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+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
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+status under the laws that apply to them.
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #60061 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/60061)
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-Project Gutenberg's The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, by Various
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
-most other parts of the world 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.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll
-have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using
-this ebook.
-
-
-
-Title: The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine
-       Vol. LXXXVI, No. 5, September, 1913
-
-Author: Various
-
-Release Date: August 5, 2019 [EBook #60061]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CENTURY ILLUSTRATED ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by Jane Robins, Reiner Ruf, and the Online
-Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
-file was produced from images generously made available
-by The Internet Archive)
-
-
-
-
-
-
- ######################################################################
-
-                          Transcriber’s Notes
-
-    This e-text is based on ‘The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine,’
-    from September, 1913. The table of contents, based on the index
-    from the May issue, has been added by the transcriber.
-
-    Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation have been retained, but
-    punctuation and typographical errors have been corrected. Passages
-    in English dialect and in languages other than English have
-    not been altered. Footnotes have been moved to the end of the
-    corresponding article.
-
-    _Underscores_ have been used to indicate italic text in the
-    original; ~tilde characters~ have been applied to denote small
-    capitals.
-
- ######################################################################
-
-
-
-
-[Illustration:
-
-  © H. H.    Half-tone plate, engraved for ~The Century~ by H. Davidson
-
-BRONZE GROUP OF THE UNDEFEATED AMERICAN POLO TEAM
-
-HERBERT HAZELTINE’S SCULPTURE OF THE AMERICAN TEAM WHICH WON THE
-WORLD’S CHAMPIONSHIP IN ENGLAND, IN 1909, AND DEFENDED IT SUCCESSFULLY
-AGAINST ALL ENGLAND IN 1911 AND 1913
-
-(The leading figure: Mr. Milburn. Second figure: Mr. Whitney, captain.
-Figure in background: Mr. Lawrence Waterbury. Figure on the right: Mr.
-J. M. Waterbury.)]
-
-
-
-
-                        ~The Century Magazine~
-
-            ~Vol. LXXXVI~      SEPTEMBER, 1913      ~No. 5~
-
-      Copyright, 1913, by ~The Century Co.~ All rights reserved.
-
-
-
-
-CONTENTS
-
-                                                                    PAGE
-
-  ~Avocats, Les deux.~ From the
-    painting by                           _Honoré Daumier_
-                                                        Facing page  654
-
-  ~Book of his Heart, The~                _Allan Updegraff_          701
-      Picture by Herman Pfeifer.
-
-  ~Cartoons.~
-    The “Elite” Bathing-Dress.            _Reginald Birch_           797
-    From Grave to Gay.                    _C. F. Peters_             798
-
-  ~Century, the, The Spirit of~           _Editorial_                789
-
-  ~Choate, Joseph H.~ From a charcoal
-    portrait by                           _John S. Sargent_
-                                                        Facing page  711
-
-  ~Clown’s Rue.~                          _Hugh Johnson_             730
-      Picture, printed in tint, by
-        H. C. Dunn.
-
-  ~Country Roads of New England.~
-      Drawings by                         _Walter King Stone_        668
-
-  ~Dormer-Window, the, The Country of~    _Henry Dwight Sedgwick_    720
-      Pictures by W. T. Benda.
-
-  ~Down-town in New York.~
-      Drawings by                         _Herman Webster_           697
-
-  ~Juryman, the, The Mind of~             _Hugo Münsterberg_         711
-
-  ~Life After Death.~                     _Maurice Maeterlinck_      655
-
-  ~Louise.~ Color-Tone, from the
-    marble bust by                        _Evelyn Beatrice Longman_
-                                                        Facing page  766
-
-  ~Love by Lightning.~                    _Maria Thompson Daviess_   641
-      Pictures, printed in tint,
-        by F. R. Gruger.
-
-  ~Oregon Muddle,” “The~                  _Victor Rosewater_         764
-
-  ~T. Tembarom.~                          _Frances Hodgson Burnett_
-                                                                     767
-      Drawings by Charles S. Chapman.
-
-  ~Uncommercial Traveler, An, in London~  _Theodore Dreiser_         736
-      Pictures by W. J. Glackens.
-
-  ~Venezuela Dispute, the, The Monroe
-    Doctrine in~                          _Charles R. Miller_        750
-      Cartoons from “Punch,” and a map.
-
-  ~Wall Street, The News in~              _James L. Ford_            794
-      Pictures by Reginald Birch and May
-        Wilson Preston.
-
-  ~Whistler, A Visit to~                  _Maria Torrilhon Buel_     694
-
-  ~White Linen Nurse, The~                _Eleanor Hallowell Abbott_
-                                                                     672
-      Pictures, printed in tint, by
-        Herman Pfeifer.
-
-  ~World Reformers--and Dusters.~         _The Senior Wrangler_      792
-      Picture by Reginald Birch.
-
-
-VERSE
-
-  ~Continued in the Ads.~                 _Sarah Redington_          795
-
-  ~Gentle Reader, The~                    _Arthur Davison Ficke_     692
-
-  ~Lady Clara Vere de Vere: New Style.~   _Anne O’Hagan_             793
-      Picture by E. L. Blumenschein.
-
-  ~Last Faun, The~                        _Helen Minturn Seymour_    717
-      Picture, printed in tint, by
-        Charles A. Winter.
-
-  ~Limericks.~:
-      Text and pictures by Oliver Herford.
-    XXXIV.  The Conservative Owl.                                    799
-    XXXV.   The Omnivorous Book-worm.                                800
-
-  ~Ritual.~                               _William Rose Benét_       788
-
-  ~Rymbels~:
-      Pictures by Oliver Herford.
-    A Rymbel of Rhymers.                  _Carolyn Wells_            796
-    The Prudent Lover.                    _L. Frank Tooker_          797
-    On a Portrait of Nancy.               _Carolyn Wells_            797
-
-  ~Submarine Mountains.~                  _Cale Young Rice_          693
-
-  ~Wise Saint, The~                       _Herman Da Costa_          798
-      Picture by W. T. Benda.
-
-
-
-
-LOVE BY LIGHTNING
-
-BY MARIA THOMPSON DAVIESS
-
-Author of “The Melting of Molly,” “Andrew the Glad,” “Miss Selina Lue,”
-etc.
-
-WITH PICTURES BY F. R. GRUGER
-
-
-Love is the début of a woman’s soul from the darkness under Adam’s left
-ribs into the sunshine of the Garden of Eden and his presence. It is
-heavenly, but very much like a major operation attended by convulsions,
-and I am going to write you the whole truth about it, my dear Evelyn,
-and not present to you an unadorned feminine version. It is going to be
-hard, for I’ve only been practising concise veracity for a little over
-a month, and if I am crude in places, you must forgive me.
-
-What did it?
-
-Aunt Grace, my unfilial virago of a disposition, and the will of God.
-
-Please don’t let it make you uncomfortable to have me speak of Him in
-this friendly fashion, for He is in the story, and I can’t help it.
-Besides, that is part of what I want to tell you about.
-
-The first of May, mother came home from a visit to Aunt Grace in
-Louisville with the most peculiar little man led by a halter for me. He
-has a title, genuine brand. Elizabeth Gentry is going to marry him now,
-and she’ll write you all about it. Aunt Grace had selected him in Rome
-at Easter, and told him the round numbers of the fortune Grandmother
-Wickliffe left me. She had instructed mother minutely as to my joyous
-and appreciative course of action toward him, and you know how my
-maternal parent is about Aunt Grace. I want to record it of father that
-he received the duke with a recoil, and went to New Orleans the next
-morning for an indefinite stay.
-
-Of course the little man is a human being, but I consider the United
-States as fortunate that it is not now in complications with Italy over
-the murder of one of her scions by an enraged Tennessee woman. Two
-days after his arrival, and only several hours after the first time he
-tried to possess his funny little paws of my very garden-burned hand,
-I packed a few of my belongings in three trunks and a steamer-bag and
-departed to find Dudley. He is such a perfectly satisfactory brother
-that, since my earliest youth, I have always felt it best to flee to
-him when I feel a tantrum coming on. They don’t disturb the even tenor
-of his life in the least.
-
-“Oh, Nell!” was all mother had the courage to say, when so far away
-from Aunt Grace, at the announcement of my intention.
-
-“My brother is ill up in the Harpeth Hills, and _I_ must go to him,”
-was all I said to the duke.
-
-That was the feminine version of a line in Dudley’s last letter, saying
-he had caught a heavy cold sleeping out without his blanket while with
-one of his gangs marking lumber on Old Harpeth. But I did take his
-grace to call on Elizabeth before I departed. I will say that much for
-myself.
-
-With it all I had left home in such a whirl of hurry and rage that I
-hadn’t had time really to realize myself until I sat in my seat and
-watched the train begin to wind around and around the foot-hills that
-lead up from the valley. And I must say that realization of myself was
-not much in the way of amusement. Why should I have left mother in a
-huff just because she is Aunt Grace’s obedient sister? Isn’t she also
-my browbeaten parent? And why rudely abandon the little nobleman, who
-was my guest, for trying to kiss my hand, which has been used for any
-old purpose, from digging worms for Dudley to fish with to supplying a
-surface to be pressed by Bobby Gentry’s adolescent bristles, even unto
-the mustache he at present flourishes? And others, too! No, I couldn’t
-honestly approve of myself, as hard as I tried.
-
-And, to make it worse, the very day itself was a balmy, pliant,
-feminine thing, with not a bluster in its disposition to harmonize with
-mine. There was a soft bridal veil of spring mist all over the Harpeth
-Valley, behind which the orchards were blushing pink and white, while
-by noon, as we began to go up the hills, I caught a whiff of that
-indescribable, lilting honeysuckle note that comes in the June rhapsody
-in the Alleghanies. You remember it, don’t you, deary, even if you do
-live in an enchanted Breton garden with a husband who sings? I’m going
-to remember it in heaven.
-
-No, I wasn’t very well pleased with myself, and I got more and more
-serious on the subject the higher the train crawled up toward the
-crown of Old Harpeth. If a naturally conscientious person has such
-a bad disposition that she finds it impossible to accept any form of
-criticism from other people, then she is ethically obliged to chastise
-her own self, which is the refinement of psychical cruelty.
-
-By three o’clock the only way I could drag myself out of the depths was
-by remembering how Aunt Grace’s nostrils distend while she insinuates
-to mother in my presence what an unsatisfactory daughter I am. I can
-always get up a rage with that mental picture. That is, I could; now it
-is different, because--but that is what I am going to tell you about.
-
-Of course I knew that Dudley’s letters all went to Crow Point, and the
-ticket-man had told me that we got there at five-fifty. That hour was
-not dark--quite, I knew, and I decided that I would have plenty of time
-to drive across the ridge to his camp at Pigeon Creek.
-
-Isn’t it a good thing for women that they can’t take peeps into what is
-going to happen to them next? Men could digest their disclosed futures
-complacently, but on account of pure excitement, women never in the
-world could even sufficiently masticate theirs to swallow them.
-
-“Is it far from Crow Point to Pigeon Creek?” I asked the conductor, by
-way of amusing myself.
-
-“About one horse-pull,” he answered lucidly, as he went to help a woman
-and eleven children off at Hitch It.
-
-I’m glad now he was no more explicit.
-
-Crow Point was just a little farther along the road than Hitch It, and
-we got there before I had time to ask him any more questions. Purple
-dusk was just hovering over the mountain-top, as if uncertain about
-settling down upon it for the night, when the train stopped. He called
-Crow Point, and I jumped off--the universe.
-
-I stood for a few minutes, with my mind tottering.
-
-“Looking for anybody, little gal?” came a drawl from out the twilight
-just in time to keep me from running after the train to try and tell
-them that I didn’t want to be left alone in the mountains at dark. A
-man sat all hunched up on the tree-trunk that supported one end of
-the huge log which represented the station platform of Crow Point,
-whittling a small stick.
-
-“Is this Crow Point?” I gasped from the depths of both consternation
-and amazement as I looked from him to the three trunks stacked on the
-ground by the rustic platform.
-
-“Sure am,” was the answer, as the small red slivers of wood flew.
-
-“Is this--this all of it?” I asked, this time less from consternation
-than astonishment.
-
-“Well, they is a few more of us,” he answered. “Was you a-looking for
-any of us in particular?”
-
-“Mr. Dudley Gaines,” I answered in a manner that bordered on the
-lofty, as if I felt that the status of my family must be much the same
-commanding one at Crow Point that it was down in Hillsboro.
-
-“I reckon you’ll have to holler that loud enough to reach about
-twenty-five miles acrost to Pigeon Creek, gal, if you want to git him,”
-was the unimpressed answer.
-
-“Twenty-five miles!” I spoke less haughtily this time. “Can’t I get
-there to-night?”
-
-“You could ef you had started this time last night,” was the practical
-reply.
-
-Suddenly the fact that I was planted down in the wilderness of gigantic
-mountains, alone except for one aborigine of the masculine gender,
-overpowered me so that I sank down on the log and became much meeker in
-manner and spirit.
-
-“What’ll I do?” I asked, and this time my words were nothing more than
-a subdued and respectful peep.
-
-“Wall, I reckon Stivers and missus will have to take you in for the
-night,” answered the native, with a condescending drawl. “They might
-not, but you mentioned young Gaines’s name. We ’most shot him for a
-revenue when he first came, but he’s brought a sight of good work
-amongst us, and lives like he was fellow-man with all. Be you his
-sister or his woman?”
-
-“Sister,” I answered, taking a grain of courage at thus hearing
-Dudley’s name mentioned as that of a prominent citizen of the
-fastnesses.
-
-“Yes, Stivers had a cross on his gun for Dud, and he mighty nigh got
-a bloodstain to smear on it ’fore he found out that he were just a
-logger. But Stivers’ll take you in, I reckon, now he knows you belong
-to his tribe, though his cabin is so small you couldn’t cuss a cat
-without getting hair in your teeth.”
-
-“Where do Mr. and Mrs. Stivers live?” I ventured, with a shudder at the
-taste of cat-hair in my mouth.
-
-“Round behind that crag and woodland there,” he answered as he turned
-the stick and looked at it critically in the fading light. “You can go
-on by yourself, or, if you want to wait until I whittle this little end
-slimmer, I can take you along with me. They is going to be a ruckus
-kind of a meetin’ of the gang there to-night, but they won’t nothing
-but dark draw the boys outen the bushes.”
-
-“I’ll wait,” I answered trustfully, preferring to appear at the
-hostelry under the care of a strange man than risk the woods alone.
-Necessity is the stepmother of many conventions.
-
-And there I sat on a companionable log beside a perfectly strange
-outlaw who had been talking about notches on guns and blood-splotches,
-waiting for him to whittle down the end of a stick exactly to satisfy
-his artistic tastes before accompanying me through a dark strip of
-woodland to the hospitable roof of a moonshiner, in hopes I would be
-taken in to spend the night thereunder.
-
-And I must proudly and truthfully record it of myself that I bore the
-situation in dignified and complacent terror, sitting humbly still
-while the moonshiner slowly peeled tiny pink shavings off the end of
-the stick for what seemed like centuries to me. My interior was a small
-Vesuvius of disposition, frozen over temporarily, and I even had the
-strength to marvel at my own control of it.
-
-Finally he held his work of art close to his eyes to see the point in
-the dusk, which had deepened by the moment, tested it on his finger
-carefully several times, peered at it again, and then nonchalantly
-threw it away in the grass.
-
-“Come on and follow,” he said in commanding and indifferent mien as I
-rose to accompany him.
-
-And follow him I did, in true squaw fashion, about ten paces behind.
-I was surprised he didn’t ask me to carry his gun, a long, heavy
-ante-bellum weapon that rested carelessly in the hollow of his arm.
-I’d have done it with the greatest graciousness if he had handed it to
-me. A frightened woman easily lapses into savagery, and is willing to
-accept impedimenta in the rear of man in times of danger.
-
-And, as we walked, the shadows got blacker and blacker, and the
-tree-tops lowered lower and lower in their thick gloom. Every few
-minutes something furry, like the hallucination of a gigantic mouse,
-would scurry across our path, or a great creaky croak would be hurled
-at our heads from the groaning branches above. And, with every fresh
-horror, I got closer to the heels of the human animal in front of me,
-until I was in danger of having my nose skinned by the barrel of the
-gun, or stepping on the protruding heels of his heavy boots, into
-which his faded overalls were stuffed. My knees may have trembled, but
-I assure you I kept pace with grim determination through what seemed
-endless miles of that haunted woodland.
-
-And as we tramped along in silence, my mood of self-depreciation, which
-had seized me on the train, again asserted itself, and my alarmed
-mentality was saying sternly that it had warned my proud spirit
-that such catastrophes would be the result of my headlong course of
-wilfulness, when we came out of the darkness into a clearing where a
-cabin stood, from which a dim light shone.
-
-“Stivers’,” remarked my guide, fluently. “So long,” he added tersely,
-and disappeared again into the woods by another path. At the time I
-wondered if he could be troubled by the conventions. I did him an
-injustice; I know now it was a horse hitched on the other side of the
-clearing.
-
-For more than a few long minutes I stood and pondered with panicky
-indecision over just what to do, the wood with its nightmares on the
-one hand, and the unknown on the other. I chose the unknown, and
-plunged in as I faltered up to the open door of the small two-room hut.
-
-Suddenly two doors were shut hurriedly in the darkness, and I heard
-the scuffling of heavy feet as a man appeared in the flare of the dim
-candle in the front room and peered at me cautiously.
-
-“What do you want?” was the hospitable greeting that issued from the
-cavern of his huge chest.
-
-“Mr. Dudley Gaines,” I answered, using instinctively the name of
-introduction that I had seen succeed a few minutes earlier.
-
-“He ain’t here; but if you are his woman, come in,” was the answer, and
-as Dudley’s property I entered the Stivers’s abode.
-
-Even in my tragic situation for an instant my temper rose. Why should
-man’s possession justify the existence of a woman in the eyes of the
-primitive? However, masculine justification of life is a delicious
-feeling to a woman in a dark and fearful wood and--But I’ll tell you
-about that later.
-
-With becoming gravity and timidity I entered the living-room of the
-moonshiner’s hut, and weakly seated myself in a chair he pointed out to
-me in a corner by an open window.
-
-“Brat’s got fits, and the woman is out there tending it,” was my host’s
-ample excuse for the non-appearance of my hostess.
-
-At his words my heart jumped and then stood still. I had never been in
-the house with a fit before, and the feeling was gruesome, coming so
-close on the heels of the woolly, furry things in the woods.
-
-Then as I poised myself on the edge of the chair, holding on tight to
-keep myself from running out into the night, an eery wail came from
-the back of the house, and I collapsed on the seat, with a queer,
-suffocating pain in the place of that jump. I had never noticed a
-child’s cry before, and something moved in the region of my solar
-plexus.
-
-“Can’t--can’t something be done?” I ventured in desperation.
-
-“Naw,” came the answer in a drawl. “I reckon it is bound fer kingdom
-come this trip sure. Leader will take a look at it when he comes in fer
-a round-up of the gang. They’ll all be late to-night, on ’count of some
-dirty business over at Hitch It. If you want to go to bed, that’s the
-best bed in the lean-to out there we keep for over-nights. Better git
-settled and outen the way ’fore the gang gits here. They’re ’most too
-rough fer calico like you to stay around, and there’ll be a big fight
-on ’fore it’s over. Leader is snorting rough over that knifing at Hitch
-It, and somebody’ll be cut down with power by him ’fore he’s done with
-it. The woman is too upsot with the kid to see to you; but bedding is
-all you need, now dark has come. Better git to cover right away.”
-
-[Illustration: Drawn by F. R. Gruger. Color-Tone, engraved for ~The
-Century~ by H. Davidson
-
-“THEN, AS I FALTERED AND FELT THAT I MUST STOP AND SINK ON THE FLOOR,
-A WHILE A SHOULDER BRACED ITSELF AGAINST STRONG, WARM, BARE ARM CAME
-AROUND ME, AND UNDER MY ARM AROUND THE BABY, MINE, AS GABRIEL SWUNG
-INTO STEP WITH ME”]
-
-As he was speaking, he took the candle and led the way into a
-little shed-room, while I followed with trembling knees, and the jelly
-of fear quivering all over my body. Every moonshine murder about which
-I had ever read in the papers trod in martial array before my mental
-eyes, and my breath was just a flutter between my chattering teeth. It
-really is a triumph of the survival of the life force in the human body
-that I am alive to tell the tale to you to-day.
-
-“They’s light enough from the window for you to roll in,” the man said
-as he pointed to a low bed, built of logs and boughs along the wall
-next to the front room. “Better git to cover and stay there, a calico
-like you, with the boys as rough as they be; you mightn’t like ’em. I
-reckon they better not know you’re here, on ’count of the row that’s
-coming over that knifing; so lay close.”
-
-And even before he had time to depart with his candle, I made a dive
-beneath the patched quilt, only grasping my hat in my hand instead of
-keeping it on my head. Then, as still as my trembling limbs would let
-me, I lay close to the rough, thin, pine planks that separated me from
-what seemed the only other human being in the world. And for hours it
-seemed I lay there and panted and groveled in spirit with terror and
-helplessness, waiting, waiting, for something dreadful to happen, and
-almost wishing it would come and be over.
-
-Across the mountain-tops there began to be distant mutterings of
-thunder, and in the flashes of lightning I could see restless, dark
-birds wing by the small window. And save for the thunderings, there was
-a stillness that must have been on the waters before the first dawn
-reigned. I could hear my heart beat like a muffled motor, and only the
-uncanny wail broke the silence now and again, while once I thought I
-heard a woman’s stifled moan that sent a shudder to the very core of my
-body.
-
-And as I lay and cowered in that darkness, the mood of self-realization
-came back upon me, and alone in that terror of blackness I turned at
-bay and faced myself. Was that coward thing I that lay helpless while a
-woman alone moaned away the life of her tortured child, and a plan for
-murder was plotted with my full knowledge? Why didn’t I run out into
-that dreadful night and warn the victim, stop him from stepping into
-the dreadful trap laid for him? And right then I impeached myself. I
-had been guarded and fended and had all humanity nurtured out of me,
-so that, rather than risk my own pitiful little life, I was willing to
-“lie close” and let my brother human be murdered in cold blood.
-
-“But women are weak,” I argued in my own defense, “and terrible,
-wolfish things like these they cannot control or prevent. They must let
-them take their course.”
-
-“Weak women have steeled themselves to the saving of their brothers and
-sisters centuries long,” came the still, small voice that seemed to be
-hovering over my breast.
-
-“I can’t risk my own life for that of a rough moonshiner who probably
-spends his time whittling a stick to throw away,” I sobbed in answer to
-myself.
-
-“What more important thing than whittling a stick do you do with your
-life?” came the question, relentlessly.
-
-“Nothing,” I sobbed under my breath, as a vision of all the nothings I
-had done in my life came before me with a flash of the lightning that
-seemed to illumine the inside of the very inner me.
-
-“And that other woman suffering in there, why don’t I go to her?” I
-demanded of myself, and failed to find an answer.
-
-“Afraid of the roughness of some mountain man who would scarcely dare
-harm your brother’s ‘woman’?” I asked contemptuously from above my own
-breast. “You a ‘woman,’ if you let another woman watch her child die
-alone!”
-
-Desperate at this goad, I sat up, and was pushing back the quilt, when
-the muffled sound of heavy boots came from across the clearing, and in
-another flash I saw a file of men, each one of whom looked ten feet
-tall, each with a gun on his arm, come out of the black woods and turn
-to the front of the house. I melted back to cover, and lay drawing
-breath like a drowning man.
-
-Quietly they came into the room next to that in which I was hiding, and
-their drawly voices had a subdued and terrible sound as they exchanged
-a few remarks in guarded tones.
-
-“Leader come?” one man asked from so near the pine board against which
-I trembled that he couldn’t have been a foot away from me.
-
-“Naw; and Bill is waiting in the woods to ketch him ’fore he gits here,
-if he kin,” came the mumble of my host’s big voice.
-
-“It’ll be nip and tuck ’twixt ’em, and lay out the worst man feet due
-west,” another voice took up the gruesome chorus.
-
-“That’s Bill now, coming outen the woods,” exclaimed Stivers,
-ominously. “I reckon he thinks he missed Leader. Don’t nobody say
-nothing when he comes in, but let him set and wait for his knock-out.
-Nobody’s business but Leader’s.”
-
-Listening frantically, I heard the doomed man’s hesitating feet shuffle
-into the room and the chair groan as he took his seat amid the glum
-silence.
-
-And there I lay, and with Bill I waited I didn’t know for what, some
-nameless horror that would kill the life in me and make me a dishonored
-thing all my life--a human too cowardly to cry out the word of warning
-to another of God’s creatures. And through it all the little child
-wailed and the woman moaned.
-
-Then in the midst of another thick muttering from the head of Old
-Harpeth, which was followed by a vivid flash, I heard another pair of
-feet step on the threshold of the cabin. I cowered under the quilt,
-held my breath, and took the bullet into my own heart--or thought I did.
-
-Then high and clear through the flash of the lightning, over the
-mutterings of the thunder and the scuffle of the men’s feet,
-accompanied by a glad cry from the moaning woman, there came a voice
-of an archangel singing in tones of command that thrilled that whole
-mountain until it seemed to shake with its reverberations:
-
-    “Stand up! stand up for Jesus!
-      Ye soldiers of the cross;
-    Lift high His royal banner,
-      It must not suffer loss.”
-
-I lay still, and something poured into my heart that was a peace made
-from the glory of the storm, the moan of the woman, and the song of
-a dawn-bird. Out of the darkness my soul came like--I think I partly
-expressed it in the first sentence of this confession, if you will turn
-back and see, Evelyn dear.
-
-After the men had sung the wonderful old hymn through to its very last
-lines,
-
-    “To him that overcometh
-      A crown of life shall be;
-    He with the King of Glory
-      Shall reign eternally,”
-
-Bill and I kept very still and took our “knock-out.”
-
-Bill had stuck a knife into a gallant over at Hitch It for offering to
-exchange snuff-sticks with Malinda Budd, and I could easily detect a
-decided vein of sympathy in the voice of Leader while he administered
-a rousing reproof to the knife, but extolled the use of fists in such
-cases, much to the approval of the rest of the gang.
-
-In fact, that was the greatest sermon ever spoken in the English
-language on the theme of justice, courage, feminine protection, manly
-dignity, and brotherly love, and it was done in about five minutes, I
-should say. Every word of it hit Bill fair and square, and me also, to
-say nothing of all the rest of the world. During the last minute and
-a half of the discourse the men were indulging in muttered “Ahmens”
-and “Glory be’s,” and I could hardly restrain myself from throwing off
-the quilt and--well, you know, Evelyn, that Grandmother Wickliffe was
-a pillar in the Methodist Church of Hillsboro, and at times of great
-emotion, during the visit of the presiding elder, she did--shout. Aunt
-Grace never likes to hear it mentioned.
-
-Now, let me see, this is just about the beginning of the real story,
-and I am so anxious to tell it all, though I really feel a hesitancy.
-However, when I am through with the letter, I can leave out any part of
-it that doesn’t sound seemly for me to tell about him--and me, can’t I?
-
-To begin with, I hardly know how to make you understand about that
-baby’s stomach, and how near a tragedy it was. Don’t laugh! I tremble
-when I think about it, and I don’t ever believe I’ll learn to do it
-to them. I hope I won’t have to practise on one of my own first; but,
-then, it would be awful to kill another woman’s baby experimenting on
-it, wouldn’t it? I’d better not think about that now, or I can’t tell
-the rest of the story.
-
-Well, after the doxology had been sung by the strange Gabriel in the
-next room, accompanied by some really lovely rough men’s voices, and
-he had sent them away so he could see to the sick baby in the other
-room, I lay still and had a racking, glorious experience. For the first
-time in my life I really prayed to Something that answered in the dark.
-I didn’t have much to say for myself, but a great Gentleness reached
-down and laid hold of me for always, and I can never be lost from Him
-any more, and I knew it. _Now_, I have been taught that it is called
-the witness of the spirit, and it’s what Grandmother Wickliffe had.
-But I didn’t inherit it; I had to find it myself, and I got it through
-tribulation, by the way of Gabriel’s song in the terror of the night,
-followed by the sermon to Bill.
-
-And while I was lying there under the quilt, just shouting in my soul
-with ancestral ardor, I was called to come forth and attest my new
-convictions. And I did. If I hadn’t got that faith in God just a few
-minutes before on the wings of a great emotion, I never could have
-steeled myself to taking that awful purple, twitching baby and helping
-Gabriel do the dreadful things to it he did. I would have taken to the
-woods at the first look at it. But I know now that I had got the real
-religion that darts right through the emotions, and prods you up to do
-things. And I did them.
-
-“It’ll die, and I can’t hold it,” whimpered the poor exhausted mother
-when Gabriel told her to hold the baby’s mouth open while he poured in
-the hot water. At that time I was still safe and rejoicing over myself
-under the quilt.
-
-“You must hold him while I wash him out, or he _will_ die. Come, brace
-up and help me!” I heard Gabriel plead to the poor creature, with
-positive agony in his voice, while the baby moaned.
-
-“No use, Leader; I’ve done give’ up,” and I heard her fling herself on
-the floor and begin to moan in chorus with the baby.
-
-It took me just half a minute to get to my feet, into that other room,
-and that baby in my arms, as awful to look at as it was. Of course it
-seemed as if God was honoring me by crowding works on my new faith
-pretty closely, and how I got through with such credit I don’t see; but
-I did.
-
-“You’ll have to show me just what to do; I never touched a baby before,
-but I will try to help,” I said to Gabriel, who was looking at me in
-an absolute astonishment and devout thankfulness that encouraged my
-new-found capableness.
-
-“A woman, thank God!” I heard him mutter before he spoke.
-
-“Tip him on your arm, hold his head close against your breast, with
-your finger down his throat, while I pour in this hot water; then turn
-him over on your knee quick when it is about to come up. He is full of
-fried potatoes, and that is what is making the spasms. I’ll hold his
-legs with my left hand, so he can’t kick away from you. We must get
-down enough of this water to bring up all of the potatoes.”
-
-Gabriel’s voice was quick and respectful, as if he were speaking to
-somebody that had as much intellect and manual training as himself. I
-suppose that is what helped me through with those dreadful hours of
-time that it took to work up that awful potato--that and the positive
-way I said:
-
-“Now, God, help me, please, and quick!”
-
-At last it all came forth, and I don’t suppose it really was hours; but
-the baby was apparently done for.
-
-“No use, Leader; his time have come. She’s buried five out thar in the
-clearing at jest about his age. Let the little critter go in peace,”
-said Stivers, who had come in through the back door. His rough voice
-had a note of suffering in it, though he lit his pipe by a coal from
-the fire calmly enough.
-
-But at the mention of the five little graves out in that awful night,
-the poor woman on the floor groveled up on to her knees and caught at
-my skirts.
-
-“God help you!” said Gabriel, gently, to her. “He’s rid of the poison,
-but so collapsed that there seems nothing more to do.”
-
-“Yes, and I’m going to help God help her,” I said suddenly, and I rose
-from the chair to walk the floor with the limp, white thing that had
-been the purple horror in my arms. “I didn’t know how to unpoison him,
-but if it’s strength and heat he needs, I can give him that,” and I
-held the tiny mountaineer close against my bare breast, from which
-his poor little convulsed fingers had torn all the foolish lace and
-embroidered linen.
-
-“If a physician were here, he would try transfusion; the child is
-anemic, anyway,” said Gabriel, thoughtfully.
-
-“We don’t need any physician but God to get my heat and strength into
-him. I only wish I had on a real flannel petticoat, as a decent woman
-ought to have for cases of emergency like this, to wrap him in. This
-old piece of blanket isn’t real wool.”
-
-“Poor folks can’t buy much but shoddy these days,” said Stivers, with
-glum resentfulness.
-
-“Here, my shirt’s the thing,” said Leader, and as quick as one of the
-flashes that came in the window with the thunder mutterings, he had
-peeled off his own gray flannel blouse, and was wrapping it around the
-baby, and tucking it close over my breast.
-
-“Now fight, and I’m with you,” he said as he looked straight into my
-eyes in the dim light.
-
-“He isn’t going to die; he’s got a right to live, and he’s going to do
-it, God helping,” I answered, as I got a firm grasp of the mite on my
-left arm, and put my warm right hand over the poor little collapsed
-stomach.
-
-And then for what seemed hours of eternity I walked and rubbed and
-hugged that limp baby, while I prayed inside my own vitals to the tune
-of “Stand up.” Stivers stood smoking sullenly by the fire, the mother
-lay on the floor, moaning, and Gabriel stood over by the window, with
-his bare shoulders gleaming comfortingly with every flash of lightning.
-And the knowledge that all three of those strong, useful real people
-were depending upon ignorant, foolish me to lead the fight for that
-poor little life made the new wings of my spirit raise themselves and
-soar out into some wonderful space I had never been in before, but
-through which I knew the way and could take the baby with me.
-
-How long I plodded across and across that rickety floor of the cabin I
-don’t know, but once I staggered as I came near Gabriel at the window,
-and my right shoulder sagged under its burden. Then, as I faltered and
-felt that I must stop and sink on the floor, a strong, warm, bare arm
-came around me, and under my arm around the baby, while a shoulder
-braced itself against mine, as Gabriel swung into step with me.
-
-“Keep fighting,” he said deep in his throat.
-
-And again I soared away with the baby up to where God was there to help
-us.
-
-Then suddenly we both were brought back to earth by my feeling him
-stir, and huddle closer to my breast, while the limp little knees found
-strength to press themselves in against the ribs over my heart.
-
-“Oh!” I sobbed with a quick breath.
-
-The mother moaned, and Gabriel steadied us both closer. He thought the
-baby was dead, I knew.
-
-“Want to give him to me?” he asked gently.
-
-“No, I don’t,” I answered jerkily enough to sound like a snap; “but
-wipe the perspiration out of my eyes. He’s getting hot now, and I’m
-melting, but I don’t dare stop hugging and patting. Make his mother
-understand he’s getting all right.”
-
-But nobody has to make a mother understand when her baby is saved. The
-poor creature just gave one pitiful gasp, and went to nice, comfortable
-crying instead of moaning. It was lovely to hear hearty boohoos, though
-she never said a word except to ask Stivers for her snuff-stick, which
-he attentively swabbed in the can before he handed it to her.
-
-“You can’t go on walking and joggling forever; sit down and rock and
-rest with him,” suggested Gabriel, timidly and respectfully, after he
-had passed a nice, cool, linen handkerchief all over my hot face for
-me, even with intelligence enough to wipe in the hollow under my chin.
-
-“Not now; he’s squirming deliciously, and I don’t dare. Suppose he
-should go limp again,” I answered fearfully.
-
-“He’s due to drop off to sleep now,” announced Leader in such a
-positive, though kind, voice that almost immediately young Stivers
-obediently turned himself a bit, settled in a nice, soggy way, and I
-could feel the little lungs so near mine begin to draw breath in a
-regular, good sound sleep.
-
-I waited a minute to be sure, then sank with him into a chair beside
-the fire.
-
-“Yes, he’s all right now,” Leader said in a lovely, quiet voice,
-with just a husky note of happiness in it as he gently raised into
-his own strong hand one tiny paddie that had stolen up on my breast
-from out the warm, gray shirt. For a wonderful second we were all
-soul-becalmed together, and then he went over into the corner and
-slipped on his khaki hunting-coat, which he had hung on a peg in the
-wall, and decorously tied his silk handkerchief around his neck, in
-true mountaineer fashion. He never did get that shirt again, for I
-originated some remarkable bandages for young Stivers out of it next
-day.
-
-[Illustration: Color-Tone, engraved for ~The Century~ by H. Davidson
-
-“‘ARE YOU REAL?’ HE WHISPERED, WITH MY CHEEK PRESSED HARD AGAINST HIS,
-AND HIS ARMS TERRIFIC WITH TENDERNESS”
-
-DRAWN BY F. R. GRUGER]
-
-Then he came back to the fire, and while I hovered the kiddie, the
-mother came close on her knees and settled beside us, so that together
-we took a worse ministerial drubbing than even Bill got for the
-knifing episode, delivered in a voice of such heavenly sympathy that
-Grandmother Wickliffe’s spirit again rose in me, and if it hadn’t been
-for the baby, I believe she would have broken out this time in one good
-shout. She hasn’t up to date, but I feel sure she will some day, and I
-don’t always intend to restrain her manifestations.
-
-The sermon this time had for its text the sacredness of the use of
-the maternal fount for the young instead of promiscuous food, but it
-embraced all the advanced feminist questions of the day, and was an
-awful glorification and arraignment of human females all in one breath.
-Why don’t women begin to know what dreadful and wonderful creatures
-they really are earlier in life? The knowledge comes with an awful
-shock when it does come, and ought to be experienced while young. I had
-taken Bill’s sermon to heart, but that one to Mrs. Stivers I got right
-in the center of my soul. It is still there.
-
-And when it was over, the poor mother was kneeling by the fire, with
-the baby at her breast, sobbing and crooning softly as she rocked it to
-and fro in its deep sleep.
-
-“It’s suffocating in here, now that it is all over. Don’t you want to
-come out and watch the storm?” Gabriel asked me in a low voice as he
-stood beside me looking down on the comfortable pair on the hearth.
-“Don’t be afraid. It is a great one, mostly electrical, and will likely
-go on all night this way. It makes the atmosphere almost unendurably
-heavy. Do you want to watch it from the bluff there at the end of the
-clearing? You can look down and see it at play in the valley.”
-
-“Please,” I answered, catching the word in the middle with a breath
-that was a sob in retreat.
-
-Then before I knew it, or how, we were seated together on a big rock
-that jutted out from the edge of the world. The cabin, with its one or
-two dim lights, loomed with shadowy outlines behind us, and tall trees
-hugged us close on both sides; but before us and beneath us was a wild,
-black, turbulent night.
-
-“Now look down into the valley when the next flash comes,” Gabriel said
-with a note of excitement sounding in his deep voice that matched the
-wind through the trees.
-
-Then just as he finished speaking, a slow, steady sheet of light came
-and lit up the world below us. The fields in their spring garments,
-embroidered by the threads of silver creeks, lay lush and green, dotted
-by farm-houses in which dim lights twinkled, bouqueted by glowing pink
-orchards, and outlined by blooming hedges. Tall trees were massed along
-the edges of the meadows and the river-banks, and among them the white
-lines of the old sycamores gleamed in masses of high lights. And in the
-wild, soft wind that rushed up the mountain-sides and flung itself upon
-us there was mingled the tang of the honeysuckle and rhododendron with
-the sweetness of the orchards and pungence of newly plowed earth.
-
-Then as suddenly as the picture had risen before our eyes it sank back
-into the purple blackness, and I caught my breath with the glory of it.
-
-“And God made it!” I exclaimed softly, with the last sob that had been
-left in my heart caught from my mouth by the wind.
-
-“‘The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof; the world, and
-they that dwell therein,’” he answered, and the wind took his words as
-if it had been waiting for them to carry across the mountains.
-
-After that for several long minutes, I don’t know how many, I sat
-silent in the windy blackness, with the tree-branches sighing and
-crashing over our heads, and wild things rustling in the leaves and
-bushes beside us, and wondered what was happening to me.
-
-Of course I have been deadly afraid of a minister all my life, and
-the times we have had the bishops and presiding elders and pastors to
-dinner with us in honor of the memory of Grandmother Wickliffe have
-been times of torture to me. I always thought, of course, they were not
-real men, though the way they looked and their hearty appetites for
-both viands and jokes kept them from seeming conventional angels; but
-this Gabriel materialization that sat close to me on that rock, which
-was the end of the universe, was a strong, heart-beating man, who alone
-stood between me and the real wilderness of the woods and the awful
-wilderness of my ignorant and convicted spirit. It was terrific, but
-heavenly sweet.
-
-“I know He made me,--I found that out to-night,--but I don’t see what
-for, and I wish I knew why,” I said in the smallest voice I had ever
-heard myself use; and this time there was just the echo of that last
-sob left to sigh out on the wind.
-
-“He saw I needed you pretty badly a few hours ago,” Gabriel said in
-that delicious warm voice he had used to me to encourage me through the
-worst baby chokings.
-
-“I’ve always been a dreadful woman, and wanted to be more and more so
-until I heard you sing ‘Stand up for Jesus!’ when I was dead and gone
-from fear of your gun, and talk to Bill about loving the girl with the
-snuff-stick in the right way, and the man, too, just because we are all
-God’s children. I was lost, but Something found me in the dark just
-before you and the baby did. I never belonged to anything or anybody
-before, and even now how do I know that God wants me after the awful
-way I have lived?” My words trailed in positive anguish.
-
-“He does want you, woman dear. Take my word for that, or would you like
-me to quote you about five hundred passages from His Book to prove it
-to you?” He laughed as he said it in a wooing, comforting way that was
-both manly and ministerial.
-
-“You don’t know me. I’m a perfect stranger to you,” I answered with
-agonizing honesty, because the regard of that man, whom I had never
-seen a few hard, long hours before, was becoming very valuable to me,
-and I felt afraid that if I didn’t warn him about myself before he took
-me for a friend, I might not ever do it, but dishonestly make him like
-me, as I have done to so many other men.
-
-“We couldn’t be perfect strangers after the battle with those
-potatoes--and after seeing what that flash revealed of the valley
-together, could we?” he asked, with the amusement sounding still more
-plainly in his voice. “And you know you heard me preach twice. Isn’t
-that a kind of left-handed introduction?”
-
-“People that are introduced to me don’t ever know me,” I answered
-forlornly; for I felt that the time had come for me to confess my sins
-before men, and this was the hardest man to do it to I had ever met,
-and also the easiest.
-
-“Then tell me about yourself. I’ve been wondering a bit since I
-have had time. You answered a hurry-call I had to send above pretty
-quickly,” he said in a beguiling and encouraging tone of voice that
-sounded just as other agreeable men’s voices have sounded to me before,
-only more so.
-
-Just then a furry thing rustled in the bushes, and I moved an inch
-nearer him. I felt him stir, but he sat comfortingly still. I didn’t
-want him to move to me.
-
-“The worst thing about me is that I am utterly and entirely worthless,”
-I began, dropping the words out slowly in the dark. “If God made me, He
-can’t help but be dreadfully disappointed in me, and wishing He hadn’t.
-I’m just a wicked white kitten, with a blue ribbon around my neck,
-kept in a basket, and fed the warm milk of other people’s work and
-attentions.”
-
-“That is not always the kitten’s fault,” said Gabriel, gently.
-
-“It’s this kitten’s. My family would have liked for me to be
-strong-minded and go to college and do things in the world. They’ve
-tried to persuade me. Dudley, my brother, says I have got so much
-brains held in solution that he is afraid some day something will
-happen to precipitate them before the world is ready for them; but I
-ignore them strenuously. My mother is the president of the Home Mission
-Society that Grandmother Wickliffe founded, and Aunt Grace is state
-president of the Colonial Daughters, and makes remarkable speeches. I
-am just a large, white-skinned, well-fed, red-headed bunch of nothing,
-and I don’t know how to get over it.”
-
-“At least you are of the blessed company of the meek,” answered
-Gabriel, this time with a real human chuckle that he might have used
-if he had found three of a kind in a poker-hand.
-
-“Oh, no, I’m not meek,” I hastened to assure him. “I’m the most
-conceited woman on the earth, the vain kind of conceit that looks in
-the glass and admires its black lashes and white teeth, and long curves
-in good frocks, not the intellectual-attainment kind, that has some
-excuse for existence. I know I’m beautiful, and I hugely enjoy it.”
-
-“You sound beautiful by description, and a few flashes of lightning,
-added to candle-light, bear you witness. Still, why shouldn’t you
-appreciate the gifts God has made you? Beauty can have the most
-wonderful influence in the world in the way of enjoyment for us people
-at large. Use yours that way when no misguided potatoes call you.”
-His voice was enthusiastic and delightful, and what he said about the
-flashes of lightning made me blush so there in the dark that I was
-sorry one didn’t come that minute and let him see it--the blush. That
-thought, coming into my mind, cast me into the depths of humiliation
-that I had had it about him.
-
-“That’s the trouble,” I faltered in unhappy mortification at my
-instability of character. “I use it to make other people miserable, and
-know when I do it--men people and things like that.”
-
-“Sometimes that isn’t fair, is it?” he asked after a minute’s pause.
-“And yet women will do it. What makes them?”
-
-“I don’t know,” I almost sobbed, but controlled it. “I never knew how
-wrong it was until you talked to Bill about that snuff-stick girl, and
-how he ought to feel about her, and influence her not to do other men
-that way. I’m like her, only I do worse than snuff-sticks; and I enjoy
-it. No, I know God doesn’t want a woman like that.”
-
-“But perhaps you won’t be like that any more. I don’t believe you
-could, after tasting to-night’s adventure. You lapped up that situation
-pretty enthusiastically,” he said gently. But somehow there was a hint
-of amusement in his voice that set my dreadful temper off for a second,
-and made me wild to convince him of the depths of my sinfulness. I felt
-that the occasion demanded his serious attention and not levity.
-
-All my life my temper has been a whirlwind that rose and carried me to
-the limit of things, and then beyond, without any warning. I thought
-I was making a confession in a state of religious zeal, but I am
-afraid it was just the same old rage. Religious zeal often takes these
-peculiar forms of exaggerated temper, and often never finds itself out.
-From this you’ll see I’m trying very hard to differentiate myself; but
-it is difficult.
-
-Then for minutes and minutes, and perhaps hours, I sat there in the
-dark beside that strange man, and told him things that I had never told
-anybody living, and some I had never admitted to myself. It came out
-in a wailing, sobbing volume, and I trembled so that he had to take my
-cold hand in his, I suppose to keep me from sliding off the rock down
-into the valley.
-
-I wonder if any woman before ever talked out her whole wild self into
-a man’s ears? And I wonder if it shook him as it did this one out
-under the lowering clouds and dark trees? When women habitually reveal
-themselves to men, it is going to bring social revolution, and they
-must go slow.
-
-And I did go slow. I tried to be truly considerate of him. I began on a
-few ridiculous misdemeanors that I am surprised I remembered of myself,
-such as inconsiderate extraction of money from father by means of
-unwarranted tantrums, impositions on my dear mother’s loving credulity
-about some of my hunting forays with Bobby, when I left home riding
-Lady Gray, side-style, only to fling a leg over Dudley’s Grit two
-squares down the street, where Bobby was waiting with him for me.
-
-It surprised me that he only chuckled delightedly, and wanted to know
-just exactly who and what Bobby was or is.
-
-But I couldn’t be diverted, and was determined to tell the whole tale.
-I felt as if I must get one or two things off my conscience and on to
-his. I went the whole length, and succeeded.
-
-When I told him of that mad escapade at Louisville, while I was
-visiting Aunt Grace, with Stanley Hughes and the supper party he gave
-to that French dancing-girl in “The Bird-Flight,” when I got out of the
-taxi and walked home in my satin slippers in the snow for ten blocks
-rather than stay and have Stanley take me another block in the state
-he was in, though I had done nothing to stop his drinking and laughed
-at him, I heard him catch his breath and shudder.
-
-I never told anybody before that it was a paper-knife in my hands that
-ripped open Henry Hedrick’s cheek for an inch, down in his library
-while Mamie was up-stairs putting their six-months’ old baby to bed,
-and I was a guest in their house. In this case I had suspected how he
-felt about me before I came, but had contemptuously ignored it because
-I liked to be with Mamie. I told the last few minutes of that tale with
-dry sobs breaking my words, and while I shook, he folded my cold hand
-in both his warm ones, and I heard him mutter between his teeth:
-
-“God love her and keep her!”
-
-Then, after a long stillness, I crept closer to him, so that my head
-bowed against his arm, and opened the very depths to him.
-
-“I don’t think any woman ought to say this to any man,” I began from
-very far down in my throat, “but you are a preacher, and that makes a
-difference, and you won’t mind. I am disrespectful and ungrateful to
-Aunt Grace about it when she is trying her level best to do it to me,
-but--but I ought to get married. There are lots of wonderful women all
-over the world who are doing gloriously without husbands, and living
-happily forever after; but I’m not one. Some women have such frivolous
-spirits that nothing but a good, firm husband and an enormous family
-of children can ever chasten them. I’m one. I’ve always thought that
-he’d find me some day long before I was ready for him--or them; but now
-I’m afraid he’ll never come. I know he won’t.” I clung to his strong
-fingers desperately.
-
-“I think he will,” he answered as he kindly, but firmly, possessed
-himself of his own hand and coat-sleeve, but in such a way as not to
-hurt my feelings. “I seem to feel that he is well on the road, though
-fighting hard,” he added in what sounded like mild exasperation or
-desperation, I couldn’t tell which.
-
-“No,” I answered, with pitiful sadness and real conviction--“no; I am
-not worthy of him, and he won’t come. It is too late. God and you have
-just taught me this dreadful night what a good woman really is, and now
-I will have to be so busy trying all the rest of my life to be one
-that I won’t have time to look for--that is, he won’t find me. I don’t
-want anything but a good one, and if I’m being so good as all that,
-how’ll I let him know I want him?”
-
-“Maybe he’ll get a revelation,” answered Gabriel in a low and
-controlled voice that seemed to come from the very fastnesses of
-something within him.
-
-And as he spoke I felt something warm and sweet and terrible stealing
-over me; but I plunged forward in my confession, past the episode of
-the duke, my traitorous flight from home, and up to the arrival at
-Stivers’s, and the cowardly taking of refuge under the patchwork quilt.
-
-“I misunderstood, and thought from the way the men talked that you were
-going to kill Bill, and I was too much of a coward to run out and find
-him in the dark and warn him. You see, I lay still and let Bill be
-killed, whether you did it or not; and so I murdered him, even if he is
-alive,” I deduced miserably.
-
-“Dudley was wise to fear the precipitation of the logical part of
-the solution,” Gabriel remarked so quietly that it seemed as if he
-preferred that I shouldn’t hear him.
-
-“Yes; and, you see, I am a common murderer as well as all the other
-dreadful things. And I let that baby die, too, rather than go and
-help the woman wash it outside and in, as you made me do. That is two
-murders; and I’m another one for not knowing how to fill it up with hot
-water and poke my finger down its throat and press the potatoes and
-water up at the same time. I’m a woman, or I ought to be. It’s my life
-business to know and perform ably such terrible and simple operations
-on babies. That makes me three murderers. And how did I know that Bill
-wouldn’t kill you at the same time you killed him, and Mr. Stivers
-and--”
-
-“Stop!” Gabriel exclaimed suddenly, and he was shaking so hard with
-unseemly mirth that he shook me, too; for without being able to help
-myself, I had been crowding closer and closer to him, until I was
-burrowing right under his arm in the agonies of confession. “The
-damages will be endless if you go on at this rate. How many of these
-murders did you realize you were doing at the time you did ’em?”
-
-“Only Bill,” I answered, after a few minutes of intense mental
-suffering. “I knew I ought to go and sympathize with the mother of the
-baby, but I didn’t know about that squeezing a baby’s stomach in the
-right place; but, as I say, I ought to have known, and--I did throw
-the quilt back to start to Mrs. Stivers when you came in. Please don’t
-laugh!”
-
-“Then you stand acquitted of all responsibility of faulty impulse
-except about the murder of Bill, which didn’t come off,” Gabriel
-answered in a gentle, serious, and respectful voice that soothed me
-into a cheerful frame of mind over my crimes even before he had more
-than half uttered the words. I felt hope for myself rise in my heart.
-
-“And then--then you came to the door and began to sing ‘Stand up for
-Jesus!’ so that eyes in my soul opened suddenly, and I saw Him standing
-and looking pitifully down into my awful black heart, and I felt Him
-reach out His hand to me in the darkness. I’ve always avoided and been
-afraid of God before, but now do you think He feels about me as He did
-the man on the other cross who had done awful things, I forget just
-what, and as long as Bill and the baby are both alive, and I worked so
-hard, He will forgive me and love me? And give me more awful work to
-do? Tell me, and what you say I will believe.” I crouched at his knee
-as I asked the question breathlessly.
-
-“Oh, you wonderful, foolish woman, you! Don’t you know that the good
-God knows and claims His own?” Gabriel answered, as he bent forward and
-put his hand on the head that had bowed on his knee. For a heart-still
-instant we trembled together, then he said quietly and humbly: “I give
-up. All my life I have prayed that my ‘woman’ would be one who had seen
-her Master face to face. Stumbling in the darkness, groping, both of
-us, we found each other and--clung. Are you mine? God, dare I claim a
-miracle such as You sent to Your servants of old? Have we together met
-You in the bush, and is it burning? Can we believe that You mean to”--
-
-Then suddenly, in the very midst of his prayer, came a great, white,
-steady glare, which rent the black clouds above us and revealed us to
-each other, like the sun at high noon. The very mountains seemed to
-reel in it, and the forest behind us was stilled from the rack of the
-winds.
-
-And clasping his knees, I looked and looked into his eyes, down, down
-until I found a light more blinding than that without, while I could
-feel his searching mine sternly, solemnly, and with a hope so great
-that I was tempted to cower, but was prevented by a fierce hunger that
-rose in me and demanded. I don’t know how long the light lasted, but
-when it went out, and had left us in the night, the ordeal was over,
-and I was welded into his arms, and his lips were pouring out love to
-me in broken words of blessing and demand.
-
-“Are you real?” he whispered, with my cheek pressed hard against his,
-and his arms terrific with tenderness. “Can I believe it is true? Can I
-claim a miracle? Can I?”
-
-“Yes,” I answered with triumphant certainty in my mind and voice--“yes.
-It’s that revelation you said you--that is, the--the man that was
-coming for me would have. I know it’s a miracle, because I am as afraid
-of a preacher as of--of that thing rustling out there in the bushes;
-but if God let me get into your arms this awful way He means for me to
-stay. And it’s _my_ miracle, not yours. I needed one, and you didn’t.
-You are it! You don’t think He will take you away from me in the
-daylight, do you?”
-
-“Never,” he laughed against my lips, with the coax and woo both in his
-throat, under my hand pressed against it. And that was the taming of
-the wild me.
-
-A long time after, when I had settled myself comfortably against his
-shoulder, and gone permanently to housekeeping in the parsonage of his
-arms, softly the clouds above us drifted apart, and a glorious full
-moon shone down on us in the warmest congratulatory approval.
-
-“Let me look good at you, love-woman, so I’ll not confuse you with the
-other flowers when morning comes,” Gabriel fluted from above my head as
-he attempted to turn me on his arm a fraction of an inch away from him.
-
-“You can use the moon, if you need it for identification purposes, but
-that lightning was enough for me,” I answered, retiring from his eyes
-for a hot-cheeked second under the silk handkerchief around his neck.
-“It may take time and moonlight to teach you me, but I knew you in a
-flash. I know it’s awful, but most women learn love by lightning, and
-it’s agony to have to wait while men slowly arrive at it by the light
-of the sun, moon, and stars. Will nothing ever teach them to hurry?”
-
-“I should say,” answered Gabriel, with a delicious laugh, which I got
-double benefit of, for I both heard it and felt it, “that I had met you
-at least half-way.”
-
-“And I’m a perfect stranger to you,” I was reiterating honestly, when
-an amazed answer arrived from the other side of the rock.
-
-“Well, you don’t look it--perfect strangers!” came in Dudley’s
-astonished voice, as he rose from beneath the crag and stood beside us.
-“You old psalm-singer, you, where did you get that girl?” he demanded
-with a great, but, for the circumstances, very calm, interest.
-
-“Just picked her up in the woods, where she has always been waiting
-for me, you old log-killer, you. Yes, I guessed the fact that she is
-your sister, but I dare you to try to take her away from me,” answered
-Gabriel, as he held me closer, when, with sisterly dignity, I tried to
-get into a position to squelch Dudley.
-
-“I’ll never try,” answered Dudley, with devout thankfulness sounding in
-his voice up from his diaphragm. “Maybe you can hold her down, Gates;
-you seem to have got a good grip for a starter. The family never could.”
-
-Yes, my dear Evelyn, Gabriel turned out to be that wonderful Gates
-Attwood to whom Chicago has given five million dollars to build his
-great Temple of Labor down on the South Side. He has been up here
-visiting Dudley at his camp at Pigeon Creek, hiding for a little rest
-for three months, and circuit-riding the mountaineers. If I had met him
-under the shelter of my own roof-tree, I in evening dress, with the
-lights on, I would have taken one insolent look at him, and then talked
-to Bobby the rest of the evening, while Aunt Grace raged in pantomime
-at mother about me. I realized this the instant Dudley called his name,
-and I turned and hid my eyes against his lips as I trembled at such an
-escape from losing him.
-
-“I never belonged to anybody but you and--God. That’s what made me bad
-to the others before I was found and claimed,” I whispered across his
-cheek, while he nestled me still deeper into his breast, ignoring
-Dudley, as he deserved.
-
-“God’s good woman, and mine,” was the low answer I felt and heard.
-
-“Well, I’d better go scare Mr. and Mrs. Possum and the Coon Sisters
-off your trunks over at Crow Point,” remarked Dudley, with more than
-brotherly consideration. “Something familiar about that collection of
-baggage yanked me off the down train. I’ll fix you up at Stivers’s when
-you want to come in, Nell. Here’s to her permanent change of heart,
-Parson!” And he lighted his pipe as he strolled away through the woods.
-
-And as he left, an awful shyness came pressing in between me and the
-great man who sat on an Old Harpeth crag and held me so mercifully in
-his arms.
-
-“Isn’t there a mistake somewhere?” I asked in fear and trembling. “Or
-did I really get born again, with you to help me?”
-
-“Yes, love,” he answered softly. “This is the right way of things. I
-needed you; you, me. We were ready, and He let us touch hands in the
-storm, to be new created. Don’t you feel--kind of weak and young?”
-
-“No,” I whispered just as softly. “Dreadfully strong. I know now how
-Eve felt when she put her hand to Adam’s side, where there wasn’t even
-a scar, and didn’t have to ask where she really came from.”
-
-
-THE LETTER THAT REALLY WAS SENT
-
-    Hillsboro, Tennessee, May 30.
-
-    My dear Evelyn:
-
-Yes, I know it sounds dreadful for him, that I’m going to marry Gates
-Attwood next month; but I am going to be better than you can believe
-I will. I tried to write you all about it, but I couldn’t. No, that
-isn’t exactly true. I did, but Gates is wearing the letter in his left
-breast pocket, and won’t give it up. Everybody will just have to trust
-him with me because he does; and he must know what’s best, because God
-trusts him. Please come home in time for the wedding. I need you, but
-I haven’t made any plans. I can’t think or plan. I’m feeling. Were you
-ever born again? If you have been, you will know what I’m talking about
-when I tell you; and if you haven’t, you will think I am crazy.
-
-    Lovingly,
-
-    ~Helen~.
-
-[Illustration: Color-Tone, engraved for ~The Century~ by H. Davidson
-
-LES DEUX AVOCATS (THE TWO LAWYERS)
-
-FROM THE HITHERTO UNPUBLISHED PAINTING BY HONORÉ DAUMIER
-
-NOW IN THE COLLECTION OF ALEXANDER W. DRAKE]
-
-
-
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-LIFE AFTER DEATH[1]
-
-BY MAURICE MAETERLINCK
-
-Author of “The Life of the Bee,” “Pelléas and Mélisande,” etc.
-
-
-This calm, judicious review of the results of organized psychical
-research cannot fail to be immensely valuable in clearing up the mists
-accumulated in twenty-eight years of earnest investigation into “the
-debatable phenomena designated by such terms as mesmeric, psychical,
-and spiritualistic.” The accumulations of evidence, and of argument
-based upon evidence, have been so enormous that few men busy with
-life have found time more than to dip into the wonderful subject and
-turn dismayed and reluctant away. Nothing has been so much needed by
-the Public Concerned with the Greater Things as a careful digestion
-of this subject to date, and we are fortunate in having so broad, so
-scientific, so many-sided a mind as Maeterlinck’s perform this service
-for us.
-
-This paper is the first of many in which ~The Century~ will take
-account of civilization’s accomplishments in many fields for the
-benefit of busy men and women.--~The Editor.~
-
-
-THE THEOSOPHICAL HYPOTHESIS
-
-I have recently been studying two interesting solutions of the
-problem of personal survival--solutions which, although not new, have
-at least been lately renewed. I refer to the neotheosophical and
-neospiritualistic theories, which are, I think, the only ones that can
-be seriously discussed. The first is almost as old as man himself;
-but a popular movement of some magnitude in certain countries has
-rejuvenated the doctrine of reincarnation, or the transmigration of
-souls, and brought it once more into prominence.
-
-The great argument of its adherents--the chief and, when all is said,
-the only argument--is only a sentimental one. Their doctrine that the
-soul in its successive existences is purified and exalted with more or
-less rapidity according to its efforts and deserts is, they maintain,
-the only one that satisfies the irresistible instinct of justice which
-we bear within us. They are right, and, from this point of view, their
-posthumous justice is immeasurably superior to that of the barbaric
-heaven and the monstrous hell of the Christians, where rewards and
-punishments are forever meted out to virtues and vices which are for
-the most part puerile, unavoidable, or accidental. But this, I repeat,
-is only a sentimental argument, which has only an infinitesimal value
-in the scale of evidence.
-
-We may admit that certain of their theories are rather ingenious; and
-what they say of the part played by the “shells,” for instance, or
-the “elementals,” in the spiritualistic phenomena, is worth about as
-much as our clumsy explanations of fluidic and supersensible bodies.
-Perhaps, or even no doubt, they are right when they insist that
-everything around us is full of living, sentient forms, of diverse and
-innumerous types, “as different from one another as a blade of grass
-and a tiger, or a tiger and a man,” which are incessantly brushing
-against us and through which we pass unawares. If all the religions
-have overpopulated the world with invisible beings, we have perhaps
-depopulated it too completely; and it is extremely possible that we
-shall find one day that the mistake was not on the side which one
-imagined. As Sir William Crookes well puts it in a remarkable passage:
-
-    It is not improbable that other sentient beings have organs of
-    sense which do not respond to some or any of the rays to which our
-    eyes are sensitive, but are able to appreciate other vibrations
-    to which we are blind. Such beings would practically be living in
-    a different world to our own. Imagine, for instance, what idea
-    we should form of surrounding objects were we endowed with eyes
-    not sensitive to the ordinary rays of light but sensitive to the
-    vibrations concerned in electric and magnetic phenomena. Glass and
-    crystal would be among the most opaque of bodies. Metals would be
-    more or less transparent, and a telegraph wire through the air
-    would look like a long narrow hole drilled through an impervious
-    solid body. A dynamo in active work would resemble a conflagration,
-    whilst a permanent magnet would realise the dream of mediæval
-    mystics and become an everlasting lamp with no expenditure of
-    energy or consumption of fuel.
-
-All this, with so many other things which they assert, would be, if
-not admissible, at least worthy of attention, if those suppositions
-were offered for what they are, very ancient hypotheses that go back
-to the early ages of human theology and metaphysics; but when they are
-transformed into categorical and dogmatic assertions, they at once
-become untenable. Their exponents promise us, on the other hand, that
-by exercising our minds, by refining our senses, by etherealizing our
-bodies, we shall be able to live with those whom we call dead and with
-the higher beings that surround us. It all seems to lead to nothing
-very much and rests on very frail bases, on very vague proofs derived
-from hypnotic sleep, presentiments, mediumism, phantasms, and so forth.
-We want something more than arbitrary theories about the “immortal
-triad,” the “three worlds,” the “astral body,” the “permanent atom,”
-or the “Karma-Loka.” As their sensibility is keener, their perception
-subtler, their spiritual intuition more penetrating, than ours, why do
-they not choose as a field for investigation the phenomena of prenatal
-memory, for instance, to take one subject at random from a multitude
-of others--phenomena which, although sporadic and open to question, are
-still admissible?
-
-
-THE NEOSPIRITUALISTIC HYPOTHESIS
-
-Outside theosophy, investigations of a purely scientific nature have
-been made in the baffling regions of survival and reincarnation.
-Neospiritualism, or psychicism, or experimental spiritualism, had its
-origin in America in 1870. In the following year the first strictly
-scientific experiments were organized by Sir William Crookes, the man
-of genius who opened up most of the roads at the end of which men were
-astounded to discover unknown properties and conditions of matter;
-and as early as 1873 or 1874 he obtained, with the aid of the medium
-Florence Cook, phenomena of materialization that have hardly been
-surpassed. But the real beginning of the new science dates from the
-foundation of the Society for Psychical Research, familiarly known
-as the S. P. R. This society was formed in London twenty-eight years
-ago, under the auspices of the most distinguished men of science
-in England, and, as we all know, has made a methodical and strict
-study of every case of supernormal psychology and sensibility. This
-study or investigation, originally conducted by Edmund Gurney, F. W.
-H. Myers, and Frank Podmore, and continued by their successors, is
-a masterpiece of scientific patience and conscientiousness. Not an
-incident is admitted that is not supported by unimpeachable testimony,
-by definite written records and convincing corroboration. Among the
-many supernormal manifestations, telepathy, previsions, and so forth,
-we will take cognizance only of those which relate to life beyond the
-grave. They can be divided into two categories: first, real, objective,
-and spontaneous apparitions, or direct manifestations; second,
-manifestations obtained by the agency of mediums, whether induced
-apparitions, which we will put aside for the moment because of their
-frequently questionable character, or communications with the dead by
-word of mouth or automatic writing. Those extraordinary communications
-have been studied at length by such men as F. W. H. Myers, Richard
-Hodgson, Sir Oliver Lodge, and the philosopher William James, the
-father of the new pragmatism. They profoundly impressed and almost
-convinced these men, and they therefore deserve to arrest our attention.
-
-It appears, therefore, to be as well established as a fact can be
-that a spiritual or nervous shape, an image, a belated reflection of
-life, is capable of subsisting for some time, of releasing itself
-from the body, or surviving it, of traversing enormous distances in
-the twinkling of an eye, of manifesting itself to the living and,
-sometimes, of communicating with them.
-
-For the rest, we have to recognize that these apparitions are very
-brief. They take place only at the precise moment of death, or follow
-very shortly after. They do not seem to have the least consciousness of
-a new or superterrestrial life, differing from that of the body whence
-they issue. On the contrary, their spiritual energy, at a time when it
-ought to be absolutely pure, because it is rid of matter, seems greatly
-inferior to what it was when matter surrounded it. These more or less
-uneasy phantasms, often tormented with trivial cares, although they
-come from another world, have never brought us one single revelation
-of topical interest concerning that world whose prodigious threshold
-they have crossed. Soon they fade away and disappear forever. Are they
-the first glimmers of a new existence or the final glimmers of the old?
-Do the dead thus use, for want of a better, the last link that binds
-them and makes them perceptible to our senses? Do they afterward go on
-living around us, without again succeeding, despite their endeavors, to
-make themselves known or to give us an idea of their presence, because
-we have not the organ that is necessary to perceive them, even as all
-our endeavors would not succeed in giving a man who was blind from
-birth the least notion of light and color? We do not know at all; nor
-can we tell whether it is permissible to draw any conclusion from all
-these incontestable phenomena. Meanwhile, it is interesting to observe
-that there really are ghosts, specters, and phantoms. Once again,
-science steps in to confirm a general belief of mankind, and to teach
-us that a belief of this sort, however absurd it may at first seem,
-still deserves careful examination.
-
-
-THE DILEMMA OF THE TRUTH-SEEKER
-
-Now, what are we to think of it all? Must we, with Myers, Newbold,
-Hyslop, Hodgson, and many others who have studied this problem at
-length, conclude in favor of the incontestable agency of forces and
-intelligences returning from the farther bank of the great river
-which it was deemed that none might cross? Must we acknowledge with
-them that there are cases ever more numerous which make it impossible
-for us to hesitate any longer between the telepathic hypothesis
-and the spiritualistic hypothesis? I do not think so. I have no
-prejudices,--what were the use of having any in these mysteries?--no
-reluctance to admit the survival and the intervention of the dead;
-but, before leaving the terrestrial plane, it is wise and necessary
-to exhaust all the suppositions, all the explanations, there to be
-discovered. We have to make our choice between two manifestations of
-the unknown, two miracles, if you prefer, whereof one is situated in
-the world which we inhabit and the other in a region which, rightly or
-wrongly, we believe to be separated from us by nameless spaces which
-no human being, alive or dead, has crossed to this day. It is natural,
-therefore, that we should stay in our own world as long as it gives
-us a foothold, as long as we are not pitilessly expelled from it by a
-series of irresistible and irrefutable facts issuing from the adjoining
-abyss. The survival of a spirit is no more improbable than the
-prodigious faculties which we are obliged to attribute to the mediums
-if we deny them to the dead: but the existence of the medium, contrary
-to that of the spirit, is unquestionable; and therefore it is for the
-spirit, or for those who make use of its name, first to prove that it
-exists.
-
-Do the extraordinary phenomena of which we have spoken--transmission
-of thought from one subconscious mind to another, perception of events
-at a distance, subliminal clairvoyance--occur when the dead are not
-in evidence, when the experiments are being made exclusively between
-living persons? This cannot be honestly contested. Certainly no one
-has ever obtained among living people series of communications or
-revelations similar to those of the great spiritualistic mediums Mrs.
-Piper, Mrs. Thompson, and Stainton Moses, nor anything that can be
-compared with these so far as continuity or lucidity is concerned.
-But though the quality of the phenomena will not bear comparison,
-it cannot be denied that their inner nature is identical. It is
-logical to infer from this that the real cause lies not in the source
-of inspiration, but in the personal value, the sensitiveness, the
-power of the medium. These mediums are pleased, in all good faith and
-probably unconsciously, to give to their subliminal faculties, to
-their secondary personalities, or to accept, on their behalf, names
-which were borne by beings who have crossed to the further side of the
-mystery: this is a matter of vocabulary or nomenclature which neither
-lessens nor increases the intrinsic significance of the facts.
-
-
-THE BORDER-LAND OF LIFE AND DEATH
-
-Well, in examining these facts, however strange and really unparalleled
-some of them may be, I never find one which proceeds frankly from
-this world or which comes indisputably from the other. They are, if
-you wish, phenomenal border incidents; but it cannot be said that the
-border has been violated. It is simply a matter of distant perception,
-subliminal clairvoyance, and telepathy raised to the highest power;
-and these three manifestations of the unexplored depths of man are
-to-day recognized and classified by science, which is not saying that
-they are explained. That is another question. When, in connection
-with electricity, we use such terms as positive, negative, induction,
-potential, and resistance, we are also applying conventional words
-to facts and phenomena of the inward essence of which we are utterly
-ignorant; and we must needs be content with these, pending better.
-Between these extraordinary manifestations and those given to us by a
-medium who is not speaking in the name of the dead, there is, I insist,
-only a difference of the greater and the lesser, a difference of extent
-or degree, and in no wise a difference in kind.
-
-For the proof to be more decisive, it would be necessary that neither
-the medium nor the witnesses should ever have known of the existence
-of him whose past is revealed by the dead man; in other words, that
-every living link should be eliminated. I do not believe that this has
-ever actually occurred, nor even that it is possible; in any case, it
-would be a very difficult experiment to control. Be this as it may,
-Dr. Hodgson, who devoted part of his life to the quest of specific
-phenomena wherein the boundaries of mediumistic power should be
-plainly overstepped, believes that he found them in certain cases, of
-which, as the others were of very much the same nature, I will merely
-mention one of the most striking. In a course of excellent sittings
-with Mrs. Piper, the medium, he communicated with various dead friends
-who reminded him of a large number of common memories. The medium,
-the spirits, and he himself seemed in a wonderfully accommodating
-mood; and the revelations were plentiful, exact, and easy. In this
-extremely favorable atmosphere, he was placed in communication with
-the soul of one of his best friends, who had died a year before, and
-whom he simply called “A.” This A, whom he had known more intimately
-than most of the spirits with whom he had communicated previously,
-behaved quite differently and, while establishing his identity beyond
-dispute, vouchsafed only incoherent replies. Now, A “had been troubled
-much, for years before his death, by headaches and occasionally mental
-exhaustion, though not amounting to positive mental disturbance.”
-
-The same phenomenon appears to recur whenever similar troubles have
-come before death, as in cases of suicide.
-
-“If the telepathic explanation is held to be the only one,” says Dr.
-Hodgson (I give the gist of his observations), “if it is claimed that
-all the communications of these discarnate minds are only suggestions
-from my subconscious self, it is unintelligible that, after having
-obtained satisfactory results from others whom I had known far
-less intimately than A and with whom I had consequently far fewer
-recollections in common, I should get from him, in the same sittings,
-nothing but incoherencies. I am thus driven to believe that my
-subliminal self is not the only thing in evidence, that it is in the
-presence of a real, living personality, whose mental state is the same
-as it was at the hour of death, a personality which remains independent
-of my subliminal consciousness and absolutely unaffected by it, which
-is deaf to its suggestions, and draws from its own resources the
-revelations which it makes.”
-
-The argument is not without value, but its full force would be obtained
-only if it were certain that none of those present knew of A’s
-madness; otherwise it can be contended that, the notion of madness
-having penetrated the subconscious intelligence of one of them, it
-worked upon it and gave to the replies induced a form in keeping with
-the state of mind presupposed in the dead man.
-
-
-IS THE FUTURE LIFE DIM AND SHADOWY?
-
-Of a truth, by extending the possibilities of the medium to these
-extremes, we furnish ourselves with explanations which forestall
-nearly everything, bar every road, and all but deny to the spirits
-any power of manifesting themselves in the manner which they appear
-to have chosen. But why do they choose that manner? Why do they thus
-restrict themselves? Why do they jealously hug the narrow strip of
-territory which memory occupies on the confines of both worlds and
-from which none but indecisive or questionable evidence can reach
-us? Are there, then, no other outlets, no other horizons? Why do
-they tarry about us, stagnant in their little pasts, when, in their
-freedom from the flesh, they ought to be able to wander at ease over
-the virgin stretches of space and time? Do they not yet know that the
-sign which will prove to us that they survive is to be found not with
-us, but with them, on the other side of the grave? Why do they come
-back with empty hands and empty words? Is that what one finds when
-one is steeped in infinity? Beyond our last hour is it all bare and
-shapeless and dim? If it be so, let them tell us; and the evidence of
-the darkness will at least possess a grandeur that is all too absent
-from these cross-examining methods. Of what use is it to die, if all
-life’s trivialities continue? Is it really worth while to have passed
-through the terrifying gorges which open on the eternal fields in order
-to remember that we had a great-uncle called Peter and that our Cousin
-Paul was afflicted with varicose veins and a gastric complaint? At
-that rate, I should choose for those whom I love the august and frozen
-solitudes of the everlasting nothing. Though it be difficult for them,
-as they complain, to make themselves understood through a strange and
-sleep-bound organism, they tell us enough categorical details about the
-past to show that they could disclose similar details, if not about
-the future, which they perhaps do not yet know, at least about the
-lesser mysteries which surround us on every side and which our body
-alone prevents us from approaching. There are a thousand things, large
-or small, alike unknown to us, which we must perceive when feeble eyes
-no longer arrest our vision. It is in those regions from which a shadow
-separates us, and not in foolish tittle-tattle of the past, that they
-would at last find the clear and genuine proof which they seem to seek
-with such enthusiasm. Without demanding a great miracle, one would
-nevertheless think that we had the right to expect from a mind which
-nothing now enthralls some other discourse than that which it avoided
-when it was still subject to matter.
-
-This is where things stood when, of late years, the mediums, the
-spiritualists, or, rather, it appears, the spirits themselves, for
-one cannot tell exactly with whom we have to do, perhaps dissatisfied
-at not being more definitely recognized and understood, invented,
-for a more effectual proof of their existence, what has been called
-“cross-correspondence.” Here the position is reversed: it is no longer
-a question of various and more or less numerous spirits revealing
-themselves through the agency of one and the same medium, but of a
-single spirit manifesting itself almost simultaneously through several
-mediums often at great distances from one another and without any
-preliminary understanding among themselves. Each of these messages,
-taken alone, is usually unintelligible, and yields a meaning only when
-laboriously combined with all the others.
-
-As Sir Oliver Lodge says:
-
-    The object of this ingenious and complicated effort clearly is
-    to prove that there is some definite intelligence underlying
-    the phenomena, distinct from that of any of the automatists, by
-    sending fragments of a message or literary reference which shall be
-    unintelligible to each separately--so that no effective telepathy
-    is possible between them,--thus eliminating or trying to eliminate
-    what had long been recognized by all members of the Society for
-    Psychical Research as the most troublesome and indestructible of
-    the semi-normal hypotheses. And the further object is evidently
-    to prove as far as possible, by the substance and quality of
-    the message, that it is characteristic of the one particular
-    personality who is ostensibly communicating, and of no other.[2]
-
-The experiments are still in their early stages, and the most recent
-volumes of the “Proceedings” are devoted to them. Although the
-accumulated mass of evidence is already considerable, no conclusion
-can yet be drawn from it. In any case, whatever the spiritualists
-may say, the suspicion of telepathy seems to me to be in no way
-removed. The experiments form a rather fantastic literary exercise,
-one intellectually much superior to the ordinary manifestations of the
-mediums; but up to the present there is no reason for placing their
-mystery in the other world rather than in this. Men have tried to see
-in them a proof that somewhere in time or space, or else beyond both,
-there is a sort of immense cosmic reserve of knowledge upon which the
-spirits go and draw freely. But if the reserve exist, which is very
-possible, nothing tells us that it is not the living rather than the
-dead who repair to it. It is very strange that the dead, if they really
-have access to the immeasurable treasure, should bring back nothing
-from it but a kind of ingenious child’s puzzle, although it ought to
-contain myriads of lost or forgotten notions and acquirements, heaped
-up during thousands and thousands of years in abysses which our mind,
-weighed down by the body, can no longer penetrate, but which nothing
-seems to close against the investigations of freer and more subtle
-activities. They are evidently surrounded by innumerable mysteries,
-by unsuspected and formidable truths that loom large on every side.
-The smallest astronomical or biological revelation, the least secret
-of olden time, such as that of the temper of copper, an archæological
-detail, a poem, a statue, a recovered remedy, a shred of one of those
-unknown sciences which flourished in Egypt or Atlantis--any of these
-would form a much more decisive argument than hundreds of more or
-less literary reminiscences. Why do they speak to us so seldom of the
-future? And for what reason, when they do venture upon it, are they
-mistaken with such disheartening regularity? One would think that, in
-the sight of a being delivered from the trammels of the body and of
-time, the years, whether past or future, ought all to lie outspread
-on one and the same plane.[3] We may therefore say that the ingenuity
-of the proof turns against it. All things considered, as in other
-attempts, and notably in those of the famous medium Stainton Moses,
-there is the same characteristic inability to bring us the veriest
-particle of truth or knowledge of which no vestige can be found in
-a living brain or in a book written on this earth. And yet it is
-inconceivable that there should not somewhere exist a knowledge that is
-not as ours and truths other than those which we possess here below.
-
-
-A LACK OF VITAL COMMUNICATIONS
-
-The case of Stainton Moses, whose name we have just mentioned, is a
-very striking one in this respect. This Stainton Moses was a dogmatic,
-hard-working clergyman, whose learning, Myers tells us, in the normal
-state did not exceed that of an ordinary schoolmaster. But he was no
-sooner “entranced” before certain spirits of antiquity or of the Middle
-Ages who are hardly known save to profound scholars--among others,
-St. Hippolytus; Plotinus; Athenodorus, the tutor of Augustus; and
-more particularly Grocyn, the friend of Erasmus--took possession of
-his person and manifested themselves through his agency. Now, Grocyn,
-for instance, furnished certain information about Erasmus which was
-at first thought to have been gathered in the other world, but which
-was subsequently discovered in forgotten, but nevertheless accessible,
-books. On the other hand, Stainton Moses’s integrity was never
-questioned for an instant by those who knew him, and we may therefore
-take his word for it when he declares that he had not read the books
-in question. Here again the mystery, inexplicable though it be, seems
-really to lie hidden in the midst of ourselves. It is unconscious
-reminiscence, if you will, suggestion at a distance, subliminal
-reading; but no more than in cross-correspondence is it indispensable
-to have recourse to the dead and to drag them by main force into the
-riddle, which, seen from our side of the grave, is dark and impassioned
-enough as it is. Furthermore, we must not insist unduly on this
-cross-correspondence. We must remember that the whole thing is in its
-earliest stages, and that the dead appear to have no small difficulty
-in grasping the requirements of the living.
-
-In regard to this subject, as to the others, the spiritualists are fond
-of saying:
-
-“If you refuse to admit the agency of spirits, the majority of these
-phenomena are absolutely inexplicable.”
-
-Agreed; nor do we pretend to explain them, for hardly anything is to be
-explained upon this earth. We are content simply to ascribe them to the
-incomprehensible power of the mediums, which is no more improbable than
-the survival of the dead, and has the advantage of not going outside
-the sphere which we occupy and of bearing relation to a large number of
-similar facts that occur among living people. Those singular faculties
-are baffling only because they are still sporadic, and because only a
-very short time has elapsed since they received scientific recognition.
-Properly speaking, they are no more marvelous than those which we use
-daily without marveling at them; as our memory, for instance, our
-understanding, our imagination, and so forth. They form part of the
-great miracle that we are; and, having once admitted the miracle, we
-should be surprised not so much at its extent as at its limits.
-
-Nevertheless, I am not at all of opinion that we must definitely reject
-the spiritualistic theory; that would be both unjust and premature.
-Hitherto everything remains in suspense. We may say that things are
-still very little removed from the point marked by Sir William Crookes,
-in 1874, in an article which he contributed to the “Quarterly Journal
-of Science.” He there wrote:
-
-    The difference between the advocates of Psychic Force and the
-    Spiritualists consists in this--that we contend that there is
-    as yet insufficient proof of any other directing agent than the
-    Intelligence of the Medium, and no proof whatever of the agency of
-    Spirits of the Dead; while the Spiritualists hold it as a faith,
-    not demanding further proof, that Spirits of the Dead are the sole
-    agents in the production of all the phenomena. Thus the controversy
-    resolves itself into a pure question of _fact_, only to be
-    determined by a laborious and long-continued series of experiments
-    and an extensive collection of psychological _facts_, which should
-    be the first duty of the Psychological Society, the formation of
-    which is now in progress.
-
-
-HAS THE SPIRIT ONLY AN INCOHERENT MEMORY OF LIFE?
-
-Meanwhile, it is saying a good deal that rigorous scientific
-investigations have not utterly shattered a theory which radically
-confounds the idea which we were wont to form of death. We shall see
-presently why, in considering our destinies beyond the grave, we need
-have no reason to linger too long over these apparitions or these
-revelations, even though they should really be incontestable and to
-the point. They would seem, all told, to be only the incoherent and
-precarious manifestations of a transitory state. They would at best
-prove, if we were bound to admit them, that a reflection of ourselves,
-an after-vibration of the nerves, a bundle of emotions, a spiritual
-silhouette, a grotesque and forlorn image, or, more correctly, a sort
-of truncated and uprooted memory, can, after our death, linger and
-float in a space where nothing remains to feed it, where it gradually
-becomes wan and lifeless, but where a special fluid, emanating from
-an exceptional medium, succeeds at moments in galvanizing it. Perhaps
-it exists objectively, perhaps it subsists and revives only in the
-recollection of certain sympathies. After all, it would be not unlikely
-that the memory which represents us during our life should continue to
-do so for a few weeks or even a few years after our decease. This would
-explain the evasive and deceptive character of those spirits which,
-possessing only a mnemonic existence, are naturally able to interest
-themselves only in matters within their reach. Hence their irritating
-and maniacal energy in clinging to the slightest facts, their sleepy
-dullness, their incomprehensible indifference and ignorance, and all
-the wretched absurdities which we have noticed more than once.
-
-But, I repeat, it is much simpler to attribute these absurdities to the
-special character and the as yet imperfectly recognized difficulties
-of telepathic communication. The unconscious suggestions of the most
-intelligent among those who take part in the experiment are impaired,
-disjointed, and stripped of their main virtues in passing through the
-obscure intermediary of the medium. It may be that they go astray and
-make their way into certain forgotten corners which the intelligence
-no longer visits, and thence bring back more or less surprising
-discoveries; but the intellectual quality of the aggregate will always
-be inferior to that which a conscious mind would yield. Besides, once
-more, it is not yet time to draw conclusions. We must not lose sight
-of the fact that we have to do with a science which was born but
-yesterday, and which is groping for its implements, its paths, its
-methods, and its aim in a darkness denser than the earth’s. The boldest
-bridge that men have yet undertaken to throw across the river of death
-is not to be built in thirty years. Most sciences have centuries of
-thankless efforts and barren uncertainties behind them; and there
-are, I imagine, few among the younger of them that can show from the
-earliest hour, as this one does, promises of a harvest which may not be
-the harvest of their conscious sowing, but which already bids fair to
-yield such unknown and wondrous fruit.[4]
-
-
-TRANSMIGRATION OF SOULS
-
-So much for survival proper. But certain spiritualists go further, and
-attempt the scientific proof of palingenesis and the transmigration
-of souls. I pass over their merely moral or scientific arguments,
-as well as those which they discover in the prenatal reminiscences
-of illustrious men and others. These reminiscences, though often
-disturbing, are still too rare, too sporadic, so to speak; and the
-supervision has not always been sufficiently close for us to be able
-to rely upon them with safety. Nor do I purpose to pay attention to
-the proofs based upon the inborn aptitudes of genius or of certain
-infant prodigies--aptitudes which are difficult to explain, but which,
-nevertheless, may be attributed to unknown laws of heredity. I shall be
-content to recall briefly the results of some of Colonel de Rochas’s
-experiments, which leave one at a loss for an explanation.
-
-First of all, it is only right to say that Colonel de Rochas is a
-savant who seeks nothing but objective truth, and does so with a
-scientific strictness and integrity that have never been questioned.
-He puts certain exceptional subjects into an hypnotic sleep, and by
-means of downward passes makes them trace back the whole course of
-their existence. He thus takes them successively to their youth, their
-adolescence, and down to the extreme limits of their childhood. At
-each of these hypnotic stages the subject reassumes the consciousness,
-the character, and the state of mind which he possessed at the
-corresponding stage in his life. He goes over the same events, with
-their joys and sorrows. If he has been ill, he once more passes through
-his illness, his convalescence, and his recovery. If, for instance, the
-subject is a woman who has been a mother, she again becomes pregnant
-and again suffers the pains of childbirth. Carried back to an age when
-she was learning to write, she writes like a child, and her writings
-can be placed side by side with the copy-books which she filled at
-school.
-
-This in itself is very extraordinary, but, as Colonel de Rochas says:
-
-    Up to the present, we have walked on firm ground; we have been
-    observing a physiological phenomenon which is difficult of
-    explanation, but which numerous experiments and verifications allow
-    us to look upon as certain.
-
-We now enter a region where still more surprising enigmas await us. Let
-us, to come to details, take one of the simplest cases. The subject
-is a girl of eighteen, called Joséphine. She lives at Voiron, in the
-department of the Isère. By means of downward passes, she is brought
-back to the condition of a baby at her mother’s breast. The passes
-continue, and the wonder-tale runs its course. Joséphine can no longer
-speak; and we have the great silence of infancy, which seems to be
-followed by a silence more mysterious still. Joséphine no longer
-answers except by signs; _she is not yet born_, “she is floating in
-darkness.” They persist; the sleep becomes heavier; and suddenly,
-from the depths of that sleep, rises the voice of another being--a
-voice unexpected and unknown, the voice of a churlish, distrustful,
-and discontented old man. They question him. At first he refuses to
-answer, saying that “of course he’s there, as he’s speaking”; that “he
-sees nothing”; and that “he’s in the dark.” They increase the number
-of passes, and gradually gain his confidence. His name is Jean-Claude
-Bourdon; he is an old man; he has long been ailing and bedridden. He
-tells the story of his life. He was born at Champvent, in the parish of
-Polliat, in 1812. He went to school until he was eighteen, and served
-his time in the army with the Seventh Artillery at Besançon; and he
-describes his gay time there, while the sleeping girl makes the gesture
-of twirling an imaginary mustache. When he goes back to his native
-place, he does not marry, but he has a mistress. He leads a solitary
-life (I omit all but the essential facts), and dies at the age of
-seventy, after a long illness.
-
-We now hear the dead man speak, and his posthumous revelations are not
-sensational, which, however, is not an adequate reason for doubting
-their genuineness. He “feels himself growing out of his body,” but
-he remains attached to it for a fairly long time. His fluidic body,
-which is at first diffused, takes a more concentrated form. He lives
-in darkness, which he finds disagreeable; but he does not suffer. At
-last the night in which he is plunged is streaked with a few flashes
-of light. The idea comes to him to reincarnate himself, and he draws
-near to her who is to be his mother (that is to say, the mother of
-Joséphine). He encircles her until the child is born, whereupon he
-gradually enters the child’s body. Until about the seventh year this
-body was surrounded by a sort of floating mist in which he used to see
-many things which he has not seen since.
-
-The next thing to be done is to go back beyond Jean-Claude. A
-mesmerization lasting nearly three quarters of an hour, without
-lingering at any intermediate stage, brings the old man back to
-babyhood, to a fresh silence, a new limbo; and then suddenly another
-voice and an unexpected person. This time it is an old woman who has
-been very wicked; and so she is in great torment. She is dead at the
-actual instant; for, in this inverted world, lives go backward and of
-course begin at the end. She is in deep darkness, surrounded by evil
-spirits. She speaks in a faint voice, but always gives definite replies
-to the questions put to her, instead of caviling at every moment, as
-Jean-Claude did. Her name is Philomène Carteron.
-
-I will now quote Colonel de Rochas:
-
-    By intensifying the sleep, I induce the manifestations of a living
-    Philomène. She no longer suffers, seems very calm, and always
-    answers very coldly and distinctly. She knows that she is unpopular
-    in the neighborhood, but no one is a penny the worse, and she
-    will be even with them yet. She was born in 1702; her maiden name
-    was Philomène Charpigny; her grandfather on the mother’s side was
-    called Pierre Machon and lived at Ozan. In 1732 she married, at
-    Chevroux, a man named Carteron, by whom she had two children, both
-    of whom she lost.
-
-    Before her incarnation, Philomène had been a little girl who died
-    in infancy. Previous to that, she was a man who had committed
-    murder, and it was to expiate this crime that she endured much
-    suffering in the darkness, even after her life as a little girl,
-    when she had had no time to do wrong. I did not think it necessary
-    to carry the hypnosis further, because the subject appeared
-    exhausted and her paroxysms were painful to watch.
-
-    But, on the other hand, I noticed one thing which would tend
-    to show that the revelations of these mediums rest on an
-    objective reality. At Voiron, one of the regular attendants at my
-    demonstrations is a young girl, Louise----. She possesses a very
-    sedate and thoughtful cast of mind, not at all open to hypnotic
-    suggestion; and she has in a very high degree the capacity, which
-    is comparatively common in a lesser degree, of perceiving the
-    magnetic effluvia of human beings and, consequently, the fluidic
-    body. When Joséphine revives the memory of her past, a luminous
-    aura is observed around her, and is perceived by Louise. Now, to
-    the eyes of Louise, this aura becomes dark when Joséphine is in
-    the phase separating two existences. In every instance there is a
-    strong reaction in Joséphine when I touch points where Louise tells
-    me that she perceives the aura, whether it be dark or light.
-
-I thought it well to give the report of one of these experiments almost
-in extenso, because those who maintain the palingenesic theory find
-in these the only appreciable argument which they possess. Colonel
-de Rochas renewed them more than once with different subjects. Among
-these, I will mention only one, a girl called Marie Mayo, whose
-history is more complicated than Joséphine’s, and whose successive
-reincarnations take us back to the seventeenth century and carry us
-suddenly to Versailles, among the historical personages moving about
-Louis XIV.
-
-Let us add that Colonel de Rochas is not the only mesmerizer who has
-obtained revelations of this kind, which may henceforth be classed
-among the incontestable facts of hypnotism. I have mentioned his alone
-because they offer the most substantial guaranties from every point of
-view.
-
-
-WHAT HAS BEEN PROVED?
-
-What do they prove? We must begin, as in all questions of this kind, by
-entertaining a certain distrust of the medium. It goes without saying
-that all mediums, by the very nature of their faculties, are inclined
-to imposture, to trickery. I know that Colonel de Rochas, like Dr.
-Richet and like Professor Lombroso, was occasionally hoaxed. That is
-the inherent defect of the machinery which we must perforce employ; and
-experiments of this sort will never possess the scientific value of
-those made in a physical or chemical laboratory. But this is not an a
-priori reason for denying them any sort of interest. As a question of
-fact, are imposture and trickery possible here? Obviously, even though
-the experiments be conducted under the strictest supervision. However
-complicated it may be, the subject can have learned his lesson, and
-can cleverly avoid the traps laid for him. The best guaranty, when
-all is said, lies in his good faith and his moral sense, which the
-experimenters alone are in a position to test and to know; and for that
-we must trust to them. Besides, they neglect no precaution necessary to
-make imposture extremely difficult. After taking the subject, by means
-of transverse passes, up the stream of his life, they make him come
-down the same stream; and the same events pass in the reverse order.
-Repeated tests and countertests always yield identical results; and the
-medium never hesitates or goes astray in the labyrinth of names, dates,
-and incidents.[5]
-
-Moreover, it would be requisite for these mediums, who are generally
-people of merely average intelligence, suddenly to become great poets
-in order thus to create, down to every detail, a series of characters
-differing entirely one from the other, in which everything--gestures,
-voice, temper, mind, thoughts, feeling--is in keeping, and ever
-ready to reply, in harmony with their inmost nature, to the most
-unexpected questions. It has been said that every man is a Shakspere
-in his dreams; but have we not here to do with dreams which, in their
-uniformity, bear a singular resemblance to fact?
-
-I think, therefore, that, until we receive evidence to the contrary, we
-may be allowed to leave fraud out of the question. Another objection
-that might be raised, as was done with respect to the Myers phantom, is
-the insignificance of their revelations from beyond the grave. I would
-rather look on this as an argument in behalf of their good faith. Those
-whose imagination is rich enough to create the wonderful persons whom
-we see living in their sleep would doubtless find no great difficulty
-in inventing a few fantastic but plausible details on the subject of
-the next world. Not one of them thinks of it. They are Christians, and
-therefore carry deep down in themselves the traditional terror of hell,
-the fear of purgatory, and the vision of a paradise full of angels and
-palms. They never refer to any of it. Although they are most often
-ignorant of all the theories of reincarnation, they conform strictly to
-the theosophical or neospiritualistic hypothesis, and are unconsciously
-faithful to it in their very indefiniteness: they speak vaguely of “the
-dark” in which they find themselves. They tell nothing because they
-know nothing. It is apparently impossible for them to give any account
-of a state that is still illumined. In fact, it is very likely, if we
-admit the hypothesis of reincarnation and of evolution after death,
-that nature, here as elsewhere, does not proceed by bounds. There is no
-special reason why she should take a prodigious and inconceivable leap
-between life and death.
-
-We do not find the dramatic change which at first thought we are
-rather inclined to expect. The spirit is first of all confused at
-losing its body and every one of its familiar ways; it recovers itself
-only by degrees. It resumes consciousness slowly. This consciousness
-is subsequently purified, exalted, and extended, gradually and
-indefinitely, until, reaching other spheres, the principle of life that
-animates it ceases to reincarnate itself, and loses all contact with
-us. This would explain why we never have any but minor and elementary
-revelations.
-
-All that concerns this first phase of the survival is fairly probable,
-even to those who do not admit the theory of reincarnation. For
-the rest, we shall see presently that the solutions which man’s
-imagination finds there merely change the question and are inadequate
-and provisional.
-
-
-THE DANGER OF UNCONSCIOUS SUGGESTION IN MESMERIC TESTS
-
-We now come to the most serious objection, that of suggestion. Colonel
-de Rochas declares that he and all the other experimenters who have
-given themselves up to this study “have not only avoided everything
-that could put the subject on a definite tack, but have often tried in
-vain to lead him astray by different suggestions.” I am convinced of
-it: there can be no question of voluntary suggestion.
-
-But do we not know that in these regions unconscious and involuntary
-suggestion is often more powerful and effective than the other? In
-the hackneyed and rather childish experiment of table-turning, for
-instance, which, after all, is only a crude and elementary form of
-telepathy, the replies are nearly always dictated by the unconscious
-suggestion of a participant or a mere onlooker.[6] We should therefore
-first of all have to make sure that neither the hypnotizer nor
-an onlooker, nor yet the subject himself, has ever heard of the
-reincarnated persons. It will be enough, I shall be told, to employ
-for the countertests another operator and different onlookers who
-are ignorant of the previous revelations. Yes, but the subject is
-not ignorant of them; and it is possible that the first suggestion
-has been so profound that it will remain forever stamped upon the
-unconsciousness, and that it will reproduce the same incarnations
-indefinitely in the same order.
-
-All this does not mean that the phenomena of suggestion are not
-themselves laden with mysteries; but that is another question. For
-the moment, as we see, the problem is almost insoluble, and control is
-impracticable. Meanwhile, since we have to choose between reincarnation
-and suggestion, it is right that we should confine ourselves in the
-first instance to the latter, in accordance with the principles which
-we have observed in the case of automatic speech and writing. Between
-two unknowns, common sense and prudence decree that we should turn
-first to the one on whose frontiers lie certain facts more frequently
-recorded, the one which shows a few familiar glimmers. Let us exhaust
-the mystery of our life before forsaking it for the mystery of our
-death. Throughout this vast expanse of treacherous ground, it is
-important that, until fresh evidence arrives, we should keep to one
-inflexible rule, namely, that thought transference exists as long as
-it is not absolutely and physically impossible for the subject or some
-person in the room to have cognizance of the incident in question,
-whether the cognizance be conscious or not, forgotten or actual. Even
-this guaranty is not sufficient, for it is still possible for some one
-taking no part in the sitting, and even very far away from it, to be
-placed in communication with the medium by some unknown means, and to
-influence the medium at a distance and unwittingly. Lastly, to provide
-for every contingency before letting death come upon the boards, it
-would be necessary to make certain that atavistic memory does not
-play an unforeseen part. Cannot a man, for instance, carry hidden in
-the depths of his being the recollection of events connected with
-the childhood of an ancestor whom he has never seen, and communicate
-it to the medium by unconscious suggestion? It is not impossible. We
-carry in ourselves all the past, all the experience, of our ancestors.
-If by some magic we could illumine the prodigious treasures of the
-subconscious memory, why should we not there discover the events and
-facts that form the sources of that experience? Before turning toward
-yonder unknown, we must utterly exhaust the possibilities of this
-terrestrial unknown. It is moreover remarkable, but undeniable, that,
-despite the strictness of a law which seems to shut out every other
-explanation, despite the almost unlimited and probably excessive scope
-allotted to the domain of suggestion, there nevertheless remain some
-facts which perhaps call for another interpretation.
-
-
-THE LACK OF COMPELLING PROOF IN THE THEORY
-
-But let us return to reincarnation, and recognize, in passing, that
-it is very regrettable that the arguments of the theosophists and
-neospiritualists are not compelling; for there never was a more
-beautiful, a juster, a purer, a more moral, fruitful, and consoling,
-or, to a certain point, a more probable creed than theirs. But the
-quality of a creed is no evidence of its truth. Even though it is
-the religion of six hundred millions of mankind, the nearest to the
-mysterious origins, the only one that is not odious, and the least
-absurd of all, it will have to do what the others have not done--bring
-unimpeachable testimony; and what it has given us hitherto is only the
-first shadow of a proof begun.
-
-Indeed, even that would not put an end to the riddle. In principle,
-reincarnation sooner or later is inevitable, since nothing can be
-lost or remain stationary. What has not been demonstrated in any way,
-and will perhaps remain indemonstrable, is the reincarnation of the
-whole, identical person, notwithstanding the abolition of memory. But
-what matters that reincarnation to him, if he be unaware that he is
-still himself? All the problems of the conscious survival of man start
-up anew, and we have to begin all over again. Even if scientifically
-established, the doctrine of reincarnation, just like that of a
-survival, would not set a term to our questions. It replies to neither
-the first nor the last, those of the beginning and the end, the only
-ones that are essential. It simply shifts them, pushes them a few
-hundreds, a few thousands, of years back, in the hope, perhaps, of
-losing or forgetting them in silence and space. But they have come from
-the depths of the most prodigious infinities, and are not content with
-a tardy solution. I am most certainly interested in learning what is in
-store for me, what will happen to me immediately after my death. You
-tell me:
-
-“Man, in his successive incarnations, will make atonement by suffering,
-will be purified, in order that he may ascend from sphere to sphere
-until he returns to the divine essence whence he sprang.”
-
-I am willing to believe it, notwithstanding that all this still bears
-the somewhat questionable stamp of our little earth and its old
-religions; I am willing to believe it; but even then? What matters to
-me is not what will be for some time, but for always; and your divine
-principle appears to me not at all infinite nor definite. It even
-seems to me greatly inferior to that which I conceive without your
-help. Now, even if it were based on thousands of facts, a religion
-that belittles the God conceived by my loftiest thought could never
-dominate my conscience. Your infinity or our God, without being even
-more unintelligible than mine, is nevertheless smaller. If I be again
-immerged in Him, it means that I emerged from Him; if it be possible
-for me to have emerged from Him, then He is not infinite; and, if He
-be not infinite, what is He? We must accept one thing or the other:
-either He purifies me because I am outside Him and He is not infinite;
-or, being infinite, if He purify me, then there was something impure
-in Him, because it is a part of Himself which He is purifying in me.
-Moreover, how can we admit that this God who has existed for all
-time, who has the same infinity of millenaries behind Him as in front
-of Him, should not yet have found time to purify Himself and put a
-period to His trials? What He was not able to do in the eternity
-previous to the moment of my existence He will not be able to do in
-the subsequent eternity, for the two are equal. And the same question
-presents itself where I am concerned. My principle of life, like His,
-exists from all eternity, for my emergence out of nothing would be more
-difficult of explanation than my existence without a beginning. I have
-necessarily had innumerable opportunities of incarnating myself; and I
-have probably done so, seeing that it is hardly likely that the idea
-came to me only yesterday. All the chances of reaching my goal have
-therefore been offered to me in the past; and all those which I shall
-find in the future will add nothing to the number, which was already
-infinite. There is not much to say in answer to these interrogations,
-which spring up everywhence the moment our thought glances upon them.
-Meanwhile, I had rather know that I know nothing than feed myself
-on illusory and irreconcilable assertions. I had rather keep to an
-infinity the incomprehensibility of which has no bounds than restrict
-myself to a God whose incomprehensibility is limited on every side.
-Nothing compels you to speak of your God; but, if you take upon
-yourself to do so, it is necessary that your explanations should be
-superior to the silence which they break.
-
-It is true that the scientific spiritualists do not venture as far
-as this God; but, then, tight-pressed between the two riddles of the
-beginning and the end, they have almost nothing to tell us. They follow
-the tracks of our dead for a few seconds in a world where seconds no
-longer count, and then they abandon them in the darkness. I do not
-reproach them, because we have here to do with things which, in all
-probability, we shall not know in the day when we shall think that we
-know everything. I do not ask that they shall reveal to me the secret
-of the universe, for I do not believe, like a child, that this secret
-can be expressed in three words or that it can enter my brain without
-bursting it. I am even persuaded that beings who might be millions of
-times more intelligent than the most intelligent among us would not
-yet possess it, for this secret must be as infinite, as unfathomable,
-as inexhaustible as the universe itself. Nevertheless, the fact
-remains that this inability to go even a few years beyond the life
-after death detracts greatly from the interest of their experiments
-and revelations. At best, it is only a short space gained, and it is
-not by this juggling on the threshold that our fate is decided. I am
-ready to go through what may befall me in the short interval filled by
-those revelations, as I am even now going through what befalls me in my
-life here. My destiny does not lie there, nor my home. I do not doubt
-that the facts reported are genuine and proved; but what is even much
-more certain is that the dead, if they survive, have not a great deal
-to teach us, whether because at the moment when they can speak to us
-they have nothing to tell us, or because at the moment when they might
-have something to reveal to us they are no longer able to do so, but
-withdraw forever, and lose sight of us in the immensity which they are
-exploring.
-
-  [1] Translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos and copyright U. S.
-      A., 1913, by Eugène Fasquelle.
-
-  [2] “The Survival of Man,” Chap. XXV, p. 325.
-
-  [3] In this connection, however, we find two or three rather
-      perturbing facts, a remarkable one being that at a spiritualistic
-      meeting held by the late W. T. Stead the prediction of the murder
-      of King Alexander and Queen Draga was described with the most
-      circumstantial details. A verbatim report was drawn up of this
-      prediction and signed by thirty witnesses; and Stead went next
-      day to beg the Servian minister in London to warn the king of the
-      danger that threatened him. The event took place, as announced, a
-      few months later. But “precognition” does not necessarily require
-      the intervention of the dead; moreover, every case of this kind,
-      before being definitely accepted, would call for prolonged study
-      in every particular.
-
-  [4] In order to exhaust this question of survival and of
-      communications with the dead, I ought to speak of Dr. Hyslop’s
-      recent investigations, made with the assistance of the mediums
-      Smead and Chenoweth (communications with William James). I ought
-      also to mention Julia’s famous “bureau” and, above all, the
-      extraordinary séances of Mrs. Wriedt, the trumpet medium, who not
-      only obtains communications in which the dead speak languages of
-      which she herself is completely ignorant, but raises apparitions
-      said to be extremely disturbing. I ought lastly, to examine the
-      facts set forth by Professor Porro, Dr. Venzano, and M. Rozanne,
-      and many other things besides, for spiritualistic investigation
-      and literature are already piling volume upon volume. But it was
-      not my intention or my pretension to make a complete study of
-      scientific spiritualism. I wished merely to omit no essential
-      point and to give a general but accurate idea of this posthumous
-      atmosphere which no really new and decisive fact has come to
-      unsettle since the manifestations of which we have spoken.
-
-  [5] In order to hide nothing and to bring all the documents into
-      court, we may point out that Colonel de Rochas ascertained upon
-      inquiry that the subjects’ revelations concerning their former
-      existences were inaccurate in several particulars.
-
-      “Their narratives were also full of anachronisms, which disclosed
-      the presence of normal recollections among the suggestions
-      that came from an unknown source. Nevertheless, one perfectly
-      indubitable fact remains, which is that of the existence of
-      certain visions recurring with the same characteristics in the
-      case of a considerable number of persons unknown to one another.”
-
-  [6] In this connection, may I be permitted to quote a personal
-      experience? One evening at the Abbaye de Saint-Wandrille, where
-      I am wont to spend my summers, some newly arrived guests were
-      amusing themselves by making a small table spin on its foot. I
-      was quietly smoking in a corner of the drawing-room, at some
-      distance from the little table, taking no interest in what was
-      happening around it and thinking of something quite different.
-      After due entreaty, the table replied that it held the spirit of
-      a seventeenth-century monk who was buried in the east gallery
-      of the cloisters under a flagstone dated 1693. After the
-      departure of the monk, who suddenly, for no apparent reason,
-      refused to continue the interview, we thought that we would go
-      with a lamp and look for the grave. We ended by discovering
-      in the far cloister, on the eastern side, a tombstone in very
-      bad condition, broken, worn down, trodden into the ground, and
-      crumbling, on which, by examining it very closely, we were able
-      with great difficulty to decipher the inscription, “A.D. 1693.”
-      Now, at the moment of the monk’s reply there was no one in the
-      drawing-room except my guests and myself. None of them knew the
-      abbey; they had arrived that very evening a few minutes before
-      dinner, after which, as it was quite dark, they had put off their
-      visit to the cloisters and the ruins until the following day.
-      Therefore, short of a belief in the “shells” or the “elementals”
-      of the theosophists, the revelation could have come only from
-      me. Nevertheless, I believed myself to be absolutely ignorant
-      of the existence of that particular tombstone, one of the least
-      legible among a score of others, all belonging to the seventeenth
-      century, which pave this part of the cloisters.
-
-
-
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-Country Roads of New England
-
-Four Drawings by Walter King Stone
-
-[Illustration]
-
-[Illustration]
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-THE WHITE LINEN NURSE
-
-HOW RAE MALGREGOR UNDERTOOK GENERAL HEARTWORK FOR A FAMILY OF TWO
-
-BY ELEANOR HALLOWELL ABBOTT
-
-Author of “Molly Make-Believe,” etc.
-
-IN THREE PARTS: PART TWO
-
-WITH PICTURES BY HERMAN PFEIFER
-
-SYNOPSIS OF PRECEDING INSTALMENT
-
-    On the day of her graduation from the training-school, the White
-    Linen Nurse was overcome by hysteria. For weeks she had been
-    working too hard, and two or three cases with which she had been
-    connected having gone wrong, she had racked herself with an absurd
-    sense of responsibility. Now, in her distracted state, the visible
-    sign of her self-contempt was the perfectly controlled expression
-    of her trained-nurse face.
-
-    From a scene in her room with her two room-mates, in which
-    confidences are exchanged, she rushed to the office of the
-    Superintendent of Nurses, and hysterically demanded her own face.
-    The Senior Surgeon was sent for, and after tartly telling the girl
-    she was a fool, finally took her with him and his little crippled
-    daughter for a thirty-mile trip into the country, where he had been
-    summoned on a difficult case.
-
-    On their return, the Senior Surgeon lost control of the machine on
-    a steep hill, and the three were thrown out.
-
-
-When the White Linen Nurse found anything again, she found herself
-lying perfectly flat on her back in a reasonably comfortable nest of
-grass and leaves. Staring inquisitively up into the sky she thought
-she noticed a slight black-and-blue discoloration toward the west, but
-more than that, much to her relief, the firmament did not seem to be
-seriously injured. The earth, she feared, had not escaped so easily.
-Even away off somewhere near the tip of her fingers the ground was as
-sore, as sore as could be, under her touch. Impulsively to her dizzy
-eyes the hot tears started, to think that now, tired as she was, she
-would have to jump right up in another minute or two and attend to the
-poor earth. Fortunately for any really strenuous emergency that might
-arise, there seemed to be nothing about her own body that hurt at all
-except a queer, persistent little pain in her cheek.
-
-Not until the Little Crippled Girl’s dirt-smouched face intervened
-between her own staring eyes and the sky did she realize that the pain
-in her cheek was a pinch.
-
-“Wake up! wake up!” scolded the Little Crippled Girl, shrilly.
-“Naughty--pink-and-white Nursie! I wanted to hear the bump! You
-screamed so loud I couldn’t hear the bump.”
-
-With excessive caution the White Linen Nurse struggled up at last to a
-sitting posture, and gazed perplexedly about her.
-
-It seemed to be a perfectly pleasant field--acres and acres of mild old
-grass tottering palsiedly down to watch some skittish young violets
-and bluets frolic in and out of a giggling brook. Up the field? Up
-the field? Hazily the White Linen Nurse ground her knuckles into her
-incredulous eyes. Up the field, just beyond them, the great empty
-automobile stood amiably at rest. From the general appearance of the
-stone wall at the top of the little grassy slope it was palpably
-evident that the car had attempted certain vain acrobatic feats before
-its failing momentum had forced it into the humiliating ranks of the
-backsliders.
-
-Still grinding her knuckles into her eyes, the White Linen Nurse
-turned back to the Little Girl. Under the torn, twisted sable cap
-one little eye was hidden completely, but the other eye loomed up as
-rakish and bruised as a prize-fighter’s. One sable sleeve was wrenched
-disastrously from its armhole, and along the edge of the vivid, purple
-little skirt the ill-favored white ruffles seemed to have raveled out
-into hopeless yards and yards and yards of Hamburg embroidery.
-
-The Little Girl began to gather herself together a trifle
-self-consciously.
-
-“We--we seem to have fallen out of something,” she confided with the
-air of one who halves a most precious secret.
-
-“Yes, I know,” said the White Linen Nurse; “but _what_ has become
-of--your father?”
-
-Worriedly for an instant, the Little Girl sat scanning the remotest
-corners of the field, then abruptly, with a gasp of real relief, she
-began to explore with cautious fingers the geographical outline of her
-black eye.
-
-“Oh, never mind about Father,” she asserted cheerfully. “I guess--I
-guess he got mad and went home.”
-
-“Yes, I know,” mused the White Linen Nurse; “but it doesn’t
-seem--probable.”
-
-“Probable?” mocked the Little Girl, most disagreeably; then suddenly
-her little hand went shooting out toward the stranded automobile.
-
-“Why, _there_ he is,” she screamed--“under the car! Oh,
-look--look--looky!”
-
-Laboriously the White Linen Nurse scrambled to her knees. Desperately
-she tried to ram her fingers like a clog into the whirling dizziness
-round her temples.
-
-“Oh, my God! oh, my God! what’s the dose for anybody under a car?” she
-babbled idiotically.
-
-Then with a really Herculean effort, both mental and physical, she
-staggered to her feet, and started for the automobile.
-
-But her knees gave out, and wilting down to the grass, she tried to
-crawl along on all fours till straining wrists sent her back to her
-feet again.
-
-Whenever she tried to walk, the Little Girl walked; whenever she tried
-to crawl, the Little Girl crawled.
-
-“Isn’t it _fun_!” the shrill childish voice piped persistently. “Isn’t
-it just like playing shipwreck!”
-
-When they reached the car, both woman and child were too utterly
-exhausted with breathlessness to do anything except just sit down on
-the ground and stare.
-
-Sure enough, under that monstrous, immovable-looking machine the Senior
-Surgeon’s body lay rammed, face down, deep, deep into the grass.
-
-It was the Little Girl who recovered her breath first.
-
-“I think he’s dead,” she volunteered sagely. “His legs look--awfully
-dead to me.” Only excitement was in the statement. It took a second or
-two for her little mind to make any particularly personal application
-of such excitement. “I hadn’t--exactly--planned--on having _him_ dead,”
-she began with imperious resentment. A threat of complete emotional
-collapse zigzagged suddenly across her face. “I won’t have him dead! I
-won’t! I _won’t_!” she screamed out stormily.
-
-In the amazing silence that ensued the White Linen Nurse gathered her
-trembling knees up into the circle of her arms and sat there staring at
-the Senior Surgeon’s prostrate body, and rocking herself feebly to and
-fro in a futile effort to collect her scattered senses.
-
-“Oh, if some one would only tell me what to do, I know I could do it!
-Oh, I know I could do it! If some one would only tell me what to do!”
-she kept repeating helplessly.
-
-Cautiously the Little Girl crept forward on her hands and knees to the
-edge of the car, and peered speculatively through the great yellow
-wheel-spokes. “Father!” she faltered in almost inaudible gentleness.
-“Father!” she pleaded in perfectly impotent whisper.
-
-Impetuously the White Linen Nurse scrambled to her own hands and knees
-and jostled the Little Girl aside.
-
-“Fat Father!” screamed the White Linen Nurse. “Fat Father! Fat Father!
-_Fat Father!_” she gibed and taunted with the one call she knew that
-had never yet failed to rouse him.
-
-Perceptibly across the Senior Surgeon’s horridly quiet shoulders a
-little twitch wrinkled and was gone again.
-
-“Oh, his heart!” gasped the White Linen Nurse. “I must find his heart!”
-
-Throwing herself prone upon the cool, meadowy ground and frantically
-reaching under the running-board of the car to her full arm’s-length,
-she began to rummage awkwardly hither and yon beneath the heavy weight
-of the man in the desperate hope of feeling a heart-beat.
-
-“Ouch! you tickle me!” spluttered the Senior Surgeon, weakly.
-
-Rolling back quickly with fright and relief, the White Linen Nurse
-burst forth into one maddening cackle of hysterical laughter. “Ha! ha!
-ha!” she giggled. “Hi! hi!”
-
-Perplexedly at first, but with increasing abandon, the Little Girl’s
-voice took up the same idiotic refrain. “Ha! ha! ha!” she choked. “Hi!
-hi! hi!”
-
-With an agonizing jerk of his neck, the Senior Surgeon rooted his
-mud-gagged mouth half an inch farther toward free and spontaneous
-speech. Very laboriously, very painstakingly, he spat out one by one
-two stones and a wisp of ground-pine and a brackish, prickly tickle of
-stale goldenrod.
-
-“Blankety-blank-blank-_blank_!” he announced in due
-time--“blankety-blank-blank-blank-_blank_! Maybe when you two
-blankety-blank imbeciles have got through your blankety-blank
-cackling, you’ll have the blankety-blank decency to save my--my
-blankety-blank-blank-blank-_blank-blank life_!”
-
-“Ha! ha! ha!” persisted the poor White Linen Nurse, with the tears
-streaming down her cheeks.
-
-“Hi! hi! hi!” snickered the poor Little Girl through her hiccoughs.
-
-Feeling hopelessly imprisoned under the monstrous car, the Senior
-Surgeon closed his eyes for death. No man of his weight, he felt sure,
-could reasonably expect to survive many minutes longer the apoplectic,
-blood-red rage that pounded in his ear-drums. Through his tight-closed
-eyelids very, very slowly a red glow seemed to permeate. He thought it
-was the fires of hell. Opening his eyes to meet his fate like a man, he
-found himself staring impudently close, instead, into the White Linen
-Nurse’s furiously flushed face, which lay cuddled on one plump cheek,
-staring impudently close at him.
-
-“Why--why--get out!” gasped the Senior Surgeon.
-
-Very modestly the White Linen Nurse’s face retreated a little further
-into its blushes.
-
-“Yes, I know,” she protested; “but I’m all through giggling now. I’m
-sorry--I’m--”
-
-In sheer apprehensiveness the Senior Surgeon’s features crinkled
-wincingly from brow to chin as though struggling vainly to retreat from
-the appalling proximity of the girl’s face.
-
-“Your--eyelashes--are too long,” he complained querulously.
-
-“Eh?” jerked the White Linen Nurse’s face. “Is it your brain that’s
-hurt? Oh, sir, do you think it’s your brain that’s hurt?”
-
-“It’s my stomach,” snapped the Senior Surgeon. “I tell you I’m not
-hurt; I’m just--squashed. I’m paralyzed. If I can’t get this car off
-me--”
-
-“Yes, that’s just it,” beamed the White Linen Nurse’s face--“that’s
-just what I crawled in here to find out--how to get the car off you.
-That’s just what I want to find out. I could run for help, of course;
-only I couldn’t run, ’cause my knees are so wobbly. It would take
-hours, and the car might start or burn up or something while I was
-gone. But you don’t seem to be caught anywhere on the machinery,” she
-added more brightly; “it only seems to be sitting on you. So if I could
-only get the car off you! But it’s so heavy. I had no idea it would be
-so heavy. Could I take it apart, do you think? Is there any one place
-where I could begin at the beginning and take it all apart?”
-
-“Take it apart--hell!” groaned the Senior Surgeon.
-
-A little twitch of defiance flickered across the White Linen Nurse’s
-face.
-
-“All the same,” she asserted stubbornly, “if some one would only tell
-me what to do, I know I could do it.”
-
-Horridly from some unlocatable quarter of the engine an alarming little
-tremor quickened suddenly, and was hushed again.
-
-“Get out of here--quick!” stormed the Senior Surgeon.
-
-“I won’t,” said the White Linen Nurse, “until you tell me what to do.”
-
-Brutally for an instant the ingenuous blue eyes and the cynical gray
-eyes battled each other.
-
-“_Can_ you do what you’re told?” faltered the Senior Surgeon.
-
-“Oh, yes,” said the White Linen Nurse.
-
-“I mean, can you do exactly what you’re told?” gasped the Senior
-Surgeon. “Can you follow directions, I mean? Can you follow them
-explicitly? Or are you one of those people who listens only to her own
-judgment?”
-
-“Oh, but I haven’t got any judgment,” protested the White Linen Nurse.
-
-Palpably in the Senior Surgeon’s bloodshot eyes the leisurely seeming
-diagnosis leaped to precipitous conclusions.
-
-“Then get out of here quick, for God’s sake, and get to work!” he
-ordered.
-
-Cautiously the White Linen Nurse jerked herself back into freedom
-and crawled around and stared at the Senior Surgeon through the
-wheel-spokes again. Like one worrying out some intricate mathematical
-problem, his mental strain was pulsing visibly through his closed
-eyelids.
-
-“Yes, sir?” prodded the White Linen Nurse.
-
-“Keep still!” snapped the Senior Surgeon. “I’ve got to think,” he said.
-“I’ve got to work it out. All in a moment you’ve got to learn to run
-the car. All in a moment! It’s awful!”
-
-“Oh, I don’t mind, sir,” affirmed the White Linen Nurse, serenely.
-
-Frenziedly the Senior Surgeon rooted one cheek into the mud again.
-
-“You don’t _mind_?” he groaned. “You don’t _mind_? Why, you’ve got to
-learn--everything--everything from the very beginning!”
-
-“Oh, that’s all right, sir,” crooned the White Linen Nurse.
-
-Ominously from somewhere a horrid sound creaked again. The Senior
-Surgeon did not stop to argue any further.
-
-“Now come here,” he ordered. “I’m going to--I’m going to--”
-Startlingly his voice weakened, trailed off into nothingness, and
-rallied suddenly with exaggerated bruskness. “Look here, now, for
-Heaven’s sake, use your brains! I’m going to dictate to you very
-slowly, one thing at a time, just what to do.”
-
-Quite astonishingly the White Linen Nurse sank down on her knees and
-began to grin at him.
-
-“Oh, no, sir,” she said; “I couldn’t do it that way--not one thing at a
-time. Oh, no, indeed, sir--No.” Absolute finality was in her voice, the
-inviolable stubbornness of the perfectly good-natured person.
-
-“You’ll do it the way I tell you to,” roared the Senior Surgeon,
-struggling vainly to ease one shoulder or stretch one knee-joint.
-
-“Oh, no, sir,” beamed the White Linen Nurse; “not one thing at a time.
-Oh, no; I couldn’t do it that way. Oh, no, sir; I won’t do it that
-way--one thing at a time,” she persisted hurriedly. “Why, you might
-faint away or something might happen right in the middle of it--right
-between one direction and another, and I wouldn’t know at all what to
-turn on or off next; and it might take off one of your legs, you know,
-or an arm. Oh, no; not one thing at a time.”
-
-“Good-by, then,” croaked the Senior Surgeon. “I’m as good as dead now.”
-A single shudder went through him, a last futile effort to stretch
-himself.
-
-“Good-by,” said the White Linen Nurse. “Good-by. I’d heaps rather have
-you die perfectly whole, like that, of your own accord, than have me
-run the risk of starting the car full-tilt and chopping you up so, or
-dragging you off so, that you didn’t find it convenient to tell me how
-to _stop_ the car.”
-
-“You’re a--a--a--” spluttered the Senior Surgeon, incoherently.
-
-“_Crinkle-crackle!_” went that mysterious, horrid sound from somewhere
-in the machinery.
-
-“Oh, my God!” surrendered the Senior Surgeon, “do it your own--damned
-way! Only--only--” His voice cracked raspingly.
-
-“Steady! Steady there!” said the White Linen Nurse. Except for a sudden
-odd pucker at the end of her nose her expression was still perfectly
-serene. “Now begin at the beginning,” she begged. “Quick! Tell me
-everything just the way I must do it! Quick! quick! quick!”
-
-Twice the Senior Surgeon’s lips opened and shut with a vain effort to
-comply with her request.
-
-“But you can’t do it,” he began all over again; “it isn’t possible. You
-haven’t got the mind.”
-
-“Maybe I haven’t,” said the White Linen Nurse; “but I’ve got the
-memory. _Hurry!_”
-
-“_Creak!_” said the funny little something in the machinery.
-
-“Oh, get in there quick!” surrendered the Senior Surgeon. “Sit down
-behind the wheel!” he shouted after her flying footsteps. “Are you
-there? For God’s sake, are you there? Do you see those two little
-levers where your right hand comes? For God’s sake, don’t you know what
-a lever is? Quick now! Do just what I tell you!”
-
-A little jerkily then, but very clearly, very concisely, the Senior
-Surgeon called out to the White Linen Nurse just how every lever, every
-pedal, should be manipulated to start the car.
-
-Absolutely accurately, absolutely indelibly, the White Linen Nurse
-visualized each separate detail in her abnormally retentive mind.
-
-“But you can’t possibly remember it,” groaned the Senior Surgeon. “You
-can’t possibly. And probably the damned car’s _bust_ and won’t start,
-anyway, and--” Abruptly the speech ended in a guttural snarl of despair.
-
-“Don’t be a--blight!” screamed the White Linen Nurse. “I’ve never
-forgotten anything yet, sir!”
-
-Very tensely she straightened up suddenly in her seat. Her expression
-was no longer even remotely pleasant. Along her sensitive, fluctuant
-nostrils the casual crinkle of distaste and suspicion had deepened
-suddenly into sheer dilating terror.
-
-“Left foot--press down--hard--left pedal,” she began to singsong to
-herself.
-
-“No, _right_ foot--_right_ foot!” corrected the Little Girl,
-blunderingly from somewhere close in the grass.
-
-“Inside lever--pull--’way--back!” persisted the White Linen Nurse,
-resolutely, as she switched on the current.
-
-“No, _outside_ lever! _Outside! Outside!_” contradicted the Little
-Girl.
-
-“Shut your damned mouth!” screeched the White Linen Nurse, her hand on
-the throttle as she tried the self-starter.
-
-Bruised as he was, wretched, desperately endangered there under the
-car, the Senior Surgeon could almost have grinned at the girl’s terse,
-unconscious mimicry of his own most venomous tones.
-
-Then with all the forty-eight lusty, ebullient years of his life
-snatched from his lips like an untasted cup, and one single noxious,
-death-flavored second urged, forced, crammed down his choking throat,
-he felt the great car quicken and start.
-
-“God!” said the Senior Surgeon, just “God!” The God of mud, he meant;
-the God of brackish grass; the God of a man lying still hopeful under
-more than two and a half ton’s weight of unaccountable mechanism, with
-a novice in full command.
-
-Up in her crimson leather cushions, free-lunged, free-limbed, the White
-Linen Nurse heard the smothered cry. Clear above the whir of wheels,
-the whizz of clogs, the one word sizzled like a red-hot poker across
-her chattering consciousness. Tingling through the grasp of her fingers
-on the vibrating wheel, stinging through the sole of her foot that
-hovered over the throbbing clutch, she sensed the agonized appeal.
-“Short lever, spark; long lever, gas,” she persisted resolutely. “It
-must be right; it must!”
-
-Jerkily then, and blatantly unskilfully, with riotous puffs, and
-spinning of wheels, the great car started, faltered, balked a bit, then
-dragged crushingly across the Senior Surgeon’s flattened body, and with
-a great wanton burst of speed tore down the sloping meadow into the
-brook rods away. Clamping down the brakes with a wrench and a racket
-like the smash of a machine-shop, the White Linen Nurse jumped out into
-the brook, and with one wild, terrified glance behind her, staggered
-back up the long, grassy slope to the Senior Surgeon.
-
-Mechanically through her wooden-feeling lips she forced the greeting
-that sounded most cheerful to her.
-
-“It’s not much fun, sir, running an auto,” she gasped. “I don’t believe
-I’d like it.”
-
-Half propped up on one elbow, still dizzy with mental chaos, still
-paralyzed with physical inertia, the Senior Surgeon lay staring blankly
-about him. Indifferently for an instant his stare included the White
-Linen Nurse. Then glowering suddenly at something beyond her, his face
-went perfectly livid.
-
-“Good God! the--the car’s on fire!” he mumbled.
-
-“Yes, sir,” said the White Linen Nurse. “Why, didn’t you know it, sir?”
-
-Headlong the Senior Surgeon pitched over on the grass, his last vestige
-of self-control stripped from him, horror unspeakable racking him
-sobbingly from head to toe.
-
-Whimperingly the Little Girl came crawling to him, and, settling down
-close at his feet, began with her tiny lace handkerchief to make futile
-dabs at the mud-stains on his gray silk stockings.
-
-“Never mind, Father,” she coaxed; “we’ll get you clean sometime.”
-
-Nervously the White Linen Nurse bethought her of the brook. “Oh, wait a
-minute, sir, and I’ll get you a drink of water,” she pleaded.
-
-Bruskly the Senior Surgeon’s hand jerked out and grabbed at her skirt.
-
-“Don’t leave me!” he begged. “For God’s sake, don’t leave me!”
-
-Weakly he struggled up again and sat staring piteously at the blazing
-car. His unrelinquished clutch on the White Linen Nurse’s skirt brought
-her sinking softly down beside him like a collapsed balloon. Together
-they sat and watched the gaseous yellow flames shoot up into the sky.
-
-“It’s pretty, isn’t it?” piped the Little Girl.
-
-“Eh?” groaned the Senior Surgeon.
-
-“Father,” persisted the shrill little voice--“Father, do people ever
-burn up?”
-
-“Eh?” gasped the Senior Surgeon. Brutally the harsh, shuddering sobs
-began to rack and tear again through his great chest.
-
-“There! there!” crooned the White Linen Nurse, struggling desperately
-to her knees. “Let me get--everybody a drink of water.”
-
-Again the Senior Surgeon’s unrelinquished clutch on her skirt jerked
-her back to the place beside him.
-
-“I said _not to leave me_!” he snapped out as roughly as he jerked.
-
-Before the affrighted look in the White Linen Nurse’s face a sheepish,
-mirthless grin flickered across one corner of his mouth.
-
-“Lord! but I’m shaken!” he apologized. “Me, of all people!” Painfully
-the red blood mounted to his cheeks. “Me, of all people!” Bluntly he
-forced the White Linen Nurse’s reluctant gaze to meet his own. “Only
-yesterday,” he persisted, “I did a laparotomy on a man who had only one
-chance in a hundred of pulling through, and I--I laughed at him for
-fighting off his ether cone--laughed at him, I tell you!”
-
-“Yes, I know,” soothed the White Linen Nurse; “but--”
-
-“But nothing!” growled the Senior Surgeon. “The fear of death? Bah! All
-my life I’ve scoffed at it. Die? Yes, of course, when you _have_ to,
-but with no kick coming. Why, I’ve been wrecked in a hurricane in the
-Gulf of Mexico, and I didn’t care; and I’ve lain for nine days more
-dead than alive in an Asiatic cholera camp, and I didn’t care; and
-I’ve been locked into my office three hours with a raving maniac and
-a dynamite bomb, and I didn’t care; and twice in a Pennsylvania mine
-disaster I’ve been the first man down the shaft, and I didn’t care; and
-I’ve been shot, I tell you, and I’ve been horse-trampled, and I’ve been
-wolf-bitten, and I’ve _never_ cared. But to-day--to-day--” Piteously
-all the pride and vigor wilted from his great shoulders, leaving him
-all huddled up, like a woman, with his head on his knees--“but to-day
-I’ve got mine,” he acknowledged brokenly.
-
-Once again the White Linen Nurse tried to rise.
-
-“Oh, please, sir, let me get you a--drink of water,” she suggested
-helplessly.
-
-“I said not to leave me!” jerked the Senior Surgeon.
-
-Perplexedly, with big staring eyes, the Little Crippled Girl glanced
-up at this strange fatherish person who sounded so suddenly small
-and scared like herself. Jealous instantly of her own prerogatives,
-she dropped her futile labors on the mud-stained silk stockings and
-scrambled precipitously for the White Linen Nurse’s lap, where she
-nestled down finally after many gyrations, and sat glowering forth at
-all possible interlopers.
-
-“Don’t leave _any_ of us!” she ordered with a peremptoriness not
-unmixed with supplication.
-
-“Surely some one will see the fire and come and get us,” conceded the
-Senior Surgeon.
-
-“Yes, surely,” mused the White Linen Nurse. Just at that moment she
-was mostly concerned with adjusting the curve of her shoulder to the
-curve of the Little Girl’s head. “I could sit more comfortably,” she
-suggested to the Senior Surgeon, “if you’d let go my skirt.”
-
-“Let go of your skirt? Who’s touching your skirt?” gasped the Senior
-Surgeon, incredulously. Once again the blood mounted darkly to his
-face. “I think I’ll get up--and walk around a bit,” he confided coldly.
-
-“Do, sir,” said the White Linen Nurse.
-
-With a tweak of pain through his sprained back, the Senior Surgeon
-suddenly sat down again. “I _sha’n’t_ get up till I’m good and ready,”
-he declared.
-
-“I wouldn’t, sir,” said the White Linen Nurse. Very slowly, very
-complacently, all the while she kept right on renovating the Little
-Girl’s personal appearance, smoothing a wrinkled stocking, tucking up
-obstreperous white ruffles, tugging down parsimonious purple hems,
-loosening a pinchy hook, tightening a wobbly button. Very slowly, very
-complacently, the Little Girl drowsed off to sleep, with her weazen,
-iron-cased little legs stretched stiffly out before her. “Poor little
-legs! Poor little legs! Poor little legs!” crooned the White Linen
-Nurse.
-
-“I don’t know that you need to make a _song_ about it,” winced the
-Senior Surgeon. “It’s just about the cruellest case of complete
-muscular atrophy that I’ve ever seen.”
-
-Blandly the White Linen Nurse lifted her big blue eyes to his.
-
-“It wasn’t her ‘complete muscular atrophy’ that I was thinking about,”
-she said. “It’s her panties that are so unbecoming.”
-
-“Eh?” exclaimed the Senior Surgeon.
-
-“Poor little legs! Poor little legs! Poor little legs!” resumed the
-White Linen Nurse, droningly.
-
-Very slowly, very complacently, all around them April kept right on
-being April. Very slowly, very complacently, all around them the grass
-kept right on growing, and the trees kept right on budding. Very
-slowly, very complacently, all around them the blue sky kept right on
-fading into its early evening dove-colors.
-
-Nothing brisk, nothing breathless, nothing even remotely hurried, was
-there in all the landscape except just the brook, and the flash of a
-bird, and the blaze of the crackling automobile.
-
-The White Linen Nurse’s nostrils were smooth and calm with the
-lovely sappy scent of rabbit-nibbled maple-bark and mud-wet arbutus
-buds. The White Linen Nurse’s mind was full of sumptuous, succulent
-marsh-marigolds and fluffy-white shad-bush blossoms.
-
-The Senior Surgeon’s nostrils were all puckered up with the stench
-of burning varnish. The Senior Surgeon’s mind was full of the horrid
-thought that he’d forgotten to renew his automobile fire-insurance,
-and that he had a sprained back, and that his rival colleague had told
-him he didn’t know how to run an auto, anyway, and that the cook had
-given notice that morning, and that he had a sprained back, and that
-the moths had gnawed the knees out of his new dress-suit, and that the
-Superintendent of Nurses had had the audacity to send him a bunch of
-pink roses for his birthday, and that the boiler in the kitchen leaked,
-and that he had to go to Philadelphia the next day to read a paper on
-“Surgical Methods at the Battle of Waterloo” and he hadn’t even begun
-the paper yet, and that he had a sprained back, and that the wall-paper
-on his library hung in shreds and tatters, waiting for him to decide
-between a French fresco effect and an early English paneling, and that
-his little daughter was growing up in wanton ugliness under the care of
-coarse, indifferent hirelings, and that the laundry robbed him weekly
-of at least five socks, and that it would cost him fully seven thousand
-dollars to replace this car, and that he had a sprained back.
-
-“It’s restful, isn’t it?” cooed the White Linen Nurse.
-
-“Isn’t _what_ restful?” glowered the Senior Surgeon.
-
-“Sitting down,” said the White Linen Nurse.
-
-Contemptuously the Senior Surgeon’s mind ignored the interruption and
-reverted precipitously to its own immediate problem concerning the
-gloomy, black-walnut-shadowed entrance-hall of his great house, and
-how many yards of imported linoleum at $3.45 a yard it would take
-to recarpet the “confounded hole”; and how it would have seemed,
-anyway, if--if he hadn’t gone home as usual to the horrid black-walnut
-shadows that night, but been carried home instead, feet first and quite
-dead--dead, mind you, with a _red_ necktie on, and even the cook was
-out! And they wouldn’t even know where to lay him, but might put him by
-mistake in that--in that--in his dead wife’s dead bed!
-
-Altogether unconsciously a little fluttering sigh of ineffable
-contentment escaped the White Linen Nurse.
-
-“I don’t care how long we have to sit here and wait for help,” she
-announced cheerfully, “because to-morrow, of course, I’ll have to get
-up and begin all over again--and go to Nova Scotia.”
-
-“Go _where_?” lurched the Senior Surgeon.
-
-“I’d thank you kindly, sir, not to jerk my skirt quite so hard,” said
-the White Linen Nurse, just a trifle stiffly.
-
-Incredulously once more the Senior Surgeon withdrew his detaining hand.
-
-“I’m not even touching your skirt,” he denied desperately. Nothing
-but denial and reiterated denial seemed to ease his self-esteem for
-an instant. “Why, for Heaven’s sake, should I want to hold on to
-your skirt?” he demanded peremptorily. “What the deuce,” he began
-blusteringly--“why in--”
-
-Then abruptly he stopped and shot an odd, puzzled glance at the White
-Linen Nurse, and right there before her startled eyes she saw every
-vestige of human expression fade out of his face as it faded out
-sometimes in the operating-room when, in the midst of some ghastly,
-unforeseen emergency that left all his assistants blinking helplessly
-about them, his whole wonderful, scientific mind seemed to break up
-like some chemical compound into all its meek component parts, only
-to reorganize itself suddenly with some amazing explosive action that
-fairly knocked the breath out of all on-lookers, but was pretty apt to
-knock the breath _into_ the body of the person most concerned.
-
-When the Senior Surgeon’s scientific mind had reorganized itself to
-meet _this_ emergency, he found himself vastly more surprised at the
-particular type of explosion that had taken place than any other person
-could possibly have been.
-
-“Miss Malgregor,” he gasped, “speaking of preferring ‘domestic
-service,’ as you call it--speaking of preferring domestic service
-to--nursing, how would you like to consider--to consider a position
-of--of--well, call it a--a position of general--heartwork--for a
-family of two? Myself and the Little Girl here being the two, as you
-understand,” he added briskly.
-
-“Why, I think it would be grand!” beamed the White Linen Nurse.
-
-A trifle mockingly the Senior Surgeon bowed his appreciation.
-
-“Your frank and immediate--enthusiasm,” he murmured, “is more, perhaps,
-than I had dared to expect.”
-
-“But it _would_ be grand,” said the White Linen Nurse. Before the odd
-little smile in the Senior Surgeon’s eyes her white forehead puckered
-all up with perplexity. Then with her mind still thoroughly unawakened,
-her heart began suddenly to pitch and lurch like a frightened horse
-whose rider has not even remotely sensed as yet the approach of an
-unwonted footfall. “What did you say?” she repeated worriedly. “Just
-exactly what was it that you said? I guess, maybe, I didn’t understand
-just exactly what it was that you said.”
-
-The smile in the Senior Surgeon’s eyes deepened a little.
-
-“I asked you,” he said, “how you would like to consider a position of
-‘general heartwork’ in a family of two, myself and the Little Girl
-here being the two. ‘Heartwork’ was what I said. Yes, ‘heartwork,’ not
-housework.”
-
-“_Heartwork?_” faltered the White Linen Nurse. “Heartwork? I don’t know
-what you mean, sir.” Like two falling rose-petals her eyelids fluttered
-down across her affrighted eyes. “Oh, when I shut my eyes, sir, and
-just hear your voice, I know of course, sir, that it’s some sort of a
-joke; but when I look right at you, I--I--don’t know--what it is.”
-
-“Open your eyes and keep them open, then, till you do find out,”
-suggested the Senior Surgeon, bluntly.
-
-Defiantly once again the blue eyes and the gray eyes challenged each
-other.
-
-“‘Heartwork’ was what I said,” persisted the Senior Surgeon. Palpably
-his narrowing eyes shut out all meaning but one definite one.
-
-The White Linen Nurse’s face became almost as blanched as her dress.
-
-“You’re--you’re not asking me to--_marry_ you, sir?” she stammered.
-
-“I suppose I am,” acknowledged the Senior Surgeon.
-
-“Not _marry_ you!” cried the White Linen Nurse. Distress was in her
-voice, distaste, unmitigable shock, as though the high gods themselves
-had fallen at her feet and splintered off into mere candy fragments.
-“Oh, not _marry_ you, sir?” she kept right on protesting. “Not
-be--_engaged_, you mean? Oh, not be _engaged_--and everything?”
-
-“Well, why not?” snapped the Senior Surgeon.
-
-Like a smitten flower the girl’s whole body seemed to wilt down into
-incalculable weariness.
-
-“Oh, no, no! I couldn’t!” she protested. “Oh, no, really!” Appealingly
-she lifted her great blue eyes to his, and the blueness was all blurred
-with tears. “I’ve--I’ve been engaged once, you know,” she explained
-falteringly. “Why--I was engaged, sir--almost as soon as I was born,
-and I stayed engaged till two years ago. That’s almost twenty years.
-That’s a long time, sir. You don’t get over it--easy.” Very, very
-gravely she began to shake her head. “Oh, no, sir! No! Thank you--very
-much, but I--I just simply _couldn’t_ begin at the beginning and go all
-through it again. I haven’t got the heart for it. I haven’t got the
-spirit. Carving your initials on trees and--and gadding round to all
-the Sunday-school picnics--”
-
-Brutally, like a boy, the Senior Surgeon threw back his head in one
-wild hoot of joy. Much more cautiously, as the agonizing pang in his
-shoulder lulled down again, he proceeded to argue the matter, but the
-grin in his face was even yet faintly traceable.
-
-“Frankly, Miss Malgregor,” he affirmed, “I’m much more addicted
-to carving people than to carving trees; and as to Sunday-school
-picnics--well, really now, I hardly believe that you’d find my demands
-in that direction excessive.”
-
-Perplexedly the White Linen Nurse tried to stare her way through his
-bantering smile to his real meaning. Furiously, as she stared, the red
-blood came flushing back into her face.
-
-“You don’t mean for a second that you--that you love me?” she asked
-incredulously.
-
-“No, I don’t suppose I do,” acknowledged the Senior Surgeon with equal
-bluntness; “but my little kiddie here loves you,” he hastened somewhat
-nervously to affirm. “Oh, I’m almost sure that my little kiddie
-here--loves you. She needs you, anyway. Let it go at that. Call it that
-we both--need you.”
-
-“What you mean is,” corrected the White Linen Nurse, “that needing
-_somebody_ very badly, you’ve just suddenly decided that that somebody
-might as well be me?”
-
-“Well, if you choose to put it like that,” said the Senior Surgeon, a
-bit sulkily.
-
-“And if there hadn’t been an auto accident,” argued the White Linen
-Nurse just out of sheer inquisitiveness, “if there hadn’t been just
-this particular kind of an auto accident at this particular hour
-of this particular day of this particular month, with marigolds
-and--everything, you probably never would have realized that you _did_
-need anybody?”
-
-“Maybe not,” admitted the Senior Surgeon.
-
-“U-m-m,” said the White Linen Nurse. “And if you’d happened to take
-one of the other girls to-day instead of me, why, then I suppose you’d
-have felt that _she_ was the one you really needed? And if you’d taken
-the Superintendent of Nurses instead of any of us girls, you might even
-have felt that _she_ was the one you most needed?”
-
-“Oh, hell!” said the Senior Surgeon.
-
-With surprising agility for a man with a sprained back he wrenched
-himself around until he faced her quite squarely.
-
-“Now see here, Miss Malgregor,” he growled, “for Heaven’s sake, listen
-to sense, even if you can’t talk it! Here am I, a plain professional
-man, making you a plain professional offer. Why in thunder should
-you try and fuss me all up because my offer isn’t couched in all the
-foolish, romantic, lace-paper sort of flub-dubbery that you think such
-an offer ought to be couched in, eh?”
-
-“Fuss you all up, sir?” protested the White Linen Nurse, with real
-anxiety.
-
-[Illustration: Plates in tint, engraved for ~The Century~ by H. C.
-Merrill and H. Davidson
-
-“‘THE CAR’S ON FIRE!’ HE MUMBLED. ‘YES, SIR,’ SAID THE WHITE LINEN
-NURSE. ‘WHY, DIDN’T YOU KNOW IT, SIR?’”
-
-DRAWN BY HERMAN PFEIFER]
-
-“Yes, fuss me all up,” snarled the Senior Surgeon, with increasing
-venom. “I’m no story-writer; I’m not trying to make up what might
-have happened a year from next February in a Chinese junk off the
-coast of--Nova Zembla to a Methodist preacher and a--and a militant
-suffragette. What I’m trying to size up is just what’s happened to you
-and me to-day. For the fact remains that it is to-day. And it is you
-and I. And there _has_ been an accident, and out of that accident--and
-everything that’s gone with it--I _have_ come out thinking of something
-that I never thought of before. And there _were_ marigolds,” he
-added with unexpected whimsicality. “You see, I don’t deny even the
-marigolds.”
-
-“Yes, sir,” said the White Linen Nurse.
-
-“Yes, _what_?” jerked the Senior Surgeon.
-
-Softly the White Linen Nurse’s chin burrowed down a little closer
-against the sleeping child’s tangled hair.
-
-“Why--yes, thank you very much; but I never shall love again,” she said
-definitely.
-
-“Love?” gasped the Senior Surgeon. “Why, I’m not asking you to love
-me!” His face was suddenly crimson. “Why, I’d _hate_ it, if you--loved
-me! Why, I’d--”
-
-“O-h-h,” mumbled the White Linen Nurse in new embarrassment. Then
-suddenly and surprisingly her chin came tilting bravely up again. “What
-_do_ you want?” she asked.
-
-Helplessly the Senior Surgeon threw out his hands.
-
-“My God!” he said, “what do you suppose I want? I want some one to take
-care of us.”
-
-Gently the White Linen Nurse shifted her shoulder to accommodate the
-shifting little sleepy-head on her breast.
-
-“You can _hire_ some one for that,” she suggested with real relief.
-
-“I was trying to hire--_you_!” said the Senior Surgeon, tersely.
-
-“Hire _me_?” gasped the White Linen Nurse. “Why! Why!”
-
-Adroitly she slipped both hands under the sleeping child and delivered
-the little frail-fleshed, heavily ironed body into the Senior Surgeon’s
-astonished arms.
-
-“I--I don’t want to hold her,” he protested.
-
-“She--isn’t mine,” argued the White Linen Nurse.
-
-“But I can’t talk while I’m holding her,” insisted the Senior Surgeon.
-
-“I can’t listen while I’m holding her,” persisted the White Linen Nurse.
-
-Freely now, though cross-legged like a Turk, she jerked herself forward
-on the grass and sat probing up into the Senior Surgeon’s face like an
-excited puppy trying to solve whether the gift in your upraised hand is
-a lump of sugar or a live coal.
-
-“You’re trying to hire _me_?” she prompted him nudgingly with her
-voice. “Hire me for money?”
-
-“Oh, my Lord, no!” said the Senior Surgeon. “There are plenty of
-people I can hire for money; but they won’t _stay_,” he explained
-ruefully. “Hang it all!--they won’t _stay_!” Above his little girl’s
-white, pinched face his own ruddy countenance furrowed suddenly with
-unspeakable anxiety. “Why, just this last year,” he complained, “we’ve
-had nine different housekeepers and thirteen nursery governesses.”
-Skilfully as a surgeon, but awkwardly as a father, he bent to readjust
-the weight of the little iron leg-braces. “But, I tell you, no one will
-stay with us,” he finished hotly. “There’s something the matter with
-us. I don’t seem to have money enough in the world to make anybody
-_stay_ with us.” Very wryly, very reluctantly, at one corner of his
-mouth his sense of humor ignited in a feeble grin. “So, you see, what
-I’m trying to do to you, Miss Malgregor, is to--hire you with something
-that will just naturally _compel_ you to stay.” If the grin round his
-mouth strengthened a trifle, so also did the anxiety in his eyes. “For
-Heaven’s sake, Miss Malgregor,” he pleaded, “here’s a man and a house
-and a child all going to--hell! If you’re really and truly tired of
-nursing, and are looking for a new job, what’s the matter with tackling
-us?”
-
-“It _would_ be a job,” admitted the White Linen Nurse, demurely.
-
-“Why, it would be a horrible job,” confided the Senior Surgeon, with no
-demureness whatsoever.
-
-Very soberly, very thoughtfully, then, across the tangled, snuggling
-head of his own and another woman’s child, he urged the torments and
-the comforts of his home upon this second woman.
-
-“What is there about my offer that you don’t like?” he demanded
-earnestly. “Is it the whole idea that offends you? Or just the way I
-put it? ‘General heartwork for a family of two’--what is the matter
-with _that_? Seems a bit cold to you, does it, for a real marriage
-proposal? Or is it that it’s just a bit too ardent, perhaps, for a mere
-plain business proposition?”
-
-“Yes, sir,” said the White Linen Nurse.
-
-“Yes, what?” insisted the Senior Surgeon.
-
-“Yes--_sir_,” flushed the White Linen Nurse.
-
-Very meditatively the Senior Surgeon reconsidered his phrasing.
-“‘General heartwork for a family of two’? U-m-m.” Quite abruptly
-even the tenseness of his manner faded from him, leaving his face
-astonishingly quiet, astonishingly gentle. “But how else, Miss
-Malgregor,” he queried--“how else should a widower with a child proffer
-marriage to a--to a young girl like yourself? Even under conditions
-directly antipodal to ours, such a proposition can never be a purely
-romantic one. Yet even under conditions as cold and businesslike as
-ours, there’s got to be some vestige of affection in it, some vestige
-at least of the _intelligence_ of affection, else what gain is there
-for my little girl and me over the purely mercenary domestic service
-that has racked us up to this time with its garish faithlessness?”
-
-“Yes, sir,” said the White Linen Nurse.
-
-“But even if I had loved you, Miss Malgregor,” explained the Senior
-Surgeon, gravely, “my offer of marriage to you would not, I fear, have
-been a very great oratorical success. Materialist as I am, cynic,
-scientist, any harsh thing you choose to call me, marriage in some
-freak, boyish corner of my mind still defines itself as being the
-mutual sharing of a--mutually original experience. Certainly, whether
-a first marriage be instigated in love or worldliness, whether it
-eventually proves itself bliss, tragedy, or mere sickening ennui, to
-two people coming mutually virgin to the consummation of that marriage,
-the thrill of establishing publicly a man-and-woman home together is an
-emotion that cannot be reduplicated while life lasts.”
-
-“Yes, sir,” said the White Linen Nurse.
-
-Bleakly across the Senior Surgeon’s face something gray that was not
-years shadowed suddenly, and was gone again.
-
-“Even so, Miss Malgregor,” he argued--“even so, without any glittering
-romance whatsoever, no woman, I believe, is very grossly unhappy in any
-affectional place that she knows distinctly to be her _own_ place. It’s
-pretty much up to a man, then, I think, though it tear him brain from
-heart, to explain to a second wife quite definitely just exactly what
-place it is that he is offering her in his love or his friendship or
-his mere desperate need. No woman can even hope to step successfully
-into a second-hand home who does not know from her man’s own lips the
-measure of her predecessor. The respect we owe the dead is a selfish
-thing compared with the mercy we owe the living. In my own case--”
-
-Unconsciously the White Linen Nurse’s lax shoulders quickened, and the
-sudden upward tilt of her chin was as frankly interrogative as a French
-inflection. “Yes, sir,” she said.
-
-“In my own case,” said the Senior Surgeon, bluntly--“in my own case,
-Miss Malgregor, it is no more than fair to tell you that I--did not
-love my wife. And my wife did not love me.” Only the muscular twitch
-in his throat betrayed the torture that the confession cost him. “The
-details of that marriage are unnecessary,” he continued with equal
-bluntness. “It is enough, perhaps, to say that she was the daughter of
-an eminent surgeon with whom I was exceedingly anxious at that time to
-be allied, and that our mating, urged along on both sides, as it was,
-by strong personal ambitions, was one of those so-called ‘marriages of
-convenience’ which almost invariably turn out to be marriages of such
-dire inconvenience to the two people most concerned. For one year we
-lived together in a chaos of experimental acquaintanceship; for two
-years we lived together in increasing uncongeniality and distaste; for
-three years we lived together in open and acknowledged enmity; at the
-last, I am thankful to remember, we had one year together again that
-was at least an--armed truce.”
-
-Darkly the gray shadow and the red flush chased each other once more
-across the man’s haggard face.
-
-“I had a theory,” he said, “that possibly a child might bridge the
-chasm between us. My wife refuted the theory, but submitted herself
-reluctantly to the fact. And when she died in giving birth to--my
-theory, the shock, the remorse, the regret, the merciless self-analysis
-that I underwent at that time almost convinced me that the whole
-miserable failure of our marriage lay entirely on my own shoulders.”
-Like the stress of mid-summer, the tears of sweat started suddenly on
-his forehead. “But I am a fair man, I hope, even to myself, and the
-cooler, less-tortured judgment of the subsequent years has virtually
-assured me that for types as diametrically opposed as ours such a thing
-as mutual happiness never could have existed.”
-
-Mechanically he bent down and smoothed a tickly lock of hair away from
-the little girl’s eyelids.
-
-“And the child is the living physical image of her,” he stammered--“the
-violent hair, the ghost-white skin, the facile mouth, the arrogant
-eyes, staring, staring, maddeningly reproachful, persistently accusing.
-My own stubborn will, my own hideous temper, all my own ill-favored
-mannerisms, mock back at me eternally in her mother’s unloved
-features.” As mirthless as the grin of a skull, the Senior Surgeon’s
-mouth twisted up a little at one corner. “Maybe I could have borne
-it better if she’d been a boy,” he acknowledged grimly; “but to see
-all your virile--masculine vices come back at you, so sissified, in
-_skirts_!”
-
-“Yes, sir,” said the White Linen Nurse.
-
-With an unmistakable gasp of relief, the Senior Surgeon expanded his
-great chest.
-
-“There, that’s done,” he said tersely. “So much for the past; now for
-the present! Look at us pretty keenly and judge for yourself. A man
-and a very little girl, not guaranteed, not even recommended, offered
-merely ‘as is,’ in the honest trade-phrase of the day, offered frankly
-in an open package, accepted frankly, if at all, ‘at your own risk.’
-Not for an instant would I try to deceive you about us. Look at us
-closely, I ask, and decide for yourself. I am forty-eight years old; I
-am inexcusably bad-tempered, very quick to anger, and not, I fear, of
-great mercy. I am moody, I am selfish, I am most distinctly unsocial;
-but I am not, I believe, stingy, or ever intentionally unfair. My
-child is a cripple, and equally bad-tempered as myself. No one but a
-mercenary has ever coped with her, and she shows it. We have lived
-alone for six years. All of our clothes, and most of our ways, need
-mending. I am not one to mince matters, Miss Malgregor, nor has your
-training, I trust, made you one from whom truths must be veiled. I am
-a man, with all a man’s needs, mental, moral, physical. My child is a
-child with all a child’s needs, mental, moral, physical. Our house of
-life is full of cobwebs. The rooms of affection have long been closed.
-There will be a great deal of work to do, and it is not my intention,
-you see, that you should misunderstand in any conceivable way either
-the exact nature or the exact amount of work and worry involved. I
-should not want you to come to me afterward with a whine, as other
-workers do, and say: ‘Oh, but I didn’t know you would expect me to do
-_this_! Oh, but I hadn’t any idea you would want me to do _that_! And
-I certainly don’t see why you should expect me to give up my Thursday
-afternoon just because you yourself happened to fall down-stairs in the
-morning and break your back!’”
-
-Across the Senior Surgeon’s face a real smile lightened suddenly.
-
-“Really, Miss Malgregor,” he affirmed, “I’m afraid there isn’t much of
-anything that you _won’t_ be expected to do. And as to your ‘Thursdays
-out’? Ha! if you have ever yet found a way to temper the wind of your
-obligations to the shorn lamb of your pleasures, you have discovered
-something that I myself have never yet succeeded in discovering. And as
-to ‘wages’? Yes, I want to talk everything quite frankly. In addition
-to my average yearly earnings, which are by no means small, I have a
-reasonably large private fortune. Within normal limits there is no
-luxury, I think, that you cannot hope to have. Also, exclusive of the
-independent income which I should like to settle upon you, I should be
-very glad to finance for you any reasonable dreams that you may cherish
-concerning your family in Nova Scotia. Also, though the offer looks
-small and unimportant to you now, it is liable to loom pretty large
-to you later; also, I will personally guarantee to you, at some time
-every year, an unfettered, perfectly independent two-months’ holiday.
-So the offer stands--my ‘name and fame,’ if those mean anything to you,
-financial independence, an assured ‘breathing spell’ for at least two
-months out of twelve, and at last, but not least, my eternal gratitude.
-‘General heartwork for a family of two!’ There, have I made the task
-perfectly clear to you? Not everything to be done all at once, you
-know; but immediately where necessity urges it, gradually as confidence
-inspires it, ultimately if affection justifies it, every womanish thing
-that needs to be done in a man’s and a child’s neglected lives? Do you
-understand?”
-
-“Yes, sir,” said the White Linen Nurse.
-
-“Oh, and there’s one thing more,” confided the Senior Surgeon. “It’s
-something, of course, that I ought to have told you the very first
-thing of all.” Nervously he glanced down at the sleeping child, and
-lowered his voice to a mumbling monotone. “As regards my actual morals,
-you have naturally a right to know that I’ve led a pretty decentish
-sort of life, though I probably don’t deserve any special credit for
-that. A man who knows enough to be a doctor isn’t particularly apt to
-lead any other kind. Frankly, as women rate vices, I believe I have
-only one. What--what--I’m trying to tell you now is about that one.” A
-little defiantly as to chin, a little appealingly as to eye, he emptied
-his heart of its last tragic secret. “Through all the male line of my
-family, Miss Malgregor, dipsomania runs rampant. Two of my brothers,
-my father, my grandfather, my great-grandfather before him, have
-all gone down, as the temperance people would say, into ‘drunkards’
-graves.’ In my own case, I have chosen to compromise with the evil.
-Such a choice, believe me, has not been made carelessly or impulsively,
-but out of the agony and humiliation of several less successful
-methods.” As hard as a rock, his face grooved into its granite-like
-furrows again. “Naturally, under these existing conditions,” he warned
-her almost threateningly, “I am not peculiarly susceptible to the
-mawkishly ignorant and sentimental protests of people whose strongest
-passions are an appetite for chocolate candy. For eleven months of the
-year,” he hurried on a bit huskily--“for eleven months of the year,
-eleven months, each day reeking from dawn to dark with the driving,
-nerve-wracking, heart-wringing work that falls to my profession, I lead
-an absolutely abstemious life, touching neither wine nor liquor nor
-even, indeed, tea or coffee. In the twelfth month--June always--I go
-’way up into Canada,--’way, ’way off in the woods to a little log camp
-I own there,--with an Indian who has guided me thus for eighteen years,
-and live like a--wild man for four gorgeous, care-free, trail-tramping,
-salmon-fighting, whisky-guzzling weeks. It is what your temperance
-friends would call a ‘spree.’ To be quite frank, I suppose it is what
-anybody would call a ‘spree.’ Then the first of July,--three or four
-days past the first of July, perhaps,--I come out of the woods quite
-tame again, a little emotionally nervous, perhaps, a little temperishly
-irritable, a little unduly sensitive about being greeted as a returned
-jail-bird, but most miraculously purged of all morbid craving for
-liquor, and with every digital muscle as coolly steady as yours, and
-every conscious mental process clamoring cleanly for its own work
-again.”
-
-Furtively under his glowering brows he stopped and searched the White
-Linen Nurse’s imperturbable face. “It’s an--established habit, you
-understand,” he re-warned her. “I’m not advocating it, you understand,
-I’m not defending it; I’m simply calling your attention to the fact
-that it _is_ an established habit. If you decide to come to us, I--I
-couldn’t, you know, at forty-eight, begin all over again to--to have
-some one waiting for me on the top step the first of July to tell me
-what a low beast I am till I go down the steps again the following
-June.”
-
-“No, of course not,” conceded the White Linen Nurse. Blandly she
-lifted her lovely eyes to his. “Father’s like that,” she confided
-amiably. “Once a year--just Easter Sunday only--he always buys him a
-brand-new suit of clothes and goes to church. And it does something to
-him, I don’t know exactly what, but Easter afternoon he always gets
-drunk,--oh, mad, fighting drunk is what I mean,--and goes out and tries
-to shoot up the whole county.” Worriedly, two black thoughts puckered
-between her eyebrows. “And always,” she said, “he makes mother and me
-go up to Halifax beforehand to pick out the suit for him. It’s pretty
-hard sometimes,” she said, “to find anything dressy enough for the
-morning that’s serviceable enough for the afternoon.”
-
-“Eh?” jerked the Senior Surgeon. Then suddenly he began to smile again
-like a stormy sky from which the last cloud has just been cleared.
-“Well, it’s all right, then, is it? You’ll take us?” he asked brightly.
-
-“Oh, _no_!” said the White Linen Nurse. “Oh, _no_, sir! Oh, no, indeed,
-sir!” Quite perceptibly she jerked her way backward a little on the
-grass. “Thank you _very much_,” she persisted courteously. “It’s been
-_very interesting_. I thank you _very much_ for telling me, but--”
-
-“But what?” snapped the Senior Surgeon.
-
-“But it’s too quick,” said the White Linen Nurse. “No man could tell
-like that, just between one eye-wink and another, what he wanted about
-_anything_, let alone marrying a perfect stranger.”
-
-Instantly the Senior Surgeon bridled.
-
-“I assure you, my dear young lady,” he retorted, “that I am entirely
-and completely accustomed to deciding between ‘one wink and another’
-just exactly what it is that I want. Indeed, I assure you that there
-are a good many people living to-day who wouldn’t be living if it had
-taken me even as long as a wink and three quarters to make up my mind.”
-
-“Yes, I know, sir,” acknowledged the White Linen Nurse. “Yes, of
-course, sir,” she acquiesced, with most commendable humility; “but
-all the same, sir, I couldn’t do it,” she persisted with inflexible
-positiveness. “Why, I haven’t enough education,” she confessed quite
-shamelessly.
-
-“You had enough, I notice, to get into the hospital with,” drawled
-the Senior Surgeon, a bit grumpily, “and that’s quite as much as
-most people have, I assure you. ‘A high-school education or its
-equivalent,’--that is the hospital requirement, I believe?” he
-questioned tartly.
-
-“‘A high-school education or its--equivocation’ is what we girls call
-it,” confessed the White Linen Nurse, demurely. “But even so, sir,” she
-pleaded, “it isn’t just my lack of education. It’s my brains. I tell
-you, sir, I haven’t got enough brains to do what you suggest.”
-
-“I don’t mean at all to belittle your brains,” grinned the Senior
-Surgeon despite himself,--“oh, not at all, Miss Malgregor,--but, you
-see, it isn’t especially brains that I’m looking for. Really, what I
-need most,” he acknowledged frankly, “is an extra pair of hands to go
-with the--brains I already possess.”
-
-“Yes, I know, sir,” persisted the White Linen Nurse. “Yes, of course,
-sir,” she conceded. “Yes, of course, sir, my hands work awfully
-well--with your face. But all the same,” she kindled suddenly--“all the
-same, sir, I can’t. I won’t! I tell you, sir, I _won’t_! Why, I’m not
-in your world, sir. Why, I’m not in your class. Why, my folks aren’t
-like your folks. Oh, we’re just as _good_ as you, of course, but we
-aren’t as _nice_. Oh, we’re not _nice_ at all. Really and truly we’re
-not.” Desperately through her mind she rummaged up and down for some
-one conclusive fact that would close this torturing argument for all
-time. “Why, my father eats with his knife!” she asserted triumphantly.
-
-“Would he be apt to eat with mine?” asked the Senior Surgeon, with
-extravagant gravity.
-
-Precipitously the White Linen Nurse jumped to the defense of her
-father’s intrinsic honor.
-
-“Oh, no,” she denied with some vehemence; “Father’s never cheeky like
-that! Father’s simple sometimes--plain, I mean. Or he might be a bit
-sharp. But, oh, I’m sure he’d never be--cheeky. Oh, no, sir. No.”
-
-“Oh, very well, then,” grinned the Senior Surgeon. “We can consider
-everything all comfortably settled, then, I suppose?”
-
-“No, we can’t,” screamed the White Linen Nurse. A little awkwardly,
-with cramped limbs, she struggled partly upward from the grass and
-knelt there, defying the Senior Surgeon from her temporarily superior
-height. “No, we can’t,” she reiterated wildly. “I tell you I can’t,
-sir. I won’t! I _won’t_! I’ve been engaged once, and it’s enough. I
-tell you, sir, I’m all engaged _out_!”
-
-“What’s become of the man you were engaged to?” quizzed the Senior
-Surgeon, sharply.
-
-“Why, he’s married,” said the White Linen Nurse. “And they’ve got a
-kid!” she added tempestuously.
-
-“Good! I’m glad of it,” smiled the Senior Surgeon, quite amazingly.
-“Now he surely won’t bother us any more.”
-
-“But I was engaged so long,” protested the White Linen Nurse--“almost
-ever since I was born, I said. It’s too long. You don’t get over it.”
-
-“He got over it,” remarked the Senior Surgeon, laconically.
-
-“Y-e-s,” admitted the White Linen Nurse; “but, I tell you, it doesn’t
-seem decent, not after being engaged--twenty years.” With a little
-helpless gesture of appeal she threw out her hands. “Oh, can’t I make
-you understand, sir?”
-
-“Why, of course I understand,” said the Senior Surgeon, briskly. “You
-mean that you and John--”
-
-“His name was Joe,” corrected the White Linen Nurse.
-
-With astonishing amiability the Senior Surgeon acknowledged the
-correction.
-
-“You mean,” he said--“you mean that you and--Joe have been cradled
-together so familiarly all your babyhood that on your wedding-night
-you could most naturally have said: ‘Let me see, Joe, it’s two pillows
-that you always have, isn’t it? And a double-fold of blanket at the
-foot?’ You mean that you and Joe have been washed and scrubbed together
-so familiarly all your young childhood that you could identify Joe’s
-headless body twenty years hence by the kerosene-lamp scar across
-his back? You mean that you and Joe have played house together so
-familiarly all your young tin-dish days that even your rag dolls called
-Joe father? You mean that since your earliest memory, until a year or
-so ago, life has never once been just you and life, but always you and
-life and Joe? You and spring and Joe, you and summer and Joe, you and
-autumn and Joe, you and winter and Joe, till every conscious nerve in
-your body has been so everlastingly Joed with Joe’s Joeness that you
-don’t believe there’s any experience left in life powerful enough to
-eradicate that original impression? Eh?”
-
-“Yes, sir,” flushed the White Linen Nurse.
-
-“Good! I’m glad of it,” snapped the Senior Surgeon. “It doesn’t make
-you seem quite so alarmingly innocent and remote for a widower to offer
-marriage to. Good, I say! I’m glad of it.”
-
-“Even so, I don’t want to,” said the White Linen Nurse. “Thank you very
-much, sir; but even so, I don’t want to.”
-
-“Would you marry Joe now if he were suddenly free and wanted you?”
-asked the Senior Surgeon, bluntly.
-
-“Oh, my Lord, no!” said the White Linen Nurse.
-
-“Other men are pretty sure to want you,” admonished the Senior Surgeon.
-“Have you made up your mind definitely that you’ll never marry anybody?”
-
-“N-o, not exactly,” confessed the White Linen Nurse.
-
-An odd flicker twitched across the Senior Surgeon’s face like a sob in
-the brain.
-
-“What’s your first name, Miss Malgregor?” he asked a bit huskily.
-
-“Rae,” she told him, with some surprise.
-
-The Senior Surgeon’s eyes narrowed suddenly again.
-
-“Damn it all, Rae,” he said, “I--want you!”
-
-Precipitously the White Linen Nurse scrambled to her feet.
-
-“If you don’t mind, sir,” she cried, “I’ll run down to the brook and
-get _myself_ a drink of water.”
-
-Impishly like a child, muscularly like a man, the Senior Surgeon
-clutched out at the flapping corner of her coat.
-
-“No, you don’t,” he laughed, “till you’ve given me my definite answer,
-yes or no.”
-
-Breathlessly the White Linen Nurse spun round in her tracks. Her breast
-was heaving with ill-suppressed sobs, her eyes were blurred with tears.
-
-“You’ve no business to hurry me so,” she protested passionately. “It
-isn’t fair; it isn’t kind.”
-
-Sluggishly in the Senior Surgeon’s jolted arms the Little Girl woke
-from her feverish nap and peered up perplexedly through the gray dusk
-into her father’s face.
-
-“Where’s my kitty?” she asked hazily.
-
-“Eh?” jerked the Senior Surgeon.
-
-Harshly the little iron leg-braces clanked together. In an instant the
-White Linen Nurse was on her knees in the grass.
-
-“You don’t hold her right, sir,” she expostulated. Deftly, with soft,
-darting little touches, interrupted only by rubbing her knuckles into
-her own tears, she reached out and eased successively the bruise of a
-buckle or the dragging weight on a cramped little hip.
-
-Still drowsily, still hazily, with little smacking gasps and gulping
-swallows, the child worried her way back again into consciousness.
-
-“All the birds _were_ there, Father,” she droned forth feebly from her
-sweltering mink-fur nest.
-
-    “All the birds _were_ there
-    With yellow feathers instead of hair,
-    And bumblebees--and bumblebees--
-    And bumblebees--and bumblebees--”
-
-Frenziedly she began to burrow the back of her head into her father’s
-shoulder. “And bumblebees--and bumblebees--”
-
-“Oh, for Heaven’s sake--‘buzzed in the trees!’” interpolated the Senior
-Surgeon.
-
-Rigidly from head to foot the little body in his arms stiffened
-suddenly. As one who saw the supreme achievement of a life-time swept
-away by some one careless joggle of an infinitesimal part, the Little
-Girl stared up agonizingly into her father’s face.
-
-“Oh, I don’t think ‘buzzed’ was the word!” she began convulsively. “Oh,
-I don’t think--”
-
-Startlingly through the twilight the Senior Surgeon felt the White
-Linen Nurse’s rose-red lips come smack against his ear.
-
-“Darn you! Can’t you say ‘crocheted in the trees’?” sobbed the White
-Linen Nurse.
-
-Grotesquely for an instant the Senior Surgeon’s eyes and the White
-Linen Nurse’s eyes glared at each other in rank antagonism. Then
-suddenly the Senior Surgeon burst out laughing.
-
-“Oh, very well,” he surrendered--“‘crocheted in the trees!’”
-
-The White Linen Nurse sank back on her heels and began to clap her
-hands.
-
-“Oh, now I will! Now I will!” she cried exultantly.
-
-“Will _what_?” frowned the Senior Surgeon.
-
-The White Linen Nurse stopped clapping her hands and began to wring
-them nervously in her lap instead.
-
-“Why, will--_will_,” she confessed demurely.
-
-“Oh!” exclaimed the Senior Surgeon. “Oh!” Then jerkily he began to
-pucker his eyebrows. “But, for Heaven’s sake, what’s the ‘crocheted in
-the trees’ got to do with it?” he asked perplexedly.
-
-“Nothing _much_,” mused the White Linen Nurse, very softly. With sudden
-alertness she turned her curly blonde head toward the road. “There’s
-somebody coming,” she said. “I hear a team.”
-
-Overcome by a bashfulness that tried to escape in jocosity, the Senior
-Surgeon gave an odd, choking little chuckle.
-
-“Well, I never thought I should marry a--trained nurse!” he
-acknowledged with somewhat hectic blitheness.
-
-Impulsively the White Linen Nurse reached for her watch and lifted it
-close to her twilight-blinded eyes. A sense of ineffable peace crept
-suddenly over her.
-
-“You won’t, sir,” she said amiably. “It’s twenty minutes of nine now,
-and the graduation was at _eight_.”
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-For any real adventure except dying, June is certainly a most
-auspicious month.
-
-Indeed, it was on the very first rain-green, rose-red morning of June
-that the White Linen Nurse sallied forth upon her extremely hazardous
-adventure of marrying the Senior Surgeon and his naughty little
-crippled daughter.
-
-The wedding was at noon in some kind of gray-granite church. The Senior
-Surgeon was there, of course, and the necessary witnesses; but the
-Little Crippled Girl never turned up at all, owing, it proved later,
-to a more than usually violent wrangle with whomever dressed her,
-concerning the general advisability of sporting turquoise-colored
-stockings with her brightest little purple dress.
-
-The Senior Surgeon’s stockings, if you really care to know, were gray,
-and the Senior Surgeon’s suit was gray, and he looked altogether
-very huge and distinguished, and no more strikingly unhappy than any
-bridegroom looks in a gray-granite church.
-
-And the White Linen Nurse, no longer now truly a White Linen Nurse,
-but just an ordinary, every-day silk-and-cloth lady of any color she
-chose, wore something rather coaty and grand and bluish, and was
-distractingly pretty, of course, but most essentially unfamiliar, and
-just a tiny bit awkward and bony-wristed-looking, as even an admiral is
-apt to be on his first day out of uniform.
-
-Then as soon as the wedding ceremony was over, the bride and groom went
-to a wonderful green-and-gold café, all built of marble and lined with
-music, and had a little lunch. What I really mean, of course, is that
-they had a very large lunch, but didn’t eat any of it.
-
-Then in a taxi-cab, just exactly like any other taxi-cab, the
-White Linen Nurse drove home alone to the Senior Surgeon’s great,
-gloomy house, to find her brand-new stepdaughter still screaming
-over the turquoise-colored stockings. And the Senior Surgeon, in a
-Canadian-bound train, just exactly like any other Canadian-bound train,
-started off alone, as usual, on his annual June “spree.”
-
-Please don’t think for a moment that it was the Senior Surgeon who was
-responsible for the general eccentricities of this amazing wedding-day.
-No, indeed. The Senior Surgeon didn’t _want_ to be married the first
-day of June. He said he didn’t, he growled he didn’t, he snarled he
-didn’t, he swore he didn’t; and when he finished saying and growling
-and snarling and swearing, and looked up at the White Linen Nurse for
-a confirmation of his opinion, the White Linen Nurse smiled perfectly
-amiably and said, “Yes, sir.” Then the Senior Surgeon gave a great gasp
-of relief and announced resonantly: “Well, it’s all settled, then?
-We’ll be married some time in July, after I get home from Canada?” And
-when the White Linen Nurse kept right on smiling perfectly amiably and
-said, “Oh, no, sir, oh, no, thank you, sir; it wouldn’t seem exactly
-legal to me to be married any other month but June,” the Senior Surgeon
-went absolutely dumb with rage that this mere chit of a girl, and a
-trained nurse, too, should dare to thwart his personal and professional
-convenience. But the White Linen Nurse just drooped her pretty blonde
-head and blushed and blushed and blushed and said: “I was only marrying
-you, sir, to--accommodate you, sir, and if June doesn’t accommodate
-you, I’d rather go to Japan with that monoideic somnambulism case.
-It’s very interesting, and it sails June 2.” Then, “Oh, hell with the
-‘monoideic somnambulism case’!” the Senior Surgeon would protest.
-
-Really it took the Senior Surgeon quite a long while to work out the
-three special arguments that would best protect him, he thought, from
-the horridly embarrassing idea of being married in June.
-
-“But you can’t get ready so soon,” he suggested at last with real
-triumph. “You’ve no idea how long it takes a girl to get ready to be
-married. There are so many people she has to tell--and everything.”
-
-“There’s never but two that she’s got to tell, or bust,” conceded the
-White Linen Nurse with perfect candor--“just the woman she loves the
-most and the woman she hates the worst. I’ll write my mother to-morrow,
-but I told the Superintendent of Nurses yesterday.”
-
-“The deuce you did!” snapped the Senior Surgeon.
-
-Almost caressingly the White Linen Nurse lifted her big blue eyes to
-his.
-
-“Yes, sir,” she said. “And she looked as sick as a young undertaker. I
-can’t imagine what ailed her.”
-
-“Eh?” choked the Senior Surgeon. “But the house, now,” he hastened to
-contend--“the house, now, needs a lot of fixing over; it’s all run
-down. It’s all--everything. We never in the world could get it into
-shape by the first of June. For Heaven’s sake, now that we’ve got money
-enough to make it right, let’s go slow and make it perfectly right.”
-
-A little nervously the White Linen Nurse began to fumble through the
-pages of her memorandum-book.
-
-“I’ve _always_ had money enough to ‘go slow and make things perfectly
-right,’” she confided a bit wistfully. “Never in all my life have I
-had a pair of boots that weren’t guaranteed or a dress that wouldn’t
-wash or a hat that wasn’t worth at least three re-pressings. What I
-was hoping for now, sir, was that I was going to have enough money
-so that I could go fast and make things wrong if I wanted to--so
-that I could afford to take chances, I mean. Here’s this wall-paper,
-now,”--tragically she pointed to some figuring in her note-book,--“it’s
-got peacocks on it, life-size, in a queen’s garden, and I wanted it
-for the dining-room. Maybe it would fade, maybe we’d get tired of it,
-maybe it would poison us: slam it on one week, and slash it off the
-next. I wanted it just because I wanted it, sir. I thought maybe, while
-you were ’way off in Canada--”
-
-[Illustration: Plates in tint, engraved for ~The Century~ by H. C.
-Merrill and H. Davidson
-
-“‘YOU’VE NO BUSINESS TO HURRY ME SO,’ SHE PROTESTED. ‘IT ISN’T FAIR;
-IT ISN’T KIND’”
-
-DRAWN BY HERMAN PFEIFER]
-
-Eagerly the Senior Surgeon jerked his chair a little nearer to his
-fiancée’s.
-
-“Now, my dear girl,” he said, “that’s just what I want to
-explain--that’s just what I want to explain--just what I want to
-explain--to--er--explain,” he continued a bit falteringly.
-
-“Yes, sir,” said the White Linen Nurse.
-
-Very deliberately the Senior Surgeon removed a fleck of dust from one
-of his cuffs.
-
-“All this talk of yours about wanting to be married the same day I
-start off on my--Canadian trip,” he contended, “why, it’s all damned
-nonsense.”
-
-“Yes, sir,” said the White Linen Nurse.
-
-Very conscientiously the Senior Surgeon began to search for a fleck of
-dust on his other cuff.
-
-“Why, my--my dear girl,” he persisted, “it’s absurd, it’s outrageous!
-Why, people would--would hoot at us! Why, they’d think--”
-
-“Yes, sir,” said the White Linen Nurse.
-
-“Why, my dear girl,” sweated the Senior Surgeon, “even though you and
-I understand perfectly well the purely formal, businesslike conditions
-of our marriage, we must at least, for sheer decency’s sake, keep up
-a certain semblance of marital conventionality before the world. Why,
-if we were married at noon the first day of June as you suggest, and I
-should go right off alone as usual on my Canadian trip, and you should
-come back alone to the house, why, people would think--would think that
-I didn’t care anything about you.”
-
-“But you don’t,” said the White Linen Nurse, serenely.
-
-“Why, they’d think,” choked the Senior Surgeon--“they’d think you were
-trying your--darndest to get rid of me.”
-
-“I am,” said the White Linen Nurse, complacently.
-
-With a muttered ejaculation the Senior Surgeon jumped to his feet and
-stood glaring down at her.
-
-Quite ingenuously the White Linen Nurse met and parried the glare.
-
-“A gentleman, and a red-haired kiddie, and a great walloping house
-all at _once_, it’s too much,” she confided genially. “Thank you just
-the same, but I’d rather take them gradually. First of all, sir, you
-see, I’ve got to teach the little kiddie to like me. And then there’s a
-green-tiled paper with floppity sea-gulls on it that I want to try for
-the bath-room. And--and--” Ecstatically she clapped her hands together.
-“Oh, sir, there are such loads and loads of experiments I want to try
-while you are off on your spree!”
-
-“’S-h-h!” cried the Senior Surgeon. His face was suddenly blanched,
-his mouth twitching like the mouth of one stricken with almost
-insupportable pain. “For God’s sake, Miss Malgregor,” he pleaded,
-“can’t you call it my Canadian trip?”
-
-Wider and wider the White Linen Nurse opened her big blue eyes at him.
-
-“But it _is_ a spree, sir!” she protested resolutely. “And my father
-says--” Still resolutely her young mouth curved to its original
-assertion, but from under her heavy-shadowing eyelashes a little smile
-crept softly out--“when my father’s got a lame trotting-horse, sir,
-that he’s trying to shuck off his hands,” she faltered, “he doesn’t
-ever go round mournful-like, with his head hanging, telling folks about
-his wonderful trotter that’s just ‘the littlest, teeniest, tiniest
-bit lame.’ Oh, no. What father does is to call up every one he knows
-within twenty miles and tell ’em: ‘Say, Tom, Bill, Harry, or whatever
-your name is, what in the deuce do you suppose I’ve got over here in
-my barn? A lame horse that wants to trot! _Lamer than the deuce_,
-you know, but can do a mile in two forty.’” Faintly the little smile
-quickened again in the White Linen Nurse’s eyes. “And the barn will be
-full of men in half an hour,” she said. “Somehow nobody wants a trotter
-that’s lame, but almost anybody seems willing to risk a lame horse
-that’s plucky enough to trot.”
-
-“What’s the ‘lame trotting-horse’ got to do with _me_?” snarled the
-Senior Surgeon, incisively.
-
-Darkly the White Linen Nurse’s lashes fringed down across her cheeks.
-
-“Nothing much,” she said; “only--”
-
-“Only what?” demanded the Senior Surgeon. A little more roughly than
-he realized he stooped down and took the White Linen Nurse by her
-shoulders, and jerked her sharply round to the light. “Only _what_?”
-he insisted peremptorily.
-
-Almost plaintively she lifted her eyes to his.
-
-“Only my father says,” she confided obediently--“my father says, ‘if
-you’ve got a worse foot, for Heaven’s sake, put it forward, and get it
-over with!’
-
-“So I’ve _got_ to call it a spree,” smiled the White Linen Nurse;
-“’cause when I think of marrying a surgeon that goes off and gets
-drunk every June, it--it scares me almost to death; but--” Abruptly
-the red smile faded from her lips, the blue smile from her eyes--“but
-when I think of marrying a--June drunk that’s got the grit to pull up
-absolutely straight as a die and be a surgeon all the other ’leven
-months in the year?” Dartingly she bent down and kissed the Senior
-Surgeon’s astonished wrist. “Oh, then I think you’re perfectly grand!”
-she sobbed.
-
-Awkwardly the Senior Surgeon pulled away and began to pace the floor.
-
-“You’re a good little girl, Rae Malgregor,” he mumbled huskily--“a good
-little girl. I truly believe you’re the kind that will see me through.”
-Poignantly in his eyes humiliation overwhelmed the mist. Perversely in
-its turn resentment overtook the humiliation. “But I won’t be married
-in June,” he reasserted bombastically. “I won’t, I won’t, I won’t. I
-tell you I positively refuse to have a lot of damned fools speculating
-about my private affairs, wondering why I didn’t take you, wondering
-why I didn’t stay home with you. I tell you I won’t. I surely _won’t_.”
-
-“Yes, sir,” whimpered the White Linen Nurse.
-
-With a real gasp of relief the Senior Surgeon stopped his eternal
-pacing of the floor.
-
-“Bully for you!” he said. “You mean then we’ll be married some time in
-July after I get back from my--trip?”
-
-“Oh, no, sir,” whimpered the White Linen Nurse.
-
-“But, great Heavens!” shouted the Senior Surgeon.
-
-“Yes, sir,” the White Linen Nurse began all over again. Dreamily
-planning out her wedding-gown, her lips without the slightest conscious
-effort on her part were already curving into shape for her alternate
-“No, sir.”
-
-“You’re an idiot!” snapped the Senior Surgeon.
-
-A little reproachfully the White Linen Nurse came frowning out of her
-reverie.
-
-“Would it do just as well for traveling, do you think?” she asked, with
-real concern.
-
-“Eh? What?” said the Senior Surgeon.
-
-“I mean, does Japan _spot_?” queried the White Linen Nurse. “Would it
-spot a serge, I mean?”
-
-“Oh, hell with Japan!” jerked out the Senior Surgeon.
-
-“Yes, sir,” said the White Linen Nurse.
-
-Now, perhaps you will understand just exactly how it happened that the
-Senior Surgeon and the White Linen Nurse _were_ married on the first
-day of June, and just exactly how it happened that the Senior Surgeon
-went off alone as usual on his Canadian trip, and just exactly how
-it happened that the White Linen Nurse came home alone to the Senior
-Surgeon’s great, gloomy house, to find her brand-new stepdaughter still
-screaming over the turquoise-colored stockings. Everything now is
-perfectly comfortably explained except the turquoise-colored stockings.
-Nobody could explain the turquoise-colored stockings.
-
-But even a little child could explain the ensuing June. Oh, June
-was perfectly wonderful that year! Bud, blossom, birdsong, breeze,
-rioting headlong through the land; warm days as sweet and lush as a
-greenhouse vapor; crisp nights faintly metallic, like the scent of
-stars; hurdy-gurdies romping tunefully on every street corner; even the
-ash-man flushing frankly pink across his dusty cheek-bones.
-
-Like two fairies who had sublet a giant’s cave, the White Linen Nurse
-and the Little Crippled Girl turned themselves loose upon the Senior
-Surgeon’s gloomy old house.
-
-It certainly was a gloomy old house, but handsome withal, square and
-brown and substantial, and most generously gardened within high brick
-walls. Except for dusting the lilac-bushes with the hose, and weeding
-a few rusty leaves out of the privet hedge, and tacking up three
-or four scraggly sprays of English ivy, and re-greening one or two
-bay-tree boxes, there was really nothing much to do to the garden. But
-the house? O ye gods! All day long from morning till night, but most
-particularly from the back door to the barn, sweating workmen scuttled
-back and forth till nary a guilty piece of black-walnut furniture had
-escaped. All day long from morning till night, but most particularly
-from ceilings to floors, sweltering workmen scurried up and down
-step-ladders, stripping dingy papers from dingier plasterings.
-
-When the White Linen Nurse wasn’t busy renovating the big house or the
-little stepdaughter, she was writing to the Senior Surgeon. She wrote
-twice.
-
-“Dear Dr. Faber,” the first letter said--
-
-    Dear Dr. Faber:
-
-    How do you do? Thank you very much for saying you didn’t care what
-    in thunder I did to the house. It looks _sweet_. I’ve put white,
-    fluttery muslin curtains ’most everywhere. And you’ve got a new
-    solid-gold-looking bed in your room. And the Kiddie and I have
-    fixed up the most scrumptious light blue suite for ourselves in
-    the ell. Pink _was_ wrong for the front hall, but it cost me only
-    $29.00 to find out, and now that’s settled for all time.
-
-    I am very, very, very, very busy. Something strange and new happens
-    every day. Yesterday it was three ladies and a plumber. One of the
-    ladies was just selling soap, but I didn’t buy any. It was horrid
-    soap. The other two were calling ladies, a silk one and a velvet
-    one. The silk one tried to be nasty to me. Right to my face she
-    told me I was more of a lady than she had dared to hope. And I told
-    her I was sorry for that, as you’d had one “lady,” and it didn’t
-    work. Was that all right? But the other lady was nice, and I took
-    her out in the kitchen with me while I was painting the woodwork,
-    and right there in her white kid gloves she laughed and showed
-    me how to mix the paint pearl gray. _She_ was nice. It was your
-    sister-in-law.
-
-    I like being married, Dr. Faber. I like it lots better than I
-    thought I would. It’s fun being the biggest person in the house.
-
-    Respectfully yours,
-    ~Rae Malgregor, as was~.
-
-    P.S. Oh, I hope it wasn’t wrong, but in your ulster pocket, when I
-    went to put it away, I found a bottle of something that smelled as
-    though it had been forgotten. I threw it out.
-
-It was this letter that drew the only definite message from the
-itinerant bridegroom.
-
-“Kindly refrain from rummaging in my ulster pockets,” wrote the Senior
-Surgeon, briefly. “The ‘thing’ you threw out happened to be the
-cerebellum and medulla of an extremely eminent English theologian.”
-
-“Even so, it was sour,” telegraphed the White Linen Nurse in a perfect
-agony of remorse and humiliation.
-
-The telegram took an Indian with a birch canoe two days to deliver, and
-cost the Senior Surgeon twelve dollars. Just impulsively the Senior
-Surgeon decided to make no further comments on domestic affairs at that
-particular range.
-
-Very fortunately for this impulse, the White Linen Nurse’s second
-letter concerned itself almost entirely with matters quite extraneous
-to the home.
-
-The second letter ran:
-
-    Dear Dr. Faber:
-
-    Somehow I don’t seem to care so much just now about being the
-    biggest person in the house. Something awful has happened: Zillah
-    Forsyth is dead. Really dead, I mean. And she died in great
-    heroism. You remember Zillah Forsyth, don’t you? She was one of
-    my room-mates, not the gooder one, you know, not the swell; that
-    was Helene Churchill. But Zillah? Oh, you know, Zillah was the
-    one you sent out on that fractured-elbow case. It was a Yale
-    student, you remember? And there was some trouble about kissing,
-    and she got sent home? And now everybody’s crying because Zillah
-    _can’t_ kiss anybody any more. Isn’t everything the limit? Well,
-    it wasn’t a fractured Yale student she got sent out on this time.
-    If it had been, she might have been living yet. What they sent
-    her out on this time was a senile dementia, an old lady more than
-    eighty years old. And they were in a sanatorium or something like
-    that, and there was a fire in the night. And the old lady just
-    up and positively refused to escape, and Zillah had to push her
-    and shove her and yank her and carry her out of the window, along
-    the gutters, round the chimneys. And the old lady bit Zillah
-    right through the hand, but Zillah wouldn’t let go. And the old
-    lady tried to drown Zillah under a bursted water tank, but Zillah
-    wouldn’t let go. And everybody hollered to Zillah to cut loose
-    and save herself, but Zillah wouldn’t let go. And a wall fell, and
-    everything, and, oh, it was awful, but Zillah never let go. And the
-    old lady that wasn’t any good to any one, not even herself, got
-    saved, of course. But Zillah? Oh, Zillah got hurt bad, sir. We saw
-    her at the hospital, Helene and I. She sent for us about something.
-    Oh, it was awful! Not a thing about her that you’d know except just
-    her great solemn eyes mooning out at you through a gob of white
-    cotton, and her red mouth lipping sort of twitchy at the edge of a
-    bandage. Oh, it was awful! But Zillah didn’t seem to care so much.
-    There was a new interne there, a Japanese, and I guess she was sort
-    of taken with him. “But, my God, Zillah,” I said, “_your_ life was
-    worth more than that old dame’s!”
-
-    “Shut your noise!” says Zillah. “It was my job, and there’s no
-    kick coming.” Helene burst right out crying, she did. “Shut _your_
-    noise, too!” says Zillah, just as cool as you please. “Bah! There’s
-    other lives and other chances.”
-
-    “Oh, you believe that now?” cries Helene. “Oh, you do believe that
-    now, what the Bible promises you?” That was when Zillah shrugged
-    her shoulders so funny, the little way she had. Gee! but her eyes
-    were big! “I don’t pretend to know what your old Bible says,” she
-    choked. “It was the Yale feller who was tellin’ me.”
-
-    That’s all, Dr. Faber. It was her shrugging her shoulders so funny
-    that brought on the hemorrhage, I guess.
-
-    Oh, we had an awful time, sir, going home in the carriage, Helene
-    and I. We both cried, of course, because Zillah was dead, but
-    after we got through crying for that, Helene kept right on crying
-    because she couldn’t understand why a brave girl like Zillah _had_
-    to be dead. Gee! but Helene takes things hard! Ladies do, I guess.
-
-    I hope you’re having a pleasant spree.
-
-    Oh, I forgot to tell you that one of the wall-paperers is living
-    here at the house with us just now. We use him so much, it’s truly
-    a good deal more convenient. And he’s a real nice young fellow,
-    and he plays the piano finely, and he comes from up my way. And it
-    seemed more neighborly, anyway. It’s so large in the house at night
-    just now, and so creaky in the garden.
-
-    With kindest regards, good-by for now, from
-
-    ~Rae~.
-
-    P.S. Don’t tell your guide or _any one_, but Helene sent Zillah’s
-    mother a check for fifteen hundred dollars. I saw it with my own
-    eyes. And all Zillah asked for that day was just a little blue
-    serge suit. It seems she’d promised her kid sister a little blue
-    serge suit for July, and it sort of worried her.
-
-    Helene sent the little blue serge suit, too, and a hat. The hat
-    had bluebells on it. Do you think when you come home, if I haven’t
-    spent too much money on wall-papers, that I could have a blue hat
-    with bluebells on it? Excuse me for bothering you, but you forgot
-    to leave me enough money.
-
-It was some indefinite, pleasant time on Thursday, the twenty-fifth
-of June, that the Senior Surgeon received the second letter. It was
-Friday, the twenty-sixth of June, exactly at dawn, that the Senior
-Surgeon started homeward.
-
-    (To be concluded)
-
-
-
-
-THE GENTLE READER
-
-BY ARTHUR DAVISON FICKE
-
-
-    “Why does the poet choose to sing?
-      No impulse ever stirred in me
-    The wish to make myself a thing
-    To which all mocking gibes might cling.”
-      _Perhaps he sees more than you see._
-
-    “Why should this fool go crying out
-      The secrets of his soul? In steel
-    I case myself, nor care to shout
-    Those things one does not talk about.”
-      _Perhaps he feels more than you feel._
-
-    “If I had wisdom to impart,
-      I’d say the thing, and let it go,
-    Not trifle with a foolish art
-    And make a motley of my heart.”
-      _Perhaps he knows more than you know._
-
-
-
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-SUBMARINE MOUNTAINS
-
-BY CALE YOUNG RICE
-
-
-    Under the sea, which is their sky, they rise
-      To watery altitudes as vast as those
-      Of far Himalayan peaks impent in snows,
-      And veils of cloud and sacred deep repose.
-    Under the sea, their flowing firmament,
-      More dark than any ray of sun can pierce,
-      The earthquake thrust them up with mighty tierce,
-    And left them to be seen but by the eyes
-    Of awed imagination inward bent.
-
-    Their vegetation is the viscid ooze,
-      Whose mysteries are past belief or thought.
-      Creation seems around them devil-wrought,
-      Or by some cosmic urgence gone distraught.
-    A-down their precipices, chill and dense
-      With the dank midnight, creep or crawl or climb
-      Such tentacled and eyeless things of slime,
-    Such monster shapes as tempt us to accuse
-    Life of a miscreative impotence.
-
-    About their peaks the shark, their eagle, floats
-      In the thick azure far beneath the air,
-      Or downward sweeps upon what prey may dare
-      Set forth from any silent, weedy lair.
-    But one desire on all their slopes is found,
-      Desire of food, the awful hunger strife;
-      Yet here, it may be, was begun our life,
-    Here all the dreams on which our vision dotes
-    In unevolved obscurity were bound.
-
-    Too strange it is, too terrible! And yet
-      It matters not how we were wrought, or whence
-      Life came to us with all its throb intense,
-      If in it is a Godly Immanence.
-    It matters not,--if haply we are more
-      Than creatures half conceived by a blind force
-      That sweeps the universe in a chance course:
-    For only in Unmeaning Might is met
-    The intolerable thought none can ignore.
-
-
-
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-A VISIT TO WHISTLER
-
-BY MARIA TORRILHON BUEL
-
-
-In May, 1899, we were two women in Paris for hats, gowns, and the
-season’s show of pictures. I was under the wing of a handsome matron
-who had a latent desire to see herself transferred to canvas should she
-chance upon a painter with an appealing portrait of some other woman.
-Through friends, several great studios were opened to us, and we grew
-more and more enterprising, until one day my guide and mentor, suddenly
-turning to me, said, “Let us visit Whistler!”
-
-It fairly took my breath away, for I recalled much caustic wit of
-alleged Whistler origin that I had seen in the public prints, and,
-feeling the promptings of caution, I exclaimed, “How dare you?”
-
-“Because he has invited me,” she replied.
-
-It was true, for, a few years before, my friend’s husband, shrewd in
-the law, and equally daring in his connoisseurship, had paid a large
-price for a Whistler “Nocturne” of a beauty so characteristic that
-even amateurs could look at it and wonder what it was all about. This
-nocturne began its existence in my friend’s home by perpetrating a
-joke. It had been brought to the house by one of Whistler’s pupils,
-just from Europe. We two women entered the drawing-room to find it
-alone in its glory, which did not seem to be dimmed by the fact that
-it was on the carpet with a Louis Quinze chair for an easel. We gazed
-in wonderment, from all possible angles, and finally exclaimed that
-it was “quite Japanese” in style and coloring. Then the reverent
-pupil entered, kneeled before it, wiped it softly with his silk
-handkerchief, smiled, and reversed it--for we had been studying the
-_chef-d’œuvre_ upside down. He withdrew without taking notice of
-our chagrin. Evidently the joke was too good to keep, for the incident
-has become one of the stock Whistler anecdotes. Within a year a friend
-has regaled me with it, without a suspicion of carrying coals to
-Newcastle.
-
-That purchase had given the artist much satisfaction, aside from the
-lofty price, and he used to write charming letters, asking my friend to
-visit him in Paris.
-
-That same day we went to his studio in the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs.
-
-Arriving at a forbidding area, with a winding staircase, we looked at
-each other with feminine indecision. Before we could arrange a retreat,
-the concierge, who was somewhere near the top, caught sight of us and
-called down to learn whom we wanted. I made a megaphone of my hand and
-screamed aloft, “Monsieur Whist-lai-ai-re!”
-
-“_Là bas_, on the fifth,” she answered.
-
-After a slow ascent, we stood at last on the top steps of the winding
-staircase. I can still hear the prolonged jingle of the primitive
-bell my vigorous pull had roused. Before it was stilled, the door
-opened suddenly, and there stood Whistler, the great Whistler--in his
-shirt-sleeves!
-
-The first impression was of a little, big personage who completely
-filled the doorway. He appeared much smaller than any idea of
-personality conveyed by the portraits of him that we had seen. On his
-left arm he held a large palette, with a bunch of brushes in his hand.
-All were moist, as were also to some extent his sleeves and clothing,
-for he was without a painting-apron. But the famous monocle was there,
-and the whisk of white hair was in the right place. The _signalement_
-was complete.
-
-There he stood, silent, obviously waiting for us to explain the
-intrusion. In the dim light I imagined that I could see his monocle
-bristling, and I felt much like a conscience-stricken child about to
-be eaten by an ogre. As my friend remained dumb, in a weak voice I
-murmured the name that was to be our talisman, meekly adding my own;
-but that was lost in his “Ah!” of recognition.
-
-“You are the bold woman who bought my picture! I have a sitter now; but
-come to-morrow at four, and we will have tea.”
-
-We accepted in unison, the door was closed in our faces, and with
-a sense of deep satisfaction at having escaped an unknown peril we
-tripped lightly down the staircase. While we were standing at his door,
-Whistler had so managed that we could not have moved half an inch
-farther toward the forbidden sanctuary. It was probably a well-planned,
-habitual, and defensive position on his part.
-
-On the following day, punctually at four o’clock, we again stood in
-constrained positions on the narrow steps, but without a sense of
-awkwardness; again the bell jingled wildly.
-
-Again the great Whistler opened the door, but now dressed in a suit
-of black, with the red ribbon of the Legion of Honor in his lapel.
-His welcome was graceful and cordial. With easy confidence we walked
-into the studio. A bright fire glowed at one end, in front of which
-was a round table covered with green rep, on which were tea-things,
-and dishes filled with dainty French cakes. A little maid, in neat cap
-and apron, was hovering about. All about us, turned to the wall and
-unframed, were seemingly hundreds of canvases. What has become of all
-those treasures since Whistler’s death?
-
-As we entered, he said, with a wave of the hand toward the hidden
-canvases, “See how careful I am!”
-
-As a whole, the studio, though spacious, was simple in its furnishings,
-except for the amazing decoration of masterpieces turned to the wall.
-He offered us chairs, and seated himself on the edge of a long table.
-Reaching out for a copy of “The Gentle Art of Making Enemies,” he began
-to read to us his most spicy letters.
-
-He read on and on, until we began to wonder whether all the afternoon
-was to be spent in this novel and entertaining way. Meanwhile I glanced
-about and noticed a large phonograph, which seemed the only discordant
-note in an otherwise harmonious place. It soon became a discord, for
-suddenly tiring of his own wit, he turned lovingly to the instrument,
-and regaled us with a medley of “coon” songs, orchestral numbers, and
-other music. Had we dared, we should have glanced at each other in
-amazement.
-
-At last Whistler reverted to art, and brought a canvas to the easel.
-He oiled it slightly, tenderly, and, lo! a handsome Italian boy shone
-forth, soul and all. It was magical. We had previously agreed to say
-but little, and never to gush over anything we might be shown. We did
-not speak, indeed hardly dared to, for he was watching us as a nurse
-watches a thermometer in an overheated room.
-
-Again he made search, and brought before us another picture. This time
-the oiling and dusting disclosed the portrait of a beautiful American
-girl, wearing an evening cloak, the collar of which was very high. Such
-breeding and poise in the picture! It was more than a reproduction:
-something of the inner woman was there. Over this we allowed ourselves
-to exclaim in admiration, which moved the master to say:
-
-“It took a long time to paint this portrait.”
-
-There was a pause, of which my friend took advantage to say that she
-would much like to have him paint her portrait.
-
-“How long shall you be in Paris?” he asked.
-
-“Another week.”
-
-“There you are! You Americans are all the same; here to-day, gone
-to-morrow; _à Paris aujourd’hui, demain, à Hoboken_. One might as
-well try to paint fish jumping out of the water,” he added with his
-captivating laugh.
-
-With this laugh, all the ice that had been accumulating melted away. I
-found voice to say that I had recognized him immediately the day before
-from having seen and greatly admired his portrait by a fellow-artist.
-To my complete discomfiture, he shrugged his shoulders and said:
-
-“He _imagines_ that he has painted my portrait.”
-
-At last we were having a glimpse of the real Whistler, or, rather, of
-the one we had heard of and read about.
-
-He showed us two more canvases, one by a pupil. Then he drew up to the
-tea-table and began to discourse on the “Nocturne” which my friend had
-bought. This led to a recital of his hopes of the budding “Académie
-Whistler,” which had been formally opened in the autumn of 1898.
-However, the academy did not remain open long. Nothing in his training
-or natural gifts gave him the endurance and patience required of a
-teacher; besides, his health failed, and he went to a milder climate.
-We dared ask him how he liked being a teacher, to which he answered:
-
-“You know what the French call _une bête de somme--un cheval de
-fiacre--quoi!_” Again he shrugged and sighed.
-
-We had brought with us two copies of Nicholson’s caricature of
-Whistler, in which he is standing at full-length, monocled, against
-a nocturnal sky. We asked him to sign them, and he was exceedingly
-gracious about it.
-
-“These caricatures were my idea,” he explained; “I told Nicholson how
-to do them. They are a great success.”
-
-On each he sketched a butterfly in pencil, adding on one, “_Tant pis_”
-and on the other, “With all proper regrets.”
-
-He told us that he often became very much attached to his work. Once he
-had an order from a man for a portrait; it was duly finished, and amply
-paid for. He still held it, although the man wrote periodically to have
-it sent to him. “I really feel that it is much too good for him,” he
-explained. “The worst of it is that the longer I keep it the more I
-like it, and”--after a pause he whispered--“the less likely he is to
-get it.”
-
-As the afternoon had waned, we suggested driving him home. He assented,
-putting on his famous high hat and a pair of black gloves, and we
-clattered down the five flights together, the air seeming fairly
-saturated with his presence.
-
-Entering the one-horse victoria which had brought us from the hotel, I
-had to sit on the _strapontin_, about which I festooned myself as best
-I could. To my astonishment, our appearance did not seem to create much
-commotion in the Quartier, though I knew how exotic we must look.
-
-We drove through a round porte-cochère, which was the entrance to a
-sort of tunnel; at the end of it we emerged into a courtyard flanked by
-the little house Whistler occupied.
-
-On reaching his home, the master insisted on our coming in to see it.
-We found it rather gloomy, with a garden in the rear, which was shown
-with great pride. There were a few pictures on the walls. The cloth was
-spread on the dining-table, and many dishes and plates were stacked in
-the middle.
-
-The good-bys were said, with an invitation extended to visit his studio
-again on our next trip. We had had a memorable visit with him, and were
-taking away with us impressions of the real Whistler--the Whistler
-whom the world at large knew not, the kind, genial, courteous, humanly
-sorrowful, and sorrowing man of genius.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-[Illustration:
-
-    DOWN·TOWN
-    IN
-    NEW·YORK
-
-LOWER MANHATTAN, FROM THE HUDSON, OR NORTH, RIVER]
-
-[Illustration: BROAD STREET, LOOKING NORTH TO WALL STREET
-
-The portico of the Stock Exchange is at the left, a part of the portico
-of the Sub-Treasury is seen at Wall and Nassau Streets, and the crowd
-in the street, at the right, is the outdoor exchange known as “The
-Curb.”]
-
-[Illustration: CORTLANDT STREET, LOOKING EAST FROM THE FERRY
-
-The Hudson Terminal is seen at the left, and the Investment Building
-and Singer Tower at the right.]
-
-[Illustration: LOWER BROADWAY, FROM THE POST-OFFICE
-
-The portico of St. Paul’s is in the foreground, and the Singer Tower in
-the distance.]
-
-
-
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-THE BOOK OF HIS HEART
-
-BY ALLAN UPDEGRAFF
-
-Author of “The Siren of the Air,” etc.
-
-WITH A PICTURE BY HERMAN PFEIFER
-
-
-On Monday, April 11, Mr. Francis wrote in the book:
-
-    “She was in again to-day. Dressed quite different from the first
-    time. Not expensive, but tasteful and excellent. Took samples of
-    blue pongee and _crêpe de chine_. I said I thought that delicate
-    new London mist would become her better. She thanked me, and let
-    me give her a sample of that. She showed a knowledge of silks that
-    was most pleasing, considering the general ignorance among women on
-    such subjects. We talked about some things not important enough to
-    mention here.
-
-    ‘All are architects of Fate,
-    Working in these walls of time.’
-
-    _Longfellow._”
-
-His reason for adding this selection was not very clear; but somehow
-a little touch of poetry seemed suitable after an entry of that sort.
-There was a good deal of poetry in the book, selections copied from
-various magazines and volumes that had helped to brighten his prosaic
-existence as a silk salesman in McDavitt’s department store.
-
-One would have had to be a good observer to guess that behind the
-plain, neat, black-and-white exterior of Mr. Francis there was the
-soul of a poet. Judged by the frost-touched blackness of his hair, he
-might have been thirty-eight years old. His face, tending to delicacy
-of feature in the forehead and nose, and rendered a little wistful by
-the worry-lines about his eyes, had the pallor that comes from years
-of living in artificial light. He invariably looked as though he had
-been smooth-shaven five minutes before, and he invariably was ready to
-give his most earnest attention to the desires of a customer. He fitted
-in the high-classed old establishment that employed him, and paid him
-well for a silk salesman. The consideration shown him he repaid by
-immaculateness in dress, scrupulousness in his reports, and the air of
-an English butler in dealing with customers.
-
-His inner self was revealed in only two of his daily activities--in
-the handling of the silks that had been his familiars from boyhood,
-and in the keeping of a large red-morocco diary that he carried in the
-breast-pocket of his black frock-coat.
-
-The silks--how he caressed their shimmering textures and colors, how
-he made them display all their subtle beauties and allurements! It was
-quite without guile on his part: the idea of urging or inveigling any
-one into buying would have filled him with horror. He displayed his
-wares to their best advantage because he loved them. Therefore he did
-it so wonderfully well that many a fine lady, after watching his firm,
-white, well-kept hands play among the folds, bought stuffs for which
-she had no possible use. This gained him some dislike and trouble, for
-McDavitt’s does not exchange dress-goods.
-
-But Mr. Francis’s real self-revelation was reserved for the diary.
-Every night he made an entry. During the several hours every day when
-the choiceness, and therefore sparseness, of McDavitt’s clientele left
-him with nothing to do, he often took out the book, opened it among
-the shining silks on the mahogany counter, and made a note or two in
-it. It was a rather large book for a diary, and the India-paper leaves
-gave its thousand pages the bulk of a far smaller number in ordinary
-diaries. The words “Personal Journal” were printed in gold across the
-front cover, and there was a bunch of gold forget-me-nots, tied with
-a gold true-lover’s knot, in the upper left-hand corner. Beneath the
-forget-me-nots, in small, precise roman capitals, Mr. Francis had
-printed his name, ROLAND FARWELL FRANCIS.
-
-To one prying into the secrets of Mr. Francis’s life through the medium
-of this diary, the number of entries like the one quoted above might
-have seemed somewhat appalling.
-
-The pages were full of hints of romance, or, rather, of an almost
-indefinite number of romances. The vague beginnings were recorded in
-statements like “She was in again to-day.” Later there were conjectures
-about “her,” bits of personal description, faint suggestions of
-longing, of aspiration; then commiserations of his own unworthiness,
-bitter self-analysis leading up to relinquishment, final fits of
-despondency, during which he loaded pages with the most mortuary
-poetry he could find. But he was an invincible idealist; soon the
-process started all over again. From the time when he began work, aged
-seventeen years, as a stock clerk in McDavitt’s silk department, he
-must have approximated a round hundred of these catalectic romances.
-
-His station in life, his work, his poetic temperament, made the
-result inevitable. His silks attracted beauty, he adored beauty, and
-beauty considered him in much the same class as the glass-and-ebony
-display-fixtures. Like a modern Tantalus, he watched the waters of
-life flow by so close that they fairly enveloped him, and yet he was
-powerless to lift one drop for the quenching of the thirst of his soul.
-A cheaper man might have solaced himself with cheaper beauty, a more
-practical man might have sought beauty as true in less inaccessible
-places, a luckier man might have stumbled upon it nearer home. Mr.
-Francis, lacking cheapness and practicality and luck, had remained a
-virtuous bachelor.
-
-On Friday, April 15, Mr. Francis wrote in the book:
-
-    “She has not been in again. Several times I thought I saw her some
-    aisles away. Her face is an unusual one. It is strange I seem
-    always to be seeing it.
-
-    “I heard a few minutes ago a rumor that I was being considered for
-    a great piece of good fortune if Mr. Baldwin’s illness continues to
-    prevent him from resuming his duties. I do not know why I am not so
-    very much thrilled by the prospect. I suppose I ought to be.
-
-    “She must have decided that McDavitt’s is too expensive. Her dress
-    was tasteful, but not at all luxurious. She gave me a feeling of
-    great respect.
-
-    ‘Friend, let us cease to vex the Eternal Why:
-    ’Tis very good to live; better, perhaps, to die.’
-
-    _Reader Magazine._”
-
-On Monday, April 18, he wrote:
-
-    “To-day, on account of the continued illness of Mr. Baldwin, I was
-    promoted to be the assistant buyer and manager of this department.
-    Three thousand a year, nearly sixty dollars a week! Once I looked
-    forward to thirty per w’k like millions. Now sixty is not so much.
-    I must be getting old. It will help me to lay up a competence
-    for my declining years. Perhaps I should send one of my nephews
-    to college. It has been the regret of my life that I entered on
-    an active business career immediately after graduation from high
-    school. Doubtless I should have made an effort to work my way
-    through Columbia. Yes, I will write to my brother and offer to send
-    one of the boys to college.
-
-    “She has not been in again. Doubtless she decided to purchase
-    elsewhere. McDavitt’s _is_ expensive. Perhaps I should strive to
-    have the margin of profit reduced. She did not dress or act like
-    one with much money. Doubtless she was attracted to Mc’s by their
-    reputation for handling only the best. I remember she looked
-    worried whenever I quoted prices. Still, she wished the best. But
-    the state of her purse made her careful, and finally made her
-    decide to purchase in a cheaper store. I think I can understand
-    her. That London mist would have suited her, trimmed with a little
-    old gold. However, of course it is foolish for me to allow myself
-    to indulge in such reflections. I shall probably never see her
-    again.
-
-    “Mrs. Benson congratulated me warmly on my advancement. She has
-    been very thoughtful of my comforts for the last seven years, going
-    on eight. She mentioned how she had always tried to, and I thanked
-    her deeply. She said she hoped I wouldn’t feel impelled to move
-    elsewhere, and I assured her I had no such intentions. I despise
-    a man who is puffed up by a little success. Vanity of vanities,
-    _vanitas vanitatis_. Or _vanitatium_? I wish I remembered more of
-    my Latin; my memory is far from what I should like it to be. Mrs.
-    B. also said she had two tickets to The Empire Vaudeville given her
-    by the new couple in the back parlor. They are in the theatrical
-    profession, and are getting a try-out there this week. I could not
-    well refuse her invitation to accompany her, although I do not care
-    for vaudeville. She says she goes at least once every week. It
-    brightens up her dull life. Poor soul! I guess she needs it. Hers
-    is not a very gay life.”
-
-[Illustration: Drawn by Herman Pfeifer. Half-tone plate engraved by H.
-C. Merrill
-
-“‘SHE WAS THREE AISLES AWAY, LOOKING OVER THAT NEW IMPORTATION OF
-CHINESE MANDARINS’”]
-
-During the considerable period that Mr. Francis had rented Mrs.
-Benson’s most expensive room, the second-floor front, his intimacy with
-her had consisted of one heart-to-heart talk in the week following
-Mr. Benson’s decease. Mr. Benson, who had been indefinitely “in the
-clothing business,” had caught a cold which developed into pneumonia,
-with fatal results. When, a few days after the funeral, Mrs. Benson
-wept on Mr. Francis’s shoulder, she had said that she wished never to
-speak to another man, never even to see one, except in the necessary
-course of business. She ran a boarding-house, and she would accept men
-as well as women for boarders; other relations with them she could not
-consider.
-
-Mr. Francis had always respected her wishes. Even when she presided
-at the Sunday evening dinner-table, a wide, tight vision of black
-silk, and conversation was supposed to be more unrestricted than on
-week-days, Mr. Francis had been careful not to trespass on the sacred
-confines of her bereavement. Her conversation with the other men at
-the table, in which she attempted to include him, he passed off as her
-necessary sacrifice to the business that supported her widowhood. He
-was even more literal-minded than the average idealist.
-
-On Thursday, April 21, he wrote in the book:
-
-    “I am quite sure she was in again to-day. She was three aisles
-    away, looking over that new importation of Chinese mandarins,
-    but she departed before I approached. She was dressed altogether
-    different from the first two times, but I am sure it was she. I
-    would notice her face among a thousand. I noticed those two little
-    lines at the top of her nose between her eyebrows. And yet she is
-    not old; one would not call her young, either; and not middle-aged,
-    either. Before I got over wondering whether I should go over and
-    wait on her personally, she had gone. He who hesitates is lost. The
-    clerk said she had taken samples of all the new silks. He thought
-    she had taken too many, and said she did not act like a buyer.
-    I requested him to follow McDavitt’s principle to give all the
-    samples asked for and not comment on it.
-
-    “To be much of my time in the office, as my new position forces me
-    to be, has some drawbacks. Doubtless, however, even were I back
-    in my old place, I should never see her again. And what possible
-    good can come if I do see her? I am little more than a servant, a
-    lackey. But I forget that I am now an assistant buyer. Perhaps that
-    raises me a little in the scale. But how little--not enough to make
-    any difference to her.
-
-    “From the library to-day I got a book, ‘Selections from the English
-    Poets of the Nineteenth Century.’ It is more complete than the
-    ‘Golden Treasury,’ and I anticipate a great deal of pleasure and
-    profit from it. It contains Shelley’s ‘Defense of Poetry,’ which I
-    can well afford to read again.”
-
-Under the entry of Friday, April 22, he copied entire Shelley’s “Indian
-Serenade,” beginning,
-
-    “I arise from dreams of thee
-    In the first sweet sleep of night.”
-
-    “Sunday, April 24.
-
-    “This evening has been a most eventful one for me. I am engaged to
-    Mrs. Benson. I am still so astonished that I do not know precisely
-    how it occurred. I do not know how to describe my feelings. They
-    are so mixed. Words fail me.
-
-    “I escorted her to a Sunday-evening concert at the Metropolitan. I
-    owed her something, of course, in return for The Empire Vaudeville,
-    and when she reminded me of that, I said maybe she would like to
-    go to the Metropolitan. The music was beautiful. Homer and Bonci
-    sang. I have always gone alone before. Mrs. Benson wept because it
-    was so beautiful. Then she said she was partly weeping because the
-    boarders had begun to cast insinuations about her and me.
-
-    “Words cannot express how overcome I was. She has, of course,
-    nothing but her reputation. How bitterer than a serpent’s tooth
-    is a slanderous tongue! I asked her who started it, but she would
-    not tell me for fear I would attack him, which would make matters
-    worse. I would have done so, too; at least I would have demanded a
-    retraction. Before I knew it we were engaged.
-
-    “I am not sorry. How lonely my life has been! Perhaps I have at
-    last found happiness where I least expected it. She is a good,
-    honest, capable woman, and she says she’s going to begin exercising
-    to reduce her weight. I fear I am unworthy. Would that I could
-    adore her more! Everything is not just as I imagined love to be;
-    but I am not sorry. I should be happy in my good fortune. It is not
-    good for man to live alone.
-
-    ‘Duty is an Archangel on the right-hand side of God.’
-
-    _Anon._”
-
-Nevertheless, it was a much chastened, even saddened, Mr. Francis who
-returned to work the following morning. He had lived in his dreams,
-his romances had been the deepest and sweetest part of his life, for
-so long that such a reality as his engagement to Mrs. Benson hurt him
-through and through.
-
-Perhaps any reality in the matter of romance would have hurt him. He
-had become a confirmed dreamer, even as he had become a confirmed
-bachelor, and he was not fitted to cope with practical details. Even
-the preparations, the hundred and one rather sordid arrangements, he
-would have had to go through in order to marry his latest ideal would
-probably have saddened him a good deal. It was thrice in vain that he
-attempted to be practical in the matter of marriage with Mrs. Benson;
-he suffered by every necessary preparation that brushed the star-dust
-off the butterfly’s wings of his dream ideal of love--suffered agonies
-that gave him a feeling of weakness in the diaphragm and in the knees.
-
-Until eleven o’clock he was busy with the morning instalment of
-traveling-salesmen who came to offer their wares. This duty disposed
-of, he strolled out into the department where he was supposed to
-oversee the stock and clerks. Wicked hopes that she, the lady of
-his dream romance, would return he suppressed so firmly that he had
-a continuous ache in his throat. Gone were his shimmering dreams,
-his vistas of poetic reverie. He threw himself desperately into
-the business of arranging displays, stationing clerks, verifying
-price-tags. He was thoroughly melancholy and businesslike and
-stern-faced and miserable.
-
-His evenings at the boarding-house were even more uncomfortable than
-his days in the store. Mrs. Benson had lost no time in announcing her
-engagement, and Mr. Francis now occupied the place of honor at her
-right hand at meals; he had long refused this place through feelings
-of delicacy about trespassing on Mrs. Benson’s known reverence for
-her late husband, and the honor sat heavily upon him. The smiles
-and insinuations of the boarders, the sordid jocularity of it all,
-seared his soul. Idealist that he was, his sense of humor was not much
-developed; and remarks like, “Can’t you just see Mr. Francis walking
-the floor with a bundle of yell in his arms?” sent all the blood from
-his heart into his face, and back again, in two frantic leaps.
-
-On one point he was trying to be firm: he would not let Mrs. Benson
-read in “The Book of his Heart.” She found it on the second evening of
-their prenuptial bliss in the front parlor, and triumphantly drew it
-forth. Desperately he reclaimed his property; frantically he argued
-that it was sacred to him, that there were some things they wouldn’t
-have to share in common. No theory could have been more repugnant to
-Mrs. Benson, and none could have so solidified her determination to
-read that “Personal Journal” from cover to cover. The issues were
-pitched, the armies drawn up, the bugles blown; and struggle as he
-would, Mr. Francis realized that he was foredoomed to the woe of the
-vanquished. She would read the book, she would despise it, and she
-would burn it because of its wicked references to women other than
-herself. Realizing this certain outcome, Mr. Francis vacillated between
-the wisdom of burning the book himself and the wickedness of hiding it
-and telling her that he had burned it. In the meantime he kept his coat
-buttoned and his door locked.
-
-On Thursday, April 28, he wrote at one o’clock in the morning:
-
-    “God have mercy on me, a miserable sinner! She was in again to-day,
-    and I adore her still.
-
-    “I could not greet Mrs. Benson as usual this evening. I could not.
-    She insisted, but I said I had a sore throat and might infect her.
-    She said I must have a doctor, but I was firm, I declared I would
-    get along all right. She came up with a mustard-plaster while I was
-    retiring. I could not let her in. It was terrible. Several of the
-    boarders heard her; I could hear them laughing. The knowledge of my
-    turpitude debases me like a crawling worm. I have always striven to
-    live an upright life, so that I could look all men and women in the
-    face. My duty is plain. Shall I be a hypocrite and deceiver? Shall
-    I give up my self-respect, which has meant so much to me all these
-    years? I am in a terrible dilemma.
-
-    “I will rise at five o’clock and leave the house before any one is
-    stirring to-morrow morning. But what shall I do to-morrow evening?
-    Heaven help and guide me!
-
-    “And yet my heart is not able to be sorry that she was in again
-    to-day. I had given up expecting her, and the sight of her
-    confounded me. The blueness of her eyes is like still waters. Her
-    brown hair is as soft as brown silk in the skein. Her gentleness
-    restoreth my soul. Yes, though I walked through the Valley of
-    Death, I would love her. I am a vile man, loathsome to myself. And
-    I am a liar. I told Mrs. Benson I was kept at the store while in
-    truth I was walking in Central Park. Through the night under the
-    stars. Full of the thought of her. Full of poetry no one ever yet
-    wrote the like of. Full of wonder and hope and exceeding glory and
-    brightness.
-
-    “She is a sampler. I ought to have suspected it ever since that
-    clerk spoke about her taking samples of all those new mandarins
-    and she never bought anything. She had an idea to do it on a large
-    scale. Instead of being in the employ of only one rival store,
-    she has eight she supplies samples to. She spends all her time
-    supplying samples to the stores that employ her. But she’s afraid
-    her idea won’t work. She dresses as different as she can, but the
-    department managers get to recognize her, with unfortunate results.
-
-    “I went up to her as soon as I recognized her, and asked to be
-    allowed to wait on her. I lost once by my hesitation. She seemed
-    much disappointed because I recognized her. I said, ‘I suspect you
-    are a sampler, but I will take the responsibility of supplying
-    you with all the samples from McDavitt’s silk department that you
-    desire.’ Of course I had no right to make such an offer, but I
-    did not think of it at the time. She looked all broken up, and
-    told me she was deeply obliged, but she thought she’d have to quit
-    and go back in Seaton-Baum’s silk department. She said she wished
-    she could get into McDavitt’s, if only we didn’t employ only men
-    clerks. I said I thought McDavitt’s was behind the times in that as
-    well as in many other things, and I had intended to take the matter
-    up with the superintendent. This was true. I asked for her name and
-    address, so that I might notify her if anything came of it. She
-    gave them to me.
-
-    “She said she wondered how I recognized her when she dressed
-    differently every time, and I said I should remember her face among
-    a million. She said that didn’t prejudice her against me as it
-    would if most men had said it. She shook hands with me when she
-    said good-by.
-
-    “I will not put her name down here. There are some things I cannot
-    put down even here. And yet why shouldn’t I? I have always tried to
-    be sincere and frank here. Miss Anna Wright. Anna. But doubtless I
-    shall never see her again. Ours is a purely business acquaintance.
-    I fear I shall not be able to change the policy about men clerks.
-    It is an unprogressive policy. How her face would brighten the
-    department! And she knows silks better than most of our men clerks.
-    She has a feeling about them that counts a great deal; she really
-    understands them. My slight acquaintance with her has filled me
-    with the deepest respect. There is a great deal of sincerity about
-    her, but she looks as if her life had not been altogether happy. I
-    do not feel bashful when I talk to her, as I do with most women.
-    This is most strange, considering how I feel toward her. I have a
-    sort of feeling that she trusts me. What would I not give if I were
-    worthy! Thank Heaven, she does not know how I have treated poor
-    Mrs. Benson!”
-
-On Friday, April 29, Mr. Francis wrote in the book:
-
-    “I am inscribing these words in a furnished room that I rented
-    shortly after the store closed this evening. I sent an expressman
-    to Mrs. Benson’s to get my things. Try as I would, reason with my
-    self, all was in vain. I am a coward; I could not go back to Mrs.
-    Benson’s.
-
-    “I thought I would go back and say something against Mr. Benson,
-    thus breaking off the engagement in a respectable manner. Mrs.
-    Benson has often said that if I ever said anything against Mr.
-    Benson, everything between us would be at an end. I thought this
-    would be a good way to end matters. God knows I have nothing
-    against Mr. Benson, and I know he would have forgiven me if he had
-    heard of it in the place wherever the dead are. But I could not do
-    it. When within a block of the house I could not force myself to go
-    any farther. I could not, as God is my witness. I have tried to do
-    right, but I am such a coward I would have succumbed in the street
-    if I had gone on.
-
-    “Mrs. Benson refused to allow the expressman to get my things,
-    although I had sent the money to pay a week’s rent in advance with
-    him. She tried to make him give her my address, but I had warned
-    him not to do that, and I gave him a dollar when he returned and
-    told me how he had resisted her. I regret that she would not let
-    him have my things. I can get a new outfit, of course, but I had
-    become accustomed to some of the things I had. Some of them I have
-    had since my seventeenth year. Still, I am content. I have deserved
-    much worse than has been meted out to me.
-
-    “Later. Mrs. Benson has been here. The expressman deceived me; he
-    gave her my address, after all. I will not write down what she said
-    while irresponsible through her emotions, and I do not remember
-    what I said. At any rate, she is gone. I can hardly write.
-
-    “Later. The landlady of this house has just been in to tell me I
-    must move out in the morning. She doesn’t desire men like me in
-    her house. She says she knows my kind, and I am worse than the
-    white-slavers the papers tell about. Perhaps she is right. I have
-    no words to express my misery at my conduct. I will rise at five
-    o’clock in the morning and seek a new rooming-house where I am not
-    known.”
-
-    “Saturday, April 30.
-
-    “I have another furnished room. It is not highly desirable. I
-    rented it under an assumed name, and I will move when the present
-    danger has had time to decrease. I tremble lest Mrs. Benson should
-    come to seek me in the store. I spend as much of my time in the
-    office as possible, and keep a sharp lookout when I am on the floor.
-
-    ‘Oh, what a tangled web we weave,
-    When first we practise to deceive!’
-
-    I know now something of the feeling of the felon who has escaped
-    and whom every man’s hand is raised against. But I have brought it
-    on myself. I only hope it will not result in my final expulsion
-    from the store. McDavitt’s is very careful about the character of
-    their employees.
-
-    “I put the matter about lady clerks in the department up to the
-    manager this afternoon. To my surprise, he took to it rather
-    kindly, and will refer it up to the proper authorities.
-
-    “A chilly, rainy day. I am tired out, but very happy to be secluded
-    in this room. It is pleasant to sit alone and hear the rain
-    outside.
-
-    “But I am not altogether alone. I have a memory, and a name, and I
-    have a hope. Anna. But why is my heart lifted up? I am not worthy
-    even to think of her.
-
-    ‘For be the day never so long,
-    At last the bell ringeth to evensong.’
-
-    _Stephen Hawes._”
-
-    “Tuesday, May 3.
-
-    “The superintendent has refused to entertain my suggestion about
-    women clerks in the silk department. It would be against McDavitt’s
-    policy. I have written and expressed his decision. So everything
-    ends. I shall never see her again. I am a broken reed. One thing I
-    can be thankful for: Mrs. Benson has not come to ask for me at the
-    store.”
-
-    “Wednesday, May 4.
-
-    “This evening after dinner I walked over to the address. It is an
-    apartment-house, and it is just such a place as I should think she
-    would choose to live in. Nothing showy, but very neat and quiet and
-    respectable. I walked in front of the house several times before
-    returning. Something expanded in me every time I walked before the
-    house and thought it was the place where she lives. I wonder whom
-    she lives with? Doubtless with her mother and father and perhaps a
-    sister or brother. I picked out a window that looked like it might
-    be hers on the third floor. There was a soft yellow light like the
-    light of a lamp in it.
-
-    “But of course I was mistaken. Probably she was out. She must be
-    much sought after, and doubtless goes out a great deal in the
-    evenings. Still, I found my heart lifted up just to walk slowly
-    by and imagine she was in the room with the yellow lamp. I came
-    home with peace and happiness in my heart, and yet with a great
-    yearning. I will not conceal that I had that also. How poorly that
-    expresses my feeling! The power of verbal expression is not my
-    forte.”
-
-The entry of Thursday, May 5, ended:
-
-    “She has not replied to my note telling of the superintendent’s
-    decision; but of course no reply was necessary. Walked before her
-    house this evening. Had not expected to, but could not resist
-    the temptation. Have no right even to think of her. Legally, of
-    course, I am still engaged to Mrs. Benson.”
-
-The entries of May 6, 7, and 8 related that he had walked past “her”
-house. He avoided mentioning her name, as an ancient Hebrew would have
-avoided mentioning the name of Jehovah, or a modern Japanese the name
-of his emperor.
-
-On Monday, May 9, Mr. Francis wrote in the book:
-
-    “I have a note from her, thanking me for my efforts in her behalf
-    and regretting that McDavitt’s is so unprogressive. She ends: ‘I
-    shall apply to you again when your store has got out of the rut of
-    ages. I like McDavitt’s for its air of gentility and old-fashioned
-    niceness.’ How she can write! I shall treasure her note. She says
-    she would have written, thanking me, before, but my note reached
-    her just as they were moving to another apartment. She sends me
-    the new address unconsciously on the heading of her letter. I am
-    glad I know she has moved. Suppose I had continued to walk before
-    her former residence, thinking she still lived there? And yet that
-    might have served me just as well, as long as I thought she was
-    there.
-
-    “Now I have to record a very unpleasant matter. Mr. A. I.
-    Sugenheim, an attorney-at-law, was in the store to-day to see me,
-    and he said Mrs. Benson had decided to start a suit for breach
-    of promise against me for $10,000; but if I wished to avoid the
-    disgrace of having my name and picture in all the papers, I could
-    pay the money, and he would not start the suit. He gave me an
-    unpleasant impression. I said I should have to consult a lawyer
-    before I decided. I recognized Mrs. Benson had grounds for damages,
-    but I didn’t have $10,000. He said I could pay in instalments.
-
-    “I said I would consider the matter. He then said he would
-    compromise for $5000 cash. My dealings with traveling-salesmen
-    stood me in good stead. I said I would not think of paying a cent
-    more than $2000. I had $1200 in the savings-bank, and I would pay
-    the rest $100 a month.
-
-    “He begged me to remember that I had committed a very grave
-    offense. Both from a legal and moral point of view I was culpable,
-    and I had no right to pinch pennies to put myself square with the
-    world. I was obliged to admit all this. But I did not like the
-    way he said it; his manner did not give me a feeling of frankness
-    and sincerity. I answered that $2000 was a great deal of money.
-    ‘Make it $2500, for your conscience’ sake, at least,’ he said. I
-    saw he was weakening; his nature was exactly like that of many of
-    the salesmen I have to deal with. I turned away, saying, ‘I will
-    make it $2100 and I cannot in conscience make it a cent more.’ He
-    caught me by the arm and told me to believe him I would regret it
-    to my dying day if I did not make it $2400, anyway; but I was firm.
-    Finally he agreed to accept $2100. Unpleasant as the details were,
-    I have a great feeling of relief. To-morrow I shall withdraw all my
-    savings from the savings-bank and meet him at his office at 6:30
-    ~P.M.~ After that I shall be free.
-
-    “Walked past her new home this evening. It is perhaps not so nice
-    as the other place, but eminently respectable. I debated all the
-    way whether I would act unwarrantedly if I wrote her another note
-    in answer to her last. How she would despise me if she knew the
-    unfortunate details of my private life! I bow my head in shame when
-    I think of her and of them.”
-
-    “Tuesday, May 10.
-
-    “Mr. Sugenheim said last night Mrs. Benson had refused to accept
-    $2100. She had been wounded too deeply, and disgraced forever in
-    the eyes of the boarders. I was overcome with grief at this news.
-    But she would accept $2400. I at once agreed. I can save nearly two
-    hundred dollars a month out of my salary by living carefully, and I
-    feel more absolved from my turpitude than if I had paid a smaller
-    amount. But it is a base thing to try to feel that I can acquit
-    myself by a money payment. This will be a lesson to me never to
-    trifle with a woman’s feelings again unless I really love her. I
-    think I can say on my honor that I never really loved Mrs. Benson.
-    This makes me feel at once more blameworthy and more relieved than
-    if I had loved her. It is hard to explain just how.
-
-    “Walked past her new home again this evening. I have chosen
-    another window on the third floor, right-hand corner, as the one
-    that belongs to her. This is foolish, but why should I not do it
-    if it pleases me? I started to write several notes to her this
-    evening, but tore them up. I have no excuse to inflict myself upon
-    her.”
-
-The entries of the next few days dealt chiefly with his evening parades
-and with the struggles of his conscience as to whether he ought to
-write her again. By pressure of the longing in his soul he became
-bolder; one evening he even had the courage to go into the front
-hall of the apartment-house and search out her name in the long row
-of letter-boxes above the electric-bell buttons. The simple “Wright”
-printed there held him spellbound for so long that, when he recollected
-himself, he fled fearfully from the building, and trembled afterward at
-the thought of the risk he had run. But his timidity did not prevent
-him from continuing to haunt the vicinity of her home.
-
-Such was his absorption in his romance, such interesting business
-filled his evenings, that he was never lonely, as he had often been
-even in the company of the other boarders at Mrs. Benson’s. Except for
-an occasional visit to his brother and sister-in-law in Brooklyn, he
-had no more human associations, and desired none. The place where he
-lived was a rooming-house; he took his solitary meals in restaurants,
-seeking out the cheapest places, so that he might save every possible
-cent toward discharging the financial burden his engagement and
-dereliction had put upon him.
-
-But taking it all in all, he was happier than he had ever been in his
-life before. Never had one of his ideal romances developed so far;
-and never, thanks principally to the affectionate, if brief advances,
-of Mrs. Benson, had he had so true an idea of the meaning of love. He
-composed many notes to Miss Anna Wright,--I hope he will forgive me for
-setting forth her name in cold type,--and he knew that the time was
-approaching when he would send one to her.
-
-On Friday, May 13, Mr. Francis wrote in the book:
-
-    “Five o’clock in the morning. I have met her face to face, I have
-    spoken to her, and walked with her! We ran into each other,
-    almost. I was gawking up at her window,--I mean the one I call
-    hers,--and I did not see her until she stopped and spoke to me.
-
-    “What a fool I must have seemed! I could not say anything--not a
-    word. She asked me if I lived in the neighborhood, and I said no.
-    She said she was just going out for a walk over to Central Park and
-    back to get the air. I said it was a pleasant evening for a walk,
-    fool that I am! She said several other things; asked me about the
-    store. Then she said good evening, and went on. I went on, too, in
-    the direction I was going when I met her.
-
-    “But there are times when a man forgets everything but one thing.
-    I turned back before I had gone half a block. I followed her.
-    I cannot describe how I felt. All the way up Fifth Avenue from
-    Thirty-eighth Street I kept her in sight. I do not know how I had
-    the courage to go up and speak to her while she was passing St.
-    Patrick’s Cathedral. Something outside myself forced me to do it. I
-    was not myself. She let me walk with her. She let me walk back to
-    her door again with her.
-
-    “Some time I will put down where we went, the bench beside the
-    little lagoon with the swans where we sat, and all she said. I
-    remember everything perfectly. But I cannot write it down now.
-
-    “After I had told her good-night, I went back and did everything
-    we had done together, and recalled everything she had said. I sat
-    for over two hours on the bench where we had sat together. She told
-    me a great deal about herself, and I was right: she has not had a
-    very happy life. And she asked me about myself. I told her all she
-    asked. I told her about the book, and she said sometime she’d like
-    to read the extracts about her in it, and I said she could.
-
-    “It is beginning to be dawn. I am glad my window faces east. The
-    sky is pale golden. There is something about the dawn, something
-    sacred. It is like her; I cannot describe how.
-
-    “I cannot write any more. I will go out and take another walk until
-    breakfast. Perhaps I will go over to the East River. Yes, I will go
-    over to the East River and look at the boats. There is something
-    magnificent about boats.”
-
-    “Sunday, May 22.
-
-    “To-day we went out to Pelham Bay Park. We went early in the
-    morning and stayed all day. We took a boat-ride over to Closson’s
-    Point, and sat under a tree, and I let her read the book--all there
-    was in it. She did not reproach me for the many things that I
-    regret I ever wrote in it. At times she laughed, and at times I am
-    sure that there were tears in her eyes. I could not well understand
-    her at all times, even when she explained to me why it made her
-    feel as she said it did.
-
-    “Yesterday paid the first instalment of $200. $1000 more, and that
-    unfortunate episode in my life will be closed forever.
-
-    “I do not seem to take as much interest in the book as I once did.
-    For the first time in many years I have let nearly a week go by
-    without a record in it.
-
-    “Shall I tell what happened when I left her at her door at midnight
-    less than an hour ago? I have long made it a point to be sincere
-    and frank in these pages, but I cannot always write down the most
-    important things in my life, especially now. I will only write that
-    ineffable joy surrounded me.
-
-    ‘O death, where is thy sting?
-    O grave, where is thy victory?’”
-
-[Illustration]
-
-[Illustration: Half-tone plate engraved by H. C. Merrill
-
-JOSEPH H. CHOATE
-
-FROM A CHARCOAL PORTRAIT BY JOHN SARGENT]
-
-
-
-
-THE MIND OF THE JURYMAN
-
-WITH A SIDE-LIGHT ON WOMEN AS JURORS
-
-BY HUGO MÜNSTERBERG
-
-Author of “American Traits,” “Psychology and Life,” etc.
-
-
-Every lawyer knows some good stories about some wild juries he has
-known, which made him shiver and doubt whether a dozen laymen ever
-can see a legal point. But every newspaper reader, too, remembers an
-abundance of cases in which the decision of the jury startled him by
-its absurdity. Who does not recall sensational acquittals in which
-sympathy for the defendant or prejudice against the plaintiff carried
-away the feelings of the twelve good men and true? For them are the
-unwritten laws, for them the mingling of justice with race hatreds or
-with gallantry. And even in the heart of New York a judge recently said
-to a chauffeur who had killed a child and had been acquitted, “Now go
-and get drunk again; then this jury will allow you to run over as many
-children as you like.”
-
-Yet whatever the temperament of the jury and its legal insight, we may
-sharply separate its ideas of deserved punishment from that far more
-important aspect of its function, the weighing of evidence. The juries
-may be whimsical in their decisions, they may be lenient in their
-acquittals or over-rigid in their verdicts of guilty, but that is quite
-in keeping with the democratic spirit of the institution. The Teutonic
-nations do not want the abstract law of the scholarly judges; they want
-the pulse-beat of life throbbing in the court decisions, and what may
-seem a wilful ignoring of the law of the lawyers may be a heartfelt
-expression of the popular sentiment. Better to have some statutes
-riddled by illogical verdicts than legal decisions severed from the
-sense of justice which is living in the soul of the nation.
-
-But while a rush into prejudice or a hasty overriding of law may draw
-attention to some exceptional verdicts, in the overwhelming mass of
-jury decisions nothing is aimed at but a real clearing up of the facts.
-The evidence is submitted, and while the lawyers may have wrangled
-as to what is evidence and what is not, and while they may have tried
-by their presentation of the witnesses on their own side and by their
-cross-examinations to throw light on some parts of the evidence and
-shadows on some others, the jurymen are simply to seek the truth when
-all the evidence has been submitted. And mostly they do not forget
-that they will live up to their duty best the more they suppress in
-their own hearts the question whether they like or dislike the truth
-that comes to light. Whoever weighs the social significance of the
-jury system ought not to be guided by the few stray cases in which the
-emotional response obscures the truth, but all praise and blame and
-every scrutiny of the institution ought to be confined essentially to
-the ability of the jurymen to live up to their chief responsibility,
-the sober finding of the true facts.
-
-It cannot be denied that much criticism has been directed against the
-whole jury system in America and Europe by legal scholars, as well as
-by laymen, on account of the prevailing doubt whether the traditional
-form is really furthering the clearing-up of the hidden truth. Where
-the evidence is so perfectly clear that every one by himself alone
-feels from the start exactly like all the others, the coöperation of
-the twelve men cannot do any harm; but it cannot do any particular
-good, either. Such cases do not demand the special interest of the
-social reformer. His doubts and fears come up only when difference of
-opinion exists, and the discussion and the repeated votes overcome
-the divergence of opinion. The skeptics claim that the system as such
-may easily be instrumental for suppressing the truth and bringing the
-erroneous opinion to victory. In earlier times a frequent objection
-was that lack of higher education made men unfit to weigh correctly
-the facts in a complicated situation, but for a long while this kind
-of arguing has been given up. The famous French lawyer who, whenever
-he had a weak case, made use of his right to challenge jurymen by
-systematically excluding all persons of higher education, certainly
-blundered in this respect, according to the views of to-day. Those best
-informed within and without the legal science agree that the verdicts
-of straightforward people with public-school education are in the long
-run neither better nor worse than those of men with college schooling
-or professional training. A jury of artisans and farmers understands
-and looks into a mass of neutral material as well as a jury of bankers
-and doctors, or at least their final verdict has an equal chance to hit
-the truth.
-
-But the critics say that it is not the lack of general or logical
-training of the individual person which obstructs the path of justice.
-The trouble lies rather in the mutual influence of the twelve men. The
-more persons work together, the less, they say, every single man can
-reach his highest level. They become a mass, with mass consciousness,
-a kind of crowd in which each one becomes oversuggestible. Each one
-thinks less reliably, less intelligently, and less impartially than
-he would by himself alone. We know how men in a crowd do indeed lose
-some of the best features of their individuality. A crowd may be thrown
-into a panic, may rush into any foolish, violent action, may lynch
-and plunder, or a crowd may be stirred to a pitch of enthusiasm, may
-be roused to heroic deeds or to wonderful generosity; but whether
-the outcome be wretched or splendid, in any case it is the product
-of persons who have been entirely changed. In the midst of the panic
-or in the midst of the heroic enthusiasm, no one has kept his own
-characteristic mental features. The individual no longer judges
-for himself; he is carried away, his own heart reverberates, with
-the feelings of the whole crowd. The mass consciousness is not an
-adding-up, a mere summation, of the individual minds, but the creation
-of something entirely new. Such a crowd may be pushed into any roads;
-chance leaders may use or misuse its increased suggestibility for any
-ends. No one can foresee whether this heaping up of men will bring
-good or bad results. Certainly the individual level of the crowd will
-always be below the level of its best members. And is not a jury
-necessarily such a group with a mass consciousness of its own? Every
-individual member is melted into the total, has lost his independent
-power of judging, and has become influenced through his heightened
-suggestibility and social feeling by any chance pressure which may push
-toward error as often as toward truth.
-
-But if such arguments are brought into play, it is evident that it is
-no longer a legal question, but a psychological one. The psychologist
-alone deals scientifically with the problem of mutual mental influence
-and with the reënforcing or awakening of mental energies by social
-coöperation. He should accordingly investigate the question with his
-own methods, and deal with it from the point of view of the scientist.
-This means he is not simply to form an opinion from general value
-impressions and to talk about it as about a question of politics,
-where any man may have his personal idea or fancy, but to discover
-the facts by definite experiments. The modern student of mental life
-is accustomed to the methods of the laboratory. He wants to see exact
-figures, by which the essential facts come into sharp relief. But
-let us understand clearly what such an experiment means. When the
-psychologist goes to work in his laboratory, his aim is to study those
-thoughts and emotions and feelings and deeds which move our social
-world. But his aim is not simply to imitate or to repeat the social
-scenes of the community. He must simplify them and bring them down to
-the most elementary situations, in which only the characteristic mental
-actions are left.
-
-Is this not the way in which the experimenters proceed in every field?
-The physicist or the chemist does not study the great events as they
-occur in nature on a large scale and with bewildering complexity of
-conditions, but he brings down every special fact which interests him
-to a neat, miniature copy on his laboratory table. There he mixes a few
-chemical solutions in his retorts and his test-tubes, or produces the
-rays or sparks or currents with his subtle laboratory instruments, and
-he feels sure that whatever he finds there must hold true everywhere
-in the gigantic universe. If the waters move in a certain way in his
-little tank on his table, he knows that they must move according
-to the same laws in the midst of the ocean. In this spirit the
-psychologist arranges his experiments, too. He does not carry them on
-in the turmoil of social life, but prepares artificial situations in
-which the persons will show the laws of mental behavior. An experiment
-on memory or attention or imagination or feeling may bring out in a
-few minutes mental facts which the ordinary observer would discover
-only if he were to watch the behavior and life attitudes of the man for
-years. Everything depends upon the degree with which the characteristic
-mental states are brought into play under experimental conditions. The
-great advantage of the experimental method here is, as everywhere, that
-everything can be varied and changed at will and that the conditions
-and the effects can be exactly measured.
-
-If we apply these principles to the question of the jury, the task is
-clear. We want to find out whether the coöperation, the discussion,
-and the repeated voting of a number of persons is helping or hindering
-them in the effort to judge correctly upon a complex situation. We must
-therefore artificially create a situation which brings into action the
-judgment, the discussion, and the vote; but if we are loyal to the
-idea of experimenting, we must keep the experiment free from all those
-features of a real jury deliberation that have nothing to do with the
-mental action itself. Moreover, it is evident that the situations to
-be judged must allow a definite knowledge as to the objective truth.
-The experimenter must know which verdict of his voters corresponds to
-the real facts. Secondly, the situation must be difficult, in order
-that a real doubt may prevail. If all the voters were on one side
-from the start, no discussion would be needed. Thirdly, it must be a
-rather complex situation, in order that the judgment may be influenced
-by a number of motives. Only in this case will it be possible for
-the discussion to point out factors which the other party may have
-overlooked, thus giving a chance for changes of mind. All these demands
-must be fulfilled if the experiment is really to picture the jury
-function. But it would be utterly superfluous, and would make the exact
-measurement impossible, if the material on which the judgment is to be
-based were of the same kind of which the evidence in the court-room is
-composed. The trial by jury in an actual criminal case may involve many
-picturesque and interesting details, but the mental act of judging is
-no different when the most trivial objects are chosen.
-
-I settled on the following simple device. I used sheets of dark-gray
-cardboard. On each were pasted white paper dots of different form and
-in an irregular order. Each card had between ninety-two and a hundred
-and eight such white dots of different sizes. The task was to compare
-the number of spots on one card with the number of spots on another.
-Perhaps I held up a card with a hundred and four dots, and below it one
-with ninety-eight. Then the subjects of the experiment had to decide
-whether the upper card had more dots or fewer dots than the lower one.
-I made the first set of experiments with eighteen Harvard students. I
-took more than the twelve men who form a jury in order to reinforce
-the possible effect, but did not wish to exceed the number greatly,
-so that the character of the discussion might be similar to that in a
-jury. A much larger number would have made the discussion too formal
-or too unruly. The eighteen men sat about a long table, and were first
-allowed to look for half a minute at the two big cards, each forming
-his judgment independently. Then at a signal every one had to write
-down whether the number of dots on the upper card was larger, equal, or
-smaller. Immediately after that they had to indicate by a show of hands
-how many had voted for each of the three possibilities. After that an
-excited discussion began, three or four men speaking at the same time.
-
-After five minutes of talking, the vote was repeated, again at first
-being written and then being taken by a show of hands. A second
-five-minute exchange of opinion followed, with a new effort to convince
-the dissenters. After this period the third and last vote was taken.
-This experiment was carried out with a variety of cards with smaller or
-larger difference of numbers, but always with a difference enough to
-allow an uncertainty of judgment. Here, indeed, we had repeated all the
-essential conditions of the jury vote and discussion, and the mental
-state was characteristically similar to that of the jurymen.
-
-The very full accounts which the participants in the experiment
-wrote down the following day indicated clearly that we had a true
-imitation of the mental process despite the striking simplicity of our
-conditions. One man, for instance, described his inner experience as
-follows:
-
-    I think the experiment involves factors quite comparable to
-    those that determine the verdict of a jury. The cards with their
-    spots are the evidence pro and con which each juryman has before
-    him to interpret. Each person’s decision on the number is his
-    interpretation of the situation. The arguments, too, seem quite
-    comparable to the arguments of the jury. Both consist in pointing
-    out factors of the situation that have been overlooked, and in
-    showing how different interpretations may be possible.
-
-Another man wrote:
-
-    In the experiment it seemed that one man judged by one criterion
-    and another by another, such as distribution, size of spots, vacant
-    spaces, or counting along one edge. Discussion often brought a
-    man’s attention to other criterions than those he used in his first
-    judgment, and these often outweighed the original. Similarly,
-    different jurymen would base their opinion on different aspects
-    of the case, and discussion would tend to draw their attention to
-    other aspects. The experiment also illustrated the relative weight
-    given to the opinion of different fellow-jurymen. I found that the
-    statements of a few of the older men who have had more extensive
-    psychological experience weighed more with me than those of the
-    others. Suggestion did not seem to be much of a factor. A man is
-    rather on his mettle, and ready to defend his original impression
-    until he finds that it is hopeless.
-
-Again, another wrote:
-
-    To me the experiment seemed fairly comparable to the real
-    situation. As in an actual trial, the full truth was not available,
-    but, certain evidence was presented to all for interpretation. As
-    to the nature of the discussion itself, I think there was the same
-    mingling of suggestion and real argument that is to be found in a
-    jury discussion.
-
-Another said:
-
-    The discussion influenced me by suggesting other methods of
-    analysis. For instance, comparison of the amount of open space
-    in two cards, comparison of the number of dots along the
-    edges, estimation in diagonal lines, were methods mentioned
-    in the discussion which I used in forming my own judgments.
-    It does not seem to me that in my own case direct suggestion
-    had any appreciable effect. I was aware of a tendency toward
-    contrasuggestibility. There was a half-submerged feeling that
-    it would be good sport to stick it out for the losing side. The
-    lack of any unusual amount of suggestion and the presence of the
-    influences of analysis and detailed comparison seem to me to show
-    that the tests were in fact fairly comparable to situations in a
-    jury-room.
-
-To be sure, there were a few who were strongly impressed by the evident
-differences between the rich material of an actual trial and the meager
-content of our tests, there the actions of living men, here the space
-relations of little spots. But they evidently did not sufficiently
-realize that the forming of such number judgments was not at all a
-question of mere perception; that, on the contrary, many considerations
-were involved. Most men felt the similarity from the start.
-
-What were the results of this first group of experiments? Our interest
-must evidently be centered on the question of how many judgments were
-correct at the first vote before any discussion and any show of hands
-were influencing the minds of the men, and how many were correct at
-the last vote, after the two periods of discussion and after taking
-cognizance of the two preceding votes. If I sum up all the results, the
-outcome is that fifty-two per cent. of the first votes were correct,
-and seventy-eight per cent. of the final votes were correct. The
-discussion of the successive votes had therefore led to an improvement
-of twenty-six per cent. of all votes. Or, as the correct votes were at
-first fifty-two per cent., their number is increased by one half. May
-we not say that this demonstration in exact figures proves that the
-confidence in the jury system is justified? And may it not be added
-that, in view of the wide-spread prejudices, the result is almost
-surprising? Here we had men of high intelligence who were completely
-able to take account of every possible aspect of the situation. They
-had time to do so, they had training to do so, and every foregoing
-experiment ought to have stimulated them to do so in the following
-ones. Yet their judgment was right in only fifty-two per cent. of
-the cases until they heard the opinions of the others and saw how
-they voted. The mere seeing of the vote, however, cannot have been
-decisive, because forty-eight per cent.,--that is, virtually half of
-the votes,--were at first incorrect. The wrong votes might have had as
-much suggestive influence on those who voted rightly as the right votes
-on those on the wrong side. Nevertheless, if the change was so strongly
-in the right direction, the result must clearly have come from the
-discussion.
-
-But I am not at the end of my story. I also made exactly the same
-experiments with a class of advanced female university students. When
-I started, my aim was not to examine the differences of men and women,
-but only to have ampler material, and I confined my work to students in
-psychological classes because I was anxious to get the best possible
-scientific analysis of the inner experiences. I had no prejudice in
-favor of or against women as members of the jury, any more than my
-experiments were guided by a desire to defend or to attack the jury
-system. I was anxious only to clear up the facts. The women students
-had exactly the same opportunities for seeing the cards and the votes
-and for exchanging opinions. The discussions, while carried on for
-the same length of time, were on the whole less animated. There was
-less desire to convince and more restraint; but the record which
-was taken in shorthand showed nearly the same variety of arguments
-that the men had brought forward. Everything agreed exactly with the
-experiments of the men, and the only difference was in the results.
-The first vote of all experiments with the women showed a slightly
-smaller number of right judgments. The women had forty-five per cent.
-correct judgments, as against the fifty-two per cent. of the men. I
-should not put any emphasis on this difference. It may be said that
-the men had more training in scientific observations, and the task
-was therefore slightly easier for them than for most of the women.
-I should say that, all taken together, men and women showed an equal
-ability in immediate judgment, as with both groups about half of the
-first judgments were correct. The fact that with the men two per cent.
-more, with the women five per cent. less, than half were right would
-not mean much. But the situation is entirely different with the second
-figure. We saw that for the men the discussion secured an increase from
-fifty-two per cent. to seventy-eight per cent.; with the women the
-increase is not a single per cent. The first votes were forty-five per
-cent. right, and the last votes were forty-five per cent. right. In
-other words, they had not learned anything from discussion.
-
-It would not be quite correct, if we were to draw from that the
-conclusion that the women did not change their minds at all. If we
-examine the number of cases in which in the course of the first,
-second, and third votes some change occurred, we find changes in
-forty per cent. of all judgments of the men and nineteen per cent.
-of all judgments of the women. This does not mean that a change in
-a particular case necessarily made the last vote different from the
-first; we not seldom had a case where for instance the first vote was
-larger, the second equal, and the third again larger. And, as a matter
-of course, where a change between the first and the last occurred, it
-was not always a change in the right direction. Moreover, it must not
-be forgotten that the votes always covered three possibilities, and not
-only two. It was therefore possible for the first vote to be wrong,
-and then for a change to occur to another wrong vote. The nineteen per
-cent. changes in the decisions of the women accordingly contained as
-many cases in which right was turned into wrong as in which wrong was
-turned into right, while with the men the changes to the right had
-an overweight of twenty-six per cent. The self-analysis of the women
-indicated clearly the reason for their mental stubbornness. They heard
-the arguments, but they were so fully under the autosuggestion of their
-first decision that they fancied that they had known all that before
-and that they had discounted the arguments of their opponents in the
-first vote. The cobbler has to stick to his last: the psychologist
-has to be satisfied with analyzing the mental processes, but it is
-not his concern to mingle in politics. He must leave it to others to
-decide whether it will really be a gain if the jury-box is filled with
-persons whose minds are unable to profit from discussion and who return
-to their first idea, however much is argued from the other side. It
-is evident that this tendency of the female mind must be advantageous
-for many social purposes. The woman remains loyal to her instinctive
-opinion. Hence we have no right to say that one type of mind is better
-than another. We may say only they differ, and that this difference
-makes men fit and women unfit for the task which society requires from
-jurymen.
-
-In order to make quite sure that the discussion, and not the seeing
-of the vote, is responsible for the marked improvement in the case of
-men, I carried on some further experiments in which the voting alone
-was involved. To bring this mental process to strongest expression,
-I went far beyond the small circle which was needed for the informal
-exchange of opinion, and operated, instead, with my large class of
-psychological students in Harvard. I have there four hundred and sixty
-students, and accordingly had to use much larger cards with large
-dots. I showed to them any two cards twice. There was an interval of
-twenty seconds between the first and the second exposure, and each
-time they looked at the cards for three seconds. In one half of the
-experiments that interval was not filled at all, in the other half a
-quick show of hands was arranged, so that every one could see how many
-on the first impression judged the upper card as having more or an
-equal number or fewer dots than the lower. After the second exposure
-every one had to write down his final result. The pairs of cards which
-were exposed when the show of hands was made were the same as those
-which were shown without any one knowing how the other men judged. We
-calculated the results on the basis of four hundred reports. They
-showed that the total number of right judgments in the cases without
-showing hands was sixty per cent. correct, in those with show of hands
-about sixty-five per cent. A hundred and twenty men had turned from the
-right to the wrong; that is, had more incorrect judgments when they
-saw how the other men voted than when they were left to themselves. It
-is true that those who turned from worse to better by seeing the vote
-of the others were in a slight majority, bringing the total vote five
-per cent. upward; but this difference is so small that it could just
-as well be explained by the mere fact that this act of public voting
-reinforced the attention and improved a little the total vote through
-this stimulation of the social consciousness. It is not surprising that
-the mere seeing of the votes in such cases has so small an effect,
-incomparable with that of a real discussion in which new vistas are
-opened, inasmuch as in forty per cent. of the cases the majority was
-evidently on the wrong side from the start. Those who are swept away
-by the majority would, therefore, in forty per cent. of the cases
-be carried to the wrong side. I went still further, and examined by
-psychological methods the degree of suggestibility of those four
-hundred participants in the experiment, and the results showed that the
-fifty most suggestible men profited from the seeing of the vote of the
-majority no more than the fifty least suggestible ones. In both cases
-there was an increase of about five per cent. correct judgments. I also
-drew from this the conclusion that the show of hands was ineffective as
-a direct influence toward correctness, and that it had only the slight
-indirect value of forcing the men to concentrate their attention better
-on those cards. All results, therefore, point in the same direction:
-it is really the argument which brings a coöperating group nearer
-to the truth, and not the seeing how the other men vote. Hence the
-psychologist has every reason to be satisfied with the jury system.
-
-[Illustration: Color-Tone, engraved for ~The Century~ by H. Davidson
-
-THE LAST FAUN
-
-    “‘_Since I slept, the boughs have pressed so near
-      The narrow path is lost. But I must run
-      And chase my fellows out into the sun._’”
-
-DRAWN BY CHARLES A. WINTER]
-
-
-
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-THE LAST FAUN
-
-BY HELEN MINTURN SEYMOUR
-
-WITH PICTURE BY CHARLES A. WINTER
-
-
-    By mead and wood I called them all day through,
-      All day I hunted them from dale to dale,
-    From height to height, each rift we ever knew,
-      At hide-and-seek, and still no answering hail.
-        Ah, could they be so cruel in their play
-        To make me lose the first delicious day
-      Since spring came up the vale?
-
-    I mind me how the northern whirlwind tore
-      Our wood. I saw those agèd giants quake.
-    Their wreckage lay about my cavern door.
-      I shut it close and, deep in withered brake,
-        I hugged my icy flanks all shivering,
-        And closed mine eyes, and dreamed of spring--of spring
-      Whose voice would bid me wake.
-
-    And next I heard the inmost water run
-      In the cliff’s heart, and wondered, half asleep,
-    If all the snow were melted in the sun,
-      And waited for a hamadryad to peep
-        Through yonder cleft and mock me for my sloth.
-        But, oh! the fern was soft, and I was loth
-      From out my bed to creep.
-
-    Slow, slow I drew the rotting bolt away.
-      My hoofs sank deep among the drifted leaves.
-    But, farther on, a lonely sunbeam lay
-      On fading snowdrops, and my granite eaves
-        Were overthatched with mosses green and fine;
-        And every bud upon the dangling vine
-      Showed how the warm sap heaves.
-
-    I marvel how the streamer hangs so low
-      About my door, that with the fading year
-    Was out of reach--or did I dream it so?
-      No. Since I slept, the boughs have pressed so near
-        The narrow path is lost. But I must run
-        And chase my fellows out into the sun.
-      “O playmates, playmates, hear!”
-
-    So went I calling, listening, singling out
-      Each voice, each sound, each little stir that woke
-    The drowsy shadows. Now it was the rout
-      Of vagrant winds, and now a bird that broke
-        The trance with song up-brimming through the birch,
-        And now the boars disputing in their search
-      For mast beneath the oak.
-
-    I ran to find them at the dancing-green.
-      The grass had sprung untrampled by their feet.
-    Great oaks had fallen, and the copse between
-      Changed the smooth lawn. Each knoll and ivied seat
-        Was crumbling fast. The forest life had drowned
-        In waves of lush young growth our pleasure-ground,
-      Whelmed every nymph’s retreat.
-
-    I thought: “The gods have wrought a cruel jest,
-      Blasting our wood and those who dwell therein,
-    Bidding the coverts break their wonted rest
-      To grow and grow and drown the dancing-green;
-        And so in dark, numb days, the winter through,
-        The charm was wrought, and still the ruin grew,
-      Unheard-of and unseen.
-
-    “And they, my comrades, waking even as I,
-      Have they, too, seen the change and crept away
-    To weep, untroubled by the laughing sky,
-      Far in the utmost shadow? Stay, oh, stay!
-        O brothers mine, here’s one who weeps with you
-        The sunny glade, the dancing in the dew,
-      The pipes of yesterday!”
-
-    So went I calling, calling down the glade:
-      “Oh, harken, brothers, harken, one and all!”
-    Mad Echo jeered me from the hemlock shade,
-      But never came there answer to my call.
-        Their caves lay overgrown and tenantless,
-        Nor by a sound nor footprint might I guess
-      What sorrow should befall.
-
-    There came a laughter veering down the breeze,
-      Soft, cruel sounds as from a dryad’s throat.
-    “Even now they mock you, hid among the trees,
-      Shaping their signals to the wood bird’s note,
-        With sly, malicious dance and mirth-brimmed eyes.”
-        The laughter broke, and, wavering into sighs,
-      Failed, wind-like and remote.
-
-    Panting, I swung from stem to jutting stem
-      Up the wet crag, and, ever as I clomb,
-    I called, ’twixt tears and pain, and offered them
-      Bribe of my last year’s harvest, honeycomb,
-        Beechnuts, and hazel; yet there came no sign
-        Save Echo’s, answering that call of mine,
-      “O friends, come home! Come home!”
-
-    Oh, not among the cliffs or on the height!
-      “Some glad adventure leads them far astray,
-    Surely,” I said; “the coming of the night
-      Will bring them back.” And for a while I lay
-        And racked my wits with plans of punishment.
-        Then up I sprang in doubt and discontent,
-      And sought another way.
-
-    And now that dark has fallen, and I lie
-      Curled on the leaves and nurse my bleeding sides,
-    I wonder, was it Pan who wandered by,
-      And lured them down the unfamiliar rides--
-        That Pan whose piping has a sweeter note
-        Than spring has bred in any woodland throat
-      To win the shy-winged brides?
-
-    Or else another, mightier than Pan,
-      That Other who has neither form nor speech,
-    Who stops the spider ere he weaves his span,
-      Or lizard, darting o’er the fallen beech,
-        Who draws a film across the doe’s brown eyes,
-        And takes the lark, though high and high he flies
-      And dreams him out of reach.
-
-    He blows the noiseless reed which none may hear
-      Save such as he would draw unto his hand.
-    He takes a tribute of the waking year,
-      And wanders, piping, through the flowery land.
-        And there a locust hears him and is mute;
-        And here a rabbit leaves a nibbled root
-      To hark and understand.
-
-    O piper in the shadows, pipe once more!
-      Send but one call from out the fading west!
-    Aye, though I crouch behind my cavern door,
-      One note of thine would draw me to the quest,
-        To journey past the sunset and the rain,
-        Where I may find my people once again,
-      And the lost winds find rest.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-THE COUNTRY OF THE DORMER-WINDOW
-
-MURRAY BAY, A CANADIAN SUMMER RESORT
-
-BY HENRY DWIGHT SEDGWICK
-
-WITH PICTURES BY W. T. BENDA
-
-
-The way to go to Murray Bay is down the St. Lawrence by boat from
-Quebec. There is, indeed, another way, which most people take, but it
-should be taken only by impatient travelers who prefer a speedy to a
-picturesque arrival.
-
-The “bateau” is one of the three paddle-wheel boats that ply between
-Quebec and the Saguenay River. Each bateau has its own character, its
-own history, its own aliases. A bateau regards shipwreck as a baptism,
-and thereupon takes a new name and a new coat of paint. The dean of
-the fleet, at least according to the Murray Bay tradition, is a sort
-of Methuselah. The story goes that before our Civil War, in the days
-when the Mississippi ran unvexed to the gulf, when young Sam Clemens
-was crying out “Mark Twain,” a paddle-wheeler plied between New Orleans
-and Vicksburg--but this gossip is beneath the dignity of history. The
-bateau, whatever its dubious past may have been, leaves the wharf at
-Quebec at eight o’clock in the morning and arrives at Murray Bay at
-half-past one. This legend, which I take from the Richelieu and Ontario
-time-table, is less trustworthy than the other. Let us come to facts.
-At some time or other the bateau leaves Quebec; it passes the Ile
-d’Orleans, the Falls of Montmorency, and about sixty miles of beautiful
-shore; and after what, if the day be fine, is a most delightful sail,
-draws near to Bay St. Paul. This arrival is the prologue to Murray
-Bay. The bateau gyrates, heaves, trembles, and sidles toward the
-dock. Shouts from the bateau, answering shouts from the dock; the
-bateau hesitates, shivers, and like a tired cow comes diffidently up
-alongside. The passengers crowd to the landward rail; the population
-of Bay St. Paul crowds to the edge of the quay. A small coil of
-rope is hurled through the air from the bateau; it is caught by the
-population of Bay St. Paul; attached to the rope is the boat’s hawser,
-which is made fast to a pile. Friends exchange joyous greetings; the
-_charretiers_, whose carriages and carts in long sequence stretch the
-length of the causeway from the dock to the shore, wait politely for
-customers.
-
-The bateau prefers to arrive at the moment when the tide either
-lifts it far above or leaves it far below the level of the quay; the
-gang-plank is always at a sharp angle, and in consequence the cargo,
-put on or off,--barrels, bales, bundles, trunks--slides down or is
-rushed up with bumps, bangs, and loud shouts of “Prenez garde! Faites
-attention!” or less articulate expressions. For a time all is feverish
-excitement, joyous activity, perspiration, and hullabaloo. Then, as the
-gang-plank, at a whistle from the quarterdeck, is about to be lifted,
-shrieks from the quay indicate the belated arrival of a barrel, a pig,
-or some stout passenger waving breathlessly hand-bag and umbrella. At
-last the bateau glides on toward Murray Bay. The same bustle which
-characterized the arrival at Bay St. Paul, but tempered by a higher
-civilization, marks the arrival at Murray Bay. The custom-house is a
-mere amiable ceremony, and the traveler is at once confronted with
-his first exercise of choice: “Will monsieur have a _calèche_ or a
-_planche_?”
-
-[Illustration: MAP OF THE ST. LAWRENCE FROM QUEBEC TO MURRAY BAY]
-
-As soon as the traveler has climbed into the calèche (the luggage is
-left for the _charrette_), the charretier gives a warning cry and
-swings down the long causeway, and, turning to the right, goes up the
-hill that buttresses the Pic. Here you learn your first vehicular
-lesson. At a particular point going up the hill--it will not vary six
-feet on any hill, for the rule is _de rigueur_, and every native boy is
-born with the knowledge--the charretier leaps to the ground and drives
-on foot from alongside.
-
-Once free of the dock and over the hill, the traveler drives down the
-long village street. Every French-Canadian village properly consists
-of one long street. This is partly in order to economize shoveling and
-plank-walk during the winter, and partly because Latin sociability
-and democracy hold that every house has a right to front on the main
-street. Here the traveler sees the most charming touch of art in Murray
-Bay architecture, the curve of the gable-roof. In old times all the
-native houses, or most of them, had this curving roof; but of late
-years desire for space and lack of taste betray themselves in repeating
-the ugly roofs familiar to the south of the Canadian border. Nothing in
-architecture is more soothing than this curve in the gabled roof; it
-contains all the picturesqueness, all the poetry, that the patron saint
-of roofs--is it, perchance, St. Rufinus?--allows to them.
-
-[Illustration: Drawn by W. T. Benda. Half-tone plate engraved by R. C.
-Collins
-
-VIEW OF MURRAY BAY FROM POINTE-AU-PIC]
-
-The traveler who means to put up at a hotel has an ample range of
-choice. The Manoir Richelieu, a younger sister to the Château Frontenac
-of Quebec, gazes over a glorious expanse of river from the heights
-above the quay. It supplies its guests with _confort moderne_ softened
-to the native simplicity of Murray Bay, but it can hardly count as a
-part of the village; it is too young, it is an interloper. There is
-also the Château Murray, on the main street, which looks over the bay,
-and presents a comfortable air of seeming to receive, as no doubt it
-does, the compliments of departing guests; and, though even younger
-than the Manoir Richelieu, it is much more in accord with Murray Bay
-habits and traditions. But beyond cavil _the_ hotel of Murray Bay is
-the Lorne House, as it calls itself on its letter-paper, which is known
-to its familiars, and to all the world, as Chamard’s. Architects,
-builders, upholsterers, and tinsmiths can create Manoirs Richelieu
-ad libitum; so, with the addition of a French sense of proportion,
-they can also create Château Murray; nobody except the late Monsieur
-Chamard could have created Chamard’s. It is a personality expressed in
-the form of a hotel; it is a spirit embodied in dining-room, parlors,
-office, veranda, and partitions. The partitions remind the guest of
-Shakspere’s lines, like “cloud-capp’d towers” and “gorgeous palaces”:
-he expects them to dissolve, melt into thin air, and “leave not a rack
-behind.” Chamard’s is the one hotel, I should suppose, in all the world
-that rises triumphantly above material things. The table, no doubt, is
-wholesome and exhilarating, but nobody cares; for at Chamard’s, quite
-unlike other human abodes, the table is not the center of gravity.
-The place is a club, gathered about Monsieur Chamard’s interesting
-and attractive personality, and, now that he is gone, prospering upon
-his memory and Mademoiselle Chamard’s disposition and character. The
-physical structure used to stand about where the Manoir Richelieu now
-is; but it flitted away, or, like the phenix, was reborn, on a bold
-eminence above the golf-links, where half a dozen cottages, seedlings
-from the parent plant, have grown up about it. But Chamard’s is not a
-hotel for chance comers; it demands, so one of the guests assures me,
-an introduction from some one known to a guest, at least.
-
-The first thing for a new-comer to do is to take a drive; and the first
-drive should be up the _rive droite_ of the Murray River as far as the
-red bridge and down the _rive gauche_, or, for custom is liberal in
-this matter, up the rive gauche and back by the rive droite. This drive
-uncovers all that is typical in the scenery of Murray Bay.
-
-Besides introducing the traveler at once to the scenery, the Murray
-River drive has another advantage--it takes him past the principal
-sights. The road skirts the golf-links, turns sharp at the Village
-Mailloux, and then cuts the links in two just before the path
-that leads to the famous sixth tee, the _pons dufforum_. Here the
-charretier, if he is a good cicerone, points his whip to a house
-that stands in a little garden radiant with bright flowers: “Voilà,
-monsieur, la maison de Mademoiselle Anger.” One may draw aside the
-veil that has been very transparent ever since the French Academy
-crowned “L’Oublié,” and say that Mademoiselle Anger is Laure Conan, the
-novelist. A few minutes further, to the left, on the edge of the bay,
-stands the manor-house of the seigniory.
-
-[Illustration: Drawn by W. T. Benda. Half-tone plate engraved by G. M.
-Lewis
-
-VIEW OF MALBAIE (MURRAY BAY) FROM THE BRIDGE]
-
-From the manor-house the road runs along the edge of the bay, where
-picturesque schooners float or lie on their sides, according to the
-tide, and then on to the village of Malbaie, or Murray Bay. Americans
-call it the Far Village, but the native resident of Pointe-au-Pic, who
-wishes Monsieur Anger, _le notaire_, brother to Laure Conan, to draw
-up a legal document, or Monsieur Perron to cut him a suit of homespun,
-or Monsieur Shea to sell him a clock or a banjo-string, says, “Je vais
-au village” (“I am going to the village”), just as a suburban resident
-says, “I am going to town.” At the end of the bay stands the Far
-Village church in all her kindly, simple seriousness. Her bells ring
-out the angelus over the waters of the bay, along the shores, and back
-into the uplands, proclaiming that she is ready, like a hen gathering
-her chickens under her wings, to receive and comfort all the faithful.
-On the façade, if three doorways and a barn-like front can count as a
-façade, there is a statue of the Madonna that has drawn to itself some
-of the beauty of the place. Hard by is the residence of Monsieur le
-Curé and his assistants. The younger priests officiate in the church
-and also teach school. It is pleasant, when driving by during recess,
-to see these serious-faced young men, dressed in their long black
-cassocks, playing with the children, or, when off duty, refreshing
-themselves with a pipe and animated conversation.
-
-[Illustration: Drawn by W. T. Benda. Half-tone plate engraved by G. M.
-Lewis
-
-THE CHURCH OF ST. ETIENNE AT MURRAY BAY, WITH TEACHING BROTHERS IN THE
-FOREGROUND]
-
-The Far Village has a little inn of its own, but it is undisturbed by
-foreigners; it is sufficient to itself, with its shops, its bank, its
-ecclesiastical edifices, its little houses, some of which back on the
-river, in fact, lean perilously over the brink, strongly reminding one
-of the old Florentine houses along the Arno. The court-house is on the
-rive gauche, and somewhat away from the village. To say the truth, its
-bald, rather brazen, aspect suggests the less amiable side of the law,
-and it seems singularly out of keeping with the general innocence of
-Malbaie. There is a story that Sir Charles Fitzpatrick, when at the
-bar, long before he became chief-justice of Canada, went there to argue
-a case, carrying only one book under his arm. A native remarked this
-penury of legal preparation: “C’est fort peu de chose; il ne réussira
-pas avec M’sieur le juge” (“That’s too little; he won’t win his
-case”). The next time Sir Charles carried several large volumes: “A la
-bonne heure; cette fois-ci il est sérieux” (“Good; this time he means
-business”).
-
-[Illustration: Drawn by W. T. Benda. Half-tone plate engraved by R. C.
-Collins
-
-A ROAD NEAR MURRAY BAY]
-
-Now and then, whether on your first drive up the Murray River, or
-on your second up Maltais’s Hill and on the way to St. Agnès to see
-mountains rise behind mountains in deepening hues of violet and
-blue, you pass a plain, black cross. These crosses stand in little
-inclosures, eight feet square, which are filled with monk’s-hood. At
-these places the people of the neighborhood gather in the month of May
-to say a prayer, and ask _la Sainte Vierge_ to bless the sowing of the
-grain. Sometimes you pass one of the old baking-ovens, and, if you are
-in luck, a pretty girl examining the condition of the loaves.
-
-The traveler who is used to the more gingerly driven horses of other
-places need not fear lest the wiry little horse, which ends his course
-downhill at a canter and starts uphill at a gallop, will tire himself
-out. The charretier always spares his horse by jumping out himself as
-soon as the first uphill gallop is over. This is a comfort to the
-tender-hearted traveler, for as soon as he leaves the Far Village he
-is, or seems to be, going up or down hill all the time.
-
-[Illustration: Drawn by W. T. Benda. Half-tone plate engraved by C. W.
-Chadwick
-
-VIEW ACROSS THE BAY FROM THE HILLSIDE
-
-Chamard’s in the foreground; Cap-à-l’Aigle manor in the middle distance]
-
-Beyond the Murray River, on the high bluffs overlooking the St.
-Lawrence, lies the village of Cap-à-l’Aigle. The relations of
-Cap-à-l’Aigle to Pointe-au-Pic would require a chapter by themselves;
-they seem to present the difference between slap-everlasting and
-auction bridge; some like one game and some the other. Even the views
-are very different. Nothing can be finer in its way--one feels that
-here the player makes a most successful slap--than the view over
-the St. Lawrence; and there are notable objects of pilgrimage at
-Cap-à-l’Aigle. There is nothing north of the St. Lawrence--one may
-hazard the assertion--more charming in its way than the garden of Mount
-Murray manor, the seigniory that was allotted to Colonel Fraser at the
-time the seigniory on the west side of the Murray River was allotted to
-Colonel Nairne. It is hard to say what makes a garden charming, or what
-makes a garden old-fashioned, or why we praise old fashions when all
-the world is agog for new fashions; but whatever the causes, they are
-operative here, and most successfully. There is a glorious prodigality
-of color and sweet odor, an inspiriting sense that the flowers are all
-animated by as reckless a purpose to enjoy life as is compatible with
-floral propriety; and all is hedged in by a gracious seclusion.
-
-[Illustration: Drawn by W. T. Benda. Half-tone plate engraved by R.
-Varley
-
-BAKING BREAD IN MURRAY BAY]
-
-Of course there are other things to do at Murray Bay than to drive or
-to visit the sights. But do what you will, so long as you stay out
-of doors you cannot escape the view. There is golf, pursued with the
-regularity that characterizes all kinds of superior machinery, on a
-links of much variety and picturesqueness, which is associated with
-memories of President Taft and of the late Mr. Justice Harlan; there is
-tennis; there is the Sunday afternoon walk. There is canoeing for those
-who venture out on the bay or along the shore of the St. Lawrence. And
-canoeing, which is not without a spice of danger, might well be worth
-a greater risk, for only from the center of the bay can you see the
-mountains rise in sequent tiers beyond the Far Village church; only on
-the bay can you appreciate the angelus or see all the beauty of the
-Murray Bay sunsets, gloriously reflected in the water and coloring
-the eastern sky. But the chief pastime is fishing. There are salmon to
-be had in the Murray River, and ambitious fishermen spend long, happy
-hours, casting, casting, casting. It is hard to say whether catching
-enters into this sport or not, stories differ so widely.
-
-[Illustration: Drawn by W. T. Benda. Half-tone plate engraved by H. C.
-Merrill
-
-A NATIVE FAMILY AND A TYPICAL HOUSE IN MURRAY BAY]
-
-Trout-fishing is obligatory. A visitor is at liberty to play golf,
-canoe, walk, or not, as he pleases; but unless he is willing to pass
-for a misanthrope, or, what is worse, a misichthus (or whatever
-word will serve to designate some wretch of Doctor Johnson’s way
-of thinking), he must go trout-fishing. Let me hasten to say that
-what we in our slipshod American fashion call trout are not the true
-British-born trout, but char or I know not what else. This, very
-properly, is the A B C of a Canadian’s education. The way to go
-trout-fishing is to camp on the shore of one of the little lakes in the
-back country. There a club or a host provides a tent, and the guest
-brings his rod, blankets, and food. The _gardien_ of the lake, and one
-or two of his friends, cook, make the fires, and paddle the boats. Some
-people--parsons, Englishmen, young ladies--are totally absorbed in
-weights and numbers and interminable fish-stories. Others, of soberer
-disposition or piscatorial incapacity, enjoy the woods, the birds, the
-shy hare, the amiable chipmunk, and all the denizens of the forest. But
-the great pleasure of it all is to sit about the fire after supper,
-with the stars overhead and a faint breeze just audible over the lake
-and in the trees, and listen to the men sing their Canadian songs.
-
-There are no better-mannered people than the _habitants_ who live on
-the borders of the woods. In earlier times all the natives used to
-have charming manners, but the coming of strangers who set no special
-store by manners--Americans who have more important things to think
-about, others from different places who hold themselves superior to the
-natives--has tended to bring in different standards and values. But
-even now the habitants on the borders of the woods have always good
-manners--a refinement, a self-effacement, a wealth of consideration for
-their guests--that must rank as one of the fine arts. Their manners
-are their chief possession; they are poor and not quick-witted. One
-gardien, to whom a letter had been sent bidding him be ready to expect
-a party of fishermen on Monday, was discovered sitting on his door-step.
-
-_Gardien_: “Bonjour, messieurs.”
-
-_We_: “Bonjour, mon ami, est-ce que tout est prêt?”
-
-_Gardien_: “Que voulez-vous dire, messieurs?”
-
-_We_: “N’avez-vous pas reçu notre lettre?”
-
-_Gardien_: “Ah, oui, j’ai reçu votre lettre.”
-
-_We_: “Eh bien, nous avons dit que nous arriverions aujourd’hui, lundi”
-(“We said that we should come to-day, Monday”).
-
-_Gardien_ (after a pause): “J’ai lu _lundi_, mais j’ai compris _jeudi_”
-(“I read Monday, but I understood Thursday”).
-
-The great charm of Murray Bay lies even more in the character and
-disposition of its people than in its beautiful scenery. To every one
-who has been long familiar with Murray Bay its most delicate charm
-lies in the memories of the men whose dignity of character and fine
-friendliness of manner set a special seal upon the beautiful place.
-Among those who will not come again to brighten the summer days by
-their presence are Mr. Edward Blake and Mr. Justice Harlan. These
-men belong to the history of Canada and of the United States, but in
-matters that do not concern the muse of history they belong to Murray
-Bay. No golfer can tee his ball on the links without involuntarily
-expecting to see Judge Harlan’s noble figure striding joyously from
-hole to hole, and to hear his exultant, boyish glee over a good stroke
-or his humorous explanation of an unlucky one. No worshiper goes to
-the Protestant church, the pretty stone church on the village street,
-without a glance at the spot where the justice used to stand on Sunday
-mornings, a symbol of large-hearted, Christian hospitality, and greet
-the congregation as it straggled in. And if, for instance, in order
-to give a visual reality to one of Shakspere’s heroes, one seeks for
-an embodiment of dignity, grace, and high character, the image of Mr.
-Edward Blake comes instantly up, with his handsome bearing and courtly
-simplicity. Indeed, Murray Bay is rich in human memories that outdo
-nature in her prodigal attempts to make the place delightful.
-
-
-
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-CLOWN’S RUE
-
-BY HUGH JOHNSON
-
-Author of “A Man and his Dog,” etc.
-
-WITH A PICTURE BY H. T. DUNN
-
-
-The “Incorrigibles” of the Sixteenth Cavalry was an unofficial gild
-of bachelors consisting of a major named Merton; of Gallipoli, who is
-named as the homeliest man in the army; of Fredericks, who is a born
-and joyful celibate; and of Swinnerton.
-
-The round-faced good humor of fat, bandy-legged Swinnerton was
-proverbial. He was not a cavalry officer. He was a medico, and the best
-surgeon in the service; yet the only place where his mere passing did
-not provoke a smile was the operating-pavilion of his own hospital.
-His thin tow hair was of the unbrushable variety. Smooth and wet it as
-he would, it stuck out at divers angles in every conceivable form of
-horn and quirk and curl from a head that was of the contour of a peeled
-onion. His blue eyes were round, his lips seemed pursed in a perennial
-effort to form the letter o, and his torso was nearly spherical, with
-all of which grotesquery no one in the world seemed more pleased
-than Swinnerton himself. For with the advantage of having his laugh
-well launched before he had uttered a word, he had acquired an easy
-reputation as one of the army’s “funny men,” a thing in which he took
-no little pride, until between the dawn and the dark of a single day
-it became for him a shirt of fire which, strive as he would, he could
-not cast away, and which came as near as the breadth of a man’s hand
-from being the end of him.
-
-Apart from these the Sixteenth is a “married” regiment, and when orders
-dropped from a seemingly placid sky, sending the command to the Mexican
-border, fifteen hundred miles away, with two hours’ notice, no one took
-thought of how this might affect the officers of the bachelors’ mess,
-and least of all Swinnerton.
-
-At the railroad spur, where three long troop-trains lay puffing amid
-a debris of ammunition- and ration-cases, forage-bales, saddles, and
-equipment; where a regiment of soldiers swarmed, tugging and heaving
-supplies upon the train, leading, cajoling, and forcing frightened
-troop-horses up the heavy ramps to the crowded stock-cars; where
-sergeants swore and fretted, and orderlies ran about with belated
-orders for the officers who were devoting the between-times of all this
-to saying good-by to more or less numerous families, no one had eyes
-for Swinnerton. And eyes that might have seen him would not have been
-believed. For, fancying himself hidden behind a pile of canvas-bales of
-medical supplies, he was holding the two hands of a gravely beautiful
-girl, gazing into her tear-dimmed eyes and telling her in a hoarse and
-earnest voice that there was no danger, anyway, that all this could not
-possibly mean war, and that if it did, he, as a non-combatant, would
-keep well to the rear and safely out of harm’s way; that partings made
-no difference, anyway, so long as he loved her and she loved him, et
-cetera, et cetera, ad infinitum.
-
-The shock to the Sixteenth’s credulity would not have been altogether
-that Swinnerton was trying to cut a serious figure; it would have
-sprung from the fact that the hands he was holding were those of
-Mary Smith--_the_ Mary Smith, the regiment called her, because every
-youngster in the three-regiment post of Fort Robertson had vainly
-dreamed the dream that absurd little Swinnerton was here actually
-living, and which to him was no dream at all.
-
-That night when the lights were on in the officers’ Pullman, the
-Incorrigibles were sitting in the smoking-compartment over a last pipe,
-and Fredericks said:
-
-“No use talking, war or no war, these sudden trapesings to the
-antipodes are bad for family life--blamed bad, and I’m glad I’m not in
-it. Go to it, Swinney; but for Heaven’s sake don’t be irreverent. It’s
-no time for it.”
-
-Swinnerton had puffed out his cheeks to abnormal rotundity. He did this
-near the point of a story or when he was excited. It served to heighten
-effects.
-
-“I think I ought to tell you, fellows, first of all,” he began bluntly,
-“that I--I’m leaving my heart behind, too.”
-
-Gallipoli burst into raucous laughter, and Fredericks chuckled
-expectantly. Swinnerton’s face contorted in puzzlement.
-
-“Well,” he said aggressively, “what’s funny about that?”
-
-“_You_ are, Swinney,” said Merton; “that’s all.”
-
-“In the first place,” began Gallipoli, didactically, “you haven’t
-any heart in the ordinary romantic acceptation. One of your infernal
-explorative incisions would disclose a two-foot layer of healthy
-fat, and then”--he patted Swinnerton affectionately on the pudgy
-shoulder--“a core of pure gold, perhaps, and you would have to conclude
-that it was all heart; but that, unfortunately, is not the sort of
-anatomical monstrosity to offer a lady.”
-
-Swinnerton shook him off.
-
-“Be serious, can’t you?” he said. “I am.”
-
-“Manifestly absurd,” grinned Merton. “Get your banjo and sing that
-song about the chap they hired to get into the cage with the lion. You
-know--the one with the beller in the chorus.”
-
-“That’s better than your fourth-dimension joke,” urged Fredericks. “Go
-on.”
-
-Swinnerton was experiencing what was rare with him, anger.
-
-“Do you people imagine,” he asked, “that because a man goes about six
-days in the seven making a silly ass of himself for the happiness of
-humanity that he pines to be placed beyond the pale of all that is
-beautiful and wholesome in life? I _ask_ you.”
-
-His round eyes snapped. His quirks of hair fairly trembled. Secretly
-the three were wary of Swinnerton. They feared some colossal hoax, some
-trap. The suspicion that he was serious did not come.
-
-“Postulate one,” growled Merton, guardedly. “Grind out the logic. We do
-_not_ think this thing.”
-
-“If a good woman is blind enough to intrust her heart to me, is there
-any reason why I, of all men, shouldn’t accept it?”
-
-“I should say _not_,” chuckled Fredericks, pleased with the
-possibilities of his own idea, “not when you can offer her an existence
-which is a breathing enactment of all for which the Sunday supplements
-are read. ‘My dear, allow me to present my esteemed confrère of the
-colored page, _Dippy Dick_, Mrs. Swinnerton. And _this_ is _Little
-Nemo_.’”
-
-The anger was leaving Swinnerton’s red face. These men did not believe
-him, and only because he was he. His twinkling eyes dulled, his round
-mouth straightened. He rose, and something in his drooping attitude
-arrested Fredericks.
-
-“I was only going to say,” he began a little sadly, “that to you, of
-all the men I love to call my friends, I wished first to tell my great
-happiness. I am going to marry Mary Smith.” Indignation tinged his
-later words and indignation straightened his shoulders as he turned
-and walked with an unintended burlesque of dignity from the room. For
-Gallipoli had laughed again.
-
-“What’s he trying to put over?” asked Fredericks, puzzled.
-
-“Well, I don’t know,” confessed Merton, “but I think that even Swinney
-shouldn’t inject the names of ladies into his buffooneries.”
-
-In his own berth, Swinnerton, fully dressed, sat rigidly staring at his
-hands, his face hard and expressionless. He was considering a new need
-that had come to him.
-
-“Only for her,” he was saying, “I’d only ask it for her.” Then he added
-reflectively, “Only one person ever took me seriously; but she--” his
-face softened in a little smile--“will be my wife.”
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-The regiment, its twelve troops strung along the line like beads on
-a string, took station at Agua Caliente, on the Arizona border, and
-strove to prevent filibustering. Across the border the old Mexican
-city of Angeles lay steeped in the strong desert sunlight, a cascade
-of whitewashed cubicles glistening against a yellow hill, with the
-bell-shaped domes of the twin-towered cathedral sharply outlined
-against the turquoise sky above. The Mexican town was garrisoned by a
-battalion of half-starved, shoddily uniformed infantry, who eyed the
-big American troopers with envious wonder.
-
-There were _bailes_ and fiestas in the American town, but Swinnerton
-did not attend them. Every one admitted the change in him. His room at
-headquarters contained a field cot, a table, and two chairs. On the
-table were a writing-pad and a framed photograph of the face of Mary
-Smith. Here he spent much of his time. He carried on conversations with
-the girl in the picture, and his half of them he wrote down in bulky
-letters that sometimes had to be rolled because no envelop would hold
-them--pleasant fancies of a future in which he built a dream palace and
-furnished it from keep to turret with imaginings. He received letters
-done in the same spirit, and thus he strove to find refuge from the
-self that was daily becoming more and more intolerable to him.
-
-Swinnerton could sing. He had an unusually facile and sympathetic
-baritone voice, which he accompanied well on a guitar, and it was part
-of his panacea to sing in Spanish, some queer, immemorial folk-lilts,
-passionate with the throbbing _tempo di bolero_, that sometimes ended
-with a plaintive little wail at the inconstancy of a _caballero_ lover,
-and sometimes with an impudent staccato note, like a Sevillan dancer’s
-final step in a whirling _jota_. It was perfectly possible to stand in
-the corridor and imagine the singer, who was inspired by a remembered
-face, to be the most gorgeous _Escamillo_ that ever stepped gracefully
-toward an alluring _Carmen_--until the door opened. For there would
-stand Swinnerton, his fat face red and wet from exertion, his hair
-awry, his round rabbit’s eyes inquiring, and his pudgy little body
-partly covered by a Japanese crape kimono, and this would bring a smile.
-
-It was this very sort of smile that Swinnerton had been pleased to see
-on the faces of people for thirty years, but that irked him sorely
-now. It meant that he was not taken seriously, and he shrank from
-offering to the pride of Mary Smith in him a thing so lightly held. He
-desired dignity; he yearned for it more passionately than he had ever
-longed for anything in his whole life before. It did not come, and
-nothing that he could do would bring it nearer. Swinnerton’s own smile
-became sad, and a little of this sadness seeped into his letters. Out
-of this grew something very like a misunderstanding, for it had been
-unconscious, and in far-away Fort Robertson Mary Smith sensed it and
-asked about it. It disappeared, but in its place came a strange, false
-little note of irrelevancy. There came to Swinnerton one day a vexed
-letter, and then for almost a week no letter at all.
-
-The fire of insurrection was lapping up toward the border, and at
-Cananea, fifty miles away, Lopez was concentrating his ragamuffin
-battalions with ugly menace toward Angeles. Disquieting rumors were
-current on the American side, and one day the colonel, with his staff,
-was called to Huachuca, which left only Fredericks and Swinnerton to
-open the official mail. There were two bills and a wedding-invitation
-in Swinnerton’s sack, and only the daily bulletin of conditions
-along the border generally for the commanding officer. Fredericks
-opened this, and Swinnerton, the bills placed in his pocket, the
-wedding-invitation still in his hand, read it over Fredericks’s
-shoulder.
-
-[Illustration: Color-Tone, engraved for ~The Century~ by H. Davidson
-
-“GAZING INTO HER TEAR-DIMMED EYES AND TELLING HER ... THAT THERE WAS NO
-DANGER”
-
-DRAWN BY H. T. DUNN]
-
-“Information from reports of secret agents of the State and Treasury
-departments indicate a movement of Lopez forces toward Quebrantos
-smelter, five miles west of Agua Caliente--”
-
-“Phew!” whistled Fredericks. “Getting warm. We’ll see a scrap yet, eh?
-Who’s getting married now, Swinney?”
-
-The telegraph orderly had entered the corridor and stood saluting.
-Fredericks motioned him in and took the official despatch he proffered,
-while Swinnerton, with a swift insertion of his dexterous fingers, tore
-open the creamy envelop.
-
-“Darned if I know. This thing came sandwiched between bills for other
-presents. I wish people would stop it.”
-
-Fredericks was reading the loose scrawl of his telegram, and he heard
-nothing Swinnerton said. He left his chair with a suddenness that
-overturned it, and began yelling orders.
-
-“Orderly, sound _to horse_! Whoop! Hurroo! It’s come, Swinney. Old
-Lopez and his pack of thieves have crossed the border. Hurry up,
-orderly!”
-
-The trumpeter at the door glued his brass bugle to his lips and sounded
-the jumble of staccato notes that is the oldest of alarm-calls. The men
-had been forewarned. They were already swarming from their tents to the
-lines and saddle-racks. Fredericks turned to Swinnerton.
-
-Poor little Swinnerton, his chubby cheeks had suddenly become flabby,
-his mouth hung loosely open. The square envelop had fallen to the
-floor; its engraved contents drooped from his fingers. Fredericks
-gripped him by the shoulder.
-
-“For Heaven’s sake, what is it, Swinney? Are you sick? What is it, boy?”
-
-Swinnerton turned a pained face, drawn in some spasm of expression that
-was intended for a smile.
-
-“Devil of a funny joke, Fredericks. Best one that’s been pulled off on
-old fat Swinney yet. Read that, will you?”
-
-Fredericks read:
-
-    “Mr. and Mrs. Charles Smith
-    request the honor of
-    your presence
-    at the marriage of their daughter
-    Mary
-    to
-    Mr. Feldmar Brown.”
-
-Outside, the troopers were leading into line, and a trumpeter was
-holding Fredericks’s impatient charger. Fredericks had only a moment.
-He seized his pistol and field-glasses, threw an affectionate arm
-across Swinnerton’s slouching shoulders, and hugged him fiercely. There
-was not a word that he could say.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-Lopez’s raid across the border never occurred, but the false report of
-it accomplished its intended purpose. The town of Agua Caliente was
-stripped of its combatant garrison, and two hours after Fredericks had
-trotted away a lonely vaquero appeared at the crest of the hill back
-of Angeles, a Mexican picket fired, and was instantly answered by a
-sheet-like volley from the hidden rebel battle-line. It flashed through
-the wind-swept streets of Angeles, it knocked great sections from the
-adobe buildings, it ricochetted from the flagstones of the street, it
-shattered windows by the score; but most significant of all, it crossed
-the border-line, and every bullet found a resting-place in American
-soil. This was a contingency that no one had foreseen.
-
-An American at the custom-house whirled, threw up his hands, and fell
-in an anguished heap. The halyards of the headquarters flag snapped,
-and the flag dropped loosely from its pulley to the ground. A bullet
-crashed through Swinnerton’s window and thudded in the wall behind him.
-He scarcely looked up. He was sitting before the photograph in his
-room, and talking to it, as was his custom.
-
-“No, I don’t blame you. No one could, and least of all _I_. It was a
-fine thing I offered you. People may laugh at a fool, but to live with
-one! Tired--I’m tired of it myself.” After a full minute’s silence, he
-added, “Dog-tired--_pitifully_ tired.”
-
-He rose wearily and walked toward the open window, whence he could see
-the long, supple slope of the tawny hillside, with the Mexican federal
-trenches cutting it diagonally on one flank, and the white smoke-puffs
-of the attackers on the other.
-
-The mayor of Caliente came storming into the outer office, roaring at
-the abashed headquarters orderly:
-
-“Where’s the commanding officer? Where is he, I say? What are you
-soldiers good for, anyway?”
-
-Swinnerton quietly opened the door, to the immense relief of the
-trooper.
-
-“The colonel’s gone to Huachuca,” he said, “and Captain Fredericks has
-taken the troop to Quebrantos under competent orders. Is there anything
-I can do for you?”
-
-“Do? Do? Why, those damned Greasers are firing _through this town_.”
-The mayor’s fingers spread as though dropping from them something not
-to be entertained for a moment.
-
-“I have no military function, you know,” drawled Swinnerton; “I’m just
-a surgeon. And if I had, the orders are plain. We must not cross that
-line, whatever happens.”
-
-“Drat your orders!” bellowed his Excellency, the mayor. A bullet came
-and smashed the door-lintel. It covered the mayor with a shower of
-dust and plaster. He ducked incontinently, and came up furious at
-Swinnerton’s vapid smile.
-
-“I know _you, Doctor_ Swinnerton. You’re the regimental joker, the
-official fool. Gad! man, don’t you get sick of yourself? Doesn’t the
-sight of suffering humanity”--he waved his hand in an excited gesture
-that included a hurrying group of frightened non-combatants who were
-rushing a wounded man to shelter--“stir a spark of anger in you? Ain’t
-you weary of grinning and being grinned at? Ain’t you tired of it, I
-say?”
-
-“Yes,” said Swinnerton, with unexpected decision, “I am tired. Get
-out of my way.” He walked deliberately through the door and out into
-the street, hatless and unarmed. The orderly at the door, a mere boy,
-followed him in his journey toward the plaza, to the custom-house door,
-and then to the line. Spiteful little dust-spots kicked up here and
-there in the open square, and a bullet whined close to the boy’s ear.
-Swinnerton turned and ordered him back.
-
-“I ain’t goin’,” the soldier refused stolidly. “I’m a-goin’ to stay by
-you--an’ I know what orders is.”
-
-Swinnerton seemed not disposed to argue the point. Perhaps he
-thought the hotter fire forward would drive the lad back. He walked
-unhesitatingly on. He did not stop at the federal trenches, though men
-and officers cheered him as he passed. But once he had clambered over
-the glacis, his and the boy’s were the only upright figures in a wide
-stretch of sloping, gravelly hillside. There was a sense of awful
-loneliness there for a moment; yet he did not hesitate.
-
-His calm decision seemed, without qualification, good to Swinnerton.
-He expected to be killed. No one could look out across the
-bullet-spattered front and hope for less. The air was filled with
-gruesome sounds--the screams and whines and whistles of deflected
-rifle-balls. He did not yearn for the shot that would be the end, and
-yet he did not shrink from it. The very proximity of death caused
-nervous little shivers along his spine and in the pit of his stomach,
-but no regret. He was tired of disappointment, and glad to end it.
-There was an unavoidable trifle of revengeful school-boy thought,
-“They’ll be sorry when I’m gone,” and another that brought real
-pleasure, “There can never be any joke about _this_ thing I am doing.”
-
-A gentle breeze was sweeping down the hill with the fire; it ruffled in
-his hair and cooled his temples. Yes, it was all pleasant, all good,
-all desirable. He had forgotten the boy who had so faithfully followed
-him.
-
-Swinnerton was just enough to see the terrible selfishness of what
-he had done. A cry came from behind. The lad was down, writhing and
-clawing at the gravelly soil, a bullet through his intestines. Calmness
-and self-satisfaction left Swinnerton between two pulse-throbs, and
-as he knelt beside the soldier and examined the wound, anger came to
-him--anger with himself at first, and then a bullet covered them with
-trash and another seared Swinnerton’s forehead like a red-hot iron. The
-rebels were firing at them both. His blood flowed down into his eyes.
-Blinded with this and rage, he rose and ran forward. He was no doubt
-absurd, but he was not unterrifying, as with lumbering gait he stumbled
-and ran straight on to the very muzzles of the firing-line. If he was
-grotesque, it was with the grotesquery of the bizarre and sinister
-figures of the first French Empire, and he was standing where vehemence
-commanded respect.
-
-“Stop that infernal firing!” he yelled, purple with rage, his arms
-pumping in frantic gesture. And then he broke into a perfect tirade of
-English and Spanish. “I’ll bring the American troops across and hunt
-every hound of you to his hole and shoot him like the dog he is,” he
-screamed.
-
-Your Mexican is not at his best in the psychology of bluff. Half the
-rifles were already raised. Swinnerton directed his words at the
-evil-faced little firing-director, who had lived a replete life with
-the reformed bandits of the _Rurales_, but who had yet to hear or see a
-thing like this.
-
-“Do you imagine that you may fire into American territory, kill
-American soldiers, and escape the troops?”
-
-The self-commissioned officer blew his firing-whistle.
-
-“Señor,” he said, “igscouse. We do no know our fire offend. We will
-make attack from other quarters.”
-
-Swinnerton wasted neither words nor time. He hurried back, and knelt
-at the side of the wounded orderly. He threw one of the boy’s arms
-about his own neck and lifted him, his voice running on like a mother’s
-crooning.
-
-“Never mind, Felker; it’s not a bad wound. If I’m a surgeon at all,
-I’ll mend it. There, is that easy, boy? Then here we go.”
-
-A special train had hurried the general and the colonel and staff back
-from Huachuca. Fredericks, good soldier that he was, had marched to
-the sound of the guns. From the time he had trotted out at the head of
-his troop, an absurd suspicion had been troubling Fredericks, and the
-moment of his return he verified it. He found and examined the envelop
-in Swinnerton’s room, and he was even ahead of the general in greeting
-Swinnerton when the latter came staggering under his heavy burden
-toward the custom-house steps. Despite the gravity of the occasion,
-the general smiled, the colonel chuckled, and Fredericks laughed aloud.
-
-Swinnerton’s hair was rumpled like the ruffled crest of a cockatoo.
-Dust had blackened the caking streaks on his face, which was red from
-exertion. He was wheezing and puffing like a donkey-engine, and at
-every expiration of breath his cheeks bulged prodigiously. And what
-is more than mere words of description can ever convey, he was simply
-Swinnerton, at whom and with whom people smiled. He did not smile this
-time. He set his burden down and glared murderously at Fredericks.
-
-“Well, Fredericks,” he gasped, with no thought of the deference due to
-the general’s stars, “what is there about this so infernally _funny_?”
-
-“This is, Swinney,” said Fredericks, waving the wedding-card. “It isn’t
-even postmarked Fort Robertson. The last census found twenty-three
-thousand four hundred and five Mary Smiths. This is just one of the
-others, my boy.”
-
-Swinnerton made a full confession to Fredericks before the week was
-over. He had received three delayed love-letters and a congratulatory
-telegram from the President of the United States, though it was
-significant that every admiring newspaper sensed the humor of a
-single fat surgeon waddling up to a firing-line and bluffing it into
-submission.
-
-“I reckon,” he smiled a little ruefully, “that it’s written in the
-books that I’m to be a silly ass of sorts for all my mortal days. But
-I’m cured of minding it, and I’m a most uncommonly happy one, Freddie.”
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-[Illustration: THE THAMES]
-
-
-
-
-AN UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELER IN LONDON
-
-BY THEODORE DREISER
-
-Author of “Sister Carrie,” “Jennie Gerhardt,” etc.
-
-WITH PICTURES BY W. J. GLACKENS
-
-
-After a few days I went to London for the first time,--I do not
-count the night of my arrival, for I saw nothing but the railway
-terminus,--and, I confess, I was not greatly impressed. I could not
-help thinking on this first morning, as we passed from Paddington,
-via Hyde Park, Grosvenor Square, Berkeley Square, Piccadilly, and
-other streets to Regent Street and the neighborhood of the Carlton
-Hotel, that it was beautiful, spacious, cleanly, dignified, and well
-ordered, but not astonishingly imposing. Fortunately, it was a bright
-and comfortable morning, and the air was soft. There was a faint,
-bluish haze over the city, which I took to be smoke; and certainly it
-smelled as though it were smoky. I had a sense of great life, but not
-of crowded life, if I manage to make myself clear by that. It seemed
-to me at first blush as if the city might be so vast that no part was
-important. At every turn, X. was my ever-present monitor. We must have
-passed through a long stretch of Piccadilly, for X. pointed out a line
-of clubs, naming them the St. James’s Club, the Savile Club, the Lyceum
-Club, and then St. James’s Palace.
-
-I was duly impressed. I was seeing things which, after all, I thought,
-did not depend so much upon their exterior beauty or vast presence
-as upon the distinction of their lineage and connections. They were
-beautiful in a low, dark way, and certainly they were tinged with
-an atmosphere of age and respectability. After all, since life is a
-figment of the brain, such built-up notions of things are in many cases
-really far more impressive than the things themselves. London is a
-fanfare of great names; it is a clatter of vast reputations; it is a
-swirl of memories and celebrated beauties and orders and distinctions.
-It is almost impossible any more to disassociate the real from the
-fictitious or, better, the spiritual. There is something here which is
-not of brick and stone at all, but which is purely a matter of thought.
-It is disembodied poetry, noble ideas, delicious memories of great
-things; and these, after all, are better than brick and stone. The city
-is low, generally not more than five stories high, often not more than
-two, but it is beautiful. And it alternates great spaces with narrow
-crevices in such a way as to give a splendid variety. You can have
-at once a sense of being very crowded and of being very free. I can
-understand now Browning’s desire to include “poor old Camberwell” with
-Italy in the confines of romance.
-
-[Illustration: Drawn by W. J. Glackens
-
-“X. WAS MY EVER-PRESENT MONITOR”]
-
-The thing that struck me most was that the buildings were largely a
-golden yellow in color, quite as if they had been white, and time had
-stained them. Many other buildings looked as though they had been black
-originally and had been daubed white in spots. The truth is that it was
-quite the other way about. They had been snow-white and had been sooted
-by the smoke until they were now nearly coal-black. Only here and there
-had the wind and rain whipped bare white places which looked like scars
-or the drippings of lime. At first I thought, “How wretched!” Later,
-“This effect is charming.”
-
-We are so used to the new and shiny and tall in America, particularly
-in our larger cities, that it is very hard at first to estimate a
-city of equal or greater rank, which is old and low and, to a certain
-extent, smoky. In places there was more beauty, more surety, more
-dignity, more space than most of our cities have to offer. The police
-had an air of dignity and intelligence such as I have never seen
-anywhere in America, and it was obvious at a glance. The streets were
-beautifully swept and clean, and I saw soldiers here and there in fine
-uniforms, standing outside palaces and walking in the public ways. That
-alone was sufficient to differentiate London from any American city. We
-rarely see our soldiers. They are too few. I think what I felt most of
-all was that I could not feel anything very definite about so great a
-city, and that there was no use trying.
-
-The first thing that took my attention in the stores was the clerks,
-but I may say the stores and shops themselves, after New York, seemed
-small and old. New York is new; the space given to the more important
-shops is considerable. In London it struck me that the space was not
-much and that the woodwork and walls were dingy. One can tell by the
-feel of a place whether it is exceptional and profitable, and all of
-these were that; but they were dingy. The English clerk, too, had an
-air of civility, I had almost said servility, which was different. They
-looked to me like persons born to a condition and a point of view, and
-I think they are. In America any clerk may subsequently be anything he
-chooses, ability guaranteed, but I’m not so sure that this is true in
-England. Anyhow, the American clerk always looks his possibilities, his
-problematic future; the English clerk looks as though he were to be one
-indefinitely.
-
-X. and I were through with our first impressive round of sight-seeing
-by one o’clock, and he explained that we would go to a popular, hotel
-grill. All my life, certainly all my literary life, I had been hearing
-of this hotel, its distinction, its air; and now I said to myself,
-“Here I am, and I shall be able to judge it for myself.” We stopped at
-a barber’s for a few minutes to be shaved, and, to my astonishment,
-I saw a barber-shop which anywhere in America would be considered
-ridiculous. It was not a dirty barber-shop; you could see plainly that
-it was clean, well-conditioned, and probably enjoyed a profitable
-patronage: but for smallness, meanness, the age of the woodwork and the
-chairs, commend me to America of, say, 1865. It was the poorest little
-threadbare thing I have yet seen in that line. X. spoke of it as “his
-barber’s.”
-
-The hotel, after its fashion,--the grill,--was another blow. I had
-fancied that I was going to see something on the order of the new,
-luxurious hotels in New York; certainly as resplendent, let us say, as
-our hotels of the lower first class. Not so. It can be compared, and
-I think fairly so, only to our hotels of the second or third class.
-There is the same air of age here that there is about our old, but
-very excellent, hotels in New York. The woodwork is plain, simple (I
-am speaking of the grill); the coat-room commonplace; the carpets are
-red and a little worn in spots. Several of the stair-steps squeaked as
-we went down. “Just like our old and popular hotels,” I said to myself
-over and over in descending; and the cuisine and the general appearance
-of the dining-room reminded me of the same type of room in these hotels.
-
-While we were sipping coffee X. told me of a Mrs. W., a friend of his,
-whom I was to meet. She was, he said, a lion-hunter. She tried to make
-her somewhat interesting personality felt in so large a sea as London
-by taking up with promising talent before it was already a commonplace.
-I believe it was arranged over the telephone then that I should lunch
-there the following day at one, and be introduced to a certain Lady B.,
-who was known as a patron of the arts, and to a certain Miss N., an
-interesting English type. I was pleased with the idea of going. I had
-never seen an English lady lion-hunter. I had never met English ladies
-of the types of Miss N. and Lady B. There might be others present, I
-was told. I was also informed that Mrs. W. was really not English, but
-French, though she and her husband, who was also French and a wealthy
-merchant, had resided in London so long that they were to all intents
-and purposes English, and besides they were in rather interesting
-standing socially.
-
-I recall the next day, Sunday, with as much interest as any date, for
-on that day I encountered my first London drawing-room. When I reached
-the house of Mrs. W., which was in one of those lovely squares that
-constitute a striking feature of the West End, I was ushered up-stairs
-to the drawing-room, where I found my host, a rather practical,
-shrewd-looking Frenchman, and his less obviously French wife.
-
-“Oh, Mr. Der_riz_er,” exclaimed my hostess on sight, as she came
-forward to greet me, a decidedly engaging woman of something over
-forty, with bronze hair and ruddy complexion. Her gown of green silk,
-cut after the latest mode, stamped her in my mind as of a romantic,
-artistic, eager disposition.
-
-“You must come and tell us at once what you think of the picture we are
-discussing. It is down-stairs. Lady B. is there, and Miss N. We are
-trying to see if we can get a better light on it. Mr. X. has told me of
-you. You are from America. You must tell us how you like London, after
-you see the Degas.”
-
-I think I liked this lady thoroughly at a glance and felt at home with
-her, for I know the type. It is the mobile, artistic type, with not
-much practical judgment in great matters, but bubbling with enthusiasm,
-temperament, life.
-
-“Certainly; delighted. I know too little of London to talk of it. I
-shall be interested in your picture.”
-
-[Illustration: Drawn by W. J. Glackens
-
-“‘I LIKE IT,’ HE PRONOUNCED. ‘THE NOTE IS SOMBER, BUT IT IS EXCELLENT
-WORK’”]
-
-We had reached the main floor by this time.
-
-“Mr. Der_riz_er, the Lady B.,” said Mrs. W., as she brought me forward
-to meet the ladies.
-
-A modern suggestion of the fair _Jehanne_, tall, astonishingly lissome,
-done, as to clothes, after the best manner of the romanticists, such
-was the Lady B. A more fascinating type, from the point of view of
-stagecraft, I never saw. And the languor and lofty elevation of her
-gestures and eyebrows defy description. She could say, “Oh, I am so
-weary of all this!” with a slight elevation of her eyebrows a hundred
-times more definitely and forcefully than if it had been shouted for
-her in stentorian tones through a megaphone.
-
-She gave me the fingers of an archly poised hand.
-
-“It is a pleasure.”
-
-“And Miss N., Mr. Der_riz_er.” Again it was Mrs. W. who spoke.
-
-“I am very pleased.”
-
-A pink, slim lily of a woman of twenty-eight or thirty, seemingly
-very fragile, very Dresden-china-like as to color, a dream of light
-and Tyrian blue with some white interwoven, very keen as to eye, the
-perfection of hauteur as to manner, so well-bred that her voice seemed
-subtly suggestive of it all--that was Miss N.
-
-To say that I was interested in this company is putting it mildly.
-The three women were distinct, individual, characteristic each in a
-different way. The Lady B. was all peace and repose, statuesque, weary,
-dark. Miss N. was like a ray of sunshine, pure morning light, delicate,
-gay, mobile. Mrs. W. was of thicker texture, redder blood, more human
-fire. She had a vigor past the comprehension of either, if not their
-subtlety of intellect, which latter is often much better.
-
-“Ah, yes, Degas. You like Degas, no doubt,” interpolated Mrs. W.,
-recalling us. “A lovely pigture, don’t you think? Such color, such
-depth, such sympathy of treatment! Oh!”
-
-Mrs. W.’s hands were up in a pretty artistic gesture of delight.
-
-[Illustration: “LADY B. WAS EXTENDING HER HAND IN AN ALMOST PATHETIC
-FAREWELL”]
-
-“Oh, yes,” continued the Lady B., taking up the rapture, “it is saw
-human--saw perfect in its harmony! The hair it is divine! And the poor
-man! He lives alone now in Paris, quite dreary, not seeing any one. Aw,
-the tragedy of it! The tragedy of it!” Her delicately carved vanity-box
-of some odd workmanship--blue-and-white enamel, with points of coral in
-it--was lifted in one hand as expressing her great distress. I confess
-I was not much moved, and I looked quickly at Miss N. Her eyes, it
-seemed to me, held a subtle, apprehending twinkle.
-
-“And you?” It was Mrs. W. addressing me.
-
-“It is impressive, I think. I do not know as much of his work as I
-might, I am sorry to say.”
-
-“Aw, he is marvelous, wonderful! I am transported by the beauty and
-the depth of it all.” It was Mrs. W. talking, and I could not help
-rejoicing in the quality of her accent. Nothing is so pleasing to me in
-a woman of culture and refinement as that additional tang of remoteness
-which a foreign accent lends. If only all the lovely, cultivated women
-of the world would speak with a foreign accent in their native tongue
-I should like it better. It lends a touch of piquancy not otherwise
-obtainable.
-
-Our luncheon party was complete now, and we would probably have gone
-immediately into the dining-room except for another picture--by
-Picasso. Let me repeat here that before X. called my attention to
-Picasso’s cubical uncertainty in the London exhibition, I had never
-heard of him. Here in a dark corner of the room was the nude torso of
-a consumptive girl, her ribs showing, her cheeks colorless and sunken,
-her nose a wasted point, her eyes as hungry and sharp and lustrous as
-those of a bird. Her hair was really no hair--strings; and her thin,
-bony arms and shoulders were pathetic, decidedly morbid in their
-quality. To add to the morgue-like aspect of the composition, the
-picture was painted in a pale bluish-green key.
-
-I wish to state here that now, after a little lapse of time, this
-conception, the thought and execution of it, is growing upon me. I am
-not sure that this work, which has rather haunted me, is not much more
-than a protest, the expression and realization of a great temperament;
-but at the moment it struck me as dreary, gruesome, decadent, and I
-said as much when asked for my impression.
-
-“Gloomy, morbid,” Mrs. W. fired in her lovely accent, “what have they
-to do with art?”
-
-“Luncheon is served, Madam.”
-
-The double doors of the dining-room were flung open.
-
-I found myself sitting between Mrs. W. and Miss N.
-
-“Ah was so glad to hear you say you didn’t like it,” Miss N. applauded,
-her eyes sparkling, her lip moving with a delicate little smile. “You
-know, I abhor those things. They _are_ decadent, like the rest of
-France and England. We are going backward instead of forward, I am
-quite sure. We have not the force we once had. It is all a race after
-pleasure and living and an interest in subjects of that kind. I am sure
-it isn’t healthy, normal art. I am sure life is better and brighter
-than that.”
-
-“I am inclined to think so at times myself,” I replied.
-
-We talked further, and I learned to my surprise that she suspected
-England to be decadent as a whole, falling behind in brain, brawn, and
-spirit, and that she thought America was much better.
-
-“Do you know,” she observed, “I really think it would be a very good
-thing for us if we were conquered by Germany.”
-
-I had found here, I fancied, some one who was really thinking for
-herself and a very charming young lady into the bargain. She was
-quick, apprehensive, all for a heartier point of view. I am not sure
-now that she was not merely being nice to me, and that, anyhow, she
-is not all wrong, and that the heartier point of view is the courage
-which can front life unashamed, which sees the divinity of fact and of
-beauty in the utmost seeming tragedy. Picasso’s grim presentation of
-decay and degradation is beginning to teach me something--the marvelous
-perfection of the spirit which is concerned with neither perfection,
-nor decay, but with life. It haunts me.
-
-The charming luncheon was quickly over, and I think I gathered a very
-clear impression of the status of my host and hostess from their
-surroundings. Mr. W. was evidently liberal in his understanding of what
-constitutes a satisfactory home. It was not exceptional in that it
-differed greatly from the prevailing standard of luxury. But assuredly
-it was all in sharp contrast to Picasso’s grim representation of life
-and Degas’s revolutionary opposition to conventional standards.
-
-Another man now made his appearance--an artist. I shall not forget him
-soon, for you do not often meet people who have the courage to appear
-at Sunday afternoons in a shabby, workaday business suit, unpolished
-shoes, a green neckerchief in lieu of collar and tie, and cuffless
-sleeves. I admired the quality, the workmanship, of the silver-set
-scarab which held his green linen neckerchief together, but I was a
-little puzzled as to whether he was very poor and his presence insisted
-upon, or comfortably progressive and indifferent to conventional dress.
-His face and body were quite thin; his hands delicate. He had an
-apprehensive eye that rarely met one’s direct gaze.
-
-“Do you think art really needs that?” Miss N. asked me. She was
-referring to the green linen neckerchief.
-
-“I admire the courage. It is at least individual.”
-
-“It is after George Bernard Shaw. It has been done before,” replied
-Miss N.
-
-“Then it requires almost more courage,” I replied.
-
-Here Mrs. W. moved the sad excerpt from the morgue to the center of the
-room that he of the green neckerchief might gaze at it.
-
-“I like it,” he pronounced. “The note is somber, but it is excellent
-work.”
-
-[Illustration: Drawn by W. J. Glackens
-
-“HOPED FOR THE DAY WHEN THE ISSUE MIGHT BE TRIED OUT PHYSICALLY”]
-
-Then he took his departure with interesting abruptness. Almost
-immediately the Lady B. was extending her hand in an almost pathetic
-farewell. Her voice was lofty, sad, sustained. I wish I could describe
-it. There was just a suggestion of _Lady Macbeth_ in the sleep-walking
-scene. As she made her slow, graceful exit, I wanted to applaud loudly.
-
-Mrs. W. turned to me as the nearest source of interest, and I realized
-with horror that she was going to fling her Picasso at my head again,
-and with as much haste as was decent I, too, took my leave.
-
-Another evening I went with an American friend to call on two
-professional critics, one working in the field of literature, the
-other in art exclusively. I mention these two men and their labors
-because they were very interesting to me, representing, as they did,
-two fields of artistic livelihood in London, and both making moderate
-incomes, not large, but sufficient to live on in a simple way. They
-were men of mettle, as I discovered, urgent, thinking types of mind,
-quarreling to a certain extent with life and fate, and doing their best
-to read this very curious riddle of existence.
-
-These two men lived in charming, though small, quarters not far from
-fashionable London, on the fringe of ultra-respectability, if not of
-it. Mr. F. was a conservative man, thirty-two or thirty-three years
-of age, pale, slender, remote, artistic. Mr. Lewis was in character
-not unlike Mr. F., I should have said, though he was the older man,
-artistic, remote, ostensibly cultivated, living and doing all the
-refined things on principle more than anything else.
-
-It amuses me now when I think of it, for of course neither of these
-gentlemen cared for me in the least, beyond my momentary vogue or
-repute in their small world. I must have appeared somewhat boorish
-and supercilious, but they were exceedingly pleasant. How did I like
-London? What did I think of the English? How did London contrast with
-New York? What had I seen?
-
-My head was ringing with what I had already seen. London was going
-around in a ring for me. Its vast reaches were ever in my mind. I
-stated as succinctly as I could that I was puzzled in my mind as to
-what I did think, as I am generally by this phantasmagoria called life,
-while Mr. Lewis served an opening glass of port, and I toasted my feet
-before a delicious grate-fire. Already, as I have indicated in a way,
-I had decided that England was deficient in the vitality which America
-now possesses, certainly deficient in the raw creative imagination
-which is producing many new things in America, but far superior in
-what, for want of a better phrase, I must call social organization
-as it relates to social and commercial interchange generally.
-Something has developed in the English social consciousness a sense of
-responsibility. I really think that the English climate has had a great
-deal to do with this. It is so uniformly damp and cold and raw that
-it has produced a sober-minded race. When subsequently I encountered
-the climates of Paris, Rome, and the Riviera, I realized clearly how
-impossible it would be to produce the English temperament there. One
-can see the dark, moody, passionate temperament of the Italian evolving
-to perfection under his brilliant skies. The wine-like atmosphere of
-Paris speaks for itself. London is what it is, and the Englishmen
-likewise, because of the climate in which they have been reared.
-
-I said as much without much protest, but when I ventured that the
-English might possibly be falling behind in the world’s race, and that
-other nations, such as the Germans and the Americans, might rapidly be
-displacing them, I evoked a storm of opposition. The sedate Mr. F.
-rose to this argument. It began at the dinner-table and was continued
-in the general living-room later. He sneered at the suggestion that the
-Germans could possibly conquer or displace England, and hoped for the
-day when the issue might be tried out physically. Mr. Lewis laughed as
-he spoke of the long way America had to go before it could achieve any
-social importance even within itself. It was a thrashing whirlpool of
-foreign elements. He had recently been to the United States, and in
-one of the British journals then on the stands was a long estimate by
-him of America’s weaknesses and potentialities. He poked fun at the
-careless, insulting manners of the people, their love of show, their
-love of praise. No Englishman, having tasted the comforts of civilized
-life in England, could ever live happily in America. There was no such
-thing as a serving class. He objected to American business methods
-as he had encountered them, and I could see that he really disliked
-America. To a certain extent he disliked me for being an American,
-and possibly resented my literary actuality for obtruding itself upon
-England. I enjoyed these two men as exceedingly able combatants--men
-against whose wits I could sharpen my own.
-
-I mention them because, in a measure, they suggested the literary and
-artistic atmosphere of London. They went about, I was informed, to one
-London drawing-room and another. Mr. F. was considered an excellent
-judge of art; Mr. Lewis an important critic. Their mode of living
-constituted a touch of the better Grub Street of to-day. It was not bad.
-
-“London sings in my ears.” I remember writing this somewhere about
-the fourth or fifth day of my stay. It was delicious, the sense of
-novelty and wonder it gave me. I am one of those who have been raised
-on Dickens and Thackeray and Lamb, but I must confess I found little to
-corroborate the world of vague impressions I had formed. Novels are a
-mere expression of temperament, anyhow.
-
-New York and America are both so new, so lustful of change. Here, in
-these streets, when you walk out of a morning or an evening, you feel
-a pleasing stability. London is not going to change under your very
-eyes. You are not going to turn your back to find, on looking again, a
-whole sky-line effaced. The city is restful, naïve, in a way tender and
-sweet, like an old song. London is more fatalistic, and therefore less
-hopeful than New York.
-
-[Illustration: Drawn by W. J. Glackens
-
-PICCADILLY CIRCUS]
-
-The first thing that impressed me was the grayish tinge of smoke that
-was over everything, a faint haze; and the next that, as a city, street
-for street and square for square, it was not so strident as New York,
-not nearly so harsh. The traffic was less noisy, the people were more
-thoughtful and considerate, the so-called rush, which characterizes New
-York, was less foolish. There is something rowdyish and ill-mannered
-about the street life of New York. This is not true of London. It
-struck me as simple, sedate, thoughtful, and I could only conclude that
-it sprang from a less-stirring atmosphere of opportunity. I fancy it is
-harder to get along in London. People do not change from one thing to
-another so much. The world there is more fixed in a pathetic routine,
-and people are more aware of their so-called “betters.” I hope not, but
-I felt it to be true.
-
-I do not believe that it is given to any writer wholly to suggest a
-city. The mind is like a voracious fish: it would like to eat up all
-the experiences and characteristics of a city or a nation, but this,
-fortunately, is not possible. My own mind was busy pounding at the
-gates of fact, but during all the while I was there I got only a little
-way. I remember being struck with the nature of St. James’s Park, which
-was near my hotel, the great column to the Duke of Marlborough, at the
-end of the street, the whirl of life in Trafalgar Square and Piccadilly
-Circus, which were both very near. An office I visited in a narrow
-street interested me, and the storm of cabs which whirled by all the
-corners of this region. It was described to me as the center of London,
-and I am quite sure it was, for clubs, theaters, hotels, smart shops,
-and the like were all here. The heavy trading section was farther east,
-along the banks of the Thames, and between that and Regent Street,
-where my little hotel was located, lay the financial section, sprawling
-about St. Paul’s Cathedral and the Bank of England. One could go out of
-this great central world easily enough, but it was only, apparently, to
-get into minor centers. It was all decidedly pleasing, because it was
-new and strange, and because there was a world of civility prevailing
-which does not exist in America.
-
-The amazing metropolitan atmosphere in which I found myself satisfied
-me completely for the time being. Life here was so complex and so
-extended that during days and days that involved visits--breakfasts,
-luncheons, dinners, suppers--with one personage and another, political,
-social, artistic, I was still busy snatching glimpses of the great
-lake of life that spread on every hand. In so far as I could judge
-on so short a notice, London seemed to me to represent a mood--a
-uniform, aware, conservative state of being, neither brilliant nor gay
-anywhere, though interesting always. About Piccadilly Circus, Trafalgar
-Square, Leicester Square, Charing Cross, and the Strand I suppose the
-average Londoner would insist that London is very gay; but I could
-not see it. Certainly it was not gay as similar sections in New York
-are gay. It is not in the Londoner himself to be so. He is solid,
-hard, phlegmatic, a little dreary, like a certain type of rain-bird or
-Northern loon, content to make the best of a rather dreary situation.
-On the other hand, I should not say that the city is depressing,--far
-from it,--though there are many who have told me they found it so.
-You have to represent a certain state of mind to be a Londoner, or a
-Britisher, even, a true one, and, on the whole, I think it is a more
-pleasant attitude than one finds in America, though not so brilliant.
-Creature comforts run high with this type of mind, and, after that, a
-certain happy acceptance of the commonplace. Nothing less than that
-could possibly explain the mile on mile of drab houses, of streets all
-alike, of doorways all alike, of chimneys all alike. That is what you
-feel all over England--a drab acceptance of the commonplace; and yet,
-when all is said and done, it works out into something so charming in
-its commonplaceness that it is almost irresistible. All the while I
-was in London I was never tired of looking at these dreary streets and
-congratulating myself that they composed so well. I do not wonder that
-Whistler found much to admire at Chelsea or that Turner could paint
-Thames water-scenes. I could, too, if I were an artist. As it was, I
-could see Goldsmith and Lamb and Gray and Dickens and much of Shakspere
-in all that I saw here. It must be the genius of the English people to
-be homy and simple, and yet charmingly idyllic in their very lack of
-imagination. It must be so.
-
-One particular afternoon along the Thames it was raining. I saw the
-river in varying moods all the way from Blackfriars Bridge to Chelsea,
-and never once was it anything more than black-gray, varying at times
-from a pale or almost sunlit yellow to a solid leaden-black hue. It
-looked at times as though something remarkable were about to happen,
-so weirdly greenish yellow was the sky above the water; and the tall
-chimneys of Lambeth over the way, appearing and disappearing in the
-mist, were irresistible. There is a certain kind of barge which plies
-up and down the Thames with a collapsible mast and sail which looks
-for all the world like something off the Nile. They harmonize with the
-smoke and the gray, lowery skies. I was never weary of looking at them
-in the changing light and mist and rain. Gulls skimmed over the water
-here very freely all the way from Blackfriars to Battersea, and along
-the Embankment they sat in scores, solemnly cogitating the state of the
-weather, perhaps. I was delighted with the picture they made in places,
-greedy, wide-winged, artistic things.
-
-I had a novel experience with these same gulls one Sunday afternoon,
-which I may as well relate here. I had been out all morning
-reconnoitering strange sections of London, and arrived near Blackfriars
-Bridge about one o’clock. I was attracted by what seemed to me at first
-glance as thousands of gulls, lovely clouds of them, swirling about the
-heads of several different men at various points along the wall. It was
-too beautiful to miss. It reminded me of the gulls about the steamer at
-Fishguard. I drew near. The first man I saw was feeding them minnows
-out of a small box he had purchased for a penny, throwing the tiny fish
-aloft in the air and letting the gulls dive for them. They ate from his
-hand, circled above and about his head, walked on the wall before him,
-their jade bills and salmon-pink feet showing delightfully.
-
-I was delighted, and hurried to the second. It was the same. I found
-the vender of small minnows near by, a man who sold them for this
-purpose, and purchased a few boxes. Instantly I became the center of
-another swirling cloud, wheeling and squeaking in hungry anticipation.
-It was a great sight. Finally I threw out the last minnows, tossing
-them all high in the air, and seeing not one escape, while I meditated
-on the speed of these birds, which, while scarcely moving a wing, rise
-and fall with incredible swiftness. It is a matter of gliding up and
-down with them. I left, my head full of birds, the Thames forever fixed
-in mind.
-
-It seems odd to make separate comment on something so thoroughly
-involved with everything else in a trip of this kind as the streets of
-London; but they contrasted so strangely with those of other cities
-I have seen that I am forced to comment on them. For one thing, they
-are seldom straight for any distance, and they change their names as
-frequently and as unexpectedly as a thief. Bond Street speedily becomes
-Old Bond Street or New Bond Street, according to the direction in which
-you are going, and I never could see why the Strand should turn into
-Fleet Street as it went along, and then into Ludgate Hill, and then
-into Cannon Street. Neither could I understand why Whitechapel Road
-should change to Mile End Road; but that is neither here nor there.
-The thing that interested me about London streets first was that
-there were no high buildings, nothing, as a rule, over four or five
-stories, though now and then you actually find an eight- or nine-story
-building. There are some near Victoria Street in the vicinity of the
-Roman Catholic Cathedral of Westminster. For another thing, the vast
-majority of these buildings are comparatively old, not new, like those
-in New York or Rome or Berlin or Paris or Milan. London is older in
-its seeming than almost any of these other cities, and yet this may
-be due to the fact that it is smokier than any of the others. I saw
-it always in gray weather or through, at best, a sunlit golden haze,
-when it looked more like burnished brass than anything else. Then it
-was lovely. The buildings in almost all cases were of a vintage which
-has passed in America. Outside of some of the old palaces and castles
-in London,--St. James’s, Buckingham, the Tower, Windsor,--there are
-no fine buildings. The Houses of Parliament and the cathedrals are
-excluded, of course.
-
-One evening I went with a friend of mine to visit the House of
-Parliament, that noble pile of buildings on the banks of the Thames.
-For days I had been skirting about them, interested in other things.
-The clock-tower, with its great round clock-face,--twenty-three feet
-in diameter, some one told me,--had been staring me in the face over
-a stretch of park space and intervening buildings on such evenings as
-Parliament was in session, and I frequently debated with myself whether
-I should trouble to go or not, even if some one invited me. I grow so
-weary of standard, completed things at times! However, I did go. It
-came about through the Hon. T. P. O’Connor, M.P., an old admirer of
-“Sister Carrie,” who, hearing that I was in London, invited me. He had
-just finished reading “Jennie Gerhardt” the night I met him, and I
-shall never forget the kindly glow of his face as, on meeting me in the
-dining-room of the House of Commons, he exclaimed:
-
-“Ah, the biographer of that poor girl! And how charming she was, too!
-Ah me! Ah me!”
-
-I can hear the soft brogue in his voice yet, and see the gay romance of
-his Irish eye. Are not the Irish all inborn cavaliers, anyhow?
-
-I had been out in the East End all day, speculating on that shabby mass
-that have nothing, know nothing, dream nothing; or do they? I could
-have cried as dark fell, and I returned through long, humble streets
-alive with a home-hurrying mass of people--clouds of people not knowing
-whence they came or why. London always struck me as so vast and so
-pathetic, and now I was to return and go to dine where the laws are
-made for all England.
-
-I was escorted by another friend, a Mr. M., since dead, who was, when
-I reached the hotel, quite disturbed lest we be late. I like the man
-who takes society and social forms seriously, though I would not be
-that man for all the world. M. was one such. He was, if you please, a
-stickler for law and order. The Houses of Parliament and the repute
-of the Hon. T. P. O’Connor meant much to him. I can see O’Connor’s
-friendly, comprehensive eye understanding it all--understanding in his
-deep, literary way why it should be so.
-
-As I hurried through Westminster Hall, the great general entrance, once
-itself the ancient Parliament of England, the scene of the deposition
-of Edward II, of the condemnation of Charles I, of the trial of
-Warren Hastings, and the poling of the exhumed head of Cromwell, I
-was thinking, thinking, thinking. What is a place like this, anyhow,
-but a fanfare of names? If you know history, the long, strange tangle
-of steps or actions by which life ambles crab-wise from nothing to
-nothing, you know that it is little more than this. The present places
-are the thing, the present forms, salaries, benefices, and that dream
-of the mind which makes it all into something. As I walked through into
-the Central Hall, where we had to wait until T. P. was found, I studied
-the high, groined arches, the Gothic walls, the graven figures of the
-general anteroom. It was all rich, gilded, dark, lovely. And about
-me was a room full of men all titillating with a sense of their own
-importance--commoners, lords possibly, call-boys, ushers, and here and
-there persons crying of “Division! Division!” while a bell somewhere
-clanged raucously.
-
-“There’s a vote on,” observed Mr. M. “Perhaps they won’t find him
-right away. Never mind; he’ll come back.”
-
-He did return finally, with, after his first greetings, a “Well, now
-we’ll ate, drink, and be merry,” and then we went in.
-
-At table, being an old member of Parliament, he explained many things
-swiftly and interestingly, how the buildings were arranged, the number
-of members, the procedure, and the like. He was, he told me, a member
-from Liverpool, which, by the way, returns some Irish members, which
-struck me as rather strange for an English city.
-
-“Not at all, not at all. The English like the Irish--at times,” he
-added softly.
-
-“I have just been out in your East End,” I said, “trying to find
-out how tragic London is, and I think my mood has made me a little
-color-blind. It’s rather a dreary world, I should say, and I often
-wonder whether law-making ever helps these people.”
-
-He smiled that genial, equivocal, sophisticated smile of the Irish that
-always bespeaks the bland acceptance of things as they are, and tries
-to make the best of a bad mess.
-
-“Yes, it’s bad,”--and nothing could possibly suggest the aroma of a
-brogue that went with this,--“but it’s no worse than some of your
-American cities--Lawrence, Lowell, Fall River.” (Trust the Irish to
-hand you an intellectual “Your another!”) “Conditions in Pittsburgh
-are as bad as anywhere, I think; but it’s true the East End is pretty
-bad. You want to remember that it’s typical London winter weather
-we’re having, and London smoke makes those gray buildings look rather
-forlorn, it’s true. But there’s some comfort there, as there is
-everywhere. My old Irish father was one for thinking that we all have
-our rewards here or hereafter. Perhaps theirs is to be hereafter.” And
-he rolled his eyes humorously and sanctimoniously heavenward.
-
-An able man this, full, as I knew, from reading his weekly and his
-books, of a deep, kindly understanding of life, but one who, despite
-his knowledge of the tragedies of existence, refused to be cast down.
-
-He was going up the Nile shortly in a house-boat with a party of
-wealthy friends, and he told me that Lloyd George, the champion of
-the poor, was just making off for a winter outing on the Riviera,
-but that I might, if I would come some morning, have breakfast with
-him. He was sure that the great commoner would be glad to see me. He
-wanted me to call at his rooms, his London official offices, as it
-were, at 5 Morpeth Mansions, and have a pleasant talk with him, which
-latterly I did. He wanted me to meet a Madame N., a French litterateur
-of over fifty, then staying at the same country place with him near
-Maidenhead, and hear her very tragic history. He brought an ache to my
-heart by recounting this same,--a story to which only a Flaubert or a
-De Maupassant could do justice. It is much too long and too Gallic to
-relate here.
-
-While he was in the midst of it, the call of “Division!” sounded
-once more through the halls, and he ran to take his place with
-his fellow-parliamentarians on some question of presumably vital
-importance. I can see him bustling away in his long frock-coat, his
-napkin in his hand, ready to be counted yea or nay, as the case might
-be.
-
-Afterward, when he had outlined for me a tour in Ireland which I must
-sometime take, he took us up into the members’ gallery of the Commons
-in order to see how wonderful it was, and we sat as solemn as owls,
-contemplating the rather interesting scene below. I cannot say that I
-was seriously impressed. The Hall of Commons, I thought, was small and
-stuffy, not so large as the House of Representatives at Washington, by
-any means.
-
-In delicious Irish whispers he explained a little concerning the
-arrangement of the place. The seat of the speaker was at the north end
-of the chamber on a straight line with the sacred wool sack of the
-House of Lords in another part of the building, however important that
-may be. If I would look under the rather shadowy canopy at the north
-end of this extremely square chamber, I would see him, “smothering
-under an immense white wig,” he explained. In front of the canopy was
-a table, the speaker’s table, with presumably the speaker’s official
-mace lying upon it. To the right of the speaker were the recognized
-seats of the government party, the ministers occupying the front bench.
-And then he pointed out to me Mr. Lloyd George, Mr. Bonar Law, and Mr.
-Winston Churchill, all men creating a great stir at the time. They were
-whispering and smiling in genial concert, while opposite them, on
-the left hand of the speaker, where the opposition was gathered, some
-droning M.P. from the North, I understood, a noble lord who chose to
-sit in the Commons rather than in the House of Lords, was delivering
-one of those typically intellectual commentaries which the English are
-fond of delivering. I could not see him from where I sat, but I could
-see him just the same. I knew that he was standing very straight, in
-the most suitable clothes for the occasion, his linen immaculate, one
-hand poised gracefully, ready to emphasize some rather obscure point,
-while he stated in the best English why this and this must be done.
-Every now and then, at a suitable point in his argument, some friendly
-and equally intelligent member would give voice to a soothing “Hyah!
-hyah!” or “Rathah!” Of the four hundred and seventy-six provided seats,
-I fancy something like over four hundred were vacant, their occupants
-being out in the dining-rooms, or off in those adjoining chambers where
-parliamentarians confer during hours that are not pressing, and where
-they are sought at the call for a division. I do not presume, however,
-that they were all in any so safe or sane places. I mock-reproachfully
-asked Mr. O’Connor why he was not in his seat, and he said in good
-Irish:
-
-“Me boy, there are thricks in every thrade. I’ll be there whin me vote
-is wanted.”
-
-We came away finally through long, floreated passages and towering
-rooms, where I paused to admire the intricate woodwork, the splendid
-gilding, and the tier upon tier of carven kings and queens in their
-respective niches. There was for me a flavor of great romance over it
-all. I could not help thinking that, pointless as it all might be,
-such joys and glories as we have are thus compounded. Out of the dull
-blatherings of half-articulate members, the maunderings of dreamers and
-schemers, come such laws and such policies as best express the moods of
-the time--of the British or any other empire. I have no great faith in
-laws, anyhow. They are ill-fitting garments at best, traps and mental
-catch-poles for the unwary only. But I thought as I came out into the
-swirling city again, “It is a strange world. These clock-towers and
-halls will sometime fall into decay. The dome of our own capitol will
-be rent and broken, and through its ragged interstices will fall the
-pallor of the moon.” But life does not depend upon parliaments or men.
-It can get along with windless spaces and such forms and spirits as
-have not yet been dreamed of in the mind of man.
-
-The Thames from Blackfriars Bridge to the Tower Bridge, along Upper
-and Lower Thames Street, which is on the right bank of the river
-going up-stream, was my first excursion, though, in making it, I saw
-little of the river. It is a street that runs parallel with it, and
-is intersected every fifty or a hundred feet by narrow lanes which
-lead down to docks at the water’s-edge. The Thames is a murky little
-stream above London Bridge, compared with such vast bodies as the
-Hudson and the Mississippi, but utterly delightful. I saw it on several
-occasions before and after, once in a driving rain off London Bridge,
-where twenty thousand vehicles were passing in the hour, it was said;
-once afterward at night when the boats below were faint, wind-driven
-lights and the crowd on the bridge black shadows. Once I walked along
-the Embankment from Blackfriars Bridge to Battersea Bridge and beyond
-to the giant plant of the General Electric Company, a very charming
-section of London.
-
-But I was never more impressed than I was this day walking from
-Cleopatra’s Needle to the Tower. The section lying between Blackfriars
-Bridge and Tower Bridge is very interesting from a human, to say
-nothing of a river, point of view; I question whether from some points
-of view it is not the most interesting in London, though it gives only
-occasional glimpses of the river. London is curious. It is very modern
-in spots. It is too much like New York and Chicago and Philadelphia
-and Boston; but here between Blackfriars Bridge and the Tower, along
-Upper and Lower Thomas Street, I found something that delighted me.
-It smacked of Dickens, of Charles II, of Old England, and of a great
-many forgotten, far-off things which I felt, but could not readily
-call to mind. It was delicious, this narrow, winding street, with high
-walls,--high because the street was so narrow,--and alive with people
-bobbing along under umbrellas or walking stodgily in the rain. Lights
-were burning in all the stores and warehouses, dark recesses running
-back to the restless tide of the Thames, and they were full of an
-industrious commercial life.
-
-It was interesting to me to think that I was in the center of so much
-that was old, but for the exact details I confess I cared little. Here
-the Thames was especially delightful. It presented such odd vistas.
-I watched the tumbling tide of water, whipped by gusty wind where
-moderate-sized tugs and tows were going by in the mist and rain. It
-was delicious, artistic, far more significant than quiescence and
-sunlight could have made it. I took note of the houses, the doorways,
-the quaint, winding passages, but for significance and charm they did
-not compare with the nebulous, indescribable mass of working boys and
-girls and men and women which moved before my gaze. The mouths of many
-of them were weak, their noses snub, their eyes squint, their chins
-undershot, their ears stub, their chests flat. Most of them had a waxy,
-meaty look, but for interest they were incomparable. American working
-crowds may be much more chipper, but not more interesting. I could not
-weary of looking at them.
-
-I followed the Thames in the rain to the giant plant of the General
-Electric Company, and thought of Sir Thomas More, and Henry VIII,
-who married Anne Boleyn at the Old Church near Battersea Bridge, and
-wondered what they would think of this modern power-house. What a
-change from Henry VIII and Sir Thomas More to vast, whirling electric
-dynamos and a London subway system! A little below this, coming once
-more into a dreary neighborhood of the cheapest houses,--mud-colored
-brick,--I turned into a street called Lots Road, drab and gray, and,
-weary of rain and gloom, took a bus to my hotel. What I know of the
-Thames I have described. It is beautiful.
-
-
-
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-THE MONROE DOCTRINE IN THE VENEZUELA DISPUTE
-
-HOW THAT CONTROVERSY PAVED THE WAY FOR THE PANAMA CANAL
-
-BY CHARLES R. MILLER
-
-Editor of “The New York Times”
-
-WITH A MAP, AND WITH TWO CARTOONS FROM “PUNCH” REPRODUCED BY SPECIAL
-PERMISSION
-
-    Far from being a subject of importance merely to historians,
-    the Monroe Doctrine is likely, in the months and years to come,
-    to hold the attention of American statesmen and citizens. Our
-    relations to our neighbors in Central and South America, the new
-    responsibilities brought upon us by the operation of the Panama
-    Canal, are among the most important American problems of to-day
-    and to-morrow. It would be impossible to find a writer better
-    informed than Mr. Miller on current affairs, nor one who has more
-    continuously studied the subject at first hand over a period of so
-    many years.--~The Editor.~
-
-
-Ex-President Harrison was very testy and Sir Richard Webster
-unmistakably cross one cool afternoon in September, 1899, when I found
-a place among the spectators in the Hall of the Ministry of Foreign
-Affairs in Paris, where the Commission of Arbitration in the boundary
-dispute between Great Britain and Venezuela was in session. General
-Benjamin F. Tracy was drawn into the area of unpleasantness.
-
-“That is not a way in which I am going to be addressed, General Tracy,”
-said Sir Richard to the ex-Secretary of the Navy.
-
-Sir Richard Webster was the chief counsel of Great Britain before the
-Arbitration Commission; ex-President Harrison was the leading counsel
-of Venezuela, and General Tracy was his associate. It was about the
-forty-fourth day of the proceedings. The ill temper of these great
-men arose from no national antagonism, no professional jealousy, for
-in that noble strife of minds each had come to hold in high respect
-the legal attainments of the others. But they had entered upon the
-eighth week of perhaps the most wearisome and uninteresting trial
-of an international cause of which the chronicles of diplomacy hold
-any record, and court and counsel were tired out and bored beyond
-expression.
-
-Two years earlier I had sat in the President’s room at the White House
-and heard Mr. Cleveland talk of the Venezuela boundary dispute and
-of his part in forwarding it to a settlement. It was in the month
-of February, 1897, two weeks before the expiration of President
-Cleveland’s second term. A few days earlier, on February 2, 1897,
-Sir Julian Pauncefote, on behalf of Great Britain, and José Andradé,
-representing Venezuela, had signed at Washington a treaty of which this
-was the first article:
-
-    An arbitral tribunal shall be immediately appointed to determine
-    the boundary line between the colony of British Guiana and the
-    United States of Venezuela.
-
-The signing of that treaty, of which ratifications were exchanged
-on the following fourteenth of June, was a memorable triumph for
-President Cleveland, for the Monroe Doctrine, and for the principle
-of arbitration between nations. For it was a message sent to Congress
-on December 17, 1895--a message which startled two worlds, that had
-brought about this agreement to arbitrate the questions in dispute.
-
-In a two-hours’ talk on that February day Mr. Cleveland had reviewed
-some of the chief acts of his administration, and I asked him to tell
-me, as far as he felt free to do so, the reasons that had called forth
-his Venezuela message. He spoke at length upon the subject, and with
-much freedom. Expressing in substance the impression his words made
-upon me, I wrote at the time as follows of the message and of Mr.
-Cleveland’s part in bringing the dispute to a settlement:
-
-    These words sounded like war, but they insured peace. How can
-    anybody who reads them with his eyes fully open fail to understand
-    what had happened--or rather was about to happen? No gentle and
-    ladylike remonstrance would have changed the course of proximate
-    events. The ponderous Executive fist had to come down with a thump
-    that made people leap to their feet, and it did. The blow was heard
-    and heeded. First there was a British blue book showing a decent
-    respect for the opinions of mankind. Then there were negotiations.
-    Now Venezuela and her powerful co-disputant have honorably come
-    together in a treaty, and the long controversy goes to arbitration.
-
-    “But we were in danger of war, there was a panic, and stock
-    exchange values shrank four hundred millions.” Let the Stock
-    Exchange think on its mercies. A war averted does not shrink values
-    a tenth part as much as a war fought.
-
-It will be well to say in the beginning that the merits of the
-boundary dispute and the immediate results of the arbitration are
-not particularly under examination in this article. The finding of
-the Paris tribunal was a compromise. The extreme contentions of both
-disputants were denied, although those of Venezuela were abridged much
-more than the claims of Great Britain. But had England obtained at
-Paris every square mile of territory to which, in the ultimate stretch
-of her audacity, she had asserted right and title, the triumph of
-President Cleveland and of the Monroe Doctrine would have been in no
-wise dimmed.
-
-The vital essence of that triumph lay in this, that under the
-constraint laid upon her by Mr. Cleveland’s message of December 17,
-England submitted to a judicial determination of her title to territory
-which for more than half a century she had sought to wrest without due
-proof of ownership from a country too weak to resist her continuing
-encroachments.
-
-“If a European Power by an extension of its boundaries takes possession
-of the territory of one of our neighboring republics against its will,
-and in derogation of its rights,” said Mr. Cleveland in his message,
-“it is difficult to see why, to that extent, such European Power does
-not thereby attempt to extend its system of government to that portion
-of this continent which is taken,” and this, the message continued, “is
-the precise action which President Monroe declared to be ‘dangerous to
-our peace and safety.’”
-
-For Great Britain to take territory on this continent before proving
-title was an act of which the United States by its President complained
-as “a willful aggression upon its rights and interests.” Great Britain
-heeded the protest, yielded to our demand for a judicial examination
-and finding, and Venezuela had her day in court, and that, not the
-actual and precise position of the boundary line as finally traced,
-was the whole point of the matter so far as the United States and the
-Monroe Doctrine were involved in it. That was our triumph.
-
-Historically, the dispute over the boundary between British Guiana
-and Venezuela dates from the discovery of America and the Spanish
-occupation. Following in the track of Columbus, who in his third
-voyage, in 1498, had sailed along the Orinoco delta, his first sight of
-the mainland of America, the Spaniards, early in the sixteenth century,
-had explored the country in search of gold. The El Dorado of fable
-was supposed to lie somewhere in the region between the upper waters
-of the Orinoco and Essequibo. By right of discovery, exploration, and
-settlement, for settlements were established later, the Spaniards
-gained the right to call Guayana their own, for that name was at first
-given to the South American shore of the Caribbean Sea.
-
-[Illustration: THE DISPUTED TERRITORY
-
-On this map the Schomburgk Line is laid down in conformity with the
-claims of Great Britain as to its proper position. By the arbitration
-Great Britain lost the two strips of land within that line indicated
-on the map by shaded sections, one at the mouth of the Orinoco and the
-other between Yuruan and Mt. Roraima. Those shaded sections comprise
-about 5000 square miles, an area a trifle larger than the State of
-Connecticut, and represent what Venezuela gained in territory within
-the Schomburgk Line as defined by Great Britain. Venezuela’s political
-gain consisted in the complete control of the mouth of the Orinoco,
-the natural outlet to nearly all of Venezuela and of a large part of
-Colombia.--~Editor.~]
-
-There was in truth a store of gold in the land; the explorers carried
-stories of their new wealth back to Spain, and before the end of
-the sixteenth century Sir Walter Raleigh, with a body of English
-adventurers and certain Dutchmen, visited Guayana in quest of treasure.
-The Dutch West India Company planted a settlement near the mouth of the
-Essequibo about the year 1624, and was strong enough to hold it against
-the Spaniards, who up to that time had been in undisputed possession.
-The title of the Dutch to the territory upon which they had established
-themselves was confirmed by the treaty of Münster in 1648, in which
-Spain recognized the Netherlands as free and independent states. Early
-in the last century England captured from the Dutch their settlements
-of Berbice, Demerara, and Essequibo, and in the treaty of 1814 these
-were formally ceded to her. Thus British Guiana came into being. On the
-one hand, therefore, Venezuela, when she revolted from Spain in 1811,
-became vested with the title to all the territory which Spain had held
-by virtue of discovery and exploration save the districts she had ceded
-to the Dutch; while, on the other hand, England held British Guiana by
-cession from the Dutch, who had acquired it from Spain by the treaty of
-Münster.
-
-In that treaty Spain and Holland had not been at pains to draw the
-boundary line between Guayana, now British Guiana, and the Captaincy
-General of Caracas, now Venezuela, and from that act of omission arose
-all the trouble. For many years after England entered into lawful
-possession of British Guiana by the treaty of 1814 no dispute over
-the undefined boundary arose. With the running of what is called the
-Schomburgk Line in 1849 begins the unbroken chain of events that led to
-the boundary controversy, brought it to a critical stage, called forth
-the message of December, 1895, and culminated in the finding and award
-of the Paris tribunal.
-
-In 1841 the British engineer Sir Robert Schomburgk was commissioned
-by his Government to ascertain and fix by metes and bounds the line
-between British Guiana and Venezuela. Then began Venezuela’s protest,
-and then, too, began the singular migrations of the Schomburgk Line.
-Lord Aberdeen abandoned it in 1844, but in 1886 it was laid down in
-British official publications as having made a wide detour to the
-west, the British maps presenting to the eyes of the Venezuelans a
-startling incursion upon territory they had supposed to be their own
-by undisputed title. “The Statesman’s Year Book” of 1885 stated the
-area of British Guiana to be 76,000 square miles. In 1887, according
-to the “Year Book,” the area of the colony had expanded to 109,000
-square miles. Nor was this the limit of the westward sweep of British
-pretensions, for in 1890 England obligingly consented to arbitrate
-her title to a vast tract of territory embracing thousands of square
-miles wholly outside the Schomburgk Line, and, a circumstance that has
-oftener explained than excused England’s land hunger, including within
-its boundaries some of Venezuela’s richest gold mines.
-
-The protests of Venezuela and her appeals for justice became insistent.
-She demanded an arbitration of the British claims, and her demands
-meeting with refusal, in 1887 she broke off diplomatic relations.
-Our aid was invoked by her, and Secretary Bayard tendered our good
-offices to promote a friendly settlement. Great Britain firmly refused
-to arbitrate the question except upon the basis of an antecedent
-concession to her of a very large part of the territory in dispute,
-including the mouth of the Orinoco and all territory within the
-extended Schomburgk Line. Meanwhile the Venezuelans grew more and more
-uneasy as they observed the behavior of British war-ships in and near
-the mouth of the Orinoco, and the acts of British subjects asserting
-and exercising rights of occupation and settlement upon territory they
-held, and rightly held, to be their own.
-
-This was the situation when Secretary of State Richard Olney addressed
-to Ambassador Bayard in London, on July 20, 1895, that letter of
-instructions which the British ambassador at Washington described as a
-“fiery note.” Another British authority called it “Olney’s hectoring
-note.” Lord Salisbury, very much at his ease, and taking his time about
-it, replied to this note on November 26. He explained that “it could
-not be answered until it had been carefully considered by the law
-officers of the Crown.” It may be recalled that Earl Russell, before
-making reply to the vigorous protest of our minister, Mr. Charles
-Francis Adams, against the fitting out of the _Alabama_ in a British
-shipyard, referred the matter to the “law officers of the Crown.” One
-of these learned gentlemen having unfortunately lost his mind, there
-was a delay of some days, of which the _Alabama_ took advantage to
-escape the jurisdiction by putting out to sea. As the decision of
-the law officers, when tardily rendered, was that the ship must be
-seized, it would appear that England should lay the responsibility for
-the _Alabama_ award of $15,500,000 that she paid to us upon the too
-deliberate working of her legal machinery.
-
-Secretary Olney in his letter, which of course Mr. Bayard was
-instructed to lay before Lord Salisbury, had embodied all the
-substantive declarations of the Monroe Doctrine, and in the very words
-of Mr. Monroe’s message of 1823. The first fruit of the doctrine, he
-pointed out, was the independence of South America, for it was to
-the European Powers banded together in the Holy Alliance, and then
-preparing to assist Spain in the recapture of her revolted colonies,
-that Monroe addressed his warning message. Every administration since
-Monroe’s had given its sanction and indorsement to the doctrine. It
-had been successfully invoked to put an end to the empire forced upon
-the Mexican people by Napoleon III, and now it was upon no general
-justification of interposing in a controversy between two other
-nations, but specifically upon the Monroe Doctrine, that we based our
-remonstrance against Great Britain’s high-handed ways with Venezuela.
-
-Great Britain’s assertion of title to disputed territory, followed by
-her refusal to submit her title to investigation, was “a substantial
-appropriation of the territory to her own use,” and we should ignore
-our established policy if we did not “give warning that the transaction
-will be regarded as injurious to the people of the United States,
-as well as oppressive in itself.” “While the measures necessary or
-appropriate for the vindication of that policy are to be determined by
-another branch of the Government,” continued Mr. Olney, “it is clearly
-for the Executive to leave nothing undone which may tend to render
-such determination unnecessary.” This is the passage, doubtless, which
-provoked the epithets “fiery” and “hectoring.” Those who ponder its
-meaning may feel that its words were at least ominous.
-
-Lord Salisbury based his reply of November 26 in the main upon the
-familiar European contention that while the Monroe Doctrine is
-interesting, and may have had a salutary effect when first promulgated,
-it has never “been inscribed by competent authority in the code of
-international law,” and that Mr. Olney’s principle that “American
-questions are for American decision ... cannot be sustained by any
-reasoning drawn from the law of nations.” He reviewed the dispute with
-Venezuela, defended with many and plausible citations of authority
-Great Britain’s procedure in the territory claimed by her, made a tart
-reference to “large tracts” of territory once Mexican but now a part of
-the United States, and firmly declined “to submit to the arbitration of
-another Power or of foreign jurists, however eminent, claims based on
-the extravagant pretensions of Spanish officials in the last century,
-and involving the transfer of British subjects who have for many years
-enjoyed the settled rule of a British colony to a nation of different
-race and language, whose political system is subject to frequent
-disturbances, and whose institutions as yet offer very inadequate
-protection to life and property.”
-
-The substance and meaning of Lord Salisbury’s despatch, and the
-attitude which Great Britain assumed, were set forth with conspicuous
-moderation and fairness by Mr. Cleveland in his Princeton lectures:
-
-    These dispatches exhibit a refusal to admit such an interest
-    in the controversy on our part as entitled us to insist upon
-    arbitration for the purpose of having a line between Great Britain
-    and Venezuela established; a denial of such force or meaning to the
-    Monroe Doctrine as made it worthy of the regard of Great Britain in
-    the premises; a fixed and continued determination on the part of
-    Her Majesty’s Government to reject arbitration as to any territory
-    included within the extended Schomburgk Line. They further indicate
-    that the existence of gold within the disputed territory had not
-    been overlooked; and, as was to be expected, they put forward the
-    colonisation and settlement by English subjects in such territory
-    during more than half a century of dispute as creating a claim to
-    dominion and sovereignty, if not strong enough to override all
-    question of right and title, at least so clear and indisputable as
-    to be properly regarded as above and beyond the contingencies of
-    arbitration.[7]
-
-It was then that President Cleveland, patient, but knowing that
-patience has its bounds, loving peace, and willing to make the full
-measure of sacrifice to that high end, but with firm conviction that
-our interposition in the controversy was necessary and could not
-longer be delayed, sent to Congress the special message of December
-17, 1895. That message fixed the attention of the civilized world upon
-the Venezuela boundary dispute, a matter which had up to that time
-held only small place in the thoughts of men other than the immediate
-official participants; for President Cleveland’s plain words brought
-clearly into view the possibility of war--war between the United States
-and Great Britain. Christmas was at hand. At that season nobody was
-thinking of war, and war between the English and ourselves had long
-been held to be at any and all seasons unthinkable. The civilized world
-was startled; it is not too much to say that some men of large affairs
-and international dealings were stunned. “The crime of the century,”
-was the phrase applied to the message by some whose alarm at the
-possibility of war was equaled by their ignorance of the long series of
-disturbing events which led Mr. Cleveland to perpetrate that “crime.”
-
-It was no crime; it was a saving act, a step that made for peace, and
-removed a source of long-standing irritation that was a menace to
-peace. The pen of Richard Olney was the one to set forth the legal
-basis of our demand--the pen of a great lawyer, not too much cramped
-by the circumstance that it was also the pen of a diplomat. Mr.
-Cleveland’s strong hand was the one to write the words that proclaimed
-the Nation’s duty. The Monroe Doctrine has never had a sturdier
-defender or a sounder defense. Lord Salisbury’s amusingly English and
-almost sneering references to the doctrine as one “to be mentioned
-with respect on account of the distinguished statesman to whom it is
-due,” but having no relation to the affairs of the present day, evoked
-that memorable sentence in Mr. Cleveland’s message, in which he said
-that the Monroe Doctrine “was intended to apply to every stage of our
-National life, and cannot become obsolete while our Republic endures.”
-
-To the Salisbury argument that the doctrine must be ruled out because
-it has never been inscribed in the code of international law, and
-“cannot be sustained by any reasoning drawn from the law of nations,”
-Mr. Cleveland replied that “the Monroe Doctrine finds its recognition
-in those principles of international law which are based on the
-theory that every nation shall have its rights protected and its just
-claims enforced.” When we urged upon Great Britain the resort to
-arbitration, we were “without any convictions as to the final merits of
-the dispute”; we desired to be informed whether Great Britain sought
-under a claim of boundary “to extend her possessions on this continent
-without right, or whether she merely sought possession of territory
-fairly included within her lines of ownership.”
-
-Having been apprised of Great Britain’s refusal of an impartial
-arbitration, “nothing remains,” said the President, “but to accept the
-situation, to recognize its plain requirements, and to deal with it
-accordingly.”
-
-Mr. Cleveland, therefore, suggested to Congress an adequate
-appropriation for the expenses of a commission appointed by the
-Executive to “make the necessary investigation and report upon the
-matter with the least possible delay.” Words of grave import followed
-this recommendation:
-
-    When such report is made and accepted, it will, in my opinion,
-    be the duty of the United States to resist by every means in its
-    power, as a willful aggression upon its rights and interests,
-    the appropriation by Great Britain of any lands or the exercise
-    of governmental jurisdiction over any territory which after
-    investigation we have determined of right belongs to Venezuela.
-
-    In making these recommendations I am fully alive to the
-    responsibilities incurred, and keenly realize all the consequences
-    that may follow.
-
-    I am nevertheless firm in my conviction that, while it is a
-    grievous thing to contemplate the two great English-speaking
-    peoples of the world as being otherwise than friendly competitors
-    in the onward march of civilization, and strenuous and worthy
-    rivals in all the arts of peace, there is no calamity which a
-    great nation can invite which equals that which follows a supine
-    submission to wrong and injustice, and the consequent loss of
-    National self-respect and honor, beneath which are shielded and
-    defended a people’s safety and greatness.
-
-The commission of inquiry was appointed. It promptly began and
-industriously pursued its investigations for many months, the
-governments of Great Britain and Venezuela willingly contributing to
-the success of the commission’s labors by placing at its disposal
-elaborate statements and all available evidence, while in the archives
-of Spain and Holland documents were made accessible that threw much
-light upon the remote origins of the controversy. But before the
-commission had finished its work, Great Britain and Venezuela, by the
-treaty of January 2, 1897, agreed to an arbitration. The labors of the
-commission were not in vain, however. It reached the conclusion that
-neither the extreme claims of Great Britain nor those of Venezuela were
-admissible, being unsupported by proofs of title, and the great mass of
-documentary evidence it had collected was of much use and value for the
-arbitral tribunal.
-
-By the terms of the Pauncefote-Andradé Treaty, signed at Washington
-January 2, 1897, Great Britain and Venezuela agreed to the appointment
-of an arbitral tribunal “to determine the boundary line between the
-colony of British Guiana and the United States of Venezuela.” The
-tribunal was to “ascertain the extent of the territories belonging
-to, or that might lawfully be claimed by, the United Netherlands, or
-by the Kingdom of Spain, respectively, at the time of the acquisition
-of the colony of British Guiana,” in order to establish the chain
-of lawful title. Rules of procedure were prescribed in the treaty.
-Adverse holding for fifty years, or exclusive political control, as
-well as actual settlement of a district was to be considered as making
-a good title; recognition and effect were to be given to rights and
-claims resting on other grounds valid in international law; and such
-effect was to be given to the occupation, at the time of signing the
-treaty, of the territory of one of the parties by the citizens or
-subjects of the other, as the equities of the case and the principles
-of international law should be deemed to require. It was provided in
-article II that the tribunal should consist of five jurists. Those
-named on the part of Great Britain were Baron Herschel, and Sir Richard
-Collins of the Supreme Court of Judicature. Baron Herschel having died
-before the convening of the tribunal, Lord Chief-Justice Russell was
-named to fill the vacancy. On the part of Venezuela, Chief-Justice
-Fuller of the United States Supreme Court, and Associate-Justice David
-Brewer of that court, were named. The fifth member of the tribunal
-named by these four was Frederic de Martens, the Russian jurist, who
-became president of the tribunal.
-
-The tribunal assembled in Paris on January 25, 1899. After various
-and necessary adjournments, it began the formal consideration of the
-case on June 15. After seven weeks of painstaking toil, in which the
-story of Spain’s earliest search for the gold of the West, the terms
-of the treaty of Münster, the law and practice of nations in respect
-to discovery, occupation, and settlement, and an intolerable mass and
-multitude of documentary and legal details pertaining to each and all
-of these matters, had been minutely examined and expounded for the
-information, but certainly not the edification, of the five learned
-jurists sitting in judgment in the case, the evidence of nervous strain
-and irritation to which I have referred in the beginning of this
-article was apparent. On the forty-seventh day Sir Richard Webster
-sarcastically invited the attention of ex-President Harrison to certain
-comments of Sir Travers Twiss on the Oregon case. “I had read Twiss on
-the Oregon case through long before I had the privilege of seeing you,”
-replied Mr. Harrison. “This investigation has been long and wearisome,”
-said General Tracy, but he reminded the tribunal that it involved the
-“investigation of four hundred years of history.” And on the fiftieth
-day Mr. Harrison, in closing his argument, said: “Counsel who addresses
-this tribunal comes to his work in a frame of weariness of mind and
-body, and he addresses judges who are weary.”
-
-It was on the fifty-sixth day that the tribunal announced its award.
-The true divisional line, as determined by the unanimous decision of
-the five jurists, gave sanction, as has been said, to the extreme
-pretensions of neither party. A large area west of the Essequibo River,
-to which Venezuela, without warrant, had laid claim, was held to be
-British territory; but, on the other hand, valuable tracts within the
-Schomburgk Line were awarded to Venezuela, the most important being the
-region of which the coast-line runs from Barima Point, at the mouth
-of the Orinoco, to Point Playa. The confirmation of the title to this
-territory, as to which Great Britain had firmly refused arbitration,
-gave Venezuela exclusive control of the mouth of her great river and
-of both its banks. The vast area, including the rich gold-mines, which
-Great Britain had belted about by the audacious westward extension of
-her claims, went altogether to Venezuela.
-
-[Illustration: From London “Punch” for December 28, 1895
-
-“THE COMPLIMENTS OF THE SEASON!!”
-
-~President Cleveland~: “Waal, Salisbury, sir, whether you like it or
-not, we propose to arbitrate on this matter ourselves, and, in that
-event, we shall abide by our own decision.”
-
-    “An inquiry [as to the true divisional line between the Republic
-    of Venezuela and British Guiana] should, of course, be conducted
-    carefully and judicially.... When report is made [by a Commission
-    appointed by Congress] and accepted, it will, in my opinion, be
-    the duty of the United States to resist by every means in its
-    power, as a willful aggression upon its rights and interests, the
-    appropriation by Great Britain of any lands, [etc., etc.,] ...
-    which after investigation we have determined of right to belong
-    to Venezuela.”--_President Cleveland’s message to Congress, vide
-    “Time’s,” December 18._
-]
-
-Of the whole territory in dispute, far the larger portion went to
-Great Britain, and some few persons who uttered cries of distress
-over the message of December 17 counted this as a rebuke and rebuff
-for President Cleveland. That was the very hardihood of perversity in
-taking a false view. Mr. Cleveland had declared that our Government was
-“without any convictions as to the final merits of the dispute.” The
-supreme, the vital point is that in the award of the Paris tribunal,
-accepted by both parties, law triumphed over force. The boundary line
-was traced, and titles with which Great Britain had vested herself by
-her own acts, heedless of the protests of Venezuela and rejecting her
-and our appeals for adjudication, were passed upon by an impartial
-arbitral tribunal according to evidence and the principles of public
-law. Whoever gained, whoever lost, that was quite immaterial from
-our point of view. The process of territorial expansion by stealthy
-encroachment, by unwarranted shifting of boundaries, and the alteration
-of maps and statistics, was at an end. The sovereignty of the lawful
-owner replaced that of the squatter. Venezuela was delivered from
-duress and from peril, no longer was her soil or her destiny under
-the menace of foreign control, and the situation created by the
-attempt of a power over the sea to extend the European system within
-this hemisphere, which Monroe declared to be dangerous to our peace
-and safety, and against which Mr. Cleveland had invoked the Monroe
-Doctrine, no longer existed. Mr. Cleveland had triumphed, the Monroe
-Doctrine had triumphed, peace had triumphed. General Harrison and Sir
-Richard Webster parted with expressions of mutual esteem, and the
-report of the proceedings of the Paris tribunal, in eleven folio parts,
-now on the shelves of the New York Public Library, was presented by the
-Marquis of Salisbury, while to Mr. Richard Olney was tendered not long
-ago the appointment as Ambassador at the Court of St. James’s.
-
-The consequences of this successful and momentous assertion of the
-Monroe Doctrine may now be traced. Three times within the century of
-its declaration the doctrine was firmly asserted and maintained by the
-United States as the public system of the Western World, for it may
-with entire propriety be called our public system, as the concert of
-Europe is the public system of that continent. First, when President
-Monroe proclaimed it as a warning to the Holy Alliance, plotting the
-restoration to Spain of her revolted colonies in Latin America. Second,
-when Secretary Seward’s repeated protests against the establishment of
-an empire and an emperor, the Austrian Maximilian, in Mexico against
-the will of the people by French arms, were ominously reinforced by
-the despatch of General Sheridan to the banks of the Rio Grande with
-80,000 disciplined and experienced troops, freed from active service
-by the ending of the war between the States, the French evacuation
-of Mexico speedily following. The absence of any mention of the
-Monroe Doctrine in Secretary Seward’s correspondence in respect to
-the French adventurer in Mexico is without significance. The spirit
-and the principle of Monroe’s declaration were the declared motives
-of his action. Third, when President Cleveland, by virtue of the
-doctrine, “intended to apply to every stage of our National life,”
-constrained England to submit her boundary dispute with Venezuela
-to a judicial settlement. The next application of the doctrine, the
-fourth in this series, all of primary importance, fell within the
-present century, when the substitution of the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty
-for the Clayton-Bulwer convention of half a century earlier dissolved
-our partnership with Great Britain in an agreement to extend a joint
-protectorship over any transportation route across the isthmus, and so
-cleared the way for the building and exclusive control by ourselves of
-the Panama Canal.
-
-The Clayton-Bulwer Treaty was never popular in this country. It
-was entered into at a time, in 1850, when the discovery of gold
-in California, and the consequent tide of travel to the land of
-easily acquired riches, brought into view the need for facilities of
-transportation across the isthmus; and also, it should be said, when
-the responsible statesmen of the Nation were perhaps less mindful than
-at any other time since Monroe’s administration of the import and
-the saving force of the doctrine that bears his name. Nevertheless,
-the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty itself, after a fashion, a most illogical
-and inconsistent fashion, was on our part an attempt to apply the
-prohibitions of the doctrine against European colonization in this
-hemisphere. Great Britain was encroaching upon the territory of Central
-American States, and she stood in the way of the building of the canal.
-We negotiated the treaty to free ourselves from this embarrassment, and
-by that singular bargain, through the waiver of a right, we secured the
-recognition of a right; that is, we persuaded Great Britain to assent
-to Monroe Doctrine principles in Central America at the price of
-taking her as a partner in any undertaking for a transportation route
-across the isthmus, which was in itself contrary to the spirit of the
-doctrine.
-
-The treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, ending our war with Mexico, was
-signed February 2, 1848. By its terms Mexico ceded to us the territory
-now included within the borders of the States of California, Nevada,
-Utah, Arizona, and parts of Colorado and New Mexico. Great Britain
-strenuously opposed the cession to us of any territory on the Pacific
-coast. Failing to control the acts of Mexico in that respect, she took
-measures in her own way to offset our great territorial gain. Six days
-after signing the treaty she despatched her fleet from Vera Cruz to
-the coast of Nicaragua, and forcibly took possession of San Juan at
-the mouth of the river of that name. She set up a governor, erected
-fortifications, and changed the name of the place to Greytown. This
-gave her command of the only canal route then under consideration, for
-it was at a much later time that the Panama route came to the fore
-as more practicable. The seizure of San Juan was a move so plainly
-hostile to our interests that our Government at once sent a diplomatic
-representative to Nicaragua, and a treaty known as the Hise Treaty was
-negotiated in June, 1849, by which Nicaragua granted to the United
-States “the exclusive right and privilege” of constructing a canal or
-railway between the two oceans across Nicaraguan territory. This treaty
-was not sent to the Senate and was never ratified by either country.
-
-The occupation of San Juan, or Greytown, by the British, and their
-proceedings upon the Mosquito Coast of Nicaragua, where they had set up
-a trumpery Indian king, and by virtue of a “treaty” with him assumed
-a protectorate over the region, were a cause of growing uneasiness
-at Washington. In pursuance of her age-long policy of insuring her
-domination of the seas by occupying strategic points giving control of
-great routes of navigation, Great Britain had with a cool disregard of
-our rights and interests seized upon vantage-ground in Central America
-that would make her mistress of interoceanic communication. Holding
-Greytown, she was in complete control of any Nicaraguan canal, for the
-only practicable route was that which would make Lake Nicaragua and
-the San Juan River a part of the canal. Thus, upon the one hand, our
-freedom of action in respect to a canal was hampered, and, upon the
-other, England, notwithstanding her many excuses and protestations to
-the contrary, was manifestly establishing a colony in Central America.
-
-With a view to the removal of these sources of embarrassment and of
-difference between the two countries, Mr. Clayton, Secretary of State,
-pressed Great Britain to withdraw her pretensions to dominion over the
-Mosquito Coast. Her reply was a refusal, but an intimation was given
-that the British Government would be willing to enter into a treaty
-for a joint protectorate over the proposed canal. This was the germ of
-the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, negotiated at Washington between Secretary
-of State Clayton and Sir Henry Bulwer, the British minister, and
-signed April 19, 1850. Article I of the treaty, here subjoined, is a
-declaratory and self-denying ordinance:
-
-    The Governments of the United States and Great Britain hereby
-    declare that neither the one nor the other will ever obtain or
-    maintain for itself any exclusive control over the said ship
-    canal; agreeing that neither will ever erect or maintain any
-    fortifications commanding the same or in the vicinity thereof, or
-    occupy, or fortify, or colonize, or assume, or exercise any domain
-    over Nicaragua, Costa Rica, the Mosquito Coast, or any part of
-    Central America; nor will either make use of any protection which
-    either affords or may afford, or any alliance which either has
-    or may have to or with any State or people, for the purpose of
-    erecting or maintaining any such fortifications, or of occupying,
-    fortifying, or colonizing Nicaragua, Costa Rica, the Mosquito
-    Coast, or any part of Central America, or of assuming or exercising
-    dominion over the same; nor will the United States or Great Britain
-    take advantage of any intimacy, or use any alliance, connection,
-    or influence that either may possess with any State or Government
-    through whose territory the said canal may pass, for the purpose of
-    acquiring or holding, directly or indirectly, for the citizens or
-    subjects of the one, any rights or advantages in regard to commerce
-    or navigation through the said canal which shall not be offered on
-    the same terms to the citizens or subjects of the other.
-
-These stipulations applied only to a canal route across Nicaragua in
-Central America, not to Panama. But we carried our spirit of complacent
-self-denial to a further and extraordinary length in article VIII. The
-first clause of that article is here quoted:
-
-    The Governments of the United States and Great Britain having not
-    only desired, in entering into this convention, to accomplish a
-    particular object, but also to establish a general principle, they
-    hereby agree to extend their protection, by treaty stipulations, to
-    any other practicable communications, whether by canal or railway,
-    across the isthmus which connects North and South America, and
-    especially to the interoceanic communications, should the same
-    prove to be practicable, whether by canal or railway, which are now
-    proposed to be established by the way of Tehuantepec or Panama.
-
-James Buchanan, then our Minister to England, in a memorandum for
-Lord Clarendon, written on January 6, 1854, referring to the relation
-of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty to the Monroe Doctrine, said that while
-that doctrine would be maintained whenever the peace and safety of the
-United States made it necessary, “yet to have acted upon it in Central
-America might have brought us into collision with Great Britain, an
-event always to be deplored, and if possible avoided”; therefore
-these “dangerous questions” were settled by a resort to friendly
-negotiations. In view of the flimsy nature of Great Britain’s asserted
-rights in Central America, and of the manifest unfriendliness of the
-motives that had prompted her to plant her flag, her colonies, and her
-forts in the pathway of communication between our Atlantic and Pacific
-coasts, it must be said that Mr. Buchanan’s memorandum could not easily
-have been outdone in politeness. The sounder opinion, the opinion which
-the country has held and acted upon, is expressed by Francis Wharton in
-that edition of the “Digest of International Law of the United States”
-which he edited:
-
-    For Great Britain to assume in whole or in part a protectorate
-    of the Isthmus or of an interoceanic canal, viewing the term
-    protectorate in the sense in which she viewed it in respect to
-    the Belise and the Mosquito country, would be to antagonize the
-    Monroe Doctrine; and for the United States to unite with her in
-    such a protectorship would be to connive at such antagonism. The
-    Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, if it were to be construed so as to put
-    the Isthmus under the joint protectorate of Great Britain and the
-    United States, would not only conflict with the Monroe Doctrine,
-    by introducing a European Power in the management of the affairs
-    of this continent, but it would be a gross departure from those
-    traditions, consecrated by the highest authorities to which we
-    can appeal, by which we are forbidden to enter into “entangling
-    alliances” with European Powers. No “alliance” could be more
-    “entangling” than one with Great Britain to control not only
-    the Isthmus, but the interoceanic trade of this continent. No
-    introduction of a foreign Power could be more fatal to the policy
-    of Mr. Monroe, by which America was to be prevented from being the
-    theatre of new European domination, than that which would give to
-    Great Britain a joint control of the continent in one of its most
-    vital interests.
-
-The appearance of Ferdinand de Lesseps upon the isthmus and the
-public discussion of his canal project brought the possibilities of
-foreign control plainly into view, and public opinion in this country
-ripened into form and expression. “The policy of this country,” said
-President Hayes in his message to Congress on March 8, 1880, “is a
-canal under American control. The United States cannot consent to the
-surrender of this control to any European Power or to any combination
-of European Powers. If existing treaties between the United States
-and other nations, or if the rights of sovereignty or property of
-other nations stand in the way of this policy--a contingency which is
-not apprehended--suitable steps should be taken by just and liberal
-negotiations to promote and establish the American policy.” And
-Secretary Blaine in 1881 instructed Minister Lowell to let it be known
-that in the opinion of the President our treaty of 1846 guaranteeing to
-New Granada, afterward the United States of Colombia, the protection
-of the projected canal across the Isthmus of Panama, did not require
-reinforcement or assent from any other Power; and that any attempt to
-supersede it by an agreement between European Powers would “partake
-of the nature of an alliance against the United States, and would be
-regarded by this Government as an indication of an unfriendly feeling.”
-
-[Illustration: From London “Punch” for October 11, 1899
-
-PEACE AND PLENTY
-
-~Lord Salisbury~ (chuckling): “I like arbitration--in the _proper
-place_!”]
-
-In a further instruction to Mr. Lowell, on November 19, 1881, Secretary
-Blaine stated at length the reasons for holding that the Clayton-Bulwer
-Treaty had become obsolete, or at least inapplicable to the conditions
-existing thirty years after its ratification, and he expressed the hope
-of the President that Great Britain would consent to such modifications
-as would remove every obstacle to our fortification and holding
-political control of the canal “in conjunction with the country in
-which it is located.”
-
-President Cleveland, in his first administration, did not approve
-the policy of exclusive American ownership, control, and guaranty,
-favoring rather a neutralized canal “open to all nations and subject
-to the ambitions and warlike necessities of none.” But Mr. Gresham,
-Secretary of State in Mr. Cleveland’s second term, expressed the “deep
-conviction” of our Government that the canal should be constructed
-“under distinctively American auspices.” Secretary Olney, who succeeded
-Mr. Gresham, in a memorable communication rejected the argument
-frequently heard, that the treaty had been abrogated by Great Britain’s
-persistent violation of the provision relating to her Mosquito Coast
-colony, and recorded the conclusion that if the treaty has now
-become inapplicable or injurious, the true remedy was “a direct and
-straightforward application to Great Britain for a reconsideration of
-the whole matter.”
-
-Thus, in the slow process of time public opinion was prepared and
-the way cleared for the ending of a joint protectorate agreement
-with Great Britain by the substitution of the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty
-for the convention negotiated fifty years before between Mr. Clayton
-and Sir Henry Bulwer. The time for action had now come. The French
-company was bankrupt, the commercial demand for a canal had become
-more pressing, and the voyage of the _Oregon_ from the Pacific coast
-around Cape Horn to take her place with the blockading squadron that
-encircled the harbor entrance at Santiago de Cuba brought vividly
-to the minds of the American people the vital need of a canal as a
-measure of national defense. Commissions were studying routes and
-making estimates of cost. There could no longer be any doubt that the
-two oceans were to be connected, and with all possible speed, by a
-navigable way. There was an obstacle--the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty. If
-we built a Nicaragua canal, we must forego “any exclusive control,”
-and we must submit to the engagements of article V, that the United
-States and Great Britain jointly will “protect it from interruption,
-seizure, or unjust confiscation, and that they will guarantee the
-neutrality thereof.” We must observe the further stipulation of article
-VI, requiring us to join Great Britain in inviting other nations to
-enter into the arrangement for the construction, control, and guaranty
-of this American canal. If we chose to build at Panama, we were bound
-by article VIII to make a new treaty with Great Britain for a joint
-protectorate over that route.
-
-Never for a day after President Cleveland’s Venezuela message would the
-American people have been in a mood to sanction any canal undertaking
-under these vexatious and impossible conditions. We were quite done
-with the idea of a joint protectorate over an isthmian canal. The
-resolve had been taken to build a canal, and the conclusion reached
-that it must be a canal of our own construction and under our exclusive
-control.
-
-Most fortunately, we found the Government of Great Britain in an
-assenting mood. Indeed, the contrast between the rasping quality
-of Lord Salisbury’s notes declining arbitration of the Venezuela
-boundary dispute and the candid, placable tone of Lord Lansdowne’s
-correspondence in the negotiations that led to the superseding of
-the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty by the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty silenced, if
-it did not shame, those half-hearted Americans who had denounced Mr.
-Cleveland’s memorable message of December 17 as “the crime of the
-century” and a menace to the friendly relations between ourselves
-and our kinsmen of England. Following President McKinley’s message
-of December, 1898, in which he pointed out that the prospective
-expansion of American commerce and influence in the Pacific called more
-imperatively than ever for the control of the projected canal by the
-United States, Lord Pauncefote was instructed to acquaint himself with
-our attitude. He was informed that we desired at once to enter upon
-the necessary pourparlers, with a view to such modifications of the
-Clayton-Bulwer Treaty as would remove all obstacles to our construction
-of the canal, which it was evident would not be undertaken by private
-capital. To this her Majesty’s Government assented, and a draft of the
-proposed convention was handed to Lord Pauncefote by Secretary Hay on
-January 11, 1899. This convention her Majesty’s Government, after due
-consideration, “accepted unconditionally as a signal proof,” said Lord
-Lansdowne, “of their friendly disposition and of their desire not to
-impede the execution of a project declared to be of National importance
-to the people of the United States.”
-
-This was the first form of the Hay-Pauncefote convention, signed at
-Washington in February, 1900. Consideration by the Senate followed, but
-it was not ratified until December 20 of that year, and then with three
-amendments which proved to be unacceptable to Great Britain. As to the
-first of these amendments, declaring the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty to be
-“hereby superseded,” Lord Lansdowne, in his memorandum of August 3,
-1901, objected that no attempt had been made to ascertain the views of
-his Government upon the entire abrogation of the former treaty, which
-dealt with several matters for which no provision had been made in the
-new instrument; and with rather startling frankness he pointed out that
-if the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty were wholly abrogated, “both Powers would,
-except in the vicinity of the canal, recover entire freedom of action
-in Central America, a change which might be of substantial importance.”
-That was enough to make the Senate open its eyes, for it was not
-exactly the purpose of our Government to confer upon Great Britain
-entire freedom of action in Central America.
-
-The statesmanship and the diplomacy of John Hay found a way to
-reconcile these divergences and bring the negotiations to a successful
-end. He submitted a new draft of the treaty, providing by a separate
-article that the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty should be superseded, a method
-of accomplishing that important object more acceptable to Great
-Britain than procedure by Senate amendment. Lord Lansdowne’s comment
-upon this article of the draft was that “the purpose to abrogate the
-Clayton-Bulwer convention is not, I think, inadmissible if it can be
-shown that sufficient provision is made in the new treaty for such
-portions of the convention as ought, in the interests of this country,
-to remain in force.” The victory for American control and for the
-Monroe Doctrine was won. From that point the negotiations proceeded
-smoothly. Lord Lansdowne suggested the article, accepted by Secretary
-Hay, providing that the general principle of the treaty should not be
-affected by any change of sovereignty over the territory traversed by
-the canal. The question of our right to take measures for the defense
-of the canal presented no great difficulty.
-
-To the first of the rules for the neutralization of the canal, as it
-appeared in Mr. Hay’s draft, Lord Lansdowne suggested an amendment
-which served to bring into the clear light of day both our purpose
-to secure exclusively American control over the canal, and Great
-Britain’s willingness to consent thereto. After the words “the canal
-shall be free and open to the vessels of commerce and of war of all
-nations,” his lordship proposed to add, “which shall agree to observe
-these rules,” and further on the words “so agreeing” after the clause
-declaring that there should be “no discrimination against any nation,”
-and so forth. To this, Mr. Hay informed him, there would be opposition
-“because of the strong objection to inviting other Powers to become
-contract parties to a treaty affecting the canal”; and he suggested as
-a substitute for Lord Lansdowne’s amendment “the canal shall be free
-and open to the vessels of commerce and of war of all nations observing
-these rules,” and instead of “any nations so agreeing” the words “any
-such nation.” The difference was vital, for all connotation of inviting
-formal agreements with other nations disappeared. Lord Lansdowne at
-once accepted this form of the amendment, which he wrote “seemed to us
-equally efficacious for the purpose which we had in view, namely, to
-insure that Great Britain should not be placed in a less advantageous
-position than other Powers, while they stopped short of conferring upon
-other nations a contractual right to the use of the canal.”
-
-The minds of the two governments had now met. The amendments proposed
-on each site, with the modifications noted, were agreed upon. The
-treaty was reduced to final form, engrossed for signature, and on
-November 19, 1901, Lord Pauncefote had the honor to inform the Marquis
-of Lansdowne that on the preceding day he had visited the State
-Department and had “signed the new treaty for the construction of an
-interoceanic canal.” The Senate ratified the treaty on December 16
-following.
-
-Venezuela had opened the way for Panama. The hand withdrawn from broad
-areas east of the Orinoco had relinquished its lawful rights under the
-canal partnership, and in both cases at our instance. In the one, Lord
-Salisbury’s noble British contempt of our demands and our doctrine
-forced us into an unaccustomed attitude of firmness. In the other,
-the Marquis of Lansdowne’s open-minded, amicable, and statesmanlike
-disposition favored our interest, and left us free to give to the
-commerce of the world a channel of communication that had been the
-dream of centuries. We had expressly set up the principle of the
-Monroe Doctrine as the warrant of our interference for the protection
-of Venezuela, and Great Britain gave heed by submitting to impartial
-examination titles she had insisted upon enforcing as though they were
-beyond dispute. Ill-judged concessions contrary to the spirit of the
-Monroe Doctrine, made in the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, we recalled by
-a substitute agreement with Great Britain which left us with a free
-hand for the construction and control of the canal as an exclusively
-American work. The vitality, the continuing and constant applicability,
-of the Monroe Doctrine at every stage of our National existence, as Mr.
-Cleveland put it, could hardly be more conclusively demonstrated than
-by the record of the American Government’s part in bringing about the
-agreement to arbitrate the Venezuela boundary dispute, and in replacing
-the outworn Clayton-Bulwer convention by the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty.
-
-  [7] ~The Century Magazine~, July, 1901.
-
-
-
-
-“THE OREGON MUDDLE”
-
-A CURIOUS PHASE OF THE HAYES-TILDEN CONTROVERSY
-
-BY VICTOR ROSEWATER
-
-Editor of “The Omaha Daily Bee”
-
-
-I have been intensely interested in the articles appearing in ~The
-Century~ for May and June upon the Presidential election of 1876.
-While I could have no part in, nor recollection of, that controversy,
-acquaintance with two of the prominent figures in it some time ago led
-me to look into one phase of the question, and the facts concerning
-it brought out by the congressional investigation, which seem to me
-to bear vitally upon this discussion, though they have been entirely
-ignored. I refer to what was known as “the Oregon muddle,” being the
-attempt of the Democrats to secure one of the electoral votes of Oregon
-for Tilden, who had plainly no moral right to it.
-
-At the November election the lowest vote polled by a Republican
-Presidential elector in Oregon was 15,206, while the highest vote
-polled by a Democratic elector was only 14,157. After the returns were
-in, and it was discovered that the electoral college was to be so close
-that one or two votes might turn it one way or another, the Democrats
-ascertained that one of the Republican electors in Oregon was a deputy
-postmaster, and they at once set up the claim that he was ineligible,
-and that, as a consequence, the Democrat receiving the highest vote was
-entitled to serve.
-
-At that time Oregon was under Democratic control, had a Democratic
-governor, Democratic state officers, and one of the United States
-senators was a Democrat high in the national councils. Before he
-realized what was at stake, E. A. Cronin, the high man on the
-Democratic ticket, had announced publicly that he admitted his defeat,
-and that he would not serve even if he were declared to be elected and
-offered a certificate, something to that effect having been rumored as
-coming from the Democratic state officials.
-
-It was at this point that the managers of the Tilden campaign in New
-York came to the conclusion that something had to be done and done at
-once. A telegram was sent to Dr. George L. Miller at Omaha, then a
-member of the Democratic national committee and editor of the Omaha
-“Herald,” requesting him to proceed at once to Portland and get in
-touch with the party representatives there. Dr. Miller, it seemed, had
-already acted on his own account, and had despatched in his stead a
-close, personal friend, and active Democrat, J. N. H. Patrick, also of
-Omaha, who had mining interests in Utah, and who was acquainted in the
-far West.
-
-According to the testimony adduced in the congressional investigation,
-which embodies as documentary evidence copies of all the telegraphic
-messages that passed to and fro in connection with the case, Patrick
-reached Portland in the latter part of November, and immediately called
-upon C. B. Bellinger, the chairman of the Democratic state committee
-for Oregon. According to Bellinger, Patrick informed him who he was and
-the object of his visit, and, as a result of the conference, promised
-to secure $10,000 to be placed at his disposal to pay the expenses of
-the contest. Cronin was sent for, and introduced to Patrick, who told
-him how important it was for him to serve, and intimated that if his
-vote should make Mr. Tilden President, he would be able to get about
-anything he wanted from Mr. Tilden. Three thousand dollars of the money
-transmitted to Oregon through Patrick’s agency was used to retain a
-firm of Republican lawyers to argue before the governor the question
-of issuing the certificate to Cronin, the selection of the particular
-firm, however, being guided by the fact that the senior partner was
-also the editor of the Portland “Oregonian,” with the hope that it
-would be induced “not to be too severe in criticizing” the Democratic
-machinations.
-
-Mr. Patrick evidently communicated with the governor at some time,
-because he telegraphed to Mr. Tilden, under date of December 1, a
-cipher translation of the following message:
-
-    December 1, 1876.
-
-    To Hon. Sam. J. Tilden,
-    15 Gramercy Park, New York City.
-
-    I shall decide every point in the case of post-office elector in
-    favor of the highest Democratic elector, and grant certificate
-    accordingly on the morning of the sixth inst. Confidential.
-
-    ~Governor.~
-
-In the investigation Governor Grover denied having sent this telegram
-or ever having seen it, but the fact stared every one in the face that
-just six days later Governor Grover did exactly what the telegram said
-he would do. The telegram was in the handwriting of Mr. Patrick.
-
-The other message upon which great stress was laid is reproduced in
-facsimile in the official report, and reads as follows:
-
-    Portland, November 28, 1876.
-
-    To W. T. Pelton,
-    15 Gramercy Park, New York City.
-
-    By Vizier association innocuous to negligence cunning minutely
-    previously readmit doltish to purchase afar act with cunning afar
-    sacristy unweighed afar pointer tigress cuttle superannuated
-    syllabus dilatoriness misapprehension contraband Kountze bisulcous
-    top usher spiniferous answer.
-
-    ~J. N. H. Patrick.~
-
-    I fully endorse this.
-
-    ~James K. Kelly.~
-
-The explanation of this conglomeration of words is perhaps best had by
-quoting directly from the congressional report:
-
-    It appears from the testimony of Alfred B. Hinman of Detroit,
-    Michigan, that in 1874, he, Hinman, made the acquaintance of J. N.
-    H. Patrick at Salt Lake City; that he there entered into business
-    relations with him in connection with mining interests in Utah;
-    that at the time Mr. Patrick gave him a small dictionary entitled
-    “The Household English Dictionary, London. T. Nelson & Sons, Pater
-    Noster Row, Edinburgh and New York, 1872,” to be used by them as
-    cipher in their business dispatches. That this dictionary, which
-    was produced by the witness, Hinman, had two columns of words on
-    each page; that the key to this cipher as used by Patrick and the
-    witness, Hinman, was as follows: In sending a dispatch the first
-    word of which in translation would, for instance be “every,” the
-    word directly opposite this in the next column would be taken as
-    the cipher; and so on through the whole dispatch.
-
-It was, however, shown that the cipher-despatches in this case could
-not be translated from the dictionary by adopting the key of taking the
-corresponding word on the opposite column, but in every instance they
-could be translated from the dictionary by taking the corresponding
-word in the columns eight columns ahead. It further appeared from the
-testimony, and no attempt was made to impeach it, or the translation
-made in this way, or to contradict the claim that all these
-cipher-despatches were sent by this dictionary or its duplicate in
-accordance with the key as above stated,--and, besides, Pelton, Kelly,
-Bellinger, and Miller all testified that the despatches were made up
-from a dictionary cipher,--that the translation of the despatch just
-quoted is as follows:
-
-    Portland, November 28, 1876.
-
-    To W. T. Pelton,
-    15 Gramercy Park, New York City.
-
-    Certificate will be issued to one democrat. Must purchase a
-    republican elector to recognize and act with democrats and secure
-    the vote and prevent trouble. Deposit $10,000 to my credit with
-    Kountze Brothers, Wall street. Answer.
-
-    ~J. N. H. Patrick.~
-
-    I fully endorse this.
-
-    ~James K. Kelly.~
-
-Mr. Patrick, after having concluded his arrangements with the local
-representatives of the party in Oregon, and having provided the money
-necessary for them to carry out the agreed plan, seems to have dropped
-out of the negotiations.
-
-Governor Grover, as promised, decided the contest against the
-Republican elector, and in conjunction with the secretary of state
-had the certificate of election made out for the two uncontested
-Republicans and Cronin, the Democrat. These certificates were made out
-in triplicate, and were all delivered to Cronin, copies being refused
-the Republican electors. When the time came for the electoral college
-to meet and vote, the three Republicans got together, the contested
-member, Watts, having in the interval resigned his post-office
-position, and, after declaring the vacancy, reappointed Watts, who
-was then eligible to serve as elector, the three casting the vote for
-Rutherford B. Hayes.
-
-Cronin and the crowd of Democrats who had assembled simultaneously
-moved over to the other end of the room, and under pretense that the
-Republicans refused to act with him, Cronin called in another Democrat,
-a man named Miller, and went through the form of appointing him to fill
-a vacancy, the two together following this up by appointing a third
-Democrat, Parker, to fill up the college, although neither of these two
-were candidates or were voted for at the election.
-
-The three Democrats thereupon formally organized and proceeded to cast
-a ballot giving two votes to Rutherford B. Hayes, and one to Samuel J.
-Tilden. They made up the forms certifying to these facts, and appointed
-Cronin to carry the documents to Washington.
-
-The disinterestedness of Cronin was further evinced by the fact that,
-although he was entitled to draw mileage and expenses as messenger,
-he refused to go until he was paid $3000 in gold by the Democratic
-campaign managers to reimburse him for his time and expenses, the money
-being part of that supplied from the national committee at New York
-under the arrangements made by Mr. Patrick.
-
-“The Oregon muddle” furnished one of the disputed points passed upon by
-the electoral commission, and the three votes of Oregon were finally
-recorded for the Republican candidate who was later installed as
-President.
-
-Mr. J. N. H. Patrick died here about eight years ago. Dr. George L.
-Miller is still alive, but his now failing mind will prevent him
-throwing further light on the subject. The point which, in my judgment,
-ought to be emphasized, is that if the Democrats in charge of Mr.
-Tilden’s political fortunes at that time believed that he had carried,
-and was entitled to, the votes of Florida and Louisiana, they would not
-have set so high a value upon, or have gone to so questionable lengths
-to obtain, this lone electoral vote in Oregon; nor have they accused
-the Republicans of doing anything reprehensible on behalf of Hayes
-which by the record was not matched by their performance in Oregon.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-[Illustration: Color-Tone, engraved for ~The Century~ by H. Davidson
-
-LOUISE
-
-FROM THE TINTED MARBLE BUST BY EVELYN BEATRICE LONGMAN]
-
-
-
-
-[Illustration]
-
-T. TEMBAROM
-
-BY FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT
-
-Author of “That Lass o’ Lowrie’s,” “The Shuttle,” etc.
-
-WITH DECORATIVE PICTURES BY CHARLES S. CHAPMAN
-
-
-CHAPTER XXVI
-
-The neighborhood of Temple Barholm was not, upon the whole, a brilliant
-one. Indeed, it had been frankly designated by the casual guest as dull.
-
-Most of the residents took their sober season in London, the men of the
-family returning gladly to the pheasants, the women not regretfully
-to their gardens and tennis, because their successes in town had not
-been particularly delirious. The guests who came to them were generally
-as respectable and law-abiding as themselves, and introduced no
-iconoclastic diversions. For the greater portion of the year, in fact,
-diners out were of the neighborhood and met the neighborhood, and were
-reduced to discussing neighborhood topics, which was not, on the whole,
-a fevered joy.
-
-In such circumstances it cannot be found amazing that a situation such
-as Temple Barholm presented should provide rich food for conversation,
-supposition, argument, and humorous comment.
-
-T. Tembarom himself, after the duke had established him, furnished an
-unlimited source of interest. His household became a perennial fount of
-quiet discussion. Lady Mallowe and her daughter were the members of it
-who met with the most attention. They appeared to have become members
-of it rather than visitors. Her ladyship had plainly elected to extend
-her stay even beyond the period to which a relative might feel entitled
-to hospitality. She was not going away, the neighborhood decided, until
-she had achieved that which she really had come to accomplish. Lady
-Joan would be obliged to stay also, if her mother intended that she
-should. But the poor American--What was he going to do in the end? What
-was she going to do? What was Lady Mallowe going to do if there was no
-end at all? He was not as unhappy-looking a lover as one might have
-expected, they said. He kept up his spirits wonderfully. Perhaps she
-was not always as icily indifferent to him as she chose to appear in
-public.
-
-So they talked it over as they looked on.
-
-“How they gossip! How delightfully they gossip!” said the duke. “But it
-is such a perfect subject. They have never been so enthralled before.
-Dear young man! how grateful we ought to be for him!”
-
-One of the most discussed features of the case was the duke’s own
-cultivation of the central figure. There was an actual oddity about
-it. He drove from Stone Hover to Temple Barholm repeatedly. He invited
-Tembarom to the castle and had long talks with him--long, comfortable
-talks in secluded, delightful rooms or under great trees on the lawn.
-He wanted to hear anecdotes of his past, to draw him on to giving his
-points of view. When he spoke of him to his daughters, he called him
-“T. Tembarom,” but the slight derision of his earlier tone modified
-itself.
-
-“That delightful young man will shortly become my closest intimate,” he
-said. “He not only keeps up my spirits, but he opens up vistas. Vistas
-after a man’s seventy-second birthday!”
-
-“I like him first rate,” Tembarom said to Miss Alicia. “I liked him the
-minute he got up laughing like an old sport when he fell out of the
-pony carriage.”
-
-As he became more intimate with him, he liked him still better.
-Obscured though it was by airy, elderly persiflage, he began to come
-upon a background of stability and points of view wholly to be relied
-on in his new acquaintance. It had evolved itself out of long and
-varied experience with the aid of brilliant mentality. The old peer’s
-reasons were always logical. He laughed at most things, but at a few he
-did not laugh at all. After several of the long conversations Tembarom
-began to say to himself that this seemed like a man you need not be
-afraid to talk things over with--things you didn’t want to speak of to
-everybody.
-
-“Seems to me,” he said thoughtfully to Miss Alicia, “he’s an old
-fellow you could tie to. I’ve got on to one thing when I’ve listened
-to him: he talks all he wants to and laughs a lot, but he never gives
-himself away. He wouldn’t give another fellow away either if he said he
-wouldn’t. He knows how not to.”
-
-There was an afternoon on which, during a drive they took together, the
-duke was enlightened as to several points which had given him cause for
-reflection, among others the story beloved of Captain Palliser and his
-audiences.
-
-“I guess you’ve known a good many women,” T. Tembarom remarked on this
-occasion after a few minutes of thought. “Living all over the world as
-you’ve done, you’d be likely to come across a whole raft of them one
-time and another.”
-
-“A whole raft of them, one time and another,” agreed the duke. “Yes.”
-
-“You’ve liked them, haven’t you?”
-
-“Immensely. Sometimes a trifle disastrously. Find me a more absolutely
-interesting object in the universe than a woman--any woman, and I
-will devote the remainder of my declining years to the study of it,”
-answered his grace.
-
-He said it with a decision which made T. Tembarom turn to look at him,
-and after his look decide to proceed.
-
-“Have you ever known a bit of a slim thing”--he made an odd embracing
-gesture with his arm--“the size that you could pick up with one
-hand and set on your knee as if she was a child”--the duke remained
-still, knowing this was only the beginning, and pricking up his ears
-as he took a rapid kaleidoscopic view of all the “Ladies” in the
-neighborhood, and as hastily waved them aside--“a bit of a thing that
-some way seems to mean it _all_ to you--and _moves_ the world?” The
-conclusion was one which brought the incongruous touch of maturity into
-his face.
-
-“Not one of the ‘Ladies,’” the duke was mentally summing the matter
-up. “Certainly not Lady Joan, after all. Not, I think, even the young
-person in the department store.”
-
-He leaned back in his corner the better to inspect his companion
-directly.
-
-“You have, I see,” he replied quietly. “Once I myself did.” He had
-cried out, “Ah! Heloïse!” though he had laughed at himself when he
-seemed facing his ridiculous tragedy.
-
-“Yes,” confessed T. Tembarom. “I met her at the boarding-house where I
-lived. Her father was a Lancashire man and an inventor. I guess you’ve
-heard of him; his name is Joseph Hutchinson.”
-
-The whole country had heard of him; more countries, indeed, than one
-had heard. He was the man who was going to make his fortune in America
-because T. Tembarom had stood by him in his extremity. He would make a
-fortune in America and another in England and possibly several others
-on the Continent. He had learned to read in the village school, and the
-girl was his daughter.
-
-“Yes,” replied the duke.
-
-“I don’t know whether the one you knew had that quiet little way of
-seeing right straight into a thing, and making you see it, too,” said
-Tembarom.
-
-“She had,” answered the duke, and an odd expression wavered in his
-eyes because he was looking backward across forty years which seemed a
-hundred.
-
-“That’s what I meant by moving the world,” T. Tembarom went on. “You
-know she’s _right_, and you’ve got to do what she says, if you love
-her.”
-
-“And you always do,” said the duke--“always and forever. There are very
-few. They are the elect.”
-
-T. Tembarom took it gravely.
-
-“I said to her once that there wasn’t more than one of her in the world
-because there couldn’t be enough to make two of that kind. I wasn’t
-joshing either; I meant it. It’s her quiet little voice and her quiet,
-babyfied eyes that get you where you can’t move. And it’s something
-else you don’t know anything about. It’s her never doing anything for
-herself, but just doing it because it’s the right thing for you.”
-
-The duke’s chin had sunk a little on his breast, and looking back
-across the hundred years, he forgot for a moment where he was.
-
-“Ah! Heloïse!” he sighed unconsciously.
-
-“What did you say?” asked T. Tembarom. The duke came back.
-
-“I was thinking of the time when I was nine and twenty,” he answered.
-“It was not yesterday nor even the day before. The one I knew died when
-she was twenty-four.”
-
-“Died!” said Tembarom. “Good Lord!” He dropped his head and even
-changed color. “A fellow can’t get on to a thing like that. It seems as
-if it couldn’t happen. Suppose--” he caught his breath hard and then
-pulled himself up--“Nothing could happen to her before she knew that
-I’ve proved what I said--just proved it, and done every single thing
-she told me to do!”
-
-“I am sure you have,” the duke said.
-
-“It’s because of that I began to say this.” Tembarom spoke hurriedly
-that he might thrust away the sudden dark thought. “You’re a man, and
-I’m a man; far away ahead of me as you are, you’re a man, too. I was
-crazy to get her to marry me and come here with me, and she wouldn’t.”
-
-The duke’s eyes lighted anew.
-
-“She had her reasons,” he said.
-
-“She laid ’em out as if she’d been my mother instead of a little
-red-headed angel. She didn’t waste a word,--just told me what I was up
-against. She’d lived in the village with her grandmother, and she knew.
-She said I’d got to come and find out for myself what no one else could
-teach me. She told me about the kind of girls I’d see--beauties that
-were different from anything I’d ever seen before. And it was up to me
-to see all of them--the best of them.”
-
-“Ladies?” interjected the duke, gently.
-
-“Yes. With titles like those in novels, she said, and clothes like the
-‘Woman’s Pictorial.’ The kind of girls, she said, that would make her
-look like a housemaid. Housemaid be darned!” he exclaimed, suddenly
-growing hot. “I’ve seen the whole lot of them, I’ve done my darndest to
-get next, and there’s not one--” he stopped short. “Why should any of
-them look at me, anyhow?” he added suddenly.
-
-“That was not her point,” remarked the duke. “She wanted you to look at
-them, and you have looked.” T. Tembarom’s eagerness was inspiring to
-behold.
-
-“I have, haven’t I?” he cried. “That was what I wanted to ask you. I’ve
-done as she said. I haven’t shirked a thing. I’ve followed them around
-when I knew they hadn’t any use on earth for me. Some of them have
-handed me the lemon pretty straight. Why shouldn’t they? But I don’t
-believe she knew how tough it might be for a fellow sometimes.”
-
-“No, she did not,” the duke said.
-
-To his hearer Palliser’s story became an amusing thing, read in the
-light of this most delicious frankness. It was Palliser himself who
-had played the fool, and not T. Tembarom, who had simply known what
-he wanted, and had, with businesslike directness, applied himself to
-finding a method of obtaining it. The young women he gave his time to
-must be “Ladies” because Miss Hutchinson had required it from him. The
-female flower of the noble houses had been passed in review before
-him to practise upon, so to speak. The handsomer they were, the more
-dangerously charming, the better Miss Hutchinson would be pleased. And
-he had been regarded as a presumptuous aspirant! It was a situation for
-a comedy. But the “Ladies” would not enjoy it if they were told. It was
-also not the Duke of Stone who would tell them.
-
-In courts he had learned to wear a composed countenance when he was
-prompted to smile, and he wore one now. He enjoyed the society of T.
-Tembarom increasingly every hour. He provided him with every joy.
-
-Their drive was a long one, and they talked a good deal. They talked
-of the Hutchinsons, of the invention, of the business “deals” Tembarom
-had entered into at the outset, and of their tremendously encouraging
-result. It was not mere rumor that Hutchinson would end by being a
-rich man. The girl would be an heiress. How complex her position would
-be! And being of the elect who unknowingly bear with them the power
-that “moves the world,” how would she affect Temple Barholm and its
-surrounding neighborhood?
-
-“I wish to God she was here now!” exclaimed Tembarom, suddenly.
-“There’s times when you want a little thing like that just to talk
-things over with, just to ask, because you--you’re dead sure she’d
-never lose her head and give herself away without knowing she was doing
-it. It’s the keeping your mouth shut that’s so hard for most people,
-the not saying a darned thing, whatever happens, till just the right
-time.”
-
-“Women cannot often do it,” said the duke. “Very few men can.”
-
-“You’re right,” Tembarom answered, and there was a trifle of anxiety
-in his tone. “There’s women, just the best kind, that you daren’t tell
-a big thing to. Not that they’d mean to give it away,--perhaps they
-wouldn’t know when they did it,--but they’d feel so anxious they’d
-get--they’d get--”
-
-“Rattled,” put in the duke, and knew of whom he was thinking. He saw
-Miss Alicia’s delicate, timid face as he spoke.
-
-T. Tembarom laughed.
-
-“That’s just it,” he answered. “They wouldn’t go back on you for
-worlds, but--well, you have to be careful with them.”
-
-“He’s got something on his mind,” mentally commented the duke. “He is
-wondering if he will tell it to me.”
-
-“And there’s times when you’d give half you’ve got to be able to talk
-a thing out and put it up to some one else for a while. I could do it
-with her. That’s why I said I wish to God that she was here.”
-
-“You have learned to know how to keep still,” the duke said. “So have
-I. We learned it in different schools, but we have both learned.”
-
-As he was saying the words, he thought he was going to hear something
-when he had finished saying them; he knew that he would without a
-doubt. T. Tembarom made a quick move in his seat; he lost a shade of
-color and cleared his throat as he bent forward, casting a glance at
-the backs of the coachman and footman on the high seat above them.
-
-“Can these fellows hear me?” he asked.
-
-“No,” the duke answered; “if you speak as you are speaking now.”
-
-“You are the biggest man about here,” the young man went on. “You
-stand for everything that English people care for, and you were born
-knowing all the things I don’t. I’ve been carrying a big load for quite
-a while, and I guess I’m not big enough to handle it alone, perhaps.
-Anyhow, I want to be sure I’m not making fool mistakes. The worst of it
-is that I’ve got to keep still if I’m right, and I’ve got to keep still
-if I’m wrong. I’ve got to keep still, anyhow.”
-
-“I learned to hold my tongue in places where, if I had not held it, I
-might have plunged nations into bloodshed,” the duke said. “Tell me all
-you choose.”
-
-As a result of which, by the time their drive had ended and they
-returned to Stone Hover, he had told him, and the duke sat in his
-corner of the carriage with an unusual light in his eyes and a flush of
-somewhat excited color on his cheek.
-
-“You’re a queer fellow, T. Tembarom,” he said, when they parted in
-the drawing-room after taking tea. “You exhilarate me. You make me
-laugh. If I were an emotional person, you would at moments make me
-cry. There’s an affecting uprightness about you. You’re rather a fine
-fellow too, ’pon my life.” Putting a waxen, gout-knuckled old hand on
-his shoulder, and giving him a friendly push which was half a pat, he
-added, “You are, by God!”
-
-After his guest had left him, the duke stood for some minutes gazing
-into the fire with a complicated smile and the air of a man who finds
-himself quaintly enriched.
-
-“I have had ambitions in the course of my existence--several of them,”
-he said, “but even in over-vaulting moments never have I aspired to
-such an altitude as this--to be, as it were, part of a melodrama. One
-feels that one scarcely deserves it.”
-
-
-CHAPTER XXVII
-
-“Mr. Temple Barholm seems in better spirits,” Lady Mallowe said to
-Captain Palliser as they walked on the terrace in the starlit dusk
-after dinner.
-
-Captain Palliser took his cigar from his mouth and looked at the
-glowing end of it.
-
-“He mayn’t exactly like all this, but he’s getting something out of it.”
-
-“He is not getting much of what he evidently wants most. I am out of
-all patience,” said Lady Mallowe. “Joan treads him in the mire and
-sails about professing to be conducting herself flawlessly. She is too
-clever for me,” she added with bitterness.
-
-Palliser laughed softly and said:
-
-“She has got something up her sleeve, and so has he.”
-
-“He!” Lady Mallowe quite ejaculated the word. “She always has. That’s
-her abominable secretive way. But he! T. Tembarom with something up his
-sleeve! One can’t imagine it.”
-
-“Almost everybody has. I found that out long years ago,” said Palliser,
-looking at his cigar end again as if consulting it. “Since I arrived
-at the conclusion, I always take it for granted, and look out for it.
-I’ve become rather clever in following such things up, and I have taken
-an unusual interest in T. Tembarom from the first.”
-
-Lady Mallowe turned her handsome face, much softened by an enwreathing
-gauze scarf, toward him anxiously.
-
-“Do you think his depression, or whatever it is, means Joan?” she asked.
-
-“If he is depressed by her, you need not be discouraged,” smiled
-Palliser. “The time to lose hope would be when, despite her
-ingenuities, he became entirely cheerful. But,” he added after a pause,
-“I have an idea there is some other little thing.”
-
-“Do you suppose that some young woman he has left behind in New York
-is demanding her rights?” said Lady Mallowe, with annoyance. “That is
-exactly the kind of thing Joan would like to hear, and so entirely
-natural. Some shop-girl or other.”
-
-“Quite natural, as you say; but he would scarcely be running up to
-London and consulting Scotland Yard about her,” Palliser answered.
-
-“Scotland Yard!” ejaculated his companion.
-
-“Scotland Yard has also come to him,” he went on. “Did you chance to
-see a red-faced person who spent a morning with him last week?”
-
-“He looked like a butcher, and I thought he might be one of his
-friends,” Lady Mallowe said.
-
-“I recognized the man. He is an extremely clever detective, much
-respected for his resources in the matter of following clues which are
-so attenuated as to be scarcely clues at all.”
-
-“Clues have no connection with Joan,” said Lady Mallowe, still more
-annoyed. “All London knows her miserable story.”
-
-“Have you--” Captain Palliser’s tone was thoughtful--“has any one ever
-seen Strangeways?”
-
-“No. Can you imagine anything more absurdly romantic? A creature
-without a memory, shut up in a remote wing of a place like this, as if
-he were the Man with the Iron Mask. Romance is not quite compatible
-with T. Tembarom.”
-
-“He leaves everything to one’s imagination,” remarked Palliser. “All
-one knows is that he isn’t a relative; that he isn’t mad, but only
-too nervous to see or be seen. Queer situation. I’ve found there is
-always a reason for things; the queerer they are, the more sure it is
-that there’s a reason. What is the reason Strangeways is kept here, and
-where would a detective come in? Just on general principles I’m rather
-going into the situation. There’s a reason, and it would be amusing to
-find it out. Don’t you think so?”
-
-[Illustration]
-
-He spoke casually, and Lady Mallowe’s answer was casual, though she
-knew from experience that he was not as casual as he chose to seem. He
-was clever; and Temple Barholm as the estate of a distant relative and
-T. Tembarom as its owner were not assets to deal with indifferently.
-
-“It’s quite natural that you should feel an interest,” she answered.
-“But the romantic stranger is too romantic, though I will own Scotland
-Yard is a little odd.”
-
-“Yes, that is exactly what I thought,” said Palliser.
-
-He had in fact thought a good deal and followed the thing up a good
-deal in a quiet amateur way, though with annoyingly little result.
-Occasionally he had felt rather a fool for his pains, because he
-had been led to so few facts of importance and had found himself
-so often confronted by T. Tembarom’s entirely frank grin. His own
-mental attitude was not a complex one. Lady Mallowe’s summing up
-had been correct enough on the whole. Temple Barholm ought to be
-a substantial asset, regarded in its connection with its present
-owner. Little dealings in stocks--sometimes rather large ones when
-luck was with him--had brought desirable returns to Captain Palliser
-throughout a number of years. Just now he was taking an interest in
-a somewhat imposing scheme, or what might prove an imposing one if
-it were managed properly and presented to the right persons. If T.
-Tembarom had been sufficiently lured by the spirit of speculation to
-plunge into old Hutchinson’s affair, as he evidently had done, he
-was plainly of the temperament attracted by the game of chance. There
-had been no reason but that of temperament which could have led him
-to invest. He had found himself suddenly a moneyed man and had liked
-the game. Never having so much as heard of Little Ann Hutchinson,
-Captain Palliser not unnaturally argued after this wise. There seemed
-no valid reason why, if a vague invention had allured, a less vague
-scheme, managed in a more businesslike manner, should not. This
-Mexican silver-and-copper-mine was a dazzling thing to talk about.
-He could go into details. He had, in fact, allowed a good deal of
-detail to trail through his conversation at times. It had not been
-difficult to accomplish this in his talks with Lady Mallowe in his
-host’s presence. Lady Mallowe was always ready to talk of mines, gold,
-silver, or copper. It happened at times that one could manage to
-secure a few shares without the actual payment of money. There were
-little hospitalities or social amiabilities now and then which might
-be regarded as value received. So she had made it easy for Captain
-Palliser to talk.
-
-T. Tembarom had at the outset seemed to present, so to speak, no
-surface. Palliser had soon ceased to be at all sure that his social
-ambitions were to be relied on as a lever. Besides which, when the old
-Duke of Stone took delighted possession of him, dined with him, drove
-with him, sat and gossiped with him by the hour, there was not much one
-could do for him. Strangeways had at first meant only eccentricity. The
-veriest chance had led Palliser to find himself regarding the opening
-up of possible vistas.
-
-From a certain window in a certain wing of the house a much-praised
-view was to be seen. Nothing was more natural than that on the occasion
-of a curious sunset Palliser should, in coming from his room, decide to
-take a look at it. As he passed through a corridor Pearson came out of
-a room near him.
-
-“How is Mr. Strangeways to-day?” Palliser asked.
-
-“Not quite so well, I am afraid, sir,” was the answer.
-
-“Sorry to hear it,” replied Palliser, and passed on.
-
-When returning, he walked somewhat slowly down the corridor. As he
-turned into it he thought he heard the murmur of voices. One was that
-of T. Tembarom, and he was evidently using argument. It sounded as if
-he were persuading some one to agree with him, and the persuasion was
-earnest. He was not arguing with Pearson or a housemaid. Why was he
-arguing with his pensioner? His voice was as low as it was eager, and
-the other man’s replies were not to be heard. Only just after Palliser
-had passed the door there broke out an appeal which was a sort of cry.
-
-“No! My God, no! Don’t send me away! Don’t send me away!”
-
-One could not, even if so inclined, stand and listen near a door while
-servants might chance to be wandering about. Palliser went on his way
-with a sense of having been slightly startled.
-
-“He wants to get rid of him, and the fellow is giving him trouble,” he
-said to himself. “That voice is not American. Not in the least.” It set
-him thinking and observing. When Tembarom wore the look which was not a
-look of depression, but of something more puzzling, he thought that he
-could guess at its reason. By the time he talked with Lady Mallowe he
-had gone much further than he chose to let her know.
-
-
-CHAPTER XXVIII
-
-The popularity of Captain Palliser’s story of the “Ladies” had been
-great at the outset, but with the passage of time it had oddly waned.
-That the Duke of Stone had immensely taken up Mr. Temple Barholm had of
-course resulted in his being accepted in such a manner gave him many
-opportunities to encounter one and all. He appeared at dinners, teas,
-and garden parties. Miss Alicia, whom he had in some occult manner
-impressed upon people until they found themselves actually paying a
-sort of court to her, was always his companion.
-
-“One realizes one cannot possibly leave her out of anything,” had
-been said. “He has somehow established her as if she were his mother
-or his aunt--or his interpreter. And such clothes, my dear, one
-doesn’t often behold. Worth and Paquin and Doucet must go sleepless
-for weeks to invent them. They are without a flaw in shade or line
-or texture.” Which was true, because Mrs. Mellish of the Bond Street
-shop had become quite obsessed by her idea and committed extravagances
-Miss Alicia offered up contrite prayers to atone for, while Tembarom,
-simply chortling in his glee, signed checks to pay for their exquisite
-embodiment. That he was not reluctant to avail himself of social
-opportunities was made manifest by the fact that he never refused an
-invitation. He appeared upon any spot to which hospitality bade him,
-and unashamedly placed himself on record as a neophyte upon almost
-all occasions. In a brief period of time, however, every young woman
-who might have expected to find herself an object of such ambitions
-realized that his methods of approach and attack were not marked by the
-usual characteristics of aspirants of his class. He evidently desired
-to see and be seen. He presented himself, as it were, for inspection
-and consideration, but while he was attentive, he did not press
-attentions upon any one. He did not make advances in the ordinary sense
-of the word. He never essayed flattering or even admiring remarks. He
-said queer things at which one often could not help but laugh, but he
-somehow wore no air of saying them with the intention of offering them
-as witticisms which might be regarded as allurements. He did not ogle,
-he did not simper or shuffle about nervously and turn red or pale, as
-eager and awkward youths have a habit of doing under the stress of
-unrequited admiration. He conducted himself with a detached good nature
-which seemed to take but small account of attitudes less unoffending
-than his own.
-
-“He is not in the least forward,” Beatrice Talchester said, the time
-arriving when she and her sisters occasionally talked him over with
-their special friends, the Granthams, “and he is not forever under
-one’s feet, as the pushing sort usually is.”
-
-[Illustration]
-
-“But he never declines an invitation. There is no doubt that he wants
-to see people,” said Lady Honora, with the pretty little nose and the
-dimples. She had ceased to turn up the pretty little nose, and she
-showed a dimple as she added: “Gwynedd is tremendously taken with him.
-She is teaching him to play croquet. They spend hours together.”
-
-“He’s beginning to play a pretty good game,” said Gwynedd. “He’s not
-stupid, at all events.”
-
-“I don’t understand him, or I don’t understand Captain Palliser’s
-story,” Amabel Grantham argued. “Lucy and I are quite out of the
-running, but I honestly believe that he takes as much notice of us as
-he does of any of you.”
-
-“He said, however, that the things that mattered were not only titles,
-but looks. He asked how many of us were ‘lookers.’ Don’t be modest,
-Amabel. Neither you nor Lucy are out of the running,” Beatrice amiably
-suggested.
-
-“There may be a sort of explanation,” Honora put the idea forward
-somewhat thoughtfully. “Captain Palliser insists that he is much
-shrewder than he seems. Perhaps he is cautious, and is looking us all
-over before he commits himself.”
-
-“He is a Temple Barholm, after all,” said Gwynedd, with boldness.
-“He’s rather good-looking. He has the nicest white teeth and the most
-cheering grin I ever saw, and he’s as ‘rich as grease is,’ as I heard a
-housemaid say one day. I’m getting quite resigned to his voice, or it
-is improving, I don’t know which.
-
-“But,” added Lady Gwynedd, “he is not going to commit himself to any of
-us, incredible as it may seem. The one person he stares at sometimes is
-Joan Fayre, and he only looks at her as if he were curious and wouldn’t
-object to finding out why she treats him so outrageously. He isn’t
-annoyed; he’s only curious.”
-
-“He’s a likable thing,” said Amabel Grantham. “He’s even rather a dear.
-I’ve begun to like him myself.”
-
-“I hear you are learning to play croquet,” the Duke of Stone remarked
-to him a day or so later. “How do you like it?”
-
-“Lady Gwynedd Talchester is teaching me,” Tembarom answered. “I’d learn
-to iron shirt-waists if she would give me lessons. She’s one of the two
-that have dimples,” he added, reflection in his tone. “I guess that’ll
-count. Shouldn’t you think it would?”
-
-“Miss Hutchinson?” queried the duke.
-
-Tembarom nodded.
-
-“Yes, it’s always her,” he answered without a ray of humor. “I just
-want to stack ’em up.”
-
-“You are doing it,” the duke replied with a slightly twisted mouth.
-There were, in fact, moments when he might have fallen into fits of
-laughter while Tembarom was seriousness itself. “I’m doing my stunt, of
-course, but I like them,” said he. “They’re mighty nice to me when you
-consider what they’re up against. And these two with the dimples, Lady
-Gwynedd and Lady Honora, are just peaches.”
-
-They were having one of their odd long talks under a particularly
-splendid copper beech which provided the sheltered out-of-door corner
-his grace liked best. When they took their seats together in this
-retreat, it was mysteriously understood that they were settling
-themselves down to enjoyment of their own, and must not be disturbed.
-
-“What dear papa talks to him about, and what he talks about to dear
-papa,” Lady Celia had more than once murmured in her gently remote,
-high-nosed way, “I cannot possibly imagine. Sometimes when I have
-passed them on my way to the croquet lawn I have really seen them both
-look as absorbed as people in a play. Of course it is very good for
-papa. It has had quite a marked effect on his digestion. But isn’t it
-odd!”
-
-“I wish,” Lady Edith remarked almost wistfully, “that I could get on
-better with him myself conversationally. But I don’t know what to talk
-about, and it makes me nervous.”
-
-Their father, on the contrary, found in him unique resources, and this
-afternoon it occurred to him that he had never so far heard him express
-himself freely on the subject of Palliser. If led to do so, he would
-probably reveal that he had views of Captain Palliser of which he might
-not have been suspected, and the manner in which they would unfold
-themselves would more than probably be illuminating. The duke was, in
-fact, serenely sure that he required neither warning nor advice, and he
-had no intention of offering either. He wanted to hear the views.
-
-“Do you know,” he said as he stirred his tea, “I’ve been thinking about
-Palliser, and it has occurred to me more than once that I should like
-to hear just how he strikes you?”
-
-“What I got on to first was how I struck him,” answered Tembarom, with
-a reasonable air. “That was dead easy.”
-
-There was no hint of any vaunt of superior shrewdness. His was merely
-the level-toned manner of an observer of facts in detail.
-
-“He has given you an opportunity of seeing a good deal of him,” the
-duke added. “What do you gather from him--unless he has made up his
-mind that you shall not gather anything at all?”
-
-“A fellow like that couldn’t fix it that way, however much he wanted
-to,” Tembarom answered again reasonably. “Just his trying to do it
-would give him away.”
-
-“You mean you have gathered things?”
-
-“Oh, I’ve gathered enough, though I didn’t go after it. It hung on the
-bushes. Anyhow, it seemed to me that way. I guess you run up against
-that kind everywhere. There’s stacks of them in New York--different
-shapes and sizes.”
-
-“If you met a man of his particular shape and size in New York, how
-would you describe him?” the duke asked.
-
-“I should never have met him when I was there. He wouldn’t have come
-my way. He’d have been on Wall Street, doing high-class bucket-shop
-business, or he’d have had a swell office selling copper-mines--any old
-kind of mine that’s going to make ten million a minute, the sort of
-deal he’s in now. But I don’t believe you asked me because you thought
-I wasn’t on to him.”
-
-“Frankly speaking, no,” answered the duke. “Does he talk to you about
-the mammoth mines and the rubber forests?”
-
-“Say, that’s where he wins out with me,” Tembarom replied admiringly.
-“He gets in such fine work that I switch him on to it whenever I want
-cheering up. It makes me sort o’ forget things that worry me just to
-see a man act the part right up to the top notch the way he does it.
-The very way his clothes fit, the style he’s got his hair brushed, and
-that swell, careless lounge of his, are half of the make-up. You see,
-most of us couldn’t mistake him for anything else but just what he
-looks like--a gentleman visiting round among his friends and a million
-miles from wanting to butt in with business. The thing that first got
-me interested was watching how he slid in the sort of guff he wanted
-you to get worked up about and think over. Why, if I ’d been what I
-look like to him, he’d have had my pile long ago, and he wouldn’t be
-loafing round here any more.”
-
-“What do you think you look like to him?” his host inquired.
-
-“I look as if I’d eat out of his hand,” Tembarom answered, quite
-unbiased by any touch of wounded vanity. “Why shouldn’t I? And I’m not
-trying to wake him up, either. I like to look that way to him and to
-his sort. It gives me a chance to watch and get wise to things. He’s a
-high-school education in himself. I like to hear him talk. I asked him
-to come and stay at the house so that I could hear him talk.”
-
-“Did he introduce the mammoth mines in his first call?” the duke
-inquired.
-
-“Oh, I don’t mean that kind of talk. I didn’t know how much good I was
-going to get out of him at first. But he was the kind I hadn’t known,
-and it seemed like he was part of the whole thing--like the girls with
-title that Ann said I must get next to. And an easy way of getting next
-to the man kind was to let him come and stay. He wanted to, all right.
-I guess that’s the way he lives when he’s down on his luck, getting
-invited to stay at places. Like Lady Mallowe,” he added, quite without
-prejudice.
-
-“You do sum them up, don’t you?” smiled the duke.
-
-“Well, I don’t see how I could help it,” he said impartially. “They’re
-printed in sixty-four-point black-face, seems to me.”
-
-“What is that?” the duke inquired with interest. He thought it might be
-a new and desirable bit of slang. “I don’t know that one.”
-
-“Biggest type there is,” grinned Tembarom. “It’s the kind that’s used
-for head-lines. That’s newspaper-office talk.”
-
-“Ah, technical, I see. Well, you are not printed in sixty-four-point
-black-face so far as they are concerned. They don’t find themselves
-able to sum you up. That fact is one of my recreations.”
-
-“I’ll tell you why,” Tembarom explained with his clearly unprejudiced
-air. “There’s nothing much about me to sum up, anyhow. I’m too sort of
-plain sailing and ordinary. I’m not making for anywhere they’d think
-I’d want to go. I’m not hiding anything they’d be sure I’d want to
-hide.”
-
-“By the Lord! you’re not!” exclaimed the duke.
-
-“When I first came here, every one of them had a fool idea I’d want
-to pretend I’d never set eyes on a newsboy or a bootblack, and that I
-couldn’t find my way in New York when I got off Fifth Avenue. I used to
-see them thinking they’d got to look as if they believed it, if they
-wanted to keep next. When I just let out and showed I didn’t care a
-darn and hadn’t sense enough to know that it mattered, it nearly made
-them throw a fit. They had to turn round and fix their faces all over
-again and act like it was ‘interesting.’ That’s what Lady Mallowe calls
-it. She says it’s so ‘interesting!’ Now, Palliser--” he paused and
-grinned again.
-
-“Yes, Palliser? Don’t let us neglect Palliser,” his host encouraged him.
-
-“He’s in a worse mix-up than the rest because he’s got more to lose. If
-he could work this mammoth-mine song and dance with the right people,
-there’d be money enough in it to put him on Easy Street. That’s where
-he’s aiming for. The company’s just where it has to have a boost. It’s
-just _got_ to. If it doesn’t, there’ll be a bust up that may end in
-fitting out a high-toned promoter or so in a striped yellow-and-black
-Jersey suit and set him to breaking rocks or playing with oakum. I’ll
-tell you, poor old Palliser gets the Willies sometimes after he’s read
-his mail. He turns the color of écru baby Irish. That’s a kind of lace
-I got a dressmaker to tell me about when I wrote up receptions and
-dances for the Sunday ‘Earth.’ Écru baby Irish--that’s Palliser’s color
-after he read his letters.”
-
-“I dare say the fellow’s in a devil of a mess, if the truth were
-known,” the duke said.
-
-“And here’s ‘T. T.,’ hand-made and hand-painted for the part of the
-kind of sucker he wants.” T. Tembarom’s manner was almost sympathetic
-in its appreciation. “I can tell you I’m having a real good time with
-Palliser. It looked like I’d just dropped from heaven when he first saw
-me. If he’d been the praying kind, I’d have been just the sort he’d
-have prayed for when he said his ‘Now-I-lay-me’s’ before he went to
-bed. There wasn’t a chance in a hundred that I wasn’t a fool that had
-his head swelled so that he’d swallow any darned thing if you handed
-it to him smooth enough. First time he called he asked me a lot of
-questions about New York business. That was pretty smart of him. He
-wanted to find out, sort of careless, how much I knew--or how little.”
-
-The duke was leaning back luxuriously in his chair and gazing at him as
-he might have gazed at the work of an old master of which each line and
-shade was of absorbing interest.
-
-“I can see him,” he said. “I see him.”
-
-“He found out I knew nothing,” Tembarom continued. “And what was to
-hinder him trying to teach me something, by gee! Nothing on top of the
-green earth. I was there, waiting with my mouth open, it seemed like.”
-
-“And he has tried--in his best manner?” said his grace.
-
-“What he hasn’t tried wouldn’t be worth trying,” Tembarom answered
-cheerfully. “Sometimes it seems like a shame to waste it. I’ve got so
-I know how to start him when he doesn’t know I’m doing it. I tell you,
-he’s fine. Gentlemanly--that’s his way, you know. High-toned friend
-that just happens to know of a good thing and thinks enough of you in a
-sort of reserved way to feel like it’s a pity not to give you a chance
-to come in on the ground floor, if you’ve got the sense to see the
-favor he’s friendly enough to do you. It’s such a favor that it’d just
-disgust a man if you could possibly turn it down. But of course you’re
-to take it or leave it. It’s not to his interest to push it. Lord, no!
-Whatever you did, his way is that he’d not condescend to say a darned
-word. High-toned silence, that’s all.”
-
-The Duke of Stone was chuckling very softly. His chuckles rather broke
-his words when he spoke.
-
-“By--by--Jove!” he said. “You--you do see it, don’t you? You do see it.”
-
-“Why,” he said, “it’s what keeps me up. You know a lot more about me
-than any one else does, but there’s a whole raft of things I think
-about that I couldn’t hang round any man’s neck. If I tried to hang
-them round yours, you’d know that I would be having a hell of a time
-here, if I’d let myself think too much. If I didn’t see it, as you call
-it, if I didn’t see so many things, I might begin to get sorry for
-myself.” There was a pause of a second. “Gee!” he said, “gee! this not
-hearing a thing about Ann! I’ve got to keep going to stand it. Well,
-Strangeways gives me some work to do. And I’ve got Palliser. He’s a
-little sunbeam.”
-
-A man-servant approaching to suggest a possible need of hot tea started
-at hearing his grace break into a sudden and plainly involuntary crow
-of glee. He had not heard that one before, either. Palliser as a little
-sunbeam brightening the pathway of T. Tembarom was, in the particular
-existing circumstances, all that could be desired of fine humor. It
-somewhat recalled the situation of the “Ladies” of the noble houses
-of Pevensy, Talchester, and Stone unconsciously passing in review for
-the satisfaction of little Miss Hutchinson. Tembarom laughed a little
-himself, but he went on with seriousness:
-
-“There’s one thing sure enough. I’ve got on to it by listening and
-working out what he would do by what he doesn’t know he says. If he
-could put the screws on me in any way, he wouldn’t hold back. It’d be
-all quite polite and gentlemanly, but he’d do it all the same. And he’s
-dead-sure that everybody’s got something they’d like to hide--or get.
-That’s what he works things out from.”
-
-“Does he think you have something to hide--or get?” the duke inquired,
-quickly.
-
-“He’s sure of it. But he doesn’t know yet whether it’s get or hide. He
-noses about. Pearson’s seen him. He asks questions and plays he ain’t
-doing it and ain’t interested, anyhow.”
-
-“He doesn’t like you, he doesn’t like you,” the duke said rather
-thoughtfully. “He has a way of conveying that you are far more subtle
-than you choose to look. He says an air of entire frankness is one of
-the chief assets of American promoters.”
-
-Tembarom smiled the smile of recognition. “Yes,” he said, “it looks
-like that’s a long way round, doesn’t it? But it’s not far to T. T.
-when you want to hitch on the connection. Anyhow, that’s the way he
-means it to look. If ever I was suspected of being in any mix-up,
-everybody would remember he’d said that.”
-
-“It’s very amusin’,” said the duke.
-
-They had become even greater friends and intimates by this time than
-the already astonished neighborhood suspected them of being. That they
-spent much time together in an amazing degree of familiarity was the
-talk of the country, in fact, one of the most frequent resources of
-conversation. Everybody endeavored to find reason for the situation,
-but none had been presented which seemed of sufficiently logical
-convincingness. The duke was eccentric, of course. That was easy to hit
-upon. He was amiably perverse and good-humoredly cynical. He was of
-course immensely amused by the incongruity of the acquaintance. This
-being the case, why exactly he had never before chosen for himself
-a companion equally out of the picture it was not easy to explain.
-Palliser, it is true, suggested it was Tembarom’s “cheek” which stood
-him in good stead, and his being so entirely a bounder that he did
-not know he was one, and was ready to make an ass of himself to any
-extent. The frankest statement of the situation, if any one had so
-chosen to put it, would have been that he was regarded as a sort of
-court fool without cap or bells.
-
-No one was aware of the odd confidences which passed between the
-weirdly dissimilar pair. No one guessed that the old peer sat and
-listened to stories of a red-headed, slim-bodied girl in a dingy New
-York boarding-house, that he liked them sufficiently to encourage their
-telling, that he had made a mental picture of a certain look in a pair
-of maternally yearning and fearfully convincing round young eyes, that
-he knew the burnished fullness and glow of the red hair until he could
-imagine the feeling of its texture and abundant warmth in the hand.
-And this subject was only one of many. And of others they talked with
-interest, doubt, argument, speculation, holding a living thrill.
-
-The tap of croquet-mallets sounded hollow and clear from the sunken
-lawn below the mass of shrubs between them and the players as the duke
-repeated:
-
-“It’s hugely amusin’,” dropping his “g,” which was not one of his usual
-affectations.
-
-“Confound it!” he said next, wrinkling the thin, fine skin round his
-eyes in a speculative smile, “I wish I had had a son of my own just
-like you.”
-
-All of Tembarom’s white teeth revealed themselves.
-
-“I’d have liked to be in it,” he replied, “but I shouldn’t have been
-like me.”
-
-“Yes, you would.” The duke put the tips of his fingers delicately
-together. “You are of the kind which in all circumstances is like
-itself.” He looked about him, taking in the turreted, majestic age and
-mass of the castle. “You would have been born here. You would have
-learned to ride your pony down the avenue. You would have gone to Eton
-and to Oxford. I don’t think you would have learned much, but you would
-have been decidedly edifying and companionable. You would have had a
-sense of humor which would have made you popular in society and at
-court. A young fellow who makes those people laugh holds success in his
-hand. They want to be made to laugh as much as I do. Good God! how they
-are obliged to be bored and behave decently under it! You would have
-seen and known more things to be humorous about than you know now.”
-
-“Would I have been Lord Temple Temple Barholm or something of that
-sort?” Tembarom asked.
-
-“You would have been the Marquis of Belcarey,” the duke replied,
-looking him over thoughtfully, “and your name would probably have been
-Hugh Lawrence Gilbert Henry Charles Adelbert, or words to that effect.”
-
-“A regular six-shooter,” grinned Tembarom. “I should have liked it
-all right if I hadn’t been born in Brooklyn. But that starts you out
-in a different way. Do you think, if I’d been born the Marquis of
-Bel--what’s his name--I should have been on to Palliser’s little song
-and dance, and had as much fun out of it?”
-
-“On my soul, I believe you would,” the duke answered. “Brooklyn or
-Stone Hover Castle, I’m hanged if you wouldn’t have been _you_.”
-
-
-CHAPTER XXIX
-
-After this came a pause. Each man sat thinking his own thoughts, which,
-while marked with difference in form, were doubtless subtly alike in
-the line they followed. During the silence T. Tembarom looked out at
-the late afternoon shadows lengthening themselves in darkening velvet
-across the lawns.
-
-At last he said:
-
-“I never told you that I’ve been reading some of the ’steen thousand
-books in the library. I started it about a month ago. And somehow
-they’ve got me going.”
-
-“No, you have not mentioned it,” his grace answered, and laughed a
-little. “You frequently fail to mention things. When first we knew each
-other I used to wonder if you were naturally a secretive fellow; but
-you are not. You always have a reason for your silences.”
-
-“It took about ten years to kick that into me--ten good years, I should
-say.”
-
-“I have often thought that if books attracted you the library would
-help you to get through a good many of the hundred and thirty-six
-hours a day you’ve spoken of, and get through them pretty decently,”
-commented the duke.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-“That’s what’s happened,” Tembarom answered. “There’s not so many now.
-I can cut ’em off in chunks.”
-
-“How did it begin?”
-
-He listened with much pleasure while Tembarom told him how it had begun
-and how it had gone on.
-
-“I’d been having a pretty bad time one day. Strangeways had been
-worse--a darned sight worse--just when I thought he was better. I’d
-been trying to help him to think straight; and suddenly I made a break,
-somehow, and must have touched exactly the wrong spring. It seemed as
-if I set him nearly crazy. I had to leave him to Pearson right away.
-Then it poured rain steady for about eight hours, and I couldn’t get
-out and ‘take a walk.’ Then I went wandering into the picture-gallery
-and found Lady Joan there, looking at Miles Hugo. And she ordered me
-out, or blamed near it.”
-
-“You are standing a good deal,” said the duke.
-
-“Yes, I am--but so is she.” He set his hard young jaw, and stared once
-more at the velvet shadows.
-
-“I tell you, for a fellow that knows nothing this novel-reading is an
-easy way of finding out a lot of things,” he resumed. “You find out
-what different kinds of people there are, and what different kinds of
-ways. If you’ve lived in one place, and been up against nothing but
-earning your living, you think that’s all there is of it--that it’s
-the whole thing. But it isn’t, by gee!” His air became thoughtful.
-“I’ve begun to kind of get on to what all this means”--glancing about
-him--“to you people; and how a fellow like T. T. must look to you. I’ve
-always sort of guessed, but reading a few dozen novels has helped me to
-see _why_ it’s that way. I’ve yelled right out laughing over it many
-a time. That fellow called Thackeray--I can’t read his things right
-straight through--but he’s an eye-opener.”
-
-“You have tried nothing _but_ novels?” his enthralled hearer inquired.
-
-“Not yet. I shall come to the others in time. I’m sort of hungry for
-these things about _people_. It’s the ways they’re different that gets
-me going.
-
-“Reading novels put me wise to things in a new way. Lady Joan’s been
-wiping her feet on me _hard_ for a good while, and I sort of made up
-my mind I’d got to let her until I was sure where I was. I won’t say
-I didn’t mind it, but I could stand it. But once when she caught me
-looking at her, the way she looked back at me made me see all of a
-sudden that it would be easier for her if I told her straight that she
-was mistaken.”
-
-“That she is mistaken in thinking--?”
-
-“What she does think. She wouldn’t have thought it if the old lady
-hadn’t been driving her mad by hammering it in. She’d have hated me all
-right, and I don’t blame her when I think of how poor Jem was treated;
-but she wouldn’t have thought that every time I tried to be decent and
-friendly to her I was butting in and making a sick fool of myself.
-She’s got to stay where her mother keeps her, and she’s got to listen
-to her. Oh, hell! She’s got to be told!”
-
-The duke set the tips of his fingers together. “How would you do it?”
-he asked.
-
-“Just straight,” replied T. Tembarom. “There’s no other way.”
-
-From the old worldling broke forth an involuntary low laugh, which was
-a sort of cackle. So this was what was coming.
-
-“I cannot think of any devious method,” he said, “which would make it
-less than a delicate thing to do. A beautiful young woman, whose host
-you are, has flouted you furiously for weeks, under the impression that
-you are offensively in love with her. You propose to tell her that
-her judgment has betrayed her, and that, as you say, ‘There’s nothing
-doing.’”
-
-“Not a darned thing, and never has been,” said T. Tembarom. He looked
-quite grave and not at all embarrassed. He plainly did not see it as a
-situation to be regarded with humor.
-
-“If she will listen--” the duke began.
-
-“Oh, she’ll listen,” put in Tembarom. “I’ll make her.”
-
-His was a self-contradicting countenance, the duke reflected, as he
-took him in with a somewhat long look. One did not usually see a face
-built up of boyishness and maturity, simpleness which was baffling, and
-a good nature which could be hard. At the moment, it was both of these
-last at one and the same time.
-
-“I know something of Lady Joan and I know something of you,” he said,
-“but I don’t exactly foresee what will happen. I will not say that I
-should not like to be present.”
-
-“There’ll be nobody present but just me and her,” Tembarom answered.
-
-
-CHAPTER XXX
-
-The visits of Lady Mallowe and Captain Palliser had had their features.
-Neither of the pair had come to one of the most imposing “places”
-in Lancashire to live a life of hermit-like seclusion and dullness.
-They had arrived with the intention of availing themselves of all
-such opportunities for entertainment as could be guided in their
-direction by the deftness of experience. As a result, there had been
-hospitalities at Temple Barholm such as it had not beheld during the
-last generation at least. T. Tembarom had looked on, an interested
-spectator, as these festivities had been adroitly arranged and managed
-for him. He had not, however, in the least resented acting as a sort of
-figurehead in the position of sponsor and host.
-
-“They think I don’t know I’m not doing it all myself,” was his easy
-mental summing-up. “They’ve got the idea that I’m pleased because I
-believe I’m It. But that’s all to the merry. It’s what I’ve set my mind
-on having going on here, and I couldn’t have started it as well myself.
-I shouldn’t have known how. They’re teaching me. All I hope is that
-Ann’s grandmother is keeping tab.”
-
-“Do you and Rose happen to know old Mrs. Hutchinson?” he had inquired
-of Pearson the night before the talk with the duke.
-
-“Well, not to say exactly _know_ her, sir, but everybody knows _of_
-her,” said Pearson. “She is a most remarkable old person, sir--most
-remarkable.” Then, after watching his face for a moment or so, he added
-tentatively, “Would you perhaps _wish_ us to make her acquaintance
-for--for any reason, sir?”
-
-Tembarom thought the matter over speculatively. He had learned that
-his first liking for Pearson had been founded upon a rock. He was
-always to be trusted to understand, and also to apply a quite unusual
-intelligence to such matters as he became aware of without having been
-told about them.
-
-“What I’d like would be for her to hear that there’s plenty doing at
-Temple Barholm; that people are coming and going all the time; and that
-there’s ladies to burn--and most of them lookers, at that,” was his
-answer.
-
-How Pearson had discovered the exotic subtleties of his master’s
-situation and mental attitude toward it, only those of his class and
-gifted with his occult powers could explain in detail. The fact exists
-that Pearson did know an immense number of things his employer had
-not mentioned to him, and held them locked in his bosom in honored
-security, like a little gentleman. He made his reply with a polite
-conviction which carried weight.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-“It would not be necessary for either Rose or me to make old Mrs.
-Hutchinson’s acquaintance with a view to informing her of anything
-which occurs on the estate or in the village, sir,” he remarked. “Mrs.
-Hutchinson knows more of things than any one ever tells her. She sits
-in her cottage there, and she just _knows_ things and sees through
-people in a way that’d be almost unearthly, if she wasn’t a good old
-person, and so respectable that there’s those that touches their hats
-to her as if she belonged to the gentry. She’s got a blue eye, sir.”
-
-“Has she?” exclaimed Tembarom.
-
-“Yes, sir. As blue as a baby’s, sir, and as clear, though she’s past
-eighty. Oh, sir! you can depend upon old Mrs. Hutchinson as to who’s
-been here, and even what they’ve thought about it. The village just
-flocks to her to tell her the news and get advice about things. She’d
-know.”
-
-It was as a result of this that on his return from Stone Hover he
-dismissed the carriage at the gates and walked through them to make
-a visit in the village. Old Mrs. Hutchinson, sitting knitting in
-her chair behind the abnormally flourishing fuchsias, geraniums,
-and campanula carpaticas in her cottage-window, looked between the
-banked-up flower-pots to see that Mr. Temple Barholm had opened her
-wicket-gate and was walking up the clean-brushed path to her front
-door. When he knocked she called out in the broad Lancashire she had
-always spoken, “Coom in!” When he entered he took off his hat and
-looked at her, friendly but hesitant, and with the expression of a
-young man who has not quite made up his mind as to what he is about to
-encounter.
-
-“I’m Temple Temple Barholm, Mrs. Hutchinson,” he announced.
-
-“I know that,” she answered. “Not that tha looks loike the Temple
-Barholms, but I’ve been watchin’ thee walk an’ drive past here ever
-since tha coom to the place.”
-
-She watched him steadily with an astonishingly limpid pair of old eyes.
-They were old and young at the same time; old because they held deeps
-of wisdom, young because they were so alive and full of question.
-
-“I don’t know whether I ought to have come to see you or not,” he said.
-
-“Well, tha’st coom,” she replied, going on with her knitting. “Sit thee
-doun and have a bit of a chat.”
-
-“Say!” he broke out. “Ain’t you going to shake hands with me?” He held
-his hand out impetuously. He knew he was all right if she’d shake hands.
-
-“Theer’s nowt agen that, surely,” she answered, with a shrewd bit of
-a smile. She gave him her hand. “If I was na stiff in my legs, it’s
-my place to get up an’ mak’ thee a curtsey, but th’ rheumatics has no
-respect even for th’ lord o’ th’ manor.”
-
-“If you got up and made me a curtsey,” Tembarom said, “I should throw a
-fit. Say, Mrs. Hutchinson, I bet you know that as well as I do.”
-
-The shrewd bit of smile lighted her eyes as well as twinkled about her
-mouth.
-
-“Sit thee doun,” she said again.
-
-So he sat down and looked at her as straight as she looked at him.
-
-“Tha’d give a good bit,” she said presently, over her flashing needles,
-“to know how much Little Ann’s tow’d me about thee.”
-
-“I’d give a lot to know how much it’d be square to ask you to tell me
-about _her_,” he gave back to her, hesitating yet eager.
-
-“What does tha mean by square?” she demanded.
-
-“I mean ‘fair.’ Can I talk to you about her at all? I promised I’d
-stick it out here and do as she said. She told me she wasn’t going to
-write to me or let her father write. I’ve promised, and I’m not going
-to fall down when I’ve said a thing. I’m going to be as good as I know
-how.”
-
-“So tha coom to see her grandmother?”
-
-He reddened, but held his head up.
-
-“I’m not going to ask her grandmother a thing she doesn’t want me to
-be told. But I’ve been up against it pretty hard lately. I read some
-things in the New York papers about her father and his invention, and
-about her traveling round with him and helping him with his business.”
-
-“In Germany they wur,” she put in, forgetting herself. “They’re havin’
-big doin’s over th’ invention. What Joe’d do wi’out th’ lass I canna
-tell. She’s doin’ every bit o’ th’ managin’ an’ contrivin’ wi’ them
-furriners--but he’ll never know it.”
-
-Her face flushed and she stopped herself sharply.
-
-“I’m talkin’ about her to thee!” she said. “I would na ha’ believed it
-o’ mysen.”
-
-He got up from his chair.
-
-“I guess I oughtn’t to have come,” he said restlessly. “But you haven’t
-told me more than I got here and there in the papers. That was what
-startled me. It was like watching her. I could hear her talking and
-see the way she was doing things till it drove me half crazy. All of a
-sudden I just got wild and made up my mind I’d come here. I’ve wanted
-to do it many a time, but I’ve kept away.”
-
-“Tha showed sense i’ doin’ that,” remarked Mrs. Hutchinson. “She’d not
-ha’ thowt well o’ thee if tha’d coom runnin’ to her grandmother every
-day or so. What she likes about thee is as she thinks tha’s got a
-strong backbone o’ thy own.
-
-“Happen a look at a lass’s grandmother--when tha canna get at th’ lass
-hersen--is a bit o’ comfort,” she added. “But don’t tha go walkin’ by
-here to look in at th’ window too often. She would na think well o’
-that either.”
-
-“Say! There’s one thing I’m going to get off my chest before I go,” he
-announced, “just one thing. She can go where she likes and do what she
-likes, but I’m going to marry her when she’s done it--unless something
-knocks me on the head and finishes me. I’m going to marry her.”
-
-“Tha art, art tha?” laconically.
-
-“I’m keeping up my end here, and it’s no slouch of a job, but I’m not
-forgetting what she promised for one minute! And I’m not forgetting
-what her promise means,” he said, obstinately.
-
-“Tha’d like me to tell her that?” she said.
-
-“If she doesn’t know it, you telling her wouldn’t cut any ice,” was his
-reply. “I’m saying it because I want you to know it, and because it
-does me good to say it out loud. I’m going to marry her.”
-
-“That’s for her and thee to settle,” she commented impersonally.
-
-“It _is_ settled,” he answered. “There’s no way out of it. Will you
-shake hands with me again before I go?”
-
-“Aye,” she consented, “I will.”
-
-When she took his hand she held it a minute. Her own was warm, and
-there was no limpness about it. The secret which had seemed to conceal
-itself behind her eyes had some difficulty in keeping itself wholly in
-the background.
-
-“She knows aw’ tha does,” she said coolly, as if she were not suddenly
-revealing immensities. “She knows who cooms an’ who goes, an’ what they
-think o’ thee, an’ how tha gets on wi’ ’em. Now get thee gone, lad, an’
-dunnot tha coom back till her or me sends for thee.”
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-~Within~ an hour of this time the afternoon post brought to Lady
-Mallowe a letter which she read with an expression in which her
-daughter recognized relief. It was in fact a letter for which she had
-waited with anxiety, and the invitation it contained was a tribute to
-her social skill at its highest water-mark. In her less heroic moments,
-she had felt doubts of receiving it, which had caused shudders to run
-the entire length of her spine.
-
-“I’m going to Broome Haughton,” she announced to Joan.
-
-“When?” Joan inquired.
-
-“At the end of the week. I am invited for a fortnight.”
-
-“Am I going?” Joan asked.
-
-“No. You will go to London to meet some friends who are coming over
-from Paris.”
-
-Joan knew that comment was unnecessary. Both she and her mother were
-on intimate terms with these hypothetical friends who so frequently
-turned up from Paris or elsewhere when it was necessary that she
-should suddenly go back to London and live in squalid seclusion in the
-unopened house, with a charwoman to provide her with underdone or burnt
-chops, and eggs at eighteen a shilling, while the shutters of the front
-rooms were closed, and dusty desolation reigned.
-
-“If you had conducted yourself sensibly you need not have gone,”
-continued her mother. “I could have made an excuse and left you here.
-You would at least have been sure of good food and decent comforts.”
-
-“After your visit, are we to return here?” was Lady Joan’s sole reply.
-
-“I do not know what will happen when I leave Broome Haughton,” her
-mother added, a note of rasped uncertainty in her voice.
-
-In truth, the future was a hideous thing to contemplate if no rescue
-at all was in sight. It would be worse for her than for Joan, because
-Joan did not care what happened or did not happen, and she cared
-desperately. She knew perfectly well that the girl had somehow found
-out that Sir Moses Monaldini was to be at Broome Haughton, and that
-when he left there he was going abroad. She knew also that she had not
-been able to conceal that his indifference had of late given her some
-ghastly hours, and that her play for this lagging invitation had been a
-frantically bold one. That the most ingenious efforts and devices had
-ended in success only after such delay made it all the more necessary
-that no straw must remain unseized on.
-
-“I can wear some of your things, with a little alteration,” she said.
-“Rose will do it for me. Hats and gloves and ornaments do not require
-altering. I shall need things you will not need in London. Where are
-your keys?”
-
-Lady Joan rose and got them for her. She even flushed slightly. They
-were often obliged to borrow each other’s possessions, but for a moment
-she felt herself moved by a sort of hard pity.
-
-“We are like rats in a trap,” she remarked. “I hope you will get out.”
-
-“If I do, you will be left inside. Get out yourself! Get out yourself!”
-said Lady Mallowe in a fierce whisper.
-
-Her regrets at the necessity of their leaving Temple Barholm were
-expressed with fluent touchingness at the dinner-table. The visit had
-been so delightful. Mr. Temple Barholm and Miss Alicia had been so
-kind. The loveliness of the whole dear place had so embraced them that
-they felt as if they were leaving a home instead of ending a delightful
-visit. It was extraordinary what an effect the house had on one. It
-was as if one had lived in it always--and always would. So few places
-gave one the same feeling. They should both look forward--greedy as it
-seemed--to being allowed some time to come again. She had decided from
-the first that it was not necessary to go to any extreme of caution
-or subtlety with her host and Miss Alicia. Her method of paving the
-way for future visits was perhaps more than a shade too elaborate.
-She felt, however, that it sufficed. For the most part, Lady Joan sat
-with lids dropped over her burning eyes. She tried to force herself
-not to listen. This was the kind of thing which made her sick with
-humiliation. Howsoever rudimentary these people were, they could not
-fail to comprehend that a foothold in the house was being bid for.
-They should at least see that she did not join in the bidding. Her own
-visit had been filled with feelings at war with one another. In the
-long-past three months of happiness, Jem--_her_ Jem--had described the
-house to her--the rooms, gardens, pleached walks, pictures, the very
-furniture itself. She could enter no room, walk in no spot she did not
-seem to know, and passionately love in spite of herself. She loved them
-so much that there were times when she yearned to stay in the place at
-any cost, and others when she could not endure the misery it woke in
-her--the pure misery.
-
-T. Tembarom thought he never had seen Lady Joan look as handsome as
-she looked to-night. The color on her cheek burned, her eyes had a
-driven loneliness in them. She had a wonderfully beautiful mouth, and
-its curve drooped in a new way. He wished Ann could get her in a corner
-and sit down and talk sense to her. He remembered what he had said to
-the duke. Perhaps this was the time. If she was going away, and her
-mother meant to drag her back again when she was ready, it would make
-it easier for her to leave the place knowing she need not hate to come
-back. But the duke wasn’t making any miss hit when he said it wouldn’t
-be easy. She was not like Ann, who would feel some pity for the biggest
-fool on earth if she had to throw him down hard. Lady Joan would feel
-neither compunctions nor relentings. He knew the way she could look at
-a fellow. If he couldn’t make her understand what he was aiming at,
-they would both be worse off than they would be if he left things as
-they were. But--the hard line showed itself about his mouth--he wasn’t
-going to leave things as they were.
-
-As they passed through the hall after dinner, Lady Mallowe glanced at
-a side-table on which lay some letters arrived by the late post. An
-imposing envelop was on the top of the rest. Joan saw her face light as
-she took it up.
-
-“I think this is from Broome Haughton,” she said. “If you will excuse
-me, I will go into the library and read it. It may require answering at
-once.”
-
-She turned hot and cold, poor woman, and went away, so that she might
-be free from the disaster of an audience if anything had gone wrong. It
-would be better to be alone even if things had gone right. The letter
-was from Sir Moses Monaldini.
-
-The men had come into the drawing-room when she returned. As she
-entered, Joan did not glance up from the book she was reading, but at
-the first sound of her voice she knew what the letter meant.
-
-“I was obliged to dash off a note to Broome Haughton so that it would
-be ready for the early post,” Lady Mallowe said. She was at her best.
-Palliser saw that some years had slipped from her shoulders. The moment
-which relieves or even promises to relieve fears does astonishing
-things. Tembarom wondered whether she had had good news. Her brilliant
-air of social ease returned to her, and she began to talk fluently
-of what was being done in London, and to touch lightly upon the
-possibility of taking part in great functions. Persons whose fortunate
-names had ceased to fall easily from her lips appeared again upon the
-horizon. Miss Alicia was impressed anew with the feeling that she had
-known every brilliant or important personage in the big world of social
-London; that she had taken part in every dazzling event. Tembarom
-somehow realized that she had been afraid of something or other, and
-was for some reason not afraid any more. Such a change, whatsoever the
-reason for it, ought to have had some effect on her daughter. Surely
-she would share her luck, if luck had come to her.
-
-But Lady Joan sat apart and kept her eyes upon her book. This was one
-of the things she often chose to do, in spite of her mother’s indignant
-protest.
-
-“I came here because you brought me,” she would answer. “I did not come
-to be entertaining or polite.”
-
-She was not reading this evening. She heard every word of Lady
-Mallowe’s agreeable and slightly excited conversation. She did not know
-exactly what had happened; but she knew that it was something which had
-buoyed her up with a hopefulness which exhilarated her and before her
-own future Joan saw the blank wall of stone building itself higher and
-higher. If Sir Moses had capitulated, she would be counted out. A cruel
-little smile touched her lips, as she reviewed the number of things
-she could _not_ do to earn her living. She could not take in sewing or
-washing, and there was nothing she could teach. Starvation or marriage.
-The wall built itself higher and yet higher. What a hideous thing it
-was for a penniless girl to be brought up merely to be a beauty, and
-in consequence supposably a great lady. And yet if she was born to a
-certain rank and had height and figure, a lovely mouth, a delicate
-nose, unusual eyes and lashes, to train her to be a dressmaker or a
-housemaid would be a stupid investment of capital. If nothing tragic
-interfered and the right man wanted such a girl, she had been trained
-to please him. But tragic things had happened, and before her grew the
-wall while she pretended to read her book.
-
-T. Tembarom was coming toward her. She had heard Palliser suggest a
-game of billiards.
-
-“Will you come and play billiards with us?” Tembarom asked. “Palliser
-says you play splendidly.”
-
-“She plays brilliantly,” put in Lady Mallowe. “Come, Joan.”
-
-“No, thank you,” she answered. “Let me stay here and read.”
-
-Lady Mallowe protested. She tried an air of playful maternal reproach
-because she was in good spirits. Joan saw Palliser smiling quietly, and
-there was that in his smile which suggested to her that he was thinking
-her an obstinate fool.
-
-“You had better show Temple Barholm what you can do,” he remarked.
-“This will be your last chance, as you leave so soon. Never ought you
-let a last chance slip by. I never do.”
-
-Tembarom stood still and looked down at her from his good height. He
-did not know what Palliser’s speech meant, but an instinct made him
-feel that it somehow held an ugly, quiet taunt.
-
-“What I would like to do,” was the unspoken crudity which passed
-through his mind, “would be to swat him on the mouth. He’s getting at
-her just when she ought to be let alone.”
-
-“Would you like it better to stay here and read?” he inquired.
-
-“Much better, if you please,” was her reply.
-
-“Then that goes,” he answered, and left her.
-
-He swept the others out of the room with a good-natured promptness
-which put an end to argument. When he said of anything “Then that
-goes,” it usually did so.
-
-
-CHAPTER XXXI
-
-When she was alone Joan sat and gazed not at her wall but at the
-pictures that came back to her out of a part of her life which seemed
-to have been lived centuries ago. They were the pictures that came
-back continually without being called, the clearness of which always
-startled her afresh. Sometimes she thought they sprang up to add to
-her torment, but sometimes it seemed as if they came to save her from
-herself--her mad, wicked self. After all, there were moments when to
-know that she _had_ been the girl whose eighteen-year-old heart had
-leaped so when she turned and met Jem’s eyes, as he stood gazing at her
-under the beech-tree, was something to cling to. She had been that girl
-and Jem had been--Jem. Her throat strained itself because sobs rose in
-it, and her eyes were hot with the swell of tears.
-
-She could hear voices and laughter and the click of balls from the
-billiard-room. Her mother and Palliser laughed the most, but she knew
-the sound of her mother’s voice would cease soon, because she would
-come back to her. She knew the kind of scene they would pass through
-together when she returned. The old things would be said, the old
-arguments used, but a new one would be added. It was at once horrible
-and ridiculous that she must sit and listen--and stare at the growing
-wall. It was as she caught her breath against the choking swell of
-tears that she heard Lady Mallowe returning. She came in with an
-actual sweep across the room. Her society air had fled, and she was
-unadornedly furious when she stopped before Joan’s chair. For a few
-seconds she actually glared; then she broke forth in a suppressed
-undertone.
-
-“Come into the billiard-room. I command it!”
-
-Joan lifted her eyes from her book. Her voice was as low as her
-mother’s, but steadier.
-
-“No,” she answered.
-
-“Is this conduct to continue? Is it?” Lady Mallowe panted.
-
-“Yes,” said Joan, and laid her book on the table near her. There was
-nothing else to say. Words made things worse.
-
-Lady Mallowe had lost her head, but she still spoke in the suppressed
-voice.
-
-“You _shall_ behave yourself!” she cried, under her breath, and
-actually made a passionate half-start toward her.
-
-“Wouldn’t it be wise to remember that you cannot make the kind of scene
-here that you can in your own house?” said Joan. “We are a bad-tempered
-pair. But when we are guests in other people’s houses--”
-
-“You think you can take advantage of that!” she said. “Don’t trust
-yourself too far. Do you imagine that just when all might go well for
-me I will allow you to spoil everything?”
-
-“How can I spoil everything?”
-
-“By behaving as you have been behaving since we came here--refusing
-to make a home for yourself; by hanging round my neck so that it will
-appear that any one who takes me must take you also. I came in here to
-tell you,” she went on, “that this is your last chance. I shall never
-give you another.”
-
-Joan remained silent, and her silence added to her mother’s helpless
-rage. She moved a step nearer to her and flung the javelin which she
-always knew would strike deep.
-
-“You have made yourself a laughing-stock for all London for years. You
-are mad about a man who disgraced and ruined himself.”
-
-She saw the javelin quiver as it struck; but Joan’s voice as it
-answered her had a quality of low and deadly steadiness.
-
-“You have said that a thousand times, and you will say it another
-thousand--though you know the story was a lie and was proved to be one.”
-
-Lady Mallowe knew her way thoroughly.
-
-“Who remembers the denials? What the world remembers is that Jem Temple
-Barholm was stamped as a cheat and a trickster. No one has time to
-remember the other thing. He is dead--_dead_! When a man’s dead it’s
-too late.”
-
-She was desperate enough to drive her javelin home deeper than she had
-ever chanced to drive it before. The truth--the awful truth she uttered
-shook Joan from head to foot. She sprang up and stood before her in
-heart-wrung fury.
-
-“Oh! You are a hideously cruel woman!” she cried. “They say even tigers
-care for their young! But you--you can say that to _me_. ‘When a man’s
-dead, it’s too late.’”
-
-“It _is_ too late--it _is_ too late!” Lady Mallowe persisted. Why
-had not she struck this note before? It was breaking Joan’s will: “I
-would say anything to bring you to your senses. I came here because
-it _is_ your last chance. Palliser knew what he was saying when he
-made a joke of it just now. He knew it wasn’t a joke. You might have
-been the Duchess of Merthshire; you might have been Lady St. Maur,
-with a husband with millions. And here you are. You know what’s before
-you--when I am out of the trap.”
-
-Joan laughed. It was a wild little laugh, and she felt there was no
-sense in it.
-
-“I might apply for a place in Miss Alicia’s Home for Decayed
-Gentlewomen,” she said.
-
-Lady Mallowe nodded her head fiercely.
-
-“Apply, then. There will be no place for you in the home I am going to
-live in,” she retorted.
-
-Joan ceased moving about. She was about to hear the one argument that
-was new.
-
-“You may as well tell me,” she said wearily.
-
-“I have had a letter from Sir Moses Monaldini. He is to be at Broome
-Haughton. He is going there purposely to meet me. What he writes can
-mean only one thing. He means to ask me to marry him. I’m your mother,
-and I’m nearly twenty years older than you; but you see that I’m out of
-the trap first.”
-
-“I knew you would be,” answered Joan.
-
-“He detests you,” Lady Mallowe went on. “He will not hear of your
-living with us--or even near us. He says you are old enough to take
-care of yourself. Take my advice. I am doing you a good turn in giving
-it. This New York newsboy is mad over you. If he hadn’t been we should
-have been bundled out of the house before this. He never has spoken
-to a lady before in his life, and he feels as if you were a goddess.
-Go into the billiard-room this instant, and do all a woman can. Go!”
-And she actually stamped her foot on the carpet. “You might live in
-the very house you would have lived in with Jem Temple Barholm, on the
-income he could have given you.”
-
-She saw the crassness of her blunder the next moment. If she had had an
-advantage, she had lost it.
-
-Wickedly, without a touch of mirth, Joan laughed in her face.
-
-“Jem’s house and Jem’s money--and the New York newsboy in his shoes,”
-she flung at her. “T. Tembarom to live with until one’s death-bed. T.
-Tembarom!”
-
-Suddenly, something _was_ giving way in her, Lady Mallowe thought
-again. Joan slipped into a chair and dropped her head and hidden face
-on the table.
-
-“Oh! Mother! Mother!” she ended. “Oh! Jem! Jem!”
-
-Was she sobbing or trying to choke sobbing back? There was no time to
-be lost. Her mother had never known a scene to end in this way before.
-
-“Crying!” There was absolute spite in her voice. “That shows you know
-what you are in for, at all events. But I’ve said my last word. What
-does it matter to me, after all? You’re in the trap. I’m not. Get out
-as best you can.”
-
-She turned her back and went out of the room--as she had come into
-it--with a sweep Joan would have smiled at as rather vulgar if she
-had seen it. As a child in the nursery, she had often seen that her
-ladyship was vulgar.
-
-But she did not see the sweep because her face was hidden. Something
-in her had broken this time, as her mother had felt. That bitter,
-sordid truth, driven home as it had been, had done it. Who had time
-to remember denials, or lies proved to be lies? Nobody in the world.
-Who had time to give to the defense of a dead man? There was not
-time enough to give to living ones. It was true--true! When a man is
-dead, it is too late. The wall had built itself until it reached her
-sky; but it was not the wall she bent her head and sobbed over. It
-was that suddenly she had seen again Jem’s face as he had stood with
-slow-growing pallor, and looked round at the ring of eyes which stared
-at him; Jem’s face as he strode by her without a glance and went out
-of the room. She forgot everything else on earth. She forgot where she
-was. She was eighteen again, and she sobbed in her arms as eighteen
-sobs when its heart is torn from it.
-
-“Oh, Jem! Jem!” she cried. “If you were only in the same _world_ with
-me! If you were just in the same _world_!”
-
-She had forgotten all else, indeed. She forgot too long. She did not
-know how long. It seemed that no more than a few minutes had passed
-before she was without warning struck with the shock of feeling that
-some one was in the room with her, standing near her, looking at her.
-She had been mad not to remember that exactly this thing would be
-sure to happen, by some abominable chance. Her movement as she rose
-was almost violent, she could not hold herself still, and her face
-was horribly wet with shameless, unconcealable tears. Shameless she
-felt them--indecent--a sort of nudity of the soul. If it had been a
-servant who had intruded, or if it had been Palliser it would have been
-intolerable enough. But it was T. Tembarom who confronted her with his
-common face, moved mysteriously by some feeling she resented even more
-than she resented his presence. He was too grossly ignorant to know
-that a man of breeding, having entered by chance, would have turned
-and gone away, professing not to have seen. He seemed to think--the
-dolt!--that he must make some apology.
-
-“Say! Lady Joan!” he began. “I beg your pardon. I didn’t mean to butt
-in.”
-
-“Then go away,” she commanded. “Instantly--instantly!”
-
-She knew he must see that she spoke almost through her teeth in her
-effort to control her sobbing breath. But he made no move toward
-leaving her. He even drew nearer, looking at her in a sort of
-meditative, obstinate way.
-
-“N-no,” he replied deliberately. “I guess--I won’t.”
-
-“You won’t?” Lady Joan repeated after him. “Then I will.”
-
-He made a stride forward and laid his hand on her arm.
-
-“No. Not on your life. You won’t, either--if I can help it. And you’re
-going to _let_ me help it.”
-
-Almost any one but herself--any one, at least, who did not resent his
-very existence--would have felt the drop in his voice which suddenly
-struck the note of boyish, friendly appeal in the last sentence.
-“You’re going to _let_ me,” he repeated.
-
-She stood looking down at the daring, unconscious hand on her arm.
-
-“I suppose,” she said, with cutting slowness, “that you do not even
-_know_ that you are insolent. Take your hand away,” in arrogant command.
-
-He removed it with an unabashed half-smile.
-
-“I beg your pardon,” he said. “I didn’t even know I’d put it there. It
-was a break--but I wanted to keep you.”
-
-That he not only wanted to keep her, but intended to do so, was
-apparent. His air was neither rough nor brutal, but he had ingeniously
-placed himself in the outlet between the big table and the way to the
-door, He put his hands in his pockets in his vulgar, unconscious way,
-and watched her.
-
-“Say, Lady Joan!” he broke forth, in the frank outburst of a man who
-wants to get something over. “I should be a fool if I didn’t see that
-you’re up against it--hard! What’s the matter?” His voice dropped again.
-
-There was something in the drop this time which--perhaps because of her
-recent emotion--sounded to her almost as if he were asking the question
-with the protecting sympathy of the tone one would use in speaking to
-a child. How dare he! But it came home to her that Jem had once said
-“What’s the matter?” to her in the same way.
-
-“Do you think it likely that I should confide in you?” she said, and
-inwardly quaked at the memory as she said it.
-
-“No,” he answered, considering the matter gravely. “It’s not
-_likely_--the way things look to you now. But if you knew me better
-perhaps it would be likely.”
-
-“I once explained to you that I do not _intend_ to know you better,”
-she gave answer.
-
-He nodded acquiescently.
-
-“Yes. I got on to that. And it’s because it’s up to me that I came out
-here to tell you something I want you to know before you go away. I’m
-going to confide in _you_.”
-
-“Cannot even _you_ see that I am not in the mood to accept
-confidences?” she exclaimed.
-
-“Yes, I can. But you’re going to accept this one,” steadily. “No,” as
-she made a swift movement, “I’m not going to clear the way till I’ve
-done.”
-
-“I insist!” she cried. “If you were--” He put out his hand, but not to
-touch her.
-
-“I know what you’re going to say. If I were a gentleman--Well, I’m not
-laying any claims to anything--but I’m a sort of a man, anyhow, though
-you mayn’t think it. And you’re going to listen.”
-
-
-(To be continued)
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-RITUAL
-
-BY WILLIAM ROSE BENÉT
-
-
-              Lord God, what may we think of Thee,
-              Save that in stars we drink of Thee,
-  Save that in the abundance of Thy sunlight we have seen
-              Thine excellent intention;
-              And Thy marvelous invention
-  In great and little living things and all the grades between?
-
-              Lord God, what may we say to Thee
-              Who know our hearts give way to Thee
-  Surely at last in secret depths, though protest long denies,
-              And that to live is wonder
-              With worlds above and under
-  Unreached of any mortal heart, blurred to all mortal eyes?
-
-              Lord God, the fitting praise to Thee
-              Rather would seem to raise to Thee
-  Only pure honesty of mind, waiting Thy stalwart will;
-              Like as the hills believe Thee,
-              Like as the seas receive Thee,
-  Like as the trees whose rustlings cease,--who hear Thee and are still!
-
-
-
-
-[Illustration: TOPICS OF THE TIME]
-
-
-THE SPIRIT OF THE CENTURY
-
-“The magazine needs no other aim than to be worthy of the name it
-bears.”
-
-Thus wrote ~The Century’s~ first editor, Dr. J. G. Holland, in the
-first number of this magazine nearly forty-three years ago. He
-referred, of course, to the magazine’s original title, which was
-“Scribner’s Monthly”; but ~The Century’s~ earnest ambition to realize
-the full meaning of its present significant title can find no fitter
-expression. It continues to believe that success will be attained
-only as it becomes really the representative magazine of this new and
-spectacular century of American life.
-
-For the information of many inquiring friends, it seems wise at this
-time to say that there will be no “new” ~Century~ in the sense of a
-changed ~Century~. There can be none. In remaining the “old” ~Century~,
-merely growing with the times, merely holding fast to its historic
-place in the front of progress, this magazine, in these richer days of
-hard thinking and prompt acting and strenuous living, these tumultuous
-days of changing eras, remains by mere definition the organ of what
-is noblest and forwardest in American life. The first editor of this
-magazine stated editorially that it was conducted in “the free spirit
-of modern progress and the broadest literary catholicity.” The fourth
-editor joyfully reaffirms this creed. There can be no simpler and more
-comprehensive statement of this magazine’s present spirit and purposes.
-
-In the twentieth-anniversary number, Richard Watson Gilder, who, on Dr.
-Holland’s death in 1881, succeeded to the editorship, reaffirmed the
-creed in these words:
-
-    If there is any one dominant sentiment which an unprejudiced
-    reviewer would recognize as pervading these forty half-yearly
-    volumes, it is, we think, a sane and earnest Americanism. Along
-    with and part of the American spirit has been the earnest endeavor
-    to do all that such a publication might do to increase the
-    sentiment of union throughout our diverse sisterhood of States--the
-    sentiment of American nationality. It has always been the aim of
-    ~The Century~ not only to be a force in literature and art, but to
-    take a wholesome part in the discussion of great questions; not
-    only to promote good literature and art, but good citizenship.
-
-Allowing for different conditions, Mr. Gilder might have written this
-for to-day.
-
-In the same editorial utterance Mr. Gilder dwelt strongly upon
-“the spirit of experiment” which, he said, had always inspired the
-magazine’s policy. This we take to be merely another phrase for Dr.
-Holland’s “free spirit of modern progress.”
-
-Five years later, on the occasion of our twenty-fifth anniversary, Mr.
-Gilder wrote in these pages:
-
-    During the next ten years there should be in America especially
-    a revival of creative literature. If there is, or should be at
-    any particular time, a lack of energy, or a lack of quantity
-    or quality, in the American literary output, it can be merely
-    temporary; for our condition is full of social, political, and
-    industrial problems; life in the New World is replete with
-    strenuous exertion of every kind, of picturesque contrasts, and of
-    innumerable themes fit to inspire literary art. American life is
-    rich in feeling and action and meaning.
-
-American life is richer many times over in feeling and action, and
-especially in meaning, than when Mr. Gilder penned these words. The
-intervening years have brought to the surface a myriad of surging
-currents of human desire and necessity and passion, then concealed,
-almost unsuspected, below the surface.
-
-It cannot have escaped any reader of ~The Century~ that we are living
-in a period of amazing achievement as well as of portentous social
-development. Yet any worker in the furrows of life may well be pardoned
-for failure to realize the detail and immensity of our achievement.
-Could one devote himself wholly to discovering the facts of modern
-accomplishment, it would take a busy life to get abreast of the mere
-news of it, and to keep there. Ours are times of such variety and
-complexity that none can be expected to grasp much more than the
-technicalities of his own work-bench.
-
-Like most prophesies, Mr. Gilder’s has been only partly fulfilled. Yet
-the eighteen years since he uttered it have proved at least that it
-was true, though its realization has been delayed by the extraordinary
-activity of these later years. The history of all human progress shows
-that the art of any period is, so to speak, the flowering of that
-period. The bloom appears only after stem and stalk have shot to their
-full growth, and leaves have expanded and darkened to their maturity.
-The bubbling sap of Mr. Gilder’s time is showing now in new and
-surprising growth, and our problem to-day is not so much to enjoy the
-flowering literature which he promised as to study and to measure and
-to comprehend as nearly as possible the wealth of scientific and social
-and political and industrial achievement which has amazingly developed.
-
-There is no escaping the fact that civilization, like the river
-tumbling and swirling between two lakes, is passing turbulently from
-the old convention of the last several generations to the unknown,
-almost unguessable convention of the not distant future. The feminist
-movement, the uprising of labor, the surging of innumerable socialistic
-currents, can mean nothing else than the certain readjustment of social
-levels. The demand of the people for the heritage of the bosses is not
-short of revolution. The rebellious din of frantic impressionistic
-groups is nothing if not strenuous protest against a frozen art. The
-changed Sabbath and the tempered sermon mark the coldly critical
-appraisement of religious creeds. And science, meantime, straining and
-sweating under the lash of progress, is passing from wonder unto wonder.
-
-Perhaps Mr. Gilder’s period of literary flowering, though surely
-coming, must be postponed another decade. The need of the moment is to
-discover where we are, what is accomplishing about us. Where have all
-these struggling activities brought us? What have they really done?
-What do they mean? Whither do they tend?
-
-It is time we look this question of the present squarely in the eye,
-in order, if for no other reason, that we may intelligently face
-the future. It is time that, in business phrase, we take account
-of stock. It is time that the chemist, for example, trembling
-over the revelations of his amazing combinations, know that the
-psychologist, too, is excited about the astonishing developments of
-his own laboratory; that the elated conquerors of the air realize the
-achievement of those who plod in the groaning shops of town; that the
-biologist, amazed at his artificial propagation of life, appreciate the
-telegraphic annihilation of space.
-
-Thus only may we wisely choose our steps in these uncertain times,
-remembering that change is not always degeneration; oftener it is
-progress. There are periods when men live literature, not write it,
-and consequently literary barrenness may mean merely lying fallow, and
-still be progress. Especially must we not be too hasty of judgment, for
-while there are times to preach and times to act and times to pronounce
-judgment, there are at long intervals also times, between the passings
-out and the comings in, when it behooves all men to watch and to wait
-and to study the signs. There are abundant reasons to believe that such
-a time is at hand, and ~The Century~, now, as in the past, stands by to
-help.
-
-During the months, perhaps the years, to come, in Dr. Holland’s “free
-spirit of modern progress,” in Mr. Gilder’s “spirit of experiment,” and
-in Mr. Johnson’s spirit of public helpfulness, ~The Century~ will offer
-to its readers a summing-up of the results of this wonderful period,
-and a fair presentation of the changes attendant upon the passing of
-our present order and the establishment of the new.
-
-Not as an advocate shall we present these causes, nor again in protest;
-but in the fair, free, unbiased spirit of investigation. Facts must
-precede opinions. It is poor rowing against the rapids between the
-lakes. Let us study these manifestations fairly and sympathetically
-before we draw conclusions. It will be ~The Century’s~ pleasure and
-public duty to enlist the services of able authorities in every cause,
-and to present each justly from its own point of view.
-
-Such a program will, we feel sure, help materially the cause of human
-progress, because it will help men and women to comprehend life as it
-passes.
-
-As for the rest, we shall conserve the best that ~The Century~ has
-stood for in the past. We shall offer a larger proportion of fiction
-than formerly, and shall bring it as near to truth, and make it
-as interpretative of life, as conditions allow. We shall maintain
-illustration at the highest point modern method will permit. We shall
-cultivate history and poetry and the essay. We shall explore conditions
-at home and abroad. We shall make this magazine, fearlessly and in the
-white light of to-day, as nearly the magazine of the century as courage
-and devotion and eyes that see and minds that shrink not can do.
-
-
-
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-In Lighter Vein
-
-
-WORLD REFORMERS--AND DUSTERS
-
-[Illustration]
-
-Though often entranced by that brilliant group of cosmic
-problem-solvers--Mr. H. G. Wells, Mr. Shaw, Mr. Chesterton, and
-others--I insist on my personal irresponsibility for the state of
-Mankind as a whole. These men are always nursing civilization.
-They regard it as a sort of potted plant which they fear to find
-frost-bitten of a morning. This is especially clear in the latest
-writings of Mr. H. G. Wells, who would tidy up the whole world at once.
-At one swoop he would remove the shirts from our clothes-lines and the
-errors from our minds. The world is too large for his feather duster;
-he had thought to find it a smaller planet that he might have kept at
-least half-way clean. Now see what he has on his hands--everything in
-a mess, Africa backward, China careless, the sex relation by no means
-straightened out, socialism, imperialism, industrialism, planless
-progressivism littering up things, and nobody caring a rap--at times
-it seems to the good housewifely soul almost too much for one person
-to manage. And then that infernal human diversity--slow minds, stupid
-minds, minds made up too soon, or not at all, closed minds, tough
-minds, tender minds--what’s to be done with them? He burns to do
-_something_. At least he says he does.
-
-In one of his books he describes himself in fancy as going about the
-country and, with the keenest joy, spearing Anglican bishops. Though I
-am myself a stranger to the sport, I believe the pleasure of spearing
-bishops is exaggerated. For once begun it must lead logically to a
-daily drudgery of slaughter among the great crowds of folks who are not
-intellectually independent or morally daring--lead, in short, to the
-massacre of those who are not particularly exciting, a large task and
-tedious.
-
-I wonder if we commonplace persons are not right after all in a certain
-instinct of distrust toward these gifted writers. We believe implicitly
-in their fancies and not at all in their facts. We believe in the world
-they have invented and not in the world they have observed; and we
-distrust them utterly as world-pushers. The signs are plain--terribly
-plain sometimes--that it is when they have the smallest notions that
-they say their largest things.
-
-    _The Senior Wrangler._
-
-
-
-
-LADY CLARA VERE DE VERE: _NEW STYLE_
-
-(REFORMER, UPLIFTER, SOCIAL SERVICER AND BELIEVER IN BETTERMENT)
-
-BY ANNE O’HAGAN
-
-WITH A PICTURE BY E. L. BLUMENSCHEIN
-
-[Illustration: LADY CLARA: _NEW STYLE_]
-
-    Lady Clara Vere de Vere,
-      Though, ’neath the Tennysonian frown,
-    You’ve ceased to play at hearts, what need
-      For throwing _all_ the graces down?
-    The quip, the wile, the wingèd smile,
-      Must these in truth be quite retired,
-    Reformer of a thousand ills,
-      O lady with a mission fired?
-
-    Lady Clara Vere de Vere,
-      You cause a tumult in my head.
-    I do not know how many quarts
-      Of coal-tar every year are fed
-    In store-made pies, or what dread dyes
-      Give that bright emerald to canned peas.
-    I do not know the cure for graft,
-      Or juvenile delinquencies;
-    And, oh, my very soul is sick
-      Of these and topics like to these!
-
-    Lady Clara Vere de Vere,
-      On suffragism you’ve a view.
-    You have one on the cost of war,
-      And what the working-girl should do.
-    Your uplift crusade comprehends
-      The stage, the mart, the funeral bier;
-    Your dinner-table talk has grown
-      Statistical and very drear.
-
-    Trust me, Clara Vere de Vere,
-      By yon blue heavens above us bent,
-    The gardener Adam and his wife
-      Yawn at your plans for betterment.
-    We never see such sad ennui
-      Among our hapless human brood
-    As when the ladies’ motto runs:
-      “’Tis fashionable to do good.”
-
-    *       *       *       *       *
-
-    Clara, Clara Vere de Vere,
-      If time hangs heavy on your hands,
-    Are there no suitors at your gates,
-      No squires of dames about your lands?
-    Go, play the game of hearts again,
-      Coquette, and sparkle, languish, glow;
-    Ask pardon of the folk you’ve bored,
-      And let the thousand causes go!
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-[Illustration: Drawn by Reginald Birch
-
-“THE PET HAS BECOME OF MATERIAL AID TO HIM IN HIS WALL STREET WORK”]
-
-
-THE NEWS IN WALL STREET
-
-BY JAMES L. FORD
-
-Author of “The Literary Shop”
-
-WITH PICTURES BY REGINALD BIRCH AND MAY WILSON PRESTON
-
-~Algy Bond~ is one of the brokers who is doing remarkably well in Wall
-Street now. He is widely known as a cotillion leader, as vice-president
-of the Westminster Kennel Club, and as a member of the MacDowell
-Musical Union. He has lately trained Grassmere Dolly--his intelligent
-French poodle--so that the pet has become of material aid to him in his
-Wall Street work.
-
-~Money~ has been easier in Wall Street since the sale of many
-gilt-edged mining and industrial securities brought a number of
-eager home-builders into the market. The new fashion of papering the
-walls of country homes with these beautiful and durable specimens of
-steel-engraving has created a lively demand for the stocks in question.
-
-~The~ opening of the new station of the Herald Ice Fund at the corner
-of Wall and Broad streets created a profound sensation in the financial
-district. The Stock-Exchange closed during the distribution of the
-ice, and many pitiful scenes were enacted as the members of the great
-banking-houses crowded about the wagon and fought for the chilly cubes
-that were handed out to them. An office boy generously shared his piece
-with a bank president. The magnate burst into tears, and promised that
-he would make his benefactor rich by never giving him a tip on the
-stock-market.
-
-~Yeggmen~ entered the office of Bilkheimer Brothers, Bankers and
-Brokers, last Saturday night, and blew open the safe with dynamite.
-When Mr. Abie Bilkheimer, the popular bond specialist, and the head of
-the firm, reached his office on Monday morning, he found a ten-dollar
-bill and a card on which were inscribed a few words of heartfelt
-sympathy from the yeggmen.
-
-~That~ a cat cannot live in a vacuum has been proved by a series of
-recent experiments carried on by the Wall Street Class for Scientific
-Study to which many of the younger brokers belong. It was found that
-the quickest method of killing a cat is to lock it in the vaults of
-that trust company which claims the largest capital and surplus.
-
-~Many~ charitable persons have been in the habit of scattering pennies
-from the gallery of the Stock-Exchange, but this practice has been
-forbidden since Looey Pinchenstein (the organizer of the pool in Rio
-and Hernandez copper) fractured his nose in the scramble. Pennies will
-hereafter be left with the doorman to distribute at the close of the
-day.
-
-~The~ Tribune Fresh Air Fund has received a touching letter from little
-Willie Noodle, inclosing thirty-eight cents--which he had saved in a
-toy bank from his candy money--and expressing the hope that it would
-help to send a poor ticker-tied broker on an outing to the sea-shore.
-
-[Illustration:
-
-    “A POOR TICKER-TIED BROKER”
-
-    Drawn by
-    May Wilson Preston
-]
-
-~The~ other day a gentleman of provincial aspect was found wandering
-on Wall Street in a dazed and feeble condition. Upon being questioned
-as to the nature of his errand there, he announced his intention
-of opening an account with a Wall Street brokerage firm.... When
-the police finally rescued him from the surging mob of brokers, it
-was found that he had suffered severe contusions about the hips and
-breasts. He is at present confined in one of the private wards of the
-observation pavilion.
-
-
-CONTINUED IN THE ADS
-
-A DIRGE INSPIRED BY A REGRETTABLE TENDENCY IN THE PERIODICALS OF OUR DAY
-
-BY SARAH REDINGTON
-
-(With the usual apologies to Swinburne)
-
-    If I wrote sonnets soulful
-      And you wrote ads for beans,
-        And I got in your section
-        ’Twould cause me deep dejection.
-    (My Muse would be so doleful
-      In such unwonted scenes.)
-    If I wrote sonnets soulful,
-      And you wrote ads for beans.
-
-    If you had sung the praises
-      Of soap or safety-pin,
-        And found some high-brow lyric
-        Beside your panegyric,
-    You’d be as mad as blazes
-      To see bards butting in.
-    If you had sung the praises
-      Of soap or safety-pin.
-
-    When, on page eight, perusing
-      “The Baby and the Cop,”
-        Its dénouement I’m bidden
-        To seek, ’mid ads half hidden,
-    I find it hanged confusing
-      And let the Baby drop.
-    When, on page eight perusing
-      “The Baby and the Cop.”
-
-    When one is just deciding
-      To buy a fountain-pen,
-        And in the ads one’s seeking
-        For “Notablot Non-Leaking,”
-    _Who_ wants to be colliding
-      With “Wives of Famous Men”?
-    When one is just deciding
-      To buy a fountain-pen.
-
-    Oh, magazines suggesting
-      A boarding-house ragout,
-        _Why_ mix your tales and ballads
-        With ads of soups and salads?
-    It’s hard enough digesting
-      The awful stuff we do.
-    Oh, magazines suggesting
-      A boarding-house ragout.
-
-
-[Illustration:
-
-    JUMBLE   MRS. RYMBEL  MR. RYMBEL  SYMBOL  RAMBLE  RONDEAU AND RHYME
-  (THE BABY)                                             (THE TWINS)
-
-THE RYMBEL FAMILY. FROM A RECENT PORTRAIT BY OLIVER HERFORD]
-
-
-HOW THE RYMBELS BROKE INTO VERSE
-
-The above portrait is the first authentic likeness of the eccentric
-Rymbels. It portrays them rymbling, _chez eux_. It is, in particular, a
-speaking, not to say a _shouting_, likeness of Mr. Rymbel.
-
-This interesting, demented, and extremely misunderstood verse family
-was first discovered and laid bare to the public by Mr. Herford in the
-August issue of ~The Century~. As a result of his happy discovery, and
-because of his two remarkable rymbels in that issue, he has lately been
-appointed Rymbel Laureate of America. Since their successful début,
-public interest in the Rymbels has increased amazingly. In New York the
-fever is now at its height. Everybody’s rymbling it. Rude, ridiculous,
-and ribald rymbels are arriving by every post.
-
-For those who are not already confirmed rymbelists it may be merciful
-to explain that, roughly speaking, a rymbel is any poem of two, four,
-or six stanzas, preferably of five lines each, in which the ultimate
-word in one verse must inevitably be a miscue for the subject-matter of
-the next. This miscue is due to three things: eccentricity, deafness,
-and dementia, all of them pronounced Rymbel family characteristics.
-
-Whenever Mr. Rymbel embarks on the first verse, Mrs. Rymbel, because
-of her deafness and lightness of mind, seizes on the most unexpected
-meaning embodied in the last word of her husband’s verse, and proceeds
-properly to mangle it in the second, after which the children take up
-the tangled skein, and do a little mangling on their own.
-
-In the masterly canvas at the head of this page, Mr. R. is seen
-inflated with an afflatus and embarking on his first verse. Mrs. R.,
-with a tight hold on the baby, is feverishly awaiting her all important
-cue. Symbol, their beautiful daughter, is the seated lady shown at the
-right of Mr. R. The astute reader will already have guessed, because
-of the prevalence of flowering hay in her hair, that, mentally, Symbol
-is, to put it charitably, only sparking on one cylinder. Ramble, the
-eldest son, has, it will be seen, just rebuked Rondeau and Rhyme, the
-twins, who, after hearing parts of their father’s verse, have turned to
-their mother to mutter: “What’s the matter with his metre-motor, mater?”
-
-Miss Carolyn Wells, who has for years been on the most intimate terms
-with the Rymbels, and who might almost be called a member of the
-family, has preserved, as souvenirs of a boy-and-girl affair with
-Master Ramble, two noteworthy examples of rymbelican verse. In the
-first of these the Rymbels have touchingly voiced their preferences for
-the nobler and loftier bards of our day. It is entitled:
-
-A RYMBEL OF RHYMERS
-
-    Dear Edith Thomas! Oft do I
-      Feel in my heart the call of her.
-    Swift to my book-shelf then I fly,
-    And, hovering ’twixt a laugh and cry,
-      I read and re-read all of her.
-
-    Oliver Herford! How can praise
-      Add aught to his renown?
-    His comic kits, his fetching fays,
-    His books and works and healthful plays,
-      Are known all over town.
-
-    Charles Hanson Towne! his lyrics flow
-      Soft as the dews of Harmon;
-    His tastes are musical, and so
-    To please them he will often go
-      To “Lohengrin” or “Carmen.”
-
-    Bliss Carman all our hearts must win;
-      To higher thought he’d urge us;
-    Divinely tall, divinely thin,
-    Austere of mien, he should have been
-      A beadle or a burgess.
-
-    G. Burgess, Super-Sulphide! yet
-      Perhaps more saint than sinner.
-    His rhymes cavort and pirouette,
-    And as for that mad thing, Vivette,
-      I almost wish I’d been her.
-
-    Oh, Witter Bynner, oftener sound
-      Your note of lyric joys!
-    Come, poets, let us gather round,
-    Lest our brave pipings yet be drowned
-      By some strange foreign Noyes!
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-~Mr. L. Frank Tooker~ of Callao, Peru, insists that the rymbel is
-didactic, and that its highest form is found in Spanish South America,
-where it is used to inculcate the prudence and self-restraint for which
-that region is preëminent. In illustration of this contention, he sends
-this from Callao:
-
-
-THE PRUDENT LOVER
-
-    I think when I behold her face,
-      It is so varee fair,
-    ’Tis best to get acquaint’, you know,
-    And so I gaze _simpatico_:
-      That’s how you call to stare.
-
-    Ah, she was pausing on that stair
-      So timid like the fawn;
-    And fawn-like were her eyes, her lips
-    Were like the flowers the slow bee sips
-      Upon the dewy lawn.
-
-    But, _hola! she_ was not in lawn;
-      For as she turned to go,
-    I saw the pearls glow at her throat,
-    The satin gown about her float,
-      Though timid like the doe.
-
-    _Caramba!_ I have not the dough
-      For such expensiveness.
-    The eyes, the lips, the timid air,
-    That’s varee nice; but, oh, beware
-      That C. O. D. express!
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-Again the low rymbling sound of Miss Carolyn Wells!! This time ART is
-her impassioned theme. She writes from Hansontown, Herfordshire.
-
-
-ON A PORTRAIT OF NANCY
-
-    Full winsome was her bonny face,
-      And eke her golden hair.
-    Her gown was weft of rarest lace;
-    And high aloft, with gentle grace,
-      A sunshade pink she bare.
-
-    The She Bear from the forest came,
-      Just why, I cannot state.
-    The creature seemed to be quite tame;
-    Methought, would I her favor claim,
-      I must ingratiate.
-
-    In gray she ate! The lunch was fair,--
-      We had a window-seat.
-    Her gray gown meek, yet debonair;--
-    Demure,--yet with a regal air,--
-      She looked imperial,--sweet.
-
-    “Imperial suite? Yes,--I dare say
-      ’T would make our voyage gladder.”
-    My wife is mad about display--
-    (But when I mentioned what we’d pay,
-      It only made Rose madder!)
-
-    Rose madder,--’tis the tint I’d use
-      To paint my brain’s fair figment;
-    A shape, half goddess and half muse,
-    And all in misty, pinkish hues,
-      The color scheme,--the pigment.
-
-    The color scheme the pig meant? Ma’am,
-      That _was_ a subtle fancy!
-    In tints of dawning gooseb’ry jam,
-    And those soft pinks of early ham,
-      We painted little Nancy!
-
-
-[Illustration: Drawing by Birch
-
-
-THE “ELITE” BATHING DRESS
-
-_Now so much in vogue at Newport_]
-
-We have been distressed to learn, from our great Metropolitan dailies,
-that the ladies of assured and ultramundane position at Newport have
-recently suffered severely from the unwarrantable intrusion on Bailey’s
-Beach of certain Sunday Supplement sketch artists, society editors,
-female policemen, independent kodakers, and foreign noblemen. As an
-indirect result of these intrusions the “Elite” bathing dress has been
-designed to assuage the sensibilities of the more modest and fastidious
-among the hostesses of Newport. Our illustration shows Mrs. Reginald
-Ochrepoint and Wu, her clever pet, ready for their morning dip.
-
-[Illustration: Drawn by C. F. Peters
-
-FROM GRAVE TO GAY
-
-    ~The Freshman~: “Oh--er--might I be excused from my lectures for a
-    few days? The truth is--er--I want very much to attend the funeral
-    of an old and trusted friend.”
-
-    ~The Dean~: “Well, really, Robinson,--I wonder if that is quite
-    necessary?--Now, if it were your father or your mother, I should,
-    of course, be only _too_ delighted.”
-]
-
-
-THE WISE SAINT
-
-(A FABLE FOR ANYBODY)
-
-BY HERMAN DA COSTA
-
-PICTURE BY W. T. BENDA
-
-[Illustration]
-
-    De debble see St. Peter sneak into heaben’s gate;
-    He holler: “What’s yo’ hurry? Wait dar, Peter! Wait!”
-
-    De saint pull in de latch-string, an’ holler: “Now, you go!
-    I’ll sic de houn’ dawg on you de fustest t’ing you know.”
-
-    “I speaks you like a ge’man,” de debble up an’ say,
-    “And yere you shets me out, sah! Fer shame! to ack dat way!”
-
-    “Don’ argify,” say Peter. “You leads fo’ks into sin.
-    Ain’t shettin’ you out, nohow; I’s shettin’ mahse’f in.”
-
-
-LIMERICKS
-
-TEXT AND PICTURES BY OLIVER HERFORD
-
-
-[Illustration]
-
-THE CONSERVATIVE OWL
-
-    A Canary, its woe to assuage,
-    Once invented a wireless cage.
-        The owl shook his head,
-        “It’s a Great Thought,” he said,
-    “But it’s far in advance of the age.”
-
-
-[Illustration]
-
-THE OMNIVOROUS BOOK-WORM
-
-    Quoth the book-worm, “I don’t care one bit
-    If writers have wisdom or wit;
-        A volume must be
-        Pretty dull to bore me
-    As completely as I can bore it.”
-
-
-                     THE DE VINNE PRESS, NEW YORK
-
-
-
-
-
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-Magazine, by Various
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-<pre>
-
-Project Gutenberg's The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, by Various
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
-most other parts of the world 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.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll
-have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using
-this ebook.
-
-
-
-Title: The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine
-       Vol. LXXXVI, No. 5, September, 1913
-
-Author: Various
-
-Release Date: August 5, 2019 [EBook #60061]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CENTURY ILLUSTRATED ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by Jane Robins, Reiner Ruf, and the Online
-Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
-file was produced from images generously made available
-by The Internet Archive)
-
-
-
-
-
-
-</pre>
-
-
-<div class="transnote mbot3">
-
-<p class="s3 center"><b>Transcriber’s Notes</b></p>
-
-<p>This e-text is based on ‘The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine,’
-from September, 1913. The <a href="#CONTENTS">table of contents</a>, based on the index from the May
-issue, has been added by the transcriber.</p>
-
-<p>Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation have been retained, but
-punctuation and typographical errors have been corrected. Passages
-in English dialect and in languages other than English have not been
-altered. Footnotes have been moved to the end of the corresponding
-article.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="figcenter break-before">
-   <a id="i_641" name="i_641">
-   <img class="mtop1" src="images/i_641.jpg" alt="" /></a>
-  <p class="caption1">© H. H. <span class="mleft3">Half-tone plate, engraved for</span>
-    T<span class="smaller">HE</span> C<span class="smaller">ENTURY</span> by H. Davidson</p>
-  <p class="caption">BRONZE GROUP OF THE UNDEFEATED AMERICAN POLO TEAM</p>
-  <p class="caption1">HERBERT HAZELTINE’S SCULPTURE OF THE AMERICAN TEAM WHICH WON THE
-  WORLD’S CHAMPIONSHIP IN ENGLAND, IN 1909, AND DEFENDED IT SUCCESSFULLY
-  AGAINST ALL ENGLAND IN 1911 AND 1913</p>
-  <p class="caption1">(The leading figure: Mr. Milburn. Second figure: Mr. Whitney, captain.
-  Figure in background: Mr. Lawrence Waterbury. Figure on the right: Mr.
-  J. M. Waterbury.)</p>
-  <p class="linkedimage"><a href="images/i_641_large.jpg">&#10063;<br />
-  <span class="smaller">LARGER IMAGE</span></a></p>
-</div>
-
-<hr class="full" />
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_641" id="Page_641">[Pg 641]</a></span></p>
-
-<div class="frontmatter">
-
-<h1>T<span class="smaller">HE</span> C<span class="smaller">ENTURY</span> M<span class="smaller">AGAZINE</span></h1>
-
-<div class="header_tab padbot2">
-  <div class="table_row">
-    <div class="table_cell center">
-      V<span class="smaller">OL</span>. LXXXVI
-    </div>
-    <div class="table_cell center">
-      SEPTEMBER, 1913
-    </div>
-    <div class="table_cell center">
-      N<span class="smaller">O</span>. 5
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class="center s6 mtop2">Copyright, 1913, by
-T<span class="smaller">HE</span> C<span class="smaller">ENTURY</span>
-C<span class="smaller">O.</span> All rights reserved.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<hr class="full" />
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<h2 class="nobreak" id="CONTENTS">CONTENTS</h2>
-
-</div>
-
-<table class="toc" summary="Table of Contents for September">
-  <tr>
-    <td class="subject">
-      &nbsp;
-    </td>
-    <td class="author">
-      &nbsp;
-    </td>
-    <td class="pgnum s6">
-      PAGE
-    </td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class="subject">
-      A<span class="smaller">VOCATS</span>, L<span class="smaller">ES</span>
-      D<span class="smaller">EUX</span>.
-      From the painting by
-    </td>
-    <td class="author">
-      Honoré Daumier
-    </td>
-    <td class="pgnum">
-      &nbsp;
-    </td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class="subject">
-      &nbsp;
-    </td>
-    <td class="pgnum" colspan="2">
-      Facing page <a href="#i_654">654</a>
-    </td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class="subject">
-      B<span class="smaller">OOK OF HIS</span> H<span class="smaller">EART</span>,
-      T<span class="smaller">HE</span>
-    </td>
-    <td class="author">
-      Allan Updegraff
-    </td>
-    <td class="pgnum">
-      <a href="#i_701">701</a>
-    </td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class="subject3" colspan="3">
-      Picture by Herman Pfeifer.
-    </td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class="subject">
-      C<span class="smaller">ARTOONS</span>.
-    </td>
-    <td class="author">
-      &nbsp;
-    </td>
-    <td class="pgnum">
-      &nbsp;
-    </td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class="subject2">
-      The “Elite” Bathing-Dress.
-    </td>
-    <td class="author">
-      Reginald Birch
-    </td>
-    <td class="pgnum">
-      <a href="#i_797">797</a>
-    </td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class="subject2">
-      From Grave to Gay.
-    </td>
-    <td class="author">
-      C. F. Peters
-    </td>
-    <td class="pgnum">
-      <a href="#i_798a">798</a>
-    </td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class="subject">
-      C<span class="smaller">ENTURY</span>, <span class="smaller">THE</span>,
-      T<span class="smaller">HE</span> S<span class="smaller">PIRIT OF</span>
-    </td>
-    <td class="author">
-      Editorial
-    </td>
-    <td class="pgnum">
-      <a href="#THE_SPIRIT_OF_THE_CENTURY">789</a>
-    </td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class="subject">
-      C<span class="smaller">HOATE</span>, J<span class="smaller">OSEPH</span> H.
-      From a charcoal portrait by
-    </td>
-    <td class="author">
-      John S. Sargent
-    </td>
-    <td class="pgnum">
-      &nbsp;
-    </td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class="subject">
-      &nbsp;
-    </td>
-    <td class="pgnum" colspan="2">
-      Facing page <a href="#i_711">711</a>
-    </td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class="subject">
-      C<span class="smaller">LOWN</span>’<span class="smaller">S</span>
-      R<span class="smaller">UE</span>.
-    </td>
-    <td class="author">
-      Hugh Johnson
-    </td>
-    <td class="pgnum">
-      <a href="#i_730">730</a>
-    </td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class="subject3" colspan="3">
-      Picture, printed in tint, by H. C. Dunn.
-    </td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class="subject">
-      C<span class="smaller">OUNTRY</span> R<span class="smaller">OADS OF</span>
-      N<span class="smaller">EW</span> E<span class="smaller">NGLAND</span>. Drawings by
-    </td>
-    <td class="author">
-      Walter King Stone
-    </td>
-    <td class="pgnum">
-      <a href="#i_668">668</a>
-    </td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class="subject">
-      D<span class="smaller">ORMER</span>-W<span class="smaller">INDOW</span>,
-      <span class="smaller">THE</span>, T<span class="smaller">HE</span>
-      C<span class="smaller">OUNTRY OF</span>
-    </td>
-    <td class="author">
-      Henry Dwight Sedgwick
-    </td>
-    <td class="pgnum">
-      <a href="#i_720">720</a>
-    </td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class="subject3" colspan="3">
-      Pictures by W. T. Benda.
-    </td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class="subject">
-      D<span class="smaller">OWN</span>-<span class="smaller">TOWN IN</span>
-      N<span class="smaller">EW</span> Y<span class="smaller">ORK.</span>
-      Drawings by
-    </td>
-    <td class="author">
-      Herman Webster
-    </td>
-    <td class="pgnum">
-      <a href="#Down_Town_in_New_York">697</a>
-    </td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class="subject">
-      J<span class="smaller">URYMAN</span>, <span class="smaller">THE</span>,
-      T<span class="smaller">HE</span> M<span class="smaller">IND OF</span>
-    </td>
-    <td class="author">
-      Hugo Münsterberg
-    </td>
-    <td class="pgnum">
-      <a href="#THE_MIND_OF_THE_JURYMAN">711</a>
-    </td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class="subject">
-      L<span class="smaller">IFE</span> A<span class="smaller">FTER</span>
-      D<span class="smaller">EATH</span>.
-    </td>
-    <td class="author">
-      Maurice Maeterlinck
-    </td>
-    <td class="pgnum">
-      <a href="#i_655">655</a>
-    </td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class="subject">
-      L<span class="smaller">OUISE</span>. Color-Tone, from the
-      marble bust by
-    </td>
-    <td class="author">
-      Evelyn Beatrice Longman
-    </td>
-    <td class="pgnum">
-      &nbsp;
-    </td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class="subject">
-      &nbsp;
-    </td>
-    <td class="pgnum" colspan="2">
-      Facing page <a href="#i_767">766</a>
-    </td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class="subject">
-      L<span class="smaller">OVE BY</span>
-      L<span class="smaller">IGHTNING</span>.
-    </td>
-    <td class="author">
-      Maria Thompson Daviess
-    </td>
-    <td class="pgnum">
-      <a href="#LOVE_BY_LIGHTNING">641</a>
-    </td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class="subject3" colspan="3">
-      Pictures, printed in tint, by F. R. Gruger.
-    </td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class="subject">
-      O<span class="smaller">REGON</span>
-      M<span class="smaller">UDDLE</span>,” “T<span class="smaller">HE</span>
-    </td>
-    <td class="author">
-      Victor Rosewater
-    </td>
-    <td class="pgnum">
-      <a href="#THE_OREGON_MUDDLE">764</a>
-    </td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class="subject">
-      T. T<span class="smaller">EMBAROM</span>.
-    </td>
-    <td class="author">
-      Frances Hodgson Burnett
-    </td>
-    <td class="pgnum">
-      <a href="#i_767a">767</a>
-    </td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class="subject3" colspan="3">
-      Drawings by Charles S. Chapman.
-    </td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class="subject">
-      U<span class="smaller">NCOMMERCIAL</span>
-      T<span class="smaller">RAVELER</span>, A<span class="smaller">N</span>,
-      <span class="smaller">IN</span> L<span class="smaller">ONDON</span>
-    </td>
-    <td class="author">
-      Theodore Dreiser
-    </td>
-    <td class="pgnum">
-      <a href="#i_736">736</a>
-    </td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class="subject3" colspan="3">
-      Pictures by W. J. Glackens.
-    </td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class="subject">
-      V<span class="smaller">ENEZUELA</span>
-      D<span class="smaller">ISPUTE</span>, <span class="smaller">THE</span>,
-      T<span class="smaller">HE</span> M<span class="smaller">ONROE</span>
-      D<span class="smaller">OCTRINE IN</span>
-    </td>
-    <td class="author">
-      Charles R. Miller
-    </td>
-    <td class="pgnum">
-      <a href="#i_750">750</a>
-    </td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class="subject3" colspan="3">
-      Cartoons from “Punch,” and a map.
-    </td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class="subject">
-      W<span class="smaller">ALL</span> S<span class="smaller">TREET</span>,
-      T<span class="smaller">HE</span> N<span class="smaller">EWS IN</span>
-    </td>
-    <td class="author">
-      James L. Ford
-    </td>
-    <td class="pgnum">
-      <a href="#i_794">794</a>
-    </td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class="subject3" colspan="3">
-      Pictures by Reginald Birch and May Wilson Preston.
-    </td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class="subject">
-      W<span class="smaller">HISTLER</span>, A
-      V<span class="smaller">ISIT TO</span>
-    </td>
-    <td class="author">
-      Maria Torrilhon Buel
-    </td>
-    <td class="pgnum">
-      <a href="#i_694">694</a>
-    </td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class="subject">
-      W<span class="smaller">HITE</span> L<span class="smaller">INEN</span>
-      N<span class="smaller">URSE</span>, T<span class="smaller">HE</span>
-    </td>
-    <td class="author">
-      Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
-    </td>
-    <td class="pgnum">
-      <a href="#i_672">672</a>
-    </td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class="subject3" colspan="3">
-      Pictures, printed in tint, by Herman Pfeifer.
-    </td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class="subject">
-      W<span class="smaller">ORLD</span>
-      R<span class="smaller">EFORMERS</span>&mdash;<span class="smaller">AND</span>
-      D<span class="smaller">USTERS</span>.
-    </td>
-    <td class="author">
-      The Senior Wrangler
-    </td>
-    <td class="pgnum">
-      <a href="#WORLD_REFORMERS_AND_DUSTERS">792</a>
-    </td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class="subject3" colspan="3">
-      Picture by Reginald Birch.
-    </td>
-  </tr>
-</table>
-
-<p class="s4 center mtop2">VERSE</p>
-
-<table class="toc mtop1" summary="Verses, September">
-  <tr>
-    <td class="subject">
-      C<span class="smaller">ONTINUED IN THE</span>
-      A<span class="smaller">DS</span>.
-    </td>
-    <td class="author">
-      Sarah Redington
-    </td>
-    <td class="pgnum">
-      <a href="#CONTINUED_IN_THE_ADS">795</a>
-    </td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class="subject">
-      G<span class="smaller">ENTLE</span> R<span class="smaller">EADER</span>,
-      T<span class="smaller">HE</span>
-    </td>
-    <td class="author">
-      Arthur Davison Ficke
-    </td>
-    <td class="pgnum">
-      <a href="#THE_GENTLE_READER">692</a>
-    </td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class="subject">
-      L<span class="smaller">ADY</span> C<span class="smaller">LARA</span>
-      V<span class="smaller">ERE DE</span> V<span class="smaller">ERE</span>:
-      N<span class="smaller">EW</span> S<span class="smaller">TYLE</span>.
-    </td>
-    <td class="author">
-      Anne O’Hagan
-    </td>
-    <td class="pgnum">
-      <a href="#LADY_CLARA_VERE_DE_VERE_NEW_STYLE">793</a>
-    </td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class="subject3" colspan="3">
-      Picture by E. L. Blumenschein.
-    </td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class="subject">
-      L<span class="smaller">AST</span> F<span class="smaller">AUN</span>,
-      T<span class="smaller">HE</span>
-    </td>
-    <td class="author">
-      Helen Minturn Seymour
-    </td>
-    <td class="pgnum">
-      <a href="#i_716">717</a>
-    </td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class="subject3" colspan="3">
-      Picture, printed in tint, by Charles A. Winter.
-    </td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class="subject">
-      <a href="#LIMERICKS">L<span class="smaller">IMERICKS</span>.</a>:
-    </td>
-    <td class="author">
-      &nbsp;
-    </td>
-    <td class="pgnum">
-      &nbsp;
-    </td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class="subject3" colspan="3">
-      Text and pictures by Oliver Herford.
-    </td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class="subject2">
-      XXXIV. The Conservative Owl.
-    </td>
-    <td class="author">
-      &nbsp;
-    </td>
-    <td class="pgnum">
-      <a href="#i_799">799</a>
-    </td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class="subject2">
-      XXXV. The Omnivorous Book-worm.
-    </td>
-    <td class="author">
-      &nbsp;
-    </td>
-    <td class="pgnum">
-      <a href="#i_800">800</a>
-    </td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class="subject">
-      R<span class="smaller">ITUAL</span>.
-    </td>
-    <td class="author">
-      William Rose Benét
-    </td>
-    <td class="pgnum">
-      <a href="#RITUAL">788</a>
-    </td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class="subject">
-      <a href="#i_796">R<span class="smaller">YMBELS</span></a>:
-    </td>
-    <td class="author">
-      &nbsp;
-    </td>
-    <td class="pgnum">
-      &nbsp;
-    </td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class="subject3" colspan="3">
-      Pictures by Oliver Herford.
-    </td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class="subject2">
-      A Rymbel of Rhymers.
-    </td>
-    <td class="author">
-      Carolyn Wells
-    </td>
-    <td class="pgnum">
-      <a href="#A_Rymbel_of_Rhymers">796</a>
-    </td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class="subject2">
-      The Prudent Lover.
-    </td>
-    <td class="author">
-      L. Frank Tooker
-    </td>
-    <td class="pgnum">
-      <a href="#The_Prudent_Lover">797</a>
-    </td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class="subject2">
-      On a Portrait of Nancy.
-    </td>
-    <td class="author">
-      Carolyn Wells
-    </td>
-    <td class="pgnum">
-      <a href="#On_a_Portrait_of_Nancy">797</a>
-    </td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class="subject">
-      S<span class="smaller">UBMARINE</span>
-      M<span class="smaller">OUNTAINS</span>.
-    </td>
-    <td class="author">
-      Cale Young Rice
-    </td>
-    <td class="pgnum">
-      <a href="#i_693">693</a>
-    </td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class="subject">
-      W<span class="smaller">ISE</span> S<span class="smaller">AINT</span>,
-      T<span class="smaller">HE</span>
-    </td>
-    <td class="author">
-      Herman Da Costa
-    </td>
-    <td class="pgnum">
-      <a href="#i_798a">798</a>
-    </td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class="subject3" colspan="3">
-      Picture by W. T. Benda.
-    </td>
-  </tr>
-
-</table>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<hr class="full" />
-
-<h2 class="nobreak" id="LOVE_BY_LIGHTNING">LOVE BY LIGHTNING</h2>
-
-<p class="s3 center mtop1">BY MARIA THOMPSON DAVIESS</p>
-
-<p class="s6 center">Author of “The Melting of Molly,” “Andrew the Glad,”
-“Miss Selina Lue,” etc.</p>
-
-<p class="s5 center mtop1 mbot2">WITH PICTURES BY F. R. GRUGER</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<p class="p0"><span class="drop-cap">L</span>OVE is the début of a woman’s soul from the darkness under Adam’s left
-ribs into the sunshine of the Garden of Eden and his presence. It is
-heavenly, but very much like a major operation attended by convulsions,
-and I am going to write you the whole truth about it, my dear Evelyn,
-and not present to you an unadorned feminine version. It is going to be
-hard, for I’ve only been practising concise veracity for a little over
-a month, and if I am crude in places, you must forgive me.</p>
-
-<p>What did it?</p>
-
-<p>Aunt Grace, my unfilial virago of a disposition, and the will of God.</p>
-
-<p>Please don’t let it make you uncomfortable to have me speak of Him in
-this friendly fashion, for He is in the story, and I can’t help it.
-Besides, that is part of what I want to tell you about.</p>
-
-<p>The first of May, mother came home from a visit to Aunt Grace in
-Louisville with the most peculiar little man led by a halter for me. He
-has a title, genuine brand. Elizabeth Gentry is going to marry him now,
-and she’ll write you all about it. Aunt Grace had selected him in Rome
-at Easter, and told him the round numbers of the fortune Grandmother
-Wickliffe left me. She had instructed mother minutely as to my joyous
-and appreciative course of action toward him, and you know how my
-maternal parent is about Aunt Grace. I want to record it of father that
-he received the duke with a recoil, and went to New Orleans the next
-morning for an indefinite stay.</p>
-
-<p>Of course the little man is a human being, but I consider the United
-States as fortunate that it is not now in complications with Italy over
-the murder of one of her scions by an enraged Tennessee woman. Two
-days after his arrival, and only several hours after the first time he
-tried to possess his funny little paws of my very garden-burned hand,
-I packed a few of my belongings in three trunks and a steamer-bag and
-departed to find Dudley. He is such a perfectly satisfactory brother
-that, since my earliest youth, I have always felt it best to flee to
-him when I feel a tantrum coming on. They don’t dis<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_642" id="Page_642">[Pg 642]</a></span>turb the even tenor
-of his life in the least.</p>
-
-<p>“Oh, Nell!” was all mother had the courage to say, when so far away
-from Aunt Grace, at the announcement of my intention.</p>
-
-<p>“My brother is ill up in the Harpeth Hills, and <i>I</i> must go to him,”
-was all I said to the duke.</p>
-
-<p>That was the feminine version of a line in Dudley’s last letter, saying
-he had caught a heavy cold sleeping out without his blanket while with
-one of his gangs marking lumber on Old Harpeth. But I did take his
-grace to call on Elizabeth before I departed. I will say that much for
-myself.</p>
-
-<p>With it all I had left home in such a whirl of hurry and rage that I
-hadn’t had time really to realize myself until I sat in my seat and
-watched the train begin to wind around and around the foot-hills that
-lead up from the valley. And I must say that realization of myself was
-not much in the way of amusement. Why should I have left mother in a
-huff just because she is Aunt Grace’s obedient sister? Isn’t she also
-my browbeaten parent? And why rudely abandon the little nobleman, who
-was my guest, for trying to kiss my hand, which has been used for any
-old purpose, from digging worms for Dudley to fish with to supplying a
-surface to be pressed by Bobby Gentry’s adolescent bristles, even unto
-the mustache he at present flourishes? And others, too! No, I couldn’t
-honestly approve of myself, as hard as I tried.</p>
-
-<p>And, to make it worse, the very day itself was a balmy, pliant,
-feminine thing, with not a bluster in its disposition to harmonize with
-mine. There was a soft bridal veil of spring mist all over the Harpeth
-Valley, behind which the orchards were blushing pink and white, while
-by noon, as we began to go up the hills, I caught a whiff of that
-indescribable, lilting honeysuckle note that comes in the June rhapsody
-in the Alleghanies. You remember it, don’t you, deary, even if you do
-live in an enchanted Breton garden with a husband who sings? I’m going
-to remember it in heaven.</p>
-
-<p>No, I wasn’t very well pleased with myself, and I got more and more
-serious on the subject the higher the train crawled up toward the
-crown of Old Harpeth. If a naturally conscientious person has such
-a bad disposition that she finds it impossible to accept any form of
-criticism from other people, then she is ethically obliged to chastise
-her own self, which is the refinement of psychical cruelty.</p>
-
-<p>By three o’clock the only way I could drag myself out of the depths was
-by remembering how Aunt Grace’s nostrils distend while she insinuates
-to mother in my presence what an unsatisfactory daughter I am. I can
-always get up a rage with that mental picture. That is, I could; now it
-is different, because&mdash;but that is what I am going to tell you about.</p>
-
-<p>Of course I knew that Dudley’s letters all went to Crow Point, and the
-ticket-man had told me that we got there at five-fifty. That hour was
-not dark&mdash;quite, I knew, and I decided that I would have plenty of time
-to drive across the ridge to his camp at Pigeon Creek.</p>
-
-<p>Isn’t it a good thing for women that they can’t take peeps into what is
-going to happen to them next? Men could digest their disclosed futures
-complacently, but on account of pure excitement, women never in the
-world could even sufficiently masticate theirs to swallow them.</p>
-
-<p>“Is it far from Crow Point to Pigeon Creek?” I asked the conductor, by
-way of amusing myself.</p>
-
-<p>“About one horse-pull,” he answered lucidly, as he went to help a woman
-and eleven children off at Hitch It.</p>
-
-<p>I’m glad now he was no more explicit.</p>
-
-<p>Crow Point was just a little farther along the road than Hitch It, and
-we got there before I had time to ask him any more questions. Purple
-dusk was just hovering over the mountain-top, as if uncertain about
-settling down upon it for the night, when the train stopped. He called
-Crow Point, and I jumped off&mdash;the universe.</p>
-
-<p>I stood for a few minutes, with my mind tottering.</p>
-
-<p>“Looking for anybody, little gal?” came a drawl from out the twilight
-just in time to keep me from running after the train to try and tell
-them that I didn’t want to be left alone in the mountains at dark. A
-man sat all hunched up on the tree-trunk that supported one end of
-the huge log which represented the station platform of Crow Point,
-whittling a small stick.</p>
-
-<p>“Is this Crow Point?” I gasped from<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_643" id="Page_643">[Pg 643]</a></span> the depths of both consternation
-and amazement as I looked from him to the three trunks stacked on the
-ground by the rustic platform.</p>
-
-<p>“Sure am,” was the answer, as the small red slivers of wood flew.</p>
-
-<p>“Is this&mdash;this all of it?” I asked, this time less from consternation
-than astonishment.</p>
-
-<p>“Well, they is a few more of us,” he answered. “Was you a-looking for
-any of us in particular?”</p>
-
-<p>“Mr. Dudley Gaines,” I answered in a manner that bordered on the
-lofty, as if I felt that the status of my family must be much the same
-commanding one at Crow Point that it was down in Hillsboro.</p>
-
-<p>“I reckon you’ll have to holler that loud enough to reach about
-twenty-five miles acrost to Pigeon Creek, gal, if you want to git him,”
-was the unimpressed answer.</p>
-
-<p>“Twenty-five miles!” I spoke less haughtily this time. “Can’t I get
-there to-night?”</p>
-
-<p>“You could ef you had started this time last night,” was the practical
-reply.</p>
-
-<p>Suddenly the fact that I was planted down in the wilderness of gigantic
-mountains, alone except for one aborigine of the masculine gender,
-overpowered me so that I sank down on the log and became much meeker in
-manner and spirit.</p>
-
-<p>“What’ll I do?” I asked, and this time my words were nothing more than
-a subdued and respectful peep.</p>
-
-<p>“Wall, I reckon Stivers and missus will have to take you in for the
-night,” answered the native, with a condescending drawl. “They might
-not, but you mentioned young Gaines’s name. We ’most shot him for a
-revenue when he first came, but he’s brought a sight of good work
-amongst us, and lives like he was fellow-man with all. Be you his
-sister or his woman?”</p>
-
-<p>“Sister,” I answered, taking a grain of courage at thus hearing
-Dudley’s name mentioned as that of a prominent citizen of the
-fastnesses.</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, Stivers had a cross on his gun for Dud, and he mighty nigh got
-a bloodstain to smear on it ’fore he found out that he were just a
-logger. But Stivers’ll take you in, I reckon, now he knows you belong
-to his tribe, though his cabin is so small you couldn’t cuss a cat
-without getting hair in your teeth.”</p>
-
-<p>“Where do Mr. and Mrs. Stivers live?” I ventured, with a shudder at the
-taste of cat-hair in my mouth.</p>
-
-<p>“Round behind that crag and woodland there,” he answered as he turned
-the stick and looked at it critically in the fading light. “You can go
-on by yourself, or, if you want to wait until I whittle this little end
-slimmer, I can take you along with me. They is going to be a ruckus
-kind of a meetin’ of the gang there to-night, but they won’t nothing
-but dark draw the boys outen the bushes.”</p>
-
-<p>“I’ll wait,” I answered trustfully, preferring to appear at the
-hostelry under the care of a strange man than risk the woods alone.
-Necessity is the stepmother of many conventions.</p>
-
-<p>And there I sat on a companionable log beside a perfectly strange
-outlaw who had been talking about notches on guns and blood-splotches,
-waiting for him to whittle down the end of a stick exactly to satisfy
-his artistic tastes before accompanying me through a dark strip of
-woodland to the hospitable roof of a moonshiner, in hopes I would be
-taken in to spend the night thereunder.</p>
-
-<p>And I must proudly and truthfully record it of myself that I bore the
-situation in dignified and complacent terror, sitting humbly still
-while the moonshiner slowly peeled tiny pink shavings off the end of
-the stick for what seemed like centuries to me. My interior was a small
-Vesuvius of disposition, frozen over temporarily, and I even had the
-strength to marvel at my own control of it.</p>
-
-<p>Finally he held his work of art close to his eyes to see the point in
-the dusk, which had deepened by the moment, tested it on his finger
-carefully several times, peered at it again, and then nonchalantly
-threw it away in the grass.</p>
-
-<p>“Come on and follow,” he said in commanding and indifferent mien as I
-rose to accompany him.</p>
-
-<p>And follow him I did, in true squaw fashion, about ten paces behind.
-I was surprised he didn’t ask me to carry his gun, a long, heavy
-ante-bellum weapon that rested carelessly in the hollow of his arm.
-I’d have done it with the greatest graciousness if he had handed it to
-me. A frightened woman easily lapses into sav<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_644" id="Page_644">[Pg 644]</a></span>agery, and is willing to
-accept impedimenta in the rear of man in times of danger.</p>
-
-<p>And, as we walked, the shadows got blacker and blacker, and the
-tree-tops lowered lower and lower in their thick gloom. Every few
-minutes something furry, like the hallucination of a gigantic mouse,
-would scurry across our path, or a great creaky croak would be hurled
-at our heads from the groaning branches above. And, with every fresh
-horror, I got closer to the heels of the human animal in front of me,
-until I was in danger of having my nose skinned by the barrel of the
-gun, or stepping on the protruding heels of his heavy boots, into
-which his faded overalls were stuffed. My knees may have trembled, but
-I assure you I kept pace with grim determination through what seemed
-endless miles of that haunted woodland.</p>
-
-<p>And as we tramped along in silence, my mood of self-depreciation, which
-had seized me on the train, again asserted itself, and my alarmed
-mentality was saying sternly that it had warned my proud spirit
-that such catastrophes would be the result of my headlong course of
-wilfulness, when we came out of the darkness into a clearing where a
-cabin stood, from which a dim light shone.</p>
-
-<p>“Stivers’,” remarked my guide, fluently. “So long,” he added tersely,
-and disappeared again into the woods by another path. At the time I
-wondered if he could be troubled by the conventions. I did him an
-injustice; I know now it was a horse hitched on the other side of the
-clearing.</p>
-
-<p>For more than a few long minutes I stood and pondered with panicky
-indecision over just what to do, the wood with its nightmares on the
-one hand, and the unknown on the other. I chose the unknown, and
-plunged in as I faltered up to the open door of the small two-room hut.</p>
-
-<p>Suddenly two doors were shut hurriedly in the darkness, and I heard
-the scuffling of heavy feet as a man appeared in the flare of the dim
-candle in the front room and peered at me cautiously.</p>
-
-<p>“What do you want?” was the hospitable greeting that issued from the
-cavern of his huge chest.</p>
-
-<p>“Mr. Dudley Gaines,” I answered, using instinctively the name of
-introduction that I had seen succeed a few minutes earlier.</p>
-
-<p>“He ain’t here; but if you are his woman, come in,” was the answer, and
-as Dudley’s property I entered the Stivers’s abode.</p>
-
-<p>Even in my tragic situation for an instant my temper rose. Why should
-man’s possession justify the existence of a woman in the eyes of the
-primitive? However, masculine justification of life is a delicious
-feeling to a woman in a dark and fearful wood and&mdash;But I’ll tell you
-about that later.</p>
-
-<p>With becoming gravity and timidity I entered the living-room of the
-moonshiner’s hut, and weakly seated myself in a chair he pointed out to
-me in a corner by an open window.</p>
-
-<p>“Brat’s got fits, and the woman is out there tending it,” was my host’s
-ample excuse for the non-appearance of my hostess.</p>
-
-<p>At his words my heart jumped and then stood still. I had never been in
-the house with a fit before, and the feeling was gruesome, coming so
-close on the heels of the woolly, furry things in the woods.</p>
-
-<p>Then as I poised myself on the edge of the chair, holding on tight to
-keep myself from running out into the night, an eery wail came from
-the back of the house, and I collapsed on the seat, with a queer,
-suffocating pain in the place of that jump. I had never noticed a
-child’s cry before, and something moved in the region of my solar
-plexus.</p>
-
-<p>“Can’t&mdash;can’t something be done?” I ventured in desperation.</p>
-
-<p>“Naw,” came the answer in a drawl. “I reckon it is bound fer kingdom
-come this trip sure. Leader will take a look at it when he comes in fer
-a round-up of the gang. They’ll all be late to-night, on ’count of some
-dirty business over at Hitch It. If you want to go to bed, that’s the
-best bed in the lean-to out there we keep for over-nights. Better git
-settled and outen the way ’fore the gang gits here. They’re ’most too
-rough fer calico like you to stay around, and there’ll be a big fight
-on ’fore it’s over. Leader is snorting rough over that knifing at Hitch
-It, and somebody’ll be cut down with power by him ’fore he’s done with
-it. The woman is too upsot with the kid to see to you; but bedding is
-all you need, now dark has come. Better git to cover right away.”</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-   <a id="i_644_645" name="i_644_645">
-   <img class="mtop1" src="images/i_644_645.jpg" alt="" /></a>
-  <p class="caption1">Drawn by F. R. Gruger. Color-Tone, engraved for
-    T<span class="smaller">HE</span> C<span class="smaller">ENTURY</span> by H. Davidson</p>
-  <p class="caption">“THEN, AS I FALTERED AND FELT THAT I MUST STOP AND SINK ON THE FLOOR,
-  A WHILE A SHOULDER BRACED ITSELF AGAINST STRONG, WARM, BARE ARM CAME
-  AROUND ME, AND UNDER MY ARM AROUND THE BABY, MINE, AS GABRIEL SWUNG
-  INTO STEP WITH ME”</p>
-  <p class="linkedimage"><a href="images/i_644_645_large.jpg">&#10063;<br />
-  <span class="smaller">LARGER IMAGE</span></a></p>
-</div>
-
-<p class="mtop1">As he was speaking, he took the candle<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_645" id="Page_645">[Pg 645]</a></span> and led the way into a
-little shed-room, while I followed with trembling knees, and the jelly
-of fear quivering all over my body. Every moonshine murder about which
-I had ever read in the papers trod in martial array before my mental
-eyes, and my breath was just a flutter between my chattering teeth. It
-really is a triumph of the survival of the life force in the human body
-that I am alive to tell the tale to you to-day.</p>
-
-<p>“They’s light enough from the window for you to roll in,” the man said
-as he pointed to a low bed, built of logs and boughs along the wall
-next to the front room. “Better git to cover and stay there, a calico
-like you, with the boys as rough as they be; you mightn’t like ’em. I
-reckon they better not know you’re here, on ’count of the row that’s
-coming over that knifing; so lay close.”</p>
-
-<p>And even before he had time to depart with his candle, I made a dive
-beneath the patched quilt, only grasping my hat in my hand instead of
-keeping it on my head. Then, as still as my trembling limbs would let
-me, I lay close to the rough, thin, pine planks that separated me from
-what seemed the only other human being in the world. And for hours it
-seemed I lay there and panted and groveled in spirit with terror and
-helplessness, waiting, waiting, for something dreadful to happen, and
-almost wishing it would come and be over.</p>
-
-<p>Across the mountain-tops there began to be distant mutterings of
-thunder, and in the flashes of lightning I could see restless, dark
-birds wing by the small window. And save for the thunderings, there was
-a stillness that must have been on the waters before the first dawn
-reigned. I could hear my heart beat like a muffled motor, and only the
-uncanny wail broke the silence now and again, while once I thought I
-heard a woman’s stifled moan that sent a shudder to the very core of my
-body.</p>
-
-<p>And as I lay and cowered in that darkness, the mood of self-realization
-came back upon me, and alone in that terror of blackness I turned at
-bay and faced myself. Was that coward thing I that lay helpless while a
-woman alone moaned away the life of her tortured child, and a plan for
-murder was plotted with my full knowledge? Why didn’t I run out into
-that dreadful night and warn the victim, stop him from stepping into
-the dreadful trap laid for him? And right then I impeached myself. I
-had been guarded and fended and had all humanity nurtured out of me,
-so that, rather than risk my own pitiful little life, I was willing to
-“lie close” and let my brother human be murdered in cold blood.</p>
-
-<p>“But women are weak,” I argued in my own defense, “and terrible,
-wolfish things like these they cannot control or prevent. They must let
-them take their course.”</p>
-
-<p>“Weak women have steeled themselves to the saving of their brothers and
-sisters centuries long,” came the still, small voice that seemed to be
-hovering over my breast.</p>
-
-<p>“I can’t risk my own life for that of a rough moonshiner who probably
-spends his time whittling a stick to throw away,” I sobbed in answer to
-myself.</p>
-
-<p>“What more important thing than whittling a stick do you do with your
-life?” came the question, relentlessly.</p>
-
-<p>“Nothing,” I sobbed under my breath, as a vision of all the nothings I
-had done in my life came before me with a flash of the lightning that
-seemed to illumine the inside of the very inner me.</p>
-
-<p>“And that other woman suffering in there, why don’t I go to her?” I
-demanded of myself, and failed to find an answer.</p>
-
-<p>“Afraid of the roughness of some mountain man who would scarcely dare
-harm your brother’s ‘woman’?” I asked contemptuously from above my own
-breast. “You a ‘woman,’ if you let another woman watch her child die
-alone!”</p>
-
-<p>Desperate at this goad, I sat up, and was pushing back the quilt, when
-the muffled sound of heavy boots came from across the clearing, and in
-another flash I saw a file of men, each one of whom looked ten feet
-tall, each with a gun on his arm, come out of the black woods and turn
-to the front of the house. I melted back to cover, and lay drawing
-breath like a drowning man.</p>
-
-<p>Quietly they came into the room next to that in which I was hiding, and
-their drawly voices had a subdued and terrible sound as they exchanged
-a few remarks in guarded tones.</p>
-
-<p>“Leader come?” one man asked from so near the pine board against which
-I trembled that he couldn’t have been a foot away from me.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_646" id="Page_646">[Pg 646]</a></span></p>
-
-<p>“Naw; and Bill is waiting in the woods to ketch him ’fore he gits here,
-if he kin,” came the mumble of my host’s big voice.</p>
-
-<p>“It’ll be nip and tuck ’twixt ’em, and lay out the worst man feet due
-west,” another voice took up the gruesome chorus.</p>
-
-<p>“That’s Bill now, coming outen the woods,” exclaimed Stivers,
-ominously. “I reckon he thinks he missed Leader. Don’t nobody say
-nothing when he comes in, but let him set and wait for his knock-out.
-Nobody’s business but Leader’s.”</p>
-
-<p>Listening frantically, I heard the doomed man’s hesitating feet shuffle
-into the room and the chair groan as he took his seat amid the glum
-silence.</p>
-
-<p>And there I lay, and with Bill I waited I didn’t know for what, some
-nameless horror that would kill the life in me and make me a dishonored
-thing all my life&mdash;a human too cowardly to cry out the word of warning
-to another of God’s creatures. And through it all the little child
-wailed and the woman moaned.</p>
-
-<p>Then in the midst of another thick muttering from the head of Old
-Harpeth, which was followed by a vivid flash, I heard another pair of
-feet step on the threshold of the cabin. I cowered under the quilt,
-held my breath, and took the bullet into my own heart&mdash;or thought I did.</p>
-
-<p>Then high and clear through the flash of the lightning, over the
-mutterings of the thunder and the scuffle of the men’s feet,
-accompanied by a glad cry from the moaning woman, there came a voice
-of an archangel singing in tones of command that thrilled that whole
-mountain until it seemed to shake with its reverberations:</p>
-
-<div class="poetry-container s5">
-  <div class="poetry">
-    <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse">“Stand up! stand up for Jesus!</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">Ye soldiers of the cross;</div>
-      <div class="verse">Lift high His royal banner,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">It must not suffer loss.”</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p>I lay still, and something poured into my heart that was a peace made
-from the glory of the storm, the moan of the woman, and the song of
-a dawn-bird. Out of the darkness my soul came like&mdash;I think I partly
-expressed it in the first sentence of this confession, if you will turn
-back and see, Evelyn dear.</p>
-
-<p>After the men had sung the wonderful old hymn through to its very last
-lines,</p>
-
-<div class="poetry-container s5">
-  <div class="poetry">
-    <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse">“To him that overcometh</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">A crown of life shall be;</div>
-      <div class="verse">He with the King of Glory</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">Shall reign eternally,”</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class="p0">Bill and I kept very still and took our “knock-out.”</p>
-
-<p>Bill had stuck a knife into a gallant over at Hitch It for offering to
-exchange snuff-sticks with Malinda Budd, and I could easily detect a
-decided vein of sympathy in the voice of Leader while he administered
-a rousing reproof to the knife, but extolled the use of fists in such
-cases, much to the approval of the rest of the gang.</p>
-
-<p>In fact, that was the greatest sermon ever spoken in the English
-language on the theme of justice, courage, feminine protection, manly
-dignity, and brotherly love, and it was done in about five minutes, I
-should say. Every word of it hit Bill fair and square, and me also, to
-say nothing of all the rest of the world. During the last minute and
-a half of the discourse the men were indulging in muttered “Ahmens”
-and “Glory be’s,” and I could hardly restrain myself from throwing off
-the quilt and&mdash;well, you know, Evelyn, that Grandmother Wickliffe was
-a pillar in the Methodist Church of Hillsboro, and at times of great
-emotion, during the visit of the presiding elder, she did&mdash;shout. Aunt
-Grace never likes to hear it mentioned.</p>
-
-<p>Now, let me see, this is just about the beginning of the real story,
-and I am so anxious to tell it all, though I really feel a hesitancy.
-However, when I am through with the letter, I can leave out any part of
-it that doesn’t sound seemly for me to tell about him&mdash;and me, can’t I?</p>
-
-<p>To begin with, I hardly know how to make you understand about that
-baby’s stomach, and how near a tragedy it was. Don’t laugh! I tremble
-when I think about it, and I don’t ever believe I’ll learn to do it
-to them. I hope I won’t have to practise on one of my own first; but,
-then, it would be awful to kill another woman’s baby experimenting on
-it, wouldn’t it? I’d better not think about that now, or I can’t tell
-the rest of the story.</p>
-
-<p>Well, after the doxology had been sung by the strange Gabriel in the
-next room, accompanied by some really lovely rough<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_647" id="Page_647">[Pg 647]</a></span> men’s voices, and
-he had sent them away so he could see to the sick baby in the other
-room, I lay still and had a racking, glorious experience. For the first
-time in my life I really prayed to Something that answered in the dark.
-I didn’t have much to say for myself, but a great Gentleness reached
-down and laid hold of me for always, and I can never be lost from Him
-any more, and I knew it. <i>Now</i>, I have been taught that it is called
-the witness of the spirit, and it’s what Grandmother Wickliffe had.
-But I didn’t inherit it; I had to find it myself, and I got it through
-tribulation, by the way of Gabriel’s song in the terror of the night,
-followed by the sermon to Bill.</p>
-
-<p>And while I was lying there under the quilt, just shouting in my soul
-with ancestral ardor, I was called to come forth and attest my new
-convictions. And I did. If I hadn’t got that faith in God just a few
-minutes before on the wings of a great emotion, I never could have
-steeled myself to taking that awful purple, twitching baby and helping
-Gabriel do the dreadful things to it he did. I would have taken to the
-woods at the first look at it. But I know now that I had got the real
-religion that darts right through the emotions, and prods you up to do
-things. And I did them.</p>
-
-<p>“It’ll die, and I can’t hold it,” whimpered the poor exhausted mother
-when Gabriel told her to hold the baby’s mouth open while he poured in
-the hot water. At that time I was still safe and rejoicing over myself
-under the quilt.</p>
-
-<p>“You must hold him while I wash him out, or he <i>will</i> die. Come, brace
-up and help me!” I heard Gabriel plead to the poor creature, with
-positive agony in his voice, while the baby moaned.</p>
-
-<p>“No use, Leader; I’ve done give’ up,” and I heard her fling herself on
-the floor and begin to moan in chorus with the baby.</p>
-
-<p>It took me just half a minute to get to my feet, into that other room,
-and that baby in my arms, as awful to look at as it was. Of course it
-seemed as if God was honoring me by crowding works on my new faith
-pretty closely, and how I got through with such credit I don’t see; but
-I did.</p>
-
-<p>“You’ll have to show me just what to do; I never touched a baby before,
-but I will try to help,” I said to Gabriel, who was looking at me in
-an absolute astonishment and devout thankfulness that encouraged my
-new-found capableness.</p>
-
-<p>“A woman, thank God!” I heard him mutter before he spoke.</p>
-
-<p>“Tip him on your arm, hold his head close against your breast, with
-your finger down his throat, while I pour in this hot water; then turn
-him over on your knee quick when it is about to come up. He is full of
-fried potatoes, and that is what is making the spasms. I’ll hold his
-legs with my left hand, so he can’t kick away from you. We must get
-down enough of this water to bring up all of the potatoes.”</p>
-
-<p>Gabriel’s voice was quick and respectful, as if he were speaking to
-somebody that had as much intellect and manual training as himself. I
-suppose that is what helped me through with those dreadful hours of
-time that it took to work up that awful potato&mdash;that and the positive
-way I said:</p>
-
-<p>“Now, God, help me, please, and quick!”</p>
-
-<p>At last it all came forth, and I don’t suppose it really was hours; but
-the baby was apparently done for.</p>
-
-<p>“No use, Leader; his time have come. She’s buried five out thar in the
-clearing at jest about his age. Let the little critter go in peace,”
-said Stivers, who had come in through the back door. His rough voice
-had a note of suffering in it, though he lit his pipe by a coal from
-the fire calmly enough.</p>
-
-<p>But at the mention of the five little graves out in that awful night,
-the poor woman on the floor groveled up on to her knees and caught at
-my skirts.</p>
-
-<p>“God help you!” said Gabriel, gently, to her. “He’s rid of the poison,
-but so collapsed that there seems nothing more to do.”</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, and I’m going to help God help her,” I said suddenly, and I rose
-from the chair to walk the floor with the limp, white thing that had
-been the purple horror in my arms. “I didn’t know how to unpoison him,
-but if it’s strength and heat he needs, I can give him that,” and I
-held the tiny mountaineer close against my bare breast, from which
-his poor little convulsed fingers had torn all the foolish lace and
-embroidered linen.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_648" id="Page_648">[Pg 648]</a></span></p>
-
-<p>“If a physician were here, he would try transfusion; the child is
-anemic, anyway,” said Gabriel, thoughtfully.</p>
-
-<p>“We don’t need any physician but God to get my heat and strength into
-him. I only wish I had on a real flannel petticoat, as a decent woman
-ought to have for cases of emergency like this, to wrap him in. This
-old piece of blanket isn’t real wool.”</p>
-
-<p>“Poor folks can’t buy much but shoddy these days,” said Stivers, with
-glum resentfulness.</p>
-
-<p>“Here, my shirt’s the thing,” said Leader, and as quick as one of the
-flashes that came in the window with the thunder mutterings, he had
-peeled off his own gray flannel blouse, and was wrapping it around the
-baby, and tucking it close over my breast.</p>
-
-<p>“Now fight, and I’m with you,” he said as he looked straight into my
-eyes in the dim light.</p>
-
-<p>“He isn’t going to die; he’s got a right to live, and he’s going to do
-it, God helping,” I answered, as I got a firm grasp of the mite on my
-left arm, and put my warm right hand over the poor little collapsed
-stomach.</p>
-
-<p>And then for what seemed hours of eternity I walked and rubbed and
-hugged that limp baby, while I prayed inside my own vitals to the tune
-of “Stand up.” Stivers stood smoking sullenly by the fire, the mother
-lay on the floor, moaning, and Gabriel stood over by the window, with
-his bare shoulders gleaming comfortingly with every flash of lightning.
-And the knowledge that all three of those strong, useful real people
-were depending upon ignorant, foolish me to lead the fight for that
-poor little life made the new wings of my spirit raise themselves and
-soar out into some wonderful space I had never been in before, but
-through which I knew the way and could take the baby with me.</p>
-
-<p>How long I plodded across and across that rickety floor of the cabin I
-don’t know, but once I staggered as I came near Gabriel at the window,
-and my right shoulder sagged under its burden. Then, as I faltered and
-felt that I must stop and sink on the floor, a strong, warm, bare arm
-came around me, and under my arm around the baby, while a shoulder
-braced itself against mine, as Gabriel swung into step with me.</p>
-
-<p>“Keep fighting,” he said deep in his throat.</p>
-
-<p>And again I soared away with the baby up to where God was there to help
-us.</p>
-
-<p>Then suddenly we both were brought back to earth by my feeling him
-stir, and huddle closer to my breast, while the limp little knees found
-strength to press themselves in against the ribs over my heart.</p>
-
-<p>“Oh!” I sobbed with a quick breath.</p>
-
-<p>The mother moaned, and Gabriel steadied us both closer. He thought the
-baby was dead, I knew.</p>
-
-<p>“Want to give him to me?” he asked gently.</p>
-
-<p>“No, I don’t,” I answered jerkily enough to sound like a snap; “but
-wipe the perspiration out of my eyes. He’s getting hot now, and I’m
-melting, but I don’t dare stop hugging and patting. Make his mother
-understand he’s getting all right.”</p>
-
-<p>But nobody has to make a mother understand when her baby is saved. The
-poor creature just gave one pitiful gasp, and went to nice, comfortable
-crying instead of moaning. It was lovely to hear hearty boohoos, though
-she never said a word except to ask Stivers for her snuff-stick, which
-he attentively swabbed in the can before he handed it to her.</p>
-
-<p>“You can’t go on walking and joggling forever; sit down and rock and
-rest with him,” suggested Gabriel, timidly and respectfully, after he
-had passed a nice, cool, linen handkerchief all over my hot face for
-me, even with intelligence enough to wipe in the hollow under my chin.</p>
-
-<p>“Not now; he’s squirming deliciously, and I don’t dare. Suppose he
-should go limp again,” I answered fearfully.</p>
-
-<p>“He’s due to drop off to sleep now,” announced Leader in such a
-positive, though kind, voice that almost immediately young Stivers
-obediently turned himself a bit, settled in a nice, soggy way, and I
-could feel the little lungs so near mine begin to draw breath in a
-regular, good sound sleep.</p>
-
-<p>I waited a minute to be sure, then sank with him into a chair beside
-the fire.</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, he’s all right now,” Leader said in a lovely, quiet voice,
-with just a husky note of happiness in it as he gently raised into
-his own strong hand one tiny paddie that had stolen up on my breast
-from out the warm, gray shirt. For a wonderful<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_649" id="Page_649">[Pg 649]</a></span> second we were all
-soul-becalmed together, and then he went over into the corner and
-slipped on his khaki hunting-coat, which he had hung on a peg in the
-wall, and decorously tied his silk handkerchief around his neck, in
-true mountaineer fashion. He never did get that shirt again, for I
-originated some remarkable bandages for young Stivers out of it next
-day.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-   <a id="i_648" name="i_648">
-   <img class="mtop1" src="images/i_648.jpg" alt="" /></a>
-  <p class="caption1">Color-Tone, engraved for
-    T<span class="smaller">HE</span> C<span class="smaller">ENTURY</span> by H. Davidson</p>
-  <p class="caption">“‘ARE YOU REAL?’ HE WHISPERED, WITH MY CHEEK PRESSED HARD AGAINST HIS,
-  AND HIS ARMS TERRIFIC WITH TENDERNESS”</p>
-  <p class="caption1">DRAWN BY F. R. GRUGER</p>
-  <p class="linkedimage"><a href="images/i_648_large.jpg">&#10063;<br />
-  <span class="smaller">LARGER IMAGE</span></a></p>
-</div>
-
-<p class="mtop1">Then he came back to the fire, and while I hovered the kiddie, the
-mother came close on her knees and settled beside us, so that together
-we took a worse ministerial drubbing than even Bill got for the
-knifing episode, delivered in a voice of such heavenly sympathy that
-Grandmother Wickliffe’s spirit again rose in me, and if it hadn’t been
-for the baby, I believe she would have broken out this time in one good
-shout. She hasn’t up to date, but I feel sure she will some day, and I
-don’t always intend to restrain her manifestations.</p>
-
-<p>The sermon this time had for its text the sacredness of the use of
-the maternal fount for the young instead of promiscuous food, but it
-embraced all the advanced feminist questions of the day, and was an
-awful glorification and arraignment of human females all in one breath.
-Why don’t women begin to know what dreadful and wonderful creatures
-they really are earlier in life? The knowledge comes with an awful
-shock when it does come, and ought to be experienced while young. I had
-taken Bill’s sermon to heart, but that one to Mrs. Stivers I got right
-in the center of my soul. It is still there.</p>
-
-<p>And when it was over, the poor mother was kneeling by the fire, with
-the baby at her breast, sobbing and crooning softly as she rocked it to
-and fro in its deep sleep.</p>
-
-<p>“It’s suffocating in here, now that it is all over. Don’t you want to
-come out and watch the storm?” Gabriel asked me in a low voice as he
-stood beside me looking down on the comfortable pair on the hearth.
-“Don’t be afraid. It is a great one, mostly electrical, and will likely
-go on all night this way. It makes the atmosphere almost unendurably
-heavy. Do you want to watch it from the bluff there at the end of the
-clearing? You can look down and see it at play in the valley.”</p>
-
-<p>“Please,” I answered, catching the word in the middle with a breath
-that was a sob in retreat.</p>
-
-<p>Then before I knew it, or how, we were seated together on a big rock
-that jutted out from the edge of the world. The cabin, with its one or
-two dim lights, loomed with shadowy outlines behind us, and tall trees
-hugged us close on both sides; but before us and beneath us was a wild,
-black, turbulent night.</p>
-
-<p>“Now look down into the valley when the next flash comes,” Gabriel said
-with a note of excitement sounding in his deep voice that matched the
-wind through the trees.</p>
-
-<p>Then just as he finished speaking, a slow, steady sheet of light came
-and lit up the world below us. The fields in their spring garments,
-embroidered by the threads of silver creeks, lay lush and green, dotted
-by farm-houses in which dim lights twinkled, bouqueted by glowing pink
-orchards, and outlined by blooming hedges. Tall trees were massed along
-the edges of the meadows and the river-banks, and among them the white
-lines of the old sycamores gleamed in masses of high lights. And in the
-wild, soft wind that rushed up the mountain-sides and flung itself upon
-us there was mingled the tang of the honeysuckle and rhododendron with
-the sweetness of the orchards and pungence of newly plowed earth.</p>
-
-<p>Then as suddenly as the picture had risen before our eyes it sank back
-into the purple blackness, and I caught my breath with the glory of it.</p>
-
-<p>“And God made it!” I exclaimed softly, with the last sob that had been
-left in my heart caught from my mouth by the wind.</p>
-
-<p>“‘The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof; the world, and
-they that dwell therein,’” he answered, and the wind took his words as
-if it had been waiting for them to carry across the mountains.</p>
-
-<p>After that for several long minutes, I don’t know how many, I sat
-silent in the windy blackness, with the tree-branches sighing and
-crashing over our heads, and wild things rustling in the leaves and
-bushes beside us, and wondered what was happening to me.</p>
-
-<p>Of course I have been deadly afraid of a minister all my life, and
-the times we have had the bishops and presiding elders and pastors to
-dinner with us in honor<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_650" id="Page_650">[Pg 650]</a></span> of the memory of Grandmother Wickliffe have
-been times of torture to me. I always thought, of course, they were not
-real men, though the way they looked and their hearty appetites for
-both viands and jokes kept them from seeming conventional angels; but
-this Gabriel materialization that sat close to me on that rock, which
-was the end of the universe, was a strong, heart-beating man, who alone
-stood between me and the real wilderness of the woods and the awful
-wilderness of my ignorant and convicted spirit. It was terrific, but
-heavenly sweet.</p>
-
-<p>“I know He made me,&mdash;I found that out to-night,&mdash;but I don’t see what
-for, and I wish I knew why,” I said in the smallest voice I had ever
-heard myself use; and this time there was just the echo of that last
-sob left to sigh out on the wind.</p>
-
-<p>“He saw I needed you pretty badly a few hours ago,” Gabriel said in
-that delicious warm voice he had used to me to encourage me through the
-worst baby chokings.</p>
-
-<p>“I’ve always been a dreadful woman, and wanted to be more and more so
-until I heard you sing ‘Stand up for Jesus!’ when I was dead and gone
-from fear of your gun, and talk to Bill about loving the girl with the
-snuff-stick in the right way, and the man, too, just because we are all
-God’s children. I was lost, but Something found me in the dark just
-before you and the baby did. I never belonged to anything or anybody
-before, and even now how do I know that God wants me after the awful
-way I have lived?” My words trailed in positive anguish.</p>
-
-<p>“He does want you, woman dear. Take my word for that, or would you like
-me to quote you about five hundred passages from His Book to prove it
-to you?” He laughed as he said it in a wooing, comforting way that was
-both manly and ministerial.</p>
-
-<p>“You don’t know me. I’m a perfect stranger to you,” I answered with
-agonizing honesty, because the regard of that man, whom I had never
-seen a few hard, long hours before, was becoming very valuable to me,
-and I felt afraid that if I didn’t warn him about myself before he took
-me for a friend, I might not ever do it, but dishonestly make him like
-me, as I have done to so many other men.</p>
-
-<p>“We couldn’t be perfect strangers after the battle with those
-potatoes&mdash;and after seeing what that flash revealed of the valley
-together, could we?” he asked, with the amusement sounding still more
-plainly in his voice. “And you know you heard me preach twice. Isn’t
-that a kind of left-handed introduction?”</p>
-
-<p>“People that are introduced to me don’t ever know me,” I answered
-forlornly; for I felt that the time had come for me to confess my sins
-before men, and this was the hardest man to do it to I had ever met,
-and also the easiest.</p>
-
-<p>“Then tell me about yourself. I’ve been wondering a bit since I
-have had time. You answered a hurry-call I had to send above pretty
-quickly,” he said in a beguiling and encouraging tone of voice that
-sounded just as other agreeable men’s voices have sounded to me before,
-only more so.</p>
-
-<p>Just then a furry thing rustled in the bushes, and I moved an inch
-nearer him. I felt him stir, but he sat comfortingly still. I didn’t
-want him to move to me.</p>
-
-<p>“The worst thing about me is that I am utterly and entirely worthless,”
-I began, dropping the words out slowly in the dark. “If God made me, He
-can’t help but be dreadfully disappointed in me, and wishing He hadn’t.
-I’m just a wicked white kitten, with a blue ribbon around my neck,
-kept in a basket, and fed the warm milk of other people’s work and
-attentions.”</p>
-
-<p>“That is not always the kitten’s fault,” said Gabriel, gently.</p>
-
-<p>“It’s this kitten’s. My family would have liked for me to be
-strong-minded and go to college and do things in the world. They’ve
-tried to persuade me. Dudley, my brother, says I have got so much
-brains held in solution that he is afraid some day something will
-happen to precipitate them before the world is ready for them; but I
-ignore them strenuously. My mother is the president of the Home Mission
-Society that Grandmother Wickliffe founded, and Aunt Grace is state
-president of the Colonial Daughters, and makes remarkable speeches. I
-am just a large, white-skinned, well-fed, red-headed bunch of nothing,
-and I don’t know how to get over it.”</p>
-
-<p>“At least you are of the blessed company of the meek,” answered
-Gabriel, this<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_651" id="Page_651">[Pg 651]</a></span> time with a real human chuckle that he might have used
-if he had found three of a kind in a poker-hand.</p>
-
-<p>“Oh, no, I’m not meek,” I hastened to assure him. “I’m the most
-conceited woman on the earth, the vain kind of conceit that looks in
-the glass and admires its black lashes and white teeth, and long curves
-in good frocks, not the intellectual-attainment kind, that has some
-excuse for existence. I know I’m beautiful, and I hugely enjoy it.”</p>
-
-<p>“You sound beautiful by description, and a few flashes of lightning,
-added to candle-light, bear you witness. Still, why shouldn’t you
-appreciate the gifts God has made you? Beauty can have the most
-wonderful influence in the world in the way of enjoyment for us people
-at large. Use yours that way when no misguided potatoes call you.”
-His voice was enthusiastic and delightful, and what he said about the
-flashes of lightning made me blush so there in the dark that I was
-sorry one didn’t come that minute and let him see it&mdash;the blush. That
-thought, coming into my mind, cast me into the depths of humiliation
-that I had had it about him.</p>
-
-<p>“That’s the trouble,” I faltered in unhappy mortification at my
-instability of character. “I use it to make other people miserable, and
-know when I do it&mdash;men people and things like that.”</p>
-
-<p>“Sometimes that isn’t fair, is it?” he asked after a minute’s pause.
-“And yet women will do it. What makes them?”</p>
-
-<p>“I don’t know,” I almost sobbed, but controlled it. “I never knew how
-wrong it was until you talked to Bill about that snuff-stick girl, and
-how he ought to feel about her, and influence her not to do other men
-that way. I’m like her, only I do worse than snuff-sticks; and I enjoy
-it. No, I know God doesn’t want a woman like that.”</p>
-
-<p>“But perhaps you won’t be like that any more. I don’t believe you
-could, after tasting to-night’s adventure. You lapped up that situation
-pretty enthusiastically,” he said gently. But somehow there was a hint
-of amusement in his voice that set my dreadful temper off for a second,
-and made me wild to convince him of the depths of my sinfulness. I felt
-that the occasion demanded his serious attention and not levity.</p>
-
-<p>All my life my temper has been a whirlwind that rose and carried me to
-the limit of things, and then beyond, without any warning. I thought
-I was making a confession in a state of religious zeal, but I am
-afraid it was just the same old rage. Religious zeal often takes these
-peculiar forms of exaggerated temper, and often never finds itself out.
-From this you’ll see I’m trying very hard to differentiate myself; but
-it is difficult.</p>
-
-<p>Then for minutes and minutes, and perhaps hours, I sat there in the
-dark beside that strange man, and told him things that I had never told
-anybody living, and some I had never admitted to myself. It came out
-in a wailing, sobbing volume, and I trembled so that he had to take my
-cold hand in his, I suppose to keep me from sliding off the rock down
-into the valley.</p>
-
-<p>I wonder if any woman before ever talked out her whole wild self into
-a man’s ears? And I wonder if it shook him as it did this one out
-under the lowering clouds and dark trees? When women habitually reveal
-themselves to men, it is going to bring social revolution, and they
-must go slow.</p>
-
-<p>And I did go slow. I tried to be truly considerate of him. I began on a
-few ridiculous misdemeanors that I am surprised I remembered of myself,
-such as inconsiderate extraction of money from father by means of
-unwarranted tantrums, impositions on my dear mother’s loving credulity
-about some of my hunting forays with Bobby, when I left home riding
-Lady Gray, side-style, only to fling a leg over Dudley’s Grit two
-squares down the street, where Bobby was waiting with him for me.</p>
-
-<p>It surprised me that he only chuckled delightedly, and wanted to know
-just exactly who and what Bobby was or is.</p>
-
-<p>But I couldn’t be diverted, and was determined to tell the whole tale.
-I felt as if I must get one or two things off my conscience and on to
-his. I went the whole length, and succeeded.</p>
-
-<p>When I told him of that mad escapade at Louisville, while I was
-visiting Aunt Grace, with Stanley Hughes and the supper party he gave
-to that French dancing-girl in “The Bird-Flight,” when I got out of the
-taxi and walked home in my satin slippers in the snow for ten blocks
-rather than stay and have Stanley take me<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_652" id="Page_652">[Pg 652]</a></span> another block in the state
-he was in, though I had done nothing to stop his drinking and laughed
-at him, I heard him catch his breath and shudder.</p>
-
-<p>I never told anybody before that it was a paper-knife in my hands that
-ripped open Henry Hedrick’s cheek for an inch, down in his library
-while Mamie was up-stairs putting their six-months’ old baby to bed,
-and I was a guest in their house. In this case I had suspected how he
-felt about me before I came, but had contemptuously ignored it because
-I liked to be with Mamie. I told the last few minutes of that tale with
-dry sobs breaking my words, and while I shook, he folded my cold hand
-in both his warm ones, and I heard him mutter between his teeth:</p>
-
-<p>“God love her and keep her!”</p>
-
-<p>Then, after a long stillness, I crept closer to him, so that my head
-bowed against his arm, and opened the very depths to him.</p>
-
-<p>“I don’t think any woman ought to say this to any man,” I began from
-very far down in my throat, “but you are a preacher, and that makes a
-difference, and you won’t mind. I am disrespectful and ungrateful to
-Aunt Grace about it when she is trying her level best to do it to me,
-but&mdash;but I ought to get married. There are lots of wonderful women all
-over the world who are doing gloriously without husbands, and living
-happily forever after; but I’m not one. Some women have such frivolous
-spirits that nothing but a good, firm husband and an enormous family
-of children can ever chasten them. I’m one. I’ve always thought that
-he’d find me some day long before I was ready for him&mdash;or them; but now
-I’m afraid he’ll never come. I know he won’t.” I clung to his strong
-fingers desperately.</p>
-
-<p>“I think he will,” he answered as he kindly, but firmly, possessed
-himself of his own hand and coat-sleeve, but in such a way as not to
-hurt my feelings. “I seem to feel that he is well on the road, though
-fighting hard,” he added in what sounded like mild exasperation or
-desperation, I couldn’t tell which.</p>
-
-<p>“No,” I answered, with pitiful sadness and real conviction&mdash;“no; I am
-not worthy of him, and he won’t come. It is too late. God and you have
-just taught me this dreadful night what a good woman really is, and now
-I will have to be so busy trying all the rest of my life to be one
-that I won’t have time to look for&mdash;that is, he won’t find me. I don’t
-want anything but a good one, and if I’m being so good as all that,
-how’ll I let him know I want him?”</p>
-
-<p>“Maybe he’ll get a revelation,” answered Gabriel in a low and
-controlled voice that seemed to come from the very fastnesses of
-something within him.</p>
-
-<p>And as he spoke I felt something warm and sweet and terrible stealing
-over me; but I plunged forward in my confession, past the episode of
-the duke, my traitorous flight from home, and up to the arrival at
-Stivers’s, and the cowardly taking of refuge under the patchwork quilt.</p>
-
-<p>“I misunderstood, and thought from the way the men talked that you were
-going to kill Bill, and I was too much of a coward to run out and find
-him in the dark and warn him. You see, I lay still and let Bill be
-killed, whether you did it or not; and so I murdered him, even if he is
-alive,” I deduced miserably.</p>
-
-<p>“Dudley was wise to fear the precipitation of the logical part of
-the solution,” Gabriel remarked so quietly that it seemed as if he
-preferred that I shouldn’t hear him.</p>
-
-<p>“Yes; and, you see, I am a common murderer as well as all the other
-dreadful things. And I let that baby die, too, rather than go and
-help the woman wash it outside and in, as you made me do. That is two
-murders; and I’m another one for not knowing how to fill it up with hot
-water and poke my finger down its throat and press the potatoes and
-water up at the same time. I’m a woman, or I ought to be. It’s my life
-business to know and perform ably such terrible and simple operations
-on babies. That makes me three murderers. And how did I know that Bill
-wouldn’t kill you at the same time you killed him, and Mr. Stivers
-and&mdash;”</p>
-
-<p>“Stop!” Gabriel exclaimed suddenly, and he was shaking so hard with
-unseemly mirth that he shook me, too; for without being able to help
-myself, I had been crowding closer and closer to him, until I was
-burrowing right under his arm in the agonies of confession.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_653" id="Page_653">[Pg 653]</a></span> “The
-damages will be endless if you go on at this rate. How many of these
-murders did you realize you were doing at the time you did ’em?”</p>
-
-<p>“Only Bill,” I answered, after a few minutes of intense mental
-suffering. “I knew I ought to go and sympathize with the mother of the
-baby, but I didn’t know about that squeezing a baby’s stomach in the
-right place; but, as I say, I ought to have known, and&mdash;I did throw
-the quilt back to start to Mrs. Stivers when you came in. Please don’t
-laugh!”</p>
-
-<p>“Then you stand acquitted of all responsibility of faulty impulse
-except about the murder of Bill, which didn’t come off,” Gabriel
-answered in a gentle, serious, and respectful voice that soothed me
-into a cheerful frame of mind over my crimes even before he had more
-than half uttered the words. I felt hope for myself rise in my heart.</p>
-
-<p>“And then&mdash;then you came to the door and began to sing ‘Stand up for
-Jesus!’ so that eyes in my soul opened suddenly, and I saw Him standing
-and looking pitifully down into my awful black heart, and I felt Him
-reach out His hand to me in the darkness. I’ve always avoided and been
-afraid of God before, but now do you think He feels about me as He did
-the man on the other cross who had done awful things, I forget just
-what, and as long as Bill and the baby are both alive, and I worked so
-hard, He will forgive me and love me? And give me more awful work to
-do? Tell me, and what you say I will believe.” I crouched at his knee
-as I asked the question breathlessly.</p>
-
-<p>“Oh, you wonderful, foolish woman, you! Don’t you know that the good
-God knows and claims His own?” Gabriel answered, as he bent forward and
-put his hand on the head that had bowed on his knee. For a heart-still
-instant we trembled together, then he said quietly and humbly: “I give
-up. All my life I have prayed that my ‘woman’ would be one who had seen
-her Master face to face. Stumbling in the darkness, groping, both of
-us, we found each other and&mdash;clung. Are you mine? God, dare I claim a
-miracle such as You sent to Your servants of old? Have we together met
-You in the bush, and is it burning? Can we believe that You mean to”&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>Then suddenly, in the very midst of his prayer, came a great, white,
-steady glare, which rent the black clouds above us and revealed us to
-each other, like the sun at high noon. The very mountains seemed to
-reel in it, and the forest behind us was stilled from the rack of the
-winds.</p>
-
-<p>And clasping his knees, I looked and looked into his eyes, down, down
-until I found a light more blinding than that without, while I could
-feel his searching mine sternly, solemnly, and with a hope so great
-that I was tempted to cower, but was prevented by a fierce hunger that
-rose in me and demanded. I don’t know how long the light lasted, but
-when it went out, and had left us in the night, the ordeal was over,
-and I was welded into his arms, and his lips were pouring out love to
-me in broken words of blessing and demand.</p>
-
-<p>“Are you real?” he whispered, with my cheek pressed hard against his,
-and his arms terrific with tenderness. “Can I believe it is true? Can I
-claim a miracle? Can I?”</p>
-
-<p>“Yes,” I answered with triumphant certainty in my mind and voice&mdash;“yes.
-It’s that revelation you said you&mdash;that is, the&mdash;the man that was
-coming for me would have. I know it’s a miracle, because I am as afraid
-of a preacher as of&mdash;of that thing rustling out there in the bushes;
-but if God let me get into your arms this awful way He means for me to
-stay. And it’s <i>my</i> miracle, not yours. I needed one, and you didn’t.
-You are it! You don’t think He will take you away from me in the
-daylight, do you?”</p>
-
-<p>“Never,” he laughed against my lips, with the coax and woo both in his
-throat, under my hand pressed against it. And that was the taming of
-the wild me.</p>
-
-<p>A long time after, when I had settled myself comfortably against his
-shoulder, and gone permanently to housekeeping in the parsonage of his
-arms, softly the clouds above us drifted apart, and a glorious full
-moon shone down on us in the warmest congratulatory approval.</p>
-
-<p>“Let me look good at you, love-woman, so I’ll not confuse you with the
-other flowers when morning comes,” Gabriel fluted from above my head as
-he attempted to turn me on his arm a fraction of an inch away from him.</p>
-
-<p>“You can use the moon, if you need it for identification purposes, but
-that lightning was enough for me,” I answered, retiring from his eyes
-for a hot-cheeked second under the silk handkerchief around his neck.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_654" id="Page_654">[Pg 654]</a></span>
-“It may take time and moonlight to teach you me, but I knew you in a
-flash. I know it’s awful, but most women learn love by lightning, and
-it’s agony to have to wait while men slowly arrive at it by the light
-of the sun, moon, and stars. Will nothing ever teach them to hurry?”</p>
-
-<p>“I should say,” answered Gabriel, with a delicious laugh, which I got
-double benefit of, for I both heard it and felt it, “that I had met you
-at least half-way.”</p>
-
-<p>“And I’m a perfect stranger to you,” I was reiterating honestly, when
-an amazed answer arrived from the other side of the rock.</p>
-
-<p>“Well, you don’t look it&mdash;perfect strangers!” came in Dudley’s
-astonished voice, as he rose from beneath the crag and stood beside us.
-“You old psalm-singer, you, where did you get that girl?” he demanded
-with a great, but, for the circumstances, very calm, interest.</p>
-
-<p>“Just picked her up in the woods, where she has always been waiting
-for me, you old log-killer, you. Yes, I guessed the fact that she is
-your sister, but I dare you to try to take her away from me,” answered
-Gabriel, as he held me closer, when, with sisterly dignity, I tried to
-get into a position to squelch Dudley.</p>
-
-<p>“I’ll never try,” answered Dudley, with devout thankfulness sounding in
-his voice up from his diaphragm. “Maybe you can hold her down, Gates;
-you seem to have got a good grip for a starter. The family never could.”</p>
-
-<p>Yes, my dear Evelyn, Gabriel turned out to be that wonderful Gates
-Attwood to whom Chicago has given five million dollars to build his
-great Temple of Labor down on the South Side. He has been up here
-visiting Dudley at his camp at Pigeon Creek, hiding for a little rest
-for three months, and circuit-riding the mountaineers. If I had met him
-under the shelter of my own roof-tree, I in evening dress, with the
-lights on, I would have taken one insolent look at him, and then talked
-to Bobby the rest of the evening, while Aunt Grace raged in pantomime
-at mother about me. I realized this the instant Dudley called his name,
-and I turned and hid my eyes against his lips as I trembled at such an
-escape from losing him.</p>
-
-<p>“I never belonged to anybody but you and&mdash;God. That’s what made me bad
-to the others before I was found and claimed,” I whispered across his
-cheek, while he nestled me still deeper into his breast, ignoring
-Dudley, as he deserved.</p>
-
-<p>“God’s good woman, and mine,” was the low answer I felt and heard.</p>
-
-<p>“Well, I’d better go scare Mr. and Mrs. Possum and the Coon Sisters
-off your trunks over at Crow Point,” remarked Dudley, with more than
-brotherly consideration. “Something familiar about that collection of
-baggage yanked me off the down train. I’ll fix you up at Stivers’s when
-you want to come in, Nell. Here’s to her permanent change of heart,
-Parson!” And he lighted his pipe as he strolled away through the woods.</p>
-
-<p>And as he left, an awful shyness came pressing in between me and the
-great man who sat on an Old Harpeth crag and held me so mercifully in
-his arms.</p>
-
-<p>“Isn’t there a mistake somewhere?” I asked in fear and trembling. “Or
-did I really get born again, with you to help me?”</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, love,” he answered softly. “This is the right way of things. I
-needed you; you, me. We were ready, and He let us touch hands in the
-storm, to be new created. Don’t you feel&mdash;kind of weak and young?”</p>
-
-<p>“No,” I whispered just as softly. “Dreadfully strong. I know now how
-Eve felt when she put her hand to Adam’s side, where there wasn’t even
-a scar, and didn’t have to ask where she really came from.”</p>
-
-<p class="s4 center mtop2 mbot1">THE LETTER THAT REALLY WAS SENT</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p class="right mright2">Hillsboro, Tennessee, May 30.</p>
-
-<p class="p0">My dear Evelyn:</p>
-
-<p>Yes, I know it sounds dreadful for him, that I’m going to marry Gates
-Attwood next month; but I am going to be better than you can believe
-I will. I tried to write you all about it, but I couldn’t. No, that
-isn’t exactly true. I did, but Gates is wearing the letter in his left
-breast pocket, and won’t give it up. Everybody will just have to trust
-him with me because he does; and he must know what’s best, because God
-trusts him. Please come home in time for the wedding. I need you, but
-I haven’t made any plans. I can’t think or plan. I’m feeling. Were you
-ever born again? If you have been, you will know what I’m talking about
-when I tell you; and if you haven’t, you will think I am crazy.</p>
-
-<p class="right mright2"><span class="mright3">Lovingly,</span><br />
-H<span class="smaller">ELEN</span>.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-   <a id="i_654" name="i_654">
-   <img class="mtop1" src="images/i_654.jpg" alt="" /></a>
-  <p class="caption1">Color-Tone, engraved for
-    T<span class="smaller">HE</span> C<span class="smaller">ENTURY</span> by H. Davidson</p>
-  <p class="caption">LES DEUX AVOCATS (THE TWO LAWYERS)</p>
-  <p class="caption1">FROM THE HITHERTO UNPUBLISHED PAINTING BY HONORÉ DAUMIER</p>
-  <p class="caption1"><span class="s5">NOW IN THE COLLECTION OF ALEXANDER W. DRAKE</span></p>
-  <p class="linkedimage"><a href="images/i_654_large.jpg">&#10063;<br />
-  <span class="smaller">LARGER IMAGE</span></a></p>
-</div>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_655" id="Page_655">[Pg 655]</a></span></p>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-   <a id="i_655" name="i_655">
-   <img class="mtop3" src="images/i_655.jpg" alt="Headpiece Maeterlinck" /></a>
-</div>
-
-<h2 class="nobreak nopad" id="LIFE_AFTER_DEATH1" title="LIFE AFTER DEATH">LIFE AFTER DEATH<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor"><span class="s6 vat">[1]</span></a></h2>
-
-<p class="s3 center">BY MAURICE MAETERLINCK</p>
-
-<p class="s4 center">Author of “The Life of the Bee,” “Pelléas
-and Mélisande,” etc.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p class="p0">T<span class="smaller">HIS</span> calm, judicious review of the results of organized psychical
-research cannot fail to be immensely valuable in clearing up the mists
-accumulated in twenty-eight years of earnest investigation into “the
-debatable phenomena designated by such terms as mesmeric, psychical,
-and spiritualistic.” The accumulations of evidence, and of argument
-based upon evidence, have been so enormous that few men busy with
-life have found time more than to dip into the wonderful subject and
-turn dismayed and reluctant away. Nothing has been so much needed by
-the Public Concerned with the Greater Things as a careful digestion
-of this subject to date, and we are fortunate in having so broad, so
-scientific, so many-sided a mind as Maeterlinck’s perform this service
-for us.</p>
-
-<p>This paper is the first of many in which T<span class="smaller">HE</span>
-C<span class="smaller">ENTURY</span> will take account of civilization’s
-accomplishments in many fields for the benefit of busy men and
-women.&mdash;T<span class="smaller">HE</span> E<span class="smaller">DITOR</span>.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<h3>THE THEOSOPHICAL HYPOTHESIS</h3>
-
-<p class="p0"><span class="drop-cap">I</span>&nbsp; HAVE recently been studying two interesting solutions of the
-problem of personal survival&mdash;solutions which, although not new, have
-at least been lately renewed. I refer to the neotheosophical and
-neospiritualistic theories, which are, I think, the only ones that can
-be seriously discussed. The first is almost as old as man himself;
-but a popular movement of some magnitude in certain countries has
-rejuvenated the doctrine of reincarnation, or the transmigration of
-souls, and brought it once more into prominence.</p>
-
-<p>The great argument of its adherents&mdash;the chief and, when all is said,
-the only argument&mdash;is only a sentimental one. Their doctrine that the
-soul in its successive existences is purified and exalted with more or
-less rapidity according to its efforts and deserts is, they maintain,
-the only one that satisfies the irresistible instinct of justice which
-we bear within us. They are right, and, from this point of view, their
-posthumous justice is immeasurably superior to that of the barbaric
-heaven and the monstrous hell of the Christians, where rewards and
-punishments are forever meted out to virtues and vices which are for
-the most part puerile, unavoidable, or accidental. But this, I repeat,
-is only a sentimental argument, which has only an infinitesimal value
-in the scale of evidence.</p>
-
-<p>We may admit that certain of their theories are rather ingenious; and
-what they say of the part played by the “shells,” for instance, or
-the “elementals,” in the spiritualistic phenomena, is worth about as
-much as our clumsy explanations of fluidic and supersensible bodies.
-Perhaps, or even no doubt, they are right when they insist that
-everything around us is full of living, sentient forms, of diverse and
-innumerous types, “as different from one another as a blade of grass
-and a tiger, or a tiger and a man,” which are incessantly brushing
-against us and through which we pass unawares. If all the religions
-have overpopulated the world with invisible beings, we have perhaps
-depopulated it too completely; and it is extremely possible<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_656" id="Page_656">[Pg 656]</a></span> that we
-shall find one day that the mistake was not on the side which one
-imagined. As Sir William Crookes well puts it in a remarkable passage:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>It is not improbable that other sentient beings have organs of
-sense which do not respond to some or any of the rays to which our
-eyes are sensitive, but are able to appreciate other vibrations
-to which we are blind. Such beings would practically be living in
-a different world to our own. Imagine, for instance, what idea
-we should form of surrounding objects were we endowed with eyes
-not sensitive to the ordinary rays of light but sensitive to the
-vibrations concerned in electric and magnetic phenomena. Glass and
-crystal would be among the most opaque of bodies. Metals would be
-more or less transparent, and a telegraph wire through the air
-would look like a long narrow hole drilled through an impervious
-solid body. A dynamo in active work would resemble a conflagration,
-whilst a permanent magnet would realise the dream of mediæval
-mystics and become an everlasting lamp with no expenditure of
-energy or consumption of fuel.</p></div>
-
-<p>All this, with so many other things which they assert, would be, if
-not admissible, at least worthy of attention, if those suppositions
-were offered for what they are, very ancient hypotheses that go back
-to the early ages of human theology and metaphysics; but when they are
-transformed into categorical and dogmatic assertions, they at once
-become untenable. Their exponents promise us, on the other hand, that
-by exercising our minds, by refining our senses, by etherealizing our
-bodies, we shall be able to live with those whom we call dead and with
-the higher beings that surround us. It all seems to lead to nothing
-very much and rests on very frail bases, on very vague proofs derived
-from hypnotic sleep, presentiments, mediumism, phantasms, and so forth.
-We want something more than arbitrary theories about the “immortal
-triad,” the “three worlds,” the “astral body,” the “permanent atom,”
-or the “Karma-Loka.” As their sensibility is keener, their perception
-subtler, their spiritual intuition more penetrating, than ours, why do
-they not choose as a field for investigation the phenomena of prenatal
-memory, for instance, to take one subject at random from a multitude
-of others&mdash;phenomena which, although sporadic and open to question, are
-still admissible?</p>
-
-<h3>THE NEOSPIRITUALISTIC HYPOTHESIS</h3>
-
-<p>O<span class="smaller">UTSIDE</span> theosophy, investigations of a purely scientific nature have
-been made in the baffling regions of survival and reincarnation.
-Neospiritualism, or psychicism, or experimental spiritualism, had its
-origin in America in 1870. In the following year the first strictly
-scientific experiments were organized by Sir William Crookes, the man
-of genius who opened up most of the roads at the end of which men were
-astounded to discover unknown properties and conditions of matter;
-and as early as 1873 or 1874 he obtained, with the aid of the medium
-Florence Cook, phenomena of materialization that have hardly been
-surpassed. But the real beginning of the new science dates from the
-foundation of the Society for Psychical Research, familiarly known
-as the S. P. R. This society was formed in London twenty-eight years
-ago, under the auspices of the most distinguished men of science
-in England, and, as we all know, has made a methodical and strict
-study of every case of supernormal psychology and sensibility. This
-study or investigation, originally conducted by Edmund Gurney, F. W.
-H. Myers, and Frank Podmore, and continued by their successors, is
-a masterpiece of scientific patience and conscientiousness. Not an
-incident is admitted that is not supported by unimpeachable testimony,
-by definite written records and convincing corroboration. Among the
-many supernormal manifestations, telepathy, previsions, and so forth,
-we will take cognizance only of those which relate to life beyond the
-grave. They can be divided into two categories: first, real, objective,
-and spontaneous apparitions, or direct manifestations; second,
-manifestations obtained by the agency of mediums, whether induced
-apparitions, which we will put aside for the moment because of their
-frequently questionable character, or communications with the dead by
-word of mouth or automatic writing. Those extraordinary communications
-have been studied at length by such men as F. W. H. Myers, Richard
-Hodgson, Sir Oliver Lodge, and the philosopher William James, the
-father of the new pragmatism. They profoundly impressed and almost<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_657" id="Page_657">[Pg 657]</a></span>
-convinced these men, and they therefore deserve to arrest our attention.</p>
-
-<p>It appears, therefore, to be as well established as a fact can be
-that a spiritual or nervous shape, an image, a belated reflection of
-life, is capable of subsisting for some time, of releasing itself
-from the body, or surviving it, of traversing enormous distances in
-the twinkling of an eye, of manifesting itself to the living and,
-sometimes, of communicating with them.</p>
-
-<p>For the rest, we have to recognize that these apparitions are very
-brief. They take place only at the precise moment of death, or follow
-very shortly after. They do not seem to have the least consciousness of
-a new or superterrestrial life, differing from that of the body whence
-they issue. On the contrary, their spiritual energy, at a time when it
-ought to be absolutely pure, because it is rid of matter, seems greatly
-inferior to what it was when matter surrounded it. These more or less
-uneasy phantasms, often tormented with trivial cares, although they
-come from another world, have never brought us one single revelation
-of topical interest concerning that world whose prodigious threshold
-they have crossed. Soon they fade away and disappear forever. Are they
-the first glimmers of a new existence or the final glimmers of the old?
-Do the dead thus use, for want of a better, the last link that binds
-them and makes them perceptible to our senses? Do they afterward go on
-living around us, without again succeeding, despite their endeavors, to
-make themselves known or to give us an idea of their presence, because
-we have not the organ that is necessary to perceive them, even as all
-our endeavors would not succeed in giving a man who was blind from
-birth the least notion of light and color? We do not know at all; nor
-can we tell whether it is permissible to draw any conclusion from all
-these incontestable phenomena. Meanwhile, it is interesting to observe
-that there really are ghosts, specters, and phantoms. Once again,
-science steps in to confirm a general belief of mankind, and to teach
-us that a belief of this sort, however absurd it may at first seem,
-still deserves careful examination.</p>
-
-<h3>THE DILEMMA OF THE TRUTH-SEEKER</h3>
-
-<p>N<span class="smaller">OW</span>, what are we to think of it all? Must we, with Myers, Newbold,
-Hyslop, Hodgson, and many others who have studied this problem at
-length, conclude in favor of the incontestable agency of forces and
-intelligences returning from the farther bank of the great river
-which it was deemed that none might cross? Must we acknowledge with
-them that there are cases ever more numerous which make it impossible
-for us to hesitate any longer between the telepathic hypothesis
-and the spiritualistic hypothesis? I do not think so. I have no
-prejudices,&mdash;what were the use of having any in these mysteries?&mdash;no
-reluctance to admit the survival and the intervention of the dead;
-but, before leaving the terrestrial plane, it is wise and necessary
-to exhaust all the suppositions, all the explanations, there to be
-discovered. We have to make our choice between two manifestations of
-the unknown, two miracles, if you prefer, whereof one is situated in
-the world which we inhabit and the other in a region which, rightly or
-wrongly, we believe to be separated from us by nameless spaces which
-no human being, alive or dead, has crossed to this day. It is natural,
-therefore, that we should stay in our own world as long as it gives
-us a foothold, as long as we are not pitilessly expelled from it by a
-series of irresistible and irrefutable facts issuing from the adjoining
-abyss. The survival of a spirit is no more improbable than the
-prodigious faculties which we are obliged to attribute to the mediums
-if we deny them to the dead: but the existence of the medium, contrary
-to that of the spirit, is unquestionable; and therefore it is for the
-spirit, or for those who make use of its name, first to prove that it
-exists.</p>
-
-<p>Do the extraordinary phenomena of which we have spoken&mdash;transmission
-of thought from one subconscious mind to another, perception of events
-at a distance, subliminal clairvoyance&mdash;occur when the dead are not
-in evidence, when the experiments are being made exclusively between
-living persons? This cannot be honestly contested. Certainly no one
-has ever obtained among living people series of communications or
-revelations similar to those of the great spiritualistic mediums Mrs.
-Piper, Mrs. Thompson, and Stainton Moses, nor anything that can be
-compared with these so far as continuity or lucidity is concerned.
-But though the quality of the phenomena will not bear<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_658" id="Page_658">[Pg 658]</a></span> comparison,
-it cannot be denied that their inner nature is identical. It is
-logical to infer from this that the real cause lies not in the source
-of inspiration, but in the personal value, the sensitiveness, the
-power of the medium. These mediums are pleased, in all good faith and
-probably unconsciously, to give to their subliminal faculties, to
-their secondary personalities, or to accept, on their behalf, names
-which were borne by beings who have crossed to the further side of the
-mystery: this is a matter of vocabulary or nomenclature which neither
-lessens nor increases the intrinsic significance of the facts.</p>
-
-<h3>THE BORDER-LAND OF LIFE AND DEATH</h3>
-
-<p>W<span class="smaller">ELL</span>, in examining these facts, however strange and really unparalleled
-some of them may be, I never find one which proceeds frankly from
-this world or which comes indisputably from the other. They are, if
-you wish, phenomenal border incidents; but it cannot be said that the
-border has been violated. It is simply a matter of distant perception,
-subliminal clairvoyance, and telepathy raised to the highest power;
-and these three manifestations of the unexplored depths of man are
-to-day recognized and classified by science, which is not saying that
-they are explained. That is another question. When, in connection
-with electricity, we use such terms as positive, negative, induction,
-potential, and resistance, we are also applying conventional words
-to facts and phenomena of the inward essence of which we are utterly
-ignorant; and we must needs be content with these, pending better.
-Between these extraordinary manifestations and those given to us by a
-medium who is not speaking in the name of the dead, there is, I insist,
-only a difference of the greater and the lesser, a difference of extent
-or degree, and in no wise a difference in kind.</p>
-
-<p>For the proof to be more decisive, it would be necessary that neither
-the medium nor the witnesses should ever have known of the existence
-of him whose past is revealed by the dead man; in other words, that
-every living link should be eliminated. I do not believe that this has
-ever actually occurred, nor even that it is possible; in any case, it
-would be a very difficult experiment to control. Be this as it may,
-Dr. Hodgson, who devoted part of his life to the quest of specific
-phenomena wherein the boundaries of mediumistic power should be
-plainly overstepped, believes that he found them in certain cases, of
-which, as the others were of very much the same nature, I will merely
-mention one of the most striking. In a course of excellent sittings
-with Mrs. Piper, the medium, he communicated with various dead friends
-who reminded him of a large number of common memories. The medium,
-the spirits, and he himself seemed in a wonderfully accommodating
-mood; and the revelations were plentiful, exact, and easy. In this
-extremely favorable atmosphere, he was placed in communication with
-the soul of one of his best friends, who had died a year before, and
-whom he simply called “A.” This A, whom he had known more intimately
-than most of the spirits with whom he had communicated previously,
-behaved quite differently and, while establishing his identity beyond
-dispute, vouchsafed only incoherent replies. Now, A “had been troubled
-much, for years before his death, by headaches and occasionally mental
-exhaustion, though not amounting to positive mental disturbance.”</p>
-
-<p>The same phenomenon appears to recur whenever similar troubles have
-come before death, as in cases of suicide.</p>
-
-<p>“If the telepathic explanation is held to be the only one,” says Dr.
-Hodgson (I give the gist of his observations), “if it is claimed that
-all the communications of these discarnate minds are only suggestions
-from my subconscious self, it is unintelligible that, after having
-obtained satisfactory results from others whom I had known far
-less intimately than A and with whom I had consequently far fewer
-recollections in common, I should get from him, in the same sittings,
-nothing but incoherencies. I am thus driven to believe that my
-subliminal self is not the only thing in evidence, that it is in the
-presence of a real, living personality, whose mental state is the same
-as it was at the hour of death, a personality which remains independent
-of my subliminal consciousness and absolutely unaffected by it, which
-is deaf to its suggestions, and draws from its own resources the
-revelations which it makes.”</p>
-
-<p>The argument is not without value, but its full force would be obtained
-only if it were certain that none of those present<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_659" id="Page_659">[Pg 659]</a></span> knew of A’s
-madness; otherwise it can be contended that, the notion of madness
-having penetrated the subconscious intelligence of one of them, it
-worked upon it and gave to the replies induced a form in keeping with
-the state of mind presupposed in the dead man.</p>
-
-<h3>IS THE FUTURE LIFE DIM AND SHADOWY?</h3>
-
-<p>O<span class="smaller">F</span> a truth, by extending the possibilities of the medium to these
-extremes, we furnish ourselves with explanations which forestall
-nearly everything, bar every road, and all but deny to the spirits
-any power of manifesting themselves in the manner which they appear
-to have chosen. But why do they choose that manner? Why do they thus
-restrict themselves? Why do they jealously hug the narrow strip of
-territory which memory occupies on the confines of both worlds and
-from which none but indecisive or questionable evidence can reach
-us? Are there, then, no other outlets, no other horizons? Why do
-they tarry about us, stagnant in their little pasts, when, in their
-freedom from the flesh, they ought to be able to wander at ease over
-the virgin stretches of space and time? Do they not yet know that the
-sign which will prove to us that they survive is to be found not with
-us, but with them, on the other side of the grave? Why do they come
-back with empty hands and empty words? Is that what one finds when
-one is steeped in infinity? Beyond our last hour is it all bare and
-shapeless and dim? If it be so, let them tell us; and the evidence of
-the darkness will at least possess a grandeur that is all too absent
-from these cross-examining methods. Of what use is it to die, if all
-life’s trivialities continue? Is it really worth while to have passed
-through the terrifying gorges which open on the eternal fields in order
-to remember that we had a great-uncle called Peter and that our Cousin
-Paul was afflicted with varicose veins and a gastric complaint? At
-that rate, I should choose for those whom I love the august and frozen
-solitudes of the everlasting nothing. Though it be difficult for them,
-as they complain, to make themselves understood through a strange and
-sleep-bound organism, they tell us enough categorical details about the
-past to show that they could disclose similar details, if not about
-the future, which they perhaps do not yet know, at least about the
-lesser mysteries which surround us on every side and which our body
-alone prevents us from approaching. There are a thousand things, large
-or small, alike unknown to us, which we must perceive when feeble eyes
-no longer arrest our vision. It is in those regions from which a shadow
-separates us, and not in foolish tittle-tattle of the past, that they
-would at last find the clear and genuine proof which they seem to seek
-with such enthusiasm. Without demanding a great miracle, one would
-nevertheless think that we had the right to expect from a mind which
-nothing now enthralls some other discourse than that which it avoided
-when it was still subject to matter.</p>
-
-<p>This is where things stood when, of late years, the mediums, the
-spiritualists, or, rather, it appears, the spirits themselves, for
-one cannot tell exactly with whom we have to do, perhaps dissatisfied
-at not being more definitely recognized and understood, invented,
-for a more effectual proof of their existence, what has been called
-“cross-correspondence.” Here the position is reversed: it is no longer
-a question of various and more or less numerous spirits revealing
-themselves through the agency of one and the same medium, but of a
-single spirit manifesting itself almost simultaneously through several
-mediums often at great distances from one another and without any
-preliminary understanding among themselves. Each of these messages,
-taken alone, is usually unintelligible, and yields a meaning only when
-laboriously combined with all the others.</p>
-
-<p>As Sir Oliver Lodge says:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>The object of this ingenious and complicated effort clearly is
-to prove that there is some definite intelligence underlying
-the phenomena, distinct from that of any of the automatists, by
-sending fragments of a message or literary reference which shall be
-unintelligible to each separately&mdash;so that no effective telepathy
-is possible between them,&mdash;thus eliminating or trying to eliminate
-what had long been recognized by all members of the Society for
-Psychical Research as the most troublesome and indestructible of
-the semi-normal hypotheses. And the further object is evidently
-to prove as far as possible, by the substance and quality of
-the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_660" id="Page_660">[Pg 660]</a></span> message, that it is characteristic of the one particular
-personality who is ostensibly communicating, and of no other.<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p></div>
-
-<p>The experiments are still in their early stages, and the most recent
-volumes of the “Proceedings” are devoted to them. Although the
-accumulated mass of evidence is already considerable, no conclusion
-can yet be drawn from it. In any case, whatever the spiritualists
-may say, the suspicion of telepathy seems to me to be in no way
-removed. The experiments form a rather fantastic literary exercise,
-one intellectually much superior to the ordinary manifestations of the
-mediums; but up to the present there is no reason for placing their
-mystery in the other world rather than in this. Men have tried to see
-in them a proof that somewhere in time or space, or else beyond both,
-there is a sort of immense cosmic reserve of knowledge upon which the
-spirits go and draw freely. But if the reserve exist, which is very
-possible, nothing tells us that it is not the living rather than the
-dead who repair to it. It is very strange that the dead, if they really
-have access to the immeasurable treasure, should bring back nothing
-from it but a kind of ingenious child’s puzzle, although it ought to
-contain myriads of lost or forgotten notions and acquirements, heaped
-up during thousands and thousands of years in abysses which our mind,
-weighed down by the body, can no longer penetrate, but which nothing
-seems to close against the investigations of freer and more subtle
-activities. They are evidently surrounded by innumerable mysteries,
-by unsuspected and formidable truths that loom large on every side.
-The smallest astronomical or biological revelation, the least secret
-of olden time, such as that of the temper of copper, an archæological
-detail, a poem, a statue, a recovered remedy, a shred of one of those
-unknown sciences which flourished in Egypt or Atlantis&mdash;any of these
-would form a much more decisive argument than hundreds of more or
-less literary reminiscences. Why do they speak to us so seldom of the
-future? And for what reason, when they do venture upon it, are they
-mistaken with such disheartening regularity? One would think that, in
-the sight of a being delivered from the trammels of the body and of
-time, the years, whether past or future, ought all to lie outspread
-on one and the same plane.<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> We may therefore say that the ingenuity
-of the proof turns against it. All things considered, as in other
-attempts, and notably in those of the famous medium Stainton Moses,
-there is the same characteristic inability to bring us the veriest
-particle of truth or knowledge of which no vestige can be found in
-a living brain or in a book written on this earth. And yet it is
-inconceivable that there should not somewhere exist a knowledge that is
-not as ours and truths other than those which we possess here below.</p>
-
-<h3>A LACK OF VITAL COMMUNICATIONS</h3>
-
-<p>T<span class="smaller">HE</span> case of Stainton Moses, whose name we have just mentioned, is a
-very striking one in this respect. This Stainton Moses was a dogmatic,
-hard-working clergyman, whose learning, Myers tells us, in the normal
-state did not exceed that of an ordinary schoolmaster. But he was no
-sooner “entranced” before certain spirits of antiquity or of the Middle
-Ages who are hardly known save to profound scholars&mdash;among others,
-St. Hippolytus; Plotinus; Athenodorus, the tutor of Augustus; and
-more particularly Grocyn, the friend of Erasmus&mdash;took possession of
-his person and manifested themselves through his agency. Now, Grocyn,
-for instance, furnished certain information about Erasmus which was
-at first thought to have been gathered in the other world, but which
-was subsequently discovered in forgotten, but nevertheless accessible,
-books. On the other hand, Stainton Moses’s integrity was never
-questioned for an instant by those who knew him, and we may therefore
-take his word for it when he declares that he had not read the books
-in question. Here again the mystery, inexplicable though it be, seems
-really to lie hidden in the midst of ourselves. It is unconscious
-reminis<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_661" id="Page_661">[Pg 661]</a></span>cence, if you will, suggestion at a distance, subliminal
-reading; but no more than in cross-correspondence is it indispensable
-to have recourse to the dead and to drag them by main force into the
-riddle, which, seen from our side of the grave, is dark and impassioned
-enough as it is. Furthermore, we must not insist unduly on this
-cross-correspondence. We must remember that the whole thing is in its
-earliest stages, and that the dead appear to have no small difficulty
-in grasping the requirements of the living.</p>
-
-<p>In regard to this subject, as to the others, the spiritualists are fond
-of saying:</p>
-
-<p>“If you refuse to admit the agency of spirits, the majority of these
-phenomena are absolutely inexplicable.”</p>
-
-<p>Agreed; nor do we pretend to explain them, for hardly anything is to be
-explained upon this earth. We are content simply to ascribe them to the
-incomprehensible power of the mediums, which is no more improbable than
-the survival of the dead, and has the advantage of not going outside
-the sphere which we occupy and of bearing relation to a large number of
-similar facts that occur among living people. Those singular faculties
-are baffling only because they are still sporadic, and because only a
-very short time has elapsed since they received scientific recognition.
-Properly speaking, they are no more marvelous than those which we use
-daily without marveling at them; as our memory, for instance, our
-understanding, our imagination, and so forth. They form part of the
-great miracle that we are; and, having once admitted the miracle, we
-should be surprised not so much at its extent as at its limits.</p>
-
-<p>Nevertheless, I am not at all of opinion that we must definitely reject
-the spiritualistic theory; that would be both unjust and premature.
-Hitherto everything remains in suspense. We may say that things are
-still very little removed from the point marked by Sir William Crookes,
-in 1874, in an article which he contributed to the “Quarterly Journal
-of Science.” He there wrote:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>The difference between the advocates of Psychic Force and the
-Spiritualists consists in this&mdash;that we contend that there is
-as yet insufficient proof of any other directing agent than the
-Intelligence of the Medium, and no proof whatever of the agency of
-Spirits of the Dead; while the Spiritualists hold it as a faith,
-not demanding further proof, that Spirits of the Dead are the sole
-agents in the production of all the phenomena. Thus the controversy
-resolves itself into a pure question of <i>fact</i>, only to be
-determined by a laborious and long-continued series of experiments
-and an extensive collection of psychological <i>facts</i>, which should
-be the first duty of the Psychological Society, the formation of
-which is now in progress.</p></div>
-
-<h3>HAS THE SPIRIT ONLY AN INCOHERENT MEMORY OF LIFE?</h3>
-
-<p>M<span class="smaller">EANWHILE</span>, it is saying a good deal that rigorous scientific
-investigations have not utterly shattered a theory which radically
-confounds the idea which we were wont to form of death. We shall see
-presently why, in considering our destinies beyond the grave, we need
-have no reason to linger too long over these apparitions or these
-revelations, even though they should really be incontestable and to
-the point. They would seem, all told, to be only the incoherent and
-precarious manifestations of a transitory state. They would at best
-prove, if we were bound to admit them, that a reflection of ourselves,
-an after-vibration of the nerves, a bundle of emotions, a spiritual
-silhouette, a grotesque and forlorn image, or, more correctly, a sort
-of truncated and uprooted memory, can, after our death, linger and
-float in a space where nothing remains to feed it, where it gradually
-becomes wan and lifeless, but where a special fluid, emanating from
-an exceptional medium, succeeds at moments in galvanizing it. Perhaps
-it exists objectively, perhaps it subsists and revives only in the
-recollection of certain sympathies. After all, it would be not unlikely
-that the memory which represents us during our life should continue to
-do so for a few weeks or even a few years after our decease. This would
-explain the evasive and deceptive character of those spirits which,
-possessing only a mnemonic existence, are naturally able to interest
-themselves only in matters within their reach. Hence their irritating
-and maniacal energy in clinging to the slightest facts, their sleepy
-dullness, their incomprehensible indifference and ignorance, and all
-the wretched absurdities which we have noticed more than once.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_662" id="Page_662">[Pg 662]</a></span></p>
-
-<p>But, I repeat, it is much simpler to attribute these absurdities to the
-special character and the as yet imperfectly recognized difficulties
-of telepathic communication. The unconscious suggestions of the most
-intelligent among those who take part in the experiment are impaired,
-disjointed, and stripped of their main virtues in passing through the
-obscure intermediary of the medium. It may be that they go astray and
-make their way into certain forgotten corners which the intelligence
-no longer visits, and thence bring back more or less surprising
-discoveries; but the intellectual quality of the aggregate will always
-be inferior to that which a conscious mind would yield. Besides, once
-more, it is not yet time to draw conclusions. We must not lose sight
-of the fact that we have to do with a science which was born but
-yesterday, and which is groping for its implements, its paths, its
-methods, and its aim in a darkness denser than the earth’s. The boldest
-bridge that men have yet undertaken to throw across the river of death
-is not to be built in thirty years. Most sciences have centuries of
-thankless efforts and barren uncertainties behind them; and there
-are, I imagine, few among the younger of them that can show from the
-earliest hour, as this one does, promises of a harvest which may not be
-the harvest of their conscious sowing, but which already bids fair to
-yield such unknown and wondrous fruit.<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a></p>
-
-<h3>TRANSMIGRATION OF SOULS</h3>
-
-<p>S<span class="smaller">O</span> much for survival proper. But certain spiritualists go further, and
-attempt the scientific proof of palingenesis and the transmigration
-of souls. I pass over their merely moral or scientific arguments,
-as well as those which they discover in the prenatal reminiscences
-of illustrious men and others. These reminiscences, though often
-disturbing, are still too rare, too sporadic, so to speak; and the
-supervision has not always been sufficiently close for us to be able
-to rely upon them with safety. Nor do I purpose to pay attention to
-the proofs based upon the inborn aptitudes of genius or of certain
-infant prodigies&mdash;aptitudes which are difficult to explain, but which,
-nevertheless, may be attributed to unknown laws of heredity. I shall be
-content to recall briefly the results of some of Colonel de Rochas’s
-experiments, which leave one at a loss for an explanation.</p>
-
-<p>First of all, it is only right to say that Colonel de Rochas is a
-savant who seeks nothing but objective truth, and does so with a
-scientific strictness and integrity that have never been questioned.
-He puts certain exceptional subjects into an hypnotic sleep, and by
-means of downward passes makes them trace back the whole course of
-their existence. He thus takes them successively to their youth, their
-adolescence, and down to the extreme limits of their childhood. At
-each of these hypnotic stages the subject reassumes the consciousness,
-the character, and the state of mind which he possessed at the
-corresponding stage in his life. He goes over the same events, with
-their joys and sorrows. If he has been ill, he once more passes through
-his illness, his convalescence, and his recovery. If, for instance, the
-subject is a woman who has been a mother, she again becomes pregnant
-and again suffers the pains of childbirth. Carried back to an age when
-she was learning to write, she writes like a child, and her writings
-can be placed side by side with the copy-books which she filled at
-school.</p>
-
-<p>This in itself is very extraordinary, but, as Colonel de Rochas says:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>Up to the present, we have walked on firm ground; we have been
-observing a physiological phenomenon which is difficult of
-explanation, but which numerous experiments and verifications allow
-us to look upon as certain.</p></div>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_663" id="Page_663">[Pg 663]</a></span></p>
-
-<p>We now enter a region where still more surprising enigmas await us. Let
-us, to come to details, take one of the simplest cases. The subject
-is a girl of eighteen, called Joséphine. She lives at Voiron, in the
-department of the Isère. By means of downward passes, she is brought
-back to the condition of a baby at her mother’s breast. The passes
-continue, and the wonder-tale runs its course. Joséphine can no longer
-speak; and we have the great silence of infancy, which seems to be
-followed by a silence more mysterious still. Joséphine no longer
-answers except by signs; <i>she is not yet born</i>, “she is floating in
-darkness.” They persist; the sleep becomes heavier; and suddenly,
-from the depths of that sleep, rises the voice of another being&mdash;a
-voice unexpected and unknown, the voice of a churlish, distrustful,
-and discontented old man. They question him. At first he refuses to
-answer, saying that “of course he’s there, as he’s speaking”; that “he
-sees nothing”; and that “he’s in the dark.” They increase the number
-of passes, and gradually gain his confidence. His name is Jean-Claude
-Bourdon; he is an old man; he has long been ailing and bedridden. He
-tells the story of his life. He was born at Champvent, in the parish of
-Polliat, in 1812. He went to school until he was eighteen, and served
-his time in the army with the Seventh Artillery at Besançon; and he
-describes his gay time there, while the sleeping girl makes the gesture
-of twirling an imaginary mustache. When he goes back to his native
-place, he does not marry, but he has a mistress. He leads a solitary
-life (I omit all but the essential facts), and dies at the age of
-seventy, after a long illness.</p>
-
-<p>We now hear the dead man speak, and his posthumous revelations are not
-sensational, which, however, is not an adequate reason for doubting
-their genuineness. He “feels himself growing out of his body,” but
-he remains attached to it for a fairly long time. His fluidic body,
-which is at first diffused, takes a more concentrated form. He lives
-in darkness, which he finds disagreeable; but he does not suffer. At
-last the night in which he is plunged is streaked with a few flashes
-of light. The idea comes to him to reincarnate himself, and he draws
-near to her who is to be his mother (that is to say, the mother of
-Joséphine). He encircles her until the child is born, whereupon he
-gradually enters the child’s body. Until about the seventh year this
-body was surrounded by a sort of floating mist in which he used to see
-many things which he has not seen since.</p>
-
-<p>The next thing to be done is to go back beyond Jean-Claude. A
-mesmerization lasting nearly three quarters of an hour, without
-lingering at any intermediate stage, brings the old man back to
-babyhood, to a fresh silence, a new limbo; and then suddenly another
-voice and an unexpected person. This time it is an old woman who has
-been very wicked; and so she is in great torment. She is dead at the
-actual instant; for, in this inverted world, lives go backward and of
-course begin at the end. She is in deep darkness, surrounded by evil
-spirits. She speaks in a faint voice, but always gives definite replies
-to the questions put to her, instead of caviling at every moment, as
-Jean-Claude did. Her name is Philomène Carteron.</p>
-
-<p>I will now quote Colonel de Rochas:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>By intensifying the sleep, I induce the manifestations of a living
-Philomène. She no longer suffers, seems very calm, and always
-answers very coldly and distinctly. She knows that she is unpopular
-in the neighborhood, but no one is a penny the worse, and she
-will be even with them yet. She was born in 1702; her maiden name
-was Philomène Charpigny; her grandfather on the mother’s side was
-called Pierre Machon and lived at Ozan. In 1732 she married, at
-Chevroux, a man named Carteron, by whom she had two children, both
-of whom she lost.</p>
-
-<p>Before her incarnation, Philomène had been a little girl who died
-in infancy. Previous to that, she was a man who had committed
-murder, and it was to expiate this crime that she endured much
-suffering in the darkness, even after her life as a little girl,
-when she had had no time to do wrong. I did not think it necessary
-to carry the hypnosis further, because the subject appeared
-exhausted and her paroxysms were painful to watch.</p>
-
-<p>But, on the other hand, I noticed one thing which would tend
-to show that the revelations of these mediums rest on an
-objective reality. At Voiron, one of the regular attendants at my
-demonstrations is a young girl, Louise&mdash;&mdash;. She possesses a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_664" id="Page_664">[Pg 664]</a></span> very
-sedate and thoughtful cast of mind, not at all open to hypnotic
-suggestion; and she has in a very high degree the capacity, which
-is comparatively common in a lesser degree, of perceiving the
-magnetic effluvia of human beings and, consequently, the fluidic
-body. When Joséphine revives the memory of her past, a luminous
-aura is observed around her, and is perceived by Louise. Now, to
-the eyes of Louise, this aura becomes dark when Joséphine is in
-the phase separating two existences. In every instance there is a
-strong reaction in Joséphine when I touch points where Louise tells
-me that she perceives the aura, whether it be dark or light.</p></div>
-
-<p>I thought it well to give the report of one of these experiments almost
-in extenso, because those who maintain the palingenesic theory find
-in these the only appreciable argument which they possess. Colonel
-de Rochas renewed them more than once with different subjects. Among
-these, I will mention only one, a girl called Marie Mayo, whose
-history is more complicated than Joséphine’s, and whose successive
-reincarnations take us back to the seventeenth century and carry us
-suddenly to Versailles, among the historical personages moving about
-Louis XIV.</p>
-
-<p>Let us add that Colonel de Rochas is not the only mesmerizer who has
-obtained revelations of this kind, which may henceforth be classed
-among the incontestable facts of hypnotism. I have mentioned his alone
-because they offer the most substantial guaranties from every point of
-view.</p>
-
-<h3>WHAT HAS BEEN PROVED?</h3>
-
-<p>W<span class="smaller">HAT</span> do they prove? We must begin, as in all questions of this kind, by
-entertaining a certain distrust of the medium. It goes without saying
-that all mediums, by the very nature of their faculties, are inclined
-to imposture, to trickery. I know that Colonel de Rochas, like Dr.
-Richet and like Professor Lombroso, was occasionally hoaxed. That is
-the inherent defect of the machinery which we must perforce employ; and
-experiments of this sort will never possess the scientific value of
-those made in a physical or chemical laboratory. But this is not an a
-priori reason for denying them any sort of interest. As a question of
-fact, are imposture and trickery possible here? Obviously, even though
-the experiments be conducted under the strictest supervision. However
-complicated it may be, the subject can have learned his lesson, and
-can cleverly avoid the traps laid for him. The best guaranty, when
-all is said, lies in his good faith and his moral sense, which the
-experimenters alone are in a position to test and to know; and for that
-we must trust to them. Besides, they neglect no precaution necessary to
-make imposture extremely difficult. After taking the subject, by means
-of transverse passes, up the stream of his life, they make him come
-down the same stream; and the same events pass in the reverse order.
-Repeated tests and countertests always yield identical results; and the
-medium never hesitates or goes astray in the labyrinth of names, dates,
-and incidents.<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a></p>
-
-<p>Moreover, it would be requisite for these mediums, who are generally
-people of merely average intelligence, suddenly to become great poets
-in order thus to create, down to every detail, a series of characters
-differing entirely one from the other, in which everything&mdash;gestures,
-voice, temper, mind, thoughts, feeling&mdash;is in keeping, and ever
-ready to reply, in harmony with their inmost nature, to the most
-unexpected questions. It has been said that every man is a Shakspere
-in his dreams; but have we not here to do with dreams which, in their
-uniformity, bear a singular resemblance to fact?</p>
-
-<p>I think, therefore, that, until we receive evidence to the contrary, we
-may be allowed to leave fraud out of the question. Another objection
-that might be raised, as was done with respect to the Myers phantom, is
-the insignificance of their revelations from beyond the grave. I would
-rather look on this as an argument in behalf of their good faith. Those
-whose imagination is rich enough to create the wonderful persons whom
-we see living in their sleep would doubtless find no great<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_665" id="Page_665">[Pg 665]</a></span> difficulty
-in inventing a few fantastic but plausible details on the subject of
-the next world. Not one of them thinks of it. They are Christians, and
-therefore carry deep down in themselves the traditional terror of hell,
-the fear of purgatory, and the vision of a paradise full of angels and
-palms. They never refer to any of it. Although they are most often
-ignorant of all the theories of reincarnation, they conform strictly to
-the theosophical or neospiritualistic hypothesis, and are unconsciously
-faithful to it in their very indefiniteness: they speak vaguely of “the
-dark” in which they find themselves. They tell nothing because they
-know nothing. It is apparently impossible for them to give any account
-of a state that is still illumined. In fact, it is very likely, if we
-admit the hypothesis of reincarnation and of evolution after death,
-that nature, here as elsewhere, does not proceed by bounds. There is no
-special reason why she should take a prodigious and inconceivable leap
-between life and death.</p>
-
-<p>We do not find the dramatic change which at first thought we are
-rather inclined to expect. The spirit is first of all confused at
-losing its body and every one of its familiar ways; it recovers itself
-only by degrees. It resumes consciousness slowly. This consciousness
-is subsequently purified, exalted, and extended, gradually and
-indefinitely, until, reaching other spheres, the principle of life that
-animates it ceases to reincarnate itself, and loses all contact with
-us. This would explain why we never have any but minor and elementary
-revelations.</p>
-
-<p>All that concerns this first phase of the survival is fairly probable,
-even to those who do not admit the theory of reincarnation. For
-the rest, we shall see presently that the solutions which man’s
-imagination finds there merely change the question and are inadequate
-and provisional.</p>
-
-<h3>THE DANGER OF UNCONSCIOUS SUGGESTION IN MESMERIC TESTS</h3>
-
-<p>W<span class="smaller">E</span> now come to the most serious objection, that of suggestion. Colonel
-de Rochas declares that he and all the other experimenters who have
-given themselves up to this study “have not only avoided everything
-that could put the subject on a definite tack, but have often tried in
-vain to lead him astray by different suggestions.” I am convinced of
-it: there can be no question of voluntary suggestion.</p>
-
-<p>But do we not know that in these regions unconscious and involuntary
-suggestion is often more powerful and effective than the other? In
-the hackneyed and rather childish experiment of table-turning, for
-instance, which, after all, is only a crude and elementary form of
-telepathy, the replies are nearly always dictated by the unconscious
-suggestion of a participant or a mere onlooker.<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> We should therefore
-first of all have to make sure that neither the hypnotizer nor
-an onlooker, nor yet the subject himself, has ever heard of the
-reincarnated persons. It will be enough, I shall be told, to employ
-for the countertests another operator and different onlookers who
-are ignorant of the previous revelations. Yes, but the subject is
-not ignorant of them; and it is possible that the first suggestion
-has been so profound that it will remain forever stamped upon the
-unconsciousness, and that it will reproduce the same incarnations
-indefinitely in the same order.</p>
-
-<p>All this does not mean that the phenomena of suggestion are not
-themselves laden<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_666" id="Page_666">[Pg 666]</a></span> with mysteries; but that is another question. For
-the moment, as we see, the problem is almost insoluble, and control is
-impracticable. Meanwhile, since we have to choose between reincarnation
-and suggestion, it is right that we should confine ourselves in the
-first instance to the latter, in accordance with the principles which
-we have observed in the case of automatic speech and writing. Between
-two unknowns, common sense and prudence decree that we should turn
-first to the one on whose frontiers lie certain facts more frequently
-recorded, the one which shows a few familiar glimmers. Let us exhaust
-the mystery of our life before forsaking it for the mystery of our
-death. Throughout this vast expanse of treacherous ground, it is
-important that, until fresh evidence arrives, we should keep to one
-inflexible rule, namely, that thought transference exists as long as
-it is not absolutely and physically impossible for the subject or some
-person in the room to have cognizance of the incident in question,
-whether the cognizance be conscious or not, forgotten or actual. Even
-this guaranty is not sufficient, for it is still possible for some one
-taking no part in the sitting, and even very far away from it, to be
-placed in communication with the medium by some unknown means, and to
-influence the medium at a distance and unwittingly. Lastly, to provide
-for every contingency before letting death come upon the boards, it
-would be necessary to make certain that atavistic memory does not
-play an unforeseen part. Cannot a man, for instance, carry hidden in
-the depths of his being the recollection of events connected with
-the childhood of an ancestor whom he has never seen, and communicate
-it to the medium by unconscious suggestion? It is not impossible. We
-carry in ourselves all the past, all the experience, of our ancestors.
-If by some magic we could illumine the prodigious treasures of the
-subconscious memory, why should we not there discover the events and
-facts that form the sources of that experience? Before turning toward
-yonder unknown, we must utterly exhaust the possibilities of this
-terrestrial unknown. It is moreover remarkable, but undeniable, that,
-despite the strictness of a law which seems to shut out every other
-explanation, despite the almost unlimited and probably excessive scope
-allotted to the domain of suggestion, there nevertheless remain some
-facts which perhaps call for another interpretation.</p>
-
-<h3>THE LACK OF COMPELLING PROOF IN THE THEORY</h3>
-
-<p>B<span class="smaller">UT</span> let us return to reincarnation, and recognize, in passing, that
-it is very regrettable that the arguments of the theosophists and
-neospiritualists are not compelling; for there never was a more
-beautiful, a juster, a purer, a more moral, fruitful, and consoling,
-or, to a certain point, a more probable creed than theirs. But the
-quality of a creed is no evidence of its truth. Even though it is
-the religion of six hundred millions of mankind, the nearest to the
-mysterious origins, the only one that is not odious, and the least
-absurd of all, it will have to do what the others have not done&mdash;bring
-unimpeachable testimony; and what it has given us hitherto is only the
-first shadow of a proof begun.</p>
-
-<p>Indeed, even that would not put an end to the riddle. In principle,
-reincarnation sooner or later is inevitable, since nothing can be
-lost or remain stationary. What has not been demonstrated in any way,
-and will perhaps remain indemonstrable, is the reincarnation of the
-whole, identical person, notwithstanding the abolition of memory. But
-what matters that reincarnation to him, if he be unaware that he is
-still himself? All the problems of the conscious survival of man start
-up anew, and we have to begin all over again. Even if scientifically
-established, the doctrine of reincarnation, just like that of a
-survival, would not set a term to our questions. It replies to neither
-the first nor the last, those of the beginning and the end, the only
-ones that are essential. It simply shifts them, pushes them a few
-hundreds, a few thousands, of years back, in the hope, perhaps, of
-losing or forgetting them in silence and space. But they have come from
-the depths of the most prodigious infinities, and are not content with
-a tardy solution. I am most certainly interested in learning what is in
-store for me, what will happen to me immediately after my death. You
-tell me:</p>
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_667" id="Page_667">[Pg 667]</a></span></p>
-<p>“Man, in his successive incarnations, will make atonement by suffering,
-will be purified, in order that he may ascend from sphere to sphere
-until he returns to the divine essence whence he sprang.”</p>
-
-<p>I am willing to believe it, notwithstanding that all this still bears
-the somewhat questionable stamp of our little earth and its old
-religions; I am willing to believe it; but even then? What matters to
-me is not what will be for some time, but for always; and your divine
-principle appears to me not at all infinite nor definite. It even
-seems to me greatly inferior to that which I conceive without your
-help. Now, even if it were based on thousands of facts, a religion
-that belittles the God conceived by my loftiest thought could never
-dominate my conscience. Your infinity or our God, without being even
-more unintelligible than mine, is nevertheless smaller. If I be again
-immerged in Him, it means that I emerged from Him; if it be possible
-for me to have emerged from Him, then He is not infinite; and, if He
-be not infinite, what is He? We must accept one thing or the other:
-either He purifies me because I am outside Him and He is not infinite;
-or, being infinite, if He purify me, then there was something impure
-in Him, because it is a part of Himself which He is purifying in me.
-Moreover, how can we admit that this God who has existed for all
-time, who has the same infinity of millenaries behind Him as in front
-of Him, should not yet have found time to purify Himself and put a
-period to His trials? What He was not able to do in the eternity
-previous to the moment of my existence He will not be able to do in
-the subsequent eternity, for the two are equal. And the same question
-presents itself where I am concerned. My principle of life, like His,
-exists from all eternity, for my emergence out of nothing would be more
-difficult of explanation than my existence without a beginning. I have
-necessarily had innumerable opportunities of incarnating myself; and I
-have probably done so, seeing that it is hardly likely that the idea
-came to me only yesterday. All the chances of reaching my goal have
-therefore been offered to me in the past; and all those which I shall
-find in the future will add nothing to the number, which was already
-infinite. There is not much to say in answer to these interrogations,
-which spring up everywhence the moment our thought glances upon them.
-Meanwhile, I had rather know that I know nothing than feed myself
-on illusory and irreconcilable assertions. I had rather keep to an
-infinity the incomprehensibility of which has no bounds than restrict
-myself to a God whose incomprehensibility is limited on every side.
-Nothing compels you to speak of your God; but, if you take upon
-yourself to do so, it is necessary that your explanations should be
-superior to the silence which they break.</p>
-
-<p>It is true that the scientific spiritualists do not venture as far
-as this God; but, then, tight-pressed between the two riddles of the
-beginning and the end, they have almost nothing to tell us. They follow
-the tracks of our dead for a few seconds in a world where seconds no
-longer count, and then they abandon them in the darkness. I do not
-reproach them, because we have here to do with things which, in all
-probability, we shall not know in the day when we shall think that we
-know everything. I do not ask that they shall reveal to me the secret
-of the universe, for I do not believe, like a child, that this secret
-can be expressed in three words or that it can enter my brain without
-bursting it. I am even persuaded that beings who might be millions of
-times more intelligent than the most intelligent among us would not
-yet possess it, for this secret must be as infinite, as unfathomable,
-as inexhaustible as the universe itself. Nevertheless, the fact
-remains that this inability to go even a few years beyond the life
-after death detracts greatly from the interest of their experiments
-and revelations. At best, it is only a short space gained, and it is
-not by this juggling on the threshold that our fate is decided. I am
-ready to go through what may befall me in the short interval filled by
-those revelations, as I am even now going through what befalls me in my
-life here. My destiny does not lie there, nor my home. I do not doubt
-that the facts reported are genuine and proved; but what is even much
-more certain is that the dead, if they survive, have not a great deal
-to teach us, whether because at the moment when they can speak to us
-they have nothing to tell us, or because at the moment when they might
-have something to reveal to us they are no longer able to do so, but
-withdraw forever, and lose sight of us in the immensity which they are
-exploring.</p>
-
-<div class="footnotes">
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos and copyright
-U. S. A., 1913, by Eugène Fasquelle.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> “The Survival of Man,” Chap. XXV, p. 325.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> In this connection, however, we find two or three rather
-perturbing facts, a remarkable one being that at a spiritualistic
-meeting held by the late W. T. Stead the prediction of the murder
-of King Alexander and Queen Draga was described with the most
-circumstantial details. A verbatim report was drawn up of this
-prediction and signed by thirty witnesses; and Stead went next day to
-beg the Servian minister in London to warn the king of the danger that
-threatened him. The event took place, as announced, a few months later.
-But “precognition” does not necessarily require the intervention of
-the dead; moreover, every case of this kind, before being definitely
-accepted, would call for prolonged study in every particular.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> In order to exhaust this question of survival and of
-communications with the dead, I ought to speak of Dr. Hyslop’s recent
-investigations, made with the assistance of the mediums Smead and
-Chenoweth (communications with William James). I ought also to mention
-Julia’s famous “bureau” and, above all, the extraordinary séances of
-Mrs. Wriedt, the trumpet medium, who not only obtains communications
-in which the dead speak languages of which she herself is completely
-ignorant, but raises apparitions said to be extremely disturbing.
-I ought lastly, to examine the facts set forth by Professor Porro,
-Dr. Venzano, and M. Rozanne, and many other things besides, for
-spiritualistic investigation and literature are already piling volume
-upon volume. But it was not my intention or my pretension to make a
-complete study of scientific spiritualism. I wished merely to omit
-no essential point and to give a general but accurate idea of this
-posthumous atmosphere which no really new and decisive fact has come to
-unsettle since the manifestations of which we have spoken.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> In order to hide nothing and to bring all the documents
-into court, we may point out that Colonel de Rochas ascertained
-upon inquiry that the subjects’ revelations concerning their former
-existences were inaccurate in several particulars.</p>
-
-<p>“Their narratives were also full of anachronisms, which disclosed
-the presence of normal recollections among the suggestions that came
-from an unknown source. Nevertheless, one perfectly indubitable fact
-remains, which is that of the existence of certain visions recurring
-with the same characteristics in the case of a considerable number of
-persons unknown to one another.”</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> In this connection, may I be permitted to quote a personal
-experience? One evening at the Abbaye de Saint-Wandrille, where I
-am wont to spend my summers, some newly arrived guests were amusing
-themselves by making a small table spin on its foot. I was quietly
-smoking in a corner of the drawing-room, at some distance from the
-little table, taking no interest in what was happening around it and
-thinking of something quite different. After due entreaty, the table
-replied that it held the spirit of a seventeenth-century monk who was
-buried in the east gallery of the cloisters under a flagstone dated
-1693. After the departure of the monk, who suddenly, for no apparent
-reason, refused to continue the interview, we thought that we would
-go with a lamp and look for the grave. We ended by discovering in the
-far cloister, on the eastern side, a tombstone in very bad condition,
-broken, worn down, trodden into the ground, and crumbling, on which,
-by examining it very closely, we were able with great difficulty to
-decipher the inscription, “A.D. 1693.” Now, at the moment of the monk’s
-reply there was no one in the drawing-room except my guests and myself.
-None of them knew the abbey; they had arrived that very evening a few
-minutes before dinner, after which, as it was quite dark, they had put
-off their visit to the cloisters and the ruins until the following
-day. Therefore, short of a belief in the “shells” or the “elementals”
-of the theosophists, the revelation could have come only from me.
-Nevertheless, I believed myself to be absolutely ignorant of the
-existence of that particular tombstone, one of the least legible among
-a score of others, all belonging to the seventeenth century, which pave
-this part of the cloisters.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_668" id="Page_668">[Pg 668]</a></span></p>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-   <a id="i_668" name="i_668">
-   <img class="mtop6" src="images/i_668.jpg" alt="New England Country Road 1" /></a>
-  <p class="linkedimage"><a href="images/i_668_large.jpg">&#10063;<br />
-  <span class="smaller">LARGER IMAGE</span></a></p>
-</div>
-
-<h2 class="nopad nobreak" id="Country_Roads_of_New_England">Country Roads of
-New England</h2>
-
-<p class="s3 center">Four Drawings by Walter King Stone</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_669" id="Page_669">[Pg 669]</a></span></p>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-   <a id="i_669" name="i_669">
-   <img class="mtop3" src="images/i_669.jpg" alt="New England Country Road 2" /></a>
-  <p class="linkedimage"><a href="images/i_669_large.jpg">&#10063;<br />
-  <span class="smaller">LARGER IMAGE</span></a></p>
-</div>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_670" id="Page_670">[Pg 670]</a></span></p>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-   <a id="i_670" name="i_670">
-   <img class="mtop3" src="images/i_670.jpg" alt="New England Country Road 3" /></a>
-  <p class="linkedimage"><a href="images/i_670_large.jpg">&#10063;<br />
-  <span class="smaller">LARGER IMAGE</span></a></p>
-</div>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_671" id="Page_671">[Pg 671]</a></span></p>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-   <a id="i_671" name="i_671">
-   <img class="mtop3" src="images/i_671.jpg" alt="New England Country Road 4" /></a>
-  <p class="linkedimage"><a href="images/i_671_large.jpg">&#10063;<br />
-  <span class="smaller">LARGER IMAGE</span></a></p>
-</div>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_672" id="Page_672">[Pg 672]</a></span></p>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-   <a id="i_672" name="i_672">
-   <img class="mtop3" src="images/i_672.jpg" alt="Headpiece White Linen Nurse" /></a>
-</div>
-
-<h2 class="nopad nobreak" id="THE_WHITE_LINEN_NURSE">THE WHITE LINEN NURSE</h2>
-
-</div>
-
-<p class="s4 center">HOW RAE MALGREGOR UNDERTOOK GENERAL HEARTWORK FOR A
-FAMILY OF TWO</p>
-
-<p class="s3 center mtop1">BY ELEANOR HALLOWELL ABBOTT</p>
-
-<p class="s6 center">Author of “Molly Make-Believe,” etc.</p>
-
-<p class="s4 center mtop1 mbot2">IN THREE PARTS: PART TWO</p>
-
-<p class="s5 center">WITH PICTURES BY HERMAN PFEIFER</p>
-
-<p class="s4 center">SYNOPSIS OF PRECEDING INSTALMENT</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p class="p0">O<span class="smaller">N</span> the day of her graduation from the training-school, the White
-Linen Nurse was overcome by hysteria. For weeks she had been
-working too hard, and two or three cases with which she had been
-connected having gone wrong, she had racked herself with an absurd
-sense of responsibility. Now, in her distracted state, the visible
-sign of her self-contempt was the perfectly controlled expression
-of her trained-nurse face.</p>
-
-<p>From a scene in her room with her two room-mates, in which
-confidences are exchanged, she rushed to the office of the
-Superintendent of Nurses, and hysterically demanded her own face.
-The Senior Surgeon was sent for, and after tartly telling the girl
-she was a fool, finally took her with him and his little crippled
-daughter for a thirty-mile trip into the country, where he had been
-summoned on a difficult case.</p>
-
-<p>On their return, the Senior Surgeon lost control of the machine on
-a steep hill, and the three were thrown out.</p></div>
-
-<p class="p0 mtop2"><span class="drop-cap">W</span>HEN the White Linen Nurse found anything again, she found herself
-lying perfectly flat on her back in a reasonably comfortable nest of
-grass and leaves. Staring inquisitively up into the sky she thought
-she noticed a slight black-and-blue discoloration toward the west, but
-more than that, much to her relief, the firmament did not seem to be
-seriously injured. The earth, she feared, had not escaped so easily.
-Even away off somewhere near the tip of her fingers the ground was as
-sore, as sore as could be, under her touch. Impulsively to her dizzy
-eyes the hot tears started, to think that now, tired as she was, she
-would have to jump right up in another minute or two and attend to the
-poor earth. Fortunately for any really strenuous emergency that might
-arise, there seemed to be nothing about her own body that hurt at all
-except a queer, persistent little pain in her cheek.</p>
-
-<p>Not until the Little Crippled Girl’s dirt-smouched face intervened
-between her own staring eyes and the sky did she realize that the pain
-in her cheek was a pinch.</p>
-
-<p>“Wake up! wake up!” scolded the Little Crippled Girl, shrilly.
-“Naughty&mdash;pink-and-white Nursie! I wanted to hear the bump! You
-screamed so loud I couldn’t hear the bump.”</p>
-
-<p>With excessive caution the White Linen Nurse struggled up at last to a
-sitting posture, and gazed perplexedly about her.</p>
-
-<p>It seemed to be a perfectly pleasant field&mdash;acres and acres of mild old
-grass totter<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_673" id="Page_673">[Pg 673]</a></span>ing palsiedly down to watch some skittish young violets
-and bluets frolic in and out of a giggling brook. Up the field? Up
-the field? Hazily the White Linen Nurse ground her knuckles into her
-incredulous eyes. Up the field, just beyond them, the great empty
-automobile stood amiably at rest. From the general appearance of the
-stone wall at the top of the little grassy slope it was palpably
-evident that the car had attempted certain vain acrobatic feats before
-its failing momentum had forced it into the humiliating ranks of the
-backsliders.</p>
-
-<p>Still grinding her knuckles into her eyes, the White Linen Nurse
-turned back to the Little Girl. Under the torn, twisted sable cap
-one little eye was hidden completely, but the other eye loomed up as
-rakish and bruised as a prize-fighter’s. One sable sleeve was wrenched
-disastrously from its armhole, and along the edge of the vivid, purple
-little skirt the ill-favored white ruffles seemed to have raveled out
-into hopeless yards and yards and yards of Hamburg embroidery.</p>
-
-<p>The Little Girl began to gather herself together a trifle
-self-consciously.</p>
-
-<p>“We&mdash;we seem to have fallen out of something,” she confided with the
-air of one who halves a most precious secret.</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, I know,” said the White Linen Nurse; “but <i>what</i> has become
-of&mdash;your father?”</p>
-
-<p>Worriedly for an instant, the Little Girl sat scanning the remotest
-corners of the field, then abruptly, with a gasp of real relief, she
-began to explore with cautious fingers the geographical outline of her
-black eye.</p>
-
-<p>“Oh, never mind about Father,” she asserted cheerfully. “I guess&mdash;I
-guess he got mad and went home.”</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, I know,” mused the White Linen Nurse; “but it doesn’t
-seem&mdash;probable.”</p>
-
-<p>“Probable?” mocked the Little Girl, most disagreeably; then suddenly
-her little hand went shooting out toward the stranded automobile.</p>
-
-<p>“Why, <i>there</i> he is,” she screamed&mdash;“under the car! Oh,
-look&mdash;look&mdash;looky!”</p>
-
-<p>Laboriously the White Linen Nurse scrambled to her knees. Desperately
-she tried to ram her fingers like a clog into the whirling dizziness
-round her temples.</p>
-
-<p>“Oh, my God! oh, my God! what’s the dose for anybody under a car?” she
-babbled idiotically.</p>
-
-<p>Then with a really Herculean effort, both mental and physical, she
-staggered to her feet, and started for the automobile.</p>
-
-<p>But her knees gave out, and wilting down to the grass, she tried to
-crawl along on all fours till straining wrists sent her back to her
-feet again.</p>
-
-<p>Whenever she tried to walk, the Little Girl walked; whenever she tried
-to crawl, the Little Girl crawled.</p>
-
-<p>“Isn’t it <i>fun</i>!” the shrill childish voice piped persistently. “Isn’t
-it just like playing shipwreck!”</p>
-
-<p>When they reached the car, both woman and child were too utterly
-exhausted with breathlessness to do anything except just sit down on
-the ground and stare.</p>
-
-<p>Sure enough, under that monstrous, immovable-looking machine the Senior
-Surgeon’s body lay rammed, face down, deep, deep into the grass.</p>
-
-<p>It was the Little Girl who recovered her breath first.</p>
-
-<p>“I think he’s dead,” she volunteered sagely. “His legs look&mdash;awfully
-dead to me.” Only excitement was in the statement. It took a second or
-two for her little mind to make any particularly personal application
-of such excitement. “I hadn’t&mdash;exactly&mdash;planned&mdash;on having <i>him</i> dead,”
-she began with imperious resentment. A threat of complete emotional
-collapse zigzagged suddenly across her face. “I won’t have him dead! I
-won’t! I <i>won’t</i>!” she screamed out stormily.</p>
-
-<p>In the amazing silence that ensued the White Linen Nurse gathered her
-trembling knees up into the circle of her arms and sat there staring at
-the Senior Surgeon’s prostrate body, and rocking herself feebly to and
-fro in a futile effort to collect her scattered senses.</p>
-
-<p>“Oh, if some one would only tell me what to do, I know I could do it!
-Oh, I know I could do it! If some one would only tell me what to do!”
-she kept repeating helplessly.</p>
-
-<p>Cautiously the Little Girl crept forward on her hands and knees to the
-edge of the car, and peered speculatively through the great yellow
-wheel-spokes. “Father!” she faltered in almost inaudible gentleness.
-“Father!” she pleaded in perfectly impotent whisper.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_674" id="Page_674">[Pg 674]</a></span></p>
-
-<p>Impetuously the White Linen Nurse scrambled to her own hands and knees
-and jostled the Little Girl aside.</p>
-
-<p>“Fat Father!” screamed the White Linen Nurse. “Fat Father! Fat Father!
-<i>Fat Father!</i>” she gibed and taunted with the one call she knew that
-had never yet failed to rouse him.</p>
-
-<p>Perceptibly across the Senior Surgeon’s horridly quiet shoulders a
-little twitch wrinkled and was gone again.</p>
-
-<p>“Oh, his heart!” gasped the White Linen Nurse. “I must find his heart!”</p>
-
-<p>Throwing herself prone upon the cool, meadowy ground and frantically
-reaching under the running-board of the car to her full arm’s-length,
-she began to rummage awkwardly hither and yon beneath the heavy weight
-of the man in the desperate hope of feeling a heart-beat.</p>
-
-<p>“Ouch! you tickle me!” spluttered the Senior Surgeon, weakly.</p>
-
-<p>Rolling back quickly with fright and relief, the White Linen Nurse
-burst forth into one maddening cackle of hysterical laughter. “Ha! ha!
-ha!” she giggled. “Hi! hi!”</p>
-
-<p>Perplexedly at first, but with increasing abandon, the Little Girl’s
-voice took up the same idiotic refrain. “Ha! ha! ha!” she choked. “Hi!
-hi! hi!”</p>
-
-<p>With an agonizing jerk of his neck, the Senior Surgeon rooted his
-mud-gagged mouth half an inch farther toward free and spontaneous
-speech. Very laboriously, very painstakingly, he spat out one by one
-two stones and a wisp of ground-pine and a brackish, prickly tickle of
-stale goldenrod.</p>
-
-<p>“Blankety-blank-blank-<i>blank</i>!” he announced in due
-time&mdash;“blankety-blank-blank-blank-<i>blank</i>! Maybe when you two
-blankety-blank imbeciles have got through your blankety-blank
-cackling, you’ll have the blankety-blank decency to save my&mdash;my
-blankety-blank-blank-blank-<i>blank-blank life</i>!”</p>
-
-<p>“Ha! ha! ha!” persisted the poor White Linen Nurse, with the tears
-streaming down her cheeks.</p>
-
-<p>“Hi! hi! hi!” snickered the poor Little Girl through her hiccoughs.</p>
-
-<p>Feeling hopelessly imprisoned under the monstrous car, the Senior
-Surgeon closed his eyes for death. No man of his weight, he felt sure,
-could reasonably expect to survive many minutes longer the apoplectic,
-blood-red rage that pounded in his ear-drums. Through his tight-closed
-eyelids very, very slowly a red glow seemed to permeate. He thought it
-was the fires of hell. Opening his eyes to meet his fate like a man, he
-found himself staring impudently close, instead, into the White Linen
-Nurse’s furiously flushed face, which lay cuddled on one plump cheek,
-staring impudently close at him.</p>
-
-<p>“Why&mdash;why&mdash;get out!” gasped the Senior Surgeon.</p>
-
-<p>Very modestly the White Linen Nurse’s face retreated a little further
-into its blushes.</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, I know,” she protested; “but I’m all through giggling now. I’m
-sorry&mdash;I’m&mdash;”</p>
-
-<p>In sheer apprehensiveness the Senior Surgeon’s features crinkled
-wincingly from brow to chin as though struggling vainly to retreat from
-the appalling proximity of the girl’s face.</p>
-
-<p>“Your&mdash;eyelashes&mdash;are too long,” he complained querulously.</p>
-
-<p>“Eh?” jerked the White Linen Nurse’s face. “Is it your brain that’s
-hurt? Oh, sir, do you think it’s your brain that’s hurt?”</p>
-
-<p>“It’s my stomach,” snapped the Senior Surgeon. “I tell you I’m not
-hurt; I’m just&mdash;squashed. I’m paralyzed. If I can’t get this car off
-me&mdash;”</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, that’s just it,” beamed the White Linen Nurse’s face&mdash;“that’s
-just what I crawled in here to find out&mdash;how to get the car off you.
-That’s just what I want to find out. I could run for help, of course;
-only I couldn’t run, ’cause my knees are so wobbly. It would take
-hours, and the car might start or burn up or something while I was
-gone. But you don’t seem to be caught anywhere on the machinery,” she
-added more brightly; “it only seems to be sitting on you. So if I could
-only get the car off you! But it’s so heavy. I had no idea it would be
-so heavy. Could I take it apart, do you think? Is there any one place
-where I could begin at the beginning and take it all apart?”</p>
-
-<p>“Take it apart&mdash;hell!” groaned the Senior Surgeon.</p>
-
-<p>A little twitch of defiance flickered across the White Linen Nurse’s
-face.</p>
-
-<p>“All the same,” she asserted stubbornly,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_675" id="Page_675">[Pg 675]</a></span> “if some one would only tell
-me what to do, I know I could do it.”</p>
-
-<p>Horridly from some unlocatable quarter of the engine an alarming little
-tremor quickened suddenly, and was hushed again.</p>
-
-<p>“Get out of here&mdash;quick!” stormed the Senior Surgeon.</p>
-
-<p>“I won’t,” said the White Linen Nurse, “until you tell me what to do.”</p>
-
-<p>Brutally for an instant the ingenuous blue eyes and the cynical gray
-eyes battled each other.</p>
-
-<p>“<i>Can</i> you do what you’re told?” faltered the Senior Surgeon.</p>
-
-<p>“Oh, yes,” said the White Linen Nurse.</p>
-
-<p>“I mean, can you do exactly what you’re told?” gasped the Senior
-Surgeon. “Can you follow directions, I mean? Can you follow them
-explicitly? Or are you one of those people who listens only to her own
-judgment?”</p>
-
-<p>“Oh, but I haven’t got any judgment,” protested the White Linen Nurse.</p>
-
-<p>Palpably in the Senior Surgeon’s bloodshot eyes the leisurely seeming
-diagnosis leaped to precipitous conclusions.</p>
-
-<p>“Then get out of here quick, for God’s sake, and get to work!” he
-ordered.</p>
-
-<p>Cautiously the White Linen Nurse jerked herself back into freedom
-and crawled around and stared at the Senior Surgeon through the
-wheel-spokes again. Like one worrying out some intricate mathematical
-problem, his mental strain was pulsing visibly through his closed
-eyelids.</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, sir?” prodded the White Linen Nurse.</p>
-
-<p>“Keep still!” snapped the Senior Surgeon. “I’ve got to think,” he said.
-“I’ve got to work it out. All in a moment you’ve got to learn to run
-the car. All in a moment! It’s awful!”</p>
-
-<p>“Oh, I don’t mind, sir,” affirmed the White Linen Nurse, serenely.</p>
-
-<p>Frenziedly the Senior Surgeon rooted one cheek into the mud again.</p>
-
-<p>“You don’t <i>mind</i>?” he groaned. “You don’t <i>mind</i>? Why, you’ve got to
-learn&mdash;everything&mdash;everything from the very beginning!”</p>
-
-<p>“Oh, that’s all right, sir,” crooned the White Linen Nurse.</p>
-
-<p>Ominously from somewhere a horrid sound creaked again. The Senior
-Surgeon did not stop to argue any further.</p>
-
-<p>“Now come here,” he ordered. “I’m going to&mdash;I’m going to&mdash;”
-Startlingly his voice weakened, trailed off into nothingness, and
-rallied suddenly with exaggerated bruskness. “Look here, now, for
-Heaven’s sake, use your brains! I’m going to dictate to you very
-slowly, one thing at a time, just what to do.”</p>
-
-<p>Quite astonishingly the White Linen Nurse sank down on her knees and
-began to grin at him.</p>
-
-<p>“Oh, no, sir,” she said; “I couldn’t do it that way&mdash;not one thing at a
-time. Oh, no, indeed, sir&mdash;No.” Absolute finality was in her voice, the
-inviolable stubbornness of the perfectly good-natured person.</p>
-
-<p>“You’ll do it the way I tell you to,” roared the Senior Surgeon,
-struggling vainly to ease one shoulder or stretch one knee-joint.</p>
-
-<p>“Oh, no, sir,” beamed the White Linen Nurse; “not one thing at a time.
-Oh, no; I couldn’t do it that way. Oh, no, sir; I won’t do it that
-way&mdash;one thing at a time,” she persisted hurriedly. “Why, you might
-faint away or something might happen right in the middle of it&mdash;right
-between one direction and another, and I wouldn’t know at all what to
-turn on or off next; and it might take off one of your legs, you know,
-or an arm. Oh, no; not one thing at a time.”</p>
-
-<p>“Good-by, then,” croaked the Senior Surgeon. “I’m as good as dead now.”
-A single shudder went through him, a last futile effort to stretch
-himself.</p>
-
-<p>“Good-by,” said the White Linen Nurse. “Good-by. I’d heaps rather have
-you die perfectly whole, like that, of your own accord, than have me
-run the risk of starting the car full-tilt and chopping you up so, or
-dragging you off so, that you didn’t find it convenient to tell me how
-to <i>stop</i> the car.”</p>
-
-<p>“You’re a&mdash;a&mdash;a&mdash;” spluttered the Senior Surgeon, incoherently.</p>
-
-<p>“<i>Crinkle-crackle!</i>” went that mysterious, horrid sound from somewhere
-in the machinery.</p>
-
-<p>“Oh, my God!” surrendered the Senior Surgeon, “do it your own&mdash;damned
-way! Only&mdash;only&mdash;” His voice cracked raspingly.</p>
-
-<p>“Steady! Steady there!” said the White Linen Nurse. Except for a sudden
-odd pucker at the end of her nose her expression was still perfectly
-serene. “Now begin at the beginning,” she<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_676" id="Page_676">[Pg 676]</a></span> begged. “Quick! Tell me
-everything just the way I must do it! Quick! quick! quick!”</p>
-
-<p>Twice the Senior Surgeon’s lips opened and shut with a vain effort to
-comply with her request.</p>
-
-<p>“But you can’t do it,” he began all over again; “it isn’t possible. You
-haven’t got the mind.”</p>
-
-<p>“Maybe I haven’t,” said the White Linen Nurse; “but I’ve got the
-memory. <i>Hurry!</i>”</p>
-
-<p>“<i>Creak!</i>” said the funny little something in the machinery.</p>
-
-<p>“Oh, get in there quick!” surrendered the Senior Surgeon. “Sit down
-behind the wheel!” he shouted after her flying footsteps. “Are you
-there? For God’s sake, are you there? Do you see those two little
-levers where your right hand comes? For God’s sake, don’t you know what
-a lever is? Quick now! Do just what I tell you!”</p>
-
-<p>A little jerkily then, but very clearly, very concisely, the Senior
-Surgeon called out to the White Linen Nurse just how every lever, every
-pedal, should be manipulated to start the car.</p>
-
-<p>Absolutely accurately, absolutely indelibly, the White Linen Nurse
-visualized each separate detail in her abnormally retentive mind.</p>
-
-<p>“But you can’t possibly remember it,” groaned the Senior Surgeon. “You
-can’t possibly. And probably the damned car’s <i>bust</i> and won’t start,
-anyway, and&mdash;” Abruptly the speech ended in a guttural snarl of despair.</p>
-
-<p>“Don’t be a&mdash;blight!” screamed the White Linen Nurse. “I’ve never
-forgotten anything yet, sir!”</p>
-
-<p>Very tensely she straightened up suddenly in her seat. Her expression
-was no longer even remotely pleasant. Along her sensitive, fluctuant
-nostrils the casual crinkle of distaste and suspicion had deepened
-suddenly into sheer dilating terror.</p>
-
-<p>“Left foot&mdash;press down&mdash;hard&mdash;left pedal,” she began to singsong to
-herself.</p>
-
-<p>“No, <i>right</i> foot&mdash;<i>right</i> foot!” corrected the Little Girl,
-blunderingly from somewhere close in the grass.</p>
-
-<p>“Inside lever&mdash;pull&mdash;’way&mdash;back!” persisted the White Linen Nurse,
-resolutely, as she switched on the current.</p>
-
-<p>“No, <i>outside</i> lever! <i>Outside! Outside!</i>” contradicted the Little
-Girl.</p>
-
-<p>“Shut your damned mouth!” screeched the White Linen Nurse, her hand on
-the throttle as she tried the self-starter.</p>
-
-<p>Bruised as he was, wretched, desperately endangered there under the
-car, the Senior Surgeon could almost have grinned at the girl’s terse,
-unconscious mimicry of his own most venomous tones.</p>
-
-<p>Then with all the forty-eight lusty, ebullient years of his life
-snatched from his lips like an untasted cup, and one single noxious,
-death-flavored second urged, forced, crammed down his choking throat,
-he felt the great car quicken and start.</p>
-
-<p>“God!” said the Senior Surgeon, just “God!” The God of mud, he meant;
-the God of brackish grass; the God of a man lying still hopeful under
-more than two and a half ton’s weight of unaccountable mechanism, with
-a novice in full command.</p>
-
-<p>Up in her crimson leather cushions, free-lunged, free-limbed, the White
-Linen Nurse heard the smothered cry. Clear above the whir of wheels,
-the whizz of clogs, the one word sizzled like a red-hot poker across
-her chattering consciousness. Tingling through the grasp of her fingers
-on the vibrating wheel, stinging through the sole of her foot that
-hovered over the throbbing clutch, she sensed the agonized appeal.
-“Short lever, spark; long lever, gas,” she persisted resolutely. “It
-must be right; it must!”</p>
-
-<p>Jerkily then, and blatantly unskilfully, with riotous puffs, and
-spinning of wheels, the great car started, faltered, balked a bit, then
-dragged crushingly across the Senior Surgeon’s flattened body, and with
-a great wanton burst of speed tore down the sloping meadow into the
-brook rods away. Clamping down the brakes with a wrench and a racket
-like the smash of a machine-shop, the White Linen Nurse jumped out into
-the brook, and with one wild, terrified glance behind her, staggered
-back up the long, grassy slope to the Senior Surgeon.</p>
-
-<p>Mechanically through her wooden-feeling lips she forced the greeting
-that sounded most cheerful to her.</p>
-
-<p>“It’s not much fun, sir, running an auto,” she gasped. “I don’t believe
-I’d like it.”</p>
-
-<p>Half propped up on one elbow, still dizzy with mental chaos, still
-paralyzed with physical inertia, the Senior Surgeon lay staring blankly
-about him. Indiffer<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_677" id="Page_677">[Pg 677]</a></span>ently for an instant his stare included the White
-Linen Nurse. Then glowering suddenly at something beyond her, his face
-went perfectly livid.</p>
-
-<p>“Good God! the&mdash;the car’s on fire!” he mumbled.</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, sir,” said the White Linen Nurse. “Why, didn’t you know it, sir?”</p>
-
-<p>Headlong the Senior Surgeon pitched over on the grass, his last vestige
-of self-control stripped from him, horror unspeakable racking him
-sobbingly from head to toe.</p>
-
-<p>Whimperingly the Little Girl came crawling to him, and, settling down
-close at his feet, began with her tiny lace handkerchief to make futile
-dabs at the mud-stains on his gray silk stockings.</p>
-
-<p>“Never mind, Father,” she coaxed; “we’ll get you clean sometime.”</p>
-
-<p>Nervously the White Linen Nurse bethought her of the brook. “Oh, wait a
-minute, sir, and I’ll get you a drink of water,” she pleaded.</p>
-
-<p>Bruskly the Senior Surgeon’s hand jerked out and grabbed at her skirt.</p>
-
-<p>“Don’t leave me!” he begged. “For God’s sake, don’t leave me!”</p>
-
-<p>Weakly he struggled up again and sat staring piteously at the blazing
-car. His unrelinquished clutch on the White Linen Nurse’s skirt brought
-her sinking softly down beside him like a collapsed balloon. Together
-they sat and watched the gaseous yellow flames shoot up into the sky.</p>
-
-<p>“It’s pretty, isn’t it?” piped the Little Girl.</p>
-
-<p>“Eh?” groaned the Senior Surgeon.</p>
-
-<p>“Father,” persisted the shrill little voice&mdash;“Father, do people ever
-burn up?”</p>
-
-<p>“Eh?” gasped the Senior Surgeon. Brutally the harsh, shuddering sobs
-began to rack and tear again through his great chest.</p>
-
-<p>“There! there!” crooned the White Linen Nurse, struggling desperately
-to her knees. “Let me get&mdash;everybody a drink of water.”</p>
-
-<p>Again the Senior Surgeon’s unrelinquished clutch on her skirt jerked
-her back to the place beside him.</p>
-
-<p>“I said <i>not to leave me</i>!” he snapped out as roughly as he jerked.</p>
-
-<p>Before the affrighted look in the White Linen Nurse’s face a sheepish,
-mirthless grin flickered across one corner of his mouth.</p>
-
-<p>“Lord! but I’m shaken!” he apologized. “Me, of all people!” Painfully
-the red blood mounted to his cheeks. “Me, of all people!” Bluntly he
-forced the White Linen Nurse’s reluctant gaze to meet his own. “Only
-yesterday,” he persisted, “I did a laparotomy on a man who had only one
-chance in a hundred of pulling through, and I&mdash;I laughed at him for
-fighting off his ether cone&mdash;laughed at him, I tell you!”</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, I know,” soothed the White Linen Nurse; “but&mdash;”</p>
-
-<p>“But nothing!” growled the Senior Surgeon. “The fear of death? Bah! All
-my life I’ve scoffed at it. Die? Yes, of course, when you <i>have</i> to,
-but with no kick coming. Why, I’ve been wrecked in a hurricane in the
-Gulf of Mexico, and I didn’t care; and I’ve lain for nine days more
-dead than alive in an Asiatic cholera camp, and I didn’t care; and
-I’ve been locked into my office three hours with a raving maniac and
-a dynamite bomb, and I didn’t care; and twice in a Pennsylvania mine
-disaster I’ve been the first man down the shaft, and I didn’t care; and
-I’ve been shot, I tell you, and I’ve been horse-trampled, and I’ve been
-wolf-bitten, and I’ve <i>never</i> cared. But to-day&mdash;to-day&mdash;” Piteously
-all the pride and vigor wilted from his great shoulders, leaving him
-all huddled up, like a woman, with his head on his knees&mdash;“but to-day
-I’ve got mine,” he acknowledged brokenly.</p>
-
-<p>Once again the White Linen Nurse tried to rise.</p>
-
-<p>“Oh, please, sir, let me get you a&mdash;drink of water,” she suggested
-helplessly.</p>
-
-<p>“I said not to leave me!” jerked the Senior Surgeon.</p>
-
-<p>Perplexedly, with big staring eyes, the Little Crippled Girl glanced
-up at this strange fatherish person who sounded so suddenly small
-and scared like herself. Jealous instantly of her own prerogatives,
-she dropped her futile labors on the mud-stained silk stockings and
-scrambled precipitously for the White Linen Nurse’s lap, where she
-nestled down finally after many gyrations, and sat glowering forth at
-all possible interlopers.</p>
-
-<p>“Don’t leave <i>any</i> of us!” she ordered with a peremptoriness not
-unmixed with supplication.</p>
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_678" id="Page_678">[Pg 678]</a></span></p>
-<p>“Surely some one will see the fire and come and get us,” conceded the
-Senior Surgeon.</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, surely,” mused the White Linen Nurse. Just at that moment she
-was mostly concerned with adjusting the curve of her shoulder to the
-curve of the Little Girl’s head. “I could sit more comfortably,” she
-suggested to the Senior Surgeon, “if you’d let go my skirt.”</p>
-
-<p>“Let go of your skirt? Who’s touching your skirt?” gasped the Senior
-Surgeon, incredulously. Once again the blood mounted darkly to his
-face. “I think I’ll get up&mdash;and walk around a bit,” he confided coldly.</p>
-
-<p>“Do, sir,” said the White Linen Nurse.</p>
-
-<p>With a tweak of pain through his sprained back, the Senior Surgeon
-suddenly sat down again. “I <i>sha’n’t</i> get up till I’m good and ready,”
-he declared.</p>
-
-<p>“I wouldn’t, sir,” said the White Linen Nurse. Very slowly, very
-complacently, all the while she kept right on renovating the Little
-Girl’s personal appearance, smoothing a wrinkled stocking, tucking up
-obstreperous white ruffles, tugging down parsimonious purple hems,
-loosening a pinchy hook, tightening a wobbly button. Very slowly, very
-complacently, the Little Girl drowsed off to sleep, with her weazen,
-iron-cased little legs stretched stiffly out before her. “Poor little
-legs! Poor little legs! Poor little legs!” crooned the White Linen
-Nurse.</p>
-
-<p>“I don’t know that you need to make a <i>song</i> about it,” winced the
-Senior Surgeon. “It’s just about the cruellest case of complete
-muscular atrophy that I’ve ever seen.”</p>
-
-<p>Blandly the White Linen Nurse lifted her big blue eyes to his.</p>
-
-<p>“It wasn’t her ‘complete muscular atrophy’ that I was thinking about,”
-she said. “It’s her panties that are so unbecoming.”</p>
-
-<p>“Eh?” exclaimed the Senior Surgeon.</p>
-
-<p>“Poor little legs! Poor little legs! Poor little legs!” resumed the
-White Linen Nurse, droningly.</p>
-
-<p>Very slowly, very complacently, all around them April kept right on
-being April. Very slowly, very complacently, all around them the grass
-kept right on growing, and the trees kept right on budding. Very
-slowly, very complacently, all around them the blue sky kept right on
-fading into its early evening dove-colors.</p>
-
-<p>Nothing brisk, nothing breathless, nothing even remotely hurried, was
-there in all the landscape except just the brook, and the flash of a
-bird, and the blaze of the crackling automobile.</p>
-
-<p>The White Linen Nurse’s nostrils were smooth and calm with the
-lovely sappy scent of rabbit-nibbled maple-bark and mud-wet arbutus
-buds. The White Linen Nurse’s mind was full of sumptuous, succulent
-marsh-marigolds and fluffy-white shad-bush blossoms.</p>
-
-<p>The Senior Surgeon’s nostrils were all puckered up with the stench
-of burning varnish. The Senior Surgeon’s mind was full of the horrid
-thought that he’d forgotten to renew his automobile fire-insurance,
-and that he had a sprained back, and that his rival colleague had told
-him he didn’t know how to run an auto, anyway, and that the cook had
-given notice that morning, and that he had a sprained back, and that
-the moths had gnawed the knees out of his new dress-suit, and that the
-Superintendent of Nurses had had the audacity to send him a bunch of
-pink roses for his birthday, and that the boiler in the kitchen leaked,
-and that he had to go to Philadelphia the next day to read a paper on
-“Surgical Methods at the Battle of Waterloo” and he hadn’t even begun
-the paper yet, and that he had a sprained back, and that the wall-paper
-on his library hung in shreds and tatters, waiting for him to decide
-between a French fresco effect and an early English paneling, and that
-his little daughter was growing up in wanton ugliness under the care of
-coarse, indifferent hirelings, and that the laundry robbed him weekly
-of at least five socks, and that it would cost him fully seven thousand
-dollars to replace this car, and that he had a sprained back.</p>
-
-<p>“It’s restful, isn’t it?” cooed the White Linen Nurse.</p>
-
-<p>“Isn’t <i>what</i> restful?” glowered the Senior Surgeon.</p>
-
-<p>“Sitting down,” said the White Linen Nurse.</p>
-
-<p>Contemptuously the Senior Surgeon’s mind ignored the interruption and
-reverted precipitously to its own immediate problem concerning the
-gloomy, black-walnut-shadowed entrance-hall of his great house, and
-how many yards of imported linoleum at $3.45 a yard it would take
-to recarpet the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_679" id="Page_679">[Pg 679]</a></span> “confounded hole”; and how it would have seemed,
-anyway, if&mdash;if he hadn’t gone home as usual to the horrid black-walnut
-shadows that night, but been carried home instead, feet first and quite
-dead&mdash;dead, mind you, with a <i>red</i> necktie on, and even the cook was
-out! And they wouldn’t even know where to lay him, but might put him by
-mistake in that&mdash;in that&mdash;in his dead wife’s dead bed!</p>
-
-<p>Altogether unconsciously a little fluttering sigh of ineffable
-contentment escaped the White Linen Nurse.</p>
-
-<p>“I don’t care how long we have to sit here and wait for help,” she
-announced cheerfully, “because to-morrow, of course, I’ll have to get
-up and begin all over again&mdash;and go to Nova Scotia.”</p>
-
-<p>“Go <i>where</i>?” lurched the Senior Surgeon.</p>
-
-<p>“I’d thank you kindly, sir, not to jerk my skirt quite so hard,” said
-the White Linen Nurse, just a trifle stiffly.</p>
-
-<p>Incredulously once more the Senior Surgeon withdrew his detaining hand.</p>
-
-<p>“I’m not even touching your skirt,” he denied desperately. Nothing
-but denial and reiterated denial seemed to ease his self-esteem for
-an instant. “Why, for Heaven’s sake, should I want to hold on to
-your skirt?” he demanded peremptorily. “What the deuce,” he began
-blusteringly&mdash;“why in&mdash;”</p>
-
-<p>Then abruptly he stopped and shot an odd, puzzled glance at the White
-Linen Nurse, and right there before her startled eyes she saw every
-vestige of human expression fade out of his face as it faded out
-sometimes in the operating-room when, in the midst of some ghastly,
-unforeseen emergency that left all his assistants blinking helplessly
-about them, his whole wonderful, scientific mind seemed to break up
-like some chemical compound into all its meek component parts, only
-to reorganize itself suddenly with some amazing explosive action that
-fairly knocked the breath out of all on-lookers, but was pretty apt to
-knock the breath <i>into</i> the body of the person most concerned.</p>
-
-<p>When the Senior Surgeon’s scientific mind had reorganized itself to
-meet <i>this</i> emergency, he found himself vastly more surprised at the
-particular type of explosion that had taken place than any other person
-could possibly have been.</p>
-
-<p>“Miss Malgregor,” he gasped, “speaking of preferring ‘domestic
-service,’ as you call it&mdash;speaking of preferring domestic service
-to&mdash;nursing, how would you like to consider&mdash;to consider a position
-of&mdash;of&mdash;well, call it a&mdash;a position of general&mdash;heartwork&mdash;for a
-family of two? Myself and the Little Girl here being the two, as you
-understand,” he added briskly.</p>
-
-<p>“Why, I think it would be grand!” beamed the White Linen Nurse.</p>
-
-<p>A trifle mockingly the Senior Surgeon bowed his appreciation.</p>
-
-<p>“Your frank and immediate&mdash;enthusiasm,” he murmured, “is more, perhaps,
-than I had dared to expect.”</p>
-
-<p>“But it <i>would</i> be grand,” said the White Linen Nurse. Before the odd
-little smile in the Senior Surgeon’s eyes her white forehead puckered
-all up with perplexity. Then with her mind still thoroughly unawakened,
-her heart began suddenly to pitch and lurch like a frightened horse
-whose rider has not even remotely sensed as yet the approach of an
-unwonted footfall. “What did you say?” she repeated worriedly. “Just
-exactly what was it that you said? I guess, maybe, I didn’t understand
-just exactly what it was that you said.”</p>
-
-<p>The smile in the Senior Surgeon’s eyes deepened a little.</p>
-
-<p>“I asked you,” he said, “how you would like to consider a position of
-‘general heartwork’ in a family of two, myself and the Little Girl
-here being the two. ‘Heartwork’ was what I said. Yes, ‘heartwork,’ not
-housework.”</p>
-
-<p>“<i>Heartwork?</i>” faltered the White Linen Nurse. “Heartwork? I don’t know
-what you mean, sir.” Like two falling rose-petals her eyelids fluttered
-down across her affrighted eyes. “Oh, when I shut my eyes, sir, and
-just hear your voice, I know of course, sir, that it’s some sort of a
-joke; but when I look right at you, I&mdash;I&mdash;don’t know&mdash;what it is.”</p>
-
-<p>“Open your eyes and keep them open, then, till you do find out,”
-suggested the Senior Surgeon, bluntly.</p>
-
-<p>Defiantly once again the blue eyes and the gray eyes challenged each
-other.</p>
-
-<p>“‘Heartwork’ was what I said,” persisted the Senior Surgeon. Palpably
-his narrowing eyes shut out all meaning but one definite one.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_680" id="Page_680">[Pg 680]</a></span></p>
-
-<p>The White Linen Nurse’s face became almost as blanched as her dress.</p>
-
-<p>“You’re&mdash;you’re not asking me to&mdash;<i>marry</i> you, sir?” she stammered.</p>
-
-<p>“I suppose I am,” acknowledged the Senior Surgeon.</p>
-
-<p>“Not <i>marry</i> you!” cried the White Linen Nurse. Distress was in her
-voice, distaste, unmitigable shock, as though the high gods themselves
-had fallen at her feet and splintered off into mere candy fragments.
-“Oh, not <i>marry</i> you, sir?” she kept right on protesting. “Not
-be&mdash;<i>engaged</i>, you mean? Oh, not be <i>engaged</i>&mdash;and everything?”</p>
-
-<p>“Well, why not?” snapped the Senior Surgeon.</p>
-
-<p>Like a smitten flower the girl’s whole body seemed to wilt down into
-incalculable weariness.</p>
-
-<p>“Oh, no, no! I couldn’t!” she protested. “Oh, no, really!” Appealingly
-she lifted her great blue eyes to his, and the blueness was all blurred
-with tears. “I’ve&mdash;I’ve been engaged once, you know,” she explained
-falteringly. “Why&mdash;I was engaged, sir&mdash;almost as soon as I was born,
-and I stayed engaged till two years ago. That’s almost twenty years.
-That’s a long time, sir. You don’t get over it&mdash;easy.” Very, very
-gravely she began to shake her head. “Oh, no, sir! No! Thank you&mdash;very
-much, but I&mdash;I just simply <i>couldn’t</i> begin at the beginning and go all
-through it again. I haven’t got the heart for it. I haven’t got the
-spirit. Carving your initials on trees and&mdash;and gadding round to all
-the Sunday-school picnics&mdash;”</p>
-
-<p>Brutally, like a boy, the Senior Surgeon threw back his head in one
-wild hoot of joy. Much more cautiously, as the agonizing pang in his
-shoulder lulled down again, he proceeded to argue the matter, but the
-grin in his face was even yet faintly traceable.</p>
-
-<p>“Frankly, Miss Malgregor,” he affirmed, “I’m much more addicted
-to carving people than to carving trees; and as to Sunday-school
-picnics&mdash;well, really now, I hardly believe that you’d find my demands
-in that direction excessive.”</p>
-
-<p>Perplexedly the White Linen Nurse tried to stare her way through his
-bantering smile to his real meaning. Furiously, as she stared, the red
-blood came flushing back into her face.</p>
-
-<p>“You don’t mean for a second that you&mdash;that you love me?” she asked
-incredulously.</p>
-
-<p>“No, I don’t suppose I do,” acknowledged the Senior Surgeon with equal
-bluntness; “but my little kiddie here loves you,” he hastened somewhat
-nervously to affirm. “Oh, I’m almost sure that my little kiddie
-here&mdash;loves you. She needs you, anyway. Let it go at that. Call it that
-we both&mdash;need you.”</p>
-
-<p>“What you mean is,” corrected the White Linen Nurse, “that needing
-<i>somebody</i> very badly, you’ve just suddenly decided that that somebody
-might as well be me?”</p>
-
-<p>“Well, if you choose to put it like that,” said the Senior Surgeon, a
-bit sulkily.</p>
-
-<p>“And if there hadn’t been an auto accident,” argued the White Linen
-Nurse just out of sheer inquisitiveness, “if there hadn’t been just
-this particular kind of an auto accident at this particular hour
-of this particular day of this particular month, with marigolds
-and&mdash;everything, you probably never would have realized that you <i>did</i>
-need anybody?”</p>
-
-<p>“Maybe not,” admitted the Senior Surgeon.</p>
-
-<p>“U-m-m,” said the White Linen Nurse. “And if you’d happened to take
-one of the other girls to-day instead of me, why, then I suppose you’d
-have felt that <i>she</i> was the one you really needed? And if you’d taken
-the Superintendent of Nurses instead of any of us girls, you might even
-have felt that <i>she</i> was the one you most needed?”</p>
-
-<p>“Oh, hell!” said the Senior Surgeon.</p>
-
-<p>With surprising agility for a man with a sprained back he wrenched
-himself around until he faced her quite squarely.</p>
-
-<p>“Now see here, Miss Malgregor,” he growled, “for Heaven’s sake, listen
-to sense, even if you can’t talk it! Here am I, a plain professional
-man, making you a plain professional offer. Why in thunder should
-you try and fuss me all up because my offer isn’t couched in all the
-foolish, romantic, lace-paper sort of flub-dubbery that you think such
-an offer ought to be couched in, eh?”</p>
-
-<p>“Fuss you all up, sir?” protested the White Linen Nurse, with real
-anxiety.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-   <a id="i_680" name="i_680">
-   <img class="mtop1" src="images/i_680.jpg" alt="" /></a>
-  <p class="caption1">Plates in tint, engraved for
-    T<span class="smaller">HE</span> C<span class="smaller">ENTURY</span> by H.
-    C. Merrill and H. Davidson</p>
-  <p class="caption">“‘THE CAR’S ON FIRE!’ HE MUMBLED. ‘YES, SIR,’ SAID THE WHITE LINEN
-  NURSE. ‘WHY, DIDN’T YOU KNOW IT, SIR?’”</p>
-  <p class="caption1">DRAWN BY HERMAN PFEIFER</p>
-  <p class="linkedimage"><a href="images/i_680_large.jpg">&#10063;<br />
-  <span class="smaller">LARGER IMAGE</span></a></p>
-</div>
-
-<p class="mtop1">“Yes, fuss me all up,” snarled the Senior Surgeon, with increasing
-venom.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_681" id="Page_681">[Pg 681]</a></span> “I’m no story-writer; I’m not trying to make up what might
-have happened a year from next February in a Chinese junk off the
-coast of&mdash;Nova Zembla to a Methodist preacher and a&mdash;and a militant
-suffragette. What I’m trying to size up is just what’s happened to you
-and me to-day. For the fact remains that it is to-day. And it is you
-and I. And there <i>has</i> been an accident, and out of that accident&mdash;and
-everything that’s gone with it&mdash;I <i>have</i> come out thinking of something
-that I never thought of before. And there <i>were</i> marigolds,” he
-added with unexpected whimsicality. “You see, I don’t deny even the
-marigolds.”</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, sir,” said the White Linen Nurse.</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, <i>what</i>?” jerked the Senior Surgeon.</p>
-
-<p>Softly the White Linen Nurse’s chin burrowed down a little closer
-against the sleeping child’s tangled hair.</p>
-
-<p>“Why&mdash;yes, thank you very much; but I never shall love again,” she said
-definitely.</p>
-
-<p>“Love?” gasped the Senior Surgeon. “Why, I’m not asking you to love
-me!” His face was suddenly crimson. “Why, I’d <i>hate</i> it, if you&mdash;loved
-me! Why, I’d&mdash;”</p>
-
-<p>“O-h-h,” mumbled the White Linen Nurse in new embarrassment. Then
-suddenly and surprisingly her chin came tilting bravely up again. “What
-<i>do</i> you want?” she asked.</p>
-
-<p>Helplessly the Senior Surgeon threw out his hands.</p>
-
-<p>“My God!” he said, “what do you suppose I want? I want some one to take
-care of us.”</p>
-
-<p>Gently the White Linen Nurse shifted her shoulder to accommodate the
-shifting little sleepy-head on her breast.</p>
-
-<p>“You can <i>hire</i> some one for that,” she suggested with real relief.</p>
-
-<p>“I was trying to hire&mdash;<i>you</i>!” said the Senior Surgeon, tersely.</p>
-
-<p>“Hire <i>me</i>?” gasped the White Linen Nurse. “Why! Why!”</p>
-
-<p>Adroitly she slipped both hands under the sleeping child and delivered
-the little frail-fleshed, heavily ironed body into the Senior Surgeon’s
-astonished arms.</p>
-
-<p>“I&mdash;I don’t want to hold her,” he protested.</p>
-
-<p>“She&mdash;isn’t mine,” argued the White Linen Nurse.</p>
-
-<p>“But I can’t talk while I’m holding her,” insisted the Senior Surgeon.</p>
-
-<p>“I can’t listen while I’m holding her,” persisted the White Linen Nurse.</p>
-
-<p>Freely now, though cross-legged like a Turk, she jerked herself forward
-on the grass and sat probing up into the Senior Surgeon’s face like an
-excited puppy trying to solve whether the gift in your upraised hand is
-a lump of sugar or a live coal.</p>
-
-<p>“You’re trying to hire <i>me</i>?” she prompted him nudgingly with her
-voice. “Hire me for money?”</p>
-
-<p>“Oh, my Lord, no!” said the Senior Surgeon. “There are plenty of
-people I can hire for money; but they won’t <i>stay</i>,” he explained
-ruefully. “Hang it all!&mdash;they won’t <i>stay</i>!” Above his little girl’s
-white, pinched face his own ruddy countenance furrowed suddenly with
-unspeakable anxiety. “Why, just this last year,” he complained, “we’ve
-had nine different housekeepers and thirteen nursery governesses.”
-Skilfully as a surgeon, but awkwardly as a father, he bent to readjust
-the weight of the little iron leg-braces. “But, I tell you, no one will
-stay with us,” he finished hotly. “There’s something the matter with
-us. I don’t seem to have money enough in the world to make anybody
-<i>stay</i> with us.” Very wryly, very reluctantly, at one corner of his
-mouth his sense of humor ignited in a feeble grin. “So, you see, what
-I’m trying to do to you, Miss Malgregor, is to&mdash;hire you with something
-that will just naturally <i>compel</i> you to stay.” If the grin round his
-mouth strengthened a trifle, so also did the anxiety in his eyes. “For
-Heaven’s sake, Miss Malgregor,” he pleaded, “here’s a man and a house
-and a child all going to&mdash;hell! If you’re really and truly tired of
-nursing, and are looking for a new job, what’s the matter with tackling
-us?”</p>
-
-<p>“It <i>would</i> be a job,” admitted the White Linen Nurse, demurely.</p>
-
-<p>“Why, it would be a horrible job,” confided the Senior Surgeon, with no
-demureness whatsoever.</p>
-
-<p>Very soberly, very thoughtfully, then, across the tangled, snuggling
-head of his own and another woman’s child, he urged the torments and
-the comforts of his home upon this second woman.</p>
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_682" id="Page_682">[Pg 682]</a></span></p>
-<p>“What is there about my offer that you don’t like?” he demanded
-earnestly. “Is it the whole idea that offends you? Or just the way I
-put it? ‘General heartwork for a family of two’&mdash;what is the matter
-with <i>that</i>? Seems a bit cold to you, does it, for a real marriage
-proposal? Or is it that it’s just a bit too ardent, perhaps, for a mere
-plain business proposition?”</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, sir,” said the White Linen Nurse.</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, what?” insisted the Senior Surgeon.</p>
-
-<p>“Yes&mdash;<i>sir</i>,” flushed the White Linen Nurse.</p>
-
-<p>Very meditatively the Senior Surgeon reconsidered his phrasing.
-“‘General heartwork for a family of two’? U-m-m.” Quite abruptly
-even the tenseness of his manner faded from him, leaving his face
-astonishingly quiet, astonishingly gentle. “But how else, Miss
-Malgregor,” he queried&mdash;“how else should a widower with a child proffer
-marriage to a&mdash;to a young girl like yourself? Even under conditions
-directly antipodal to ours, such a proposition can never be a purely
-romantic one. Yet even under conditions as cold and businesslike as
-ours, there’s got to be some vestige of affection in it, some vestige
-at least of the <i>intelligence</i> of affection, else what gain is there
-for my little girl and me over the purely mercenary domestic service
-that has racked us up to this time with its garish faithlessness?”</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, sir,” said the White Linen Nurse.</p>
-
-<p>“But even if I had loved you, Miss Malgregor,” explained the Senior
-Surgeon, gravely, “my offer of marriage to you would not, I fear, have
-been a very great oratorical success. Materialist as I am, cynic,
-scientist, any harsh thing you choose to call me, marriage in some
-freak, boyish corner of my mind still defines itself as being the
-mutual sharing of a&mdash;mutually original experience. Certainly, whether
-a first marriage be instigated in love or worldliness, whether it
-eventually proves itself bliss, tragedy, or mere sickening ennui, to
-two people coming mutually virgin to the consummation of that marriage,
-the thrill of establishing publicly a man-and-woman home together is an
-emotion that cannot be reduplicated while life lasts.”</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, sir,” said the White Linen Nurse.</p>
-
-<p>Bleakly across the Senior Surgeon’s face something gray that was not
-years shadowed suddenly, and was gone again.</p>
-
-<p>“Even so, Miss Malgregor,” he argued&mdash;“even so, without any glittering
-romance whatsoever, no woman, I believe, is very grossly unhappy in any
-affectional place that she knows distinctly to be her <i>own</i> place. It’s
-pretty much up to a man, then, I think, though it tear him brain from
-heart, to explain to a second wife quite definitely just exactly what
-place it is that he is offering her in his love or his friendship or
-his mere desperate need. No woman can even hope to step successfully
-into a second-hand home who does not know from her man’s own lips the
-measure of her predecessor. The respect we owe the dead is a selfish
-thing compared with the mercy we owe the living. In my own case&mdash;”</p>
-
-<p>Unconsciously the White Linen Nurse’s lax shoulders quickened, and the
-sudden upward tilt of her chin was as frankly interrogative as a French
-inflection. “Yes, sir,” she said.</p>
-
-<p>“In my own case,” said the Senior Surgeon, bluntly&mdash;“in my own case,
-Miss Malgregor, it is no more than fair to tell you that I&mdash;did not
-love my wife. And my wife did not love me.” Only the muscular twitch
-in his throat betrayed the torture that the confession cost him. “The
-details of that marriage are unnecessary,” he continued with equal
-bluntness. “It is enough, perhaps, to say that she was the daughter of
-an eminent surgeon with whom I was exceedingly anxious at that time to
-be allied, and that our mating, urged along on both sides, as it was,
-by strong personal ambitions, was one of those so-called ‘marriages of
-convenience’ which almost invariably turn out to be marriages of such
-dire inconvenience to the two people most concerned. For one year we
-lived together in a chaos of experimental acquaintanceship; for two
-years we lived together in increasing uncongeniality and distaste; for
-three years we lived together in open and acknowledged enmity; at the
-last, I am thankful to remember, we had one year together again that
-was at least an&mdash;armed truce.”</p>
-
-<p>Darkly the gray shadow and the red flush chased each other once more
-across the man’s haggard face.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_683" id="Page_683">[Pg 683]</a></span></p>
-
-<p>“I had a theory,” he said, “that possibly a child might bridge the
-chasm between us. My wife refuted the theory, but submitted herself
-reluctantly to the fact. And when she died in giving birth to&mdash;my
-theory, the shock, the remorse, the regret, the merciless self-analysis
-that I underwent at that time almost convinced me that the whole
-miserable failure of our marriage lay entirely on my own shoulders.”
-Like the stress of mid-summer, the tears of sweat started suddenly on
-his forehead. “But I am a fair man, I hope, even to myself, and the
-cooler, less-tortured judgment of the subsequent years has virtually
-assured me that for types as diametrically opposed as ours such a thing
-as mutual happiness never could have existed.”</p>
-
-<p>Mechanically he bent down and smoothed a tickly lock of hair away from
-the little girl’s eyelids.</p>
-
-<p>“And the child is the living physical image of her,” he stammered&mdash;“the
-violent hair, the ghost-white skin, the facile mouth, the arrogant
-eyes, staring, staring, maddeningly reproachful, persistently accusing.
-My own stubborn will, my own hideous temper, all my own ill-favored
-mannerisms, mock back at me eternally in her mother’s unloved
-features.” As mirthless as the grin of a skull, the Senior Surgeon’s
-mouth twisted up a little at one corner. “Maybe I could have borne
-it better if she’d been a boy,” he acknowledged grimly; “but to see
-all your virile&mdash;masculine vices come back at you, so sissified, in
-<i>skirts</i>!”</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, sir,” said the White Linen Nurse.</p>
-
-<p>With an unmistakable gasp of relief, the Senior Surgeon expanded his
-great chest.</p>
-
-<p>“There, that’s done,” he said tersely. “So much for the past; now for
-the present! Look at us pretty keenly and judge for yourself. A man
-and a very little girl, not guaranteed, not even recommended, offered
-merely ‘as is,’ in the honest trade-phrase of the day, offered frankly
-in an open package, accepted frankly, if at all, ‘at your own risk.’
-Not for an instant would I try to deceive you about us. Look at us
-closely, I ask, and decide for yourself. I am forty-eight years old; I
-am inexcusably bad-tempered, very quick to anger, and not, I fear, of
-great mercy. I am moody, I am selfish, I am most distinctly unsocial;
-but I am not, I believe, stingy, or ever intentionally unfair. My
-child is a cripple, and equally bad-tempered as myself. No one but a
-mercenary has ever coped with her, and she shows it. We have lived
-alone for six years. All of our clothes, and most of our ways, need
-mending. I am not one to mince matters, Miss Malgregor, nor has your
-training, I trust, made you one from whom truths must be veiled. I am
-a man, with all a man’s needs, mental, moral, physical. My child is a
-child with all a child’s needs, mental, moral, physical. Our house of
-life is full of cobwebs. The rooms of affection have long been closed.
-There will be a great deal of work to do, and it is not my intention,
-you see, that you should misunderstand in any conceivable way either
-the exact nature or the exact amount of work and worry involved. I
-should not want you to come to me afterward with a whine, as other
-workers do, and say: ‘Oh, but I didn’t know you would expect me to do
-<i>this</i>! Oh, but I hadn’t any idea you would want me to do <i>that</i>! And
-I certainly don’t see why you should expect me to give up my Thursday
-afternoon just because you yourself happened to fall down-stairs in the
-morning and break your back!’”</p>
-
-<p>Across the Senior Surgeon’s face a real smile lightened suddenly.</p>
-
-<p>“Really, Miss Malgregor,” he affirmed,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_684" id="Page_684">[Pg 684]</a></span> “I’m afraid there isn’t much of
-anything that you <i>won’t</i> be expected to do. And as to your ‘Thursdays
-out’? Ha! if you have ever yet found a way to temper the wind of your
-obligations to the shorn lamb of your pleasures, you have discovered
-something that I myself have never yet succeeded in discovering. And as
-to ‘wages’? Yes, I want to talk everything quite frankly. In addition
-to my average yearly earnings, which are by no means small, I have a
-reasonably large private fortune. Within normal limits there is no
-luxury, I think, that you cannot hope to have. Also, exclusive of the
-independent income which I should like to settle upon you, I should be
-very glad to finance for you any reasonable dreams that you may cherish
-concerning your family in Nova Scotia. Also, though the offer looks
-small and unimportant to you now, it is liable to loom pretty large
-to you later; also, I will personally guarantee to you, at some time
-every year, an unfettered, perfectly independent two-months’ holiday.
-So the offer stands&mdash;my ‘name and fame,’ if those mean anything to you,
-financial independence, an assured ‘breathing spell’ for at least two
-months out of twelve, and at last, but not least, my eternal gratitude.
-‘General heartwork for a family of two!’ There, have I made the task
-perfectly clear to you? Not everything to be done all at once, you
-know; but immediately where necessity urges it, gradually as confidence
-inspires it, ultimately if affection justifies it, every womanish thing
-that needs to be done in a man’s and a child’s neglected lives? Do you
-understand?”</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, sir,” said the White Linen Nurse.</p>
-
-<p>“Oh, and there’s one thing more,” confided the Senior Surgeon. “It’s
-something, of course, that I ought to have told you the very first
-thing of all.” Nervously he glanced down at the sleeping child, and
-lowered his voice to a mumbling monotone. “As regards my actual morals,
-you have naturally a right to know that I’ve led a pretty decentish
-sort of life, though I probably don’t deserve any special credit for
-that. A man who knows enough to be a doctor isn’t particularly apt to
-lead any other kind. Frankly, as women rate vices, I believe I have
-only one. What&mdash;what&mdash;I’m trying to tell you now is about that one.” A
-little defiantly as to chin, a little appealingly as to eye, he emptied
-his heart of its last tragic secret. “Through all the male line of my
-family, Miss Malgregor, dipsomania runs rampant. Two of my brothers,
-my father, my grandfather, my great-grandfather before him, have
-all gone down, as the temperance people would say, into ‘drunkards’
-graves.’ In my own case, I have chosen to compromise with the evil.
-Such a choice, believe me, has not been made carelessly or impulsively,
-but out of the agony and humiliation of several less successful
-methods.” As hard as a rock, his face grooved into its granite-like
-furrows again. “Naturally, under these existing conditions,” he warned
-her almost threateningly, “I am not peculiarly susceptible to the
-mawkishly ignorant and sentimental protests of people whose strongest
-passions are an appetite for chocolate candy. For eleven months of the
-year,” he hurried on a bit huskily&mdash;“for eleven months of the year,
-eleven months, each day reeking from dawn to dark with the driving,
-nerve-wracking, heart-wringing work that falls to my profession, I lead
-an absolutely abstemious life, touching neither wine nor liquor nor
-even, indeed, tea or coffee. In the twelfth month&mdash;June always&mdash;I go
-’way up into Canada,&mdash;’way, ’way off in the woods to a little log camp
-I own there,&mdash;with an Indian who has guided me thus for eighteen years,
-and live like a&mdash;wild man for four gorgeous, care-free, trail-tramping,
-salmon-fighting, whisky-guzzling weeks. It is what your temperance
-friends would call a ‘spree.’ To be quite frank, I suppose it is what
-anybody would call a ‘spree.’ Then the first of July,&mdash;three or four
-days past the first of July, perhaps,&mdash;I come out of the woods quite
-tame again, a little emotionally nervous, perhaps, a little temperishly
-irritable, a little unduly sensitive about being greeted as a returned
-jail-bird, but most miraculously purged of all morbid craving for
-liquor, and with every digital muscle as coolly steady as yours, and
-every conscious mental process clamoring cleanly for its own work
-again.”</p>
-
-<p>Furtively under his glowering brows he stopped and searched the White
-Linen Nurse’s imperturbable face. “It’s an&mdash;established habit, you
-understand,” he re-warned her. “I’m not advocating it, you understand,
-I’m not defending it; I’m simply calling your attention to the fact
-that it <i>is</i> an established habit. If you decide to come to us, I&mdash;I
-couldn’t, you know, at forty-eight, begin all over again to&mdash;to have
-some one waiting for me on the top step the first of July to tell me
-what a low beast I am till I go down the steps again the following
-June.”</p>
-
-<p>“No, of course not,” conceded the White Linen Nurse. Blandly she
-lifted her lovely eyes to his. “Father’s like that,” she confided
-amiably. “Once a year&mdash;just Easter Sunday only&mdash;he always buys him a
-brand-new suit of clothes and goes to church. And it does something to
-him, I don’t know exactly what, but Easter afternoon he always gets
-drunk,&mdash;oh, mad, fighting drunk is what I mean,&mdash;and goes out and tries
-to shoot up the whole county.” Worriedly, two black<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_685" id="Page_685">[Pg 685]</a></span> thoughts puckered
-between her eyebrows. “And always,” she said, “he makes mother and me
-go up to Halifax beforehand to pick out the suit for him. It’s pretty
-hard sometimes,” she said, “to find anything dressy enough for the
-morning that’s serviceable enough for the afternoon.”</p>
-
-<p>“Eh?” jerked the Senior Surgeon. Then suddenly he began to smile again
-like a stormy sky from which the last cloud has just been cleared.
-“Well, it’s all right, then, is it? You’ll take us?” he asked brightly.</p>
-
-<p>“Oh, <i>no</i>!” said the White Linen Nurse. “Oh, <i>no</i>, sir! Oh, no, indeed,
-sir!” Quite perceptibly she jerked her way backward a little on the
-grass. “Thank you <i>very much</i>,” she persisted courteously. “It’s been
-<i>very interesting</i>. I thank you <i>very much</i> for telling me, but&mdash;”</p>
-
-<p>“But what?” snapped the Senior Surgeon.</p>
-
-<p>“But it’s too quick,” said the White Linen Nurse. “No man could tell
-like that, just between one eye-wink and another, what he wanted about
-<i>anything</i>, let alone marrying a perfect stranger.”</p>
-
-<p>Instantly the Senior Surgeon bridled.</p>
-
-<p>“I assure you, my dear young lady,” he retorted, “that I am entirely
-and completely accustomed to deciding between ‘one wink and another’
-just exactly what it is that I want. Indeed, I assure you that there
-are a good many people living to-day who wouldn’t be living if it had
-taken me even as long as a wink and three quarters to make up my mind.”</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, I know, sir,” acknowledged the White Linen Nurse. “Yes, of
-course, sir,” she acquiesced, with most commendable humility; “but
-all the same, sir, I couldn’t do it,” she persisted with inflexible
-positiveness. “Why, I haven’t enough education,” she confessed quite
-shamelessly.</p>
-
-<p>“You had enough, I notice, to get into the hospital with,” drawled
-the Senior Surgeon, a bit grumpily, “and that’s quite as much as
-most people have, I assure you. ‘A high-school education or its
-equivalent,’&mdash;that is the hospital requirement, I believe?” he
-questioned tartly.</p>
-
-<p>“‘A high-school education or its&mdash;equivocation’ is what we girls call
-it,” confessed the White Linen Nurse, demurely. “But even so, sir,” she
-pleaded, “it isn’t just my lack of education. It’s my brains. I tell
-you, sir, I haven’t got enough brains to do what you suggest.”</p>
-
-<p>“I don’t mean at all to belittle your brains,” grinned the Senior
-Surgeon despite himself,&mdash;“oh, not at all, Miss Malgregor,&mdash;but, you
-see, it isn’t especially brains that I’m looking for. Really, what I
-need most,” he acknowledged frankly, “is an extra pair of hands to go
-with the&mdash;brains I already possess.”</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, I know, sir,” persisted the White Linen Nurse. “Yes, of course,
-sir,” she conceded. “Yes, of course, sir, my hands work awfully
-well&mdash;with your face. But all the same,” she kindled suddenly&mdash;“all the
-same, sir, I can’t. I won’t! I tell you, sir, I <i>won’t</i>! Why, I’m not
-in your world, sir. Why, I’m not in your class. Why, my folks aren’t
-like your folks. Oh, we’re just as <i>good</i> as you, of course, but we
-aren’t as <i>nice</i>. Oh, we’re not <i>nice</i> at all. Really and truly we’re
-not.” Desperately through her mind she rummaged up and down for some
-one conclusive fact that would close this torturing argument for all
-time. “Why, my father eats with his knife!” she asserted triumphantly.</p>
-
-<p>“Would he be apt to eat with mine?” asked the Senior Surgeon, with
-extravagant gravity.</p>
-
-<p>Precipitously the White Linen Nurse jumped to the defense of her
-father’s intrinsic honor.</p>
-
-<p>“Oh, no,” she denied with some vehemence; “Father’s never cheeky like
-that! Father’s simple sometimes&mdash;plain, I mean. Or he might be a bit
-sharp. But, oh, I’m sure he’d never be&mdash;cheeky. Oh, no, sir. No.”</p>
-
-<p>“Oh, very well, then,” grinned the Senior Surgeon. “We can consider
-everything all comfortably settled, then, I suppose?”</p>
-
-<p>“No, we can’t,” screamed the White Linen Nurse. A little awkwardly,
-with cramped limbs, she struggled partly upward from the grass and
-knelt there, defying the Senior Surgeon from her temporarily superior
-height. “No, we can’t,” she reiterated wildly. “I tell you I can’t,
-sir. I won’t! I <i>won’t</i>! I’ve been engaged once, and it’s enough. I
-tell you, sir, I’m all engaged <i>out</i>!”</p>
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_686" id="Page_686">[Pg 686]</a></span></p>
-<p>“What’s become of the man you were engaged to?” quizzed the Senior
-Surgeon, sharply.</p>
-
-<p>“Why, he’s married,” said the White Linen Nurse. “And they’ve got a
-kid!” she added tempestuously.</p>
-
-<p>“Good! I’m glad of it,” smiled the Senior Surgeon, quite amazingly.
-“Now he surely won’t bother us any more.”</p>
-
-<p>“But I was engaged so long,” protested the White Linen Nurse&mdash;“almost
-ever since I was born, I said. It’s too long. You don’t get over it.”</p>
-
-<p>“He got over it,” remarked the Senior Surgeon, laconically.</p>
-
-<p>“Y-e-s,” admitted the White Linen Nurse; “but, I tell you, it doesn’t
-seem decent, not after being engaged&mdash;twenty years.” With a little
-helpless gesture of appeal she threw out her hands. “Oh, can’t I make
-you understand, sir?”</p>
-
-<p>“Why, of course I understand,” said the Senior Surgeon, briskly. “You
-mean that you and John&mdash;”</p>
-
-<p>“His name was Joe,” corrected the White Linen Nurse.</p>
-
-<p>With astonishing amiability the Senior Surgeon acknowledged the
-correction.</p>
-
-<p>“You mean,” he said&mdash;“you mean that you and&mdash;Joe have been cradled
-together so familiarly all your babyhood that on your wedding-night
-you could most naturally have said: ‘Let me see, Joe, it’s two pillows
-that you always have, isn’t it? And a double-fold of blanket at the
-foot?’ You mean that you and Joe have been washed and scrubbed together
-so familiarly all your young childhood that you could identify Joe’s
-headless body twenty years hence by the kerosene-lamp scar across
-his back? You mean that you and Joe have played house together so
-familiarly all your young tin-dish days that even your rag dolls called
-Joe father? You mean that since your earliest memory, until a year or
-so ago, life has never once been just you and life, but always you and
-life and Joe? You and spring and Joe, you and summer and Joe, you and
-autumn and Joe, you and winter and Joe, till every conscious nerve in
-your body has been so everlastingly Joed with Joe’s Joeness that you
-don’t believe there’s any experience left in life powerful enough to
-eradicate that original impression? Eh?”</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, sir,” flushed the White Linen Nurse.</p>
-
-<p>“Good! I’m glad of it,” snapped the Senior Surgeon. “It doesn’t make
-you seem quite so alarmingly innocent and remote for a widower to offer
-marriage to. Good, I say! I’m glad of it.”</p>
-
-<p>“Even so, I don’t want to,” said the White Linen Nurse. “Thank you very
-much, sir; but even so, I don’t want to.”</p>
-
-<p>“Would you marry Joe now if he were suddenly free and wanted you?”
-asked the Senior Surgeon, bluntly.</p>
-
-<p>“Oh, my Lord, no!” said the White Linen Nurse.</p>
-
-<p>“Other men are pretty sure to want you,” admonished the Senior Surgeon.
-“Have you made up your mind definitely that you’ll never marry anybody?”</p>
-
-<p>“N-o, not exactly,” confessed the White Linen Nurse.</p>
-
-<p>An odd flicker twitched across the Senior Surgeon’s face like a sob in
-the brain.</p>
-
-<p>“What’s your first name, Miss Malgregor?” he asked a bit huskily.</p>
-
-<p>“Rae,” she told him, with some surprise.</p>
-
-<p>The Senior Surgeon’s eyes narrowed suddenly again.</p>
-
-<p>“Damn it all, Rae,” he said, “I&mdash;want you!”</p>
-
-<p>Precipitously the White Linen Nurse scrambled to her feet.</p>
-
-<p>“If you don’t mind, sir,” she cried, “I’ll run down to the brook and
-get <i>myself</i> a drink of water.”</p>
-
-<p>Impishly like a child, muscularly like a man, the Senior Surgeon
-clutched out at the flapping corner of her coat.</p>
-
-<p>“No, you don’t,” he laughed, “till you’ve given me my definite answer,
-yes or no.”</p>
-
-<p>Breathlessly the White Linen Nurse spun round in her tracks. Her breast
-was heaving with ill-suppressed sobs, her eyes were blurred with tears.</p>
-
-<p>“You’ve no business to hurry me so,” she protested passionately. “It
-isn’t fair; it isn’t kind.”</p>
-
-<p>Sluggishly in the Senior Surgeon’s jolted arms the Little Girl woke
-from her feverish nap and peered up perplexedly through the gray dusk
-into her father’s face.</p>
-
-<p>“Where’s my kitty?” she asked hazily.</p>
-
-<p>“Eh?” jerked the Senior Surgeon.</p>
-
-<p>Harshly the little iron leg-braces<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_687" id="Page_687">[Pg 687]</a></span> clanked together. In an instant the
-White Linen Nurse was on her knees in the grass.</p>
-
-<p>“You don’t hold her right, sir,” she expostulated. Deftly, with soft,
-darting little touches, interrupted only by rubbing her knuckles into
-her own tears, she reached out and eased successively the bruise of a
-buckle or the dragging weight on a cramped little hip.</p>
-
-<p>Still drowsily, still hazily, with little smacking gasps and gulping
-swallows, the child worried her way back again into consciousness.</p>
-
-<p>“All the birds <i>were</i> there, Father,” she droned forth feebly from her
-sweltering mink-fur nest.</p>
-
-<div class="poetry-container s5">
-  <div class="poetry">
-    <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse">“All the birds <i>were</i> there</div>
-      <div class="verse">With yellow feathers instead of hair,</div>
-      <div class="verse">And bumblebees&mdash;and bumblebees&mdash;</div>
-      <div class="verse">And bumblebees&mdash;and bumblebees&mdash;”</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p>Frenziedly she began to burrow the back of her head into her father’s
-shoulder. “And bumblebees&mdash;and bumblebees&mdash;”</p>
-
-<p>“Oh, for Heaven’s sake&mdash;‘buzzed in the trees!’” interpolated the Senior
-Surgeon.</p>
-
-<p>Rigidly from head to foot the little body in his arms stiffened
-suddenly. As one who saw the supreme achievement of a life-time swept
-away by some one careless joggle of an infinitesimal part, the Little
-Girl stared up agonizingly into her father’s face.</p>
-
-<p>“Oh, I don’t think ‘buzzed’ was the word!” she began convulsively. “Oh,
-I don’t think&mdash;”</p>
-
-<p>Startlingly through the twilight the Senior Surgeon felt the White
-Linen Nurse’s rose-red lips come smack against his ear.</p>
-
-<p>“Darn you! Can’t you say ‘crocheted in the trees’?” sobbed the White
-Linen Nurse.</p>
-
-<p>Grotesquely for an instant the Senior Surgeon’s eyes and the White
-Linen Nurse’s eyes glared at each other in rank antagonism. Then
-suddenly the Senior Surgeon burst out laughing.</p>
-
-<p>“Oh, very well,” he surrendered&mdash;“‘crocheted in the trees!’”</p>
-
-<p>The White Linen Nurse sank back on her heels and began to clap her
-hands.</p>
-
-<p>“Oh, now I will! Now I will!” she cried exultantly.</p>
-
-<p>“Will <i>what</i>?” frowned the Senior Surgeon.</p>
-
-<p>The White Linen Nurse stopped clapping her hands and began to wring
-them nervously in her lap instead.</p>
-
-<p>“Why, will&mdash;<i>will</i>,” she confessed demurely.</p>
-
-<p>“Oh!” exclaimed the Senior Surgeon. “Oh!” Then jerkily he began to
-pucker his eyebrows. “But, for Heaven’s sake, what’s the ‘crocheted in
-the trees’ got to do with it?” he asked perplexedly.</p>
-
-<p>“Nothing <i>much</i>,” mused the White Linen Nurse, very softly. With sudden
-alertness she turned her curly blonde head toward the road. “There’s
-somebody coming,” she said. “I hear a team.”</p>
-
-<p>Overcome by a bashfulness that tried to escape in jocosity, the Senior
-Surgeon gave an odd, choking little chuckle.</p>
-
-<p>“Well, I never thought I should marry a&mdash;trained nurse!” he
-acknowledged with somewhat hectic blitheness.</p>
-
-<p>Impulsively the White Linen Nurse reached for her watch and lifted it
-close to her twilight-blinded eyes. A sense of ineffable peace crept
-suddenly over her.</p>
-
-<p>“You won’t, sir,” she said amiably. “It’s twenty minutes of nine now,
-and the graduation was at <i>eight</i>.”</p>
-
-<p class="mtop2">F<span class="smaller">OR</span> any real adventure except dying, June is certainly a most
-auspicious month.</p>
-
-<p>Indeed, it was on the very first rain-green, rose-red morning of June
-that the White Linen Nurse sallied forth upon her extremely hazardous
-adventure of marrying the Senior Surgeon and his naughty little
-crippled daughter.</p>
-
-<p>The wedding was at noon in some kind of gray-granite church. The Senior
-Surgeon was there, of course, and the necessary witnesses; but the
-Little Crippled Girl never turned up at all, owing, it proved later,
-to a more than usually violent wrangle with whomever dressed her,
-concerning the general advisability of sporting turquoise-colored
-stockings with her brightest little purple dress.</p>
-
-<p>The Senior Surgeon’s stockings, if you really care to know, were gray,
-and the Senior Surgeon’s suit was gray, and he looked altogether
-very huge and distinguished, and no more strikingly unhappy than any
-bridegroom looks in a gray-granite church.</p>
-
-<p>And the White Linen Nurse, no longer<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_688" id="Page_688">[Pg 688]</a></span> now truly a White Linen Nurse,
-but just an ordinary, every-day silk-and-cloth lady of any color she
-chose, wore something rather coaty and grand and bluish, and was
-distractingly pretty, of course, but most essentially unfamiliar, and
-just a tiny bit awkward and bony-wristed-looking, as even an admiral is
-apt to be on his first day out of uniform.</p>
-
-<p>Then as soon as the wedding ceremony was over, the bride and groom went
-to a wonderful green-and-gold café, all built of marble and lined with
-music, and had a little lunch. What I really mean, of course, is that
-they had a very large lunch, but didn’t eat any of it.</p>
-
-<p>Then in a taxi-cab, just exactly like any other taxi-cab, the
-White Linen Nurse drove home alone to the Senior Surgeon’s great,
-gloomy house, to find her brand-new stepdaughter still screaming
-over the turquoise-colored stockings. And the Senior Surgeon, in a
-Canadian-bound train, just exactly like any other Canadian-bound train,
-started off alone, as usual, on his annual June “spree.”</p>
-
-<p>Please don’t think for a moment that it was the Senior Surgeon who was
-responsible for the general eccentricities of this amazing wedding-day.
-No, indeed. The Senior Surgeon didn’t <i>want</i> to be married the first
-day of June. He said he didn’t, he growled he didn’t, he snarled he
-didn’t, he swore he didn’t; and when he finished saying and growling
-and snarling and swearing, and looked up at the White Linen Nurse for
-a confirmation of his opinion, the White Linen Nurse smiled perfectly
-amiably and said, “Yes, sir.” Then the Senior Surgeon gave a great gasp
-of relief and announced resonantly: “Well, it’s all settled, then?
-We’ll be married some time in July, after I get home from Canada?” And
-when the White Linen Nurse kept right on smiling perfectly amiably and
-said, “Oh, no, sir, oh, no, thank you, sir; it wouldn’t seem exactly
-legal to me to be married any other month but June,” the Senior Surgeon
-went absolutely dumb with rage that this mere chit of a girl, and a
-trained nurse, too, should dare to thwart his personal and professional
-convenience. But the White Linen Nurse just drooped her pretty blonde
-head and blushed and blushed and blushed and said: “I was only marrying
-you, sir, to&mdash;accommodate you, sir, and if June doesn’t accommodate
-you, I’d rather go to Japan with that monoideic somnambulism case.
-It’s very interesting, and it sails June 2.” Then, “Oh, hell with the
-‘monoideic somnambulism case’!” the Senior Surgeon would protest.</p>
-
-<p>Really it took the Senior Surgeon quite a long while to work out the
-three special arguments that would best protect him, he thought, from
-the horridly embarrassing idea of being married in June.</p>
-
-<p>“But you can’t get ready so soon,” he suggested at last with real
-triumph. “You’ve no idea how long it takes a girl to get ready to be
-married. There are so many people she has to tell&mdash;and everything.”</p>
-
-<p>“There’s never but two that she’s got to tell, or bust,” conceded the
-White Linen Nurse with perfect candor&mdash;“just the woman she loves the
-most and the woman she hates the worst. I’ll write my mother to-morrow,
-but I told the Superintendent of Nurses yesterday.”</p>
-
-<p>“The deuce you did!” snapped the Senior Surgeon.</p>
-
-<p>Almost caressingly the White Linen Nurse lifted her big blue eyes to
-his.</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, sir,” she said. “And she looked as sick as a young undertaker. I
-can’t imagine what ailed her.”</p>
-
-<p>“Eh?” choked the Senior Surgeon. “But the house, now,” he hastened to
-contend&mdash;“the house, now, needs a lot of fixing over; it’s all run
-down. It’s all&mdash;everything. We never in the world could get it into
-shape by the first of June. For Heaven’s sake, now that we’ve got money
-enough to make it right, let’s go slow and make it perfectly right.”</p>
-
-<p>A little nervously the White Linen Nurse began to fumble through the
-pages of her memorandum-book.</p>
-
-<p>“I’ve <i>always</i> had money enough to ‘go slow and make things perfectly
-right,’” she confided a bit wistfully. “Never in all my life have I
-had a pair of boots that weren’t guaranteed or a dress that wouldn’t
-wash or a hat that wasn’t worth at least three re-pressings. What I
-was hoping for now, sir, was that I was going to have enough money
-so that I could go fast and make things wrong if I wanted to&mdash;so
-that I could afford to take chances, I mean. Here’s this wall-paper,
-now,”&mdash;tragically she pointed to some figuring in her note-book,&mdash;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_689" id="Page_689">[Pg 689]</a></span>“it’s
-got peacocks on it, life-size, in a queen’s garden, and I wanted it
-for the dining-room. Maybe it would fade, maybe we’d get tired of it,
-maybe it would poison us: slam it on one week, and slash it off the
-next. I wanted it just because I wanted it, sir. I thought maybe, while
-you were ’way off in Canada&mdash;”</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-   <a id="i_688" name="i_688">
-   <img class="mtop1" src="images/i_688.jpg" alt="" /></a>
-  <p class="caption1">Plates in tint, engraved for
-    T<span class="smaller">HE</span> C<span class="smaller">ENTURY</span> by H.
-    C. Merrill and H. Davidson</p>
-  <p class="caption">“‘YOU’VE NO BUSINESS TO HURRY ME SO,’ SHE PROTESTED. ‘IT ISN’T FAIR;
-  IT ISN’T KIND’”</p>
-  <p class="caption1">DRAWN BY HERMAN PFEIFER</p>
-  <p class="linkedimage"><a href="images/i_688_large.jpg">&#10063;<br />
-  <span class="smaller">LARGER IMAGE</span></a></p>
-</div>
-
-<p class="mtop1">Eagerly the Senior Surgeon jerked his chair a little nearer to his
-fiancée’s.</p>
-
-<p>“Now, my dear girl,” he said, “that’s just what I want to
-explain&mdash;that’s just what I want to explain&mdash;just what I want to
-explain&mdash;to&mdash;er&mdash;explain,” he continued a bit falteringly.</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, sir,” said the White Linen Nurse.</p>
-
-<p>Very deliberately the Senior Surgeon removed a fleck of dust from one
-of his cuffs.</p>
-
-<p>“All this talk of yours about wanting to be married the same day I
-start off on my&mdash;Canadian trip,” he contended, “why, it’s all damned
-nonsense.”</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, sir,” said the White Linen Nurse.</p>
-
-<p>Very conscientiously the Senior Surgeon began to search for a fleck of
-dust on his other cuff.</p>
-
-<p>“Why, my&mdash;my dear girl,” he persisted, “it’s absurd, it’s outrageous!
-Why, people would&mdash;would hoot at us! Why, they’d think&mdash;”</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, sir,” said the White Linen Nurse.</p>
-
-<p>“Why, my dear girl,” sweated the Senior Surgeon, “even though you and
-I understand perfectly well the purely formal, businesslike conditions
-of our marriage, we must at least, for sheer decency’s sake, keep up
-a certain semblance of marital conventionality before the world. Why,
-if we were married at noon the first day of June as you suggest, and I
-should go right off alone as usual on my Canadian trip, and you should
-come back alone to the house, why, people would think&mdash;would think that
-I didn’t care anything about you.”</p>
-
-<p>“But you don’t,” said the White Linen Nurse, serenely.</p>
-
-<p>“Why, they’d think,” choked the Senior Surgeon&mdash;“they’d think you were
-trying your&mdash;darndest to get rid of me.”</p>
-
-<p>“I am,” said the White Linen Nurse, complacently.</p>
-
-<p>With a muttered ejaculation the Senior Surgeon jumped to his feet and
-stood glaring down at her.</p>
-
-<p>Quite ingenuously the White Linen Nurse met and parried the glare.</p>
-
-<p>“A gentleman, and a red-haired kiddie, and a great walloping house
-all at <i>once</i>, it’s too much,” she confided genially. “Thank you just
-the same, but I’d rather take them gradually. First of all, sir, you
-see, I’ve got to teach the little kiddie to like me. And then there’s a
-green-tiled paper with floppity sea-gulls on it that I want to try for
-the bath-room. And&mdash;and&mdash;” Ecstatically she clapped her hands together.
-“Oh, sir, there are such loads and loads of experiments I want to try
-while you are off on your spree!”</p>
-
-<p>“’S-h-h!” cried the Senior Surgeon. His face was suddenly blanched,
-his mouth twitching like the mouth of one stricken with almost
-insupportable pain. “For God’s sake, Miss Malgregor,” he pleaded,
-“can’t you call it my Canadian trip?”</p>
-
-<p>Wider and wider the White Linen Nurse opened her big blue eyes at him.</p>
-
-<p>“But it <i>is</i> a spree, sir!” she protested resolutely. “And my father
-says&mdash;” Still resolutely her young mouth curved to its original
-assertion, but from under her heavy-shadowing eyelashes a little smile
-crept softly out&mdash;“when my father’s got a lame trotting-horse, sir,
-that he’s trying to shuck off his hands,” she faltered, “he doesn’t
-ever go round mournful-like, with his head hanging, telling folks about
-his wonderful trotter that’s just ‘the littlest, teeniest, tiniest
-bit lame.’ Oh, no. What father does is to call up every one he knows
-within twenty miles and tell ’em: ‘Say, Tom, Bill, Harry, or whatever
-your name is, what in the deuce do you suppose I’ve got over here in
-my barn? A lame horse that wants to trot! <i>Lamer than the deuce</i>,
-you know, but can do a mile in two forty.’” Faintly the little smile
-quickened again in the White Linen Nurse’s eyes. “And the barn will be
-full of men in half an hour,” she said. “Somehow nobody wants a trotter
-that’s lame, but almost anybody seems willing to risk a lame horse
-that’s plucky enough to trot.”</p>
-
-<p>“What’s the ‘lame trotting-horse’ got to do with <i>me</i>?” snarled the
-Senior Surgeon, incisively.</p>
-
-<p>Darkly the White Linen Nurse’s lashes fringed down across her cheeks.</p>
-
-<p>“Nothing much,” she said; “only&mdash;”</p>
-
-<p>“Only what?” demanded the Senior Surgeon. A little more roughly than
-he realized he stooped down and took the White Linen Nurse by her
-shoulders, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_690" id="Page_690">[Pg 690]</a></span> jerked her sharply round to the light. “Only <i>what</i>?”
-he insisted peremptorily.</p>
-
-<p>Almost plaintively she lifted her eyes to his.</p>
-
-<p>“Only my father says,” she confided obediently&mdash;“my father says, ‘if
-you’ve got a worse foot, for Heaven’s sake, put it forward, and get it
-over with!’</p>
-
-<p>“So I’ve <i>got</i> to call it a spree,” smiled the White Linen Nurse;
-“’cause when I think of marrying a surgeon that goes off and gets
-drunk every June, it&mdash;it scares me almost to death; but&mdash;” Abruptly
-the red smile faded from her lips, the blue smile from her eyes&mdash;“but
-when I think of marrying a&mdash;June drunk that’s got the grit to pull up
-absolutely straight as a die and be a surgeon all the other ’leven
-months in the year?” Dartingly she bent down and kissed the Senior
-Surgeon’s astonished wrist. “Oh, then I think you’re perfectly grand!”
-she sobbed.</p>
-
-<p>Awkwardly the Senior Surgeon pulled away and began to pace the floor.</p>
-
-<p>“You’re a good little girl, Rae Malgregor,” he mumbled huskily&mdash;“a good
-little girl. I truly believe you’re the kind that will see me through.”
-Poignantly in his eyes humiliation overwhelmed the mist. Perversely in
-its turn resentment overtook the humiliation. “But I won’t be married
-in June,” he reasserted bombastically. “I won’t, I won’t, I won’t. I
-tell you I positively refuse to have a lot of damned fools speculating
-about my private affairs, wondering why I didn’t take you, wondering
-why I didn’t stay home with you. I tell you I won’t. I surely <i>won’t</i>.”</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, sir,” whimpered the White Linen Nurse.</p>
-
-<p>With a real gasp of relief the Senior Surgeon stopped his eternal
-pacing of the floor.</p>
-
-<p>“Bully for you!” he said. “You mean then we’ll be married some time in
-July after I get back from my&mdash;trip?”</p>
-
-<p>“Oh, no, sir,” whimpered the White Linen Nurse.</p>
-
-<p>“But, great Heavens!” shouted the Senior Surgeon.</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, sir,” the White Linen Nurse began all over again. Dreamily
-planning out her wedding-gown, her lips without the slightest conscious
-effort on her part were already curving into shape for her alternate
-“No, sir.”</p>
-
-<p>“You’re an idiot!” snapped the Senior Surgeon.</p>
-
-<p>A little reproachfully the White Linen Nurse came frowning out of her
-reverie.</p>
-
-<p>“Would it do just as well for traveling, do you think?” she asked, with
-real concern.</p>
-
-<p>“Eh? What?” said the Senior Surgeon.</p>
-
-<p>“I mean, does Japan <i>spot</i>?” queried the White Linen Nurse. “Would it
-spot a serge, I mean?”</p>
-
-<p>“Oh, hell with Japan!” jerked out the Senior Surgeon.</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, sir,” said the White Linen Nurse.</p>
-
-<p>Now, perhaps you will understand just exactly how it happened that the
-Senior Surgeon and the White Linen Nurse <i>were</i> married on the first
-day of June, and just exactly how it happened that the Senior Surgeon
-went off alone as usual on his Canadian trip, and just exactly how
-it happened that the White Linen Nurse came home alone to the Senior
-Surgeon’s great, gloomy house, to find her brand-new stepdaughter still
-screaming over the turquoise-colored stockings. Everything now is
-perfectly comfortably explained except the turquoise-colored stockings.
-Nobody could explain the turquoise-colored stockings.</p>
-
-<p>But even a little child could explain the ensuing June. Oh, June
-was perfectly wonderful that year! Bud, blossom, birdsong, breeze,
-rioting headlong through the land; warm days as sweet and lush as a
-greenhouse vapor; crisp nights faintly metallic, like the scent of
-stars; hurdy-gurdies romping tunefully on every street corner; even the
-ash-man flushing frankly pink across his dusty cheek-bones.</p>
-
-<p>Like two fairies who had sublet a giant’s cave, the White Linen Nurse
-and the Little Crippled Girl turned themselves loose upon the Senior
-Surgeon’s gloomy old house.</p>
-
-<p>It certainly was a gloomy old house, but handsome withal, square and
-brown and substantial, and most generously gardened within high brick
-walls. Except for dusting the lilac-bushes with the hose, and weeding
-a few rusty leaves out of the privet hedge, and tacking up three
-or four scraggly sprays of English ivy, and re-greening one or two
-bay-tree boxes, there was really nothing much to do to the garden. But
-the house? O ye gods! All<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_691" id="Page_691">[Pg 691]</a></span> day long from morning till night, but most
-particularly from the back door to the barn, sweating workmen scuttled
-back and forth till nary a guilty piece of black-walnut furniture had
-escaped. All day long from morning till night, but most particularly
-from ceilings to floors, sweltering workmen scurried up and down
-step-ladders, stripping dingy papers from dingier plasterings.</p>
-
-<p>When the White Linen Nurse wasn’t busy renovating the big house or the
-little stepdaughter, she was writing to the Senior Surgeon. She wrote
-twice.</p>
-
-<p>“Dear Dr. Faber,” the first letter said&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p class="p0">Dear Dr. Faber:</p>
-
-<p>How do you do? Thank you very much for saying you didn’t care what
-in thunder I did to the house. It looks <i>sweet</i>. I’ve put white,
-fluttery muslin curtains ’most everywhere. And you’ve got a new
-solid-gold-looking bed in your room. And the Kiddie and I have
-fixed up the most scrumptious light blue suite for ourselves in
-the ell. Pink <i>was</i> wrong for the front hall, but it cost me only
-$29.00 to find out, and now that’s settled for all time.</p>
-
-<p>I am very, very, very, very busy. Something strange and new happens
-every day. Yesterday it was three ladies and a plumber. One of the
-ladies was just selling soap, but I didn’t buy any. It was horrid
-soap. The other two were calling ladies, a silk one and a velvet
-one. The silk one tried to be nasty to me. Right to my face she
-told me I was more of a lady than she had dared to hope. And I told
-her I was sorry for that, as you’d had one “lady,” and it didn’t
-work. Was that all right? But the other lady was nice, and I took
-her out in the kitchen with me while I was painting the woodwork,
-and right there in her white kid gloves she laughed and showed
-me how to mix the paint pearl gray. <i>She</i> was nice. It was your
-sister-in-law.</p>
-
-<p>I like being married, Dr. Faber. I like it lots better than I
-thought I would. It’s fun being the biggest person in the house.</p>
-
-<p class="right mright2"><span class="mright3">Respectfully yours,</span><br />
-R<span class="smaller">AE</span> M<span class="smaller">ALGREGOR</span>,
-<span class="smaller">AS WAS</span>.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p>P.S. Oh, I hope it wasn’t wrong, but in your ulster pocket, when I
-went to put it away, I found a bottle of something that smelled as
-though it had been forgotten. I threw it out.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<p>It was this letter that drew the only definite message from the
-itinerant bridegroom.</p>
-
-<p>“Kindly refrain from rummaging in my ulster pockets,” wrote the Senior
-Surgeon, briefly. “The ‘thing’ you threw out happened to be the
-cerebellum and medulla of an extremely eminent English theologian.”</p>
-
-<p>“Even so, it was sour,” telegraphed the White Linen Nurse in a perfect
-agony of remorse and humiliation.</p>
-
-<p>The telegram took an Indian with a birch canoe two days to deliver, and
-cost the Senior Surgeon twelve dollars. Just impulsively the Senior
-Surgeon decided to make no further comments on domestic affairs at that
-particular range.</p>
-
-<p>Very fortunately for this impulse, the White Linen Nurse’s second
-letter concerned itself almost entirely with matters quite extraneous
-to the home.</p>
-
-<p>The second letter ran:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p class="p0">Dear Dr. Faber:</p>
-
-<p>Somehow I don’t seem to care so much just now about being the
-biggest person in the house. Something awful has happened: Zillah
-Forsyth is dead. Really dead, I mean. And she died in great
-heroism. You remember Zillah Forsyth, don’t you? She was one of
-my room-mates, not the gooder one, you know, not the swell; that
-was Helene Churchill. But Zillah? Oh, you know, Zillah was the
-one you sent out on that fractured-elbow case. It was a Yale
-student, you remember? And there was some trouble about kissing,
-and she got sent home? And now everybody’s crying because Zillah
-<i>can’t</i> kiss anybody any more. Isn’t everything the limit? Well,
-it wasn’t a fractured Yale student she got sent out on this time.
-If it had been, she might have been living yet. What they sent
-her out on this time was a senile dementia, an old lady more than
-eighty years old. And they were in a sanatorium or something like
-that, and there was a fire in the night. And the old lady just
-up and positively refused to escape, and Zillah had to push her
-and shove her and yank her and carry her out of the window, along
-the gutters, round the chimneys. And the old lady bit Zillah
-right through the hand, but Zillah wouldn’t let go. And the old
-lady tried to drown Zillah under a bursted water tank, but Zillah
-wouldn’t let go. And everybody hollered to Zillah to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_692" id="Page_692">[Pg 692]</a></span> cut loose
-and save herself, but Zillah wouldn’t let go. And a wall fell, and
-everything, and, oh, it was awful, but Zillah never let go. And the
-old lady that wasn’t any good to any one, not even herself, got
-saved, of course. But Zillah? Oh, Zillah got hurt bad, sir. We saw
-her at the hospital, Helene and I. She sent for us about something.
-Oh, it was awful! Not a thing about her that you’d know except just
-her great solemn eyes mooning out at you through a gob of white
-cotton, and her red mouth lipping sort of twitchy at the edge of a
-bandage. Oh, it was awful! But Zillah didn’t seem to care so much.
-There was a new interne there, a Japanese, and I guess she was sort
-of taken with him. “But, my God, Zillah,” I said, “<i>your</i> life was
-worth more than that old dame’s!”</p>
-
-<p>“Shut your noise!” says Zillah. “It was my job, and there’s no
-kick coming.” Helene burst right out crying, she did. “Shut <i>your</i>
-noise, too!” says Zillah, just as cool as you please. “Bah! There’s
-other lives and other chances.”</p>
-
-<p>“Oh, you believe that now?” cries Helene. “Oh, you do believe that
-now, what the Bible promises you?” That was when Zillah shrugged
-her shoulders so funny, the little way she had. Gee! but her eyes
-were big! “I don’t pretend to know what your old Bible says,” she
-choked. “It was the Yale feller who was tellin’ me.”</p>
-
-<p>That’s all, Dr. Faber. It was her shrugging her shoulders so funny
-that brought on the hemorrhage, I guess.</p>
-
-<p>Oh, we had an awful time, sir, going home in the carriage, Helene
-and I. We both cried, of course, because Zillah was dead, but
-after we got through crying for that, Helene kept right on crying
-because she couldn’t understand why a brave girl like Zillah <i>had</i>
-to be dead. Gee! but Helene takes things hard! Ladies do, I guess.</p>
-
-<p>I hope you’re having a pleasant spree.</p>
-
-<p>Oh, I forgot to tell you that one of the wall-paperers is living
-here at the house with us just now. We use him so much, it’s truly
-a good deal more convenient. And he’s a real nice young fellow,
-and he plays the piano finely, and he comes from up my way. And it
-seemed more neighborly, anyway. It’s so large in the house at night
-just now, and so creaky in the garden.</p>
-
-<p>With kindest regards, good-by for now, from</p>
-
-<p class="right mright2">R<span class="smaller">AE</span>.</p>
-
-<p>P.S. Don’t tell your guide or <i>any one</i>, but Helene sent Zillah’s
-mother a check for fifteen hundred dollars. I saw it with my own
-eyes. And all Zillah asked for that day was just a little blue
-serge suit. It seems she’d promised her kid sister a little blue
-serge suit for July, and it sort of worried her.</p>
-
-<p>Helene sent the little blue serge suit, too, and a hat. The hat
-had bluebells on it. Do you think when you come home, if I haven’t
-spent too much money on wall-papers, that I could have a blue hat
-with bluebells on it? Excuse me for bothering you, but you forgot
-to leave me enough money.</p></div>
-
-<p>It was some indefinite, pleasant time on Thursday, the twenty-fifth
-of June, that the Senior Surgeon received the second letter. It was
-Friday, the twenty-sixth of June, exactly at dawn, that the Senior
-Surgeon started homeward.</p>
-
-<p class="s5 center mtop2">(To be concluded)</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<h2 class="nobreak" id="THE_GENTLE_READER">THE GENTLE READER</h2>
-
-<p class="s3 center mbot1">BY ARTHUR DAVISON FICKE</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="poetry-container">
-  <div class="poetry">
-    <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse"><span class="drop-cap_poetry">W</span>HY does the poet choose to sing?</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">No impulse ever stirred in me</div>
-      <div class="verse">The wish to make myself a thing</div>
-      <div class="verse">To which all mocking gibes might cling.”</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1"><i>Perhaps he sees more than you see.</i></div>
-    </div>
-    <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse">“Why should this fool go crying out</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">The secrets of his soul? In steel</div>
-      <div class="verse">I case myself, nor care to shout</div>
-      <div class="verse">Those things one does not talk about.”</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1"><i>Perhaps he feels more than you feel.</i></div>
-    </div>
-    <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse">“If I had wisdom to impart,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">I’d say the thing, and let it go,</div>
-      <div class="verse">Not trifle with a foolish art</div>
-      <div class="verse">And make a motley of my heart.”</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1"><i>Perhaps he knows more than you know.</i></div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_693" id="Page_693">[Pg 693]</a></span></p>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-   <a id="i_693" name="i_693">
-   <img class="mtop3" src="images/i_693.jpg" alt="Headpiece Submarine Mountains" /></a>
-</div>
-
-<h2 class="nopad nobreak" id="SUBMARINE_MOUNTAINS">SUBMARINE MOUNTAINS</h2>
-
-</div>
-
-<p class="s3 center mbot1">BY CALE YOUNG RICE</p>
-
-<div class="poetry-container">
-  <div class="poetry">
-    <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse"><span class="drop-cap_poetry">U</span>NDER the sea, which is their sky, they rise</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">To watery altitudes as vast as those</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">Of far Himalayan peaks impent in snows,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">And veils of cloud and sacred deep repose.</div>
-      <div class="verse">Under the sea, their flowing firmament,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">More dark than any ray of sun can pierce,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">The earthquake thrust them up with mighty tierce,</div>
-      <div class="verse">And left them to be seen but by the eyes</div>
-      <div class="verse">Of awed imagination inward bent.</div>
-    </div>
-    <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse">Their vegetation is the viscid ooze,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">Whose mysteries are past belief or thought.</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">Creation seems around them devil-wrought,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">Or by some cosmic urgence gone distraught.</div>
-      <div class="verse">A-down their precipices, chill and dense</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">With the dank midnight, creep or crawl or climb</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">Such tentacled and eyeless things of slime,</div>
-      <div class="verse">Such monster shapes as tempt us to accuse</div>
-      <div class="verse">Life of a miscreative impotence.</div>
-    </div>
-    <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse">About their peaks the shark, their eagle, floats</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">In the thick azure far beneath the air,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">Or downward sweeps upon what prey may dare</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">Set forth from any silent, weedy lair.</div>
-      <div class="verse">But one desire on all their slopes is found,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">Desire of food, the awful hunger strife;</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">Yet here, it may be, was begun our life,</div>
-      <div class="verse">Here all the dreams on which our vision dotes</div>
-      <div class="verse">In unevolved obscurity were bound.</div>
-    </div>
-    <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse">Too strange it is, too terrible! And yet</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">It matters not how we were wrought, or whence</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">Life came to us with all its throb intense,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">If in it is a Godly Immanence.</div>
-      <div class="verse">It matters not,&mdash;if haply we are more</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">Than creatures half conceived by a blind force</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">That sweeps the universe in a chance course:</div>
-      <div class="verse">For only in Unmeaning Might is met</div>
-      <div class="verse">The intolerable thought none can ignore.</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_694" id="Page_694">[Pg 694]</a></span></p>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-   <a id="i_694" name="i_694">
-   <img class="mtop3" src="images/i_694.jpg" alt="Headpiece Visit to Whistler" /></a>
-</div>
-
-<h2 class="nopad nobreak" id="A_VISIT_TO_WHISTLER">A VISIT TO WHISTLER</h2>
-
-</div>
-
-<p class="s3 center mbot1">BY MARIA TORRILHON BUEL</p>
-
-<p class="p0"><span class="drop-cap">I</span>N May, 1899, we were two women in Paris for hats, gowns, and the
-season’s show of pictures. I was under the wing of a handsome matron
-who had a latent desire to see herself transferred to canvas should she
-chance upon a painter with an appealing portrait of some other woman.
-Through friends, several great studios were opened to us, and we grew
-more and more enterprising, until one day my guide and mentor, suddenly
-turning to me, said, “Let us visit Whistler!”</p>
-
-<p>It fairly took my breath away, for I recalled much caustic wit of
-alleged Whistler origin that I had seen in the public prints, and,
-feeling the promptings of caution, I exclaimed, “How dare you?”</p>
-
-<p>“Because he has invited me,” she replied.</p>
-
-<p>It was true, for, a few years before, my friend’s husband, shrewd in
-the law, and equally daring in his connoisseurship, had paid a large
-price for a Whistler “Nocturne” of a beauty so characteristic that
-even amateurs could look at it and wonder what it was all about. This
-nocturne began its existence in my friend’s home by perpetrating a
-joke. It had been brought to the house by one of Whistler’s pupils,
-just from Europe. We two women entered the drawing-room to find it
-alone in its glory, which did not seem to be dimmed by the fact that
-it was on the carpet with a Louis Quinze chair for an easel. We gazed
-in wonderment, from all possible angles, and finally exclaimed that
-it was “quite Japanese” in style and coloring. Then the reverent
-pupil entered, kneeled before it, wiped it softly with his silk
-handkerchief, smiled, and reversed it&mdash;for we had been studying the
-<i>chef-d’œuvre</i> upside down. He withdrew without taking notice of
-our chagrin. Evidently the joke was too good to keep, for the incident
-has become one of the stock Whistler anecdotes. Within a year a friend
-has regaled me with it, without a suspicion of carrying coals to
-Newcastle.</p>
-
-<p>That purchase had given the artist much satisfaction, aside from the
-lofty price, and he used to write charming letters, asking my friend to
-visit him in Paris.</p>
-
-<p>That same day we went to his studio in the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs.</p>
-
-<p>Arriving at a forbidding area, with a winding staircase, we looked at
-each other with feminine indecision. Before we could arrange a retreat,
-the concierge, who was somewhere near the top, caught sight of us and
-called down to learn whom we wanted. I made a megaphone of my hand and
-screamed aloft, “Monsieur Whist-lai-ai-re!”</p>
-
-<p>“<i>Là bas</i>, on the fifth,” she answered.</p>
-
-<p>After a slow ascent, we stood at last on the top steps of the winding
-staircase. I can still hear the prolonged jingle of the primitive
-bell my vigorous pull had roused. Before it was stilled, the door
-opened suddenly, and there stood Whistler, the great Whistler&mdash;in his
-shirt-sleeves!</p>
-
-<p>The first impression was of a little, big personage who completely
-filled the doorway. He appeared much smaller than any idea of
-personality conveyed by the portraits of him that we had seen. On his
-left arm he held a large palette, with a bunch of brushes in his hand.
-All were moist, as were also to some extent his sleeves and clothing,
-for he was without a painting-apron. But the famous mono<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_695" id="Page_695">[Pg 695]</a></span>cle was there,
-and the whisk of white hair was in the right place. The <i>signalement</i>
-was complete.</p>
-
-<p>There he stood, silent, obviously waiting for us to explain the
-intrusion. In the dim light I imagined that I could see his monocle
-bristling, and I felt much like a conscience-stricken child about to
-be eaten by an ogre. As my friend remained dumb, in a weak voice I
-murmured the name that was to be our talisman, meekly adding my own;
-but that was lost in his “Ah!” of recognition.</p>
-
-<p>“You are the bold woman who bought my picture! I have a sitter now; but
-come to-morrow at four, and we will have tea.”</p>
-
-<p>We accepted in unison, the door was closed in our faces, and with
-a sense of deep satisfaction at having escaped an unknown peril we
-tripped lightly down the staircase. While we were standing at his door,
-Whistler had so managed that we could not have moved half an inch
-farther toward the forbidden sanctuary. It was probably a well-planned,
-habitual, and defensive position on his part.</p>
-
-<p>On the following day, punctually at four o’clock, we again stood in
-constrained positions on the narrow steps, but without a sense of
-awkwardness; again the bell jingled wildly.</p>
-
-<p>Again the great Whistler opened the door, but now dressed in a suit
-of black, with the red ribbon of the Legion of Honor in his lapel.
-His welcome was graceful and cordial. With easy confidence we walked
-into the studio. A bright fire glowed at one end, in front of which
-was a round table covered with green rep, on which were tea-things,
-and dishes filled with dainty French cakes. A little maid, in neat cap
-and apron, was hovering about. All about us, turned to the wall and
-unframed, were seemingly hundreds of canvases. What has become of all
-those treasures since Whistler’s death?</p>
-
-<p>As we entered, he said, with a wave of the hand toward the hidden
-canvases, “See how careful I am!”</p>
-
-<p>As a whole, the studio, though spacious, was simple in its furnishings,
-except for the amazing decoration of masterpieces turned to the wall.
-He offered us chairs, and seated himself on the edge of a long table.
-Reaching out for a copy of “The Gentle Art of Making Enemies,” he began
-to read to us his most spicy letters.</p>
-
-<p>He read on and on, until we began to wonder whether all the afternoon
-was to be spent in this novel and entertaining way. Meanwhile I glanced
-about and noticed a large phonograph, which seemed the only discordant
-note in an otherwise harmonious place. It soon became a discord, for
-suddenly tiring of his own wit, he turned lovingly to the instrument,
-and regaled us with a medley of “coon” songs, orchestral numbers, and
-other music. Had we dared, we should have glanced at each other in
-amazement.</p>
-
-<p>At last Whistler reverted to art, and brought a canvas to the easel.
-He oiled it slightly, tenderly, and, lo! a handsome Italian boy shone
-forth, soul and all. It was magical. We had previously agreed to say
-but little, and never to gush over anything we might be shown. We did
-not speak, indeed hardly dared to, for he was watching us as a nurse
-watches a thermometer in an overheated room.</p>
-
-<p>Again he made search, and brought before us another picture. This time
-the oiling and dusting disclosed the portrait of a beautiful American
-girl, wearing an evening cloak, the collar of which was very high. Such
-breeding and poise in the picture! It was more than a reproduction:
-something of the inner woman was there. Over this we allowed ourselves
-to exclaim in admiration, which moved the master to say:</p>
-
-<p>“It took a long time to paint this portrait.”</p>
-
-<p>There was a pause, of which my friend took advantage to say that she
-would much like to have him paint her portrait.</p>
-
-<p>“How long shall you be in Paris?” he asked.</p>
-
-<p>“Another week.”</p>
-
-<p>“There you are! You Americans are all the same; here to-day, gone
-to-morrow; <i>à Paris aujourd’hui, demain, à Hoboken</i>. One might as
-well try to paint fish jumping out of the water,” he added with his
-captivating laugh.</p>
-
-<p>With this laugh, all the ice that had been accumulating melted away. I
-found voice to say that I had recognized him immediately the day before
-from having seen and greatly admired his portrait by a fellow-artist.
-To my complete discomfiture, he shrugged his shoulders and said:</p>
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_696" id="Page_696">[Pg 696]</a></span></p>
-<p>“He <i>imagines</i> that he has painted my portrait.”</p>
-
-<p>At last we were having a glimpse of the real Whistler, or, rather, of
-the one we had heard of and read about.</p>
-
-<p>He showed us two more canvases, one by a pupil. Then he drew up to the
-tea-table and began to discourse on the “Nocturne” which my friend had
-bought. This led to a recital of his hopes of the budding “Académie
-Whistler,” which had been formally opened in the autumn of 1898.
-However, the academy did not remain open long. Nothing in his training
-or natural gifts gave him the endurance and patience required of a
-teacher; besides, his health failed, and he went to a milder climate.
-We dared ask him how he liked being a teacher, to which he answered:</p>
-
-<p>“You know what the French call <i>une bête de somme&mdash;un cheval de
-fiacre&mdash;quoi!</i>” Again he shrugged and sighed.</p>
-
-<p>We had brought with us two copies of Nicholson’s caricature of
-Whistler, in which he is standing at full-length, monocled, against
-a nocturnal sky. We asked him to sign them, and he was exceedingly
-gracious about it.</p>
-
-<p>“These caricatures were my idea,” he explained; “I told Nicholson how
-to do them. They are a great success.”</p>
-
-<p>On each he sketched a butterfly in pencil, adding on one, “<i>Tant pis</i>”
-and on the other, “With all proper regrets.”</p>
-
-<p>He told us that he often became very much attached to his work. Once he
-had an order from a man for a portrait; it was duly finished, and amply
-paid for. He still held it, although the man wrote periodically to have
-it sent to him. “I really feel that it is much too good for him,” he
-explained. “The worst of it is that the longer I keep it the more I
-like it, and”&mdash;after a pause he whispered&mdash;“the less likely he is to
-get it.”</p>
-
-<p>As the afternoon had waned, we suggested driving him home. He assented,
-putting on his famous high hat and a pair of black gloves, and we
-clattered down the five flights together, the air seeming fairly
-saturated with his presence.</p>
-
-<p>Entering the one-horse victoria which had brought us from the hotel, I
-had to sit on the <i>strapontin</i>, about which I festooned myself as best
-I could. To my astonishment, our appearance did not seem to create much
-commotion in the Quartier, though I knew how exotic we must look.</p>
-
-<p>We drove through a round porte-cochère, which was the entrance to a
-sort of tunnel; at the end of it we emerged into a courtyard flanked by
-the little house Whistler occupied.</p>
-
-<p>On reaching his home, the master insisted on our coming in to see it.
-We found it rather gloomy, with a garden in the rear, which was shown
-with great pride. There were a few pictures on the walls. The cloth was
-spread on the dining-table, and many dishes and plates were stacked in
-the middle.</p>
-
-<p>The good-bys were said, with an invitation extended to visit his studio
-again on our next trip. We had had a memorable visit with him, and were
-taking away with us impressions of the real Whistler&mdash;the Whistler
-whom the world at large knew not, the kind, genial, courteous, humanly
-sorrowful, and sorrowing man of genius.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-   <a id="i_696" name="i_696">
-   <img class="mtop2 w5em" src="images/i_696.jpg" alt="Tailpiece Visit to Whistler" /></a>
-</div>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_697" id="Page_697">[Pg 697]</a></span></p>
-
-<h2 class="nodisp" id="Down_Town_in_New_York" title="DOWN TOWN IN
-NEW YORK"></h2>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-   <a id="i_697" name="i_697">
-   <img class="mtop6" src="images/i_697.jpg" alt="" /></a>
-  <p class="caption">LOWER MANHATTAN, FROM THE HUDSON, OR NORTH, RIVER</p>
-  <p class="linkedimage"><a href="images/i_697_large.jpg">&#10063;<br />
-  <span class="smaller">LARGER IMAGE</span></a></p>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_698" id="Page_698">[Pg 698]</a></span></p>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-   <a id="i_698" name="i_698">
-   <img class="mtop2" src="images/i_698.jpg" alt="" /></a>
-  <p class="caption">BROAD STREET, LOOKING NORTH TO WALL STREET</p>
-  <p class="caption1">The portico of the Stock Exchange is at the left, a
-  part of the portico of the Sub-Treasury is seen at Wall and Nassau
-  Streets, and the crowd in the street, at the right, is the outdoor
-  exchange known as “The Curb.”</p>
-  <p class="linkedimage"><a href="images/i_698_large.jpg">&#10063;<br />
-  <span class="smaller">LARGER IMAGE</span></a></p>
-</div>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_699" id="Page_699">[Pg 699]</a></span></p>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-   <a id="i_699" name="i_699">
-   <img class="mtop2" src="images/i_699.jpg" alt="" /></a>
-  <p class="caption">CORTLANDT STREET, LOOKING EAST FROM THE FERRY</p>
-  <p class="caption1">The Hudson Terminal is seen at the left, and the
-  Investment Building and Singer Tower at the right.</p>
-  <p class="linkedimage"><a href="images/i_699_large.jpg">&#10063;<br />
-  <span class="smaller">LARGER IMAGE</span></a></p>
-</div>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_700" id="Page_700">[Pg 700]</a></span></p>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-   <a id="i_700" name="i_700">
-   <img class="mtop2" src="images/i_700.jpg" alt="" /></a>
-  <p class="caption">LOWER BROADWAY, FROM THE POST-OFFICE</p>
-  <p class="caption1">The portico of St. Paul’s is in the foreground,
-  and the Singer Tower in the distance.</p>
-  <p class="linkedimage"><a href="images/i_700_large.jpg">&#10063;<br />
-  <span class="smaller">LARGER IMAGE</span></a></p>
-</div>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_701" id="Page_701">[Pg 701]</a></span></p>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-   <a id="i_701" name="i_701">
-   <img class="mtop3 w12em" src="images/i_701.jpg" alt="Headpiece The Book of His Heart" /></a>
-</div>
-
-<h2 class="nopad nobreak" id="THE_BOOK_OF_HIS_HEART">THE BOOK OF HIS HEART</h2>
-
-</div>
-
-<p class="s3 center mbot1">BY ALLAN UPDEGRAFF</p>
-
-<p class="s6 center">Author of “The Siren of the Air,” etc.</p>
-
-<p class="s5 center">WITH A PICTURE BY HERMAN PFEIFER</p>
-
-<p class="p0 mtop2"><span class="drop-cap">O</span>N Monday, April 11, Mr.
-Francis wrote in the book:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>“She was in again to-day. Dressed quite different from the first
-time. Not expensive, but tasteful and excellent. Took samples of
-blue pongee and <i>crêpe de chine</i>. I said I thought that delicate
-new London mist would become her better. She thanked me, and let
-me give her a sample of that. She showed a knowledge of silks that
-was most pleasing, considering the general ignorance among women on
-such subjects. We talked about some things not important enough to
-mention here.</p>
-
-<div class="poetry-container">
-  <div class="poetry">
-    <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse">‘All are architects of Fate,</div>
-      <div class="verse">Working in these walls of time.’</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft8"><i>Longfellow.</i>”</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<p>His reason for adding this selection was not very clear; but somehow
-a little touch of poetry seemed suitable after an entry of that sort.
-There was a good deal of poetry in the book, selections copied from
-various magazines and volumes that had helped to brighten his prosaic
-existence as a silk salesman in McDavitt’s department store.</p>
-
-<p>One would have had to be a good observer to guess that behind the
-plain, neat, black-and-white exterior of Mr. Francis there was the
-soul of a poet. Judged by the frost-touched blackness of his hair, he
-might have been thirty-eight years old. His face, tending to delicacy
-of feature in the forehead and nose, and rendered a little wistful by
-the worry-lines about his eyes, had the pallor that comes from years
-of living in artificial light. He invariably looked as though he had
-been smooth-shaven five minutes before, and he invariably was ready to
-give his most earnest attention to the desires of a customer. He fitted
-in the high-classed old establishment that employed him, and paid him
-well for a silk salesman. The consideration shown him he repaid by
-immaculateness in dress, scrupulousness in his reports, and the air of
-an English butler in dealing with customers.</p>
-
-<p>His inner self was revealed in only two of his daily activities&mdash;in
-the handling of the silks that had been his familiars from boyhood,
-and in the keeping of a large red-morocco diary that he carried in the
-breast-pocket of his black frock-coat.</p>
-
-<p>The silks&mdash;how he caressed their shimmering textures and colors, how
-he made them display all their subtle beauties and allurements! It was
-quite without guile on his part: the idea of urging or inveigling any
-one into buying would have filled him with horror. He displayed his
-wares to their best advantage because he loved them. Therefore he did
-it so wonderfully well that many a fine lady, after watching his firm,
-white, well-kept hands play among the folds, bought stuffs for which
-she had no possible use. This gained him some dislike and trouble, for
-McDavitt’s does not exchange dress-goods.</p>
-
-<p>But Mr. Francis’s real self-revelation was reserved for the diary.
-Every night he made an entry. During the several hours every day when
-the choiceness, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_702" id="Page_702">[Pg 702]</a></span> therefore sparseness, of McDavitt’s clientele left
-him with nothing to do, he often took out the book, opened it among
-the shining silks on the mahogany counter, and made a note or two in
-it. It was a rather large book for a diary, and the India-paper leaves
-gave its thousand pages the bulk of a far smaller number in ordinary
-diaries. The words “Personal Journal” were printed in gold across the
-front cover, and there was a bunch of gold forget-me-nots, tied with
-a gold true-lover’s knot, in the upper left-hand corner. Beneath the
-forget-me-nots, in small, precise roman capitals, Mr. Francis had
-printed his name, ROLAND FARWELL FRANCIS.</p>
-
-<p>To one prying into the secrets of Mr. Francis’s life through the medium
-of this diary, the number of entries like the one quoted above might
-have seemed somewhat appalling.</p>
-
-<p>The pages were full of hints of romance, or, rather, of an almost
-indefinite number of romances. The vague beginnings were recorded in
-statements like “She was in again to-day.” Later there were conjectures
-about “her,” bits of personal description, faint suggestions of
-longing, of aspiration; then commiserations of his own unworthiness,
-bitter self-analysis leading up to relinquishment, final fits of
-despondency, during which he loaded pages with the most mortuary
-poetry he could find. But he was an invincible idealist; soon the
-process started all over again. From the time when he began work, aged
-seventeen years, as a stock clerk in McDavitt’s silk department, he
-must have approximated a round hundred of these catalectic romances.</p>
-
-<p>His station in life, his work, his poetic temperament, made the
-result inevitable. His silks attracted beauty, he adored beauty, and
-beauty considered him in much the same class as the glass-and-ebony
-display-fixtures. Like a modern Tantalus, he watched the waters of
-life flow by so close that they fairly enveloped him, and yet he was
-powerless to lift one drop for the quenching of the thirst of his soul.
-A cheaper man might have solaced himself with cheaper beauty, a more
-practical man might have sought beauty as true in less inaccessible
-places, a luckier man might have stumbled upon it nearer home. Mr.
-Francis, lacking cheapness and practicality and luck, had remained a
-virtuous bachelor.</p>
-
-<p>On Friday, April 15, Mr. Francis wrote in the book:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>“She has not been in again. Several times I thought I saw her some
-aisles away. Her face is an unusual one. It is strange I seem
-always to be seeing it.</p>
-
-<p>“I heard a few minutes ago a rumor that I was being considered for
-a great piece of good fortune if Mr. Baldwin’s illness continues to
-prevent him from resuming his duties. I do not know why I am not so
-very much thrilled by the prospect. I suppose I ought to be.</p>
-
-<p>“She must have decided that McDavitt’s is too expensive. Her dress
-was tasteful, but not at all luxurious. She gave me a feeling of
-great respect.</p>
-
-<div class="poetry-container">
-  <div class="poetry">
-    <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse">‘Friend, let us cease to vex the Eternal Why:</div>
-      <div class="verse">’Tis very good to live; better, perhaps, to die.’</div>
-      <div class="verse center"><i>Reader Magazine.</i>”</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<p>On Monday, April 18, he wrote:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>“To-day, on account of the continued illness of Mr. Baldwin, I was
-promoted to be the assistant buyer and manager of this department.
-Three thousand a year, nearly sixty dollars a week! Once I looked
-forward to thirty per w’k like millions. Now sixty is not so much.
-I must be getting old. It will help me to lay up a competence
-for my declining years. Perhaps I should send one of my nephews
-to college. It has been the regret of my life that I entered on
-an active business career immediately after graduation from high
-school. Doubtless I should have made an effort to work my way
-through Columbia. Yes, I will write to my brother and offer to send
-one of the boys to college.</p>
-
-<p>“She has not been in again. Doubtless she decided to purchase
-elsewhere. McDavitt’s <i>is</i> expensive. Perhaps I should strive to
-have the margin of profit reduced. She did not dress or act like
-one with much money. Doubtless she was attracted to Mc’s by their
-reputation for handling only the best. I remember she looked
-worried whenever I quoted prices. Still, she wished the best. But
-the state of her purse made her careful, and finally<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_704" id="Page_704">[Pg 704]</a></span> made her
-decide to purchase in a cheaper store. I think I can understand
-her. That London mist would have suited her, trimmed with a little
-old gold. However, of course it is foolish for me to allow myself
-to indulge in such reflections. I shall probably never see her
-again.</p>
-
-<p>“Mrs. Benson congratulated me warmly on my advancement. She has
-been very thoughtful of my comforts for the last seven years, going
-on eight. She mentioned how she had always tried to, and I thanked
-her deeply. She said she hoped I wouldn’t feel impelled to move
-elsewhere, and I assured her I had no such intentions. I despise
-a man who is puffed up by a little success. Vanity of vanities,
-<i>vanitas vanitatis</i>. Or <i>vanitatium</i>? I wish I remembered more of
-my Latin; my memory is far from what I should like it to be. Mrs.
-B. also said she had two tickets to The Empire Vaudeville given her
-by the new couple in the back parlor. They are in the theatrical
-profession, and are getting a try-out there this week. I could not
-well refuse her invitation to accompany her, although I do not care
-for vaudeville. She says she goes at least once every week. It
-brightens up her dull life. Poor soul! I guess she needs it. Hers
-is not a very gay life.”</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-   <a id="i_703" name="i_703">
-   <img class="mtop1" src="images/i_703.jpg" alt="" /></a>
-  <p class="caption1">Drawn by Herman Pfeifer. Half-tone plate engraved by
-  H. C. Merrill</p>
-  <p class="caption">“‘SHE WAS THREE AISLES AWAY, LOOKING OVER THAT NEW
-  IMPORTATION OF CHINESE MANDARINS’”</p>
-  <p class="linkedimage"><a href="images/i_703_large.jpg">&#10063;<br />
-  <span class="smaller">LARGER IMAGE</span></a></p>
-</div>
-
-<p class="mtop1">During the considerable period that Mr. Francis had rented Mrs.
-Benson’s most expensive room, the second-floor front, his intimacy with
-her had consisted of one heart-to-heart talk in the week following
-Mr. Benson’s decease. Mr. Benson, who had been indefinitely “in the
-clothing business,” had caught a cold which developed into pneumonia,
-with fatal results. When, a few days after the funeral, Mrs. Benson
-wept on Mr. Francis’s shoulder, she had said that she wished never to
-speak to another man, never even to see one, except in the necessary
-course of business. She ran a boarding-house, and she would accept men
-as well as women for boarders; other relations with them she could not
-consider.</p>
-
-<p>Mr. Francis had always respected her wishes. Even when she presided
-at the Sunday evening dinner-table, a wide, tight vision of black
-silk, and conversation was supposed to be more unrestricted than on
-week-days, Mr. Francis had been careful not to trespass on the sacred
-confines of her bereavement. Her conversation with the other men at
-the table, in which she attempted to include him, he passed off as her
-necessary sacrifice to the business that supported her widowhood. He
-was even more literal-minded than the average idealist.</p>
-
-<p>On Thursday, April 21, he wrote in the book:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>“I am quite sure she was in again to-day. She was three aisles
-away, looking over that new importation of Chinese mandarins,
-but she departed before I approached. She was dressed altogether
-different from the first two times, but I am sure it was she. I
-would notice her face among a thousand. I noticed those two little
-lines at the top of her nose between her eyebrows. And yet she is
-not old; one would not call her young, either; and not middle-aged,
-either. Before I got over wondering whether I should go over and
-wait on her personally, she had gone. He who hesitates is lost. The
-clerk said she had taken samples of all the new silks. He thought
-she had taken too many, and said she did not act like a buyer.
-I requested him to follow McDavitt’s principle to give all the
-samples asked for and not comment on it.</p>
-
-<p>“To be much of my time in the office, as my new position forces me
-to be, has some drawbacks. Doubtless, however, even were I back
-in my old place, I should never see her again. And what possible
-good can come if I do see her? I am little more than a servant, a
-lackey. But I forget that I am now an assistant buyer. Perhaps that
-raises me a little in the scale. But how little&mdash;not enough to make
-any difference to her.</p>
-
-<p>“From the library to-day I got a book, ‘Selections from the English
-Poets of the Nineteenth Century.’ It is more complete than the
-‘Golden Treasury,’ and I anticipate a great deal of pleasure and
-profit from it. It contains Shelley’s ‘Defense of Poetry,’ which I
-can well afford to read again.”</p></div>
-
-<p>Under the entry of Friday, April 22, he copied entire Shelley’s “Indian
-Serenade,” beginning,</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<div class="poetry-container">
-  <div class="poetry">
-    <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse">“I arise from dreams of thee</div>
-      <div class="verse">In the first sweet sleep of night.”</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_705" id="Page_705">[Pg 705]</a></span></p>
-
-<p class="right mright2">“Sunday, April 24.</p>
-
-<p>“This evening has been a most eventful one for me. I am engaged to
-Mrs. Benson. I am still so astonished that I do not know precisely
-how it occurred. I do not know how to describe my feelings. They
-are so mixed. Words fail me.</p>
-
-<p>“I escorted her to a Sunday-evening concert at the Metropolitan. I
-owed her something, of course, in return for The Empire Vaudeville,
-and when she reminded me of that, I said maybe she would like to
-go to the Metropolitan. The music was beautiful. Homer and Bonci
-sang. I have always gone alone before. Mrs. Benson wept because it
-was so beautiful. Then she said she was partly weeping because the
-boarders had begun to cast insinuations about her and me.</p>
-
-<p>“Words cannot express how overcome I was. She has, of course,
-nothing but her reputation. How bitterer than a serpent’s tooth
-is a slanderous tongue! I asked her who started it, but she would
-not tell me for fear I would attack him, which would make matters
-worse. I would have done so, too; at least I would have demanded a
-retraction. Before I knew it we were engaged.</p>
-
-<p>“I am not sorry. How lonely my life has been! Perhaps I have at
-last found happiness where I least expected it. She is a good,
-honest, capable woman, and she says she’s going to begin exercising
-to reduce her weight. I fear I am unworthy. Would that I could
-adore her more! Everything is not just as I imagined love to be;
-but I am not sorry. I should be happy in my good fortune. It is not
-good for man to live alone.</p>
-
-<div class="poetry-container">
-  <div class="poetry">
-    <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse">‘Duty is an Archangel on the right-hand side of God.’</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft19"><i>Anon.</i>”</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<p>Nevertheless, it was a much chastened, even saddened, Mr. Francis who
-returned to work the following morning. He had lived in his dreams,
-his romances had been the deepest and sweetest part of his life, for
-so long that such a reality as his engagement to Mrs. Benson hurt him
-through and through.</p>
-
-<p>Perhaps any reality in the matter of romance would have hurt him. He
-had become a confirmed dreamer, even as he had become a confirmed
-bachelor, and he was not fitted to cope with practical details. Even
-the preparations, the hundred and one rather sordid arrangements, he
-would have had to go through in order to marry his latest ideal would
-probably have saddened him a good deal. It was thrice in vain that he
-attempted to be practical in the matter of marriage with Mrs. Benson;
-he suffered by every necessary preparation that brushed the star-dust
-off the butterfly’s wings of his dream ideal of love&mdash;suffered agonies
-that gave him a feeling of weakness in the diaphragm and in the knees.</p>
-
-<p>Until eleven o’clock he was busy with the morning instalment of
-traveling-salesmen who came to offer their wares. This duty disposed
-of, he strolled out into the department where he was supposed to
-oversee the stock and clerks. Wicked hopes that she, the lady of
-his dream romance, would return he suppressed so firmly that he had
-a continuous ache in his throat. Gone were his shimmering dreams,
-his vistas of poetic reverie. He threw himself desperately into
-the business of arranging displays, stationing clerks, verifying
-price-tags. He was thoroughly melancholy and businesslike and
-stern-faced and miserable.</p>
-
-<p>His evenings at the boarding-house were even more uncomfortable than
-his days in the store. Mrs. Benson had lost no time in announcing her
-engagement, and Mr. Francis now occupied the place of honor at her
-right hand at meals; he had long refused this place through feelings
-of delicacy about trespassing on Mrs. Benson’s known reverence for
-her late husband, and the honor sat heavily upon him. The smiles
-and insinuations of the boarders, the sordid jocularity of it all,
-seared his soul. Idealist that he was, his sense of humor was not much
-developed; and remarks like, “Can’t you just see Mr. Francis walking
-the floor with a bundle of yell in his arms?” sent all the blood from
-his heart into his face, and back again, in two frantic leaps.</p>
-
-<p>On one point he was trying to be firm: he would not let Mrs. Benson
-read in “The Book of his Heart.” She found it on the second evening of
-their prenuptial bliss in the front parlor, and triumphantly drew it
-forth. Desperately he reclaimed his property; frantically he argued
-that it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_706" id="Page_706">[Pg 706]</a></span> was sacred to him, that there were some things they wouldn’t
-have to share in common. No theory could have been more repugnant to
-Mrs. Benson, and none could have so solidified her determination to
-read that “Personal Journal” from cover to cover. The issues were
-pitched, the armies drawn up, the bugles blown; and struggle as he
-would, Mr. Francis realized that he was foredoomed to the woe of the
-vanquished. She would read the book, she would despise it, and she
-would burn it because of its wicked references to women other than
-herself. Realizing this certain outcome, Mr. Francis vacillated between
-the wisdom of burning the book himself and the wickedness of hiding it
-and telling her that he had burned it. In the meantime he kept his coat
-buttoned and his door locked.</p>
-
-<p>On Thursday, April 28, he wrote at one o’clock in the morning:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>“God have mercy on me, a miserable sinner! She was in again to-day,
-and I adore her still.</p>
-
-<p>“I could not greet Mrs. Benson as usual this evening. I could not.
-She insisted, but I said I had a sore throat and might infect her.
-She said I must have a doctor, but I was firm, I declared I would
-get along all right. She came up with a mustard-plaster while I was
-retiring. I could not let her in. It was terrible. Several of the
-boarders heard her; I could hear them laughing. The knowledge of my
-turpitude debases me like a crawling worm. I have always striven to
-live an upright life, so that I could look all men and women in the
-face. My duty is plain. Shall I be a hypocrite and deceiver? Shall
-I give up my self-respect, which has meant so much to me all these
-years? I am in a terrible dilemma.</p>
-
-<p>“I will rise at five o’clock and leave the house before any one is
-stirring to-morrow morning. But what shall I do to-morrow evening?
-Heaven help and guide me!</p>
-
-<p>“And yet my heart is not able to be sorry that she was in again
-to-day. I had given up expecting her, and the sight of her
-confounded me. The blueness of her eyes is like still waters. Her
-brown hair is as soft as brown silk in the skein. Her gentleness
-restoreth my soul. Yes, though I walked through the Valley of
-Death, I would love her. I am a vile man, loathsome to myself. And
-I am a liar. I told Mrs. Benson I was kept at the store while in
-truth I was walking in Central Park. Through the night under the
-stars. Full of the thought of her. Full of poetry no one ever yet
-wrote the like of. Full of wonder and hope and exceeding glory and
-brightness.</p>
-
-<p>“She is a sampler. I ought to have suspected it ever since that
-clerk spoke about her taking samples of all those new mandarins
-and she never bought anything. She had an idea to do it on a large
-scale. Instead of being in the employ of only one rival store,
-she has eight she supplies samples to. She spends all her time
-supplying samples to the stores that employ her. But she’s afraid
-her idea won’t work. She dresses as different as she can, but the
-department managers get to recognize her, with unfortunate results.</p>
-
-<p>“I went up to her as soon as I recognized her, and asked to be
-allowed to wait on her. I lost once by my hesitation. She seemed
-much disappointed because I recognized her. I said, ‘I suspect you
-are a sampler, but I will take the responsibility of supplying
-you with all the samples from McDavitt’s silk department that you
-desire.’ Of course I had no right to make such an offer, but I
-did not think of it at the time. She looked all broken up, and
-told me she was deeply obliged, but she thought she’d have to quit
-and go back in Seaton-Baum’s silk department. She said she wished
-she could get into McDavitt’s, if only we didn’t employ only men
-clerks. I said I thought McDavitt’s was behind the times in that as
-well as in many other things, and I had intended to take the matter
-up with the superintendent. This was true. I asked for her name and
-address, so that I might notify her if anything came of it. She
-gave them to me.</p>
-
-<p>“She said she wondered how I recognized her when she dressed
-differently every time, and I said I should remember her face among
-a million. She said that didn’t prejudice her against me as it
-would if most men had said it. She shook hands with me when she
-said good-by.</p>
-
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_707" id="Page_707">[Pg 707]</a></span>
-
-<p>“I will not put her name down here. There are some things I cannot
-put down even here. And yet why shouldn’t I? I have always tried to
-be sincere and frank here. Miss Anna Wright. Anna. But doubtless I
-shall never see her again. Ours is a purely business acquaintance.
-I fear I shall not be able to change the policy about men clerks.
-It is an unprogressive policy. How her face would brighten the
-department! And she knows silks better than most of our men clerks.
-She has a feeling about them that counts a great deal; she really
-understands them. My slight acquaintance with her has filled me
-with the deepest respect. There is a great deal of sincerity about
-her, but she looks as if her life had not been altogether happy. I
-do not feel bashful when I talk to her, as I do with most women.
-This is most strange, considering how I feel toward her. I have a
-sort of feeling that she trusts me. What would I not give if I were
-worthy! Thank Heaven, she does not know how I have treated poor
-Mrs. Benson!”</p></div>
-
-<p>On Friday, April 29, Mr. Francis wrote in the book:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>“I am inscribing these words in a furnished room that I rented
-shortly after the store closed this evening. I sent an expressman
-to Mrs. Benson’s to get my things. Try as I would, reason with my
-self, all was in vain. I am a coward; I could not go back to Mrs.
-Benson’s.</p>
-
-<p>“I thought I would go back and say something against Mr. Benson,
-thus breaking off the engagement in a respectable manner. Mrs.
-Benson has often said that if I ever said anything against Mr.
-Benson, everything between us would be at an end. I thought this
-would be a good way to end matters. God knows I have nothing
-against Mr. Benson, and I know he would have forgiven me if he had
-heard of it in the place wherever the dead are. But I could not do
-it. When within a block of the house I could not force myself to go
-any farther. I could not, as God is my witness. I have tried to do
-right, but I am such a coward I would have succumbed in the street
-if I had gone on.</p>
-
-<p>“Mrs. Benson refused to allow the expressman to get my things,
-although I had sent the money to pay a week’s rent in advance with
-him. She tried to make him give her my address, but I had warned
-him not to do that, and I gave him a dollar when he returned and
-told me how he had resisted her. I regret that she would not let
-him have my things. I can get a new outfit, of course, but I had
-become accustomed to some of the things I had. Some of them I have
-had since my seventeenth year. Still, I am content. I have deserved
-much worse than has been meted out to me.</p>
-
-<p>“Later. Mrs. Benson has been here. The expressman deceived me; he
-gave her my address, after all. I will not write down what she said
-while irresponsible through her emotions, and I do not remember
-what I said. At any rate, she is gone. I can hardly write.</p>
-
-<p>“Later. The landlady of this house has just been in to tell me I
-must move out in the morning. She doesn’t desire men like me in
-her house. She says she knows my kind, and I am worse than the
-white-slavers the papers tell about. Perhaps she is right. I have
-no words to express my misery at my conduct. I will rise at five
-o’clock in the morning and seek a new rooming-house where I am not
-known.”</p></div>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p class="right mright2">“Saturday, April 30.</p>
-
-<p>“I have another furnished room. It is not highly desirable. I
-rented it under an assumed name, and I will move when the present
-danger has had time to decrease. I tremble lest Mrs. Benson should
-come to seek me in the store. I spend as much of my time in the
-office as possible, and keep a sharp lookout when I am on the floor.</p>
-
-<div class="poetry-container">
-  <div class="poetry">
-    <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse">‘Oh, what a tangled web we weave,</div>
-      <div class="verse">When first we practise to deceive!’</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p>I know now something of the feeling of the felon who has escaped
-and whom every man’s hand is raised against. But I have brought it
-on myself. I only hope it will not result in my final expulsion
-from the store. McDavitt’s is very careful about the character of
-their employees.</p>
-
-<p>“I put the matter about lady clerks in the department up to the
-manager this afternoon. To my surprise, he took to it rather
-kindly, and will refer it up to the proper authorities.</p>
-
-<p>“A chilly, rainy day. I am tired out, but very happy to be secluded
-in this room. It is pleasant to sit alone and hear the rain
-outside.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_708" id="Page_708">[Pg 708]</a></span></p>
-
-<p>“But I am not altogether alone. I have a memory, and a name, and I
-have a hope. Anna. But why is my heart lifted up? I am not worthy
-even to think of her.</p>
-
-<div class="poetry-container">
-  <div class="poetry">
-    <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse">‘For be the day never so long,</div>
-      <div class="verse">At last the bell ringeth to evensong.’</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft8"><i>Stephen Hawes.</i>”</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p class="right mright2">“Tuesday, May 3.</p>
-
-<p>“The superintendent has refused to entertain my suggestion about
-women clerks in the silk department. It would be against McDavitt’s
-policy. I have written and expressed his decision. So everything
-ends. I shall never see her again. I am a broken reed. One thing I
-can be thankful for: Mrs. Benson has not come to ask for me at the
-store.”</p></div>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p class="right mright2">“Wednesday, May 4.</p>
-
-<p>“This evening after dinner I walked over to the address. It is an
-apartment-house, and it is just such a place as I should think she
-would choose to live in. Nothing showy, but very neat and quiet and
-respectable. I walked in front of the house several times before
-returning. Something expanded in me every time I walked before the
-house and thought it was the place where she lives. I wonder whom
-she lives with? Doubtless with her mother and father and perhaps a
-sister or brother. I picked out a window that looked like it might
-be hers on the third floor. There was a soft yellow light like the
-light of a lamp in it.</p>
-
-<p>“But of course I was mistaken. Probably she was out. She must be
-much sought after, and doubtless goes out a great deal in the
-evenings. Still, I found my heart lifted up just to walk slowly
-by and imagine she was in the room with the yellow lamp. I came
-home with peace and happiness in my heart, and yet with a great
-yearning. I will not conceal that I had that also. How poorly that
-expresses my feeling! The power of verbal expression is not my
-forte.”</p></div>
-
-<p>The entry of Thursday, May 5, ended:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>“She has not replied to my note telling of the superintendent’s
-decision; but of course no reply was necessary. Walked before her
-house this evening. Had not expected to, but could not resist
-the temptation. Have no right even to think of her. Legally, of
-course, I am still engaged to Mrs. Benson.”</p></div>
-
-<p>The entries of May 6, 7, and 8 related that he had walked past “her”
-house. He avoided mentioning her name, as an ancient Hebrew would have
-avoided mentioning the name of Jehovah, or a modern Japanese the name
-of his emperor.</p>
-
-<p>On Monday, May 9, Mr. Francis wrote in the book:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>“I have a note from her, thanking me for my efforts in her behalf
-and regretting that McDavitt’s is so unprogressive. She ends: ‘I
-shall apply to you again when your store has got out of the rut of
-ages. I like McDavitt’s for its air of gentility and old-fashioned
-niceness.’ How she can write! I shall treasure her note. She says
-she would have written, thanking me, before, but my note reached
-her just as they were moving to another apartment. She sends me
-the new address unconsciously on the heading of her letter. I am
-glad I know she has moved. Suppose I had continued to walk before
-her former residence, thinking she still lived there? And yet that
-might have served me just as well, as long as I thought she was
-there.</p>
-
-<p>“Now I have to record a very unpleasant matter. Mr. A. I.
-Sugenheim, an attorney-at-law, was in the store to-day to see me,
-and he said Mrs. Benson had decided to start a suit for breach
-of promise against me for $10,000; but if I wished to avoid the
-disgrace of having my name and picture in all the papers, I could
-pay the money, and he would not start the suit. He gave me an
-unpleasant impression. I said I should have to consult a lawyer
-before I decided. I recognized Mrs. Benson had grounds for damages,
-but I didn’t have $10,000. He said I could pay in instalments.</p>
-
-<p>“I said I would consider the matter. He then said he would
-compromise for $5000 cash. My dealings with traveling-salesmen
-stood me in good stead. I said I would not think of paying a cent
-more than $2000. I had $1200 in the savings-bank, and I would pay
-the rest $100 a month.</p>
-
-<p>“He begged me to remember that I had committed a very grave
-offense. Both<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_709" id="Page_709">[Pg 709]</a></span> from a legal and moral point of view I was culpable,
-and I had no right to pinch pennies to put myself square with the
-world. I was obliged to admit all this. But I did not like the
-way he said it; his manner did not give me a feeling of frankness
-and sincerity. I answered that $2000 was a great deal of money.
-‘Make it $2500, for your conscience’ sake, at least,’ he said. I
-saw he was weakening; his nature was exactly like that of many of
-the salesmen I have to deal with. I turned away, saying, ‘I will
-make it $2100 and I cannot in conscience make it a cent more.’ He
-caught me by the arm and told me to believe him I would regret it
-to my dying day if I did not make it $2400, anyway; but I was firm.
-Finally he agreed to accept $2100. Unpleasant as the details were,
-I have a great feeling of relief. To-morrow I shall withdraw all my
-savings from the savings-bank and meet him at his office at 6:30
-<span class="smaller">P.M.</span> After that I shall be free.</p>
-
-<p>“Walked past her new home this evening. It is perhaps not so nice
-as the other place, but eminently respectable. I debated all the
-way whether I would act unwarrantedly if I wrote her another note
-in answer to her last. How she would despise me if she knew the
-unfortunate details of my private life! I bow my head in shame when
-I think of her and of them.”</p></div>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p class="right mright2">“Tuesday, May 10.</p>
-
-<p>“Mr. Sugenheim said last night Mrs. Benson had refused to accept
-$2100. She had been wounded too deeply, and disgraced forever in
-the eyes of the boarders. I was overcome with grief at this news.
-But she would accept $2400. I at once agreed. I can save nearly two
-hundred dollars a month out of my salary by living carefully, and I
-feel more absolved from my turpitude than if I had paid a smaller
-amount. But it is a base thing to try to feel that I can acquit
-myself by a money payment. This will be a lesson to me never to
-trifle with a woman’s feelings again unless I really love her. I
-think I can say on my honor that I never really loved Mrs. Benson.
-This makes me feel at once more blameworthy and more relieved than
-if I had loved her. It is hard to explain just how.</p>
-
-<p>“Walked past her new home again this evening. I have chosen
-another window on the third floor, right-hand corner, as the one
-that belongs to her. This is foolish, but why should I not do it
-if it pleases me? I started to write several notes to her this
-evening, but tore them up. I have no excuse to inflict myself upon
-her.”</p></div>
-
-<p>The entries of the next few days dealt chiefly with his evening parades
-and with the struggles of his conscience as to whether he ought to
-write her again. By pressure of the longing in his soul he became
-bolder; one evening he even had the courage to go into the front
-hall of the apartment-house and search out her name in the long row
-of letter-boxes above the electric-bell buttons. The simple “Wright”
-printed there held him spellbound for so long that, when he recollected
-himself, he fled fearfully from the building, and trembled afterward at
-the thought of the risk he had run. But his timidity did not prevent
-him from continuing to haunt the vicinity of her home.</p>
-
-<p>Such was his absorption in his romance, such interesting business
-filled his evenings, that he was never lonely, as he had often been
-even in the company of the other boarders at Mrs. Benson’s. Except for
-an occasional visit to his brother and sister-in-law in Brooklyn, he
-had no more human associations, and desired none. The place where he
-lived was a rooming-house; he took his solitary meals in restaurants,
-seeking out the cheapest places, so that he might save every possible
-cent toward discharging the financial burden his engagement and
-dereliction had put upon him.</p>
-
-<p>But taking it all in all, he was happier than he had ever been in his
-life before. Never had one of his ideal romances developed so far;
-and never, thanks principally to the affectionate, if brief advances,
-of Mrs. Benson, had he had so true an idea of the meaning of love. He
-composed many notes to Miss Anna Wright,&mdash;I hope he will forgive me for
-setting forth her name in cold type,&mdash;and he knew that the time was
-approaching when he would send one to her.</p>
-
-<p>On Friday, May 13, Mr. Francis wrote in the book:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>“Five o’clock in the morning. I have met her face to face, I have
-spoken to her, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_710" id="Page_710">[Pg 710]</a></span> walked with her! We ran into each other,
-almost. I was gawking up at her window,&mdash;I mean the one I call
-hers,&mdash;and I did not see her until she stopped and spoke to me.</p>
-
-<p>“What a fool I must have seemed! I could not say anything&mdash;not a
-word. She asked me if I lived in the neighborhood, and I said no.
-She said she was just going out for a walk over to Central Park and
-back to get the air. I said it was a pleasant evening for a walk,
-fool that I am! She said several other things; asked me about the
-store. Then she said good evening, and went on. I went on, too, in
-the direction I was going when I met her.</p>
-
-<p>“But there are times when a man forgets everything but one thing.
-I turned back before I had gone half a block. I followed her.
-I cannot describe how I felt. All the way up Fifth Avenue from
-Thirty-eighth Street I kept her in sight. I do not know how I had
-the courage to go up and speak to her while she was passing St.
-Patrick’s Cathedral. Something outside myself forced me to do it. I
-was not myself. She let me walk with her. She let me walk back to
-her door again with her.</p>
-
-<p>“Some time I will put down where we went, the bench beside the
-little lagoon with the swans where we sat, and all she said. I
-remember everything perfectly. But I cannot write it down now.</p>
-
-<p>“After I had told her good-night, I went back and did everything
-we had done together, and recalled everything she had said. I sat
-for over two hours on the bench where we had sat together. She told
-me a great deal about herself, and I was right: she has not had a
-very happy life. And she asked me about myself. I told her all she
-asked. I told her about the book, and she said sometime she’d like
-to read the extracts about her in it, and I said she could.</p>
-
-<p>“It is beginning to be dawn. I am glad my window faces east. The
-sky is pale golden. There is something about the dawn, something
-sacred. It is like her; I cannot describe how.</p>
-
-<p>“I cannot write any more. I will go out and take another walk until
-breakfast. Perhaps I will go over to the East River. Yes, I will go
-over to the East River and look at the boats. There is something
-magnificent about boats.”</p></div>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p class="right mright2">“Sunday, May 22.</p>
-
-<p>“To-day we went out to Pelham Bay Park. We went early in the
-morning and stayed all day. We took a boat-ride over to Closson’s
-Point, and sat under a tree, and I let her read the book&mdash;all there
-was in it. She did not reproach me for the many things that I
-regret I ever wrote in it. At times she laughed, and at times I am
-sure that there were tears in her eyes. I could not well understand
-her at all times, even when she explained to me why it made her
-feel as she said it did.</p>
-
-<p>“Yesterday paid the first instalment of $200. $1000 more, and that
-unfortunate episode in my life will be closed forever.</p>
-
-<p>“I do not seem to take as much interest in the book as I once did.
-For the first time in many years I have let nearly a week go by
-without a record in it.</p>
-
-<p>“Shall I tell what happened when I left her at her door at midnight
-less than an hour ago? I have long made it a point to be sincere
-and frank in these pages, but I cannot always write down the most
-important things in my life, especially now. I will only write that
-ineffable joy surrounded me.</p>
-
-<div class="poetry-container">
-  <div class="poetry">
-    <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse">‘O death, where is thy sting?</div>
-      <div class="verse">O grave, where is thy victory?’”</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-   <a id="i_701a" name="i_701a">
-   <img class="w8em" src="images/i_701.jpg" alt="Tailpiece The Book of His Heart" /></a>
-</div>
-
-<div class="section mtop2">
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-   <a id="i_711" name="i_711">
-   <img class="mtop3" src="images/i_711.jpg" alt="" /></a>
-  <p class="caption1">Half-tone plate engraved by H. C. Merrill</p>
-  <p class="caption">JOSEPH H. CHOATE</p>
-  <p class="caption1">FROM A CHARCOAL PORTRAIT BY JOHN SARGENT</p>
-  <p class="linkedimage"><a href="images/i_711_large.jpg">&#10063;<br />
-  <span class="smaller">LARGER IMAGE</span></a></p>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_711" id="Page_711">[Pg 711]</a></span></p>
-
-<h2 class="nobreak" id="THE_MIND_OF_THE_JURYMAN">THE MIND OF THE JURYMAN</h2>
-
-</div>
-
-<p class="s4 center">WITH A SIDE-LIGHT ON WOMEN AS JURORS</p>
-
-<p class="s3 center mbot1">BY HUGO MÜNSTERBERG</p>
-
-<p class="s6 center">Author of “American Traits,” “Psychology and Life,” etc.</p>
-
-<p class="p0 mtop2"><span class="drop-cap">E</span>VERY lawyer knows some good stories about some wild juries he has
-known, which made him shiver and doubt whether a dozen laymen ever
-can see a legal point. But every newspaper reader, too, remembers an
-abundance of cases in which the decision of the jury startled him by
-its absurdity. Who does not recall sensational acquittals in which
-sympathy for the defendant or prejudice against the plaintiff carried
-away the feelings of the twelve good men and true? For them are the
-unwritten laws, for them the mingling of justice with race hatreds or
-with gallantry. And even in the heart of New York a judge recently said
-to a chauffeur who had killed a child and had been acquitted, “Now go
-and get drunk again; then this jury will allow you to run over as many
-children as you like.”</p>
-
-<p>Yet whatever the temperament of the jury and its legal insight, we may
-sharply separate its ideas of deserved punishment from that far more
-important aspect of its function, the weighing of evidence. The juries
-may be whimsical in their decisions, they may be lenient in their
-acquittals or over-rigid in their verdicts of guilty, but that is quite
-in keeping with the democratic spirit of the institution. The Teutonic
-nations do not want the abstract law of the scholarly judges; they want
-the pulse-beat of life throbbing in the court decisions, and what may
-seem a wilful ignoring of the law of the lawyers may be a heartfelt
-expression of the popular sentiment. Better to have some statutes
-riddled by illogical verdicts than legal decisions severed from the
-sense of justice which is living in the soul of the nation.</p>
-
-<p>But while a rush into prejudice or a hasty overriding of law may draw
-attention to some exceptional verdicts, in the overwhelming mass of
-jury decisions nothing is aimed at but a real clearing up of the facts.
-The evidence is submitted, and while the lawyers may have wrangled
-as to what is evidence and what is not, and while they may have tried
-by their presentation of the witnesses on their own side and by their
-cross-examinations to throw light on some parts of the evidence and
-shadows on some others, the jurymen are simply to seek the truth when
-all the evidence has been submitted. And mostly they do not forget
-that they will live up to their duty best the more they suppress in
-their own hearts the question whether they like or dislike the truth
-that comes to light. Whoever weighs the social significance of the
-jury system ought not to be guided by the few stray cases in which the
-emotional response obscures the truth, but all praise and blame and
-every scrutiny of the institution ought to be confined essentially to
-the ability of the jurymen to live up to their chief responsibility,
-the sober finding of the true facts.</p>
-
-<p>It cannot be denied that much criticism has been directed against the
-whole jury system in America and Europe by legal scholars, as well as
-by laymen, on account of the prevailing doubt whether the traditional
-form is really furthering the clearing-up of the hidden truth. Where
-the evidence is so perfectly clear that every one by himself alone
-feels from the start exactly like all the others, the coöperation of
-the twelve men cannot do any harm; but it cannot do any particular
-good, either. Such cases do not demand the special interest of the
-social reformer. His doubts and fears come up only when difference of
-opinion exists, and the discussion and the repeated votes overcome
-the divergence of opinion. The skeptics claim that the system as such
-may easily be instrumental for suppressing the truth and bringing the
-erroneous opinion to victory. In earlier times a frequent objection
-was that lack of higher education made men unfit to weigh correctly
-the facts in a complicated situation, but for a long while<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_712" id="Page_712">[Pg 712]</a></span> this kind
-of arguing has been given up. The famous French lawyer who, whenever
-he had a weak case, made use of his right to challenge jurymen by
-systematically excluding all persons of higher education, certainly
-blundered in this respect, according to the views of to-day. Those best
-informed within and without the legal science agree that the verdicts
-of straightforward people with public-school education are in the long
-run neither better nor worse than those of men with college schooling
-or professional training. A jury of artisans and farmers understands
-and looks into a mass of neutral material as well as a jury of bankers
-and doctors, or at least their final verdict has an equal chance to hit
-the truth.</p>
-
-<p>But the critics say that it is not the lack of general or logical
-training of the individual person which obstructs the path of justice.
-The trouble lies rather in the mutual influence of the twelve men. The
-more persons work together, the less, they say, every single man can
-reach his highest level. They become a mass, with mass consciousness,
-a kind of crowd in which each one becomes oversuggestible. Each one
-thinks less reliably, less intelligently, and less impartially than
-he would by himself alone. We know how men in a crowd do indeed lose
-some of the best features of their individuality. A crowd may be thrown
-into a panic, may rush into any foolish, violent action, may lynch
-and plunder, or a crowd may be stirred to a pitch of enthusiasm, may
-be roused to heroic deeds or to wonderful generosity; but whether
-the outcome be wretched or splendid, in any case it is the product
-of persons who have been entirely changed. In the midst of the panic
-or in the midst of the heroic enthusiasm, no one has kept his own
-characteristic mental features. The individual no longer judges
-for himself; he is carried away, his own heart reverberates, with
-the feelings of the whole crowd. The mass consciousness is not an
-adding-up, a mere summation, of the individual minds, but the creation
-of something entirely new. Such a crowd may be pushed into any roads;
-chance leaders may use or misuse its increased suggestibility for any
-ends. No one can foresee whether this heaping up of men will bring
-good or bad results. Certainly the individual level of the crowd will
-always be below the level of its best members. And is not a jury
-necessarily such a group with a mass consciousness of its own? Every
-individual member is melted into the total, has lost his independent
-power of judging, and has become influenced through his heightened
-suggestibility and social feeling by any chance pressure which may push
-toward error as often as toward truth.</p>
-
-<p>But if such arguments are brought into play, it is evident that it is
-no longer a legal question, but a psychological one. The psychologist
-alone deals scientifically with the problem of mutual mental influence
-and with the reënforcing or awakening of mental energies by social
-coöperation. He should accordingly investigate the question with his
-own methods, and deal with it from the point of view of the scientist.
-This means he is not simply to form an opinion from general value
-impressions and to talk about it as about a question of politics,
-where any man may have his personal idea or fancy, but to discover
-the facts by definite experiments. The modern student of mental life
-is accustomed to the methods of the laboratory. He wants to see exact
-figures, by which the essential facts come into sharp relief. But
-let us understand clearly what such an experiment means. When the
-psychologist goes to work in his laboratory, his aim is to study those
-thoughts and emotions and feelings and deeds which move our social
-world. But his aim is not simply to imitate or to repeat the social
-scenes of the community. He must simplify them and bring them down to
-the most elementary situations, in which only the characteristic mental
-actions are left.</p>
-
-<p>Is this not the way in which the experimenters proceed in every field?
-The physicist or the chemist does not study the great events as they
-occur in nature on a large scale and with bewildering complexity of
-conditions, but he brings down every special fact which interests him
-to a neat, miniature copy on his laboratory table. There he mixes a few
-chemical solutions in his retorts and his test-tubes, or produces the
-rays or sparks or currents with his subtle laboratory instruments, and
-he feels sure that whatever he finds there must hold true everywhere
-in the gigantic universe. If the waters move in a certain way in his
-little<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_713" id="Page_713">[Pg 713]</a></span> tank on his table, he knows that they must move according
-to the same laws in the midst of the ocean. In this spirit the
-psychologist arranges his experiments, too. He does not carry them on
-in the turmoil of social life, but prepares artificial situations in
-which the persons will show the laws of mental behavior. An experiment
-on memory or attention or imagination or feeling may bring out in a
-few minutes mental facts which the ordinary observer would discover
-only if he were to watch the behavior and life attitudes of the man for
-years. Everything depends upon the degree with which the characteristic
-mental states are brought into play under experimental conditions. The
-great advantage of the experimental method here is, as everywhere, that
-everything can be varied and changed at will and that the conditions
-and the effects can be exactly measured.</p>
-
-<p>If we apply these principles to the question of the jury, the task is
-clear. We want to find out whether the coöperation, the discussion,
-and the repeated voting of a number of persons is helping or hindering
-them in the effort to judge correctly upon a complex situation. We must
-therefore artificially create a situation which brings into action the
-judgment, the discussion, and the vote; but if we are loyal to the
-idea of experimenting, we must keep the experiment free from all those
-features of a real jury deliberation that have nothing to do with the
-mental action itself. Moreover, it is evident that the situations to
-be judged must allow a definite knowledge as to the objective truth.
-The experimenter must know which verdict of his voters corresponds to
-the real facts. Secondly, the situation must be difficult, in order
-that a real doubt may prevail. If all the voters were on one side
-from the start, no discussion would be needed. Thirdly, it must be a
-rather complex situation, in order that the judgment may be influenced
-by a number of motives. Only in this case will it be possible for
-the discussion to point out factors which the other party may have
-overlooked, thus giving a chance for changes of mind. All these demands
-must be fulfilled if the experiment is really to picture the jury
-function. But it would be utterly superfluous, and would make the exact
-measurement impossible, if the material on which the judgment is to be
-based were of the same kind of which the evidence in the court-room is
-composed. The trial by jury in an actual criminal case may involve many
-picturesque and interesting details, but the mental act of judging is
-no different when the most trivial objects are chosen.</p>
-
-<p>I settled on the following simple device. I used sheets of dark-gray
-cardboard. On each were pasted white paper dots of different form and
-in an irregular order. Each card had between ninety-two and a hundred
-and eight such white dots of different sizes. The task was to compare
-the number of spots on one card with the number of spots on another.
-Perhaps I held up a card with a hundred and four dots, and below it one
-with ninety-eight. Then the subjects of the experiment had to decide
-whether the upper card had more dots or fewer dots than the lower one.
-I made the first set of experiments with eighteen Harvard students. I
-took more than the twelve men who form a jury in order to reinforce
-the possible effect, but did not wish to exceed the number greatly,
-so that the character of the discussion might be similar to that in a
-jury. A much larger number would have made the discussion too formal
-or too unruly. The eighteen men sat about a long table, and were first
-allowed to look for half a minute at the two big cards, each forming
-his judgment independently. Then at a signal every one had to write
-down whether the number of dots on the upper card was larger, equal, or
-smaller. Immediately after that they had to indicate by a show of hands
-how many had voted for each of the three possibilities. After that an
-excited discussion began, three or four men speaking at the same time.</p>
-
-<p>After five minutes of talking, the vote was repeated, again at first
-being written and then being taken by a show of hands. A second
-five-minute exchange of opinion followed, with a new effort to convince
-the dissenters. After this period the third and last vote was taken.
-This experiment was carried out with a variety of cards with smaller or
-larger difference of numbers, but always with a difference enough to
-allow an uncertainty of judgment. Here, indeed, we had repeated all the
-essential conditions of the jury vote and discussion, and the mental
-state was char<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_714" id="Page_714">[Pg 714]</a></span>acteristically similar to that of the jurymen.</p>
-
-<p>The very full accounts which the participants in the experiment
-wrote down the following day indicated clearly that we had a true
-imitation of the mental process despite the striking simplicity of our
-conditions. One man, for instance, described his inner experience as
-follows:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>I think the experiment involves factors quite comparable to
-those that determine the verdict of a jury. The cards with their
-spots are the evidence pro and con which each juryman has before
-him to interpret. Each person’s decision on the number is his
-interpretation of the situation. The arguments, too, seem quite
-comparable to the arguments of the jury. Both consist in pointing
-out factors of the situation that have been overlooked, and in
-showing how different interpretations may be possible.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<p>Another man wrote:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>In the experiment it seemed that one man judged by one criterion
-and another by another, such as distribution, size of spots, vacant
-spaces, or counting along one edge. Discussion often brought a
-man’s attention to other criterions than those he used in his first
-judgment, and these often outweighed the original. Similarly,
-different jurymen would base their opinion on different aspects
-of the case, and discussion would tend to draw their attention to
-other aspects. The experiment also illustrated the relative weight
-given to the opinion of different fellow-jurymen. I found that the
-statements of a few of the older men who have had more extensive
-psychological experience weighed more with me than those of the
-others. Suggestion did not seem to be much of a factor. A man is
-rather on his mettle, and ready to defend his original impression
-until he finds that it is hopeless.</p></div>
-
-<p>Again, another wrote:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>To me the experiment seemed fairly comparable to the real
-situation. As in an actual trial, the full truth was not available,
-but, certain evidence was presented to all for interpretation. As
-to the nature of the discussion itself, I think there was the same
-mingling of suggestion and real argument that is to be found in a
-jury discussion.</p></div>
-
-<p>Another said:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>The discussion influenced me by suggesting other methods of
-analysis. For instance, comparison of the amount of open space
-in two cards, comparison of the number of dots along the
-edges, estimation in diagonal lines, were methods mentioned
-in the discussion which I used in forming my own judgments.
-It does not seem to me that in my own case direct suggestion
-had any appreciable effect. I was aware of a tendency toward
-contrasuggestibility. There was a half-submerged feeling that
-it would be good sport to stick it out for the losing side. The
-lack of any unusual amount of suggestion and the presence of the
-influences of analysis and detailed comparison seem to me to show
-that the tests were in fact fairly comparable to situations in a
-jury-room.</p></div>
-
-<p>To be sure, there were a few who were strongly impressed by the evident
-differences between the rich material of an actual trial and the meager
-content of our tests, there the actions of living men, here the space
-relations of little spots. But they evidently did not sufficiently
-realize that the forming of such number judgments was not at all a
-question of mere perception; that, on the contrary, many considerations
-were involved. Most men felt the similarity from the start.</p>
-
-<p>What were the results of this first group of experiments? Our interest
-must evidently be centered on the question of how many judgments were
-correct at the first vote before any discussion and any show of hands
-were influencing the minds of the men, and how many were correct at
-the last vote, after the two periods of discussion and after taking
-cognizance of the two preceding votes. If I sum up all the results, the
-outcome is that fifty-two per cent. of the first votes were correct,
-and seventy-eight per cent. of the final votes were correct. The
-discussion of the successive votes had therefore led to an improvement
-of twenty-six per cent. of all votes. Or, as the correct votes were at
-first fifty-two per cent., their number is increased by one half. May
-we not say that this demonstration in exact figures proves that the
-confidence in the jury system is justified? And may it not be added
-that, in view of the wide-spread prejudices, the result is almost
-surprising?<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_715" id="Page_715">[Pg 715]</a></span> Here we had men of high intelligence who were completely
-able to take account of every possible aspect of the situation. They
-had time to do so, they had training to do so, and every foregoing
-experiment ought to have stimulated them to do so in the following
-ones. Yet their judgment was right in only fifty-two per cent. of
-the cases until they heard the opinions of the others and saw how
-they voted. The mere seeing of the vote, however, cannot have been
-decisive, because forty-eight per cent.,&mdash;that is, virtually half of
-the votes,&mdash;were at first incorrect. The wrong votes might have had as
-much suggestive influence on those who voted rightly as the right votes
-on those on the wrong side. Nevertheless, if the change was so strongly
-in the right direction, the result must clearly have come from the
-discussion.</p>
-
-<p>But I am not at the end of my story. I also made exactly the same
-experiments with a class of advanced female university students. When
-I started, my aim was not to examine the differences of men and women,
-but only to have ampler material, and I confined my work to students in
-psychological classes because I was anxious to get the best possible
-scientific analysis of the inner experiences. I had no prejudice in
-favor of or against women as members of the jury, any more than my
-experiments were guided by a desire to defend or to attack the jury
-system. I was anxious only to clear up the facts. The women students
-had exactly the same opportunities for seeing the cards and the votes
-and for exchanging opinions. The discussions, while carried on for
-the same length of time, were on the whole less animated. There was
-less desire to convince and more restraint; but the record which
-was taken in shorthand showed nearly the same variety of arguments
-that the men had brought forward. Everything agreed exactly with the
-experiments of the men, and the only difference was in the results.
-The first vote of all experiments with the women showed a slightly
-smaller number of right judgments. The women had forty-five per cent.
-correct judgments, as against the fifty-two per cent. of the men. I
-should not put any emphasis on this difference. It may be said that
-the men had more training in scientific observations, and the task
-was therefore slightly easier for them than for most of the women.
-I should say that, all taken together, men and women showed an equal
-ability in immediate judgment, as with both groups about half of the
-first judgments were correct. The fact that with the men two per cent.
-more, with the women five per cent. less, than half were right would
-not mean much. But the situation is entirely different with the second
-figure. We saw that for the men the discussion secured an increase from
-fifty-two per cent. to seventy-eight per cent.; with the women the
-increase is not a single per cent. The first votes were forty-five per
-cent. right, and the last votes were forty-five per cent. right. In
-other words, they had not learned anything from discussion.</p>
-
-<p>It would not be quite correct, if we were to draw from that the
-conclusion that the women did not change their minds at all. If we
-examine the number of cases in which in the course of the first,
-second, and third votes some change occurred, we find changes in
-forty per cent. of all judgments of the men and nineteen per cent.
-of all judgments of the women. This does not mean that a change in
-a particular case necessarily made the last vote different from the
-first; we not seldom had a case where for instance the first vote was
-larger, the second equal, and the third again larger. And, as a matter
-of course, where a change between the first and the last occurred, it
-was not always a change in the right direction. Moreover, it must not
-be forgotten that the votes always covered three possibilities, and not
-only two. It was therefore possible for the first vote to be wrong,
-and then for a change to occur to another wrong vote. The nineteen per
-cent. changes in the decisions of the women accordingly contained as
-many cases in which right was turned into wrong as in which wrong was
-turned into right, while with the men the changes to the right had
-an overweight of twenty-six per cent. The self-analysis of the women
-indicated clearly the reason for their mental stubbornness. They heard
-the arguments, but they were so fully under the autosuggestion of their
-first decision that they fancied that they had known all that before
-and that they had discounted the arguments of their opponents in the
-first vote. The cobbler has to stick to his last: the psychologist
-has to be sat<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_716" id="Page_716">[Pg 716]</a></span>isfied with analyzing the mental processes, but it is
-not his concern to mingle in politics. He must leave it to others to
-decide whether it will really be a gain if the jury-box is filled with
-persons whose minds are unable to profit from discussion and who return
-to their first idea, however much is argued from the other side. It
-is evident that this tendency of the female mind must be advantageous
-for many social purposes. The woman remains loyal to her instinctive
-opinion. Hence we have no right to say that one type of mind is better
-than another. We may say only they differ, and that this difference
-makes men fit and women unfit for the task which society requires from
-jurymen.</p>
-
-<p>In order to make quite sure that the discussion, and not the seeing
-of the vote, is responsible for the marked improvement in the case of
-men, I carried on some further experiments in which the voting alone
-was involved. To bring this mental process to strongest expression,
-I went far beyond the small circle which was needed for the informal
-exchange of opinion, and operated, instead, with my large class of
-psychological students in Harvard. I have there four hundred and sixty
-students, and accordingly had to use much larger cards with large
-dots. I showed to them any two cards twice. There was an interval of
-twenty seconds between the first and the second exposure, and each
-time they looked at the cards for three seconds. In one half of the
-experiments that interval was not filled at all, in the other half a
-quick show of hands was arranged, so that every one could see how many
-on the first impression judged the upper card as having more or an
-equal number or fewer dots than the lower. After the second exposure
-every one had to write down his final result. The pairs of cards which
-were exposed when the show of hands was made were the same as those
-which were shown without any one knowing how the other men judged. We
-calculated the results on the basis of four hundred reports. They
-showed that the total number of right judgments in the cases without
-showing hands was sixty per cent. correct, in those with show of hands
-about sixty-five per cent. A hundred and twenty men had turned from the
-right to the wrong; that is, had more incorrect judgments when they
-saw how the other men voted than when they were left to themselves. It
-is true that those who turned from worse to better by seeing the vote
-of the others were in a slight majority, bringing the total vote five
-per cent. upward; but this difference is so small that it could just
-as well be explained by the mere fact that this act of public voting
-reinforced the attention and improved a little the total vote through
-this stimulation of the social consciousness. It is not surprising that
-the mere seeing of the votes in such cases has so small an effect,
-incomparable with that of a real discussion in which new vistas are
-opened, inasmuch as in forty per cent. of the cases the majority was
-evidently on the wrong side from the start. Those who are swept away
-by the majority would, therefore, in forty per cent. of the cases
-be carried to the wrong side. I went still further, and examined by
-psychological methods the degree of suggestibility of those four
-hundred participants in the experiment, and the results showed that the
-fifty most suggestible men profited from the seeing of the vote of the
-majority no more than the fifty least suggestible ones. In both cases
-there was an increase of about five per cent. correct judgments. I also
-drew from this the conclusion that the show of hands was ineffective as
-a direct influence toward correctness, and that it had only the slight
-indirect value of forcing the men to concentrate their attention better
-on those cards. All results, therefore, point in the same direction:
-it is really the argument which brings a coöperating group nearer
-to the truth, and not the seeing how the other men vote. Hence the
-psychologist has every reason to be satisfied with the jury system.</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<h2 class="nodisp" id="THE_LAST_FAUN" title="THE LAST FAUN"></h2>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-   <a id="i_716" name="i_716">
-   <img class="mtop1" src="images/i_716.jpg" alt="" /></a>
-  <p class="caption1">Color-Tone, engraved for
-   T<span class="smaller">HE</span> C<span class="smaller">ENTURY</span>
-   by H. Davidson</p>
-  <p class="caption">THE LAST FAUN</p>
-  <p class="caption1">“‘<i>Since I slept, the boughs have pressed so near</i><br />
-  <i>The narrow path is lost. But I must run</i><br />
-  <i>And chase my fellows out into the sun.</i>’”</p>
-  <p class="caption"><span class="s5">DRAWN BY CHARLES A. WINTER</span></p>
-  <p class="linkedimage"><a href="images/i_716_large.jpg">&#10063;<br />
-  <span class="smaller">LARGER IMAGE</span></a></p>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_717" id="Page_717">[Pg 717]</a></span>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-   <a id="i_717" name="i_717">
-   <img class="mtop3" src="images/i_717.jpg" alt="Headpiece The Last Faun" /></a>
-</div>
-
-<p class="s2 center mtop2">THE LAST FAUN</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<p class="s3 center mtop1">BY HELEN MINTURN SEYMOUR</p>
-
-<p class="s5 center mtop1 mbot2">WITH PICTURE BY CHARLES A. WINTER</p>
-
-<div class="poetry-container">
-  <div class="poetry">
-    <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse"><span class="drop-cap_poetry">B</span>Y mead and wood I called them all day through,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">All day I hunted them from dale to dale,</div>
-      <div class="verse">From height to height, each rift we ever knew,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">At hide-and-seek, and still no answering hail.</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft2">Ah, could they be so cruel in their play</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft2">To make me lose the first delicious day</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">Since spring came up the vale?</div>
-    </div>
-    <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse">I mind me how the northern whirlwind tore</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">Our wood. I saw those agèd giants quake.</div>
-      <div class="verse">Their wreckage lay about my cavern door.</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">I shut it close and, deep in withered brake,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft2">I hugged my icy flanks all shivering,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft2">And closed mine eyes, and dreamed of spring&mdash;of spring</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">Whose voice would bid me wake.</div>
-    </div>
-    <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse">And next I heard the inmost water run</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">In the cliff’s heart, and wondered, half asleep,</div>
-      <div class="verse">If all the snow were melted in the sun,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">And waited for a hamadryad to peep</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft2">Through yonder cleft and mock me for my sloth.</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft2">But, oh! the fern was soft, and I was loth</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">From out my bed to creep.</div>
-    </div>
-    <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse">Slow, slow I drew the rotting bolt away.</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">My hoofs sank deep among the drifted leaves.</div>
-      <div class="verse">But, farther on, a lonely sunbeam lay</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">On fading snowdrops, and my granite eaves</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft2">Were overthatched with mosses green and fine;</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft2">And every bud upon the dangling vine</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">Showed how the warm sap heaves.</div>
-    </div>
-    <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse">I marvel how the streamer hangs so low</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">About my door, that with the fading year</div>
-      <div class="verse">Was out of reach&mdash;or did I dream it so?</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">No. Since I slept, the boughs have pressed so near</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft2">The narrow path is lost. But I must run</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft2">And chase my fellows out into the sun.</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">“O playmates, playmates, hear!”</div>
-    </div>
-    <div class="stanza">
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_718" id="Page_718">[Pg 718]</a></span>
-      <div class="verse">So went I calling, listening, singling out</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">Each voice, each sound, each little stir that woke</div>
-      <div class="verse">The drowsy shadows. Now it was the rout</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">Of vagrant winds, and now a bird that broke</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft2">The trance with song up-brimming through the birch,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft2">And now the boars disputing in their search</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">For mast beneath the oak.</div>
-    </div>
-    <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse">I ran to find them at the dancing-green.</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">The grass had sprung untrampled by their feet.</div>
-      <div class="verse">Great oaks had fallen, and the copse between</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">Changed the smooth lawn. Each knoll and ivied seat</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft2">Was crumbling fast. The forest life had drowned</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft2">In waves of lush young growth our pleasure-ground,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">Whelmed every nymph’s retreat.</div>
-    </div>
-    <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse">I thought: “The gods have wrought a cruel jest,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">Blasting our wood and those who dwell therein,</div>
-      <div class="verse">Bidding the coverts break their wonted rest</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">To grow and grow and drown the dancing-green;</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft2">And so in dark, numb days, the winter through,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft2">The charm was wrought, and still the ruin grew,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">Unheard-of and unseen.</div>
-    </div>
-    <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse">“And they, my comrades, waking even as I,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">Have they, too, seen the change and crept away</div>
-      <div class="verse">To weep, untroubled by the laughing sky,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">Far in the utmost shadow? Stay, oh, stay!</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft2">O brothers mine, here’s one who weeps with you</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft2">The sunny glade, the dancing in the dew,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">The pipes of yesterday!”</div>
-    </div>
-    <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse">So went I calling, calling down the glade:</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">“Oh, harken, brothers, harken, one and all!”</div>
-      <div class="verse">Mad Echo jeered me from the hemlock shade,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">But never came there answer to my call.</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft2">Their caves lay overgrown and tenantless,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft2">Nor by a sound nor footprint might I guess</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">What sorrow should befall.</div>
-    </div>
-    <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse">There came a laughter veering down the breeze,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">Soft, cruel sounds as from a dryad’s throat.</div>
-      <div class="verse">“Even now they mock you, hid among the trees,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">Shaping their signals to the wood bird’s note,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft2">With sly, malicious dance and mirth-brimmed eyes.”</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft2">The laughter broke, and, wavering into sighs,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">Failed, wind-like and remote.</div>
-    </div>
-    <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse">Panting, I swung from stem to jutting stem</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">Up the wet crag, and, ever as I clomb,</div>
-      <div class="verse">I called, ’twixt tears and pain, and offered them</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">Bribe of my last year’s harvest, honeycomb,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft2">Beechnuts, and hazel; yet there came no sign</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft2">Save Echo’s, answering that call of mine,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">“O friends, come home! Come home!”</div>
-    </div>
-    <div class="stanza">
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_719" id="Page_719">[Pg 719]</a></span>
-      <div class="verse">Oh, not among the cliffs or on the height!</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">“Some glad adventure leads them far astray,</div>
-      <div class="verse">Surely,” I said; “the coming of the night</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">Will bring them back.” And for a while I lay</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft2">And racked my wits with plans of punishment.</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft2">Then up I sprang in doubt and discontent,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">And sought another way.</div>
-    </div>
-    <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse">And now that dark has fallen, and I lie</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">Curled on the leaves and nurse my bleeding sides,</div>
-      <div class="verse">I wonder, was it Pan who wandered by,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">And lured them down the unfamiliar rides&mdash;</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft2">That Pan whose piping has a sweeter note</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft2">Than spring has bred in any woodland throat</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">To win the shy-winged brides?</div>
-    </div>
-    <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse">Or else another, mightier than Pan,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">That Other who has neither form nor speech,</div>
-      <div class="verse">Who stops the spider ere he weaves his span,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">Or lizard, darting o’er the fallen beech,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft2">Who draws a film across the doe’s brown eyes,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft2">And takes the lark, though high and high he flies</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">And dreams him out of reach.</div>
-    </div>
-    <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse">He blows the noiseless reed which none may hear</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">Save such as he would draw unto his hand.</div>
-      <div class="verse">He takes a tribute of the waking year,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">And wanders, piping, through the flowery land.</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft2">And there a locust hears him and is mute;</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft2">And here a rabbit leaves a nibbled root</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">To hark and understand.</div>
-    </div>
-    <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse">O piper in the shadows, pipe once more!</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">Send but one call from out the fading west!</div>
-      <div class="verse">Aye, though I crouch behind my cavern door,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">One note of thine would draw me to the quest,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft2">To journey past the sunset and the rain,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft2">Where I may find my people once again,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">And the lost winds find rest.</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-   <a id="i_719" name="i_719">
-   <img class="mtop3 mbot3" src="images/i_719.jpg" alt="Tailpiece The Last Faun" /></a>
-</div>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_720" id="Page_720">[Pg 720]</a></span></p>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-   <a id="i_720" name="i_720">
-   <img class="mtop3" src="images/i_720.jpg" alt="Headpiece The Last Faun" /></a>
-</div>
-
-<h2 class="nopad nobreak" id="THE_COUNTRY_OF_THE_DORMER-WINDOW">THE COUNTRY OF THE
-DORMER-WINDOW</h2>
-
-</div>
-
-<p class="s4 center">MURRAY BAY, A CANADIAN SUMMER RESORT</p>
-
-<p class="s3 center mtop1">BY HENRY DWIGHT SEDGWICK</p>
-
-<p class="s5 center mtop1 mbot2">WITH PICTURES BY W. T. BENDA</p>
-
-<p class="p0 mtop2"><span class="drop-cap">T</span>HE way to go to Murray Bay is down the St. Lawrence by boat from
-Quebec. There is, indeed, another way, which most people take, but it
-should be taken only by impatient travelers who prefer a speedy to a
-picturesque arrival.</p>
-
-<p>The “bateau” is one of the three paddle-wheel boats that ply between
-Quebec and the Saguenay River. Each bateau has its own character, its
-own history, its own aliases. A bateau regards shipwreck as a baptism,
-and thereupon takes a new name and a new coat of paint. The dean of
-the fleet, at least according to the Murray Bay tradition, is a sort
-of Methuselah. The story goes that before our Civil War, in the days
-when the Mississippi ran unvexed to the gulf, when young Sam Clemens
-was crying out “Mark Twain,” a paddle-wheeler plied between New Orleans
-and Vicksburg&mdash;but this gossip is beneath the dignity of history. The
-bateau, whatever its dubious past may have been, leaves the wharf at
-Quebec at eight o’clock in the morning and arrives at Murray Bay at
-half-past one. This legend, which I take from the Richelieu and Ontario
-time-table, is less trustworthy than the other. Let us come to facts.
-At some time or other the bateau leaves Quebec; it passes the Ile
-d’Orleans, the Falls of Montmorency, and about sixty miles of beautiful
-shore; and after what, if the day be fine, is a most delightful sail,
-draws near to Bay St. Paul. This arrival is the prologue to Murray
-Bay. The bateau gyrates, heaves, trembles, and sidles toward the
-dock. Shouts from the bateau, answering shouts from the dock; the
-bateau hesitates, shivers, and like a tired cow comes diffidently up
-alongside. The passengers crowd to the landward rail; the population
-of Bay St. Paul crowds to the edge of the quay. A small coil of
-rope is hurled through the air from the bateau; it is caught by the
-population of Bay St. Paul; attached to the rope is the boat’s hawser,
-which is made fast to a pile. Friends exchange joyous greetings; the
-<i>charretiers</i>, whose carriages and carts in long sequence stretch the
-length of the causeway from the dock to the shore, wait politely for
-customers.</p>
-
-<p>The bateau prefers to arrive at the moment when the tide either
-lifts it far above or leaves it far below the level of the quay; the
-gang-plank is always at a sharp angle, and in consequence the cargo,
-put on or off,&mdash;barrels, bales, bundles, trunks&mdash;slides down or is
-rushed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_721" id="Page_721">[Pg 721]</a></span> up with bumps, bangs, and loud shouts of “Prenez garde! Faites
-attention!” or less articulate expressions. For a time all is feverish
-excitement, joyous activity, perspiration, and hullabaloo. Then, as the
-gang-plank, at a whistle from the quarterdeck, is about to be lifted,
-shrieks from the quay indicate the belated arrival of a barrel, a pig,
-or some stout passenger waving breathlessly hand-bag and umbrella. At
-last the bateau glides on toward Murray Bay. The same bustle which
-characterized the arrival at Bay St. Paul, but tempered by a higher
-civilization, marks the arrival at Murray Bay. The custom-house is a
-mere amiable ceremony, and the traveler is at once confronted with
-his first exercise of choice: “Will monsieur have a <i>calèche</i> or a
-<i>planche</i>?”</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-   <a id="i_721" name="i_721">
-   <img class="mtop1" src="images/i_721.jpg" alt="" /></a>
-   <p class="caption">MAP OF THE ST. LAWRENCE FROM QUEBEC TO MURRAY BAY</p>
-</div>
-
-<p class="mtop1">As soon as the traveler has climbed into the calèche (the luggage is
-left for the <i>charrette</i>), the charretier gives a warning cry and
-swings down the long causeway, and, turning to the right, goes up the
-hill that buttresses the Pic. Here you learn your first vehicular
-lesson. At a particular point going up the hill&mdash;it will not vary six
-feet on any hill, for the rule is <i>de rigueur</i>, and every native boy is
-born with the knowledge&mdash;the charretier leaps to the ground and drives
-on foot from alongside.</p>
-
-<p>Once free of the dock and over the hill, the traveler drives down the
-long village street. Every French-Canadian village properly consists
-of one long street. This is partly in order to economize shoveling and
-plank-walk during the winter, and partly because Latin sociability
-and democracy hold that every house has a right to front on the main
-street. Here the traveler sees the most charming touch of art in Murray
-Bay architecture, the curve of the gable-roof. In old times all the
-native houses, or most of them, had this curving roof; but of late
-years desire for space and lack of taste betray themselves in repeating
-the ugly roofs familiar to the south of the Canadian border. Nothing in
-architecture is more soothing than this curve in the gabled roof; it
-contains all the picturesqueness, all the poetry, that the patron saint
-of roofs&mdash;is it, perchance, St. Rufinus?&mdash;allows to them.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-   <a id="i_722" name="i_722">
-   <img class="mtop1" src="images/i_722.jpg" alt="" /></a>
-   <p class="caption1">Drawn by W. T. Benda. Half-tone plate engraved by
-   R. C. Collins</p>
-   <p class="caption">VIEW OF MURRAY BAY FROM POINTE-AU-PIC</p>
-</div>
-
-<p class="mtop1">The traveler who means to put up at a hotel has an ample range of
-choice. The Manoir Richelieu, a younger sister to the Château Frontenac
-of Quebec, gazes over a glorious expanse of river from the heights
-above the quay. It supplies its guests with <i>confort moderne</i> softened
-to the native simplicity of Murray Bay, but it can hardly count as a
-part of the village; it is too young, it is an interloper. There is
-also the Château Murray, on the main street, which looks over the bay,
-and presents a comfortable air of seeming to receive, as no doubt it
-does, the compliments of departing guests; and, though even younger
-than the Manoir Richelieu, it is much more in accord with Murray Bay
-habits and traditions. But beyond cavil <i>the</i> hotel of Murray Bay is
-the Lorne House, as it calls itself on its letter-paper, which is known
-to its familiars, and to all the world, as Chamard’s. Architects,
-builders, upholsterers, and tinsmiths can<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_722" id="Page_722">[Pg 722]</a></span> create Manoirs Richelieu
-ad libitum; so, with the addition of a French sense of proportion,
-they can also create Château Murray; nobody except the late Monsieur
-Chamard could have created Chamard’s. It is a personality expressed in
-the form of a hotel; it is a spirit embodied in dining-room, parlors,
-office, veranda, and partitions. The partitions remind the guest of
-Shakspere’s lines, like “cloud-capp’d towers” and “gorgeous palaces”:
-he expects them to dissolve, melt into thin air, and “leave not a rack
-behind.” Chamard’s is the one hotel, I should suppose, in all the world
-that rises triumphantly above material things. The table, no doubt, is
-wholesome and exhilarating, but nobody cares; for at Chamard’s, quite
-unlike other human abodes, the table is not the center of gravity.
-The place is a club, gathered about Monsieur Chamard’s interesting
-and attractive personality, and, now that he is gone, prospering upon
-his memory and Mademoiselle Chamard’s disposition and character. The
-physical structure used to stand about where the Manoir Richelieu now
-is; but it flitted away, or, like the phenix, was reborn, on a bold
-eminence above the golf-links, where half a dozen cottages, seedlings
-from the parent plant, have grown up about it. But Chamard’s is not a
-hotel for chance comers; it demands, so one of the guests assures me,
-an introduction from some one known to a guest, at least.</p>
-
-<p>The first thing for a new-comer to do is to take a drive; and the first
-drive should be up the <i>rive droite</i> of the Murray River as far as the
-red bridge and down the <i>rive gauche</i>, or, for custom is liberal in
-this matter, up the rive gauche and back by the rive droite. This drive
-uncovers all that is typical in the scenery of Murray Bay.</p>
-
-<p>Besides introducing the traveler at once to the scenery, the Murray
-River drive has another advantage&mdash;it takes him past the principal
-sights. The road skirts the golf-links, turns sharp at the Village
-Mailloux, and then cuts the links in two just before the path
-that leads to the famous sixth tee, the <i>pons dufforum</i>. Here the
-charretier, if he is a good cicerone, points his whip to a house
-that stands in a little garden radiant with bright flowers: “Voilà,
-monsieur, la maison de Mademoiselle Anger.” One may draw aside the
-veil that has been very transparent ever since the French Academy
-crowned “L’Oublié,” and say that Mademoiselle Anger is Laure Conan, the
-novelist. A few minutes further, to the left, on the edge of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_723" id="Page_723">[Pg 723]</a></span> bay,
-stands the manor-house of the seigniory.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-   <a id="i_723" name="i_723">
-   <img class="mtop1" src="images/i_723.jpg" alt="" /></a>
-   <p class="caption1">Drawn by W. T. Benda. Half-tone plate engraved by
-   G. M. Lewis</p>
-   <p class="caption">VIEW OF MALBAIE (MURRAY BAY) FROM THE BRIDGE</p>
-</div>
-
-<p class="mtop1">From the manor-house the road runs along the edge of the bay, where
-picturesque schooners float or lie on their sides, according to the
-tide, and then on to the village of Malbaie, or Murray Bay. Americans
-call it the Far Village, but the native resident of Pointe-au-Pic, who
-wishes Monsieur Anger, <i>le notaire</i>, brother to Laure Conan, to draw
-up a legal document, or Monsieur Perron to cut him a suit of homespun,
-or Monsieur Shea to sell him a clock or a banjo-string, says, “Je vais
-au village” (“I am going to the village”), just as a suburban resident
-says, “I am going to town.” At the end of the bay stands the Far
-Village church in all her kindly, simple seriousness. Her bells ring
-out the angelus over the waters of the bay, along the shores, and back
-into the uplands, proclaiming that she is ready, like a hen gathering
-her chickens under her wings, to receive and comfort all the faithful.
-On the façade, if three doorways and a barn-like front can count as a
-façade, there is a statue of the Madonna that has drawn to itself some
-of the beauty of the place. Hard by is the residence of Monsieur le
-Curé and his assistants. The younger priests officiate in the church
-and also teach school. It is pleasant, when<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_724" id="Page_724">[Pg 724]</a></span> driving by during recess,
-to see these serious-faced young men, dressed in their long black
-cassocks, playing with the children, or, when off duty, refreshing
-themselves with a pipe and animated conversation.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-   <a id="i_724" name="i_724">
-   <img class="mtop1" src="images/i_724.jpg" alt="" /></a>
-   <p class="caption1">Drawn by W. T. Benda. Half-tone plate engraved by
-   G. M. Lewis</p>
-   <p class="caption">THE CHURCH OF ST. ETIENNE AT MURRAY BAY,<br />
-   WITH TEACHING BROTHERS IN THE FOREGROUND</p>
-</div>
-
-<p class="mtop1">The Far Village has a little inn of its own, but it is undisturbed by
-foreigners; it is sufficient to itself, with its shops, its bank, its
-ecclesiastical edifices, its little houses, some of which back on the
-river, in fact, lean perilously over the brink, strongly reminding one
-of the old Florentine houses along the Arno. The court-house is on the
-rive gauche, and somewhat away from the village. To say the truth, its
-bald, rather brazen, aspect suggests the less amiable side of the law,
-and it seems singularly out of keeping with the general innocence of
-Malbaie. There is a story that Sir Charles Fitzpatrick, when at the
-bar, long before he became chief-justice of Canada, went there to argue
-a case, carrying only one book under his arm. A native remarked this
-penury of legal preparation: “C’est fort peu de chose; il ne réussira
-pas avec M’sieur le juge” (“That’s too little; he won’t win his
-case”). The next time Sir Charles carried several large volumes:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_725" id="Page_725">[Pg 725]</a></span> “A la
-bonne heure; cette fois-ci il est sérieux” (“Good; this time he means
-business”).</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-   <a id="i_725" name="i_725">
-   <img class="mtop1" src="images/i_725.jpg" alt="" /></a>
-   <p class="caption1">Drawn by W. T. Benda. Half-tone plate engraved by
-   R. C. Collins</p>
-   <p class="caption">A ROAD NEAR MURRAY BAY</p>
-</div>
-
-<p class="mtop1">Now and then, whether on your first drive up the Murray River, or
-on your second up Maltais’s Hill and on the way to St. Agnès to see
-mountains rise behind mountains in deepening hues of violet and
-blue, you pass a plain, black cross. These crosses stand in little
-inclosures, eight feet square, which are filled with monk’s-hood. At
-these places the people of the neighborhood gather in the month of May
-to say a prayer, and ask <i>la Sainte Vierge</i> to bless the sowing of the
-grain. Sometimes you pass one of the old baking-ovens, and, if you are
-in luck, a pretty girl examining the condition of the loaves.</p>
-
-<p>The traveler who is used to the more gingerly driven horses of other
-places need not fear lest the wiry little horse, which ends his course
-downhill at a canter and starts uphill at a gallop, will tire himself
-out. The charretier always spares his horse by jumping out himself as
-soon as the first<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_726" id="Page_726">[Pg 726]</a></span> uphill gallop is over. This is a comfort to the
-tender-hearted traveler, for as soon as he leaves the Far Village he
-is, or seems to be, going up or down hill all the time.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-   <a id="i_726" name="i_726">
-   <img class="mtop1" src="images/i_726.jpg" alt="" /></a>
-   <p class="caption1">Drawn by W. T. Benda. Half-tone plate engraved by
-   C. W. Chadwick</p>
-   <p class="caption">VIEW ACROSS THE BAY FROM THE HILLSIDE</p>
-   <p class="caption1">Chamard’s in the foreground; Cap-à-l’Aigle manor
-   in the middle distance</p>
-</div>
-
-<p class="mtop1">Beyond the Murray River, on the high bluffs overlooking the St.
-Lawrence, lies the village of Cap-à-l’Aigle. The relations of
-Cap-à-l’Aigle to Pointe-au-Pic would require a chapter by themselves;
-they seem to present the difference between slap-everlasting and
-auction bridge; some like one game and some the other. Even the views
-are very different. Nothing can be finer in its way&mdash;one feels that
-here the player makes a most successful slap&mdash;than the view over
-the St. Lawrence; and there are notable objects of pilgrimage at
-Cap-à-l’Aigle. There is nothing north of the St. Lawrence&mdash;one may
-hazard the assertion&mdash;more charming in its way than the garden of Mount
-Murray manor, the seigniory that was allotted to Colonel Fraser at the
-time the seigniory on the west side of the Murray River was allotted to
-Colonel Nairne. It is hard to say what makes a garden charming, or what
-makes a garden old-fashioned, or why we praise old fashions when all
-the world is agog for new fashions; but whatever the causes, they are
-operative<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_727" id="Page_727">[Pg 727]</a></span> here, and most successfully. There is a glorious prodigality
-of color and sweet odor, an inspiriting sense that the flowers are all
-animated by as reckless a purpose to enjoy life as is compatible with
-floral propriety; and all is hedged in by a gracious seclusion.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-   <a id="i_727" name="i_727">
-   <img class="mtop1" src="images/i_727.jpg" alt="" /></a>
-   <p class="caption1">Drawn by W. T. Benda. Half-tone plate engraved by
-   R. Varley</p>
-   <p class="caption">BAKING BREAD IN MURRAY BAY</p>
-</div>
-
-<p class="mtop1">Of course there are other things to do at Murray Bay than to drive or
-to visit the sights. But do what you will, so long as you stay out
-of doors you cannot escape the view. There is golf, pursued with the
-regularity that characterizes all kinds of superior machinery, on a
-links of much variety and picturesqueness, which is associated with
-memories of President Taft and of the late Mr. Justice Harlan; there is
-tennis; there is the Sunday afternoon walk. There is canoeing for those
-who venture out on the bay or along the shore of the St. Lawrence. And
-canoeing, which is not without a spice of danger, might well be worth
-a greater risk, for only from the center of the bay can you see the
-mountains rise in sequent tiers beyond the Far Village church; only on
-the bay can you appreciate the angelus or see all the beauty of the
-Murray Bay<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_729" id="Page_729">[Pg 729]</a></span> sunsets, gloriously reflected in the water and coloring
-the eastern sky. But the chief pastime is fishing. There are salmon to
-be had in the Murray River, and ambitious fishermen spend long, happy
-hours, casting, casting, casting. It is hard to say whether catching
-enters into this sport or not, stories differ so widely.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-   <a id="i_728" name="i_728">
-   <img class="mtop1" src="images/i_728.jpg" alt="" /></a>
-  <p class="caption1">Drawn by W. T. Benda. Half-tone plate engraved by
-   H. C. Merrill</p>
-  <p class="caption">A NATIVE FAMILY AND A TYPICAL HOUSE IN MURRAY BAY</p>
-  <p class="linkedimage"><a href="images/i_728_large.jpg">&#10063;<br />
-  <span class="smaller">LARGER IMAGE</span></a></p>
-</div>
-
-<p class="mtop1">Trout-fishing is obligatory. A visitor is at liberty to play golf,
-canoe, walk, or not, as he pleases; but unless he is willing to pass
-for a misanthrope, or, what is worse, a misichthus (or whatever
-word will serve to designate some wretch of Doctor Johnson’s way
-of thinking), he must go trout-fishing. Let me hasten to say that
-what we in our slipshod American fashion call trout are not the true
-British-born trout, but char or I know not what else. This, very
-properly, is the A B C of a Canadian’s education. The way to go
-trout-fishing is to camp on the shore of one of the little lakes in the
-back country. There a club or a host provides a tent, and the guest
-brings his rod, blankets, and food. The <i>gardien</i> of the lake, and one
-or two of his friends, cook, make the fires, and paddle the boats. Some
-people&mdash;parsons, Englishmen, young ladies&mdash;are totally absorbed in
-weights and numbers and interminable fish-stories. Others, of soberer
-disposition or piscatorial incapacity, enjoy the woods, the birds, the
-shy hare, the amiable chipmunk, and all the denizens of the forest. But
-the great pleasure of it all is to sit about the fire after supper,
-with the stars overhead and a faint breeze just audible over the lake
-and in the trees, and listen to the men sing their Canadian songs.</p>
-
-<p>There are no better-mannered people than the <i>habitants</i> who live on
-the borders of the woods. In earlier times all the natives used to
-have charming manners, but the coming of strangers who set no special
-store by manners&mdash;Americans who have more important things to think
-about, others from different places who hold themselves superior to the
-natives&mdash;has tended to bring in different standards and values. But
-even now the habitants on the borders of the woods have always good
-manners&mdash;a refinement, a self-effacement, a wealth of consideration for
-their guests&mdash;that must rank as one of the fine arts. Their manners
-are their chief possession; they are poor and not quick-witted. One
-gardien, to whom a letter had been sent bidding him be ready to expect
-a party of fishermen on Monday, was discovered sitting on his door-step.</p>
-
-<p><i>Gardien</i>: “Bonjour, messieurs.”</p>
-
-<p><i>We</i>: “Bonjour, mon ami, est-ce que tout est prêt?”</p>
-
-<p><i>Gardien</i>: “Que voulez-vous dire, messieurs?”</p>
-
-<p><i>We</i>: “N’avez-vous pas reçu notre lettre?”</p>
-
-<p><i>Gardien</i>: “Ah, oui, j’ai reçu votre lettre.”</p>
-
-<p><i>We</i>: “Eh bien, nous avons dit que nous arriverions aujourd’hui, lundi”
-(“We said that we should come to-day, Monday”).</p>
-
-<p><i>Gardien</i> (after a pause): “J’ai lu <i>lundi</i>, mais j’ai compris <i>jeudi</i>”
-(“I read Monday, but I understood Thursday”).</p>
-
-<p>The great charm of Murray Bay lies even more in the character and
-disposition of its people than in its beautiful scenery. To every one
-who has been long familiar with Murray Bay its most delicate charm
-lies in the memories of the men whose dignity of character and fine
-friendliness of manner set a special seal upon the beautiful place.
-Among those who will not come again to brighten the summer days by
-their presence are Mr. Edward Blake and Mr. Justice Harlan. These
-men belong to the history of Canada and of the United States, but in
-matters that do not concern the muse of history they belong to Murray
-Bay. No golfer can tee his ball on the links without involuntarily
-expecting to see Judge Harlan’s noble figure striding joyously from
-hole to hole, and to hear his exultant, boyish glee over a good stroke
-or his humorous explanation of an unlucky one. No worshiper goes to
-the Protestant church, the pretty stone church on the village street,
-without a glance at the spot where the justice used to stand on Sunday
-mornings, a symbol of large-hearted, Christian hospitality, and greet
-the congregation as it straggled in. And if, for instance, in order
-to give a visual reality to one of Shakspere’s heroes, one seeks for
-an embodiment of dignity, grace, and high character, the image of Mr.
-Edward Blake comes instantly up, with his handsome bearing and courtly
-simplicity. Indeed, Murray Bay is rich in human memories that outdo
-nature in her prodigal attempts to make the place delightful.</p>
-
-<div class="chapter mtop3">
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_730" id="Page_730">[Pg 730]</a></span></p>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-   <a id="i_730" name="i_730">
-   <img class="mtop3" src="images/i_730.jpg" alt="Headpiece Clown’s Rue" /></a>
-</div>
-
-<h2 class="nopad nobreak" id="CLOWNS_RUE">CLOWN’S RUE</h2>
-
-</div>
-
-<p class="s3 center mtop1">BY HUGH JOHNSON</p>
-
-<p class="s5 center">Author of “A Man and his Dog,” etc.</p>
-
-<p class="s5 center mtop1 mbot2">WITH A PICTURE BY H. T. DUNN</p>
-
-<p class="p0 mtop2"><span class="drop-cap">T</span>HE “Incorrigibles” of the Sixteenth Cavalry was an unofficial gild
-of bachelors consisting of a major named Merton; of Gallipoli, who is
-named as the homeliest man in the army; of Fredericks, who is a born
-and joyful celibate; and of Swinnerton.</p>
-
-<p>The round-faced good humor of fat, bandy-legged Swinnerton was
-proverbial. He was not a cavalry officer. He was a medico, and the best
-surgeon in the service; yet the only place where his mere passing did
-not provoke a smile was the operating-pavilion of his own hospital.
-His thin tow hair was of the unbrushable variety. Smooth and wet it as
-he would, it stuck out at divers angles in every conceivable form of
-horn and quirk and curl from a head that was of the contour of a peeled
-onion. His blue eyes were round, his lips seemed pursed in a perennial
-effort to form the letter o, and his torso was nearly spherical, with
-all of which grotesquery no one in the world seemed more pleased
-than Swinnerton himself. For with the advantage of having his laugh
-well launched before he had uttered a word, he had acquired an easy
-reputation as one of the army’s “funny men,” a thing in which he took
-no little pride, until between the dawn and the dark of a single day
-it became for him a shirt of fire which, strive as he would, he could
-not cast away, and which came as near as the breadth of a man’s hand
-from being the end of him.</p>
-
-<p>Apart from these the Sixteenth is a “married” regiment, and when orders
-dropped from a seemingly placid sky, sending the command to the Mexican
-border, fifteen hundred miles away, with two hours’ notice, no one took
-thought of how this might affect the officers of the bachelors’ mess,
-and least of all Swinnerton.</p>
-
-<p>At the railroad spur, where three long troop-trains lay puffing amid
-a debris of ammunition- and ration-cases, forage-bales, saddles, and
-equipment; where a regiment of soldiers swarmed, tugging and heaving
-supplies upon the train, leading, cajoling, and forcing frightened
-troop-horses up the heavy ramps to the crowded stock-cars; where
-sergeants swore and fretted, and orderlies ran about with belated
-orders for the officers who were devoting the between-times of all this
-to saying good-by to more or less numerous families, no one had eyes
-for Swinnerton. And eyes that might have seen him would not have been
-believed. For, fancying himself hidden behind a pile of canvas-bales of
-medical<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_731" id="Page_731">[Pg 731]</a></span> supplies, he was holding the two hands of a gravely beautiful
-girl, gazing into her tear-dimmed eyes and telling her in a hoarse and
-earnest voice that there was no danger, anyway, that all this could not
-possibly mean war, and that if it did, he, as a non-combatant, would
-keep well to the rear and safely out of harm’s way; that partings made
-no difference, anyway, so long as he loved her and she loved him, et
-cetera, et cetera, ad infinitum.</p>
-
-<p>The shock to the Sixteenth’s credulity would not have been altogether
-that Swinnerton was trying to cut a serious figure; it would have
-sprung from the fact that the hands he was holding were those of
-Mary Smith&mdash;<i>the</i> Mary Smith, the regiment called her, because every
-youngster in the three-regiment post of Fort Robertson had vainly
-dreamed the dream that absurd little Swinnerton was here actually
-living, and which to him was no dream at all.</p>
-
-<p>That night when the lights were on in the officers’ Pullman, the
-Incorrigibles were sitting in the smoking-compartment over a last pipe,
-and Fredericks said:</p>
-
-<p>“No use talking, war or no war, these sudden trapesings to the
-antipodes are bad for family life&mdash;blamed bad, and I’m glad I’m not in
-it. Go to it, Swinney; but for Heaven’s sake don’t be irreverent. It’s
-no time for it.”</p>
-
-<p>Swinnerton had puffed out his cheeks to abnormal rotundity. He did this
-near the point of a story or when he was excited. It served to heighten
-effects.</p>
-
-<p>“I think I ought to tell you, fellows, first of all,” he began bluntly,
-“that I&mdash;I’m leaving my heart behind, too.”</p>
-
-<p>Gallipoli burst into raucous laughter, and Fredericks chuckled
-expectantly. Swinnerton’s face contorted in puzzlement.</p>
-
-<p>“Well,” he said aggressively, “what’s funny about that?”</p>
-
-<p>“<i>You</i> are, Swinney,” said Merton; “that’s all.”</p>
-
-<p>“In the first place,” began Gallipoli, didactically, “you haven’t
-any heart in the ordinary romantic acceptation. One of your infernal
-explorative incisions would disclose a two-foot layer of healthy
-fat, and then”&mdash;he patted Swinnerton affectionately on the pudgy
-shoulder&mdash;“a core of pure gold, perhaps, and you would have to conclude
-that it was all heart; but that, unfortunately, is not the sort of
-anatomical monstrosity to offer a lady.”</p>
-
-<p>Swinnerton shook him off.</p>
-
-<p>“Be serious, can’t you?” he said. “I am.”</p>
-
-<p>“Manifestly absurd,” grinned Merton. “Get your banjo and sing that
-song about the chap they hired to get into the cage with the lion. You
-know&mdash;the one with the beller in the chorus.”</p>
-
-<p>“That’s better than your fourth-dimension joke,” urged Fredericks. “Go
-on.”</p>
-
-<p>Swinnerton was experiencing what was rare with him, anger.</p>
-
-<p>“Do you people imagine,” he asked, “that because a man goes about six
-days in the seven making a silly ass of himself for the happiness of
-humanity that he pines to be placed beyond the pale of all that is
-beautiful and wholesome in life? I <i>ask</i> you.”</p>
-
-<p>His round eyes snapped. His quirks of hair fairly trembled. Secretly
-the three were wary of Swinnerton. They feared some colossal hoax, some
-trap. The suspicion that he was serious did not come.</p>
-
-<p>“Postulate one,” growled Merton, guardedly. “Grind out the logic. We do
-<i>not</i> think this thing.”</p>
-
-<p>“If a good woman is blind enough to intrust her heart to me, is there
-any reason why I, of all men, shouldn’t accept it?”</p>
-
-<p>“I should say <i>not</i>,” chuckled Fredericks, pleased with the
-possibilities of his own idea, “not when you can offer her an existence
-which is a breathing enactment of all for which the Sunday supplements
-are read. ‘My dear, allow me to present my esteemed confrère of the
-colored page, <i>Dippy Dick</i>, Mrs. Swinnerton. And <i>this</i> is <i>Little
-Nemo</i>.’”</p>
-
-<p>The anger was leaving Swinnerton’s red face. These men did not believe
-him, and only because he was he. His twinkling eyes dulled, his round
-mouth straightened. He rose, and something in his drooping attitude
-arrested Fredericks.</p>
-
-<p>“I was only going to say,” he began a little sadly, “that to you, of
-all the men I love to call my friends, I wished first to tell my great
-happiness. I am going to marry Mary Smith.” Indignation tinged his
-later words and indignation straightened his shoulders as he turned
-and walked with an unintended burlesque of dignity from the room. For
-Gallipoli had laughed again.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_732" id="Page_732">[Pg 732]</a></span></p>
-
-<p>“What’s he trying to put over?” asked Fredericks, puzzled.</p>
-
-<p>“Well, I don’t know,” confessed Merton, “but I think that even Swinney
-shouldn’t inject the names of ladies into his buffooneries.”</p>
-
-<p>In his own berth, Swinnerton, fully dressed, sat rigidly staring at his
-hands, his face hard and expressionless. He was considering a new need
-that had come to him.</p>
-
-<p>“Only for her,” he was saying, “I’d only ask it for her.” Then he added
-reflectively, “Only one person ever took me seriously; but she&mdash;” his
-face softened in a little smile&mdash;“will be my wife.”</p>
-
-<p class="mtop2">T<span class="smaller">HE</span> regiment, its twelve troops strung along the line like beads on
-a string, took station at Agua Caliente, on the Arizona border, and
-strove to prevent filibustering. Across the border the old Mexican
-city of Angeles lay steeped in the strong desert sunlight, a cascade
-of whitewashed cubicles glistening against a yellow hill, with the
-bell-shaped domes of the twin-towered cathedral sharply outlined
-against the turquoise sky above. The Mexican town was garrisoned by a
-battalion of half-starved, shoddily uniformed infantry, who eyed the
-big American troopers with envious wonder.</p>
-
-<p>There were <i>bailes</i> and fiestas in the American town, but Swinnerton
-did not attend them. Every one admitted the change in him. His room at
-headquarters contained a field cot, a table, and two chairs. On the
-table were a writing-pad and a framed photograph of the face of Mary
-Smith. Here he spent much of his time. He carried on conversations with
-the girl in the picture, and his half of them he wrote down in bulky
-letters that sometimes had to be rolled because no envelop would hold
-them&mdash;pleasant fancies of a future in which he built a dream palace and
-furnished it from keep to turret with imaginings. He received letters
-done in the same spirit, and thus he strove to find refuge from the
-self that was daily becoming more and more intolerable to him.</p>
-
-<p>Swinnerton could sing. He had an unusually facile and sympathetic
-baritone voice, which he accompanied well on a guitar, and it was part
-of his panacea to sing in Spanish, some queer, immemorial folk-lilts,
-passionate with the throbbing <i>tempo di bolero</i>, that sometimes ended
-with a plaintive little wail at the inconstancy of a <i>caballero</i> lover,
-and sometimes with an impudent staccato note, like a Sevillan dancer’s
-final step in a whirling <i>jota</i>. It was perfectly possible to stand in
-the corridor and imagine the singer, who was inspired by a remembered
-face, to be the most gorgeous <i>Escamillo</i> that ever stepped gracefully
-toward an alluring <i>Carmen</i>&mdash;until the door opened. For there would
-stand Swinnerton, his fat face red and wet from exertion, his hair
-awry, his round rabbit’s eyes inquiring, and his pudgy little body
-partly covered by a Japanese crape kimono, and this would bring a smile.</p>
-
-<p>It was this very sort of smile that Swinnerton had been pleased to see
-on the faces of people for thirty years, but that irked him sorely
-now. It meant that he was not taken seriously, and he shrank from
-offering to the pride of Mary Smith in him a thing so lightly held. He
-desired dignity; he yearned for it more passionately than he had ever
-longed for anything in his whole life before. It did not come, and
-nothing that he could do would bring it nearer. Swinnerton’s own smile
-became sad, and a little of this sadness seeped into his letters. Out
-of this grew something very like a misunderstanding, for it had been
-unconscious, and in far-away Fort Robertson Mary Smith sensed it and
-asked about it. It disappeared, but in its place came a strange, false
-little note of irrelevancy. There came to Swinnerton one day a vexed
-letter, and then for almost a week no letter at all.</p>
-
-<p>The fire of insurrection was lapping up toward the border, and at
-Cananea, fifty miles away, Lopez was concentrating his ragamuffin
-battalions with ugly menace toward Angeles. Disquieting rumors were
-current on the American side, and one day the colonel, with his staff,
-was called to Huachuca, which left only Fredericks and Swinnerton to
-open the official mail. There were two bills and a wedding-invitation
-in Swinnerton’s sack, and only the daily bulletin of conditions
-along the border generally for the commanding officer. Fredericks
-opened this, and Swinnerton, the bills placed in his pocket, the
-wedding-invitation still in his hand, read it over Fredericks’s
-shoulder.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-   <a id="i_732" name="i_732">
-   <img class="mtop1" src="images/i_732.jpg" alt="" /></a>
-  <p class="caption1">Color-Tone, engraved for T<span class="smaller">HE</span>
-   C<span class="smaller">ENTURY</span> by H. Davidson</p>
-  <p class="caption">“GAZING INTO HER TEAR-DIMMED EYES AND TELLING HER
-   ... THAT THERE WAS NO DANGER”</p>
-  <p class="caption1">DRAWN BY H. T. DUNN</p>
-  <p class="linkedimage"><a href="images/i_732_large.jpg">&#10063;<br />
-  <span class="smaller">LARGER IMAGE</span></a></p>
-</div>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_733" id="Page_733">[Pg 733]</a></span></p>
-
-<p class="mtop1">“Information from reports of secret agents of the State and Treasury
-departments indicate a movement of Lopez forces toward Quebrantos
-smelter, five miles west of Agua Caliente&mdash;”</p>
-
-<p>“Phew!” whistled Fredericks. “Getting warm. We’ll see a scrap yet, eh?
-Who’s getting married now, Swinney?”</p>
-
-<p>The telegraph orderly had entered the corridor and stood saluting.
-Fredericks motioned him in and took the official despatch he proffered,
-while Swinnerton, with a swift insertion of his dexterous fingers, tore
-open the creamy envelop.</p>
-
-<p>“Darned if I know. This thing came sandwiched between bills for other
-presents. I wish people would stop it.”</p>
-
-<p>Fredericks was reading the loose scrawl of his telegram, and he heard
-nothing Swinnerton said. He left his chair with a suddenness that
-overturned it, and began yelling orders.</p>
-
-<p>“Orderly, sound <i>to horse</i>! Whoop! Hurroo! It’s come, Swinney. Old
-Lopez and his pack of thieves have crossed the border. Hurry up,
-orderly!”</p>
-
-<p>The trumpeter at the door glued his brass bugle to his lips and sounded
-the jumble of staccato notes that is the oldest of alarm-calls. The men
-had been forewarned. They were already swarming from their tents to the
-lines and saddle-racks. Fredericks turned to Swinnerton.</p>
-
-<p>Poor little Swinnerton, his chubby cheeks had suddenly become flabby,
-his mouth hung loosely open. The square envelop had fallen to the
-floor; its engraved contents drooped from his fingers. Fredericks
-gripped him by the shoulder.</p>
-
-<p>“For Heaven’s sake, what is it, Swinney? Are you sick? What is it, boy?”</p>
-
-<p>Swinnerton turned a pained face, drawn in some spasm of expression that
-was intended for a smile.</p>
-
-<p>“Devil of a funny joke, Fredericks. Best one that’s been pulled off on
-old fat Swinney yet. Read that, will you?”</p>
-
-<p>Fredericks read:</p>
-
-<p class="s5 center mtop2 mbot2">“Mr. and Mrs. Charles Smith<br />
-request the honor of<br />
-your presence<br />
-at the marriage of their daughter<br />
-Mary<br />
-to<br />
-Mr. Feldmar Brown.”</p>
-
-<p>Outside, the troopers were leading into line, and a trumpeter was
-holding Fredericks’s impatient charger. Fredericks had only a moment.
-He seized his pistol and field-glasses, threw an affectionate arm
-across Swinnerton’s slouching shoulders, and hugged him fiercely. There
-was not a word that he could say.</p>
-
-<p class="mtop2">L<span class="smaller">OPEZ</span>’<span class="smaller">S</span> raid across the border never occurred, but the false report of
-it accomplished its intended purpose. The town of Agua Caliente was
-stripped of its combatant garrison, and two hours after Fredericks had
-trotted away a lonely vaquero appeared at the crest of the hill back
-of Angeles, a Mexican picket fired, and was instantly answered by a
-sheet-like volley from the hidden rebel battle-line. It flashed through
-the wind-swept streets of Angeles, it knocked great sections from the
-adobe buildings, it ricochetted from the flagstones of the street, it
-shattered windows by the score; but most significant of all, it crossed
-the border-line, and every bullet found a resting-place in American
-soil. This was a contingency that no one had foreseen.</p>
-
-<p>An American at the custom-house whirled, threw up his hands, and fell
-in an anguished heap. The halyards of the headquarters flag snapped,
-and the flag dropped loosely from its pulley to the ground. A bullet
-crashed through Swinnerton’s window and thudded in the wall behind him.
-He scarcely looked up. He was sitting before the photograph in his
-room, and talking to it, as was his custom.</p>
-
-<p>“No, I don’t blame you. No one could, and least of all <i>I</i>. It was a
-fine thing I offered you. People may laugh at a fool, but to live with
-one! Tired&mdash;I’m tired of it myself.” After a full minute’s silence, he
-added, “Dog-tired&mdash;<i>pitifully</i> tired.”</p>
-
-<p>He rose wearily and walked toward the open window, whence he could see
-the long, supple slope of the tawny hillside, with the Mexican federal
-trenches cutting it diagonally on one flank, and the white smoke-puffs
-of the attackers on the other.</p>
-
-<p>The mayor of Caliente came storming into the outer office, roaring at
-the abashed headquarters orderly:</p>
-
-<p>“Where’s the commanding officer? Where is he, I say? What are you
-soldiers good for, anyway?”</p>
-
-<p>Swinnerton quietly opened the door, to the immense relief of the
-trooper.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_734" id="Page_734">[Pg 734]</a></span></p>
-
-<p>“The colonel’s gone to Huachuca,” he said, “and Captain Fredericks has
-taken the troop to Quebrantos under competent orders. Is there anything
-I can do for you?”</p>
-
-<p>“Do? Do? Why, those damned Greasers are firing <i>through this town</i>.”
-The mayor’s fingers spread as though dropping from them something not
-to be entertained for a moment.</p>
-
-<p>“I have no military function, you know,” drawled Swinnerton; “I’m just
-a surgeon. And if I had, the orders are plain. We must not cross that
-line, whatever happens.”</p>
-
-<p>“Drat your orders!” bellowed his Excellency, the mayor. A bullet came
-and smashed the door-lintel. It covered the mayor with a shower of
-dust and plaster. He ducked incontinently, and came up furious at
-Swinnerton’s vapid smile.</p>
-
-<p>“I know <i>you, Doctor</i> Swinnerton. You’re the regimental joker, the
-official fool. Gad! man, don’t you get sick of yourself? Doesn’t the
-sight of suffering humanity”&mdash;he waved his hand in an excited gesture
-that included a hurrying group of frightened non-combatants who were
-rushing a wounded man to shelter&mdash;“stir a spark of anger in you? Ain’t
-you weary of grinning and being grinned at? Ain’t you tired of it, I
-say?”</p>
-
-<p>“Yes,” said Swinnerton, with unexpected decision, “I am tired. Get
-out of my way.” He walked deliberately through the door and out into
-the street, hatless and unarmed. The orderly at the door, a mere boy,
-followed him in his journey toward the plaza, to the custom-house door,
-and then to the line. Spiteful little dust-spots kicked up here and
-there in the open square, and a bullet whined close to the boy’s ear.
-Swinnerton turned and ordered him back.</p>
-
-<p>“I ain’t goin’,” the soldier refused stolidly. “I’m a-goin’ to stay by
-you&mdash;an’ I know what orders is.”</p>
-
-<p>Swinnerton seemed not disposed to argue the point. Perhaps he
-thought the hotter fire forward would drive the lad back. He walked
-unhesitatingly on. He did not stop at the federal trenches, though men
-and officers cheered him as he passed. But once he had clambered over
-the glacis, his and the boy’s were the only upright figures in a wide
-stretch of sloping, gravelly hillside. There was a sense of awful
-loneliness there for a moment; yet he did not hesitate.</p>
-
-<p>His calm decision seemed, without qualification, good to Swinnerton.
-He expected to be killed. No one could look out across the
-bullet-spattered front and hope for less. The air was filled with
-gruesome sounds&mdash;the screams and whines and whistles of deflected
-rifle-balls. He did not yearn for the shot that would be the end, and
-yet he did not shrink from it. The very proximity of death caused
-nervous little shivers along his spine and in the pit of his stomach,
-but no regret. He was tired of disappointment, and glad to end it.
-There was an unavoidable trifle of revengeful school-boy thought,
-“They’ll be sorry when I’m gone,” and another that brought real
-pleasure, “There can never be any joke about <i>this</i> thing I am doing.”</p>
-
-<p>A gentle breeze was sweeping down the hill with the fire; it ruffled in
-his hair and cooled his temples. Yes, it was all pleasant, all good,
-all desirable. He had forgotten the boy who had so faithfully followed
-him.</p>
-
-<p>Swinnerton was just enough to see the terrible selfishness of what
-he had done. A cry came from behind. The lad was down, writhing and
-clawing at the gravelly soil, a bullet through his intestines. Calmness
-and self-satisfaction left Swinnerton between two pulse-throbs, and
-as he knelt beside the soldier and examined the wound, anger came to
-him&mdash;anger with himself at first, and then a bullet covered them with
-trash and another seared Swinnerton’s forehead like a red-hot iron. The
-rebels were firing at them both. His blood flowed down into his eyes.
-Blinded with this and rage, he rose and ran forward. He was no doubt
-absurd, but he was not unterrifying, as with lumbering gait he stumbled
-and ran straight on to the very muzzles of the firing-line. If he was
-grotesque, it was with the grotesquery of the bizarre and sinister
-figures of the first French Empire, and he was standing where vehemence
-commanded respect.</p>
-
-<p>“Stop that infernal firing!” he yelled, purple with rage, his arms
-pumping in frantic gesture. And then he broke into a perfect tirade of
-English and Spanish.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_735" id="Page_735">[Pg 735]</a></span> “I’ll bring the American troops across and hunt
-every hound of you to his hole and shoot him like the dog he is,” he
-screamed.</p>
-
-<p>Your Mexican is not at his best in the psychology of bluff. Half the
-rifles were already raised. Swinnerton directed his words at the
-evil-faced little firing-director, who had lived a replete life with
-the reformed bandits of the <i>Rurales</i>, but who had yet to hear or see a
-thing like this.</p>
-
-<p>“Do you imagine that you may fire into American territory, kill
-American soldiers, and escape the troops?”</p>
-
-<p>The self-commissioned officer blew his firing-whistle.</p>
-
-<p>“Señor,” he said, “igscouse. We do no know our fire offend. We will
-make attack from other quarters.”</p>
-
-<p>Swinnerton wasted neither words nor time. He hurried back, and knelt
-at the side of the wounded orderly. He threw one of the boy’s arms
-about his own neck and lifted him, his voice running on like a mother’s
-crooning.</p>
-
-<p>“Never mind, Felker; it’s not a bad wound. If I’m a surgeon at all,
-I’ll mend it. There, is that easy, boy? Then here we go.”</p>
-
-<p>A special train had hurried the general and the colonel and staff back
-from Huachuca. Fredericks, good soldier that he was, had marched to
-the sound of the guns. From the time he had trotted out at the head of
-his troop, an absurd suspicion had been troubling Fredericks, and the
-moment of his return he verified it. He found and examined the envelop
-in Swinnerton’s room, and he was even ahead of the general in greeting
-Swinnerton when the latter came staggering under his heavy burden
-toward the custom-house steps. Despite the gravity of the occasion,
-the general smiled, the colonel chuckled, and Fredericks laughed aloud.</p>
-
-<p>Swinnerton’s hair was rumpled like the ruffled crest of a cockatoo.
-Dust had blackened the caking streaks on his face, which was red from
-exertion. He was wheezing and puffing like a donkey-engine, and at
-every expiration of breath his cheeks bulged prodigiously. And what
-is more than mere words of description can ever convey, he was simply
-Swinnerton, at whom and with whom people smiled. He did not smile this
-time. He set his burden down and glared murderously at Fredericks.</p>
-
-<p>“Well, Fredericks,” he gasped, with no thought of the deference due to
-the general’s stars, “what is there about this so infernally <i>funny</i>?”</p>
-
-<p>“This is, Swinney,” said Fredericks, waving the wedding-card. “It isn’t
-even postmarked Fort Robertson. The last census found twenty-three
-thousand four hundred and five Mary Smiths. This is just one of the
-others, my boy.”</p>
-
-<p>Swinnerton made a full confession to Fredericks before the week was
-over. He had received three delayed love-letters and a congratulatory
-telegram from the President of the United States, though it was
-significant that every admiring newspaper sensed the humor of a
-single fat surgeon waddling up to a firing-line and bluffing it into
-submission.</p>
-
-<p>“I reckon,” he smiled a little ruefully, “that it’s written in the
-books that I’m to be a silly ass of sorts for all my mortal days. But
-I’m cured of minding it, and I’m a most uncommonly happy one, Freddie.”</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-   <a id="i_735" name="i_735">
-   <img class="mtop3 mbot3" src="images/i_735.jpg" alt="Tailpiece Clown’s Rue" /></a>
-</div>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_736" id="Page_736">[Pg 736]</a></span></p>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-   <a id="i_736" name="i_736">
-   <img class="mtop3" src="images/i_736.jpg" alt="" /></a>
-   <p class="caption">THE THAMES</p>
-</div>
-
-<h2 class="nopad nobreak" id="AN_UNCOMMERCIAL_TRAVELER_IN_LONDON">AN
-UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELER IN LONDON</h2>
-
-</div>
-
-<p class="s3 center mtop1">BY THEODORE DREISER</p>
-
-<p class="s5 center">Author of “Sister Carrie,” “Jennie
-Gerhardt,” etc.</p>
-
-<p class="s5 center mtop1 mbot2">WITH PICTURES BY  W. J. GLACKENS</p>
-
-<p class="p0 mtop2"><span class="drop-cap">A</span>FTER a few days I went to London for the first time,&mdash;I do not
-count the night of my arrival, for I saw nothing but the railway
-terminus,&mdash;and, I confess, I was not greatly impressed. I could not
-help thinking on this first morning, as we passed from Paddington,
-via Hyde Park, Grosvenor Square, Berkeley Square, Piccadilly, and
-other streets to Regent Street and the neighborhood of the Carlton
-Hotel, that it was beautiful, spacious, cleanly, dignified, and well
-ordered, but not astonishingly imposing. Fortunately, it was a bright
-and comfortable morning, and the air was soft. There was a faint,
-bluish haze over the city, which I took to be smoke; and certainly it
-smelled as though it were smoky. I had a sense of great life, but not
-of crowded life, if I manage to make myself clear by that. It seemed
-to me at first blush as if the city might be so vast that no part was
-important. At every turn, X. was my ever-present monitor. We must have
-passed through a long stretch of Piccadilly, for X. pointed out a line
-of clubs, naming them the St. James’s Club, the Savile Club, the Lyceum
-Club, and then St. James’s Palace.</p>
-
-<p>I was duly impressed. I was seeing things which, after all, I thought,
-did not depend so much upon their exterior beauty or vast presence
-as upon the distinction of their lineage and connections. They were
-beautiful in a low, dark way, and certainly they were tinged with
-an atmosphere of age and respectability. After all, since life is a
-figment of the brain, such built-up notions of things are in many cases
-really far more impressive than the things them<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_737" id="Page_737">[Pg 737]</a></span>selves. London is a
-fanfare of great names; it is a clatter of vast reputations; it is a
-swirl of memories and celebrated beauties and orders and distinctions.
-It is almost impossible any more to disassociate the real from the
-fictitious or, better, the spiritual. There is something here which is
-not of brick and stone at all, but which is purely a matter of thought.
-It is disembodied poetry, noble ideas, delicious memories of great
-things; and these, after all, are better than brick and stone. The city
-is low, generally not more than five stories high, often not more than
-two, but it is beautiful. And it alternates great spaces with narrow
-crevices in such a way as to give a splendid variety. You can have
-at once a sense of being very crowded and of being very free. I can
-understand now Browning’s desire to include “poor old Camberwell” with
-Italy in the confines of romance.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-   <a id="i_737" name="i_737">
-   <img class="mtop1" src="images/i_737.jpg" alt="" /></a>
-   <p class="caption1">Drawn by W. J. Glackens</p>
-   <p class="caption">“X. WAS MY EVER-PRESENT MONITOR”</p>
-</div>
-
-<p class="mtop1">The thing that struck me most was that the buildings were largely a
-golden yellow in color, quite as if they had been white, and time had
-stained them. Many other buildings looked as though they had been black
-originally and had been daubed white in spots. The truth is that it was
-quite the other way about. They had been snow-white and had been sooted
-by the smoke until they were now nearly coal-black. Only here and there
-had the wind and rain whipped bare white places which looked like scars
-or the drippings of lime. At first I thought, “How wretched!” Later,
-“This effect is charming.”</p>
-
-<p>We are so used to the new and shiny and tall in America, particularly
-in our larger cities, that it is very hard at first to estimate a
-city of equal or greater rank, which is old and low and, to a certain
-extent, smoky. In places there was more beauty, more surety, more
-dignity, more space than most of our cities have to offer. The police
-had an air of dignity and intelligence such as I have never seen
-anywhere in America, and it was obvious at a glance. The streets were
-beautifully swept and clean, and I saw soldiers here and there in fine
-uniforms, standing outside palaces and walking in the public ways. That
-alone was sufficient to differentiate London from any American city. We
-rarely see our soldiers. They are too few. I think what I felt most of
-all was that I could not feel anything very definite about so great a
-city, and that there was no use trying.</p>
-
-<p>The first thing that took my attention in the stores was the clerks,
-but I may say the stores and shops themselves, after New York, seemed
-small and old. New York is new; the space given to the more important
-shops is considerable. In London it struck me that the space was not
-much and that the woodwork and walls were dingy. One can tell by the
-feel of a place whether it is exceptional and profitable, and all of
-these were that; but they were dingy. The English clerk, too, had an
-air of civility, I had almost said servility, which was different. They
-looked to me like<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_738" id="Page_738">[Pg 738]</a></span> persons born to a condition and a point of view, and
-I think they are. In America any clerk may subsequently be anything he
-chooses, ability guaranteed, but I’m not so sure that this is true in
-England. Anyhow, the American clerk always looks his possibilities, his
-problematic future; the English clerk looks as though he were to be one
-indefinitely.</p>
-
-<p>X. and I were through with our first impressive round of sight-seeing
-by one o’clock, and he explained that we would go to a popular, hotel
-grill. All my life, certainly all my literary life, I had been hearing
-of this hotel, its distinction, its air; and now I said to myself,
-“Here I am, and I shall be able to judge it for myself.” We stopped at
-a barber’s for a few minutes to be shaved, and, to my astonishment,
-I saw a barber-shop which anywhere in America would be considered
-ridiculous. It was not a dirty barber-shop; you could see plainly that
-it was clean, well-conditioned, and probably enjoyed a profitable
-patronage: but for smallness, meanness, the age of the woodwork and the
-chairs, commend me to America of, say, 1865. It was the poorest little
-threadbare thing I have yet seen in that line. X. spoke of it as “his
-barber’s.”</p>
-
-<p>The hotel, after its fashion,&mdash;the grill,&mdash;was another blow. I had
-fancied that I was going to see something on the order of the new,
-luxurious hotels in New York; certainly as resplendent, let us say, as
-our hotels of the lower first class. Not so. It can be compared, and
-I think fairly so, only to our hotels of the second or third class.
-There is the same air of age here that there is about our old, but
-very excellent, hotels in New York. The woodwork is plain, simple (I
-am speaking of the grill); the coat-room commonplace; the carpets are
-red and a little worn in spots. Several of the stair-steps squeaked as
-we went down. “Just like our old and popular hotels,” I said to myself
-over and over in descending; and the cuisine and the general appearance
-of the dining-room reminded me of the same type of room in these hotels.</p>
-
-<p>While we were sipping coffee X. told me of a Mrs. W., a friend of his,
-whom I was to meet. She was, he said, a lion-hunter. She tried to make
-her somewhat interesting personality felt in so large a sea as London
-by taking up with promising talent before it was already a commonplace.
-I believe it was arranged over the telephone then that I should lunch
-there the following day at one, and be introduced to a certain Lady B.,
-who was known as a patron of the arts, and to a certain Miss N., an
-interesting English type. I was pleased with the idea of going. I had
-never seen an English lady lion-hunter. I had never met English ladies
-of the types of Miss N. and Lady B. There might be others present, I
-was told. I was also informed that Mrs. W. was really not English, but
-French, though she and her husband, who was also French and a wealthy
-merchant, had resided in London so long that they were to all intents
-and purposes English, and besides they were in rather interesting
-standing socially.</p>
-
-<p>I recall the next day, Sunday, with as much interest as any date, for
-on that day I encountered my first London drawing-room. When I reached
-the house of Mrs. W., which was in one of those lovely squares that
-constitute a striking feature of the West End, I was ushered up-stairs
-to the drawing-room, where I found my host, a rather practical,
-shrewd-looking Frenchman, and his less obviously French wife.</p>
-
-<p>“Oh, Mr. Der<i>riz</i>er,” exclaimed my hostess on sight, as she came
-forward to greet me, a decidedly engaging woman of something over
-forty, with bronze hair and ruddy complexion. Her gown of green silk,
-cut after the latest mode, stamped her in my mind as of a romantic,
-artistic, eager disposition.</p>
-
-<p>“You must come and tell us at once what you think of the picture we are
-discussing. It is down-stairs. Lady B. is there, and Miss N. We are
-trying to see if we can get a better light on it. Mr. X. has told me of
-you. You are from America. You must tell us how you like London, after
-you see the Degas.”</p>
-
-<p>I think I liked this lady thoroughly at a glance and felt at home with
-her, for I know the type. It is the mobile, artistic type, with not
-much practical judgment in great matters, but bubbling with enthusiasm,
-temperament, life.</p>
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_739" id="Page_739">[Pg 739]</a></span></p>
-<p>“Certainly; delighted. I know too little of London to talk of it. I
-shall be interested in your picture.”</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-   <a id="i_739" name="i_739">
-   <img class="mtop1" src="images/i_739.jpg" alt="" /></a>
-   <p class="caption1">Drawn by W. J. Glackens</p>
-   <p class="caption">“‘I LIKE IT,’ HE PRONOUNCED. ‘THE NOTE IS SOMBER,<br />
-   BUT IT IS EXCELLENT WORK’”</p>
-</div>
-
-<p class="mtop1">We had reached the main floor by this time.</p>
-
-<p>“Mr. Der<i>riz</i>er, the Lady B.,” said Mrs. W., as she brought me forward
-to meet the ladies.</p>
-
-<p>A modern suggestion of the fair <i>Jehanne</i>, tall, astonishingly lissome,
-done, as to clothes, after the best manner of the romanticists, such
-was the Lady B. A more fascinating type, from the point of view of
-stagecraft, I never saw. And the languor and lofty elevation of her
-gestures and eyebrows defy description. She could say, “Oh, I am so
-weary of all this!” with a slight elevation of her eyebrows a hundred
-times more definitely and forcefully than if it had been shouted for
-her in stentorian tones through a megaphone.</p>
-
-<p>She gave me the fingers of an archly poised hand.</p>
-
-<p>“It is a pleasure.”</p>
-
-<p>“And Miss N., Mr. Der<i>riz</i>er.” Again it was Mrs. W. who spoke.</p>
-
-<p>“I am very pleased.”</p>
-
-<p>A pink, slim lily of a woman of twenty-eight or thirty, seemingly
-very fragile, very Dresden-china-like as to color, a dream of light
-and Tyrian blue with some white interwoven, very keen as to eye, the
-perfection of hauteur as to manner, so well-bred that her voice seemed
-subtly suggestive of it all&mdash;that was Miss N.</p>
-
-<p>To say that I was interested in this company is putting it mildly.
-The three women were distinct, individual, characteristic each in a
-different way. The Lady B. was all peace and repose, statuesque, weary,
-dark. Miss N. was like a ray of sunshine, pure morning light, delicate,
-gay, mobile. Mrs. W. was of thicker texture, redder blood, more human
-fire. She had a vigor past the comprehension of either, if not their
-subtlety of intellect, which latter is often much better.</p>
-
-<p>“Ah, yes, Degas. You like Degas, no doubt,” interpolated Mrs. W.,
-recalling<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_740" id="Page_740">[Pg 740]</a></span> us. “A lovely pigture, don’t you think? Such color, such
-depth, such sympathy of treatment! Oh!”</p>
-
-<p>Mrs. W.’s hands were up in a pretty artistic gesture of delight.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-   <a id="i_740" name="i_740">
-   <img class="mtop1" src="images/i_740.jpg" alt="" /></a>
-   <p class="caption">“LADY B. WAS EXTENDING HER HAND IN AN ALMOST
-   PATHETIC FAREWELL”</p>
-</div>
-
-<p class="mtop1">“Oh, yes,” continued the Lady B., taking up the rapture, “it is saw
-human&mdash;saw perfect in its harmony! The hair it is divine! And the poor
-man! He lives alone now in Paris, quite dreary, not seeing any one. Aw,
-the tragedy of it! The tragedy of it!” Her delicately carved vanity-box
-of some odd workmanship&mdash;blue-and-white enamel, with points of coral in
-it&mdash;was lifted in one hand as expressing her great distress. I confess
-I was not much moved, and I looked quickly at Miss N. Her eyes, it
-seemed to me, held a subtle, apprehending twinkle.</p>
-
-<p>“And you?” It was Mrs. W. addressing me.</p>
-
-<p>“It is impressive, I think. I do not know as much of his work as I
-might, I am sorry to say.”</p>
-
-<p>“Aw, he is marvelous, wonderful! I am transported by the beauty and
-the depth of it all.” It was Mrs. W. talking, and I could not help
-rejoicing in the quality of her accent. Nothing is so pleasing to me in
-a woman of culture and refinement as that additional tang of remoteness
-which a foreign accent lends. If only all the lovely, cultivated women
-of the world would speak with a foreign accent in their native tongue
-I should like it better. It lends a touch of piquancy not otherwise
-obtainable.</p>
-
-<p>Our luncheon party was complete now, and we would probably have gone
-immediately into the dining-room except for another picture&mdash;by
-Picasso. Let me repeat here that before X. called my atten<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_741" id="Page_741">[Pg 741]</a></span>tion to
-Picasso’s cubical uncertainty in the London exhibition, I had never
-heard of him. Here in a dark corner of the room was the nude torso of
-a consumptive girl, her ribs showing, her cheeks colorless and sunken,
-her nose a wasted point, her eyes as hungry and sharp and lustrous as
-those of a bird. Her hair was really no hair&mdash;strings; and her thin,
-bony arms and shoulders were pathetic, decidedly morbid in their
-quality. To add to the morgue-like aspect of the composition, the
-picture was painted in a pale bluish-green key.</p>
-
-<p>I wish to state here that now, after a little lapse of time, this
-conception, the thought and execution of it, is growing upon me. I am
-not sure that this work, which has rather haunted me, is not much more
-than a protest, the expression and realization of a great temperament;
-but at the moment it struck me as dreary, gruesome, decadent, and I
-said as much when asked for my impression.</p>
-
-<p>“Gloomy, morbid,” Mrs. W. fired in her lovely accent, “what have they
-to do with art?”</p>
-
-<p>“Luncheon is served, Madam.”</p>
-
-<p>The double doors of the dining-room were flung open.</p>
-
-<p>I found myself sitting between Mrs. W. and Miss N.</p>
-
-<p>“Ah was so glad to hear you say you didn’t like it,” Miss N. applauded,
-her eyes sparkling, her lip moving with a delicate little smile. “You
-know, I abhor those things. They <i>are</i> decadent, like the rest of
-France and England. We are going backward instead of forward, I am
-quite sure. We have not the force we once had. It is all a race after
-pleasure and living and an interest in subjects of that kind. I am sure
-it isn’t healthy, normal art. I am sure life is better and brighter
-than that.”</p>
-
-<p>“I am inclined to think so at times myself,” I replied.</p>
-
-<p>We talked further, and I learned to my surprise that she suspected
-England to be decadent as a whole, falling behind in brain, brawn, and
-spirit, and that she thought America was much better.</p>
-
-<p>“Do you know,” she observed, “I really think it would be a very good
-thing for us if we were conquered by Germany.”</p>
-
-<p>I had found here, I fancied, some one who was really thinking for
-herself and a very charming young lady into the bargain. She was
-quick, apprehensive, all for a heartier point of view. I am not sure
-now that she was not merely being nice to me, and that, anyhow, she
-is not all wrong, and that the heartier point of view is the courage
-which can front life unashamed, which sees the divinity of fact and of
-beauty in the utmost seeming tragedy. Picasso’s grim presentation of
-decay and degradation is beginning to teach me something&mdash;the marvelous
-perfection of the spirit which is concerned with neither perfection,
-nor decay, but with life. It haunts me.</p>
-
-<p>The charming luncheon was quickly over, and I think I gathered a very
-clear impression of the status of my host and hostess from their
-surroundings. Mr. W. was evidently liberal in his understanding of what
-constitutes a satisfactory home. It was not exceptional in that it
-differed greatly from the prevailing standard of luxury. But assuredly
-it was all in sharp contrast to Picasso’s grim representation of life
-and Degas’s revolutionary opposition to conventional standards.</p>
-
-<p>Another man now made his appearance&mdash;an artist. I shall not forget him
-soon, for you do not often meet people who have the courage to appear
-at Sunday afternoons in a shabby, workaday business suit, unpolished
-shoes, a green neckerchief in lieu of collar and tie, and cuffless
-sleeves. I admired the quality, the workmanship, of the silver-set
-scarab which held his green linen neckerchief together, but I was a
-little puzzled as to whether he was very poor and his presence insisted
-upon, or comfortably progressive and indifferent to conventional dress.
-His face and body were quite thin; his hands delicate. He had an
-apprehensive eye that rarely met one’s direct gaze.</p>
-
-<p>“Do you think art really needs that?” Miss N. asked me. She was
-referring to the green linen neckerchief.</p>
-
-<p>“I admire the courage. It is at least individual.”</p>
-
-<p>“It is after George Bernard Shaw. It has been done before,” replied
-Miss N.</p>
-
-<p>“Then it requires almost more courage,” I replied.</p>
-
-<p>Here Mrs. W. moved the sad excerpt from the morgue to the center of the
-room that he of the green neckerchief might gaze at it.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_742" id="Page_742">[Pg 742]</a></span></p>
-
-<p>“I like it,” he pronounced. “The note is somber, but it is excellent
-work.”</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-   <a id="i_742" name="i_742">
-   <img class="mtop1" src="images/i_742.jpg" alt="" /></a>
-   <p class="caption1">Drawn by W. J. Glackens</p>
-   <p class="caption center">“HOPED FOR THE DAY WHEN THE ISSUE<br />
-   MIGHT BE TRIED OUT PHYSICALLY”</p>
-</div>
-
-<p class="mtop1">Then he took his departure with interesting abruptness. Almost
-immediately the Lady B. was extending her hand in an almost pathetic
-farewell. Her voice was lofty, sad, sustained. I wish I could describe
-it. There was just a suggestion of <i>Lady Macbeth</i> in the sleep-walking
-scene. As she made her slow, graceful exit, I wanted to applaud loudly.</p>
-
-<p>Mrs. W. turned to me as the nearest source of interest, and I realized
-with horror that she was going to fling her Picasso at my head again,
-and with as much haste as was decent I, too, took my leave.</p>
-
-<p>Another evening I went with an American friend to call on two
-professional critics, one working in the field of literature, the
-other in art exclusively. I mention these two men and their labors
-because they were very interesting to me, representing, as they did,
-two fields of artistic livelihood in London, and both making moderate
-incomes, not large, but sufficient to live on in a simple way. They
-were men of mettle, as I discovered, urgent, thinking types of mind,
-quarreling to a certain extent with life and fate, and doing their best
-to read this very curious riddle of existence.</p>
-
-<p>These two men lived in charming, though small, quarters not far from
-fashionable London, on the fringe of ultra-respectability, if not of
-it. Mr. F. was a conservative man, thirty-two or thirty-three years
-of age, pale, slender, remote, artistic. Mr. Lewis was in character
-not unlike Mr. F., I should have said, though<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_743" id="Page_743">[Pg 743]</a></span> he was the older man,
-artistic, remote, ostensibly cultivated, living and doing all the
-refined things on principle more than anything else.</p>
-
-<p>It amuses me now when I think of it, for of course neither of these
-gentlemen cared for me in the least, beyond my momentary vogue or
-repute in their small world. I must have appeared somewhat boorish
-and supercilious, but they were exceedingly pleasant. How did I like
-London? What did I think of the English? How did London contrast with
-New York? What had I seen?</p>
-
-<p>My head was ringing with what I had already seen. London was going
-around in a ring for me. Its vast reaches were ever in my mind. I
-stated as succinctly as I could that I was puzzled in my mind as to
-what I did think, as I am generally by this phantasmagoria called life,
-while Mr. Lewis served an opening glass of port, and I toasted my feet
-before a delicious grate-fire. Already, as I have indicated in a way,
-I had decided that England was deficient in the vitality which America
-now possesses, certainly deficient in the raw creative imagination
-which is producing many new things in America, but far superior in
-what, for want of a better phrase, I must call social organization
-as it relates to social and commercial interchange generally.
-Something has developed in the English social consciousness a sense of
-responsibility. I really think that the English climate has had a great
-deal to do with this. It is so uniformly damp and cold and raw that
-it has produced a sober-minded race. When subsequently I encountered
-the climates of Paris, Rome, and the Riviera, I realized clearly how
-impossible it would be to produce the English temperament there. One
-can see the dark, moody, passionate temperament of the Italian evolving
-to perfection under his brilliant skies. The wine-like atmosphere of
-Paris speaks for itself. London is what it is, and the Englishmen
-likewise, because of the climate in which they have been reared.</p>
-
-<p>I said as much without much protest, but when I ventured that the
-English might possibly be falling behind in the world’s race, and that
-other nations, such as the Germans and the Americans, might rapidly be
-displacing them, I evoked a storm of opposition. The sedate Mr. F.
-rose to this argument. It began at the dinner-table and was continued
-in the general living-room later. He sneered at the suggestion that the
-Germans could possibly conquer or displace England, and hoped for the
-day when the issue might be tried out physically. Mr. Lewis laughed as
-he spoke of the long way America had to go before it could achieve any
-social importance even within itself. It was a thrashing whirlpool of
-foreign elements. He had recently been to the United States, and in
-one of the British journals then on the stands was a long estimate by
-him of America’s weaknesses and potentialities. He poked fun at the
-careless, insulting manners of the people, their love of show, their
-love of praise. No Englishman, having tasted the comforts of civilized
-life in England, could ever live happily in America. There was no such
-thing as a serving class. He objected to American business methods
-as he had encountered them, and I could see that he really disliked
-America. To a certain extent he disliked me for being an American,
-and possibly resented my literary actuality for obtruding itself upon
-England. I enjoyed these two men as exceedingly able combatants&mdash;men
-against whose wits I could sharpen my own.</p>
-
-<p>I mention them because, in a measure, they suggested the literary and
-artistic atmosphere of London. They went about, I was informed, to one
-London drawing-room and another. Mr. F. was considered an excellent
-judge of art; Mr. Lewis an important critic. Their mode of living
-constituted a touch of the better Grub Street of to-day. It was not bad.</p>
-
-<p>“London sings in my ears.” I remember writing this somewhere about
-the fourth or fifth day of my stay. It was delicious, the sense of
-novelty and wonder it gave me. I am one of those who have been raised
-on Dickens and Thackeray and Lamb, but I must confess I found little to
-corroborate the world of vague impressions I had formed. Novels are a
-mere expression of temperament, anyhow.</p>
-
-<p>New York and America are both so new, so lustful of change. Here, in
-these streets, when you walk out of a morning or an evening, you feel
-a pleasing stability. London is not going to change under your very
-eyes. You are not going to turn your<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_744" id="Page_744">[Pg 744]</a></span> back to find, on looking again, a
-whole sky-line effaced. The city is restful, naïve, in a way tender and
-sweet, like an old song. London is more fatalistic, and therefore less
-hopeful than New York.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-   <a id="i_744" name="i_744">
-   <img class="mtop1" src="images/i_744.jpg" alt="" /></a>
-   <p class="caption1">Drawn by W. J. Glackens</p>
-   <p class="caption center">PICCADILLY CIRCUS</p>
-</div>
-
-<p class="mtop1">The first thing that impressed me was the grayish tinge of smoke that
-was over everything, a faint haze; and the next that, as a city, street
-for street and square for square, it was not so strident as New York,
-not nearly so harsh. The traffic was less noisy, the people were more
-thoughtful and considerate, the so-called rush, which characterizes New
-York, was less foolish. There is something rowdyish and ill-mannered
-about the street life of New York. This is not true of London. It
-struck me as simple, sedate, thoughtful, and I could only conclude that
-it sprang from a less-stirring atmosphere of opportunity. I fancy it is
-harder to get along in London. People do not change from one thing to
-another so much. The world there is more fixed in a pathetic routine,
-and people are more aware of their so-called “betters.” I hope not, but
-I felt it to be true.</p>
-
-<p>I do not believe that it is given to any<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_745" id="Page_745">[Pg 745]</a></span> writer wholly to suggest a
-city. The mind is like a voracious fish: it would like to eat up all
-the experiences and characteristics of a city or a nation, but this,
-fortunately, is not possible. My own mind was busy pounding at the
-gates of fact, but during all the while I was there I got only a little
-way. I remember being struck with the nature of St. James’s Park, which
-was near my hotel, the great column to the Duke of Marlborough, at the
-end of the street, the whirl of life in Trafalgar Square and Piccadilly
-Circus, which were both very near. An office I visited in a narrow
-street interested me, and the storm of cabs which whirled by all the
-corners of this region. It was described to me as the center of London,
-and I am quite sure it was, for clubs, theaters, hotels, smart shops,
-and the like were all here. The heavy trading section was farther east,
-along the banks of the Thames, and between that and Regent Street,
-where my little hotel was located, lay the financial section, sprawling
-about St. Paul’s Cathedral and the Bank of England. One could go out of
-this great central world easily enough, but it was only, apparently, to
-get into minor centers. It was all decidedly pleasing, because it was
-new and strange, and because there was a world of civility prevailing
-which does not exist in America.</p>
-
-<p>The amazing metropolitan atmosphere in which I found myself satisfied
-me completely for the time being. Life here was so complex and so
-extended that during days and days that involved visits&mdash;breakfasts,
-luncheons, dinners, suppers&mdash;with one personage and another, political,
-social, artistic, I was still busy snatching glimpses of the great
-lake of life that spread on every hand. In so far as I could judge
-on so short a notice, London seemed to me to represent a mood&mdash;a
-uniform, aware, conservative state of being, neither brilliant nor gay
-anywhere, though interesting always. About Piccadilly Circus, Trafalgar
-Square, Leicester Square, Charing Cross, and the Strand I suppose the
-average Londoner would insist that London is very gay; but I could
-not see it. Certainly it was not gay as similar sections in New York
-are gay. It is not in the Londoner himself to be so. He is solid,
-hard, phlegmatic, a little dreary, like a certain type of rain-bird or
-Northern loon, content to make the best of a rather dreary situation.
-On the other hand, I should not say that the city is depressing,&mdash;far
-from it,&mdash;though there are many who have told me they found it so.
-You have to represent a certain state of mind to be a Londoner, or a
-Britisher, even, a true one, and, on the whole, I think it is a more
-pleasant attitude than one finds in America, though not so brilliant.
-Creature comforts run high with this type of mind, and, after that, a
-certain happy acceptance of the commonplace. Nothing less than that
-could possibly explain the mile on mile of drab houses, of streets all
-alike, of doorways all alike, of chimneys all alike. That is what you
-feel all over England&mdash;a drab acceptance of the commonplace; and yet,
-when all is said and done, it works out into something so charming in
-its commonplaceness that it is almost irresistible. All the while I
-was in London I was never tired of looking at these dreary streets and
-congratulating myself that they composed so well. I do not wonder that
-Whistler found much to admire at Chelsea or that Turner could paint
-Thames water-scenes. I could, too, if I were an artist. As it was, I
-could see Goldsmith and Lamb and Gray and Dickens and much of Shakspere
-in all that I saw here. It must be the genius of the English people to
-be homy and simple, and yet charmingly idyllic in their very lack of
-imagination. It must be so.</p>
-
-<p>One particular afternoon along the Thames it was raining. I saw the
-river in varying moods all the way from Blackfriars Bridge to Chelsea,
-and never once was it anything more than black-gray, varying at times
-from a pale or almost sunlit yellow to a solid leaden-black hue. It
-looked at times as though something remarkable were about to happen,
-so weirdly greenish yellow was the sky above the water; and the tall
-chimneys of Lambeth over the way, appearing and disappearing in the
-mist, were irresistible. There is a certain kind of barge which plies
-up and down the Thames with a collapsible mast and sail which looks
-for all the world like something off the Nile. They harmonize with the
-smoke and the gray, lowery skies. I was never weary of looking at them
-in the changing light and mist and rain. Gulls skimmed over the water
-here very freely all the way from Blackfriars to Bat<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_746" id="Page_746">[Pg 746]</a></span>tersea, and along
-the Embankment they sat in scores, solemnly cogitating the state of the
-weather, perhaps. I was delighted with the picture they made in places,
-greedy, wide-winged, artistic things.</p>
-
-<p>I had a novel experience with these same gulls one Sunday afternoon,
-which I may as well relate here. I had been out all morning
-reconnoitering strange sections of London, and arrived near Blackfriars
-Bridge about one o’clock. I was attracted by what seemed to me at first
-glance as thousands of gulls, lovely clouds of them, swirling about the
-heads of several different men at various points along the wall. It was
-too beautiful to miss. It reminded me of the gulls about the steamer at
-Fishguard. I drew near. The first man I saw was feeding them minnows
-out of a small box he had purchased for a penny, throwing the tiny fish
-aloft in the air and letting the gulls dive for them. They ate from his
-hand, circled above and about his head, walked on the wall before him,
-their jade bills and salmon-pink feet showing delightfully.</p>
-
-<p>I was delighted, and hurried to the second. It was the same. I found
-the vender of small minnows near by, a man who sold them for this
-purpose, and purchased a few boxes. Instantly I became the center of
-another swirling cloud, wheeling and squeaking in hungry anticipation.
-It was a great sight. Finally I threw out the last minnows, tossing
-them all high in the air, and seeing not one escape, while I meditated
-on the speed of these birds, which, while scarcely moving a wing, rise
-and fall with incredible swiftness. It is a matter of gliding up and
-down with them. I left, my head full of birds, the Thames forever fixed
-in mind.</p>
-
-<p>It seems odd to make separate comment on something so thoroughly
-involved with everything else in a trip of this kind as the streets of
-London; but they contrasted so strangely with those of other cities
-I have seen that I am forced to comment on them. For one thing, they
-are seldom straight for any distance, and they change their names as
-frequently and as unexpectedly as a thief. Bond Street speedily becomes
-Old Bond Street or New Bond Street, according to the direction in which
-you are going, and I never could see why the Strand should turn into
-Fleet Street as it went along, and then into Ludgate Hill, and then
-into Cannon Street. Neither could I understand why Whitechapel Road
-should change to Mile End Road; but that is neither here nor there.
-The thing that interested me about London streets first was that
-there were no high buildings, nothing, as a rule, over four or five
-stories, though now and then you actually find an eight- or nine-story
-building. There are some near Victoria Street in the vicinity of the
-Roman Catholic Cathedral of Westminster. For another thing, the vast
-majority of these buildings are comparatively old, not new, like those
-in New York or Rome or Berlin or Paris or Milan. London is older in
-its seeming than almost any of these other cities, and yet this may
-be due to the fact that it is smokier than any of the others. I saw
-it always in gray weather or through, at best, a sunlit golden haze,
-when it looked more like burnished brass than anything else. Then it
-was lovely. The buildings in almost all cases were of a vintage which
-has passed in America. Outside of some of the old palaces and castles
-in London,&mdash;St. James’s, Buckingham, the Tower, Windsor,&mdash;there are
-no fine buildings. The Houses of Parliament and the cathedrals are
-excluded, of course.</p>
-
-<p>One evening I went with a friend of mine to visit the House of
-Parliament, that noble pile of buildings on the banks of the Thames.
-For days I had been skirting about them, interested in other things.
-The clock-tower, with its great round clock-face,&mdash;twenty-three feet
-in diameter, some one told me,&mdash;had been staring me in the face over
-a stretch of park space and intervening buildings on such evenings as
-Parliament was in session, and I frequently debated with myself whether
-I should trouble to go or not, even if some one invited me. I grow so
-weary of standard, completed things at times! However, I did go. It
-came about through the Hon. T. P. O’Connor, M.P., an old admirer of
-“Sister Carrie,” who, hearing that I was in London, invited me. He had
-just finished reading “Jennie Gerhardt” the night I met him, and I
-shall never forget the kindly glow of his face as, on meeting me in the
-dining-room of the House of Commons, he exclaimed:</p>
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_747" id="Page_747">[Pg 747]</a></span></p>
-<p>“Ah, the biographer of that poor girl! And how charming she was, too!
-Ah me! Ah me!”</p>
-
-<p>I can hear the soft brogue in his voice yet, and see the gay romance of
-his Irish eye. Are not the Irish all inborn cavaliers, anyhow?</p>
-
-<p>I had been out in the East End all day, speculating on that shabby mass
-that have nothing, know nothing, dream nothing; or do they? I could
-have cried as dark fell, and I returned through long, humble streets
-alive with a home-hurrying mass of people&mdash;clouds of people not knowing
-whence they came or why. London always struck me as so vast and so
-pathetic, and now I was to return and go to dine where the laws are
-made for all England.</p>
-
-<p>I was escorted by another friend, a Mr. M., since dead, who was, when
-I reached the hotel, quite disturbed lest we be late. I like the man
-who takes society and social forms seriously, though I would not be
-that man for all the world. M. was one such. He was, if you please, a
-stickler for law and order. The Houses of Parliament and the repute
-of the Hon. T. P. O’Connor meant much to him. I can see O’Connor’s
-friendly, comprehensive eye understanding it all&mdash;understanding in his
-deep, literary way why it should be so.</p>
-
-<p>As I hurried through Westminster Hall, the great general entrance, once
-itself the ancient Parliament of England, the scene of the deposition
-of Edward II, of the condemnation of Charles I, of the trial of
-Warren Hastings, and the poling of the exhumed head of Cromwell, I
-was thinking, thinking, thinking. What is a place like this, anyhow,
-but a fanfare of names? If you know history, the long, strange tangle
-of steps or actions by which life ambles crab-wise from nothing to
-nothing, you know that it is little more than this. The present places
-are the thing, the present forms, salaries, benefices, and that dream
-of the mind which makes it all into something. As I walked through into
-the Central Hall, where we had to wait until T. P. was found, I studied
-the high, groined arches, the Gothic walls, the graven figures of the
-general anteroom. It was all rich, gilded, dark, lovely. And about
-me was a room full of men all titillating with a sense of their own
-importance&mdash;commoners, lords possibly, call-boys, ushers, and here and
-there persons crying of “Division! Division!” while a bell somewhere
-clanged raucously.</p>
-
-<p>“There’s a vote on,” observed Mr. M. “Perhaps they won’t find him
-right away. Never mind; he’ll come back.”</p>
-
-<p>He did return finally, with, after his first greetings, a “Well, now
-we’ll ate, drink, and be merry,” and then we went in.</p>
-
-<p>At table, being an old member of Parliament, he explained many things
-swiftly and interestingly, how the buildings were arranged, the number
-of members, the procedure, and the like. He was, he told me, a member
-from Liverpool, which, by the way, returns some Irish members, which
-struck me as rather strange for an English city.</p>
-
-<p>“Not at all, not at all. The English like the Irish&mdash;at times,” he
-added softly.</p>
-
-<p>“I have just been out in your East End,” I said, “trying to find
-out how tragic London is, and I think my mood has made me a little
-color-blind. It’s rather a dreary world, I should say, and I often
-wonder whether law-making ever helps these people.”</p>
-
-<p>He smiled that genial, equivocal, sophisticated smile of the Irish that
-always bespeaks the bland acceptance of things as they are, and tries
-to make the best of a bad mess.</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, it’s bad,”&mdash;and nothing could possibly suggest the aroma of a
-brogue that went with this,&mdash;“but it’s no worse than some of your
-American cities&mdash;Lawrence, Lowell, Fall River.” (Trust the Irish to
-hand you an intellectual “Your another!”) “Conditions in Pittsburgh
-are as bad as anywhere, I think; but it’s true the East End is pretty
-bad. You want to remember that it’s typical London winter weather
-we’re having, and London smoke makes those gray buildings look rather
-forlorn, it’s true. But there’s some comfort there, as there is
-everywhere. My old Irish father was one for thinking that we all have
-our rewards here or hereafter. Perhaps theirs is to be hereafter.” And
-he rolled his eyes humorously and sanctimoniously heavenward.</p>
-
-<p>An able man this, full, as I knew, from reading his weekly and his
-books, of a deep, kindly understanding of life, but one who, despite
-his knowledge of the tragedies of existence, refused to be cast down.</p>
-
-<p>He was going up the Nile shortly in a house-boat with a party of
-wealthy friends, and he told me that Lloyd George, the champion of
-the poor, was just making off<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_748" id="Page_748">[Pg 748]</a></span> for a winter outing on the Riviera,
-but that I might, if I would come some morning, have breakfast with
-him. He was sure that the great commoner would be glad to see me. He
-wanted me to call at his rooms, his London official offices, as it
-were, at 5 Morpeth Mansions, and have a pleasant talk with him, which
-latterly I did. He wanted me to meet a Madame N., a French litterateur
-of over fifty, then staying at the same country place with him near
-Maidenhead, and hear her very tragic history. He brought an ache to my
-heart by recounting this same,&mdash;a story to which only a Flaubert or a
-De Maupassant could do justice. It is much too long and too Gallic to
-relate here.</p>
-
-<p>While he was in the midst of it, the call of “Division!” sounded
-once more through the halls, and he ran to take his place with
-his fellow-parliamentarians on some question of presumably vital
-importance. I can see him bustling away in his long frock-coat, his
-napkin in his hand, ready to be counted yea or nay, as the case might
-be.</p>
-
-<p>Afterward, when he had outlined for me a tour in Ireland which I must
-sometime take, he took us up into the members’ gallery of the Commons
-in order to see how wonderful it was, and we sat as solemn as owls,
-contemplating the rather interesting scene below. I cannot say that I
-was seriously impressed. The Hall of Commons, I thought, was small and
-stuffy, not so large as the House of Representatives at Washington, by
-any means.</p>
-
-<p>In delicious Irish whispers he explained a little concerning the
-arrangement of the place. The seat of the speaker was at the north end
-of the chamber on a straight line with the sacred wool sack of the
-House of Lords in another part of the building, however important that
-may be. If I would look under the rather shadowy canopy at the north
-end of this extremely square chamber, I would see him, “smothering
-under an immense white wig,” he explained. In front of the canopy was
-a table, the speaker’s table, with presumably the speaker’s official
-mace lying upon it. To the right of the speaker were the recognized
-seats of the government party, the ministers occupying the front bench.
-And then he pointed out to me Mr. Lloyd George, Mr. Bonar Law, and Mr.
-Winston Churchill, all men creating a great stir at the time. They were
-whispering and smiling in genial concert, while opposite them, on
-the left hand of the speaker, where the opposition was gathered, some
-droning M.P. from the North, I understood, a noble lord who chose to
-sit in the Commons rather than in the House of Lords, was delivering
-one of those typically intellectual commentaries which the English are
-fond of delivering. I could not see him from where I sat, but I could
-see him just the same. I knew that he was standing very straight, in
-the most suitable clothes for the occasion, his linen immaculate, one
-hand poised gracefully, ready to emphasize some rather obscure point,
-while he stated in the best English why this and this must be done.
-Every now and then, at a suitable point in his argument, some friendly
-and equally intelligent member would give voice to a soothing “Hyah!
-hyah!” or “Rathah!” Of the four hundred and seventy-six provided seats,
-I fancy something like over four hundred were vacant, their occupants
-being out in the dining-rooms, or off in those adjoining chambers where
-parliamentarians confer during hours that are not pressing, and where
-they are sought at the call for a division. I do not presume, however,
-that they were all in any so safe or sane places. I mock-reproachfully
-asked Mr. O’Connor why he was not in his seat, and he said in good
-Irish:</p>
-
-<p>“Me boy, there are thricks in every thrade. I’ll be there whin me vote
-is wanted.”</p>
-
-<p>We came away finally through long, floreated passages and towering
-rooms, where I paused to admire the intricate woodwork, the splendid
-gilding, and the tier upon tier of carven kings and queens in their
-respective niches. There was for me a flavor of great romance over it
-all. I could not help thinking that, pointless as it all might be,
-such joys and glories as we have are thus compounded. Out of the dull
-blatherings of half-articulate members, the maunderings of dreamers and
-schemers, come such laws and such policies as best express the moods of
-the time&mdash;of the British or any other empire. I have no great faith in
-laws, anyhow. They are ill-fitting garments at best, traps and mental
-catch-poles for the unwary only. But I thought as I came out into the
-swirling city again,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_749" id="Page_749">[Pg 749]</a></span> “It is a strange world. These clock-towers and
-halls will sometime fall into decay. The dome of our own capitol will
-be rent and broken, and through its ragged interstices will fall the
-pallor of the moon.” But life does not depend upon parliaments or men.
-It can get along with windless spaces and such forms and spirits as
-have not yet been dreamed of in the mind of man.</p>
-
-<p>The Thames from Blackfriars Bridge to the Tower Bridge, along Upper
-and Lower Thames Street, which is on the right bank of the river
-going up-stream, was my first excursion, though, in making it, I saw
-little of the river. It is a street that runs parallel with it, and
-is intersected every fifty or a hundred feet by narrow lanes which
-lead down to docks at the water’s-edge. The Thames is a murky little
-stream above London Bridge, compared with such vast bodies as the
-Hudson and the Mississippi, but utterly delightful. I saw it on several
-occasions before and after, once in a driving rain off London Bridge,
-where twenty thousand vehicles were passing in the hour, it was said;
-once afterward at night when the boats below were faint, wind-driven
-lights and the crowd on the bridge black shadows. Once I walked along
-the Embankment from Blackfriars Bridge to Battersea Bridge and beyond
-to the giant plant of the General Electric Company, a very charming
-section of London.</p>
-
-<p>But I was never more impressed than I was this day walking from
-Cleopatra’s Needle to the Tower. The section lying between Blackfriars
-Bridge and Tower Bridge is very interesting from a human, to say
-nothing of a river, point of view; I question whether from some points
-of view it is not the most interesting in London, though it gives only
-occasional glimpses of the river. London is curious. It is very modern
-in spots. It is too much like New York and Chicago and Philadelphia
-and Boston; but here between Blackfriars Bridge and the Tower, along
-Upper and Lower Thomas Street, I found something that delighted me.
-It smacked of Dickens, of Charles II, of Old England, and of a great
-many forgotten, far-off things which I felt, but could not readily
-call to mind. It was delicious, this narrow, winding street, with high
-walls,&mdash;high because the street was so narrow,&mdash;and alive with people
-bobbing along under umbrellas or walking stodgily in the rain. Lights
-were burning in all the stores and warehouses, dark recesses running
-back to the restless tide of the Thames, and they were full of an
-industrious commercial life.</p>
-
-<p>It was interesting to me to think that I was in the center of so much
-that was old, but for the exact details I confess I cared little. Here
-the Thames was especially delightful. It presented such odd vistas.
-I watched the tumbling tide of water, whipped by gusty wind where
-moderate-sized tugs and tows were going by in the mist and rain. It
-was delicious, artistic, far more significant than quiescence and
-sunlight could have made it. I took note of the houses, the doorways,
-the quaint, winding passages, but for significance and charm they did
-not compare with the nebulous, indescribable mass of working boys and
-girls and men and women which moved before my gaze. The mouths of many
-of them were weak, their noses snub, their eyes squint, their chins
-undershot, their ears stub, their chests flat. Most of them had a waxy,
-meaty look, but for interest they were incomparable. American working
-crowds may be much more chipper, but not more interesting. I could not
-weary of looking at them.</p>
-
-<p>I followed the Thames in the rain to the giant plant of the General
-Electric Company, and thought of Sir Thomas More, and Henry VIII,
-who married Anne Boleyn at the Old Church near Battersea Bridge, and
-wondered what they would think of this modern power-house. What a
-change from Henry VIII and Sir Thomas More to vast, whirling electric
-dynamos and a London subway system! A little below this, coming once
-more into a dreary neighborhood of the cheapest houses,&mdash;mud-colored
-brick,&mdash;I turned into a street called Lots Road, drab and gray, and,
-weary of rain and gloom, took a bus to my hotel. What I know of the
-Thames I have described. It is beautiful.</p>
-
-<div class="chapter mtop3">
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_750" id="Page_750">[Pg 750]</a></span></p>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-   <a id="i_750" name="i_750">
-   <img class="mtop3" src="images/i_750.jpg" alt="Headpiece The Monroe
-   Doctrine" /></a>
-</div>
-
-<h2 class="nopad nobreak" id="THE_MONROE_DOCTRINE_IN_THE_VENEZUELA_DISPUTE">THE
-MONROE DOCTRINE IN THE VENEZUELA DISPUTE</h2>
-
-</div>
-
-<p class="s4 center">HOW THAT CONTROVERSY PAVED THE WAY FOR THE
-PANAMA CANAL</p>
-
-<p class="s3 center mtop1">BY CHARLES R. MILLER</p>
-
-<p class="s5 center">Editor of “The New York Times”</p>
-
-<p class="s5 center mtop1 mbot2">WITH A MAP, AND WITH TWO CARTOONS FROM
-“PUNCH” REPRODUCED BY SPECIAL PERMISSION</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p class="p0 mtop2">F<span class="smaller">AR</span> from being a subject of importance merely to historians,
-the Monroe Doctrine is likely, in the months and years to come,
-to hold the attention of American statesmen and citizens. Our
-relations to our neighbors in Central and South America, the new
-responsibilities brought upon us by the operation of the Panama
-Canal, are among the most important American problems of to-day
-and to-morrow. It would be impossible to find a writer better
-informed than Mr. Miller on current affairs, nor one who has more
-continuously studied the subject at first hand over a period of so
-many years.&mdash;T<span class="smaller">HE</span> E<span class="smaller">DITOR</span>.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<p class="p0"><span class="drop-cap">E</span>X-PRESIDENT HARRISON
-was very testy and Sir Richard Webster
-unmistakably cross one cool afternoon in September, 1899, when I found
-a place among the spectators in the Hall of the Ministry of Foreign
-Affairs in Paris, where the Commission of Arbitration in the boundary
-dispute between Great Britain and Venezuela was in session. General
-Benjamin F. Tracy was drawn into the area of unpleasantness.</p>
-
-<p>“That is not a way in which I am going to be addressed, General Tracy,”
-said Sir Richard to the ex-Secretary of the Navy.</p>
-
-<p>Sir Richard Webster was the chief counsel of Great Britain before the
-Arbitration Commission; ex-President Harrison was the leading counsel
-of Venezuela, and General Tracy was his associate. It was about the
-forty-fourth day of the proceedings. The ill temper of these great
-men arose from no national antagonism, no professional jealousy, for
-in that noble strife of minds each had come to hold in high respect
-the legal attainments of the others. But they had entered upon the
-eighth week of perhaps the most wearisome and uninteresting trial
-of an international cause of which the chronicles of diplomacy hold
-any record, and court and counsel were tired out and bored beyond
-expression.</p>
-
-<p>Two years earlier I had sat in the President’s room at the White House
-and heard Mr. Cleveland talk of the Venezuela boundary dispute and
-of his part in forwarding it to a settlement. It was in the month
-of February, 1897, two weeks before the expiration of President
-Cleveland’s second term. A few days earlier, on February 2, 1897,
-Sir Julian Pauncefote, on behalf of Great Britain, and José Andradé,
-representing Venezuela, had signed at Washington a treaty of which this
-was the first article:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>An arbitral tribunal shall be immediately appointed to determine
-the boundary line between the colony of British Guiana and the
-United States of Venezuela.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<p>The signing of that treaty, of which ratifications were exchanged
-on the following fourteenth of June, was a memorable triumph for
-President Cleveland,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_751" id="Page_751">[Pg 751]</a></span> for the Monroe Doctrine, and for the principle
-of arbitration between nations. For it was a message sent to Congress
-on December 17, 1895&mdash;a message which startled two worlds, that had
-brought about this agreement to arbitrate the questions in dispute.</p>
-
-<p>In a two-hours’ talk on that February day Mr. Cleveland had reviewed
-some of the chief acts of his administration, and I asked him to tell
-me, as far as he felt free to do so, the reasons that had called forth
-his Venezuela message. He spoke at length upon the subject, and with
-much freedom. Expressing in substance the impression his words made
-upon me, I wrote at the time as follows of the message and of Mr.
-Cleveland’s part in bringing the dispute to a settlement:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>These words sounded like war, but they insured peace. How can
-anybody who reads them with his eyes fully open fail to understand
-what had happened&mdash;or rather was about to happen? No gentle and
-ladylike remonstrance would have changed the course of proximate
-events. The ponderous Executive fist had to come down with a thump
-that made people leap to their feet, and it did. The blow was heard
-and heeded. First there was a British blue book showing a decent
-respect for the opinions of mankind. Then there were negotiations.
-Now Venezuela and her powerful co-disputant have honorably come
-together in a treaty, and the long controversy goes to arbitration.</p>
-
-<p>“But we were in danger of war, there was a panic, and stock
-exchange values shrank four hundred millions.” Let the Stock
-Exchange think on its mercies. A war averted does not shrink values
-a tenth part as much as a war fought.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<p>It will be well to say in the beginning that the merits of the
-boundary dispute and the immediate results of the arbitration are
-not particularly under examination in this article. The finding of
-the Paris tribunal was a compromise. The extreme contentions of both
-disputants were denied, although those of Venezuela were abridged much
-more than the claims of Great Britain. But had England obtained at
-Paris every square mile of territory to which, in the ultimate stretch
-of her audacity, she had asserted right and title, the triumph of
-President Cleveland and of the Monroe Doctrine would have been in no
-wise dimmed.</p>
-
-<p>The vital essence of that triumph lay in this, that under the
-constraint laid upon her by Mr. Cleveland’s message of December 17,
-England submitted to a judicial determination of her title to territory
-which for more than half a century she had sought to wrest without due
-proof of ownership from a country too weak to resist her continuing
-encroachments.</p>
-
-<p>“If a European Power by an extension of its boundaries takes possession
-of the territory of one of our neighboring republics against its will,
-and in derogation of its rights,” said Mr. Cleveland in his message,
-“it is difficult to see why, to that extent, such European Power does
-not thereby attempt to extend its system of government to that portion
-of this continent which is taken,” and this, the message continued, “is
-the precise action which President Monroe declared to be ‘dangerous to
-our peace and safety.’”</p>
-
-<p>For Great Britain to take territory on this continent before proving
-title was an act of which the United States by its President complained
-as “a willful aggression upon its rights and interests.” Great Britain
-heeded the protest, yielded to our demand for a judicial examination
-and finding, and Venezuela had her day in court, and that, not the
-actual and precise position of the boundary line as finally traced,
-was the whole point of the matter so far as the United States and the
-Monroe Doctrine were involved in it. That was our triumph.</p>
-
-<p>Historically, the dispute over the boundary between British Guiana
-and Venezuela dates from the discovery of America and the Spanish
-occupation. Following in the track of Columbus, who in his third
-voyage, in 1498, had sailed along the Orinoco delta, his first sight of
-the mainland of America, the Spaniards, early in the sixteenth century,
-had explored the country in search of gold. The El Dorado of fable
-was supposed to lie somewhere in the region between the upper waters
-of the Orinoco and Essequibo. By right of discovery, exploration, and
-settlement, for settlements were established later, the Spaniards
-gained the right to call Guayana their own, for that name was at first
-given to the South American shore of the Caribbean Sea.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_752" id="Page_752">[Pg 752]</a></span></p>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-   <a id="i_752" name="i_752">
-   <img class="mtop1" src="images/i_752.jpg" alt="" /></a>
-  <p class="caption">THE DISPUTED TERRITORY</p>
-  <p class="p0 caption2">On this map the Schomburgk Line is laid down in conformity with the
-claims of Great Britain as to its proper position. By the arbitration
-Great Britain lost the two strips of land within that line indicated
-on the map by shaded sections, one at the mouth of the Orinoco and the
-other between Yuruan and Mt. Roraima. Those shaded sections comprise
-about 5000 square miles, an area a trifle larger than the State of
-Connecticut, and represent what Venezuela gained in territory within
-the Schomburgk Line as defined by Great Britain. Venezuela’s political
-gain consisted in the complete control of the mouth of the Orinoco,
-the natural outlet to nearly all of Venezuela and of a large part of
-Colombia.&mdash;E<span class="smaller">DITOR</span>.</p>
-  <p class="linkedimage"><a href="images/i_752_large.jpg">&#10063;<br />
-  <span class="smaller">LARGER IMAGE</span></a></p>
-</div>
-
-<p class="mtop1">There was in truth a store of gold in the land; the explorers carried
-stories of their new wealth back to Spain, and before the end of
-the sixteenth century Sir Walter Raleigh, with a body of English
-adventurers and certain Dutchmen, visited Guayana in quest of treasure.
-The Dutch West India Company planted a settlement near the mouth of the
-Essequibo about the year 1624, and was strong enough to hold it against
-the Spaniards, who up to that time had been in undisputed possession.
-The title of the Dutch to the territory upon which they had established
-themselves was confirmed by the treaty of Münster in 1648, in which
-Spain recognized the Netherlands as free and independent states. Early
-in the last<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_753" id="Page_753">[Pg 753]</a></span> century England captured from the Dutch their settlements
-of Berbice, Demerara, and Essequibo, and in the treaty of 1814 these
-were formally ceded to her. Thus British Guiana came into being. On the
-one hand, therefore, Venezuela, when she revolted from Spain in 1811,
-became vested with the title to all the territory which Spain had held
-by virtue of discovery and exploration save the districts she had ceded
-to the Dutch; while, on the other hand, England held British Guiana by
-cession from the Dutch, who had acquired it from Spain by the treaty of
-Münster.</p>
-
-<p>In that treaty Spain and Holland had not been at pains to draw the
-boundary line between Guayana, now British Guiana, and the Captaincy
-General of Caracas, now Venezuela, and from that act of omission arose
-all the trouble. For many years after England entered into lawful
-possession of British Guiana by the treaty of 1814 no dispute over
-the undefined boundary arose. With the running of what is called the
-Schomburgk Line in 1849 begins the unbroken chain of events that led to
-the boundary controversy, brought it to a critical stage, called forth
-the message of December, 1895, and culminated in the finding and award
-of the Paris tribunal.</p>
-
-<p>In 1841 the British engineer Sir Robert Schomburgk was commissioned
-by his Government to ascertain and fix by metes and bounds the line
-between British Guiana and Venezuela. Then began Venezuela’s protest,
-and then, too, began the singular migrations of the Schomburgk Line.
-Lord Aberdeen abandoned it in 1844, but in 1886 it was laid down in
-British official publications as having made a wide detour to the
-west, the British maps presenting to the eyes of the Venezuelans a
-startling incursion upon territory they had supposed to be their own
-by undisputed title. “The Statesman’s Year Book” of 1885 stated the
-area of British Guiana to be 76,000 square miles. In 1887, according
-to the “Year Book,” the area of the colony had expanded to 109,000
-square miles. Nor was this the limit of the westward sweep of British
-pretensions, for in 1890 England obligingly consented to arbitrate
-her title to a vast tract of territory embracing thousands of square
-miles wholly outside the Schomburgk Line, and, a circumstance that has
-oftener explained than excused England’s land hunger, including within
-its boundaries some of Venezuela’s richest gold mines.</p>
-
-<p>The protests of Venezuela and her appeals for justice became insistent.
-She demanded an arbitration of the British claims, and her demands
-meeting with refusal, in 1887 she broke off diplomatic relations.
-Our aid was invoked by her, and Secretary Bayard tendered our good
-offices to promote a friendly settlement. Great Britain firmly refused
-to arbitrate the question except upon the basis of an antecedent
-concession to her of a very large part of the territory in dispute,
-including the mouth of the Orinoco and all territory within the
-extended Schomburgk Line. Meanwhile the Venezuelans grew more and more
-uneasy as they observed the behavior of British war-ships in and near
-the mouth of the Orinoco, and the acts of British subjects asserting
-and exercising rights of occupation and settlement upon territory they
-held, and rightly held, to be their own.</p>
-
-<p>This was the situation when Secretary of State Richard Olney addressed
-to Ambassador Bayard in London, on July 20, 1895, that letter of
-instructions which the British ambassador at Washington described as a
-“fiery note.” Another British authority called it “Olney’s hectoring
-note.” Lord Salisbury, very much at his ease, and taking his time about
-it, replied to this note on November 26. He explained that “it could
-not be answered until it had been carefully considered by the law
-officers of the Crown.” It may be recalled that Earl Russell, before
-making reply to the vigorous protest of our minister, Mr. Charles
-Francis Adams, against the fitting out of the <i>Alabama</i> in a British
-shipyard, referred the matter to the “law officers of the Crown.” One
-of these learned gentlemen having unfortunately lost his mind, there
-was a delay of some days, of which the <i>Alabama</i> took advantage to
-escape the jurisdiction by putting out to sea. As the decision of
-the law officers, when tardily rendered, was that the ship must be
-seized, it would appear that England should lay the responsibility for
-the <i>Alabama</i> award of $15,500,000 that she paid to us upon the too
-deliberate working of her legal machinery.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_754" id="Page_754">[Pg 754]</a></span></p>
-
-<p>Secretary Olney in his letter, which of course Mr. Bayard was
-instructed to lay before Lord Salisbury, had embodied all the
-substantive declarations of the Monroe Doctrine, and in the very words
-of Mr. Monroe’s message of 1823. The first fruit of the doctrine, he
-pointed out, was the independence of South America, for it was to
-the European Powers banded together in the Holy Alliance, and then
-preparing to assist Spain in the recapture of her revolted colonies,
-that Monroe addressed his warning message. Every administration since
-Monroe’s had given its sanction and indorsement to the doctrine. It
-had been successfully invoked to put an end to the empire forced upon
-the Mexican people by Napoleon III, and now it was upon no general
-justification of interposing in a controversy between two other
-nations, but specifically upon the Monroe Doctrine, that we based our
-remonstrance against Great Britain’s high-handed ways with Venezuela.</p>
-
-<p>Great Britain’s assertion of title to disputed territory, followed by
-her refusal to submit her title to investigation, was “a substantial
-appropriation of the territory to her own use,” and we should ignore
-our established policy if we did not “give warning that the transaction
-will be regarded as injurious to the people of the United States,
-as well as oppressive in itself.” “While the measures necessary or
-appropriate for the vindication of that policy are to be determined by
-another branch of the Government,” continued Mr. Olney, “it is clearly
-for the Executive to leave nothing undone which may tend to render
-such determination unnecessary.” This is the passage, doubtless, which
-provoked the epithets “fiery” and “hectoring.” Those who ponder its
-meaning may feel that its words were at least ominous.</p>
-
-<p>Lord Salisbury based his reply of November 26 in the main upon the
-familiar European contention that while the Monroe Doctrine is
-interesting, and may have had a salutary effect when first promulgated,
-it has never “been inscribed by competent authority in the code of
-international law,” and that Mr. Olney’s principle that “American
-questions are for American decision ... cannot be sustained by any
-reasoning drawn from the law of nations.” He reviewed the dispute with
-Venezuela, defended with many and plausible citations of authority
-Great Britain’s procedure in the territory claimed by her, made a tart
-reference to “large tracts” of territory once Mexican but now a part of
-the United States, and firmly declined “to submit to the arbitration of
-another Power or of foreign jurists, however eminent, claims based on
-the extravagant pretensions of Spanish officials in the last century,
-and involving the transfer of British subjects who have for many years
-enjoyed the settled rule of a British colony to a nation of different
-race and language, whose political system is subject to frequent
-disturbances, and whose institutions as yet offer very inadequate
-protection to life and property.”</p>
-
-<p>The substance and meaning of Lord Salisbury’s despatch, and the
-attitude which Great Britain assumed, were set forth with conspicuous
-moderation and fairness by Mr. Cleveland in his Princeton lectures:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>These dispatches exhibit a refusal to admit such an interest
-in the controversy on our part as entitled us to insist upon
-arbitration for the purpose of having a line between Great Britain
-and Venezuela established; a denial of such force or meaning to the
-Monroe Doctrine as made it worthy of the regard of Great Britain in
-the premises; a fixed and continued determination on the part of
-Her Majesty’s Government to reject arbitration as to any territory
-included within the extended Schomburgk Line. They further indicate
-that the existence of gold within the disputed territory had not
-been overlooked; and, as was to be expected, they put forward the
-colonisation and settlement by English subjects in such territory
-during more than half a century of dispute as creating a claim to
-dominion and sovereignty, if not strong enough to override all
-question of right and title, at least so clear and indisputable as
-to be properly regarded as above and beyond the contingencies of
-arbitration.<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a></p>
-
-</div>
-
-<p>It was then that President Cleveland, patient, but knowing that
-patience has its bounds, loving peace, and willing to make the full
-measure of sacrifice to that high end, but with firm conviction that
-our<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_755" id="Page_755">[Pg 755]</a></span> interposition in the controversy was necessary and could not
-longer be delayed, sent to Congress the special message of December
-17, 1895. That message fixed the attention of the civilized world upon
-the Venezuela boundary dispute, a matter which had up to that time
-held only small place in the thoughts of men other than the immediate
-official participants; for President Cleveland’s plain words brought
-clearly into view the possibility of war&mdash;war between the United States
-and Great Britain. Christmas was at hand. At that season nobody was
-thinking of war, and war between the English and ourselves had long
-been held to be at any and all seasons unthinkable. The civilized world
-was startled; it is not too much to say that some men of large affairs
-and international dealings were stunned. “The crime of the century,”
-was the phrase applied to the message by some whose alarm at the
-possibility of war was equaled by their ignorance of the long series of
-disturbing events which led Mr. Cleveland to perpetrate that “crime.”</p>
-
-<p>It was no crime; it was a saving act, a step that made for peace, and
-removed a source of long-standing irritation that was a menace to
-peace. The pen of Richard Olney was the one to set forth the legal
-basis of our demand&mdash;the pen of a great lawyer, not too much cramped
-by the circumstance that it was also the pen of a diplomat. Mr.
-Cleveland’s strong hand was the one to write the words that proclaimed
-the Nation’s duty. The Monroe Doctrine has never had a sturdier
-defender or a sounder defense. Lord Salisbury’s amusingly English and
-almost sneering references to the doctrine as one “to be mentioned
-with respect on account of the distinguished statesman to whom it is
-due,” but having no relation to the affairs of the present day, evoked
-that memorable sentence in Mr. Cleveland’s message, in which he said
-that the Monroe Doctrine “was intended to apply to every stage of our
-National life, and cannot become obsolete while our Republic endures.”</p>
-
-<p>To the Salisbury argument that the doctrine must be ruled out because
-it has never been inscribed in the code of international law, and
-“cannot be sustained by any reasoning drawn from the law of nations,”
-Mr. Cleveland replied that “the Monroe Doctrine finds its recognition
-in those principles of international law which are based on the
-theory that every nation shall have its rights protected and its just
-claims enforced.” When we urged upon Great Britain the resort to
-arbitration, we were “without any convictions as to the final merits of
-the dispute”; we desired to be informed whether Great Britain sought
-under a claim of boundary “to extend her possessions on this continent
-without right, or whether she merely sought possession of territory
-fairly included within her lines of ownership.”</p>
-
-<p>Having been apprised of Great Britain’s refusal of an impartial
-arbitration, “nothing remains,” said the President, “but to accept the
-situation, to recognize its plain requirements, and to deal with it
-accordingly.”</p>
-
-<p>Mr. Cleveland, therefore, suggested to Congress an adequate
-appropriation for the expenses of a commission appointed by the
-Executive to “make the necessary investigation and report upon the
-matter with the least possible delay.” Words of grave import followed
-this recommendation:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>When such report is made and accepted, it will, in my opinion,
-be the duty of the United States to resist by every means in its
-power, as a willful aggression upon its rights and interests,
-the appropriation by Great Britain of any lands or the exercise
-of governmental jurisdiction over any territory which after
-investigation we have determined of right belongs to Venezuela.</p>
-
-<p>In making these recommendations I am fully alive to the
-responsibilities incurred, and keenly realize all the consequences
-that may follow.</p>
-
-<p>I am nevertheless firm in my conviction that, while it is a
-grievous thing to contemplate the two great English-speaking
-peoples of the world as being otherwise than friendly competitors
-in the onward march of civilization, and strenuous and worthy
-rivals in all the arts of peace, there is no calamity which a
-great nation can invite which equals that which follows a supine
-submission to wrong and injustice, and the consequent loss of
-National self-respect and honor, beneath which are shielded and
-defended a people’s safety and greatness.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<p>The commission of inquiry was appointed. It promptly began and
-indus<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_756" id="Page_756">[Pg 756]</a></span>triously pursued its investigations for many months, the
-governments of Great Britain and Venezuela willingly contributing to
-the success of the commission’s labors by placing at its disposal
-elaborate statements and all available evidence, while in the archives
-of Spain and Holland documents were made accessible that threw much
-light upon the remote origins of the controversy. But before the
-commission had finished its work, Great Britain and Venezuela, by the
-treaty of January 2, 1897, agreed to an arbitration. The labors of the
-commission were not in vain, however. It reached the conclusion that
-neither the extreme claims of Great Britain nor those of Venezuela were
-admissible, being unsupported by proofs of title, and the great mass of
-documentary evidence it had collected was of much use and value for the
-arbitral tribunal.</p>
-
-<p>By the terms of the Pauncefote-Andradé Treaty, signed at Washington
-January 2, 1897, Great Britain and Venezuela agreed to the appointment
-of an arbitral tribunal “to determine the boundary line between the
-colony of British Guiana and the United States of Venezuela.” The
-tribunal was to “ascertain the extent of the territories belonging
-to, or that might lawfully be claimed by, the United Netherlands, or
-by the Kingdom of Spain, respectively, at the time of the acquisition
-of the colony of British Guiana,” in order to establish the chain
-of lawful title. Rules of procedure were prescribed in the treaty.
-Adverse holding for fifty years, or exclusive political control, as
-well as actual settlement of a district was to be considered as making
-a good title; recognition and effect were to be given to rights and
-claims resting on other grounds valid in international law; and such
-effect was to be given to the occupation, at the time of signing the
-treaty, of the territory of one of the parties by the citizens or
-subjects of the other, as the equities of the case and the principles
-of international law should be deemed to require. It was provided in
-article II that the tribunal should consist of five jurists. Those
-named on the part of Great Britain were Baron Herschel, and Sir Richard
-Collins of the Supreme Court of Judicature. Baron Herschel having died
-before the convening of the tribunal, Lord Chief-Justice Russell was
-named to fill the vacancy. On the part of Venezuela, Chief-Justice
-Fuller of the United States Supreme Court, and Associate-Justice David
-Brewer of that court, were named. The fifth member of the tribunal
-named by these four was Frederic de Martens, the Russian jurist, who
-became president of the tribunal.</p>
-
-<p>The tribunal assembled in Paris on January 25, 1899. After various
-and necessary adjournments, it began the formal consideration of the
-case on June 15. After seven weeks of painstaking toil, in which the
-story of Spain’s earliest search for the gold of the West, the terms
-of the treaty of Münster, the law and practice of nations in respect
-to discovery, occupation, and settlement, and an intolerable mass and
-multitude of documentary and legal details pertaining to each and all
-of these matters, had been minutely examined and expounded for the
-information, but certainly not the edification, of the five learned
-jurists sitting in judgment in the case, the evidence of nervous strain
-and irritation to which I have referred in the beginning of this
-article was apparent. On the forty-seventh day Sir Richard Webster
-sarcastically invited the attention of ex-President Harrison to certain
-comments of Sir Travers Twiss on the Oregon case. “I had read Twiss on
-the Oregon case through long before I had the privilege of seeing you,”
-replied Mr. Harrison. “This investigation has been long and wearisome,”
-said General Tracy, but he reminded the tribunal that it involved the
-“investigation of four hundred years of history.” And on the fiftieth
-day Mr. Harrison, in closing his argument, said: “Counsel who addresses
-this tribunal comes to his work in a frame of weariness of mind and
-body, and he addresses judges who are weary.”</p>
-
-<p>It was on the fifty-sixth day that the tribunal announced its award.
-The true divisional line, as determined by the unanimous decision of
-the five jurists, gave sanction, as has been said, to the extreme
-pretensions of neither party. A large area west of the Essequibo River,
-to which Venezuela, without warrant, had laid claim, was held to be
-British territory; but, on the other hand, valuable tracts within the
-Schomburgk Line were awarded to Venezuela, the most important being the
-region of which the coast-line<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_757" id="Page_757">[Pg 757]</a></span> runs from Barima Point, at the mouth
-of the Orinoco, to Point Playa. The confirmation of the title to this
-territory, as to which Great Britain had firmly refused arbitration,
-gave Venezuela exclusive control of the mouth of her great river and
-of both its banks. The vast area, including the rich gold-mines, which
-Great Britain had belted about by the audacious westward extension of
-her claims, went altogether to Venezuela.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-   <a id="i_757" name="i_757">
-   <img class="mtop1" src="images/i_757.jpg" alt="" /></a>
-   <p class="caption1">From London “Punch” for December 28, 1895</p>
-   <p class="caption1">“THE COMPLIMENTS OF THE SEASON!!”</p>
-   <p class="caption3 p0">P<span class="smaller">RESIDENT</span>
-   C<span class="smaller">LEVELAND</span>: “Waal, Salisbury, sir, whether
-   you like it or not, we propose to arbitrate on this matter ourselves,
-   and, in that event, we shall abide by our own decision.”</p>
-   <p class="caption2 p0">“An inquiry [as to the true divisional line between the Republic
-   of Venezuela and British Guiana] should, of course, be conducted
-   carefully and judicially.... When report is made [by a Commission
-   appointed by Congress] and accepted, it will, in my opinion, be
-   the duty of the United States to resist by every means in its
-   power, as a willful aggression upon its rights and interests, the
-   appropriation by Great Britain of any lands, [etc., etc.,] ...
-   which after investigation we have determined of right to belong
-   to Venezuela.”&mdash;<i>President Cleveland’s message to Congress,
-   vide “Time’s,” December 18.</i></p>
-</div>
-
-<p class="mtop1">Of the whole territory in dispute, far the larger portion went to
-Great Britain, and some few persons who uttered cries of distress
-over the message of December 17 counted this as a rebuke and rebuff
-for President Cleveland. That was the very hardihood of perversity in
-taking a false view. Mr. Cleveland had declared that our Government was
-“without any convictions as to the final merits of the dispute.” The
-supreme, the vital point is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_758" id="Page_758">[Pg 758]</a></span> that in the award of the Paris tribunal,
-accepted by both parties, law triumphed over force. The boundary line
-was traced, and titles with which Great Britain had vested herself by
-her own acts, heedless of the protests of Venezuela and rejecting her
-and our appeals for adjudication, were passed upon by an impartial
-arbitral tribunal according to evidence and the principles of public
-law. Whoever gained, whoever lost, that was quite immaterial from
-our point of view. The process of territorial expansion by stealthy
-encroachment, by unwarranted shifting of boundaries, and the alteration
-of maps and statistics, was at an end. The sovereignty of the lawful
-owner replaced that of the squatter. Venezuela was delivered from
-duress and from peril, no longer was her soil or her destiny under
-the menace of foreign control, and the situation created by the
-attempt of a power over the sea to extend the European system within
-this hemisphere, which Monroe declared to be dangerous to our peace
-and safety, and against which Mr. Cleveland had invoked the Monroe
-Doctrine, no longer existed. Mr. Cleveland had triumphed, the Monroe
-Doctrine had triumphed, peace had triumphed. General Harrison and Sir
-Richard Webster parted with expressions of mutual esteem, and the
-report of the proceedings of the Paris tribunal, in eleven folio parts,
-now on the shelves of the New York Public Library, was presented by the
-Marquis of Salisbury, while to Mr. Richard Olney was tendered not long
-ago the appointment as Ambassador at the Court of St. James’s.</p>
-
-<p>The consequences of this successful and momentous assertion of the
-Monroe Doctrine may now be traced. Three times within the century of
-its declaration the doctrine was firmly asserted and maintained by the
-United States as the public system of the Western World, for it may
-with entire propriety be called our public system, as the concert of
-Europe is the public system of that continent. First, when President
-Monroe proclaimed it as a warning to the Holy Alliance, plotting the
-restoration to Spain of her revolted colonies in Latin America. Second,
-when Secretary Seward’s repeated protests against the establishment of
-an empire and an emperor, the Austrian Maximilian, in Mexico against
-the will of the people by French arms, were ominously reinforced by
-the despatch of General Sheridan to the banks of the Rio Grande with
-80,000 disciplined and experienced troops, freed from active service
-by the ending of the war between the States, the French evacuation
-of Mexico speedily following. The absence of any mention of the
-Monroe Doctrine in Secretary Seward’s correspondence in respect to
-the French adventurer in Mexico is without significance. The spirit
-and the principle of Monroe’s declaration were the declared motives
-of his action. Third, when President Cleveland, by virtue of the
-doctrine, “intended to apply to every stage of our National life,”
-constrained England to submit her boundary dispute with Venezuela
-to a judicial settlement. The next application of the doctrine, the
-fourth in this series, all of primary importance, fell within the
-present century, when the substitution of the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty
-for the Clayton-Bulwer convention of half a century earlier dissolved
-our partnership with Great Britain in an agreement to extend a joint
-protectorship over any transportation route across the isthmus, and so
-cleared the way for the building and exclusive control by ourselves of
-the Panama Canal.</p>
-
-<p>The Clayton-Bulwer Treaty was never popular in this country. It
-was entered into at a time, in 1850, when the discovery of gold
-in California, and the consequent tide of travel to the land of
-easily acquired riches, brought into view the need for facilities of
-transportation across the isthmus; and also, it should be said, when
-the responsible statesmen of the Nation were perhaps less mindful than
-at any other time since Monroe’s administration of the import and
-the saving force of the doctrine that bears his name. Nevertheless,
-the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty itself, after a fashion, a most illogical
-and inconsistent fashion, was on our part an attempt to apply the
-prohibitions of the doctrine against European colonization in this
-hemisphere. Great Britain was encroaching upon the territory of Central
-American States, and she stood in the way of the building of the canal.
-We negotiated the treaty to free ourselves from this embarrassment, and
-by that singular bargain, through the waiver of a right, we secured the
-recognition of a right; that is, we persuaded Great Britain to assent
-to Monroe<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_759" id="Page_759">[Pg 759]</a></span> Doctrine principles in Central America at the price of
-taking her as a partner in any undertaking for a transportation route
-across the isthmus, which was in itself contrary to the spirit of the
-doctrine.</p>
-
-<p>The treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, ending our war with Mexico, was
-signed February 2, 1848. By its terms Mexico ceded to us the territory
-now included within the borders of the States of California, Nevada,
-Utah, Arizona, and parts of Colorado and New Mexico. Great Britain
-strenuously opposed the cession to us of any territory on the Pacific
-coast. Failing to control the acts of Mexico in that respect, she took
-measures in her own way to offset our great territorial gain. Six days
-after signing the treaty she despatched her fleet from Vera Cruz to
-the coast of Nicaragua, and forcibly took possession of San Juan at
-the mouth of the river of that name. She set up a governor, erected
-fortifications, and changed the name of the place to Greytown. This
-gave her command of the only canal route then under consideration, for
-it was at a much later time that the Panama route came to the fore
-as more practicable. The seizure of San Juan was a move so plainly
-hostile to our interests that our Government at once sent a diplomatic
-representative to Nicaragua, and a treaty known as the Hise Treaty was
-negotiated in June, 1849, by which Nicaragua granted to the United
-States “the exclusive right and privilege” of constructing a canal or
-railway between the two oceans across Nicaraguan territory. This treaty
-was not sent to the Senate and was never ratified by either country.</p>
-
-<p>The occupation of San Juan, or Greytown, by the British, and their
-proceedings upon the Mosquito Coast of Nicaragua, where they had set up
-a trumpery Indian king, and by virtue of a “treaty” with him assumed
-a protectorate over the region, were a cause of growing uneasiness
-at Washington. In pursuance of her age-long policy of insuring her
-domination of the seas by occupying strategic points giving control of
-great routes of navigation, Great Britain had with a cool disregard of
-our rights and interests seized upon vantage-ground in Central America
-that would make her mistress of interoceanic communication. Holding
-Greytown, she was in complete control of any Nicaraguan canal, for the
-only practicable route was that which would make Lake Nicaragua and
-the San Juan River a part of the canal. Thus, upon the one hand, our
-freedom of action in respect to a canal was hampered, and, upon the
-other, England, notwithstanding her many excuses and protestations to
-the contrary, was manifestly establishing a colony in Central America.</p>
-
-<p>With a view to the removal of these sources of embarrassment and of
-difference between the two countries, Mr. Clayton, Secretary of State,
-pressed Great Britain to withdraw her pretensions to dominion over the
-Mosquito Coast. Her reply was a refusal, but an intimation was given
-that the British Government would be willing to enter into a treaty
-for a joint protectorate over the proposed canal. This was the germ of
-the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, negotiated at Washington between Secretary
-of State Clayton and Sir Henry Bulwer, the British minister, and
-signed April 19, 1850. Article I of the treaty, here subjoined, is a
-declaratory and self-denying ordinance:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>The Governments of the United States and Great Britain hereby
-declare that neither the one nor the other will ever obtain or
-maintain for itself any exclusive control over the said ship
-canal; agreeing that neither will ever erect or maintain any
-fortifications commanding the same or in the vicinity thereof, or
-occupy, or fortify, or colonize, or assume, or exercise any domain
-over Nicaragua, Costa Rica, the Mosquito Coast, or any part of
-Central America; nor will either make use of any protection which
-either affords or may afford, or any alliance which either has
-or may have to or with any State or people, for the purpose of
-erecting or maintaining any such fortifications, or of occupying,
-fortifying, or colonizing Nicaragua, Costa Rica, the Mosquito
-Coast, or any part of Central America, or of assuming or exercising
-dominion over the same; nor will the United States or Great Britain
-take advantage of any intimacy, or use any alliance, connection,
-or influence that either may possess with any State or Government
-through whose territory the said canal may pass, for the purpose of
-acquiring or holding, directly or indirectly, for the citizens or
-subjects of the one, any rights or advantages in regard to commerce
-or navigation<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_760" id="Page_760">[Pg 760]</a></span> through the said canal which shall not be offered on
-the same terms to the citizens or subjects of the other.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<p>These stipulations applied only to a canal route across Nicaragua in
-Central America, not to Panama. But we carried our spirit of complacent
-self-denial to a further and extraordinary length in article VIII. The
-first clause of that article is here quoted:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>The Governments of the United States and Great Britain having not
-only desired, in entering into this convention, to accomplish a
-particular object, but also to establish a general principle, they
-hereby agree to extend their protection, by treaty stipulations, to
-any other practicable communications, whether by canal or railway,
-across the isthmus which connects North and South America, and
-especially to the interoceanic communications, should the same
-prove to be practicable, whether by canal or railway, which are now
-proposed to be established by the way of Tehuantepec or Panama.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<p>James Buchanan, then our Minister to England, in a memorandum for
-Lord Clarendon, written on January 6, 1854, referring to the relation
-of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty to the Monroe Doctrine, said that while
-that doctrine would be maintained whenever the peace and safety of the
-United States made it necessary, “yet to have acted upon it in Central
-America might have brought us into collision with Great Britain, an
-event always to be deplored, and if possible avoided”; therefore
-these “dangerous questions” were settled by a resort to friendly
-negotiations. In view of the flimsy nature of Great Britain’s asserted
-rights in Central America, and of the manifest unfriendliness of the
-motives that had prompted her to plant her flag, her colonies, and her
-forts in the pathway of communication between our Atlantic and Pacific
-coasts, it must be said that Mr. Buchanan’s memorandum could not easily
-have been outdone in politeness. The sounder opinion, the opinion which
-the country has held and acted upon, is expressed by Francis Wharton in
-that edition of the “Digest of International Law of the United States”
-which he edited:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>For Great Britain to assume in whole or in part a protectorate
-of the Isthmus or of an interoceanic canal, viewing the term
-protectorate in the sense in which she viewed it in respect to
-the Belise and the Mosquito country, would be to antagonize the
-Monroe Doctrine; and for the United States to unite with her in
-such a protectorship would be to connive at such antagonism. The
-Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, if it were to be construed so as to put
-the Isthmus under the joint protectorate of Great Britain and the
-United States, would not only conflict with the Monroe Doctrine,
-by introducing a European Power in the management of the affairs
-of this continent, but it would be a gross departure from those
-traditions, consecrated by the highest authorities to which we
-can appeal, by which we are forbidden to enter into “entangling
-alliances” with European Powers. No “alliance” could be more
-“entangling” than one with Great Britain to control not only
-the Isthmus, but the interoceanic trade of this continent. No
-introduction of a foreign Power could be more fatal to the policy
-of Mr. Monroe, by which America was to be prevented from being the
-theatre of new European domination, than that which would give to
-Great Britain a joint control of the continent in one of its most
-vital interests.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<p>The appearance of Ferdinand de Lesseps upon the isthmus and the
-public discussion of his canal project brought the possibilities of
-foreign control plainly into view, and public opinion in this country
-ripened into form and expression. “The policy of this country,” said
-President Hayes in his message to Congress on March 8, 1880, “is a
-canal under American control. The United States cannot consent to the
-surrender of this control to any European Power or to any combination
-of European Powers. If existing treaties between the United States
-and other nations, or if the rights of sovereignty or property of
-other nations stand in the way of this policy&mdash;a contingency which is
-not apprehended&mdash;suitable steps should be taken by just and liberal
-negotiations to promote and establish the American policy.” And
-Secretary Blaine in 1881 instructed Minister Lowell to let it be known
-that in the opinion of the President our treaty of 1846 guaranteeing to
-New Granada, afterward the United<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_761" id="Page_761">[Pg 761]</a></span> States of Colombia, the protection
-of the projected canal across the Isthmus of Panama, did not require
-reinforcement or assent from any other Power; and that any attempt to
-supersede it by an agreement between European Powers would “partake
-of the nature of an alliance against the United States, and would be
-regarded by this Government as an indication of an unfriendly feeling.”</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-   <a id="i_761" name="i_761">
-   <img class="mtop1" src="images/i_761.jpg" alt="" /></a>
-   <p class="caption1">From London “Punch” for October 11, 1899</p>
-   <p class="caption1">PEACE AND PLENTY</p>
-   <p class="caption4">L<span class="smaller">ORD</span> S<span class="smaller">ALISBURY</span> (chuckling): “I like arbitration&mdash;in the
-<i>proper place</i>!”</p>
-</div>
-
-<p class="mtop1">In a further instruction to Mr. Lowell, on November 19, 1881, Secretary
-Blaine stated at length the reasons for holding that the Clayton-Bulwer
-Treaty had become obsolete, or at least inapplicable to the conditions
-existing thirty years after its ratification, and he expressed the hope
-of the President that Great Britain would consent to such modifications
-as would remove every obstacle to our fortification and holding
-political control of the canal “in conjunction with the country in
-which it is located.”</p>
-
-<p>President Cleveland, in his first administration, did not approve
-the policy of exclusive American ownership, control, and guaranty,
-favoring rather a neutralized canal<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_762" id="Page_762">[Pg 762]</a></span> “open to all nations and subject
-to the ambitions and warlike necessities of none.” But Mr. Gresham,
-Secretary of State in Mr. Cleveland’s second term, expressed the “deep
-conviction” of our Government that the canal should be constructed
-“under distinctively American auspices.” Secretary Olney, who succeeded
-Mr. Gresham, in a memorable communication rejected the argument
-frequently heard, that the treaty had been abrogated by Great Britain’s
-persistent violation of the provision relating to her Mosquito Coast
-colony, and recorded the conclusion that if the treaty has now
-become inapplicable or injurious, the true remedy was “a direct and
-straightforward application to Great Britain for a reconsideration of
-the whole matter.”</p>
-
-<p>Thus, in the slow process of time public opinion was prepared and
-the way cleared for the ending of a joint protectorate agreement
-with Great Britain by the substitution of the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty
-for the convention negotiated fifty years before between Mr. Clayton
-and Sir Henry Bulwer. The time for action had now come. The French
-company was bankrupt, the commercial demand for a canal had become
-more pressing, and the voyage of the <i>Oregon</i> from the Pacific coast
-around Cape Horn to take her place with the blockading squadron that
-encircled the harbor entrance at Santiago de Cuba brought vividly
-to the minds of the American people the vital need of a canal as a
-measure of national defense. Commissions were studying routes and
-making estimates of cost. There could no longer be any doubt that the
-two oceans were to be connected, and with all possible speed, by a
-navigable way. There was an obstacle&mdash;the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty. If
-we built a Nicaragua canal, we must forego “any exclusive control,”
-and we must submit to the engagements of article V, that the United
-States and Great Britain jointly will “protect it from interruption,
-seizure, or unjust confiscation, and that they will guarantee the
-neutrality thereof.” We must observe the further stipulation of article
-VI, requiring us to join Great Britain in inviting other nations to
-enter into the arrangement for the construction, control, and guaranty
-of this American canal. If we chose to build at Panama, we were bound
-by article VIII to make a new treaty with Great Britain for a joint
-protectorate over that route.</p>
-
-<p>Never for a day after President Cleveland’s Venezuela message would the
-American people have been in a mood to sanction any canal undertaking
-under these vexatious and impossible conditions. We were quite done
-with the idea of a joint protectorate over an isthmian canal. The
-resolve had been taken to build a canal, and the conclusion reached
-that it must be a canal of our own construction and under our exclusive
-control.</p>
-
-<p>Most fortunately, we found the Government of Great Britain in an
-assenting mood. Indeed, the contrast between the rasping quality
-of Lord Salisbury’s notes declining arbitration of the Venezuela
-boundary dispute and the candid, placable tone of Lord Lansdowne’s
-correspondence in the negotiations that led to the superseding of
-the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty by the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty silenced, if
-it did not shame, those half-hearted Americans who had denounced Mr.
-Cleveland’s memorable message of December 17 as “the crime of the
-century” and a menace to the friendly relations between ourselves
-and our kinsmen of England. Following President McKinley’s message
-of December, 1898, in which he pointed out that the prospective
-expansion of American commerce and influence in the Pacific called more
-imperatively than ever for the control of the projected canal by the
-United States, Lord Pauncefote was instructed to acquaint himself with
-our attitude. He was informed that we desired at once to enter upon
-the necessary pourparlers, with a view to such modifications of the
-Clayton-Bulwer Treaty as would remove all obstacles to our construction
-of the canal, which it was evident would not be undertaken by private
-capital. To this her Majesty’s Government assented, and a draft of the
-proposed convention was handed to Lord Pauncefote by Secretary Hay on
-January 11, 1899. This convention her Majesty’s Government, after due
-consideration, “accepted unconditionally as a signal proof,” said Lord
-Lansdowne, “of their friendly disposition and of their desire not to
-impede the execution of a project declared to be of National importance
-to the people of the United States.”</p>
-
-<p>This was the first form of the Hay-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_763" id="Page_763">[Pg 763]</a></span>Pauncefote convention, signed at
-Washington in February, 1900. Consideration by the Senate followed, but
-it was not ratified until December 20 of that year, and then with three
-amendments which proved to be unacceptable to Great Britain. As to the
-first of these amendments, declaring the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty to be
-“hereby superseded,” Lord Lansdowne, in his memorandum of August 3,
-1901, objected that no attempt had been made to ascertain the views of
-his Government upon the entire abrogation of the former treaty, which
-dealt with several matters for which no provision had been made in the
-new instrument; and with rather startling frankness he pointed out that
-if the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty were wholly abrogated, “both Powers would,
-except in the vicinity of the canal, recover entire freedom of action
-in Central America, a change which might be of substantial importance.”
-That was enough to make the Senate open its eyes, for it was not
-exactly the purpose of our Government to confer upon Great Britain
-entire freedom of action in Central America.</p>
-
-<p>The statesmanship and the diplomacy of John Hay found a way to
-reconcile these divergences and bring the negotiations to a successful
-end. He submitted a new draft of the treaty, providing by a separate
-article that the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty should be superseded, a method
-of accomplishing that important object more acceptable to Great
-Britain than procedure by Senate amendment. Lord Lansdowne’s comment
-upon this article of the draft was that “the purpose to abrogate the
-Clayton-Bulwer convention is not, I think, inadmissible if it can be
-shown that sufficient provision is made in the new treaty for such
-portions of the convention as ought, in the interests of this country,
-to remain in force.” The victory for American control and for the
-Monroe Doctrine was won. From that point the negotiations proceeded
-smoothly. Lord Lansdowne suggested the article, accepted by Secretary
-Hay, providing that the general principle of the treaty should not be
-affected by any change of sovereignty over the territory traversed by
-the canal. The question of our right to take measures for the defense
-of the canal presented no great difficulty.</p>
-
-<p>To the first of the rules for the neutralization of the canal, as it
-appeared in Mr. Hay’s draft, Lord Lansdowne suggested an amendment
-which served to bring into the clear light of day both our purpose
-to secure exclusively American control over the canal, and Great
-Britain’s willingness to consent thereto. After the words “the canal
-shall be free and open to the vessels of commerce and of war of all
-nations,” his lordship proposed to add, “which shall agree to observe
-these rules,” and further on the words “so agreeing” after the clause
-declaring that there should be “no discrimination against any nation,”
-and so forth. To this, Mr. Hay informed him, there would be opposition
-“because of the strong objection to inviting other Powers to become
-contract parties to a treaty affecting the canal”; and he suggested as
-a substitute for Lord Lansdowne’s amendment “the canal shall be free
-and open to the vessels of commerce and of war of all nations observing
-these rules,” and instead of “any nations so agreeing” the words “any
-such nation.” The difference was vital, for all connotation of inviting
-formal agreements with other nations disappeared. Lord Lansdowne at
-once accepted this form of the amendment, which he wrote “seemed to us
-equally efficacious for the purpose which we had in view, namely, to
-insure that Great Britain should not be placed in a less advantageous
-position than other Powers, while they stopped short of conferring upon
-other nations a contractual right to the use of the canal.”</p>
-
-<p>The minds of the two governments had now met. The amendments proposed
-on each site, with the modifications noted, were agreed upon. The
-treaty was reduced to final form, engrossed for signature, and on
-November 19, 1901, Lord Pauncefote had the honor to inform the Marquis
-of Lansdowne that on the preceding day he had visited the State
-Department and had “signed the new treaty for the construction of an
-interoceanic canal.” The Senate ratified the treaty on December 16
-following.</p>
-
-<p>Venezuela had opened the way for Panama. The hand withdrawn from broad
-areas east of the Orinoco had relinquished its lawful rights under the
-canal partnership, and in both cases at our instance. In the one, Lord
-Salisbury’s noble British contempt of our demands and our doctrine<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_764" id="Page_764">[Pg 764]</a></span>
-forced us into an unaccustomed attitude of firmness. In the other,
-the Marquis of Lansdowne’s open-minded, amicable, and statesmanlike
-disposition favored our interest, and left us free to give to the
-commerce of the world a channel of communication that had been the
-dream of centuries. We had expressly set up the principle of the
-Monroe Doctrine as the warrant of our interference for the protection
-of Venezuela, and Great Britain gave heed by submitting to impartial
-examination titles she had insisted upon enforcing as though they were
-beyond dispute. Ill-judged concessions contrary to the spirit of the
-Monroe Doctrine, made in the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, we recalled by
-a substitute agreement with Great Britain which left us with a free
-hand for the construction and control of the canal as an exclusively
-American work. The vitality, the continuing and constant applicability,
-of the Monroe Doctrine at every stage of our National existence, as Mr.
-Cleveland put it, could hardly be more conclusively demonstrated than
-by the record of the American Government’s part in bringing about the
-agreement to arbitrate the Venezuela boundary dispute, and in replacing
-the outworn Clayton-Bulwer convention by the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty.</p>
-
-<div class="footnotes">
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a>
-T<span class="smaller">HE</span> C<span class="smaller">ENTURY</span> M<span class="smaller">AGAZINE</span>, July, 1901.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<h2 class="nobreak" id="THE_OREGON_MUDDLE">“THE OREGON MUDDLE”</h2>
-
-</div>
-
-<p class="s4 center">A CURIOUS PHASE OF THE HAYES-TILDEN CONTROVERSY</p>
-
-<p class="s3 center mtop1">BY VICTOR ROSEWATER</p>
-
-<p class="s5 center">Editor of “The Omaha Daily Bee”</p>
-
-<p class="p0 mtop2"><span class="drop-cap">I</span>&nbsp; HAVE been intensely interested in the articles appearing in
-T<span class="smaller">HE</span> C<span class="smaller">ENTURY</span> for May and June upon the Presidential election of 1876.
-While I could have no part in, nor recollection of, that controversy,
-acquaintance with two of the prominent figures in it some time ago led
-me to look into one phase of the question, and the facts concerning
-it brought out by the congressional investigation, which seem to me
-to bear vitally upon this discussion, though they have been entirely
-ignored. I refer to what was known as “the Oregon muddle,” being the
-attempt of the Democrats to secure one of the electoral votes of Oregon
-for Tilden, who had plainly no moral right to it.</p>
-
-<p>At the November election the lowest vote polled by a Republican
-Presidential elector in Oregon was 15,206, while the highest vote
-polled by a Democratic elector was only 14,157. After the returns were
-in, and it was discovered that the electoral college was to be so close
-that one or two votes might turn it one way or another, the Democrats
-ascertained that one of the Republican electors in Oregon was a deputy
-postmaster, and they at once set up the claim that he was ineligible,
-and that, as a consequence, the Democrat receiving the highest vote was
-entitled to serve.</p>
-
-<p>At that time Oregon was under Democratic control, had a Democratic
-governor, Democratic state officers, and one of the United States
-senators was a Democrat high in the national councils. Before he
-realized what was at stake, E. A. Cronin, the high man on the
-Democratic ticket, had announced publicly that he admitted his defeat,
-and that he would not serve even if he were declared to be elected and
-offered a certificate, something to that effect having been rumored as
-coming from the Democratic state officials.</p>
-
-<p>It was at this point that the managers of the Tilden campaign in New
-York came to the conclusion that something had to be done and done at
-once. A telegram was sent to Dr. George L. Miller at Omaha, then a
-member of the Democratic national committee and editor of the Omaha
-“Herald,” requesting him to proceed at once to Portland and get in
-touch with the party representatives there. Dr. Miller, it seemed, had
-already acted on his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_765" id="Page_765">[Pg 765]</a></span> own account, and had despatched in his stead a
-close, personal friend, and active Democrat, J. N. H. Patrick, also of
-Omaha, who had mining interests in Utah, and who was acquainted in the
-far West.</p>
-
-<p>According to the testimony adduced in the congressional investigation,
-which embodies as documentary evidence copies of all the telegraphic
-messages that passed to and fro in connection with the case, Patrick
-reached Portland in the latter part of November, and immediately called
-upon C. B. Bellinger, the chairman of the Democratic state committee
-for Oregon. According to Bellinger, Patrick informed him who he was and
-the object of his visit, and, as a result of the conference, promised
-to secure $10,000 to be placed at his disposal to pay the expenses of
-the contest. Cronin was sent for, and introduced to Patrick, who told
-him how important it was for him to serve, and intimated that if his
-vote should make Mr. Tilden President, he would be able to get about
-anything he wanted from Mr. Tilden. Three thousand dollars of the money
-transmitted to Oregon through Patrick’s agency was used to retain a
-firm of Republican lawyers to argue before the governor the question
-of issuing the certificate to Cronin, the selection of the particular
-firm, however, being guided by the fact that the senior partner was
-also the editor of the Portland “Oregonian,” with the hope that it
-would be induced “not to be too severe in criticizing” the Democratic
-machinations.</p>
-
-<p>Mr. Patrick evidently communicated with the governor at some time,
-because he telegraphed to Mr. Tilden, under date of December 1, a
-cipher translation of the following message:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p class="right mright2">December 1, 1876.</p>
-
-<p class="p0">To Hon. Sam. J. Tilden,</p>
-
-<p>15 Gramercy Park, New York City.</p>
-
-<p>I shall decide every point in the case of post-office elector in
-favor of the highest Democratic elector, and grant certificate
-accordingly on the morning of the sixth inst. Confidential.</p>
-
-<p class="right mright2">G<span class="smaller">OVERNOR</span>.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<p>In the investigation Governor Grover denied having sent this telegram
-or ever having seen it, but the fact stared every one in the face that
-just six days later Governor Grover did exactly what the telegram said
-he would do. The telegram was in the handwriting of Mr. Patrick.</p>
-
-<p>The other message upon which great stress was laid is reproduced in
-facsimile in the official report, and reads as follows:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p class="right mright2">Portland, November 28, 1876.</p>
-
-<p class="p0">To W. T. Pelton,</p>
-
-<p>15 Gramercy Park, New York City.</p>
-
-<p>By Vizier association innocuous to negligence cunning minutely
-previously readmit doltish to purchase afar act with cunning afar
-sacristy unweighed afar pointer tigress cuttle superannuated
-syllabus dilatoriness misapprehension contraband Kountze bisulcous
-top usher spiniferous answer.</p>
-
-<p class="right mright2">J. N. H. P<span class="smaller">ATRICK</span>.</p>
-
-<p>I fully endorse this.</p>
-
-<p class="right mright2">J<span class="smaller">AMES</span> K.
-K<span class="smaller">ELLY</span>.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<p>The explanation of this conglomeration of words is perhaps best had by
-quoting directly from the congressional report:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>It appears from the testimony of Alfred B. Hinman of Detroit,
-Michigan, that in 1874, he, Hinman, made the acquaintance of J. N.
-H. Patrick at Salt Lake City; that he there entered into business
-relations with him in connection with mining interests in Utah;
-that at the time Mr. Patrick gave him a small dictionary entitled
-“The Household English Dictionary, London. T. Nelson &amp; Sons, Pater
-Noster Row, Edinburgh and New York, 1872,” to be used by them as
-cipher in their business dispatches. That this dictionary, which
-was produced by the witness, Hinman, had two columns of words on
-each page; that the key to this cipher as used by Patrick and the
-witness, Hinman, was as follows: In sending a dispatch the first
-word of which in translation would, for instance be “every,” the
-word directly opposite this in the next column would be taken as
-the cipher; and so on through the whole dispatch.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<p>It was, however, shown that the cipher-despatches in this case could
-not be translated from the dictionary by adopting the key of taking the
-corresponding word on the opposite column, but in every instance they
-could be translated from the dictionary by taking the corresponding
-word in the columns eight columns ahead. It further appeared from the
-testimony, and no attempt was made to impeach it, or the translation
-made in this way, or to con<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_766" id="Page_766">[Pg 766]</a></span>tradict the claim that all these
-cipher-despatches were sent by this dictionary or its duplicate in
-accordance with the key as above stated,&mdash;and, besides, Pelton, Kelly,
-Bellinger, and Miller all testified that the despatches were made up
-from a dictionary cipher,&mdash;that the translation of the despatch just
-quoted is as follows:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p class="right mright2">Portland, November 28, 1876.</p>
-
-<p class="p0">To W. T. Pelton,</p>
-
-<p>15 Gramercy Park, New York City.</p>
-
-<p>Certificate will be issued to one democrat. Must purchase a
-republican elector to recognize and act with democrats and secure
-the vote and prevent trouble. Deposit $10,000 to my credit with
-Kountze Brothers, Wall street. Answer.</p>
-
-<p class="right mright2">J. N. H. P<span class="smaller">ATRICK</span>.</p>
-
-<p>I fully endorse this.</p>
-
-<p class="right mright2">J<span class="smaller">AMES</span> K.
-K<span class="smaller">ELLY</span>.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<p>Mr. Patrick, after having concluded his arrangements with the local
-representatives of the party in Oregon, and having provided the money
-necessary for them to carry out the agreed plan, seems to have dropped
-out of the negotiations.</p>
-
-<p>Governor Grover, as promised, decided the contest against the
-Republican elector, and in conjunction with the secretary of state
-had the certificate of election made out for the two uncontested
-Republicans and Cronin, the Democrat. These certificates were made out
-in triplicate, and were all delivered to Cronin, copies being refused
-the Republican electors. When the time came for the electoral college
-to meet and vote, the three Republicans got together, the contested
-member, Watts, having in the interval resigned his post-office
-position, and, after declaring the vacancy, reappointed Watts, who
-was then eligible to serve as elector, the three casting the vote for
-Rutherford B. Hayes.</p>
-
-<p>Cronin and the crowd of Democrats who had assembled simultaneously
-moved over to the other end of the room, and under pretense that the
-Republicans refused to act with him, Cronin called in another Democrat,
-a man named Miller, and went through the form of appointing him to fill
-a vacancy, the two together following this up by appointing a third
-Democrat, Parker, to fill up the college, although neither of these two
-were candidates or were voted for at the election.</p>
-
-<p>The three Democrats thereupon formally organized and proceeded to cast
-a ballot giving two votes to Rutherford B. Hayes, and one to Samuel J.
-Tilden. They made up the forms certifying to these facts, and appointed
-Cronin to carry the documents to Washington.</p>
-
-<p>The disinterestedness of Cronin was further evinced by the fact that,
-although he was entitled to draw mileage and expenses as messenger,
-he refused to go until he was paid $3000 in gold by the Democratic
-campaign managers to reimburse him for his time and expenses, the money
-being part of that supplied from the national committee at New York
-under the arrangements made by Mr. Patrick.</p>
-
-<p>“The Oregon muddle” furnished one of the disputed points passed upon by
-the electoral commission, and the three votes of Oregon were finally
-recorded for the Republican candidate who was later installed as
-President.</p>
-
-<p>Mr. J. N. H. Patrick died here about eight years ago. Dr. George L.
-Miller is still alive, but his now failing mind will prevent him
-throwing further light on the subject. The point which, in my judgment,
-ought to be emphasized, is that if the Democrats in charge of Mr.
-Tilden’s political fortunes at that time believed that he had carried,
-and was entitled to, the votes of Florida and Louisiana, they would not
-have set so high a value upon, or have gone to so questionable lengths
-to obtain, this lone electoral vote in Oregon; nor have they accused
-the Republicans of doing anything reprehensible on behalf of Hayes
-which by the record was not matched by their performance in Oregon.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-   <a id="i_766" name="i_766">
-   <img class="mtop2 mbot3" src="images/i_766.jpg" alt="Tailpiece Oregon Muddle" /></a>
-</div>
-
-<div class="section mtop3">
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-   <a id="i_767" name="i_767">
-   <img class="mtop1" src="images/i_767.jpg" alt="" /></a>
-  <p class="caption1">Color-Tone, engraved for
-    T<span class="smaller">HE</span> C<span class="smaller">ENTURY</span> by H. Davidson</p>
-  <p class="caption">LOUISE</p>
-  <p class="caption1">FROM THE TINTED MARBLE BUST BY EVELYN
-   BEATRICE LONGMAN</p>
-  <p class="linkedimage"><a href="images/i_767_large.jpg">&#10063;<br />
-  <span class="smaller">LARGER IMAGE</span></a></p>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_767" id="Page_767">[Pg 767]</a></span></p>
-
-<div class="figcenter padtop3">
-   <a id="i_767a" name="i_767a">
-   <img class="mtop3 mbot1" src="images/i_767a.jpg"
-      alt="Headpiece T. Tembarom" /></a>
-</div>
-
-<h2 class="nopad nobreak" id="T_TEMBAROM">T. TEMBAROM</h2>
-
-<p class="s3 center">BY FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT</p>
-
-<p class="s6 center">Author of “That Lass o’ Lowrie’s,” “The Shuttle,” etc.</p>
-
-<p class="s6 center mbot2">WITH DECORATIVE PICTURES BY CHARLES S. CHAPMAN</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<h3 class="nobreak" id="T_TEMBAROM_XXVI">CHAPTER XXVI</h3>
-
-<div class="dc">
-   <a id="i_767b" name="i_767b">
-   <img class="mtop-2 w10em" src="images/i_767b.jpg" alt="T" /></a>
-</div>
-
-<p class="p0"><span class="hide-first1">T</span>HE neighborhood of Temple Barholm was not, upon the whole, a brilliant
-one. Indeed, it had been frankly designated by the casual guest as dull.</p>
-
-<p>Most of the residents took their sober season in London, the men of the
-family returning gladly to the pheasants, the women not regretfully
-to their gardens and tennis, because their successes in town had not
-been particularly delirious. The guests who came to them were generally
-as respectable and law-abiding as themselves, and introduced no
-iconoclastic diversions. For the greater portion of the year, in fact,
-diners out were of the neighborhood and met the neighborhood, and were
-reduced to discussing neighborhood topics, which was not, on the whole,
-a fevered joy.</p>
-
-<p>In such circumstances it cannot be found amazing that a situation such
-as Temple Barholm presented should provide rich food for conversation,
-supposition, argument, and humorous comment.</p>
-
-<p>T. Tembarom himself, after the duke had established him, furnished an
-unlimited source of interest. His household became a perennial fount of
-quiet discussion. Lady Mallowe and her daughter were the members of it
-who met with the most attention. They appeared to have become members
-of it rather than visitors. Her ladyship had plainly elected to extend
-her stay even beyond the period to which a relative might feel entitled
-to hospitality. She was not going away, the neighborhood decided, until
-she had achieved that which she really had come to accomplish. Lady
-Joan would be obliged to stay also, if her mother intended that she
-should. But the poor American&mdash;What was he going to do in the end? What
-was she going to do? What was Lady Mallowe going to do if there was no
-end at all? He was not as unhappy-looking a lover as one might have
-expected, they said. He kept up his spirits wonderfully. Perhaps<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_768" id="Page_768">[Pg 768]</a></span> she
-was not always as icily indifferent to him as she chose to appear in
-public.</p>
-
-<p>So they talked it over as they looked on.</p>
-
-<p>“How they gossip! How delightfully they gossip!” said the duke. “But it
-is such a perfect subject. They have never been so enthralled before.
-Dear young man! how grateful we ought to be for him!”</p>
-
-<p>One of the most discussed features of the case was the duke’s own
-cultivation of the central figure. There was an actual oddity about
-it. He drove from Stone Hover to Temple Barholm repeatedly. He invited
-Tembarom to the castle and had long talks with him&mdash;long, comfortable
-talks in secluded, delightful rooms or under great trees on the lawn.
-He wanted to hear anecdotes of his past, to draw him on to giving his
-points of view. When he spoke of him to his daughters, he called him
-“T. Tembarom,” but the slight derision of his earlier tone modified
-itself.</p>
-
-<p>“That delightful young man will shortly become my closest intimate,” he
-said. “He not only keeps up my spirits, but he opens up vistas. Vistas
-after a man’s seventy-second birthday!”</p>
-
-<p>“I like him first rate,” Tembarom said to Miss Alicia. “I liked him the
-minute he got up laughing like an old sport when he fell out of the
-pony carriage.”</p>
-
-<p>As he became more intimate with him, he liked him still better.
-Obscured though it was by airy, elderly persiflage, he began to come
-upon a background of stability and points of view wholly to be relied
-on in his new acquaintance. It had evolved itself out of long and
-varied experience with the aid of brilliant mentality. The old peer’s
-reasons were always logical. He laughed at most things, but at a few he
-did not laugh at all. After several of the long conversations Tembarom
-began to say to himself that this seemed like a man you need not be
-afraid to talk things over with&mdash;things you didn’t want to speak of to
-everybody.</p>
-
-<p>“Seems to me,” he said thoughtfully to Miss Alicia, “he’s an old
-fellow you could tie to. I’ve got on to one thing when I’ve listened
-to him: he talks all he wants to and laughs a lot, but he never gives
-himself away. He wouldn’t give another fellow away either if he said he
-wouldn’t. He knows how not to.”</p>
-
-<p>There was an afternoon on which, during a drive they took together, the
-duke was enlightened as to several points which had given him cause for
-reflection, among others the story beloved of Captain Palliser and his
-audiences.</p>
-
-<p>“I guess you’ve known a good many women,” T. Tembarom remarked on this
-occasion after a few minutes of thought. “Living all over the world as
-you’ve done, you’d be likely to come across a whole raft of them one
-time and another.”</p>
-
-<p>“A whole raft of them, one time and another,” agreed the duke. “Yes.”</p>
-
-<p>“You’ve liked them, haven’t you?”</p>
-
-<p>“Immensely. Sometimes a trifle disastrously. Find me a more absolutely
-interesting object in the universe than a woman&mdash;any woman, and I
-will devote the remainder of my declining years to the study of it,”
-answered his grace.</p>
-
-<p>He said it with a decision which made T. Tembarom turn to look at him,
-and after his look decide to proceed.</p>
-
-<p>“Have you ever known a bit of a slim thing”&mdash;he made an odd embracing
-gesture with his arm&mdash;“the size that you could pick up with one
-hand and set on your knee as if she was a child”&mdash;the duke remained
-still, knowing this was only the beginning, and pricking up his ears
-as he took a rapid kaleidoscopic view of all the “Ladies” in the
-neighborhood, and as hastily waved them aside&mdash;“a bit of a thing that
-some way seems to mean it <i>all</i> to you&mdash;and <i>moves</i> the world?” The
-conclusion was one which brought the incongruous touch of maturity into
-his face.</p>
-
-<p>“Not one of the ‘Ladies,’” the duke was mentally summing the matter
-up. “Certainly not Lady Joan, after all. Not, I think, even the young
-person in the department store.”</p>
-
-<p>He leaned back in his corner the better to inspect his companion
-directly.</p>
-
-<p>“You have, I see,” he replied quietly. “Once I myself did.” He had
-cried out, “Ah! Heloïse!” though he had laughed at himself when he
-seemed facing his ridiculous tragedy.</p>
-
-<p>“Yes,” confessed T. Tembarom. “I met her at the boarding-house where I
-lived. Her father was a Lancashire man and an inventor. I guess you’ve
-heard of him; his name is Joseph Hutchinson.”</p>
-
-<p>The whole country had heard of him; more countries, indeed, than one
-had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_769" id="Page_769">[Pg 769]</a></span> heard. He was the man who was going to make his fortune in America
-because T. Tembarom had stood by him in his extremity. He would make a
-fortune in America and another in England and possibly several others
-on the Continent. He had learned to read in the village school, and the
-girl was his daughter.</p>
-
-<p>“Yes,” replied the duke.</p>
-
-<p>“I don’t know whether the one you knew had that quiet little way of
-seeing right straight into a thing, and making you see it, too,” said
-Tembarom.</p>
-
-<p>“She had,” answered the duke, and an odd expression wavered in his
-eyes because he was looking backward across forty years which seemed a
-hundred.</p>
-
-<p>“That’s what I meant by moving the world,” T. Tembarom went on. “You
-know she’s <i>right</i>, and you’ve got to do what she says, if you love
-her.”</p>
-
-<p>“And you always do,” said the duke&mdash;“always and forever. There are very
-few. They are the elect.”</p>
-
-<p>T. Tembarom took it gravely.</p>
-
-<p>“I said to her once that there wasn’t more than one of her in the world
-because there couldn’t be enough to make two of that kind. I wasn’t
-joshing either; I meant it. It’s her quiet little voice and her quiet,
-babyfied eyes that get you where you can’t move. And it’s something
-else you don’t know anything about. It’s her never doing anything for
-herself, but just doing it because it’s the right thing for you.”</p>
-
-<p>The duke’s chin had sunk a little on his breast, and looking back
-across the hundred years, he forgot for a moment where he was.</p>
-
-<p>“Ah! Heloïse!” he sighed unconsciously.</p>
-
-<p>“What did you say?” asked T. Tembarom. The duke came back.</p>
-
-<p>“I was thinking of the time when I was nine and twenty,” he answered.
-“It was not yesterday nor even the day before. The one I knew died when
-she was twenty-four.”</p>
-
-<p>“Died!” said Tembarom. “Good Lord!” He dropped his head and even
-changed color. “A fellow can’t get on to a thing like that. It seems as
-if it couldn’t happen. Suppose&mdash;” he caught his breath hard and then
-pulled himself up&mdash;“Nothing could happen to her before she knew that
-I’ve proved what I said&mdash;just proved it, and done every single thing
-she told me to do!”</p>
-
-<p>“I am sure you have,” the duke said.</p>
-
-<p>“It’s because of that I began to say this.” Tembarom spoke hurriedly
-that he might thrust away the sudden dark thought. “You’re a man, and
-I’m a man; far away ahead of me as you are, you’re a man, too. I was
-crazy to get her to marry me and come here with me, and she wouldn’t.”</p>
-
-<p>The duke’s eyes lighted anew.</p>
-
-<p>“She had her reasons,” he said.</p>
-
-<p>“She laid ’em out as if she’d been my mother instead of a little
-red-headed angel. She didn’t waste a word,&mdash;just told me what I was up
-against. She’d lived in the village with her grandmother, and she knew.
-She said I’d got to come and find out for myself what no one else could
-teach me. She told me about the kind of girls I’d see&mdash;beauties that
-were different from anything I’d ever seen before. And it was up to me
-to see all of them&mdash;the best of them.”</p>
-
-<p>“Ladies?” interjected the duke, gently.</p>
-
-<p>“Yes. With titles like those in novels, she said, and clothes like the
-‘Woman’s Pictorial.’ The kind of girls, she said, that would make her
-look like a housemaid. Housemaid be darned!” he exclaimed, suddenly
-growing hot. “I’ve seen the whole lot of them, I’ve done my darndest to
-get next, and there’s not one&mdash;” he stopped short. “Why should any of
-them look at me, anyhow?” he added suddenly.</p>
-
-<p>“That was not her point,” remarked the duke. “She wanted you to look at
-them, and you have looked.” T. Tembarom’s eagerness was inspiring to
-behold.</p>
-
-<p>“I have, haven’t I?” he cried. “That was what I wanted to ask you. I’ve
-done as she said. I haven’t shirked a thing. I’ve followed them around
-when I knew they hadn’t any use on earth for me. Some of them have
-handed me the lemon pretty straight. Why shouldn’t they? But I don’t
-believe she knew how tough it might be for a fellow sometimes.”</p>
-
-<p>“No, she did not,” the duke said.</p>
-
-<p>To his hearer Palliser’s story became an amusing thing, read in the
-light of this most delicious frankness. It was Palliser himself who
-had played the fool, and not T. Tembarom, who had simply known what
-he wanted, and had, with business<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_770" id="Page_770">[Pg 770]</a></span>like directness, applied himself to
-finding a method of obtaining it. The young women he gave his time to
-must be “Ladies” because Miss Hutchinson had required it from him. The
-female flower of the noble houses had been passed in review before
-him to practise upon, so to speak. The handsomer they were, the more
-dangerously charming, the better Miss Hutchinson would be pleased. And
-he had been regarded as a presumptuous aspirant! It was a situation for
-a comedy. But the “Ladies” would not enjoy it if they were told. It was
-also not the Duke of Stone who would tell them.</p>
-
-<p>In courts he had learned to wear a composed countenance when he was
-prompted to smile, and he wore one now. He enjoyed the society of T.
-Tembarom increasingly every hour. He provided him with every joy.</p>
-
-<p>Their drive was a long one, and they talked a good deal. They talked
-of the Hutchinsons, of the invention, of the business “deals” Tembarom
-had entered into at the outset, and of their tremendously encouraging
-result. It was not mere rumor that Hutchinson would end by being a
-rich man. The girl would be an heiress. How complex her position would
-be! And being of the elect who unknowingly bear with them the power
-that “moves the world,” how would she affect Temple Barholm and its
-surrounding neighborhood?</p>
-
-<p>“I wish to God she was here now!” exclaimed Tembarom, suddenly.
-“There’s times when you want a little thing like that just to talk
-things over with, just to ask, because you&mdash;you’re dead sure she’d
-never lose her head and give herself away without knowing she was doing
-it. It’s the keeping your mouth shut that’s so hard for most people,
-the not saying a darned thing, whatever happens, till just the right
-time.”</p>
-
-<p>“Women cannot often do it,” said the duke. “Very few men can.”</p>
-
-<p>“You’re right,” Tembarom answered, and there was a trifle of anxiety
-in his tone. “There’s women, just the best kind, that you daren’t tell
-a big thing to. Not that they’d mean to give it away,&mdash;perhaps they
-wouldn’t know when they did it,&mdash;but they’d feel so anxious they’d
-get&mdash;they’d get&mdash;”</p>
-
-<p>“Rattled,” put in the duke, and knew of whom he was thinking. He saw
-Miss Alicia’s delicate, timid face as he spoke.</p>
-
-<p>T. Tembarom laughed.</p>
-
-<p>“That’s just it,” he answered. “They wouldn’t go back on you for
-worlds, but&mdash;well, you have to be careful with them.”</p>
-
-<p>“He’s got something on his mind,” mentally commented the duke. “He is
-wondering if he will tell it to me.”</p>
-
-<p>“And there’s times when you’d give half you’ve got to be able to talk
-a thing out and put it up to some one else for a while. I could do it
-with her. That’s why I said I wish to God that she was here.”</p>
-
-<p>“You have learned to know how to keep still,” the duke said. “So have
-I. We learned it in different schools, but we have both learned.”</p>
-
-<p>As he was saying the words, he thought he was going to hear something
-when he had finished saying them; he knew that he would without a
-doubt. T. Tembarom made a quick move in his seat; he lost a shade of
-color and cleared his throat as he bent forward, casting a glance at
-the backs of the coachman and footman on the high seat above them.</p>
-
-<p>“Can these fellows hear me?” he asked.</p>
-
-<p>“No,” the duke answered; “if you speak as you are speaking now.”</p>
-
-<p>“You are the biggest man about here,” the young man went on. “You
-stand for everything that English people care for, and you were born
-knowing all the things I don’t. I’ve been carrying a big load for quite
-a while, and I guess I’m not big enough to handle it alone, perhaps.
-Anyhow, I want to be sure I’m not making fool mistakes. The worst of it
-is that I’ve got to keep still if I’m right, and I’ve got to keep still
-if I’m wrong. I’ve got to keep still, anyhow.”</p>
-
-<p>“I learned to hold my tongue in places where, if I had not held it, I
-might have plunged nations into bloodshed,” the duke said. “Tell me all
-you choose.”</p>
-
-<p>As a result of which, by the time their drive had ended and they
-returned to Stone Hover, he had told him, and the duke sat in his
-corner of the carriage with an unusual light in his eyes and a flush of
-somewhat excited color on his cheek.</p>
-
-<p>“You’re a queer fellow, T. Tembarom,” he said, when they parted in
-the drawing-room after taking tea.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_771" id="Page_771">[Pg 771]</a></span> “You exhilarate me. You make me
-laugh. If I were an emotional person, you would at moments make me
-cry. There’s an affecting uprightness about you. You’re rather a fine
-fellow too, ’pon my life.” Putting a waxen, gout-knuckled old hand on
-his shoulder, and giving him a friendly push which was half a pat, he
-added, “You are, by God!”</p>
-
-<p>After his guest had left him, the duke stood for some minutes gazing
-into the fire with a complicated smile and the air of a man who finds
-himself quaintly enriched.</p>
-
-<p>“I have had ambitions in the course of my existence&mdash;several of them,”
-he said, “but even in over-vaulting moments never have I aspired to
-such an altitude as this&mdash;to be, as it were, part of a melodrama. One
-feels that one scarcely deserves it.”</p>
-
-<div class="section">
-
-<h3 class="nobreak" id="T_TEMBAROM_XXVII">CHAPTER XXVII</h3>
-
-<div class="dc">
-   <a id="i_771" name="i_771">
-   <img class="mtop-2 w10em" src="images/i_771.jpg" alt="M" /></a>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<p class="p0"><span class="hide-first1">M</span>R. TEMPLE BARHOLM seems in better spirits,” Lady Mallowe said to
-Captain Palliser as they walked on the terrace in the starlit dusk
-after dinner.</p>
-
-<p>Captain Palliser took his cigar from his mouth and looked at the
-glowing end of it.</p>
-
-<p>“He mayn’t exactly like all this, but he’s getting something out of it.”</p>
-
-<p>“He is not getting much of what he evidently wants most. I am out of
-all patience,” said Lady Mallowe. “Joan treads him in the mire and
-sails about professing to be conducting herself flawlessly. She is too
-clever for me,” she added with bitterness.</p>
-
-<p>Palliser laughed softly and said:</p>
-
-<p>“She has got something up her sleeve, and so has he.”</p>
-
-<p>“He!” Lady Mallowe quite ejaculated the word. “She always has. That’s
-her abominable secretive way. But he! T. Tembarom with something up his
-sleeve! One can’t imagine it.”</p>
-
-<p>“Almost everybody has. I found that out long years ago,” said Palliser,
-looking at his cigar end again as if consulting it. “Since I arrived
-at the conclusion, I always take it for granted, and look out for it.
-I’ve become rather clever in following such things up, and I have taken
-an unusual interest in T. Tembarom from the first.”</p>
-
-<p>Lady Mallowe turned her handsome face, much softened by an enwreathing
-gauze scarf, toward him anxiously.</p>
-
-<p>“Do you think his depression, or whatever it is, means Joan?” she asked.</p>
-
-<p>“If he is depressed by her, you need not be discouraged,” smiled
-Palliser. “The time to lose hope would be when, despite her
-ingenuities, he became entirely cheerful. But,” he added after a pause,
-“I have an idea there is some other little thing.”</p>
-
-<p>“Do you suppose that some young woman he has left behind in New York
-is demanding her rights?” said Lady Mallowe, with annoyance. “That is
-exactly the kind of thing Joan would like to hear, and so entirely
-natural. Some shop-girl or other.”</p>
-
-<p>“Quite natural, as you say; but he would scarcely be running up to
-London and consulting Scotland Yard about her,” Palliser answered.</p>
-
-<p>“Scotland Yard!” ejaculated his companion.</p>
-
-<p>“Scotland Yard has also come to him,” he went on. “Did you chance to
-see a red-faced person who spent a morning with him last week?”</p>
-
-<p>“He looked like a butcher, and I thought he might be one of his
-friends,” Lady Mallowe said.</p>
-
-<p>“I recognized the man. He is an extremely clever detective, much
-respected for his resources in the matter of following clues which are
-so attenuated as to be scarcely clues at all.”</p>
-
-<p>“Clues have no connection with Joan,” said Lady Mallowe, still more
-annoyed. “All London knows her miserable story.”</p>
-
-<p>“Have you&mdash;” Captain Palliser’s tone was thoughtful&mdash;“has any one ever
-seen Strangeways?”</p>
-
-<p>“No. Can you imagine anything more absurdly romantic? A creature
-without a memory, shut up in a remote wing of a place like this, as if
-he were the Man with the Iron Mask. Romance is not quite compatible
-with T. Tembarom.”</p>
-
-<p>“He leaves everything to one’s imagination,” remarked Palliser.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_772" id="Page_772">[Pg 772]</a></span> “All
-one knows is that he isn’t a relative; that he isn’t mad, but only
-too nervous to see or be seen. Queer situation. I’ve found there is
-always a reason for things; the queerer they are, the more sure it is
-that there’s a reason. What is the reason Strangeways is kept here, and
-where would a detective come in? Just on general principles I’m rather
-going into the situation. There’s a reason, and it would be amusing to
-find it out. Don’t you think so?”</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-   <a id="i_772" name="i_772">
-   <img class="mtop1 mbot1" src="images/i_772.jpg"
-      alt="A Walk on the Terrace" /></a>
-</div>
-
-<p>He spoke casually, and Lady Mallowe’s answer was casual, though she
-knew from experience that he was not as casual as he chose to seem. He
-was clever; and Temple Barholm as the estate of a distant relative and
-T. Tembarom as its owner were not assets to deal with indifferently.</p>
-
-<p>“It’s quite natural that you should feel an interest,” she answered.
-“But the romantic stranger is too romantic, though I will own Scotland
-Yard is a little odd.”</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, that is exactly what I thought,” said Palliser.</p>
-
-<p>He had in fact thought a good deal and followed the thing up a good
-deal in a quiet amateur way, though with annoyingly little result.
-Occasionally he had felt rather a fool for his pains, because he
-had been led to so few facts of importance and had found himself
-so often confronted by T. Tembarom’s entirely frank grin. His own
-mental attitude was not a complex one. Lady Mallowe’s summing up
-had been correct enough on the whole. Temple Barholm ought to be
-a substantial asset, regarded in its connection with its present
-owner. Little dealings in stocks&mdash;sometimes rather large ones when
-luck was with him&mdash;had brought desirable returns to Captain Palliser
-throughout a number of years. Just now he was taking an interest in
-a somewhat imposing scheme, or what might prove an imposing one if
-it were managed properly and presented to the right persons. If T.
-Tembarom had been sufficiently lured by the spirit of speculation to
-plunge into old Hutchinson’s affair, as he evidently had done, he
-was plainly of the temperament attracted by the game of chance. There
-had been no reason but that of temperament which could have led him
-to invest. He had found himself suddenly a moneyed man and had liked
-the game. Never having so much as heard of Little Ann Hutchinson,
-Captain Palliser not unnaturally argued after this wise. There seemed
-no valid reason why, if a vague invention had allured, a less vague
-scheme, managed in a more businesslike manner, should not. This
-Mexican silver-and-copper-mine was a dazzling thing to talk about.
-He could go into details. He had, in fact, allowed a good deal of
-detail to trail through his conversation at times. It had not been
-difficult to accomplish this in his talks with Lady Mallowe in his
-host’s presence. Lady Mallowe was always ready to talk of mines, gold,
-silver, or copper. It happened at times that one could manage to
-secure a few shares without the actual payment of money. There were
-little hospitalities or social amiabilities now and then which might
-be regarded as value received. So she had made it easy for Captain
-Palliser to talk.</p>
-
-<p>T. Tembarom had at the outset seemed to present, so to speak, no
-surface. Palliser had soon ceased to be at all sure that his social
-ambitions were to be relied on as a lever. Besides which, when the old
-Duke of Stone took delighted possession of him, dined with him, drove
-with him, sat and gossiped with him by the hour, there was not much one
-could do for him. Strangeways had at first meant only eccentricity. The
-veriest chance had led Palliser to find himself regarding the opening
-up of possible vistas.</p>
-
-<p>From a certain window in a certain wing of the house a much-praised
-view was to be seen. Nothing was more natural than that on the occasion
-of a curious sunset Palliser should, in coming from his room, decide to
-take a look at it. As he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_773" id="Page_773">[Pg 773]</a></span> passed through a corridor Pearson came out of
-a room near him.</p>
-
-<p>“How is Mr. Strangeways to-day?” Palliser asked.</p>
-
-<p>“Not quite so well, I am afraid, sir,” was the answer.</p>
-
-<p>“Sorry to hear it,” replied Palliser, and passed on.</p>
-
-<p>When returning, he walked somewhat slowly down the corridor. As he
-turned into it he thought he heard the murmur of voices. One was that
-of T. Tembarom, and he was evidently using argument. It sounded as if
-he were persuading some one to agree with him, and the persuasion was
-earnest. He was not arguing with Pearson or a housemaid. Why was he
-arguing with his pensioner? His voice was as low as it was eager, and
-the other man’s replies were not to be heard. Only just after Palliser
-had passed the door there broke out an appeal which was a sort of cry.</p>
-
-<p>“No! My God, no! Don’t send me away! Don’t send me away!”</p>
-
-<p>One could not, even if so inclined, stand and listen near a door while
-servants might chance to be wandering about. Palliser went on his way
-with a sense of having been slightly startled.</p>
-
-<p>“He wants to get rid of him, and the fellow is giving him trouble,” he
-said to himself. “That voice is not American. Not in the least.” It set
-him thinking and observing. When Tembarom wore the look which was not a
-look of depression, but of something more puzzling, he thought that he
-could guess at its reason. By the time he talked with Lady Mallowe he
-had gone much further than he chose to let her know.</p>
-
-<div class="section">
-
-<h3 class="nobreak" id="T_TEMBAROM_XXVIII">CHAPTER XXVIII</h3>
-
-<div class="dc">
-   <a id="i_773" name="i_773">
-   <img class="mtop-2 w10em" src="images/i_773.jpg" alt="T" /></a>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<p class="p0"><span class="hide-first1">T</span>HE popularity of Captain Palliser’s story of the “Ladies” had been
-great at the outset, but with the passage of time it had oddly waned.
-That the Duke of Stone had immensely taken up Mr. Temple Barholm had of
-course resulted in his being accepted in such a manner gave him many
-opportunities to encounter one and all. He appeared at dinners, teas,
-and garden parties. Miss Alicia, whom he had in some occult manner
-impressed upon people until they found themselves actually paying a
-sort of court to her, was always his companion.</p>
-
-<p>“One realizes one cannot possibly leave her out of anything,” had
-been said. “He has somehow established her as if she were his mother
-or his aunt&mdash;or his interpreter. And such clothes, my dear, one
-doesn’t often behold. Worth and Paquin and Doucet must go sleepless
-for weeks to invent them. They are without a flaw in shade or line
-or texture.” Which was true, because Mrs. Mellish of the Bond Street
-shop had become quite obsessed by her idea and committed extravagances
-Miss Alicia offered up contrite prayers to atone for, while Tembarom,
-simply chortling in his glee, signed checks to pay for their exquisite
-embodiment. That he was not reluctant to avail himself of social
-opportunities was made manifest by the fact that he never refused an
-invitation. He appeared upon any spot to which hospitality bade him,
-and unashamedly placed himself on record as a neophyte upon almost
-all occasions. In a brief period of time, however, every young woman
-who might have expected to find herself an object of such ambitions
-realized that his methods of approach and attack were not marked by the
-usual characteristics of aspirants of his class. He evidently desired
-to see and be seen. He presented himself, as it were, for inspection
-and consideration, but while he was attentive, he did not press
-attentions upon any one. He did not make advances in the ordinary sense
-of the word. He never essayed flattering or even admiring remarks. He
-said queer things at which one often could not help but laugh, but he
-somehow wore no air of saying them with the intention of offering them
-as witticisms which might be regarded as allurements. He did not ogle,
-he did not simper or shuffle about nervously and turn red or pale, as
-eager and awkward youths have a habit of doing under the stress of
-unrequited admiration. He conducted himself with a detached good nature
-which seemed to take but small account of attitudes less unoffending
-than his own.</p>
-
-<p>“He is not in the least forward,” Bea<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_774" id="Page_774">[Pg 774]</a></span>trice Talchester said, the time
-arriving when she and her sisters occasionally talked him over with
-their special friends, the Granthams, “and he is not forever under
-one’s feet, as the pushing sort usually is.”</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-   <a id="i_774" name="i_774">
-   <img class="mtop1 mbot1" src="images/i_774.jpg"
-      alt="A Game of Croquet" /></a>
-</div>
-
-<p>“But he never declines an invitation. There is no doubt that he wants
-to see people,” said Lady Honora, with the pretty little nose and the
-dimples. She had ceased to turn up the pretty little nose, and she
-showed a dimple as she added: “Gwynedd is tremendously taken with him.
-She is teaching him to play croquet. They spend hours together.”</p>
-
-<p>“He’s beginning to play a pretty good game,” said Gwynedd. “He’s not
-stupid, at all events.”</p>
-
-<p>“I don’t understand him, or I don’t understand Captain Palliser’s
-story,” Amabel Grantham argued. “Lucy and I are quite out of the
-running, but I honestly believe that he takes as much notice of us as
-he does of any of you.”</p>
-
-<p>“He said, however, that the things that mattered were not only titles,
-but looks. He asked how many of us were ‘lookers.’ Don’t be modest,
-Amabel. Neither you nor Lucy are out of the running,” Beatrice amiably
-suggested.</p>
-
-<p>“There may be a sort of explanation,” Honora put the idea forward
-somewhat thoughtfully. “Captain Palliser insists that he is much
-shrewder than he seems. Perhaps he is cautious, and is looking us all
-over before he commits himself.”</p>
-
-<p>“He is a Temple Barholm, after all,” said Gwynedd, with boldness.
-“He’s rather good-looking. He has the nicest white teeth and the most
-cheering grin I ever saw, and he’s as ‘rich as grease is,’ as I heard a
-housemaid say one day. I’m getting quite resigned to his voice, or it
-is improving, I don’t know which.</p>
-
-<p>“But,” added Lady Gwynedd, “he is not going to commit himself to any of
-us, incredible as it may seem. The one person he stares at sometimes is
-Joan Fayre, and he only looks at her as if he were curious and wouldn’t
-object to finding out why she treats him so outrageously. He isn’t
-annoyed; he’s only curious.”</p>
-
-<p>“He’s a likable thing,” said Amabel Grantham. “He’s even rather a dear.
-I’ve begun to like him myself.”</p>
-
-<p>“I hear you are learning to play croquet,” the Duke of Stone remarked
-to him a day or so later. “How do you like it?”</p>
-
-<p>“Lady Gwynedd Talchester is teaching me,” Tembarom answered. “I’d learn
-to iron shirt-waists if she would give me lessons. She’s one of the two
-that have dimples,” he added, reflection in his tone. “I guess that’ll
-count. Shouldn’t you think it would?”</p>
-
-<p>“Miss Hutchinson?” queried the duke.</p>
-
-<p>Tembarom nodded.</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, it’s always her,” he answered without a ray of humor. “I just
-want to stack ’em up.”</p>
-
-<p>“You are doing it,” the duke replied with a slightly twisted mouth.
-There were, in fact, moments when he might have fallen into fits of
-laughter while Tembarom was seriousness itself. “I’m doing my stunt, of
-course, but I like them,” said he. “They’re mighty nice to me when you
-consider what they’re up against. And these two with the dimples, Lady
-Gwynedd and Lady Honora, are just peaches.”</p>
-
-<p>They were having one of their odd long talks under a particularly
-splendid copper beech which provided the sheltered out-of-door corner
-his grace liked best. When they took their seats together in this
-retreat, it was mysteriously understood that they were settling
-themselves down to en<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_775" id="Page_775">[Pg 775]</a></span>joyment of their own, and must not be disturbed.</p>
-
-<p>“What dear papa talks to him about, and what he talks about to dear
-papa,” Lady Celia had more than once murmured in her gently remote,
-high-nosed way, “I cannot possibly imagine. Sometimes when I have
-passed them on my way to the croquet lawn I have really seen them both
-look as absorbed as people in a play. Of course it is very good for
-papa. It has had quite a marked effect on his digestion. But isn’t it
-odd!”</p>
-
-<p>“I wish,” Lady Edith remarked almost wistfully, “that I could get on
-better with him myself conversationally. But I don’t know what to talk
-about, and it makes me nervous.”</p>
-
-<p>Their father, on the contrary, found in him unique resources, and this
-afternoon it occurred to him that he had never so far heard him express
-himself freely on the subject of Palliser. If led to do so, he would
-probably reveal that he had views of Captain Palliser of which he might
-not have been suspected, and the manner in which they would unfold
-themselves would more than probably be illuminating. The duke was, in
-fact, serenely sure that he required neither warning nor advice, and he
-had no intention of offering either. He wanted to hear the views.</p>
-
-<p>“Do you know,” he said as he stirred his tea, “I’ve been thinking about
-Palliser, and it has occurred to me more than once that I should like
-to hear just how he strikes you?”</p>
-
-<p>“What I got on to first was how I struck him,” answered Tembarom, with
-a reasonable air. “That was dead easy.”</p>
-
-<p>There was no hint of any vaunt of superior shrewdness. His was merely
-the level-toned manner of an observer of facts in detail.</p>
-
-<p>“He has given you an opportunity of seeing a good deal of him,” the
-duke added. “What do you gather from him&mdash;unless he has made up his
-mind that you shall not gather anything at all?”</p>
-
-<p>“A fellow like that couldn’t fix it that way, however much he wanted
-to,” Tembarom answered again reasonably. “Just his trying to do it
-would give him away.”</p>
-
-<p>“You mean you have gathered things?”</p>
-
-<p>“Oh, I’ve gathered enough, though I didn’t go after it. It hung on the
-bushes. Anyhow, it seemed to me that way. I guess you run up against
-that kind everywhere. There’s stacks of them in New York&mdash;different
-shapes and sizes.”</p>
-
-<p>“If you met a man of his particular shape and size in New York, how
-would you describe him?” the duke asked.</p>
-
-<p>“I should never have met him when I was there. He wouldn’t have come
-my way. He’d have been on Wall Street, doing high-class bucket-shop
-business, or he’d have had a swell office selling copper-mines&mdash;any old
-kind of mine that’s going to make ten million a minute, the sort of
-deal he’s in now. But I don’t believe you asked me because you thought
-I wasn’t on to him.”</p>
-
-<p>“Frankly speaking, no,” answered the duke. “Does he talk to you about
-the mammoth mines and the rubber forests?”</p>
-
-<p>“Say, that’s where he wins out with me,” Tembarom replied admiringly.
-“He gets in such fine work that I switch him on to it whenever I want
-cheering up. It makes me sort o’ forget things that worry me just to
-see a man act the part right up to the top notch the way he does it.
-The very way his clothes fit, the style he’s got his hair brushed, and
-that swell, careless lounge of his, are half of the make-up. You see,
-most of us couldn’t mistake him for anything else but just what he
-looks like&mdash;a gentleman visiting round among his friends and a million
-miles from wanting to butt in with business. The thing that first got
-me interested was watching how he slid in the sort of guff he wanted
-you to get worked up about and think over. Why, if I ’d been what I
-look like to him, he’d have had my pile long ago, and he wouldn’t be
-loafing round here any more.”</p>
-
-<p>“What do you think you look like to him?” his host inquired.</p>
-
-<p>“I look as if I’d eat out of his hand,” Tembarom answered, quite
-unbiased by any touch of wounded vanity. “Why shouldn’t I? And I’m not
-trying to wake him up, either. I like to look that way to him and to
-his sort. It gives me a chance to watch and get wise to things. He’s a
-high-school education in himself. I like to hear him talk. I asked him
-to come and stay at the house so that I could hear him talk.”</p>
-
-<p>“Did he introduce the mammoth mines in his first call?” the duke
-inquired.</p>
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_776" id="Page_776">[Pg 776]</a></span></p>
-<p>“Oh, I don’t mean that kind of talk. I didn’t know how much good I was
-going to get out of him at first. But he was the kind I hadn’t known,
-and it seemed like he was part of the whole thing&mdash;like the girls with
-title that Ann said I must get next to. And an easy way of getting next
-to the man kind was to let him come and stay. He wanted to, all right.
-I guess that’s the way he lives when he’s down on his luck, getting
-invited to stay at places. Like Lady Mallowe,” he added, quite without
-prejudice.</p>
-
-<p>“You do sum them up, don’t you?” smiled the duke.</p>
-
-<p>“Well, I don’t see how I could help it,” he said impartially. “They’re
-printed in sixty-four-point black-face, seems to me.”</p>
-
-<p>“What is that?” the duke inquired with interest. He thought it might be
-a new and desirable bit of slang. “I don’t know that one.”</p>
-
-<p>“Biggest type there is,” grinned Tembarom. “It’s the kind that’s used
-for head-lines. That’s newspaper-office talk.”</p>
-
-<p>“Ah, technical, I see. Well, you are not printed in sixty-four-point
-black-face so far as they are concerned. They don’t find themselves
-able to sum you up. That fact is one of my recreations.”</p>
-
-<p>“I’ll tell you why,” Tembarom explained with his clearly unprejudiced
-air. “There’s nothing much about me to sum up, anyhow. I’m too sort of
-plain sailing and ordinary. I’m not making for anywhere they’d think
-I’d want to go. I’m not hiding anything they’d be sure I’d want to
-hide.”</p>
-
-<p>“By the Lord! you’re not!” exclaimed the duke.</p>
-
-<p>“When I first came here, every one of them had a fool idea I’d want
-to pretend I’d never set eyes on a newsboy or a bootblack, and that I
-couldn’t find my way in New York when I got off Fifth Avenue. I used to
-see them thinking they’d got to look as if they believed it, if they
-wanted to keep next. When I just let out and showed I didn’t care a
-darn and hadn’t sense enough to know that it mattered, it nearly made
-them throw a fit. They had to turn round and fix their faces all over
-again and act like it was ‘interesting.’ That’s what Lady Mallowe calls
-it. She says it’s so ‘interesting!’ Now, Palliser&mdash;” he paused and
-grinned again.</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, Palliser? Don’t let us neglect Palliser,” his host encouraged him.</p>
-
-<p>“He’s in a worse mix-up than the rest because he’s got more to lose. If
-he could work this mammoth-mine song and dance with the right people,
-there’d be money enough in it to put him on Easy Street. That’s where
-he’s aiming for. The company’s just where it has to have a boost. It’s
-just <i>got</i> to. If it doesn’t, there’ll be a bust up that may end in
-fitting out a high-toned promoter or so in a striped yellow-and-black
-Jersey suit and set him to breaking rocks or playing with oakum. I’ll
-tell you, poor old Palliser gets the Willies sometimes after he’s read
-his mail. He turns the color of écru baby Irish. That’s a kind of lace
-I got a dressmaker to tell me about when I wrote up receptions and
-dances for the Sunday ‘Earth.’ Écru baby Irish&mdash;that’s Palliser’s color
-after he read his letters.”</p>
-
-<p>“I dare say the fellow’s in a devil of a mess, if the truth were
-known,” the duke said.</p>
-
-<p>“And here’s ‘T. T.,’ hand-made and hand-painted for the part of the
-kind of sucker he wants.” T. Tembarom’s manner was almost sympathetic
-in its appreciation. “I can tell you I’m having a real good time with
-Palliser. It looked like I’d just dropped from heaven when he first saw
-me. If he’d been the praying kind, I’d have been just the sort he’d
-have prayed for when he said his ‘Now-I-lay-me’s’ before he went to
-bed. There wasn’t a chance in a hundred that I wasn’t a fool that had
-his head swelled so that he’d swallow any darned thing if you handed
-it to him smooth enough. First time he called he asked me a lot of
-questions about New York business. That was pretty smart of him. He
-wanted to find out, sort of careless, how much I knew&mdash;or how little.”</p>
-
-<p>The duke was leaning back luxuriously in his chair and gazing at him as
-he might have gazed at the work of an old master of which each line and
-shade was of absorbing interest.</p>
-
-<p>“I can see him,” he said. “I see him.”</p>
-
-<p>“He found out I knew nothing,” Tembarom continued.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_777" id="Page_777">[Pg 777]</a></span> “And what was to
-hinder him trying to teach me something, by gee! Nothing on top of the
-green earth. I was there, waiting with my mouth open, it seemed like.”</p>
-
-<p>“And he has tried&mdash;in his best manner?” said his grace.</p>
-
-<p>“What he hasn’t tried wouldn’t be worth trying,” Tembarom answered
-cheerfully. “Sometimes it seems like a shame to waste it. I’ve got so
-I know how to start him when he doesn’t know I’m doing it. I tell you,
-he’s fine. Gentlemanly&mdash;that’s his way, you know. High-toned friend
-that just happens to know of a good thing and thinks enough of you in a
-sort of reserved way to feel like it’s a pity not to give you a chance
-to come in on the ground floor, if you’ve got the sense to see the
-favor he’s friendly enough to do you. It’s such a favor that it’d just
-disgust a man if you could possibly turn it down. But of course you’re
-to take it or leave it. It’s not to his interest to push it. Lord, no!
-Whatever you did, his way is that he’d not condescend to say a darned
-word. High-toned silence, that’s all.”</p>
-
-<p>The Duke of Stone was chuckling very softly. His chuckles rather broke
-his words when he spoke.</p>
-
-<p>“By&mdash;by&mdash;Jove!” he said. “You&mdash;you do see it, don’t you? You do see it.”</p>
-
-<p>“Why,” he said, “it’s what keeps me up. You know a lot more about me
-than any one else does, but there’s a whole raft of things I think
-about that I couldn’t hang round any man’s neck. If I tried to hang
-them round yours, you’d know that I would be having a hell of a time
-here, if I’d let myself think too much. If I didn’t see it, as you call
-it, if I didn’t see so many things, I might begin to get sorry for
-myself.” There was a pause of a second. “Gee!” he said, “gee! this not
-hearing a thing about Ann! I’ve got to keep going to stand it. Well,
-Strangeways gives me some work to do. And I’ve got Palliser. He’s a
-little sunbeam.”</p>
-
-<p>A man-servant approaching to suggest a possible need of hot tea started
-at hearing his grace break into a sudden and plainly involuntary crow
-of glee. He had not heard that one before, either. Palliser as a little
-sunbeam brightening the pathway of T. Tembarom was, in the particular
-existing circumstances, all that could be desired of fine humor. It
-somewhat recalled the situation of the “Ladies” of the noble houses
-of Pevensy, Talchester, and Stone unconsciously passing in review for
-the satisfaction of little Miss Hutchinson. Tembarom laughed a little
-himself, but he went on with seriousness:</p>
-
-<p>“There’s one thing sure enough. I’ve got on to it by listening and
-working out what he would do by what he doesn’t know he says. If he
-could put the screws on me in any way, he wouldn’t hold back. It’d be
-all quite polite and gentlemanly, but he’d do it all the same. And he’s
-dead-sure that everybody’s got something they’d like to hide&mdash;or get.
-That’s what he works things out from.”</p>
-
-<p>“Does he think you have something to hide&mdash;or get?” the duke inquired,
-quickly.</p>
-
-<p>“He’s sure of it. But he doesn’t know yet whether it’s get or hide. He
-noses about. Pearson’s seen him. He asks questions and plays he ain’t
-doing it and ain’t interested, anyhow.”</p>
-
-<p>“He doesn’t like you, he doesn’t like you,” the duke said rather
-thoughtfully. “He has a way of conveying that you are far more subtle
-than you choose to look. He says an air of entire frankness is one of
-the chief assets of American promoters.”</p>
-
-<p>Tembarom smiled the smile of recognition. “Yes,” he said, “it looks
-like that’s a long way round, doesn’t it? But it’s not far to T. T.
-when you want to hitch on the connection. Anyhow, that’s the way he
-means it to look. If ever I was suspected of being in any mix-up,
-everybody would remember he’d said that.”</p>
-
-<p>“It’s very amusin’,” said the duke.</p>
-
-<p>They had become even greater friends and intimates by this time than
-the already astonished neighborhood suspected them of being. That they
-spent much time together in an amazing degree of familiarity was the
-talk of the country, in fact, one of the most frequent resources of
-conversation. Everybody endeavored to find reason for the situation,
-but none had been presented which seemed of sufficiently logical
-convincingness. The duke was eccentric, of course. That was easy to hit
-upon. He was amiably perverse and good-humoredly cynical. He was of
-course immensely amused by the incongruity of the acquaintance. This
-being the case, why exactly he had never before chosen for himself
-a companion equally out of the picture it was not easy to explain.
-Palliser, it is true, suggested it was Tembarom’s “cheek” which stood
-him in good stead, and his being so entirely a bounder that he did
-not know he was one, and was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_778" id="Page_778">[Pg 778]</a></span> ready to make an ass of himself to any
-extent. The frankest statement of the situation, if any one had so
-chosen to put it, would have been that he was regarded as a sort of
-court fool without cap or bells.</p>
-
-<p>No one was aware of the odd confidences which passed between the
-weirdly dissimilar pair. No one guessed that the old peer sat and
-listened to stories of a red-headed, slim-bodied girl in a dingy New
-York boarding-house, that he liked them sufficiently to encourage their
-telling, that he had made a mental picture of a certain look in a pair
-of maternally yearning and fearfully convincing round young eyes, that
-he knew the burnished fullness and glow of the red hair until he could
-imagine the feeling of its texture and abundant warmth in the hand.
-And this subject was only one of many. And of others they talked with
-interest, doubt, argument, speculation, holding a living thrill.</p>
-
-<p>The tap of croquet-mallets sounded hollow and clear from the sunken
-lawn below the mass of shrubs between them and the players as the duke
-repeated:</p>
-
-<p>“It’s hugely amusin’,” dropping his “g,” which was not one of his usual
-affectations.</p>
-
-<p>“Confound it!” he said next, wrinkling the thin, fine skin round his
-eyes in a speculative smile, “I wish I had had a son of my own just
-like you.”</p>
-
-<p>All of Tembarom’s white teeth revealed themselves.</p>
-
-<p>“I’d have liked to be in it,” he replied, “but I shouldn’t have been
-like me.”</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, you would.” The duke put the tips of his fingers delicately
-together. “You are of the kind which in all circumstances is like
-itself.” He looked about him, taking in the turreted, majestic age and
-mass of the castle. “You would have been born here. You would have
-learned to ride your pony down the avenue. You would have gone to Eton
-and to Oxford. I don’t think you would have learned much, but you would
-have been decidedly edifying and companionable. You would have had a
-sense of humor which would have made you popular in society and at
-court. A young fellow who makes those people laugh holds success in his
-hand. They want to be made to laugh as much as I do. Good God! how they
-are obliged to be bored and behave decently under it! You would have
-seen and known more things to be humorous about than you know now.”</p>
-
-<p>“Would I have been Lord Temple Temple Barholm or something of that
-sort?” Tembarom asked.</p>
-
-<p>“You would have been the Marquis of Belcarey,” the duke replied,
-looking him over thoughtfully, “and your name would probably have been
-Hugh Lawrence Gilbert Henry Charles Adelbert, or words to that effect.”</p>
-
-<p>“A regular six-shooter,” grinned Tembarom. “I should have liked it
-all right if I hadn’t been born in Brooklyn. But that starts you out
-in a different way. Do you think, if I’d been born the Marquis of
-Bel&mdash;what’s his name&mdash;I should have been on to Palliser’s little song
-and dance, and had as much fun out of it?”</p>
-
-<p>“On my soul, I believe you would,” the duke answered. “Brooklyn or
-Stone Hover Castle, I’m hanged if you wouldn’t have been <i>you</i>.”</p>
-
-<div class="section">
-
-<h3 class="nobreak" id="T_TEMBAROM_XXIX">CHAPTER XXIX</h3>
-
-<div class="dc">
-   <a id="i_778" name="i_778">
-   <img class="mtop-2 w10em" src="images/i_778.jpg" alt="A" /></a>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<p class="p0"><span class="hide-first1">A</span>FTER this came a pause. Each man sat thinking his own thoughts, which,
-while marked with difference in form, were doubtless subtly alike in
-the line they followed. During the silence T. Tembarom looked out at
-the late afternoon shadows lengthening themselves in darkening velvet
-across the lawns.</p>
-
-<p>At last he said:</p>
-
-<p>“I never told you that I’ve been reading some of the ’steen thousand
-books in the library. I started it about a month ago. And somehow
-they’ve got me going.”</p>
-
-<p>“No, you have not mentioned it,” his grace answered, and laughed a
-little. “You frequently fail to mention things. When first we knew each
-other I used to wonder if you were naturally a secretive fellow; but
-you are not. You always have a reason for your silences.”</p>
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_779" id="Page_779">[Pg 779]</a></span></p>
-<p>“It took about ten years to kick that into me&mdash;ten good years, I should
-say.”</p>
-
-<p>“I have often thought that if books attracted you the library would
-help you to get through a good many of the hundred and thirty-six
-hours a day you’ve spoken of, and get through them pretty decently,”
-commented the duke.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-   <a id="i_779" name="i_779">
-   <img class="mtop1 mbot1" src="images/i_779.jpg"
-      alt="Mr. Temple Barholm and the Duke" /></a>
-</div>
-
-<p class="mtop1">“That’s what’s happened,” Tembarom answered. “There’s not so many now.
-I can cut ’em off in chunks.”</p>
-
-<p>“How did it begin?”</p>
-
-<p>He listened with much pleasure while Tembarom told him how it had begun
-and how it had gone on.</p>
-
-<p>“I’d been having a pretty bad time one day. Strangeways had been
-worse&mdash;a darned sight worse&mdash;just when I thought he was better. I’d
-been trying to help him to think straight; and suddenly I made a break,
-somehow, and must have touched exactly the wrong spring. It seemed as
-if I set him nearly crazy. I had to leave him to Pearson right away.
-Then it poured rain steady for about eight hours, and I couldn’t get
-out and ‘take a walk.’ Then I went wandering into the picture-gallery
-and found Lady Joan there, looking at Miles Hugo. And she ordered me
-out, or blamed near it.”</p>
-
-<p>“You are standing a good deal,” said the duke.</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, I am&mdash;but so is she.” He set his hard young jaw, and stared once
-more at the velvet shadows.</p>
-
-<p>“I tell you, for a fellow that knows nothing this novel-reading is an
-easy way of finding out a lot of things,” he resumed. “You find out
-what different kinds of people there are, and what different kinds of
-ways. If you’ve lived in one place, and been up against nothing but
-earning your living, you think that’s all there is of it&mdash;that it’s
-the whole thing. But it isn’t, by gee!” His air became thoughtful.
-“I’ve begun to kind of get on to what all this means”&mdash;glancing about
-him&mdash;“to you people; and how a fellow like T. T. must look to you. I’ve
-always sort of guessed, but reading a few dozen novels has helped me to
-see <i>why</i> it’s that way. I’ve yelled right out laughing over it many
-a time. That fellow called Thackeray&mdash;I can’t read his things right
-straight through&mdash;but he’s an eye-opener.”</p>
-
-<p>“You have tried nothing <i>but</i> novels?” his enthralled hearer inquired.</p>
-
-<p>“Not yet. I shall come to the others in time. I’m sort of hungry for
-these things about <i>people</i>. It’s the ways they’re different that gets
-me going.</p>
-
-<p>“Reading novels put me wise to things in a new way. Lady Joan’s been
-wiping her feet on me <i>hard</i> for a good while, and I sort of made up
-my mind I’d got to let her until I was sure where I was. I won’t say
-I didn’t mind it, but I could stand it. But once when she caught me
-looking at her, the way she looked back at me made me see all of a
-sudden that it would be easier for her if I told her straight that she
-was mistaken.”</p>
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_780" id="Page_780">[Pg 780]</a></span></p>
-<p>“That she is mistaken in thinking&mdash;?”</p>
-
-<p>“What she does think. She wouldn’t have thought it if the old lady
-hadn’t been driving her mad by hammering it in. She’d have hated me all
-right, and I don’t blame her when I think of how poor Jem was treated;
-but she wouldn’t have thought that every time I tried to be decent and
-friendly to her I was butting in and making a sick fool of myself.
-She’s got to stay where her mother keeps her, and she’s got to listen
-to her. Oh, hell! She’s got to be told!”</p>
-
-<p>The duke set the tips of his fingers together. “How would you do it?”
-he asked.</p>
-
-<p>“Just straight,” replied T. Tembarom. “There’s no other way.”</p>
-
-<p>From the old worldling broke forth an involuntary low laugh, which was
-a sort of cackle. So this was what was coming.</p>
-
-<p>“I cannot think of any devious method,” he said, “which would make it
-less than a delicate thing to do. A beautiful young woman, whose host
-you are, has flouted you furiously for weeks, under the impression that
-you are offensively in love with her. You propose to tell her that
-her judgment has betrayed her, and that, as you say, ‘There’s nothing
-doing.’”</p>
-
-<p>“Not a darned thing, and never has been,” said T. Tembarom. He looked
-quite grave and not at all embarrassed. He plainly did not see it as a
-situation to be regarded with humor.</p>
-
-<p>“If she will listen&mdash;” the duke began.</p>
-
-<p>“Oh, she’ll listen,” put in Tembarom. “I’ll make her.”</p>
-
-<p>His was a self-contradicting countenance, the duke reflected, as he
-took him in with a somewhat long look. One did not usually see a face
-built up of boyishness and maturity, simpleness which was baffling, and
-a good nature which could be hard. At the moment, it was both of these
-last at one and the same time.</p>
-
-<p>“I know something of Lady Joan and I know something of you,” he said,
-“but I don’t exactly foresee what will happen. I will not say that I
-should not like to be present.”</p>
-
-<p>“There’ll be nobody present but just me and her,” Tembarom answered.</p>
-
-<div class="section">
-
-<h3 class="nobreak" id="T_TEMBAROM_XXX">CHAPTER XXX</h3>
-
-<div class="dc">
-   <a id="i_780" name="i_780">
-   <img class="mtop-2 w10em" src="images/i_780.jpg" alt="T" /></a>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<p class="p0"><span class="hide-first1">T</span>HE visits of Lady Mallowe and Captain Palliser had had their features.
-Neither of the pair had come to one of the most imposing “places”
-in Lancashire to live a life of hermit-like seclusion and dullness.
-They had arrived with the intention of availing themselves of all
-such opportunities for entertainment as could be guided in their
-direction by the deftness of experience. As a result, there had been
-hospitalities at Temple Barholm such as it had not beheld during the
-last generation at least. T. Tembarom had looked on, an interested
-spectator, as these festivities had been adroitly arranged and managed
-for him. He had not, however, in the least resented acting as a sort of
-figurehead in the position of sponsor and host.</p>
-
-<p>“They think I don’t know I’m not doing it all myself,” was his easy
-mental summing-up. “They’ve got the idea that I’m pleased because I
-believe I’m It. But that’s all to the merry. It’s what I’ve set my mind
-on having going on here, and I couldn’t have started it as well myself.
-I shouldn’t have known how. They’re teaching me. All I hope is that
-Ann’s grandmother is keeping tab.”</p>
-
-<p>“Do you and Rose happen to know old Mrs. Hutchinson?” he had inquired
-of Pearson the night before the talk with the duke.</p>
-
-<p>“Well, not to say exactly <i>know</i> her, sir, but everybody knows <i>of</i>
-her,” said Pearson. “She is a most remarkable old person, sir&mdash;most
-remarkable.” Then, after watching his face for a moment or so, he added
-tentatively, “Would you perhaps <i>wish</i> us to make her acquaintance
-for&mdash;for any reason, sir?”</p>
-
-<p>Tembarom thought the matter over speculatively. He had learned that
-his first liking for Pearson had been founded upon a rock. He was
-always to be trusted to understand, and also to apply a quite unusual
-intelligence to such matters as he became aware of without having been
-told about them.</p>
-
-<p>“What I’d like would be for her to hear that there’s plenty doing at
-Temple Barholm; that people are coming and going all the time; and that
-there’s ladies to burn&mdash;and most of them lookers, at that,” was his
-answer.</p>
-
-<p>How Pearson had discovered the exotic subtleties of his master’s
-situation and mental attitude toward it, only those of his class and
-gifted with his occult powers could explain in detail. The fact exists
-that Pearson did know an immense number of things his employer had
-not mentioned to him, and held them locked in his bosom in honored
-security, like a little<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_781" id="Page_781">[Pg 781]</a></span> gentleman. He made his reply with a polite
-conviction which carried weight.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-   <a id="i_781" name="i_781">
-   <img class="mtop1 mbot1" src="images/i_781.jpg"
-      alt="In Mrs. Hutchinson’s Cottage" /></a>
-</div>
-
-<p>“It would not be necessary for either Rose or me to make old Mrs.
-Hutchinson’s acquaintance with a view to informing her of anything
-which occurs on the estate or in the village, sir,” he remarked. “Mrs.
-Hutchinson knows more of things than any one ever tells her. She sits
-in her cottage there, and she just <i>knows</i> things and sees through
-people in a way that’d be almost unearthly, if she wasn’t a good old
-person, and so respectable that there’s those that touches their hats
-to her as if she belonged to the gentry. She’s got a blue eye, sir.”</p>
-
-<p>“Has she?” exclaimed Tembarom.</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, sir. As blue as a baby’s, sir, and as clear, though she’s past
-eighty. Oh, sir! you can depend upon old Mrs. Hutchinson as to who’s
-been here, and even what they’ve thought about it. The village just
-flocks to her to tell her the news and get advice about things. She’d
-know.”</p>
-
-<p>It was as a result of this that on his return from Stone Hover he
-dismissed the carriage at the gates and walked through them to make
-a visit in the village. Old Mrs. Hutchinson, sitting knitting in
-her chair behind the abnormally flourishing fuchsias, geraniums,
-and campanula carpaticas in her cottage-window, looked between the
-banked-up flower-pots to see that Mr. Temple Barholm had opened her
-wicket-gate and was walking up the clean-brushed path to her front
-door. When he knocked she called out in the broad Lancashire she had
-always spoken, “Coom in!” When he entered he took off his hat and
-looked at her, friendly but hesitant, and with the expression of a
-young man who has not quite made up his mind as to what he is about to
-encounter.</p>
-
-<p>“I’m Temple Temple Barholm, Mrs. Hutchinson,” he announced.</p>
-
-<p>“I know that,” she answered. “Not that tha looks loike the Temple
-Barholms, but I’ve been watchin’ thee walk an’ drive past here ever
-since tha coom to the place.”</p>
-
-<p>She watched him steadily with an astonishingly limpid pair of old eyes.
-They were old and young at the same time; old because they held deeps
-of wisdom, young because they were so alive and full of question.</p>
-
-<p>“I don’t know whether I ought to have come to see you or not,” he said.</p>
-
-<p>“Well, tha’st coom,” she replied, going on with her knitting. “Sit thee
-doun and have a bit of a chat.”</p>
-
-<p>“Say!” he broke out. “Ain’t you going to shake hands with me?” He held
-his hand out impetuously. He knew he was all right if she’d shake hands.</p>
-
-<p>“Theer’s nowt agen that, surely,” she answered, with a shrewd bit of
-a smile. She gave him her hand. “If I was na stiff in my legs, it’s
-my place to get up an’ mak’ thee a curtsey, but th’ rheumatics has no
-respect even for th’ lord o’ th’ manor.”</p>
-
-<p>“If you got up and made me a curtsey,” Tembarom said, “I should throw a
-fit. Say, Mrs. Hutchinson, I bet you know that as well as I do.”</p>
-
-<p>The shrewd bit of smile lighted her eyes as well as twinkled about her
-mouth.</p>
-
-<p>“Sit thee doun,” she said again.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_782" id="Page_782">[Pg 782]</a></span></p>
-
-<p>So he sat down and looked at her as straight as she looked at him.</p>
-
-<p>“Tha’d give a good bit,” she said presently, over her flashing needles,
-“to know how much Little Ann’s tow’d me about thee.”</p>
-
-<p>“I’d give a lot to know how much it’d be square to ask you to tell me
-about <i>her</i>,” he gave back to her, hesitating yet eager.</p>
-
-<p>“What does tha mean by square?” she demanded.</p>
-
-<p>“I mean ‘fair.’ Can I talk to you about her at all? I promised I’d
-stick it out here and do as she said. She told me she wasn’t going to
-write to me or let her father write. I’ve promised, and I’m not going
-to fall down when I’ve said a thing. I’m going to be as good as I know
-how.”</p>
-
-<p>“So tha coom to see her grandmother?”</p>
-
-<p>He reddened, but held his head up.</p>
-
-<p>“I’m not going to ask her grandmother a thing she doesn’t want me to
-be told. But I’ve been up against it pretty hard lately. I read some
-things in the New York papers about her father and his invention, and
-about her traveling round with him and helping him with his business.”</p>
-
-<p>“In Germany they wur,” she put in, forgetting herself. “They’re havin’
-big doin’s over th’ invention. What Joe’d do wi’out th’ lass I canna
-tell. She’s doin’ every bit o’ th’ managin’ an’ contrivin’ wi’ them
-furriners&mdash;but he’ll never know it.”</p>
-
-<p>Her face flushed and she stopped herself sharply.</p>
-
-<p>“I’m talkin’ about her to thee!” she said. “I would na ha’ believed it
-o’ mysen.”</p>
-
-<p>He got up from his chair.</p>
-
-<p>“I guess I oughtn’t to have come,” he said restlessly. “But you haven’t
-told me more than I got here and there in the papers. That was what
-startled me. It was like watching her. I could hear her talking and
-see the way she was doing things till it drove me half crazy. All of a
-sudden I just got wild and made up my mind I’d come here. I’ve wanted
-to do it many a time, but I’ve kept away.”</p>
-
-<p>“Tha showed sense i’ doin’ that,” remarked Mrs. Hutchinson. “She’d not
-ha’ thowt well o’ thee if tha’d coom runnin’ to her grandmother every
-day or so. What she likes about thee is as she thinks tha’s got a
-strong backbone o’ thy own.</p>
-
-<p>“Happen a look at a lass’s grandmother&mdash;when tha canna get at th’ lass
-hersen&mdash;is a bit o’ comfort,” she added. “But don’t tha go walkin’ by
-here to look in at th’ window too often. She would na think well o’
-that either.”</p>
-
-<p>“Say! There’s one thing I’m going to get off my chest before I go,” he
-announced, “just one thing. She can go where she likes and do what she
-likes, but I’m going to marry her when she’s done it&mdash;unless something
-knocks me on the head and finishes me. I’m going to marry her.”</p>
-
-<p>“Tha art, art tha?” laconically.</p>
-
-<p>“I’m keeping up my end here, and it’s no slouch of a job, but I’m not
-forgetting what she promised for one minute! And I’m not forgetting
-what her promise means,” he said, obstinately.</p>
-
-<p>“Tha’d like me to tell her that?” she said.</p>
-
-<p>“If she doesn’t know it, you telling her wouldn’t cut any ice,” was his
-reply. “I’m saying it because I want you to know it, and because it
-does me good to say it out loud. I’m going to marry her.”</p>
-
-<p>“That’s for her and thee to settle,” she commented impersonally.</p>
-
-<p>“It <i>is</i> settled,” he answered. “There’s no way out of it. Will you
-shake hands with me again before I go?”</p>
-
-<p>“Aye,” she consented, “I will.”</p>
-
-<p>When she took his hand she held it a minute. Her own was warm, and
-there was no limpness about it. The secret which had seemed to conceal
-itself behind her eyes had some difficulty in keeping itself wholly in
-the background.</p>
-
-<p>“She knows aw’ tha does,” she said coolly, as if she were not suddenly
-revealing immensities. “She knows who cooms an’ who goes, an’ what they
-think o’ thee, an’ how tha gets on wi’ ’em. Now get thee gone, lad, an’
-dunnot tha coom back till her or me sends for thee.”</p>
-
-<p class="p0 mtop2">W<span class="smaller">ITHIN</span> an hour of this time the afternoon post brought to
-Lady Mallowe a letter which she read with an expression in which her
-daughter recognized relief. It was in fact a letter for which she had
-waited with anxiety, and the invitation it contained was a tribute to
-her social skill at its highest water-mark. In her less heroic moments,
-she had felt doubts of receiving it, which had caused shudders to run
-the entire length of her spine.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_783" id="Page_783">[Pg 783]</a></span></p>
-
-<p>“I’m going to Broome Haughton,” she announced to Joan.</p>
-
-<p>“When?” Joan inquired.</p>
-
-<p>“At the end of the week. I am invited for a fortnight.”</p>
-
-<p>“Am I going?” Joan asked.</p>
-
-<p>“No. You will go to London to meet some friends who are coming over
-from Paris.”</p>
-
-<p>Joan knew that comment was unnecessary. Both she and her mother were
-on intimate terms with these hypothetical friends who so frequently
-turned up from Paris or elsewhere when it was necessary that she
-should suddenly go back to London and live in squalid seclusion in the
-unopened house, with a charwoman to provide her with underdone or burnt
-chops, and eggs at eighteen a shilling, while the shutters of the front
-rooms were closed, and dusty desolation reigned.</p>
-
-<p>“If you had conducted yourself sensibly you need not have gone,”
-continued her mother. “I could have made an excuse and left you here.
-You would at least have been sure of good food and decent comforts.”</p>
-
-<p>“After your visit, are we to return here?” was Lady Joan’s sole reply.</p>
-
-<p>“I do not know what will happen when I leave Broome Haughton,” her
-mother added, a note of rasped uncertainty in her voice.</p>
-
-<p>In truth, the future was a hideous thing to contemplate if no rescue
-at all was in sight. It would be worse for her than for Joan, because
-Joan did not care what happened or did not happen, and she cared
-desperately. She knew perfectly well that the girl had somehow found
-out that Sir Moses Monaldini was to be at Broome Haughton, and that
-when he left there he was going abroad. She knew also that she had not
-been able to conceal that his indifference had of late given her some
-ghastly hours, and that her play for this lagging invitation had been a
-frantically bold one. That the most ingenious efforts and devices had
-ended in success only after such delay made it all the more necessary
-that no straw must remain unseized on.</p>
-
-<p>“I can wear some of your things, with a little alteration,” she said.
-“Rose will do it for me. Hats and gloves and ornaments do not require
-altering. I shall need things you will not need in London. Where are
-your keys?”</p>
-
-<p>Lady Joan rose and got them for her. She even flushed slightly. They
-were often obliged to borrow each other’s possessions, but for a moment
-she felt herself moved by a sort of hard pity.</p>
-
-<p>“We are like rats in a trap,” she remarked. “I hope you will get out.”</p>
-
-<p>“If I do, you will be left inside. Get out yourself! Get out yourself!”
-said Lady Mallowe in a fierce whisper.</p>
-
-<p>Her regrets at the necessity of their leaving Temple Barholm were
-expressed with fluent touchingness at the dinner-table. The visit had
-been so delightful. Mr. Temple Barholm and Miss Alicia had been so
-kind. The loveliness of the whole dear place had so embraced them that
-they felt as if they were leaving a home instead of ending a delightful
-visit. It was extraordinary what an effect the house had on one. It
-was as if one had lived in it always&mdash;and always would. So few places
-gave one the same feeling. They should both look forward&mdash;greedy as it
-seemed&mdash;to being allowed some time to come again. She had decided from
-the first that it was not necessary to go to any extreme of caution
-or subtlety with her host and Miss Alicia. Her method of paving the
-way for future visits was perhaps more than a shade too elaborate.
-She felt, however, that it sufficed. For the most part, Lady Joan sat
-with lids dropped over her burning eyes. She tried to force herself
-not to listen. This was the kind of thing which made her sick with
-humiliation. Howsoever rudimentary these people were, they could not
-fail to comprehend that a foothold in the house was being bid for.
-They should at least see that she did not join in the bidding. Her own
-visit had been filled with feelings at war with one another. In the
-long-past three months of happiness, Jem&mdash;<i>her</i> Jem&mdash;had described the
-house to her&mdash;the rooms, gardens, pleached walks, pictures, the very
-furniture itself. She could enter no room, walk in no spot she did not
-seem to know, and passionately love in spite of herself. She loved them
-so much that there were times when she yearned to stay in the place at
-any cost, and others when she could not endure the misery it woke in
-her&mdash;the pure misery.</p>
-
-<p>T. Tembarom thought he never had seen Lady Joan look as handsome as
-she looked to-night. The color on her cheek<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_784" id="Page_784">[Pg 784]</a></span> burned, her eyes had a
-driven loneliness in them. She had a wonderfully beautiful mouth, and
-its curve drooped in a new way. He wished Ann could get her in a corner
-and sit down and talk sense to her. He remembered what he had said to
-the duke. Perhaps this was the time. If she was going away, and her
-mother meant to drag her back again when she was ready, it would make
-it easier for her to leave the place knowing she need not hate to come
-back. But the duke wasn’t making any miss hit when he said it wouldn’t
-be easy. She was not like Ann, who would feel some pity for the biggest
-fool on earth if she had to throw him down hard. Lady Joan would feel
-neither compunctions nor relentings. He knew the way she could look at
-a fellow. If he couldn’t make her understand what he was aiming at,
-they would both be worse off than they would be if he left things as
-they were. But&mdash;the hard line showed itself about his mouth&mdash;he wasn’t
-going to leave things as they were.</p>
-
-<p>As they passed through the hall after dinner, Lady Mallowe glanced at
-a side-table on which lay some letters arrived by the late post. An
-imposing envelop was on the top of the rest. Joan saw her face light as
-she took it up.</p>
-
-<p>“I think this is from Broome Haughton,” she said. “If you will excuse
-me, I will go into the library and read it. It may require answering at
-once.”</p>
-
-<p>She turned hot and cold, poor woman, and went away, so that she might
-be free from the disaster of an audience if anything had gone wrong. It
-would be better to be alone even if things had gone right. The letter
-was from Sir Moses Monaldini.</p>
-
-<p>The men had come into the drawing-room when she returned. As she
-entered, Joan did not glance up from the book she was reading, but at
-the first sound of her voice she knew what the letter meant.</p>
-
-<p>“I was obliged to dash off a note to Broome Haughton so that it would
-be ready for the early post,” Lady Mallowe said. She was at her best.
-Palliser saw that some years had slipped from her shoulders. The moment
-which relieves or even promises to relieve fears does astonishing
-things. Tembarom wondered whether she had had good news. Her brilliant
-air of social ease returned to her, and she began to talk fluently
-of what was being done in London, and to touch lightly upon the
-possibility of taking part in great functions. Persons whose fortunate
-names had ceased to fall easily from her lips appeared again upon the
-horizon. Miss Alicia was impressed anew with the feeling that she had
-known every brilliant or important personage in the big world of social
-London; that she had taken part in every dazzling event. Tembarom
-somehow realized that she had been afraid of something or other, and
-was for some reason not afraid any more. Such a change, whatsoever the
-reason for it, ought to have had some effect on her daughter. Surely
-she would share her luck, if luck had come to her.</p>
-
-<p>But Lady Joan sat apart and kept her eyes upon her book. This was one
-of the things she often chose to do, in spite of her mother’s indignant
-protest.</p>
-
-<p>“I came here because you brought me,” she would answer. “I did not come
-to be entertaining or polite.”</p>
-
-<p>She was not reading this evening. She heard every word of Lady
-Mallowe’s agreeable and slightly excited conversation. She did not know
-exactly what had happened; but she knew that it was something which had
-buoyed her up with a hopefulness which exhilarated her and before her
-own future Joan saw the blank wall of stone building itself higher and
-higher. If Sir Moses had capitulated, she would be counted out. A cruel
-little smile touched her lips, as she reviewed the number of things
-she could <i>not</i> do to earn her living. She could not take in sewing or
-washing, and there was nothing she could teach. Starvation or marriage.
-The wall built itself higher and yet higher. What a hideous thing it
-was for a penniless girl to be brought up merely to be a beauty, and
-in consequence supposably a great lady. And yet if she was born to a
-certain rank and had height and figure, a lovely mouth, a delicate
-nose, unusual eyes and lashes, to train her to be a dressmaker or a
-housemaid would be a stupid investment of capital. If nothing tragic
-interfered and the right man wanted such a girl, she had been trained
-to please him. But tragic things had happened, and before her grew the
-wall while she pretended to read her book.</p>
-
-<p>T. Tembarom was coming toward her.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_785" id="Page_785">[Pg 785]</a></span> She had heard Palliser suggest a
-game of billiards.</p>
-
-<p>“Will you come and play billiards with us?” Tembarom asked. “Palliser
-says you play splendidly.”</p>
-
-<p>“She plays brilliantly,” put in Lady Mallowe. “Come, Joan.”</p>
-
-<p>“No, thank you,” she answered. “Let me stay here and read.”</p>
-
-<p>Lady Mallowe protested. She tried an air of playful maternal reproach
-because she was in good spirits. Joan saw Palliser smiling quietly, and
-there was that in his smile which suggested to her that he was thinking
-her an obstinate fool.</p>
-
-<p>“You had better show Temple Barholm what you can do,” he remarked.
-“This will be your last chance, as you leave so soon. Never ought you
-let a last chance slip by. I never do.”</p>
-
-<p>Tembarom stood still and looked down at her from his good height. He
-did not know what Palliser’s speech meant, but an instinct made him
-feel that it somehow held an ugly, quiet taunt.</p>
-
-<p>“What I would like to do,” was the unspoken crudity which passed
-through his mind, “would be to swat him on the mouth. He’s getting at
-her just when she ought to be let alone.”</p>
-
-<p>“Would you like it better to stay here and read?” he inquired.</p>
-
-<p>“Much better, if you please,” was her reply.</p>
-
-<p>“Then that goes,” he answered, and left her.</p>
-
-<p>He swept the others out of the room with a good-natured promptness
-which put an end to argument. When he said of anything “Then that
-goes,” it usually did so.</p>
-
-<div class="section">
-
-<h3 class="nobreak" id="T_TEMBAROM_XXXI">CHAPTER XXXI</h3>
-
-</div>
-
-<p class="p0">W<span class="smaller">HEN</span> she was alone Joan sat and gazed not at her wall but at the
-pictures that came back to her out of a part of her life which seemed
-to have been lived centuries ago. They were the pictures that came
-back continually without being called, the clearness of which always
-startled her afresh. Sometimes she thought they sprang up to add to
-her torment, but sometimes it seemed as if they came to save her from
-herself&mdash;her mad, wicked self. After all, there were moments when to
-know that she <i>had</i> been the girl whose eighteen-year-old heart had
-leaped so when she turned and met Jem’s eyes, as he stood gazing at her
-under the beech-tree, was something to cling to. She had been that girl
-and Jem had been&mdash;Jem. Her throat strained itself because sobs rose in
-it, and her eyes were hot with the swell of tears.</p>
-
-<p>She could hear voices and laughter and the click of balls from the
-billiard-room. Her mother and Palliser laughed the most, but she knew
-the sound of her mother’s voice would cease soon, because she would
-come back to her. She knew the kind of scene they would pass through
-together when she returned. The old things would be said, the old
-arguments used, but a new one would be added. It was at once horrible
-and ridiculous that she must sit and listen&mdash;and stare at the growing
-wall. It was as she caught her breath against the choking swell of
-tears that she heard Lady Mallowe returning. She came in with an
-actual sweep across the room. Her society air had fled, and she was
-unadornedly furious when she stopped before Joan’s chair. For a few
-seconds she actually glared; then she broke forth in a suppressed
-undertone.</p>
-
-<p>“Come into the billiard-room. I command it!”</p>
-
-<p>Joan lifted her eyes from her book. Her voice was as low as her
-mother’s, but steadier.</p>
-
-<p>“No,” she answered.</p>
-
-<p>“Is this conduct to continue? Is it?” Lady Mallowe panted.</p>
-
-<p>“Yes,” said Joan, and laid her book on the table near her. There was
-nothing else to say. Words made things worse.</p>
-
-<p>Lady Mallowe had lost her head, but she still spoke in the suppressed
-voice.</p>
-
-<p>“You <i>shall</i> behave yourself!” she cried, under her breath, and
-actually made a passionate half-start toward her.</p>
-
-<p>“Wouldn’t it be wise to remember that you cannot make the kind of scene
-here that you can in your own house?” said Joan. “We are a bad-tempered
-pair. But when we are guests in other people’s houses&mdash;”</p>
-
-<p>“You think you can take advantage of that!” she said. “Don’t trust
-yourself too far. Do you imagine that just when all might go well for
-me I will allow you to spoil everything?”</p>
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_786" id="Page_786">[Pg 786]</a></span></p>
-<p>“How can I spoil everything?”</p>
-
-<p>“By behaving as you have been behaving since we came here&mdash;refusing
-to make a home for yourself; by hanging round my neck so that it will
-appear that any one who takes me must take you also. I came in here to
-tell you,” she went on, “that this is your last chance. I shall never
-give you another.”</p>
-
-<p>Joan remained silent, and her silence added to her mother’s helpless
-rage. She moved a step nearer to her and flung the javelin which she
-always knew would strike deep.</p>
-
-<p>“You have made yourself a laughing-stock for all London for years. You
-are mad about a man who disgraced and ruined himself.”</p>
-
-<p>She saw the javelin quiver as it struck; but Joan’s voice as it
-answered her had a quality of low and deadly steadiness.</p>
-
-<p>“You have said that a thousand times, and you will say it another
-thousand&mdash;though you know the story was a lie and was proved to be one.”</p>
-
-<p>Lady Mallowe knew her way thoroughly.</p>
-
-<p>“Who remembers the denials? What the world remembers is that Jem Temple
-Barholm was stamped as a cheat and a trickster. No one has time to
-remember the other thing. He is dead&mdash;<i>dead</i>! When a man’s dead it’s
-too late.”</p>
-
-<p>She was desperate enough to drive her javelin home deeper than she had
-ever chanced to drive it before. The truth&mdash;the awful truth she uttered
-shook Joan from head to foot. She sprang up and stood before her in
-heart-wrung fury.</p>
-
-<p>“Oh! You are a hideously cruel woman!” she cried. “They say even tigers
-care for their young! But you&mdash;you can say that to <i>me</i>. ‘When a man’s
-dead, it’s too late.’”</p>
-
-<p>“It <i>is</i> too late&mdash;it <i>is</i> too late!” Lady Mallowe persisted. Why
-had not she struck this note before? It was breaking Joan’s will: “I
-would say anything to bring you to your senses. I came here because
-it <i>is</i> your last chance. Palliser knew what he was saying when he
-made a joke of it just now. He knew it wasn’t a joke. You might have
-been the Duchess of Merthshire; you might have been Lady St. Maur,
-with a husband with millions. And here you are. You know what’s before
-you&mdash;when I am out of the trap.”</p>
-
-<p>Joan laughed. It was a wild little laugh, and she felt there was no
-sense in it.</p>
-
-<p>“I might apply for a place in Miss Alicia’s Home for Decayed
-Gentlewomen,” she said.</p>
-
-<p>Lady Mallowe nodded her head fiercely.</p>
-
-<p>“Apply, then. There will be no place for you in the home I am going to
-live in,” she retorted.</p>
-
-<p>Joan ceased moving about. She was about to hear the one argument that
-was new.</p>
-
-<p>“You may as well tell me,” she said wearily.</p>
-
-<p>“I have had a letter from Sir Moses Monaldini. He is to be at Broome
-Haughton. He is going there purposely to meet me. What he writes can
-mean only one thing. He means to ask me to marry him. I’m your mother,
-and I’m nearly twenty years older than you; but you see that I’m out of
-the trap first.”</p>
-
-<p>“I knew you would be,” answered Joan.</p>
-
-<p>“He detests you,” Lady Mallowe went on. “He will not hear of your
-living with us&mdash;or even near us. He says you are old enough to take
-care of yourself. Take my advice. I am doing you a good turn in giving
-it. This New York newsboy is mad over you. If he hadn’t been we should
-have been bundled out of the house before this. He never has spoken
-to a lady before in his life, and he feels as if you were a goddess.
-Go into the billiard-room this instant, and do all a woman can. Go!”
-And she actually stamped her foot on the carpet. “You might live in
-the very house you would have lived in with Jem Temple Barholm, on the
-income he could have given you.”</p>
-
-<p>She saw the crassness of her blunder the next moment. If she had had an
-advantage, she had lost it.</p>
-
-<p>Wickedly, without a touch of mirth, Joan laughed in her face.</p>
-
-<p>“Jem’s house and Jem’s money&mdash;and the New York newsboy in his shoes,”
-she flung at her. “T. Tembarom to live with until one’s death-bed. T.
-Tembarom!”</p>
-
-<p>Suddenly, something <i>was</i> giving way in her, Lady Mallowe thought
-again. Joan slipped into a chair and dropped her head and hidden face
-on the table.</p>
-
-<p>“Oh! Mother! Mother!” she ended.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_787" id="Page_787">[Pg 787]</a></span> “Oh! Jem! Jem!”</p>
-
-<p>Was she sobbing or trying to choke sobbing back? There was no time to
-be lost. Her mother had never known a scene to end in this way before.</p>
-
-<p>“Crying!” There was absolute spite in her voice. “That shows you know
-what you are in for, at all events. But I’ve said my last word. What
-does it matter to me, after all? You’re in the trap. I’m not. Get out
-as best you can.”</p>
-
-<p>She turned her back and went out of the room&mdash;as she had come into
-it&mdash;with a sweep Joan would have smiled at as rather vulgar if she
-had seen it. As a child in the nursery, she had often seen that her
-ladyship was vulgar.</p>
-
-<p>But she did not see the sweep because her face was hidden. Something
-in her had broken this time, as her mother had felt. That bitter,
-sordid truth, driven home as it had been, had done it. Who had time
-to remember denials, or lies proved to be lies? Nobody in the world.
-Who had time to give to the defense of a dead man? There was not
-time enough to give to living ones. It was true&mdash;true! When a man is
-dead, it is too late. The wall had built itself until it reached her
-sky; but it was not the wall she bent her head and sobbed over. It
-was that suddenly she had seen again Jem’s face as he had stood with
-slow-growing pallor, and looked round at the ring of eyes which stared
-at him; Jem’s face as he strode by her without a glance and went out
-of the room. She forgot everything else on earth. She forgot where she
-was. She was eighteen again, and she sobbed in her arms as eighteen
-sobs when its heart is torn from it.</p>
-
-<p>“Oh, Jem! Jem!” she cried. “If you were only in the same <i>world</i> with
-me! If you were just in the same <i>world</i>!”</p>
-
-<p>She had forgotten all else, indeed. She forgot too long. She did not
-know how long. It seemed that no more than a few minutes had passed
-before she was without warning struck with the shock of feeling that
-some one was in the room with her, standing near her, looking at her.
-She had been mad not to remember that exactly this thing would be
-sure to happen, by some abominable chance. Her movement as she rose
-was almost violent, she could not hold herself still, and her face
-was horribly wet with shameless, unconcealable tears. Shameless she
-felt them&mdash;indecent&mdash;a sort of nudity of the soul. If it had been a
-servant who had intruded, or if it had been Palliser it would have been
-intolerable enough. But it was T. Tembarom who confronted her with his
-common face, moved mysteriously by some feeling she resented even more
-than she resented his presence. He was too grossly ignorant to know
-that a man of breeding, having entered by chance, would have turned
-and gone away, professing not to have seen. He seemed to think&mdash;the
-dolt!&mdash;that he must make some apology.</p>
-
-<p>“Say! Lady Joan!” he began. “I beg your pardon. I didn’t mean to butt
-in.”</p>
-
-<p>“Then go away,” she commanded. “Instantly&mdash;instantly!”</p>
-
-<p>She knew he must see that she spoke almost through her teeth in her
-effort to control her sobbing breath. But he made no move toward
-leaving her. He even drew nearer, looking at her in a sort of
-meditative, obstinate way.</p>
-
-<p>“N-no,” he replied deliberately. “I guess&mdash;I won’t.”</p>
-
-<p>“You won’t?” Lady Joan repeated after him. “Then I will.”</p>
-
-<p>He made a stride forward and laid his hand on her arm.</p>
-
-<p>“No. Not on your life. You won’t, either&mdash;if I can help it. And you’re
-going to <i>let</i> me help it.”</p>
-
-<p>Almost any one but herself&mdash;any one, at least, who did not resent his
-very existence&mdash;would have felt the drop in his voice which suddenly
-struck the note of boyish, friendly appeal in the last sentence.
-“You’re going to <i>let</i> me,” he repeated.</p>
-
-<p>She stood looking down at the daring, unconscious hand on her arm.</p>
-
-<p>“I suppose,” she said, with cutting slowness, “that you do not even
-<i>know</i> that you are insolent. Take your hand away,” in arrogant command.</p>
-
-<p>He removed it with an unabashed half-smile.</p>
-
-<p>“I beg your pardon,” he said. “I didn’t even know I’d put it there. It
-was a break&mdash;but I wanted to keep you.”</p>
-
-<p>That he not only wanted to keep her, but intended to do so, was
-apparent. His air was neither rough nor brutal, but he had ingeniously
-placed himself in the outlet between the big table and the way to the
-door, He put his hands in his pockets in his vulgar, unconscious way,
-and watched her.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_788" id="Page_788">[Pg 788]</a></span></p>
-
-<p>“Say, Lady Joan!” he broke forth, in the frank outburst of a man who
-wants to get something over. “I should be a fool if I didn’t see that
-you’re up against it&mdash;hard! What’s the matter?” His voice dropped again.</p>
-
-<p>There was something in the drop this time which&mdash;perhaps because of her
-recent emotion&mdash;sounded to her almost as if he were asking the question
-with the protecting sympathy of the tone one would use in speaking to
-a child. How dare he! But it came home to her that Jem had once said
-“What’s the matter?” to her in the same way.</p>
-
-<p>“Do you think it likely that I should confide in you?” she said, and
-inwardly quaked at the memory as she said it.</p>
-
-<p>“No,” he answered, considering the matter gravely. “It’s not
-<i>likely</i>&mdash;the way things look to you now. But if you knew me better
-perhaps it would be likely.”</p>
-
-<p>“I once explained to you that I do not <i>intend</i> to know you better,”
-she gave answer.</p>
-
-<p>He nodded acquiescently.</p>
-
-<p>“Yes. I got on to that. And it’s because it’s up to me that I came out
-here to tell you something I want you to know before you go away. I’m
-going to confide in <i>you</i>.”</p>
-
-<p>“Cannot even <i>you</i> see that I am not in the mood to accept
-confidences?” she exclaimed.</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, I can. But you’re going to accept this one,” steadily. “No,” as
-she made a swift movement, “I’m not going to clear the way till I’ve
-done.”</p>
-
-<p>“I insist!” she cried. “If you were&mdash;” He put out his hand, but not to
-touch her.</p>
-
-<p>“I know what you’re going to say. If I were a gentleman&mdash;Well, I’m not
-laying any claims to anything&mdash;but I’m a sort of a man, anyhow, though
-you mayn’t think it. And you’re going to listen.”</p>
-
-<p class="s5 center mtop1">(To be continued)</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-   <a id="i_788" name="i_788">
-   <img class="mtop2 mbot3 w5em" src="images/i_788.jpg" alt="Tailpiece T. Tembarom" /></a>
-</div>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<h2 class="nobreak" id="RITUAL">RITUAL</h2>
-
-<p class="s3 center mbot1">BY WILLIAM ROSE BENÉT</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="poetry-container">
-  <div class="poetry">
-    <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse mleft5"><span class="drop-cap_poetry">L</span>ORD GOD, what may we think of Thee,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft5">Save that in stars we drink of Thee,</div>
-      <div class="verse">Save that in the abundance of Thy sunlight we have seen</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft5">Thine excellent intention;</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft5">And Thy marvelous invention</div>
-      <div class="verse">In great and little living things and all the grades between?</div>
-    </div>
-    <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse mleft5">Lord God, what may we say to Thee</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft5">Who know our hearts give way to Thee</div>
-      <div class="verse">Surely at last in secret depths, though protest long denies,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft5">And that to live is wonder</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft5">With worlds above and under</div>
-      <div class="verse">Unreached of any mortal heart, blurred to all mortal eyes?</div>
-    </div>
-    <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse mleft5">Lord God, the fitting praise to Thee</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft5">Rather would seem to raise to Thee</div>
-      <div class="verse">Only pure honesty of mind, waiting Thy stalwart will;</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft5">Like as the hills believe Thee,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft5">Like as the seas receive Thee,</div>
-      <div class="verse">Like as the trees whose rustlings cease,&mdash;who hear Thee and are still!</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<div class="chapter mtop2">
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_789" id="Page_789">[Pg 789]</a></span></p>
-
-<h2 id="TOPICS_OF_THE_TIME" class="nodisp" title="TOPICS OF THE TIME"></h2>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-   <a id="i_789" name="i_789">
-   <img class="mtop3 mbot1" src="images/i_789.jpg"
-      alt="Topics of the Time" /></a>
-</div>
-
-<h3 id="THE_SPIRIT_OF_THE_CENTURY">THE SPIRIT OF THE CENTURY</h3>
-
-<p class="p0 mtop2"><span class="drop-cap"><span class="s6 vat">“</span>T</span>HE magazine needs no other aim than to be worthy of the name it
-bears.”</p>
-
-<p>Thus wrote T<span class="smaller">HE</span> C<span class="smaller">ENTURY</span>’<span class="smaller">S</span> first editor, Dr. J. G. Holland,
-in the first number of this magazine nearly forty-three years ago.
-He referred, of course, to the magazine’s original title, which was
-“Scribner’s Monthly”; but T<span class="smaller">HE</span> C<span class="smaller">ENTURY</span>’<span class="smaller">S</span> earnest ambition to
-realize the full meaning of its present significant title can find
-no fitter expression. It continues to believe that success will be
-attained only as it becomes really the representative magazine of this
-new and spectacular century of American life.</p>
-
-<p>For the information of many inquiring friends, it seems wise at this
-time to say that there will be no “new” C<span class="smaller">ENTURY</span> in the sense
-of a changed C<span class="smaller">ENTURY</span>. There can be none. In remaining the
-“old” C<span class="smaller">ENTURY</span>, merely growing with the times, merely holding
-fast to its historic place in the front of progress, this magazine,
-in these richer days of hard thinking and prompt acting and strenuous
-living, these tumultuous days of changing eras, remains by mere
-definition the organ of what is noblest and forwardest in American
-life. The first editor of this magazine stated editorially that it
-was conducted in “the free spirit of modern progress and the broadest
-literary catholicity.” The fourth editor joyfully reaffirms this
-creed. There can be no simpler and more comprehensive statement of
-this magazine’s present spirit and purposes.</p>
-
-<p>In the twentieth-anniversary number, Richard Watson Gilder, who, on Dr.
-Holland’s death in 1881, succeeded to the editorship, reaffirmed the
-creed in these words:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>If there is any one dominant sentiment which an unprejudiced
-reviewer would recognize as pervading these forty half-yearly
-volumes, it is, we think, a sane and earnest Americanism. Along
-with and part of the American spirit has been the earnest endeavor
-to do all that such a publication might do to increase the
-sentiment of union throughout our diverse sisterhood of States&mdash;the
-sentiment of American nationality. It has always been the aim of
-T<span class="smaller">HE</span> C<span class="smaller">ENTURY</span> not only to be a force in literature and art,
-but to take a wholesome part in the discussion of great questions;
-not only to promote good literature and art, but good citizenship.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<p>Allowing for different conditions, Mr. Gilder might have written this
-for to-day.</p>
-
-<p>In the same editorial utterance Mr. Gilder dwelt strongly upon
-“the spirit of experiment” which, he said, had always inspired the
-magazine’s policy. This we take to be merely another phrase for Dr.
-Holland’s “free spirit of modern progress.”</p>
-
-<p>Five years later, on the occasion of our twenty-fifth anniversary, Mr.
-Gilder wrote in these pages:</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_790" id="Page_790">[Pg 790]</a></span></p><div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>During the next ten years there should be in America especially
-a revival of creative literature. If there is, or should be at
-any particular time, a lack of energy, or a lack of quantity
-or quality, in the American literary output, it can be merely
-temporary; for our condition is full of social, political, and
-industrial problems; life in the New World is replete with
-strenuous exertion of every kind, of picturesque contrasts, and of
-innumerable themes fit to inspire literary art. American life is
-rich in feeling and action and meaning.</p></div>
-
-<p>American life is richer many times over in feeling and action, and
-especially in meaning, than when Mr. Gilder penned these words. The
-intervening years have brought to the surface a myriad of surging
-currents of human desire and necessity and passion, then concealed,
-almost unsuspected, below the surface.</p>
-
-<p>It cannot have escaped any reader of T<span class="smaller">HE</span> C<span class="smaller">ENTURY</span> that we are
-living in a period of amazing achievement as well as of portentous
-social development. Yet any worker in the furrows of life may well
-be pardoned for failure to realize the detail and immensity of our
-achievement. Could one devote himself wholly to discovering the facts
-of modern accomplishment, it would take a busy life to get abreast of
-the mere news of it, and to keep there. Ours are times of such variety
-and complexity that none can be expected to grasp much more than the
-technicalities of his own work-bench.</p>
-
-<p>Like most prophesies, Mr. Gilder’s has been only partly fulfilled. Yet
-the eighteen years since he uttered it have proved at least that it
-was true, though its realization has been delayed by the extraordinary
-activity of these later years. The history of all human progress shows
-that the art of any period is, so to speak, the flowering of that
-period. The bloom appears only after stem and stalk have shot to their
-full growth, and leaves have expanded and darkened to their maturity.
-The bubbling sap of Mr. Gilder’s time is showing now in new and
-surprising growth, and our problem to-day is not so much to enjoy the
-flowering literature which he promised as to study and to measure and
-to comprehend as nearly as possible the wealth of scientific and social
-and political and industrial achievement which has amazingly developed.</p>
-
-<p>There is no escaping the fact that civilization, like the river
-tumbling and swirling between two lakes, is passing turbulently from
-the old convention of the last several generations to the unknown,
-almost unguessable convention of the not distant future. The feminist
-movement, the uprising of labor, the surging of innumerable socialistic
-currents, can mean nothing else than the certain readjustment of social
-levels. The demand of the people for the heritage of the bosses is not
-short of revolution. The rebellious din of frantic impressionistic
-groups is nothing if not strenuous protest against a frozen art. The
-changed Sabbath and the tempered sermon mark the coldly critical
-appraisement of religious creeds. And science, meantime, straining and
-sweating under the lash of progress, is passing from wonder unto wonder.</p>
-
-<p>Perhaps Mr. Gilder’s period of literary flowering, though surely
-coming, must be postponed another decade. The need of the moment is to
-discover where we are, what is accomplishing about us. Where<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_791" id="Page_791">[Pg 791]</a></span> have all
-these struggling activities brought us? What have they really done?
-What do they mean? Whither do they tend?</p>
-
-<p>It is time we look this question of the present squarely in the eye,
-in order, if for no other reason, that we may intelligently face
-the future. It is time that, in business phrase, we take account
-of stock. It is time that the chemist, for example, trembling
-over the revelations of his amazing combinations, know that the
-psychologist, too, is excited about the astonishing developments of
-his own laboratory; that the elated conquerors of the air realize the
-achievement of those who plod in the groaning shops of town; that the
-biologist, amazed at his artificial propagation of life, appreciate the
-telegraphic annihilation of space.</p>
-
-<p>Thus only may we wisely choose our steps in these uncertain times,
-remembering that change is not always degeneration; oftener it is
-progress. There are periods when men live literature, not write it,
-and consequently literary barrenness may mean merely lying fallow, and
-still be progress. Especially must we not be too hasty of judgment, for
-while there are times to preach and times to act and times to pronounce
-judgment, there are at long intervals also times, between the passings
-out and the comings in, when it behooves all men to watch and to wait
-and to study the signs. There are abundant reasons to believe that
-such a time is at hand, and T<span class="smaller">HE</span> C<span class="smaller">ENTURY</span>, now, as in the past,
-stands by to help.</p>
-
-<p>During the months, perhaps the years, to come, in Dr. Holland’s “free
-spirit of modern progress,” in Mr. Gilder’s “spirit of experiment,”
-and in Mr. Johnson’s spirit of public helpfulness, T<span class="smaller">HE</span> C<span class="smaller">ENTURY</span>
-will offer to its readers a summing-up of the results of this wonderful
-period, and a fair presentation of the changes attendant upon the
-passing of our present order and the establishment of the new.</p>
-
-<p>Not as an advocate shall we present these causes, nor again in protest;
-but in the fair, free, unbiased spirit of investigation. Facts must
-precede opinions. It is poor rowing against the rapids between the
-lakes. Let us study these manifestations fairly and sympathetically
-before we draw conclusions. It will be T<span class="smaller">HE</span> C<span class="smaller">ENTURY</span>’<span class="smaller">S</span> pleasure
-and public duty to enlist the services of able authorities in every
-cause, and to present each justly from its own point of view.</p>
-
-<p>Such a program will, we feel sure, help materially the cause of human
-progress, because it will help men and women to comprehend life as it
-passes.</p>
-
-<p>As for the rest, we shall conserve the best that T<span class="smaller">HE</span> C<span class="smaller">ENTURY</span>
-has stood for in the past. We shall offer a larger proportion of
-fiction than formerly, and shall bring it as near to truth, and make
-it as interpretative of life, as conditions allow. We shall maintain
-illustration at the highest point modern method will permit. We shall
-cultivate history and poetry and the essay. We shall explore conditions
-at home and abroad. We shall make this magazine, fearlessly and in the
-white light of to-day, as nearly the magazine of the century as courage
-and devotion and eyes that see and minds that shrink not can do.</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_792" id="Page_792">[Pg 792]</a></span></p>
-
-<div class="figcenter padtop3">
-   <a id="i_792a1" name="i_792a1">
-   <img class="mtop3" src="images/i_792a1.jpg" alt="Headpiece In Lighter Vein" /></a>
-</div>
-
-<h2 id="IN_LIGHTER_VEIN" class="nodisp nopad nobreak">IN LIGHTER VEIN</h2>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-   <a id="i_792a2" name="i_792a2">
-   <img class="mtop1 mbot2 w20em" src="images/i_792a2.jpg"
-      alt="In Lighter Vein" /></a>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<h3 id="WORLD_REFORMERS_AND_DUSTERS">WORLD REFORMERS&mdash;AND DUSTERS</h3>
-
-<p class="p0 mtop2"><span class="drop-cap">T</span>HOUGH often entranced by that brilliant group of cosmic
-problem-solvers&mdash;Mr. H. G. Wells, Mr. Shaw, Mr. Chesterton, and
-others&mdash;I insist on my personal irresponsibility for the state of
-Mankind as a whole. These men are always nursing civilization.
-They regard it as a sort of potted plant which they fear to find
-frost-bitten of a morning. This is especially clear in the latest
-writings of Mr. H. G. Wells, who would tidy up the whole world at once.
-At one swoop he would remove the shirts from our clothes-lines and the
-errors from our minds. The world is too large for his feather duster;
-he had thought to find it a smaller planet that he might have kept at
-least half-way clean. Now see what he has on his hands&mdash;everything in
-a mess, Africa backward, China careless, the sex relation by no means
-straightened out, socialism, imperialism, industrialism, planless
-progressivism littering up things, and nobody caring a rap&mdash;at times
-it seems to the good housewifely soul almost too much for one person
-to manage. And then that infernal human diversity&mdash;slow minds, stupid
-minds, minds made up too soon, or not at all, closed minds, tough
-minds, tender minds&mdash;what’s to be done with them? He burns to do
-<i>something</i>. At least he says he does.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-   <a id="i_792b" name="i_792b">
-   <img class="mtop1 mbot1" src="images/i_792b.jpg"
-      alt="Duster" /></a>
-</div>
-
-<p>In one of his books he describes himself in fancy as going about the
-country and, with the keenest joy, spearing Anglican bishops. Though I
-am myself a stranger to the sport, I believe the pleasure of spearing
-bishops is exaggerated. For once begun it must lead logically to a
-daily drudgery of slaughter among the great crowds of folks who are not
-intellectually independent or morally daring&mdash;lead, in short, to the
-massacre of those who are not particularly exciting, a large task and
-tedious.</p>
-
-<p>I wonder if we commonplace persons are not right after all in a certain
-instinct of distrust toward these gifted writers. We believe implicitly
-in their fancies and not at all in their facts. We believe in the world
-they have invented and not in the world they have observed; and we
-distrust them utterly as world-pushers. The signs are plain&mdash;terribly
-plain sometimes&mdash;that it is when they have the smallest notions that
-they say their largest things.</p>
-
-<p class="right mright2"><i>The Senior Wrangler.</i></p>
-
-<div class="section">
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_793" id="Page_793">[Pg 793]</a></span></p>
-
-<h3 id="LADY_CLARA_VERE_DE_VERE_NEW_STYLE">LADY CLARA VERE DE VERE:
-<i>NEW STYLE</i></h3>
-
-<p class="s4 center">(REFORMER, UPLIFTER, SOCIAL SERVICER AND BELIEVER IN BETTERMENT)</p>
-
-<p class="s4 center mtop1">BY ANNE O’HAGAN</p>
-
-<p class="s5 center">WITH A PICTURE BY E. L. BLUMENSCHEIN</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-   <a id="i_793a" name="i_793a">
-   <img class="mtop2" src="images/i_793a.jpg" alt="" /></a>
-   <p class="caption">LADY CLARA: <i>NEW STYLE</i></p>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="poetry-container">
-  <div class="poetry">
-    <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse">L<span class="smaller">ADY</span> C<span class="smaller">LARA</span> V<span class="smaller">ERE DE</span> V<span class="smaller">ERE</span>,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">Though, ’neath the Tennysonian frown,</div>
-      <div class="verse">You’ve ceased to play at hearts, what need</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">For throwing <i>all</i> the graces down?</div>
-      <div class="verse">The quip, the wile, the wingèd smile,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">Must these in truth be quite retired,</div>
-      <div class="verse">Reformer of a thousand ills,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">O lady with a mission fired?</div>
-    </div>
-    <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse">Lady Clara Vere de Vere,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">You cause a tumult in my head.</div>
-      <div class="verse">I do not know how many quarts</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">Of coal-tar every year are fed</div>
-      <div class="verse">In store-made pies, or what dread dyes</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">Give that bright emerald to canned peas.</div>
-      <div class="verse">I do not know the cure for graft,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">Or juvenile delinquencies;</div>
-      <div class="verse">And, oh, my very soul is sick</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">Of these and topics like to these!</div>
-    </div>
-    <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse">Lady Clara Vere de Vere,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">On suffragism you’ve a view.</div>
-      <div class="verse">You have one on the cost of war,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">And what the working-girl should do.</div>
-      <div class="verse">Your uplift crusade comprehends</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">The stage, the mart, the funeral bier;</div>
-      <div class="verse">Your dinner-table talk has grown</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">Statistical and very drear.</div>
-    </div>
-    <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse">Trust me, Clara Vere de Vere,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">By yon blue heavens above us bent,</div>
-      <div class="verse">The gardener Adam and his wife</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">Yawn at your plans for betterment.</div>
-      <div class="verse">We never see such sad ennui</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">Among our hapless human brood</div>
-      <div class="verse">As when the ladies’ motto runs:</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">“’Tis fashionable to do good.”</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft2 s4">·&nbsp;<span class="mleft1">·</span>&nbsp;<span class="mleft1">·</span>&nbsp;<span class="mleft1">·</span>&nbsp;<span class="mleft1">·</span>&nbsp;<span class="mleft1">·</span>&nbsp;<span class="mleft1">·</span></div>
-      <div class="verse">Clara, Clara Vere de Vere,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">If time hangs heavy on your hands,</div>
-      <div class="verse">Are there no suitors at your gates,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">No squires of dames about your lands?</div>
-      <div class="verse">Go, play the game of hearts again,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">Coquette, and sparkle, languish, glow;</div>
-      <div class="verse">Ask pardon of the folk you’ve bored,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">And let the thousand causes go!</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-   <a id="i_793b" name="i_793b">
-   <img class="mtop1 w6em" src="images/i_793b.jpg" alt="Tailpiece Clara Vere de Vere" /></a>
-</div>
-
-<div class="section mtop3">
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_794" id="Page_794">[Pg 794]</a></span></p>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-   <a id="i_794" name="i_794">
-   <img class="mtop3" src="images/i_794.jpg" alt="" /></a>
-   <p class="caption1">Drawn by Reginald Birch</p>
-   <p class="caption">“THE PET HAS BECOME OF MATERIAL AID TO HIM IN HIS WALL STREET WORK”</p>
-</div>
-
-<h3 class="mtop2" id="THE_NEWS_IN_WALL_STREET">THE NEWS IN WALL STREET</h3>
-
-<p class="s4 center mtop1">BY JAMES L. FORD</p>
-
-<p class="s5 center">Author of “The Literary Shop”</p>
-
-<p class="s5 center mtop1 mbot2">WITH PICTURES BY REGINALD BIRCH AND
-MAY WILSON PRESTON</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<p class="p0">A<span class="smaller">LGY</span> B<span class="smaller">OND</span> is one of the brokers who is doing remarkably well
-in Wall Street now. He is widely known as a cotillion leader, as
-vice-president of the Westminster Kennel Club, and as a member of the
-MacDowell Musical Union. He has lately trained Grassmere Dolly&mdash;his
-intelligent French poodle&mdash;so that the pet has become of material aid
-to him in his Wall Street work.</p>
-
-<p class="p0">M<span class="smaller">ONEY</span> has been easier in Wall Street since the sale of many
-gilt-edged mining and industrial securities brought a number of
-eager home-builders into the market. The new fashion of papering the
-walls of country homes with these beautiful and durable specimens of
-steel-engraving has created a lively demand for the stocks in question.</p>
-
-<p class="p0">T<span class="smaller">HE</span> opening of the new station of the Herald Ice Fund at the
-corner of Wall and Broad streets created a profound sensation in the
-financial district. The Stock-Exchange closed during the distribution
-of the ice, and many pitiful scenes were enacted as the members of the
-great banking-houses crowded about the wagon and fought for the chilly
-cubes that were handed out to them. An office boy generously shared his
-piece with a bank president. The magnate burst into tears, and promised
-that he would make his benefactor rich by never giving him a tip on the
-stock-market.</p>
-
-<p class="p0">Y<span class="smaller">EGGMEN</span> entered the office of Bilkheimer Brothers, Bankers and
-Brokers, last Saturday night, and blew open the safe with dynamite.
-When Mr. Abie Bilkheimer, the popular bond specialist, and the head of
-the firm, reached his office on Monday morning, he found a ten-dollar
-bill and a card on which were inscribed a few words of heartfelt
-sympathy from the yeggmen.</p>
-
-<p class="p0">T<span class="smaller">HAT</span> a cat cannot live in a vacuum has been proved by a
-series of recent experiments carried on by the Wall Street Class for
-Scientific Study to which many of the younger brokers belong. It was
-found that the quickest method of killing a cat is to lock it in the
-vaults of that trust company which claims the largest capital and
-surplus.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_795" id="Page_795">[Pg 795]</a></span></p>
-
-<p class="p0">M<span class="smaller">ANY</span> charitable persons have been in the habit of scattering
-pennies from the gallery of the Stock-Exchange, but this practice has
-been forbidden since Looey Pinchenstein (the organizer of the pool in
-Rio and Hernandez copper) fractured his nose in the scramble. Pennies
-will hereafter be left with the doorman to distribute at the close of
-the day.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-   <a id="i_795" name="i_795">
-   <img class="mtop1" src="images/i_795.jpg" alt="" /></a>
-   <p class="caption">“A POOR TICKER-TIED BROKER”</p>
-   <p class="caption1">Drawn by May Wilson Preston</p>
-</div>
-
-<p class="p0 mtop1">T<span class="smaller">HE</span> Tribune Fresh Air Fund has received a touching letter
-from little Willie Noodle, inclosing thirty-eight cents&mdash;which he had
-saved in a toy bank from his candy money&mdash;and expressing the hope that
-it would help to send a poor ticker-tied broker on an outing to the
-sea-shore.</p>
-
-<p class="p0">T<span class="smaller">HE</span> other day a gentleman of provincial aspect was found
-wandering on Wall Street in a dazed and feeble condition. Upon being
-questioned as to the nature of his errand there, he announced his
-intention of opening an account with a Wall Street brokerage firm....
-When the police finally rescued him from the surging mob of brokers,
-it was found that he had suffered severe contusions about the hips and
-breasts. He is at present confined in one of the private wards of the
-observation pavilion.</p>
-
-<div class="section">
-
-<h3 class="nopad mtop3" id="CONTINUED_IN_THE_ADS">CONTINUED IN THE ADS</h3>
-
-<p class="s5 center">A DIRGE INSPIRED BY A REGRETTABLE TENDENCY IN THE
-PERIODICALS OF OUR DAY</p>
-
-<p class="s4 center mtop1">BY SARAH REDINGTON</p>
-
-<p class="s5 center">(With the usual apologies to Swinburne)</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="poetry-container">
-  <div class="poetry">
-    <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse">I<span class="smaller">F</span> I wrote sonnets soulful</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">And you wrote ads for beans,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft2">And I got in your section</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft2">’Twould cause me deep dejection.</div>
-      <div class="verse">(My Muse would be so doleful</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">In such unwonted scenes.)</div>
-      <div class="verse">If I wrote sonnets soulful,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">And you wrote ads for beans.</div>
-    </div>
-    <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse">If you had sung the praises</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">Of soap or safety-pin,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft2">And found some high-brow lyric</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft2">Beside your panegyric,</div>
-      <div class="verse">You’d be as mad as blazes</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">To see bards butting in.</div>
-      <div class="verse">If you had sung the praises</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">Of soap or safety-pin.</div>
-    </div>
-    <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse">When, on page eight, perusing</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">“The Baby and the Cop,”</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft2">Its dénouement I’m bidden</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft2">To seek, ’mid ads half hidden,</div>
-      <div class="verse">I find it hanged confusing</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">And let the Baby drop.</div>
-      <div class="verse">When, on page eight perusing</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">“The Baby and the Cop.”</div>
-    </div>
-    <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse">When one is just deciding</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">To buy a fountain-pen,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft2">And in the ads one’s seeking</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft2">For “Notablot Non-Leaking,”</div>
-      <div class="verse"><i>Who</i> wants to be colliding</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">With “Wives of Famous Men”?</div>
-      <div class="verse">When one is just deciding</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">To buy a fountain-pen.</div>
-    </div>
-    <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse">Oh, magazines suggesting</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">A boarding-house ragout,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft2"><i>Why</i> mix your tales and ballads</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft2">With ads of soups and salads?</div>
-      <div class="verse">It’s hard enough digesting</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">The awful stuff we do.</div>
-      <div class="verse">Oh, magazines suggesting</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">A boarding-house ragout.</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<div class="section mtop3">
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_796" id="Page_796">[Pg 796]</a></span></p>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-   <a id="i_796" name="i_796">
-   <img class="mtop3" src="images/i_796.jpg" alt="" /></a>
-   <p class="caption">THE RYMBEL FAMILY. FROM A RECENT PORTRAIT BY OLIVER HERFORD</p>
-</div>
-
-<h3 class="mtop2" id="HOW_THE_RYMBELS_BROKE_INTO_VERSE">HOW THE
-RYMBELS BROKE INTO VERSE</h3>
-
-</div>
-
-<p class="p0">T<span class="smaller">HE</span> above portrait is the first authentic likeness of the eccentric
-Rymbels. It portrays them rymbling, <i>chez eux</i>. It is, in particular, a
-speaking, not to say a <i>shouting</i>, likeness of Mr. Rymbel.</p>
-
-<p>This interesting, demented, and extremely misunderstood verse family
-was first discovered and laid bare to the public by Mr. Herford in
-the August issue of T<span class="smaller">HE</span> C<span class="smaller">ENTURY</span>. As a result of his happy
-discovery, and because of his two remarkable rymbels in that issue,
-he has lately been appointed Rymbel Laureate of America. Since their
-successful début, public interest in the Rymbels has increased
-amazingly. In New York the fever is now at its height. Everybody’s
-rymbling it. Rude, ridiculous, and ribald rymbels are arriving by every
-post.</p>
-
-<p>For those who are not already confirmed rymbelists it may be merciful
-to explain that, roughly speaking, a rymbel is any poem of two, four,
-or six stanzas, preferably of five lines each, in which the ultimate
-word in one verse must inevitably be a miscue for the subject-matter of
-the next. This miscue is due to three things: eccentricity, deafness,
-and dementia, all of them pronounced Rymbel family characteristics.</p>
-
-<p>Whenever Mr. Rymbel embarks on the first verse, Mrs. Rymbel, because
-of her deafness and lightness of mind, seizes on the most unexpected
-meaning embodied in the last word of her husband’s verse, and proceeds
-properly to mangle it in the second, after which the children take up
-the tangled skein, and do a little mangling on their own.</p>
-
-<p>In the masterly canvas at the head of this page, Mr. R. is seen
-inflated with an afflatus and embarking on his first verse. Mrs. R.,
-with a tight hold on the baby, is feverishly awaiting her all important
-cue. Symbol, their beautiful daughter, is the seated lady shown at the
-right of Mr. R. The astute reader will already have guessed, because
-of the prevalence of flowering hay in her hair, that, mentally, Symbol
-is, to put it charitably, only sparking on one cylinder. Ramble, the
-eldest son, has, it will be seen, just rebuked Rondeau and Rhyme, the
-twins, who, after hearing parts of their father’s verse, have turned to
-their mother to mutter: “What’s the matter with his metre-motor, mater?”</p>
-
-<p>Miss Carolyn Wells, who has for years been on the most intimate terms
-with the Rymbels, and who might almost be called a member of the
-family, has preserved, as souvenirs of a boy-and-girl affair with
-Master Ramble, two noteworthy examples of rymbelican verse. In the
-first of these the Rymbels have touchingly voiced their preferences for
-the nobler and loftier bards of our day. It is entitled:</p>
-
-<p class="s4 center mtop2" id="A_Rymbel_of_Rhymers">A RYMBEL OF RHYMERS</p>
-
-<div class="poetry-container">
-  <div class="poetry">
-    <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse">D<span class="smaller">EAR</span> Edith Thomas! Oft do I</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">Feel in my heart the call of her.</div>
-      <div class="verse">Swift to my book-shelf then I fly,</div>
-      <div class="verse">And, hovering ’twixt a laugh and cry,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">I read and re-read all of her.</div>
-    </div>
-    <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse">Oliver Herford! How can praise</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">Add aught to his renown?</div>
-      <div class="verse">His comic kits, his fetching fays,</div>
-      <div class="verse">His books and works and healthful plays,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">Are known all over town.</div>
-    </div>
-    <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse">Charles Hanson Towne! his lyrics flow</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">Soft as the dews of Harmon;</div>
-      <div class="verse">His tastes are musical, and so</div>
-      <div class="verse">To please them he will often go</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">To “Lohengrin” or “Carmen.”</div>
-    </div>
-    <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse">Bliss Carman all our hearts must win;</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">To higher thought he’d urge us;</div>
-      <div class="verse">Divinely tall, divinely thin,</div>
-      <div class="verse">Austere of mien, he should have been</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">A beadle or a burgess.</div>
-    </div>
-    <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse">G. Burgess, Super-Sulphide! yet</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">Perhaps more saint than sinner.</div>
-      <div class="verse">His rhymes cavort and pirouette,</div>
-      <div class="verse">And as for that mad thing, Vivette,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">I almost wish I’d been her.</div>
-    </div>
-    <div class="stanza">
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_797" id="Page_797">[Pg 797]</a></span>
-      <div class="verse">Oh, Witter Bynner, oftener sound</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">Your note of lyric joys!</div>
-      <div class="verse">Come, poets, let us gather round,</div>
-      <div class="verse">Lest our brave pipings yet be drowned</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">By some strange foreign Noyes!</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class="p0 mtop1">M<span class="smaller">R</span>. L. F<span class="smaller">RANK</span> T<span class="smaller">OOKER</span> of Callao, Peru, insists that the rymbel
-is didactic, and that its highest form is found in Spanish South
-America, where it is used to inculcate the prudence and self-restraint
-for which that region is preëminent. In illustration of this
-contention, he sends this from Callao:</p>
-
-<p class="s4 center mtop2" id="The_Prudent_Lover">THE PRUDENT LOVER</p>
-
-<div class="poetry-container">
-  <div class="poetry">
-    <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse">I <span class="smaller">THINK</span> when I behold her face,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">It is so varee fair,</div>
-      <div class="verse">’Tis best to get acquaint’, you know,</div>
-      <div class="verse">And so I gaze <i>simpatico</i>:</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">That’s how you call to stare.</div>
-    </div>
-    <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse">Ah, she was pausing on that stair</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">So timid like the fawn;</div>
-      <div class="verse">And fawn-like were her eyes, her lips</div>
-      <div class="verse">Were like the flowers the slow bee sips</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">Upon the dewy lawn.</div>
-    </div>
-    <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse">But, <i>hola! she</i> was not in lawn;</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">For as she turned to go,</div>
-      <div class="verse">I saw the pearls glow at her throat,</div>
-      <div class="verse">The satin gown about her float,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">Though timid like the doe.</div>
-    </div>
-    <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse"><i>Caramba!</i> I have not the dough</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">For such expensiveness.</div>
-      <div class="verse">The eyes, the lips, the timid air,</div>
-      <div class="verse">That’s varee nice; but, oh, beware</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">That C. O. D. express!</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class="p0 mtop1">A<span class="smaller">GAIN</span> the low rymbling sound of Miss Carolyn Wells!! This time ART is
-her impassioned theme. She writes from Hansontown, Herfordshire.</p>
-
-<p class="s4 center mtop2" id="On_a_Portrait_of_Nancy">ON A PORTRAIT OF NANCY</p>
-
-<div class="poetry-container">
-  <div class="poetry">
-    <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse">F<span class="smaller">ULL</span> winsome was her bonny face,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">And eke her golden hair.</div>
-      <div class="verse">Her gown was weft of rarest lace;</div>
-      <div class="verse">And high aloft, with gentle grace,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">A sunshade pink she bare.</div>
-    </div>
-    <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse">The She Bear from the forest came,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">Just why, I cannot state.</div>
-      <div class="verse">The creature seemed to be quite tame;</div>
-      <div class="verse">Methought, would I her favor claim,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">I must ingratiate.</div>
-    </div>
-    <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse">In gray she ate! The lunch was fair,&mdash;</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">We had a window-seat.</div>
-      <div class="verse">Her gray gown meek, yet debonair;&mdash;</div>
-      <div class="verse">Demure,&mdash;yet with a regal air,&mdash;</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">She looked imperial,&mdash;sweet.</div>
-    </div>
-    <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse">“Imperial suite? Yes,&mdash;I dare say</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">’T would make our voyage gladder.”</div>
-      <div class="verse">My wife is mad about display&mdash;</div>
-      <div class="verse">(But when I mentioned what we’d pay,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">It only made Rose madder!)</div>
-    </div>
-    <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse">Rose madder,&mdash;’tis the tint I’d use</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">To paint my brain’s fair figment;</div>
-      <div class="verse">A shape, half goddess and half muse,</div>
-      <div class="verse">And all in misty, pinkish hues,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">The color scheme,&mdash;the pigment.</div>
-    </div>
-    <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse">The color scheme the pig meant? Ma’am,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">That <i>was</i> a subtle fancy!</div>
-      <div class="verse">In tints of dawning gooseb’ry jam,</div>
-      <div class="verse">And those soft pinks of early ham,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft1">We painted little Nancy!</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-   <a id="i_797" name="i_797">
-   <img src="images/i_797.jpg" alt="" /></a>
-   <p class="caption1">Drawing by Birch</p>
-   <p class="caption">THE “ELITE” BATHING DRESS</p>
-   <p class="caption1"><i>Now so much in vogue at Newport</i></p>
-</div>
-
-<p class="p0 mtop1">W<span class="smaller">E</span> have been distressed to learn, from our great Metropolitan dailies,
-that the ladies of assured and ultramundane position at Newport have
-recently suffered severely from the unwarrantable intrusion on Bailey’s
-Beach of certain Sunday Supplement sketch artists, society editors,
-female policemen, independent kodakers, and foreign noblemen. As an
-indirect result of these intrusions the “Elite” bathing dress has been
-designed to assuage the sensibilities of the more modest and fastidious
-among the hostesses of Newport. Our illustration shows Mrs. Reginald
-Ochrepoint and Wu, her clever pet, ready for their morning dip.</p>
-
-<div class="section mtop3">
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_798" id="Page_798">[Pg 798]</a></span></p>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-   <a id="i_798a" name="i_798a">
-   <img src="images/i_798a.jpg" alt="" /></a>
-   <p class="caption1">Drawn by C. F. Peters</p>
-   <p class="caption">FROM GRAVE TO GAY</p>
-   <p class="caption5">T<span class="smaller">HE</span> F<span class="smaller">RESHMAN</span>: “Oh&mdash;er&mdash;might I be excused from my lectures
-for a few days? The truth is&mdash;er&mdash;I want very much to attend the
-funeral of an old and trusted friend.”</p>
-   <p class="caption5">T<span class="smaller">HE</span> D<span class="smaller">EAN</span>: “Well, really, Robinson,&mdash;I wonder if that is
-quite necessary?&mdash;Now, if it were your father or your mother, I
-should, of course, be only <i>too</i> delighted.”</p>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="section mtop3">
-
-<h3 class="nopad mtop2" id="THE_WISE_SAINT">THE WISE SAINT</h3>
-
-<p class="s4 center">(A FABLE FOR ANYBODY)</p>
-
-<p class="center">BY HERMAN DA COSTA</p>
-
-<p class="s5 center">PICTURE BY W. T. BENDA</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-   <a id="i_798b" name="i_798b">
-   <img class="mtop1" src="images/i_798b.jpg" alt="The Devil and St. Peter" /></a>
-</div>
-
-<div class="poetry-container">
-  <div class="poetry">
-    <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse">D<span class="smaller">E</span> debble see St. Peter sneak into heaben’s gate;</div>
-      <div class="verse">He holler: “What’s yo’ hurry? Wait dar, Peter! Wait!”</div>
-    </div>
-    <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse">De saint pull in de latch-string, an’ holler: “Now, you go!</div>
-      <div class="verse">I’ll sic de houn’ dawg on you de fustest t’ing you know.”</div>
-    </div>
-    <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse">“I speaks you like a ge’man,” de debble up an’ say,</div>
-      <div class="verse">“And yere you shets me out, sah! Fer shame! to ack dat way!”</div>
-    </div>
-    <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse">“Don’ argify,” say Peter. “You leads fo’ks into sin.</div>
-      <div class="verse">Ain’t shettin’ you out, nohow; I’s shettin’ mahse’f in.”</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<div class="section mtop3">
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_799" id="Page_799">[Pg 799]</a></span></p>
-
-<h3 class="nopad mtop2" id="LIMERICKS">LIMERICKS</h3>
-
-<p class="center">TEXT AND PICTURES BY OLIVER HERFORD</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-   <a id="i_799" name="i_799">
-   <img class="mtop1" src="images/i_799.jpg" alt="The Conservative Owl" /></a>
-</div>
-
-<h4>THE CONSERVATIVE OWL</h4>
-
-<div class="poetry-container">
-  <div class="poetry">
-    <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse">A <span class="smaller">CANARY</span>, its woe to assuage,</div>
-      <div class="verse">Once invented a wireless cage.</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft2">The owl shook his head,</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft2">“It’s a Great Thought,” he said,</div>
-      <div class="verse">“But it’s far in advance of the age.”</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_800" id="Page_800">[Pg 800]</a></span></p>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-   <a id="i_800" name="i_800">
-   <img class="mtop1" src="images/i_800.jpg" alt="The Omnivorous Book-worm" /></a>
-</div>
-
-<h4>THE OMNIVOROUS BOOK-WORM</h4>
-
-<div class="poetry-container mbot3">
-  <div class="poetry">
-    <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse">Q<span class="smaller">UOTH</span> the book-worm, “I don’t care one bit</div>
-      <div class="verse">If writers have wisdom or wit;</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft2">A volume must be</div>
-      <div class="verse mleft2">Pretty dull to bore me</div>
-      <div class="verse">As completely as I can bore it.”</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class="s6 center"><span class="bt padtop0_5">&emsp; THE DE VINNE PRESS,
-NEW YORK &emsp;</span></p>
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-<pre>
-
-
-
-
-
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