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If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this eBook. - -Title: Raw Material - -Author: Dorothy Canfield - -Release Date: September 10, 2021 [eBook #66258] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -Produced by: D A Alexander, Martin Pettit and the Online Distributed - Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was - produced from images generously made available by The Internet - Archive) - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RAW MATERIAL *** - -+-------------------------------------------------+ -|Transcriber’s note: | -| | -|Obvious typographic errors have been corrected. | -| | -+-------------------------------------------------+ - - -RAW MATERIAL - - - - -_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_ - -THE SQUIRREL-CAGE -A MONTESSORI MOTHER -MOTHERS AND CHILDREN -THE BENT TWIG -THE REAL MOTIVE -FELLOW CAPTAINS (With SARAH N. CLEGHORN) -UNDERSTOOD BETSY -HOME FIRES IN FRANCE -THE DAY OF GLORY -THE BRIMMING CUP -ROUGH-HEWN - - - - -RAW MATERIAL - -BY -DOROTHY CANFIELD - -[Illustration: Logo] - - -NEW YORK -HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY - - - - -COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY -HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, INC. - - -PRINTED IN THE U.S.A. BY - -The Quinn & Boden Company -BOOK MANUFACTURERS -RAHWAY NEW JERSEY - - - - -CONTENTS - - PAGE -RAW MATERIAL 9 - -UNCLE GILES 25 - -“WHAT GOES UP...” 37 - -OLD MAN WARNER 69 - -THE IDEAS OF M. BRODARD 83 - -FAIRFAX HUNTER 111 - -PROFESSOR PAUL MEYER 127 - -“WHILE ALL THE GODS...” 143 - -SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS 151 - -ART ATMOSPHERE 167 - -COLONEL SHAYS 175 - -A GREAT LOVE 187 - -SUPPLY AND DEMAND 197 - -UNCLE ELLIS 211 - -GOD’S COUNTRY 215 - -INHERITANCE 227 - -THIRTY YEARS AFTER 233 - -“THE OLD NEW ENGLAND STOCK” 239 - -OCTOBER, 1918 255 - -A BRETON AMONG HSÜ HSI 265 - -ALMERA HAWLEY CANFIELD 273 - - - - -RAW MATERIAL - - -I don’t know who is responsible for this rather odd book, but I lay -it to the earlier generations of my family. My clergyman grandfather -always said that he never enjoyed any sermons so much as the ones he -preached to himself sitting under another clergyman’s pulpit. When the -text was given out, his mind seized on it with a vivid fresh interest -and, running rapidly away from the intrusive sound of the other -preacher’s voice, wove a tissue of clear, strong, and fascinatingly -interesting reasonings and exhortations. Grandfather used to say that -such sermons preached to himself were in the nature of things much -better than any he could ever deliver in church. “I don’t have to keep -a wary eye out for stupid old Mrs. Ellsworth, who never understands -anything light or fanciful; I don’t have to remember to thunder -occasionally at stolid Mr. Peters to wake him up. I don’t have to -remember to keep my voice raised so that deaf old Senator Peaseley can -hear me. I am not obliged to hold the wandering attention of their -muddled heads by a series of foolish little rhetorical tricks or by a -prodigious effort of my personality. I can just make my sermon what it -ought to be.” - -My father, who did a great deal of public speaking, though not in -pulpits, took up this habit in his turn. When a speaker began an -address, he always fell into a trance-like condition, his eyes fixed -steadily on the other orator, apparently giving him the most profound -attention, but in reality making in his mind, on the theme suggested -by the audible speaker, a fluent, impassioned address of his own. He -used to say that he came to himself after one of these auto-addresses -infinitely exhilarated and refreshed by the experience of having -been speaking to an audience which instantly caught his every point, -and which, although entirely sympathetic, was stimulatingly quick to -find the weak spots in his argument and eager to keep him up to his -best. Afterwards he dreaded an ordinary audience with its limping -comprehension, its wandering attention, its ill-timed laughter and -applause. - -After I began to read for myself I found the same habit of mind -familiar to many authors. The Stevensons walked up and down the -porch at Saranac, talking at the tops of their voices, on fire with -enthusiasm for their first conception of “The Wrecker.” There never -was, there never could be (so they found out afterwards) a story half -so fine as that tale seemed to them in those glorious moments when -they saw it as they would have liked to make it. I nodded my head -understandingly over this episode. Yes, that was what, in their plain -way, my grandfather and father had done. I recognized the process. -It was evidently a universal one. And when in “Cousine Bette” I -encountered Wencelas Steinbock, I recognized him from afar. “To muse, -to dream, to conceive of fine works, is a delightful occupation. -The work then floats in all the grace of infancy, in the mad joy of -conception, with the fragrant beauty of a flower, and the aromatic -juice of a fruit enjoyed in anticipation.” - -And upon my own arrival in adult life it seemed quite the expected -and natural thing to find my own fancy constantly occupied in this -way. The stories I told myself were infinitely superior to anything I -ever got down on paper. Just as my father had been the ideal audience -for himself, so I was my own best reader, a reader who needed no long -explanations, who caught the idea at once, who brought to the tale -all the experience which made it intelligible. Two words with the -grocer’s boy, delivering soap and canned salmon at the back door, and -I was off, author and reader galloping along side by side, on a story -which made not only my own written tales, but other people’s as well, -seem clumsy, obvious, and wordy. A look on an old cousin’s face was -to me--like a text to my grandfather--a springboard from which author -and reader plunged simultaneously into the sea of human relationships, -sensing in human life significances pitiful, exalted, profound, beyond -anything that can be drawn out with the loose-meshed net of words. Did -I sit idling in a railway station, my great-uncle, who died before -I was born, stood there beside me, expounding his life to me with a -precision, a daring abandon, a zestful ardor which would wither and -fade if it were transferred to the pages of a book. - -At first I thought this habit of mind entirely universal--as it -is certainly the most natural one possible; but in the course of -much random talk about things in general, I have occasionally come -across people whose eyes are too weak for the white brilliance of -reality, who can only see life through the printed page, which is -a very opaque object. Such people--and they are often cultivated, -university-bred--will say, quite as if they were uttering a truism: “Of -course characters in books--well-written books--are ever so much more -interesting than men and women in real life.” - -They perceive the fateful mixture of beast and angel in the human face -only in a portrait gallery; for them the birds sing, the winds sigh, -and human hearts cry out, only at a symphony concert; they depend on -books to give them faintly, dully, dimly, at third-hand, what lies -before them every day, bright-colored, throbbing, and alive. It is a -mental attitude hard for me to understand but it does exist. I have -seen them turn away from a stern and noble tragedy in the life of -their washerwoman, to the cheap sentimentality of a poor novel, which -guarantees (as a fake dentist promises to fill teeth without pain) to -provide tears without emotion. I have seen women who might have been -playing with a baby, laughing at his inimitable funniness, leave him -to a nurse and go out to enliven their minds by the contemplation of -custard-pies smeared over the human countenance. - -We are so used to this phenomenon that it does not seem strange to -us. But it is strange--strange and tragic. And I do not in the least -believe that the tragedy is one of the inevitable ones. I think it is -simply a bad habit which has grown up as the modern world has taken to -reading. - -Why did the habit ever start? Naturally enough. Because the new medium -of cheap printing let loose on the world the innate loquacity of -writers, unrepressed by the limitations of the human voice. Other -people have not been able to hear themselves think since Gutenberg -enabled writers to drown out the grave, silent, first-hand mental -processes of people blessed by nature with taciturnity. The writer -is not born (as is his boast) with more capacity than other people -for seeing color and interest and meaning in life; he is born merely -with an irrepressible desire to tell everybody what he sees and -feels. We have been hypnotized by his formidable capacity for speech -into thinking that he is the only human being on whom life makes an -impression. This is not so. He is merely so made that he cannot rest -till he has told everybody who will listen to him, the impression -that life has made on him. This is the queer mainspring of creative -literature. The writer cannot keep a shut mouth. To speak out seems to -be the only useful thing he can do in life. And in its way it is a very -useful occupation. But there is no reason why other people who have -other useful things to do should miss the purity and vividness of a -first-hand impression of life which they could enjoy without spoiling -it, as an artist always does, by his instant anxiety about how much -of it he can carry off with him for his art, by his instant mental -fumbling with technical means, by his anguished mental questions: “What -would be the best way to get that effect over in a book?” or “How could -you convey that impression in a dialogue?” - -It is a dog’s life, believe me, this absurd, pretentious carrying -about of your little literary yardstick and holding it up against -the magnificent hugeness of the world. I cannot believe that it is -necessary to have that yardstick in hand before seeing the hugeness -which it can never measure. One proof that it is not necessary is the -fact that artists enjoy the raw materials of arts which they do not -practise, much more freely and light-heartedly than the raw material -of their own. I love the materials from which painters make pictures -and musicians make music vastly more than the materials from which -novelists make novels, because I feel no responsibility about them, -because I know that they do not mean for me a struggle, foredoomed to -failure, to get them down on canvas or between the five lines of the -musical staff. - -Do I seem to be advocating a habit of mind which would put an end to -the writing of novels altogether? Personally I do not believe that the -foundations of the world would move by a hair if that end were brought -about. But, as a matter of fact, I do not in the least think that -novel-writing would be anything but immensely benefited by a reading -public which had acquired its own eyesight and did not depend on the -writer’s. Such a body of creative-minded readers would lift the art of -fiction up to levels we have none of us conceived. With such a public -of trained, practised observers, fiction could cast off the encumbering -paraphernalia of explanations and photographs which now weigh it down. -There need be no fear for the future of fiction if every one takes to -being his own novelist. For then readers will not look in novels for -what is never there, reality itself. They will look for what is the -only thing that ought to be there, the impression which reality has -made on the writer, and they will have an impression of their own with -which to compare that of the writer. This will free the author forever -from attempting the impossible, bricks-without-straw undertaking of -trying to get life itself between the covers of a book. - -For never, never can fiction hope to attain myriads of effects which -life effortlessly puts over wherever we look, if we will only see what -is there. If we leave those inimitable natural effects of beauty, or -fun, or tragedy, or farce entirely for the professional writer to see -and enjoy and ponder on, we are showing the same sort of passive, -closed imaginations which lead Persians to sit obesely at ease on -cushions, and watch professional dancers have all the fun of dancing. -The phrase which we traditionally ascribe to them is this, “Why bother -to dance yourselves, when you can hire somebody to do it much better?” -But that is our own unspoken phrase about the raw material of art -and its monopoly by the professional artist. We Westerners dance, -ourselves, not because we have any notion that we can dance better than -the professionals, but because we have discovered by experience that -to dance gives us a very different sort of pleasure from that given by -looking at professionals. We have also discovered that it does not at -all prevent us from hiring professionals and enjoying them as much as -any Persians. - -It is for the active-minded people who enjoy doing their own thinking -as well as watching the author do his, that I have put this volume -together. When life speaks to them, their hearts answer, as a friend -to a friend. They are my brothers and my sisters. They practise the -delight-giving art of being their own authors. They know the familiar, -exquisite interest of trying to arrange in coherence the raw material -which life constantly washes up to every one in great flooding masses. -And they do this for their own high pleasure, with no idea of profiting -by it in the eyes of the world. They work to create order out of chaos -with a single-hearted effort, impossible to poor authors, tortured -by the aching need to get the results of their efforts into words -intelligible to others. - -Being useful in other ways to the world, it is quite permissible for -them to indulge in what was pernicious self-indulgence for an artist -like Wencelas Steinbock. They are good children who, having nourished -themselves on the substantial food of useful work, may eat candy -without risking indigestion. The artist’s work is the fatiguing attempt -to transform the wonder of life into art! Those other disinterested -observers of life, those wise, deeply pondering, far-seeing men and -women, driven by their own need to make something understandable out of -our tangled life, struggle, just as the artist does, to piece together -what they see into intelligible order. But they do this in their -own hearts, for their own satisfaction. How singularly free-handed -and open-hearted and generous their attitude seems, compared to the -artist’s frugal, not to say penurious, not to say avaricious, anxiety -to utilize every scrap of his life as raw material for his art. - -Such people have, as the reward for their disinterested attitude of -mind, all the pleasures of the creative artist’s life and none of its -terrible pains. All the pleasure, that is, except the dubious one -of seeing themselves in print. This is--for me at least--a pleasure -deeply colored with humiliation. The stuff which I manage to get into -a printed book is so tragically dry and lifeless compared to the -vibrating, ordered, succulent life which goes on inside my head before -I put pen to paper! For my part, I envy the clever, happy people who -are content to let it stay in their heads, and never try to decant it -into a book, only to find that the bouquet and aroma are all gone. I -quite sympathize with them when they are impatient with the verbose -literal-minded garrulity with which most writers of fiction spread out -clumsily over two pages that which takes but a flash to think or to -feel. They think, and quite rightly, that what is slowly written out in -the inaccurate, halting system we call language, bears little relation -to the arrow-swift movements of the thinking mind and feeling heart. - -That which is written down in an attempt to make it intelligible to -everybody is a rude approximation like that of ready-made clothing, -manufactured to fit every one somewhat and no one exactly. That -which springs into being in the brain at a contact with life, exactly -fits the comprehension, background, and experience of the person who -owns the brain. There are no waste motions, no paragraphs to skip, no -compressions too bare, no descriptions too wordy, none of those sore, -never-solved problems of the writer who addresses unknown readers, “How -much can I leave out? How far can I suggest and not state? How far -can I trust the reader’s attention not to flag, his intelligence to -understand at a hint, rather than at a statement? What experience of -life can I presuppose him to have had?” - -When you are your own author, you know all about your reader, and need -never think of his limitations. He is faithful to you, flies lightly -when you rise into the air, plods steadily beside you at your own pace -as you slowly work your way into unfamiliar country, flashes back into -the past and selects exactly what is needed from his experience, sinks -with you into a golden haze of contemplation over some surprising or -puzzling phenomenon, is in no nagging hurry to “get on with the story.” -After some experience of such a marriage of author and reader, don’t -you find it hard to put up with the fumbling guesswork of a printed -book? - -And yet here I have written another book? No, this is not a written -book in the usual sense. It is a book where nearly everything is -left for the reader to do. I have only set down in it, just as if I -were noting them down for my own use, a score of instances out of -human life, which have long served me as pegs on which to hang the -meditations of many different moods. - -Note well that I have not set down those meditations ... or at -most--for the flesh is weak!--only here and there a trace of them. But -if I have occasionally back-slid from the strait neutral path of sacred -Objectivity, at least let me here and now warn you to ignore whatever -moralizings of mine have escaped excision. Pay no attention to them, -if you run across one or two. I know for a certainty that my musings -about the men and women who were the originals of these portraits -would not serve you as they do me. I know you can make for yourselves -infinitely better ones. I know that what you will do for yourselves -will be like the living lacework of many-colored sea-weed floating free -and quivering in quiet sunlit pools; and that what I could get down in -a book would be a poor little faded collection of stiff dead tendrils, -pasted on blotting paper. - -In this unrelated, unorganized bundle of facts, I give you just the -sort of thing from which a novelist makes principal or secondary -characters, or episodes in a novel. I offer them to you for the novels -you are writing inside your own heads, before I have spoiled them by -the additions, cuttings, stretchings, or twistings necessary to make -them fit into the fabric of a book. I give them to you, rounded and -whole, just as they happened, without filing and smoothing truth down -to the limits of possibility as all fiction-writers are forced to do. -I spare you all the long-winded conventional devices, descriptions, -transitions, exposition, eloquent passages and the like, by which -writers try to divert the minds of their readers from the inherent -improbability of their stories, devices which, to the suspicious mind, -resemble the patter of thimbleriggers at a county fair. You know as -well as I how inherently improbable life is. Why pretend that it is -not? I have treated you just as though you were that other self in me -who is my best reader. I have given you the fare I like best. - -And I have faith to believe that you will enjoy for once being able to -move about in a book without a clutter of explanations and sign-boards -to show you the road the author wishes you to take. I do not wish you -to take any road in particular, and rather hope you will try a good -many different ones, as I do. I have only tried to loan you a little -more to add to the raw material which life has brought you, out of -which you are constructing your own attempt to understand. - -I am only handing you from my shelves a few more curiosities to set -among the oddities you have already collected, and which from time to -time you take down as I do mine, turning them around in your hands, -poring over them with a smile, or a somber gaze, or a puzzled look of -surprise. - - - - -UNCLE GILES - - -There are few personalities which survive the blurring, dimming results -of being the subject of family talk through several generations; -but the personality of my Great-Uncle Giles has suffered no partial -obliteration. It has come down to us with outlines keen and sharply -etched into the family consciousness by the acid of exact recollection. - -This is not at all because Uncle Giles ever disgraced the family or -did any evil or wicked action. Quite the contrary! Uncle Giles thought -that he was the only member of the entire tribe with any fineness -or distinction of feeling, with any fitness for a higher sphere of -activities than the grubby middle-class world of his kinsmen. Yes, that -is what Uncle Giles thought, probably adding to himself that he often -felt that he was a “gentleman among canaille.” To this day the family -bristles rise at the mention of any one who openly professes to be a -gentleman. - -A gentleman should not be forced to the menial task of earning his -living. Uncle Giles was never forced to the menial task of earning -his living. None of the coarsely materialistic forces in human life -ever succeeded in forcing him to it, not even the combined and violent -efforts of a good many able-bodied and energetic kinspeople. The tales -of how Uncle Giles blandly outwitted their stub-fingered attacks on -his liberty and succeeded to the end of a very long life in living -without work are endless in number and infinite in variety; and for -three generations now have wrought the members of our family to wrath -and laughter. He was incredible. You can’t imagine anything like him. -Unless you have had him in your family too. - -For many years Uncle Giles was “preparing for the ministry.” These were -the candid years when his people did not know him so well as later, and -still believed that with a little more help Giles would be able to get -on his feet. He was a great favorite in the Theological Seminary where -he was a student for so long, a handsome well-set-up blond young man, -with beautiful large blue eyes. I know just how he looked, for we have -an expensive miniature of him that was painted at the time. He paid -for that miniature with the money my great-grandfather pried out of a -Vermont farm. It had been sent to pay for his board. You can’t abandon -a son just on the point of becoming a clergyman and being a credit to -the entire family. Great-grandfather himself had no more money to send -at that time, but his other sons, hard-working, energetic, successful -men, clubbed together and made up the amount necessary to settle that -board-bill. Uncle Giles thanked them and forwarded with his letter, to -show them, in his own phrase, “that their bounty was not ill-advised,” -a beautifully bound, high-priced, little red morocco note-book in which -he had written down the flattering things said of him by his professors -and others--especially others. He underlined certain passages, thus: -“... a very worthy young man, _most pleasing in society_.” “A model to -all _in the decorum and grace of his manners_.” - -His board bill had to be paid a good many times before Uncle Giles -finally gave up preparing himself for the ministry. The summer -vacations of this period he spent in visiting first one and then -another member of the family, a first-rate ornament on the front porch -and at the table, admired by the ladies of the neighborhood, a prime -favorite on picnics and on the croquet ground. He always seemed to -have dropped from a higher world into the rough middle-class existence -of his kin, but his courtesy was so exquisite that he refrained from -commenting on this in any way. Still you could see that he felt it. -Especially if you were one of the well-to-do neighbors on whom the -distinguished young theological student paid evening calls, you admired -his quiet tact and his steady loyalty to his commonplace family. - -The effect which his quiet tact and steady loyalty had on his -commonplace family was so great that it has persisted undiminished to -this day. Any one of us, to the remotest cousin, can spot an Uncle -Giles as far as we can see him. We know all about him, and it is not -on our front porches that he comes to display his tact and loyalty, -and the decorum and grace of his manners. As for allowing the faintest -trace of Uncle-Gilesism to color our own lives, there is not one of -us who would not rush out to earn his living by breaking stone by the -road-side rather than accept even the most genuinely voluntary loan. -We are, as Uncle Giles felt, a very commonplace family, of the most -ordinary Anglo-Saxon stock, with no illuminating vein of imaginative -Irish or Scotch or Welsh blood; and I think it very likely that if we -had not experienced Uncle Giles we would have been the stodgiest of the -stodgy as far as social injustice is concerned. But our imaginations -seem to have been torn open by Uncle Giles as by a charge of -dynamite; and, having once understood what he meant, we hang to that -comprehension with all our dull Anglo-Saxon tenacity. We have a deep, -unfailing sympathy with any one who is trying to secure a better and -fairer adjustment of burdens in human life, because we see in our plain -dull way that what he is trying to do is to eliminate the Uncle Gileses -from society and force them to work. And we are always uneasily trying -to make sure that we are not in the bigger scheme, without realizing -it, Uncle Gilesing it ourselves. - -After a while Uncle Giles stopped preparing for the ministry and -became an invalid. He bore this affliction with the unaffected manly -courage which was always one of his marked characteristics. He never -complained: he “bore up” in all circumstances; even on busy wash-days -when there was no time to prepare one of the dainty little dishes which -the delicacy of his taste enabled him so greatly to appreciate. Uncle -Giles always said of the rude, vigorous, hearty, undiscriminating men -of the family, that they could “eat anything.” His accent in saying -this was the wistful one of resigned envy of their health. - -It has been a point of honor with us all, ever since, to be able to -“eat anything.” Any one, even a legitimate invalid, who is inclined -to be fastidious and make it difficult for the others, feels a united -family glare concentrating on him, which makes him, in a panic, reach -out eagerly for the boiled pork and cabbage. - -Uncle Giles’s was a singular case, “one of those mysterious maladies -which baffle even the wisest physicians,” as he used to say himself. A -good many ladies in those days had mysterious maladies which baffled -even the wisest physicians, and they used to enjoy Uncle Giles above -everything. No other man had such an understanding of their symptoms -and such sympathy for their sufferings. The easy chair beside Uncle -Giles’s invalid couch was seldom vacant. Ladies going away after having -left a vaseful of flowers for him, and a plateful of cake, and two or -three jars of jelly, and some cold breasts of chicken, would say with -shining, exalted countenances, “In spite of his terrible trials, what -an inspiration our friend can be! An hour with that good man is like an -hour on Pisgah.” - -They would, as like as not, make such a remark to the brave invalid’s -brother or cousin (or, in later years, nephew) who was earning the -money to keep the household going. I am afraid we are no longer as a -family very sure what or where Pisgah is, although we know it is in -the Bible somewhere, but there is a fierce family tradition against -fussing over your health which is as vivid this minute as on the day -when the brother or cousin or nephew of Uncle Giles turned away with -discourteous haste from the shining-faced lady and stamped rudely -into another room. Doctors enter our homes for a broken leg or for a -confinement, but seldom for anything else. - -When the Civil War came on, and Uncle Giles was the only man in the -family left at home, he rose splendidly to the occasion and devoted -himself to the instruction of his kinswomen, ignorant of the technique -of warfare. From his invalid couch he explained to them the strategy -of the great battles in which their brothers and husbands and fathers -were fighting; and when the letters from hospital came with news of -the wounded, who but Uncle Giles was competent to understand and -explain the symptoms reported. As a rule the women of his family were -too frantically busy with their Martha-like concentration on the mere -material problems of wartime life to give these lucid and intellectual -discussions of strategy the attention and consideration they deserved. -The war, however, though it seemed endless, lasted after all but four -years. And when it was over, Uncle Giles was free to go back to -discussions more congenial to his literary and esthetic tastes. - -By this time he was past middle-age, “a butterfly broken on the -wheel of life,” as he said; it was of course out of the question to -expect him to think of earning his own living. He had become a family -tradition by that time, too, firmly embedded in the solidly set cement -of family habits. The older generation always had taken care of him, -the younger saw no way out, and with an unsurprised resignation bent -their shoulders to carry on. So, before any other plans could be made, -Uncle Giles had to be thought of. Vacations were taken seriatim not to -leave Uncle Giles alone. In buying or building a house, care had to be -taken to have a room suitable for Uncle Giles when it was your turn to -entertain him. If the children had measles, one of the first things to -do was to get Uncle Giles into some other home so that he would not be -quarantined. That strange law of family life which ordains that the -person most difficult to please is always, in the long run, the one to -please whom most efforts are made, worked out in its usual complete -detail. The dishes Uncle Giles liked were the only ones served (since -other men could “eat anything”); the songs Uncle Giles liked were the -only ones sung; the houses were adjusted to him; the very color of the -rugs and the pictures on the walls were selected to suit Uncle Giles’s -fine and exacting taste. - -Looking back, through the perspective of a generation-and-a-half, I -can see the exact point of safely acknowledged middle-age when Uncle -Giles’s health began cautiously to improve; but it must have been -imperceptible to those around him, so gradual was the change. His kin -grew used to each successive stage of his recovery before they realized -it was there, and nobody seems to have been surprised to have Uncle -Giles pass into a remarkably hale and vigorous old age. - -“Invalids often are strong in their later years,” he said of himself. -“It is God’s compensation for their earlier sufferings.” - -He passed into the full rewards of the most rewarded old age. It was a -period of apotheosis for him, and a very lengthy one at that, for he -lived to be well past eighty. In any gathering Uncle Giles, erect and -handsome, specklessly attired, his smooth old face neatly shaved, with -a quaint, gentle, old-world courtesy and protecting chivalry in his -manner to ladies, was a conspicuous and much-admired figure. People -brought their visitors to call on him, and to hear him tell in his -vivid, animated way of old times in the country. His great specialty -was the Civil War. At any gathering where veterans of the War were to -be honored, Uncle Giles held every one breathless with his descriptions -of Gettysburg and Chancellorsville; and when he spoke of Mobile Bay and -Sherman’s march, how his voice pealed, how his fine eyes lighted up! -Strangers used to say to themselves that it was easy to see what an -eloquent preacher he must have been when he was in the active ministry. -The glum old men in worn blue coats used to gather in a knot in the -farthest corner, and in low tones, not to interrupt his discourse, -would chat to each other of crops, fishing, and politics. - -Somewhere we have a scrapbook in which an ironic cousin of mine -carefully pasted in all the newspaper articles that were written about -Uncle Giles in his old age, and the many handsome obituary notices -which appeared when he finally died. I can remember my father’s getting -it out occasionally, and reading the clippings to himself with a very -grim expression on his face; but it always moved my light-hearted, -fun-loving mother to peals of laughter. After all, she was related to -Uncle Giles only by marriage and felt no responsibility for him. - -The other day, in looking over some old legal papers, I came across a -yellowed letter, folded and sealed (as was the habit before envelopes -were common) with three handsome pale-blue seals on its back. The -seals were made with the crested cameo ring which Uncle Giles always -wore, bearing what he insisted was the “coat of arms” of our family. -The handwriting of the letter was beautiful, formed with an amorous -pride in every letter. It was from Uncle Giles to one of his uncles, my -great-grandfather’s brother. It had lain there lost for half a century -or more, and of course I had never seen it before; but every word -of it was familiar to me as I glanced it over. It began in a manner -characteristic of Uncle Giles’s polished courtesy, with inquiries after -every member of his uncle’s family, and a pleasant word for each one. -He then detailed the state of his health, which, alas, left much to be -desired, and seemed, so the doctors told him, to require urgently a -summer in the mountains. Leaving this subject, he jumped to the local -news of the town where he was then living, and told one or two amusing -stories. In one of them I remember was this phrase, “I told her I might -be poor, but that a gentleman of good birth did not recognize poverty -as a member of the family.” Through a neat transition after this he -led up again to the subject of his health and to the desirability of -his passing some months in the mountains, “in the pure air of God’s -great hills.” Then he entered upon a discreet, pleasant, whimsical -reference to the fact that only a contribution from his uncle’s purse -could make this possible. There never was anybody who could beat Uncle -Giles on ease and grace, and pleasant, pungent humor when it came to -asking for money. The only person embarrassed in that situation was the -one of whom Uncle Giles was expecting the loan. - -I read no more. With no conscious volition of mine, my hand had -scrunched the letter into a ball, and my arm, without my bidding, had -hurled the ball into the heart of the fire. - - -But as I reflected on the subject afterwards, and thought of the -influence which Uncle Giles has always had on our family, it occurred -to me that I was wrong. Uncle Giles ought not to be forgotten. I ought -to have saved that letter to show to my children. - - - - -“WHAT GOES UP....” - - -Among the many agreeably arranged European lives which were roughly -interrupted by the war, I know of none more snugly and compactly -comfortable than that of Octavie Moreau. Indeed, for some years there -had been in the back of my mind a faint notion of something almost -indiscreet in the admirably competent way in which ’Tavie arranged -her life precisely to her taste. I don’t mean that it was an easeful -or elegant or self-indulgent life. She cared as little for dress -as any other intellectual Frenchwoman, let herself get portly, did -up her hair queerly, and the rigorously hearth-and-home matrons of -Tourciennes pointed her out to their young daughters as a horrible -example of what happens to the looks of a woman who acquires too -much learning. As for ease and self-indulgence, ’Tavie’s vigorous -personality and powerful, disciplined brain, as well as the need -to earn her living, kept her from laying on intellectual fat. But -all that vigorous personality, that powerful brain, as well as all -the money which she competently earned, seemed more and more to be -concentrated on her own comfort and on nothing else. Her excellent -salary as professor of science in the girls’ Lycée was almost doubled -by what she made by private lessons, for she was an inspired natural -teacher, who can, as the saying goes, teach anybody anything. In the -thirty years of her life in Tourciennes she has pulled innumerable -despairing boys and girls through dreaded examinations in science and -mathematics; and parents pay well, the world over, for having their -boys and girls pulled through examinations. They respect the woman who -can do it, even if, as in Octavie’s case, their respect is tempered -with considerable disapprobation of eccentric dress, irreligious ideas, -immense skepticism, and cigarette-smoking. And in this case the respect -was heightened by Mlle. Moreau’s well-known ability to drive a hard -bargain and to see through any one else’s attempt to do the same. -Octavie had plenty of everything, brains, will-power and money; but as -far as I could see, she never did anything with this plenty, except to -feather her own nest. I mean this quite literally, for ’Tavie had a -nest, a pretty, red-roofed, gray-walled, old villa, in the outskirts -of Tourciennes, which she had bought years before at a great bargain, -and which was the center of her life. Her younger sister, a weaker -edition of Octavie, who lived with her, and kept house for her, and -revolved about her, and adored her, and depended on her, joined with -her in this, as in everything else. Those two women visibly existed -for the purpose of bringing to perfection that house and the fine, -walled garden about it. Long before anybody else in our circle in -France thought of such a thing as having a real bathroom with hot and -cold water, ’Tavie had one, tiled, and glazed, and gleaming. Octavie’s -library was the best one (in science and economic history) in that -part of France. Never were there such perfectly laid and kept floors -as ’Tavie’s, nor such a kitchen garden, nor closets so convenient and -ingeniously arranged, nor a kitchen of such perfection. All well-to-do -kitchens in the north of France are works of art, but ’Tavie’s was -several degrees more shining and copper-kettled and red-tiled and -polished than any other, just as the food which was prepared there was -several degrees more succulent, even than the superexcellent meals -served elsewhere in that affluent industrial city of the North. As I -finished one of ’Tavie’s wonderful dinners, and stepped with her into -the ordered marvel of her great garden, I remember one day having on -the tip of my tongue some half-baked remark about how far the same -amount of intelligence and energy would have gone towards providing -more decent homes for a few of the poor in her quarter--for the housing -of the poor in Tourciennes was notorious for its wretchedness. But you -may be sure I said nothing of the sort. Nobody ventured to make any -such sanctimonious comment to caustic Octavie Moreau, fifty-four years -old, weighty, powerful, utterly indifferent to other people’s opinions, -her fine mind at the perfection of its maturity, her well-tempered -personality like a splendid tool at the service of her will, her heart -preserved from care about other people’s troubles by her biological -conviction of the futility of trying to help any one not energetic -enough to help himself. She was not unkind to people she happened -to know personally, occasionally spilling over on the needy ones a -little of her superabundant vigor, and some of the money she earned so -easily. But in her heart she scorned people who were either materially -or morally needy, as she scorned every one who was weak and ignorant -and timorous, who was not strong enough to walk straight up to what he -wanted and take it. She had always done that. Anybody who couldn’t ...! - - -Then the war began and well-planned lives became like grains of dust -in a whirlwind. Tourciennes was at once taken by the Germans and held -until the very last of the war, and for more than four years none -of the rest of us had a word from ’Tavie and her sister. Beyond the -trenches Tourciennes seemed more remote than the palest asteroid. - -But after the armistice, what with letters and visits, we soon learned -all about their life under the German occupation, in most ways like -the lives of all our other friends in the North, the grinding round of -petty and great vexations and extortions and oppressions, and slow, -dirty starvation of body, mind, and soul which has been described so -many times since Armistice Day--but with one notable exception. To -Octavie life had brought something more than this. - -Early in the third year of the war, the grimly enduring town was -appalled by a decree, issued from German Headquarters. In reprisal for -something said to have happened in far-away Alsace-Lorraine, forty of -the leading women of Tourciennes were to be taken as hostages, conveyed -to a prison-camp in the north of Germany, and left there indefinitely -till the grievance (whatever it was) in Alsace-Lorraine had been -adjusted to the satisfaction of the German government. - -By the third year of the war, every one in Tourciennes knew very well -what deportation to a German prison-camp meant: almost sure death, -and certainly broken health for the most vigorous men. They had all -at one time or another gone to the railway station to meet returned -prisoners, ragged, demoralized groups of broken, tubercular skeletons, -who had gone away from home elderly but powerful men, leaders in their -professions. And these latest hostages were to be women, delicately -reared, not in their first youth, many of them already half-ill after -three years of war privations. In order to make the deepest possible -impression on the public of the captive city the most respected and -conspicuous women were chosen, prominent either for their husband’s -standing and wealth or for the place they had made for themselves, by -their own intelligence and energy: the Directress of the Hospital, a -well known teacher of music, the Mayor’s wife, the daughter of a noted -professor. Of course, our Octavie was among the number. - -We knew some of the others, too, either by reputation or personally, -and could imagine the heart-sick horror in which their families saw -them make their few hasty preparations for departure. Here is a typical -case. One of the names on the list was that of Mme. Orléanne, a woman -of seventy. She was then so weak from malassimilation of war-food that -she had not been out of doors for months! It was nothing less than a -death-sentence for her. Her family did not even let her see the list. -Her elder daughter, married to a wealthy manufacturer, went to the -German officials and offered herself to be deported as a substitute, -although she had two children, a girl of eight and a little boy of -three! She was accepted, and, death in her heart, set about making up -the tiny bundle of necessaries--all they were allowed to carry. Her -little girl was old enough to take up the tradition of tragic stoicism -of her elders and listened with a blanched face to the instructions -of her desperate mother, who told her that there was now nothing -but dignity left to Frenchwomen. When the German guard came to tell -Mme. Baudoin that the truck which was to carry the hostages away to -the railroad was waiting at the door, little Elise, rigid and gray, -kissed her mother good-by silently, though after the truck had gone, -she fainted and lay unconscious for hours. But Raoul, only a baby, -screamed, and struck at the German soldier, clung wildly to his mother -with hysteric strength, and after she had gone, broke away from his -aunt, rushed out of the street door, shrieking, “Mother, Mother! don’t -go away from Raoul!” and flung himself frantically upon his mother’s -skirts. She said to me, as she told me of this, “dying will be easy -compared to that moment!” But without weakening she did the intolerable -thing, the only thing there was to do, she reached down, tore the -little boy’s tense fingers from her dress, and climbed up into the -truck. “As I looked away from Raoul I saw that tears were running down -the cheeks of the German guard who stood at the back of the truck.” - - - Ah, this human race we belong to! - - -Shuddering with the anguish of such scenes of separation, the hostages -were locked for three days into cattle-cars, cold, windowless, jolting -prisons, where they lived over and over those unbearable last moments -with children, or sisters, or parents, or husbands, whom they never -expected to see again. At the end of this ordeal, the wretched women, -numb, half-starved, limping along in their disordered garments, raging -inwardly, inflamed with indignant hatred for the soldiers who marshaled -them, were brought together in their prison and left alone, save for -two bored guards who sat at the door and stared at them. - -The prison camp was an enormous one in the north of Germany, a dreary -clutter of rough wooden buildings thrown down on a flat, sandy -plain, entangled and surrounded by miles of barbed-wire fencing. -The prison-room allotted to the forty women from Tourciennes was a -high, bare loft, like a part of an ill-built, hastily constructed -barn. Around three walls were tiers of bunks, filled with damp, moldy -straw, a couple of dirty blankets on each. In the middle of the room -was a smallish stove, rather tall and thin in shape, with one hole -in the top, closed by a flat lid. An iron kettle stood on the stove. -Windows were set in one wall of the room. Under the windows ran a long -bench, and before it stood a long table made of a wide board. There -was nothing else to be seen, except grease and caked filth on the -rough, unpainted boards of the floor and walls. The last of the women -staggered into the room; the door was shut, and they faced each other -in the gray winter light which filtered in through the smeared panes of -the windows. - -All during the black nightmare of the journey, every one of them had -been quivering with suppressed anguish. Absorbed each in her own grief -and despair, they had lain on the thin layer of straw on the floor of -the freight car, at the end of their strength, undone by the ignominy -of their utter defenselessness before brute force. The marks of tears -showed on their gray, unwashed faces, but they had no more tears to -shed now. They leaned against the walls and the bunks, their knees -shaking with exhaustion, and looked about them at the dreary, dirty -desolation of the room which from now on was to be their world. The -guards stared at them indifferently, seeing nothing of any interest in -that group of prisoners more than in any other, especially as these -were women no longer young, disheveled, wrinkled, unappetizing, with -uncombed, gray hair, and grimy hands. - -A little stir among them, and there was Octavie, our ’Tavie, on her -feet, haggard with fatigue, dowdy, crumpled, battered, but powerful and -magnetic. She was speaking to them, speaking with the authority of her -long years of directing others, with the weight and assurance of her -puissant personality. - -I can tell you almost exactly what she said, for the women who were -there and who told me about it afterwards, had apparently not forgotten -a word! She began by saying clearly and energetically, like an older -sister, “Come, come, we are all Frenchwomen, and so we have courage; -and we all have brains. People with brains and courage have nothing -to fear anywhere, _if they’ll use them_. Now let’s get to work and use -ours, all for one and one for all!” - -Her bold, strong voice, her dauntless look, her masterful gesture, -brought them out of their lassitude, brought them from all sides and -corners of the room, where they had abandoned themselves, brought -them in a compact group close about her. She went on, her steady eyes -going from one to the other, “I think I know what is the first thing -to do; to take a solemn vow to stick by each other loyally. You know -it is said that women always quarrel among themselves, and that all -French people do. We are in a desperate plight. If we quarrel ever, at -all: if we are divided, we are undone. We’re of all sorts, Catholics, -free-thinkers, aristocrats, radicals, housekeepers, business-women, and -we don’t know each other very well. But we are all women, civilized -women, Frenchwomen, sisters! Nobody can help us but ourselves. But if -we give all we have, they can never conquer us!” - -She stopped and looked at them deeply, her strong, ugly face, white -with intensity. “A vow, my friends, a vow from every one of us, by what -she holds most sacred, that she will summon all her strength to give of -her very best for the common good. In the name of our love for those -we have left--” her voice broke, and she could not go on. She lifted -her hand silently and held it up, her eyes fixed on them. The other -hands went up, the drawn faces steadied, the quivering hearts, centered -each on its own suffering, calmed by taking thought for others. The -very air in the barrack-room seemed less stifling. The two German -guards looked on, astonished by the incomprehensible ceremony. These -scattered, half-dead women, flung into the room like cattle, who had -not seemed to know each other, all at once to be one unit! - -Octavie drew a long breath. Then, homely, familiar, coherent as though -she were giving a preliminary explanation to a class at the beginning -of a school-year, “Now let us understand clearly what is happening to -us, so that we can defend ourselves against it. What is it that is -being done to us? An attempt is being made to break us down, physically -and morally. But these people around us here are not the ones who wish -this; they are not as intelligent as we; and they haven’t half the -personal incentive to accomplish it, that we have to prevent it. We -have a thousand resources of ingenuity that they can’t touch at all. - -“We must begin by economizing every atom possible of our strength, -moral and physical. And we can start on that right now by not wasting -any more strength hating our guards as we have all been hating the -Germans who have had to touch us, so far. We can think of them as -demons and infernal forces of evil and make them into horrors that will -shadow our every thought. Or we can look straight at them to see what -they are, and disregard them, just leave them out of our moral lives, -when we see that they are ordinary men, for the most part coarse and -common men, and now forced to be abnormal, forced by others into a -situation that develops every germ of brutality in them.” - -At this, young Mme. Baudoin spoke out and told of the German guard who -had wept when her little boy was dragged away; and, “I’d rather be in -my shoes than his,” cried Octavie vigorously. - -“So then we sweep them out of our world,” she went on, “and that leaves -the decks cleared for real action. I should say,” she went on with a -change of manner, including in one wide humorous glance her own dirty -hands, the tangled hair of the others, and the grease and grime of the -room, “that the next thing is to organize ourselves to get clean! It’s -plain only a few of us can do it at a time; let’s draw lots to see who -begins, and the others can lie down while they wait. Is there anybody -here who speaks German enough to ask for soap and water? I see the -broom here at hand.” A good many of the women proved to have studied -German at school, and three of them spoke it. But this did not carry -them far. The guards laughed at the idea of soap--nobody in Germany had -had soap for months--prisoners were not given such luxuries as towels, -and as for water, the tap was down the hall, and the pail was there, -and they could carry it for themselves. Besides there was water in the -kettle on the stove. - -There and then they began their campaign. Lots were drawn, a certain -number of tired women collapsed into the bunks to wait, while Octavie -organized the others into squads, some to carry water; some to arrange -a bathing-place in a corner of the room by hanging up their cloaks on -strings stretched from nails; some to sweep out the worst of the dusty -litter on the floor. - -There was order and purpose in the air. The first woman who emerged -from behind the curtain of cloaks, bathed, fresh linen next her clean -skin (for they had been allowed to bring one change of linen in their -little packages), her hair in order, was like a being from another -world, the world they had left. Self-respect came back to the others, -as they looked at her. - -By night every woman was clean, had arranged her small belongings in -her own bunk, and had washed out and hung up the body-linen which -she had worn on the trip. One empty bunk had been set aside as the -pharmacy, and all their little stock of medicine gathered there; -another was the library, where a half-dozen books stood side by side; -and a third was the storeroom for miscellaneous goods, the extra -bars of soap they had brought from home, a little chocolate, thread, -needles, scissors, and the like, communistically put together to be -used for whatever proved to be the greatest need. They had taken stock -of their material resources and agreed to share them. They had eaten -what they could of the coarse, unpalatable food brought to them in the -evening, and now sat on the long bench and on the floor, trying to plan -out the struggle before them, the struggle to construct an endurable -life out of the materials at hand. Octavie was saying, “Everything in -order! That is the French way to go at things; classify them and take -them up one by one. What are we? Bodies and minds; both equally in -danger. Now, the body first. We must have exercise out of doors, more -than we’re used to at home, if we are to digest this awful food. They -say we’re to be allowed out an hour a day, but that is not enough. We -must open the windows once an hour and do something active in here. Any -volunteers to show us gymnastic exercises? Anybody who remembers them -from school days? I don’t know one.” - -Yes, there were several, and one whose sister was a woman doctor -using curative gymnastics. The meeting voted to make them an athletic -committee, to organize such activities. - -“Now, our digestions. You know how all prisoners in Germany have always -come home with ruined digestions. Is there anything we can do here? Is -there anybody here experienced in cooking who could guess at the raw -materials in that fearful mess we’ve just finished, and does she think -it might be cooked more intelligently so that it would be better? It -stands to reason that the prison cooks would naturally be incompetent, -and indifferent to their results. Could we do better ourselves? It also -stands to reason that we’d be allowed to, because it would mean less -work for the prison kitchens.” A group of housewives was appointed to -consider this, next day. - -“Now, as to cleanliness. Any suggestions about how to get along with -no soap? We don’t dare use soap on the floor, we have so little, but -heaven knows it needs it!” All the practical housekeepers spoke at once -now, crying out upon her lack of ingenuity in not thinking of sand. -That sandy path outside the barracks, that would do excellently well as -an abrasive. With plenty of water and energy, sand and some bricks for -rubbing, everything in the room could be cleaned. As they spoke, their -faces brightened at the prospect of having cleanliness about them, and -of being active once more. - -“Anything more for the body?” asked Octavie. “If we keep it exercised -and clean, and as well-fed as we can manage it, it ought to last us. -Now for the mind. We’re going to have hours and hours of leisure time -such as we busy women never had before. It’s the chance of our lives to -go on with our education. Let’s share each of us with the other, what -we have in our minds. I’ll begin. I have chemistry thoroughly, economic -history fairly, and the general theory of physics. I’ll give a course -of lectures on those. Who can do something else?” - -They were all appalled at this and protested that she was the only one -who had any information to impart; but she scouted the idea and began -a relentless person-to-person inquiry. The result was that a group -of musicians were organized, under the guidance of the music teacher, -to give lectures on the history of music, the lives and works of the -composers, church music, ballads, songs, and operas. Three other women -who had brought up great families were to dive deep into their memories -and lecture to the others, as logically, coherently, and rationally as -they could on proper care for children. A shy, thin, drab-colored woman -was found to have been brought up in Indo-China, and was to lecture -on the life and education of that country. The German-speaking ones -were to give a course in German. Another, the daughter of a well-known -professor of French literature, was to assemble and arrange what she -knew, and be prepared to plan and lead literary discussions. Another, -the distinguished founder and former head of the best hospital in -Tourciennes, would lecture on the care of the sick--and so on. From -one, from another, from them all, Octavie drew potential treasures of -experience and information which lay almost visibly shimmering in a -great heap before them--“Enough,” she cried triumphantly, “to last us -for years!” - -“And now because we’re not solemn Anglo-Saxons, but Frenchwomen, -we must plan for some fun, if we’re to keep themselves alive,” she -told them firmly, and at their sad-hearted wincing from the idea, -she said, “Yes, we must. It’s part of our defensive campaign. Our -task is to construct out of our brains and wills a little fortress -of civilization, and to protect ourselves behind its walls against -demoralization and barbarism! And you all know that amusement is needed -for civilization!” A majority agreed to this, a dramatic committee -was appointed, and another one on games (Octavie suggested drawing -checker-boards on the tables, playing with bits of paper for men, -and starting a free-for-all tournament); some one else thought of -manufacturing balls and inventing games to be played with them, and -there were two packs of cards, in the miscellaneous store. The musical -group undertook to provide a weekly concert. - -One of the subjects which had been canvassed and found no professor -was the history of France; but like all French people, they had been -soundly and carefully instructed in history and planned, by putting -all their memories together, to reconstruct the story of their nation. -The meeting was trailing off from serious, purposeful planning to a -discursive attempt to get the list of French kings complete, when one -of the older women spoke to Octavie in a low tone, the quality of which -instantly made silence about them. She said, “But Mlle. Moreau, we -have souls too, souls hard beset.” - -Up to this moment Octavie had, as always, dominated the situation! Now -she, who has not been inside a church since she was a child, and who -considers herself thoroughly emancipated from what she calls, “all -that theological nonsense,” was brought up short before the need to -make just such a whole-hearted concession to other people’s ideas as -she had urged on her comrades! She looked hard at the speaker. It was -the foundress of the hospital, Mme. Rouart. From her eyes looked out a -personality just as strong as Octavie’s, and tinctured to the core with -faith. Octavie’s arrogant intellectualism humbled itself at the sight. -She made a gesture of acquiescence and was silent. Mme. Rouart went on, -“We’re of all sorts of belief, but we can all pray.” - -Then, after an instant’s pause, she said in a low, trembling voice, -“Let us pray.” - -There was an interval of intense silence, during which, so Octavie told -me afterwards, quite without any shade of irony, she “prayed as hard as -any one ... and after that I prayed every evening when the others did.” - -“How did _you_ pray?” I asked her, incredulously. - -Her definition of prayer was characteristic. “I set every ounce -of will power to calling up all my strength and endurance. It was -wonderful how I felt it rise, when I called,” she said gravely. She -added that on that first evening after her silent plunge to the deep -places of power in her soul, she put both arms around Mme. Rouart’s -neck and kissed her. “I loved her,” she said simply, without attempting -her usual skeptical, corrosive analysis of reasons. - -Other kisses were exchanged, soberly, as the stiff, tired women -stumbled to their feet to go to bed. They laid their exhausted bodies -down heavily on the dirty blankets, but in their hearts which had -seemed burned out to ashes with grief, indignation, and despair, there -shone a living spark of purpose. Some time later, into the darkness -came the voice of one of the younger women. “Oh, I’ve just remembered! -That fourth son of Clovis was Charibert;” to which Octavie’s voice -answered exultantly, “Ah, they never can beat _us_!” - -The life which went on after this seems as real to me as though I had -lived it with them, because when I first saw them, they were fresh -from it, and could speak of little else. Every day was thrust at them -full of the noisome poison of prison life, idleness, indifference, -despair, bitterness, hatred, personal degeneration; and every day they -poured out this poison resolutely and filled its place with intelligent -occupation! Just to keep clean was a prodigious undertaking, which -they attacked in squads, turn by turn. With sand, water, and bricks -for rubbing, they kept the room immaculate, though it took hours to -do it. Even the blankets were washed out after a fashion, one by one -at intervals, by women who had never before so much as washed out -a handkerchief. To prepare the food with the more than inadequate -utensils and poor materials and the stove unsuited for cooking was -a tremendous problem, but they all took turns at it, Octavie humbly -acting as scullery-maid when her turn for service came; and the food, -though poor, monotonous, and coarse, was infinitely superior, being -prepared with brains and patience, to what was served all around them -to the apathetic, healthless mobs of Russian and Polish women and men, -sunk despairingly in degradation and disease, “giving up and lying down -in their dirt,” Octavie told me, “to die like beasts.” - -The older and weaker women among the Tourciennes group, who could not -holystone the floor and carry water and wood, were set at the lighter -tasks, the endless mending which kept their garments from becoming -mere rags, peeling turnips, washing dishes, “making the beds” as they -called the process of drying and airing the straw in the bunks. - -Every day they went out in all weathers, and exercised and played ball -with their home-made, straw-stuffed balls, and every evening they -played games, checkers, guessing games, capped rimes, told stories and -sang. They all “studied singing” and sang in twos, trios, quartets, or -the whole forty in a chorus. They sang anything any one could remember, -old folk-songs of which there are such an infinite variety in French, -ballads, church-chants, songs from operas. - -Octavie told me that one evening, when the false news which was -constantly served to them was specially bad, when they had been told -that half the French Army was taken prisoner, and the other half in -retreat south of Paris, they sang with the tears running down their -cheeks, but still sang, and kept their hearts from breaking. - -Every day there were “lessons.” Octavie was the only trained teacher -among them, so that her courses in general science and in economic -history were the most professional of the instructions given; but she -sedulously attended the “courses” given by the others, putting her -disciplined mind on the matter they had to present, and by adroit -questionings and summarizings, helped them to order it coherently and -logically. Once a week they had dramatics, scenes out of Molière, -or Labiche, or Shakespeare, or Courteline, farce, tragedy, drama, -anything of which anybody had any recollection, with improvisations in -the passages which nobody could remember. The German guards looked on -astonished at the spirit and dash of the acting, and the laughter and -applause from the bunks, where the audience was installed to leave the -room clear for a stage. Mme. Baudoin told me that she had never begun -to suck the marrow out of the meaty Molière comedies, as she did in the -stifling days of midsummer when they were giving a series of his plays. - -By midsummer they had learned that one of the younger married women -had been pregnant when she left France, that a French child was to be -born in that German prison. How they all yearned over the homesick -young mother! How important old Mme. Rouart became with her medical and -nurse’s lore! What anxious consultations about the preparations of the -layette, manufactured out of spare undergarments and a pair of precious -linen sheets brought from home. They were supposed to have medical -attention furnished in the prison, but they had seen too much of the -brutal roughness of the overworked and indifferent army-surgeons of the -camp, not to feel a horror at the thought of their attending delicate -little Mme. Larçonneur. She begged them desperately not to call in a -doctor, but themselves to help her through her black hours. They were -terrified at the responsibility, and as her time drew near, with the -ups and downs of those last days, they were almost as frightened and -tremulous as she. - -But the night when she called out in a strangled voice that she needed -help, found them all organized, each one with her work planned: some -who sprang from their beds to heat water; Mme. Rouart prepared as far -as her poor substitute for a nurse’s outfit would allow her; others -ready to lift the shivering, groaning woman from her own bunk to the -one which had been cleaned, sterilized with boiling water, and kept -ready. The others, who could not help, lay in their beds, their hands -clenched tightly in sympathy with the suffering of their comrade, -shaken to the heart, as the old drama of human life opened solemnly -there in that poor place. - -When the baby came, his high-pitched cry was like a shout of triumph. - -“All well,” announced the nurse to the anxious women, “a fine little -boy. No! nobody must stir! Perfect quiet for Mme. Larçonneur.” She -busied herself with the mother, while her two assistants oiled the baby -and wrapped him in flannel, gloating over the perfections of his tiny -finished body, and murmuring to the faces showing over the bunks, “Such -a beauty! Such a darling! His little hands!--Oh, see how he fights us!” - -The next morning they formed in line to worship him as he lay sleeping -beside his mother, and although the sight brought a fierce stab of -misery to all the mothers who had left their children behind, the -little boy brought into their lives an element of tenderness and -hopeful forward-looking which was curative medicine for their sick, -women’s hearts. - -For in spite of all Octavie’s moral and physical therapeutics, there -were intolerable moments and hours and days for all of them. Women, -loving women, used to a life-time of care for others, used to the most -united family life, left for months at a time without the slightest -news of those they had left, could not, valiantly as they might try, -master the fury of longing and anxiety which sprang upon them in the -midst of the courageously planned life which they led. They all came -to recognize in others the sudden whiteness, the trembling hands, the -fixed, unseeing eyes blinded by tears. As far as loving whole-hearted -sympathy could ease human hearts, such moments of unendurable pain were -tempered by a deep sense of the sharing by all of each one’s sorrow. - -And then, of course, there were other bad moments and days, meaner, -pettier enemies to fight, when it took all of one’s self-control to -prevent explosions of irritability from overwrought nerves; quarrelsome -bitterness, which comes from brooding on grievances; sudden captious -hatred for other people’s mannerisms, which, in all prison-camps, -almost as much as physical suffering, embittered and poisoned -prison-life for the high-strung, finely organized, twentieth century -prisoners of the Great War. Forty women, with lowered physical health, -with heightened nervous sensibility, used to fastidious privacy, now -shut up together in one room, with no chance ever to escape each other, -crowded each other morally almost as much as physically. Octavie told -me there were days when she would have liked to slap them, weak, -wavering, superstitious souls that they seemed to her, and turn her -face to the wall in her bunk to concentrate on hating the human race. -And one of the devout Catholics told me that she often longed so -intensely for her old atmosphere of belief and faith that she was -almost ill. But they adopted as their battle-cry, “All together to -defend our civilization!” and, clinging fiercely to this resolve, -they fought away from everything that might have separated them and -struggled out on ground common to them all. - -Then Winter was there again, endless, empty, gray days. There was -sickness in the camp, a terrible wave of influenza, carrying off -hundreds all around them. They redoubled their cleanliness, boiled -every drop of water, exercised, played, mended, studied, cooked, sang, -kept steadily on with the ordered precision of their lives. But old -Mme. Rouart, the one they loved the most of all, who led the silent -prayer of every evening, fell ill, endured silently a few bitter days -of suffering, died, and was borne out from among them to be buried in -alien soil. Three others were desperately ill, lay near to death, and -slowly recovered. Tragedy drew them more closely together than ever, as -they realized how utterly they depended on each other, and after this -there were fewer struggles against black days of bad temper. The little -boy was seven months old now, laughed and crowed, and played with his -fingers. - -Time seemed to stand still for them, as they fought to protect their -little shining taper of civilization, feeding it from their hearts and -minds. When they went outdoors for the daily escape from their room to -the sandy, hard-trodden desert of the prison yard, they seemed with -their neat, threadbare, faded, well-mended garments, with their gray, -carefully dressed hair, their pale faces, clean and quiet, with brave -eyes and smiling lips, like another order of being from the shaggy, -dirt-crusted, broken-down Polish and Russian soldiers, whose corrals -were on each side of them, lying listlessly in the drizzling mist or -quarreling among themselves. They were known by this time all over the -camp, and the demoralized, desperate men watched the decent Frenchwomen -with that most humanizing of emotions, respect. - -Do you see them, those gaunt, heart-sick women, shoulder to shoulder, -indomitable in the patient use of their intelligence, in their long -triumphant battle against the weakness and evil in their own nature, -which were, as they had known from the first, the only things in the -world which could harm them? - - - What a race to belong to! - - -Well, then came the end, foreshadowed by weeks of excited rumor, a -confused, bewildered period of guesses and half hopes, when nobody, -not even the guards, knew what was happening at the front. The camp -was all one crazy uproar, no newspaper, no certainty of anything. Our -little group of women clung to each other, as the world rocked round -them, till the evening when the guards came running to take them to -the train. Not an instant to spare; the thousands of other prisoners -were yelling in the riot which, the next day, tore the camp to pieces. -They huddled on their clothes and fled into the wild confusion of the -journey, standing up in locked cattle-cars, frantic to know what was -happening, with no idea in the world where they were or where the train -was taking them, until the moment when the jolting cars stopped, the -locked doors were broken open and French voices out of the darkness -cried, “Mesdames, vous êtes chez vous!” - -They were at home, at their own station, a faint gray light showing -the well-known pointed roofs of their own city, the massive tower -of the old Town Hall black against the dawn. On the same platform, -where they had seen so many deported prisoners return, vermin-ridden, -filthy, half-imbecile, a burden to themselves and their families, there -they were, lean and worn and pale, but stronger, better, finer human -beings than they had been before. Half-awed by the greatness of their -victory, they stood there, like ghosts who had fought their way back -from the grave, peering out through the dim light at their own homes. - - -That’s where the story ought to end, oughtn’t it? - -But you know as well as I do that five years have passed since that -morning when they stood there, awe-struck and transfigured. And I -cannot conceal the fact that I have seen them all again, a good many -times since then. - -What are they doing with themselves now? Well, the last time I made -a round of visits among them, I found the housewives concerned about -their preserves and the hang of their skirts; the business-women deep -in calculations about how to get around the sinful rate of exchange. -The mothers were bringing up their children very hard, as we all do, -very much concerned about their knowing the children of the right -people and no others. The teachers were grumbling about the delay in -the promised raise of their pay and complaining about the tyranny -of the Directrice of their Lycée. Young Mme. Baudoin, now that her -children are old enough to go to school, often leaves them with the -servants and runs off to Brussels or Paris for a few days of fun. All -the returned hostages have grown quite stout, and they have taken up -bridge whist with enthusiasm, once more. - -As for Octavie, the last time I saw her, she was on fire with interest -over a little green-house she was having built back of the kitchen, -so that she might have fresh green vegetables the year around. It was -very hard to achieve such a thing, what with the lack of workmen, the -scarcity of bricks, and the high price of glass. But Octavie was sure -she could manage it. - -And so am I. Octavie can always manage anything she tries for. - - - - -OLD MAN WARNER - - -I must warn you at the outset that unless you or some of your folks -came from Vermont, it is hardly worth your while to read about Old Man -Warner. You will not be able to see anything in his story except, as we -say in Vermont, a “gape and swallow” about nothing. Well, I don’t claim -much dramatic action for the story of old man Warner, but I am setting -it down on the chance that it may fall into the hands of some one -brought up on Vermont stories as I was. I know that for him there will -be something in Old Man Warner’s life, something of Vermont, something -we feel and cannot express, as we feel the incommunicable aura of a -personality. - -The old man has been a weight on the collective mind of our town ever -since I was a little girl, and that is a long time ago. He was an old -man even then. Year after year, as our Board of Selectmen planned -the year’s town budget they had this worry about Old Man Warner, and -what to do with him. It was not that old Mr. Warner was a dangerous -character, or anything but strictly honest and law-abiding. But he had -his own way of bothering his fellow citizens. - -In his young days he had inherited a farm from his father, back up in -Arnold Hollow, where at that time, about 1850, there was a cozy little -settlement of five or six farms with big families. He settled there, -cultivated the farm, married, and brought up a family of three sons. -When the Civil War came, he volunteered together with his oldest boy, -and went off to fight in the second year of the war. He came back alone -in 1864, the son having fallen in the Battle of the Wilderness. And he -went back up to Arnold Hollow to live and there he stayed, although -the rest of his world broke up and rearranged itself in a different -pattern, mostly centering about the new railroad track in the main -valley. - -Only the older men returned to the Arnold Hollow settlement to go on -cultivating their steep, rocky farms. The younger ones set off for the -West, the two remaining Warner boys with the others. Their father and -mother stayed, the man hardly ever leaving the farm now even to go to -town. His wife said once he seemed to feel as though he never could -get caught up on the years he had missed during the war. She said he -always had thought the world of his own home. - -The boys did pretty well out in Iowa, had the usual ups and downs -of pioneer farmers, and by 1898, when their mother died, leaving -their father alone at seventy-one, they were men of forty-eight and -forty-six, who had comfortable homes to which to invite him to pass his -old age. - -Everybody in our town began to lay plans about what they would buy at -the auction, when Old Man Warner would sell off his things, as the -other Arnold Hollow families had. By this time, for one reason or -another, the Warners were the only people left up there. The Selectmen -planned to cut out the road up into Arnold Hollow, and put the tidy -little sum saved from its upkeep into improvements on the main valley -thoroughfare. But old Mr. Warner wrote his sons and told the Selectmen -that he saw no reason for leaving his home to go and live in a strange -place and be a burden to his children, with whom, having seen them at -the rarest intervals during the last thirty years, he did not feel very -well acquainted. And he always had liked his own home. Why should he -leave it? It was pretty late in the day for him to get used to western -ways. He’d just be a bother to his boys. He didn’t want to be a bother -to anybody, and he didn’t propose to be! - -There were a good many protests all round, but of course the Selectmen -had not the faintest authority over him, and as quite probably his sons -were at heart relieved, nothing was done. The town very grudgingly -voted the money to keep up the Arnold Hollow road, but consoled itself -by saying freely that the old cuss never had been so very bright and -was worse now, evidently had no idea what he was trying to do, and -would soon get tired of living alone and “doing for himself.” - -That was twenty-two years ago. Selectmen who were then vigorous and -middle-aged, grew old, decrepit, died, and were buried. Boys who were -learning their letters then, grew up, married, had children, and became -Selectmen in their turn. Old Man Warner’s sons grew old and died, and -the names of most of his grand-children, scattered all over the West, -were unknown to us. And still the old man lived alone in his home and -“did for himself.” - -Every spring, when road work began, the Selectmen groaned over having -to keep up the Arnold Hollow road, and every autumn they tried their -best to persuade the old man to come down to a settlement where he -could be taken care of. Our town is very poor, and taxes are a heavy -item in our calculations. It is just all we can do to keep our schools -and roads going, and we grudge every penny we are forced to spend on -tramps, paupers, or the indigent sick. Selectmen in whose régime town -expenses were high, are not only never reëlected to town office, but -their name is a by-word and a reproach for years afterwards. We elect -them, among other things, to see to it that town expenses are not high, -and to lay their plans accordingly. - - -Decades of Selectmen, heavy with this responsibility, tried to lay -their plans accordingly in regard to Old Man Warner, and ran their -heads into a stone wall. One Board of Selectmen after another knew -exactly what would happen; the old dumb-head would get a stroke of -paralysis, or palsy, or softening of the brain, or something, and the -town Treasury would bleed at every pore for expensive medical service, -maybe an operation at a hospital, and after that, somebody paid to -take care of him. If they could only ship him off to his family! One -of the granddaughters, now a middle-aged woman, kept up a tenuous -connection with the old man, and answered, after long intervals, -anxious communications from the Selectmen. Or if not that, if only they -could get him down out of there in the winter, so they would not be -saddled with the perpetual worry about what was happening to him, with -the perpetual need to break out the snow in the road and go up there to -see that he was all right. - -But Old Man Warner was still not bright enough to see any reason why -he should lie down on his own folks, or why he should not live in his -own home. When gentle expostulations were tried, he always answered -mildly that he guessed he’d rather go on living the way he was for a -while longer; and when blustering was tried, he straightened up, looked -the blusterer in the eye, and said he guessed there wasn’t no law in -Vermont to turn a man off his own farm, s’long’s he paid his debts, and -he didn’t owe any that he knew of. - -That was the fact, too. He paid spot cash for what he bought in his -semi-yearly trips to the village to “do trading,” as our phrase goes. -He bought very little, a couple of pairs of overalls a year, a bag -apiece of sugar, and coffee, and rice, and salt, and flour, some -raisins, and pepper. And once or twice during the long period of his -hermit life, an overcoat and a new pair of trousers. What he brought -down from his farm was more than enough to pay for such purchases, for -he continued to cultivate his land, less and less of it, of course, -each year, but still enough to feed his horse and cow and pig and -hens, and to provide him with corn and potatoes and onions. He salted -down and smoked a hog every fall and ate his hens when they got too old -to lay. - -And, of course, as long as he was actually economically independent, -the town, groaning with apprehension over the danger to its treasury -though it was, could not lay a finger on the cranky old codger. And -yet, of course, his economic independence couldn’t last! From one day -to the next, something was bound to happen to him, something that would -cost the town money. - -Each year the Selectmen planning the town expenditures with the -concentrated prudence born of hard necessity, cast an uneasy mental -glance up Arnold Hollow way, and scringed at the thought that perhaps -this was the year when money would have to be taken away from the road -or the school fund to pay for Old Man Warner’s doctoring and nursing; -and finally for his burial, because as the years went by, even the -tenuous western granddaughter vanished: died, or moved, or something. -Old Man Warner was now entirely alone in the world. - -All during my childhood and youth he was a legendary figure of “sot” -obstinacy and queerness. We children used to be sent up once in a -while, to take our turn in seeing that the old man was all right. It -was an expedition like no other. You turned off the main road and -went up the steep, stony winding mountain road, dense with the shade -of sugar-maples and oaks. At the top, when your blown horse stopped -to rest, you saw before you the grassy lane leading across the little -upland plateau where the Arnold Hollow settlement had been. The older -people said they could almost hear faint echoes of whetting scythes, -and barking dogs, and cheerful homely noises, as there had been in the -old days. But for us children there was nothing but a breathlessly -hushed, sunny glade of lush meadows, oppressively silent and spooky, -with a few eyeless old wrecks of abandoned farm houses, drooping and -gray. You went past the creepy place as fast as your horse could -gallop, and clattered into the thicket of shivering white birches which -grew close to the road like a screen; and then--there was no sensation -in my childhood quite like the coming out into the ordered, inhabited, -humanized little clearing, in front of Old Man Warner’s home. There -were portly hens crooning around on the close-cropped grass, and a pig -grunting sociably from his pen at you, and shining milk-pans lying in -the sun tilted against the white birch sticks of the wood-pile, and -Old Man Warner, himself, infinitely aged and stooped, in his faded, -clean overalls, emerging from the barn-door to peer at you out of his -bright old eyes and to give you a hearty, “Well, you’re quite a long -ways from home, don’t you know it? Git off your horse, can’t ye? I’ve -got a new calf in here.” Or perhaps if it were a Sunday, he sat in -the sun on the front porch, with a clean shirt on, reading the weekly -edition of the _New York Tribune_. He drove two miles every Saturday -afternoon, down to his R. F. D. mail-box on the main road, to get this. - -You heard so much talk about him down in the valley, so much fussing -and stewing about his being so “sot,” and so queer, that it always -surprised you when you saw him, to find he was just like anybody else. -You saw his calf, and had a drink of milk in his clean, well-scrubbed -kitchen, and played with the latest kitten, and then you said good-by -for that time, and got on your horse and went back through the birch -thicket into the ghostly decay of the abandoned farms, back down the -long, stony road to the valley where everybody was so cross with the -unreasonable old man for causing them so much worry. - -“How _could_ he expect to go along like that, when other old folks, so -much younger than he, gave up and acted like other people, and settled -down where you could take care of them! The house might burn down over -his head, and he with it; or he might fall and break his hip and be -there for days, yelling and fainting away till somebody happened to go -by; or a cow might get ugly and hook him, and nobody to send for help.” -All these frightening possibilities and many others had been repeatedly -presented to the old man himself with the elaborations and detail which -came from heart-felt alarm about him. But he continued to say mildly -that he guessed he’d go on living the way he was for a while yet. - -“A _while_!” He was ninety years old. - -And then he was ninety-one, and then ninety-two; and we were surer and -surer he would “come on the town,” before each fiscal year was over. -At the beginning of last winter our Selectmen went up in a body to -try to bully or coax the shrunken, wizened old man, now only half his -former size, to go down to the valley. He remarked that he “guessed -there wasn’t no law in Vermont” and so forth, just as he had to their -fathers. He was so old, that he could no longer straighten up as he -said it, for his back was helplessly bent with rheumatism, and for -lack of teeth he whistled and clucked and lisped a good deal as he -pronounced his formula. But his meaning was as clear as it had been -thirty years ago. They came sulkily away without him, knowing that they -would both be laughed at and blamed, in the valley, because the cussed -old crab had got the best of them, again. - -Last February, a couple of men, crossing over to a lumber-job on -Hemlock Mountain, by way of the Arnold Hollow road, saw no smoke coming -out of the chimney, knocked at the door, and, getting no answer, opened -it and stepped in. There lay Old Man Warner, dead on his kitchen floor -in front of his well-blacked cook-stove. The tiny, crooked, old body -was fully dressed, even to a fur cap and mittens, and in one hand was -his sharp, well-ground ax. One stove-lid was off, and a charred stick -of wood lay half in and half out of the fire box. Evidently the old man -had stepped to the fire to put in a stick of wood before he went out to -split some more, and had been stricken instantly, before he could move -a step. His cold, white old face was composed and quiet, just as it had -always been in life. - -The two lumbermen fed the half-starved pig and hens and turned back to -the valley with the news, driving the old man’s cow and horse in front -of them; and in a couple of hours we all knew that Old Man Warner had -died, all alone, in his own kitchen. - - -Well, what do you think! We were as stirred up about it--! We turned -out and gave him one of the best funerals the town ever saw. And we -put up a good marble tombstone that told all about how he had lived. -We found we were proud of him, as proud as could be, the darned old -bull-dog, who had stuck it out all alone, in spite of us. We brag -now about his single-handed victory over old age and loneliness, and -we keep talking about him to the children, just as we brag about our -grandfather’s victories in the Civil War, and talk to the children -about the doings of the Green Mountain Boys. Old Man Warner has become -history. We take as much satisfaction in the old fellow’s spunk, as -though he had been our own grandfather, and we spare our listeners no -detail of his story: “... And there he stuck year after year, with the -whole town plaguing at him to quit. And he earned his own living, and -chopped his own wood, and kept himself and the house just as decent, -and never got queer and frowzy and half-cracked, but stayed just like -anybody, as nice an old man as ever you saw--all alone, all stark -alone--beholden to nobody--asking no odds of anybody--yes, sir, and -died with his boots on, at ninety-three, on a kitchen floor you could -have et off of, ’twas so clean.” - - - - -THE IDEAS OF M. BRODARD - - -During the first winter I spent in the boarding-school on the Rue de -Vaugirard, the Brodard sisters were the mainstay of my life. It was not -that I needed mainstaying in any of the regular classes, although we -were driven like dogs by the grindingly thorough teachers, for lessons -are lessons, wherever you find them, hard and tense though they may be -in France, easy and loose in America. It was quite another part of our -school life which routed me, the training in deportment and manners, -carried on in three deadly sessions a week, by a wizened skipping old -man, light and dry as a cork. - -His little juiceless body was light, but everything else about him was -heavy with the somber earnestness of his determination to teach us what -he considered the manners of women of the world. Thrice a week we were -obliged to begin those lessons by a ceremonious entry into the big -salon, four by four, advancing in time to music across the bare shining -desert of its waxed floors, counting furtively under our breaths, “one, -two, three, four, glide, bend, recover, glide,” as we courtesied to -the Directrice, “advance again, one, two, three, four, glide, bend, -recover, glide,”--here we saluted the Sous-Directrice--“advance again” -(I was always shaking partly with giggles at the absurdity of the whole -business, partly with fear of the terrible eye of Professor Delacour), -“one, two three, four, glide, bend ...” but usually at this point of my -attempted bow to the Professor of Deportment I was harshly told to go -back and start the whole agonizing ritual over. - -That was before the Brodard girls took me in hand and, flanking me on -either side, swept me forward on the crest of their perfect advance -and genuflection to the coveted place of safety on the other side of -the room where, in a black-robed line, the little girls who had made a -correct entry awaited further instructions in the manners of the world. - -The support of the three Brodard girls did not stop short when they had -engineered me through the matter of getting into a room. The professor -himself was not more steeped in a religious sense of the importance of -his instruction than were Madeleine, Lucie, and Clotilde Brodard. The -insensate inner laughter which constantly threatened to shake the lid -of my decorum, was safely muffled by their whole-souled attention as -we stood there, watching the elegant gestures and still more elegant -immobilities of Professor Delacour, as he explained the lesson of the -day. - -One day we were taught how to put money into the contribution-box in -church, “not with a preoccupied, bored air, nor yet with a complacent -smirk, but thus, gravely, with a quiet dignified gesture.” Then he -would pass the velvet contribution bag down the line, and forty little -girls must each find the right expression, “not bored, or preoccupied, -not yet with a complacent, self-conscious look, gravely--quietly--with -dignity.” - -I can still feel in the pit of my stomach the quiver of mingled -terror and mirth with which at twelve years of age, I prepared to -be, “not bored or preoccupied, nor yet smirking and complacent, but -quiet--dignified--” I would never have lived through it if I had not -been hypnotized by the Brodard girls. - -Or perhaps we were required to be ladies stepping from a carriage -and crossing a side-walk to enter a theater, keenly conscious of the -eyes of the crowd on us; but required to seem unaware of spectators, -“graceful, moving with a well-bred repose, and above all, unconscious, -entirely natural and unconscious.” Then two by two, squirmingly -the center of all the eyes in the salon, we crossed the imaginary -sidewalk and entered the imaginary door, “quiet, graceful, above all -unconscious, entirely natural and unconscious....” Do you suppose -for a moment I could have escaped annihilation at the hands of our -High-Priest, if Clotilde Brodard had not been my fellow acolyte, -applying all her orthodox convictions to the problem set before us? - -Yes, the Brodard girls were an example to us all, in and out of the -class in deportment, for they were as scrupulously observant of all -the rules of good behavior in daily school-life as under the eye of -Professor Delacour. Any chance observer would have been sure that they -were preparing to enter the wealthiest and most exclusive society, an -impression by no means contradicted by the aspect of their mother, -a quiet, distinguished, tailored person, who brought them to school -at the beginning of the term, and once in a while made the tiresome -trip from Morvilliers to Paris to see them. But the Brodards must -have had some training in genuine good-breeding as well as the quaint -instruction given by Professor Delacour, for they never made any -pretensions to wealth or social standing--they said very little of any -sort about their home life. - -Two years later I spent my Christmas vacation with them, and at once -I understood a good deal more about them. Young as I was--fourteen at -the time--it was plain to me as it would have been to any observer, -that they took their lessons in “society manners” so seriously because -society manners and any occasions for using them were the only things -lacking in the home where they were so comfortable, so much loved, and -so well cared for. They lived on a shabby street in Morvilliers, in a -small apartment, with one maid-of-all-work; and although their mother -had a genius for keeping everything on a plane of strict gentility, -their big, gay, roughly clad, unceremonious father was the ramping -red editor of the most ramping red radical newspaper in that part of -France, the center of all the anti-everything agitations going on in -the region. - -As used to happen in Europe, in the far-gone days, when I was fourteen -years old (but not at all as it happens now-a-days) what they called -ramping and redness looked very plain and obvious to an American. Most -of what M. Brodard was making such a fuss about, seemed to me just -what everybody at home took for granted: for instance his thesis that -every man ought to earn his own living no matter how high his social -position might be. I was astonished that anybody could consider that -a revolutionary idea. Among other things, M. Brodard was what people -would call now-a-days a feminist, expounding hotly his conviction that -women should be trusted with the responsibility for the conduct of -their own lives, and the earning of their own livings. These opinions -found no echo at all in the serious-minded middle-class families of -his town, nor indeed in his family, but they were an old story to me. -I told him as much, informing him confidently from my wide experience -as a child in the impecunious faculty of a western State-University, -that everybody in America expected as a matter of course to earn his -_and_ her own living--everybody! He accepted this as unquestioningly -as I advanced it, with the fresh faith and enthusiasm which upheld him -in all the generous quixotism of his life. I believe, indeed, that on -the strength of my testimony he actually wrote some editorials about -America in his furiously convinced style. - -Of course he was the champion of the working classes as against the -bourgeoisie, adored by the first and hated by the second. It was an -adventure to walk with him along the narrow, cobbled streets of the -musty little town. Everywhere the lean, sinewy men in working clothes -and the thin women in aprons and without hats, had a quick, flashing -look of pleasure to see his great frame come striding vigorously along. -Everywhere the artisans stopped their work to call a hearty greeting -to him, or to step quickly to meet him, full of some grievance, sure -of his sympathy, and comforted by the quick flame of his indignation. -And everywhere the very sight of him put a taste of green apples into -the mouths of all the well-dressed people. You could see that by the -sour expression of their broad, florid faces. The prosperous merchant -at the door of his shop frowned, cleared his throat, and turned hastily -within doors, as he saw M. Brodard come marching along, humming a -tune, his hat cocked light-heartedly over one ear. The lawyer in his -black broadcloth coat passed us hurriedly; the women in expensive -furs stepped high, drew their long skirts about them, and looked him -straight in the eye, with an expression half fear, half horror. This -last made him break out into the hearty, full-throated laugh, always -close to the surface with him--the laugh that was as characteristic a -part of him as the shape of his nose. - -I understood now why Mme. Brodard sent the girls away to school. They -would have been outcasts in any bourgeoise school in their own town. -Yet M. Brodard was a great champion of the public schools and never -lost an opportunity of defending against their bitter critics the -public lycées for girls, then just struggling into being in France. I -wondered a little that he should allow his daughters to go to such a -boarding-school as ours. But it seemed that the angry resistance of the -moneyed and pious families of Morvilliers had up to that time prevented -the establishment of a public lycée for girls there. This enabled Mme. -Brodard to steer past another dangerous headland in the complicated -course of her life. Perhaps, also, warm-hearted M. Brodard was not -inclined to be too hard on his girls, whom he fondly loved, after the -adoring manner of French fathers, nor to expect too much from his -devoted wife in the way of conforming to his ideas. - -Even at that time, poor Mme. Brodard’s life was all one miracle of -adroit achievement in reconciling irreconcilable elements and effecting -impossible compromises. She had married her husband when they were -both young (he must have been an irresistible suitor), and before his -hot-headed sympathies for the under-dog had absorbed him. Like a good -and devoted French wife, she never admitted that anything her Bernard -did was other than what she would wish. But she remained exactly what -she had been at the time of her marriage, and although she was deeply -attached to her kind and faithful husband and made the best of homes -for him, she had not the slightest intention of changing a hair or -becoming anything but a good bourgeoise, a devoted believer in social -distinctions, in the Church, in the laboring classes _as such and in -their places_, and above all in the excellence of owning property and -inheriting money. - -On this last point M. Brodard went much further than anything I had -heard discussed at home, and poured out incessantly in brilliant -editorials a torrent of scorn, laughter, hatred, and denunciation, upon -the sacred institution of inheritance, the very keystone of the French -social edifice. “How ridiculous,” he used to write on mornings when -no other forlorn hope stood in special need of a harebrained charge, -“that the mere chance of birth, or a personal caprice, should put vast -sums of unearned wealth into the hands of a man who has not had the -slightest connection with its production. Property, the amassing of -wealth by a man who has had the acumen and force to produce it ... we -may have two opinions about that, about whether he should be allowed to -keep for himself all he can lay his hands on. But there can be no two -opinions about the hilarious idiocy of the theory that his grown-up -son has any inherent right to possess that wealth, his son who has no -more to do with it than the Emperor of China, save by a physiological -accident. A hundred years from now, people will be laughing at our -imbecile acquiescence in such a theory, as we now laugh at the imbecile -acquiescence of whole provinces and kingdoms in the Middle Ages, passed -from the hand of one master to another, because somebody had married -somebody else.” - -Mme. Brodard used to say resignedly, that she minded such editorials -least of all. “That is a principle that will never touch _our_ lives!” -she said with melancholy conviction, for her modest dowry was the -extent of their fortune and of their expectations. She herself had been -an orphan and all the Brodard elders were dead, having left nothing to -the family of such an enemy to society as they considered Bernard to be. - -She did not complain; she never complained of anything her husband did; -but it was plain to see that she thought it her obvious duty to protect -her daughters from the consequences of their dear father’s ideas. The -income from her dowry kept them at school and dressed them at home, and -as the oldest began to approach the marriageable age Mme. Brodard cast -about her with silent intensity for some possible means for stretching -that dowry to enable Madeleine to make the right sort of match. She -knew of course that this was an impossible undertaking; but all her -married life had been an impossible undertaking carried through to -success, and she did not despair, although there were times when she -looked white and anxious. - -But this was never when M. Brodard was at home. Indeed it was -impossible for any one to be tense or distraught in the sunny gaiety -of M. Brodard’s presence. His entrance into that neat, hushed, narrow, -waxed, and polished interior was like the entrance of a military band -playing a quick-step. He was always full of his latest crusade, fired -with enthusiasms, hope, and certainty of success. He made you feel -that he was the commanding officer of a devoted force, besieging an -iniquitous old enemy, and every day advancing further toward victory. -Yet another blast, down would tumble the flimsy walls of cowardly -traditional injustice, and sunshine would stream into the dark places! - -Full of faith in what he was doing, he was as light-hearted as a boy, -electrifying the most stagnant air with the vibrant current of his -conviction that life is highly worth the trouble it costs. Big girls -as we were, he swept us off into hilarious games of hide-and-seek; and -never in any later evenings of my life have I rocked in such gales -of fun as on the evenings when we played charades. An impersonation -of a fussy, clucking setting hen which he gave as part of the word, -“ampoule” has remained with me as a high-water mark of sheer glorious -foolery never surpassed by the highest-salaried clown. In the following -charade we laughed so at his “creation” of a fateful Napoleon that -we could not sit on our chairs; and after that, carried away by his -own high spirits, he did the “strong man” at the village fair (he was -a prodigiously powerful athlete) lifting a feather with a grotesque -display of swelling muscles, clenched jaws, and widespread legs which -all but finished me. The tears of mirth used to come to my eyes as -I recalled that evening, and many a taut, high-strung moment of my -adolescence in after years relaxed into healthy amusement at the -remembered roar of M. Brodard’s laughter. - -M. Brodard’s laughter ... alas! - -And yet at the very time when his care-free, fearless laughter so -filled my ears, he was standing out single-handed against the most -poisonous hostility, to force an investigation of a framed-up law case, -in which a workingman had been defrauded of his rights. Apparently -there was always some such windmill against which he thought it -necessary to charge. Apparently his zeal for forlorn hopes never -diminished. We went back to school after that vacation leaving him the -center of a pack of yelling vituperations from all the staid and solid -citizens of the region ... “poor, dear Papa,” as the Brodard girls -always said, imitating their mother’s accent. - -To me, school and lessons in deportment seemed queerer than ever, -after that great gust of stormy, ruffling wind, but the Brodard girls -were used to such contrasts. They but plunged themselves deeper than -ever, up to their very necks, into the atmosphere of gentility. They -had caught more than their mother’s accent, they had caught her deep -anxiety about their future, her passionate determination that the ideas -of their father should not drag them into that impossible world of -workingmen, radicals and badly dressed outcasts, which was the singular -choice of their excellent poor dear Papa. - -When Mme. Brodard came to Paris, in the well-cut tailored dress which -I now knew to be the only one she possessed, she reported that Papa, -by sheer capacity for shouting unpleasant truths at the top of his -great voice, had obtained a re-trial and acquittal of that tiresome -workingman, and was now off on a new tack, was antagonizing all the -merchants of town by an exposé of their grinding meanness to their -hapless employees. It seemed that libel-suits were thick in the air, -and the influential members of society crossed to the other side of the -street when they met M. Brodard. “But you know how poor dear Papa seems -to thrive on all that!” - -Well, _he_ might thrive on all that, but Madeleine, Lucie, and Clotilde -knew very well that nothing they wanted would thrive on “all that.” -Their only salvation was in escape from it. In the effort to prepare -themselves for that escape, they smeared themselves, poor things, from -head to foot with good breeding. They had nothing but themselves, -Maman, and her little dowry to count on; but at least no one should -be able to guess from their manners that their home life had not been -conventional. Mme. Brodard went on, that day, to consult with her -banker about re-investing some of her little fortune, so that it would -mean more income. When Madeleine left school, they would need more, -Heaven knew, to piece out the plain living furnished by the head of the -house. What could they do to rise to that crisis? _When Madeleine left -school_ ... an abyss before their feet! Could they perhaps go south, -to a winter resort for a few months every year, where there were no -Morvilliers people, where there might be eligible young men ... or even -some not so young? They all looked anxious and stern, when they thought -of it, for after Madeleine, there were Lucie and Clotilde! - -I was sent home to America in June that year, before the end of -the school-term. The good-bys were said at lunch-time, before my -schoolmates went off to the lesson in deportment. The last I saw of the -Brodards at the time, was through the door of the salon as I passed on -my way to the street. They were learning how to handle a fan, how to -open it--“not tearing it open with both hands like a peasant girl, but -flirting it open with a sinuous bend of the wrist of one hand ... not -so abrupt!... smooth, suave, with an aristocratic....” As I went down -the hall, the voice of Professor Delacour died away on these words. I -wondered what poor dear Papa was up to now. - -Two years later when I was taken back to France and went to visit the -Brodards, I found that he was still up to the same sort of thing. Just -then he was making the echoes yell in the defense of a singularly -unattractive, snuffy old man, who lived in a village six or seven -kilometers away from Morvilliers. Old M. Duval, it seemed, had gone to -South America in his youth, had accumulated some property there, and -had lost his religion. Now, at sixty-nine, with so it was said, enough -money to live on, he had come back to Fressy, had bought a comfortable -little home there, and settled down to end his days in his birthplace. -But Fressy, as it happened, had always been and still was noted for its -piety and conservatism. The curé of the parish was a man of flaming -zeal, and the Mayor was also a very devout ultramontane. Till then -their influence had been unquestioned in the town. They had boasted -that there was one loyal village left in France where none of the -poisonous new ideas had come in to corrupt the working classes, and to -wean them from their dutiful submission to the rule of their spiritual -and secular betters. Apparently till then, M. Brodard had overlooked -the existence of such a village near him. - -His attention was now very much called to it by the persecution of -old M. Duval. The persistent and ostentatious absence from Mass of -the returned traveler was followed by a shower of stones which broke -most of his windows. His easy-going advice given publicly in a café to -some young workmen of the town to follow his example, to stand up for -themselves, get higher wages or strike, was answered by the poisoning -of his dog. The old fellow became indignant, and never dreaming of -the heat of the feeling against him, walked straight up to M. le Curé -one day in the street, and asked him--as if the priest had anything -to do with what was happening!--whether the laws of France did or did -not permit a man to live quietly in his own house, no matter what his -opinions were! That night some anonymous defender of the status quo set -fire to his chicken-house. It was at this time that M. Brodard began to -be aware of the existence of Fressy. - -Old M. Duval called on the police for protection. “The police.” That -sounds very fine, but the police of Fressy meant a solitary old -garde-champêtre whose wife was the most pious woman in town, and whose -only daughter was the cook in the house of the fiercely legitimatist -Mayor. It is not surprising that the next morning, the scoffing -unbeliever from overseas found that somehow marauders had eluded “the -police,” and laid waste his promising kitchen-garden. They intended -(they proclaimed it openly) to drive out from their sanctified midst, -the man who flaunted his prosperity as the result of a wicked and -godless life. - -But they had not counted on M. Brodard and on his unparalleled capacity -for making a noise. He stormed out to Fressy to see the old man, -thoroughly frightened by this time; heard his story, exploding at -intervals into fiery rockets of indignation; clasped him in his arms, -as though M. Duval had been his own kin; and swore that he would prove -to him that justice and freedom existed in France to-day as always. The -old man’s nerves were shaken by his troubled nights and his harried -sense of invisible enemies all about him. Until that moment it had -seemed to him that all the world was against him. His relief was -immense. He returned M. Brodard’s embrace emotionally, his trembling -old arms clasped hard about M. Brodard’s great neck, the tears in his -scared old eyes. - -Then M. Brodard hurried back to Morvilliers, tore the throttle open, -and let her go ... to the great discomfort of Mme. Brodard and the -girls, the two elder of whom were now very reluctantly preparing -themselves to teach, for they had not been able to organize the -longed-for escape. That was the situation when I visited them. - -Of course in due time the intemperate publicity about the matter put an -end to the attacks on M. Duval. The rattling crackle of M. Brodard’s -quick-fire protests rose in the air, till they reached the ears of -the Sous-Prefect, from whose exalted office orders to “see to that -matter” were issued, and came with imperative urgence even to the -royalist Mayor of Fressy. He very grudgingly issued certain unofficial -orders, which meant quiet in old M. Duval’s life. There was even a -victim sacrificed to shut M. Brodard’s too-articulate mouth. The -garde-champêtre lost his position and his chance for a pension, which -was very hard on an excellent, honest man whose only intention had been -to do his duty as he saw it. - -By the time that I was back in America in college, Clotilde wrote me -that all that disturbance had died down, that M. Duval, horrid old -thing, had come on his shaking old legs to make a visit to Papa, to -thank him with deep emotion for the intense peace and comfort of his -present life. I could read between the lines that Clotilde thought they -might very well have a little more of those commodities in their own -life. - -After that I heard from some one else (for M. Brodard and his ideas -were becoming famous) that the opposition had finally caught him in a -legal technicality, something connected with his campaign for tearing -down the miserable old disease-soaked medieval hovels where many -poor people lived in Morvilliers. The proprietors of the threatened -rookeries chipped in together, hired expensive expert legal advice, -and finally, to their immense satisfaction, succeeded in getting a tiny -sentence of imprisonment, for defamation of their characters, inflicted -on M. Brodard. He was kept in jail for two weeks, I believe, which -was a fortnight of pure glory. All his humble adherents, hundreds of -them, came tramping in to see him from all the region round, bringing -tribute. His “cell” was heaped with flowers, he fared on the finest -game and fattest poultry, and ... what pleased him vastly more ... the -fiery editorials which he sent out from his prison about the infamy -of wretched lodgings for poor families were noticed and reprinted -everywhere in France, where the circumstances of his grotesque -imprisonment were known. - -The condemnation which his opponents meant to be a crushing disgrace -turned out an apotheosis. He enjoyed every moment of it and emerged -from his two weeks vacation, ruddier, stronger, in higher spirits than -ever, his name shining with the praise of generous-hearted men all -over the country. He cocked his hat further over one ear than ever and -strode off home. You could fairly see the sparks fly from beneath his -feet. - - * * * * * * * - -The morning after his release from prison, news came from Fressy that -old M. Duval had died of apoplexy. - -Well, what of that? Ah, what of that ...? - -He had willed his whole fortune to M. Brodard, and it seemed he was -frightfully rich: it came to more than three million francs. - - * * * * * * * - -Oh, yes, he took it. Of course he did. You knew he would. What else -would you have had him do? It’s all very well to have abstract ideas -about the absurdity and iniquity of inheritance; but when your own -daughters ... and your own wife ... expect so confidently.... - -Mme. Brodard, you see ... he was devoted to his wife who had so -faithfully made the best of homes for him; and to his daughters whom he -loved so dearly.... - -Can’t you see the astounded radiance of their faces at the news? And -they’d already been sacrificed so many years for his ideas.... _Ideas!_ - -What do you suppose he could do but accept it? - - * * * * * * * - -I don’t know one thing about the inner history of this period when -M. Brodard was bringing himself to a decision, and in the light of a -glimpse, just one glimpse which I had later, I think the less I know -about it the better for my peace of mind. The only information I had -was contained in a very nice, conventional note from Mme. Brodard, -giving me, in the pleasantly formal, well-turned phrases of French -epistolatory style, the news of their great good fortune which, she -said, was certainly sent by Providence to protect her dear husband -from the suffering and hardship which would have been his without it; -for M. Brodard was very ill, she wrote, oh, very ill indeed! He had -gone through a phase of strange mental excitement; from that he had -sunk into melancholia which had frightened them, and in the end had -succumbed to a mysterious malady of the nervous system which made him -half-blind and almost helpless. Helpless ... her wonderful, strong -husband! What could she have done to care for him if it had not been -for this financial windfall coming just when it was most needed? - -You can imagine my stupefaction on reading this letter. It was caused -as much by learning that M. Brodard was a hopeless invalid as by -learning about that odd business of the fortune left them. How strange! -M. Brodard with a nervous affection which left him in a wheel chair! It -was incredible. I reread the beautifully written letter, trying hard -to see if anything lay between the lines. But there was nothing more -in it than I had already found. It was evidently written in the utmost -good faith. Everything Mme. Brodard did was done with the utmost good -faith. - -Some years later I was in France again and found myself near the -address on the Riviera where the Brodards had purchased an estate. I -had not heard from them in some months, but on the chance that they -might be there, I went over from Mentone on a slow way-train which, -returning three hours later, would give me time to pay my call and -get back the same afternoon. Everybody at the little white-stuccoed -station knew where the Brodard villa was, and when he knew where I was -going, the driver of the shabby cab tucked me into it with a respect -for my destiny he had noticeably not shown to my very plain and rather -dusty traveling-dress. We climbed a long hill-road to a high point, -commanding a glorious view of the brilliant sea and yet more brilliant -coast, and turned into a long manorial allée of fine cypress trees. - -The house was as manorial and imposing as the avenue leading to it and -I began to be uneasily aware of my plain garb. As I went up the steps -to the great door I could feel the house thrilling rhythmically to -excellent music, and to the delicate gliding of many finely-shod feet. - -A servant led me to a small round salon hung with blue brocade, and -in a moment Mme. Brodard came hurrying to meet me. She had bloomed -herself luxuriantly open like a late rose, and from head to foot was a -delight to the eye. Of course she was very much surprised to see me, -but with never a glance at my garb she gave me the cordial welcome of -an old friend. Her perfect good faith and good breeding still governed -her life, it was plain to see. She was giving a _thé dansant_ for the -younger girls, she told me, adding that Madeleine had been married two -months before to a silk manufacturer of Lyons. She was evidently glad -to see me, but naturally enough, just for the moment, a little puzzled -what to do with me! I suggested to her relief that I make a visit to M. -Brodard first of all and wait to see the others till their guests had -gone. - -“Yes, that’s the very thing,” she said, ringing for a servant to show -me the way, “he’ll remember you, of course. He will be so glad to see -you. He always liked you so much.” - -As the servant came to the door, she added with a note of caution. “But -you must expect to find him sadly changed. His health does not improve, -although we have a resident physician for him, and _everything_ is -done for him, poor dear Bernard!” - -The servant in a quiet livery of the finest materials, led me upstairs -over velvet carpets, and then upstairs again, to a superb room at the -top of the house. It was all glass towards the miraculous living blue -of the Mediterranean, and full of flowers, books, and harmoniously -designed modern furniture. M. Brodard, clad in a picturesque, furred -dressing-gown sat in a wheel chair, his bald head sunk on his breast, -his eyes fixed and wide-open, lowered towards his great, wasted white -hands lying empty on his knees. Until he raised his eyes to look at me, -I could not believe that it was he ... no, it was not possible! - -He remembered me, as Mme. Brodard had predicted, but the rest of her -simple-hearted prophecy did not come true. He was not in the least glad -to see me and made not the slightest pretense that he was. A look that -was intolerable to see, had come into his eyes as he recognized me, and -he had instantly turned his head as though he hated the sight of me. - -I knew at once that I ought to get out of the room, no matter how; but -I was so stricken with horror and pity that for a moment I could not -collect myself, and stood there stupidly. - -A faint distant sound of gay music hummed rhythmically in the silence. -A professional-looking man who had been sitting with a book on the -other side of the room got up now and, with the bored air of a man -doing his duty, took hold of M. Brodard’s thin wrist to feel the pulse. - -M. Brodard snatched away his hand and said to me over the doctor’s -head, “Well, you see how it is with us now.” He corrected himself. “You -see how it is with me.” - -His accent, his aspect, his eyes added what he did not say. He had -been trembling with impatience because I was there at all. Now he was -trembling with impatience because I did not answer him! His terrible -eyes dared me to answer. - -I would have done better to hold my tongue altogether, but my agitation -was so great that I lost my head. I felt that I was called upon to -bring out something consoling, and heard myself murmuring in a foolish -babble something or other about possible compensations for his illness, -about his still being able to go on with his work, to write, to -publish, in that way to propagate his ideas.... - -At that he burst into a laugh I would give anything in the world not to -have heard. - -“My ideas ... ha! ha! ha!” he cried. - -Oh, I got myself out of the room then! I ran down the velvet carpets of -the stairs, my hands over my ears. - -As I hurried along to the outside door I passed the salon. I saw, -across the bare, gleaming desert of its waxed floor, Clotilde standing -with a well-dressed man. She had a fan in her hand, and, as I looked, -she opened it deftly, with a sinuous bend of her flexible wrist ... -“smoothly, suavely ... with an aristocratic ...” - - - - -FAIRFAX HUNTER - - -The erratic philanthropist of our family arrived from New York one -spring day with a thin, sickly-looking, middle-aged, colored man, -almost in rags. “This is Fairfax Hunter,” he announced with the -professional cheeriness of the doer of good. “He’s pretty badly run -down and needs country air. I thought maybe you could let him sleep in -the barn, and work around enough for his board.” - -There was nothing professionally or in any other way cheery about the -colored man, who stood waiting indifferently for my decision, his knees -sagging, his hollow chest sunken. As I glanced at him he raised his -dark, blood-shot eyes and met my look. I decided hastily, on impulse, -from something in the expression of his eyes, that we could not send -him away. - -I led him off to the barn and showed him the corner of the hay-mow -where the children sometimes sleep when our tiny house overflows with -guests. He sank down on it and closed his eyes. The lids were blue and -livid as though bruised. He had nothing with him except the ragged -clothes on his back. - -When I returned to the house, the philanthropist explained that -Fairfax was a Virginia negro--“You could tell that from his name, of -course”--who had come to New York and fallen into bad ways, “drink, -etc.... But there’s something about him....” - -Yes, I agreed to that. There was something about him.... - -Fairfax lived with us after this for more than four years, the last -years of his life. He was really very ill at first, the merest little -flicker of life puffing uncertainly in and out of the bag of skin and -bones which was his body. The doctor said that rest and food were the -only medicines for him. He lay like a piece of sodden driftwood for -long hours on the edge of the hay where the sun caught it. - -The good-natured old Yankee woman who was cooking for me then, used -to take him out big bowls of fresh milk, and slices of her home-baked -bread, and stand chatting with him while he sat up listlessly and ate. -At least, she being a great gossip, did the chattering, and Fairfax -listened, once in a while murmuring the soft, slow, “Ye-e-s’m,” which -came to be the speech he was known by, in our valley. - -He seemed to have no interest in getting well, but little by little -the sunshine, the quiet, the mountain air, and something else of which -we did not dream till later, lifted him slowly up to health. He began -to work a little in the garden, occasionally cut the grass around the -house and, borrowing the carpentering tools, built himself a little -room in the corner of the barn. One day I paid him a small sum for his -services about the place, and my husband gave him some old clothes. -The next afternoon he took his first walk to the village, and came -back with a pipe and a bag of tobacco. That evening Nancy, our “help,” -called me to the kitchen window and pointed out towards the barn. On a -bench before the barn door sat Fairfax, smoking, his head tipped back, -watching the moon sink behind the mountain. We agreed that it looked as -though he were getting well. - -Nancy had to go home to a sick sister that Fall, and Fairfax moved into -the kitchen to occupy her place. It came out that he had once worked in -a hotel kitchen in Virginia, so that thereafter our Vermont cookstove -turned out Southern food, from hot biscuit to fried chicken. - -There is very little caste feeling in our valley, and not a bit of -color prejudice. Many of our people had never even seen a negro to -speak to before they knew Fairfax, and they liked him very much. - -He always was very thin, but he had filled out a little by this time; -had gone to a dentist by my advice and had the blackened stumps of his -teeth replaced by shining new ivories; had bought with his first wages -a new suit of clothes, and was considered by our farmer families to -be “quite a good-looking fellow.” He kept his curling gray hair cut -short to his head, his thin cheeks scrupulously shaven, and was always -presentable. - -As a matter of course he was invited to all the country gatherings, -like other people’s “hired help,” along with the rest of us. I remember -the first of these invitations: some one telephoned from the village to -announce a church supper, and I was urged, “Do bring down a good crowd. -We’ve got a lot of food to dispose of.” - -I stepped back into the kitchen and told Fairfax not to get supper that -night, as we were all going to the village to a church supper. - -“Yes’m,” said Fairfax. - -“I want you to be ready to start at a quarter to six,” I added, -glancing at the clock. - -“Who, _me_?” said Fairfax, with a little start. - -“Yes,” I answered, a little surprised. “Didn’t you hear me say I wanted -us all to go?” - -Fairfax looked at me searchingly, “Where’ll I get my supper?” - -“Why, they usually have the church suppers out on the church green -unless it rains, and then they go down to the basement rooms.” - -Fairfax said apathetically, “No’m, they don’t want me.” - -I saw now what was in his mind, and said, to set him right, “Oh, yes, -they do. You know the people around here haven’t any of those notions. -Come on.” - -“No’m, they don’t want me,” he repeated. - -I beckoned him to follow me, went back to the telephone and rang up -the woman who was arranging for the supper. “Do you want me to bring -Fairfax Hunter with us?” I asked her explicitly. - -“Why, of course,” she said surprised. “I told you we want a crowd.” - -After this Fairfax stood undecided, his sensitive face clouded -and anxious. I had a glimpse then of the long years of brutal -discrimination through which he had lived, and said, feeling very much -ashamed of my civilization, “Now, Fairfax, don’t be so foolish. We -_want_ you to go. Get on your best clothes, so’s to do honor to the -Ladies Aid.” - -He went back to the room in the corner of the barn, and half an hour -later came out, fresh and neat in his new suit, closely shaven, his -slim yellow hands clean, his gray hair smooth. He looked almost eager, -with a light in his eyes that was like a distant reflection of gaiety. -But when we cranked up the Ford to go he was not in sight. We called -him, and he answered from the barn that he was not ready, and would -walk in. I was vexed, and shouted back as we rolled down the hill, “Now -don’t fail to come.” - -It rained on the way in, and the supper was served in the basement, -with all the neighbors spruced up and fresh, while the busy women of -the Ladies Aid rushed back and forth bringing us salmon loaf, pickles, -Boston brown bread, creamed potatoes, and coffee and ice-cream as from -the beginning of time they always have; but though I kept a chair at -our table empty for Fairfax, and sat where I could watch the door, he -did not appear. - -After the supper I went across the street to see my aunt, house-ridden -with a hard cold. She told me that from her windows she had seen -Fairfax come down to the village street, halt in front of the church, -go on, turn back, halt again. She said he had paced back and forth in -this way for half an hour, and finally had gone home. - -When we reached the house we found Fairfax there, his good clothes put -away, his cook’s white apron tied around him, eating bread and butter -and cold meat. - -I sat down to scold him for not doing as I had said. When I had -finished Fairfax looked at me, hesitated, and said, “If it had been out -of doors, maybe I’d have tried it.” There was an expression on his thin -somber face, which made me get up and go away without venturing any -more comment. - -As his health increased, his spirits rose somewhat. My little son was -born that winter, and Fairfax was very fond of the baby, who soon -developed the most extravagant fondness for his company. When spring -came on, and gardening arrived, Fairfax took over a part of that work, -and had a long-running feud with the woodchucks who live in the edge of -the woods beyond our garden patch. It was a quaint sight to see Fairfax -in his white jacket and apron, sitting outside the kitchen door, -peeling potatoes, a rifle across his knees, or to see him emerge in a -stealthy run from the kitchen door, gun in hand, and dart across the -road to get a better sight on the little brown garden thieves. It did -me good to see him stirred up enough to care about anything. - -He turned out to be a great reader and worked his way through most of -our library. I know you will not believe me when I tell you who his -favorite author was. But I am not concerned with seeming probable, only -with telling the truth. It was Thomas Hardy, whose philosophy of life -fitted in exactly with Fairfax’s views and experience. He was no talker -and rarely said anything to me beyond the gentle “no’m” and “yes’m” -with which he received orders. But once he remarked to my husband that -Thomas Hardy certainly did know what life was like. He went straight -through that entire set of novels, once he had found them on the -shelves, and all that winter my life was tinged with the consciousness -of Fairfax sitting in the kitchen after his work was done, deep in -communion with Hardy. Our visiting friends used to find the sight so -curious as to be amusing. I did not find it so. - -The neighbors grew very used to him, and being sociable, friendly -people, with a great deal of Yankee curiosity about the rest of the -world, they often tried to get Fairfax to tell about life in the south. -When he went out for a stroll in the evening, they would call to him, -from where they were weeding a bed in the garden, or giving the pigs -their last meal, “Hello, there, Fairfax, come on in for a minute.” If -they were in the yard, or on the porch, Fairfax often accepted the -invitation. As we went by in the car we used to see him leaning up -against the porch-railing, talking, or helping some busy woman set out -her cabbage plants. But he never went indoors. - -Our corner of the valley is a very cheerful one with a number of lively -children to keep us from “shucking over” into middle age too soon, and -the school-house is often the place where we gather for good times. The -school-benches are pushed back, the lamps lighted, the fiddler tunes -up, and we all dance, young and old, children and grown-ups. Fairfax -was invited as a matter of course to these informal affairs, and some -of the children who were very fond of the kind, gentle, silent man, -used to pull at his coat, and say, “Do come on in, Mr. Hunter! Dance -with me!” But Fairfax only grinned uneasily and shook his head. He -used to stand outside, smoking his pipe and looking in wistfully at -the brightly lighted room. As we skipped back and forth in the lively -old-fashioned dances, we could see him, a dim shape outside the window, -the little red glow of his pipe reflected once in a while from his -dark, liquid eyes. Sometimes when the window was open, he came and -leaned his elbows on the sill, nodding his head with the music, and -beating time lightly with his fingers, his eyes following us about as -we stepped back and forth in the complicated figures. - -When we were ready to serve the “refreshments,” some of us went -out into the entry-way, and Fairfax came in to help us with the -uncomfortable work of digging out the ice and salt from the top of the -freezers, and opening the cans. I used to say at first, “Fairfax, why -don’t you go in and dance, too? Anybody can see you know just how to.” -But his invariable answer, “No’m, I guess I won’t,” had in it a quality -which ended by silencing me. - -The older people called him Fairfax, as we did, but because he was a -grown man, and a middle-aged man, they thought it not good manners for -the children to call him by his first name, and taught the boys and -girls to call him Mr. Hunter. We thought this perfectly natural, and -none of us, entirely ignorant of Southern ways, had the slightest idea -of what this meant to him. - -Once a year, Fairfax took a two weeks’ vacation, and all his earnings -for the year. He went off to the city, clean, and strong, and -well-dressed; and he always came back without a cent, sick, and -coughing, and shabby, with a strong smell of whiskey all over him. Of -course, we took him severely to task for this inexcusable behavior, -getting out for his benefit all the accepted axioms of conduct, -prudence, ambition, self-interest, and so on, showing him how he could -save his money, and put it in the bank, and be prosperous. - -He always answered with his invariable soft, “Yes’m,” except on one -occasion, the last year of his life, when he said somberly, with his -soft, Southern accent, “I’ve got no use for money. I can’t buy _what I -want_. I’m a colored man.” - -We learned more about him ... a little ... that he had a sister now -married to a sober, hard-working carpenter, living in Buffalo, that -he had lived at home with his mother till long after he was grown up, -working in the hotel, and supporting them both with his wages. That -was the only time I ever saw him show emotion. His thin face suddenly -twisted like a child’s, and tears shone in his eyes. “She was an awful -good woman, my mother was. She had a terrible time to get along when -my sister and I were little. She never had a husband to help her. My -father was a white man.” - -“Fairfax, why don’t you think of marrying and having a home of your -own?” I said impulsively. - -“To bring up children to be Jim-Crowed?” he asked, shortly. - -On another occasion, when I was commenting on the singular excellence -of his writing and figuring, I heard about his school taught by a -northern Negro, who had gone down south as a volunteer teacher after -the war. It was from him that Fairfax had learned his correct speech, -without a trace of what we call the Negro dialect. - -When the war in Europe came, and we decided to take the children and -go to France we were confronted with the question of what to do with -Fairfax. He wanted to go with us, and asked for it with more insistence -than he ever showed, and I often now regret that I did not try to take -him. But it seemed impossible to add to the responsibility of little -children in a war-ridden country, the heavier responsibility in a -country flowing with alcohol, for a man with a weakness for drink. -Besides, we could not afford the extra expense. - -There was no place for him in our region, where few people keep -help in the kitchen. In the hurry and confusion of our preparations -for departure I simply could not think of anything satisfactory to -do in the United States of America for a proud sensitive colored -man. The best I could devise was to find him a place with a friend, -unfortunately in a city where there were plenty of saloons and plenty -of race prejudice. I can’t see now why I did not think of Canada. But -we knew no one in Canada. - -When we separated, he kissed the children good-by, seriously, and -shook the hand which I held heartily out to him. After our last words, -I said, making a great effort to break through the wall of dignified -reserve which his silence built around him, “Fairfax, do keep straight, -won’t you?” - -He looked at me with that passive, neutral look of his, which had to my -eye an ironical color, and made a little gesture with his shoulders and -eyebrows that might mean anything. - - * * * * * * * - -He drank himself to death inside six months. I read the news in a -letter from his sister, the first and only letter I ever had from her. -I had hurried back to the apartment in Paris one evening to be with -the children during an air-raid, found the American mail arrived, and -read it to the accompaniment of that anti-aircraft bombardment which -was so familiar a part of the war to make the world safe for democracy. -My letter from the country of democracy informed me that Fairfax had -died, alone, before his sister could reach him. “He had been drinking -again, I am afraid, from what they told me. I always felt so bad about -Fairfax drinking, but he wouldn’t stop--he was just plain discouraged -of life. He never touched a drop as long as our mother was living. He -was always so sorry for our mother, and so good to her, though she was -only a poor ignorant woman, who couldn’t read or write, and Fairfax was -so smart. The teacher in our school wanted Fairfax to study to be a -minister or a doctor, but he never would. He said he thought the more -colored people try to raise themselves, the worse they get treated. He -felt so bad, always, about the way colored people were treated. He said -white folks wanted them to be low-down, so he was going to be. I used -to tell him how wrong this was, and how the good white people weren’t -like that, but he didn’t have any patience. Colored people have got -to have patience. Our mother was always patient. And my husband and I -manage pretty well. But Fairfax was proud. And colored people can’t be -proud. I don’t believe he ever let you-all know how he liked the way -the folks up your way treated him. He said their folks taught the white -children to call him mister just like a white man, and that the white -people used to ask him to parties and dances. He tried to go, he said, -but at the door, he’d remember all the times when white people made a -scene and called him a nigger and got mad if he even stood near them on -the street, and looked at him that way white people do ... if you were -colored you’d know what I mean. And then he just didn’t dare risk it. -When he was a boy and something like that happened, it used to make him -down sick so he couldn’t eat for days. And when he got up to where you -live, it was too late. My husband and I had Fairfax taken to our old -home town in Virginia and buried there beside our mother.” - - -The air-raid was over when I finished that letter. The noisy -bombardment of hate and revenge was quiet. The night was as still there -in France as in the graveyard in Virginia. I was very thankful to know -that Fairfax was sleeping beside his mother. - - -We are back in Vermont now, the curtain lowered over air-raids and -barrages. Everything goes on as before. - -The other evening we were all down at the school-house for an -entertainment. The children spoke pieces, and then we had a dance. -About eleven o’clock some of us went out to the entry-room and began -to serve the ice-cream. One of my neighbors said, after a while, “Do -you remember how Fairfax used to get all dressed up so nice, and then -always stayed around outside to watch?” - -“Yes,” I remembered. - -“Sometimes,” said another one of the women, “sometimes when we’re out -here like this, it seems to me when I look up quick and glance out -there in the dark, as though I could almost see him there now.” - -After a time, some one else said, “’Twas a pity he never would come in.” - - - - -PROFESSOR PAUL MEYER - - -“Master of the Word.” I never could remember where I had read that -phrase--perhaps as a child in an old story-book about enchanters; but I -knew whom it described when I first saw Professor Meyer speaking to his -class in the École des Chartes. Not in any metaphorical sense, but in -the plain literal meaning of the phrase, was he Master of the Word. He -made the title “Philologist” put on purple and gold. - -The sallow young seminarists in their scant black gowns, keen, pale, -young students who had come from Russia, Italy, Roumania, and Finland, -sat motionless and intent, their eyes fixed on him unwaveringly for the -two long hours of these daily lectures. Words were the living creatures -in that room. They were born before our eyes in the remote childhood -of the race, and swept down through the ages till there they were -in our own language, issuing every day from our own lips, an ironic -reminder that all the days of our lives were no more than an hour in -the existence of those disembodied and deathless sounds. - -From his youth the vigorous old man had transferred all his life to the -world of words--and had found it an enchanted kingdom, something sure -and lasting in the quicksands of human existence. From inside the walls -of his safe refuge he watched the world outside suffer and despair and -cry out and die. And he marveled at its folly. He himself knew none -of these fitful moods. He was always of a steady, kind, and humorous -cheerfulness, and always the most compelling of talkers. No impassioned -orator declaiming on an emotional theme could hold more breathlessly -attentive his listeners than this tall, stooping, plain old Jew, when -in his rapid conversational staccato he traced out the life of a word, -told the Odyssey of its wanderings in the mouths of men, so much less -able to withstand death and time than this mere breath from out their -mouths. He did this not with the straining effort of the orator, but as -naturally as he breathed or thought. His mind was constantly revolving -such cycles, and when he spoke he was but thinking aloud, always with -the same zest, day after day, always alert, with never a flagging of -interest, with never a moment of treacherous wonder about the value of -anything. I knew him when I was passing through one of those passions -of doubt which mark one’s entry into adult life, and I never could be -done with marveling at him. I was grateful to him, too, for he showed -the most amused sympathetic kindliness to the foreign girl, groping her -way forward. - -I think he was sorry for me, for any one tempted to step into human and -prosaic life. He stood at the door of his ordered, settled, established -life, and called to me to construct one like it, to do as he had done, -to turn away from the sordid comedy of personality, and step into -the blessed country of impersonal intellectual activity. Many things -turned me toward his path: the great weight of his mature personality -(he was over seventy then and I was twenty), my immense admiration -for his learning, my interest in his subject, my intuitive dread of -the guessed-at strain of human emotions. You must not think that his -world was austere or rarefied. He had found there, with no penalties -to pay, all the amusement, the drama, the struggle, the rewards, the -entertainment, which men find in the human world, and pay for so -dearly. He never knew a bored or listless moment in his life, nor did -any one in his company. - -Every Tuesday and Thursday, after that two-hour lecture to the -seminarists, there was a half hour intermission before the next -class--eight or ten advanced students--met in his oak-paneled, -half-basement office, rich with precious books, to discuss with him a -curious Old-French manuscript which he had discovered in the library at -Cassel. - -I have never in my life known anything more sparkling and stimulating -than those half-hour intermissions. The old man always clapped on his -hat, talking incessantly as usual, and, stretching his long legs to a -stride which kept me trotting like a little dog at his side, started up -the Boulevard St. Michel towards the Odéon, to the pastry-shop which -calls itself “of the Medicis.” As soon as his tall form showed in the -distance, and the inimitable, high, never-to-be-forgotten squeak of -his voice could be heard, one of the elegant young-lady waitresses -bestirred herself--for the pastry-shop was proud of its famous patron. -She always had _babas au rhum_ waiting for us, as this was the only -pastry Professor Meyer considered worth eating. I do not like _babas -au rhum_ myself, but who was I to set up my insignificant opinion -against so great a man? So I ate the wet sop docilely, considering it -a small price to pay for the stories that went with it, stories that -blew the walls away from around us, and spread there the rich darkness -of the Middle Ages. There were stories out of medieval manuscripts -as yet unattributed and unedited, heaped in the upper rooms of the -Ambrosiana at Milan, of the untold riches, unclassified and unarranged -of the Bodleian, which Paul Meyer described with apostolic fervor; -of priceless scripts discovered in impossible places, by incredible -coincidences; of years of fruitless work on an obscure passage in the -Grail-cycle, suddenly cleared up because a Greek priest in Siberia had -discovered a manuscript bound in with an old Bible. - -Or if he were in a playful mood, the mood the waitresses adored and -hoped for, he would begin juggling with the names of things about -us, the trim shoes on their feet, the brooches at their throats, the -ribbon in their well-kept hair; and with a pyrotechnic display of -laughing erudition, would hunt those words around and around through -all the languages where they had tarried for a time, back through -history--the Renaissance, the Middle Ages, the Dark Ages, Late Latin, -the Empire--till they ended in the long-drawn sonorous Sanscrit chant -of an early Aryan dialect, which Professor Meyer rendered with a total -disregard of onlookers. - -After one of these flights, we came to ourselves with a start, looking -around with astonishment at our everyday dress and surroundings and -bodies. - -Or perhaps it was a story out of his life, his long, long life, of -which not a day had been lost from his work. My favorites, I remember, -were the Tarascon stories. Ages and ages ago, when Paul Meyer was a -very young man, one of the brilliant pioneers in the study of Old -French, the municipal authorities of Tarascon employed him to come -and decipher the Town records, faithfully kept from the beginning of -time, but in their strange medieval scripts, with the abbreviations, -conventional signs, and handwritings of the past centuries, wholly -unintelligible to the modern Tarasconians. The young savant spent a -whole winter there, studying and copying out these manuscripts, a first -experience of the intense, bright pleasure such work was to give him -all his life long. The quick-hearted southerners in the town, loving -change and novelty, delighted to see the young, new face among them, -welcomed him with meridional hospitality, and filled his leisure hours -with the noisy, boisterous fun of Provence. He made friends there whom -he never forgot, and every year after that he made the long trip to -Tarascon to have a reunion with those comrades of his youth. But he -lived long, much longer than the quickly-consumed southerners, and one -by one, the friends of Tarascon were absent from the annual reunion. -They were fewer and fewer, older and older, those men used up by the -fever of living, and they fell away from the side of the vigorous man -who had chosen for his own the unchanging world of the intellect. “And -finally, last year,” said Professor Meyer on one occasion, “when I went -back, they were all gone. Every one! I had to go to the cemetery to -have a visit with them.” - -As I gazed at him, astounded by the unbroken matter-of-factness of -his tone, no self-pity in it, he went on, his voice brightening into -enthusiasm, “So I went and had another look at the town records. Such a -glorious collection of scripts. Not one known style missing!” - -He regretted deeply the death of the much-loved Gaston Paris, his great -colleague at the Collège de France, whose name was always linked with -his in the glory of the renaissance of Old-French studies, but his -lamentations were over the work unfinished, the priceless manuscripts -yet unedited. When the news came of the tragic family disgrace of one -of the greatest of German editors of Old-French texts, Paul Meyer was -moved almost to tears. They were not of sympathy with the sorrow of the -other scholar, but of exasperation that any man, especially one filled -with irreplaceable knowledge of his subject, could let so ephemeral a -thing as human relations distract him from the rich fields to be tilled -in the kingdom of words. - -During the second trial of Dreyfus, Paul Meyer was called to testify -as a handwriting expert and gave his testimony in favor of Dreyfus, -the evidence, he said, being unmistakable. It was at the height of the -Dreyfus re-trial, when all France was throbbing with hate and suspicion -like an ulcer throbbing with fever. Professor Meyer was abominably -treated by the opposition, attacked in the streets, insulted, -boycotted, his classes filled with jeering young men who yelled him -down when he tried to speak. His bearing through this trial is one of -the momentous impressions of my life. He did not resent it, he made no -effort to resist it, he struck no melodramatic attitude, as did many -of the fine men then fighting for justice in France. He smothered the -flame out, down to the last spark by his total disregard of it. What -did he care for howling fanatics in one camp or another? Nothing! He -had been asked to pass judgment on a piece of handwriting and he had -done it. There was nothing more to be said. - -I cannot forget the slightest shade of his expression as he stood -one day, on the platform of his classroom, chalk in hand, ready to -write out an outline on the blackboard, waiting, while the yelling -crowd of “_manifestants_,” mostly young men in flowing black neckties, -with straggling attempts at beards on their pimply faces, stamped -and hooted and shrieked out, “Dirty Jew! What were you paid? Shut -up! Shut up! What was your price, dirty Jew?” and other things less -printable. And yet, although I can shut my eyes now and see that -harsh, big-nosed, deeply-lined old face, with the small, bright eyes -under the bristling white eyebrows, I can not think of any words to -describe its expression--not scornful, not actively courageous, not -resentful, not defiant; rather the quiet, unexcited, waiting look of a -man in ordinary talk who waits to go on with what he has to say until -a pounding truck of iron rails has time to pass the windows. He stood -looking at his assailants, the chalk ready in his bony fingers, and -from him emanated so profound a sense of their entire unimportance, of -the utterly ephemeral quality of their emotion compared to the life -of the consonant he was about to discuss, that little by little they -were silenced. Their furious voices flattened out to an occasional -scream which sounded foolish even to their own ears. They looked at -each other, got up in a disorderly body and stamped out of the room. -The last one might have heard Professor Meyer’s high, squeaky voice -stating, “Thus in Picardy and in the north of Normandy, Latin _C_ -before _a_ did not undergo the change noted in other provinces, and we -still find it pronounced....” - -The pale, keen seminarists in their long, black gowns, and the American -girl, whipped out their notebooks and were at once caught up into the -Paul-Meyer world where no storms blew. - -When, three or four years after the beginning of this friendship--it -was not precisely that, but I cannot think of another name to call -it--I made my final choice and stepped out of his safe, windless realm -into human life, it was with some apprehension that I went to tell him -that I was engaged to be married and would study Philology no more. I -might have known better than to be apprehensive. What did he care? What -was one more or less among the disciples of Philology, as long as the -words were there? Also, he laughingly refused to consider my decision -as final. He seemed to stand at the door of Philology, calling after me -with perfect good humor, as I walked away, “When you’re tired of all -that, come back. I’m always here.” - -In the years after this, whenever we passed through Paris I went to see -him, stepping back into my girlhood as I stepped over the threshold of -the École des Chartes. Professor Meyer was very old now, but showed -not the slightest sign of weakness or infirmity. One evening when I -went hurriedly to say good-by before we sailed for home, I found him -in his study, in that rich, half-basement room, lined with books. The -green-shaded lamp burned clear and steady as though there were no wind -in the world to shake a flame. The gray, plain, old man looked up -from the yellow parchment he was deciphering, and in a sudden gust I -had a new revelation of the insatiability of the human heart. I was a -complete, fulfilled, vigorous woman, a happy wife, a writer beginning -to feel an intoxicating interest in creative work, joyously awaiting -the birth of my first child; but I knew for an instant there, the -bitterest envy of the lot of the old scholar, half buried though he was -in the earth, safe in the infinite security of his active brain. - -The last time I saw him was two years later. We had been in Italy and -were to pass through Paris on the way home. My little daughter was -eighteen months old, a mere baby still, and I wrote Professor Meyer to -ask him if he could not for once reverse the usual procedure and come -to see me. He answered, setting a day, and informing me that he had -been and still was very ill. “I will give you details when I see you.” - -When he came into the room I was shocked at his appearance, and -horrified when he told me what had happened to him. He had been as -usual in the summer, at Oxford, delving in the unclassified treasures -of the Bodleian, and had started home. The Channel steamer arrived late -at night at Boulogne, and he had chosen to sleep there, instead of -taking the night train to Paris. - -He had gone to sleep apparently in his usual health, but when he woke -up in the morning he had lost his control of words. He could not bring -them into the simplest order. He could not command a single one to his -use. He could not say who he was, nor where he wanted to go, although -he knew these facts perfectly. The moment he tried to speak, there -swooped down between him and his meaning, a darkening throng of words. -All the words in the world were there, Greek, Sanscrit, Provençal, -Italian, Old-French, tearing furiously through his mind. But not the -simple words in his own language to say that he was Professor Paul -Meyer of the École des Chartes, who wanted to buy a ticket to Paris. -He stood there, helpless, facing the staring chambermaids, cut off -from them, from every one by this wild, invisible storm. They thought -him an idiot, escaped from his friends, and ran away from him. As he -told me about it, he looked sick and gray, and the sweat stood out on -his forehead. - -It had lasted for three days. For three days and three nights he had -felt himself drowning in words, words that flooded up about him so that -he was fighting for air. Never for an instant was he able to take his -attention from their crazy flight through his mind, and never able to -stop one long enough to use it. He suffered, suffered more than he had -thought any human being could and retain consciousness, had after the -first day fallen into a high fever, so that they feared for his life. -Hour after hour he had lain on his bed, helpless, trying with all his -strength to fight away those words long enough to remember what he -wished to say. - -And then, on the morning of the fourth day, click! Something snapped -into place inside his mind, and there he was, very worn, very weak, but -perfectly himself again, Professor Paul Meyer of the École des Chartes. -He had reached home safely, though strengthless and exhausted, and the -next morning had wakened again to that horror. It had lasted an hour -then, but it had come twice since--once as he was lecturing before his -class! - -He never knew when it might be upon him. As he opened his mouth to -speak at any moment, he could not be sure that words would not burst -from his command again. Even as he told me this, he glanced at my baby -daughter, whom I had brought out to show him. For an instant his face -whitened in so terrible a glare of panic that I screamed and clutched -his arm. It was over. He was drawing a long breath and wiping his -shaking lips with his handkerchief. “For an instant as I looked at -her I could not think of the word ‘baby,’” he said pitifully. “It was -there, waiting to come on me again.” - -It seemed to me that he was not fit to go about the streets alone, and -when he started to go away I asked him if he would not like to have me -take him home. He hung his proud old head and said nothing. I went to -get my hat and as no one happened to be at home with whom to leave the -baby, I took her on my arm. - -We went silently through the familiar Paris streets, the stooping old -man towering on one side of me, the rosy baby heavy on my shoulder. -When we reached his door, his concierge saw us and came out to meet us, -nodding knowingly to me, and behind his back, tapping her forehead. I -took his great bony old hand for a last clasp and said good-by. He went -away up the stairs led by the concierge. - - -Three months after this I read in a newspaper a cabled notice of the -death of the distinguished scholar, M. Paul Meyer, founder and for many -years head of the École des Chartes. He died, so the notice said, “from -an obscure form of aphasia.” - - - - -“WHILE ALL THE GODS ...” - - - “_While all the gods Olympus’ summit crowned, - Looking from high to see the wondrous sight._” - ILIAD, XXII. - - -I was spading up the earth in the dahlia-bed, when the children came -up, a shouting band of them, just out of school, and noticed that -the angleworms were “out.” This first, indubitable sign of spring in -Vermont always suggests to adolescent Vermonters the first fishing -expedition. But ten-year-olds and under think of the early brood of -first-hatched chicks. - -“Hey, Jimmy, _angleworms_!” - -“Carl, run get a can!” - -“Here’s a fat one!” - -They swooped down on me and squatted along the edge of the spaded -earth, pecking and snatching and chattering like a flock of sparrows. -As I spaded on, I heard bits of their talk, “Won’t the chicks just love -them!” “First worms _those_ chicks ever saw.” “No, Carl, that’s too -few, let’s wait till we get a lot. It’s such fun to drop in a whole -bunch.” “They _love_ angleworms so!” - -Then I heard the inevitable fanciful suggestion from the imaginative -one of the group, “I bet we seem to the chicks just like giants ... no, -giants are always mean ... like gods.” - -They fell on this idea, chattering and snatching, as they had at the -worms: “_Let’s_ be gods! I’ll be Jupiter.” - -“I want to be Mars.” - -“Loki! Loki!” - -“I want to be Thor!” - -“No, _I_ want to be Thor!” - -“I was just going to be Thor, myself!” - -Everybody wanted to be Thor, it seemed. They trooped off to the -poultry-yard, still disputing the question. - -When I passed the brooder-house a little later, a group of exasperated -gods hung over the low wire-netting, gesticulating and crying out on -the idiocy of chicks. They fell on me for sympathy, and from their -babbling account I made out that the chicks had acted just as chicks -always act and always have acted from the beginning of time. - -The gods had proudly put down in the midst of the little world of their -beneficiaries the mass of angleworm wealth which they had gathered with -such good intentions of giving pleasure. - -“All they had to do was to pitch right in and enjoy themselves,” cried -Jupiter, wrathfully. - -And what had they done? Well, first of all they had been afraid, -running to look at the squirming heap of treasure, peeping shrilly -in agitation, and running frantically away with fluttering wings and -hearts. - -The circle of omnipotents, hanging over the wire-netting had been able -to endure this foolishness with an approach to the necessary god-like -toleration of the limitations of a lesser race. One of the Thors, it -seemed, the six-year-old-one, had tried to hurry up the progress of -the race, by catching one of his pin-headed charges and holding him -firmly in a benevolent small hand, directly in front of the delicious -food, “where he couldn’t _help_ seeing how good it was, seems ’s if,” -explained Thor Number Three, to me. - -But the chick had, it appeared, been perfectly capable of not seeing -how good it was, because his mind was entirely taken up With his terror -at being held. He had merely emitted one frenzied screech of horror -after another till the other chicks began to run about and screech -too, and the older, more experienced gods had sharply told young Thor -that he didn’t know so much about this god-business as he thought he -did, and that experience had told them the only thing to do was to let -the chicks alone till they got used to a new idea. That always took -forever, they informed their young colleague. - -So after this they had waited and waited and _waited_, while the chicks -fluttered, and peeped and ran away from what they really wanted above -everything; from what the gods had so kindly put there for them to -enjoy. - -“Gee _whiz_!” said Mars disdainfully. “Wouldn’t you think they’d know -enough for _that_! There was room for every last one of them to stand -around the pile, and eat all they wanted, without stirring a toe.” - -Finally, one bold adventurer had struck his beak experimentally into -the pile, pulled out a tasty piece of meat, and turned aside to gobble -it down. - -And _then_ what? - -Did the other chicks follow his sensible example and begin at last to -profit by their opportunity. - -“No! no! no!” A chorus of all the gods assured me that nothing like -that had happened. Instead, with shrill twitters of excitement, all the -twenty or more chicks had thrown themselves on that one, to wrest his -bit from him. - -“Honest to goodness, they _did_!” Loki affirmed to me, passionately, -as if feeling that I could not possibly believe in such unreason if I -had not seen it. - -The chick with the worm had taken to his heels, unable to swallow his -prize because of the hunt against him. Up and down the little world -of their yard, he had run frantically, wildly, and silently (because -of his mouth being full). And up and down, wildly, frantically and -vociferously (their mouths being empty) his fellow-chicks had pursued -him, bent on catching him and taking away from him whatever it was he -prized enough to try to possess. As he turned and doubled to escape -them, they turned and doubled in a pack, slipping, falling, and -trampling on each other in their blind fury. - -Presently, “What do you _think_!” cried the oldest of the Thors. “He -got so rattled that he lost his piece of worm out of his mouth, but the -others didn’t give him time to tell them that. Anyhow, they’d yelled -and carried on so, they had him up in the air. He didn’t know by that -time what he _was_ doing; and he kept on legging it as hard as ever, -and they after him.” - -By and by, this insane flight and agitation had so exhausted them -all that they were staggering feebly on their tiny legs, and unable -to emit more than hoarse squawks as they ran. Then, apparently by -chance, as he darted zigzag to and fro, he had run under a corner of -the brooder. Instantly ... ah-h-h, the grateful warmth and darkness had -suggested rest to his weary soul; with a long murmured “che-e-eep” of -utter relief, he had settled down against the wall of the brooder to -close his eyes. And each of his pursuers, as they dashed in after him, -had seized on the Heaven-sent opportunity for rest after the terrible -tension of the struggle for existence, imposed on them by a cruel fate, -and had with a sigh and a relieved, whispered twitter, given himself -over to sleep and dreams. - -At the time when I came up, every chick was sound asleep in the -brooder, while outside in the middle of their world, lay the untouched -pile of angleworms, bare and open to view under the bright spring sky. - -“Can you beat it!” said Mars contemptuously. - -He turned away from such unimaginable imbecility to a new idea, “Say, -kids!” he bellowed, although they were all within touching distance of -him, “let's be cops and robbers!” - -They flared up like tinder to a spark, “All right! I’ll be Chief of -Police!” - -“I’ll be a detective!” - -“I’ll be the robber captain ... cave’s under the hay, as usual.” - -“No, _I_ wanted to be robber captain!” - -“No, me, me!” - -They all wanted to be robber captain, it seemed. They streamed away to -the barn, wrangling over this. - - -All but one. The youngest Thor, newer than the others to the -god-business, still hung over the wire-netting, grieving, “Seems ’s if -... if we could only _tell_ them! They _love_ angleworms so!” he said -pityingly. “If I could only think of some way to _teach_ them how to -stand around quietly, and each one get all he wanted to. They’d have -such a _good_ time!” he yearned over them. - -As I said nothing, he asked of the world in general, “Why won’t they? -Oh, why _won’t_ they?” - -I let fall insidiously, “I wonder how the angleworms like it?” The -little god stared at me with startled eyes; and then at the worms. He -looked at them as though he saw them for the first time. His tender -young face was fairly vacant with his surprise before a new idea. - -Then he began slowly to climb over the wire-netting. - -When I went back to the dahlia-bed, he was carefully burying the -angleworms again. - -His young face wore an expression of puzzled bewilderment. - - - - -SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS - - -When the elders of our family could think of nothing else to worry -about they put in their time to good advantage on little Cousin Maria -Pearl Manley. Yes--Maria Pearl--that was really the poor child’s name, -given in baptism. You can see that her troubles began early. That name -was symbolical of what her life was to be, sharply divided between her -mother’s family (they were the ones who insisted on the Maria) and -her father’s folks, who stood out for the Pearl. Her father had died -before she was born, and her mother lived only a few months after the -baby came, and was so mortally ill that no one thought of naming the -poor little girl. It was after her mother’s death, when the two hostile -families could collect themselves, that the long struggle over the -child began by giving her that name. - -Thereafter she was Maria for six months of the year, the period when -she stayed with the Purdons; and Pearl the other half-year, when she -was with her father’s family, the Manleys. “The poor little tyke, not -even a fixed name of her own,” my grandmother used to say, pitying the -child’s half-yearly oscillations between those two utterly dissimilar -houses “where there’s nothing the way it should be in either one!” The -circle of compassionate elders used to continue, “Dear, dear! What -can the poor little thing ever learn, with such awful examples always -before her eyes.” - -As I look back now, I must admit that such severe characterizations -were really not due to the natural tendency of all elders to be sure -that children are being badly brought up. Those two houses which -formed the horizon of Maria Pearl’s life were certainly extravagant -examples of how not to conduct life. The Purdon grandfather and -grandmother and aunt were the strictest kind of church people (the -kind who make you want to throw a brick through the church-windows), -narrow, self-righteous, Old-Testament folks, who dragged little Maria -(the “Pearl” was never pronounced inside their doors) to Church and -Sunday-School and prayer-meeting and revivals and missionary meetings, -and made her save all her pennies for the heathen. Not that she had -very many to save, for the Purdons, although very well-to-do, were -stingier than any other family in town. They loved money, it tore at -the very fibers of their being to part with it, and they avoided -this mental anguish with considerable skill. Although their competent -“management” allowed them to live comfortably, there were few occasions -which brought them to the point of letting any actual cash out of -their hands. The dark, plain, well-fitting garments which clothed -little Maria were never bought, but made over out of her grandmother’s -clothes; the soap which kept her clothes immaculately clean had cost -no money, but was part of the amazing household economies in which -old Mrs. Purdon was expert and into which she introduced Maria with -conscientious care. The child learned to darn and patch and how to make -soap out of left-over bits of fat, and how to use the apple-culls for -jelly and how, year after year, to retrim last season’s hat for this. - -From morning till night she lived in a close, airless round of -intensive housekeeping and thrift. She spread newspapers down over the -rugs, so the sun should not fade them; she dried every scrap of orange -peel to use as kindling, she saved the dried beef jars to use for jams, -she picked berries all day long instead of playing, and then sat up -late with Aunt Maria and Grandmother, picking them over and canning -them, on the stove in the woodshed, to avoid litter in the kitchen. -She always wore gingham aprons, even to school, which no other children -did, and she was treated as though she had offended against the Holy -Ghost, if she forgot to wash her rubbers and put them in their place -in the closet under the stairs. She was rigorously held to a perfect -performance of her share of the housework, making up her bed with the -fear of the Lord in her poor little heart lest the corners be not -square enough, poking desperately at the corner of the windows she -washed and polished, and running her finger anxiously over the dishes -she wiped to be sure they had that glass-smooth surface which only -repeated rinsings in very hot water can give. Then when all was done, -her reward was to take her seat in their appallingly neat sitting-room -and, to the accompaniment of Aunt Maria’s reading aloud out of a church -paper, to set tiny stitches in the stout, unbleached cotton of which -her underwear was made. They were really dreadful, the six months she -passed with her mother’s people. - -But the other half-year was scarcely better, although she might have -journeyed to another planet with less change in her surroundings. When -the day came, the first of January, for her departure from the Purdon -household, her solidly-constructed little trunk was filled with her -solidly-constructed little clothes, her hair was once more rebraided to -an even harder finish, her face was once more polished with the harsh, -home-made soap, and her nails were cut to the quick. “It’s the _last_ -time the poor child will have any decent care, till she comes back,” -Grandmother Purdon would say bitterly, buttoning up with exactitude the -stout, plain warm little coat, and pulling down over Maria’s ears the -firmly knit toque of dark-blue wool. They all went down to the station -to make sure she took the right train, and put her, each of them -separately, in the hands of the Conductor. They kissed her good-by, all -but Grandfather, who shook hands with her hard. It was at that moment -that Maria’s frozen little heart felt a faint warmth from the great -protecting affection they had for her, which underlay the rigor of -their training and which they hid with such tragic completeness. - -The first day of the arrival at the Manley’s was always a dream of -delight! To emerge from the silent rigidity of the Purdon house into -the cheerful, easy-going, affectionate noise of the Manley home, -to exchange the grim looks of Grandmother Purdon for the exuberant -caresses of Grandmother Manley; to leave behind all stringent -admonitions to put your wraps on a certain hook, and to be allowed to -fling them down on the floor where you stood.... Little Pearl (she was -never called Maria by the Manleys) felt herself rebounding into all the -sunshine and good-nature, as a rubber ball rebounds from a hard stone -wall. She flung herself around Aunt Pearl’s neck, and paid back with -interest the “forty thousand kisses” which were the tradition in that -home. She flung herself into play with the innumerable little cousins, -who cluttered up the floor; for there was always a married aunt or two -back home, with her family, while an invisible uncle-by-marriage tried -somewhere in a vague distance, to get a hypothetical job. She flung -herself into her bed at night joyfully reveling in the fact that its -corners were not turned squarely, and that the pillow-case had last -seen the wash-tub on about the same date that Aunt Carry’s husband had -last had a job. It was a care-free dream to go to bed whenever she -pleased--eleven o’clock if that suited her taste--with nobody to tell -her to wash, or to brush her teeth, or comb her hair; and to lie there -watching Aunt Carry and Aunt Pearl, who always sat up till midnight at -least, putting their hair in curl-papers and talking about the way the -neighbor next door treated his wife. This was life! - -But already the very next morning the dream was not quite so -iridescent, as with no one to wake her, she opened her eyes at twenty -minutes of nine, and knew that she had to be at school at nine! She -sprang up, shivering in the cold room (Grandfather Manley never could -manage the furnace, and also there were periods when there was mighty -little money to buy coal) and started to claw herself into her clothes. -But always just at first she forgot the Manley ways, and neglected to -collect everything she had taken off, and put it under her pillow, -the only spot in which you could keep things for yourself in that -comfortably communistic family. Her shoes were gone, her nice new -calf-skin school shoes. She went flying out, comb in hand, tearing -at the tangles in her hair, as she went, asking if anybody had seen -her shoes. Aunt Carry, still in her nightgown, with a smeary baby in -her arms, said, yes, she’d let her Elmer have them to run down to the -grocery store to get some bread. Somehow they’d got out of bread and -poor Aunt Pearl had had to go off to her work with only some crackers -to eat. Surely little Pearl didn’t grudge the loan of her shoes to her -cousin. The bread was for all of them, and Elmer couldn’t find his -shoes, and anyhow one of them had a big hole in it and the snow was -deep. - -“But, Aunt Carry, how can I get to school? I’ll be late!” - -“Well, gracious, what if you are! Don’t be so fussy! Time was made for -slaves!” That was Aunt Carry’s favorite motto, which she was always -citing, and for citing which there were plenty of occasions in her -life. Little Pearl thought somewhat resentfully, as she rummaged in -her trunk for her other shoes, that if Aunt Carry had to enter the -school-room late and get scolded, she’d think differently about time! -But anyhow it was fun to wear her best shoes if she liked, and to -watch their patent leather tips twinkling as she scurried about. They -twinkled very fast during that quarter of an hour, as Pearl collected -her wraps (her mittens she never did find after that day) and tried to -scare up something for breakfast in the disordered kitchen, where the -cat, installed on the table, was methodically getting a breakfast by -licking the dirty plates clean. Pearl was not so lucky, and had to go -off to school with a cracker in one hand and a piece of marshmallow -cake in the other. The less said about her hair the better! Grandmother -Manley’s “forty thousand kisses” were not quite so wonderful this -morning as they had been last night. - -At noon Pearl ran home, her stomach in her heels, all one voracious -demand for good food. Aunt Carry was crocheting by the window and -there was no sign of any lunch. “Mercy me!” cried Grandmother Manley, -“Is it noon? Why, how the morning has gone!” And then with the utmost -compunction they both rushed out into the kitchen and began to hurry -with all their might to get something for Pearl to eat. The kitchen -fire was pretty low, and there were no potatoes cooked, and Aunt Carry -had forgotten to order any eggs, and the milk bottle had been left -outside and was frozen hard. Hurry as they might and apologize to Pearl -almost with tears as they did, it was very little that Pearl had eaten -when she went back to school, and she knew well enough that they would -forget to-morrow, just as they had to-day. No, already Pearl felt that -life could not be made _wholly_ out of kisses and good nature. By -nightfall, her thin kid shoes were rather scuffed and very wet, with a -break in one of the patent leather tips where Cousin Tom had stepped on -it, in a scuffle with his brother. Little Pearl nursed her sore toe and -broken shoe with a weary feeling. - -Always at the end of the six months with the Manleys, Pearl was nearly -a nervous wreck. She was behind in her lessons, since there was not -a quiet spot in the house to study, and even if there had been you -couldn’t escape from the noise of the trombone, which Aunt Carry’s -oldest was learning to play; she was underweight and anæemic for lack -of regular food and enough sleep ... it wasn’t much use to go to bed -when nobody else did, and Aunt Pearl and Aunt Carry always visited in -more than audible voices as they put up their hair in curlers; she -had nothing to wear (since nothing had been renewed or mended) except -a blue silk dress which Grandfather Manley had bought for her in a -fit of affection, and some mostly-lace underwear which Aunt Carry -had sat up till all hours making for her, so that “she should have -something pretty like the other girls!” But for an active little girl, -mostly-lace underwear soon was reduced to the quality of mosquito -netting; and a blue silk dress in the Manley’s house was first cousin -to Sir Walter Raleigh’s cloak in the mud-puddle. - -With all the family she had been night after night to the moving -pictures and not infrequently was kept up afterwards by the hysterics -of little Nelly, Aunt Carry’s nervous, high-strung five-year-old, who -saw men with revolvers pointed at her, and desperadoes about to bind -and gag her, till Pearl more than half saw them too, and dreamed of -them afterwards. She had suffered the terrible humiliation of having -the teacher send her home with a note saying that her hair must be -washed and kept in better order, a humiliation scarcely lessened by the -outraged affection of the Manleys, who had taken her into their loving -arms, to moan over their darling’s hurt feelings. She had thereafter -made frantic efforts to keep her own hair in order, with what brush -and comb she could salvage out of the jetsam in the room which was -at once hers and the aunts’ bedroom; but if she complained that her -hair-ribbons disappeared, or were crumpled in a corner of the drawer, -she was told comfortably, not to be fussy, “For goodness’ sakes, don’t -make such a fuss about things! Folks that do never have a minute’s -comfort in life, nor nobody else in the house either.” - -Yes, it was a rather pale, wild-eyed little Pearl, who on the first day -of July scrambled together into her trunk what she could find, put on -the hat which had been so bright and pretty when Aunt Pearl gave it to -her at Easter, and which now after two months with the Manleys looked -like a floor-cloth. She did not put her hands over her ears to deaden a -little the volume of noise as they all crowded about her in the station -to say their affectionate and vociferous good-byes, but that was only -because she did not want to hurt their feelings. The instant she was in -the train, she always hid her face in her arms, quivering all over with -nervous tension. Oh, the noise the Manleys always made over everything, -and the confusion they were always in, when they tried to do anything, -colliding with each other, and dropping things, and squealing and -screaming! And it was all right for them to be warm-hearted and -generous--but when they slathered money on ice-cream, and then didn’t -have enough to pay for her ticket, till they’d borrowed it ...! - -Well, then there was the re-entrance into the Purdon house, the -beautiful, fragrant cleanliness of everything, the dustless order, her -own room, with the clean, white sheets, and her own safe closet into -which nobody would ever plunge rummaging. And Aunt Maria so quiet and -calm, with her nice low voice, and Grandmother Purdon so neat with -her white lace collar, and her lovely white hair so well-brushed, and -oh, the good things to eat.... To sit down to a well-ordered table, -with a well-cooked savory mutton stew, and potatoes neither watery nor -underdone, and clear apple jelly quivering in a glass dish! And the -clean, clean dishes! Had Maria ever complained of having to rinse the -dishes too often! She remembered the dried-on bits of food always to -be felt on the Manley plates ...! - -The first evening too was always dream-like, the quiet, deft -despatching of the dishes, in the kitchen shining with cleanliness, and -then all the evening free, and so quiet, so blessedly quiet, with no -trombone, and no whoops of chatter or boisterous crying and laughing; -no piano banging (except perhaps Aunt Maria softly playing a hymn or -two), no children overturning chairs and slamming doors, no one falling -up or downstairs, no crash of breaking crockery from the kitchen ... -little Maria sat on the well-swept porch behind the well-trained vines -and soaked herself in the peace and quiet. - -But by the next morning, the shine was a little off. When Aunt Maria -came to wake her at half past six, _half past six_ ... why, no one -at Grandfather Manley’s thought of stirring till eight! And she was -expected to wash and dress ... not a button unbuttoned or a hair out -of place under penalty of a long lecture on neatness ... and “do” her -room, even to wiping off the woodwork; and make her bed. Heavens! How -fussy they were about those old corners! All this before she had a -bit of breakfast. Then, breakfast with everybody’s whole soul fixed -on the work to be done, and nobody so much as dimly aware that it -was a glorious, sunny, windy, summer day outside. Maria’s heart sank, -sank, sank, as she drank her perfectly made chocolate, and ate her -golden-brown toast, till it struck the dismal level where it usually -lived during the Purdon half-year. “Come, Maria, don’t loiter over your -food. The only way to get the work done is to go right at it!” - -“Oh, Maria, do you call that folding your napkin? I call it crumpling -it into a ball.” - -“You forgot to put your chair back against the wall, Maria. If we each -do faithfully our share of what is to be done, it will be easier for us -all.” - -“No, the _spoons_ go there ... mercy, no! not the forks!” - -“Don’t twitch the curtain so as you go by. It takes all the fresh out -of it. I only ironed them yesterday.” - -“Why, Maria, whistling! Like a little street boy!” - -The July sun might shine and the wind blow outside, inside the house -it was always gray, windless November weather. She felt herself curl -up like a little autumn leaf, and, with a dry rattle, blow about the -rooms before the chill admonitory breath of Grandmother Purdon and Aunt -Maria. - -Yes, the family elders were right in pitying her, as a child brought -up just as badly as it was possible to be; and nobody was surprised or -blamed her a bit, when she got out of both families as rapidly and as -unceremoniously as she could, by making a very early marriage with an -anonymous young man, somebody she had met at a high-school dance. He -seemed just like any young man, from the glimpse of him, which was all -the family had, before their marriage; but nobody knew a thing about -his character or whether he would make a good husband. And, indeed, -there was a big doubt in the family mind as to whether Maria Pearl -would be any sort of wife or home-maker. How could she have learned -anything about rational living, the poor little tyke, hustled from one -bad example to another through all the impressionable years of her -life? Suppose she kept house like the Manleys! Horrors! Or suppose she -took after the Purdons! Her poor husband! - - * * * * * * * - -Nothing of the sort! There’s not a happier home anywhere in the country -than hers, nor a better housekeeper, nor a wiser mother. It’s a perfect -treat to visit in her cheerful, sunny, orderly house, or to talk with -her well-brought-up, jolly children, or to see her well-fed, satisfied -husband. And she herself is a joy to the eye, stout and rosy and calm. -She is neither fussy nor slack, neither stingy nor extravagant, neither -cold and repressed, nor slushy and sentimental. - -How did it happen? Probably Maria Pearl doesn’t know. But I do. And -since it has happened, I can see perfectly how inevitable it was. -Whenever the routine of her housekeeping begins to set too hard, and -she feels like flying at muddy-footed, careless children with the -acrimony natural to the good housekeeper, the memory of forlorn little -Pearl among the Purdons softens and humanizes her words. And when the -balance begins to swing the other way, when she tastes that first -delicious, poisonous languor of letting things slide, when her Manley -blood comes to the top, she has other memories to steady her. I have -seen her sitting at the breakfast table, after the children are off to -school, begin to sag in her chair, and reach with an indolent gesture -for a tempting novel; and I knew what was in her mind as she sprang -up with a start and began briskly to clear off the table and plan the -lunch. - - - - -ART ATMOSPHERE - - -My cousin Angelica was one of the advance-guard. She bowed down and -worshipped Whistler six months or so before the rest of humanity -reached the adoration stage; and when she heard that he had opened -a studio for “lady students” available to any one who would pay -the entrance-fee--“just like one of the second-raters who teach at -Carlorossi’s”--she lost no time in making tracks for the Passage -Stanislas, where, if I remember rightly, the Whistler studio was -situated. - -It was, just as rumor had said, like all other studio-classes of -that sort, except that the fee was many times larger; but that was -legitimate, Whistler being _the_ thing that winter, and _the_ thing -always commanding a high price in the open market. - -It was a large, grimly dirty, barn-like room, with a big sky-light -towards the north. In it sat some twenty or thirty more-or-less-young -ladies, most of them Americans (the fee was really _very_ large) -enveloped in voluminous, paint-stained aprons. They sat, as always in -such studio-classes, in a circle around a platform, on which stood the -model. - -Once a week (or was it once a fortnight?) “the Master” drove up in a -cab, made his way into the room amid palpable emanations of awe, and -going from canvas to canvas shed upon the bowed head of each acolyte a -little of the sacred fire of his genius. - -My cousin Angelica, like the others, found this a more than -satisfactory arrangement and considered that she received full value -for her money. We heard little from her that winter but enthusiasm over -the Whistler atmosphere and scorn of everything else. In any exhibition -she was to be found in ecstasy before some barely visible human visage -sunk in the gloom of a dusky corner at twilight, or a floating, whitish -blur or two on a dark-blue canvas, which, she told us, represented -the new artistic tradition, worth all the other artistic traditions -produced since they carried the Cimabue Madonna through the streets--or -was that a Giotto? - -I was studying philology that year and had no quarrel with Angelica -about that sort of thing. For all I cared, she could give her adherence -to whichever artistic tradition took her fancy for the moment. But -it was occasionally inconvenient to have her so slavishly tied to -the studio-class on the days when they expected a criticism. Nothing -could have tempted her away from one of those marvelous opportunities -to profit by first-hand personal instruction from a first-rate living -genius. Even when our one prosperous relative, Uncle Frederick, came -through Paris and invited us over to the Right Bank to go to lunch with -him at a fearfully expensive restaurant, and to sit in a fearfully -expensive loge at the Français afterwards, Angelica had to go first to -the studio. - -I went with her, so that I could carry her off directly afterwards. -This is what I saw and heard in the hour I spent there. - - -The day was a fine one of sunlight less tempered with gray than most -Paris sunshine. The model was a stout, red-haired woman with the -milk-white skin of red-haired people. From the great expanse of the -skylight, there poured upon her opulent nude body, as smooth and white -as a newly peeled almond, a flood of light that was sparkling, in spite -of the north exposure. The room rang with the high, clear brightness of -that white flesh in that morning light. - -Around the model sat the thirty or so disciples of the Master. While -I waited for Angelica, I wandered around back of them, glancing at the -canvases on their easels. - -They had all painted the model the color of an old saddle. From one -dim, cavernous sketch after another, a misty, smeary, dark-brown mass -looked out waveringly from blue, or brown, or gray twilight. The red -head glimmered faintly, attenuated by layers and layers of shadow. The -disciples looked up at the gleaming white woman before them, reflecting -the daylight as definitely as a sound tooth reflects it, and looked -down happily and proudly on their dark, blurred canvases. You could see -how pleased they were at the progress they were making. They had caught -it, this time, they had caught what was the thing to catch. - -“We’ll have some fireworks, all right, when ‘the Master’ gets here,” I -thought to myself. - -Presently he came. The door swung open, I caught a glimpse of the -concierge performing the impossible in the way of holding the door -open and effacing herself in one and the same gesture, and in came a -dapper, immaculately dressed little old gentleman, with gray gloves and -pearl-gray gaiters. - -The disciples prostrated themselves, foreheads to the floor (or at -least that is the impression they made on me in the first intense -emotion of his entrance) and then stiffened to attention before their -easels, not to miss a word of the down-dropping pearls and rubies. - -The little old gentleman advanced with small, gentlemanly steps -to the first of the easels, and contemplated the leather-brown -South-Sea-Islander depicted on it. Every one of the students held her -breath. So did I. - -He looked at it a long time, his face imperturbable. Then -with the traditional studio gesture I had seen all my life in -studios--outstretched thumb, modeling in the air--he began saying -what I had heard all my life in studios, “A little more shadow on the -shoulder, I should say. And perhaps.... Yes, go into the modeling of -that arm more deeply. On the whole very promising, very interesting.” - -He passed on to the next easel. One felt another devout heart turn -over with a rustle. “Good! Well _felt_, that knee. But lacking in -distinction, perhaps, the treatment of the hair. Go into the modeling -of the hands more deeply.” - -He passed to the next. And the next. And the next. I heard a murmur -of “Very promising ... very interesting ... deeper feeling about ... -keep it flat ... subtle ... relations of planes not quite ... very -promising ... very interesting.” - -In half an hour it was over. He walked neatly back to the door, which -the nearest student sprang to open, and with a courteous bow all around -he disappeared, his face imperturbable to the last. If he lifted a -cynical eyebrow in amusement, it was not till after the door had closed -upon him. - - -Angelica and I were now free to go, and I proceeded to the difficult -undertaking of cutting her out from the herd of art-students milling -excitedly around and around before the canvases, “Did you hear what -he said about my shoulder-blade?” “This was the plane he liked on my -back.” “He didn’t object to the treatment of my ...” - - -The model, however, showed an imperturbability as complete as that of -the Master. Like him, she had earned her pay for a morning’s work. As -the door had closed on him, she had climbed down off the platform, and -she was now calmly pulling her chemise on over her red head. - - -Angelica was still a little wild-eyed and emotional when we emerged -on the street. “Isn’t he _won_derful?” she said, clutching at my arm. -“Can’t you understand now what a privilege it is to ...” She took -ten minutes to blow off this high-pressure steam and come down to -little wandering puffs like, “It _means_ so much to have such precious -contacts!” And, “You simply take it in through your _pores_ when you -are in the real art atmosphere.” - - -Understand me, please, I do not venture to affirm that this is really -all that took place. I am no art-student and never was. There may have -been oceans more. But this is all that I saw. - - - - -COLONEL SHAYS - - -I dare say when you studied American history you read about Shays’ -Rebellion, in Massachusetts, and duly learned that it was put down, and -the instigators punished. But I am sure that you never knew, and never -wondered, what became of Colonel Shays himself, of whom the history -books say succinctly, “the leader himself, escaped.” - -I have never seen in print anything about the latter part of his life -beyond one or two scanty and inaccurate references in one or two -out-of-date books of reference; but all the older people in our town -were brought up on stories about him, for it was to the valley just -over the mountain from us that he fled after his last defeat. And later -on, as an old man, he lived for some years in our town, in a house -still standing, and told many people what I am going to set down here. - -At the time when he made his escape from the officers of the State in -Massachusetts, Vermont was, quaintly enough, an independent republic, -all by itself, and hence a sufficient refuge for men fleeing from the -officers of any State in the Union. Furthermore it was still rather -wild, sparsely settled, none too respectful of any authority, and -distinctly sympathetic to strangers who came from the east, south, or -west over the mountains on the run, with the manner of men escaping -from sheriffs. Sheriffs were not popular persons in Vermont in 1787. - -But all this did not seem to make it a safe enough refuge to the man -with a price set on his head, the man who had risked everything on the -boldest of enterprises, and had lost everything. He passed by the rough -scattered little hamlets and went into a remote, narrow, dark, high -valley, which is to this day a place where a man might hide for years -and never be seen. Colonel Shays, traveling at night, on foot, through -the forests, came down into the Sandgate valley through the Beartown -notch, over the mountains, and not a soul knew that he had come. - -He made his first camp, which was also his permanent and last one, -since he was never disturbed, high up on a shoulder of the mountain, -overlooking the trail for a great distance, and densely surrounded with -a thick growth of pine trees. Very cautiously, making no noise, using -the ax and knife which were his only tools, he put up a rough shelter, -and building a fire only at night in a hollow where rocks masked its -flame, began cooking some of the game he caught. He lived in this way, -all alone for years and years. Game was abundant; like most men of that -time he was an adroit trapper, a good pioneer, and knew how to smoke -and preserve the flesh of animals and to save their skins. For the -first year he did not dare to let any one know that a man was living -there, and literally saw not one soul. - -Then one day about a year after he began this life, a little boy going -fishing saw a tall, strong, black-haired stranger standing in the trail -and holding a large packet of furs. He told the child to take the -packet and ask his father for a bushel of seed-corn and a bag of salt. -He specified that the man who brought it was to leave it just where -they then stood and go away without waiting. - -The child’s father was a rough, half-civilized, good-natured trapper, -who had had troubles of his own with unreasonable officers of the -law in York State. When the child told his story, the father laughed -knowingly, took the skins, got the seed-corn and the salt, left them -in the place indicated, and kept a neighborly shut mouth. He could not -read or write, had never heard of Shays’ Rebellion, and supposed the -man in hiding to be in the same situation as himself. Living as he -did, it seemed no awful fate to make one’s living out of the woods, and -he thought little of the fact that he had a new neighbor. - -After this, Colonel Shays began a little cultivation of the ground, -in scattered places, hidden behind screens of thick trees, in a -few natural clearings in the forest. He used to say that life was -infinitely more tolerable to him after the addition to his diet of salt -and cereals. After some months he risked a little more, and, buying -them with furs worth forty times their value, he secured a few tools -and some gunpowder. The transactions were always carried on through the -child, the only one to see the fugitive. - -Nothing has come down to me of what this terrible dead halt in -mid-career, and this grim isolation from the world meant to the active, -intelligent, ambitious man at the height of his powers. None of the -old people who heard him talk seem to have asked him about this, or to -have had any curiosity on the subject. Only the bare facts are known, -that he lived thus for many years, till the little boy grew up, till -his own hair turned gray and then white, till the few families in that -valley were quite used to the knowledge that a queer, harmless old man -was living up in the woods near the northern pass of the mountains, -miles from any neighbor. Once in a great while, now, some one saw -him--a boy fishing, a hunter far on the trail of a deer, or a group -of women picking berries. He occasionally exchanged a few words with -his neighbors at such times, but he had almost forgotten how to speak -aloud. All the stories about him mention the rough, deep, hoarseness of -his unused voice. - -One day his nearest neighbor, meaning to do him a kindness, told him -with a rough good-will that he might as well quit hiding now, “Whatever -’tis you done, ’tis so long past now! And up here ... nobody from your -part of the country, wherever ’tis, would ever be coming up here. And -if they did they wouldn’t know you. Why, your own mother wouldn’t know -you in them clothes, and with that white beard.” - -It is said that Colonel Shays on hearing this, drew back and looked -down at himself with a strange air of astonishment. - -Apparently the advice stuck in his mind, for, some weeks after this, -he decided to risk it, and to make the trip to Cambridge, the nearest -town to those mountain settlements. Early one morning the people of the -Sandgate valley were astonished to see the old man going down the trail -of the valley which led into the State road going to Cambridge. Well, -that was something to talk about! He was going to town at last like -anybody else. - - -Now, this happened a good many years after Shays’ Rebellion had failed, -and the bitterness of the feeling about it had died down. Although -Colonel Shays could not know this, most people had even forgotten all -about him, and as for looking for him to arrest him, nobody would have -dreamed of doing it. There were many other things in the world to -think of by that time and although to himself Colonel Shays was still -the dramatically hunted fugitive with every man’s hand against him, -to other people he had begun to sink into the history-book paragraph, -which he has since remained. His family and friends in Massachusetts -had waited till the occasion seemed favorable, and then petitioned for -his pardon, on the ground that he must be, if still living, an old -man now, quite harmless, and that it would be only decent to let him -come back to spend his last days in his own home; and if he were dead, -his pardon would clear his family name, and straighten out certain -complications about his property. At first they had not succeeded. -People still remembered too vividly the treasonable attempt to -overturn the authority of the State, only just established and none too -strong. But by and by, the pertinacity of the petitioners wore out the -fading hostility to his name. He was proclaimed pardoned, and notices -were sent to all American newspapers informing him that he could now -return. This had happened a year before Colonel Shays had started down -to Cambridge, but you may be sure that at that period no newspapers -found their way to the Sandgate valley. - -After a year had gone by, and no sign came from the fugitive, people -generally thought him dead. But a fellow-townsman who had known him -well by sight and who, some years after his flight, had married his -youngest sister, volunteered to try to spread the news more widely -than by newspaper. There had been a faint notion among his kinspeople -that he had fled to Vermont, although they had taken care to keep -this to themselves as long as he was an outlaw, and had now almost -forgotten about it. Acting on this notion, Shays’ brother-in-law took -the long journey on horseback up into Vermont. He entered the state -at Bennington and slowly worked his way north, branching off at every -practicable road. But nowhere did he find any one who had ever heard of -any such man as his wife’s brother. Colonel Shays had hidden himself -only too well. - -The Massachusetts man began to think his errand a futile one, and -prepared to turn back. But on a chance he rode down to Cambridge, just -over the New York line. Cambridge was the nearest town to a number of -small valley settlements in Vermont. He would ask there if any one had -seen or heard of the man he was seeking. He knew that men from the -remote outlying settlements came to Cambridge to do their trading. He -arrived rather late one evening and as he was no longer young, and very -much tired by his long and fruitless journey, he slept that night in -the Cambridge Inn. - - -For the rest of the story there are plenty of details, for Colonel -Shays told over and over exactly what happened and just how he felt, -and why he acted as he did. It seared deep into him, and to the end of -his days, he always showed a consuming agitation in speaking of it. - -He walked along the road, the first road he had seen since the night -so many years ago when he had fled along the roads in Massachusetts. -It seemed like iron to his buckskin-shod feet. He walked slowly for -this and other reasons. Every house which came into view along the -road brought him up short with a jerk like a frightened horse. The -instinct to hide, to trust himself in no man’s sight, had deformed -his whole nature so that the bold leader of men halted, trembling and -white-faced, at the sight of an ordinary farm-house. He forced himself -to go on, to pass those sleeping homes, but after he had passed each -one with his silent, stealthy wood-dweller’s tread, he quickened his -pace and looked fearfully over his shoulder, expecting to see men run -out after him with warrants for his arrest. - -By the time he approached Cambridge, the nervous strain was telling on -him. He was wet with sweat, and as tired as though he had been four -times over the mountains. Only a few people were abroad as it was the -breakfast hour. Partly from the old fear of years, partly from the mere -habit of total isolation, every strange face was startling to him. He -felt his knees weak under him and sat down on a bench in front of the -kitchen door of the Cambridge Inn to get his breath. He had been a man -of powerful will and strong self-control or he never could have lived -through those terrible years of being buried alive, and he now angrily -told himself there was nothing to fear in this remote little hamlet, -where everybody was used to the sight of men in buckskins coming down -to trade their furs for gunpowder and salt. At the sight of all those -human faces taking him back to the days of his human life, a deep -yearning had come upon him to get back into the world of living men. He -could have wept aloud and taken them into his arms like brothers. He -was determined to master his tense nerves, to learn to move about among -his fellow-men once more. In a moment, just a moment, he decided he -would stand up and move casually over to the general store across the -street where a lad was then unlocking the door. He would go in and make -a purchase--the first in so many years! - -He turned his head to glance into the kitchen of the Inn, and as he did -so, the door opened, and a man came in, a traveler with a face familiar -to him in spite of gray hair and wrinkles, a man he had known in -Massachusetts, who knew him, and no friend of his, a man who had been -on the other side in the Rebellion. - -Colonel Shays’ heart gave a staggering leap. He caught at the door-jamb -and shrank out of sight. He heard the other voice say, “I stepped in -to ask if any of you know whether Colonel Shays was ever heard of in -this....” - -And then the old man, running madly for his life, fled back to his den -in the woods. - -A whole decade passed after this, before he happened to learn in a -conversation overheard between two trappers, that for eleven priceless, -irreplaceable years, he had been a free man. - - - - -A GREAT LOVE - - -When my pretty young cousin and god-daughter, Flossie, fell in love -with Peter Carr, we all felt rather apprehensive about her future. But -Flossie faced the facts with an honest, even a rather grim resolution -which surprised us. She said with only a little tremor in her voice -that she never expected to occupy the place in Peter’s heart which -Eleanor Arling had taken forever, but that she loved him so much she -was willing to take whatever he could give her. It wasn’t _his_ fault, -she said, with the quaintest chivalric defiance of us, if poor Peter -hadn’t more to give. She thought a great love like that “was a noble -thing in any one’s life, even if it did make them perfectly miserable.” -If Miss Arling felt that personal happiness must be sacrificed for her -art, why, that was an exalted attitude to take, and Peter’s sorrow was -“sacred in her eyes”; and so on and so forth--the usual things that -are said in such cases by people who are in sympathy with that sort of -thing. - -So they were married, with the understanding that Peter could still go -on worshiping the very sound of Eleanor Arling’s name and turning white -when he came across a mention of her or of her pictures in the cabled -news of the art world in Paris. Flossie was, so we all agreed, a good -sport if there ever was one, and she stuck gamely to her bargain. She -had transferred the big silver-framed photograph of Miss Arling from -Peter’s bachelor quarters to the wall of their new living room, and she -dusted it as conscientiously as she did the Botticelli Spring which I -gave her for a wedding present. It was not easy for her. I have seen -her flush deeply and set her lips hard as Peter looked up at the dusky -brooding eyes shadowed by the casque of black braids. Flossie is one of -the small, quick, humming-bird women, with nothing to set against Miss -Arling’s massive classic beauty, and by her expression at such moments, -I know she felt her defenselessness bitterly. But she never let Peter -see how she felt. She had taken him, the darkness of his unrequited -passion heavy on him, and if she ever regretted it, she gave no sign. - -She flashed about the house, keeping it in perfect order, feeding Peter -the most delicious food, and after the twins came, caring for them with -no strain or nervous tension, with only a bright thankful enjoyment -of them that was warm on your heart like sunshine. Peter enjoyed his -pretty home and devoted wife and lively babies and excellent food. He -began to lay on flesh, and to lose the haggard, gray leanness which, -just after Miss Arling had gone away, had made people turn and look -after him in the street. Architecture is, even when you are busy and -successful as Peter is, a rather sedentary occupation, offering no -resistance to such cooking as Flossie’s. Peter’s skin began to grow -rosy and sleek, his hair from being rough and bristling, began to look -smooth and glossy. It was quite beautiful hair as long as it lasted; -but as the years went on and the twins began to be big children, it, -unlike the rest of Peter, began to look thinner. Peter with a bald spot -was queer enough, but before he was thirty-five it was not a mere spot, -but all the top of his head. We thought it very becoming to him as it -gave him a beneficent, thoughtful, kindly look, like a philosopher. -And his added weight was also distinctly an improvement to his looks. -We often said to each other that nobody would ever have thought that -crazy-looking boy would make such a nice-looking man. - -Flossie had not changed an atom. Those tiny, slight women occasionally -remain stationary in looks as though they were in cold storage. She -continued to worship Peter, and as he had made a good husband, we had -nothing to say, although of course you never can understand what an -excessively devoted wife sees in her husband, year after year. Flossie -never mitigated in the least the extremity of her attention to Peter’s -needs. When he was called away on a business trip she always saw that -his satchel was packed with just what he would need; and she would have -risen from her grave to put exactly the right amount of cream and sugar -into his coffee. - -The rest of us had forgotten all about Miss Arling’s connection with -Peter, and had grown so used to the big photograph of the big, handsome -woman that we did not see it any more, when one morning I found Flossie -waiting for me as I came downstairs. She was very pale, with dark -circles under her eyes. She was holding a newspaper in her clenched -hand--the New York newspaper they had always taken on account of its -full, gossipy “Happenings in the World of Art” column. Flossie opened -it to that column now, and read in a dry voice: “American art lovers -are promised a treat in the visit of the famous Eleanor Arling who -arrives on the _Mauretania_. Miss Arling plans an extensive trip in -her native country from which she has been absent for many years. She -will visit New York, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Denver and San Francisco. Her -keen artistic memory is shown by her intention of breaking her trip for -a few days at ...” Flossie’s voice broke.... “She’s coming _here_!” -she gasped. Then collecting herself, she continued reading, “Miss -Arling told our interviewer that she once passed some weeks there and -remembers with pleasure a composition of cliff, water, and pine trees. -She wishes to see it again.” - -“Cliff, water, and pine trees,” repeated Flossie, her eyes blazing. -“Of course _we_ know it is nothing in the way of a _landscape_ she is -coming to see here!” I saw that her little fists were clenched. “I -won’t stand it!” she cried, “I won’t stand it!” - -But she looked horribly frightened all the same. - -“What can you do?” I asked, sympathizing painfully with the poor little -thing. - -“I shall go to her the minute she reaches town.” - -This threw me into a panic, “What good would _that_ do?” I cried, -alarmed at the prospect of scenes and goings-on. - -“I don’t know! I don’t know! If I see her, I can think of some way to -make her go away and not ...” she said wildly. - -I hoped devoutly that she would settle down from this hysterical state -of unreason, but three days after this she darted in, her face pinched, -and told me that the time was now, and that she wanted me to be with -her.... “I must have _some_body there,” she said piteously. - -I was thoroughly alarmed, protested, tried desperately to back out, -but found myself in Flossie’s car driving at a dangerous rate of speed -towards Miss Arling’s hotel. - -We were shown into the sitting room of her suite, and sat down, both -breathing hard. I am fond of Flossie and I was very sorry for her, -but I certainly wished her at the other end of the world just then. -If I had not feared she would have rushed to lock me in, I would have -tried to escape even then, but before I could collect myself, the door -opened, and a stout, middle-aged woman came in. Her straight gray hair -was bobbed and hanging in strings around a very red, glistening face. -It was terribly hot weather and she had, I suppose, just came in from -the long motor trip. She had a lighted cigarette in one hand. Her -cushiony shapeless feet were thrust into a pair of Japanese sandals. -She distinctly waddled as she walked. We supposed that she was Miss -Arling’s companion, and I said, because Flossie was too agitated to -speak, “We wished to speak to Miss Arling, please.” - -“I am Miss Arling,” she said casually. “Won’t you sit down?” I don’t -know what I did, but I heard Flossie give a little squeak like a -terrified rabbit. So I hurried on, saying desperately the first thing -that came into my mind. “We heard you were coming ... in the newspapers -... we are old residents here ... a cliff, water, and pine trees.... I -know the view ... we thought perhaps we might show you where....” - -She was surprised a little at my incoherence and Flossie’s strange -face, but she was evidently a much-experienced woman-of-the-world, whom -nothing could surprise very much. “Oh, that’s very kind,” she said -civilly, tossing her cigarette butt away and folding her strong hands -on her ample knees, “But I went that way on the road coming into town. -I remembered it perfectly I find. I used it as the background in a -portrait, some years ago.” - -She saw no reason for expanding the topic and now stopped speaking. -I could think of nothing more to say. There was a profound silence. -Our hostess evidently took us for tongue-tied, small-town people who -do not know how to get themselves out of a room, and went on making -conversation for us with a vague, fluent, absent-minded kindness. -“It’s very pleasant to be here again. I stayed here once, you know, -a few weeks, many years ago, when I was young. We had quite a jolly -time, I remember. There was a boy here ... a slim, dark, tall fellow, -with the most perfect early-Renaissance head imaginable, quite like the -Jeune Homme Inconnu. I’ve been trying all day to remember his name? -Paul?... no. Walter?... it had two syllables it seems to me. Well, at -any rate, he had two great beauties, the pale, flat white of his skin, -and his great shaggy mass of dark hair. I’ve often used his hair in -drawings, since. But I don’t suppose he looks like that now.” - -Flossie spoke. She spoke with the effect of a revolver discharging a -bullet, “Oh, yes, he does! He looks exactly like that still, only more -mature, more interesting,” she said in an indignant tone. - -“Ah, indeed,” said the painter with an accent of polite acquiescence. -She sighed now and looked firmly at the clock. I rose and said since we -could not be of use to her, we would leave her to rest. - -She accompanied us to the door pleasantly enough, with the -professional, impersonal courtesy of a celebrity. - -Outside Flossie sprang into her car, leaving me stranded on the -sidewalk. “I must get Peter away,” she said between her teeth. - -“But not now, surely!” I cried. - -“Now more than ever,” she flung back at me, as she whirled the car -around. - -Then as I stood open-mouthed, utterly at a loss, she drove the car -close to the curb and leaning to my ear, whispered fiercely, “You don’t -suppose I’d let him see how she looks _now_.” - - -Miss Arling was gone before they returned from the two-day fishing-trip -on which they started that night. I doubt if Peter ever heard that she -had been in town. - -The morning after their return, as soon as Peter had gone downtown, -Flossie tore down the big photograph from the wall and flung it into -the garbage can. - -I noticed its absence some days later, when I went over to see them, -and asked with a little apprehension, “What did Peter say when he found -it gone?” - -The strangest expression came into her face. She said in a low tone, -“He has never even missed it.” And then she began to cry. As I looked -at her, I saw that she had suddenly begun to show her age. - - - - -SUPPLY AND DEMAND - - -The thoughtful intellectual people around the fire were talking with -animation and conviction, and I hoped the one business-man present, a -relative of mine, was appreciating his privileges. It was not often -that you could collect before your fire so many brilliant people -representing so many important varieties of human activity; and when -you had collected them it was not often that the talk fell on a subject -big enough to draw out of each one his most hotly held conviction. - -The subject was big enough in all conscience: nothing more or less than -what is the matter with the world in general and with our country in -particular. They all had different ideas about what the trouble is and -about the best cure for it. The head nurse of the big City Hospital had -started the ball rolling by some of her usual scornful remarks about -the idiocy with which most people run their physical lives, and the -super-idiocy, as she put it, “which makes them think that doctors and -nurses can put scrambled eggs back into the shell.” - -“We’ll never have any health as a nation till we have health as -individuals,” she said. “See that the babies have clean milk; give the -children plenty of space and time for out-door play; keep the young -folks busy with athletic sports; run down all the diphtheria carriers -and make it a misdemeanor not to be both vaccinated for small-pox and -inoculated against typhoid ... and we’d be a nation such as the world -never saw before.” - -The political reformer was sincerely shocked by the narrowness of her -views, and took her down in a long description of our villainously -mismanaged government. “Much good mere physical health would do against -our insane tolerance of such political ineptness and corruption!” he -ended. “What we need is an awakening to the importance of government as -every man’s personal business.” - -Mrs. Maynard, the tragic-faced, eloquent Scotch expert on -birth-control, now said in that low, bitter voice of hers which always -makes every one stop to listen, “I would be obliged if you would point -out to me how either physical health or the very best of municipal -governments should alleviate in the slightest, the hideous ulcers of -our so-called respectable married homes. When the very foundation -of every-day human life is cemented in such unthinkable cruelty and -suffering to defenseless women, I don’t see how human beings with -hearts in their bosoms can stop for an instant to consider such puerile -non-essentials as athletics and party politics!” - -The two or three happily married women in the group, startled by -her fierce acrimony, were silent, feeling abashed by the grossly -comfortable way we had managed to escape even a knowledge of the -horrors which she so urgently assured us were universal. But Mr. -Sharpless, the efficiency engineer, shook his head pityingly. “No, no, -my dear lady, you can’t cure anything by going at it with the hammer -and tongs of direct action. The economic key is the only one that -fits all locks, opens all doors. The women of what we call the ‘upper -classes’ do not suffer as you describe. You know they don’t. Now why do -we _call_ them the ‘upper classes’? Because they have money. You know -it! Hence, if everybody had money ...! I tell you the thing to do is to -reorganize our wretched old producing machinery till ever so much more -is produced, ever so much more easily; and then invent distributing -machinery that will ensure everybody’s getting his share. You may not -think home life is much affected by the chemist in his laboratory, -devising a way to get nitrogen chiefly from the air, or by the engineer -struggling with the problem of free power out of the tides or the -sun. But it is. Just once put _all_ women in the comfortable upper -classes....” - -He was interrupted here by a number of protesting voices, all speaking -at once, the loudest of which, Professor Oleny’s finally drowned -out the others, “... money without intelligence is the most fatal -combination conceivable to man! Economic prosperity would spell speedy -destruction without an overhauling of education.” He spun like a -pinwheel for a moment, in a sparkling, devastating characterization of -American schools, and of their deadening effect on the brains which -passed through them, and began on a description of what schools should -be. - -But I had heard him lecture on that only the day before and, looking -away from him, sought out the face of my cousin, the business-man. -He had sat through it all, and now continued to sit through the -free-for-all debate which followed, without opening his mouth except to -emit an occasional thoughtful puff of cigar-smoke. His thoughts seemed -to be with the billowing smoke-rings, which he sent towards the ceiling -rather than with the great sweep of the subjects being discussed. I -knew well enough that his silence did not come in the least from any -inability to follow the pyrotechnics about him, and I felt in his -absent preoccupation something of the disdain, traditionally felt for -talkers and reformers by men of action--when in the twentieth century -and in the United States, you say “man of action” you mean of course, -“business-man.” - -It nettled me a little, and after the others had gone and he was -finishing the end of his cigar, I said challengingly, “I suppose you -think they are all off! I suppose you think that you know what is the -matter with the world and that it is something quite different.” - -He considered the end of his cigar meditatively and answered mildly, “I -don’t _think_ I know, I _know_ I know.” - -“Oh, you do, do you?” I said, amused and ironic. “Would you mind -telling me what it is?” - -He shucked further down in his chair, tipped his head back and looked -up at the ceiling. “Well, if you really want to know, I’ll tell you a -story that happened just lately in one of the biggest mail-order houses -in this country. Of course, I know that you don’t fully appreciate the -importance of mail-order houses, not being in business. And they’re too -through and through American a growth for people like your friends -to-night to know about or talk about. But some of the best brains and -real sure-enough genius in the United States have gone into creating -the mail-order house idea. Maybe you might allow that to be a good -enough reason for considering for a moment what goes on inside one of -them ... what? - -“As a matter of fact, the story isn’t just about a mail-order house, -but about what is the matter with the world ... the very same subject -your friends were debating. My story won’t have so many long words in -it as they use, nor so many abstract ideas ... at least on the surface; -but it won’t do you any harm to soak it away and think it over. I’ll -tell you what, _I’ve_ been thinking it over this evening, as I listened -to the talk. I only heard the story this morning, and it’s stuck in my -head all day ... and especially this evening, as they were all talking -about how to hit on some organization of society that would really fix -things up, once and for all.” - -He paused for a moment, stretched his legs out straight before him and -put his hands into his pockets. “If I really told you all you ought -to know, to understand the background and setting of the story, I’d -be sitting here to-morrow morning still talking. So I won’t try, I’ll -just tell you the plain story as it happened. You try to imagine -the background: an organization as big, as complicated, with as many -chances for waste motion, or overorganization, or poor organization as -society itself. And not only power and glory, but _cash_, plenty of -hard cash as immediate reward for the successful use of brains. - -“Well now, into that arrives a smart youngster full of enthusiasm for -making things run better, just like your friends to-night; dead sure -just like them that _he_ has the key; with lots of pep and brains and -interest in his job, pushing his way right up from the stenographer’s -desk, with his eye on the Manager’s. Do you get him? Well, he’s laid -awake nights, thinking how to improve the organization, partly because -he wanted to improve it, partly because he wanted to get the credit -for it ... just like your friends again. And because he is a smart -young fellow as keen as a razor, he soon figured out a way to increase -business, to increase it like a house afire, and to handle it once it -was increased. - -“He went to the big man of the concern and laid out his plans. Now, -you’d better believe the big men in any organization always have a glad -hand out for anybody in the concern who’ll show interest and brains; -and the boy got treated like a king. Sure, he could try out his plan! -On a small scale at first, to see how it would work. Let him take a -county out of each of six selected states, and concentrate on them. -And, sure, yes, indeed, he could have anything in the organization he -wanted, to make his try with. - -“So the boy went away bounding like a rubber-ball and planned his -campaign. I won’t bother you by trying to tell you what it was.... -It wouldn’t interest you, and anyhow you couldn’t understand the -business details. It was a mixture of intensive publicity, special -attention paid to detail, a follow-up system that meant personal care -and personal acquaintance with the tastes of customers, and intimate -knowledge of what past orders from customers had been. To get the -right kind of assistants he went through the various departments of -that big organization and hand-picked his staff; the very best of the -publicity men, the smartest of the order-clerks, the brightest of the -stenographers. And then they just tore in and ate up the territory they -were practising on! They plowed it with publicity, and sowed it with -personal service, they reaped, by George, a harvest that would put your -eye out! Business increased by a twenty-five per cent, by a fifty per -cent! At the end of a year, the boy, too big for his skin, paraded into -the Manager-in-chief’s office with statistics to prove a seventy-five -per cent increase over any business ever done there before! Well, that -was simply grand, wasn’t it? Yes, the Manager would certainly sit up -and take some notice of a system that had accomplished _that_!” - -My cousin had finished his cigar, now threw the butt into the -fire-place, and sat looking at the embers with a somber expression. -I couldn’t see anything to look somber about. Indeed I found myself -stifling a yawn. What did I care how much business a mail-order house -did or how they did it? - -My cousin answered my thought, “Don’t you see that the story is all -about the same general idea you were all discussing this evening? It -is about getting things done more intelligently, more efficiently, -about avoiding fool mistakes, about rising to big opportunities, about -learning how to scramble over the obstacles that prevent human beings -from being intelligent and efficient and effective. Now, then, at the -first take-off, the boy had soared right over those obstacles, hadn’t -he? But the Manager-in-chief knew a thing or two about them, too. In -fact he had grown bald and gray trying to climb over those very same -obstacles. But you can be sure the boy didn’t once think that his chief -might be just as anxious as he was to have things done better. Boys -never do....” There was a pause, while my cousin considered the embers -moodily. - -“So, by and by, after the boy had fizzed the place all foamy with his -wonderful statistics, the bald-headed, gray-haired Manager began to -come down to brass tacks, and to inquire just how the thing had been -done. The boy was crazy to tell him, went into every detail; and the -Manager listened hard. - -“And then he shook his old bald gray head. He said: ‘Young fellow, you -listen to me. It takes _sense_ to run that system of yours. You’re -counting on everybody, from you right down to the boy that works your -mimeograph, paying attention to what he’s doing, using his brains and -using them every minute. If everybody doesn’t, you won’t get your -results, will you? Now, consider this, how did you get hold of a staff -that would have any brains to use and would use them? _You_ know how! -We let you run a fine tooth comb through our whole organization, -thousands and thousands of employees. You took out of every department -the very best they had; three or four out of hundreds, and they are -the only ones out of thousands who amount to anything after years of -training at our expense. And then you put your very best licks into -it yourself. Now, who are you? You’re the first stenographer we’ve -had in ten years, who took enough interest in the business as a whole -to have a single idea about it. You tell me something. Suppose we -reorganized along your lines, who would I get to run all the other -departments and keep up the high-speed efficiency and red-hot ambition -you’ve shown, which is the _only_ reason your scheme works? You know -as well as I do I can’t find another _one_, let alone the eighty or -ninety I’d have to have, if we tried to do business on your plan. And -if I could--supposing for the sake of argument that an angel from -Heaven served such department heads to me on a silver platter, where am -I going to find staffs to work with them. You’ve _got_ all the really -efficient employees we’ve been able to rake in from the whole United -States in the past twenty years. - -“‘Did you ever have to work with a plain, ordinary six-for-a-quarter -stenographer, such as the business colleges turn out, such as you -mostly get? You’ve built your machine so that only brains and sense -will run it. How long would it take a couple of hundred of such stenogs -to smash your system into splinters? Did you ever have to try and get -work out of the average dressy young employee who puts ninety-eight -and a half per cent of what gray matter he has on his neckties and -the bets he made on the horse-races, and the little flier he took on -stocks; and one and a half per cent of his brains on his work when -somebody higher up is looking at him? How do you suppose you can -persuade a crowd of light-weights like that to care a whoop whether -Mrs. Arrowsmith in Cohoes, N. Y., is satisfied with the color of the -linoleum rug she bought?’” - -My cousin looked at me hard, and again answered an unspoken thought of -mine. “Are you wondering why hadn’t the boy interrupted long before -this, to hold up his end, if he was really so enthusiastic as I’ve -said? This is the reason. Though he hadn’t let on to the Manager, he -really had had plenty of troubles of his own, already, keeping even his -hand-picked crew up to the scratch. Many’s the time he’d been ready to -murder them! Drive as hard as he might, he couldn’t keep them steadily -up to the standard he’d set for his work. He’d noticed that. Oh, yes, -of course, he’d noticed it all right, and he’d been furious about it. -But until that minute, he hadn’t thought of it--what it meant; and the -minute the Manager spoke, he knew in his bones the old man was right. -And he felt things come down with a smash. - -“It pretty nearly knocked him silly. He never said a word. And the old -bald-head looked at him, and saw that in the last three minutes the boy -had grown up ... he’d grown up! That hurts, hurts more than any visit -to the dentist. I know how he felt; probably the Manager knew how he -felt. Anybody who’s ever tried to get anything done has run his head -into that stone wall. - -“Well, he was sorry for the kid, and tried to let him down easy. -He went on talking, to give the boy time to catch his breath. ‘You -understand, I’d like, maybe more than you, to reorganize the whole ball -o’ wax, on any lines that would work better. And there are lots of good -points in your plan that we _can_ use, plenty of ’em. This invention -of yours about cross-indexing orders now, that is a splendid idea. I -believe we could install that ... it looks _almost_ fool proof! And -maybe we might run a special mailing-list along the lines you’ve worked -out. Lemme look at it again. Well, I guess the mistakes the stenogs -would make _might_ be more than offset by the extra publicity ... maybe! - -“But the lad was feeling too cut up to pay any attention to these -little poultices. He stood there, and almost fell in pieces, he -was thinking so hard. Not very cheerful thoughts, at that. When he -could get his breath he leaned over the table and said in a solemn, -horrified voice, ‘Good God, Mr. Burton, why then ... why then....’ He -was all but plumb annihilated by the hardness of the fact that had just -hit him on the head. He broke out, ‘What’s the _use_ of inventing a -better system as long as ... as long as ...?’ he got it out finally. -‘Why, Mr. Burton, there just aren’t enough folks with sense to go -around!’” - -My cousin stood up, moved to the hall, secured his hat and looked in -at me through the door-way. “Poor kid!” he commented pityingly. “Just -think of his never having thought of that before!” - - - - -UNCLE ELLIS - - -I never saw my Uncle Ellis because he died before I was born, but I -heard a great deal about him when I was a child. His stepdaughter -married one of our fellow-townsmen, and lived next door to us when I -was a little girl, and her mother, my great-aunt, Uncle Ellis’ third -wife, lived with her. Whatever Cousin Ruth did not say about her -stepfather, Aunt Molly supplied. The two women spent the rest of their -lives hating him, and for his sake hated, distrusted and despised all -men. - -The gruesome impressions of married life which float through the -air to most little girls, came to me from their half-heard and -half-understood stories of Uncle Ellis. He had killed his first two -wives, they said, just as much as though he had taken an ax to them, -and only his opportune death had saved Aunt Molly from the same fate. -His innumerable children--I would never venture to set down how many -he had, all in legal marriage--feared and detested him and ran away -from home as soon as they could walk. He was meanness itself, secret, -sneaking meanness, the sort of man who would refuse his wife money -for a wringer to do the family wash, and spend five dollars on a box -of cigars; he would fly into a black rage over a misplaced towel, and -persecute the child who had misplaced it, till she was ready to commit -suicide; and then open his arms with a spectacular smile to the new -baby of a parishioner. After mistreating his wife till she could hardly -stand, she used to hear him holding forth in a boys’ meeting, exhorting -them to a chivalric attitude towards women. - -Aunt Molly died long ago, firing up to the last in vindictive -reminiscences of her husband. Ruth is dead now, too, in the fullness of -time. I am a middle-aged woman, and probably the only one now alive who -ever heard those two talk about Uncle Ellis; and I had forgotten him. -If he stayed at all in my memory it was with the vague, disembodied -presence of a character in a book. - - -About a month ago, I accepted an invitation to speak at a convention in -a town in the middle-west which I had never seen, but the name of which -seemed slightly familiar; perhaps, I thought, because I had learned it -in a geography lesson long ago. But when I arrived I understood the -reason. It was the town where for many years Uncle Ellis had been -pastor of the church. At the railway station, as I stepped down on the -platform, one of the older women in the group who met me, startled -me by saying, “We have been especially anxious to see you because of -your connection with our wonderful Dr. Ellis Randolph. I was a young -girl when he died, but I can truly say that my whole life has been -influenced for good by the words and example of that saintly man.” - -The elderly man beside her added, “You will find many here who will -say the same. In the formative period of our town’s history he made an -indelible impression for good.” - -They took me to his church, where a large bronze tablet set forth -his virtues and his influence. They showed me the Ellis Randolph -Memorial Library. I was shown the public playground which he conceived -a generation before any one else thought of such a thing. But what -made the deepest impression on me were the men and women who came to -shake my hand because I was Uncle Ellis’ niece, because they wanted to -testify to the greatness of his value in their lives. The minister of -the town, a white-haired man, told me with a deep note of emotion in -his voice, that Dr. Randolph had done more than merely save his life; -in his wayward youth he had saved his soul alive. The banker told me -that he had heard many celebrated orators, but never any one who could -go straight to the heart like Dr. Randolph. “I often tell my wife that -she ought to be thankful to Dr. Randolph for a lecture on chivalry to -women which he gave to us boys, at an impressionable moment of our -lives.” - -And the old principal of the school said, “Not a year goes by that I -do not thank God for sending that righteous man to be an example to my -youth. He left behind him many human monuments to his glory.” - - -What did I say to them? Oh, I didn’t say anything to them. I couldn’t -think of anything to say. - - - - -GOD’S COUNTRY - - -When I was a faculty-child living in a middle-western university town -we were all thrilled by the news that the energetic Chancellor of the -University had secured as head of the Department of Chemistry a noted -European scientist. Although still young he had made a name for himself -by some important discoveries in organic chemistry. We talked about -those discoveries as fluently, and understood about them as thoroughly -as we all now discuss and understand the theories of Professor Einstein. - -Professor Behrens was not only a remarkable chemist, so we heard, but a -remarkable teacher and a man of wide sympathies and democratic ideals. -It was the candid period in American life, when, especially in the -west, the word “Europe” was pronounced with a very special intonation, -of which Henry James’ wistful admiration was the quintessence. It was -the time in American university life when Germany was the goal toward -which all our younger scholars ran their fastest race. Yet here was -Professor Behrens, leaving a University not only European but German, -from which our younger professors were proud to have a Ph.D. and -deliberately choosing our new, raw, young institution for the sake of -the free, untrammeled, democratic life in America. It went to our heads! - -Passages in his letter of acceptance were read to my mother by my -father, who had borrowed the letter from the Chancellor. “I have a -family of children and as they grow older I am more and more aware -of the stifling, airless stagnation of European life. I want them to -know something bigger and freer than will ever come to them in this -Old World of rigid caste lines and fixed ideas. My wife and I, too, -wish to escape from the narrowness of this provincial town where -an arrogant young lieutenant swaggering about in his gold-braided -white broadcloth uniform is much higher in social rank than the most -learned and renowned member of the University faculty; where a rich -lumber-merchant, brutal and ignorant, can buy his way into political -position and parade about with sash and gold chain and the insignia of -the office of Mayor.” - -We were all righteously indignant over such elements of life in -Europe, and quite exalted in our certainty that the distinguished -immigrant would find nothing like that in our midst. The sole and only -representative of the military caste was the lieutenant who drilled -the university battalion, and he was a most unassuming young American -who never on any occasion wore white broadcloth, put on his plain -dark-blue uniform as seldom as possible, and for the most part wore -a pepper-and-salt business suit and a derby hat. Since there were no -trees on the Western plains, there was no equivalent to the iniquitous -lumber merchant, the nearest approach being a man who had made a good -deal of money out of lucky guesses in real estate. But he would have -dropped dead before putting on a sash and a gold chain. - -So we awaited the Behrens full of pride and pleasure. When they -arrived, everybody in the faculty gave receptions and lunch-parties for -them, and all we children rejoiced in the unlimited leavings of fried -chicken (it was in September), ice cream, and cake, which were at our -disposition after these “functions,” as the Faculty ladies called them. -Although surprisingly unceremonious as to table manners, the Behrens -were as nice as we expected to find them; and they were evidently -delighted with the warm-hearted, open-handed good nature of Americans, -by the cordiality of their reception (which seemed quite to amaze them) -by the wide-open doors which led anywhere they might wish to go, by the -absence of class distinction, and by the generosity with which America -supported universities, hospitals, libraries, and public schools. -When the University opened, Professor Behrens threw himself into his -teaching and soon became one of the favorite professors. He had a song -sung about him at the winter concert of the Glee Club; and the Junior -year-book was dedicated to him in the spring. By that time the Behrens -children, who were in the eighth, fifth, and third grades of my public -school were no longer to be distinguished from the rest of us, running -and yelling on the hard-beaten earth of the playground, and thoroughly -acquainted with duck-on-a-rock, prisoner’s base, and run-sheep-run. -Julie and I were classmates in the fifth grade that year, and the next -and the next. - -But just as we were about to pass together into the exalted rank of the -eighth grade, Professor Behrens received a call to be Rector (Julie -explained to me that this had nothing to do with a church, but was the -same as our Chancellor) of a university in his own country. - -It seemed such an advancement to be promoted from Professor to -Chancellor that it was no surprise to have him accept, and to see Mrs. -Behrens begin hastily to pack up the family belongings. But what -did surprise us was the sudden revelation brought out by this event, -of a great home-sickness on the part of the Behrens to get back to a -“civilized country.” This was one of the phrases Julie overheard her -father saying to her mother, which she repeated to me, and I to my -parents. A faculty circle gets its news by about the same channels as -an army post or a village sewing circle. So by the time this remark -had reached my parents it did not surprise them. The Behrens, although -still heartily grateful for all the kindness that had been shown -them, although still feeling a lively affection for the good-hearted -qualities in American life, could not conceal their immense relief at -the prospect of the change. Professor Behrens discussed the question -with the open frankness of a scientist before a new phenomenon: “I -had no idea, till I had to go without them, how vital to civilization -are the finer shades, the polish, the stability, the decorum, which -comes only with long life of a society in an old country. I had never -thought of them, had always supposed, of course, they were to be found -everywhere. It is not that I blame America for not having them ... -nothing but time can give them ... but there is no denying that they -give a different color to life, the same difference of color there -is between camping out in a cave, ever so fine and airy and open a -cave, and living in a well-ordered house with the appurtenances of -civilization. There is a certain something which springs up from such -niceties of life.... I can hardly wait to get home, and give a real -dinner with well-trained servants, and cultivated, established guests -who have had a social position for so long that it is a part of them. -The crudeness, the abruptness, the roughness in human intercourse -here! And the total lack on the part of people in the lower classes of -any sense of the fitness of things! The _conductor on the street-car_ -slapped me on the back the other day!” - -So we gave them a grand good-by reception in the gymnasium, and we -faculty-children fairly swam in lemonade and wallowed in left-over -cake. The faculty presented Professor Behrens with a beautifully bound -edition of Emerson, and Mrs. Behrens with a little pearl pendant; and -then they went away, and we supposed we would never see them again. - -Julie and I corresponded once in a while as children do, the letters -growing less frequent as Julie evidently began to forget her English. -Mrs. Behrens wrote back a round-robin letter or two to be passed about -among her faculty friends, one of them describing the splendid, -ceremonious, Old-World way in which Professor Behrens was inducted into -his new position. She spoke with special pride of the way in which both -the military and municipal authorities of the town had turned out to do -him honor, the soldiers, officers, and the Mayor of the town marching -at the head of the procession, the latter in his bright sash and gold -chain of office. It seemed to us we had heard something about that -Mayor before, but we could not remember what it was. - -And then Julie forgot her English altogether, and Mrs. Behrens’ letters -dwindled and there were none. - -I got on through the eighth grade and went into the University -prep-school. After three years there, my father was called to a better -position in another State University. As we were settling ourselves in -the new home, what should we hear but that a distinguished European -scientist was about to be added to the faculty, none other than -Professor Behrens. - -Foreigners, even distinguished ones, were more common in American -faculties then than they had been seven years before; there was a -large German Department, with many native German instructors; and -the University was further east and hence not so open-heartedly -welcoming. There was, therefore, no such stir over the newcomers as on -their first arrival although every one was very nice to them and the -President’s wife had Mrs. Behrens stand by her in the receiving line at -the first of the faculty receptions. But the Behrens did not seem to -notice that there was anything lacking in their treatment. You never -saw people more delighted than they were to be back in America. - -“It was worse than I remembered,” Professor Behrens told my father. -“After an experience of the free, breezy, self-respecting life in -America it was simply unendurable. Suffocating, simply suffocating! -With the most ridiculous caste spirit. Rusted to a stand-still with -cock-sure conservatism! An instant, hermetic closing up of every pore -at any mention of new possibilities for human nature, or for human -organizations. And such absurd, stiff, artificial rules of conduct -and precedence in society! Let me tell you an episode which will -seem almost incredible to you, but which really decided us to come -back here. At a garden party my wife ... _my_ wife!... seeing there -the wife of the General commanding the troops in the town garrison -and knowing her quite well, stepped across the lawn to speak to her, -one lady to another. Will you believe it, because she had not waited -till the General’s wife had summoned her to her circle, my poor wife -received a cold, unrecognizing stare, her outstretched hand was left -hanging in the air, and the General’s wife turned her back on her. And -when I was furious and protested, I was made uncomfortable, seriously -uncomfortable!” - -And Mrs. Behrens told my mother she had been horrified by the -cold-hearted envy, hatred and meanness which lay underneath the -polished manners of many of the people in their circle. “They do not -wish you well. They wish you ill. They simply have no conception of the -meaning of that American word ‘friendly.’” - -Julie was ready for the University, as I was, and we entered the -Freshman class together. She was a very pretty girl, one of the -brown-haired Teutons, who are so much finer and more neatly finished -than the blonde ones, and she had her fair share of popularity. We were -taken into the same fraternity, studied together, and were much in each -other’s homes. I soon saw that the Behrens home was not altogether a -light-hearted one. After the first flush of pleasure at being back had -passed, a cloud of depression settled over them. Their sojourn in a -more finished and stable, low-toned and nuanced civilization had put -them all out of key for the loud-mouthed, cheerful American tune. They -found it shrill and noisy, and often stopped their ears against it. -Heavens, they had not remembered that American trades-people were so -utterly mannerless! Nor that all Americans were so blackly ignorant of -the arts! They had no interest in organized athletics, and very soon -developed an active hostility for football because of the indisputable -fact that the university world was so occupied with it, that nothing -serious was done in classes until after Thanksgiving when the last game -was played. The Behrens were musical and nobody in the city cared for -music except the German-Americans in their shabby quarter at the other -end of town, and they were fat grocers, saloon-keepers or foremen in -factories, people with whom the Behrens could not dream of associating. -They were really very miserable and lonely and disillusioned. - -When we were Seniors there came a wonderful offer from Germany: a very -high Government position for Professor Behrens. I heard them discussing -this with a certain indecision which I had never heard in their remarks -before. They knew very well what was before them in Germany. But, -oh, what was about them here! The very servant problem alone made it -impossible for civilized beings to organize a livable existence in -America. Not to speak of a thousand other, raw, unfinished edges which -rasped and fretted them at every turn. - -They finally decided to go, but their packing-up was conducted in a -very different spirit from the first one I had seen. They had begun -to divine that there was, in this business of looking for the ideal -country, something more than meets the eye. - - -I happened to visit them a few years after this, just before I was -married, and found them much dissatisfied with European life. Mrs. -Behrens was nettled and fretted by the question of social precedence -which was, so it seemed to her, constantly used to humiliate her; and -the children were stifling in the restricted, fenced-in, tyrannically -regulated corner of life which was theirs. Julie took me off for a long -walk one afternoon and told me something of her opinion of European -young men, especially the officers whom for the most part she met in -society, as they were the ones who had most leisure for afternoon and -evening parties. “I can just tell you one thing,” she said with a grim -accent and a hardset jaw, “I’ll never marry a European, if I die an old -maid!” - -But later on, when her mother and she were exchanging reminiscences -about the difficulties of American housekeeping, Julie cried out, “Oh, -I couldn’t keep house in a country where there is no servant class!” - -Mrs. Behrens sighed, “Yes, I know, but just remember the bath-rooms, -and the vacuum cleaners, and the hot water.” - -It seemed to me, as I looked about on their much traveled chairs and -tables that I saw them patiently making ready for another journey. - - - - -INHERITANCE - - -One of my mother’s distant cousins was left a widow, years ago with -no assets but the house she lived in, a savings-bank account, and a -very pretty daughter, then eighteen years old. Cousin Henrietta’s -decisions were always prompt. It took her about six weeks to sell the -house, draw the money from the savings-bank and take her daughter to -Europe. I think her intention probably was to give Ella the benefit -of a year’s polish, and bring her back to the home market, her value -enhanced by the reputation of her Continental “Education.” But the -impossible happened, as energetic women like Cousin Henrietta can -occasionally make it happen. Through some chance connection at -the pension in Florence, they made the acquaintance of a wealthy, -middle-aged Tuscan, not the traditional European nobleman at all, but a -swarthy, well-preserved man of the people, risen to wealth by his own -exertions. He was presented to Ella and lost his head entirely over her -pale blonde prettiness. He was fifty-five. They were married on her -nineteenth birthday. - -Cousin Henrietta shared their married life with them, of course, -although this did not last very long. Signor Cattaneo, as not -infrequently happens to elderly husbands of very young wives, tried -to renew his youth too rapidly. He danced all one evening with his -bride, an exercise which his great bulk made extremely violent for him; -stepped out upon a balcony with her, in a cool, damp wind, and died of -double pneumonia at the end of a week. - -Cousin Henrietta still in charge of affairs, at once brought home -to the God’s country of Chicago, the lovely, wealthy little widow. -They set up housekeeping on a grand scale with the money which was -sent to them every month from the honest, conscientious Tuscan agent -in Florence. The agent got it from the honest, conscientious Tuscan -peasants, and they got it out of their bodies, sweating and toiling -endlessly long hours in all weathers. Ella and Cousin Henrietta had -everything they could think of, that money could buy; and presently -Ella, wanting something new, bought herself a husband. He did not -turn out very well: Ella had done exactly as she pleased for too long -to bother with a husband, and after a time they separated, though -there was never any legal action taken, since Cousin Henrietta was an -extremely orthodox church member, who disapproved of any laxity in the -relations between the sexes. Divorce seemed to her such a laxity. - -Then Ella wanted to do as other wealthy and fashionable ladies do -and learn how to ride. They bought, as usual, the best that money -could buy, and this time it was a little too good for Ella; for the -high-spirited thorough-bred took fright one day and, disregarding -Ella’s amateur efforts to control him, ran away, threw Ella off and -broke her poor little neck. - -Cousin Henrietta was horrified and scandalized to find that now Ella’s -remote but still legal husband would inherit a very large proportion -of the Italian property. Her whole soul and being rose up wildly in -an understandable and instinctive protest against this iniquity. -She simply could not believe that the law would countenance such a -barefaced theft of other people’s property. She filled the newspapers -and the courts with her clamor and made us all ashamed of the family -name. But that was all the good it did her. Ella had not dreamed of -making a will; Cousin Henrietta’s son-in-law had no reason to love his -wife’s mother, and could see no reason why she had any more right to -that fortune than he had. Neither can I, when it comes to that. - -Ella’s husband was rather dazed by his good luck and made all haste -to marry. But he did not make quite haste enough. That was one of the -years when the influenza was going the rounds, and he died of it two -days before his wedding, in spite of all the care of three trained -nurses and a whole battery of consulting physicians. I never knew what -became of his fiancée, but always wondered if she did not perhaps go to -live with Cousin Henrietta, as being the only person who would entirely -sympathize with her. - -So the Cattaneo fortune passed to the casual next-of-kin, who happened -to be the only nephew of Ella’s husband, a young clerk of twenty. The -honest conscientious agent in Florence, who was paid a small annual -salary for his services, and who would have died before touching a -penny not his, went on administering the Italian estate which was -growing steadily in value all the time, and paying more income. He sent -that income over to the new name and address in America. He was upheld -in his meager, narrow, difficult life by feeling that he was living up -to the fine old Tuscan code of honor; and he often told his children, -who lacked schooling and opportunities he could have given them if he -had had more money, that the best inheritance a father can leave his -children is an unblemished name. - -The children of Ella’s husband’s nephew have something much more -substantial as an inheritance than that. For the young man with a -fortune was married by a competent, ambitious girl as soon as he came -of age. They have three children, who learned very young how to spend -a great deal of money with great speed. The money which the Italian -day-laborers and small-farmers earn by patient endurance of hardships, -by eating rough, poor, scanty food, by working their pregnant wives -to the day before their confinements, by taking their children out of -school before they can read, is sent month by month to America and -spent in buying a new fur set for Ella’s husband’s nephew’s young-lady -daughter, a ten-thousand-dollar racing-car for Ella’s husband’s -nephew’s seventeen-year-old son, and to keep Ella’s husband’s nephew -from doing anything more strenuous than clipping the end of his cigars. - - - - -THIRTY YEARS AFTER - - -A long time ago, when Duane Bellamy was at the height of his brilliant -fame, and when I was a little girl, his daughter chanced to be a -school-mate of mine for a winter. And one Sunday evening I was invited -to their supper-table. I was very much impressed by the momentous -occasion which it seemed to me, and I have not forgotten a word he -said, nor a gesture he made, nor an expression of his face. I can -still see his darkly handsome face, with his glossy black mane, his -large bright eyes, his great curling Assyrian beard. And if ever I -saw a human being saturated to the bone with satisfaction, it was at -that Sunday evening supper. He was acclaimed as the greatest portrait -painter in America, and he accepted this well-deserved reputation with -no mock modesty. The knowledge of it did not make him coarsely vain or -puffed up. It acted on him like a generous wine, made him extravagantly -kind and over-flowing with high spirits. His little girl told me -that night that her princely father had been known to stop a tired -coal-heaver at his work, hand him a twenty-dollar bill and walk on. He -was like a great fountain of enjoyment, splashing with its clear waters -all who came near it, even the little schoolgirl at the other end of -the table. - -But there were people he could not help to enjoyment. The name of one -of them came up in the conversation that evening: “Poor old Hendricks!” -said our host, “what can you do for the poor old chap? _He_ doesn’t -even know what hit him!” - -One of the younger painters there was a protégé of Bellamy’s, admiring -him so greatly that his paintings were scarcely to be told from his -master’s. He now answered, “Oh, the old Rip Van Winkle! He ought to -be told to crawl into his hole and pull it in after him. Making a -laughing-stock of himself with those sooty old landscapes of his, year -after year.” - -Our host took a great draught of the beer in his stein, wiped his great -mustache with his fine damask napkin, and turned comfortably in his -chair. “Hendrick got me in a tight place the other day,” he began, “At -this year’s exhibition he marched me up to one of his bitumen-black, -woolly horrors, and said, ‘Now, Bellamy, you’re an honest man. Tell me -what it is you youngsters don’t like in that? It looks all right to me. -I can’t see why they all jump on me so. I look at theirs, and then I -look at mine.... I _can’t_ see what they’re talking about.’” - -“Well, for God’s sake, what nerve!” ejaculated the disciple, very much -astonished. “What did you say?” - -“What could I say?” said Bellamy. “I didn’t want to hurt the old man’s -feelings. I hadn’t supposed till then that he’d so much as noticed how -people feel about his work. I didn’t try to explain to him, of course. -What’s the use? He _can’t_ understand! If I’d talked to him all day -about what we’re after--light, and shimmer, and vibration--he wouldn’t -have known what I was talking about. If it were _in_ him to understand, -he’d die before he’d paint the way he does. So I just patted him on the -back and said, ‘Oh, you’re all right, Mr. Hendricks. What makes you -think there is anything the matter with your work?’ and pretended that -somebody was calling to me from the other side of the gallery.” - -He finished his beer at a draught. He thought himself magnificently -kind and tolerant. And so did we. - - -That was a long time ago, thirty years ago, to be exact. The Bellamys -took their little girl out of our school that spring, and I saw no more -of them. But I always felt a slight personal interest at the sight -of his name in a list of exhibitors, and in picture-galleries always -went to look at whichever bright, high-keyed, dashing portrait he was -exhibiting that year. Some years ago it began to seem to me that they -did not look just the same; and yet when I looked straight at them, -I saw that they were, quite miraculously, the same, the old Bellamy -flowing brush-work, the masterly rendering of fabrics, the ringing -color, the firm drawing, all lighted by that bold flood of sunlight -with which he had shocked and enchanted the early American public -groping its way out from Munich. - -Presently, finding that the impression that they were different -persisted, I set myself to analyze it, and found that their altered -look came from the altered character of the paintings beside and above -them ... and then, as the years went on, below them! For the time came -when the annual Bellamy portrait was not in the center of the last -gallery, to catch your eye as you entered, but was hung high in one of -the side-rooms. It looked very queer and matter-of-fact with its solid -surfaces honestly rendered in all their opacity, compared to the odd, -subtle, sideways-glancing, arrestingly imaginative canvases about it. -They took the eye far below the surfaces they depicted. They suggested -far more than they said. For days afterwards, they haunted you like an -unfinished cadence in a poem in a foreign language. The Bellamy canvas -was in no unknown language, but in the speech used for the daily order -to the grocer; nor was it in the least unfinished. It came finally to -seem to me as literal and bald a statement of fact as a time-table. - -One day this year, as I hung over an Arthur Davies, a strange, -beautiful, white-fleshed, eerie, blonde woman, placed at the side of a -luminous canvas, with, so it seemed to me, more pure imaginative beauty -than anything since Botticelli, I heard voices behind me. A tall, -splendid-looking old man, with a great white beard, fine dark eyes, and -the carriage of a king was talking to a younger man, an unimpressive, -slight, fair fellow, evidently very ill at ease. - -“See here, Brehming, speak out, tell me what it’s all about. I honestly -don’t know what you’re driving at, you kids. What’s the matter with -good drawing? What do you _want_ in a painting?” He waved a well-kept -hand up towards a canvas above us, “Isn’t there light in that? And -space? And interesting composition? And true values? _I_ ought to know -a good painting when I see one. What are you boys talking about when -you slash at my things so? I’m not sore. Don’t think I’m sore. You’ve -a right to your own opinion. Only, for the Lord’s sake, what _is_ your -opinion?” - -He had said he was not sore, but there was a raw note of hurt in his -voice, and his eyes rested anxiously on the young man beside him. - -The other looked every way except at him and said in a vague, hurried, -kindly voice, “Why, Mr. Bellamy, your work is all right, of course. -It’s fine. Sure, it’s fine. We all admire it like anything....” - - -Yes, I did hear that! I heard it just exactly as I’m setting it down. - - - - -“THE OLD NEW ENGLAND STOCK” - - -Students and classifiers of American “types” often say that the -grandfathers of the present generation of New Englanders represent -the “New England type” much more accurately than their descendants -of to-day. Some times I wonder what they mean by “New England type.” -Apparently they make the phrase stand for blue-nosed, thin-blooded -frigidity of temperament, a pinched, mean, timorous attitude towards -human life and human nature, and a cold, calculating capacity to skin -other people alive in a bargain. At any rate, the presumption seems to -be that whatever else they were, New Englanders were always very much -of the same sort. - -Here are my two New England grandfathers. - - -Both of them had identically the same sort of ancestry, plain English -people who came to the New World about the middle of the seventeenth -century. Certain genealogically-minded members of the two families -have gathered reverently together the scant tradition concerning the -generations that bridge the two centuries and a half of life in -America; but though I have dutifully plodded through the thick volumes -of “family histories” I have never been able to see that any of my -forebears did anything more than earn their own livings and keep out of -jail. - -Younger branches of both families moved up into Vermont, after the end -of the French-and-Indian wars and have lived here ever since. Both -my grandfathers spent their boyhood on Vermont farms. And there the -resemblance ceases. - - -One of them had, apparently, from early childhood, a passion for books -and learning and sophistication and cultivation--and gregarious, -articulate social existence--and dinner parties and black broadcloth -and white linen and good wine--and all the other elements in the sort -of life which is not to be found on Vermont farms. The Vermont farm, -however, seems to have presented him with some tools for getting what -he wanted: a powerful great body, an active mind and an unlimited -amount of dynamic energy. He left home at sixteen (this was about 1833) -spurred on by the sympathy of a strong-minded mother. I have still in -the attic of his old house, the little hair-covered trunk which he -took with him, and which contained all his worldly possessions. - -From that time on, until his old age, he never came home except to -rest in the occasional, very brief intervals of incessant and almost -appalling activity, both intellectual and physical. With only a -little help from his family he earned his way through college, and -then put himself through a Theological Seminary in record time. With -him, as with other manifestants of the mid-century explosion of -energy in America, it was as if the long generations of vegetating -country-dwellers had, like other vegetating matter of by-gone ages, -turned to rich veins of highly combustible material, which this -descendant of theirs mined out, at top speed, and cast by great -shovelfuls into the furnace of his personality. He seems always to have -been incandescent, the whole six-feet-three of him, with motive-power -which he could not, try as he might, use up fast enough to cool off. -All his life he burned hot with a vitality at which an ever-widening -circle of other human beings, rich and poor, young and old, learned -and ignorant, warmed their hands and their hearts. Even the people -whom he furiously rubbed the wrong way (he had as many enemies as -friends) were stimulated by the friction to a quicker life-pace, a -livelier circulation. The temperature in a room rose when he entered -it. Even people of sluggish, scholarly, dilettante temperaments, even -coldly superior and skeptical people who prided themselves on being too -disdainful of life to lift an eyebrow over its issues, soon kindled -either to intense exasperation or lively personal affection. In either -case, calm and ease and torpidity of life were scorched and shaken. -I have often thought with sympathy of the vestrymen in Grandfather’s -various parishes. - -As a young clergyman he ran one parish after another, with increasing -brio. When he settled down in the New York parish where he stayed for -most of his life, he was already editing a church-paper and writing -innumerable pamphlets, in addition to his regular duties as rector. He -now speeded up the staid old parish into new work of all sorts, added -one mission chapel after another to the church organization, pushed out -the influence of the parish further and further, especially into the -outlying regions of the slums, which because of their very discouraging -aspect of poverty and foreignness had been till then safe from attempts -to improve them. - -Of course I knew my grandfather only when he was a very old man, long -after he had retired from active life; but I never got from him the -slightest impression that he was what is known as a “religious-minded -person” or that all this remarkable expansion of church and mission -work came entirely from evangelical fervor. In fact, as I remember -Grandfather, you never would dream that he had been a minister at -all. My guess is that he developed that church as his contemporaries -developed their transcontinental systems of railways, because he was -born with a clutch that never slipped, so that all the power he created -by his many-cylindered motor was transmitted without loss to the wheels -which sent him with extreme rapidity along the road he had chanced to -follow. - -He not only developed the parish, he developed his own life: he bought -books, unendingly bought books, Hebrew, Latin, Greek, French, English. -No junk-man who ever lived has been able to free us entirely of this -vast accumulation of serious-minded books of research, now quite -worthless, all of them, full of the pompous and inaccurate scholarship -of his day. He traveled abroad and sprang, tiger-like, upon European -culture, with his formidable New-World capacity for the assimilation -of Gargantuan meals of solid food. He married “well,” as the saying -goes, and gave his son university life and European travel. He lived -as he had wanted to live, with friends and acquaintances in three -countries, dressing his vast body in fine broadcloth and white linen; -his house was lined with well-bound books; he was a famous talker--in -the vein of Dr. Johnson--much sought after for his brilliantly amusing -conversation, though at times, I take it, he followed his prototype -into rather overpowering monologue; he was a powerful and very fluent -public speaker--we have chests and chests full of his sermons still in -the attic--and so far as I can gather he no more doubted the ultimately -satisfying value of all these things as an integral part of life than -Mr. Russel Sage seems to have questioned the ultimately satisfying -value of squeezing the last penny of interest out of a loan, or Barnum -to have doubted the worthwhileness of running the biggest show on earth. - -It would be very unfair to give the impression that his agreeable -social life and the possession of objects and books then in fashion -made up the whole or even the largest part of his life. It took -such a formidable number of elements to satisfy his huge appetite -for life and activity, that it would be difficult to catalog them -all. Controversy, for instance; he adored pamphleteering, and was -known as one of the leading controversialists of his time. He was a -heart-felt Low-Churchman and perhaps the real passion of his passionate -life was his hot-blooded detestation of formalism in religious -beliefs. Infinitely various, and all headlong, were his attacks on -High-Churchism, with its rigid orthodoxy, and its fol-de-rols (as -he called them) of salvation by incense and candles and twiddling -distinctions between green and blue and yellow stoles. - -Indeed this shouldering impatience of formal theological points led -him late in life, to disagree vigorously with the majority of his -parishioners on several questions of doctrine. Refusing to conform to -the strict pattern they wished to impose upon him, he blew up with an -explosion, shook the dust of his religious vocation off his feet, and -retired to the comfortable old house in Vermont, where he spent his -old age, living comfortably on his small savings. He took with him -all the possessions he had enjoyed so heartily, his many, many books, -his substantial furniture, the excellent oil-portrait which had been -painted of his vivid, handsome face in middle-life, his gold-headed -cane, his great black-silk clerical robes, and fine ecclesiastical -linen. When he died, he had never, so far as I know, slept out of an -excellent bed a single night in all his life. - - * * * * * * * - -The other grandfather fared forth at about the same date or a little -earlier, and at about the same age; but not in search of well-set -dinner-tables nor well-filled libraries, nor the inheritance of culture -from past ages. On the contrary, he seems all his life to have been -engaged in running away from even the light and sketchy approximation -to imprisoning regularity which was shown by the America of that day -and the State of his birth. Like an unbroken colt who snorts and -wheels and dashes away at the mere sight of some one emerging from the -barn with a rope halter, this other farm-boy gave one look at what -seemed to him the penitentiary-like pressure of conventional life and -ran away with all the speed of what turned out to be a remarkably -fleet pair of heels. First, as a lad, he ran away from his perfectly -comfortable home, where he had been well cared for, and soundly if -plainly educated. Disdaining ... no, more than that, courting hardship, -as he always did, he roamed out into the absolute, untrammeled freedom -of early frontier life. There he starved and hunted and went in ragged -buckskin, and trapped, and moved on, and grew up to a great height and -great strength, and was no man’s man to his heart’s content. At some -time during this period he acquired, with characteristic casual ease, -the profession of surveyor, the only one of the trades or professions -at which he was willing even to give a glance. There was plenty of -unsurveyed land in the States at that time, and all of it in the new, -untracked wilderness which he loved. - -He seems always to have despised physical comfort as a clumsy trap laid -by life to catch you and hold you fast. None of it for him. He hated -the very indoor smell of it, as he did the burdening weight of material -possessions. A gun (which like other frontiersmen of that day he -passionately and personally loved), an ax (with which he could perform -almost any feat), the clothes he stood in, the tools of his wildwoods -profession, and the world before him, full, intoxicatingly full of -untrodden paths leading into bright enticing danger. Prosperity? A -home of his own? Above all, regular work? Never, as long as there were -squirrels and deer to shoot and logs to make temporary shelters withal! - -His roamings took him into Ohio, the early river and lake settlements -of which were at that time horribly marshy and fever-ridden. There -he encountered the lure which brings most young adventurers in under -a roof and beside a hearth-fire. He fell in love. A pretty Vermont -girl was visiting some cousins there and had set up a little millinery -shop, where she made and sold the scoop-bonnets of the period. Do you -see them, the tall, big-boned surveyor, with his magnetic personality, -pungent with the odor of freedom, and the pink-cheeked, white-fingered -little amateur milliner? - -She went back to Vermont to her family, and he followed her. I have -often amused myself by walking around over the roads and paths and -fields he must have trod during his wooing, and trying to imagine his -impatience of the cribbed and cabined superfluity and conventionality -of the Vermont life, which looked so primitive and bare to my other -grandfather. - -He endured it for some months, till his wooing was successful, and, -just after her twenty-first birthday, the gentle, home-loving girl put -her hand upon his sinewy arm and followed him out into the wilds. This -was in 1838 when the wilds were very wild indeed. My great-uncle, who -was her little brother at that time conceived a lifelong admiration -and affection for the great, strapping, warm-hearted hero who came to -take away his big sister. He used to tell me stories of that impetuous -wooing, and of the strange impression left on the deeply-rooted -mountain-people by the meteor-like appearance and disappearance of -this startling, unreliable, dangerously alive personality, living so -immorally free from all the rules and possessions and standards which -bore them down to the earth, and to which they so tenaciously clung. -My great-uncle always ended these stories of his brother-in-law (whom -he never saw but on that occasion) by saying, “He was a talented man, -with a powerful personality, who could have done anything he chose.” -He also told me, “Our minister said of Albert that he was a wild, free -son of Nature.” I take it the minister had had some contact with the -romantic-school phraseology so much in fashion at that date. - -It was a bitterly hard life which the Vermont girl had chosen, full -of extravagant hardships and privations of which she could never have -dreamed. They lived here and there, always from hand to mouth, always -as far beyond the edge of the settlements as it was possible to take a -family of young children, for they had five little girls by the time -they had been married a decade. Once or twice her husband made an -attempt to enter regular life, to run a store in a frontier settlement, -to take an everyday job; but these trials never lasted long, and their -old life was taken up, log-cabin after log-cabin, rough clearings in -the primeval forest, days when there was nothing but corn-meal in the -pantry, long treks in covered wagons to escape from the fever-and-ague -which burned and ravaged them; never more possessions than could be -drawn by a team of lean horses, ... and always unbroken love and -devotion between the two wayfarers. Wherever their caravan halted for -a few months was home to the woodsman’s wife, because he was there; -his vitality, his free-hearted zest in whatever came to them, bore her -along like a tidal wave. And to the end of her days she worshipped the -memory of his deep, never-wavering passion for her. - -You can imagine that her comfortably well-to-do family thought he took -a very queer way to show it, and with Yankee out-spokenness told them -both so, as cuttingly as Yankee tongues can speak. Without a hesitation -she flung her family ties away along with her love of home, her woman’s -love for stability, her mother’s anxiety about her little girls. Not -till long after his death did she again resume relations with her -family. - -Her little girls, never having known any other life, saw nothing -unusual in the one they led, especially as their mother, her -personality doubled and trebled by the exigencies of her life, stood, -somehow, miraculously between them and the most impossible of the -hardships to which their father so light-heartedly condemned them. -They were always dressed in well-mended garments, they had shoes and -stockings, they were clean and cherished, there was always cheer and -loving-kindness between their father and mother, and when there was -only corn-meal mush for supper, they scarcely noticed it, because of -the old songs and stories of which their mother had such a store. My -mother sang them to me, and I now sing them to my children, those old -folk-songs with which my grandmother charmed away hunger from her -little children. They adored their great, rollicking father, always in -high spirits, and they preferred the deer-steaks and squirrel stews -which were the results of his wonderful marksmanship, to the tough, -stringy beef and salt pork which was the diet of the other frontier -children. One of my mother’s vivid recollections is of looking out of -the window on a snowy day and seeing her stalwart father emerge from -the woods into the clearing, carrying ... a very Robin Hood ... a whole -deer’s carcass on his broad shoulders. He cast it down before the door -and called, like a great boy, for his women-folk to come and admire -him! She says she can close her eyes now, see the blood ruddy on the -snow, and her father’s thrown-back head and bright, laughing face. - -Of course, when the news of gold in California came, burning-hot like -wild-fire from the west, he was one of the first to go. He would be. -A distant, uncertain, and dangerous expedition, into unknown country; -could he resist such an alluring combination? Of course, he could have -resisted it if he had tried; but he did not try. He never tried. - -Also, of course, it was really out of the question to transport a wife -and five little girls across an untracked continent, full of Indians. -He was to go alone, make a brief stay, get the lay of the land, and -come back, his pockets full of gold, to take the family out in a ship -around the Horn. It was all settled in his mind as if the gold were -heavy in his pockets. The separation would be short ... he was sure -of it, as he was always sure of whatever would ensure his being free -of the slightest constraint.... He moved his family into the nearest -settlement, cashed in on everything saleable, added a small sum that -had just come to him as his share of his father’s small property, and -got together enough to support his family for a year. It took little -enough, as they had always lived. And he would be back before the year -was out, rolling in gold. - -With empty pockets and a high heart he took his gun and his ax, kissed -his family good-by and went away planning to live off the country as he -traveled, as he always had. - -One letter came back from California, the only one he ever wrote, -since he had never before been separated from the one human being he -had loved. He had had a gloriously adventurous time in getting out -there, Indians, drought, snow, heat, grizzly bears--all the regulation -accompaniments of the transcontinental trip in 1849. He struck it rich -at once, and as one of the first on the ground had a wonderful claim of -his own. They would all be rich in no time. - -In no time he was dead. - -For an interminable period his wife heard nothing, and then, very -vaguely, that he had died of “mountain fever.” He had been dead and -buried for months before she learned that she was a widow at thirty-two -with five helpless little girls and not a penny in the world. - - - - -OCTOBER, 1918 - - -MORNING - -I was crossing the Place de la Concorde, and stopped for an instant, -fascinated by the sinister expression of an immense cannon, painted -in serpentine streaks and stripes, the muzzle of its tube distorted -by an explosion so that a twisted flap of steel hung down like a -broken jaw-bone. A hail made me turn around. The elegant old man who -was an American correspondent for a New York newspaper, came up with -an expression of approval. “Magnificent display, isn’t it?” he said, -waving his hand towards the ranks of captured cannon and mitrailleuses, -standing thick on the public square. “Why didn’t you bring your -children?” - - -The gulf between his generation and mine yawned deep. I told myself -the part of wisdom was to close my lips on what I felt. But the cannon -leered at me too insolently, with its torn muzzle. - -I answered, “I’m glad enough when the police seem to be getting the -better of a band of ruffians who’ve been terrorizing the town. But I -don’t take the children to see the bloody clubs with which....” - -“Oh, come!” said my old friend, genially. “Feminine emotionality! -These don’t look much like bloody clubs. They look more like part of a -steel-foundry.” - -“Every cannon here is wreathed in human viscera, spattered with human -brains, and stands in a pool of human blood, if we only had eyes to -see!” I said moderately. - -“Why, you talk like a pacifist!” said the old gentleman, forgetting his -usual politeness to women. - -“I thought the unforgivable sin of the Germans was in forcing a war -on a world that has outgrown war! If war is so hateful a thing, why -complacently lay out to view its hideous instruments of torture?” - -“Because,” said my old friend with deep emotion, “because they have -been instruments of righteousness!” (For the moment he had forgotten -the nationality of the cannon about us.) - -“Have they?” I asked. “They’re German cannon, remember.” In spite of my -feeling sick, I could not but laugh at the change in his expression. I -went on, “Well, even if they had been sacred Allied cannon, they’d be -instruments of torture all the same. I thought we were fighting to put -such things on the scrap heap. Why don’t we have the decency to hide -them from view? We don’t put the offal from our slaughter-houses on -public view.” - -“Vegetarianism, next?” - -“Oh, no, I eat beefsteaks. But I don’t take the children to see the -steers killed.” - -“Of course, I know,” said my old friend tolerantly, “that women have a -traditional right to be illogical, but _really_.... Did you, or did you -not turn your personal life upside down to do your share in this war? -It would give me brain fever to feel two different ways about the same -thing.” - -“See here,” I put it to him, “a man, crazy-drunk comes roaring down our -street. Who _wouldn’t_ feel two ways about him? I certainly do. First, -I know that society has been wrongly organized to permit any boy to -grow up crazed with whiskey; and second, I know that my children must -be protected, now, at this very minute. Shooting that man dead isn’t -going to help the general situation at all. If we are not to have a -perpetual procession of crazy-drunk men coming down our street (_and -our own men among them_) we must change the organization of society -by long, patient, and constructive efforts. In the meantime with -the drunken man pounding on my door, if the police don’t do what is -necessary, why, of course, I will throw a dishpan of scalding water -down on him. But I wouldn’t spend the rest of my life making speeches -about the dishpan.” - -My sophisticated old friend had for me the smiling amusement one -feels for a bright child talking about what he does not understand. -Taking up the sharp ax of Ecclesiastes, he struck a great blow at the -root of the matter, “No, my dear girl, no, you don’t. A well-meaning, -high-principled woman like you, can do a great deal, but she cannot -amputate a vital part of human nature. You can’t make manly, brave men -ashamed of war and it’s a lucky thing for you you can’t, for if you -did, there would be nobody to stand between you and the bullies. Take -it from a man nearly twice your age, that without the soldier in every -man (and that means love of force and submission to force--you must -swallow that!) there would be no order in the world. You needn’t try to -reduce that element of force to mere businesslike police-work. It can’t -be done. There would be anarchy in the twinkling of an eye. You won’t -believe this, because it doesn’t fit into your womanish, preconceived -notions. But it doesn’t make any difference whether you believe it or -not. Such are the facts. And all your noble phrases can’t change them.” - - -I turned and left him. I did not believe a word he said, of course ... -but.... There _is_ a horrible side to human nature.... Suppose that to -hold it in check it might be necessary ... - - -AFTERNOON - -“Oh, mother, this is Thursday and the merry-go-round in the Parc of the -Château is running. Couldn’t you take us?” - -We set off, the three of us, hand in hand, crossed the arid, bare -Place d’Armes where the great Louis had mustered his troops, hobbled -up over the villainous paving-stones of the gray entrance court and -came by beautiful leafy avenues to where the primitive circle of wooden -horses whirled slowly about, as a one-armed soldier turned the crank. -I was left on a bench, with the other waiting mothers, watching our -children’s pleasure. - -My two were at once in another world--Jimmy’s a mere wide world of -enchantment, as befitted his five-year-old ignorance. He swam through -the air, a vague smile of beatitude on his lips. Sally sat very -straight, one hand on her hip, the other stretched out in a gesture of -command. She was perhaps Charlemagne before the defeated Saxons, or -possibly Joan of Arc at Orléans. Sally’s class at school begins to have -some notions of history. - -When the crippled soldier was tired, and we had paid our copper sous, -we wandered on, to a bench in front of a statue of mellow marble. Here -I sat down while the children ran about, shouting and kicking up the -chestnut leaves which laid a carpet of cloth-of-gold under their feet. -Their laughter sounded distant in my ears. I was hearing again the -cock-sure old voice of the morning.... “Anarchy in a moment if respect -for force were eliminated ... you cannot amputate a part of human -nature....” - - -What was my little daughter saying, with her amusing older-sister air -of omniscience? “Did you know, Jimmy, that it was a king who had all -this made, out of nothing at all. We’ve just had that in school. It was -only a bare, sandy plain, and he had all the trees brought here, and -the terraces made, and the water brought here.... It cost millions and -millions.” - -Jimmy looked up in astonishment at the giant oak over him. “Can you -carry great big trees like these around with you?” he asked. - -“No, gracious, no! It was ever so long ago. They’ve grown up since. -They were just scrawny little saplings. They’ve got an old picture at -school that shows how it was when he was alive. Awfully ugly!” - -“I wouldn’t have liked it then,” said Jimmy. - -Sally hooted at his ignorance. “My goodness, you don’t suppose you’d -ever have got any chance to play here if you’d lived then. Not much! -We never could have got in. They had soldiers at all the gates to keep -people out.” - -Jimmy’s sense of the probable was outraged. There were some things too -tall to be believed, even if Sally did say them. “What was it _for_, if -nobody was allowed in?” - -“It was for the king. Everything was for the king then. And he only let -in his own family and his special friends.” - -“I should think people would ha’ been mad to see the king hogging -everything for himself,” Jimmy said vigorously. - -“Oh, they were used to it,” explained Sally. “They thought it had to be -that way. All the learned men in those days told them that everything -would go to pieces and everybody would rob and murder everybody else -if they didn’t have a king and think they loved him more than anybody -else.” - -Once more Jimmy’s sense of the probable rose up to protest, “They -didn’t _love_ that old hog-it-all king!” The little twentieth-century -American brain refused to credit this ridiculous and inherently -impossible idea. - - -( ... and yet how many generations of men suffered and died to affirm -that idea as the natural and inevitable foundation of society!) - - -“Well, they thought they had to, and so they thought they did,” said -Sally lucidly. “The way we love our governments now. But after a couple -of hundred years or so they found out the learned men didn’t know so -much, and that it wasn’t having a king that kept folks from robbing and -murdering all the time. So they got together and came out here from -Paris and took all this away from him. And that’s how we get in to -play.” - -Jimmy’s fancy was tickled by a new idea. “I bet he’d be surprised if he -could see us playing here.” - -Sally dramatized the scene, instantly. “Wouldn’t he though! Suppose -he should come walking right down those marble steps with his high -wig and his big-buckled shoes, and his clothes all solid gold and -diamonds, and suppose he should walk right up to us and say, ‘You -good-for-nothing common-people, what are you doing in MY park? I’ll -have you boiled in oil at once!’” - -Jimmy was a little intimidated. He took his big sister’s hand and said -in rather a small voice, “What would you say back?” - -Sally made a dramatic gesture of scorn. “I’d say, ‘Get away from here, -you old King. Don’t you know you’re dead?’ And then, Jimmy, you know -ghosts aren’t solid. I’d just draw off and run right through him, gold -clothes and diamonds and all, like this.” - -She executed a headlong assault on space and came back laughing. - -Jimmy, reassured, caught the note, “Yes,” he said swaggering, “I would -too, I’d say, ‘You old King, you’re dead!’ and I’d run right through -him too.” - -It was the most delightful of all the games Sally had invented. They -went at it with gusto, their faces rosy and laughing as they took turns -in dashing through the non-existent might, majesty, and glory of a dead -idea. - - -It was a game which amused their mother quite as much as the children. -I sat watching them at it, till it was time to start home back through -the rich magnificence of the old park which had been planted for a -king’s pleasure and which throughout the silent, purposeful centuries -had grown to beauty for the people. - - - - -A BRETON AMONG HSÜ HSI - - -The black-and-white maid told me I was expected and showed me into the -drawing-room to wait. As I waited I looked around at the beautiful -room with the leaden depression which such beautiful rooms always -produce in me. It was a wonderfully elaborate composition with as many -details in it as there are notes on a page of music, and every one of -them was correct and accredited. As I stepped in through the door the -whole shouted in my ears a pæan of religiously devout acceptance of the -fashion then prevailing in interior decoration. - -The floor was dully lustrous, avoiding the vulgar shininess of varnish -so esteemed a decade or so before. There was a great deal of black in -all the fabrics as was then the fashion (now it would be vermilion -and verdigris green); chintz curtains with a black background and a -splashingly-colored design of wreaths and strange large birds; black -satin sofa-pillows, with stiff quilled ruffles in brilliant colors -to match the birds. The shades of the electric lights (which were -of course designed to make them look like candles) were ornamented -with cut-out black silhouettes of nude ladies with extremely long -legs. The furniture was either all “antique” or had been doctored to -look as though it were. A large, dark, carved chest stood against a -wall--to contain what it was difficult to conjecture. The chairs had -the correct kind of legs and backs and arms, that is, the kind that -had not yet been copied sufficiently to spoil it for the discerning -taste; and the straight, curiously-shaped table was at least two jumps -ahead of anything shown at that time even by the most enterprising -department-store. The walls, in accordance with the order of the -day, were for the most part smartly and knowingly bare, with a -few permissible reproductions of Chinese landscapes; one a tall, -narrow study of bamboo shoots, another a long, narrow study of snowy -mountains, depicted in three or four lines (this year it would be, I -suppose, an 1858 panel by Jolly). - -I sat down in what looked like the most comfortable of the -distinguished chairs, my feet on one of the correctly Oriental rugs, -and looked dispiritedly about me for some sign of living taste in all -that tastefully arranged room. There was plenty of taste shown there; -but it smelled so of the pages of an expensive magazine printed on -highly-glazed paper, that presently, as I sat there, despairing of -my race, I felt my own body take on the same flat, two-dimensional -unreality. Well, that is the sort of flat and unreal creatures human -beings are when it comes to taste, I reflected. - -There was not, so far as I could see, one single object in that room -(and God knows there were plenty of objects in it!) which rang out with -the clear, brave note of a thing chosen because it gives pleasure. -Everything about me wore a large, invisible but plainly legible -placard, setting forth that it was there because it was “the thing”; -and that the instant “the thing” was something else it would be cast -out and replaced with something else as meaningless as itself in the -life of the owner. - -The whole expensive show was perched on the branch of other people’s -opinions, and was ready to fall to the ground as soon as that branch -waved in the wind of a new fashion. There was not one object which -suggested what you might think would be the first, simple, hearty, -healthy instinct of prospering humanity, the desire to surround itself -with what it likes. No, in its abject consistency, the room shamelessly -proclaimed that its ambition was to be well thought of by “people in -the know” and not at all to please the family who had paid for it and -had to live with it. - -Docility in human beings is always a dreadful quality, but docility -in matters of taste is shameful. I sighed, and fixed my eyes on what -looked like a Chardin. Oh, yes, Chardin was “in” now, I remembered. -But an ordinary private family would be as little likely to own a -real Chardin as a real Veermeer. I reflected that as soon as it was -discovered not to be a genuine one, it would certainly be sent off to -the junk shop. And yet it was a delightful canvas, apparently by some -one of the period who had absorbed Chardin’s atmosphere and loved it as -we do. If it looked so much like a Chardin that only the X-ray could -tell the difference, why wasn’t it as good as a Chardin? I fell into a -meditation on the hideous ways of collectors of pictures, blasphemers -against the Holy Ghost of Art that they are. Ostensibly they buy -pictures because they love good paintings (I am not referring to art -_dealers_!). A collector sees a small canvas, said to be a Teniers, -and is ready to pay a fantastic price for it, enough to endow a school -for all time. Some expert with a chemical test proves that it is not a -Teniers. It is the same picture as before, the very same; but now the -lover of good art would not hang it on his walls, if it were given to -him. - -What kind of a race is that to belong to, I asked myself plaintively. -They don’t want beauty, they don’t want art, they haven’t even the -plain courage that any dog or monkey has, to want what they want. They -want what other people pretend to want. - -I got up restlessly, crossed over to the other side of the room, -turned my eyes to the side I had left, and was electrified. There -in the center of the wall, next to a small reproduction of a Madhu -camel-fight, was a large canvas, a solidly painted, honest, dark, -sentimental Jules Breton. I gazed at it with profound thankfulness. -There was not an extenuating circumstance. It was his usual peasant -girl, done with his usual pseudo-realism, with her usual bare feet, -every muddy toe conscientiously drawn, and it had darkened to the usual -Breton gloom. It swore at the top of its voice at all the knowing, -Orientalized, simplified, subtle things about it, and my heart leaped -up to hear it swear. For it sounded like a living voice. - -Here was something that must have been bought some time ago (for nobody -can actually have bought a Breton recently), which must have been hung -on the wall when Bretons were in style. But it had not been banished -when the style had changed! - -And yet the rest of the room told me unmistakably that the owner of -that room knew as well as any one else what was now thought of that -Breton by people “in the know.” - -Well, there was one visitor who appreciated it. Never before had I -thought to admire so ardently the dull, faithful, unimaginative surface -of a Breton. But I gazed at it with affection. There could be no reason -for its presence except that somebody liked it enough to keep it in -spite of what other people thought. Well, now--I took heart--maybe the -situation wasn’t so desperate as I had thought. Perhaps we may have a -live national taste in art, twenty or more generations later on. If -there was _any_body not an artist himself, who had the honesty and -courage which must be at the foundation of anything alive in artistic -taste, why perhaps.... - -Just then a dreadful possibility came into my mind--perhaps it had been -a wedding present from a wealthy uncle not to be offended? - -On this my host and hostess came in. As we talked of the object of my -visit (which had nothing to do with art) I was constantly spying on the -expression of their eyes, listening half-hopefully, half-despairingly -to the sound of their voices, watching feverishly every turn of -expression in their kind, honest faces. I had never seen them before -that day and probably shall have no occasion to see them again. But I -often think of them and wonder about them. They really looked as though -they might be capable of not being ashamed to like a picture no longer -in fashion. Perhaps they _had_ kept that Breton on their walls out of -sheer, honest, brave, artistic integrity.... - -But the more I think of it, the more unlikely it seems. - - - - -ALMERA HAWLEY CANFIELD - -b. 1787; m. 1808; d. 1874 - - -Of course I never saw her. She died years before I was born. But she -left behind her a portrait so full of her personality that no living -figure is more human to me than my great-grandmother. - -I do not at all refer to the portrait over the dining-room mantelpiece, -showing her as a withered old woman in a frilled cap, which is now the -only tangible sign of her existence left in her old home. No; that -might have been any withered old woman in a frilled cap. - -There is another portrait of my great-grandmother not done on canvas -with oils. Here are some of the strokes which one by one, at long -intervals, as if casually and by chance, have painted it for me. - - -When I was about eight years old, I went out one day to watch old -Lemuel Hager, who came once a year to mow the grass in the orchard back -of the house. As he clinked the whetstone over the ringing steel of -his scythe, he looked down at me and remarked: “You favor the Hawley -side of the family, don’t you? There’s a look around your mouth sort -o’ like Aunt Almera, your grandmother--no--my sakes, you must be her -great-granddaughter! Wa’l--think of that! And it don’t seem more’n -yesterday I saw her come stepping out same’s you did just now; not so -much bigger’n you are this minute, for all she must have been sixty -years old then. She always was the _littlest_ woman. But for all that -she marched up to me, great lummox of a boy, and she said, ‘Is it true, -what I hear folks say, Lemuel, that you somehow got out of school -without having learned how to read?’ And I says, ‘Why, Mis Canfield, to -tell the truth, I never did seem to git the hang of books, and I never -could seem to git up no sort of interest in ’em.’ - -“And she says back, ‘Well, no great boy of eighteen in the town -_I_ live in is a-goin’ to grow up without he knows how to read the -Declaration of Independence,’ says she. And she made me stop work for -an hour--she paid me just the same for it--took me into the house, and -started teaching me. - -“Great land of love! if the teacher at school had ’a’ taught me like -that, I’d ’a’ been a minister! I felt as though she’d cracked a hole -in my head and was just pouring the l’arning in through a funnel. -And ’twa’n’t more’n ten minutes before she found out ’twas my eyes -the trouble. I’m terrible near-sighted. Well, that was before the -days when everybody wore specs. There wa’n’t no way to git specs for -me; but you couldn’t stump Aunt Almera. She just grabbed up a sort of -magnifying-glass that she used, she said, for her sewing, now her eyes -were kind o’ failing her, and she give it to me. ‘I’ll take bigger -stitches,’ says she, laughing; ‘big stitches don’t matter so much as -reading for an American citizen.’ - -“Well, sir, she didn’t forgit me; she kept at me to practice to home -with my magnifying-glass, and it was years before I could git by the -house without Aunt Almera come out on the porch and hollered to me, -that bossy way she had, ‘Lemuel, you come in for a minute and let me -hear you read.’ Sometimes it kind o’ madded me, she had such a way o’ -thinkin’ she could make everybody stand ’round. And sometimes it made -me laugh, she was so old, and not much bigger’n my fist. But, by gol, I -l’arned to read, and I have taken a sight of comfort out of it. I don’t -never set down in the evening and open up the Necronsett ‘Journal’ -without I think of Aunt Almera Canfield.” - -One day I was sent over to Mrs. Pratt’s to get some butter, and found -it just out of the churn. So I sat down to wait till Mrs. Pratt should -work it over, munching on a cookie, and listening to her stream of -talk--the chickens, the hail-storm of the other day, had my folks -begun to make currant jelly yet? and so on--till she had finished and -was shaping the butter into beautiful round pats. “This always puts -me in mind of Aunt Almera,” she said, interrupting an account of how -the men had chased a woodchuck up a _tree_--who ever heard of such a -thing? “Whenever I begin to make the pats, I remember when I was a girl -working for her. She kept you right up to the mark, I tell you, and you -ought to have seen how she lit into me when she found out some of my -butter-pats were just a little over a pound and some a little less. It -was when she happened to have too much cream and she was ‘trading in’ -the butter at the store. You’d have thought I’d stolen a fifty-cent -piece to hear her go on! ‘I sell those for a pound; they’ve got to _be_ -a pound,’ says she, the way she always spoke, as though that ended it. - -“‘But land sakes, Mis’ Canfield,’ says I, all out o’ patience with her, -‘an ounce or two one way or the other--it’s as likely to be more as -less, you know! What difference does it make? _Nobody_ expects to make -their pats just a pound! How could you?’ - -“‘How could you? How could you?’ says she. ‘Why, just the way you make -anything else the way it ought to be--by keeping at it till it _is_ -right. What other way is there?’ - -“I didn’t think you could do it. I _knew_ you couldn’t; but you always -had to do the way Mis Canfield said, and so I began grumbling under my -breath about high-handed, fussy old women. But she never minded what -you _said_ about her, so long as you did your work right. So I fussed -and fussed, clipping off a little, and adding on a little, and weighing -it between times. It was the awfulest bother you ever saw, because it -spoiled the shape of your pat to cut at it so much, and you had to -start it over again every time. - -“Well, you wouldn’t believe it, how soon I got the hang of it! She’d -made me think about it so much, I got interested, and it wasn’t any -time at all before I could tell the heft of a pat to within a fraction -of an ounce just by the feel of it in my hand. And I never forgot it. -You never do forget that kind of thing. I brought up my whole family on -that story. ‘Now you do that spelling lesson just exactly _right_,’ -I’d say to my Lucy, ‘just the way Aunt Almera made me do the butter -pats!’” - - -I was sitting on the steps of the Town Hall, trying to make a willow -whistle, when the janitor came along and opened the door. “The Ladies’ -Aid are going to have a supper in the downstairs room,” he explained, -getting out a broom. I wandered in to visit with him while he swept and -dusted the pleasant little community sitting-room where our village -social gatherings were held. He moved an armchair and wiped off the -frame of the big portrait of Lincoln. “Your great-grandmother gave -that, do you know it?” he observed, and then, resting on the broom for -a moment and beginning to laugh, “Did you ever hear how Aunt Almera -got folks stirred up to do something about this room? Well, ’twas so -_like_ her! The place used to be the awfulest hole you ever saw. Years -ago they’d used it to lock up drunks in, or anybody that had to be -locked up. Then after the new jail was built the sheriff began to take -prisoners down there. But nobody did anything to this room to clean it -up or fix it. It belongs to the town, you know, and nobody ever’ll do -anything that they think they can put off on the town. The women used -to talk a lot about it--what a nice place ’twould be for socials, and -how ’twould keep the boys off the streets, and how they could have -chicken suppers here, same as other towns, if this room was fixed up. -But whose business was it to fix it up? The town’s of course! And of -course nobody ever thinks that he and his folks are all there is _to_ -the town. No, they just jawed about it, and kept saying ‘wa’n’t the -selectmen shiftless because they didn’t see to it!’ But of course the -selectmen didn’t have the money to do anything. Nothing in the law -about using tax money to fix up rooms for sociables, is there? And -those were awful tight times, when money came hard and every cent of -tax money had to be put to some good plain use. So the selectmen said -_they_ couldn’t do anything. And nobody else would, because it wasn’t -anybody’s business in particular, and nobody wanted to be put upon and -made to do more than his share. And the room got dirtier and dirtier, -with the lousy old mattress the last drunk had slept on right there -on the floor in the corner, and broken chairs and old wooden boxes, -and dust and dry leaves that had blown in through the windows when the -panes of glass were broken--regular dumping-ground for trash. - -“Well, one morning bright and early--I’ve heard my mother tell about it -a thousand times--the first person that went by the Town Hall seen the -door open and an awful rattling going on. He peeked in, and there was -little old Aunt Almera, in a big gingham apron, her white hair sticking -out from underneath a towel she’d tied her head up in, cleaning away -to beat the band. She looked up, saw him standing and gaping at her, -and says, just as though that was what she did every day for a living, -‘Good morning,’ she says. ‘Nice weather, isn’t it?’ - -“He went away kind of quick, and told about her over in the store, and -they looked out, and sure enough out she come, limping along (she had -the rheumatism _bad_) and dragging that old mattress with her. She drug -it out in front to a bare place, and poured some kerosene on it and set -fire to it; and I guess by that time every family in the street was -looking out at her from behind the window-shades. Then she went back -in, leaving it there burning up, high and smoky, and in a minute out -she came again with her dustpan full of trash. She flung that on the -fire as if she’d been waiting all her life to have the chance to get -it burned up, and went back for more. And there she was, bobbing back -and forth all the fore part of the morning. Folks from the Lower Street -that hadn’t heard about it would come up for their mail, and just stop -dead, to see the bonfire blazing and Aunt Almera limping out with -maybe an old broken box full of junk in her arms. She’d always speak -up just as pleasant and gentle to them--_that_ made ’em feel queerer -than anything else. Aunt Almera talking so mild! ‘Well, folks, how are -you this morning?’ she’d say. ‘And how are all the folks at home?’ And -then _slosh!_ would go a pail of dirty water, for as soon as she got -it swept out, didn’t she get down on her creaking old marrow-bones and -scrub the floor! All that afternoon every time anybody looked out, -splash! there’d be Aunt Almera throwing away the water she’d been -scrubbing the floor with. Folks felt about as big as a pint-cup by that -time, but nobody could think of anything to do or say, for fear of what -Aunt Almera might say back at them, and everybody was always kind o’ -slow about trying to stop her once she got started on anything. So they -just kept indoors and looked at each other like born fools, till Aunt -Almera crawled back home. It mighty nigh killed her, that day’s work. -She was all crippled up for a fortnight afterwards with rheumatism. But -you’d better believe folks stirred around those two weeks, and when she -was out and around again there was this room all fixed up just the way -’tis now, with furniture, and the floor painted, and white curtains to -the windows, and all. Nobody said a word to her about it, and neither -did she say a word when she saw it--she never was one to do any crowing -over folks--once she’d got her own way.” - - -The hassocks in our pew began to look shabby, and my aunt brought -them home from church to put fresh carpeting on them. They suggested -church, of course, and as she worked on them a great many reminiscences -came to her mind. Here is one: “I used to love to ride horseback, and -grandmother always made father let me, although he was afraid to have -me. Well, one summer evening, right after supper I went for a little -ride, and didn’t get home till about half-past seven. As I rode into -the yard I looked through the open windows, and there was grandmother -putting her bonnet on; and it came to me in a flash that I’d promised -to go to evening prayers with her. I was a grown-up young lady then, -but I was scared! You did what you’d promised grandmother you would, -or something happened. So I just fell off my horse, turned him out in -the night pasture, saddle and all, and ran into the house. Grandmother -was putting on her gloves, and, although she saw me with my great -looped-up riding skirt on and my whip in my hand, she never said -a word nor lifted an eyebrow; just went on wetting her fingers and -pushing the gloves down on them as though I was ready with my best hat -on. That scared me worse than ever. I tore into my room, slipped off my -skirt, put on another right over my riding trousers, slammed on a hat, -threw a long cape around me, and grabbed my gloves. As the last bell -began to ring and grandmother stepped out of the house, I stepped out -beside her, all right as to the outer layer, but with the perspiration -streaming down my face. I’d hurried so, and those great thick riding -trousers were so hot under my woolen skirt! My! I thought I’d die! And -it was worse in the church! Over in our dark, close corner pew there -wasn’t a breath of air. It must have been a hundred by the thermometer. -I was so hot I just had to do something or die! There weren’t but a -few people in the church, and nobody anywhere near our corner, and it -was as dark as could be, back in our high pew. So when we knelt down -for the General Confession I gathered the cape all around me, reached -up under my full skirt, unbuttoned those awful riding trousers, and -just cautiously slipped them off. My! What a relief it was! Grandmother -felt me rustling around and looked over sharp at me, to see what I -was doing. When she saw the riding trousers, she looked shocked, and -frowned; but I guess I must have looked terribly hot and red, so she -didn’t say anything. - -“Well, I knew it was an awful thing to do in church, and I was so -afraid maybe somebody _had_ seen me, although old Dr. Skinner, the -rector, was the only one high enough up to look over the pew-top, and -he was looking at his Prayer Book. But I felt as mean as though he’d -been looking right at me. Well, he finally got through the prayers and -began on the First Lesson. It was something out of the Old Testament, -that part about how the Jews went back and repaired the broken walls -of Jerusalem, each one taking a broken place for his special job, and -then how they got scared away, all but a few, from the holes in the -walls they were trying to fix up. Dr. Skinner always read the Lessons -very loud and solemn, as though he were reading them right at somebody, -and he’d sort of turn from one to another in the congregation with his -forefinger pointed at them, as if he meant that just for them. What -_do_ you suppose I felt like when he turned right towards our corner -and leaned ’way over and shook his finger at me, and said in a loud, -blaming tone, ‘But Asher continued and _abode_ in _his_ breaches!’ I -gave a little gasp, and grandmother turned towards me quick. When she -saw the expression on my face (I guess I must have looked funny), she -just burst right out into that great laugh of hers--ha! ha! ha! She -laughed so she couldn’t stop, and had to actually get up and go out -of church, her handkerchief stuffed into her mouth. We could hear her -laughing as she went down the walk outside! - -“You’d have thought she’d be mortified, wouldn’t you? _I_ was mortified -almost to death! But she wasn’t a bit. She laughed every time she -thought of it, for years after that. It was just like her! She did love -a good laugh! Let anything happen that struck her as funny, and she’d -laugh, no _matter_ what!” - -Later on, as we carried the hassocks back to the church and put them in -our pew, my aunt said, reflectively, looking round the empty church: -“I never come in here that I don’t remember how grandmother used to -say the Creed, loud and strong--she always spoke up so clear: ‘From -thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead. I believe in the -Holy Ghost: The Holy Catholic Church: The Communion of Saints: The -Forgiveness of sins--’ and then she’d stop dead, while everybody went -on, ‘The Resurrection of the body;’ and then she’d chime in again, -‘And the Life everlasting, Amen.’ You couldn’t help noticing it, she -took the greatest pains you should. But if anybody said anything about -it she always said that she didn’t believe in the resurrection of the -body, and she wasn’t going to _say_ she did. Sometimes the ministers -would get wrought up, especially the young ones, and one of them went -to the bishop about it, but nobody ever did anything. What _could_ you -do? And grandmother went right on saying the Creed that way to the day -of her death.” - - -On the hundredth anniversary of the organization of our parish there -were, of course, great doings in the way of centenary celebrations. -Many of the old rectors came back to visit, and to make after-dinner -talks and to preach at special services. One of the most interesting of -these old men was the Reverend Mr. Jason Gillett, who had been rector -for a year shortly after the Civil War, when he was a young man just -out of the Theological Seminary. He had since become well-known, one -might say famous (in church circles at least) for his sermons of a -fervor truly evangelical (so it was said), delivered in a voice noted -for its harmony and moving qualities. We had often read about his -preaching, in the Church papers. He had brought up from decay several -old parishes and had founded one of the finest and most thriving in -Chicago. - -There was a stir when his return for a day was announced, and the -morning when he preached, the church was crowded to the doors. He -proved to be a spiritual-faced, white-haired, handsome old man, -equipped with fine eyes and beautiful hands as well as his famous -voice. He preached a sermon which held every one in the church -breathlessly attentive. I noticed that his stole was exquisitely -worked in gold thread, and after the service, when the Altar Guild -were putting things away, we saw that his surplice was of extremely -fine material, with a deep band of embroidery about the hem. “Loving -lady-parishioners,” conjectured one of the Guild, holding it up. - -“They say the women are always crazy about him, everywhere, and no -wonder!” said another. “Such a fascinating, attractive personality.” - -“How did you like his sermon?” I asked. Personally I had found it -rather too dramatic for my taste. It rubs me the wrong way when I feel -that somebody is trying to work my feelings up, although I always feel -a little ashamed of this natural ungraciousness, which is labeled in -the talk of the old people of our locality as “Canfield cussedness.” - -One of my companions answered me, “Why, the tears ran right down my -cheeks, towards the end of that sermon!” - -And another added, “Such a power for good as he has been, all his life. -Think of his having begun his wonderful work right here in our little -parish.” - -The door opened and the preacher himself entered in his black cassock, -followed by a group of people. He was a little flushed from the -handshaking reception he had been holding in the vestibule and still -wore the affable smile which had gone with the handshaking. The men and -women who had followed him in were still talking two or three at once, -trying to get his attention, still fixing their eyes on him, unwilling -to leave him, moved evidently by his mere presence. - -“It’s a renewal of my youth to be here again in this dear old parish,” -he said genially, using a set of inflections of his fine voice quite -different from those of the sermon, “I find it all comes back to me -with the utmost freshness. Ah, youth! Youth!” - -He broke off to say in still another tone, “I know none of you will -object to my saying also that it is an immense relief to find the -parish rid of that detestable incubus Mrs. Almera Canfield. You must -all breathe a happier air, since she took her mocking cynicism into -another world.” - -A quick shifting of eyes, lifted eyebrows, and suppressed smiles told -him that he had been indiscreet. He faced the uncomfortable little -situation with a well-oiled ease of manner. “Have I offended some -one here?” he asked, instantly, turning towards us. Then, seeing by -my expression that I was the one involved, he said gallantly, “It’s -not possible that so very young a lady can have any connection with a -generation so long since passed away.” - -“Mrs. Almera Canfield was my great-grandmother,” I said, perhaps rather -drily. Not that I cared especially about Great-grandmother, of whom at -that time I knew very little, and who seemed as remote from my life as -Moses. But that same hateful, contrary streak in my nature was roused -to resentment by his apparent assumption that a smile and a word from -him could set anything straight. - -He found the fact of my relationship and of my knowledge of it very -amusing, “Where, oh, where, out of Vermont could you find a modern -young person who even knew the name of her great-grandmother? I’m -sure, my dear, that family loyalties are outlawed by such a long -interval of years. And I’m also sure by one look at you, that you are -not at all like your great-grandmother.” - -He seemed to think, I reflected, that I would be sure to take that as a -compliment. She must have been an old Tartar. - -I could think of nothing to answer, and he turned away again, to go on -chatting with the people who continued to hang on his words, laughing -loudly when he said something playful, nodding a grave concurrence in -his more seriously expressed opinions, their eyes always fixed on his. - -They all moved away, out into the church and down the aisle and I -did not see him again till that evening, when, quite unexpectedly, -he appeared beside me in the break-up of the company after the large -public dinner. - -“I feel that I owe you an apology,” he began persuasively and -courteously, “for having let slip that chance remark about a relative -of yours, even so very far distant. I would not have said it, of -course, if I had dreamed that any member of her family....” Up to this -point he had used the same sort of voice and tone that he had employed -after church that morning, but now he suddenly dropped into another -tone, quite different. I had a divination that it was not only quite -different from any inflection he had used, but also not at all what he -had had the intention of using. “I try to be fair ... to be tolerant -... to be _forgiving_, but really I can never forget the....” (it was -as if a wave of lava had burst up out of the smiling pleasantness of -his agreeable manner) “I simply can’t express to you the blighting, -devastating effect she had on me, young, sensitive, emotional and -ardent as I was at that time!” - -He started at the violence of his own voice and glanced quickly around -him as if to see whether any one else had heard it. And then he looked -intensely annoyed by his own gesture. - -“You are probably assuming that I refer,” he went on more quietly, -but still pressingly (it was as if for some reason he quite cared to -influence my unimportant opinion), “that I refer to her dictatorial -assurance that she knew better than any one else how things ought -to be run. Of course you must have heard plenty of stories of her -overbearing ways. But that is not the point; no, although she was a -hard parishioner on that account for a young clergyman struggling with -the administration of his first parish. What came back to me, in a wave -of bitterness as I stood up to preach to-day, was the remembrance of -the peculiarly corrosive vein of irony, with which she withered and -dried to the root any play of poetry or emotion in those about her. So -far from feeling any natural, human sympathy with ardent youth, she -had a cold intolerance for any nature richer or more warmly colored -than her own. She made it her business to drop an acid sneer upon any -expression of emotion or any appeal to it; and a life-long practice in -that diabolical art had given her a technique of raw, brutal roughness, -guaranteed to hamstring any spontaneity of feeling, any warmth of -personality. I could quote you dozens of such poisoned shafts of -hers.... Here’s one that came into my mind as I stood again in that -pulpit, where I first dedicated myself to the service of God. - -“I can never forget her comment on the first sermon in which I let -myself go into the fervor which was given me by nature. It was an -appeal for foreign missions, a cause always dear to my heart. I was -carried away by my feelings, and fairly poured out my soul to my -listeners. I have always considered that to be my first real sermon, -the first time I felt sure of my Vocation. Afterwards, as I stood in -the robing room, faint with the reaction after my emotion, I heard some -one just outside the door say, ‘Well, Aunt Almera, what did you think -of the sermon?’ And what do you think her answer was! She said, ‘Oh, I -_like_ to see anybody enjoy himself as much as that young man did.’” - -This unexpected conclusion brought to me such a sudden horrifying -desire to laugh that I felt quite shaken by the necessity to curb it. -And it was essential not to let it be seen. For he had wound himself up -again to a heat which astonished me. It was as if he had meant casually -to show me an old scar, and had found to his surprise that the wound -was as raw and smarting as ever. - -“Why,” he cried, “she all but drove me wholly out of preaching, at -the very outset of my career, sitting there as she did, Sunday after -Sunday, fixing that cynical aged eye on me. You can’t know ... I hear -that you have been brought up, luckily for you, outside of this deadly -New England atmosphere.... You can’t _imagine_ how it kills and freezes -all the warmth and color and fire out of life to have such a ... if I -hadn’t escaped out of it to....” - -“I’m afraid I’ve been brought up mostly in a New England atmosphere,” I -said, beginning to feel very cross and prickly. - -As if struck by something in my tone, he now looked at me very hard. I -don’t know what he saw in my face ... perhaps a family resemblance of -expression ... but he suddenly seemed to come to himself with a start. -He said abruptly, with an expression of extreme annoyance once more on -his face, “I beg your pardon for bringing all this up. I can’t think -what in the world made me!” and turned away with a noticeable lack of -suavity and grace of manner. - - -Once I was taken to see an old Irishwoman who had come from Ireland as -a young girl, just after the great famine in ’48, and had gone to work -for Great-grandmother, who was then sixty-three years old. She told me -this story, in her thick, thick early-nineteenth-century brogue, which -I will not try to reproduce here: “There was a pretty girl, young and -happy-looking, that lived up the road with her father, a poor weak -rag of a man with a backbone like a piece of string. He’d married for -his second wife a hard, hard woman. And when they found out the girl -was in trouble, and her sweetheart that was the cause of it off up in -the North Country for the winter to work as a lumberjack, didn’t the -stepmother turn the poor girl out--yes, out like a dog. And old Mrs. -Canfield--that was some kin to you, I forget what--where I was working, -she went right out and brought her in, and kept her there safe and -sound all winter, treating her as nice as anybody, letting her sew -to pay for her keep, and helping her make the baby clothes. She’d go -with her to church every Sunday, the girl right on her arm, and nobody -daring to say a word, for fear of old Mrs. Canfield’s tongue, ‘For,’ -she used to say, ‘let ’em say a word if they dare, and I’ll tell a few -things I know about some folks in this town who had to be married in a -hurry, and whose babies came into the world ahead of time.’ You see, -she was so old she knew everything that had happened from the beginning -almost. She’d say, ‘There’s lots worse things done every day in this -town than anything Margaret’s done,’ she’d say, and nobody to answer -her back a word. - -“But everybody was thinking it very certain that the man would never -come back, and if he did, he’d never own the child, nor have anything -to do with Margaret, poor girl! You see, in those days there weren’t -any mails that were carried ’way back off in the woods, and she neither -had any word of him nor he of her. Well, old Mrs. Canfield knew what -people were saying all right, and I could see that she was troubled in -her mind, though she never lowered her high head by an inch. Margaret’s -time drew near, and no sign from John Dawson that was away. But -Margaret never lost her faith in him a minute. ‘When John is back,’ -she’d say, just as sure of him as though they’d been married by the -priest; but I could see old Mrs. Canfield look queer when she’d hear -Margaret talking that way. - -“And then one morning, in April ’twas, and we’d all the doors and -windows open for the first time, Margaret had gone down the walk to -look at the lilac bush to see if there were any buds on it, and around -the corner came John Dawson! - -“Her back was to him and he hadn’t any idea she was there, so when -she turned round, they stared at each other for just a minute, as if -they’d never seen each other. Now the moment had come, Margaret stood -there frozen, just waiting, like a little scared, helpless--I had the -half of me hanging out the kitchen window to see what would happen, and -I’ll never forget it--never--never--never--the look on his face, the -astounded look on his face, so full of pity and love, so strong with -pity and love. ‘Margie! _Margie!_’ he said in a loud voice, and threw -his sack off his back and his gun from his hand, and ran, ran to take -her in his arms. - -“Well, when I could see again, I went off to tell old Mrs. Canfield, -and there was the old lady in her own bedroom, standing bolt upright -in the middle of the floor, and crying at the top of her voice. Her -wrinkled old face was just a-sop with tears. Faith, but it was the -grand cry she was having! And the good it did her! When she came to, -she says to me, ‘Well,’ says she, ‘folks aren’t so cussed as they seem, -are they?’ - -“And then we went downstairs to get out the fruit-cake and the brandied -peaches; for the minister married them in our parlor that afternoon.” - - -One day old Mr. Morgan, the one-armed Civil War veteran, took me along -with him, to get out of the buckboard and open gates, on the back road -along the river. He was going up to a hill pasture to salt his sheep. -It took forever to get there, because his horse was so slow, and he -had time to tell me a great many stories. This was one of them: “When -I was a boy at school, I worked at Aunt Almera Canfield’s doing chores -night and morning. I remember how she used to loosen herself up in -the morning. She was terribly rheumaticky, but she wouldn’t give in -to it. Every morning she’d be all stiffened up so she couldn’t stand -up straight, nor hardly move her legs at all; but she’d get herself -dressed somehow, and then two of her sons came in to help her get -started. She’d make them take hold of her, one on each side, and walk -her around the room. It was awful to hear how she’d yell out--yell as -though they were killing her! And then they’d stop, the sweat on their -faces to see how it hurt her, and then she’d yell at them to go on, -go on, _she_ hadn’t asked them to stop! They were over sixty, both of -them, with grandchildren themselves, but they didn’t dare not do what -she said, and they’d walk her round again. She’d kick her poor legs -out in front of her hard, to get the joints limbered up, and holler -with the pain, and kick them out again, till by and by she’d get so she -could go by herself, and she’d be all right for the day. I tell you, I -often think of that. Yes, lots of times, it comes back to me.” - -Up in the sheep pasture, as we sat to rest the horse, he told me this: -“I always thought Aunt Almera knew all about the John Brown raid before -most folks did--maybe she sent some money to help him. She wasn’t a -bit surprised, anyhow, when she heard of it, and all through the whole -business she never thought of another thing, nor let anybody else. He -was caught--any of us that lived in that house those days will never -forget a one of those dates--and put in jail on the 9th of October, -and his trial lasted until the 31st. Aunt Almera made us get together -in the evenings, me and the hired girl and one of her grandsons and -her daughter, all the family, and she’d read aloud to us out of the -‘Tribune’ about what had happened that day at his trial. I never saw -her so worked up about anything--just like ashes her old face was, and -her voice like cold steel. We got as excited about it as she did, all -of us, especially her grandson, that was about my age. The day of his -execution--December 2d, it was--Aunt Almera came at dawn to wake me up. -‘Put on your clothes,’ says she, ‘and go over to the church and begin -to toll the bell.’ I didn’t need to ask her what for, either. I’ll -never forget how awful she looked to me. - -“Well, we tolled the bell all day long, one or the other of the family, -never stopped a minute. You never heard anything so like death. All day -long that slow, deep clang--and then a stillness--and then _clang!_ -again. I could hear it in my head for days afterwards. Folks came in -from all around to find out what it meant, and Aunt Almera called them -all into her parlor--she sat there all day and never ate a mouthful -of food--and _told_ them what it meant, so they couldn’t ever get the -sound of her voice out of their ears. Between times she’d read out -of the Bible to whoever was there, ‘Avenge thou thy cause, O Lord God -of battles,’ and ‘It is time for thee, O Lord, to lay to thy hand, -for they have destroyed thy law,’ and ‘Let there be no man to pity -them; nor to have compassion of their fatherless children.’ It was the -darndest thing to hear her! - -“You’d better believe when Abraham Lincoln sent out the first call for -men there wasn’t a boy of military age in our town that didn’t enlist!” - - -An aged cousin had just died, and as we sat downstairs talking with the -doctor, he said to my aunt, who had been taking care of the sick woman: -“She took it hard! She took it hard!” - -They both frowned, and my aunt looked rather sick. Then the doctor -said, “Not much like your grandmother, do you remember?” - -“Oh, yes, I remember,” said my aunt, her face quivering, her eyes -misty, her lips smiling. - -The doctor explained to me: “Your great-grandmother was an old, old -woman before she ever was really sick at all, except for rheumatism. -And then she had a stroke of paralysis that left her right side dead. -She lived four days that way--the only days she’d spent in bed in -years, since she was a young woman, I suppose. Her mind wasn’t very -clear, she couldn’t talk so that we could understand her, and I don’t -think she rightly knew anybody after her stroke. I guess she went -back, ’way back, for we saw from what she did that she thought she had -a little baby with her. I suppose she thought she was a young mother -again, and that was why she was in bed. We used to see her spread out -her arm, very gentle and slow, the only arm she could move, so’s to -make a hollow place for a little head, and then she’d lie there, so -satisfied and peaceful, looking up at the ceiling with a smile in her -eyes, as if she felt a little warm, breathing creature there beside -her. And sometimes she’d half wake up and stretch out her hand and -seem to stroke the baby’s head or snuggle it up closer to her, and -then she’d give a long sigh of comfort to find it there, and drop off -to sleep again, smiling. And she’d always remember, even in her sleep, -to keep her arm curved around so there’d be room for the baby; and -even in her sleep her face had that shining new-mother look--that old -wrinkled face, with that look on it! I’ve seen lots of death-beds, but -I never--” he stopped for a moment. - -“Why, at the very last--do you remember?”--he went on to my aunt, “I -thought she was asleep, but as I moved a chair she opened her eyes -quickly, looked down as if to see whether I had wakened the baby, and -looked at me, to warn me to be quiet, her fingers at her lips. ‘Sh!’ -she whispered. - -“And that was the way she died.” - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RAW MATERIAL *** - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the -United States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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