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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of McClure's Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 3, August,
+1893, 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: McClure's Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 3, August, 1893
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: March 18, 2011 [EBook #35610]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MCCLURE'S MAGAZINE, AUGUST, 1893 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Katherine Ward, and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+McCLURE'S MAGAZINE
+
+VOL. I    AUGUST, 1893    No. 3
+
+
+_Copyright, 1893, by S. S. McClure, Limited. All rights reserved._
+
+Table of Contents
+
+                                                                  PAGE
+  A Dialogue Between Eugene Field and Hamlin Garland. Recorded
+      by Hamlin Garland.                                           195
+  The Shadow Boatswain. By Bliss Carman.                           205
+  The Slapping Sal. By Conan Doyle.                                206
+  "Human Documents."                                               213
+  Some Professional Adventures of Karl Hagenbeck. By Raymond
+      Blathwayt.                                                   219
+  The Story I Heard on the Cars. By Mrs. E. V. Wilson.             224
+  Mrs. Gladstone and Her Good Works. By Mary G. Burnett.           235
+  A Boys' Republic. By Alfred Balch.                               242
+  The Happy Life. By Sir Henry Wotton.                             254
+  Edwin Booth. On and Off the Stage. By Adam Badeau.               255
+  Burglars Three. By James Harvey Smith.                           268
+  Stranger Than Fiction. By Dr. William Wright.                    277
+
+
+
+
+Illustrations
+
+                                                                  PAGE
+  The Old Homestead at Fayetteville, Vermont.                      196
+  Eugene Field's Home at Buena Park, Chicago.                      197
+  The Hall.                                                        198
+  A Bit of Library.                                                199
+  The Dining-Room.                                                 199
+  The Drawing-Room.                                                201
+  Field's "Treasures."                                             203
+  Hairy Hudson.                                                    206
+  Captain Johnson and Mr. Wharton.                                 207
+  The Action.                                                      209
+  Aboard the "Leda."                                               210
+  Oliver Wendell Holmes.                                           214
+  J. J. Ingalls.                                                   216
+  Jules Verne.                                                     218
+  Karl Hagenbeck's Father and His First Show in Berlin.            220
+  The Scramble in Munich.                                          223
+  The Old and New Castle of Hawarden.                              236
+  Miss Glynne (Mrs. Gladstone), 1838.                              237
+  The Orphanage, Hawarden.                                         237
+  The Inmates of Woodsford Hall in the Forest.                     239
+  The Annual Lunch Party of the Notting Hill School Girls.         240
+  Mrs. Gladstone To-day.                                           241
+  The Chapel.                                                      243
+  The Camp on March.                                               249
+  A Halt for Supper.                                               250
+  The Barge.                                                       250
+  Captain Cairn's House.                                           253
+  The Death Mask of Edwin Booth.                                   267
+  "I Ain't No Missionary!"                                         269
+  "Excellent Claret," Said Harry.                                  271
+  "No Violence, Jim!"                                              272
+  "What Is Your Annual Income as a Burglar?"                       273
+
+
+
+
+REAL CONVERSATIONS.--II.
+
+A DIALOGUE BETWEEN EUGENE FIELD AND HAMLIN GARLAND.
+
+RECORDED BY HAMLIN GARLAND.
+
+
+One afternoon quite recently two men sat in an attic study in one of
+the most interesting homes in the city of Chicago. A home that was a
+museum of old books, rare books, Indian relics, dramatic souvenirs and
+bric-a-brac indescribable, but each piece with a history.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+It was a beautiful June day, and the study window looked out upon a
+lawn of large trees where children were rioting. It was a part of
+Chicago which the traveler never sees, green and restful and
+dignified, the lake not far off.
+
+The host was a tall, thin-haired man with a New England face of
+the Scotch type, rugged, smoothly shaven, and generally very
+solemn--suspiciously solemn in expression. His infrequent smile
+curled his wide, expressive mouth in fantastic grimaces which seemed
+not to affect the steady gravity of the blue-gray eyes. He was
+stripped to his shirt-sleeves and sat with feet on a small stand. He
+chewed reflectively upon a cigar during the opening of the talk.
+His voice was deep but rather dry in quality.
+
+The other man was a rather heavily built man with brown hair and beard
+cut rather close. He listened, mainly, going off into gusts of
+laughter occasionally as the other man gave a quaint turn to some very
+frank phrase. The tall host was Eugene Field, the interviewer a
+Western writer by the name of Garland.
+
+"Well now, brother Field," said Garland, interrupting his host as he
+was about to open another case of rare books. "You remember I'm to
+interview you to-day."
+
+Field scowled savagely.
+
+"O say, Garland, can't we put that thing off?"
+
+"No. Must be did," replied his friend decisively. "Now there are two
+ways to do this thing. We can be as literary and as deliciously select
+in our dialogue as Mr. Howells and Professor Boyesen were, or we can
+be wild and woolly. How would it do to be as wild and woolly as those
+Eastern fellers expect us to be?"
+
+"All right," said Field, taking his seat well upon the small of his
+back. "What does it all mean anyway? What you goin' to do?"
+
+"I'm goin' to take notes while we talk, and I'm goin' to put this
+thing down pretty close to the fact, now, you bet," said Garland,
+sharpening a pencil.
+
+"Where you wan'to begin?"
+
+"Oh, we'll have to begin with your ancestry, though it's a good deal
+like the introductory chapter to the old-fashioned novels. We'll start
+early, with your birth for instance."
+
+"Well, I was born in St. Louis."
+
+[Illustration: THE OLD HOMESTEAD AT FAYETTEVILLE, VERMONT.]
+
+"Is that so?" the interviewer showed an unprofessional surprise. "Why,
+I thought you were born in Massachusetts?"
+
+"No," said Field, reflectively. "No, I'm sorry of course, but I was
+born in St. Louis; but my parents were Vermont people." He mentioned
+this as an extenuating circumstance, evidently. "My father was a
+lawyer. He was a precocious boy,--graduated from Middlebury College
+when he was fifteen, and when he was nineteen was made States-Attorney
+by special act of the legislature; without that he would have had to
+wait till he was twenty-one. He married and came West, and I was born
+in 1850."
+
+"So you're forty-three? Where does the New England life come in?"
+
+"When I was seven years old my mother died, and father packed us boys
+right off to Massachusetts and put us under the care of a maiden
+cousin, a Miss French,--she was a fine woman too."
+
+Garland looked up from his scratchpad to ask, "This was at Amherst?"
+
+"Yes. I stayed there until I was nineteen, and they were the sweetest
+and finest days of my life. I like old Amherst." He paused a moment,
+and his long face slowly lightened up. "By the way, here's something
+you'll like. When I was nine years old father sent us up to
+Fayetteville, Vermont, to the old homestead where my grandmother
+lived. We stayed there seven months," he said with a grim curl of his
+lips, "and the old lady got all the grandson she wanted. She didn't
+want the visit repeated."
+
+He sat a moment in silence, and his face softened and his eyes grew
+tender. "I tell you, Garland, a man's got to have a layer of country
+experience somewhere in him. My love for nature dates from that visit,
+because I had never lived in the country before. Sooner or later a man
+rots if he lives too far away from the grass and the trees."
+
+"You're right there, Field, only I didn't know you felt it so deeply.
+I supposed you hated farm life."
+
+"I do, but farm life is not nature. I'd like to live in the country
+without the effects of work and dirt and flies."
+
+The word "flies" started him off on a side-track. "Say! You should see
+my boys. I go up to a farm near Fox Lake and stay a week every year,
+suffering all sorts of tortures, in order to give my boys a chance to
+see farm life. I sit there nights trying to read by a vile-smelling
+old kerosene lamp, the flies trooping in so that you can't keep the
+window down, you know, and those boys lying there all the time on a
+hot husk bed, faces spattered with mosquito bites and sweating like
+pigs--and happy as angels. The roar of the flies and mosquitoes is
+sweetest lullaby to a tired boy."
+
+"Well, now, going back to that visit," said the interviewer with
+persistency to his plan.
+
+"Oh, yes. Well, my grandmother was a regular old New England
+Congregationalist. Say, I've got a sermon I wrote when I was nine. The
+old lady used to give me ten cents for every sermon I'd write. Like to
+see it?"
+
+[Illustration: EUGENE FIELD'S HOME AT BUENA PARK, CHICAGO.]
+
+"Well, I should say. A sermon at nine years! Field, you started in
+well."
+
+"Didn't I?" he replied, while getting the book. "And you bet it's a
+corker." He produced the volume, which was a small bundle of
+note-paper bound beautifully. It was written in a boy's formal hand.
+He sat down to read it:
+
+  "I would remark secondly that conscience makes the way of
+  transgressors hard; for every act of pleasure, every act of Guilt
+  his conscience smites him. The last of his stay on earth will
+  appear horrible to the beholder. Some times, however, he will be
+  stayed in his guilt. A death in a family of some favorite object
+  or be attacked by Some disease himself is brought to the portals
+  of the grave. Then for a little time perhaps he is stayed in his
+  wickedness, but before long he returns to his worldly lust. Oh, it
+  is indeed bad for sinners to go down into perdition over all the
+  obstacles which God has placed in his path. But many I am afraid
+  do go down into perdition, for wide gate and broad is the way that
+  leadeth to destruction and many there be that go in thereat."
+
+He stopped occasionally to look at Garland gravely, as he read some
+particularly comical phrase: "'I secondly remark'--ain't that
+great?--'that the wise man remembers even how near he is to the
+portals of death.' 'Portals of death' is good. 'One should strive to
+walk the narrow way and not the one which leads to perdition.' I was
+heavy on quotations, you notice."
+
+"Is this the first and last of your sermons?" queried Garland, with an
+amused smile.
+
+"The first and last. Grandmother soon gave me up as bad material for a
+preacher. She paid me five dollars for learning the Ten Commandments.
+I used to be very slow at 'committing to memory.' I recall that while
+I was thus committing the book of Acts, my brother committed that book
+and the Gospel of Matthew, part of John, the thirteenth chapter of
+First Corinthians and the Westminster Catechism. I would not now
+exchange for any amount of money the acquaintance with the Bible that
+was drummed into me when I was a boy. At learning 'pieces to speak' I
+was, however, unusually quick, and my favorites were: 'Marco
+Bozzaris,' 'Psalm of Life,' Drake's 'American Flag,' Longfellow's
+'Launching of the Ship,' Webster's 'Action,' Shakspeare's 'Clarence's
+Dream' (Richard III.), and 'Wolsey to Cromwell,' 'Death of Virginia,'
+'Horatius at the Bridge,' 'Hymn of the Moravian Nuns,' 'Absalom,'
+'Lochiel's Warning,' 'Maclean's Revenge,' Bulwer's translation of
+Schiller's 'The Diver,' 'Landing of the Pilgrims,' Bryant's
+'Melancholy Days,' 'Burial of Sir John Moore,' and 'Hohenlinden.'"
+
+"I remember when I was thirteen, our cousin said she'd give us a
+Christmas tree. So we went down into Patrick's swamp--I suppose the
+names are all changed now--and dug up a little pine tree, about as
+tall as we were, and planted it in a tub. On the night of Christmas
+Day, just when we were dancing around the tree, making merry and
+having a high-old-jinks of a time, the way children will, grandma came
+in and looked at us. 'Will this popery never cease?' was all she said,
+and out she flounced."
+
+"Yes, that was the old Puritan idea of it. But did live----"
+
+"Now hold on," he interrupted. "I want to finish. We planted that tree
+near the corner of Sunset Avenue and Amity Street, and it's there now,
+a magnificent tree. Sometime when I'm East I'm going to go up there
+with my brother and put a tablet on it--'Pause, busy traveller, and
+give a thought to the happy days of two Western boys who lived in old
+New England, and make resolve to render the boyhood near you happier
+and brighter,' or something like that."
+
+"That's a pretty idea," Garland agreed. He felt something fine and
+tender in the man's voice which was generally hard and dry but
+wonderfully expressive.
+
+[Illustration: THE HALL.]
+
+"Now, this sermon I had bound just for the sake of old times. If I
+didn't have it right here, I wouldn't believe I ever wrote such stuff.
+I tell you, a boy's a queer combination," he ended, referring to the
+book again.
+
+"You'll see that I signed my name, those days, 'E. P. Field.' The 'P.'
+stands for Phillips.
+
+"As I grew old enough to realize it, I was much chagrined to find I
+had no middle name like the rest of the boys, so I took the name of
+Phillips. I was a great admirer of Wendell Phillips, am yet, though
+I'm not a reformer. You'll see here,"--he pointed at the top of the
+pages,--"I wrote the word 'sensual.' Evidently I was struck with the
+word, and was seeking a chance to ring it in somewhere, but failed."
+They both laughed over the matter while Field put the book back.
+
+"Are you a college man?" asked Garland. "I've noticed your deplorable
+tendency toward the classics."
+
+"I fitted for college when I was sixteen. My health was bad, or I
+should have entered right off. I had pretty nearly everything that was
+going in the way of diseases," this was said with a comical twist
+voice, "so I didn't get to Williams till I was eighteen. My health
+improved right along, but I'm sorry to say that of the college did
+not." He smiled again, a smile that meant a very great deal.
+
+"What happened then?"
+
+"Well, my father died, and I returned West. I went to live with my
+guardian, Professor Burgess, of Knox College. This college is situated
+at Galesburg, Illinois. This is the college that has lately conferred
+A. M. upon me. The Professor's guardianship was merely nominal,
+however. I did about as I pleased.
+
+"I next went to the State University at Columbia, Missouri. It was an
+old slave-holding town, but I liked it. I've got a streak of Southern
+feeling in me." He said abruptly, "I'm an aristocrat. I'm looking for
+a Maecenas. I have mighty little in common with most of the wealthy,
+but I like the idea of wealth in the abstract." He failed to make the
+distinction quite clear, but he went on as if realizing that this
+might be a thin spot of ice.
+
+"At twenty-one, I came into sixty thousand dollars, and I went to
+Europe, taking a friend, a young fellow of about my own age, with me.
+I had a lovely time!" he added, and again the smile conveyed vast
+meaning.
+
+Garland looked up from his pad.
+
+"You must have had. Did you 'blow in the whole business'?"
+
+"Pretty near. I _swatted_ the money around. Just think of it!" he
+exclaimed, warming with the recollection. "A boy of twenty-one,
+without father or mother, and sixty thousand dollars. Oh, it was a
+lovely combination! I saw more things and did more things than are
+dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio," he paraphrased, looking at his
+friend with a strange expression of amusement, and pleasure, and
+regret. "I had money. I paid it out for experience--it was plenty.
+Experience was laying around loose."
+
+"Came home when the money gave out, I reckon?"
+
+[Illustration: A BIT OF LIBRARY.]
+
+"Yes. Came back to St. Louis, and went to work on the 'Journal,' I had
+previously tried to 'enter journalism' as I called it then. About the
+time I was twenty-one, I went to Stilson Hutchins, and told him who I
+was, and he said:
+
+"'All right. I'll give you a chance, but we don't pay much.' Of
+course, I told him pay didn't matter.
+
+[Illustration: THE DINING-ROOM.]
+
+"'Well!' he said, 'go down to the Olympia, and write up the play there
+to-night,' I went down, and I brought most of my critical acumen to
+bear upon an actor by the name of Charley Pope, who was playing
+Mercutio for Mrs. D. P. Bowers. His wig didn't fit, and all my best
+writing centred about that wig. I sent the critique in, blame fine as
+I thought, with illuminated initial letters, and all that. Oh, it was
+lovely! and the next morning I was deeply pained and disgusted to find
+it mutilated,--all that about the wig, the choicest part, was cut out.
+I thought I'd quit journalism forever. I don't suppose Hutchins
+connects Eugene Field with the ---- fool that wrote that critique. I
+don't myself," he added with a quick half-smile, lifting again the
+corner of his solemn mouth. It was like a ripple on a still pool.
+
+"Well, when did you really get into the work?" his friend asked, for
+he seemed about to go off into another by-path.
+
+"Oh, after I came back from Europe I was busted, and had to go to
+work. I met Stanley Waterloo about that time, and his talk induced me
+to go to work for the 'Journal' as a reporter. I soon got to be city
+editor, but I didn't like it. I liked to have fun with people. I liked
+to have my fun as I went along. About this time I married the sister
+of the friend who went with me to Europe, and feeling my new
+responsibilities, I went up to St. Joseph as city editor." He mused
+for a moment in silence. "It was terrific hard work, but I wouldn't
+give a good deal for those two years."
+
+"Have you ever drawn upon them for material?" asked Garland with a
+novelist's perception of their possibilities.
+
+"No, but I may some time. Things have to get pretty misty before I can
+use 'em. I'm not like you fellows," he said, referring to the
+realists. "I got thirty dollars a week; wasn't that princely?"
+
+"Nothing else, but you earned it, no doubt."
+
+"Earned it? Why, Great Scott! I did the whole business except turning
+the handle of the press.
+
+"Well, in 1877 I was called back to the 'Journal' in St. Louis, as
+editorial writer of paragraphs. That was the beginning of my own line
+of work."
+
+"When did you do your first work in verse?" asked Garland.
+
+The tall man brought his feet down to the floor with a bang and thrust
+his hand out toward his friend. "_There!_ I'm glad you said _verse_.
+For heaven's sake don't ever say I call my stuff poetry. I never do. I
+don't pass judgment on it like that." After a little he resumed. "The
+first that I wrote was 'Christmas Treasures.' I wrote that one night
+to fill in a chink in the paper."
+
+"Give me a touch of it?" asked his friend.
+
+He chewed his cigar in the effort to remember. "I don't read it much.
+I put it with the collection for the sake of old times." He read a few
+lines of it, and read it extremely well, before returning to his
+history.
+
+
+CHRISTMAS TREASURES.
+
+  I count my treasures o'er with care,--
+    The little toy my darling knew,
+    A little sock of faded hue,
+  A little lock of golden hair.
+
+  Long years ago this holy time,
+    My little ones--my all to me--
+    Sat robed in white upon my knee,
+  And heard the merry Christmas chime.
+
+  "Tell me, my little golden-head,
+    If Santa Claus should come to-night,
+    What shall he bring my baby bright,--
+  What treasure for my boy?" I said.
+
+  Then he named this little toy,
+    While in his round and mournful eyes
+    There came a look of sweet surprise,
+  That spake his quiet, trustful joy.
+
+  And as he lisped his evening prayer,
+    He asked the boon with childish grace,
+    Then, toddling to the chimney-place,
+  He hung this little stocking there.
+
+  That night, while lengthening shadows crept,
+    I saw the white-winged angels come
+    With singing to our lowly home,
+  And kiss my darling as he slept.
+
+  They must have heard his little prayer,
+    For in the morn with rapturous face,
+    He toddled to the chimney-place,
+  And found this little treasure there.
+
+  They came again one Christmas-tide,--
+    That angel host, so fair and white!
+    And singing all that glorious night,
+  They lured my darling from my side.
+
+  A little sock, a little toy,
+    A little lock of golden hair,
+    The Christmas music on the air,
+  A watching for my baby boy!
+
+  But if again that angel train
+    And golden head come back to me,
+    To bear me to Eternity,
+  My watching will not be in vain!
+
+"I went next to the Kansas City 'Times' as managing editor. I wrote
+there that 'Little Peach,' which still chases me round the country."
+
+
+THE LITTLE PEACH.
+
+  A little peach in the orchard grew,
+  A little peach of emerald hue;
+  Warmed by the sun and wet by the dew,
+        It grew.
+
+  One day, passing that orchard through,
+  That little peach dawned on the view
+  Of Johnny Jones and his sister Sue,
+        Them two.
+
+  Up at that peach a club they threw,
+  Down from the stem on which it grew,
+  Fell that peach of emerald hue.
+        Mon Dieu!
+
+  John took a bite and Sue a chew,
+  And then the trouble began to brew,
+  Trouble the doctor couldn't subdue.
+        Too true!
+
+  Under the turf where the daisies grew,
+  They planted John and his sister Sue,
+  And their little souls to the angels flew,
+        Boo hoo!
+
+  What of that peach of the emerald hue,
+  Warmed by the sun, and wet by the dew?
+  Ah, well, its mission on earth is through.
+        Adieu!
+
+[Illustration: THE DRAWING-ROOM.]
+
+"I went to the 'Denver Tribune' next, and stayed there till 1883. The
+most conspicuous thing I did there, was the burlesque primer series.
+'See the po-lice-man. Has he a club? Yes he has a club,' etc. These
+were so widely copied and pirated that I put them into a little book
+which is very rare, thank heaven. I hope I have the only copy of it.
+The other thing which rose above the level of my ordinary work was a
+bit of verse, 'The Wanderer,' which I credited to Modjeska, and which
+has given her no little annoyance."
+
+
+THE WANDERER.
+
+  Upon a mountain height, far from the sea,
+    I found a shell,
+  And to my listening ear the lonely thing
+  Ever a song of ocean seemed to sing,
+    Ever a tale of ocean seemed to tell.
+
+  How came the shell upon that mountain height?
+    Ah, who can say
+  Whether there dropped by some too careless hand,
+  Or whether there cast when Ocean swept the Land,
+    Ere the Eternal had ordained the day?
+
+  Strange, was it not? Far from its native deep,
+    One song it sang,
+  Sang of the awful mysteries of the tide,
+  Sang of the misty sea, profound and wide,
+    Ever with echoes of the ocean rang.
+
+  And as the shell upon the mountain height
+    Sings of the sea,
+  So do I ever, leagues and leagues away,
+  So do I ever, wandering where I may,
+    Sing, O my home! sing, O my home! of thee.
+
+"That brings you up to Chicago, doesn't it?"
+
+"In 1883 Melville Stone asked me to join him on the 'News,' and I did.
+Since then my life has been uneventful."
+
+"I might not think so. Did you establish the column 'Sharps and Flats'
+at once?"
+
+"Yes. I told Stone I'd write a good deal of musical matter, and the
+name seemed appropriate. We tried to change it several times, but no
+go."
+
+"I first saw your work in the 'News.' I was attracted by your
+satirical studies of Chicago. I don't always like what you write, but
+I liked your war against sham."
+
+Field became serious at once, and leaned towards the other man in an
+attitude of great earnestness. The deepest note in the man's voice
+came out. "I hate a sham or a fraud; not so much a fraud, for a fraud
+means brains very often, but a sham makes me mad clear through," he
+said savagely. His fighting quality came out in the thrust of the
+chin. Here was the man whom the frauds and shams fear.
+
+"That is evident. But I don't think the people make the broadest
+application of your satires. They apply them to Chicago. There is
+quite a feeling. I suppose you know about this. They say you've hurt
+Chicago art."
+
+"I hope I have, so far as the bogus art and imitation culture of my
+city is concerned. As a matter of fact the same kind of thing exists
+in Boston and New York, only they're used to it there. I've jumped on
+that crowd of faddists, I'll admit, as hard as I could, but I don't
+think anyone can say I've ever willingly done a real man or woman an
+injury. If I have, I've always tried to square the thing up." Here was
+the man's fairness, kindliness of heart, coming to the surface in good
+simple way.
+
+The other man was visibly impressed with his friend's earnestness, but
+he pursued his course. "You've had offers to go East, according to the
+papers."
+
+"Yes, but I'm not going--why should I? I'm in my element here. They
+haven't any element there. They've got atmosphere there, and it's
+pretty thin sometimes, I call it." He uttered "atmosphere" with a
+drawling attenuated nasal to express his contempt. "I don't want
+literary atmosphere. I want to be in an _element_ where I can tumble
+around and yell without falling in a fit for lack of breath."
+
+The interviewer was scratching away like mad--this was his chance.
+
+Field's mind took a sudden turn now, and he said emphatically:
+"Garland, I'm a newspaper man. I don't claim to be anything else. I've
+never written a thing for the magazines, and I never was asked to,
+till about four years ago. I never have put a high estimate upon my
+verse. That it's popular is because my sympathies and the public's
+happen to run on parallel lines just now. That's all. Not much of it
+will live."
+
+"I don't know about that, brother Field," said Garland, pausing to
+rest. "I think you underestimate some of that work. Your reminiscent
+boy-life poems and your songs of children are thoroughly American, and
+fine and tender. They'll take care of themselves."
+
+"Yes, but my best work has been along lines of satire. I've
+consistently made war upon shams. I've stood always in my work for
+decency and manliness and honesty. I think that'll remain true, you'll
+find. I'm not much physically, but morally I'm not a coward."
+
+"No, I don't think anybody will rise up to charge you with time-serving.
+By the way, what a rare chance you have in the attitude of the
+Chicago people toward the Spanish princess!"
+
+The tall man straightened up. His whole nature roused at this point,
+and his face grew square. His Puritan grandfather looked from his
+indignant eyes and set jaw as he said:
+
+"I don't know what's coming upon us."
+
+"Aha!" Garland exulted, "even you are bitten with the same."
+
+He flung his hand out in quick deprecation.
+
+"Oh, I don't pretend to be a reformer. I leave that to others. I hate
+logarithms. I like speculative astronomy. I am naturally a lover of
+romance. My mind turns toward the far past or future. I like to
+illustrate the foolery of these society folks by stories which I
+invent. The present don't interest me--at least not taken as it is.
+Possibilities interest me."
+
+"That's a good way to put it," said the other man. "It's a question of
+the impossible, the possible, and the probable. I like the probable. I
+like the near-at-hand. I feel the most vital interest in the average
+fact."
+
+"I know you do, and I like it after you get through with it, but I
+don't care to deal with the raw material myself. I like the archaic."
+
+"Yet some of your finest things, I repeat, are your reminiscent verses
+of boy-life," pursued Garland, who called himself a veritist and
+enjoyed getting his friend as nearly on his ground as possible.
+
+[Illustration: FIELD'S "TREASURES:" THE GLADSTONE AXE, C. A. DANA'S
+SHEARS, THE HORACES.]
+
+"Yes, that's so, but that's in the far past," Field admitted. Garland
+took the thought up.
+
+"Time helps you then. Time is a romancer. He halves the fact, but we
+veritists find the _present_ fact haloed, with significance if not
+beauty."
+
+Field dodged the point.
+
+"Yes, I like to do those boy-life verses. I like to live over the joys
+and tragedies--because we had our tragedies."
+
+"Didn't we! Weeding the onion-bed on circus day, for example."
+
+"Yes, or gettin' a terrible strappin' for goin' swimming without
+permission. Oh, it all comes back to me, all sweet and fine somehow.
+I've forgotten all the unpleasant things. I remember only the best of
+it all. I like boy-life. I like children. I like young men. I like the
+buoyancy of youth and its freshness. It's a God's pity that every
+young child can't get a taste of country life at some time. It's a
+fund of inspiration to a man." Again the finer quality in the man came
+out in his face and voice.
+
+"Your life in New England and the South, and also in the West, has
+been of great help to you, I think."
+
+"Yes, and a big disadvantage. When I go East, Stedman calls me a
+typical Westerner, and when I come West they call me a Yankee--so
+there I am!"
+
+"There's no doubt of your being a Westerner."
+
+"I hope not. I believe in the West. I tell you, brother Garland, the
+West is the coming country. We ought to have a big magazine to develop
+the West. It's absurd to suppose we're going on always being tributary
+to the East!"
+
+Garland laid down his pad and lifted his big fist in the air like a
+maul. His enthusiasm rose like a flood.
+
+"Now you touch a great theme. You're right, Field. The next ten years
+will see literary horizons change mightily. The West is dead sure to
+be in the game from this time on. A man can't be out here a week
+without feeling the thrill of latent powers. The West is coming to its
+manhood. The West is the place for enthusiasm. Her history is
+making."
+
+Field took up the note. "I've got faith in it. I love New England for
+her heritage to you. I like her old stone walls and meadows, but when
+I get back West--well, I'm home, that's all. My love for the West has
+got blood in it."
+
+Garland laughed in sudden perception of their earnestness. "We're both
+talking like a couple of boomers. It might be characteristic, however,
+to apply the methods of the boomers of town lots to the development of
+art and literature. What say?"
+
+"It can be done. It will come in the course of events."
+
+"In our enthusiasm we have skated away from the subject. You are
+forty-three, then--you realize there's a lot of work before you, I
+hope."
+
+"Yes, yes, my serious work is just begun. I'm a man of slow
+development. I feel that. I know my faults and my weaknesses. I'm
+getting myself in hand. Now, Garland, I'm with you in your purposes,
+but I go a different way. You go into things direct. I'm naturally
+allusive. My work is almost always allusive, if you've noticed."
+
+"Do you write rapidly?"
+
+"I write my verse easily, but my prose I sweat over. Don't you?"
+
+"I toil in revision even when I have what the other fellows call an
+inspiration."
+
+"I tell you, Garland, genius is not in it. It's work and patience, and
+staying with a thing. Inspiration is all right and pretty and a
+suggestion, but it's when a man gets a pen in his hand and sweats
+blood, that inspiration begins to enter in."
+
+"Well, what are your plans for the future--your readers want to know
+that?"
+
+His face glowed as he replied, "I'm going to write a sentimental life
+of Horace. We know mighty little of him, but what I don't know I'll
+make up. I'll write such a life as he _must_ have lived. The life we
+all live when boys."
+
+The younger man put up his notes, and they walked down and out under
+the trees with the gibbous moon shining through the gently moving
+leaves. They passed a couple of young people walking slow--his voice a
+murmur, hers a whisper.
+
+"There they go. Youth! Youth!" said Field.
+
+  NOTE.--A series of portraits of Mr. Field at different ages will
+  be printed among the "Human Documents" in the September number.
+
+
+
+
+THE SHADOW BOATSWAIN.
+
+BY BLISS CARMAN.
+
+
+  Don't you know the sailing orders?
+    It is time to put to sea,
+  And the stranger in the harbor
+    Sends a boat ashore for me.
+
+  With the thunder of her canvas,
+    Coming on the wind again,
+  I can hear the Shadow Boatswain
+    Piping to his shadow men.
+
+  Is it firelight or morning
+    That red flicker on the floor?
+  Your good-bye was braver, Sweetheart,
+    When I sailed away before.
+
+  Think of this last lovely summer!
+    Love, what ails the wind to-night?
+  What's he saying in the chimney
+    Turns your berry cheek so white?
+
+  What a morning! How the sunlight
+    Sparkles on the outer bay,
+  Where the brig lies waiting for me
+    To trip anchor and away.
+
+  That's the Doomkeel. You may know her
+    By her clean run aft; and, then,
+  Don't you hear the Shadow Boatswain
+    Piping to his shadow men?
+
+  Off the freshening sea to windward,
+    Is it a white tern I hear
+  Shrilling in the gusty weather
+    Where the far sea-line is clear?
+
+  What a morning for departure!
+    How your blue eyes melt and shine!
+  Will you watch us from the headland
+    Till we sink below the line?
+
+  I can see the wind already
+    Steer the scruf marks of the tide,
+  As we slip the wake of being
+    Down the sloping world, and wide.
+
+  I can feel the vasty mountains
+    Heave and settle under me,
+  And the Doomkeel veer and tremor,
+    Crumbling on the hollow sea.
+
+  There's a call, as when a white gull
+    Cries and beats across the blue;
+  That must be the Shadow Boatswain
+    Piping to his shadow crew.
+
+  There's a boding sound, like winter,
+    When the pines begin to quail;
+  That must be the gray wind moaning
+    In the belly of the sail.
+
+  I can feel the icy fingers
+    Creeping in upon my bones;
+  There must be a berg to windward
+    Somewhere in these border zones.
+
+  Stir the fire.... I love the sunlight,
+    Always loved my shipmate sun.
+  How the sunflowers beckon to me
+    From the dooryard one by one!
+
+  How the royal lady-roses
+    Strew this summer world of ours.
+  There'll be none in Lonely Haven,
+    It is too far north for flowers.
+
+  There, Sweetheart! And I must leave you.
+    What should touch my wife with tears?
+  There's no danger with the Master,
+    He has sailed the sea for years.
+
+  With the sea-wolves on her quarter,
+    And the white bones in her teeth,
+  He will steer the shadow cruiser,
+    Dark before and doom beneath,
+
+  Down the last expanse till morning
+    Flares above the broken sea,
+  And the midnight storm is over,
+    And the isles are close alee.
+
+  So some twilight, when your roses
+    Are all blown, and it is June,
+  You will turn your blue eyes seaward,
+    Through the white dusk of the moon.
+
+  Wondering, as that far sea-cry
+    Comes upon the wind again,
+  And you hear the Shadow Boatswain
+    Piping to his shadow men.
+
+THE SLAPPING SAL.
+
+BY CONAN DOYLE.
+
+PICTURES BY A. BRENNAN.
+
+[Illustration: HAIRY HUDSON.]
+
+
+It was in the days when France's power was already broken upon the
+seas, and when more of her three-deckers lay rotting in the Medway
+than were to be found in Brest Harbor. But her frigates and corvettes
+still scoured the ocean, closely followed ever by those of her rival.
+At the uttermost ends of the earth these dainty vessels, with sweet
+names of girls or of flowers, mangled and shattered each other for the
+honor of the four yards of bunting that flapped from their gaffs.
+
+It had blown hard in the night, but the wind had dropped with the
+dawning, and now the rising sun tinted the fringe of the storm wrack
+as it dwindled into the west, and glinted on the endless crests of the
+long green waves. To north and south and west lay a sky-line which was
+unbroken, save by the spout of foam when two of the great Atlantic
+seas dashed each other into spray. To the east was a rocky island,
+jutting out into craggy points, with a few scattered clumps of
+palm-trees, and a pennant of mist streaming out from the bare conical
+hill which capped it. A heavy surf beat upon the shore, and at a safe
+distance from it the British 32-gun frigate "Leda," Captain A. P.
+Johnson, raised her black, glistening side upon the crest of a wave,
+or swooped down into an emerald valley, dipping away to the nor'ard
+under easy sail. On her snow-white quarter-deck stood a stiff, little,
+brown-faced man, who swept the horizon with his glass.
+
+"Mr. Wharton," he cried, with a voice like a rusty hinge.
+
+A thin, knock-kneed officer shambled across the poop to him.
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"I've opened the sealed orders, Mr. Wharton."
+
+A glimmer of curiosity shone upon the meagre features of the first
+lieutenant. The "Leda" had sailed with her consort the "Dido" from
+Antigua the week before, and the admiral's orders had been contained
+in a sealed envelope.
+
+"We were to open them on reaching the deserted island of Sombriero,
+lying in north latitude eighteen, thirty-six, west longitude
+sixty-three, twenty-eight. Sombriero bore four miles to the northeast
+from our port bow when the gale cleared, Mr. Wharton."
+
+The lieutenant bowed stiffly. He and the captain had been bosom
+friends from childhood. They had gone to school together, joined the
+navy together, fought again and again together, and married into each
+other's families; but as long as their feet were on the poop the iron
+discipline of the service struck all that was human out of them, and
+left only the superior and the subordinate. Captain Johnson took a
+blue paper from his pocket, which crackled as he unfolded it.
+
+  "The 32-gun frigates, 'Leda' and 'Dido' (Captains A. P. Johnson
+  and James Munro), are to cruise from the point at which these
+  instructions are read to the mouth of the Caribbean Sea, in the
+  hope of encountering the French frigate 'La Gloire' (48), which
+  has recently harassed our merchant ships in that quarter. H. M.
+  frigates are also directed to hunt down the piratical craft known
+  sometimes as the 'Slapping Sal' and sometimes as the 'Hairy
+  Hudson,' which has plundered the British ships as per margin,
+  inflicting barbarities upon their crews. She is a small brig
+  carrying ten light guns, with one twenty-four pound carronade
+  forward. She was last seen upon the 23d ult., to the northeast of
+  the island of Sombriero."
+
+    (Signed)
+      JAMES MONTGOMERY,
+        Rear-Admiral.
+
+  H. M. S. "Colossus," Antigua.
+
+"We appear to have lost our consort," said Captain Johnson, folding up
+his instructions and again sweeping the horizon with his glass. "She
+drew away after we reefed down. It would be a pity if we met this
+heavy Frenchman without the 'Dido,' Mr. Wharton, eh?"
+
+The lieutenant twinkled and smiled.
+
+"She has eighteen-pounders on the main and twelves on the poop, sir,"
+said the captain. "She carries four hundred to our two hundred and
+thirty-one. Captain de Milon is the smartest man in the French
+service. O Bobby, boy, I'd give my hopes of my flag to rub my side up
+against her!" He turned on his heel, ashamed of his momentary lapse.
+"Mr. Wharton," said he, looking back sternly over his shoulder, "get
+those square sails shaken out, and bear away a point more to the
+west."
+
+"A brig on the port bow," came a voice from the forecastle.
+
+"A brig on the port bow," said the lieutenant.
+
+[Illustration: CAPTAIN JOHNSON AND MR. WHARTON.]
+
+The captain sprang up on the bulwarks, and held on by the mizzen
+shrouds, a strange little figure with flying skirts and puckered eyes.
+The lean lieutenant craned his neck and whispered to Smeaton, the
+second, while officers and men came popping up from below and
+clustered along the weather-rail, shading their eyes with their hands,
+for the tropical sun was already clear of the palm trees. The strange
+brig lay at anchor in the throat of a curving estuary, and it was
+already obvious that she could not get out without passing under the
+guns of the frigate. A long rocky point to the north of her held her
+in.
+
+"Keep her as she goes, Mr. Wharton," said the captain. "Hardly worth
+while clearing for action, Mr. Smeaton, but the men can stand by the
+guns in case she tries to pass us. Cast loose the bowchasers, and send
+the small arm men on to the forecastle."
+
+A British crew went to its quarters in those days with the quiet
+serenity of men on their daily routine. In a few minutes, without
+fuss or sound, the sailors were knotted round their guns, the marines
+were drawn up and leaning on their muskets, and the frigate's bowsprit
+pointed straight for her little victim.
+
+"Is it the 'Slapping Sal,' sir?"
+
+"I have no doubt of it, Mr. Wharton."
+
+"They don't seem to like the look of us, sir. They've cut their cable
+and are clapping on sail."
+
+It was evident that the brig meant struggling for her freedom. One
+little patch of canvas fluttered out above another, and her people
+could be seen working like mad men in the rigging. She made no attempt
+to pass her antagonist, but headed up the estuary. The captain rubbed
+his hands.
+
+"She's making for shoal water, Mr. Wharton, and we shall have to cut
+her out, sir. She's a footy little brig, but I should have thought a
+fore-and-after would have been more handy."
+
+"It was a mutiny, sir."
+
+"Ah, indeed!"
+
+"Yes, sir, I heard of it at Manilla--a bad business, sir. Captain and
+two mates murdered. This Hudson, or Hairy Hudson, as they call him,
+led the mutiny. He's a Londoner, sir, but a cruel villain as ever
+walked."
+
+"His next walk will be to Execution Dock, Mr. Wharton. She seems
+heavily manned. I wish I could take twenty topmen out of her, but they
+would be enough to corrupt the crew of the ark, Mr. Wharton."
+
+Both officers were looking through their glasses at the brig. Suddenly
+the lieutenant showed his teeth in a grin, while the captain flushed
+to a deeper red.
+
+"That's Hairy Hudson on the afterrail, sir."
+
+"The low, impertinent blackguard! He'll play some other antics before
+we are done with him. Could you reach him with the long eighteen, Mr.
+Smeaton?"
+
+"Another cable length will do it, sir."
+
+The brig yawed as they spoke, and as she came round, a spurt of smoke
+whiffed out from her quarter. It was a pure piece of bravado, for the
+gun could scarce carry half way. Then with a jaunty swing the little
+ship came into the wind again and shot round a fresh curve of the
+winding channel.
+
+"The water's shoaling rapidly, sir," reported the second lieutenant.
+
+"There's six fathoms, by the chart."
+
+"Four, by the lead, sir."
+
+"When we clear this point we shall see how we lie. Ha! I thought as
+much! Lay her to, Mr. Wharton. Now we have got her at our mercy."
+
+The frigate was quite out of sight of the sea now, at the head of this
+river-like estuary. As she came round the curve the two shores were
+seen to converge at a point about a mile distant. In the angle, as
+near shore as she could get, the brig was lying with her broadside
+towards her pursuer, and a wisp of black cloth streaming from her
+mizzen. The lean lieutenant, who had reappeared upon deck with a
+cutlass strapped to his side and two pistols rammed into his belt,
+peered curiously at the ensign.
+
+"Is it the 'Jolly Roger,' sir?" he asked.
+
+But the captain was furious. "He may hang where his breeches are
+hanging before I have done with him," said he. "What boats will you
+want, Mr. Wharton?"
+
+"We should do it with the launch and the jolly-boat."
+
+"Take four and make a clean job of it. Pipe away the crews at once,
+and I'll work her in and help you with the long eighteens."
+
+With a rattle of ropes and a creaking of blocks the four boats
+splashed into the water. Their crews clustered thickly into
+them--bare-footed sailors, stolid marines, laughing middies, and in
+the sheets of each the senior officers with their stern, schoolmaster
+faces. The captain, his elbows on the binnacle, still watched the
+distant brig. Her crew were tricing up the boarding netting, dragging
+round the starboard guns, knocking new portholes for them, and making
+every preparation for a desperate resistance. In the thick of it all a
+huge man, bearded to the eyes, with a red night-cap upon his head, was
+straining and stooping and hauling. The captain watched him with a
+sour smile, and then snapping up his glass he turned upon his heel.
+For an instant he stood staring.
+
+"Call back the boats!" he cried, in his thin, creaking voice. "Clear
+away for action there! Cast loose those main-deck guns. Brace back the
+yards, Mr. Smeaton, and stand by to go about when she has weigh
+enough."
+
+Round the curve of the estuary was coming a huge vessel. Her great
+yellow bowsprit and white-winged figure-head were jutting out from the
+cluster of palm-trees, while high above them towered three immense
+masts, with the tricolor flag floating superbly from the mizzen. Round
+she came, the deep-blue water creaming under her fore-foot, until her
+long, curving, black side, her line of shining copper beneath, and of
+snow-white hammocks above, and the thick clusters of men who peered
+over her bulwarks were all in full view.
+
+Her lower yards were slung, her ports triced up, and her guns run out
+all ready for action. Lying behind one of the promontories of the
+island the look-out men of the "Gloire" upon the shore had seen the
+_cul-de-sac_ into which the British frigate had headed, so that
+Captain de Milon had observed the "Leda" as Captain Johnson had the
+"Slapping Sal."
+
+[Illustration: THE ACTION.]
+
+But the splendid discipline of the British service was at its best in
+such a crisis. The boats flew back, their crews clustered aboard, they
+were swung up at the davits, and the fall-ropes made fast. Hammocks
+were brought up and stowed, bulkheads sent down, ports and magazines
+opened, the fires put out in the galley, and the drums beat to
+quarters. Swarms of men set the head-sails and brought the frigate
+round, while the gun-crews threw off their jackets and shirts,
+tightened their belts, and ran out their eighteen-pounders, peering
+through the open portholes at the stately Frenchman. The wind was
+very light. Hardly a ripple showed itself upon the clear blue water,
+but the sails blew gently out as the breeze came over the wooded
+banks. The Frenchman had gone about also, and both ships were now
+heading slowly for the sea under fore-and-aft canvas, the "Gloire" a
+hundred yards in advance. She luffed up to cross the "Leda's" bows,
+but the British ship came round also, and the two rippled slowly on in
+such a silence that the ringing of the ramrods, as the French marines
+drove home their charges, clanged quite loudly upon the ear.
+
+"Not much sea room, Mr. Wharton," remarked the captain.
+
+"I have fought actions in less, sir."
+
+"We must keep our distance, and trust to our gunnery. She is very
+heavily manned, and if she got alongside we might find ourselves in
+trouble."
+
+"I see the shakoes of soldiers aboard of her--two companies of light
+infantry from Martinique. Now we have her! Hard a port, and let her
+have it as we cross her stern!"
+
+The keen eye of the little commander had seen the surface ripple which
+told of a passing breeze. He had used it to dart across behind the big
+Frenchman and to rake her with every gun as he passed. But, once past
+her, the "Leda" had to come back into the wind to keep out of shoal
+water. The manoeuvre brought her on the starboard side of the
+Frenchman, and the trim little frigate seemed to heel right over under
+the crashing broadside which burst from the gaping ports. A moment
+later her topmen were swarming aloft to set her topsails and royals,
+and she strove to cross the "Gloire's" bows and rake her again. The
+French captain, however, brought his frigate's head round, and the two
+rode side by side within easy pistol shot, pouring broadsides into
+each other in one of those murderous duels which, could they all be
+recorded, would mottle our charts with blood.
+
+[Illustration: ABOARD THE "LEDA."]
+
+In that heavy tropical air, with so faint a breeze, the smoke formed a
+thick bank round the two vessels, from which the topmasts only
+protruded. Neither could see anything of its enemy save the throbs of
+fire in the darkness, and the guns were sponged and trained and fired
+into a dense wall of vapor. On the poop and the forecastle the
+marines, in two little red lines, were pouring in their volleys, but
+neither they nor the seamen-gunners could see what effect their fire
+was having. Nor, indeed, could they tell how far they were suffering
+themselves, for standing at a gun one could but hazily see that upon
+the right and left. But above the roar of the cannon came the sharper
+sound of the piping shot, the crashing of riven planks, and the
+occasional heavy thud as spar or block came hurtling onto the deck.
+The lieutenants paced up and down behind the line of guns, while
+Captain Johnson fanned the smoke away with his cocked hat, and peered
+eagerly out.
+
+"This is rare, Bobby," said he, as the lieutenant joined him. Then,
+suddenly restraining himself, "What have we lost, Mr. Wharton?"
+
+"Our main-topsail yard and our gaff, sir."
+
+"Where's the flag?"
+
+"Gone overboard, sir."
+
+"They'll think we've struck. Lash a boat's ensign on the starboard arm
+of the mizzen cross jack-yard."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+A round shot dashed the binnacle to pieces between them. A second
+knocked two marines into a bloody, palpitating mass. For a moment the
+smoke rose, and the English captain saw that his adversary's heavier
+metal was producing a horrible effect. The "Leda" was a shattered
+wreck. Her deck was strewed with corpses. Several of her portholes
+were knocked into one, and one of her eighteen-pounder guns had been
+thrown right back onto her breech, and pointed straight up to the sky.
+The thin line of marines still loaded and fired, but half the guns
+were silent, and their crews were piled thickly around them.
+
+"Stand by to repel boarders!" yelled the captain.
+
+"Cutlasses, lads, cutlasses!" roared Wharton.
+
+"Hold your volley till they touch!" cried the captain of marines.
+
+The huge loom of the Frenchman was seen bursting through the smoke.
+Thick clusters of boarders hung upon her sides and shrouds. A final
+broadside leapt from her ports, and the mainmast of the "Leda,"
+snapping short off a few feet above the deck, spun into the air and
+crashed down upon the port guns, killing ten men and putting the
+whole battery out of action. An instant later the two ships scraped
+together, and the starboard bower anchor of the "Gloire" caught the
+mizzen chains of the "Leda" upon the port side. With a yell the black
+swarm of boarders steadied themselves for a spring.
+
+But their feet were never to reach that blood-stained deck. From
+somewhere there came a well-aimed whiff of grape, and another, and
+another. The English marines and seamen, waiting with cutlass and
+musket behind the silent guns, saw with amazement the dark masses
+thinning and shredding away. At the same time the port broadside of
+the Frenchman burst into a roar.
+
+"Clear away the wreck!" roared the captain. "What the devil are they
+firing at?"
+
+"Get the guns clear!" panted the lieutenant. "We'll do them yet,
+boys!"
+
+The wreckage was torn and hacked and splintered until first one gun
+and then another roared into action again. The Frenchman's anchor had
+been cut away, and the "Leda" had worked herself free from that fatal
+hug. But now suddenly there was a scurry up the shrouds of the
+"Gloire," and a hundred Englishmen were shouting themselves hoarse.
+
+"They're running! They're running! They're running!"
+
+And it was true. The Frenchman had ceased to fire, and was intent only
+upon clapping on every sail that she could carry.
+
+But that shouting hundred could not claim it all as their own. As the
+smoke cleared, it was not difficult to see the reason. The ships had
+gained the mouth of the estuary during the fight, and there, about
+four miles out to sea, was the "Leda's" consort bearing down under
+full sail to the sound of the guns. Captain de Milon had done his part
+for one day, and presently the "Gloire" was drawing off swiftly to the
+north, while the "Dido" was bowling along at her skirts, rattling away
+with her bowchasers, until a headland hid them both from view.
+
+But the "Leda" lay sorely stricken, with her mainmast gone, her
+bulwarks shattered, her mizzen topmast and gaff shot away, her sails
+like a beggar's rags, and a hundred of her crew dead and wounded.
+Close beside her a mass of wreckage floated upon the waves. It was the
+stern post of a mangled vessel, and across it, in white letters on a
+black ground, was printed "The Slapping Sal."
+
+"By the Lord, it was the brig that saved us!" cried Mr. Wharton.
+"Hudson brought her into action with the Frenchman, and was blown out
+of the water by a broadside."
+
+The little captain turned on his heel and paced up and down the deck.
+Already his crew were plugging the shot-holes, knotting and splicing
+and mending. When he came back the lieutenant saw a softening of the
+stern lines about his mouth and eyes.
+
+"Are they all gone?"
+
+"Every man. They must have sunk with the wreck."
+
+The two officers looked down at the sinister name and at the stump of
+wreckage which floated in the discolored water. Something black washed
+to and fro beside a splintered gaff and a tangle of halyards. It was
+the outrageous ensign, and near it a scarlet cap was floating.
+
+"He was a villain, but he was a Briton," said the captain at last. "He
+lived like a dog, but, by God, he died like a man!"
+
+
+
+
+"HUMAN DOCUMENTS."
+
+  "For of the soule the bodie forme doth take,
+  For soule is forme and doth the bodie make."
+
+      --From "An Hymne in Honour of Beautie."--SPENSER.
+
+
+BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES.
+
+OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES was born eighty-four years ago on the 29th of
+August, 1809. He was educated at the Phillips Andover Academy, and
+graduated at Harvard in 1829, and was one of the founders of the _Phi
+Beta Kappa_ Society of that university. His first general reception as
+a poet was gained by his successful lyrical effort to save the old
+frigate, "The Constitution," from being broken up. He graduated in
+medicine in 1836 (after studying law in the Cambridge Law School), and
+in the same year published his first volume of verse. In 1839 he was
+made Professor of Anatomy and Physiology at Dartmouth, and in 1847 he
+filled the same position at Harvard. He has published several volumes
+of poems, and the famous books known, respectively, as "The Autocrat,"
+"The Poet," and the "Professor at the Breakfast Table." He has written
+many medical works, and of his novels, "Elsie Venner" and "The
+Guardian Angel" are best known.
+
+JOHN JAMES INGALLS was born in Middleton, Massachusetts, on December
+29th, 1833. He graduated at Williams College in 1855. He then studied
+law, and was admitted to the bar in 1857. Going to Atchison, Kansas,
+in the following year, he there practised his profession, and from
+that time to the present has been closely connected with the
+development of his adopted State and that of the country. In 1862 he
+was elected a Senator in the State of Kansas, and in 1863 and 1864 was
+defeated for the Lieut.-Governorship. For some years he was editor of
+the Atchison "Champion." In 1873 he was chosen United States Senator,
+and served without interruption until 1889.
+
+JULES VERNE was born at Nantes in France on February 8, 1828, and was
+educated there. After leaving school he studied law in Paris, but,
+while still very young, he became known as a popular writer of dramas,
+comedies and burlesques for the Parisian theatres. "Les Pailles
+Rompues" was produced at the Gymnase Theatre in 1850, when Jules was
+but twenty-two years old, and "Onze Jours de Siege" shortly
+afterwards. He first became known as a writer of highly imaginative
+stories with a strong current of science in them in 1863, when his
+"Five Weeks in a Balloon" made a great success. Since then he has
+produced more than sixty novels of the same class, the most noted of
+which are "The Voyage to the Moon," "20,000 Leagues under the Sea,"
+and "Michael Strogoff." Many of his works have been successfully
+dramatized, and he has been translated into almost every modern
+language, including Arabic and Japanese.
+
+
+OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.
+
+[Illustration: ALL FROM DAGUERREOTYPES--THE TWO LAST ONES, BETWEEN 1845
+AND 1855. THE FIRST IS THE EARLIEST PICTURE OF DOCTOR HOLMES, AND HE IS
+UNABLE TO PLACE A DATE UPON IT.]
+
+[Illustration: MARCH, 1869. AGE 60.]
+
+[Illustration: AUGUST, 1874. AGE 65.]
+
+[Illustration: ABOUT 1882. AGE 73.]
+
+[Illustration: NOVEMBER, 1891. AGE 82.]
+
+
+J. J. INGALLS.
+
+[Illustration: 1847. AGE 14.]
+
+[Illustration: 1853. AGE 20.]
+
+[Illustration: 1865. AGE 32.]
+
+[Illustration: 1873. AGE 40.]
+
+[Illustration: 1877. AGE 44.]
+
+[Illustration: TO-DAY. AGE 60.]
+
+
+JULES VERNE.
+
+[Illustration: 1848. AGE 20.]
+
+[Illustration: 1858. AGE 30.]
+
+[Illustration: 1868. AGE 40.]
+
+[Illustration: 1886. AGE 58.]
+
+
+
+
+SOME PROFESSIONAL ADVENTURES OF KARL HAGENBECK.
+
+BY RAYMOND BLATHWAYT.
+
+
+As Karl Hagenbeck stood with me, in his Hamburg Wild Beast Emporium,
+before the great cage of the boa constrictors and pythons, he
+naturally fell to relating some of the curious adventures that have
+befallen him with snakes and other brutes.
+
+There was a great ugly looking boa constrictor coiled up in a corner
+by itself, a most repulsive looking animal.
+
+"He's a beauty, isn't he?" said Mr. Hagenbeck, looking fondly on him.
+"He swallowed four whole sheep in one day, and only nine days after
+that he got another, and seemed to enjoy it as much as if he had been
+fasting for months. Come and look at this cage, where you can see a
+revengeful member of the species. He once had a companion, but now
+he's alone through his own fault. He and his companion were peculiarly
+fond of rabbits, and we threw one into their cage one day. They both
+darted for it, and, while the poor little shivering animal crept into
+a corner in a fright, the snakes quarrelled as to whose 'bonne bouche'
+the rabbit was to be. The smaller one won, and this great wretch
+retired to a corner and watched his foe devour the rabbit, and then
+lie down in that state of repleteness which it is the highest ambition
+of these great snakes to attain. The big fellow then, seeing his
+rival's helpless condition, roused himself, and a moment afterwards he
+vigorously attacked the creature that lay gorged in the corner. We all
+rushed to see what would happen, and I declare to you, that in a very
+short time the big snake had swallowed the small snake, rabbit and
+all."
+
+"Would you like to see them in action?" said Mr. Hagenbeck to me, and,
+as he spoke, he opened a cage door and boldly stepped in amongst a
+number of big sleepy reptiles. He coolly began lifting them up by
+their enormous coils, just as one would lift up great coils of rope,
+and there was soon a mighty stirring amongst the previously inert
+masses. They writhed to and fro, their scales glittering in the pale
+light of the winter sun, and with a great hissing, an irritated
+rearing back of their heads and a constant projection of their long
+forked tongues, they began to move about the cage--a hideous, mixed-up
+mass of repulsive life, that made one involuntarily step back from
+their bars.
+
+"You don't like the look of them," said Mr. Hagenbeck, with a smile,
+as he stepped out and rejoined me. "They are queer fellows, certainly,
+and gave me a big fright once."
+
+"I should have imagined more than once," I said, as we turned from the
+ugly mass of twisted snakes.
+
+"Well, perhaps," said Mr. Hagenbeck, "but this particular once was
+something to remember. In one cage I had eight full-grown pythons,
+which I wanted to put into one huge box to send them off to a
+menagerie. I handled the first six all right enough, catching them,
+as is usual, by the back of the neck and dropping them into the box.
+Then I went for number seven, but as soon as I entered the cage she,
+the lady of the flock, flew at me with open mouth. Seeing her coming I
+took off my hat and thrust it at her. She bit her teeth into it. I
+then seized her with the right hand at the back of her neck, and I
+dragged her down into the lower partition of the cage. Just when I was
+going to fetch her out she reared her head to attack me again. I then
+made a cautious movement forward, and at the same moment she darted
+her head at me. I met the second attack with my hat in the same way
+that I had the first. With a quick dart I grabbed her by the back of
+the neck, only to find, to my horror, that I couldn't let her go if I
+wanted to, as she had coiled herself firmly round my legs. One of my
+assistants, standing near, heard me yell, and he came rushing up to me
+with all the speed he could, for I fancy my shout told everybody
+within hearing that I had to do with a matter of life and death. I
+managed, however, to retain my nerve, and gave the order to the helper
+to try and uncoil the serpent, which with great difficulty and my
+assistance he at last managed to do."
+
+Mr. Hagenbeck laughed a little as he recalled the experience, but I
+confess I didn't feel like laughing much. The horror of having those
+massive coils pressing tightly on your legs and bruising your muscles
+with irresistible strength seemed very real to me.
+
+"I wasn't done even then," Mr. Hagenbeck resumed, "for just as I
+thought that I could get the big snake safely in the cage, another
+python, and really an enormous fellow, attacked me. I had just time to
+shout to my man to throw a blanket over it, and this he luckily
+managed to do. At the same moment I moved backwards out of the cage
+and got free of it altogether, and then I had a little rest. My men
+tried to dissuade me from going back, each of them saying he would do
+it. I felt very exhausted, but my temper was fairly up, and I
+determined I wouldn't be beaten. So, after a few moments, I stepped
+again into the cage, caught them both round the backs of their necks,
+dragged them as quickly as I could to the edge of the cage, and then,
+all helping, we flung them into the box waiting for them. Had not my
+assistant been near me, nothing could have saved me from being
+squeezed to death."
+
+The wild-beast tamer then motioned me away from the serpent cages, and
+we went to those of their cousins, the crocodiles and alligators. We
+passed by an aviary of very great size, where parrots and other
+beautifully plumed birds chattered, laughed, quarrelled, and made love
+in a long, ear-piercing enjoyment of their captivity; and further on
+we came to a large tank, in which were slowly paddling round some
+spiteful-looking alligators--huge-jawed, soulless-eyed, each one a
+waiting, watching destroyer of life.
+
+[Illustration: KARL HAGENBECK'S FATHER AND HIS FIRST SHOW IN BERLIN.]
+
+We looked at them for a little while, and then Mr. Hagenbeck said:
+"Once I had to pack sixteen of these fellows up for the Duesseldorf
+Zoological Gardens. I grappled hold of the first one and was pulling
+him ashore, when he gave me a frightful blow with his tail and
+knocked me into the tank, where, for a brief moment, I was alone with
+fifteen alligators. Those who were standing by told me that as soon as
+I splashed in a number of them made a rush, but I was out again like
+an India-rubber ball. The swirl of the water and the open jaws of the
+disappointed beasts told me that I had not been one second too smart.
+This was a very narrow escape, as, if one of the crocodiles had
+happened to get hold of me, all the rest would have attacked me,
+snapping and biting at me at one and the same moment, until there
+would have been little, if anything, left of me at all. They are the
+most determined fighters even amongst themselves. Six of them, each
+about fourteen feet long, had a fight amongst themselves once, and so
+desperately did they set to, that within fourteen days they were all
+dead. Three of them had their jaws broken, and in some cases their
+legs were torn right out of their bodies. This occurred at night, and
+one of the keepers, happening to hear the frightful noise which was
+made by the clashing of their jaws, rushed off to tell me what was
+happening. We lit our lanterns and hurried to the scene of action,
+but, beyond trying to separate them with long poles, it was little we
+could do. When we managed to part them for a time they only renewed
+the fight with greater fierceness than ever, and so terribly were they
+wounded, that, as I said, they were all dead in a fortnight. Nowadays,
+when I get a new consignment of alligators I always muzzle them for
+four days with a rope. They then calm down, and I cut the rope off;
+otherwise, if I did not do that they would begin fighting as soon as
+they came out of the box, for the first sight of day-light after the
+long journey always seems to excite them. A fight amongst the snakes,
+also, is a terrible thing. I had once five big pythons in one cage.
+One of the keepers flung a dead rabbit amongst them, and two of them,
+being very hungry, attacked it at once. At the same moment the other
+four flew for the prey, and in one moment all the six were in one big
+writhing lump. The keepers fetched me, and I at once attempted to
+uncoil them. I succeeded, but hardly had I done so when the fight
+began again between the first two. The larger one threw his tail round
+the small one's neck and squeezed it with such force against the wall
+that it lost all power. Then the bigger snake got hold of the rabbit
+and swallowed it, after which it gradually loosened its hold of the
+smaller snake. The little one then sought revenge, and flew at the big
+python, which was rendered almost helpless by its huge meal, bit it in
+the back, coiled round and round it, and squeezed it till it could
+hardly breathe, although it screamed as I had never heard any living
+creature scream before. The funny thing was that when I went to see
+them next morning they were all right and perfectly good friends.
+
+"Talking of fights, I was once turned out of bed at one o'clock in the
+morning by one of my keepers, who came in with the news that the big
+kangaroo had jumped a six-foot fence into the next stable, in which
+there was a large hippopotamus. When I came down there was the
+queerest kind of a duel going on. The kangaroo stood up to his belly
+in water, whilst the hippopotamus, with wide-open jaws, snapped at him
+right and left. However, the kangaroo managed to 'get in' a good right
+and left with his front legs, and scratched the hippopotamus in the
+face tremendously. When the amphibian came to close quarters, the
+kangaroo jumped up, gave him a tremendous blow with his hind legs, and
+then managed to get on to dry land. I caught the kangaroo with a big
+net, and after all the fighting there wasn't so very much harm done."
+
+Just as Mr. Hagenbeck finished talking, the Polar bear at our rear
+began growling. Mr. Hagenbeck went up to soothe and pet him. Then he
+said:
+
+"I expect I am pretty well the only man in the world who can say that
+he ever cut the toe nails of a Polar bear. It was this very beast, and
+I will tell you how it all happened. The poor beast's nails had grown
+into its foot, causing it a great deal of pain. We tried to get the
+feet into a sling and pull them through the bars, but this proved to
+be too awkward an arrangement. So I got him into a narrow cage which
+had an iron barred front, and this I turned upside down so that the
+bear had to stand on the bars of the cage, which we lifted up about
+four feet above the ground. I went underneath with a sharp pair of
+pincers, and, as he stood there with his toes pressed through the
+bars, I managed to pull the nails out. Then I stood him in water to
+wash and cool his wounds, and in a few days he was all right. On yet
+another occasion a royal Bengal tiger was suffering very much from
+toothache, so two of my men held him by the collar and, whilst one of
+my attendants opened his mouth, my brother-in-law and I took some
+pincers and pulled out the teeth which had been giving him so much
+pain, and which, indeed, had grown so badly that they had hindered him
+from biting his food properly.
+
+"The most risky thing, however, that ever occurred to me happened in
+Munich during the Centennial Fete in 1888. I was passing in the long
+procession with eight elephants, and the streets were very much
+crammed. It chanced that we had to pass a great big iron dragon,
+which, by some mechanical contrivance, began to spit fire as soon as
+we got near it. Four of the elephants at once took fright and ran
+away, which was only natural, and the other four followed suit. The
+people rushed after them with sticks and loud cries, which of course
+only made matters worse. I managed to get between two of them, and
+caught hold of them, but it was of no use, as they ran with me for at
+least a mile. I was badly hurled from side to side and, indeed, at one
+moment I was very nearly crushed to death by them against the walls of
+a house. At last two other elephants came up, and I managed to
+persuade the lot of them to stand still; just as I had done so the
+stupid crowd again came rushing up, and away the elephants went again.
+I was too tired to do anything more. All four of them rushed into a
+house; the bottom gave way and the excited creatures fell into the
+cellar. A new house has now been built there which is called to this
+day 'The four wild elephants.' A lot of people were hurt, some indeed
+were killed, but, as the Police President had seen all that had
+happened, I was held free of blame. That was, however, the worst
+trouble with my captive friends I ever have had, and how I escaped
+being crushed to death then I cannot understand to this day."
+
+[Illustration: THE SCRAMBLE IN MUNICH.]
+
+
+
+
+THE STORY I HEARD ON THE CARS.
+
+BY MRS. E. V. WILSON.
+
+
+It was very tiresome riding on the cars all day, with the same
+monotonous stretch of prairie to be seen from the window; so I am sure
+it was pardonable in me to listen to the conversation of my
+fellow-passengers.
+
+Just in front of me (their bundles on a seat before them) sat two
+elderly women, old friends, it seemed, who had chanced to meet in
+their journeying; and it was a sentence or two of their talk that
+caught my attention, and presently I became so interested that I no
+longer felt my weariness.
+
+"And so," said one, "you say they are livin' all alone in that big
+house of their'n! I knowed the girls was all married an' gone, but I
+heerd Jim had tuk a wife home to live with the old folks, and I said
+to Simon, says I, 'Well, it'll take more'n a mortal woman to live with
+Mary Ann Curtis onless she's mightily changed sence I use ter know
+her,' says I."
+
+"Well," said the other voice, and a sweet, patient-sounding voice it
+was--so sweet, indeed, that I glanced over to look at its owner. She
+was a little, quaint old woman, with soft brown eyes and a pathetic,
+lovable face. I fell in love with her at once. Her companion was a
+younger woman, with shrewd, black, observing eyes and sharp nose and
+chin. From appearances and manner, I judged both were wives of
+well-to-do farmers.
+
+"Well," said the sweet voice, "Jim did marry a mortal woman, but Mary
+Ann soon made a angel out of her. I knowed Jim Curtis's wife as well
+as if she'd ben my own child; and no wonder, seein' as she boarded
+with me and Jonathan nigh on to a year. You see, she was left an
+orphan, and her uncle that raised her, not bein' well off, give her
+what schoolin' he could, an' then when she was about sixteen year old
+he got her first the summer school in our deestric, and then, as she
+suited the folks, the d'rectors they let her have it fur the winter. I
+was sort o' feared for her to tackle the winter school, seein' as some
+of the big boys, and girls, too, for that matter, 's pritty
+obstreperous; but Rhody she laughed and tossed her head an' said,
+'I'll get along, Aunt Nancy!' (You know everybody in the neighborhood
+calls me Aunt Nancy, and Rhody she picked it up as natral as could
+be.)
+
+"Well, she did manage somehow, an' never had a bit of trouble. An' I
+use ter watch o' evenin's for her to come, allus smilin', and with
+somethin' funny to tell about the scholars. I declare to you, Mis'
+Johnson, if she'd ben our own, Jonathan an' me couldn't a sot more by
+her. Why, whenever it was rainy or snowy the ole man would saddle a
+horse an' go for her, an' she'd look that cute, settin' behin' on ole
+Molly an' holdin' on to the ole man!
+
+"One cold evenin' (it was a Friday evenin', too--I'll never
+forgit it), jist as Jonathan got the saddle on the mare, we heard
+sleigh-bells, for I was out at the fence talkin' to the ole man, an'
+who should come sailin' up the road, large as life, but Jim
+Curtis in his new sleigh, with our Rhody, smilin' and rosy,
+beside him. 'There, ole man,' says I, 'your cake's dough.' And I
+declare fur it, ef he warn't that cut up he could scarce be civil
+to the youngsters.
+
+"Of course you know how it was after that--no needcessity fur the ole
+man botherin' any more; not 'at it was bother, for he allus liked
+goin' fur Rhody; but laws! Jim was allus on hand, no matter how the
+weather was, an' he tuk her to her uncle's two or three times, an' to
+meetin' Sundays, an' I up an' tole her one day that I b'lieved I'd ask
+Jim to board with us, an' her face got mighty red, an' she stepped up
+an' put both arms roun' my neck, she was such a lovin' leetle critter,
+an' she says, 'You aint mad, Aunt Nancy, are you? You like Jim, don't
+you?'
+
+"'Well,' says I, 'ef I don't, somebody else does; but I'd like to
+know what this deestric's goin' to do fur a teacher.'
+
+"'Oh,' she says, blushin' more 'an ever, 'I am goin' to teach my
+school out.'
+
+"'An' then what?' says I.
+
+"'Then I'll tell you,' she says, and run off laughin'.
+
+"So I says to the ole man that night, after we'd gone to bed, says I,
+'Jonathan, Rhody is goin' to marry Jim Curtis, an' I dunno whether to
+be glad or sorry.'
+
+"An' he laughed till the bed shuk, an' says he, 'Why, whot on 'arth is
+ther' to be sorry 'bout?' says he; 'ther' aint a likelier feller'n the
+neighborhood than Jim, an' as for Rhody, pshaw! she's good enough an'
+purty 'nough for anybody.'
+
+"'Oh,' says I, ''tain't that--they're both well 'nough; but how's our
+little girl goin' to git along with Mis' Curtis?'"
+
+"Yes," interrupted Mrs. Johnson, appreciatively, "that was a question.
+What did you let 'em go there to live for? That's what I want to know,
+Nancy Riley."
+
+"Well," sighed Aunt Nancy, "I did try to prevent it. I talked to
+Rhody, but she thought she could surely git along with Jim's
+mother--said she loved her already, pore thing! Then I tuk Jim to
+task, an' he said the ole folks weren't willin' fur him to leave 'em;
+his father was gittin' old, an' ther' were lots 'o rooms in the house,
+an' his mother was glad he was goin' to marry an' bring his wife
+there, she was so lonesome now all her girls was gone, an' a heap more
+sich stuff."
+
+"Lonesome, indeed!" snapped Mrs. Johnson. "She was glad to git rid of
+her girls, so she was! Laws! don't I mind what times them poor girls
+had to git decent clothes? She jist grudged 'em everything, an' kep'
+'em workin' like--I was goin' to say darkys, but no darky ever worked
+like old Mis' Curtis made her girls. No wonder they up an' tuk the
+first feller 'at came along an' asked 'em. But I stopped you, Aunt
+Nancy--excuse me--for I knowed Mis' Curtis so well. The idea of her
+a-bein' lonesome! She wanted somebody to help with the work, she did.
+Her own girls got away soon's they could. That Jim must 'a' been a
+fool!"
+
+"Oh, no, he wasn't," went on the soft voice. "It's mighty little a
+young feller like him knows about housework, an' his mother's work
+never bothered him. So as soon as Rhody's school was out in the spring
+they was married. You see, her uncle thought for a pore girl she was
+doin' purty well, an' I 'low she was ef she had been jes' marryin' Jim
+Curtis, but she warn't--she was a tyin' of herself to his mother."
+
+"More fool Jim!" snarled Mrs. Johnson.
+
+"Now, Mis' Johnson," said Aunt Nancy, "Jim meant well, an' he
+worshipped the very ground Rhody walked on; but, you see, old Mis'
+Curtis she didn't believe in young folks makin' simpletons of
+theirselves, and when she see Jim slip his arm 'roun' Rhody, or her
+run her hand through his curly hair, she'd snap out something sort o'
+hateful; so Rhody she got afraid of her, an' there's where the trouble
+begun, in my 'pinion, fur if my pore child had let Jim see how she was
+imposed on, he certingly'd have made a change, but to keep peace she
+jist made believe she was happy 'nough. I use' ter go over sometimes,
+though I knowed Mis' Curtis set no store by my comin', but Rhody was
+allus that glad, and I tell you it riled me to see how she was
+treated. It was: 'Rhody, bring the milk out of the suller'; 'Rhody,
+fetch some wood'; 'Rhody, set the table,' till I wondered she didn't
+drop.
+
+"One awful hot day I was there, an' Rhody she was ironin' in the back
+porch, an' Mis' Curtis she was makin' pies; she was a master-hand at
+cookin'; you'll 'low that, Mis' Johnson."
+
+"Oh, yes," snapped Mrs. Johnson, "Mary Ann Curtis was a master at
+anything she put her hand to."
+
+"As I was sayin'," went on Aunt Nancy meekly, "Rhody was ironin'; and
+sich a pile of clothes!--white winder-curtains starched like boards,
+an' table-cloths, let alone shirts and other things--an' I was
+thinkin' how pale she was, an' peaked-lookin', when Mis' Curtis calls
+out, 'Rhody, the fire's goin' down. I wonder if you 'spect to iron
+with cold irons. Ef you do, you kin quit, for I don't have my ironin'
+done that way, if some folks does.'
+
+"Rhody never said a word, but jist went to the wood-pile for more
+wood, an' I says to Mis' Curtis, says I, 'Ef I was you, I'd hev some
+of the men-folks bring in the wood. Rhody don't look well.'
+
+"You oughter seen her look at me; her eyes fairly scared me. 'Our
+men-folks,' says she, ''s tired enough when they come in, 'thout
+havin' women's work to do. Ef they was shiftless as some I knows,
+that's all they'd be fit fur.'
+
+"I tell you, that sort o' riled me," went on the gentle voice; "but
+Rhody came in with a big armful of wood, so I didn't say anything."
+
+"As if you would have said anything, you good soul!" said Mrs.
+Johnson.
+
+"You don't know me," said Aunt Nancy. "Jonathan says I am right smart
+when I get riled--scares him;" and a mellow laugh rippled over her
+thin lips, which sounded so sweet that more than one passenger turned
+to see the laugher. Mrs. Johnson joined in the merriment, and I smiled
+too--the idea of that voice scolding was so absurd. And now it went on
+again:
+
+"I thought I'd say something to Jim about Rhody, for I felt oneasy
+about her; an' so when he was helpin' me on my horse in the evenin'
+(Rhody couldn't come to the fence, 'cause Mis' Curtis called her back
+when she started), I says to him, 'Jim,' says I, 'Rhody looks mighty
+bad; I'm feered she's doin' too much this hot weather.' You see, it
+was September, an' you know what tirin' weather we sometimes have in
+September.
+
+"'Oh, she's all right,' says Jim.
+
+"'No, she ain't,' says I.
+
+"Jim laughed, and his face reddened up, and says I,
+
+"'You better take good care of her, Jim; she's not a strong woman like
+your mother; she can't stand everything,' an' no more she couldn't,
+pore little thing.
+
+"Well, the very nex' Sunday, here came Jim and Rhody to see us. An' I
+tell you the ole man an' me was that glad he would have Rhody sing for
+us, an' she sang some of the songs he liked, but not many; she said
+she hadn't sung any fur so long it tired her.
+
+"'Why don't you sing, Rhody?' says the ole man; 'you used to sing like
+a bird.'
+
+"'I guess I'm not like a bird any more, Uncle Jonathan,' she says. An'
+then she sighed, but catchin' Jim lookin' at her, she lightened up and
+says, 'I am an old married woman now.'
+
+"After a while Jim an' the ole man they went out to the stable, and
+then the pore little darlin' says,
+
+"'Oh, Aunt Nancy, I'd be the happiest woman in the world if Jim and me
+was livin' by ourselves! Mother Curtis is a good woman, but somehow I
+can't please her, an' I try so hard. Sometimes I'm so tired I can't
+sleep or eat, an' she thinks I'm puttin' on airs, she calls it, an'
+she's allus saying she pities a man with a do-nothin', whiny wife.'
+
+"'It's a shame!' says I; 'why don't you tell Jim, and coax him to get
+another place?'
+
+"'Oh, Aunt Nancy,' she says, wipin' her purty eyes, 'I can't bear to
+make trouble, and what would Pap Curtis do? He's awful good to us. He
+brings me candy and sometimes oranges from town, and gives 'em to me
+when she don't see him, and he often helps me, too; gets wood and
+water and milks the cows--but there's Jim with the buggy,' and off she
+went.
+
+"I made up my mind to have another talk with Jim Curtis, but laws! we
+never can tell. The ole man he took the bed with rheumatiks in
+October, and I never seen anybody much fur three months, and then our
+Sarah's baby was born, and I was over there awhile, an' my own
+worriments drove other people's clean out of my head, till one day
+'long the last of February Jonathan came in (he'd be'n to town for
+somethin' or other), an' says he,
+
+"'Nancy, Rhody's got a boy!'
+
+"Laws! I was jist as s'prised as ef I'd never thought of sich a thing,
+an' says I, 'Who tole you?'
+
+"'Ole man Curtis,' says he, 'an' he's that sot up he wants you to come
+right over.'
+
+"'An' so I will,' says I. 'The blessed darlin'; an' it's a boy, an'
+our Sarah's is a boy, too. Well, that beats me.' An' I 'low 'twas odd,
+Mis' Johnson;" and Mrs. Johnson "'lowed" it was, too, and the story
+went on:
+
+"In a day or two I managed to go over to the Curtis place, an' though
+Mary Ann Curtis didn't seem over-pleased to see me, I'll say that for
+her, she treated me well enough, and asked me right up stairs to see
+Rhody and the baby. My! but my girl was glad to see me!
+
+"'Aunt Nancy,' she says, 'is Sarah's baby bigger'n mine?' and she
+turned down the kiver and showed me the littlest mite of a boy, with
+such a wrinkled old face! I wonder what does make a pore weakly baby
+look so much like old folks, anyhow. Did you ever notice it, Mis'
+Johnson?"
+
+"Oh, yes, often," said Mrs. Johnson. "There was my Silas, looked just
+like his Grandfather Johnson when he was born. But was her baby
+weakly?"
+
+"I saw it was in a minute," said Aunt Nancy, "but I never let on. I
+looked at the baby an' praised it all I could--said it wasn't as big
+as Sary's, but size was nothin'.
+
+"Mis' Curtis she sniffed sort o' scornful, an' says she, 'The child
+might have been bigger ef its mother'd knowed how to take keer of
+herself;' an' then she says, 'Well, I ain't no time to be a-foolin'. I
+must go to work.'
+
+"'I suppose you've got a girl?' says I.
+
+"'No, I ain't,' says she; 'an' what's more, I don't want one. I never
+seen one yet that they didn't eat an' waste more than their work came
+to, let alone their wages;' an' off she went down-stairs.
+
+"Rhody said nothing for a minute, an' I didn't, either. We just looked
+at the baby, an' it begun to pucker its face and cry a little, 'bout
+as loud as a young kitten. I thought of Sary's squaller of a boy, but
+I didn't say anything, and when it was quiet Rhody says:
+
+"'Aunt Nancy, is my baby like Sary's baby?' and she looked so pitiful
+I felt as if I could cry.
+
+"'Well,' I says, 'Sary's is bigger. Why do you ask that?'
+
+"Her lips quivered, an' she says:
+
+"'Everybody 'at sees it says, "What an old-fashioned baby! Poor little
+thing! Re'ly it's so odd-looking." Is it odd, Aunt Nancy? An' is there
+fashions in babies? I thought babies were all alike;' an' she tried to
+smile while tears rolled down her white face.
+
+"I tried to cheer her up. She was a baby herself--only a little over
+eighteen, you know; an' I went down and made her some toast and tea,
+and then fed the baby and got it to sleep, an' left her feelin' pretty
+cheerful.
+
+"After that I went over as often as ever I could, and sometimes
+carried a little somethin' I cooked to Rhody, but I saw Mis' Curtis
+didn't thank me. Once she's good as said so--said her victuals was
+good 'nough for anybody. Says I, 'Sick folks like strange cookin'
+sometimes, Mis' Curtis, an' Rhody allus liked my ways.' Which was an
+unfortunate thing for me to say, fur Mis' Curtis she flew all to
+pieces, and said I put mischief in Rhody's head.
+
+"'Here,' she says, 'is her baby three weeks old, an' her barely
+settin' up. Your Sary was at work afore her baby was that old, an' I
+know it; an' if Mis' Rhody can't wait on herself now, she can go
+'thout waitin' on for all of me,' she says.
+
+"'Mis' Curtis,' says I, 'my Sary's a different woman from Rhody.'
+
+"'I guess she is,' says Mis' Curtis, mad as fire.
+
+"'An,' says I, 'Jim ought to get somebody to help wait on Rhody and
+take care of the baby,' says I, 'or else it's my 'pinion he won't have
+'em long; fur,' says I, 'Rhody's gettin' weaker instead of stronger,
+and she ain't got milk fur that pore baby.'
+
+"Then Mis' Curtis she jes' let loose, an' I ketched it. She said it
+was all my doin's that Jim married that pore no-'count, stuck-up
+school-mistress, an' brought her there to be waited on, an' she knowed
+it all along, and now I needn't come a-tryin' to make out as Rhody
+wasn't treated well, fur she had wore herself out trottin' up and
+down stairs, an' she didn't mean to do it any longer.
+
+"Just then the kitchen door was opened, and old Mr. Curtis came in.
+
+"'Why, howdy, Aunt Nancy?' says he as cheerful, though I knowed he
+must have seen somethin' was up."
+
+"Yes," interrupted Mrs. Johnson angrily, "that's the way people do,
+and call it keepin' peace. I despise sich ways. Why didn't he make her
+behave herself? Suppose there was a fuss; ef she'd found he was goin'
+to be boss, she'd soon give up."
+
+"I guess not, Mis' Johnson," said the other; "she had sich a temper."
+
+"As if I didn't know that! an' I know when folks give up to sich
+tempers they make 'em worse. Wouldn't it been better if ole man Curtis
+had jes' let her see from the first that he didn't care for her
+temper? Why, she jesso natrally drove her girls to marry; and think of
+poor Molly tied to that drunken, shiftless Ned Pelton, and Betsy
+married to a old widower with seven or eight children, and him nearly
+as old as her father! I tell you, Aunt Nancy, Curtis is to blame."
+
+"Well," said the old lady gently, "I went up-stairs and found Rhody
+looking better'n I expected, with that midget of a baby with its eyes
+wide open on her lap. She was glad to see me.
+
+"'O Aunt Nancy!' she cried before I got my bunnit off, 'Jim has rented
+the old Duncan place, and as soon as I am able we are going there to
+live. He is over there now, fixing up.'
+
+"'Aha!' thought I, 'that's what's up!' but I said I was glad, and that
+I had brought her some sponge cake and other things; an' I 'mused the
+baby while she et a little--a mighty little, I was sorry to see; but
+she went on to tell me Jim had been to the doctor about her, an' he
+said she needed tonics, and he sent her some, an' she was goin' to
+take the med'cin' an' would soon be well and strong, an' so happy!
+'But, Aunt Nancy,' she says, 'baby don't grow a bit. I'm afraid he is
+too old-fashioned. Mother Curtis says I don't stir 'round enough to
+get an appetite. Do you think that's it--that baby don't get enough to
+make him grow because I can't eat?' She looked so weak and pitiful.
+
+"I says, 'Well, it ain't your fault; I reckon you can't make yourself
+eat.'
+
+"She laughed a little. 'You are such a comfort, auntie!' she says;
+'but that wonderful tonic'll set me up again.'
+
+"An' so I left her an' went home, promising to be back in a day or two
+an' take her home with me for a little visit if she was strong enough.
+You'd jes' oughter to seen her face when I said that; it jes' lit up.
+
+"'Mother Curtis?' she whispered.
+
+"'Oh,' says I, 'she'll be glad to get rid of you for a while,' an' I
+went off plannin' how I'd see Jim and make him bring her over. But it
+did seem as if there was a spite to be worked out agin me, for that
+very evenin' it set in to rain, an' that stiffened the ole man up bad,
+an' for days he could not move hisself, an' I was kep' close at home
+for three weeks, hearin' from the neighbors every once in a while that
+Rhody was gainin' slowly, but the baby wasn't right somehow.
+
+"Well, Jonathan got able to hobble round again, an' a purty spell of
+weather sot in, but there was garden to make, an' soap to bile, an'
+another week slipped away, an' I says to Jonathan, says I, 'As sure as
+I live I am going to see Rhody to-morrer ef old Mis' Curtis'll let me
+in;' an' the words wasn't hardly out of my mouth when somebody knocked
+at the door. 'Come in,' says I, and who was it but old man Curtis,
+looking like a ghost. 'What's the matter?' says I. He r'al'y couldn't
+speak for a minit, an' then he got out somethin' 'bout Rhody an' the
+baby, and comin', but I sensed it all, an' in less'n a minit I was
+ready an' in the buggy with him.
+
+"From what I could make out as we druv as fast as we could, Jim had
+been away from home over to the Duncan place from airly in the mornin'
+till about five o'clock that afternoon. When he got home he run right
+up to Rhody's room, an' found her a-settin' there with the baby in her
+arms, asleep he thought, but when he spoke to Rhody she began to
+scream, so that he was scared an' tuk hold of the baby an' it was
+dead.
+
+"'Then he hollered,' said the old man, 'an' me an' Mary Ann an' Tom
+(that's the hired man) ran up there, fur we was jes' settin' down to
+supper, an' when we saw what it was Tom went for the doctor and I came
+for you.'
+
+"An' oh, Mis' Johnson, I never want to see such sights agin! The baby
+was dead, sure enough, poor little thing, an' out of its misery, but
+Rhody, she jes' went out o' one faint into another till the doctor
+came, an' then we worked over her a long time, an' when she quit
+faintin' she was ravin' in a high fever. Dangerous, the doctor said,
+an' turned everybody but Jim an' me out o' the room. Such an awful
+time! Rhody would scream, 'Oh, do come, Mother! Mother! Mother! Baby's
+dyin'!' till she couldn't scream any more, an' then she'd ask for the
+baby, an' lie still, waitin' like, an' then scream again.
+
+"It was midnight before the doctor got her quiet, and then she lay in
+a stupor like, with Jim settin' watchin' her. Then I thought of the
+pore baby an' went to see about it, but some of the other neighbors
+hed come in, an' I found they had it laid out nice in the parlor.
+
+"Mis' Curtis was settin' by the kitchen stove, fur it was a cool
+evenin', an' I says to her, 'Mary Ann,' says I, 'what ailed the child?
+It was tuk suddent, wasn't it?'
+
+"She looked at me. I knowed she was mad as well as feelin' bad, but
+she didn't want to show it then, an' she says,
+
+"'Yes, I reckon you might say it was, 'though I never spected the
+child to live from the first. What'd Jim marry that no-'count spindly
+girl fur? He might 'a 'knowed.'
+
+"'Mis' Curtis,' says I, 'Rhody'll not trouble you long; and it's my
+belief,' says I, 'you've hurried her into her grave.'
+
+"'It's no sich thing,' says she. 'I waited on her as good as if she
+was my own; but I had lots to do to-day, an' I tole her this mornin' I
+was done packin' victuals up stairs for a lazy trollop like her, an'
+she could come down to dinner if she wanted any. She's plenty able to,
+Nancy Riley, an' it's my 'pinion she didn't take half care of that
+baby. An' she set Jim agin me. He's fixin' to go off to live by
+hisself.'
+
+"I jes' turned round and left her, an' she bounced up an' says to one
+of the women, 'I spect you're all hungry, an' I'll get supper'; an' in
+spite of all they could do, to work she went."
+
+"Oh, yes," said Mrs. Johnson, "the madder she got the harder she'd
+work, an' a mighty good worker, too, she was; but how did that poor
+Rhody get along?"
+
+"Well, she lay quiet all that mornin', but about the middle of the
+afternoon she roused up and seemed to know me an' Jim, an' asked for
+the baby.
+
+"'It's down stairs, Rhody,' says I.
+
+"She looked at me so queer.
+
+"'Is it?' she said. 'Mother was mad, Jim, an' wouldn't come up stairs;
+an' baby was so sick, an' I tried to call her, an' I couldn't make her
+hear, an' then I tried to go down stairs an' I couldn't, an' baby got
+so stiff and cold, an' I couldn't get him warm.' An' then, O Mis'
+Johnson, she began to scream again. It was awful, but after a while
+she was still again for several hours, an' I tried to get Jim to lay
+down, but he wouldn't leave her; an' his mother come up for him to get
+him to go down an' eat somethin', but he jes' looked at her, an' she
+went an' left him.
+
+"It was night when Rhody roused up agin', an' she looked so much
+better out of her eyes that I felt sort a cheered.
+
+"'Jim,' she says, whispering, 'is that Aunt Nancy?'
+
+"'Yes, dear,' he says.
+
+"'An' has she got the baby?' she went on.
+
+"Well, Jim didn't say nothin', pore feller, an' she says,
+
+"'Aunt Nancy, when Jim an' me's keepin' house you'll come an' see
+us?'
+
+"'Yes, dear,' I says. 'Now go to sleep, like a good girl.'
+
+"'All right,' she says, 'you keep the baby, an', Jim, kiss me good
+night. I love you--Jim. We'll be--so happy--by--ourselves.'
+
+"The last words were a long time comin', an' Jim, after he kissed her,
+looked at me an' whispered, 'Send for the doctor.' I hurried out, but
+before the doctor came he was not needed. Rhody had said her last good
+night."
+
+"How did Mary Ann take it?" said Mrs. Johnson, wiping her eyes.
+
+"Laws, she tuk on like all possessed, cried and hollered till I
+thought she'd go inter fits; but somehow I felt sorrier for the ole
+man. He'd stan' an' look at the pore thing after she was laid out, an'
+the big tears'd run down his wrinkled face, an' he says to me, 'She's
+too good fur this world, Nancy, Rhody was.'"
+
+Just then the brakeman shouted the name of the town at which I was to
+stop, and I must gather up my traps. I leaned over and whispered to
+"Aunt Nancy," "What did poor Jim do?"
+
+The old lady's face flushed. "Was you a-listenin'?" says she.
+
+"I couldn't help it," I said. "Poor Rhoda! But what about Jim, Aunt
+Nancy?"
+
+"This way, Madam," said the conductor briskly. "Let me have your
+valise."
+
+"Jim?" she whispered excitedly, "he like to went wild, but he was
+mighty quiet, an' soon's the funeral was over he sold everything he
+had and went to Californy."
+
+"Did he forgive his mother?" I asked, but the conductor took my arm
+and marched me out, and to this day I am wondering about "Jim" and his
+mother and "ole man Curtis." If I knew where "Aunt Nancy" lived, I
+would write to her.
+
+
+
+
+MRS. GLADSTONE AND HER GOOD WORKS.
+
+BY MARY G. BURNETT.
+
+
+The mistress of Hawarden Castle is something more than the devoted
+wife of the great statesman who sways the destinies of Great Britain.
+She has a notable personality of her own, worthy in its energy and
+sagacity of him with whom her life is linked. While the husband's
+career has always been interwoven with the highest affairs of state,
+the wife has shown her genius for administration by the charitable
+enterprises in which she has taken so active a part. Most things come
+about naturally as the effect of growth; and it is interesting to go
+back to the childhood of Mrs. Gladstone to trace the influences which
+directed her mind to deeds of beneficence. Things have changed since
+Mrs. Gladstone was a little girl, living with her sister and brothers
+at Hawarden Castle, nearly eighty years ago.
+
+Mrs. Gladstone's father, Sir Stephen Glynne, died young, when his
+eldest daughter Catherine (Mrs. Gladstone) was scarcely five years
+old. Tradition remembers him as a very handsome, lively-minded man,
+and it is said that Catherine Glynne grew up very like her father. One
+of Mrs. Gladstone's first vivid impressions is of the fright she got
+by seeing the "mutes," then the fashion at important funerals,
+standing about the castle while her dead father lay in state. It gave
+her a life-long horror of elaborate and expensive funerals. Her father
+was succeeded in the baronetcy and estates by his eldest son, Stephen
+Richard, then but a little boy of eight. Lady Glynne, a daughter of
+Lord Brabrooke, was left with the sole charge of the property and the
+children. She was a beautiful woman of strong character. Fortunately
+about this time her brother, the Honorable George Neville, came to be
+rector of Hawarden parish. The castle and rectory were within a
+quarter hour's walk of each other, and it was a precious boon for Lady
+Glynne to have her brother's judicious help in the management of the
+large estates, and in the education of her two boys and her two
+girls.
+
+This was about the year 1813. At that date Hawarden, in common with a
+village in Cheshire, had the deserved reputation of being the most
+wicked place in all the country round. Mr. Neville, with Lady Glynne's
+consent, closed the worst of the public houses, and inaugurated a
+system of education for the parish, setting up schools in Hawarden
+village and in the districts round.
+
+
+MRS. GLADSTONE'S EARLY TRAINING.
+
+It was a serious problem at the outset to obtain either teachers or
+scholars. It was necessary to employ bribery to get the mothers to
+send their children to school, and the aid of Lady Glynne and her
+young girls was brought to bear, in the first place, to talk the
+mothers over; and, secondly, to prepare a store of frocks, coats,
+cloaks, and other useful garments. These were given away as Christmas
+prizes, to recompense the mothers for remitting the services of their
+little girls, and the pence which the boys could pick up at scaring
+crows and such like juvenile occupations.
+
+It was a matter of still greater difficulty to find teachers who knew
+anything of the art of instruction; this was long before the day of
+colleges for elementary teachers. An old woman at Hawarden boasted to
+me that she had received for many years a Christmas prize for regular
+attendance at school. Naturally the question was asked: "How was it,
+then, Mrs. Catheral, you never learned either to read or write?"
+
+"Oh, I never wanted to," said she. "I never tried. But I liked the
+pretty frock or warm cloak the Miss Glynnes always gave us for prizes
+at Christmas time, if we went to school regular." Then she added,
+"Bless you! you should have seen the prizes in those days! They were
+worth looking at; none of your books and rubbish, like what children
+get in these days." In such an atmosphere did the children of Lady
+Glynne grow up, systematically trained to assist their mother and
+uncle in everything they projected for the parish good. Then came the
+full tide of the Oxford movement, which swept like a wave of light and
+heat through the sluggish heart of English religious and social
+reform, though it landed some of its brightest lights afterwards in
+Romanism. The names of Pusey, Keble, Manning, and Newman were
+household words at Hawarden Castle. Catherine's brothers were then at
+Christ Church, Oxford; and, in the midst of it all, intimate with the
+leaders of the movement, amongst whom were young Gladstone and many
+other brilliant young men, destined to be friends through life of
+those two bright and beautiful young girls at Hawarden.
+
+[Illustration: THE OLD AND NEW CASTLE OF HAWARDEN.]
+
+Thus a happy childhood matured into womanhood, under revolutionary
+influences. The breezes of intellectual and spiritual awakening
+stirred the air. Theirs never was a life of mere social excitement
+which so often plunges the _debutante_ into a whirl of pleasure
+without feeding the better life. They entered, it is true, into all
+the pleasures of London seasons, their beauty and bright minds fitting
+them to enjoy these to the full. But behind and above it all was the
+intelligence which kept them in touch with the movement of their
+day--a movement which, when turned into practical channels, brought
+about, for example, the great work of Florence Nightingale, who
+re-created the hospital-nursing service. The same potency inspired the
+establishment of homes and refuges and many of the philanthropic
+schemes which have made the last forty years so notable. Certain it is
+that Catherine Glynne came under the influence of the Oxford movement,
+and was predisposed by it to take a leading part in the philanthropic
+work of the day.
+
+
+MARRIAGE AND PHILANTHROPY.
+
+[Illustration: MISS GLYNNE (MRS. GLADSTONE), 1838.]
+
+In 1839 she married William Ewart Gladstone, whose great genius
+already foreshadowed his future eminence. The same day her younger
+sister married Lord Lyttleton. Those who were eye-witnesses of that
+double wedding, and all the wonderful festivities in the village, are
+becoming few, indeed. In her married life Mrs. Gladstone found
+occupation to the full. She was always the true and careful mother who
+would not give over her duties to another, even to the best of nurses.
+She was devoted to her husband in his incessant political toils. She
+did not need to look around her for work. Still her assistance was
+from the first prompt to the furtherance of any schemes where a
+helping hand was needed.
+
+Mrs. Gladstone soon became a centre for philanthropic work of all
+kinds. She and Mr. Gladstone started Newport Market Refuge, which is
+now carried on at Westminster, with an industrial school attached.
+Begun in Soho in 1863, it was Mr. Gladstone's idea, for he saw many
+friendless wanderers as he went at night between the House of Commons
+and his home. Mrs. Gladstone threw herself into his scheme, and the
+work was started with an efficient committee. From the beginning Mr.
+Gladstone has been president and his wife a regular visitor. The
+object of the refuge is to give shelter to persons out of work and in
+temporary distress, to enable them to tide over their difficulties,
+and to find fresh employment. It does not take in the practised
+casual, or loafer, but weary, sore-footed travellers, who have walked
+far in search of work and found none. Such are always admitted as far
+as room permits, and have the assurance of a week's lodging free, with
+the prospect of an extension of time if the committee see a reasonable
+chance of their getting work.
+
+[Illustration: THE ORPHANAGE, HAWARDEN.]
+
+In the course of a single year about thirteen thousand nights'
+lodgings and thirty thousand rations have been granted, and three
+hundred and nine men and women have obtained employment, or else have
+been sent home to their friends.
+
+It need scarcely be said to those who have kept pace with recent
+events that the most vital feature of General Booth's great work in
+London follows closely the model set by the Gladstone institution.
+
+It was soon found advisable to add a Boys' Industrial School to the
+work of the Refuge. Many lads in distress were constantly being
+discovered, who would certainly drift into a life of idleness and
+dishonesty if not taken in hand. So the managers of the Refuge
+determined to try this novel combination--refuge and school--which,
+hazardous as it was at its commencement, has proved an entire
+success.
+
+In 1866 a sharp epidemic of cholera reached England, and the East End
+of London was severely attacked. Mrs. Gladstone came in contact with
+it, in her regular visits to the London hospital. Whole families were
+brought in together, some to die, others to recover. Parents dying
+left their children behind them, friendless and helpless. Mrs.
+Gladstone carried away many of the poor little wretches virtually in
+her arms. They were naked, for their only clothing had to be burned,
+but she found cloaks and blankets to wrap them in, and took them with
+her to her own house or to lodgings which she had provided.
+
+She induced her friends to furnish fresh garments without delay, and
+she rented an empty house at Clapton, wherein to lodge her orphans.
+She set about raising money to provide for their needs and those of
+other cholera patients. She wrote a letter to the "Times," asking
+subscriptions for this object, and speedily five thousand pounds
+rolled in. With this she was able to keep her little cholera orphans
+in comfort. One who saw the sight, when she accompanied Mrs. Gladstone
+to Clapton, says she can never forget it. As soon as the door was
+opened she was surrounded by the little ones, who clung to her and
+almost overwhelmed her in their eagerness to obtain a caress from the
+one they loved so dearly.
+
+
+VARIED ENTERPRISES OF AN ACTIVE LIFE.
+
+Her Free Convalescent Home had its genesis in the necessities of
+the sick poor, brought to light by this cholera epidemic. It was
+forced upon her notice that many, who had passed safely through the
+dangers of acute disease, relapsed into serious, and sometimes fatal,
+illness for lack of that timely change of air, wholesome food and
+comfortable lodging which they were unable to find at home. There were
+convalescent establishments in operation, but it was found that
+they were already full, or else admission was hampered by such
+conditions of privileged tickets, weekly payments, and distance,
+that, before these could be complied with, the evils sought to be
+averted had actually occurred.
+
+Mrs. Gladstone determined to establish a Convalescent Home, where
+admission could be quickly arranged, free of cost. She called to her
+aid a committee of ladies and gentlemen, qualified by business
+experience, professional knowledge, or familiarity with the needs of
+the poor, to cooperate with her. Such confidence did she inspire, that
+a beginning was quickly made in a house at Snaresbrook, the remainder
+of the lease being made over to Mrs. Gladstone and her committee. When
+the lease came to an end, the convalescents were transferred for a
+short time to the houses which Mrs. Gladstone had at Clapton, but in
+1868 a freehold property, known as Woodsford Hall, most healthily
+situated in Essex, was bought by the committee. Here this good work
+has been carried on ever since. It is a charming house close to the
+forest, surrounded by lawns and trees and flowers. In fine weather the
+house is nearly empty all day long. The invalids from the squalid city
+lanes spend their time in the forest, gathering wild flowers, and
+drinking in the perfumed air which pours rich draughts of health and
+strength into their wasted bodies.
+
+When in London, Mrs. Gladstone has for nearly a quarter of a century
+gone down to the London Hospital every Monday morning, to examine into
+the circumstances of those who apply to go down to Woodsford. The
+clergy and ministers of all denominations in the parishes around the
+London Hospital have a right to send their sick poor with a note of
+recommendation, but those who are recovering in the London Hospital
+have the special claim. The business is carefully supervised by Mrs.
+Gladstone and her assistants, even to the day of going, and the train.
+Attention is always directed to the express object of the home--as a
+resort solely for those who have been ill, are slowly recovering, and
+require, for complete restoration to health, change of air, good food,
+rest, and kindly treatment.
+
+Every year more than a thousand men, women, and children enjoy the
+benefit of this retreat. One report gives the numbers at six hundred
+and thirty-nine men, three hundred and sixty-nine women, seventy
+boys, and forty girls. The large excess of men and boys over women and
+girls has revealed the fact that working men are much more liable than
+are women, not only to accidents, but to disease. This holds good
+among the children, as more sickness rages among the boys than among
+the girls. In this great undertaking Mrs. Gladstone has been ably
+assisted by many friends, among whom may be specially mentioned her
+niece, Lady Frederick Cavendish, whose terribly imposed sorrow has
+always found relief in works of love and charity. It is impossible,
+too, to say good-by to the Free Convalescent Home at Woodsford without
+mentioning Miss Simmons, the superintendent for many years--an ideal
+mother for such a home. To see her play games with the patients is
+something one remembers, for the humor with which it is done and the
+mirth it creates. Mrs. Gladstone herself delights the patients on her
+visits by playing dance music to them. Her country dances and Sir
+Roger de Coverely are special favorites.
+
+[Illustration: THE INMATES OF WOODSFORD HALL IN THE FOREST.]
+
+Another prominent feature of her charities is the orphanage at
+Hawarden, which arose out of the American war of 1862, and the
+subsequent cotton famine in Lancashire.
+
+Mrs. Gladstone's brother, Sir Stephen Glynne, was alive, and Mr. and
+Mrs. Gladstone lived at Hawarden Castle with him. When the distress
+was most severe, Mr. Gladstone collected a number of men who were idle
+in Lancashire, and found them employment in cutting foot-paths
+through the park and woods of Hawarden--as he could not give them work
+which would displace any of the permanent laborers on the estates. At
+the same time Mrs. Gladstone sent for some of their young daughters,
+and her brother, Sir Stephen, gave her the use of a nice old house
+which stood in the courtyard, formerly the dower house belonging to
+the Ravenscrofts, who in time past had owned Hawarden Castle, then
+called "Broad Lane Hall." (The heiress of the Ravenscrofts had married
+Mrs. Gladstone's great-grandfather, Sir John Glynne.) This dower house
+Mrs. Gladstone converted into a training home for the girls, under the
+charge of a very charming nurse of her own children, who had lately
+married. The experiment proved a great success. The girls had all
+worked in the mills, but they learned quickly something of domestic
+work. Then Mrs. Gladstone found them places amongst her own friends in
+the neighborhood, whereupon she was able to send for more girls to be
+similarly assisted. Some of them were lovely young women, and most of
+them married extremely well while in service.
+
+[Illustration: THE ANNUAL LUNCH PARTY OF THE NOTTING HILL SCHOOL GIRLS.]
+
+In the autumn of 1867 Mrs. Gladstone brought down about a dozen of her
+orphans from Clapton and lodged them in another small house, which her
+brother had lent to her. These she put under the care of a widow with
+a little boy of her own. There they dwelt happily, going every day up
+to the village to attend the infant school. When the Lancashire
+distress was quite over, and all need of the old dower house at an end
+for the mill girls, Mrs. Gladstone transferred her Clapton orphans
+there, and added to their number other children whose fathers and
+mothers had died in the London Hospital. When the orphanage was
+properly established in the larger house, it accommodated comfortably
+about thirty children. Experience taught Mrs. Gladstone that poor
+parents found it more difficult to provide for and manage their boys
+than their girls. So the Hawarden orphanage has come to be filled by
+boys. They attend the parish schools till they are old enough to be
+apprenticed to trades. There is now a whole army of well-doing young
+men who have been brought up in the Hawarden Castle orphanage. It is
+still in full tide of the work it has carried on for over twenty-five
+years.
+
+About 1880 a home for training young women for service was opened at
+Notting Hill, London, under the management of a committee of ladies.
+The object of the home was to take girls under its protection who had
+bad homes, and were therefore likely to be totally neglected and to
+drift into a life of uselessness and vice. Mrs. Gladstone was asked to
+become the president, and consented. It is organized on a small scale,
+a fact much in favor of its purpose. Not more than fifteen girls are
+there at one time, and a few lady boarders are taken in, as this works
+well for training the girls in the various branches of domestic
+service. The proud characteristic of the school is its determination
+never to despair of any pupil, however discouraging she may be in her
+first trial of service. The reward seems great when a girl, who has
+failed in several places, at last finds a mistress who understands her
+and draws out the best in her, when she receives praise as a good
+servant instead of the fault-finding hitherto her portion. There are
+now numbers of respectable, well-doing servants who have been trained
+here, and the institution has proved a boon to employers as well as
+the employed.
+
+
+A CROWN OF HONOR.
+
+[Illustration: MRS. GLADSTONE TO-DAY.]
+
+Mrs. Gladstone gives the girls who are in service an annual treat
+every summer down at the Convalescent Home at Woodsford. About a year
+ago a party of them enjoyed luncheon and tea on the lawn there, under
+the shadow of a rare kind of sycamore which their hostess had brought
+in a flower-pot, as a little seedling, from an old tree which spreads
+its ample branches close to her orphanage at Hawarden. Mrs. Gladstone
+told the girls that, when she planted it, she never thought to live so
+long as to see it large enough to shelter a party of forty in the
+shadow of its foliage. Such works of beneficence as have just been
+sketched are only a few of those forming a crown of honor and glory
+for the head of the great Premier's wife. She was in that early band
+who began penitentiary work at Clewer before it took shape under Mrs.
+Monsel's management. That must have been soon after her marriage. To
+that early time, too, belong the beginnings of the House of Charity
+for distressed persons in London, which is carried on at Soho, and
+rejoices in its forty-sixth annual report. This is to help persons a
+little higher than the working-class, who have fallen into temporary
+distress from sickness or other vicissitudes.
+
+As for the deeds of private kindness, it can truly be said that Mrs.
+Gladstone has sown them on all sides, and it is characteristic of that
+noble woman's nature that she is loyal to the last to those who need
+her help, even if it be for a lifetime.
+
+
+
+
+A BOYS' REPUBLIC.
+
+THE STORY OF CAMP CHOCORUA.
+
+BY ALFRED BALCH.
+
+There is an island in Big Asquam Lake, New Hampshire, lying almost
+under the shadow of Mount Chocorua, and on it there are many
+buildings, rough but weather-tight; paths which have been carefully
+built to grade; a boat-yard, with ways leading to the water; a long
+wharf projecting out toward a swimming raft which is floating
+where there is depth for diving; a sea wall of heavy stone, against
+which the ice is powerless. Down by the water's edge, and squatting
+on a wooden stage within easy reach, a group of boys are washing
+dishes. From time to time one of them, who while working as hard as
+any, keeps his eye on the others, gives a short order which is
+instantly obeyed. Other boys are sitting on the porch, polishing
+lantern and lamps, while yet others are sweeping up the litter which
+disfigures the open space. There are buildings to the right and
+left, there are canvas canoes and boats floating near the wharf, and a
+great flat boat--somewhat rudely made--is moored in front of the sea
+wall. With each group of boys is a young man, busily employed in
+the same work, but it is noticeable that he gives no orders.
+
+From the island itself the view is exquisitely beautiful. To the north
+the White Mountains rest like a mighty barrier, walling in the valley
+at their feet. The lake itself lies smiling under the sunlight of the
+perfect day, or darkening under the shadow of the drifting cloud. The
+breeze is barely enough to fill the sails of the white canoe outside
+there, while the scarlet cap of the boy sailing it makes a patch of
+color. There are other islands with long vistas of water between them,
+relieving the vivid green of the trees which cover them with foliage,
+and coming toward the wharf is a boat filled with girls; in the
+stillness their gay laughter sounds pleasantly. Everywhere is the
+beauty of the mountains and the lake, and the voices of the boys at
+work fill the very air with life.
+
+Big Asquam Lake was more picturesque during the summers from 1881 to
+1889, because Camp Chocorua was there, than it has been since. The
+camp was founded by Mr. Ernest Berkeley Balch as a summer camp for
+boys, in which they could have plenty of outdoor sport, a reasonable
+amount of work, and abundant opportunity to enjoy themselves in their
+own way. Starting with five boys and a small frame shanty in 1881, it
+grew into one of the oddest institutions that may be imagined. It was
+different in many ways from anything else of the kind, and its great
+success was due to the fact that it was modelled on real life as men
+see it. The motive underlying all of its pleasant features and most
+quaint customs was twofold: first, responsibility, personally and for
+others; and, second, work--not only the work which each one must do
+for himself, but also that extra work which brings with it a tangible
+reward. The boys were encouraged in everything that would tend to
+develop them physically, to make them strong and healthy, but they
+also found themselves members of a little world that had a high
+standard of honor, a world in which the laws governing the conflicting
+interests of men were recognized and obeyed. How this was done, how
+Camp Chocorua was governed and run, and why the boys who were there
+still look on it so affectionately is not an uninteresting story.
+
+"The Camp," as it is always called by those who were there, took in
+all of the space on the island. In 1889, the last year, the buildings
+included the office; the big dormitory--in the upper story of which
+was the library, with a large room below, having at one end the great
+fireplace, where the camp-fire blazed and burned; the dining-house--an
+open shed; the cook-house, with the ice-house at its back; the
+store-house and faculty quarters--the upper story of this was the
+hospital; and the carpenter's shop, down by the boat-yard. There were
+many paths built carefully to grade, and one of these led to the grove
+of silver birches, in the midst of which was the chapel. I think this
+was one of the prettiest places I ever saw. The walls were the living
+trees, the seats were rustic benches, and the reading-desk was a rock,
+oddly fashioned, of the stone of the Granite State, into the form of a
+lectern. Every Sunday afternoon when it was fair weather the service
+was held here.
+
+It is not, however, in the buildings, on the island, nor in the trees
+that one can find the interest of Camp Chocorua. It was in the life
+led by the boys, in their customs and laws, in their courts and
+contracts, that this resides.
+
+[Illustration: THE CHAPEL.]
+
+One of the fundamental rules of the place was that every boy or man
+there should do his own work and his share of the common work of the
+camp. Many of the boys who came had never in their lives done anything
+for themselves, and the first thing demanded of them, that they should
+make up their own beds and take care of their own clothes, came very
+hard. The boy was careless, he lost his waterproof, he could not put
+on his shoes, or could not remember to put away his clothes. There was
+no punishment for his fault; he was simply ranked as an "Incapable."
+An Incapable was a boy who did no work of any kind, who belonged to no
+crew, who had no part in the busy life of the camp except that of a
+spectator. More than this, an Incapable was forbidden to refuse
+assistance from any member of a crew, and as it speedily became the
+fashion to help an Incapable, he had no lack of such assistance. Any
+one who can remember the scorn a boy feels for another who, he thinks,
+is less manly than himself will understand the sort of blistering sore
+applied to an Incapable. It was not without a pathetic side, the way
+in which these little chaps would work to learn how to dress
+themselves and lace their own shoes, and the anxiety they showed to
+keep their clothes and bed in order; and as an Incapable had the right
+to an examination, by a member of the faculty, at any time, as to his
+capability, few there were who were not assigned to a crew within two
+weeks.
+
+The supreme power in Camp Chocorua resided in the founder, although he
+could not, except in extreme cases, traverse one of the customs of the
+camp, for these were, in fact, unwritten laws. Associated with him
+were the members of the faculty, generally four in number, and it was
+their duty to oversee and watch the boys. One of the faculty was
+always with a crew, and he had the right to give general orders and to
+inspect the work done, as a whole. He had no power, however, over the
+individual members of that crew, for this resided wholly in the
+stroke, or, in his absence, in the sub-stroke. To compare one thing
+with another, the member of the faculty was the general commanding the
+brigade, and the stroke was the colonel in command of a regiment. The
+general could give his orders and comment on how they were carried
+out, but it was the colonel who decided on details. The member of the
+faculty with a crew worked as they worked, taking such part of the
+labor as he saw fit, or doing that which the stroke asked him to. The
+boys in the camp were divided into four crews, and at the beginning of
+the camp year the strokes were appointed by the faculty. As soon as a
+stroke was named, he had the power of appointing his sub-stroke, or
+second in command of the crew, on the principle that as he was
+responsible for all the sub-stroke did, it was but fair he should have
+his choice.
+
+The crews did all the routine work of the camp, three being on duty
+every day and one off. These three were the kitchen crew, which
+supplied the cook's boy to prepare vegetables and run errands, and
+which cleaned all the pots, pans, and kitchen utensils; the police
+crew, which cleaned the lamps, swept the rooms, and removed all litter
+from the grounds; and the dish crew, which washed all the larger
+dishes used on the table, as well as the plate, cup, knife, fork, and
+spoon of any guest for the first three days of his stay on the island.
+After that the guest did his own work. The dish crew supplied the
+inspector of dishes--generally the sub-stroke--and visitors, I
+remember, got useful lessons on what constituted cleanliness as they
+stood meekly before him. It was safe to say that any article passing
+inspection was in a condition to be used again. Each crew in turn
+became kitchen, police, and dish, during three days, and on the
+fourth, the off crew. This was expected to do any work outside of the
+regular duties of the day, such as manning a boat for visitors,
+handling express matter or supplies, or, in short, anything not done
+by the others. The milk boat was manned by the kitchen crew, and the
+mail boat by the police. Practically speaking, each crew worked about
+five hours a day.
+
+It was a cardinal principle in Camp Chocorua that the boys should
+govern the boys. The strokes were to all intents and purposes supreme
+over their crews, and under no circumstances did a member of the
+faculty give an order to a member of a crew. The order was given to
+the stroke or sub-stroke in command, and he carried it out as he saw
+fit. The stroke was expected not only to rule his crew and see they
+did the work, he must also set them an example by doing as much or
+more than any one of them. In point of fact, the stroke and sub-stroke
+were generally the two most efficient boys in a crew. But in such a
+system as this, that a member of a crew might be disobedient, or a
+stroke might be tyrannical, was not lost sight of. The stroke had no
+power to punish, but he could, were his orders disobeyed, direct a boy
+to report to the faculty. On the other hand, although the presence of
+a member of the faculty prevented any open bullying, it was within the
+power of a stroke to "work" a boy, and that boy had an appeal to the
+faculty. As in Camp Chocorua in proportion to the power was the
+responsibility, the appeal was a much more serious thing than the
+report. When the latter was made by order of a stroke, the boy might
+be reprimanded, given a good talking, or be shifted into another crew.
+In extreme cases he might be declared an Incapable--than which nothing
+was more detested. If it were found that a boy could not get along
+with any stroke he might be sent home, because this meant he refused
+to submit to the discipline of the camp.
+
+The position of stroke was the most sought for in Camp Chocorua. It
+was understood the stroke had to get the work done perfectly, rule his
+crew justly and without friction, and personally be a model of a camp
+boy. If he failed in either of these, the inference was obvious--he
+was unfit for the position; the faculty had made a mistake in putting
+him into it. If a complaint of tyranny was proved, there was but one
+thing to do--the stroke was reduced in rank. He lost all the
+privileges of his position, and in the eyes of all, men and boys
+alike, he was disgraced; he was officially declared to be unfit to
+govern others. It is difficult to find among the possible experiences
+of men anything equal in severity, and the boys in the camp dreaded
+such punishment as they dreaded nothing else. It was bad enough when a
+sub-stroke was reduced, but to a stroke it was terrible. The system,
+however, was in itself almost enough to prevent this punishment. A
+stroke was expected to keep his crew happy and contented, and there
+were keen eyes watching him all the while, and kindly men ready to
+give a hint.
+
+Under its curious double government by faculty and boys, Camp Chocorua
+prospered and grew. The personal and routine work was done, the boys
+played baseball or tennis, they swam and dived, and went sailing,
+rowing and paddling. No ambition was greater in the mind of a camp boy
+than that of owning a canoe, and as many of them were not rich enough
+to buy, the boat-yard was established in the cove. Here was the
+carpenter shop, with a full set of tools and a bench, and outside its
+open door were the ways on which the canoes were built. At one time
+the yard was full of the pretty little boats in all stages, from the
+keel with its newly joined ribs to the completed canoe on whose canvas
+cover the paint was slowly drying. Exceedingly good canoe builders
+some of the boys turned out to be, and their models were not only fast
+but safe. Here, too, was the floor on which they cut their sails, or
+sat and talked as they stitched in the leach lines or fastened the
+reef points in place. Many of the canoes were the work of their
+owners' hands in every part--hull, paddle, sails, and rigging. When
+the fleet came in, paddling in open order, I never saw anything
+prettier in my life than the white hulls gliding so easily over the
+placid water, the boys singing and keeping stroke, while beyond lay
+the green islands, casting the long shadows from their trees under the
+setting sun. It was in this yard that the great flatboat was built in
+which the whole camp moved about the lake, ten oars on a side, and
+every boy tugging for all he knew. An unwieldy craft, in which one
+earned his passage. It was in this yard, too, that the best canoe
+designers earned much money from their less skilful comrades.
+
+The financial system of Camp Chocorua was as odd, when one thinks
+of it as applied to boys from eight to fourteen years, as were
+many other things about the place. Each boy had an allowance of
+twenty-five cents a week paid by the camp, and no boy, no matter what
+the wealth of his parents, was allowed to bring money given him to
+the camp. His outfit might include fishing-tackle, but a canoe was
+barred. If, as was generally the case, he wanted more money than his
+allowance, he could get it by working during his own time. While
+the boys did the routine work of the camp as a part of their duty,
+they had nothing to do with permanent improvements, yet there were
+many of these made during the nine years. These were paid for by the
+camp, and it was a cardinal principle that when work of this kind was
+to be done, the boys should earn the money if they chose. Out of this
+rose the system of contracts. The work to be done was announced
+beforehand, and then sold to the lowest bidder, who was required
+to sign a contract. This was printed in legal form, with the camp
+as party of the first part, and the contractor as party of the
+second, the price to be paid and the time being duly entered. The
+book of contracts is one of the most curious things to study. One
+of the pages reads "building one yard on the chapel path to grade,"
+price five cents, and time one week. "Removing a stump in front of
+the office and filling the hole," is another, price twenty-five cents.
+Some of the contracts were taken by firms and others by companies.
+"The Goodwill Contract Company" takes a contract to do the washing
+of the camp, and the president's signature is affixed. If a contract
+was performed, the price was credited to the contractor in the
+bank. It might be that, owing to circumstances, the time was
+extended, or the contract might be forfeited for non-performance.
+In the latter case it was sold again to the lowest bidder, and the
+difference--if any--between the original contract price and the sum
+charged to finish the work was charged to the contractor. It was
+very rarely that an old camp boy either underestimated the amount
+of work necessary or the time required, and the forfeitures were for
+the most part among the new boys. They learned quickly, however.
+Under this contract system the paths were made, the wharf built, and,
+in fact, the majority of the permanent improvements carried out.
+The contracts were not always with the camp. The boys made them with
+each other, as in the building of canoes, and as the boys had no
+power to put up a forfeited contract at auction, the courts became
+necessary. The camp, the men or the boys were all alike subordinate
+to the courts; either could sue or be sued, and each was bound by
+the result.
+
+In the court of first instance one of the faculty presided as judge,
+and there might or might not be a jury. The parties to the cause could
+argue their own cases, or they could appear by counsel chosen from the
+boys or the faculty. In case plaintiff or defendant chose, he could
+appeal from the decision, providing he deposited a check for the full
+amount of damages and costs. The Appellate Court consisted of a
+majority of the members of the faculty--not less than three--and in
+this there was no jury. It must be acknowledged that in appeal cases
+the judges took cognizance of the facts as well as the law. But the
+law of the camp was so well known to every boy there, and it was so
+simple, that no boy could fail to see the justice of the decision. It
+must be remembered when these courts are considered that to the boys
+they were very real. It cost five cents to bring a suit, and fifteen
+for an appeal, and the sums sued for were lost or won in reality. The
+costs went to the officers of the court, excluding the judges, who
+served for honor. If counsel were employed they had to be paid, unless
+they volunteered, and it came to be naturally understood that a
+plaintiff or defendant in the wrong could not get volunteer counsel.
+The verdict--when there was a jury--was that of the boys themselves;
+they condemned or approved of what other boys had done. As the boys
+were trusted to rule each other, so they were the guardians of each
+other's rights, while the power of appeal made it impossible that any
+wave of temporary unpopularity should bring injustice to any boy. Camp
+Chocorua was builded on this idea of the boys managing themselves, but
+there was ever present the superior authority to prevent wrong being
+done, and the very existence of this authority made it rarely called
+on.
+
+[Illustration: THE CAMP ON MARCH.]
+
+The keenness in business of these boys is well illustrated by the
+story of the Soda-Water Trust. Whenever the boys went to the store in
+Holderness they generally bought soda-water. This went on until some
+one suggested the apparatus could be bought and the soda-water made in
+the camp. Two firms--one of three boys and the other of two--each firm
+having a bank account large enough to purchase the apparatus and
+supplies, were formed at once. But the privileges or monopolies in the
+camp were always sold for the benefit of the Charity Fund, and it was
+promptly announced the soda-water franchise would be put up at
+auction. The two firms were rich, but they were not willing to enter a
+contest of this kind. The members got together and talked matters over
+at length, finally resolving to form a trust. When the time came the
+trust bid one cent for the franchise, and there being no other bid it
+was sold at this price. When their apparatus came the trust did a
+rushing business.
+
+[Illustration: A HALT FOR SUPPER.]
+
+[Illustration: THE BARGE.]
+
+In the Camp Chocorua bank, each man and boy had an account. Payments
+of all kinds were made by check. The allowance was added to the
+account each week, and as the boys made money the credits grew larger.
+At the end of the camp season the depositor could either draw out his
+balance or have it carried over to the next summer. During the winter
+he was allowed to earn money by work, provided he received no more for
+it than would have been paid to anyone else, and this money could be
+added to the bank account. One boy brought nine dollars and
+seventy-five cents as the result of shovelling snow, but the canoe his
+father gave him could only be kept when he showed himself able to pay
+for it. This he could only do by borrowing from the bank the necessary
+balance; but his credit was good, and the summer was not half over
+before he had paid back the loan. I have often laughed when I have
+thought of the feeling with which that father must have looked on his
+son's check, and realized what it meant. If the boys in Camp Chocorua
+learned anything, they learned not to be ashamed of labor in any form.
+The dignity of work was silently taught them, even as they were taught
+to expect the tangible rewards.
+
+It was towards the middle of the second term of the camp that the
+sports took place. For days before, the boys were at work cleaning the
+camp up, and the cooks--two of the boys--were busy getting the lunch
+ready. To the sports all the friends and relations of the boys were
+invited, and there were usually many grown people present. There was a
+game at baseball, some sets at tennis; there were sailing, rowing, and
+paddling matches, swimming and diving contests, foot races, and the
+like. The prizes were simple enough, bits of ribbons with the name of
+the camp, the contest, and the date painted on, yet they were valued
+very highly. Splendid work the boys did in these sports, and
+conclusive was the evidence of their thorough training during the
+summer. Those who attended the sports once were always glad to come
+again, for long as the days were, they were filled with fun and
+frolic. In the evening the boys and their visitors gathered around the
+great fireplace in the dormitory building, and there, in the light of
+the camp fire, joined in the camp songs. The last song of all was "The
+Battle Hymn of the Republic," the verses being sung as a solo, and the
+chorus by everyone present; and it was with the grand old melody still
+ringing in their ears that the guests took the boats which carried
+them home.
+
+There was one prize awarded at the sports which might come to any
+boy. This was the "C. C." pin in silver. Those who won it were the
+boys who had in their own way shown themselves to have got the
+greatest good out of the camp, and who had done the most good to
+others. The pins were not common; two or three, perhaps, were given
+in a summer, and sometimes none at all. It is most difficult to define
+the conditions under which the pin was given; it came as the result
+of a unanimous feeling in the faculty that it had been won, rather
+than as the result of rules obeyed. A conscious effort to win it was
+enough to prevent success. The boy had to show the manliness,
+justice, truth, conscientiousness in him, not for reward, but
+because he had them in him; and then the reward, or rather the
+recognition, came. Intrinsically these little pins are worth
+nothing; but those who have them value them as they value few
+things, and they are right.
+
+The cruise which marked the end of the summer's camp life was one of
+the most picturesque things imaginable. An ox-cart with four oxen
+carried the blankets, dishes, and stores; Porgus, the great,
+slobbering bloodhound, was fastened to the rear axle, the Infant--the
+youngest boy in camp--mounted the donkey, and with faculty and boys on
+foot, the camp set out. The routes taken during the nine cruises
+included all the best known roads in the White Mountains. Generally,
+those boys who wished to made up a separate party, and climbed some
+one of the great peaks, while the rest confined themselves to lower
+levels. At night they all slept in some barn. The routine work of the
+cooks and crews went on as usual, and the whole thing was pick-nicking
+on a grand scale. Sometimes the ox-cart would stall, or the oxen be
+unable to haul it up a hill, and then the rope was fastened on, and
+the whole camp toiled on and pulled. It was an experience to pass them
+at this time, to listen to the orders of the strokes, to hear the
+chaff flying back and forward, and to watch the crowd, all clad in
+gray knickerbockers and jackets, gray stockings and flannel shirts,
+and wearing the scarlet knit Scotch caps which completed the camp
+uniform.
+
+There is a story about Porgus, the big bloodhound, which is worth
+telling. When they first got him everyone supposed he was exceedingly
+fierce, and, lest he should bite, he was tied up on another island,
+and his food taken to him twice a day. Suddenly, one day, Porgus was
+seen swimming towards Chocorua, and, the alarm being given, everyone
+except the man who knew him took refuge in the house. The dog was
+taken back and tied up, but as he could gain nothing by howling he
+broke away once more. The fact of the matter was, that Porgus was
+lonely, and that so far from being fierce, he was one of the most
+good-natured beasts in the world. This having been found out, he was
+added to the list of camp pets. These at various times included a
+flying squirrel that had a habit of jumping on your shoulder as you
+passed his tree; a black sheep called Billy, who learned to butt
+anyone in the neighborhood; the donkey, and the kyuse--the latter a
+mustang pony. All of these in their time were important members of the
+camp. Old Captain Cairns, too, a man who lived alone in a most curious
+house on one of the islands, was one of the greatest friends of the
+boys, and always came to the sports. The captain was a curiosity in
+his way, and he never got tired of telling yarns about the places he
+had been to or the people he had seen.
+
+[Illustration: CAPTAIN CAIRN'S HOUSE.]
+
+The story of Camp Chocorua, of the healthy, open-air life, of the high
+standards so rigidly lived up to, of the fun they had, of the work
+they did, and of the lessons in manliness they so unconsciously
+learned, is really written in the memories of the boys who, during
+those nine summers, spent their time on that little island. This
+article is but a brief account of the methods through which so much
+was done. The place now belongs to the founder, and a custodian is
+kept there to look after it. The buildings are open to the old camp
+boys, and many of them spend their vacation time there. For the most
+part, they are men in the world now, but none the less do they look
+back at the camp with pleasant memories, feeling and realizing, as
+they never did then, all that the camp life meant to them. Everything
+is ready for them; they have but to hang up the great Chinese gong on
+which the hours were struck, and the camp is open. They can sail, row,
+and swim, and at night, sitting before the "camp fire," they can bring
+back the days when they were boys; they can tell their stories of the
+contracts and the trials, the sports and the cruises; they can laugh
+over half-forgotten jokes, or speak in lower tones of the boys who are
+now dead. For although Camp Chocorua has ceased to be, Camp Chocorua
+lives in the memories of the camp boys.
+
+
+
+
+THE HAPPY LIFE.
+
+BY SIR HENRY WOTTON.
+
+(1568-1639.)
+
+
+  How happy is he, born and taught,
+    That serveth not another's will,
+  Whose armor is his honest thought,
+    And simple truth his utmost skill.
+
+  Whose passions not his masters are;
+    Whose soul is still prepared for death,
+  Untied unto the worldly care
+    Of public fame or private breath!
+
+  Who envies none that chance doth raise,
+    Or vice; who never understood
+  How deepest wounds are given by praise,
+    Nor rules of state, but rules of good.
+
+  Who hath his life from humors freed,
+    Whose conscience is his strong retreat;
+  Whose state can neither flatterers feed,
+    Nor ruin make accusers great.
+
+  Who God doth late and early pray
+    More of his grace than gifts to lend,
+  And entertains the harmless day
+    With a well-chosen book or friend.
+
+  This man is freed from servile bands
+    Of hope to rise, or fear to fall--
+  Lord of himself, though not of lands;
+    And having nothing yet hath all.
+
+
+
+
+EDWIN BOOTH.
+
+ON AND OFF THE STAGE.
+
+Personal Recollections.
+
+BY ADAM BADEAU.
+
+
+The Friday before Booth was taken ill, I spent two or three hours with
+him in his rooms at the Players' Club, and while there it occurred to
+me that a picture, not of the actor merely, but of the man whom I had
+known for more than thirty years, in the glow of youth and the prime
+of manhood, down to the weary invalid, stricken before his time, in
+the characters that were not assumed--of husband, father, brother,
+son, and friend--would have an interest far beyond any critical
+analysis of his performances or historical account of his engagements.
+He did not object to my painting him as I had known him in the most
+intimate relations of his life--an actor is always used to being
+described and criticised--and he gave me incidents and information,
+all that I sought. Thus in what I have to say there will be nothing
+second-hand, nothing that he has not himself told me at one time or
+another, or that I have not observed in the friendship of a lifetime.
+
+I first met him when he was twenty-three, and I only twenty-five years
+old, and from that time till his marriage and my own entrance into the
+army we were as intimate as it is possible for two young men to be. I
+have the right, therefore, to tell what I shall unfold, for he gave it
+to me, and I have a further right in the certainty that nothing I can
+tell will depreciate his fame. If I portray all that I know, no one
+who reads will fail to think more highly and tenderly of the nature
+that was cloaked under Richard and Iago, suggested perhaps by points
+in Othello and Lear, but only really indicated in Hamlet, the
+melancholy, moody, dreamy, filial, tender Dane.
+
+He was born in 1833, in the night of the historical meteoric
+display--the "star-shower," he always called it. His father was a
+famous actor in the parts which the son so often played. I never saw
+the elder, but others assured me he possessed a tragic genius perhaps
+at times even more tremendous than that of the Booth I knew. He was an
+Englishman, and the rival of Edmund Kean. The family tradition is that
+he was driven from London by a cabal of Kean's admirers, and came to
+America in 1821, almost immediately after his marriage.
+
+Junius Brutus Booth must have been an extraordinary person off the
+stage; erratic almost to insanity, gloomy, given to fits of
+passion, but full of warm affections; a man with a temper almost
+uncontrollable, yet more often morose than violent, who refused to
+play, even when announced, unless he was in the vein, and walked
+the streets for hours after acting, and sometimes before. His wife
+for years accompanied him to the theatre, acting as dresser, and
+Edwin was taken with them. He thus received his first impressions of
+the stage when he was three or four years old. The wife remained in
+the dressing-room during the play, and when the child grew sleepy
+he was put to bed in a chest of drawers that held his father's
+wardrobe. If he wakened he had the theatrical wigs and paint-pots
+for his toys. A few years later he took his mother's place and
+dressed his father for the stage.
+
+[Illustration: _From photo by F. Gutekunst._
+
+_Copyright by F. Gutekunst, Philadelphia._]
+
+There were several children, and three of the sons became actors. I
+asked him whether he was the favorite, but he said no: his father
+always preferred John Wilkes. Yet Edwin had the greatest influence
+with the tragedian when the gloomy fits came on, and followed him
+many a night through the streets to see that he got no harm. He
+could prevail on him to act when no other could, and often told me
+of his attempts to direct their wanderings so that they might reach
+the stage-door in time. He himself was melancholy and moody, and
+lived very much in the imagination. It must have been a strange
+spectacle--this erratic genius and his anxious child, both slightly
+formed, with the same wonderful piercing eyes, stumbling about the
+streets at dark, the boy trying to persuade the father, sometimes
+succeeding, sometimes failing altogether.
+
+The story of Edwin's first appearance on any stage has often been
+told. It was as Tressel to his father's Richard III. He was not yet
+sixteen and received no encouragement nor sign of approval from his
+strangely constituted parent, but a little later the two were walking
+in Broadway, when they met a Mr. Conway, an English actor well known
+to play-goers of the last generation. Booth stopped to talk, and
+Conway, who was pompous in speech, inquired rather elaborately:
+
+"Upon which of your sons do you intend to confer your mantle?"
+
+The great player did not reply in words, but laid his hand on Edwin's
+head with a sort of solemnity, perhaps suggested by Conway's tone. The
+lad attached little significance to the action at the moment, but
+afterward felt certain that his father meant all that the gesture
+implied. I asked him how old he was when this occurred. "Only a
+stripling," he said, "about as high as the top of that candle," and he
+pointed to the mantelpiece.
+
+"Why," I exclaimed, "you are not as high as that now."
+
+"Ah! but I wore a hat," he replied; "and my father had to reach up to
+put his hand on me. I was taller than he."
+
+He first played Richard III. at the old Chatham Street Theatre in New
+York, as a substitute for his father, who either could not be found or
+refused to act. When the manager learned this fact he said to Edwin:
+"Then you must play Richard." The lad, just seventeen, was naturally
+unwilling, but he knew the text from having heard his father so often
+in the part, and their figures were not unlike. The assistants dressed
+him in his father's clothes, and he made up his face as like as
+possible to the great actor in Richard III. The audience was surprised
+when he appeared, but allowed him to go on, and he must have played
+with a certain degree of power, for he was called out at the end of
+the first act, and went through the entire exacting tragedy. When the
+play was over he hastened home and found his father, who offered
+neither comment nor inquiry. In this way the strange pair went on,
+leading a life as curious as any of the mimic ones they portrayed on
+the stage; for Edwin now played at times, even in prominent parts, but
+made no especial mark, being dwarfed, of course, by his father's
+superlative ability.
+
+In 1852 they went to California, but the wayward elder remained only a
+few months, then suddenly returned to the Atlantic States, leaving
+Edwin behind with his brother Junius, also an actor of some
+prominence. The brothers played together occasionally, but the times
+were rough and their success was small. Edwin was soon reduced to the
+hard straits of a strolling player's life: borrowing a few dollars now
+and then, walking hungry through mountain snows, living sometimes in a
+ranch, sometimes on the pittance of a stock-actor's salary, but
+sometimes making a hit, drawing crowded houses and filling his purse
+for a while.
+
+In November, 1852, he got word of the death of his father, a terrible
+blow to him, whose relations with the great actor were so peculiar.
+Throughout his life he retained the liveliest memories of his father's
+character and presence. He liked to talk of him, and spent hours with
+me describing the peculiarities that left so profound an impression on
+him. But though he saw their strangeness, the reverent tone in which
+he told of them was always marked.
+
+Doubtless he inherited the dramatic genius and some of the temperament
+of his parent. He was not so wildly passionate on the stage, and his
+temper was never so uncontrollable, but his brooding melancholy, the
+sensitiveness of his nature, the depth of his affections, the quaint
+humor so strange in a tragic actor, his vivid imagination--many,
+indeed, of his especial gifts and faults--were unquestionably
+transmitted with his blood by him who was at once the author of his
+physical being and the begetter of his genius. The likeness extended
+to feature and gesture. I have a picture of the father given me by the
+son, which might easily be taken for one of Edwin in Richard III.; and
+older play-goers always declared that in the great tragic scenes the
+son recalled, in tone and look and power, the peculiar magnetic
+quality that made the elder so remarkable. I have thought sometimes
+that the awful bursts of passion of his younger days were more
+effective even than the elaborate manner of his later art. He told me
+more than once that his life-long friend and comrade, Joseph
+Jefferson, often warned him against refining away his power, and
+thought the classic finish hardly compensated for the natural
+intensity which it replaced.
+
+His feeling for his father certainly added to the power of his
+performance of Hamlet. His greatest scenes in this tragedy were those
+with the ghost, and when Booth addressed the shade, and exclaimed:
+
+            "I'll call thee Hamlet,
+  King, _Father_, royal Dane,"
+
+there was a pathos in the word "father" which those who ever heard him
+utter it must recall. He dropped on one knee as he spoke it, and bowed
+his head, not in terror, but in awe and love, and tender memory of the
+past; he had a feeling that he was actually in the presence of that
+weird shade whom he had known on earth, and he was not afraid.
+
+The fatherless son remained in California, playing with varied
+success, sometimes as leading-man with Miss Heron, Laura Keene, or
+Mrs. Forrest Sinclair, sometimes as a star, sometimes in the stock
+company of those days, taking any part to which he was assigned. The
+experience was doubtless valuable to him, and he acknowledged that he
+owed to it much of his ease on the stage, his familiarity with the
+business, his self-possession under all circumstances, and his
+readiness in emergencies.
+
+During his stay on the Pacific Coast he once visited the Sandwich
+Islands, and with an impromptu company gave a few performances. He had
+great trouble in announcing his plays, for the boys who were employed
+to post the bills ate up all the paste; but the houses were full, and
+the audience included the king. The court, however, was in mourning,
+and His Majesty could not be seen in front, so a chair was draped with
+theatrical robes behind the scenes, and there the real king applauded
+the mimic one in "Richard III." The throne was needed for the
+coronation scene, and Kamehameha kindly abdicated for that occasion.
+In 1851 young Booth, as he was now called, returned to the Eastern
+States and played in Baltimore, Richmond, Boston--everywhere with
+great success. He was at once recognized as the dramatic descendant of
+his father, and the future head of the American stage.
+
+In May, 1857, he entered upon his first engagement in New York, and on
+one of the earlier nights I strolled into the theatre while he was
+playing Richard III. I had seen his name in the bills, but he was
+heralded as the "Hope of the Living Drama," and I had no great
+expectations from such an announcement. But I was struck at once with
+his dramatic fire, his grace, his expressive eye and mobile mouth, his
+natural elocution, and the decided genius he displayed. I remember
+even now, after the lapse of thirty-six years, the prodigious effect
+in the fourth act, when Richard exclaims:
+
+            "What do they in the North
+  When they should serve their sovereign in the West?"
+
+His whole face and form were ablaze with expression--literally
+transfigured; and his voice embodied a majestic terrible rage that
+electrified the listeners. Men rose in all parts of the house and
+shouted with delight. I had seen Rachel and Forrest and Cushman and
+Grisi then, and I have seen Bernhardt and Irving and Salvini and
+Ristori since, but I never saw or heard on the stage anything more
+tremendous than the picture he presented and the passion he portrayed
+in his youth in Richard III.
+
+I went the next night and the next, and found the fascination
+increase. I saw him in Petruchio, Brutus, Hamlet, Richelieu, Lear,
+Iago, Claude Melnotte, Sir Giles Overreach, Romeo, and Pescara. He was
+uneven and fitful in everything, but in every part he played he did
+something that no other actor could rival. His youth, too, had a
+charm; the very crudeness of his acting gave a certain interest--it
+left room for anticipation. I was very much attracted by the stage at
+that time, so I called on young Booth and told him what I thought of
+his acting. He had plenty of admirers, but my enthusiasm seemed to
+touch him, and we struck up a friendship at once. At the end of a week
+he consented to spend Sunday with me; and from that time dated a
+peculiar intimacy. I had a good deal of leisure and could pass my days
+as well as nights in his company, and I knew no greater pleasure than
+he gave me, either on or off the stage. He was not then a finished
+scholar, nor by any means the great artist that he afterward became,
+and I was anxious that he should be both. I used to hunt up books and
+pictures about the stage, the finest criticisms, the works that
+illustrated his scenes, the biographies of great actors, and we
+studied them together. We visited the Astor Library and the Society
+Library to verify costumes, and every picture or picture-gallery in
+New York, public or private, that was accessible. He discussed his
+parts with me, and with the conceit of youth I often ventured to
+differ with him on points in his art where he should have been an
+authority. Often we quarrelled all day about an interpretation or a
+rendering, and I went to the theatre at night to be convinced that he
+was right and I was wrong. Sometimes he gave me a private box, and I
+took notes of the performance, and of the criticisms or changes that
+occurred to me. Next day we went over them together, and at night he
+would play Richard or Iago according to my suggestions--perhaps as
+much to gratify me as because he thought my judgment correct.
+
+Oftener I went to his dressing-room. It was very fascinating to watch
+the face of the character he was to play grow and vary beneath his
+hand. The character itself seemed to grow at the same time. When we
+entered at the stage door he was my friend--"Ned," I always called
+him; but as the paint and the cotton eyebrows, the wig and the tights,
+were put on, the stage personage appeared; and when Hamlet or Romeo
+was ready his manner assumed all the grace and dignity of the Prince
+or the Montagu. After he had played a scene or two the transformation
+was complete, and lasted till the stage clothes were taken off.
+
+How completely he personated the characters that he assumed I can
+testify from comparison with what may be called his originals, the
+actual Hotspurs and Hamlets, the soldiers and princes, of the real
+world. One night in Louisiana before a battle I was with General T. W.
+Sherman while he was giving orders to his officers and aides-de-camp.
+It was nearly midnight, and there was to be an attack at dawn. First
+came in one messenger, then another, next the leader of the advance,
+last the captain of the reserves. The night was warm and the tent was
+thrown open; a candle burned on a table within, while the general
+paced up and down in the darkness outside. There was a hush and a
+bustle combined, a subdued intensity and a dramatic haste, as the
+commander gave his different orders and received his successive
+subordinates, that brought to my mind at the moment the tent scene in
+"Richard III." I thought, just then, "How like all this is to what I
+have seen on the stage." Yet Booth had never witnessed actual war.
+
+In the same way in Europe: I often thought of him when princes and
+sovereigns were holding levees or processions, receiving homage or
+conferring honors; no Guelph or Bourbon of them all went through his
+part with greater dignity or grace than the young American who had
+never been at court; and sometimes the magic of genius arrayed him in
+a majesty which all the reality of their grandeur could not inspire.
+
+There was one character, however, that he could not play--the lover.
+He was the poorest of Romeos, and he knew it. He looked the part, of
+course, in his youth; the women always wanted to see him play it, and
+the actresses all wanted to be Juliet; but there was a lack of
+tenderness in his eye, and of ardor in his tone; even the gestures
+were tame. He was not anxious or persuasive enough; he was too
+confident, or too indifferent. The only point in the play where he
+rose to his usual level was in the fight with Tybalt; but then there
+was killing to be done, and this was passion of a different sort--this
+was tragedy. Then he became inspired, and looked for a moment like one
+of the demi-gods in Homer's battles. But in the scenes with the friar
+and with Juliet, even in the balcony scene, he was comparatively
+spiritless. Whether he was not actually a good lover, or whether he
+felt a certain delicacy about love-making in public, the fact remains
+that he was always more effective in parts that represent harsh or
+violent emotions than in tender ones with women.
+
+So, too, though he had a keen sense of humor, and was full of jokes
+and funny stories off the stage, and told them with a genuine comic
+power, he could not act a comic part. I once saw him in "Little
+Toddlekins," in white trousers and a high hat, and I never wanted to
+see him in farce again. Even in high comedy he was not so interesting
+as in tragedy. Benedick himself was not to his taste, and his nearest
+approach to success in comedy was as Don Caesar de Bazan; but there the
+fascination was in his superb appearance and irresistible grace quite
+as much as in dramatic power. His Don Caesar, however, was a wonderful
+picture, an embodied romance. He delighted in the caustic speeches of
+Shylock or Hamlet, or the irony of Iago, but these can hardly be
+called comedy. His Petruchio was a game of romps; but it was Donatello
+romping with Miriam, or Bacchus with Ariadne.
+
+Yet, I repeat, he was bubbling over with a grim sort of humor in real
+life, like that which Shakespeare sprinkles over his tragedies. Behind
+the scenes he would mock and gibe at himself, had odd remarks to make
+about his face or his costume, and was alive with waggeries and
+witticisms. I once pulled aside his robes in Richelieu as he sat
+smoking between the acts, and he shrank back and screamed, "How dare
+you, sir?" in a shrill tone, exactly like a woman. The next moment he
+was the stately cardinal again.
+
+I was very anxious that Booth should receive a social recognition.
+Thirty years ago actors had not overleaped the barriers which had
+existed for centuries, to anything like the extent we know at present,
+and I wanted him to meet people of distinction, to hold the position
+which Garrick once occupied in England; but he hardly shared my
+ambition for him. If people wanted him they had to seek him, and even
+then were not sure of getting him. Social attentions sometimes
+gratified, but quite as often bored him. But his genius was so
+positive and so attractive, that the most prominent people all over
+the country courted his society. I had the pleasure of putting up his
+name at the Century Club, where he was more than cordially welcomed.
+The wits, the scholars, artists, authors, all were glad to know the
+man who had given them so refined a pleasure. Bancroft, Bryant,
+Curtis, and their families, Sumner, Mrs. Ward Howe, men and women of
+the first social position, as well as cultivation, were his personal
+friends, even at that early day. But he seemed indifferent to his
+fame.
+
+He had no trace of personal vanity. He said to me once he only cared
+for his good looks as the tools of his trade. Hundreds of women flung
+themselves at him in those days; they sent him notes in verse and
+prose, flowers, presents of jewels, shawls, feathers, to wear on the
+stage; they asked for appointments; they invited him to their houses,
+they offered to go to his; but he cared nothing for any of them.
+Sometimes they amused, but more often disgusted him. More than once he
+saved some foolish child from what might have been disgrace, and sent
+her home to her family. And he never injured a pure woman in his life.
+Off the stage he had no care for his looks; even in his youth his
+dress was more than plain; he was positively indifferent to his
+appearance.
+
+He always continued to have fits of sadness and silence; a feeling
+that evil was hanging over him, that he could not come to good. These
+moods would pass, but would return. Still, when he inclined to talk he
+was profoundly interesting. He had a wonderful fund of stories, and
+recollected the most minute and the most salient circumstances,
+showing the actor's power of observation. He studied character
+incessantly; not deliberately, but because he could not help seeing
+peculiar traits of character or peculiar circumstances. He acted all
+his stories, comic or tragic, without meaning to do it, and often just
+as well off as on the stage. I used to get him to make the faces he
+did on the stage, to look like Richelieu in the "curse of Rome," or
+Richard in "What do they in the North?" But it was only when he was in
+a very good humor that he would do this. Once or twice he painted his
+face to assume his father's appearance.
+
+But he hated to act off the stage, and even at rehearsal seldom raised
+his voice above the conversational tone, or struck an attitude. I
+often went to rehearsal with him and wondered at the calmness of his
+tones when he struck down Iago, or smothered Desdemona. One morning in
+Buffalo I missed him when we started, and followed him to the theatre;
+I entered at the stage door and went to the wings, looking for him. It
+was a minute or two before I recognized him, with a high hat and a
+cane, reciting passages from "Macbeth." But that night he was more
+tremendous than ever. His first entrance in the play he made by
+leaping from the rocks, as he exclaimed, "So foul and fair a day I
+have not seen"; and it was the very Highland thane that came upon the
+scene--full of his future dignity and oppressed by the feeling of Fate
+that fills this tragedy as it does the plays of Euripides. That
+feeling, indeed, almost illustrates the depression that settled over
+his nature at intervals, and seemed a premonition of some awful
+future. It was appalling to witness, and must have been still more
+appalling to endure. Doubtless he inherited it from his father. It was
+like a veil that shrouded him from other mortals, and he walked behind
+it, apart. He strove to describe his emotions at such times to me, for
+he wanted me to know all he felt; but the effort was like those sad
+ones of his later days, when he attempted to utter words and gave only
+inarticulate sounds. I cannot portray him unless I make this sadness
+apparent; it was so strange and weird.
+
+And yet this introspective, distant man, so old when he was young,
+so cold though gifted with every personal charm--was a warmly
+affectionate son, devoted to his mother, and generous to his family;
+he lived with his mother and sister for years, and provided for them
+after his marriage; he lent money not only to his brothers, but to
+hosts of friends, actors and others, for his profession brought him
+in large sums, and he gave away much in charity, especially to
+actors. His friendships, though steadfast, were not usually ardent
+or demonstrative. He who was gifted with such wonderful power to
+express the emotions of others was often unable or unwilling to give
+utterance to his own. When he was called out after the play, the
+man who had just enthralled an audience as Richard or Othello, or
+hurled the imprecations of Richelieu or Lear, stood modest and
+shrinking, only able to stammer a few words of thanks in his own
+person, on the very boards where he was most at home.
+
+He was not a good hater; when he was injured he felt it keenly, and I
+am not sure that he ever forgave a wrong, but the memory of it was
+not always keen, and I doubt if he ever revenged himself--he relented
+when it came to inflicting pain. In his business relations he more
+than once fell into foul hands, and he had himself little business
+faculty; but he was slow in making reprisals, even if opportunity
+offered. For he had a noble, gentle nature; I never knew him do a mean
+or vulgar thing. He was no backbiter; he refrained, even with me, from
+hostile criticism of other actors. I sometimes drew out opinions that
+were not favorable, but he never offered them, and always seemed to
+utter them unwillingly, as if he would not refuse to tell me what he
+thought, and yet was loath to speak severely of a brother artist.
+
+No one ever charged him with desertion of a friend or backwardness in
+time of need; and I have known of sacrifices that he made for others,
+greater than most men are capable of. He submitted to much from some
+members of his family, because he deemed it his duty, or from
+affectionate pity, and endured even cruel wrongs rather than resent
+them publicly. He was most averse to bringing his private affairs
+before the world, and disliked to extend the publicity of the stage to
+his every-day life. His friendships in his youth were almost confined
+to members of his own profession. Joseph Jefferson, and John Sleeper
+Clarke, who married his sister, were always very close to him, and in
+later years, Barrett. In time, however, he had many associates among
+artists and cultivated men, who naturally sought his company, and some
+of these he regarded as personal friends.[1]
+
+  [1] His three executors, Messrs. Benedict, Bispham, and McGonigle,
+      were, I suppose, as intimate with him as any one in later years;
+      he certainly showed them the most absolute confidence in his
+      will, and for years had consulted them on the management of his
+      affairs. Mr. McGonigle married the sister of his first wife.
+
+I once visited with him the place where he was born. It was a
+farmhouse twenty-five or thirty miles from Baltimore. We drove out in
+a one-horse vehicle, and he was Phaeton. The house was partly
+furnished but unoccupied, and an old negro in an outbuilding gave us
+the keys. His father's library remained, and a part of his stage
+wardrobe, and we spent hours ransacking them both, studying old
+play-bills, even English ones of his father, examining rare copies of
+Shakespeare, and trying on trappings of Shylock or Lear. I made him
+put on a wig and act the parts for a single auditor. He was very
+complaisant that day, or night rather, for we sat up till late into
+the morning, and then made beds out of Caesar's mantle and Macbeth's
+robes. He picked out three volumes of Shakespeare which he had used in
+playing, full of his own stage directions written in, and variations
+of the text, and gave them to me as a memento of the visit, inscribing
+some lines from one of the sonnets. It was Verplanck's illustrated
+edition, and some of the plates were marked: "Form this picture." I
+remember afterward noticing that he made the picture on the stage.
+
+Many a night in those days we sat together till morning, for he had
+the actor's habit of turning night into day. Playing till nearly
+midnight, and supping still later, the excitement of the stage kept
+him awake afterward, and he never wanted to go to bed. He was never
+more animated in thought and look and gesture than after acting. Of
+course, he rose late, and during an engagement his only leisure hours
+were one or two in the afternoon; for in those early days he went
+regularly to rehearsal. That was before the era of long runs, and he
+played a range of parts in each engagement, changing them nearly every
+night. He sometimes slept after his early dinner, so as to be
+refreshed and ready for evening.
+
+Then there were the painters and sculptors and photographers, always
+one or two in every town, who wanted to take him, either in a popular
+part, or "in his habit as he lived." He never dined out while he was
+playing, except on Sundays, and a walk or a drive was almost his only
+exercise or amusement; there was not time for more; he had to reserve
+himself for the night. For he had to work when other men played; his
+work was their amusement. It was a life utterly unlike that of other
+men, and it is not strange that his character was unlike theirs. He
+was exposed to the temptations of youth, and he had his peculiar
+faults, but no gross vices, and he did no harm or wrong to man or
+woman--ever, that I knew. Of how many can this be said?
+
+In 1860 he married Miss Mary Devlin, a young actress, who retired from
+the stage as soon as she became engaged to him. She was a sweet gentle
+woman, of great natural refinement, and every way fit to be his wife.
+A year before he had told me he meant to marry, and I encouraged this
+intention. I thought he would be happier, that he needed the constant
+companionship and solace of a wife's society, though I knew that
+marriage must, to a certain extent, disturb the intimacy which I
+valued and enjoyed so highly. No man could be so intimate with two
+people at once as he had been with me. They were married at the
+clergyman's house on the afternoon of July 7. He and I went together
+to the simple ceremony; there were no other witnesses except his
+wife's sister and her husband and John Wilkes Booth. After it was
+over, Wilkes threw his arms about Edwin's neck and kissed him.
+
+In a week Booth wrote to me and wanted me to join them at Niagara.
+They had a cottage on the Canada side, and there I spent two weeks of
+his honeymoon with my friend. He was most anxious to show me that his
+marriage had made no difference in his feeling toward me, and his wife
+was quite as anxious that I should perceive none. In the autumn Booth
+played in New York, and I was with him almost as much as ever. We sat
+up late into the night as of old, and Mrs. Booth was often so good as
+to leave us together. I had the pleasure of accompanying them to
+distinguished houses, for Mrs. Booth was much invited, as well as he,
+and bore herself with quiet grace and modest dignity, as "to the
+manner born." We continued our studies, too. Mrs. Booth was as anxious
+as I for the artistic success of her husband; she and I went to the
+play together and discussed his performances. Their union was complete
+and their happiness unalloyed.
+
+But the currents of our lives ran different ways. In 1861 I entered
+the army and Booth went to England. His success in London at this
+time was not marked; he could not obtain the theatre he wanted, and
+English feeling just then was hostile to Americans. He played only a
+short engagement, and it was not until the second or third week that
+he made any impression. Then his Richelieu created a sensation, but it
+was late in the season, and he only acted a few nights afterward. In
+December his only child, Edwina, was born at Fulham, England.
+
+He returned to America early in 1862, and in September I was passing
+through New York and went to see them. I found the same dear friend I
+had known of old, with a sweet tender woman by his side, and a child
+of nine months playing on the floor. Mrs. Booth made me remark that
+the little one, creeping in its play, fell instinctively into the
+attitude of Richard III. in the terrible fight with Richmond; and the
+likeness was laughable. I left the same day for New Orleans, happy for
+this glimpse at their domestic happiness.
+
+They took a house in Boston, and the next year, in February, 1863,
+Booth was playing in New York, having left his wife at home because of
+her delicate health. During a performance at the Winter Garden a
+despatch was handed him, summoning him to her side. He left at the
+close of the play, but before he could reach her the dearest thing on
+earth to him was gone forever. The shock almost unbalanced his mind.
+His wife had been all that a perfect wife could be to a man of his
+peculiar temperament and needs. She sustained him, encouraged him,
+soothed him when the sad moods came on, and exorcised the evil spirit
+absolutely. She inspired his work, and comforted him in weariness,
+trouble, or physical pain. He wrote me, at once, the saddest letter I
+ever received. He was crushed, and saw no hope, no reason for living.
+The black cloud that she had lifted was lowered again; not even his
+child at first could interest or distract him. But he turned to me in
+his bereavement, for I had known her, and I did what I could to
+comfort him; at least, I could grieve with him.
+
+The young wife was buried at Mount Auburn, near Boston, at a spot
+which they had selected together. He built a tomb in which both
+were to lie; it was lined with brick, and when her remains were
+transferred, before the coffin was lowered Booth jumped into the grave
+as Hamlet did into Ophelia's. He joined her there last June, after
+thirty years.
+
+In May, 1863, I was seriously wounded, and it was his turn to solace
+me. I lay in hospital for many weeks, and he wrote me constantly. In
+July I was taken to New York, and arrived just before the riots of
+that year. I was carried to Booth's house. He and his brother Wilkes
+bore me to Edwin's bed, which he gave up for me, and there I was left
+alone with my distracted friend. I may not disclose all that he said
+in his grief, but, with his unusual nature, it can be imagined. He was
+inclined to think the spirit near him of her who had been so much to
+him in life, and I said nothing to disturb the impression. I remained
+at his house until it was possible to remove me to the country; both
+he and his brother dressed my wounds, and tended me with the greatest
+care.
+
+I saw much of him during the months of my convalescence, and early in
+1865, when I was again taken to New York after an attack of camp
+fever; Wilkes Booth was once more at his brother's house. He was
+excessively handsome, even physically finer than Edwin, but less
+intellectual in his manliness. I never saw him on the stage, but under
+Edwin's roof I thought him very captivating, though not so thoroughly
+distinguished as his greater brother.
+
+Two months later came the terrible event which plunged the nation, and
+especially the Booth family, into such awful sorrow. Edwin was playing
+in Boston, but at once gave up his engagement and returned to his home
+in New York. Numbers of the most eminent people hastened to assure him
+of their sympathy and their belief in his loyalty. He had indeed been
+stanch for the Union, and the only vote he ever cast was for Lincoln
+in 1864. But he was overwhelmed by this fresh misfortune, this new
+cloud that had settled on his house. His brother Junius and his
+brother-in-law were thrown into prison in Washington, and he felt
+himself an object of suspicion. I had returned to the field, and was
+in Richmond when the news reached me. I wrote to him at once, but my
+letter was withheld. All letters to him for awhile were kept back, and
+I suppose especially any from Richmond. I could not leave my post
+immediately, and it was a month or more before I reached New York,
+where I went, of course, direct to him. The first shock was over, but
+the old gloom was greater than ever.
+
+He told me he had seen nothing in his brother to excite suspicion, and
+I have always believed that the awful act was the result of a
+disturbed brain. It was so theatrical in plan and performance; the
+conspiracy, the dagger, the selection of a theatre, the brandishing of
+the weapon, the cry "_Sic Semper Tyrannis_" to the audience--all was
+exactly what a madman brought up in a theatre might have been expected
+to conceive; a man, too, of this peculiar family, the son of Junius
+Brutus Booth, used all his life to acting tragedies. He had not only
+nursed me tenderly, a soldier wounded for the cause he should have
+hated, but in all the exciting period of the riot he said no word that
+indicated sympathy with the South. He went out daily to inquire the
+news, and was indignant at the outrages he reported; he even assisted
+to shield my negro servant who remained hidden in the cellar for
+nearly a week. Two months before the end of the war he wished me well
+when I set out to rejoin Grant.
+
+After a few months Booth returned to the stage, and was welcomed back
+with an enthusiasm which showed that not only his genius but his
+nobility of character, his elevation of thought, his refinement of
+manner had all been appreciated. In 1869 he remarried--this time a
+Miss McVicker, an actress of Chicago, whom I never saw. She left the
+stage upon her marriage. In the same year he opened Booth's Theatre.
+His pecuniary success had been very brilliant, and he had long been
+ambitious to build and control a theatre where the most elevating
+influences of the drama should be exemplified. It was a beautiful
+tribute to his art. Everything was done that taste and study and care
+and elaborate expenditure could accomplish, to produce the greatest
+plays in the most admirable manner; but Booth had no business talent,
+and some of those with whom he was brought into contact had a large
+share of this talent, and used it to injure or betray his interests.
+He lost largely, and finally was obliged to declare himself a
+bankrupt. He gave up all he had in the world, his personal and private
+property, his theatre, his library and theatrical wardrobe, and many
+treasures of his profession, and became once more a travelling star.
+His performances, however, proved more attractive than ever; he was
+soon able to repay all his creditors, and afterward remained a man of
+fortune.
+
+Meanwhile the vicissitudes of life had drifted us far apart. I was in
+Europe officially for many years, but in 1880 had a leave of absence.
+During the month of June a public breakfast was offered Booth at
+Delmonico's by many of the most eminent men in New York, and I then
+met him for the first time since 1867. After the breakfast I went to
+his rooms, and he put his arms around me and begged that we should be
+to each other all we had ever been. Each promised, and each kept his
+word.
+
+But he started for England a few days afterward, and it was not till
+the next year that I returned there. Then I saw much of him. He played
+this time with great success, at Irving's theatre. The great English
+actor gave him every facility; relinquished his house to him for a
+while, and treated him with a distinguished courtesy worthy of his own
+position as head of the British stage. Irving had been in the stock
+company that supported Booth during his first English engagement, but
+now they were equals, and played on alternate nights, and sometimes
+together, in Othello and Iago. Booth's houses were crowded with the
+most cultivated and important people in England; and his acting,
+despite a certain national jealousy, was by many pronounced superior
+to that of the Englishman. Invitations came to him from aristocratic
+quarters, in which his daughter was included; but his wife was in
+miserable health and unable to go at all into the world, or even to
+receive any one but her own family. This marred the gratification at
+his success, and in 1881, after lingering in great suffering, both for
+herself and those about her, the second wife of Edwin Booth also died.
+I had returned from Europe and passed the night after her funeral in
+his rooms at New York. His mother and sister also passed away, and his
+daughter married, so that he was left, in a great degree, alone.
+
+His profession, however, remained to him. It was about this time that
+he began those remarkable dramatic tours with Barrett which were more
+successful from a pecuniary point of view than any other of his
+enterprises. It is even said, by those competent to pronounce, that
+the financial results surpassed any known in the history of the stage.
+Everywhere he was recognized as the head of the American theatre. His
+acting was ripened and chastened by study and long experience, by the
+development of his own powers, and the opportunities he had enjoyed of
+comparison with his greatest foreign rivals. He was accepted as the
+equal in America of what Garrick had been in his palmiest days--the
+peer and companion of whatever was best in American society.
+
+It is four or five years since he conceived the idea of founding the
+Players' Club, and, having become a man of more than ordinary means,
+he was able to gratify this ambition. He bought and rebuilt a fine
+house in a desirable position in New York, and filled it with choice
+books and pictures and relics of the stage, and then invited men of
+distinction and culture to meet actors of character and ability on an
+equal footing. The club has been eminently successful, and for several
+years Booth, its founder and president, made it his home. He had a
+suite of rooms, modestly but tastefully furnished, and among his
+friends and books and pictures passed the last days of his life. When
+he wrote the extracts from the Shakespearian sonnets in the volume he
+gave me thirty years ago, I think he felt some consciousness of the
+ban that the world then put upon his profession, but he could not have
+retained the feeling, for there was no ban applied to him. Exclusive
+English aristocrats invited him and his daughter, and visited them in
+return; and Edwin Booth voted to admit Grover Cleveland to the Century
+Club, and invited General Sherman to become a member of the Players'.
+
+I was very much struck, on my return from Europe in 1881, with the
+dignity and composure which years of recognition had given to his
+bearing. The glowing beauty of his youth, of course, was gone, his
+features bore traces of his own sorrows and experiences, and besides
+were worn and hardened by those terrible passions of the stage which
+were for the time so real to him. I have indeed no doubt that it was
+the intense strain on brain and nerve which his acting demanded, and
+not any private grief or anxiety, that broke him down before his
+time.
+
+Years, however, had enhanced his innate nobility. He was always
+reverent to religion, and had warm friends among the clergy of various
+denominations. A Catholic priest and the Protestant Bishop of New York
+were among the first to call after his paralysis was known. I never
+heard him speak disrespectfully of sacred themes or of good women. His
+character in later years took on a softer phase; his irritability was
+rarer, indeed it almost disappeared, while the range of his
+friendships was wider.
+
+When he received a foreign actor who came to call on him, as they all
+did, or welcomed some distinguished visitor to his club, he did it
+with a calm dignity and gracious courtesy that was very natural and
+yet imposing, while his more intimate bearing when we were alone was
+inexpressibly confiding and affectionate, though more subdued than in
+the earlier days.
+
+In his acting also there was something of the same inevitable change
+that time brings to all things and all men; but to me he always
+remained the most powerful and consummate tragedian I have ever seen.
+Some of the old force may have faded, but it flashed out at intervals
+in every performance with all its ancient brilliancy.
+
+The last time that I saw him on the stage,
+
+                      "Last scene of all,
+  That ends this strange eventful history,"
+
+was also the last night that Barrett ever played. The piece was
+"Richelieu," and it seemed to me that Booth excelled himself in the
+finish of the earlier scenes and in the tempest of passion at the
+climax. During this engagement I went behind the scenes as I had used
+to go a quarter of a century before, and found all the old fascination
+still, subdued and softened by his more chastened dignity. But he
+played only a few times after his friend Barrett was stricken, and
+then his own ailings increased.
+
+After this I never met him out of his own rooms but once. I called
+just as he was about to try to walk, and he asked me to go with him.
+He had to be assisted to the door, and when he reached the street I
+offered him my arm. He took it and leaned heavily. He stumbled as he
+walked, and it took us half an hour to move around the block of
+buildings in which the club-house stands. Then he was tired, and
+wanted to go in, and I knew that my friend would not recover.
+
+In his rooms at the Players' Club I saw my last of him. For a year or
+two he seldom left them except to visit his daughter in town or
+country, or perhaps to accompany her to a play. But he spent many
+hours in her society and that of her husband and children--his
+greatest solace. I fortunately was near him during this period, and we
+often passed a morning talking of our early manhood or his later
+career.
+
+But there was something inexpressibly painful in the spectacle of him,
+whose physical faculties had been so inextricably bound up with the
+intellectual, whose bodily gifts had been the incarnation of passion
+and romance and poetry, his corporal charm the fit embodiment of a
+noble soul--to see him decay, his powers crumble and waste away; to
+see him decrepit, weary, worn, who had been alive with expression,
+captivating in bearing, majestic, terrible, tender, by turns. Only his
+eyes retained their marvellous beauty, like a lamp burning in a
+deserted temple, or the soul looking out through the windows of that
+body it was soon to leave.
+
+[Illustration: THE DEATH MASK OF EDWIN BOOTH.]
+
+Farewell! beloved spirit! Thou hast given tens, nay hundreds of
+thousands pleasure by thy genius, expressed for them the subtlest and
+most delicate thoughts and sublimest conceptions of the greatest of
+poets, elevated their imaginations, refined their fancy, charmed their
+taste, subdued their moods, and soothed their weary hours; and never
+once, in all thy art, suggested an impure or vicious thought, never
+stimulated an evil desire, nor insinuated a wanton or vulgar feeling.
+Thou hast done much to elevate the profession thou hast adorned; hast
+assisted the needy, hast stretched out a hand to aid the worthy in
+arriving at thy own position, and introduced thy brethren to the
+company which sought and welcomed thee. Thou hast been a loving son, a
+reverent, filial admirer of him whose mantle fell upon thee, a
+faithful, devoted husband, a brother worthy of the name, a tender,
+bountiful father, a loyal, stanch, confiding friend. The world has
+been happier and better for thy passage across its stage.
+
+
+
+
+BURGLARS THREE.
+
+BY JAMES HARVEY SMITH
+
+
+As a usual thing, when they cracked a crib, one of the three remained
+outside to warn with a whistle, or some other previously concerted
+signal, his companions inside. But on this occasion, when Jim Baxter
+opened the simple catch that fastened the woodshed door, and thence
+gained access to the interior of the house, Wilson Graham and Harry
+Montgomery followed softly after him. This breach of burglarious
+custom was probably due to the fact that the Braithwait mansion was in
+the suburbs, some distance from the road, and several hundred yards
+from the nearest house.
+
+Once inside, Mr. Graham lighted the gas, and it was then the work of a
+very few minutes to open the sideboard and subtract therefrom the
+family silver and place it in a bag brought for that purpose. While
+this operation was taking place, Montgomery made a tour of the upper
+rooms.
+
+"I don't exactly like to trust Harry up-stairs," remarked Baxter, in a
+surly tone, after he had securely tied the mouth of the bag. "He is
+too soft. Like as not he'll go and git sentimental over a picture or
+somethin', or maybe git a-thinkin' of his mother, and leave half the
+ornyments."
+
+Graham, who had just opened a pearl inlaid _secretaire_, and was
+possessing himself of numerous valuable trinkets, laughed softly, as
+he replied:
+
+"I don't think so, Jim. Only yesterday I gave the boy a good talking
+to, and he promised to attend strictly to business in future. You must
+remember he is young, and, unless we give him a chance, how is he to
+learn? Of course, if there was a young girl in the house--but there
+isn't," he added quickly, observing the wrathful frown on his
+companion's face. "I made certain that the only people who sleep in
+the house are Mr. Braithwait and the housekeeper, who is rather old
+and nearly deaf; the rest of the family are in Florida for their
+health. If Braithwait makes a disturbance I reckon Harry can settle
+him without any sentimental nonsense."
+
+"I'd settle him," muttered Baxter, surlily.
+
+"You're a savage, Jim," said Graham, reproachfully. "How often have I
+told you that there is no virtue in violence. Haven't I convinced you
+that the easy way is the safe way?"
+
+"Yah! Don't give me no more of that!" said Baxter, contemptuously. "I
+ain't no missionary."
+
+At this juncture, when the argument threatened to develop into a
+quarrel, peace was restored by the reappearance of the young burglar,
+carrying a considerable quantity of jewelry, loose and in boxes, while
+he softly whistled "M'Appari."
+
+"Not a bad haul," observed Graham, turning over the plunder as it lay
+on the table. "_Two_ watches?"
+
+"They're them little tickers what the girls carry," said Baxter,
+scornfully. "We won't get two dollars apiece for 'em."
+
+"Won't we, though!" said Graham, smiling. "They are gold, and there is
+an inscription on each; that means a fancy reward, or I don't know
+human feminine nature. Two brooches, a necklace--h'm--h'm--very good,
+indeed."
+
+"There was no money," remarked Harry, adjusting his necktie before the
+mirror, and giving his small blonde mustache a curl.
+
+"I expected as much," commented Graham, storing away the trinkets in
+his pockets. "Braithwait has a hundred with him, I dare say, but it
+isn't worth the risk. If we kill a man in the city it's soon
+forgotten, but in the suburbs it creates a regular panic. The
+neighbors hire detectives and follow a man all over creation, and you
+can't buy them off or compromise the matter--money is no object.
+That's why I keep telling Jim--"
+
+"Let up, will ye!" exclaimed Baxter, roughly. "I ain't killin' nobody,
+am I?"
+
+"Certainly not; but I only say----"
+
+[Illustration: "I AIN'T NO MISSIONARY!"]
+
+"Say nothin'! where's the feed box?"
+
+Mr. Graham groaned, and looked at his young accomplice in comical
+alarm.
+
+"I knew how it would be! Jim, these luncheons will be the ruin of us
+all some night."
+
+"Can't help it," retorted Baxter, doggedly. "It's a good four-mile
+walk from the city and as much back, and we hadn't anything but a
+snack for supper. A man's got to eat, and when I'm hungry----"
+
+"Well, well," said the other, with a gesture of impatience, "if it
+must be, it must. Harry, see to the wine, and we will find the
+substantials. Now, Jim, _do_ be careful of the dishes, and _don't_
+grunt and puff while you're eating. It's vulgar."
+
+Jim Baxter grunted and puffed at this, but made no other reply as he
+busied himself spreading the contents of the refrigerator on the
+dining-room table, while Harry from the sideboard produced a decanter
+of whiskey and three bottles of claret. There was a nice piece of cold
+ham, some tongue, cheese and pickles, bread and butter, anchovies and
+sardines, a bottle of olives, and the remains of an oyster pie.
+
+"Quite a lay-out," remarked Baxter, with a ravenous chuckle. "D'ye
+remember the house at Barleytown where there wasn't nothin' but graham
+crackers and winegar in the box?"
+
+"I should say so," exclaimed Graham, with a look of disgust.
+
+"Some people are too mean to live," returned Baxter, savagely. "Come,
+shove over that decanter, and let's pitch in. Fingers, gents, 'cause
+there ain't nothin' but silver knives and forks in this house, unless
+I take 'em out of the bag, which I ain't doin'. Here's luck!"
+
+"Excellent claret, Wilson," said the young burglar, holding his glass
+up to the light.
+
+"Genuine Medoc," returned Graham, with the air of a connoisseur.
+"That's the worst of this business; not one gentleman out of ten is a
+judge of wine. Now, the whiskey----"
+
+"The whiskey's all right," interrupted Baxter, curtly. "All whiskey's
+good; some's better'n others, but it's all good. Blow claret!"
+
+"No style about Jim," said Harry, with a smile that was half a sneer.
+
+"No, you bet there ain't," said Baxter, stolidly. "You oughter call me
+'Old Business,' 'cause that's what I am. Pass them pickles."
+
+It was a most interesting sight. At the head of the table sat Graham,
+a smooth-faced, well-fed man of forty, who might have passed for a
+prosperous banker, or a man living on an annuity; to his right
+reclined, rather than sat, young Montgomery, a spruce and slender
+fellow, with soft blue eyes, tremulous lips, and light hair neatly
+brushed; while opposite Graham sat Baxter, a coarse, shaggy, grimy man
+of uncertain age, with small, shifty eyes, a heavy beard, and a
+general air of brutal strength. Had it not been for the fact that each
+man wore his hat, and that the bag of stolen goods lay on one corner
+of the table, it might have been taken for a small stag party, Graham
+personating the host to perfection.
+
+The resemblance was lost, however, a moment later. The door leading to
+the back stairway, directly behind Jim Baxter, opened and revealed a
+spare man with long blonde whiskers, wearing gold eye-glasses, and a
+flowered dressing-gown.
+
+Graham was the first to see the intruder, and his exclamation of
+astonishment caused Baxter to turn his head. In an instant that worthy
+was on his feet, with a pistol in his hand. Graham was quicker,
+however, and before his companion could raise the weapon he seized his
+arm and pushed him aside.
+
+"No violence, Jim," he said, sternly.
+
+"I warn't goin' to shoot," growled Jim. "I was only goin' to give him
+a crack on the head."
+
+"I won't have it," returned Graham, authoritatively. "Sit down."
+
+Baxter put up his pistol and sat down. Graham then turned to the spare
+gentleman, who had not moved from the doorway during this episode.
+
+"Mr. Braithwait, I presume?"
+
+"That is my name," was the composed reply. "Burglars, I presume?"
+
+"The presumption is correct. Will you take a seat?"
+
+Mr. Braithwait sat down opposite young Montgomery, to whom he bowed
+gravely. There was then a moment of silence, broken by Graham, who had
+resumed his place at the head of the table.
+
+"I am sorry," said he, "you have made your appearance, as we can't
+very well apologize for our intrusion."
+
+"No, I suppose not," said Mr. Braithwait, smiling. "Yet I am rather
+pleased that I did come, since I always enjoy an unusual experience."
+
+"Glad you enjoy it," muttered Baxter; but no one listened to him.
+
+"I was aroused by the reflection of the gaslight in the upper hall,"
+explained Mr. Braithwait, "and I supposed that the housekeeper had
+left it burning--she has done so more than once. I came down to
+extinguish it. I heard voices in this room, and I entered."
+
+"At the risk of your life," observed Graham, with a significant glance
+at Baxter, who had resumed eating.
+
+"I did not think of that," said Mr. Braithwait, simply. "My life has
+been threatened so often--you know I am a railroad man--that I give
+little thought to the risk of an undertaking. Professionals, I
+suppose?"
+
+He looked at Montgomery, who nodded nonchalantly and lighted a
+cigarette.
+
+Mr. Braithwait coughed.
+
+"I wish you wouldn't," he said, deprecatingly. "Apart from the looks,
+I can't bear cigarette-smoke. There's a box of very fine Conchas on
+the sideboard. Thank you"--to Graham--"if you will join me?--thank you
+again."
+
+Graham laughed with genuine enjoyment, yet without vulgarity.
+
+"I like you," he said, frankly, "and I am sorry that, in the line of
+business----" He waved his cigar at the bag.
+
+[Illustration: "EXCELLENT CLARET," SAID HARRY.]
+
+"Of course, yes, of course, I know that can't be helped," said Mr.
+Braithwait, smoking away easily, "and that's another reason why I'm
+glad I came. I suppose you have in that bag some trinkets belonging to
+my wife and daughters that have a special value as mementos. I hear
+that you gentlemen are frequently forced to sell your plunder at a
+simply ruinous sacrifice, and it occurred to me that if we could come
+to some arrangement--you understand?"
+
+"Perfectly," answered Graham. "It can be done, and I will open
+negotiations at an early date. Provided, of course," he added,
+severely, "that you play fair."
+
+"That is understood. As a business man I accept the situation. My loss
+is your gain."
+
+At this the youngest burglar broke silence for the first time.
+
+"You are a philosopher," he said, in a tone of admiration.
+
+"What sensible man is not?" responded Mr. Braithwait, cheerfully. "I
+suppose it is capable of proof that the accumulated wisdom of the
+ancients amounts simply to the homely proverb: 'What can't be cured
+must be endured.' My business is a sort of war, and I have my defeats
+as well as my victories. I must bear them both with equanimity."
+
+"So is ours," said the youngest burglar. "As Horace says in his
+'Epistles': 'Caedimur, et totidem plagis consumimus hostem.'"
+
+"Permit me," returned Mr. Braithwait, "to reply with Catullus: 'Nil
+mihi tam valde placeat, Rhamnusia virgo, quod temere invitis
+suscipiatur heris.'"
+
+Montgomery flushed slightly, and Baxter growled an incoherent protest
+against the use of foreign languages.
+
+"Of course, I do not claim that I enjoy being robbed," continued Mr.
+Braithwait, "but I realize that it is not as bad as it might be. Last
+week you would have caught me with two thousand in cash in the house,
+and last month you would have horribly scared my wife and daughters."
+
+"Not for worlds," murmured Mr. Montgomery.
+
+"Well, you might have done so--women have such a detestation of
+robbers, except when they are in jail. The pleasure of your visit--I
+hinted that I could extract pleasure from adversity--lies in the fact
+that it brings me in contact with a profession I have previously known
+only by hearsay. I suppose I may take it for granted you gentlemen are
+experts?"
+
+[Illustration: "NO VIOLENCE, JIM!"]
+
+"We've been there before," said Baxter, coarsely.
+
+"If an experience of fourteen years is any guaranty, then I am an
+expert," said Graham, with a certain air of pride in his tones. "Our
+friend there," nodding at Baxter, "has, I believe, been in the
+profession since childhood; while Mr."--indicating Montgomery with his
+cigar--"you'll excuse my not mentioning names?--is a beginner. A
+skilled workman, I admit, but this is only his second year."
+
+"I don't wonder that he"--and Mr. Braithwait glanced slightly at
+Baxter,--"remains in the business, but that you should follow the
+vocation for fourteen years surprises me greatly."
+
+"Indeed?" queried Graham, with perceptible stiffness. "Why?"
+
+"Because you appear to be a sensible man, and I should not think the
+business would pay. What is your annual income as a burglar?"
+
+"On an average, I should say three thousand a year."
+
+"And you are an expert! I receive six thousand a year, and I am only
+Assistant General Freight Agent, and have been but twelve years in the
+business. Then I may infer that these two gentlemen make much less
+than three thousand?"
+
+"I've seen the week when I didn't make hod-carrier's wages," growled
+Baxter, who had now finished eating, and was preparing to smoke a
+black wooden pipe.
+
+"You're not so sensible as I thought," rejoined Mr. Braithwait,
+frankly. "I can easily imagine a man exposing himself to dreadful
+dangers and cruel privations when there is a great prize in view. An
+explorer like Stanley, a pioneer like Pike or Fremont, a conqueror
+like Cortez, or a revolutionist like Washington, could well brave
+hardship and peril when success meant wealth as well as the
+plaudits of their fellow men. The early settlers of this and every
+other country, the gold hunters of '49, the pirates who ravaged the
+seas, all were actuated by the hope of a fortune at one swoop; but
+to risk prison, to say nothing of life itself, for a day laborer's
+wages!----"
+
+"But," spoke up Montgomery, quickly, "there is fame, if not fortune."
+
+"Pardon me. In what way?"
+
+"In the usual way. Who has not heard of Hickey, the man who cracked
+twenty banks before they tripped him up; Peters, the New England
+cracksman; Bronthers, the Chicago expert?"
+
+"I hope," said Mr. Braithwait, gently, "I won't offend you when I say
+I never heard of those gentlemen."
+
+"Is it possible!"
+
+"Honestly, I never did."
+
+"You have surely heard of Red Leary?"
+
+"I can't recall his name."
+
+"George Post? Louis Ludlum? Pete McCartney? Miles Ogle?"
+
+"Don't know them."
+
+"Perhaps," sarcastically, "you don't read the papers?"
+
+"Yes, I do, and I have a good memory. I can say without boasting that
+I have on my tongue's end all the professional, literary and artistic
+names in America, and many in Europe. In my library I have many
+biographies, but none of which a burglar is the theme, nor do I recall
+the name of a celebrated criminal, unless," pleasantly, "he has been
+hanged."
+
+"Yet there _are_ famous names in our profession," persisted the young
+burglar, somewhat sullenly.
+
+"Oh, yes," admitted Mr. Braithwait, taking a small drink of claret.
+"Literature has preserved Claude Duval, Jack Sheppard, Dick
+Turpin--all hung--Fra Diavolo, who was shot, and even our own James
+and Younger boys; and I have heard vaguely of one Billy the Kid
+somewhere out West. In a general sense, literature and the drama are
+saturated with bandits, brigands and outlaws, sometimes comical,
+sometimes heroic, but you will excuse me if I maintain that you stand
+on a different footing. Those fellows always had a poetical backing;
+somebody or something had driven them to their illegal calling, but
+you can scarcely make a similar claim."
+
+[Illustration: "WHAT IS YOUR ANNUAL INCOME AS A BURGLAR?"]
+
+"I don't know about that," protested Baxter, doggedly. "Who'd give
+_me_ a job?"
+
+"Did you ever try?"
+
+"No; nor I ain't goin' to!"
+
+"As I supposed. Honest work is plentiful, therefore you are absolutely
+without excuse. No one has usurped your name and fortune, stolen your
+ancestral home or intended bride; neither have you been outlawed for
+your political or religious beliefs, or unjustly accused of crime."
+
+The big burglar looked extremely blank at this pointed address, and
+took a grumbling drink of whiskey. Mr. Graham promptly came to his
+companion's relief.
+
+"You have made out a _prima facie_ case, as the lawyers say, but the
+fact remains that there _is_ a fascination in the life we lead, and
+some romance. There is mystery about it, for one thing, and danger
+for another. Then we certainly have the sympathy of a certain class of
+society, when we are prisoners."
+
+"Is not the sympathy to which you allude confined to murderers,
+especially those who kill their wives?"
+
+"As a rule, yes," admitted Graham; "but the people, who have sympathy
+for murderers, generally have such a superabundance that they can
+spare some for us. I have known burglars to receive six bouquets in a
+single day, and from real ladies, too."
+
+"I am afraid," said Mr. Braithwait, with a smile, "that the sympathy
+extended with such small discretion has little market value. But let
+us pass that by and glance at the disagreeable side of your
+profession. For instance, this night you have walked from the city,
+the nearest point of which is three miles."
+
+"We come four," growled Baxter.
+
+"Well, four; and four back is eight. It could not have been a pleasant
+walk, as the night is cloudy and the roads are heavy from recent
+rains."
+
+"There warn't no choice," said Baxter, savagely. "We _had_ to walk."
+
+"There it is," said Mr. Braithwait, triumphantly, "you _had_ to walk.
+Now, I don't have to walk; I ride in the train or my carriage at any
+hour of the day or night. No honest man has to walk, if he has
+money--and, of course, you have."
+
+"The point," admitted Mr. Graham, reluctantly, "is well taken."
+
+"I feel certain of it. Nor is this the only instance in which your
+pleasure is marred by fear. The very fame for which you strive is a
+constant bar to your enjoyment. If you take lodging at a hotel you are
+ejected; you may be refused admittance to any respectable theatre; in
+any place of entertainment, except the very lowest, you cannot make a
+new acquaintance for fear he may be a detective plotting your capture;
+you are compelled to eat, drink, and sleep among vile associates and
+vulgar surroundings; and all for a pitiful three thousand a year! By
+heaven! it is worth thirty!"
+
+"You use strong language, sir," exclaimed the youngest burglar,
+rising and pacing the floor in an agitated way.
+
+"I do," admitted the master of the house, "because my business sense
+is outraged by your stupidity."
+
+"Stupidity!" echoed Graham, sharply.
+
+"That is the word," returned Mr. Braithwait, sternly. "Your profession
+requires acuteness, courage, skill, caution, and endurance. Gentlemen,
+these are admirable traits, and with them you might be anything but
+burglars. The banking institutions, railways, private and civic
+corporations, are eager for such men; they pay them large wages and
+grant them great privileges. The governments, State and National, want
+such men, and are looking for them, while they are skulking through
+city alleys or walking miry roads at midnight. Gentlemen, with all
+your qualifications, you lack the one essential to success--common
+sense."
+
+"Permit me," said Graham, leaning over the table and speaking with
+much force, "to call your attention to the fact that we are bright
+enough to keep society eternally on the defensive."
+
+"Granted," said Mr. Braithwait.
+
+"Small in numbers though we are, we necessitate the employment of a
+police force in every village, town, and city in the Union, to say
+nothing of special constables and private watchmen. We force every
+bank and corporation to sink thousands in costly safes, locks, and
+other safeguards, and no householder is ever free from apprehension on
+our account. We are one against many, so to speak, but we make the
+many tremble! Could we exercise this power without brains?"
+
+"Ay! could we?" supplemented Montgomery, with flashing eyes.
+
+"Granted again," said Mr. Braithwait, cheerfully, "but quite foreign
+to the point at issue. Society is terrorized through its inertness,
+and when society enters on an active warfare you gentlemen cannot make
+a show of resistance. And even under our present policy of passive
+resistance there is but one thing that will save a criminal from the
+eventual clutch of the law, and that is--death."
+
+The youngest burglar turned white and Baxter cursed softly.
+
+"You cannot, with all your brightness, commit a crime without leaving
+a trace," went on Mr. Braithwait, impassively, "and every modern
+appliance is a stumbling-block in your path. The modern bank safe,
+equipped with time-locks, is impregnable; the electric light has made
+our streets as safe by night as day; and the telegraph has lengthened
+the arm of justice until it encircles the globe."
+
+"And yet," retorted Graham, with a slight sneer, "_you_ have been
+robbed."
+
+"And yet I have been robbed," repeated Mr. Braithwait, calmly.
+"Without interfering sadly with my comfort and ease, I cannot make my
+house a bank or surround myself with an army of watchmen. And I don't
+like dogs. So I have been robbed. Yet"--Mr. Braithwait looked Mr.
+Graham quietly in the eye--"yet I am not entirely defenceless."
+
+"Hello!" said Baxter, breathing hard. "Have you been up to somethin'?"
+
+"You shall judge whether I have rightly accused you of lack of common
+sense. Before attacking this house, did you make yourself acquainted
+with the surroundings?"
+
+"I did," answered Graham, confidently.
+
+"Do you know that I am a railroad man?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"Did you notice a wire running through the woods at the rear of my
+house?"
+
+"No!" cried Graham, violently.
+
+"A strange oversight on your part. Very stupid. It is a telephone
+wire, and leads from my chamber above to my office in the city. Now
+for the application of my remarks. From the moment of your entrance I
+was aware of your movements, and instantly explained the situation to
+the night operator. He, of course, notified the police----"
+
+"And while you kept us engaged in conversation--" cried Graham,
+advancing threateningly.
+
+"The police were coming on a special train to my assistance," said Mr.
+Braithwait, taking a second cigar.
+
+"Damn you!" exclaimed Baxter, threateningly.
+
+"Stop!" cried Graham, interposing. "We have no time for that. Let us
+run!"
+
+"Don't!" said the host, warningly. "The house is surrounded, and you
+will certainly be shot. Accept the situation, as I did. You gentlemen
+have been my guests this evening, and I have been highly entertained.
+May I hope that the pleasure has been mutual?"
+
+Before anyone could answer, the door leading to the woodshed was
+thrown open, and four policemen appeared on the threshold. Montgomery
+sank helplessly into a chair. Baxter made a dash for the door,
+while Graham remained impassive, but all were alike handcuffed
+expeditiously.
+
+"Sir," said Graham, taking a cigar from the box, "our misfortune is
+directly due to the uncontrollable appetite of our companion, but none
+the less I congratulate you upon your ingenuity."
+
+"Thanks," said Mr. Braithwait. "Did I not tell you that you were
+stupid?"
+
+Mr. Graham bowed.
+
+"You have taught us a lesson," he said gravely. "I think it is time to
+abandon the business."
+
+"Well, I'll be----" Baxter gasped, and could say no more.
+
+"We are disgraced!" exclaimed the youngest burglar, bitterly.
+
+Mr. Braithwait waved his hand.
+
+"I am sleepy," he said, with a yawn. "Gentlemen, good-night; I will
+see you again--in court."
+
+
+
+
+STRANGER THAN FICTION.
+
+UNPUBLISHED CHAPTERS FROM "THE BRONTES IN IRELAND."
+
+BY DR. WILLIAM WRIGHT.
+
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+The sources of information regarding the Bronte family in England have
+been studiously investigated, and everything known about them there
+has been described with great wealth of literary skill and ingenuity;
+but the eager guesses and surmises as to what lay beyond the English
+boundaries have been mostly erroneous.
+
+Mrs. Gaskell's "Life of Charlotte Bronte" is an exquisite tribute from
+a gifted hand, but Mrs. Gaskell's dreary moorlands are as inadequate
+to account for the Bronte genius, as the general picture of suppressed
+sadness is unwarranted by the Bronte letters, or by the living
+testimony of Miss Ellen Nussey, Charlotte's life-long friend and
+confidante.
+
+Mr. Wemyss Reid has given us a picture of this singular family in
+brighter, truer colors; but his theory as to the "disillusioning" of
+Charlotte at Brussels is a pure assumption, and repudiated with
+indignation by Miss Nussey.
+
+Mr. Augustine Birrell's brilliant "Life of Charlotte Bronte" contains
+some additional facts gleaned in England, and deserves to be read, if
+only for the generous indignation called forth by the "Quarterly
+Reviewer," who sought to assassinate the reputation of the author of
+"Jane Eyre."
+
+A feeling of dissatisfaction was felt in some degree by each of these
+writers in turn, but by none more clearly expressed than by Mr. J. A.
+Erskine Stuart in his most useful book, "The Bronte Country." He
+writes: "For our own part, we desire a fuller biography of the family
+than has yet been written, and we trust, and are confident, that such
+will yet appear, and that there are many surprises yet in store for
+students of this Celtic circle."
+
+I now proceed, but not without misgivings, to justify the confidence
+thus expressed, and to fulfill the prediction implied, so far as
+regards the Brontes in Ireland. I propose in the following pages to
+supply the Irish straws of Bronte history which I have been
+accumulating for nearly half a century. I have waited in hopes that
+some more skillful hand might undertake the task, but as no one else,
+since the death of Captain Mayne Reid, has the requisite information,
+the story of the Irish Brontes must be told by me, or remain untold.
+
+My first classical teacher was the Reverend William McAllister, of
+Ryans, near Newry, a man of brilliant imagination, who under favorable
+conditions might have taken rank with John Bunyan or William Blake. He
+had known Patrick Bronte (Charlotte's father), and had often heard old
+Hugh, the grandfather, narrate to a spell-bound audience, the
+incidents which formed the ground-work of "Wuthering Heights." He used
+to take me for long walks in the fields, and tell me the story of Hugh
+Bronte's early life, or narrate other Bronte adventures, which he
+assured me were just as worthy to be recounted as the wrath of
+Achilles or the wanderings of Pius AEneas. It thus happened that I
+wrote screeds of the Bronte novels myself before a line of them had
+been penned at Haworth. I do not think that Branwell Bronte really
+meant to deceive when he spoke of having written "Wuthering Heights,"
+for the story in outline must have been common property at Haworth,
+and the children of the vicarage were all scribblers.
+
+Through my teacher's relatives, who lived quite near to the Brontes, I
+was able to verify facts and incidents, and the pains thus taken has
+fixed them indelibly upon my mind. At a later period, I had still
+better opportunities for forming a sound judgment concerning the Irish
+Brontes, for the pleasantest part of my undergraduate holidays was
+spent at the manse of the Reverend David McKee of Ballynaskeagh. Mr.
+McKee was a great educationalist, and prepared many students for
+college who afterwards became famous.
+
+This great and noble man, who stood six feet six inches high, was
+the friend of the Brontes, as well as their near neighbor. He
+recognized the Bronte genius, where others only saw what was wild
+and unconventional. Mr. McKee's home was the center of mental
+activity in that neighborhood, and the early copies of the novels
+that came to the "Uncle Bronte's" were cut, read, and criticised by
+Mr. McKee, and his criticisms forwarded to the Haworth nieces. Great
+was the joy of those uncles and aunts when Mr. McKee's approval
+was enthusiastically given.
+
+There are also several other persons, some of them still living, who
+knew the Brontes, and have kindly communicated to me the information
+they possessed, so that I have had illumination from various points on
+this many-sided family.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+THE DARK FOUNDLING.
+
+Hugh Bronte's grandfather, the great-great-grandfather of the English
+novelist, formerly lived upon a farm on the banks of the Boyne, above
+Drogheda. He was a cattle-dealer, and often crossed to Liverpool to
+dispose of his stock. Once, when he was returning therefrom, a strange
+child was found in a bundle in the hold of the vessel. It was very
+young, very black, very dirty, and almost destitute of clothing. No
+one knew whence it had come, nor cared what became of it. There was no
+doctor in the ship, and no woman save Mrs. Bronte, who had accompanied
+her husband. The child was thrown on deck. Some one said, "Toss it
+overboard," but nobody would touch it, and its cries were distressing.
+From sheer pity Mrs. Bronte was obliged to succor the abandoned
+infant.
+
+On reaching Drogheda, it was taken ashore for food and clothing, with
+the intention of returning it to Liverpool; but the captain refused to
+allow it to be brought aboard of his ship again. As no one in Drogheda
+had an interest in the child, it was left in Mrs. Bronte's hands. To
+be sure, there was a vestry tax at that time for the removal of
+illegitimate children, but Mrs. Bronte found it much easier to take
+the child home than to Dublin, where it might possibly be refused
+admission amongst the authorized foundlings--there being no hospital
+nearer than that point.
+
+When the infant was carried up out of the hold of the vessel, it was
+declared to be a Welsh child on account of its color. It might,
+doubtless, have laid claim to a more Oriental descent, but, when it
+became a Bronte, it was called "Welsh." The Brontes, who were all
+golden-haired, exceedingly disliked the swarthy infant, but "pity
+melts the heart to love," and Mrs. Bronte brought it up amongst her
+own children. Little Welsh was a weak, delicate, and fretful thing,
+and being generally despised and pushed aside by the vigorous young
+Brontes, he grew up morose, envious, and cunning. He used secretly to
+play many spiteful tricks upon the children, so that they were
+continually chastising him. On his part, he maintained a moody, sullen
+silence, except when Mr. Bronte was present to protect him. With Mr.
+Bronte he became a favorite, because he always ran to meet him on his
+return home, as if glad to see him, and anxious to render him any
+possible assistance. He followed his master about, while at home, with
+dog-like fidelity, telling him everything he knew to the other
+children's disadvantage, and thus succeeded in securing a permanent
+place between them and their father.
+
+Old Bronte took Welsh with him to fairs and markets, instead of his
+own sons, as soon as he was able to go, and found him of the greatest
+service. His very insignificance added to his usefulness. He would
+mingle with the people from whom Bronte wished to purchase cattle, and
+find out from their conversation the lowest price they would be
+willing to take, and then report to his master. Bronte would then
+offer the dealers a little less than he knew they wanted, and secure
+the cattle without the usual weary process of bargaining. The same
+course was repeated in Liverpool, and in the end Bronte became a rich
+and prosperous dealer. Welsh was now indispensable to him, and
+followed him like a shadow; but the more Bronte became attached to
+Welsh, the more the children hated the interloper. As time went on,
+Bronte's affairs passed more and more into his assistant's hands,
+until at last he had the entire management. They were returning from
+Liverpool once, after selling the largest drove of cattle that had
+ever crossed the channel, when suddenly Bronte died in mid-ocean.
+Welsh, who was with him at the time of his death, professed ignorance
+of his master's money; and, as all books and accounts had disappeared,
+no one could tell what had become of the cash received for the
+cattle.
+
+The young Brontes, who were now almost men and women, had been brought
+up in comparative luxury. They were well educated, but they understood
+neither farming nor dealing, and the land had been so neglected that
+it could not support a family, even if the requisite capital for its
+cultivation had not been lost. In this emergency Welsh requested an
+interview with the whole family. He declared that he had a proposal to
+make which would restore their fallen fortunes. He had been forbidden
+the house, but, as it was supposed that he was going to give back the
+money which he must have stolen, his request was reluctantly granted.
+
+Welsh appeared at the interview dressed up in broadcloth, black and
+shiny as his well-greased hair, and in fine linen, white and
+glistening as his prominent teeth. The effect was ludicrous to those
+who had always known the man. His sinister expression was intensified
+by a smile of satisfaction which gave emphasis to the cast in both
+eyes, and to his jackal-like mouth.
+
+He began at once, in the grand cattle-dealer style, to express
+sympathy with the family, and to declare that upon one condition only
+would he continue the dealing and supply their wants. This condition
+was that Mary, the youngest sister, should become his wife--a proposal
+which was rejected with indignant scorn. Many hot and bitter words
+were exchanged, but as Welsh was leaving the house, he turned and
+said, "Mary shall yet be my wife, and I will scatter the rest of you
+like chaff from this house, which shall be mine also." With these
+words he passed out into the darkness.
+
+The interview had two immediate results. It revealed the threatened
+dangers, and roused the brothers to an earnest effort to save their
+home. Welsh had robbed them, but he must not be permitted to ruin and
+disgrace them. They had many friends, and in a short time the three
+brothers were employed in remunerative occupations, two of them in
+England and one in Ireland. They were thus able to send home enough to
+pay the rent of the farm, and to maintain the family in comfort.
+
+The landlord of Bronte's farm was an "absentee," the estate being
+administered by an agent. He was the great man of the district, local
+magistrate, grand juror, and "Pasha" in general. A parliament of
+landlords had given him despotic powers in the collection of rent, and
+in all matters of property, limb, and life. The agent of those days
+was served by attorneys, bailiffs and sub-agents. Welsh was appointed
+to a vacancy as sub-agent, in return for a large bribe paid to the
+agent.
+
+The sub-agent's business was to act as buffer between the tenant and
+the "Squire," as the agent was called. He was generally a man without
+heart, conscience, or bowels. Selected from the basest of the people,
+he had nominal wages, never paid and never demanded; but he managed to
+squeeze a large amount out of the tenants, first by alarming them, and
+then by promising to stand their friend with the rapacious agent. He
+cringed and grovelled before the "Squire," but at the same time was
+the chief medium of information concerning the condition of the
+tenants, and their ability to pay their rents. One of his duties was
+to mix in their festivities, when whiskey had opened their hearts and
+loosened their tongues, and discover their ability to pay an increased
+rent.
+
+Welsh was the very man for this post. He had lived by cunning and
+treachery, and in his new occupation had great scope for serving both
+himself and his master. He seldom saw his tenants without letting
+drop the fatal word, "eviction." But, while serving the "Squire,"
+and recouping himself from the tenants for the bribe he had paid
+him, he never forgot for a moment his double purpose of securing his
+late master's farm, and with it, the person of Mary Bronte. He
+straightway drew the agent's attention to the derelict condition of
+the farm, and to the likelihood of the rent falling into arrears,
+and declared himself willing to undertake the burden of his late
+master's desolate homestead. The agent promised Welsh that the farm
+should be transferred to him, on payment of a certain sum, in case
+the Brontes were not able to pay the rent; but the rent did not
+fall into arrears. The agent's demands were punctually met, and
+besides this, considerable sums of money were spent in improving the
+house and the land. In consequence of this the rent was raised, but
+the increased rent was paid the day it fell due, and again raised.
+
+Finding himself foiled, Welsh changed his tactics, and turned his
+attention to the other object of his quest, Mary Bronte.
+
+In the neighborhood there lived a female sub-agent called Meg, as base
+and unprincipled as himself. Her services were utilized in many ways;
+in conveying bottles of whiskey to farmers' wives who were getting
+into drinking habits, and in aiding farmers' sons and daughters to
+dispose of eggs and apples and meal purloined from their parents in
+return for trinkets which they wished to possess. She had also great
+skill in furthering the wicked designs of rich but immoral men. She
+was the "spey-woman" who told fortunes to servant-girls, and lured
+them to their destruction. Like the male sub-agents, such women were
+supposed to have the black art, and to have sold themselves to the
+devil.
+
+Meg came often to tell the servants' fortunes, and had many
+opportunities of assuring Mary of Welsh's love and goodness. She told
+how he had restrained the agent for several years from evicting them,
+by the payment of large sums. All of this seemed incredible to the
+simple-minded girl, but the harpy was able to show receipts for the
+money thus expended.
+
+After a time, Mary listened to the vile woman's tale. Welsh could
+not be so bad as they believed him to be. Flowers taken from
+tenants' gardens found their way to Mary's room, and trinkets wrung
+from the anguish-stricken, in fear of eviction, were laid on her
+dressing-table. At length, she consented to meet Welsh in a lonely
+part of the farm, in company with the harpy, that she might express to
+him her gratitude for protecting the dear old home.
+
+That meeting sealed Mary's fate, and she was forced to consent to
+marry Welsh. The marriage was secretly performed by one of the
+"buckle-beggars" of the time, and then publicly proclaimed. Welsh was
+now the husband of one of the ladies on the farm, and, for a
+substantial bribe, the agent accepted him as tenant.
+
+The brothers on hearing the news hurried back to the old home, but
+arrived too late. The agent received them with great courtesy. They
+reminded him that their ancestors had reclaimed the place from mere
+bog and wilderness; that their father had expended large sums in
+building the houses and draining the land; that they themselves had
+paid exorbitant rents without demur; and that now their old home with
+all of these improvements had been confiscated, without cause or
+notice, by the man who had robbed and degraded the family.
+
+The agent seemed greatly pained, but of course he was only an agent,
+and obliged to do whatever the landlord desired. Failing to get
+redress from the agent, the brothers unfortunately took the law into
+their own hands, and were arrested for trespass and assault. They were
+tried before the agent, and sent to prison and hard labor.
+
+Thus the man Welsh, who afterward assumed the name Bronte, carried out
+his purpose. His threat of vengeance was also fulfilled. Mother,
+sisters, were scattered abroad, and so effectively that I have not
+been able, after much searching, to find a single trace of any of them
+save Hugh and his descendants.
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE KIDNAPPING OF HUGH BRONTE.
+
+Hugh Bronte first makes his appearance as if he had just stepped out
+of a Bronte novel. His father, a man in prosperous circumstances, had
+a large family, and resided somewhere in the south of Ireland, in a
+comfortable home, the exact locality being unknown.
+
+Some time about the middle of the last century, this entire family was
+thrown into excitement by the arrival of an uncle and aunt of whom
+they had never heard. The children did not like them at first, but, as
+they remained guests for a considerable time, these impressions wore
+off.
+
+These newly discovered relatives were the foundling Welsh and his
+wife, Mary. Their visit occurred many years subsequent to the events
+recorded in the last chapter. In the meantime, the house, from which
+the Brontes had been driven by fraud, had been burnt to the ground,
+thus destroying all of Welsh's ill-gotten riches, and leaving him a
+poor and ruined man. But Welsh was always able to subordinate his
+pride to his interests, and, through his wife, he opened up a
+correspondence with one of her brothers, prosperously settled in
+Ireland. Welsh expressed deep penitence for all of his wrong-doing,
+and declared his earnest desire, if forgiven, to make amends.
+
+He and Mary were then childless, and getting on in years. They
+professed to be troubled at the prospect of the farm passing into the
+hands of strangers for lack of an heir. They offered, therefore, to
+adopt one of their numerous nephews and to bring him up as their own
+son. Conditions of adoption were agreed upon, including education, but
+a solemn oath was taken by the father never to communicate with his
+son in any way. Welsh and Mary also bound themselves never to let the
+child know where his father lived.
+
+The family oath in Ireland is regarded with superstitious awe, and
+binds like destiny. The man who breaks it is perjured and abandoned
+beyond all hope of salvation, here or hereafter.
+
+Hugh Bronte was about five or six years old when Welsh and Mary made
+the visit to his parents, and he soon became a great favorite with the
+newcomers.
+
+Many years later, the old man, when "beeking" a cornkiln in County
+Down, used to tell the simple incidents of that night. He had waited
+with impatience the local dressmaker, who had brought him home late at
+night a special suit of clothes to travel in. When they were fitted
+on, he was raised into a chair to give the dressmaker "beverage," as
+the first kiss in new clothes is called in Ireland. It is a mark of
+especial favor, and supposed to confer good luck. Hugh's sisters
+thronged around him for "second beverage," but the kiss and squeeze of
+the dressmaker remained a life-long memory. He always believed that
+she had a presentiment of his fate, for her voice choked and her eyes
+filled with tears, as she turned away from him.
+
+His mother never seemed happy about his going away, but her opposition
+was always borne down. For the few days previous, she had been
+accustomed to take him on her lap, and, with eyes full of tears, heap
+endearing epithets upon him, such as, "My sweet flower;" but he did
+not appreciate her sympathy, and always broke away from her. His
+father lifted him in his arms, carried him out into the darkness, and
+placed him gently between his uncle and aunt, on a seat with a raised
+back, which was laid across a cart from side to side. Sitting aloft,
+on this prototype of the Irish gig, little Hugh Bronte, with a heart
+full of childish anticipations, began his rough journey out into the
+big world.
+
+That Bronte covenant was indeed faithfully kept, for even when Mary,
+his aunt, visited Hugh in County Down about the beginning of this
+century, she could neither be coaxed nor compelled to give him, either
+directly or indirectly, the slightest clue by which he might discover
+the home of his childhood. It thus happened that Hugh Bronte was never
+able to retrace his steps to his father's house, after the darkness
+had closed around him, perched aloft on the cross-seat of a country
+cart, between his uncle and aunt. It was a cold night, and the child
+crept close under his aunt's wing for warmth. Soon he began to prattle
+in his childish way as he had done with his new friends for days, when
+suddenly a harsh torrent of corrosive words burst from Welsh,
+commanding him not to let another sound pass his lips. For a moment
+the child was stunned and bewildered, for the angry order fell like a
+blow. The young Bronte blood could not, however, rest passively in
+such a crisis. Disentangling himself from his aunt's shawl, Hugh drew
+towards his uncle and said, "Did you speak those unkind words to me?"
+
+"I'll teach you to disobey me, you magnificent whelp!" rasped out
+Welsh, bringing his great hand down with a sharp smack on the little
+fellow's face.
+
+Hurt and angry, little Bronte sprang from the seat into the bottom of
+the cart and, facing the cruel uncle, shouted:
+
+"I won't go with you one step further! I will go back and tell my
+father what a bad old monster you are!" and then clutching at the
+reins, screamed: "Turn the horse around and take me home!"
+
+A heavy hand grasped him, and choked the voice out of him. He was
+shaken and knocked against the bottom and sides of the cart, until he
+was able neither to escape nor to speak. Several hours later, he awoke
+and found himself lying in damp straw, sick, and sore, and hungry.
+Every jolt of the springless cart pained him.
+
+It was a moonlight night with occasional showers. He turned upon his
+side, and watched the two figures perched upon the seat above him,
+riding along in silence and caring nothing for him. A few hours before
+he had loved them passionately, and now he hated them to loathing. He
+felt the utter desolation of loneliness and home-sickness.
+
+That was the first night in his remembrance when he had ever neglected
+to say his prayers. He rose to his knees, put up his little folded
+hands, and said the only prayer he knew. A sobbing sound escaped him
+and startled his uncle. He turned suddenly, and with his whip struck
+the kneeling child and prostrated him. The blow was followed by a
+hurricane of oaths and threats.
+
+The child was badly hurt, but he did not cry nor let his uncle know
+that he was suffering.
+
+Seventy years afterwards Hugh Bronte used to say, "I grew fast that
+night. I was Christian child, ardent lover, vindictive hater,
+enthusiast, misanthrope, atheist, and philosopher, in one cruel
+hour!"
+
+The sun was shining hot in his face when he awoke. The cart had been
+drawn up close to a little thatched cottage, in which there was a
+grocer's shop and a public house. He tried to get out of the cart, but
+was unable to do so. A blacksmith, whose smithy stood on the other
+side of the road, seeing his fruitless efforts, came and lifted him
+down. Just as he was beginning to recite the story of his wrongs his
+aunt, who had approached him from behind, caught his arms and led him
+gently into the cottage, where he had some potatoes and buttermilk. He
+slept by the kitchen fire until late in the afternoon without having
+been permitted to speak to a soul. He was still dreaming of home, when
+he was roughly awakened to mount the cart again. Heavy imprecations
+fell upon his aunt for detaining him to wash the blood-stains from
+his face. A penny "bap" was given him, and he was allowed to buy
+apples with the money which had been put by his brothers and sisters
+into the pockets of his new clothes as "hansel." "It was ten years,"
+said old Bronte, "before I fingered another penny that I could call my
+own!"
+
+As the shades of evening gathered, the journey was continued in a
+drizzling rain. A "bottle" of fresh straw had been added to the hard
+bed on which little Hugh was to spend the night. He arranged the straw
+under the cross-seat on which his uncle and aunt sat, so as to be
+sheltered from the rain, and, placing his heap of apples and the "bap"
+beside him, he settled down in comparative comfort for the night.
+
+The night was long, the rain incessant. The horse stumbled and
+splashed along, and the harsh uncle varied the monotony by whipping
+the horse into a trot, and swearing at it when it did trot. By ten
+o'clock the next morning a large village was reached, where was an inn
+of considerable importance. The child was carried, stiff and cold, and
+put to bed in a little room in this inn, no one but his aunt being
+allowed to come near him. She placed some bread and milk beside him,
+took away his clothes, and locked the door of his room.
+
+In the afternoon she returned bringing a suit of bottle-green corduroy
+with shining brass buttons, much too large for him. The trousers were
+so stiff that he could hardly sit down in them, and he hated the smell
+of corduroy. His own warm woolen garments had been exchanged for these
+others, and for a horse cover, which became his coverlet by night.
+Beneath it he slept more comfortably than before.
+
+At an early hour the following morning, while Hugh was still asleep,
+they reached another large town, and, as usual, the cart was drawn up
+at an inn, where the travellers passed the day. While Welsh was out in
+the town, and the aunt dozing by the fire, Hugh tried to tell the
+innkeeper the story of his wrongs, but neither could understand the
+other, owing to the man's brogue. The child's earnestness drew a
+little crowd around him, however, and he was just beginning to make
+himself understood, when his uncle returned suddenly and whisked him
+off to the cart to spend the long afternoon, until they resumed their
+journey at nightfall. Angry words passed between the innkeeper and his
+uncle, but no deliverance came. After another miserable night they
+arrived at Drogheda on the forenoon of the following day. Here they
+made a short pause, but he was not permitted to descend from the cart,
+nor communicate with any stranger. The party arrived at Welsh's home,
+on the banks of the Boyne, late in the afternoon.
+
+Such is the story of Hugh Bronte's journey to Welsh's house, as first
+told me by the Reverend William McAllister, and subsequently confirmed
+by four independent narrators. I have given a mere outline of the
+boy's experience on that dreadful journey, without attempting to
+reproduce Hugh Bronte's style. As told by the man in after years, it
+never failed to hold his listeners spell-bound. The stunted trees on
+the wind-swept mountains, the ghostly shadows on the moon-bleached
+plains, the desolate bogs on every side, the interminable stretches of
+road leading over narrow bridges and through shallow fords, the
+heavens on fire with stars, and the autumn stricken into gold by the
+setting sun, all lent color and reality to Hugh Bronte's eloquence.
+Mr. McAllister had heard most of the orators of his time, O'Connell
+and Chalmers and Cook, but no man ever roused and thrilled him by his
+dramatic power as did Hugh Bronte.
+
+Welsh Bronte traveled at night partly for economy, but more especially
+that little Hugh should see no landmark, by which his footsteps might
+ever be guided home. Do the incidents of the journey give us any clue
+to discover the region where Hugh Bronte lived? They spent four whole
+nights on the road, and traversed a distance from one hundred to one
+hundred and twenty miles.
+
+My own efforts to find the early home of Hugh Bronte resulted in
+discovering no trace or tradition of a Bronte family south of the
+Boyne. I have written hundreds of letters to various parts of Ireland
+with an equal lack of success, and it is probable that the exact
+locality will never be discovered. What is of more importance, is the
+fact that the ancient home of the Brontes, where Hugh's grandfather,
+the great-great-grandfather of the novelists, lived, was on the north
+side of the river Boyne between Oldbridge and Navan, not far from the
+spot where William of Orange won his famous battle. Some thirty-five
+years ago, the place where the Bronte house once stood, was pointed
+out to me. The potato-blight and other calamities have been steadily
+removing landmarks in Ireland, and it is not surprising that local
+tradition has now faded from the district. Few families there, of the
+rank of the Brontes, could trace their pedigrees to the seventh
+generation; but that the ancestors of the Brontes lived on the banks
+of the Boyne seven generations back is beyond all doubt.
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+A MISERABLE HOME.
+
+Upon arrival at their destination, Welsh seized his nephew and ward by
+the shoulders, and, looking fiercely in his face, informed him that
+his father was a mean and black-hearted scoundrel. Welsh declared that
+he had agreed to make Hugh his heir, with "the education of a
+gentleman," in consideration of the sum of fifty pounds, but, as the
+"spalpeen" had only paid five pounds, Hugh would have to work for his
+bread and go without education; all emphasized by very strong words.
+
+There was present at this family interview a tall, gaunt, half-naked
+savage called Gallagher, who expressed audible approval of Welsh's
+remarks, and, at their close, called on the Blessed Virgin and all the
+saints to _blast_ Hugh's father and protect his uncle. This
+sanctimonious individual was the steward of Welsh's house, and had
+formerly been his most valuable ally. Hugh's father had once denounced
+Gallagher as a spy at a public gathering, whence he had been
+ignominiously ejected, and, in return, he had supplied the false
+evidence which led to the imprisonment and conviction of the three
+brothers. Gallagher had been of service to Welsh in many ways. He had
+aided Meg in the schemes which led to Mary Bronte becoming Welsh's
+wife, and he had been a partner with Meg in the foundling business.
+Their ways of dealing with superfluous children had been effective.
+These were supposed to be carried to the Dublin Foundling Hospital,
+but, inasmuch as no questions were asked, and no receipts given, the
+guilty parents were satisfied that their offspring should go "where
+the wicked cease from troubling." Gallagher was the original from
+which Emily Bronte drew her portrait of Joseph, in "Wuthering
+Heights," just as Heathcliff is modelled on Welsh. It was to the
+companionship of this human monster that Welsh committed his little
+nephew and ward. His name became of common use in County Down as a
+synonym for objectionable persons, and is so still.
+
+As soon as Welsh and Gallagher ceased speaking, Hugh looked around the
+mansion to which he had become presumptive heir. A happy pig with a
+large family lay on one side of the room, and a stack of peat was
+heaped up on the other side of the great open chimney. A broad, square
+bed stood in the end of the room, raised about a foot from the ground.
+The damp, uneven, earthen floor was unswept. On the backs of a few
+chairs, upholstered with straw ropes, a succession of hens perched,
+preliminary to flight to the cross-beams close up to the thatch. A
+lean, long-backed, rough-haired yellow dog stood by his side smelling
+him, without signs of welcome. Hugh listened to his uncle's hard,
+rasping words, and in reply said:
+
+"Are you going home soon?"
+
+"You are at home now," declared his uncle. "This is the only home you
+shall ever know, and you are beholden to me for it. Your father was
+glad to be rid of you, and this is your gratitude to me! No airs here,
+my fine fellow. Get to bed out of my way, and I'll find you something
+to do in the morning."
+
+But in the morning the child was unable to leave the bed where he had
+lain across his uncle and aunt's feet, his slumbers incessantly
+disturbed by the grunting, squealing pigs. Welsh arose early to let
+out the animals, and then dragged little Hugh from his bed to resume
+the responsibility of heirship. The child tottered to the floor. His
+uncle's fierce imprecations could not exorcise fever and delirium, and
+for many weeks little Hugh lingered between life and death. He
+remained weak and unable to go out during the winter, but he made many
+friends, of which the chief was the rough yellow dog. The child in
+return loved the great shaggy creature with all the strength of his
+poor crushed heart. But better than the devotion of the fowls, the pig
+and the dog, his Aunt Mary conceived a great affection for him, and
+grew to love him during his illness as her own child. When Welsh was
+absent, she would give him an egg, or a little fresh butter from the
+"meskin" prepared for market, or even a cup of peppermint tea; and
+over this, she told him secretly the tragic story of the Bronte
+family. In after years it was a satisfaction to Hugh to know that his
+cowardly uncle was no Bronte after all, and not even an Irishman.
+
+The spring came early that year, and with it health and vigor. Hugh's
+aunt had told him of the burning of the old Bronte house. The squalor
+and wretchedness of Welsh's home, into which so many things crept at
+night, compared with the ruins of the house in which his father had
+been reared, made a lasting impression upon Hugh's mind. But he was
+not left long to such reflections. As soon as he was able to go, he
+was sent to herd cattle, which were housed at night in the ruined
+rooms of the burnt edifice, with his dog, Keeper, for a faithful
+companion. Emily Bronte's love for her dog, which was actually named
+Keeper, was a weak platonic affair compared with the tie that bound
+the desolate boy and friendless dog together.
+
+In no land has attachment to home so firm a grip of the heart as in
+Ireland. Year followed year in slow procession, but Hugh grew up in
+solitariness, and his heart never ceased to yearn for the lost friends
+of his old home. His corduroy suit soon grew too small for him, and
+when his boots became unwearable, he was obliged to go bare-footed.
+His highest enjoyment was to be away with his dog somewhere, remote
+from the espionage of Gallagher, and the violent blasphemy of Welsh.
+But his idle days among the bees in the clover soon gave place to
+sterner duties. He had to gather potatoes in sleet and rain, collect
+stones from winter fields to drain bog-land, perform the drudgery of
+an ill-cultivated farm from sunrise to sunset, and then thresh and
+winnow grain in the barn until near midnight. His uncle hated him
+fiercely and bitterly, and once told him that he could never beat him
+when he did not deserve it, because, like a goat, he was always either
+going to mischief, or coming from it.
+
+Hugh found Gallagher's cunning malignity harder to endure than the
+harsh cruelty of his uncle. The boy's clear instinct told him that
+Gallagher was a bad man, but sometimes his pent-up heart would
+overflow to the one human being near him in his working hours. When
+Gallagher had got all the secrets of the boy from him, he would
+denounce him to Welsh in such a way as to best stir up his cruelty; or
+he would mock at Hugh's rags, and tell him that all of his evils had
+come upon him because of his father's sins, assuring him that the
+Devil would carry him away from the barn some night, as he had often
+taken bad men's sons before.
+
+The cruelties practised upon the boy were Gallagher's base revenge for
+the whippings formerly administered to him by Hugh's father. Every
+means that cunning could devise was employed to render the boy's life
+miserable. He would purloin eggs, break the farming-tools, and maim
+the cattle in order to have him beaten by his uncle, a ceremony which
+he always managed to witness.
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+ESCAPE FROM CAPTIVITY.
+
+Nothing in Ireland is supposed to test a man's honesty so severely as
+a bog lying contiguous to his own land. "If a man escape with honor as
+a trustee, try him with a bit of bog," is an Irish proverb. This
+temptation had come in Welsh's way when a sub-agent. He had robbed the
+Brontes of their farm, why should he hesitate to add a slice of bog to
+it? The owner was known as an objectionable tenant who had dared to
+vote contrary to his landlord, and there was not likely to be any
+trouble, for the bog was of little use to anybody, all of the turf
+having been removed, leaving only a swamp covered with star-grass, and
+tenanted by water-hen, coots and snipe.
+
+The agent agreed to let Welsh have his neighbor's bog for a
+consideration. Welsh paid the sum demanded, but the tenant, being a
+cantankerous person, did not fall in pleasantly with this arrangement.
+Difficulties were raised. The plundering of the Brontes had been
+watched by their neighbors with sullen indignation, but, when it
+became known that the sub-agent was about to grasp the property of
+another farmer, the smouldering fire burst into a conflagration. At
+this crisis, the agent was murdered, and Welsh's house was burnt to
+the ground.
+
+The ownership of the bog now remained for a long time in a doubtful
+condition. Welsh lost his official position, and for years the new
+agent gave promises to both claimants, and accepted presents from
+both. The landlord would of course decide the matter upon his return
+to Ireland, but, in the meantime, both paid rent for the bog and then
+fought for the useless star-grass.
+
+Welsh maintained his claim until one day, after many hot words with
+the owner, blows ensued, and the trespasser was badly beaten. He
+called on Hugh, who was then a large boy of fifteen, for help; but he
+called in vain, for Hugh had overhead a full recital of his uncle's
+crimes before the battle began. He heard him accused to his teeth of
+murdering old Bronte for his money, and of betraying his daughter in
+order to rob the family of the estate. The misery he had brought to
+many homes was comprehensively set forth; and Hugh believed his uncle
+to be absolutely in the wrong in his attempt to take possession of his
+neighbor's property, and deserving of the beating he received.
+Besides, this neighbor had always treated Hugh kindly, and had
+frequently shared with him his collation of bread and milk in the
+fields in the afternoon.
+
+This battle led to important issues. Welsh was carried home bleeding
+by Gallagher and Hugh, and put to bed. On the following morning he
+sent for Hugh, and in a choking passion demanded why he had not helped
+him in the fight. Hugh replied that he considered his uncle in the
+wrong and any assistance unfair. Inasmuch as Welsh could not get out
+of bed to chastise him, the boy seized his long-deferred opportunity,
+and pleaded his case with a courage that surprised himself. He told
+his uncle that he was a false and cruel bully, who thoroughly merited
+a beating at the hands of the man he had tried to rob, and, carried
+away by his rising passion, he informed him that he knew he was not a
+true Bronte, but a gutter-monster, who had stolen the name, defiantly
+adding that he hoped before long to avenge his ancestors for the
+desecration of their name by thrashing him himself.
+
+Having delivered this speech Hugh realized that another crisis in his
+life had arrived. Even the chaff bed in the half-roofed barn would now
+cease for him. His uncle's house was no longer childless. A son and
+heir had appeared upon the scene a twelve-month before, and Hugh knew
+that he had nothing except harsh treatment to expect in the future. He
+could not even hope, in the event of his uncle's death, to inherit the
+old Bronte home and restore its fallen fortunes, for a legal heir was
+now in full possession. His uncle had declared his intention to punish
+him once for all, as soon as he got well, and a severe beating was
+his immediate prospect.
+
+In a few days Welsh was out of bed and able to move about, his head
+wrapped in bandages and his two eyes in mourning. Hugh saw that the
+time had now come for him to shift for himself. He first resolved to
+fight his uncle, but wisely concluded that, even if victorious, this
+would only make his position in the house more unendurable. Then he
+resolved on flight, but how could he fly? If followed and brought
+back, his state with his uncle would be worse than ever. Besides, he
+was almost naked, for the few rags that hung around him left his body
+visible at many points.
+
+Hugh was now in a state of rebellion, and in his desperation he went
+to his uncle's enemy. He told this chastiser the full tale of his
+sorrows, and found him a sympathizing and resourceful ally.
+
+The day on which Hugh was to get his great beating arrived. Everybody
+except Gallagher awaited it in gloomy silence. Even Keeper seemed to
+know what was coming. Welsh had provided himself with a stout hazel
+rod which he playfully called "the tickler." Aunt Mary's eyes were, as
+usual, red with weeping. The chastisement was to be administered when
+the cattle were brought home at midday.
+
+Hugh and Gallagher spent that morning weeding in a field of oats in a
+remote corner of the farm. Hugh was silent, but Gallagher passed the
+whole morning in jeers, and taunts, and mockery.
+
+As the hour arrived for Hugh to go for the cows, Gallagher surpassed
+all previous brutality by telling Hugh that he had once been his
+mother's lover. He was proceeding to develop this false and cruel tale
+when Hugh, stung to the quick, and blind with passion, sprang upon his
+mother's defamer like a tiger. There was a short fierce struggle, and
+Hugh had his tormentor on the ground beating his face into a jelly,
+while Keeper was engaged in tearing the ruffian's clothes to shreds.
+
+Hugh's fury cooled when Gallagher no longer resisted. Throwing his
+"thistle-hook" on top of the prostrate form, he walked into the house.
+He bade his aunt, who was baking bread, good-by, kissed the baby, and
+then left to bring home the cattle to be milked. Keeper, who had laid
+aside his melancholy during the encounter with Gallagher, responded to
+his master's whistle by barking and gambolling as if to keep up his
+spirits. As Hugh turned for a last look at the old Bronte home, he saw
+Gallagher approaching Welsh, who was waiting near the cow-shed,
+evidently enjoying the pleasures of the imagination.
+
+The cattle were grazing on the banks of the Boyne, near the spot where
+a wing of William's army crossed on that era-making day in 1690. Hugh
+proceeded to the river and divested himself of his rags, preparatory
+to a plunge, as was his wont. He told Keeper to lie down upon his heap
+of tattered garments; then throwing himself down naked beside his
+faithful friend, he took him in his arms, kissed him again and again,
+and, starting up with a sob, plunged headlong into the river.
+
+Keeper could not see his master enter the river, nor mark the
+direction in which he had gone, owing to a little ridge. It was a swim
+for life. The current soon carried him opposite the farm of his
+uncle's enemy, who awaited his approach in a clump of willows by the
+water's edge. He had brought with him an improvised suit of clothes to
+further the boy's escape. The pockets of the coat were stuffed with
+oat-bread, and there were a few pence in the pockets of the trousers.
+Hugh hurried on these garments, which were much too large for him, and
+thrust his feet, the first time for seven years, into a pair of boots.
+With a heart full of gratitude, and a final squeeze of the hand,
+unaccompanied by words from either, Hugh Bronte started on his race
+for life and freedom.
+
+With buoyant spirits Hugh sped on the road to Dunleer, where he
+did not pause, and continuing his flight struck straight for
+Castlebellingham. He did not know where the road led to, nor whither
+he was going, but he believed there was a city of refuge ahead, and
+his pace was quickened by the fear of the avenger at his heels.
+
+As he approached Castlebellingham he heard a car coming behind him, so
+he hid behind a fence until it had passed. It was filled with
+policemen, but Welsh was not on the car. He reached Dundalk at an
+early hour, and after a short sleep in a hay-rick, continued his
+journey, not by the public road, but eastward through level fields
+where now runs the Dundalk and Greenore railway. He spent his last
+copper in a small public house for a little food, and then started for
+Carlingford, which the publican had told him was an important town
+behind the mountain. After a couple of hours of wandering by the
+shore, he turned inland, and came upon lime-kilns at a place called
+Mount Pleasant, or Faquahart. These kilns were known as Swift
+McNeil's, and people came great distances to purchase lime for
+agricultural and building purposes.
+
+When Hugh arrived, there were thirty or forty carts from Down, Armagh,
+and Louth, waiting for their loads, and there were not enough hands to
+keep up the supply. Limestone had to be quarried, wheeled to the
+kilns, then broken, and thrown in at the top with layers of coal.
+After burning for a time the lime was drawn out from the eye of the
+kiln into shallow barrels, and emptied into carts, the price being so
+much per barrel.
+
+Here Hugh Bronte found his first job, and regular remuneration for his
+free labor. In a short time he had earned enough money to provide
+himself with a complete suit of clothes. His wages more than supplied
+his wants, and he had a great deal to spare for personal adornment.
+Being steady, and better dressed than the other workers, he was soon
+advanced to the responsible position of overseer.
+
+Hugh became a favorite with purchasers and employers. Among the
+regular customers were the Todds and McAllisters of Ballynaskeagh and
+Glascar, in County Down. Their servants were often accompanied by a
+youth named McGlory, who drove his own cart.
+
+McGlory and Bronte, who were about the same age, resembled each other
+in the fiery color of their hair. They became great friends, and it
+was arranged that Bronte should visit McGlory in County Down during
+the Christmas holidays. This visit was fraught with important
+consequences for Hugh, and marked an epoch in his eventful career.
+
+
+
+
+EDITOR'S ANNOUNCEMENT.--In the September number of McClure's Magazine
+will be told the romantic story of Hugh Bronte's courtship, and his
+elopement with Alice McGlory upon the very day appointed by her family
+for her marriage with Joe Burns.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+Transcribers Note
+
+Table of Contents and Illustration List added.
+
+Passages in italics indicated by _underscores_.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of McClure's Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 3,
+August, 1893, by Various
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MCCLURE'S MAGAZINE, AUGUST, 1893 ***
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