upon those overt acts which led to the Crimean +war. Out of this war the Ottoman Empire came with considerable apparent +advantage. The man supposed to be sick unto death showed that there was +unexpected vitality--of a spasmodic sort indeed--in his Asiatic members; +and again there were hopes and fears of his ultimate convalescence, if +not of restoration to robust health. That those hopes and fears were +baseless is now clear enough. Never was the sick man so feeble as within +the last five years. + +The existing crisis in the Eastern Question came about in the ordinary +course of things. In the summer of 1875 the pecuniary needs of the +Sublime Porte were more than usually urgent, and the tax-gatherers were +even more than usually exacting. The normal result ensued: there were +local risings in Bosnia and Herzegovina. A secret Bulgarian +revolutionary committee, favored by Russia, has for years existed in +Bucharest, the capital of Roumania. They sent emissaries into Bulgaria +to excite an insurrection in that province. The plan was to set fire to +Adrianople and Philippopolis, each in scores of places, to burn other +towns, mainly inhabited by Mussulmans, and force all the Bulgarian +Rayahs to join the uprising. The insurrection broke out prematurely in +May, 1876, and only a few were actively engaged in it. Two or three +thousand troops would have been sufficient to have quelled the rising; +but there were none in the province, and despite the urgent appeals of +the Pacha none were sent. The Mussulmans, who are in a fearful minority +there, were thrown into a panic; and the Pacha gave orders for calling +an ignorant and fanatical population to arms. Regular troops were at +last sent. The Turks gained an easy victory, and perpetrated those +ineffable atrocities, the recital of which sent a thrill of horror +throughout Christendom. The Bulgarians fled northward toward Servia, +pursued by the Turks, who it is said made predatory incursions. Prince +Milan made some extraordinary demands upon the Sultan, among which were +that the government of Bulgaria should be committed to him and that of +Bosnia to Prince Nicholas of Herzegovina. The Grand Vizier refused to +listen to these demands; whereupon the Prince called the Servians to +arms, declared war against the Sultan, invaded Bulgaria, and soon +assumed the title of King of Servia. His invasion of Bulgaria met with +ill success. Although aided by many Russian soldiers and officers, +absent on special leave from their regiments, the Servians were driven +back over their frontiers; and the war was finally suspended by a truce +for six months. We suppose that there can be no doubt that the rising in +Bulgaria and the action of Servia were favored, if not by the Czar +personally, yet by the Russian government, although it would, if +possible, have withheld Prince Milan from declaring war when he did. The +Servian Bishop Strossmayer expressly affirms that the insurrection in +Herzegovina was prematurely commenced against the advice of Russia, and +that Servia and Montenegro went to war of their own accord, though they +have naturally accepted the Russian aid since accorded to them. He adds +that Prince Gortschakoff, who in the Russian government is all that +Prince Bismarck is in that of Germany, the year before last "informed +Prince Milan that Russia was unprepared; that only within three years +did she count on taking Constantinople; and that only then would she +call on the Sclaves of the South to plant the Greek cross on the dome of +St. Sophia." + +Meanwhile, on the news of the Turkish atrocities in Bulgaria, the Czar +put his troops in motion toward the Turkish frontier, and made demands +upon the Sultan which, if acceded to, would have practically made the +Czar the actual sovereign of all Turkey in Europe north of the Balkhan. +Great Britain sent her fleet to the mouth of the Dardanelles to +"maintain the interests of the British empire" in that part of the +world. Diplomatic notes and rejoinders passed between the cabinets of +the great Powers; and early in January an International Conference was +assembled at Constantinople to endeavor to settle, or at least to stave +off the present crisis in the Eastern Question; Great Britain, through +her representative, the Earl of Salisbury, apparently taking the lead. +As we write, in the early days of February, all that is definitely known +is: The Conference has utterly failed; the Sultan absolutely refused to +accede to the propositions made to him; and the ambassadors of the great +Powers have been withdrawn from Constantinople. Surmises and rumors as +to what will next be done are rife; not the least significant or the +least probable being that the Emperors of Germany, Russia, and Austria +are consulting as to taking the matter into their own hands. Whatever +the immediate issue may be--whether a peace of some kind; a partial war +between Russia on the one side, and Turkey, with or without Great +Britain, on the other; or a general European war--of one thing we may be +certain: it will not cause Russia to more than postpone still longer her +long-cherished determination to have Constantinople. + +Mr. Carlyle has suggested, as a final settlement of the Eastern +Question, that Turkey in Europe should be divided between Russia, +Austria, and Great Britain. But, as is his wont, he leaves out some +essential factors in the problem. No part of this territory would be of +the slightest use to Great Britain, except perhaps the island of Candia +as a sort of half-way house in the highway to India by the Suez canal. +She has everything to lose and little more than nothing to gain by any +such partition, which, as it necessarily must, would give Constantinople +to Russia. Mr. Carlyle has so thorough a dislike to France--and with him +dislike is nearly equivalent to contempt--that he naturally leaves her +out of the problem. But it is surprising that he leaves out his favorite +Germany, perhaps the most important factor of all. + +We can conceive of a partition of Turkey between Russia and Austria +which would be so manifestly and equally advantageous to both that they +might agree to it. And the line of division is clearly indicated by +nature. Austria, like every other great civilized nation, desires to be +a maritime power; but she touches the sea only at one point, the head of +the Adriatic, with the narrow strip known as Dalmatia, running half way +down its eastern coast. There are only two considerable ports, Trieste +and Fiume. Eastward, and back of Dalmatia, are Servia, Bosnia, and +Herzegovina; and below these, on the Adriatic, is the long coast-line of +Albania, with several good harbors. Across the narrowing isthmus is the +Archipelago, with the excellent harbor of Salonika. Now look on any +tolerable map, and one will see on the eastern borders of Servia, where +the Danube breaks through the Carpathians, a range of mountains shooting +southward to and crossing the Balkhan, from which it is continued still +southward to the Archipelago, the whole dividing European Turkey into +two almost equal halves. Let Russia take the eastern half, comprising +Roumania, Bulgaria, and the half of Roumelia, including Constantinople, +the whole shore of the Sea of Marmora and the Dardanelles--all that she +really needs or cares for. Let Austria take the other half, which would +give her the whole eastern coast of the Adriatic, and a large frontage +on the Archipelago, and so a double access to the Mediterranean and +thence to the ocean. She would acquire thereby an access of valuable +territory equal to almost half of her present dominions, which would +render her relatively to Russia fully as strong as she now is. + +But such a partition could not be carried into effect without the +concurrence of Germany, for Germany is undoubtedly as a military power +much stronger than Russia. Germany certainly would never assent unless +she could somewhere get something equivalent to that gained by Austria +and Russia, and not an inch of Turkey would be of any use to her. But in +quite another part of Europe is a territory comparatively small in +extent, which would be of priceless value to Germany. This is the little +kingdom of Holland, which is indeed physically a part of Germany, and +essential to the rounding off of the boundaries of the new empire. It +would give her an extended sea-front, which is what she also needs in +order to become a great naval and commercial power. It would give her +also in the Zuyder Zee a naval depot and harbor of refuge inferior only +to that of the Black Sea, and immeasurably superior to any other in +Europe. Furthermore, with Holland would go the possession of Java and as +many other great islands in the Indian Ocean as she might choose to +seize and colonize. To Holland, indeed, we think such an annexation +would be a decided gain. Her people are in race, language, and religion +closely allied to the Germans. It would be better for her to become a +State, inferior only to Prussia, of the great German empire, than a +feeble kingdom, always at the mercy of her powerful neighbors. But +whether it would be for her good or not, would not be likely to be much +taken into account should the great Powers agree upon a reconstruction +of the political map of Europe. The interests of France would suffer no +material damage from this, provided she were left free to extend her +Algerian possessions over the whole Mediterranean coast of Africa, now +almost a desert, but once the granary of the Roman empire, and +abundantly capable of being restored to its ancient fertility; or in +case she should think her dignity required something more, she might +receive in Belgium far more than a counterpoise for her recent loss of +Alsace-Lorraine. + +Suppose that in some not remote future the policy of Russia, Germany, +and Austria shall happen to be directed by statesmen as able and +unscrupulous as Gortschakoff, Bismarck, and Von Beust, we think such a +settlement of the Eastern Question by no means an improbable one. And +should these Powers agree to effect it, all the rest of Europe could do +nothing to the contrary. + + A. H. GUERNSEY. + + + + +THE LASSIE'S COMPLAINT. + + + Now simmer cleeds the groves in green, + An' decks the flow'ry brae; + An' fain I'd wander out at e'en, + But out I daurna gae. + For there's a laddie down the gate + Wha's like a ghaist to me; + An' gin I meet him air or late, + He winna lat me be. + + He glow'rs like ony silly gowk, + He ca's me heavenly fair. + I bid him look like ither fowk, + Nor fash me sae nae mair. + I ca' him coof an' hav'rel too, + An' frown wi' scornfu' ee. + But a' I say, or a' I do, + He winna lat me be. + + JAMES KENNEDY. + + + + +ASSJA. + +BY IVAN TOURGUÉNEFF. + + +I was then twenty-five years old, began N. N. As you see, the story is +of days long past. I was absolutely my own master, and was making a +foreign tour, not to "finish my education," as the phrase is nowadays, +but to look about me in the world a little. I was healthy, young, +light-hearted; I had plenty of money and as yet no cares; I lived in the +present and did precisely as I wished; in one word, life was in full +flower with me. It did not occur to me that man is not like a plant, and +that his time of bloom is but once. Youth eats its gilded gingerbread, +and thinks that is to be its daily food; but the time comes when one +longs in vain for a bit of dry bread. But it is not worth while to speak +of that. + +I was travelling without aim or plan: made stops wherever it pleased me, +and went on whenever I felt the need of seeing fresh faces--especially +faces. Men interested me above all things. I detested monuments, +collections of curiosities. The mere sight of a guide roused in me +feelings of weariness and fury. In the Dresden "Grüne Gewölbe" I nearly +lost my wits. Nature made a powerful impression upon me; but I did not +love her so-called beauties--her mighty hills, her crags and torrents. I +did not like to have them take possession of me and disturb my +tranquillity. Faces, on the contrary--living, earthly faces, men's talk, +laughter, movements--I could not do without. In the midst of a crowd I +was always particularly gay and at my ease. It gave me real pleasure +merely to go where others went, to shout when others shouted, and at the +same time to observe how these others shouted. It pleased me to observe +men--yes, I did not observe them merely; I studied them with a delighted +and insatiable curiosity. But I am digressing again. + +Twenty years ago, then, I was living in the little German town of S----, +on the left bank of the Rhine. I sought solitude. I had been wounded to +the heart by a young widow whose acquaintance I had made at a +watering-place. She was extremely pretty and vivacious, flirted with +everybody--alas! with me also, poor rustic! At first she had lifted me +to the skies, but soon plunged me in despair when she sacrificed me to a +rosy-cheeked lieutenant from Bavaria. Seriously speaking, the wound in +my heart was not very deep; but I considered it my duty to give myself +for a time to melancholy and retirement--what pleasure youth finds in +these!--and accordingly settled myself in S----. + +This little town had attracted me by its position at the foot of high +hills, by its old walls and towers, its hundred-year-old diadems, its +steep bridges over the clear little brook which flowed into the Rhine, +but above all by its good wine. And after sunset--it was in June--the +loveliest of fair-haired Rhineland girls sauntered through the narrow +streets and cried, "Good evening!" in their sweet tones to the stranger +whom they met, some of them even lingering still when the moon rose +behind the peaked roofs of the old houses, and the little stones of the +pavement showed distinctly in her steady light. Then I delighted in +strolling about the old town. The moon seemed to look down benignly from +a cloudless sky, and the town received this glance and lay peacefully +there wrapped in sleep and veiled in moonbeams--the light that at once +soothes and vaguely stirs the soul. The weathercock upon the high, sharp +spire gleamed in dull gold; long gleams of gold quivered on the dark +surface of the stream; some dim lights--O thrifty German folk!--burned +here and there in the small windows under the slated roofs; the vines +stretched out mysterious fingers from the walls; something stirred +perhaps in the shadow of the fountain in the little three-cornered +market-place; suddenly the sleepy cry of the watchman sounded; then a +good-natured dog growled in an undertone; and the air kissed the brow so +softly, and the lindens smelled so sweet, that the breast involuntarily +heaved quicker, and the word "Gretchen" rose to the lips, half a cry, +half question. + +This little town of S---- lies about two versts from the Rhine. I went +often to look at the majestic river, and would sit for hours upon a +stone bench under a lonely, large oak, thinking, not without a certain +exertion, of my faithless widow. A little statue of the Virgin, with a +red heart pierced with swords upon her breast, looked sadly out from the +leaves. On the opposite bank lay the town of L----, somewhat larger than +the one in which I had established myself. One evening I was sitting in +my favorite spot, looking in turn at the stream, the sky, and the +vineyards. Before me some white-hooded urchins were climbing over the +sides of a boat that was drawn up on the shore and lay there keel +upward. Little skiffs with sails hardly swollen passed slowly along; +green waves slid by with a gentle, rushing sound. All at once strains of +music greeted my ears. I listened. They were playing a waltz in L----. +The double bass grumbled out its broken tones, the violins rang clear +between, the flutes trilled noisily. + +"What is that?" I asked an old man who approached me dressed in a plush +waistcoat, blue stockings, and shoes with buckles. + +"That?" he replied, shifting his pipe from one corner of his mouth to +the other. "Those are the students who have come from B---- to the +_Commers_." + +"I will see this Commers," I thought. "Besides, I have not yet been in +L----." I found a ferryman and crossed the river. + +Perhaps not every one knows what a Commers is. It is a particular kind +of drinking bout, in which the students from one section, or of one +society, unite. Almost every participant of a Commers wears the +conventional costume of the German student: a short jacket, high boots, +and a little cap with colored vizor. The students generally assemble at +midday and carouse till morning, drinking, singing, smoking, and +occasionally they hire a band. + +Such a Commers was at this moment held in L---- at a little inn called +the Sun, in a garden adjoining the street. Flags were flying from the +inn and over the garden itself. The students sat round tables under the +spreading lindens; a huge bulldog under one of the tables. The musicians +were under a trellis at one side, playing with great spirit, and +refreshing themselves from time to time with mugs of beer. A great crowd +had collected in the street before the unpretending little inn. The good +citizens of L---- were not of the stuff to let slip a good opportunity +of seeing strange guests. I mingled with the crowd of lookers-on. It +gave me an immense satisfaction to watch the faces of the students, +their embraces, their exclamations, the innocent affectations of youth, +the eager glances, the unrestrained laughter--the best laughter in the +world. All this generous ferment of young, fresh life, this striving +forward, no matter whither so it be forward, this rollicking, +untrammelled existence excited and infected me. Why not join them, I +thought? + +"Assja, have you had enough?" suddenly asked in Russian a man's voice +behind me. + +"Let us wait a little longer," answered another voice, a woman's, in the +same tongue. + +I turned hastily. My eyes fell on a handsome young fellow in a loose +jacket and cap. On his arm hung a girl of medium height, with a straw +hat which entirely hid the upper part of her face. + +"You are Russians?" I said aloud involuntarily. + +The young man smiled and answered, "Yes; we are Russians." + +"I did not expect, in such an out-of-the-way place----" I began. + +"Nor did we," he interrupted me. "But what does that signify? All the +better. Permit me to introduce myself. My name is Gagin, and this +is"--he paused for an instant--"my sister. May we ask your name?" + +I told him, and we began a conversation. I learned that Gagin, like +myself, was travelling for pleasure; that he had arrived at L---- the +week previous, and was now staying there. To speak candidly, I was +always unwilling to make the acquaintance of Russians in other +countries. I could recognize them at any distance by their gait, the cut +of their clothes, and more than all by the expression of their faces. +The self-satisfied, scornful, and usually haughty expression would +change suddenly to one timid and suspicious; in a moment the whole man +is on his guard, his glance wanders about unsteadily. "Have I said +anything ridiculous? Are they laughing at me?" this anxious look seems +to say. But a moment more, and the majesty of the physiognomy is +restored, only occasionally replaced by stupidity. Yes, I avoided +Russians, but Gagin pleased me at once. There are such fortunate faces +in the world. To look at them is a pleasure for every one. One feels at +once cheered and caressed by them. Gagin had just such a gentle, +attractive face, with great soft eyes and fine curly hair. When he +spoke, even if you did not see his face, you felt by the mere sound of +his voice that he was smiling. + +The young girl whom he had called his sister also seemed to me at the +first glance very lovely. There was something peculiar and remarkable in +the traits of her round, brown face, with its thin, delicate nose, its +round, almost babyish cheeks, and its clear, dark eyes. Her form was +graceful, but apparently not yet fully developed. She did not in the +least resemble her brother. + +"Will you come home with us?" Gagin asked me. "I think we have seen +enough of the Germans. Our beloved countrymen would certainly have +broken some window panes or smashed a few chairs, but these fellows are +quite too well behaved. What do you say, Assja, shall we go home?" + +The young girl nodded assent. + +"We live just beyond the village," Gagin continued, "in a little +solitary house far up the hillside. It is really fine there. You shall +see for yourself. The landlady promised me to have some buttermilk for +us. It will be dark very soon, and then you can cross the Rhine far more +pleasantly by moonlight." + +We set out. Through a low gate--for the town was surrounded on all sides +by an old wall, some of whose loop-holes even yet remained +undestroyed--we gained the open country, and after we had walked about a +hundred paces beside a stone wall we came to a steep and narrow path up +the hill, into which Gagin turned. The slope on both sides was planted +with grapes. The sun had but just set, and a soft purple light rested on +the green vines, the long poles, the dusty soil covered with bits of +broken slate and stone, and upon the white walls of a small house with +steep roof and light windows, which stood high above us on the mountain +which we were climbing. + +"Here is our place!" exclaimed Gagin as we drew near the house. "And +here is the landlady just bringing us our buttermilk. Good evening, +madam! We will be there in a moment. But first," he added, "look about +you once. What do you say to this outlook?" + +The view was indeed charming. The Rhine lay before us, a strip of silver +between green banks. In one place it glowed in the purple and gold of +the sunset. All the houses in the little towns clustering on the shores +stood out distinctly; hills and fields spread far before us. Below us it +was lovely, but above it was lovelier still. The brilliant transparency +of the atmosphere, and the depth and purity of the sky, made a profound +impression on me. The air was fresh and exhilarating. It blew with a +light wave motion, as if it felt itself more free on the hilltop. + +"You have chosen a magnificent situation," I said. + +"Assja found it out," Gagin answered. "Now, Assja, give your orders. Let +us have everything brought here. We will take tea in the open air. We +can hear the music better here. Haven't you noticed it?" he went on. "A +waltz close at hand may be often good for nothing--mere commonplace +jingle. It becomes exquisite at a distance; sets all the sentimental +strings in one's heart a twanging." Assja (her name was properly Anna; +but Gagin always called her Assja, and I shall allow myself that +privilege)--Assja went into the house and soon returned with the +landlady. Both together they carried a great tea-tray with a jug full of +milk, plates, spoons, sugar, berries, and bread. We seated ourselves and +began to eat. Assja took off her hat. Her black hair, cut rather short, +and curled like a boy's, fell in thick ringlets over neck and shoulders. +At first she was shy; but Gagin said to her: + +"Assja, don't be afraid. He won't hurt you!" + +She smiled, and immediately addressed a little conversation to me. I +have never seen a more restless creature. She did not sit still a +moment. She stood up, ran into the house, came out again, sang in an +undertone, and laughed often in an odd way. It seemed as if she was not +laughing at what she heard, but at stray thoughts which came into her +head. Her large, clear eyes looked at us frankly and fearlessly. Now and +then, however, the lids fell, and then her glance became suddenly deep +and gentle. + +For nearly two hours we chatted together. Daylight was long past, and +the twilight had changed from scarlet and gold to a faint redness, then +to a clear gray, and finally all was lost in night; but our speech +flowed as uninterruptedly, peaceful, and quiet as the air that +surrounded us. Gagin brought a bottle of Rhine wine, and we drank it +leisurely. We could still hear the music. The notes seemed fainter and +sweeter to us. Lights began to appear in the town and on the river. +Assja's head drooped forward so that her hair fell over her eyes. She +was silent and breathed heavily. Then she declared that she was sleepy, +and went into the house; but I saw that she stood for a long time behind +the closed window without lighting her lamp. Then the moon rose, and her +beams quivered on the surface of the water. Everything was bright or in +deep shadow, but certainly took on a different appearance. Even the wine +in our glasses sparkled with a mysterious brilliancy. The wind had +fallen as if it had folded its wings and were resting. Warm, spicy odors +of the night rose from the ground. + +"It is time for me to go, or I shall not find a ferryman," I said. + +"Yes; it is time," Gagin repeated. + +We descended the footpath. Suddenly stones began to rattle down. Assja +was running after us. + +"Aren't you asleep then?" her brother asked her. But she ran on before +us without replying. The last dim lights which the students had lighted +in the little inn garden showed through the branches of the trees, and +lent them a gay, fantastic appearance. We found Assja at the shore +talking to the old boatmen. I sprang into the boat and took leave of my +new friends. Gagin promised to visit me on the next day. I shook his +hand and held mine out to Assja, but she merely looked at me and nodded. +The boat was pushed off and was borne down on the swift current. The +ferryman, a hale old fellow, dipped his oars deep into the dark flood. + +"You're in the streak of moonshine--you've spoiled it," Assja called +after me. + +I looked down. The waves were rippling darkly about the boat. + +"Good-by!" rang her voice again. + +"Till to-morrow," Gagin added. + +The boat touched the bank. I stepped out and looked back, but could see +no one on the shore behind me. The moonshine spanned the stream again +like a golden bridge, and like another good-by I caught the strains of +an old country waltz. Gagin was right. I felt that all the strings of my +heart trembled responsively. I crossed the dusky fields to my house, +drinking great draughts of the balmy air, and giving myself up wholly to +a sweet, vague feeling of expectation. I felt myself happy. But why? I +wished for nothing, I thought of nothing. I was merely happy. + +Still smiling from the fulness of delightful and changing sensations, I +sank into bed, and had already closed my eyes when it suddenly occurred +to me that I had not thought of my cruel fair one once in the whole +evening. "What does it mean?" I asked myself. "Am I not hopelessly in +love?" But just as I put this question to myself I fell asleep, as it +seemed, like a baby in its cradle. + + * * * * * + +The next morning (I was awake, but had not risen) some one knocked with +a stick under my window, and a voice that I immediately recognized as +Gagin's began to sing, + + Sleepest thou still? + My lute shall wake thee. + +I ran to open the door for him. + +"Good morning," said Gagin as he entered. "I disturb you a little early. +But what a morning it is! Fresh, dewy; the larks singing." With his +wavy, shining hair, his bare neck and ruddy checks, he was as fresh as +the morning himself. + +I dressed myself, and we went out into the garden, sat down upon a +bench, ordered coffee, and began to talk. Gagin confided to me his plans +for the future. Possessed of a fair property, and entirely independent, +he wished to devote himself to painting; only he regretted that this +decision had been a late one, and that he had already lost much time. I +also detailed my projects, and even took him into the secret of my +unhappy love affair. He listened patiently, but, so far as I could see, +the story of my passion did not awake any very lively sympathy in him. +After he had sighed once or twice out of good manners, he proposed to me +to come and see his studio. I was ready at once. + +We did not find Assja. She had gone to the "ruin," the landlady assured +us. Two versts from L---- were the remains of a castle of the middle +ages. Gagin laid all his canvases before me. There was life and truth in +his sketches, a certain breadth and freedom of treatment, but not one +was finished, and the drawing was careless and often faulty. I told him +my opinion frankly. + +"Yes, yes," he interrupted me with a sigh. "You are right; it is all +weak and unsatisfactory. But what is to be done? I haven't studied +properly, and the inexcusable carelessness shows everywhere. Before +working it always seems as if I were capable of eagle flights--it seems +as I could hurl the earth out of her course; but when it comes to +execution one loses strength quickly enough, and is tired." + +I began to encourage him, but he motioned with his hand that I should be +silent, rolled up his canvases, and threw himself on the sofa. "If my +patience lasts, I shall make something yet," he muttered in his beard; +"if not--then I shall stay a country lout. Come, let us look after +Assja." We started. + + * * * * * + +The way to the ruin wound round the slope of a wooded valley, at whose +bottom a brook flowed noisily over its pebbles as if it were anxious to +lose itself in the great stream that was shining peacefully behind the +sharply indented mountain side. Gagin called my attention to some +partially lighted spots; in his words the artist certainly spoke, if not +the painter. The river soon appeared. On the summit of the naked rock +rose a square town, black with age but in tolerable preservation, though +it was cleft from top to bottom. Moss-grown walls adjoined this town, +ivy clung here and there, a tangle of briars filled the embrasures and +the shattered arches. A stone foot-walk led to the door that remained +intact. We were already near it when suddenly a girl's figure sped by +us, sprang over the heaps of rubbish, and seated herself on a projection +of the wall directly over the abyss. "There is Assja," cried Gagin. "Is +she mad?" + +Through the gate we stepped into a spacious courtyard half filled with +wild apple trees and stinging nettles. It was indeed Assja, who was +sitting on the projection. She looked down at us and laughed, but did +not stir from her place. Gagin threatened her with his finger. I began +to expostulate aloud with her on her recklessness. + +"Don't do that," Gagin whispered to me. "Don't exasperate her. You don't +know her. She would be capable of clambering up the town. Look yonder, +rather, and see how ingenious the people hereabouts are." + +I looked about me. A thrifty old lady had made herself very comfortable +in a kind of narrow booth made of boards piled up in one corner, and +knitted her stocking, while she occasionally glanced askance at us. She +had beer, cake, and soda-water for tourists. We sat down on a bench and +attacked our heavy tin mugs of cooling beer. Assja still sat motionless; +she had drawn up her feet, and wound her muslin scarf about her head. +Her charming, slender figure showed sharp against the sky, but I could +not look at it without annoyance. Even on the previous day I had seen +something intense, unnatural in her. "Does she want to astonish us?" I +thought. "What for? What a childish freak!" As if she had fathomed my +thought, she cast a quick and piercing glance at me, laughed loudly, +sprang in two bounds from the wall, and going to the old woman, asked +for a glass of water. + +"You think that I want to drink it?" she said, turning to her brother. +"No; there are some flowers up there that I must water." + +Gagin made no reply, but she scrambled up the ruins glass in hand, and, +stopping from time to time and bending down, with extraordinary +painstaking she let fall some drops of water, which glistened in the +sun. Her movements were full of grace, but I was vexed as before, +although I was forced to admire her lightness and dexterity. In one +perilous spot she uttered a little shriek with design, and then laughed +loudly again. That annoyed me still more. + +"The young lady climbs like a goat," mumbled the old woman, and stopped +knitting for a moment. + +Meanwhile Assja had emptied her glass and come down, roguishly swaying +to and fro. A strange, imperceptible smile played round her brows, and +nostrils, and lips; half audacious, half merry, the dark eyes were +shining. + +"You find my behavior scandalous," her face seemed to say. "Very well. I +know that you admire me." + +"Neatly done, Assja; neatly done," said Gagin under his breath. + +It seemed as if she felt suddenly ashamed of herself. Her long lashes +fell, and she sat down near us meekly, as if conscious of naughtiness. +Now for the first time I could see her face fairly--the most changeful +that I had ever beheld. For a few moments it was very pale, and took on +a reserved, almost a melancholy expression. Her features seemed larger, +stronger, and more simple. She was perfectly still. We made the tour of +the ruins (Assja followed us), and were very enthusiastic over the view. +Meanwhile dinnertime approached. Gagin paid the old woman, asked for +another glass of beer, and cried, turning to me with a sly look, + +"To the health of the lady of your heart!" + +"Has he--have you such a lady?" asked Assja suddenly. + +"Who hasn't?" replied Gagin. + +Assja became thoughtful. Her face assumed yet another expression. The +challenging, almost bold smile returned. + +On the way home she laughed more, and her behavior was more whimsical +than ever. She broke for herself a long branch, carried it over her +shoulder like a gun, and bound her scarf about her head. A party of +fair-haired young English dandies met us. As if at a word of command, +they all stood aside to let Assja pass, with a cold glare of +astonishment in their eyes, while she began to sing loudly in mockery. +As soon as we had reached the house she went to her chamber, and +appeared at dinner in a most elaborate dress, with carefully arranged +hair, and wearing gloves. She behaved with great propriety, not to say +stillness, at table, hardly touched her food, and drank water out of a +wineglass. Evidently she wished to appear before me in a new rōle, that +of a conventional and well brought up young lady. Gagin let her alone. +It was easy to see that it had become a habit with him to let her have +her will in all things. At times he looked at her good-naturedly and +shrugged his shoulders slightly, as much as to say, "Be indulgent; she +is only a child." When the meal was ended Assja rose, made us a +courtesy, and taking up her hat, asked Gagin if she might go to see Frau +Luise. + +"Since when have you begun to ask permission?" answered Gagin with his +ready smile, but with a little astonishment. "Is the time long to you +with us?" + +"No; but yesterday I promised Frau Luise that I would visit her. And +then I think you two would rather be alone. Mr. N." (she pointed to me) +"may have something to tell you." + +She went. + +"Frau Luise," Gagin began, taking pains to avoid my glance, "is the +widow of a former burgomaster of this place; a good old soul, but rather +narrow-minded. She has taken a great fancy to Assja. It is Assja's +passion to make the acquaintance of people of the lower classes. I have +found that pride is at the bottom of the matter every time. I have +spoiled her thoroughly, you see," he went on after a pause; "but what +was there for me to do? I never could carry a point by firmness with any +one; most of all not with her. It is my duty to be indulgent with her." + +I was silent. Gagin gave another direction to the conversation. The more +I learned of him the more he pleased me. I soon understood him. His was +a real Russian character--truth-loving, faithful, simple, but +unfortunately rather sluggish, lacking firmness, and without the inward +fire. Youth did not flame up in him; it burned with a gentle glow. He +was most amiable and sensible; but I could not imagine what he would +become in manhood. He wished to be an artist. Without constant, +absorbing endeavor, no one is an artist. You exhaust yourself, I +thought, looking at his gentle face and listening to the slow cadence of +his voice. No; you will not strain every nerve; you will never succeed +in mastering yourself. And yet it was impossible not to be attracted by +him. My heart was really drawn to him. It may have been four hours that +we talked together, sometimes sitting on the sofa, sometimes walking +quietly up and down before the house; and in these four hours we became +real friends. + +The day was at its close, and it was time to go home. Assja had not +returned. + +"She is a wild creature," Gagin said. "If you please, I will go back +with you, and we will go to Frau Luise's on the way, and I will ask if +she is still there. The distance is trifling." + +"We descended to the town, turned into a crooked and narrow cross +street, and came to a standstill before a house of four stories with two +windows on a floor. The second story projected into the street beyond +the first; the third and fourth reached still further forward than the +second. The whole house, with its old-fashioned carving, its two thick +pillars below, its steep, tiled roof, and the beak-shaped gutter running +out from the eaves, had the appearance of some monstrous, squatting +bird. + +"Assja," called Gagin, "are you there?" + +A lighted window in the third story was thrown up, and Assja's little +dark head appeared. Behind her peered forth the face of a toothless and +blear-eyed old woman. + +"Here I am," answered Assja, coquettishly leaning over the window-sill +on her elbows. "It is exceedingly pleasant here. Catch," she added, +flinging a bit of geranium down to Gagin. "Imagine that I am the lady of +your heart." + +Frau Luise laughed. + +"N. is going," responded Gagin. "He would like to take leave of you." + +"Indeed?" said Assja. "In that case give him my sprig. I am coming home +directly." + +She shut the window, and I fancied that she gave Frau Luise a kiss. +Gagin handed me the sprig without a word. Without a word I put it in my +pocket, went to the ferry, and crossed to the other side. + +I remember that I went home thinking of nothing definite, but feeling a +certain dull ache at my heart, when suddenly a strong odor, well known +to me, but not usual in Germany, made me stop puzzled. I stood still and +recognized by the roadside a hemp field of moderate size, whose smell +reminded me at once of my native steppes. A mighty homesickness arose in +me. I had a longing to feel Russian air blowing on my cheeks, to have +Russian ground beneath my feet. "What am I doing here? Why am I +wandering about among strangers in a strange land?" I cried aloud, and +the vague uneasiness that weighed on my spirits changed suddenly to a +bitter burning pain. I reached the house in a mood entirely different +from the one of the preceding day. I was strangely excited. I could not +compose myself. A feeling of vexation which I could not explain to +myself possessed me. At last I sat down to think of my faithless widow +(for I devoted the close of every day to official recollections of this +lady), and I took out one of her letters. But this time I did not even +open it. My thoughts had taken another turn; I thought--of Assja. I +remembered that Gagin, in the course of conversation, had spoken of +certain obstacles which would make his return to Russia very difficult. +"Is she then really his sister?" I cried aloud. + +I undressed myself, went to bed, and tried to sleep; but an hour +afterward I was sitting up with my elbow on the pillow, and still +thinking of the "capricious maid with her affected laugh." "She has a +form like the little Galatea of Raphael in the Farnese," I said to +myself. "Yes, and she is not his sister." + +Meanwhile the widow's letter lay quietly on the floor, bleached by a +moonbeam. + + * * * * * + +However, on the following day I went again to L----. I said to myself +that I wished to visit Gagin, but in truth I was curious to watch Assja, +to see if she would pursue the extravagances of the day previous. I +found them both in the parlor, and wonderful!--was it because I had +thought so much of Russia in the night and the morning?--Assja appeared +to me a real Russian girl--yes, even a very ordinary one, almost like a +servant. She wore a shabby gown; her hair was combed back behind her +ears. She sat quietly by the window, busy with some sewing, sedate and +still as if she never in her life had been otherwise. She hardly spoke, +examined her work from time to time; and her features had an expression +so dull and commonplace that I was involuntarily reminded of our own +Kathinkas and Maschinkas. To complete the resemblance, she began to hum +"My darling little mother." I looked at her sallow, languid face, +thought of yesterday's fantasies, and got suddenly out of temper. The +weather was magnificent. Gagin declared that he was going to sketch from +nature. I asked if he would permit me to accompany him, if it would not +disturb him? + +"On the contrary," said he, "you will assist me by your suggestions." + +He put on his Vandyk hat and his painting blouse, took his canvas under +his arm, and started. I followed him slowly; Assja remained at home. In +going out Gagin begged her to take care that the soup should not be too +watery. Assja promised to oversee it in the kitchen. Gagin reached a +dell which I already knew, sat down upon a stone, and began to sketch an +old, hollow, wide-branched oak. I lay down in the grass and took out a +book, but my reading did not advance beyond the second page, nor did he +blacken much paper. We chatted a great deal, and, if my memory does not +deceive me, we discoursed very subtly and profoundly about work: what +one should avoid, what strive for, and in what consisted the real merit +of the artists of our day. At last Gagin declared that he was not in the +mood for work, threw himself down beside me, and then for the first time +our youthful talk flowed free, now passionate, now dreamy, now almost +inspired, but always vague--a conversation peculiar to Russians. After +we had talked ourselves tired we started for home, filled with +satisfaction that we had accomplished something, had arrived at some +result. I found Assja precisely as I had left her. Whatever pains I +might take with my scrutiny I could discover no trace of coquetry, no +evidence of a part designedly played. This time it was impossible to +accuse her of oddity. "Aha!" Gagin said; "you have imposed penance and +fasting on yourself." In the evening she gaped several times without +pretence at concealment, and retired early. I also took leave of Gagin +betimes, and having reached home, I gave myself up to no more dreams. +This day ended in sober reflections. But I remember that as I settled +myself to sleep I said aloud, "What a chameleon the girl is!" And after +a moment's thought I added, "And she is certainly not his sister." + + * * * * * + +In this way two whole weeks passed. I visited the Gagins every day. +Assja seemed to shun me. She indulged in no more of those extravagances +which had so astonished me on the first days of our acquaintance. It +seemed to me that she was secretly troubled or perplexed. Neither did +she laugh so much. I observed her with interest. + +She spoke French and German indifferently well, but one could see in +everything that she had not been in the hands of women since her +childhood, and the strange, desultory education which she had received +had nothing in common with Gagin's. In spite of the Vandyk hat and the +painter's blouse, the delicate, almost effeminate Russian nobleman was +always apparent in him; but she was not in the least like a noblewoman. +In all her movements there was something unsteady. Here was a graft +lately made, wine not yet fermented. Naturally of a timid and shy +disposition, she yet was annoyed by her own timidity, and in her +vexation she compelled herself to be unconcerned and at her ease, in +which she did not always succeed. Several times I turned the +conversation to her life in Russia, her past. She answered my questions +reluctantly. I learned, however, that she had lived in the country for a +long time before her travels. Once I found her with a book. She was +alone. Her head supported by both hands, the fingers twisted deep in her +hair, she was devouring the words with her eyes. + +"Bravo!" I called out to her on entering. "You are very busy." + +She raised her head and looked at me with great gravity and earnestness. + +"Do you really think that I can do nothing but laugh?" she said, and was +about to withdraw. + +I glanced at the title of the book; it was a French novel. + +"I can't commend your choice," I said. + +"What shall I read then?" she cried. And throwing her book on the table, +she added, "It's better that I fill up my time with nonsense," and with +this she ran out into the garden. + +That evening I read "Hermann and Dorothea" aloud to Gagin. At first +Assja occupied herself rather noisily near us, then suddenly ceased and +became attentive, seated herself quietly beside me, and listened to the +reading to the end. On the following day I was again puzzled by her mood +till it occurred to me that she had been seized with a whim to be +womanly and discreet like Dorothea. In a word, she was an enigmatical +creature. Full of conceit and irritable as she was, she attracted me +even while she made me angry. I was more and more convinced that she was +not Gagin's sister. His behavior toward her was not that of a brother; +it was too gentle, too considerate, and at the same time a little +constrained. A singular occurrence seemed, by every token, to confirm my +suspicions. + +One evening, when I came to the vineyard where the Gagins lived, I found +the gate locked. Without much thought I went to a broken place which I +had often noticed in the wall, and sprang over. Not far from this place, +and aside from the path, there was a small clump of acacia. I had +reached it, and was on the point of passing it. Suddenly I heard Assja's +voice, the words spoken excitedly and through tears: + +"No. I will love no one but you: no, no--you alone and for ever!" + +"Listen, Assja. Compose yourself," replied Gagin. "You know that I +believe you." I heard the voices of both in the arbor. I saw both +through the sparse foliage. They were not aware of my presence. + +"You--you alone," she repeated, threw herself on his neck, and clinging +to his breast, she kissed him amid violent sobs. "Come, enough," he +said, while he smoothed her hair gently with his hand. + +For a moment I stood motionless. Suddenly I recollected myself. Enter +and join them? For nothing in the world! it shot through my brain. With +hasty steps I gained the wall, leaped it, and reached my dwelling almost +on the run. I laughed, rubbed my hands together, and congratulated +myself on the chance which had so unexpectedly confirmed my suspicion +(whose truth I had not doubted for an instant); but my heart was heavy. +"They dissemble well?" I thought. "And for what purpose? Why do they +wish to amuse themselves at my expense? I would not have thought it of +them!" What a disturbing discovery it was! + + * * * * * + +I slept ill, and on the following day I rose early, buckled on my +knapsack, and after telling my landlady not to expect me at night, I +turned my steps toward the mountains, following the stream on which the +town of S---- is built. These mountains are very interesting from a +geological point of view; they are particularly remarkable for the +regularity and purity of their basaltic formations; but I was not bent +on geological investigation. I could give no account to myself of my own +feelings. One thing, however, was clear: I had not the least desire to +see the Gagins. I insisted to myself that the only ground of my sudden +distaste for their society lay in vexation at their falseness. + +What had been the necessity of calling themselves brother and sister? I +resolutely avoided thinking of them, loitered idly among the hills and +valleys, spent much time in village inns in friendly talk with the +landlord and his guests, or lay on a flat or sunny rock in the lovely +weather, and watched the clouds float over. In this way three days +passed not unpleasantly, though from time to time I had a stifled +feeling at my heart. This quiet nature accorded perfectly with my state +of mind. I gave myself up completely to the chance of the moment and the +impressions that it brought to me; following one another without haste, +they flooded my soul, and left finally a single feeling where everything +which I had seen or heard or experienced during these three days was +blended--everything: the faint resinous smell of the woods, cry and +tapping of the woodpeckers, the continual murmur of the clear brooks +with spotted trout in their sandy shallows, the not too bold outlines of +the mountains, gray rock, the friendly villages with venerable churches +and trees, storks in the meadows, snug mills with wheels merrily +turning, the honest faces of the country people with their blue smocks +and gray stockings, the slow creaking wagons and well-fed horses, or +sometimes a yoke of oxen, long-haired lads strolling along the cleanly +kept paths under apple and pear trees. To this day I remember with +pleasure the impressions of that time. I greet you, little nook of +modest ground, with your modest content, with your signs everywhere +visible of busy hands, of labor constant if not severe--greetings to you +and peace. + +At the end of the third day I returned to S----. I have forgotten to say +that in my vexation with the Gagins, I had endeavored to reinstate the +image of my hard-hearted widow. But I remember, as I began to think of +her, I saw before me a little peasant girl, about five years old, out of +whose round little face a pair of great innocent eyes were regarding me +curiously. The look was so childlike, so confiding, a kind of shame +swept over me. I could not continue a lie before that gaze, and at once +and for ever I said good-by to my early flame. + +I found a note from Gagin waiting for me. My sudden whim astonished him. +He made me some reproaches that I had not taken him with me, and begged +me to come to him as soon as I should return. Distrustfully I read this +note, yet the following day found me at L----. + + * * * * * + +Gagin's reception was friendly. He overwhelmed me with affectionate +reproaches; but no sooner had Assja caught sight of me than she broke +into loud laughter, designedly, it seemed, and without the least cause, +and ran away precipitately. Gagin lost his temper, grumbled at her for a +crazy girl, and begged me to excuse her. I must confess that I was very +cross with Assja. I was uncomfortable before, and now this unnatural +laughter and ridiculous behavior must be added. However, I acted as if I +had observed nothing, and detailed to Gagin all the incidents of my +little journey. He told me what he had done during my absence. But the +conversation went lame. Assja kept running in and out. Finally I +declared that I had some pressing work, and that it was time for me to +be at home. Gagin tried to detain me at first, then looking keenly at +me, he begged permission to accompany me. In the hall Assja approached +me suddenly, and held out her hand to me. I gave her fingers an almost +imperceptible pressure, and bade her good-by carelessly. We crossed the +Rhine together, strolled to my favorite oak tree near the little shrine +to the Virgin, and sat down on a bench to enjoy the landscape. There a +remarkable conversation took place between us. + +At first we only spoke in the briefest words, then fell into silence and +fixed our eyes on the shining river. + +"Tell me," Gagin began suddenly, with his accustomed smile, "what is +your opinion of Assja? She must appear a little singular to you. Not +so?" + +"Yes," I answered, not without a certain constraint. I had not expected +him to speak of her. + +"One must learn to know her well to form a judgment upon her," he +continued. "She has a very good heart, but a wild head. It is hard to +live quietly with her. However, it is not her fault, and if you knew her +history----" + +"Her history!" I interrupted him. "Isn't she then your----" Gagin looked +at me. + +"Is it possible that you have doubted that she was my sister? No," he +went on, without heeding my confusion. "She is; at least she is my +father's daughter. Listen to me. I have confidence in you, and I will +tell you all about her. + +"My father was a very honest, sensible, cultivated, and unfortunate man. +Fate had no harder blows for him than for others, but he could not bear +the first one that he felt from her. He had married early--a love match; +his wife, my mother, soon died, and I was left a six months' old baby. +My father took me to his country estates, and for twelve whole years he +lived there in absolute seclusion. He himself took charge of my +education, and would never have been separated from me if my uncle, his +brother, had not come to visit us in our country house. This uncle lived +in Petersburg, where he held a rather important post. He persuaded my +father, who could not be induced to quit his home under any +consideration, to trust me to his care. He showed his brother what an +injury it was to a boy of my age to live in such complete isolation, and +that, with a companion always melancholy and silent as my father, I +should inevitably remain behind boys of my age--yes, that my character +might easily be endangered by such a life. For a long time my father +resisted his brother's arguments, but at last he yielded. I cried at +parting from my father, whom I loved, though I had never seen a smile on +his face; but Petersburg once reached, our gloomy and silent nest was +soon forgotten. I went to school, and was afterward placed in a regiment +of the Guards. Every year I spent some weeks at our country house, and +with every year I found my father more melancholy, more reserved, and +depressed to an alarming degree. He went to church daily, and had almost +given up speech. On one of my visits--I was then in my twentieth year--I +saw for the first time about the house a little lean, black-eyed girl, +who might have been about ten years old. It was Assja. My father said +she was an orphan whose care he had undertaken: those were his own +words. I gave her no further attention. She was as wild, quick, and shy +as a little animal, and if I entered my father's favorite room, a great +dismal chamber in which my mother had died, and which had to be lighted +even by day, she always slunk out of sight behind my father's +old-fashioned easy chair, or hid behind the bookcase. It happened that +for the three or four years following I was prevented by my service from +visiting our estate. Every month I received a short letter from my +father, in which Assja was spoken of seldom and always incidentally. My +father was already past his fiftieth year, but looked still a young man. +Imagine my distress then when I suddenly received a perfectly unexpected +letter from our steward, announcing the fatal illness of my father, and +begging me urgently to come home as quickly as possible if I wished to +see him alive. I rushed headlong home, and found my father, though in +the last agony. My presence seemed the greatest joy to him; he clasped +me in his wasted arms, turned on me his gaze half doubtful, half +imploring, and after he had obtained from me a promise that I would +carry out his last wishes, he ordered his old servant to fetch Assja. +The old man brought her. She could hardly support herself on her feet, +and was trembling in every limb. + +"'Now take her,' said my father to me with earnestness. 'I bequeathe to +you my daughter, your sister. You will hear everything from Jacob,' he +added, while he pointed to his valet. + +"Assja burst out sobbing, and threw herself on the bed. Half an hour +afterward my father was dead. + +"I learned the following story: Assja was the daughter of my father and +a former waiting maid of my mother's, named Tatiana. She rose distinct +to my remembrance, this Tatiana, with her tall, slender figure, her +serious face, regular features, her dark and earnest eyes. She had the +reputation of a proud, unapproachable girl. As nearly as I could learn +from Jacob's reserved and respectful story, my father had entered into +close relations with her some years after my mother's death. At that +time Tatiana was not in her master's house, but living with a married +sister, the dairywoman, in a separate hut. My father became very much +attached to her, and wished to marry her after my departure, but she +herself refused this in spite of his entreaties. + +"'The departed Tatiana Vlassievna'--so Jacob told me, standing against +the door, with his hands crossed behind his back--'was in all things +very thoughtful, and would not lower your father. "A fine wife I should +be for you--a real lady wife!" she said to him--in my presence she has +said it.' Tatiana never would come back to the house, but remained, +together with Assja, living with her sister as before. As a child I had +often seen Tatiana at church on saint days. She stood among the +servants, usually near a window. She wore a dark cloth wound about her +head and a yellow shawl on her shoulders--the strong outline of her face +clear against the transparent pane; and she prayed silently and humbly, +bowing very low after the old fashion. When my uncle took me away Assja +was just two; when she lost her mother, just nine years old. + +"Immediately after Tatiana's death my father took Assja home to himself. +He had already expressed a wish to have her with him, but Tatiana had +refused it. You can imagine what Assja must have felt when she was taken +into the master's house. To this day she has not forgotten the hour when +for the first time they dressed her in a silk dress and kissed her +little hand. In her mother's lifetime she had been brought up with great +strictness: my father left her without a single restraint. He was her +instructor; except him, she saw no one. He did not spoil her; at least +he did not follow her about like a nursemaid, but he loved her fondly, +and refused her nothing. He was conscious of guilt toward her. Assja +soon discovered that she was the principal person in the household. She +knew the master was her father, but at the same time she began to +understand her equivocal position. Wilfulness and distrust were +developed to an extreme degree in her. Bad manners were contracted; +simplicity vanished. She wished (she herself told me) to compel the +whole world to forget her origin. She was ashamed of her mother, was +ashamed of being ashamed, and was in turn proud of her. You see that she +knew and knows still many things that should not be known at her age. +But does the blame rest with her? Youth was strong in her: her blood +flowed hot, and no hand near to guide her--the fullest independence in +everything! Is such a fate easily borne? She would not be inferior to +other girls. She rushed headlong into study. But what good could result +from it? The life, lawlessly begun, seemed likely to develop lawlessly. +But the heart remained true and the reason sound. + +"And so I found myself, a young fellow of twenty, weighted with the care +of a thirteen-year old girl! In the first days after my father's death +my voice caused her a feeling of feverish horror, my caresses made her +sad, and only by degrees and after a long time did she become accustomed +to me. And later, when she had gained security that I really considered +her my sister, and that I loved her as a sister, she attached herself +passionately to me: with her there is no half feeling. + +"I brought her to Petersburg. Hard as it was to leave her--I could not +live with her in any case--I placed her at one of the best +boarding-schools. Assja agreed to the necessity of our separation, but +it cost her a sickness which came near to being a fatal one. Little by +little she reconciled herself, and she staid four years in this +establishment. But contrary to my expectations, she remained almost her +old self. The principal of the school often complained to me. 'I cannot +punish her,' she would say; 'and I can do nothing by kindness.' Assja +comprehended everything with great quickness, learned +wonderfully--better than all; but it was utterly impossible to bring her +under the common rule. She rebelled; was sulky. I could not blame her +much. In her position she must keep herself at the service of every one, +or avoid every one. Only one of all her companions was intimate with +her--an insignificant, silent, and poor girl. The other young girls with +whom she was associated, of good families for the most part, did not +like her, and taunted and jibed her whenever they could find +opportunity. Assja was not behind them by a hair's breadth. Once, in the +hour for religious instruction, the teacher came to speak of the idea of +vice. 'Sycophancy and cowardice,' said Assja aloud, 'are the meanest +vices.' In a word, she continued to walk in her own way, only her +manners improved somewhat; but even in this respect, I fancy, she has +made no wonderful advance. + +"She had reached her seventeenth year. It was useless to keep her longer +at school. I found myself in great perplexity. All of a sudden a happy +thought struck me: to quit the service, and to travel with Assja for a +year or two. Done as soon as thought. So here are we both now on the +banks of the Rhine: I occupied in learning to paint, she following out +her whims in her usual way. But now I must hope that you will not pass +too harsh judgment upon her; for however much she may insist that +everything is indifferent to her, she does care very much for the +opinion of others, and especially for your own." + +And Gagin smiled again his gentle smile. I wrung his hand. + +"That is how it stands now," Gagin continued. "But I have my hands full +with her. A real firebrand, that girl! Up to this time no one has ever +pleased her; but alas if ever she falls in love! At times I do not know +what to do with her. Lately she took it into her head to declare that I +was growing cold to her, but that she loved only me, and would love only +me her life long. And how she sobbed!" + +"So that was it," I said to myself, and bit my lip. "But tell me," I +asked Gagin, "now that our hearts are open, has really no one ever +caught her fancy? Surely she must have seen many young men in +Petersburg?" + +"And they are all absolutely distasteful to her. No. Assja is seeking a +hero--an entirely extraordinary man, or else an artistic shepherd among +his flock. But enough of this gossip. I am detaining you," he added as +he rose. + +"Come," I said, "let us go back. I don't care to go home." + +"And your work?" + +I made no reply. Gagin laughed good-naturedly, and we returned to L----. +As the well-known vineyard and the little white house on the hillside +came in sight, my heart was warmed in a curious way--yes, that was +it--warmed and soothed as if, unknown to me, some one had poured some +healing drops there. Gagin's story had made me cheerful. + +Assja met us at the threshold. I had expected to find her still +laughing, but she stepped forward to us, pale, silent, and with eyes +down cast. + +"Here he is again," Gagin said to her, "and be sure of this: it was his +own wish to come back." + +Assja looked at me inquiringly. I held out my hand to her, and this time +I grasped tightly her cold and slender fingers. I felt deep pity for +her. Now I understood much that had before disturbed me in her: her +inner restlessness, her offensive manner, her endeavor to show herself +other than she was--all was clear to me. I had had a glimpse into this +soul. A constant weight oppressed it. Fearfully the untrained will +fought and struggled, yet her whole being was striving after truth. Now +I understood why this singular girl had attracted me: it was not only +the charm which invested her whole body; it was her soul which drew me. + +Gagin began to fumble among his sketches. I asked Assja to come for a +walk with me through the vineyard. She gave a ready, almost humble +assent. We climbed the hill about half way, and stopped on a broad +plateau. + +"And you felt no _ennui_ without us?" Assja began. + +"Did you, then, feel any in my absence?" I asked. + +Assja looked at me sideways. + +"Yes," she replied. "Is it pleasant in the mountains?" she immediately +continued. "Are they high? Higher than the clouds? Tell me what you have +seen. You have told my brother, but I have heard nothing about it." + +"Why did you go away?" I interrupted her. + +"I went--because---- Now I will not go away," she added in a gentle, +confiding tone. "You were cross today." + +"I?" + +"You." + +"But why? I beg you----" + +"I don't know; but you were cross, and went away cross. It was very +unpleasant to me to have you go away in that manner, and I am glad that +you have come back." + +"I am equally glad," I replied. + +Assja moved her shoulders slightly, one after the other, as children do +when they are in good humor. + +"Oh, I am famous at guessing," she went on. "Long ago my father had only +to cough, and I knew instantly whether he was pleased with me or not." + +Till this time Assja had never spoken to me of her father. That struck +me. + +"You loved your father very much?" I asked, and I felt to my great +annoyance that I was blushing. + +She did not answer, but she also blushed. We were both silent. In the +distance a steamboat with its trailing smoke was descending the Rhine: +our looks followed it. + +"Why do you not tell me something?" Assja said half aloud. + +"Why did you laugh to-day when you saw me coming?" I asked her. + +"I do not know myself. Sometimes I want to cry, and yet must laugh. You +must not judge me by what I do. Ah, by the way, what a wonderful story +it is about the Lorelei. Isn't it her rock that we see yonder? They say +that at first she drew every one else beneath the water, but after she +was acquainted with love, she cast herself in. The story pleases me. +Frau Luise tells me all sorts of fairy stories. Frau Luise has a black +cat with yellow eyes----" + +Assja raised her head and threw back her hair. + +"Ah, how comfortable I feel!" she said. + +At this moment broken, monotonous tones fell on our ears. Hundreds of +voices in unison repeated a hymn with measured pauses. A troop of +pilgrims was moving along the way beneath us with flags and crosses. + +"I would like to go with them!" cried Assja, while she listened to the +sound of the voices, gradually dying away. + +"Are you so devout?" + +"I would like to go somewhere far off, to pray, to accomplish something +difficult," she added. "The days hurry by, life will come to an end, and +what have we done?" + +"You are ambitious," I said. "You do not wish to live in vain. You would +like to leave behind some trace of your existence." + +"Would it be impossible?" + +"Impossible," I had nearly repeated. I looked into her clear eyes and +only said: + +"Well, try it." + +"Tell me," Assja began after a little silence, while flying shadows +followed each other across her face, which had grown pale again--"did +that lady please you very much? You remember, my brother drank to your +health once, in the ruins; it was the day after we had made +acquaintance." + +I laughed aloud. + +"It was a jest of your brother's; no lady has pleased me, at least no +one now pleases me." + +"What is it that pleases you in women?" asked Assja, tossing back her +head in childish curiosity. + +"What a singular question!" I exclaimed. + +Assja was a little disturbed. + +"I should not have asked the question--not so? Forgive me. I am used to +chatter about everything that goes through my head. That is why I am +afraid to talk." + +"Only talk, for heaven's sake! Don't be afraid," I broke in. "I am so +glad that at last you cease to be shy." Assja lowered her eyes and +laughed; a still, gentle laughter that I did not recognize as hers. + +"Well, tell me something then," she said, while she smoothed her dress +and tucked it about her feet as if disposing herself to sit for a long +while--"tell me something, or read something aloud, as that time when +you read to us out of 'Onegin.'" + +She grew suddenly thoughtful. + + Where now in green boughs' shadow + The cross rests on my mother's grave-- + +she said to herself in a low voice. + +"In Pushkin the verse is somewhat different," I ventured.[J] + +[Footnote J: In Pushkin it reads, "On my nurse's grave."] + +"I would have liked to be Pushkin's Tatiana," she continued, still lost +in thought. "Tell me something," she cried suddenly, with vivacity. + +But I could find nothing to say. I looked at her as she sat there, +gentle and peaceful, surrounded with the clear sunshine. Everything +about us glowed with happiness; the sky, the earth, the water. It seemed +as if the very air was bathed in a splendor. + +"Look, how beautiful!" I said, involuntarily lowering my voice. + +"Yes, beautiful," she answered as gently, without looking at me. "If we +were both birds, we would fly high up there--would soar. We would sink +deep into that blue. But we are no birds." + +"We may have wings though," I answered. + +"How?" + +"In time you will discover. There are feelings that swing us off from +the earth. Don't fear; you will have wings." + +"Have you had them then?" + +"How shall I say? I believe that I have never flown till now." + +Assja fell again into thought. I bent toward her a little. + +"Can you waltz?" she asked unexpectedly. + +"Yes, I can," I answered, somewhat surprised. + +"Then come, come--I will ask my brother to play a waltz for us--we will +imagine that we are flying, that our wings have grown." + +She ran to the house. I hastened after her, and in a few moments we were +whirling round the narrow room to the music of a charming waltz. Assja +danced exceedingly well, with lightness and skill. Something soft and +feminine came suddenly into her childish, earnest face. For a long time +afterward my hand felt the contact of her delicate form, for a long time +I seemed to feel her close, quickened breathing, and to see before me +the dark, fixed, half-closed eyes, and the animated pale face with its +wreathing hair. + + * * * * * + +This whole day passed so that one could not have wished it better. We +were merry as children. Assja was very lovable and natural. It was a +pleasure for Gagin to see her. It was late when I went away. In the +middle of the Rhine I told the ferryman to leave the boat to the +current. The old man drew in his oars and the majestic stream bore us +onward. While I looked about me and listened, and called forgotten +things to memory, I felt a sense of unrest in my heart. I turned my eyes +to the heavens, but in the heavens was no rest; with its glittering host +of stars it was in steady motion, revolving, trembling. I bent to the +river, but there also in the dark, cool depths the stars were dancing +and flickering; everywhere the restless spirit of life met me, and the +restlessness in my own heart grew stronger. I leaned over the side of +the boat. The murmuring of the breeze in my ears, the low splash of the +water against the stern of the boat, excited me, and the freshness of +the waves did not cool me. Somewhere on the shore a nightingale began +her song, and this music worked upon me like a sweet poison. Tears +filled my eyes, but not the tears of an indefinite rapture. What I +experienced was not the vague feeling of boundless longing in which it +seems as if the heart could embrace everything: no. In me arose a +burning desire for happiness. Only as yet I did not dare call this +happiness by its real name. But bliss--bliss to overflowing was what I +longed for. The boat drifted further and further, and the old ferryman +sat bowed over his oars and fast asleep. + + * * * * * + +On my way to the Gagins the following day I did not ask myself if I was +in love with Assja, but I thought of her continually; her destiny +absorbed me, and I rejoiced over our unhoped-for meeting. I felt that I +had known her only since yesterday. Until then she had always avoided +me. And now that she had finally admitted me to her friendship, in what +a bewitching light did her image appear to me; what a mysterious charm +streamed from it to me. + +Hastily I sprang up the well-known path, straining my eyes for a glimpse +of the little white house in the distance. I did not think of the +future; I did not think even of the morrow; but my heart was light in +me. + +Assja blushed as I entered the room. I observed that she had again +dressed herself with great care, but the expression of her face did not +correspond with her finery; it was melancholy. And I had come so happily +disposed! I believe that she was inclined to run away in her usual +fashion, but forcibly compelled herself to remain. I found Gagin in that +peculiar mood of artistic enthusiasm which catches dilettanti by +surprise whenever they imagine themselves about to take nature by storm, +as they express it. He stood with hair disordered, and bedaubed with +paint, before a fresh canvas, drawing madly. Furiously he nodded to me, +stepped backward, half closed his eyes, and then precipitated himself +again upon his work. I did not like to disturb him, and sat down beside +Assja. Slowly her dark eyes turned on me. + +"You are not as you were yesterday," I ventured, after I had made some +vain attempts to bring a smile to her lips. + +"No, I am not," she replied, with a slow, suppressed voice. "But that is +nothing. I did not sleep well. I was thinking the whole night." + +"About what?" + +"Oh, I thought about many things. It has been my habit from childhood, +even when I was living with my mother." + +She spoke this with a certain emphasis, and repeated it. + +"When I was living with my mother I--I wondered why no one can know +beforehand what is to happen to him. Sometimes one sees a misfortune +coming, and yet cannot turn away from it; and why cannot one always say +boldly the truth? Then I thought that I do not know anything, and that I +must learn. I must be educated over again. I have been very badly +brought up. I do not know how to play the piano, I cannot draw, I sew +dreadfully; I have no capacity; I must be very tiresome." + +"You are unjust to yourself," I answered. "You have read much, you are +cultivated, and with your intellect----" + +"Have I an intellect?" she asked with such naļve curiosity that I could +not help laughing. She did not laugh. + +"Brother, have I an intellect?" she asked Gagin. + +He made her no answer, but continued his work, busily laying on his +colors, and with one arm flourished in the air. + +"Sometimes I hardly know myself what goes through my head," Assja went +on with the same thoughtful expression. "At certain times I am actually +afraid of myself. Ah, I wish---- Is it really true that women ought not +to read much?" + +"It is not necessary that they should read much, but----" + +"Will you tell me what to read? Will you tell me what to do? I will do +everything that you tell me," she said, turning to me with an innocent +confidence. + +I did not readily find any answer to make. + +"The time with me will not seem long to you?" + +"How can you think so!" I said. + +"Well, I thank you," cried Assja, "but I thought you might be _ennuyé_." + +And her little hot hand grasped +mine tightly. + +"N.!" cried Gagin at this moment, "isn't this background too dark?" + +I went over to him. Assja rose and left the room. + + * * * * * + +An hour afterward she returned, stood in the doorway, and beckoned to +me. + +"Listen," she said. "Would you be sorry if I died?" + +"What ideas you have to-day!" I exclaimed. + +"I imagine that I shall die soon. Sometimes it seems to me as if +everything about me was taking leave of me. It is better to die than to +live as---- Ah, don't look at me so. Indeed I am not a hypocrite. I +shall be afraid of you again." + +"Have you ever been afraid of me?" + +"If I am unlike other people, the fault is not mine," she answered. +"Already, you see, I cannot laugh any more." + +She was melancholy and depressed until evening. Something was passing in +her that I could not understand. Her eyes often rested on me, and every +time they did so I felt my heart chilled by their strange expression. +She was quiet--and yet whenever I looked at her it seemed to me that I +must beg her to be calm. Her appearance fascinated me; I found the +greatest charm in her pale features, in her slow, aimless movements; but +she fancied--I do not know why--that I was in ill humor. + +"Listen," she said to me a little while before my departure. "The +thought haunts me that you think me frivolous. In future you must +believe everything that I tell you, and you must be frank with me. I +will always tell you the truth, I give you my word of honor." + +This "word of honor" made me laugh. + +"Oh, do not laugh," she broke in with eagerness, "or else I must say to +you to-day what you said to me yesterday: 'Why do you laugh so much?'" +And after a short silence she continued: "Do you remember, yesterday we +were talking of wings? My wings are grown--but where shall I fly?" + +"What are you saying!" I replied. "To you all ways are open." + +Assja looked in my eyes long and keenly. + +"You have a bad opinion of me today," she said, and drew her eyebrows +together. + +"I have a bad opinion? Of you!" + +"What is the matter with you two to-day?" Gagin interrupted me. "Shall I +play a waltz for you as I did yesterday?" + +"No, no," exclaimed Assja, clasping her hands together--"not for the +world to-day." + +"I won't insist--be easy." + +"Not for the world," she repeated, and her cheeks grew pale. + + * * * * * + +Does she love me? I thought, as I came to the Rhine, whose waves rolled +swiftly by. + +Does she love me? I asked myself when I awoke the next morning. I did +not wish to look into my own heart. I felt that her image--the image of +the "girl with the bold laugh"--had impressed itself upon my soul, and +that I could not easily get rid of it. I went to L---- and remained there +the whole day; but I had only one glimpse of Assja. She was not well; +her head ached. She came down stairs for a few moments with her head +bound up, her eyes half closed, pale and weak; she smiled feebly, said, +"It will pass; it is nothing; everything passes, does it not?" and went +away. I was depressed and had a painful sense of blankness, but I would +not go home till very late, without, however, seeing her again. + +I spent the next day like a man walking in his sleep. I tried to work, +but could not; then I tried to be absolutely idle, and to think of +nothing; but neither did that succeed. I strolled about the town, +returned home, and went out again. + +"Are you Mr. N.?" said suddenly the voice of a child behind me. I +turned. A little boy was standing before me. "From Miss Annette," and +handed me a note. + +I opened it, and recognized Assja's irregular and scrawling handwriting. +"I must see you," she wrote. "Come to-day at four o'clock to the stone +chapel on the way to the ruins. Something unexpected has happened. For +heaven's sake, come. You shall know everything. Say to the bearer, +'yes.'" + +"Any answer?" the boy asked me. + +"Say 'yes,'" I replied. The boy ran off. + + * * * * * + +When I had reached my room I sat down and fell into deep thought. My +heart beat forcibly. I read Assja's note several times over. I looked at +the clock; it was not yet midday. + +The door opened: Gagin walked in. + +His face was gloomy. He seized my hand and shook it warmly. Apparently +he was very much excited. + +"What is the matter?" I asked him. + +Gagin took a chair and drew it near mine. "Four days ago," he began with +a forced smile, and stammering a little, "I amazed you with a +confidence; and to-day I shall amaze you even more. With any other I +probably should not--so plainly. But you are a man of honor; you're my +friend, are you not? Well, here then; my sister Assja loves you." + +I started up from my chair. + +"You say--your sister----" + +"Yes, yes," Gagin interrupted me. "I tell you she has lost her senses +and will make me lose mine, moreover. Happily she is not used to lying +and has great trust in me. Oh, what a soul the girl has! But she will +surely do herself a mischief." + +"You must be mistaken," I said. + +"No, I'm not. Yesterday, you know, she staid in bed nearly all day; she +ate nothing: to be sure she complained of nothing. She never complains. +I was not uneasy, although toward evening she grew feverish. But at two +o'clock this morning our landlady roused me. 'Come to your sister,' said +she. 'There is something wrong with her.' I hastened to Assja, and found +her not yet undressed, very feverish, in tears: her head was burning +hot, her teeth chattered. 'What's the matter?' I asked. 'Are you sick?' +She threw herself upon my neck, and insisted that I should take her away +from there as speedily as possible if I wished her to remain alive. I +could make nothing of it--tried to pacify her. Her sobs increased, and +suddenly among her sobs I heard--well, in one word, I discovered that +she loves you. I assure you, neither of us, being reasonable men, can +have the smallest idea of the impetuosity of her feelings and the +incredible violence with which she expresses them; it is as sudden and +as inevitable as a thunder storm. You are a delightful fellow," Gagin +continued, "But I must confess that I do not see why she has fallen in +love with you. She believes that she has loved you from the first moment +she saw you. She was crying lately on that account, even when she was +declaring that she loved nobody but me. She imagines that you despise +her; she fancies that you know her origin. She asked me if I had told +you the story of her life. I naturally denied it, but it is astonishing +how keen she is. She wishes only one thing: to go away: immediately +away. I staid with her till morning. She wrung a promise from me that we +would leave here to-morrow, and then at last she fell asleep. I thought +it over and over, and decided--to talk with you. Assja is right, in my +opinion. It is best that we should both leave this place. I should have +taken her away to-day if an idea that has got into my head didn't +prevent it. Perhaps--who can tell?--my sister pleases you? If this +should be the case, why should I take her away? So I determined to put +shame aside. Besides, I have myself noticed--so I decided--from your own +mouth to learn----" Poor Gagin became hopelessly confused. "Pray excuse +me," he added. "I am inexperienced in such matters." + +I seized his hand. + +"You wish to know whether your sister pleases me? Yes, she pleases me," +I said in a steady voice. Gagin looked at me. + +"But," he said with an effort, "you don't want to marry her?" + +"How can I answer such a question? Think, yourself, how could I at this +moment----" + +"I know, I know," Gagin interrupted me. "I have not the least right to +expect an answer from you, and my question was improper--to the last +degree. But what was I to do? One cannot play with fire. You do not know +Assja. It would be possible for her to drown herself--to run away, to +seek an interview with you. Any other girl would know how to conceal +everything and to wait opportunities--but not she. This is her first +experience. That is the worst of it! If you had seen her as she lay +sobbing at my feet, you would share my anxiety." + +I became thoughtful. Gagin's expression, "seek an interview with you," +sank into my heart. It seemed abominable not to answer his confidence +with confidence as free. + +"Yes," I said at last. "You are right. An hour ago I received a note +from your sister. Here it is." + +Gagin took the note, read it hurriedly, and let his hands fall on his +knees. The expression of his features was ludicrous enough, but I was in +no mood for laughter. + +"You're a man of honor. I repeat it," he said. "But what is to be done +now? What! She wishes to hurry away from here, yet she writes to you and +reproaches herself for her own want of foresight. And when can she have +written this? What does she want of you?" + +I succeeded in calming him, and we began to talk, as coolly as we could, +about what we might have to do. + +At last we decided as follows: To guard against any desperate step on +her part, I was to meet Assja at the appointed place, and have a fair +explanation with her. Gagin pledged himself to remain at home and to +avoid all appearance of knowing about the note. In the evening we agreed +to meet again. "I have full confidence in you," said Gagin, and pressed +my hand strongly. "Spare Assja and myself. But we shall leave +to-morrow," he added as he rose, "for you will not marry Assja." + +"Give me time till evening," I said. + +"So be it. But you will not marry her." + +He went away. I threw myself on the sofa and shut my eyes. My head spun +round like a top. Too many emotions came crowding upon me. Gagin's +frankness annoyed me, and I was angry with Assja. Her love distressed +and delighted me at once. I could not understand how she could betray +herself to her brother. The necessity of a hasty, an instantaneous +decision tormented me. "Marry a seventeen-year-old girl of such a +disposition! How can I do it?" I said, getting up from my seat. + + * * * * * + +I crossed the Rhine at the appointed hour, and the first face that met +me on the opposite shore was that of the same boy who had come to me in +the morning. He seemed to be waiting for me. + +"From Miss Annette," he said, and gave me another letter. Assja wrote to +appoint another place for our meeting. In half an hour I was to come, +not to the chapel, but to the house of Frau Luise, knock at the door, +and ascend to the third story. + +"'Yes' again?" the boy asked me. + +"Yes," I answered, and walked along the bank of the river. There was not +time to return to my house, and I had no inclination to stroll about the +streets. Just beyond the limits of the village there was a little garden +with a covered bowling alley and tables for beer drinkers. I entered it. +A few middle-aged men were playing ninepins. The balls rolled noisily, +and from time to time I caught expressions of applause. A pretty girl, +with eyelids reddened by crying, brought me a glass of beer. I looked +her in the face. She turned hastily away and disappeared. + +"Yes, yes," said a fat and ruddy-cheeked man who was sitting near me. +"Our little Nancy is in great trouble to-day. Her lover is gone with the +conscripts." I looked after her. She had retired to a corner and buried +her face in her hands. One after another the tears trickled through her +fingers. Some one called for beer. She brought it, and went back to her +place. Her grief reacted upon me. I began to think of the interview +before me; but I thought of it with anxiety, not with joy. I did not go +light-hearted to the rendezvous. No joyful exchange of mutual love was +before me; I had a promise to redeem, a hard duty to perform. "There is +no jesting possible with her"--this expression of Gagin's pierced my +soul like an arrow. And was not this the very happiness for which I had +longed four days ago, in the little boat which the waves bore onward? +Now it seemed to be possible--but I wavered, I thrust it from me; I must +put it away from me. The very unexpectedness of it confused me. Assja +herself, with her impetuosity, her past history, her education--this +charming but singular being--let me confess it--inspired me with fear. +For a long time I gave myself up to these conflicting feelings. The +deferred tryst was at hand. "I cannot marry her," I decided at last, +"and she shall not know that I love her." + +I rose, and after I had pressed a thaler in poor Nancy's hand (for which +she did not even thank me) I went straight to Frau Luise's house. +Already the shadow of dusk was in the air, and above the darkening +streets a narrow streak, the reflection of the sunset, reddened in the +sky. I knocked lightly at the door. It was opened instantly. I stepped +across the threshold and found myself suddenly in darkness. + +"This way!" whispered an old woman's voice. "Some one is waiting for +you." + +I advanced a couple of steps, stumbling. A skinny hand clutched mine. + +"Is it you, Frau Luise?" I asked. + +"Yes," the same voice answered. "Yes, it is I, my handsome young +gentleman." The old woman led me up one steep staircase and stopped at +the bottom of a second. By the dull light which came in through a little +window I recognized the wrinkled visage of the burgomaster's widow. A +hateful, sly smile distorted her shrunken lips and half closed the +little bleared eyes. She pointed out a small door to me. I opened it +with a hand that trembled, and shut it again behind me. + + * * * * * + +It was nearly dark in the little room which I entered, and at first I +did not discover Assja. Wrapped in a great cloak, she was sitting in a +chair by the window, with her head averted and almost hidden, like a +frightened bird. Her breath came quickly, and she was trembling in every +limb. I felt an inexpressible pity for her. I approached her; she turned +her head away still more. + +"Anna Nicolaevna!" I addressed her. + +She started suddenly as if she wished to look at me, but dared not. I +took her hand. It was cold, and lay in mine like a dead thing. + +"I wished," Assja began, and tried to smile, but her pallid lips would +not obey her--"I wanted--no, I cannot," she said, and was silent. And in +truth her voice broke at every word. + +I sat down beside her. + +"Anna Nicolaevna!" I repeated, and again found nothing further to say. + +There was a silence. I still held her hand and looked at her. She was in +the same constrained attitude as before: breathed heavily, and bit her +under lip in order to keep back her tears. My eyes were fixed on her. +There was something touchingly helpless in her shy immobility. It seemed +as if she had just been able to reach the chair, and had fallen there. +My heart overflowed. + +"Assja!" I whispered, almost inaudibly. + +Slowly she raised her eyes to mine. Oh, the glance of a woman who loves! +Who shall describe it? Her eyes expressed entreaty, trust, questioning, +surrender. I could not withstand their magic. A burning fire thrilled me +like the prick of red-hot needles. I bent down and pressed my lips to +her hand. + +A little hurried sound as of a broken sob fell on my ear, and I felt on +my hair the tender touch of a hand that trembled like a leaf. I raised +my head, and looked in her face. The expression of fear was gone from +her features. Her glance swept past me into the room. Her lips were a +little apart, her forehead white as marble, and the hair pushed off as +if the wind had blown it back. I forgot everything; I drew her toward +me; willingly her hand obeyed, and her whole body followed; the shawl +slipped from her shoulders, and her head bowed silently to my breast and +laid itself against my burning lips. + +"Yours!" she whispered faintly. + +Already my arm was about her, when suddenly, like a gleam of lightning, +the thought of Gagin flashed through my brain. "What are we doing?" I +cried, and moved roughly away. "Your brother knows all--he knows that we +are here together." + +Assja sank into her chair. + +"Yes," I went on, while I rose and went over to the other side of the +room. "Your brother knows everything. I had to tell him everything." + +"You had to?" she stammered unintelligibly. She could not come to +herself, and only half comprehended me. + +"Yes, yes," I repeated with a certain bitterness, "and you are to blame +for it--you alone. Why did you betray your secret? Who compelled you to +tell your brother? He himself was with me to-day, and told me of your +conversation with him." + +I avoided looking at Assja, and went up and down the room with great +strides. "Now everything is lost--everything, everything." + +Assja was about to get up from her chair. + +"Oh, sit still," I cried; "sit still, I beg you. You have to do with a +man of honor--yes, with a man of honor. But in Heaven's name what +disturbed you so? Have you seen any change in me? But it was impossible +for me to conceal it from your brother when he made me a visit to-day." + +"What am I saying?" I thought to myself, and the idea that I should be a +base hypocrite, that Gagin knew of this meeting, that everything had +been talked over, twisted and spoiled, maddened me. + +"I did not call my brother," Assja said, in a frightened, harsh voice. +"He came of his own will." + +"Only see what you have done," I went on. "Now you want to go away." + +"Yes, I must go," she said in a whisper, "and I only asked you to come +here that I might take leave of you." + +"And do you think," I retorted, "that it is easy for me to part from +you?" + +"Why were you obliged to tell my brother?" repeated Assja with an +expression of amazement. + +"I tell you, I could not do otherwise. If you had not betrayed +yourself----" + +"I had locked myself into my chamber," she answered simply. "I did not +know that my landlady had another key." + +This innocent speech from her mouth at such a moment nearly cost me my +self-control. Even now I cannot think of it without emotion. Poor, +honest, innocent child! + +"And so it is all over," I began again. "All. Now indeed we must part." +I threw a stolen glance at Assja, whose face became more and scarlet. +She was, I felt, alarmed and ashamed. I myself was greatly agitated, and +spoke like one in a fever. "You did not leave the budding feeling time +to unfold itself. You yourself have torn the bond between us. You had no +confidence in me; you cherished suspicion against me." + +While I was speaking Assja bent forward more and more, then sank +suddenly on her knees, let her head fall into her hands, and broke into +sobs. I rushed to her and tried to raise her, but she resisted me. I +cannot endure women's tears; when I see them I lose my self-possession +at once. + +"Anna Nicolaevna, Assja!" I cried repeatedly. "I beg, I implore you! +Stop, for God's sake!" I took her hand again. + +But to my extremest astonishment she sprang up suddenly, sped like a +flash through the door, and vanished. + +When Frau Luise came in a few moments later, I still stood in the middle +of the chamber as if thunderstruck. I could not believe that the +interview had come to an end so abrupt, so unmeaning, when I myself had +not said the hundredth part of what I meant to say, and was, besides, +quite uncertain how it should finally terminate. + +"Is the young lady gone?" Frau Luise asked me, and raised her yellow +eyebrows quite to the parting of her hair. + +I stared at her like an idiot, and went away. + + * * * * * + +I left the village and made my way into the fields. Vexation, the +keenest vexation possessed me. I overwhelmed myself with reproaches. How +had it been possible for me to misunderstand the reason which had +induced Assja to change our place of meeting? How could I have failed to +know what it must have cost her to go to the old woman? Why had I not +detained her! Alone with her in the dim, empty room I had found the +strength, I had had the heart to drive her from me--even to reproach her +for coming. Now her image followed me; I besought her pardon. The memory +of that pale face, those shy, wet eyes, that hair flowing over the bowed +back, the soft nestling of her head against my breast, consumed me like +a fire. "Yours!" Her whisper still rang in my ears. "I have acted +conscientiously," I tried to say to myself. Lies! What was the +conclusion I truly wished? Am I in a condition to part with her? Can I +lose her? "O fool! fool!" I repeated with bitterness. + +By this time the night had fallen. With hasty steps I sought the house +where Assja lived. + + * * * * * + +Gagin came to meet me. + +"Have you seen my sister?" he called to me, still at a distance. + +"Isn't she at home then?" I returned. + +"No." + +"She has not come back?" + +"No. Excuse me," Gagin went on. "I could not stand it. I went to the +chapel in spite of our agreement; she was not there; she cannot have +gone there." + +"She did not go to the chapel." + +"And you have not seen her?" + +I had to acknowledge that I had seen her. + +"Where?" + +"At Frau Luise's. We separated an hour ago," I added. "I believed +certainly that she had come home." + +"Let us wait," said Gagin. + +We entered the house and sat down near each other. We were silent. +Neither of us was without anxiety. We watched the door and listened. At +last Gagin rose. + +"This is the end of everything," he cried. "I don't know if my heart is +in my body. She will kill me yet, by God! Come, let us search for her." + +We went out. It had grown dark. + +"Of what did you talk with her?" asked Gagin as he crushed his hat down +over his eyes. + +"I was with her five minutes at longest," I answered. "I spoke to her as +we had decided." + +"Well," he said, "we would better go, each for himself; in that way we +shall find her sooner. In any event, come back here in an hour." + + * * * * * + +Hastily I descended the hill and ran to the town. I made my way rapidly +through all the streets, staring in all directions, took another glance +at the windows of Frau Luise's house, reached the Rhine, and began to +walk quickly along its bank. From time to time I met women, but Assja +was nowhere to be seen. It was no longer vexation that I felt. A secret +fear oppressed me, and not fear alone; no, remorse, the warmest pity. +Love! yes, tenderest love! Wringing my hands, I called on Assja, into +the gathering darkness of the night; softly at first, then louder and +louder; a hundred times I repeated that I loved her. I swore never to +part from her. I would have given everything in the world to hear her +gentle voice again, to hold her cold hand, to see herself standing +before me. So near had she been to me, in perfect trustfulness, in utter +simplicity of heart and feeling had she come to me and laid her +inexperienced youth in my hands; and I had not caught her to my heart; I +had thrown away the bliss of seeing the shy face bloom into a joy, a +rapture of peace--this thought drove me to madness. + +"Where can she be gone? What is become of her?" I called out, desperate +with helpless fears. Suddenly something white glimmered near by on the +shore. I knew the spot. An old half sunken cross with quaint inscription +stood there, over the grave of a man drowned seventy years before. My +heart stood still in my body. I ran to the cross. The white figure had +disappeared. "Assja!" I shouted. My wild cry terrified me. No one made +answer. + +I determined to see if Gagin had found her. + + * * * * * + +As I hastened up the footpath I saw a light in Assja's chamber. It +calmed me a little. + +I drew near the house. The door was fastened. I knocked. A window in the +darkened first story was carefully raised, and Gagin's head showed +itself. + +"Found?" I asked. + +"She is come back," he whispered to me. "She is in her chamber, and +undressing. All is as it should be." + +"God be thanked!" I cried, in a transport of inexpressible joy. "God be +thanked! Now all will be well. But you know we have something to say to +each other." + +"Another time," he answered, softly closing the window--"another time. +For this, good-by." + +"Till to-morrow then," I said. "Tomorrow everything will be clear." + +"Good-by," Gagin repeated, and the window was shut. I came near to +knocking again. I wished to tell Gagin at once that I sought his +sister's hand. But such a wooing, at such an hour! "Till to-morrow +then," I thought. "To-morrow I shall be happy!" + +"To-morrow I shall be happy!" Happiness has no to-morrow; it has no +yesterday; it knows of no past; it thinks of no future. The present +belongs to it, and not even the present day--only the moment. + +I do not know how I reached S----. Not my feet brought me; not the boat +carried me; I was borne over as if on broad, mighty wings. My way led me +by a thicket in which a nightingale was singing. It seemed to me it sang +of my love and my joy. + + * * * * * + +The next morning, as I drew near the familiar little house, one +circumstance seemed strange: all its windows were open, and the door as +well. Scraps of paper lay strewn about the threshold, and behind the +door a maid was visible with her broom. + +I stepped up to her. + +"They're off!" she volunteered, before I could ask her if the Gagins +were at home. + +"Off!" I repeated. "What, gone? Where?" + +"They went at six o'clock this morning, and did not say where. But stop. +You are surely Mr. N." + +"I am Mr. N." + +"There is a letter for you inside." She went in and returned with a +letter. "Here it is, if you please." + +"But it isn't possible. How can it be?" I said. The maid stared at me +stupidly, and began to sweep. + +I opened the letter. It was Gagin who wrote. From Assja not a line. He +began with a hope that I would not be angry with him on account of his +sudden departure. He felt assured that, after mature thought, I would +agree to his decision. He had found no other way out of a situation +which might easily become difficult, even dangerous. "Yesterday," he +wrote, "as we were both waiting silently for Assja, I convinced myself +fully that a separation was necessary. There are prejudices which I know +how to respect. I understand that you cannot marry Assja. She has told +me everything. For her own sake I am compelled to yield to her repeated, +desperate prayers." In conclusion he expressed his regret that our +acquaintance should be broken off so abruptly; wished me happiness; +shook my hand affectionately; and assured me that it would be useless +for me to try to find them. + +"What prejudices?" I cried out, as if he could hear me. "Nonsense! Who +has given him the right to rob me of her?" I clutched my head with my +hands. + +The maid began to call loudly for the landlady. Her terror rendered me +my self control. One thought took possession of me--to find them, to +find them at whatever cost. To submit to this stroke, to calmly accept +it, was impossible. I learned from the landlady that they had taken a +steamboat about six o'clock in the morning to go down the Rhine. I went +to the office. There I was told that they had taken tickets for Cologne. +I went home with the intention to pack at once and follow them. My way +led me by Frau Luise's house. All at once I heard some one call me. I +raised my head, and saw the Burgomaster's widow at the window of the +very room where, the day before, I had met Assja. She summoned me with +her disagreeable smile. I turned away, and would have gone on, but she +called after me that something was there for me. This brought me to a +standstill, and I entered the house. How shall I describe my feelings as +I again beheld that little room? + +"To tell the truth," the old woman said to me, handing me a little note, +"I was only to give you that if you came here of your own free will. But +you are such a handsome young gentleman. Take it." + +I took the letter. + +The following words were hastily scrawled in pencil on a scrap of paper: + +"Farewell! We shall not see each other any more. It is not from pride +that I go. No; I cannot do anything else. Yesterday, when I was crying +before you, it only needed a word from you--only one single word. I +should have staid. You did not speak it. It must be better so. Farewell, +for always." + + * * * * * + +One word! Fool that I had been! This word! I had said it with tears over +and over. I had scattered it to the wind. I had repeated it--how +often--to the lonely fields; but to her I had not said it. I had not +told her that I loved her. And now I must never say it. When I met her +in that fatal room, I myself had no clear consciousness of my love. +Perhaps I was not even yet awakened to it while I was sitting with her +brother in helpless and fearful silence. A moment later it broke out +with irresistible force as I shuddered at the possibility of harm to +her, and began to seek her, to call her, but then it was already too +late. "But that is impossible," you say. I do not know whether it is +possible, but I know that it is true. Assja would not have left me if +there had been a trace of coquetry in her, and if her position had not +been a false one. She could not bear that which every other girl could +have borne; but that I had not realized. My evil genius held my +confession back from my lips, as I saw Gagin for the last time, at the +dark window, and the last thread that I might have seized slipped from +my fingers. + +On the same day I returned to L---- with my travelling trunk, and took +passage for Cologne. I remember that, as the boat was under way, and I +was taking leave in spirit of the streets and the places I should never +lose from memory, I saw Nancy on the bank. She was sitting on a bench. +Her face was pale, but not sorrowful, and a stalwart young peasant stood +beside her, laughing and talking to her. On the other shore of the river +the little Madonna looked out, sad as ever, from the green shadow of the +old oak tree. + + * * * * * + +I found myself on the Gagins' track in Cologne. I learned that they had +started for London. Hastily I followed them; but in London all my +inquiries were fruitless. For a long time I would not be discouraged, +for a long time I kept up an obstinate search; but at last I was obliged +to give up hope of finding them. + +And I never saw them again; I never saw Assja again. Of her brother I +heard brief news sometimes; but she had for ever vanished from my sight. +I do not know if she is yet living. Once, while travelling, years +afterward, I caught a hasty glimpse of a woman in a railway carriage +whose face reminded me vividly of features never to be forgotten, but I +was deceived by a chance resemblance. Assja remained in my memory as I +had known her in the fairest days of my life, and as I had last seen +her, bowed over the arm of the low wooden chair. + +But I will confess that I did not grieve too long for her. Yes, I have +even fancied that Fate had been kind in refusing to unite us. I consoled +myself with the thought that I could not have been happy with such a +wife. I was young, and the future--this short, fleeting life--seemed +endless to me. Why should not that be again which once had been so +sweet, and even better and more beautiful? I have known other women, but +the feeling which Assja awakened in me--that deep and ardent +tenderness--has never repeated itself. + +No! No eyes could compensate me for the loss of those that once were +lifted, with such love, to mine. No heart has ever rested on my breast +which could make my own beat with such delicious anguish! Condemned to +the solitary existence of a man without a family tie, I bring my life to +its gloomy end; but I guard still, as a sacred relic, her letters and +the dried geranium sprig which she once tossed me from the window. There +clings a faint fragrance to it even yet; but the hand that gave it, the +hand that it was only once vouchsafed to me to kiss, has mouldered, +perhaps, for many a year in the grave. And I--what has become of me? +What remains to me of myself--of those happy and painful days--of those +winged hopes and desires? So the slight fragrance of a feeble weed +outlasts all the joys and all the sorrows of a man. Nay, it outlasts the +man himself! + + + + +TO BEETHOVEN. + + + Clasped in a too strict calyxing + Lay Music's bud o'er-long unblown, + Till thou, Beethoven, breathed her spring: + Then blushed the perfect rose of tone. + + O loving Soul, thy song hath taught + All full-grown passion fast to flee + Where science drives all full-grown thought-- + To unity, to unity. + + For he whose ear with grave delight + Brings brave revealings from thine art + Oft hears thee calling through the night: + _In Love's large tune all tones have part._ + + Thy music hushes motherwise, + And motherwise to stillness sings + The slanders told by sickly eyes + On nature's healthy course of things. + + It soothes my accusations sour + 'Gainst frets that fray the restless soul: + The stain of death; the pain of power; + The lack of love 'twixt part and whole; + + The yea-nay of Free-will and Fate, + Whereof both cannot be, yet are; + The praise a poet wins too late + Who starves from earth into a star; + + The lies that serve great parties well, + While truths but give their Christs a cross + The loves that send warm souls to hell, + While cold-blood neuters live on loss; + + Th' indifferent smile that nature's grace + On Jesus, Judas, pours alike; + Th' indifferent frown on nature's face + When luminous lightnings blindly strike; + + The sailor praying on his knees + Along with him that's cursing God-- + Whose wives and babes may starve or freeze, + Yet Nature will not stir a clod. + + If winds of question blow from out + The large sea-caverns of thy notes, + They do but clear each cloud of doubt + That round a high-path'd purpose floats. + + As: why one blind by nature's act + Still feels no law in mercy bend, + No pitfall from his feet retract, + No storm cry out, _Take shelter, friend!_ + + Or, Can the truth be best for them + That have not stomachs for its strength? + Or, Will the sap in Culture's stem + E'er reach life's furthest fibre-length? + + How to know all, save knowingness; + To grasp, yet loosen, feeling's rein; + To sink no manhood in success; + To look with pleasure upon pain; + + How, teased by small mixt social claims, + To lose no large simplicity; + How through all clear-seen crimes and shames + To move with manly purity; + + How, justly, yet with loving eyes, + Pure art from cleverness to part; + To know the Clever good and wise, + Yet haunt the lonesome heights of Art. + + O Psalmist of the weak, the strong, + O Troubadour of love and strife, + Co-Litanist of right and wrong, + Sole Hymner of the whole of life, + + I know not how, I care not why, + Thy music brings this broil at ease, + And melts my passion's mortal cry + In satisfying symphonies. + + Yea, it forgives me all my sins, + Fits Life to Love like rhyme to rhyme, + And tunes the task each day begins + By the last trumpet-note of Time. + + SIDNEY LANIER. + + + + +THE DRAMATIC CANONS. + + +At intervals of varying length, the journals of the Anglo-Saxon races +are given to discussing the question whether the present age be one of +decadence or progress in dramatic art. Most readers of "The Galaxy" have +seen some phases of this discussion, which starts up afresh after the +arrival of every noted foreign actor or the production of a new play. It +is at present confined to the English-speaking nations, and prevails +more in America than England just now. + +In France there is no lively interest in the theme. The French dramatic +authors seem to be pretty well satisfied themselves, and to satisfy +their audiences; their best claim to success being found in the fact +that English and American dramatic authors of the present day almost +invariably pilfer from them. + +In the course of this perennial discussion we constantly meet with +appeals, on the part of those learned gentlemen, the theatrical critics, +to the "dramatic canons." Such and such a play is said to offend against +these "canons," and they are spoken of as something of which it is +shameful to be ignorant, but at the same time with a vagueness of phrase +betraying a similar vagueness of definition. It has seemed to us that an +inquiry into the nature of these canons may not be out of place at the +present time. This we propose to determine by consulting the practice of +those authors of former times whose productions still hold the stage as +"stock plays," so called, and of those modern authors still living whose +plays are well known and famous, being still successfully acted. By such +an analysis we may possibly settle something, especially if our inquiry +shall call forth the actual experience of those living who have attained +great success, whether as authors or adapters. + +The most obvious division of our subject is into tragedy, comedy, +melodrama; but inasmuch as it is plain that the laws of success in all +these walks of dramatic art must contain much in common, we have +preferred a different division for analysis, leaving the kind of drama +as a subdivision common to each part of the inquiry. A less obvious but +equally just division will be as to the canons regulating the subject, +the treatment, and the production of a successful drama, in whatever +walk. We propose to ascertain our canons from the successful plays, +still holding the stage, of Shakespeare, Sheridan, Knowles, Bulwer, Dion +Boucicault, Tom Taylor, Augustin Daly, and Gilbert, together with such +single plays, like "The Honeymoon," "Masks and Faces," and a few others, +as are better known to the public than their authors, whose sole +dramatic successes they were. Ephemeral successes, however great, cannot +be safely taken as guides to a canon; but an established success of long +standing, however repugnant to our tastes, must be examined, even if it +take the form of the "Black Crook." + +The influence of the French drama on Anglo-Saxon art has been so decided +that no safe estimates of canons can be made which do not take into +account the works of Sardou, Dumas, and the minor French authors, whose +name is legion. Fortunately for our subject, the French work on simple +principles, and will not confuse us any more than the Greeks, whom they +imitate. Let us try, then, to ascertain our canons in their order, +beginning with the subject of the drama. + +What subjects are fit for dramatic treatment, and are there any entirely +unfitted therefor? + +We find a pretty wide range in the successful dramas of modern time. In +tragedy we have ancient history, as shown by "Coriolanus," "Julius +Cęsar," "Virginius," "Alexander the Great"; medieval history, in +"Macbeth," "Richard III."; legendary stories, in "Lear," "Hamlet," +"Othello," "Romeo and Juliet." In comedy and melodrama we have an almost +infinite variety, as much so as in novel writing. History, legend, and +pure invention claim equal right in the field. We have "The Tempest," +"As You Like It," "Much Ado about Nothing," "Twelfth Night," "Henry +IV.," "Henry V.," "Merchant of Venice," "The Wonder," "The Honeymoon," +"Masks and Faces," "London Assurance," "School for Scandal," "The +Rivals," "The Lady of Lyons," "Richelieu," "Wild Oats," "The Colleen +Bawn," "Arrah-na-Pogue," "The Shaughraun," "The Wife," "The Merry Wives +of Windsor," "Under the Gaslight," "Don Cęsar de Bazan," "American +Cousin," "Rip Van Winkle," and the "Black Crook," all well known and +successful plays, many perhaps being acted this very night all over the +Union and England. We are not here examining the question of the +goodness or badness of these plays, their merits or demerits: we are +merely recognizing them as well known plays, constantly being acted, and +always successful when well acted. Of all of these, the most constantly +successful and most frequently acted are those of Shakespeare, Sheridan, +and Bulwer, among the old plays, and those of Boucicault and Daly among +living authors. Almost all playgoers are familiar with these works, and +have seen them once or more; and every new aspirant for histrionic +honors has one or more of the plays of the first three in his list of +test characters. If he be a man and a tragedian, he must play Hamlet, +Othello, Richard, Shylock, Macbeth, Richelieu, Claude Melnotte; if +versatile, he must add Benedick, Charles Surface, Captain Absolute, and +others to the list; if a lady, she must be tested in Portia, Ophelia, +Pauline, Lady Teazle, Juliet--who knows what? Some very versatile ladies +have tried all the light comedy characters, finishing with Lady Macbeth +as an experiment. A short time ago there was quite an epidemic of Lady +Macbeths, but that is over for the present. The stray sheep have +returned to the fold. Let us return to them. + +What can we glean about the limitations of the dramatic subject from +these successful plays? There is a limitation somewhere, and the first +and most obvious is--time. A novelist can make the minute description of +a life interesting. The most celebrated novels, such as "Robinson +Crusoe," "Vicar of Wakefield," "David Copperfield," "Pendennis," "The +Three Guardsmen," and others, have been just such books, imitations of +real biographies. But a play is limited in length to five acts, or six +at most, and its time of acting has a practical limit of three hours, +with the inter-acts. Each act is further practically limited to five +scenes, and it is but seldom that it stretches over three, while the +latter average is never exceeded and seldom reached in a five-act play. +No scene can properly contain more than a chapter of a novel, so we find +ourselves practically limited to a story which can be told inside of +fifteen chapters, the further inside the better. The French, who are +much more artificial than the English in their dramatic canons, almost +invariably limit their acts to a single scene, reducing their story +thereby to only five chapters. A careful comparison of successful acting +plays will generally end in bringing us to one obvious canon: + + I. The subject of a drama must be capable of being fully + treated in fifteen chapters at most. + +The next limitation that we meet is in the nature of the story. A +novelist can describe his hero and heroine and the scenes in which they +move. He can depict them in motion, and describe a long journey in +strange countries, trusting to picturesque scenery and incident to help +him out. He can give us a sketch of their former life, and tell how they +fared after they were happily married. The dramatist cannot do this. He +must put his people down in a given place and leave them there till his +scene is over, opening another scene or another act after a silent +interval. He can, indeed, put a narrative of supposed events into the +mouth of any of his characters, but such narratives are always dull and +prosy, and to be avoided. Shakespeare uses them sometimes, but only when +he cannot help himself, and always makes them short. The nearest +instances that occur to us are, the description by Tressel to Henry VI. +of the murder of Prince Edward, usually put now in the first act of +"Richard III.," and the story of Oliver in "As You Like It." Sometimes a +short story cannot be helped, but if told, it is always found to be of a +collateral circumstance not directly leading to the catastrophe. It +generally is brought in only to explain the presence of a character on +the stage in the successful drama. Sometimes it happens otherwise. For +instance, Coleman makes Mortimer, in the "Iron Chest," tell the whole +mystery of his life in the form of a story instead of acting it. The +result is a poor play, seldom acted, and generally to small audiences, +being only valuable for some special features of which we shall speak +later. It is not too much to ask for acceptance of this second canon +regarding the subject: + + II. The subject should be capable of being acted without the + aid of narrative. + +Is it still possible to limit the subject, and do novels and dramas +differ still further? A third limitation will reveal itself, if we +compare a typical drama, like "Much Ado About Nothing," or "Hamlet," +with a typical novel such as "David Copperfield" or "Robinson Crusoe." +These latter depend for their interest on a series of adventures which +befall a hero, sometimes entirely unconnected with each other, just as +they happen to a man in real life, wherein he meets many and various +scenes and persons. Neither possesses any sequence of events, depending +on each other, such as pervades "Hamlet" and all acting plays. It is +true that some few novelists, such as Wilkie Collins, write novels that +depend on plot for their interest, but those typical novels which stand +at the head of the list do not. The masterpieces of Scott, such as +"Ivanhoe," "Talisman," "Old Mortality," are antiquarian studies, with +very slight plots; Dickens and Thackeray's best novels have no plot +worth mentioning; and where perfect plots are found, it is rare to find +a lasting and enduring novel. In a play, on the other hand, a plot seems +to be absolutely necessary to interest the spectator, the more intricate +the better. We have all seen Shakespeare's plays so often, that we are +apt to forget how intricate and involved many of his plots are; and when +we consider that most of his plots were taken from very bad novels which +have utterly perished from sight, while the plays still live, we begin +to realize by the force of contrast another canon relating to the +subject, which is this: + + III. The subject must have a connected plot, in which one + event depends on the other. + +When we come to restrict the dramatic subject any further, we encounter +more difficulty. Some might hold that the interest of the subject should +depend on either love or death, but we are met at once by instances of +plays in which the real interest is almost wholly political, such as +"Henry V.," "Richard III.," or moral, such as "Lear." Referring once +more to the effect of contrast with the novel for guidance, we find it +very difficult to separate subjects proper for dramatic treatment any +further than we have done, and almost impossible to lay down any +absolute rule to which distinguished exceptions cannot be quoted. It +might be said that the interest should turn on a single action, as it +does in most plays, and especially in tragedies, but here we are met by +"Much Ado About Nothing," "The Honeymoon," and other plays, where two or +three plots progress side by side in perfect harmony. It seems, +therefore, that any further absolute limitation of the abstract dramatic +subject is impracticable, and we must be content with adding a mere +recommendation for our fourth canon, much as follows: + + IV. The interest of the plot generally turns on either love + or death, and generally hinges on a single action or + episode. + +When we come to speak of the _best_ subjects of dramatic writing, we are +really approaching the domain of treatment, which is much wider and +better defined. There it becomes a question for judgment and discretion, +and much more certainty can be attained. Instead of considering all +dramas, we narrow our search to the best only, judging them by the +simple tests of success and frequency of acting, and finding what sort +of subjects have been taken, and how they have been treated. + +Let us then come at once to the question, What is the best method of +treating a given subject? Here we are again confronted by a variety of +decisions, some of which seem to conflict with others, but which all +agree in some common particulars. In the dramas written, down to the +time of Boucicault, it seemed to be assumed as a matter of course that +every first-class play, comedy or tragedy, must be written in five acts. +All of Shakespeare's, Sheridan's, Knowles's, follow this old rule, as +inflexible and artificial as some of the French canons, but with the +same compensating advantage, that author and audience knew what was +expected of each, and troubled themselves little over the structure of +their dramas. Of late years another custom has taken the place of the +five-act play, and many if not most of the modern dramas, while of the +same length as the old ones, are divided into four and even three acts. +Especially is this the case with comedies, and those nondescript plays +that are variously called "melodramas," "dramas," and "domestic dramas." +In the case of three-act plays, the number of scenes in each act is +frequently five, sometimes six or seven, but the common modern practice +restricts the last act, if possible, to a single scene. The number of +scenes must of course depend on how many are absolutely necessary to +develop the story. The French system of a single scene to each act has +one great advantage. It permits of very much finer scenery being +introduced than in a scene which is to be shifted, whether closed in or +drawn aside. For instance, when the curtain comes down between each +scene, the stage may be crowded with furniture, and those temporary +erections called "set pieces." There will always be plenty of time to +remove these between the acts, and noise of hammering is of no +consequence when the curtain is down. If there is more than one scene in +the act, all this is changed. Let us say there are only two scenes. One +of these must be a full-depth scene, but all the furniture and set +pieces are restricted to that part of the stage which lies behind the +two "flats" which make the front scene. In that front scene furniture +is inadmissible, without rudely disturbing the illusion. Let us suppose +the front scene to be the first, and that any furniture is left on the +stage. At the close of the scene the characters leave the stage, but +there stands the furniture. The old way to get rid of it is simple. +Enter a "supe" in livery, who picks up the one table and two chairs. +Exit, amid the howls of the gods in the gallery, who shriek "Soup! +soup!" as if they were suddenly stricken with hunger. Of course this +spoils the illusion; and the better the scenery, the more perfect the +other illusions, the easier they are disturbed by such incongruity. +Sometimes the set pieces in front, if there are any, and the furniture, +disappear through trap doors. In the large city theatres, such as those +where spectacular pieces are constantly produced, this method of +changing a scene is common, but such theatres themselves are not common, +and it costs a great deal to run them on account of the number of +workmen required. Our present inquiry is directed to the ordinary +theatre, with its stock company, simple scenery, and few traps. Of this +kind of theatre every town furnishes at least one sample. In such +theatres at least it will always be best to keep furniture and set +pieces out of the front scenes as much as possible, to preserve the +illusion. If the front scene come after the full-depth one, the wisdom +of this rule becomes still more apparent. A "supe" taking out furniture +is not half as ludicrous as one bringing it in, and without a trap such +a spectacle is unavoidable. The first canon offered by common sense is +obviously sound: + + V. Keep furniture and set pieces out of front scenes, if + possible. + +This rule being followed, will probably reduce the front scenes of a +drama to the open air, woods, gardens, halls, streets, church porches, +and similar places, where the attention will be concentrated on the +actors, not the picture. The scope of a front scene is further +restricted by the fact that you must bring your characters on and take +them off, being deprived of that valuable ally to illusion, the +"tableau." If the scene be the first of the act, a tableau may indeed be +discovered, but it cannot close the scene. The most common place for a +front scene is between a first and a third full-depth scene, to give +time for the change that goes on behind. This change always makes a +certain amount of noise, and the use of the front scene is to take off +the attention of the audience. This intention must be hidden at any +price, for, if perceived, it is fatal to the illusion. To hide it there +is only one method always reliable, which is to rivet the attention of +the audience on your characters, put in your best writing, and get up an +excitement to cover the scene. If you have any brilliant dialogue, any +passage of great emotion, any mystery to be revealed, put it in your +front scene so that your design may not be suspected, but the scene +appear natural. In brief the canon says: + + VI. Put the best writing into the front scenes. + +The next question that arises as to the front scene relates to the +character of incident that should be treated therein. It is obvious that +it will not do to put in a crisis or a climax at such a place. At its +best a front scene is only a makeshift, a preparation for the full +scene. Its employment necessitates a loss of nearly three-quarters of +the available space, and the tableau loses all its power, as developed +in the full-depth scene. Its use is therefore a disagreeable necessity, +so disagreeable that the French discard it entirely. Mechanically it is +only an introduction to the full scene, and the more it partakes of the +same character intellectually, the less will it weary the audience. The +best preparation an audience can have for a scene is to make them eager +therefor, and the best way to make them eager is to leave them in +suspense, so that they are impatient for the movement of the flats that +opens the next picture. A familiar instance of this employment of the +front scene is found in the "Shaughraun," by Boucicault, before the +Irish wake. The front scene represents the outside of a cottage with a +door in the right flat; the peasants and other characters come in, talk +about the wake, and enter the house one after another. In this scene it +is also explained that the supposed corpse is not dead, but shamming, so +that there is no tragic interest associated with the coming scene, but +every one is anxious to see it. At last all the characters are off, the +flats are drawn aside, and the celebrated Irish wake makes its +appearance, taking the whole depth of the stage. The audience is +satisfied, and the front scene has answered its end, as expressed in +this canon: + + VII. Front scenes ought to terminate in a suspense, which + the following scene will relieve. + +From this canon it follows that the front scene should deal only with +explanatory and dependent matters, not the principal action of the +drama. Sheridan, in "The Rivals" and the "School for Scandal," opens his +first acts with front scenes, which introduce little of the matter of +the story. I am inclined to think that he had a reason for this which +still prevails, in the noise made by the audience. The beginning of the +first act of most plays is distinguished in the auditorium by much +shuffling of feet, opening of doors, taking of seats, especially by +those who take the reserved seats in front of the house. All this +disturbs the audience and makes them lose any fine points at the +beginning of a play, unless the actors strain their voices unduly. In a +front scene the flats immediately behind the actors serve as a sounding +board for the voice, and reduce the volume of space to be filled by the +speakers. The advantage gained in this way is balanced by the loss to +the eye in losing the full-depth scene, wherefore this method of opening +a play is not much in favor; but its use in the cases mentioned leads to +a general canon as to the first act of a play, which also recommends +itself to common sense: + + VIII. Avoid fine points, and have plenty of action at the + beginning of the first act. + +This rule, however safe and sensible, is hampered by the necessities of +the subject, to which everything must be subordinated. Let us see how +the greatest masters of dramatic construction in modern times open their +first acts. Of these Boucicault comes first, _facile princeps_. We will +take the "Shaughraun" and "Flying Scud" for examples. Both open in a +similar manner: in the first a young woman, in the second an old man, +engaged in household work, singing away at nothing particular. A quiet +picture not requiring close attention. To each, enter a disturber, +somewhat disagreeable, arresting attention. A short squabble, then more +characters coming on, one or more at a time, till the stage is pretty +full, and no flagging of interest. The act does not drag. Compare this +with Sardou's "Frou-Frou," "Fernande," and others. Sardou's first acts +almost invariably drag, and the success does not come till afterward. +One great difference is immediately perceptible. Sardou almost always +brings on his people in pairs, and takes them off together, leaving the +first act a succession of dualogues, with very little action. Now take +"The Lady of Lyons," an old success, which nowhere drags. It opens with +a picture, mother and daughter, doing nothing particular. Enter +disagreeable Beauseant, who makes an offer and is rejected. A mild +excitement at once arises, shut in by a front scene, short, lively, and +spirited, where Glavis and Beauseant plot for revenge on Pauline. The +scene ends in suspense, the actors having gone for Claude Melnotte, and +the flats draw aside, revealing Melnotte's cottage and introducing the +hero. By this time the audience is quiet and can take the fine points, +so the third scene of the first act can be made exciting. There is thus +no flagging of interest in either Bulwer or Boucicault. One does the +thing in three scenes, the other in a single scene, but both employ the +same means, which are thus expressed: + + IX. Open the first act with a quiet picture, and bring in + the disturbing element at once. Having aroused attention, + bring on all your characters, and end with an excitement. + Avoid bringing on characters in pairs in this act. + +The first act of a play is always surrounded with difficulties. The +interest of the audience has to be aroused, and all the characters +brought in. Every part of it must hang together, and the attention must +be excited more and more as the act progresses. This rule applies to the +whole play likewise, but in the first act it is especially necessary, +because there are so many things to divert attention, and the object of +the act is to catch it. After a certain period it must flag, and the +object of the dramatist must be to close his act before that dreadful +period. The office of the first act is to prepare for the second; +therefore it resembles the front scene in one important principle--it +should end in suspense, and make the audience eager for the second act. +Ending as it should in a full scene, it has the advantage over the front +scene that a tableau is possible, and should be used. This tableau must +be natural, and must come, as all tableaux come, out of a climax, but +the climax must not be complete. It must leave the audience in suspense, +and give them something to talk about in the inter-act. It must not be +too long delayed, or the act will drag. These and various other reasons +have led to this further canon, generally observed: + + X. The first act should be the shortest, and as soon as a + partial climax is reached the curtain should come down. The + tableau and action should indicate suspense and preparation. + +This general rule indicates that the villain should be temporarily +triumphant, if the play is to end in his discomfiture. If his first +scheme fails in the first act, it is difficult to arouse interest in the +nominally imperilled innocence which is left in danger. The structure +becomes too artificial, and the dictum _ars est celare artem_ has been +violated. No rule is so safe in dramatic writing, as also in acting. The +end is--_illusion_. + +The rule of putting only suspensory and preparatory action in the first +act is universally followed by Shakespeare and all other successful +writers of plays, and is better settled than any other. The first act +occupies the office of the first volume of a novel, explaining all the +story. Very frequently, in the modern French drama especially, it +assumes the form of a prologue, the action transpiring at an interval of +several years, sometimes a whole generation, before the rest of the +play. Only one instance of this character is found in Shakespeare, in +the "Winter's Tale," where the action of the drama demands a prologue, +but it is quite common in modern times, while another custom of +Shakespeare's--that of dividing a historical play into two "parts"--has +quite gone out of fashion. Its only modern example is that of Wagner's +opera of the "Niebelungen Ring," which takes a week to get through. The +Chinese and Japanese have a strong taste for this kind of play, but the +practice has vanished from Anglo-Saxon civilization. It must be +confessed that the employment of a prologue is rather a clumsy way of +opening a play. It is too apt to be complete in itself, and to join +clumsily to the rest of the drama. Besides this, it is hard to preserve +the illusion that the small child who appears in the prologue has +developed into the good-looking young person who is the heroine of the +rest of the play. The "Sea of Ice" is a familiar instance of this sort +of thing, where the same actress who personates the mother in the first +act, and gets drowned, blossoms into a girl of eighteen in the second +act, supposed to be her own daughter, last seen as a small child. In +"Winter's Tale" there is nothing of this. The supposed Perdita of Act I. +is merely a rag baby, and mother and child reappear together thereafter. +In cases where the interval between prologue and play is limited to a +year or two, this objection does not apply; in fact such prologues are +quite common and useful. The fanciful and magic prologue to the "Marble +Heart" is a very happy instance of conquest of the difficulties inherent +in long separated prologues. The wrench is so sudden from a Greek +sculptor to a French sculptor, from Athenian dresses to Parisian, that +the main interest of the play lies in the identification of the ancient +characters in the new dress, and the very fanciful absurdity of the plot +lends it an air of reality essentially dramatic. The end is illusion, +and illusion it is. + +There is little more clear and positive to be said about the first act. +Study of the best models will reveal many points inherent in all, but no +general rules so clear as those of brevity, action, and suspense. The +practical limit of time is from fifteen to thirty minutes, the medium of +twenty being common to mono-scenic acts, but on this no positive canon +can be ascertained. It depends on the interest, and only this general +rule is partially true, that no interest can carry an audience through a +first act of forty-five minutes. + +We next come to the middle acts of the play, and here again general +rules are hard to find. The number of acts varies so much that nothing +positive can be said except as regards fixed lengths of drama. Treating +all between the first and last acts as a whole, the first certain rule +that meets us is this truism: + + XI. From the second to the last act the interest must be + regularly increased, and each act must end in suspense, + leading to the next. + +Without an observance of this rule no play can ever be permanently +successful as a general thing. There have been some poor plays with +little interest, that have been bolstered up for a time by the force of +a single character, portrayed by a peculiar actor, but in that case the +play becomes a mere "star play," not amenable to the common rules, and +useless out of the hands of the peculiar star who owns it. Of such are +those multiform dramas, constantly varying, of which Mr. Sothern makes +Lord Dundreary and Sam the central figures. The actor found he had made +a lucky hit in his character, and he hired out the work of altering the +play to any sort of literary hacks, so that he himself is really the +creator of the plays, and when he dies they will die. In the "American +Cousin," as it was first played, the interest lay entirely in Asa +Trenchard, and the drama was very skilfully constructed, with ascending +interest, to develop the ideal Yankee. In that part Jefferson made his +first public hit. As soon as he found that Dundreary had stolen the play +from its hero, Jefferson was wise enough to drop the contest between +high comedy and broad farce, in which the latter must conquer when they +come together. By taking up the ideal Dutchman (or rather German, as he +makes it) in Rip Van Winkle, he created a part of which no one can +deprive him, but which will probably die with him. No one else has +succeeded with it to the same degree, and "Rip Van Winkle" stands as a +model of a successful star play, wherein all the interest hangs on a +single character. + +It is not the intention of this article to enter into the question of +what constitutes the interest of such plays as "Rip Van Winkle." To do +so would be to enter into a field where everything is uncertain, and +where judgment is only an expression of individual liking. The main +elements of the success appear to be humor and pathos, those twin +brethren of genius whose identity and individuality are frequently so +inextricable from each other. Both are drawn in broad, simple lights and +shadows, so that the simplest audience can take the points, while the +most cultivated members of that audience are studying the delicate +touches of the actor. The contrast between--but we must refrain from the +digression, however tempting. We are examining the dramatic canons, and +the only settled canons about which there is little doubt are those +relating to construction, not to sources of interest. In the kingdom of +invention genius is supreme, and amenable to no rules. Each writer must +work out his own salvation. + +Constructively it is obvious that the number of acts in a play must be +regulated by the number of natural episodes in the action of its +subject; and the perfection of its construction is tested by the +liberties that can be taken with the acts and scenes. Of late years it +has become the fashion to alter and remodel Shakespeare's and other old +plays, by changing scenes and acts, cutting out and putting in. To an +ardent worshipper of Shakespeare as read, these alterations frequently +appear desecrations, but there is little question that they were and are +improvements. The construction of many of Shakespeare's plays is +decidedly faulty, and the nature of the improvements made by managers +and actors is best illustrated when the original play unaltered is tried +against the adaptation. The acting edition of "Richard III." is a +familiar instance of this. Colley Cibber arranged it, he being a shrewd +old actor and manager. His edition holds the stage today, and always +succeeds, where the original "Richard" fails. In this matter of +construction the chances are all in favor of the improvement of a work +by a shrewd adapter. His attention is directed to only one thing, the +successful presentation of the play. He is not an artist so much as a +workman. He creates nothing, he only alters and improves. He may be +perfectly incapable of creating an ideal character, while yet he can +make its language more compact, can concentrate its action. Such an +adapter is a skilful gardener. He cannot create the fruit tree, but he +can prune it, and stimulate it to the perfection of fruit-bearing. + +The French stage has been a prolific nursery for these skilful workmen, +and they have managed to extract splendid successes from their work. It +is by comparing their English adaptations with a simple translation of +the work that one best sees the improvement. For instance, there is the +"Two Orphans," with a plot and incidents so repulsive in the original +that its translation failed in London in spite of its weird power. +Adapted and cleansed by a clever American author, it was the great +success of last year in New York, and is now running a fresh career of +success. Another instance that occurs is Sardou's "Fernande." It was +altered and adapted in New York by Augustin Daly, and succeeded. Another +version by Mr. Schönberg, then of Wallack's, a straight translation, +failed to secure a hearing in Boston, and ended in a lawsuit. This was +not for want of merit in the translation, which was excellent, but, as +appears from a comparison of the two plays, simply because Daly had +improved on Sardou. The alterations were small, but masterly, and showed +that Daly understood his business. In Sardou's play there appears a +certain character, a young count (I forget his name) who comes in at the +beginning of the first act, the close of the last. In the last he has +some very important business to do, but he appears nowhere else. Of +himself he does not aid the plot, but his last action is indispensable. +In the original play also appears the Spanish Commander, a mere sketch +in the first act. Daly suppressed the Count altogether, gave his best +business to the Commander, and brought the latter in all through the +play. The result was one good character instead of two poor ones, and +indicates a canon which can be confirmed by many other instances. This +canon shapes itself something like this: + + XII. Concentrate the interest on few characters, and avoid + numerous unimportant parts. + +This canon rests on the necessities of a stock company, as those before +rest on the nature of scenery and audiences. Every company has its +leading man, leading lady, low comedians, old man and old woman, and +those ordinary characters which all playgoers know by heart. If the play +does not fit these, it will not succeed. The appreciation of this fact +is one secret of the great success of Boucicault, Daly, and Lester +Wallack as play writers. They know the exact capacity of their stages +and companies from long experience, and write their plays to fit them. +With even ordinary talents they would have a great advantage to start +with over writers of greater genius, writing with vague ideas of what +the manager wants. As managers they know exactly what they want, and +what their companies can do. To a young writer the difficulties are all +in the start, unless he be an actor, or so closely related to actors or +managers as to be able to get behind the scenes at all times, and become +familiar with scenery, traps, machinery, rehearsals, and all the details +of the _business_ of theatricals. In former times, especially two +centuries ago, the task of writing a good acting play was far easier +than now. Scenery was simple, access behind the scenes easier--there was +not such a wall of separation as now exists between actors and audience +in a first-class city theatre. Even in those days, however, the writing +of plays was confined chiefly to actors, managers, and those men of +fashion who were given to haunting the green room. In the present day no +amount of talent in a writer seems capable of overcoming the +difficulties of technical construction of a drama. It is rare to find an +author of acknowledged talent in other departments, especially in +America, distinguished as a dramatist, and when one of them tries his +hand at playwriting he fails, not from lack of good dialogue and +literary finish, but solely from lack of knowledge of the business of +the drama, the limitations of actors and scenery, and the technique of +dramatic construction. + +There is more hope to the American stage in the future in the production +of such undeniably original if mechanically faulty plays as Bret Harte +has given us in the "Two Men of Sandy Bar," than in the rapid carpentry +and skilful patchwork of hosts of French adaptations, whether they run +ten or five hundred nights. Our Hartes and our yet unknown writers daily +coming to the front, with freshness in their hearts and brains in their +heads, lack only technique and the custom of the stage, which no one can +give them but the managers and actors, who shall welcome them as +apprentices to learn the trade. That these latter will find it to their +advantage in the end to encourage a cordial alliance between the men of +the quill and the men of the sock and buskin, follows from a simple +calculation. If men of confessedly small talent and low character, such +as the host of lesser playwrights who furnish pabulum for the outlying +theatres, can write fair acting plays, simply by using mechanical +knowledge and stolen materials, it is probable that men of original +talent, already experienced writers in other branches of literature, +will end by producing much better and fresher work, when they are +offered and have enjoyed the same technical advantages. + + FREDERICK WHITTAKER. + + + + +AN EVENING PARTY AMONG THE COSSACKS OF THE DON. + + +Sunset on the Lower Don; a dim waste of gray, unending steppe, looking +vaster and drearier than ever under the fast falling shadows of night; a +red gleam far away to the west, falling luridly across the darkening sky +and the ghostly prairie; a dead, grim silence, broken only by the plash +and welter of our laboring steamer, or the shrill cry of some passing +bird; an immense, crushing loneliness--the solitude not of a region +whence life has died out, but of one where it has never existed. Even my +three comrades, hardened as they are to all such influences, appear +somewhat impressed by the scene. + +"Cheerful place, ain't it?" says Sinbad, the traveller; "and the whole +of southern Russia is just the same style--multiply a billiard board by +five million, and subtract the cushions!" + +"I wonder what the population of this district can be," muses Allfact, +the statistician, looking disconsolately at his unfilled note-book. +"It's almost impossible to get any reliable information in these parts. +But I should think one man to three square miles must be about the +proportion." + +"And not a feather of game in the whole shop!" growls Smoothbore, the +sportsman, with an indignant glance at his pet double barrel. "It's as +bad as that desert where the old sportsman committed suicide, leaving a +letter beside him to the effect that he must be firing at something, and +there being nothing else to shoot, he had shot himself!" + +"I'll give you one entry for your note-book, Allfact, my boy," +interrupted I; "there are _thirty-nine_ sand banks between this and +Rostoff, at the head of the estuary; and the upper stream is all banks +together--no navigation at all!" + +"I should think not, by Jove, with that kind of thing going on!" says +Smoothbore, pointing to a solitary horseman who is coolly riding across +our bows with an aggravating grin, his dog following. Our outraged +captain has barely time to hurl at him some pithy suggestions respecting +his portion in a future life, which had better not be quoted, when there +comes a tremendous bump, and we are aground once more! + +Just at this moment two wild figures come dashing along the bank at full +gallop, sitting so far forward as to be almost on the horse's +neck--their hair tossing in the wind like a mane, their small black eyes +gleaming savagely under the high sheepskin cap, their dark lean faces +thrust forward like vultures scenting prey--shooting a sharp, hungry +glance at us as they swoop by, in mute protest against the iron age +which compels them to pass a party in distress without robbing it. These +are the famous Cossacks of the Don, the best guerillas and the worst +soldiers in the world; at once the laziest and most active of +men--strangest of all the waifs stranded on the shore of modern +civilization by the ebb of the middle ages--a nation of grown-up +children, with all the virtues and all the vices of barbarism--simple, +good-natured, thievish, pugnacious, hospitable, drunken savages.[K] + +[Footnote K: The Cossack is often erroneously classed by untravelled +writers with the native Russian, from whom he is as distinct as the +Circassian or the Tartar.] + +It takes us fully ten minutes to "poll off" again, and we have hardly +done so when there comes a sound through the still air, like the moan of +a distant sea; and athwart the last gleam of the sinking sun flits a +cloud of wide-winged living things, shadowy, silent, unearthly, as a +legion of ghosts. The wild fowl of the steppes are upon their annual +migration, and for many minutes the living mass sweeps over us unbroken, +orderly, and even as an army in battle array--a resemblance increased by +the exertions of an active leader, who keeps darting back from his post +at the head of the column, and trimming the ranks like an officer on +parade. + +"I wonder how many birds there are in that column," says Allfact, +instinctively feeling for his note-book, as if expecting some leading +bird to volunteer the desired information. + +"Just like their mean tricks," mutters Smoothbore savagely. "First the +game won't show at all, and then they come so thick that no fellow would +be such a cad as to fire at 'em." + +Night comes on, and the foul-creeping mist begins to steam up from the +low banks of greasy black mud, driving us perforce into the cabin, where +we speedily fall asleep on the benches along the walls--for bed-places +there are none. About midnight I begin to dream that I am a Christian +martyr in the reign of Diocletian, "in the act" (as Paddy would, say) of +being burned alive; and I awake to find it all but true. The fact is, +the steward, with a thoroughly Russian love of overheating, has put wood +enough into the stove to roast an ox; and there is nothing for it but to +bolt on deck again, where we remain for the rest of the night. + +The panorama of the deck in the early morning forms an ethnological +study hard to match, except perchance by the Yokohama packet steaming +out of 'Frisco, or a "coolie boat" coming over from Demerara to +Trinidad. Gaunt, aquiline Cossacks, and portly Germans, and bumfaced +Tartars; red-capped, broad-visaged, phlegmatic Turks; slim, graceful +Circassians, beautiful with all the sleek tiger-like beauty of their +gladiator race; sallow, beetle-browed Russians, and black-robed, +dark-eyed, melancholy Jews. We have _one_ Persian on board--a lanky, +hatchet-faced rogue, half buried under a huge black sheepskin cap not +unlike a tarred beehive. He smokes one half the day and sleeps the other +half, and is only once betrayed into any show of emotion. This occurs at +one of our halting places on the second day, when he comes on board +again grinning and whooping like a madman, having succeeded (as I learn +when his excitement subsides) in cheating a Cossack out of a halfpenny. + +But the appearance of the Russian _mujiks_ (peasants), and the manner in +which they curl themselves up anywhere and anyhow, and sleep the sleep +of the just with their heads in baskets and their feet in pools of dirty +water, baffles all description. A painter would revel in the third-class +deck about sunrise, when the miscellaneous hash of heads and limbs +begins to animate itself, like a coil of snakes at the approach of +spring--when mothers of families look anxiously about for the little +waddling bundles of clothes that are already thrusting their round faces +and beady black eyes into every place where they ought _not_ to go; and +when brawny peasants, taking their neighbor's elbow out of their mouth, +and their knee out of their neighbor's stomach, make three or four rapid +dips, like a drinking duck, to any village church that may be in sight, +and then fall to with unfailing zest to the huge black loaf which seems +to be their only baggage. The whole thing is like a scene in a fairy +tale: + + There was an old captain that lived in a "screw." + He had so many passengers he didn't know what to do; + They'd got nary baggage but one loaf of bread. + They squatted round the funnel, and _that_ was their bed. + +As we move southward, our surroundings alter very perceptibly. A genial +warmth and a rich summer blue replace the cold gray sky of the north; +the banks begin to rise higher, and to clothe themselves with thick +patches of bush, and even trees, instead of the coarse prairie grass; +while at every halting place the little wooden jetty is heaped with +perfect mounds of splendid grapes, sold at three cents per pound, by men +in shirtsleeves--phenomena which, to us who are fresh from the furred +wrappings and snow-blocked streets of Moscow, have a rather bewildering +effect. But the most striking sight is (to our friend Allfact at least) +the huge masses of coal which now fuel the steamer instead of the split +logs of the Volga. + +"You see Russia's richer than her neighbors think," remark I. "On the +Don alone there are 16,000 square miles of the finest anthracite, which +leaves only two per cent. of ashes in burning." + +"Sixteen thousand square miles!" cries the statistician, whipping out +his note-book. "Why on earth doesn't she use it, then, instead of +destroying all that valuable timber?" + +"Well, you see, the railways are not completed yet; but when they are I +can promise you that Russia will cut out England altogether in supplying +Constantinople and the Levant." + +One by one the little villages slip by us: Alexandrosk, the first sign +of which is the glitter of its gilded church-tower; Nikolaievo, with its +black marble monument to the late Crown Prince; Konstantirovskoė, the +birthplace of Prince Potemkin, brightest and most worthless of Russian +favorites, who "lived like an emperor and died like a dog." They are all +vary much of one pattern: substantial log-cabins, curiously painted, +with little palisaded gardens in front, and red-shirted men sitting +smoking at their doors, alternating with little wickerwork hovels daubed +with mud, which look very much like hampers left behind by a monster +picnic. Gangs of lean dogs (the pest of every Cossack village) are +sniffing hungrily about, while scores of sturdy wenches, with +berry-brown arms and feet, and sunburnt children clothed only in short +pinafores lined with dirt, run to stare at the wonderful fire-breathing +vessel as she comes gliding in. + +The sun is just dipping below the horizon as we reach Semi-Karakorskaya, +and anchor for the night as usual; for to navigate the Lower Don in the +dark is beyond the power of any pilot afloat. Here a Cossack +official,[L] whose acquaintance we have made on board, proposes to us to +land and be presented to the "Ataman," or chief of the tribe, with the +certainty of seeing something worth looking at. The offer is joyfully +accepted, and five minutes later we are scrambling up the steep, +crumbling bank--in the course of which feat Allfact slips and rolls +bodily down into the river. + +[Footnote L: The "Army of the Don," though now an integral part of +Russia, is still officered to a great extent by its own people.] + +"There's something for the notebook at last, old boy!" cries Smoothbore +spitefully. "Write down that you notice _a great falling off_ in this +part of the country!" + +To find one's way into a Cossack village at night is almost as hopeless +as the proverbial hunt for a needle in a haystack. The whole country +seems to consist of a series of carefully dug pitfalls, into which we +tumble one over the other, like fish out of a net; and our final +approach to the village is only to be guessed by the yells of the dogs, +which come about us with such zeal as to necessitate some vigorous +cudgelling, and a shower of trenchant Russian oaths, in which our +leader, thanks to his official character, seems to be quite a +proficient. At length a few lights, which appear to start from the very +ground under our feet, announce that we are among houses--underground +ones, it is true, but houses still. Then the first glimmer of the rising +moon lights up a row of log-cabins on either side, and the abyss of +half-dried mud between them; and at last, following our leader, we enter +one of those immeasurable courtyards in which the Cossack heart +delights, pass through a low doorway, ascend a creaking, ladder-like +stair, and, entering a small room at the head of it, find ourselves in +the presence of two men--one old and decrepit, the other in the prime of +life. The younger is the Ataman himself; the elder is his father, an old +soldier of the first campaigns of Nicholas. + +Seen by the dim light of the lamp that stands on the rough-hewn table, +the "interior" is sufficiently picturesque: the heavy crossbeams of the +roof, the skins that cover the walls, intermingled with weapons of every +kind, from the long Cossack lance to the light carabine which is fast +superseding it; the fresh complexions and Western costume of the English +party, contrasting strangely enough with the commanding figure and dark, +handsome face of our host, in his picturesque native dress and high +boots; the long white beard and vacant, wondering eyes of the ancient +soldier; the picture of the Ataman's patron saint in the corner, with +its little oil light burning before it, and a pious cockroach making a +laborious pilgrimage around its gilt frame; and, through the narrow, +loophole-like window, a glimpse of the great waste outside, lit by +fitful gleams of moonlight. + +Hospitality has been a Cossack virtue since the day that Bogdan +Khmelnitski gave meat from his own dish to the prisoners whom he was +about to slaughter; and we have hardly time to exchange greetings with +our new friends when we are set down to a plentiful meal of rye bread, +the splendid grapes of the Don, and "nardek"--a rich syrup strained from +the rind of the watermelon, not unlike molasses both in appearance and +flavor. + +The "bread and salt" (as the Russians technically call it) being +despatched, my three comrades, with the native official as interpreter, +fasten upon the Ataman, while I devote myself to the old soldier, and +begin to question him on the Danubian campaign of 1826. It is a sight to +see how the worn old face lights up, and how the sunken eyes flash at +the sound of the familiar name; and he plunges at once into his story. +Seldom is it given to any man to hear such a tale as that to which I +listen for the next half hour, told by one of its chief actors. Weary +struggles through miles of hideous morass--men dropping from sheer +exhaustion, with the wheels of the heavy artillery ploughing through +their living flesh; vultures haunting the long march of death to tear +the still quivering limbs of the fallen; soldiers, in the rage of +hunger, feeding upon the corpses of their comrades--all the hideous +details of that terrible campaign, told in a quiet, matter-of-course +way, which makes them doubly horrible. My impromptu Xenophon is still in +full swing when high above the clamor of tongues rises a sound from +without, which nothing on earth can match save the war whoop of the +Western Indian--the shrill, long-drawn "Hourra!" of the Cossack, which +made many a veteran grenadier's stout heart grow chill within, as it +came pealing over the endless snows of 1812. We rush headlong to the +outer door, and this is what we see: + +In the centre of the courtyard, under the full splendor of the +moonlight, stand some twenty tall, sinewy figures, in the high sheepskin +cap, wide trousers, and huge knee-high boots of the Cossack irregular. +They salute the Ataman as he appears by drawing their long knives and +waving them in the air, again uttering their shrill war cry; and then +begin to move in a kind of measured dance, advancing and retreating by +turns, to the sound of a low, dirge-like chant. Presently the music +grows quicker, the motion faster and fiercer; the dancers dart to and +fro through each other's ranks, brandishing their weapons, turning, +leaping, striking right and left--acting in terribly lifelike pantomime +the fury of a deadly battle. Seen in the heart of this great solitude, +with the cold moon looking silently down upon it, this whirl of wild +figures, and gleaming weapons, and dark, fierce faces, all eyes and +teeth, has a very grim effect; and even Sinbad's seasoned nerves quiver +slightly as the dancers at length join hands, and, whirling round like +madmen, burst forth with the deep, stern chorus with which their +ancestors swept the coasts of the Black Sea five hundred years ago: + + Our horses have trodden the steep Kavkaz (Caucasus); + Of the Krim (Crimea) we have taken our share; + And the way that we went is dabbled with blood, + To show that _we_ have been there! + +The volume of sound (stern and savage to the last degree, but yet full +of a weird, unearthly melody) fills the whole air like the rush of a +storm; and now, the Cossack blood being thoroughly heated, the play +suddenly turns to earnest. The nearest dancer, a tall, handsome lad with +a heavy black moustache, suddenly fells his next neighbor with a +tremendous blow between the eyes, which Heenan himself might have +applauded. The next moment the conqueror falls in his turn before a +crushing right-hander from his _vis-ą-vis_; and in an instant the whole +band are at it hammer and tongs--apparently without "sides," order, or +object of any kind, except the mere pleasure of thrashing and being +thrashed. There is little science among the combatants, who deliver +their blows in a slashing, round-hand style that would agonize a +professional "bruiser"; but every blow dealt by those brawny arms leaves +its mark, and the whole company speedily look as if they had been taking +part in an election. + +"By Jove!" says Smoothbore, with considerable feeling; "it does one good +to see a real good fight so far away from home!" + +"You'd see plenty such in Central Russia," answer I. "Two villages often +turn out to fight, just as we'd turn out to play cricket.[M] They call +it 'Koolatchni boi.'" + +[Footnote M: I remember one such battle near Moscow, in October, 1809, +in which more than a thousand men took part.] + +But Sinbad, being a man of humane temper, thinks that the sport has gone +far enough, and appeals to the Ataman to stop it. One word from the +all-powerful chief suffices to part the combatants; and, a messenger +being despatched for some corn-whiskey, they are speedily chinking +glasses as merrily as if nothing had happened. I am standing +unsuspectingly in their midst when suddenly the whole company rush upon +me as one man, and I find myself lifted in their arms and tossed bodily +into the air six times in succession, amid yells of applause, to which +all the previous uproar is as nothing.[N] Next they pounce upon Allfact, +who, in his thirst for new ideas, submits readily enough; but Sinbad and +Smoothbore take to their heels at once, and are with difficulty pacified +by our host and his venerable father, who are looking on from the +doorway. + +[Footnote N: This singular compliment (a universal one among the +Cossacks) is probably a relic of the old custom of raising their +"Kosbevoi," or head chief, on a shield when elected.] + +This closes the entertainment, for it is now nearly midnight, and we are +to start again at sunrise. We take a cordial leave of our new friends, +and depart, laden with bunches of grapes which are somewhat difficult to +carry conveniently. + +"I wonder why they tossed me up like that?" muses Allfact, as we grope +our way down to the shore. + +"Why!" answers Smoothbore. "Why, to take a _rise_ out of you, to be +sure." + + DAVID KER. + + + + +DRIFT-WOOD. + + +THE WILLS OF THE TRIUMVIRATE. + +"Nothing so generally strikes the imagination and engages the affections +of mankind," says Sir William Blackstone, "as the right of property." +Sure it is, that society palpitates whenever a great estate passes to a +new owner, disclosing its vastness in the act of transit. Perhaps for +this fact we may find another reason in Blackstone, where he says: +"There is no foundation in nature why the son should have the right to +exclude his fellow creatures from a determinate spot of ground because +his father had done so before him, or why the occupier of a particular +field or of a jewel, when lying on his death-bed, and no longer able to +maintain possession, should be entitled to tell the rest of the world +which of them should enjoy it after him." But since the law, to reward +thrift and avoid strife, has established this artificial right of +disposal, the disparities of fortune, on these signal occasions of +transfer, always set us to pondering. + +Vanderbilt, last of the three monstrously rich men of New York who have +died within three years, furnishes in his will the now tripled evidence +of a new ambition in American Croesuses--an aim to keep their fortunes +rolling and greatening for several generations in the exact paths where +they were started. Supposing that Mr. Stewart's bequest to Judge Hilton +was designed to purchase his entrance into the dry goods firm, we should +have a common aim of the triumvirate, since each has put a chosen man +into his shoes, as if with the hope to live on in this successor, like +Mordecai in "Deronda." The master passion of acquisition is thus +striving to outwit death. Astor and Vanderbilt found their second selves +in favorite sons; childless Stewart could only take his confidential +agent. Each conceivably died in the hope that a successor so carefully +selected and endowed would in turn hand over the bulk of his gigantic +wealth, in its original channel, to some steward chosen with equal care; +so that ages hence the Astor fortune still in houses, the Stewart +fortune still in trade, the Vanderbilt fortune still in railways, might +flourish under successive guardians, faithful to their tradition and +training. The John Jacob, the Cornelius, the Alexander of the past has +been blessed with the vision of his millions multiplying as he would +have them multiply, and haply has dreamed of accomplishing by his own +foresight an entail which he could not create under the laws. + +If this be the new tendency that American life is called upon to face, +it is at least not hard to account for. The thirst for posthumous fame +which inflamed old heroes and poets rages still in days when greatness +collects rents, sells dry goods, and corners stocks. And after all, what +is there stranger in struggling to prolong after death one's imperious +railroad sway, his landlord laws, his massive trade monopolies, than in +slaving out one's childless old age in the hard rut of traffic, in order +to turn five surplus millions into ten? + +To Dives, after a life of accretion, the prospect of frittering his +wealth into fragments must be painful. Heirs will waste what he toiled +to win. That fortune which grew so great while he rolled it on turns +out, after all, but a snowball, to be broken apart and trampled by +careless spoilers when he is gone. There are, to be sure, hard-headed +philosophers who contemplate coolly the dispersion of their hoard. I +remember from boyhood that when somebody rallied Squire Anthony Briggs, +of Milldale, on his veteran vigilance in money-getting, saying, "Your +children will spend as fast as you have made it," stanch old Tony +answered: "If they get as much pleasure from spending my money as I have +in making it, they are welcome." But with prodigious fortunes like +Astor's and Vanderbilt's, the instinct of accumulation which increases +what is already preposterously great may struggle to keep it +accumulating after death. When Bishop Timothy sonorously declares from +the desk that we brought nothing into this world, neither may we carry +anything out, Croesus in the pew below takes this as a very solemn +warning to him--warning to secure betimes the utmost posthumous control +of his money that the laws allow. Dombey's soul is not wrapt up in the +miser's clutching love of money, but in the money-getting institution of +Dombey & Son; and not only in the Dombey & Son of to-day, but the +Dombeys & Sons of centuries hence. To found a dry-goods dynasty, a line +of railway kings, a house of landed Astors, its owner puts the bulk of +his vast wealth into a single hand--in that _exegi monumentum_ spirit +common to bard and broker, soldier and salesman. _Non omnis moriar, +multaque pars mei vitabit Libitinam_, the millionaire may then +triumphantly say. + +On the other hand, the Cornells and Licks of our day, wonderfully +numerous, have made America renowned by their public uses of wealth, +either in lifetime gift or testamentary bequest; and this devotion of +private fortune to the common weal is fostered by the observed +independence of each generation in pursuing its own mode of life without +regard to the customs of ancestors. + +But the testamentary aim of the richest trio that ever lived in America +was to escape this national trait of beneficence; to substitute the +perpetuity of one's business monopoly or family trade; to struggle +against any serious division of the enormous fortune, even at the cost +of preferences among equal children; to spare not one dollar out of +fifty millions for the public; to heap the gigantic hoard, save what for +other legatees propriety demands, on some "chip of the old block" or +business "bird of a feather." This purpose also influenced their lives. +"Magnificence is the decency of the rich," but little magnificence +marked the lives of those three rich New Yorkers. Powerful, self-willed, +all-conquering they were, but hardly magnificent. Unprecedented and +incredible thing in America, neither Stewart nor Vanderbilt left one +poor dollar of his fifty or sixty millions to any municipal or +charitable purpose. Filled with his posthumous business plans, neither +cared for New York as Girard cared for Philadelphia and Hopkins for +Baltimore. True, each of the Gotham triumvirate endowed in life an +institution of public beneficence--Astor his library, Vanderbilt his +college away in Tennessee, Stewart his hotel for women. It is further +true that men who, like Vanderbilt and Stewart, give sure pay for many +years to thousands of employees, are benefactors. But to do this, and +then to leave besides some testamentary memorial to the city where one +has heaped up his wealth, has hitherto been the aim of the rich men of +America. Girard not only founded his orphan college, ornament and pride +of Philadelphia, but left great sums to beautify and improve the city by +removing wooden houses and widening thoroughfares. Stewart, scrupulously +just in business dealings, deserves public gratitude as the apostle of +"one price," and as the cash-selling reformer who protected prudent folk +from the higher prices caused in trade by the allowances for bad debts; +but, this apart, in the will of Stewart and the will of Stephen Girard, +what a world-wide difference of public spirit! That one act of grace +that might have tempered his forgetfulness toward New York--the gift of +his picture gallery for public uses--even this act Stewart did not do. +The contrast is startling between the bequests of an Astor, a Stewart, a +Vanderbilt, and those of a Girard, a Peabody, and a Johns Hopkins. + + +THE DUEL AND THE NEWSPAPERS. + +Barring the two services, doctors used, I fancy, to be the great +duellists among professional men. And still, ever and anon, some +irascible Sawbones rushes to the ten-paced turf, where, though he be +spectacled or pot-bellied, those disadvantages rarely calm his +blood-letting rage. But editors are the modern magnates of the code; not +because they thirst for gore, but only because the guild of M. Paul de +Cassagnac is professionally liable to give offence, and hence to be +dragged to the field of glory and to die with boots on. I once saw a +statement that the famous fighting editor of the "Pays" had taken part +in eighteen duels, "besides having a man to kill next month"; and he was +greatly coveted by a Missouri paper that had been losing its writers in +street encounters too rapidly for convenience. + +The newspapers have emptied their vials of wrath or ridicule upon Mr. +Bennett for his duel with young May: now in horror over his resort to +the measured ground, and anon in scorn at the bloodless result. +Nevertheless, had Mr. Bennett failed to fight that duel, he and his +newspaper would have been butts during his lifetime for the shafts of +half the editorial archers of the land. A noble refusal to resent the +public insult would have been misrepresented with ingenious malice, in +the hope to disgrace him and ruin his property. In answer to "Herald" +arguments on disputed questions, the unresented cowhiding of its owner +would have been paraded by rival sheets. Rarely in business or political +controversy would they have failed to taunt him with cowardice. Life +would have been a burden to him; and if the consciousness of having +refrained in that instance from breaking the laws of man and of God +could have saved him from desperation, it would not have been for lack +of the sneers of newspapers continually fomenting and reviving public +contempt against him. Sometimes a man is goaded by such stings into a +second duel, after having been able to resist fighting the first; or +else he puts an end to a life which has been made unendurable through +constant imputations. Let those who doubt what would have occurred +recall the instantaneous newspaper sarcasms, after the street assault, +on the question "whether a man is answerable for hereditary tendencies +to receive a public cowhiding without resenting it." The satirist who +eggs on a duel in that fashion feels justified afterward in invoking +public contempt for the man that fights it. + +What is the upshot of this comment? That duelling is ever commendable? +Most emphatically no. Duelling, branded by the law, is also now so +branded in public opinion that it would be waste of words to +anathematize it. But what is suggested by the venom of some of the press +writers is that they have never put themselves into the place of a man +who, with the average sensitiveness to personal affront, and with +thorough-going physical courage, had also a clear perception of the +remorselessness of his journalistic rivals. From some of them he could +expect no more mercy than from the red gentry of the plains. Let those +who are sending their arrows into Mr. Bennett ask themselves whether +they are wholly sure that in his position, with his family history +behind them, they would have done otherwise after the street assault. At +any rate, neither duelling nor that cowardly substitute, shooting down +an unprepared man who has done some wrong, will be driven out of fashion +by bringing newspaper taunts of "showing the white feather" against +those who fail to resort to such lawlessness. + + +THE INDUSTRY OF INTERVIEWERS. + +It was a quarrel totally apart from newspaper affairs, as we all know, +that carried the editor of the "Herald" to the field of honor at +Marydell. Indeed, Mr. Bennett's conduct before and after the duel was so +"unjournalistic" that the Philadelphia reporters are said to have sent +him a letter, while he tarried in that city, protesting that a gentleman +so well aware of the "usages of the profession" ought to submit to be +interviewed. But the physician does not always swallow his own drugs. +Mr. Bennett, on receiving the missive, remarked that it was "all right," +and remained uninterviewed, thus setting an awful example to the +community. + +A public attack by a man armed with a cowhide upon another not so armed +is hardly a feat that excites admiration, while the affair at Marydell +was in no sense such reparation for the previous insult as in common +parlance to be thought "satisfaction." But one feature of the +Bennett-May quarrel not unpleasant to read was the outwitting of the +news-gatherers and their resulting desperation. "Had the duel taken +place on the Canada border the parties to it could hardly have evaded +our extensive arrangements to report it," said one journal after the +affair, in a somewhat lugubrious and yet self-vindicating strain. The +promptness of Mr. Bennett's movements, and his skill in throwing the +reporters off the scent, lest the duel might be stopped, were hard blows +to the newspapers. But theirs was no dishonorable defeat--it was one of +the fraternity that beat them. Even the device of giving imaginary +accounts of the battle in order to draw out the true one was +unsuccessful until Mr. Bennett had sailed for Europe. + +On the May side there was a trifling gain for the interviewers, but not +much. Dr. May, senior, seems to have been condemned to a copious +acquaintance with journalists; for, though in knowing Mr. Bennett he had +already perhaps known one too many of them, his house appears to have +been overrun, after the Fifth avenue assault, with the fraternity, who, +in the "strict discharge of professional duty," swarmed multitudinously +upon him. At least, one morning the "Tribune" said: + + The May mansion in West Nineteenth street was a sealed book + to reporters yesterday, and the door was promptly shut in + the face of those who were recognized as newspaper inquirers + by the negro in charge. Dr. May has made no secret of his + anger at the reports, too accurately drawn, of his + appearance of anxiety and alarm when expecting bad news from + his son, and will have nothing to say to representatives of + the press. + +Here, it will be observed, is a claim to something professional in the +very aspect of the "newspaper inquirer" whereby the sable guardian of +the portal may know him well enough to take the responsibility of +slamming the door in his face. Again, we observe here a tribute to the +interviewer's skill; for, prior to the duel, Dr. May, though politely +presenting himself, could give no news; but his lynx-eyed visitors had +gathered from the very attitude, tone, and look of their host the +material for an item as picturesque as any tidings. So the besieged +householder, as we have seen, took refuge in total eclipse, leaving only +a "negro in charge" to determine the status of his callers. + +Yet the most discerning negro in charge sometimes proves a weak barrier +against invasion. The trained interviewer can take a protean shape, and +introduce himself under disguise of the most sympathetic friendship or +the most urgent business. Sometimes he is the picture of respectful woe, +or anon it is he who has a favor to confer by bringing news of pressing +importance. Close and private indeed must be that conference whose +secrets he cannot worm out. He gave to the public the "family scene of +astonishment at the opening of the Vanderbilt will" the very morning +after the affair occurred. Should moral borings fail, he can resort to +material ones, as when, a few months since, he cut a hole in a hotel +floor, to apply his ear to, over the room where a Congressional +committee sat in secret session, being detected only by the unlucky +plaster falling among the astonished statesmen below. He is the animal +of the fable, who, having once "got in," cannot be got out until ready +to go. In our war times some commanders looked upon him, coming to camp +in never so fair a guise, with the misgivings of the hapless Trojan +regarding the wooden horse; and it is said of Baron Von Werther that he +"treats as an enemy all newspaper correspondents, even though they have +the best personal introductions to him." Such fears of warriors and +diplomats, who quail before no ordinary foes, are tributes to the +interviewer's prowess. + +It must go hard but he gets something from the sullenest and most +refractory customer. We have seen his harvests at the May mansion, when +baffled by real ignorance on the part of his victim; hence we may guess +whether he is to be checked by a mere wilful purpose to conceal, or the +whim to keep a matter private. At very worst, his own description of his +rebuff will be humorous and piquant. Often do we have an entertaining +half column beginning, "Our reporter waited upon," etc., and, after +descriptions of household ornaments, personal dress, and so on, ending +in this way: + + _Ques._--You say, then, that you can give me no information + whatever? + + _Ans._ (_snappishly_)--As I have already told you a dozen + times, no information whatever. + + _Ques._--And that is positive and final? + + _Ans._ (_savagely_)--Positive and final. + + Here our reporter took his leave, wishing the gentleman a + very good morning, to which politeness of our reporter the + uncommunicative gentleman only distantly bowed. + +But these defeats form a rare experience of the interviewer, who even +then continues to pluck victory (that is to say, an item) out of their +jaws. His ordinary career is a round of triumph which has made him a +leading figure in the portrait gallery of modern society. I wonder that +Mr. Daly does not introduce it at length into some of his comedies of +American life. Drawn faithfully, and personated by Mr. James Lewis, the +dramatized interviewer would be a wealth of pleasure. + + PHILIP QUILIBET. + + + + +SCIENTIFIC MISCELLANY. + + +THE FORCE OF CRYSTALLIZATION. + +The old story of a bombshell filled with water and left to burst by +freezing, upon the plains of Abraham, near Quebec, may now be superseded +as an illustration of the power of frost. The men at a Western dockyard +were surprised to find one morning that the paddle-wheel of a steamer in +the dry dock had fallen from the shaft, and was broken in two pieces. +The hub of the wheel, about fifteen inches long, was slightly hollowed +out at the centre to admit of its being slipped on without difficulty +over any uneven portion of the shaft-end. This recess was full of water +when the boat was placed in the dock, and the keying had been so close +that the liquid--about a pailful--was exposed to the frost. As the water +congealed under the sharp wintry atmosphere of the night it expanded and +burst asunder the five-inch walls of iron, and the broken wheel fell +with a crash. + + +FROZEN NITRO-GLYCERINE. + +Two accidents, both fatal, have lately occurred from the use of +nitro-glycerine for blasting. In one case some frozen cartridges were +recklessly placed in the oven of a stove, while others were held up to +the fire. That an explosion should take place under such circumstances +is not surprising, and comment is unnecessary. The other explosion +partook more clearly of the nature of an accident. A well digger, living +near Sing Sing, had buried a can of nitro-glycerine in his garden for +future use; and while digging it up, January 18, his pick struck the +can, ignition followed, and he was blown to pieces. No doubt the can was +frozen, thus proving anew that frozen nitro-glycerine is more dangerous +to handle, though not so powerful in its effects, as in the liquid form. +This is singular behavior and contrary to theory. In general terms, +explosion may be defined as the result which takes place when a portion +of the nitro-glycerine is raised to a given temperature. Now, to produce +this temperature by the friction resulting from the blow of a pick is +manifestly more difficult with frozen than with tepid liquid. In the +former case some of the heat produced would be absorbed by the +liquefaction of the solid substance, and therefore there would be less +available for producing the temperature of explosion. But, plain as this +proposition is, there must be some unknown condition, for it has been +frequently observed in practical work that nitro-glycerine is never so +dangerous to handle as when frozen. This result, however, is directly +opposed to the experiments of Beckerhinn, of Vienna, who lately +experimented to decide this question. He placed a thin layer of +nitro-glycerine on a Bessemer steel anvil, and a weight of about five +pounds, having a small hardened steel face, was dropped upon it. The +height to which it was necessary to raise this weight in order to +produce explosion determined the comparative delicacy of the explosive. +With tepid nitro-glycerine explosion took place when the weight dropped +about 31 inches (0.78 metres), but with frozen liquid the fall had to be +increased to about 85 inches (2.13 metre). Thus the experimental results +are opposed to the acknowledged experience of practical work in the +hands of common laborers. Mr. Beckerhinn found the density of the solid +nitro-glycerine to be 1.735, that of the liquid 1.599, and the average +melting heat to be 33.54 heat units. Thus the explosive shrinks about +one-twelfth in crystallizing. + + +ENGLISH GREAT GUNS. + +The largest rifled cannon in the world is a 100-ton gun, made for the +Italian government by Sir William Armstrong's firm. But the English +government is preparing to outdo this, and already has the plans ready +for a gun of 164 tons. It hesitates, in fact, between a weapon of this +size and one of 200 tons, a mass of metal which its shops are now +perfectly able to handle. The meaning of the term--200-ton gun--is +simply this: a tube of iron and steel of that weight, fifty feet long, +having a calibre of 20 inches, and firing a shot of 3,500 or 4,000 +pounds weight, with a charge of 800 pounds of powder! The human capacity +for astonishment has grown perforce as the successive steps have been +taken from the guns of ten and twenty tons to these weapons, which must +remain huge whatever further advances are made. The character of warfare +with them is best indicated by the fact that the 200-ton gun must be +handled entirely by machinery. The advent of these unmanageable weapons +is signalized by the invention of a hydraulic apparatus for working +them. The vast shock of the recoil from the bursting of thirty-two kegs +of powder--enough to throw down 1,200 tons of rock in mining--is taken +up by a cylinder pierced with small holes. These holes are capped with +valves, held down with a pressure of fifty tons to the square inch. When +the force of the recoil exceeds this the water is forced out of the +holes and the recoil thus taken up in work done. The breech of the piece +is supported on a hydraulic ram, the elevation of which depresses the +muzzle of the gun below the level of the deck, and brings it exactly in +line with an iron tube carrying the sponge. This is run up to the base +of the powder chamber, a deluge of water rushes from apertures in its +head, and the bore is completely cleaned out and every spark of +remaining fire extinguished. The rammer then retires, the sponge is +taken off, and the powder hoisted by tackle to the muzzle, whence the +rammer pushes it home, and then does the same for the shot. The shot and +cartridge, weighing together about 1,350 pounds, are stored on little +iron carriages, every charge in the magazine having its own carriage. +The loading finished, the gun is raised, pointed, the port flies open, +and the discharge immediately follows. What the result of the blow from +such a projectile would be is not to be imagined. It is acknowledged, +however, that in the struggle for mastery the gun has beaten defensive +armor. No ship has been built to stand the shock of a 3,500 pound bolt +moving at the velocity of 1,300 or 1,500 feet a second. + + +EAR TRUMPETS FOR PILOTS. + +Prof. Henry has turned his attention to the discovery of means for +increasing the distinctness of sound signals at sea. It is a very large +hearing trumpet, projecting mouth foremost from the top of the +pilot-house of a steamboat. But he soon found that a single hearing +trumpet would not answer the purpose, for though it greatly augmented +the perceptive power of the ear, it destroyed the capacity of that organ +for distinguishing the direction of sound. For this purpose two ears are +necessary. Prof. Henry then made use of two hearing trumpets, the axes +of which are separated about 30 inches. An india-rubber tube proceeding +from the axis of each is placed so as to terminate in the ear of the +observer--one in each ear. With this instrument the audibility of the +sound was very much increased, but as a means of determining the +direction of the source of sound, it was apparently of little use. For +this purpose the unaided ear is sufficient, provided the head is placed +above all obstructions and away from reflections. + + +HOT WATER IN DRESSING ORES. + +We have before alluded to the investigations made to ascertain the +reason why clay settles more rapidly in solutions of some salts than in +pure water, a fact which appears contrary to reason, since it might be +inferred that the greater the specific gravity the more buoyant the +fluid. But the fact is abundantly confirmed, and it is likely to find +important application some day in the arts. The property which every +substance has of sinking through a fluid of less density than its own +forms the basis upon which nine-tenths of the gold and copper, and +probably six-tenths of the silver produced in this country, is extracted +from its ores. It is the foundation of the art of ore dressing, one of +the most important parts of metallurgy. Anything which increases the +rapidity and thoroughness of the process may have a fortunate +application in this art. Mr. Ramsay, of the Glasgow university +laboratory, thinks the property in question depends upon the varying +absorption of heat by the different solutions. When water containing +suspended clay is heated the rapidity of settling is proportional to the +heat of the water. This mode of accelerating the movement of fine +sediments in water is perhaps more easily applied than the solution of +caustic soda or potash, or of common salt. Rittinger, by a mathematical +discussion of the principles which control the downward movement of +solid particles in an ascending stream of water, showed that the +separation of light from heavy minerals is more complete with solutions +of density greater than that of water than in water alone. He found a +solution of 1.5 sp. gr. extremely favorable. If the addition of heat +will increase the effect of such a solution, it may become possible to +separate, by means of the continuous jig, minerals so near in specific +gravity as barite and galena. This whole subject of ore dressing is one +of the most important questions connected with the future of mineral +industry in America. In the Mississippi valley everything connected with +metallurgy, from the fuels to the finished metal, will one day be +closely dependent on it. + + +OCEAN ECHOES. + +Prof. Henry communicated to the National Academy at Philadelphia his +latest researches into the subject of sound, and among them an +explanation of the echo observed on the water. This echo he had formerly +been inclined to attribute to reflection from the crests of the waves. +Tyndall holds that it is due to reflection from strata of air at +different densities. Prof. Henry's present explanation is that this echo +is produced by the reflection of the sound wave from the uniform surface +of the water. The effect of the echo is produced by the fact that the +original sound wave is interrupted. It has what the learned Professor +calls _shadows_, produced by the intervention of some obstacle in its +path. Sound is not propagated in parallel, but in diverging lines, and +yet there are some cases where what may be called a "sound shadow" is +produced. For instance, let a fog-signal be placed at or near water +level on one side of an island that has a conical elevation. Then the +signal will be heard distinctly by a vessel on the opposite side of the +island at a distance of three miles. But when the vessel sails toward +the island (the signal being on the opposite side), the sound will be +entirely lost when the distance is reduced to a mile, and in any smaller +distance it is not recovered. In this case the station of the vessel at +the shorter distance is in the "sound shadow." The termination of that +shadow is the point at which the diverging beams of sound, passing over +the crest of the island, bend down and reach the surface of the water. +The formation of the sound echo may be explained by this extreme +divergence of the sound waves, for it is rational to suppose that at a +great distance from the source of sound some of the dispersed waves will +reach the water surface at such an angle as to be reflected back to the +hearer. This was well illustrated by an experiment made to test +Tyndall's theory. A steam siren was pointed straight upward to the +zenith, but no echo from the zenith was heard, though the presence of a +cloud from which a few raindrops fell certified the presence of air +strata of different densities. But, strange to say, an echo _was_ heard +from every part of the horizon, half of which was land and half water. +The only explanation of this fact is that the sound waves projected +upward were so dispersed as to reach the earth's surface at a certain +distance, and at that point some of them had curled over and assumed a +direction that caused their reflection back to the siren. + + +THE DELICACY OF CHEMISTS' BALANCES. + +In making chemical balances for fine work the beam is made in the truss +form to prevent the bending which takes place even under such small +loads as an ounce or two. Prof. Mendeleef has a balance that will turn +with one-thousandth of a grain, when each pan is loaded with 15,000 +grains. This extreme sensibility is obtained by the use of micrometer +scales and cross threads at the end of the beam, these being observed by +means of a telescope. Of course one weighing with this complicated +apparatus occupies a long time. In most balances the beam rests on steel +knife edges; but a maker who has lately obtained celebrity makes his +supports of pure rock crystal. The steel edges can be seen with the +naked eye; the quartz edges cannot be seen even with a magnifying glass. +One writer on this subject thinks that with these perfect crystal edges, +with an inflexible girder beam, a short beam giving quick vibrations, +and a sensitiveness that can be increased by screwing up the centre of +gravity, there can hardly be a practical limit to the smallness of the +weight that will turn the beam. The amount of motion may be very small, +but if this can be observed, the limit of possible accuracy is very much +extended. + + +GOVERNMENT CONTROL OF THE DEAD. + +What the population of European countries was a hundred years ago it +would be hard to tell with accuracy; but the nations have doubled and +trebled in strength within the century. Sanitary precautions have +increased in importance, and the very noticeable movement in regard to +social hygiene which now possesses English society is perhaps due in +part to the obvious dangers to which thirty million human beings are +subjected when living together on such a small area. The medical officer +for Birkenhead has pointed out that it may be necessary for the +government authorities to take more complete charge of the dead as a +possible source of infection. He says that the intelligence of deaths +from infectious diseases now furnished by local registrary would be much +more useful than it is as a means for limiting the spread of disease if +the medical officer were vested with further powers in respect to the +infected dead body. At present neither the medical officer nor any one +else has any power to order the immediate removal of an infected body, +and those in charge of it might do what they liked with it. He advocated +the necessity of power being given to medical officers to order the +immediate removal of the infected bodies to a public mortuary and their +speedy burial. + + +MICROSCOPIC LIFE. + +Dr. Leidy lately described to the Academy of Sciences in Philadelphia an +encounter for life which he witnessed between two microscopic +animalcules. The two creatures were respectively 1-625th and 1-200th of +an inch in diameter. On the morning of August 27, from some mud adhering +to the roots of sphagnum, obtained the day previously in a nearly +dried-up marsh at Bristol, Pennsylvania, he obtained a drop of material +for examination with the microscope. After a few moments he observed an +amoeba verrucosa, nearly motionless, empty of food, with a large central +vesicle, and measuring 1/25th of a millimetre in diameter. Within a +short distance of it, and moving directly toward it, was another and +more active amoeba, regarding the species of which he was not positive. +It was perhaps the one described by Dujardin as amoeba limax, by which +name it may be called. As first noticed, this amoeba was one-eighth of a +millimetre long, with a number of conical pseudopods projecting from the +front border, which was one-sixteenth of a millimetre wide. The creature +contained a number of spherical food spaces with sienna colored +contents, a large diatom filled with endochrome, besides several clear +food spaces, a posterior contractile vesicle, and the usual glanular +endosarc. The amoeba limax approached and came into contact with the +motionless amoeba verrucosa. Moving to the right, it left a long +finger-like pseudopod curved around its lower half, and then extended a +similar one around the upper half until it met the first pseudo-pod. +After a few moments the ends of the two projections actually became +continuous, and the verrucosa was enclosed in the embrace of the amoeba +limax. The latter assumed a perfectly circular outline, and after a +while a uniformly smooth surface. It now moved away with its new +capture, and after a short time what had been the head end contracted +and became wrinkled and villous in appearance, while from what had been +the tail end ten conical pseudopods projected. The amoeba verrucosa +assumed an oval form, and the contractile vesicle became indistinct +without collapsing. Moving on, the amoeba limax became more slug-like in +shape. The amoeba verrucosa now appeared enclosed in a large oval, clear +vacuole or space, was constricted so as to be gourd-shaped, and had lost +all trace of its vesicle. Subsequently it was doubled upon itself, and +at this point the amoeba limax discharged from one side of the tail end +the siliceous case of the diatom, which now contained only a shrivelled +cord of endochrome. Later the amoeba verrucosa was broken up into fine +spherical granular balls, and these gradually became obscured and +apparently diffused among the granular contents of the entosarc of the +amoeba limax. The observations from the time of the seizure of the +amoeba verrucosa to its digestion or disappearance among the granular +matter of the entosarc of its captor, occupied seven hours. From naked +amoeba the shell-protected rhizopods were no doubt evolved, and it is a +curious sight to observe them swallowed, home and all, to be digested +out of their house. It was also interesting to observe the cannibal +amoeba swallowing one of its own kind and appropriating its structure to +its own use, just as we might do the contents of an egg. The amoeba +verrucosa he describes as remarkable for its sluggish character, and in +appearance reminds one of a little pile of epithelial scales or a +fragment of dandruff from the head. It is oval or rounded, transparent, +and more or less wrinkled, or marked with delicate, wavy lines. + + +THE SOURCES OF POTABLE WATER. + +In the British Social Science meeting, Mr. Latham, a civil engineer of +London, brought up the question of water supplies and endeavored to find +rules for the guidance of water engineers in those apparently +contradictory facts which the observation of recent years has produced +so abundantly. It has been generally considered that water which has +received the sewage of large populations must be unfit for domestic use; +but careful investigation would show that when such polluting matter has +been passed into a river, and exposed to the influence of light, +vegetation, etc., it becomes innocuous. This is shown by the good health +enjoyed by the inhabitants of London, which place receives its supply +chiefly from the Thames and the Lea, both of which rivers receive a +considerable amount of sewage pollution. The author instanced Wakefield, +Doncaster, and Ely as towns that draw their supplies of water from +sources into which sewage matter enters, and yet whose inhabitants are +healthy. The cholera epidemic at Newcastle-on-Tyne in 1853 was supposed +to have been caused by the use of polluted Tyne water, and yet it was +clearly ascertained that disease was much more rife among those persons +who used local well water. These facts, which have often been quoted, +were not favorably received by the audience, who greeted with laughter +Mr. Latham's assertion that water into which sewage matter has entered +can be purified by a short exposure to the air. That statement may be +too strong; but there is acknowledged truth in the author's main point. +He considered it was clearly proved that water derived from underground +sources, or from which light and air have been excluded, is impure, and +consequently unfit for domestic use. Universal testimony showed that +decaying matter easily found its way into underground sources of supply. +Well water may become seriously contaminated by the slow steeping of +noxious matters, and be less wholesome than the water of a running +stream that receives much larger quantities of impurity. + + +THEORY OF THE RADIOMETER. + +Prof. Crookes has at length announced a theory in explanation of the +movements exhibited by the remarkable "light mill" of his invention. He +says: "The evidence afforded by the experiments is to my mind so strong +as almost to amount to conviction, that the repulsion resulting from +radiation is due to the action of thermometric heat between the surface +of the moving body and the case of the instrument, through the +intervention of the residual gas. This explanation of its action is in +accordance with recent speculations as to the ultimate constitution of +matter, and the dynamical theory of gases." The most refined means for +exhausting the air from the glass bulb which contains the suspended +vanes of the radiometer leave, and if they were to be carried to +absolute mechanical perfection, would still leave a certain amount of +gas in it. But Dr. Crookes has carried this attenuation so far that the +number of gas molecules present can no longer be considered as +practically infinite. Nor is the mean length of their paths between +their collisions any longer very small compared to the size of the bulb. +The latest use to which the radiometer has been put was to test the +viscosity of gases at decreasing pressures. The glass bulb was furnished +with a stopper lubricated with burnt rubber. This was fixed and carried +a fine thread of glass which is almost perfectly elastic. To the end of +this thread hung a thin oblong plate of pith to which a mirror was +attached. The glass stopper being fixed, and the bulb capable of +rotation through a small angle, it is evident that when the bulb is +rotated the pith ball will remain at rest except as it yields to the +friction of the air moved by the bulb. It does move, swinging a certain +distance and then back, like a pendulum. The amount of this movement is +carefully observed by a telescope, and recorded for five successive +beats. As the pith and glass fibre form a torsion pendulum, it is +evident that these beats will gradually die down in consequence of the +resistance of the air. By exhausting the air to various degrees of +rarity, it was proved that Prof. Clerk Maxwell's theory, that the +viscosity of a gas is independent of its density, is correct. The +logarithmic decrement of the first five oscillations (that is, the +decrease, oscillation by oscillation, of the logarithm of the arc +through which the pith vanes swing), was found to be nearly the same +when the air was almost exhausted as when it was at its natural +pressure, proving that its viscosity remained nearly equal for all +pressures. Only in the exceptionally perfect vacuum referred to above +did this logarithmic decrement sink to about one-twentieth of what it +had commenced with. Repulsion of the vane by the action of light +commences when this decrement is one-fourth of what it was before the +exhaustion of air began. As the rarity of the air within the bulb +increases the force of this repulsion begins to diminish, like the +logarithmic decrement, and when the latter has sunk to one-twentieth the +former has fallen off one-half. All these and other facts previously +obtained prove that the action of light is not _direct_, but _indirect_; +and Dr. Crookes has, after repeatedly refusing to consider hasty +judgments, in consequence come to the conclusion stated above, that the +rotation of the light mill is the result of heat. This decision accords +with the opinion of other observers. The radiometer has already entered +the field of industrial science, and is used to measure the duration of +exposure of photographic plates. De Fonvielle has made with it a new +determination of the sun's thermometric power. He made a spectroscope +with a graduated screen, which permitted the amount of light that +entered the apparatus to be graduated at will. In the path of the beam +he placed a radiometer, and by comparing its action in the graduated +light ray, and in the light of a standard oil lamp, burning 42 grammes +(11.3 ounces Troy) per hour, he found that at 4 o'clock, on June 4, +1876, the radiating force of the sun was equal to 14 lamps placed 25 +centimetres (10 inches) from the radiometer. + + +TEMPERED GLASS IN THE HOUSEHOLD. + +The "tempered glass," which has made the name of M. de la Bastié, its +discoverer, so well known, does not prove to be always manageable. It +was to have the strength of metal, and not shiver with changes of +temperature. But an English lady has found that it sometimes has +precisely the contrary characteristics. She purchased twelve globes for +gaslights, and they were made in the manufactory of M. de la Bastié +himself. But one night, after the gas had been extinguished for exactly +an hour, one of the globes burst with a report, and fell in pieces on +the floor, leaving the bottom ring still on the burner. These pieces, +which were of course found to be perfectly cold, were some two or three +inches long and an inch or so wide. They continued for an hour or more +splitting up and subdividing themselves into smaller and still smaller +fragments, each split being accompanied by a slight report, until at +length there was not a fragment larger than a hazel nut, and the greater +part of the glass was in pieces of about the size of a pea, and of a +crystalline form. In the morning it was found that the rim had fallen +from the burner to the floor in atoms. In all these phenomena the +behavior was that of unannealed glass, of which so many curious +performances have been related. + + +THE NEW YORK AQUARIUM. + +A marine and fresh-water aquarium has been opened in New York, and both +from its intrinsic merits and as the first attempt to institute in this +country a valuable mode of scientific amusement and instruction, it +deserves mention. It does not equal in size or arrangements any of the +celebrated places of the kind abroad. Still it contains tanks of +considerable size, and in them some very interesting denizens. The +shark, sturgeon, skate, sea-turtle, and other fishes are represented by +large individuals, and their habits can be watched at leisure. A small +white whale was also at one time one of the attractions. Fish breeding +is carried on in the establishment, which receives constant additions to +its occupants by expeditions which are said to be especially planned for +this purpose. In any case New York is an excellent point for an +aquarium, and probably receives every year enough rare living fish at +its great markets to maintain such an institution. The commencement now +made is a worthy one, and it can easily become an important source of +pleasure and usefulness. The system employed is that of constant +circulation, the water being pumped from a reservoir to the several +tanks. Pumps and pipes are made of hard rubber. A library, a +naturalists' laboratory, equipped with tables, microscopes, etc., are +either established or projected in the building. + + +THE CRUELTY OF HUNTING. + +The outcry against the practice of making surgical experiments upon +living dogs, rabbits, and other animals has roused some vivisectionists +to return to the subject of hunting. This is one of the principal themes +of the philosophic philanthropist, whose opposition to the practice +seems to be an outgrowth of the better acquaintance which man has made, +through science, with the lower animals. He accomplishes his task very +effectively by calculating the number of animals which are wounded but +not recovered by English sportsmen every year. The official returns show +that in 1873-'4 there were 132,036 holders of gun licenses, and 65,846 +holders of licenses to kill game in the British dominions. In 1874-'5 +the numbers were 144,278 and 68,079, showing that the disposition and +ability to hunt are on the increase. As a basis for computation, the +partridge season of 21 weeks is taken, and two days' hunting are allowed +for each week; while three birds are supposed to be wounded and "lost" +daily by each sportsman. This gives 126 birds wounded and left to suffer +unknown torments by each one of the 68,079 holders of game licenses. The +total is no less than 8,296,496 "lost" birds in 1873-'4, and 8,577,954 +in 1874-'5. Then the holders of gun licenses have the right to shoot +birds which are destructive to crops, etc., and two lost birds each week +in the year is calculated to be the average. This makes no less than +13,731,744 wounded birds in 1873-'4, and 15,004,912 in 1874-'5. The +total is in round numbers _twenty million_ birds injured each year! +These estimates are made by "Nature," and they correctly represent the +ground on which the modern opposition to the hunt as a cruel and +unnecessary occupation is based. Of course the figures are not exact. +The only effort made was to have them within bounds; and considering all +the varieties of game pursued in England, and the extraordinary keenness +of Englishmen for sport, this estimate is probably correct. Quite lately +they have been confirmed by a noted hunter on the western plains, who +says that in his case a day's sport was usually marked by the "loss" of +two or three animals. As he is an uncommon shot, his experience cannot +be more unfortunate than the average. Such calculations show us how +enormous are the results when the whole human race engages in one +action. At present, English society offers the contradictory spectacle +of a large and increasing body of hunters who oppose vivisection on the +ground of cruelty, and a small and increasing body of vivisectionists +who oppose hunting also on the ground of cruelty. + + +THE GORILLA IN CONFINEMENT. + +Great interest attaches to the career of the young gorilla now in the +Berlin aquarium. Dr. Hermes described some of his peculiarities at a +late meeting of the German Association of Naturalists and Physicians. He +nods and claps his hands to visitors; wakes up like a man, and stretches +himself. His keeper must always be beside him and eat with him. He eats +what his keeper eats; they share dinner and supper. The keeper must +remain by him till he goes to sleep, his sleep lasting eight hours. His +easy life has increased his weight in a few months from thirty-one to +thirty-seven pounds. For some weeks he had inflammation of the lungs, +when his old friend Dr. Falkenstein was fetched, who treated him with +quinine and Ems water, which made him better. When Dr. Hermes left the +gorilla on the previous Sunday the latter showed the doctor his tongue, +clapped his hands, and squeezed the hand of the doctor as an indication, +the latter believed, of his recovery. Apparently he means to support, by +every means in his power, the effort at a hot-house development of the +ape to the man. A large glass house has been built for him in connection +with the palm house. + + +INSTRUCTION SHOPS IN BOSTON. + +The Boston Institute of Technology is somewhat noted for its boldness in +making educational experiments; its efforts so far having been directed +toward the introduction of practical trade instruction into an advanced +school. Some years ago it endeavored to establish a model room for +dressing ores and another for smelting them; but the success of this +trial seems to be more than doubtful. Both of these pursuits are too +extensive to be represented by one shop or by sample work. Nothing +daunted by this failure, President Runkle has lately introduced a +"filing shop" as the first step toward practical instruction in +engineering work. This shop has about thirty work tables, each provided +with a vise and tool drawers. Filing is one of the first things the +young apprentice has to learn; and those who think that anybody can file +who has hands may be surprised to learn that the filing of a hexagon +bolt head is one of the tests for a Whitworth prize scholarship. The +difficulty of making a flat surface is in that task combined with the +necessity of having the faces of equal size and placed at equal angles +to each other. The plan in the Boston institute is to have the student +spend ten weeks in filing, and then the same length of time in each the +forging shop and the turning shop. The two latter are not yet ready. +These three steps form part of a two years' course in mechanical +engineering, the tuition fee to which is $125 yearly. The main objection +to such schools is that engineers and practical men persist in refusing +to accept such instruction as a substitute for actual work. The Boston +institute is making praiseworthy efforts, but it seems to be adopting a +system which has never been in favor just at a time when the smelting +works and machine shops of the country appear willing to unite with the +scientific schools in supplying students with real experience of work as +a requirement for a diploma. + + * * * * * + +A new mode of compressing arteries is by the use of a hard pad having a +prominent projection, which is pressed against the artery or vein by a +strong elastic ring of rubber passed over the limb. + + * * * * * + +The Harvard summer schools were so far successful that the last +catalogue reports forty students in geology, twenty-five in chemistry, +twenty-five in phenogamic botany, and six in cryptogamic botany. + + * * * * * + +A case in which the heart was severely wounded without causing immediate +death lately occurred in England. The wound was made by a knife which +passed between the third and fourth ribs, through the wall of the heart +into the cavity of the left ventricle. The man lived sixty-four hours. + + * * * * * + +M. Peligot warns housekeepers against the advice so often given, to use +borax for the preserving of meat. He finds that borax and the borates +affect plants very seriously, and doubts whether it can be innocuous to +animals. French beans watered once with a solution of borax quickly +withered and died. + + * * * * * + +A young American, Dr. James by name, was killed with his partner (a +Swede) at Yule Island in September last, by the natives of New Guinea. +They were hunting birds of paradise at the time. Dr. James left some +valuable collections which have been described before the Linnęan +Society of London. + + * * * * * + +In extending the underground railway of London, the excavations +disclosed Roman and other remains of considerable interest. Among the +former there were found fragments of urns, specimens of pottery, and +bronze coins. The most remarkable discovery was that of a thick stratum +of bullock's horns, commencing about twenty feet below the surface, and +extending to an unascertained distance beneath. Although the deposit was +doubtless made many centuries ago, the horns had suffered so little by +decay that they found a ready sale in the market. This road has carried +in thirteen years 408,500,000 passengers. In 1863, the first year, the +number was 9,500,000, which increased to 48,500,000 last year. + + * * * * * + +Foreign papers say that Mr. Floyd, the President of the board of +trustees for the Lick donation, has come to an arrangement with M. +Leverrier, the celebrated French astronomer, for the better execution of +the instruments to be made for the Lick Observatory. The masses of glass +required are to be made in Paris, at Feil's glass works, and the +object-glasses very likely by an English optician. + + * * * * * + +Two distinguished men were officially superannuated last year: Profs. +Milne-Edwards and Delafosse of the Paris Museum. The son of the former +takes his place, and Descloiseaux succeeds to the chair of mineralogy. +Professors Dove of Berlin and Wöhler of Göttingen have had their +_jubiläum_ or fiftieth anniversary of their doctorates. All these facts +illustrate the conservative influence of student life. + + * * * * * + +The Western mines of gold and silver have lately yielded some new and +interesting minerals. Roscoelite is a vanadium mica from a gold mine at +Granite creek, California. The vanadic acid varies from 20 to 23 per +cent. Psittacinite is a vanadate of lead and copper, which occurs +associated with gold, lead, and copper minerals at several mines in +Silver Star district, Montana. It is considered to be a favorable +indication, for when that is found the vein is said to become rich in +gold. Coloradoite is a telluride of mercury, also a new mineral and +quite rare. + + * * * * * + +Dr. Piggott proposes to replace the spider's web of telescopes by a star +illuminated transit eye-piece. A sheet of glass, on which a thin film of +silver is deposited, is placed in the focus of the eye lens; transparent +lines are drawn on the film, instead of wires, and as the star passes +across the lines it is seen to flash out brightly. The film of silver is +made sufficiently thin to permit of the star being seen when it is +between the lines, but it appears that the lines themselves are only +visible, except in the case of very large stars, when the star disc is +in transit across a line. + + * * * * * + +Singular results of strains existing in the granite rocks through which +the St. Gothard tunnel is passing are recorded. When the shots are fired +at the end of the gallery they are sometimes succeeded at unequal +intervals by other explosions at points where there is no drill hole and +no powder. Workmen have been injured by these spontaneous explosions, +which are to be explained only on the theory that there are strains in +the rock; and when this tension is increased by the shock of a heavy +explosion, the rock flies in pieces with noise. Similar effects have +been noticed in other granites. + + * * * * * + +It is said that aniline colors are now used to color wines, and that +enough of them is taken into the Bordeaux district of France to color +one-third of its whole product. Husson gives the following method for +detecting it: Take a small quantity of the wine and add a little +ammonia, when the mixture turns a dirty green. Steep a thread of white +woollen yarn in the liquor and allow a drop of vinegar to flow along it. +If the color of the wine is natural, as the drop advances the original +whiteness of the wool is restored; but if the wine has been +sophisticated with magenta, the wool will take a rose color. This test +is simple, easily tried, and effective. + + * * * * * + +An inquiry into the results of systematic gymnastic exercises in a +French military school shows that the strength is increased on the +average 15 to 17 per cent., and is also equalized on both sides of the +body. The capacity of the chest is increased at least 16 per cent. and +the weight 6 to 7 per cent. Coincident with this increase is a decrease +in the bulk of the body, showing that fat is changed to muscle. The +improvement is confined to the first three months of the course unless +the exercise is then moderated. If continued at too high a rate, +weakness succeeds the increase of strength. It would be a good plan to +place a dynamometer in every gymnasium as a measure of the changes which +take place in the gymnast. + + +MOON MADNESS. + +The popular belief that the moon's rays will cause madness in any person +who sleeps exposed to them has long been felt to be absurd, and yet it +has appeared to have its source in undoubted facts. Some deleterious +influence is experienced by those who rashly court slumber in full +moonshine, and probably there is no superstition to which the well-to-do +pay more attention. Windows are often carefully covered to keep the +moonbeams from entering sleeping rooms. A gentleman living in India +furnishes "Nature" with an explanation of this phenomenon which is at +least plausible. He says: "It has often been observed that when the moon +is full, or near its full time, there are rarely any clouds about; and +if there be clouds before the full moon rises, they are soon dissipated; +and therefore a perfectly clear sky, with a bright full moon, is +frequently observed. A clear sky admits of rapid radiation of heat from +the surface of the earth, and any person exposed to such radiation is +sure to be chilled by rapid loss of heat. There is reason to believe +that, under the circumstances, paralysis of one side of the face is +sometimes likely to occur from chill, as one side of the face is more +likely to be exposed to rapid radiation, and consequent loss of its +heat. This chill is more likely to occur when the sky is perfectly +clear. I have often slept in the open in India on a clear summer night, +when there was no moon; and although the first part of the night may +have been hot, yet toward two or three o'clock in the morning, the chill +has been so great that I have often been awakened by an ache in my +forehead, which I as often have counteracted by wrapping a handkerchief +round my head, and drawing the blanket over my face. As the chill is +likely to be greatest on a very clear night, and the clearest nights are +likely to be those on which there is a bright moonshine, it is very +possible that neuralgia, paralysis, or other similar injury, caused by +sleeping in the open, has been attributed to the moon, when the +proximate cause may really have been the _chill_, and the moon only a +remote cause acting by dissipating the clouds and haze (if it do so), +and leaving a perfectly clear sky for the play of radiation into space." + + +THE ARGUMENT AGAINST VACCINATION. + +An English physician opposes compulsory vaccination on the ground that +it prevents further discovery, and compels medical science to halt at +just that point, because it forbids experiment upon methods of +prevention that may prove to be better. He says: "It stereotypes a +particular stage of scientific knowledge, and bars further progress. If +I remind you of the great improvement thought to have been made by the +introduction of inoculation by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu at the end of +the last century, and ask you to suppose that Parliament might then have +passed an act to compel every one to be inoculated, you will, I think, +see what is meant. This method was tried for some years with great +_éclat_, but afterward it was found to spread the smallpox so much that +an act of Parliament was passed to forbid its use. Vaccination, +introduced by Dr. Jenner, has followed, and this was another step in +advance. I was the first child in my father's family vaccinated +seventy-one years ago, several elder brothers and sisters having been +inoculated. Both methods answered in our cases. But for many years I +have been satisfied that other diseases besides the modified small-pox +(called cow-pox) are now introduced by the old vaccine, and have +steadily refused to use it, seeking rather, at increased trouble and +expense, new vaccine. And the question which comes forcibly to the front +is this: May not some other preservative be discovered which shall be a +further improvement? This question cannot be answered so long as +vaccination is compelled by law. There are no persons upon whom +experiments can be tried." So far as it goes, this is valid ground for +criticising vaccination laws. But the proof that small-pox is more +disastrous to the human race than the evils that vaccination brings with +it is so strong that there is little likelihood society will subject +itself to the attacks of the greater enemy in order to avoid the lesser. +The evils of the old system of using vaccine taken from human beings for +new inoculations are now no longer inevitable. Fresh vaccine direct from +the calf, and called "Bovine," can be had everywhere. A large +establishment for obtaining it is situated near New York. + + + + +CURRENT LITERATURE. + + +Colonel Dodge's "Plains of the Great West"[O] is one of the most +entertaining and important books of the kind we have met with. Whether +he treats of the chase, the natural history of the wild animals found on +our continent, or the Indians, he draws upon abundant resources of +observation and experience. His description of the much talked of +"plains" is new. He distinguishes three of these, the first lying next +the mountains, the next known as the "High Plains," being to the +eastward, and finally the broad surface of the lower plains. As the high +plains are more fertile than either of the others (owing to diversities +of soil), we have the singular effect of a country suddenly becoming +more fertile as the interior of the continent is more deeply penetrated. +Of other peculiarities exhibited in this region our author gives a vivid +account, and it requires all our faith in his accuracy to have +confidence in the following description of the famous Bad Lands, the +scene of so much Scientific search: + + The ground is covered with fragments of the bones of animals + and reptiles, and the man must indeed be insensible who can + pass unmoved through these most magnificent burying-grounds + of animals extinct before the advent of his race. + + Almost everywhere throughout the whole length and breadth of + the plains are found, in greater or less profusion, animal + remains, fossils, shells, and petrifactions. Bones are very + numerous and in great variety, from the saurian and mastodon + to the minutest reptile, ranging in point of time from the + remotest ages to the present day. + +[Footnote O: "_The Plains of the Great West and their Inhabitants._" By +(Lieutenant-Colonel) RICHARD IRVING DODGE. With an Introduction by +William Blackmore. Illustrated. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.] + +His description of other features of this vast region is full of +interest. The two remarkable belts of forest, called the cross timbers, +stretching for a hundred miles through a trackless country, but not +increasing their width beyond their normal eight to twelve miles; the +extraordinary rivers, half sand, half water, the mazes of which confound +the Indian, usually so acute in the field; the sand streams, which +repeat in that material the puzzle of the cross timbers, and are even +more inexplicable. While the desert does not narrow the cross timber +belts, nor water widen them, the wind seems to have no effect on these +sand streams, though the material that composes them is so light as to +rise on every puff of air. Like the cross timbers, the sand streams +pursue their way across the country, regarding neither wet nor dry, hill +nor stream. Their origin lies in forces not yet known, and though they +may seem to be the sport of existing conditions, they really maintain +themselves indifferent to their surroundings. Things like these prove +that Americans need not go to the Sahara for novel aspects of nature. +Our author has a quick perception of what is striking in these scenes, +and describes them in vigorous and pictorial language. + +Colonel Dodge is one of the most noted hunters in our army, and his +descriptions of the chase deserve to rank with those of Cummings, Baker, +and other great African sportsmen. It is true our country does not +afford the hunter such a slaughter field as South Africa has been. A few +animals have increased on our soil to such an extent as to afford at +certain seasons opportunities for unlimited slaughter. But the past five +years have seen such destruction of the last of these--the buffalo--that +wholesale killing is no longer possible on any ground the white man is +suffered to visit. Three years more will carry us to the end of the +decade, and probably of the buffalo hunt as it has been in the past. +About five years ago a change came over the pursuit of this animal. He +began to be killed for his hide alone, and the results are almost +incredible. Colonel Dodge shows that in three years no less than +4,373,730 buffalo were killed by whites and Indians. It is evidently +impossible for any animal, bringing forth but one at a birth, to +maintain its increase against such heedless destruction. The present +winter has witnessed what is probably the last grand attack upon these +animals, as they took refuge in the sheltering mountains of northwestern +Texas from the cold and snow-covered plains. Very soon the noblest prey +of the sportsman on this continent will be one of his rarest prizes. +Colonel Dodge does not lack the usual hunter's fund of anecdote. His own +adventures are modestly told, and when "seven antelope and a fine dog" +are bagged with one shot, the story is credited (with the Colonel's +guarantee) to an anonymous "old hunter"! We have said that the plains do +not rival the African field in quantity of game, but the dimensions of +two separate "bags," shot in successive years, shows how great even in +this country the rewards of the chase may be. In 1872 five gentlemen, of +whom Colonel Dodge was one, bagged 1,262 head, and next year four shot +1,141 head on the same ground, and the author thinks "the whole world +can be safely challenged to offer a greater variety of game." + +But interesting as the chase is in our author's hands, the most +important part of the book is that in which the Indians are described +and discussed. To one who knows the unanimity of army opinion concerning +the much debated Indian question in the West, it is almost unnecessary +to say that Colonel Dodge wishes to see the tribes transferred to the +sole control of the War Department, treaty-making stopped at once, +discipline introduced, the vagabond whites eliminated from the tribes, +and the never-ceasing stream of outrages stopped. These opinions, which +the author shares with the Western community at large, are founded on a +very intimate knowledge of the Indians, and while they are invaluable as +the testimony of so competent an authority, they must yield in immediate +interest to the very vivid picture which the author gives of Indian life +and his estimate of Indian character. While what he says is not novel, +and could hardly be novel after the many thousands of works on the same +subject, his views are based on his own observation, and the facts are +presented with so much force that we gain a new idea of the American +savage. His essential moral characteristic is his love of cruelty. What +the savage thinks about in the frequent and long continued seasons of +idle solitude, it has long puzzled the ethnologist to discover. Colonel +Dodge says that a large part of the Indian's brooding thoughts are given +to the invention of modes of inflicting pain when he has the opportunity +to do so, and many of the camp fire discussions are upon suggestions for +cruelty. When the captive is brought in his tortures are not inflicted +in mere accordance with the momentary promptings of a brutal nature. +They may have been invented years before in some far distant camp, in +the profoundest peace, or may be copied from some noted example of +successful cruelty. They may have grown by one suggestion added to +another, among men whose knowledge of natural history includes a +marvellous perception of what parts of the frame are most sensitive to +pain. The Indian's cruelty is his pride. He gains credit by it among his +people, and he who invents a new torture is a leader. Cruelty is a merit +among these savages. It has rewards which make this passion one of the +most noticeable elements in their system of morality. No other author +has presented this aspect of Indian character with the clearness of +Colonel Dodge. His frequent illustrations show that it is no temporary +impulse, but a race characteristic carefully fostered by tradition and +perhaps by religion. But what position does all this give the Indian +among other races of men? Clearly he stands apart. The cannibal may +dance around the living victims who are soon to appear upon his table, +and the prisoner may be made to grace his conqueror's triumph, or the +altar of his conqueror's god, at any cost of suffering to himself, but +no other race, savage or civilized, has ever been shown to cultivate +cruelty for its own sake as the American Indian does. It is not from +fear, revenge, hate, or any other extraneous cause that he studies so +fondly and long over the means of giving pain. Cruelty is a thing to be +enjoyed for itself. The author has spoken with such plainness upon the +position of captive women in the hands of Indians, that we fear his book +will be objected to in just those quarters where its revelations are +most likely to do good. There is one thing which we wish he had made +clear--whether the brutality shown toward captive women is a practice +which has grown among the Cheyennes since they were driven from their +old home, or whether that has always been their mode of procedure. In +some quarters this particular brutality has been spoken of as the +outgrowth of their sufferings at the hands of the whites. + +Colonel Dodge's book shows a rare combination of acute observation, long +experience, and the spirit of good fellowship. It is one of the best +books of hunting we know of, the best book ever written about the +plains, and its pictures and anecdotes of hunting life and Indian +fighting are a faithful reproduction of the peculiar conditions to be +found only on our great plains, with the anomalous relations of the +civilized and barbarous races that haunt them. The publishers have +illustrated it liberally. The Indian portraits are worthy of especial +mention for the minute accuracy which makes them ethnological examples +of unusual value. + + * * * * * + +The zoölogical collections described in the fifth volume of Reports, +Survey west of the Hundredth Meridian,[P] were all obtained in that +zoölogical province known as the "Campestrian region," from the great +plains which it includes. There the animal colors are pale and tend +toward uniformity, corresponding to the low rainfall of from three to +twenty inches per year. In this peculiarity, and also in comparison with +the surrounding more humid regions, the district of country in which the +Government surveys are now carried on sustains the general theory that +coloration in animals is closely dependent on rainfall, a humid +atmosphere serving to cloak the sun's rays and preserve the natural dyes +(mostly organic) from bleaching out. Dr. Yarrow thinks that the entirely +rainless parts of this vast Campestrian region may ultimately deserve +recognition as a separate zoölogical province. The observations made as +to the mimicry of color which some animals, especially reptiles, exert +or suffer lead him to believe that "a law may yet be formulated in this +respect which will equally apply to all classes of animals." This +mimicry was especially noticed in serpents and lizards found near red +sandstone deposits, the well-known little _Phrynosoma_, or horned toad, +being greenish gray, nearly white, or deep red, as it was found on the +plain, the alkali flat, or the sandstone soil. But however profound the +change, the skin returned to its normal color within a day or two after +removal from the determining locality. In regard to the rattlesnake, we +have the welcome information that it is apparently decreasing in +numbers, and the less agreeable fact that with other serpents, it +principally frequents the neighborhood of settlements. The collections +of all kinds made by the explorers prove to be unexpectedly perfect in +spite of the rapidity with which they are forced to move, and losses by +fire and railroad accident. The report upon these collections is drawn +up with the care and thoroughness that are such creditable features of +recent American official work. A copious bibliography and synonomy is +attached to the descriptions of species. The allotment of reports is as +follows: Geographical Distribution, Dr. H. C. Yarrow; Mammals, Dr. +Elliott Coues and Dr. Yarrow; Birds, H. W. Henshaw; Batrachians and +Reptiles, Dr. Yarrow; Fishes, Prof. E. D. Cope and Dr. Yarrow; Insects, +E. T. Cresson, E. Norton, T. L. Mead, R. H. Stretch, C. R. Osten-Sacken, +H. Ulke, R. P. Uhler, Cyrus Thomas, H. A. Hagen; Mollusca, Dr. Yarrow. +These names show how carefully the head of the survey, Lieutenant +Wheeler, has sought assistance in the important work of classification. +But these are by no means all from whom he and his assistants +acknowledge service. The list given in the preface numbers more than +forty persons, and includes the best known specialists in this country. +Forty-five plates, colored when necessary, accompany the text. In every +respect the report is worthy the important survey from which it +emanates. + +[Footnote P: "_Report upon Geographical and Geological Explorations and +Surveys West of the Hundredth Meridian_," in charge of First Lieutenant +GEORGE M. WHEELER. Vol. V., Zoölogy.] + + * * * * * + +Though it is now quite common to find the life of two or even three +continents mingled in one web of fiction, few writers make so close a +subjective study of the immigrant's experiences as Mr. Boyesen has done +in his "Tales from Two Hemispheres."[Q] In fact he stands almost alone +in this field, and for a good reason; he is a participant where others +are onlookers. We are often told of the impression American ladies make +on foreign gentlemen, but rarely receive an analysis of it or are +offered even an attempt to analyze it. And yet this appears to be one of +the most promising exhibitions of human feeling ever studied. The +intercourse of the sexes, necessarily the subject of all romance, may +obviously have its situations heightened in every way by the +juxtaposition of two races, two diverse educations, and two opposite +moral systems, conjointly with the customary incidents of love-making. +Our author is fully alive to his opportunity, and, short as his tales +are, they bristle with dramatic scenes, and have an element of the +mythical and legendary in them, even when they are removed from such +professedly mystical subjects as he has treated in "Asathor's +Vengeance." Even in drawing-room scenes in New York the love-making is +ideal and romantic instead of calculating or passionate, as the current +novel commonly paints it. This mode of treatment implies that the tales +are either pathetic or fanciful, and in Mr. Boyesen's hands they are all +pathetic. He shows unusual power in this style of writing, and has the +natural and quiet humor which it demands. But there is a rudeness in the +construction and language of all of these stories which sometimes blinds +the reader to the really delicate insight into human feeling displayed +in them. The author writes like one who has the conception of what he +wants to do, but not yet the full command of the means. But this is a +fault that practice cures, and we trust Mr. Boyesen will continue his +studies in this essentially novel and peculiarly promising field of +literature. + +[Footnote Q: "_Tales from Two Hemispheres._" By HJALMAR HJORTH BOYESEN. +Boston: James R. Osgood & Co.] + +--In "Captain Mago"[R] we have a kind of book which with proper +attention may be made extremely interesting and valuable. It is an +attempt to reconstruct the life of three thousand years ago, not merely +among the Phoenicians, but in many other countries. Under the guise of +an expedition sent by the King of Tyre to Tarshish for the purpose of +collecting materials for the Jewish temple which King David was then +planning, we are taken to Judęa, Egypt, Crete, Italy, Spain, France, +England, and Africa. Such an expedition of course gives the author an +opportunity to present a panoramic view of the civilization in those +countries thirty centuries ago. We cannot say that he has performed the +task well. He dwells too much upon what he imagines to be the language +and conversation of the ancients and too little on those material facts +in their life which can be proved or plausibly imagined from the remains +of it which we have gathered. Ancient habits are but very obscurely +exhibited in the rude tools, the fragments of village houses, the +necklace of the Man of Mentone, the whistles and other toys of the +caves, the funereal fireplaces, and similar objects, but they are much +more plainly discernible than are the peculiarities of speech which must +have made up the bulk of daily conversation among our ancestors. A +reconstruction of ancient life based on a good knowledge of these +objects is likely to be more instructive and real than one that depends +for its force on a fanciful conception of their _thouing_ and _theeing_, +their love-making, and what oaths they swore. In fact, real service +could be done to "popular" science by a book that should exhibit our +remote forefathers as we really know them, and not attempting to go +beyond that point. Difficult as it will necessarily be to make such an +undertaking successful, we have no doubt that it will one day be +accomplished. "Captain Mago," though falling far short even of +excellence in this field, is nevertheless an interesting and peculiar +book. + +[Footnote R: "_The Adventures of Captain Mago_; or, A Phoenician +Expedition B.C. 1000." By LEON CAHUN. Translated by Ellen E. Frewer. +Illustrated. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co.] + +--The defect of "Captain Mago" is that its author has endeavored to +reconstruct from remains of a purely literary kind the life of a time +which was antecedent to the most of our oldest literature. Another +author, Mr. Mahaffy, has had great success in a similar field because he +chose for reconstruction a society which has left literary monuments of +a very varied character and great abundance. His "Social Life in Greece" +and other works about the ancient Greeks were written before he ever saw +that historic country, and yet he tells us in his last work,[S] written +after a personal visit and stay of some time, that his former writings +were sufficiently true to the Greece of to-day to deceive living Greeks +into the belief that he had been intimately acquainted with their +landscapes and familiar customs. Mr. Mahaffy's "Rambles" among modern +Greeks are a very interesting finish to his idealizations of their +ancestors. It is comforting to know that after all her spoliations the +country is still so rich in remains of ancient art as to retain more +fine and pure specimens of the best work than are to be found in all the +rest of the world. Very little is done toward uncovering and nothing +toward restoring these sculptures, for the Greeks are jealous of +foreigners and unable or not sufficiently interested to do this +themselves. They are willing to allow others to do the work, but Greece +must have all the profit. Still, there the works lie, and may be +recovered at some future day. We may even be comforted to think they are +well covered with soil, for the present inhabitants of the country, with +exquisite barbarity that their ancestors could not have practised, use +the standing monuments of art as a mark for pistol practice! Another +point in which they show a constitutional divergence from their +forefathers is in the singular barrenness that has fallen upon their +women. Once their land teemed with a native-born population. Now the +household remains so long childless that it is very common to find the +wife's mother a permanent member of the household, being retained for +companionship! Even the mature family contains but few children, and +this in the best agricultural parts of the country. While these +differences exist the author is not at a loss to find strange +resemblances. The yellow hair and fair complexion, the forms which are +even now types of the same race that stood for the old statues, the +language, and a multitude of other things prove that the old race +continues in purity and that Greece is not now filled with a mere +mixture of Turks, Albanians, and Sclaves. Our author has a poor opinion +of the Greek's capacity for government, and likens them to the Irish. He +thinks that both these races are constitutionally incapable of +government, and need subjugation by a foreigner. In this characteristic +he finds a strong resemblance between the modern and the ancient Greek, +for both have suffered personal jealousy to outweigh the strongest +promptings of patriotism. Mr. Mahaffy shows himself to be as able as an +observer as he is as an historian. + +[Footnote S: "_Rambles and Studies in Greece._" By J. P. MAHAFFY. +Macmillan & Co.] + +--The peculiar character of De Quincey's work gives unusual opportunity +for such a volume of selections as this, published under the untasteful +name of "Beauties."[T] He had all the mental power required for +sustained efforts in composition, though his plans for such works were +always defeated by physical weakness. His productions, therefore, though +incomplete, are not those of a literary trifler. His genius and methods +seem to be especially suited to the tastes of the present day, for he +excelled in the qualities that make the professional magazinist: great +learning, research, and acuteness, combined with a humor that sports +most waywardly through everything he wrote, a vivid fancy, a wonderful +use of words, and a style which even in its faults exhibits the needs of +periodical literature. He was, perhaps, more exactly fitted to serve the +world in its chosen field of current publications than any other man who +has written for it. Were he living now he would be acknowledged the +prince of the nebulous gentlemen who occupy easy chairs, gather in +contributors' clubs, and fill up "editors' baskets" with their +effusions. We have additional respect for the somewhat chopped up +productions of these gentlemen, after reading the numerous volumes that +bear his name, for there we find how much of every sort of literary good +they can contain. The editor of these selections is a lucky man, for his +work has the merit, rare among such books, of being thoroughly good in +itself. He has with excellent judgment given us somewhat of +autobiography, somewhat of the rare and indescribable dream life of De +Quincey, and somewhat of his tales, essays, and critiques. The character +of his author's writings relieves these morsels from the air of +incompleteness and decapitation which so often attaches to selections. +What he has given us is not all of De Quincey, but each chapter is +complete in itself. Selections usually repel us. We cannot join in the +argument so often found in prefaces to such works, that the reading of +them may lead to the reading of the author's whole works. On the +contrary, we are of that class to whom the cutting up of a good author +is apt to seem like vivisection--necessary, perhaps, but revolting. This +book, however, does not leave such an impression. On laying it down we +wonder why we are not constantly reading the great essayist, the +precursor of the literary spirit of our own times, probably a better +example than any now living of the many virtues demanded from the +popular writer. + +[Footnote T: "_Beauties Selected from the Writings of Thomas De +Quincey._" New York: Hurd & Houghton.] + + * * * * * + +Under the editorship of Mr. John Austin Stevens we may look for a +valuable and permanent publication in the "Magazine of American History, +with Notes and Queries," of which A. S. Barnes & Co. are the publishers. +The position of the editor as librarian of the New York Historical +Society will, or at all events should, be an additional source of +strength to the publication. Experience shows that literary undertakings +which possess more merit than popularity can derive great advantages +from the official countenance of societies pursuing allied subjects of +investigation. Properly managed, the two modes of obtaining union in +action can be made to help each other materially. This hint will perhaps +be considered not amiss since the pamphlet, printed with the neatness +characteristic of such works, which lies before us, is but a specimen +and preliminary number, which is to be followed by monthly issues in +quarto form, at $5 yearly, if sufficient support is obtained. The editor +says: "Each number will contain: I. An original article on some point of +American history from a recognized and authoritative pen. II. A +biographical sketch of some character of historic interest. III. +Original documents, diaries, and letters. IV. Reprints of rare +documents. V. Notes and queries in the well-known English form. VI. +Reports of the proceedings of the New York Historical Society. VII. +Notices of historical publications." He also promises to keep it free +from sectional prejudices and "from personality and controversy in any +form." He has ready for publication a large number of interesting old +manuscripts contributed by historians and collectors, and it is to be +hoped his attempt to establish a periodical for historical literature +will be sustained. + + + + +BOOKS RECEIVED. + + +"_Materialism and Theology._" JAMES MARTINEAU, LL.D. G. P. Putnam's +Sons. + +"_Waverley Novels_," Riverside Edition, "Heart of Midlothian." Hurd & +Houghton. + +_The Same._ "Bride of Lammermoor." + +_The Same._ "The Monastery." + +"_Footsteps of the Master._" HARRIET B. STOWE. J. B. Ford & Co. + +"_Functions of the Brain._" Illustrated. D. FERRIER, M.D. G. P. Putnam's +Sons. + +"_The Plains of the Great West._" Illustrated. Lieutenant Colonel +RICHARD I. DODGE. G. P. Putnam's Sons. + +"_The Sons of Godwin._" A Tragedy. WILLIAM LEIGHTON, Jr. J. B. +Lippincott & Co. + +"_Personal Relations Between Librarian and Readers._" SAM. S. GREEN. +Chas. Hamilton, Worcester, Mass. + +"_Special Report on Worcester Free Library._" The same. + +"_Tales from Two Hemispheres._" H. H. BOYESEN. Jas. R. Osgood & Co. + +"_The Problems of Problems._" CLARK BRADEN. Chase & Hall, Cincinnati. + +"_Archology_; or, The Science of Government." V. BLAKESLEE. A. Roman & +Co. + +"_Woman as a Musician._" FANNY RAYMOND RITTER. Ed. Schuberth & Co. + +"_Vivisection._" Copp Clark & Co., Toronto. + +"_Cholera Facts of the Last Year._" E. MCCLELLAN, M.D. Richmond & +Louisville Medical Journal office. + +"_Art Journal._" Photo-Engraving Co., New York. + +"_History of the City of New York._" Parts 5 to 10. Mrs. M. J. LAMB. A. +S. Barnes & Co. + +"_The Magazine of American History._" JNO. AUSTIN STEVENS, editor. A. S. +Barnes & Co. + +"_National Quarterly Review._" D. A. GORTON, editor. + +"_National Survey West of 100th Meridian._" Vol. 5, Zoölogy. Dr. H. C. +YARROW and others. Government Printing Office. + +"_Catalogue Siamese Exhibit International Exhibition._" J. B. Lippincott +& Co. + +"_Planetary Meteorology, Mansill's Almanac of._" R. MANSILL. R. +Crampton, Rock Island. + +"_Notes on Assaying._" R. DE P. RICKETTS. Art Printing Establishment. + +"_Mental Powers of Insects._" A. S. PACKARD, Jr. Estes & Lauriat. + +"_Beauties of De Quincey._" Hurd & Houghton. + +"_The Convicts._" B. AUERBACH. H. Holt & Co. + +"_Philosophical Discussions._" C. WRIGHT. H. Holt & Co. + +"_The Sons of Goodwin._" W. LEIGHTON. J. B. Lippincott & Co. + +"_Rambles and Studies in Greece._" J. P. MAHAFFY. Macmillan & Co. + +"_Mother and Daughter._" F. S. VERDI, M. D. J. B. Ford & Co. + +"_Marie._ A Story of Russian Lore." MARIE H. DE ZIELINSKI. Jansen, +McClurg & Co. + +"_The Barton Experiment._" By the author of "Helen's Babies." G. P. +Putnam's Sons. + + + + +NEBULĘ. + + +--It would seem that we must return to the old fashion of strong boxes, +old stockings, and cracked pipkins as the receptacles of our savings. As +to savings banks and trust companies, and life insurance companies, the +revelations of the last few months go to show that they do anything but +save; that they are no longer to be trusted, and that they ensure +nothing but total loss to those who put their money into them. Ere long +it will be said of a young man that he was poor but honest, although he +had the misfortune to have a father who was a director in several +important financial institutions. The state of affairs in this respect +is frightful; and it frightens. The financial panic has been followed by +a moral panic which is really as much more deplorable than its +predecessor as moral causes are more radical in their operation and more +enduring than those which are merely material. Confidence is gone. How +it is to be restored is a problem far more perplexing than how to revive +drooping trade. For that the real wealth of the country, never greater +than it is now and constantly increasing, must bring about sooner or +later. But if men of wealth and of fair reputation are no longer to be +trusted, what is the use of saving, to put money into a box where it +gains nothing and where thieves break through and steal? Robbery seems +to be the fashion; on the one hand masked burglars with pistols at your +heads and gags in the mouths of your wife and children, and on the other +hypocritical, lying, false-swearing, thieving scoundrels who get your +money under fair pretences, and because of your trust in their +characters and good faith, and then waste it in speculations and in +luxurious living. Of the two, the burglars seem to be rather the more +respectable. It is said, on good authority, that the West India slaves +of a past generation could be trusted to carry bags of gold from one +part of the Spanish Main to another, and that they were constantly so +trusted with entire impunity. They would kidnap, and on occasion stab or +cut a throat; but if they were trusted, they would not break their +faith. The honesty of the Turkish porters is so well known that it has +become almost proverbial. Does not the honesty of these pirates and +pagans put to shame the Christians who with the professions and the +faces of Pharisees "devour widows' houses"? + +--For as to the business of life insurance, savings banks, and trust +companies, it is somewhat more, or surely somewhat other, than mere +business. And so those who practise it and profit by it profess that it +is. A life insurance company is a grand combination +philanthropico-financial corporation whose motto is, "Cast thy bread +upon the waters, and after many days thou shalt receive it again." But +the truth of the matter turns out to be that if you cast your bread upon +the waters, the chances are that you will see it devoured before your +eyes by financial sharks. One case in point has come directly to our +knowledge. A gentleman, a Government officer, who has a moderate salary, +with little or no hope of acquiring property, insured his life twenty +years or more ago in what was thought a good company. His premium was +always promptly paid even in the flush times of the war and afterward, +when the fixed salaries of public officers lost more than half their +purchasing power. Within the last few months he has suddenly found that +his policy is not worth the paper on which it is magnificently printed. +But worse than this: within the last few years, as age has crept upon +him, there has come with it a disease which is incurable although he may +live for some time longer. Now, however, he cannot get his life insured +at all; no company will take his life; (it is a rueful jest to say that +the company in question _did_ take his life); and he has the prospect +before him of a widow left entirely without provision, although for +nearly a quarter of a century he and she stinted themselves to provide +against such a contingency. Meantime the officers of the company lived +luxuriously, and used the money in their hands for speculation, and in +living which if not riotous, was at least shameless and dishonest. And +they were all men of reputation, were selected for their positions +because it was thought that men of their position and habits of life and +outward bearing were incorruptible. Have they not devoured that +prospective widow's house? If He who condemned the hypocritical +Pharisees of old were on the earth now, would he not pronounce Woe upon +them? And much would they care about His condemnation if they could get +their commissions, and their pickings and stealings, and live in +splendid houses, and be known as the managers of an institution that +handled millions of dollars yearly, and whose offices were gorgeous with +many-colored marbles, and gilding, and inlaid wood, and rich carpets! + +And like their predecessors in the devouring of widows' houses for a +pretence, they make long prayers. They, we say; but of course we do not +mean all; for there are honest officers of life insurance companies, and +even sound companies; but the number of both is shown day after day to +be less and less; and when we think that those that we hear about are +only they which have reached the end of their tether in fraud, perjury, +and swindling, the prospect before us is one of the most disheartening +that could be presented to a reflecting people. For remember, these +defaulting, false-swearing life insurance and savings bank officers are +picked men, and that their dishonest practices are from their very +nature deliberate, slow of execution, and that in fact they have gone on +for years. It is no clutch of drowning men at financial straws that we +have here; it is the regular "confidence game" played on an enormous +scale by men who are regarded as the most respectable that can be found +in the whole community. They are vestrymen, and deacons, and elders, and +grave and reverend signors, and these men have deliberately used and +abused the confidence not only of the community in general, but of their +friends and acquaintance, to "convey" in Nym's phrase, to steal in plain +English, money which was brought within their reach because of their +pretended high principle and their philanthropic motives. For, we +repeat, it must constantly be kept in mind as an aggravation of these +wrongs, that life insurance companies and savings banks are essentially +and professedly benevolent institutions. They are, and they openly +profess to be, chiefly for the benefit of widows and children. The man +who takes to himself the money of a life insurance company or of a +savings bank is not a mere thief and swindler; he robs the widow and the +fatherless; he takes his place among those who are accursed of all men; +and moreover, in all these cases he is a hypocrite of the deepest dye. + +--In any case, however, there is reason for fearing that the business of +life insurance has in the main long been rotten, even when it has not +been deliberately corrupt. Professedly and originally a benevolent +contrivance by which men of moderate incomes could year by year make +provision for wives and children who might otherwise be left destitute, +it was reasonable and right to expect that the business of life +insurance would be conducted upon the most economical principles and in +the simplest and most unpretending fashion; that there would have been +only as much expenditure as was absolutely necessary for the proper +conduct of the business; and that safety for the insured would have been +the first if not the only ruling motive with the insurers. And such +indeed was life insurance in the beginning. But by and by it was found +that there was "money in it," and the sleek, snug hypocrites that prey +upon society under the guise of philanthropy and religion began to swarm +around it. Life insurance companies began to have a host of officers; +they had "actuaries," whatever they may be, who, by whatever motives +they were actuated, contrived and put forth statements which to the +common mind were equally plausible and bewildering; they entered into +bitter rivalry with each other in their philanthropic careers; they had +agents who went abroad over the land in swarms, smooth-speaking, +shameless creatures who would say anything, promise anything so long as +they got their commissions; they published gorgeous pamphlets, tumid and +splendid with self-praise, and filled with tabular statements that +justified and illustrated the denying that there is nothing so +untrustworthy as facts, except figures; they contrived the "mutual" +plan, by which they made it appear to some men that they could insure +their own lives--which is much like a man's trying to hoist himself over +a fence by the straps of his boots--and yet these mutual officers, +benevolent creatures, were as eager to get business and as ready to pay +large commissions as if, poor, simple-minded souls, they had expected to +get rich by life insuring; and then they put up huge and enormously +expensive buildings, more like palaces than any others known to our +country. And all this came out of the pockets of those who are, with +cruel mockery, called the insured. It is the old story: ten cents to the +beneficiary and ninety cents to the agent through whose hands the money +passes. Is it not plain, merely from the grand scale and the large +pretence on which this life insurance business has been carried on of +late years, that it is rotten? It is a scheme for making money. Now, +making money is right enough; but when it is carried on under +philanthropic and benevolent pretences its tendency must naturally be, +as we have seen that it has been, to gross corruption and the most +heartless fraud. + + * * * * * + + The point of honor has been deemed of use + To teach good manners and to curb abuse. + +So wrote Cowper in his "Conversation," nearly a century ago, when +duelling was beginning to go out of fashion, even among men who did not +look upon it from a religious point of view. There is no doubt that the +passage which these lines introduce did much to bring the custom of +settling personal quarrels by single combat into disrepute. Cowper, the +moral poet _par excellence_ of the English language, attained this +eminence chiefly because he wrote, not like a fanatic, or a canting +pietist, but like a Christian gentleman and a man of sense. A man of +family, he thought and felt as a gentleman, and addressed himself to +gentlemen; and indeed, in his day poetry, at least of the quality that +he produced, had very few readers outside the pale of gentry. His view +of duelling is the one which now prevails in most communities of English +blood in all parts of the world. Germans and Frenchmen and the Latin +races generally still fight upon personal provocation, and in our late +slave States and among the rude and fierce men who guard and extend our +western borders, "misunderstandings" are settled by the bullet or the +knife, and if not on the spot, with the weapon at hand, then in a +regularly arranged duel in which the forms are entirely subordinate to +the essentials of a bloody and vindictive contest. With these +exceptions, however, duelling among the English-speaking people has come +to be regarded as both folly and crime. Nothing could evince more +strongly the change that has taken place in the moral sense of the +world; for to resent an insult by a challenge to fight, and to accept +such a challenge without a moment's hesitation, were once the highest +duties of a gentleman. There was a reason for this; and without +advocating or defending the practice of duelling, it may be questioned +whether that reason has entirely disappeared. + + * * * * * + +--Our readers need not fear that we are about to defend or to palliate +the conduct of either of the parties to the recent affair which began in +Fifth Avenue in New York and ended on the Maryland border; but the fact +that that occurrence or series of occurrences has attracted the +attention of the whole country, makes it a proper occasion of remark +upon the questions involved in such encounters. And first we must set +aside the Cowper view of the subject, not in its conclusion, but in its +reasoning. For however Christian in sentiment and sound in its final +judgment the passage in the "Conversation" may be, its author's position +is not logically impregnable. For it rests upon the assumption embodied +in the couplet-- + + Amoral, sensible, and well-bred man + Will not affront me, and no other can. + +But if this be true, it follows that a man cannot be insulted, which is +an absurdity; for men are insulted, as we all know--and we are happy if +we do not know it by experience. Moreover, men are insulted more +frequently where the "code of honor" does not prevail than where it +does; for that code is of use; and if it does not teach good manners, it +certainly does curb abuse. The question to be decided is whether in the +teaching of manners and the curbing of abuse by the alternative and +arbitrament of bloody combat we are not paying too high a price for what +we gain. To consider the example which is the occasion of our remark. A +man is met in the street by another with whom he has been upon terms of +social intercourse, and is there publicly whipped. He faces his +assailant, resists, but is overcome because the assailant is the +stronger and the more dexterous. What shall he do? Submit quietly? That +may be Christian conduct; but whether it is good public policy, to say +nothing more, may at least be questioned; for it would place the greater +part of the community at the mercy of the strong brawling bullies. Two +courses are open to a person so assailed--either to place the matter in +the hands of the law, in a civil or a criminal suit, or to challenge the +assailant. In most cases it may be admitted that the former course is +the wiser and the better course. Where mere protection against personal +injury is sought a police justice and a police officer are the effective +as well as the lawful means. But there is something else to be +considered. The mere personal injury may be slight, and there may be no +fear of its repetition, and yet there is a wrong done that may rankle +deeper than a wound. Personal indignity is something that most men of +character and spirit feel more than bodily pain or than loss of money or +of property. It is a sentimental grievance, and therefore one which the +law cannot provide against or punish. It cannot be estimated in damages; +none the less, therefore, but rather the more, does the man who suffers +it take it to heart; none the less, therefore, but rather the more, do +gentlemen set up barriers against it which, although invisible, and not +even expressed, if indeed they are expressible in words, are more +forbidding in their frown, more difficult of assault than the regular +bulwarks of the law. It must be repeated that this wrong is not to be +measured by the bodily injury or the bodily pain that is inflicted. Two +men may be boxing or fencing, and one may severely injure the other; but +no sense of wrong accompanies the injury, and that not because no injury +was intended, but because no offence was meant; whereas the flirt of a +kid glove across the face, or a word, may inflict a wrong that if not +atoned for or expiated, may rankle through a man's whole life. To +attempt to set aside or to do away with this feeling is quite useless: +as well attempt to set aside or to do away with human nature. It is this +feeling that has been at the bottom of most duels since duels passed out +of use as a mode of determining guilt or innocence, or of deciding +questions as to property, or position, or title. In the sixteenth, +seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries duels were chiefly the remedy for +wounded honor, as they are when they are rarely fought nowadays. True +there was the duel fought between two gentlemen "to prevent the +inconvenience of their both addressing the same lady"; but the duel for +that reason pure and simple was always comparatively rare, as, owing to +the infirmity of human nature, the agreement in opinion of the lady and +the disagreement as to the disposition to be made of her were almost +sure to take the form of a more reasonable if not more deadly cause of +quarrel. + +--But society--that is, society in which Anglo-Saxon modes of thought +and feeling prevail--says that no matter what the provocation, or how +great the sense of wrong, the duel shall not be; it has been made a +crime in some if not in most of such communities even to send a +challenge. This is done on grounds of public policy and of morality, and +not, as some persons seem to think, because killing in a duel is murder. +Murder is more than a mere killing, and is in its essence entirely +inconsistent with the fact that the person killed voluntarily placed +himself, and generally with much trouble and at great inconvenience, in +the way of his death. The duel is in fact a sort of _hari-kari_, or +happy release, as our Japanese friends have well phrased it, but it is +with the coöperation of a second party who voluntarily places himself in +similar peril, the happy release being in both cases from the stigma of +dishonor. This is shown very clearly by the distinction which is drawn +in general estimation between the man who challenges because he has +suffered an insult or an injury to his family honor, and one who does so +from a feeling of revenge and with the intent to rid himself of a hated +opponent, as for example in the case of Aaron Burr in his duel with +Alexander Hamilton. That was more than half a century ago, when there +were no such laws against duelling as now exist; but Burr, although he +rid himself of his hated rival on what was called the field of honor, +was from that day a degraded, detested, ruined man. If Hamilton had +offered him a personal indignity, or had injured him in his family +relations, the result of the duel would have added nothing to the weight +of disrepute under which Burr was already suffering. The whole world +recognizes this distinction, and there is hardly a man whose breeding +and habits make him what is rightly called a gentleman in the full sense +of the term, who, however his judgment may condemn the duellist who +fights because of an insult or an injury to family honor, does not feel +a certain sympathy with him. Notwithstanding the teachings of +Christianity, and the example of its founder as to the patient suffering +of indignity, notwithstanding the law, we all, or most of us, have the +feeling that Barclay of Wry's battle-tried comrade had when he saw his +old friend and heroic commander openly insulted by a throng of +swashbucklers in the streets of Aberdeen, because he had become a +Quaker, and which Whittier has expressed with such spirit in his poem on +the subject, which is one of the few truly admirable ballads of modern +days (although its author does not so class it), and which is, we are +inclined to think, the most admirable of them all: + + Woe's the day, he sadly said, + With a slowly shaking head, + And a look of pity: + Wry's honest lord reviled, + Mock of knave and sport of child, + In his own good city. + + Speak the word, and master mine, + As we charged on Tilly's line + And his Walloon lancers, + Smiting through their midst, we'll teach + Civil look and decent speech + To these boyish prancers. + +--What then is to be done? for the question is a serious one. We all +feel that personal indignity is of all wrongs the hardest one to bear; +we know that it is a wrong of a kind that cannot be redressed by law; +and yet we restrain men from the only redress, "satisfaction," as it is +called, that human ingenuity has bean able to devise, and with which +human nature, of the unregenerate sort, is satisfied. We cannot expect +all men to behave like members of the Society of Friends. All men have +not proved their courage and high spirit like Barclay of Wry, who + + ----stood + Ankle deep in Lutzen's blood + With the great Gustavus. + +We cannot compel all men to be Christians; and yet we would compel them +by law to bear insult as if they were Christians and great captains +turned Quakers. We can do this, which thus far society has neglected to +do: we can put a social ban upon the man who deliberately offers a +personal indignity to another. This should be a social duty. Let it be +understood, according to one of those silent social laws which are the +most binding of all laws because the sheriff cannot enforce them, that +the man who flourishes a horsewhip over another's head, or who uses his +tongue as a scourge with like purpose, or who offers personal indignity +of any kind, insults society as well as his victim, and is not to be +pardoned until he has made the amend to the injured party, and there +would soon be an end of provocation to duelling, except that which +touches the family, and that cannot be done away with until men have so +developed morally and intellectually that they see that a man's honor is +not in the keeping of a woman, not in that of any other person than +himself, not even his wife. Her conduct may indeed involve his dishonor, +if he is what used to be called a wittol, but even then _his_ dishonor +is because of his own disgrace. Only then can we reconcile the making of +a challenge a felony with the feeling that a man who has had a personal +indignity put upon him has suffered the deepest wrong he could be called +upon to bear, yet a wrong which society fails to right while it forbids +him to seek the only reparation. + +--That reparation is defined, if not prescribed, by the code of honor, +as to which code there seems to be a very general misapprehension. The +purpose of the code is this, that no gentleman shall offer a personal +indignity to another except with the certainty of its being at the risk +of his life. If society would provide a remedy or preventive that would +operate like this risk, the code would soon pass absolutely out of +practice and into oblivion. It is generally supposed that the code is a +very bloodthirsty law, and that those who acknowledge it and act upon it +are "sudden and quick in quarrel," lovers of fighting, revengeful and +implacable, and that the code gives them the means of gratifying their +murderous or combative propensities. No notion of it could be more +erroneous; the misconception is like that which supposes military men to +be desirous of using arms on slight provocation; whereas the contrary is +the case. No men are so reluctant to begin fighting as thoroughbred +soldiers; for they know what it means and to what end it must be carried +if it is once begun. The code has been reduced to writing, and by a +"fire-eating" South Carolinian, so that we can see just how bloodthirsty +it is. It provides first that if an insult be received in public it +should not be resented or noticed there, out of respect to those +present, except in case of a blow or the like, because this is insult to +the company which did not originate with the person receiving it; that a +challenge should never be sent in the first instance because "that +precludes all negotiation," and that in the note asking explanation and +reparation the writer should "cautiously avoid attributing to the +adverse party any improper motive"; that the aggrieved party's second +should manage the whole affair even before a challenge is sent, because +he "is supposed to be cool and collected, and his friends' feelings are +more or less irritated" ["more or less" here is excellent good as +expressive of the state of mind of a man so aggrieved that he is ready +to risk his life]; the second is to "use every effort to soothe and +tranquillize his principal," not to "see things in the aggravated light +in which he views them, but to extenuate the conduct of his adversary +whenever he sees clearly an opportunity to do so"; to "endeavor to +persuade him that there has been some misunderstanding in the matter," +and to "check him if he uses opprobrious epithets toward his adversary"; +"when an accommodation is tendered," the code says in a paragraph worthy +of the most respectful consideration, "never require too much; and if +the party offering the _amende honorable_ wishes to give a reason for +his conduct in the matter, do not, unless it is offensive to your +friend, refuse to receive it. By doing so you heal the breach more +effectively." Strangers may call upon you for your offices as second, +"for strangers are entitled to redress for wrongs as well as others, and +the rules of honor and of hospitality should protect them." The second +of the party challenged is also told, "Use your utmost efforts to allay +the excitement which your principal may labor under," to search +diligently into the origin of the misunderstanding, "for gentlemen +seldom insult each other unless they labor under some misapprehension or +mistake," and if the matter be investigated in the right spirit, it is +probable that "harmony will be restored." The other parts of the code +refer to the arrangements for and the etiquette of the hostile meeting, +of which we shall only notice the censure passed upon the seconds if +after either party is hit the fight is allowed to go on. The last +section implies, although it does not positively assert, that "every +insult may be compromised" without a hostile meeting, and it is directly +said that "the old opinion that a blow must require blood is of no +force; blows may be compromised in many cases." We do by no means +advocate the fighting of duels; but we must say that we cannot see in +this code the blood-thirstiness and the quarrel-seeking generally +attributed to it. On the contrary, all its instructions seem to tend +toward peacemaking, the restoration of harmony, the restraining of even +expressions of ill feeling. It does recognize as indisputable that an +insult must be atoned for, and if necessary, at the risk of life. That +necessity society can do away with by placing its ban upon the man who +insults another. + + * * * * * + +--It is generally supposed that the "average American" beats the world +in his love of big titles, and in his use of them; but the freed +southern negro beats his white fellow citizen all hollow. We hear from +Texas of one who is Head Centre of a Lodge--exactly of what sort we +don't know, but we suppose that it must be a lodge in the wilderness or +perhaps, in Solomon's phrase, a lodge in a garden of cucumbers. This +cullud pusson will spend two months' wages to "report" at a grand +junction "jamboree" of his "lodge." The titles of the officers of these +associations are something wonderful. A negro office boy down there +asked leave of absence for a day to attend a meeting. "Why," said his +master, "Scip, I didn't know you belonged to a lodge." "Oh, yes, boss," +replied Africanus, "Ise Supreme Grand King, an' Ise nowhar near de top +nuther." Who shall say that the abolition of slavery was not worth all +that it cost? + + + + + Transcriber's Notes: + + Obvious punctuation errors corrected. + + Text changes: + English Peerage: replaced "e.i." with "i.e." + ..._i.e._ the mayor being... + Misanthrope: replaced "acquintance" with "acquaintance" + ...to renew her acquaintance with Miss Lucy... + Wordsworth: Corrected "ta dč, kollomeleī" to "tą dč kollomeleī" + The Greek word "k'autonomįzei" appears in other editions as + "k'antonomįzei." + Replaced "Jeffry" with "Jeffrey" ...Jeffrey looked for logical... + Used =[text]= to indicate word typed with strike-out + =Those= lips... + Replaced "chearful" with "cheerful" ...Be wise and cheerful... + Portrait: Open quote without close quote in poem retained; + "Is thine that great,... + Tinsel: Removed extra period: ...before I asked it.". + Eastern: Corrected "Mediterannean" to "Mediterranean" + ...superior fleet in the Mediterranean;... + Added comma between "there there" ...In religion there, there are... + Assja: Consolidated 'The young man smiled and answered, "Yes; we are + Russians."' into one paragraph. + Removed hyphen from "hemp-field" ...a hemp field of moderate size... + Scientific: Added thought breaks between paragraphs at change of topic. + Nebulę: Added thought breaks between paragraphs at change of topic. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Galaxy, by Various + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GALAXY *** + +***** This file should be named 35112-8.txt or 35112-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/5/1/1/35112/ + +Produced by Carol Ann Brown, Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier +and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +https://www.pgdp.net. + + +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. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Galaxy + Vol. XXIII--March, 1877.--No. 3 + +Author: Various + +Release Date: January 29, 2011 [EBook #35112] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GALAXY *** + + + + +Produced by Carol Ann Brown, Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier +and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +https://www.pgdp.net. + + + + + + +</pre> + + +<h1>THE GALAXY.</h1> + +<hr class="c10" /> + +<h4>VOL. XXIII.—MARCH, 1877.—No. 3.</h4> + +<hr class="c5" /> + +<p class="p4"></p> + +<h5>Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1877, by SHELDON +& CO., in the office of the<br /> Librarian of Congress, at +Washington.</h5> + +<p class="p4"></p> + +<h4>THE ENGLISH PEERAGE.</h4> + +<p class="p2">More than one reader must have felt impatient with Milton +for spoiling the fine epitaph on the Marchioness of Winchester with such +unfortunate lines as "A Viscount's daughter, an Earl's heir," and "No +Marchioness, but now a queen." Probably the expressions sounded less +absurd to his contemporaries than they do to us, for titles of nobility, +however unworthily conferred, had more significance in the reign of +James I. than they bear in the reign of Queen Victoria. The memorable +despatch in which Collingwood announced the victory of Trafalgar, and +which has been described by great writers as a masterpiece of simple +narration began with these words: "Sir: The ever to be lamented death of +Vice Admiral Lord Viscount Nelson, in the moment of victory," etc. Now +peers of all ranks, except the highest, are commonly spoken of under the +general designation of "Lord So-and-So," and are rarely accorded in +conversation the honors of "my lord," or "your lordship." Generally +speaking, it may be said that in England titles, like decorations, are +still greedily sought after, but when won are not openly displayed. They +are felt by their bearers to be an anachronism, though no doubt a +sufficiently agreeable one to those most immediately concerned.</p> + +<p>Successive governments give as large a share of patronage to the +peers and baronets, and their kinsfolk, as they reasonably can; while +the Premier is only too glad to select men of rank as his colleagues in +the Cabinet, if they are only possessed of decent abilities, and will +work—for a minister must be a hard worker in these days. Thus, Mr. +Gladstone's administration, the first which was ever designated as +"Radical," contained a large proportion of the aristocratic element in +its ranks, though it was even made a charge against Mr. Gladstone by +conservative and pseudo-liberal papers, that he unjustly deprived the +peerage of its due representation in the Cabinet.</p> + +<p>As a matter of fact, when the Cabinet resigned it consisted of +sixteen members. Of these, eight were peers or sons of peers. Of the +remaining thirty-six Parliamentary members of the administration, +fourteen were peers or sons of peers. Mr. Disraeli's Cabinet numbers but +twelve ministers. Of these six are peers, another is heir presumptive to +a dukedom; while an eighth is a baronet; and of the remaining members of +the administration, nineteen out of thirty-eight are peers, baronets, or +sons of peers. In the army and navy, in the diplomatic service, the +peerage equally secures its full share of prizes; and even in the legal +profession it is far from being a disadvantage to a young barrister that +his name figures in the pages of Burke. In the Church a large proportion +of the best livings are held by members of the same privileged class, +and even the Stock Exchange lately showed itself eager to confer such +honors as were in its gift on a duke's son, who had been courageous +enough to "go into trade."</p> + +<p>The British aristocracy is still, therefore, "a fact," if a favorite +term of Mr. Carlyle's may be permitted in such a connexion, as it +probably may, for the author of "The French Revolution" has himself been +one of the latest eulogists of the governing families of England, and +perhaps a few notes on the origin and history of some of the principal +houses may not be unacceptable to American readers.</p> + +<p>The House of Lords, as at present constituted, consists of something +less than five hundred temporal peers. The first in order of hereditary +precedence, after the princes of the blood royal, is the Duke of +Norfolk, a blameless young gentleman of eight-and-twenty years, and a +zealous Catholic, as it is generally supposed that a Howard is compelled +to be by a mysterious law of his nature. As a matter of fact, however, +no family in England has changed its religion so often. Henry Charles, +thirteenth duke, seceded from the Church of Rome on the occasion of the +papal aggression. He declared himself convinced that "ultramontane +opinions were totally incompatible with allegiance to the sovereign and +the Constitution." The Duke's expression of opinion might have had more +weight with his coreligionists had his own reputation for wisdom stood +higher. But it stood very low. His Grace had made himself very +conspicuous during the agitation for the repeal of the corn laws by +recommending a curry powder of his own manufacture as a substitute for +bread, which singular piece of advice to a starving people earned him +the sobriquet of "Curry Norfolk." Charles, eleventh duke, also renounced +the old faith about the year 1780. He had not yet succeeded to his +title, but was known as the Earl of Surrey; was immediately returned to +Parliament for one of his father's boroughs. (The dukes of Norfolk had +eleven boroughs at their disposition before the passing of the reform +bill.) He was a notable personage in his day, and acted in concert with +the party of Fox. For giving the toast of "The people, our Sovereign," +at a public dinner he was deprived of his lord-lieutenancy and of his +colonelcy of militia. He was remarkable, too, for a dislike of clean +linen, which his friends were grieved to see him carry to excess.<a +name="FNanchor_A" id="FNanchor_A"></a><a href="#Footnote_A" +class="fnanchor">[A]</a> Three other Howards of the same stock are more +honorably distinguished in their country's annals. They are the victor +of Flodden and two of his grandsons; the one the Surrey of history and +romance, the other, Charles Lord Howard of Effingham, the conqueror of +the Spanish Armada. The origin of the family is involved in obscurity, +some maintaining that it sprung from the famous Hereward, the Wake, of +whose name they affirm Howard to be a corruption; while others assert +that the word Howard is neither more nor less than a euphonious form of +Hogward, and that the premier duke and hereditary Earl Marshal of +England might ultimately trace his descent to a swineherd if he were +disposed so to do. The first Howard of whom genealogists can take +serious cognizance was a respectable judge of the court of common pleas +in the reigns of Edward I. and Edward II. (1297-1308). His descendant +was ennobled in the reign of Edward IV.</p> + +<p>Next on the roll of the Lords to the Duke of Norfolk is Edward St. +Maur, the Duke of Somerset, an extremely clever man, "with a passion for +saying disagreeable things." He recently published a smart attack on the +evidences of Christianity, which occasioned not a little difficulty to +some worthy editors. They were sincere Christians, but it jarred against +their feelings to speak harshly of a duke. The St. Maurs (or Seymours) +are of genuine Norman descent, and began to be heard of in the +thirteenth century. They apparently remained estimable till the time of +Henry VIII., when that uxorious monarch married Jane, the daughter of +Sir John Seymour, by whom he became the father of Edward VI. Strangely +enough, Jane's brother, Lord Seymour of Sudeley, afterward married +Henry's widow, and the knot of family relationships becomes a little +complicated in consequence. More inauspicious unions were never +contracted. Lord Seymour was executed by order of his brother, the +Protector (and first Duke of Somerset), and three years later the +Protector's death-warrant was signed by his own nephew. From the close +of this short chronicle of blood, the Seymours practically disappear +from the pages of English history, though Macaulay has left a graphic +picture of that Sir Edward Seymour who was Speaker of the House of +Commons under Charles II., and who proudly replied to William III., when +asked if he belonged to the Duke of Somerset's family, that "the Duke of +Somerset belonged to his family." Francis, fifth duke, was the occasion +of a few days' gossip and much scandal. During his travels in Italy he +visited the convent of the Augustinians at Lerice, where he was foolish +enough to offer an impertinence to some ladies of the family of Botti, +and was shot by an angry Signor Botti a few hours later. His brother +Charles, who succeeded him, is the hero of a less tragic story. His +second wife, Lady Charlotte Finch, once tapped him with her fan, when he +is said to have rebuked her in these terms: "Madam, my first wife was a +Percy, and she never ventured to take such a liberty." He was known +among his contemporaries as "the proud Duke of Somerset."</p> + +<p>The next of the ducal houses in order of precedence traces its +descent from Charles II. and Louisa de Querouaille, "whom our rude +ancestors called Madam Carwell." The Dukes of Richmond have always been +known as honorable gentlemen, but they have left no mark on the +political history of England. The present Duke is perhaps the most +distinguished man of his family, being leader of the Conservative party +in the House of Lords, and, as is generally thought, Mr. Disraeli's +destined successor in the Premiership. The third Duke held high office +in the early part of the reign of George III.; while his nephew, Colonel +Lennox, who afterward succeeded him in the title, had the honor of +fighting a duel with a son of George III. Neither of the combatants +suffered any hurt, and Colonel Lennox was reserved for the most +melancholy of deaths; falling, thirty years after, a victim to +hydrophobia, caused by the bite of a dog. His royal antagonist was +Frederic, Duke of York, who subsequently became Commander-in-Chief of +the British army in the most inglorious period of its annals. Indeed, so +disgraceful was his Royal Highness's conduct of the campaign of 1794, +that Pitt demanded one of two things from the King; viz., either that +the Prince should be brought before a court-martial, or that the Prime +Minister should in future have the right of appointing to great military +commands. It must have cost George III. a bitter pang to accept the +latter alternative.</p> + +<p>The Duke of Grafton, who holds the fourth place on Garter's Roll, is +equally descended from his Majesty, King Charles II., of happy memory. +Henry Fitzroy, son of Barbara Villiers (created Duchess of Cleveland), +was raised to the highest rank in the peerage, as Duke of Grafton, in +1675. He was one of the first to desert his uncle's cause in 1688, and +two years later he died a soldier's death under the walls of Cork, +fighting for William III. and the liberties of England. His great +grandson was Augustus Henry, third Duke of Grafton, who may still be +seen gibbeted in the pages of Junius. His Grace was a member of +Chatham's second ministry, and succeeded his chief in the Premiership. +Of other Dukes of Grafton history makes no special mention.</p> + +<p>The fifth of the dukes in order of precedence quarters the royal arms +of France and England, but without the bāton sinister. Henry Charles +Fitzroy Somerset, Duke of Beaufort, is lineally descended from +"<i>old</i> John of Gaunt, time-honored Lancaster" (third son of Edward +III.) and Catherine Swinford. John of Gaunt's children by this union +were afterward legitimatized by act of Parliament. Henry, the second +son, took holy orders, and became Bishop of Lincoln, and afterward of +Winchester, as well as Cardinal and Lord Chancellor. He is the Cardinal +Beaufort who figures in the stately Gallery of Shakespeare. He and his +brothers took the name they bore from the Castle of Beaufort, in Anjou, +the place of their nativity. The Cardinal's elder brother was created +Earl and afterward Marquis of Somerset. His descendant, Henry Beaufort, +Duke of Somerset, fell into the hands of the Yorkists, at the battle of +Hexham, and was succeeded in the family honors by his brother Edmund, +who was soon to share the same fate. With him the legitimate male line +of John of Gaunt became extinct. Duke Henry, however, had left a natural +son, who was called Charles Somerset, and who, to use the appropriate +language of chronological dictionaries, "flourished" in the reigns of +Henry VII. and Henry VIII. He was a brave soldier and a skilful +diplomatist; having been chosen a Knight of the Garter; he was also +appointed captain of the King's Guards for his services. Sir Charles +Somerset obtained in marriage Elizabeth, daughter and heiress of William +Herbert, Earl of Huntingdon, and Lord Herbert of Rayland, Chepston, and +Gower; and, in his wife's right, was summoned to Parliament as Lord +Herbert, in the first year of Henry VIII. In 1514 he was advanced to the +Earldom of Worcester, having previously been constituted Lord +Chamberlain for life, as a reward for the distinguished part he had in +the taking of Terouenne and Tournay. He died in 1526, and was succeeded +by his son. Little is heard of the Somersets—Earls of +Worcester—during the sixteenth century, though the marriage of two +ladies of that house called forth the well-known Epithalamium of +Spenser. Henry, the fifth earl, created Marquis of Worcester by Charles +I., is celebrated in English history for his defence of Rayland castle +against the forces of the Parliament, under Sir Thomas Fairfax. On this +subject, Mr. George MacDonald's last novel of "St. George and St. +Michael" may be consulted with advantage.</p> + +<p>The brave old cavalier did not long survive the surrender and +destruction of his ancestral home. The same year he died, and was +succeeded in his title by his son Edward, the famous author of the +"Century of Inventions." It is scarcely too much to say that had this +man been divested of rank and fortune, and had he been furnished with +the requisite motive for exertion, he might have anticipated the work of +Watt and Stephenson. As it was, the discoveries he made served but to +amuse his leisure hours. The Marquis of Worcester was well-nigh the last +of his race about whose doings his countrymen would much care to be +informed. His son was created Duke of Beaufort in 1682, and with the +attainment of the highest rank in the peerage came a cessation of mental +activity in the family. One more Somerset, however, deserves honorable +mention—Fitzroy, who was aide-de-camp to Wellington, and lost an +arm at Waterloo. Raised to the peerage in 1852 as Lord Raglan, he was +named two years later to the command of the English army in the Crimea. +What he did, and what he did not, in that post, is still remembered. In +truth he was a gallant soldier, distracted by contradictory +instructions, feeling keenly the criticisms of newspaper writers, who +complained that one of the strongest fortresses in the world was not +taken in a few weeks. The siege had lasted eight months, when Lord +Raglan resolved to make one desperate effort to carry the place by +assault on the 18th of June, the fortieth anniversary of Waterloo. The +attack failed, and the allies were repulsed with severe loss. Ten days +later the English general succumbed to sickness and chagrin.</p> + +<p>The Dukes of St. Albans enjoy precedence after the Dukes of Beaufort. +William Amelius Aubrey De Vere Beauclerk, present and tenth duke, is +lineally descended from the Merry Monarch and Nell Gwynn, and through +the marriage of the first duke, from the De Veres, Earls of Oxford. His +Grace is Hereditary Grand Falconer, a pleasant little sinecure of some +$6,000 a year. Of the Dukes of Saint Albans history has nothing to say. +The ninth duke married the widow of Mr. Thomas Coutts, of banking +renown.</p> + +<p>Next on Garter's roll comes the Duke of Leeds, lineally descended +from Thomas Osborne, Earl of Danby and Lord High Treasurer under Charles +II., whom Dutch William afterward made Duke of Leeds. Danby (for he is +better known by this title than by the one which he dishonored) must be +considered to have been an average statesman, and even a patriot, as +public spirit then went. He steadily opposed French influence under +Charles II., and afterward contributed to the success of the Revolution. +He was subsequently impeached by the Commons for taking bribes, but the +principal witness on whom the House relied to substantiate the charge +mysteriously disappeared when most wanted. From that day, however, the +Duke of Leeds was morally extinguished. The subsequent Dukes led worthy +and honorable lives, but were not otherwise notable. The seventh married +(24th of April, 1828) an American lady, Louisa Catharine, third daughter +of Mr. Richard Caton of Maryland, and widow of Sir Felton Bathurst +Hervey.</p> + +<p>The two next of the ducal houses, those of Bedford and Devonshire, +are invested by Whig writers with almost a halo of glory, though in +truth they have produced respectable rather than great men. The +beginnings of the house of Russell are somewhat curious. One of the +earliest ancestors of the family of whom anything is accurately known +was Speaker of the House of Commons in the second and tenth years of +Henry VI. His grandson, John Russell, a gentleman of property, resided +at Berwick, about four miles from Bridport, in the county of Dorset. He +was a bookish man, and would probably never have gone to seek out +fortune; but fortune, as is her wont, came to him in the person of the +Archduke Philip of Austria. This Prince, the son of the reckless +Maximilian, having encountered a violent hurricane in his passage from +Flanders to Spain, was driven into Weymouth, where he landed, and was +hospitably received by a Sir Thomas Trenchard, who immediately wrote to +court for instructions. Meanwhile he deputed his first cousin, Mr. +Russell, to wait upon the Prince. His Highness was so fascinated by the +conversation of Mr. Russell, that he begged that gentleman to accompany +him to Windsor, where he spoke of him in such high terms to the King +(Henry VII.), that the monarch at once took him into his favor. He +subsequently accompanied Henry VIII. in his French wars, and afterward +becoming a supple instrument of his master's ecclesiastical policy, was +rewarded with a peerage and a grant of the Abbey of Tavistock, and the +extensive lands thereto belonging. To these possessions the Protector +Somerset added the monastery of Woburn and the Earldom of Bedford. Nor +did the star of John Russell grow dim under the reign of the Catholic +Mary, who named him Lord Privy Seal, and Ambassador to Spain, to conduct +Philip II. to England. He died in 1555. From him were descended various +Russells who enjoyed as many of the good things of this life as they +could decently lay hands upon, and two of whom were famous men in their +day. William, Lord Russell, is best known to posterity as the husband of +the admirable Rachael Wriothesley, daughter of Thomas, Earl of +Southampton, and widow of Francis, Lord Vaughan. With respect to his +execution there has been some difference of opinion; but the probability +is that it was a judicial murder of the worst kind. Immediately after +the Revolution, Lord Russell's attainder was reversed by Parliament. His +widow survived him forty years, and lived to see George I. on the throne +and the Protestant succession firmly established. What is not so +generally known, perhaps, is that the mother of Lord Russell was the +daughter of Carr, Earl of Somerset, by the divorced wife of Essex. She +was herself a virtuous lady, and is said to have fallen down in a fit +when she first learned the horrible details of her family history.</p> + +<p>Lord Russell's cousin was the victor of La Hogue, created Earl of +Orford in 1697. He died in 1727 without issue, when the title became +extinct—to be renewed fifteen years later in favor of Sir Robert +Walpole.</p> + +<p>Lord Russell's father was created Duke of Bedford by William III., +May 11, 1694. He was succeeded by his grandson, Wriothesley, who was +married at the ripe age of fourteen and elevated to a separate peerage +the same year. He had previously been requested to come forward as a +candidate for the county of Middlesex; but the prudent Lady Russell +refused to allow him. In the then state of public opinion he would have +been elected without opposition.</p> + +<p>The eighteenth century was the golden age of Whig families, at least +till George III. became king, and the house of Russell continued to +provide the country with a succession of dignified placemen. John IV., +Duke of Bedford, was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in 1756. In 1762 his +Grace, as the plenipotentiary of England, signed the preliminaries of +peace at Fontainebleau with France and Spain—a work on which he +can scarcely be congratulated, seeing that by it England was juggled out +of nearly every advantage she had won by seven years of victory. The +Duke's son, Francis, called by courtesy Marquis of Tavistock, married +Lady Elizabeth Keppel, who literally died of grief when her husband was +killed by a fall from his horse. Dr. Johnson's characteristic comment on +this event was that if her ladyship had been a poor washerwoman with +twelve children to mind, she would have had no time to die of grief. +Lord Tavistock left three sons, Francis and John, successively fifth and +sixth Dukes of Bedford, and William (posthumous), the unfortunate +nobleman who, within living memory, was murdered by his French valet +Courvoisier.</p> + +<p>John, Earl Russell, the distinguished statesman who "upset the +coach," is a son of the sixth duke, Lord Odo Russell, one of the ablest +of modern diplomatists, a grandson of the same peer.</p> + +<p>On the day after the head of the house of Russell was raised to ducal +rank, the head of the Cavendishes received the same honor, being created +Marquis of Hartington and Duke of Devonshire. This family claims descent +from Sir John Cavendish, Lord Chief Justice of England in 1366, 1373, +and 1377. "In the fourth year of Richard II. his lordship was elected +chancellor of the university of Cambridge, and was next year +commissioned, with Robert de Hales, treasurer of England, to suppress +the insurrection raised in the city of York, in which year the mob, +having risen to the number of fifty thousand, made it a point, +particularly in the county of Suffolk, to plunder and murder the +lawyers; and being incensed in a more than ordinary degree against the +Chief Justice Cavendish, his son John having killed the notorious Wat +Tyler, they seized upon and dragged him, with Sir John of Cambridge, +prior of Bury, into the marketplace of that town, and there caused both +to be beheaded." Thus far Burke, who has small sympathy to bestow on Wat +Tyler, albeit that reformer was murdered in a cowardly way, whether it +were Walworth or Cavendish who struck the blow. "For William Walworth, +mayor of London, having arrested him (Wat Tyler), he furiously struck +the mayor with his dagger, but being armed [<ins title="Transcriber's +Note: Original reads 'e. i.'"><i>i.e.</i></ins> the mayor being in +armor], hurt him not; whereupon the mayor, drawing his baselard, +grievously wounded Wat in the neck; in which conflict an esquire of the +King's house, called John Cavendish, drew his sword and wounded him +twice or thrice, even unto death. For which service Cavendish was +knighted in Smithfield, and had a grant of £40 per annum from the King." +The great-great-grandson of this Sir John Cavendish was gentleman usher +to Cardinal Wolsey; after the death of his master King Henry took him +into his own employment, to reward him for the fidelity with which he +had served his former patron. His elder brother William was in 1530 +appointed one of the commissioners for visiting and taking the +surrenders of divers religious houses. Needless to add that from that +day Mr. Cavendish had but to do as the King told him and make his +fortune. Before his death he had begun to build the noble seat of +Chatsworth, in Derbyshire, which his descendants still possess. His +second son, and eventual heir, was created Earl of Devonshire by King +James I. in 1618. The first earl's nephew was the renowned cavalier +general created Marquis and subsequently Duke of Newcastle. He was at +one time governor of the Prince of Wales (afterward Charles II.), and +there is a touching epistle extant in which his youthful charge entreats +the Marquis that he may not be compelled to take physic, which he feels +sure would do him no good.</p> + +<p>William, fourth earl of Devonshire, although raised to a dukedom by +William III., distinguished himself, as did his son, the Marquis of +Hartington, in the House of Commons, by vehement opposition to the +King's retention of his Dutch guards after the conclusion of peace in +1697; and for this uncourtly conduct the country owes them a deep debt +of gratitude. The Dutch guards were not likely to do much harm, but +foreign troops have no business in a free state.</p> + +<p>Henry Cavendish, the eminent chemist and philosopher, was grandson to +the second duke (who married Rachel, daughter of William, Lord Russell). +The present duke was senior wrangler of his year; his eldest son is +leader of the Liberal party in the House of Commons.</p> + +<p>Of the dukes of Marlborough, who are next on the list, it is +unnecessary to say much. All the world knows the strange history of John +Churchill, the noblest and the meanest of mankind. The great duke's only +son died of the smallpox while yet a boy; but his honors were made +perpetual in the female as well as the male line. The present duke is +lineally descended on the father's side from a most worthy country +gentleman, Sir Robert Spencer, of Althorp, raised to the peerage as Lord +Spencer by James I. Lord Spencer's name should be dear to every American +for the friendship he showed his neighbors the Washingtons. The +Washingtons had at one time rather a severe struggle to make both ends +meet, but they saw better days. John Washington, the heir of the house, +was knighted and fought for Charles I. in the civil war. Disgusted with +the commonwealth, he emigrated to America, hearing that men were more +loyal on the other side of the Atlantic. He is commonly believed to have +been the ancestor of George Washington. Such is the irony of fate.</p> + +<p>The second Duke of Marlborough who, when unwell, would limit himself +to a bottle of brandy a day, proved a real source of danger to his +country. When he succeeded to his grandfather's honors in 1733, the +faults of the victor of Blenheim were forgotten and only his surpassing +military achievements remembered. King and people were alike determined +to honor the man who bore his name, and, it was fondly deemed, inherited +his qualities. He was made lord lieutenant of two counties, a knight of +the garter, and promoted to high military command. Having conducted +himself without discredit at Dettingen, he was thought equal to +anything, and in the year 1758 Pitt, who felt kindly toward the +Churchills, and who had been left £10,000 by Duchess Sarah, was so rash +as to name him commander-in-chief of all the British forces in Germany +destined to act under Prince Ferdinand. After all, the appointment did +no harm, for the Duke died the same year. <i>Exeunt</i> the Dukes of +Marlborough into infinite space. Henceforth they and their doings have +no more human interest.</p> + +<p>The Dukes of Rutland are another family dating their greatness from a +share in the spoil of the monasteries. Thomas Manners, first Earl of +Rutland, drew one of the best repartees ever made from Sir Thomas More, +then Lord Chancellor. "<i>Honores mutant mores</i>," said the Earl to +Sir Thomas in resent for some fancied affront. "Nay, my lord," replied +More; "the pun is better translated into English—Honors change +Manners." Among the descendants of this nobleman two are worthy a +passing notice; viz., John, Marquis of Granby, the most dashing of +cavalry officers, whose bluff features may still be seen on the +signboards of many taverns in England; and Lord John Manners, +heir-presumptive to the Dukedom of Rutland, and a member of the present +Cabinet. Lord John is chiefly famous as the author of a poem in which +occur the oft-quoted lines:</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <span class="i0"> Let arts and learning, laws and commerce die,</span> + <span class="i0">But keep us still our old nobility—</span> +</div> + +<p>perhaps the most remarkable sentiment ever uttered even by a young +man. It is fair to Lord John Manners to add that he was a fairly +successful Minister of Public Works under two administrations, showing +indeed a good deal of taste and no contempt at all for the arts. Another +Manners was Archbishop of Canterbury from 1805 to 1828; but beyond +having an income of something like $130,000 punctually during nearly a +quarter of a century, this prelate cannot be considered to have done +anything noteworthy. The Archbishop's son was Speaker of the House of +Commons from 1817 to 1834, and was raised to the peerage in 1835 as +Viscount Canterbury—a peerage being the invariable termination of +a modern Speaker's career. The present Lord Canterbury (his son) has +been Governor of Victoria and two or three other colonies; for men do +not belong to a ducal family for nothing.</p> + +<p>There are but eleven Dukes of England properly so called; that is, +Dukes sitting in the House of Lords as such, and deriving their titles +from creations before the union with Scotland. The Duke of Norfolk, as +before stated, is the first of these, and the Duke of Rutland the last +in order of precedence. The patent of the latter as Duke bears date +March 29, 1703. There are also Dukes of Great Britain and of the United +Kingdom, as well as of Scotland and Ireland; but those of the two sister +kingdoms sit by inferior titles among their peers, and all the Dukes not +of England take precedence among each other by somewhat intricate rules +of precedence, into which it is not worth while to enter. The dukedoms +are twenty-eight in all, exclusive of those held by princes of the blood +royal. The honor has been very sparingly bestowed in late years. The +last conferred by George III. was that of Northumberland, the King +refusing to make any more creations, except in favor of his own +descendants. The Prince Regent made Lord Wellington a duke, and after +his accession to the throne raised Lord Buckingham to the same dignity. +William IV. made two more, and her present Majesty has added an equal +number to the list.</p> + +<p>The history of one ducal family is the history of all. They generally +boast a founder of some abilities, and produce one or two men, seldom +more, who leave their mark on the annals of their country. It would be +strange if it were otherwise, considering the enormous opportunities +which a title, joined to fair means, gives to its possessor in England. +The privileges with which acts of Parliament and courtly lawyers in +bygone ages invested the nobility have long since become nominal. A peer +has now no right as such to tender advice to the Queen. If libelled, he +can no more terrify the offender with the penalties of <i>scandalum +magnatum</i>, but must content himself with the same remedies as do +other folk; if he cannot be arrested for debt, he shares that privilege +with all the Queen's subjects; and if he continues to be a hereditary +member of the Legislature, it is because the chamber in which he sits +has been reduced to a moderating committee of the sovereign assembly. +But the nameless privileges of persons of rank are great indeed. The +army, the navy, the Church are filled with them or their dependents. +Till within the last few years, the diplomatic service was regarded as +their peculiar property. In the present House of Commons, the second +elected by household suffrage, fully one-third of the members are sons +of peers, baronets, or closely allied by marriage, or otherwise, to the +titled classes. A fair proportion of these are Liberals; the Queen's +son-in-law, Lord Lorne, member for Argyllshire, being a professor of +"Liberal" opinions, as also Lord Stafford, son of the Duke of +Sutherland, and Lord de Gray, son of the Marquis of Ripon. Such Liberals +serve the useful function of "watering" the creed of their party, which +might otherwise prove too strong for the Constitution. Mr. Gladstone and +Mr. Bright would doubtless have gone much further in the path of reform +if unfettered by ducal retainers.</p> + +<p>And yet, though England is still very far from the realization of +that political equality which American citizens enjoy among themselves, +and which is perhaps one of the few ascertainable benefits Frenchmen +have derived from the revolution, there can be no doubt as to the +direction in which England is advancing. Democracy is the goal of the +future, and it is even in sight, though a long way off. For instance, +considerable as is the parliamentary influence of certain noblemen in +the present day, it is influence and no more. Before the Reform act of +1832, the parliamentary "influence" of a peer, as it was euphemistically +termed, meant that he had the absolute disposal of one or more seats in +the House of Commons. The Duke of Norfolk, as before mentioned, returned +eleven members, the Duke of Richmond three, Lord Buckingham six, the +Duke of Newcastle seven. In the year 1820, out of the twenty-six +prelates sitting in the House of Lords, only six were not directly or +indirectly connected with the peerage; while the value of some of the +sees was enormous. Now public opinion is too formidable to allow of +jobbery that is not very discreetly managed, and a great deal no doubt +is thus managed. But appearances must be kept up.</p> + +<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">E. C. Grenville Murray.</span> +</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_A" id="Footnote_A"></a> <a +href="#FNanchor_A"> <span class="label">[A]</span></a>"Did your Grace +ever try a clean shirt?" Abernethy is said to have asked the Duke, who +had consulted him on some ailment.</p></div> + +<hr /> + +<p class="p4"></p> + +<h4>MISS MISANTHROPE.</h4> + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">By Justin McCarthy.</span></p> + +<hr class="c5" /> + +<p class="p4"></p> + +<h3>CHAPTER IV.</h3> + +<h4>"OH, MUCH DESIRED PRIZE, SWEET LIBERTY!"</h4> + +<p class="p2">The summer had gone and much even of the autumn, and Miss +Grey and her companion were settled in London. Minola had had everything +planned out in her mind before they left Dukes-Keeton, and little Miss +Blanchet was positively awed by her leader's energy, knowledge, and +fearlessness. The first night of their arrival in town they went to a +quiet, respectable, old-fashioned hotel, well known of Keeton folk, +where Miss Grey's father used to stay during his visits to London for +many years, and where his name was still well remembered. Then the two +strangers from the country set out to look for lodgings, and Miss Grey +was able to test her knowledge of London, and satisfy her pride of +learning, by conducting her friend straightway to the region in which +she had resolved to make a home for herself. She had been greatly +divided in mind for a while between Kensington and the West Centre; +between the neighborhood of the South Kensington Museum, the glades of +the gardens, and all the charms of the old court suburb, and the +temptations of the National Gallery, the British Museum, and the +old-fashioned squares and houses around the latter. She decided for the +British Museum quarter. Miss Blanchet would have preferred the +brightness and air of fashion which belonged to Kensington, but Miss +Grey ruled that to live somewhere near the British Museum was more like +living in London, and she energetically declared that she would rather +live in Seven Dials than out of London.</p> + +<p>To find a pleasant and suitable lodging would ordinarily have been a +difficulty; for the regular London lodging-house keeper detests the +sight of women, and only likes the gentleman who disappears in the +morning and returns late at night. But luckily there are Keeton folk +everywhere. As a rule nobody is born in London, "except children," as a +lady once remarked. Come up to London from whatever little Keeton you +will, you can find your compatriots settled everywhere in the +metropolis. Miss Grey obtained from the kindly landlady of the +hotel—who had herself been born in Keeton, and was married to a +Glasgow man—a choice of Keeton folk willing to receive respectable +and well-recommended lodgers—"real ladies" especially. Miss Grey, +being cordially vouched for by the landlady as a real lady, found out a +Keeton woman in the West Centre who had a drawing-room and two bedrooms +to let.</p> + +<p>Had Miss Grey invented the place it could not have suited her better. +It was an old-fashioned street, running out of a handsome old-fashioned +square. The street was no thoroughfare. Its other end was closed by a +solemn, sombre structure with a portico, and over the portico a plaster +bust of Pallas. This was an institution or foundation of some kind which +had long outlived the uses whereto it had been devoted by its pious +founder. It now had nothing but a library, a lecture hall, an enclosed +garden (into which, happily for her, the windows of Miss Grey's bedroom +looked), an old fountain in the garden, considerable funds, a board of +trustees, and an annual dinner. This place lent an air of severe dignity +to the street, and furthermore kept the street secluded and quiet by +blocking up one of its ends and inviting no traffic. The house in which +our pair of wanderers was lodging was itself old-fashioned, and in a +manner picturesque. It had broad old staircases of stone, and a large +hall and fine rooms. It had once been a noble mansion, and the legend +was that its owner had entertained Dr. Johnson there and Sir Joshua +Reynolds, and that Mrs. Thrale had often been handed up and down that +staircase. Minola loved association with such good company, and it may +be confessed went up and down the stairs several times for no other +purpose whatever than the pleasure of fancying herself following in the +footsteps of bright Mrs. Thrale, with whose wrongs Miss Grey, as a +misanthrope, was especially bound to sympathize.</p> + +<p>The drawing-room happily looked at least aslant over the grass and +the trees of the square. Minola's bedroom, as has been said, looked into +the garden of the institution, with its well-kept walks, its shrubs, and +its old-fashioned fountain, whose quiet plash was always heard in the +seclusion of the back of the house. Had the trunks of the trees been +just a little less blackened by smoke our heroine might well have +fancied, as she looked from her bedroom window of nights, that she was +in some quaint old abode in a quiet country town. But in truth she did +not desire to encourage any such delusion. To feel that she was in the +heart of London was her especial delight. This feeling would have +brightened and glorified a far less attractive place. She used to sit +down alone in her bedroom of nights in order to think quietly to +herself, "Now I am at last really in London; not visiting London, but +living in it." There at least was one dream made real. There was one +ambition crowned. "Come what will," she said to herself, "I am living in +London." In London and freedom she grew more and more healthy and happy. +As a wearied Londoner might have sought out say Keeton, and found new +strength and spirits there, so our Keeton girl, who was somewhat pale +and thin when she sat on the steps of the ducal mausoleum, grew stronger +and brighter every day in the West Centre regions of London.</p> + +<p>A happier, quieter, freer life could hardly be imagined, at least for +her. She spent hours in the National Gallery and the Museum; she walked +with Mary Blanchet in Regent's Park, and delighted to find out new +vistas and glimpses of beauty among the trees there, and to insist that +it was ever so much better than any place in the country. As autumn came +on and the trees grew barer and the skies became of a heavier silver +gray, Minola found greater charms in their softened half tones than the +brighter lights of summer could give. Even when it rained—and it +did rain sometimes—who could fail to see the beauty, all its own, +of the green of grass, and the darker stems and branches of trees, +showing faintly through the veil of the mist and the soft descending +shower? It was, indeed, a delightful Arcadian life. Its simplicity can +hardly be better illustrated than by the fact that our adventurous pair +of women always dined at one o'clock—when they dined at +all—off a chop, except on Sundays, when they invariably had a cold +fowl.</p> + +<p>Much as Miss Grey loved London, however, it was still a place made up +of men whom she considered herself bound to dislike, and of women who +depended far too much on these men. Therefore she made studies of scraps +of London life, and amused herself by satirizing them to her friend.</p> + +<p>"I have accomplished a chapter of London, Mary," she said one evening +before their reading had set in. "I have completed my social studies of +our neighbors in Gainsborough Place"—a little street of shops near +at hand. "I am prepared to give you a complete court guide as to the +grades of society there, Mary, so that you may know at once how to +demean yourself to each and all."</p> + +<p>"Do tell me all about it; I should very much like to know."</p> + +<p>"Shall we begin with the highest or the lowest?" </p> + +<p>"I think," Miss Blanchet said with a gentle sigh, expressive of no +great delight in the story of the lower classes, "I would rather you +begin low down, dear, and get done with them first."</p> + +<p>"Very well; now listen. The lowest of all is the butcher. He is a +wealthy man, I am sure, and his daughter, who sits in the little office +in the shop, is a good-looking girl, I think. But in private life nobody +in Gainsborough Place mixes with them on really cordial terms. Their +friends come from other places; from butchers' shops in other streets. +They do occasionally interchange a few courtesies with the family of the +baker; but the baker's wife, though not nearly so rich, rather +patronizes and looks down upon Mrs. Butcher."</p> + +<p>"Dear me!" said the poetess. "What odd people!"</p> + +<p>"Well, the pastry-cook's family will have nothing to do, except in +the way of business, with butcher or baker; but they are very friendly +with the grocer, and they have evenings together. Now the two little old +maids, who keep the stationer's shop where the post-office is, are very +genteel, and have explained to me more than once that they don't feel at +home in this quarter, and that their friends are in the West End. But +they are not well off, poor things, I fear, and they like to spend an +evening now and then with the family of the grocer and the pastry-cook, +who are rather proud to receive them, and can give them the best tea and +Madeira cake; and both the little ladies assure me that nothing can be +more respectable than the families of the pastry-cook and the +grocer—for their station in life, they always add."</p> + +<p>"Oh, of course," Miss Blanchet said, who was listening with great +interest as to a story, having that order of mind to which anything is +welcome that offers itself in narrative form, but not having any +perception of a satirical purpose in the whole explanation. Minola +appreciated the "of course," and somehow became discouraged.</p> + +<p>"Well," she said, "that's nearly all, except for the family of the +chemist, who live next to the little ladies of the post-office, and who +only know even them by sufferance, and would not for all the world have +any social intercourse with any of the others. It's delightful, I think, +to find that London is not one place at all, but only a cluster of +little Keetons. This one street is Keeton to the life, Mary. I want to +pursue my studies deeper though; I want to find out how the gradations +of society go between the mothers of the boy who drives the butcher's +cart, the baker's boy, and pastry-cook's boy."</p> + +<p>"Oh, Minola dear!"</p> + +<p>"You think all this very unpoetic, Mary, and you are shocked at my +interest in these prosaic and lowly details. But it is a study of life, +my dear poetess, and it amuses and instructs me. Only for chance, you +know, I might have been like <i>that</i>, and it is a grand thing to +learn one's own superiority."</p> + +<p>"You never could have been like that, Minola; you belong to a +different class."</p> + +<p>"Yes, yes, dear, that is quite true. I belong to the higher classes +entirely; my father was a country architect, my stepfather is a +Nonconformist minister—these are of the aristocracy +everywhere."</p> + +<p>"You are a lady—a woman of education, Minola," the poetess said +almost severely. She could not understand how even Miss Grey herself +could disparage Miss Grey and her parentage in jest.</p> + +<p>"I can assure you, dear, that one of the pastry-cook's daughters, +whom I talked with to-day, is a much better educated girl than I am. You +should hear her talk French, Mary. She has been taught in Paris, dear, +and speaks so well that I found it very hard to understand her. She +plays the harp, and knows all about Wagner. I don't. I like her very +much, and she is coming here to take tea with us."</p> + +<p>The poetess was not delighted with this kind of society, but she +never ventured to contradict her leader.</p> + +<p>"You can talk to every one I do really believe," she said. "I find it +so hard to get on with people—with some people."</p> + +<p>"I feel so happy and so free here. I can say all the cynical things +that please me—<i>you</i> don't mind—and I can like or +dislike as I choose."</p> + +<p>"I am afraid you dislike more than you like, Minola."</p> + +<p>"I think I could like any one who had some strong purpose in life; +not the getting of money, or making a way in society. There are such, I +suppose; I don't know."</p> + +<p>"When you meet my brother I am sure you will acknowledge that he has +a purpose in life which is not the getting of money," said Miss +Blanchet. "But you don't like men."</p> + +<p>Minola made no reply. Poor little Miss Blanchet felt so kindly to all +the race of men that she did not understand how any woman could really +dislike them.</p> + +<p>"I am going to do something that will please you to-morrow," Miss +Grey said, feeling that she owed her companion some atonement for not +warming to the mention of her brother. "I am positively going to hunt +out Lucy Money. They must have returned by this time."</p> + +<p>This was really very pleasant news for Miss Blanchet. She had been +longing for her friend to renew her <ins title="Transcriber's Note: +Original reads 'acquintance'"> acquaintance</ins> with Miss Lucy Money, +about whom she had many dreams. It did not occur to Mary Blanchet to +question directly even in her own mind the decrees of Miss Grey, or to +say to herself that the course of life which they were leading was not +the most delightful that could be devised. But, if the little poetess +could have ventured to translate vague yearnings into definite thoughts, +she would, perhaps, have acknowledged to herself a faint desire that the +brilliant passages of the London career she had marked out for herself +in anticipation should come rather more quickly than they just now +seemed likely to do. At present there was not much difference +perceptible to her between London and Duke's-Keeton. Nobody came to see +them. Even her brother had not yet presented himself. Her poem did not +make much progress; there was no great incentive to poetic work. Minola +and she did not know any poets, or artists, or publishers. Mary +Blanchet's poetic tastes were of a somewhat old-fashioned school, and +did not include any particular care for looking at trees, and fields, +and water, and skies, although these objects of natural beauty were made +to figure in the poems a good deal in connection with, and illustrative +of, the emotions of the poetess. Therefore the rambles in the park were +not so delightful to her as to her leader; and when the evening set in, +and Minola and she read to each other, Mary Blanchet was always rather +pleased if an opportunity occurred for interrupting the reading by a +talk. She was particularly anxious that Minola should renew her +acquaintance with her old schoolfellow, Miss Lucy Money, whose father +she understood to be somehow a great sort of person, and through whom +she saw dimly opening up a vista, perhaps the only one for her, into +society and literature. But the Money family were out of town when our +friends came to London, and Miss Blanchet had to wait; and, even when it +was probable that they had returned, Miss Grey did not seem very eager +to renew the acquaintance. Indeed, her resolve to visit Miss Money now +was entirely a good-natured concession to the evident desire of Mary +Blanchet. Minola saw her friend's little ways and weaknesses clearly, +and smiled now and then as she thought of them, and liked her none the +less for them—rather, indeed, felt her breast swell with +kindliness and pity. It pleased her generous heart to gratify her +companion in every way, to find out things that she liked and bring them +to her, to study her little innocent vanities, that she might gratify +them. What little dainties Mary Blanchet liked to have with her tea, +what pretty ribbons she thought it became her to wear—these Miss +Grey was always perplexing herself about. When she found that she liked +to be alone sometimes, that she must have a long walk unaccompanied, +that she must have thoughts which Mary would not care to hear, then she +felt a pang of remorse, as if she were guilty of a breach of true +<i>camaraderie</i>, and she could not rest until she had relieved her +soul by some special mark of attention to her friend. On the other hand, +Mary Blanchet, for all her dreams and aspirations, was a sensible and +managing little person, who got for Miss Grey about twice the value that +she herself could have obtained out of her money. This was a fact which +Minola always took care to impress upon her companion, for she dreaded +lest Miss Blanchet should feel herself a dependent. Miss Blanchet, +however, in a modest way, knew her value, and had besides one of the +temperaments to which dependence on some really loved being comes +natural, and is inevitable.</p> + +<p>So Minola set out next day, about three o'clock, to look up her +schoolfellow, Miss Lucy Money. She went forth on her mission with some +unwillingness, and with a feeling as if she were abandoning some purpose +or giving up a little of a principle in doing so. "I came to London to +live alone and independent," she said to herself sometimes, "and already +I am going out to seek for acquaintances. Why do I do that? I want +strength of purpose. I am just like everybody else"; and she began, as +was her wont, to scrutinize her own weaknesses, and bear heavily on +them. For, absurd as it may seem, this odd young woman really did +propose to live alone—herself and Mary Blanchet—in London +until they died—alone, that is, so far as social life and +acquaintanceships in society were concerned. Vast and vague schemes for +doing good to her neighbors, and for striving in especial to give a +helping hand to troubled women, were in Miss Grey's plans of life; but +society, so called, was to have no part in them. It did not occur to her +that she was far too handsome a girl to be allowed to put herself thus +under an extinguisher or behind a screen. When people looked after her +as she passed through the streets, she assumed that they noticed some +rustic peculiarity in her dress or her hat, and she felt a contempt for +them. Her love of London did not imply a love of Londoners, whom in +general she thought rude and given to staring. But even if she had +thought people were looking at her because of her figure, her face, her +eyes, her superb hair, she would have felt a contempt for them all the +same. She had a proud indifference to personal beauty, and looked down +upon men whose judgment could be affected by the fact that a woman had +finer eyes, or brighter hair, or a more shapely mould than other +women.</p> + +<p>Once Minola was positively on the point of turning back, and +renouncing all claim on the acquaintanceship of her former school +companion. She suddenly remembered, however, that in condemning her own +fancied weakness she had forgotten that her visit was undertaken to +oblige Mary Blanchet. "Poor Mary! I have only one little +acquaintanceship that has anything to do with society, and am I to deny +her that chance if she likes it?" She went on rapidly and resolutely. +Sometimes she felt inclined to blame herself for bringing Mary Blanchet +away from Keeton, although Mary had for years been complaining of her +life and her work there, and beseeching Miss Grey not to leave her +behind when she went to live in London.</p> + +<p>It was a beautiful autumn day. London looks to great advantage on one +of these rare days, and Miss Grey felt her heart swell with mere delight +as she looked from the streets to the sky and from the sky to the +streets. She passed through one or two squares, and stopped to see the +sun, already going down, send its light through the bare branches of the +trees. The western sky was covered with gray, silver-edged clouds, which +brightened into blots of golden fire as they came closer in the track of +the sun. The air was mild, soft, and almost warm. All poets and painters +are full of the autumnal charms of the country; but to certain oddly +constituted minds some street views in London on a fine autumn day have +an unspeakable witchery. Miss Grey walked round and round one of the +squares, and had to remind herself of her purpose on Mary Blanchet's +behalf in order to impel herself on.</p> + +<p>The best of the day had gone, and the early evening was looking +somewhat chill and gloomy between the huge ramparts of the Victoria +street houses by the time that Miss Grey stood in that solemn +thoroughfare, and her heart sank a little as she reached the house where +her old school friend lived.</p> + +<p>"Perhaps Lucy Money is altogether changed," Miss Grey said to herself +as she came up to the door. "Perhaps she won't care about me; perhaps I +shan't like her any more; and perhaps her mamma will think me a dreadful +person for not honoring my stepfather and stepmother. Perhaps there are +brothers—odious, slangy young men, who think girls fall in love +with them. Oh, yes, here is one of them."</p> + +<p>For just as she had rung the bell a hansom cab drove up to the door, +and a tall, dark-complexioned young man leaped out. He raised his hat +with what seemed to Miss Grey something the manner of a foreigner when +he saw her standing at the door, and she felt a momentary thrill of +relief, because, if he was a foreigner, he could not be Lucy Money's +brother. Besides, she knew very well that the great houses in Victoria +street were occupied by several tenants, and there was good hope that +the young man might have business with the upper story, and she with the +ground floor.</p> + +<p>The young man was about to ring the bell, when he stopped and +said:</p> + +<p>"Perhaps you have rung already?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I have rung," Miss Grey coldly replied.</p> + +<p>"This is Mr. Money's, I suppose?"</p> + +<p>"Mr. Money lives here," she answered, with the manner of one resolute +to close the conversation. The young man did not seem in the least +impressed by her tone.</p> + +<p>"Perhaps I have the honor of speaking to Miss Money?" he began, with +delighted eagerness.</p> + +<p>"No. I am not Miss Money," she answered, still in her clear +monotone.</p> + +<p>No words could say more distinctly than the young man's expression +did, "I am sorry to hear it." Indeed, no young man in the world going to +visit Mr. Money could have avoided wishing that the young lady then +standing at the door might prove to be Miss Money.</p> + +<p>The door opened, and the young man drew politely back to give Miss +Grey the first chance. She asked for Miss Lucy Money, and the porter +rang a bell for one of Mr. Money's servants. Miss Grey had brought a +card with her, on which she had written over her engraved name, "For +Lucy Money," and beneath it, "Nola," the short rendering of "Minola," +which they used to adopt at school.</p> + +<p>Then the porter looked inquiringly at the other visitor.</p> + +<p>"If Mr. Money is at home," said the latter, "I should be glad to see +him. I find I have forgotten my card case, but my name is +Heron—Mr. Victor Heron; and do, please, try to remember it, and to +say it rightly."</p> + +<p class="p4"></p> + +<h3>CHAPTER V.</h3> + +<h4>MISS GREY'S FIRST CALL.</h4> + +<p>Mr. Money's home, like Mr. Money himself, conveyed to the intelligent +observer an idea of quiet, self-satisfied strength. Mr. Money had one of +the finest and most expensive suites of rooms to be had in the great +Victoria street buildings, and his rooms were furnished handsomely and +richly. He had servants in sober livery, and a carriage for his wife and +daughters, and a little brougham for himself. He made no pretence at +being fashionable; rather indeed seemed to say deliberately, "I am a +plain man and don't care twopence about fashion, and I despise making a +show of being rich; but I am rich enough for all I want, and whatever +money can buy for me I can buy." He would not allow his wife and +daughters to aim at being persons of fashion had they been so inclined, +but they might spend as much money as ever they pleased. He never made a +boast of his original poverty, or the humbleness of his bringing up, nor +put on any vulgar show of rugged independence. The impression he made +upon everybody was that of a completely self-sufficing—we do not +say self-sufficient—man. It was not very clear how he had made his +money. He had been at the head of one of the working departments under +the Government, had somehow fancied himself ill treated, resigned his +place, and, it was understood, had entered into various contracts to do +work for the governments of foreign States. It was certain that Mr. +Money was not a speculator. His name never appeared in the directors' +list of any new company. He could not be called a city man. But it was +certain that he was rich.</p> + +<p>Mr. Money was in Parliament. He was a strong radical in theory, and +was believed to have much stronger opinions than he troubled himself to +express. There was a rough, scornful way about him, as of one who dearly +considered all our existing arrangements merely provisional, and who in +the mean time did not care to occupy himself overmuch with the small +differences between this legislative proposition and that. It was not on +political subjects that he usually spoke. He was a very good speaker, +clear, direct, and expressive in his language, always using plain, +effective words, and always showing a perfect ease in the finishing of +his sentences. There was a savor of literature about him, and it was +evident in many indirect ways that he knew Greek and Latin much better +than most of the university men. The impression he produced was that of +a man who on most subjects knew more than he troubled himself to +display. It seemed as if it would take a very ready speaker indeed to +enter into personal contest with Mr. Money and not get the worst of +it.</p> + +<p>He was believed to be very shrewd and clever, and was known to be +liberal of his money. People consulted him about many things, and to +some extent admired him; some were a little afraid of him, and, in +homely phrase, fought shy of him. Perhaps he was thought to be +unscrupulous; perhaps his blunt way of going at the very heart of a +scruple in others made them fancy that he rather despised all moral +conventionalities. Whatever the reason was, a certain class of persons +always rather distrusted Mr. Money, and held aloof even while asking his +advice. No one who had come in his way even for a moment forgot him, or +was confused as to his identity, or failed to form some opinion about or +could have put clearly into words an exact statement of the opinion he +had formed.</p> + +<p>On this particular day of autumn Mr. Money was in his study reading +letters. He was talking to himself in short, blunt sentences over each +letter as he read it, and put it into a pigeonhole, or tore it and threw +it into the waste-paper basket. His sentences were generally concise +judgments pronounced on each correspondent. "Fool." "Blockhead." "Just +so; I expected that of you!" "Yes, yes, he's all right." "That will do." +Sometimes a comment, begun rather gruffly, ended in a good-natured +smile, and sometimes Mr. Money, having read a letter to the close with a +pleased and satisfied expression, suddenly became thoughtful, and leaned +upon his desk, drumming with the finger tips of one hand upon his +teeth.</p> + +<p>A servant interrupted his work by bringing him a message and a name. +Mr. Money looked up, said quickly, "Yes, yes; show him in!" and Mr. +Victor Heron was introduced.</p> + +<p>Mr. Money advanced to meet his visitor with an air of cordial +welcome. One peculiarity of Mr. Money's strong, homely face was the +singular sweetness of the smile which it sometimes wore. The full lips +parted so pleasantly, the white teeth shone, and the eyes, that usually +seemed heavy, beamed with so kindly an air, that to youth at least the +influence was for the moment irresistible. Victor Heron's emotional face +sparkled with responsive expression.</p> + +<p>"Well, well; glad to see you, glad to see you. Knew you would come. +Shove away those blue books and sit down. We haven't long got back; but +I tried to find you, and couldn't get at your address. They didn't know +at the Colonial Institute even. And how are you, and what have you been +doing with yourself?"</p> + +<p>"Not much good," Heron replied, thinking as usual of his grievance. +"I couldn't succeed in seeing anybody."</p> + +<p>"Of course not, of course not. I could have told you so. People are +not yet coming back to town, except hard working fellows like me. Have +you been cooling your heels in the antechambers of the Colonial +office?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I have been there a little; not much. I saw it was no use just +yet, and that isn't a kind of occupation I delight in." The young man's +face reddened with the bare memory of his vexation. "I hate that sort of +thing."</p> + +<p>"To go where you know people don't want to see you? Yes, it tries +young and sensitive people a good deal. They've put you off?"</p> + +<p>"As I told you, I have seen nobody yet. But I mean to persevere. They +shall find I am not a man to be got rid of in that way."</p> + +<p>Mr. Money made no observation on this, but went to a drawer in his +desk and took out a little book with pages alphabetically arranged.</p> + +<p>"I have been making inquiries about you," he said, "of various people +who know all about the colonies. Would you like to hear a summary +description of your personal character? Don't be offended—this is +a way I have; the moment a person interests me and seems worth thinking +about, I enter him in my little book here, and sum up his character from +my own observation and from what people tell me. Shall I read it for +you? I wouldn't, you may be sure, if I thought you were anything of a +fool."</p> + +<p>This compliment, of course, conquered Heron, who was otherwise a good +deal puzzled. But there was something in Mr. Money's manner with those +in whom he took any interest, that prevented their feeling hurt by his +occasional bluntness.</p> + +<p>"I don't know myself," Heron said.</p> + +<p>"Of course you don't. What busy man, who has to know other people, +could have time to study himself? That work might do for philosophers. I +may teach you something now, and save you the trouble."</p> + +<p>"I suppose I ought to make my own acquaintance," said Heron +resignedly, while much preferring to talk of his grievance.</p> + +<p>"Very good. Now listen.</p> + +<p>"Heron, Victor.—Formerly in administration of St. Xavier's +settlements. Got into difficulty; dropped down. Education good, but +literary rather than businesslike. Plenty of pluck, but wants coolness. +Egotistic, but unselfish. Good deal of talent and go. Very honest, but +impracticable. A good weapon in good hands, but must take care not to be +made a plaything."</p> + +<p>Heron laughed. "It's a little like the sort of thing phrenologists +give people," he said, "but I think it's very flattering. I can assure +you, however, no one shall make a plaything of <i>me</i>," he added with +emphasis.</p> + +<p>"So we all think, so we all think," Mr. Money said, putting away his +book. "Well, you are going on with this then?"</p> + +<p>"I am going to vindicate my conduct, and compel them to grant me an +inquiry, if you mean that. Nothing on earth shall keep me from +that."</p> + +<p>"So, so. Very well. We'll talk about that another time—many +other times; and I may give you some advice, which you needn't take if +you don't like, and I shan't be offended. Now, I want to introduce you +to my wife and my girls, and you must have a cup of tea. Odd, isn't it, +to find men drinking tea at five o'clock in the afternoon? Up at the +club, any day about that hour, you might think we were a drawing-room +full of old spinsters, to hear the rattling of teacups that goes on all +around."</p> + +<p>He took Heron's arm in a friendly, dictatorial way, and conducted him +to the drawing-room on the same floor.</p> + +<p>The drawing-room was entered, not by opening a door, but by +withdrawing some folds of a great, heavy, dark-green curtain. Mr. Money +drew aside part of the curtain to make way for his friend; and they both +stopped a moment on the threshold. A peculiar, sweet, half melancholy +smile gave a strange dignity for the moment to Mr. Money's somewhat +rough face, and he gently let the curtain fall.</p> + +<p>"Wasn't there some great person, Mr. Heron—Burke, was +it?—who used to say that whatever troubles he had outside all +ceased as he stood at his own door? Well, I always feel like that when I +lift this curtain."</p> + +<p>It was a pretty sight, as he again raised the curtain and led Heron +in. The drawing-room was very large, and was richly, and, as it seemed +to Heron, somewhat oddly furnished. The light in the lower part was +faint and dim, a sort of yellowish twilight, procured by softened lamps. +The upper extremity was steeped in a far brighter light, and displayed +to Heron, almost as on a stage, a little group of women, among whom his +quick eye at once saw the girl who had come up to the door at the same +time with him. She was, indeed, a very conspicuous figure, for she was +seated on a sofa, and one girl sat at her feet, while another stood at +the arm of the sofa and bent over her. An elderly lady, with voluminous +draperies that floated over the floor, was reclining on a low arm-chair, +with her profile turned to Heron. On a fancy table near, a silver +tea-tray glittered. A daintily dressed waiting-maid was serving tea.</p> + +<p>"Take care of the floors as you come along," said Money. "We like to +put rugs, and rolls of carpet, and stools now in all sorts of wrong +places, to trip people up. That shows how artistic we are! Theresa, +dear, this is my friend, Mr. Heron."</p> + +<p>"I am glad to see you, Mr. Heron," said a full, deep, melancholy +voice, and a tall, slender lady partly rose from her chair, then sank +again amid her draperies, bowed a head topped by a tiny lace cap, and +held out to Heron a thin hand covered with rings, and having such +bracelets and dependent chainlets that when Heron gave it even the +gentlest pressure, they rattled like the manacles of a captive.</p> + +<p>"We saw you in Paris, Mr. Heron," the lady graciously said, "but I +think you hardly saw us."</p> + +<p>"These are my daughters, Mr. Heron, Theresa and Lucy. I think them +good girls, though full of nonsense," said Mr. Money.</p> + +<p>Lucy, who had been on a footstool at Miss Grey's feet, gathered +herself up, blushing. She was a pretty girl, with brown, frizzy hair, +and wore a dress which fitted her so closely from neck to hip that she +might really have been, to all seeming, melted or moulded into it. The +other young lady, Theresa, slightly and gravely inclined her head to Mr. +Heron, who at once thought the whole group most delightful and +beautiful, and found his breast filled with a new pride in the loved old +England that produced such homes and furnished them with such women.</p> + +<p>"Dear, darling papa," exclaimed the enthusiastic little Lucy, +swooping at her father, and throwing both arms round his neck, "we have +had such a joy to-day, such a surprise! Don't you see anybody here? Oh, +come now, do use your eyes."</p> + +<p>"I see a young lady whom I have not yet the pleasure of knowing, but +whom I hope you will help me to know, Lucelet."</p> + +<p>Mr. Money turned to Miss Grey with his genial smile. She rose from +the sofa and bowed and waited. She did not as yet quite understand the +Money family, and was not sure whether she ought to like them or not. +They impressed her at first as being far too rich for her taste, and odd +and affected, and she hated affectation.</p> + +<p>"But this is Nola Grey, papa—my dearest old schoolfellow when I +was at Keeton; you must have heard me talk of Nola Grey a thousand +times."</p> + +<p>So she dragged her papa up to Nola Grey, whose color grew a little at +this tempestuous kind of welcome.</p> + +<p>"Dare say I did, Lucelet, but Miss Grey, I am sure will excuse me if +I have forgotten; I am very glad to see you, Miss Grey—glad to see +any friend of Lucelet's. So you come from Keeton? That's another reason +why I should be glad to see you, for I just now want to ask a question +or two about Keeton. Sit down."</p> + +<p>Miss Grey allowed herself to be led to a sofa a little distance from +where she had been sitting. Mr. Money sat beside her.</p> + +<p>"Now, Lucelet, I want to ask Miss Grey a sensible question or two, +which I don't think you would care twopence about. Just you go and help +our two Theresas to talk to Mr. Heron."</p> + +<p>"But, papa darling, Miss Grey won't care about what you call sensible +subjects any more than I. She won't know anything about them."</p> + +<p>"Yes, dear, she will; look at her forehead."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I have looked at it! Isn't it beautiful?"</p> + +<p>"I didn't mean that," Mr. Money said with a smile; "I meant that it +looked sensible and thoughtful. Now, go away, Lucelet, like a dear +little girl."</p> + +<p>Miss Grey sat quietly through all this. She was not in the least +offended. Mr. Money seemed to her to be just what a man ought to +be—uncouth, rough, and domineering. She was amused meanwhile to +observe the kind of devotion and enthusiasm with which Mr. Heron was +entering into conversation with Mrs. Money and her elder daughter. That, +too, was just what a man ought to be—a young man—silly in +his devotion to women, unless, perhaps, where the devotion was to be +accounted for otherwise than by silliness, as in a case like the +present, where the unmarried women might be presumed to have large +fortunes. So Miss Grey liked the whole scene. It was as good as a play +to her, especially as good as a play which confirms all one's own +theories of life.</p> + +<p>"England, Mr. Heron," said Mrs. Money in her melancholy voice, "is +near her fall."</p> + +<p>"Oh, Mrs. Money, pray pardon me—England! you amaze me—I +<i>am</i> surprised—do forgive me—to hear an Englishwoman +say so; our England with her glorious destiny!" The young man blushed +and grew confused. One might have thought his mother had been called in +question or his sweetheart.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Money shook her head and twirled one of her bracelets.</p> + +<p>"She is near her fall, Mr. Heron! You cannot know. You have lived far +away, and do not see what <i>we</i> see. She has proved faithless to her +mission."</p> + +<p>"Something—yes—there I agree," Mr. Heron eagerly +interposed, thinking of the St. Xavier's settlements.</p> + +<p>"She was the cradle of freedom," Mrs. Money went on. "She ought to +have been always its nursery and home. What have we now, Mr. Heron? A +people absolutely in servitude, the principle of caste everywhere +triumphant—corruption in the aristocracy—corruption in the +city. No man now dares to serve his country except at the penalty of +suffering the blackest ingratitude!"</p> + +<p>Mr. Heron was startled. He did not know that Mrs. Money was arguing +only from the assumption that her husband was a very great man, who +would have done wonderful things for England if a perverse and base +ruling class had not thwarted him, and treated him badly.</p> + +<p>"England," Theresa Money said, smiling sweetly, but with a suffusion +of melancholy, "can hardly be regenerated until she is once more dipped +in the holy well."</p> + +<p>"You see we all think differently, Mr. Heron," said the eager Lucy. +"Mamma thinks we want a republic. Tessy is a saint, and would like to +see roadside shrines."</p> + +<p>"And you?" Heron asked, pleased with the girl's bright eyes and +winning ways.</p> + +<p>"Oh—I only believe in the regeneration of England through the +renaissance of art. So we all have our different theories, you see, but +we all agree to differ, and we don't quarrel much. Papa laughs at us all +when he has time. But just now I am taken up with Nola Grey. If I were a +man, I should make an idol of her. That lovely, statuesque face, that +figure—like the Diana of the Louvre!"</p> + +<p>Mr. Heron looked and admired, but one person's raptures about man or +woman seldom awaken corresponding raptures in impartial breasts. He saw, +however, a handsome, ladylike girl, who conveyed to him a sort of +chilling impression.</p> + +<p>"She was my schoolfellow at Keeton," Lucy went on, "and she was so +good and clever that I adored her then, and I do now again. She has come +to London to live alone, and I am sure she must have some strange and +romantic story."</p> + +<p>Meanwhile Mr. Money, who prefaced his inquiries by telling Miss Grey +that he was always asking information about something, began to put +several questions to her concerning the local magnates, politics, and +parties of Keeton. Minola was rather pleased to be talked to by a man as +if she were a rational creature. Like most girls brought up in a +Nonconformist household in a country town, she had been surrounded by +political talk from her infancy, but unlike most girls, she had +sometimes listened to it and learned to know what it was all about. So +she gave Mr. Money a good deal of information, which he received with an +approbatory "Yes, yes" or an inquiring "So, so" every now and then.</p> + +<p>"You know that there's likely to be a vacancy soon in the +representation-member of Parliament," he added by way of +explanation.</p> + +<p>"I know what a vacancy in the representation means," Miss Grey +answered demurely, "but I didn't know there was likely to be one just +now. I don't keep up much correspondence with Keeton. I don't love +it."</p> + +<p>"Why not?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I don't know."</p> + +<p>He smiled.</p> + +<p>"You are smiling because you think that a woman's answer? So it is, +Mr. Money, and I am afraid it isn't true; but I really didn't think of +what I was saying. I <i>do</i> know why I don't care much about +Keeton."</p> + +<p>"Yes, yes; well, I dare say you do. But to return, as the books +say—do you know a Mr. Augustus Sheppard?"</p> + +<p>She could not help coloring slightly. "Yes, I know him," and a faint +smile broke over her face in spite of herself.</p> + +<p>"Is he strong in Keeton?"</p> + +<p>"Strong?"</p> + +<p>"Well liked, respectable, a likely kind of man to get good +Conservative support if he stood for Keeton? You don't know, +perhaps?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I think I do know. I believe he wishes to get into Parliament, +and I am sure he is thought highly of. He is a very good man—a man +of very high character," she added emphatically, anxious to repair the +mental wrong doing of thinking him ridiculous and tiresome.</p> + +<p>Just at this moment Mr. Heron rose to take his leave, and Mr. Money +left the room with him, so that the conversation with Miss Grey was +broken off. Then Lucy came to Nola again, and Nola was surrounded by the +three women, who began to lay out various schemes for seeing her often +and making London pleasant to her. Much as our lonely heroine loved her +loneliness, she was greatly touched by their spontaneous kindness, but +she was alarmed by it too.</p> + +<p>A card was brought to Mrs. Money, who passed it on to Lucy.</p> + +<p>"Oh, how delightful!" Lucy exclaimed. "So glad he has come, mamma. +Nola, dear, a poet—a real poet!"</p> + +<p>But Nola would not prolong her visit that day even for a poet. A very +handsome, tall, dark-haired man, who at a distance seemed boyishly +young, and when near looked worn and not very young, was shown in. For +the moment or two that she could see him, Minola thought she had never +seen so self-conceited and affected a creature. She did not hear his +name nor a word he said, but his splendid, dark eyes, deeply set in +hollows, took in every outline of her face and form. She thought him the +poet of a schoolgirl's romance made to order.</p> + +<p>Minola tore herself from the clinging embraces of Lucy, with less +difficulty, perhaps, because of the poet's arrival, to whose society +Lucy was clearly anxious to hasten back. It so happened that Mr. Money +had kept Mr. Heron for a few minutes in talk, and the result was that +exactly as Miss Grey reached the door Mr. Heron arrived there too. They +both came out together, and in a moment they were in the gray +atmosphere, dun lines of houses, and twinkling gaslights of Victoria +street. Minola would much rather have been there alone.</p> + +<p>Victor Heron, however, was full of the antique ideas of man's +chivalrous duty and woman's sweet dependence, which still lingered in +the out-of-the-way colony where he had spent so much of his time. Also, +it must be owned that he had not yet quite got rid of the sense of +responsibility and universal dictatorship belonging to the chief man in +a petty commonwealth. For some time after his return to London he could +hardly see an omnibus horse fall in the street without thinking it was +an occasion which called for some intervention on his part. Therefore, +when Miss Grey and he stood in the street together Mr. Heron at once +assumed that the young woman must, as a matter of course, require his +escort and protection.</p> + +<p>He calmly took his place at her side. Miss Grey was a little +surprised, but said nothing, and they went on.</p> + +<p>"Do you live far from this, Miss Money?" he began.</p> + +<p>"I am not Miss Money. My name is Grey."</p> + +<p>"Of course, yes—I beg your pardon for the mistake. It was only +a mistake of the tongue, for I knew very well that you were not Miss +Money."</p> + +<p>"Thank you."</p> + +<p>"And your first name is so very pretty and peculiar that I could not +have easily forgotten it."</p> + +<p>"I am greatly obliged to my godfathers and godmothers."</p> + +<p>"Did you say that you lived in this quarter, Miss Grey?"</p> + +<p>"No—I did not make any answer; I had not time."</p> + +<p>"I hope you do not live very near," the gallant Heron observed.</p> + +<p>"Why do you hope that?" Miss Grey said, turning her eyes upon him +with an air of cold resolution, which would probably have proved very +trying to a less sincere maker of compliments, even though a far more +dexterous person than Mr. Heron.</p> + +<p>"Of course, because I should have the less of your company."</p> + +<p>"But there is no need of your coming out of your way for me. I don't +require any escort, Mr. Heron."</p> + +<p>"I couldn't think of letting a lady walk home by herself. That would +seem very strange to me. Perhaps you think me old-fashioned or +colonial?"</p> + +<p>"I have heard that you are from the colonies. In London people have +not time to keep up all these pretty forms and ceremonies. We don't any +longer pretend to think that a girl needs to be defended against giants, +or robbers, or mad bulls, when crossing two or three streets in open +day."</p> + +<p>"Well, it is hardly open day now; it is almost quite dark."</p> + +<p>"The lamps are lighted," Miss Gray observed.</p> + +<p>"Yes, if you call that being lighted! You have such bad gas in +London. Why does not somebody stir up people here, and put things to +rights? You seem to me the most patient people in all the world. I wish +they would give me the ruling of this place for about a +twelvemonth."</p> + +<p>"I wish they would."</p> + +<p>"Do you?" and he looked at her with a glance of genuine gratitude in +his dark eyes, for he thought she meant to express her entire confidence +in his governing power, and her wish to see him at the head of affairs. +Miss Grey, however, only meant that if he were engaged in directing the +municipal government of London he probably would be rather too busy to +walk with her.</p> + +<p>"Yes," he went on, "you should soon see a change. For +instance"—they were now at the end of Victoria street, near the +Abbey—"I would begin by having a great broad street, like this, +running right up from here to the British Museum. You know where the +British Museum is, of course?"</p> + +<p>"Yes; I live near it."</p> + +<p>"Do you really? I am so glad to hear that. I have been there lately +very often. How happy you Londoners are to have such glorious places. In +that reading-room I felt inclined to bless England."</p> + +<p>Miss Grey was now particularly sorry that she had said anything about +her place of residence. Still it did not seem as if much would have been +gained by any reticence unless she could actually dismiss her companion +peremptorily. Mr. Heron was evidently quite resolved to be her escort +all the way along. He was clearly under the impression that he was +making himself very agreeable. The good-natured youth believed he was +doing quite the right thing, and meant it all for the very best, and +therefore could not suppose that any nice girl could fail to accept his +attendance in a kindly spirit. That Miss Grey must be a nice girl he was +perfectly certain, for he had met her at Mr. Money's, and Money was +evidently a fine fellow—a very fine fellow. Miss Grey was very +handsome too, but that did not count for very much with Heron. At least +he would have made himself just as readily, under the circumstances, the +escort of little Miss Blanchet.</p> + +<p>So he talked on about various things—the Moneys, and what +charming people they were! the British Museum, what a noble institution! +the National Gallery, how hideous the building!—why on earth +didn't anybody do something?—the glorious destiny of +England—the utter imbecility of the English Government.</p> + +<p>It was not always quite easy to keep up with his talk, for the +streets were crowded and noisy, and Mr. Heron talked right on through +every interruption. When they came to crossings where the perplexed +currents and counter-currents of traffic on wheels would have made a +nervous person shudder, Mr. Heron coolly took Miss Grey's hand and +conducted her in and out, talking all the while as if they were crossing +a ball-room floor. Minola made it a point of honor not to hesitate, or +start, or show that she had nerves. But when he began to run into +politics he always pulled himself up, for he politely remembered that +young ladies did not care about politics, and so he tried to find some +prettier subject to talk about. Miss Grey understood this perfectly +well, and was amused and contemptuous.</p> + +<p>"I suppose this man must be a person of some brains and sense," she +thought. "He was in command of something somewhere, and I suppose even +the Government he calls so imbecile would not have put him there if he +were a downright fool. But because he talks to a woman, he feels bound +only to talk of trivial things."</p> + +<p>At last the walk came to an end. "Ah, I beg pardon. You live here," +Mr. Heron said. "May I have the honor of calling on your family? I +sometimes come to the Museum, and if I might call, I should be delighted +to make their acquaintance."</p> + +<p>"Thank you," Miss Grey said coldly. "I have no family. My father and +mother are dead."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I am so sorry! I wish I had not asked such a question." He +looked really distressed, and the expression of his eyes had for the +first time a pleasing, softening effect upon Miss Grey.</p> + +<p>"We lodge here all alone—a lady—an old friend of +mine—and I. We have no acquaintances, unless Lucy Money's family +may be called so. We read and study a great deal, and don't go out, and +don't see any one."</p> + +<p>"I can quite understand," Mr. Heron answered with grave sympathy. "Of +course you don't care to be intruded on by visitors. I thank you for +having allowed me the pleasure of accompanying you so far."</p> + +<p>He spoke in tones much more deferential than before, for he assumed +that the young lady was lonely and poor. There was something in his +manner, in his eyes, in his grave, respectful voice, which conveyed to +Minola the idea of genuine sympathy, and brought to her, the object of +it, a new conviction that she really was isolated and friendless, and +the springs of her emotions were touched in a moment, and tears flashed +in her eyes. Perhaps Mr. Heron saw them, and felt that he ought not to +see them, for he raised his hat and instantly left her.</p> + +<p>Minola lingered for a moment on the doorstep, in order that she might +recover her expression of cheerfulness before meeting the eyes of Miss +Blanchet. But that little lady had seen her coming to the door, and seen +and marvelled at her escort, and now ran herself and opened the door to +receive her.</p> + +<p>"My dear Minola, do tell me who that handsome young man was! What +lovely dark eyes he had! Where did you meet him? Is he young Mr. +Money?"</p> + +<p>The poetess's susceptible bosom still thrilled and throbbed at the +sight, or even the thought, of a handsome young man. She could not +understand how anybody on earth could avoid liking handsome young men. +But in this case a certain doubt and dissatisfaction suddenly dissolved +away into her instinctive gratification at the sight of Minola's escort. +A handsome and young Mr. Money might prove an inconvenient visitor just +at present.</p> + +<p>Minola briefly told her when they were safe in their room. Miss +Blanchet was relieved to find that he was not a young Mr. Money, for a +young Mr. Money, if there were one, would doubtless be rich.</p> + +<p>"Isn't he wonderfully handsome! Such a smile!"</p> + +<p>"I hardly know," Minola said distressedly; "perhaps he is. I really +didn't notice. He goes to the Museum, and I must exile myself from the +place for evermore, or I shall be always meeting him, and be forced to +listen politely to talk about nothing. Mary Blanchet, our days of +freedom are gone! We are getting to know people. I foresaw it. What +shall we do? We must find some other lodgings ever so far away."</p> + +<p>"Do you like Miss Money, dear?" Mary Blanchet asked timidly.</p> + +<p>"Lucy? Oh, yes, very much. But there is Mr. Money; and they are going +to be terribly kind to us; and they have all manner of friends; and what +is to become of my independence? Mary Blanchet, I will <i>not</i> bear +it! I <i>will</i> be independent!"</p> + +<p>"I have news for you, dear," Miss Blanchet said.</p> + +<p>"If it please the destinies, not news of any more friends! Why, we +shall be like the hare in Gay's fable if we go on in this way."</p> + +<p>"Not of any more friends, darling, but of one friend. My brother has +been here."</p> + +<p>"Oh!"</p> + +<p>"Yes; and he is longing to see you."</p> + +<p>Minola sincerely wished she could say that she was longing to see +him. But she could not say it, even to please her friend and +comrade.</p> + +<p>"You don't want to see him," said Mary Blanchet in piteous +reproach.</p> + +<p>"But you do, dear," Miss Grey said; "and I shall like to see any one, +be sure, who brightens your life."</p> + +<p>This was said with full sincerity, although at the very moment the +whimsical thought passed through her, "We only want Mr. Augustus +Sheppard now to complete our social happiness."</p> + +<p class="p4"></p> + +<h3>CHAPTER VI.</h3> + +<h4>IS THIS ALCESTE?</h4> + +<p class="p2">Minola's mind was a good deal disturbed by the various +little events of the day, the incidents and consequences of her first +visit in London. She began to see with much perplexity and +disappointment that her life of lonely independence was likely to be +compromised. She was not sure that she could much like the Moneys, and +yet she felt that they were disposed and determined to be very kind to +her. There was something ridiculous and painful in the fact that Mr. +Augustus Sheppard's name was thrust upon her almost at the first moment +of her crossing for the first time a strange threshold in London; then +there was Mary Blanchet's brother turning up; and Mary Blanchet herself +was evidently falling off from the high design of lonely independence. +Again, there was Mr. Heron, who now knew where she lived, and who often +went to the British Museum, and who might cross her path at any hour. +Sweet, lonely freedom, happy carelessness of action, farewell!</p> + +<p>Mr. Heron was especially a trouble to Minola. The kindly, grave +expression on his face when he heard of her living alone declared, as +nearly as any words could do, that he considered her an object of pity. +Was she an object of pity? Was that the light in which any one could +look at her superb project of playing at a lifelong holiday? And if +people chose to look at it so, what did that matter to her? Are women, +then, the slaves of the opinion of people all around them? "They are," +Minola said to herself in scorn and melancholy—"they are; we are. +I am shaken to the very soul, because a young man, for whose opinion on +any other subject I should not care anything, chooses to look at me with +pity!"</p> + +<p>The night was melancholy. When the outer world was shut out, and the +gas was lighted, and the two women sat down to work and talk, nothing +seemed to Minola quite as it had been. The evident happiness and passing +high spirits of the little poetess oppressed her. Mary Blanchet was so +glad to be making acquaintances, and to have some prospect of seeing the +inside of a London home. Then Minola's kindlier nature returned to her, +and she thought of Mary's delight at seeing her brother, and how unkind +it would be if she, Minola, did not try to enter into her feelings. Her +mind went back to her own brother, to their dear early companionship, +when nothing seemed more natural and more certain than that they two +should walk the world arm-in-arm. Now all that had come to an +end—faded away somehow; and he had gone into the world on his own +account, and made other ties, and forgotten her. But if he were even now +to come back, if she were to hear in the street the sound of the +peculiar whistle with which he always announced his coming to +her—oh, how, in spite of all his forgetfulness and her anger, she +would run to him and throw her arms around his neck! Why should not Mary +Blanchet love her brother, and gladden when he came?</p> + +<p>"What is your brother like, Mary, dear?" she said gently, anxious to +propitiate by voluntarily entering on the topic dearest to her +friend.</p> + +<p>"Oh, very handsome—very, very handsome!"</p> + +<p>Miss Grey smiled in spite of herself.</p> + +<p>"Now, Minola, I know what you are smiling at; you think it is my +sisterly nonsense, and all that; but wait until you see."</p> + +<p>"I'll wait," Minola said.</p> + +<p>Miss Grey did not go out the next day as usual, although it was one +of the soft, amber-gray, autumnal days that she loved, and the Regent's +Park would have looked beautiful. She remained nearly all the morning in +her own room, and avoided even Mary Blanchet. Some singular change had +taken place within her, for which she could not account, otherwise than +by assuming that it was begotten of the fear that she would be drawn, +willingly or unwillingly, into uncongenial companionship, and must +renounce her liberty. She was forced into a strange, painful, +self-questioning mood. Was the whole fabric of her self-appointed +happiness and independence only a dream, or, worse than a dream, an +error? So soon to doubt the value and the virtue of the emancipation she +had prayed for and planned for during years? Not often, perhaps, has a +warm-hearted, fanciful, and spirited girl been pressed down by such +peculiar relationship as hers at Keeton lately; a twice removed +stepfather and stepmother, absolutely uncongenial with her, causing her +soul and her youth to congeal amid dull repression. What wonder that to +her all happiness seemed to consist in mere freedom and unrestricted +self-development? And now—so soon—why does she begin to +doubt the reality, the fulfilment of her happiness? Only because an +impulsive and kindly young man, whom she saw for the first time, looked +pityingly at her. This, she said to herself, is what our self-reliance +and our emancipation come to after all.</p> + +<p>It was a positive relief to her, after a futile hour or so of such +questioning, when Mary Blanchet ran up stairs, and with beaming eyes +begged that Minola would come and see her brother. "He is longing to see +you—and you will like him—oh, you will like him, Minola +dearest?" she said beseechingly.</p> + +<p>Miss Gray went down stairs straightway, without stopping to give one +touch to her hair, or one glance at the glass. The little poetess was +waiting a moment, with an involuntary look toward the dressing table, as +if Miss Grey must needs have some business there before she descended, +but Miss Grey thought nothing of the kind, and they went down stairs +together.</p> + +<p>Minola expected, she could not tell why, to see a small and withered +man in Mary Blanchet's brother. When they were entering the +drawing-room, he was looking out of the window, and had his back turned, +and she was surprised to see that he was decidedly tall. When he turned +around she saw not only that he was handsome, but that she had +recognized the fact of his being handsome before. For he was +unmistakably the ideal poet of schoolgirls whom she had met at Mr. +Money's house the day before.</p> + +<p>The knowledge produced a sort of embarrassment to begin with. Minola +was about to throw her soul into the sacrifice, and greet her friend's +brother with the utmost cordiality. But she had pictured to herself a +sort of Mary Blanchet in trousers, a gentle, old-fashioned, timid +person, whom, perhaps, the outer world was apt to misprize, if not even +to snub, and whom therefore it became her, Minola Grey, as an enemy and +outlaw of the common world, to receive with double consideration. But +this brilliant, self-conceited, affected, oppressively handsome young +man, on whom she had seen Lucy Money and her mother hanging devotedly, +was quite another sort of person. His presence seemed to overcharge the +room; the scene became all compound of tall, bending form and dark +eyes.</p> + +<p>"I am glad to see you, Mr. Blanchet," Miss Grey began, determined not +to be put out by any self-conceited poet and ideal of schoolgirls. "I +must be glad to see you, because you are Mary's brother."</p> + +<p>"You ought rather to be not glad to see me for that reason," he said, +with a deprecating bow and a slight shrug of the shoulders, "for I have +been a very neglectful brother to Mary."</p> + +<p>"So I have heard," Miss Grey said, "but not from Mary. She always +defended you. But I have seen you before, Mr. Blanchet, have I not?"</p> + +<p>"At Mrs. Money's yesterday? Oh, yes; I only saw you, Miss Grey. I +went there to see you, and only in the most literal way got what I +wanted."</p> + +<p>"But, Herbert, you never told me that you were going, or that you +knew Mrs. Money," his sister interposed.</p> + +<p>"No, dear; that was an innocent deceit on my part. You told me that +Miss Grey had gone there, and as I knew the Moneys I hurried away there +without telling you. I wanted to know what you were like, Miss Grey, +before seeing my sister again. I hope you are not angry? She is so +devoted to you that she painted you in colors the most bewitching; but I +was afraid her friendship was carrying her away, and I wanted to see for +myself when she was not present."</p> + +<p>Miss Grey remained resolutely silent. She thought this beginning +particularly disagreeable, and began to fear that she should never be +able to like Mary Blanchet's brother. "Oh, why do women have brothers?" +she asked herself. There seemed something dishonest in Mr. Blanchet's +proceeding despite the frank completeness of his confession.</p> + +<p>"Well, Herbert, confess that I didn't do her justice; didn't do her +common justice," the enthusiastic Mary exclaimed.</p> + +<p>"If Miss Grey would not be offended," her brother said, "I would say +that I see in her just the woman capable of doing the kind and generous +things I have heard of."</p> + +<p>"Yes; but we mustn't talk about it," the poetess said, with tears of +gratefulness blinking in her eyes; "and we'll not say a word more about +it, Minola; not a word, indeed, dear." And she put a deprecating little +hand upon Minola's arm.</p> + +<p>Then they all sat down, and Herbert Blanchet began to talk. He talked +very well, and he seemed to have put away most of the airs of +affectation which, even in her very short opportunity of observation, +Minola had seen in him when he was talking to the Money girls.</p> + +<p>"You have travelled a great deal," Miss Grey said. "I envy you."</p> + +<p>"If you call it travelling. I have drifted about the world a good +deal, and seen the wrong sides of everything. I make it pay in a sort of +way. When any place that I know is brought into public notice by a war +or something of the kind, I write about it. Or if a place is not brought +into any present notice by anything, I write about it, and take a +different view from anybody else. I have done particularly well with +Italy, showing that Naples is the ugliest place in all the world; that +the Roman women have shockingly bad figures, and that the climate is +wretched from the Alps to the Straits of Messina.</p> + +<p>"But you don't think that?" Mary Blanchet said wonderingly.</p> + +<p>"Don't I? Well, I don't know. I almost think I do for the moment. One +can get into that frame of mind. Besides, I really don't care about +scenery. I don't observe it as I pass along. And I like to say what +other people don't say, and to see what they don't see. Of course I +don't put my name to any of these things; they are only done to make a +living. I live <i>on</i> such stuff as that. I live <i>for</i> Art."</p> + +<p>"It is glorious to live for art," his sister exclaimed, pressing her +thin, tiny hands together.</p> + +<p>Mr. Blanchet did not seem to care much about his sister's +approval.</p> + +<p>"My art isn't yours, Mary," he said, with a pitying smile. "Pictures +of flowers and little children saying their prayers, and nice poems +about good young men and women, are your ideas of painting and poetry, I +am sure. You are a lover of the human race, I know."</p> + +<p>"I hope I love my neighbors," Mary said earnestly.</p> + +<p>"I hope you do, dear. All good little women like you ought to do +that. Do <i>you</i> love your neighbor, Miss Grey?"</p> + +<p>"I don't care much for any one," Miss Grey answered decisively, +"except Mary Blanchet. But I have no particular principle or theory +about it, only that I don't care for people."</p> + +<p>Although Miss Grey had Alceste for her hero, she did not like sham +misanthropy, which she now fancied her visitor was trying to display. +Perhaps too she began to think that his misanthropy rather caricatured +her own.</p> + +<p>Miss Blanchet, on the contrary, was inclined to argue the question, +and to pelt her brother with touching commonplaces.</p> + +<p>"The more we know people," she emphatically declared, "the more good +we see in them. In every heart there is a deep spring of goodness. Oh, +yes!"</p> + +<p>"There isn't in mine, I know," he said. "I speak for myself."</p> + +<p>"For shame, Herbert! How else could you ever feel impelled to try and +do some good for your fellow creatures?"</p> + +<p>"But I don't want to do any good to my fellow creatures. I don't care +about my fellow creatures, and I don't even admit that they are my +fellow creatures, those men and those women too that one sees about. Why +should the common possession of two legs make us fellow creatures with +every man, more than with every bird? No, I don't love the human race at +all."</p> + +<p>"This is nonsense, Minola; you won't believe a word of it," the +little poetess eagerly said, divided between admiration and alarm.</p> + +<p>"You good, little, innocent dear, is it not perfectly true? What did +I ever do for you, let me ask? There, Miss Grey, you see as kind an +elder sister as ever lived. I remember her a perfect mother to me. I +dare say I should have been dead thirty years ago but for her, though +whether I ought to thank her for keeping me alive is another thing. +Anyhow, what was my way of showing my gratitude? As soon as I could +shake myself free, I rambled about the world, a very vagrant, and never +took any thought of her. We are all the same, Miss Grey, believe +me—we men."</p> + +<p>"I can well believe it," Miss Grey said.</p> + +<p>"Of course you can. In all our dealings with you women we are just +the same. Our sisters and mothers take trouble without end for us, and +cry their eyes out for us, and we—what do we care? I am not worse +than my neighbors. But if you ask me, do I admire my fellow man, I +answer frankly, no. Not I. What should I admire him for?"</p> + +<p>"One must live for something," the poetess pleaded, much perplexed in +her heart as to what Miss Grey's opinion might be about all this.</p> + +<p>"Of course one must live for art; for music and poetry, and colors +and decoration."</p> + +<p>"And Nature?" Mary Blanchet gently insinuated.</p> + +<p>"Nature—no! Nature is the buxom sweetheart of ploughboy poets. +We only affect to admire Nature because people think we can't be good if +we don't. No one really cares about great cauliflower suns, and +startling contrasts of blazing purple and emerald green. There is +nothing really beautiful in Nature except her decay; her rank weeds, and +dank grasses, and funereal evening glooms."</p> + +<p>While he talked this way he was seated on the piano stool, with his +face turned away from the piano, on whose keys he touched every now and +then with a light and seemingly careless hand, bringing out only a faint +note that seemed to help the conversation rather than to interrupt it. +He was very handsome, Minola could not help thinking, and there was +something in his colorless face and deep eyes that seemed congenial with +the talk of glooms and decay. Still, true to her first feeling toward +all men, Minola was disposed to dislike him, the more especially as he +spoke with an air of easy superiority, as one who would imply that he +knew how to maintain his place above women in creation.</p> + +<p>"I thought all you poets affected to be in love with Nature," she +said. "I mean you younger poets," and she emphasized the word "younger" +with a certain contemptuous tone, which made it just what it meant to +be—"smaller poets."</p> + +<p>"Why younger poets?"</p> + +<p>"Well, because the elder ones I think really were in love with +Nature, and didn't affect anything."</p> + +<p>He smiled pityingly.</p> + +<p>"No," he said decisively, "we don't care about Nature—our +school."</p> + +<p>"I am from the country; I don't think I know what your school +is."</p> + +<p>"We don't want to be known in the country; we couldn't endure to be +known in the country."</p> + +<p>"But fame?" Minola asked—"does fame not go outside the +twelve-mile radius?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, Miss Grey, do pray excuse me, but you really don't understand +us; we don't want fame. What is fame? Vulgarity made immortal."</p> + +<p>"Then what do you publish for?"</p> + +<p>He rose from his seat and seized his hair with both hands; then +constrained himself to endurance, and sat down again.</p> + +<p>"My dear young lady, we don't publish; we don't intend to publish. No +man in his senses would publish for us if we were never so well +inclined. No one could sell six copies. The great, thick-headed public +couldn't understand us. We are satisfied that the true artist never does +have a public—or look for it. The public can have their Tennysons, +and Brownings, and Swinburnes, and Tuppers, and all that +lot——"</p> + +<p>"That lot!" broke in Miss Blanchet, mildly horrified—"that lot! +Browning and Tupper put together!"</p> + +<p>"My dear Mary, I don't know one of these people from another; I never +read any of them now. They are all the same sort of thing to me. These +persons are not artists; they are only men trying to amuse the public. +Some of them, I am told, are positively fond of politics."</p> + +<p>"Don't your school care for politics?" Miss Grey asked, now growing +rather amused.</p> + +<p>"Oh, no; we never trouble ourselves about such things. What can it +matter whether the Reform bill is carried—is there a Reform bill +going on now?—I believe there always is—or what becomes of +the Eastern Question, or whether New Zealand has a constitution? These +are questions for vestrymen, not artists; we don't love man."</p> + +<p>"There I am with you," Miss Grey said; "if that alone were +qualification enough, I should be glad to be one of your fraternity, for +I don't love man; I think he is a poor creature at his best."</p> + +<p>"So do I," said the poet, turning toward her with eyes in which for +the moment a deep and genuine feeling seemed to light up; "the poorest +creature, at his best! Why should any one turn aside for a moment from +his path to help such a thing? What does it matter, the welfare of him +and his pitiful race? Let us sing, and play, and paint, and forget him +and the destiny that he makes such a work about. Wisdom only consists in +shutting our ears to his cries of ambition, and jealousy, and pain, and +being happy in our own way and forgetting him."</p> + +<p>Their eyes met for a moment, and then Minola lowered hers. In that +instant a gleam of sympathy had passed from her eyes into his, and he +knew it. She felt a little humiliated somehow, like a proud fencer +suddenly disarmed at the first touch of his adversary. For, as he was +speaking scorn of the human race, she was saying to herself, "This man, +I do believe, has suffered deeply. He has found people cold, and mean, +and selfish—as <i>I</i> have—and he feels it, and cannot +hide it. I did him wrong; he is not a fribble or sham cynic, only a +disappointed dreamer." The sympathy which she felt showed itself only +too quickly in her very eloquent eyes.</p> + +<p>Herbert Blanchet rose after an instant of silence and took his leave, +asking permission to call again, which Miss Grey would have gladly +refused if she could have stood up against the appealing looks of Mary. +So she had to grant him the permission, thinking as she gave it that +another path of her liberty was closed.</p> + +<p>Mary went to the door with her brother, and, much to Minola's +gratification, remained a long time talking with him there.</p> + +<p>Miss Grey went to the piano and began to sing; softly to herself, +that she might not be heard outside. The short autumnal day was already +closing in London. Out in the country there would be two hours yet of +light before the round, red sun went down behind the sloping fields, +with the fresh upturned earth, and the clumps of trees, but here, in +West-Central regions of London, the autumn day dies in its youth. The +dusk already gathered around the singer, who sang to please or to soothe +herself. In any troubled mood Miss Grey had long been accustomed to +clear her spirits by singing to herself; and on many a long, dull Sunday +at home—in the place that was called her home—she had +committed the not impious fraud of singing her favorite ballads to slow, +slow time, that they might be mistaken for hymns and pass unreproved. +Her voice and way of singing made the song seem like a sweet, plaintive +recitative, just the singing to hear in the "gloaming," to draw a few +people hushed around it, and hold them in suspense, fearful to lose a +single note, and miss the charm of expression. In truth, the charm of it +sprang from the fact that the singer sang to express her own emotions, +and thus every tone had its reality and its meaning. When women sing for +a listening company, they sing conventionally, and in the way that some +teacher has taught, or in what they believe to be the manner of some +great artist; or they sing to somebody or at somebody, and in any case +they are away from that truthfulness which in art is simply the faithful +expression of real emotion. With Minola Grey singing was an end rather +than a means; a relief in itself, a new mood in itself; a passing away +from poor and personal emotions into ideal regions, where melancholy, if +it must be, was always divine; and pain, if it would intrude, was +purifying and ennobling. So, while the little poetess talked with her +brother in the dusk, at the doorway, with the gas lamps just beginning +to light the monotonous street, Minola was singing herself into the pure +blue ether, above the fogs, and clouds, and discordant, selfish +voices.</p> + +<p>She came back to earth with something like a heavy fall, as Mary +Blanchet ran in upon her in the dark and exclaimed—</p> + +<p>"Now, do tell me—how do you like my brother?"</p> + +<p>To say the truth, Miss Grey did not well know. "I wonder is he an +Alceste?" she asked herself. On the whole, his coming had made an +uncomfortable, anxious, uncanny impression upon her, and she looked back +with a kind of hopeless regret on the days when she had London all to +herself, and knew nobody.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="p4"></p> + +<h4>WORDSWORTH'S CORRECTIONS.</h4> + +<p class="p2">When an author, in his later editions, departs from his +earlier text, he is apt to reveal some traits of his method and genius +that might not otherwise have been so evident, and a poet's corrections +may thus have more than a merely curious interest. Take Mr. Tennyson's, +for instance: "The Princess," to say nothing of his shorter emended +poems, has been, one might say, rewritten since the first edition, and +his corrections are always interesting. Yet they spring, I think, from a +narrower range of motive than Wordsworth's; they are directed more +exclusively toward the object of artistic finish; they commonly show the +poet busied in casting perfume upon the lily. Take this example from +"The Miller's Daughter." In the first version of that poem, as it +appeared in 1842, we are told that before the heroine's reflection +became visible in the mill-pool—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <span class="i2">A water-rat from off the bank</span> + <span class="i4">Plunged in the stream.</span> +</div> + +<p>Later editions give us this more graceful version of what +occurred:</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <span class="i0">Then leapt a trout. In lazy mood</span> + <span class="i2">I watch'd the little circles die;</span> + <span class="i0">They passed into the level flood,</span> + <span class="i2">And there a vision caught my eye.</span> +</div> + +<p>Unquestionably that is an improvement, and of a sort which Wordsworth +was continually making. But Wordsworth's corrections do not merely +illustrate the effort to reach artistic finish, though very many of them +are made with that intent; they have a relation to his theories, tastes, +creeds, to his temperament and training, to his manner of receiving +friendly or hostile criticism; and in comparing these textual variations +we seem to watch the artist at his work—to enter in some sort into +his very consciousness—as we see him manipulating the form or the +thought of his verses:</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <span class="i0">Τὰ δὲ +τορνεύει, <ins +title="Transcriber's Note: Original reads 'τα +δὲ,'">τὰ δὲ</ins> +κολλομελεῖ, + </span> + <span class="i0">καὶ +γνωμοτυπεῖ, +κᾀυτονομάζει. + </span> +</div> + +<p>Nor is this to consider too curiously; Wordsworth himself has invited +us to the task. In his letters as well as in the notes to his poems, +frequent mention is made of these labors of emendation. Writing in 1837 +to Edward Quillinan, he asks him to "take the trouble ... of comparing +the corrections in my last edition [that of 1836] with the text in the +preceding one," "in the correction of which I took great pains," as he +had written to Prof. Reed a month before. And there is ample opportunity +of this sort; I do not know an ampler one of the kind in the works of +any other poet. Tasso's <i>varię lectiones</i> are numerous, but they +were mostly made to conciliate his critics; Milton's are of great +interest, but they are comparatively few in number, and Gray's are fewer +still: Pope's are numerous, but not often interesting; while Tennyson's, +as I have intimated, seem to me to spring from a less serious poetic +faculty than Wordsworth's, and are therefore less significant. But I am +anxious not to claim too much significance for Wordsworth's corrections, +for I can do little more here than to point out some of them, leaving +for the most part their interpretation to the reader. To attempt more +than this would be to enter upon an analysis of Wordsworth's genius, for +which this is not the occasion.</p> + +<p>And yet we shall see, I think, that his genius might be in some sort +"restored," as naturalists say, were it necessary, from these +fragmentary data, for Wordsworth's corrections cover the whole term of +his literary activity. He preferred, one might say, to correct after +publication rather than before; and, revising his youthful writing +during a second and a third generation following, his final texts had +received the benefit of more than half a century of criticism by himself +and others. From the year 1793, in which his first volumes appeared, the +"Evening Walk" and the "Descriptive Sketches," to the year of his death, +1850, he put forth not fewer than twenty-four separate publications in +verse, each of which contained more or less of poetry previously +unpublished; and in the greater number of these texts may be found +variations from the previous readings. The larger part of them, indeed, +are slight—the change of single words, the alteration of phrases, +the transposition of verses or stanzas. And yet few of them, I think, +are quite without interest for persons in whose reading, as Wordsworth +himself expresses it, "poetry has continued to be comprehended as a +study." I have noted some thousands of his corrections; but a copious +citation of them might weary all but actual students of poetic +<i>technique</i>, a class that is hardly as numerous, I suspect, as that +of the actual practitioners of poetry, and I will therefore keep mainly +to such <i>varię lectiones</i> as may be referred to motives of more +general interest.<a name="FNanchor_B" id="FNanchor_B"></a><a +href="#Footnote_B" class="fnanchor">[B]</a></p> + +<p>The first question which we naturally ask about Wordsworth's +corrections is this: Were they improvements? My readers will decide for +themselves; for my own part, it seems to me that they generally were +improvements; that Wordsworth bettered his text three times out of four +when he changed it. Nor is this surprising; few admirers of Wordsworth's +poetry will deny that there were many passages quite susceptible of +amendment in it; for that task there was ample room. But on the other +hand, it happened not infrequently, as we might expect, that when the +poet returned, in the critical mood, to mend his first form of +expression, he marred it instead. In the poem, for instance, beginning, +"Strange fits of passion have I known," the second stanza as originally +published ran thus:</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <span class="i0">When she I loved was strong and gay,</span> + <span class="i2">And like a rose in June,</span> + <span class="i0">I to her cottage bent my way,</span> + <span class="i2">Beneath the evening moon.</span> +</div> + +<p class="quotsig">—<i>Lyrical Ballads</i>, 1800.</p> + +<p>The passage stood thus for many years, and was finally altered to +read:</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <span class="i0"> When she I loved looked every day</span> + <span class="i2">Fresh as a rose in June,</span> + <span class="i0">I to her cottage bent my way,</span> + <span class="i2">Beneath an evening moon.</span> +</div> + +<p>Is there not some loss of vividness here? The later reading is +perhaps the more graceful, and yet the picture seems to me brighter in +the early version. This, too, seems a doubtful improvement; it occurs in +"The Farmer of Tilsbury Vale." Wordsworth wrote at first:</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <span class="i0">His staff is a sceptre—his gray hairs a crown: + </span> + <span class="i0">Erect as a sunflower he stands, and the streak</span> + <span class="i0">Of the unfaded rose is expressed on his cheek.</span> +</div> + +<p class="quotsig">—1815.</p> + +<p>In later editions we read:</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <span class="i0">His bright eyes look brighter, set off by the streak + </span> + <span class="i0">Of the unfaded rose that still blooms on his cheek. + </span> +</div> + +<p>Here the last line is bettered; but I, for one, am sorry to lose the +sunflower comparison; it is picturesque, and it aptly describes this +hearty child of the earth.</p> + +<p>Look now at the poem "We are Seven," as it began in the "Lyrical +Ballads":</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <span class="i0">A simple child, dear brother Jim,</span> + <span class="i2">That lightly draws its breath,</span> + <span class="i0">And feels its life in every limb—</span> + <span class="i2">What should it know of death?</span> +</div> + +<p>It is now sixty years since "dear brother Jim" was dismissed from his +place in these lines—dismissed, perhaps, with the less compunction +because the stanza was written by another +hand—Coleridge's—as an introduction to the rest of the poem. +But I think the lines were better as the young poets first sent them +forth. "Brother Jim" had, perhaps, no clearly demonstrable business in +the poem; and yet, having been there, we miss him now that he is gone. +That homely apostrophe had in it the primitive impulses of the Lake +school feeling; the phrase refuses to be forgotten, and seems to have a +persistent life of its own. I have seen the missing words restored, in +pencil marks, to their rightful place in the text of copies belonging to +old-fashioned gentlemen who remembered the original reading. Nor can we +easily deny existence to our "dear brother Jim"; his name still lingers +in our memories, haunting about the page from which it was excluded long +ago; he lives, and deserves to live, as the symbol of immortal +fraternity.</p> + +<p>But as I have said, Wordsworth mended his text oftener than he marred +it, and first by refining upon his descriptions of outward nature. Among +the cases in point, one occurs in a poem entitled "Influences of Natural +objects in calling forth and strengthening the Imagination in Boyhood +and early Youth"—a cumbrous heading enough. May I digress for a +moment upon the unlucky titles which Wordsworth so often prefixed to his +poems, and the improvements occasionally made in them? Surely a less +convenient caption than the one just quoted is not often met with, or a +less attractive one than this other, prefixed to an inscription not very +many times longer than itself:</p> + +<p>"Written at the Request of Sir George Beaumont, Bart., and in his +Name, for an Urn, placed by him at the termination of a newly-planted +Avenue in the same Grounds."</p> + +<p>Titles like these are not only fatiguing in the very reading, a +preliminary disenchantment, but they are not properly names at all; they +are headings, rubrics, captions which do not name. Wordsworth seems to +send forth these unlucky children of the muse with a full description of +their eyes, hair, and complexion, but forgets to christen them; and I +believe that this oversight, though it may not appear a very serious +one, has interfered more than a little with the effectiveness of his +minor poetry, and consequently with the fame and influence of the poet. +For it makes reference to them difficult, almost impossible: how is one +to refer to a favorite passage, for instance, in a poem "Written at the +Request of Sir George Beaumont, Bart., and in his Name, for an Urn, +placed by him at the termination of a newly-planted Avenue in the same +Grounds"? These titles are fit to discourage even the admirers of +Wordsworth, and to repel his intending students; nor will they attract +any one, for they are formless; they are the abstracts of essays, the +<i>précis</i> of an argument, rather than fit designations for works of +poetic art. A considerable number, too, of Wordsworth's minor pieces +remain without name, title, or description of any kind whatever. If that +desirable thing, a satisfactory edition of his poems, should ever +appear, it will be given us by some editor who shall be sensitive to +this northern formlessness, and who may venture, perhaps, to improve the +state of Wordsworth's titles.</p> + +<p>Let me end this digression by noting another singular title, with its +emendation. In the "Lyrical Ballads" of 1798 appeared a poem with this +extraordinary caption:</p> + +<p>"Anecdote for Fathers, shewing how the art of Lying may be +taught."</p> + +<p>Now, certainly, Wordsworth did not intend to teach the art of lying, +yet nothing can be clearer than his declaration. He failed to see the +ludicrous meaning of these words, and it took him thirty years, +apparently, to find out what he had said; but he saw it at last, and +dropped the explanatory clause of the title, quoting in its place an apt +motto from Eusebius; and we now read:</p> + +<p>"Anecdote for Fathers. <i>Retine vim istam, falsa enim dicam, si +coges</i>;" and the charming story professes no longer to show how boys +may be taught to lie, but to point out the danger of making them lie +when you press them to give reasons for their sentiments.</p> + +<p>And now, returning to the corrections of text in the descriptive +passages, let us note a curious change in the poem already mentioned, +"On the Influence of Natural Objects," etc. Wordsworth is describing the +pleasures of skating; and these are some of them, according to the +passage as originally published in "The Friend":</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <span class="i0">Not seldom from the uproar I retired</span> + <span class="i0">Into a silent bay—or sportively</span> + <span class="i0">Glanced sideway, leaving the tumultuous throng</span> + <span class="i0"><i>To cut across the image of a Star</i></span> + <span class="i0"><i>That gleamed upon the ice.</i></span> +</div> + +<p>To do this is of course impossible, and the lines which I have +italicized are mere closet description. We cannot skate across the +reflection of a star until we can skate into the end of a rainbow; and +the curious thing is that the so-called "poet of nature" should ever +have fancied, even for a moment at his desk, that he had ever done it. +Clearly, Wordsworth's study was not always out of doors, to use a +favorite phrase of his; on the contrary, this passage is so unreal that +a critic unacquainted with the personal history of the poet might argue +that he had never been on skates—as Coleridge wrote the "Hymn in +the Valley of Chamouni" without ever visiting that valley. But +Wordsworth seems to have found out that his description was false; for +he made a compromise, in the later editions, with the optical law of +incidence and reflection; and we now see him attempting merely, but not +achieving, the impossible thing:</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <span class="i2">——Leaving the tumultuous throng</span> + <span class="i0">To cut across the reflex of a star</span> + <span class="i0">That fled, and, flying still before me, gleamed</span> + <span class="i0">Upon the glassy plain.</span> +</div> + +<p>But Wordsworth held stoutly, in the main, to his own experience, his +own impressions; and he did this even to the injury of his descriptions. +He was never, for instance, in sailor's phrase, "off soundings"; he +never saw the mid-ocean; and consequently, when he described Leonard, in +the first edition of "The Brothers," as sailing in mid-ocean, he says +that he gazed upon "the broad green wave and sparkling foam." But he +found out his mistake at last; he was fond of reading voyages and +travels, and he seems to have become convinced finally, perhaps by the +testimony of his sailor brother, that the deep sea was really blue and +not green; that the common epithet was the true one; for he corrected +the line to read "the broad blue wave."</p> + +<p>Let us now examine some of those curiously prosaic passages which +Wordsworth strove faithfully to convert into poetry, and strove with +various success. And first, those famous arithmetical passages in "The +Thorn," one of which stands to-day as it stood in the "Lyrical Ballads." +We still read there, indeed, of</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <span class="i0">A beauteous heap, a hill of moss,</span> + <span class="i0">Just half a foot in height,</span> +</div> + +<p>the precise altitude that Wordsworth gave it in 1798; not an inch to +the critics, he seems to have said. But these other peccant lines in the +preceding stanza he recast, and in a way that is curious to follow:</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <span class="i0">And to the left, three yards beyond,</span> + <span class="i0">You see a little muddy Pond</span> + <span class="i0">Of water never dry:</span> + <span class="i0">I've measured it from side to side:</span> + <span class="i0">'Tis three feet long, and two feet wide.</span> +</div> + +<p>Of these lines Crabb Robinson said to Wordsworth that "he dared not +read them aloud in company." "They ought to be liked," rejoined the +poet. Well, we may not like them; but they are interesting, for they +present a really instructive specimen of bad art. Clearly enough, here +is a poet in difficulties. The "little muddy pond" was not a pond in +nature, but a pool; and a pool it would have been in verse, but for the +particular exigency—the necessity of rhyming with the word +<i>beyond</i>. Note now the honesty of our poet. For rhyme's sake he has +temporarily sacrificed accuracy; he has called a pool a pond; but to +show what the piece of water actually was, that actually it was a pool, +though the exigencies of rhyme had forced him to call it provisionally +by another name, he goes on to give us its accurate measurement, not +only from "side to side," but from end to end as well. "'Tis three feet +long and two feet wide," he tells us; and now his northern conscience is +satisfied; he seems to say, "I was unfortunately compelled to use the +wrong word in this passage, but I make amends at once; these are the +precise dimensions of the object, and you can give it the right name +yourself." This devotion to the topographical truth of the matter was +abated, however, in later editions, perhaps by the derision of the +critics. Wordsworth rewrote the passage, one would say, to please the +graces rather than the mathematical verities; and the lines now read +thus:</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <span class="i0">You see a little muddy pond</span> + <span class="i0">Of water, never dry,</span> + <span class="i0">Though but of compass small, and bare</span> + <span class="i0">To thirsty suns and parching air.</span> +</div> + +<p>Another considerable improvement was made, a little further on, in +the same poem. These are the lines as they ran in the "Lyrical +Ballads":</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <span class="i0">Poor Martha! on that woful day</span> + <span class="i0">A cruel, cruel fire, they say,</span> + <span class="i0">Into her bones was sent;</span> + <span class="i0">It dried her body like a cinder,</span> + <span class="i0">And almost turned her brain to tinder.</span> +</div> + +<p class="quotsig">—1798.</p> + +<p>Certainly there was room for improvement here; and in the edition of +1815 we find the lines recast as follows:</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <span class="i0">A pang of pitiless dismay</span> + <span class="i0">Into her soul was sent;</span> + <span class="i0">A Fire was kindled in her breast,</span> + <span class="i0">Which might not burn itself to rest.</span> +</div> + +<p>Or see again this prosaic passage from "The Brothers," as first +published in the "Lyrical Ballads." The lines describe the parting of +James from his companions at a certain rock:</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <span class="i2">——By our shepherds it is call'd the Pillar. + </span> + <span class="i0">James, pointing to its summit, over which</span> + <span class="i0">They all had purposed to return together,</span> + <span class="i0">Inform'd them that he there would wait for them;</span> + <span class="i0">They parted, and his comrades pass'd that way</span> + <span class="i0">Some two hours after, but they did not find him</span> + <span class="i0">At the appointed place, a circumstance</span> + <span class="i0">Of which they took no heed.</span> +</div> + +<p class="quotsig">—1800.</p> + +<p>It would occur to few readers to call this poetry were it not visibly +divided into verse; and Wordsworth himself seems to have thought as +much, for after many years he rewrote the passage, condensing and +poetizing it as follows:</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <span class="i0">——By our shepherds it is called <span + class="smcap">The Pillar</span>.</span> + <span class="i0">Upon its airy summit crowned with heath</span> + <span class="i0">The loiterer, not unnoticed by his comrades,</span> + <span class="i0">Lay stretched at ease; but, passing by the place</span> + <span class="i0">On their return, they found that he was gone.</span> + <span class="i0">No ill was feared.</span> +</div> + +<p>There are hundreds of corrections in this style; and we naturally ask +what made it necessary for Wordsworth to weed his poetic garden so +often, to amend with care and trouble what some other poets would have +done well at first? We need not hold with some of his critics that +Wordsworth had in any peculiar sense a dual nature, to explain the +amount of prosaic poetry, if I may call it so, that he wrote. No real +poet ever wrote, as I take it, a greater amount of prosaic poetry than +he; and no real poet ever published a greater number of verses that +might fairly be called not only poor poetry, but considered as proof +that their author could not write good poetry at all.</p> + +<p>What critic would believe before the proof, that the poet who had +written the lines just quoted from "The Thorn," and others like them, +could have written also the "Lines to H. C." and "She Was a Phantom of +Delight"? But to inquire at length into this contrast is to inquire into +the deepest traits of Wordsworth's genius. One cause of his prosaic +verse, however, may be mentioned here. Wordsworth had injurious habits +of composition; he dictated his prose to an amanuensis, and he composed +his poems in the fields as he walked. He was thus a libertine of +opportunity, and though he strictly economized his subjects, and made +the least yield him up its utmost, yet he was prodigal in the quantity +of his expression. He did not wait for what are called moments of +inspiration; he was always ready to compose, and thus he composed too +much; he made verses whenever he was out of doors, "murmuring them out" +to the astonishment of the rustics. Doubtless the first factor of genius +is this abundance of power. But, on the other hand, the control, the +direction of power is the first essential to the beauty of the work of +art. "Good men may utter whatever comes uppermost; good poets may not," +says Landor; and the aphorism touches upon a serious fault of +Wordsworth's method. He lacked due power of self-repression; he was too +much interested in his own thoughts to make a sufficiently jealous +choice among them when he came to write them down. Two qualities, +indeed, of his nature he kept in such abeyance, the amative and the +humorous—and he was not without a humorous side—as to +express but little of them in his writings. But he seems to have +recorded almost everything, not humorous or amatory, that came into his +mind; and, in consequence, we feel that his poetry comes perilously near +being a verbatim transcript of his processes of consciousness. But no +man's thought is always sufficiently valuable for a shorthand report; +and we often wish that Wordsworth had reflected, with Herrick, that the +poet is not fitted every day to prophesy:</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <span class="i0">No; but when the spirit fills</span> + <span class="i0">The fantastic pannicles</span> + <span class="i0">Full of fire—then I write</span> + <span class="i0">As the Godhead doth indite.</span> +</div> + +<p>Does it seem an invidious task to recall the unhappy readings that I +have mentioned—readings abandoned by Wordsworth long ago, and +unknown to many of his younger students? To do it with slighting intent, +or from mere curiosity, would be unworthy; nor will the routine mind be +persuaded that there is anything more than a merely curious interest in +the comparison of editions. We, thinking that Wordsworth cannot really +be understood in a single edition, must leave the routine mind to its +conviction that one text contains all that there is of value in his +poetry. And to offset the ungraceful verses that we have just +considered, let us look at some changes by which Wordsworth has made +fine passages finer still. Of the sonnets published in 1819 with "The +Waggoner," none is more striking, as I think, than the one beginning, +"Eve's lingering clouds extend in solid bars." In it at first he spoke +as follows of the reflection of the heavens at night in perfectly still +water:</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <span class="i0">Is it a mirror?—or the nether sphere</span> + <span class="i0">Opening its vast abyss, while fancy feeds</span> + <span class="i0">On the rich show?—But list! a voice is near; + </span> + <span class="i0">Great Pan himself low-whispering through the reeds. + </span> +</div> + +<p>In the later editions this passage is enriched by a grand stroke of +imagination:</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <span class="i0">Is it a mirror?—or the nether sphere</span> + <span class="i0">Opening to view the abyss in which she feeds</span> + <span class="i0">Her own calm fires?—But list! a voice is near; + </span> + <span class="i0">Great Pan himself low-whispering through the reeds. + </span> +</div> + +<p>The following change is from the same sonnets; the passage describes +a bright star setting:</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <span class="i4">Forfeiting his bright attire,</span> + <span class="i0">He burns, transmuted to a sullen fire</span> + <span class="i0">That droops and dwindles; and, the appointed debt</span> + <span class="i0">To the flying moments paid, is seen no more.</span> +</div> + +<p>So in 1819; in later editions we find the passage as follows:</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <span class="i0">He burns, transmuted to a dusty fire,</span> + <span class="i0">Then pays submissively the appointed debt</span> + <span class="i0">To the flying moments, and is seen no more.</span> +</div> + +<p>That is scarcely an improvement; but the alteration of epithet is +curious: the substitution of fact for fancy in changing the low star's +"sullen fire" into a "dusty fire."</p> + +<p>Here, again, is a case where the new reading has a fresher phrase +than the old. It occurs in the last stanza of "Rob Roy's Grave," where +Wordsworth spoke thus of the hero's virtues:</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <span class="i0">——Far and near, through vale and hill, + </span> + <span class="i0">Are faces that attest the same;</span> + <span class="i0">And kindle, like a fire new-stirred,</span> + <span class="i0">At sound of <span class="smcap">Rob Roy</span>'s name. + </span> +</div> + +<p>Later, a new line was substituted as follows:</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <span class="i0">——Far and near, through vale and hill, + </span> + <span class="i0">Are faces that attest the same;</span> + <span class="i0">The proud heart flashing through the eyes</span> + <span class="i0">At sound of <span class="smcap">Rob Roy</span>'s name. + </span> +</div> + +<p>And Wordsworth insisted, quite as strongly as his severest critics, +upon finish, upon literary art as discriminable from the substance. +While he was blaming Byron, Campbell, and other eminent poets for its +lack, his assailants were loud in the same charge against him; they +protested that whatever other merits the new poetry might have, that of +artistic finish was surely not one. Jeffrey wrote in 1807 that +Wordsworth "scarcely ever condescended to give the grace of correctness +or melody to his versification." But Wordsworth, in a letter lately +first published, criticises Campbell's "Hohenlinden" in a way that shows +him by no means unstudious of form. He writes thus to Mr. Hamilton:<a +name="FNanchor_C" id="FNanchor_C"></a><a href="#Footnote_C" +class="fnanchor">[C]</a> "I remember Campbell says, in a composition +that is overrun with faulty language, 'And dark as winter was the +<i>flow</i> of Iser rolling rapidly'; that is, 'flowing rapidly.' The +expression ought to have been 'stream' or 'current.'... These may appear +to you frigid criticisms," he adds; "but depend upon it, no writings +will live in which these rules are disregarded." This is good doctrine, +and we have seen Wordsworth striving to realize it in his practice. He +did realize it to a certain extent; if his style was not always +eloquent, not always poetical, it was generally better English than that +of his popular contemporaries. And yet a critic in "The Dial," +following, as recently as 1843, the lead of Jeffrey in this blame of +Wordsworth, could write of him as follows:<a name="FNanchor_D" +id="FNanchor_D"></a><a href="#Footnote_D" class="fnanchor">[D]</a> "He +has the merit of just moral perception, but not that of deft poetic +execution. How would Milton curl his lip at such slip-shod newspaper +style! Many of his poems, as for example the 'Rylstone Doe,' might be +all improvised.... These are such verses as in a just state of culture +should be <i>vers de Société</i>, such as every gentleman could write, +but none would think of printing." That passage is worth reading twice; +note the condescension of the praise, the flippancy of the blame, the +inaccurate English and French; and what a jaunty misquotation of +Wordsworth's title! It was not very profitable censure; but Wordsworth +received much criticism by which he was glad to profit. Let us look at +some of the cases in which he turned the strictures of friends or of +enemies to account. The changes that he made in deference to criticism +are striking, and so too are some of the cases in which he refused to +profit by criticism. I will speak of both.</p> + +<p>Of the former kind are the corrections in "Laodamia." That poem +appeared first in 1815, having been suggested during a course of +classical reading which Wordsworth had taken up for the purpose of +directing the studies of his son. Landor criticised this poem in the +first volume of his "Imaginary Conversations," and in the main very +favorably; he makes Porson say that parts of it "might have been heard +with shouts of rapture in the regions he describes"; he calls it "a +composition such as Sophocles might have delighted to own." But he +points out blemishes in two stanzas, the first and the seventeenth; he +blames the execution of one and the thought of the other. Wordsworth +rewrote both of them, and I quote the second passage as affording the +more interesting change. In the first edition Protesilaus, says the +poet, returning from the shades to visit Laodamia,</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <span class="i0">Spake, as a witness, of a second birth</span> + <span class="i0">For all that is most perfect upon earth.</span> +</div> + +<p>On this Landor remarks, putting the words into Porson's mouth:</p> + +<p class="blockquot">How unseasonable is the allusion to <i>witness</i> +and <i>second</i> birth, which things, however holy and venerable in +themselves, come stinking and reeking to us from the conventicle. I +desire to see Laodamia in the silent and gloomy mansion of her beloved +Protesilaus; not elbowed by the godly butchers in Tottenham court road, +nor smelling devoutly of ratafia among the sugar bakers' wives at +Blackfriars.</p> + +<p>Wordsworth dropped these lines; and we now read instead, that the +hero</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <span class="i0">Spake of heroic arts in graver mood</span> + <span class="i0">Revived, with finer harmony pursued.</span> +</div> + +<p>In the first volume of his "Imaginary Conversations" Landor said of +Wordsworth: "Those who attack him with virulence or with levity are men +of no morality and no reflection." In a later volume, however, Landor +attacks him thus himself, with both virulence and levity, as I fear we +must say, and Wordsworth declined to profit by these later gibing +criticisms, though some of them, and especially those upon the "Anecdote +for Fathers," were valuable, and suggested real improvements of text. In +this attack, which is contained in the second conversation of Southey +and Porson, Landor had noticed Wordsworth's adoption of his earlier +criticism of Laodamia; and this circumstance was probably a reason why +Wordsworth refused to receive further critical favors at his hands. The +poem "Goody Blake and Harry Gill," for instance, sharply criticised by +Landor, stood almost untouched through the editions of fifty years. And +in a letter of 1843, recently published for the first time,<a +name="FNanchor_E" id="FNanchor_E"></a><a href="#Footnote_E" +class="fnanchor">[E]</a> Wordsworth speaks thus severely of an attack +made upon his son-in-law, Edward Quillinan, by Landor: "I should have +disapproved of his [Quillinan's] condescending to notice anything that a +man so deplorably tormented by ungovernable passion as that unhappy +creature might eject. His character may be given in two or three words: +a madman, a bad man; yet a man of genius, as many a madman is." That +criticism seems rather more than righteously severe; but Wordsworth, +while he cared little for the criticism of the reviews, felt keenly the +lash of the violent Landor. The violent Landor we must call him, for +violence was the too dominant trait of his noble genius; and he +exasperated Wordsworth, as we see. But compare what I have just quoted +with his familiar remark about the small critics: "My ears are stone +dead to this idle buzz, and my flesh as insensible as iron to these +petty stings." That Wordsworth said at thirty-six years of age; and here +is a striking reminiscence recorded during his later years, and +published in the "Prose Works." At seventy-one he said to Lady +Richardson:</p> + +<p class="blockquot">It would certainly have been a great object to me +to have reaped the profits I should have done from my writings but for +the stupidity of Mr. Gifford and the impertinence of Mr. Jeffrey. It +would have enabled me to purchase many books which I could not obtain, +and I should have gone to Italy earlier, which I never could afford to +do until I was sixty-five, when Moxon gave me a thousand pounds for my +writings. This was the only kind of injury Mr. Jeffrey did me, for I +immediately perceived that his mind was of that kind that his individual +opinion on poetry was of no consequence to me whatever; that it was only +by the influence his periodical exercised at the time in preventing my +poems being read and sold that he could injure me.... I never, +therefore, felt his opinion of the slightest value except in preventing +the young of that generation from receiving impressions which might have +been of use to them through life.</p> + +<p>This is grand self-confidence; and it is in the same tone that +elsewhere he says:</p> + +<p class="blockquot">Feeling that my writings were founded on what was +true and spiritual in human nature, I knew the time would come when they +must be known.</p> + +<p>In this connexion the English reviews of that time are still +interesting reading, particularly the "Quarterly" and the "Edinburgh." +What was Jeffrey saying in his "organ" during the years of Wordsworth's +earlier fame? In 1807 he described the poem of "The Beggars" as "a very +paragon of silliness and affectation"; and he said of "Alice Fell," "If +the printing of such verses be not felt as an insult on the public +taste, we are afraid it cannot be insulted." Two years later he calls +upon the patrons of the Lake school of poetry to "think with what +infinite contempt the powerful mind of Burns would have perused the +story of Alice Fell and her duffle cloak, of Andrew Jones and the +half-crown, or of little Dan without breeches and his thievish +grandfather." Wordsworth dropped the poem of "Andrew Jones," and never +restored it—an omission almost unique, as we shall see; for he +stood by the substance of his work, if not always by the form, with +great pertinacity. He said of "Alice Fell," in his old age, "It brought +upon me a world of ridicule by the small critics, so that in policy I +excluded it from many editions of my poems, till it was restored at the +request of some of my friends." Wordsworth had no stancher friend, his +poetry had no more delicate critic, than Charles Lamb; and Lamb wrote +thus in 1815 to Wordsworth about "Alice Fell" and the assailants of the +poem. He said: "I am glad that you have not sacrificed a verse to those +scoundrels. I would not have had you offer up the poorest rag that +lingered upon the stript shoulders of little Alice Fell, to have atoned +all their malice: I would not have given 'em a red cloak to save their +souls."</p> + +<p>Jeffrey decried two other pieces that rank among the most perfect of +Wordsworth's minor poems, as "stuff about dancing daffodils and sister +Emmelines," and spoke of another, which we count for pure poetry to-day, +as "a rapturous, mystical ode to the cuckoo, in which the author, +striving after force and originality, produces nothing but absurdity." +And he attacked these lines in the "Ode to Duty":</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <span class="i0">Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong:</span> + <span class="i0">And the most ancient heavens through thee are fresh + and strong.</span> +</div> + +<p>This, Jeffrey said, is "utterly without meaning: at least we have no +sort of conception in what sense Duty can be said to keep the old skies +<i>fresh</i>, and the stars from wrong." We need not be surprised at +Jeffrey's failing to admire these lines: they are transcendentalism, and +it would have troubled Wordsworth himself to render them into the plain +speech which he recommended as the proper diction of poetry. For they +have not a definite translatable content of thought; and we cannot read +them as philosophy or ethics; but as poetry we may feel their power; we +are willing to enjoy them for their own sake, because beauty is enough. +But this Jeffrey did not admit; Jeffrey was not vulnerable by +magnificent phrases, and of course he could not foresee what a power +Wordsworth's transcendentalism was to exert. When the ode "Intimations +of Immortality" first appeared (with the edition of 1807), Jeffrey +called it "the most illegible and unintelligible part of the +publication."<a name="FNanchor_F" id="FNanchor_F"></a><a +href="#Footnote_F" class="fnanchor">[F]</a> The remark need not surprise +us. <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Original reads +'Jeffry'">Jeffrey</ins> looked for logical thought in the poem, and +logical thought it had not; whatever else it may contain, it will hardly +be said to propound any new arguments for immortality. But Jeffrey wrote +in all sincerity, and later in his life he read Wordsworth's poetry a +second time, with a view to discover, if he could, the merits which he +had failed to see when he criticised it—the merits which the +English public had then found out. His effort was a failure: for him the +primrose remained a primrose to the last, and nothing more. The acute +lawyer was not a poet, nor a judge of poets; he had an erroneous notion +of what the office of poetry is; of what it has been and will +be—to please, to elevate, to suggest, but not to argue or +convince; and to the last he did not get beyond his early decision, +which, in the article just quoted from, runs as follows:</p> + +<p class="blockquot">We think there is every reason to hope that the +lamentable consequences which have resulted from Mr. Wordsworth's open +violation of the established laws of poetry, will operate as a wholesome +warning to those who might otherwise have been seduced by his example, +and be the means of restoring to that ancient and venerable code its +honor and authority.</p> + +<p>But the critic cannot always tell what the new "song is destined to, +and what the stars intend to do." It is now evident enough where the +early assailants of Wordsworth were mistaken; and yet which critic of +to-day would be sure of his ground in a similar case? For the faults of +genius are old, familiar, and easily to be discerned; while, on the +other hand, genius itself is always novel, and therefore may be easily +mistaken. It takes genius to recognize genius; and most of Wordsworth's +critics were not men of genius. Landor, who was one, made a wise remark +upon this point. He said, "To compositions of a new kind, like +Wordsworth's, we come without scales and weights, and without the means +of making an assay."</p> + +<p>But by pointing out his faults, his critics did him and us a service; +and it was one by which the poet profited, as we have seen, in spite of +his independence.</p> + +<p>Let us now look at some of Wordsworth's multiple readings, if we may +call them so—passages, namely, in which he has returned, year +after year, to certain peccant verses, changing them again and again in +the quest of adequate expression. After repeated experiments he +sometimes finds a reading to please himself; sometimes, having allowed a +provisional text to stand throughout many years, he discards it and +returns to the original form; and sometimes, again, he abandons a +passage entirely, after scarring it with a lifetime's emendations. Of +the first sort I will cite three readings of a stanza in "A Poet's +Epitaph." As first published in the "Lyrical Ballads" of 1800, the poem +contained this adjuration to the philosopher "wrapped in his sensual +fleece"</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <span class="i0">O turn aside, and take, I pray,</span> + <span class="i0">That he below may rest in peace,</span> + <span class="i0">Thy pin-point of a soul away!</span> +</div> + +<p>Lamb did not like this; and he wrote to Wordsworth: "The 'Poet's +Epitaph' is disfigured, to my taste, by the coarse epithet of +'pin-point' in the sixth stanza." In the edition of 1815 the "coarse +epithet" disappears, and the passage is modified as follows:</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <span class="i2">——Take, I pray,</span> + <span class="i0">That he below may rest in peace,</span> + <span class="i0">That abject thing, thy soul, away!</span> +</div> + +<p>The years that "bring the philosophic mind" did not, however, +reconcile Wordsworth with the particular "philosopher" here in question. +(Sir Humphrey Davy, as Crabb Robinson, if I am not mistaken, tells us). +On the contrary, the poet devised a still more injurious epithet for +that unhappy physicist; and the passage now reads:</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <span class="i0">——Take, I pray,...</span> + <span class="i0">Thy ever-dwindling soul away!</span> +</div> + +<p>Another of these multiple corrections has attracted much notice; it +occurs in the successive descriptions of the craft wherein the "Blind +Highland Boy" went sailing. In the first edition of that poem Wordsworth +called it</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <span class="i0">A Household Tub, like one of those</span> + <span class="i0">Which women use to wash their clothes!</span> +</div> + +<p>It would seem difficult to defend this couplet upon any accepted +theory of aesthetics, rhyme, or syntax; and the "Household Tub" provoked +quite naturally a shout of derision from all the critics; it became the +poetical scandal of the day. Jeffery, mindful of "the established laws" +of poetic art, protested that there was nothing, down to the wiping of +shoes, or the evisceration of chickens, which may not be introduced in +poetry, if this is tolerated. The tub, in short, proved intolerable to +the reviewers; and when next the poem appeared in a new edition, that of +1815, Wordsworth transmuted the craft into a green turtle shell, noting +the change as made "upon the suggestion of a Friend ":</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <span class="i0">The shell of a green Turtle, thin</span> + <span class="i0">And hollow: you might sit therein,</span> + <span class="i2">It was so wide and deep.</span> + <span class="i0">'Twas even the largest of its kind,</span> + <span class="i0">Large, thin, and light as birch tree rind;</span> + <span class="i0">So light a shell that it would swim,</span> + <span class="i0">And gaily lift its fearless brim</span> + <span class="i2">Above the tossing waves.</span> +</div> + +<p>Lamb's comment upon this change was as follows:</p> + +<p class="blockquot">I am afraid lest that substitution of a shell (a +flat falsification of the history) for the household implement, as it +stood at first, was a kind of tub thrown out to the beast, or rather +thrown out for him. The tub was a good honest tub in its place, and +nothing could be fairly said against it. You say you made the alteration +for the "friendly reader," but the "malicious" will take it to himself. +Damn 'em, if you give 'em an inch, etc.</p> + +<p>Wordsworth, however, instead of restoring the old text, went on +amending, and with reason; the reading just given is diffuse. But see +now the third and final form which he gave to the passage. The +sublimation of the Household Tub is now completed; it becomes, at +last,</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <span class="i0">A shell of ample size, and light</span> + <span class="i0">As the pearly car of Amphitrite,</span> + <span class="i2">That sportive dolphins draw.</span> + <span class="i0">And as a Coracle that braves</span> + <span class="i0">On Vaga's breast the fretful waves,</span> + <span class="i0">This shell upon the deep would swim.</span> +</div> + +<p>Here again are some new readings that Wordsworth discarded after long +trial. A well-known sonnet, one of his earliest, began thus in 1807:</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <span class="i0">I grieved for Buonaparte, with a vain</span> + <span class="i0">And an unthinking grief! The vital blood</span> + <span class="i0">Of that Man's mind, what can it be? What food</span> + <span class="i0">Fed his first hopes? What knowledge could he gain? + </span> +</div> + +<p>In 1815 we find the passage rewritten as follows:</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <span class="i0">I grieved for Buonaparte, with a vain</span> + <span class="i0">And an unthinking grief! for, who aspires</span> + <span class="i0">To genuine greatness but from just desires,</span> + <span class="i0">And knowledge such as He could never gain?</span> +</div> + +<p>But in the later editions the first reading was restored, except the +words "vital blood," and we now read:</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <span class="i4">The tenderest mood</span> + <span class="i0">Of that man's mind, what can it be?</span> +</div> + +<p>In "The Nightingale" Wordsworth first called that bird "a creature of +a fiery heart"; but in the edition of 1815 it became "a creature of +ebullient heart," a flat disenchantment of the verse. The change was +questioned from the first, as Crabb Robinson tells us, and in later +editions the first reading was restored. A fortunate correction made in +the same edition was retained—the change of "laughing company" to +"jocund company," in "The Daffodils":</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <span class="i0">A poet could not but be gay</span> + <span class="i0">In such a jocund company.</span> +</div> + +<p class="quotsig">—1815.</p> + +<p>The poem "Rural Architecture," in the "Lyrical Ballads" of 1800, was +curtailed of its closing stanza in the edition of 1815:</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <span class="i0">Some little I've seen of blind boisterous works</span> + <span class="i0">In Paris and London, 'mong Christians and Turks,</span> + <span class="i0">Spirits busy to do and undo, etc., etc.</span> +</div> + +<p>But in Lamb's correspondence of the same year he complains to +Wordsworth that the omission "leaves it [the poem] in my mind less +complete," and the lines were restored in the later editions. Not to +differ hastily with Lamb, the lines yet seem lines to be spared. In the +same sentence he complains that in the new edition there is another +"admirable line gone (or something come instead of it), 'the stone-chat, +and the glancing sandpiper,' which was a line quite alive. I demand +these at your hand." Wordsworth restored the line, and the three +versions of the passage are worth comparison. It is from the "Lines left +upon a Seat in a Yew Tree," and describes a wanderer in the solitude of +the country:</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <span class="i0">His only visitants a straggling sheep,</span> + <span class="i0">The stone-chat, or the glancing sand-piper:</span> + <span class="i0">And on these barren rocks, with juniper,</span> + <span class="i0">And heath, and thistle, thinly sprinkled o'er,</span> + <span class="i0">Fixing his downcast eye, he many an hour</span> + <span class="i0">A morbid pleasure nourished.</span> +</div> + +<p class="quotsig">—"Lyrical Ballads."</p> + +<p>In the second reading he corrects a bad assonance thus:</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <span class="i0">His only visitants a straggling sheep,</span> + <span class="i0">The stone-chat, or the sand-lark, restless bird,</span> + <span class="i0">Piping along the margin of the lake....</span> +</div> + +<p class="quotsig">—1815.</p> + +<p>Here the "line quite alive" is gone—to be restored in +deference, apparently, to Lamb's request. Another assonance is got rid +of in the later editions, the "thistle thinly sprinkled o'er," and the +passage now reads melodiously as follows:</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <span class="i0">His only visitants a straggling sheep.</span> + <span class="i0">The stone-chat, or the glancing sand-piper:</span> + <span class="i0">And on these barren rocks, with fern and heath,</span> + <span class="i0">And juniper and thistle, sprinkled o'er,</span> + <span class="i0">Fixing his downcast eye, he many an hour</span> + <span class="i0">A morbid pleasure nourished.</span> +</div> + +<p>Wordsworth struck out many lines and stanzas in the course of his +revisions, besides main passages of considerable length, as from the +"Thanksgiving Ode" and the patriotic ode of January, 1816. These +omissions are too long to quote here; but the following lines dropped +from the ode on "Immortality" will have interest; they are not to be +found, I think, in any English edition since that of 1815. Addressing +the child over whom Immortality, in the language of the ode,</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <span class="i0">Broods like the Day, a Master o'er a Slave,</span> + <span class="i0">A Presence which is not to be put by—</span> +</div> + +<p>this earlier reading continues:</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <span class="i4">To whom the grave</span> + <span class="i0">Is but a lonely bed without the sense or sight</span> + <span class="i2">Of day or the warm light:</span> + <span class="i0">A place of thought where we in waiting lie.</span> +</div> + +<p>Another notable omitted passage is the introduction to "Dion," +published in 1816:</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <span class="i0">Fair is the Swan, whose majesty, prevailing</span> + <span class="i0">O'er breezeless water on Locarno's lake....</span> +</div> + +<p>Here nineteen lines full of beauty are sacrificed by Wordsworth in +the interest of the unity of the poem. He struck out, too, some lines +from "The Daisy," "The Thorn," and "Simon Lee," and eight stanzas have +disappeared from "Peter Bell" since the first edition of that poem. +Among them are these grotesque lines, favorites with Charles Lamb:</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <span class="i0">Is it a party in a parlour?</span> + <span class="i0">Cramm'd just as they on earth were cramm'd— + </span> + <span class="i0">Some sipping punch, some sipping tea,</span> + <span class="i0">All silent and all damn'd!</span> +</div> + +<p>And here are some verses that have interest from the glimpse they +give of Wordsworth's faculty in a field that he declined to +cultivate—the amatory or "fleshly," as it has been conveniently +named for us of late. I quote from that rare book, the "Descriptive +Sketches" of 1793; and as the lines are not included in any edition of +his poems, they are unfamiliar to most readers. But two copies of this +book, so far as I know, exist in this country. One of them, which +belonged to the late Prof. Henry Reed, Wordsworth's American editor, is +full of corrections in Wordsworth's own handwriting; and it is by the +courtesy of its present owner that I am enabled to give here the early +text with these corrections, never before printed. The young Wordsworth +takes leave of Switzerland, at the conclusion of his pedestrian tour, +with this glowing apostrophe:</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <span class="i4"> ye + + the</span> + <span class="i0">Farewell! those forms that in thy noontide shade</span> + <span class="i4">your</span> + <span class="i0">Rest near their little plots of oaten glade,</span> + <span class="i0"> Dark</span> + <span class="i0">Those stedfast eyes, that beating breasts inspire, + </span> + <span class="i0">To throw the "sultry rays" of young Desire;</span> + <span class="i4"> + soft</span> + <span class="i0"><del>Those</del> lips whose ^ tides of fragrance + come and go</span> + <span class="i0">Accordant to the cheek's unquiet glow;</span> + <span class="i0"> Ye + + + + warm</span> + <span class="i0">Those shadowy breasts In love's soft light array'd + </span> + <span class="i0">And rising by the moon of passion sway'd."<a + name="FNanchor_G" id="FNanchor_G"></a><a href="#Footnote_G" + class="fnanchor">[G]</a></span> +</div> + +<p>Wordsworth thus dropped, for one reason or another, many passages +from his poems. But did he abandon entire poems? That did not often +happen. He strove patiently to perfect the form of his thought; but he +was unwilling to let the substance of it go. In the seven volumes of his +poetry, as they now stand, but two poems are lacking, to the best of my +knowledge, of all that he ever published. One of these, an unimportant +piece beginning, "The confidence of youth our only art," was printed +with the "Memorials of a Tour on the Continent" (1822), and no longer +appears in the collected editions. The other missing poem, "Andrew +Jones," was abandoned for reasons, as I think, of considerable critical +interest. In the "Lyrical Ballads" it began thus:</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <span class="i0">I hate that Andrew Jones: he'll breed</span> + <span class="i0">His children up to waste and pillage:</span> + <span class="i0">I wish the press-gang or the drum</span> + <span class="i0">With its tantara sound would come,</span> + <span class="i0">And sweep him from the village!</span> +</div> + +<p>This poem may be found (with, slight emendations) as late as the +edition of 1815; but after that date I meet with it nowhere but in +foreign reprints. Why was it dropped? It is doubtless a story of +unrelieved though petty suffering; it corresponds, in small, to what Mr. +Matthew Arnold calls the "poetically faulty" situation of Empedocles, a +situation "in which there is everything to be endured, nothing to be +done." But, on the other hand, that fragment of Ęschylus, the +"Prometheus Bound," in which everything is endured and nothing done, yet +remains a work of the deepest interest: nor need we think that +Wordsworth abandoned his little poem for a reason so refined as that +which led Mr. Arnold to abandon one of his own. There was, as I take it, +a moral reason which led to Wordsworth's decision; namely, that the +story of "Andrew Jones" is told with bitterness of feeling from +beginning to end; and against bitterness of feeling Wordsworth had +recorded, during his earlier years, a striking protest. We shall read it +presently; but first let us couple with the poem a sentence from his +prose—a sentence full of the same feeling, and which was early +dropped for the same reason. We shall find it in the edition of 1815, in +the essay supplementary to the famous Preface of that date. There +Wordsworth turns upon his critics as follows:</p> + +<p>"By what fatality the orb of my genius (for genius none of them seem +to deny me) acts upon these men like the moon upon a certain description +of patients, it would be irksome to enquire: nor would it consist with +the respect which I owe myself to take further notice of opponents whom +I internally despise."</p> + +<p>This is not quite in the vein of the serenely meditative poet; and if +we look back to a time twenty years earlier than this, we shall find +that Wordsworth had reproved his heat beforehand. In 1795, when he first +chose definitely the poet's career, he had written these lines:</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <span class="i0">If thou be one whose heart the holy forms</span> + <span class="i0">Of young imagination have kept pure,</span> + <span class="i0">Stranger! henceforth be warned; and know that pride, + </span> + <span class="i0">Howe'er disguised in its own majesty,</span> + <span class="i0">Is littleness: that he who feels contempt</span> + <span class="i0">For any living thing, hath faculties</span> + <span class="i0">Which he has never used: that thought with him</span> + <span class="i0">Is in its infancy.</span> +</div> + +<p>That is the teaching of earlier and serener years, of the time when +the poet was still quietly embayed in youth, when jealous criticism, and +envy, and disappointment were still trials of the future. Youth has its +own passions; but it has also its peculiar serenity; and after +Wordsworth had passed through the stormy years which gave him fame, we +see the maturer man recalling the teaching of his calmer self. It was in +obedience to this, as I believe, that he cancelled the passages that +have just been mentioned; feeling their discord with the pure song of +that early time.</p> + +<p>Let us now look at some of the passages which Wordsworth has emended, +not by taking away from the words of his book, but by adding to them. As +he wrote to Mr. Dyce, he diligently revised the "Excursion," in the +edition of 1827, and got the sense "in several instances, ... into less +room"; and minor changes are to be counted by hundreds. But he made some +additions to this poem, and for significant reasons.</p> + +<p>Readers of Christopher North's essay, in the "Recreations," on +"Sacred Poetry," will remember the long indictment which he there brings +against the earlier poems of Wordsworth; he complains of them as being +irreligious. It is interesting to find the earthly Christopher +displaying the pious zeal of an inquisitor in the matter, declaring that +in all of Wordsworth's writings, up to the "Excursion," "though we have +much fine poetry, and some high philosophy, it would puzzle the most +ingenious to detect much, if any, Christian religion"; and lamenting its +absence even in the "Excursion," in the story of "Margaret," as told in +the first book. This tale Christopher North calls "perhaps the most +elaborate picture he [Wordsworth] ever painted of any conflict within +any one human heart;" but he adds, with how much sincerity we will not +now ask, that it "is, with all its pathos, repulsive to every religious +mind—<i>that</i> being wanting without which the entire +representation is vitiated.... This utter absence of Revealed Religion +... throws over the whole poem to which the tale of Margaret belongs an +unhappy suspicion of hollowness and insincerity in that poetical +religion which at the best is a sorry substitute indeed for the light +that is from heaven."</p> + +<p>That Wordsworth laid to heart this criticism, will appear on +comparing the original passage, as reprobated by Christopher North, with +the form which the poet gave it in the latter editions. Originally the +peddler, finishing the story of "Margaret," moralizes thus:</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <span class="i0">My Friend! enough to sorrow you have given;</span> + <span class="i0">The purposes of wisdom ask no more:</span> + <span class="i0">Be wise and <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Original + reads 'chearful'">cheerful</ins>, and no longer read</span> + <span class="i0">The forms of things with an unworthy eye;</span> + <span class="i0">She sleeps in the calm earth, and peace is here.</span> + <span class="i0">I well remember that those very plumes,</span> + <span class="i0">Those weeds, and the high spear-grass on that wall, + </span> + <span class="i0">By mist and silent raindrops silvered o'er,</span> + <span class="i0">As once I passed, into my heart convey'd</span> + <span class="i0">So still an image of tranquillity,</span> + <span class="i0">So calm and still, and look'd so beautiful</span> + <span class="i0">Amid the uneasy thoughts which fill'd my mind,</span> + <span class="i0">That what we feel of sorrow and despair</span> + <span class="i0">From ruin and from change, and all the griefs</span> + <span class="i0">The passing shows of Being leave behind,</span> + <span class="i0">Appear'd an idle dream, that could not live</span> + <span class="i0">Where meditation was. I turn'd away,</span> + <span class="i0">And walk'd along my road in happiness.</span> +</div> + +<p>"What meditation?" cries out Christopher North. "Turn thou, O child +of a day, to the New Testament, and therein thou mayest find comfort." +And Wordsworth in his revision made the following additions to this fine +pagan passage:</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <span class="i2">——Enough to sorrow you have given;</span> + <span class="i0">The purposes of wisdom ask no more:</span> + <span class="i0">Nor more would she have craved as due to one</span> + <span class="i0">Who in her worst distress, had often felt</span> + <span class="i0">The unbounded might of prayer; and learned, with soul + </span> + <span class="i0">Fixed on the cross, that consolation springs</span> + <span class="i0">From sources deeper far than deepest pain</span> + <span class="i0">For the meek sufferer. Why then should we read</span> + <span class="i0">The forms of things with an unworthy eye?</span> + <span class="i0">She sleeps in the calm earth, and peace is here.</span> +</div> + +<p>Then follow the beautiful lines about the weeds, the spear-grass, the +mist and rain-drops, as quoted above; but the close of the passage is +extended as follows:</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <span class="i4">——All the griefs</span> + <span class="i0">That passing shows of Being leave behind,</span> + <span class="i0">Appeared an idle dream, that could maintain</span> + <span class="i0">Nowhere dominion o'er the enlightened spirit</span> + <span class="i0">Whose meditative sympathies repose</span> + <span class="i0">Upon the breast of Faith. I turned away,</span> + <span class="i0">And walked along my road in happiness.</span> +</div> + +<p>It remains to be said that a certain number of Wordsworth's +poems—and these were, as we might expect, among his +best—have stood unchanged in all the editions from the first, +running the gauntlet of their author's critical moods for half a +century, and coming out untouched at last. I will not call them +uncorrected poems, but rather poems in which all the needed corrections +were made before their first publication, for they belong to that +exquisite class of creations—too small a class, even in the works +of the greatest masters—in which the poet has fused completely the +refractory element of language before pouring it out into the mould of +poetic form. Among these untouched poems are three from the "Lyrical +Ballads"—"A slumber did my spirit seal," "Three years she grew in +sun and shower," and "She dwelt among the untrodden ways"—all +written at the age of twenty-nine; such are the "Yew Tree," written four +years later, and "She was a phantom of delight." Several of the best +sonnets, too, were unchanged; as that on "Westminster Bridge," and +"Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour."</p> + +<p>And lastly, I may mention one or two changes of text which Wordsworth +did not make, but which belong to the class for which careless editors +or proofreaders are responsible. An edition well known to the American +public is especially peccant in this respect; that beautiful line, for +instance, in "The Pet Lamb"—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <span class="i0">And that green corn all day is rustling in thy ears, + </span> +</div> + +<p>becomes,</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <span class="i0">That green cord all day is rustling in thy ears.</span> +</div> + +<p>And here is a really interesting <i>erratum</i>; it occurs in the +poem of "The Idiot Boy," where it has stood unnoticed for twenty years +and more. Wordsworth's stanzas, describing the boy's night-long ride +under the moon, "from eight o'clock till five," hearing meanwhile "the +owls in tuneful concert strive," originally put these words into his +mouth, the actual words of his hero, as Wordsworth tells us in a +note:</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <span class="i0">The cocks did crow to-whoo, to-whoo,</span> + <span class="i0">And the Sun did shine so cold,</span> + <span class="i0">Thus answered Johnny in his glory.</span> +</div> + +<p>But this reading puzzled the proofreader. How could the sun shine at +night? This being clearly impossible, he restored the idiot boy to +partial sanity. He made him say:</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <span class="i0">The cocks did crow to-whoo, to-whoo,</span> + <span class="i0">And the Moon did shine so cold;</span> +</div> + +<p>and the only wonder is that he did not also read,</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <span class="i0">The cocks did crow cock-a-doodle-doo.</span> +</div> + +<p>Some one proposes, I believe, a similar emendation in "As You Like +It," intending to make the Duke speak better sense than Shakespeare put +into his mouth. He is to say,</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <span class="i4">Sermons in books.</span> + <span class="i0">Stones in the running brooks, and good in everything. + </span> +</div> + +<p>But while in the main the text of Shakespeare is bettering under +criticism, Wordsworth is suffering miscorrection; and for the good that +he has to give us we cannot quite dispense with the original +editions.</p> + +<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Titus Munson Coan.</span></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p class="p2"><a name="Footnote_B" +id="Footnote_B"></a> <a href="#FNanchor_B"><span class="label">[B]</span></a> +After the early poems just mentioned and the "Lyrical Ballads," 1798 to +1802, the chief editions to be consulted for the changes of text are the +complete editions of 1807, 1815, and 1836, and the original issues of +"The Excursion" (1814), of "The White Doe of Rylston" (1815), of "Peter +Bell," and of "The Waggoner" (1819). Unfortunately I have not been able +to get access to Mr. W. Johnston's useful collection of Wordsworth's +"Earlier Poems" (London, 1857): it would have lightened the task of +collecting the <i>variantes</i>, the more important of which, for the +period covered by the collection, are given in it. But, having gone in +nearly every case to the original texts, I need hardly say that I have +been careful to quote them accurately in the present article.</p> </div> + +<div class="footnote"> <p><a name="Footnote_C" id="Footnote_C"></a> <a +href="#FNanchor_C"> <span class="label">[C]</span></a>"Prose Works," +III., 302.</p> </div> + +<div class="footnote"> <p><a name="Footnote_D" id="Footnote_D"></a> <a +href="#FNanchor_D"><span class="label">[D]</span></a>"The Dial," Vol. +III., p. 514.</p> </div> + +<div class="footnote"> <p><a name="Footnote_E" id="Footnote_E"></a> <a +href="#FNanchor_E"> <span class="label">[E]</span></a>"Prose Works," +III., 381.</p> </div> + +<div class="footnote"> <p><a name="Footnote_F" id="Footnote_F"></a> <a +href="#FNanchor_F"> <span class="label">[F]</span></a>"Edinburgh +Review," October, 1807.</p> </div> + +<div class="footnote"> <p><a name="Footnote_G" id="Footnote_G"></a> <a +href="#FNanchor_G"> <span class="label">[G]</span></a>I venture to note, +in passing, a small class of corrections in which the poet has cleared +his text from certain innocencies of expression that were liable to be +misread by persons on the alert for double meanings. The following are +among the Wordsworthian simplicities that have been amended in the later +editions; the reference is made to the octavos of 1815, which may be +compared with any of the editions since 1836:</p> + +<p>Vol. I., page 111, "The Brothers," passage beginning, "James, tired +perhaps."</p> + +<p>Vol. I., page 210, "Michael," passage beginning, "Old Michael, while +he was a babe in arms."</p> + +<p>Vol. I., page 223, "Laodamia," stanza beginning, "Be taught, O +faithful Consort."</p> </div> + +<hr /> + +<p class="p4"></p> + +<h4>PORTRAIT D'UNE JEUNE FEMME INCONNUE,</h4> + +<p class="center">GALERIE DE FLORENCE.</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <span class="i0">I saw a picture in a gallery:</span> + <span class="i0">Go where I will, it still abides with me.</span> + <span class="i0">The hair rich brown, one lovely golden tress</span> + <span class="i0">Strayed from the braid and touched the loveliness + </span> + <span class="i0">Of the fair neck, so smooth, so white, so young,</span> + <span class="i0">It shamed the pearls a prince's hand had strung.</span> + <span class="i0">The dress is white, with here and there a gleam</span> + <span class="i0">Of amber brilliant, sunlight on a stream!</span> + <span class="i0">And hanging on her arm, a scarf; the thing</span> + <span class="i0">About that glorious head and neck to fling,</span> + <span class="i0">Protecting from the night, scarlet and black and gold, + </span> + <span class="i0">And gems are woven in each gleaming fold.</span> + <span class="i0">The picture has that gracious air which tells</span> + <span class="i0">The hand that painted it was Raphael's.</span> + <span class="i0">They know she's beautiful, and know no more.</span> + <span class="i0">Thus questioned I, as many did before:</span> + <span class="i0">"Why art thou sad, thou delicate, proud face?</span> + <span class="i0">Thou art a Dame of bright and cheerful race,</span> + <span class="i0">Thy fortunes grand, thy home this Florence fair.</span> + <span class="i0">Does an unworthy heart thy palace share?</span> + <span class="i0">Or with a soft caprice dost turn from joy,</span> + <span class="i0">And play with sorrow as a costly toy?</span> + <span class="i0">Or has thy page forgotten, or done worse—</span> + <span class="i0">Failed he to find the fond expected verse</span> + <span class="i0">Thy lover promised thee? I know not why</span> + <span class="i0">I linger near thee, beautiful and sad,</span> + <span class="i0">Yet with such sorrow, who would have thee glad?"</span> + <span class="i0">(Is she not gifted with the anointed eye</span> + <span class="i0">That sees the trouble of the passer-by?)</span> + <span class="i0"><ins title="Transcriber's Note: No close quote in the + original.">"</ins>Is thine that great, that tender sympathy</span> + <span class="i0">That calls all heart-aches nearer unto thee?</span> + <span class="i0">Or a great soul with aspirations rife,</span> + <span class="i0">Feeling the insufficiency of this our life?</span> + <span class="i0">Thou hast attraction of a grander tone,</span> + <span class="i0">Some charm more subtle e'en than beauty's own!</span> + <span class="i0">"Though woman throws no greater lure than this,</span> + <span class="i0">The lip regretful which we fain would kiss,</span> + <span class="i0">The eye made softer by the unfallen tear,</span> + <span class="i0">And sunlight brighter for the shadow near.</span> + <span class="i0">Why do I ask? will woman ever tell</span> + <span class="i0">The secret of the charm that fits her well?"</span> + <span class="i0">She did not answer, sweet, mysterious Dame.</span> + <span class="i0">I left her sadly, locked in gilded frame.</span> +</div> + +<p class="quotsig">M. E. W. S.</p> + +<hr /> + +<h3 class="p4">MISS TINSEL.</h3> + +<h4>A GOLD-MINER'S LOVE STORY.—IN FIVE CHAPTERS.</h4> + +<h3 class="p4">CHAPTER I.</h3> + +<h4>A GOLD-DIGGING RECLUSE.</h4> + +<p class="p2">On a knoll, not far from a running stream, was pitched a +rough canvas tent. It was of the "wall" sort, and was pegged to the +ground with strong fastenings. Inside were a hammock, a coarse table, +two or three stools, and some boxes and barrels. There were likewise a +gridiron, a "spider," an iron kettle, some tin dishes and cups, and a +pair of candlesticks of the same material. Outside there was a trench +dug, by way of drainage, so that the floor within was kept hard and dry; +but the floor was of earth merely. There was not a flower, or a picture, +or the least attempt at ornament whatever within the tent. Hence the +interior looked bare, sordid, and forbidding. And yet, grim as it was, +the tent had been the solitary abode of its occupant for many months. In +the midst of gold, in quantity outstripping the wildest dreams of his +boyhood, this man had chosen to be a miser. In the midst of a society +whose reckless joviality and wild profusion were perhaps without +precedent, he had chosen to be a recluse. For this self indulgence he +had to pay a price. But he consoled himself, remembering that a price +has to be paid for everything.</p> + +<p>Chester Harding came to Bullion Flat about a year before. He had no +friends and no money. The former he could do without, he thought, but +the latter was indispensable. So he got work on the Flat, turning a +spade and plying a rocker for five dollars a day. Such work was then +better paid as a rule, but Harding, though diligent and strong, was not +used to toil, and hence was awkward and comparatively inefficient. He +improved with practice and strove doggedly on, never losing a day, +saving every penny, spending nothing for drink or good fellowship, +courting no man's smile, and indifferent to all men's frowns. He was +savagely bent on achieving independence, and in no long time, after a +fashion, he got it. Independence, in this sense, consisted in a share of +a paying claim, and in the whole of a "wall" tent. In the former he dug +and washed, morosely enough, with five or six partners; but he made up +for this enforced and distasteful social attrition by living in his tent +alone.</p> + +<p>Harding was a man getting toward middle life, strongly built, but not +tall, with a grave, handsome face and speech studiously reserved and +cold. He seemed to fear lest he might be thought educated, and, as if to +disarm such a suspicion, his few words were apt to be abrupt and homely. +When he first came to the Flat he had two leathern trunks, and these in +due time were bestowed in the tent on the knoll. One Sunday Harding +opened them. The first contained some respectable garments, such as +might belong to the ordinary wardrobe of a gentleman. There were white +shirts among the rest, and some pairs of kid gloves. Of all these +articles Harding made a pile in the rear of his tent and then +deliberately set them on fire. "I couldn't afford it before," he +muttered. "They might have bought a meal or two if need were; but +now——" To be rich enough to gratify a caprice was clearly +very agreeable to the man; for presently he brought out a number of +books—old favorites obviously—and treated them in the same +incendiary manner. The Shakespeare and the Milton, the Macaulay and the +Buckle spluttered and crackled reproachfully in the flames; yet their +destroyer never winced, but added to the holocaust heaps of letters, and +at last two or three miniatures saved for the fire as a final tid-bit, +and gazed with grim joy as the whole crumbled in the end to powdery +ashes. Chester Harding reserved nothing but one little volume, bound in +velvet with gilt clasps, and one faded old daguerreotype, which he +replaced in his trunk side by side, and then covered quickly so that +they should be out of sight. It seemed to be his wish to hide and to +forget every trace of his past life.</p> + +<p>That life had been a hard and bitter one. From his earliest childhood +Harding had been a victim of the weakness and cruelty of others. A +miserable home, made a hell by drink and contention, was at last broken +up in ruin, and the young man went forth into the world to meet coldness +and injustice at every turn. Suspicion and selfishness are among the +almost certain fruits of an experience like this, and the world is +naturally more ready to condemn such fruits than to find excuses for +them. When Harding found himself unpopular and distrusted he as +naturally shaped his conduct so as to justify its condemnation. +Surrounded from the beginning of his life by bad influences, and by +these almost exclusively, he found little to soften his harsh judgment +of men or to mitigate his resentment for their ill treatment. In time he +fell in with one who with greater strength and higher wisdom might +perhaps have led him up to nobler views and a loftier destiny. For he +loved her deeply and without reservation. But her charms of person found +no counterparts in her mind or heart, and Harding was cheated and +betrayed. To escape old thoughts and associations, and to mend if +possible broken fortunes, he sought the Land of Gold. He had heard that +men were more generous there than elsewhere, less cunning, tricky, and +censorious. Perhaps even he might find average acceptance among new +scenes and among a new people.</p> + +<p>But on the day he landed at San Francisco Harding was robbed by a +fellow traveller, whom he had befriended, of the last penny he had in +the world. The man had shared his stateroom on board the steamer, and +knew that he had a draft on the agent of the Rothschilds. When Harding +cashed his draft he took the proceeds, in gold coin, to his hotel. That +night he was visited by his shipmate, who contrived to steal the belt +containing this little fortune, and to escape with it to the mines. Next +morning Harding sought a near relative, an older man of known wealth, +his sole acquaintance on the Pacific coast.</p> + +<p>"I've come to you," he said, after receiving a somewhat icy greeting, +"to ask you to help me. A serious misfortune has overtaken me, +and——"</p> + +<p>"If it's money you want," interrupted the other brusquely, "I've got +none!"</p> + +<p>This was not the usual fashion of the pioneers. Happily most of them +were made of sweeter and kindlier stuff. But the fates had woven out +poor Harding's earlier fortune, and it was all destined to be of the +same harsh, pitiless web. He bowed his head when these words were said +to him, and with the kind of smile angels must most hate to see on the +faces of those so near and so little below them, he went forth in +silence. Next morning he pawned his watch and made his way up into the +mines.</p> + +<div class="center">* * * * *</div> + +<p>"He's cracked; that's what he is," decided Jack Storm. Since the +great find of gold at Bullion Flat there had been a great rush thither +from the immediate neighborhood, and among the rest quite a deputation +arrived from Boone's Bar. Jack was as great a dandy as ever, and still +wore his gaudy Mexican jacket, with its silver bell buttons, his +flapping trousers to match, and his gigantic and carefully nourished +moustache.</p> + +<p>"Cracked!" repeated Mr. Copperas suavely. "Not he. He takes too good +care of his money for that. No, boys, that ain't the trouble. He's been +'chasing the eagle' in times past; the bird has been too many for him, +and now he's playing to get even."</p> + +<p>"Stuff!" gurgled Judge Carboy, unwilling to part by expectoration +with even the smallest product of his favorite quid. "He's done sutthin' +he's ashamed of. No trifle like that, Cop. He's proberly committed a +murder out East. Bime by we'll hear all about it."</p> + +<p>Jack Storm shook his head. "He's worked side by side with me for nigh +a year, and he wouldn't hurt a fly. Besides, it is his turn next week to +go to 'Frisco for stores."</p> + +<p>"What's that to do with it?" queried Mr. Copperas.</p> + +<p>"A durned sight," returned the other. "Ain't they after these cusses +with a sharp stick who've got in hot water at home? And ain't goin' to +'Frisco for such chaps jes' like walkin' into the lion's mouth? Why, +there's honest miners—and them as ain't honest miners, +Cop—who'd a <i>leetle</i> rather not go down to the Bay jes' now, +even among the quiet folks over at Boone's Bar."</p> + +<p>Mr. Copperas coughed uneasily. "So Harding's going down, is he?" he +inquired. "Right off?"</p> + +<p>"Sartain. You'd better take a trip and keep him company."</p> + +<p>There was a murmur of amusement at this. Everybody at the "Bella +Union" knew that something had been in the air touching chirographic +exploits of Mr. Copperas a few years back at New Orleans, and before he +kept the faro bank at Boone's Bar.</p> + +<p>"For my part," put in Jim Blair, who liked to hear injustice done to +no man, "I s'pose there's reasons why a chap might want to live alone, +and yet mightn't a knifed anybody nor robbed 'em either."</p> + +<p>"That's so, Jim," affirmed Judge Carboy oracularly. "No doubt on't. +But when it's so we usually hear what them reasons is. Now, who knows +air a word on 'em in the case afore us? Anyhow, I hope he's +good—good as gold—only we've had our sheer of troubles in +the county, and it's well to look sharp."</p> + +<p>"When I was a little chap," proceeded Jim Blair with retrospective +deliberation, "I lived in a village on the further side o' the Ohio. +Most folks did their business on t'other bank, and went over generally +by the eight o'clock ferry in the mornin.' Now, there was two or three +that didn't; men whose work lay nigher home, or who went later. But the +crowd went over reg'lar at eight. Arter awhile they got awful sot agin +them who didn't go over at the same time. There weren't no hell's +delights you could think of them fellers didn't lay to the men who +didn't travel by the eight boat; and at last, damn me if they didn't +want to lynch 'em!"</p> + +<p>"Lynch 'em for not goin' in the eight boat!" cried the Judge, whose +respect for the majesty of the law always asserted itself, as was meet, +on hearing any tale of its infringement.</p> + +<p>Jim Blair nodded. "Not so much, I reckon, for not goin' in the eight +boat as for not doin' what other folks did. However, them who ever try +to trouble Ches Harding'll have a rough time, I guess."</p> + +<p>"You think he's sech a game fighter?" inquired Jack Storm with lively +interest.</p> + +<p>"That may be too. But what I meant was, there's them on the Flat who +believe in Ches for all his lonesome ways, and won't see him put upon. +For my part I reckon he's more sinned against than sinnin'."</p> + +<p>"I guess you're half right, Jim," admitted Judge Carboy with +diplomatic concession; "more'n half right. But mark my words"—and +the Judge's voice rose to the orotund swell which denoted his purpose to +be more than commonly impressive—"thar'll be the devil's own time +on the Flat some day, and that air duck'll be king pin and starter of +it. I never know'd no such silent, sulky cuss as that moonin' round but +that he kicked up pettikiler h— in the long run."</p> + +<p>It will be seen from this that there were differences of opinion +respecting Chester Harding at Bullion Flat, and it cannot be denied that +there was some reason for it.</p> + +<p class="p2"></p> + +<hr class="c10" /> + +<p class="p4"></p> + +<h3>CHAPTER II.</h3> + +<h4>MISS TINSEL.</h4> + +<p class="p2">It was in a magnificent theatre that Chester Harding first +saw her—a theatre grand in size and tasteful in decoration. It had +only lately been opened, and was one of the lions of the Golden City. +Harding went there to while away an idle hour, and in order, perhaps, +that he might see all there was to be seen before leaving San Francisco. +His visit was one of merest chance, and no trifle had seemed lighter in +all his California life than his straying that night into the +Cosmopolitan Theatre.</p> + +<p>And yet perhaps it was the turning-point in his existence. Others who +were there from Bullion Flat said afterward that from that night Harding +was transfigured. A blaze of chandeliers, with golden fretwork skirting +the galleries and rich dark velvet framing the boxes, could hardly +surprise him. Nor was there much to astonish—whatever there might +be to admire—in the rows of handsomely dressed women who gave +brilliancy to the audience. Neither could the drama itself, which the +manager was pleased to style "a grand legendary fairy spectacle," move +Harding seriously from his equilibrium. All these splendors, together +with the resonant orchestra, the dazzling scenery, rich in Dutch metal +and gold foil, the sanguinary and crested Baron, the villain of the +play, the iridescent youth, its hero, the demons, who went through +traps, vampire and other—one Blood-Red Demon with a long nose +being especially conspicuous—the fairies, who brought order out of +chaos—of whom the "Queen of the Fairy Bower" was the large-limbed +and voluptuous principal—the "Amazonian Phalanx," who went through +unheard-of manœuvres with massive tin battle axes and +spears—all these failed, it must be owned, to startle Mr. Harding +from his propriety. He had seen such things, or things very like them, +before. And yet he was taken off his feet, to use the metaphor, and +swept away captive by a very torrent of emotion excited by Miss +Tinsel.</p> + +<p>She was only a <i>coryphée</i>; that is, she was but one among the +minor subordinates of the ballet. Her advent was accomplished as one of +the "Sprites of the Silver Shower." She had to come chassezing down the +stage, and she never raised her eyelids—before most demurely cast +down—until she was close upon the footlights. But when those +eyelids <i>did</i> go up it was—well, as Judge Carboy afterward +used to say, it was just like sunrise over the mountains at Boone's Bar! +A girl with a mass of bright hair, almost red it looked by daylight, and +large gray eyes that looked as black as soot by the gas, but took on +more tender hues by day—a girl with a figure that was simply +perfection, and yet one who with all her archness seemed to have no +vanity. She had many dainty white skirts, one above another like an +artichoke, of fluffy and diaphanous texture, and although these, it +cannot be denied, were perilously short, somehow Miss Tinsel did not +look in the least immodest.</p> + +<p>All the men from Bullion Flat knew it <i>was</i> Miss Tinsel, since +the "Queen of the Fairy Bower" addressed this charming figure more than +once as "Zephyrind," and a reference to the play-bill thereupon at once +established her identity.</p> + +<p>What strange magnetism there was about this girl Harding, and indeed +all who looked at her, found it hard to define. Perhaps, apart from her +lovely eyes and hair and her exquisite figure, it was because she always +seemed to be drawing away that she proved so fascinating. Even when she +advanced straight toward you she seemed for ever to retreat. By what +subtle and skilful instinct of coquetry Miss Tinsel was enabled to +convey this impression cannot here be explained. That she did convey it +was universally admitted. It appeared, however, on inquiry, that her +dramatic powers were of the slightest. Her beauty and charm were such +that the manager would gladly have put her forward could he have seen +his way to do so. But her success had been so moderate, when the +experiment was tried, in one or two of the "walking ladies" of farces, +that it was thought wisest to let her be seen as much and heard as +little as possible.</p> + +<p>When Harding last saw her that night she was going up to Paradise on +one foot, the other pointing vaguely at nothing behind, the intoxicating +eyes turned up with a charming simulation of pious joy, and the cherry +lips curled into a smile that showed plenty of pearls below. She +vanished from his gaze in a glory of red fire, amid the blare of gongs +and trumpets, while the "Blood-Red Demon" went down to the bad place +under the stage through a trap, and the "Queen of the Fairy Bower," with +felicitous compensation, ascended to the heaven of the flies.</p> + +<p>After this tremendous catastrophe Harding went to his hotel and +reflected.</p> + +<p>That a Timon like himself—a misogynist indeed of the first +water—should fall in love at first sight with a ballet girl +certainly furnished matter for reflection. But reflection did not +prevent Timon from seeking an interview with his unconscious enslaver +the next day. Even cold and soured natures may become under some +incentives enthusiastic and ingenious.</p> + +<p>Harding found out where Miss Tinsel lived, learned that she usually +came from rehearsal at about two, called consequently at three, and +coolly sent in his name, telling the servant that the young lady would +know who he was. As he hoped, the device got him admittance. The girl +supposed he was some one from the theatre whose name she had not caught +or had forgotten.</p> + +<p>It was a very plain and humble room, almost us bare and forbidding +perhaps as the inside of Harding's tent on the knoll, and yet how +glorified was the place with the purple atmosphere of romance!</p> + +<p>Miss Tinsel was as simply equipped as her room: a gown of dark stuff +with a bit of color at the throat, and that was all. Harding saw that +she was not quite so perfect physically as he had thought, and this, +strange as it may seem, instantly increased his passion for her. Nothing +could make her figure other than beautiful, or impair the lustre of her +eyes; but the fair creature had a little range of freckles across her +delicate nose and cheeks, and her hair by day appeared, as has been said +before, nearly red. Her natural smile, on the other hand, as +distinguished from her stage smile, which was merely intoxicating, was +almost heavenly; and it was not made less so by an occasional look that +was grave almost to sadness.</p> + +<p>"Sit down." He was standing stock still and silent in the middle of +the room. "You come from the theatre, don't you?"</p> + +<p>It was a sweet voice—sweet and low—too low, in truth, +which was one of the reasons of its failure in the drama—one of +those thrilling contralto voices, most magnetic and charming when heard +by one alone, or close by, but which lost their magnetism and charm if +strained to fill the ears of a crowd.</p> + +<p>"No—yes—that is, I was there last night. I saw you +there," he replies stupidly.</p> + +<p>"Last night? Oh, yes. But why do you want to see me to-day?"</p> + +<p>This is a hard question to answer; so he tries evasion.</p> + +<p>"Did you get a bouquet?"</p> + +<p>"A perfect love—a beauty—it was thrown at my feet; but I +gave it to her of course."</p> + +<p>"Gave it to <i>her</i>?"</p> + +<p>"Miss De Montague—don't you know—the 'Queen of the Fairy +Bower?' She gets all the bouquets."</p> + +<p>"Oh, she does, does she?"</p> + +<p>"Certainly. She is the principal, you know. Her engagement calls for +all the bouquets."</p> + +<p>"Even when they are plainly intended for somebody else?"</p> + +<p>"Ah, but they oughtn't to be intended for somebody else. If any one +is so silly as to think somebody else ought to have a bouquet, any one +has to be punished. Then they forfeit him."</p> + +<p>"Forfeit him?"</p> + +<p>"Or his flowers. They always forfeit you in theatres—if you're +late at rehearsal, you know, or if you keep the stage waiting. But then +you needn't mind. Miss De Montague is a dear, good soul. She took the +bouquet for the look of the thing, you know; that's business; but she +gave me half the flowers when we got home."</p> + +<p>"Does she live here then?"</p> + +<p>"Why, to be sure. You know, we always go to the theatre together. +Only for her I should be quite alone."</p> + +<p>"And do you like this kind of thing?" he asks clumsily.</p> + +<p>She bursts into a merry laugh. "Like it? Why, I get my living by it. +We all have to live, you know, and I've no one to look out for me but +myself, and——"</p> + +<p>She pauses suddenly, having caught his eye fixed upon her with a gaze +of passionate admiration. This first calls up the look of gravity we +have spoken of, and then brings the color sharply to her face. It also +reminds her of the somewhat peculiar character of the interview. The +instant after she resumes, as if continuing her sentence, "Did you come +here to ask me that?"</p> + +<p>"No," he replies bluntly. "I never thought of the question until the +moment before I asked it."</p> + +<p>"Please tell me, then," she proceeds, with gathering surprise, "what +<i>did</i> you come for?"</p> + +<p>He hesitates a moment, moved by the superstition or the honest +feeling that he must tell her no word of untruth, and then quietly +answers:</p> + +<p>"I am not sure that I know."</p> + +<p>"Not sure that you know?"</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>"Perhaps, then, you'll go away, and when you <i>are</i> +sure——"</p> + +<p>"Come back again?" hazards he.</p> + +<p>"I didn't say that. You look and talk like a gentleman, and if, as I +hope, you are one, you will know that I can't see strangers—people +who have no business with me—and so you must excuse me." She has +risen and moves with some dignity toward the door.</p> + +<p>"One moment," he interposes. "Forgive me; you know for your part that +it is impossible I should wish to offend——"</p> + +<p>"How should I? You come here to me a stranger, and refuse to say what +for."</p> + +<p>"No. I did not refuse. I only said I was not sure that I knew why I +came."</p> + +<p>"Then you must be crazy!" she blurts out impulsively.</p> + +<p>"Perhaps I am. I begin to think so."</p> + +<p>"Then I wish you would go away!" she goes on with apprehension. "I'll +tell you what, Mr. Bellario is here, and he's—oh, terribly +strong!"</p> + +<p>"Mr. Bellario?" he echoes.</p> + +<p>"Yes. The 'Blood-Red Demon,' you know. Didn't you see him go through +the traps?"</p> + +<p>Harding laughs, very much amused. "And you mean to threaten me with +the 'Blood-Red Demon,' do you?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, no," she responds gently, but again edging toward the +door—"not threaten; but"—in a very conciliatory +tone—"if you won't say what you come for and won't go +away——"</p> + +<p>"But I will," he says gravely.</p> + +<p>"Will which?"</p> + +<p>"Will both. I will say what I came for and then I will go away."</p> + +<p>"I don't mean to be rude, you know," she puts in, softening.</p> + +<p>"Nor I. Now I will tell you. I came because I could not possibly stay +away—because you drew me toward you with an irresistible +force——"</p> + +<p>"I'm sure I didn't!" she protests indignantly.</p> + +<p>"Unconsciously, of course. You may think me foolish—wild if you +please. I can't help that. You will know better in time. I come to you +saying not a wrong word, thinking not a wrong thought. There is nothing +against me. At home I was a gentleman. I ask leave to visit you, +respectfully as a friend, nothing more."</p> + +<p>"But why?" she asks, bewildered.</p> + +<p>"Because I admire you greatly, inexpressibly, and I must tell you +so." She turns scarlet now. "But I shall never tell you this—not +again—or anything else in words you do not choose to hear. All I +ask is the leave now and then to see and to speak with you."</p> + +<p>This was very embarrassing. Had he said he loved her, and at first +sight, she would have turned him away. She would have distrusted both +his sincerity and his motives. But he did not say this. On the contrary, +he offered in explicit terms, it would seem, not to say it. She +therefore naturally took refuge in generalities.</p> + +<p>"But what you ask won't be possible. What would people say? This is a +very bad, a scandalous country, I mean. What would Miss De Montague +think, or Mr. Bellario?"</p> + +<p>"What people will say or think hardly needs to be considered," said +Harding steadily, "since in a week I shall have gone to my home in the +mines. You won't be troubled with me long—twice more perhaps. Only +once if you prefer it. All shall be exactly as you wish it. Is not that +fair?"</p> + +<p>Miss Tinsel was saved the present necessity for replying to a +question or coping with a situation both of which she found extremely +perplexing, since at this juncture the door opened and admitted the +"Queen of the Fairy Bower" and the "Blood-Red Demon," who had apparently +been out for a morning walk. To Harding's surprise, the "Queen" was a +motherly looking woman of forty-five and the "Demon" a weak-eyed young +man, with a pasty white face, and some fifteen years younger. Both were +much overdressed, and both stared vigorously at Harding—the +"Queen" with an air intended to represent fashionable raillery, the +"Demon" with haughty surprise. But the visitor avoided explanations that +might have been embarrassing by bowing low to the company and passing +from the room.</p> + +<p class="p2"></p> + +<hr class="c10" /> + +<p class="p4"></p> + +<h3>CHAPTER III.</h3> + +<h4>THE CUP AND THE LIP.</h4> + +<p class="p2">Her real name was Jane Green. But Jane Green would never +do for the play-bill; so the manager, exercising his peculiar and +traditional prerogative, had rechristened the young lady for the +histrionic world, and she appeared as "Aurora Tinsel." A poor, almost +friendless girl, she had left the Atlantic States with an aunt who had +been the wife of the "property man" in the theatre. Soon after the aunt +died, and Jane had gladly accepted the offer of Miss De Montague to live +with her, and, by helping that lady with her dresses, to render an +equivalent for her society and protection.</p> + +<p>Harding was a wise man in his generation, foolish as in some respects +he may appear. We offer no explanation of his swift and unreasoning +infatuation, because it is just such men who do just such rash and +impulsive things. But he was sagacious enough to know that a man who +really wants a woman is less likely to get her by being too quick than +even by being too slow. Women who are interested always maintain the +contrary; but this is because they want to bag their game instantly, +whether they mean to throw it away afterward or not. The sex are not +apt, however, to err by over-rating the value of what they get too +easily, and this Harding was philosopher enough to know.</p> + +<p>Hence, while he again sought Miss Tinsel twice before his departure, +and while his admiration, although respectful, was not concealed, he did +not go so far as to ask the girl to become his wife. It appeared that +after the run of the current spectacle at the theatre a "great +tragedian" was to play an engagement there, and the opportunity was to +be taken for the ballet and pantomime troupe to make a tour of the +mines. Miss De Montague was to go as a chief attraction, and Miss Tinsel +was to go also, and among the places they were to visit was Bullion +Flat.</p> + +<p>These plans left open a space of three months, during which Harding +could think of what he was at, and Miss Tinsel could think of what he +meant, and several other persons who were interested could make up their +minds what to do.</p> + +<p>The first step taken by Harding on his return was highly +confirmatory, in the judgment of the Flat, of the opinion expressed by +Jack Storm some time before. A contract was made with a builder, and +close by the tent on the knoll there speedily arose a cottage of fair +proportions, which was evidently meant to supersede the humbler +structure which for a year had formed Harding's home. No one doubted his +ability prudently to incur such an outlay. He had been saving to +parsimony, and he had been prosperous. But why, when a tent had so long +sufficed to him, and when he so disliked to part with money, he should +go to so needless an expense, was so obscure that to accept Jack Storm's +solution impugning Harding's sanity was the easiest and consequently the +most popular way of solving the enigma.</p> + +<p>The cottage was built notwithstanding, and it was soon the subject of +general remark that Harding was becoming more genial and "sociable" than +before. He astonished Judge Carboy and Jim Blair by asking them to drink +one night at the "Bella Union." He smiled affably and passed the time of +day with Jack Storm and his other companions when they met to begin work +on the claim for the day. He ordered champagne for the crowd on the +evening when a green tree was lashed to the rooftree of his cottage on +the knoll; and at last he raised wonder and surprise to their perihelion +by actually giving a housewarming.</p> + +<p>"I know'd it all along," affirmed Judge Carboy that night to his +familiars. They were taking a cocktail at the "Bella Union" by way of +preface to "bucking" against Mr. Copperas's bank—"I know'd it all +along. He's got a wife out East, and she's a comin' out to jine him in +the new house."</p> + +<p>"Is that the 'suthin' you talked of that he was ashamed of, Judge?" +laughed Jim Blair. "It looks like it, for sartin he never said nothin' +about her."</p> + +<p>"A man may git married," retorted the Judge with judicial acumen, +"and yit do suthin' else to be ashamed of, mayn't he? There's been +murderers and horse thieves stretched afore now who had wives, hain't +there? And the last chap the boys hung to a flume up to Redwood, he had +three wives, didn't he? And they all come to the funeral." And with this +triumphant vindication of his position the Judge sternly deposited half +a paper of fine-cut in his mouth and started for the luxurious apartment +of Mr. Copperas.</p> + +<p>Next morning Bullion Flat was in a flurry of excitement and +pleasurable anticipation. The "Grand Cosmopolitan Burlesque, Ballet, and +Spectacle Troupe" had arrived, and were to play in the theatre attached +to the "Bella Union." It was not, however, until the succeeding +afternoon that Chester Harding called upon Miss Tinsel at the same +hotel.</p> + +<p>It was a good sign that that young lady crimsoned at the first sight +of him; what she first said was another:</p> + +<p>"You have not been in a hurry," she pouted, "to come and see me."</p> + +<p>"I supposed you would be very busy," said he smiling, and devouring +her with his eyes. "Were you so anxious to have me come?"</p> + +<p>"Anxious?" she repeated; and then added, illogically, "I supposed you +would please yourself."</p> + +<p>He nodded. "And how do you like Bullion Flat?"</p> + +<p>"I think it ever so pretty—only I don't like the earth all torn +up, and such ugly holes and scars."</p> + +<p>"We have to get at the gold, you know," he explained, "even at such a +cost. But the hilltops, anyhow, are spared."</p> + +<p>She looked through a window and pointed at the most picturesque +eminence in the neighborhood—the knoll. "That is your house?" she +observed shyly.</p> + +<p>"Yes. Do you like it?"</p> + +<p>"I think it lovely—situation and all."</p> + +<p>"And how did you know it was mine?"</p> + +<p>"Oh," she said, laughing, "we show-folks see a great many +people—besides being seen by them—and I've heard a lot about +you."</p> + +<p>Harding's face darkened a little. "Then you've heard that I'm not +much liked?"</p> + +<p>"I've heard that some say so. But what of that? Miss De Montague says +she wouldn't give a fig for a man everybody speaks well of—and she +quoted something from a comedy—the 'School for Scandal.'"</p> + +<p>"Will you tell me what people say?" he inquired curiously.</p> + +<p>"Oh, that you are gloomy, reserved, and live all alone, and that you +are—are not extravagant, and that you haven't had a very happy +life."</p> + +<p>"That last at least, if true, is a misfortune rather than a +fault."</p> + +<p>"It's all misfortune, ain't it?" said the girl sagely. "People don't +make themselves. There's Mr. Bellario now. He thinks nature really meant +him for a great warrior—somebody like Napoleon, you know. And +instead of that he's—well, he calls himself a professional +gentleman, but the boys call him a tumbler. I suppose it would be much +grander to kill people than to jump through 'vampire traps'; but you see +he didn't get his choice—any more than I did."</p> + +<p>"Then you didn't want to go on the stage?"</p> + +<p>"No, indeed. It was just for bread. Aunty was a 'second old +woman'—and they got me in for 'utility,' as they call it. There +was no one to care for me, and I was glad to earn an honest living; but +like it! Never!"</p> + +<p>"You say there was no one to care for you?" said Harding gently. "Had +you no friends—no parents?"</p> + +<p>Jane reddened painfully, and the sad look came quickly into her face. +"My mother is dead, you see," she replied, with hesitancy, +"and—and—I'd rather not speak of this any more, please."</p> + +<p>"Surely," he exclaimed hastily, "I've no right to catechize you. Pray +forgive my asking at all. I ought to have been more careful. I know what +trouble is, and how to feel for those who suffer."</p> + +<p>She looked at him earnestly. "You have suffered yourself, +then—they were right when they said yours had not been a happy +life?"</p> + +<p>"I have no right to whine—but happy—no, far from it."</p> + +<p>Jane's lovely face took on its softest and tenderest expression.</p> + +<p>"They said that lately you have been happier—gayer than ever +before—and that people liked you—oh, ever so much better +than they used to. Why is it that people like those the best who seem to +need help and sympathy the least?"</p> + +<p>Jane leaned from the window as she spoke and toyed with some running +vine that clambered to the casement. The grace and beauty of her figure +were made conspicuous by the movement, and Harding paused a moment +before he replied:</p> + +<p>"People like to be cheerful, I suppose, and people like others to be +like themselves, I know. It is true that I have been unhappy—that +my life has been morose and solitary. How much this has been my own +fault and how much that of others, need not be said. But it is also true +that of late I have been far happier. Shall I tell you why?"</p> + +<p>His voice was deep and earnest, and something in his eyes made the +girl crimson again, and turn her own to the distant hills.</p> + +<p>"If you please," she faltered, in her low, musical contralto.</p> + +<p>"Shall I tell you too why I have built that cottage you are looking +at?" he went on with increasing earnestness. "It is because it has been +my hope, my prayer, that this sad, lonely life of mine was nearly over. +It is because I have believed that after much pain, and doubt, and +bitterness my trust in men might be brought back through my love for a +woman. The cottage—it is for you, Jane. I love you, Jane. Do you +hear me? From the moment I saw you, I loved you. I resolved to ask you +to marry me. Jane, will you do so?"</p> + +<p>While he spoke the color had been fading steadily from her face, and +when he stopped the girl was ashy pale. He looked at her anxiously and +impatiently.</p> + +<p>"I—I—am—so sorry," she muttered at last, as if each +word were a separate pain.</p> + +<p>"Sorry? God! Why?" Then with swift suspicion, "Jane, do you care +for—are you engaged to some one?"</p> + +<p>She shook her head mournfully.</p> + +<p>"Do you see that sun going down over the hills?" She turned her +beautiful eyes full upon Harding as she spoke, with a look of ineffable +tenderness and sorrow. "Well, you must let what you have said go down +with that sun, and never think of it—never speak of it again."</p> + +<p>It was Harding's turn to blanch now, and the blood retreated from his +swarthy cheeks until they looked almost ghastly.</p> + +<p>"Why?" and his voice came involuntarily, almost in a whisper.</p> + +<p>"Do not ask me—have pity—do not ask me."</p> + +<p>"I must ask you," he cried impetuously, "but yet I need not perhaps. +You care for no one else? Then it must be that you do not, you cannot, +care for me. Is that it, Jane?"</p> + +<p>"That is not it."</p> + +<p>"Not it!" he cried joyfully. "Then you <i>do</i> care for me a +little—just a little, Jane?—a little which is to grow into a +great deal by and by! Oh, child, child, think how wretched I have been +all these years! Think how I have waited and waited. I lived for twelve +long months, Jane, alone, without a soul, without even a dog, in a tent +on that knoll; and so hungry, Jane—so hungry for sympathy, for +love. It comes to me at last, dear Jane, what I have longed for and +begged for so long. Don't, don't—as you hope for mercy, don't take +it away again!"</p> + +<p>"You are good," she said softly, "whatever they may say. It is good +and noble of you. Why should I tell you lies? I do like you very much, +for all," looking down with a faint blush, "we have met and known each +other so little. But all the same, it cannot be."</p> + +<p>"Cannot again," he cried impatiently. "Once more, I ask you, will you +tell me why not?"</p> + +<p>She looked at him half frightened, for there was something of mastery +in his tone; then, standing erect, and with a positiveness as strong as +his own, she answered, "Because I should disgrace you."</p> + +<p>"Because you are on the stage!" he exclaimed disdainfully. "Is that +it?"</p> + +<p>"That is something," returned Jane humbly, "but perhaps not much. I +am hardly important enough to be worth even that sort of reproach. And +besides the people of California are too liberal to apply it. I know I +am only a ballet dancer"—and the poor girl tried to smile +here—"and a pretty bad one at that. But I work hard for an honest +living, and no one can say I have ever disgraced myself."</p> + +<p>"Then how can you disgrace me?"</p> + +<p>"I have begged you not to ask me."</p> + +<p>"I must!" cried Harding passionately; "and I have the right to do so. +Would you have me take your cool 'no' when you care for no one else and +do care for me, and to go my way satisfied? I can't—I won't!"</p> + +<p>"You will be sorry," said Jane pitifully.</p> + +<p>"Let me be. Anything rather than the doubt. Give me the truth." </p> + +<p>"Well then." She turned her back now: and looked from the window with +her grave, sad face, and spoke in a dull, measured way, like the +swinging of a pendulum. "I am a convict's daughter. My father is in the +State prison of New York at Auburn."</p> + +<p>"For what crime?"</p> + +<p>"Murder. It was in the first degree. The Governor commuted it to +imprisonment for life. There were extenuating circumstances. I went down +on my knees and prayed that he might be saved from the gallows."</p> + +<p>"And his victim?"</p> + +<p>"Was his wife—my mother."</p> + +<p class="p2"></p> + +<hr class="c10" /> + +<p class="p4"></p> + +<h3>CHAPTER IV.</h3> + +<h4>A MYSTERY AND A PARTING.</h4> + +<p class="p2">The troupe of which Miss De Montague and Mr. Bellario were +prime spirits made a profound impression at Bullion Flat; so profound, +in truth, that before their three nights were over a fresh engagement +was made for their return a fortnight later. It was agreed that at that +time, and on their return from other points, they should appear for an +additional three nights, and thus afford their admirers opportunities +for which the first essay had been insufficient. This arrangement was +highly agreeable to Miss De Montague and Mr. Bellario for reasons +largely connected, respectively, with the excellent cuisine and bar of +the Bella Union. "Why, my dear," observed the lady, "when I fust come up +to do the 'legitimate,' fifteen months ago, love nor money could buy a +morsel of supper after the play. We had to do with a pot of ginger, and +dig it out with the Macbeth daggers, and wash it down with bad +beer."</p> + +<p>The arrangement was also satisfactory to Miss Tinsel. It seemed well +to her that she should be absent for a time; and yet she could not deny +a feeling of joy over the thought of returning. Her lover had been +greatly shocked by the dismal tale she had recited; but, to the credit +of his manliness, he had refused to accept the facts as conclusive +arguments against his suit. "Was it her fault," argued he, "that her +father was a scoundrel?" Why should stigma or disability of any sort +attach to her for that which she had no hand in, and had been powerless +to prevent? On the contrary, should not the world, or any part of it +that might come in contact with her, treat a helpless and innocent girl +with even greater tenderness and commiseration because of the undeserved +and terrible misfortune that had befallen her?</p> + +<p>Jane had resolved that she ought not to be moved by such arguments, +and yet she could not help liking to hear them. It was in the end agreed +between them—by Harding's earnest entreaties—that she should +think the matter over, and that her final decision should be withheld +until the return of the troupe to perform its second engagement. Jane +had talked with Miss De Montague, who, in spite of some foibles, was a +kind-hearted and right-minded woman, and Miss De Montague had strongly +urged that Jane's sensitiveness was overstrained. If Mr. Harding had +been told all the truth without reserve and he still wished to make Jane +his wife, and Jane wished to marry him, that was enough. To stand about +and moon over it, and wonder or care what people would say, was all +fiddle-faddle, and all sensible people would call it so. Besides, +California was different from other places. It was the custom there to +give everybody a chance, and value them for what they did and what they +were <i>now</i>—and not for what other people, or even they +themselves, had done before. It is right to admit that the amiable +lady's passion for Mr. Bellario—whose similar feeling for Miss +Tinsel was more than suspected—had something to do with inspiring +all these sage suggestions; but the suggestions were not deprived of +good sense by that.</p> + +<p>During the fortnight that passed between Jane's departure and her +return the cottage that Harding designed for her future home fast +approached completion. Meanwhile its owner's claim was doing better, and +his coffers were consequently fuller than ever before. He resolved that, +come what might, Jane should become his wife; and it was in this frame +of mind that Harding walked out by the riverside on the night the troupe +returned. As before, he resolved not to hurry in his suit, and therefore +determined to omit calling until the following day.</p> + +<p>The night was clear, the stars shining brightly, and the stream ran +gurgling forward with a pleasant sound. Suddenly, as Harding strolled +musing along the bank, some one touched him on the shoulder from behind; +and turning, he beheld the "Blood-Red Demon," Mr. Bellario. That +gentleman wore a long cloak, tossed across his breast and left shoulder, +and a slouched sombrero; and his white, pasty face wore a look of +inscrutable mystery.</p> + +<p>"Hist!" he enjoined in a stage whisper; "all is discovered!" Then he +drew back, with finger on lip, as if to watch the effect of his +revelation.</p> + +<p>"What's the matter?" said Harding. "What do you mean?"</p> + +<p>"Mean! Ha! ha!" and the "Demon" laughed witheringly. "He asks me what +I mean! Mark me," proceeded he, with a sudden transition, "I know your +secret!"</p> + +<p>"Oh, you do, do you? Which one do you mean?" questioned Harding +scornfully.</p> + +<p>"I have neither time nor heart to trifle," said the "Demon," waving +his arm with an air of ineffable majesty. "I shall be brief and to the +point."</p> + +<p>"You'll very much oblige me."</p> + +<p>"Enough. What prompts me to this midnight deed, 'twere bootless now +to ask, and idle to reveal. Therefore to my tale. You are in love with +Aurora—with Miss Tinsel?"</p> + +<p>"By what right——"</p> + +<p>"Spare your reproaches. I am in love with her too!"</p> + +<p>"You?"</p> + +<p>"Is that so strange? Long ere you crossed our path I knew and loved +her. But this is neither here nor there."</p> + +<p>"I should think not."</p> + +<p>"Professionally," continued the "Demon," with great dignity, "she is, +of course, my inferior. Socially—well, you know, I think the +damning family secret——"</p> + +<p>"Whatever that may be, it is no sin of hers. I think you may wisely +leave it a secret—so far, that is, as to omit crying it on the +housetops."</p> + +<p>"Save to yourself and Miss De Montague, no hint of the tragedy has +passed my lips. But to the business between us——"</p> + +<p>"My good sir," said Harding, with irritation, "I know of none, so +far. If you have anything to say to me, I'll listen. If not, I'll pass +on."</p> + +<p>"Ha! ha! ha!" laughed the "Demon" with bitter mockery. "I come to +serve ye, and ye would spurn me from yer path! Poor, poor humanity! Why, +why should I laugh when I should rather weep?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know, I'm sure," answered Harding simply, "and I don't want +to be uncivil. But it certainly isn't asking too much to want to know +what you mean."</p> + +<p>"No," responded the "Demon," with melodious sadness—"not too +much. Though every word be torture, yet I will e'en go through the +ordeal. Sir, what I have to say—and it cuts me to the heart to say +it—is that this lady—this young girl—this Aurora +Tinsel—is worthy of neither of us."</p> + +<p>"What!"</p> + +<p>"She is unworthy—lost—and capable of the worst +deception!"</p> + +<p>"That's false!"</p> + +<p>"How, sir?"</p> + +<p>"That's false. And you or any one else who says it is a liar!"</p> + +<p>The "Demon" drew suddenly back, clapped his hand to an imaginary +sword hung at his left side—and then thought better of it.</p> + +<p>"Pshaw!" he exclaimed lightly, but keeping at a wary distance from +Harding's reach. "Why should I yield to rage? My prowess is well +known—and, after all, this worthy gentleman speaks in ignorance. +Sir," he added, changing his tone with elaborate and chivalrous grace, +"I speak of what I know, and speak only with the best of motives. But it +is due to you that I offer to make good my words. I can absolutely prove +that what I have said is true."</p> + +<p>"Prove it, how?"</p> + +<p>"By enabling you to witness for yourself that which justifies what I +say."</p> + +<p>"And you can do this?"</p> + +<p>"Almost to a certainty, and probably this very night."</p> + +<p>Harding hesitated. To take the course proposed seemed like doubt, and +doubt was unworthy. To refuse to take that course might subject Jane to +calumny, which he might on the other hand nip in the bud. Presently he +spoke:</p> + +<p>"What do you propose?"</p> + +<p>"That you go with me at once, and judge for yourself. We may fail +tonight, but if so, our success to-morrow will be all but +certainty."</p> + +<p>The man's air of conviction was impressive, and Harding, fearful, yet +hoping that he might unearth some strange mistake or deception, agreed +to the plan proposed. It was settled that the two should meet an hour +later at the "Bella Union," and they parted now with that understanding. +Bellario, however, took occasion before leaving his companion to make +his insinuations so far specific as to tell him that Miss Tinsel had +made the acquaintance of a certain handsome, dark-eyed man, who had +followed the troupe ever since it had last been at Bullion Flat; that +this man evidently admired the girl very much, and that she had +encouraged his advances in the most unmistakable manner; that she had +gone so far as to receive her admirer at her room in the hotel, and that +at so late an hour as to excite the censure of the not over-prudish Miss +De Montague; and that, in fine, Miss Tinsel's hitherto spotless name had +been so tarnished by the events of the last fortnight as to make it +certain none would ever again think her the pure girl she had always +hitherto been held to be.</p> + +<p>With the blood tingling through every vein, with nerves at extreme +tension, and a heart full of bitterness, Chester Harding passed away. +Something told him that the tale, black and dismal as it was, was +likewise true. When Jane told him the story of her father's crime and +its punishment, Harding felt as if there had fallen between him and his +prospect of happiness a veil that made it look doubtful and unreal. The +girl's firmness in telling him the truth, and the assertion of her +opinion as to the proper bearing and consequence of that truth on her +relations with Harding, had assuredly deeply impressed and comforted +him. It was something to face, after all, and even in California, this +wedding the child of a murderer and felon. Yet her own perfect goodness +was the justification and would be the reward of such an act. But when +Jane's goodness itself was in question it was no wonder that Harding's +heart sank within him. He was no coward, but his experience had taught +him distrust; and he waited for the stipulated hour to pass in an agony +of doubt and pain.</p> + +<p>The "Bella Union" had two long wings, perhaps thirty feet apart, +running at right angles with its faēade toward the rear. In the second +story of one wing there were sleeping rooms. Both stories of the +opposite wing were occupied by the theatre. The latter was quite dark, +and hither Bellario conducted Harding after they had met in the saloon +below.</p> + +<p>"Be silent," whispered the "Demon," when they met—"be silent +and follow."</p> + +<p>Up two winding staircases, then through a long passage, and they +stood in a gallery over the stage and directly facing the other +wing.</p> + +<p>"Look!" said the "Demon"; "he's there now!" He still whispered, for +the night was hot and windows were everywhere open. Through one of these +directly opposite Harding distinctly saw Miss Tinsel. She was talking +earnestly with some one not in sight. Harding gazed breathlessly and +listened. Presently a second figure came between the window and the +light within. It was that of a tall, handsome man with dark eyes. He +replied to the girl with earnestness equal to her own, but in tones as +carefully suppressed. As the eyes of the observers got used to the +situation, they descried a bed on the further side of the room. On this +Miss Tinsel, after a time, sat down. The man followed and seated himself +by her side. A moment or two more, and he took both her hands and +clasped them in his own. They still talked, obviously with deep feeling, +and at last Miss Tinsel threw her arms around her companion's neck and +kissed him.</p> + +<p>"Enough," hoarsely exclaimed Harding. "Enough—and more than +enough!"</p> + +<p>"You'll wait no longer?" asked the other.</p> + +<p>"Not an instant. Can't you conceive, man—you who profess +yourself to have cared for her—what a hell this is?"</p> + +<p>"I've been through it before," muttered the "Demon," "and the wound +isn't quite so fresh."</p> + +<p>They descended in silence to the saloon, and there Harding spoke more +freely:</p> + +<p>"See here—you've saved me from a great peril—and although +I think I had rather you had shot me outright, you deserve no less +gratitude. If you want help—money—for +instance——"</p> + +<p>The "Demon" waved his hand in lofty refusal.</p> + +<p>"As Claude Melnotte says, sir, I gave you revenge—I did not +sell it. There are better men than I in the world, and lots of them. But +I try to do as I would be done by—at least in a scrape like this. +I wish you good night, and I hope you'll take comfort. After a little +it'll seem easier to you. Certainly the ill news should come easier even +now than it would afterward. As Othello says, ''Tis better as it +is.'"</p> + +<p>He bowed and passed away. Ascending to the apartment of Miss De +Montague, he made himself so agreeable as to be able to borrow from that +lady a dozen shining eagles; and, thus provided, descended promptly to +Mr. Copperas's bank, where he whiled away the night—assisted by +copious drinks and unlimited cigars—at the enlivening game of +faro.</p> + +<p>As for Harding, he went to the bar of the saloon and took what was +for him a stiff glass of brandy. Then he turned abruptly on his heel, +and without sending his name before him, marched straight up to Miss +Tinsel's room.</p> + +<p>She met him at the door with a glad cry—and then shrank back +abashed.</p> + +<p>"I see," she murmured, in her low, sweet voice, "you don't care to +have me repulse you again. You have thought it over—and you agree +that it is better not."</p> + +<p>He came just inside the door, but did not sit, although she motioned +him to a chair.</p> + +<p>"I agree," he repeated mechanically—"I agree—with you +that it is better not." Then he looked suspiciously around the room. +There was no one there—but a door opened into another room beyond. +Jane followed his eyes. "That is Miss De Montague's room," she said; "we +are always next to each other."</p> + +<p>"And she is there now?"</p> + +<p>"Yes—with Mr. Bellario—he is calling on her."</p> + +<p>Harding paused a minute, and then went on in a hard, constrained +voice, like one who repeats a disagreeable lesson.</p> + +<p>"I have thought it right to see you—now, for the last +time—and say I think it best—and right—that we should +part."</p> + +<p>Jane turned very pale, and the old grave look of hopeless pain came +over her face. But she answered with infinite softness and humility:</p> + +<p>"It is right—you know I thought so from the first. You should +not marry a—a convict's daughter."</p> + +<p>"It is not because you are a convict's daughter."</p> + +<p>"The reason is sufficient."</p> + +<p>"I repel it," he cried vehemently—"I will have none of +it—I told you so before—I repeat it now. Listen," and he +crossed the room swiftly and closed both doors.</p> + +<p>"I loved you for yourself—dearly—dearly. What did it +matter to me—what fault was it of yours—what other people +did, or what or where they were? In this grand, new country, +men—some men, at least—have grown high enough and strong +enough to shake off such paltry prejudices as those. To me they are as +nothing."</p> + +<p>"You led me to think so," Jane said gently.</p> + +<p>"Why should I care for your being a ballet-dancer—or for the +other thing, when you had never disgraced yourself? But now it is +different."</p> + +<p>"Now it is different!" she echoed in amazement.</p> + +<p>"Different in this," pursued he with growing excitement, "that before +you were a pure girl—pure as snow—everybody said +that—and now you are—are—compromised."</p> + +<p>The blood rushed in a torrent up to her hair.</p> + +<p>"Who says it?" she demanded, now first showing warmth—"who +dares say it?"</p> + +<p>"Alas, Jane," he replied, "don't make things worse by deception at +parting. Let us be at least as we have always been, honest and +unreserved to each other."</p> + +<p>"What you have said just now," said the girl' proudly, "is an insult. +The time has been when you would not have heard another say such +words—either to me or of me; and yet they are as little deserved +now as they have ever been."</p> + +<p>"They are, are they?" he retorted. "Then pray tell me who was that +man you have had here within an hour?"</p> + +<p>She turned deadly white, and opened her lips thrice to speak before +the words would shape themselves.</p> + +<p>"That—man?"</p> + +<p>"Do you deny having a man with you?"</p> + +<p>She shook her head piteously. "No—there was a man +here—and with me."</p> + +<p>"Ah, you confess it then," cried he, as if her admission made what he +knew more heinous. "Who was this man? Confess all!"</p> + +<p>"He—he—wanted help—asked for money. He saw me in +the play at Boone's Bar—and thinking me richer than I am, asked me +for money."</p> + +<p>Harding laughed scornfully. "And do you expect me to believe +this?"</p> + +<p>"It is true," she hurried on nervously. "He said he was desperate and +must have money to get away."</p> + +<p>"Had he any claim upon you?" he asked, scanning her with cold, +searching eyes.</p> + +<p>She hesitated and made answer, "No—none."</p> + +<p>"Yet he pushed his demand with eloquence?"</p> + +<p>"He did."</p> + +<p>"And with success?"</p> + +<p>"I gave him all I had."</p> + +<p>"Even although he had no claim on you?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"Oh, Jane—Jane!" he cried with a burst of bitter sorrow; "why +couldn't you have been truthful to the end? Why—why must you make +me look back—always and only to despise you!"</p> + +<p>She looked at him stonily, but made no reply.</p> + +<p>"Jane, it cuts me to the heart to say it—but I saw you—do +you hear?—saw you. He took both your hands in his—you threw +your arms about his neck and kissed him. Do you deny this?"</p> + +<p>She still looked him straight in the face, but two tears brimmed into +her eyes and rolled slowly down her cheeks. "No, it is true," she then +answered.</p> + +<p>"You own this too," he cried furiously. "Jane, who is this man?"</p> + +<p>She remained silent.</p> + +<p>"I ask you again, Jane—and for the last time—who is this +man?"</p> + +<p>"I cannot tell you."</p> + +<p>"You refuse?"</p> + +<p>"I must."</p> + +<p>"Then farewell. We can meet no more." He turned, and stood with his +hand on the door, and with the action the girl's overstrained nerves +gave way.</p> + +<p>"Oh, no, no, no! Oh, Chester, I have loved you so! Don't—for +mercy's sake—don't leave me in anger—when I so need +comfort—help—and—p—pity!"</p> + +<p>She fell on her knees by the bed, and with her face in her hands, +sobbed aloud.</p> + +<p>As she did so, a burst of strange, mocking laughter resounded from +the adjoining room, and Harding started as if he had been stung.</p> + +<p>"It must be!" he hissed, all that was hardest and worst in his nature +suddenly possessing him. "After this it would only be torture—to +both!" He bent suddenly and kissed—not her lips, no longer +pure—but her forehead, once, twice, thrice, passionately, and then +fled away into the darkness.</p> + +<p class="p2"></p> + +<hr class="c10" /> + +<p class="p4"></p> + +<h3>CHAPTER V.</h3> + +<h4>GOOD OUT OF EVIL.</h4> + +<p class="p2">Harding went up to his lonely tent. Like a wounded animal, +he sought his lair, and the memory of the many solitary hours he had +passed there, even at this sad moment, refreshed his spirit. There he +could be alone—away from men's eyes—free from their +curiosity, from their comments, or, what would be worse, from their +pity.</p> + +<p>He had made himself comparatively rich; he had built up a home, as it +were, in the wilderness; he had even tried, and with some success, to +gain men's esteem—and what were all these worth to him now?</p> + +<p>Such bitter thoughts as these filled Harding's mind as he arranged +his coarse pallet, and then, throwing himself upon it, sought to forget +his grief during the short space that remained before daylight. He was +awakened, almost instantly, it seemed to him—although, in fact, +three hours had passed—by the sharp crack of a rifle. Harding +leaped up and ran to his door.</p> + +<p>It was a dull, gray dawn—the sky overcast, but the air free +from wind or rain. A little below Harding's tent there spread a plain +about a mile wide. This extended along the bank of the river, and +terminated in a clump of redwoods which grew far up the mountain beyond. +Here and there on the plain were scattered a few small trees and copses +of manzanita; but for the most part it was clear from the outskirts of +the village up to the redwoods.</p> + +<p>On this plain Harding now saw a remarkable sight. A man was running +from tree to tree, striving always to get nearer the mountain. Perhaps +three hundred yards behind him were five or six armed pursuers trying to +close in on the fugitive, and occasionally firing at him. As Harding +gazed, three shots were discharged in rapid succession. Yet the man +still held on his way, apparently unhurt, and it looked as if he would +quickly gain the cover of the forest. But there was one behind him far +swifter than the rest, who ran like an Indian on the river or further +side from Harding, and who threatened in a few moments to get +dangerously near. It was because this man was so distant from himself +that Harding did not at first recognize his own partner, Jack Storm, +although he was in his usual well known Mexican dress. Now, Storm was +the best rifle shot on Bullion Flat.</p> + +<p>It appeared that the fugitive knew this. At all events, as if +suddenly realizing his peril, he turned and ran straight toward Storm, +resolved to draw his fire, apparently, and by confusing his aim to have +a better chance of escape. Storm's ready rifle flew up to his shoulder +instantly, and Harding saw the pale blue ring of smoke and heard the +quick report. Still the fugitive sped on. He was plainly unscathed, or +in any case not disabled; and in his hand there now flashed a bright +something which Harding knew was a bowie-knife. With that, although the +combatants were a mile away, Harding seized a revolver, and dashed at +his highest speed down the hill. Almost at the same moment, there also +started in company from Bullion Flat three figures on horseback. These +were Miss Tinsel, the "Demon," Mr. Bellario, and Judge Carboy. All who +were now making for the scene of the combat heard in sharp repetition +five or six shots from revolvers; but after the last of these, all was +still. When they got to the spot they found Jack Storm fainting from +loss of blood, but hurt only with flesh wounds; and they were told that +the other man, his opponent, was mortally wounded, and had been taken, +by his own request, up on the mountain side, among the redwoods, to +die.</p> + +<p>With a choking cry, Miss Tinsel galloped on, and in a few moments +Chester Harding and she were again face to face over the dying man's +body. Ghastly white as he was, all dabbled with blood, and the foam +oozing from his lips, her lover at once knew Jane's visitor of the night +before. What had happened had been hurriedly revealed to +Harding—in broken whispers by the bystanders—before Jane +came up.</p> + +<p>The man had robbed several rooms at the "Bella Union" during the +night, and had succeeded in gathering a large sum. Among the treasures +stolen were all the loose funds belonging to the "Combination Troupe," +the night's winnings of Mr. Copperas's faro bank, and Miss De Montague's +diamonds. But just as the robber, toward daylight, was on the point of +making off in safety, he met a lion in the path in Jack Storm. It +happened that Jack wanted to have a talk with his partner, Harding, and, +as they were then very busy on the claim, made up his mind to compass +this purpose bright and early, before getting to work. Stumbling on the +marauder, the latter was secured after a struggle, and "the boys" +speedily determined to make an example of him. The man begged for a +chance of life, and after some debate, had been given the option of the +halter or running the gauntlet, with three hundred yards' start, in the +way we have described. In the subsequent struggle he had been shot +through the lungs, and terribly cut with his own +bowie-knife—wrested from him by Jack Storm—and his life was +now fast ebbing away.</p> + +<p>As she came up Jane sprang from her horse, and threw herself on the +ground beside the dying man. They had propped his head on a hillock of +turf, and some charitable soul had brought water from the river. Judge +Carboy quickly put a flask of brandy to the sufferer's lips, and he +opened his eyes:</p> + +<p>"Ja—Jane," he gasped, "my pretty Jane—this is the +end—the end of it—a dog's death—and deserved, +too-but—I—I—always loved you!"</p> + +<p>She burst into tears and began sobbing over him and fondling his +head.</p> + +<p>"Don't, darling—don't, little Jenny—it won't be +long—I am better away—better for +you—there—there! I'm sliding away +somewhere—and——"</p> + +<p>His voice failed, and his dark face began to grow blue. The doctor, +who had ridden hastily up, forced between the man's teeth some strong +restorative.</p> + +<p>"I want you to remember—always—that I was drunk when I +did it—drunk and crazy. I was bad—vile—but not so bad +as that. Don't tell who—who I am. It will only disgrace +you—only disgrace you—I'm going, little +Jenny——"</p> + +<p>"Oh, <i>father</i>! <i>father!</i>" and the poor child bowed down her +pretty head on the breast of the wretched thief and murderer, and wept +as if her heart would break.</p> + +<p>"No—no," he muttered; "no, little Jenny, I'm not worth it. +Only—don't think worse—worse of me than I deserve. Perhaps +mother—in heaven—has forgiven me! She +knows—knows—I was mad when I did it."</p> + +<p>"Yes—yes—I shall remember," whispered she, "always. Now +don't talk more—not now."</p> + +<p>"No—I shan't talk—much more"—a strange wan smile +came over his face—"not much more, little Jenny." He put up his +hand and stroked her sunny hair.</p> + +<p>"Tell them about this last—that I was desperate—I had +broke jail—knew the officers were on my track—and was +penniless. Give me—more—brandy. So. Why, I can't see you any +more, little Jenny—and yet it is morning, isn't it, not night!" He +gasped for breath and clutched feebly at the air. "Kiss me—little +Jenny—mer—mercy—<i>Lord +Jesus</i>—better—better times—hereafter!"</p> + +<p>A shudder, and the man was dead, and Jane was left all alone in the +world. Poor, besotted, frantic Michael Green, all sin-scorched as he +was, had passed from the judgment of men to the more merciful judgment +beyond. Yet the orphan, if alone, lacked neither sympathy nor +protection. Nor did she ever lack from that moment the respect and +confidence of the man of whose heart she had from the first been +mistress. So that the true happiness came in time which is so often the +sweeter for being deferred.</p> + +<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Henry Sedley.</span></p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="p4"></p> + +<h4>DEFEATED.</h4> + +<hr class="c5" /> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Give me your +hand—nay, both, as I confront you.</span> +<span class="i0">Let me +look in your eyes, as once before.</span> +<span class="i0">I gaze, and +gaze. Oh, how they change and soften!</span> +<span class="i0">I stand +within the portal: lo! a door—</span> +</div> +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">A door close shut and barred. I knock and +listen.</span> +<span class="i0">No sound, no answer. Doubtingly I +wait.</span> +<span class="i0">Oh! for one glance beyond that guarded +entrance,</span> +<span class="i0">The power that mystic realm to +penetrate.</span> +</div> +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I touch +the barrier with hands entreating,</span> +<span class="i0">If it would +yield to me, and none beside.</span> +<span class="i0">What bitter pain, +what sense of loss and failure,</span> +<span class="i0">To come so near, +and come to be denied!</span> +</div> +<div class="stanza"> + <span class="i0">Softly I call, but only silence answers—</span> + <span class="i0">Silence, and the quick throbbing of my heart.</span> + <span class="i0">Immovable, the frowning bar abideth:</span> + <span class="i0">Kneeling, I kiss the threshold and depart.</span> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Mary L. Ritter.</span></p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="p4"></p> + +<h4>SHALL PUNISHMENT PUNISH?</h4> + +<hr class="c5" /> + +<p class="p2">It is published that in England a man has been undergoing +an aggregate imprisonment of ten years for breaking a shop window, at +different times, and that when recently pardoned he immediately broke +the same window again for the purpose of being again arrested. One who +knows nothing more than this of the facts cannot presume to determine +what punishment should in justice be given to this particular offender; +but the case is interesting as an extreme example of what frequently +occurs in a less striking degree in this country. Police courts become +acquainted with a class of criminals who would rather go to jail for +their dinner, especially in winter, than earn a dinner by hard work. +They are the confirmed vagabonds from whom the army of summer tramps is +chiefly recruited. They never feel truly virtuous and happy in cold +weather except when they have committed a petty offence and are on the +way to "punishment," which consists in accepting from a thoughtful +public a warm shelter and all the food they want. It is their business +to live, at times if not constantly, in this way. Sending them to jail +for their offences is known by the courts that send them to be nothing +but a sorry farce.</p> + +<p>There is another equally incorrigible class, who commit greater +crimes, but not chiefly for the sake of "punishment." Detectives keep +themselves advised of the sentences of these offenders, and prepare to +shadow them anew whenever they are released from confinement. It is not +expected that incarceration will have any reformatory effect. The +question of reforming them, as of reforming those who offend to get rid +of the trouble of taking care of themselves, comes to be left out of +consideration, after a little experience, by the officers whose duty it +is to deal with them. Only intimidation remains for a considerable +number. With these, rather than with the English window-breaker, should +probably be classed the subject of this item from a late newspaper: +"Charles Dickens is dead, and died of honest work; but the German +prisoner, Charles Langheimer, whom he saw in the penitentiary at +Philadelphia thirty-three years ago, and over whose punishment by +solitary confinement he lamented in 'American Notes,' describing him as +'a picture of forlorn affliction and distress of mind,' still lives at +the age of seventy-five, and has just been sent back to his old quarters +the sixth time, for his chronic offence of petty theft, which has kept +him in jail full half his long life."</p> + +<p>That punishment for crime is necessary, and therefore a public duty, +is admitted, and every community professes to impose it. But what of the +criminals whom punishment as now administered does not punish—who +actually commit crimes for the purpose of receiving it? It would seem +that society has not the power or has not the wisdom to protect itself. +It has the right, of course. It has the power also.</p> + +<p>The law does not succeed in what it attempts and professes to do. At +present when we find a criminal who has sufficient good in him to feel +our methods, we punish him in proportion to his—goodness. When we +find one so vile that our methods are like water on a duck's back, we do +not punish him—except as water punishes a duck. He goes unpunished +because he is so bad, while a better man is punished because he is +better. What is this but rewarding insensibility? It is very creditable +to the hearts of the lawmakers—perhaps—but it is fraud on +the community. It is legalized wickedness. It permits incarnate +nuisances to wax fat, and prey upon honest industry, and increase and +multiply, until they become the only prosperous and protected class.</p> + +<p>It has been suggested that a criminal on his second conviction be +deemed a professional, and incarcerated for life. It would no doubt be +cheaper for the public to shut him up thus and support him permanently. +But there is the objection that the punishment would generally be out of +proportion to the crime, if it were a punishment at all; and if it were +not a punishment, we would be offering a greater premium on vice than we +now are. To punish petty larceny as if it were as great a crime as +manslaughter or murder would be too unjust to be long possible. The case +seems to demand a new medicine rather than a greater dose of one which +has failed when tried in any practicable quantities.</p> + +<p>There is one remedy, so far as the infliction of real punishment is a +remedy, although those who administer justice as above described will +hold up their hands in horror at the mention of it. If it be a fact that +the punishment of criminals is necessary, and if it be a fact that a +class of them is impervious to any punishment except physical pain, then +we are bound to either inflict this pain or else abandon the principle +of punishment. There is no third course if the two facts are +admitted—and to those who will not admit them an unprejudiced +reading of the criminal news of the past three hundred and sixty-five +days is commended. If one man's heart is callous to what will break +another's, all men's backs are of nearly equal tenderness. It is +doubtful whether the whipping-post ever had a fair trial without proving +that it might be made a good thing under such circumstances as we must +very soon, if we do not now, confront.</p> + +<p>The fact that it was once used and then abandoned does not settle the +case. It was erected for those who could have been otherwise dealt with, +and for those who deserved no punishment at all. It was not reserved for +only those deserving punishment, on whom our more refined penalties had +been tried and had failed. It is not a fair trial of it to put it into +the hands of a drunken or passionate ship's captain; or the hands of a +religious bigot; or the hands of a slave-driver; or the hands of a +tyrant or autocrat of any kind; or the hands of an incompetent judge; or +the hands of any judge in a ruder age than this. If an ignorant or +brutal use of it in the past condemns an enlightened use of it now, we +should abandon life-taking and imprisonment, for these have been even +more abused. We have no fear that the death penalty will be misused +hereafter because men have been hung for petty larceny heretofore. When +the lash is wielded by a barbarous hand, as it generally has been, of +course we abhor it. But how about it when the hand of Christ wields it +in the temple? Although the incarnation of charity made him a scourge +for those who needed it, yet we cannot follow His example because +Torquemadas have made scourges for those who did not need them. Such is +the logic of those who would cite the past in this matter. The truth is, +the lash was abandoned in the humane belief that criminals could be +punished without it; and the truth also is, some criminals are now +proving that they cannot be punished without it.</p> + +<p>Go over the subject as we may, we come back to the question, Is the +lash or something equally unrefined necessary to accomplish all the law +now attempts? It must be looked at in the cold light of certain very sad +facts, as well as in the warm blaze of "chromo" civilization. If we are +not yet compelled to answer it in the affirmative, there is so much +evidence pointing toward such an answer, that it is well to consider +very respectfully indeed whatever can be said on the unpopular side. It +need not frighten those who accept the idea so tersely presented by the +Hare Brothers—of which one is strongly reminded by Mr. Greg in the +"Enigmas of Life," although perhaps he does not expressly state +it—that the tendency of civilization is to barbarism.</p> + +<p>Of course flogging is not a panacea; but it is for those who profit +by nothing gentler; and the more enlightened society becomes the more +certainly can these be identified. The generous feeling that has +discontinued it would not cease to be a guarantee against its abuse. Our +courts cannot depart far from public sentiment. We can trust judges and +juries to determine who deserves castigation just as safely as to +determine who deserves imprisonment or death. Most of the censure they +now receive in their treatment of the hopelessly depraved is for their +lenity and not their rigor. There is no offender would not dread and +wish to avoid whipping. Certainly no one would offend for the purpose of +receiving it; and it would probably discourage a man in less than ten +years from breaking the same window. It would be inexpensive, and would +have the merit of being short and sharp, if not decisive. Punishment, +intimidation, is what is here considered, and the point is whether it +shall be administered to all who deserve it, or whether the law society +finds necessary for its protection shall be a falsehood, at war with +itself—a sham. The law cannot shrink from anything that is +necessary to its purpose without impeaching its purpose.</p> + +<p>And is it more inhuman to hurt the back of one who cannot be made to +feel anything else than it is to pain the heart and hurt the soul of one +who can? How can Christians so exalt the flesh above the spirit? They +did not do it in the primitive days of the faith. Is it more barbarous +to scourge the body than to gall it with irons, or poison and debilitate +it by confinement, or wear it out by inches at hard labor? We have not +abolished corporeal punishment—only rejected a form of it which is +frequently more merciful, if more dreaded, than some that are +retained.</p> + +<p>All wrongs right themselves by "inhumanity," if permitted to go far +enough. You are told by good authority, and you know without telling, +that if you find a burglar in your house at night, you perform a public +duty by shooting him dead rather than see him escape. From the +humanitarian point of view, this is certainly more dreadful than it +would have been to stop, by flogging, any minor offences that led him +into your house. Indeed, if the penalty for the burglary itself were a +"barbarous" laceration of his back, it would doubtless have more effect +in keeping him from the burglary and from a bloody death, than does the +risk of imprisonment. We must not whip him in obedience to the law, but +we may safely shoot him dead without regard to it. It is our tenderness +that becomes "inhuman" if it be not wisely bestowed. Would it be quite +in keeping with the pretensions of "advanced" civilization to see the +matrons and maids of the rural neighborhoods going about their dairies +and summer kitchens with revolvers in their belts, and bowie-knives in +their bosoms? That is the spectacle the "tramp" nuisance promises to +produce. Would the whipping-post, set up in the slums of the great +cities, where the miscreants among the tramps breed and form their +characters, look any more like barbarism? The voluntary tramp has but +shown the countryman during the summer what the city suffers during the +winter. He is simply trying to distribute and equalize himself, and +while enjoying his country air, collects the same taxes he collects all +the rest of the year in town. Let the city continue to rear him +tenderly, and not hurt his precious carcass, and feed and warm him, and +punish only his sensitive spirit, until the country people get down +their shot-guns and make a barbarous end of him. And this is being true +to the cause of humanity.</p> + +<p>It is noble for the law to withhold its hand when one who has taken a +wrong step can be won back to a good life by other means; and if the +wretches hopelessly saturated with vice can be intimidated by anything +milder than flogging, by all means be mild; but when we find one who +cannot, why not acknowledge the fact and act on it?</p> + +<p>The reason why we do not so act is only a sentimental one. A +sentimental reason, however, may be a very good one. Society feels that +it is better to suffer, and to see its laws become a mockery to this +degree, than to shock its own best instincts. This sentiment that +obstructs absolute vindication of the law is respectable so long as it +can be respected with tolerable safety and public satisfaction. But it +interferes with justice by courtesy, and not by right. It is all very +well so long as society does not complain. But if its mouthpieces are to +be believed, society does complain. The public is not satisfied with the +present punishment of certain offenders—indicated with sufficient +accuracy by the tough old Langheimer and the English +window-breaker—and is restive under the pecuniary burden they +impose.</p> + +<p>Although the history of the whipping-post is nearly worthless to one +seeking to know what its value might be under all the favorable +conditions with which it could be surrounded now and here, yet it is +possible to point readily to one trial that should have been, and +probably was, a fair one. A very few years ago—perhaps four or +five—garroting became a terror to the London pedestrian. For +assault and robbery, without intent to kill, the death penalty was too +terrible, and the other penalties failed to intimidate, as they +generally do when the crime is lucrative, easily accomplished, and not +immediately dangerous. It could not be trifled with, and something had +to be done. A "barbarous" whipping of the bare back was resorted to, and +garroting subsided. The result was what the public wanted. Sentimental +eyes may show their whites, horrified hands may go up, floods of twaddle +may come forth in sympathy with the discouraged garroter, but men of +common sense, especially if they have been garroted themselves, will say +the end was worth what it cost, and believe in the inhumanity that +achieved it.</p> + +<p>Nothing has been said of Delaware. No valuable lesson could be drawn +from her without considerable investigation, and perhaps not then. She +may do too much flogging, or she may not do enough. Her ministers of +justice may be models of enlightenment, or they may be models of +debasement. The lash there may be still a class instrument, or it may +not. She has no great city—an exceedingly important +consideration—and two portions of her people are jostling each +other as nominal equals in the race of life, who but the other day held +the relation of master and slave. She is probably not indifferent to a +good name, and her retention of the whip under all the sneers she +receives is some evidence that she at least regards it as still having a +defensible use.</p> + +<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Chauncey Hickox.</span></p> + +<hr /> + +<h4 class="p4">RENUNCIATION.</h4> + +<hr class="c5" /> + +<div class="poem"> + <span class="i0">Could I recall thee from that silent shore</span> + <span class="i0">Whence never word may reach our longing ears,</span> + <span class="i0">To gaze upon thee thro' my happy tears,</span> + <span class="i0">And call thee back to life and joy once more,</span> + <span class="i0">Could I refrain? If at my touch</span> + <span class="i0">Death's door Would open for thee, and thy glad eyes + shine</span> + <span class="i0">With swift surprise of life, straight into mine,</span> + <span class="i0">And we might dwell with love for evermore,</span> + <span class="i0">Could I forbear? God knows, who still denies.</span> + <span class="i0">Yet being dead, thou art all mine again:</span> + <span class="i0">No fear of change can break that perfect rest,</span> + <span class="i0">Nor can I be where thou art not; thine eyes</span> + <span class="i0">Smile at me out of heaven, and still my pain,</span> + <span class="i0">And the whole pitying earth is at thy breast.</span> +</div> + +<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Kate Hillard.</span></p> + +<hr /> + +<h4 class="p4">THE EASTERN QUESTION.</h4> + +<p class="p2">"The last word in the Eastern Question," said Lord Derby, +"is Constantinople." If for Constantinople we read not merely the city +itself, but that half of Turkey in Europe bordering upon the Black Sea +and the Sea of Marmora, and understand the real point to be, Shall or +shall not Russia have it? we have the whole Eastern Question in a +nutshell. Russia is bound by every consideration of policy and interest +to get it if she can. Great Britain is bound by every consideration of +interest, and even of self-preservation, to prevent it if she can. +Germany, Austria, and France are bound to prevent it, if possible, +unless they can at the same time gain equivalent advantages which shall +leave them relatively to each other, and especially to Russia, not less +powerful than they now are. The other nations of Europe may be left out +of view in considering the question; for their interest in it is less +vital, and they could do little toward the result, except as allies to +one side or the other, in case of a general European war in which the +great Powers should be quite evenly balanced, when their comparatively +small weight might turn the scale.</p> + +<p>A glance at the map will show the paramount importance to Russia of +the acquisition of this territory. Comprising more than half of all +Europe, she is practically cut off from the navigable seas. She has, +indeed, a long coast-line upon the Arctic ocean, but she has there only +the inconsiderable port of Archangel, and this can be reached only by +rounding the North Cape and sailing far within the Arctic Circle, while +the port itself is blocked up by ice seven months of the year. She also +borders for seven hundred miles upon the Baltic and the Gulf of Bothnia; +but here, in the northwestern corner of her territory, she has only two +tolerable ports, Cronstadt and Riga, and these are frozen up for nearly +half the year; but from these ports is carried on three-fourths of her +foreign commerce. She next touches salt water in the Black Sea, almost +1,500 miles from St. Petersburg, on the extreme south of her territory. +This sea, half of whose shores belongs to Russia, is 720 miles long, and +380 miles wide at its broadest point, covering an area, including the +connected Sea of Azof, of nearly 200,000 square miles—more than +twice that of all the great lakes of North America. Russia wishes to be +a great maritime power. The Black Sea has good harbors and abundant +facilities for building ships and exercising fleets. Into it fall all +the great rivers of the southern half of Russia, except the Volga, whose +mouth is in the Caspian; and the Volga may properly be considered a +Black Sea river, for a railway, or perhaps even a canal of a few +leagues, would connect it with the Don and the other rivers of the Black +Sea system. The Black Sea is emphatically a Russian sea; but Russia +enjoys the valuable use of it only by the sufferance of whomsoever holds +Constantinople. By the treaty of Paris, concluded in 1856, after the +reverses of the Crimean war, Russia agreed not to maintain a fleet +there; and it was not till 1870 that taking advantage of the critical +position of the other great Powers, she declared that this article of +the treaty was abrogated. She has now a strong fleet of iron-clads and +other steamers in the sea, but the actual strength of this fleet is +unknown except to herself. It was certainly powerful three years ago, +and is doubtless much more powerful now. A vessel and crew which has +navigated the "Bad Black Sea." as the Turks call it, has nothing to fear +from the broadest ocean. But this sea is liable at any moment to be a +closed one to Russia. No Russian man-of-war has, we believe, ever sailed +into or out of it; no merchantman can enter or leave it except by the +Bosporus and the Dardanelles, which are its gates, and of these gates +Turkey holds the keys.</p> + +<p>The Black Sea is joined to the deep, narrow Sea of Marmora by the +straits of the Bosporus, twenty miles long and from three-quarters of a +mile to two and a half miles wide. Just where the straits open out into +the Sea of Marmora stands Constantinople, a spot marked out by nature as +the one on the whole globe best fitted for the site of a great +metropolis. At its western extremity the Sea of Marmora—about one +hundred miles long, with a maximum breadth of forty-three +miles—contracts into the straits usually called the Dardanelles, +which is properly the name of four castles, which, two on each side, +command the passage, here less than a mile wide. Both straits could +easily be so fortified as to be impassable by the combined navies of the +world; and even now we suppose that only the best armored iron-clads +could safely undertake to force the passage, in or out, of the +Dardanelles.</p> + +<p>Let us now consider the fearful preponderance which Russia would gain +by the possession of these straits, including of course that half of +European Turkey bordering upon them. We have seen that the shores of the +Black Sea furnish every facility for the construction of a navy of any +required strength, and its waters afford ample space for its training. +With these approaches in her grasp, Russia might in ten years construct +and discipline her fleet there, perfectly safe from molestation by the +navies of Europe. Fleets built and equipped at Sebastopol, Kherson, and +Nicolaief, could sweep through the Dardanelles, closed to all except +themselves, enter the Archipelago and the Mediterranean, and dominate +over their shores and over the commerce of every nation which has to use +these waters as a highway. In case of its happening at any time to find +itself overmatched, the Russian fleet could repass the gates of the +Dardanelles, and be as safe from pursuit as an army would be if +sheltered behind the rocks of Gibraltar.</p> + +<p>Great Britain would be first and most immediately menaced by this; +for a strong military and naval power established on the Bosporus would +hold in command the shortest way of communication with her possessions +in India. The Czar would hold in control the route by way of the Suez +canal: or at best Great Britain could keep it open only by maintaining a +vastly superior fleet in the <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Original +reads 'Mediterannean'">Mediterranean</ins>; and it would be difficult +for her to maintain there a fleet which would not be practically +overmatched by one which Russia could easily keep up in the Black Sea +and the Sea of Marmora. The days are past when a Hood or a Nelson might +safely risk a battle if the odds against him were much less than two to +one. A British admiral must henceforth make his count upon meeting skill +and seamanship equal to his own, and whatever advantage he gains must be +gained by sheer preponderance of force.</p> + +<p>If Great Britain is to retain her Indian empire, a collision there +between her and Russia is a foregone conclusion. An empire which, under +a succession of sovereigns of very different character, has steadily +pressed its march of conquest through the deserts of Turkistan, will not +be likely to look without longing eyes upon the fertile valley of the +Indus; and here Russia would have a fearful advantage in position. The +Suez route practically closed, as it would be in the event of a war, +Britain could only reach India by the long voyage around the Cape of +Good Hope, while Russia would have broad highways for the march of her +troops to the banks of the Indus, whence she could menace the whole +peninsula of Hindostan.</p> + +<p>We indeed do not think that the possession of her Indian empire adds +anything to the power of Great Britain. She has never derived any direct +revenue from it. The Indian expenditures to-day exceed, and are likely +in the future to exceed, the revenues. All the vast amounts of plunder +and "loot" which individuals, the East India Company, or the Crown have +gained, have cost to get them more than they were worth. Unlike +Australia and the Dominion of Canada, India offers no field for +colonization for men of British blood, where they or their children may +build up a new Britain under strange stars. It has come to be an +accepted fact that Englishmen cannot long retain health and vigor in +India, and that their offspring, born there, rarely survive childhood +unless sent "home" at an early age. Britain holds India purely and +absolutely as a conquered and subjugated territory. Whether British rule +in India is, upon the whole, a blessing or a curse to the natives, is a +matter of grave doubt; that it is most unwillingly borne, is beyond all +question. It is a despotism pure and unmixed, and a despotism of the +most galling kind—a despotism exercised by a horde alien in race +and religion, alien in habits and modes of thought, in life and manners, +in customs and ideas. Macaulay, when in power in India, forty years ago, +said of it the best that can be said: "India cannot have a free +government; but she may have the next best thing—a firm and +impartial despotism." To maintain this despotism, even against the +feeble natives alone, imposes a heavy strain upon the British +government. The British empire in India is only a thin crust overlying a +bottomless quagmire, into which it is in peril of sinking at any moment +by a force from above or an upheaval from below. How nearly this came to +pass during the accidental Sepoy mutiny of twenty years ago, is known to +all men. Had that mutiny chanced to have broken out three years before, +during the Crimean war, it is safe to say that the course of the world's +history would have taken a different turn. Since then Great Britain has +apparently somewhat consolidated this crust, but it is yet thin, and the +weight of Russia thrown upon it could scarcely fail to break it +through.</p> + +<p>The commercial value of India to Great Britain is, we think, vastly +exaggerated. India, in proportion to her population, has always been, +and is likely long to be, a very poor country. The trade of Great +Britain with India—exports and imports—is not much greater +than that with France, considerably less than that with Germany, and far +less than that with the United States; and we see no reason to suppose +that it is perceptibly increased by the subjugation of India to the +British crown. India sells to Great Britain what she can, and buys from +her what she wants and can pay for, and would continue to do so in any +case. Still, we do not imagine that the British government or people +will ever be brought to take our view of the value of India to them. It +will be held to the last extremity of the national power, and will only +be abandoned under stress of the direst necessity. And for her secure +possession of India it is absolutely essential, for reasons which have +been stated, that whoever else may have Constantinople in the future, +Russia shall not have it. England's interest in the question is a purely +selfish one. She is content to have the Turks there because for the time +being they keep the Russians out. Whatever worth may formerly have been +in the sentimental averment that it is the duty of the European family +of nations to see to it that no weak member of it is gravely wronged by +a stronger one is past and gone. It is from no love for the Turks that +Great Britain desires that the Sultan should continue to hold at least +nominal sovereignty over Turkey in Europe, and the actual custody of the +keys of the Black Sea. An able English writer says:<a name="FNanchor_H" +id="FNanchor_H"></a><a href="#Footnote_H" class="fnanchor">[H]</a></p> + +<div class="blockquot">The position of the Turk at Constantinople is no +choice of ours, nor any creation of our policy. We do not maintain him +for any love of himself, nor because we rely on his strength to guard +the post—though that is absurdly underrated. His corruption and +weakness are at least as great an embarrassment to us as an injury to +the nations of his empire. But the whole Eastern question hangs upon the +fact that he is there, and has been there with a long prescriptive right +which he is not likely to yield, or to have wrested from his grasp till +after a frantic struggle of despair. Nor is any practical mode apparent +by which he will be soon displaced, save that, after a convulsion which +would involve all Europe, the Czar should be enthroned upon the +Bosporus. To prevent that catastrophe, and to avert the horrors that +must precede it, is our real Eastern policy. </div> + +<p>Still more emphatic is the declaration of Lord Derby, the British +Premier, when defending the action of the Government in sending the +Mediterranean fleet, last May, to Besika Bay, at the mouth of the +Dardanelles: "We have in that part of the world great interests which we +must protect.... It is said that we sent the fleet to the Dardanelles to +maintain the Turkish empire. I entirely deny it. <i>We sent the fleet to +maintain the interests of the British empire.</i>"</p> + +<p>Let us now glance rapidly at Turkey in Europe, the coveted prize in +this case. Nominally, and upon the maps, it comprises all except the +southern apex of the great triangular peninsula bounded on the east by +the Black Sea, the Sea of Marmora, and the Archipelago; on the west by +the Adriatic; on the north, the broad base of the peninsula, it is +bounded by Austria; on the south, the narrow apex, by Greece. Russia +touches it only on the northeast corner. Its area is in round numbers +200,000 square miles, not differing materially from that of France or +Germany, or about five-sixths of that of Austria. No other part of +Europe, of anything like equal extent, combines so many natural +advantages of geographical position, soil, and climate. The population +is variously estimated at from 13,000,000 upward; we think that +17,000,000 is a tolerably close approximation. Of these, in round +numbers, only about 2,000,000 are Turks, or, as they style themselves, +Osmanlis; 11,500,000 are of various Sclavonic races; 1,500,000 are +Albanians; 1,000,000 Greeks; the remainder Armenians, Jews, and Gipsies. +In religion there, there are about 4,800,000 Mohammedans, nearly half of +whom are not Osmanlis, the remainder being of Sclavonic descent, whose +ancestors embraced Islam in order to save their estates; they are, +however, quite as devoted Mussulmans as are the Osmanlis themselves. +There are now about 12,000,000 Christians, of whom some 11,000,000 +belong to the Greek Church, and nearly 1,000,000 are in communion with +the Church of Rome. The name Ottomans is officially given to all the +subjects of the empire, irrespective of race or religion; all except +Mussulmans are specifically designated as <i>Rayahs</i>, "the flock." +Nominally, at least, by the new Constitution promulgated in December, +1876, while Islam is the religion of the State, all subjects are equal +before the law, and all, without distinction of race or creed, are alike +eligible for civil and military positions.</p> + +<p>But a very considerable part of this territory is not properly +included in the Ottoman empire. The principality of Roumania, in the +northeastern corner, made up of what was formerly known as Wallachia and +Moldavia, with a population of about 4,500,000, is practically +independent, under a prince of the house of Hohenzollern, elected in +1866. It merely acknowledges the suzerainty of the Sultan, to whom it +pays an annual tribute of some $200,000. Servia, on the north, bordering +upon Austria, with a population something less than 1,500,000, has for +years been really independent, merely paying a tribute of less than +$100,000.</p> + +<p>Roumania and Servia are strongly under Russian influence. Besides +these is the little State of Montenegro, on the Adriatic, with a +population of less than 200,000, which disowns the suzerainty of the +Sultan, and has for many months waged a fierce but desultory war against +him.</p> + +<p>Of what properly constitutes Turkey in Europe, with a population of +some 11,000,000, the following are the principal divisions, designating +them by their former names, by which they are still best known: south of +Roumania, and between the Danube and the Balkhan mountains, is Bulgaria; +south of Bulgaria is Roumelia, in which Constantinople is situated; in +the northwest is Herzegovina; between which and Servia is Bosnia; on the +west, along the Adriatic, is Albania. In estimating the defensive +strength of the Ottoman empire we must take main account of Turkey in +Asia, with a population of some 17,000,000, by far the larger portion of +whom are Osmanlis, devoted to Islam, warlike by nature, and fully +capable, as was shown in the Crimean war, of being moulded into +excellent soldiers. But our present concern is with Turkey in +Europe.</p> + +<p>If the ingenuity of man, working through long centuries of misrule, +had set itself to the task of developing a form of government the most +potent for evil and the least powerful for good, the system could not +have been worse than that which exists in European Turkey; and the worst +of it is that no one but the most hopeful optimist can perceive in it +the slightest hope of reform or practical amendment. In theory the +Sultan is the recognized organ of all executive power in the State. The +dignity is hereditary in the house of Osman; but the brother of a +deceased or deposed Sultan takes precedence of the son, as being nearer +in blood to the great founder of the house. A Sultan, therefore, must +see in his brother a possible rival, who must, in case his life is +spared, be kept immured in the seclusion of the harem. A Sultan who +succeeds his brother naturally comes to the throne at a somewhat mature +age, but as ignorant as a babe of all that belongs to the duties of +government; lucky it is if he is not also physically and mentally worn +out by debauchery and excess. Turkish history is full of instances where +one of the first acts of a Sultan has been to order the execution of his +brothers and nephews. Thus Mahmoud II. put to death his infant nephew, +the son of his predecessor, and caused three pregnant inmates of the +harem to be flung into the Bosporus in order to make sure the +destruction of their unborn offspring. The actual task of government is +in some sort divided between the Sultan and the "Porte," a term which is +used to designate the chief dignitaries of the State. The "Sublime +Porte" is the Council of the Grand Vizier, who presides over the Council +of State, consisting of the ministers for home affairs, for foreign +affairs, and for executive acts, with several secretaries, one of whom +is supposed to be answerable that the acts of the ministry are in +conformity with, the supreme law of the Koran. The Porte of the +Defterdar, or Minister of Finance, whose council is styled the "Divan," +consists of several ministers and other functionaries. The "Agha" +formerly comprised many civil and military officials whose duties were +in some way immediately connected with the person of the Sultan, not +very unlike what we call a "kitchen cabinet." The foregoing are all +designated as "Dignitaries of the Pen." The "Dignitaries of the Sword" +are the viceregal and provincial governors, styled pachas and beys. They +are at once civil and military commanders; and, most important of all, +tax-gatherers, and not infrequently farmers as well as receivers of +taxes. If they forward to the Porte the required sum of money, little +care is had as to the manner in which their other duties are performed +or neglected. The manifold extortions of the local pachas keep one part +or another of the empire, not only in Europe, but in Asia, in a state of +perpetual insurrection, of which little is ever heard abroad.</p> + +<p>The Koran is the acknowledged source of all law, civil and +ecclesiastical. Its interpreter is the <i>Sheikh-ul-Islam</i>, "the +Chief of the Faithful," sometimes styled the "Grand Mufti." He is the +head of the <i>Ulemi</i>, or "Wise Men," comprising the body of great +jurists, theologians, and <i>literati</i>, any or all of whom he may +summon to his council. He is appointed for life by the Sultan, and may +be removed by him. His office is in theory, and sometimes in practice, +one of great importance. To him and his council the Sultan is supposed +to refer every act of importance. He does not declare war or conclude +peace until the Grand Mufti has formally pronounced the act "conformable +to the law." It is only in virtue of his <i>fetwa</i>, or decree, that +the deposition of a Sultan is legalized. A <i>fetwa</i> from him would +summon around the standard of the Prophet all the fanatical hordes of +Islam to fight to the death against the infidels, in the firm belief +that death on the battlefield is a sure passport to Paradise. With the +Koran as the supreme law, and the Sheikh-ul-Islam its sole interpreter, +nothing can be more futile than the provision of the new Constitution of +December, 1876, that "the prerogatives of the Sultan are those of the +constitutional sovereigns of the West."</p> + +<p>It is necessary here to touch only briefly upon the rise and decline +of the Turkish empire in Europe. The Osmanlis take their name from +Osman, the leader of a Tartar horde driven out from the confines of the +Chinese empire, who overran Asia Minor. His great-grandson, Amurath I., +crossed into Europe, took Adrianople in 1361, and overran Bulgaria and +Servia. Several of his successors pushed far into Hungary and Poland. +Mohammed II. took Constantinople in 1453, and brought the Byzantine +empire to a close. Selim I. (1512-'20) extended his dominion over +Mesopotamia, Syria, and Egypt. Solyman II., "the Magnificent" +(1520-1566), raised the Turkish power to its highest point. He took Buda +in 1529; and in 1532 besieged Vienna with a force of 300,000 men, but +was routed by the Polish John Sobieski, with a force hardly a tenth as +great. But for another half century the Turkish power was sufficient to +inspire terror in all Christendom. With the death of Solyman, the power +of the Turks began to wane, slowly but surely, and at the close of the +last century the expulsion of the Turks from Europe seemed close at +hand. The great wars of the French Revolution gave them a new lease of +possession, and at its close Sultan Mahmoud II., who was by blood half +French,<a name="FNanchor_I" id="FNanchor_I"></a><a href="#Footnote_I" +class="fnanchor">[I]</a> endeavored to introduce reforms which some men +hoped and others feared would restore the Ottoman Empire. But the result +showed the impossibility of patching up rotten garments with new cloth. +The Greek revolution broke out, and at its close the Sultan found +himself no match for his vassal, Mehemet Ali, Pacha of Egypt, and it was +only the intervention of Russia, Austria, and Great Britain which +prevented the Pacha from establishing at Constantinople the seat of a +new empire, which, be it what it might, would not have been Turkish. +What were the reasons of Great Britain and France it is not now easy to +say. Those of Russia are patent: she wanted Constantinople to remain in +the hands of the Turks until she herself was in a position to seize it. +From that time the Ottoman Empire became the "sick man of Europe," +around whose bedside all the other powers were watching, each determined +that none of the others should gain the greater share in his estates +when he died. In 1844 they formally adopted him into the family of the +nations of Europe, and promised that his safety should be the common +care of all.</p> + +<p>Russia, in the mean while, was busy in endeavoring to make herself +the patron of the Christian subjects of the Sultan, and when the time +appeared ripe, entered upon those overt acts which led to the Crimean +war. Out of this war the Ottoman Empire came with considerable apparent +advantage. The man supposed to be sick unto death showed that there was +unexpected vitality—of a spasmodic sort indeed—in his +Asiatic members; and again there were hopes and fears of his ultimate +convalescence, if not of restoration to robust health. That those hopes +and fears were baseless is now clear enough. Never was the sick man so +feeble as within the last five years.</p> + +<p>The existing crisis in the Eastern Question came about in the +ordinary course of things. In the summer of 1875 the pecuniary needs of +the Sublime Porte were more than usually urgent, and the tax-gatherers +were even more than usually exacting. The normal result ensued: there +were local risings in Bosnia and Herzegovina. A secret Bulgarian +revolutionary committee, favored by Russia, has for years existed in +Bucharest, the capital of Roumania. They sent emissaries into Bulgaria +to excite an insurrection in that province. The plan was to set fire to +Adrianople and Philippopolis, each in scores of places, to burn other +towns, mainly inhabited by Mussulmans, and force all the Bulgarian +Rayahs to join the uprising. The insurrection broke out prematurely in +May, 1876, and only a few were actively engaged in it. Two or three +thousand troops would have been sufficient to have quelled the rising; +but there were none in the province, and despite the urgent appeals of +the Pacha none were sent. The Mussulmans, who are in a fearful minority +there, were thrown into a panic; and the Pacha gave orders for calling +an ignorant and fanatical population to arms. Regular troops were at +last sent. The Turks gained an easy victory, and perpetrated those +ineffable atrocities, the recital of which sent a thrill of horror +throughout Christendom. The Bulgarians fled northward toward Servia, +pursued by the Turks, who it is said made predatory incursions. Prince +Milan made some extraordinary demands upon the Sultan, among which were +that the government of Bulgaria should be committed to him and that of +Bosnia to Prince Nicholas of Herzegovina. The Grand Vizier refused to +listen to these demands; whereupon the Prince called the Servians to +arms, declared war against the Sultan, invaded Bulgaria, and soon +assumed the title of King of Servia. His invasion of Bulgaria met with +ill success. Although aided by many Russian soldiers and officers, +absent on special leave from their regiments, the Servians were driven +back over their frontiers; and the war was finally suspended by a truce +for six months. We suppose that there can be no doubt that the rising in +Bulgaria and the action of Servia were favored, if not by the Czar +personally, yet by the Russian government, although it would, if +possible, have withheld Prince Milan from declaring war when he did. The +Servian Bishop Strossmayer expressly affirms that the insurrection in +Herzegovina was prematurely commenced against the advice of Russia, and +that Servia and Montenegro went to war of their own accord, though they +have naturally accepted the Russian aid since accorded to them. He adds +that Prince Gortschakoff, who in the Russian government is all that +Prince Bismarck is in that of Germany, the year before last "informed +Prince Milan that Russia was unprepared; that only within three years +did she count on taking Constantinople; and that only then would she +call on the Sclaves of the South to plant the Greek cross on the dome of +St. Sophia."</p> + +<p>Meanwhile, on the news of the Turkish atrocities in Bulgaria, the +Czar put his troops in motion toward the Turkish frontier, and made +demands upon the Sultan which, if acceded to, would have practically +made the Czar the actual sovereign of all Turkey in Europe north of the +Balkhan. Great Britain sent her fleet to the mouth of the Dardanelles to +"maintain the interests of the British empire" in that part of the +world. Diplomatic notes and rejoinders passed between the cabinets of +the great Powers; and early in January an International Conference was +assembled at Constantinople to endeavor to settle, or at least to stave +off the present crisis in the Eastern Question; Great Britain, through +her representative, the Earl of Salisbury, apparently taking the lead. +As we write, in the early days of February, all that is definitely known +is: The Conference has utterly failed; the Sultan absolutely refused to +accede to the propositions made to him; and the ambassadors of the great +Powers have been withdrawn from Constantinople. Surmises and rumors as +to what will next be done are rife; not the least significant or the +least probable being that the Emperors of Germany, Russia, and Austria +are consulting as to taking the matter into their own hands. Whatever +the immediate issue may be—whether a peace of some kind; a partial +war between Russia on the one side, and Turkey, with or without Great +Britain, on the other; or a general European war—of one thing we +may be certain: it will not cause Russia to more than postpone still +longer her long-cherished determination to have Constantinople.</p> + +<p>Mr. Carlyle has suggested, as a final settlement of the Eastern +Question, that Turkey in Europe should be divided between Russia, +Austria, and Great Britain. But, as is his wont, he leaves out some +essential factors in the problem. No part of this territory would be of +the slightest use to Great Britain, except perhaps the island of Candia +as a sort of half-way house in the highway to India by the Suez canal. +She has everything to lose and little more than nothing to gain by any +such partition, which, as it necessarily must, would give Constantinople +to Russia. Mr. Carlyle has so thorough a dislike to France—and +with him dislike is nearly equivalent to contempt—that he +naturally leaves her out of the problem. But it is surprising that he +leaves out his favorite Germany, perhaps the most important factor of +all.</p> + +<p>We can conceive of a partition of Turkey between Russia and Austria +which would be so manifestly and equally advantageous to both that they +might agree to it. And the line of division is clearly indicated by +nature. Austria, like every other great civilized nation, desires to be +a maritime power; but she touches the sea only at one point, the head of +the Adriatic, with the narrow strip known as Dalmatia, running half way +down its eastern coast. There are only two considerable ports, Trieste +and Fiume. Eastward, and back of Dalmatia, are Servia, Bosnia, and +Herzegovina; and below these, on the Adriatic, is the long coast-line of +Albania, with several good harbors. Across the narrowing isthmus is the +Archipelago, with the excellent harbor of Salonika. Now look on any +tolerable map, and one will see on the eastern borders of Servia, where +the Danube breaks through the Carpathians, a range of mountains shooting +southward to and crossing the Balkhan, from which it is continued still +southward to the Archipelago, the whole dividing European Turkey into +two almost equal halves. Let Russia take the eastern half, comprising +Roumania, Bulgaria, and the half of Roumelia, including Constantinople, +the whole shore of the Sea of Marmora and the Dardanelles—all that +she really needs or cares for. Let Austria take the other half, which +would give her the whole eastern coast of the Adriatic, and a large +frontage on the Archipelago, and so a double access to the Mediterranean +and thence to the ocean. She would acquire thereby an access of valuable +territory equal to almost half of her present dominions, which would +render her relatively to Russia fully as strong as she now is.</p> + +<p>But such a partition could not be carried into effect without the +concurrence of Germany, for Germany is undoubtedly as a military power +much stronger than Russia. Germany certainly would never assent unless +she could somewhere get something equivalent to that gained by Austria +and Russia, and not an inch of Turkey would be of any use to her. But in +quite another part of Europe is a territory comparatively small in +extent, which would be of priceless value to Germany. This is the little +kingdom of Holland, which is indeed physically a part of Germany, and +essential to the rounding off of the boundaries of the new empire. It +would give her an extended sea-front, which is what she also needs in +order to become a great naval and commercial power. It would give her +also in the Zuyder Zee a naval depot and harbor of refuge inferior only +to that of the Black Sea, and immeasurably superior to any other in +Europe. Furthermore, with Holland would go the possession of Java and as +many other great islands in the Indian Ocean as she might choose to +seize and colonize. To Holland, indeed, we think such an annexation +would be a decided gain. Her people are in race, language, and religion +closely allied to the Germans. It would be better for her to become a +State, inferior only to Prussia, of the great German empire, than a +feeble kingdom, always at the mercy of her powerful neighbors. But +whether it would be for her good or not, would not be likely to be much +taken into account should the great Powers agree upon a reconstruction +of the political map of Europe. The interests of France would suffer no +material damage from this, provided she were left free to extend her +Algerian possessions over the whole Mediterranean coast of Africa, now +almost a desert, but once the granary of the Roman empire, and +abundantly capable of being restored to its ancient fertility; or in +case she should think her dignity required something more, she might +receive in Belgium far more than a counterpoise for her recent loss of +Alsace-Lorraine.</p> + +<p>Suppose that in some not remote future the policy of Russia, Germany, +and Austria shall happen to be directed by statesmen as able and +unscrupulous as Gortschakoff, Bismarck, and Von Beust, we think such a +settlement of the Eastern Question by no means an improbable one. And +should these Powers agree to effect it, all the rest of Europe could do +nothing to the contrary.</p> + +<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">A. H. Guernsey.</span></p> + +<div class="footnote"> <p><a name="Footnote_H" id="Footnote_H"></a> <a +href="#FNanchor_H"> <span class="label">[H]</span></a>"Quarterly +Review;" October, 1876.</p> </div> + +<div class="footnote"> <p><a name="Footnote_I" id="Footnote_I"></a> <a +href="#FNanchor_I"> <span class="label">[I]</span></a>His mother was a +Creole, a native of Martinique, and cousin of that other Creole who came +to be the Empress Josephine. She had been sent to France to be educated, +and on her voyage homeward was captured by an Algerine pirate who sold +her to the Dey, by whom she was sent as a present to the Sultan, whose +favorite Sultana she became.</p> </div> + +<hr /> + +<p class="p4"></p> + +<h4>THE LASSIE'S COMPLAINT.</h4> + +<hr class="c5" /> + +<div class="poem"> + <div class="stanza"> + <span class="i0">Now simmer cleeds the groves in green,</span> + <span class="i2">An' decks the flow'ry brae;</span> + <span class="i0">An' fain I'd wander out at e'en,</span> + <span class="i2">But out I daurna gae.</span> + <span class="i0">For there's a laddie down the gate</span> + <span class="i2">Wha's like a ghaist to me;</span> + <span class="i0">An' gin I meet him air or late,</span> + <span class="i2">He winna lat me be.</span> + </div> + + <div class="stanza"> + <span class="i0">He glow'rs like ony silly gowk,</span> + <span class="i2">He ca's me heavenly fair.</span> + <span class="i0">I bid him look like ither fowk,</span> + <span class="i2">Nor fash me sae nae mair.</span> + <span class="i0">I ca' him coof an' hav'rel too,</span> + <span class="i2">An' frown wi' scornfu' ee.</span> + <span class="i0">But a' I say, or a' I do,</span> + <span class="i2">He winna lat me be.</span> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">James Kennedy.</span></p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="p4"></p> + +<h4>ASSJA.</h4> + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">By Ivan Tourguéneff.</span></p> + + +<hr class="c5" /> + +<p class="p2">I was then twenty-five years old, began N. N. As you see, +the story is of days long past. I was absolutely my own master, and was +making a foreign tour, not to "finish my education," as the phrase is +nowadays, but to look about me in the world a little. I was healthy, +young, light-hearted; I had plenty of money and as yet no cares; I lived +in the present and did precisely as I wished; in one word, life was in +full flower with me. It did not occur to me that man is not like a +plant, and that his time of bloom is but once. Youth eats its gilded +gingerbread, and thinks that is to be its daily food; but the time comes +when one longs in vain for a bit of dry bread. But it is not worth while +to speak of that.</p> + +<p>I was travelling without aim or plan: made stops wherever it pleased +me, and went on whenever I felt the need of seeing fresh +faces—especially faces. Men interested me above all things. I +detested monuments, collections of curiosities. The mere sight of a +guide roused in me feelings of weariness and fury. In the Dresden "Grüne +Gewölbe" I nearly lost my wits. Nature made a powerful impression upon +me; but I did not love her so-called beauties—her mighty hills, +her crags and torrents. I did not like to have them take possession of +me and disturb my tranquillity. Faces, on the contrary—living, +earthly faces, men's talk, laughter, movements—I could not do +without. In the midst of a crowd I was always particularly gay and at my +ease. It gave me real pleasure merely to go where others went, to shout +when others shouted, and at the same time to observe how these others +shouted. It pleased me to observe men—yes, I did not observe them +merely; I studied them with a delighted and insatiable curiosity. But I +am digressing again.</p> + +<p>Twenty years ago, then, I was living in the little German town of +<span style="white-space:nowrap;">S——</span>, on the left +bank of the Rhine. I sought solitude. I had been wounded to the heart by +a young widow whose acquaintance I had made at a watering-place. She was +extremely pretty and vivacious, flirted with everybody—alas! with +me also, poor rustic! At first she had lifted me to the skies, but soon +plunged me in despair when she sacrificed me to a rosy-cheeked +lieutenant from Bavaria. Seriously speaking, the wound in my heart was +not very deep; but I considered it my duty to give myself for a time to +melancholy and retirement—what pleasure youth finds in +these!—and accordingly settled myself in <span +style="white-space:nowrap;">S——</span>.</p> + +<p>This little town had attracted me by its position at the foot of high +hills, by its old walls and towers, its hundred-year-old diadems, its +steep bridges over the clear little brook which flowed into the Rhine, +but above all by its good wine. And after sunset—it was in +June—the loveliest of fair-haired Rhineland girls sauntered +through the narrow streets and cried, "Good evening!" in their sweet +tones to the stranger whom they met, some of them even lingering still +when the moon rose behind the peaked roofs of the old houses, and the +little stones of the pavement showed distinctly in her steady light. +Then I delighted in strolling about the old town. The moon seemed to +look down benignly from a cloudless sky, and the town received this +glance and lay peacefully there wrapped in sleep and veiled in +moonbeams—the light that at once soothes and vaguely stirs the +soul. The weathercock upon the high, sharp spire gleamed in dull gold; +long gleams of gold quivered on the dark surface of the stream; some dim +lights—O thrifty German folk!—burned here and there in the +small windows under the slated roofs; the vines stretched out mysterious +fingers from the walls; something stirred perhaps in the shadow of the +fountain in the little three-cornered market-place; suddenly the sleepy +cry of the watchman sounded; then a good-natured dog growled in an +undertone; and the air kissed the brow so softly, and the lindens +smelled so sweet, that the breast involuntarily heaved quicker, and the +word "Gretchen" rose to the lips, half a cry, half question.</p> + +<p>This little town of <span +style="white-space:nowrap;">S——</span> lies about two versts +from the Rhine. I went often to look at the majestic river, and would +sit for hours upon a stone bench under a lonely, large oak, thinking, +not without a certain exertion, of my faithless widow. A little statue +of the Virgin, with a red heart pierced with swords upon her breast, +looked sadly out from the leaves. On the opposite bank lay the town of +<span style="white-space:nowrap;">L——</span>, somewhat +larger than the one in which I had established myself. One evening I was +sitting in my favorite spot, looking in turn at the stream, the sky, and +the vineyards. Before me some white-hooded urchins were climbing over +the sides of a boat that was drawn up on the shore and lay there keel +upward. Little skiffs with sails hardly swollen passed slowly along; +green waves slid by with a gentle, rushing sound. All at once strains of +music greeted my ears. I listened. They were playing a waltz in +L——. The double bass grumbled out its broken tones, the +violins rang clear between, the flutes trilled noisily.</p> + +<p>"What is that?" I asked an old man who approached me dressed in a +plush waistcoat, blue stockings, and shoes with buckles.</p> + +<p>"That?" he replied, shifting his pipe from one corner of his mouth to +the other. "Those are the students who have come from B—— to +the <i>Commers</i>."</p> + +<p>"I will see this Commers," I thought. "Besides, I have not yet been +in <span style="white-space:nowrap;">L——</span>." I found a +ferryman and crossed the river.</p> + +<p>Perhaps not every one knows what a Commers is. It is a particular +kind of drinking bout, in which the students from one section, or of one +society, unite. Almost every participant of a Commers wears the +conventional costume of the German student: a short jacket, high boots, +and a little cap with colored vizor. The students generally assemble at +midday and carouse till morning, drinking, singing, smoking, and +occasionally they hire a band.</p> + +<p>Such a Commers was at this moment held in <span +style="white-space:nowrap;">L——</span> at a little inn +called the Sun, in a garden adjoining the street. Flags were flying from +the inn and over the garden itself. The students sat round tables under +the spreading lindens; a huge bulldog under one of the tables. The +musicians were under a trellis at one side, playing with great spirit, +and refreshing themselves from time to time with mugs of beer. A great +crowd had collected in the street before the unpretending little inn. +The good citizens of L—— were not of the stuff to let slip a +good opportunity of seeing strange guests. I mingled with the crowd of +lookers-on. It gave me an immense satisfaction to watch the faces of the +students, their embraces, their exclamations, the innocent affectations +of youth, the eager glances, the unrestrained laughter—the best +laughter in the world. All this generous ferment of young, fresh life, +this striving forward, no matter whither so it be forward, this +rollicking, untrammelled existence excited and infected me. Why not join +them, I thought?</p> + +<p>"Assja, have you had enough?" suddenly asked in Russian a man's voice +behind me.</p> + +<p>"Let us wait a little longer," answered another voice, a woman's, in +the same tongue.</p> + +<p>I turned hastily. My eyes fell on a handsome young fellow in a loose +jacket and cap. On his arm hung a girl of medium height, with a straw +hat which entirely hid the upper part of her face.</p> + +<p>"You are Russians?" I said aloud involuntarily.</p> + +<p>The young man smiled and answered, <ins title="Transcriber's Note: +Original is a new paragraph.">"Yes</ins>; we are Russians."</p> + +<p>"I did not expect, in such an out-of-the-way place——" I +began.</p> + +<p>"Nor did we," he interrupted me. "But what does that signify? All the +better. Permit me to introduce myself. My name is Gagin, and this +is"—he paused for an instant—"my sister. May we ask your +name?"</p> + +<p>I told him, and we began a conversation. I learned that Gagin, like +myself, was travelling for pleasure; that he had arrived at <span +style="white-space:nowrap;">L——</span> the week previous, +and was now staying there. To speak candidly, I was always unwilling to +make the acquaintance of Russians in other countries. I could recognize +them at any distance by their gait, the cut of their clothes, and more +than all by the expression of their faces. The self-satisfied, scornful, +and usually haughty expression would change suddenly to one timid and +suspicious; in a moment the whole man is on his guard, his glance +wanders about unsteadily. "Have I said anything ridiculous? Are they +laughing at me?" this anxious look seems to say. But a moment more, and +the majesty of the physiognomy is restored, only occasionally replaced +by stupidity. Yes, I avoided Russians, but Gagin pleased me at once. +There are such fortunate faces in the world. To look at them is a +pleasure for every one. One feels at once cheered and caressed by them. +Gagin had just such a gentle, attractive face, with great soft eyes and +fine curly hair. When he spoke, even if you did not see his face, you +felt by the mere sound of his voice that he was smiling.</p> + +<p>The young girl whom he had called his sister also seemed to me at the +first glance very lovely. There was something peculiar and remarkable in +the traits of her round, brown face, with its thin, delicate nose, its +round, almost babyish cheeks, and its clear, dark eyes. Her form was +graceful, but apparently not yet fully developed. She did not in the +least resemble her brother.</p> + +<p>"Will you come home with us?" Gagin asked me. "I think we have seen +enough of the Germans. Our beloved countrymen would certainly have +broken some window panes or smashed a few chairs, but these fellows are +quite too well behaved. What do you say, Assja, shall we go home?"</p> + +<p>The young girl nodded assent.</p> + +<p>"We live just beyond the village," Gagin continued, "in a little +solitary house far up the hillside. It is really fine there. You shall +see for yourself. The landlady promised me to have some buttermilk for +us. It will be dark very soon, and then you can cross the Rhine far more +pleasantly by moonlight."</p> + +<p>We set out. Through a low gate—for the town was surrounded on +all sides by an old wall, some of whose loop-holes even yet remained +undestroyed—we gained the open country, and after we had walked +about a hundred paces beside a stone wall we came to a steep and narrow +path up the hill, into which Gagin turned. The slope on both sides was +planted with grapes. The sun had but just set, and a soft purple light +rested on the green vines, the long poles, the dusty soil covered with +bits of broken slate and stone, and upon the white walls of a small +house with steep roof and light windows, which stood high above us on +the mountain which we were climbing.</p> + +<p>"Here is our place!" exclaimed Gagin as we drew near the house. "And +here is the landlady just bringing us our buttermilk. Good evening, +madam! We will be there in a moment. But first," he added, "look about +you once. What do you say to this outlook?"</p> + +<p>The view was indeed charming. The Rhine lay before us, a strip of +silver between green banks. In one place it glowed in the purple and +gold of the sunset. All the houses in the little towns clustering on the +shores stood out distinctly; hills and fields spread far before us. +Below us it was lovely, but above it was lovelier still. The brilliant +transparency of the atmosphere, and the depth and purity of the sky, +made a profound impression on me. The air was fresh and exhilarating. It +blew with a light wave motion, as if it felt itself more free on the +hilltop.</p> + +<p>"You have chosen a magnificent situation," I said.</p> + +<p>"Assja found it out," Gagin answered. "Now, Assja, give your orders. +Let us have everything brought here. We will take tea in the open air. +We can hear the music better here. Haven't you noticed it?" he went on. +"A waltz close at hand may be often good for nothing—mere +commonplace jingle. It becomes exquisite at a distance; sets all the +sentimental strings in one's heart a twanging." Assja (her name was +properly Anna; but Gagin always called her Assja, and I shall allow +myself that privilege)—Assja went into the house and soon returned +with the landlady. Both together they carried a great tea-tray with a +jug full of milk, plates, spoons, sugar, berries, and bread. We seated +ourselves and began to eat. Assja took off her hat. Her black hair, cut +rather short, and curled like a boy's, fell in thick ringlets over neck +and shoulders. At first she was shy; but Gagin said to her:</p> + +<p>"Assja, don't be afraid. He won't hurt you!"</p> + +<p>She smiled, and immediately addressed a little conversation to me. I +have never seen a more restless creature. She did not sit still a +moment. She stood up, ran into the house, came out again, sang in an +undertone, and laughed often in an odd way. It seemed as if she was not +laughing at what she heard, but at stray thoughts which came into her +head. Her large, clear eyes looked at us frankly and fearlessly. Now and +then, however, the lids fell, and then her glance became suddenly deep +and gentle.</p> + +<p>For nearly two hours we chatted together. Daylight was long past, and +the twilight had changed from scarlet and gold to a faint redness, then +to a clear gray, and finally all was lost in night; but our speech +flowed as uninterruptedly, peaceful, and quiet as the air that +surrounded us. Gagin brought a bottle of Rhine wine, and we drank it +leisurely. We could still hear the music. The notes seemed fainter and +sweeter to us. Lights began to appear in the town and on the river. +Assja's head drooped forward so that her hair fell over her eyes. She +was silent and breathed heavily. Then she declared that she was sleepy, +and went into the house; but I saw that she stood for a long time behind +the closed window without lighting her lamp. Then the moon rose, and her +beams quivered on the surface of the water. Everything was bright or in +deep shadow, but certainly took on a different appearance. Even the wine +in our glasses sparkled with a mysterious brilliancy. The wind had +fallen as if it had folded its wings and were resting. Warm, spicy odors +of the night rose from the ground.</p> + +<p>"It is time for me to go, or I shall not find a ferryman," I +said.</p> + +<p>"Yes; it is time," Gagin repeated.</p> + +<p>We descended the footpath. Suddenly stones began to rattle down. +Assja was running after us.</p> + +<p>"Aren't you asleep then?" her brother asked her. But she ran on +before us without replying. The last dim lights which the students had +lighted in the little inn garden showed through the branches of the +trees, and lent them a gay, fantastic appearance. We found Assja at the +shore talking to the old boatmen. I sprang into the boat and took leave +of my new friends. Gagin promised to visit me on the next day. I shook +his hand and held mine out to Assja, but she merely looked at me and +nodded. The boat was pushed off and was borne down on the swift current. +The ferryman, a hale old fellow, dipped his oars deep into the dark +flood.</p> + +<p>"You're in the streak of moonshine—you've spoiled it," Assja +called after me.</p> + +<p>I looked down. The waves were rippling darkly about the boat.</p> + +<p>"Good-by!" rang her voice again.</p> + +<p>"Till to-morrow," Gagin added.</p> + +<p>The boat touched the bank. I stepped out and looked back, but could +see no one on the shore behind me. The moonshine spanned the stream +again like a golden bridge, and like another good-by I caught the +strains of an old country waltz. Gagin was right. I felt that all the +strings of my heart trembled responsively. I crossed the dusky fields to +my house, drinking great draughts of the balmy air, and giving myself up +wholly to a sweet, vague feeling of expectation. I felt myself happy. +But why? I wished for nothing, I thought of nothing. I was merely +happy.</p> + +<p>Still smiling from the fulness of delightful and changing sensations, +I sank into bed, and had already closed my eyes when it suddenly +occurred to me that I had not thought of my cruel fair one once in the +whole evening. "What does it mean?" I asked myself. "Am I not hopelessly +in love?" But just as I put this question to myself I fell asleep, as it +seemed, like a baby in its cradle.</p> + +<div class="center">* * * * *</div> + +<p>The next morning (I was awake, but had not risen) some one knocked +with a stick under my window, and a voice that I immediately recognized +as Gagin's began to sing,</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <span class="i0">Sleepest thou still?</span> + <span class="i0">My lute shall wake thee.</span> +</div> + +<p>I ran to open the door for him.</p> + +<p>"Good morning," said Gagin as he entered. "I disturb you a little +early. But what a morning it is! Fresh, dewy; the larks singing." With +his wavy, shining hair, his bare neck and ruddy checks, he was as fresh +as the morning himself.</p> + +<p>I dressed myself, and we went out into the garden, sat down upon a +bench, ordered coffee, and began to talk. Gagin confided to me his plans +for the future. Possessed of a fair property, and entirely independent, +he wished to devote himself to painting; only he regretted that this +decision had been a late one, and that he had already lost much time. I +also detailed my projects, and even took him into the secret of my +unhappy love affair. He listened patiently, but, so far as I could see, +the story of my passion did not awake any very lively sympathy in him. +After he had sighed once or twice out of good manners, he proposed to me +to come and see his studio. I was ready at once.</p> + +<p>We did not find Assja. She had gone to the "ruin," the landlady +assured us. Two versts from <span +style="white-space:nowrap;">L——</span> were the remains of a +castle of the middle ages. Gagin laid all his canvases before me. There +was life and truth in his sketches, a certain breadth and freedom of +treatment, but not one was finished, and the drawing was careless and +often faulty. I told him my opinion frankly.</p> + +<p>"Yes, yes," he interrupted me with a sigh. "You are right; it is all +weak and unsatisfactory. But what is to be done? I haven't studied +properly, and the inexcusable carelessness shows everywhere. Before +working it always seems as if I were capable of eagle flights—it +seems as I could hurl the earth out of her course; but when it comes to +execution one loses strength quickly enough, and is tired."</p> + +<p>I began to encourage him, but he motioned with his hand that I should +be silent, rolled up his canvases, and threw himself on the sofa. "If my +patience lasts, I shall make something yet," he muttered in his beard; +"if not—then I shall stay a country lout. Come, let us look after +Assja." We started.</p> + +<div class="center">* * * * *</div> + +<p>The way to the ruin wound round the slope of a wooded valley, at +whose bottom a brook flowed noisily over its pebbles as if it were +anxious to lose itself in the great stream that was shining peacefully +behind the sharply indented mountain side. Gagin called my attention to +some partially lighted spots; in his words the artist certainly spoke, +if not the painter. The river soon appeared. On the summit of the naked +rock rose a square town, black with age but in tolerable preservation, +though it was cleft from top to bottom. Moss-grown walls adjoined this +town, ivy clung here and there, a tangle of briars filled the embrasures +and the shattered arches. A stone foot-walk led to the door that +remained intact. We were already near it when suddenly a girl's figure +sped by us, sprang over the heaps of rubbish, and seated herself on a +projection of the wall directly over the abyss. "There is Assja," cried +Gagin. "Is she mad?"</p> + +<p>Through the gate we stepped into a spacious courtyard half filled +with wild apple trees and stinging nettles. It was indeed Assja, who was +sitting on the projection. She looked down at us and laughed, but did +not stir from her place. Gagin threatened her with his finger. I began +to expostulate aloud with her on her recklessness.</p> + +<p>"Don't do that," Gagin whispered to me. "Don't exasperate her. You +don't know her. She would be capable of clambering up the town. Look +yonder, rather, and see how ingenious the people hereabouts are."</p> + +<p>I looked about me. A thrifty old lady had made herself very +comfortable in a kind of narrow booth made of boards piled up in one +corner, and knitted her stocking, while she occasionally glanced askance +at us. She had beer, cake, and soda-water for tourists. We sat down on a +bench and attacked our heavy tin mugs of cooling beer. Assja still sat +motionless; she had drawn up her feet, and wound her muslin scarf about +her head. Her charming, slender figure showed sharp against the sky, but +I could not look at it without annoyance. Even on the previous day I had +seen something intense, unnatural in her. "Does she want to astonish +us?" I thought. "What for? What a childish freak!" As if she had +fathomed my thought, she cast a quick and piercing glance at me, laughed +loudly, sprang in two bounds from the wall, and going to the old woman, +asked for a glass of water.</p> + +<p>"You think that I want to drink it?" she said, turning to her +brother. "No; there are some flowers up there that I must water."</p> + +<p>Gagin made no reply, but she scrambled up the ruins glass in hand, +and, stopping from time to time and bending down, with extraordinary +painstaking she let fall some drops of water, which glistened in the +sun. Her movements were full of grace, but I was vexed as before, +although I was forced to admire her lightness and dexterity. In one +perilous spot she uttered a little shriek with design, and then laughed +loudly again. That annoyed me still more.</p> + +<p>"The young lady climbs like a goat," mumbled the old woman, and +stopped knitting for a moment.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile Assja had emptied her glass and come down, roguishly +swaying to and fro. A strange, imperceptible smile played round her +brows, and nostrils, and lips; half audacious, half merry, the dark eyes +were shining.</p> + +<p>"You find my behavior scandalous," her face seemed to say. "Very +well. I know that you admire me."</p> + +<p>"Neatly done, Assja; neatly done," said Gagin under his breath.</p> + +<p>It seemed as if she felt suddenly ashamed of herself. Her long lashes +fell, and she sat down near us meekly, as if conscious of naughtiness. +Now for the first time I could see her face fairly—the most +changeful that I had ever beheld. For a few moments it was very pale, +and took on a reserved, almost a melancholy expression. Her features +seemed larger, stronger, and more simple. She was perfectly still. We +made the tour of the ruins (Assja followed us), and were very +enthusiastic over the view. Meanwhile dinnertime approached. Gagin paid +the old woman, asked for another glass of beer, and cried, turning to me +with a sly look,</p> + +<p>"To the health of the lady of your heart!"</p> + +<p>"Has he—have you such a lady?" asked Assja suddenly.</p> + +<p>"Who hasn't?" replied Gagin.</p> + +<p>Assja became thoughtful. Her face assumed yet another expression. The +challenging, almost bold smile returned.</p> + +<p>On the way home she laughed more, and her behavior was more whimsical +than ever. She broke for herself a long branch, carried it over her +shoulder like a gun, and bound her scarf about her head. A party of +fair-haired young English dandies met us. As if at a word of command, +they all stood aside to let Assja pass, with a cold glare of +astonishment in their eyes, while she began to sing loudly in mockery. +As soon as we had reached the house she went to her chamber, and +appeared at dinner in a most elaborate dress, with carefully arranged +hair, and wearing gloves. She behaved with great propriety, not to say +stillness, at table, hardly touched her food, and drank water out of a +wineglass. Evidently she wished to appear before me in a new rōle, that +of a conventional and well brought up young lady. Gagin let her alone. +It was easy to see that it had become a habit with him to let her have +her will in all things. At times he looked at her good-naturedly and +shrugged his shoulders slightly, as much as to say, "Be indulgent; she +is only a child." When the meal was ended Assja rose, made us a +courtesy, and taking up her hat, asked Gagin if she might go to see Frau +Luise.</p> + +<p>"Since when have you begun to ask permission?" answered Gagin with +his ready smile, but with a little astonishment. "Is the time long to +you with us?"</p> + +<p>"No; but yesterday I promised Frau Luise that I would visit her. And +then I think you two would rather be alone. Mr. N." (she pointed to me) +"may have something to tell you."</p> + +<p>She went.</p> + +<p>"Frau Luise," Gagin began, taking pains to avoid my glance, "is the +widow of a former burgomaster of this place; a good old soul, but rather +narrow-minded. She has taken a great fancy to Assja. It is Assja's +passion to make the acquaintance of people of the lower classes. I have +found that pride is at the bottom of the matter every time. I have +spoiled her thoroughly, you see," he went on after a pause; "but what +was there for me to do? I never could carry a point by firmness with any +one; most of all not with her. It is my duty to be indulgent with +her."</p> + +<p>I was silent. Gagin gave another direction to the conversation. The +more I learned of him the more he pleased me. I soon understood him. His +was a real Russian character—truth-loving, faithful, simple, but +unfortunately rather sluggish, lacking firmness, and without the inward +fire. Youth did not flame up in him; it burned with a gentle glow. He +was most amiable and sensible; but I could not imagine what he would +become in manhood. He wished to be an artist. Without constant, +absorbing endeavor, no one is an artist. You exhaust yourself, I +thought, looking at his gentle face and listening to the slow cadence of +his voice. No; you will not strain every nerve; you will never succeed +in mastering yourself. And yet it was impossible not to be attracted by +him. My heart was really drawn to him. It may have been four hours that +we talked together, sometimes sitting on the sofa, sometimes walking +quietly up and down before the house; and in these four hours we became +real friends.</p> + +<p>The day was at its close, and it was time to go home. Assja had not +returned.</p> + +<p>"She is a wild creature," Gagin said. "If you please, I will go back +with you, and we will go to Frau Luise's on the way, and I will ask if +she is still there. The distance is trifling."</p> + +<p>"We descended to the town, turned into a crooked and narrow cross +street, and came to a standstill before a house of four stories with two +windows on a floor. The second story projected into the street beyond +the first; the third and fourth reached still further forward than the +second. The whole house, with its old-fashioned carving, its two thick +pillars below, its steep, tiled roof, and the beak-shaped gutter running +out from the eaves, had the appearance of some monstrous, squatting +bird.</p> + +<p>"Assja," called Gagin, "are you there?"</p> + +<p>A lighted window in the third story was thrown up, and Assja's little +dark head appeared. Behind her peered forth the face of a toothless and +blear-eyed old woman.</p> + +<p>"Here I am," answered Assja, coquettishly leaning over the +window-sill on her elbows. "It is exceedingly pleasant here. Catch," she +added, flinging a bit of geranium down to Gagin. "Imagine that I am the +lady of your heart."</p> + +<p>Frau Luise laughed.</p> + +<p>"N. is going," responded Gagin. "He would like to take leave of +you."</p> + +<p>"Indeed?" said Assja. "In that case give him my sprig. I am coming +home directly."</p> + +<p>She shut the window, and I fancied that she gave Frau Luise a kiss. +Gagin handed me the sprig without a word. Without a word I put it in my +pocket, went to the ferry, and crossed to the other side.</p> + +<p>I remember that I went home thinking of nothing definite, but feeling +a certain dull ache at my heart, when suddenly a strong odor, well known +to me, but not usual in Germany, made me stop puzzled. I stood still and +recognized by the roadside a <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Original +reads 'hemp-field'">hemp field</ins> of moderate size, whose smell +reminded me at once of my native steppes. A mighty homesickness arose in +me. I had a longing to feel Russian air blowing on my cheeks, to have +Russian ground beneath my feet. "What am I doing here? Why am I +wandering about among strangers in a strange land?" I cried aloud, and +the vague uneasiness that weighed on my spirits changed suddenly to a +bitter burning pain. I reached the house in a mood entirely different +from the one of the preceding day. I was strangely excited. I could not +compose myself. A feeling of vexation which I could not explain to +myself possessed me. At last I sat down to think of my faithless widow +(for I devoted the close of every day to official recollections of this +lady), and I took out one of her letters. But this time I did not even +open it. My thoughts had taken another turn; I thought—of Assja. I +remembered that Gagin, in the course of conversation, had spoken of +certain obstacles which would make his return to Russia very difficult. +"Is she then really his sister?" I cried aloud.</p> + +<p>I undressed myself, went to bed, and tried to sleep; but an hour +afterward I was sitting up with my elbow on the pillow, and still +thinking of the "capricious maid with her affected laugh." "She has a +form like the little Galatea of Raphael in the Farnese," I said to +myself. "Yes, and she is not his sister."</p> + +<p>Meanwhile the widow's letter lay quietly on the floor, bleached by a +moonbeam.</p> + +<hr class="c5" /> + +<p>However, on the following day I went again to <span +style="white-space:nowrap;">L——</span>. I said to myself +that I wished to visit Gagin, but in truth I was curious to watch Assja, +to see if she would pursue the extravagances of the day previous. I +found them both in the parlor, and wonderful!—was it because I had +thought so much of Russia in the night and the morning?—Assja +appeared to me a real Russian girl—yes, even a very ordinary one, +almost like a servant. She wore a shabby gown; her hair was combed back +behind her ears. She sat quietly by the window, busy with some sewing, +sedate and still as if she never in her life had been otherwise. She +hardly spoke, examined her work from time to time; and her features had +an expression so dull and commonplace that I was involuntarily reminded +of our own Kathinkas and Maschinkas. To complete the resemblance, she +began to hum "My darling little mother." I looked at her sallow, languid +face, thought of yesterday's fantasies, and got suddenly out of temper. +The weather was magnificent. Gagin declared that he was going to sketch +from nature. I asked if he would permit me to accompany him, if it would +not disturb him?</p> + +<p>"On the contrary," said he, "you will assist me by your +suggestions."</p> + +<p>He put on his Vandyk hat and his painting blouse, took his canvas +under his arm, and started. I followed him slowly; Assja remained at +home. In going out Gagin begged her to take care that the soup should +not be too watery. Assja promised to oversee it in the kitchen. Gagin +reached a dell which I already knew, sat down upon a stone, and began to +sketch an old, hollow, wide-branched oak. I lay down in the grass and +took out a book, but my reading did not advance beyond the second page, +nor did he blacken much paper. We chatted a great deal, and, if my +memory does not deceive me, we discoursed very subtly and profoundly +about work: what one should avoid, what strive for, and in what +consisted the real merit of the artists of our day. At last Gagin +declared that he was not in the mood for work, threw himself down beside +me, and then for the first time our youthful talk flowed free, now +passionate, now dreamy, now almost inspired, but always vague—a +conversation peculiar to Russians. After we had talked ourselves tired +we started for home, filled with satisfaction that we had accomplished +something, had arrived at some result. I found Assja precisely as I had +left her. Whatever pains I might take with my scrutiny I could discover +no trace of coquetry, no evidence of a part designedly played. This time +it was impossible to accuse her of oddity. "Aha!" Gagin said; "you have +imposed penance and fasting on yourself." In the evening she gaped +several times without pretence at concealment, and retired early. I also +took leave of Gagin betimes, and having reached home, I gave myself up +to no more dreams. This day ended in sober reflections. But I remember +that as I settled myself to sleep I said aloud, "What a chameleon the +girl is!" And after a moment's thought I added, "And she is certainly +not his sister."</p> + +<hr class="c5" /> + +<p>In this way two whole weeks passed. I visited the Gagins every day. +Assja seemed to shun me. She indulged in no more of those extravagances +which had so astonished me on the first days of our acquaintance. It +seemed to me that she was secretly troubled or perplexed. Neither did +she laugh so much. I observed her with interest.</p> + +<p>She spoke French and German indifferently well, but one could see in +everything that she had not been in the hands of women since her +childhood, and the strange, desultory education which she had received +had nothing in common with Gagin's. In spite of the Vandyk hat and the +painter's blouse, the delicate, almost effeminate Russian nobleman was +always apparent in him; but she was not in the least like a noblewoman. +In all her movements there was something unsteady. Here was a graft +lately made, wine not yet fermented. Naturally of a timid and shy +disposition, she yet was annoyed by her own timidity, and in her +vexation she compelled herself to be unconcerned and at her ease, in +which she did not always succeed. Several times I turned the +conversation to her life in Russia, her past. She answered my questions +reluctantly. I learned, however, that she had lived in the country for a +long time before her travels. Once I found her with a book. She was +alone. Her head supported by both hands, the fingers twisted deep in her +hair, she was devouring the words with her eyes.</p> + +<p>"Bravo!" I called out to her on entering. "You are very busy."</p> + +<p>She raised her head and looked at me with great gravity and +earnestness.</p> + +<p>"Do you really think that I can do nothing but laugh?" she said, and +was about to withdraw.</p> + +<p>I glanced at the title of the book; it was a French novel.</p> + +<p>"I can't commend your choice," I said.</p> + +<p>"What shall I read then?" she cried. And throwing her book on the +table, she added, "It's better that I fill up my time with nonsense," +and with this she ran out into the garden.</p> + +<p>That evening I read "Hermann and Dorothea" aloud to Gagin. At first +Assja occupied herself rather noisily near us, then suddenly ceased and +became attentive, seated herself quietly beside me, and listened to the +reading to the end. On the following day I was again puzzled by her mood +till it occurred to me that she had been seized with a whim to be +womanly and discreet like Dorothea. In a word, she was an enigmatical +creature. Full of conceit and irritable as she was, she attracted me +even while she made me angry. I was more and more convinced that she was +not Gagin's sister. His behavior toward her was not that of a brother; +it was too gentle, too considerate, and at the same time a little +constrained. A singular occurrence seemed, by every token, to confirm my +suspicions.</p> + +<p>One evening, when I came to the vineyard where the Gagins lived, I +found the gate locked. Without much thought I went to a broken place +which I had often noticed in the wall, and sprang over. Not far from +this place, and aside from the path, there was a small clump of acacia. +I had reached it, and was on the point of passing it. Suddenly I heard +Assja's voice, the words spoken excitedly and through tears:</p> + +<p>"No. I will love no one but you: no, no—you alone and for +ever!"</p> + +<p>"Listen, Assja. Compose yourself," replied Gagin. "You know that I +believe you." I heard the voices of both in the arbor. I saw both +through the sparse foliage. They were not aware of my presence.</p> + +<p>"You—you alone," she repeated, threw herself on his neck, and +clinging to his breast, she kissed him amid violent sobs. "Come, +enough," he said, while he smoothed her hair gently with his hand.</p> + +<p>For a moment I stood motionless. Suddenly I recollected myself. Enter +and join them? For nothing in the world! it shot through my brain. With +hasty steps I gained the wall, leaped it, and reached my dwelling almost +on the run. I laughed, rubbed my hands together, and congratulated +myself on the chance which had so unexpectedly confirmed my suspicion +(whose truth I had not doubted for an instant); but my heart was heavy. +"They dissemble well?" I thought. "And for what purpose? Why do they +wish to amuse themselves at my expense? I would not have thought it of +them!" What a disturbing discovery it was!</p> + +<hr class="c5" /> + +<p>I slept ill, and on the following day I rose early, buckled on my +knapsack, and after telling my landlady not to expect me at night, I +turned my steps toward the mountains, following the stream on which the +town of <span style="white-space:nowrap;">S——</span> is +built. These mountains are very interesting from a geological point of +view; they are particularly remarkable for the regularity and purity of +their basaltic formations; but I was not bent on geological +investigation. I could give no account to myself of my own feelings. One +thing, however, was clear: I had not the least desire to see the Gagins. +I insisted to myself that the only ground of my sudden distaste for +their society lay in vexation at their falseness.</p> + +<p>What had been the necessity of calling themselves brother and sister? +I resolutely avoided thinking of them, loitered idly among the hills and +valleys, spent much time in village inns in friendly talk with the +landlord and his guests, or lay on a flat or sunny rock in the lovely +weather, and watched the clouds float over. In this way three days +passed not unpleasantly, though from time to time I had a stifled +feeling at my heart. This quiet nature accorded perfectly with my state +of mind. I gave myself up completely to the chance of the moment and the +impressions that it brought to me; following one another without haste, +they flooded my soul, and left finally a single feeling where everything +which I had seen or heard or experienced during these three days was +blended—everything: the faint resinous smell of the woods, cry and +tapping of the woodpeckers, the continual murmur of the clear brooks +with spotted trout in their sandy shallows, the not too bold outlines of +the mountains, gray rock, the friendly villages with venerable churches +and trees, storks in the meadows, snug mills with wheels merrily +turning, the honest faces of the country people with their blue smocks +and gray stockings, the slow creaking wagons and well-fed horses, or +sometimes a yoke of oxen, long-haired lads strolling along the cleanly +kept paths under apple and pear trees. To this day I remember with +pleasure the impressions of that time. I greet you, little nook of +modest ground, with your modest content, with your signs everywhere +visible of busy hands, of labor constant if not severe—greetings +to you and peace.</p> + +<p>At the end of the third day I returned to <span +style="white-space:nowrap;">S——</span>. I have +forgotten to say that in my vexation with the Gagins, I had endeavored +to reinstate the image of my hard-hearted widow. But I remember, as I +began to think of her, I saw before me a little peasant girl, about five +years old, out of whose round little face a pair of great innocent eyes +were regarding me curiously. The look was so childlike, so confiding, a +kind of shame swept over me. I could not continue a lie before that +gaze, and at once and for ever I said good-by to my early flame.</p> + +<p>I found a note from Gagin waiting for me. My sudden whim astonished +him. He made me some reproaches that I had not taken him with me, and +begged me to come to him as soon as I should return. Distrustfully I +read this note, yet the following day found me at <span +style="white-space:nowrap;">L——</span>.</p> + +<hr class="c5" /> + +<p>Gagin's reception was friendly. He overwhelmed me with affectionate +reproaches; but no sooner had Assja caught sight of me than she broke +into loud laughter, designedly, it seemed, and without the least cause, +and ran away precipitately. Gagin lost his temper, grumbled at her for a +crazy girl, and begged me to excuse her. I must confess that I was very +cross with Assja. I was uncomfortable before, and now this unnatural +laughter and ridiculous behavior must be added. However, I acted as if I +had observed nothing, and detailed to Gagin all the incidents of my +little journey. He told me what he had done during my absence. But the +conversation went lame. Assja kept running in and out. Finally I +declared that I had some pressing work, and that it was time for me to +be at home. Gagin tried to detain me at first, then looking keenly at +me, he begged permission to accompany me. In the hall Assja approached +me suddenly, and held out her hand to me. I gave her fingers an almost +imperceptible pressure, and bade her good-by carelessly. We crossed the +Rhine together, strolled to my favorite oak tree near the little shrine +to the Virgin, and sat down on a bench to enjoy the landscape. There a +remarkable conversation took place between us.</p> + +<p>At first we only spoke in the briefest words, then fell into silence +and fixed our eyes on the shining river.</p> + +<p>"Tell me," Gagin began suddenly, with his accustomed smile, "what is +your opinion of Assja? She must appear a little singular to you. Not +so?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," I answered, not without a certain constraint. I had not +expected him to speak of her.</p> + +<p>"One must learn to know her well to form a judgment upon her," he +continued. "She has a very good heart, but a wild head. It is hard to +live quietly with her. However, it is not her fault, and if you knew her +history——"</p> + +<p>"Her history!" I interrupted him. "Isn't she then your——" +Gagin looked at me.</p> + +<p>"Is it possible that you have doubted that she was my sister? No," he +went on, without heeding my confusion. "She is; at least she is my +father's daughter. Listen to me. I have confidence in you, and I will +tell you all about her.</p> + +<p>"My father was a very honest, sensible, cultivated, and unfortunate +man. Fate had no harder blows for him than for others, but he could not +bear the first one that he felt from her. He had married early—a +love match; his wife, my mother, soon died, and I was left a six months' +old baby. My father took me to his country estates, and for twelve whole +years he lived there in absolute seclusion. He himself took charge of my +education, and would never have been separated from me if my uncle, his +brother, had not come to visit us in our country house. This uncle lived +in Petersburg, where he held a rather important post. He persuaded my +father, who could not be induced to quit his home under any +consideration, to trust me to his care. He showed his brother what an +injury it was to a boy of my age to live in such complete isolation, and +that, with a companion always melancholy and silent as my father, I +should inevitably remain behind boys of my age—yes, that my +character might easily be endangered by such a life. For a long time my +father resisted his brother's arguments, but at last he yielded. I cried +at parting from my father, whom I loved, though I had never seen a smile +on his face; but Petersburg once reached, our gloomy and silent nest was +soon forgotten. I went to school, and was afterward placed in a regiment +of the Guards. Every year I spent some weeks at our country house, and +with every year I found my father more melancholy, more reserved, and +depressed to an alarming degree. He went to church daily, and had almost +given up speech. On one of my visits—I was then in my twentieth +year—I saw for the first time about the house a little lean, +black-eyed girl, who might have been about ten years old. It was Assja. +My father said she was an orphan whose care he had undertaken: those +were his own words. I gave her no further attention. She was as wild, +quick, and shy as a little animal, and if I entered my father's favorite +room, a great dismal chamber in which my mother had died, and which had +to be lighted even by day, she always slunk out of sight behind my +father's old-fashioned easy chair, or hid behind the bookcase. It +happened that for the three or four years following I was prevented by +my service from visiting our estate. Every month I received a short +letter from my father, in which Assja was spoken of seldom and always +incidentally. My father was already past his fiftieth year, but looked +still a young man. Imagine my distress then when I suddenly received a +perfectly unexpected letter from our steward, announcing the fatal +illness of my father, and begging me urgently to come home as quickly as +possible if I wished to see him alive. I rushed headlong home, and found +my father, though in the last agony. My presence seemed the greatest joy +to him; he clasped me in his wasted arms, turned on me his gaze half +doubtful, half imploring, and after he had obtained from me a promise +that I would carry out his last wishes, he ordered his old servant to +fetch Assja. The old man brought her. She could hardly support herself +on her feet, and was trembling in every limb.</p> + +<p>"'Now take her,' said my father to me with earnestness. 'I bequeathe +to you my daughter, your sister. You will hear everything from Jacob,' +he added, while he pointed to his valet.</p> + +<p>"Assja burst out sobbing, and threw herself on the bed. Half an hour +afterward my father was dead.</p> + +<p>"I learned the following story: Assja was the daughter of my father +and a former waiting maid of my mother's, named Tatiana. She rose +distinct to my remembrance, this Tatiana, with her tall, slender figure, +her serious face, regular features, her dark and earnest eyes. She had +the reputation of a proud, unapproachable girl. As nearly as I could +learn from Jacob's reserved and respectful story, my father had entered +into close relations with her some years after my mother's death. At +that time Tatiana was not in her master's house, but living with a +married sister, the dairywoman, in a separate hut. My father became very +much attached to her, and wished to marry her after my departure, but +she herself refused this in spite of his entreaties.</p> + +<p>"'The departed Tatiana Vlassievna'—so Jacob told me, standing +against the door, with his hands crossed behind his back—'was in +all things very thoughtful, and would not lower your father. "A fine +wife I should be for you—a real lady wife!" she said to +him—in my presence she has said it.' Tatiana never would come back +to the house, but remained, together with Assja, living with her sister +as before. As a child I had often seen Tatiana at church on saint days. +She stood among the servants, usually near a window. She wore a dark +cloth wound about her head and a yellow shawl on her shoulders—the +strong outline of her face clear against the transparent pane; and she +prayed silently and humbly, bowing very low after the old fashion. When +my uncle took me away Assja was just two; when she lost her mother, just +nine years old.</p> + +<p>"Immediately after Tatiana's death my father took Assja home to +himself. He had already expressed a wish to have her with him, but +Tatiana had refused it. You can imagine what Assja must have felt when +she was taken into the master's house. To this day she has not forgotten +the hour when for the first time they dressed her in a silk dress and +kissed her little hand. In her mother's lifetime she had been brought up +with great strictness: my father left her without a single restraint. He +was her instructor; except him, she saw no one. He did not spoil her; at +least he did not follow her about like a nursemaid, but he loved her +fondly, and refused her nothing. He was conscious of guilt toward her. +Assja soon discovered that she was the principal person in the +household. She knew the master was her father, but at the same time she +began to understand her equivocal position. Wilfulness and distrust were +developed to an extreme degree in her. Bad manners were contracted; +simplicity vanished. She wished (she herself told me) to compel the +whole world to forget her origin. She was ashamed of her mother, was +ashamed of being ashamed, and was in turn proud of her. You see that she +knew and knows still many things that should not be known at her age. +But does the blame rest with her? Youth was strong in her: her blood +flowed hot, and no hand near to guide her—the fullest independence +in everything! Is such a fate easily borne? She would not be inferior to +other girls. She rushed headlong into study. But what good could result +from it? The life, lawlessly begun, seemed likely to develop lawlessly. +But the heart remained true and the reason sound.</p> + +<p>"And so I found myself, a young fellow of twenty, weighted with the +care of a thirteen-year old girl! In the first days after my father's +death my voice caused her a feeling of feverish horror, my caresses made +her sad, and only by degrees and after a long time did she become +accustomed to me. And later, when she had gained security that I really +considered her my sister, and that I loved her as a sister, she attached +herself passionately to me: with her there is no half feeling.</p> + +<p>"I brought her to Petersburg. Hard as it was to leave her—I +could not live with her in any case—I placed her at one of the +best boarding-schools. Assja agreed to the necessity of our separation, +but it cost her a sickness which came near to being a fatal one. Little +by little she reconciled herself, and she staid four years in this +establishment. But contrary to my expectations, she remained almost her +old self. The principal of the school often complained to me. 'I cannot +punish her,' she would say; 'and I can do nothing by kindness.' Assja +comprehended everything with great quickness, learned +wonderfully—better than all; but it was utterly impossible to +bring her under the common rule. She rebelled; was sulky. I could not +blame her much. In her position she must keep herself at the service of +every one, or avoid every one. Only one of all her companions was +intimate with her—an insignificant, silent, and poor girl. The +other young girls with whom she was associated, of good families for the +most part, did not like her, and taunted and jibed her whenever they +could find opportunity. Assja was not behind them by a hair's breadth. +Once, in the hour for religious instruction, the teacher came to speak +of the idea of vice. 'Sycophancy and cowardice,' said Assja aloud, 'are +the meanest vices.' In a word, she continued to walk in her own way, +only her manners improved somewhat; but even in this respect, I fancy, +she has made no wonderful advance.</p> + +<p>"She had reached her seventeenth year. It was useless to keep her +longer at school. I found myself in great perplexity. All of a sudden a +happy thought struck me: to quit the service, and to travel with Assja +for a year or two. Done as soon as thought. So here are we both now on +the banks of the Rhine: I occupied in learning to paint, she following +out her whims in her usual way. But now I must hope that you will not +pass too harsh judgment upon her; for however much she may insist that +everything is indifferent to her, she does care very much for the +opinion of others, and especially for your own."</p> + +<p>And Gagin smiled again his gentle smile. I wrung his hand.</p> + +<p>"That is how it stands now," Gagin continued. "But I have my hands +full with her. A real firebrand, that girl! Up to this time no one has +ever pleased her; but alas if ever she falls in love! At times I do not +know what to do with her. Lately she took it into her head to declare +that I was growing cold to her, but that she loved only me, and would +love only me her life long. And how she sobbed!"</p> + +<p>"So that was it," I said to myself, and bit my lip. "But tell me," I +asked Gagin, "now that our hearts are open, has really no one ever +caught her fancy? Surely she must have seen many young men in +Petersburg?"</p> + +<p>"And they are all absolutely distasteful to her. No. Assja is seeking +a hero—an entirely extraordinary man, or else an artistic shepherd +among his flock. But enough of this gossip. I am detaining you," he +added as he rose.</p> + +<p>"Come," I said, "let us go back. I don't care to go home."</p> + +<p>"And your work?"</p> + +<p>I made no reply. Gagin laughed good-naturedly, and we returned to +<span style="white-space:nowrap;">L——</span>. As the +well-known vineyard and the little white house on the hillside came in +sight, my heart was warmed in a curious way—yes, that was +it—warmed and soothed as if, unknown to me, some one had poured +some healing drops there. Gagin's story had made me cheerful.</p> + +<p>Assja met us at the threshold. I had expected to find her still +laughing, but she stepped forward to us, pale, silent, and with eyes +down cast.</p> + +<p>"Here he is again," Gagin said to her, "and be sure of this: it was +his own wish to come back."</p> + +<p>Assja looked at me inquiringly. I held out my hand to her, and this +time I grasped tightly her cold and slender fingers. I felt deep pity +for her. Now I understood much that had before disturbed me in her: her +inner restlessness, her offensive manner, her endeavor to show herself +other than she was—all was clear to me. I had had a glimpse into +this soul. A constant weight oppressed it. Fearfully the untrained will +fought and struggled, yet her whole being was striving after truth. Now +I understood why this singular girl had attracted me: it was not only +the charm which invested her whole body; it was her soul which drew +me.</p> + +<p>Gagin began to fumble among his sketches. I asked Assja to come for a +walk with me through the vineyard. She gave a ready, almost humble +assent. We climbed the hill about half way, and stopped on a broad +plateau.</p> + +<p>"And you felt no <i>ennui</i> without us?" Assja began.</p> + +<p>"Did you, then, feel any in my absence?" I asked.</p> + +<p>Assja looked at me sideways.</p> + +<p>"Yes," she replied. "Is it pleasant in the mountains?" she +immediately continued. "Are they high? Higher than the clouds? Tell me +what you have seen. You have told my brother, but I have heard nothing +about it."</p> + +<p>"Why did you go away?" I interrupted her.</p> + +<p>"I went—because—— Now I will not go away," she +added in a gentle, confiding tone. "You were cross today."</p> + +<p>"I?"</p> + +<p>"You."</p> + +<p>"But why? I beg you——"</p> + +<p>"I don't know; but you were cross, and went away cross. It was very +unpleasant to me to have you go away in that manner, and I am glad that +you have come back."</p> + +<p>"I am equally glad," I replied.</p> + +<p>Assja moved her shoulders slightly, one after the other, as children +do when they are in good humor.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I am famous at guessing," she went on. "Long ago my father had +only to cough, and I knew instantly whether he was pleased with me or +not."</p> + +<p>Till this time Assja had never spoken to me of her father. That +struck me.</p> + +<p>"You loved your father very much?" I asked, and I felt to my great +annoyance that I was blushing.</p> + +<p>She did not answer, but she also blushed. We were both silent. In the +distance a steamboat with its trailing smoke was descending the Rhine: +our looks followed it.</p> + +<p>"Why do you not tell me something?" Assja said half aloud.</p> + +<p>"Why did you laugh to-day when you saw me coming?" I asked her.</p> + +<p>"I do not know myself. Sometimes I want to cry, and yet must laugh. +You must not judge me by what I do. Ah, by the way, what a wonderful +story it is about the Lorelei. Isn't it her rock that we see yonder? +They say that at first she drew every one else beneath the water, but +after she was acquainted with love, she cast herself in. The story +pleases me. Frau Luise tells me all sorts of fairy stories. Frau Luise +has a black cat with yellow eyes——"</p> + +<p>Assja raised her head and threw back her hair.</p> + +<p>"Ah, how comfortable I feel!" she said.</p> + +<p>At this moment broken, monotonous tones fell on our ears. Hundreds of +voices in unison repeated a hymn with measured pauses. A troop of +pilgrims was moving along the way beneath us with flags and crosses.</p> + +<p>"I would like to go with them!" cried Assja, while she listened to +the sound of the voices, gradually dying away.</p> + +<p>"Are you so devout?"</p> + +<p>"I would like to go somewhere far off, to pray, to accomplish +something difficult," she added. "The days hurry by, life will come to +an end, and what have we done?"</p> + +<p>"You are ambitious," I said. "You do not wish to live in vain. You +would like to leave behind some trace of your existence."</p> + +<p>"Would it be impossible?"</p> + +<p>"Impossible," I had nearly repeated. I looked into her clear eyes and +only said:</p> + +<p>"Well, try it."</p> + +<p>"Tell me," Assja began after a little silence, while flying shadows +followed each other across her face, which had grown pale +again—"did that lady please you very much? You remember, my +brother drank to your health once, in the ruins; it was the day after we +had made acquaintance."</p> + +<p>I laughed aloud.</p> + +<p>"It was a jest of your brother's; no lady has pleased me, at least no +one now pleases me."</p> + +<p>"What is it that pleases you in women?" asked Assja, tossing back her +head in childish curiosity.</p> + +<p>"What a singular question!" I exclaimed.</p> + +<p>Assja was a little disturbed.</p> + +<p>"I should not have asked the question—not so? Forgive me. I am +used to chatter about everything that goes through my head. That is why +I am afraid to talk."</p> + +<p>"Only talk, for heaven's sake! Don't be afraid," I broke in. "I am so +glad that at last you cease to be shy." Assja lowered her eyes and +laughed; a still, gentle laughter that I did not recognize as hers.</p> + +<p>"Well, tell me something then," she said, while she smoothed her +dress and tucked it about her feet as if disposing herself to sit for a +long while—"tell me something, or read something aloud, as that +time when you read to us out of 'Onegin.'"</p> + +<p>She grew suddenly thoughtful.</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <span class="i0">Where now in green boughs' shadow</span> + <span class="i0">The cross rests on my mother's grave—</span> +</div> + +<p>she said to herself in a low voice.</p> + +<p>"In Pushkin the verse is somewhat different," I ventured.<a +name="FNanchor_J" id="FNanchor_J"></a><a href="#Footnote_J" +class="fnanchor">[J]</a></p> + +<p>"I would have liked to be Pushkin's Tatiana," she continued, still +lost in thought. "Tell me something," she cried suddenly, with +vivacity.</p> + +<p>But I could find nothing to say. I looked at her as she sat there, +gentle and peaceful, surrounded with the clear sunshine. Everything +about us glowed with happiness; the sky, the earth, the water. It seemed +as if the very air was bathed in a splendor.</p> + +<p>"Look, how beautiful!" I said, involuntarily lowering my voice.</p> + +<p>"Yes, beautiful," she answered as gently, without looking at me. "If +we were both birds, we would fly high up there—would soar. We +would sink deep into that blue. But we are no birds."</p> + +<p>"We may have wings though," I answered.</p> + +<p>"How?"</p> + +<p>"In time you will discover. There are feelings that swing us off from +the earth. Don't fear; you will have wings."</p> + +<p>"Have you had them then?"</p> + +<p>"How shall I say? I believe that I have never flown till now."</p> + +<p>Assja fell again into thought. I bent toward her a little.</p> + +<p>"Can you waltz?" she asked unexpectedly.</p> + +<p>"Yes, I can," I answered, somewhat surprised.</p> + +<p>"Then come, come—I will ask my brother to play a waltz for +us—we will imagine that we are flying, that our wings have +grown."</p> + +<p>She ran to the house. I hastened after her, and in a few moments we +were whirling round the narrow room to the music of a charming waltz. +Assja danced exceedingly well, with lightness and skill. Something soft +and feminine came suddenly into her childish, earnest face. For a long +time afterward my hand felt the contact of her delicate form, for a long +time I seemed to feel her close, quickened breathing, and to see before +me the dark, fixed, half-closed eyes, and the animated pale face with +its wreathing hair.</p> + +<hr class="c5" /> + +<p>This whole day passed so that one could not have wished it better. We +were merry as children. Assja was very lovable and natural. It was a +pleasure for Gagin to see her. It was late when I went away. In the +middle of the Rhine I told the ferryman to leave the boat to the +current. The old man drew in his oars and the majestic stream bore us +onward. While I looked about me and listened, and called forgotten +things to memory, I felt a sense of unrest in my heart. I turned my eyes +to the heavens, but in the heavens was no rest; with its glittering host +of stars it was in steady motion, revolving, trembling. I bent to the +river, but there also in the dark, cool depths the stars were dancing +and flickering; everywhere the restless spirit of life met me, and the +restlessness in my own heart grew stronger. I leaned over the side of +the boat. The murmuring of the breeze in my ears, the low splash of the +water against the stern of the boat, excited me, and the freshness of +the waves did not cool me. Somewhere on the shore a nightingale began +her song, and this music worked upon me like a sweet poison. Tears +filled my eyes, but not the tears of an indefinite rapture. What I +experienced was not the vague feeling of boundless longing in which it +seems as if the heart could embrace everything: no. In me arose a +burning desire for happiness. Only as yet I did not dare call this +happiness by its real name. But bliss—bliss to overflowing was +what I longed for. The boat drifted further and further, and the old +ferryman sat bowed over his oars and fast asleep.</p> + +<hr class="c5" /> + +<p>On my way to the Gagins the following day I did not ask myself if I +was in love with Assja, but I thought of her continually; her destiny +absorbed me, and I rejoiced over our unhoped-for meeting. I felt that I +had known her only since yesterday. Until then she had always avoided +me. And now that she had finally admitted me to her friendship, in what +a bewitching light did her image appear to me; what a mysterious charm +streamed from it to me.</p> + +<p>Hastily I sprang up the well-known path, straining my eyes for a +glimpse of the little white house in the distance. I did not think of +the future; I did not think even of the morrow; but my heart was light +in me.</p> + +<p>Assja blushed as I entered the room. I observed that she had again +dressed herself with great care, but the expression of her face did not +correspond with her finery; it was melancholy. And I had come so happily +disposed! I believe that she was inclined to run away in her usual +fashion, but forcibly compelled herself to remain. I found Gagin in that +peculiar mood of artistic enthusiasm which catches dilettanti by +surprise whenever they imagine themselves about to take nature by storm, +as they express it. He stood with hair disordered, and bedaubed with +paint, before a fresh canvas, drawing madly. Furiously he nodded to me, +stepped backward, half closed his eyes, and then precipitated himself +again upon his work. I did not like to disturb him, and sat down beside +Assja. Slowly her dark eyes turned on me.</p> + +<p>"You are not as you were yesterday," I ventured, after I had made +some vain attempts to bring a smile to her lips.</p> + +<p>"No, I am not," she replied, with a slow, suppressed voice. "But that +is nothing. I did not sleep well. I was thinking the whole night."</p> + +<p>"About what?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I thought about many things. It has been my habit from +childhood, even when I was living with my mother."</p> + +<p>She spoke this with a certain emphasis, and repeated it.</p> + +<p>"When I was living with my mother I—I wondered why no one can +know beforehand what is to happen to him. Sometimes one sees a +misfortune coming, and yet cannot turn away from it; and why cannot one +always say boldly the truth? Then I thought that I do not know anything, +and that I must learn. I must be educated over again. I have been very +badly brought up. I do not know how to play the piano, I cannot draw, I +sew dreadfully; I have no capacity; I must be very tiresome."</p> + +<p>"You are unjust to yourself," I answered. "You have read much, you +are cultivated, and with your intellect——"</p> + +<p>"Have I an intellect?" she asked with such naļve curiosity that I +could not help laughing. She did not laugh.</p> + +<p>"Brother, have I an intellect?" she asked Gagin.</p> + +<p>He made her no answer, but continued his work, busily laying on his +colors, and with one arm flourished in the air.</p> + +<p>"Sometimes I hardly know myself what goes through my head," Assja +went on with the same thoughtful expression. "At certain times I am +actually afraid of myself. Ah, I wish—— Is it really true +that women ought not to read much?"</p> + +<p>"It is not necessary that they should read much, +but——"</p> + +<p>"Will you tell me what to read? Will you tell me what to do? I will +do everything that you tell me," she said, turning to me with an +innocent confidence.</p> + +<p>I did not readily find any answer to make.</p> + +<p>"The time with me will not seem long to you?"</p> + +<p>"How can you think so!" I said.</p> + +<p>"Well, I thank you," cried Assja, "but I thought you might be +<i>ennuyé</i>."</p> + +<p>And her little hot hand grasped mine tightly.</p> + +<p>"N.!" cried Gagin at this moment, "isn't this background too +dark?"</p> + +<p>I went over to him. Assja rose and left the room.</p> + +<hr class="c5" /> + +<p>An hour afterward she returned, stood in the doorway, and beckoned to +me.</p> + +<p>"Listen," she said. "Would you be sorry if I died?"</p> + +<p>"What ideas you have to-day!" I exclaimed.</p> + +<p>"I imagine that I shall die soon. Sometimes it seems to me as if +everything about me was taking leave of me. It is better to die than to +live as—— Ah, don't look at me so. Indeed I am not a +hypocrite. I shall be afraid of you again."</p> + +<p>"Have you ever been afraid of me?"</p> + +<p>"If I am unlike other people, the fault is not mine," she answered. +"Already, you see, I cannot laugh any more."</p> + +<p>She was melancholy and depressed until evening. Something was passing +in her that I could not understand. Her eyes often rested on me, and +every time they did so I felt my heart chilled by their strange +expression. She was quiet—and yet whenever I looked at her it +seemed to me that I must beg her to be calm. Her appearance fascinated +me; I found the greatest charm in her pale features, in her slow, +aimless movements; but she fancied—I do not know why—that I +was in ill humor.</p> + +<p>"Listen," she said to me a little while before my departure. "The +thought haunts me that you think me frivolous. In future you must +believe everything that I tell you, and you must be frank with me. I +will always tell you the truth, I give you my word of honor."</p> + +<p>This "word of honor" made me laugh.</p> + +<p>"Oh, do not laugh," she broke in with eagerness, "or else I must say +to you to-day what you said to me yesterday: 'Why do you laugh so +much?'" And after a short silence she continued: "Do you remember, +yesterday we were talking of wings? My wings are grown—but where +shall I fly?"</p> + +<p>"What are you saying!" I replied. "To you all ways are open."</p> + +<p>Assja looked in my eyes long and keenly.</p> + +<p>"You have a bad opinion of me today," she said, and drew her eyebrows +together.</p> + +<p>"I have a bad opinion? Of you!"</p> + +<p>"What is the matter with you two to-day?" Gagin interrupted me. +"Shall I play a waltz for you as I did yesterday?"</p> + +<p>"No, no," exclaimed Assja, clasping her hands together—"not for +the world to-day."</p> + +<p>"I won't insist—be easy."</p> + +<p>"Not for the world," she repeated, and her cheeks grew pale.</p> + +<hr class="c5" /> + +<p>Does she love me? I thought, as I came to the Rhine, whose waves +rolled swiftly by.</p> + +<p>Does she love me? I asked myself when I awoke the next morning. I did +not wish to look into my own heart. I felt that her image—the +image of the "girl with the bold laugh"—had impressed itself upon +my soul, and that I could not easily get rid of it. I went to <span +style="white-space:nowrap;">L——</span> and remained there +the whole day; but I had only one glimpse of Assja. She was not well; +her head ached. She came down stairs for a few moments with her head +bound up, her eyes half closed, pale and weak; she smiled feebly, said, +"It will pass; it is nothing; everything passes, does it not?" and went +away. I was depressed and had a painful sense of blankness, but I would +not go home till very late, without, however, seeing her again.</p> + +<p>I spent the next day like a man walking in his sleep. I tried to +work, but could not; then I tried to be absolutely idle, and to think of +nothing; but neither did that succeed. I strolled about the town, +returned home, and went out again.</p> + +<p>"Are you Mr. N.?" said suddenly the voice of a child behind me. I +turned. A little boy was standing before me. "From Miss Annette," and +handed me a note.</p> + +<p>I opened it, and recognized Assja's irregular and scrawling +handwriting. "I must see you," she wrote. "Come to-day at four o'clock +to the stone chapel on the way to the ruins. Something unexpected has +happened. For heaven's sake, come. You shall know everything. Say to the +bearer, 'yes.'"</p> + +<p>"Any answer?" the boy asked me.</p> + +<p>"Say 'yes,'" I replied. The boy ran off.</p> + +<hr class="c5" /> + +<p>When I had reached my room I sat down and fell into deep thought. My +heart beat forcibly. I read Assja's note several times over. I looked at +the clock; it was not yet midday.</p> + +<p>The door opened: Gagin walked in.</p> + +<p>His face was gloomy. He seized my hand and shook it warmly. +Apparently he was very much excited.</p> + +<p>"What is the matter?" I asked him.</p> + +<p>Gagin took a chair and drew it near mine. "Four days ago," he began +with a forced smile, and stammering a little, "I amazed you with a +confidence; and to-day I shall amaze you even more. With any other I +probably should not—so plainly. But you are a man of honor; you're +my friend, are you not? Well, here then; my sister Assja loves you."</p> + +<p>I started up from my chair.</p> + +<p>"You say—your sister——"</p> + +<p>"Yes, yes," Gagin interrupted me. "I tell you she has lost her senses +and will make me lose mine, moreover. Happily she is not used to lying +and has great trust in me. Oh, what a soul the girl has! But she will +surely do herself a mischief."</p> + +<p>"You must be mistaken," I said.</p> + +<p>"No, I'm not. Yesterday, you know, she staid in bed nearly all day; +she ate nothing: to be sure she complained of nothing. She never +complains. I was not uneasy, although toward evening she grew feverish. +But at two o'clock this morning our landlady roused me. 'Come to your +sister,' said she. 'There is something wrong with her.' I hastened to +Assja, and found her not yet undressed, very feverish, in tears: her +head was burning hot, her teeth chattered. 'What's the matter?' I asked. +'Are you sick?' She threw herself upon my neck, and insisted that I +should take her away from there as speedily as possible if I wished her +to remain alive. I could make nothing of it—tried to pacify her. +Her sobs increased, and suddenly among her sobs I heard—well, in +one word, I discovered that she loves you. I assure you, neither of us, +being reasonable men, can have the smallest idea of the impetuosity of +her feelings and the incredible violence with which she expresses them; +it is as sudden and as inevitable as a thunder storm. You are a +delightful fellow," Gagin continued, "But I must confess that I do not +see why she has fallen in love with you. She believes that she has loved +you from the first moment she saw you. She was crying lately on that +account, even when she was declaring that she loved nobody but me. She +imagines that you despise her; she fancies that you know her origin. She +asked me if I had told you the story of her life. I naturally denied it, +but it is astonishing how keen she is. She wishes only one thing: to go +away: immediately away. I staid with her till morning. She wrung a +promise from me that we would leave here to-morrow, and then at last she +fell asleep. I thought it over and over, and decided—to talk with +you. Assja is right, in my opinion. It is best that we should both leave +this place. I should have taken her away to-day if an idea that has got +into my head didn't prevent it. Perhaps—who can tell?—my +sister pleases you? If this should be the case, why should I take her +away? So I determined to put shame aside. Besides, I have myself +noticed—so I decided—from your own mouth to +learn——" Poor Gagin became hopelessly confused. "Pray excuse +me," he added. "I am inexperienced in such matters."</p> + +<p>I seized his hand.</p> + +<p>"You wish to know whether your sister pleases me? Yes, she pleases +me," I said in a steady voice. Gagin looked at me.</p> + +<p>"But," he said with an effort, "you don't want to marry her?"</p> + +<p>"How can I answer such a question? Think, yourself, how could I at +this moment——"</p> + +<p>"I know, I know," Gagin interrupted me. "I have not the least right +to expect an answer from you, and my question was improper—to the +last degree. But what was I to do? One cannot play with fire. You do not +know Assja. It would be possible for her to drown herself—to run +away, to seek an interview with you. Any other girl would know how to +conceal everything and to wait opportunities—but not she. This is +her first experience. That is the worst of it! If you had seen her as +she lay sobbing at my feet, you would share my anxiety."</p> + +<p>I became thoughtful. Gagin's expression, "seek an interview with +you," sank into my heart. It seemed abominable not to answer his +confidence with confidence as free.</p> + +<p>"Yes," I said at last. "You are right. An hour ago I received a note +from your sister. Here it is."</p> + +<p>Gagin took the note, read it hurriedly, and let his hands fall on his +knees. The expression of his features was ludicrous enough, but I was in +no mood for laughter.</p> + +<p>"You're a man of honor. I repeat it," he said. "But what is to be +done now? What! She wishes to hurry away from here, yet she writes to +you and reproaches herself for her own want of foresight. And when can +she have written this? What does she want of you?"</p> + +<p>I succeeded in calming him, and we began to talk, as coolly as we +could, about what we might have to do.</p> + +<p>At last we decided as follows: To guard against any desperate step on +her part, I was to meet Assja at the appointed place, and have a fair +explanation with her. Gagin pledged himself to remain at home and to +avoid all appearance of knowing about the note. In the evening we agreed +to meet again. "I have full confidence in you," said Gagin, and pressed +my hand strongly. "Spare Assja and myself. But we shall leave +to-morrow," he added as he rose, "for you will not marry Assja."</p> + +<p>"Give me time till evening," I said.</p> + +<p>"So be it. But you will not marry her."</p> + +<p>He went away. I threw myself on the sofa and shut my eyes. My head +spun round like a top. Too many emotions came crowding upon me. Gagin's +frankness annoyed me, and I was angry with Assja. Her love distressed +and delighted me at once. I could not understand how she could betray +herself to her brother. The necessity of a hasty, an instantaneous +decision tormented me. "Marry a seventeen-year-old girl of such a +disposition! How can I do it?" I said, getting up from my seat.</p> + +<hr class="c5" /> + +<p>I crossed the Rhine at the appointed hour, and the first face that +met me on the opposite shore was that of the same boy who had come to me +in the morning. He seemed to be waiting for me.</p> + +<p>"From Miss Annette," he said, and gave me another letter. Assja wrote +to appoint another place for our meeting. In half an hour I was to come, +not to the chapel, but to the house of Frau Luise, knock at the door, +and ascend to the third story.</p> + +<p>"'Yes' again?" the boy asked me.</p> + +<p>"Yes," I answered, and walked along the bank of the river. There was +not time to return to my house, and I had no inclination to stroll about +the streets. Just beyond the limits of the village there was a little +garden with a covered bowling alley and tables for beer drinkers. I +entered it. A few middle-aged men were playing ninepins. The balls +rolled noisily, and from time to time I caught expressions of applause. +A pretty girl, with eyelids reddened by crying, brought me a glass of +beer. I looked her in the face. She turned hastily away and +disappeared.</p> + +<p>"Yes, yes," said a fat and ruddy-cheeked man who was sitting near me. +"Our little Nancy is in great trouble to-day. Her lover is gone with the +conscripts." I looked after her. She had retired to a corner and buried +her face in her hands. One after another the tears trickled through her +fingers. Some one called for beer. She brought it, and went back to her +place. Her grief reacted upon me. I began to think of the interview +before me; but I thought of it with anxiety, not with joy. I did not go +light-hearted to the rendezvous. No joyful exchange of mutual love was +before me; I had a promise to redeem, a hard duty to perform. "There is +no jesting possible with her"—this expression of Gagin's pierced +my soul like an arrow. And was not this the very happiness for which I +had longed four days ago, in the little boat which the waves bore +onward? Now it seemed to be possible—but I wavered, I thrust it +from me; I must put it away from me. The very unexpectedness of it +confused me. Assja herself, with her impetuosity, her past history, her +education—this charming but singular being—let me confess +it—inspired me with fear. For a long time I gave myself up to +these conflicting feelings. The deferred tryst was at hand. "I cannot +marry her," I decided at last, "and she shall not know that I love +her."</p> + +<p>I rose, and after I had pressed a thaler in poor Nancy's hand (for +which she did not even thank me) I went straight to Frau Luise's house. +Already the shadow of dusk was in the air, and above the darkening +streets a narrow streak, the reflection of the sunset, reddened in the +sky. I knocked lightly at the door. It was opened instantly. I stepped +across the threshold and found myself suddenly in darkness.</p> + +<p>"This way!" whispered an old woman's voice. "Some one is waiting for +you."</p> + +<p>I advanced a couple of steps, stumbling. A skinny hand clutched +mine.</p> + +<p>"Is it you, Frau Luise?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"Yes," the same voice answered. "Yes, it is I, my handsome young +gentleman." The old woman led me up one steep staircase and stopped at +the bottom of a second. By the dull light which came in through a little +window I recognized the wrinkled visage of the burgomaster's widow. A +hateful, sly smile distorted her shrunken lips and half closed the +little bleared eyes. She pointed out a small door to me. I opened it +with a hand that trembled, and shut it again behind me.</p> + +<hr class="c5" /> + +<p>It was nearly dark in the little room which I entered, and at first I +did not discover Assja. Wrapped in a great cloak, she was sitting in a +chair by the window, with her head averted and almost hidden, like a +frightened bird. Her breath came quickly, and she was trembling in every +limb. I felt an inexpressible pity for her. I approached her; she turned +her head away still more.</p> + +<p>"Anna Nicolaevna!" I addressed her.</p> + +<p>She started suddenly as if she wished to look at me, but dared not. I +took her hand. It was cold, and lay in mine like a dead thing.</p> + +<p>"I wished," Assja began, and tried to smile, but her pallid lips +would not obey her—"I wanted—no, I cannot," she said, and +was silent. And in truth her voice broke at every word.</p> + +<p>I sat down beside her.</p> + +<p>"Anna Nicolaevna!" I repeated, and again found nothing further to +say.</p> + +<p>There was a silence. I still held her hand and looked at her. She was +in the same constrained attitude as before: breathed heavily, and bit +her under lip in order to keep back her tears. My eyes were fixed on +her. There was something touchingly helpless in her shy immobility. It +seemed as if she had just been able to reach the chair, and had fallen +there. My heart overflowed.</p> + +<p>"Assja!" I whispered, almost inaudibly.</p> + +<p>Slowly she raised her eyes to mine. Oh, the glance of a woman who +loves! Who shall describe it? Her eyes expressed entreaty, trust, +questioning, surrender. I could not withstand their magic. A burning +fire thrilled me like the prick of red-hot needles. I bent down and +pressed my lips to her hand.</p> + +<p>A little hurried sound as of a broken sob fell on my ear, and I felt +on my hair the tender touch of a hand that trembled like a leaf. I +raised my head, and looked in her face. The expression of fear was gone +from her features. Her glance swept past me into the room. Her lips were +a little apart, her forehead white as marble, and the hair pushed off as +if the wind had blown it back. I forgot everything; I drew her toward +me; willingly her hand obeyed, and her whole body followed; the shawl +slipped from her shoulders, and her head bowed silently to my breast and +laid itself against my burning lips.</p> + +<p>"Yours!" she whispered faintly.</p> + +<p>Already my arm was about her, when suddenly, like a gleam of +lightning, the thought of Gagin flashed through my brain. "What are we +doing?" I cried, and moved roughly away. "Your brother knows +all—he knows that we are here together."</p> + +<p>Assja sank into her chair.</p> + +<p>"Yes," I went on, while I rose and went over to the other side of the +room. "Your brother knows everything. I had to tell him everything."</p> + +<p>"You had to?" she stammered unintelligibly. She could not come to +herself, and only half comprehended me.</p> + +<p>"Yes, yes," I repeated with a certain bitterness, "and you are to +blame for it—you alone. Why did you betray your secret? Who +compelled you to tell your brother? He himself was with me to-day, and +told me of your conversation with him."</p> + +<p>I avoided looking at Assja, and went up and down the room with great +strides. "Now everything is lost—everything, everything."</p> + +<p>Assja was about to get up from her chair.</p> + +<p>"Oh, sit still," I cried; "sit still, I beg you. You have to do with +a man of honor—yes, with a man of honor. But in Heaven's name what +disturbed you so? Have you seen any change in me? But it was impossible +for me to conceal it from your brother when he made me a visit +to-day."</p> + +<p>"What am I saying?" I thought to myself, and the idea that I should +be a base hypocrite, that Gagin knew of this meeting, that everything +had been talked over, twisted and spoiled, maddened me.</p> + +<p>"I did not call my brother," Assja said, in a frightened, harsh +voice. "He came of his own will."</p> + +<p>"Only see what you have done," I went on. "Now you want to go +away."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I must go," she said in a whisper, "and I only asked you to +come here that I might take leave of you."</p> + +<p>"And do you think," I retorted, "that it is easy for me to part from +you?"</p> + +<p>"Why were you obliged to tell my brother?" repeated Assja with an +expression of amazement.</p> + +<p>"I tell you, I could not do otherwise. If you had not betrayed +yourself——"</p> + +<p>"I had locked myself into my chamber," she answered simply. "I did +not know that my landlady had another key."</p> + +<p>This innocent speech from her mouth at such a moment nearly cost me +my self-control. Even now I cannot think of it without emotion. Poor, +honest, innocent child!</p> + +<p>"And so it is all over," I began again. "All. Now indeed we must +part." I threw a stolen glance at Assja, whose face became more and +scarlet. She was, I felt, alarmed and ashamed. I myself was greatly +agitated, and spoke like one in a fever. "You did not leave the budding +feeling time to unfold itself. You yourself have torn the bond between +us. You had no confidence in me; you cherished suspicion against +me."</p> + +<p>While I was speaking Assja bent forward more and more, then sank +suddenly on her knees, let her head fall into her hands, and broke into +sobs. I rushed to her and tried to raise her, but she resisted me. I +cannot endure women's tears; when I see them I lose my self-possession +at once.</p> + +<p>"Anna Nicolaevna, Assja!" I cried repeatedly. "I beg, I implore you! +Stop, for God's sake!" I took her hand again.</p> + +<p>But to my extremest astonishment she sprang up suddenly, sped like a +flash through the door, and vanished.</p> + +<p>When Frau Luise came in a few moments later, I still stood in the +middle of the chamber as if thunderstruck. I could not believe that the +interview had come to an end so abrupt, so unmeaning, when I myself had +not said the hundredth part of what I meant to say, and was, besides, +quite uncertain how it should finally terminate.</p> + +<p>"Is the young lady gone?" Frau Luise asked me, and raised her yellow +eyebrows quite to the parting of her hair.</p> + +<p>I stared at her like an idiot, and went away.</p> + +<hr class="c5" /> + +<p>I left the village and made my way into the fields. Vexation, the +keenest vexation possessed me. I overwhelmed myself with reproaches. How +had it been possible for me to misunderstand the reason which had +induced Assja to change our place of meeting? How could I have failed to +know what it must have cost her to go to the old woman? Why had I not +detained her! Alone with her in the dim, empty room I had found the +strength, I had had the heart to drive her from me—even to +reproach her for coming. Now her image followed me; I besought her +pardon. The memory of that pale face, those shy, wet eyes, that hair +flowing over the bowed back, the soft nestling of her head against my +breast, consumed me like a fire. "Yours!" Her whisper still rang in my +ears. "I have acted conscientiously," I tried to say to myself. Lies! +What was the conclusion I truly wished? Am I in a condition to part with +her? Can I lose her? "O fool! fool!" I repeated with bitterness.</p> + +<p>By this time the night had fallen. With hasty steps I sought the +house where Assja lived.</p> + +<hr class="c5" /> + +<p>Gagin came to meet me.</p> + +<p>"Have you seen my sister?" he called to me, still at a distance.</p> + +<p>"Isn't she at home then?" I returned.</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>"She has not come back?"</p> + +<p>"No. Excuse me," Gagin went on. "I could not stand it. I went to the +chapel in spite of our agreement; she was not there; she cannot have +gone there."</p> + +<p>"She did not go to the chapel."</p> + +<p>"And you have not seen her?"</p> + +<p>I had to acknowledge that I had seen her.</p> + +<p>"Where?"</p> + +<p>"At Frau Luise's. We separated an hour ago," I added. "I believed +certainly that she had come home."</p> + +<p>"Let us wait," said Gagin.</p> + +<p>We entered the house and sat down near each other. We were silent. +Neither of us was without anxiety. We watched the door and listened. At +last Gagin rose.</p> + +<p>"This is the end of everything," he cried. "I don't know if my heart +is in my body. She will kill me yet, by God! Come, let us search for +her."</p> + +<p>We went out. It had grown dark.</p> + +<p>"Of what did you talk with her?" asked Gagin as he crushed his hat +down over his eyes.</p> + +<p>"I was with her five minutes at longest," I answered. "I spoke to her +as we had decided."</p> + +<p>"Well," he said, "we would better go, each for himself; in that way +we shall find her sooner. In any event, come back here in an hour."</p> + +<hr class="c5" /> + +<p>Hastily I descended the hill and ran to the town. I made my way +rapidly through all the streets, staring in all directions, took another +glance at the windows of Frau Luise's house, reached the Rhine, and +began to walk quickly along its bank. From time to time I met women, but +Assja was nowhere to be seen. It was no longer vexation that I felt. A +secret fear oppressed me, and not fear alone; no, remorse, the warmest +pity. Love! yes, tenderest love! Wringing my hands, I called on Assja, +into the gathering darkness of the night; softly at first, then louder +and louder; a hundred times I repeated that I loved her. I swore never +to part from her. I would have given everything in the world to hear her +gentle voice again, to hold her cold hand, to see herself standing +before me. So near had she been to me, in perfect trustfulness, in utter +simplicity of heart and feeling had she come to me and laid her +inexperienced youth in my hands; and I had not caught her to my heart; I +had thrown away the bliss of seeing the shy face bloom into a joy, a +rapture of peace—this thought drove me to madness.</p> + +<p>"Where can she be gone? What is become of her?" I called out, +desperate with helpless fears. Suddenly something white glimmered near +by on the shore. I knew the spot. An old half sunken cross with quaint +inscription stood there, over the grave of a man drowned seventy years +before. My heart stood still in my body. I ran to the cross. The white +figure had disappeared. "Assja!" I shouted. My wild cry terrified me. No +one made answer.</p> + +<p>I determined to see if Gagin had found her.</p> + +<hr class="c5" /> + +<p>As I hastened up the footpath I saw a light in Assja's chamber. It +calmed me a little.</p> + +<p>I drew near the house. The door was fastened. I knocked. A window in +the darkened first story was carefully raised, and Gagin's head showed +itself.</p> + +<p>"Found?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"She is come back," he whispered to me. "She is in her chamber, and +undressing. All is as it should be."</p> + +<p>"God be thanked!" I cried, in a transport of inexpressible joy. "God +be thanked! Now all will be well. But you know we have something to say +to each other."</p> + +<p>"Another time," he answered, softly closing the window—"another +time. For this, good-by."</p> + +<p>"Till to-morrow then," I said. "Tomorrow everything will be +clear."</p> + +<p>"Good-by," Gagin repeated, and the window was shut. I came near to +knocking again. I wished to tell Gagin at once that I sought his +sister's hand. But such a wooing, at such an hour! "Till to-morrow +then," I thought. "To-morrow I shall be happy!"</p> + +<p>"To-morrow I shall be happy!" Happiness has no to-morrow; it has no +yesterday; it knows of no past; it thinks of no future. The present +belongs to it, and not even the present day—only the moment.</p> + +<p>I do not know how I reached <span +style="white-space:nowrap;">S——</span>. Not my feet brought +me; not the boat carried me; I was borne over as if on broad, mighty +wings. My way led me by a thicket in which a nightingale was singing. It +seemed to me it sang of my love and my joy.</p> + +<hr class="c5" /> + +<p>The next morning, as I drew near the familiar little house, one +circumstance seemed strange: all its windows were open, and the door as +well. Scraps of paper lay strewn about the threshold, and behind the +door a maid was visible with her broom.</p> + +<p>I stepped up to her.</p> + +<p>"They're off!" she volunteered, before I could ask her if the Gagins +were at home.</p> + +<p>"Off!" I repeated. "What, gone? Where?"</p> + +<p>"They went at six o'clock this morning, and did not say where. But +stop. You are surely Mr. N."</p> + +<p>"I am Mr. N."</p> + +<p>"There is a letter for you inside." She went in and returned with a +letter. "Here it is, if you please."</p> + +<p>"But it isn't possible. How can it be?" I said. The maid stared at me +stupidly, and began to sweep.</p> + +<p>I opened the letter. It was Gagin who wrote. From Assja not a line. +He began with a hope that I would not be angry with him on account of +his sudden departure. He felt assured that, after mature thought, I +would agree to his decision. He had found no other way out of a +situation which might easily become difficult, even dangerous. +"Yesterday," he wrote, "as we were both waiting silently for Assja, I +convinced myself fully that a separation was necessary. There are +prejudices which I know how to respect. I understand that you cannot +marry Assja. She has told me everything. For her own sake I am compelled +to yield to her repeated, desperate prayers." In conclusion he expressed +his regret that our acquaintance should be broken off so abruptly; +wished me happiness; shook my hand affectionately; and assured me that +it would be useless for me to try to find them.</p> + +<p>"What prejudices?" I cried out, as if he could hear me. "Nonsense! +Who has given him the right to rob me of her?" I clutched my head with +my hands.</p> + +<p>The maid began to call loudly for the landlady. Her terror rendered +me my self control. One thought took possession of me—to find +them, to find them at whatever cost. To submit to this stroke, to calmly +accept it, was impossible. I learned from the landlady that they had +taken a steamboat about six o'clock in the morning to go down the Rhine. +I went to the office. There I was told that they had taken tickets for +Cologne. I went home with the intention to pack at once and follow them. +My way led me by Frau Luise's house. All at once I heard some one call +me. I raised my head, and saw the Burgomaster's widow at the window of +the very room where, the day before, I had met Assja. She summoned me +with her disagreeable smile. I turned away, and would have gone on, but +she called after me that something was there for me. This brought me to +a standstill, and I entered the house. How shall I describe my feelings +as I again beheld that little room?</p> + +<p>"To tell the truth," the old woman said to me, handing me a little +note, "I was only to give you that if you came here of your own free +will. But you are such a handsome young gentleman. Take it."</p> + +<p>I took the letter.</p> + +<p>The following words were hastily scrawled in pencil on a scrap of +paper:</p> + +<p>"Farewell! We shall not see each other any more. It is not from pride +that I go. No; I cannot do anything else. Yesterday, when I was crying +before you, it only needed a word from you—only one single word. I +should have staid. You did not speak it. It must be better so. Farewell, +for always."</p> + +<hr class="c5" /> + +<p>One word! Fool that I had been! This word! I had said it with tears +over and over. I had scattered it to the wind. I had repeated +it—how often—to the lonely fields; but to her I had not said +it. I had not told her that I loved her. And now I must never say it. +When I met her in that fatal room, I myself had no clear consciousness +of my love. Perhaps I was not even yet awakened to it while I was +sitting with her brother in helpless and fearful silence. A moment later +it broke out with irresistible force as I shuddered at the possibility +of harm to her, and began to seek her, to call her, but then it was +already too late. "But that is impossible," you say. I do not know +whether it is possible, but I know that it is true. Assja would not have +left me if there had been a trace of coquetry in her, and if her +position had not been a false one. She could not bear that which every +other girl could have borne; but that I had not realized. My evil genius +held my confession back from my lips, as I saw Gagin for the last time, +at the dark window, and the last thread that I might have seized slipped +from my fingers.</p> + +<p>On the same day I returned to <span +style="white-space:nowrap;">L——</span> with my travelling +trunk, and took passage for Cologne. I remember that, as the boat was +under way, and I was taking leave in spirit of the streets and the +places I should never lose from memory, I saw Nancy on the bank. She was +sitting on a bench. Her face was pale, but not sorrowful, and a stalwart +young peasant stood beside her, laughing and talking to her. On the +other shore of the river the little Madonna looked out, sad as ever, +from the green shadow of the old oak tree.</p> + +<hr class="c5" /> + +<p>I found myself on the Gagins' track in Cologne. I learned that they +had started for London. Hastily I followed them; but in London all my +inquiries were fruitless. For a long time I would not be discouraged, +for a long time I kept up an obstinate search; but at last I was obliged +to give up hope of finding them.</p> + +<p>And I never saw them again; I never saw Assja again. Of her brother I +heard brief news sometimes; but she had for ever vanished from my sight. +I do not know if she is yet living. Once, while travelling, years +afterward, I caught a hasty glimpse of a woman in a railway carriage +whose face reminded me vividly of features never to be forgotten, but I +was deceived by a chance resemblance. Assja remained in my memory as I +had known her in the fairest days of my life, and as I had last seen +her, bowed over the arm of the low wooden chair.</p> + +<p>But I will confess that I did not grieve too long for her. Yes, I +have even fancied that Fate had been kind in refusing to unite us. I +consoled myself with the thought that I could not have been happy with +such a wife. I was young, and the future—this short, fleeting +life—seemed endless to me. Why should not that be again which once +had been so sweet, and even better and more beautiful? I have known +other women, but the feeling which Assja awakened in me—that deep +and ardent tenderness—has never repeated itself.</p> + +<p>No! No eyes could compensate me for the loss of those that once were +lifted, with such love, to mine. No heart has ever rested on my breast +which could make my own beat with such delicious anguish! Condemned to +the solitary existence of a man without a family tie, I bring my life to +its gloomy end; but I guard still, as a sacred relic, her letters and +the dried geranium sprig which she once tossed me from the window. There +clings a faint fragrance to it even yet; but the hand that gave it, the +hand that it was only once vouchsafed to me to kiss, has mouldered, +perhaps, for many a year in the grave. And I—what has become of +me? What remains to me of myself—of those happy and painful +days—of those winged hopes and desires? So the slight fragrance of +a feeble weed outlasts all the joys and all the sorrows of a man. Nay, +it outlasts the man himself!</p> + +<div class="footnote"> <p><a name="Footnote_J" id="Footnote_J"></a> <a +href="#FNanchor_J"> <span class="label">[J]</span></a>In Pushkin it + reads, "On my nurse's grave."</p> </div> + +<hr /> + +<p class="p4"></p> + +<h4>TO BEETHOVEN.</h4> + +<hr class="c5" /> + +<div class="poem"> + <div class="stanza"> + <span class="i0">Clasped in a too strict calyxing</span> + <span class="i2">Lay Music's bud o'er-long unblown,</span> + <span class="i0">Till thou, Beethoven, breathed her spring:</span> + <span class="i2"> Then blushed the perfect rose of tone.</span> + </div> + + <div class="stanza"> + <span class="i0">O loving Soul, thy song hath taught</span> + <span class="i2">All full-grown passion fast to flee</span> + <span class="i0">Where science drives all full-grown thought— + </span> + <span class="i2">To unity, to unity.</span> + </div> + + <div class="stanza"> + <span class="i0">For he whose ear with grave delight</span> + <span class="i2">Brings brave revealings from thine art</span> + <span class="i0">Oft hears thee calling through the night:</span> + <span class="i2"><i>In Love's large tune all tones have part.</i></span> + </div> + + <div class="stanza"> + <span class="i0">Thy music hushes motherwise,</span> + <span class="i2">And motherwise to stillness sings</span> + <span class="i0">The slanders told by sickly eyes</span> + <span class="i2">On nature's healthy course of things.</span> + </div> + + <div class="stanza"> + <span class="i0">It soothes my accusations sour</span> + <span class="i2">'Gainst frets that fray the restless soul:</span> + <span class="i0">The stain of death; the pain of power;</span> + <span class="i2">The lack of love 'twixt part and whole;</span> + </div> + + <div class="stanza"> + <span class="i0">The yea-nay of Free-will and Fate,</span> + <span class="i2">Whereof both cannot be, yet are;</span> + <span class="i0">The praise a poet wins too late</span> + <span class="i2">Who starves from earth into a star;</span> + </div> + + <div class="stanza"> + <span class="i0">The lies that serve great parties well,</span> + <span class="i2">While truths but give their Christs a cross</span> + <span class="i0">The loves that send warm souls to hell,</span> + <span class="i2">While cold-blood neuters live on loss;</span> + </div> + + <div class="stanza"> + <span class="i0">Th' indifferent smile that nature's grace</span> + <span class="i2">On Jesus, Judas, pours alike;</span> + <span class="i0">Th' indifferent frown on nature's face</span> + <span class="i2">When luminous lightnings blindly strike;</span> + </div> + + <div class="stanza"> + <span class="i0">The sailor praying on his knees</span> + <span class="i2">Along with him that's cursing God—</span> + <span class="i0">Whose wives and babes may starve or freeze,</span> + <span class="i2">Yet Nature will not stir a clod.</span> + </div> + + <div class="stanza"> + <span class="i0">If winds of question blow from out</span> + <span class="i2">The large sea-caverns of thy notes,</span> + <span class="i0">They do but clear each cloud of doubt</span> + <span class="i2">That round a high-path'd purpose floats.</span> + </div> + + <div class="stanza"> + <span class="i0">As: why one blind by nature's act</span> + <span class="i2">Still feels no law in mercy bend,</span> + <span class="i0">No pitfall from his feet retract,</span> + <span class="i2">No storm cry out, <i>Take shelter, friend!</i></span> + </div> + + <div class="stanza"> + <span class="i0">Or, Can the truth be best for them</span> + <span class="i2">That have not stomachs for its strength?</span> + <span class="i0">Or, Will the sap in Culture's stem</span> + <span class="i2">E'er reach life's furthest fibre-length?</span> + </div> + + <div class="stanza"> + <span class="i0">How to know all, save knowingness;</span> + <span class="i2">To grasp, yet loosen, feeling's rein;</span> + <span class="i0">To sink no manhood in success;</span> + <span class="i2">To look with pleasure upon pain;</span> + </div> + + <div class="stanza"> + <span class="i0">How, teased by small mixt social claims,</span> + <span class="i2">To lose no large simplicity;</span> + <span class="i0">How through all clear-seen crimes and shames</span> + <span class="i2">To move with manly purity;</span> + </div> + + <div class="stanza"> + <span class="i0">How, justly, yet with loving eyes,</span> + <span class="i2">Pure art from cleverness to part;</span> + <span class="i0">To know the Clever good and wise,</span> + <span class="i2">Yet haunt the lonesome heights of Art.</span> + </div> + + <div class="stanza"> + <span class="i0">O Psalmist of the weak, the +strong,</span> +<span class="i2">O Troubadour of love and strife,</span> +<span class="i0">Co-Litanist of right and wrong,</span> +<span +class="i2">Sole Hymner of the whole of life,</span> +</div> + + <div class="stanza"> + <span class="i0">I know not how, I care not why,</span> + <span class="i2">Thy music brings this broil at ease,</span> + <span class="i0">And melts my passion's mortal cry</span> + <span class="i2">In satisfying symphonies.</span> + </div> + + <div class="stanza"> + <span class="i0">Yea, it forgives me all my sins,</span> + <span class="i2">Fits Life to Love like rhyme to rhyme,</span> + <span class="i0">And tunes the task each day begins</span> + <span class="i2">By the last trumpet-note of Time.</span> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Sidney Lanier.</span></p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="p4"></p> + +<h4>THE DRAMATIC CANONS.</h4> + +<hr class="c5" /> + +<p class="p2">At intervals of varying length, the journals of the +Anglo-Saxon races are given to discussing the question whether the +present age be one of decadence or progress in dramatic art. Most +readers of "The Galaxy" have seen some phases of this discussion, which +starts up afresh after the arrival of every noted foreign actor or the +production of a new play. It is at present confined to the +English-speaking nations, and prevails more in America than England just +now.</p> + +<p>In France there is no lively interest in the theme. The French +dramatic authors seem to be pretty well satisfied themselves, and to +satisfy their audiences; their best claim to success being found in the +fact that English and American dramatic authors of the present day +almost invariably pilfer from them.</p> + +<p>In the course of this perennial discussion we constantly meet with +appeals, on the part of those learned gentlemen, the theatrical critics, +to the "dramatic canons." Such and such a play is said to offend against +these "canons," and they are spoken of as something of which it is +shameful to be ignorant, but at the same time with a vagueness of phrase +betraying a similar vagueness of definition. It has seemed to us that an +inquiry into the nature of these canons may not be out of place at the +present time. This we propose to determine by consulting the practice of +those authors of former times whose productions still hold the stage as +"stock plays," so called, and of those modern authors still living whose +plays are well known and famous, being still successfully acted. By such +an analysis we may possibly settle something, especially if our inquiry +shall call forth the actual experience of those living who have attained +great success, whether as authors or adapters.</p> + +<p>The most obvious division of our subject is into tragedy, comedy, +melodrama; but inasmuch as it is plain that the laws of success in all +these walks of dramatic art must contain much in common, we have +preferred a different division for analysis, leaving the kind of drama +as a subdivision common to each part of the inquiry. A less obvious but +equally just division will be as to the canons regulating the subject, +the treatment, and the production of a successful drama, in whatever +walk. We propose to ascertain our canons from the successful plays, +still holding the stage, of Shakespeare, Sheridan, Knowles, Bulwer, Dion +Boucicault, Tom Taylor, Augustin Daly, and Gilbert, together with such +single plays, like "The Honeymoon," "Masks and Faces," and a few others, +as are better known to the public than their authors, whose sole +dramatic successes they were. Ephemeral successes, however great, cannot +be safely taken as guides to a canon; but an established success of long +standing, however repugnant to our tastes, must be examined, even if it +take the form of the "Black Crook."</p> + +<p>The influence of the French drama on Anglo-Saxon art has been so +decided that no safe estimates of canons can be made which do not take +into account the works of Sardou, Dumas, and the minor French authors, +whose name is legion. Fortunately for our subject, the French work on +simple principles, and will not confuse us any more than the Greeks, +whom they imitate. Let us try, then, to ascertain our canons in their +order, beginning with the subject of the drama.</p> + +<p>What subjects are fit for dramatic treatment, and are there any +entirely unfitted therefor?</p> + +<p>We find a pretty wide range in the successful dramas of modern time. +In tragedy we have ancient history, as shown by "Coriolanus," "Julius +Cęsar," "Virginius," "Alexander the Great"; medieval history, in +"Macbeth," "Richard III."; legendary stories, in "Lear," "Hamlet," +"Othello," "Romeo and Juliet." In comedy and melodrama we have an almost +infinite variety, as much so as in novel writing. History, legend, and +pure invention claim equal right in the field. We have "The Tempest," +"As You Like It," "Much Ado about Nothing," "Twelfth Night," "Henry +IV.," "Henry V.," "Merchant of Venice," "The Wonder," "The Honeymoon," +"Masks and Faces," "London Assurance," "School for Scandal," "The +Rivals," "The Lady of Lyons," "Richelieu," "Wild Oats," "The Colleen +Bawn," "Arrah-na-Pogue," "The Shaughraun," "The Wife," "The Merry Wives +of Windsor," "Under the Gaslight," "Don Cęsar de Bazan," "American +Cousin," "Rip Van Winkle," and the "Black Crook," all well known and +successful plays, many perhaps being acted this very night all over the +Union and England. We are not here examining the question of the +goodness or badness of these plays, their merits or demerits: we are +merely recognizing them as well known plays, constantly being acted, and +always successful when well acted. Of all of these, the most constantly +successful and most frequently acted are those of Shakespeare, Sheridan, +and Bulwer, among the old plays, and those of Boucicault and Daly among +living authors. Almost all playgoers are familiar with these works, and +have seen them once or more; and every new aspirant for histrionic +honors has one or more of the plays of the first three in his list of +test characters. If he be a man and a tragedian, he must play Hamlet, +Othello, Richard, Shylock, Macbeth, Richelieu, Claude Melnotte; if +versatile, he must add Benedick, Charles Surface, Captain Absolute, and +others to the list; if a lady, she must be tested in Portia, Ophelia, +Pauline, Lady Teazle, Juliet—who knows what? Some very versatile +ladies have tried all the light comedy characters, finishing with Lady +Macbeth as an experiment. A short time ago there was quite an epidemic +of Lady Macbeths, but that is over for the present. The stray sheep have +returned to the fold. Let us return to them.</p> + +<p>What can we glean about the limitations of the dramatic subject from +these successful plays? There is a limitation somewhere, and the first +and most obvious is—time. A novelist can make the minute +description of a life interesting. The most celebrated novels, such as +"Robinson Crusoe," "Vicar of Wakefield," "David Copperfield," +"Pendennis," "The Three Guardsmen," and others, have been just such +books, imitations of real biographies. But a play is limited in length +to five acts, or six at most, and its time of acting has a practical +limit of three hours, with the inter-acts. Each act is further +practically limited to five scenes, and it is but seldom that it +stretches over three, while the latter average is never exceeded and +seldom reached in a five-act play. No scene can properly contain more +than a chapter of a novel, so we find ourselves practically limited to a +story which can be told inside of fifteen chapters, the further inside +the better. The French, who are much more artificial than the English in +their dramatic canons, almost invariably limit their acts to a single +scene, reducing their story thereby to only five chapters. A careful +comparison of successful acting plays will generally end in bringing us +to one obvious canon:</p> + +<p class="blockquot">I. The subject of a drama must be capable of being +fully treated in fifteen chapters at most.</p> + +<p>The next limitation that we meet is in the nature of the story. A +novelist can describe his hero and heroine and the scenes in which they +move. He can depict them in motion, and describe a long journey in +strange countries, trusting to picturesque scenery and incident to help +him out. He can give us a sketch of their former life, and tell how they +fared after they were happily married. The dramatist cannot do this. He +must put his people down in a given place and leave them there till his +scene is over, opening another scene or another act after a silent +interval. He can, indeed, put a narrative of supposed events into the +mouth of any of his characters, but such narratives are always dull and +prosy, and to be avoided. Shakespeare uses them sometimes, but only when +he cannot help himself, and always makes them short. The nearest +instances that occur to us are, the description by Tressel to Henry VI. +of the murder of Prince Edward, usually put now in the first act of +"Richard III.," and the story of Oliver in "As You Like It." Sometimes a +short story cannot be helped, but if told, it is always found to be of a +collateral circumstance not directly leading to the catastrophe. It +generally is brought in only to explain the presence of a character on +the stage in the successful drama. Sometimes it happens otherwise. For +instance, Coleman makes Mortimer, in the "Iron Chest," tell the whole +mystery of his life in the form of a story instead of acting it. The +result is a poor play, seldom acted, and generally to small audiences, +being only valuable for some special features of which we shall speak +later. It is not too much to ask for acceptance of this second canon +regarding the subject:</p> + +<p class="blockquot">II. The subject should be capable of being acted +without the aid of narrative.</p> + +<p>Is it still possible to limit the subject, and do novels and dramas +differ still further? A third limitation will reveal itself, if we +compare a typical drama, like "Much Ado About Nothing," or "Hamlet," +with a typical novel such as "David Copperfield" or "Robinson Crusoe." +These latter depend for their interest on a series of adventures which +befall a hero, sometimes entirely unconnected with each other, just as +they happen to a man in real life, wherein he meets many and various +scenes and persons. Neither possesses any sequence of events, depending +on each other, such as pervades "Hamlet" and all acting plays. It is +true that some few novelists, such as Wilkie Collins, write novels that +depend on plot for their interest, but those typical novels which stand +at the head of the list do not. The masterpieces of Scott, such as +"Ivanhoe," "Talisman," "Old Mortality," are antiquarian studies, with +very slight plots; Dickens and Thackeray's best novels have no plot +worth mentioning; and where perfect plots are found, it is rare to find +a lasting and enduring novel. In a play, on the other hand, a plot seems +to be absolutely necessary to interest the spectator, the more intricate +the better. We have all seen Shakespeare's plays so often, that we are +apt to forget how intricate and involved many of his plots are; and when +we consider that most of his plots were taken from very bad novels which +have utterly perished from sight, while the plays still live, we begin +to realize by the force of contrast another canon relating to the +subject, which is this:</p> + +<p class="blockquot">III. The subject must have a connected plot, in +which one event depends on the other.</p> + +<p>When we come to restrict the dramatic subject any further, we +encounter more difficulty. Some might hold that the interest of the +subject should depend on either love or death, but we are met at once by +instances of plays in which the real interest is almost wholly +political, such as "Henry V.," "Richard III.," or moral, such as "Lear." +Referring once more to the effect of contrast with the novel for +guidance, we find it very difficult to separate subjects proper for +dramatic treatment any further than we have done, and almost impossible +to lay down any absolute rule to which distinguished exceptions cannot +be quoted. It might be said that the interest should turn on a single +action, as it does in most plays, and especially in tragedies, but here +we are met by "Much Ado About Nothing," "The Honeymoon," and other +plays, where two or three plots progress side by side in perfect +harmony. It seems, therefore, that any further absolute limitation of +the abstract dramatic subject is impracticable, and we must be content +with adding a mere recommendation for our fourth canon, much as +follows:</p> + +<p class="blockquot">IV. The interest of the plot generally turns on +either love or death, and generally hinges on a single action or +episode.</p> + +<p>When we come to speak of the <i>best</i> subjects of dramatic +writing, we are really approaching the domain of treatment, which is +much wider and better defined. There it becomes a question for judgment +and discretion, and much more certainty can be attained. Instead of +considering all dramas, we narrow our search to the best only, judging +them by the simple tests of success and frequency of acting, and finding +what sort of subjects have been taken, and how they have been +treated.</p> + +<p>Let us then come at once to the question, What is the best method of +treating a given subject? Here we are again confronted by a variety of +decisions, some of which seem to conflict with others, but which all +agree in some common particulars. In the dramas written, down to the +time of Boucicault, it seemed to be assumed as a matter of course that +every first-class play, comedy or tragedy, must be written in five acts. +All of Shakespeare's, Sheridan's, Knowles's, follow this old rule, as +inflexible and artificial as some of the French canons, but with the +same compensating advantage, that author and audience knew what was +expected of each, and troubled themselves little over the structure of +their dramas. Of late years another custom has taken the place of the +five-act play, and many if not most of the modern dramas, while of the +same length as the old ones, are divided into four and even three acts. +Especially is this the case with comedies, and those nondescript plays +that are variously called "melodramas," "dramas," and "domestic dramas." +In the case of three-act plays, the number of scenes in each act is +frequently five, sometimes six or seven, but the common modern practice +restricts the last act, if possible, to a single scene. The number of +scenes must of course depend on how many are absolutely necessary to +develop the story. The French system of a single scene to each act has +one great advantage. It permits of very much finer scenery being +introduced than in a scene which is to be shifted, whether closed in or +drawn aside. For instance, when the curtain comes down between each +scene, the stage may be crowded with furniture, and those temporary +erections called "set pieces." There will always be plenty of time to +remove these between the acts, and noise of hammering is of no +consequence when the curtain is down. If there is more than one scene in +the act, all this is changed. Let us say there are only two scenes. One +of these must be a full-depth scene, but all the furniture and set +pieces are restricted to that part of the stage which lies behind the +two "flats" which make the front scene. In that front scene furniture +is inadmissible, without rudely disturbing the illusion. Let us suppose +the front scene to be the first, and that any furniture is left on the +stage. At the close of the scene the characters leave the stage, but +there stands the furniture. The old way to get rid of it is simple. +Enter a "supe" in livery, who picks up the one table and two chairs. +Exit, amid the howls of the gods in the gallery, who shriek "Soup! +soup!" as if they were suddenly stricken with hunger. Of course this +spoils the illusion; and the better the scenery, the more perfect the +other illusions, the easier they are disturbed by such incongruity. +Sometimes the set pieces in front, if there are any, and the furniture, +disappear through trap doors. In the large city theatres, such as those +where spectacular pieces are constantly produced, this method of +changing a scene is common, but such theatres themselves are not common, +and it costs a great deal to run them on account of the number of +workmen required. Our present inquiry is directed to the ordinary +theatre, with its stock company, simple scenery, and few traps. Of this +kind of theatre every town furnishes at least one sample. In such +theatres at least it will always be best to keep furniture and set +pieces out of the front scenes as much as possible, to preserve the +illusion. If the front scene come after the full-depth one, the wisdom +of this rule becomes still more apparent. A "supe" taking out furniture +is not half as ludicrous as one bringing it in, and without a trap such +a spectacle is unavoidable. The first canon offered by common sense is +obviously sound:</p> + +<p class="blockquot">V. Keep furniture and set pieces out of front +scenes, if possible.</p> + +<p>This rule being followed, will probably reduce the front scenes of a +drama to the open air, woods, gardens, halls, streets, church porches, +and similar places, where the attention will be concentrated on the +actors, not the picture. The scope of a front scene is further +restricted by the fact that you must bring your characters on and take +them off, being deprived of that valuable ally to illusion, the +"tableau." If the scene be the first of the act, a tableau may indeed be +discovered, but it cannot close the scene. The most common place for a +front scene is between a first and a third full-depth scene, to give +time for the change that goes on behind. This change always makes a +certain amount of noise, and the use of the front scene is to take off +the attention of the audience. This intention must be hidden at any +price, for, if perceived, it is fatal to the illusion. To hide it there +is only one method always reliable, which is to rivet the attention of +the audience on your characters, put in your best writing, and get up an +excitement to cover the scene. If you have any brilliant dialogue, any +passage of great emotion, any mystery to be revealed, put it in your +front scene so that your design may not be suspected, but the scene +appear natural. In brief the canon says:</p> + +<p class="blockquot">VI. Put the best writing into the front scenes.</p> + +<p>The next question that arises as to the front scene relates to the +character of incident that should be treated therein. It is obvious that +it will not do to put in a crisis or a climax at such a place. At its +best a front scene is only a makeshift, a preparation for the full +scene. Its employment necessitates a loss of nearly three-quarters of +the available space, and the tableau loses all its power, as developed +in the full-depth scene. Its use is therefore a disagreeable necessity, +so disagreeable that the French discard it entirely. Mechanically it is +only an introduction to the full scene, and the more it partakes of the +same character intellectually, the less will it weary the audience. The +best preparation an audience can have for a scene is to make them eager +therefor, and the best way to make them eager is to leave them in +suspense, so that they are impatient for the movement of the flats that +opens the next picture. A familiar instance of this employment of the +front scene is found in the "Shaughraun," by Boucicault, before the +Irish wake. The front scene represents the outside of a cottage with a +door in the right flat; the peasants and other characters come in, talk +about the wake, and enter the house one after another. In this scene it +is also explained that the supposed corpse is not dead, but shamming, so +that there is no tragic interest associated with the coming scene, but +every one is anxious to see it. At last all the characters are off, the +flats are drawn aside, and the celebrated Irish wake makes its +appearance, taking the whole depth of the stage. The audience is +satisfied, and the front scene has answered its end, as expressed in +this canon:</p> + +<p class="blockquot">VII. Front scenes ought to terminate in a suspense, +which the following scene will relieve.</p> + +<p>From this canon it follows that the front scene should deal only with +explanatory and dependent matters, not the principal action of the +drama. Sheridan, in "The Rivals" and the "School for Scandal," opens his +first acts with front scenes, which introduce little of the matter of +the story. I am inclined to think that he had a reason for this which +still prevails, in the noise made by the audience. The beginning of the +first act of most plays is distinguished in the auditorium by much +shuffling of feet, opening of doors, taking of seats, especially by +those who take the reserved seats in front of the house. All this +disturbs the audience and makes them lose any fine points at the +beginning of a play, unless the actors strain their voices unduly. In a +front scene the flats immediately behind the actors serve as a sounding +board for the voice, and reduce the volume of space to be filled by the +speakers. The advantage gained in this way is balanced by the loss to +the eye in losing the full-depth scene, wherefore this method of opening +a play is not much in favor; but its use in the cases mentioned leads to +a general canon as to the first act of a play, which also recommends +itself to common sense:</p> + +<p class="blockquot">VIII. Avoid fine points, and have plenty of action +at the beginning of the first act.</p> + +<p>This rule, however safe and sensible, is hampered by the necessities +of the subject, to which everything must be subordinated. Let us see how +the greatest masters of dramatic construction in modern times open their +first acts. Of these Boucicault comes first, <i>facile princeps</i>. We +will take the "Shaughraun" and "Flying Scud" for examples. Both open in +a similar manner: in the first a young woman, in the second an old man, +engaged in household work, singing away at nothing particular. A quiet +picture not requiring close attention. To each, enter a disturber, +somewhat disagreeable, arresting attention. A short squabble, then more +characters coming on, one or more at a time, till the stage is pretty +full, and no flagging of interest. The act does not drag. Compare this +with Sardou's "Frou-Frou," "Fernande," and others. Sardou's first acts +almost invariably drag, and the success does not come till afterward. +One great difference is immediately perceptible. Sardou almost always +brings on his people in pairs, and takes them off together, leaving the +first act a succession of dualogues, with very little action. Now take +"The Lady of Lyons," an old success, which nowhere drags. It opens with +a picture, mother and daughter, doing nothing particular. Enter +disagreeable Beauseant, who makes an offer and is rejected. A mild +excitement at once arises, shut in by a front scene, short, lively, and +spirited, where Glavis and Beauseant plot for revenge on Pauline. The +scene ends in suspense, the actors having gone for Claude Melnotte, and +the flats draw aside, revealing Melnotte's cottage and introducing the +hero. By this time the audience is quiet and can take the fine points, +so the third scene of the first act can be made exciting. There is thus +no flagging of interest in either Bulwer or Boucicault. One does the +thing in three scenes, the other in a single scene, but both employ the +same means, which are thus expressed:</p> + +<p class="blockquot">IX. Open the first act with a quiet picture, and +bring in the disturbing element at once. Having aroused attention, bring +on all your characters, and end with an excitement. Avoid bringing on +characters in pairs in this act.</p> + +<p>The first act of a play is always surrounded with difficulties. The +interest of the audience has to be aroused, and all the characters +brought in. Every part of it must hang together, and the attention must +be excited more and more as the act progresses. This rule applies to the +whole play likewise, but in the first act it is especially necessary, +because there are so many things to divert attention, and the object of +the act is to catch it. After a certain period it must flag, and the +object of the dramatist must be to close his act before that dreadful +period. The office of the first act is to prepare for the second; +therefore it resembles the front scene in one important +principle—it should end in suspense, and make the audience eager +for the second act. Ending as it should in a full scene, it has the +advantage over the front scene that a tableau is possible, and should be +used. This tableau must be natural, and must come, as all tableaux come, +out of a climax, but the climax must not be complete. It must leave the +audience in suspense, and give them something to talk about in the +inter-act. It must not be too long delayed, or the act will drag. These +and various other reasons have led to this further canon, generally +observed:</p> + +<p class="blockquot">X. The first act should be the shortest, and as +soon as a partial climax is reached the curtain should come down. The +tableau and action should indicate suspense and preparation.</p> + +<p>This general rule indicates that the villain should be temporarily +triumphant, if the play is to end in his discomfiture. If his first +scheme fails in the first act, it is difficult to arouse interest in the +nominally imperilled innocence which is left in danger. The structure +becomes too artificial, and the dictum <i>ars est celare artem</i> has +been violated. No rule is so safe in dramatic writing, as also in +acting. The end is—<i>illusion</i>.</p> + +<p>The rule of putting only suspensory and preparatory action in the +first act is universally followed by Shakespeare and all other +successful writers of plays, and is better settled than any other. The +first act occupies the office of the first volume of a novel, explaining +all the story. Very frequently, in the modern French drama especially, +it assumes the form of a prologue, the action transpiring at an interval +of several years, sometimes a whole generation, before the rest of the +play. Only one instance of this character is found in Shakespeare, in +the "Winter's Tale," where the action of the drama demands a prologue, +but it is quite common in modern times, while another custom of +Shakespeare's—that of dividing a historical play into two +"parts"—has quite gone out of fashion. Its only modern example is +that of Wagner's opera of the "Niebelungen Ring," which takes a week to +get through. The Chinese and Japanese have a strong taste for this kind +of play, but the practice has vanished from Anglo-Saxon civilization. It +must be confessed that the employment of a prologue is rather a clumsy +way of opening a play. It is too apt to be complete in itself, and to +join clumsily to the rest of the drama. Besides this, it is hard to +preserve the illusion that the small child who appears in the prologue +has developed into the good-looking young person who is the heroine of +the rest of the play. The "Sea of Ice" is a familiar instance of this +sort of thing, where the same actress who personates the mother in the +first act, and gets drowned, blossoms into a girl of eighteen in the +second act, supposed to be her own daughter, last seen as a small child. +In "Winter's Tale" there is nothing of this. The supposed Perdita of Act +I. is merely a rag baby, and mother and child reappear together +thereafter. In cases where the interval between prologue and play is +limited to a year or two, this objection does not apply; in fact such +prologues are quite common and useful. The fanciful and magic prologue +to the "Marble Heart" is a very happy instance of conquest of the +difficulties inherent in long separated prologues. The wrench is so +sudden from a Greek sculptor to a French sculptor, from Athenian dresses +to Parisian, that the main interest of the play lies in the +identification of the ancient characters in the new dress, and the very +fanciful absurdity of the plot lends it an air of reality essentially +dramatic. The end is illusion, and illusion it is.</p> + +<p>There is little more clear and positive to be said about the first +act. Study of the best models will reveal many points inherent in all, +but no general rules so clear as those of brevity, action, and suspense. +The practical limit of time is from fifteen to thirty minutes, the +medium of twenty being common to mono-scenic acts, but on this no +positive canon can be ascertained. It depends on the interest, and only +this general rule is partially true, that no interest can carry an +audience through a first act of forty-five minutes.</p> + +<p>We next come to the middle acts of the play, and here again general +rules are hard to find. The number of acts varies so much that nothing +positive can be said except as regards fixed lengths of drama. Treating +all between the first and last acts as a whole, the first certain rule +that meets us is this truism:</p> + +<p class="blockquot">XI. From the second to the last act the interest +must be regularly increased, and each act must end in suspense, leading +to the next.</p> + +<p>Without an observance of this rule no play can ever be permanently +successful as a general thing. There have been some poor plays with +little interest, that have been bolstered up for a time by the force of +a single character, portrayed by a peculiar actor, but in that case the +play becomes a mere "star play," not amenable to the common rules, and +useless out of the hands of the peculiar star who owns it. Of such are +those multiform dramas, constantly varying, of which Mr. Sothern makes +Lord Dundreary and Sam the central figures. The actor found he had made +a lucky hit in his character, and he hired out the work of altering the +play to any sort of literary hacks, so that he himself is really the +creator of the plays, and when he dies they will die. In the "American +Cousin," as it was first played, the interest lay entirely in Asa +Trenchard, and the drama was very skilfully constructed, with ascending +interest, to develop the ideal Yankee. In that part Jefferson made his +first public hit. As soon as he found that Dundreary had stolen the play +from its hero, Jefferson was wise enough to drop the contest between +high comedy and broad farce, in which the latter must conquer when they +come together. By taking up the ideal Dutchman (or rather German, as he +makes it) in Rip Van Winkle, he created a part of which no one can +deprive him, but which will probably die with him. No one else has +succeeded with it to the same degree, and "Rip Van Winkle" stands as a +model of a successful star play, wherein all the interest hangs on a +single character.</p> + +<p>It is not the intention of this article to enter into the question of +what constitutes the interest of such plays as "Rip Van Winkle." To do +so would be to enter into a field where everything is uncertain, and +where judgment is only an expression of individual liking. The main +elements of the success appear to be humor and pathos, those twin +brethren of genius whose identity and individuality are frequently so +inextricable from each other. Both are drawn in broad, simple lights and +shadows, so that the simplest audience can take the points, while the +most cultivated members of that audience are studying the delicate +touches of the actor. The contrast between—but we must refrain +from the digression, however tempting. We are examining the dramatic +canons, and the only settled canons about which there is little doubt +are those relating to construction, not to sources of interest. In the +kingdom of invention genius is supreme, and amenable to no rules. Each +writer must work out his own salvation.</p> + +<p>Constructively it is obvious that the number of acts in a play must +be regulated by the number of natural episodes in the action of its +subject; and the perfection of its construction is tested by the +liberties that can be taken with the acts and scenes. Of late years it +has become the fashion to alter and remodel Shakespeare's and other old +plays, by changing scenes and acts, cutting out and putting in. To an +ardent worshipper of Shakespeare as read, these alterations frequently +appear desecrations, but there is little question that they were and are +improvements. The construction of many of Shakespeare's plays is +decidedly faulty, and the nature of the improvements made by managers +and actors is best illustrated when the original play unaltered is tried +against the adaptation. The acting edition of "Richard III." is a +familiar instance of this. Colley Cibber arranged it, he being a shrewd +old actor and manager. His edition holds the stage today, and always +succeeds, where the original "Richard" fails. In this matter of +construction the chances are all in favor of the improvement of a work +by a shrewd adapter. His attention is directed to only one thing, the +successful presentation of the play. He is not an artist so much as a +workman. He creates nothing, he only alters and improves. He may be +perfectly incapable of creating an ideal character, while yet he can +make its language more compact, can concentrate its action. Such an +adapter is a skilful gardener. He cannot create the fruit tree, but he +can prune it, and stimulate it to the perfection of fruit-bearing.</p> + +<p>The French stage has been a prolific nursery for these skilful +workmen, and they have managed to extract splendid successes from their +work. It is by comparing their English adaptations with a simple +translation of the work that one best sees the improvement. For +instance, there is the "Two Orphans," with a plot and incidents so +repulsive in the original that its translation failed in London in spite +of its weird power. Adapted and cleansed by a clever American author, it +was the great success of last year in New York, and is now running a +fresh career of success. Another instance that occurs is Sardou's +"Fernande." It was altered and adapted in New York by Augustin Daly, and +succeeded. Another version by Mr. Schönberg, then of Wallack's, a +straight translation, failed to secure a hearing in Boston, and ended in +a lawsuit. This was not for want of merit in the translation, which was +excellent, but, as appears from a comparison of the two plays, simply +because Daly had improved on Sardou. The alterations were small, but +masterly, and showed that Daly understood his business. In Sardou's play +there appears a certain character, a young count (I forget his name) who +comes in at the beginning of the first act, the close of the last. In +the last he has some very important business to do, but he appears +nowhere else. Of himself he does not aid the plot, but his last action +is indispensable. In the original play also appears the Spanish +Commander, a mere sketch in the first act. Daly suppressed the Count +altogether, gave his best business to the Commander, and brought the +latter in all through the play. The result was one good character +instead of two poor ones, and indicates a canon which can be confirmed +by many other instances. This canon shapes itself something like +this:</p> + +<p class="blockquot">XII. Concentrate the interest on few characters, +and avoid numerous unimportant parts.</p> + +<p>This canon rests on the necessities of a stock company, as those +before rest on the nature of scenery and audiences. Every company has +its leading man, leading lady, low comedians, old man and old woman, and +those ordinary characters which all playgoers know by heart. If the play +does not fit these, it will not succeed. The appreciation of this fact +is one secret of the great success of Boucicault, Daly, and Lester +Wallack as play writers. They know the exact capacity of their stages +and companies from long experience, and write their plays to fit them. +With even ordinary talents they would have a great advantage to start +with over writers of greater genius, writing with vague ideas of what +the manager wants. As managers they know exactly what they want, and +what their companies can do. To a young writer the difficulties are all +in the start, unless he be an actor, or so closely related to actors or +managers as to be able to get behind the scenes at all times, and become +familiar with scenery, traps, machinery, rehearsals, and all the details +of the <i>business</i> of theatricals. In former times, especially two +centuries ago, the task of writing a good acting play was far easier +than now. Scenery was simple, access behind the scenes +easier—there was not such a wall of separation as now exists +between actors and audience in a first-class city theatre. Even in those +days, however, the writing of plays was confined chiefly to actors, +managers, and those men of fashion who were given to haunting the green +room. In the present day no amount of talent in a writer seems capable +of overcoming the difficulties of technical construction of a drama. It +is rare to find an author of acknowledged talent in other departments, +especially in America, distinguished as a dramatist, and when one of +them tries his hand at playwriting he fails, not from lack of good +dialogue and literary finish, but solely from lack of knowledge of the +business of the drama, the limitations of actors and scenery, and the +technique of dramatic construction.</p> + +<p>There is more hope to the American stage in the future in the +production of such undeniably original if mechanically faulty plays as +Bret Harte has given us in the "Two Men of Sandy Bar," than in the rapid +carpentry and skilful patchwork of hosts of French adaptations, whether +they run ten or five hundred nights. Our Hartes and our yet unknown +writers daily coming to the front, with freshness in their hearts and +brains in their heads, lack only technique and the custom of the stage, +which no one can give them but the managers and actors, who shall +welcome them as apprentices to learn the trade. That these latter will +find it to their advantage in the end to encourage a cordial alliance +between the men of the quill and the men of the sock and buskin, follows +from a simple calculation. If men of confessedly small talent and low +character, such as the host of lesser playwrights who furnish pabulum +for the outlying theatres, can write fair acting plays, simply by using +mechanical knowledge and stolen materials, it is probable that men of +original talent, already experienced writers in other branches of +literature, will end by producing much better and fresher work, when +they are offered and have enjoyed the same technical advantages.</p> + +<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Frederick Whittaker.</span></p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="p4"></p> + +<h4>AN EVENING PARTY AMONG THE COSSACKS OF THE DON.</h4> + +<hr class="c5" /> + +<p class="p2">Sunset on the Lower Don; a dim waste of gray, unending +steppe, looking vaster and drearier than ever under the fast falling +shadows of night; a red gleam far away to the west, falling luridly +across the darkening sky and the ghostly prairie; a dead, grim silence, +broken only by the plash and welter of our laboring steamer, or the +shrill cry of some passing bird; an immense, crushing +loneliness—the solitude not of a region whence life has died out, +but of one where it has never existed. Even my three comrades, hardened +as they are to all such influences, appear somewhat impressed by the +scene.</p> + +<p>"Cheerful place, ain't it?" says Sinbad, the traveller; "and the +whole of southern Russia is just the same style—multiply a +billiard board by five million, and subtract the cushions!"</p> + +<p>"I wonder what the population of this district can be," muses +Allfact, the statistician, looking disconsolately at his unfilled +note-book. "It's almost impossible to get any reliable information in +these parts. But I should think one man to three square miles must be +about the proportion."</p> + +<p>"And not a feather of game in the whole shop!" growls Smoothbore, the +sportsman, with an indignant glance at his pet double barrel. "It's as +bad as that desert where the old sportsman committed suicide, leaving a +letter beside him to the effect that he must be firing at something, and +there being nothing else to shoot, he had shot himself!"</p> + +<p>"I'll give you one entry for your note-book, Allfact, my boy," +interrupted I; "there are <i>thirty-nine</i> sand banks between this and +Rostoff, at the head of the estuary; and the upper stream is all banks +together—no navigation at all!"</p> + +<p>"I should think not, by Jove, with that kind of thing going on!" says +Smoothbore, pointing to a solitary horseman who is coolly riding across +our bows with an aggravating grin, his dog following. Our outraged +captain has barely time to hurl at him some pithy suggestions respecting +his portion in a future life, which had better not be quoted, when there +comes a tremendous bump, and we are aground once more!</p> + +<p>Just at this moment two wild figures come dashing along the bank at +full gallop, sitting so far forward as to be almost on the horse's +neck—their hair tossing in the wind like a mane, their small black +eyes gleaming savagely under the high sheepskin cap, their dark lean +faces thrust forward like vultures scenting prey—shooting a sharp, +hungry glance at us as they swoop by, in mute protest against the iron +age which compels them to pass a party in distress without robbing it. +These are the famous Cossacks of the Don, the best guerillas and the +worst soldiers in the world; at once the laziest and most active of +men—strangest of all the waifs stranded on the shore of modern +civilization by the ebb of the middle ages—a nation of grown-up +children, with all the virtues and all the vices of +barbarism—simple, good-natured, thievish, pugnacious, hospitable, +drunken savages.<a name="FNanchor_K" id="FNanchor_K"></a><a +href="#Footnote_K" class="fnanchor">[K]</a></p> + +<p>It takes us fully ten minutes to "poll off" again, and we have hardly +done so when there comes a sound through the still air, like the moan of +a distant sea; and athwart the last gleam of the sinking sun flits a +cloud of wide-winged living things, shadowy, silent, unearthly, as a +legion of ghosts. The wild fowl of the steppes are upon their annual +migration, and for many minutes the living mass sweeps over us unbroken, +orderly, and even as an army in battle array—a resemblance +increased by the exertions of an active leader, who keeps darting back +from his post at the head of the column, and trimming the ranks like an +officer on parade.</p> + +<p>"I wonder how many birds there are in that column," says Allfact, +instinctively feeling for his note-book, as if expecting some leading +bird to volunteer the desired information.</p> + +<p>"Just like their mean tricks," mutters Smoothbore savagely. "First +the game won't show at all, and then they come so thick that no fellow +would be such a cad as to fire at 'em."</p> + +<p>Night comes on, and the foul-creeping mist begins to steam up from +the low banks of greasy black mud, driving us perforce into the cabin, +where we speedily fall asleep on the benches along the walls—for +bed-places there are none. About midnight I begin to dream that I am a +Christian martyr in the reign of Diocletian, "in the act" (as Paddy +would, say) of being burned alive; and I awake to find it all but true. +The fact is, the steward, with a thoroughly Russian love of overheating, +has put wood enough into the stove to roast an ox; and there is nothing +for it but to bolt on deck again, where we remain for the rest of the +night.</p> + +<p>The panorama of the deck in the early morning forms an ethnological +study hard to match, except perchance by the Yokohama packet steaming +out of 'Frisco, or a "coolie boat" coming over from Demerara to +Trinidad. Gaunt, aquiline Cossacks, and portly Germans, and bumfaced +Tartars; red-capped, broad-visaged, phlegmatic Turks; slim, graceful +Circassians, beautiful with all the sleek tiger-like beauty of their +gladiator race; sallow, beetle-browed Russians, and black-robed, +dark-eyed, melancholy Jews. We have <i>one</i> Persian on board—a +lanky, hatchet-faced rogue, half buried under a huge black sheepskin cap +not unlike a tarred beehive. He smokes one half the day and sleeps the +other half, and is only once betrayed into any show of emotion. This +occurs at one of our halting places on the second day, when he comes on +board again grinning and whooping like a madman, having succeeded (as I +learn when his excitement subsides) in cheating a Cossack out of a +halfpenny.</p> + +<p>But the appearance of the Russian <i>mujiks</i> (peasants), and the +manner in which they curl themselves up anywhere and anyhow, and sleep +the sleep of the just with their heads in baskets and their feet in +pools of dirty water, baffles all description. A painter would revel in +the third-class deck about sunrise, when the miscellaneous hash of heads +and limbs begins to animate itself, like a coil of snakes at the +approach of spring—when mothers of families look anxiously about +for the little waddling bundles of clothes that are already thrusting +their round faces and beady black eyes into every place where they ought +<i>not</i> to go; and when brawny peasants, taking their neighbor's +elbow out of their mouth, and their knee out of their neighbor's +stomach, make three or four rapid dips, like a drinking duck, to any +village church that may be in sight, and then fall to with unfailing +zest to the huge black loaf which seems to be their only baggage. The +whole thing is like a scene in a fairy tale:</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <span class="i0">There was an old captain that lived in a "screw."</span> + <span class="i0">He had so many passengers he didn't know what to do; + </span> + <span class="i0">They'd got nary baggage but one loaf of bread.</span> + <span class="i0">They squatted round the funnel, and <i>that</i> was + their bed.</span> +</div> + +<p>As we move southward, our surroundings alter very perceptibly. A +genial warmth and a rich summer blue replace the cold gray sky of the +north; the banks begin to rise higher, and to clothe themselves with +thick patches of bush, and even trees, instead of the coarse prairie +grass; while at every halting place the little wooden jetty is heaped +with perfect mounds of splendid grapes, sold at three cents per pound, +by men in shirtsleeves—phenomena which, to us who are fresh from +the furred wrappings and snow-blocked streets of Moscow, have a rather +bewildering effect. But the most striking sight is (to our friend +Allfact at least) the huge masses of coal which now fuel the steamer +instead of the split logs of the Volga.</p> + +<p>"You see Russia's richer than her neighbors think," remark I. "On the +Don alone there are 16,000 square miles of the finest anthracite, which +leaves only two per cent. of ashes in burning."</p> + +<p>"Sixteen thousand square miles!" cries the statistician, whipping out +his note-book. "Why on earth doesn't she use it, then, instead of +destroying all that valuable timber?"</p> + +<p>"Well, you see, the railways are not completed yet; but when they are +I can promise you that Russia will cut out England altogether in +supplying Constantinople and the Levant."</p> + +<p>One by one the little villages slip by us: Alexandrosk, the first +sign of which is the glitter of its gilded church-tower; Nikolaievo, +with its black marble monument to the late Crown Prince; +Konstantirovskoė, the birthplace of Prince Potemkin, brightest and most +worthless of Russian favorites, who "lived like an emperor and died like +a dog." They are all vary much of one pattern: substantial log-cabins, +curiously painted, with little palisaded gardens in front, and +red-shirted men sitting smoking at their doors, alternating with little +wickerwork hovels daubed with mud, which look very much like hampers +left behind by a monster picnic. Gangs of lean dogs (the pest of every +Cossack village) are sniffing hungrily about, while scores of sturdy +wenches, with berry-brown arms and feet, and sunburnt children clothed +only in short pinafores lined with dirt, run to stare at the wonderful +fire-breathing vessel as she comes gliding in.</p> + +<p>The sun is just dipping below the horizon as we reach +Semi-Karakorskaya, and anchor for the night as usual; for to navigate +the Lower Don in the dark is beyond the power of any pilot afloat. Here +a Cossack official,<a name="FNanchor_L" id="FNanchor_L"></a><a +href="#Footnote_L" class="fnanchor">[L]</a> whose acquaintance we have +made on board, proposes to us to land and be presented to the "Ataman," +or chief of the tribe, with the certainty of seeing something worth +looking at. The offer is joyfully accepted, and five minutes later we +are scrambling up the steep, crumbling bank—in the course of which +feat Allfact slips and rolls bodily down into the river.</p> + +<p>"There's something for the notebook at last, old boy!" cries +Smoothbore spitefully. "Write down that you notice <i>a great falling +off</i> in this part of the country!"</p> + +<p>To find one's way into a Cossack village at night is almost as +hopeless as the proverbial hunt for a needle in a haystack. The whole +country seems to consist of a series of carefully dug pitfalls, into +which we tumble one over the other, like fish out of a net; and our +final approach to the village is only to be guessed by the yells of the +dogs, which come about us with such zeal as to necessitate some vigorous +cudgelling, and a shower of trenchant Russian oaths, in which our +leader, thanks to his official character, seems to be quite a +proficient. At length a few lights, which appear to start from the very +ground under our feet, announce that we are among +houses—underground ones, it is true, but houses still. Then the +first glimmer of the rising moon lights up a row of log-cabins on either +side, and the abyss of half-dried mud between them; and at last, +following our leader, we enter one of those immeasurable courtyards in +which the Cossack heart delights, pass through a low doorway, ascend a +creaking, ladder-like stair, and, entering a small room at the head of +it, find ourselves in the presence of two men—one old and +decrepit, the other in the prime of life. The younger is the Ataman +himself; the elder is his father, an old soldier of the first campaigns +of Nicholas.</p> + +<p>Seen by the dim light of the lamp that stands on the rough-hewn +table, the "interior" is sufficiently picturesque: the heavy crossbeams +of the roof, the skins that cover the walls, intermingled with weapons +of every kind, from the long Cossack lance to the light carabine which +is fast superseding it; the fresh complexions and Western costume of the +English party, contrasting strangely enough with the commanding figure +and dark, handsome face of our host, in his picturesque native dress and +high boots; the long white beard and vacant, wondering eyes of the +ancient soldier; the picture of the Ataman's patron saint in the corner, +with its little oil light burning before it, and a pious cockroach +making a laborious pilgrimage around its gilt frame; and, through the +narrow, loophole-like window, a glimpse of the great waste outside, lit +by fitful gleams of moonlight.</p> + +<p>Hospitality has been a Cossack virtue since the day that Bogdan +Khmelnitski gave meat from his own dish to the prisoners whom he was +about to slaughter; and we have hardly time to exchange greetings with +our new friends when we are set down to a plentiful meal of rye bread, +the splendid grapes of the Don, and "nardek"—a rich syrup strained +from the rind of the watermelon, not unlike molasses both in appearance +and flavor.</p> + +<p>The "bread and salt" (as the Russians technically call it) being +despatched, my three comrades, with the native official as interpreter, +fasten upon the Ataman, while I devote myself to the old soldier, and +begin to question him on the Danubian campaign of 1826. It is a sight to +see how the worn old face lights up, and how the sunken eyes flash at +the sound of the familiar name; and he plunges at once into his story. +Seldom is it given to any man to hear such a tale as that to which I +listen for the next half hour, told by one of its chief actors. Weary +struggles through miles of hideous morass—men dropping from sheer +exhaustion, with the wheels of the heavy artillery ploughing through +their living flesh; vultures haunting the long march of death to tear +the still quivering limbs of the fallen; soldiers, in the rage of +hunger, feeding upon the corpses of their comrades—all the hideous +details of that terrible campaign, told in a quiet, matter-of-course +way, which makes them doubly horrible. My impromptu Xenophon is still in +full swing when high above the clamor of tongues rises a sound from +without, which nothing on earth can match save the war whoop of the +Western Indian—the shrill, long-drawn "Hourra!" of the Cossack, +which made many a veteran grenadier's stout heart grow chill within, as +it came pealing over the endless snows of 1812. We rush headlong to the +outer door, and this is what we see:</p> + +<p>In the centre of the courtyard, under the full splendor of the +moonlight, stand some twenty tall, sinewy figures, in the high sheepskin +cap, wide trousers, and huge knee-high boots of the Cossack irregular. +They salute the Ataman as he appears by drawing their long knives and +waving them in the air, again uttering their shrill war cry; and then +begin to move in a kind of measured dance, advancing and retreating by +turns, to the sound of a low, dirge-like chant. Presently the music +grows quicker, the motion faster and fiercer; the dancers dart to and +fro through each other's ranks, brandishing their weapons, turning, +leaping, striking right and left—acting in terribly lifelike +pantomime the fury of a deadly battle. Seen in the heart of this great +solitude, with the cold moon looking silently down upon it, this whirl +of wild figures, and gleaming weapons, and dark, fierce faces, all eyes +and teeth, has a very grim effect; and even Sinbad's seasoned nerves +quiver slightly as the dancers at length join hands, and, whirling round +like madmen, burst forth with the deep, stern chorus with which their +ancestors swept the coasts of the Black Sea five hundred years ago:</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <span class="i0">Our horses have trodden the steep Kavkaz (Caucasus); + </span> + <span class="i0">Of the Krim (Crimea) we have taken our share;</span> + <span class="i0">And the way that we went is dabbled with blood,</span> + <span class="i0">To show that <i>we</i> have been there!</span> +</div> + +<p>The volume of sound (stern and savage to the last degree, but yet +full of a weird, unearthly melody) fills the whole air like the rush of +a storm; and now, the Cossack blood being thoroughly heated, the play +suddenly turns to earnest. The nearest dancer, a tall, handsome lad with +a heavy black moustache, suddenly fells his next neighbor with a +tremendous blow between the eyes, which Heenan himself might have +applauded. The next moment the conqueror falls in his turn before a +crushing right-hander from his <i>vis-ą-vis</i>; and in an instant the +whole band are at it hammer and tongs—apparently without "sides," +order, or object of any kind, except the mere pleasure of thrashing and +being thrashed. There is little science among the combatants, who +deliver their blows in a slashing, round-hand style that would agonize a +professional "bruiser"; but every blow dealt by those brawny arms leaves +its mark, and the whole company speedily look as if they had been taking +part in an election.</p> + +<p>"By Jove!" says Smoothbore, with considerable feeling; "it does one +good to see a real good fight so far away from home!"</p> + +<p>"You'd see plenty such in Central Russia," answer I. "Two villages +often turn out to fight, just as we'd turn out to play cricket.<a +name="FNanchor_M" id="FNanchor_M"></a><a href="#Footnote_M" +class="fnanchor">[M]</a> They call it 'Koolatchni boi.'"</p> + +<p>But Sinbad, being a man of humane temper, thinks that the sport has +gone far enough, and appeals to the Ataman to stop it. One word from the +all-powerful chief suffices to part the combatants; and, a messenger +being despatched for some corn-whiskey, they are speedily chinking +glasses as merrily as if nothing had happened. I am standing +unsuspectingly in their midst when suddenly the whole company rush upon +me as one man, and I find myself lifted in their arms and tossed bodily +into the air six times in succession, amid yells of applause, to which +all the previous uproar is as nothing.<a name="FNanchor_N" +id="FNanchor_N"></a><a href="#Footnote_N" class="fnanchor">[N]</a> Next +they pounce upon Allfact, who, in his thirst for new ideas, submits +readily enough; but Sinbad and Smoothbore take to their heels at once, +and are with difficulty pacified by our host and his venerable father, +who are looking on from the doorway.</p> + +<p>This closes the entertainment, for it is now nearly midnight, and we +are to start again at sunrise. We take a cordial leave of our new +friends, and depart, laden with bunches of grapes which are somewhat +difficult to carry conveniently.</p> + +<p>"I wonder why they tossed me up like that?" muses Allfact, as we +grope our way down to the shore.</p> + +<p>"Why!" answers Smoothbore. "Why, to take a <i>rise</i> out of you, to +be sure."</p> + +<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">David Ker.</span></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_K" id="Footnote_K"></a> <a +href="#FNanchor_K"> <span class="label">[K]</span></a>The Cossack is +often erroneously classed by untravelled writers with the native +Russian, from whom he is as distinct as the Circassian or the +Tartar.</p> </div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_L" id="Footnote_L"></a> <a +href="#FNanchor_L"> <span class="label">[L]</span></a>The "Army of the +Don," though now an integral part of Russia, is still officered to a +great extent by its own people.</p> </div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_M" id="Footnote_M"></a> <a +href="#FNanchor_M"> <span class="label">[M]</span></a>I remember one +such battle near Moscow, in October, 1809, in which more than a thousand +men took part.</p> </div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_N" id="Footnote_N"></a> <a +href="#FNanchor_N"> <span class="label">[N]</span></a>This singular +compliment (a universal one among the Cossacks) is probably a relic of +the old custom of raising their "Kosbevoi," or head chief, on a shield +when elected.</p> </div> + +<hr /> + +<p class="p4"></p> + +<h4>DRIFT-WOOD.</h4> + +<hr class="c5" /> + +<p class="center">THE WILLS OF THE TRIUMVIRATE.</p> + +<p>"Nothing so generally strikes the imagination and engages +the affections of mankind," says Sir William Blackstone, "as the right +of property." Sure it is, that society palpitates whenever a great +estate passes to a new owner, disclosing its vastness in the act of +transit. Perhaps for this fact we may find another reason in Blackstone, +where he says: "There is no foundation in nature why the son should have +the right to exclude his fellow creatures from a determinate spot of +ground because his father had done so before him, or why the occupier of +a particular field or of a jewel, when lying on his death-bed, and no +longer able to maintain possession, should be entitled to tell the rest +of the world which of them should enjoy it after him." But since the +law, to reward thrift and avoid strife, has established this artificial +right of disposal, the disparities of fortune, on these signal occasions +of transfer, always set us to pondering.</p> + +<p>Vanderbilt, last of the three monstrously rich men of New York who +have died within three years, furnishes in his will the now tripled +evidence of a new ambition in American Crœsuses—an aim to +keep their fortunes rolling and greatening for several generations in +the exact paths where they were started. Supposing that Mr. Stewart's +bequest to Judge Hilton was designed to purchase his entrance into the +dry goods firm, we should have a common aim of the triumvirate, since +each has put a chosen man into his shoes, as if with the hope to live on +in this successor, like Mordecai in "Deronda." The master passion of +acquisition is thus striving to outwit death. Astor and Vanderbilt found +their second selves in favorite sons; childless Stewart could only take +his confidential agent. Each conceivably died in the hope that a +successor so carefully selected and endowed would in turn hand over the +bulk of his gigantic wealth, in its original channel, to some steward +chosen with equal care; so that ages hence the Astor fortune still in +houses, the Stewart fortune still in trade, the Vanderbilt fortune still +in railways, might flourish under successive guardians, faithful to +their tradition and training. The John Jacob, the Cornelius, the +Alexander of the past has been blessed with the vision of his millions +multiplying as he would have them multiply, and haply has dreamed of +accomplishing by his own foresight an entail which he could not create +under the laws.</p> + +<p>If this be the new tendency that American life is called upon to +face, it is at least not hard to account for. The thirst for posthumous +fame which inflamed old heroes and poets rages still in days when +greatness collects rents, sells dry goods, and corners stocks. And after +all, what is there stranger in struggling to prolong after death one's +imperious railroad sway, his landlord laws, his massive trade +monopolies, than in slaving out one's childless old age in the hard rut +of traffic, in order to turn five surplus millions into ten?</p> + +<p>To Dives, after a life of accretion, the prospect of frittering his +wealth into fragments must be painful. Heirs will waste what he toiled +to win. That fortune which grew so great while he rolled it on turns +out, after all, but a snowball, to be broken apart and trampled by +careless spoilers when he is gone. There are, to be sure, hard-headed +philosophers who contemplate coolly the dispersion of their hoard. I +remember from boyhood that when somebody rallied Squire Anthony Briggs, +of Milldale, on his veteran vigilance in money-getting, saying, "Your +children will spend as fast as you have made it," stanch old Tony +answered: "If they get as much pleasure from spending my money as I have +in making it, they are welcome." But with prodigious fortunes like +Astor's and Vanderbilt's, the instinct of accumulation which increases +what is already preposterously great may struggle to keep it +accumulating after death. When Bishop Timothy sonorously declares from +the desk that we brought nothing into this world, neither may we carry +anything out, Crœsus in the pew below takes this as a very solemn +warning to him—warning to secure betimes the utmost posthumous +control of his money that the laws allow. Dombey's soul is not wrapt up +in the miser's clutching love of money, but in the money-getting +institution of Dombey & Son; and not only in the Dombey & Son of +to-day, but the Dombeys & Sons of centuries hence. To found a +dry-goods dynasty, a line of railway kings, a house of landed Astors, +its owner puts the bulk of his vast wealth into a single hand—in +that <i>exegi monumentum</i> spirit common to bard and broker, soldier +and salesman. <i>Non omnis moriar, multaque pars mei vitabit +Libitinam</i>, the millionaire may then triumphantly say.</p> + +<p>On the other hand, the Cornells and Licks of our day, wonderfully +numerous, have made America renowned by their public uses of wealth, +either in lifetime gift or testamentary bequest; and this devotion of +private fortune to the common weal is fostered by the observed +independence of each generation in pursuing its own mode of life without +regard to the customs of ancestors.</p> + +<p>But the testamentary aim of the richest trio that ever lived in +America was to escape this national trait of beneficence; to substitute +the perpetuity of one's business monopoly or family trade; to struggle +against any serious division of the enormous fortune, even at the cost +of preferences among equal children; to spare not one dollar out of +fifty millions for the public; to heap the gigantic hoard, save what for +other legatees propriety demands, on some "chip of the old block" or +business "bird of a feather." This purpose also influenced their lives. +"Magnificence is the decency of the rich," but little magnificence +marked the lives of those three rich New Yorkers. Powerful, self-willed, +all-conquering they were, but hardly magnificent. Unprecedented and +incredible thing in America, neither Stewart nor Vanderbilt left one +poor dollar of his fifty or sixty millions to any municipal or +charitable purpose. Filled with his posthumous business plans, neither +cared for New York as Girard cared for Philadelphia and Hopkins for +Baltimore. True, each of the Gotham triumvirate endowed in life an +institution of public beneficence—Astor his library, Vanderbilt +his college away in Tennessee, Stewart his hotel for women. It is +further true that men who, like Vanderbilt and Stewart, give sure pay +for many years to thousands of employees, are benefactors. But to do +this, and then to leave besides some testamentary memorial to the city +where one has heaped up his wealth, has hitherto been the aim of the +rich men of America. Girard not only founded his orphan college, +ornament and pride of Philadelphia, but left great sums to beautify and +improve the city by removing wooden houses and widening thoroughfares. +Stewart, scrupulously just in business dealings, deserves public +gratitude as the apostle of "one price," and as the cash-selling +reformer who protected prudent folk from the higher prices caused in +trade by the allowances for bad debts; but, this apart, in the will of +Stewart and the will of Stephen Girard, what a world-wide difference of +public spirit! That one act of grace that might have tempered his +forgetfulness toward New York—the gift of his picture gallery for +public uses—even this act Stewart did not do. The contrast is +startling between the bequests of an Astor, a Stewart, a Vanderbilt, and +those of a Girard, a Peabody, and a Johns Hopkins.</p> + +<hr class="c5" /> + +<p class="center">THE DUEL AND THE NEWSPAPERS.</p> + +<p>Barring the two services, doctors used, I fancy, to be the +great duellists among professional men. And still, ever and anon, some +irascible Sawbones rushes to the ten-paced turf, where, though he be +spectacled or pot-bellied, those disadvantages rarely calm his +blood-letting rage. But editors are the modern magnates of the code; not +because they thirst for gore, but only because the guild of M. Paul de +Cassagnac is professionally liable to give offence, and hence to be +dragged to the field of glory and to die with boots on. I once saw a +statement that the famous fighting editor of the "Pays" had taken part +in eighteen duels, "besides having a man to kill next month"; and he was +greatly coveted by a Missouri paper that had been losing its writers in +street encounters too rapidly for convenience.</p> + +<p>The newspapers have emptied their vials of wrath or ridicule upon Mr. +Bennett for his duel with young May: now in horror over his resort to +the measured ground, and anon in scorn at the bloodless result. +Nevertheless, had Mr. Bennett failed to fight that duel, he and his +newspaper would have been butts during his lifetime for the shafts of +half the editorial archers of the land. A noble refusal to resent the +public insult would have been misrepresented with ingenious malice, in +the hope to disgrace him and ruin his property. In answer to "Herald" +arguments on disputed questions, the unresented cowhiding of its owner +would have been paraded by rival sheets. Rarely in business or political +controversy would they have failed to taunt him with cowardice. Life +would have been a burden to him; and if the consciousness of having +refrained in that instance from breaking the laws of man and of God +could have saved him from desperation, it would not have been for lack +of the sneers of newspapers continually fomenting and reviving public +contempt against him. Sometimes a man is goaded by such stings into a +second duel, after having been able to resist fighting the first; or +else he puts an end to a life which has been made unendurable through +constant imputations. Let those who doubt what would have occurred +recall the instantaneous newspaper sarcasms, after the street assault, +on the question "whether a man is answerable for hereditary tendencies +to receive a public cowhiding without resenting it." The satirist who +eggs on a duel in that fashion feels justified afterward in invoking +public contempt for the man that fights it.</p> + +<p>What is the upshot of this comment? That duelling is ever +commendable? Most emphatically no. Duelling, branded by the law, is also +now so branded in public opinion that it would be waste of words to +anathematize it. But what is suggested by the venom of some of the press +writers is that they have never put themselves into the place of a man +who, with the average sensitiveness to personal affront, and with +thorough-going physical courage, had also a clear perception of the +remorselessness of his journalistic rivals. From some of them he could +expect no more mercy than from the red gentry of the plains. Let those +who are sending their arrows into Mr. Bennett ask themselves whether +they are wholly sure that in his position, with his family history +behind them, they would have done otherwise after the street assault. At +any rate, neither duelling nor that cowardly substitute, shooting down +an unprepared man who has done some wrong, will be driven out of fashion +by bringing newspaper taunts of "showing the white feather" against +those who fail to resort to such lawlessness.</p> + +<hr class="c5" /> + +<p class="center">THE INDUSTRY OF INTERVIEWERS.</p> + +<p>It was a quarrel totally apart from newspaper affairs, as +we all know, that carried the editor of the "Herald" to the field of +honor at Marydell. Indeed, Mr. Bennett's conduct before and after the +duel was so "unjournalistic" that the Philadelphia reporters are said to +have sent him a letter, while he tarried in that city, protesting that a +gentleman so well aware of the "usages of the profession" ought to +submit to be interviewed. But the physician does not always swallow his +own drugs. Mr. Bennett, on receiving the missive, remarked that it was +"all right," and remained uninterviewed, thus setting an awful example +to the community.</p> + +<p>A public attack by a man armed with a cowhide upon another not so +armed is hardly a feat that excites admiration, while the affair at +Marydell was in no sense such reparation for the previous insult as in +common parlance to be thought "satisfaction." But one feature of the +Bennett-May quarrel not unpleasant to read was the outwitting of the +news-gatherers and their resulting desperation. "Had the duel taken +place on the Canada border the parties to it could hardly have evaded +our extensive arrangements to report it," said one journal after the +affair, in a somewhat lugubrious and yet self-vindicating strain. The +promptness of Mr. Bennett's movements, and his skill in throwing the +reporters off the scent, lest the duel might be stopped, were hard blows +to the newspapers. But theirs was no dishonorable defeat—it was +one of the fraternity that beat them. Even the device of giving +imaginary accounts of the battle in order to draw out the true one was +unsuccessful until Mr. Bennett had sailed for Europe.</p> + +<p>On the May side there was a trifling gain for the interviewers, but +not much. Dr. May, senior, seems to have been condemned to a copious +acquaintance with journalists; for, though in knowing Mr. Bennett he had +already perhaps known one too many of them, his house appears to have +been overrun, after the Fifth avenue assault, with the fraternity, who, +in the "strict discharge of professional duty," swarmed multitudinously +upon him. At least, one morning the "Tribune" said:</p> + +<div class="blockquot">The May mansion in West Nineteenth street was a +sealed book to reporters yesterday, and the door was promptly shut in +the face of those who were recognized as newspaper inquirers by the +negro in charge. Dr. May has made no secret of his anger at the reports, +too accurately drawn, of his appearance of anxiety and alarm when +expecting bad news from his son, and will have nothing to say to +representatives of the press.</div> + +<p>Here, it will be observed, is a claim to something professional in +the very aspect of the "newspaper inquirer" whereby the sable guardian +of the portal may know him well enough to take the responsibility of +slamming the door in his face. Again, we observe here a tribute to the +interviewer's skill; for, prior to the duel, Dr. May, though politely +presenting himself, could give no news; but his lynx-eyed visitors had +gathered from the very attitude, tone, and look of their host the +material for an item as picturesque as any tidings. So the besieged +householder, as we have seen, took refuge in total eclipse, leaving only +a "negro in charge" to determine the status of his callers.</p> + +<p>Yet the most discerning negro in charge sometimes proves a weak +barrier against invasion. The trained interviewer can take a protean +shape, and introduce himself under disguise of the most sympathetic +friendship or the most urgent business. Sometimes he is the picture of +respectful woe, or anon it is he who has a favor to confer by bringing +news of pressing importance. Close and private indeed must be that +conference whose secrets he cannot worm out. He gave to the public the +"family scene of astonishment at the opening of the Vanderbilt will" the +very morning after the affair occurred. Should moral borings fail, he +can resort to material ones, as when, a few months since, he cut a hole +in a hotel floor, to apply his ear to, over the room where a +Congressional committee sat in secret session, being detected only by +the unlucky plaster falling among the astonished statesmen below. He is +the animal of the fable, who, having once "got in," cannot be got out +until ready to go. In our war times some commanders looked upon him, +coming to camp in never so fair a guise, with the misgivings of the +hapless Trojan regarding the wooden horse; and it is said of Baron Von +Werther that he "treats as an enemy all newspaper correspondents, even +though they have the best personal introductions to him." Such fears of +warriors and diplomats, who quail before no ordinary foes, are tributes +to the interviewer's prowess.</p> + +<p>It must go hard but he gets something from the sullenest and most +refractory customer. We have seen his harvests at the May mansion, when +baffled by real ignorance on the part of his victim; hence we may guess +whether he is to be checked by a mere wilful purpose to conceal, or the +whim to keep a matter private. At very worst, his own description of his +rebuff will be humorous and piquant. Often do we have an entertaining +half column beginning, "Our reporter waited upon," etc., and, after +descriptions of household ornaments, personal dress, and so on, ending +in this way:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p><i>Ques.</i>—You say, then, that you can give me no information +whatever?</p> + +<p><i>Ans.</i> (<i>snappishly</i>)—As I have already told you a +dozen times, no information whatever.</p> + +<p><i>Ques.</i>—And that is positive and final?</p> + +<p><i>Ans.</i> (<i>savagely</i>)—Positive and final.</p> + +<p>Here our reporter took his leave, wishing the gentleman a very good +morning, to which politeness of our reporter the uncommunicative +gentleman only distantly bowed.</p> + +</div> + +<p>But these defeats form a rare experience of the interviewer, who even +then continues to pluck victory (that is to say, an item) out of their +jaws. His ordinary career is a round of triumph which has made him a +leading figure in the portrait gallery of modern society. I wonder that +Mr. Daly does not introduce it at length into some of his comedies of +American life. Drawn faithfully, and personated by Mr. James Lewis, the +dramatized interviewer would be a wealth of pleasure.</p> + +<p class="quotsig"><span class="smcap">Philip Quilibet.</span></p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="p4"></p> + +<h4>SCIENTIFIC MISCELLANY.</h4> + +<hr class="c5" /> + +<p class="center">THE FORCE OF CRYSTALLIZATION.</p> + +<p>The old story of a bombshell filled with water and left to +burst by freezing, upon the plains of Abraham, near Quebec, may now be +superseded as an illustration of the power of frost. The men at a +Western dockyard were surprised to find one morning that the +paddle-wheel of a steamer in the dry dock had fallen from the shaft, and +was broken in two pieces. The hub of the wheel, about fifteen inches +long, was slightly hollowed out at the centre to admit of its being +slipped on without difficulty over any uneven portion of the shaft-end. +This recess was full of water when the boat was placed in the dock, and +the keying had been so close that the liquid—about a +pailful—was exposed to the frost. As the water congealed under the +sharp wintry atmosphere of the night it expanded and burst asunder the +five-inch walls of iron, and the broken wheel fell with a crash.</p> + +<hr class="c5" /> + +<p class="center">FROZEN NITRO-GLYCERINE.</p> + +<p>Two accidents, both fatal, have lately occurred from the +use of nitro-glycerine for blasting. In one case some frozen cartridges +were recklessly placed in the oven of a stove, while others were held up +to the fire. That an explosion should take place under such +circumstances is not surprising, and comment is unnecessary. The other +explosion partook more clearly of the nature of an accident. A well +digger, living near Sing Sing, had buried a can of nitro-glycerine in +his garden for future use; and while digging it up, January 18, his pick +struck the can, ignition followed, and he was blown to pieces. No doubt +the can was frozen, thus proving anew that frozen nitro-glycerine is +more dangerous to handle, though not so powerful in its effects, as in +the liquid form. This is singular behavior and contrary to theory. In +general terms, explosion may be defined as the result which takes place +when a portion of the nitro-glycerine is raised to a given temperature. +Now, to produce this temperature by the friction resulting from the blow +of a pick is manifestly more difficult with frozen than with tepid +liquid. In the former case some of the heat produced would be absorbed +by the liquefaction of the solid substance, and therefore there would be +less available for producing the temperature of explosion. But, plain as +this proposition is, there must be some unknown condition, for it has +been frequently observed in practical work that nitro-glycerine is never +so dangerous to handle as when frozen. This result, however, is directly +opposed to the experiments of Beckerhinn, of Vienna, who lately +experimented to decide this question. He placed a thin layer of +nitro-glycerine on a Bessemer steel anvil, and a weight of about five +pounds, having a small hardened steel face, was dropped upon it. The +height to which it was necessary to raise this weight in order to +produce explosion determined the comparative delicacy of the explosive. +With tepid nitro-glycerine explosion took place when the weight dropped +about 31 inches (0.78 metres), but with frozen liquid the fall had to be +increased to about 85 inches (2.13 metre). Thus the experimental results +are opposed to the acknowledged experience of practical work in the +hands of common laborers. Mr. Beckerhinn found the density of the solid +nitro-glycerine to be 1.735, that of the liquid 1.599, and the average +melting heat to be 33.54 heat units. Thus the explosive shrinks about +one-twelfth in crystallizing.</p> + +<hr class="c5" /> + +<p class="center">ENGLISH GREAT GUNS.</p> + +<p>The largest rifled cannon in the world is a 100-ton gun, +made for the Italian government by Sir William Armstrong's firm. But the +English government is preparing to outdo this, and already has the plans +ready for a gun of 164 tons. It hesitates, in fact, between a weapon of +this size and one of 200 tons, a mass of metal which its shops are now +perfectly able to handle. The meaning of the term—200-ton +gun—is simply this: a tube of iron and steel of that weight, fifty +feet long, having a calibre of 20 inches, and firing a shot of 3,500 or +4,000 pounds weight, with a charge of 800 pounds of powder! The human +capacity for astonishment has grown perforce as the successive steps +have been taken from the guns of ten and twenty tons to these weapons, +which must remain huge whatever further advances are made. The character +of warfare with them is best indicated by the fact that the 200-ton gun +must be handled entirely by machinery. The advent of these unmanageable +weapons is signalized by the invention of a hydraulic apparatus for +working them. The vast shock of the recoil from the bursting of +thirty-two kegs of powder—enough to throw down 1,200 tons of rock +in mining—is taken up by a cylinder pierced with small holes. +These holes are capped with valves, held down with a pressure of fifty +tons to the square inch. When the force of the recoil exceeds this the +water is forced out of the holes and the recoil thus taken up in work +done. The breech of the piece is supported on a hydraulic ram, the +elevation of which depresses the muzzle of the gun below the level of +the deck, and brings it exactly in line with an iron tube carrying the +sponge. This is run up to the base of the powder chamber, a deluge of +water rushes from apertures in its head, and the bore is completely +cleaned out and every spark of remaining fire extinguished. The rammer +then retires, the sponge is taken off, and the powder hoisted by tackle +to the muzzle, whence the rammer pushes it home, and then does the same +for the shot. The shot and cartridge, weighing together about 1,350 +pounds, are stored on little iron carriages, every charge in the +magazine having its own carriage. The loading finished, the gun is +raised, pointed, the port flies open, and the discharge immediately +follows. What the result of the blow from such a projectile would be is +not to be imagined. It is acknowledged, however, that in the struggle +for mastery the gun has beaten defensive armor. No ship has been built +to stand the shock of a 3,500 pound bolt moving at the velocity of 1,300 +or 1,500 feet a second.</p> + +<hr class="c5" /> + +<p class="center">EAR TRUMPETS FOR PILOTS.</p> + +<p>Prof. Henry has turned his attention to the discovery of +means for increasing the distinctness of sound signals at sea. It is a +very large hearing trumpet, projecting mouth foremost from the top of +the pilot-house of a steamboat. But he soon found that a single hearing +trumpet would not answer the purpose, for though it greatly augmented +the perceptive power of the ear, it destroyed the capacity of that organ +for distinguishing the direction of sound. For this purpose two ears are +necessary. Prof. Henry then made use of two hearing trumpets, the axes +of which are separated about 30 inches. An india-rubber tube proceeding +from the axis of each is placed so as to terminate in the ear of the +observer—one in each ear. With this instrument the audibility of +the sound was very much increased, but as a means of determining the +direction of the source of sound, it was apparently of little use. For +this purpose the unaided ear is sufficient, provided the head is placed +above all obstructions and away from reflections.</p> + +<hr class="c5" /> + +<p class="center">HOT WATER IN DRESSING ORES.</p> + +<p>We have before alluded to the investigations made to +ascertain the reason why clay settles more rapidly in solutions of some +salts than in pure water, a fact which appears contrary to reason, since +it might be inferred that the greater the specific gravity the more +buoyant the fluid. But the fact is abundantly confirmed, and it is +likely to find important application some day in the arts. The property +which every substance has of sinking through a fluid of less density +than its own forms the basis upon which nine-tenths of the gold and +copper, and probably six-tenths of the silver produced in this country, +is extracted from its ores. It is the foundation of the art of ore +dressing, one of the most important parts of metallurgy. Anything which +increases the rapidity and thoroughness of the process may have a +fortunate application in this art. Mr. Ramsay, of the Glasgow university +laboratory, thinks the property in question depends upon the varying +absorption of heat by the different solutions. When water containing +suspended clay is heated the rapidity of settling is proportional to the +heat of the water. This mode of accelerating the movement of fine +sediments in water is perhaps more easily applied than the solution of +caustic soda or potash, or of common salt. Rittinger, by a mathematical +discussion of the principles which control the downward movement of +solid particles in an ascending stream of water, showed that the +separation of light from heavy minerals is more complete with solutions +of density greater than that of water than in water alone. He found a +solution of 1.5 sp. gr. extremely favorable. If the addition of heat +will increase the effect of such a solution, it may become possible to +separate, by means of the continuous jig, minerals so near in specific +gravity as barite and galena. This whole subject of ore dressing is one +of the most important questions connected with the future of mineral +industry in America. In the Mississippi valley everything connected with +metallurgy, from the fuels to the finished metal, will one day be +closely dependent on it.</p> + +<hr class="c5" /> + +<p class="center">OCEAN ECHOES.</p> + +<p>Prof. Henry communicated to the National Academy at +Philadelphia his latest researches into the subject of sound, and among +them an explanation of the echo observed on the water. This echo he had +formerly been inclined to attribute to reflection from the crests of the +waves. Tyndall holds that it is due to reflection from strata of air at +different densities. Prof. Henry's present explanation is that this echo +is produced by the reflection of the sound wave from the uniform surface +of the water. The effect of the echo is produced by the fact that the +original sound wave is interrupted. It has what the learned Professor +calls <i>shadows</i>, produced by the intervention of some obstacle in +its path. Sound is not propagated in parallel, but in diverging lines, +and yet there are some cases where what may be called a "sound shadow" +is produced. For instance, let a fog-signal be placed at or near water +level on one side of an island that has a conical elevation. Then the +signal will be heard distinctly by a vessel on the opposite side of the +island at a distance of three miles. But when the vessel sails toward +the island (the signal being on the opposite side), the sound will be +entirely lost when the distance is reduced to a mile, and in any smaller +distance it is not recovered. In this case the station of the vessel at +the shorter distance is in the "sound shadow." The termination of that +shadow is the point at which the diverging beams of sound, passing over +the crest of the island, bend down and reach the surface of the water. +The formation of the sound echo may be explained by this extreme +divergence of the sound waves, for it is rational to suppose that at a +great distance from the source of sound some of the dispersed waves will +reach the water surface at such an angle as to be reflected back to the +hearer. This was well illustrated by an experiment made to test +Tyndall's theory. A steam siren was pointed straight upward to the +zenith, but no echo from the zenith was heard, though the presence of a +cloud from which a few raindrops fell certified the presence of air +strata of different densities. But, strange to say, an echo <i>was</i> +heard from every part of the horizon, half of which was land and half +water. The only explanation of this fact is that the sound waves +projected upward were so dispersed as to reach the earth's surface at a +certain distance, and at that point some of them had curled over and +assumed a direction that caused their reflection back to the siren.</p> + +<hr class="c5" /> + +<p class="center">THE DELICACY OF CHEMISTS' BALANCES.</p> + +<p>In making chemical balances for fine work the beam is made +in the truss form to prevent the bending which takes place even under +such small loads as an ounce or two. Prof. Mendeleef has a balance that +will turn with one-thousandth of a grain, when each pan is loaded with +15,000 grains. This extreme sensibility is obtained by the use of +micrometer scales and cross threads at the end of the beam, these being +observed by means of a telescope. Of course one weighing with this +complicated apparatus occupies a long time. In most balances the beam +rests on steel knife edges; but a maker who has lately obtained +celebrity makes his supports of pure rock crystal. The steel edges can +be seen with the naked eye; the quartz edges cannot be seen even with a +magnifying glass. One writer on this subject thinks that with these +perfect crystal edges, with an inflexible girder beam, a short beam +giving quick vibrations, and a sensitiveness that can be increased by +screwing up the centre of gravity, there can hardly be a practical limit +to the smallness of the weight that will turn the beam. The amount of +motion may be very small, but if this can be observed, the limit of +possible accuracy is very much extended.</p> + +<hr class="c5" /> + +<p class="center">GOVERNMENT CONTROL OF THE DEAD.</p> + +<p>What the population of European countries was a hundred +years ago it would be hard to tell with accuracy; but the nations have +doubled and trebled in strength within the century. Sanitary precautions +have increased in importance, and the very noticeable movement in regard +to social hygiene which now possesses English society is perhaps due in +part to the obvious dangers to which thirty million human beings are +subjected when living together on such a small area. The medical officer +for Birkenhead has pointed out that it may be necessary for the +government authorities to take more complete charge of the dead as a +possible source of infection. He says that the intelligence of deaths +from infectious diseases now furnished by local registrary would be much +more useful than it is as a means for limiting the spread of disease if +the medical officer were vested with further powers in respect to the +infected dead body. At present neither the medical officer nor any one +else has any power to order the immediate removal of an infected body, +and those in charge of it might do what they liked with it. He advocated +the necessity of power being given to medical officers to order the +immediate removal of the infected bodies to a public mortuary and their +speedy burial.</p> + +<hr class="c5" /> + +<p class="center">MICROSCOPIC LIFE.</p> + +<p>Dr. Leidy lately described to the Academy of Sciences in +Philadelphia an encounter for life which he witnessed between two +microscopic animalcules. The two creatures were respectively 1-625th and +1-200th of an inch in diameter. On the morning of August 27, from some +mud adhering to the roots of sphagnum, obtained the day previously in a +nearly dried-up marsh at Bristol, Pennsylvania, he obtained a drop of +material for examination with the microscope. After a few moments he +observed an amoeba verrucosa, nearly motionless, empty of food, with a +large central vesicle, and measuring 1/25th of a millimetre in diameter. +Within a short distance of it, and moving directly toward it, was +another and more active amoeba, regarding the species of which he was +not positive. It was perhaps the one described by Dujardin as amoeba +limax, by which name it may be called. As first noticed, this amoeba was +one-eighth of a millimetre long, with a number of conical pseudopods +projecting from the front border, which was one-sixteenth of a +millimetre wide. The creature contained a number of spherical food +spaces with sienna colored contents, a large diatom filled with +endochrome, besides several clear food spaces, a posterior contractile +vesicle, and the usual glanular endosarc. The amoeba limax approached +and came into contact with the motionless amoeba verrucosa. Moving to +the right, it left a long finger-like pseudopod curved around its lower +half, and then extended a similar one around the upper half until it met +the first pseudo-pod. After a few moments the ends of the two +projections actually became continuous, and the verrucosa was enclosed +in the embrace of the amoeba limax. The latter assumed a perfectly +circular outline, and after a while a uniformly smooth surface. It now +moved away with its new capture, and after a short time what had been +the head end contracted and became wrinkled and villous in appearance, +while from what had been the tail end ten conical pseudopods projected. +The amoeba verrucosa assumed an oval form, and the contractile vesicle +became indistinct without collapsing. Moving on, the amoeba limax became +more slug-like in shape. The amoeba verrucosa now appeared enclosed in a +large oval, clear vacuole or space, was constricted so as to be +gourd-shaped, and had lost all trace of its vesicle. Subsequently it was +doubled upon itself, and at this point the amoeba limax discharged from +one side of the tail end the siliceous case of the diatom, which now +contained only a shrivelled cord of endochrome. Later the amoeba +verrucosa was broken up into fine spherical granular balls, and these +gradually became obscured and apparently diffused among the granular +contents of the <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Original spelled +'entosarc'.">endosarc</ins> of the amoeba limax. The observations from +the time of the seizure of the amoeba verrucosa to its digestion or +disappearance among the granular matter of the entosarc of its captor, +occupied seven hours. From naked amoeba the shell-protected rhizopods +were no doubt evolved, and it is a curious sight to observe them +swallowed, home and all, to be digested out of their house. It was also +interesting to observe the cannibal amoeba swallowing one of its own +kind and appropriating its structure to its own use, just as we might do +the contents of an egg. The amoeba verrucosa he describes as remarkable +for its sluggish character, and in appearance reminds one of a little +pile of epithelial scales or a fragment of dandruff from the head. It is +oval or rounded, transparent, and more or less wrinkled, or marked with +delicate, wavy lines.</p> + +<hr class="c5" /> + +<p class="center">THE SOURCES OF POTABLE WATER.</p> + +<p>In the British Social Science meeting, Mr. Latham, a civil +engineer of London, brought up the question of water supplies and +endeavored to find rules for the guidance of water engineers in those +apparently contradictory facts which the observation of recent years has +produced so abundantly. It has been generally considered that water +which has received the sewage of large populations must be unfit for +domestic use; but careful investigation would show that when such +polluting matter has been passed into a river, and exposed to the +influence of light, vegetation, etc., it becomes innocuous. This is +shown by the good health enjoyed by the inhabitants of London, which +place receives its supply chiefly from the Thames and the Lea, both of +which rivers receive a considerable amount of sewage pollution. The +author instanced Wakefield, Doncaster, and Ely as towns that draw their +supplies of water from sources into which sewage matter enters, and yet +whose inhabitants are healthy. The cholera epidemic at Newcastle-on-Tyne +in 1853 was supposed to have been caused by the use of polluted Tyne +water, and yet it was clearly ascertained that disease was much more +rife among those persons who used local well water. These facts, which +have often been quoted, were not favorably received by the audience, who +greeted with laughter Mr. Latham's assertion that water into which +sewage matter has entered can be purified by a short exposure to the +air. That statement may be too strong; but there is acknowledged truth +in the author's main point. He considered it was clearly proved that +water derived from underground sources, or from which light and air have +been excluded, is impure, and consequently unfit for domestic use. +Universal testimony showed that decaying matter easily found its way +into underground sources of supply. Well water may become seriously +contaminated by the slow steeping of noxious matters, and be less +wholesome than the water of a running stream that receives much larger +quantities of impurity.</p> + +<hr class="c5" /> + +<p class="center">THEORY OF THE RADIOMETER.</p> + +<p>Prof. Crookes has at length announced a theory in +explanation of the movements exhibited by the remarkable "light mill" of +his invention. He says: "The evidence afforded by the experiments is to +my mind so strong as almost to amount to conviction, that the repulsion +resulting from radiation is due to the action of thermometric heat +between the surface of the moving body and the case of the instrument, +through the intervention of the residual gas. This explanation of its +action is in accordance with recent speculations as to the ultimate +constitution of matter, and the dynamical theory of gases." The most +refined means for exhausting the air from the glass bulb which contains +the suspended vanes of the radiometer leave, and if they were to be +carried to absolute mechanical perfection, would still leave a certain +amount of gas in it. But Dr. Crookes has carried this attenuation so far +that the number of gas molecules present can no longer be considered as +practically infinite. Nor is the mean length of their paths between +their collisions any longer very small compared to the size of the bulb. +The latest use to which the radiometer has been put was to test the +viscosity of gases at decreasing pressures. The glass bulb was furnished +with a stopper lubricated with burnt rubber. This was fixed and carried +a fine thread of glass which is almost perfectly elastic. To the end of +this thread hung a thin oblong plate of pith to which a mirror was +attached. The glass stopper being fixed, and the bulb capable of +rotation through a small angle, it is evident that when the bulb is +rotated the pith ball will remain at rest except as it yields to the +friction of the air moved by the bulb. It does move, swinging a certain +distance and then back, like a pendulum. The amount of this movement is +carefully observed by a telescope, and recorded for five successive +beats. As the pith and glass fibre form a torsion pendulum, it is +evident that these beats will gradually die down in consequence of the +resistance of the air. By exhausting the air to various degrees of +rarity, it was proved that Prof. Clerk Maxwell's theory, that the +viscosity of a gas is independent of its density, is correct. The +logarithmic decrement of the first five oscillations (that is, the +decrease, oscillation by oscillation, of the logarithm of the arc +through which the pith vanes swing), was found to be nearly the same +when the air was almost exhausted as when it was at its natural +pressure, proving that its viscosity remained nearly equal for all +pressures. Only in the exceptionally perfect vacuum referred to above +did this logarithmic decrement sink to about one-twentieth of what it +had commenced with. Repulsion of the vane by the action of light +commences when this decrement is one-fourth of what it was before the +exhaustion of air began. As the rarity of the air within the bulb +increases the force of this repulsion begins to diminish, like the +logarithmic decrement, and when the latter has sunk to one-twentieth the +former has fallen off one-half. All these and other facts previously +obtained prove that the action of light is not <i>direct</i>, but +<i>indirect</i>; and Dr. Crookes has, after repeatedly refusing to +consider hasty judgments, in consequence come to the conclusion stated +above, that the rotation of the light mill is the result of heat. This +decision accords with the opinion of other observers. The radiometer has +already entered the field of industrial science, and is used to measure +the duration of exposure of photographic plates. De Fonvielle has made +with it a new determination of the sun's thermometric power. He made a +spectroscope with a graduated screen, which permitted the amount of +light that entered the apparatus to be graduated at will. In the path of +the beam he placed a radiometer, and by comparing its action in the +graduated light ray, and in the light of a standard oil lamp, burning 42 +grammes (11.3 ounces Troy) per hour, he found that at 4 o'clock, on June +4, 1876, the radiating force of the sun was equal to 14 lamps placed 25 +centimetres (10 inches) from the radiometer.</p> + +<hr class="c5" /> + +<p class="center">TEMPERED GLASS IN THE HOUSEHOLD.</p> + +<p>The "tempered glass," which has made the name of M. de la +Bastié, its discoverer, so well known, does not prove to be always +manageable. It was to have the strength of metal, and not shiver with +changes of temperature. But an English lady has found that it sometimes +has precisely the contrary characteristics. She purchased twelve globes +for gaslights, and they were made in the manufactory of M. de la Bastié +himself. But one night, after the gas had been extinguished for exactly +an hour, one of the globes burst with a report, and fell in pieces on +the floor, leaving the bottom ring still on the burner. These pieces, +which were of course found to be perfectly cold, were some two or three +inches long and an inch or so wide. They continued for an hour or more +splitting up and subdividing themselves into smaller and still smaller +fragments, each split being accompanied by a slight report, until at +length there was not a fragment larger than a hazel nut, and the greater +part of the glass was in pieces of about the size of a pea, and of a +crystalline form. In the morning it was found that the rim had fallen +from the burner to the floor in atoms. In all these phenomena the +behavior was that of unannealed glass, of which so many curious +performances have been related.</p> + +<hr class="c5" /> + +<p class="center">THE NEW YORK AQUARIUM.</p> + +<p>A marine and fresh-water aquarium has been opened in New +York, and both from its intrinsic merits and as the first attempt to +institute in this country a valuable mode of scientific amusement and +instruction, it deserves mention. It does not equal in size or +arrangements any of the celebrated places of the kind abroad. Still it +contains tanks of considerable size, and in them some very interesting +denizens. The shark, sturgeon, skate, sea-turtle, and other fishes are +represented by large individuals, and their habits can be watched at +leisure. A small white whale was also at one time one of the +attractions. Fish breeding is carried on in the establishment, which +receives constant additions to its occupants by expeditions which are +said to be especially planned for this purpose. In any case New York is +an excellent point for an aquarium, and probably receives every year +enough rare living fish at its great markets to maintain such an +institution. The commencement now made is a worthy one, and it can +easily become an important source of pleasure and usefulness. The system +employed is that of constant circulation, the water being pumped from a +reservoir to the several tanks. Pumps and pipes are made of hard rubber. +A library, a naturalists' laboratory, equipped with tables, microscopes, +etc., are either established or projected in the building.</p> + +<hr class="c5" /> + +<p class="center">THE CRUELTY OF HUNTING.</p> + +<p>The outcry against the practice of making surgical +experiments upon living dogs, rabbits, and other animals has roused some +vivisectionists to return to the subject of hunting. This is one of the +principal themes of the philosophic philanthropist, whose opposition to +the practice seems to be an outgrowth of the better acquaintance which +man has made, through science, with the lower animals. He accomplishes +his task very effectively by calculating the number of animals which are +wounded but not recovered by English sportsmen every year. The official +returns show that in 1873-'4 there were 132,036 holders of gun licenses, +and 65,846 holders of licenses to kill game in the British dominions. In +1874-'5 the numbers were 144,278 and 68,079, showing that the +disposition and ability to hunt are on the increase. As a basis for +computation, the partridge season of 21 weeks is taken, and two days' +hunting are allowed for each week; while three birds are supposed to be +wounded and "lost" daily by each sportsman. This gives 126 birds wounded +and left to suffer unknown torments by each one of the 68,079 holders of +game licenses. The total is no less than 8,296,496 "lost" birds in +1873-'4, and 8,577,954 in 1874-'5. Then the holders of gun licenses have +the right to shoot birds which are destructive to crops, etc., and two +lost birds each week in the year is calculated to be the average. This +makes no less than 13,731,744 wounded birds in 1873-'4, and 15,004,912 +in 1874-'5. The total is in round numbers <i>twenty million</i> birds +injured each year! These estimates are made by "Nature," and they +correctly represent the ground on which the modern opposition to the +hunt as a cruel and unnecessary occupation is based. Of course the +figures are not exact. The only effort made was to have them within +bounds; and considering all the varieties of game pursued in England, +and the extraordinary keenness of Englishmen for sport, this estimate is +probably correct. Quite lately they have been confirmed by a noted +hunter on the western plains, who says that in his case a day's sport +was usually marked by the "loss" of two or three animals. As he is an +uncommon shot, his experience cannot be more unfortunate than the +average. Such calculations show us how enormous are the results when the +whole human race engages in one action. At present, English society +offers the contradictory spectacle of a large and increasing body of +hunters who oppose vivisection on the ground of cruelty, and a small and +increasing body of vivisectionists who oppose hunting also on the ground +of cruelty.</p> + +<hr class="c5" /> + +<p class="center">THE GORILLA IN CONFINEMENT.</p> + +<p>Great interest attaches to the career of the young gorilla +now in the Berlin aquarium. Dr. Hermes described some of his +peculiarities at a late meeting of the German Association of Naturalists +and Physicians. He nods and claps his hands to visitors; wakes up like a +man, and stretches himself. His keeper must always be beside him and eat +with him. He eats what his keeper eats; they share dinner and supper. +The keeper must remain by him till he goes to sleep, his sleep lasting +eight hours. His easy life has increased his weight in a few months from +thirty-one to thirty-seven pounds. For some weeks he had inflammation of +the lungs, when his old friend Dr. Falkenstein was fetched, who treated +him with quinine and Ems water, which made him better. When Dr. Hermes +left the gorilla on the previous Sunday the latter showed the doctor his +tongue, clapped his hands, and squeezed the hand of the doctor as an +indication, the latter believed, of his recovery. Apparently he means to +support, by every means in his power, the effort at a hot-house +development of the ape to the man. A large glass house has been built +for him in connection with the palm house.</p> + +<hr class="c5" /> + +<p class="center">INSTRUCTION SHOPS IN BOSTON.</p> + +<p>The Boston Institute of Technology is somewhat noted for +its boldness in making educational experiments; its efforts so far +having been directed toward the introduction of practical trade +instruction into an advanced school. Some years ago it endeavored to +establish a model room for dressing ores and another for smelting them; +but the success of this trial seems to be more than doubtful. Both of +these pursuits are too extensive to be represented by one shop or by +sample work. Nothing daunted by this failure, President Runkle has +lately introduced a "filing shop" as the first step toward practical +instruction in engineering work. This shop has about thirty work tables, +each provided with a vise and tool drawers. Filing is one of the first +things the young apprentice has to learn; and those who think that +anybody can file who has hands may be surprised to learn that the filing +of a hexagon bolt head is one of the tests for a Whitworth prize +scholarship. The difficulty of making a flat surface is in that task +combined with the necessity of having the faces of equal size and placed +at equal angles to each other. The plan in the Boston institute is to +have the student spend ten weeks in filing, and then the same length of +time in each the forging shop and the turning shop. The two latter are +not yet ready. These three steps form part of a two years' course in +mechanical engineering, the tuition fee to which is $125 yearly. The +main objection to such schools is that engineers and practical men +persist in refusing to accept such instruction as a substitute for +actual work. The Boston institute is making praiseworthy efforts, but it +seems to be adopting a system which has never been in favor just at a +time when the smelting works and machine shops of the country appear +willing to unite with the scientific schools in supplying students with +real experience of work as a requirement for a diploma.</p> + +<div class="center">* * * * *</div> + +<p>A new mode of compressing arteries is by the use of a hard pad having +a prominent projection, which is pressed against the artery or vein by a +strong elastic ring of rubber passed over the limb.</p> + +<div class="center">* * * * *</div> + +<p>The Harvard summer schools were so far successful that the last +catalogue reports forty students in geology, twenty-five in chemistry, +twenty-five in phenogamic botany, and six in cryptogamic botany.</p> + +<div class="center">* * * * *</div> + +<p>A case in which the heart was severely wounded without causing +immediate death lately occurred in England. The wound was made by a +knife which passed between the third and fourth ribs, through the wall +of the heart into the cavity of the left ventricle. The man lived +sixty-four hours.</p> + +<div class="center">* * * * *</div> + +<p>M. Peligot warns housekeepers against the advice so often given, to +use borax for the preserving of meat. He finds that borax and the +borates affect plants very seriously, and doubts whether it can be +innocuous to animals. French beans watered once with a solution of borax +quickly withered and died.</p> + +<div class="center">* * * * *</div> + +<p>A young American, Dr. James by name, was killed with his partner (a +Swede) at Yule Island in September last, by the natives of New Guinea. +They were hunting birds of paradise at the time. Dr. James left some +valuable collections which have been described before the Linnęan +Society of London.</p> + +<div class="center">* * * * *</div> + +<p>In extending the underground railway of London, the excavations +disclosed Roman and other remains of considerable interest. Among the +former there were found fragments of urns, specimens of pottery, and +bronze coins. The most remarkable discovery was that of a thick stratum +of bullock's horns, commencing about twenty feet below the surface, and +extending to an unascertained distance beneath. Although the deposit was +doubtless made many centuries ago, the horns had suffered so little by +decay that they found a ready sale in the market. This road has carried +in thirteen years 408,500,000 passengers. In 1863, the first year, the +number was 9,500,000, which increased to 48,500,000 last year.</p> + +<div class="center">* * * * *</div> + +<p>Foreign papers say that Mr. Floyd, the President of the board of +trustees for the Lick donation, has come to an arrangement with M. +Leverrier, the celebrated French astronomer, for the better execution of +the instruments to be made for the Lick Observatory. The masses of glass +required are to be made in Paris, at Feil's glass works, and the +object-glasses very likely by an English optician.</p> + +<div class="center">* * * * *</div> + +<p>Two distinguished men were officially superannuated last year: Profs. +Milne-Edwards and Delafosse of the Paris Museum. The son of the former +takes his place, and Descloiseaux succeeds to the chair of mineralogy. +Professors Dove of Berlin and Wöhler of Göttingen have had their +<i>jubiläum</i> or fiftieth anniversary of their doctorates. All these +facts illustrate the conservative influence of student life.</p> + +<div class="center">* * * * *</div> + +<p>The Western mines of gold and silver have lately yielded some new and +interesting minerals. Roscoelite is a vanadium mica from a gold mine at +Granite creek, California. The vanadic acid varies from 20 to 23 per +cent. Psittacinite is a vanadate of lead and copper, which occurs +associated with gold, lead, and copper minerals at several mines in +Silver Star district, Montana. It is considered to be a favorable +indication, for when that is found the vein is said to become rich in +gold. Coloradoite is a telluride of mercury, also a new mineral and +quite rare.</p> + +<div class="center">* * * * *</div> + +<p>Dr. Piggott proposes to replace the spider's web of telescopes by a +star illuminated transit eye-piece. A sheet of glass, on which a thin +film of silver is deposited, is placed in the focus of the eye lens; +transparent lines are drawn on the film, instead of wires, and as the +star passes across the lines it is seen to flash out brightly. The film +of silver is made sufficiently thin to permit of the star being seen +when it is between the lines, but it appears that the lines themselves +are only visible, except in the case of very large stars, when the star +disc is in transit across a line.</p> + +<div class="center">* * * * *</div> + +<p>Singular results of strains existing in the granite rocks through +which the St. Gothard tunnel is passing are recorded. When the shots are +fired at the end of the gallery they are sometimes succeeded at unequal +intervals by other explosions at points where there is no drill hole and +no powder. Workmen have been injured by these spontaneous explosions, +which are to be explained only on the theory that there are strains in +the rock; and when this tension is increased by the shock of a heavy +explosion, the rock flies in pieces with noise. Similar effects have +been noticed in other granites.</p> + +<div class="center">* * * * *</div> + +<p>It is said that aniline colors are now used to color wines, and that +enough of them is taken into the Bordeaux district of France to color +one-third of its whole product. Husson gives the following method for +detecting it: Take a small quantity of the wine and add a little +ammonia, when the mixture turns a dirty green. Steep a thread of white +woollen yarn in the liquor and allow a drop of vinegar to flow along it. +If the color of the wine is natural, as the drop advances the original +whiteness of the wool is restored; but if the wine has been +sophisticated with magenta, the wool will take a rose color. This test +is simple, easily tried, and effective.</p> + +<div class="center">* * * * *</div> + +<p>An inquiry into the results of systematic gymnastic exercises in a +French military school shows that the strength is increased on the +average 15 to 17 per cent., and is also equalized on both sides of the +body. The capacity of the chest is increased at least 16 per cent. and +the weight 6 to 7 per cent. Coincident with this increase is a decrease +in the bulk of the body, showing that fat is changed to muscle. The +improvement is confined to the first three months of the course unless +the exercise is then moderated. If continued at too high a rate, +weakness succeeds the increase of strength. It would be a good plan to +place a dynamometer in every gymnasium as a measure of the changes which +take place in the gymnast.</p> + +<div class="center">* * * * *</div> + +<p class="center">MOON MADNESS.</p> + +<p>The popular belief that the moon's rays will cause madness +in any person who sleeps exposed to them has long been felt to be +absurd, and yet it has appeared to have its source in undoubted facts. +Some deleterious influence is experienced by those who rashly court +slumber in full moonshine, and probably there is no superstition to +which the well-to-do pay more attention. Windows are often carefully +covered to keep the moonbeams from entering sleeping rooms. A gentleman +living in India furnishes "Nature" with an explanation of this +phenomenon which is at least plausible. He says: "It has often been +observed that when the moon is full, or near its full time, there are +rarely any clouds about; and if there be clouds before the full moon +rises, they are soon dissipated; and therefore a perfectly clear sky, +with a bright full moon, is frequently observed. A clear sky admits of +rapid radiation of heat from the surface of the earth, and any person +exposed to such radiation is sure to be chilled by rapid loss of heat. +There is reason to believe that, under the circumstances, paralysis of +one side of the face is sometimes likely to occur from chill, as one +side of the face is more likely to be exposed to rapid radiation, and +consequent loss of its heat. This chill is more likely to occur when the +sky is perfectly clear. I have often slept in the open in India on a +clear summer night, when there was no moon; and although the first part +of the night may have been hot, yet toward two or three o'clock in the +morning, the chill has been so great that I have often been awakened by +an ache in my forehead, which I as often have counteracted by wrapping a +handkerchief round my head, and drawing the blanket over my face. As the +chill is likely to be greatest on a very clear night, and the clearest +nights are likely to be those on which there is a bright moonshine, it +is very possible that neuralgia, paralysis, or other similar injury, +caused by sleeping in the open, has been attributed to the moon, when +the proximate cause may really have been the <i>chill</i>, and the moon +only a remote cause acting by dissipating the clouds and haze (if it do +so), and leaving a perfectly clear sky for the play of radiation into +space."</p> + +<hr class="c5" /> + +<p class="center">THE ARGUMENT AGAINST VACCINATION.</p> + +<p>An English physician opposes compulsory vaccination on the +ground that it prevents further discovery, and compels medical science +to halt at just that point, because it forbids experiment upon methods +of prevention that may prove to be better. He says: "It stereotypes a +particular stage of scientific knowledge, and bars further progress. If +I remind you of the great improvement thought to have been made by the +introduction of inoculation by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu at the end of +the last century, and ask you to suppose that Parliament might then have +passed an act to compel every one to be inoculated, you will, I think, +see what is meant. This method was tried for some years with great +<i>éclat</i>, but afterward it was found to spread the smallpox so much +that an act of Parliament was passed to forbid its use. Vaccination, +introduced by Dr. Jenner, has followed, and this was another step in +advance. I was the first child in my father's family vaccinated +seventy-one years ago, several elder brothers and sisters having been +inoculated. Both methods answered in our cases. But for many years I +have been satisfied that other diseases besides the modified small-pox +(called cow-pox) are now introduced by the old vaccine, and have +steadily refused to use it, seeking rather, at increased trouble and +expense, new vaccine. And the question which comes forcibly to the front +is this: May not some other preservative be discovered which shall be a +further improvement? This question cannot be answered so long as +vaccination is compelled by law. There are no persons upon whom +experiments can be tried." So far as it goes, this is valid ground for +criticising vaccination laws. But the proof that small-pox is more +disastrous to the human race than the evils that vaccination brings with +it is so strong that there is little likelihood society will subject +itself to the attacks of the greater enemy in order to avoid the lesser. +The evils of the old system of using vaccine taken from human beings for +new inoculations are now no longer inevitable. Fresh vaccine direct from +the calf, and called "Bovine," can be had everywhere. A large +establishment for obtaining it is situated near New York.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="p4"></p> + +<h4>CURRENT LITERATURE.</h4> + +<hr class="c5" /> + +<p class="p2">Colonel Dodge's "Plains of the Great West"<a name="FNanchor_O" +id="FNanchor_O"></a><a href="#Footnote_O" class="fnanchor">[O]</a> is +one of the most entertaining and important books of the kind we have met +with. Whether he treats of the chase, the natural history of the wild +animals found on our continent, or the Indians, he draws upon abundant +resources of observation and experience. His description of the much +talked of "plains" is new. He distinguishes three of these, the first +lying next the mountains, the next known as the "High Plains," being to +the eastward, and finally the broad surface of the lower plains. As the +high plains are more fertile than either of the others (owing to +diversities of soil), we have the singular effect of a country suddenly +becoming more fertile as the interior of the continent is more deeply +penetrated. Of other peculiarities exhibited in this region our author +gives a vivid account, and it requires all our faith in his accuracy to +have confidence in the following description of the famous Bad Lands, +the scene of so much Scientific search:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> <p>The ground is covered with fragments of the +bones of animals and reptiles, and the man must indeed be insensible who +can pass unmoved through these most magnificent burying-grounds of +animals extinct before the advent of his race.</p> + +<p>Almost everywhere throughout the whole length and breadth of the +plains are found, in greater or less profusion, animal remains, fossils, +shells, and petrifactions. Bones are very numerous and in great variety, +from the saurian and mastodon to the minutest reptile, ranging in point +of time from the remotest ages to the present day.</p> </div> + +<p>His description of other features of this vast region is full of +interest. The two remarkable belts of forest, called the cross timbers, +stretching for a hundred miles through a trackless country, but not +increasing their width beyond their normal eight to twelve miles; the +extraordinary rivers, half sand, half water, the mazes of which confound +the Indian, usually so acute in the field; the sand streams, which +repeat in that material the puzzle of the cross timbers, and are even +more inexplicable. While the desert does not narrow the cross timber +belts, nor water widen them, the wind seems to have no effect on these +sand streams, though the material that composes them is so light as to +rise on every puff of air. Like the cross timbers, the sand streams +pursue their way across the country, regarding neither wet nor dry, hill +nor stream. Their origin lies in forces not yet known, and though they +may seem to be the sport of existing conditions, they really maintain +themselves indifferent to their surroundings. Things like these prove +that Americans need not go to the Sahara for novel aspects of nature. +Our author has a quick perception of what is striking in these scenes, +and describes them in vigorous and pictorial language.</p> + +<p>Colonel Dodge is one of the most noted hunters in our army, and his +descriptions of the chase deserve to rank with those of Cummings, Baker, +and other great African sportsmen. It is true our country does not +afford the hunter such a slaughter field as South Africa has been. A few +animals have increased on our soil to such an extent as to afford at +certain seasons opportunities for unlimited slaughter. But the past five +years have seen such destruction of the last of these—the +buffalo—that wholesale killing is no longer possible on any ground +the white man is suffered to visit. Three years more will carry us to +the end of the decade, and probably of the buffalo hunt as it has been +in the past. About five years ago a change came over the pursuit of this +animal. He began to be killed for his hide alone, and the results are +almost incredible. Colonel Dodge shows that in three years no less than +4,373,730 buffalo were killed by whites and Indians. It is evidently +impossible for any animal, bringing forth but one at a birth, to +maintain its increase against such heedless destruction. The present +winter has witnessed what is probably the last grand attack upon these +animals, as they took refuge in the sheltering mountains of northwestern +Texas from the cold and snow-covered plains. Very soon the noblest prey +of the sportsman on this continent will be one of his rarest prizes. +Colonel Dodge does not lack the usual hunter's fund of anecdote. His own +adventures are modestly told, and when "seven antelope and a fine dog" +are bagged with one shot, the story is credited (with the Colonel's +guarantee) to an anonymous "old hunter"! We have said that the plains do +not rival the African field in quantity of game, but the dimensions of +two separate "bags," shot in successive years, shows how great even in +this country the rewards of the chase may be. In 1872 five gentlemen, of +whom Colonel Dodge was one, bagged 1,262 head, and next year four shot +1,141 head on the same ground, and the author thinks "the whole world +can be safely challenged to offer a greater variety of game."</p> + +<p>But interesting as the chase is in our author's hands, the most +important part of the book is that in which the Indians are described +and discussed. To one who knows the unanimity of army opinion concerning +the much debated Indian question in the West, it is almost unnecessary +to say that Colonel Dodge wishes to see the tribes transferred to the +sole control of the War Department, treaty-making stopped at once, +discipline introduced, the vagabond whites eliminated from the tribes, +and the never-ceasing stream of outrages stopped. These opinions, which +the author shares with the Western community at large, are founded on a +very intimate knowledge of the Indians, and while they are invaluable as +the testimony of so competent an authority, they must yield in immediate +interest to the very vivid picture which the author gives of Indian life +and his estimate of Indian character. While what he says is not novel, +and could hardly be novel after the many thousands of works on the same +subject, his views are based on his own observation, and the facts are +presented with so much force that we gain a new idea of the American +savage. His essential moral characteristic is his love of cruelty. What +the savage thinks about in the frequent and long continued seasons of +idle solitude, it has long puzzled the ethnologist to discover. Colonel +Dodge says that a large part of the Indian's brooding thoughts are given +to the invention of modes of inflicting pain when he has the opportunity +to do so, and many of the camp fire discussions are upon suggestions for +cruelty. When the captive is brought in his tortures are not inflicted +in mere accordance with the momentary promptings of a brutal nature. +They may have been invented years before in some far distant camp, in +the profoundest peace, or may be copied from some noted example of +successful cruelty. They may have grown by one suggestion added to +another, among men whose knowledge of natural history includes a +marvellous perception of what parts of the frame are most sensitive to +pain. The Indian's cruelty is his pride. He gains credit by it among his +people, and he who invents a new torture is a leader. Cruelty is a merit +among these savages. It has rewards which make this passion one of the +most noticeable elements in their system of morality. No other author +has presented this aspect of Indian character with the clearness of +Colonel Dodge. His frequent illustrations show that it is no temporary +impulse, but a race characteristic carefully fostered by tradition and +perhaps by religion. But what position does all this give the Indian +among other races of men? Clearly he stands apart. The cannibal may +dance around the living victims who are soon to appear upon his table, +and the prisoner may be made to grace his conqueror's triumph, or the +altar of his conqueror's god, at any cost of suffering to himself, but +no other race, savage or civilized, has ever been shown to cultivate +cruelty for its own sake as the American Indian does. It is not from +fear, revenge, hate, or any other extraneous cause that he studies so +fondly and long over the means of giving pain. Cruelty is a thing to be +enjoyed for itself. The author has spoken with such plainness upon the +position of captive women in the hands of Indians, that we fear his book +will be objected to in just those quarters where its revelations are +most likely to do good. There is one thing which we wish he had made +clear—whether the brutality shown toward captive women is a +practice which has grown among the Cheyennes since they were driven from +their old home, or whether that has always been their mode of procedure. +In some quarters this particular brutality has been spoken of as the +outgrowth of their sufferings at the hands of the whites.</p> + +<p>Colonel Dodge's book shows a rare combination of acute observation, +long experience, and the spirit of good fellowship. It is one of the +best books of hunting we know of, the best book ever written about the +plains, and its pictures and anecdotes of hunting life and Indian +fighting are a faithful reproduction of the peculiar conditions to be +found only on our great plains, with the anomalous relations of the +civilized and barbarous races that haunt them. The publishers have +illustrated it liberally. The Indian portraits are worthy of especial +mention for the minute accuracy which makes them ethnological examples +of unusual value.</p> + +<hr class="c5" /> + +<p>The zoölogical collections described in the fifth volume of Reports, +Survey west of the Hundredth Meridian,<a name="FNanchor_P" +id="FNanchor_P"></a><a href="#Footnote_P" class="fnanchor">[P]</a> were +all obtained in that zoölogical province known as the "Campestrian +region," from the great plains which it includes. There the animal +colors are pale and tend toward uniformity, corresponding to the low +rainfall of from three to twenty inches per year. In this peculiarity, +and also in comparison with the surrounding more humid regions, the +district of country in which the Government surveys are now carried on +sustains the general theory that coloration in animals is closely +dependent on rainfall, a humid atmosphere serving to cloak the sun's +rays and preserve the natural dyes (mostly organic) from bleaching out. +Dr. Yarrow thinks that the entirely rainless parts of this vast +Campestrian region may ultimately deserve recognition as a separate +zoölogical province. The observations made as to the mimicry of color +which some animals, especially reptiles, exert or suffer lead him to +believe that "a law may yet be formulated in this respect which will +equally apply to all classes of animals." This mimicry was especially +noticed in serpents and lizards found near red sandstone deposits, the +well-known little <i>Phrynosoma</i>, or horned toad, being greenish +gray, nearly white, or deep red, as it was found on the plain, the +alkali flat, or the sandstone soil. But however profound the change, the +skin returned to its normal color within a day or two after removal from +the determining locality. In regard to the rattlesnake, we have the +welcome information that it is apparently decreasing in numbers, and the +less agreeable fact that with other serpents, it principally frequents +the neighborhood of settlements. The collections of all kinds made by +the explorers prove to be unexpectedly perfect in spite of the rapidity +with which they are forced to move, and losses by fire and railroad +accident. The report upon these collections is drawn up with the care +and thoroughness that are such creditable features of recent American +official work. A copious bibliography and synonomy is attached to the +descriptions of species. The allotment of reports is as follows: +Geographical Distribution, Dr. H. C. Yarrow; Mammals, Dr. Elliott Coues +and Dr. Yarrow; Birds, H. W. Henshaw; Batrachians and Reptiles, Dr. +Yarrow; Fishes, Prof. E. D. Cope and Dr. Yarrow; Insects, E. T. Cresson, +E. Norton, T. L. Mead, R. H. Stretch, C. R. Osten-Sacken, H. Ulke, R. P. +Uhler, Cyrus Thomas, H. A. Hagen; Mollusca, Dr. Yarrow. These names show +how carefully the head of the survey, Lieutenant Wheeler, has sought +assistance in the important work of classification. But these are by no +means all from whom he and his assistants acknowledge service. The list +given in the preface numbers more than forty persons, and includes the +best known specialists in this country. Forty-five plates, colored when +necessary, accompany the text. In every respect the report is worthy the +important survey from which it emanates.</p> + +<hr class="c5" /> + +<p>Though it is now quite common to find the life of two or even three +continents mingled in one web of fiction, few writers make so close a +subjective study of the immigrant's experiences as Mr. Boyesen has done +in his "Tales from Two Hemispheres."<a name="FNanchor_Q" +id="FNanchor_Q"></a><a href="#Footnote_Q" class="fnanchor">[Q]</a> In +fact he stands almost alone in this field, and for a good reason; he is +a participant where others are onlookers. We are often told of the +impression American ladies make on foreign gentlemen, but rarely receive +an analysis of it or are offered even an attempt to analyze it. And yet +this appears to be one of the most promising exhibitions of human +feeling ever studied. The intercourse of the sexes, necessarily the +subject of all romance, may obviously have its situations heightened in +every way by the juxtaposition of two races, two diverse educations, and +two opposite moral systems, conjointly with the customary incidents of +love-making. Our author is fully alive to his opportunity, and, short as +his tales are, they bristle with dramatic scenes, and have an element of +the mythical and legendary in them, even when they are removed from such +professedly mystical subjects as he has treated in "Asathor's +Vengeance." Even in drawing-room scenes in New York the love-making is +ideal and romantic instead of calculating or passionate, as the current +novel commonly paints it. This mode of treatment implies that the tales +are either pathetic or fanciful, and in Mr. Boyesen's hands they are all +pathetic. He shows unusual power in this style of writing, and has the +natural and quiet humor which it demands. But there is a rudeness in the +construction and language of all of these stories which sometimes blinds +the reader to the really delicate insight into human feeling displayed +in them. The author writes like one who has the conception of what he +wants to do, but not yet the full command of the means. But this is a +fault that practice cures, and we trust Mr. Boyesen will continue his +studies in this essentially novel and peculiarly promising field of +literature.</p> + +<p>—In "Captain Mago"<a name="FNanchor_R" id="FNanchor_R"></a><a +href="#Footnote_R" class="fnanchor">[R]</a> we have a kind of book which +with proper attention may be made extremely interesting and valuable. It +is an attempt to reconstruct the life of three thousand years ago, not +merely among the Phœnicians, but in many other countries. Under +the guise of an expedition sent by the King of Tyre to Tarshish for the +purpose of collecting materials for the Jewish temple which King David +was then planning, we are taken to Judęa, Egypt, Crete, Italy, Spain, +France, England, and Africa. Such an expedition of course gives the +author an opportunity to present a panoramic view of the civilization in +those countries thirty centuries ago. We cannot say that he has +performed the task well. He dwells too much upon what he imagines to be +the language and conversation of the ancients and too little on those +material facts in their life which can be proved or plausibly imagined +from the remains of it which we have gathered. Ancient habits are but +very obscurely exhibited in the rude tools, the fragments of village +houses, the necklace of the Man of Mentone, the whistles and other toys +of the caves, the funereal fireplaces, and similar objects, but they are +much more plainly discernible than are the peculiarities of speech which +must have made up the bulk of daily conversation among our ancestors. A +reconstruction of ancient life based on a good knowledge of these +objects is likely to be more instructive and real than one that depends +for its force on a fanciful conception of their <i>thouing</i> and +<i>theeing</i>, their love-making, and what oaths they swore. In fact, +real service could be done to "popular" science by a book that should +exhibit our remote forefathers as we really know them, and not +attempting to go beyond that point. Difficult as it will necessarily be +to make such an undertaking successful, we have no doubt that it will +one day be accomplished. "Captain Mago," though falling far short even +of excellence in this field, is nevertheless an interesting and peculiar +book.</p> + +<p>—The defect of "Captain Mago" is that its author has endeavored +to reconstruct from remains of a purely literary kind the life of a time +which was antecedent to the most of our oldest literature. Another +author, Mr. Mahaffy, has had great success in a similar field because he +chose for reconstruction a society which has left literary monuments of +a very varied character and great abundance. His "Social Life in Greece" +and other works about the ancient Greeks were written before he ever saw +that historic country, and yet he tells us in his last work,<a +name="FNanchor_S" id="FNanchor_S"></a><a href="#Footnote_S" +class="fnanchor">[S]</a> written after a personal visit and stay of some +time, that his former writings were sufficiently true to the Greece of +to-day to deceive living Greeks into the belief that he had been +intimately acquainted with their landscapes and familiar customs. Mr. +Mahaffy's "Rambles" among modern Greeks are a very interesting finish to +his idealizations of their ancestors. It is comforting to know that +after all her spoliations the country is still so rich in remains of +ancient art as to retain more fine and pure specimens of the best work +than are to be found in all the rest of the world. Very little is done +toward uncovering and nothing toward restoring these sculptures, for the +Greeks are jealous of foreigners and unable or not sufficiently +interested to do this themselves. They are willing to allow others to do +the work, but Greece must have all the profit. Still, there the works +lie, and may be recovered at some future day. We may even be comforted +to think they are well covered with soil, for the present inhabitants of +the country, with exquisite barbarity that their ancestors could not +have practised, use the standing monuments of art as a mark for pistol +practice! Another point in which they show a constitutional divergence +from their forefathers is in the singular barrenness that has fallen +upon their women. Once their land teemed with a native-born population. +Now the household remains so long childless that it is very common to +find the wife's mother a permanent member of the household, being +retained for companionship! Even the mature family contains but few +children, and this in the best agricultural parts of the country. While +these differences exist the author is not at a loss to find strange +resemblances. The yellow hair and fair complexion, the forms which are +even now types of the same race that stood for the old statues, the +language, and a multitude of other things prove that the old race +continues in purity and that Greece is not now filled with a mere +mixture of Turks, Albanians, and Sclaves. Our author has a poor opinion +of the Greek's capacity for government, and likens them to the Irish. He +thinks that both these races are constitutionally incapable of +government, and need subjugation by a foreigner. In this characteristic +he finds a strong resemblance between the modern and the ancient Greek, +for both have suffered personal jealousy to outweigh the strongest +promptings of patriotism. Mr. Mahaffy shows himself to be as able as an +observer as he is as an historian.</p> + +<p>—The peculiar character of De Quincey's work gives unusual +opportunity for such a volume of selections as this, published under the +untasteful name of "Beauties."<a name="FNanchor_T" +id="FNanchor_T"></a><a href="#Footnote_T" class="fnanchor">[T]</a> He +had all the mental power required for sustained efforts in composition, +though his plans for such works were always defeated by physical +weakness. His productions, therefore, though incomplete, are not those +of a literary trifler. His genius and methods seem to be especially +suited to the tastes of the present day, for he excelled in the +qualities that make the professional magazinist: great learning, +research, and acuteness, combined with a humor that sports most +waywardly through everything he wrote, a vivid fancy, a wonderful use of +words, and a style which even in its faults exhibits the needs of +periodical literature. He was, perhaps, more exactly fitted to serve the +world in its chosen field of current publications than any other man who +has written for it. Were he living now he would be acknowledged the +prince of the nebulous gentlemen who occupy easy chairs, gather in +contributors' clubs, and fill up "editors' baskets" with their +effusions. We have additional respect for the somewhat chopped up +productions of these gentlemen, after reading the numerous volumes that +bear his name, for there we find how much of every sort of literary good +they can contain. The editor of these selections is a lucky man, for his +work has the merit, rare among such books, of being thoroughly good in +itself. He has with excellent judgment given us somewhat of +autobiography, somewhat of the rare and indescribable dream life of De +Quincey, and somewhat of his tales, essays, and critiques. The character +of his author's writings relieves these morsels from the air of +incompleteness and decapitation which so often attaches to selections. +What he has given us is not all of De Quincey, but each chapter is +complete in itself. Selections usually repel us. We cannot join in the +argument so often found in prefaces to such works, that the reading of +them may lead to the reading of the author's whole works. On the +contrary, we are of that class to whom the cutting up of a good author +is apt to seem like vivisection—necessary, perhaps, but revolting. +This book, however, does not leave such an impression. On laying it down +we wonder why we are not constantly reading the great essayist, the +precursor of the literary spirit of our own times, probably a better +example than any now living of the many virtues demanded from the +popular writer.</p> + +<hr class="c5" /> + +<p>Under the editorship of Mr. John Austin Stevens we may look for a +valuable and permanent publication in the "Magazine of American History, +with Notes and Queries," of which A. S. Barnes & Co. are the +publishers. The position of the editor as librarian of the New York +Historical Society will, or at all events should, be an additional +source of strength to the publication. Experience shows that literary +undertakings which possess more merit than popularity can derive great +advantages from the official countenance of societies pursuing allied +subjects of investigation. Properly managed, the two modes of obtaining +union in action can be made to help each other materially. This hint +will perhaps be considered not amiss since the pamphlet, printed with +the neatness characteristic of such works, which lies before us, is but +a specimen and preliminary number, which is to be followed by monthly +issues in quarto form, at $5 yearly, if sufficient support is obtained. +The editor says: "Each number will contain: I. An original article on +some point of American history from a recognized and authoritative pen. +II. A biographical sketch of some character of historic interest. III. +Original documents, diaries, and letters. IV. Reprints of rare +documents. V. Notes and queries in the well-known English form. VI. +Reports of the proceedings of the New York Historical Society. VII. +Notices of historical publications." He also promises to keep it free +from sectional prejudices and "from personality and controversy in any +form." He has ready for publication a large number of interesting old +manuscripts contributed by historians and collectors, and it is to be +hoped his attempt to establish a periodical for historical literature +will be sustained.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_O" id="Footnote_O"></a> <a +href="#FNanchor_O"> <span class="label">[O]</span></a>"<i>The Plains of +the Great West and their Inhabitants.</i>" By (Lieutenant-Colonel) <span +class="smcap">Richard Irving Dodge</span>. With an Introduction by +William Blackmore. Illustrated. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.</p> +</div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_P" id="Footnote_P"></a> <a +href="#FNanchor_P"> <span class="label">[P]</span></a>"<i>Report upon +Geographical and Geological Explorations and Surveys West of the +Hundredth Meridian</i>," in charge of First Lieutenant <span +class="smcap">George M. Wheeler</span>. Vol. V., Zoölogy.</p> </div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_Q" id="Footnote_Q"></a> <a +href="#FNanchor_Q"> <span class="label">[Q]</span></a>"<i>Tales from Two +Hemispheres.</i>" By <span class="smcap">Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen</span>. +Boston: James R. Osgood & Co.</p> </div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_R" id="Footnote_R"></a> <a +href="#FNanchor_R"> <span class="label">[R]</span></a>"<i>The Adventures +of Captain Mago</i>; or, A Phœnician Expedition B.C. 1000." By +<span class="smcap">Leon Cahun</span>. Translated by Ellen E. Frewer. +Illustrated. New York: Scribner, Armstrong&Co.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_S" id="Footnote_S"></a> <a +href="#FNanchor_S"> <span class="label">[S]</span></a>"<i>Rambles and +Studies in Greece.</i>" By <span class="smcap">J. P. Mahaffy</span>. +Macmillan&Co.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"> <p><a name="Footnote_T" id="Footnote_T"></a> <a +href="#FNanchor_T"> <span class="label">[T]</span></a>"<i>Beauties +Selected from the Writings of Thomas De Quincey.</i>" New York: Hurd & +Houghton.</p> </div> + +<hr /> + +<p class="p4"></p> + +<h4>BOOKS RECEIVED.</h4> + +<p class="p2">"<i>Materialism and Theology.</i>" <span class="smcap">James +Martineau, LL.D.</span> G. P. Putnam's Sons.</p> + +<p>"<i>Waverley Novels</i>," Riverside Edition, "Heart of Midlothian." +Hurd & Houghton.</p> + +<p><i>The Same.</i> "Bride of Lammermoor."</p> + +<p><i>The Same.</i> "The Monastery."</p> + +<p>"<i>Footsteps of the Master.</i>" <span class="smcap">Harriet B. +Stowe</span>. J. B. Ford & Co.</p> + +<p>"<i>Functions of the Brain.</i>" Illustrated. <span class="smcap">D. +Ferrier</span>, M.D. G. P. Putnam's Sons.</p> + +<p>"<i>The Plains of the Great West.</i>" Illustrated. Lieutenant +Colonel <span class="smcap">Richard I. Dodge</span>. G. P. Putnam's +Sons.</p> + +<p>"<i>The Sons of Godwin.</i>" A Tragedy. <span class="smcap">William +Leighton</span>, Jr. J. B. Lippincott & Co.</p> + +<p>"<i>Personal Relations Between Librarian and Readers.</i>" <span +class="smcap">Sam. S. Green</span>. Chas. Hamilton, Worcester, Mass.</p> + +<p>"<i>Special Report on Worcester Free Library.</i>" The same.</p> + +<p>"<i>Tales from Two Hemispheres.</i>" <span class="smcap">H. H. +Boyesen.</span> Jas. R. Osgood & Co.</p> + +<p>"<i>The Problems of Problems.</i>" <span class="smcap">Clark +Braden.</span> Chase & Hall, Cincinnati.</p> + +<p>"<i>Archology</i>; or, The Science of Government." <span +class="smcap">V. Blakeslee</span>. A. Roman & Co.</p> + +<p>"<i>Woman as a Musician.</i>" <span class="smcap">Fanny Raymond +Ritter</span>. Ed. Schuberth & Co.</p> + +<p>"<i>Vivisection.</i>" Copp Clark & Co., Toronto.</p> + +<p>"<i>Cholera Facts of the Last Year.</i>" <span class="smcap">E. +McClellan</span>, M.D. Richmond & Louisville Medical Journal office. +</p> + +<p>"<i>Art Journal.</i>" Photo-Engraving Co., New York.</p> + +<p>"<i>History of the City of New York.</i>" Parts 5 to 10. Mrs. <span +class="smcap">M. J. Lamb</span>. A. S. Barnes & Co.</p> + +<p>"<i>The Magazine of American History.</i>" <span class="smcap">Jno. +Austin Stevens</span>, editor. A. S. Barnes & Co.</p> + +<p>"<i>National Quarterly Review.</i>" <span class="smcap">D. A. +Gorton</span>, editor.</p> + +<p>"<i>National Survey West of 100th Meridian.</i>" Vol. 5, Zoölogy. Dr. +<span class="smcap">H. C. Yarrow</span> and others. Government Printing +Office.</p> + +<p>"<i>Catalogue Siamese Exhibit International Exhibition.</i>" J. B. +Lippincott & Co.</p> + +<p>"<i>Planetary Meteorology, Mansill's Almanac of.</i>" <span +class="smcap">R. Mansill</span>. R. Crampton, Rock Island.</p> + +<p>"<i>Notes on Assaying.</i>" <span class="smcap">R. De P. +Ricketts</span>. Art Printing Establishment.</p> + +<p>"<i>Mental Powers of Insects.</i>" <span class="smcap">A. S. +Packard</span>, Jr. Estes & Lauriat.</p> + +<p>"<i>Beauties of De Quincey.</i>" Hurd & Houghton.</p> + +<p>"<i>The Convicts.</i>" <span class="smcap">B. Auerbach</span>. H. +Holt & Co.</p> + +<p>"<i>Philosophical Discussions.</i>" <span class="smcap">C. +Wright</span>. H. Holt & Co.</p> + +<p>"<i>The Sons of Goodwin.</i>" <span class="smcap">W. Leighton</span>. +J. B. Lippincott & Co.</p> + +<p>"<i>Rambles and Studies in Greece.</i>" <span class="smcap">J. P. +Mahaffy</span>. Macmillan & Co.</p> + +<p>"<i>Mother and Daughter.</i>" <span class="smcap">F. S. Verdi</span>, +M. D. J. B. Ford & Co.</p> + +<p>"<i>Marie.</i> A Story of Russian Lore." <span class="smcap">Marie H. +de Zielinski</span>. Jansen, McClurg & Co.</p> + +<p>"<i>The Barton Experiment.</i>" By the author of "Helen's Babies." G. +P. Putnam's Sons.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="p4"></p> + +<h4>NEBULĘ.</h4> + +<hr class="c5" /> + +<p class="p2">—It would seem that we must return to the old +fashion of strong boxes, old stockings, and cracked pipkins as the +receptacles of our savings. As to savings banks and trust companies, and +life insurance companies, the revelations of the last few months go to +show that they do anything but save; that they are no longer to be +trusted, and that they ensure nothing but total loss to those who put +their money into them. Ere long it will be said of a young man that he +was poor but honest, although he had the misfortune to have a father who +was a director in several important financial institutions. The state of +affairs in this respect is frightful; and it frightens. The financial +panic has been followed by a moral panic which is really as much more +deplorable than its predecessor as moral causes are more radical in +their operation and more enduring than those which are merely material. +Confidence is gone. How it is to be restored is a problem far more +perplexing than how to revive drooping trade. For that the real wealth +of the country, never greater than it is now and constantly increasing, +must bring about sooner or later. But if men of wealth and of fair +reputation are no longer to be trusted, what is the use of saving, to +put money into a box where it gains nothing and where thieves break +through and steal? Robbery seems to be the fashion; on the one hand +masked burglars with pistols at your heads and gags in the mouths of +your wife and children, and on the other hypocritical, lying, +false-swearing, thieving scoundrels who get your money under fair +pretences, and because of your trust in their characters and good faith, +and then waste it in speculations and in luxurious living. Of the two, +the burglars seem to be rather the more respectable. It is said, on good +authority, that the West India slaves of a past generation could be +trusted to carry bags of gold from one part of the Spanish Main to +another, and that they were constantly so trusted with entire impunity. +They would kidnap, and on occasion stab or cut a throat; but if they +were trusted, they would not break their faith. The honesty of the +Turkish porters is so well known that it has become almost proverbial. +Does not the honesty of these pirates and pagans put to shame the +Christians who with the professions and the faces of Pharisees "devour +widows' houses"?</p> + +<p>—For as to the business of life insurance, savings banks, and +trust companies, it is somewhat more, or surely somewhat other, than +mere business. And so those who practise it and profit by it profess +that it is. A life insurance company is a grand combination +philanthropico-financial corporation whose motto is, "Cast thy bread +upon the waters, and after many days thou shalt receive it again." But +the truth of the matter turns out to be that if you cast your bread upon +the waters, the chances are that you will see it devoured before your +eyes by financial sharks. One case in point has come directly to our +knowledge. A gentleman, a Government officer, who has a moderate salary, +with little or no hope of acquiring property, insured his life twenty +years or more ago in what was thought a good company. His premium was +always promptly paid even in the flush times of the war and afterward, +when the fixed salaries of public officers lost more than half their +purchasing power. Within the last few months he has suddenly found that +his policy is not worth the paper on which it is magnificently printed. +But worse than this: within the last few years, as age has crept upon +him, there has come with it a disease which is incurable although he may +live for some time longer. Now, however, he cannot get his life insured +at all; no company will take his life; (it is a rueful jest to say that +the company in question <i>did</i> take his life); and he has the +prospect before him of a widow left entirely without provision, although +for nearly a quarter of a century he and she stinted themselves to +provide against such a contingency. Meantime the officers of the company +lived luxuriously, and used the money in their hands for speculation, +and in living which if not riotous, was at least shameless and +dishonest. And they were all men of reputation, were selected for their +positions because it was thought that men of their position and habits +of life and outward bearing were incorruptible. Have they not devoured +that prospective widow's house? If He who condemned the hypocritical +Pharisees of old were on the earth now, would he not pronounce Woe upon +them? And much would they care about His condemnation if they could get +their commissions, and their pickings and stealings, and live in +splendid houses, and be known as the managers of an institution that +handled millions of dollars yearly, and whose offices were gorgeous with +many-colored marbles, and gilding, and inlaid wood, and rich +carpets!</p> + +<p>And like their predecessors in the devouring of widows' houses for a +pretence, they make long prayers. They, we say; but of course we do not +mean all; for there are honest officers of life insurance companies, and +even sound companies; but the number of both is shown day after day to +be less and less; and when we think that those that we hear about are +only they which have reached the end of their tether in fraud, perjury, +and swindling, the prospect before us is one of the most disheartening +that could be presented to a reflecting people. For remember, these +defaulting, false-swearing life insurance and savings bank officers are +picked men, and that their dishonest practices are from their very +nature deliberate, slow of execution, and that in fact they have gone on +for years. It is no clutch of drowning men at financial straws that we +have here; it is the regular "confidence game" played on an enormous +scale by men who are regarded as the most respectable that can be found +in the whole community. They are vestrymen, and deacons, and elders, and +grave and reverend signors, and these men have deliberately used and +abused the confidence not only of the community in general, but of their +friends and acquaintance, to "convey" in Nym's phrase, to steal in plain +English, money which was brought within their reach because of their +pretended high principle and their philanthropic motives. For, we +repeat, it must constantly be kept in mind as an aggravation of these +wrongs, that life insurance companies and savings banks are essentially +and professedly benevolent institutions. They are, and they openly +profess to be, chiefly for the benefit of widows and children. The man +who takes to himself the money of a life insurance company or of a +savings bank is not a mere thief and swindler; he robs the widow and the +fatherless; he takes his place among those who are accursed of all men; +and moreover, in all these cases he is a hypocrite of the deepest +dye.</p> + +<p>—In any case, however, there is reason for fearing that the +business of life insurance has in the main long been rotten, even when +it has not been deliberately corrupt. Professedly and originally a +benevolent contrivance by which men of moderate incomes could year by +year make provision for wives and children who might otherwise be left +destitute, it was reasonable and right to expect that the business of +life insurance would be conducted upon the most economical principles +and in the simplest and most unpretending fashion; that there would have +been only as much expenditure as was absolutely necessary for the proper +conduct of the business; and that safety for the insured would have been +the first if not the only ruling motive with the insurers. And such +indeed was life insurance in the beginning. But by and by it was found +that there was "money in it," and the sleek, snug hypocrites that prey +upon society under the guise of philanthropy and religion began to swarm +around it. Life insurance companies began to have a host of officers; +they had "actuaries," whatever they may be, who, by whatever motives +they were actuated, contrived and put forth statements which to the +common mind were equally plausible and bewildering; they entered into +bitter rivalry with each other in their philanthropic careers; they had +agents who went abroad over the land in swarms, smooth-speaking, +shameless creatures who would say anything, promise anything so long as +they got their commissions; they published gorgeous pamphlets, tumid and +splendid with self-praise, and filled with tabular statements that +justified and illustrated the denying that there is nothing so +untrustworthy as facts, except figures; they contrived the "mutual" +plan, by which they made it appear to some men that they could insure +their own lives—which is much like a man's trying to hoist himself +over a fence by the straps of his boots—and yet these mutual +officers, benevolent creatures, were as eager to get business and as +ready to pay large commissions as if, poor, simple-minded souls, they +had expected to get rich by life insuring; and then they put up huge and +enormously expensive buildings, more like palaces than any others known +to our country. And all this came out of the pockets of those who are, +with cruel mockery, called the insured. It is the old story: ten cents +to the beneficiary and ninety cents to the agent through whose hands the +money passes. Is it not plain, merely from the grand scale and the large +pretence on which this life insurance business has been carried on of +late years, that it is rotten? It is a scheme for making money. Now, +making money is right enough; but when it is carried on under +philanthropic and benevolent pretences its tendency must naturally be, +as we have seen that it has been, to gross corruption and the most +heartless fraud.</p> + +<div class="center">* * * * *</div> + +<div class="poem"> + <span class="i0">The point of honor has been deemed of use</span> + <span class="i0">To teach good manners and to curb abuse.</span> +</div> + +<p>So wrote Cowper in his "Conversation," nearly a century ago, when +duelling was beginning to go out of fashion, even among men who did not +look upon it from a religious point of view. There is no doubt that the +passage which these lines introduce did much to bring the custom of +settling personal quarrels by single combat into disrepute. Cowper, the +moral poet <i>par excellence</i> of the English language, attained this +eminence chiefly because he wrote, not like a fanatic, or a canting +pietist, but like a Christian gentleman and a man of sense. A man of +family, he thought and felt as a gentleman, and addressed himself to +gentlemen; and indeed, in his day poetry, at least of the quality that +he produced, had very few readers outside the pale of gentry. His view +of duelling is the one which now prevails in most communities of English +blood in all parts of the world. Germans and Frenchmen and the Latin +races generally still fight upon personal provocation, and in our late +slave States and among the rude and fierce men who guard and extend our +western borders, "misunderstandings" are settled by the bullet or the +knife, and if not on the spot, with the weapon at hand, then in a +regularly arranged duel in which the forms are entirely subordinate to +the essentials of a bloody and vindictive contest. With these +exceptions, however, duelling among the English-speaking people has come +to be regarded as both folly and crime. Nothing could evince more +strongly the change that has taken place in the moral sense of the +world; for to resent an insult by a challenge to fight, and to accept +such a challenge without a moment's hesitation, were once the highest +duties of a gentleman. There was a reason for this; and without +advocating or defending the practice of duelling, it may be questioned +whether that reason has entirely disappeared.</p> + +<div class="center">* * * * *</div> + +<p>—Our readers need not fear that we are about to defend or to +palliate the conduct of either of the parties to the recent affair which +began in Fifth Avenue in New York and ended on the Maryland border; but +the fact that that occurrence or series of occurrences has attracted the +attention of the whole country, makes it a proper occasion of remark +upon the questions involved in such encounters. And first we must set +aside the Cowper view of the subject, not in its conclusion, but in its +reasoning. For however Christian in sentiment and sound in its final +judgment the passage in the "Conversation" may be, its author's position +is not logically impregnable. For it rests upon the assumption embodied +in the couplet—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <span class="i0">Amoral, sensible, and well-bred man</span> + <span class="i0">Will not affront me, and no other can.</span> +</div> + +<p>But if this be true, it follows that a man cannot be insulted, which +is an absurdity; for men are insulted, as we all know—and we are +happy if we do not know it by experience. Moreover, men are insulted +more frequently where the "code of honor" does not prevail than where it +does; for that code is of use; and if it does not teach good manners, it +certainly does curb abuse. The question to be decided is whether in the +teaching of manners and the curbing of abuse by the alternative and +arbitrament of bloody combat we are not paying too high a price for what +we gain. To consider the example which is the occasion of our remark. A +man is met in the street by another with whom he has been upon terms of +social intercourse, and is there publicly whipped. He faces his +assailant, resists, but is overcome because the assailant is the +stronger and the more dexterous. What shall he do? Submit quietly? That +may be Christian conduct; but whether it is good public policy, to say +nothing more, may at least be questioned; for it would place the greater +part of the community at the mercy of the strong brawling bullies. Two +courses are open to a person so assailed—either to place the +matter in the hands of the law, in a civil or a criminal suit, or to +challenge the assailant. In most cases it may be admitted that the +former course is the wiser and the better course. Where mere protection +against personal injury is sought a police justice and a police officer +are the effective as well as the lawful means. But there is something +else to be considered. The mere personal injury may be slight, and there +may be no fear of its repetition, and yet there is a wrong done that may +rankle deeper than a wound. Personal indignity is something that most +men of character and spirit feel more than bodily pain or than loss of +money or of property. It is a sentimental grievance, and therefore one +which the law cannot provide against or punish. It cannot be estimated +in damages; none the less, therefore, but rather the more, does the man +who suffers it take it to heart; none the less, therefore, but rather +the more, do gentlemen set up barriers against it which, although +invisible, and not even expressed, if indeed they are expressible in +words, are more forbidding in their frown, more difficult of assault +than the regular bulwarks of the law. It must be repeated that this +wrong is not to be measured by the bodily injury or the bodily pain that +is inflicted. Two men may be boxing or fencing, and one may severely +injure the other; but no sense of wrong accompanies the injury, and that +not because no injury was intended, but because no offence was meant; +whereas the flirt of a kid glove across the face, or a word, may inflict +a wrong that if not atoned for or expiated, may rankle through a man's +whole life. To attempt to set aside or to do away with this feeling is +quite useless: as well attempt to set aside or to do away with human +nature. It is this feeling that has been at the bottom of most duels +since duels passed out of use as a mode of determining guilt or +innocence, or of deciding questions as to property, or position, or +title. In the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries duels +were chiefly the remedy for wounded honor, as they are when they are +rarely fought nowadays. True there was the duel fought between two +gentlemen "to prevent the inconvenience of their both addressing the +same lady"; but the duel for that reason pure and simple was always +comparatively rare, as, owing to the infirmity of human nature, the +agreement in opinion of the lady and the disagreement as to the +disposition to be made of her were almost sure to take the form of a +more reasonable if not more deadly cause of quarrel.</p> + +<p>—But society—that is, society in which Anglo-Saxon modes +of thought and feeling prevail—says that no matter what the +provocation, or how great the sense of wrong, the duel shall not be; it +has been made a crime in some if not in most of such communities even to +send a challenge. This is done on grounds of public policy and of +morality, and not, as some persons seem to think, because killing in a +duel is murder. Murder is more than a mere killing, and is in its +essence entirely inconsistent with the fact that the person killed +voluntarily placed himself, and generally with much trouble and at great +inconvenience, in the way of his death. The duel is in fact a sort of +<i>hari-kari</i>, or happy release, as our Japanese friends have well +phrased it, but it is with the coöperation of a second party who +voluntarily places himself in similar peril, the happy release being in +both cases from the stigma of dishonor. This is shown very clearly by +the distinction which is drawn in general estimation between the man who +challenges because he has suffered an insult or an injury to his family +honor, and one who does so from a feeling of revenge and with the intent +to rid himself of a hated opponent, as for example in the case of Aaron +Burr in his duel with Alexander Hamilton. That was more than half a +century ago, when there were no such laws against duelling as now exist; +but Burr, although he rid himself of his hated rival on what was called +the field of honor, was from that day a degraded, detested, ruined man. +If Hamilton had offered him a personal indignity, or had injured him in +his family relations, the result of the duel would have added nothing to +the weight of disrepute under which Burr was already suffering. The +whole world recognizes this distinction, and there is hardly a man whose +breeding and habits make him what is rightly called a gentleman in the +full sense of the term, who, however his judgment may condemn the +duellist who fights because of an insult or an injury to family honor, +does not feel a certain sympathy with him. Notwithstanding the teachings +of Christianity, and the example of its founder as to the patient +suffering of indignity, notwithstanding the law, we all, or most of us, +have the feeling that Barclay of Wry's battle-tried comrade had when he +saw his old friend and heroic commander openly insulted by a throng of +swashbucklers in the streets of Aberdeen, because he had become a +Quaker, and which Whittier has expressed with such spirit in his poem on +the subject, which is one of the few truly admirable ballads of modern +days (although its author does not so class it), and which is, we are +inclined to think, the most admirable of them all:</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <div class="stanza"> + <span class="i0">Woe's the day, he sadly said,</span> + <span class="i0">With a slowly shaking head,</span> + <span class="i2">And a look of pity:</span> + <span class="i0">Wry's honest lord reviled,</span> + <span class="i0">Mock of knave and sport of child,</span> + <span class="i2">In his own good city.</span> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <span class="i0">Speak the word, and master mine,</span> + <span class="i0">As we charged on Tilly's line</span> + <span class="i2">And his Walloon lancers,</span> + <span class="i0">Smiting through their midst, we'll teach</span> + <span class="i0">Civil look and decent speech</span> + <span class="i2">To these boyish prancers.</span> + </div> +</div> + +<p>—What then is to be done? for the question is a serious one. We +all feel that personal indignity is of all wrongs the hardest one to +bear; we know that it is a wrong of a kind that cannot be redressed by +law; and yet we restrain men from the only redress, "satisfaction," as +it is called, that human ingenuity has bean able to devise, and with +which human nature, of the unregenerate sort, is satisfied. We cannot +expect all men to behave like members of the Society of Friends. All men +have not proved their courage and high spirit like Barclay of Wry, +who</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <span class="i6">——stood</span> + <span class="i0">Ankle deep in Lutzen's blood</span> + <span class="i2">With the great Gustavus.</span> +</div> + +<p>We cannot compel all men to be Christians; and yet we would compel +them by law to bear insult as if they were Christians and great captains +turned Quakers. We can do this, which thus far society has neglected to +do: we can put a social ban upon the man who deliberately offers a +personal indignity to another. This should be a social duty. Let it be +understood, according to one of those silent social laws which are the +most binding of all laws because the sheriff cannot enforce them, that +the man who flourishes a horsewhip over another's head, or who uses his +tongue as a scourge with like purpose, or who offers personal indignity +of any kind, insults society as well as his victim, and is not to be +pardoned until he has made the amend to the injured party, and there +would soon be an end of provocation to duelling, except that which +touches the family, and that cannot be done away with until men have so +developed morally and intellectually that they see that a man's honor is +not in the keeping of a woman, not in that of any other person than +himself, not even his wife. Her conduct may indeed involve his dishonor, +if he is what used to be called a wittol, but even then <i>his</i> +dishonor is because of his own disgrace. Only then can we reconcile the +making of a challenge a felony with the feeling that a man who has had a +personal indignity put upon him has suffered the deepest wrong he could +be called upon to bear, yet a wrong which society fails to right while +it forbids him to seek the only reparation.</p> + +<p>—That reparation is defined, if not prescribed, by the code of +honor, as to which code there seems to be a very general +misapprehension. The purpose of the code is this, that no gentleman +shall offer a personal indignity to another except with the certainty of +its being at the risk of his life. If society would provide a remedy or +preventive that would operate like this risk, the code would soon pass +absolutely out of practice and into oblivion. It is generally supposed +that the code is a very bloodthirsty law, and that those who acknowledge +it and act upon it are "sudden and quick in quarrel," lovers of +fighting, revengeful and implacable, and that the code gives them the +means of gratifying their murderous or combative propensities. No notion +of it could be more erroneous; the misconception is like that which +supposes military men to be desirous of using arms on slight +provocation; whereas the contrary is the case. No men are so reluctant +to begin fighting as thoroughbred soldiers; for they know what it means +and to what end it must be carried if it is once begun. The code has +been reduced to writing, and by a "fire-eating" South Carolinian, so +that we can see just how bloodthirsty it is. It provides first that if +an insult be received in public it should not be resented or noticed +there, out of respect to those present, except in case of a blow or the +like, because this is insult to the company which did not originate with +the person receiving it; that a challenge should never be sent in the +first instance because "that precludes all negotiation," and that in the +note asking explanation and reparation the writer should "cautiously +avoid attributing to the adverse party any improper motive"; that the +aggrieved party's second should manage the whole affair even before a +challenge is sent, because he "is supposed to be cool and collected, and +his friends' feelings are more or less irritated" ["more or less" here +is excellent good as expressive of the state of mind of a man so +aggrieved that he is ready to risk his life]; the second is to "use +every effort to soothe and tranquillize his principal," not to "see +things in the aggravated light in which he views them, but to extenuate +the conduct of his adversary whenever he sees clearly an opportunity to +do so"; to "endeavor to persuade him that there has been some +misunderstanding in the matter," and to "check him if he uses +opprobrious epithets toward his adversary"; "when an accommodation is +tendered," the code says in a paragraph worthy of the most respectful +consideration, "never require too much; and if the party offering the +<i>amende honorable</i> wishes to give a reason for his conduct in the +matter, do not, unless it is offensive to your friend, refuse to receive +it. By doing so you heal the breach more effectively." Strangers may +call upon you for your offices as second, "for strangers are entitled to +redress for wrongs as well as others, and the rules of honor and of +hospitality should protect them." The second of the party challenged is +also told, "Use your utmost efforts to allay the excitement which your +principal may labor under," to search diligently into the origin of the +misunderstanding, "for gentlemen seldom insult each other unless they +labor under some misapprehension or mistake," and if the matter be +investigated in the right spirit, it is probable that "harmony will be +restored." The other parts of the code refer to the arrangements for and +the etiquette of the hostile meeting, of which we shall only notice the +censure passed upon the seconds if after either party is hit the fight +is allowed to go on. The last section implies, although it does not +positively assert, that "every insult may be compromised" without a +hostile meeting, and it is directly said that "the old opinion that a +blow must require blood is of no force; blows may be compromised in many +cases." We do by no means advocate the fighting of duels; but we must +say that we cannot see in this code the blood-thirstiness and the +quarrel-seeking generally attributed to it. On the contrary, all its +instructions seem to tend toward peacemaking, the restoration of +harmony, the restraining of even expressions of ill feeling. It does +recognize as indisputable that an insult must be atoned for, and if +necessary, at the risk of life. That necessity society can do away with +by placing its ban upon the man who insults another.</p> + +<div class="center">* * * * *</div> + +<p>—It is generally supposed that the "average American" beats the +world in his love of big titles, and in his use of them; but the freed +southern negro beats his white fellow citizen all hollow. We hear from +Texas of one who is Head Centre of a Lodge—exactly of what sort we +don't know, but we suppose that it must be a lodge in the wilderness or +perhaps, in Solomon's phrase, a lodge in a garden of cucumbers. This +cullud pusson will spend two months' wages to "report" at a grand +junction "jamboree" of his "lodge." The titles of the officers of these +associations are something wonderful. A negro office boy down there +asked leave of absence for a day to attend a meeting. "Why," said his +master, "Scip, I didn't know you belonged to a lodge." "Oh, yes, boss," +replied Africanus, "Ise Supreme Grand King, an' Ise nowhar near de top +nuther." Who shall say that the abolition of slavery was not worth all +that it cost?</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="p4"></p> + +<div class='tnote'> + +<h3>Transcriber's Notes:</h3> + +<p>Obvious punctuation errors corrected. Footnotes moved to end of +applicable article.</p> + +<p>The Greek word +"κᾀυτονομάζει" +in the Wordsworth article appears in other editions as +"κᾀντονομάζει." +</p> + +<p>Where thought breaks appear in the original text as short lines, +lines were used; otherwise, thought breaks are indicated with asterisks. +Thought breaks were added in Scientific Miscellany and Nebulę chapters +with changes of topic.</p> + +<p>The remaining corrections are indicated by dotted lines under the +corrections. Scroll the mouse over the word and the original text will +<ins title="Transcriber's Note: Original reads 'apprear'"> +appear</ins>.</p> + +</div> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Galaxy, by Various + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GALAXY *** + +***** This file should be named 35112-h.htm or 35112-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/5/1/1/35112/ + +Produced by Carol Ann Brown, Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier +and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +https://www.pgdp.net. + + +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. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Galaxy + Vol. XXIII--March, 1877.--No. 3 + +Author: Various + +Release Date: January 29, 2011 [EBook #35112] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GALAXY *** + + + + +Produced by Carol Ann Brown, Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier +and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +https://www.pgdp.net. + + + + + + + + + + THE GALAXY. + + + + + VOL. XXIII.--MARCH, 1877.--No. 3. + + +Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1877, by SHELDON & +CO., in the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. + + + + + THE ENGLISH PEERAGE. + + +More than one reader must have felt impatient with Milton for spoiling +the fine epitaph on the Marchioness of Winchester with such unfortunate +lines as "A Viscount's daughter, an Earl's heir," and "No Marchioness, +but now a queen." Probably the expressions sounded less absurd to his +contemporaries than they do to us, for titles of nobility, however +unworthily conferred, had more significance in the reign of James I. +than they bear in the reign of Queen Victoria. The memorable despatch in +which Collingwood announced the victory of Trafalgar, and which has been +described by great writers as a masterpiece of simple narration began +with these words: "Sir: The ever to be lamented death of Vice Admiral +Lord Viscount Nelson, in the moment of victory," etc. Now peers of all +ranks, except the highest, are commonly spoken of under the general +designation of "Lord So-and-So," and are rarely accorded in conversation +the honors of "my lord," or "your lordship." Generally speaking, it may +be said that in England titles, like decorations, are still greedily +sought after, but when won are not openly displayed. They are felt by +their bearers to be an anachronism, though no doubt a sufficiently +agreeable one to those most immediately concerned. + +Successive governments give as large a share of patronage to the peers +and baronets, and their kinsfolk, as they reasonably can; while the +Premier is only too glad to select men of rank as his colleagues in the +Cabinet, if they are only possessed of decent abilities, and will +work--for a minister must be a hard worker in these days. Thus, Mr. +Gladstone's administration, the first which was ever designated as +"Radical," contained a large proportion of the aristocratic element in +its ranks, though it was even made a charge against Mr. Gladstone by +conservative and pseudo-liberal papers, that he unjustly deprived the +peerage of its due representation in the Cabinet. + +As a matter of fact, when the Cabinet resigned it consisted of sixteen +members. Of these, eight were peers or sons of peers. Of the remaining +thirty-six Parliamentary members of the administration, fourteen were +peers or sons of peers. Mr. Disraeli's Cabinet numbers but twelve +ministers. Of these six are peers, another is heir presumptive to a +dukedom; while an eighth is a baronet; and of the remaining members of +the administration, nineteen out of thirty-eight are peers, baronets, or +sons of peers. In the army and navy, in the diplomatic service, the +peerage equally secures its full share of prizes; and even in the legal +profession it is far from being a disadvantage to a young barrister that +his name figures in the pages of Burke. In the Church a large proportion +of the best livings are held by members of the same privileged class, +and even the Stock Exchange lately showed itself eager to confer such +honors as were in its gift on a duke's son, who had been courageous +enough to "go into trade." + +The British aristocracy is still, therefore, "a fact," if a favorite +term of Mr. Carlyle's may be permitted in such a connexion, as it +probably may, for the author of "The French Revolution" has himself been +one of the latest eulogists of the governing families of England, and +perhaps a few notes on the origin and history of some of the principal +houses may not be unacceptable to American readers. + +The House of Lords, as at present constituted, consists of something +less than five hundred temporal peers. The first in order of hereditary +precedence, after the princes of the blood royal, is the Duke of +Norfolk, a blameless young gentleman of eight-and-twenty years, and a +zealous Catholic, as it is generally supposed that a Howard is compelled +to be by a mysterious law of his nature. As a matter of fact, however, +no family in England has changed its religion so often. Henry Charles, +thirteenth duke, seceded from the Church of Rome on the occasion of the +papal aggression. He declared himself convinced that "ultramontane +opinions were totally incompatible with allegiance to the sovereign and +the Constitution." The Duke's expression of opinion might have had more +weight with his coreligionists had his own reputation for wisdom stood +higher. But it stood very low. His Grace had made himself very +conspicuous during the agitation for the repeal of the corn laws by +recommending a curry powder of his own manufacture as a substitute for +bread, which singular piece of advice to a starving people earned him +the sobriquet of "Curry Norfolk." Charles, eleventh duke, also renounced +the old faith about the year 1780. He had not yet succeeded to his +title, but was known as the Earl of Surrey; was immediately returned to +Parliament for one of his father's boroughs. (The dukes of Norfolk had +eleven boroughs at their disposition before the passing of the reform +bill.) He was a notable personage in his day, and acted in concert with +the party of Fox. For giving the toast of "The people, our Sovereign," +at a public dinner he was deprived of his lord-lieutenancy and of his +colonelcy of militia. He was remarkable, too, for a dislike of clean +linen, which his friends were grieved to see him carry to excess.[A] +Three other Howards of the same stock are more honorably distinguished +in their country's annals. They are the victor of Flodden and two of his +grandsons; the one the Surrey of history and romance, the other, Charles +Lord Howard of Effingham, the conqueror of the Spanish Armada. The +origin of the family is involved in obscurity, some maintaining that it +sprung from the famous Hereward, the Wake, of whose name they affirm +Howard to be a corruption; while others assert that the word Howard is +neither more nor less than a euphonious form of Hogward, and that the +premier duke and hereditary Earl Marshal of England might ultimately +trace his descent to a swineherd if he were disposed so to do. The first +Howard of whom genealogists can take serious cognizance was a +respectable judge of the court of common pleas in the reigns of Edward +I. and Edward II. (1297-1308). His descendant was ennobled in the reign +of Edward IV. + +[Footnote A: "Did your Grace ever try a clean shirt?" Abernethy is said +to have asked the Duke, who had consulted him on some ailment.] + +Next on the roll of the Lords to the Duke of Norfolk is Edward St. Maur, +the Duke of Somerset, an extremely clever man, "with a passion for +saying disagreeable things." He recently published a smart attack on the +evidences of Christianity, which occasioned not a little difficulty to +some worthy editors. They were sincere Christians, but it jarred against +their feelings to speak harshly of a duke. The St. Maurs (or Seymours) +are of genuine Norman descent, and began to be heard of in the +thirteenth century. They apparently remained estimable till the time of +Henry VIII., when that uxorious monarch married Jane, the daughter of +Sir John Seymour, by whom he became the father of Edward VI. Strangely +enough, Jane's brother, Lord Seymour of Sudeley, afterward married +Henry's widow, and the knot of family relationships becomes a little +complicated in consequence. More inauspicious unions were never +contracted. Lord Seymour was executed by order of his brother, the +Protector (and first Duke of Somerset), and three years later the +Protector's death-warrant was signed by his own nephew. From the close +of this short chronicle of blood, the Seymours practically disappear +from the pages of English history, though Macaulay has left a graphic +picture of that Sir Edward Seymour who was Speaker of the House of +Commons under Charles II., and who proudly replied to William III., when +asked if he belonged to the Duke of Somerset's family, that "the Duke of +Somerset belonged to his family." Francis, fifth duke, was the occasion +of a few days' gossip and much scandal. During his travels in Italy he +visited the convent of the Augustinians at Lerice, where he was foolish +enough to offer an impertinence to some ladies of the family of Botti, +and was shot by an angry Signor Botti a few hours later. His brother +Charles, who succeeded him, is the hero of a less tragic story. His +second wife, Lady Charlotte Finch, once tapped him with her fan, when he +is said to have rebuked her in these terms: "Madam, my first wife was a +Percy, and she never ventured to take such a liberty." He was known +among his contemporaries as "the proud Duke of Somerset." + +The next of the ducal houses in order of precedence traces its descent +from Charles II. and Louisa de Querouaille, "whom our rude ancestors +called Madam Carwell." The Dukes of Richmond have always been known as +honorable gentlemen, but they have left no mark on the political history +of England. The present Duke is perhaps the most distinguished man of +his family, being leader of the Conservative party in the House of +Lords, and, as is generally thought, Mr. Disraeli's destined successor +in the Premiership. The third Duke held high office in the early part of +the reign of George III.; while his nephew, Colonel Lennox, who +afterward succeeded him in the title, had the honor of fighting a duel +with a son of George III. Neither of the combatants suffered any hurt, +and Colonel Lennox was reserved for the most melancholy of deaths; +falling, thirty years after, a victim to hydrophobia, caused by the bite +of a dog. His royal antagonist was Frederic, Duke of York, who +subsequently became Commander-in-Chief of the British army in the most +inglorious period of its annals. Indeed, so disgraceful was his Royal +Highness's conduct of the campaign of 1794, that Pitt demanded one of +two things from the King; viz., either that the Prince should be brought +before a court-martial, or that the Prime Minister should in future have +the right of appointing to great military commands. It must have cost +George III. a bitter pang to accept the latter alternative. + +The Duke of Grafton, who holds the fourth place on Garter's Roll, is +equally descended from his Majesty, King Charles II., of happy memory. +Henry Fitzroy, son of Barbara Villiers (created Duchess of Cleveland), +was raised to the highest rank in the peerage, as Duke of Grafton, in +1675. He was one of the first to desert his uncle's cause in 1688, and +two years later he died a soldier's death under the walls of Cork, +fighting for William III. and the liberties of England. His great +grandson was Augustus Henry, third Duke of Grafton, who may still be +seen gibbeted in the pages of Junius. His Grace was a member of +Chatham's second ministry, and succeeded his chief in the Premiership. +Of other Dukes of Grafton history makes no special mention. + +The fifth of the dukes in order of precedence quarters the royal arms of +France and England, but without the baton sinister. Henry Charles +Fitzroy Somerset, Duke of Beaufort, is lineally descended from "_old_ +John of Gaunt, time-honored Lancaster" (third son of Edward III.) and +Catherine Swinford. John of Gaunt's children by this union were +afterward legitimatized by act of Parliament. Henry, the second son, +took holy orders, and became Bishop of Lincoln, and afterward of +Winchester, as well as Cardinal and Lord Chancellor. He is the Cardinal +Beaufort who figures in the stately Gallery of Shakespeare. He and his +brothers took the name they bore from the Castle of Beaufort, in Anjou, +the place of their nativity. The Cardinal's elder brother was created +Earl and afterward Marquis of Somerset. His descendant, Henry Beaufort, +Duke of Somerset, fell into the hands of the Yorkists, at the battle of +Hexham, and was succeeded in the family honors by his brother Edmund, +who was soon to share the same fate. With him the legitimate male line +of John of Gaunt became extinct. Duke Henry, however, had left a natural +son, who was called Charles Somerset, and who, to use the appropriate +language of chronological dictionaries, "flourished" in the reigns of +Henry VII. and Henry VIII. He was a brave soldier and a skilful +diplomatist; having been chosen a Knight of the Garter; he was also +appointed captain of the King's Guards for his services. Sir Charles +Somerset obtained in marriage Elizabeth, daughter and heiress of William +Herbert, Earl of Huntingdon, and Lord Herbert of Rayland, Chepston, and +Gower; and, in his wife's right, was summoned to Parliament as Lord +Herbert, in the first year of Henry VIII. In 1514 he was advanced to the +Earldom of Worcester, having previously been constituted Lord +Chamberlain for life, as a reward for the distinguished part he had in +the taking of Terouenne and Tournay. He died in 1526, and was succeeded +by his son. Little is heard of the Somersets--Earls of Worcester--during +the sixteenth century, though the marriage of two ladies of that house +called forth the well-known Epithalamium of Spenser. Henry, the fifth +earl, created Marquis of Worcester by Charles I., is celebrated in +English history for his defence of Rayland castle against the forces of +the Parliament, under Sir Thomas Fairfax. On this subject, Mr. George +MacDonald's last novel of "St. George and St. Michael" may be consulted +with advantage. + +The brave old cavalier did not long survive the surrender and +destruction of his ancestral home. The same year he died, and was +succeeded in his title by his son Edward, the famous author of the +"Century of Inventions." It is scarcely too much to say that had this +man been divested of rank and fortune, and had he been furnished with +the requisite motive for exertion, he might have anticipated the work of +Watt and Stephenson. As it was, the discoveries he made served but to +amuse his leisure hours. The Marquis of Worcester was well-nigh the last +of his race about whose doings his countrymen would much care to be +informed. His son was created Duke of Beaufort in 1682, and with the +attainment of the highest rank in the peerage came a cessation of mental +activity in the family. One more Somerset, however, deserves honorable +mention--Fitzroy, who was aide-de-camp to Wellington, and lost an arm at +Waterloo. Raised to the peerage in 1852 as Lord Raglan, he was named two +years later to the command of the English army in the Crimea. What he +did, and what he did not, in that post, is still remembered. In truth he +was a gallant soldier, distracted by contradictory instructions, feeling +keenly the criticisms of newspaper writers, who complained that one of +the strongest fortresses in the world was not taken in a few weeks. The +siege had lasted eight months, when Lord Raglan resolved to make one +desperate effort to carry the place by assault on the 18th of June, the +fortieth anniversary of Waterloo. The attack failed, and the allies were +repulsed with severe loss. Ten days later the English general succumbed +to sickness and chagrin. + +The Dukes of St. Albans enjoy precedence after the Dukes of Beaufort. +William Amelius Aubrey De Vere Beauclerk, present and tenth duke, is +lineally descended from the Merry Monarch and Nell Gwynn, and through +the marriage of the first duke, from the De Veres, Earls of Oxford. His +Grace is Hereditary Grand Falconer, a pleasant little sinecure of some +$6,000 a year. Of the Dukes of Saint Albans history has nothing to say. +The ninth duke married the widow of Mr. Thomas Coutts, of banking +renown. + +Next on Garter's roll comes the Duke of Leeds, lineally descended from +Thomas Osborne, Earl of Danby and Lord High Treasurer under Charles II., +whom Dutch William afterward made Duke of Leeds. Danby (for he is better +known by this title than by the one which he dishonored) must be +considered to have been an average statesman, and even a patriot, as +public spirit then went. He steadily opposed French influence under +Charles II., and afterward contributed to the success of the Revolution. +He was subsequently impeached by the Commons for taking bribes, but the +principal witness on whom the House relied to substantiate the charge +mysteriously disappeared when most wanted. From that day, however, the +Duke of Leeds was morally extinguished. The subsequent Dukes led worthy +and honorable lives, but were not otherwise notable. The seventh married +(24th of April, 1828) an American lady, Louisa Catharine, third daughter +of Mr. Richard Caton of Maryland, and widow of Sir Felton Bathurst +Hervey. + +The two next of the ducal houses, those of Bedford and Devonshire, are +invested by Whig writers with almost a halo of glory, though in truth +they have produced respectable rather than great men. The beginnings of +the house of Russell are somewhat curious. One of the earliest ancestors +of the family of whom anything is accurately known was Speaker of the +House of Commons in the second and tenth years of Henry VI. His +grandson, John Russell, a gentleman of property, resided at Berwick, +about four miles from Bridport, in the county of Dorset. He was a +bookish man, and would probably never have gone to seek out fortune; but +fortune, as is her wont, came to him in the person of the Archduke +Philip of Austria. This Prince, the son of the reckless Maximilian, +having encountered a violent hurricane in his passage from Flanders to +Spain, was driven into Weymouth, where he landed, and was hospitably +received by a Sir Thomas Trenchard, who immediately wrote to court for +instructions. Meanwhile he deputed his first cousin, Mr. Russell, to +wait upon the Prince. His Highness was so fascinated by the conversation +of Mr. Russell, that he begged that gentleman to accompany him to +Windsor, where he spoke of him in such high terms to the King (Henry +VII.), that the monarch at once took him into his favor. He subsequently +accompanied Henry VIII. in his French wars, and afterward becoming a +supple instrument of his master's ecclesiastical policy, was rewarded +with a peerage and a grant of the Abbey of Tavistock, and the extensive +lands thereto belonging. To these possessions the Protector Somerset +added the monastery of Woburn and the Earldom of Bedford. Nor did the +star of John Russell grow dim under the reign of the Catholic Mary, who +named him Lord Privy Seal, and Ambassador to Spain, to conduct Philip +II. to England. He died in 1555. From him were descended various +Russells who enjoyed as many of the good things of this life as they +could decently lay hands upon, and two of whom were famous men in their +day. William, Lord Russell, is best known to posterity as the husband of +the admirable Rachael Wriothesley, daughter of Thomas, Earl of +Southampton, and widow of Francis, Lord Vaughan. With respect to his +execution there has been some difference of opinion; but the probability +is that it was a judicial murder of the worst kind. Immediately after +the Revolution, Lord Russell's attainder was reversed by Parliament. His +widow survived him forty years, and lived to see George I. on the throne +and the Protestant succession firmly established. What is not so +generally known, perhaps, is that the mother of Lord Russell was the +daughter of Carr, Earl of Somerset, by the divorced wife of Essex. She +was herself a virtuous lady, and is said to have fallen down in a fit +when she first learned the horrible details of her family history. + +Lord Russell's cousin was the victor of La Hogue, created Earl of Orford +in 1697. He died in 1727 without issue, when the title became +extinct--to be renewed fifteen years later in favor of Sir Robert +Walpole. + +Lord Russell's father was created Duke of Bedford by William III., May +11, 1694. He was succeeded by his grandson, Wriothesley, who was married +at the ripe age of fourteen and elevated to a separate peerage the same +year. He had previously been requested to come forward as a candidate +for the county of Middlesex; but the prudent Lady Russell refused to +allow him. In the then state of public opinion he would have been +elected without opposition. + +The eighteenth century was the golden age of Whig families, at least +till George III. became king, and the house of Russell continued to +provide the country with a succession of dignified placemen. John IV., +Duke of Bedford, was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in 1756. In 1762 his +Grace, as the plenipotentiary of England, signed the preliminaries of +peace at Fontainebleau with France and Spain--a work on which he can +scarcely be congratulated, seeing that by it England was juggled out of +nearly every advantage she had won by seven years of victory. The Duke's +son, Francis, called by courtesy Marquis of Tavistock, married Lady +Elizabeth Keppel, who literally died of grief when her husband was +killed by a fall from his horse. Dr. Johnson's characteristic comment on +this event was that if her ladyship had been a poor washerwoman with +twelve children to mind, she would have had no time to die of grief. +Lord Tavistock left three sons, Francis and John, successively fifth and +sixth Dukes of Bedford, and William (posthumous), the unfortunate +nobleman who, within living memory, was murdered by his French valet +Courvoisier. + +John, Earl Russell, the distinguished statesman who "upset the coach," +is a son of the sixth duke, Lord Odo Russell, one of the ablest of +modern diplomatists, a grandson of the same peer. + +On the day after the head of the house of Russell was raised to ducal +rank, the head of the Cavendishes received the same honor, being created +Marquis of Hartington and Duke of Devonshire. This family claims descent +from Sir John Cavendish, Lord Chief Justice of England in 1366, 1373, +and 1377. "In the fourth year of Richard II. his lordship was elected +chancellor of the university of Cambridge, and was next year +commissioned, with Robert de Hales, treasurer of England, to suppress +the insurrection raised in the city of York, in which year the mob, +having risen to the number of fifty thousand, made it a point, +particularly in the county of Suffolk, to plunder and murder the +lawyers; and being incensed in a more than ordinary degree against the +Chief Justice Cavendish, his son John having killed the notorious Wat +Tyler, they seized upon and dragged him, with Sir John of Cambridge, +prior of Bury, into the marketplace of that town, and there caused both +to be beheaded." Thus far Burke, who has small sympathy to bestow on Wat +Tyler, albeit that reformer was murdered in a cowardly way, whether it +were Walworth or Cavendish who struck the blow. "For William Walworth, +mayor of London, having arrested him (Wat Tyler), he furiously struck +the mayor with his dagger, but being armed [_i.e._ the mayor being in +armor], hurt him not; whereupon the mayor, drawing his baselard, +grievously wounded Wat in the neck; in which conflict an esquire of the +King's house, called John Cavendish, drew his sword and wounded him +twice or thrice, even unto death. For which service Cavendish was +knighted in Smithfield, and had a grant of L40 per annum from the King." +The great-great-grandson of this Sir John Cavendish was gentleman usher +to Cardinal Wolsey; after the death of his master King Henry took him +into his own employment, to reward him for the fidelity with which he +had served his former patron. His elder brother William was in 1530 +appointed one of the commissioners for visiting and taking the +surrenders of divers religious houses. Needless to add that from that +day Mr. Cavendish had but to do as the King told him and make his +fortune. Before his death he had begun to build the noble seat of +Chatsworth, in Derbyshire, which his descendants still possess. His +second son, and eventual heir, was created Earl of Devonshire by King +James I. in 1618. The first earl's nephew was the renowned cavalier +general created Marquis and subsequently Duke of Newcastle. He was at +one time governor of the Prince of Wales (afterward Charles II.), and +there is a touching epistle extant in which his youthful charge entreats +the Marquis that he may not be compelled to take physic, which he feels +sure would do him no good. + +William, fourth earl of Devonshire, although raised to a dukedom by +William III., distinguished himself, as did his son, the Marquis of +Hartington, in the House of Commons, by vehement opposition to the +King's retention of his Dutch guards after the conclusion of peace in +1697; and for this uncourtly conduct the country owes them a deep debt +of gratitude. The Dutch guards were not likely to do much harm, but +foreign troops have no business in a free state. + +Henry Cavendish, the eminent chemist and philosopher, was grandson to +the second duke (who married Rachel, daughter of William, Lord Russell). +The present duke was senior wrangler of his year; his eldest son is +leader of the Liberal party in the House of Commons. + +Of the dukes of Marlborough, who are next on the list, it is unnecessary +to say much. All the world knows the strange history of John Churchill, +the noblest and the meanest of mankind. The great duke's only son died +of the smallpox while yet a boy; but his honors were made perpetual in +the female as well as the male line. The present duke is lineally +descended on the father's side from a most worthy country gentleman, Sir +Robert Spencer, of Althorp, raised to the peerage as Lord Spencer by +James I. Lord Spencer's name should be dear to every American for the +friendship he showed his neighbors the Washingtons. The Washingtons had +at one time rather a severe struggle to make both ends meet, but they +saw better days. John Washington, the heir of the house, was knighted +and fought for Charles I. in the civil war. Disgusted with the +commonwealth, he emigrated to America, hearing that men were more loyal +on the other side of the Atlantic. He is commonly believed to have been +the ancestor of George Washington. Such is the irony of fate. + +The second Duke of Marlborough who, when unwell, would limit himself to +a bottle of brandy a day, proved a real source of danger to his country. +When he succeeded to his grandfather's honors in 1733, the faults of the +victor of Blenheim were forgotten and only his surpassing military +achievements remembered. King and people were alike determined to honor +the man who bore his name, and, it was fondly deemed, inherited his +qualities. He was made lord lieutenant of two counties, a knight of the +garter, and promoted to high military command. Having conducted himself +without discredit at Dettingen, he was thought equal to anything, and in +the year 1758 Pitt, who felt kindly toward the Churchills, and who had +been left L10,000 by Duchess Sarah, was so rash as to name him +commander-in-chief of all the British forces in Germany destined to act +under Prince Ferdinand. After all, the appointment did no harm, for the +Duke died the same year. _Exeunt_ the Dukes of Marlborough into infinite +space. Henceforth they and their doings have no more human interest. + +The Dukes of Rutland are another family dating their greatness from a +share in the spoil of the monasteries. Thomas Manners, first Earl of +Rutland, drew one of the best repartees ever made from Sir Thomas More, +then Lord Chancellor. "_Honores mutant mores_," said the Earl to Sir +Thomas in resent for some fancied affront. "Nay, my lord," replied More; +"the pun is better translated into English--Honors change Manners." +Among the descendants of this nobleman two are worthy a passing notice; +viz., John, Marquis of Granby, the most dashing of cavalry officers, +whose bluff features may still be seen on the signboards of many taverns +in England; and Lord John Manners, heir-presumptive to the Dukedom of +Rutland, and a member of the present Cabinet. Lord John is chiefly +famous as the author of a poem in which occur the oft-quoted lines: + + Let arts and learning, laws and commerce die, + But keep us still our old nobility-- + +perhaps the most remarkable sentiment ever uttered even by a young man. +It is fair to Lord John Manners to add that he was a fairly successful +Minister of Public Works under two administrations, showing indeed a +good deal of taste and no contempt at all for the arts. Another Manners +was Archbishop of Canterbury from 1805 to 1828; but beyond having an +income of something like $130,000 punctually during nearly a quarter of +a century, this prelate cannot be considered to have done anything +noteworthy. The Archbishop's son was Speaker of the House of Commons +from 1817 to 1834, and was raised to the peerage in 1835 as Viscount +Canterbury--a peerage being the invariable termination of a modern +Speaker's career. The present Lord Canterbury (his son) has been +Governor of Victoria and two or three other colonies; for men do not +belong to a ducal family for nothing. + +There are but eleven Dukes of England properly so called; that is, Dukes +sitting in the House of Lords as such, and deriving their titles from +creations before the union with Scotland. The Duke of Norfolk, as before +stated, is the first of these, and the Duke of Rutland the last in order +of precedence. The patent of the latter as Duke bears date March 29, +1703. There are also Dukes of Great Britain and of the United Kingdom, +as well as of Scotland and Ireland; but those of the two sister kingdoms +sit by inferior titles among their peers, and all the Dukes not of +England take precedence among each other by somewhat intricate rules of +precedence, into which it is not worth while to enter. The dukedoms are +twenty-eight in all, exclusive of those held by princes of the blood +royal. The honor has been very sparingly bestowed in late years. The +last conferred by George III. was that of Northumberland, the King +refusing to make any more creations, except in favor of his own +descendants. The Prince Regent made Lord Wellington a duke, and after +his accession to the throne raised Lord Buckingham to the same dignity. +William IV. made two more, and her present Majesty has added an equal +number to the list. + +The history of one ducal family is the history of all. They generally +boast a founder of some abilities, and produce one or two men, seldom +more, who leave their mark on the annals of their country. It would be +strange if it were otherwise, considering the enormous opportunities +which a title, joined to fair means, gives to its possessor in England. +The privileges with which acts of Parliament and courtly lawyers in +bygone ages invested the nobility have long since become nominal. A peer +has now no right as such to tender advice to the Queen. If libelled, he +can no more terrify the offender with the penalties of _scandalum +magnatum_, but must content himself with the same remedies as do other +folk; if he cannot be arrested for debt, he shares that privilege with +all the Queen's subjects; and if he continues to be a hereditary member +of the Legislature, it is because the chamber in which he sits has been +reduced to a moderating committee of the sovereign assembly. But the +nameless privileges of persons of rank are great indeed. The army, the +navy, the Church are filled with them or their dependents. Till within +the last few years, the diplomatic service was regarded as their +peculiar property. In the present House of Commons, the second elected +by household suffrage, fully one-third of the members are sons of peers, +baronets, or closely allied by marriage, or otherwise, to the titled +classes. A fair proportion of these are Liberals; the Queen's +son-in-law, Lord Lorne, member for Argyllshire, being a professor of +"Liberal" opinions, as also Lord Stafford, son of the Duke of +Sutherland, and Lord de Gray, son of the Marquis of Ripon. Such Liberals +serve the useful function of "watering" the creed of their party, which +might otherwise prove too strong for the Constitution. Mr. Gladstone and +Mr. Bright would doubtless have gone much further in the path of reform +if unfettered by ducal retainers. + +And yet, though England is still very far from the realization of that +political equality which American citizens enjoy among themselves, and +which is perhaps one of the few ascertainable benefits Frenchmen have +derived from the revolution, there can be no doubt as to the direction +in which England is advancing. Democracy is the goal of the future, and +it is even in sight, though a long way off. For instance, considerable +as is the parliamentary influence of certain noblemen in the present +day, it is influence and no more. Before the Reform act of 1832, the +parliamentary "influence" of a peer, as it was euphemistically termed, +meant that he had the absolute disposal of one or more seats in the +House of Commons. The Duke of Norfolk, as before mentioned, returned +eleven members, the Duke of Richmond three, Lord Buckingham six, the +Duke of Newcastle seven. In the year 1820, out of the twenty-six +prelates sitting in the House of Lords, only six were not directly or +indirectly connected with the peerage; while the value of some of the +sees was enormous. Now public opinion is too formidable to allow of +jobbery that is not very discreetly managed, and a great deal no doubt +is thus managed. But appearances must be kept up. + + E. C. GRENVILLE MURRAY. + + + + +MISS MISANTHROPE. + +BY JUSTIN MCCARTHY. + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + +"OH, MUCH DESIRED PRIZE, SWEET LIBERTY!" + + +The summer had gone and much even of the autumn, and Miss Grey and her +companion were settled in London. Minola had had everything planned out +in her mind before they left Dukes-Keeton, and little Miss Blanchet was +positively awed by her leader's energy, knowledge, and fearlessness. The +first night of their arrival in town they went to a quiet, respectable, +old-fashioned hotel, well known of Keeton folk, where Miss Grey's father +used to stay during his visits to London for many years, and where his +name was still well remembered. Then the two strangers from the country +set out to look for lodgings, and Miss Grey was able to test her +knowledge of London, and satisfy her pride of learning, by conducting +her friend straightway to the region in which she had resolved to make a +home for herself. She had been greatly divided in mind for a while +between Kensington and the West Centre; between the neighborhood of the +South Kensington Museum, the glades of the gardens, and all the charms +of the old court suburb, and the temptations of the National Gallery, +the British Museum, and the old-fashioned squares and houses around the +latter. She decided for the British Museum quarter. Miss Blanchet would +have preferred the brightness and air of fashion which belonged to +Kensington, but Miss Grey ruled that to live somewhere near the British +Museum was more like living in London, and she energetically declared +that she would rather live in Seven Dials than out of London. + +To find a pleasant and suitable lodging would ordinarily have been a +difficulty; for the regular London lodging-house keeper detests the +sight of women, and only likes the gentleman who disappears in the +morning and returns late at night. But luckily there are Keeton folk +everywhere. As a rule nobody is born in London, "except children," as a +lady once remarked. Come up to London from whatever little Keeton you +will, you can find your compatriots settled everywhere in the +metropolis. Miss Grey obtained from the kindly landlady of the +hotel--who had herself been born in Keeton, and was married to a Glasgow +man--a choice of Keeton folk willing to receive respectable and +well-recommended lodgers--"real ladies" especially. Miss Grey, being +cordially vouched for by the landlady as a real lady, found out a Keeton +woman in the West Centre who had a drawing-room and two bedrooms to let. + +Had Miss Grey invented the place it could not have suited her better. It +was an old-fashioned street, running out of a handsome old-fashioned +square. The street was no thoroughfare. Its other end was closed by a +solemn, sombre structure with a portico, and over the portico a plaster +bust of Pallas. This was an institution or foundation of some kind which +had long outlived the uses whereto it had been devoted by its pious +founder. It now had nothing but a library, a lecture hall, an enclosed +garden (into which, happily for her, the windows of Miss Grey's bedroom +looked), an old fountain in the garden, considerable funds, a board of +trustees, and an annual dinner. This place lent an air of severe dignity +to the street, and furthermore kept the street secluded and quiet by +blocking up one of its ends and inviting no traffic. The house in which +our pair of wanderers was lodging was itself old-fashioned, and in a +manner picturesque. It had broad old staircases of stone, and a large +hall and fine rooms. It had once been a noble mansion, and the legend +was that its owner had entertained Dr. Johnson there and Sir Joshua +Reynolds, and that Mrs. Thrale had often been handed up and down that +staircase. Minola loved association with such good company, and it may +be confessed went up and down the stairs several times for no other +purpose whatever than the pleasure of fancying herself following in the +footsteps of bright Mrs. Thrale, with whose wrongs Miss Grey, as a +misanthrope, was especially bound to sympathize. + +The drawing-room happily looked at least aslant over the grass and the +trees of the square. Minola's bedroom, as has been said, looked into the +garden of the institution, with its well-kept walks, its shrubs, and its +old-fashioned fountain, whose quiet plash was always heard in the +seclusion of the back of the house. Had the trunks of the trees been +just a little less blackened by smoke our heroine might well have +fancied, as she looked from her bedroom window of nights, that she was +in some quaint old abode in a quiet country town. But in truth she did +not desire to encourage any such delusion. To feel that she was in the +heart of London was her especial delight. This feeling would have +brightened and glorified a far less attractive place. She used to sit +down alone in her bedroom of nights in order to think quietly to +herself, "Now I am at last really in London; not visiting London, but +living in it." There at least was one dream made real. There was one +ambition crowned. "Come what will," she said to herself, "I am living in +London." In London and freedom she grew more and more healthy and happy. +As a wearied Londoner might have sought out say Keeton, and found new +strength and spirits there, so our Keeton girl, who was somewhat pale +and thin when she sat on the steps of the ducal mausoleum, grew stronger +and brighter every day in the West Centre regions of London. + +A happier, quieter, freer life could hardly be imagined, at least for +her. She spent hours in the National Gallery and the Museum; she walked +with Mary Blanchet in Regent's Park, and delighted to find out new +vistas and glimpses of beauty among the trees there, and to insist that +it was ever so much better than any place in the country. As autumn came +on and the trees grew barer and the skies became of a heavier silver +gray, Minola found greater charms in their softened half tones than the +brighter lights of summer could give. Even when it rained--and it did +rain sometimes--who could fail to see the beauty, all its own, of the +green of grass, and the darker stems and branches of trees, showing +faintly through the veil of the mist and the soft descending shower? It +was, indeed, a delightful Arcadian life. Its simplicity can hardly be +better illustrated than by the fact that our adventurous pair of women +always dined at one o'clock--when they dined at all--off a chop, except +on Sundays, when they invariably had a cold fowl. + +Much as Miss Grey loved London, however, it was still a place made up of +men whom she considered herself bound to dislike, and of women who +depended far too much on these men. Therefore she made studies of scraps +of London life, and amused herself by satirizing them to her friend. + +"I have accomplished a chapter of London, Mary," she said one evening +before their reading had set in. "I have completed my social studies of +our neighbors in Gainsborough Place"--a little street of shops near at +hand. "I am prepared to give you a complete court guide as to the grades +of society there, Mary, so that you may know at once how to demean +yourself to each and all." + +"Do tell me all about it; I should very much like to know." + +"Shall we begin with the highest or the lowest?" + +"I think," Miss Blanchet said with a gentle sigh, expressive of no great +delight in the story of the lower classes, "I would rather you begin low +down, dear, and get done with them first." + +"Very well; now listen. The lowest of all is the butcher. He is a +wealthy man, I am sure, and his daughter, who sits in the little office +in the shop, is a good-looking girl, I think. But in private life nobody +in Gainsborough Place mixes with them on really cordial terms. Their +friends come from other places; from butchers' shops in other streets. +They do occasionally interchange a few courtesies with the family of the +baker; but the baker's wife, though not nearly so rich, rather +patronizes and looks down upon Mrs. Butcher." + +"Dear me!" said the poetess. "What odd people!" + +"Well, the pastry-cook's family will have nothing to do, except in the +way of business, with butcher or baker; but they are very friendly with +the grocer, and they have evenings together. Now the two little old +maids, who keep the stationer's shop where the post-office is, are very +genteel, and have explained to me more than once that they don't feel at +home in this quarter, and that their friends are in the West End. But +they are not well off, poor things, I fear, and they like to spend an +evening now and then with the family of the grocer and the pastry-cook, +who are rather proud to receive them, and can give them the best tea and +Madeira cake; and both the little ladies assure me that nothing can be +more respectable than the families of the pastry-cook and the +grocer--for their station in life, they always add." + +"Oh, of course," Miss Blanchet said, who was listening with great +interest as to a story, having that order of mind to which anything is +welcome that offers itself in narrative form, but not having any +perception of a satirical purpose in the whole explanation. Minola +appreciated the "of course," and somehow became discouraged. + +"Well," she said, "that's nearly all, except for the family of the +chemist, who live next to the little ladies of the post-office, and who +only know even them by sufferance, and would not for all the world have +any social intercourse with any of the others. It's delightful, I think, +to find that London is not one place at all, but only a cluster of +little Keetons. This one street is Keeton to the life, Mary. I want to +pursue my studies deeper though; I want to find out how the gradations +of society go between the mothers of the boy who drives the butcher's +cart, the baker's boy, and pastry-cook's boy." + +"Oh, Minola dear!" + +"You think all this very unpoetic, Mary, and you are shocked at my +interest in these prosaic and lowly details. But it is a study of life, +my dear poetess, and it amuses and instructs me. Only for chance, you +know, I might have been like _that_, and it is a grand thing to learn +one's own superiority." + +"You never could have been like that, Minola; you belong to a different +class." + +"Yes, yes, dear, that is quite true. I belong to the higher classes +entirely; my father was a country architect, my stepfather is a +Nonconformist minister--these are of the aristocracy everywhere." + +"You are a lady--a woman of education, Minola," the poetess said almost +severely. She could not understand how even Miss Grey herself could +disparage Miss Grey and her parentage in jest. + +"I can assure you, dear, that one of the pastry-cook's daughters, whom I +talked with to-day, is a much better educated girl than I am. You should +hear her talk French, Mary. She has been taught in Paris, dear, and +speaks so well that I found it very hard to understand her. She plays +the harp, and knows all about Wagner. I don't. I like her very much, and +she is coming here to take tea with us." + +The poetess was not delighted with this kind of society, but she never +ventured to contradict her leader. + +"You can talk to every one I do really believe," she said. "I find it so +hard to get on with people--with some people." + +"I feel so happy and so free here. I can say all the cynical things that +please me--_you_ don't mind--and I can like or dislike as I choose." + +"I am afraid you dislike more than you like, Minola." + +"I think I could like any one who had some strong purpose in life; not +the getting of money, or making a way in society. There are such, I +suppose; I don't know." + +"When you meet my brother I am sure you will acknowledge that he has a +purpose in life which is not the getting of money," said Miss Blanchet. +"But you don't like men." + +Minola made no reply. Poor little Miss Blanchet felt so kindly to all +the race of men that she did not understand how any woman could really +dislike them. + +"I am going to do something that will please you to-morrow," Miss Grey +said, feeling that she owed her companion some atonement for not warming +to the mention of her brother. "I am positively going to hunt out Lucy +Money. They must have returned by this time." + +This was really very pleasant news for Miss Blanchet. She had been +longing for her friend to renew her acquaintance with Miss Lucy Money, +about whom she had many dreams. It did not occur to Mary Blanchet to +question directly even in her own mind the decrees of Miss Grey, or to +say to herself that the course of life which they were leading was not +the most delightful that could be devised. But, if the little poetess +could have ventured to translate vague yearnings into definite thoughts, +she would, perhaps, have acknowledged to herself a faint desire that the +brilliant passages of the London career she had marked out for herself +in anticipation should come rather more quickly than they just now +seemed likely to do. At present there was not much difference +perceptible to her between London and Duke's-Keeton. Nobody came to see +them. Even her brother had not yet presented himself. Her poem did not +make much progress; there was no great incentive to poetic work. Minola +and she did not know any poets, or artists, or publishers. Mary +Blanchet's poetic tastes were of a somewhat old-fashioned school, and +did not include any particular care for looking at trees, and fields, +and water, and skies, although these objects of natural beauty were made +to figure in the poems a good deal in connection with, and illustrative +of, the emotions of the poetess. Therefore the rambles in the park were +not so delightful to her as to her leader; and when the evening set in, +and Minola and she read to each other, Mary Blanchet was always rather +pleased if an opportunity occurred for interrupting the reading by a +talk. She was particularly anxious that Minola should renew her +acquaintance with her old schoolfellow, Miss Lucy Money, whose father +she understood to be somehow a great sort of person, and through whom +she saw dimly opening up a vista, perhaps the only one for her, into +society and literature. But the Money family were out of town when our +friends came to London, and Miss Blanchet had to wait; and, even when it +was probable that they had returned, Miss Grey did not seem very eager +to renew the acquaintance. Indeed, her resolve to visit Miss Money now +was entirely a good-natured concession to the evident desire of Mary +Blanchet. Minola saw her friend's little ways and weaknesses clearly, +and smiled now and then as she thought of them, and liked her none the +less for them--rather, indeed, felt her breast swell with kindliness and +pity. It pleased her generous heart to gratify her companion in every +way, to find out things that she liked and bring them to her, to study +her little innocent vanities, that she might gratify them. What little +dainties Mary Blanchet liked to have with her tea, what pretty ribbons +she thought it became her to wear--these Miss Grey was always perplexing +herself about. When she found that she liked to be alone sometimes, that +she must have a long walk unaccompanied, that she must have thoughts +which Mary would not care to hear, then she felt a pang of remorse, as +if she were guilty of a breach of true _camaraderie_, and she could not +rest until she had relieved her soul by some special mark of attention +to her friend. On the other hand, Mary Blanchet, for all her dreams and +aspirations, was a sensible and managing little person, who got for Miss +Grey about twice the value that she herself could have obtained out of +her money. This was a fact which Minola always took care to impress upon +her companion, for she dreaded lest Miss Blanchet should feel herself a +dependent. Miss Blanchet, however, in a modest way, knew her value, and +had besides one of the temperaments to which dependence on some really +loved being comes natural, and is inevitable. + +So Minola set out next day, about three o'clock, to look up her +schoolfellow, Miss Lucy Money. She went forth on her mission with some +unwillingness, and with a feeling as if she were abandoning some purpose +or giving up a little of a principle in doing so. "I came to London to +live alone and independent," she said to herself sometimes, "and already +I am going out to seek for acquaintances. Why do I do that? I want +strength of purpose. I am just like everybody else"; and she began, as +was her wont, to scrutinize her own weaknesses, and bear heavily on +them. For, absurd as it may seem, this odd young woman really did +propose to live alone--herself and Mary Blanchet--in London until they +died--alone, that is, so far as social life and acquaintanceships in +society were concerned. Vast and vague schemes for doing good to her +neighbors, and for striving in especial to give a helping hand to +troubled women, were in Miss Grey's plans of life; but society, so +called, was to have no part in them. It did not occur to her that she +was far too handsome a girl to be allowed to put herself thus under an +extinguisher or behind a screen. When people looked after her as she +passed through the streets, she assumed that they noticed some rustic +peculiarity in her dress or her hat, and she felt a contempt for them. +Her love of London did not imply a love of Londoners, whom in general +she thought rude and given to staring. But even if she had thought +people were looking at her because of her figure, her face, her eyes, +her superb hair, she would have felt a contempt for them all the same. +She had a proud indifference to personal beauty, and looked down upon +men whose judgment could be affected by the fact that a woman had finer +eyes, or brighter hair, or a more shapely mould than other women. + +Once Minola was positively on the point of turning back, and renouncing +all claim on the acquaintanceship of her former school companion. She +suddenly remembered, however, that in condemning her own fancied +weakness she had forgotten that her visit was undertaken to oblige Mary +Blanchet. "Poor Mary! I have only one little acquaintanceship that has +anything to do with society, and am I to deny her that chance if she +likes it?" She went on rapidly and resolutely. Sometimes she felt +inclined to blame herself for bringing Mary Blanchet away from Keeton, +although Mary had for years been complaining of her life and her work +there, and beseeching Miss Grey not to leave her behind when she went to +live in London. + +It was a beautiful autumn day. London looks to great advantage on one of +these rare days, and Miss Grey felt her heart swell with mere delight as +she looked from the streets to the sky and from the sky to the streets. +She passed through one or two squares, and stopped to see the sun, +already going down, send its light through the bare branches of the +trees. The western sky was covered with gray, silver-edged clouds, which +brightened into blots of golden fire as they came closer in the track of +the sun. The air was mild, soft, and almost warm. All poets and painters +are full of the autumnal charms of the country; but to certain oddly +constituted minds some street views in London on a fine autumn day have +an unspeakable witchery. Miss Grey walked round and round one of the +squares, and had to remind herself of her purpose on Mary Blanchet's +behalf in order to impel herself on. + +The best of the day had gone, and the early evening was looking somewhat +chill and gloomy between the huge ramparts of the Victoria street houses +by the time that Miss Grey stood in that solemn thoroughfare, and her +heart sank a little as she reached the house where her old school friend +lived. + +"Perhaps Lucy Money is altogether changed," Miss Grey said to herself as +she came up to the door. "Perhaps she won't care about me; perhaps I +shan't like her any more; and perhaps her mamma will think me a dreadful +person for not honoring my stepfather and stepmother. Perhaps there are +brothers--odious, slangy young men, who think girls fall in love with +them. Oh, yes, here is one of them." + +For just as she had rung the bell a hansom cab drove up to the door, and +a tall, dark-complexioned young man leaped out. He raised his hat with +what seemed to Miss Grey something the manner of a foreigner when he saw +her standing at the door, and she felt a momentary thrill of relief, +because, if he was a foreigner, he could not be Lucy Money's brother. +Besides, she knew very well that the great houses in Victoria street +were occupied by several tenants, and there was good hope that the young +man might have business with the upper story, and she with the ground +floor. + +The young man was about to ring the bell, when he stopped and said: + +"Perhaps you have rung already?" + +"Yes, I have rung," Miss Grey coldly replied. + +"This is Mr. Money's, I suppose?" + +"Mr. Money lives here," she answered, with the manner of one resolute to +close the conversation. The young man did not seem in the least +impressed by her tone. + +"Perhaps I have the honor of speaking to Miss Money?" he began, with +delighted eagerness. + +"No. I am not Miss Money," she answered, still in her clear monotone. + +No words could say more distinctly than the young man's expression did, +"I am sorry to hear it." Indeed, no young man in the world going to +visit Mr. Money could have avoided wishing that the young lady then +standing at the door might prove to be Miss Money. + +The door opened, and the young man drew politely back to give Miss Grey +the first chance. She asked for Miss Lucy Money, and the porter rang a +bell for one of Mr. Money's servants. Miss Grey had brought a card with +her, on which she had written over her engraved name, "For Lucy Money," +and beneath it, "Nola," the short rendering of "Minola," which they used +to adopt at school. + +Then the porter looked inquiringly at the other visitor. + +"If Mr. Money is at home," said the latter, "I should be glad to see +him. I find I have forgotten my card case, but my name is Heron--Mr. +Victor Heron; and do, please, try to remember it, and to say it +rightly." + + + + +CHAPTER V. + +MISS GREY'S FIRST CALL. + + +Mr. Money's home, like Mr. Money himself, conveyed to the intelligent +observer an idea of quiet, self-satisfied strength. Mr. Money had one of +the finest and most expensive suites of rooms to be had in the great +Victoria street buildings, and his rooms were furnished handsomely and +richly. He had servants in sober livery, and a carriage for his wife and +daughters, and a little brougham for himself. He made no pretence at +being fashionable; rather indeed seemed to say deliberately, "I am a +plain man and don't care twopence about fashion, and I despise making a +show of being rich; but I am rich enough for all I want, and whatever +money can buy for me I can buy." He would not allow his wife and +daughters to aim at being persons of fashion had they been so inclined, +but they might spend as much money as ever they pleased. He never made a +boast of his original poverty, or the humbleness of his bringing up, nor +put on any vulgar show of rugged independence. The impression he made +upon everybody was that of a completely self-sufficing--we do not say +self-sufficient--man. It was not very clear how he had made his money. +He had been at the head of one of the working departments under the +Government, had somehow fancied himself ill treated, resigned his place, +and, it was understood, had entered into various contracts to do work +for the governments of foreign States. It was certain that Mr. Money was +not a speculator. His name never appeared in the directors' list of any +new company. He could not be called a city man. But it was certain that +he was rich. + +Mr. Money was in Parliament. He was a strong radical in theory, and was +believed to have much stronger opinions than he troubled himself to +express. There was a rough, scornful way about him, as of one who dearly +considered all our existing arrangements merely provisional, and who in +the mean time did not care to occupy himself overmuch with the small +differences between this legislative proposition and that. It was not on +political subjects that he usually spoke. He was a very good speaker, +clear, direct, and expressive in his language, always using plain, +effective words, and always showing a perfect ease in the finishing of +his sentences. There was a savor of literature about him, and it was +evident in many indirect ways that he knew Greek and Latin much better +than most of the university men. The impression he produced was that of +a man who on most subjects knew more than he troubled himself to +display. It seemed as if it would take a very ready speaker indeed to +enter into personal contest with Mr. Money and not get the worst of it. + +He was believed to be very shrewd and clever, and was known to be +liberal of his money. People consulted him about many things, and to +some extent admired him; some were a little afraid of him, and, in +homely phrase, fought shy of him. Perhaps he was thought to be +unscrupulous; perhaps his blunt way of going at the very heart of a +scruple in others made them fancy that he rather despised all moral +conventionalities. Whatever the reason was, a certain class of persons +always rather distrusted Mr. Money, and held aloof even while asking his +advice. No one who had come in his way even for a moment forgot him, or +was confused as to his identity, or failed to form some opinion about or +could have put clearly into words an exact statement of the opinion he +had formed. + +On this particular day of autumn Mr. Money was in his study reading +letters. He was talking to himself in short, blunt sentences over each +letter as he read it, and put it into a pigeonhole, or tore it and threw +it into the waste-paper basket. His sentences were generally concise +judgments pronounced on each correspondent. "Fool." "Blockhead." "Just +so; I expected that of you!" "Yes, yes, he's all right." "That will do." +Sometimes a comment, begun rather gruffly, ended in a good-natured +smile, and sometimes Mr. Money, having read a letter to the close with a +pleased and satisfied expression, suddenly became thoughtful, and leaned +upon his desk, drumming with the finger tips of one hand upon his teeth. + +A servant interrupted his work by bringing him a message and a name. Mr. +Money looked up, said quickly, "Yes, yes; show him in!" and Mr. Victor +Heron was introduced. + +Mr. Money advanced to meet his visitor with an air of cordial welcome. +One peculiarity of Mr. Money's strong, homely face was the singular +sweetness of the smile which it sometimes wore. The full lips parted so +pleasantly, the white teeth shone, and the eyes, that usually seemed +heavy, beamed with so kindly an air, that to youth at least the +influence was for the moment irresistible. Victor Heron's emotional face +sparkled with responsive expression. + +"Well, well; glad to see you, glad to see you. Knew you would come. +Shove away those blue books and sit down. We haven't long got back; but +I tried to find you, and couldn't get at your address. They didn't know +at the Colonial Institute even. And how are you, and what have you been +doing with yourself?" + +"Not much good," Heron replied, thinking as usual of his grievance. "I +couldn't succeed in seeing anybody." + +"Of course not, of course not. I could have told you so. People are not +yet coming back to town, except hard working fellows like me. Have you +been cooling your heels in the antechambers of the Colonial office?" + +"Yes, I have been there a little; not much. I saw it was no use just +yet, and that isn't a kind of occupation I delight in." The young man's +face reddened with the bare memory of his vexation. "I hate that sort of +thing." + +"To go where you know people don't want to see you? Yes, it tries young +and sensitive people a good deal. They've put you off?" + +"As I told you, I have seen nobody yet. But I mean to persevere. They +shall find I am not a man to be got rid of in that way." + +Mr. Money made no observation on this, but went to a drawer in his desk +and took out a little book with pages alphabetically arranged. + +"I have been making inquiries about you," he said, "of various people +who know all about the colonies. Would you like to hear a summary +description of your personal character? Don't be offended--this is a way +I have; the moment a person interests me and seems worth thinking about, +I enter him in my little book here, and sum up his character from my own +observation and from what people tell me. Shall I read it for you? I +wouldn't, you may be sure, if I thought you were anything of a fool." + +This compliment, of course, conquered Heron, who was otherwise a good +deal puzzled. But there was something in Mr. Money's manner with those +in whom he took any interest, that prevented their feeling hurt by his +occasional bluntness. + +"I don't know myself," Heron said. + +"Of course you don't. What busy man, who has to know other people, could +have time to study himself? That work might do for philosophers. I may +teach you something now, and save you the trouble." + +"I suppose I ought to make my own acquaintance," said Heron resignedly, +while much preferring to talk of his grievance. + +"Very good. Now listen. + +"Heron, Victor.--Formerly in administration of St. Xavier's settlements. +Got into difficulty; dropped down. Education good, but literary rather +than businesslike. Plenty of pluck, but wants coolness. Egotistic, but +unselfish. Good deal of talent and go. Very honest, but impracticable. A +good weapon in good hands, but must take care not to be made a +plaything." + +Heron laughed. "It's a little like the sort of thing phrenologists give +people," he said, "but I think it's very flattering. I can assure you, +however, no one shall make a plaything of _me_," he added with emphasis. + +"So we all think, so we all think," Mr. Money said, putting away his +book. "Well, you are going on with this then?" + +"I am going to vindicate my conduct, and compel them to grant me an +inquiry, if you mean that. Nothing on earth shall keep me from that." + +"So, so. Very well. We'll talk about that another time--many other +times; and I may give you some advice, which you needn't take if you +don't like, and I shan't be offended. Now, I want to introduce you to my +wife and my girls, and you must have a cup of tea. Odd, isn't it, to +find men drinking tea at five o'clock in the afternoon? Up at the club, +any day about that hour, you might think we were a drawing-room full of +old spinsters, to hear the rattling of teacups that goes on all around." + +He took Heron's arm in a friendly, dictatorial way, and conducted him to +the drawing-room on the same floor. + +The drawing-room was entered, not by opening a door, but by withdrawing +some folds of a great, heavy, dark-green curtain. Mr. Money drew aside +part of the curtain to make way for his friend; and they both stopped a +moment on the threshold. A peculiar, sweet, half melancholy smile gave a +strange dignity for the moment to Mr. Money's somewhat rough face, and +he gently let the curtain fall. + +"Wasn't there some great person, Mr. Heron--Burke, was it?--who used to +say that whatever troubles he had outside all ceased as he stood at his +own door? Well, I always feel like that when I lift this curtain." + +It was a pretty sight, as he again raised the curtain and led Heron in. +The drawing-room was very large, and was richly, and, as it seemed to +Heron, somewhat oddly furnished. The light in the lower part was faint +and dim, a sort of yellowish twilight, procured by softened lamps. The +upper extremity was steeped in a far brighter light, and displayed to +Heron, almost as on a stage, a little group of women, among whom his +quick eye at once saw the girl who had come up to the door at the same +time with him. She was, indeed, a very conspicuous figure, for she was +seated on a sofa, and one girl sat at her feet, while another stood at +the arm of the sofa and bent over her. An elderly lady, with voluminous +draperies that floated over the floor, was reclining on a low arm-chair, +with her profile turned to Heron. On a fancy table near, a silver +tea-tray glittered. A daintily dressed waiting-maid was serving tea. + +"Take care of the floors as you come along," said Money. "We like to put +rugs, and rolls of carpet, and stools now in all sorts of wrong places, +to trip people up. That shows how artistic we are! Theresa, dear, this +is my friend, Mr. Heron." + +"I am glad to see you, Mr. Heron," said a full, deep, melancholy voice, +and a tall, slender lady partly rose from her chair, then sank again +amid her draperies, bowed a head topped by a tiny lace cap, and held out +to Heron a thin hand covered with rings, and having such bracelets and +dependent chainlets that when Heron gave it even the gentlest pressure, +they rattled like the manacles of a captive. + +"We saw you in Paris, Mr. Heron," the lady graciously said, "but I think +you hardly saw us." + +"These are my daughters, Mr. Heron, Theresa and Lucy. I think them good +girls, though full of nonsense," said Mr. Money. + +Lucy, who had been on a footstool at Miss Grey's feet, gathered herself +up, blushing. She was a pretty girl, with brown, frizzy hair, and wore a +dress which fitted her so closely from neck to hip that she might really +have been, to all seeming, melted or moulded into it. The other young +lady, Theresa, slightly and gravely inclined her head to Mr. Heron, who +at once thought the whole group most delightful and beautiful, and found +his breast filled with a new pride in the loved old England that +produced such homes and furnished them with such women. + +"Dear, darling papa," exclaimed the enthusiastic little Lucy, swooping +at her father, and throwing both arms round his neck, "we have had such +a joy to-day, such a surprise! Don't you see anybody here? Oh, come now, +do use your eyes." + +"I see a young lady whom I have not yet the pleasure of knowing, but +whom I hope you will help me to know, Lucelet." + +Mr. Money turned to Miss Grey with his genial smile. She rose from the +sofa and bowed and waited. She did not as yet quite understand the Money +family, and was not sure whether she ought to like them or not. They +impressed her at first as being far too rich for her taste, and odd and +affected, and she hated affectation. + +"But this is Nola Grey, papa--my dearest old schoolfellow when I was at +Keeton; you must have heard me talk of Nola Grey a thousand times." + +So she dragged her papa up to Nola Grey, whose color grew a little at +this tempestuous kind of welcome. + +"Dare say I did, Lucelet, but Miss Grey, I am sure will excuse me if I +have forgotten; I am very glad to see you, Miss Grey--glad to see any +friend of Lucelet's. So you come from Keeton? That's another reason why +I should be glad to see you, for I just now want to ask a question or +two about Keeton. Sit down." + +Miss Grey allowed herself to be led to a sofa a little distance from +where she had been sitting. Mr. Money sat beside her. + +"Now, Lucelet, I want to ask Miss Grey a sensible question or two, which +I don't think you would care twopence about. Just you go and help our +two Theresas to talk to Mr. Heron." + +"But, papa darling, Miss Grey won't care about what you call sensible +subjects any more than I. She won't know anything about them." + +"Yes, dear, she will; look at her forehead." + +"Oh, I have looked at it! Isn't it beautiful?" + +"I didn't mean that," Mr. Money said with a smile; "I meant that it +looked sensible and thoughtful. Now, go away, Lucelet, like a dear +little girl." + +Miss Grey sat quietly through all this. She was not in the least +offended. Mr. Money seemed to her to be just what a man ought to +be--uncouth, rough, and domineering. She was amused meanwhile to observe +the kind of devotion and enthusiasm with which Mr. Heron was entering +into conversation with Mrs. Money and her elder daughter. That, too, was +just what a man ought to be--a young man--silly in his devotion to +women, unless, perhaps, where the devotion was to be accounted for +otherwise than by silliness, as in a case like the present, where the +unmarried women might be presumed to have large fortunes. So Miss Grey +liked the whole scene. It was as good as a play to her, especially as +good as a play which confirms all one's own theories of life. + +"England, Mr. Heron," said Mrs. Money in her melancholy voice, "is near +her fall." + +"Oh, Mrs. Money, pray pardon me--England! you amaze me--I _am_ +surprised--do forgive me--to hear an Englishwoman say so; our England +with her glorious destiny!" The young man blushed and grew confused. One +might have thought his mother had been called in question or his +sweetheart. + +Mrs. Money shook her head and twirled one of her bracelets. + +"She is near her fall, Mr. Heron! You cannot know. You have lived far +away, and do not see what _we_ see. She has proved faithless to her +mission." + +"Something--yes--there I agree," Mr. Heron eagerly interposed, thinking +of the St. Xavier's settlements. + +"She was the cradle of freedom," Mrs. Money went on. "She ought to have +been always its nursery and home. What have we now, Mr. Heron? A people +absolutely in servitude, the principle of caste everywhere +triumphant--corruption in the aristocracy--corruption in the city. No +man now dares to serve his country except at the penalty of suffering +the blackest ingratitude!" + +Mr. Heron was startled. He did not know that Mrs. Money was arguing only +from the assumption that her husband was a very great man, who would +have done wonderful things for England if a perverse and base ruling +class had not thwarted him, and treated him badly. + +"England," Theresa Money said, smiling sweetly, but with a suffusion of +melancholy, "can hardly be regenerated until she is once more dipped in +the holy well." + +"You see we all think differently, Mr. Heron," said the eager Lucy. +"Mamma thinks we want a republic. Tessy is a saint, and would like to +see roadside shrines." + +"And you?" Heron asked, pleased with the girl's bright eyes and winning +ways. + +"Oh--I only believe in the regeneration of England through the +renaissance of art. So we all have our different theories, you see, but +we all agree to differ, and we don't quarrel much. Papa laughs at us all +when he has time. But just now I am taken up with Nola Grey. If I were a +man, I should make an idol of her. That lovely, statuesque face, that +figure--like the Diana of the Louvre!" + +Mr. Heron looked and admired, but one person's raptures about man or +woman seldom awaken corresponding raptures in impartial breasts. He saw, +however, a handsome, ladylike girl, who conveyed to him a sort of +chilling impression. + +"She was my schoolfellow at Keeton," Lucy went on, "and she was so good +and clever that I adored her then, and I do now again. She has come to +London to live alone, and I am sure she must have some strange and +romantic story." + +Meanwhile Mr. Money, who prefaced his inquiries by telling Miss Grey +that he was always asking information about something, began to put +several questions to her concerning the local magnates, politics, and +parties of Keeton. Minola was rather pleased to be talked to by a man as +if she were a rational creature. Like most girls brought up in a +Nonconformist household in a country town, she had been surrounded by +political talk from her infancy, but unlike most girls, she had +sometimes listened to it and learned to know what it was all about. So +she gave Mr. Money a good deal of information, which he received with an +approbatory "Yes, yes" or an inquiring "So, so" every now and then. + +"You know that there's likely to be a vacancy soon in the +representation-member of Parliament," he added by way of explanation. + +"I know what a vacancy in the representation means," Miss Grey answered +demurely, "but I didn't know there was likely to be one just now. I +don't keep up much correspondence with Keeton. I don't love it." + +"Why not?" + +"Oh, I don't know." + +He smiled. + +"You are smiling because you think that a woman's answer? So it is, Mr. +Money, and I am afraid it isn't true; but I really didn't think of what +I was saying. I _do_ know why I don't care much about Keeton." + +"Yes, yes; well, I dare say you do. But to return, as the books say--do +you know a Mr. Augustus Sheppard?" + +She could not help coloring slightly. "Yes, I know him," and a faint +smile broke over her face in spite of herself. + +"Is he strong in Keeton?" + +"Strong?" + +"Well liked, respectable, a likely kind of man to get good Conservative +support if he stood for Keeton? You don't know, perhaps?" + +"Yes, I think I do know. I believe he wishes to get into Parliament, and +I am sure he is thought highly of. He is a very good man--a man of very +high character," she added emphatically, anxious to repair the mental +wrong doing of thinking him ridiculous and tiresome. + +Just at this moment Mr. Heron rose to take his leave, and Mr. Money left +the room with him, so that the conversation with Miss Grey was broken +off. Then Lucy came to Nola again, and Nola was surrounded by the three +women, who began to lay out various schemes for seeing her often and +making London pleasant to her. Much as our lonely heroine loved her +loneliness, she was greatly touched by their spontaneous kindness, but +she was alarmed by it too. + +A card was brought to Mrs. Money, who passed it on to Lucy. + +"Oh, how delightful!" Lucy exclaimed. "So glad he has come, mamma. Nola, +dear, a poet--a real poet!" + +But Nola would not prolong her visit that day even for a poet. A very +handsome, tall, dark-haired man, who at a distance seemed boyishly +young, and when near looked worn and not very young, was shown in. For +the moment or two that she could see him, Minola thought she had never +seen so self-conceited and affected a creature. She did not hear his +name nor a word he said, but his splendid, dark eyes, deeply set in +hollows, took in every outline of her face and form. She thought him the +poet of a schoolgirl's romance made to order. + +Minola tore herself from the clinging embraces of Lucy, with less +difficulty, perhaps, because of the poet's arrival, to whose society +Lucy was clearly anxious to hasten back. It so happened that Mr. Money +had kept Mr. Heron for a few minutes in talk, and the result was that +exactly as Miss Grey reached the door Mr. Heron arrived there too. They +both came out together, and in a moment they were in the gray +atmosphere, dun lines of houses, and twinkling gaslights of Victoria +street. Minola would much rather have been there alone. + +Victor Heron, however, was full of the antique ideas of man's chivalrous +duty and woman's sweet dependence, which still lingered in the +out-of-the-way colony where he had spent so much of his time. Also, it +must be owned that he had not yet quite got rid of the sense of +responsibility and universal dictatorship belonging to the chief man in +a petty commonwealth. For some time after his return to London he could +hardly see an omnibus horse fall in the street without thinking it was +an occasion which called for some intervention on his part. Therefore, +when Miss Grey and he stood in the street together Mr. Heron at once +assumed that the young woman must, as a matter of course, require his +escort and protection. + +He calmly took his place at her side. Miss Grey was a little surprised, +but said nothing, and they went on. + +"Do you live far from this, Miss Money?" he began. + +"I am not Miss Money. My name is Grey." + +"Of course, yes--I beg your pardon for the mistake. It was only a +mistake of the tongue, for I knew very well that you were not Miss +Money." + +"Thank you." + +"And your first name is so very pretty and peculiar that I could not +have easily forgotten it." + +"I am greatly obliged to my godfathers and godmothers." + +"Did you say that you lived in this quarter, Miss Grey?" + +"No--I did not make any answer; I had not time." + +"I hope you do not live very near," the gallant Heron observed. + +"Why do you hope that?" Miss Grey said, turning her eyes upon him with +an air of cold resolution, which would probably have proved very trying +to a less sincere maker of compliments, even though a far more dexterous +person than Mr. Heron. + +"Of course, because I should have the less of your company." + +"But there is no need of your coming out of your way for me. I don't +require any escort, Mr. Heron." + +"I couldn't think of letting a lady walk home by herself. That would +seem very strange to me. Perhaps you think me old-fashioned or +colonial?" + +"I have heard that you are from the colonies. In London people have not +time to keep up all these pretty forms and ceremonies. We don't any +longer pretend to think that a girl needs to be defended against giants, +or robbers, or mad bulls, when crossing two or three streets in open +day." + +"Well, it is hardly open day now; it is almost quite dark." + +"The lamps are lighted," Miss Gray observed. + +"Yes, if you call that being lighted! You have such bad gas in London. +Why does not somebody stir up people here, and put things to rights? You +seem to me the most patient people in all the world. I wish they would +give me the ruling of this place for about a twelvemonth." + +"I wish they would." + +"Do you?" and he looked at her with a glance of genuine gratitude in his +dark eyes, for he thought she meant to express her entire confidence in +his governing power, and her wish to see him at the head of affairs. +Miss Grey, however, only meant that if he were engaged in directing the +municipal government of London he probably would be rather too busy to +walk with her. + +"Yes," he went on, "you should soon see a change. For instance"--they +were now at the end of Victoria street, near the Abbey--"I would begin +by having a great broad street, like this, running right up from here to +the British Museum. You know where the British Museum is, of course?" + +"Yes; I live near it." + +"Do you really? I am so glad to hear that. I have been there lately very +often. How happy you Londoners are to have such glorious places. In that +reading-room I felt inclined to bless England." + +Miss Grey was now particularly sorry that she had said anything about +her place of residence. Still it did not seem as if much would have been +gained by any reticence unless she could actually dismiss her companion +peremptorily. Mr. Heron was evidently quite resolved to be her escort +all the way along. He was clearly under the impression that he was +making himself very agreeable. The good-natured youth believed he was +doing quite the right thing, and meant it all for the very best, and +therefore could not suppose that any nice girl could fail to accept his +attendance in a kindly spirit. That Miss Grey must be a nice girl he was +perfectly certain, for he had met her at Mr. Money's, and Money was +evidently a fine fellow--a very fine fellow. Miss Grey was very handsome +too, but that did not count for very much with Heron. At least he would +have made himself just as readily, under the circumstances, the escort +of little Miss Blanchet. + +So he talked on about various things--the Moneys, and what charming +people they were! the British Museum, what a noble institution! the +National Gallery, how hideous the building!--why on earth didn't anybody +do something?--the glorious destiny of England--the utter imbecility of +the English Government. + +It was not always quite easy to keep up with his talk, for the streets +were crowded and noisy, and Mr. Heron talked right on through every +interruption. When they came to crossings where the perplexed currents +and counter-currents of traffic on wheels would have made a nervous +person shudder, Mr. Heron coolly took Miss Grey's hand and conducted her +in and out, talking all the while as if they were crossing a ball-room +floor. Minola made it a point of honor not to hesitate, or start, or +show that she had nerves. But when he began to run into politics he +always pulled himself up, for he politely remembered that young ladies +did not care about politics, and so he tried to find some prettier +subject to talk about. Miss Grey understood this perfectly well, and was +amused and contemptuous. + +"I suppose this man must be a person of some brains and sense," she +thought. "He was in command of something somewhere, and I suppose even +the Government he calls so imbecile would not have put him there if he +were a downright fool. But because he talks to a woman, he feels bound +only to talk of trivial things." + +At last the walk came to an end. "Ah, I beg pardon. You live here," Mr. +Heron said. "May I have the honor of calling on your family? I sometimes +come to the Museum, and if I might call, I should be delighted to make +their acquaintance." + +"Thank you," Miss Grey said coldly. "I have no family. My father and +mother are dead." + +"Oh, I am so sorry! I wish I had not asked such a question." He looked +really distressed, and the expression of his eyes had for the first time +a pleasing, softening effect upon Miss Grey. + +"We lodge here all alone--a lady--an old friend of mine--and I. We have +no acquaintances, unless Lucy Money's family may be called so. We read +and study a great deal, and don't go out, and don't see any one." + +"I can quite understand," Mr. Heron answered with grave sympathy. "Of +course you don't care to be intruded on by visitors. I thank you for +having allowed me the pleasure of accompanying you so far." + +He spoke in tones much more deferential than before, for he assumed that +the young lady was lonely and poor. There was something in his manner, +in his eyes, in his grave, respectful voice, which conveyed to Minola +the idea of genuine sympathy, and brought to her, the object of it, a +new conviction that she really was isolated and friendless, and the +springs of her emotions were touched in a moment, and tears flashed in +her eyes. Perhaps Mr. Heron saw them, and felt that he ought not to see +them, for he raised his hat and instantly left her. + +Minola lingered for a moment on the doorstep, in order that she might +recover her expression of cheerfulness before meeting the eyes of Miss +Blanchet. But that little lady had seen her coming to the door, and seen +and marvelled at her escort, and now ran herself and opened the door to +receive her. + +"My dear Minola, do tell me who that handsome young man was! What lovely +dark eyes he had! Where did you meet him? Is he young Mr. Money?" + +The poetess's susceptible bosom still thrilled and throbbed at the +sight, or even the thought, of a handsome young man. She could not +understand how anybody on earth could avoid liking handsome young men. +But in this case a certain doubt and dissatisfaction suddenly dissolved +away into her instinctive gratification at the sight of Minola's escort. +A handsome and young Mr. Money might prove an inconvenient visitor just +at present. + +Minola briefly told her when they were safe in their room. Miss Blanchet +was relieved to find that he was not a young Mr. Money, for a young Mr. +Money, if there were one, would doubtless be rich. + +"Isn't he wonderfully handsome! Such a smile!" + +"I hardly know," Minola said distressedly; "perhaps he is. I really +didn't notice. He goes to the Museum, and I must exile myself from the +place for evermore, or I shall be always meeting him, and be forced to +listen politely to talk about nothing. Mary Blanchet, our days of +freedom are gone! We are getting to know people. I foresaw it. What +shall we do? We must find some other lodgings ever so far away." + +"Do you like Miss Money, dear?" Mary Blanchet asked timidly. + +"Lucy? Oh, yes, very much. But there is Mr. Money; and they are going to +be terribly kind to us; and they have all manner of friends; and what is +to become of my independence? Mary Blanchet, I will _not_ bear it! I +_will_ be independent!" + +"I have news for you, dear," Miss Blanchet said. + +"If it please the destinies, not news of any more friends! Why, we shall +be like the hare in Gay's fable if we go on in this way." + +"Not of any more friends, darling, but of one friend. My brother has +been here." + +"Oh!" + +"Yes; and he is longing to see you." + +Minola sincerely wished she could say that she was longing to see him. +But she could not say it, even to please her friend and comrade. + +"You don't want to see him," said Mary Blanchet in piteous reproach. + +"But you do, dear," Miss Grey said; "and I shall like to see any one, be +sure, who brightens your life." + +This was said with full sincerity, although at the very moment the +whimsical thought passed through her, "We only want Mr. Augustus +Sheppard now to complete our social happiness." + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + +IS THIS ALCESTE? + + +Minola's mind was a good deal disturbed by the various little events of +the day, the incidents and consequences of her first visit in London. +She began to see with much perplexity and disappointment that her life +of lonely independence was likely to be compromised. She was not sure +that she could much like the Moneys, and yet she felt that they were +disposed and determined to be very kind to her. There was something +ridiculous and painful in the fact that Mr. Augustus Sheppard's name was +thrust upon her almost at the first moment of her crossing for the first +time a strange threshold in London; then there was Mary Blanchet's +brother turning up; and Mary Blanchet herself was evidently falling off +from the high design of lonely independence. Again, there was Mr. Heron, +who now knew where she lived, and who often went to the British Museum, +and who might cross her path at any hour. Sweet, lonely freedom, happy +carelessness of action, farewell! + +Mr. Heron was especially a trouble to Minola. The kindly, grave +expression on his face when he heard of her living alone declared, as +nearly as any words could do, that he considered her an object of pity. +Was she an object of pity? Was that the light in which any one could +look at her superb project of playing at a lifelong holiday? And if +people chose to look at it so, what did that matter to her? Are women, +then, the slaves of the opinion of people all around them? "They are," +Minola said to herself in scorn and melancholy--"they are; we are. I am +shaken to the very soul, because a young man, for whose opinion on any +other subject I should not care anything, chooses to look at me with +pity!" + +The night was melancholy. When the outer world was shut out, and the gas +was lighted, and the two women sat down to work and talk, nothing seemed +to Minola quite as it had been. The evident happiness and passing high +spirits of the little poetess oppressed her. Mary Blanchet was so glad +to be making acquaintances, and to have some prospect of seeing the +inside of a London home. Then Minola's kindlier nature returned to her, +and she thought of Mary's delight at seeing her brother, and how unkind +it would be if she, Minola, did not try to enter into her feelings. Her +mind went back to her own brother, to their dear early companionship, +when nothing seemed more natural and more certain than that they two +should walk the world arm-in-arm. Now all that had come to an end--faded +away somehow; and he had gone into the world on his own account, and +made other ties, and forgotten her. But if he were even now to come +back, if she were to hear in the street the sound of the peculiar +whistle with which he always announced his coming to her--oh, how, in +spite of all his forgetfulness and her anger, she would run to him and +throw her arms around his neck! Why should not Mary Blanchet love her +brother, and gladden when he came? + +"What is your brother like, Mary, dear?" she said gently, anxious to +propitiate by voluntarily entering on the topic dearest to her friend. + +"Oh, very handsome--very, very handsome!" + +Miss Grey smiled in spite of herself. + +"Now, Minola, I know what you are smiling at; you think it is my +sisterly nonsense, and all that; but wait until you see." + +"I'll wait," Minola said. + +Miss Grey did not go out the next day as usual, although it was one of +the soft, amber-gray, autumnal days that she loved, and the Regent's +Park would have looked beautiful. She remained nearly all the morning in +her own room, and avoided even Mary Blanchet. Some singular change had +taken place within her, for which she could not account, otherwise than +by assuming that it was begotten of the fear that she would be drawn, +willingly or unwillingly, into uncongenial companionship, and must +renounce her liberty. She was forced into a strange, painful, +self-questioning mood. Was the whole fabric of her self-appointed +happiness and independence only a dream, or, worse than a dream, an +error? So soon to doubt the value and the virtue of the emancipation she +had prayed for and planned for during years? Not often, perhaps, has a +warm-hearted, fanciful, and spirited girl been pressed down by such +peculiar relationship as hers at Keeton lately; a twice removed +stepfather and stepmother, absolutely uncongenial with her, causing her +soul and her youth to congeal amid dull repression. What wonder that to +her all happiness seemed to consist in mere freedom and unrestricted +self-development? And now--so soon--why does she begin to doubt the +reality, the fulfilment of her happiness? Only because an impulsive and +kindly young man, whom she saw for the first time, looked pityingly at +her. This, she said to herself, is what our self-reliance and our +emancipation come to after all. + +It was a positive relief to her, after a futile hour or so of such +questioning, when Mary Blanchet ran up stairs, and with beaming eyes +begged that Minola would come and see her brother. "He is longing to see +you--and you will like him--oh, you will like him, Minola dearest?" she +said beseechingly. + +Miss Gray went down stairs straightway, without stopping to give one +touch to her hair, or one glance at the glass. The little poetess was +waiting a moment, with an involuntary look toward the dressing table, as +if Miss Grey must needs have some business there before she descended, +but Miss Grey thought nothing of the kind, and they went down stairs +together. + +Minola expected, she could not tell why, to see a small and withered man +in Mary Blanchet's brother. When they were entering the drawing-room, he +was looking out of the window, and had his back turned, and she was +surprised to see that he was decidedly tall. When he turned around she +saw not only that he was handsome, but that she had recognized the fact +of his being handsome before. For he was unmistakably the ideal poet of +schoolgirls whom she had met at Mr. Money's house the day before. + +The knowledge produced a sort of embarrassment to begin with. Minola was +about to throw her soul into the sacrifice, and greet her friend's +brother with the utmost cordiality. But she had pictured to herself a +sort of Mary Blanchet in trousers, a gentle, old-fashioned, timid +person, whom, perhaps, the outer world was apt to misprize, if not even +to snub, and whom therefore it became her, Minola Grey, as an enemy and +outlaw of the common world, to receive with double consideration. But +this brilliant, self-conceited, affected, oppressively handsome young +man, on whom she had seen Lucy Money and her mother hanging devotedly, +was quite another sort of person. His presence seemed to overcharge the +room; the scene became all compound of tall, bending form and dark eyes. + +"I am glad to see you, Mr. Blanchet," Miss Grey began, determined not to +be put out by any self-conceited poet and ideal of schoolgirls. "I must +be glad to see you, because you are Mary's brother." + +"You ought rather to be not glad to see me for that reason," he said, +with a deprecating bow and a slight shrug of the shoulders, "for I have +been a very neglectful brother to Mary." + +"So I have heard," Miss Grey said, "but not from Mary. She always +defended you. But I have seen you before, Mr. Blanchet, have I not?" + +"At Mrs. Money's yesterday? Oh, yes; I only saw you, Miss Grey. I went +there to see you, and only in the most literal way got what I wanted." + +"But, Herbert, you never told me that you were going, or that you knew +Mrs. Money," his sister interposed. + +"No, dear; that was an innocent deceit on my part. You told me that Miss +Grey had gone there, and as I knew the Moneys I hurried away there +without telling you. I wanted to know what you were like, Miss Grey, +before seeing my sister again. I hope you are not angry? She is so +devoted to you that she painted you in colors the most bewitching; but I +was afraid her friendship was carrying her away, and I wanted to see for +myself when she was not present." + +Miss Grey remained resolutely silent. She thought this beginning +particularly disagreeable, and began to fear that she should never be +able to like Mary Blanchet's brother. "Oh, why do women have brothers?" +she asked herself. There seemed something dishonest in Mr. Blanchet's +proceeding despite the frank completeness of his confession. + +"Well, Herbert, confess that I didn't do her justice; didn't do her +common justice," the enthusiastic Mary exclaimed. + +"If Miss Grey would not be offended," her brother said, "I would say +that I see in her just the woman capable of doing the kind and generous +things I have heard of." + +"Yes; but we mustn't talk about it," the poetess said, with tears of +gratefulness blinking in her eyes; "and we'll not say a word more about +it, Minola; not a word, indeed, dear." And she put a deprecating little +hand upon Minola's arm. + +Then they all sat down, and Herbert Blanchet began to talk. He talked +very well, and he seemed to have put away most of the airs of +affectation which, even in her very short opportunity of observation, +Minola had seen in him when he was talking to the Money girls. + +"You have travelled a great deal," Miss Grey said. "I envy you." + +"If you call it travelling. I have drifted about the world a good deal, +and seen the wrong sides of everything. I make it pay in a sort of way. +When any place that I know is brought into public notice by a war or +something of the kind, I write about it. Or if a place is not brought +into any present notice by anything, I write about it, and take a +different view from anybody else. I have done particularly well with +Italy, showing that Naples is the ugliest place in all the world; that +the Roman women have shockingly bad figures, and that the climate is +wretched from the Alps to the Straits of Messina. + +"But you don't think that?" Mary Blanchet said wonderingly. + +"Don't I? Well, I don't know. I almost think I do for the moment. One +can get into that frame of mind. Besides, I really don't care about +scenery. I don't observe it as I pass along. And I like to say what +other people don't say, and to see what they don't see. Of course I +don't put my name to any of these things; they are only done to make a +living. I live _on_ such stuff as that. I live _for_ Art." + +"It is glorious to live for art," his sister exclaimed, pressing her +thin, tiny hands together. + +Mr. Blanchet did not seem to care much about his sister's approval. + +"My art isn't yours, Mary," he said, with a pitying smile. "Pictures of +flowers and little children saying their prayers, and nice poems about +good young men and women, are your ideas of painting and poetry, I am +sure. You are a lover of the human race, I know." + +"I hope I love my neighbors," Mary said earnestly. + +"I hope you do, dear. All good little women like you ought to do that. +Do _you_ love your neighbor, Miss Grey?" + +"I don't care much for any one," Miss Grey answered decisively, "except +Mary Blanchet. But I have no particular principle or theory about it, +only that I don't care for people." + +Although Miss Grey had Alceste for her hero, she did not like sham +misanthropy, which she now fancied her visitor was trying to display. +Perhaps too she began to think that his misanthropy rather caricatured +her own. + +Miss Blanchet, on the contrary, was inclined to argue the question, and +to pelt her brother with touching commonplaces. + +"The more we know people," she emphatically declared, "the more good we +see in them. In every heart there is a deep spring of goodness. Oh, +yes!" + +"There isn't in mine, I know," he said. "I speak for myself." + +"For shame, Herbert! How else could you ever feel impelled to try and do +some good for your fellow creatures?" + +"But I don't want to do any good to my fellow creatures. I don't care +about my fellow creatures, and I don't even admit that they are my +fellow creatures, those men and those women too that one sees about. Why +should the common possession of two legs make us fellow creatures with +every man, more than with every bird? No, I don't love the human race at +all." + +"This is nonsense, Minola; you won't believe a word of it," the little +poetess eagerly said, divided between admiration and alarm. + +"You good, little, innocent dear, is it not perfectly true? What did I +ever do for you, let me ask? There, Miss Grey, you see as kind an elder +sister as ever lived. I remember her a perfect mother to me. I dare say +I should have been dead thirty years ago but for her, though whether I +ought to thank her for keeping me alive is another thing. Anyhow, what +was my way of showing my gratitude? As soon as I could shake myself +free, I rambled about the world, a very vagrant, and never took any +thought of her. We are all the same, Miss Grey, believe me--we men." + +"I can well believe it," Miss Grey said. + +"Of course you can. In all our dealings with you women we are just the +same. Our sisters and mothers take trouble without end for us, and cry +their eyes out for us, and we--what do we care? I am not worse than my +neighbors. But if you ask me, do I admire my fellow man, I answer +frankly, no. Not I. What should I admire him for?" + +"One must live for something," the poetess pleaded, much perplexed in +her heart as to what Miss Grey's opinion might be about all this. + +"Of course one must live for art; for music and poetry, and colors and +decoration." + +"And Nature?" Mary Blanchet gently insinuated. + +"Nature--no! Nature is the buxom sweetheart of ploughboy poets. We only +affect to admire Nature because people think we can't be good if we +don't. No one really cares about great cauliflower suns, and startling +contrasts of blazing purple and emerald green. There is nothing really +beautiful in Nature except her decay; her rank weeds, and dank grasses, +and funereal evening glooms." + +While he talked this way he was seated on the piano stool, with his face +turned away from the piano, on whose keys he touched every now and then +with a light and seemingly careless hand, bringing out only a faint note +that seemed to help the conversation rather than to interrupt it. He was +very handsome, Minola could not help thinking, and there was something +in his colorless face and deep eyes that seemed congenial with the talk +of glooms and decay. Still, true to her first feeling toward all men, +Minola was disposed to dislike him, the more especially as he spoke with +an air of easy superiority, as one who would imply that he knew how to +maintain his place above women in creation. + +"I thought all you poets affected to be in love with Nature," she said. +"I mean you younger poets," and she emphasized the word "younger" with a +certain contemptuous tone, which made it just what it meant to +be--"smaller poets." + +"Why younger poets?" + +"Well, because the elder ones I think really were in love with Nature, +and didn't affect anything." + +He smiled pityingly. + +"No," he said decisively, "we don't care about Nature--our school." + +"I am from the country; I don't think I know what your school is." + +"We don't want to be known in the country; we couldn't endure to be +known in the country." + +"But fame?" Minola asked--"does fame not go outside the twelve-mile +radius?" + +"Oh, Miss Grey, do pray excuse me, but you really don't understand us; +we don't want fame. What is fame? Vulgarity made immortal." + +"Then what do you publish for?" + +He rose from his seat and seized his hair with both hands; then +constrained himself to endurance, and sat down again. + +"My dear young lady, we don't publish; we don't intend to publish. No +man in his senses would publish for us if we were never so well +inclined. No one could sell six copies. The great, thick-headed public +couldn't understand us. We are satisfied that the true artist never does +have a public--or look for it. The public can have their Tennysons, and +Brownings, and Swinburnes, and Tuppers, and all that lot----" + +"That lot!" broke in Miss Blanchet, mildly horrified--"that lot! +Browning and Tupper put together!" + +"My dear Mary, I don't know one of these people from another; I never +read any of them now. They are all the same sort of thing to me. These +persons are not artists; they are only men trying to amuse the public. +Some of them, I am told, are positively fond of politics." + +"Don't your school care for politics?" Miss Grey asked, now growing +rather amused. + +"Oh, no; we never trouble ourselves about such things. What can it +matter whether the Reform bill is carried--is there a Reform bill going +on now?--I believe there always is--or what becomes of the Eastern +Question, or whether New Zealand has a constitution? These are questions +for vestrymen, not artists; we don't love man." + +"There I am with you," Miss Grey said; "if that alone were qualification +enough, I should be glad to be one of your fraternity, for I don't love +man; I think he is a poor creature at his best." + +"So do I," said the poet, turning toward her with eyes in which for the +moment a deep and genuine feeling seemed to light up; "the poorest +creature, at his best! Why should any one turn aside for a moment from +his path to help such a thing? What does it matter, the welfare of him +and his pitiful race? Let us sing, and play, and paint, and forget him +and the destiny that he makes such a work about. Wisdom only consists in +shutting our ears to his cries of ambition, and jealousy, and pain, and +being happy in our own way and forgetting him." + +Their eyes met for a moment, and then Minola lowered hers. In that +instant a gleam of sympathy had passed from her eyes into his, and he +knew it. She felt a little humiliated somehow, like a proud fencer +suddenly disarmed at the first touch of his adversary. For, as he was +speaking scorn of the human race, she was saying to herself, "This man, +I do believe, has suffered deeply. He has found people cold, and mean, +and selfish--as _I_ have--and he feels it, and cannot hide it. I did him +wrong; he is not a fribble or sham cynic, only a disappointed dreamer." +The sympathy which she felt showed itself only too quickly in her very +eloquent eyes. + +Herbert Blanchet rose after an instant of silence and took his leave, +asking permission to call again, which Miss Grey would have gladly +refused if she could have stood up against the appealing looks of Mary. +So she had to grant him the permission, thinking as she gave it that +another path of her liberty was closed. + +Mary went to the door with her brother, and, much to Minola's +gratification, remained a long time talking with him there. + +Miss Grey went to the piano and began to sing; softly to herself, that +she might not be heard outside. The short autumnal day was already +closing in London. Out in the country there would be two hours yet of +light before the round, red sun went down behind the sloping fields, +with the fresh upturned earth, and the clumps of trees, but here, in +West-Central regions of London, the autumn day dies in its youth. The +dusk already gathered around the singer, who sang to please or to soothe +herself. In any troubled mood Miss Grey had long been accustomed to +clear her spirits by singing to herself; and on many a long, dull Sunday +at home--in the place that was called her home--she had committed the +not impious fraud of singing her favorite ballads to slow, slow time, +that they might be mistaken for hymns and pass unreproved. Her voice and +way of singing made the song seem like a sweet, plaintive recitative, +just the singing to hear in the "gloaming," to draw a few people hushed +around it, and hold them in suspense, fearful to lose a single note, and +miss the charm of expression. In truth, the charm of it sprang from the +fact that the singer sang to express her own emotions, and thus every +tone had its reality and its meaning. When women sing for a listening +company, they sing conventionally, and in the way that some teacher has +taught, or in what they believe to be the manner of some great artist; +or they sing to somebody or at somebody, and in any case they are away +from that truthfulness which in art is simply the faithful expression of +real emotion. With Minola Grey singing was an end rather than a means; a +relief in itself, a new mood in itself; a passing away from poor and +personal emotions into ideal regions, where melancholy, if it must be, +was always divine; and pain, if it would intrude, was purifying and +ennobling. So, while the little poetess talked with her brother in the +dusk, at the doorway, with the gas lamps just beginning to light the +monotonous street, Minola was singing herself into the pure blue ether, +above the fogs, and clouds, and discordant, selfish voices. + +She came back to earth with something like a heavy fall, as Mary +Blanchet ran in upon her in the dark and exclaimed-- + +"Now, do tell me--how do you like my brother?" + +To say the truth, Miss Grey did not well know. "I wonder is he an +Alceste?" she asked herself. On the whole, his coming had made an +uncomfortable, anxious, uncanny impression upon her, and she looked back +with a kind of hopeless regret on the days when she had London all to +herself, and knew nobody. + + + + +WORDSWORTH'S CORRECTIONS. + + +When an author, in his later editions, departs from his earlier text, he +is apt to reveal some traits of his method and genius that might not +otherwise have been so evident, and a poet's corrections may thus have +more than a merely curious interest. Take Mr. Tennyson's, for instance: +"The Princess," to say nothing of his shorter emended poems, has been, +one might say, rewritten since the first edition, and his corrections +are always interesting. Yet they spring, I think, from a narrower range +of motive than Wordsworth's; they are directed more exclusively toward +the object of artistic finish; they commonly show the poet busied in +casting perfume upon the lily. Take this example from "The Miller's +Daughter." In the first version of that poem, as it appeared in 1842, we +are told that before the heroine's reflection became visible in the +mill-pool-- + + A water-rat from off the bank + Plunged in the stream. + +Later editions give us this more graceful version of what occurred: + + Then leapt a trout. In lazy mood + I watch'd the little circles die; + They passed into the level flood, + And there a vision caught my eye. + +Unquestionably that is an improvement, and of a sort which Wordsworth +was continually making. But Wordsworth's corrections do not merely +illustrate the effort to reach artistic finish, though very many of them +are made with that intent; they have a relation to his theories, tastes, +creeds, to his temperament and training, to his manner of receiving +friendly or hostile criticism; and in comparing these textual variations +we seem to watch the artist at his work--to enter in some sort into his +very consciousness--as we see him manipulating the form or the thought +of his verses: + + Ta de torneuei, ta de kollomelei, + Kai gnomotupei, k'autonomazei. + +Nor is this to consider too curiously; Wordsworth himself has invited us +to the task. In his letters as well as in the notes to his poems, +frequent mention is made of these labors of emendation. Writing in 1837 +to Edward Quillinan, he asks him to "take the trouble ... of comparing +the corrections in my last edition [that of 1836] with the text in the +preceding one," "in the correction of which I took great pains," as he +had written to Prof. Reed a month before. And there is ample opportunity +of this sort; I do not know an ampler one of the kind in the works of +any other poet. Tasso's _variae lectiones_ are numerous, but they were +mostly made to conciliate his critics; Milton's are of great interest, +but they are comparatively few in number, and Gray's are fewer still: +Pope's are numerous, but not often interesting; while Tennyson's, as I +have intimated, seem to me to spring from a less serious poetic faculty +than Wordsworth's, and are therefore less significant. But I am anxious +not to claim too much significance for Wordsworth's corrections, for I +can do little more here than to point out some of them, leaving for the +most part their interpretation to the reader. To attempt more than this +would be to enter upon an analysis of Wordsworth's genius, for which +this is not the occasion. + +And yet we shall see, I think, that his genius might be in some sort +"restored," as naturalists say, were it necessary, from these +fragmentary data, for Wordsworth's corrections cover the whole term of +his literary activity. He preferred, one might say, to correct after +publication rather than before; and, revising his youthful writing +during a second and a third generation following, his final texts had +received the benefit of more than half a century of criticism by himself +and others. From the year 1793, in which his first volumes appeared, the +"Evening Walk" and the "Descriptive Sketches," to the year of his death, +1850, he put forth not fewer than twenty-four separate publications in +verse, each of which contained more or less of poetry previously +unpublished; and in the greater number of these texts may be found +variations from the previous readings. The larger part of them, indeed, +are slight--the change of single words, the alteration of phrases, the +transposition of verses or stanzas. And yet few of them, I think, are +quite without interest for persons in whose reading, as Wordsworth +himself expresses it, "poetry has continued to be comprehended as a +study." I have noted some thousands of his corrections; but a copious +citation of them might weary all but actual students of poetic +_technique_, a class that is hardly as numerous, I suspect, as that of +the actual practitioners of poetry, and I will therefore keep mainly to +such _variae lectiones_ as may be referred to motives of more general +interest.[B] + +[Footnote B: After the early poems just mentioned and the "Lyrical +Ballads," 1798 to 1802, the chief editions to be consulted for the +changes of text are the complete editions of 1807, 1815, and 1836, and +the original issues of "The Excursion" (1814), of "The White Doe of +Rylston" (1815), of "Peter Bell," and of "The Waggoner" (1819). +Unfortunately I have not been able to get access to Mr. W. Johnston's +useful collection of Wordsworth's "Earlier Poems" (London, 1857): it +would have lightened the task of collecting the _variantes_, the more +important of which, for the period covered by the collection, are given +in it. But, having gone in nearly every case to the original texts, I +need hardly say that I have been careful to quote them accurately in the +present article.] + +The first question which we naturally ask about Wordsworth's corrections +is this: Were they improvements? My readers will decide for themselves; +for my own part, it seems to me that they generally were improvements; +that Wordsworth bettered his text three times out of four when he +changed it. Nor is this surprising; few admirers of Wordsworth's poetry +will deny that there were many passages quite susceptible of amendment +in it; for that task there was ample room. But on the other hand, it +happened not infrequently, as we might expect, that when the poet +returned, in the critical mood, to mend his first form of expression, he +marred it instead. In the poem, for instance, beginning, "Strange fits +of passion have I known," the second stanza as originally published ran +thus: + + When she I loved was strong and gay, + And like a rose in June, + I to her cottage bent my way, + Beneath the evening moon. + --_Lyrical Ballads_, 1800. + +The passage stood thus for many years, and was finally altered to read: + + When she I loved looked every day + Fresh as a rose in June, + I to her cottage bent my way, + Beneath an evening moon. + +Is there not some loss of vividness here? The later reading is perhaps +the more graceful, and yet the picture seems to me brighter in the early +version. This, too, seems a doubtful improvement; it occurs in "The +Farmer of Tilsbury Vale." Wordsworth wrote at first: + + His staff is a sceptre--his gray hairs a crown: + Erect as a sunflower he stands, and the streak + Of the unfaded rose is expressed on his cheek. + --1815. + +In later editions we read: + + His bright eyes look brighter, set off by the streak + Of the unfaded rose that still blooms on his cheek. + +Here the last line is bettered; but I, for one, am sorry to lose the +sunflower comparison; it is picturesque, and it aptly describes this +hearty child of the earth. + +Look now at the poem "We are Seven," as it began in the "Lyrical +Ballads": + + A simple child, dear brother Jim, + That lightly draws its breath, + And feels its life in every limb-- + What should it know of death? + +It is now sixty years since "dear brother Jim" was dismissed from his +place in these lines--dismissed, perhaps, with the less compunction +because the stanza was written by another hand--Coleridge's--as an +introduction to the rest of the poem. But I think the lines were better +as the young poets first sent them forth. "Brother Jim" had, perhaps, no +clearly demonstrable business in the poem; and yet, having been there, +we miss him now that he is gone. That homely apostrophe had in it the +primitive impulses of the Lake school feeling; the phrase refuses to be +forgotten, and seems to have a persistent life of its own. I have seen +the missing words restored, in pencil marks, to their rightful place in +the text of copies belonging to old-fashioned gentlemen who remembered +the original reading. Nor can we easily deny existence to our "dear +brother Jim"; his name still lingers in our memories, haunting about the +page from which it was excluded long ago; he lives, and deserves to +live, as the symbol of immortal fraternity. + +But as I have said, Wordsworth mended his text oftener than he marred +it, and first by refining upon his descriptions of outward nature. Among +the cases in point, one occurs in a poem entitled "Influences of Natural +objects in calling forth and strengthening the Imagination in Boyhood +and early Youth"--a cumbrous heading enough. May I digress for a moment +upon the unlucky titles which Wordsworth so often prefixed to his poems, +and the improvements occasionally made in them? Surely a less convenient +caption than the one just quoted is not often met with, or a less +attractive one than this other, prefixed to an inscription not very many +times longer than itself: + +"Written at the Request of Sir George Beaumont, Bart., and in his Name, +for an Urn, placed by him at the termination of a newly-planted Avenue +in the same Grounds." + +Titles like these are not only fatiguing in the very reading, a +preliminary disenchantment, but they are not properly names at all; they +are headings, rubrics, captions which do not name. Wordsworth seems to +send forth these unlucky children of the muse with a full description of +their eyes, hair, and complexion, but forgets to christen them; and I +believe that this oversight, though it may not appear a very serious +one, has interfered more than a little with the effectiveness of his +minor poetry, and consequently with the fame and influence of the poet. +For it makes reference to them difficult, almost impossible: how is one +to refer to a favorite passage, for instance, in a poem "Written at the +Request of Sir George Beaumont, Bart., and in his Name, for an Urn, +placed by him at the termination of a newly-planted Avenue in the same +Grounds"? These titles are fit to discourage even the admirers of +Wordsworth, and to repel his intending students; nor will they attract +any one, for they are formless; they are the abstracts of essays, the +_precis_ of an argument, rather than fit designations for works of +poetic art. A considerable number, too, of Wordsworth's minor pieces +remain without name, title, or description of any kind whatever. If that +desirable thing, a satisfactory edition of his poems, should ever +appear, it will be given us by some editor who shall be sensitive to +this northern formlessness, and who may venture, perhaps, to improve the +state of Wordsworth's titles. + +Let me end this digression by noting another singular title, with its +emendation. In the "Lyrical Ballads" of 1798 appeared a poem with this +extraordinary caption: + +"Anecdote for Fathers, shewing how the art of Lying may be taught." + +Now, certainly, Wordsworth did not intend to teach the art of lying, yet +nothing can be clearer than his declaration. He failed to see the +ludicrous meaning of these words, and it took him thirty years, +apparently, to find out what he had said; but he saw it at last, and +dropped the explanatory clause of the title, quoting in its place an apt +motto from Eusebius; and we now read: + +"Anecdote for Fathers. _Retine vim istam, falsa enim dicam, si coges_;" +and the charming story professes no longer to show how boys may be +taught to lie, but to point out the danger of making them lie when you +press them to give reasons for their sentiments. + +And now, returning to the corrections of text in the descriptive +passages, let us note a curious change in the poem already mentioned, +"On the Influence of Natural Objects," etc. Wordsworth is describing the +pleasures of skating; and these are some of them, according to the +passage as originally published in "The Friend": + + Not seldom from the uproar I retired + Into a silent bay--or sportively + Glanced sideway, leaving the tumultuous throng + _To cut across the image of a Star + That gleamed upon the ice._ + +To do this is of course impossible, and the lines which I have +italicized are mere closet description. We cannot skate across the +reflection of a star until we can skate into the end of a rainbow; and +the curious thing is that the so-called "poet of nature" should ever +have fancied, even for a moment at his desk, that he had ever done it. +Clearly, Wordsworth's study was not always out of doors, to use a +favorite phrase of his; on the contrary, this passage is so unreal that +a critic unacquainted with the personal history of the poet might argue +that he had never been on skates--as Coleridge wrote the "Hymn in the +Valley of Chamouni" without ever visiting that valley. But Wordsworth +seems to have found out that his description was false; for he made a +compromise, in the later editions, with the optical law of incidence and +reflection; and we now see him attempting merely, but not achieving, the +impossible thing: + + ----Leaving the tumultuous throng + To cut across the reflex of a star + That fled, and, flying still before me, gleamed + Upon the glassy plain. + +But Wordsworth held stoutly, in the main, to his own experience, his own +impressions; and he did this even to the injury of his descriptions. He +was never, for instance, in sailor's phrase, "off soundings"; he never +saw the mid-ocean; and consequently, when he described Leonard, in the +first edition of "The Brothers," as sailing in mid-ocean, he says that +he gazed upon "the broad green wave and sparkling foam." But he found +out his mistake at last; he was fond of reading voyages and travels, and +he seems to have become convinced finally, perhaps by the testimony of +his sailor brother, that the deep sea was really blue and not green; +that the common epithet was the true one; for he corrected the line to +read "the broad blue wave." + +Let us now examine some of those curiously prosaic passages which +Wordsworth strove faithfully to convert into poetry, and strove with +various success. And first, those famous arithmetical passages in "The +Thorn," one of which stands to-day as it stood in the "Lyrical Ballads." +We still read there, indeed, of + + A beauteous heap, a hill of moss, + Just half a foot in height, + +the precise altitude that Wordsworth gave it in 1798; not an inch to the +critics, he seems to have said. But these other peccant lines in the +preceding stanza he recast, and in a way that is curious to follow: + + And to the left, three yards beyond, + You see a little muddy Pond + Of water never dry: + I've measured it from side to side: + 'Tis three feet long, and two feet wide. + +Of these lines Crabb Robinson said to Wordsworth that "he dared not read +them aloud in company." "They ought to be liked," rejoined the poet. +Well, we may not like them; but they are interesting, for they present a +really instructive specimen of bad art. Clearly enough, here is a poet +in difficulties. The "little muddy pond" was not a pond in nature, but a +pool; and a pool it would have been in verse, but for the particular +exigency--the necessity of rhyming with the word _beyond_. Note now the +honesty of our poet. For rhyme's sake he has temporarily sacrificed +accuracy; he has called a pool a pond; but to show what the piece of +water actually was, that actually it was a pool, though the exigencies +of rhyme had forced him to call it provisionally by another name, he +goes on to give us its accurate measurement, not only from "side to +side," but from end to end as well. "'Tis three feet long and two feet +wide," he tells us; and now his northern conscience is satisfied; he +seems to say, "I was unfortunately compelled to use the wrong word in +this passage, but I make amends at once; these are the precise +dimensions of the object, and you can give it the right name yourself." +This devotion to the topographical truth of the matter was abated, +however, in later editions, perhaps by the derision of the critics. +Wordsworth rewrote the passage, one would say, to please the graces +rather than the mathematical verities; and the lines now read thus: + + You see a little muddy pond + Of water, never dry, + Though but of compass small, and bare + To thirsty suns and parching air. + +Another considerable improvement was made, a little further on, in the +same poem. These are the lines as they ran in the "Lyrical Ballads": + + Poor Martha! on that woful day + A cruel, cruel fire, they say, + Into her bones was sent; + It dried her body like a cinder, + And almost turned her brain to tinder. + --1798. + +Certainly there was room for improvement here; and in the edition of +1815 we find the lines recast as follows: + + A pang of pitiless dismay + Into her soul was sent; + A Fire was kindled in her breast, + Which might not burn itself to rest. + +Or see again this prosaic passage from "The Brothers," as first +published in the "Lyrical Ballads." The lines describe the parting of +James from his companions at a certain rock: + + ----By our shepherds it is call'd the Pillar. + James, pointing to its summit, over which + They all had purposed to return together, + Inform'd them that he there would wait for them; + They parted, and his comrades pass'd that way + Some two hours after, but they did not find him + At the appointed place, a circumstance + Of which they took no heed. + --1800. + +It would occur to few readers to call this poetry were it not visibly +divided into verse; and Wordsworth himself seems to have thought as +much, for after many years he rewrote the passage, condensing and +poetizing it as follows: + + ----By our shepherds it is called THE PILLAR. + Upon its airy summit crowned with heath + The loiterer, not unnoticed by his comrades, + Lay stretched at ease; but, passing by the place + On their return, they found that he was gone. + No ill was feared. + +There are hundreds of corrections in this style; and we naturally ask +what made it necessary for Wordsworth to weed his poetic garden so +often, to amend with care and trouble what some other poets would have +done well at first? We need not hold with some of his critics that +Wordsworth had in any peculiar sense a dual nature, to explain the +amount of prosaic poetry, if I may call it so, that he wrote. No real +poet ever wrote, as I take it, a greater amount of prosaic poetry than +he; and no real poet ever published a greater number of verses that +might fairly be called not only poor poetry, but considered as proof +that their author could not write good poetry at all. + +What critic would believe before the proof, that the poet who had +written the lines just quoted from "The Thorn," and others like them, +could have written also the "Lines to H. C." and "She Was a Phantom of +Delight"? But to inquire at length into this contrast is to inquire into +the deepest traits of Wordsworth's genius. One cause of his prosaic +verse, however, may be mentioned here. Wordsworth had injurious habits +of composition; he dictated his prose to an amanuensis, and he composed +his poems in the fields as he walked. He was thus a libertine of +opportunity, and though he strictly economized his subjects, and made +the least yield him up its utmost, yet he was prodigal in the quantity +of his expression. He did not wait for what are called moments of +inspiration; he was always ready to compose, and thus he composed too +much; he made verses whenever he was out of doors, "murmuring them out" +to the astonishment of the rustics. Doubtless the first factor of genius +is this abundance of power. But, on the other hand, the control, the +direction of power is the first essential to the beauty of the work of +art. "Good men may utter whatever comes uppermost; good poets may not," +says Landor; and the aphorism touches upon a serious fault of +Wordsworth's method. He lacked due power of self-repression; he was too +much interested in his own thoughts to make a sufficiently jealous +choice among them when he came to write them down. Two qualities, +indeed, of his nature he kept in such abeyance, the amative and the +humorous--and he was not without a humorous side--as to express but +little of them in his writings. But he seems to have recorded almost +everything, not humorous or amatory, that came into his mind; and, in +consequence, we feel that his poetry comes perilously near being a +verbatim transcript of his processes of consciousness. But no man's +thought is always sufficiently valuable for a shorthand report; and we +often wish that Wordsworth had reflected, with Herrick, that the poet is +not fitted every day to prophesy: + + No; but when the spirit fills + The fantastic pannicles + Full of fire--then I write + As the Godhead doth indite. + +Does it seem an invidious task to recall the unhappy readings that I +have mentioned--readings abandoned by Wordsworth long ago, and unknown +to many of his younger students? To do it with slighting intent, or from +mere curiosity, would be unworthy; nor will the routine mind be +persuaded that there is anything more than a merely curious interest in +the comparison of editions. We, thinking that Wordsworth cannot really +be understood in a single edition, must leave the routine mind to its +conviction that one text contains all that there is of value in his +poetry. And to offset the ungraceful verses that we have just +considered, let us look at some changes by which Wordsworth has made +fine passages finer still. Of the sonnets published in 1819 with "The +Waggoner," none is more striking, as I think, than the one beginning, +"Eve's lingering clouds extend in solid bars." In it at first he spoke +as follows of the reflection of the heavens at night in perfectly still +water: + + Is it a mirror?--or the nether sphere + Opening its vast abyss, while fancy feeds + On the rich show?--But list! a voice is near; + Great Pan himself low-whispering through the reeds. + +In the later editions this passage is enriched by a grand stroke of +imagination: + + Is it a mirror?--or the nether sphere + Opening to view the abyss in which she feeds + Her own calm fires?--But list! a voice is near; + Great Pan himself low-whispering through the reeds. + +The following change is from the same sonnets; the passage describes a +bright star setting: + + Forfeiting his bright attire, + He burns, transmuted to a sullen fire + That droops and dwindles; and, the appointed debt + To the flying moments paid, is seen no more. + +So in 1819; in later editions we find the passage as follows: + + He burns, transmuted to a dusty fire, + Then pays submissively the appointed debt + To the flying moments, and is seen no more. + +That is scarcely an improvement; but the alteration of epithet is +curious: the substitution of fact for fancy in changing the low star's +"sullen fire" into a "dusty fire." + +Here, again, is a case where the new reading has a fresher phrase than +the old. It occurs in the last stanza of "Rob Roy's Grave," where +Wordsworth spoke thus of the hero's virtues: + + ----Far and near, through vale and hill, + Are faces that attest the same; + And kindle, like a fire new-stirred, + At sound of ROB ROY's name. + +Later, a new line was substituted as follows: + + ----Far and near, through vale and hill, + Are faces that attest the same; + The proud heart flashing through the eyes + At sound of ROB ROY's name. + +And Wordsworth insisted, quite as strongly as his severest critics, upon +finish, upon literary art as discriminable from the substance. While he +was blaming Byron, Campbell, and other eminent poets for its lack, his +assailants were loud in the same charge against him; they protested that +whatever other merits the new poetry might have, that of artistic finish +was surely not one. Jeffrey wrote in 1807 that Wordsworth "scarcely ever +condescended to give the grace of correctness or melody to his +versification." But Wordsworth, in a letter lately first published, +criticises Campbell's "Hohenlinden" in a way that shows him by no means +unstudious of form. He writes thus to Mr. Hamilton:[C] "I remember +Campbell says, in a composition that is overrun with faulty language, +'And dark as winter was the _flow_ of Iser rolling rapidly'; that is, +'flowing rapidly.' The expression ought to have been 'stream' or +'current.' ... These may appear to you frigid criticisms," he adds; "but +depend upon it, no writings will live in which these rules are +disregarded." This is good doctrine, and we have seen Wordsworth +striving to realize it in his practice. He did realize it to a certain +extent; if his style was not always eloquent, not always poetical, it +was generally better English than that of his popular contemporaries. +And yet a critic in "The Dial," following, as recently as 1843, the lead +of Jeffrey in this blame of Wordsworth, could write of him as +follows:[D] "He has the merit of just moral perception, but not that of +deft poetic execution. How would Milton curl his lip at such slip-shod +newspaper style! Many of his poems, as for example the 'Rylstone Doe,' +might be all improvised.... These are such verses as in a just state of +culture should be _vers de Societe_, such as every gentleman could +write, but none would think of printing." That passage is worth reading +twice; note the condescension of the praise, the flippancy of the blame, +the inaccurate English and French; and what a jaunty misquotation of +Wordsworth's title! It was not very profitable censure; but Wordsworth +received much criticism by which he was glad to profit. Let us look at +some of the cases in which he turned the strictures of friends or of +enemies to account. The changes that he made in deference to criticism +are striking, and so too are some of the cases in which he refused to +profit by criticism. I will speak of both. + +[Footnote C: "Prose Works," III., 302.] + +[Footnote D: "The Dial," Vol. III., p. 514.] + +Of the former kind are the corrections in "Laodamia." That poem appeared +first in 1815, having been suggested during a course of classical +reading which Wordsworth had taken up for the purpose of directing the +studies of his son. Landor criticised this poem in the first volume of +his "Imaginary Conversations," and in the main very favorably; he makes +Porson say that parts of it "might have been heard with shouts of +rapture in the regions he describes"; he calls it "a composition such as +Sophocles might have delighted to own." But he points out blemishes in +two stanzas, the first and the seventeenth; he blames the execution of +one and the thought of the other. Wordsworth rewrote both of them, and I +quote the second passage as affording the more interesting change. In +the first edition Protesilaus, says the poet, returning from the shades +to visit Laodamia, + + Spake, as a witness, of a second birth + For all that is most perfect upon earth. + +On this Landor remarks, putting the words into Porson's mouth: + + How unseasonable is the allusion to _witness_ and _second_ + birth, which things, however holy and venerable in + themselves, come stinking and reeking to us from the + conventicle. I desire to see Laodamia in the silent and + gloomy mansion of her beloved Protesilaus; not elbowed by + the godly butchers in Tottenham court road, nor smelling + devoutly of ratafia among the sugar bakers' wives at + Blackfriars. + +Wordsworth dropped these lines; and we now read instead, that the hero + + Spake of heroic arts in graver mood + Revived, with finer harmony pursued. + +In the first volume of his "Imaginary Conversations" Landor said of +Wordsworth: "Those who attack him with virulence or with levity are men +of no morality and no reflection." In a later volume, however, Landor +attacks him thus himself, with both virulence and levity, as I fear we +must say, and Wordsworth declined to profit by these later gibing +criticisms, though some of them, and especially those upon the "Anecdote +for Fathers," were valuable, and suggested real improvements of text. In +this attack, which is contained in the second conversation of Southey +and Porson, Landor had noticed Wordsworth's adoption of his earlier +criticism of Laodamia; and this circumstance was probably a reason why +Wordsworth refused to receive further critical favors at his hands. The +poem "Goody Blake and Harry Gill," for instance, sharply criticised by +Landor, stood almost untouched through the editions of fifty years. And +in a letter of 1843, recently published for the first time,[E] +Wordsworth speaks thus severely of an attack made upon his son-in-law, +Edward Quillinan, by Landor: "I should have disapproved of his +[Quillinan's] condescending to notice anything that a man so deplorably +tormented by ungovernable passion as that unhappy creature might eject. +His character may be given in two or three words: a madman, a bad man; +yet a man of genius, as many a madman is." That criticism seems rather +more than righteously severe; but Wordsworth, while he cared little for +the criticism of the reviews, felt keenly the lash of the violent +Landor. The violent Landor we must call him, for violence was the too +dominant trait of his noble genius; and he exasperated Wordsworth, as we +see. But compare what I have just quoted with his familiar remark about +the small critics: "My ears are stone dead to this idle buzz, and my +flesh as insensible as iron to these petty stings." That Wordsworth said +at thirty-six years of age; and here is a striking reminiscence recorded +during his later years, and published in the "Prose Works." At +seventy-one he said to Lady Richardson: + + It would certainly have been a great object to me to have + reaped the profits I should have done from my writings but + for the stupidity of Mr. Gifford and the impertinence of Mr. + Jeffrey. It would have enabled me to purchase many books + which I could not obtain, and I should have gone to Italy + earlier, which I never could afford to do until I was + sixty-five, when Moxon gave me a thousand pounds for my + writings. This was the only kind of injury Mr. Jeffrey did + me, for I immediately perceived that his mind was of that + kind that his individual opinion on poetry was of no + consequence to me whatever; that it was only by the + influence his periodical exercised at the time in preventing + my poems being read and sold that he could injure me.... I + never, therefore, felt his opinion of the slightest value + except in preventing the young of that generation from + receiving impressions which might have been of use to them + through life. + +[Footnote E: "Prose Works," III., 381.] + +This is grand self-confidence; and it is in the same tone that elsewhere +he says: + + Feeling that my writings were founded on what was true and + spiritual in human nature, I knew the time would come when + they must be known. + +In this connexion the English reviews of that time are still interesting +reading, particularly the "Quarterly" and the "Edinburgh." What was +Jeffrey saying in his "organ" during the years of Wordsworth's earlier +fame? In 1807 he described the poem of "The Beggars" as "a very paragon +of silliness and affectation"; and he said of "Alice Fell," "If the +printing of such verses be not felt as an insult on the public taste, we +are afraid it cannot be insulted." Two years later he calls upon the +patrons of the Lake school of poetry to "think with what infinite +contempt the powerful mind of Burns would have perused the story of +Alice Fell and her duffle cloak, of Andrew Jones and the half-crown, or +of little Dan without breeches and his thievish grandfather." Wordsworth +dropped the poem of "Andrew Jones," and never restored it--an omission +almost unique, as we shall see; for he stood by the substance of his +work, if not always by the form, with great pertinacity. He said of +"Alice Fell," in his old age, "It brought upon me a world of ridicule by +the small critics, so that in policy I excluded it from many editions of +my poems, till it was restored at the request of some of my friends." +Wordsworth had no stancher friend, his poetry had no more delicate +critic, than Charles Lamb; and Lamb wrote thus in 1815 to Wordsworth +about "Alice Fell" and the assailants of the poem. He said: "I am glad +that you have not sacrificed a verse to those scoundrels. I would not +have had you offer up the poorest rag that lingered upon the stript +shoulders of little Alice Fell, to have atoned all their malice: I would +not have given 'em a red cloak to save their souls." + +Jeffrey decried two other pieces that rank among the most perfect of +Wordsworth's minor poems, as "stuff about dancing daffodils and sister +Emmelines," and spoke of another, which we count for pure poetry to-day, +as "a rapturous, mystical ode to the cuckoo, in which the author, +striving after force and originality, produces nothing but absurdity." +And he attacked these lines in the "Ode to Duty": + + Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong: + And the most ancient heavens through thee are fresh and strong. + +This, Jeffrey said, is "utterly without meaning: at least we have no +sort of conception in what sense Duty can be said to keep the old skies +_fresh_, and the stars from wrong." We need not be surprised at +Jeffrey's failing to admire these lines: they are transcendentalism, and +it would have troubled Wordsworth himself to render them into the plain +speech which he recommended as the proper diction of poetry. For they +have not a definite translatable content of thought; and we cannot read +them as philosophy or ethics; but as poetry we may feel their power; we +are willing to enjoy them for their own sake, because beauty is enough. +But this Jeffrey did not admit; Jeffrey was not vulnerable by +magnificent phrases, and of course he could not foresee what a power +Wordsworth's transcendentalism was to exert. When the ode "Intimations +of Immortality" first appeared (with the edition of 1807), Jeffrey +called it "the most illegible and unintelligible part of the +publication."[F] The remark need not surprise us. Jeffrey looked for +logical thought in the poem, and logical thought it had not; whatever +else it may contain, it will hardly be said to propound any new +arguments for immortality. But Jeffrey wrote in all sincerity, and later +in his life he read Wordsworth's poetry a second time, with a view to +discover, if he could, the merits which he had failed to see when he +criticised it--the merits which the English public had then found out. +His effort was a failure: for him the primrose remained a primrose to +the last, and nothing more. The acute lawyer was not a poet, nor a judge +of poets; he had an erroneous notion of what the office of poetry is; of +what it has been and will be--to please, to elevate, to suggest, but not +to argue or convince; and to the last he did not get beyond his early +decision, which, in the article just quoted from, runs as follows: + + We think there is every reason to hope that the lamentable + consequences which have resulted from Mr. Wordsworth's open + violation of the established laws of poetry, will operate as + a wholesome warning to those who might otherwise have been + seduced by his example, and be the means of restoring to + that ancient and venerable code its honor and authority. + + +[Footnote F: "Edinburgh Review," October, 1807.] + +But the critic cannot always tell what the new "song is destined to, and +what the stars intend to do." It is now evident enough where the early +assailants of Wordsworth were mistaken; and yet which critic of to-day +would be sure of his ground in a similar case? For the faults of genius +are old, familiar, and easily to be discerned; while, on the other hand, +genius itself is always novel, and therefore may be easily mistaken. It +takes genius to recognize genius; and most of Wordsworth's critics were +not men of genius. Landor, who was one, made a wise remark upon this +point. He said, "To compositions of a new kind, like Wordsworth's, we +come without scales and weights, and without the means of making an +assay." + +But by pointing out his faults, his critics did him and us a service; +and it was one by which the poet profited, as we have seen, in spite of +his independence. + +Let us now look at some of Wordsworth's multiple readings, if we may +call them so--passages, namely, in which he has returned, year after +year, to certain peccant verses, changing them again and again in the +quest of adequate expression. After repeated experiments he sometimes +finds a reading to please himself; sometimes, having allowed a +provisional text to stand throughout many years, he discards it and +returns to the original form; and sometimes, again, he abandons a +passage entirely, after scarring it with a lifetime's emendations. Of +the first sort I will cite three readings of a stanza in "A Poet's +Epitaph." As first published in the "Lyrical Ballads" of 1800, the poem +contained this adjuration to the philosopher "wrapped in his sensual +fleece": + + O turn aside, and take, I pray, + That he below may rest in peace, + Thy pin-point of a soul away! + +Lamb did not like this; and he wrote to Wordsworth: "The 'Poet's +Epitaph' is disfigured, to my taste, by the coarse epithet of +'pin-point' in the sixth stanza." In the edition of 1815 the "coarse +epithet" disappears, and the passage is modified as follows: + + + ----Take, I pray, + That he below may rest in peace, + That abject thing, thy soul, away! + +The years that "bring the philosophic mind" did not, however, reconcile +Wordsworth with the particular "philosopher" here in question. (Sir +Humphrey Davy, as Crabb Robinson, if I am not mistaken, tells us). On +the contrary, the poet devised a still more injurious epithet for that +unhappy physicist; and the passage now reads: + + ----Take, I pray,... + Thy ever-dwindling soul away! + +Another of these multiple corrections has attracted much notice; it +occurs in the successive descriptions of the craft wherein the "Blind +Highland Boy" went sailing. In the first edition of that poem Wordsworth +called it + + A Household Tub, like one of those + Which women use to wash their clothes! + +It would seem difficult to defend this couplet upon any accepted theory +of aesthetics, rhyme, or syntax; and the "Household Tub" provoked quite +naturally a shout of derision from all the critics; it became the +poetical scandal of the day. Jeffery, mindful of "the established laws" +of poetic art, protested that there was nothing, down to the wiping of +shoes, or the evisceration of chickens, which may not be introduced in +poetry, if this is tolerated. The tub, in short, proved intolerable to +the reviewers; and when next the poem appeared in a new edition, that of +1815, Wordsworth transmuted the craft into a green turtle shell, noting +the change as made "upon the suggestion of a Friend": + + The shell of a green Turtle, thin + And hollow: you might sit therein, + It was so wide and deep. + 'Twas even the largest of its kind, + Large, thin, and light as birch tree rind; + So light a shell that it would swim, + And gaily lift its fearless brim + Above the tossing waves. + +Lamb's comment upon this change was as follows: + + I am afraid lest that substitution of a shell (a flat + falsification of the history) for the household implement, + as it stood at first, was a kind of tub thrown out to the + beast, or rather thrown out for him. The tub was a good + honest tub in its place, and nothing could be fairly said + against it. You say you made the alteration for the + "friendly reader," but the "malicious" will take it to + himself. Damn 'em, if you give 'em an inch, etc. + +Wordsworth, however, instead of restoring the old text, went on +amending, and with reason; the reading just given is diffuse. But see +now the third and final form which he gave to the passage. The +sublimation of the Household Tub is now completed; it becomes, at last, + + A shell of ample size, and light + As the pearly car of Amphitrite, + That sportive dolphins draw. + And as a Coracle that braves + On Vaga's breast the fretful waves, + This shell upon the deep would swim. + +Here again are some new readings that Wordsworth discarded after long +trial. A well-known sonnet, one of his earliest, began thus in 1807: + + I grieved for Buonaparte, with a vain + And an unthinking grief! The vital blood + Of that Man's mind, what can it be? What food + Fed his first hopes? What knowledge could he gain? + +In 1815 we find the passage rewritten as follows: + + I grieved for Buonaparte, with a vain + And an unthinking grief! for, who aspires + To genuine greatness but from just desires, + And knowledge such as He could never gain? + +But in the later editions the first reading was restored, except the +words "vital blood," and we now read: + + The tenderest mood + Of that man's mind, what can it be? + +In "The Nightingale" Wordsworth first called that bird "a creature of a +fiery heart"; but in the edition of 1815 it became "a creature of +ebullient heart," a flat disenchantment of the verse. The change was +questioned from the first, as Crabb Robinson tells us, and in later +editions the first reading was restored. A fortunate correction made in +the same edition was retained--the change of "laughing company" to +"jocund company," in "The Daffodils": + + A poet could not but be gay + In such a jocund company. + --1815. + +The poem "Rural Architecture," in the "Lyrical Ballads" of 1800, was +curtailed of its closing stanza in the edition of 1815: + + Some little I've seen of blind boisterous works + In Paris and London, 'mong Christians and Turks, + Spirits busy to do and undo, etc., etc. + +But in Lamb's correspondence of the same year he complains to Wordsworth +that the omission "leaves it [the poem] in my mind less complete," and +the lines were restored in the later editions. Not to differ hastily +with Lamb, the lines yet seem lines to be spared. In the same sentence +he complains that in the new edition there is another "admirable line +gone (or something come instead of it), 'the stone-chat, and the +glancing sandpiper,' which was a line quite alive. I demand these at +your hand." Wordsworth restored the line, and the three versions of the +passage are worth comparison. It is from the "Lines left upon a Seat in +a Yew Tree," and describes a wanderer in the solitude of the country: + + His only visitants a straggling sheep, + The stone-chat, or the glancing sand-piper: + And on these barren rocks, with juniper, + And heath, and thistle, thinly sprinkled o'er, + Fixing his downcast eye, he many an hour + A morbid pleasure nourished. + --"Lyrical Ballads." + +In the second reading he corrects a bad assonance thus: + + His only visitants a straggling sheep, + The stone-chat, or the sand-lark, restless bird, + Piping along the margin of the lake.... + --1815. + +Here the "line quite alive" is gone--to be restored in deference, +apparently, to Lamb's request. Another assonance is got rid of in the +later editions, the "thistle thinly sprinkled o'er," and the passage now +reads melodiously as follows: + + His only visitants a straggling sheep. + The stone-chat, or the glancing sand-piper: + And on these barren rocks, with fern and heath, + And juniper and thistle, sprinkled o'er, + Fixing his downcast eye, he many an hour + A morbid pleasure nourished. + +Wordsworth struck out many lines and stanzas in the course of his +revisions, besides main passages of considerable length, as from the +"Thanksgiving Ode" and the patriotic ode of January, 1816. These +omissions are too long to quote here; but the following lines dropped +from the ode on "Immortality" will have interest; they are not to be +found, I think, in any English edition since that of 1815. Addressing +the child over whom Immortality, in the language of the ode, + + Broods like the Day, a Master o'er a Slave, + A Presence which is not to be put by-- + +this earlier reading continues: + + To whom the grave + Is but a lonely bed without the sense or sight + Of day or the warm light: + A place of thought where we in waiting lie. + +Another notable omitted passage is the introduction to "Dion," published +in 1816: + + Fair is the Swan, whose majesty, prevailing + O'er breezeless water on Locarno's lake.... + +Here nineteen lines full of beauty are sacrificed by Wordsworth in the +interest of the unity of the poem. He struck out, too, some lines from +"The Daisy," "The Thorn," and "Simon Lee," and eight stanzas have +disappeared from "Peter Bell" since the first edition of that poem. +Among them are these grotesque lines, favorites with Charles Lamb: + + Is it a party in a parlour? + Cramm'd just as they on earth were cramm'd-- + Some sipping punch, some sipping tea, + All silent and all damn'd! + +And here are some verses that have interest from the glimpse they give +of Wordsworth's faculty in a field that he declined to cultivate--the +amatory or "fleshly," as it has been conveniently named for us of late. +I quote from that rare book, the "Descriptive Sketches" of 1793; and as +the lines are not included in any edition of his poems, they are +unfamiliar to most readers. But two copies of this book, so far as I +know, exist in this country. One of them, which belonged to the late +Prof. Henry Reed, Wordsworth's American editor, is full of corrections +in Wordsworth's own handwriting; and it is by the courtesy of its +present owner that I am enabled to give here the early text with these +corrections, never before printed. The young Wordsworth takes leave of +Switzerland, at the conclusion of his pedestrian tour, with this glowing +apostrophe: + + ye the + Farewell! those forms that in thy noontide shade + your + Rest near their little plots of oaten glade, + Dark + Those stedfast eyes, that beating breasts inspire, + To throw the "sultry rays" of young Desire; + soft + =Those= lips whose ^ tides of fragrance come and go + Accordant to the cheek's unquiet glow; + Ye warm + Those shadowy breasts In love's soft light array'd + And rising by the moon of passion sway'd.[G] + +[Footnote G: +I venture to note, in passing, a small class of corrections in which the +poet has cleared his text from certain innocencies of expression that +were liable to be misread by persons on the alert for double meanings. +The following are among the Wordsworthian simplicities that have been +amended in the later editions; the reference is made to the octavos of +1815, which may be compared with any of the editions since 1836: + +Vol. I., page 111, "The Brothers," passage beginning, "James, tired +perhaps." + +Vol. I., page 210, "Michael," passage beginning, "Old Michael, while he +was a babe in arms." + +Vol. I., page 223, "Laodamia," stanza beginning, "Be taught, O faithful +Consort."] + +Wordsworth thus dropped, for one reason or another, many passages from +his poems. But did he abandon entire poems? That did not often happen. +He strove patiently to perfect the form of his thought; but he was +unwilling to let the substance of it go. In the seven volumes of his +poetry, as they now stand, but two poems are lacking, to the best of my +knowledge, of all that he ever published. One of these, an unimportant +piece beginning, "The confidence of youth our only art," was printed +with the "Memorials of a Tour on the Continent" (1822), and no longer +appears in the collected editions. The other missing poem, "Andrew +Jones," was abandoned for reasons, as I think, of considerable critical +interest. In the "Lyrical Ballads" it began thus: + + I hate that Andrew Jones: he'll breed + His children up to waste and pillage: + I wish the press-gang or the drum + With its tantara sound would come, + And sweep him from the village! + +This poem may be found (with, slight emendations) as late as the edition +of 1815; but after that date I meet with it nowhere but in foreign +reprints. Why was it dropped? It is doubtless a story of unrelieved +though petty suffering; it corresponds, in small, to what Mr. Matthew +Arnold calls the "poetically faulty" situation of Empedocles, a +situation "in which there is everything to be endured, nothing to be +done." But, on the other hand, that fragment of AEschylus, the +"Prometheus Bound," in which everything is endured and nothing done, yet +remains a work of the deepest interest: nor need we think that +Wordsworth abandoned his little poem for a reason so refined as that +which led Mr. Arnold to abandon one of his own. There was, as I take it, +a moral reason which led to Wordsworth's decision; namely, that the +story of "Andrew Jones" is told with bitterness of feeling from +beginning to end; and against bitterness of feeling Wordsworth had +recorded, during his earlier years, a striking protest. We shall read it +presently; but first let us couple with the poem a sentence from his +prose--a sentence full of the same feeling, and which was early dropped +for the same reason. We shall find it in the edition of 1815, in the +essay supplementary to the famous Preface of that date. There Wordsworth +turns upon his critics as follows: + +"By what fatality the orb of my genius (for genius none of them seem to +deny me) acts upon these men like the moon upon a certain description of +patients, it would be irksome to enquire: nor would it consist with the +respect which I owe myself to take further notice of opponents whom I +internally despise." + +This is not quite in the vein of the serenely meditative poet; and if we +look back to a time twenty years earlier than this, we shall find that +Wordsworth had reproved his heat beforehand. In 1795, when he first +chose definitely the poet's career, he had written these lines: + + If thou be one whose heart the holy forms + Of young imagination have kept pure, + Stranger! henceforth be warned; and know that pride, + Howe'er disguised in its own majesty, + Is littleness: that he who feels contempt + For any living thing, hath faculties + Which he has never used: that thought with him + Is in its infancy. + +That is the teaching of earlier and serener years, of the time when the +poet was still quietly embayed in youth, when jealous criticism, and +envy, and disappointment were still trials of the future. Youth has its +own passions; but it has also its peculiar serenity; and after +Wordsworth had passed through the stormy years which gave him fame, we +see the maturer man recalling the teaching of his calmer self. It was in +obedience to this, as I believe, that he cancelled the passages that +have just been mentioned; feeling their discord with the pure song of +that early time. + +Let us now look at some of the passages which Wordsworth has emended, +not by taking away from the words of his book, but by adding to them. As +he wrote to Mr. Dyce, he diligently revised the "Excursion," in the +edition of 1827, and got the sense "in several instances, ... into less +room"; and minor changes are to be counted by hundreds. But he made some +additions to this poem, and for significant reasons. + +Readers of Christopher North's essay, in the "Recreations," on "Sacred +Poetry," will remember the long indictment which he there brings against +the earlier poems of Wordsworth; he complains of them as being +irreligious. It is interesting to find the earthly Christopher +displaying the pious zeal of an inquisitor in the matter, declaring that +in all of Wordsworth's writings, up to the "Excursion," "though we have +much fine poetry, and some high philosophy, it would puzzle the most +ingenious to detect much, if any, Christian religion"; and lamenting its +absence even in the "Excursion," in the story of "Margaret," as told in +the first book. This tale Christopher North calls "perhaps the most +elaborate picture he [Wordsworth] ever painted of any conflict within +any one human heart;" but he adds, with how much sincerity we will not +now ask, that it "is, with all its pathos, repulsive to every religious +mind--_that_ being wanting without which the entire representation is +vitiated.... This utter absence of Revealed Religion ... throws over the +whole poem to which the tale of Margaret belongs an unhappy suspicion of +hollowness and insincerity in that poetical religion which at the best +is a sorry substitute indeed for the light that is from heaven." + +That Wordsworth laid to heart this criticism, will appear on comparing +the original passage, as reprobated by Christopher North, with the form +which the poet gave it in the latter editions. Originally the peddler, +finishing the story of "Margaret," moralizes thus: + + My Friend! enough to sorrow you have given; + The purposes of wisdom ask no more: + Be wise and cheerful, and no longer read + The forms of things with an unworthy eye; + She sleeps in the calm earth, and peace is here. + I well remember that those very plumes, + Those weeds, and the high spear-grass on that wall, + By mist and silent raindrops silvered o'er, + As once I passed, into my heart convey'd + So still an image of tranquillity, + So calm and still, and look'd so beautiful + Amid the uneasy thoughts which fill'd my mind, + That what we feel of sorrow and despair + From ruin and from change, and all the griefs + The passing shows of Being leave behind, + Appear'd an idle dream, that could not live + Where meditation was. I turn'd away, + And walk'd along my road in happiness. + +"What meditation?" cries out Christopher North. "Turn thou, O child of a +day, to the New Testament, and therein thou mayest find comfort." And +Wordsworth in his revision made the following additions to this fine +pagan passage: + + ----Enough to sorrow you have given; + The purposes of wisdom ask no more: + Nor more would she have craved as due to one + Who in her worst distress, had often felt + The unbounded might of prayer; and learned, with soul + Fixed on the cross, that consolation springs + From sources deeper far than deepest pain + For the meek sufferer. Why then should we read + The forms of things with an unworthy eye? + She sleeps in the calm earth, and peace is here. + +Then follow the beautiful lines about the weeds, the spear-grass, the +mist and rain-drops, as quoted above; but the close of the passage is +extended as follows: + + ----All the griefs + That passing shows of Being leave behind, + Appeared an idle dream, that could maintain + Nowhere dominion o'er the enlightened spirit + Whose meditative sympathies repose + Upon the breast of Faith. I turned away, + And walked along my road in happiness. + +It remains to be said that a certain number of Wordsworth's poems--and +these were, as we might expect, among his best--have stood unchanged in +all the editions from the first, running the gauntlet of their author's +critical moods for half a century, and coming out untouched at last. I +will not call them uncorrected poems, but rather poems in which all the +needed corrections were made before their first publication, for they +belong to that exquisite class of creations--too small a class, even in +the works of the greatest masters--in which the poet has fused +completely the refractory element of language before pouring it out into +the mould of poetic form. Among these untouched poems are three from the +"Lyrical Ballads"--"A slumber did my spirit seal," "Three years she grew +in sun and shower," and "She dwelt among the untrodden ways"--all +written at the age of twenty-nine; such are the "Yew Tree," written four +years later, and "She was a phantom of delight." Several of the best +sonnets, too, were unchanged; as that on "Westminster Bridge," and +"Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour." + +And lastly, I may mention one or two changes of text which Wordsworth +did not make, but which belong to the class for which careless editors +or proofreaders are responsible. An edition well known to the American +public is especially peccant in this respect; that beautiful line, for +instance, in "The Pet Lamb"-- + + And that green corn all day is rustling in thy ears, + +becomes, + + That green cord all day is rustling in thy ears. + +And here is a really interesting _erratum_; it occurs in the poem of +"The Idiot Boy," where it has stood unnoticed for twenty years and more. +Wordsworth's stanzas, describing the boy's night-long ride under the +moon, "from eight o'clock till five," hearing meanwhile "the owls in +tuneful concert strive," originally put these words into his mouth, the +actual words of his hero, as Wordsworth tells us in a note: + + The cocks did crow to-whoo, to-whoo, + And the Sun did shine so cold, + Thus answered Johnny in his glory. + +But this reading puzzled the proofreader. How could the sun shine at +night? This being clearly impossible, he restored the idiot boy to +partial sanity. He made him say: + + The cocks did crow to-whoo, to-whoo, + And the Moon did shine so cold; + +and the only wonder is that he did not also read, + + The cocks did crow cock-a-doodle-doo. + +Some one proposes, I believe, a similar emendation in "As You Like It," +intending to make the Duke speak better sense than Shakespeare put into +his mouth. He is to say, + + Sermons in books. + Stones in the running brooks, and good in everything. + +But while in the main the text of Shakespeare is bettering under +criticism, Wordsworth is suffering miscorrection; and for the good that +he has to give us we cannot quite dispense with the original editions. + + TITUS MUNSON COAN. + + + + +PORTRAIT D'UNE JEUNE FEMME INCONNUE, + +GALERIE DE FLORENCE. + + + I saw a picture in a gallery: + Go where I will, it still abides with me. + The hair rich brown, one lovely golden tress + Strayed from the braid and touched the loveliness + Of the fair neck, so smooth, so white, so young, + It shamed the pearls a prince's hand had strung. + The dress is white, with here and there a gleam + Of amber brilliant, sunlight on a stream! + And hanging on her arm, a scarf; the thing + About that glorious head and neck to fling, + Protecting from the night, scarlet and black and gold, + And gems are woven in each gleaming fold. + The picture has that gracious air which tells + The hand that painted it was Raphael's. + They know she's beautiful, and know no more. + Thus questioned I, as many did before: + "Why art thou sad, thou delicate, proud face? + Thou art a Dame of bright and cheerful race, + Thy fortunes grand, thy home this Florence fair. + Does an unworthy heart thy palace share? + Or with a soft caprice dost turn from joy, + And play with sorrow as a costly toy? + Or has thy page forgotten, or done worse-- + Failed he to find the fond expected verse + Thy lover promised thee? I know not why + I linger near thee, beautiful and sad, + Yet with such sorrow, who would have thee glad?" + (Is she not gifted with the anointed eye + That sees the trouble of the passer-by?) + "Is thine that great, that tender sympathy + That calls all heart-aches nearer unto thee? + Or a great soul with aspirations rife, + Feeling the insufficiency of this our life? + Thou hast attraction of a grander tone, + Some charm more subtle e'en than beauty's own! + "Though woman throws no greater lure than this, + The lip regretful which we fain would kiss, + The eye made softer by the unfallen tear, + And sunlight brighter for the shadow near. + Why do I ask? will woman ever tell + The secret of the charm that fits her well?" + She did not answer, sweet, mysterious Dame. + I left her sadly, locked in gilded frame. + + M. E. W. S. + + + + +MISS TINSEL. + +A GOLD-MINER'S LOVE STORY.--IN FIVE CHAPTERS. + + + + +CHAPTER I. + +A GOLD-DIGGING RECLUSE. + + +On a knoll, not far from a running stream, was pitched a rough canvas +tent. It was of the "wall" sort, and was pegged to the ground with +strong fastenings. Inside were a hammock, a coarse table, two or three +stools, and some boxes and barrels. There were likewise a gridiron, a +"spider," an iron kettle, some tin dishes and cups, and a pair of +candlesticks of the same material. Outside there was a trench dug, by +way of drainage, so that the floor within was kept hard and dry; but the +floor was of earth merely. There was not a flower, or a picture, or the +least attempt at ornament whatever within the tent. Hence the interior +looked bare, sordid, and forbidding. And yet, grim as it was, the tent +had been the solitary abode of its occupant for many months. In the +midst of gold, in quantity outstripping the wildest dreams of his +boyhood, this man had chosen to be a miser. In the midst of a society +whose reckless joviality and wild profusion were perhaps without +precedent, he had chosen to be a recluse. For this self indulgence he +had to pay a price. But he consoled himself, remembering that a price +has to be paid for everything. + +Chester Harding came to Bullion Flat about a year before. He had no +friends and no money. The former he could do without, he thought, but +the latter was indispensable. So he got work on the Flat, turning a +spade and plying a rocker for five dollars a day. Such work was then +better paid as a rule, but Harding, though diligent and strong, was not +used to toil, and hence was awkward and comparatively inefficient. He +improved with practice and strove doggedly on, never losing a day, +saving every penny, spending nothing for drink or good fellowship, +courting no man's smile, and indifferent to all men's frowns. He was +savagely bent on achieving independence, and in no long time, after a +fashion, he got it. Independence, in this sense, consisted in a share of +a paying claim, and in the whole of a "wall" tent. In the former he dug +and washed, morosely enough, with five or six partners; but he made up +for this enforced and distasteful social attrition by living in his tent +alone. + +Harding was a man getting toward middle life, strongly built, but not +tall, with a grave, handsome face and speech studiously reserved and +cold. He seemed to fear lest he might be thought educated, and, as if to +disarm such a suspicion, his few words were apt to be abrupt and homely. +When he first came to the Flat he had two leathern trunks, and these in +due time were bestowed in the tent on the knoll. One Sunday Harding +opened them. The first contained some respectable garments, such as +might belong to the ordinary wardrobe of a gentleman. There were white +shirts among the rest, and some pairs of kid gloves. Of all these +articles Harding made a pile in the rear of his tent and then +deliberately set them on fire. "I couldn't afford it before," he +muttered. "They might have bought a meal or two if need were; but +now----" To be rich enough to gratify a caprice was clearly very +agreeable to the man; for presently he brought out a number of +books--old favorites obviously--and treated them in the same incendiary +manner. The Shakespeare and the Milton, the Macaulay and the Buckle +spluttered and crackled reproachfully in the flames; yet their destroyer +never winced, but added to the holocaust heaps of letters, and at last +two or three miniatures saved for the fire as a final tid-bit, and gazed +with grim joy as the whole crumbled in the end to powdery ashes. Chester +Harding reserved nothing but one little volume, bound in velvet with +gilt clasps, and one faded old daguerreotype, which he replaced in his +trunk side by side, and then covered quickly so that they should be out +of sight. It seemed to be his wish to hide and to forget every trace of +his past life. + +That life had been a hard and bitter one. From his earliest childhood +Harding had been a victim of the weakness and cruelty of others. A +miserable home, made a hell by drink and contention, was at last broken +up in ruin, and the young man went forth into the world to meet coldness +and injustice at every turn. Suspicion and selfishness are among the +almost certain fruits of an experience like this, and the world is +naturally more ready to condemn such fruits than to find excuses for +them. When Harding found himself unpopular and distrusted he as +naturally shaped his conduct so as to justify its condemnation. +Surrounded from the beginning of his life by bad influences, and by +these almost exclusively, he found little to soften his harsh judgment +of men or to mitigate his resentment for their ill treatment. In time he +fell in with one who with greater strength and higher wisdom might +perhaps have led him up to nobler views and a loftier destiny. For he +loved her deeply and without reservation. But her charms of person found +no counterparts in her mind or heart, and Harding was cheated and +betrayed. To escape old thoughts and associations, and to mend if +possible broken fortunes, he sought the Land of Gold. He had heard that +men were more generous there than elsewhere, less cunning, tricky, and +censorious. Perhaps even he might find average acceptance among new +scenes and among a new people. + +But on the day he landed at San Francisco Harding was robbed by a fellow +traveller, whom he had befriended, of the last penny he had in the +world. The man had shared his stateroom on board the steamer, and knew +that he had a draft on the agent of the Rothschilds. When Harding cashed +his draft he took the proceeds, in gold coin, to his hotel. That night +he was visited by his shipmate, who contrived to steal the belt +containing this little fortune, and to escape with it to the mines. Next +morning Harding sought a near relative, an older man of known wealth, +his sole acquaintance on the Pacific coast. + +"I've come to you," he said, after receiving a somewhat icy greeting, +"to ask you to help me. A serious misfortune has overtaken me, and----" + +"If it's money you want," interrupted the other brusquely, "I've got +none!" + +This was not the usual fashion of the pioneers. Happily most of them +were made of sweeter and kindlier stuff. But the fates had woven out +poor Harding's earlier fortune, and it was all destined to be of the +same harsh, pitiless web. He bowed his head when these words were said +to him, and with the kind of smile angels must most hate to see on the +faces of those so near and so little below them, he went forth in +silence. Next morning he pawned his watch and made his way up into the +mines. + + * * * * * + +"He's cracked; that's what he is," decided Jack Storm. Since the great +find of gold at Bullion Flat there had been a great rush thither from +the immediate neighborhood, and among the rest quite a deputation +arrived from Boone's Bar. Jack was as great a dandy as ever, and still +wore his gaudy Mexican jacket, with its silver bell buttons, his +flapping trousers to match, and his gigantic and carefully nourished +moustache. + +"Cracked!" repeated Mr. Copperas suavely. "Not he. He takes too good +care of his money for that. No, boys, that ain't the trouble. He's been +'chasing the eagle' in times past; the bird has been too many for him, +and now he's playing to get even." + +"Stuff!" gurgled Judge Carboy, unwilling to part by expectoration with +even the smallest product of his favorite quid. "He's done sutthin' he's +ashamed of. No trifle like that, Cop. He's proberly committed a murder +out East. Bime by we'll hear all about it." + +Jack Storm shook his head. "He's worked side by side with me for nigh a +year, and he wouldn't hurt a fly. Besides, it is his turn next week to +go to 'Frisco for stores." + +"What's that to do with it?" queried Mr. Copperas. + +"A durned sight," returned the other. "Ain't they after these cusses +with a sharp stick who've got in hot water at home? And ain't goin' to +'Frisco for such chaps jes' like walkin' into the lion's mouth? Why, +there's honest miners--and them as ain't honest miners, Cop--who'd a +_leetle_ rather not go down to the Bay jes' now, even among the quiet +folks over at Boone's Bar." + +Mr. Copperas coughed uneasily. "So Harding's going down, is he?" he +inquired. "Right off?" + +"Sartain. You'd better take a trip and keep him company." + +There was a murmur of amusement at this. Everybody at the "Bella Union" +knew that something had been in the air touching chirographic exploits +of Mr. Copperas a few years back at New Orleans, and before he kept the +faro bank at Boone's Bar. + +"For my part," put in Jim Blair, who liked to hear injustice done to no +man, "I s'pose there's reasons why a chap might want to live alone, and +yet mightn't a knifed anybody nor robbed 'em either." + +"That's so, Jim," affirmed Judge Carboy oracularly. "No doubt on't. But +when it's so we usually hear what them reasons is. Now, who knows air a +word on 'em in the case afore us? Anyhow, I hope he's good--good as +gold--only we've had our sheer of troubles in the county, and it's well +to look sharp." + +"When I was a little chap," proceeded Jim Blair with retrospective +deliberation, "I lived in a village on the further side o' the Ohio. +Most folks did their business on t'other bank, and went over generally +by the eight o'clock ferry in the mornin.' Now, there was two or three +that didn't; men whose work lay nigher home, or who went later. But the +crowd went over reg'lar at eight. Arter awhile they got awful sot agin +them who didn't go over at the same time. There weren't no hell's +delights you could think of them fellers didn't lay to the men who +didn't travel by the eight boat; and at last, damn me if they didn't +want to lynch 'em!" + +"Lynch 'em for not goin' in the eight boat!" cried the Judge, whose +respect for the majesty of the law always asserted itself, as was meet, +on hearing any tale of its infringement. + +Jim Blair nodded. "Not so much, I reckon, for not goin' in the eight +boat as for not doin' what other folks did. However, them who ever try +to trouble Ches Harding'll have a rough time, I guess." + +"You think he's sech a game fighter?" inquired Jack Storm with lively +interest. + +"That may be too. But what I meant was, there's them on the Flat who +believe in Ches for all his lonesome ways, and won't see him put upon. +For my part I reckon he's more sinned against than sinnin'." + +"I guess you're half right, Jim," admitted Judge Carboy with diplomatic +concession; "more'n half right. But mark my words"--and the Judge's +voice rose to the orotund swell which denoted his purpose to be more +than commonly impressive--"thar'll be the devil's own time on the Flat +some day, and that air duck'll be king pin and starter of it. I never +know'd no such silent, sulky cuss as that moonin' round but that he +kicked up pettikiler h-- in the long run." + +It will be seen from this that there were differences of opinion +respecting Chester Harding at Bullion Flat, and it cannot be denied that +there was some reason for it. + + + + +CHAPTER II. + +MISS TINSEL. + + +It was in a magnificent theatre that Chester Harding first saw her--a +theatre grand in size and tasteful in decoration. It had only lately +been opened, and was one of the lions of the Golden City. Harding went +there to while away an idle hour, and in order, perhaps, that he might +see all there was to be seen before leaving San Francisco. His visit was +one of merest chance, and no trifle had seemed lighter in all his +California life than his straying that night into the Cosmopolitan +Theatre. + +And yet perhaps it was the turning-point in his existence. Others who +were there from Bullion Flat said afterward that from that night Harding +was transfigured. A blaze of chandeliers, with golden fretwork skirting +the galleries and rich dark velvet framing the boxes, could hardly +surprise him. Nor was there much to astonish--whatever there might be to +admire--in the rows of handsomely dressed women who gave brilliancy to +the audience. Neither could the drama itself, which the manager was +pleased to style "a grand legendary fairy spectacle," move Harding +seriously from his equilibrium. All these splendors, together with the +resonant orchestra, the dazzling scenery, rich in Dutch metal and gold +foil, the sanguinary and crested Baron, the villain of the play, the +iridescent youth, its hero, the demons, who went through traps, vampire +and other--one Blood-Red Demon with a long nose being especially +conspicuous--the fairies, who brought order out of chaos--of whom the +"Queen of the Fairy Bower" was the large-limbed and voluptuous +principal--the "Amazonian Phalanx," who went through unheard-of +manoeuvres with massive tin battle axes and spears--all these failed, it +must be owned, to startle Mr. Harding from his propriety. He had seen +such things, or things very like them, before. And yet he was taken off +his feet, to use the metaphor, and swept away captive by a very torrent +of emotion excited by Miss Tinsel. + +She was only a _coryphee_; that is, she was but one among the minor +subordinates of the ballet. Her advent was accomplished as one of the +"Sprites of the Silver Shower." She had to come chassezing down the +stage, and she never raised her eyelids--before most demurely cast +down--until she was close upon the footlights. But when those eyelids +_did_ go up it was--well, as Judge Carboy afterward used to say, it was +just like sunrise over the mountains at Boone's Bar! A girl with a mass +of bright hair, almost red it looked by daylight, and large gray eyes +that looked as black as soot by the gas, but took on more tender hues by +day--a girl with a figure that was simply perfection, and yet one who +with all her archness seemed to have no vanity. She had many dainty +white skirts, one above another like an artichoke, of fluffy and +diaphanous texture, and although these, it cannot be denied, were +perilously short, somehow Miss Tinsel did not look in the least +immodest. + +All the men from Bullion Flat knew it _was_ Miss Tinsel, since the +"Queen of the Fairy Bower" addressed this charming figure more than once +as "Zephyrind," and a reference to the play-bill thereupon at once +established her identity. + +What strange magnetism there was about this girl Harding, and indeed all +who looked at her, found it hard to define. Perhaps, apart from her +lovely eyes and hair and her exquisite figure, it was because she always +seemed to be drawing away that she proved so fascinating. Even when she +advanced straight toward you she seemed for ever to retreat. By what +subtle and skilful instinct of coquetry Miss Tinsel was enabled to +convey this impression cannot here be explained. That she did convey it +was universally admitted. It appeared, however, on inquiry, that her +dramatic powers were of the slightest. Her beauty and charm were such +that the manager would gladly have put her forward could he have seen +his way to do so. But her success had been so moderate, when the +experiment was tried, in one or two of the "walking ladies" of farces, +that it was thought wisest to let her be seen as much and heard as +little as possible. + +When Harding last saw her that night she was going up to Paradise on one +foot, the other pointing vaguely at nothing behind, the intoxicating +eyes turned up with a charming simulation of pious joy, and the cherry +lips curled into a smile that showed plenty of pearls below. She +vanished from his gaze in a glory of red fire, amid the blare of gongs +and trumpets, while the "Blood-Red Demon" went down to the bad place +under the stage through a trap, and the "Queen of the Fairy Bower," with +felicitous compensation, ascended to the heaven of the flies. + +After this tremendous catastrophe Harding went to his hotel and +reflected. + +That a Timon like himself--a misogynist indeed of the first +water--should fall in love at first sight with a ballet girl certainly +furnished matter for reflection. But reflection did not prevent Timon +from seeking an interview with his unconscious enslaver the next day. +Even cold and soured natures may become under some incentives +enthusiastic and ingenious. + +Harding found out where Miss Tinsel lived, learned that she usually came +from rehearsal at about two, called consequently at three, and coolly +sent in his name, telling the servant that the young lady would know who +he was. As he hoped, the device got him admittance. The girl supposed he +was some one from the theatre whose name she had not caught or had +forgotten. + +It was a very plain and humble room, almost us bare and forbidding +perhaps as the inside of Harding's tent on the knoll, and yet how +glorified was the place with the purple atmosphere of romance! + +Miss Tinsel was as simply equipped as her room: a gown of dark stuff +with a bit of color at the throat, and that was all. Harding saw that +she was not quite so perfect physically as he had thought, and this, +strange as it may seem, instantly increased his passion for her. Nothing +could make her figure other than beautiful, or impair the lustre of her +eyes; but the fair creature had a little range of freckles across her +delicate nose and cheeks, and her hair by day appeared, as has been said +before, nearly red. Her natural smile, on the other hand, as +distinguished from her stage smile, which was merely intoxicating, was +almost heavenly; and it was not made less so by an occasional look that +was grave almost to sadness. + +"Sit down." He was standing stock still and silent in the middle of the +room. "You come from the theatre, don't you?" + +It was a sweet voice--sweet and low--too low, in truth, which was one of +the reasons of its failure in the drama--one of those thrilling +contralto voices, most magnetic and charming when heard by one alone, or +close by, but which lost their magnetism and charm if strained to fill +the ears of a crowd. + +"No--yes--that is, I was there last night. I saw you there," he replies +stupidly. + +"Last night? Oh, yes. But why do you want to see me to-day?" + +This is a hard question to answer; so he tries evasion. + +"Did you get a bouquet?" + +"A perfect love--a beauty--it was thrown at my feet; but I gave it to +her of course." + +"Gave it to _her_?" + +"Miss De Montague--don't you know--the 'Queen of the Fairy Bower?' She +gets all the bouquets." + +"Oh, she does, does she?" + +"Certainly. She is the principal, you know. Her engagement calls for all +the bouquets." + +"Even when they are plainly intended for somebody else?" + +"Ah, but they oughtn't to be intended for somebody else. If any one is +so silly as to think somebody else ought to have a bouquet, any one has +to be punished. Then they forfeit him." + +"Forfeit him?" + +"Or his flowers. They always forfeit you in theatres--if you're late at +rehearsal, you know, or if you keep the stage waiting. But then you +needn't mind. Miss De Montague is a dear, good soul. She took the +bouquet for the look of the thing, you know; that's business; but she +gave me half the flowers when we got home." + +"Does she live here then?" + +"Why, to be sure. You know, we always go to the theatre together. Only +for her I should be quite alone." + +"And do you like this kind of thing?" he asks clumsily. + +She bursts into a merry laugh. "Like it? Why, I get my living by it. We +all have to live, you know, and I've no one to look out for me but +myself, and----" + +She pauses suddenly, having caught his eye fixed upon her with a gaze of +passionate admiration. This first calls up the look of gravity we have +spoken of, and then brings the color sharply to her face. It also +reminds her of the somewhat peculiar character of the interview. The +instant after she resumes, as if continuing her sentence, "Did you come +here to ask me that?" + +"No," he replies bluntly. "I never thought of the question until the +moment before I asked it." + +"Please tell me, then," she proceeds, with gathering surprise, "what +_did_ you come for?" + +He hesitates a moment, moved by the superstition or the honest feeling +that he must tell her no word of untruth, and then quietly answers: + +"I am not sure that I know." + +"Not sure that you know?" + +"No." + +"Perhaps, then, you'll go away, and when you _are_ sure----" + +"Come back again?" hazards he. + +"I didn't say that. You look and talk like a gentleman, and if, as I +hope, you are one, you will know that I can't see strangers--people who +have no business with me--and so you must excuse me." She has risen and +moves with some dignity toward the door. + +"One moment," he interposes. "Forgive me; you know for your part that it +is impossible I should wish to offend----" + +"How should I? You come here to me a stranger, and refuse to say what +for." + +"No. I did not refuse. I only said I was not sure that I knew why I +came." + +"Then you must be crazy!" she blurts out impulsively. + +"Perhaps I am. I begin to think so." + +"Then I wish you would go away!" she goes on with apprehension. "I'll +tell you what, Mr. Bellario is here, and he's--oh, terribly strong!" + +"Mr. Bellario?" he echoes. + +"Yes. The 'Blood-Red Demon,' you know. Didn't you see him go through the +traps?" + +Harding laughs, very much amused. "And you mean to threaten me with the +'Blood-Red Demon,' do you?" + +"Oh, no," she responds gently, but again edging toward the door--"not +threaten; but"--in a very conciliatory tone--"if you won't say what you +come for and won't go away----" + +"But I will," he says gravely. + +"Will which?" + +"Will both. I will say what I came for and then I will go away." + +"I don't mean to be rude, you know," she puts in, softening. + +"Nor I. Now I will tell you. I came because I could not possibly stay +away--because you drew me toward you with an irresistible force----" + +"I'm sure I didn't!" she protests indignantly. + +"Unconsciously, of course. You may think me foolish--wild if you please. +I can't help that. You will know better in time. I come to you saying +not a wrong word, thinking not a wrong thought. There is nothing against +me. At home I was a gentleman. I ask leave to visit you, respectfully as +a friend, nothing more." + +"But why?" she asks, bewildered. + +"Because I admire you greatly, inexpressibly, and I must tell you so." +She turns scarlet now. "But I shall never tell you this--not again--or +anything else in words you do not choose to hear. All I ask is the leave +now and then to see and to speak with you." + +This was very embarrassing. Had he said he loved her, and at first +sight, she would have turned him away. She would have distrusted both +his sincerity and his motives. But he did not say this. On the contrary, +he offered in explicit terms, it would seem, not to say it. She +therefore naturally took refuge in generalities. + +"But what you ask won't be possible. What would people say? This is a +very bad, a scandalous country, I mean. What would Miss De Montague +think, or Mr. Bellario?" + +"What people will say or think hardly needs to be considered," said +Harding steadily, "since in a week I shall have gone to my home in the +mines. You won't be troubled with me long--twice more perhaps. Only once +if you prefer it. All shall be exactly as you wish it. Is not that +fair?" + +Miss Tinsel was saved the present necessity for replying to a question +or coping with a situation both of which she found extremely perplexing, +since at this juncture the door opened and admitted the "Queen of the +Fairy Bower" and the "Blood-Red Demon," who had apparently been out for +a morning walk. To Harding's surprise, the "Queen" was a motherly +looking woman of forty-five and the "Demon" a weak-eyed young man, with +a pasty white face, and some fifteen years younger. Both were much +overdressed, and both stared vigorously at Harding--the "Queen" with an +air intended to represent fashionable raillery, the "Demon" with haughty +surprise. But the visitor avoided explanations that might have been +embarrassing by bowing low to the company and passing from the room. + + + + +CHAPTER III. + +THE CUP AND THE LIP. + + +Her real name was Jane Green. But Jane Green would never do for the +play-bill; so the manager, exercising his peculiar and traditional +prerogative, had rechristened the young lady for the histrionic world, +and she appeared as "Aurora Tinsel." A poor, almost friendless girl, she +had left the Atlantic States with an aunt who had been the wife of the +"property man" in the theatre. Soon after the aunt died, and Jane had +gladly accepted the offer of Miss De Montague to live with her, and, by +helping that lady with her dresses, to render an equivalent for her +society and protection. + +Harding was a wise man in his generation, foolish as in some respects he +may appear. We offer no explanation of his swift and unreasoning +infatuation, because it is just such men who do just such rash and +impulsive things. But he was sagacious enough to know that a man who +really wants a woman is less likely to get her by being too quick than +even by being too slow. Women who are interested always maintain the +contrary; but this is because they want to bag their game instantly, +whether they mean to throw it away afterward or not. The sex are not +apt, however, to err by over-rating the value of what they get too +easily, and this Harding was philosopher enough to know. + +Hence, while he again sought Miss Tinsel twice before his departure, and +while his admiration, although respectful, was not concealed, he did not +go so far as to ask the girl to become his wife. It appeared that after +the run of the current spectacle at the theatre a "great tragedian" was +to play an engagement there, and the opportunity was to be taken for the +ballet and pantomime troupe to make a tour of the mines. Miss De +Montague was to go as a chief attraction, and Miss Tinsel was to go +also, and among the places they were to visit was Bullion Flat. + +These plans left open a space of three months, during which Harding +could think of what he was at, and Miss Tinsel could think of what he +meant, and several other persons who were interested could make up their +minds what to do. + +The first step taken by Harding on his return was highly confirmatory, +in the judgment of the Flat, of the opinion expressed by Jack Storm some +time before. A contract was made with a builder, and close by the tent +on the knoll there speedily arose a cottage of fair proportions, which +was evidently meant to supersede the humbler structure which for a year +had formed Harding's home. No one doubted his ability prudently to incur +such an outlay. He had been saving to parsimony, and he had been +prosperous. But why, when a tent had so long sufficed to him, and when +he so disliked to part with money, he should go to so needless an +expense, was so obscure that to accept Jack Storm's solution impugning +Harding's sanity was the easiest and consequently the most popular way +of solving the enigma. + +The cottage was built notwithstanding, and it was soon the subject of +general remark that Harding was becoming more genial and "sociable" than +before. He astonished Judge Carboy and Jim Blair by asking them to drink +one night at the "Bella Union." He smiled affably and passed the time of +day with Jack Storm and his other companions when they met to begin work +on the claim for the day. He ordered champagne for the crowd on the +evening when a green tree was lashed to the rooftree of his cottage on +the knoll; and at last he raised wonder and surprise to their perihelion +by actually giving a housewarming. + +"I know'd it all along," affirmed Judge Carboy that night to his +familiars. They were taking a cocktail at the "Bella Union" by way of +preface to "bucking" against Mr. Copperas's bank--"I know'd it all +along. He's got a wife out East, and she's a comin' out to jine him in +the new house." + +"Is that the 'suthin' you talked of that he was ashamed of, Judge?" +laughed Jim Blair. "It looks like it, for sartin he never said nothin' +about her." + +"A man may git married," retorted the Judge with judicial acumen, "and +yit do suthin' else to be ashamed of, mayn't he? There's been murderers +and horse thieves stretched afore now who had wives, hain't there? And +the last chap the boys hung to a flume up to Redwood, he had three +wives, didn't he? And they all come to the funeral." And with this +triumphant vindication of his position the Judge sternly deposited half +a paper of fine-cut in his mouth and started for the luxurious apartment +of Mr. Copperas. + +Next morning Bullion Flat was in a flurry of excitement and pleasurable +anticipation. The "Grand Cosmopolitan Burlesque, Ballet, and Spectacle +Troupe" had arrived, and were to play in the theatre attached to the +"Bella Union." It was not, however, until the succeeding afternoon that +Chester Harding called upon Miss Tinsel at the same hotel. + +It was a good sign that that young lady crimsoned at the first sight of +him; what she first said was another: + +"You have not been in a hurry," she pouted, "to come and see me." + +"I supposed you would be very busy," said he smiling, and devouring her +with his eyes. "Were you so anxious to have me come?" + +"Anxious?" she repeated; and then added, illogically, "I supposed you +would please yourself." + +He nodded. "And how do you like Bullion Flat?" + +"I think it ever so pretty--only I don't like the earth all torn up, and +such ugly holes and scars." + +"We have to get at the gold, you know," he explained, "even at such a +cost. But the hilltops, anyhow, are spared." + +She looked through a window and pointed at the most picturesque eminence +in the neighborhood--the knoll. "That is your house?" she observed +shyly. + +"Yes. Do you like it?" + +"I think it lovely--situation and all." + +"And how did you know it was mine?" + +"Oh," she said, laughing, "we show-folks see a great many +people--besides being seen by them--and I've heard a lot about you." + +Harding's face darkened a little. "Then you've heard that I'm not much +liked?" + +"I've heard that some say so. But what of that? Miss De Montague says +she wouldn't give a fig for a man everybody speaks well of--and she +quoted something from a comedy--the 'School for Scandal.'" + +"Will you tell me what people say?" he inquired curiously. + +"Oh, that you are gloomy, reserved, and live all alone, and that you +are--are not extravagant, and that you haven't had a very happy life." + +"That last at least, if true, is a misfortune rather than a fault." + +"It's all misfortune, ain't it?" said the girl sagely. "People don't +make themselves. There's Mr. Bellario now. He thinks nature really meant +him for a great warrior--somebody like Napoleon, you know. And instead +of that he's--well, he calls himself a professional gentleman, but the +boys call him a tumbler. I suppose it would be much grander to kill +people than to jump through 'vampire traps'; but you see he didn't get +his choice--any more than I did." + +"Then you didn't want to go on the stage?" + +"No, indeed. It was just for bread. Aunty was a 'second old woman'--and +they got me in for 'utility,' as they call it. There was no one to care +for me, and I was glad to earn an honest living; but like it! Never!" + +"You say there was no one to care for you?" said Harding gently. "Had +you no friends--no parents?" + +Jane reddened painfully, and the sad look came quickly into her face. +"My mother is dead, you see," she replied, with hesitancy, +"and--and--I'd rather not speak of this any more, please." + +"Surely," he exclaimed hastily, "I've no right to catechize you. Pray +forgive my asking at all. I ought to have been more careful. I know what +trouble is, and how to feel for those who suffer." + +She looked at him earnestly. "You have suffered yourself, then--they +were right when they said yours had not been a happy life?" + +"I have no right to whine--but happy--no, far from it." + +Jane's lovely face took on its softest and tenderest expression. + +"They said that lately you have been happier--gayer than ever +before--and that people liked you--oh, ever so much better than they +used to. Why is it that people like those the best who seem to need help +and sympathy the least?" + +Jane leaned from the window as she spoke and toyed with some running +vine that clambered to the casement. The grace and beauty of her figure +were made conspicuous by the movement, and Harding paused a moment +before he replied: + +"People like to be cheerful, I suppose, and people like others to be +like themselves, I know. It is true that I have been unhappy--that my +life has been morose and solitary. How much this has been my own fault +and how much that of others, need not be said. But it is also true that +of late I have been far happier. Shall I tell you why?" + +His voice was deep and earnest, and something in his eyes made the girl +crimson again, and turn her own to the distant hills. + +"If you please," she faltered, in her low, musical contralto. + +"Shall I tell you too why I have built that cottage you are looking at?" +he went on with increasing earnestness. "It is because it has been my +hope, my prayer, that this sad, lonely life of mine was nearly over. It +is because I have believed that after much pain, and doubt, and +bitterness my trust in men might be brought back through my love for a +woman. The cottage--it is for you, Jane. I love you, Jane. Do you hear +me? From the moment I saw you, I loved you. I resolved to ask you to +marry me. Jane, will you do so?" + +While he spoke the color had been fading steadily from her face, and +when he stopped the girl was ashy pale. He looked at her anxiously and +impatiently. + +"I--I--am--so sorry," she muttered at last, as if each word were a +separate pain. + +"Sorry? God! Why?" Then with swift suspicion, "Jane, do you care +for--are you engaged to some one?" + +She shook her head mournfully. + +"Do you see that sun going down over the hills?" She turned her +beautiful eyes full upon Harding as she spoke, with a look of ineffable +tenderness and sorrow. "Well, you must let what you have said go down +with that sun, and never think of it--never speak of it again." + +It was Harding's turn to blanch now, and the blood retreated from his +swarthy cheeks until they looked almost ghastly. + +"Why?" and his voice came involuntarily, almost in a whisper. + +"Do not ask me--have pity--do not ask me." + +"I must ask you," he cried impetuously, "but yet I need not perhaps. You +care for no one else? Then it must be that you do not, you cannot, care +for me. Is that it, Jane?" + +"That is not it." + +"Not it!" he cried joyfully. "Then you _do_ care for me a little--just a +little, Jane?--a little which is to grow into a great deal by and by! +Oh, child, child, think how wretched I have been all these years! Think +how I have waited and waited. I lived for twelve long months, Jane, +alone, without a soul, without even a dog, in a tent on that knoll; and +so hungry, Jane--so hungry for sympathy, for love. It comes to me at +last, dear Jane, what I have longed for and begged for so long. Don't, +don't--as you hope for mercy, don't take it away again!" + +"You are good," she said softly, "whatever they may say. It is good and +noble of you. Why should I tell you lies? I do like you very much, for +all," looking down with a faint blush, "we have met and known each other +so little. But all the same, it cannot be." + +"Cannot again," he cried impatiently. "Once more, I ask you, will you +tell me why not?" + +She looked at him half frightened, for there was something of mastery in +his tone; then, standing erect, and with a positiveness as strong as his +own, she answered, "Because I should disgrace you." + +"Because you are on the stage!" he exclaimed disdainfully. "Is that it?" + +"That is something," returned Jane humbly, "but perhaps not much. I am +hardly important enough to be worth even that sort of reproach. And +besides the people of California are too liberal to apply it. I know I +am only a ballet dancer"--and the poor girl tried to smile here--"and a +pretty bad one at that. But I work hard for an honest living, and no one +can say I have ever disgraced myself." + +"Then how can you disgrace me?" + +"I have begged you not to ask me." + +"I must!" cried Harding passionately; "and I have the right to do so. +Would you have me take your cool 'no' when you care for no one else and +do care for me, and to go my way satisfied? I can't--I won't!" + +"You will be sorry," said Jane pitifully. + +"Let me be. Anything rather than the doubt. Give me the truth." + +"Well then." She turned her back now: and looked from the window with +her grave, sad face, and spoke in a dull, measured way, like the +swinging of a pendulum. "I am a convict's daughter. My father is in the +State prison of New York at Auburn." + +"For what crime?" + +"Murder. It was in the first degree. The Governor commuted it to +imprisonment for life. There were extenuating circumstances. I went down +on my knees and prayed that he might be saved from the gallows." + +"And his victim?" + +"Was his wife--my mother." + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + +A MYSTERY AND A PARTING. + + +The troupe of which Miss De Montague and Mr. Bellario were prime spirits +made a profound impression at Bullion Flat; so profound, in truth, that +before their three nights were over a fresh engagement was made for +their return a fortnight later. It was agreed that at that time, and on +their return from other points, they should appear for an additional +three nights, and thus afford their admirers opportunities for which the +first essay had been insufficient. This arrangement was highly agreeable +to Miss De Montague and Mr. Bellario for reasons largely connected, +respectively, with the excellent cuisine and bar of the Bella Union. +"Why, my dear," observed the lady, "when I fust come up to do the +'legitimate,' fifteen months ago, love nor money could buy a morsel of +supper after the play. We had to do with a pot of ginger, and dig it out +with the Macbeth daggers, and wash it down with bad beer." + +The arrangement was also satisfactory to Miss Tinsel. It seemed well to +her that she should be absent for a time; and yet she could not deny a +feeling of joy over the thought of returning. Her lover had been greatly +shocked by the dismal tale she had recited; but, to the credit of his +manliness, he had refused to accept the facts as conclusive arguments +against his suit. "Was it her fault," argued he, "that her father was a +scoundrel?" Why should stigma or disability of any sort attach to her +for that which she had no hand in, and had been powerless to prevent? On +the contrary, should not the world, or any part of it that might come in +contact with her, treat a helpless and innocent girl with even greater +tenderness and commiseration because of the undeserved and terrible +misfortune that had befallen her? + +Jane had resolved that she ought not to be moved by such arguments, and +yet she could not help liking to hear them. It was in the end agreed +between them--by Harding's earnest entreaties--that she should think the +matter over, and that her final decision should be withheld until the +return of the troupe to perform its second engagement. Jane had talked +with Miss De Montague, who, in spite of some foibles, was a kind-hearted +and right-minded woman, and Miss De Montague had strongly urged that +Jane's sensitiveness was overstrained. If Mr. Harding had been told all +the truth without reserve and he still wished to make Jane his wife, and +Jane wished to marry him, that was enough. To stand about and moon over +it, and wonder or care what people would say, was all fiddle-faddle, and +all sensible people would call it so. Besides, California was different +from other places. It was the custom there to give everybody a chance, +and value them for what they did and what they were _now_--and not for +what other people, or even they themselves, had done before. It is right +to admit that the amiable lady's passion for Mr. Bellario--whose similar +feeling for Miss Tinsel was more than suspected--had something to do +with inspiring all these sage suggestions; but the suggestions were not +deprived of good sense by that. + +During the fortnight that passed between Jane's departure and her return +the cottage that Harding designed for her future home fast approached +completion. Meanwhile its owner's claim was doing better, and his +coffers were consequently fuller than ever before. He resolved that, +come what might, Jane should become his wife; and it was in this frame +of mind that Harding walked out by the riverside on the night the troupe +returned. As before, he resolved not to hurry in his suit, and therefore +determined to omit calling until the following day. + +The night was clear, the stars shining brightly, and the stream ran +gurgling forward with a pleasant sound. Suddenly, as Harding strolled +musing along the bank, some one touched him on the shoulder from behind; +and turning, he beheld the "Blood-Red Demon," Mr. Bellario. That +gentleman wore a long cloak, tossed across his breast and left shoulder, +and a slouched sombrero; and his white, pasty face wore a look of +inscrutable mystery. + +"Hist!" he enjoined in a stage whisper; "all is discovered!" Then he +drew back, with finger on lip, as if to watch the effect of his +revelation. + +"What's the matter?" said Harding. "What do you mean?" + +"Mean! Ha! ha!" and the "Demon" laughed witheringly. "He asks me what I +mean! Mark me," proceeded he, with a sudden transition, "I know your +secret!" + +"Oh, you do, do you? Which one do you mean?" questioned Harding +scornfully. + +"I have neither time nor heart to trifle," said the "Demon," waving his +arm with an air of ineffable majesty. "I shall be brief and to the +point." + +"You'll very much oblige me." + +"Enough. What prompts me to this midnight deed, 'twere bootless now to +ask, and idle to reveal. Therefore to my tale. You are in love with +Aurora--with Miss Tinsel?" + +"By what right----" + +"Spare your reproaches. I am in love with her too!" + +"You?" + +"Is that so strange? Long ere you crossed our path I knew and loved +her. But this is neither here nor there." + +"I should think not." + +"Professionally," continued the "Demon," with great dignity, "she is, of +course, my inferior. Socially--well, you know, I think the damning +family secret----" + +"Whatever that may be, it is no sin of hers. I think you may wisely +leave it a secret--so far, that is, as to omit crying it on the +housetops." + +"Save to yourself and Miss De Montague, no hint of the tragedy has +passed my lips. But to the business between us----" + +"My good sir," said Harding, with irritation, "I know of none, so far. +If you have anything to say to me, I'll listen. If not, I'll pass on." + +"Ha! ha! ha!" laughed the "Demon" with bitter mockery. "I come to serve +ye, and ye would spurn me from yer path! Poor, poor humanity! Why, why +should I laugh when I should rather weep?" + +"I don't know, I'm sure," answered Harding simply, "and I don't want to +be uncivil. But it certainly isn't asking too much to want to know what +you mean." + +"No," responded the "Demon," with melodious sadness--"not too much. +Though every word be torture, yet I will e'en go through the ordeal. +Sir, what I have to say--and it cuts me to the heart to say it--is that +this lady--this young girl--this Aurora Tinsel--is worthy of neither of +us." + +"What!" + +"She is unworthy--lost--and capable of the worst deception!" + +"That's false!" + +"How, sir?" + +"That's false. And you or any one else who says it is a liar!" + +The "Demon" drew suddenly back, clapped his hand to an imaginary sword +hung at his left side--and then thought better of it. + +"Pshaw!" he exclaimed lightly, but keeping at a wary distance from +Harding's reach. "Why should I yield to rage? My prowess is well +known--and, after all, this worthy gentleman speaks in ignorance. Sir," +he added, changing his tone with elaborate and chivalrous grace, "I +speak of what I know, and speak only with the best of motives. But it is +due to you that I offer to make good my words. I can absolutely prove +that what I have said is true." + +"Prove it, how?" + +"By enabling you to witness for yourself that which justifies what I +say." + +"And you can do this?" + +"Almost to a certainty, and probably this very night." + +Harding hesitated. To take the course proposed seemed like doubt, and +doubt was unworthy. To refuse to take that course might subject Jane to +calumny, which he might on the other hand nip in the bud. Presently he +spoke: + +"What do you propose?" + +"That you go with me at once, and judge for yourself. We may fail +tonight, but if so, our success to-morrow will be all but certainty." + +The man's air of conviction was impressive, and Harding, fearful, yet +hoping that he might unearth some strange mistake or deception, agreed +to the plan proposed. It was settled that the two should meet an hour +later at the "Bella Union," and they parted now with that understanding. +Bellario, however, took occasion before leaving his companion to make +his insinuations so far specific as to tell him that Miss Tinsel had +made the acquaintance of a certain handsome, dark-eyed man, who had +followed the troupe ever since it had last been at Bullion Flat; that +this man evidently admired the girl very much, and that she had +encouraged his advances in the most unmistakable manner; that she had +gone so far as to receive her admirer at her room in the hotel, and that +at so late an hour as to excite the censure of the not over-prudish Miss +De Montague; and that, in fine, Miss Tinsel's hitherto spotless name had +been so tarnished by the events of the last fortnight as to make it +certain none would ever again think her the pure girl she had always +hitherto been held to be. + +With the blood tingling through every vein, with nerves at extreme +tension, and a heart full of bitterness, Chester Harding passed away. +Something told him that the tale, black and dismal as it was, was +likewise true. When Jane told him the story of her father's crime and +its punishment, Harding felt as if there had fallen between him and his +prospect of happiness a veil that made it look doubtful and unreal. The +girl's firmness in telling him the truth, and the assertion of her +opinion as to the proper bearing and consequence of that truth on her +relations with Harding, had assuredly deeply impressed and comforted +him. It was something to face, after all, and even in California, this +wedding the child of a murderer and felon. Yet her own perfect goodness +was the justification and would be the reward of such an act. But when +Jane's goodness itself was in question it was no wonder that Harding's +heart sank within him. He was no coward, but his experience had taught +him distrust; and he waited for the stipulated hour to pass in an agony +of doubt and pain. + +The "Bella Union" had two long wings, perhaps thirty feet apart, running +at right angles with its facade toward the rear. In the second story of +one wing there were sleeping rooms. Both stories of the opposite wing +were occupied by the theatre. The latter was quite dark, and hither +Bellario conducted Harding after they had met in the saloon below. + +"Be silent," whispered the "Demon," when they met--"be silent and +follow." + +Up two winding staircases, then through a long passage, and they stood +in a gallery over the stage and directly facing the other wing. + +"Look!" said the "Demon"; "he's there now!" He still whispered, for the +night was hot and windows were everywhere open. Through one of these +directly opposite Harding distinctly saw Miss Tinsel. She was talking +earnestly with some one not in sight. Harding gazed breathlessly and +listened. Presently a second figure came between the window and the +light within. It was that of a tall, handsome man with dark eyes. He +replied to the girl with earnestness equal to her own, but in tones as +carefully suppressed. As the eyes of the observers got used to the +situation, they descried a bed on the further side of the room. On this +Miss Tinsel, after a time, sat down. The man followed and seated himself +by her side. A moment or two more, and he took both her hands and +clasped them in his own. They still talked, obviously with deep feeling, +and at last Miss Tinsel threw her arms around her companion's neck and +kissed him. + +"Enough," hoarsely exclaimed Harding. "Enough--and more than enough!" + +"You'll wait no longer?" asked the other. + +"Not an instant. Can't you conceive, man--you who profess yourself to +have cared for her--what a hell this is?" + +"I've been through it before," muttered the "Demon," "and the wound +isn't quite so fresh." + +They descended in silence to the saloon, and there Harding spoke more +freely: + +"See here--you've saved me from a great peril--and although I think I +had rather you had shot me outright, you deserve no less gratitude. If +you want help--money--for instance----" + +The "Demon" waved his hand in lofty refusal. + +"As Claude Melnotte says, sir, I gave you revenge--I did not sell it. +There are better men than I in the world, and lots of them. But I try to +do as I would be done by--at least in a scrape like this. I wish you +good night, and I hope you'll take comfort. After a little it'll seem +easier to you. Certainly the ill news should come easier even now than +it would afterward. As Othello says, ''Tis better as it is.'" + +He bowed and passed away. Ascending to the apartment of Miss De +Montague, he made himself so agreeable as to be able to borrow from that +lady a dozen shining eagles; and, thus provided, descended promptly to +Mr. Copperas's bank, where he whiled away the night--assisted by copious +drinks and unlimited cigars--at the enlivening game of faro. + +As for Harding, he went to the bar of the saloon and took what was for +him a stiff glass of brandy. Then he turned abruptly on his heel, and +without sending his name before him, marched straight up to Miss +Tinsel's room. + +She met him at the door with a glad cry--and then shrank back abashed. + +"I see," she murmured, in her low, sweet voice, "you don't care to have +me repulse you again. You have thought it over--and you agree that it is +better not." + +He came just inside the door, but did not sit, although she motioned him +to a chair. + +"I agree," he repeated mechanically--"I agree--with you that it is +better not." Then he looked suspiciously around the room. There was no +one there--but a door opened into another room beyond. Jane followed his +eyes. "That is Miss De Montague's room," she said; "we are always next +to each other." + +"And she is there now?" + +"Yes--with Mr. Bellario--he is calling on her." + +Harding paused a minute, and then went on in a hard, constrained voice, +like one who repeats a disagreeable lesson. + +"I have thought it right to see you--now, for the last time--and say I +think it best--and right--that we should part." + +Jane turned very pale, and the old grave look of hopeless pain came over +her face. But she answered with infinite softness and humility: + +"It is right--you know I thought so from the first. You should not marry +a--a convict's daughter." + +"It is not because you are a convict's daughter." + +"The reason is sufficient." + +"I repel it," he cried vehemently--"I will have none of it--I told you +so before--I repeat it now. Listen," and he crossed the room swiftly and +closed both doors. + +"I loved you for yourself--dearly--dearly. What did it matter to +me--what fault was it of yours--what other people did, or what or where +they were? In this grand, new country, men--some men, at least--have +grown high enough and strong enough to shake off such paltry prejudices +as those. To me they are as nothing." + +"You led me to think so," Jane said gently. + +"Why should I care for your being a ballet-dancer--or for the other +thing, when you had never disgraced yourself? But now it is different." + +"Now it is different!" she echoed in amazement. + +"Different in this," pursued he with growing excitement, "that before +you were a pure girl--pure as snow--everybody said that--and now you +are--are--compromised." + +The blood rushed in a torrent up to her hair. + +"Who says it?" she demanded, now first showing warmth--"who dares say +it?" + +"Alas, Jane," he replied, "don't make things worse by deception at +parting. Let us be at least as we have always been, honest and +unreserved to each other." + +"What you have said just now," said the girl' proudly, "is an insult. +The time has been when you would not have heard another say such +words--either to me or of me; and yet they are as little deserved now as +they have ever been." + +"They are, are they?" he retorted. "Then pray tell me who was that man +you have had here within an hour?" + +She turned deadly white, and opened her lips thrice to speak before the +words would shape themselves. + +"That--man?" + +"Do you deny having a man with you?" + +She shook her head piteously. "No--there was a man here--and with me." + +"Ah, you confess it then," cried he, as if her admission made what he +knew more heinous. "Who was this man? Confess all!" + +"He--he--wanted help--asked for money. He saw me in the play at Boone's +Bar--and thinking me richer than I am, asked me for money." + +Harding laughed scornfully. "And do you expect me to believe this?" + +"It is true," she hurried on nervously. "He said he was desperate and +must have money to get away." + +"Had he any claim upon you?" he asked, scanning her with cold, searching +eyes. + +She hesitated and made answer, "No--none." + +"Yet he pushed his demand with eloquence?" + +"He did." + +"And with success?" + +"I gave him all I had." + +"Even although he had no claim on you?" + +"Yes." + +"Oh, Jane--Jane!" he cried with a burst of bitter sorrow; "why couldn't +you have been truthful to the end? Why--why must you make me look +back--always and only to despise you!" + +She looked at him stonily, but made no reply. + +"Jane, it cuts me to the heart to say it--but I saw you--do you +hear?--saw you. He took both your hands in his--you threw your arms +about his neck and kissed him. Do you deny this?" + +She still looked him straight in the face, but two tears brimmed into +her eyes and rolled slowly down her cheeks. "No, it is true," she then +answered. + +"You own this too," he cried furiously. "Jane, who is this man?" + +She remained silent. + +"I ask you again, Jane--and for the last time--who is this man?" + +"I cannot tell you." + +"You refuse?" + +"I must." + +"Then farewell. We can meet no more." He turned, and stood with his hand +on the door, and with the action the girl's overstrained nerves gave +way. + +"Oh, no, no, no! Oh, Chester, I have loved you so! Don't--for mercy's +sake--don't leave me in anger--when I so need comfort--help--and--p--pity!" + +She fell on her knees by the bed, and with her face in her hands, sobbed +aloud. + +As she did so, a burst of strange, mocking laughter resounded from the +adjoining room, and Harding started as if he had been stung. + +"It must be!" he hissed, all that was hardest and worst in his nature +suddenly possessing him. "After this it would only be torture--to both!" +He bent suddenly and kissed--not her lips, no longer pure--but her +forehead, once, twice, thrice, passionately, and then fled away into the +darkness. + + + + +CHAPTER V. + +GOOD OUT OF EVIL. + + +Harding went up to his lonely tent. Like a wounded animal, he sought his +lair, and the memory of the many solitary hours he had passed there, +even at this sad moment, refreshed his spirit. There he could be +alone--away from men's eyes--free from their curiosity, from their +comments, or, what would be worse, from their pity. + +He had made himself comparatively rich; he had built up a home, as it +were, in the wilderness; he had even tried, and with some success, to +gain men's esteem--and what were all these worth to him now? + +Such bitter thoughts as these filled Harding's mind as he arranged his +coarse pallet, and then, throwing himself upon it, sought to forget his +grief during the short space that remained before daylight. He was +awakened, almost instantly, it seemed to him--although, in fact, three +hours had passed--by the sharp crack of a rifle. Harding leaped up and +ran to his door. + +It was a dull, gray dawn--the sky overcast, but the air free from wind +or rain. A little below Harding's tent there spread a plain about a mile +wide. This extended along the bank of the river, and terminated in a +clump of redwoods which grew far up the mountain beyond. Here and there +on the plain were scattered a few small trees and copses of manzanita; +but for the most part it was clear from the outskirts of the village up +to the redwoods. + +On this plain Harding now saw a remarkable sight. A man was running from +tree to tree, striving always to get nearer the mountain. Perhaps three +hundred yards behind him were five or six armed pursuers trying to close +in on the fugitive, and occasionally firing at him. As Harding gazed, +three shots were discharged in rapid succession. Yet the man still held +on his way, apparently unhurt, and it looked as if he would quickly gain +the cover of the forest. But there was one behind him far swifter than +the rest, who ran like an Indian on the river or further side from +Harding, and who threatened in a few moments to get dangerously near. It +was because this man was so distant from himself that Harding did not at +first recognize his own partner, Jack Storm, although he was in his +usual well known Mexican dress. Now, Storm was the best rifle shot on +Bullion Flat. + +It appeared that the fugitive knew this. At all events, as if suddenly +realizing his peril, he turned and ran straight toward Storm, resolved +to draw his fire, apparently, and by confusing his aim to have a better +chance of escape. Storm's ready rifle flew up to his shoulder instantly, +and Harding saw the pale blue ring of smoke and heard the quick report. +Still the fugitive sped on. He was plainly unscathed, or in any case not +disabled; and in his hand there now flashed a bright something which +Harding knew was a bowie-knife. With that, although the combatants were +a mile away, Harding seized a revolver, and dashed at his highest speed +down the hill. Almost at the same moment, there also started in company +from Bullion Flat three figures on horseback. These were Miss Tinsel, +the "Demon," Mr. Bellario, and Judge Carboy. All who were now making for +the scene of the combat heard in sharp repetition five or six shots from +revolvers; but after the last of these, all was still. When they got to +the spot they found Jack Storm fainting from loss of blood, but hurt +only with flesh wounds; and they were told that the other man, his +opponent, was mortally wounded, and had been taken, by his own request, +up on the mountain side, among the redwoods, to die. + +With a choking cry, Miss Tinsel galloped on, and in a few moments +Chester Harding and she were again face to face over the dying man's +body. Ghastly white as he was, all dabbled with blood, and the foam +oozing from his lips, her lover at once knew Jane's visitor of the night +before. What had happened had been hurriedly revealed to Harding--in +broken whispers by the bystanders--before Jane came up. + +The man had robbed several rooms at the "Bella Union" during the night, +and had succeeded in gathering a large sum. Among the treasures stolen +were all the loose funds belonging to the "Combination Troupe," the +night's winnings of Mr. Copperas's faro bank, and Miss De Montague's +diamonds. But just as the robber, toward daylight, was on the point of +making off in safety, he met a lion in the path in Jack Storm. It +happened that Jack wanted to have a talk with his partner, Harding, and, +as they were then very busy on the claim, made up his mind to compass +this purpose bright and early, before getting to work. Stumbling on the +marauder, the latter was secured after a struggle, and "the boys" +speedily determined to make an example of him. The man begged for a +chance of life, and after some debate, had been given the option of the +halter or running the gauntlet, with three hundred yards' start, in the +way we have described. In the subsequent struggle he had been shot +through the lungs, and terribly cut with his own bowie-knife--wrested +from him by Jack Storm--and his life was now fast ebbing away. + +As she came up Jane sprang from her horse, and threw herself on the +ground beside the dying man. They had propped his head on a hillock of +turf, and some charitable soul had brought water from the river. Judge +Carboy quickly put a flask of brandy to the sufferer's lips, and he +opened his eyes: + +"Ja--Jane," he gasped, "my pretty Jane--this is the end--the end of +it--a dog's death--and deserved, too-but--I--I--always loved you!" + +She burst into tears and began sobbing over him and fondling his head. + +"Don't, darling--don't, little Jenny--it won't be long--I am better +away--better for you--there--there! I'm sliding away somewhere--and----" + +His voice failed, and his dark face began to grow blue. The doctor, who +had ridden hastily up, forced between the man's teeth some strong +restorative. + +"I want you to remember--always--that I was drunk when I did it--drunk +and crazy. I was bad--vile--but not so bad as that. Don't tell who--who +I am. It will only disgrace you--only disgrace you--I'm going, little +Jenny----" + +"Oh, _father_! _father!_" and the poor child bowed down her pretty head +on the breast of the wretched thief and murderer, and wept as if her +heart would break. + +"No--no," he muttered; "no, little Jenny, I'm not worth it. Only--don't +think worse--worse of me than I deserve. Perhaps mother--in heaven--has +forgiven me! She knows--knows--I was mad when I did it." + +"Yes--yes--I shall remember," whispered she, "always. Now don't talk +more--not now." + +"No--I shan't talk--much more"--a strange wan smile came over his +face--"not much more, little Jenny." He put up his hand and stroked her +sunny hair. + +"Tell them about this last--that I was desperate--I had broke jail--knew +the officers were on my track--and was penniless. Give me--more--brandy. +So. Why, I can't see you any more, little Jenny--and yet it is morning, +isn't it, not night!" He gasped for breath and clutched feebly at the +air. "Kiss me--little Jenny--mer--mercy--_Lord Jesus_--better--better +times--hereafter!" + +A shudder, and the man was dead, and Jane was left all alone in the +world. Poor, besotted, frantic Michael Green, all sin-scorched as he +was, had passed from the judgment of men to the more merciful judgment +beyond. Yet the orphan, if alone, lacked neither sympathy nor +protection. Nor did she ever lack from that moment the respect and +confidence of the man of whose heart she had from the first been +mistress. So that the true happiness came in time which is so often the +sweeter for being deferred. + + HENRY SEDLEY. + + + + +DEFEATED. + + + Give me your hand--nay, both, as I confront you. + Let me look in your eyes, as once before. + I gaze, and gaze. Oh, how they change and soften! + I stand within the portal: lo! a door-- + + A door close shut and barred. I knock and listen. + No sound, no answer. Doubtingly I wait. + Oh! for one glance beyond that guarded entrance, + The power that mystic realm to penetrate. + + I touch the barrier with hands entreating, + If it would yield to me, and none beside. + What bitter pain, what sense of loss and failure, + To come so near, and come to be denied! + + Softly I call, but only silence answers-- + Silence, and the quick throbbing of my heart. + Immovable, the frowning bar abideth: + Kneeling, I kiss the threshold and depart. + + MARY L. RITTER. + + + + +SHALL PUNISHMENT PUNISH? + + +It is published that in England a man has been undergoing an aggregate +imprisonment of ten years for breaking a shop window, at different +times, and that when recently pardoned he immediately broke the same +window again for the purpose of being again arrested. One who knows +nothing more than this of the facts cannot presume to determine what +punishment should in justice be given to this particular offender; but +the case is interesting as an extreme example of what frequently occurs +in a less striking degree in this country. Police courts become +acquainted with a class of criminals who would rather go to jail for +their dinner, especially in winter, than earn a dinner by hard work. +They are the confirmed vagabonds from whom the army of summer tramps is +chiefly recruited. They never feel truly virtuous and happy in cold +weather except when they have committed a petty offence and are on the +way to "punishment," which consists in accepting from a thoughtful +public a warm shelter and all the food they want. It is their business +to live, at times if not constantly, in this way. Sending them to jail +for their offences is known by the courts that send them to be nothing +but a sorry farce. + +There is another equally incorrigible class, who commit greater crimes, +but not chiefly for the sake of "punishment." Detectives keep themselves +advised of the sentences of these offenders, and prepare to shadow them +anew whenever they are released from confinement. It is not expected +that incarceration will have any reformatory effect. The question of +reforming them, as of reforming those who offend to get rid of the +trouble of taking care of themselves, comes to be left out of +consideration, after a little experience, by the officers whose duty it +is to deal with them. Only intimidation remains for a considerable +number. With these, rather than with the English window-breaker, should +probably be classed the subject of this item from a late newspaper: +"Charles Dickens is dead, and died of honest work; but the German +prisoner, Charles Langheimer, whom he saw in the penitentiary at +Philadelphia thirty-three years ago, and over whose punishment by +solitary confinement he lamented in 'American Notes,' describing him as +'a picture of forlorn affliction and distress of mind,' still lives at +the age of seventy-five, and has just been sent back to his old quarters +the sixth time, for his chronic offence of petty theft, which has kept +him in jail full half his long life." + +That punishment for crime is necessary, and therefore a public duty, is +admitted, and every community professes to impose it. But what of the +criminals whom punishment as now administered does not punish--who +actually commit crimes for the purpose of receiving it? It would seem +that society has not the power or has not the wisdom to protect itself. +It has the right, of course. It has the power also. + +The law does not succeed in what it attempts and professes to do. At +present when we find a criminal who has sufficient good in him to feel +our methods, we punish him in proportion to his--goodness. When we find +one so vile that our methods are like water on a duck's back, we do not +punish him--except as water punishes a duck. He goes unpunished because +he is so bad, while a better man is punished because he is better. What +is this but rewarding insensibility? It is very creditable to the hearts +of the lawmakers--perhaps--but it is fraud on the community. It is +legalized wickedness. It permits incarnate nuisances to wax fat, and +prey upon honest industry, and increase and multiply, until they become +the only prosperous and protected class. + +It has been suggested that a criminal on his second conviction be deemed +a professional, and incarcerated for life. It would no doubt be cheaper +for the public to shut him up thus and support him permanently. But +there is the objection that the punishment would generally be out of +proportion to the crime, if it were a punishment at all; and if it were +not a punishment, we would be offering a greater premium on vice than we +now are. To punish petty larceny as if it were as great a crime as +manslaughter or murder would be too unjust to be long possible. The case +seems to demand a new medicine rather than a greater dose of one which +has failed when tried in any practicable quantities. + +There is one remedy, so far as the infliction of real punishment is a +remedy, although those who administer justice as above described will +hold up their hands in horror at the mention of it. If it be a fact that +the punishment of criminals is necessary, and if it be a fact that a +class of them is impervious to any punishment except physical pain, then +we are bound to either inflict this pain or else abandon the principle +of punishment. There is no third course if the two facts are +admitted--and to those who will not admit them an unprejudiced reading +of the criminal news of the past three hundred and sixty-five days is +commended. If one man's heart is callous to what will break another's, +all men's backs are of nearly equal tenderness. It is doubtful whether +the whipping-post ever had a fair trial without proving that it might be +made a good thing under such circumstances as we must very soon, if we +do not now, confront. + +The fact that it was once used and then abandoned does not settle the +case. It was erected for those who could have been otherwise dealt with, +and for those who deserved no punishment at all. It was not reserved for +only those deserving punishment, on whom our more refined penalties had +been tried and had failed. It is not a fair trial of it to put it into +the hands of a drunken or passionate ship's captain; or the hands of a +religious bigot; or the hands of a slave-driver; or the hands of a +tyrant or autocrat of any kind; or the hands of an incompetent judge; or +the hands of any judge in a ruder age than this. If an ignorant or +brutal use of it in the past condemns an enlightened use of it now, we +should abandon life-taking and imprisonment, for these have been even +more abused. We have no fear that the death penalty will be misused +hereafter because men have been hung for petty larceny heretofore. When +the lash is wielded by a barbarous hand, as it generally has been, of +course we abhor it. But how about it when the hand of Christ wields it +in the temple? Although the incarnation of charity made him a scourge +for those who needed it, yet we cannot follow His example because +Torquemadas have made scourges for those who did not need them. Such is +the logic of those who would cite the past in this matter. The truth is, +the lash was abandoned in the humane belief that criminals could be +punished without it; and the truth also is, some criminals are now +proving that they cannot be punished without it. + +Go over the subject as we may, we come back to the question, Is the lash +or something equally unrefined necessary to accomplish all the law now +attempts? It must be looked at in the cold light of certain very sad +facts, as well as in the warm blaze of "chromo" civilization. If we are +not yet compelled to answer it in the affirmative, there is so much +evidence pointing toward such an answer, that it is well to consider +very respectfully indeed whatever can be said on the unpopular side. It +need not frighten those who accept the idea so tersely presented by the +Hare Brothers--of which one is strongly reminded by Mr. Greg in the +"Enigmas of Life," although perhaps he does not expressly state it--that +the tendency of civilization is to barbarism. + +Of course flogging is not a panacea; but it is for those who profit by +nothing gentler; and the more enlightened society becomes the more +certainly can these be identified. The generous feeling that has +discontinued it would not cease to be a guarantee against its abuse. Our +courts cannot depart far from public sentiment. We can trust judges and +juries to determine who deserves castigation just as safely as to +determine who deserves imprisonment or death. Most of the censure they +now receive in their treatment of the hopelessly depraved is for their +lenity and not their rigor. There is no offender would not dread and +wish to avoid whipping. Certainly no one would offend for the purpose of +receiving it; and it would probably discourage a man in less than ten +years from breaking the same window. It would be inexpensive, and would +have the merit of being short and sharp, if not decisive. Punishment, +intimidation, is what is here considered, and the point is whether it +shall be administered to all who deserve it, or whether the law society +finds necessary for its protection shall be a falsehood, at war with +itself--a sham. The law cannot shrink from anything that is necessary to +its purpose without impeaching its purpose. + +And is it more inhuman to hurt the back of one who cannot be made to +feel anything else than it is to pain the heart and hurt the soul of one +who can? How can Christians so exalt the flesh above the spirit? They +did not do it in the primitive days of the faith. Is it more barbarous +to scourge the body than to gall it with irons, or poison and debilitate +it by confinement, or wear it out by inches at hard labor? We have not +abolished corporeal punishment--only rejected a form of it which is +frequently more merciful, if more dreaded, than some that are retained. + +All wrongs right themselves by "inhumanity," if permitted to go far +enough. You are told by good authority, and you know without telling, +that if you find a burglar in your house at night, you perform a public +duty by shooting him dead rather than see him escape. From the +humanitarian point of view, this is certainly more dreadful than it +would have been to stop, by flogging, any minor offences that led him +into your house. Indeed, if the penalty for the burglary itself were a +"barbarous" laceration of his back, it would doubtless have more effect +in keeping him from the burglary and from a bloody death, than does the +risk of imprisonment. We must not whip him in obedience to the law, but +we may safely shoot him dead without regard to it. It is our tenderness +that becomes "inhuman" if it be not wisely bestowed. Would it be quite +in keeping with the pretensions of "advanced" civilization to see the +matrons and maids of the rural neighborhoods going about their dairies +and summer kitchens with revolvers in their belts, and bowie-knives in +their bosoms? That is the spectacle the "tramp" nuisance promises to +produce. Would the whipping-post, set up in the slums of the great +cities, where the miscreants among the tramps breed and form their +characters, look any more like barbarism? The voluntary tramp has but +shown the countryman during the summer what the city suffers during the +winter. He is simply trying to distribute and equalize himself, and +while enjoying his country air, collects the same taxes he collects all +the rest of the year in town. Let the city continue to rear him +tenderly, and not hurt his precious carcass, and feed and warm him, and +punish only his sensitive spirit, until the country people get down +their shot-guns and make a barbarous end of him. And this is being true +to the cause of humanity. + +It is noble for the law to withhold its hand when one who has taken a +wrong step can be won back to a good life by other means; and if the +wretches hopelessly saturated with vice can be intimidated by anything +milder than flogging, by all means be mild; but when we find one who +cannot, why not acknowledge the fact and act on it? + +The reason why we do not so act is only a sentimental one. A sentimental +reason, however, may be a very good one. Society feels that it is better +to suffer, and to see its laws become a mockery to this degree, than to +shock its own best instincts. This sentiment that obstructs absolute +vindication of the law is respectable so long as it can be respected +with tolerable safety and public satisfaction. But it interferes with +justice by courtesy, and not by right. It is all very well so long as +society does not complain. But if its mouthpieces are to be believed, +society does complain. The public is not satisfied with the present +punishment of certain offenders--indicated with sufficient accuracy by +the tough old Langheimer and the English window-breaker--and is restive +under the pecuniary burden they impose. + +Although the history of the whipping-post is nearly worthless to one +seeking to know what its value might be under all the favorable +conditions with which it could be surrounded now and here, yet it is +possible to point readily to one trial that should have been, and +probably was, a fair one. A very few years ago--perhaps four or +five--garroting became a terror to the London pedestrian. For assault +and robbery, without intent to kill, the death penalty was too terrible, +and the other penalties failed to intimidate, as they generally do when +the crime is lucrative, easily accomplished, and not immediately +dangerous. It could not be trifled with, and something had to be done. A +"barbarous" whipping of the bare back was resorted to, and garroting +subsided. The result was what the public wanted. Sentimental eyes may +show their whites, horrified hands may go up, floods of twaddle may come +forth in sympathy with the discouraged garroter, but men of common +sense, especially if they have been garroted themselves, will say the +end was worth what it cost, and believe in the inhumanity that achieved +it. + +Nothing has been said of Delaware. No valuable lesson could be drawn +from her without considerable investigation, and perhaps not then. She +may do too much flogging, or she may not do enough. Her ministers of +justice may be models of enlightenment, or they may be models of +debasement. The lash there may be still a class instrument, or it may +not. She has no great city--an exceedingly important consideration--and +two portions of her people are jostling each other as nominal equals in +the race of life, who but the other day held the relation of master and +slave. She is probably not indifferent to a good name, and her retention +of the whip under all the sneers she receives is some evidence that she +at least regards it as still having a defensible use. + + CHAUNCEY HICKOX. + + + + +RENUNCIATION. + + + Could I recall thee from that silent shore + Whence never word may reach our longing ears, + To gaze upon thee thro' my happy tears, + And call thee back to life and joy once more, + Could I refrain? If at my touch Death's door + Would open for thee, and thy glad eyes shine + With swift surprise of life, straight into mine, + And we might dwell with love for evermore, + Could I forbear? God knows, who still denies. + Yet being dead, thou art all mine again: + No fear of change can break that perfect rest, + Nor can I be where thou art not; thine eyes + Smile at me out of heaven, and still my pain, + And the whole pitying earth is at thy breast. + + KATE HILLARD. + + + + +THE EASTERN QUESTION. + + +"The last word in the Eastern Question," said Lord Derby, "is +Constantinople." If for Constantinople we read not merely the city +itself, but that half of Turkey in Europe bordering upon the Black Sea +and the Sea of Marmora, and understand the real point to be, Shall or +shall not Russia have it? we have the whole Eastern Question in a +nutshell. Russia is bound by every consideration of policy and interest +to get it if she can. Great Britain is bound by every consideration of +interest, and even of self-preservation, to prevent it if she can. +Germany, Austria, and France are bound to prevent it, if possible, +unless they can at the same time gain equivalent advantages which shall +leave them relatively to each other, and especially to Russia, not less +powerful than they now are. The other nations of Europe may be left out +of view in considering the question; for their interest in it is less +vital, and they could do little toward the result, except as allies to +one side or the other, in case of a general European war in which the +great Powers should be quite evenly balanced, when their comparatively +small weight might turn the scale. + +A glance at the map will show the paramount importance to Russia of the +acquisition of this territory. Comprising more than half of all Europe, +she is practically cut off from the navigable seas. She has, indeed, a +long coast-line upon the Arctic ocean, but she has there only the +inconsiderable port of Archangel, and this can be reached only by +rounding the North Cape and sailing far within the Arctic Circle, while +the port itself is blocked up by ice seven months of the year. She also +borders for seven hundred miles upon the Baltic and the Gulf of Bothnia; +but here, in the northwestern corner of her territory, she has only two +tolerable ports, Cronstadt and Riga, and these are frozen up for nearly +half the year; but from these ports is carried on three-fourths of her +foreign commerce. She next touches salt water in the Black Sea, almost +1,500 miles from St. Petersburg, on the extreme south of her territory. +This sea, half of whose shores belongs to Russia, is 720 miles long, and +380 miles wide at its broadest point, covering an area, including the +connected Sea of Azof, of nearly 200,000 square miles--more than twice +that of all the great lakes of North America. Russia wishes to be a +great maritime power. The Black Sea has good harbors and abundant +facilities for building ships and exercising fleets. Into it fall all +the great rivers of the southern half of Russia, except the Volga, whose +mouth is in the Caspian; and the Volga may properly be considered a +Black Sea river, for a railway, or perhaps even a canal of a few +leagues, would connect it with the Don and the other rivers of the Black +Sea system. The Black Sea is emphatically a Russian sea; but Russia +enjoys the valuable use of it only by the sufferance of whomsoever holds +Constantinople. By the treaty of Paris, concluded in 1856, after the +reverses of the Crimean war, Russia agreed not to maintain a fleet +there; and it was not till 1870 that taking advantage of the critical +position of the other great Powers, she declared that this article of +the treaty was abrogated. She has now a strong fleet of iron-clads and +other steamers in the sea, but the actual strength of this fleet is +unknown except to herself. It was certainly powerful three years ago, +and is doubtless much more powerful now. A vessel and crew which has +navigated the "Bad Black Sea." as the Turks call it, has nothing to fear +from the broadest ocean. But this sea is liable at any moment to be a +closed one to Russia. No Russian man-of-war has, we believe, ever sailed +into or out of it; no merchantman can enter or leave it except by the +Bosporus and the Dardanelles, which are its gates, and of these gates +Turkey holds the keys. + +The Black Sea is joined to the deep, narrow Sea of Marmora by the +straits of the Bosporus, twenty miles long and from three-quarters of a +mile to two and a half miles wide. Just where the straits open out into +the Sea of Marmora stands Constantinople, a spot marked out by nature as +the one on the whole globe best fitted for the site of a great +metropolis. At its western extremity the Sea of Marmora--about one +hundred miles long, with a maximum breadth of forty-three +miles--contracts into the straits usually called the Dardanelles, which +is properly the name of four castles, which, two on each side, command +the passage, here less than a mile wide. Both straits could easily be so +fortified as to be impassable by the combined navies of the world; and +even now we suppose that only the best armored iron-clads could safely +undertake to force the passage, in or out, of the Dardanelles. + +Let us now consider the fearful preponderance which Russia would gain by +the possession of these straits, including of course that half of +European Turkey bordering upon them. We have seen that the shores of the +Black Sea furnish every facility for the construction of a navy of any +required strength, and its waters afford ample space for its training. +With these approaches in her grasp, Russia might in ten years construct +and discipline her fleet there, perfectly safe from molestation by the +navies of Europe. Fleets built and equipped at Sebastopol, Kherson, and +Nicolaief, could sweep through the Dardanelles, closed to all except +themselves, enter the Archipelago and the Mediterranean, and dominate +over their shores and over the commerce of every nation which has to use +these waters as a highway. In case of its happening at any time to find +itself overmatched, the Russian fleet could repass the gates of the +Dardanelles, and be as safe from pursuit as an army would be if +sheltered behind the rocks of Gibraltar. + +Great Britain would be first and most immediately menaced by this; for a +strong military and naval power established on the Bosporus would hold +in command the shortest way of communication with her possessions in +India. The Czar would hold in control the route by way of the Suez +canal: or at best Great Britain could keep it open only by maintaining a +vastly superior fleet in the Mediterranean; and it would be difficult +for her to maintain there a fleet which would not be practically +overmatched by one which Russia could easily keep up in the Black Sea +and the Sea of Marmora. The days are past when a Hood or a Nelson might +safely risk a battle if the odds against him were much less than two to +one. A British admiral must henceforth make his count upon meeting skill +and seamanship equal to his own, and whatever advantage he gains must be +gained by sheer preponderance of force. + +If Great Britain is to retain her Indian empire, a collision there +between her and Russia is a foregone conclusion. An empire which, under +a succession of sovereigns of very different character, has steadily +pressed its march of conquest through the deserts of Turkistan, will not +be likely to look without longing eyes upon the fertile valley of the +Indus; and here Russia would have a fearful advantage in position. The +Suez route practically closed, as it would be in the event of a war, +Britain could only reach India by the long voyage around the Cape of +Good Hope, while Russia would have broad highways for the march of her +troops to the banks of the Indus, whence she could menace the whole +peninsula of Hindostan. + +We indeed do not think that the possession of her Indian empire adds +anything to the power of Great Britain. She has never derived any direct +revenue from it. The Indian expenditures to-day exceed, and are likely +in the future to exceed, the revenues. All the vast amounts of plunder +and "loot" which individuals, the East India Company, or the Crown have +gained, have cost to get them more than they were worth. Unlike +Australia and the Dominion of Canada, India offers no field for +colonization for men of British blood, where they or their children may +build up a new Britain under strange stars. It has come to be an +accepted fact that Englishmen cannot long retain health and vigor in +India, and that their offspring, born there, rarely survive childhood +unless sent "home" at an early age. Britain holds India purely and +absolutely as a conquered and subjugated territory. Whether British rule +in India is, upon the whole, a blessing or a curse to the natives, is a +matter of grave doubt; that it is most unwillingly borne, is beyond all +question. It is a despotism pure and unmixed, and a despotism of the +most galling kind--a despotism exercised by a horde alien in race and +religion, alien in habits and modes of thought, in life and manners, in +customs and ideas. Macaulay, when in power in India, forty years ago, +said of it the best that can be said: "India cannot have a free +government; but she may have the next best thing--a firm and impartial +despotism." To maintain this despotism, even against the feeble natives +alone, imposes a heavy strain upon the British government. The British +empire in India is only a thin crust overlying a bottomless quagmire, +into which it is in peril of sinking at any moment by a force from above +or an upheaval from below. How nearly this came to pass during the +accidental Sepoy mutiny of twenty years ago, is known to all men. Had +that mutiny chanced to have broken out three years before, during the +Crimean war, it is safe to say that the course of the world's history +would have taken a different turn. Since then Great Britain has +apparently somewhat consolidated this crust, but it is yet thin, and the +weight of Russia thrown upon it could scarcely fail to break it through. + +The commercial value of India to Great Britain is, we think, vastly +exaggerated. India, in proportion to her population, has always been, +and is likely long to be, a very poor country. The trade of Great +Britain with India--exports and imports--is not much greater than that +with France, considerably less than that with Germany, and far less than +that with the United States; and we see no reason to suppose that it is +perceptibly increased by the subjugation of India to the British crown. +India sells to Great Britain what she can, and buys from her what she +wants and can pay for, and would continue to do so in any case. Still, +we do not imagine that the British government or people will ever be +brought to take our view of the value of India to them. It will be held +to the last extremity of the national power, and will only be abandoned +under stress of the direst necessity. And for her secure possession of +India it is absolutely essential, for reasons which have been stated, +that whoever else may have Constantinople in the future, Russia shall +not have it. England's interest in the question is a purely selfish one. +She is content to have the Turks there because for the time being they +keep the Russians out. Whatever worth may formerly have been in the +sentimental averment that it is the duty of the European family of +nations to see to it that no weak member of it is gravely wronged by a +stronger one is past and gone. It is from no love for the Turks that +Great Britain desires that the Sultan should continue to hold at least +nominal sovereignty over Turkey in Europe, and the actual custody of the +keys of the Black Sea. An able English writer says:[H] + + The position of the Turk at Constantinople is no choice of + ours, nor any creation of our policy. We do not maintain him + for any love of himself, nor because we rely on his strength + to guard the post--though that is absurdly underrated. His + corruption and weakness are at least as great an + embarrassment to us as an injury to the nations of his + empire. But the whole Eastern question hangs upon the fact + that he is there, and has been there with a long + prescriptive right which he is not likely to yield, or to + have wrested from his grasp till after a frantic struggle of + despair. Nor is any practical mode apparent by which he will + be soon displaced, save that, after a convulsion which would + involve all Europe, the Czar should be enthroned upon the + Bosporus. To prevent that catastrophe, and to avert the + horrors that must precede it, is our real Eastern policy. + +[Footnote H: "Quarterly Review;" October, 1876.] + +Still more emphatic is the declaration of Lord Derby, the British +Premier, when defending the action of the Government in sending the +Mediterranean fleet, last May, to Besika Bay, at the mouth of the +Dardanelles: "We have in that part of the world great interests which we +must protect.... It is said that we sent the fleet to the Dardanelles to +maintain the Turkish empire. I entirely deny it. _We sent the fleet to +maintain the interests of the British empire._" + +Let us now glance rapidly at Turkey in Europe, the coveted prize in this +case. Nominally, and upon the maps, it comprises all except the southern +apex of the great triangular peninsula bounded on the east by the Black +Sea, the Sea of Marmora, and the Archipelago; on the west by the +Adriatic; on the north, the broad base of the peninsula, it is bounded +by Austria; on the south, the narrow apex, by Greece. Russia touches it +only on the northeast corner. Its area is in round numbers 200,000 +square miles, not differing materially from that of France or Germany, +or about five-sixths of that of Austria. No other part of Europe, of +anything like equal extent, combines so many natural advantages of +geographical position, soil, and climate. The population is variously +estimated at from 13,000,000 upward; we think that 17,000,000 is a +tolerably close approximation. Of these, in round numbers, only about +2,000,000 are Turks, or, as they style themselves, Osmanlis; 11,500,000 +are of various Sclavonic races; 1,500,000 are Albanians; 1,000,000 +Greeks; the remainder Armenians, Jews, and Gipsies. In religion there, +there are about 4,800,000 Mohammedans, nearly half of whom are not +Osmanlis, the remainder being of Sclavonic descent, whose ancestors +embraced Islam in order to save their estates; they are, however, quite +as devoted Mussulmans as are the Osmanlis themselves. There are now +about 12,000,000 Christians, of whom some 11,000,000 belong to the Greek +Church, and nearly 1,000,000 are in communion with the Church of Rome. +The name Ottomans is officially given to all the subjects of the empire, +irrespective of race or religion; all except Mussulmans are specifically +designated as _Rayahs_, "the flock." Nominally, at least, by the new +Constitution promulgated in December, 1876, while Islam is the religion +of the State, all subjects are equal before the law, and all, without +distinction of race or creed, are alike eligible for civil and military +positions. + +But a very considerable part of this territory is not properly included +in the Ottoman empire. The principality of Roumania, in the northeastern +corner, made up of what was formerly known as Wallachia and Moldavia, +with a population of about 4,500,000, is practically independent, under +a prince of the house of Hohenzollern, elected in 1866. It merely +acknowledges the suzerainty of the Sultan, to whom it pays an annual +tribute of some $200,000. Servia, on the north, bordering upon Austria, +with a population something less than 1,500,000, has for years been +really independent, merely paying a tribute of less than $100,000. + +Roumania and Servia are strongly under Russian influence. Besides these +is the little State of Montenegro, on the Adriatic, with a population of +less than 200,000, which disowns the suzerainty of the Sultan, and has +for many months waged a fierce but desultory war against him. + +Of what properly constitutes Turkey in Europe, with a population of some +11,000,000, the following are the principal divisions, designating them +by their former names, by which they are still best known: south of +Roumania, and between the Danube and the Balkhan mountains, is Bulgaria; +south of Bulgaria is Roumelia, in which Constantinople is situated; in +the northwest is Herzegovina; between which and Servia is Bosnia; on the +west, along the Adriatic, is Albania. In estimating the defensive +strength of the Ottoman empire we must take main account of Turkey in +Asia, with a population of some 17,000,000, by far the larger portion of +whom are Osmanlis, devoted to Islam, warlike by nature, and fully +capable, as was shown in the Crimean war, of being moulded into +excellent soldiers. But our present concern is with Turkey in Europe. + +If the ingenuity of man, working through long centuries of misrule, had +set itself to the task of developing a form of government the most +potent for evil and the least powerful for good, the system could not +have been worse than that which exists in European Turkey; and the worst +of it is that no one but the most hopeful optimist can perceive in it +the slightest hope of reform or practical amendment. In theory the +Sultan is the recognized organ of all executive power in the State. The +dignity is hereditary in the house of Osman; but the brother of a +deceased or deposed Sultan takes precedence of the son, as being nearer +in blood to the great founder of the house. A Sultan, therefore, must +see in his brother a possible rival, who must, in case his life is +spared, be kept immured in the seclusion of the harem. A Sultan who +succeeds his brother naturally comes to the throne at a somewhat mature +age, but as ignorant as a babe of all that belongs to the duties of +government; lucky it is if he is not also physically and mentally worn +out by debauchery and excess. Turkish history is full of instances where +one of the first acts of a Sultan has been to order the execution of his +brothers and nephews. Thus Mahmoud II. put to death his infant nephew, +the son of his predecessor, and caused three pregnant inmates of the +harem to be flung into the Bosporus in order to make sure the +destruction of their unborn offspring. The actual task of government is +in some sort divided between the Sultan and the "Porte," a term which is +used to designate the chief dignitaries of the State. The "Sublime +Porte" is the Council of the Grand Vizier, who presides over the Council +of State, consisting of the ministers for home affairs, for foreign +affairs, and for executive acts, with several secretaries, one of whom +is supposed to be answerable that the acts of the ministry are in +conformity with, the supreme law of the Koran. The Porte of the +Defterdar, or Minister of Finance, whose council is styled the "Divan," +consists of several ministers and other functionaries. The "Agha" +formerly comprised many civil and military officials whose duties were +in some way immediately connected with the person of the Sultan, not +very unlike what we call a "kitchen cabinet." The foregoing are all +designated as "Dignitaries of the Pen." The "Dignitaries of the Sword" +are the viceregal and provincial governors, styled pachas and beys. They +are at once civil and military commanders; and, most important of all, +tax-gatherers, and not infrequently farmers as well as receivers of +taxes. If they forward to the Porte the required sum of money, little +care is had as to the manner in which their other duties are performed +or neglected. The manifold extortions of the local pachas keep one part +or another of the empire, not only in Europe, but in Asia, in a state of +perpetual insurrection, of which little is ever heard abroad. + +The Koran is the acknowledged source of all law, civil and +ecclesiastical. Its interpreter is the _Sheikh-ul-Islam_, "the Chief of +the Faithful," sometimes styled the "Grand Mufti." He is the head of the +_Ulemi_, or "Wise Men," comprising the body of great jurists, +theologians, and _literati_, any or all of whom he may summon to his +council. He is appointed for life by the Sultan, and may be removed by +him. His office is in theory, and sometimes in practice, one of great +importance. To him and his council the Sultan is supposed to refer every +act of importance. He does not declare war or conclude peace until the +Grand Mufti has formally pronounced the act "conformable to the law." It +is only in virtue of his _fetwa_, or decree, that the deposition of a +Sultan is legalized. A _fetwa_ from him would summon around the standard +of the Prophet all the fanatical hordes of Islam to fight to the death +against the infidels, in the firm belief that death on the battlefield +is a sure passport to Paradise. With the Koran as the supreme law, and +the Sheikh-ul-Islam its sole interpreter, nothing can be more futile +than the provision of the new Constitution of December, 1876, that "the +prerogatives of the Sultan are those of the constitutional sovereigns of +the West." + +It is necessary here to touch only briefly upon the rise and decline of +the Turkish empire in Europe. The Osmanlis take their name from Osman, +the leader of a Tartar horde driven out from the confines of the Chinese +empire, who overran Asia Minor. His great-grandson, Amurath I., crossed +into Europe, took Adrianople in 1361, and overran Bulgaria and Servia. +Several of his successors pushed far into Hungary and Poland. Mohammed +II. took Constantinople in 1453, and brought the Byzantine empire to a +close. Selim I. (1512-'20) extended his dominion over Mesopotamia, +Syria, and Egypt. Solyman II., "the Magnificent" (1520-1566), raised the +Turkish power to its highest point. He took Buda in 1529; and in 1532 +besieged Vienna with a force of 300,000 men, but was routed by the +Polish John Sobieski, with a force hardly a tenth as great. But for +another half century the Turkish power was sufficient to inspire terror +in all Christendom. With the death of Solyman, the power of the Turks +began to wane, slowly but surely, and at the close of the last century +the expulsion of the Turks from Europe seemed close at hand. The great +wars of the French Revolution gave them a new lease of possession, and +at its close Sultan Mahmoud II., who was by blood half French,[I] +endeavored to introduce reforms which some men hoped and others feared +would restore the Ottoman Empire. But the result showed the +impossibility of patching up rotten garments with new cloth. The Greek +revolution broke out, and at its close the Sultan found himself no match +for his vassal, Mehemet Ali, Pacha of Egypt, and it was only the +intervention of Russia, Austria, and Great Britain which prevented the +Pacha from establishing at Constantinople the seat of a new empire, +which, be it what it might, would not have been Turkish. What were the +reasons of Great Britain and France it is not now easy to say. Those of +Russia are patent: she wanted Constantinople to remain in the hands of +the Turks until she herself was in a position to seize it. From that +time the Ottoman Empire became the "sick man of Europe," around whose +bedside all the other powers were watching, each determined that none of +the others should gain the greater share in his estates when he died. In +1844 they formally adopted him into the family of the nations of Europe, +and promised that his safety should be the common care of all. + +[Footnote I: His mother was a Creole, a native of Martinique, and cousin +of that other Creole who came to be the Empress Josephine. She had been +sent to France to be educated, and on her voyage homeward was captured +by an Algerine pirate who sold her to the Dey, by whom she was sent as a +present to the Sultan, whose favorite Sultana she became.] + +Russia, in the mean while, was busy in endeavoring to make herself the +patron of the Christian subjects of the Sultan, and when the time +appeared ripe, entered upon those overt acts which led to the Crimean +war. Out of this war the Ottoman Empire came with considerable apparent +advantage. The man supposed to be sick unto death showed that there was +unexpected vitality--of a spasmodic sort indeed--in his Asiatic members; +and again there were hopes and fears of his ultimate convalescence, if +not of restoration to robust health. That those hopes and fears were +baseless is now clear enough. Never was the sick man so feeble as within +the last five years. + +The existing crisis in the Eastern Question came about in the ordinary +course of things. In the summer of 1875 the pecuniary needs of the +Sublime Porte were more than usually urgent, and the tax-gatherers were +even more than usually exacting. The normal result ensued: there were +local risings in Bosnia and Herzegovina. A secret Bulgarian +revolutionary committee, favored by Russia, has for years existed in +Bucharest, the capital of Roumania. They sent emissaries into Bulgaria +to excite an insurrection in that province. The plan was to set fire to +Adrianople and Philippopolis, each in scores of places, to burn other +towns, mainly inhabited by Mussulmans, and force all the Bulgarian +Rayahs to join the uprising. The insurrection broke out prematurely in +May, 1876, and only a few were actively engaged in it. Two or three +thousand troops would have been sufficient to have quelled the rising; +but there were none in the province, and despite the urgent appeals of +the Pacha none were sent. The Mussulmans, who are in a fearful minority +there, were thrown into a panic; and the Pacha gave orders for calling +an ignorant and fanatical population to arms. Regular troops were at +last sent. The Turks gained an easy victory, and perpetrated those +ineffable atrocities, the recital of which sent a thrill of horror +throughout Christendom. The Bulgarians fled northward toward Servia, +pursued by the Turks, who it is said made predatory incursions. Prince +Milan made some extraordinary demands upon the Sultan, among which were +that the government of Bulgaria should be committed to him and that of +Bosnia to Prince Nicholas of Herzegovina. The Grand Vizier refused to +listen to these demands; whereupon the Prince called the Servians to +arms, declared war against the Sultan, invaded Bulgaria, and soon +assumed the title of King of Servia. His invasion of Bulgaria met with +ill success. Although aided by many Russian soldiers and officers, +absent on special leave from their regiments, the Servians were driven +back over their frontiers; and the war was finally suspended by a truce +for six months. We suppose that there can be no doubt that the rising in +Bulgaria and the action of Servia were favored, if not by the Czar +personally, yet by the Russian government, although it would, if +possible, have withheld Prince Milan from declaring war when he did. The +Servian Bishop Strossmayer expressly affirms that the insurrection in +Herzegovina was prematurely commenced against the advice of Russia, and +that Servia and Montenegro went to war of their own accord, though they +have naturally accepted the Russian aid since accorded to them. He adds +that Prince Gortschakoff, who in the Russian government is all that +Prince Bismarck is in that of Germany, the year before last "informed +Prince Milan that Russia was unprepared; that only within three years +did she count on taking Constantinople; and that only then would she +call on the Sclaves of the South to plant the Greek cross on the dome of +St. Sophia." + +Meanwhile, on the news of the Turkish atrocities in Bulgaria, the Czar +put his troops in motion toward the Turkish frontier, and made demands +upon the Sultan which, if acceded to, would have practically made the +Czar the actual sovereign of all Turkey in Europe north of the Balkhan. +Great Britain sent her fleet to the mouth of the Dardanelles to +"maintain the interests of the British empire" in that part of the +world. Diplomatic notes and rejoinders passed between the cabinets of +the great Powers; and early in January an International Conference was +assembled at Constantinople to endeavor to settle, or at least to stave +off the present crisis in the Eastern Question; Great Britain, through +her representative, the Earl of Salisbury, apparently taking the lead. +As we write, in the early days of February, all that is definitely known +is: The Conference has utterly failed; the Sultan absolutely refused to +accede to the propositions made to him; and the ambassadors of the great +Powers have been withdrawn from Constantinople. Surmises and rumors as +to what will next be done are rife; not the least significant or the +least probable being that the Emperors of Germany, Russia, and Austria +are consulting as to taking the matter into their own hands. Whatever +the immediate issue may be--whether a peace of some kind; a partial war +between Russia on the one side, and Turkey, with or without Great +Britain, on the other; or a general European war--of one thing we may be +certain: it will not cause Russia to more than postpone still longer her +long-cherished determination to have Constantinople. + +Mr. Carlyle has suggested, as a final settlement of the Eastern +Question, that Turkey in Europe should be divided between Russia, +Austria, and Great Britain. But, as is his wont, he leaves out some +essential factors in the problem. No part of this territory would be of +the slightest use to Great Britain, except perhaps the island of Candia +as a sort of half-way house in the highway to India by the Suez canal. +She has everything to lose and little more than nothing to gain by any +such partition, which, as it necessarily must, would give Constantinople +to Russia. Mr. Carlyle has so thorough a dislike to France--and with him +dislike is nearly equivalent to contempt--that he naturally leaves her +out of the problem. But it is surprising that he leaves out his favorite +Germany, perhaps the most important factor of all. + +We can conceive of a partition of Turkey between Russia and Austria +which would be so manifestly and equally advantageous to both that they +might agree to it. And the line of division is clearly indicated by +nature. Austria, like every other great civilized nation, desires to be +a maritime power; but she touches the sea only at one point, the head of +the Adriatic, with the narrow strip known as Dalmatia, running half way +down its eastern coast. There are only two considerable ports, Trieste +and Fiume. Eastward, and back of Dalmatia, are Servia, Bosnia, and +Herzegovina; and below these, on the Adriatic, is the long coast-line of +Albania, with several good harbors. Across the narrowing isthmus is the +Archipelago, with the excellent harbor of Salonika. Now look on any +tolerable map, and one will see on the eastern borders of Servia, where +the Danube breaks through the Carpathians, a range of mountains shooting +southward to and crossing the Balkhan, from which it is continued still +southward to the Archipelago, the whole dividing European Turkey into +two almost equal halves. Let Russia take the eastern half, comprising +Roumania, Bulgaria, and the half of Roumelia, including Constantinople, +the whole shore of the Sea of Marmora and the Dardanelles--all that she +really needs or cares for. Let Austria take the other half, which would +give her the whole eastern coast of the Adriatic, and a large frontage +on the Archipelago, and so a double access to the Mediterranean and +thence to the ocean. She would acquire thereby an access of valuable +territory equal to almost half of her present dominions, which would +render her relatively to Russia fully as strong as she now is. + +But such a partition could not be carried into effect without the +concurrence of Germany, for Germany is undoubtedly as a military power +much stronger than Russia. Germany certainly would never assent unless +she could somewhere get something equivalent to that gained by Austria +and Russia, and not an inch of Turkey would be of any use to her. But in +quite another part of Europe is a territory comparatively small in +extent, which would be of priceless value to Germany. This is the little +kingdom of Holland, which is indeed physically a part of Germany, and +essential to the rounding off of the boundaries of the new empire. It +would give her an extended sea-front, which is what she also needs in +order to become a great naval and commercial power. It would give her +also in the Zuyder Zee a naval depot and harbor of refuge inferior only +to that of the Black Sea, and immeasurably superior to any other in +Europe. Furthermore, with Holland would go the possession of Java and as +many other great islands in the Indian Ocean as she might choose to +seize and colonize. To Holland, indeed, we think such an annexation +would be a decided gain. Her people are in race, language, and religion +closely allied to the Germans. It would be better for her to become a +State, inferior only to Prussia, of the great German empire, than a +feeble kingdom, always at the mercy of her powerful neighbors. But +whether it would be for her good or not, would not be likely to be much +taken into account should the great Powers agree upon a reconstruction +of the political map of Europe. The interests of France would suffer no +material damage from this, provided she were left free to extend her +Algerian possessions over the whole Mediterranean coast of Africa, now +almost a desert, but once the granary of the Roman empire, and +abundantly capable of being restored to its ancient fertility; or in +case she should think her dignity required something more, she might +receive in Belgium far more than a counterpoise for her recent loss of +Alsace-Lorraine. + +Suppose that in some not remote future the policy of Russia, Germany, +and Austria shall happen to be directed by statesmen as able and +unscrupulous as Gortschakoff, Bismarck, and Von Beust, we think such a +settlement of the Eastern Question by no means an improbable one. And +should these Powers agree to effect it, all the rest of Europe could do +nothing to the contrary. + + A. H. GUERNSEY. + + + + +THE LASSIE'S COMPLAINT. + + + Now simmer cleeds the groves in green, + An' decks the flow'ry brae; + An' fain I'd wander out at e'en, + But out I daurna gae. + For there's a laddie down the gate + Wha's like a ghaist to me; + An' gin I meet him air or late, + He winna lat me be. + + He glow'rs like ony silly gowk, + He ca's me heavenly fair. + I bid him look like ither fowk, + Nor fash me sae nae mair. + I ca' him coof an' hav'rel too, + An' frown wi' scornfu' ee. + But a' I say, or a' I do, + He winna lat me be. + + JAMES KENNEDY. + + + + +ASSJA. + +BY IVAN TOURGUENEFF. + + +I was then twenty-five years old, began N. N. As you see, the story is +of days long past. I was absolutely my own master, and was making a +foreign tour, not to "finish my education," as the phrase is nowadays, +but to look about me in the world a little. I was healthy, young, +light-hearted; I had plenty of money and as yet no cares; I lived in the +present and did precisely as I wished; in one word, life was in full +flower with me. It did not occur to me that man is not like a plant, and +that his time of bloom is but once. Youth eats its gilded gingerbread, +and thinks that is to be its daily food; but the time comes when one +longs in vain for a bit of dry bread. But it is not worth while to speak +of that. + +I was travelling without aim or plan: made stops wherever it pleased me, +and went on whenever I felt the need of seeing fresh faces--especially +faces. Men interested me above all things. I detested monuments, +collections of curiosities. The mere sight of a guide roused in me +feelings of weariness and fury. In the Dresden "Gruene Gewoelbe" I nearly +lost my wits. Nature made a powerful impression upon me; but I did not +love her so-called beauties--her mighty hills, her crags and torrents. I +did not like to have them take possession of me and disturb my +tranquillity. Faces, on the contrary--living, earthly faces, men's talk, +laughter, movements--I could not do without. In the midst of a crowd I +was always particularly gay and at my ease. It gave me real pleasure +merely to go where others went, to shout when others shouted, and at the +same time to observe how these others shouted. It pleased me to observe +men--yes, I did not observe them merely; I studied them with a delighted +and insatiable curiosity. But I am digressing again. + +Twenty years ago, then, I was living in the little German town of S----, +on the left bank of the Rhine. I sought solitude. I had been wounded to +the heart by a young widow whose acquaintance I had made at a +watering-place. She was extremely pretty and vivacious, flirted with +everybody--alas! with me also, poor rustic! At first she had lifted me +to the skies, but soon plunged me in despair when she sacrificed me to a +rosy-cheeked lieutenant from Bavaria. Seriously speaking, the wound in +my heart was not very deep; but I considered it my duty to give myself +for a time to melancholy and retirement--what pleasure youth finds in +these!--and accordingly settled myself in S----. + +This little town had attracted me by its position at the foot of high +hills, by its old walls and towers, its hundred-year-old diadems, its +steep bridges over the clear little brook which flowed into the Rhine, +but above all by its good wine. And after sunset--it was in June--the +loveliest of fair-haired Rhineland girls sauntered through the narrow +streets and cried, "Good evening!" in their sweet tones to the stranger +whom they met, some of them even lingering still when the moon rose +behind the peaked roofs of the old houses, and the little stones of the +pavement showed distinctly in her steady light. Then I delighted in +strolling about the old town. The moon seemed to look down benignly from +a cloudless sky, and the town received this glance and lay peacefully +there wrapped in sleep and veiled in moonbeams--the light that at once +soothes and vaguely stirs the soul. The weathercock upon the high, sharp +spire gleamed in dull gold; long gleams of gold quivered on the dark +surface of the stream; some dim lights--O thrifty German folk!--burned +here and there in the small windows under the slated roofs; the vines +stretched out mysterious fingers from the walls; something stirred +perhaps in the shadow of the fountain in the little three-cornered +market-place; suddenly the sleepy cry of the watchman sounded; then a +good-natured dog growled in an undertone; and the air kissed the brow so +softly, and the lindens smelled so sweet, that the breast involuntarily +heaved quicker, and the word "Gretchen" rose to the lips, half a cry, +half question. + +This little town of S---- lies about two versts from the Rhine. I went +often to look at the majestic river, and would sit for hours upon a +stone bench under a lonely, large oak, thinking, not without a certain +exertion, of my faithless widow. A little statue of the Virgin, with a +red heart pierced with swords upon her breast, looked sadly out from the +leaves. On the opposite bank lay the town of L----, somewhat larger than +the one in which I had established myself. One evening I was sitting in +my favorite spot, looking in turn at the stream, the sky, and the +vineyards. Before me some white-hooded urchins were climbing over the +sides of a boat that was drawn up on the shore and lay there keel +upward. Little skiffs with sails hardly swollen passed slowly along; +green waves slid by with a gentle, rushing sound. All at once strains of +music greeted my ears. I listened. They were playing a waltz in L----. +The double bass grumbled out its broken tones, the violins rang clear +between, the flutes trilled noisily. + +"What is that?" I asked an old man who approached me dressed in a plush +waistcoat, blue stockings, and shoes with buckles. + +"That?" he replied, shifting his pipe from one corner of his mouth to +the other. "Those are the students who have come from B---- to the +_Commers_." + +"I will see this Commers," I thought. "Besides, I have not yet been in +L----." I found a ferryman and crossed the river. + +Perhaps not every one knows what a Commers is. It is a particular kind +of drinking bout, in which the students from one section, or of one +society, unite. Almost every participant of a Commers wears the +conventional costume of the German student: a short jacket, high boots, +and a little cap with colored vizor. The students generally assemble at +midday and carouse till morning, drinking, singing, smoking, and +occasionally they hire a band. + +Such a Commers was at this moment held in L---- at a little inn called +the Sun, in a garden adjoining the street. Flags were flying from the +inn and over the garden itself. The students sat round tables under the +spreading lindens; a huge bulldog under one of the tables. The musicians +were under a trellis at one side, playing with great spirit, and +refreshing themselves from time to time with mugs of beer. A great crowd +had collected in the street before the unpretending little inn. The good +citizens of L---- were not of the stuff to let slip a good opportunity +of seeing strange guests. I mingled with the crowd of lookers-on. It +gave me an immense satisfaction to watch the faces of the students, +their embraces, their exclamations, the innocent affectations of youth, +the eager glances, the unrestrained laughter--the best laughter in the +world. All this generous ferment of young, fresh life, this striving +forward, no matter whither so it be forward, this rollicking, +untrammelled existence excited and infected me. Why not join them, I +thought? + +"Assja, have you had enough?" suddenly asked in Russian a man's voice +behind me. + +"Let us wait a little longer," answered another voice, a woman's, in the +same tongue. + +I turned hastily. My eyes fell on a handsome young fellow in a loose +jacket and cap. On his arm hung a girl of medium height, with a straw +hat which entirely hid the upper part of her face. + +"You are Russians?" I said aloud involuntarily. + +The young man smiled and answered, "Yes; we are Russians." + +"I did not expect, in such an out-of-the-way place----" I began. + +"Nor did we," he interrupted me. "But what does that signify? All the +better. Permit me to introduce myself. My name is Gagin, and this +is"--he paused for an instant--"my sister. May we ask your name?" + +I told him, and we began a conversation. I learned that Gagin, like +myself, was travelling for pleasure; that he had arrived at L---- the +week previous, and was now staying there. To speak candidly, I was +always unwilling to make the acquaintance of Russians in other +countries. I could recognize them at any distance by their gait, the cut +of their clothes, and more than all by the expression of their faces. +The self-satisfied, scornful, and usually haughty expression would +change suddenly to one timid and suspicious; in a moment the whole man +is on his guard, his glance wanders about unsteadily. "Have I said +anything ridiculous? Are they laughing at me?" this anxious look seems +to say. But a moment more, and the majesty of the physiognomy is +restored, only occasionally replaced by stupidity. Yes, I avoided +Russians, but Gagin pleased me at once. There are such fortunate faces +in the world. To look at them is a pleasure for every one. One feels at +once cheered and caressed by them. Gagin had just such a gentle, +attractive face, with great soft eyes and fine curly hair. When he +spoke, even if you did not see his face, you felt by the mere sound of +his voice that he was smiling. + +The young girl whom he had called his sister also seemed to me at the +first glance very lovely. There was something peculiar and remarkable in +the traits of her round, brown face, with its thin, delicate nose, its +round, almost babyish cheeks, and its clear, dark eyes. Her form was +graceful, but apparently not yet fully developed. She did not in the +least resemble her brother. + +"Will you come home with us?" Gagin asked me. "I think we have seen +enough of the Germans. Our beloved countrymen would certainly have +broken some window panes or smashed a few chairs, but these fellows are +quite too well behaved. What do you say, Assja, shall we go home?" + +The young girl nodded assent. + +"We live just beyond the village," Gagin continued, "in a little +solitary house far up the hillside. It is really fine there. You shall +see for yourself. The landlady promised me to have some buttermilk for +us. It will be dark very soon, and then you can cross the Rhine far more +pleasantly by moonlight." + +We set out. Through a low gate--for the town was surrounded on all sides +by an old wall, some of whose loop-holes even yet remained +undestroyed--we gained the open country, and after we had walked about a +hundred paces beside a stone wall we came to a steep and narrow path up +the hill, into which Gagin turned. The slope on both sides was planted +with grapes. The sun had but just set, and a soft purple light rested on +the green vines, the long poles, the dusty soil covered with bits of +broken slate and stone, and upon the white walls of a small house with +steep roof and light windows, which stood high above us on the mountain +which we were climbing. + +"Here is our place!" exclaimed Gagin as we drew near the house. "And +here is the landlady just bringing us our buttermilk. Good evening, +madam! We will be there in a moment. But first," he added, "look about +you once. What do you say to this outlook?" + +The view was indeed charming. The Rhine lay before us, a strip of silver +between green banks. In one place it glowed in the purple and gold of +the sunset. All the houses in the little towns clustering on the shores +stood out distinctly; hills and fields spread far before us. Below us it +was lovely, but above it was lovelier still. The brilliant transparency +of the atmosphere, and the depth and purity of the sky, made a profound +impression on me. The air was fresh and exhilarating. It blew with a +light wave motion, as if it felt itself more free on the hilltop. + +"You have chosen a magnificent situation," I said. + +"Assja found it out," Gagin answered. "Now, Assja, give your orders. Let +us have everything brought here. We will take tea in the open air. We +can hear the music better here. Haven't you noticed it?" he went on. "A +waltz close at hand may be often good for nothing--mere commonplace +jingle. It becomes exquisite at a distance; sets all the sentimental +strings in one's heart a twanging." Assja (her name was properly Anna; +but Gagin always called her Assja, and I shall allow myself that +privilege)--Assja went into the house and soon returned with the +landlady. Both together they carried a great tea-tray with a jug full of +milk, plates, spoons, sugar, berries, and bread. We seated ourselves and +began to eat. Assja took off her hat. Her black hair, cut rather short, +and curled like a boy's, fell in thick ringlets over neck and shoulders. +At first she was shy; but Gagin said to her: + +"Assja, don't be afraid. He won't hurt you!" + +She smiled, and immediately addressed a little conversation to me. I +have never seen a more restless creature. She did not sit still a +moment. She stood up, ran into the house, came out again, sang in an +undertone, and laughed often in an odd way. It seemed as if she was not +laughing at what she heard, but at stray thoughts which came into her +head. Her large, clear eyes looked at us frankly and fearlessly. Now and +then, however, the lids fell, and then her glance became suddenly deep +and gentle. + +For nearly two hours we chatted together. Daylight was long past, and +the twilight had changed from scarlet and gold to a faint redness, then +to a clear gray, and finally all was lost in night; but our speech +flowed as uninterruptedly, peaceful, and quiet as the air that +surrounded us. Gagin brought a bottle of Rhine wine, and we drank it +leisurely. We could still hear the music. The notes seemed fainter and +sweeter to us. Lights began to appear in the town and on the river. +Assja's head drooped forward so that her hair fell over her eyes. She +was silent and breathed heavily. Then she declared that she was sleepy, +and went into the house; but I saw that she stood for a long time behind +the closed window without lighting her lamp. Then the moon rose, and her +beams quivered on the surface of the water. Everything was bright or in +deep shadow, but certainly took on a different appearance. Even the wine +in our glasses sparkled with a mysterious brilliancy. The wind had +fallen as if it had folded its wings and were resting. Warm, spicy odors +of the night rose from the ground. + +"It is time for me to go, or I shall not find a ferryman," I said. + +"Yes; it is time," Gagin repeated. + +We descended the footpath. Suddenly stones began to rattle down. Assja +was running after us. + +"Aren't you asleep then?" her brother asked her. But she ran on before +us without replying. The last dim lights which the students had lighted +in the little inn garden showed through the branches of the trees, and +lent them a gay, fantastic appearance. We found Assja at the shore +talking to the old boatmen. I sprang into the boat and took leave of my +new friends. Gagin promised to visit me on the next day. I shook his +hand and held mine out to Assja, but she merely looked at me and nodded. +The boat was pushed off and was borne down on the swift current. The +ferryman, a hale old fellow, dipped his oars deep into the dark flood. + +"You're in the streak of moonshine--you've spoiled it," Assja called +after me. + +I looked down. The waves were rippling darkly about the boat. + +"Good-by!" rang her voice again. + +"Till to-morrow," Gagin added. + +The boat touched the bank. I stepped out and looked back, but could see +no one on the shore behind me. The moonshine spanned the stream again +like a golden bridge, and like another good-by I caught the strains of +an old country waltz. Gagin was right. I felt that all the strings of my +heart trembled responsively. I crossed the dusky fields to my house, +drinking great draughts of the balmy air, and giving myself up wholly to +a sweet, vague feeling of expectation. I felt myself happy. But why? I +wished for nothing, I thought of nothing. I was merely happy. + +Still smiling from the fulness of delightful and changing sensations, I +sank into bed, and had already closed my eyes when it suddenly occurred +to me that I had not thought of my cruel fair one once in the whole +evening. "What does it mean?" I asked myself. "Am I not hopelessly in +love?" But just as I put this question to myself I fell asleep, as it +seemed, like a baby in its cradle. + + * * * * * + +The next morning (I was awake, but had not risen) some one knocked with +a stick under my window, and a voice that I immediately recognized as +Gagin's began to sing, + + Sleepest thou still? + My lute shall wake thee. + +I ran to open the door for him. + +"Good morning," said Gagin as he entered. "I disturb you a little early. +But what a morning it is! Fresh, dewy; the larks singing." With his +wavy, shining hair, his bare neck and ruddy checks, he was as fresh as +the morning himself. + +I dressed myself, and we went out into the garden, sat down upon a +bench, ordered coffee, and began to talk. Gagin confided to me his plans +for the future. Possessed of a fair property, and entirely independent, +he wished to devote himself to painting; only he regretted that this +decision had been a late one, and that he had already lost much time. I +also detailed my projects, and even took him into the secret of my +unhappy love affair. He listened patiently, but, so far as I could see, +the story of my passion did not awake any very lively sympathy in him. +After he had sighed once or twice out of good manners, he proposed to me +to come and see his studio. I was ready at once. + +We did not find Assja. She had gone to the "ruin," the landlady assured +us. Two versts from L---- were the remains of a castle of the middle +ages. Gagin laid all his canvases before me. There was life and truth in +his sketches, a certain breadth and freedom of treatment, but not one +was finished, and the drawing was careless and often faulty. I told him +my opinion frankly. + +"Yes, yes," he interrupted me with a sigh. "You are right; it is all +weak and unsatisfactory. But what is to be done? I haven't studied +properly, and the inexcusable carelessness shows everywhere. Before +working it always seems as if I were capable of eagle flights--it seems +as I could hurl the earth out of her course; but when it comes to +execution one loses strength quickly enough, and is tired." + +I began to encourage him, but he motioned with his hand that I should be +silent, rolled up his canvases, and threw himself on the sofa. "If my +patience lasts, I shall make something yet," he muttered in his beard; +"if not--then I shall stay a country lout. Come, let us look after +Assja." We started. + + * * * * * + +The way to the ruin wound round the slope of a wooded valley, at whose +bottom a brook flowed noisily over its pebbles as if it were anxious to +lose itself in the great stream that was shining peacefully behind the +sharply indented mountain side. Gagin called my attention to some +partially lighted spots; in his words the artist certainly spoke, if not +the painter. The river soon appeared. On the summit of the naked rock +rose a square town, black with age but in tolerable preservation, though +it was cleft from top to bottom. Moss-grown walls adjoined this town, +ivy clung here and there, a tangle of briars filled the embrasures and +the shattered arches. A stone foot-walk led to the door that remained +intact. We were already near it when suddenly a girl's figure sped by +us, sprang over the heaps of rubbish, and seated herself on a projection +of the wall directly over the abyss. "There is Assja," cried Gagin. "Is +she mad?" + +Through the gate we stepped into a spacious courtyard half filled with +wild apple trees and stinging nettles. It was indeed Assja, who was +sitting on the projection. She looked down at us and laughed, but did +not stir from her place. Gagin threatened her with his finger. I began +to expostulate aloud with her on her recklessness. + +"Don't do that," Gagin whispered to me. "Don't exasperate her. You don't +know her. She would be capable of clambering up the town. Look yonder, +rather, and see how ingenious the people hereabouts are." + +I looked about me. A thrifty old lady had made herself very comfortable +in a kind of narrow booth made of boards piled up in one corner, and +knitted her stocking, while she occasionally glanced askance at us. She +had beer, cake, and soda-water for tourists. We sat down on a bench and +attacked our heavy tin mugs of cooling beer. Assja still sat motionless; +she had drawn up her feet, and wound her muslin scarf about her head. +Her charming, slender figure showed sharp against the sky, but I could +not look at it without annoyance. Even on the previous day I had seen +something intense, unnatural in her. "Does she want to astonish us?" I +thought. "What for? What a childish freak!" As if she had fathomed my +thought, she cast a quick and piercing glance at me, laughed loudly, +sprang in two bounds from the wall, and going to the old woman, asked +for a glass of water. + +"You think that I want to drink it?" she said, turning to her brother. +"No; there are some flowers up there that I must water." + +Gagin made no reply, but she scrambled up the ruins glass in hand, and, +stopping from time to time and bending down, with extraordinary +painstaking she let fall some drops of water, which glistened in the +sun. Her movements were full of grace, but I was vexed as before, +although I was forced to admire her lightness and dexterity. In one +perilous spot she uttered a little shriek with design, and then laughed +loudly again. That annoyed me still more. + +"The young lady climbs like a goat," mumbled the old woman, and stopped +knitting for a moment. + +Meanwhile Assja had emptied her glass and come down, roguishly swaying +to and fro. A strange, imperceptible smile played round her brows, and +nostrils, and lips; half audacious, half merry, the dark eyes were +shining. + +"You find my behavior scandalous," her face seemed to say. "Very well. I +know that you admire me." + +"Neatly done, Assja; neatly done," said Gagin under his breath. + +It seemed as if she felt suddenly ashamed of herself. Her long lashes +fell, and she sat down near us meekly, as if conscious of naughtiness. +Now for the first time I could see her face fairly--the most changeful +that I had ever beheld. For a few moments it was very pale, and took on +a reserved, almost a melancholy expression. Her features seemed larger, +stronger, and more simple. She was perfectly still. We made the tour of +the ruins (Assja followed us), and were very enthusiastic over the view. +Meanwhile dinnertime approached. Gagin paid the old woman, asked for +another glass of beer, and cried, turning to me with a sly look, + +"To the health of the lady of your heart!" + +"Has he--have you such a lady?" asked Assja suddenly. + +"Who hasn't?" replied Gagin. + +Assja became thoughtful. Her face assumed yet another expression. The +challenging, almost bold smile returned. + +On the way home she laughed more, and her behavior was more whimsical +than ever. She broke for herself a long branch, carried it over her +shoulder like a gun, and bound her scarf about her head. A party of +fair-haired young English dandies met us. As if at a word of command, +they all stood aside to let Assja pass, with a cold glare of +astonishment in their eyes, while she began to sing loudly in mockery. +As soon as we had reached the house she went to her chamber, and +appeared at dinner in a most elaborate dress, with carefully arranged +hair, and wearing gloves. She behaved with great propriety, not to say +stillness, at table, hardly touched her food, and drank water out of a +wineglass. Evidently she wished to appear before me in a new role, that +of a conventional and well brought up young lady. Gagin let her alone. +It was easy to see that it had become a habit with him to let her have +her will in all things. At times he looked at her good-naturedly and +shrugged his shoulders slightly, as much as to say, "Be indulgent; she +is only a child." When the meal was ended Assja rose, made us a +courtesy, and taking up her hat, asked Gagin if she might go to see Frau +Luise. + +"Since when have you begun to ask permission?" answered Gagin with his +ready smile, but with a little astonishment. "Is the time long to you +with us?" + +"No; but yesterday I promised Frau Luise that I would visit her. And +then I think you two would rather be alone. Mr. N." (she pointed to me) +"may have something to tell you." + +She went. + +"Frau Luise," Gagin began, taking pains to avoid my glance, "is the +widow of a former burgomaster of this place; a good old soul, but rather +narrow-minded. She has taken a great fancy to Assja. It is Assja's +passion to make the acquaintance of people of the lower classes. I have +found that pride is at the bottom of the matter every time. I have +spoiled her thoroughly, you see," he went on after a pause; "but what +was there for me to do? I never could carry a point by firmness with any +one; most of all not with her. It is my duty to be indulgent with her." + +I was silent. Gagin gave another direction to the conversation. The more +I learned of him the more he pleased me. I soon understood him. His was +a real Russian character--truth-loving, faithful, simple, but +unfortunately rather sluggish, lacking firmness, and without the inward +fire. Youth did not flame up in him; it burned with a gentle glow. He +was most amiable and sensible; but I could not imagine what he would +become in manhood. He wished to be an artist. Without constant, +absorbing endeavor, no one is an artist. You exhaust yourself, I +thought, looking at his gentle face and listening to the slow cadence of +his voice. No; you will not strain every nerve; you will never succeed +in mastering yourself. And yet it was impossible not to be attracted by +him. My heart was really drawn to him. It may have been four hours that +we talked together, sometimes sitting on the sofa, sometimes walking +quietly up and down before the house; and in these four hours we became +real friends. + +The day was at its close, and it was time to go home. Assja had not +returned. + +"She is a wild creature," Gagin said. "If you please, I will go back +with you, and we will go to Frau Luise's on the way, and I will ask if +she is still there. The distance is trifling." + +"We descended to the town, turned into a crooked and narrow cross +street, and came to a standstill before a house of four stories with two +windows on a floor. The second story projected into the street beyond +the first; the third and fourth reached still further forward than the +second. The whole house, with its old-fashioned carving, its two thick +pillars below, its steep, tiled roof, and the beak-shaped gutter running +out from the eaves, had the appearance of some monstrous, squatting +bird. + +"Assja," called Gagin, "are you there?" + +A lighted window in the third story was thrown up, and Assja's little +dark head appeared. Behind her peered forth the face of a toothless and +blear-eyed old woman. + +"Here I am," answered Assja, coquettishly leaning over the window-sill +on her elbows. "It is exceedingly pleasant here. Catch," she added, +flinging a bit of geranium down to Gagin. "Imagine that I am the lady of +your heart." + +Frau Luise laughed. + +"N. is going," responded Gagin. "He would like to take leave of you." + +"Indeed?" said Assja. "In that case give him my sprig. I am coming home +directly." + +She shut the window, and I fancied that she gave Frau Luise a kiss. +Gagin handed me the sprig without a word. Without a word I put it in my +pocket, went to the ferry, and crossed to the other side. + +I remember that I went home thinking of nothing definite, but feeling a +certain dull ache at my heart, when suddenly a strong odor, well known +to me, but not usual in Germany, made me stop puzzled. I stood still and +recognized by the roadside a hemp field of moderate size, whose smell +reminded me at once of my native steppes. A mighty homesickness arose in +me. I had a longing to feel Russian air blowing on my cheeks, to have +Russian ground beneath my feet. "What am I doing here? Why am I +wandering about among strangers in a strange land?" I cried aloud, and +the vague uneasiness that weighed on my spirits changed suddenly to a +bitter burning pain. I reached the house in a mood entirely different +from the one of the preceding day. I was strangely excited. I could not +compose myself. A feeling of vexation which I could not explain to +myself possessed me. At last I sat down to think of my faithless widow +(for I devoted the close of every day to official recollections of this +lady), and I took out one of her letters. But this time I did not even +open it. My thoughts had taken another turn; I thought--of Assja. I +remembered that Gagin, in the course of conversation, had spoken of +certain obstacles which would make his return to Russia very difficult. +"Is she then really his sister?" I cried aloud. + +I undressed myself, went to bed, and tried to sleep; but an hour +afterward I was sitting up with my elbow on the pillow, and still +thinking of the "capricious maid with her affected laugh." "She has a +form like the little Galatea of Raphael in the Farnese," I said to +myself. "Yes, and she is not his sister." + +Meanwhile the widow's letter lay quietly on the floor, bleached by a +moonbeam. + + * * * * * + +However, on the following day I went again to L----. I said to myself +that I wished to visit Gagin, but in truth I was curious to watch Assja, +to see if she would pursue the extravagances of the day previous. I +found them both in the parlor, and wonderful!--was it because I had +thought so much of Russia in the night and the morning?--Assja appeared +to me a real Russian girl--yes, even a very ordinary one, almost like a +servant. She wore a shabby gown; her hair was combed back behind her +ears. She sat quietly by the window, busy with some sewing, sedate and +still as if she never in her life had been otherwise. She hardly spoke, +examined her work from time to time; and her features had an expression +so dull and commonplace that I was involuntarily reminded of our own +Kathinkas and Maschinkas. To complete the resemblance, she began to hum +"My darling little mother." I looked at her sallow, languid face, +thought of yesterday's fantasies, and got suddenly out of temper. The +weather was magnificent. Gagin declared that he was going to sketch from +nature. I asked if he would permit me to accompany him, if it would not +disturb him? + +"On the contrary," said he, "you will assist me by your suggestions." + +He put on his Vandyk hat and his painting blouse, took his canvas under +his arm, and started. I followed him slowly; Assja remained at home. In +going out Gagin begged her to take care that the soup should not be too +watery. Assja promised to oversee it in the kitchen. Gagin reached a +dell which I already knew, sat down upon a stone, and began to sketch an +old, hollow, wide-branched oak. I lay down in the grass and took out a +book, but my reading did not advance beyond the second page, nor did he +blacken much paper. We chatted a great deal, and, if my memory does not +deceive me, we discoursed very subtly and profoundly about work: what +one should avoid, what strive for, and in what consisted the real merit +of the artists of our day. At last Gagin declared that he was not in the +mood for work, threw himself down beside me, and then for the first time +our youthful talk flowed free, now passionate, now dreamy, now almost +inspired, but always vague--a conversation peculiar to Russians. After +we had talked ourselves tired we started for home, filled with +satisfaction that we had accomplished something, had arrived at some +result. I found Assja precisely as I had left her. Whatever pains I +might take with my scrutiny I could discover no trace of coquetry, no +evidence of a part designedly played. This time it was impossible to +accuse her of oddity. "Aha!" Gagin said; "you have imposed penance and +fasting on yourself." In the evening she gaped several times without +pretence at concealment, and retired early. I also took leave of Gagin +betimes, and having reached home, I gave myself up to no more dreams. +This day ended in sober reflections. But I remember that as I settled +myself to sleep I said aloud, "What a chameleon the girl is!" And after +a moment's thought I added, "And she is certainly not his sister." + + * * * * * + +In this way two whole weeks passed. I visited the Gagins every day. +Assja seemed to shun me. She indulged in no more of those extravagances +which had so astonished me on the first days of our acquaintance. It +seemed to me that she was secretly troubled or perplexed. Neither did +she laugh so much. I observed her with interest. + +She spoke French and German indifferently well, but one could see in +everything that she had not been in the hands of women since her +childhood, and the strange, desultory education which she had received +had nothing in common with Gagin's. In spite of the Vandyk hat and the +painter's blouse, the delicate, almost effeminate Russian nobleman was +always apparent in him; but she was not in the least like a noblewoman. +In all her movements there was something unsteady. Here was a graft +lately made, wine not yet fermented. Naturally of a timid and shy +disposition, she yet was annoyed by her own timidity, and in her +vexation she compelled herself to be unconcerned and at her ease, in +which she did not always succeed. Several times I turned the +conversation to her life in Russia, her past. She answered my questions +reluctantly. I learned, however, that she had lived in the country for a +long time before her travels. Once I found her with a book. She was +alone. Her head supported by both hands, the fingers twisted deep in her +hair, she was devouring the words with her eyes. + +"Bravo!" I called out to her on entering. "You are very busy." + +She raised her head and looked at me with great gravity and earnestness. + +"Do you really think that I can do nothing but laugh?" she said, and was +about to withdraw. + +I glanced at the title of the book; it was a French novel. + +"I can't commend your choice," I said. + +"What shall I read then?" she cried. And throwing her book on the table, +she added, "It's better that I fill up my time with nonsense," and with +this she ran out into the garden. + +That evening I read "Hermann and Dorothea" aloud to Gagin. At first +Assja occupied herself rather noisily near us, then suddenly ceased and +became attentive, seated herself quietly beside me, and listened to the +reading to the end. On the following day I was again puzzled by her mood +till it occurred to me that she had been seized with a whim to be +womanly and discreet like Dorothea. In a word, she was an enigmatical +creature. Full of conceit and irritable as she was, she attracted me +even while she made me angry. I was more and more convinced that she was +not Gagin's sister. His behavior toward her was not that of a brother; +it was too gentle, too considerate, and at the same time a little +constrained. A singular occurrence seemed, by every token, to confirm my +suspicions. + +One evening, when I came to the vineyard where the Gagins lived, I found +the gate locked. Without much thought I went to a broken place which I +had often noticed in the wall, and sprang over. Not far from this place, +and aside from the path, there was a small clump of acacia. I had +reached it, and was on the point of passing it. Suddenly I heard Assja's +voice, the words spoken excitedly and through tears: + +"No. I will love no one but you: no, no--you alone and for ever!" + +"Listen, Assja. Compose yourself," replied Gagin. "You know that I +believe you." I heard the voices of both in the arbor. I saw both +through the sparse foliage. They were not aware of my presence. + +"You--you alone," she repeated, threw herself on his neck, and clinging +to his breast, she kissed him amid violent sobs. "Come, enough," he +said, while he smoothed her hair gently with his hand. + +For a moment I stood motionless. Suddenly I recollected myself. Enter +and join them? For nothing in the world! it shot through my brain. With +hasty steps I gained the wall, leaped it, and reached my dwelling almost +on the run. I laughed, rubbed my hands together, and congratulated +myself on the chance which had so unexpectedly confirmed my suspicion +(whose truth I had not doubted for an instant); but my heart was heavy. +"They dissemble well?" I thought. "And for what purpose? Why do they +wish to amuse themselves at my expense? I would not have thought it of +them!" What a disturbing discovery it was! + + * * * * * + +I slept ill, and on the following day I rose early, buckled on my +knapsack, and after telling my landlady not to expect me at night, I +turned my steps toward the mountains, following the stream on which the +town of S---- is built. These mountains are very interesting from a +geological point of view; they are particularly remarkable for the +regularity and purity of their basaltic formations; but I was not bent +on geological investigation. I could give no account to myself of my own +feelings. One thing, however, was clear: I had not the least desire to +see the Gagins. I insisted to myself that the only ground of my sudden +distaste for their society lay in vexation at their falseness. + +What had been the necessity of calling themselves brother and sister? I +resolutely avoided thinking of them, loitered idly among the hills and +valleys, spent much time in village inns in friendly talk with the +landlord and his guests, or lay on a flat or sunny rock in the lovely +weather, and watched the clouds float over. In this way three days +passed not unpleasantly, though from time to time I had a stifled +feeling at my heart. This quiet nature accorded perfectly with my state +of mind. I gave myself up completely to the chance of the moment and the +impressions that it brought to me; following one another without haste, +they flooded my soul, and left finally a single feeling where everything +which I had seen or heard or experienced during these three days was +blended--everything: the faint resinous smell of the woods, cry and +tapping of the woodpeckers, the continual murmur of the clear brooks +with spotted trout in their sandy shallows, the not too bold outlines of +the mountains, gray rock, the friendly villages with venerable churches +and trees, storks in the meadows, snug mills with wheels merrily +turning, the honest faces of the country people with their blue smocks +and gray stockings, the slow creaking wagons and well-fed horses, or +sometimes a yoke of oxen, long-haired lads strolling along the cleanly +kept paths under apple and pear trees. To this day I remember with +pleasure the impressions of that time. I greet you, little nook of +modest ground, with your modest content, with your signs everywhere +visible of busy hands, of labor constant if not severe--greetings to you +and peace. + +At the end of the third day I returned to S----. I have forgotten to say +that in my vexation with the Gagins, I had endeavored to reinstate the +image of my hard-hearted widow. But I remember, as I began to think of +her, I saw before me a little peasant girl, about five years old, out of +whose round little face a pair of great innocent eyes were regarding me +curiously. The look was so childlike, so confiding, a kind of shame +swept over me. I could not continue a lie before that gaze, and at once +and for ever I said good-by to my early flame. + +I found a note from Gagin waiting for me. My sudden whim astonished him. +He made me some reproaches that I had not taken him with me, and begged +me to come to him as soon as I should return. Distrustfully I read this +note, yet the following day found me at L----. + + * * * * * + +Gagin's reception was friendly. He overwhelmed me with affectionate +reproaches; but no sooner had Assja caught sight of me than she broke +into loud laughter, designedly, it seemed, and without the least cause, +and ran away precipitately. Gagin lost his temper, grumbled at her for a +crazy girl, and begged me to excuse her. I must confess that I was very +cross with Assja. I was uncomfortable before, and now this unnatural +laughter and ridiculous behavior must be added. However, I acted as if I +had observed nothing, and detailed to Gagin all the incidents of my +little journey. He told me what he had done during my absence. But the +conversation went lame. Assja kept running in and out. Finally I +declared that I had some pressing work, and that it was time for me to +be at home. Gagin tried to detain me at first, then looking keenly at +me, he begged permission to accompany me. In the hall Assja approached +me suddenly, and held out her hand to me. I gave her fingers an almost +imperceptible pressure, and bade her good-by carelessly. We crossed the +Rhine together, strolled to my favorite oak tree near the little shrine +to the Virgin, and sat down on a bench to enjoy the landscape. There a +remarkable conversation took place between us. + +At first we only spoke in the briefest words, then fell into silence and +fixed our eyes on the shining river. + +"Tell me," Gagin began suddenly, with his accustomed smile, "what is +your opinion of Assja? She must appear a little singular to you. Not +so?" + +"Yes," I answered, not without a certain constraint. I had not expected +him to speak of her. + +"One must learn to know her well to form a judgment upon her," he +continued. "She has a very good heart, but a wild head. It is hard to +live quietly with her. However, it is not her fault, and if you knew her +history----" + +"Her history!" I interrupted him. "Isn't she then your----" Gagin looked +at me. + +"Is it possible that you have doubted that she was my sister? No," he +went on, without heeding my confusion. "She is; at least she is my +father's daughter. Listen to me. I have confidence in you, and I will +tell you all about her. + +"My father was a very honest, sensible, cultivated, and unfortunate man. +Fate had no harder blows for him than for others, but he could not bear +the first one that he felt from her. He had married early--a love match; +his wife, my mother, soon died, and I was left a six months' old baby. +My father took me to his country estates, and for twelve whole years he +lived there in absolute seclusion. He himself took charge of my +education, and would never have been separated from me if my uncle, his +brother, had not come to visit us in our country house. This uncle lived +in Petersburg, where he held a rather important post. He persuaded my +father, who could not be induced to quit his home under any +consideration, to trust me to his care. He showed his brother what an +injury it was to a boy of my age to live in such complete isolation, and +that, with a companion always melancholy and silent as my father, I +should inevitably remain behind boys of my age--yes, that my character +might easily be endangered by such a life. For a long time my father +resisted his brother's arguments, but at last he yielded. I cried at +parting from my father, whom I loved, though I had never seen a smile on +his face; but Petersburg once reached, our gloomy and silent nest was +soon forgotten. I went to school, and was afterward placed in a regiment +of the Guards. Every year I spent some weeks at our country house, and +with every year I found my father more melancholy, more reserved, and +depressed to an alarming degree. He went to church daily, and had almost +given up speech. On one of my visits--I was then in my twentieth year--I +saw for the first time about the house a little lean, black-eyed girl, +who might have been about ten years old. It was Assja. My father said +she was an orphan whose care he had undertaken: those were his own +words. I gave her no further attention. She was as wild, quick, and shy +as a little animal, and if I entered my father's favorite room, a great +dismal chamber in which my mother had died, and which had to be lighted +even by day, she always slunk out of sight behind my father's +old-fashioned easy chair, or hid behind the bookcase. It happened that +for the three or four years following I was prevented by my service from +visiting our estate. Every month I received a short letter from my +father, in which Assja was spoken of seldom and always incidentally. My +father was already past his fiftieth year, but looked still a young man. +Imagine my distress then when I suddenly received a perfectly unexpected +letter from our steward, announcing the fatal illness of my father, and +begging me urgently to come home as quickly as possible if I wished to +see him alive. I rushed headlong home, and found my father, though in +the last agony. My presence seemed the greatest joy to him; he clasped +me in his wasted arms, turned on me his gaze half doubtful, half +imploring, and after he had obtained from me a promise that I would +carry out his last wishes, he ordered his old servant to fetch Assja. +The old man brought her. She could hardly support herself on her feet, +and was trembling in every limb. + +"'Now take her,' said my father to me with earnestness. 'I bequeathe to +you my daughter, your sister. You will hear everything from Jacob,' he +added, while he pointed to his valet. + +"Assja burst out sobbing, and threw herself on the bed. Half an hour +afterward my father was dead. + +"I learned the following story: Assja was the daughter of my father and +a former waiting maid of my mother's, named Tatiana. She rose distinct +to my remembrance, this Tatiana, with her tall, slender figure, her +serious face, regular features, her dark and earnest eyes. She had the +reputation of a proud, unapproachable girl. As nearly as I could learn +from Jacob's reserved and respectful story, my father had entered into +close relations with her some years after my mother's death. At that +time Tatiana was not in her master's house, but living with a married +sister, the dairywoman, in a separate hut. My father became very much +attached to her, and wished to marry her after my departure, but she +herself refused this in spite of his entreaties. + +"'The departed Tatiana Vlassievna'--so Jacob told me, standing against +the door, with his hands crossed behind his back--'was in all things +very thoughtful, and would not lower your father. "A fine wife I should +be for you--a real lady wife!" she said to him--in my presence she has +said it.' Tatiana never would come back to the house, but remained, +together with Assja, living with her sister as before. As a child I had +often seen Tatiana at church on saint days. She stood among the +servants, usually near a window. She wore a dark cloth wound about her +head and a yellow shawl on her shoulders--the strong outline of her face +clear against the transparent pane; and she prayed silently and humbly, +bowing very low after the old fashion. When my uncle took me away Assja +was just two; when she lost her mother, just nine years old. + +"Immediately after Tatiana's death my father took Assja home to himself. +He had already expressed a wish to have her with him, but Tatiana had +refused it. You can imagine what Assja must have felt when she was taken +into the master's house. To this day she has not forgotten the hour when +for the first time they dressed her in a silk dress and kissed her +little hand. In her mother's lifetime she had been brought up with great +strictness: my father left her without a single restraint. He was her +instructor; except him, she saw no one. He did not spoil her; at least +he did not follow her about like a nursemaid, but he loved her fondly, +and refused her nothing. He was conscious of guilt toward her. Assja +soon discovered that she was the principal person in the household. She +knew the master was her father, but at the same time she began to +understand her equivocal position. Wilfulness and distrust were +developed to an extreme degree in her. Bad manners were contracted; +simplicity vanished. She wished (she herself told me) to compel the +whole world to forget her origin. She was ashamed of her mother, was +ashamed of being ashamed, and was in turn proud of her. You see that she +knew and knows still many things that should not be known at her age. +But does the blame rest with her? Youth was strong in her: her blood +flowed hot, and no hand near to guide her--the fullest independence in +everything! Is such a fate easily borne? She would not be inferior to +other girls. She rushed headlong into study. But what good could result +from it? The life, lawlessly begun, seemed likely to develop lawlessly. +But the heart remained true and the reason sound. + +"And so I found myself, a young fellow of twenty, weighted with the care +of a thirteen-year old girl! In the first days after my father's death +my voice caused her a feeling of feverish horror, my caresses made her +sad, and only by degrees and after a long time did she become accustomed +to me. And later, when she had gained security that I really considered +her my sister, and that I loved her as a sister, she attached herself +passionately to me: with her there is no half feeling. + +"I brought her to Petersburg. Hard as it was to leave her--I could not +live with her in any case--I placed her at one of the best +boarding-schools. Assja agreed to the necessity of our separation, but +it cost her a sickness which came near to being a fatal one. Little by +little she reconciled herself, and she staid four years in this +establishment. But contrary to my expectations, she remained almost her +old self. The principal of the school often complained to me. 'I cannot +punish her,' she would say; 'and I can do nothing by kindness.' Assja +comprehended everything with great quickness, learned +wonderfully--better than all; but it was utterly impossible to bring her +under the common rule. She rebelled; was sulky. I could not blame her +much. In her position she must keep herself at the service of every one, +or avoid every one. Only one of all her companions was intimate with +her--an insignificant, silent, and poor girl. The other young girls with +whom she was associated, of good families for the most part, did not +like her, and taunted and jibed her whenever they could find +opportunity. Assja was not behind them by a hair's breadth. Once, in the +hour for religious instruction, the teacher came to speak of the idea of +vice. 'Sycophancy and cowardice,' said Assja aloud, 'are the meanest +vices.' In a word, she continued to walk in her own way, only her +manners improved somewhat; but even in this respect, I fancy, she has +made no wonderful advance. + +"She had reached her seventeenth year. It was useless to keep her longer +at school. I found myself in great perplexity. All of a sudden a happy +thought struck me: to quit the service, and to travel with Assja for a +year or two. Done as soon as thought. So here are we both now on the +banks of the Rhine: I occupied in learning to paint, she following out +her whims in her usual way. But now I must hope that you will not pass +too harsh judgment upon her; for however much she may insist that +everything is indifferent to her, she does care very much for the +opinion of others, and especially for your own." + +And Gagin smiled again his gentle smile. I wrung his hand. + +"That is how it stands now," Gagin continued. "But I have my hands full +with her. A real firebrand, that girl! Up to this time no one has ever +pleased her; but alas if ever she falls in love! At times I do not know +what to do with her. Lately she took it into her head to declare that I +was growing cold to her, but that she loved only me, and would love only +me her life long. And how she sobbed!" + +"So that was it," I said to myself, and bit my lip. "But tell me," I +asked Gagin, "now that our hearts are open, has really no one ever +caught her fancy? Surely she must have seen many young men in +Petersburg?" + +"And they are all absolutely distasteful to her. No. Assja is seeking a +hero--an entirely extraordinary man, or else an artistic shepherd among +his flock. But enough of this gossip. I am detaining you," he added as +he rose. + +"Come," I said, "let us go back. I don't care to go home." + +"And your work?" + +I made no reply. Gagin laughed good-naturedly, and we returned to L----. +As the well-known vineyard and the little white house on the hillside +came in sight, my heart was warmed in a curious way--yes, that was +it--warmed and soothed as if, unknown to me, some one had poured some +healing drops there. Gagin's story had made me cheerful. + +Assja met us at the threshold. I had expected to find her still +laughing, but she stepped forward to us, pale, silent, and with eyes +down cast. + +"Here he is again," Gagin said to her, "and be sure of this: it was his +own wish to come back." + +Assja looked at me inquiringly. I held out my hand to her, and this time +I grasped tightly her cold and slender fingers. I felt deep pity for +her. Now I understood much that had before disturbed me in her: her +inner restlessness, her offensive manner, her endeavor to show herself +other than she was--all was clear to me. I had had a glimpse into this +soul. A constant weight oppressed it. Fearfully the untrained will +fought and struggled, yet her whole being was striving after truth. Now +I understood why this singular girl had attracted me: it was not only +the charm which invested her whole body; it was her soul which drew me. + +Gagin began to fumble among his sketches. I asked Assja to come for a +walk with me through the vineyard. She gave a ready, almost humble +assent. We climbed the hill about half way, and stopped on a broad +plateau. + +"And you felt no _ennui_ without us?" Assja began. + +"Did you, then, feel any in my absence?" I asked. + +Assja looked at me sideways. + +"Yes," she replied. "Is it pleasant in the mountains?" she immediately +continued. "Are they high? Higher than the clouds? Tell me what you have +seen. You have told my brother, but I have heard nothing about it." + +"Why did you go away?" I interrupted her. + +"I went--because---- Now I will not go away," she added in a gentle, +confiding tone. "You were cross today." + +"I?" + +"You." + +"But why? I beg you----" + +"I don't know; but you were cross, and went away cross. It was very +unpleasant to me to have you go away in that manner, and I am glad that +you have come back." + +"I am equally glad," I replied. + +Assja moved her shoulders slightly, one after the other, as children do +when they are in good humor. + +"Oh, I am famous at guessing," she went on. "Long ago my father had only +to cough, and I knew instantly whether he was pleased with me or not." + +Till this time Assja had never spoken to me of her father. That struck +me. + +"You loved your father very much?" I asked, and I felt to my great +annoyance that I was blushing. + +She did not answer, but she also blushed. We were both silent. In the +distance a steamboat with its trailing smoke was descending the Rhine: +our looks followed it. + +"Why do you not tell me something?" Assja said half aloud. + +"Why did you laugh to-day when you saw me coming?" I asked her. + +"I do not know myself. Sometimes I want to cry, and yet must laugh. You +must not judge me by what I do. Ah, by the way, what a wonderful story +it is about the Lorelei. Isn't it her rock that we see yonder? They say +that at first she drew every one else beneath the water, but after she +was acquainted with love, she cast herself in. The story pleases me. +Frau Luise tells me all sorts of fairy stories. Frau Luise has a black +cat with yellow eyes----" + +Assja raised her head and threw back her hair. + +"Ah, how comfortable I feel!" she said. + +At this moment broken, monotonous tones fell on our ears. Hundreds of +voices in unison repeated a hymn with measured pauses. A troop of +pilgrims was moving along the way beneath us with flags and crosses. + +"I would like to go with them!" cried Assja, while she listened to the +sound of the voices, gradually dying away. + +"Are you so devout?" + +"I would like to go somewhere far off, to pray, to accomplish something +difficult," she added. "The days hurry by, life will come to an end, and +what have we done?" + +"You are ambitious," I said. "You do not wish to live in vain. You would +like to leave behind some trace of your existence." + +"Would it be impossible?" + +"Impossible," I had nearly repeated. I looked into her clear eyes and +only said: + +"Well, try it." + +"Tell me," Assja began after a little silence, while flying shadows +followed each other across her face, which had grown pale again--"did +that lady please you very much? You remember, my brother drank to your +health once, in the ruins; it was the day after we had made +acquaintance." + +I laughed aloud. + +"It was a jest of your brother's; no lady has pleased me, at least no +one now pleases me." + +"What is it that pleases you in women?" asked Assja, tossing back her +head in childish curiosity. + +"What a singular question!" I exclaimed. + +Assja was a little disturbed. + +"I should not have asked the question--not so? Forgive me. I am used to +chatter about everything that goes through my head. That is why I am +afraid to talk." + +"Only talk, for heaven's sake! Don't be afraid," I broke in. "I am so +glad that at last you cease to be shy." Assja lowered her eyes and +laughed; a still, gentle laughter that I did not recognize as hers. + +"Well, tell me something then," she said, while she smoothed her dress +and tucked it about her feet as if disposing herself to sit for a long +while--"tell me something, or read something aloud, as that time when +you read to us out of 'Onegin.'" + +She grew suddenly thoughtful. + + Where now in green boughs' shadow + The cross rests on my mother's grave-- + +she said to herself in a low voice. + +"In Pushkin the verse is somewhat different," I ventured.[J] + +[Footnote J: In Pushkin it reads, "On my nurse's grave."] + +"I would have liked to be Pushkin's Tatiana," she continued, still lost +in thought. "Tell me something," she cried suddenly, with vivacity. + +But I could find nothing to say. I looked at her as she sat there, +gentle and peaceful, surrounded with the clear sunshine. Everything +about us glowed with happiness; the sky, the earth, the water. It seemed +as if the very air was bathed in a splendor. + +"Look, how beautiful!" I said, involuntarily lowering my voice. + +"Yes, beautiful," she answered as gently, without looking at me. "If we +were both birds, we would fly high up there--would soar. We would sink +deep into that blue. But we are no birds." + +"We may have wings though," I answered. + +"How?" + +"In time you will discover. There are feelings that swing us off from +the earth. Don't fear; you will have wings." + +"Have you had them then?" + +"How shall I say? I believe that I have never flown till now." + +Assja fell again into thought. I bent toward her a little. + +"Can you waltz?" she asked unexpectedly. + +"Yes, I can," I answered, somewhat surprised. + +"Then come, come--I will ask my brother to play a waltz for us--we will +imagine that we are flying, that our wings have grown." + +She ran to the house. I hastened after her, and in a few moments we were +whirling round the narrow room to the music of a charming waltz. Assja +danced exceedingly well, with lightness and skill. Something soft and +feminine came suddenly into her childish, earnest face. For a long time +afterward my hand felt the contact of her delicate form, for a long time +I seemed to feel her close, quickened breathing, and to see before me +the dark, fixed, half-closed eyes, and the animated pale face with its +wreathing hair. + + * * * * * + +This whole day passed so that one could not have wished it better. We +were merry as children. Assja was very lovable and natural. It was a +pleasure for Gagin to see her. It was late when I went away. In the +middle of the Rhine I told the ferryman to leave the boat to the +current. The old man drew in his oars and the majestic stream bore us +onward. While I looked about me and listened, and called forgotten +things to memory, I felt a sense of unrest in my heart. I turned my eyes +to the heavens, but in the heavens was no rest; with its glittering host +of stars it was in steady motion, revolving, trembling. I bent to the +river, but there also in the dark, cool depths the stars were dancing +and flickering; everywhere the restless spirit of life met me, and the +restlessness in my own heart grew stronger. I leaned over the side of +the boat. The murmuring of the breeze in my ears, the low splash of the +water against the stern of the boat, excited me, and the freshness of +the waves did not cool me. Somewhere on the shore a nightingale began +her song, and this music worked upon me like a sweet poison. Tears +filled my eyes, but not the tears of an indefinite rapture. What I +experienced was not the vague feeling of boundless longing in which it +seems as if the heart could embrace everything: no. In me arose a +burning desire for happiness. Only as yet I did not dare call this +happiness by its real name. But bliss--bliss to overflowing was what I +longed for. The boat drifted further and further, and the old ferryman +sat bowed over his oars and fast asleep. + + * * * * * + +On my way to the Gagins the following day I did not ask myself if I was +in love with Assja, but I thought of her continually; her destiny +absorbed me, and I rejoiced over our unhoped-for meeting. I felt that I +had known her only since yesterday. Until then she had always avoided +me. And now that she had finally admitted me to her friendship, in what +a bewitching light did her image appear to me; what a mysterious charm +streamed from it to me. + +Hastily I sprang up the well-known path, straining my eyes for a glimpse +of the little white house in the distance. I did not think of the +future; I did not think even of the morrow; but my heart was light in +me. + +Assja blushed as I entered the room. I observed that she had again +dressed herself with great care, but the expression of her face did not +correspond with her finery; it was melancholy. And I had come so happily +disposed! I believe that she was inclined to run away in her usual +fashion, but forcibly compelled herself to remain. I found Gagin in that +peculiar mood of artistic enthusiasm which catches dilettanti by +surprise whenever they imagine themselves about to take nature by storm, +as they express it. He stood with hair disordered, and bedaubed with +paint, before a fresh canvas, drawing madly. Furiously he nodded to me, +stepped backward, half closed his eyes, and then precipitated himself +again upon his work. I did not like to disturb him, and sat down beside +Assja. Slowly her dark eyes turned on me. + +"You are not as you were yesterday," I ventured, after I had made some +vain attempts to bring a smile to her lips. + +"No, I am not," she replied, with a slow, suppressed voice. "But that is +nothing. I did not sleep well. I was thinking the whole night." + +"About what?" + +"Oh, I thought about many things. It has been my habit from childhood, +even when I was living with my mother." + +She spoke this with a certain emphasis, and repeated it. + +"When I was living with my mother I--I wondered why no one can know +beforehand what is to happen to him. Sometimes one sees a misfortune +coming, and yet cannot turn away from it; and why cannot one always say +boldly the truth? Then I thought that I do not know anything, and that I +must learn. I must be educated over again. I have been very badly +brought up. I do not know how to play the piano, I cannot draw, I sew +dreadfully; I have no capacity; I must be very tiresome." + +"You are unjust to yourself," I answered. "You have read much, you are +cultivated, and with your intellect----" + +"Have I an intellect?" she asked with such naive curiosity that I could +not help laughing. She did not laugh. + +"Brother, have I an intellect?" she asked Gagin. + +He made her no answer, but continued his work, busily laying on his +colors, and with one arm flourished in the air. + +"Sometimes I hardly know myself what goes through my head," Assja went +on with the same thoughtful expression. "At certain times I am actually +afraid of myself. Ah, I wish---- Is it really true that women ought not +to read much?" + +"It is not necessary that they should read much, but----" + +"Will you tell me what to read? Will you tell me what to do? I will do +everything that you tell me," she said, turning to me with an innocent +confidence. + +I did not readily find any answer to make. + +"The time with me will not seem long to you?" + +"How can you think so!" I said. + +"Well, I thank you," cried Assja, "but I thought you might be _ennuye_." + +And her little hot hand grasped +mine tightly. + +"N.!" cried Gagin at this moment, "isn't this background too dark?" + +I went over to him. Assja rose and left the room. + + * * * * * + +An hour afterward she returned, stood in the doorway, and beckoned to +me. + +"Listen," she said. "Would you be sorry if I died?" + +"What ideas you have to-day!" I exclaimed. + +"I imagine that I shall die soon. Sometimes it seems to me as if +everything about me was taking leave of me. It is better to die than to +live as---- Ah, don't look at me so. Indeed I am not a hypocrite. I +shall be afraid of you again." + +"Have you ever been afraid of me?" + +"If I am unlike other people, the fault is not mine," she answered. +"Already, you see, I cannot laugh any more." + +She was melancholy and depressed until evening. Something was passing in +her that I could not understand. Her eyes often rested on me, and every +time they did so I felt my heart chilled by their strange expression. +She was quiet--and yet whenever I looked at her it seemed to me that I +must beg her to be calm. Her appearance fascinated me; I found the +greatest charm in her pale features, in her slow, aimless movements; but +she fancied--I do not know why--that I was in ill humor. + +"Listen," she said to me a little while before my departure. "The +thought haunts me that you think me frivolous. In future you must +believe everything that I tell you, and you must be frank with me. I +will always tell you the truth, I give you my word of honor." + +This "word of honor" made me laugh. + +"Oh, do not laugh," she broke in with eagerness, "or else I must say to +you to-day what you said to me yesterday: 'Why do you laugh so much?'" +And after a short silence she continued: "Do you remember, yesterday we +were talking of wings? My wings are grown--but where shall I fly?" + +"What are you saying!" I replied. "To you all ways are open." + +Assja looked in my eyes long and keenly. + +"You have a bad opinion of me today," she said, and drew her eyebrows +together. + +"I have a bad opinion? Of you!" + +"What is the matter with you two to-day?" Gagin interrupted me. "Shall I +play a waltz for you as I did yesterday?" + +"No, no," exclaimed Assja, clasping her hands together--"not for the +world to-day." + +"I won't insist--be easy." + +"Not for the world," she repeated, and her cheeks grew pale. + + * * * * * + +Does she love me? I thought, as I came to the Rhine, whose waves rolled +swiftly by. + +Does she love me? I asked myself when I awoke the next morning. I did +not wish to look into my own heart. I felt that her image--the image of +the "girl with the bold laugh"--had impressed itself upon my soul, and +that I could not easily get rid of it. I went to L---- and remained there +the whole day; but I had only one glimpse of Assja. She was not well; +her head ached. She came down stairs for a few moments with her head +bound up, her eyes half closed, pale and weak; she smiled feebly, said, +"It will pass; it is nothing; everything passes, does it not?" and went +away. I was depressed and had a painful sense of blankness, but I would +not go home till very late, without, however, seeing her again. + +I spent the next day like a man walking in his sleep. I tried to work, +but could not; then I tried to be absolutely idle, and to think of +nothing; but neither did that succeed. I strolled about the town, +returned home, and went out again. + +"Are you Mr. N.?" said suddenly the voice of a child behind me. I +turned. A little boy was standing before me. "From Miss Annette," and +handed me a note. + +I opened it, and recognized Assja's irregular and scrawling handwriting. +"I must see you," she wrote. "Come to-day at four o'clock to the stone +chapel on the way to the ruins. Something unexpected has happened. For +heaven's sake, come. You shall know everything. Say to the bearer, +'yes.'" + +"Any answer?" the boy asked me. + +"Say 'yes,'" I replied. The boy ran off. + + * * * * * + +When I had reached my room I sat down and fell into deep thought. My +heart beat forcibly. I read Assja's note several times over. I looked at +the clock; it was not yet midday. + +The door opened: Gagin walked in. + +His face was gloomy. He seized my hand and shook it warmly. Apparently +he was very much excited. + +"What is the matter?" I asked him. + +Gagin took a chair and drew it near mine. "Four days ago," he began with +a forced smile, and stammering a little, "I amazed you with a +confidence; and to-day I shall amaze you even more. With any other I +probably should not--so plainly. But you are a man of honor; you're my +friend, are you not? Well, here then; my sister Assja loves you." + +I started up from my chair. + +"You say--your sister----" + +"Yes, yes," Gagin interrupted me. "I tell you she has lost her senses +and will make me lose mine, moreover. Happily she is not used to lying +and has great trust in me. Oh, what a soul the girl has! But she will +surely do herself a mischief." + +"You must be mistaken," I said. + +"No, I'm not. Yesterday, you know, she staid in bed nearly all day; she +ate nothing: to be sure she complained of nothing. She never complains. +I was not uneasy, although toward evening she grew feverish. But at two +o'clock this morning our landlady roused me. 'Come to your sister,' said +she. 'There is something wrong with her.' I hastened to Assja, and found +her not yet undressed, very feverish, in tears: her head was burning +hot, her teeth chattered. 'What's the matter?' I asked. 'Are you sick?' +She threw herself upon my neck, and insisted that I should take her away +from there as speedily as possible if I wished her to remain alive. I +could make nothing of it--tried to pacify her. Her sobs increased, and +suddenly among her sobs I heard--well, in one word, I discovered that +she loves you. I assure you, neither of us, being reasonable men, can +have the smallest idea of the impetuosity of her feelings and the +incredible violence with which she expresses them; it is as sudden and +as inevitable as a thunder storm. You are a delightful fellow," Gagin +continued, "But I must confess that I do not see why she has fallen in +love with you. She believes that she has loved you from the first moment +she saw you. She was crying lately on that account, even when she was +declaring that she loved nobody but me. She imagines that you despise +her; she fancies that you know her origin. She asked me if I had told +you the story of her life. I naturally denied it, but it is astonishing +how keen she is. She wishes only one thing: to go away: immediately +away. I staid with her till morning. She wrung a promise from me that we +would leave here to-morrow, and then at last she fell asleep. I thought +it over and over, and decided--to talk with you. Assja is right, in my +opinion. It is best that we should both leave this place. I should have +taken her away to-day if an idea that has got into my head didn't +prevent it. Perhaps--who can tell?--my sister pleases you? If this +should be the case, why should I take her away? So I determined to put +shame aside. Besides, I have myself noticed--so I decided--from your own +mouth to learn----" Poor Gagin became hopelessly confused. "Pray excuse +me," he added. "I am inexperienced in such matters." + +I seized his hand. + +"You wish to know whether your sister pleases me? Yes, she pleases me," +I said in a steady voice. Gagin looked at me. + +"But," he said with an effort, "you don't want to marry her?" + +"How can I answer such a question? Think, yourself, how could I at this +moment----" + +"I know, I know," Gagin interrupted me. "I have not the least right to +expect an answer from you, and my question was improper--to the last +degree. But what was I to do? One cannot play with fire. You do not know +Assja. It would be possible for her to drown herself--to run away, to +seek an interview with you. Any other girl would know how to conceal +everything and to wait opportunities--but not she. This is her first +experience. That is the worst of it! If you had seen her as she lay +sobbing at my feet, you would share my anxiety." + +I became thoughtful. Gagin's expression, "seek an interview with you," +sank into my heart. It seemed abominable not to answer his confidence +with confidence as free. + +"Yes," I said at last. "You are right. An hour ago I received a note +from your sister. Here it is." + +Gagin took the note, read it hurriedly, and let his hands fall on his +knees. The expression of his features was ludicrous enough, but I was in +no mood for laughter. + +"You're a man of honor. I repeat it," he said. "But what is to be done +now? What! She wishes to hurry away from here, yet she writes to you and +reproaches herself for her own want of foresight. And when can she have +written this? What does she want of you?" + +I succeeded in calming him, and we began to talk, as coolly as we could, +about what we might have to do. + +At last we decided as follows: To guard against any desperate step on +her part, I was to meet Assja at the appointed place, and have a fair +explanation with her. Gagin pledged himself to remain at home and to +avoid all appearance of knowing about the note. In the evening we agreed +to meet again. "I have full confidence in you," said Gagin, and pressed +my hand strongly. "Spare Assja and myself. But we shall leave +to-morrow," he added as he rose, "for you will not marry Assja." + +"Give me time till evening," I said. + +"So be it. But you will not marry her." + +He went away. I threw myself on the sofa and shut my eyes. My head spun +round like a top. Too many emotions came crowding upon me. Gagin's +frankness annoyed me, and I was angry with Assja. Her love distressed +and delighted me at once. I could not understand how she could betray +herself to her brother. The necessity of a hasty, an instantaneous +decision tormented me. "Marry a seventeen-year-old girl of such a +disposition! How can I do it?" I said, getting up from my seat. + + * * * * * + +I crossed the Rhine at the appointed hour, and the first face that met +me on the opposite shore was that of the same boy who had come to me in +the morning. He seemed to be waiting for me. + +"From Miss Annette," he said, and gave me another letter. Assja wrote to +appoint another place for our meeting. In half an hour I was to come, +not to the chapel, but to the house of Frau Luise, knock at the door, +and ascend to the third story. + +"'Yes' again?" the boy asked me. + +"Yes," I answered, and walked along the bank of the river. There was not +time to return to my house, and I had no inclination to stroll about the +streets. Just beyond the limits of the village there was a little garden +with a covered bowling alley and tables for beer drinkers. I entered it. +A few middle-aged men were playing ninepins. The balls rolled noisily, +and from time to time I caught expressions of applause. A pretty girl, +with eyelids reddened by crying, brought me a glass of beer. I looked +her in the face. She turned hastily away and disappeared. + +"Yes, yes," said a fat and ruddy-cheeked man who was sitting near me. +"Our little Nancy is in great trouble to-day. Her lover is gone with the +conscripts." I looked after her. She had retired to a corner and buried +her face in her hands. One after another the tears trickled through her +fingers. Some one called for beer. She brought it, and went back to her +place. Her grief reacted upon me. I began to think of the interview +before me; but I thought of it with anxiety, not with joy. I did not go +light-hearted to the rendezvous. No joyful exchange of mutual love was +before me; I had a promise to redeem, a hard duty to perform. "There is +no jesting possible with her"--this expression of Gagin's pierced my +soul like an arrow. And was not this the very happiness for which I had +longed four days ago, in the little boat which the waves bore onward? +Now it seemed to be possible--but I wavered, I thrust it from me; I must +put it away from me. The very unexpectedness of it confused me. Assja +herself, with her impetuosity, her past history, her education--this +charming but singular being--let me confess it--inspired me with fear. +For a long time I gave myself up to these conflicting feelings. The +deferred tryst was at hand. "I cannot marry her," I decided at last, +"and she shall not know that I love her." + +I rose, and after I had pressed a thaler in poor Nancy's hand (for which +she did not even thank me) I went straight to Frau Luise's house. +Already the shadow of dusk was in the air, and above the darkening +streets a narrow streak, the reflection of the sunset, reddened in the +sky. I knocked lightly at the door. It was opened instantly. I stepped +across the threshold and found myself suddenly in darkness. + +"This way!" whispered an old woman's voice. "Some one is waiting for +you." + +I advanced a couple of steps, stumbling. A skinny hand clutched mine. + +"Is it you, Frau Luise?" I asked. + +"Yes," the same voice answered. "Yes, it is I, my handsome young +gentleman." The old woman led me up one steep staircase and stopped at +the bottom of a second. By the dull light which came in through a little +window I recognized the wrinkled visage of the burgomaster's widow. A +hateful, sly smile distorted her shrunken lips and half closed the +little bleared eyes. She pointed out a small door to me. I opened it +with a hand that trembled, and shut it again behind me. + + * * * * * + +It was nearly dark in the little room which I entered, and at first I +did not discover Assja. Wrapped in a great cloak, she was sitting in a +chair by the window, with her head averted and almost hidden, like a +frightened bird. Her breath came quickly, and she was trembling in every +limb. I felt an inexpressible pity for her. I approached her; she turned +her head away still more. + +"Anna Nicolaevna!" I addressed her. + +She started suddenly as if she wished to look at me, but dared not. I +took her hand. It was cold, and lay in mine like a dead thing. + +"I wished," Assja began, and tried to smile, but her pallid lips would +not obey her--"I wanted--no, I cannot," she said, and was silent. And in +truth her voice broke at every word. + +I sat down beside her. + +"Anna Nicolaevna!" I repeated, and again found nothing further to say. + +There was a silence. I still held her hand and looked at her. She was in +the same constrained attitude as before: breathed heavily, and bit her +under lip in order to keep back her tears. My eyes were fixed on her. +There was something touchingly helpless in her shy immobility. It seemed +as if she had just been able to reach the chair, and had fallen there. +My heart overflowed. + +"Assja!" I whispered, almost inaudibly. + +Slowly she raised her eyes to mine. Oh, the glance of a woman who loves! +Who shall describe it? Her eyes expressed entreaty, trust, questioning, +surrender. I could not withstand their magic. A burning fire thrilled me +like the prick of red-hot needles. I bent down and pressed my lips to +her hand. + +A little hurried sound as of a broken sob fell on my ear, and I felt on +my hair the tender touch of a hand that trembled like a leaf. I raised +my head, and looked in her face. The expression of fear was gone from +her features. Her glance swept past me into the room. Her lips were a +little apart, her forehead white as marble, and the hair pushed off as +if the wind had blown it back. I forgot everything; I drew her toward +me; willingly her hand obeyed, and her whole body followed; the shawl +slipped from her shoulders, and her head bowed silently to my breast and +laid itself against my burning lips. + +"Yours!" she whispered faintly. + +Already my arm was about her, when suddenly, like a gleam of lightning, +the thought of Gagin flashed through my brain. "What are we doing?" I +cried, and moved roughly away. "Your brother knows all--he knows that we +are here together." + +Assja sank into her chair. + +"Yes," I went on, while I rose and went over to the other side of the +room. "Your brother knows everything. I had to tell him everything." + +"You had to?" she stammered unintelligibly. She could not come to +herself, and only half comprehended me. + +"Yes, yes," I repeated with a certain bitterness, "and you are to blame +for it--you alone. Why did you betray your secret? Who compelled you to +tell your brother? He himself was with me to-day, and told me of your +conversation with him." + +I avoided looking at Assja, and went up and down the room with great +strides. "Now everything is lost--everything, everything." + +Assja was about to get up from her chair. + +"Oh, sit still," I cried; "sit still, I beg you. You have to do with a +man of honor--yes, with a man of honor. But in Heaven's name what +disturbed you so? Have you seen any change in me? But it was impossible +for me to conceal it from your brother when he made me a visit to-day." + +"What am I saying?" I thought to myself, and the idea that I should be a +base hypocrite, that Gagin knew of this meeting, that everything had +been talked over, twisted and spoiled, maddened me. + +"I did not call my brother," Assja said, in a frightened, harsh voice. +"He came of his own will." + +"Only see what you have done," I went on. "Now you want to go away." + +"Yes, I must go," she said in a whisper, "and I only asked you to come +here that I might take leave of you." + +"And do you think," I retorted, "that it is easy for me to part from +you?" + +"Why were you obliged to tell my brother?" repeated Assja with an +expression of amazement. + +"I tell you, I could not do otherwise. If you had not betrayed +yourself----" + +"I had locked myself into my chamber," she answered simply. "I did not +know that my landlady had another key." + +This innocent speech from her mouth at such a moment nearly cost me my +self-control. Even now I cannot think of it without emotion. Poor, +honest, innocent child! + +"And so it is all over," I began again. "All. Now indeed we must part." +I threw a stolen glance at Assja, whose face became more and scarlet. +She was, I felt, alarmed and ashamed. I myself was greatly agitated, and +spoke like one in a fever. "You did not leave the budding feeling time +to unfold itself. You yourself have torn the bond between us. You had no +confidence in me; you cherished suspicion against me." + +While I was speaking Assja bent forward more and more, then sank +suddenly on her knees, let her head fall into her hands, and broke into +sobs. I rushed to her and tried to raise her, but she resisted me. I +cannot endure women's tears; when I see them I lose my self-possession +at once. + +"Anna Nicolaevna, Assja!" I cried repeatedly. "I beg, I implore you! +Stop, for God's sake!" I took her hand again. + +But to my extremest astonishment she sprang up suddenly, sped like a +flash through the door, and vanished. + +When Frau Luise came in a few moments later, I still stood in the middle +of the chamber as if thunderstruck. I could not believe that the +interview had come to an end so abrupt, so unmeaning, when I myself had +not said the hundredth part of what I meant to say, and was, besides, +quite uncertain how it should finally terminate. + +"Is the young lady gone?" Frau Luise asked me, and raised her yellow +eyebrows quite to the parting of her hair. + +I stared at her like an idiot, and went away. + + * * * * * + +I left the village and made my way into the fields. Vexation, the +keenest vexation possessed me. I overwhelmed myself with reproaches. How +had it been possible for me to misunderstand the reason which had +induced Assja to change our place of meeting? How could I have failed to +know what it must have cost her to go to the old woman? Why had I not +detained her! Alone with her in the dim, empty room I had found the +strength, I had had the heart to drive her from me--even to reproach her +for coming. Now her image followed me; I besought her pardon. The memory +of that pale face, those shy, wet eyes, that hair flowing over the bowed +back, the soft nestling of her head against my breast, consumed me like +a fire. "Yours!" Her whisper still rang in my ears. "I have acted +conscientiously," I tried to say to myself. Lies! What was the +conclusion I truly wished? Am I in a condition to part with her? Can I +lose her? "O fool! fool!" I repeated with bitterness. + +By this time the night had fallen. With hasty steps I sought the house +where Assja lived. + + * * * * * + +Gagin came to meet me. + +"Have you seen my sister?" he called to me, still at a distance. + +"Isn't she at home then?" I returned. + +"No." + +"She has not come back?" + +"No. Excuse me," Gagin went on. "I could not stand it. I went to the +chapel in spite of our agreement; she was not there; she cannot have +gone there." + +"She did not go to the chapel." + +"And you have not seen her?" + +I had to acknowledge that I had seen her. + +"Where?" + +"At Frau Luise's. We separated an hour ago," I added. "I believed +certainly that she had come home." + +"Let us wait," said Gagin. + +We entered the house and sat down near each other. We were silent. +Neither of us was without anxiety. We watched the door and listened. At +last Gagin rose. + +"This is the end of everything," he cried. "I don't know if my heart is +in my body. She will kill me yet, by God! Come, let us search for her." + +We went out. It had grown dark. + +"Of what did you talk with her?" asked Gagin as he crushed his hat down +over his eyes. + +"I was with her five minutes at longest," I answered. "I spoke to her as +we had decided." + +"Well," he said, "we would better go, each for himself; in that way we +shall find her sooner. In any event, come back here in an hour." + + * * * * * + +Hastily I descended the hill and ran to the town. I made my way rapidly +through all the streets, staring in all directions, took another glance +at the windows of Frau Luise's house, reached the Rhine, and began to +walk quickly along its bank. From time to time I met women, but Assja +was nowhere to be seen. It was no longer vexation that I felt. A secret +fear oppressed me, and not fear alone; no, remorse, the warmest pity. +Love! yes, tenderest love! Wringing my hands, I called on Assja, into +the gathering darkness of the night; softly at first, then louder and +louder; a hundred times I repeated that I loved her. I swore never to +part from her. I would have given everything in the world to hear her +gentle voice again, to hold her cold hand, to see herself standing +before me. So near had she been to me, in perfect trustfulness, in utter +simplicity of heart and feeling had she come to me and laid her +inexperienced youth in my hands; and I had not caught her to my heart; I +had thrown away the bliss of seeing the shy face bloom into a joy, a +rapture of peace--this thought drove me to madness. + +"Where can she be gone? What is become of her?" I called out, desperate +with helpless fears. Suddenly something white glimmered near by on the +shore. I knew the spot. An old half sunken cross with quaint inscription +stood there, over the grave of a man drowned seventy years before. My +heart stood still in my body. I ran to the cross. The white figure had +disappeared. "Assja!" I shouted. My wild cry terrified me. No one made +answer. + +I determined to see if Gagin had found her. + + * * * * * + +As I hastened up the footpath I saw a light in Assja's chamber. It +calmed me a little. + +I drew near the house. The door was fastened. I knocked. A window in the +darkened first story was carefully raised, and Gagin's head showed +itself. + +"Found?" I asked. + +"She is come back," he whispered to me. "She is in her chamber, and +undressing. All is as it should be." + +"God be thanked!" I cried, in a transport of inexpressible joy. "God be +thanked! Now all will be well. But you know we have something to say to +each other." + +"Another time," he answered, softly closing the window--"another time. +For this, good-by." + +"Till to-morrow then," I said. "Tomorrow everything will be clear." + +"Good-by," Gagin repeated, and the window was shut. I came near to +knocking again. I wished to tell Gagin at once that I sought his +sister's hand. But such a wooing, at such an hour! "Till to-morrow +then," I thought. "To-morrow I shall be happy!" + +"To-morrow I shall be happy!" Happiness has no to-morrow; it has no +yesterday; it knows of no past; it thinks of no future. The present +belongs to it, and not even the present day--only the moment. + +I do not know how I reached S----. Not my feet brought me; not the boat +carried me; I was borne over as if on broad, mighty wings. My way led me +by a thicket in which a nightingale was singing. It seemed to me it sang +of my love and my joy. + + * * * * * + +The next morning, as I drew near the familiar little house, one +circumstance seemed strange: all its windows were open, and the door as +well. Scraps of paper lay strewn about the threshold, and behind the +door a maid was visible with her broom. + +I stepped up to her. + +"They're off!" she volunteered, before I could ask her if the Gagins +were at home. + +"Off!" I repeated. "What, gone? Where?" + +"They went at six o'clock this morning, and did not say where. But stop. +You are surely Mr. N." + +"I am Mr. N." + +"There is a letter for you inside." She went in and returned with a +letter. "Here it is, if you please." + +"But it isn't possible. How can it be?" I said. The maid stared at me +stupidly, and began to sweep. + +I opened the letter. It was Gagin who wrote. From Assja not a line. He +began with a hope that I would not be angry with him on account of his +sudden departure. He felt assured that, after mature thought, I would +agree to his decision. He had found no other way out of a situation +which might easily become difficult, even dangerous. "Yesterday," he +wrote, "as we were both waiting silently for Assja, I convinced myself +fully that a separation was necessary. There are prejudices which I know +how to respect. I understand that you cannot marry Assja. She has told +me everything. For her own sake I am compelled to yield to her repeated, +desperate prayers." In conclusion he expressed his regret that our +acquaintance should be broken off so abruptly; wished me happiness; +shook my hand affectionately; and assured me that it would be useless +for me to try to find them. + +"What prejudices?" I cried out, as if he could hear me. "Nonsense! Who +has given him the right to rob me of her?" I clutched my head with my +hands. + +The maid began to call loudly for the landlady. Her terror rendered me +my self control. One thought took possession of me--to find them, to +find them at whatever cost. To submit to this stroke, to calmly accept +it, was impossible. I learned from the landlady that they had taken a +steamboat about six o'clock in the morning to go down the Rhine. I went +to the office. There I was told that they had taken tickets for Cologne. +I went home with the intention to pack at once and follow them. My way +led me by Frau Luise's house. All at once I heard some one call me. I +raised my head, and saw the Burgomaster's widow at the window of the +very room where, the day before, I had met Assja. She summoned me with +her disagreeable smile. I turned away, and would have gone on, but she +called after me that something was there for me. This brought me to a +standstill, and I entered the house. How shall I describe my feelings as +I again beheld that little room? + +"To tell the truth," the old woman said to me, handing me a little note, +"I was only to give you that if you came here of your own free will. But +you are such a handsome young gentleman. Take it." + +I took the letter. + +The following words were hastily scrawled in pencil on a scrap of paper: + +"Farewell! We shall not see each other any more. It is not from pride +that I go. No; I cannot do anything else. Yesterday, when I was crying +before you, it only needed a word from you--only one single word. I +should have staid. You did not speak it. It must be better so. Farewell, +for always." + + * * * * * + +One word! Fool that I had been! This word! I had said it with tears over +and over. I had scattered it to the wind. I had repeated it--how +often--to the lonely fields; but to her I had not said it. I had not +told her that I loved her. And now I must never say it. When I met her +in that fatal room, I myself had no clear consciousness of my love. +Perhaps I was not even yet awakened to it while I was sitting with her +brother in helpless and fearful silence. A moment later it broke out +with irresistible force as I shuddered at the possibility of harm to +her, and began to seek her, to call her, but then it was already too +late. "But that is impossible," you say. I do not know whether it is +possible, but I know that it is true. Assja would not have left me if +there had been a trace of coquetry in her, and if her position had not +been a false one. She could not bear that which every other girl could +have borne; but that I had not realized. My evil genius held my +confession back from my lips, as I saw Gagin for the last time, at the +dark window, and the last thread that I might have seized slipped from +my fingers. + +On the same day I returned to L---- with my travelling trunk, and took +passage for Cologne. I remember that, as the boat was under way, and I +was taking leave in spirit of the streets and the places I should never +lose from memory, I saw Nancy on the bank. She was sitting on a bench. +Her face was pale, but not sorrowful, and a stalwart young peasant stood +beside her, laughing and talking to her. On the other shore of the river +the little Madonna looked out, sad as ever, from the green shadow of the +old oak tree. + + * * * * * + +I found myself on the Gagins' track in Cologne. I learned that they had +started for London. Hastily I followed them; but in London all my +inquiries were fruitless. For a long time I would not be discouraged, +for a long time I kept up an obstinate search; but at last I was obliged +to give up hope of finding them. + +And I never saw them again; I never saw Assja again. Of her brother I +heard brief news sometimes; but she had for ever vanished from my sight. +I do not know if she is yet living. Once, while travelling, years +afterward, I caught a hasty glimpse of a woman in a railway carriage +whose face reminded me vividly of features never to be forgotten, but I +was deceived by a chance resemblance. Assja remained in my memory as I +had known her in the fairest days of my life, and as I had last seen +her, bowed over the arm of the low wooden chair. + +But I will confess that I did not grieve too long for her. Yes, I have +even fancied that Fate had been kind in refusing to unite us. I consoled +myself with the thought that I could not have been happy with such a +wife. I was young, and the future--this short, fleeting life--seemed +endless to me. Why should not that be again which once had been so +sweet, and even better and more beautiful? I have known other women, but +the feeling which Assja awakened in me--that deep and ardent +tenderness--has never repeated itself. + +No! No eyes could compensate me for the loss of those that once were +lifted, with such love, to mine. No heart has ever rested on my breast +which could make my own beat with such delicious anguish! Condemned to +the solitary existence of a man without a family tie, I bring my life to +its gloomy end; but I guard still, as a sacred relic, her letters and +the dried geranium sprig which she once tossed me from the window. There +clings a faint fragrance to it even yet; but the hand that gave it, the +hand that it was only once vouchsafed to me to kiss, has mouldered, +perhaps, for many a year in the grave. And I--what has become of me? +What remains to me of myself--of those happy and painful days--of those +winged hopes and desires? So the slight fragrance of a feeble weed +outlasts all the joys and all the sorrows of a man. Nay, it outlasts the +man himself! + + + + +TO BEETHOVEN. + + + Clasped in a too strict calyxing + Lay Music's bud o'er-long unblown, + Till thou, Beethoven, breathed her spring: + Then blushed the perfect rose of tone. + + O loving Soul, thy song hath taught + All full-grown passion fast to flee + Where science drives all full-grown thought-- + To unity, to unity. + + For he whose ear with grave delight + Brings brave revealings from thine art + Oft hears thee calling through the night: + _In Love's large tune all tones have part._ + + Thy music hushes motherwise, + And motherwise to stillness sings + The slanders told by sickly eyes + On nature's healthy course of things. + + It soothes my accusations sour + 'Gainst frets that fray the restless soul: + The stain of death; the pain of power; + The lack of love 'twixt part and whole; + + The yea-nay of Free-will and Fate, + Whereof both cannot be, yet are; + The praise a poet wins too late + Who starves from earth into a star; + + The lies that serve great parties well, + While truths but give their Christs a cross + The loves that send warm souls to hell, + While cold-blood neuters live on loss; + + Th' indifferent smile that nature's grace + On Jesus, Judas, pours alike; + Th' indifferent frown on nature's face + When luminous lightnings blindly strike; + + The sailor praying on his knees + Along with him that's cursing God-- + Whose wives and babes may starve or freeze, + Yet Nature will not stir a clod. + + If winds of question blow from out + The large sea-caverns of thy notes, + They do but clear each cloud of doubt + That round a high-path'd purpose floats. + + As: why one blind by nature's act + Still feels no law in mercy bend, + No pitfall from his feet retract, + No storm cry out, _Take shelter, friend!_ + + Or, Can the truth be best for them + That have not stomachs for its strength? + Or, Will the sap in Culture's stem + E'er reach life's furthest fibre-length? + + How to know all, save knowingness; + To grasp, yet loosen, feeling's rein; + To sink no manhood in success; + To look with pleasure upon pain; + + How, teased by small mixt social claims, + To lose no large simplicity; + How through all clear-seen crimes and shames + To move with manly purity; + + How, justly, yet with loving eyes, + Pure art from cleverness to part; + To know the Clever good and wise, + Yet haunt the lonesome heights of Art. + + O Psalmist of the weak, the strong, + O Troubadour of love and strife, + Co-Litanist of right and wrong, + Sole Hymner of the whole of life, + + I know not how, I care not why, + Thy music brings this broil at ease, + And melts my passion's mortal cry + In satisfying symphonies. + + Yea, it forgives me all my sins, + Fits Life to Love like rhyme to rhyme, + And tunes the task each day begins + By the last trumpet-note of Time. + + SIDNEY LANIER. + + + + +THE DRAMATIC CANONS. + + +At intervals of varying length, the journals of the Anglo-Saxon races +are given to discussing the question whether the present age be one of +decadence or progress in dramatic art. Most readers of "The Galaxy" have +seen some phases of this discussion, which starts up afresh after the +arrival of every noted foreign actor or the production of a new play. It +is at present confined to the English-speaking nations, and prevails +more in America than England just now. + +In France there is no lively interest in the theme. The French dramatic +authors seem to be pretty well satisfied themselves, and to satisfy +their audiences; their best claim to success being found in the fact +that English and American dramatic authors of the present day almost +invariably pilfer from them. + +In the course of this perennial discussion we constantly meet with +appeals, on the part of those learned gentlemen, the theatrical critics, +to the "dramatic canons." Such and such a play is said to offend against +these "canons," and they are spoken of as something of which it is +shameful to be ignorant, but at the same time with a vagueness of phrase +betraying a similar vagueness of definition. It has seemed to us that an +inquiry into the nature of these canons may not be out of place at the +present time. This we propose to determine by consulting the practice of +those authors of former times whose productions still hold the stage as +"stock plays," so called, and of those modern authors still living whose +plays are well known and famous, being still successfully acted. By such +an analysis we may possibly settle something, especially if our inquiry +shall call forth the actual experience of those living who have attained +great success, whether as authors or adapters. + +The most obvious division of our subject is into tragedy, comedy, +melodrama; but inasmuch as it is plain that the laws of success in all +these walks of dramatic art must contain much in common, we have +preferred a different division for analysis, leaving the kind of drama +as a subdivision common to each part of the inquiry. A less obvious but +equally just division will be as to the canons regulating the subject, +the treatment, and the production of a successful drama, in whatever +walk. We propose to ascertain our canons from the successful plays, +still holding the stage, of Shakespeare, Sheridan, Knowles, Bulwer, Dion +Boucicault, Tom Taylor, Augustin Daly, and Gilbert, together with such +single plays, like "The Honeymoon," "Masks and Faces," and a few others, +as are better known to the public than their authors, whose sole +dramatic successes they were. Ephemeral successes, however great, cannot +be safely taken as guides to a canon; but an established success of long +standing, however repugnant to our tastes, must be examined, even if it +take the form of the "Black Crook." + +The influence of the French drama on Anglo-Saxon art has been so decided +that no safe estimates of canons can be made which do not take into +account the works of Sardou, Dumas, and the minor French authors, whose +name is legion. Fortunately for our subject, the French work on simple +principles, and will not confuse us any more than the Greeks, whom they +imitate. Let us try, then, to ascertain our canons in their order, +beginning with the subject of the drama. + +What subjects are fit for dramatic treatment, and are there any entirely +unfitted therefor? + +We find a pretty wide range in the successful dramas of modern time. In +tragedy we have ancient history, as shown by "Coriolanus," "Julius +Caesar," "Virginius," "Alexander the Great"; medieval history, in +"Macbeth," "Richard III."; legendary stories, in "Lear," "Hamlet," +"Othello," "Romeo and Juliet." In comedy and melodrama we have an almost +infinite variety, as much so as in novel writing. History, legend, and +pure invention claim equal right in the field. We have "The Tempest," +"As You Like It," "Much Ado about Nothing," "Twelfth Night," "Henry +IV.," "Henry V.," "Merchant of Venice," "The Wonder," "The Honeymoon," +"Masks and Faces," "London Assurance," "School for Scandal," "The +Rivals," "The Lady of Lyons," "Richelieu," "Wild Oats," "The Colleen +Bawn," "Arrah-na-Pogue," "The Shaughraun," "The Wife," "The Merry Wives +of Windsor," "Under the Gaslight," "Don Caesar de Bazan," "American +Cousin," "Rip Van Winkle," and the "Black Crook," all well known and +successful plays, many perhaps being acted this very night all over the +Union and England. We are not here examining the question of the +goodness or badness of these plays, their merits or demerits: we are +merely recognizing them as well known plays, constantly being acted, and +always successful when well acted. Of all of these, the most constantly +successful and most frequently acted are those of Shakespeare, Sheridan, +and Bulwer, among the old plays, and those of Boucicault and Daly among +living authors. Almost all playgoers are familiar with these works, and +have seen them once or more; and every new aspirant for histrionic +honors has one or more of the plays of the first three in his list of +test characters. If he be a man and a tragedian, he must play Hamlet, +Othello, Richard, Shylock, Macbeth, Richelieu, Claude Melnotte; if +versatile, he must add Benedick, Charles Surface, Captain Absolute, and +others to the list; if a lady, she must be tested in Portia, Ophelia, +Pauline, Lady Teazle, Juliet--who knows what? Some very versatile ladies +have tried all the light comedy characters, finishing with Lady Macbeth +as an experiment. A short time ago there was quite an epidemic of Lady +Macbeths, but that is over for the present. The stray sheep have +returned to the fold. Let us return to them. + +What can we glean about the limitations of the dramatic subject from +these successful plays? There is a limitation somewhere, and the first +and most obvious is--time. A novelist can make the minute description of +a life interesting. The most celebrated novels, such as "Robinson +Crusoe," "Vicar of Wakefield," "David Copperfield," "Pendennis," "The +Three Guardsmen," and others, have been just such books, imitations of +real biographies. But a play is limited in length to five acts, or six +at most, and its time of acting has a practical limit of three hours, +with the inter-acts. Each act is further practically limited to five +scenes, and it is but seldom that it stretches over three, while the +latter average is never exceeded and seldom reached in a five-act play. +No scene can properly contain more than a chapter of a novel, so we find +ourselves practically limited to a story which can be told inside of +fifteen chapters, the further inside the better. The French, who are +much more artificial than the English in their dramatic canons, almost +invariably limit their acts to a single scene, reducing their story +thereby to only five chapters. A careful comparison of successful acting +plays will generally end in bringing us to one obvious canon: + + I. The subject of a drama must be capable of being fully + treated in fifteen chapters at most. + +The next limitation that we meet is in the nature of the story. A +novelist can describe his hero and heroine and the scenes in which they +move. He can depict them in motion, and describe a long journey in +strange countries, trusting to picturesque scenery and incident to help +him out. He can give us a sketch of their former life, and tell how they +fared after they were happily married. The dramatist cannot do this. He +must put his people down in a given place and leave them there till his +scene is over, opening another scene or another act after a silent +interval. He can, indeed, put a narrative of supposed events into the +mouth of any of his characters, but such narratives are always dull and +prosy, and to be avoided. Shakespeare uses them sometimes, but only when +he cannot help himself, and always makes them short. The nearest +instances that occur to us are, the description by Tressel to Henry VI. +of the murder of Prince Edward, usually put now in the first act of +"Richard III.," and the story of Oliver in "As You Like It." Sometimes a +short story cannot be helped, but if told, it is always found to be of a +collateral circumstance not directly leading to the catastrophe. It +generally is brought in only to explain the presence of a character on +the stage in the successful drama. Sometimes it happens otherwise. For +instance, Coleman makes Mortimer, in the "Iron Chest," tell the whole +mystery of his life in the form of a story instead of acting it. The +result is a poor play, seldom acted, and generally to small audiences, +being only valuable for some special features of which we shall speak +later. It is not too much to ask for acceptance of this second canon +regarding the subject: + + II. The subject should be capable of being acted without the + aid of narrative. + +Is it still possible to limit the subject, and do novels and dramas +differ still further? A third limitation will reveal itself, if we +compare a typical drama, like "Much Ado About Nothing," or "Hamlet," +with a typical novel such as "David Copperfield" or "Robinson Crusoe." +These latter depend for their interest on a series of adventures which +befall a hero, sometimes entirely unconnected with each other, just as +they happen to a man in real life, wherein he meets many and various +scenes and persons. Neither possesses any sequence of events, depending +on each other, such as pervades "Hamlet" and all acting plays. It is +true that some few novelists, such as Wilkie Collins, write novels that +depend on plot for their interest, but those typical novels which stand +at the head of the list do not. The masterpieces of Scott, such as +"Ivanhoe," "Talisman," "Old Mortality," are antiquarian studies, with +very slight plots; Dickens and Thackeray's best novels have no plot +worth mentioning; and where perfect plots are found, it is rare to find +a lasting and enduring novel. In a play, on the other hand, a plot seems +to be absolutely necessary to interest the spectator, the more intricate +the better. We have all seen Shakespeare's plays so often, that we are +apt to forget how intricate and involved many of his plots are; and when +we consider that most of his plots were taken from very bad novels which +have utterly perished from sight, while the plays still live, we begin +to realize by the force of contrast another canon relating to the +subject, which is this: + + III. The subject must have a connected plot, in which one + event depends on the other. + +When we come to restrict the dramatic subject any further, we encounter +more difficulty. Some might hold that the interest of the subject should +depend on either love or death, but we are met at once by instances of +plays in which the real interest is almost wholly political, such as +"Henry V.," "Richard III.," or moral, such as "Lear." Referring once +more to the effect of contrast with the novel for guidance, we find it +very difficult to separate subjects proper for dramatic treatment any +further than we have done, and almost impossible to lay down any +absolute rule to which distinguished exceptions cannot be quoted. It +might be said that the interest should turn on a single action, as it +does in most plays, and especially in tragedies, but here we are met by +"Much Ado About Nothing," "The Honeymoon," and other plays, where two or +three plots progress side by side in perfect harmony. It seems, +therefore, that any further absolute limitation of the abstract dramatic +subject is impracticable, and we must be content with adding a mere +recommendation for our fourth canon, much as follows: + + IV. The interest of the plot generally turns on either love + or death, and generally hinges on a single action or + episode. + +When we come to speak of the _best_ subjects of dramatic writing, we are +really approaching the domain of treatment, which is much wider and +better defined. There it becomes a question for judgment and discretion, +and much more certainty can be attained. Instead of considering all +dramas, we narrow our search to the best only, judging them by the +simple tests of success and frequency of acting, and finding what sort +of subjects have been taken, and how they have been treated. + +Let us then come at once to the question, What is the best method of +treating a given subject? Here we are again confronted by a variety of +decisions, some of which seem to conflict with others, but which all +agree in some common particulars. In the dramas written, down to the +time of Boucicault, it seemed to be assumed as a matter of course that +every first-class play, comedy or tragedy, must be written in five acts. +All of Shakespeare's, Sheridan's, Knowles's, follow this old rule, as +inflexible and artificial as some of the French canons, but with the +same compensating advantage, that author and audience knew what was +expected of each, and troubled themselves little over the structure of +their dramas. Of late years another custom has taken the place of the +five-act play, and many if not most of the modern dramas, while of the +same length as the old ones, are divided into four and even three acts. +Especially is this the case with comedies, and those nondescript plays +that are variously called "melodramas," "dramas," and "domestic dramas." +In the case of three-act plays, the number of scenes in each act is +frequently five, sometimes six or seven, but the common modern practice +restricts the last act, if possible, to a single scene. The number of +scenes must of course depend on how many are absolutely necessary to +develop the story. The French system of a single scene to each act has +one great advantage. It permits of very much finer scenery being +introduced than in a scene which is to be shifted, whether closed in or +drawn aside. For instance, when the curtain comes down between each +scene, the stage may be crowded with furniture, and those temporary +erections called "set pieces." There will always be plenty of time to +remove these between the acts, and noise of hammering is of no +consequence when the curtain is down. If there is more than one scene in +the act, all this is changed. Let us say there are only two scenes. One +of these must be a full-depth scene, but all the furniture and set +pieces are restricted to that part of the stage which lies behind the +two "flats" which make the front scene. In that front scene furniture +is inadmissible, without rudely disturbing the illusion. Let us suppose +the front scene to be the first, and that any furniture is left on the +stage. At the close of the scene the characters leave the stage, but +there stands the furniture. The old way to get rid of it is simple. +Enter a "supe" in livery, who picks up the one table and two chairs. +Exit, amid the howls of the gods in the gallery, who shriek "Soup! +soup!" as if they were suddenly stricken with hunger. Of course this +spoils the illusion; and the better the scenery, the more perfect the +other illusions, the easier they are disturbed by such incongruity. +Sometimes the set pieces in front, if there are any, and the furniture, +disappear through trap doors. In the large city theatres, such as those +where spectacular pieces are constantly produced, this method of +changing a scene is common, but such theatres themselves are not common, +and it costs a great deal to run them on account of the number of +workmen required. Our present inquiry is directed to the ordinary +theatre, with its stock company, simple scenery, and few traps. Of this +kind of theatre every town furnishes at least one sample. In such +theatres at least it will always be best to keep furniture and set +pieces out of the front scenes as much as possible, to preserve the +illusion. If the front scene come after the full-depth one, the wisdom +of this rule becomes still more apparent. A "supe" taking out furniture +is not half as ludicrous as one bringing it in, and without a trap such +a spectacle is unavoidable. The first canon offered by common sense is +obviously sound: + + V. Keep furniture and set pieces out of front scenes, if + possible. + +This rule being followed, will probably reduce the front scenes of a +drama to the open air, woods, gardens, halls, streets, church porches, +and similar places, where the attention will be concentrated on the +actors, not the picture. The scope of a front scene is further +restricted by the fact that you must bring your characters on and take +them off, being deprived of that valuable ally to illusion, the +"tableau." If the scene be the first of the act, a tableau may indeed be +discovered, but it cannot close the scene. The most common place for a +front scene is between a first and a third full-depth scene, to give +time for the change that goes on behind. This change always makes a +certain amount of noise, and the use of the front scene is to take off +the attention of the audience. This intention must be hidden at any +price, for, if perceived, it is fatal to the illusion. To hide it there +is only one method always reliable, which is to rivet the attention of +the audience on your characters, put in your best writing, and get up an +excitement to cover the scene. If you have any brilliant dialogue, any +passage of great emotion, any mystery to be revealed, put it in your +front scene so that your design may not be suspected, but the scene +appear natural. In brief the canon says: + + VI. Put the best writing into the front scenes. + +The next question that arises as to the front scene relates to the +character of incident that should be treated therein. It is obvious that +it will not do to put in a crisis or a climax at such a place. At its +best a front scene is only a makeshift, a preparation for the full +scene. Its employment necessitates a loss of nearly three-quarters of +the available space, and the tableau loses all its power, as developed +in the full-depth scene. Its use is therefore a disagreeable necessity, +so disagreeable that the French discard it entirely. Mechanically it is +only an introduction to the full scene, and the more it partakes of the +same character intellectually, the less will it weary the audience. The +best preparation an audience can have for a scene is to make them eager +therefor, and the best way to make them eager is to leave them in +suspense, so that they are impatient for the movement of the flats that +opens the next picture. A familiar instance of this employment of the +front scene is found in the "Shaughraun," by Boucicault, before the +Irish wake. The front scene represents the outside of a cottage with a +door in the right flat; the peasants and other characters come in, talk +about the wake, and enter the house one after another. In this scene it +is also explained that the supposed corpse is not dead, but shamming, so +that there is no tragic interest associated with the coming scene, but +every one is anxious to see it. At last all the characters are off, the +flats are drawn aside, and the celebrated Irish wake makes its +appearance, taking the whole depth of the stage. The audience is +satisfied, and the front scene has answered its end, as expressed in +this canon: + + VII. Front scenes ought to terminate in a suspense, which + the following scene will relieve. + +From this canon it follows that the front scene should deal only with +explanatory and dependent matters, not the principal action of the +drama. Sheridan, in "The Rivals" and the "School for Scandal," opens his +first acts with front scenes, which introduce little of the matter of +the story. I am inclined to think that he had a reason for this which +still prevails, in the noise made by the audience. The beginning of the +first act of most plays is distinguished in the auditorium by much +shuffling of feet, opening of doors, taking of seats, especially by +those who take the reserved seats in front of the house. All this +disturbs the audience and makes them lose any fine points at the +beginning of a play, unless the actors strain their voices unduly. In a +front scene the flats immediately behind the actors serve as a sounding +board for the voice, and reduce the volume of space to be filled by the +speakers. The advantage gained in this way is balanced by the loss to +the eye in losing the full-depth scene, wherefore this method of opening +a play is not much in favor; but its use in the cases mentioned leads to +a general canon as to the first act of a play, which also recommends +itself to common sense: + + VIII. Avoid fine points, and have plenty of action at the + beginning of the first act. + +This rule, however safe and sensible, is hampered by the necessities of +the subject, to which everything must be subordinated. Let us see how +the greatest masters of dramatic construction in modern times open their +first acts. Of these Boucicault comes first, _facile princeps_. We will +take the "Shaughraun" and "Flying Scud" for examples. Both open in a +similar manner: in the first a young woman, in the second an old man, +engaged in household work, singing away at nothing particular. A quiet +picture not requiring close attention. To each, enter a disturber, +somewhat disagreeable, arresting attention. A short squabble, then more +characters coming on, one or more at a time, till the stage is pretty +full, and no flagging of interest. The act does not drag. Compare this +with Sardou's "Frou-Frou," "Fernande," and others. Sardou's first acts +almost invariably drag, and the success does not come till afterward. +One great difference is immediately perceptible. Sardou almost always +brings on his people in pairs, and takes them off together, leaving the +first act a succession of dualogues, with very little action. Now take +"The Lady of Lyons," an old success, which nowhere drags. It opens with +a picture, mother and daughter, doing nothing particular. Enter +disagreeable Beauseant, who makes an offer and is rejected. A mild +excitement at once arises, shut in by a front scene, short, lively, and +spirited, where Glavis and Beauseant plot for revenge on Pauline. The +scene ends in suspense, the actors having gone for Claude Melnotte, and +the flats draw aside, revealing Melnotte's cottage and introducing the +hero. By this time the audience is quiet and can take the fine points, +so the third scene of the first act can be made exciting. There is thus +no flagging of interest in either Bulwer or Boucicault. One does the +thing in three scenes, the other in a single scene, but both employ the +same means, which are thus expressed: + + IX. Open the first act with a quiet picture, and bring in + the disturbing element at once. Having aroused attention, + bring on all your characters, and end with an excitement. + Avoid bringing on characters in pairs in this act. + +The first act of a play is always surrounded with difficulties. The +interest of the audience has to be aroused, and all the characters +brought in. Every part of it must hang together, and the attention must +be excited more and more as the act progresses. This rule applies to the +whole play likewise, but in the first act it is especially necessary, +because there are so many things to divert attention, and the object of +the act is to catch it. After a certain period it must flag, and the +object of the dramatist must be to close his act before that dreadful +period. The office of the first act is to prepare for the second; +therefore it resembles the front scene in one important principle--it +should end in suspense, and make the audience eager for the second act. +Ending as it should in a full scene, it has the advantage over the front +scene that a tableau is possible, and should be used. This tableau must +be natural, and must come, as all tableaux come, out of a climax, but +the climax must not be complete. It must leave the audience in suspense, +and give them something to talk about in the inter-act. It must not be +too long delayed, or the act will drag. These and various other reasons +have led to this further canon, generally observed: + + X. The first act should be the shortest, and as soon as a + partial climax is reached the curtain should come down. The + tableau and action should indicate suspense and preparation. + +This general rule indicates that the villain should be temporarily +triumphant, if the play is to end in his discomfiture. If his first +scheme fails in the first act, it is difficult to arouse interest in the +nominally imperilled innocence which is left in danger. The structure +becomes too artificial, and the dictum _ars est celare artem_ has been +violated. No rule is so safe in dramatic writing, as also in acting. The +end is--_illusion_. + +The rule of putting only suspensory and preparatory action in the first +act is universally followed by Shakespeare and all other successful +writers of plays, and is better settled than any other. The first act +occupies the office of the first volume of a novel, explaining all the +story. Very frequently, in the modern French drama especially, it +assumes the form of a prologue, the action transpiring at an interval of +several years, sometimes a whole generation, before the rest of the +play. Only one instance of this character is found in Shakespeare, in +the "Winter's Tale," where the action of the drama demands a prologue, +but it is quite common in modern times, while another custom of +Shakespeare's--that of dividing a historical play into two "parts"--has +quite gone out of fashion. Its only modern example is that of Wagner's +opera of the "Niebelungen Ring," which takes a week to get through. The +Chinese and Japanese have a strong taste for this kind of play, but the +practice has vanished from Anglo-Saxon civilization. It must be +confessed that the employment of a prologue is rather a clumsy way of +opening a play. It is too apt to be complete in itself, and to join +clumsily to the rest of the drama. Besides this, it is hard to preserve +the illusion that the small child who appears in the prologue has +developed into the good-looking young person who is the heroine of the +rest of the play. The "Sea of Ice" is a familiar instance of this sort +of thing, where the same actress who personates the mother in the first +act, and gets drowned, blossoms into a girl of eighteen in the second +act, supposed to be her own daughter, last seen as a small child. In +"Winter's Tale" there is nothing of this. The supposed Perdita of Act I. +is merely a rag baby, and mother and child reappear together thereafter. +In cases where the interval between prologue and play is limited to a +year or two, this objection does not apply; in fact such prologues are +quite common and useful. The fanciful and magic prologue to the "Marble +Heart" is a very happy instance of conquest of the difficulties inherent +in long separated prologues. The wrench is so sudden from a Greek +sculptor to a French sculptor, from Athenian dresses to Parisian, that +the main interest of the play lies in the identification of the ancient +characters in the new dress, and the very fanciful absurdity of the plot +lends it an air of reality essentially dramatic. The end is illusion, +and illusion it is. + +There is little more clear and positive to be said about the first act. +Study of the best models will reveal many points inherent in all, but no +general rules so clear as those of brevity, action, and suspense. The +practical limit of time is from fifteen to thirty minutes, the medium of +twenty being common to mono-scenic acts, but on this no positive canon +can be ascertained. It depends on the interest, and only this general +rule is partially true, that no interest can carry an audience through a +first act of forty-five minutes. + +We next come to the middle acts of the play, and here again general +rules are hard to find. The number of acts varies so much that nothing +positive can be said except as regards fixed lengths of drama. Treating +all between the first and last acts as a whole, the first certain rule +that meets us is this truism: + + XI. From the second to the last act the interest must be + regularly increased, and each act must end in suspense, + leading to the next. + +Without an observance of this rule no play can ever be permanently +successful as a general thing. There have been some poor plays with +little interest, that have been bolstered up for a time by the force of +a single character, portrayed by a peculiar actor, but in that case the +play becomes a mere "star play," not amenable to the common rules, and +useless out of the hands of the peculiar star who owns it. Of such are +those multiform dramas, constantly varying, of which Mr. Sothern makes +Lord Dundreary and Sam the central figures. The actor found he had made +a lucky hit in his character, and he hired out the work of altering the +play to any sort of literary hacks, so that he himself is really the +creator of the plays, and when he dies they will die. In the "American +Cousin," as it was first played, the interest lay entirely in Asa +Trenchard, and the drama was very skilfully constructed, with ascending +interest, to develop the ideal Yankee. In that part Jefferson made his +first public hit. As soon as he found that Dundreary had stolen the play +from its hero, Jefferson was wise enough to drop the contest between +high comedy and broad farce, in which the latter must conquer when they +come together. By taking up the ideal Dutchman (or rather German, as he +makes it) in Rip Van Winkle, he created a part of which no one can +deprive him, but which will probably die with him. No one else has +succeeded with it to the same degree, and "Rip Van Winkle" stands as a +model of a successful star play, wherein all the interest hangs on a +single character. + +It is not the intention of this article to enter into the question of +what constitutes the interest of such plays as "Rip Van Winkle." To do +so would be to enter into a field where everything is uncertain, and +where judgment is only an expression of individual liking. The main +elements of the success appear to be humor and pathos, those twin +brethren of genius whose identity and individuality are frequently so +inextricable from each other. Both are drawn in broad, simple lights and +shadows, so that the simplest audience can take the points, while the +most cultivated members of that audience are studying the delicate +touches of the actor. The contrast between--but we must refrain from the +digression, however tempting. We are examining the dramatic canons, and +the only settled canons about which there is little doubt are those +relating to construction, not to sources of interest. In the kingdom of +invention genius is supreme, and amenable to no rules. Each writer must +work out his own salvation. + +Constructively it is obvious that the number of acts in a play must be +regulated by the number of natural episodes in the action of its +subject; and the perfection of its construction is tested by the +liberties that can be taken with the acts and scenes. Of late years it +has become the fashion to alter and remodel Shakespeare's and other old +plays, by changing scenes and acts, cutting out and putting in. To an +ardent worshipper of Shakespeare as read, these alterations frequently +appear desecrations, but there is little question that they were and are +improvements. The construction of many of Shakespeare's plays is +decidedly faulty, and the nature of the improvements made by managers +and actors is best illustrated when the original play unaltered is tried +against the adaptation. The acting edition of "Richard III." is a +familiar instance of this. Colley Cibber arranged it, he being a shrewd +old actor and manager. His edition holds the stage today, and always +succeeds, where the original "Richard" fails. In this matter of +construction the chances are all in favor of the improvement of a work +by a shrewd adapter. His attention is directed to only one thing, the +successful presentation of the play. He is not an artist so much as a +workman. He creates nothing, he only alters and improves. He may be +perfectly incapable of creating an ideal character, while yet he can +make its language more compact, can concentrate its action. Such an +adapter is a skilful gardener. He cannot create the fruit tree, but he +can prune it, and stimulate it to the perfection of fruit-bearing. + +The French stage has been a prolific nursery for these skilful workmen, +and they have managed to extract splendid successes from their work. It +is by comparing their English adaptations with a simple translation of +the work that one best sees the improvement. For instance, there is the +"Two Orphans," with a plot and incidents so repulsive in the original +that its translation failed in London in spite of its weird power. +Adapted and cleansed by a clever American author, it was the great +success of last year in New York, and is now running a fresh career of +success. Another instance that occurs is Sardou's "Fernande." It was +altered and adapted in New York by Augustin Daly, and succeeded. Another +version by Mr. Schoenberg, then of Wallack's, a straight translation, +failed to secure a hearing in Boston, and ended in a lawsuit. This was +not for want of merit in the translation, which was excellent, but, as +appears from a comparison of the two plays, simply because Daly had +improved on Sardou. The alterations were small, but masterly, and showed +that Daly understood his business. In Sardou's play there appears a +certain character, a young count (I forget his name) who comes in at the +beginning of the first act, the close of the last. In the last he has +some very important business to do, but he appears nowhere else. Of +himself he does not aid the plot, but his last action is indispensable. +In the original play also appears the Spanish Commander, a mere sketch +in the first act. Daly suppressed the Count altogether, gave his best +business to the Commander, and brought the latter in all through the +play. The result was one good character instead of two poor ones, and +indicates a canon which can be confirmed by many other instances. This +canon shapes itself something like this: + + XII. Concentrate the interest on few characters, and avoid + numerous unimportant parts. + +This canon rests on the necessities of a stock company, as those before +rest on the nature of scenery and audiences. Every company has its +leading man, leading lady, low comedians, old man and old woman, and +those ordinary characters which all playgoers know by heart. If the play +does not fit these, it will not succeed. The appreciation of this fact +is one secret of the great success of Boucicault, Daly, and Lester +Wallack as play writers. They know the exact capacity of their stages +and companies from long experience, and write their plays to fit them. +With even ordinary talents they would have a great advantage to start +with over writers of greater genius, writing with vague ideas of what +the manager wants. As managers they know exactly what they want, and +what their companies can do. To a young writer the difficulties are all +in the start, unless he be an actor, or so closely related to actors or +managers as to be able to get behind the scenes at all times, and become +familiar with scenery, traps, machinery, rehearsals, and all the details +of the _business_ of theatricals. In former times, especially two +centuries ago, the task of writing a good acting play was far easier +than now. Scenery was simple, access behind the scenes easier--there was +not such a wall of separation as now exists between actors and audience +in a first-class city theatre. Even in those days, however, the writing +of plays was confined chiefly to actors, managers, and those men of +fashion who were given to haunting the green room. In the present day no +amount of talent in a writer seems capable of overcoming the +difficulties of technical construction of a drama. It is rare to find an +author of acknowledged talent in other departments, especially in +America, distinguished as a dramatist, and when one of them tries his +hand at playwriting he fails, not from lack of good dialogue and +literary finish, but solely from lack of knowledge of the business of +the drama, the limitations of actors and scenery, and the technique of +dramatic construction. + +There is more hope to the American stage in the future in the production +of such undeniably original if mechanically faulty plays as Bret Harte +has given us in the "Two Men of Sandy Bar," than in the rapid carpentry +and skilful patchwork of hosts of French adaptations, whether they run +ten or five hundred nights. Our Hartes and our yet unknown writers daily +coming to the front, with freshness in their hearts and brains in their +heads, lack only technique and the custom of the stage, which no one can +give them but the managers and actors, who shall welcome them as +apprentices to learn the trade. That these latter will find it to their +advantage in the end to encourage a cordial alliance between the men of +the quill and the men of the sock and buskin, follows from a simple +calculation. If men of confessedly small talent and low character, such +as the host of lesser playwrights who furnish pabulum for the outlying +theatres, can write fair acting plays, simply by using mechanical +knowledge and stolen materials, it is probable that men of original +talent, already experienced writers in other branches of literature, +will end by producing much better and fresher work, when they are +offered and have enjoyed the same technical advantages. + + FREDERICK WHITTAKER. + + + + +AN EVENING PARTY AMONG THE COSSACKS OF THE DON. + + +Sunset on the Lower Don; a dim waste of gray, unending steppe, looking +vaster and drearier than ever under the fast falling shadows of night; a +red gleam far away to the west, falling luridly across the darkening sky +and the ghostly prairie; a dead, grim silence, broken only by the plash +and welter of our laboring steamer, or the shrill cry of some passing +bird; an immense, crushing loneliness--the solitude not of a region +whence life has died out, but of one where it has never existed. Even my +three comrades, hardened as they are to all such influences, appear +somewhat impressed by the scene. + +"Cheerful place, ain't it?" says Sinbad, the traveller; "and the whole +of southern Russia is just the same style--multiply a billiard board by +five million, and subtract the cushions!" + +"I wonder what the population of this district can be," muses Allfact, +the statistician, looking disconsolately at his unfilled note-book. +"It's almost impossible to get any reliable information in these parts. +But I should think one man to three square miles must be about the +proportion." + +"And not a feather of game in the whole shop!" growls Smoothbore, the +sportsman, with an indignant glance at his pet double barrel. "It's as +bad as that desert where the old sportsman committed suicide, leaving a +letter beside him to the effect that he must be firing at something, and +there being nothing else to shoot, he had shot himself!" + +"I'll give you one entry for your note-book, Allfact, my boy," +interrupted I; "there are _thirty-nine_ sand banks between this and +Rostoff, at the head of the estuary; and the upper stream is all banks +together--no navigation at all!" + +"I should think not, by Jove, with that kind of thing going on!" says +Smoothbore, pointing to a solitary horseman who is coolly riding across +our bows with an aggravating grin, his dog following. Our outraged +captain has barely time to hurl at him some pithy suggestions respecting +his portion in a future life, which had better not be quoted, when there +comes a tremendous bump, and we are aground once more! + +Just at this moment two wild figures come dashing along the bank at full +gallop, sitting so far forward as to be almost on the horse's +neck--their hair tossing in the wind like a mane, their small black eyes +gleaming savagely under the high sheepskin cap, their dark lean faces +thrust forward like vultures scenting prey--shooting a sharp, hungry +glance at us as they swoop by, in mute protest against the iron age +which compels them to pass a party in distress without robbing it. These +are the famous Cossacks of the Don, the best guerillas and the worst +soldiers in the world; at once the laziest and most active of +men--strangest of all the waifs stranded on the shore of modern +civilization by the ebb of the middle ages--a nation of grown-up +children, with all the virtues and all the vices of barbarism--simple, +good-natured, thievish, pugnacious, hospitable, drunken savages.[K] + +[Footnote K: The Cossack is often erroneously classed by untravelled +writers with the native Russian, from whom he is as distinct as the +Circassian or the Tartar.] + +It takes us fully ten minutes to "poll off" again, and we have hardly +done so when there comes a sound through the still air, like the moan of +a distant sea; and athwart the last gleam of the sinking sun flits a +cloud of wide-winged living things, shadowy, silent, unearthly, as a +legion of ghosts. The wild fowl of the steppes are upon their annual +migration, and for many minutes the living mass sweeps over us unbroken, +orderly, and even as an army in battle array--a resemblance increased by +the exertions of an active leader, who keeps darting back from his post +at the head of the column, and trimming the ranks like an officer on +parade. + +"I wonder how many birds there are in that column," says Allfact, +instinctively feeling for his note-book, as if expecting some leading +bird to volunteer the desired information. + +"Just like their mean tricks," mutters Smoothbore savagely. "First the +game won't show at all, and then they come so thick that no fellow would +be such a cad as to fire at 'em." + +Night comes on, and the foul-creeping mist begins to steam up from the +low banks of greasy black mud, driving us perforce into the cabin, where +we speedily fall asleep on the benches along the walls--for bed-places +there are none. About midnight I begin to dream that I am a Christian +martyr in the reign of Diocletian, "in the act" (as Paddy would, say) of +being burned alive; and I awake to find it all but true. The fact is, +the steward, with a thoroughly Russian love of overheating, has put wood +enough into the stove to roast an ox; and there is nothing for it but to +bolt on deck again, where we remain for the rest of the night. + +The panorama of the deck in the early morning forms an ethnological +study hard to match, except perchance by the Yokohama packet steaming +out of 'Frisco, or a "coolie boat" coming over from Demerara to +Trinidad. Gaunt, aquiline Cossacks, and portly Germans, and bumfaced +Tartars; red-capped, broad-visaged, phlegmatic Turks; slim, graceful +Circassians, beautiful with all the sleek tiger-like beauty of their +gladiator race; sallow, beetle-browed Russians, and black-robed, +dark-eyed, melancholy Jews. We have _one_ Persian on board--a lanky, +hatchet-faced rogue, half buried under a huge black sheepskin cap not +unlike a tarred beehive. He smokes one half the day and sleeps the other +half, and is only once betrayed into any show of emotion. This occurs at +one of our halting places on the second day, when he comes on board +again grinning and whooping like a madman, having succeeded (as I learn +when his excitement subsides) in cheating a Cossack out of a halfpenny. + +But the appearance of the Russian _mujiks_ (peasants), and the manner in +which they curl themselves up anywhere and anyhow, and sleep the sleep +of the just with their heads in baskets and their feet in pools of dirty +water, baffles all description. A painter would revel in the third-class +deck about sunrise, when the miscellaneous hash of heads and limbs +begins to animate itself, like a coil of snakes at the approach of +spring--when mothers of families look anxiously about for the little +waddling bundles of clothes that are already thrusting their round faces +and beady black eyes into every place where they ought _not_ to go; and +when brawny peasants, taking their neighbor's elbow out of their mouth, +and their knee out of their neighbor's stomach, make three or four rapid +dips, like a drinking duck, to any village church that may be in sight, +and then fall to with unfailing zest to the huge black loaf which seems +to be their only baggage. The whole thing is like a scene in a fairy +tale: + + There was an old captain that lived in a "screw." + He had so many passengers he didn't know what to do; + They'd got nary baggage but one loaf of bread. + They squatted round the funnel, and _that_ was their bed. + +As we move southward, our surroundings alter very perceptibly. A genial +warmth and a rich summer blue replace the cold gray sky of the north; +the banks begin to rise higher, and to clothe themselves with thick +patches of bush, and even trees, instead of the coarse prairie grass; +while at every halting place the little wooden jetty is heaped with +perfect mounds of splendid grapes, sold at three cents per pound, by men +in shirtsleeves--phenomena which, to us who are fresh from the furred +wrappings and snow-blocked streets of Moscow, have a rather bewildering +effect. But the most striking sight is (to our friend Allfact at least) +the huge masses of coal which now fuel the steamer instead of the split +logs of the Volga. + +"You see Russia's richer than her neighbors think," remark I. "On the +Don alone there are 16,000 square miles of the finest anthracite, which +leaves only two per cent. of ashes in burning." + +"Sixteen thousand square miles!" cries the statistician, whipping out +his note-book. "Why on earth doesn't she use it, then, instead of +destroying all that valuable timber?" + +"Well, you see, the railways are not completed yet; but when they are I +can promise you that Russia will cut out England altogether in supplying +Constantinople and the Levant." + +One by one the little villages slip by us: Alexandrosk, the first sign +of which is the glitter of its gilded church-tower; Nikolaievo, with its +black marble monument to the late Crown Prince; Konstantirovskoe, the +birthplace of Prince Potemkin, brightest and most worthless of Russian +favorites, who "lived like an emperor and died like a dog." They are all +vary much of one pattern: substantial log-cabins, curiously painted, +with little palisaded gardens in front, and red-shirted men sitting +smoking at their doors, alternating with little wickerwork hovels daubed +with mud, which look very much like hampers left behind by a monster +picnic. Gangs of lean dogs (the pest of every Cossack village) are +sniffing hungrily about, while scores of sturdy wenches, with +berry-brown arms and feet, and sunburnt children clothed only in short +pinafores lined with dirt, run to stare at the wonderful fire-breathing +vessel as she comes gliding in. + +The sun is just dipping below the horizon as we reach Semi-Karakorskaya, +and anchor for the night as usual; for to navigate the Lower Don in the +dark is beyond the power of any pilot afloat. Here a Cossack +official,[L] whose acquaintance we have made on board, proposes to us to +land and be presented to the "Ataman," or chief of the tribe, with the +certainty of seeing something worth looking at. The offer is joyfully +accepted, and five minutes later we are scrambling up the steep, +crumbling bank--in the course of which feat Allfact slips and rolls +bodily down into the river. + +[Footnote L: The "Army of the Don," though now an integral part of +Russia, is still officered to a great extent by its own people.] + +"There's something for the notebook at last, old boy!" cries Smoothbore +spitefully. "Write down that you notice _a great falling off_ in this +part of the country!" + +To find one's way into a Cossack village at night is almost as hopeless +as the proverbial hunt for a needle in a haystack. The whole country +seems to consist of a series of carefully dug pitfalls, into which we +tumble one over the other, like fish out of a net; and our final +approach to the village is only to be guessed by the yells of the dogs, +which come about us with such zeal as to necessitate some vigorous +cudgelling, and a shower of trenchant Russian oaths, in which our +leader, thanks to his official character, seems to be quite a +proficient. At length a few lights, which appear to start from the very +ground under our feet, announce that we are among houses--underground +ones, it is true, but houses still. Then the first glimmer of the rising +moon lights up a row of log-cabins on either side, and the abyss of +half-dried mud between them; and at last, following our leader, we enter +one of those immeasurable courtyards in which the Cossack heart +delights, pass through a low doorway, ascend a creaking, ladder-like +stair, and, entering a small room at the head of it, find ourselves in +the presence of two men--one old and decrepit, the other in the prime of +life. The younger is the Ataman himself; the elder is his father, an old +soldier of the first campaigns of Nicholas. + +Seen by the dim light of the lamp that stands on the rough-hewn table, +the "interior" is sufficiently picturesque: the heavy crossbeams of the +roof, the skins that cover the walls, intermingled with weapons of every +kind, from the long Cossack lance to the light carabine which is fast +superseding it; the fresh complexions and Western costume of the English +party, contrasting strangely enough with the commanding figure and dark, +handsome face of our host, in his picturesque native dress and high +boots; the long white beard and vacant, wondering eyes of the ancient +soldier; the picture of the Ataman's patron saint in the corner, with +its little oil light burning before it, and a pious cockroach making a +laborious pilgrimage around its gilt frame; and, through the narrow, +loophole-like window, a glimpse of the great waste outside, lit by +fitful gleams of moonlight. + +Hospitality has been a Cossack virtue since the day that Bogdan +Khmelnitski gave meat from his own dish to the prisoners whom he was +about to slaughter; and we have hardly time to exchange greetings with +our new friends when we are set down to a plentiful meal of rye bread, +the splendid grapes of the Don, and "nardek"--a rich syrup strained from +the rind of the watermelon, not unlike molasses both in appearance and +flavor. + +The "bread and salt" (as the Russians technically call it) being +despatched, my three comrades, with the native official as interpreter, +fasten upon the Ataman, while I devote myself to the old soldier, and +begin to question him on the Danubian campaign of 1826. It is a sight to +see how the worn old face lights up, and how the sunken eyes flash at +the sound of the familiar name; and he plunges at once into his story. +Seldom is it given to any man to hear such a tale as that to which I +listen for the next half hour, told by one of its chief actors. Weary +struggles through miles of hideous morass--men dropping from sheer +exhaustion, with the wheels of the heavy artillery ploughing through +their living flesh; vultures haunting the long march of death to tear +the still quivering limbs of the fallen; soldiers, in the rage of +hunger, feeding upon the corpses of their comrades--all the hideous +details of that terrible campaign, told in a quiet, matter-of-course +way, which makes them doubly horrible. My impromptu Xenophon is still in +full swing when high above the clamor of tongues rises a sound from +without, which nothing on earth can match save the war whoop of the +Western Indian--the shrill, long-drawn "Hourra!" of the Cossack, which +made many a veteran grenadier's stout heart grow chill within, as it +came pealing over the endless snows of 1812. We rush headlong to the +outer door, and this is what we see: + +In the centre of the courtyard, under the full splendor of the +moonlight, stand some twenty tall, sinewy figures, in the high sheepskin +cap, wide trousers, and huge knee-high boots of the Cossack irregular. +They salute the Ataman as he appears by drawing their long knives and +waving them in the air, again uttering their shrill war cry; and then +begin to move in a kind of measured dance, advancing and retreating by +turns, to the sound of a low, dirge-like chant. Presently the music +grows quicker, the motion faster and fiercer; the dancers dart to and +fro through each other's ranks, brandishing their weapons, turning, +leaping, striking right and left--acting in terribly lifelike pantomime +the fury of a deadly battle. Seen in the heart of this great solitude, +with the cold moon looking silently down upon it, this whirl of wild +figures, and gleaming weapons, and dark, fierce faces, all eyes and +teeth, has a very grim effect; and even Sinbad's seasoned nerves quiver +slightly as the dancers at length join hands, and, whirling round like +madmen, burst forth with the deep, stern chorus with which their +ancestors swept the coasts of the Black Sea five hundred years ago: + + Our horses have trodden the steep Kavkaz (Caucasus); + Of the Krim (Crimea) we have taken our share; + And the way that we went is dabbled with blood, + To show that _we_ have been there! + +The volume of sound (stern and savage to the last degree, but yet full +of a weird, unearthly melody) fills the whole air like the rush of a +storm; and now, the Cossack blood being thoroughly heated, the play +suddenly turns to earnest. The nearest dancer, a tall, handsome lad with +a heavy black moustache, suddenly fells his next neighbor with a +tremendous blow between the eyes, which Heenan himself might have +applauded. The next moment the conqueror falls in his turn before a +crushing right-hander from his _vis-a-vis_; and in an instant the whole +band are at it hammer and tongs--apparently without "sides," order, or +object of any kind, except the mere pleasure of thrashing and being +thrashed. There is little science among the combatants, who deliver +their blows in a slashing, round-hand style that would agonize a +professional "bruiser"; but every blow dealt by those brawny arms leaves +its mark, and the whole company speedily look as if they had been taking +part in an election. + +"By Jove!" says Smoothbore, with considerable feeling; "it does one good +to see a real good fight so far away from home!" + +"You'd see plenty such in Central Russia," answer I. "Two villages often +turn out to fight, just as we'd turn out to play cricket.[M] They call +it 'Koolatchni boi.'" + +[Footnote M: I remember one such battle near Moscow, in October, 1809, +in which more than a thousand men took part.] + +But Sinbad, being a man of humane temper, thinks that the sport has gone +far enough, and appeals to the Ataman to stop it. One word from the +all-powerful chief suffices to part the combatants; and, a messenger +being despatched for some corn-whiskey, they are speedily chinking +glasses as merrily as if nothing had happened. I am standing +unsuspectingly in their midst when suddenly the whole company rush upon +me as one man, and I find myself lifted in their arms and tossed bodily +into the air six times in succession, amid yells of applause, to which +all the previous uproar is as nothing.[N] Next they pounce upon Allfact, +who, in his thirst for new ideas, submits readily enough; but Sinbad and +Smoothbore take to their heels at once, and are with difficulty pacified +by our host and his venerable father, who are looking on from the +doorway. + +[Footnote N: This singular compliment (a universal one among the +Cossacks) is probably a relic of the old custom of raising their +"Kosbevoi," or head chief, on a shield when elected.] + +This closes the entertainment, for it is now nearly midnight, and we are +to start again at sunrise. We take a cordial leave of our new friends, +and depart, laden with bunches of grapes which are somewhat difficult to +carry conveniently. + +"I wonder why they tossed me up like that?" muses Allfact, as we grope +our way down to the shore. + +"Why!" answers Smoothbore. "Why, to take a _rise_ out of you, to be +sure." + + DAVID KER. + + + + +DRIFT-WOOD. + + +THE WILLS OF THE TRIUMVIRATE. + +"Nothing so generally strikes the imagination and engages the affections +of mankind," says Sir William Blackstone, "as the right of property." +Sure it is, that society palpitates whenever a great estate passes to a +new owner, disclosing its vastness in the act of transit. Perhaps for +this fact we may find another reason in Blackstone, where he says: +"There is no foundation in nature why the son should have the right to +exclude his fellow creatures from a determinate spot of ground because +his father had done so before him, or why the occupier of a particular +field or of a jewel, when lying on his death-bed, and no longer able to +maintain possession, should be entitled to tell the rest of the world +which of them should enjoy it after him." But since the law, to reward +thrift and avoid strife, has established this artificial right of +disposal, the disparities of fortune, on these signal occasions of +transfer, always set us to pondering. + +Vanderbilt, last of the three monstrously rich men of New York who have +died within three years, furnishes in his will the now tripled evidence +of a new ambition in American Croesuses--an aim to keep their fortunes +rolling and greatening for several generations in the exact paths where +they were started. Supposing that Mr. Stewart's bequest to Judge Hilton +was designed to purchase his entrance into the dry goods firm, we should +have a common aim of the triumvirate, since each has put a chosen man +into his shoes, as if with the hope to live on in this successor, like +Mordecai in "Deronda." The master passion of acquisition is thus +striving to outwit death. Astor and Vanderbilt found their second selves +in favorite sons; childless Stewart could only take his confidential +agent. Each conceivably died in the hope that a successor so carefully +selected and endowed would in turn hand over the bulk of his gigantic +wealth, in its original channel, to some steward chosen with equal care; +so that ages hence the Astor fortune still in houses, the Stewart +fortune still in trade, the Vanderbilt fortune still in railways, might +flourish under successive guardians, faithful to their tradition and +training. The John Jacob, the Cornelius, the Alexander of the past has +been blessed with the vision of his millions multiplying as he would +have them multiply, and haply has dreamed of accomplishing by his own +foresight an entail which he could not create under the laws. + +If this be the new tendency that American life is called upon to face, +it is at least not hard to account for. The thirst for posthumous fame +which inflamed old heroes and poets rages still in days when greatness +collects rents, sells dry goods, and corners stocks. And after all, what +is there stranger in struggling to prolong after death one's imperious +railroad sway, his landlord laws, his massive trade monopolies, than in +slaving out one's childless old age in the hard rut of traffic, in order +to turn five surplus millions into ten? + +To Dives, after a life of accretion, the prospect of frittering his +wealth into fragments must be painful. Heirs will waste what he toiled +to win. That fortune which grew so great while he rolled it on turns +out, after all, but a snowball, to be broken apart and trampled by +careless spoilers when he is gone. There are, to be sure, hard-headed +philosophers who contemplate coolly the dispersion of their hoard. I +remember from boyhood that when somebody rallied Squire Anthony Briggs, +of Milldale, on his veteran vigilance in money-getting, saying, "Your +children will spend as fast as you have made it," stanch old Tony +answered: "If they get as much pleasure from spending my money as I have +in making it, they are welcome." But with prodigious fortunes like +Astor's and Vanderbilt's, the instinct of accumulation which increases +what is already preposterously great may struggle to keep it +accumulating after death. When Bishop Timothy sonorously declares from +the desk that we brought nothing into this world, neither may we carry +anything out, Croesus in the pew below takes this as a very solemn +warning to him--warning to secure betimes the utmost posthumous control +of his money that the laws allow. Dombey's soul is not wrapt up in the +miser's clutching love of money, but in the money-getting institution of +Dombey & Son; and not only in the Dombey & Son of to-day, but the +Dombeys & Sons of centuries hence. To found a dry-goods dynasty, a line +of railway kings, a house of landed Astors, its owner puts the bulk of +his vast wealth into a single hand--in that _exegi monumentum_ spirit +common to bard and broker, soldier and salesman. _Non omnis moriar, +multaque pars mei vitabit Libitinam_, the millionaire may then +triumphantly say. + +On the other hand, the Cornells and Licks of our day, wonderfully +numerous, have made America renowned by their public uses of wealth, +either in lifetime gift or testamentary bequest; and this devotion of +private fortune to the common weal is fostered by the observed +independence of each generation in pursuing its own mode of life without +regard to the customs of ancestors. + +But the testamentary aim of the richest trio that ever lived in America +was to escape this national trait of beneficence; to substitute the +perpetuity of one's business monopoly or family trade; to struggle +against any serious division of the enormous fortune, even at the cost +of preferences among equal children; to spare not one dollar out of +fifty millions for the public; to heap the gigantic hoard, save what for +other legatees propriety demands, on some "chip of the old block" or +business "bird of a feather." This purpose also influenced their lives. +"Magnificence is the decency of the rich," but little magnificence +marked the lives of those three rich New Yorkers. Powerful, self-willed, +all-conquering they were, but hardly magnificent. Unprecedented and +incredible thing in America, neither Stewart nor Vanderbilt left one +poor dollar of his fifty or sixty millions to any municipal or +charitable purpose. Filled with his posthumous business plans, neither +cared for New York as Girard cared for Philadelphia and Hopkins for +Baltimore. True, each of the Gotham triumvirate endowed in life an +institution of public beneficence--Astor his library, Vanderbilt his +college away in Tennessee, Stewart his hotel for women. It is further +true that men who, like Vanderbilt and Stewart, give sure pay for many +years to thousands of employees, are benefactors. But to do this, and +then to leave besides some testamentary memorial to the city where one +has heaped up his wealth, has hitherto been the aim of the rich men of +America. Girard not only founded his orphan college, ornament and pride +of Philadelphia, but left great sums to beautify and improve the city by +removing wooden houses and widening thoroughfares. Stewart, scrupulously +just in business dealings, deserves public gratitude as the apostle of +"one price," and as the cash-selling reformer who protected prudent folk +from the higher prices caused in trade by the allowances for bad debts; +but, this apart, in the will of Stewart and the will of Stephen Girard, +what a world-wide difference of public spirit! That one act of grace +that might have tempered his forgetfulness toward New York--the gift of +his picture gallery for public uses--even this act Stewart did not do. +The contrast is startling between the bequests of an Astor, a Stewart, a +Vanderbilt, and those of a Girard, a Peabody, and a Johns Hopkins. + + +THE DUEL AND THE NEWSPAPERS. + +Barring the two services, doctors used, I fancy, to be the great +duellists among professional men. And still, ever and anon, some +irascible Sawbones rushes to the ten-paced turf, where, though he be +spectacled or pot-bellied, those disadvantages rarely calm his +blood-letting rage. But editors are the modern magnates of the code; not +because they thirst for gore, but only because the guild of M. Paul de +Cassagnac is professionally liable to give offence, and hence to be +dragged to the field of glory and to die with boots on. I once saw a +statement that the famous fighting editor of the "Pays" had taken part +in eighteen duels, "besides having a man to kill next month"; and he was +greatly coveted by a Missouri paper that had been losing its writers in +street encounters too rapidly for convenience. + +The newspapers have emptied their vials of wrath or ridicule upon Mr. +Bennett for his duel with young May: now in horror over his resort to +the measured ground, and anon in scorn at the bloodless result. +Nevertheless, had Mr. Bennett failed to fight that duel, he and his +newspaper would have been butts during his lifetime for the shafts of +half the editorial archers of the land. A noble refusal to resent the +public insult would have been misrepresented with ingenious malice, in +the hope to disgrace him and ruin his property. In answer to "Herald" +arguments on disputed questions, the unresented cowhiding of its owner +would have been paraded by rival sheets. Rarely in business or political +controversy would they have failed to taunt him with cowardice. Life +would have been a burden to him; and if the consciousness of having +refrained in that instance from breaking the laws of man and of God +could have saved him from desperation, it would not have been for lack +of the sneers of newspapers continually fomenting and reviving public +contempt against him. Sometimes a man is goaded by such stings into a +second duel, after having been able to resist fighting the first; or +else he puts an end to a life which has been made unendurable through +constant imputations. Let those who doubt what would have occurred +recall the instantaneous newspaper sarcasms, after the street assault, +on the question "whether a man is answerable for hereditary tendencies +to receive a public cowhiding without resenting it." The satirist who +eggs on a duel in that fashion feels justified afterward in invoking +public contempt for the man that fights it. + +What is the upshot of this comment? That duelling is ever commendable? +Most emphatically no. Duelling, branded by the law, is also now so +branded in public opinion that it would be waste of words to +anathematize it. But what is suggested by the venom of some of the press +writers is that they have never put themselves into the place of a man +who, with the average sensitiveness to personal affront, and with +thorough-going physical courage, had also a clear perception of the +remorselessness of his journalistic rivals. From some of them he could +expect no more mercy than from the red gentry of the plains. Let those +who are sending their arrows into Mr. Bennett ask themselves whether +they are wholly sure that in his position, with his family history +behind them, they would have done otherwise after the street assault. At +any rate, neither duelling nor that cowardly substitute, shooting down +an unprepared man who has done some wrong, will be driven out of fashion +by bringing newspaper taunts of "showing the white feather" against +those who fail to resort to such lawlessness. + + +THE INDUSTRY OF INTERVIEWERS. + +It was a quarrel totally apart from newspaper affairs, as we all know, +that carried the editor of the "Herald" to the field of honor at +Marydell. Indeed, Mr. Bennett's conduct before and after the duel was so +"unjournalistic" that the Philadelphia reporters are said to have sent +him a letter, while he tarried in that city, protesting that a gentleman +so well aware of the "usages of the profession" ought to submit to be +interviewed. But the physician does not always swallow his own drugs. +Mr. Bennett, on receiving the missive, remarked that it was "all right," +and remained uninterviewed, thus setting an awful example to the +community. + +A public attack by a man armed with a cowhide upon another not so armed +is hardly a feat that excites admiration, while the affair at Marydell +was in no sense such reparation for the previous insult as in common +parlance to be thought "satisfaction." But one feature of the +Bennett-May quarrel not unpleasant to read was the outwitting of the +news-gatherers and their resulting desperation. "Had the duel taken +place on the Canada border the parties to it could hardly have evaded +our extensive arrangements to report it," said one journal after the +affair, in a somewhat lugubrious and yet self-vindicating strain. The +promptness of Mr. Bennett's movements, and his skill in throwing the +reporters off the scent, lest the duel might be stopped, were hard blows +to the newspapers. But theirs was no dishonorable defeat--it was one of +the fraternity that beat them. Even the device of giving imaginary +accounts of the battle in order to draw out the true one was +unsuccessful until Mr. Bennett had sailed for Europe. + +On the May side there was a trifling gain for the interviewers, but not +much. Dr. May, senior, seems to have been condemned to a copious +acquaintance with journalists; for, though in knowing Mr. Bennett he had +already perhaps known one too many of them, his house appears to have +been overrun, after the Fifth avenue assault, with the fraternity, who, +in the "strict discharge of professional duty," swarmed multitudinously +upon him. At least, one morning the "Tribune" said: + + The May mansion in West Nineteenth street was a sealed book + to reporters yesterday, and the door was promptly shut in + the face of those who were recognized as newspaper inquirers + by the negro in charge. Dr. May has made no secret of his + anger at the reports, too accurately drawn, of his + appearance of anxiety and alarm when expecting bad news from + his son, and will have nothing to say to representatives of + the press. + +Here, it will be observed, is a claim to something professional in the +very aspect of the "newspaper inquirer" whereby the sable guardian of +the portal may know him well enough to take the responsibility of +slamming the door in his face. Again, we observe here a tribute to the +interviewer's skill; for, prior to the duel, Dr. May, though politely +presenting himself, could give no news; but his lynx-eyed visitors had +gathered from the very attitude, tone, and look of their host the +material for an item as picturesque as any tidings. So the besieged +householder, as we have seen, took refuge in total eclipse, leaving only +a "negro in charge" to determine the status of his callers. + +Yet the most discerning negro in charge sometimes proves a weak barrier +against invasion. The trained interviewer can take a protean shape, and +introduce himself under disguise of the most sympathetic friendship or +the most urgent business. Sometimes he is the picture of respectful woe, +or anon it is he who has a favor to confer by bringing news of pressing +importance. Close and private indeed must be that conference whose +secrets he cannot worm out. He gave to the public the "family scene of +astonishment at the opening of the Vanderbilt will" the very morning +after the affair occurred. Should moral borings fail, he can resort to +material ones, as when, a few months since, he cut a hole in a hotel +floor, to apply his ear to, over the room where a Congressional +committee sat in secret session, being detected only by the unlucky +plaster falling among the astonished statesmen below. He is the animal +of the fable, who, having once "got in," cannot be got out until ready +to go. In our war times some commanders looked upon him, coming to camp +in never so fair a guise, with the misgivings of the hapless Trojan +regarding the wooden horse; and it is said of Baron Von Werther that he +"treats as an enemy all newspaper correspondents, even though they have +the best personal introductions to him." Such fears of warriors and +diplomats, who quail before no ordinary foes, are tributes to the +interviewer's prowess. + +It must go hard but he gets something from the sullenest and most +refractory customer. We have seen his harvests at the May mansion, when +baffled by real ignorance on the part of his victim; hence we may guess +whether he is to be checked by a mere wilful purpose to conceal, or the +whim to keep a matter private. At very worst, his own description of his +rebuff will be humorous and piquant. Often do we have an entertaining +half column beginning, "Our reporter waited upon," etc., and, after +descriptions of household ornaments, personal dress, and so on, ending +in this way: + + _Ques._--You say, then, that you can give me no information + whatever? + + _Ans._ (_snappishly_)--As I have already told you a dozen + times, no information whatever. + + _Ques._--And that is positive and final? + + _Ans._ (_savagely_)--Positive and final. + + Here our reporter took his leave, wishing the gentleman a + very good morning, to which politeness of our reporter the + uncommunicative gentleman only distantly bowed. + +But these defeats form a rare experience of the interviewer, who even +then continues to pluck victory (that is to say, an item) out of their +jaws. His ordinary career is a round of triumph which has made him a +leading figure in the portrait gallery of modern society. I wonder that +Mr. Daly does not introduce it at length into some of his comedies of +American life. Drawn faithfully, and personated by Mr. James Lewis, the +dramatized interviewer would be a wealth of pleasure. + + PHILIP QUILIBET. + + + + +SCIENTIFIC MISCELLANY. + + +THE FORCE OF CRYSTALLIZATION. + +The old story of a bombshell filled with water and left to burst by +freezing, upon the plains of Abraham, near Quebec, may now be superseded +as an illustration of the power of frost. The men at a Western dockyard +were surprised to find one morning that the paddle-wheel of a steamer in +the dry dock had fallen from the shaft, and was broken in two pieces. +The hub of the wheel, about fifteen inches long, was slightly hollowed +out at the centre to admit of its being slipped on without difficulty +over any uneven portion of the shaft-end. This recess was full of water +when the boat was placed in the dock, and the keying had been so close +that the liquid--about a pailful--was exposed to the frost. As the water +congealed under the sharp wintry atmosphere of the night it expanded and +burst asunder the five-inch walls of iron, and the broken wheel fell +with a crash. + + +FROZEN NITRO-GLYCERINE. + +Two accidents, both fatal, have lately occurred from the use of +nitro-glycerine for blasting. In one case some frozen cartridges were +recklessly placed in the oven of a stove, while others were held up to +the fire. That an explosion should take place under such circumstances +is not surprising, and comment is unnecessary. The other explosion +partook more clearly of the nature of an accident. A well digger, living +near Sing Sing, had buried a can of nitro-glycerine in his garden for +future use; and while digging it up, January 18, his pick struck the +can, ignition followed, and he was blown to pieces. No doubt the can was +frozen, thus proving anew that frozen nitro-glycerine is more dangerous +to handle, though not so powerful in its effects, as in the liquid form. +This is singular behavior and contrary to theory. In general terms, +explosion may be defined as the result which takes place when a portion +of the nitro-glycerine is raised to a given temperature. Now, to produce +this temperature by the friction resulting from the blow of a pick is +manifestly more difficult with frozen than with tepid liquid. In the +former case some of the heat produced would be absorbed by the +liquefaction of the solid substance, and therefore there would be less +available for producing the temperature of explosion. But, plain as this +proposition is, there must be some unknown condition, for it has been +frequently observed in practical work that nitro-glycerine is never so +dangerous to handle as when frozen. This result, however, is directly +opposed to the experiments of Beckerhinn, of Vienna, who lately +experimented to decide this question. He placed a thin layer of +nitro-glycerine on a Bessemer steel anvil, and a weight of about five +pounds, having a small hardened steel face, was dropped upon it. The +height to which it was necessary to raise this weight in order to +produce explosion determined the comparative delicacy of the explosive. +With tepid nitro-glycerine explosion took place when the weight dropped +about 31 inches (0.78 metres), but with frozen liquid the fall had to be +increased to about 85 inches (2.13 metre). Thus the experimental results +are opposed to the acknowledged experience of practical work in the +hands of common laborers. Mr. Beckerhinn found the density of the solid +nitro-glycerine to be 1.735, that of the liquid 1.599, and the average +melting heat to be 33.54 heat units. Thus the explosive shrinks about +one-twelfth in crystallizing. + + +ENGLISH GREAT GUNS. + +The largest rifled cannon in the world is a 100-ton gun, made for the +Italian government by Sir William Armstrong's firm. But the English +government is preparing to outdo this, and already has the plans ready +for a gun of 164 tons. It hesitates, in fact, between a weapon of this +size and one of 200 tons, a mass of metal which its shops are now +perfectly able to handle. The meaning of the term--200-ton gun--is +simply this: a tube of iron and steel of that weight, fifty feet long, +having a calibre of 20 inches, and firing a shot of 3,500 or 4,000 +pounds weight, with a charge of 800 pounds of powder! The human capacity +for astonishment has grown perforce as the successive steps have been +taken from the guns of ten and twenty tons to these weapons, which must +remain huge whatever further advances are made. The character of warfare +with them is best indicated by the fact that the 200-ton gun must be +handled entirely by machinery. The advent of these unmanageable weapons +is signalized by the invention of a hydraulic apparatus for working +them. The vast shock of the recoil from the bursting of thirty-two kegs +of powder--enough to throw down 1,200 tons of rock in mining--is taken +up by a cylinder pierced with small holes. These holes are capped with +valves, held down with a pressure of fifty tons to the square inch. When +the force of the recoil exceeds this the water is forced out of the +holes and the recoil thus taken up in work done. The breech of the piece +is supported on a hydraulic ram, the elevation of which depresses the +muzzle of the gun below the level of the deck, and brings it exactly in +line with an iron tube carrying the sponge. This is run up to the base +of the powder chamber, a deluge of water rushes from apertures in its +head, and the bore is completely cleaned out and every spark of +remaining fire extinguished. The rammer then retires, the sponge is +taken off, and the powder hoisted by tackle to the muzzle, whence the +rammer pushes it home, and then does the same for the shot. The shot and +cartridge, weighing together about 1,350 pounds, are stored on little +iron carriages, every charge in the magazine having its own carriage. +The loading finished, the gun is raised, pointed, the port flies open, +and the discharge immediately follows. What the result of the blow from +such a projectile would be is not to be imagined. It is acknowledged, +however, that in the struggle for mastery the gun has beaten defensive +armor. No ship has been built to stand the shock of a 3,500 pound bolt +moving at the velocity of 1,300 or 1,500 feet a second. + + +EAR TRUMPETS FOR PILOTS. + +Prof. Henry has turned his attention to the discovery of means for +increasing the distinctness of sound signals at sea. It is a very large +hearing trumpet, projecting mouth foremost from the top of the +pilot-house of a steamboat. But he soon found that a single hearing +trumpet would not answer the purpose, for though it greatly augmented +the perceptive power of the ear, it destroyed the capacity of that organ +for distinguishing the direction of sound. For this purpose two ears are +necessary. Prof. Henry then made use of two hearing trumpets, the axes +of which are separated about 30 inches. An india-rubber tube proceeding +from the axis of each is placed so as to terminate in the ear of the +observer--one in each ear. With this instrument the audibility of the +sound was very much increased, but as a means of determining the +direction of the source of sound, it was apparently of little use. For +this purpose the unaided ear is sufficient, provided the head is placed +above all obstructions and away from reflections. + + +HOT WATER IN DRESSING ORES. + +We have before alluded to the investigations made to ascertain the +reason why clay settles more rapidly in solutions of some salts than in +pure water, a fact which appears contrary to reason, since it might be +inferred that the greater the specific gravity the more buoyant the +fluid. But the fact is abundantly confirmed, and it is likely to find +important application some day in the arts. The property which every +substance has of sinking through a fluid of less density than its own +forms the basis upon which nine-tenths of the gold and copper, and +probably six-tenths of the silver produced in this country, is extracted +from its ores. It is the foundation of the art of ore dressing, one of +the most important parts of metallurgy. Anything which increases the +rapidity and thoroughness of the process may have a fortunate +application in this art. Mr. Ramsay, of the Glasgow university +laboratory, thinks the property in question depends upon the varying +absorption of heat by the different solutions. When water containing +suspended clay is heated the rapidity of settling is proportional to the +heat of the water. This mode of accelerating the movement of fine +sediments in water is perhaps more easily applied than the solution of +caustic soda or potash, or of common salt. Rittinger, by a mathematical +discussion of the principles which control the downward movement of +solid particles in an ascending stream of water, showed that the +separation of light from heavy minerals is more complete with solutions +of density greater than that of water than in water alone. He found a +solution of 1.5 sp. gr. extremely favorable. If the addition of heat +will increase the effect of such a solution, it may become possible to +separate, by means of the continuous jig, minerals so near in specific +gravity as barite and galena. This whole subject of ore dressing is one +of the most important questions connected with the future of mineral +industry in America. In the Mississippi valley everything connected with +metallurgy, from the fuels to the finished metal, will one day be +closely dependent on it. + + +OCEAN ECHOES. + +Prof. Henry communicated to the National Academy at Philadelphia his +latest researches into the subject of sound, and among them an +explanation of the echo observed on the water. This echo he had formerly +been inclined to attribute to reflection from the crests of the waves. +Tyndall holds that it is due to reflection from strata of air at +different densities. Prof. Henry's present explanation is that this echo +is produced by the reflection of the sound wave from the uniform surface +of the water. The effect of the echo is produced by the fact that the +original sound wave is interrupted. It has what the learned Professor +calls _shadows_, produced by the intervention of some obstacle in its +path. Sound is not propagated in parallel, but in diverging lines, and +yet there are some cases where what may be called a "sound shadow" is +produced. For instance, let a fog-signal be placed at or near water +level on one side of an island that has a conical elevation. Then the +signal will be heard distinctly by a vessel on the opposite side of the +island at a distance of three miles. But when the vessel sails toward +the island (the signal being on the opposite side), the sound will be +entirely lost when the distance is reduced to a mile, and in any smaller +distance it is not recovered. In this case the station of the vessel at +the shorter distance is in the "sound shadow." The termination of that +shadow is the point at which the diverging beams of sound, passing over +the crest of the island, bend down and reach the surface of the water. +The formation of the sound echo may be explained by this extreme +divergence of the sound waves, for it is rational to suppose that at a +great distance from the source of sound some of the dispersed waves will +reach the water surface at such an angle as to be reflected back to the +hearer. This was well illustrated by an experiment made to test +Tyndall's theory. A steam siren was pointed straight upward to the +zenith, but no echo from the zenith was heard, though the presence of a +cloud from which a few raindrops fell certified the presence of air +strata of different densities. But, strange to say, an echo _was_ heard +from every part of the horizon, half of which was land and half water. +The only explanation of this fact is that the sound waves projected +upward were so dispersed as to reach the earth's surface at a certain +distance, and at that point some of them had curled over and assumed a +direction that caused their reflection back to the siren. + + +THE DELICACY OF CHEMISTS' BALANCES. + +In making chemical balances for fine work the beam is made in the truss +form to prevent the bending which takes place even under such small +loads as an ounce or two. Prof. Mendeleef has a balance that will turn +with one-thousandth of a grain, when each pan is loaded with 15,000 +grains. This extreme sensibility is obtained by the use of micrometer +scales and cross threads at the end of the beam, these being observed by +means of a telescope. Of course one weighing with this complicated +apparatus occupies a long time. In most balances the beam rests on steel +knife edges; but a maker who has lately obtained celebrity makes his +supports of pure rock crystal. The steel edges can be seen with the +naked eye; the quartz edges cannot be seen even with a magnifying glass. +One writer on this subject thinks that with these perfect crystal edges, +with an inflexible girder beam, a short beam giving quick vibrations, +and a sensitiveness that can be increased by screwing up the centre of +gravity, there can hardly be a practical limit to the smallness of the +weight that will turn the beam. The amount of motion may be very small, +but if this can be observed, the limit of possible accuracy is very much +extended. + + +GOVERNMENT CONTROL OF THE DEAD. + +What the population of European countries was a hundred years ago it +would be hard to tell with accuracy; but the nations have doubled and +trebled in strength within the century. Sanitary precautions have +increased in importance, and the very noticeable movement in regard to +social hygiene which now possesses English society is perhaps due in +part to the obvious dangers to which thirty million human beings are +subjected when living together on such a small area. The medical officer +for Birkenhead has pointed out that it may be necessary for the +government authorities to take more complete charge of the dead as a +possible source of infection. He says that the intelligence of deaths +from infectious diseases now furnished by local registrary would be much +more useful than it is as a means for limiting the spread of disease if +the medical officer were vested with further powers in respect to the +infected dead body. At present neither the medical officer nor any one +else has any power to order the immediate removal of an infected body, +and those in charge of it might do what they liked with it. He advocated +the necessity of power being given to medical officers to order the +immediate removal of the infected bodies to a public mortuary and their +speedy burial. + + +MICROSCOPIC LIFE. + +Dr. Leidy lately described to the Academy of Sciences in Philadelphia an +encounter for life which he witnessed between two microscopic +animalcules. The two creatures were respectively 1-625th and 1-200th of +an inch in diameter. On the morning of August 27, from some mud adhering +to the roots of sphagnum, obtained the day previously in a nearly +dried-up marsh at Bristol, Pennsylvania, he obtained a drop of material +for examination with the microscope. After a few moments he observed an +amoeba verrucosa, nearly motionless, empty of food, with a large central +vesicle, and measuring 1/25th of a millimetre in diameter. Within a +short distance of it, and moving directly toward it, was another and +more active amoeba, regarding the species of which he was not positive. +It was perhaps the one described by Dujardin as amoeba limax, by which +name it may be called. As first noticed, this amoeba was one-eighth of a +millimetre long, with a number of conical pseudopods projecting from the +front border, which was one-sixteenth of a millimetre wide. The creature +contained a number of spherical food spaces with sienna colored +contents, a large diatom filled with endochrome, besides several clear +food spaces, a posterior contractile vesicle, and the usual glanular +endosarc. The amoeba limax approached and came into contact with the +motionless amoeba verrucosa. Moving to the right, it left a long +finger-like pseudopod curved around its lower half, and then extended a +similar one around the upper half until it met the first pseudo-pod. +After a few moments the ends of the two projections actually became +continuous, and the verrucosa was enclosed in the embrace of the amoeba +limax. The latter assumed a perfectly circular outline, and after a +while a uniformly smooth surface. It now moved away with its new +capture, and after a short time what had been the head end contracted +and became wrinkled and villous in appearance, while from what had been +the tail end ten conical pseudopods projected. The amoeba verrucosa +assumed an oval form, and the contractile vesicle became indistinct +without collapsing. Moving on, the amoeba limax became more slug-like in +shape. The amoeba verrucosa now appeared enclosed in a large oval, clear +vacuole or space, was constricted so as to be gourd-shaped, and had lost +all trace of its vesicle. Subsequently it was doubled upon itself, and +at this point the amoeba limax discharged from one side of the tail end +the siliceous case of the diatom, which now contained only a shrivelled +cord of endochrome. Later the amoeba verrucosa was broken up into fine +spherical granular balls, and these gradually became obscured and +apparently diffused among the granular contents of the entosarc of the +amoeba limax. The observations from the time of the seizure of the +amoeba verrucosa to its digestion or disappearance among the granular +matter of the entosarc of its captor, occupied seven hours. From naked +amoeba the shell-protected rhizopods were no doubt evolved, and it is a +curious sight to observe them swallowed, home and all, to be digested +out of their house. It was also interesting to observe the cannibal +amoeba swallowing one of its own kind and appropriating its structure to +its own use, just as we might do the contents of an egg. The amoeba +verrucosa he describes as remarkable for its sluggish character, and in +appearance reminds one of a little pile of epithelial scales or a +fragment of dandruff from the head. It is oval or rounded, transparent, +and more or less wrinkled, or marked with delicate, wavy lines. + + +THE SOURCES OF POTABLE WATER. + +In the British Social Science meeting, Mr. Latham, a civil engineer of +London, brought up the question of water supplies and endeavored to find +rules for the guidance of water engineers in those apparently +contradictory facts which the observation of recent years has produced +so abundantly. It has been generally considered that water which has +received the sewage of large populations must be unfit for domestic use; +but careful investigation would show that when such polluting matter has +been passed into a river, and exposed to the influence of light, +vegetation, etc., it becomes innocuous. This is shown by the good health +enjoyed by the inhabitants of London, which place receives its supply +chiefly from the Thames and the Lea, both of which rivers receive a +considerable amount of sewage pollution. The author instanced Wakefield, +Doncaster, and Ely as towns that draw their supplies of water from +sources into which sewage matter enters, and yet whose inhabitants are +healthy. The cholera epidemic at Newcastle-on-Tyne in 1853 was supposed +to have been caused by the use of polluted Tyne water, and yet it was +clearly ascertained that disease was much more rife among those persons +who used local well water. These facts, which have often been quoted, +were not favorably received by the audience, who greeted with laughter +Mr. Latham's assertion that water into which sewage matter has entered +can be purified by a short exposure to the air. That statement may be +too strong; but there is acknowledged truth in the author's main point. +He considered it was clearly proved that water derived from underground +sources, or from which light and air have been excluded, is impure, and +consequently unfit for domestic use. Universal testimony showed that +decaying matter easily found its way into underground sources of supply. +Well water may become seriously contaminated by the slow steeping of +noxious matters, and be less wholesome than the water of a running +stream that receives much larger quantities of impurity. + + +THEORY OF THE RADIOMETER. + +Prof. Crookes has at length announced a theory in explanation of the +movements exhibited by the remarkable "light mill" of his invention. He +says: "The evidence afforded by the experiments is to my mind so strong +as almost to amount to conviction, that the repulsion resulting from +radiation is due to the action of thermometric heat between the surface +of the moving body and the case of the instrument, through the +intervention of the residual gas. This explanation of its action is in +accordance with recent speculations as to the ultimate constitution of +matter, and the dynamical theory of gases." The most refined means for +exhausting the air from the glass bulb which contains the suspended +vanes of the radiometer leave, and if they were to be carried to +absolute mechanical perfection, would still leave a certain amount of +gas in it. But Dr. Crookes has carried this attenuation so far that the +number of gas molecules present can no longer be considered as +practically infinite. Nor is the mean length of their paths between +their collisions any longer very small compared to the size of the bulb. +The latest use to which the radiometer has been put was to test the +viscosity of gases at decreasing pressures. The glass bulb was furnished +with a stopper lubricated with burnt rubber. This was fixed and carried +a fine thread of glass which is almost perfectly elastic. To the end of +this thread hung a thin oblong plate of pith to which a mirror was +attached. The glass stopper being fixed, and the bulb capable of +rotation through a small angle, it is evident that when the bulb is +rotated the pith ball will remain at rest except as it yields to the +friction of the air moved by the bulb. It does move, swinging a certain +distance and then back, like a pendulum. The amount of this movement is +carefully observed by a telescope, and recorded for five successive +beats. As the pith and glass fibre form a torsion pendulum, it is +evident that these beats will gradually die down in consequence of the +resistance of the air. By exhausting the air to various degrees of +rarity, it was proved that Prof. Clerk Maxwell's theory, that the +viscosity of a gas is independent of its density, is correct. The +logarithmic decrement of the first five oscillations (that is, the +decrease, oscillation by oscillation, of the logarithm of the arc +through which the pith vanes swing), was found to be nearly the same +when the air was almost exhausted as when it was at its natural +pressure, proving that its viscosity remained nearly equal for all +pressures. Only in the exceptionally perfect vacuum referred to above +did this logarithmic decrement sink to about one-twentieth of what it +had commenced with. Repulsion of the vane by the action of light +commences when this decrement is one-fourth of what it was before the +exhaustion of air began. As the rarity of the air within the bulb +increases the force of this repulsion begins to diminish, like the +logarithmic decrement, and when the latter has sunk to one-twentieth the +former has fallen off one-half. All these and other facts previously +obtained prove that the action of light is not _direct_, but _indirect_; +and Dr. Crookes has, after repeatedly refusing to consider hasty +judgments, in consequence come to the conclusion stated above, that the +rotation of the light mill is the result of heat. This decision accords +with the opinion of other observers. The radiometer has already entered +the field of industrial science, and is used to measure the duration of +exposure of photographic plates. De Fonvielle has made with it a new +determination of the sun's thermometric power. He made a spectroscope +with a graduated screen, which permitted the amount of light that +entered the apparatus to be graduated at will. In the path of the beam +he placed a radiometer, and by comparing its action in the graduated +light ray, and in the light of a standard oil lamp, burning 42 grammes +(11.3 ounces Troy) per hour, he found that at 4 o'clock, on June 4, +1876, the radiating force of the sun was equal to 14 lamps placed 25 +centimetres (10 inches) from the radiometer. + + +TEMPERED GLASS IN THE HOUSEHOLD. + +The "tempered glass," which has made the name of M. de la Bastie, its +discoverer, so well known, does not prove to be always manageable. It +was to have the strength of metal, and not shiver with changes of +temperature. But an English lady has found that it sometimes has +precisely the contrary characteristics. She purchased twelve globes for +gaslights, and they were made in the manufactory of M. de la Bastie +himself. But one night, after the gas had been extinguished for exactly +an hour, one of the globes burst with a report, and fell in pieces on +the floor, leaving the bottom ring still on the burner. These pieces, +which were of course found to be perfectly cold, were some two or three +inches long and an inch or so wide. They continued for an hour or more +splitting up and subdividing themselves into smaller and still smaller +fragments, each split being accompanied by a slight report, until at +length there was not a fragment larger than a hazel nut, and the greater +part of the glass was in pieces of about the size of a pea, and of a +crystalline form. In the morning it was found that the rim had fallen +from the burner to the floor in atoms. In all these phenomena the +behavior was that of unannealed glass, of which so many curious +performances have been related. + + +THE NEW YORK AQUARIUM. + +A marine and fresh-water aquarium has been opened in New York, and both +from its intrinsic merits and as the first attempt to institute in this +country a valuable mode of scientific amusement and instruction, it +deserves mention. It does not equal in size or arrangements any of the +celebrated places of the kind abroad. Still it contains tanks of +considerable size, and in them some very interesting denizens. The +shark, sturgeon, skate, sea-turtle, and other fishes are represented by +large individuals, and their habits can be watched at leisure. A small +white whale was also at one time one of the attractions. Fish breeding +is carried on in the establishment, which receives constant additions to +its occupants by expeditions which are said to be especially planned for +this purpose. In any case New York is an excellent point for an +aquarium, and probably receives every year enough rare living fish at +its great markets to maintain such an institution. The commencement now +made is a worthy one, and it can easily become an important source of +pleasure and usefulness. The system employed is that of constant +circulation, the water being pumped from a reservoir to the several +tanks. Pumps and pipes are made of hard rubber. A library, a +naturalists' laboratory, equipped with tables, microscopes, etc., are +either established or projected in the building. + + +THE CRUELTY OF HUNTING. + +The outcry against the practice of making surgical experiments upon +living dogs, rabbits, and other animals has roused some vivisectionists +to return to the subject of hunting. This is one of the principal themes +of the philosophic philanthropist, whose opposition to the practice +seems to be an outgrowth of the better acquaintance which man has made, +through science, with the lower animals. He accomplishes his task very +effectively by calculating the number of animals which are wounded but +not recovered by English sportsmen every year. The official returns show +that in 1873-'4 there were 132,036 holders of gun licenses, and 65,846 +holders of licenses to kill game in the British dominions. In 1874-'5 +the numbers were 144,278 and 68,079, showing that the disposition and +ability to hunt are on the increase. As a basis for computation, the +partridge season of 21 weeks is taken, and two days' hunting are allowed +for each week; while three birds are supposed to be wounded and "lost" +daily by each sportsman. This gives 126 birds wounded and left to suffer +unknown torments by each one of the 68,079 holders of game licenses. The +total is no less than 8,296,496 "lost" birds in 1873-'4, and 8,577,954 +in 1874-'5. Then the holders of gun licenses have the right to shoot +birds which are destructive to crops, etc., and two lost birds each week +in the year is calculated to be the average. This makes no less than +13,731,744 wounded birds in 1873-'4, and 15,004,912 in 1874-'5. The +total is in round numbers _twenty million_ birds injured each year! +These estimates are made by "Nature," and they correctly represent the +ground on which the modern opposition to the hunt as a cruel and +unnecessary occupation is based. Of course the figures are not exact. +The only effort made was to have them within bounds; and considering all +the varieties of game pursued in England, and the extraordinary keenness +of Englishmen for sport, this estimate is probably correct. Quite lately +they have been confirmed by a noted hunter on the western plains, who +says that in his case a day's sport was usually marked by the "loss" of +two or three animals. As he is an uncommon shot, his experience cannot +be more unfortunate than the average. Such calculations show us how +enormous are the results when the whole human race engages in one +action. At present, English society offers the contradictory spectacle +of a large and increasing body of hunters who oppose vivisection on the +ground of cruelty, and a small and increasing body of vivisectionists +who oppose hunting also on the ground of cruelty. + + +THE GORILLA IN CONFINEMENT. + +Great interest attaches to the career of the young gorilla now in the +Berlin aquarium. Dr. Hermes described some of his peculiarities at a +late meeting of the German Association of Naturalists and Physicians. He +nods and claps his hands to visitors; wakes up like a man, and stretches +himself. His keeper must always be beside him and eat with him. He eats +what his keeper eats; they share dinner and supper. The keeper must +remain by him till he goes to sleep, his sleep lasting eight hours. His +easy life has increased his weight in a few months from thirty-one to +thirty-seven pounds. For some weeks he had inflammation of the lungs, +when his old friend Dr. Falkenstein was fetched, who treated him with +quinine and Ems water, which made him better. When Dr. Hermes left the +gorilla on the previous Sunday the latter showed the doctor his tongue, +clapped his hands, and squeezed the hand of the doctor as an indication, +the latter believed, of his recovery. Apparently he means to support, by +every means in his power, the effort at a hot-house development of the +ape to the man. A large glass house has been built for him in connection +with the palm house. + + +INSTRUCTION SHOPS IN BOSTON. + +The Boston Institute of Technology is somewhat noted for its boldness in +making educational experiments; its efforts so far having been directed +toward the introduction of practical trade instruction into an advanced +school. Some years ago it endeavored to establish a model room for +dressing ores and another for smelting them; but the success of this +trial seems to be more than doubtful. Both of these pursuits are too +extensive to be represented by one shop or by sample work. Nothing +daunted by this failure, President Runkle has lately introduced a +"filing shop" as the first step toward practical instruction in +engineering work. This shop has about thirty work tables, each provided +with a vise and tool drawers. Filing is one of the first things the +young apprentice has to learn; and those who think that anybody can file +who has hands may be surprised to learn that the filing of a hexagon +bolt head is one of the tests for a Whitworth prize scholarship. The +difficulty of making a flat surface is in that task combined with the +necessity of having the faces of equal size and placed at equal angles +to each other. The plan in the Boston institute is to have the student +spend ten weeks in filing, and then the same length of time in each the +forging shop and the turning shop. The two latter are not yet ready. +These three steps form part of a two years' course in mechanical +engineering, the tuition fee to which is $125 yearly. The main objection +to such schools is that engineers and practical men persist in refusing +to accept such instruction as a substitute for actual work. The Boston +institute is making praiseworthy efforts, but it seems to be adopting a +system which has never been in favor just at a time when the smelting +works and machine shops of the country appear willing to unite with the +scientific schools in supplying students with real experience of work as +a requirement for a diploma. + + * * * * * + +A new mode of compressing arteries is by the use of a hard pad having a +prominent projection, which is pressed against the artery or vein by a +strong elastic ring of rubber passed over the limb. + + * * * * * + +The Harvard summer schools were so far successful that the last +catalogue reports forty students in geology, twenty-five in chemistry, +twenty-five in phenogamic botany, and six in cryptogamic botany. + + * * * * * + +A case in which the heart was severely wounded without causing immediate +death lately occurred in England. The wound was made by a knife which +passed between the third and fourth ribs, through the wall of the heart +into the cavity of the left ventricle. The man lived sixty-four hours. + + * * * * * + +M. Peligot warns housekeepers against the advice so often given, to use +borax for the preserving of meat. He finds that borax and the borates +affect plants very seriously, and doubts whether it can be innocuous to +animals. French beans watered once with a solution of borax quickly +withered and died. + + * * * * * + +A young American, Dr. James by name, was killed with his partner (a +Swede) at Yule Island in September last, by the natives of New Guinea. +They were hunting birds of paradise at the time. Dr. James left some +valuable collections which have been described before the Linnaean +Society of London. + + * * * * * + +In extending the underground railway of London, the excavations +disclosed Roman and other remains of considerable interest. Among the +former there were found fragments of urns, specimens of pottery, and +bronze coins. The most remarkable discovery was that of a thick stratum +of bullock's horns, commencing about twenty feet below the surface, and +extending to an unascertained distance beneath. Although the deposit was +doubtless made many centuries ago, the horns had suffered so little by +decay that they found a ready sale in the market. This road has carried +in thirteen years 408,500,000 passengers. In 1863, the first year, the +number was 9,500,000, which increased to 48,500,000 last year. + + * * * * * + +Foreign papers say that Mr. Floyd, the President of the board of +trustees for the Lick donation, has come to an arrangement with M. +Leverrier, the celebrated French astronomer, for the better execution of +the instruments to be made for the Lick Observatory. The masses of glass +required are to be made in Paris, at Feil's glass works, and the +object-glasses very likely by an English optician. + + * * * * * + +Two distinguished men were officially superannuated last year: Profs. +Milne-Edwards and Delafosse of the Paris Museum. The son of the former +takes his place, and Descloiseaux succeeds to the chair of mineralogy. +Professors Dove of Berlin and Woehler of Goettingen have had their +_jubilaeum_ or fiftieth anniversary of their doctorates. All these facts +illustrate the conservative influence of student life. + + * * * * * + +The Western mines of gold and silver have lately yielded some new and +interesting minerals. Roscoelite is a vanadium mica from a gold mine at +Granite creek, California. The vanadic acid varies from 20 to 23 per +cent. Psittacinite is a vanadate of lead and copper, which occurs +associated with gold, lead, and copper minerals at several mines in +Silver Star district, Montana. It is considered to be a favorable +indication, for when that is found the vein is said to become rich in +gold. Coloradoite is a telluride of mercury, also a new mineral and +quite rare. + + * * * * * + +Dr. Piggott proposes to replace the spider's web of telescopes by a star +illuminated transit eye-piece. A sheet of glass, on which a thin film of +silver is deposited, is placed in the focus of the eye lens; transparent +lines are drawn on the film, instead of wires, and as the star passes +across the lines it is seen to flash out brightly. The film of silver is +made sufficiently thin to permit of the star being seen when it is +between the lines, but it appears that the lines themselves are only +visible, except in the case of very large stars, when the star disc is +in transit across a line. + + * * * * * + +Singular results of strains existing in the granite rocks through which +the St. Gothard tunnel is passing are recorded. When the shots are fired +at the end of the gallery they are sometimes succeeded at unequal +intervals by other explosions at points where there is no drill hole and +no powder. Workmen have been injured by these spontaneous explosions, +which are to be explained only on the theory that there are strains in +the rock; and when this tension is increased by the shock of a heavy +explosion, the rock flies in pieces with noise. Similar effects have +been noticed in other granites. + + * * * * * + +It is said that aniline colors are now used to color wines, and that +enough of them is taken into the Bordeaux district of France to color +one-third of its whole product. Husson gives the following method for +detecting it: Take a small quantity of the wine and add a little +ammonia, when the mixture turns a dirty green. Steep a thread of white +woollen yarn in the liquor and allow a drop of vinegar to flow along it. +If the color of the wine is natural, as the drop advances the original +whiteness of the wool is restored; but if the wine has been +sophisticated with magenta, the wool will take a rose color. This test +is simple, easily tried, and effective. + + * * * * * + +An inquiry into the results of systematic gymnastic exercises in a +French military school shows that the strength is increased on the +average 15 to 17 per cent., and is also equalized on both sides of the +body. The capacity of the chest is increased at least 16 per cent. and +the weight 6 to 7 per cent. Coincident with this increase is a decrease +in the bulk of the body, showing that fat is changed to muscle. The +improvement is confined to the first three months of the course unless +the exercise is then moderated. If continued at too high a rate, +weakness succeeds the increase of strength. It would be a good plan to +place a dynamometer in every gymnasium as a measure of the changes which +take place in the gymnast. + + +MOON MADNESS. + +The popular belief that the moon's rays will cause madness in any person +who sleeps exposed to them has long been felt to be absurd, and yet it +has appeared to have its source in undoubted facts. Some deleterious +influence is experienced by those who rashly court slumber in full +moonshine, and probably there is no superstition to which the well-to-do +pay more attention. Windows are often carefully covered to keep the +moonbeams from entering sleeping rooms. A gentleman living in India +furnishes "Nature" with an explanation of this phenomenon which is at +least plausible. He says: "It has often been observed that when the moon +is full, or near its full time, there are rarely any clouds about; and +if there be clouds before the full moon rises, they are soon dissipated; +and therefore a perfectly clear sky, with a bright full moon, is +frequently observed. A clear sky admits of rapid radiation of heat from +the surface of the earth, and any person exposed to such radiation is +sure to be chilled by rapid loss of heat. There is reason to believe +that, under the circumstances, paralysis of one side of the face is +sometimes likely to occur from chill, as one side of the face is more +likely to be exposed to rapid radiation, and consequent loss of its +heat. This chill is more likely to occur when the sky is perfectly +clear. I have often slept in the open in India on a clear summer night, +when there was no moon; and although the first part of the night may +have been hot, yet toward two or three o'clock in the morning, the chill +has been so great that I have often been awakened by an ache in my +forehead, which I as often have counteracted by wrapping a handkerchief +round my head, and drawing the blanket over my face. As the chill is +likely to be greatest on a very clear night, and the clearest nights are +likely to be those on which there is a bright moonshine, it is very +possible that neuralgia, paralysis, or other similar injury, caused by +sleeping in the open, has been attributed to the moon, when the +proximate cause may really have been the _chill_, and the moon only a +remote cause acting by dissipating the clouds and haze (if it do so), +and leaving a perfectly clear sky for the play of radiation into space." + + +THE ARGUMENT AGAINST VACCINATION. + +An English physician opposes compulsory vaccination on the ground that +it prevents further discovery, and compels medical science to halt at +just that point, because it forbids experiment upon methods of +prevention that may prove to be better. He says: "It stereotypes a +particular stage of scientific knowledge, and bars further progress. If +I remind you of the great improvement thought to have been made by the +introduction of inoculation by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu at the end of +the last century, and ask you to suppose that Parliament might then have +passed an act to compel every one to be inoculated, you will, I think, +see what is meant. This method was tried for some years with great +_eclat_, but afterward it was found to spread the smallpox so much that +an act of Parliament was passed to forbid its use. Vaccination, +introduced by Dr. Jenner, has followed, and this was another step in +advance. I was the first child in my father's family vaccinated +seventy-one years ago, several elder brothers and sisters having been +inoculated. Both methods answered in our cases. But for many years I +have been satisfied that other diseases besides the modified small-pox +(called cow-pox) are now introduced by the old vaccine, and have +steadily refused to use it, seeking rather, at increased trouble and +expense, new vaccine. And the question which comes forcibly to the front +is this: May not some other preservative be discovered which shall be a +further improvement? This question cannot be answered so long as +vaccination is compelled by law. There are no persons upon whom +experiments can be tried." So far as it goes, this is valid ground for +criticising vaccination laws. But the proof that small-pox is more +disastrous to the human race than the evils that vaccination brings with +it is so strong that there is little likelihood society will subject +itself to the attacks of the greater enemy in order to avoid the lesser. +The evils of the old system of using vaccine taken from human beings for +new inoculations are now no longer inevitable. Fresh vaccine direct from +the calf, and called "Bovine," can be had everywhere. A large +establishment for obtaining it is situated near New York. + + + + +CURRENT LITERATURE. + + +Colonel Dodge's "Plains of the Great West"[O] is one of the most +entertaining and important books of the kind we have met with. Whether +he treats of the chase, the natural history of the wild animals found on +our continent, or the Indians, he draws upon abundant resources of +observation and experience. His description of the much talked of +"plains" is new. He distinguishes three of these, the first lying next +the mountains, the next known as the "High Plains," being to the +eastward, and finally the broad surface of the lower plains. As the high +plains are more fertile than either of the others (owing to diversities +of soil), we have the singular effect of a country suddenly becoming +more fertile as the interior of the continent is more deeply penetrated. +Of other peculiarities exhibited in this region our author gives a vivid +account, and it requires all our faith in his accuracy to have +confidence in the following description of the famous Bad Lands, the +scene of so much Scientific search: + + The ground is covered with fragments of the bones of animals + and reptiles, and the man must indeed be insensible who can + pass unmoved through these most magnificent burying-grounds + of animals extinct before the advent of his race. + + Almost everywhere throughout the whole length and breadth of + the plains are found, in greater or less profusion, animal + remains, fossils, shells, and petrifactions. Bones are very + numerous and in great variety, from the saurian and mastodon + to the minutest reptile, ranging in point of time from the + remotest ages to the present day. + +[Footnote O: "_The Plains of the Great West and their Inhabitants._" By +(Lieutenant-Colonel) RICHARD IRVING DODGE. With an Introduction by +William Blackmore. Illustrated. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.] + +His description of other features of this vast region is full of +interest. The two remarkable belts of forest, called the cross timbers, +stretching for a hundred miles through a trackless country, but not +increasing their width beyond their normal eight to twelve miles; the +extraordinary rivers, half sand, half water, the mazes of which confound +the Indian, usually so acute in the field; the sand streams, which +repeat in that material the puzzle of the cross timbers, and are even +more inexplicable. While the desert does not narrow the cross timber +belts, nor water widen them, the wind seems to have no effect on these +sand streams, though the material that composes them is so light as to +rise on every puff of air. Like the cross timbers, the sand streams +pursue their way across the country, regarding neither wet nor dry, hill +nor stream. Their origin lies in forces not yet known, and though they +may seem to be the sport of existing conditions, they really maintain +themselves indifferent to their surroundings. Things like these prove +that Americans need not go to the Sahara for novel aspects of nature. +Our author has a quick perception of what is striking in these scenes, +and describes them in vigorous and pictorial language. + +Colonel Dodge is one of the most noted hunters in our army, and his +descriptions of the chase deserve to rank with those of Cummings, Baker, +and other great African sportsmen. It is true our country does not +afford the hunter such a slaughter field as South Africa has been. A few +animals have increased on our soil to such an extent as to afford at +certain seasons opportunities for unlimited slaughter. But the past five +years have seen such destruction of the last of these--the buffalo--that +wholesale killing is no longer possible on any ground the white man is +suffered to visit. Three years more will carry us to the end of the +decade, and probably of the buffalo hunt as it has been in the past. +About five years ago a change came over the pursuit of this animal. He +began to be killed for his hide alone, and the results are almost +incredible. Colonel Dodge shows that in three years no less than +4,373,730 buffalo were killed by whites and Indians. It is evidently +impossible for any animal, bringing forth but one at a birth, to +maintain its increase against such heedless destruction. The present +winter has witnessed what is probably the last grand attack upon these +animals, as they took refuge in the sheltering mountains of northwestern +Texas from the cold and snow-covered plains. Very soon the noblest prey +of the sportsman on this continent will be one of his rarest prizes. +Colonel Dodge does not lack the usual hunter's fund of anecdote. His own +adventures are modestly told, and when "seven antelope and a fine dog" +are bagged with one shot, the story is credited (with the Colonel's +guarantee) to an anonymous "old hunter"! We have said that the plains do +not rival the African field in quantity of game, but the dimensions of +two separate "bags," shot in successive years, shows how great even in +this country the rewards of the chase may be. In 1872 five gentlemen, of +whom Colonel Dodge was one, bagged 1,262 head, and next year four shot +1,141 head on the same ground, and the author thinks "the whole world +can be safely challenged to offer a greater variety of game." + +But interesting as the chase is in our author's hands, the most +important part of the book is that in which the Indians are described +and discussed. To one who knows the unanimity of army opinion concerning +the much debated Indian question in the West, it is almost unnecessary +to say that Colonel Dodge wishes to see the tribes transferred to the +sole control of the War Department, treaty-making stopped at once, +discipline introduced, the vagabond whites eliminated from the tribes, +and the never-ceasing stream of outrages stopped. These opinions, which +the author shares with the Western community at large, are founded on a +very intimate knowledge of the Indians, and while they are invaluable as +the testimony of so competent an authority, they must yield in immediate +interest to the very vivid picture which the author gives of Indian life +and his estimate of Indian character. While what he says is not novel, +and could hardly be novel after the many thousands of works on the same +subject, his views are based on his own observation, and the facts are +presented with so much force that we gain a new idea of the American +savage. His essential moral characteristic is his love of cruelty. What +the savage thinks about in the frequent and long continued seasons of +idle solitude, it has long puzzled the ethnologist to discover. Colonel +Dodge says that a large part of the Indian's brooding thoughts are given +to the invention of modes of inflicting pain when he has the opportunity +to do so, and many of the camp fire discussions are upon suggestions for +cruelty. When the captive is brought in his tortures are not inflicted +in mere accordance with the momentary promptings of a brutal nature. +They may have been invented years before in some far distant camp, in +the profoundest peace, or may be copied from some noted example of +successful cruelty. They may have grown by one suggestion added to +another, among men whose knowledge of natural history includes a +marvellous perception of what parts of the frame are most sensitive to +pain. The Indian's cruelty is his pride. He gains credit by it among his +people, and he who invents a new torture is a leader. Cruelty is a merit +among these savages. It has rewards which make this passion one of the +most noticeable elements in their system of morality. No other author +has presented this aspect of Indian character with the clearness of +Colonel Dodge. His frequent illustrations show that it is no temporary +impulse, but a race characteristic carefully fostered by tradition and +perhaps by religion. But what position does all this give the Indian +among other races of men? Clearly he stands apart. The cannibal may +dance around the living victims who are soon to appear upon his table, +and the prisoner may be made to grace his conqueror's triumph, or the +altar of his conqueror's god, at any cost of suffering to himself, but +no other race, savage or civilized, has ever been shown to cultivate +cruelty for its own sake as the American Indian does. It is not from +fear, revenge, hate, or any other extraneous cause that he studies so +fondly and long over the means of giving pain. Cruelty is a thing to be +enjoyed for itself. The author has spoken with such plainness upon the +position of captive women in the hands of Indians, that we fear his book +will be objected to in just those quarters where its revelations are +most likely to do good. There is one thing which we wish he had made +clear--whether the brutality shown toward captive women is a practice +which has grown among the Cheyennes since they were driven from their +old home, or whether that has always been their mode of procedure. In +some quarters this particular brutality has been spoken of as the +outgrowth of their sufferings at the hands of the whites. + +Colonel Dodge's book shows a rare combination of acute observation, long +experience, and the spirit of good fellowship. It is one of the best +books of hunting we know of, the best book ever written about the +plains, and its pictures and anecdotes of hunting life and Indian +fighting are a faithful reproduction of the peculiar conditions to be +found only on our great plains, with the anomalous relations of the +civilized and barbarous races that haunt them. The publishers have +illustrated it liberally. The Indian portraits are worthy of especial +mention for the minute accuracy which makes them ethnological examples +of unusual value. + + * * * * * + +The zoological collections described in the fifth volume of Reports, +Survey west of the Hundredth Meridian,[P] were all obtained in that +zoological province known as the "Campestrian region," from the great +plains which it includes. There the animal colors are pale and tend +toward uniformity, corresponding to the low rainfall of from three to +twenty inches per year. In this peculiarity, and also in comparison with +the surrounding more humid regions, the district of country in which the +Government surveys are now carried on sustains the general theory that +coloration in animals is closely dependent on rainfall, a humid +atmosphere serving to cloak the sun's rays and preserve the natural dyes +(mostly organic) from bleaching out. Dr. Yarrow thinks that the entirely +rainless parts of this vast Campestrian region may ultimately deserve +recognition as a separate zoological province. The observations made as +to the mimicry of color which some animals, especially reptiles, exert +or suffer lead him to believe that "a law may yet be formulated in this +respect which will equally apply to all classes of animals." This +mimicry was especially noticed in serpents and lizards found near red +sandstone deposits, the well-known little _Phrynosoma_, or horned toad, +being greenish gray, nearly white, or deep red, as it was found on the +plain, the alkali flat, or the sandstone soil. But however profound the +change, the skin returned to its normal color within a day or two after +removal from the determining locality. In regard to the rattlesnake, we +have the welcome information that it is apparently decreasing in +numbers, and the less agreeable fact that with other serpents, it +principally frequents the neighborhood of settlements. The collections +of all kinds made by the explorers prove to be unexpectedly perfect in +spite of the rapidity with which they are forced to move, and losses by +fire and railroad accident. The report upon these collections is drawn +up with the care and thoroughness that are such creditable features of +recent American official work. A copious bibliography and synonomy is +attached to the descriptions of species. The allotment of reports is as +follows: Geographical Distribution, Dr. H. C. Yarrow; Mammals, Dr. +Elliott Coues and Dr. Yarrow; Birds, H. W. Henshaw; Batrachians and +Reptiles, Dr. Yarrow; Fishes, Prof. E. D. Cope and Dr. Yarrow; Insects, +E. T. Cresson, E. Norton, T. L. Mead, R. H. Stretch, C. R. Osten-Sacken, +H. Ulke, R. P. Uhler, Cyrus Thomas, H. A. Hagen; Mollusca, Dr. Yarrow. +These names show how carefully the head of the survey, Lieutenant +Wheeler, has sought assistance in the important work of classification. +But these are by no means all from whom he and his assistants +acknowledge service. The list given in the preface numbers more than +forty persons, and includes the best known specialists in this country. +Forty-five plates, colored when necessary, accompany the text. In every +respect the report is worthy the important survey from which it +emanates. + +[Footnote P: "_Report upon Geographical and Geological Explorations and +Surveys West of the Hundredth Meridian_," in charge of First Lieutenant +GEORGE M. WHEELER. Vol. V., Zoology.] + + * * * * * + +Though it is now quite common to find the life of two or even three +continents mingled in one web of fiction, few writers make so close a +subjective study of the immigrant's experiences as Mr. Boyesen has done +in his "Tales from Two Hemispheres."[Q] In fact he stands almost alone +in this field, and for a good reason; he is a participant where others +are onlookers. We are often told of the impression American ladies make +on foreign gentlemen, but rarely receive an analysis of it or are +offered even an attempt to analyze it. And yet this appears to be one of +the most promising exhibitions of human feeling ever studied. The +intercourse of the sexes, necessarily the subject of all romance, may +obviously have its situations heightened in every way by the +juxtaposition of two races, two diverse educations, and two opposite +moral systems, conjointly with the customary incidents of love-making. +Our author is fully alive to his opportunity, and, short as his tales +are, they bristle with dramatic scenes, and have an element of the +mythical and legendary in them, even when they are removed from such +professedly mystical subjects as he has treated in "Asathor's +Vengeance." Even in drawing-room scenes in New York the love-making is +ideal and romantic instead of calculating or passionate, as the current +novel commonly paints it. This mode of treatment implies that the tales +are either pathetic or fanciful, and in Mr. Boyesen's hands they are all +pathetic. He shows unusual power in this style of writing, and has the +natural and quiet humor which it demands. But there is a rudeness in the +construction and language of all of these stories which sometimes blinds +the reader to the really delicate insight into human feeling displayed +in them. The author writes like one who has the conception of what he +wants to do, but not yet the full command of the means. But this is a +fault that practice cures, and we trust Mr. Boyesen will continue his +studies in this essentially novel and peculiarly promising field of +literature. + +[Footnote Q: "_Tales from Two Hemispheres._" By HJALMAR HJORTH BOYESEN. +Boston: James R. Osgood & Co.] + +--In "Captain Mago"[R] we have a kind of book which with proper +attention may be made extremely interesting and valuable. It is an +attempt to reconstruct the life of three thousand years ago, not merely +among the Phoenicians, but in many other countries. Under the guise of +an expedition sent by the King of Tyre to Tarshish for the purpose of +collecting materials for the Jewish temple which King David was then +planning, we are taken to Judaea, Egypt, Crete, Italy, Spain, France, +England, and Africa. Such an expedition of course gives the author an +opportunity to present a panoramic view of the civilization in those +countries thirty centuries ago. We cannot say that he has performed the +task well. He dwells too much upon what he imagines to be the language +and conversation of the ancients and too little on those material facts +in their life which can be proved or plausibly imagined from the remains +of it which we have gathered. Ancient habits are but very obscurely +exhibited in the rude tools, the fragments of village houses, the +necklace of the Man of Mentone, the whistles and other toys of the +caves, the funereal fireplaces, and similar objects, but they are much +more plainly discernible than are the peculiarities of speech which must +have made up the bulk of daily conversation among our ancestors. A +reconstruction of ancient life based on a good knowledge of these +objects is likely to be more instructive and real than one that depends +for its force on a fanciful conception of their _thouing_ and _theeing_, +their love-making, and what oaths they swore. In fact, real service +could be done to "popular" science by a book that should exhibit our +remote forefathers as we really know them, and not attempting to go +beyond that point. Difficult as it will necessarily be to make such an +undertaking successful, we have no doubt that it will one day be +accomplished. "Captain Mago," though falling far short even of +excellence in this field, is nevertheless an interesting and peculiar +book. + +[Footnote R: "_The Adventures of Captain Mago_; or, A Phoenician +Expedition B.C. 1000." By LEON CAHUN. Translated by Ellen E. Frewer. +Illustrated. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co.] + +--The defect of "Captain Mago" is that its author has endeavored to +reconstruct from remains of a purely literary kind the life of a time +which was antecedent to the most of our oldest literature. Another +author, Mr. Mahaffy, has had great success in a similar field because he +chose for reconstruction a society which has left literary monuments of +a very varied character and great abundance. His "Social Life in Greece" +and other works about the ancient Greeks were written before he ever saw +that historic country, and yet he tells us in his last work,[S] written +after a personal visit and stay of some time, that his former writings +were sufficiently true to the Greece of to-day to deceive living Greeks +into the belief that he had been intimately acquainted with their +landscapes and familiar customs. Mr. Mahaffy's "Rambles" among modern +Greeks are a very interesting finish to his idealizations of their +ancestors. It is comforting to know that after all her spoliations the +country is still so rich in remains of ancient art as to retain more +fine and pure specimens of the best work than are to be found in all the +rest of the world. Very little is done toward uncovering and nothing +toward restoring these sculptures, for the Greeks are jealous of +foreigners and unable or not sufficiently interested to do this +themselves. They are willing to allow others to do the work, but Greece +must have all the profit. Still, there the works lie, and may be +recovered at some future day. We may even be comforted to think they are +well covered with soil, for the present inhabitants of the country, with +exquisite barbarity that their ancestors could not have practised, use +the standing monuments of art as a mark for pistol practice! Another +point in which they show a constitutional divergence from their +forefathers is in the singular barrenness that has fallen upon their +women. Once their land teemed with a native-born population. Now the +household remains so long childless that it is very common to find the +wife's mother a permanent member of the household, being retained for +companionship! Even the mature family contains but few children, and +this in the best agricultural parts of the country. While these +differences exist the author is not at a loss to find strange +resemblances. The yellow hair and fair complexion, the forms which are +even now types of the same race that stood for the old statues, the +language, and a multitude of other things prove that the old race +continues in purity and that Greece is not now filled with a mere +mixture of Turks, Albanians, and Sclaves. Our author has a poor opinion +of the Greek's capacity for government, and likens them to the Irish. He +thinks that both these races are constitutionally incapable of +government, and need subjugation by a foreigner. In this characteristic +he finds a strong resemblance between the modern and the ancient Greek, +for both have suffered personal jealousy to outweigh the strongest +promptings of patriotism. Mr. Mahaffy shows himself to be as able as an +observer as he is as an historian. + +[Footnote S: "_Rambles and Studies in Greece._" By J. P. MAHAFFY. +Macmillan & Co.] + +--The peculiar character of De Quincey's work gives unusual opportunity +for such a volume of selections as this, published under the untasteful +name of "Beauties."[T] He had all the mental power required for +sustained efforts in composition, though his plans for such works were +always defeated by physical weakness. His productions, therefore, though +incomplete, are not those of a literary trifler. His genius and methods +seem to be especially suited to the tastes of the present day, for he +excelled in the qualities that make the professional magazinist: great +learning, research, and acuteness, combined with a humor that sports +most waywardly through everything he wrote, a vivid fancy, a wonderful +use of words, and a style which even in its faults exhibits the needs of +periodical literature. He was, perhaps, more exactly fitted to serve the +world in its chosen field of current publications than any other man who +has written for it. Were he living now he would be acknowledged the +prince of the nebulous gentlemen who occupy easy chairs, gather in +contributors' clubs, and fill up "editors' baskets" with their +effusions. We have additional respect for the somewhat chopped up +productions of these gentlemen, after reading the numerous volumes that +bear his name, for there we find how much of every sort of literary good +they can contain. The editor of these selections is a lucky man, for his +work has the merit, rare among such books, of being thoroughly good in +itself. He has with excellent judgment given us somewhat of +autobiography, somewhat of the rare and indescribable dream life of De +Quincey, and somewhat of his tales, essays, and critiques. The character +of his author's writings relieves these morsels from the air of +incompleteness and decapitation which so often attaches to selections. +What he has given us is not all of De Quincey, but each chapter is +complete in itself. Selections usually repel us. We cannot join in the +argument so often found in prefaces to such works, that the reading of +them may lead to the reading of the author's whole works. On the +contrary, we are of that class to whom the cutting up of a good author +is apt to seem like vivisection--necessary, perhaps, but revolting. This +book, however, does not leave such an impression. On laying it down we +wonder why we are not constantly reading the great essayist, the +precursor of the literary spirit of our own times, probably a better +example than any now living of the many virtues demanded from the +popular writer. + +[Footnote T: "_Beauties Selected from the Writings of Thomas De +Quincey._" New York: Hurd & Houghton.] + + * * * * * + +Under the editorship of Mr. John Austin Stevens we may look for a +valuable and permanent publication in the "Magazine of American History, +with Notes and Queries," of which A. S. Barnes & Co. are the publishers. +The position of the editor as librarian of the New York Historical +Society will, or at all events should, be an additional source of +strength to the publication. Experience shows that literary undertakings +which possess more merit than popularity can derive great advantages +from the official countenance of societies pursuing allied subjects of +investigation. Properly managed, the two modes of obtaining union in +action can be made to help each other materially. This hint will perhaps +be considered not amiss since the pamphlet, printed with the neatness +characteristic of such works, which lies before us, is but a specimen +and preliminary number, which is to be followed by monthly issues in +quarto form, at $5 yearly, if sufficient support is obtained. The editor +says: "Each number will contain: I. An original article on some point of +American history from a recognized and authoritative pen. II. A +biographical sketch of some character of historic interest. III. +Original documents, diaries, and letters. IV. Reprints of rare +documents. V. Notes and queries in the well-known English form. VI. +Reports of the proceedings of the New York Historical Society. VII. +Notices of historical publications." He also promises to keep it free +from sectional prejudices and "from personality and controversy in any +form." He has ready for publication a large number of interesting old +manuscripts contributed by historians and collectors, and it is to be +hoped his attempt to establish a periodical for historical literature +will be sustained. + + + + +BOOKS RECEIVED. + + +"_Materialism and Theology._" JAMES MARTINEAU, LL.D. G. P. Putnam's +Sons. + +"_Waverley Novels_," Riverside Edition, "Heart of Midlothian." Hurd & +Houghton. + +_The Same._ "Bride of Lammermoor." + +_The Same._ "The Monastery." + +"_Footsteps of the Master._" HARRIET B. STOWE. J. B. Ford & Co. + +"_Functions of the Brain._" Illustrated. D. FERRIER, M.D. G. P. Putnam's +Sons. + +"_The Plains of the Great West._" Illustrated. Lieutenant Colonel +RICHARD I. DODGE. G. P. Putnam's Sons. + +"_The Sons of Godwin._" A Tragedy. WILLIAM LEIGHTON, Jr. J. B. +Lippincott & Co. + +"_Personal Relations Between Librarian and Readers._" SAM. S. GREEN. +Chas. Hamilton, Worcester, Mass. + +"_Special Report on Worcester Free Library._" The same. + +"_Tales from Two Hemispheres._" H. H. BOYESEN. Jas. R. Osgood & Co. + +"_The Problems of Problems._" CLARK BRADEN. Chase & Hall, Cincinnati. + +"_Archology_; or, The Science of Government." V. BLAKESLEE. A. Roman & +Co. + +"_Woman as a Musician._" FANNY RAYMOND RITTER. Ed. Schuberth & Co. + +"_Vivisection._" Copp Clark & Co., Toronto. + +"_Cholera Facts of the Last Year._" E. MCCLELLAN, M.D. Richmond & +Louisville Medical Journal office. + +"_Art Journal._" Photo-Engraving Co., New York. + +"_History of the City of New York._" Parts 5 to 10. Mrs. M. J. LAMB. A. +S. Barnes & Co. + +"_The Magazine of American History._" JNO. AUSTIN STEVENS, editor. A. S. +Barnes & Co. + +"_National Quarterly Review._" D. A. GORTON, editor. + +"_National Survey West of 100th Meridian._" Vol. 5, Zoology. Dr. H. C. +YARROW and others. Government Printing Office. + +"_Catalogue Siamese Exhibit International Exhibition._" J. B. Lippincott +& Co. + +"_Planetary Meteorology, Mansill's Almanac of._" R. MANSILL. R. +Crampton, Rock Island. + +"_Notes on Assaying._" R. DE P. RICKETTS. Art Printing Establishment. + +"_Mental Powers of Insects._" A. S. PACKARD, Jr. Estes & Lauriat. + +"_Beauties of De Quincey._" Hurd & Houghton. + +"_The Convicts._" B. AUERBACH. H. Holt & Co. + +"_Philosophical Discussions._" C. WRIGHT. H. Holt & Co. + +"_The Sons of Goodwin._" W. LEIGHTON. J. B. Lippincott & Co. + +"_Rambles and Studies in Greece._" J. P. MAHAFFY. Macmillan & Co. + +"_Mother and Daughter._" F. S. VERDI, M. D. J. B. Ford & Co. + +"_Marie._ A Story of Russian Lore." MARIE H. DE ZIELINSKI. Jansen, +McClurg & Co. + +"_The Barton Experiment._" By the author of "Helen's Babies." G. P. +Putnam's Sons. + + + + +NEBULAE. + + +--It would seem that we must return to the old fashion of strong boxes, +old stockings, and cracked pipkins as the receptacles of our savings. As +to savings banks and trust companies, and life insurance companies, the +revelations of the last few months go to show that they do anything but +save; that they are no longer to be trusted, and that they ensure +nothing but total loss to those who put their money into them. Ere long +it will be said of a young man that he was poor but honest, although he +had the misfortune to have a father who was a director in several +important financial institutions. The state of affairs in this respect +is frightful; and it frightens. The financial panic has been followed by +a moral panic which is really as much more deplorable than its +predecessor as moral causes are more radical in their operation and more +enduring than those which are merely material. Confidence is gone. How +it is to be restored is a problem far more perplexing than how to revive +drooping trade. For that the real wealth of the country, never greater +than it is now and constantly increasing, must bring about sooner or +later. But if men of wealth and of fair reputation are no longer to be +trusted, what is the use of saving, to put money into a box where it +gains nothing and where thieves break through and steal? Robbery seems +to be the fashion; on the one hand masked burglars with pistols at your +heads and gags in the mouths of your wife and children, and on the other +hypocritical, lying, false-swearing, thieving scoundrels who get your +money under fair pretences, and because of your trust in their +characters and good faith, and then waste it in speculations and in +luxurious living. Of the two, the burglars seem to be rather the more +respectable. It is said, on good authority, that the West India slaves +of a past generation could be trusted to carry bags of gold from one +part of the Spanish Main to another, and that they were constantly so +trusted with entire impunity. They would kidnap, and on occasion stab or +cut a throat; but if they were trusted, they would not break their +faith. The honesty of the Turkish porters is so well known that it has +become almost proverbial. Does not the honesty of these pirates and +pagans put to shame the Christians who with the professions and the +faces of Pharisees "devour widows' houses"? + +--For as to the business of life insurance, savings banks, and trust +companies, it is somewhat more, or surely somewhat other, than mere +business. And so those who practise it and profit by it profess that it +is. A life insurance company is a grand combination +philanthropico-financial corporation whose motto is, "Cast thy bread +upon the waters, and after many days thou shalt receive it again." But +the truth of the matter turns out to be that if you cast your bread upon +the waters, the chances are that you will see it devoured before your +eyes by financial sharks. One case in point has come directly to our +knowledge. A gentleman, a Government officer, who has a moderate salary, +with little or no hope of acquiring property, insured his life twenty +years or more ago in what was thought a good company. His premium was +always promptly paid even in the flush times of the war and afterward, +when the fixed salaries of public officers lost more than half their +purchasing power. Within the last few months he has suddenly found that +his policy is not worth the paper on which it is magnificently printed. +But worse than this: within the last few years, as age has crept upon +him, there has come with it a disease which is incurable although he may +live for some time longer. Now, however, he cannot get his life insured +at all; no company will take his life; (it is a rueful jest to say that +the company in question _did_ take his life); and he has the prospect +before him of a widow left entirely without provision, although for +nearly a quarter of a century he and she stinted themselves to provide +against such a contingency. Meantime the officers of the company lived +luxuriously, and used the money in their hands for speculation, and in +living which if not riotous, was at least shameless and dishonest. And +they were all men of reputation, were selected for their positions +because it was thought that men of their position and habits of life and +outward bearing were incorruptible. Have they not devoured that +prospective widow's house? If He who condemned the hypocritical +Pharisees of old were on the earth now, would he not pronounce Woe upon +them? And much would they care about His condemnation if they could get +their commissions, and their pickings and stealings, and live in +splendid houses, and be known as the managers of an institution that +handled millions of dollars yearly, and whose offices were gorgeous with +many-colored marbles, and gilding, and inlaid wood, and rich carpets! + +And like their predecessors in the devouring of widows' houses for a +pretence, they make long prayers. They, we say; but of course we do not +mean all; for there are honest officers of life insurance companies, and +even sound companies; but the number of both is shown day after day to +be less and less; and when we think that those that we hear about are +only they which have reached the end of their tether in fraud, perjury, +and swindling, the prospect before us is one of the most disheartening +that could be presented to a reflecting people. For remember, these +defaulting, false-swearing life insurance and savings bank officers are +picked men, and that their dishonest practices are from their very +nature deliberate, slow of execution, and that in fact they have gone on +for years. It is no clutch of drowning men at financial straws that we +have here; it is the regular "confidence game" played on an enormous +scale by men who are regarded as the most respectable that can be found +in the whole community. They are vestrymen, and deacons, and elders, and +grave and reverend signors, and these men have deliberately used and +abused the confidence not only of the community in general, but of their +friends and acquaintance, to "convey" in Nym's phrase, to steal in plain +English, money which was brought within their reach because of their +pretended high principle and their philanthropic motives. For, we +repeat, it must constantly be kept in mind as an aggravation of these +wrongs, that life insurance companies and savings banks are essentially +and professedly benevolent institutions. They are, and they openly +profess to be, chiefly for the benefit of widows and children. The man +who takes to himself the money of a life insurance company or of a +savings bank is not a mere thief and swindler; he robs the widow and the +fatherless; he takes his place among those who are accursed of all men; +and moreover, in all these cases he is a hypocrite of the deepest dye. + +--In any case, however, there is reason for fearing that the business of +life insurance has in the main long been rotten, even when it has not +been deliberately corrupt. Professedly and originally a benevolent +contrivance by which men of moderate incomes could year by year make +provision for wives and children who might otherwise be left destitute, +it was reasonable and right to expect that the business of life +insurance would be conducted upon the most economical principles and in +the simplest and most unpretending fashion; that there would have been +only as much expenditure as was absolutely necessary for the proper +conduct of the business; and that safety for the insured would have been +the first if not the only ruling motive with the insurers. And such +indeed was life insurance in the beginning. But by and by it was found +that there was "money in it," and the sleek, snug hypocrites that prey +upon society under the guise of philanthropy and religion began to swarm +around it. Life insurance companies began to have a host of officers; +they had "actuaries," whatever they may be, who, by whatever motives +they were actuated, contrived and put forth statements which to the +common mind were equally plausible and bewildering; they entered into +bitter rivalry with each other in their philanthropic careers; they had +agents who went abroad over the land in swarms, smooth-speaking, +shameless creatures who would say anything, promise anything so long as +they got their commissions; they published gorgeous pamphlets, tumid and +splendid with self-praise, and filled with tabular statements that +justified and illustrated the denying that there is nothing so +untrustworthy as facts, except figures; they contrived the "mutual" +plan, by which they made it appear to some men that they could insure +their own lives--which is much like a man's trying to hoist himself over +a fence by the straps of his boots--and yet these mutual officers, +benevolent creatures, were as eager to get business and as ready to pay +large commissions as if, poor, simple-minded souls, they had expected to +get rich by life insuring; and then they put up huge and enormously +expensive buildings, more like palaces than any others known to our +country. And all this came out of the pockets of those who are, with +cruel mockery, called the insured. It is the old story: ten cents to the +beneficiary and ninety cents to the agent through whose hands the money +passes. Is it not plain, merely from the grand scale and the large +pretence on which this life insurance business has been carried on of +late years, that it is rotten? It is a scheme for making money. Now, +making money is right enough; but when it is carried on under +philanthropic and benevolent pretences its tendency must naturally be, +as we have seen that it has been, to gross corruption and the most +heartless fraud. + + * * * * * + + The point of honor has been deemed of use + To teach good manners and to curb abuse. + +So wrote Cowper in his "Conversation," nearly a century ago, when +duelling was beginning to go out of fashion, even among men who did not +look upon it from a religious point of view. There is no doubt that the +passage which these lines introduce did much to bring the custom of +settling personal quarrels by single combat into disrepute. Cowper, the +moral poet _par excellence_ of the English language, attained this +eminence chiefly because he wrote, not like a fanatic, or a canting +pietist, but like a Christian gentleman and a man of sense. A man of +family, he thought and felt as a gentleman, and addressed himself to +gentlemen; and indeed, in his day poetry, at least of the quality that +he produced, had very few readers outside the pale of gentry. His view +of duelling is the one which now prevails in most communities of English +blood in all parts of the world. Germans and Frenchmen and the Latin +races generally still fight upon personal provocation, and in our late +slave States and among the rude and fierce men who guard and extend our +western borders, "misunderstandings" are settled by the bullet or the +knife, and if not on the spot, with the weapon at hand, then in a +regularly arranged duel in which the forms are entirely subordinate to +the essentials of a bloody and vindictive contest. With these +exceptions, however, duelling among the English-speaking people has come +to be regarded as both folly and crime. Nothing could evince more +strongly the change that has taken place in the moral sense of the +world; for to resent an insult by a challenge to fight, and to accept +such a challenge without a moment's hesitation, were once the highest +duties of a gentleman. There was a reason for this; and without +advocating or defending the practice of duelling, it may be questioned +whether that reason has entirely disappeared. + + * * * * * + +--Our readers need not fear that we are about to defend or to palliate +the conduct of either of the parties to the recent affair which began in +Fifth Avenue in New York and ended on the Maryland border; but the fact +that that occurrence or series of occurrences has attracted the +attention of the whole country, makes it a proper occasion of remark +upon the questions involved in such encounters. And first we must set +aside the Cowper view of the subject, not in its conclusion, but in its +reasoning. For however Christian in sentiment and sound in its final +judgment the passage in the "Conversation" may be, its author's position +is not logically impregnable. For it rests upon the assumption embodied +in the couplet-- + + Amoral, sensible, and well-bred man + Will not affront me, and no other can. + +But if this be true, it follows that a man cannot be insulted, which is +an absurdity; for men are insulted, as we all know--and we are happy if +we do not know it by experience. Moreover, men are insulted more +frequently where the "code of honor" does not prevail than where it +does; for that code is of use; and if it does not teach good manners, it +certainly does curb abuse. The question to be decided is whether in the +teaching of manners and the curbing of abuse by the alternative and +arbitrament of bloody combat we are not paying too high a price for what +we gain. To consider the example which is the occasion of our remark. A +man is met in the street by another with whom he has been upon terms of +social intercourse, and is there publicly whipped. He faces his +assailant, resists, but is overcome because the assailant is the +stronger and the more dexterous. What shall he do? Submit quietly? That +may be Christian conduct; but whether it is good public policy, to say +nothing more, may at least be questioned; for it would place the greater +part of the community at the mercy of the strong brawling bullies. Two +courses are open to a person so assailed--either to place the matter in +the hands of the law, in a civil or a criminal suit, or to challenge the +assailant. In most cases it may be admitted that the former course is +the wiser and the better course. Where mere protection against personal +injury is sought a police justice and a police officer are the effective +as well as the lawful means. But there is something else to be +considered. The mere personal injury may be slight, and there may be no +fear of its repetition, and yet there is a wrong done that may rankle +deeper than a wound. Personal indignity is something that most men of +character and spirit feel more than bodily pain or than loss of money or +of property. It is a sentimental grievance, and therefore one which the +law cannot provide against or punish. It cannot be estimated in damages; +none the less, therefore, but rather the more, does the man who suffers +it take it to heart; none the less, therefore, but rather the more, do +gentlemen set up barriers against it which, although invisible, and not +even expressed, if indeed they are expressible in words, are more +forbidding in their frown, more difficult of assault than the regular +bulwarks of the law. It must be repeated that this wrong is not to be +measured by the bodily injury or the bodily pain that is inflicted. Two +men may be boxing or fencing, and one may severely injure the other; but +no sense of wrong accompanies the injury, and that not because no injury +was intended, but because no offence was meant; whereas the flirt of a +kid glove across the face, or a word, may inflict a wrong that if not +atoned for or expiated, may rankle through a man's whole life. To +attempt to set aside or to do away with this feeling is quite useless: +as well attempt to set aside or to do away with human nature. It is this +feeling that has been at the bottom of most duels since duels passed out +of use as a mode of determining guilt or innocence, or of deciding +questions as to property, or position, or title. In the sixteenth, +seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries duels were chiefly the remedy for +wounded honor, as they are when they are rarely fought nowadays. True +there was the duel fought between two gentlemen "to prevent the +inconvenience of their both addressing the same lady"; but the duel for +that reason pure and simple was always comparatively rare, as, owing to +the infirmity of human nature, the agreement in opinion of the lady and +the disagreement as to the disposition to be made of her were almost +sure to take the form of a more reasonable if not more deadly cause of +quarrel. + +--But society--that is, society in which Anglo-Saxon modes of thought +and feeling prevail--says that no matter what the provocation, or how +great the sense of wrong, the duel shall not be; it has been made a +crime in some if not in most of such communities even to send a +challenge. This is done on grounds of public policy and of morality, and +not, as some persons seem to think, because killing in a duel is murder. +Murder is more than a mere killing, and is in its essence entirely +inconsistent with the fact that the person killed voluntarily placed +himself, and generally with much trouble and at great inconvenience, in +the way of his death. The duel is in fact a sort of _hari-kari_, or +happy release, as our Japanese friends have well phrased it, but it is +with the cooperation of a second party who voluntarily places himself in +similar peril, the happy release being in both cases from the stigma of +dishonor. This is shown very clearly by the distinction which is drawn +in general estimation between the man who challenges because he has +suffered an insult or an injury to his family honor, and one who does so +from a feeling of revenge and with the intent to rid himself of a hated +opponent, as for example in the case of Aaron Burr in his duel with +Alexander Hamilton. That was more than half a century ago, when there +were no such laws against duelling as now exist; but Burr, although he +rid himself of his hated rival on what was called the field of honor, +was from that day a degraded, detested, ruined man. If Hamilton had +offered him a personal indignity, or had injured him in his family +relations, the result of the duel would have added nothing to the weight +of disrepute under which Burr was already suffering. The whole world +recognizes this distinction, and there is hardly a man whose breeding +and habits make him what is rightly called a gentleman in the full sense +of the term, who, however his judgment may condemn the duellist who +fights because of an insult or an injury to family honor, does not feel +a certain sympathy with him. Notwithstanding the teachings of +Christianity, and the example of its founder as to the patient suffering +of indignity, notwithstanding the law, we all, or most of us, have the +feeling that Barclay of Wry's battle-tried comrade had when he saw his +old friend and heroic commander openly insulted by a throng of +swashbucklers in the streets of Aberdeen, because he had become a +Quaker, and which Whittier has expressed with such spirit in his poem on +the subject, which is one of the few truly admirable ballads of modern +days (although its author does not so class it), and which is, we are +inclined to think, the most admirable of them all: + + Woe's the day, he sadly said, + With a slowly shaking head, + And a look of pity: + Wry's honest lord reviled, + Mock of knave and sport of child, + In his own good city. + + Speak the word, and master mine, + As we charged on Tilly's line + And his Walloon lancers, + Smiting through their midst, we'll teach + Civil look and decent speech + To these boyish prancers. + +--What then is to be done? for the question is a serious one. We all +feel that personal indignity is of all wrongs the hardest one to bear; +we know that it is a wrong of a kind that cannot be redressed by law; +and yet we restrain men from the only redress, "satisfaction," as it is +called, that human ingenuity has bean able to devise, and with which +human nature, of the unregenerate sort, is satisfied. We cannot expect +all men to behave like members of the Society of Friends. All men have +not proved their courage and high spirit like Barclay of Wry, who + + ----stood + Ankle deep in Lutzen's blood + With the great Gustavus. + +We cannot compel all men to be Christians; and yet we would compel them +by law to bear insult as if they were Christians and great captains +turned Quakers. We can do this, which thus far society has neglected to +do: we can put a social ban upon the man who deliberately offers a +personal indignity to another. This should be a social duty. Let it be +understood, according to one of those silent social laws which are the +most binding of all laws because the sheriff cannot enforce them, that +the man who flourishes a horsewhip over another's head, or who uses his +tongue as a scourge with like purpose, or who offers personal indignity +of any kind, insults society as well as his victim, and is not to be +pardoned until he has made the amend to the injured party, and there +would soon be an end of provocation to duelling, except that which +touches the family, and that cannot be done away with until men have so +developed morally and intellectually that they see that a man's honor is +not in the keeping of a woman, not in that of any other person than +himself, not even his wife. Her conduct may indeed involve his dishonor, +if he is what used to be called a wittol, but even then _his_ dishonor +is because of his own disgrace. Only then can we reconcile the making of +a challenge a felony with the feeling that a man who has had a personal +indignity put upon him has suffered the deepest wrong he could be called +upon to bear, yet a wrong which society fails to right while it forbids +him to seek the only reparation. + +--That reparation is defined, if not prescribed, by the code of honor, +as to which code there seems to be a very general misapprehension. The +purpose of the code is this, that no gentleman shall offer a personal +indignity to another except with the certainty of its being at the risk +of his life. If society would provide a remedy or preventive that would +operate like this risk, the code would soon pass absolutely out of +practice and into oblivion. It is generally supposed that the code is a +very bloodthirsty law, and that those who acknowledge it and act upon it +are "sudden and quick in quarrel," lovers of fighting, revengeful and +implacable, and that the code gives them the means of gratifying their +murderous or combative propensities. No notion of it could be more +erroneous; the misconception is like that which supposes military men to +be desirous of using arms on slight provocation; whereas the contrary is +the case. No men are so reluctant to begin fighting as thoroughbred +soldiers; for they know what it means and to what end it must be carried +if it is once begun. The code has been reduced to writing, and by a +"fire-eating" South Carolinian, so that we can see just how bloodthirsty +it is. It provides first that if an insult be received in public it +should not be resented or noticed there, out of respect to those +present, except in case of a blow or the like, because this is insult to +the company which did not originate with the person receiving it; that a +challenge should never be sent in the first instance because "that +precludes all negotiation," and that in the note asking explanation and +reparation the writer should "cautiously avoid attributing to the +adverse party any improper motive"; that the aggrieved party's second +should manage the whole affair even before a challenge is sent, because +he "is supposed to be cool and collected, and his friends' feelings are +more or less irritated" ["more or less" here is excellent good as +expressive of the state of mind of a man so aggrieved that he is ready +to risk his life]; the second is to "use every effort to soothe and +tranquillize his principal," not to "see things in the aggravated light +in which he views them, but to extenuate the conduct of his adversary +whenever he sees clearly an opportunity to do so"; to "endeavor to +persuade him that there has been some misunderstanding in the matter," +and to "check him if he uses opprobrious epithets toward his adversary"; +"when an accommodation is tendered," the code says in a paragraph worthy +of the most respectful consideration, "never require too much; and if +the party offering the _amende honorable_ wishes to give a reason for +his conduct in the matter, do not, unless it is offensive to your +friend, refuse to receive it. By doing so you heal the breach more +effectively." Strangers may call upon you for your offices as second, +"for strangers are entitled to redress for wrongs as well as others, and +the rules of honor and of hospitality should protect them." The second +of the party challenged is also told, "Use your utmost efforts to allay +the excitement which your principal may labor under," to search +diligently into the origin of the misunderstanding, "for gentlemen +seldom insult each other unless they labor under some misapprehension or +mistake," and if the matter be investigated in the right spirit, it is +probable that "harmony will be restored." The other parts of the code +refer to the arrangements for and the etiquette of the hostile meeting, +of which we shall only notice the censure passed upon the seconds if +after either party is hit the fight is allowed to go on. The last +section implies, although it does not positively assert, that "every +insult may be compromised" without a hostile meeting, and it is directly +said that "the old opinion that a blow must require blood is of no +force; blows may be compromised in many cases." We do by no means +advocate the fighting of duels; but we must say that we cannot see in +this code the blood-thirstiness and the quarrel-seeking generally +attributed to it. On the contrary, all its instructions seem to tend +toward peacemaking, the restoration of harmony, the restraining of even +expressions of ill feeling. It does recognize as indisputable that an +insult must be atoned for, and if necessary, at the risk of life. That +necessity society can do away with by placing its ban upon the man who +insults another. + + * * * * * + +--It is generally supposed that the "average American" beats the world +in his love of big titles, and in his use of them; but the freed +southern negro beats his white fellow citizen all hollow. We hear from +Texas of one who is Head Centre of a Lodge--exactly of what sort we +don't know, but we suppose that it must be a lodge in the wilderness or +perhaps, in Solomon's phrase, a lodge in a garden of cucumbers. This +cullud pusson will spend two months' wages to "report" at a grand +junction "jamboree" of his "lodge." The titles of the officers of these +associations are something wonderful. A negro office boy down there +asked leave of absence for a day to attend a meeting. "Why," said his +master, "Scip, I didn't know you belonged to a lodge." "Oh, yes, boss," +replied Africanus, "Ise Supreme Grand King, an' Ise nowhar near de top +nuther." Who shall say that the abolition of slavery was not worth all +that it cost? + + + + + Transcriber's Notes: + + Obvious punctuation errors corrected. + + Text changes: + English Peerage: replaced "e.i." with "i.e." + ..._i.e._ the mayor being... + Misanthrope: replaced "acquintance" with "acquaintance" + ...to renew her acquaintance with Miss Lucy... + Wordsworth: Corrected "ta de, kollomelei" to "ta de kollomelei" + The Greek word "k'autonomazei" appears in other editions as + "k'antonomazei." + Replaced "Jeffry" with "Jeffrey" ...Jeffrey looked for logical... + Used =[text]= to indicate word typed with strike-out + =Those= lips... + Replaced "chearful" with "cheerful" ...Be wise and cheerful... + Portrait: Open quote without close quote in poem retained; + "Is thine that great,... + Tinsel: Removed extra period: ...before I asked it.". + Eastern: Corrected "Mediterannean" to "Mediterranean" + ...superior fleet in the Mediterranean;... + Added comma between "there there" ...In religion there, there are... + Assja: Consolidated 'The young man smiled and answered, "Yes; we are + Russians."' into one paragraph. + Removed hyphen from "hemp-field" ...a hemp field of moderate size... + Scientific: Added thought breaks between paragraphs at change of topic. + Nebulae: Added thought breaks between paragraphs at change of topic. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Galaxy, by Various + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GALAXY *** + +***** This file should be named 35112.txt or 35112.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/5/1/1/35112/ + +Produced by Carol Ann Brown, Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier +and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +https://www.pgdp.net. + + +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. 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