The Galaxy Magazine (June, 1870)
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tte ks Poy eee ys VOL. IX.—JUNE, 1870.—No. 6. \ PUT YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE * By CHARLES READE, Author of “Foul Play,” “Griffith Gaunt,” etc, CHAPTER XLII. 66 ETTER for me if I had, then I could chop and change from one to B another as you would have me. No, mother; I dare say if I had never seen Grace I should have loved Jael. As it is, I have a great affection and respect for her, but that is all.” * And those would ripen into love if once you were married.” “They might. Ifit came to her flinging that great arm round my neck in kindness she once saved my life with by brute force, I suppose a man’s heart could not resist her. But it will never come to that while my darling lives. She is my lover, and Jael my sister and my dear friend. God bless her, and may she be as happy as she deserves. I wish I could get a word with her, but that seems out of the question to-night. I shall slip away to bed and my own sad thoughts.” ) With this he retired aiunserved: In the morning he asked Jael if she would speak to him alone. “Why not?” said she, calmly. They took a walk in the shrubbery. “T tried hard to get a word with you yesterday, but you were so taken up with that puppy.” “He is very good company.” “TI have seen the time when I was as good; but it is not so easy to chatter with a broken heart.” “That is true. Please come to the point and tell me what you want of me now.” This was said in such a curious s tone, that Henry felt quite discouraged. | He hesitated a moment and then said, “ What is the matter with you? You are a changed girl to me. There’s something about you so cold and severe; it makes me fear I have worn out my friend as well as lost my love; if it is so, tell me, and I will not intrude my sorrow any more on you.” * Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, by SHELDON & Company, in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court for the Southern District of New York. 48 ¢
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% 732 PUT YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE. (June, There was a noble and manly sadness in the way he said this, and Jael seem- ed touched a little by it. “ Mr. Henry,” said she, “I'll be frank with you. I can’t forgive you leaving the factory that night without saying a word to me; and, if you consider what I had done before you used me so, and what I suffered in consequence of your using me so—not that you will ever know all I ‘suffered, at least I hope not—no, I have tried to forgive you; for, if you are a sinner, you aré a‘sufferer—but it is no use, I can’t. I never shall forgive you to my dying day.” Henry Little hung his head dejectedly. “That is bad news,” he faltered. “I told you why I did not bid you good-by except by letter: it was out of kindness. I have begged your'pardon for it all the same. I thought you were an angel: but I see you are only a woman’; you think the time to hit a man is when he is down, Well, I can but. submit. Good-by. Stay one moment, let me take your hand, you won’t refuse me that.” She did not deign a word; he took her hand and held it.. “ This is the hand and arm that worked with me like a good mate: this is the hand and arm that overpowered a blackguard and saved me: this is the hand and arm that saved my Grace from a prison and publicshame. I must give them both oné kiss, if they knock me down for it. There—there—good-by, dear Jael, good-by! I seem to be letting go the last thing I have to cling to in the deep waters of trouble.” Melted by this sad thought, he held his best friend’s hand till a warm tear dropped on it. That softened her; the hand, to which he owed so much, closed on his and detained him. “Stay where you are. I have told you my mind, but I shall acf just as I used to do. I’m not proud of this spite I have taken against you, don’t you fancy that. There—there, don’t let us fret about what can’t be helped; but just you tell me what I can do for you.” : Young Little felt rather humiliated at assistance being offered on these terms. He did not disguise his mortification. | “ Well,” said he, rather sullenly, “beggars must not be choosers. Of course I wanted you to tell me where'I am likely to find her.” “IT don’t know.” “ But you left Hillsborough with her?” ‘Yes, and went to York. But there I left her, and she told me she should travel hundreds of miles from York. I have no notion where she is.” Little sighed. “She could not trust even you.” “The fewer one trusts with a secret the better.” “Will she never return? Will she give up her father as well as me? Did she fix no time? Did she give you no hint ?” “No, not that I remember. She said that depended on you.” “On me?” ve Yes.” Here was an enigma. They puzzled over it along time. At last Jael said, “She wrote a letter to you before she left: did she say nothing in that? Have you got the letter?” “Have I gotit? The last letter my darling ever wrote tome! Do you think it ever leaves me night or day?” He undid one of his studs, put his hand inside, and drew the letter out warm from his breast. He kissed it and gave it to Jael. She read it carefully and looked surprised. ‘Why, you are making. your own-difficulties. You have only: got to do what you'are told.. Promise not to fall foul of that Coventry, and
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1870.] PUT: YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE, 733. not to tempt ‘her ‘again, and you will hear of her. You°have “her own ‘word for it.” | “ But how'am I to let her know I promise?” “T don’t know; how does everybody let everybody know things ‘nowadays ? They advertise.” “Of course they do—in the second column of ‘The Times.’” © “You know best.” Then, after a moment’s reflection, “ Wherever she is, she’ takes in the Hillsborough papers, to see if there’s anything about you in them.” “Oh, do you think'so’?” “Think‘so? I am‘sure'ofit. I put myself in’ her place.” “Then I will advertise in ‘The Times’ and the Hillsborough papers.” He went into the library and wrote séveral advertisements.’ This is the‘one Jael preferred : “H.L.to G.C. Isee you are right. There shall be no vengeance except’ what the law may give ‘me; nor will I ever renew that request which offended you so justly. I will be patient.” He had added an entréaty that she would communicate with him,'but this Jael made him strike out.’ She thought that might make Grace suspect his’sin- cerity. “Time enough to put that in a month hence, if you don’t hear from héer.” This ‘was all I think worth recording in the interview between Jael and Hen- ry, except that at parting he thanked her warmly, and said, “ May I give you one piece of advice in return? Mr. Richard Raby has fallen'in love with you, and no wonder. If my heart was not full of Grace I should have fallen'in ‘love with! you myself, you are ‘so good and''so beautiful; but he bears.a bad character. You are wise in other people’s affairs, pray don’t be foolish 'in-your own.” “Thank you;” said Jael,'a little drily... “I shall think twice before I give my affections to any young man.” Henry had a'word with his mother before he went, and begged her not to pre- pare disappointment for herself by trying to bring Jael and him together: “ Be- sides, she has 'takén a spite against me. To be sure it isnot very deep; for she gave me good advice, and I advised her not to throw herself away on Dissolute: Dick.” | Mrs. Little smiled knowingly and looked very much’ pleased, but she said nothing more just then. Henry Little ‘returned to Hillsborough, and put’ his ad- vertisement in “The Times” and the Hillsborough journals. Two days afterward, Ransome called on’him, with’ the “ Hillsborough Liber- al.” “Is this yours?” said Ransome. “Yes. I have reason to think’she will write to me, if she ‘sees iti” © “ Would you mind giving me ‘your reason ?” Little gave it, but with so much réticence, that'no other man'in Hillsborough’ but Ransome would have understood. “Hum!” said he, “I think I can do something with this.” A ‘period of expectation ‘succeeded, hopeful at ‘first; and full of excitement ; but weeks rolled on without a word from the fugitive; and Little’s heart sickened: with hope deferred: He ‘oftén ‘wished’ to consult: Jael Dence again; he had a superstitious beliefin her sagacity. But the recollection ‘of her cold manner de- terred him. At last, however, impatience and the sense of desolation conquered, and he rode over to’ Raby Hall...
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734, _ PUT YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE, [JunE, He found his uncle and his mother in the dining-room. Mr. Raby was walk- ing about looking vexed, and even irritable. The cause soon transpired. Dissolute Dick was at that moment in the drawing-room, making hot love to Jael Dence. He had wooed her ever since that fatal evening when she burst on society full-blown. Raby, too proud and generous to forbid his addresses, had nevertheless been always bitterly averse to them, and was now in a downright rage; for Mrs. Little had just told him she felt sure he was actually proposing. “Confound him!” said Henry, “and I wanted so to speak to her.” Raby gave him a most singular look, that struck him as odd at the time, and recurred to him afterward. At last steps were heard overhead, and Dissolute Dick came down stairs. Mrs. Little slipped out, and soon after put her head into the dining-room to the gentlemen, and whispered to them “Yrs.” Then she retired to talk it all over with Jael. | At that monosyllable Mr. Raby was very much discomposed. “ There goes a friend out of this house; more fools we. You have lost her by your confounded folly. What is the use spooning all your days after another man’s wife? I wouldn’t have had this happen for ten thousand pounds. Dissolute Dick! he will break her heart in a twelvemonth.” | “Then why, in heaven’s name, didn’t you marry her yourself?” “Me! at my age? No; why didn’t you marry her? You know she fancies you. The moment you found Grace married, you ought to have secured this girl, and lived with me; the house is big enough for you all.” “Tt is not so big as your heart, sir,” said Henry. ‘But pray don’t speak to me of love or marriage either.” “Why should 1? The milk is spilt; it is no use crying now. Let us go and dress for dinner. Curse the world—it is one disappointment.” Little himself was vexed, but he determined to put a good face on it, and to be very kind to his good friend Jael. : She did not appear at dinner, and when the servants had retired, he said, “ Come now, let us make the best of it. Mother, if you don’t mind, I will settle five thousand pounds upon her and her children. He is a spendthrift, I hear, and as poor as Job.” | | Mrs. Little stared at her son. ‘Why, she has refused him.” Loud exclamations of surprise and satisfaction ! “ A fine fright you have given us... You said ‘ Yes.’” “Well, that meant he had proposed. You know, Guy, I had told you he would: I sawit in his.eye. So I observed, in a moment, he Aad, and I said “Tes” | “Then why doesn’t she come down to dinner ?” “He has upset her. It is the old story: he cried to her, and told her he had been wild, and misconducted himself, all because he had never met a woman he could really love and respect; and then he begged her, and implored her, and said his fate depended on her.” .. “But she was not. caught with that chaff; so why does she not come and receive the congratulations of the company on her escape?” “Because she is far too delicate ;” then, turning to her son, “and, perhaps, because she can’t help comparing the manly warmth and loving appreciation of Mr. Richard Raby, with the cold indifference and ingratitude of others.” “Oh,” said Henry, coloring, “if that is her feeling, she will accept him next time.”
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1870. ] PUT YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE. 735 “Next time!” roared Raby. “There shall be no next time. I have’ given the scamp fair play, quite against my own judgment. He has got his answer now, and I won’t have the girl tormented with him any more. I trust that to you, Edith.” Mrs. Little promised him Dick and Jael should not meet again, in Raby Hall at least. That evening she drew her son apart and made an earnest appeal to him. “So much for her spite against you, Henry. You told her to decline Richard Raby, and so she declined him. Spite, indeed! The gentle pique of a'lovely, good girl, who knows her value, though she is too modest to show it openly. Well, Henry, you have lost her a hushand, and she has given you one more proof of affection. Don’t build the mountain of ingratitude any higher: do pray take the cure that offers, and make your mother happy, as well as yourself, my | son.” In this strain she continued, and used all her art, her influence, her affec- tion, till at last, with a weary heart-broken sigh, he yielded as far as this: he said that, if it could once be made clear to him there was no hope of his ever marrying Grace Carden, he would wed Jael Dence at once. Then he ordered his trap, and drove sullenly home, while Mrs. Little, full of delight, communicated her triumph to Jael Dence, and told her about the five thousand pounds, and was as enthusiastic in praise of Henry to Jael, as she had been of Jael to Henry. . Meantime he drove back to Hillsborough, more unhappy than ever, and bitter. against himself for yielding, even so far, to gratitude and maternal influence. It was late when he reached home: he let himself in with a latch-key, and went into his room for a moment. A letter lay on the table, with no stamp on it: he took it up. It contained but one line; that line made his heart leap. “News of G. C. \ * RANSOME.” CHAPTER XLIII. LATE as it was, Little went to the Town-hall directly. But there, to his bit- ter disappointment, he learned that Mr. Ransome had been called to Manchester by telegram. Little had nothing to do but to wait, and eat his heart with impa- tience. However, next day, towards afternoon, Ransome called on him at the works, in considerable excitement, and told him a new firm had rented large business premises in Manchester, obtained goods, insured them in the “ Goss- hawk,” and then the premises had caught fire, and the goods been burnt to ashes ; suspicions had been excited; Mr. Carden had gone to the spot, and tele- graphed for him. He had met a London detective there, and, between them, they had soon discovered that full cases had come in by day, but full sacks gone out by night: the ashes also revealed no trace of certain goods the firm had insured. “ And now comes the clue to it all. Amongst the few things that survived the fire was a photograph—of whom do you think? Shifty Dick. The dog had kept his word, and gone into trade.” “ Confound him!” said Little; “he is always crossing my path, that fellow. You seem quite to forget that all this time I am in agonies of suspense. What do I care about Shifty Dick? He is nothing to me.” “Of course not. I am full of the fellow: a little more, and he'll make a
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736 | PUT: YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE. (Jung, monomaniac of.me. .Mr. Carden offers. £200 for his capture ;,and we got an inkling he was coming, this way again. There, there, I .won’t mention his name to you again. Let us, talk,of what w2//,interest you. .Well, sir, have. you ob- served that you are followed and watched ?” 166 No;” A “JT am glad of it; then it has been done skilfully. You have been closely watched this month past by my orders.” ‘This. made young) Little feel. queer. Suppose he had attempted anything unlawful, his, good friend.here would have collared him. ~ “You'll wonder \that-a-good citizen like you should be put under surveillance ; but, I, thought -it likely, your advertisement would either make the lady write to you, or else'draw her back to the town. She didn’t write,.so I had you watched, to see ifanybody. took a sly peep at you. Well, this.went on for weeks, and noth- ing turned. up. But the other, night a young woman walked several times by ,your house,,and went away with a,sigh. She had a. sort of Protestant nun’s dress on, anda thick veil. .Now you. know Mr. Carden told you,she was gone into a convent. I am almost,sure it is the lady.” Little thanked him with,all his soul, and then inquired eagerly where the nun lived. “Ah, my. man didn’t;know that. Unfortunately, he.was on duty in the street, and had no authority to follow anybody. However, if you can keep yourself calm, and obey orders——” “] will do.anything you tell, me.” / Well, then, this,,evening, as.soon as itis quite dark, you do.what, I have seen you do in happier times. Light your reading-lamp, and sit reading close to the. window ;,only you, must not pull. down the blind. Lower the venetians, but don’t turn them so as to hide your face from the outside. You must promise me faithfully not to move under any circumstances, or you would be sure to spoil all.” Little gave the promise, and performed it to the letter. He lighted his lamp, and tried to read book after book; but, of course, he was too agitated to fix his attention on them. He got all Grace’s letters, and read them; and it was only by a stern effort he kept still at all. The night wore on, and jheart-sickness was, beginning to succeed to feverish impatience, ‘when there was a loud knock at the door. Little-ran to, it himself, and found a sergeant of police,,who told him. in alow voice he brought a mes- sage from the chief constable. “J was to tell you itis all right; he is following the party himself. He will call on you.at twelve to-morrow morning.” ) “Not before that ?”’.said Little. However, he. gave the sergeant a sovereign, for good news, and then, taking his hat, walked twenty miles out of Hillsbor- -ough, and back, for he knew it was useless his going to’ bed, or trying to settle to anything. He got back at ten o’clock, washed, breakfasted, and dozed on two chairs, till Ransome came, with a carpet-bag in his hand. “ Tell. me all. about it: don’t omit anything.” This was. Little’s greeting. “Well, sir, she passed the house about nine o’clock, walking quickly ; and took just one glance in at your, window, but did not stop. She came back in _ half an hour, and stood.on the opposite: side of the way, and then passed on. I hid in a court, where she couldn’t see me. By and by she comes back, on your side the way this time, gliding like a cat, and she crouched and curled round the
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1870.} PUT YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE. | 737 angle of the house, and took a good look at,you. Then she, went slowly away, and I passed her. She was crying bitterly, poor girl. I never lost.sight of her, and she led me a dance, I can tell you. I’ll take you to. the place; but you had better let me disguise you; for I can see she is very. timid, and would, fly.away in a moment, if she knew she was detected.” Little acquiesced, and Ransome disguised him in a beard, and a loose set of clothes, and a billy-cock hat, and said that would do as long as he kept-at a prudent distance from the lady’s eye. They then took a cab and drove out of Hillsborough. When they had proceeded about two miles up the valley, Ran- some stopped the cab, and directed the driver to wait for them. * He then walked on, and soon came to a row of houses, in two blocks of) four houses each. The last house of the first block had.a bill in the window, “To be let fur- nished.” 3 He then knocked at the door, and a woman in charge of the house opened it. “T am the chief constable of Hillsborough ; and this is my friend Mr. Park; he is looking out for a furnished house. Can he see this one?” The woman said, “ Certainly, gentlemen,” and;showed them over the hota Ransome opened the second story window, and looked out on the back gar- den. “Ah,” said he, “these houses have nice long gardens in the rear, where one can walk and be private.” He then nudged Henry, and asked the woman who lived in the first house of the next block; “‘the house that garden belongs to?” “Why, the bill was in the window the other day; but it is just took. She is a kind of a nun, I suppose: keeps no servant; only a girl comes in and does for her, and goes home at night. .I saw her yesterday, walking in the garden there. She seems rather young to be all alone like that; but perhaps. there’s some more of ’em coming. They sort 0’ cattle mostly, goes in bands.” Henry asked what was the rent of the house. The woman did not know, but told him the proprietor lived a few doors off. “I shall. take this house,” said Little. “I think you are right,” observed Ransome: “it will just answer. your purpose.” They went together,.and took the house directly; and Henry, by advice of Ransome, engaged a woman to come into the house in the morning, and go away at dusk. Ransome also advised him to make arrangements ‘for watching Grace’s garden unseen. “That will be a great comfort to you,” said he: “I know by experience. Above all things,” said this sagacious officer, “don’t you let her know.she is discovered. Remember this: when she wants you to know she is here, she’ll be sure to let you know. At present she is here on the sly: so if you thwart her, she’ll be off again, as sure as fate.” Little was, forced to see the truth of this, and promised to restrain himself, hard as the task was. He took the house; and used to let himself into it with a latch-key at about ten o’clock every night. There he used to stay and watch, till past noon; and nearly every day he was rewarded by seeing the Protestant nun walk in her garden. He was restless and miserable till she came out; when she appeared his heart bounded and thrilled ; and when once he had feasted his eyes upon her, he would go about the vulgar affairs of life pretty contentedly. By advice of Ransome, he used to sit in his other house from seven till nine, and read at the window, to afford his beloved a joy similar to that he stole him- self.
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738 PUT YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE. [JuNE, And such is the power of true love that these furtive glances soothed two lives. Little’s spirits revived, and some color came back to Grace’s cheek. One night there was a house broken into in the row. Instantly Little took the alarm on Grace’s account, and bought powder and bullets, and a double-barrelled rifle, and a revolver; and now, at the slightest sound, he would be out of bed in a moment, ready to defend her, if necessary. Thus they both kept their hearts above water, and Grace visited the sick, and employed her days in charity ; and then, for a reward, crept, with soft foot, to Henry’s window, and devoured him with her eyes, and fed on that look for hours afterwards. When this had gone on for nearly a month, Lally, who had orders to keep his eye on Mr. Little, happened to come by and see Grace looking in at him. He watched her at a distance, but had not the intelligence to follow her home. He had no idea it was Grace Carden. However, in his next letter to his master, who was then in London, he told him Little always read at night, by the window, and, one night, a kind of nun had come and taken a very long look at him, and gone away crying. “I suspect,” said Lally, “she has played the fool with him some time or other, before she was a nun.” He was not a little surprised when his master telegraphed in reply that he would be down by the first train; but, the fact is, that Coventry had already called on Mr. Carden, and been told that his wife was in a convent, and he would never see her again. I must add that Mr. Carden received him as roughly as he had Little, but the interview terminated differently. Coventry, with his winning tongue, and penitence and plausibility, softened the indignant father, and then, appealing to his good sense, extorted from him the admission that his daughter’s only chance of happiness lay in forgiving him, and allowing him to atone his faults by a long life of humble devotion. But, when Coventry, pre- suming on this, implored him to reveal where she was, the old man stood staunch, and said that was told him under a solemn assurance of secrecy, and nothing should induce him to deceive his daughter. “I will not lose her love and confi- dence for any of you,” said he. . So now Coventry put that word “convent” and this word “nun” together, and came to Hillsborough full of suspicions. He took lodgings nearly opposite Little’s house, and watched in a dark room so persistently, that, at last, he saw the nun appear, saw her stealthy, cat-like approaches, her affected retreat, her cunning advance, her long lingering look. A close observer of women, he saw in every movement of her supple body that she was animated by love. He raged and sickened with jealousy, and when, at last, she retired, he fol- lowed her, with hell in his heart, and never lost sight of her till she entered her house in the valley. If there had been a house to let in the terrace, he would certainly have taken it; but Little had anticipated him. He took a very humble lodging in the neighborhood ; and, by dint of watch- ing, he at last saw the nun speaking to a poor woman with her veil up. It re- vealed to him nothing but what he knew already. It was the woman he loved, and she hated him; the woman who had married him under a delusion, and stabbed him on his bridal day. He loved her all the more passionately for that. Until he received Lally’s note, he had been content to wait patiently until his rival should lose hope, and carry himself and his affections elsewhere ; he felt sure that must be the end of it.
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1870.] PUT YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE. 739 But now jealousy stung him, wild passion became too strong for reason, and he resolved to play a bold and lawless game, to possess his lawful wife. Should it fail, what could they do to him? A man may take his own by force. Not only his passions, but the circumstances tempted him. She was actually living alone, | in a thinly-peopled district, and close toa road. It was only to cover her head, and stifle her cries, and fly with her to some place prepared beforehand, where she would be brought to submission by kindness of manner combined with firm- ness of purpose. | Coventry possessed every qualification to carry out such a scheme as this. He was not very courageous; yet he was not a coward: and no great courage was required. Cunning, forethought, and unscrupulousness were the principal things, and these he had to perfection. He provided a place to keep her; it was a shooting-box of his own, on a heathery hill, that nobody visited except for shooting, and the season for shoot- ing was past. He armed himself with false certificates of lunacy, to show on an emergency, and also a copy of his marriage certificate: he knew how unwilling strangers are to interfere between man and wife. , The only great difficulty was to get resolute men to help him in this act. He sounded Cole ; but that worthy objected to it, as being out of his line. Coventry talked him over, and offered a sum that made him tremble with cupidity. He assented, on one condition, that he should not be expected to break into the house, nor do any act that could be “ construed burglarious.” He actually used that phrase, which I should hardly have expected from him. Coventry assented to this condition. He undertook to get into the house, and open the door to Cole and his myrmidons: he stipulated, however, that Cole should make him a short iron ladder with four sharp prongs. By means of this he could enter Grace’s house ata certain unguarded part, and then run down and unbar the front door. He had thoroughly reconnoitred the premises, and was sure of success. First one day was appointed for the enterprise, then another, and, at last, it was their luck to settle on a certain night, of which I will only say at present, that it was a night Hillsborough and its suburbs will not soon forget. Midnight was the hour agreed on. | Now at nine o’clock of this very night the chief constable of Hillsborough was drinking tea with Little scarcely twenty yards from the scene of the proposed abduction. Not that either he or Little had the least notion of the conspiracy. The fact is, Hillsborough had lately been deluged with false coin, neatly executed, and passed with great dexterity. The police had received many complaints, but had been unable to trace it. Lately, however, an old bachelor, living in this suburban valley, had complained to the police that his neighbors kept such enor- mous fires all night, as to make his wall red-hot and blister his paint. This, and one or two other indications, made Ransome suspect the existence of a furnace, and he had got a search-warrant in his pocket, on which, however, he did not think it safe to act, till he had watched the suspected house late at night, and made certain dbservations for himself. So he had invited himself to tea with his friend Little—for he was sure of a hearty welcome at any hour—and, over their tea, he now told him his suspicions, and invited him to come and take a look at the suspected house with him. Little consented. But there was no hurry: the later they went to the house
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740 PUT YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE. [June, in question the better. So they talked of other, matters, and the, conversation soon fell on that which was far more interesting to Little than the capture of all the coiners in creation. He asked. Ransome how long he:was s to. goon like. this, contenting. himself with the mere sight of her. “Why,” said Ransome, “even that has made,another man of you. Your eye is twice as bright as it was.a month,,ago, and your color is coming back. That is a wise proverb, ‘ Let well alone.’ I hear she visits the sick, and some of them swear by her. I think. I’d give her time to take root here; and then she will not be so ready to fly off in a tangent.” Little objected that it was more than flesh and blood could bear. “Well, then,” said Ransome, “ promise me just one thing: that, if you speak to her, it shall be in, Hillsborough, and .not down here.” Little. saw the wisdom of this, and consented, but said he was. resolved to catch her at his own window the next time she came. He was. about to give his reasons, but: they were interrupted by a man.and horse clattering up to the door. “That will be for me,” said Ransome. “I thought I should not get leave to drink my tea in peace.” He was right ; amounted policeman brought him a note from the mayor .tell- ing him word had come jinto the town, that, there was, something wrong with Quseley dam. | He was to. take; the mayor’s horse,.and ride up at once to the reservoir, and, if there was any danger, to;warn the valley. “This looks serious,”.said Ransome. ‘I must wish you good-by.” “Take a, piece of advice with you. I hear that dam is too full; if so, don’t listen to advice from anybody, but open the sluices of the waste-pipes, and. re- lieve the pressure ; but if you find a flaw in the embankment, don’t trifle, blow up the waste-weir.at once with gunpowder. I wish I hada horse, I’d go with you. By the way, if there is. the least danger ,of that.dam_ bursting, of course you will give me warning in time, and I’ll get her out of the house at once.” “ What, do you think the water would get as far as this,to do any harm? It is;six miles.” “It might. Look.at the form of the ground ; it is a regular trough from that dam to Hillsborough. My opinion is, it would sweep everything before it, and flood Hillsborough itself—the lower town. I shall not go to bed, old fellow, till you come back and tell me it is.all right.” With this understanding Ransome galloped off. On. his way he passed by the house,where he suspected coining. The shutters were closed, but his. ex- perienced eye detected a bright light behind one of them, and.a peculiar smoke from the chimney. _ Adding this to his other evidence, he now felt sure the inmates were coiners, and he felt annoyed. ‘Fine ,I look,”.said. he, “walking tamely past criminals at work, and going to.a mayor’s-nest six miles off.” However, he, touched the jhorse with his heel, and cantered forward on his errand. | John Ransome rode,up to the. Ouseley Reservoir, and down again, in less than an hour and a half; and every incident of those vo rides is imprinted on his memory for life. ‘He first crossed the water at Poma bridge. The village of that name lay on his right, toward Hillsborough, and all the lights were out except in the two pub- lic -houses. One of, these, “The Reindeer,” was near the bridge, and from it a
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1870.] PUT YOURSELF! IN; HIS PLACE. 741 ruddy glare shot across ithe road, and. someboon companions. were singing, in very good harmony, a trite Scotch chorus : ‘We are no that fou, we are no that fou, But just a drappie in our ee ; The cock may craw, the day may daw, But still we’ll taste the barley bree.” Ransome: could ‘hear the very, words ;, he listened, laughed, and then rode up the valley, till he got opposite a crinoline-wire. factory. called the “ Kildare Wheel.” | Here he observed a single candle burning: .a watcher, no doubt. The next place he: saw was-also.on the other side the stream: Dolman’s farmhouse, the prettiest residence in the valley. It was built of stone, and beau- tifully situated on a promontory between two.streams. It had.a lawn in front, which went down to the very edge of the water, and was. much admired for its close turf and flowers. The farm buildings lay behind the house. There was no light whatever in Dolman’s ; but they were early people. The house and lawn slept peacefully.in the night: the windows were now shining, now dark, for small fleecy clouds kept drifting at short intervals across. the cres- cent moon. Ransome pushed on.across the, open ground, \and, for a mile or two .saw few signs of life, except here. and. there a flickering Jight in.some water-wheel ; for now one picturesque, dam and wheel.succeeded another.as rapidly..as. Nature permitted ; and indeed the size of these dams, now. shining, in, the fitful moon- light, seemed remarkable, compared with the mere thread of water which fed them, and connected them together for;miles like pearls on,a silver string. Ransome pushed rapidly on, up hill and down dale, till he reached. the. high hill, at whose foot: lay, the, hamlet of Damflask, distant two miles from Ouseley Reservoir. He looked down;and saw a few lights in. this hamlet, some stationary, but two moving. “Hum!” thought Ransome, “ they don’t seem to ihe quite.so easy in. their minds up here.” He dashed into the place; and drew up,at.a-house where several persons were collected. | As he came up, a singular. group, issued forth :.a man, with.a pig-whip, driv- ing four children—the eldest not above seven years old—and, carrying an infant in his arms. ‘The little) imps were-clad jin: shoes, night-gowns, night-caps, and.a blanket apiece, and were shivering and whining at being turned out of bed into the night air. — Ransome asked the man what. was the matter. One of the bystanders laughed, and said,-satirically, Ouseley dam was to burst . that night, so all the pigs.and children were making: for the hill. The man himself, whose name was Joseph Galton, explained more fully. Sir,” said he, “my wife is groaning, and I am bound to obey her. She had a dream last night: she was in-a-flood, and had to cross,a plank or summut. I quieted her till-supper ;) but then landlord came round and warned wus all of a crack or summut up at dam. And so now I am taking, this little lot up to my ‘brother’s. ‘It’s the foolishest job I.ever done: but needs must when the devil drives, and it is better so than to have my old gal sour her milk, and pine her suckling, and maybe fret herself to death into the bargain.” Ransome seized on the information, and rode on directly to. the village inn.
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742 PUT YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE. (June, He called the landlord out, and asked him what he had heen telling the vil- lagers. Was there anything seriously amiss up at the reservoir ? “ Nay, I hope not,” said the man; “but we gota bit of a fright this after- noon; a young man rode through, going down to Hillsborough, and stopped here to have his girth mended; he had broke it coming down our hill. While he was taking a glass he let out his errand: they had found a crack in the em- bankment, and sent him down to Hillsborough to tell Mr. Tucker, the engineer. Bless your heart, we should never have known aught about it, if his girth hadn’t broke.” He added, as a reason for thinking it was not serious, that Mr. Tucker had himself inspected the dam just before tea-time, and hadn’t even seen the crack. It was a laboring man who had discovered it through crossing the em- bankment lower down than usual. ‘But you see, sir,” said he, in conclusion, “we lie very low here, and right in the track ; and so we mustn’t make light of a warning. \nd, of course, many of the workmen stop here, and have their say ; and, to tell you the truth, one or two of them have always misliked the founda- tion that embankment is built on: too many old landslips to be seen about. But, after all, I suppose they can empty the dam if need be; and, of course, they will, if there is any danger. I expect Mr. Tucker up every minute.” Ransome thanked him for his information and pushed on to Lower Hatfield: there he found lights in the houses and the inhabitants astir; but he passed through the village in silence and came to the great corn-mill, a massive stone structure with granite pillars, the pride of the place. The building was full of lights, and the cranes were all at work hoisting the sacks of flour from the lower floors to the top story. The faces of the men reflected in the flaring gas, and the black cranes with their gaunt arms, and the dark bodies rising by the snake-like cords, formed a curious picture in the fluctuating moonlight, and an interesting one too: for it showed the miller did not feel his flour quite safe. The next place Ransome came to was Fox Farm. Farmer Emden was standing at the door of his house, and, in reply to Ran- some, told him he had just come down from the reservoir. He had seen the crack and believed it to be a mere frost-crack. He apprehended no danger, and had sent his people to bed; however, he should sit up for an hour or two just to hear what Tucker the engineer had to say about it ; he had been sent for. Ransome left him, and a smart canter brought him in sight of what seemed a long black hill, with great glow-worms dotted here and there.» That hill was the embankment, and the glow-worms were the lanterns of workmen examining the outer side of the embankment and prying into every part. The enormous size and double slope of the bank, its apparent similarity in form and thickness to those natural barriers with which nature hems in lakes of large dimensions, acted on Ransome’s senses, and set him wondering at the timidity and credulity of the people in Hatfield and Damflask. This sentiment was uppermost in his mind when he rode up to the south side of the embank- ment. He gave his horse toa boy, and got upon the embankment and looked north. The first glance at the water somewhat shook that impression of absolute security the outer side of the barrier had given him. In nature a lake lies at the knees of the restraining hills, or else has a suffi- cient outlet. But here was a lake nearly full to the brim on one side of the barrier and an open descent on the other. |
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1870.] PUT YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE. 743 He had encountered a little wind coming up, but not much; here, however, the place being entirely exposed, the wind was powerful and blew right down the valley, ruffling the artificial lake. Altogether it was a solemn scene, and, even at first glance, one that could not be surveyed, after all those comments and reports, without some awe and anxiety. The surface of the lake shone like a mirror, and waves of some size dashed against the embankment with a louder roar than one would have thought possible, and tossed some spray clean over all; while, overhead, clouds, less fleecy now, and more dark and sullen, drifted so swiftly across the crescent moon that she seemed flying across the sky. Having now realized that the embankment, huge as it was, was not so high by several hundred feet as nature builds in parallel cases, and that, besides the natural pressure of the whole water, the upper surface of the lake was being driven by the wind against the upper or thin part of the embankment, Ransome turned and went down the embankment to look at the crack and hear opinions. There were several workmen, an intelligent farmer called Ives, and Mr. Mountain, one of the contractors who had built the dam, all examining the crack. Mr. Mountain was remarking that the crack was perfectly dry, a plain proof there was no danger. “‘ Ay, but,” said Ives, “it has got larger since tea-time; see, I can get my hand in now.” “Can you account for that?” asked Ransome of the contractor. Mountain said it was caused by the embankment settling. ‘ Everything settles down a little, houses and embankments and all. There’s no danger, Mr. Ransome, believe me.” “‘ Well, sir,” said Ransome, “I am not a man of science, kut I have got eyes, and I see the water is very high, and driving against your weak part. Ah!” Then he remembered Little’s advice. “Would you mind opening the sluice- pipes ?” “ Not in the least, but I think it is the engineer’s business to give an order of that kind.” “But he is not here, and professional etiquette must give way where property and lives, perhaps, are at stake. To tell you the truth, Mr. Mountain, I have got the advice of an abler man than Mr. Tucker. His word to me was, ‘If the water is as high as they say, don’t waste time, but open the sluices at once and relieve the dam.’ ” The workmen, who had said scarcely a word till then, raised an assenting murmur at the voice of common sense. Mountain admitted it could do no harm, and gave an order accordingly ; screws were applied and the valves of the double set of sluice-pipes were forced open, but with infinite difficulty, owing to the tremendous pressure of the water. This operation showed all concerned what a giant they,were dealing with: while the sluices were being lifted, the noise and tremor of the pipes were be- yond experience and conception, When, after vast efforts, they were at last got open, the ground trembled violently, and the water, as it rushed out of the pipes, roared like discharges of artillery. So hard is it to resist the mere effect of the senses, that nearly everybody ran back appalled, although the effect of all this roaring could only be to relieve the pressure: and, in fact, now that those sluices were opened, the dam was safe, provided it could last a day or two. %
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744° PUT YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE. (June; Lights were seen approaching, and Mr. Tucker, the resident engineer, drove up; he had Mr. Carter, one of the contractors, in the gig with him: He came on the embankment, and signified a cold approval of the sluices being opened. Then’ Ransome sounded him about blowing up the waste-weir. Tucker did not reply, but put ‘some questions to a workman or two. Their’ answers showed that they considered the enlargement of the crack a fatal sign. Upon this Mr. Tucker ordered them all to stand clear of the suspected part. “Now, then,” said he, I built this embankment, and ‘I’ll tell you whether it: is going to burst or not.” Then he took a lantern, and was going to inspect the crack himself; but Mr. Carter, respecting his courage’and coolness, would accompany’ him. They went to the crack, examined it carefully with their lanterns, and then crossed over to the waste-weir: no water was ‘running into it in the ordinary way, which showed the dam was not full to its utmost capacity. They returned, and consulted with Mountain. Ransome put in his word, and, once’ more’ remembering Little’s advice, begged them to blow up the waste-weir. Tucker thought that was a‘stronger measure than’ the occasion required ; there was no immediate danger ; and the sluice-pipes would lower the water con- siderably in twenty-four hours. Farmer Ives put in his word. “I can’t learn from any of you that an enlarg- ing crack in a new embankment is a;common thing. I shall go home, but my boots won’t come off this night.” Encouraged by this, Mr. Mountain, the contractor, spoke out. “Mr. Tucker,” said he, “don’t deceive yourself; the sluice-pipes are too” slow; if we don’t relieve the dam, there’ll bea blow-up in half an hour ; mark my words.” “Well,” said Mr. Tucker, “no precaution has been neglected in building this dam; provision has been made even for blowing up the waste-weir ; a hole has been built in the masonry, and 'there’s dry powder and a fuse kept at the valve- house. I'll blow up the waste-weir, though I think it needless. I am convinced” that crack is above the level of the water in the reservoir.” This observation struck Ransome, and he asked if it could not be ascertained by measurement. “Of course it can,” said Tucker, “and I’ll measure it as I come back.” He then started for the weir, and Carter accompanied him. They'crossed the ‘embankment, and got to the weir. Ives went home, and the workmen withdrew’'to the side, not knowing exactly what might be the effect of the explosion. By and by, Ransome looked up, and observed’a thin sheet of water begin- ning to stream over the centre of ‘the embankment, and trickle down: the quan-— tity was nothing; butit alarmed him. Having no special knowledge on these matters, he was dtiven to comparisons; and it flashed across him that, when he* was a boy, and used to make little mud-dams in April, they would resist the tiny’ stream until it trickled over them, and from that moment their fate was sealed. Nature, he had observed, operates alike in small things and great, and that sheet’ of water, though thin as a wafer, alarmed him.’ He thought it was better to give a false warning than’withhold a true one: he ran to his horse, jumped on him, and spurred away. His horse was fast and powerful, and carried him in three minutes back to
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1870.] - PUT YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE. 745 Emden’s farm. The farmer had gone to bed. Ransome knocked him up, and told him he feared the dam was going; then galloped on to Hatfield Mill. Here he found the miller and his family all gathered outside, ready for a start; one workman had run down from the reservoir. ‘“The embankment is not safe.” “So I hear. I’ll take care of my flour and my folk. The mill will take care’ of herself.” And he pointed with pride to the solid structure and granite pillars, Ransome galloped on, shouting as he went. The. shout was taken up ahead, and he heard a voice crying in the night, “Tr’s cominG! It’s comInG!” This weird cry, which, perhaps, his own gal- loping and shouting had excited, seemed like an independent warning, and thrilled him to the bone. He galloped through Hatfield, shouting ‘Save your- selves! Save yourselves!” and the people poured out, and ran for high ground, shrieking wildly; looking back, he saw the hill dotted with what he took” for sheep at first, but it was the folk in their night-clothes. He galloped on to Damflask, still shouting as he went. At the edge of the hamlet, he found a cottage with no light in it; he dis- mounted and thundered at the door. “Escape for your lives! for your'lives !” A man called Hillsbro’ Harry opened the window. “The embankment is going. Fly for your lives !” “Nay,” said the man, coolly, “Ouseley dam will brust noane this week,” and : turned to go to bed again: He found Joseph Galton and another man carrying Mrs. Galton and her new- born'‘child away in a‘blanket. This poor'woman, who had'sent her five children | away on the faith of a dream, was now objecting, in a faint voice, to'be saved herself from evident danger. “Oh dear, dear! you might as well let me go down with the flood as kill me with taking me away.” Such was the sapient discourse of Mrs. Galton, who, half an hour ago, had’ been supernaturally wise and prudent. Go to, wise mother and silly woman: ~men will love thee none the less for the inequalities of thine intellect ; and hon- est Joe will save’ thy life, and heed thy twaddle no more than the bleating o a lamb.: Ransome had not left the Galtons many yards behind seven when there was a sharp explosion heard up in the hills. Ransome pulled up and said aloud, “It will be all right now,’ thank good- ness! they have blown up the weir.” The words weré scarcely out of his mouth when he heard a loud sullen roar, speedily followed by a tremendous hiss, and a rumbling thunder, that shook the’ very earth where he stood, two miles distant. This is what had taken place sinte he left the reservoir, but ten minutes ago. Mr. Tucker and Mr. Carter laid the gunpowder and the train, and lighted the latter; and came back across the middle of the embankment. Being quite safe here from the effect of the explosion, Mr. Tucker was des: sirous to establish by measurément that ‘the water in the reservoir had not risen ‘so high as the crack in the embankment. With this view he took out a measure, and, at some risk’ of being swept into eternity, began coolly to measure the crack downwards. At this very time water was trickling over; and that alarmed Carter, and he’ told Tucker they’ were trifling with their own lives. “Oh,” said Tucker, “ that is only the spray from the waves.” They actually measured the crack, stooping over it with their lanterns, -
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746 PUT YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE. (June, When they had done that, Carter raised his head, and suddenly clutched ‘Tucker by the arm, and pointed upwards. The water was pouring over the top, stillin a thin sheet, but then that sheet was gradually widening. The water came down to their feet, and some of it disappeared in the crack ; and the crack itself looked a little larger than when last inspected. Tucker said, gravely, “I don’t like that: but let me examine the valve-house at once. He got down to the valve-house, but before he could ascertain what quantity of water was escap- ing, Carter called to him, “ Come out, for God’s sake, or you are lost!” He came running out, and saw an opening thirty feet wide and nearly a foot deep, anda DE Ss stream rushing over it. The moment Tucker saw that, i cried, “It’s all up, the embankment must go!” And, the feeling of the architect overpowering the instincts of the man, he stood aghast. But Carter laid hold of him, and dragged him away. Then he came to himself, and they ran across the embankment. As they started, the powder, which had hung fire unaccountably, went off, and blew up the waste-weir: but they scarcely heard it; for, as they ran, the rent above kept enlarging and deepening at a fearful rate, and the furious stream kept rushing past their flying heels, and threatened to sweep them sideways to de- struction. : They were safe at last ; but even as they stood panting, the rent in the top of the embankment spread—deepened—yawned terrifically—and the pent-up lake plunged through, and sweeping away at once the centre of the embankment, rushed, roaring and hissing, down the valley, an avalanche of water, whirling great trees up by the roots, and sweeping pues ger away, and driving them, like corks, for miles. | At that appalling sound, that hissing thunder, the like of which he had never heard before, and hopes never to hear again, Ransome spurred away at all his speed, and warned the rest of the village with loud inarticulate cries; he could not wait to speak, nor was it necessary. At the top of the hill he turned a moment, and looked up the valley ; soon he saw a lofty white wall running down on Hatfield Mill: it struck the mill, and left nothing visible but the roof, surrounded by white foam. Another moment, and he distinctly saw the mill swim a yard or two, then disappear and leave no trace, and on came the white wall, hissing and thunder- ing. Ransome uttered a cry of horror, and galloped madly forward, to save what lives he might. Whenever he passed a house he shrieked his warning, but he never drew rein. As he galloped along his mind situs Hy He observed the valley widen in places, and he hoped the flying lake would spread, and so lose some of that tre- mendous volume and force before which he had seen Hatfield stone mill go down. With this hope he galloped on, and reached Poma Bridge, five miles anda half from the reservoir. Here, to his dismay, he heard the hissing thunder sound as near to him as it was when he halted on the hill above Damflask: but he could see nothing, ow- ing to.a turn in the valley. At the bridge itself, he found a man standing, without his hat, staring wildly up the valley. 62 He yelled to this man, “Dam is burst. Warn the village—for their lives—
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1870.] PUT YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE. 747 run on to Hillsborough—when you are winded, send another on. You'll all be paid at the Town Hall.” Then he dashed across the bridge. As he crossed it, he caught sight of the flylag lake once more: he had gone Over more ground, but he had gone no further. He saw the white wall strike Dolman’s farm ; there was a light in one window now. He saw the farm house, with its one light, swim bodily, then melt and disappear, with all the poor souls in it. He galloped on; his hat flew off: he came under the coiners’ house, and yelled a warning. A window was opened, and a man looked out; the light was behind him, and, even in that terrible moment, he recognized—Shifty Dick. “The flood! the flood! Fly! Get on high ground, for your lives!” He galloped furiously, and made for Little’s house. CHAPTER XLIV. LITTLE took a book, and tried to while away the time till Ransome’s return ; but he could not command his attention. The conversation about Grace had ex- cited a topic which excluded every other. He opened his window, a French casement, and looked out upon the night. Then he observed that Grace, too, was keeping vigil; for a faint light shot ’ from her window, and sparkled on the branches of the plane-tree in her little front garden. “And that,” thought Henry, sadly, “is all I can see of her. Close to her, yet far off—further than ever now.” A deep sadness fell on him, sadness and doubt. Suppose he were to lay a trap for her to-morrow, and catch her at her own door! What good would it do? He put himself in her place. That process showed him at once she would come no more. He should destroy her little bit of patient, quiet happiness, the one daily sunbeam of her desolate life. By and by, feeling rather drowsy, he lay down in his clothes to wait for Ran- some’s return. He put out his light. \ From his bed he could see Grace’s light kiss the pied He lay, and fixed his eyes on it, and thought of all that had passed between them: and, by-and-by, love and grief made his eyes misty, and that pale light seemed to dance and flicker before him. . About midnight, he was nearly dozing off, when his ear caught a muttering outside ; he listened, and thought he heard some instrument grating below. He rose very softly, and crept to the window, and looked keenly through his casement. | . He saw nothing at first; but presently a dark object emerged from behind the plane-tree I have mentioned, and began to go slowly, but surely, up it. Little feared it was a burglar about to attack that house which held his dar- ling. He stepped softly to his rifle, and loaded both barrels. It was a breech- loader. Then he crawled softly to the window, and peered out, rifle in hand. The man had climbed the tree, and was looking earnestly in at one of the windows in Grace’s house. His attention was so fixed that he never saw the gleaming eye which now watched him.
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748 PUT YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE. [JuNE, Presently the drifting clouds left the moon clear a minute, and Henry Little recognized the face of Frederick Coventry. He looked at him and began to tremble. Why did he tremble? Because—after the first rush of surprise—rage, hate, and bloody thoughts crossed his mind. Here was his enemy, the barrier to his happiness, come, of his own accord, to court his death. Why not take him for a burglar, and shoot him dead? Such an act might be blamed, but it could not be punished severely. The temptation was so great, that the rifle shook in his hands, and a cold per- spiration poured down his back. He prayed to God in agony to relieve him from this temptation ; he felt that it was more than he could bear. 7 He looked up. Coventry was drawing up a short iron ladder from below. He then got hold of it, and fixed it on the sill of Grace’s window. Little burst his own window open. ‘“ You villain!” he cried, and levelled his rifle at him. Coventry uttered a yell of dismay. Grace opened her window, and looked out, with a face full of terror. At sight of her, Coventry cried to her in abject terror, “ Mercy! mercy! Don’t let him shoot me.” Grace looked round, and saw Henry aiming at Coventry. She screamed, and Little lowered the rifle directly. Coventry crouched directly in the fork of the tree. Grace looked bewildered from one to the other; but it was to Henry she spoke, and asked him in trembling tones what it “all meant.” But, ere either could make a reply, a dire sound was heard of hissing thun- der: so appalling that the three actors in this strange scene were all frozen and rooted where they stood. Then came a fierce galloping, and Ransome, with his black hair and beard fly- ing, and his face like a ghost, reined up, and shouted wildly, “ Dam burst! Com- ing down here! Fly for your lives! Fly!” He turned, and galloped up the hill. Cole and his mate emerged, and followed him, howling; but before the other poor creatures, half paralyzed, could do anything, the hissing thunder was upon them. What seemed a mountain of snow came rolling, and burst on them with terrific violence, whirling great trees and fragments of houses past with incredi- ble velocity. At the first blow, the house that stood nearest to the flying lake was shat- tered, and went to pieces soon after: all the houses quivered as the water rushed round them two stories high. Little never expected to live another minute; yet, in that awful moment, his love stood firm. He screamed to Grace, “The houses must go !—the tree !—the tree !—get to the tree!” But Grace, so weak at times, was more than mortal strong at that dread hour. “What, live with him,” she cried, “when I can die with you!” She folded her arms, and her pale face was radiant—no hope, no fear. Now came a higher wave, and the water reached above the window-sills of the bedroom floor, and swept away the ladder ; yet, driven forward like a cannon- bullet, did not yet pour into the bedrooms from the main stream ; but by degrees the furious flood broke, melted, and swept away the intervening houses, and then
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1870. ] FRA ANGELICO. 749 hacked off the gable-end of Grace’s house, as if Leviathan had bitten a piece out. Through that aperture the flood came straight in, levelled the partitions at a blow, rushed into the upper rooms with fearful roar, and then, rushing out again to rejoin the greater body of water, blew the front wall clean away, and swept Grace out into the raging current. The water pouring out of the house carried her, at first, towards the tree, and Little cried wildly to Coventry to save her. He awoke from his stupor of horror, and made an attempt to clutch her; but then the main force of the mighty water drove her away from him towards the house; her helpless body was whirled round and round three times by the struggling eddies, and then hurried away like a feather by the overwhelming torrent. FRA ANGELICO, (Be I, ITHIN Fiesole’s gray cloister-cell, In beatific vision wrapped apart, Tears on his cheek and prayer within his heart, Kneeled acowled monk. The toll of convent bell, IT. The iterant tread of grave Dominican Along the stony floor—the soughing pines That sentinelled the slumbrous Apennines— The gurgle of the hidden brook that ran III. Seaward beneath its walls—a bleating lamb— The far-off tinkle at the herds’ release— Were all the sounds that jarred the simple peace, Or lightly rippled the low-breathing calm. IV. Within a niche withdrawn an easel stood, With implements of artist craft displayed ; And where a missal’s open leaves were laid, Fell the slant shadow of the holy rood. V. Golden and violet, flame and azure hues Caught out of ether, waited the command Of that meek kneeler’s mystic master-hand, To glorify the canvas and transfuse
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75° FRA ANGELICO. VI. The strange, seraphic beauty of his thought, Till the celestial impulse had sufficed To ray with light divine the pictured Christ At which, with awed and reverent touch, he wrought. VII. For Art, imperious mistress, as her thrall Had striven to bind him to her service fast; Service how sweet! Yet he had learned at last, Not to forego, but consecrate it all. VIII. Thenceforth he sought his easel as a shrine, And bowed before it like an aureol’d saint, With eyes that swam the while he kneeled to paint The marred and smitten lineaments divine. IX. With sunset gold he haloed round the head That lay aforetime on the lowly straw ; While visions glorious as the shepherds saw, With sacred ecstasy his spirit fed. X. If from the spangled meadows any bear The creamy leaf the pasture-lily shows, Or brought him from the hedge a folded rose, Some cherub’s cheek their mingled tints would wear. XI. The mists that hallowed morning’s tranquil skies, The crystal hoarded in the violet cup, Lent their pathetic gleams to kindle up The heaven-toucht haze of Mary’s clouded eyes. XII. And thus he served the Master, while he trod The path he loved the best—inspired to fill His work with worship’s rapture—climbing still Beauty’s ascending steps that lead to God, XIII. “ Beato”’—so they named him; and by this, Down-drifting to us from the Long Ago, The pure enthusiast-life we come to know That gave to Art its holiest types of bliss. [JUNE, MARGARET J. PRESTON.
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TOBACCOPHAGOI AND TOBACCOPHAGISM. \ AV ANY thousands of species of living creatures inhabit our globe, but only | \ three are tobaccophagoi. Of these, one is a worm about the size of the little finger, and so disgusting in appearance as to cause an involuntary shudder when seen for the first time; indeed, it is said to be the most repulsive of all crawling creatures. Even the negroes, whose duty it is to destroy it, pursue it with a deadly hatred, and the very turkeys continue to kill the foul things long after they have gorged themselves at their unclean repast. The second of the tobaccophagoi is the rock goat of Africa. It emits so abominable an odor that all other animals keep at as great a distance from it as possible. Its visage is revolting in the extreme, and excites an uncontrollable disgust in the beholder. The third member of the triad has been described as a featherless biped. Like its stenchiferous confrére, the rock goat, it also emits an odor which is anything but pleasant to those whose tastes are not congenial. To this species of the tobaccophagoi we shall especially direct our attention. The others have only been mentioned to illustrate the offensive peculiarities that appertain to the creatures that consume the weed of Tobago. The first historical mention of the use of tobacco by man occurs in the accounts of the voyages of the discoverers of America, in which it is related that the crews of the vessels saw the natives seated in groups on the ground and employed in drawing the smoke from burning leaves, through a hollow reed or cane, into their mouths, and puffing it out again. Some of the smokers, to increase the effect, used a forked cane, and inserting the prongs into their nos- trils drew the smoke in through this channel and emitted it from their mouths, thus inverting the process which we now so often see practised by the smokers of our own day. The importation of tobacco into England commenced in 1560, and Linnzus states that it was known in Europe from that date. The introduction of the practice of smoking among the upper classes in Great Britain is generally attrib- uted to Sir Walter Raleigh, about 1584; but the plant was cultivated in botanical gardens before 1570, and a shrubby variety, a native of China and the Cape of Good Hope, has been used in those countries from such ancient times that there is no tradition of its introduction, According to botanists, tobacco belongs to the genus /Vicofiana, natural order Solanace@, which is an order of great importance, since it includes such edibles as the egg-plant, tomato, potato, capsicum, and a number of genera that furnish narcotic principles, among which we may mention hyoscyamus, stramonium, and belladonna. The genus Nicotiana derives its name from Nicot, who is by many said to have been the author of its introduction into Europe; while the term to- bacco originated either from Tabasco, a province in Yucatan, or from the island of Tobago, whence it was first imported into Europe. This term has not, however, prevailed in all countries, for in Ceylon it passes under the euphonious title of hingele dunkél, which doubtless carries as much if not more significance to the majority of readers than is conveyed by many of the names that botanists have invented. ) Though tobacco might be cultivated in nearly all parts of the civilized world,
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752 TOBACCOPHAGOI AND TOBACCOPHAGISM. [JUNE, the tax levied on it in many countries has practically confined its growth toa few localities, among which Virginia and Cuba are perhaps the most noteworthy. The manner of cultivation does not vary much, but peculiar ideas prevail re- garding the method of curing and preparation for market. Among these we may mention the statement of San Paulti, physician to the King of Denmark, who relates that it isa common.practice in that country to lay it in the out- houses, to the end that, becoming impregnated with the volatile salts of the excrements, it may be rendered brisker and stronger. The manufacture of tobacco for the purposes of chewing and smoking consists chiefly in the removal of the midribs or stalks of the leaves, and the subsequent pressing, cutting, or rolling of the leaves, according to the demands of the mar- ket. In snuff-making the process varies with the character of the product. If a’dry snuff is desired, the stalks or midribs are powdered with as little moisture as possible in a mill. In preparing the Irish and Welsh snuffs, the stalks are roasted in closed vessels before pulverization. In the preparation of moist snuff, the stalks with fragments of leaves are well moistened, and ground in a mill of peculiar construction. It is then again “sauced,” or moistened, and allowed to ferment, to develop the desired flavor, and in some instances the snuff is scented by the addition of oil of bergamot, ottar of roses, or of orris root. The adulteration of tobacco varies greatly with the character of the prepara- tion. In that intended for chewing, it consists, chiefly of molasses or common salt, rarely of leaves of other plants. In cigars and cut tobacco for smoking, it is by no means common, and consists usually of hay, paper, or leaves of the dock, rhubarb, cabbage, elm, and oak, all of which are, comparatively speaking, harmless. In snuff, on the contrary, adulteration is very common, and the sub- stances used are, in many cases, exceedingly injurious, including such articles as chromate of lead, bichromate of potash, powdered glass, and different kinds of ochres or oxides of iron. The latter are nearly always found in the Scotch snuffs, and rarely occur in the Welsh and Irish. According to Hassall, out of forty-three specimens chromate of lead occurred in nine, nearly all of which were Scotch ; red lead or oxide of lead in three; and bichromate of potash, which is very poisonous, in three, two of which were Scotch. The presence of the lead compounds mentioned has not infrequently produced lead palsy in those who have used them, and it is of interest to the snuffing tobaccophagoi to note that these poisonous adulterations occur more frequently in Scotch snuff. The substances that give its active properties to tobacco are nicotine and nicotianine. The first is a colorless liquid alkaloid, soluble in water, ether, al- cohol, and many oils, and possessing an offensive odor and an acrid, burning taste. It is a very dangerous poison, being almost as energetic as prussic acid, and de- stroying life in equally small doses, a single drop sufficing in the experiments of Dr. Taylor to kill a rabbit in three minutes and a half. In the well-known case ‘of the Count and Countess Bocarmé, this poison was administered by force to the brother of the Countess while dining with them at their chateau. In this instance death occurred in less than five minutes; and though attempts were made to remove the odor and traces of the poison, by pouring strong acetic acid or vinegar down the throat of the victim, and on his person, the possession of the poison and the circumstantial evidence indicated the guilt of the Count so strongly that he was executed for murder. The proportion of nicotine in Ioo parts of different kinds of tobacco dried at 212 Fahr. is as follows:
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1870. | TOBACCOPHAGOI AND TOBACCOPHAGISM. 753 Virginia - - - - - - - - ° - 6.87 Kentucky 5: =. - - « = - . = e 6.02 Maryland - . - - - - - - ° - 2.29 Havana - . ~ . - - = - : 2.00 Lot Tasting. nertnaihe Jet. ice, tx 2 ae Lot-et-Garonne - - - + - - - . ° 7.34 Alsace ° - - ° - = = - - - 3.21 Nicotianine is a concrete volatile oil, sometimes spoken of as tobacco camphor. It is obtained by the distillation ot the leaves, six pounds yielding about eleven grains of the oil. It has a bitter taste and the odor of tobacco, and produces the same effect on the tongue and throat as tobacco smoke. It is almost as deadly when applied externally as nicotine is when taken internally, its action being nowhere better described than in “ Hamlet” when the ghost tells of the juice of cursed hebanon, ee The leperous distilment, whose effect Holds such an enmity with blood of man, That, swift as quicksilver, it courses through The natural gate and alleys of the body, And with a sudden vigor it doth posset And curd, like eager droppings into milk, The thin and wholesome blood. .« «© Landerer states that this oil does not exist in the fresh leaves, and Pereira remarks that it is probably formed by the action of the air in the process of dry- ing. There is but little satisfa@tion to be drawn by the tobaccophagoi from these statements, even if they are admitted to be true, since the plant is invariably dried before it is used, and must therefore always contain the oil. Tobacco smoke being the most common form under which the system is ex- posed to the action of this plant, it is necessary that we should examine into its composition. The results of many analyses show that while the alkaloid disap- pears almost entirely in the smoke, the oil is increased; it therefore follows that in chewing the effects will be chiefly those produced by nicotine, while in smoking nicotianine will be the more active ingredient. In addition to the oil, it has been recently stated that prussic or hydrocyanic acid exists toan appreciable extent in tobacco smoke. This is a possible, but probably exceptional product, its presence being dependent upon some peculiarity in the manner of combustion. The very large amount of mineral matter, and especially of the salts of potassa, in tobacco, causes it to remove these ingredients of the soil so rapidly that even the virgin lands of the Southern and Western States soon succumb to its exhaust- ing action, and can only support a miserable growth of low scrub pine, which needs but a very small amount of these substances for its development. In the same way the immoderate use of the prepared leaves slowly but surely exhausts the nervous energy in man, until at last, unless it is used within bounds, it saps the strongest constitution, and often either smites the robust, vigorous man with an incurable palsy, or so dulls his memory and blunts his other faculties as to reduce him to a condition but little better than that of an imbecile. The physiological effects of tobacco are very varied. In its antispasmodic and narcotic or anodyne effect, it resembles lobelia, while its action on the heart is not unlike that of digitalis. In this latter respect, it has in some instances originated very puzzling phenomena, such as the permanent establishment of an irregularity in the heart’s action, whereby every third or fourth beat is omitted. In its action on the pupil of the eye it resembles opium, causing it to contract, and thereby enabling us to distinguish it from belladonna, stramonium, hyoscya-
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734. | TOBACCOPHAGOI AND TOBACCOPHAGISM. __ [Jung, mus, and other solanacee. The effect of its introduction into the digestive ap- paratus is to cause so complete a relaxation of the muscular system, that physi- cians frequently employ it to produce this result when it is desired to reduce dis- locations of the large joints. In the discussion of the use of tobacco as a luxury, ‘and apart from its appli- cation as a medicine, many arguments have been advanced in its favor; and though we may be inclined to admit the value of the pipe as a social leveller, without asking whether the levelling is to a higher or lower grade, we cannot so ° dispose of its vaunted power as a prophylactic, or protection against contagious diseases. It is very possible that, since the use of tobacco reduces the sensi- bility of the system to external impressions, it consequently renders it less liable to the attacks of contagious diseases ; but it must not be forgotten that if the disease does gain a foothold in the system, this very reduction of its tone would render it less able to resist the attack, and thus a greater proportion of deaths would occur among those who were attacked. The.good effects, if there are any, would thus be neutralized, and there would be no advantage to record in its favor. A so-called moral advantage claimed for tobacco, is its action as an anti. aphrodisiac, and many defend its use on this ground. There can be but little doubt that it does possess this power, and the statistics of European countries show that since its general introduction the annual increase in population has undergone a steady diminution. In France, for example, from 1841 to 1846 the increase was 1,200,000, while from 1851 to 1856t was only 256,000, the diminu- tion bearing a very close relation to the increase in the use of tobacco. In the East the same result does not occur, owing probably to the fact that in that part of the world marriages are contracted at an earlier period in life, and families are produced before tobaccophagism has impaired the virility of the men. In Europe, on the contrary, and especially in France, marriages among the males oc- cur later in life, and in the great majority of instances after serving for a con- siderable period in armies, where the system has become thoroughly saturated with tobacco in every form in which it can be used. From these arguments, which have been advanced at various times in favor of the use of tobacco, and which, as we have seen, are not entirely satisfactory, let us furn to the examination of the unmitigated injuries and inconveniences that attend or follow the indulgence in tobaccophagism. Among snuffers the con- tinued irritation of the Schneiderian membrane which lines the cavity of the nose causes it to thicken, until finally the sense of smell is entirely obliterated, Cer- tain faculties, more especially that of memory, are at the same time blunted, and at last seriously impaired, unless the habit is broken. Not only is the use of snuff objectionable for these reasons, but it also consumes more time than either chewing or smoking, The latter may be’carried on without any serious interfer- ence with the occupations, but it is not so with the taking of snuff. This must be performed with due deliberation, and each stage of the ceremony requires from those who indulge in it a complete interruption of all previous occupations. The snuff-box must be removed from the breeches pocket, properly tapped on the top, opened with solemnity, touched gently and affectionately on one side to toss the alluring powder into a little heap. Then a pinchis taken between the thumb and finger, and drawn first into one nostril and then into the other. The box must then be closed, returned to its appropriate pocket, and softly patted as it touches the bottom. The droppings on the clothing are then dusted off, and while the titivation of the olfactory nerve is being enjoyed, the handkerchief is slowly and
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1870.] TOBACCOPHAGOI AND TOBACCOPHAGISM. 755 with dignity drawn from the recesses of the coat tail, and the sacrifice finally con- summated by a terrific blast from the nostrils, and the return of the handkerchief laden with its precious burden to its appropriate receptacle. Lord Stanhope es- timated that the snuffing ceremonial requires from a minute and a half to two minutes for its performance ; and as it is repeated by inveterate snuffers every ten minutes, if we allow sixteen hours to a snuff-taking day, it amounts to two hours and twenty-four minutes every day, which is about one day in every ten of the snuffer’s life. When employed for chewing and smoking, tobacco stimulates the salivary glands, and greatly increases the amount of saliva. The copious expectoration which is thus produced diminishes the amount of this fluid available for the pur- poses of digestion, and as a consequence indigestion is one of the commonest of the inflictions to which the chewer and smoker is obliged to submit. Another evil to which the smoker is liable is the tendency to the development of cancer. When the seeds of this disease exist in the system, the continued application of the hot, acrid smoke to the tongue and lips acts as an immediate exciting cause which vivifies the latent germs, and results in the formation of cancerous depos- its in those parts; and the sufferer usually dies in agony after enduring every conceivable torment that can be imagined as attending a slow destruction of tis- sues, in which the tongue is sometimes eaten away down to its very base or root. The relation of tobacco to insanity is also of great interest, but has not yet been fully examined. The difficulty of separating the effects of this from those of other causes that tend to develop mental disease, constitutes the chief barrier to the formation of a correct opinion. But though we may not be able to state all the points connected with the subject, we can at least advance those with which we are acquainted, and discuss their bearing while we are awaiting the collection and development of the statistics which are necessary for arriving at a final decision. Impaired sight, dulled memory, and various injuries to impor- tant senses and faculties, have long been known to follow the injudicious use of tobacco. With these facts in view, it is not surprising to find that French sta- tistics show that in that country there has been a steady increase in the number of paralytics and lunatics during the last half century, and this increase is parallel to and almost identical with the increase in the revenue derived from the tax on tobacco. During the first quarter of this century, for example, the income from the tobacco tax averaged about 28,000,000 francs, and there were 8,000 lunatics and paralytics ; while during the last five years the annual revenue from this source has averaged nearly 200,000,000 francs, while the lunatics and paralytics have numbered about 45,000. The deduction to be drawn from these facts is self- evident, but the objection may be advanced that it is not a just presentment of the case, since it is well known that insanity increases with the increase in the mental activity of a population. While we may admit the justice of this observa- tion as regards the population of great cities, it does not apply to rural districts, where improvement in the intellectual standard is very problematical; and even though we make a liberal allowance for the number of cases that arise on this account, there still remains an enormous increase among the ignorant classes, both of the country and cities, which may be fairly attributed to the influence of tobacco. Another curious incident in relation to this subject is the establishment of asylums for the insane very soon after the introduction of tobacco into Europe. The Bethlehem Hospital for the insane in London, which was the first of its
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756 TOBACCOPHAGOI AND TOBACCOPHAGISM. [JUNE, kind in Great Britain, if not in civilized Europe, was built about the time that smoking became fashionable in England ; and it is certainly a very singular coin- cidence that the necessity for the construction of such asylums should not have been recognized before, and that now there is scarcely a state or kingdom in the civilized world that does not make some public provision for its lunatics. Clas- sical history, with all its minute description of manners and customs, rarely men- tions the existence of insanity ; and though there were prisons, dungeons, and hulks for criminals, nowhere do we find in classic lore any account of establish- ments for the insane, or any indication to show that insanity was at a]l prevalente Laws were passed in relation to leprosy and other diseases, but insanity was ig- nored ; it must therefore have been uncommon, and its recent development is in all probability owing to the cause we have been discussing. The last point in this connection to which we shall call attention is the ex- tent to which patients in insane asylums have been addicted to tobaccophagism. We often hear of the relation of intemperance to lunacy, and it is a very common opinion that the abuse of alcoholic liquors is the chief cause of insanity. If this is the case, why was it that in the days of hard drinking in England, when it was considered a weak effeminacy to go to bed sober, there was little or no recogni- tion of insanity as adisease? It is very possible that the liquors now consumed are more deleterious, but is it not equally probable that since the excessive use of alcohol and tobacco nearly always go together, the lamentable results are ina great majority of instances owing to the tobacco and not to the alcohol? Where statistics have been collected in asylums, it has been found that a very large per- centage of the inmates have used tobacco to excess; and if proper allowances were made for the effects of tobacco in those cases where the lunacy has been attributed to alcohol, it is not at all impossible that it would appear that a fair majority of the occupants of these establishments have been reduced to their melancholy condition through the use of this very fashionable but deleterious drug. | , In speaking of the effects of the use of tobacco, we omitted to mention that it is stated that cannibals who have once experienced the nauseating effects pro- duced by the flesh of victims who were tobaccophagoi, ever after avoid such viands with disgust. Though it may not be necessary in these days to give our- selves any concern regarding the protection of our flesh from cannioals, the ob- servation is of interest as illustrating the manner in which the body becomes thoroughly saturated with the active principles of the plant. The breath, cloth- ing, and perspiration of those who use tobacco even in moderation, soon become redolent of its noxious odors, and the administration of these at secondhand to those with whom the smoker comes in contact is often more productive of harm to the innocent recipient of the undesirable favor than to the original offender. Take for example the case of a man who indulges in the habit of smoking in his bedroom.. The walls, hangings, and bed clothing soon become impregnated with the poisonous oil, of which we have spoken as a product of the distillation of the plant; and while he is only exposed to its action for a few hours at night, and spends a large part of his time in the open air during the day, his wife in the ma- jority of instances spends from twenty to twenty-four hours of the day in the con- fined air of the apartment, which is poisoned by the escape of the volatile oi from the surfaces on which it has settled, and the action of which she is less able to bear owing to the reduced tone of her system from a want of sufficient out- of-door exercise. The continued exposure to the poison, and the reduction of the resisting powers, soon produce their effect, and need we wonder that under
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1870.] | ENOLA. 757 such circumstances women become the victims of continued ill health? Even where the practice of smoking in the bedroom is not indulged in, and the hus- band enjoys his cigars elsewhere, the thorough impregnation of his clothing and person with the oil and its escape by the breath during the night may suf- fice to undermine the health of a wife of delicate constitution. Not only does tobacco vivify the latent seeds of cancer, and aid in the de- velopment of insanity, but there is also good reason for supposing that the con- tinued inhalation of cigar and pipe smoke, partly by its acridity and partly by the conveyance of particles of unburned carbon into the lungs, sooner or later tends to develop consumption in persons in whom this disease is hereditary. How great then is the folly under these circumstances of taking the risks to which so many voluntarily expose themselves, and how necessary it is that the people at large should be acquainted with the danger that attends the use of to- bacco, where any of these diseases already exist in the latent form in the system. In concluding this brief examination into the effects of tobacco, we may well express our wonder that it, of all the solanacez, should be so general a favorite. There is not a word or argument that can be advanced in its favor that is not equally applicable to opium, belladonna, or any other stimulating drug; yet the man who soaks himself with tobacco, to the detriment and discomfort of those nearest and dearest to him, looks with horror on the opium-eater, and would be filled with indignant surprise if he knew the extent to which it and belladonna are used. He fancies that compared with such drugs his tobacco is innocuous, when in reality it contains equally if not more deadly poisons ; and if we take into consideration the health, comfort, and feelings of others, it is certainly less of- fensive and less dangerous to the beholder to see the young ladies of our city step into a fashionable drug store and call for their belladonna-soda, than to be suffocated by the intolerable fumigation of a bad cigar. JouN C. DRAPER. — ENOLA. HAT shall we do for the heart that is hurt? How shall we freshen the cheek that is pale? Strengthen the footsteps that falter and fail— Brighten the eyes of Enola? The sunshine is out of the trail of her hair ; The waist in her girdle’s too slender by half; Gone is the ravishing, low little laugh From the blossomy lips of Enola. Her necklet of pearls was broken to-day ; Some fell in her bosom, and some to the ground | Slid, whitely and brightly, with never a sound, Like tears from the face of Enola. If the lover who left her should seek her to-night, And put back the ring that she misses the most, It would not stay on, but slip off and be lost From the poor little hand of Enola. = HOWARD GLYNDON,
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AMERICAN MEN AND ENGLISHMEN. FEW days after my arrival for the first time in the United States, I was present at a large open-air meeting, not political, in Westchester county. There was a band there, and the band was making preparations to open the proceedings of the meeting with music. A distinguished American friend who was near me said: “ You must expect to hear a good deal of ‘ Hail Columbia’ and ‘The Star-spangled Banner’ to-day.” The crash of the instru- ments cut him short in his remarks, and the band began to play “ Tommy Dodd,” the delightful popular air wherewith London streets and squares, London music- halls and hurdy-gurdies, were ringing and squeaking as I left the English capital two or three weeks. before. I was standing under the glorious sun of an Ameri- can autumn and under the flag of the Stars and Stripes; and here in my ears was the music of Bloomsbury and Islington, of the Strand and Covent Garden ! The first day I walked down Broadway I saw the walls placarded with the names of Lydia Thompson and Pauline Markham, and the windows of:the bookshops told not merely of Charles Dickens, and George Eliot, and Charles Reade, but of Edmund Yates and Annie Thomas, and other minor novelists, too, with whose works I was not unfamiliar, but whose names it seemed odd to see thus blazoned in the streets of New York. Could one help being a little disappointed? This then is only London over.again? I felt for the moment like somebody in one of Xavier de Montepin’s refined and cheerful romances, who flies for novelty to some place distant from Paris, and on the first day of his arrival there is con- fronted by so many familiar costumes, sights, faces, fashions, that he exclaims in surprise and disappointment, “ MZazs, mon Dieu / here is the whole Boulevard des Italiens over again!” In plain words, my first impressions of New York and its society were tinged a good deal with the odd blending of disappointment and delight which one feels when he finds that the strange land he has come to is after all very like the fa- miliar place he has left behind. It was only after some stay in this country and some considerable intercourse with Americans that I began to observe the points of dissimilarity, other than mere superficialities, which distinguish the Ameri- can man from the Englishman. Of course the superficial differences—those of manner and appearance—are obvious and general. We can all distinguish ata glance the average and typical Englishman from the same class of American or Irishman. You know the man’s nationality by his face just as you would by his accent. But it would be hardly worth while occupying many lines of THE GAL- AXY’S page in descanting on the fact that certain outlines of face and tints of complexion are more or less peculiarly American, or English, or Irish, or French. I think a stranger from the Old World living here for some time begins gradu- ally to appreciate certain differences between Englishmen and Americans which are deeper and more interesting than the merely superficial, and which yet do not go so deeply down as to affect that profoundest basis of character which I fancy is not touched by nationality at all. If one could dig far enough into the substance of our earth, he would, I suppose, after having pierced through many strata of various composition, come at last to a region of central, equal, and unvarying heat and pressure. So in human nature the depths of emotion and passion, the regions of. the central heat where character is primarily formed, are
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1870. ] AMERICAN MEN AND ENGLISHMEN. 759 doubtless alike everywhere, and recognize no distinctive disturbing influence of nationality. A man with a peculiarly fine and delicate ear once said to me that when he heard the language of genuine emotion, either on the stage or in politi- cal declamation or in common life, he could no longer detect the peculiar accent of the speaker; the intonation seemed to be just that which the listener’s own voice would naturally have given. Thus the profounder impulses and realities of human nature lose in their expression all the mere distinctions — peculiar characteristics of nationality. But between the surface and the centre of character there are national differ- ences and dissimilarities which are often worth a little study and observa- tion. I should like to cover a few of these pages with some remarks on certain of these dissimilarities between American men as they are found in these North- ern States, and Englishmen as they are found in the great cities of London, Liverpool, Manchester, and other such places. Perhaps I may lay some claim. to impartiality in this matter, inasmuch as I am no more an Englishman than I am an American, and consider myself qualified to be as calm a critic of England, where I have lived nearly all my working lifetime thus far, as of America, where I am still a stranger; and that I have hardly found myself excited to national prejudice or partisanship, except when there is question of my native country, which I have not seen for ever so many years, where I have not now one single tie of blood interest or pecuniary interest, and where it is utterly improbable that I shall ever live again. Is it rather an absurd thing to think of applying any general and common description to “ Americans,” to Massachusetts men and Californians, to New York and Maine, Pennsylvania and Illinois? Perhaps.so. Yet I venture to think that a man may observe far broader dissimilarities of habit, and character, and speech, who travels from Cornwall in England to Dundee in Scotland, or from London to Galway, than he can find in journeying from Broadway, New York, to Montgomery street, San Francisco. To begin with, all Americans speak the same dialect. Maine finds no shadow of difficulty in talking with Nebraska; the most refined Bostonian is in no perplexity about making him- self understood if he stands at the door of the rudest log-cabin by the Missouri. But a Cumberland peasant and a Somersetshire peasant can hardly find any mode of verbal communication, and neither could understand or be understood by an average literary man from London, ‘The difference between the Northern and Southern States of the Union is not after all nearly so great, so far as national characteristics are concerned, as the difference between England and Ireland. The one fundamental explanation of the utter failure of England to govern or pacify Ireland lies in the fact that the moods and ways of the one country are almost hopelessly unintelligible to the other. Great Britain is very ' little and the United States are very large; but it would, I think, be possible to give a tolerably precise idea of the general characteristics of the American in smaller space than would be needed to do the same for the Briton. We have all read, and heard, and said a great deal (assuredly not too much) about the beauty of the American woman. Let me say that I think we have not generally heard justice done to the face and figure of the American man. In every theatre, public meeting, social gathering, railway car, one finds quite a sur- prising number of handsome, bright-eyed, finely-made American men—Ameri- cans of the true and unmistakable type. In some parts of the West a stranger in one of the railway cars might suppose himself to be journeying in the com- panionship of giants. Frederick William of Prussia might have looked with
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760 AMERICAN MEN AND ENGLISHMEN. [JUNE, covetous admiration upon whole groups of men whom I have seen travelling together in various of the Western States. Look at the public men of these Northern States, the eminent men—the poets, orators, statesmen, journalists, authors: what a remarkably large proportion of them are of handsome face and noble presence! To come toa different sphere of life, look at the conductors of the railway cars: what fine faces and manly figures one sees among them. There is a type of manhood—and, in its way, a splendid model—which America alone seems to be developing, which is not seen anywhere else, so far as I know, and which, when I was newer to the country, used to fill me with interest and surprise. I mean what I may call, for lack of a more precise and expressive phrase, the American-Fenian type of man. I speak of the man of immediate Irish descent who has seen service and acquired a soldierly bearing under the flag of the United States, and who is to be found in endless repetitions at the Cooper Institute when a Fenian meeting is held there—the man with the bright, humor- ous eyes and the short nose of the regulation Irishman, but who has acquired much of the keen intelligence of expression which belongs to the American ; who wears the soldier’s thick moustache, and has exchanged the easy-going, lounging, devil-may-care ways and gait of his own.people at home, for the erect, energetic, defiant bearing, compound of soldier and brigand, which makes him look like a figure fromadrama. Half a life, a whole life of service in the English army, under all varieties of climate, from Quebec to Calcutta, and from Cape Town to Gibral- tar, does not convert the Irish peasant or artisan into anything like that. He is to Mickey Free what Fra Diavolo is to Dick Turpin—the same idea glorified into a picturesque, statuesque, dramatic, melodramatic expression, To come back, however, to my comparison between Americans and English- men, it has seemed to me that the former are generally much more effusive and at the same time less talkative than the latter. The common English idea that American men are generally inquisitive and loquacious is surely an odd sort of error—curiously the reverse of truth, as Carlyle would say. I have travelled through several States, have made the great Pacific journey, and more lately spent weeks and weeks of almost incessant going about in railway cars, and I declare that during all the time I only met with two inquisitive men. One was so amusing and eccentric a figure, so absolutely the sort of person a caricaturist would adopt in a book or a comedy as a representative of the whole manhood of Yankeedom, that I cannot resist the temptation of giving up a few lines to an account of him. He was a lank, dry, gray-haired, keen-eyed man, and I met him in a hotel on the edge of Lake Champlain. The day was one of unmitigated snow, and sleet, and slush; and my friend and I found ourselves standing at the door of the hotel looking hopelessly out upon the impassable street. He said the day was very cold; / said it was very cold. He eyed me curiously, and said he guessed I was not used to so much snow; I assented. Came from the South. perhaps? No, indeed; I came from England. “I want to know! Travelling for one of the big English houses, perhaps?” No, indeed. In trade, somehow? No; not in trade. This seemed to surprise him: he could not quite understand what but trade could have brought anybody so far away from home. In answer to another leading question or two, | admitted having come to the United States for pleasure; whereupon he brightened considerably, believing apparently that he had found the right track, and he remarked that many Englishmen had great estates in England. This I acknowledged to be a fact. And then he s’posed I had much real estate in England. No—none at all! Was very rich, anyhow? No; not rich at all—quite the reverse. Now,
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1870. ]} AMERICAN MEN AND ENGLISHMEN. 76% - this staggered him—wholly upset his calculations. He could not “fix” me, evi- dently, and I was resolved to let him puzzle out the matter for himself. Pres- ently, a new idea flashed upon him. He had heard that the younger sons of our English lords often didn’t have many dollars of their own—was that so? Yes; that was so. Ah, perhaps I was one of them younger sons? Alas, no! There was an end of that conjecture: that way of explaining the strange phenomenon of a man not in trade and not rich travelling across the ocean for pleasure had proved a failure. He shifted his ground, and by patient questioning found out that I had been to California, and had travelled about in several of the Western States this side the Mississipp’. Then, with a glance of triumph which seemed to declare that he had got it at last, he put it to me whether I had not been spec- ulating in land. No; I knew nothing about land, and had not speculated ina solitary lot. At this his countenance utterly fell, and before he could collect himself for a fresh spring I escaped, leaving him to puzzle over the mysterious appearance as a tourist in America ofa Briton who was not rich, was not a lord’s son, was not in trade, and was not looking after lots and land. Perhaps if his keen, inquisitive, restless old eye should ever fall on this page, he may learn that a literary man can often travel as a tinker does, and pay his way by jobs of work along the road. Anyhow, this man and one other were the only inquisitive beings I have en- countered during my journeyings thus far through the States. People seem to me as a rule more generally silent here than in England. I found myself much less often invited into conversation by strangers on a journey than would have been the case at home. But I find American men, when they do talk, much more effusive and demonstrative than men are in England. The unemotional, impas- sive manner which is becoming the ordinary demeanor of every Englishman, seems to find little favor or imitation in this country. A stranger who is intro- duced to an Englishman is often inclined to regard the Englishman’s tone and deportment as indicating a hope that he may never see the stranger again; and very likely the stranger is entirely mistaken, and the Englishman is thinking how he can best be of service to him. On the other hand, may I hint that a stranger is apt to bea little misled by the warm and demonstrative nature of the reception occasionally given to him by Americans on whom he has no particular claim, and who quite naturally forget all about him five minutes after his back is turned, but who nevertheless greeted him on his introduction to them with an eager warmth of welcome which seemed to promise eternal friendship? J donot know how to explain the fact, but it seems to me indisputable that the Americans who are thus individually so much more warm and demonstrative than Englishmen, are collectively much less so, An American political meeting is a wonderfully composed and quiet assemblage when compared with a similar kind of gather- ing in England. A lecturer of universal popularity comes before a large audi- ence here. He is greeted with a faint murmur of applause. His finest points, his most stirring passages only awaken a repetition of this murmur. In Eng- land he would be applauded to the echo that should applaud again. Oddly enough, in the great, robust, full-blooded West, audiences are even more reticent and undemonstrative than here in the East. One of the brightest and most pop- ular lecturers in America, an acknowledged success everywhere, told me the other day that her heart sometimes sank within her at the cool composure of her Western audiences, and that she never could tell by their manner whether they liked her or did not like her—although her list of engagements and her receipts must have made it pretty clear to her that her listeners were not unappreciative.
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762 AMERICAN MEN AND ENGLISHMEN. (June, When first I saw Mr. Booth play, I was lost in wonder as to how he contrived to play at all to such a house, which hardly rewarded him from first to last with one genuine round of thrilling, invigorating applause. On the other hand, I am convinced that American audiences in general listen with a far closer attention and keener appreciation than English audiences do, and that the very silence and quietness which to a stranger seem so chilling, are in reality the best com- pliments which a listener can pay to the speaker. All American men seem to me to be fluent talkers when they have occasion to talk. There is no halting for a word, no stammering and beating about ; but a man, whether he speaks well or speaks ill, will at all ‘events speak right on, and say what he has to say with unbroken rush and fluency. I need not say that fluency is the rarest gift among Englishmen. The ordinary Briton, when called upon to address a public meet- ing, even though he is in the constant habit of performing such a feat, will stam- mer and boggle, hem and haw, as if that sort of thing were a necessary accom- paniment of all public speaking. Some of our best trained parliamentary debat- ers keep up this odious habit as if it were an adornment of eloquence. The late Lord Palmerston, who could speak, and speak well, for any number of hours on almost any subject, used to introduce a sort of stammered grunt, or such semi- articulate interjection, after almost every other word. Disraeli has the same trick to a lesser degree. Robert Lowe’s speaking is all stammering, and stutter- ing, and awkward interjection. One of the greatest charms of the style of Glad- stone and Bright is an absolute freedom from this detestable peculiarity. The average of public speaking is infinitely better in America than in England ; but I think we have a few speakers in England who, for force and originality, for the combination of argument and eloquence, perfect ease and unstrained power, for variety of illustration, for depth and breadth of culture, have not an equal num- ber of rivals in the United States. Words mean more—do they not ?—with Englishmen in general than with Americans. in Wort, ein Mann, is a German proverb which your true English- man practically illustrates. What he says he means—that and nothing else. Much of the misinterpretation of the character of American public life which prevails in England is probably to be clearly traced to the extravagance of ex- pression in which American newspapers and speakers so commonly indulge. Take up an American paper—any paper, almost, of to-day—and observe how it will speak of some public man on the opposite side of a political question. Might not the unaccustomed stranger naturally and fairly suppose that this pub- lic man was, at least in the sincere opinion of the writer, one of the most aban- doned villains who ever made a trade of political profligacy? Yet the writer does not really think anything of the kind, and has not the slightest notion of the words being taken au Died de la lettre, as they assuredly would be in England. Opponents in politics and journalism are far more familiar and friendly with each other here than in England. There two men may face each other in the House of Commons for twenty years, making public allusion to each other half a dozen times during each week of that period, and yet not have the slightest private ac- quaintanceship—not have even a bowing acquaintanceship when they meet in the street. In London, the probability is that the editor of one daily journal does not know the editor of another daily journal by sight. Yet the political opponents will always allude to each other publicly with a demeanor of respect, and anything like an insinuation of want of integrity is the rarest thing possible. An English public man often believes in his heart of hearts that his opponent is _ a scoundrel, and detests him accordingly ; but he never publicly says or suggests
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1870.] AMERICAN MEN AND ENGLISHMEN. 763 this. In America, a man quite commonly suggests or declares that his opponent is a scoundrel, while privately he regards him as a very worthy fellow, and is de- lighted to meet him in society. I had not been long in New York when I met in the apartments of one of the most distinguished of American or other journal- ists a gentleman holding a leading position on the editorial staff of a rival paper, in the columns of which our host was denounced every other day, openly and by | name, in language such as English journalists would hardly employ to describe the most abominable of miscreants. I remember Louis Blanc once expressing to me his surprise at the harshness with which English journalists habitually as- sail political opponents. He insisted that in France all men, of whatever party, would admire and respect the talents of a Gladstone, a Disraeli, or a Bright, and that a journalist, criticising any sach man, would, in whatever severity of com- ment, make it apparent that he could appreciate his genius and acknowledge the worth of his character. But the harshest commentary ever made by the most reckless partisan print of our days in London might be regarded as base flattery when compared with the sort of abuse which American newspapers quite com- monly shower on their political opponents. The thing is only intelligible at all when one recognizes the fact that a far less precise value is attached to the meaning of words here than among Englishmen. Indeed, the ordinary English- man of to-day is, above all things, literal. Even that sort of obvious and pur- posed exaggeration essential to a certain kind of humor, is usually lost on him. He either fails to understand it, or he sets it down as lying. Such. an English- man, when he travels for the first time among the peasantry of Naples or the south of Ireland, comes almost at once to the conclusion that he is among a pop- ulation of liars. Every little extravagance of protestation, or welcome, or narra- tion, appears to him just a lie, and nothing else. England has produced proba- bly a larger number of great and true humorists than any other country in the world. The very word “humor” is hardly susceptible of translation into any other language. Yet nine out of ten Englishmen seem absolutely devoid of the faintest sense of humor, while nine out of every ten Americans are apparently brimming over with it. I suppose all people endowed with a quick sense of hu- mor are prone to exaggeration. Is it not in the “ Spectator,” or in one of Gold- smith’s essays, that some humorist avers that the whole fun of his story would have been lost if he had made the brim of somebody’s hat two inches narrower ? I think the national spirit which stimulates and appreciates the humorous ex- travagances and exaggerations of Hosea Bigelow, and Artemus Ward, and Josh Billings, and Mark Twain, has a good deal to do with the grotesque absurdity of the unbridled abuse which American journals so often pour out on American public men. | Is there not a much greater amount of what I may call sentiment in the American than in the Englishman? The majority in England failed to under- stand the course taken by the citizens of the North during the late civil war be-. cause they had not the least conception of the strength of the Union sentiment. No creature living has less sentiment in him than the average Englishman; and! no creature living is less endowed with that dramatic instinct which enables one man to enter into the inner feelings of another and a differently-moulded man, A familiar term of contempt in England is to call some complaint a “sentimental! grievance.” Your average Briton thinks he has utterly demolished and annihi- lated any case of complaint when he has called it a sentimental grievance—as if any power in political affairs was ever half so strong as the power of sentiment.. Now I think Americans in general have a good deal of sentiment in them ; and 50
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764 AMERICAN MEN AND ENGLISHMEN. (June, I think the possession of this quality will prove to be the great source of their success, as the lack of it among Englishmen has proved to be the great source of failure, in moulding alien creeds and races into their own political system. I am not very proud of the part played in American political life by the vast majority of Irishmen, and I am not a great admirer of the party which has con- rived to monopolize their votes and services. But I cannot help being im- pressed by the dramatic skill with which the American Democrats have suc- ceeded in inducing the Irish citizens, almost to a man, to follow their banner. The thing was done in the first instance by recognizing and appreciating poor Paddy’s national sentiments ; by managing so skilfully to twangle the strings of his Irish harp that he thought he heard the echoes of Tara from the regions of - Tammany. Foreigners in England remain foreigners always; nay, a Scotch- hman in London is never anything but a Scotchman. For no Englishman ever troubles himself to understand or enter into the feelings of a stranger. A national or other sentiment is to the regular Anglo-Saxon only something so ridiculous and stupid that he will not even give himself the pains to ask what it means. The feeling with which Americans regard the flag of the Union is quite unknown in England. An Englishman, it is needless to say, will fight for his flag, and nail it to the mast, and die for it, if need be, when it is threatened by an enemy, because it is the symbol of the home, and the State, and the people that really are the object of attack ; but in ordinary times he has no feeling what- ever about it. Nor has he anything like the sentiment towards the place of his birth which most Americans have. The local prides and jealousies between New York men, Boston men, Chicago men, and so forth, are without any parallel in England. No Englishman born in Bristol or Liverpool has any very thrilling pride in the growth or prowess of Bristol or Liverpool except so far as he and his are immediately and practically affected thereby. There is very little in England of that feeling of filial devotion which is almost universal in the North- ern States of America. The family supper-table at which three generations are represented, and which one may see anywhere and everywhere here, is now a rare and strange phenomenon there. A mother-in-law is in England a nuisance, and nothing more. I have often been struck by the fact that so much of the poetry of the late civil war was so purely sentimental in its character. I do not remember having heard or read a single genuine war-song—a song breathiag the gaudium certaminis, or even the fierce passion of the patriot in arms ; a song such as Koérner might have written, or even one to compare in spirit with Ten- nyson’s “Charge of the Light Brigade.” Such ballads of the war as I have heard were rather, indeed, pure and pathetic protests against all war; songs em- bodying the strong, gentle heart’s regret for the home-circle, the mother, the wife, the child—the mother coming in for the largest share of tender recollec- tion. Indeed, there seems to be a wonderful depth of tenderness, as well as of humor (I suppose tenderness and humor always go together), in the American nature. My friend Edmund C. Stedman’s charming little poem, “ Pan in Wall Street,” has a symbolic truth in its fanciful picture. Even in Wall street old Pan, the true-hearted god, the divinity of simple Nature, still lives. It is true that one who goes about in America does hear the dollar talked of infinitely more often than money of any kind is spoken of in England. I nevertheless hold that sociai life in the United States is everywhere moistened and sweetened by an underflow of sentiment which does not suffuse to any perceptible extent our more practical and arid English system. I never knew an American who had not al- most on the surface a contending, contrasting play of gleams of sentiment and
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1870.] AMERICAN MEN AND ENGLISHMEN. 765 flashes of humor. Quick receptivity is doubtless a special characteristic of the American mind. Did any one ever see or hear of an American who could fairly be called dull? 1, at least, have not yet met such a creature. In almost every possible way, socially, morally, and politically, Americans seem to me to be distinguished from Englishmen by the absence of the influ- ences of caste and traditional privilege, which in England are almost ubiquitous, almost omnipotent. Reform and progress with an Englishman mean the unmak- ing of old laws, the unwinding of old coils, the bursting of old chains. Re- form with Americans seems to mean the introduction of new legal mechanism, to reduce disorder into order. The tendency in England is to reduce legal restric- tion down to its very minimum, reformers there believing that human nature can generally be trusted more freely than class legislation. Of course, one great reason for this is that for generations, and almost from the beginning of our ju- dicial and legal systems, our English laws have been made by a class, and as the nation grows it finds itself compelled to shake off successive coils of unwise and partial restriction. Something is wrong here,” says the American; “let ws, the nation, make a law to set it right.” “Something is wrong here,” says the Eng- lishman; “the fault must be in some measure passed long ago by this or that class or party; let us try to get rid of it.” I happened lately to be conversing with an American friend about systems of taxation, and I learned for the first time that people in this city are only informed by a public and general notifica- tion that their taxes are due, and then they are bound to go and pay them, or else—! I thought of our rate-collectors at home in England, who believe them- selves lucky indeed if they can get the amount due the third time of their calling at the reluctant rate-payer’s door. I tried to picture to myself an Englishman seeing a general notice in the papers that everybody’s taxes were due, and there- upon walking over to the public office and paying the money. I have not a very high-soaring imagination, and my fancy could not reach this flight. My friend, on the other hand, could scarcely understand my surprise. “It is our business,” he said, “to go and pay the taxes; it is not the business of the public office to keep sending after us; the taxes are our own, and we are bound to pay them.” Fancy an Englishman talking in this sort of way of a tax! Why, we all regard the tax-collector as our natural enemy ; as a creature to be dodged, denounced, ridiculed; as a being who has no rights we are bound to respect ; between whom and us the laws of morality and commercial integrity have no binding power whatever. Seriously, a great deal of this feeling undoubtedly originated in the fact that until very lately the great majority of the people of England had little or nothing to do with the making of the laws which they were to obey, and the imposition of the taxes they were to contribute. It is not so much a sense of universal equality that seems to me to make itself evident in American society, as the sense of universal ownership or copartnership in the State and its pos- sessions. Every American man appears to me to proclaim after his own mean- ing the L’état c’est moi/ maxim. The late civil war must have done much to strengthen and deepen this feeling. Who are affected directly in England by a war? Two classes: the aristocracy whose sons are the officers, and the poor whose sons are in the ranks. “The English army,” said a brilliant young mem- ber of Parliament, Mr. George Trevelyan (nephew of Lord Macaulay), “is made up of the froth and the dregs of English society” ; and the remark was almost. literally true. Only the poor furnish soldiers to the ranks; only the rich send officers to the mess-table. The whole bulk of the lower “ middle class” in Eng- land are practically unaffected by a war, except, of course, as to the paying of
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766 AMERICAN MEN AND ENGLISHMEN. [Junr, heavier taxes. We have not had any very prolonged experience of war in this generation, but the Crimean campaign and the Indian mutiny gave us some taste of its quality, and we. all know that the mothers who watched, and wept, and prayed for their sons during each terrible crisis lived:for the most part in Bel- gravian mansions and great country houses, or in village cottages and city gar- rets. The middle class had little part in the suffering or the triumph. Now, I can affirm that, in a wide and varied intercourse with Americans, I have harcly known a single family which had not some relative, or relatives, more or less distant, engaged in the recent civil war. All this must modify incalculably the manners of a people. It must produce a freedom and fellowship which find ex- pression in* the ways and utterances of daily intercourse. Of course it has its magnificent virtues, infinitely transcending any possible disadvantages ; but it has disadvantages too.. 1] own the State as much as you; I help to run the machine as well as you. I am yourequal. Therefore I owe you no reverence.” Does not this feeling express itself commonly in the manners of American men? One observes a striking absence of reverence for authority or for personal digni- ty; aconstant tendency to make irreverent comments on personal weaknesses or defects. A man, however gifted and meritorious, can hardly afford to be ridiculous in America, Little eccentricities in the appearance, dress, and man- ner of certain public men, which are the constant theme of observation, ridicule, and caricature here, would hardly be noticed in England. I have often won- dered whether a man with so many defects of manner, awkwardnesses, and ec- centricities as Lord Brougham had, for example, could ever have obtained a high position and great popular influence in America. Certainly I think there is more social toleration of individual peculiarities and oddities in England than there is here; and I doubt whether a man might not more safely indulge in ex- treme opinions on any subject there than here. The manner in which some one who has ‘expressed, or is reported to have expressed, any opinion distasteful to the majority, is set upon by newspapers and hounded at day after day, is something quite unknown among the forms of social persecution in England. I dare say this sort of thing makes a fine bracing atmosphere in which the strong of lungs and constitution are tried and further strengthened.+ I am ready to admit that it may be a splendid ordeal by fire, which the sublimely fearless nature will brave and triumph over; but I am quite with Burke in his distrust of human sys- tems which depend for their existence upon the heroic virtues; and I fear the man of average character will be apt to keep his opinions to himself, or to think with the majority, or not to think at all, if such trials and penalties await the in- dependent utterance of his genuine opinion. Take, for example, the career of an Englishman who is regarded with profound respect in America, I mean Mr, John Stuart Mill. On nine out of every ten questions of great public interest, social, political, moral, and religious, Mr. Mill entertains and uncompromisingly expresses opinions which are opposed to those of the vast majority of the Eng- lish people, high and low, the Belgravian, the Bohemian, and the Philistine. On some of the gravest questions affecting humanity Mr. Mill’s views are regarded by the majority of his countrymen with genuine @read and positive devastation, Yet, although, of course, he has been bitterly opposed, and stupidly misjudged, and sharply assailed, I am not aware thata single ‘sentence was ever directed against him which could fairly be regarded as fas ibboir or Offensive. Respect for the unquestioned purity, sincerity, and intellect of the man mitigated the manners of his opponents, nor permitted them to be too fierce. But only suppose the case of any man thus frankly ahd broadly opposed to the average of public
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1870.] AMERICAN MEN AND ENGLISHMEN. 767 opinion, acting in this country the part Mr. Mill has always taken in England, and say whether he would not have needed strong nerves to hold his own against the storm of denunciation, abuse, and ridicule! How the hostile papers and par- ties would vilify and slander him ; how they would invent nicknames of oppro- brium for him; how they would ridicule his personal appearance, and rake every- where through his past life to find out whether he had not at some time or other done something which he ought not to have done, and which it would pain him now to have made publicly known! Of course, men of the heroic stamp, of the stamp of Mill, would endure all that, even as such men do endure it here; but the tendency of such a system is undoubtedly to suppress all individuality, to make men think, or at least pretend to think, in platoons, to compel opinion to follow a word of command, and enable the ignorant to dictate to the expert. I think a stranger here must have little observation indeed who cannot already discern the influence of this kind of thing upon American men. Of course I do not regard the public as identified with or responsible for the extravagances of certain journals, but such extravagances could not float at all except in an at- mosphere much wanting in the element of reverence for personal character and the dignity of individual manhood. I spoke of this once to an American friend, a man of great ability, culture, and thought, well acquainted with his own country and with England. He ad- mitted that lack of personal reverence is one of the penalties to be paid for in- dividual equality of rights, and copartnership in power; but he pointed out that there was something to be said too on the side of the irreverent. In England, he went on to argue, it was quite easy to make a parade of admitting colored people to social equality ; the colored people there were so few that they could not possibly come in anybody’s way, or create any disturbitig influence. Here, while he condemned any political or social distinction between races, he yet maintained that there was a much greater excuse for the man who would keep the negro in a moral Ghetto than there could be in England ; and the English- man has no right'to pride himself upon a heroism which costs him nothing. So of certain extreme opinions and their advocates. In England every great ques- tion is looked upon as fundamentally settled. There is a solidity, or even a stolidity of public opinion, which makes it utterly impossible that the most su- premely endowed reformer could bring about any radical change except by the slowest creeping steps of gradual innovation. Philistinism may sit securely be- hind its intrenchments and smile composedly at the utmost efforts of Mill or anybody else to disturb the foundations of any social institution. But here things are quite different. Everything is on trial, everything is possible. No scheme so extravagant, no social or moral innovation so daring ; but it may suc- ceed with a rush, and sweep all before it. Therefore we must make allowance for, we must at least try to understand, the bitter and passionate vehemence with which people who are opposed to and afraid of certain changes try to shriek down and scare away anybody, however worthy of personal respect, who makes himself the advocate of changes at once odious and possible. I fully admit the force and justice of much of this reasoning ; but still, as one recording merely his impressions of facts as they are, I retain the belief that there is more reverence for personal dignity and more toleration of individualities and eccentricities among Englishmen than among Americans. One sentiment of reverence the American certainly now has to a degree far beyond that which is manifested by Englishmen—the sentiment of reverence for woman. Muchas I had read of the politeness and deference shown to women by all classes of
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768 AMERICAN MEN AND ENGLISHMEN. [JUNE, Americans, I had not by any means realized the self-sacrificing chivalry with which the American everywhere defers to womanhood. French politeness to woman I hold to be a mere grace and nothing more, having or not having any reality beneath it, according to the character of the individual man. Sometimes, when one reads of the Frenchman’s exquisite courtesy to woman, he is reminded of the praise bestowed on Louis the Fourteenth, because he raised his hat when passing the serving-maidens on the steps at Versailles, while the same Louis would, to gratify the idlest whim, drag the women of his own family on dreary journeys, over dusty roads, for a whole day together, no matter what their con- dition of health, and without allowing them to stop even a moment on their toil- some way. But American courtesy to woman is a genuine, practical article, al- though it springs from what may be called a mere sentiment; and I confess I think it not merely lends a gentleness and beauty to common daily life, but is an absolute necessity for the preservation of the finer parts of man’s character in a country where existence is so much of a constant struggle and turbulent rushing movement. Of course, the freedom with which men and women mingle together in this country, is a source of almost perpetual wonder to a stranger from Eu- rope. Such a freedom would be impossible but for the strength and reality of that chivalrous feeling of deference to woman as woman which is found among American men as among the men of no other country of which I have any knowledge. I presume this sentiment will not survive the establishment of per- fect political equality between the sexes; and slight as this fact may seem, it is one of the only things which would make me at all regret what is called the en- franchisement of women. One cannot but see that the moment a woman in this country emerges from what tradition and prejudice regard as woman’s sphere, she is subjected to just the same irreverent and vehement criticism with which a public man is assailed. I do not know that this would do the woman any special harm, but I think American men can ill afford to lose a sentiment of reverence of any kind. Even superstitions sometimes have a sweetening and purifying influence over certain characters, and it is probably better on the whole to feel some reverence for a wooden idol than to feel no reverence for anything at all. : : I do not find American men in general convivial personages. I do not find that eating and drinking are regarded as means of social enjoyment here, in any- thing like the fashion of the old country. The “ perpendicular system ” of drink- ing which Dickens speaks of, is. surely the most cheerless and unsocial form of potation known to mortal beings... Every one, American and other, assures me that there is a great deal of drinking done in these Northern States. Perhaps so; but.as in this paper Iam giving only my own impressions, right or wrong, for just what they are worth, I must say that, so far as my observation goes, Americans are the soberest race of men under the sun. No Englishman who is not a professed teetotaller ever dreams of dining without a glass of wine or ale. Mr. Parton’s question about the probable potations of the Coming Man would in England seem almost as absurd as if. he were to speculate on the problem whether the Coming Man will wear clothes. Here, so far as I have seen, the habit is to accompany dinner with nothing but. ice-water, unless when a set and formal dinner-party is given. Look round the dining hall of any London hotel or restaurant—so many diners,.so many glasses of light wine, or stout, or ale. Look round the dining hall of the Fifth Avenue Hotel, New York ; the Parker House, Boston; the Continental, Philadelphia; the Sherman House, Chicago; the Russell House, Detroit ; the Cosmopolitan Hotel, San Francisco—anywhere,
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1870.] AMERICAN MEN AND ENGLISHMEN. 769 everywhere you will find the ice-water the rule, the wine or beer the rare excep- tion. Teetotalism is a strange phenomenon among cultivated Englishmen ; al- most as strange as immoderate drinking, which is now, I am glad to say, a very unusual thing among such classes of men in England. But the tendency in these Northern States seems to be towards the erection of teetotalism into a vir- tue: that is to say, into something indispensable, unquestionable, on the need of which no controversy can arise, something like chastity or truth. I talked lately with a New England clergyman on this subject, and, endeavoring in a feeble way to plead the cause of moderation, I asked him if he had not observed during his travels in Germany that decent, well-conducted men and their wives sat pleas- antly together in their beer gardens and sipped their beer, and that no excess came of it. He said he had seen such things, and had not observed any excess ; but he assured me in all seriousness and earnestness, that the sight of a married pair drinking beer together was to him simply disgusting and revolting—like the sight of a husband and wife committing some crime together. Doubtless, this was a teetotal profession of an extreme kind; but the tendency of the moral code in the Northern States seems to me to lead in that direction. The Puritan element still forms the basis of most characters here; and the man of the North- ern and Northwestern States has to my thinking less of the sensuous about him than any other man of any other nation with which I am acquainted. In his eating and drinking, his amusements, his art, his literature, the joy of the senses has little part. He eats and drinks to nourish his frame ; he amuses himself (when he aves amuse himself) in some easy and healthy way ; he reads books which have a good purpose in them, and likes pictures which illustrate a moral story. The deep, absorbing joy in a beautiful sight because it is so beautiful, rarely in- deed makes manifest its presence here. I think Hawthorne was the most un- American of all Americans. He was to the ordinary American what Savage Landor was to the ordinary Englishman. May I say that, to a stranger, this peculiarity often presents itself in rather a cheerless sort of way? Of course, the social habits of certain classes in New York and Boston are hardly different from those of similar classes in London ; and let me say, in passing, that I am delighted to find that the abominable cus- tom of sending the ladies upstairs after dinner, while the gentlemen draw their chairs together and drink their wine below, is disappearing here more quickly than even in England. But in country houses, and in many city homes too, when the rather early dinner is succeeded at once by tea or coffee, and then the rest of the long evening goes on without a solitary glass of wine to enliven host and guest, and give new freshness to conversation, isn’t it, now isn’t it—as Rosa Dartle would say—just a little cheerless? I hope no earnest teetotaller will deal with me, as some terribly earnest teetotallers did the other day with my friend Bayard Taylor, and set me down as an advocate of the immoderate use of strong drinks, because I put in this mild plea in favor of one or two genial English fashions. This at all events is to be said in favor of English ways, that if almost every Englishman drinks wine or beer at dinner, no Englishman what- ever, above the level of a coalheaver or a costermonger, walks into a bar-room at midday and swallows ardent spirits. The bar-rooms of the Fifth Avenue Hotel, the St. Nicholas, or the Astor House, would be useless institutions in hotels of that class in London. ~The persons who alone would be likely to visit the hotels are persons who would never think of presenting themselves in a bar-room. But the very existence of the bar-room and the “‘ perpendicular system” only tends to confirm me in my opinion as to the remarkable absence of the sensuous
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770 AMERICAN MEN AND ENGLISHMEN. [JuNE. in the composition of man’s character in the Northern and Western States. When a man drinks, he drinks to satisfy a certain craving, to supply a certain supposed necessity ; not for the joy of drinking and the sweetness of prolonged sensation. The Viennese with his yard or so of thin, bright beer, nay, the Neapolitan over his coffee, illustrates the delight of sensuousness far more strongly than the American drinker of cocktails or rum punches at the midday bar-room. : Beyond doubt, the habitual unfluency (if I may use such a word) of English- men in conversation, explains to some extent the necessity of the occasional stimulus in their social intercourse. An Englishman wants to have something to help him out with his talking; and he finds, as Macaulay says of Addison, that wine unlocks the spell which chains his tongue. The American man seems to need nothing of the kind. When he chooses to talk (often, as I have said already, he is habitually reticent), he can always talk with force and freedom. I declare that I have never met with an American who could not talk well in private. I am even still constantly thrown into surprise and admiration at the readiness with which every one can express his ideas, and the way in which he seems to have all the ideas arranged and classified ready for use. How slowly, hesitatingly, by fits and starts, in random glimpses, an Englishman allows you to know what he thinks on any subject! How readily, deliberately, exhaustively the American pours out all he knows, or at least all he chooses to say! I spent an evening lately in a city, not New York, at the house of a thoughtful and distinguished American, We were for the greater part of the evening alone. He told me he wished to talk with me, and compare impressions on certain subjects. We talked for hours, and I know that I have never had a more delightful conversation. His frank way of going directly to the heart of a subject and setting forth his views with- out any reserve; his complete command of his ideas and his words, actually in- spired the other party to the conversation with something like ease and freedom of expression ; and so we talked, and the hours went on. I doubt if it would be possible for two Englishmen, not previously acquainted with each other, to have thus deliberately set about an exhaustive interchange of ideas without an utter and ignominious breakdown in the conversation as the immediate result, anda cordial desire on both sides for escape on any terms of humiliating capitulation, There are of course almost innumerable points of comparison and contrast between the American of the Northern States and the Englishman, on which I might descant if time, and space and the possible patience of readers would al- low. Summing up, however, what I have thus far explained, I have only to say that my observation shows me the American as at once more humorous and more sentimental, more habitually reticent and yet far more fluent of tongue, more sober and less sensuous, less endowed with reverence for personal dignity and toleration of individual eccentricity, less precise in the use of words and more given to exaggeration, more intellectual in face and more “subjective” in mental temperament than his English brother. Let me add that 1 think the difference between an American and an Englishman is slight and superficial in- deed, when compared with the difference, about which I shall venture on some other occasion to offer a few observations, between an American woman and an English woman. | Justin McCartTry.
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KEEPING THE CASH. NE fine winter morning “ The Great Asiatic and Oceanican Spice Com- () pany”? came down with a great crash, and little Will Brennan was turned into the streets. It was a hard time, and Bren searched vainly day after day for a situation. Finally, thoroughly sick and beaten out, he was forced to give it up and go home to Crawley on the Trickle. Ten months before he had met Kate Arrow; and, to make long short, was before now about as fast to that merry, good-hearted maiden, with the pretty face and winning ways, as there was any need. And-so far he had had little cause for complaint. Since he was thrown out of work, he had not seen Kate: he thought every day he should get a place, and he had a feeling that he would rather not go until he could see his way. He couldn’t tell her he was a beggar, he said; and he wasn’t going to pretend to her, at least. Then he got discouraged, and maybe a little heart-sick, and stayed away because he hadn’t gone hefore. So he came home on the Trickle, not meaning to stay long far from Quincy street, but forced to go some- where and knowing nowhere else. He had been at home only three days when a letter came to him from his old friend Charley Traveler. They two had fallen out some months before, and Bren had very soon seen that he had been to blame. He had meant to go over and make it up. But making up is not just the pleas- antest business, nor is putting off the hardest. Then Bren was too proud to go with his trouble, when he hadn’t gone before; though he knew the first word would have brought Charley round. So he was not a little surprised to recog- nize Traveler’s hand on the envelope. Here is the letter: Dear Bren: I only heard Sunday that you was off your feet. I had almost forgotten you was in the A. and O. Spice. (I’m glad it’s gone up. It was a bad shop.) I say, Bren, why didn’t you come round? It was shabby of you not to give a fellow a chance to use you, when you was looking round. I went over to Cole when I heard of it, _and he told me you was off forC. Now, Bren, if you’re not fast yet, you’re just the fellow I want. Come down and keep my books. I’ve been doing a bigger business than at first this winter, on a very small percentage. We clear very little over and above, but I find it’s the only way to keep the mill going in these times ; and I’m working into a trade that I think will float us nicely by and by. But it makes so much to look after that I can’t keep the books up at all as they should be. If you can come, I’ll have the whole thing off my mind. I can’t make it worth much to you now, but you'll have your slice of what there is ; and I think the pudding will be bigger before long, and maybe more plums in it. This is no made-up job, Bren; I hope you'll think it worth your while to come. In haste, Cx. T,. , That was Traveler’s way of making up. Friday morning, that same week, Bren took his seat at the desk in Travel- er’s hardware store, 7 Griffin’s Row. He found the books correct as far as they went, but one-sided and fallen behind. “You see, Bren,” Traveler said, looking over Bren’s shoulder and point- ing out this and that, “I’ve been so pushed, I’ve let our creditors keep their own accounts. I’m careful where I deal, and of course they don’t know that I keep things at odds and ends. I don’t believe I’ve lost much by it. But I don’t like slip-slop, you know; and of course you'll have it all in black and white. And I say, Bren, I don’t want to look at the books if I can help it. I’ve got enough outside. You'll want to get the cash up to date the best you can.
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772 KEEPING THE CASH. “[Junr, Then you can start fair. You can work up the rest from the bills and the blot- ter as you get time. I’d balance the cash every morning, and deposit on Satur- days at the Cutlers’ and Grinders’, Pay statements in checks, or in cash if there’s enough on hand.” Part of which Bren understood to signify that Traveler was going to trust him entirely, and keep no watch or check upon him. Bren was grateful to his friend, and remembered with no great pleasure his part in the coolness between them. He took a bit of paper lying by him, and drew pot-hooks around it with his pen. “IT say, Charley,” he breaks out, looking up, “I was a fool in that Callicott business. It’s hanged good of you not to mind.” “Come, Bren,” Traveler answered, “that’s enough of that.” So Bren set to work, thankful and happy. He was on his feet again. He was hardly sorry for his misfortune now; he was glad to be quit of that flash concern, and he had got back his best friend. Bren was rather rusty at account- ing. He got on pretty slowly. He made up his mind he would not see Kate until he had brought the cash up to date. It would be an incentive to him; and, besides, he had stayed away so long, he should like to have something worth while done before he went back. It was after six on Saturday night when he laid the blotter between the leaves and closed the book with a bang. He had brought the cash down to date and balanced it “by short.” At eight he turned into Quincy street, out of Palmetto Place. He felt a little flurried as he went along ; it was three weeks since he had spoken to Kate, and all that while she had been rising in his thought, until now she seemed to Bren a being of un- earthly goodness and beauty. He felt a little afraid; he wondered how he had dared be so free and merry with her as he remembered sucha day. But then she had been so kind and so merry herself. And she seemed to like to have him come too; he could see her now, as she had smiled so frankly and given him her hand in welcome the very last time. No, there was nothing to fear. He knew she could never change; she was so good, and true, and kind. He would tell her all about this trouble of his. He was up on his feet again, and could afford to tell her now. He would tell her about Charley—what a brave, noble fellow he was—how he had paid wrong and neglect by the most delicate kindness and the fullest trust. He knew she would admire his friend as he did. Maria let him in. He found a number of people gathered for a little evening party. He met Mr. Arrow as he entered the parlor, and stopped to speak with him, Glancing aside, he saw Kate across the two rooms. She was sitting by a table, talking and laughing with a tall young fellow about his own age. He was standing, leaning over a book or picture they were examining. Kate fronted Bren as she sat, but her face was turned aside. Bren could see that the face was flushed a little; the light of a shaded jet fell broadly upon her. But she did not appear to have seen Bren; doubtless the flush was only the heat of the rooms. Bren forgot what he was saying to the gentleman ; he stammered some- thing and moved on. Ina moment he seemed wholly changed. The tremor of mingled joy and fear was gone; to its place leaped suddenly a hard, hot feeling of pain and hate. The stranger was a good-looking fellow, self-possessed and easy, with a ready laugh and smile, and not a bad face. Bren did not know why, and did not care; but he hated the fellow from the first glance. He made his way through the rooms and went up to Kate. He forced back the bitter feeling and put on acareless air. She got up when she saw him, and gave him her hand. - Her greeting was civil enough, but somehow it exasperated Bren. His
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1870.] KEEPING THE CASH. 773 eyes glanced up to the stranger standing by. She took it up instantly as a sig- nal that Bren would like to be introduced; which it certainly was not. She turned and introduced him: “Mr. Robert Brower.” Bren shot a quick questioning glance at Kate’s face; turned away, could make nothing of it. He gave the stranger rather grim greeting. He had not asked to make his acquaintance; he didn’t want to know him, and he wasn’t going to lie about it. “Very happy, I’m sure,” Brower said, and bowed. The two measured each other, as they stood face to face an instant. Bren was a poor dissembler ; his look was plainly defiant and threatening, in spite of him. And though Brower’s face was bland, there was the slightest possible contraction in the upper lip, and his eyes spoke the truth out squarely, as eyes will. Between the two, it was all the same as though he had said: “ The insolent little beggar! I’ll teach him better manners before this game’s played.” And the game seemed to have a new zest for him from that time. He was well armed. He had skill, address, and temper. With those three weapons one need not easily despair of any earthly prize. Bren had a good deal of quickness, was usually bright and merry, with an evident sincerity and kindness of disposi- tion. But he could not well hide dislike or annoyance. He felt he was no match for the other, and the feeling put him out and showed him to the worst advantage. Brower was so cool, so bold of word and laugh, so bright and hand- some withal. He seemed to rob Bren of all his likable qualities. Beside him, Bren appeared an awkward, ill-conditioned fellow enough. He hardly knew how the evening passed. He was glad to get out into the cool night air and the darkness of the streets. His face felt flushed and hot; he burned with a pas- sion of hate and disappointment. It had come upon him so suddenly, and se unexpected. He said it was too hard; he didn’t deserve it. He had taken his evil fortune manfully, had stood out against fate and done his honest best; and it wasn’t right that he should be so paid. Oh, it was too hard! He cursed it all, and himself for a grouty fool. Why had he not met this fellow on his own . ground? He was not so clever—him—it was more brass than brains. But what right had she to torment him? If she hadn’t cared for him, what did she mean by leading him on? MHadn’t she been plainly pleased to have him come? She had shown it plainer than words a hundred times. If she hadn’t cared for him, what right had she to keep him on until he was too fast to break? Who was she to take it upon her to break a man’s life for her sport or pride? What was she, before Heaven, more than he? If she was purer and finer, whose praise was that! Did she try harder; had she more temptation? Would Ae act like : that? He’d die first ! Bren walked and walked up and down the deserted streets ; he did not care how or where. A feeling of awful loneliness crept over him. He wished he was back at home; he wished he was a child again. He longed for the touch of the gentle hand that had smoothed away the smart, the gentle voice that never failed to comfort. But the bruise was deeper now, poor Bren; face and hand were far away, and vain to help. ' Bren turned at last to go home. The breadth of the sleeping city lay be- tween. The wind blew cold and damp; he shivered and turned his back. Shame and crime stared at him out of the gloom, and flitted by like horrible ghosts. He shrank back scared from their touch, and fled away through the desolate streets. The day was breaking dimly over the eastern roofs when he climbed up to his attic room and crept shivering to bed. And while the peace.
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774 KEEPING THE CASH, [JUNE, ful Sabbath morning broke and brightened over river and town, Bren tossed wretchedly awhile and then fell into a heavy sleep, and dreamed that Kate was kind again and all the world was heaven; and woke to wish he had not. Poor little Bren, no doubt it was rather hard! Bren stood a poor chance, it must be owned, unless fate and the fair one fa- vored. He could not be himself when Brower was by. He made all sorts of resolutions; he would put.a bold face upon it; he would be free and merry— would treat Brower civilly and coolly, as Brower did him. Then he would go and meet Brower, it might be, at the house; and his heart would rise into his throat at sight of the fellow, and he would scowl at him out of his eyes, over the smooth words he tried to say. And then he would be awkward and disagree- able in spite of himself. And Kate got to be cold and reserved; and Bren would come away raging and ready to cry with vexation and pain. So it went on, Bren could not keep away. It made him stamp and curse to think of that fellow, looking so manly and frank, having it all his own way. He mus¢ go and see what went on. Cole dropped in upon him one night. He talked of indifferent things a minute, sitting on the bed while Bren shaved at the glass, twelve inches by eight. Then he broke out abruptly: | “Bren, I say, why don’t you haul off? That fellow’s got the wind of you. It’ll only be the harder by and by.” And Bren turned round with uplifted razor, and his face quite white. “*—— it, Jim, I can’t!’ he answered fiercely, and stamped on the floor. “I tell you, if she throws me, I’ll kill him.” | And he made a lunge with the open blade that made Cole shrink, and threw iton the floor. And he turned away and fairly sobbed. And Cole saw it was mo use, and came away sorry and grim. He did not think much of Bren’s threat ; he knew his friend’s hot way. But he was very sorry for poor Bren ; he knew he had no great strength, and was bound up in the girl, body and soul. Besides, it was no pleasant thought to have to doubt this Kate Arrow, He had known her long before Bren, and had liked and admired her thoroughly, watch- ing her apart as was his wont. When he was sick of the world’s. meanness and shallowness, he had liked to think of Kate and assure himself there was still to be found goodness and artless truth. And now to have to doubt even Kate—it was a grim thought. And just this is one of the sorriest things that can befall. It shakes one’s faith in it all ; you feel that the very foundations are broken up, If I have looked here year after year, you say, and found all fair and sweet, and one day I come and find rottenness at the very core, where shall I put my hand and say, Here is soundness and sweetness? If this that I would have sworn to has fallen out so, what may be next and next’? It’s not a pleasant thought, friends, nor a pleasant thing. God help us; when our friends fail, or when we fail our friends ! | Well, the wretched business went on. Bren could not make Kate out, But he could not say where the difference was. Sometimes he even suspected it might be all in himself.. But he could not get on for all that. And the deeper he got into trouble, the harder it was to put a decent face upon it, and the plain- er it showed in his look, Brower took no notice of his ill-disguised hatred ; was offensively polite and officious on all occasions to Bren. And he managed in endless dexterous little ways to put Bren out or place him in an ungraceful or ridiculous light ; and Bren had little skill to return the fire. One night—it was at a “sociable ”’ at the Cotwood’s, I think—Bren was sit- ting disconsolate, talking indifferently with Mrs. C., when some movement in
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1870.] _ KEEPING THE CASH. os the rooms threw him close to Kate and a little aside, just as the company began to break up. Bren looked so wretched and down-hearted, as he spoke to her, that she could not but pity him. She gave him a kind look and bade him good- night quite in her old way; and Bren came away with a lighter heart than he had had in many a day. One gentle word had power to change Bren’s whole view of things. He looked back to these wretched weeks past, and to himself of an hour ago, with a sort of doubt and wonder. The hard, bitter feeling was gone, blown clear away by a breath. He stopped in the street and forgot him- self, staring into the gutter and trying to make out what it was all about. Had Kate been to blame after all ? had it been all his own doing ? He could not re- member that she had shown Brower any special favor. The fellow ad been friendly and obliging: could she be less than civil? ‘Well, he didn’t know. //e had been ill-conditioned enough, at any rate. But he’d drop that. He’d be himself again. He felt sure Kate had not changed. He went over and over her words and looks to-night. He saw her face in the darkness, and heard again with a fond thrill her sweet, low, pitying tone. And so he faced home and to bed, and slept like a happy child. | Going down to the store next day, he was thinking rather hardly of the hard times. Not that he blamed Traveler. No; Charley had enough to keep a warm nest for his mate and the two little birds. But he did want to have more money just now. It would be such a lift to him. He felt that he could be more of a man. He was not afraid of this Brower if he could only be himself. But Brow- er had the advantage of him every way. Kate was fond of all bright things, of jewels, pictures, spectacles, music—of pleasure parties, and the rest. Bren knew if he only had money, he could stand nearly level, and be better able to keep a brave face. + Here was Brettenham’s now: he had walked here one night in the holidays with Kate. He remembered how she had laughed and wished she were queen, and could have her wish of all that sparkling array. Here was a tray of diamond rings that she had specially coveted. He wondered if any of them were the very ones. He would have liked to buy her one that minute. He knew it was no use ; but he went in and priced them. Bren went round to the store. It was the first of the month; he would have a busy week of it making up his debtors’ statements. An hour later a statement was laid on Bren’s desk. He finished his count carefully, put his pen between his teeth, sat up and looked at the heading of the bill. “Charles V. Traveler, to Haffelfinger & Co., Dr.” Bren turned to the ledger index, ran down the H’s. “Holmes, Harris, Hinkley, Haffelfinger, 134.” He turned over the pages, found the account, and rapidly ran up the columns of figures—$827 and odd. The bill lay face down; he turned it up and glanced at the total. Then he turned white in the face. The figures of the total were these: “$643 36.” Bren ran up his own account again; no error—$827 15. He saw his hand shake as he reached out for the file of bills payable. He ran over the endorsements—“ Harris; Appleby; Jagger & Smith ; Haffelfinger, one, two, three, four, five. The first that turned up was dated three days back— $123 and cents. Here it was on the statement, “ Bill of merchandise, $123 60.” The same with the second, third, fourth—backward in order of date. That was ' the whole of the statement. On Traveler’s books there-was ome more entry: “Feb. 23, by Mdse. per Bill—$183 79.” Here was the bill, endorsed the same: “ Haffelfinger & Co., $183 79.” Bren felt a little sick just then.. He leaned on his hand and shook as if with fear. Do you know what it meant? Let me tell you. It meant that.the devil
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ae . KEEPING THE CASH. (JUNE, came and put before Bren’s face the hardest temptation that it was possible to contrive, as Bren then was. Here he was, a free, generous boy, and just now miserably poor. He lodged in a bare, mean room, up four flights. He ate coarse fare, and stinted himself to keep himself presentable to Kate. He was in trouble; he was hankering for money this very morning as he never had be- fore. And here came nearly two hundred dollars and dropped into his very hand ; and he had nothing to do but close his fingers upon it; and no man need ever know. This is how it was: This bill for $183 had never been charged on Haffelfin- ger’s books. Either the salesman had neglected to enter the sale, or the book- keeper had neglected to post the entry from the salesman’s book. Do you think it unlikely that this thing should occur? It happens in the most systematic houses inthe country. It happens many times inevery year. And this isthe result: If the buying firm do a large business, they employ a cashier, who is bound to file with the bookkeeper a voucher for every dollar of income or expense. In these cases the creditor’s error must be known to both bookkeeper and cashier, and it is probably reported and set right. But in very many cases, as in this of Traveler’s, the business will not afford such expense, and the whole thing rests in one hand. Bren kept the cash, and the whole set of books. He had only to pay the bill’s face, balance the account by the proper amount on the ledger, and enter the same on the debit side of the cash, and he would be richer by one hun- dred and eighty-three dollars, and no man knowingly the poorer, without the slightest probability that he would ever be found out ! I should say that this is the strongest part of any temptation whatever—to be thoroughly assured that no man need ever know. You may think it a little thing ; you may say Bren was very weak and no better than he should be even to doubt, And, certainly, virtuous reader, nobody dreams for a moment that you would have doubted or slipped. But, for his part, this person writing is free to confess that, if he had sat on Bren’s stool that raw, gray April morning, he too would have trembled and been afraid. He trusts, indeed, that he would not have failed even then. But he feels that it would have gone hard; and he is not going to be too hard upon little Bren if he shall not stand fast. Bren saw it all at a flash. The error was made by the interested party; their shipping clerk’s book would never be looked through, except for special reference, Once done, there would be an end of the matter forever. I do not say Bren thought of taking the money. Consciously he did not think it over then ; but he saw it all at the first glance. He sat up and shut his teeth. What was the mat- ter with him? what was he afraid of? He was no thief, he hoped. He would not act hastily, indeed; but he would get at the facts of the case first, and then he would do what he deliberately should make up his mind was right. He took up the bill—‘“ Clasp-knives, razors, Groman’s traps, axes, spokeshaves, levels. Dunderbone’s fellers” (Bren laughed derisively ; that was Brower’s saw), “ev- erlasting scrubbers, shovels, picks, drawing-room washers.” In the lower left- hand corner was written in Traveler’s hand, “Gray.” It was a habit Charley had, Bren knew, of putting the salesman’s name on his bills. It was Friday. There was cash enough in the drawer. He counted out the full amount and folded it into the bill, and locked it in the safe. He would show himself he meant to act squarely. But he knew Haffelfinger had the name of a hard man. If half he had heard was true, such a mistake as this would ten to one cost the man his place. It was no more than right that he should have warning. Bren wrote off a note and sent the boy down with it. The boy brought back an answer signed “R, L. Gray.” He lived at 8 Parade
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1870. ] KEEPING THE CASH. 777 place, corner Carroll, third floor. He would be at Mr. Brennan’s service at 8 o’clock. Bren walked down, Carroll street a little after eight. Eight Parade place was a grocer’s shop. It was a rather quiet neighborhood. , The houses were mostly alike, of brick, with a general shabby-genteel appearance. Bren entered the hall-way and went up two flights of rather steep and narrow stairs. He knocked at a door, and it was opened by an elderly man with gray hair, stooping shoul- ders, and a thin, nervous-looking face. “Ts there a Mr. Gray living in this house?” Bren asked. “My name is Gray,” the old man answered. “Yours, I suppose, is Bren- nan?” Bren was surprised.. He had expected to find a younger man. “Come in,” Gray said, and drew up a chair by the stove (it was a raw night). Bren sat down... The room was poorly furnished, but neat and quite home-like. A lady-like person got up as Bren came in, and went out. Old Gray sat opposite Bren and waited, , “You will pardon me, sir, I hope,” Bren began, “if I seem to be intruding | upon your privacy. Let.me assure you that I mean you no incivility, and have sufficient reasons for what I do.” The old man bowed, and said nothing; but he watched Bren’s face with a wondering, half-appealing regard. Bren went on: “You are in the employ of Messrs. Haffelfinger & Co.?” “] have been with the Haffelfingers, father and son, for more than thirty years.” “The father is dead, I believe? ” “ George Haffelfinger died nine years ago this month.’ se “I have heard | d man.” : nave heard he was a good man. “‘T do not believe there was ever a better.’ “Ts his son like him?” Bren looked up keenly at old Gray’s face. The old man started, and then answered coldly : ‘“‘] do not understand you, sir. You must really excuse me from discussing with a stranger the character of my employers.” Bren said: “I willexplain. I happen to know of an occurrence which nearly concerns one of your firm’s men, I have repeatedly heard that this Haffelfinger is a hard master. I have been out of place this winter ; I know what it means. I wish to wrong no man, If possible, I want to save this man trouble. I thought you could tell me how it would stand. I shall ask you only one ques- tion more. Shall I goon?” And the old man said, ‘‘ Go on.” “‘ Suppose, then, that it should come out that one of your men, through care- lessness or accidental oversight, had committed an error Which should involve a loss to your firm say of a hundred dollars—I ask you what would most likely come of it? I do not say this has happened, _I say, if it should?” Gray looked straight into Bren’s face and asked: “ Does the man know?” *“* He does not.” . , The old face turned quite pale, and looked at Bren with a pitiful, questioning expression, . : “Mr. Brennan,” he began, “I’m an old man. I served this man’s father faithfully the best part of my life. He said the business owed as much to me as to him. I have never been able to save. I have always seemed to have some sick friend, some loss or misfortune, to keep me down. I don’t complain. I suppose it was my own fault. I never had a knack of getting on. I have my wife, my daughter lying sick, and her two little children, dependent on me
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778 KEEPING THF CASH. [JUNE, now. If I should lose my place, I do not know what would become of us. I know nothing else; I am too old to begin anew, and nobody wants a grayhead if I could. I am not what I was. I cannot help growing old. I call no hard names. I have been degraded and cut down. I have now barely enough to keep along. If this thing should happen to me, I should go into the street.” The old man leaned upon his hand and looked at Bren, waiting for him to speak. Bren got up to go, and stood a moment, doubting what to say. “Mr. Gray,” he said, “what you have said to me I shall sacredly respect. You shall never suffer by it, or by,me. Remember, I have made no accusations and named no names.” The old man bowed gravely, and gave Bren his hand. Bren shook it warmly, and came away. Now he must decide. He had all the facts. They were more serious than he could have imagined. He walked the streets, up and down, block after block. He would go over the ground and set the thing in order in his mind. Then he would act as Heaven should give him light. Here was the case: A thousand people, ten thousand, want knives, bits, saws, chisels, axes. They are scattered over a thousand miles of ground. If each man must go to the makers for his axe or pick, the expense is ruinous. Simply, he cannot go. He cannot combine with many of the rest. They are too far away. Here is a man with money in his hand who knows all this. He cannot go to all. these folk; but it is all one as if he had gone and said: If you people will let me, I can bring you your ham- mers and wrenches and pitchforks at a low price, and make a good thing of it myself; because I can handle a hundred with little more expense than one. And these people are only too willing, But he cannot do it alone. Goods must be bought, and moved, and stored, and packed, and shipped. Complicated accounts must be kept.. The people say: Get ten, twenty, a hundred men to help you. We can afford to pay them all; we are ten thousand strong. It is the people who pay. The money passes into the chief’s hands; but it comes from these scattered thousands to pay these hundred men who work for them. The chief’s share is the greatest, of course; his capital is the power of so many men. But the rest is not his. If he keeps any part of any man’s just due, he steals, (So Bren said, and stamped on the stones in his hot way.) Each man has a right to his share, in proportion to the worth of his work to the people he serves. He has a right to demand that he shall not lose his dependence without reason, shall be mercifully treated in weakness and misfortune. Not one of these widely-scattered employers in a thousand would have it otherwise. But they cannot come and see to it themselves.’ They must trust it to the chief to see justice done. His capital gives him so many men’s power; he is ten ora hundred in one. Here was this man, this Antoine Haffelfinger, using this power like a despot and a barbarian. Here was an old man whom he had robbed and degraded, and who feared him as he feared cold and hunger for women and little children. Ina pressure of work he had delayed an entry; through infirmity of age he had forgotten. As a result, a hundred and eighty-three dollars of this man’s money had fallen into Bren’s hands. What should be done? The law and the common morality said: It is Haffelfinger’s ; the course is clear. But qwas the right course so clear? Was this money Haffelfinger’s, if truth were told? He owed Gray ten times told. His capital, which his father and this old man had jointly made, and the hard times, together gave him irresistible strength, and he used it like a merciless tyrant. This money in his hands, would be just so much more power of harm. Had he (Bren) the right to give it? The centre- bits and pistol might properly belong to the burglar: would he be justified in
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1870.] KEEPING THE CASH. 779 returning them to their owner if he knew they would be used to-night to rob, . perhaps murder, a man in his bed? : Charley had no right to the money. (Bren knew, in his heart, that Traveler would not have touched it more than fire.) What should he do with it, then? Was it not plain that it had been put into his hands to use as he should judge right? His happiness for life, he felt sure, depended upon Kate. And was not Kate’s, too, at stake ? He hoped he was not vain or self-sufficient ; but, before Heaven, he did honestly believe he was-a truer fellow than Brower; that he would make her happier in the long run. Andthis money would help to make a man of him, help him to be himself again. And he would not be greedy; he would give old Gray a part. And so it was that Bren played devil’s advocate against himself. And it must be owned that his client had no great reason to be displeased with the plea. In the morning Bren went straight to his desk. A disagreeable duty, he would get it off his hands at once. Duty or otherwise, it was certainly not agreeable when it came to the point. That was prejudice, Bren said. What right had he to let his likes or dislikes stand in the way of justice? wasn’t the right course plainenough ? Yes, Bren, it was plain¢nough ; else why were your lips white and compressed, and why did your hand shake so, when you wrote at the bottom of the ledger page, on the debit side of Haffelfinger & Co’s. account: “To Cash to Balance—$827 15,” and entered the same on the credit side of the cash? Bren opened the safe and took out the package labelled, “ Haffel’r’s statement. Cash—$827 15.” He took his hat, and went out and paid the bill; and came away with a receipt in full and one hundred and eighty-three dollars seventy-nine cents in his pocket, to which no man on earth could show a legal title. He went back ta the store. He crossed a foaming gutter, and a folded paper eddied into the sewer below. He sealed a fifty-dollar note in an envelope, and addressed it in print to Gray at his lodgings. He wrote a note to his sis- ter Ellen at home, asking her to post the enclosed letter there, and to say noth- ing about it. He enclosed the whole in a larger envelope, and dropped it into the letter-box with his own hands, Bren got off early that afternoon. He hired a horse and drove round to Quincy street. It was less than two days since he had seen Kate; it seemed like along month. He was almost afraid to see her; he feared she might have changed again ; ‘but he put on a brave face. Kate met him with the old frank smile, and Bren’s heart leaped. “Yes; she should like very much.” Bren had never taken her to drive before. The day was bright, the bay horse free of foot. Kate was merry and kind. Bren was a happy fellow that April afternoon. He threw care and thought to the winds. A wild joy thrilled him through. When he had left her at her door, and was driving round to the stable, it seemed like a dream of heaven. He wished it might have lasted forever ! There is no need to follow Bren. He was himself again; he was more than himself. He was over head and ears in a passion of fondness for Kate. He walked and worked in a sort of golden dream. The stones were springs under his feet ; he laughed at cold and rain; there was fire enough in his heart to light and warm the world. One thought rang forever through his brain: Kate was kind, Kate was kind! He had almost forgotten the uncharged bill; he would not let himself think of it. It was pleasanter thinking what Kate had said and looked, and planning what he should do next. | One afternoon, going up from the store, he was thinking what he could do to please her most. He thought he couid do anything in the world for her sake, SI
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780 KEEPING THE CASH. | [JUNE, _ and, unless it was to give up Kate herself, there were few things he would not have tried, I dare say. His eye fell upon Brettenham’s brilliant windows. That was it. He would g6 over.and buy her aring. He had aring of hers on his little finger that minute, that he had got in a game of forfeits and kept out of sport. That would give him the size. That same evening he called upon Kate. There was no one there, as it happened. He held up his finger with her ring, and she made a motion as if to catch it away, but checked herself. “Now, really, Will,” she remonstrated, with a comical air of displeasure, “you must give me my ring.” “¢Qpen your mouth and shut your eyes,’” Bren laughed. “Oh, come, Will,” she coaxed. ‘“ Don’t tease.” “Well, then, put out your finger and shut your eyes.” “Truly, now? On your honor, Will?” “Fair and square,” Bren answered. Kate closed her eyes tight, with a laughably deprecating face, and put out her dainty finger. Bren slipped the new ring over it quickly, and called: “ Time.” She opened her eyes expecting to see her plain old ring. At the look of sur- prise that shot into her face when the diamond flashed the light in her eyes, Bren laughed aloud. “Oh, Will,” she said; “how lovely! It’s so good of you. I’d rather have that than anything.” And the flush of pleasure that overspread her cheek paid Bren a hundred times, he thought: He had an appointment to keep, and came away soon after. His appointment was with Traveler, Charley had asked him to go down to Coventry to look after a delinquent debtor, and he was to go round at nine and talk it over, so as to take the early train. A freight train went through Acken- thale Bridge that night, and Bren was detained. Grosenlok, the debtor, had removed, and Bren had trouble to find him. It was three days before he got back. In the mean time he had had a great deal of time upon his hands, and had been compelled to think of a great many things. One or two things he had had to think of a great deal more than he cared. He was glad to get back. It was morning when he arrived ; he went up and made his report. “You're tired out, Bren,” Traveler said. ‘ Knock off to-day and take a rest. You can square things up to-morrow.” ‘‘ No, no,” Bren answered. “I ain’t tired.” : He was glad to find the books all behind. He drove at them all day. In the evening he went over to Quincy street. He had told her where he was. going ; she was sorry, she had said; he wouldn’t be at Mrs. Mackeron’s on Friday. He knew he should be all right when he saw her; he didn’t know what was the mat- ter with him now. Well, he went round. There was some company at the iouse. The first thing he saw when he looked in was Kate sitting at the piano, rhere she had been playing. When she saw Bren standing in the door, a little jush came suddenly into her cheek. She smiled, and turned her hand as it lay idly on the keys. The light flashed back from her finger as it moved. Bren had not been thinking of the ring; only of Kate herself. When the jewel flashed in his eyes, it struck him back as if he had received a blow. He turned back ° into the hall and pretended to get something out of his coat. He had seen Kate flush with pleasure almost before she saw him; and a horrible thought went through him with the diamond’s flash. He had stolen Kate's love. It struck him keen and hard. He went in and tried to be himself. Everywhere the jewel pursued him with its merciless gleam. When he talked to Kate, it put him out and made him stammer and flush. He was nervous and out of sorts. He could
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1870.] KEEPING THE CASH. o8r- not rid himself of that horrible, tormenting thought ; the more he tried the more it came and came. He was glad to get away. He went home and took out that: money from an inside pocket. He had kept it by itself’ He had said it was sent to him; he would use it for no common purpose. He had given part in charity ; the rest he would spend for Kate. He laid out what was left...There was just sixteen dollars. He folded it up, put it back in the pocket. He took thread and needle, and sewed it up. He would not have touched a cent of it now for love or life. He went to bed and dreamed that an evil demon followed him day and night and stared at him horribly with one wide, blazing eye that never shut! | Do what he might, he could not get that glittering jewel out of his head, or: the tormenting idea his fancy had bound up with it. Kate had been so gracious of late; he said he could name the very day of the change—the day he had first had this cursed money to spend. Not that he blamed her, or thought of her once as mercenary. As soon would he have thought of meanness in an angel of light! It was surely no blame that she liked pleasant things. And, besides, he had changed himself, he ought to know. But whenever or whatever, it came to the same thing. J/¢ was the money that had made the'change. And Bren broke out into language that I am not gding to repeat. j He could not keep away from Kate ; and somehow her grace, her goodness, her favor to himself, while they charmed him, were the keenest possible pang. The flash of the brilliant seemed to burn and blind him. He said it was his morbid imagination that fancied something evil in the gleam of the cursed stone. Oh, if he only had the glittering bauble back! And he went on, getting more nervous and troubled every day. Kate wore the ring constantly; naturally she thought it would please Bren. She must have been sadly perplexed by Bren’s behavior. Naturally, too, Bren brooded over the thing until it acquired the power. upon him of a magician’s spell; and he came to hate and fear it with a kind and degree of horror that I shall not make you understand. Then Kate became cold as Bren grew strange and began to avoid her, while he could not keep away from the company where she was. Bren caught her once or twice regarding him covertly, with a wondering glance, as he sat apart uneasily, and tried to talk with this one and that. But the end came. One night it must have come to her dimly that Bren’s strange conduct had something to do with the ring. She tried it. Watching him askance, she kept the stone turned so as to flash upon him wherever he moved. Bren grew plainly more uneasy under her hand; moved about, shifted his chair, changed color and bit his lip, as he caught the gleam again and again. Presently Bren knew that the ring was gone. | Putting on his hat to come away, feeling wretched and almost desperate, Kate glided out-and stood suddenly before him, erect and proud, an angry flush elowing in her face, her lips a little apart and her breath coming quick. She did not speak, but she put out her hand with a little white box. Bren put up his hand irresolutely, half-guessing what it was. The box slipped through his fin- gers, and opened as it fell. The diamond flashed in’ Bren’s eyes, and the ring rolled round and lay on the floor at his feet. A sudden impulse of fury seized him. He lifted his foot and stamped upon the ring, ground it under his heel as if it had been a venomous thing that was stinging him to death. “Ehen he turned away and rushed out into the night. That moment his mind was made up. He did not see how he could make it; but he would, if it killed him! He sat at his desk next day when Traveler came in.
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782 KEEPING THE CASH. [June, _ “Bren,” he said (he noticed how haggard Bren was, and wondered, but said nothing), “‘ Bren, we’ll have to get another man, The business is growing, and I’m tied up more than I can be and do the outside work,” Bren turned round with an eager face. ‘You want a fellow. to sell?” 6s Yes,” _ “What will you pay?” ‘“‘T can get one for twelve dollars.” “ Charley,” Bren said, “will you give it to me? I’ll do it for ten.” Traveler faced square round, sitting on a packing box in front of Bren’s desk. “ Hang it, Bren, you’re crazy. Do you want to give up the books? What do you mean?” | | “No,” Bren answered, “I can do both. There are spells through the day when I can work at the books—I’ll do the rest nights. I tell you, Charley, I’ve got to save money some way. If you won’t let me have this, I’ll have to get something else. I’m in a hard place, Charley ”—and Bren bent over the ledger, and Traveler thought he did not see it very plainly just then—‘“ I’m in a hard place, and if you’ll let me have this, you’ll help me more than you know.” “Well, well; have it your own way, Bren,” Traveler answered. ‘“ You can try it, if you like.” | So Bren went to work. He made up a bed in a storage loft and gave up his lodging. Week in and out he did his double work, day after day, night after night. He ate the plainest fare. He, wore his clothes till they were threadbare afid thoroughly shabby, and patched them with his own hands, Only he laid by. one suit against a day he hoped for. He was hardly out of the building day or night; he got up early and tramped out half a mile to keep up his health; then he was hard at work till it was high time and he was glad enough to get to bed. And, in a grim way, he was happy again. The pain about Kate was bitter enough, and ever present. But he was on the way back to the straight track. It was happiness to look before and think of being clear to go ahead once more. And the satisfaction was none the less keen that the way was hard and long ; he felt he was doing manly, honest work. Traveler saw it was doing him good, and let him alone. He did not go near Kate; he could not. He did not dare tell her the truth. He said that he had no right to go and let her think he was worthy of an honest girl’s regard, when he knew he was not. Or, at least, not yet ; when he was out of this, he trusted he would be then. He feared what might happen meanwhile, feared that more than anything now. He prayed God she might not change. ; The summer heats came on. Bren grew thin and white, but he kept his health yet. But Traveler grew afraid. He came in one August day, hot and tired, and out of sorts. Something had fretted him, Bren was plodding away at the books, having an interval of a few minutes between sales. His pale face fired Traveler. “Curse it, Bren!” he broke out. “ How long are you going to keep up this infernal grind? I say it’s got to stop. I won’t have it in my place, I swear I won’t.” Bren looked up with a whiter face. “Let me be, Charley,” he answered, doggedly. “I’m all right, I tell you. If vou let me alone, I’ll be done with this two weeks from Saturday night.” And. Traveler turned away and found fault with everything, stormed at the men, slammed things right and left; and finally came back and pulled Bren roughly off his stool, ordered him out of the place, and not to show his face again that day. Bren knew better than excite his friend’s stormy temper; he
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1870.] KEEPING THE CASH. 3 783 went off and caught a boat bound up the river ; landed and lay down under an oak on the river bank, and slept on the grass all the hot afternoon, like a tired child. Traveler sat down at the desk when Bren was gone, and worked away till he had the books square to date, never speaking a word the whole afternoon, and no one daring to speak to him. Then he got up and closed the ledger, and went home to tea, whistling “ Listen to the Mocking Bird.” Those last weeks of that summer were hot and dry. Bren got little sleep nights ; the baked brick walls never cooled, night nor day. One’s ordinary round became a burden; Bren’s double stint grew day by day a load heavier and harder to carry. Toward the last he staggered under it a good deal. But he bore up stoutly. Often he would have to lie back and shut his eyes, for a blindness and dizziness that came swarming into his eyes and brain. But he would shake his head clear, like a half-drowned diver, and go at it. again, game as a terrier. It was not over wise of Bren; but he never could. bear to wait. There wasa kind of grim joy in the very ardor of the fight. He felt that the end was worth it all, worth anything, if he could hold out. And he felt that the satisfaction of victory would be keen in proportion to the pluck and patience spent, But those hot weeks told upon him, day by day, and steadily pulled him down. If it had not been for Sundays, I do not believe he would have pulled through. I am afraid our young friend was not over regular that summer in his attendance upon public worship. Well, the longest season comes soon enough to an end. The end of August was now within two days and nights. It was Saturday evening, the 29th. Bren was writing weakly at his desk, his face and hands thin and tired-looking enough. Traveler came in and sat down by him; there was no one else in the place. He waited a little while ; then he got up, took the pen out of Bren’s hand, laid the blotter between the leaves, and closed the book. | * Bren,” he said, quietly, “it’s ‘two weeks from Saturday night.’ ” “1 know it, Charley.” Traveler counted out Bren’s double pay and laid it on the desk. ‘‘ It’s the last time, Bren.” Bren stood up at that, his thin face all fhinsih dels ** Shake hands on that,” he says. “The last time, Charley; the last time while I live, so help me God!” He took a roll of money from an inside pocket. He spread it out and added part of what lay on the desk.» He ran quickly over the bills: $188 o8—princi- pal and interest of the uncharged bill, for four months, at seven per cent. per an- num. He took up what was left and held it up to Traveler. 3 ** Charley,” he said, “I’ve been through the fire and come out scorched. There’s all the money I own in the world—nine dollars and thirty cents.” He told him the whole story; he showed him the bill and the balanced ac- count, and the lying entry on the cash. His cheek flushed hot as he pointed out the lying figures, and a bitter dimness came into his eyes. Traveler looked over Bren’s shoulder, silent and stern. Bren drew his hand furtively across his eyes, and looked round at his friend with a deprecating face. “Don’t be hard on me, Charley. It was a hard place. And it was me it hurt.” “ Bren,” he answered, his face and veice all grave, “(I wouldn’t have believed it of you. I’msorry it has happened. But never mind-now. It must have been a tight place. And you got your pay; you found it a rough road to travel. It ain’t for me to judge you. I might have done worse in your place.” Bren paid the money over to Traveler. ‘They arranged it between them.
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784 KEEPING THE CASH. (June, Monday morning he went down to Haffelfinger’s, found old Gray, and bought a small bill of goods for the store. ‘Gray,’ he said then, “five months ago you sold this bill of goods. I want you to look it up.” | : .. They were up stairs and there was no one by. The old man took the bill and looked at it and at Bren, putting up one hand to his head. He sat down and turned over his book of sales. He found the date; there was no sale en- tered to Traveler that day nor the next. He fumbled the leaves nervously; then he looked up with a frightened face. “ And this was what you meant?” ** That was what I meant.” “You said I shouldn’t be hurt,” he pleaded. “You need not. But it has got to be paid, and this is how: Look here. Have the things ’Ive ordered sent. Charge the items of this old bill on the new one. Add four shovels for interest: Enter the whole in your book, and say nothing; and you’ll never hear of it again.” ‘Bren came out into the streets. He was hardly the shadow of himself. His clothes were worn and patched, and hung loose about him. He was poor and alone. He was happier that last summer morning than any king on throne. His heart was light as air.. He tramped with a strong new life; he wanted to throw up his cap and hurrah. It was done. He was free; he was free! That was the thought of thoughts. All this while he had felt himself bound and walled in. He had not belonged to himself. He had been in jail, though nobody knew. He might go where he pleased; but unseen barriers went with him and shut him from honest folk. Something like this had been his feeling. And now it was as if the prison walls had suddenly rifted away, and the roof rolled off like a burning scroll. And all the free green earth was round about him once more, and the free blue cloud-land wide as heaven overhead. That one thought rang round and round in his brain: Free, free, free ! Now he could go to Kate. He longed and was afraid. He feared all imag- inable things. What changes might not have happened in all this weary while ? What could she have thought of his strange behavior? Well, he would hope for the best; he would be honest and straightforward. When she knew all, she would understand. She would not be hard upon him, he tried to feel sure. When he went round to Quincy street that night, the blinds of Number 79 were closed. The place was “ To Let.” Mr. Arrow had gone into a silver mine speculation somewhere in the West. Kate had taken to teaching, somewhere in Vermont, they believed. That was all Bren could learn. Traveler sent him home for three weeks to recruit. He came back in ten days and begged Charley to let him go to work. He was very quiet, and apt to brood a good deal if he was not kept busy. He had been a lit- tle wild at first. The blow, as Bren was, staggered him. He thought he had deserved better; it was grinding a'fellow a little too hard. Virtue was its own reward, was it? And that was what a man got! I can’t tell you all that he said. But, back of all, when the first intolerable sharpness had worn off somewhat, he saw and felt the truth—that there is only one way, that truth and honor are best and incomparable every where and when. Better a thousand times, he hon- estly believed, lose love, and life, and all, than have one’s will and not be worthy ! He knew it and said it to himself while he cursed his fate for very bitterness, and thought he should better be dead. And he did not get over the pain, though the rough edge wore away. It went too deep. He settled into a quiet, reserved little fellow, whom everybody liked and whom no one knew very well. Traveler gave him better pay by and by. He laid by a little for a rainy day and plodded
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1870.] KEEPING THE CASH. 785 on, cheerful, in a way, after a while, with a gentle way that surprised his friends, and an instinctive shrinking from the veriest shadow of fraud with a kind of fear. Bren is three years older when we meet him next. You would say he is five or six. Sitting one day at the same old desk, his pen between his teeth, his eyes looking out to the street, but seeing things that happened years ago, the postman comes in and lays a letter on the desk, The address is in a lady’s hand which Bren does not know. He tears off the end and reads: BRAMMERLIN, Vt., Oct. 11. FRIEND WILL: About two years ago there came to live near this an old man named Gray. He had been for many years in a hardware house in your city. His daughter married two years ago, and her husband brought the old gentleman here to live; he is a native of B, They are near,neighbors of mine; the old gentleman and I took a liking for each other. He has been quite ill for some time, though I am glad to say he is mending now. I was by him one night when he was wandering ; in his delirium I heard him speak your name. He talked of you a great deal. When he got sensible again, I asked him about it. You must know what he told me. I think I understand now what puzzled me greatly once. You can’t blame me for not seeing it then ; I had no knowledge of the case, and you must know you acted very strangely. But I’ve thought it all over, and I can’t say but that I may have seemed to you unjust. And I came to the conclusion that it could do no harm, at least, and would be a satisfaction to myself, to write and say to you that I nev- er meant you any unkindness, There are some things I cannot understand, but you and I were too good friends once for me not to wish to be still considered Your friend, K. A. Bren took a railroad guide from a hook beside his desk and turned it over. Then he turned round and spoke to one of the men: - “Tell Mr. Traveler, when he comes in, that I’m going out of town and won’t be back before Friday.” He got down at Brammerlin station as the dusk was coming on. It wasa pleasant little town. He easily found a person who could direct him. “ Arrow? Yes: teacher in Hillside Institute. Up the hill, first road to the right—little gray house—name, Mrs. Minim.,” Bren saw a woman’s figure coming down the hill alone in the dusk. He stood across her path. She looked up sharply as she came near. “ Kate.” “Will.” | They clasped hands, and each knew in that moment that all was clear be- tween them. They walked together in the twilight, till the moon came up and climbed the eastern sky. They went over it all. By and by they stopped before the little gray house. : | *T never cared for Brower, Will,” Kate was saying. ‘But you were so rude to him, and so—so jealous, Will, that you made me take his side. I was sorry then, but I couldn’t help it, Will.” “Never mind now, Katgeg, I know it was my fault. I was a grouty fool. But it would have all comelteht if I had kept clear of that cursed bill. I was afraid of you after that, Kate.” “But you did what you could to make it right; and you and I have paid for it dearly enough, haven’t we? And you’re not going to be afraid of me any more—are you, Will?” “No, Kate, dear; not again, please God!” God keep thee, little Bren; and keep thee true, and brave, and kind! And so God keep us all! J. T. McKay.
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TEN YEARS IN ROME. INTERNAL ECONOMY OF THE PAPAL STATES, ECCLESIASTICAL AND CIVIL. N his recent reply to Count Daru, Cardinal Antonelli declares that, consid- ] ering freedom of person and opinion as a chief engine of anarchy, he is totally opposed to reforms. This is only a declaration in words of a principle he has acted upon since 1849. Antonelli knows of but one kind of government, and that is despotism. Like Don Quixote, he opposes single-handed the wind- mills of modern opinion, and is resolved to carry on his system of government unchanged. Some men are convinced by what Napoleon calls the /ogigue des faits: the Emperor himself is a striking illustration: but frequent and con- stantly-recurring disasters only prove to the Cardinal that Ze is right and all the world is wrong. This at least is honest. But not so is the conduct of American apologists for Roman institutions. Thinking that they are bound from their allegiance to see no wrong in these, they recklessly make assertions as ignorant as they are presumptuous. The last theory broached by them, in the face of the Syllabus, the canons De Eccelsta and De Fide, and the whole genius and history of the Papacy, is that all modern progress is indebted to the fostering influence of Rome, Let me ask these writers, not how they can substantiate so flimsy a fiction, but how they suppose their conduct is regarded at the Vatican? A famous Romish bishop from England once received a cutting rebuke from the Pope, which I commend to American apologists for Rome. This over-zealous prelate ventured to present to the Pontiff a volume of sermons defending leading dogmas, expecting, of course, high encomium for his labor. The Holy Father looked at the title, of which he understood but one word, “ Defence,” and then remarked: “ You might do better, Monsignor, by teaching dogma. The Catholic Church does not need apologists.” This is true. The Roman Church assumes infallibility, and therefore does not need to excuse her decisions. To do so is to admit fallibility, and an inherent defect in the thing excused. By her theologians she has. pronounced an apologist particeps criminis with a heretic! Toa Ro- man theologian, Father Hecker is open to grave suspicion as unsound. Now in refutation of this new ad caftandum argument, that Rome is the minister of progress, I proceed to give a narrative of the practical working of Cardinal Antonelli’s policy in Rome and the Papal States since 1849, confining myself necessarily from want of space to salient points only. However much American Romanists are ashamed of this policy, let me assure them Rome her- self is not. The details here given are supported by documents taken from the archives of the Papal legations, and by order of the™ftalian Government compiled into a yellow book under the editorship of the Cavalier Achille Gennarelli, an eminent legal adviser of the Sacred Congregation of Rites. Great efforts were made to destroy the Papal archives. In Ferrara Monsignor Telarini burnt papers during four days, when the minutes of the dreaded Council of Censure disappeared, as well as all the PP. correspondence addressed to the legates from Rome. The two large quartos of Gennarelli remained, and fourteen thousand other documents not yet published.
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1870. ] TEN YEARS IN ROME. 787 - The impression, now a conviction with him, that free government is a politi- cal error, seems to have been welcomed by Cardinal Antonelli in his -exile at Portici. As shown ina previous article, want of moral courage prevented him from testing the value of the liberal constitution granted by the Pope at the beginning of his reign. He was glad enough of an excuse other than the one he knew to be real for putting down the people. On the 27th of April, 1849, the already-matured plans for stamping out liberalism became known to the people. The criminal and civil court of Fulgino recorded that commissioners having visited the convent which was the headquarters of the Inquisition, the Inquisi- tor and Abbot Rossi told them that three days before he had been made aware oi their approaching visit, and had therefore carefully destroyed all the docu- ments of the Holy Office. On his person was found the following letter ;* CIRCULAR N, 167. R. P. ALPHA pf. GAETA, February 15th. BELOVED BRETHREN: The God of mercies, before giving his faithful people the glory of paradise, loves that they should obtain the martyr’s reward. Unhappy circumstances pressing upon humanity and religion require that you, beloved brethren, should employ every means you can to regain for us all our violated rights, and to destroy the devices of our foes, The Liberals, the Jacobites, the Carbonari, the Republicans are only synonys mous words. They design to destroy religion and all its ministers. We, on the other hand, must destroy even to the very ashes of their race. Continue zealously to train the monks in your vicinity, as well as the country people, as in times past. Tell them that when the church bells ring they must not be wanting at the holy muster, where every one of us must without pity plunge his weapons into the hearts of the desecrators of religion, Think upon the vows which arise from us to the Almighty ; they are to destroy to the last man our enemies, not excepting infants, to prevent the mischief which these would one day exercise upon our disciples. Then, in short, see that when we shall send out the cry for reaction every one of you shall fearlessly imitate our example. _ ALPHA >] P.C. Rt This document bears internal evidence of. having het, dictated, if not by the Pope, at least by Antonelli. It was in vain that Louis Napoleon as President of the French Republic, in the well-known letter to Edgar Ney, protested that. France could only be the. ally and:assistant of civilized and rational government. The Cardinal Secretary, in an insulting circular, declared that this was non- official, and clearly intimated that the President’s opinion was not likely to have weight. Strange to say, after twenty years, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs is trying to enforce the rights of the Romans to rational government, and is again met by the same insolent rejoinders that were given his master in 1849. The solemn instrument granting a new constitution to Rome in 1848 de-- scribed the representative institutions then bestowed as the revival of an old privilege | In ancient times our communes had the -privilege of self-government, under laws selected by themselves with the sanction of the sovereign. The character of modern ‘civilization would. not permit that the same form of government should be renewed, be- cause, through the diversity of laws and usages, different municipalities were completely estranged from one another; but we are now about to confide this prerogative to two councils of trusty and patriotic citizens, one of which shall be nominated by us, the other returned from every part of the State by a fitting form of election. * The translation of this and other of the official documents is verbatim, Reference to the original will be given under the head of *‘ State Papers.” t “State Papers,” pp. 649, 650.
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4, 788 TEN YEARS IN ROME. [JUNE, Nevertheless fright was the real motive of the concession. On the 7th of December, 1848, the two Chambers were dissolved by proclamation. On the 18th of February, 1849, Cardinal Antonelli addressed a note to foreign courts refer- ring to the gracious acts whereby the Pontiff. had deserved his people’s respect. “The Holiness of our Lord in the first days of his Pontificate had no other aim than to show beneficence to his subjects, providing in every respect for their chief good, according to the exigencies of the times.” He recites the reforms granted, and concludes by saying “he had surely the right to that gratitude which subjects owe to a prince who regards them as his children, and was prom- ising them a reign of love.” On the 20th of April the Pope held a secret con- sistory at Gaeta, and in his allocution said: Every one of you well knows how a constitutional form of government was introduced into Italy, and how, on the 14th day of March, in the last year, came into light the statute conceded by us to our subjects. But, as the implacable enemies of order and public re- pose aim, on all occasions, but to use their efforts against the Pontifical Government, and incessantly to agitate the people with uneasiness and suspicions, by means of the press, of clubs, of committees, and of other artifices, they never wearied of factiously calumni- ating the Government, although it was using all solicitude and zeal that the statute so much desired should be published with the greatest possible despatch. The benevolent Pontiff here speaks for himself, and probably with an utter ignorance of the real causes that superinduced the revolution. It was only when the people and their representatives became convinced that reform was hol- low and unreal that they lost faith in it. To proclaim freedom in words while by acts it is denied, is to exasperate a people. The power nominally was in the Chambers, really in the hands of Antonelli. The debates and votes of the Par- liament were rendered nugatory by secret machinations. Taxation was carried on despite their opposition. Repressive ecclesiastical measures and ridiculous educational schemes were adopted at the suggestion of the Jesuits, and despite the popular representatives. There was a secret fight going on all the time be- tween these enemies of social progress and the people. The leanings of the Court were decidedly toward the Jesuits, and it eagerly seized upon the just in- dignation expressed at its want of faith as a pretext for accusing the Romans of ingratitude and an unfitness for constitutional government. Yet be it admitted unreservedly that the Pope was always held to be free from blame. His people regarded him as surrounded by evil and unscrupulous men, but as being unwill- ing to perjure himself deliberately. Despite his solemnly-pledged word, how- ever, the Constitution was abolished by motu proprio on the 12th of September, 1849. Certainly he carried out the maxim of moral philosophy taught at Rome, “ Yurare cum equivocatione; quando justa causa est, et ipsa equivocatio licet, non est malum.” The amnesty which followed the revocation of the Constitution furnishes proof of what the Minister considered “a just cause for equivocation.” Whole classes were excluded from it; every member of the Provisional Government, of the Constituent Assembly, the Triumvirate and Republican governments, all the chiefs of military corps, all who had ever come under any existing penal law, any person who held employment, metropolitan or municipal, in the police or in the army, were exempted from the grace. Sweeping as was the decree in words, its execution was still more so. From numerous instances only a few can be given. On the 6th of September, 1850, six- teen executions took place in Bologna. Among the number were two persons
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1870.] _ TEN. YEARS IN ROME. : 789 aged 18. A man named Giuseppe Marchetti was shot for stealing seventy half- pence. Cardinal d’Angelis, Vice-President of the sitting Gécumenical Council, signalized himself by a most cruel act at Fermo. Three men, Giuseppe Casel- lini, a young man of good family, Ignazio Rosettani, and Enrico Vanezia, were especially obnoxious to the Legate. They were moral persons, but ardent Lib- erals. Upon the evidence of a galley-slave named Testori, a most infamous criminal, they were arrested on the charge of murder. He swore that he had been their accomplice in the commission of the crime. Casellini proved bya physician that, at the time alleged, he had been ill of fever, and unable to leave his bed. An apothecary and a friend, who both saw him, gave similar testimony. | Every inducement was offered these witnesses to lead them to retract. The physician, whose name was Baronciani, succumbed, and recalled his evidence, He was at once promoted. The friend, whose means of livelihood had been shamefully taken away, was reduced with his wife and three children to want, and his constancy, which had held out for a while, at length gave way too. A girl who had waited on Casellini was threatened with imprisonment if she would not retract her statement and commit perjury. She refused, and was chained and incarcerated for four years. The chemist was an old man and very infirm, but he abhorred perjury and preferred a jail. He went to prison, and there, “in the presence of all—of the curate, and of the confessor, and of Christ in the sacrament—he swore: ‘I die a victim of the truth.’” The two priests testified to his religious character and unblemished life. The three young men were con- demned to die with the galley-slave Testori. Padre Castiglioni, a Jesuit, came to hear their confessions on the evening preceding the execution. The informer told him that he had been promised a pardon, and therefore did not need to con- fess. But after midnight he began to feel that his patrons were playing him false. Some brethren of the Confraternity of the Piet’ were present. They attend the last hours of those condemned to death. Their senior member was the most revered citizen of Fermo, the Marquis Trevisani. Testori, the informer, called him to his cell, and, in the presence of Padre Castiglioni, formally declared that the three youths were innocent of the alleged crime. The Marquis, deeming that the influence of the Jesuit would be greater than his own (for he was sus- pected of liberalism), urged him to take a minute of the deposition to the Cardi- nal. The reply was, “I am here to take confessions, not depositions.” The Confraternity, who were all friends of Casellini, who had served with distinction in the Republican army, urged the confessor to consent, but in vain. They could only weep with the hapless victim, and be silent. The police officer, whose duty it was to take minutes of everything connected with the execution, was called to take down the deposition. On applying to his superiors for authoriza- tion, it was stoutly refused. As the heads of the victims fell beneath the knife, the Jesuit exclaimed, “It is not always the guilty who die.’’* Monsignor Bedini, known, I believe, in America, earned in the Romagna the appellation of “the skinner,” by his zeal in administering the bastinado. The following letter was written by the Governor of Faenza on the 16th of July, 1853, to the Pope’s Legate: Most REVEREND EXCELLENCY: Yesterday I went to the prisons for an extraordi- nary visit. My heart was wrung with grief. Without counting those in other prisons, I found here ninety-one. Very few of them are under trial: several are in the jurisdiction * The certified story is recorded in “ State Papers,” vol. ii., pp. 572-577. ‘‘ The Judgment of the Court,” vol. ii, p. 392, et seq.
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790 TEN YEARS IN ROME. . [JuNE, of the Austrians, several under that of the Sacra Consulta, but the greater part are impris- oned for precaution, without having been examined, and probably without being suspected. Some have been confined for months, some for years, some for lustres. This is a bleed- ing wound, and the real cause of the discontent, of the hatred against the authorities, and the spite against the Government. Crime cannot be conquered in this way by striking in the lump. The people cannot be induced to love their august sovereign in this way. For the last sanguine facts, three individuals have been arrested by the Governor and Mayor, by order of the public prosecutor, and those only have been examined. By order of the Delegate, twelve others were arrested for precaution, but these have nothing to do with those ; either the one or the other are innocent. The outcry is nearly general. . . When I looked into the records of the court I found a mournful void: four hundred and fifty cases have been pending from four to five years or more.* Seventy-two persons were fined in sums ranging from three to forty scudi for having shut their shops during a most iniquitous and flagrantly unjust execu- tion at Forli. The conduct of the Papal police and their use of torture to extort confession is seen in the following document: POLITICAL GOVERNMENT, In the name of His Holiness Pius IX., now happily reigning. Sittings of the days 12th, 13th, and 16th of June, 1856. The Criminal Tribunal and the Civil Tribunal of First Instance, composed of, etc, To judge the case of the Bolognese people. SENTENCE, Charge 7th. Whereas, from the character of the accused, from their poverty, and from their close relations of friendship, . . . and because their confessions have been re- tracted by them, and still more because there are proofs on the record of the instigations and violences used to extort them. Dismissed, etc. Charge 1oth. One after another, those making confessions have retracted them almost as soon as they saw themselves out of the prisons andthe hands of the police, and ex- claimed against the instigations and the torments. Nor did they fail in proof of these. Charge 11th. Notwithstanding, to hold them guilty of this crime, there exists in reality no other ground besides their own confessions, which they afterward retracted, and which, on the record, are proved to have been instigated and extorted by force of beatings and torments. Dismissed, ete. Charge 14th. Also, Facchini and Bianchi at first made confession of theft, but these confessions, although verified in all their parts, have no value, there being strong grounds for believing that they were extorted by beatings. Dismissed, etc. Charge 21st, With respect to Cavazza, there is no charge against him beyond his miserable condition and his bad character, his own conféssion not meriting any value, in- asmuch as it has been retracted by him, and because it has been forcibly extorted by the police by means of torture, as appears on the record. Dismissed, etc. Signed. (Names of five Judges.)t Beatings, tortures, and imprisonment being insufficient to quell the yearn- ing for liberty in the public mind, Monsignor Bedini wrote to the famous Mar- shal Radetzky proposing to forcibly enroll in the Austrian army troublesome or fearsome subjects. The hero rejected the proposal on singular grounds: “ The Government does not wish to destroy the exemplary spirit of the Imperial army.” * “State Papers,” vol. i., p. 42 ¢ Archives of the Legations.
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1870.] _ TEN YEARS IN ROME. 791 A proposal was made by the Vienna Cabinet to transport the most troublesome to North America. In accordance with this advice, three hundred persons were secretly named to the police to be seized and deported at a given time. They never knew in what peril they stood until the facts were brought to light by Gennarelli. Despite all this, the Court of Rome was charged by outsiders as unable to keep down disorder. Whereupon, its official organ, the Giornale di Roma, of March 22d, 1851, said: * We will now place facts in their true aspect, dealing with facts and not with vain words. Can it be denied that in the governments of Faenza and Imola, as the result of only two trials, eighty-two persons were shot? besides whom, ten others obtained commutation of a similar sentence into that of the galleys, and thirteen others were condemned to temporary or perpetual imprisonment.”* At Ravenna another Judge, Cardinal Rivarola, who died a few years ago, condemned eight hundred in a single sentence. One only exam- ple of official tyranny can be added to this list, which might be amplified a thou- sand fold. In 1853, one Cussini, a credible person, deposed: “The officer of police, Pa- ganini, had me taken down into a cellar by six or seven of his men, where he made them cover my mouth and beat me with sticks, in order that he might teach me what I was to say; and then he began to recount to me part by part this crime of house-breaking ; and for fear of being further bastinadoed, I as- sented to everything.” Ata subsequent examination he said: “ The sub-consta- bles will tell you that Paganini for several days had me taken to his office, and © there, armed with a knife, he threatened to cut my throat; and he did give me some slight wounds, insisting that I should confess a crime that I did not know. He took me by the hair, he kicked me; he gave me blows with his fist, and he beat me in every possible way.”t The sub-constables deposed that Paganini set his dog on the prisoners to bite them, and that. he starved them and beat them indescribably. ‘“ Officers put a handkerchief into the prisoner’s mouth that was going to be flogged ; then.a sheet was rolled about his head in order that his howls should not be heard ; then he was beaten with sticks.” In the city of Fermo, two citizens were accused of blasphemy. The Bishop commanded them to be bound and put in prison ; afterward, on a high day, he had them carried to a place outside the city gates. They were made to kneel down, and the mor- dacchia was placed on the lips of one and on the tongue of the other. One died a few hours after, and the life of the other was in great danger. For strangers who may be ignorant of it, I will tell what the mordacchia is. It is formed of two rods, which at the two extremities can be compressed together by the force of steel springs. The mouth of the sufferer being opened, his hands and feet tied, and he made-to put out his tongue, the tongue itself is pressed between the rods closed by the springs. Thus the wretch remains with his tongue out of his mouth, tortured by that barbarous instrument. Little by little the tongue enlarges, and thrusts out the lips. If the victim refuses to put out the tongue, the executioner takes his lips and presses them between the two steel springs ; so that the mouth remains closed against respiration, the steel springs stick to the lips, and the anguish of the sufferer cannot vent itself in cries. At Fermo, the miserable victims were compelled to walk a mile with the mordacchia on their lips. * “State Papers,” vol. i., p. 205, t “ State Papers,” vol. ii., p. 604, and vol. i., p. 205. t “ Lutti della Stato Romano,” by C. Gennarelli, p. 67.
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792 TEN YEARS IN ROME. [June, Let us turn now to Rome itself. On the 30th of July, 1855, Cardinal An- tonelli caused the lash and the cudgel to become legal punishments applicable to boys, women, and old men. At this period, 1856, the following was made the law of Rome: The undersigned have felt it a sacred duty to publish the decrees which are thought opportune for the removal of the disorders and scandals which most frequently arise among Christian people. Blasphemy, non-observance of the festivals, ALAUKOENS of churches, breach of fasts, and immorality are the chief sources of scandal; and on this account, our attention has been specially directed to these. We shall abstain from calling to mind with what severe punishment God has coms manded, in the Divine Scriptures, that such offences should be visited ; with what punish- ment also they are marked in the canon and civil law. All know that according to the circumstances of the. person and the offence, according to places and times, now excom- munication, now prison, now fine, now scourging, now exile, and even death, have always been ordinary pains. Without abrogating any statutes now in force, we have here prescribed that which prin- cipally tends to repress and impede these scandals. While, however, we have not been able to evade the enactment of penalties against those who should offend under any of the heads already named, the intention of our heart has been rather to cure than to punish. Whence, we have made a point of distinguishing between delinquents who are perverters, and delinquents who are perverts—that is, those who make themselves public transgressors of the laws of God and of his church, with a view to diminish or destroy the respect and veneration due to the sacred things, from those who fall into such offences from want of proper care and consideration, or from those following depraved examples. Against the first we are bound to proceed with the rigor of the canon and civil law; against the second, however, especially having reflected upon the number of scandals and seductions which have taken place in recent political and religious commotions, in the hope of securing their emendation by mild penalties, or rather by medicinal régime, we have determined to proceed according to the following rules : BLASPHEMY. ArT. I. Blasphemy and any insults proffered in the presence of another, against the most holy name of God, of the most blessed Virgin, or of the saints, shall be summarily punished by from ¢ex to thirty days’ imprisonment, or by rigorous spiritual exercises in some religious house, at the will of the Ordinary. [This last, which sounds mildest, is the most severe, consisting of confinement in dark cells on bread and water, scourging daily, and other penances.] ArT. II. For a second offence the penalty will be more severe; and the prisoner must pass some days fasting according to the greater or less gravity of the circumstances of the offence and of the delinquent. Art. III. In obstinate cases, the ordinary penalties of the canon aie civil law in force shall be applied at the will of the Ordinary. [Varying from five years’ imprisonment in irons, to death or perpetual solitude. ] ART. IV. Keepers of coffee-houses, hotels, public-houses, eating-houses, and such like, under penalty of Article I., shall be obliged to correct blasphemers, and even to expel from their shops, rooms, and places of resort those who shall persist in blaspheming after being rebuked. [A fig for the saints,” is blasphemy ; so also the expression “‘ Do mio,” and other phrases colloquially employed in France and Italy, such as “ Corfo di Dio,” metamorphosed in France to “ Cordleu,” etc.] | ArT. V. In case that they shall find opposition, and not be able to expel the blas- phemers, they shall report at once to the officers of the Inquisition, failing which several times, measures of the greatest rigor shall be taken against them. [Hence, every hotel- keeper, lodging-house keeper, and eating-house keeper is perforce a spy and an informer,
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1870.] TEN YEARS IN ROME. 793 One woman contrived to open the boxes of her lodgers and take copies of their papers. She was suspected, and a steel spring so arranged that at the least displacement of the papers she would be seized. Her cries and screams soon revealed its efficacy. ] Art. VI. Under this head it is not intended to comprise those who studiously intro- duce, either with words or in writing, false principles concerning the Divinity or against the doctrine of the Church, and, in general, those who utter heretical blasphemies, because these are not simple blasphemers, but dogmatizers and heretics, or at least suspected of heresy. These will be proceeded against in the established forms ; and here we record the most weighty obligation that rests upon every one to denounce to the competent ecclesias- tical tribunals within the period of one month, under pain of excommunication in the wid- est sense, the names of those whom they may have known to utter the above-named and similar perverse principles, or express heretical blasphemies. Art. VII. It being, according to experience, very helpful in Suaedttie blasphemies to establish a confraternity of pious persons, who, vested in a frock and the head and face covered with a domino, shall go, when the Ordinary feels it expedient, and present them- selves, either alone or two together, in the resorts and places where this vice is most fre- quent, to reprove blasphemies in kindly ways and with brotherly love. [That is, accord- ing to Article VI., by denouncing them to the Inquisition. At the approach of any mem- ber of this Confraternity of the Holy Name, as it is called, conversation is suddenly stopped. In the Café Nuovo, capable of seating six hundred persons, I have seen a dead silence and hush at the very sight of one of them. Even in the streets men stop talking as they pass. For they are most unscrupulous, and their construction of blasphemy is very rigid. They hold that it is better to cut.off a heretic or political foe by perjury than to let him live and make converts by telling the truth. An oath esteemed inviolable is quite unknown in Rome.] THE NON-OBSERVANCE OF FEASTS. ArT. VIII. In the prescribed feast days, from the midnight preceding to the midnight following, every one shall abstain from every servile work, and from all other work, even though not servile, on days expressly forbidden. Art. IX. In case of necessity not contemplated in the following articles, every one must obtain a permit of us through our Vicar-General or his delegate. ArT. X. It is forbidden to hold markets even on those feast days. Let them be re- moved to those days not festivals preceding or following. The same is decreed of fairs, Art. XI. It is equally forbidden to expose in squares or other public places, or to carry round merchandise of any sort. ArT. XII. All shops, warehouses, offices, and similar places must remain always closed, and shall not be opened, except in cases where they serve as entrances to private dwellings, for the simple conveniences of ingress and egress. ArT, XIII. Keepers of coffee-houses, eating-houses, tobacconists, and salt-sellers, pork-butchers, butchers, bakers, sellers of flour and of other eatables, hotel-keepers, pub- licans and other wine-venders, even in private houses, may by permit keep a wicket open, and without displaying anything, except in the time of divine service, when they shall keep their shops and places of trade entirely closed. 4 Art. XIV. Barbers, except in the hours of divine service and at Easter and Christmas, may keep their doors open, but covered with a curtain. [As the hours of divine service last from the Adve Maria at 6 A. M. to the Ave Maria at 6 P. M., this is a mere mockery. ] ArT. XV. Chemists on any day or hour may sell medicine. ArT. XVI, No one shall transport merchandise, or anything whatever, in carts with beasts, or in any other manner, unless it be in prosecution of a journey undertaken ona week-day and after having heard the Holy Mass. ArT. XVII. All balls are prohibited, as also all games in cafés, inns, public houses, taverns, and such like, and also in public squares and roads, both in cities and in districts ; only in the afternoon, when the holy ceremonies are terminated, games not prohibited by the laws in force shall be tolerated. But to those who play at buttons, ball, foot-ball, or
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794 TEN YEARS IN ROME. [JUNE, peg-top, and other such games, the neighborhood of churches, of monasteries, of asylums for orphan girls, and of infirmaries, are all prohibited. Art. XXI. Every transgression of these decrees shall be summarily punished by a fine of from five pauls to three scudi, or with imprisonment from two to twelve days. Art. XXII. For a second offence the penalty will be doubled. ArT. XXIII. In cases of obstinacy, measures of the utmost rigor shall be taken. PROFANATION OF CHURCHES, [Eleven articles describe all sorts of irreverence, such as keeping on the hat in church, not bowing at the elevation of the Host, women wearing no head-gear, etc.] ART. XXXIV. In processions due religious reverence shall be observed ; and when the holy viaticum is met in the public way, the knee must be bowed to the earth and the head uncovered. ArT. XXXV. Violators of the above-named regulations shall be proceeded against by summary punishment, according to the gravity of the fault and the scandal which it has caused. ArT. XXXVI. The obstinate shall be punished with heavier pains, ON THE VIOLATION OF FASTS., ArT. XXXVII. On fast-days, and on those whereon meats are forbidden, if there is just cause it is lawful to use them in private under the direction of a confessor and physician ; but to avoid scandal, keepers of lodging-houses, eating-houses, coffee-houses, inns, and such like, shall not serve forbidden food, except to those persons who shall produce a cer- tificate, signed by both a physician and the parish priest. ArT. XX XIX. Those who have a lawful dispensation to use prohibited food in days of abstinence and of fast, are forbidden to eat it openly in restaurants, lodging-houses, inns, or other places ; they may only take it in separate places or chambers, Art. XL. It is truly deplorable that some keepers of lodging-houses, eating-houses, inns, and such like, to the great scandal and wonder of good men, have not ready on days of abstinence lenten diet to offer to those guests who are not furnished with the certificate of a doctor or parish priest as above. They are reminded of the strict duty incumbent upon them not to fail to have in their houses, on the days specified, this kind of food, and the guilt which, on failure of this, they will incur under a violated law. ArT. XLI. Hosts are not permitted to cook meat on the days indicated; and when persons who have a written license to use it shall produce this license to ‘hadi: they shall prepare the food in a place not open to the public. ArT. XLII. Offences against the regulations contained under this head shall be sum- marily punished. ArT. XLIII. For a second offence the penalty shall be double ; and those who shall be guilty of multiplied offences, or of open contempt, shall be proceeded against with all the rigor of the existing canon and civil law. IMMORALITY, ArT. XLIV. It is forbidden to give or serve to others in whatever manner, or expose in public, under whatever pretext, books, printed papers, and obscene works, under the pain of imprisonment from five to fifteen days, besides the forfeit of the articles. Art. XLV. Obscene songs, in whatever place or time, shall be punished with impris- onment from three to nine days. Art. XLVI. Under the same penalty it is forbidden to bathe or fish with the body naked. ART. XLVII. Licentious representations of whatever kind, if in private, shall be pun- ished by from five to fifteen days of prison; if in public, with double that penalty. [This is frequently employed against political plays and their authors.]
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1870.] TEN YEARS IN ROME. 795 ArT. XLVIII. They shall be equally punished who, in public houses, cellars, inns, ho- tels, or other similar places, shall give accommodation to persons of the two sexes to lose themselves in licentious entertainment ; and if they do not desist, their licenses shall be suspended. [Nothing being said against Arivaze brothels, three of the best known in Rome, combining the attractions of a private gambling-house, are the property of Car dinal Antonelli !] : ART. XLIX. ee of hotels, lodging-houses, coffee-houses, and such like, are for- bidden to have in their service women brought under the surveillance of the Holy Office for their bad conduct. In case of transgression, if they continue to retain them, they shall be punished under the_preceding article. Art. L. Acquaintances suspected of offences contrary to good morals; when scandals arise, if they shall be continued after admonition, shall be restrained by the commands of the Holy Office, and in case of contravention, they shall undergo the penalties determined upon in the command, Art. LI. All those on whom rest the care and custody of young people, sane they shall be discovered to connive either at unlawful loves, or shall blamably neglect to re- move the occasions of them, if after being admonished they persist, shall be punished with imprisonment from three to nine days; should the case arise in which the young people responsible to them render themselves liable to punishment, they shall also be punished with double the penalty, and all prayers and measures which they may take to obtain com- pensation or reparation shall be rejected. Art. LII. For second offences in any case whatever contemplated under this head, penalties may be inflicted according to circumstances, Art, LIII. Those who shall offend frequently, or be guilty of offences against good manners and decency, especially comprised in the penal laws in force, shall be proceeded against according to the forms of the canon and civil law, GENERAL REGULATIONS, Art. LIV. In all the above-named cases, in order to apply the summary punishments, a simple and speedy procedure will suffice, when the facts generally and specially shall be related. The names of the informers and witnesses shall be kept secret. Art. LV. The fine shall be given, one half to the benefit of places of worship appoint- ed by the Ordinary, and the other half shall be divided, part to the informer, and part to the police if they have had to do with the case. When the punishment shall be other than fine, if the person guilty has the means he must pay fifty cents for the benefit of the inform- er or police as above, besides his expenses for victuals and other things as in reason. Arr. LVI. The messengers and other agents of the Holy Office, as also the police, are bound to look diligently to the execution of all that is prescribed in this edict, pads also to. proceed immediately to arrest delinquents, if found in the act. Art. LVII. If they shall neglect to fulfil this duty, the messengers and agents shall be immediately dismissed ; and as to the police, the superior military authority shall be called’ upon to take further steps. : ArT. LVIII. The present edict must always be kept publicly posted up in the sacris- ties of parish churches, and of others most known and freqyented, as also in lodging- houses, eating-houses, and inns, under a fine of twenty cents to be applied as above, Ar- ticle LV. Art. LIX. Further, this edict shall be published by the reverend parish priests from the altars, and posted up in the usual places, after which it shall have the same force as if it had been presented to every individual personally. This code needs little comment. While it pretends to high morality, it yet carefully leaves a loophole for rich sinners to creep through, a big eyelet in the needle. While it curtails all the liberties of the individual, opens a lucrative pros- pect to the perjurer and suborner of false testimony, it yet allows to those who are real offenders a chance of escape by implicating others. Tyranny and oppres- 52
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796 ‘TEN YEARS IN ROME. [June, sion can use any of these enactments for private and personal ends. The canon law, so terrible in its decisions, is constantly invoked. A few statistics very pow- erfully illustrate the practical working of the edict: Condemned to death and the galleys . - - ~ - - = 2,300 Political exiles and recusants - - - - . ve - - 10 000 Persons shot in the city of Rome - - - - - - - - 186 Persons sentenced to be shot, but executed out of Rome - - - - 9c Persons politically compromised = - - - - - . ° - 534 Persons condemned to death and the galleys = - . . - - 3,000 Members of the Constituent Assembly exiled - - - - - - 130 Persons deported = - : - - - - - - - 500 What had not been accomplished by the edict given above was completed by the Inquisition. Those who since the publication of my last paper in THE GAL- AXY have made inquiry as to the present status of that famous tribunal, are an- swered in the following decree issued by the Inquisitor-General in 1863: We, desiring (as is demanded by the duties of the Holy Office imposed on us) that the Catholic faith, without which, as writes the Apostle Paul to the Hebrews, it is impossible to please God, should be preserved within this our jurisdiction from all heretical conta- gion, immaculate and pure; and it being manifest’from experience that many from malice or from disobedience, and others from ignorance, do not discharge the most strict obliga- tion under which they lie to denounce to the Holy Office the offences appertaining to it, and that hence spring up things unbecoming, and offences not only against good morals, but expressly against the Catholic faith: We, therefore, who should have at heart the glory of God, the full preservation and increase of the said holy faith, and the salvation of souls, to prevent all disorders, do, with the apostolic authority conceded to us, command in virtue of holy obedience, and under pain of major excommunication, besides the other pun- ishments prescribed by the sacred canons, decrees, constitutions, and bulls of the Sovereign Pontiff in the spirit of the present edict, to all and every person of whatever state, grade, condition, or dignity, as well ecclesiastical as secular, that within the term of one month, ten days of which remain assigned for the first, ten for the second, and ten for the third peremptory term, they should reveal and judicially notify to us, or to our vicars, or the re- spective ordinaries of the places, all and every of that and of what they may know con- cerning those that are heretics, or suspected or slandered as being heretics, or favorers, or harborers, or defenders of heretics, or those who have adhered or do adhere to the rites -of the Jews, or of the Mohammedans, or of the pagans, or have apostatized from the holy Catholic faith ; Those who have committed or are committing any acts from which one can infer an expressed or tacit covenant with the devil, exercising incantations, magic arts, witchcraft, of- ‘fering suffumigations to the same, incense or prayers for finding treasures, or other unlaw- ful means, invoking him or promising obedience to him, or doing other things in which his name or works may intervene, who may have meddled or who do meddle in experiments in necromancy, or any sort of magic whatever, with abuse of the sacraments or sacramental ‘things, or of things sacred or blessed ; Who have abused or do abuse the sacrament of penance, and the place of the same, ‘contrary to the decrees and the apostolic ordinances ; Who have held or do hold secret conventicles or assemblies, to the injury or in con- ‘tempt of the holy Catholic religion ; Who against the blessed God, the most holy Virgin Mary, and against the saints, have ‘offered or do offer heretical blasphemies, or have committed or are committing any act ‘whatsoever of contempt or of injury against the holy images ; Who, notwithstanding the solemn vow made at the profession of any religious order ‘approved by the Church, and after having taken holy orders, have contracted, or are about ‘contracting, or endeavoring to contract matrimony ; .
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1870. ] TEN YEARS IN ROME. 797 Who, their first wife being alive, take a second, or their first husband being alive, take a second, or who have endeavored or do endeavor to do this ; Who have impeded, or who do impede in any way the work of the Holy Inquisition, or who in any manner have contravened the bull of His Holiness Pius V., ‘‘Si de pro- tegendis”’ ; Who have made satires or published writings against the High Pontiff, the Sacred Col- lege, the superiors, the ecclesiastics, or against the regular orders, or who have composed or published writings of any sort in which may be abuse or profanation of sacred words ; Who without the necessary permission may keep in their possession writings or prints which may contain heresies, or heretical books professedly contrary to religion, or who may read, print, or cause the same to be printed, or who introduce or circulate them un- der any pretext whatsoever ; Such persons as without necessity or leave have eaten or given to eat meat, eggs, or milk foods on forbidden days, in disregard of the commands of the holy Church ; Who have induced any Christian to embrace Judaism, or any other sect contrary to the Holy Catholic religion, or who have in any way hindered Jews or Turks from havin themselves baptized. Be it declared, however, that the said enumeration of cases by us specified as to be revealed to the Inquisition does not exclude the other cases appertaining thereto, or which are comprised in the sacred canons, decrees, and bulls of the High Pontiff. Much less is the present edict intended to derogate from the other apostolical canonical provisions, and the other edicts emanating from the ordinaries and inquisitors. Be it declared, besides, that those who will not denounce as ordered by the present edict, cannot be absolved from any excommunication incurred by them until after they have as above judicially revealed the delinquents ; and that, although the assigned term of the month may have passed as above, the obligation still remains to reveal and denounce, un- der the same penalties, until such time as the person possessed of the information shall have effectively informed and denounced. And in order that the present edict, together with the orders, as well general as special, may come to the knowledge of all, we ordain and command that they be kept posted up in the sacristies of the churches, belonging as well to the secular as to the regular clergy. To the end that no one may remain ignorant of the present orders or withdraw himself from obedience, we enjoin upon all printers, booksellers, custom-house officers, tax-collectors, gate-keepers, inn-keepers, lodging-house keepers, and shop-keepers, all respectively, that they keep posted up a copy of the present edict in their respective printing-houses, book-shops, custom-houses, gates, inns, lodging- houses, and shops, and in a public place where it can be seen and read by all. EXHORTATION, The principal, rather the only object of the Inquisition being, as has been said above, the glory of God, the exaltation of the holy faith, and the salvation of souls, therefore, after having commanded and ordained as above, now we exhort fraternally all those who may know themselves to be guilty of some crime appertaining to the Inquisition, to present themselves before us, or before our vicars, or before the Ordinary of the place, sponta- neously, before being anticipated or denounced by others, and to confess with all sincerity their errors and shortcomings ; assuring them that whenever they have not been legally anticipated before any other eccleciastical tribunal, they will be received with bowels of charity, and treated with special compassion, the natural disposition of this sacred tribunal ; and in that way, without danger, or without Zd/ic penance or punishment, they will be ab- solved. PARTICULAR ORDERS. Pertaining to the orders enjoined by us relative to the printing, introduction, sale, and promulgation of wicked and prohibited books, and being specially interested that in the cities and places under our jurisdiction should be preserved that purity of faith which by the grace of the Most High exists at present, we ordain and expressly command, that no one dare to print, introduce, sell, or circulate books, within or without the cities or places sub-
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798 : TEN YEARS IN ROME. [June, ject to us, without their having been subjected to the revision of the Inquisition, and of the officers belonging to it, under the punishment established by the sacred canons, the general and special decrees of the Sacred Congregation, and the apostolic constitutions which have been issued and promulgated on this subject, and especially by those of Cle- ment VIII. and Gregory XV. Besides, as being inseparable from the orders, decrees, edicts of the supreme tribunal of the Inquisition, and the constitutions and Pontifical bulls respectively published and promulgated with respect to the Jews, especially as regards cohabitation and familiarizing with them, we ordain and command that no one dares to transgress the orders and pre- scriptions in these cases, under the penalties in them expressed and threatened. This edict illustrates the abject slavery of the Romans. Religion has been prostituted to make the bondage holy, and a nation renowned for chivalry and freedom has for twenty years past acted as slave-driver. Do the Romans de- spair of freedom? No. I could state most startling facts that would cause par- tisans of infallibility to gasp antazed. The hate of an oppressed people is greater than an infallibility fraudulently obtained. Around the Vatican at this hour there is an organization vowed to crush its tyranny. For twenty years it has existed, hoping almost against hope. But its hour of triumph is near. The declaration of infallibility will hasten it. And as no violence is contemplated, but only a free plebiscitum, will France crush the lawful demand? She is herself about to appeal to the people, and is willing to abide by the national will. All the Romans ask is the same privilege. There can be no doubt which way the vote will tend. Carefully framed as is the edifice of Roman misrule, it is threat- ened with collapse from other causes.. The exchequer has neither money nor credit. The Swiss are mutinous, and demand their pay; and even the fanatical Zouaves are resigning. Without money the Vatican cannot exist long. All sorts of mean contrivances have been resorted to raise a sufficiency, every one of which is an additional link in the national fetters. Masten the plebiscitum, is the wish of the people; and then, without blood or fighting, in forty-eight hours the Papacy, with its legions of spies, priests, nuns, and friars, its dun- geons, scourgings, tortures, scaffolds, its known and unknown horrors, will, at the united voice of an outraged people, crumble and fall! f
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TWO WOMEN. CHAPTER I. 66 S your master still at breakfast, Secundus? Call him out, then.” Colonel Marshall did not dismount, but paced his old nag impatiently up and down on the grass over which the dew was still glittering. The morning was not yet fairly awake: the fogs lay in gray opaque rivers in the valleys below ; but the sun shone warmly about the great stone farm-house (one of the oldest in Virginia), high up on the mountain side, with its massive front, its kitchens and stables crowding confidentially into view, and the gigantic oaks which seemed to have found their way from the forest below to be sociable and comfortable near- er its hospitable warmth. A straggling line of yellow-billed ducks, muddy from the barn-yard, came quacking and biting at the horse’s feet; here and there a grinning black face was thrust out of the windows, expectant of the Colonel’s usual halloo. Tom had trotted out after Secundus ; but the Colonel did not even notice Tom. Presently a short, stoutly-built man, whose black moustache and military car- riage gave him the air of a soldier, came out. ‘ Why, Marshall, what are you doing there? Coffee’s on the table.” “ Not this morning, Jeems. I want to see youalone. Run in, Tom.” — “Hyah, Mas’ Tom. Ye’r not to hear dat ar!’ Secundus hurried up to Tom, to catch some droppings of the secret himself. But the Colonel and Mr. Vogdes spoke in a whisper, glancing now and then anxiously down the valley in the direction of the coal-miners’ villages. “There can be no doubt as to the disease ?”’ said Vogdes, when they were » alone. : “No. . It is yellow fever unmistakably. And the mortality is as great as I tell you. The worst is, the wretches have no physician. Poor Jones—that young Sawbones who lived by the mine, you remember ?—was one of the first victims ; and Campion, who went down on Tuesday from the hill, died last night. There’s no chance for a man going out of a pure atmosphere. There’s been a terrible want of drainage there. I don’t know what’s to be done.” “No. I don’t know ”? irresolutely. “You see there’s Lowe,—he’s physician for the county poor; it seems natu- rally to fall to Lowe. But he has a wife and four children.” “ Certainly, Lowe is out of the question.” “And Fordyce. But Fordyce isn’t the man to make a martyr of himself. Fool if he did, with his prospects. The man’s death-warrant is signed that goes. Yet one feels as if somebody ought to do something.” “ Of course—of course ;” and after a short pause, “It’s infernally annoying.” * Yes, it is.’ Both men were kind and charitable enough. But to have the drowsy country routine of every day, the cheerful breakfasts and sociable din- ners, the leisurely ride down to their village offices and long-drawn gossip, cigar in mouth, over business, more leisurely than all, suddenly disappear, and this pit of death and reeking corruption gape open at their feet, was, as Mr. Vogdes mildly put it, annoying. “I told that Yankee contractor how it would be,” growled the Colonel, “when he first ripped over the hill, and brought that
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800 TWO WOMEN. [JUNE, swarm of railroad Irish there. Steady, Dick! I knew it was the beginning of trouble.” “TI see but one way, Marshall. I’]l go myself.” “You? What the devil, Jeems!” aghast fora minute. “I forgot that you had ever practised medicine, or I should never have come to you with this story.” Both men were silent for a while, Vogdes mechanically stroking Dick’s flank. “ll go, Marshall,” looking up presently. ** Come in and have some coffee. This fog is chilly.” “Tt will never do, old fellow,” with a good deal of feeling in his tone. ‘“ Let the cursed Irish alone. We can’t buy their lives at ¢ha¢ price.” “T don’t know anybody who could be better spared than I,” looking around as if he would be remarkably glad to light on a substitute. “I have no wife and few ties.” “You have Tom.” “Tom? Yes.” Hestopped short at that. “Tut! tut! There’s no use talk- ing about it. There’s no danger. Come in, come in. What time does the boat go down to the mines ?” “ Not until evening. You’re determined to go?” “Yes. I see nothing else to be done.” “Tt won’t do,” gathering up his bridle decisively. “I'll find somebody—I’ll manage it.” James Vogdes watched him as he rode briskly down the hill, standing mo- tionless after he was out of sight. Marshall could do nothing, of course. There was no way to “manage” it but the one. “Jacob,” he called, as he crossed the path and went up the front steps. A gray-headed old mulatto came out, who had been factotum on the place for twen- ty years before the war. “Uncle, I wish you to see that none of the people go down to the landing, or near the mine boat. I’m going away for a few days ; come to my room presently for directions, and—stay—send Jem to ask Judge Parker to stop on his way to town.” “Yes, sah. Gwine to need yer dress- suit, Mars Jeems? Shell I tell Maria to pack it?” Vogdes shook his head laughing, and went into the beeakions room. Joe Page, who had been with him for a fortnight, was waiting at the table. “I sent the coffee out to keep hot, Cousin Jeems,” he drawled. ‘ Tom’s been teaching me to box till you’d got back. Look here.” Whereupon Master Tom shook his yellow curls and charged, and the young man and he tumbled over on the carpet with a shout. “You’re spoiling that boy. Come here, sir, and sit on my knee. Try this steak, Joe.” Tom! This was his last meal with Tom if anything hapedudi But nothing was going to happen. Page chattered according to his wont about the carpet- dance at the Colonel’s last night, and about New York, where he had been in June, and about the crops, the war, of course, coming in as a dolorous refrain to it all. His host answered him, turning his eye askance now and then on Tom. ‘“‘] know nobody that lost as little in the war as you, Jeems. There’s the good of investing in Western lands.” “T lost a good deal in negroes.” *‘ Pooh, a mere trifle! Now look at us Pages! Paupers. But you always were a lucky fellow. Your cup’s always up whenit rains. Now if 7 had led two
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1870. ] TWO WOMEN. Sor battalions where you did, I’d have come out legless or armless ; or if I had in- vested in Western lands, they wouldn’t pay two cents on the dollar. I don’t know where the deuce you find your luck,” glancing out at the rolling hills of the Vogdes plantation, from which the mist was just beginning to lift, and then at the room within, with its old-fashioned, solid mahogany furniture, and the table bright with china and frosted silver. Vogdes did not answer. If you left Joe to follow his own lead, he was sure to talk in circles, and you could take him up half an hour hence at precisely the same place and have lost nothing. “Tom will be a millionaire yet with those Western lands,” staring at the child over his coffee with his vague black eyes, thinking that he was very like his father. “ Nota look of his mother in him. That detestable Nash woman! One of the luckiest days in Jeems’s life was that which rid him of his wife.”? Joe hada habit of profound speculation on trifles. He gave himself over now to the mys- tery of how Vogdes had ever been swindled into marrying that woman. People said that he never cared for her; it was a black streak in his life, never to be wiped out. No wonder he had not married again. But it must be horribly lone- ly—unnatural, too, for a man so young to sit down by the wayside, and only hope to live again in his son’s life. Page wondered if he never did think of marrying again ? scanning the soldierly figure opposite, and the face which, good-tempered as it was, kept its own secrets. Joe, like most fashionable young fellows, hada gnawing curiosity, but this matter had a personal interest to him. Vogdes meanwhile had time to coolly count the cost of his offer. He remem- bered how exceptionally liable he had always been to any sort of contagion or poison. “It will most likely end in the one way. I’m glad I sent for Parker.” His will was not made; he must plan for Tom, too, until he was of age. He had meant to be himself Tom’s only tutor, companion, and friend. He held him close as he sat on his knee. Whatever death might be, he was sure that he would find a way through it to come back and be near the boy. . He damned the Irish, their dirt and shiftlessness, to himself; but it did not once occur to him, how- ever, to draw back and let them take their chance. Joe rose, brushing a crumb from his velvet coat. Time flies! I must be off.” Vogdes glanced at the clock. An hour with Jacob, two for Parker, and what a broken bit of the day was left until the boat came! Yet it seemed to him all of life was compressed into that little space. An hour ago, the future meant for him a stable manhood and long old age ; now it had lessened into one short summer afternoon. “What are you for to-day, Jeems? Business, as usual, I suppose ?’’ “Only this morning.”” He was silenta moment. “I will go down to the cot- tage this afternoon, and wait there till the boat comes. That is the best that I can do with the day.” “T’ll say you’re coming. I’m off for there now. I tell you, Cousin Jeems, I—but no matter.’”? He turned away, growing fiery red. It was not the first time some confession had checked itself on his tongue. Mr. Vogdes laughed significantly, but a sudden qualm stopped him from speaking. He looked at the young fellow, with new keen perception as he stood in the window, the sun fall- ing on his gallant six feet of stature, his handsome features and auburn hair and beard. It was the very type of man that a woman But what did any woman matter to him now? He had written, in all proba- bility, Finis to the book himself. “Come, Tom,” lifting him on one shoulder. “You'll stay with me to-day, old fellow. I have you, at any rate, thank God!”
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802 TWO WOMEN. : [Junz, CHAPTER II. ONLY in Joe’s romantic fancy could Mrs. McIntyre’s house be called a cot- tage. It was that little bald wooden building, that looked as if it had slipped half-way down the mountain, which she had always given rent-free to some poor relation. But when the war took from her husband, sons, and property, she found refuge in it herself with Alice and one old negro. If they had been men, Joe would have wondered how they lived, being as nearly paupers as himself; but his chivalric creed would not suffer him to query about money and a lady to- gether, even to himself. Most probably the truth was that the women managed generally with tea and toast for themselves, though they never lacked a dainty dish for a guest. Alice had made the biscuits to-day for breakfast herself. Miss Vane, their guest, coming down the stairs, saw her in the kitchen, her soft arms powdered with flour, her cheeks burned pink. It was a pretty home picture, Miss Vane thought, who had a man’s taste in female beauty. “ Now / would be vulgar in a kitchen. I am always vulgar out of full toilette,” glancing down at her own large slovenly figure ; “but Alice is like a child in that. She is her own sweet inno- cent self always, standing apart. Dress or work don’t touch her.” She leaned out of the window. Her face was sallow this morning, and her eyes sunken. Miss Vane was a victim to some obscure ailment which some of her friends called hysteria, and others a secret sorrow. Whatever it might be, the girl seldom slept at night ; from midnight till morning the house shook under her heavy tread as she prowled about, now lying on the parlor floor, now creep- ing with her cold feet into Ally’s bed, then out to the porch, tramping up and down in the darkness and rain like a caged animal. By noon she was usually curled up asleep under your feet somewhere, a heavy, dead lump of matter. People who saw Charlotte Vane in the ball-room likened her to all kinds of | glowing tropical birds and flowers ; but orderly housekeepers found her unen- durable, a very messenger of Satan sent to buffet them, excepting easy-going Mrs. McIntyre, before whose placid face and quizzical laugh Satan himself, if he were vehement and ill-bred, would have found himself abashed. Charlotte flung the window open, and thrust out her head and shoulders into the wet, foggy air. The firstemorning rays had touched the upper waves of rising mist in the valley below, and brought out rose and saffron lights in them, half deadened by the sombre umber of the sea below. Beyond, rising out of the fog, was a peak of the South Mountain, a glimpse of clear light, green woods and run- ning streams. “ The hills of Beulah!” cried Charlotte. A choking lump rose in her throat. She was as easily moved asa child. The unexpressed power, the utter repose in this grand mood of Nature calmed her, as the damp air cooled and steadied her body. She stood a long time without moving. Behind this awful strength and quiet she could understand that unknown God who was only a dull perplex- ity to her in sermons. Perhaps for her, too, there were hills of Beulah waiting above this dark unintelligible world. For her too “What is it?’’ said a pleasant clear voice at her elbow. “The sunrise.” Ally peeped out. “Oh, it is nice. But it’s horribly chilly! Come to break- fast, Charlotte, dear.” Now Ally was never known to glance at anybody’s dress, but she knew quite well that Charlotte dear had on that old blue gown with the
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1870. | TWO WOMEN. 803 train again, tied bag-like about the waist ; and that a soiled corner of linen drag- ged out at her throat, and that an unhemmed brown veil was twisted about her head to hide the bristling curl papers. “She might have some respect for mam- ma,”’ thought Alice, her color rising indignantly. She stood waiting, however, touching Miss Vane’s hand gently when the bell rang again. “The biscuit$ will be cold.” | “This is what I need—what I need!” cried Charlotte to herself, her dark hungry eyes wandering over:the mountain and the dawn. Her heart was always waiting, open and gaping for some new emotion, and this had so unexpectedly quieted and satisfied her. She had had sudden insight into the glory of God: when she would have stayed there to bathe in its life-giving strength and fulness, she must go down and content her soul with frizzled beef and Alice, and her mother’s eternal chit-chat. But she said nothing. She hada mortal dread of being “stagey.” As she drew back from the window, her eyes were full of tears. “ Day unto day uttereth speech of Him, Ally,” she said quietly. “Yes,” said Alice, a little coldly. ‘ Let me shut the window, please.” She did not like to hear Miss Vane quote Scripture. At twelve o’clock last night she had been waltzing with half the men at Colonel Marshall’s with a passionate abandon which brought little Miss McIntyre’s scared heart to her mouth. *¢ She couldn’t say her prayers properly this morning after z/az,” thought Alice with a decisive nod. “It’s impossible. Charlotte is a nice girl, but I’d rather she’d not talk of the Bible to me.” Down in the bright little breakfast room Mrs. McIntyre was waiting, seated by the fire in her worn velvet easy-chair, the cat curled up at her feet, and her soft white fingers busy with that everlasting cloud of white netting. Miss Vane, who never sat on a chair, curled herself up on the rug at her feet, and put her head on her lap. “The fire is pleasant this chilly morning, isn’t it, Charlotte ?” removing, with soft motherly little touches and pats, the obnoxious curl papers. “ Some of the gentlemen might call before breakfast is over, my dear.” “So they might.” The word fired her blood as the sound of the trumpet does the trained racer’s. She stretched her long lazy limbs and gotup. “ Truth is, I ought never to ‘show’ except at night. Even Ally with her baby complex- ion don’t light up as well as I do. Don’t blush, child, whenever one speaks of you. By the time you have been through as many seasons as I have, you'll talk of your own points as though you were a horse,” with a bitter laugh, that had a stifled sob underneath. Ally was at the sideboard filling the sugar bowl. “Dear! dear!” she sighed to herself, “now that’s Charlotte’s secret sorrow which makes her satiri- cal. Poor child! Just as we had such a nice breakfast, too. She won’t enjoy the omelette one bit!” Her heart ached so with its sudden pity that she would have liked to put her arms about Charlotte’s neck as she passed her chair, but she remembered that Miss Vane had told her once she could not bear school- girls’ purring, petting ways, and that nothing was so insipid as women’s kisses. “ As if I ever purred or petted on anybody but mamma!” indignantly. Sometimes Miss Vane, when in a good humor, was as gay and brilliant with them as though they had been gentlemen. She told queer, cynical stories of her seasons at New Orleans, Havana, or Paris, out of which, however, all vicious meaning was purged in respect to the innocence of the ‘little bread-and-butter girl, as she called Ally. They listened eagerly, halfastonished and half amused. How much they would have to talk over when she was gone! But to-day she
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804 TWO WOMEN. [JUNE, was silent, ate ravenously, cast furtive gloomy glances over at Alice s lovable little face, soft brown hair, neither chignoned nor fluffed, and fresh morning dress. These people were altogether genuine and fresh: it was that which puzzled and irritated her. Genius or talent, whether vicious or noble, she could comprehend in all its moods ; but here was mediocrity which also had its power and charm, which she could not master. They had known great trouble. Would nothing break their cheery, bright calm? Whether the world went up or down, there they sat talking commonplaces, at ease with a prince or a beggar, reticent and gentle. When Charlotte had visited Virginia before, the McIntyre estate was as large as a German principality: now they were wretchedly poor. But they read the old standard books in the library every day, drew a little, crocheted and sewed, and chatted about “ Marmion” or Boswell, or gossiped in- terminably of countess cousins, the Lees and Cabells and Beverlys, just as they did then. ; Alice, after various mental pokes to rouse Miss Vane, gave it up. ‘“ Have you decided, mamma, about my blue silk?” anxiously. “ Wedd it turn? * Not without looking tawdry. Give it away, Ally.” “But it’s the last! After that—merino. And next week is my first ball, mamma !” “ Merino it must be, I fear,” giving the cat a lump of sugar. Charlotte pricked up her ears at the first mention of dress. That store of old lace you had put by for Ally—I heard the soldiers tore it into rags before your eyes.” Mrs. McIntyre nodded, and stroked pussy gently. Yet she did grow pale. “Don’t bring ghosts, even of old lace, to the breakfast table!” cried Ally, quickly. “ But the idea of merino at a ball, Alice!” solemnly. You don’t under- stand, child. And yet you sit here and do nothing!” “What could we do, Charlotte? The lace was torn into shreds—perfect shreds, I assure you!” “Who talks of lace?” vehemently. ‘You and your mother are in want, actual want. You have culture, both of you, fine taste, and shrewd wit. Why do you not use them to help yourselves and the world? You sit here content to ~ lack everything that makes life endurable.” Mrs. McIntyre’s face deepened in color, but she did not speak. *]’m sure, Charlotte,” piped Ally with a nervous quaver, “I do not wish mamma to want. I’d teach music if anybody would learn; but I only know two pieces, and they’re out of date. I can embroider very nicely——” “ Your cousin cannot mean that we should be sempstresses, Alice,” quietly. “¢ Sempstresses—yes. Anything that would give a place in the world. I wish, God knows, that I had no fortune, that I might do something to justify my _ right to live,” cried Miss Vane, who was now fully mounted on her last hobby. “T fear, Charlotte,’ said Mrs. McIntyre with grave decision, “ that you have become imbued with these new, pernicious doctrines about women’s work. You'll outgrow them, my dear, of course,” lifting her hand gently when Char- lotte would have spoken. “ It is unpleasant to want money, or to wear merino to a ball. But Alice must not unfit herself by doing men’s work, because of a tem- porary inconvenience, for the wife and mother which she will some day be.” “Unfit! Why, madam “We will not argue about it, my dear,” placidly. “I would prefer that Ally did not hear these strange doctrines discussed. They tend in all cases to isms.,
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1870.] TWO WOMEN. 805 Isms, Charlotte, spirit-rappings, Indiana divorces, and infidelity. Besides, there comes Mr. Page.” Joe’s horse’s hoofs were heard outside, and Miss Vane abandoned her cause and vanished. A man—any man—to her was a foe to be overcome, and she was never victorious in her morning wrappers. She went to her room and spent the day there, in planning how to use her fast wasting life. She was in deadly earnest in the matter. She thought, as she did every day, of lecturing, of going into a hospital or a nunnery. The happiest time of her life had been during the war, when she had been a Confederate spy at Washington, carried maps in her boot-heels or chignon, and when she appeared as Maryland at a masquerade ball in Richmond, with gold chains fettering her beautiful bared arms. “Ah! then I was a patriot! Then I lived! Like a man,” she thought. The tears were in her eyes. “What was it Mrs. McIntyre had said of Alice? Wéifeand mother?” She tossed slatternly and nerveless on the bed, saying the words over dully again and again. Would she ever be a loving wife as other women? She thought a baby’s fingers might take away the stain and sore from her breast, but nothing else could. Nothing. Then her thoughts went off at a tangent to James Vogdes. She had known him but a week or two, but she loved him. She was sure she never had loved any man so much before. If she could only be sure that he cared for her! She sat up on the bed, her sallow skin heating into mellow passionate tints, her eyes half shut and brilliant as an animal’s watching its prey. If she could rid him of that weak feeling for Alice! It was not love. That silly commonplace girl had but a surface touch: she could never rouse the brain power, the fever passions which Charlotte felt were latent in him. “Iam his equal! I will make him mine—to-night.” Charlotte stood erect as she said this, and for a moment her whole figure was instinct with a remarkable vitality and beauty. Seeing it, one could understand the unlimited power which during her life she was said to have exerted over dif- ferent men. The next moment she bethought her of her dress for the evening, and the floor was soon covered with gorgeous ball dresses, torn and soiled, unmated shoes and stockings, artificial flowers, old letters which she had dragged out of her trunks. At the bottom of one she found a bottle of laudanum, some of which she poured into a glass and drank. | “Just what my nerves needed,” she said, putting the goblet away. CHAPTER ITI. Jor PAGE kept an anxious watch on the door all day for Miss Vane. Alice was a nice little thing, but a man of the world like himself found, of course, metal more attractive in a higher type of woman. However, he lounged away the day contentedly enough. The little parlor, as usual, was cheerful and sunny, and Ally was always vivacious and stout-tempered, and secretly relished a bit of gos- sip, as every woman does, however well-bred. Joe mentally patted her on the head patronizingly. What a thorough little housekeeper she was! so tender and watchful with her mother too! they were intimate as two happy girls together. Just the very wife for Jeems Vogdes. There was a whisper going about the neighborhood that Vogdes had been a suitor for Alice ever since the little girl had left school, which was in fact but a few months ago.
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806 TWO WOMEN. [June, “T’d give all I’m worth to know if he has changed his mind since he saw Miss Vane,” thought Joe, looking steadfastly at his boot-tops, his heart ina fierce glow of jealousy. ‘But how the deuce is a fellow to find out!”? Neither the McIntyres nor Vogdes were families who could be questioned about their affairs. Joe did what he could, however. “Secundus is training that pony capitally,” he remarked. “The bay, you know? Vogdes intends it as a birthday gift for Miss Vane.” Now, there had been a vague rumor that the pony was to be broken for Alice. “*T never knew a woman ride more beautifully than Charlotte,”? Mrs. McIn- tyre remarked quickly. “J always think of Di Vernon,” said Ally with a little gush of enthusiasm. ‘** But then Charlotte is so lovely always ; don’t you think so, Cousin Joe?” ““Well—passable.” Joe twitched his moustache critically, blushing furiously red. ‘Miss Vane’s is an unusual style.” “Thank Heaven for it!” ejaculated both women in their hearts ; but they _ smiled in concert and said, “Oh, very !” “By the way, Vogdes bade me give you his compliments, Aunt Letitia. He will ride over this afternoon. ‘Tom ‘wants to see Miss Vane.” “Tom is very fond of dear Charlotte,” said Ally. “ Everybody is that, though,” forcing a smile ; and then the little girl got up, folded up her tatting, still smiling, made some little joke with her mother (who did not look at her, as she passed), and went up to her own room in great haste, only to sit down and stare at the whitewashed wall when she reached it. Charlotte was lovely, there was no denying that: especially in that puffed yellow silk—and her arms and hands were models for a sculptor, as Cousin Joe said—* When they are clean,” Ally added as a foot-note in her secret soul, with a malicious toss of her head. ‘“ But that is no reason why she should take—my—my friends away from me,” said Ally, trying to hold back the tears in her blue eyes. ‘ Cousin Joe hasn’t asked me to dance once this summer, and even Secundus brings all the bouquets for Missy Vane, and now there’s Tom gone! Dear little fellow! It was hard she couldn’t Jeave me Tom.” She buried her head in her lap, and cried bitterly. After wandering vaguely over her grievances of Joe and Secundus, she finally settled on Tom as proper cause for the heartsick tears that would come. “ Dear little fellow!” she sobbed, “poor little motherless fellow! Hedid love me. But now it’s all Charlotte! Charlotte ! ” Perhaps we ought to offer as explanation for Miss McIntyre’s grief the fact that friendship had constituted the exclusive staple of her short life. Her little, warm, clean heart had never been without a shrine and tenant since her first in- timate, at nine years old, Molly Briggs, who had married a Baptist preacher, and Ally admitted now was a red-haired, vulgar creature; in her drawers she had a box-full of hair bracelets and albums, souvenirs of bosom friends, among the girls at school, including two teachers. Her heart had always been kept sacred for her own sex, however, until she came from school last winter, when she opened it, and took in—Tom. . The little urchin was in the habit of running down to the cottage every day, and Alice’s devotion to him (when nobody saw her) was something wonderful to behold. How she brushed and curled his yellow hair! how she slily sewed on missing buttons, or darned tears in his trowsers, whispering “ Poor little mother- less fellow!” the always ready tears coming to her eyes at the thoughts of how neglected Tom’s clothes or anybody’s must be who had no woman to love them,
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1870.] TWO WOMEN. 807 and how lonely, wretchedly lonely they were in heart. Alice felt as if her own heart was fired with the zeal of a whole Christendom full of missionaries to atone to Tom for his loss or—anybody who needed her. Once he had fallen asleep on her bed, and she had asked her mother if “he looked at all like his poor, dear mother?” It was curious to note how great was her satisfaction at finding that he did not. “That dreadful Nash woman!” she said, as Joe had done, when she was alone, and then leaned over the pillow studying the child’s face with shy, soft eyes. Presently, as though she had found what she sought, she stooped and— what she never had done before with all of her petting of him—kissed him on the lips. When she lifted her head her pretty face and throat were dyed crim- son. “ Sweet little angel!” she said apologetically to herself, which argued unac- countable delusion on her part ; as—Master Tom’s especial gifts being those of chewing unlimited shoemakers’ wax and playing hookey from school—the clouds of glory which he trailed about him were, to ordinary eyes, very scant indeed. Meanwhile, down stairs, Mr. Page entertained Mrs. McIntyre with some of his most brilliant anecdotes of society and blasé bits of philosophy. Alice’s mother, he remembered, had been both belle and ded esfri¢ in her youth, and it was worth while to show her how superior young men of this day were in savoir vivre to those of her own. The lady, her white fingers busy with her wool, turned Joe over and over, and read his whole secret leisurely: that he was fiercely jealous of Vogdes, who he believed meant to put his fate to the test with Miss Vane to-night. The poor boy was as helpless in her gentle handling as a miserable little mouse upon whom a white motherly old cat has laid her velvety paws. She smiled complacently as she went up stairs to dress for tea. Poor Char- lotte! that would be a terrible ménage for any man under her rule as house- keeper. But she was thankful that Vogdes’s attention had been directed from Alice. A widower with an unruly boy, a man whose early youth had been scarred with passion, was not the husband she would choose to take her pure white flower to his bosom. “IT am so glad now that Ally never suspected that be was a lover; but she has no more thought of marriage than a child! Ally is as much of a baby as Tom,” thinking how she made g companion of the boy. All of which goes to show that babes and sucklings may be mysteries even to the wisest heads, CHAPTER IV. IT was nearly dusk when Vogdes reached the cottage. He had been detained longer at home than he planned: a man cannot so readily slip off the traces of the world and its business. When all was done, he made an excuse to go al] over the old house, to say a cheerful word or two to each of the people. Their old black faces had been familiar and friendly to him since he was a boy. Then he lifted Tom up into the buggy, holding him on his knee, joking him about his base-ball. He had a dim idea that he ought to give the boy some great truth to guide him through his life, to tell him of God. But somehow he only held him closer and talked base-ball. ‘“ What am I that I should speak of God to him?” he cried. He made a circuit of a mile or two, They passed a shady little grave-
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808 TWO WOMEN. [JUNE, yard. Close by the fence there was a marble monument so heavy and costly that there was no room for grass and flowers. They stopped beside it. “T never was here before,” said Tom. “Nor was I,” said his father. Now that he was, perhaps, done forever with life and its business, he wished to come, to say above this grave that he forgave his dead wife lying there the wrong she had done him. He sata moment in silence. He would have been glad if the marble had not been so heavy and broad above her; he would have liked to lay his hand on the warm earth that covered her breast, to bid her a kinder farewell. For, living or dead, he felt that he was done with her forever ; that in those eternal, myriad lives beyond death their paths would never cross again: of that he was sure. Half an hour afterward he drove into the enclosure about the cottage. The windows were all closed but one. It opened into the breakfast room ; the bright light shone out, and showed the dainty tea-table set, a vase of autumn flowers in the middle, and Alice sitting by the urn alone, waiting for the others to come, She never had seemed so pure to him, so tender. The soft light brought into relief her womanly little figure, her shy, sensitive face, with its dark-blue eyes set in heavy shadows, and the peach bloom on her cheeks. It was a miniature picture of home—the home that James Vogdes had never known. When Tom ran in, he stood without for a moment looking in at her from the darkness, muttering to himself, “ My wife? my wife?” with a prayer perhaps to God to spare him for a little while, if this thing might be. For the man’s life had, in fact, been heretofore bleak and black enough. ‘So you’re here at last!” said Joe Page, coming down the yard with a surly face. “I doubted if you knew your own mind this morning!” Vogdes understood him. ‘ Yes—I knew it,” composedly going with him into the house. He was quite sure he knew it. Why, for months the idea of that sweet, pure little girl as his wife and the mother of his boy had been as a glimpse into an unknown heaven for him. He would make it sure to-night. If he lived to come back, he would know if she would be his wife, or no. Of course, he knew his mind! Miss Vane had a certain charm that no one could deny. But he was no fool—no Joe Page to be won by it. If Alice—but here his heart failed him. _ Women were apt to call Miss McIntyre “Pussy,” and to think of her very much as they would of a kitten—as an innocent, rather stupid, affectionate little thing. But she became to this shrewd, well-cultured man, as by order of wise Nature every woman does to the man who loves her, a half-unreal creature, with a divinity in and about her which no near contact could destroy. Among women, Ally was noted for her painfully-neat chintzes and muslins; in his fancy she was clothed with a rare purity and modesty, like a halo: a certain light and sweet- ness exhaled from her, and set her apart from other women. He felt as if his brain and soul were clumsy as his fingers. How should he dare approach her? His courage almost gave way. Yet he began to feel as if it were a matter of life and death tohim. In the little hall he met Mrs. McIntyre and caught her hand, with a sense of having reached a half-way house of present security. But he would not tell her his secret. No other hand than his own must capture this white dove and fold it to his bosom. “TJ have a favor to ask of you, Madam,” offering her his arm, and leading her into the parlor. Now James Vogdes had a certain soldierly courtesy and pro- tecting, deferential manner to all women, even to his laundress, which had a queer, subduing effect on them.
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187¢.] TWO WOMEN. | | 809 Mrs. MclIntyre’s heart instantly softened. “You may be sure it is granted, James,” cordially. “Tam going away to-night for a few days. May I leave Tom and his nurse with you?” “ Assuredly. That would be certain without your asking. But I do not un- derstand,” looking at him keenly. “There is something beneath this. What is it?” “ Nothing. I am going to the mines. You know what is wrong there ?” “Yes,” in a whisper. “I have not told Alice.” “There is no danger for me, of course. Still, I might not return. If I do not, I have made arrangements at school for Tom. But there is no woman—will you-——” “Keep a watch over him? Yes, as God hears me I will, James. But, my dear boy, this ought not to be.”” Her eyes were full of tears ; she laid her hand on his arm. “Tut, tut! there is no danger. Only J am over-anxious about my boy.” “You will not speak of it to Alice? She is so easily frightened.” “No, no! I will wait here until tea is over, and then bid her good-by, if you will allow me.” He sat down on the dark end of the porch, where he could look into the room at her sitting there. Frighten Alice? The man must be a brute who would hurt her by a look or word. She was so little, and soft, and fair! he felt to her precisely as one would to a baby ora bird. If he lived, it should be the work of his life to hold her so close that no shadow of harm should ever come to her. She was his ideal woman, being so helpless, loving. He never felt his manhood as when he looked at her. | There was a soft rustle in the bushes near, and a warm breath. He turned quickly. Miss Vane stood close beside him, quite motionless, looking at him. He could not distinguish her figure with its drapery of dark gauze from the shadows about her. He could discern only a glimpse of lithe, bending limbs; a glint of starlight fell across the mellow, olive cheek, the slow-heaving bosom ; he could feel rather than see her magnetic, absorbing eyes. He had an odd, mo- mentary fancy that she silently had grown out of and belonged to the warm- tinted autumnal dusk, full of drowsy harvest smells, darkness, and passion. Strange as it may seem, Vogdes turned to this woman from Alice with a thrill of pleasure, almost relief. H,is brain had been heated all day, every faculty strained to its utmost tension; his courage quailed before the approach to his delicate, frigid little lady-love ; but this was only his friend ; unexacting, akin to himself: here was rest. Besides, there was a potent charm in Miss Vane’s per- son, voice, and look, perfectly pure, but peculiar to her as a woman, which no woman ever had recognized in her and very few men failed to find. Mr. Vogdes was not one of that few. He did not speak to her. Their friendship had been subtle and unconven- tional from the first ; the long silences, when the eyes or instinct only spoke, had been one of its features which strangely attracted Vogdes. When the darkness had grown familiar to him, he saw that her cheeks now were wet with tears. “What is it?’ he whispered, leaning closer. But she stood apart, the twi- light forming an impalpable barrier between them. “T heard all,” she said. “I know what you are going to do.” Now it never had occurred to him before that there was anything more than a matter-of-course affair in his going down to the wretched Irish: But looking steadily into these dark, bewildering eyes, and reading the strange, devotional
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810 : TWO WOMEN, [Junz, meanings there, he began to thrill as though he heard wonderful music calling him to high unwonted deeds ; began to feel himself a knight going out to vic- tory. “Tut, tut! there is no danger!” using the same words as to Mrs. McIntyre; but he whispered now, and the tone was soothing and tender. “TI know that it is almost certain death.” * Would you have me stay ?” “No. There are so few men who would do this heroic deed.” James Vogdes was noted among the men who knew him best as an unusually humble, unassuming fellow; a man who would never assert himself enough to push his way. But every nerve now tingled with keen excitement and delight. “ My life is worth little to any man. No one could be spared better.” And he waited breathless to be contradicted. Not that the stout, brawny fellow was in reality peculiarly vain or silly. Mailed Antony himself, no doubt, blushed with pleasure when the Egyptian women patted, and petted, and cajoled him, and put him up on a pedestal to abase themselves before. Charlotte’s answer startled him. ‘Your life is worth little,” she said, “ for you have not known its value.” * Do you?” The darkness was warm and still about them ; his breath came hot and quick. She had roused fierce, passionate thoughts in him with her sudden, sharp probe ; but they were of himself, not of her. Old ambitions started into life ; the dream which came to him in his boyhood of what he might be, the dream that had so slowly died, and left him a dull, sensible country squire, plodding with the rest: “ What am I, Charlotte ? God knows I’ve sounded myself, but I find nothing.” He waited as though the dark figure had been a priestess who had spoken to the gods for him. She did not answer at once. “1 have lived very much alone. No one ever cared to speak to me as you have done now. But you overrate me. Iam sure you overrate me.” “‘ If you come back,” she said, in the same low, strained voice, “ there is no place which strength and intellect can conquer which may not be yours. Vir- ginia needs a leader. The way is open and waiting for you. Let me speak plainly, though I.amawoman. The time is short, and 1 am your friend,” her voice failing at the last. 3 He listened breathless. “Yes. Let us be true and frank to each other. If I could believe what you tell me——” He was standing beside her. Uncon- sciously they had gone down the path into the thick trees of the garden. A strange madness fired his blood. If this were true? He had dreamed it of himself long ago. And Charlotte had subtly hinted it before. These words only gave sub- stance to her meaning and to their friendship. If he were indeed to waken when he came back to a new life of exertion, victory, power! And she—this friend who saw his true self when all others were blind ? He turned sharply. She was close to him, the rare, brilliant woman whom so many men had sought in vain, with all her wonderful beauty, her subtle thought, her feeling for him, whatever that might be, laid bare, ready for his coming. There were no trivial, tiresome barriers here. She was his friend. So great hearts and great souls approach each other. He stood silent, hesitating. He did think of Alice. But she had grown curiously petty and faded in his mind. A mere bit of ice. And ice, he remembered, when you pressed it too warmly, sometimes rested in your hand a dash of insipid water. But here- Could Fate have meant him to win ¢#zs woman’s love? She turned her face
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1870.] TWO WOMEN. Sit slowly toward him. Charlotte had always this advantage on her, side, that she never acted. For the time she loved the man madly. It breathed in the very atmosphere about her. It had its power over him without his knowledge. The heavy coils of her black hair had fallen and shook out a delicate perfume ; her breast rose and fell with passionate tremble and shiver ; her sultry eyes evaded his; her warm breath touched him. Then she drew back; she was’ almost lost in the shadows. He sprang after her, caught her arm. “Stay! If I come back alive——” He paused ; there was a fierce struggle at his heart. A bell sounded down in the river fog. She waited a moment for him to speak. “There is the boat.” She said then, quietly, “ We will he friends—in life or death.” The tone was cold enough, but she touched his forehead’with the tips of her fingers—just touched it, no more ; but the next moment she was strained to his breast and his burning lips were’ pressed to hers. Then he turned from her ‘and hurried down the’hill. At the parlor window Alice’s little pale face had been watching all evening. She saw him now cross the path that led to the house, and stop uncertainly. She got up, putting her hand upon the pané. Tom, who was’ clinging half asleep to her dress, slipped down neglected. : “He is coming!” she wagered! Surely he would not go to meet death without a word of good-by for her? The boat bell rang impatiently. She heard his sharp, clear tones. “Bid the ladies good night for me, Page. I am sorty I'am so hurried.” Joe, who knew now where he was going, stood by hii remorseful atid fuss® ing. “Will you not bid Tom good-by ?” “Tom? No, I could not do that.” He turned and walked without a word down into the fog. Had he forgotten his boy in'the last hour? He felt ‘as if he had been lost in a hot, feverish dream, from which he would never wish to awaken. Meanwhile little Ally stood by the window, watching him go.’ When the noise at the shore had ceased, and'she heard the boat swash through thé water as it passed down the river, she turned and went up stairs, smiling: very brightly as she met her mother. “Where is Tom, my dear?” “] do not know, mamma. Tom? I have not seen him.” “Has Mr. Vogdes gone? Joe told you his intention ?” “© dear, yes! How foolish men are. Good night, mamma,” and, smiling’ and nodding, she went into her room, double-locked the door, and threw herself suddenly, white and shivering, on the bed. ‘And I loved him so! I loved him’ so! I could have made him so happy and comfortable ! ” was all the moan the poor little thing made. | Miss Vane, combing out her false black hair in the next room, felt’ her heart beat faster as she heard a'sob. “Silly child!” she said, not unkindly. “It will make more of a woman of her, though. But he is not mine yet.” She sat thoughtful for a few minutes; then from the bottom of one of her trunks took out a suit of men’s clothes and laid’ them ready for usé. Thén she lay down and slept heavily. A little ‘giist of excitement’ always brought Char- lotte a good night’s sleep. 53
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812 TWO WOMEN. [JUNE, CHAPTER V. DAYLIGHT wakened Mr, Vogdes out of his feverish dream very thoroughly. The. yellow fever in a coal-diggers’ village was certainly prosaic; and then he was kept hard at work. . But for his pity for the poor wretches, and his nausea at the dirt about. him, he was well and hearty; death never seemed further off from him. The disease was not half so fatal as it had been reported; a physi- cian came down from the hills, and another from the, court-house; he began to suspect that his expectation of self-sacrifice had been a bit of melodrama of which he ought to be ashamed, and to feel himself not so much of a hero after all. As to the two women to whom he had almost committed himself the night before, it was a most damnably perplexing affair. He put it out of his mind altogether, though there were moments. when Charlotte’s words and touch sud- denly came back with a delicious, sensuous kindle and thrill of remembrance. It was late the next afternoon when he met Doctor Masters at the door of a large wooden building, into which they had removed two or three of the pa- tients. ‘Tones is better.” “So is that woman Moore. I think we have it under.” “Yes. This change in the weather is favorable. There is the boat already.” “There will be no passengers to-night.” Vogdes glanced at it down through the twilight carelessly, and went into the house. He was stooping over.one of the pallets when Doctor Masters came in, and touched his elbow. ‘There was a jpassenger—a young man, who offers himself as nurse. He asked for you.” “We really need no one else. He-ought to be sent back.” “So I think. See to him, Vogdes; here he comes,” The old doctor went out to his own patients, and Vogdes, busied in lifting the great, groaning Irish- man before him, only noticed by a glance the awkward young fellow who had entered and stood by the door. The setting sun threw a glare of light over the, ill-kept, dirty room, the half- dozen wretched occupants of the bed, and the man who moved about among them, stout, prompt, business-like. Could this be the hero of last night’s aay and romance, and passion? Charlotte’s heart dropped to low ebb. Then she stood stiff and erect. She had made a desperate move. But it would win. . If daring _ and self-sacrifice were admirable in a man, Vogdes would think them divine in a woman. He would find that she could stand by him shoulder to shoulder any- where on the man’s ground. Why should she not thus show him that she loved him? Why should not a woman be the first to say, “I love”? Man and woman stood as equals. Just then Vogdes, having finished, came up quickly, touching his hat. ‘You asked for me, I believe?” “You do not know me?” | He glanced over the shuffling, ungainly figure, ‘the sallow face, pert nose, and bold eyes, paused a moment perplexed, and then drew back. “Good God! It is not--——” » | She caught his arm with both hands, ‘Yes, it is I—it’s Charlotte! I-came to—to die with you! You will not cast me off?” For a moment Vogdes’s astenishment and dismay choked him. “What w2// people say ?” he gasped out, letting her hands slip off untouched. - Js that all? What the world thinks! But as forme——” She cried out
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1870. ] TWO WOMEN. 813 the words shrilly, her teeth beginning to chatter. She was a nervous woman, and the strain on her had been terrible all day. The reaction was coming. “For Heaven’s sake, Miss Vane, control yourself. The men will hear you. The Doctor—— Come outside and tell me what you meant by this—this freak.” Charlotte followed him. . He stopped in the chicken-yard outside, among the coops. It was still daylight, bald, ugly daylight. He had a bottle in one hand and a spoon in the other, and there she stood in her man’s coat and trousers, a felt hat on her head, into which she had, with a lingering hope of effect, put a black feather, which had been broken and sagged down behind. She knew that her face was smutted with soot from the boat. Twilight, and romance, and passion were gone from between them forever. She had made a mistake. She saw that now suddenly. Life itself seemed to turn cold and thin before her eyes. “Why should I not come?” she said at last, as he waited sternly. “Are men only to be heroic? You have told me of women who went to nurse the dy- ° ing, and praised them for it.” “It was for those poor fellows, then 7 ?” his face softening. ‘“ You are a fool- ish child, go back at once. I will not allow you to go near them.” 3 His manner was so gentle she built a sudden hope on it. “Do you think it was for those miserable Irish that I risked my life?” she cried passionately. *‘T know of no other reason,” he retorted, coldly and quickly. “Am Iastone? Could I sit at home, pale and whimpering, like Alice, when —you were in danger?” | His face turned scarlet. “ You are generous, Miss Vane, as we all know,” speaking thick and hurriedly, raising his voice when she would have spoken. “You are loyal to your friends. But your enthusiasm has led you innocently too far now. No matter! We can easily correct the mistake. Did any one know — of your coming ?” “No one,” turning away sullenly “Thank God for that! The return boat passes in a few minutes. You will go back on her. You will be safe from detection at night.” She turned on him slowly. ‘Is that all, James Vogdes ?” «What more can there be ?” | The cool masculine eye mastered her. “God knows!” wildly. “But I thought ? She threw up her arms with a mad, despairing gesture. ‘“‘T wish to the Lord she had a dose of asafoetida—and was off my hands,” thought Vogdes. He spoke to her very courteously, however, as he always did towomen. ‘“ Miss Vane, you are hardly yourself to-day. I insist upon your go- ing at once to the boat.” ) “You chose me as your friend!” she muttered under her breath. “Z was to read yourself to you. I was to help you to victory!” “You mean that plan of ours last night?” with an awkward laugh. “I was to go into Congress, was I not? or higher? That was a capital joke of yours.” © She looked at him keenly. “ A joke,” he repeated, meeting her eye steadily. ‘Such friendships as ours are made by young ladies every day to pass away a leisure hour. I quite under- stood it.” : She laughed—a queer, pitiful laugh—and stood looking down at her glove, which she folded over and over mechanically in her hand. God knows what chance of life was slipping away from her forever in this man’s words, or what it mattered
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814. 3 TWO, WOMEN. (JUNE. toher.. He only saw a nondescript, ridiculous creature, neither man nor woman, whose every movement was absurd. and intolerable to him. “Such friendships as ours, Mr. Vogdes?” trying to gain her usual tone. “They are, you think with Laertes, but the perfume and the suppliance of a min- ute—no more ?”’ He was silent fora moment. ‘No more,” he said gruffly. Fate had struck the decisive hour for this mannish girl, as for the all-womanly Ophelia. But have these men-women hearts to break, or brains that the want of love will drive mad? Mr. Vogdes thought not. “T will go now,” she said, letting her glove fall. He walked a step or two behind her down to. the river bank. When she stepped on the plank to go on the boat she turned. ‘ Good-by,” she said. Vogdes’s conscience wrung him sharply. He remembered how sweet the beautiful woman’s sympathy had been last night—the kiss he had left upon her lips. He hesitated, half held out his hand. But this was a pert, sallow-faced boy, going on deck. “She can make her own way in the world—trust her for that!” he thought. He touched his. hat. “Good-by, Miss Vane,” he said coolly, and, watching her safely on deck, went up the hill. A man came upand touched him, It was Joe Page. ‘You sent her back ?” The young fellow’s face was white and haggard. “1. knew you would.” “Of course. Is it known that she came?” “Only to me. I followed her.” ‘See. that she reaches home safely, Joe. And keep the thing quiet, my lad, won’t you?” “1 know what is due to.a lady,” curtly. ‘But I have done with her for- ever, Cousin Jeems.” “The better for you, Page.” Joe shook his. head dolorously, and went down to the boat. Vogdes knew that he would save her from detection. Frothy as Joe might be, his sense of honor was high and keen. “How horribly ugly she is in trousers!” Vogdes thought, as he went rier to the village. ‘ Well, 1 wasn’t to blame about it.” And so little Alice was pale and cried for me? - Little Alice,” walking slower, with a tender smile on his lips. A year or two afterward Mr. Vogdes and his wife were in a theatre in one of the Atlantic cities. Tom was with them in a, new and marvellous tartan suit. Mr. Vogdes had grown portly since his marriage, and ruddier ; had a more de- monstrative jolly manner and a hearty haw-haw of a laugh, that was infectious. The Vogdeses had troops of friends everywhere, even so far from home as.here in. New York. Mrs. Vogdes was spoken of as a fat, genial, sweet little woman, not a bit bookish or brilliant, but the most charming person in the world to know. They. were dining and being: féted everywhere, and invited everybody to spend next summer with them in Virginia. “ Flow like that page in the blue and silver is to Miss Vane, Alice!” said Mr. Vogdes, levelling his lorgnette-at the stage. “Very. Though one could not imagine Charlotte in men’s clothes.” “No. Where is she-now, Ally, by the by?” * At Havana, I think, or Paris. Breaking men’s hearts somewhere. I wish she would love somebody and marry him. You never appreciated her, James. Poor Charlotte!” “‘No,” said her husband absently, still looking at the stage. The page had keen eyes.. She drew back just then behind the throne. [The play was “Hamlet.”] “It is!” she said to herself. “Silly little Alice! But she
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1870.1 AD ASTRA. 815 was too good for the man, after all. A stupid fellow.” She left the stage then, and stood alone, leaning against the side scene. “Poor Charlotte!” she too said after.a while, to herself. But the others have quite forgotten her in watching the sorrows of the gentle Ophelia. REBECCA HARDING DAVIS. AD ASTRA. HERE are, who wonder whether, in the flight Which gracious beings make from star to star, They pause to mark our dim and distant earth, And speak with pity of the feeble folk Who dream their empty dreams of after life, Build temples for a host of warring creeds, And die; and with their corporal substance lose All individual thought and memory. But what'sad echo from that height of stars Started this dream of heaven’s contempt of men? I’ve stood at midnight when the world was still ; Nor cricket’s chirp nor rustling breath of trees Marred the vast stillness of the steadfast stars. Then, with my soul I’ve swept those silent depths, That deeper grew still, as I soared within them. The glittering points strown on the face of heaven Rounded to worlds immense, receding far In mighty ponderous flight through separate spheres, Each wide enough to gird a universe. Yet, as one wind breathes o’er the clustering heads Of the white rye upon a harvest field, So my strong soul, nor timid-nor elate, Breathed through those hosts of worlds, and filled the voids Betwixt the sundered orbs with human thought, Harmonious as praise. Then had I seen, Though far as Sirius, a shining train Of seraphs errant on the work of God, I would have hailed them with a brother’s speech I hail them now—though not with sight or voice ; Spirit to spirit speaks: “ Hail, sons of God! Who, mightier than we, can serve Him more, Yet are no more His sons.” Who hears their sighs Of taunting pity sifting through the air? Who hears them tell us that our dying flesh Measures our greatness and predicts our end ? * Or that, because our bodies soon must fail, Our separate souls, distinct and keen as theirs, Must lose their individual hold of thought And merge in indistinguishable being ? When dropped that dismal gospel from the sky ?
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$16 AD ASTRA. [JUNE, Then who, the words unheard, shall claim the power To read them on the far unlettered scroll Of seraph’s heart ; yet, while he reads, confess That to the nature which he scans so well He stands compared as do the beasts to men? The beast that guesses what a man can think Is beast no more, but fellow of the man. And when a human seer takes his flight To farthest heaven, only to bring back Heaven’s hypothetic scorn of human beasts, I wonder much at that strange, bestial flight— That mighty argument for impotence. Yet who shall tell?) May not the guess be true, Since knowledge of eternal things to men Is unrevealed, and at the best but breathes Through things created; may not words like these Oft fall from seraph lips?) Alas, who knows? 1 know—“ 1 know that my Redeemer lives.” I ask’no doubtful whisper from the stars. The round green earth, that hangs amidst their light, And gathers influence from all the sky, To warm and feed my weak and wasting frame, Has drunk a promise from ‘the upper heaven, And keeps it for ‘her sons.’ Not from her fields Vivid with verdure, nor fromstately hills Nor whispering streams, she speaks that treasured word. But when men die, and to:her friendly breast — She takes 'their dust, then through the opened grave Steals forth the deathless cadence of that song ) Which Christ the victor sang among the: dead : “J am the resurrection and the life ; He that believes in me shall never die.” So in the midnight when the world is still, _ And my rapt soul sweeps through the teeming stars ’ Straight to God’s throne, I will notiask nor brook Pity nor scorn, though from a seraph’s lips. My conscious spiritshall converse with God, My dying flesh draw comfort from its tomb, And answering echoes from the earth and sky Meet in the air where my dear Lord shall come. Hark! how the heavens grow silvery with song. The dark sky kindles,into bloom of light. It is God’s host. See where the Princeiof Life: Rears his near throne amid their glittering ranks. He speaks the word ; andthe dark-rolling earth Bursts into radiant life. In ranks as bright As heaven itself has poured through gates of pearl, Break from their tombs the hidden sens of God. Joy answers joy. The nearing anthems blend ; Seraphs and men meet at the throne of Christ; And death is swallowed up in victory. H. D. GANSE.
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SENATOR WILSON AND EDWIN M. STANTON. [Tuer Editor of THe GaLaxy, in giving place to the subjoined letter from a well-known public man and jurist, reminds the reader of the principle upon which this magazine is conducted—that of giving free scope to the expression of individual opinions. } To the Honorable HENRY Wi son, Senator from Massachusetts: N the February number of the ‘ Atlantic Monthly ” appeared an article of | yours entitled “Edwin M. Stanton.” It contains some statements which are very wonderful, if true; and if false; they ought to be corrected. I ask you to review this production in the light of certain facts which I shall now take the liberty to mention. My principal object is to satisfy you that you have wholly misunderstood the character of Mr. Stanton, and grossly injured him by what you supposed to be a panegyric. But before I begin that, satter me to correct some of ‘your errors about other persons. In your vituperative description of the Buchanan administration, you allege that ‘‘the President and his Attorney-General surrendered the Government’s right of self-preservation”” and “ pronounced against its power to coerce a seced- ing State.” You refer manifestly to the opinion of the Attorney-General, dated the 20th of November, 1860, defining the duties and powers of the President, and to the public acts of the President which show that he took the advice of the Law Department and squared his conduct accordingly. Upon this ground mainly, if not entirely, you denounce that administration as not only weak and unpatriotic, but wilfully wicked and treasonable. I propose to show that you have committed a cardinal error, if not something worse. The coarse way in which you charge the dead as well as the living with the highest crimes, would justify a reply in language much plainer than I intend to use. Your modes of thinking and speaking on subjects of this kind are so loose and inaccurate, that it is necessary to furnish you withian idea of certain ele- mentary principles which to most other men are too familiar to talk about. 1. The government of the United States is the Constitution and laws. 2. The preservation of the government consists in maintaining the suprem- acy of the Constitution and laws. 3. For this purpose certain coercive powers are delegated to the aii which he may use to defend the laws when they are resisted. an 4. But in this country, as in every other, except where the government is an absolute despotism, the authority of the Chief Magistrate is Zmited and his hands are tied up by legal restrictions, to prevent him from using physical force against the life, liberty, and property of his fellow-citizens, unless in certain pre- scribed ways and on proper occasions. , 5. He is bound by his inaugural oath to keep within those limits; if he breaks the laws, he destroys the government; he cannot stab the Constitution in the back because he is afraid that somebody else will strike it in the face. 6. The government of the United States, within its proper sphere, is a sov- ereign, as much as the States are sovereign within their sphere. It acts zwme- diately upon the people and claims their direct obedience to its laws. Asa State cannot make war upon a city, county, or town, and put all its inhabitants to the sword because some of them have acted or threatened to act illegally, so
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818 SENATOR WILSON AND EDWIN M. STANTON. _ [JuUNE, the General Government is also restrained from exterminating the whole popu- lation of a State for the offences, actual or intended, of some who live among them. 7. The so-called ordinances of secession’ in 1860~61 were the declara- tions of certain persons who made them that they zatended to disobey the laws of the United States. It was the duty of Congress and the President to see that forcible resistance to the laws, when actually made, should be met by a counter-force sufficient to put it down ; but neither Congress nor the President had authority to declare war and begin hostilities, by anticipation, against all the people at once, and put them all in the attitude of public enemies without regard to their personal guilt or innocence. The opinion of the Attorney-General, which you have garbled, and the mes- sages of.President Buchanan, assert these principles in plain English words. We held that the whole coercive power of the United States, delegated by the Constitution to every branch of the government, judicial, legislative, and execu- tive, including its military and naval force, might and ought,.in the appointed way, to be used to maintain the supremacy of the laws against all opposers, to hold or retake the public property, and to collect the revenue. But we asserted, also, that powers not given ought not to be usurped, and that war upon a State, in the then circumstances of the country, would be, not only usurpation, but de- struction of the Union. Of course, you cannot be so ignorant of the fundamental law as not to know that our exposition of it was perfectly sound and correct. You never pretended ——no man with sense enough to: know his right hand from his left ever will pre- tend—that the President had constitutional or legal authority to make an aggres- sive war against the States by his own act, nor had Congress any such power. But you think I ought not to have answered the President’s questions truly, and that he ought not to have been influenced by constitutional scruples. That is the rub. There is no dispute—never was, and never can be—about the law; but Mr. Buchanan’s wickedness and treason consisted in obeying it when you think he ought to have broken it. For this cause you try to excite against his memory those bad party passions by which he was hounded and persecuted during all the last years of his life. I will make no effort to convince you that Mr. Buchanan was right in stand- ing by the Constitution which he had sworn to preserve, protect, and defend. That I know would be altogether hopeless. _The declared admirer of John Brown, the political ally of Jim Lane, the partisan of Baker, the advocate of general kidnapping and special murder by military commissions, the open sup- porter of. measures which abolish the right of trial by jury and build up an Asiatic despotism on the ruins of free government—such a man would entirely misunderstand the reason (simple as it is) upon which I put the justification of a dead President for refusing to perjure himself. But, if I cannot justify, per- haps I can excuse him. I will offer some apologies which may possibly disarm your censure, or at least mitigate the severity of your righteous indignation. In the first place, then, Mr. Buchanan was born of Christian parents and edu- cated ina Christian community. All his lifetime, and at the moment of his death, he felt that fear of God which a respectable authority has declared to be, not weakness, but the “beginning of wisdom” and the only source of true greatness. The corruptions introduced into the church by the political preachers of New Eng- land never reached him. He was simply a Christian man and a firm believer in the morality taught by the New Testament. Now, you know (at all events you :
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1870.] SENATOR WILSON AND EDWIN M. STANTON. _ $19 must have heard) that persons who adhere to that kind of religion always contract a habit of regarding the violation of an oath with inexpressible horror, whether it be committed by an officer or a witness ; whether the object of it be to destroy — the character of a political opponent, to promote the interests of a party, or to enslave a State. All kinds of false swearing are alike to them. They stub- bornly reject the reasoning which seeks to convince them that observance of oaths by magistrates and legislators is a mere question of expediency and self- interest, varying with circumstances. ‘Mr. Buchanan being a-man of this class, I submit the question -whether ‘his prejudices against perjury (unreasonable as you may think them) are not entitled to some little respect. Apart from the religious obligation of his oath, he loved the Constitution of his country on its own account, as the best government the world ever saw. I do not expect you to sympathize with this feeling ; your affections are other- wise engaged. But can you not make some allowance for his attachment to that great compact which was framed by our forefathers to secure union, justice, peace, State independence, and individual liberty for ourselves and our posterity ? Another thing: All/his predecessors governed their conduct by similar no- tions of fidelity to the Constitution. In peace and in war, in prosperity and dis- aster, through all changes, in spite of all threats and provocations, they had kept their oaths and assumed no ungranted power. It was the most natural thing in the world for Mr. Buchanan to follow the example of such men as Washington, Madison, and Jackson, rather than the precepts of those small but ferocious politicians who thought their own passions and interests a “ higher law’’ than the law of the country. : . Again: All his advisers—not I alone, but a7 of them—expressed the clear and unhesitating opinion that his view of the law on the subject of coercing States was right. His legal duty being settled, not one among them ever breathed a suggestion that he ought to violate it. Besides: There was a question of natural justice, as well as legal propriety, involved in making war upon the States at that time. Nine-tenths of the South- ern people were thoroughly devoted to the Union, and had committed no sin against it even in thought: Would it have been well to bring the visitation of fire, sword, and famine upon whole communities of innocent persons? You will probably answer this in the affirmative. You think that no opportunity to shed the blood and plunder the property of men, women, and children who live be yond the Potomac ought ever to be lost. Mr. Buchanan might have seized that occasion to imitate John Brown on a large scale, and thus made himself an “he- roic character” in your eyes. But you must be aware that he would have been regarded by the mass of men as a moral monster; and the admiration of your- self and your party in Massachusetts would have been but a poor compensa- tion for the eternal weight of infamy with which the rest of the world would nave loaded his memory. Further still: You know that the General-in-Chief of the army had reported five companies as the whole available force for operations in the South, and you never proposed to increase it. Yet you wanted war. Why? You must have desired the Union cause to be disgraced and defeated, for nothing else could have resulted from such a war as you now abuse Mr. Buchanan for not making. You and your party in Congress were strictly non-committal. You did not re- commend peace, nor offer your support to war. You would take neither the olive branch nor the sword. You refused to settle, and you made no preparation for a contest. But you reveal now what was theh the secret desire of your heart—
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820 SENATOR WILSON AND EDWIN M. STANTON. _ [Joung, that the administration, in defiance of law and without means, would declare war on its own responsibility. This would have been an expulsion of the Southern States from the Union, for it would have placed all their people beyond the pro- tection of Federal law; they would necessarily rise in self-defence ; our little army of five hundred men would perish in a fortnight; before the fourth of March the independence of the South would be a settled fact. Moreover, as you and your party friends, in Congress did not call for a war, the President had a right (had he not ?) to suppose that you approved of his de- termination to keep the peace. Perhaps your approval of his conduct is not very _ powerful evidence of its justice or legality. But here is the point: How can you have the face to denounce a man as a (criminal, after he is dead, for public acts which you consented to by your silence at the time they were done? But this isnot all. You give your unqualified approbation to Mr. Lincoln’s administration. I do not say you were true to it (for I believe the evidence is extant which proves that you were not); but you have lauded it as strong and faithful. Mr. Lincoln adopted precisely the same legal principles with regard to the coercion of the States that Mr. Buchanan had acted upon, and carried the policy of reconciliation infinitely beyond him. He avowed his intention not to make war or provoke it as plainly as his predecessor had ever done. Neither he nor his Attorney-General asserted their constitutional authority to commence aggressive and general, hostilities for any cause then existing. He received commissioners. from the Southern States. He pledged himself not to retake the forts, arsenals, dockyards, custom-houses, etc., then in the hands of the seces- sionists. He promised to continue the mail service in the seceded States if they would permit him. He went further still, and publicly assured the Southern people that he would not irritate them by attempting to execute the Federal laws at any place where it would be specially offensive to them. All these were concessions to the South which Mr. Buchanan had steadily refused to make ; and if he had made them, you would no doubt have pronounced them treasonable. But the -Lincoln administration did not stop there. That Cabinet voted six to one zm fa- vor of surrendering Fort Sumter—Mr. Blair being the only dissentient. The President, if he did not yield to the majority, must have wavered a considerable time ; the Secretary of State was so sure of him that he caused the South Caro- lina authorities to be informed that the fort would be given up. You will not deny these facts, but you will continue, as heretofore, to say that the Buchanan administration weakly and wickedly favored secession, while that of Lincoln was firmly and faithfully opposed. The man who involves himself in such incon- sistencies, whether from want of information, want of judgment, or want of ve- racity, is not qualified to write on an historical subject. I have given more time and space than I intended to this part of your paper. But I am addressing a man of peculiar character. Toa person whose moral perceptions are healthy and natural, I could make my defence ina breath. But being required to apologize for zo¢ violating a sworn duty, some circumlocution is necessary. Your mere railing accusations against Mr. Buchanan are hardly worth a reply. The place he is destined to occupy in history does not depend on anything you can say or forbear to say. You have no knowledge whatever of his character. Morally, intellectually, and politically he was altogether too much of a man: for you to comprehend. The world will look for its information concerning him to the acts of his life, and to the testimony of men who knew him and had minds large enough to take in his dimensions. I would not offer you the word of a Dem-
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1870. | SENATOR WILSON AND EDWIN M. STANTON. 821 ocrat ; but among those who were with him continually during the last weeks of his administration are some who have since supported Radical measures with a zeal warm enough to make them good witnesses. Let General Dix speak his knowl- edge and say whether he saw anything of the treason, the weakness, or the wick- edness which you impute so boldly and so recklessly. . Mr. King, the Postmas- ter-General, cannot be ignorant of any important fact which bears on this ques- tion. Mr. Holt has already, on several occasions, delivered his testimony: It is a fervent tribute to the “ wise statesmanship and unsullied patriotism” of Mr. Buchanan, as well as to “the firm and generous support” which he constantly gave to men and measures approved by his conscience. The proofs of his great ability and his eminent public services are found on every page of his country’s history from 1820 to 1861. During all that long period he steadily, faithfully, and powerfully sustained the principles of free constitutional government. This na- tion never had a truer friend, nor its laws a defender who would more. cheerfully have given his life to save them from violation, No man was ever slandered so brutally. His life’s life was literally lied away. Inthe last months of his admin- istration he devoted all the energies of his mind and body to the great duty of saving the Union, if possible, from dissolution and civil war. He knew all the dangers to which it was exposed, and it would, therefore, be vain to say that he was not alarmed for his country ; bat he showed no sign of unmanly fear on his Own account. He met all his vast responsibilities as fairly as any Chief Magis- trate we ever had. In no case did he shrink from or attempt to evade them. The accusation of timidity and indecision is most preposterous. His faults were all of another kind: his resolutions once formed were generally immovable toa degree that bordered on obstinacy. Onevery matter of great importance he delib- erated cautiously, and sometimes tried the patience of his friends by refusing to act until he had made up an opinion which he could live and die by. These characteristics explain the fact that his whole political life, from the time he en- tered Congress until he retired from the Presidency—all his acts, speeches, and papers—have a consistency which belongs to those of no other American states- man. He never found it necessary to cross his own path or’ go back upon his pledges. His judgment was of course not infallible; and in 1861 he announced a determination with reference to the South Carolina commissioners which I and others thought erroneous but unchangeable. Most unexpectedly, and alto- gether contrary to his usual habit of steadfast self-reliance, he consented to re- consider and materially alter his decision. This change, and all the circum- stances which brought it about, were alike honorable to his understanding and his heart. I admit that you were not the first inventor of these slanders ; but you ought to know that it does not become a man in your station to take up an — evil report and repeat it, like a parrot, without stopping to consider whether it has any foundation or not. You are not content with traducing Mr. Buchanan himself; you take up the heads of departments who served under him, and deal out your denunciations upon nearly all in succession, The Secretary of the Treasury, you say, was deranging the finances and sink- ing the national credit. Upon whom does this fall? Was it Cobb, or Thomas, or Dix that committed that crime? The charge is equally untrue whether made against one or another. You never saw a scintilla of evidence to justify it. You tell your readers that the Secretary of War scattered the army and sent guns and munitions to the secessionists. Whatever Mr. Floyd may have done in his lifetime, it is well established that he never did this. Numerous charges
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$22 SENATOR WILSON AND EDWIN 'M. STANTON. _ [Junz, thave been, and others might be, made against that officer ‘with some show of ‘truth. It is-curious that your appetite for scandal could be satisfied only by se- ‘lecting-one which is well known to be unfounded. -. You inform ‘the country that the Secretary of ‘the Navy rendered that arm powerless. This is not a new charge. It has been made several times before, -and| solemnly investigated more than once. Not only has it never been support- ed, but it has uniformly been met by such ‘evidence of Mr. Toucey’s perfect in- tegrity that every respectable man among his political enemies acquits him with- out hesitation. In your present reiteration of it, you are simply bearing false witness against your neighbor, in flat violation of the ninth commandment. But perhaps the most-extraordinary of all your averments is, that the Secre- itary. of the Interior permitted the robbery of trust funds. You did not mean it to'be understood ‘that a-robbery occurred which he knew nothing about, and of which ‘he was, therefore, as innocent as any other: man. You intended to make the impression that he wilfully gave his permission to the criminal asportation of the funds in question, made himself an accessory to the felony before the fact, and was as guilty as if he had done it with his own hands. ‘You could not possibly have believed this, unless you perversely closed your eyes against the light of plain truth. All the circumstances of the transaction to which you refer are as well understood as anything in the*history of the country. A committee of Con- gress, consisting of members opposed to the Secretary, examined the evidence when it was fresh, and reported upon it. The correctness of their judgment has never been impugned. In the face of these recorded and well-known facts, you deliberately sit down and write out, or get somebody to write and publish to the world on‘your authority, the accusation that Mr. Thompson has committed an - offence which should make him infamous forever. The force of mendacity can go no further. I admit that you are a /oya/ man, in the modern sense of the word, and a Senator in Congress from a most loyal State; and it is equally true that Mr. Thompson was a rebel; that he was for years an exile from his home and country, pursued wherever he went by an Executive proclamation which put a price on his head. This gives you an immense advantage over him. But the fact is still true that no department of this government was ever managed more ably or more faithfully than the Interior while he was at the head of it. You may have all the benefit of loyalty, and you may weigh him down with the huge burden of rebellion; nevertheless, his mental ability, good sense, and com- mon honesty put him so immeasurably far above you, that you will never in this life be able to get a horizontal view of his character. I come now to the more important part of your article, which directly con- cerns Mr. Stanton. ‘Your attacks upon Buchanan, Toucey, and Thompson might be safely passed in silence, but the character of Stanton must utterly per- ish if it be not defended against your praise. You give us the first information we ever had that Mr. Stanton, though act- ing with the Democratic party, was an abolitionist at heart almost from his ear- liest youth. For this fact you vouch his declaration to Judge Chase more than thirty years ago, at Columbus, Ohio; and you attempt to corroborate it by citing his association at Washington with Dr. Bailey and other abolitionists. If you tell the truth, he was the most marvellous impostor that ever lived or died. Among us, his political principles were thought to be as well known as his name and. occupation. He never allowed his fidelity to be doubted for one moment. It was perfectly understood that he had no affinities whatever with men of your school in morals or politics. His condemnation of the abolitionists was un-
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3 1870. ] SENATOR WILSON AND EDWIN M. STANTON: 823: sparing for their hypocrisy, their corruption, their enmity to the Constitution,. and their lawless disregard for the rights of States and individuals. Thushe won the confidence of Democrats. On the faith of such professions we promoted him in his: business, and gave him office, honor, and fortune.. But, according to your, account, he was all the while waiting and hoping for the time to come when. he could betray the Constitution and its friends into the cruel.clutches of their enemies. For this cold-blooded and deliberate treachery. you bespeak the admi- ration of the American people. You might as.well propose to canonize Judas Iscariot. I maintain, on the other hand, that he was what. he*seemed to. be, a sound. and sincere friend, political and personal, of the: men: who showered their favors. on his head. He.had at least the average amount of attachment for “the Con- stitution of the United States, and for the. peace,.good order, and happiness of the same.” “As a necessary consequence, he dreaded the dishonest and destruc- tive rule which he foresaw that yow would: be sure to establish as soon as you could. His democracy did not cease when the war opened. In the summer of 1861, when your anti-constitutional principles began to be practically carried out by the kidnapping of innocent citizens, by the suppression of.free speech, and by the enslavement of the. press, he imprecated the vengeance of God and the law upon the guilty authors of those crimes with as. much energy as any Democrat in the nation. Only a short time before his appointment as Secretary: of War his love of liberty and legal justice impelled him to curse Mr. Lincoln himself with bitter curses. He called. him by contemptuous names, and with Stmitan, if not with “swinish phrase. soiled his addition.” I admit. that -he. changed these sentiments afterwards, but I:deny that he had adopted. your way: of thinking while he pretended to concur in ours. His conversion was a real one, produced by what he regarded as “good. and. sufficient reasons him there- unto moving,” and it was accompanied, or immediately followed, by a correspond- ing change of his party attitude. He was not what you make.him out, a‘mere’ fawning hypocrite. The issue is plainly made. The friends of Mr. Stanton will. not permit you to gibbet him in the face of the world, after death. has disarmed him of the power of self-defence. You must prove the injurious allegations you. make, or else: accept the just consequences. If the.Chief. Justice will say that he knows Mr. Stanton to have been “in entire agreement? with: the abolition party thirty years ago, his. testimony may silence denial.. But you.must not trifle with us; we will hold you to strict proof; hearsay evidence.will not be received ; least of all will the fact be admitted. upon the second-hand statement of a person who thinks, as you manifestly do think, that deception, fraud, and false pretences ‘are: an honor to the man who practised them. Next in chronological order is your assertion that Mr. Stanton, while-yet a. private citizen, advised Mr. Buchanan. that. it was the duty and.the right of the: Federal Government to coerce seceding States ; that is to say, make wariagainst | all the inhabitants of every State in which an ordinance of secession had been: or should be passed. Now, mark how plain.a.tale will put youdown. Mr, Stan- ton never was consulted on that subject by. the President until after he was Attorney-General; and he never at any time gave such advice as you put into, his mouth. He never entertained any opinion of that kind, for he was:a lawyer. of large capacity and could not believe an absurdity. He had too much regard. for his professional, character to maintain a legal proposition which he knew to be false. He certainly would not have so debased himself in the eyes of the.
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. c 824 SENATOR WILSON AND EDWIN M. STANTON. [ JUNE, administration with whom he was particularly desirous, at that time, to stand well. On this point I wish to be very distinct. I aver that Mr. Stanton thoroughly, cordially, and constantly approved of and concurred in the constitutional doc- trines which you denounce as timid and treasonable. He indorsed the opinion of his predecessor with extravagant and undeserved laudation; he gave his ad- hesion to the annual message in many ways; and the special message of 8th January, 1861, which expressed the same principles with added emphasis, was carefully read over to him before it was sent to Congress, and it received his un- qualified assent. The €xisting evidence of this can be easily adduced: it is di- rect as well as circumstantial, oral as well as documentary, and some of it is in the handwriting of Mr. Stanton himself. If you are willing to put the question into a proper form for judicial investigation, I will aid you in doing so, and give you an opportunity to make out your case before an impartial tribunal. If your statement be true that Mr. Staniton disbelieved in the principles to which the administration was unchangeably pledged, how did he come to take of- fice under it? Was he so anxious for public employment that he consented to give up his own convictions and assist in carrying out measures which his judg- ment condemned as the offspring of timidity and treason? Or, did he accept the confidence of the President and the Cabinet with a predetermined intent to be- tray it? Either way you make him guilty of unspeakable baseness. But conceding that he would accept, why did the President, with the consent of his advisers, give the appointment to a man whom they knew to be hostile to them upon points so vital not only to the public interests but their own charac- ters? That at such a time they would invite an undisguised enemy into their counsels, is a tale as wildly improbable as any that ever was swallowed by the credulity of the Salem witch-finders. Your own consciousness of this compels you to explain by attributing it to a special intervention of Divine Providence. Your impious theory is that Almighty God procured this appointment miracu- lously, in order that you, the enemies of the American Constitution, might have a spy in the camp of its friends. - This will not serve your turn. Reason never re- fers a human event to supernatural agency, unfess it be impossible to account for it in any other way. The mystery of this case is easily cleared up by the hy- pothesis that you have misrepresented it from beginning to end; which is no miracle at all, but quite in the natural order of things. The truth is, Mr. Stanton was in perfect accord with the administration, before and after he became a part of it, on every question of fundamental principle. He had unlimited confidence in the men with whom he was acting, and they confided in him. For his chief and some of his colleagues he professed an attachment literally boundless ; for all of them who:stayed during the term, and for Thomp- son, who did not stay, he was warm in his friendship. You would now have us believe that these were merely the arts of an accomplished impostor; that while she was, in appearance, zealously codperating with us, he was reporting to you that “he saw treason in every part of the government ;” and that he was se- cretly using all the means in his power to stir up the vilest passions against us. Some overt acts of the treachery you ascribe to him are curious ; for instance, the Sumner story, which you tell with singular brevity and coolness. Mr. Sum- ner called on him at his office, for what purpose you do not disclose. Mr. Stan- ton did not receive his visitor either with the politeness of a gentleman or the courtesy due to a Senator, much less with the cordiality of a friend ; but hus- tled him out of the building as if ashamed to be seen with him in daylight. He
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1870. | SENATOR WILSON AND EDWIN M. STANTON. 825 told him expressly that he did not dare to converse with him there, but would see him at one o’clock that night. The hour came, and then, when the city was, wrapped in sleep, he skulked away to the meeting place, where, under the cover. of darkness, he whispered the tales which he add not dare to utter in the hearing of the parties they were intended to ruin. And those parties were his friends and benefactors! Into what unfathomed gulfs of moral degradation must the man have fallen who could be guilty of this! But remember, this is another second-hand story, and you are not a competent witness. We will trouble you to call Mr. Sumner, if you please. Let him testify, what treason Stanton dis- closed, and explain, if he can, how this midnight and secret information against men whom he was afraid te confront is consistent. with Mr. Stanton’s character as a courageous, outspoken, and honest man. He said nothing whatever to us about the treason which he saw in every part of the government. He made no,report of his discoveries to the President. He maintained unbroken his fraternal. relations with his colleagues. By your own ~ account, he admitted to Mr. Sumner that he did not dare to speak of such a thing even in his own office, lest it might reach the ears of his associates in the admin- istration. Among the members of Congress whom you name as the recipients of his secret communications, not one man of moderate views is included ; much less did he speak to any friend of the parties accused. He cautiously selected their bitterest enemies, and poured his venom into hearts already festering with spite. The House raised a committee “ to investigate treasonable machinations and conspiracies,” upon which there were members of both parties. Stanton did not go before it and tell his story ; nor did he mention the subject to Cochrane, Reynolds, or Branch; but he “ made an arrangement by which Messrs. Howard and Dawes were informed ” of whatever they wanted to know. It appears, too, that a committee of vigilance was organized by the more active Republican mem- bers of Congress ; in other words, the extreme partisans of both Houses got upa secret body of their own, not to perform any legal duty pertaining to their offices, not to devise public measures for averting the ruin which threatened the country, but to prowl about in the dark for something to gratify. personal malice or make a little capital for their party. You were a.member of that committee, as it was fit you should be, and Mr. Stanton gave you. “ warnings and suggestions” how to proceed. This is what you call “rising in that crisis above the claims of par- tisanship.” At night he assisted you to rake the. sewers in search of materials to bespatter his colleagues, and every morning he appeared before them to “re- new the assurances of his distinguished consideration.” It was thus that, in your estimation, “ he consecrated himself to the /ofty duties of an exalted patri- otism.”” | What cargoes of defamatory falsehood he must have consigned to your keep- ing! You do not break the foul bulk, but you have given us some samples which deserve examination. He denounced Mr. Toucey as false to his country, in- spired Dawes’s resolution against him, and expressed the belief that he ought to be arrested. Let us look at this a moment. To Mr. Toucey’s face Mr. Stanton breathed no syllable,of censure upon his official conduct as head of the Navy Department. To the President or Cabinet he expressed no doubt of his wisdom, much less of his honesty. He met him every day with a face of smiling friendship. Toucey certainly had not the remotest idea that Stanton was defaming him behind his back, or conspiring with aboli- tionists to destroy his reputation, He would as soon have suspected him of, an intent to poison his food or stab him in his sleep. Can it be possible that Stan- ton was the author of the Dawes resolution ?
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826 SENATOR WILSON AND EDWIN M. STANTON. [JUNE, That resolution is found in the “ Congressional Globe,” Second Session, Thir- ty-sixth Congress, 1860-61, part second, pp. 1423-24. The proceeding was begun, no doubt, in the hope of finding something on which the charge could be founded of scattering the navy to prevent it from being used against the South. But that failed miserably ; and the committee reported nothing worse than “a grave error” of the Secretary in accepting without delay or inquiry the resignation of certain naval officers. Even this had no foundation in law or fact. Its truth was denied and the evidence called for; none was produced. The right to explain and defend was demanded, but the gag of the previous question was applied be- fore a word could be said. The accusers knew very well that it would not bear the slightest investigation. Mr. Sickles said truly (amid cries of “Order’’) that “censure without evidence disgraces only those who pronounce it.” Mr. Tou- cey’s reputation was never injuriously affected by it in the estimation of any fair- minded man. But you fish it up from the oblivion to which it has been consigned, and try to give it decency and dignity by saying that Stanton inspired it. You do not appear to perceive the hideous depth to which your assertion, if true, would drag him down. It is not true: the whole business bears the impress of a different mind. : Mr. Stanton also suggested that his colleague and friend Toucey ought to be arrested. This could not havé been a proposition to take him into legal custody on a criminal charge regularly made. That would have been utterly impossible and absurd. The Dawes committee itself could find nothing against him but an error of judgment. The suggestion must have been to kidnap him, without an accusation or proof of probable cause, and consign him to some dungeon without trial or hope of other relief. If Stanton attempted to get this done, he was guilty of such perfidy as would have shocked the basest pander in the court of Louis XV. But to confute your libel upon Toucey and Stanton both, it is only neces- sary to recollect the fact that kidnapping of American citizens was at that time wholly unknown and absolutely impossible. We were living under a Democratic administration, the country was free, and law was supreme. Tyranny had not yet sunk its bloody fangs into the vitals of the national liberty. The systematic perjury which afterward made the Constitution a dead letter was not then es- tablished as a rule of political morality. , Your whole account of the “Cabinet scene” at which Floyd, “raging and storming, arraigned the President and Cabinet,” and “the President trembled and grew pale,” and “Stanton met the baffled traitor and his fellow conspirators with a storm of fierce and fiery denunciation,” is a pure and perfectly baseless fabrication. It is absurd to boot. What was Floyd’s arraignment of the Presi- dent and Cabinet for? You say for violating their pledges to the secessionists ; and the charge against the President and Cabinet of violating zhezr pledges was predicated solely on the fact that Colonel Anderson had removed from Fort Moultrie to Fort Sumter; and Floyd was disappointed in Colonel Anderson, whom he “had expected,” as a Southern man, to “carry out his purposes in the interest of treason.” This is mere drivelling at best, and it is completely ex- ploded by the record, which shows that Colonel Anderson’s transfer of his force from Fort Moultrie to Fort Sumter was in literal obedience to orders from the President, which Floyd himself had drawn up, signed, and transmitted. More- over, Floyd at that time was not in a condition to arraign anybody. He himself had just before that been not only arraigned but condemned, and the President had notified him that he would be removed if he did not resign. Was it this broken-down and powerless man who made the President tremble and grow pale
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1870.] SENATOR WILSON AND EDWIN M. STANTON. 827 by complaining that a subordinate had unexpectedly obeyed his own orders? You are not silly enough to say so. Was it Stanton’s “storm of fierce and fiery denunciation’’? Stanton was no stormer in the presence of such men as he then had to deal with. His language was habitually deferential, his whole bearing decent, and his behavior at the council board was entirely free from the inso- lence you impute to it. Your tales do not hang together. No one can give cre- dence to your report of bold and stormy denunciation by Stanton in the pres- ence of his chief and his colleagues, and at the same time believe what you say of him at another place, where you describe him as a dastard, skulking about in the dead of night to find a place of concealment remote enough to make him safe, and confessing that he did not dare to breathe his accusation in the face of day. The crawling sycophant—the stealthy spy—who bargained so carefully for dark- ness and secrecy when he made his reports, must have been wholly unfitted to play the part of Jupiter Tonans in a square and open conflict.. It is not possible that the fearless Stanton of your ‘Cabinet scene” could be the same Stanton who, at one o’clock in the night, was “squat like a toad” at the ear of Sumner, Essaying by his devilish arts to reach The organs of his fancy. I take it upon me to deny most emphatically that Mr. Stanton ever ‘ wrote a full and detailed account of that Cabinet scene” by which you can have the least hope of being corroborated. I cannot prove a negative; but I can show that your assertion is incredible. That he should have coolly indited a letter, even though he never sent it, filled with foolish brags of his own prowess, which half a dozen men then living could prove to be false, was not consistent either with his prudence, veracity, or taste. Besides, he often spoke with me about the events of that period, and never in my hearing did he manifest the slightest dis- position to misunderstand or misrepresent them. On the contrary, when a state- ment resembling yours about the Cabinet scene was published in a London pa- per, I suggested that he ought to contradict it; and he replied, explaining how and by whom it had been fabricated, but said it was not worth a contradiction, for every man of common intelligence would know it to be a mere tissue of lies. You cannot destroy Stanton’s character for sense and decency by citing his own authority against himself. Nor can you find any other proof to sustain the story It is the weak invention of some scurvy politician, who sought to win the patron- age of one administration by maligning another. Some busy and insinuating rogue, Some cogging, cozening slave, to get some office, Hath devised this slander. Your history of his appointment to the War Department is as erroneous as that which you have given of his conduct while Attorney-General. You say that he cordially indorsed Mr. Cameron’s recommendation to arm the negroes - against the white people of the South; that Mr. Lincoln disapproved this and required it to be suppressed ; that afterward, when Cameron “felt the pressure of the multiplied labor,” he proposed to resign, but coupled his offer with a con- . dition that ‘some one should be appointed not unfriendly to his policy,’ name- ly, the policy of arming negroes, to which Mr, Lincoln was himself opposed ; that Cameron did resign upon these terms, and used the privilege conceded to him by suggesting the name of Stanton. Everybody who knows Simon Cam- eron will understand the object of dragging this thing by the head and shoulders — into your article. In fact and in truth, there was no kind of connection between these two men—no sympathy nor mutual respect. Cameron did not resign; he
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$28 SENATOR WILSON AND EDWIN M. STANTON. JUNE, was removed for good cause. He had no lot or part in naming his successor. The removal and the appointment were both made before Mr. Cameron knew of either, and they were made because the President saw the necessity of having a man at the head of that department who was competent and incorruptible. The correspondence afterward published under the names of Messrs. Lincoln and Cameron was fictitious, and got up at the instance of the latter to give the affair a false appearance. It is morally impossible that Stanton could have given his approval to Cameron’s abortive report on the negroes; for he was at that time a white man every inch of him, proud of the great race he sprang from, and full of faith in its capacity to fight its own battles and govern itself. Nothing would have humiliated him more than to see the American people relinquish their rightful place in the front rank of the world, surrender their inheritance of free government, and sneak back behind the African for protection in war or in peace. _ Long after he was Secretary of War he told Mr. Mallory, of Kentucky, that he had not only refused to sanction the enlistment of a negro regiment, but had pun- ished an officer for merely proposing it. I understand that you have promised to contradict yourself on this subject, and I hope you will keep your word. Your account of his raid upon the Treasury, in company with Governor Mor- ton, would look very strange in a panegyric made by anybody else but you. I will restate the facts you have given, but without the drapery by which you con- ceal from yourself the view of them which must unavoidably be taken by all men who believe in the obligation of any law, human or divine. In the winter of 1863, the Legislature of Indiana was dissolved before the appropriations had been made to carry on the State government or aid in putting troops in the field. Of course, Congress did not, and could not, make appropriations for carrying on the State government or putting troops in the field, which the State was bound to raise at her own expense. But the Governor determined to get what money he wanted without authority of law, and he looked to Washington for assistance. President Lincoln declined to aid him, because no money cou/d be taken from the Treasury without appropriation. Mr. Stanton, being applied to, saw the critical condition of the Governor, and, without scruple, joined him in his finan- cial enterprise. He drew a warrant for a quarter of a million of dollars, and gave it to the Governor to spend as he pleased, not only without being authorized by any appropriation for that purpose, but in defiance of express law appropriating the same money to another and a totally different object. If this be true, the guilt of the parties can hardly be overcharged by any words which the English language will supply. It was getting money out of the public treasury, not only unlawfully, but by a process as dishonest as larceny. It involved the making of a fraudulent warrant, of which the moral turpitude was no less than that com- mitted by a private individual when he fabricates and utters a false paper. It was a gross and palpable violation of the oaths which the Governor and Secre- tary had both taken. It was, by the statute of 1846, a felonious embezzlement - of the money thus obtained, punishable by fine and ten years’ imprisonment in the penitentiary. The parties, according to your version, were both conscious of the high crime they were perpetrating, for you make one say to the other, “ If the cause fails, you and I will be covered with prosecutions and probably im- prisoned or driven from the country.” You do not diminish or mitigate the of- fence one whit by saying that the money was afterward accounted for. <A felony cannot be compounded or condoned by a simple restitution of the spoils; and the law I have cited was made expressly to prevent officers charged with the safe keeping, transfer, or disbursement of public money from using it to accom-
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1870. | SENATOR WILSON AND EDWIN M. STANTON. 829 modate friends in a “critical condition.” But what will be said of your trust- worthiness as a contributor to history when the public comes to learn that this whole story is bogus? I pronounce it untrue in the aggregate and in the de- tail—in the sum total and in every item. The truth is this: In 1863 the Demo- cratic majority of the Indiana Legislature were ready and willing to pass their proper and usual appropriation bills, but were prevented by the Republican mi- nority who “bolted” and left the houses without a quorum until the constitu- tional limit of their session expired. The Governor refused to reconvene them, and thus, by his own fault and that of his friends, he was without the ways and means to pay the current expenses of the State. He was wrong, but his error was that of a violent partisan, not the crime of a corrupt magistrate. He did not come to Washington with any intention to relieve his necessities by plun- dering the Federal Treasury. He made no proposition either to Mr. Lincoln or Mr. Stanton, that they or either of them should become his accomplices in any such infamous crime. His purpose was to demand payment of a debt due, and acknowledged to be due, from the United States to the State of Indiana. The money had bcen appropriated by Congress to pay it, and zt was paid according to law / I know not how Mr. Morton may like to see himself held up as a felon confessing his guilt, but I can say, with some confidence, that if Mr. Stan- ton were alive he would call you to a very severe reckoning. What must amaze the readers of your article more than anything else is the perfect sincerity of the belief which you express, directly or indirectly, in every line of it, that the base misconduct you attribute to Mr. Stanton is eminently praiseworthy. You seem to be wholly unconscious of defaming the man you meant to eulogize. But, if your facts be accepted, the honor and honesty of them will not be measured by your standards. It may be true that public opinion has of late been sadly debauched ; but the American people have not permanently changed their code of morality. Good faith between man and man, personal in- tegrity, social fidelity, observance of oaths, and obedience to the laws which‘ hold society together, have heretofore been numbered among the virtues, and they will be again. The government of God has not been reconstructed. Fraud or force may abolish the Constitution, but the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule are beyond your reach; some persons have faith enough to believe that even “the gates of hell shall not prevail against them.” The odious character you have given Mr. Stanton is not merely unjust in it- self, but, if uncontradicted, it must lead to other misconceptions of him. Besides the offences against law, justice, humanity, and truth which you have enumera- ted and assigned to him for his glorification, he has been charged with others which, if established, must expose him to universal execration. For instance, it is asserted that, in the winter of 1861, when he was a member of the Cabinet, he gave to Governor Brown, of Mississippi, the most emphatic assurance of his conviction that secession was right, and urged him to “go on” with it; that in 1862, while he was writing the most affectionate letters to General McClellan, he not only maligned him at Washington, but maliciously plotted his defeat and the destruction of his army before Richmond; that he refused in 1864 to receive the Andersonville prisoners when offered freely without ransom, exchange, or other equivalent, though he knew that if left there they must perish miserably for want of the medicine and food which their captors had not the means to give them. These accusations, you are aware, have often been made, with horrible aggravations which I need not repeat. His friends have denied and discredited them, mainly on the ground that his character was wholly above such imputa- tions But you have done your full best to make this defence worthless. If he
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830 SENATOR WILSON AND EDWIN M. STANTON. JUNE, wore the cloak of constitutional democracy with us, and put on the livery of aboli- tionism with you, why should he not assume the garb of a secessionist with men of the South? If he tried to get his friend Toucey kidnapped, what moral prin- ciple could hinder him from contriving the ruin of his friend McClellan? If he craftily exerted himself at your end of the avenue to bring on a bloody civil war, which according to his own declarations at our end was unlawful and causeless, what crime against human life was he not capable of committing? . If he wil- fully left our prisoners to certain starvation, and then managed falsely to throw the odium of their death upon the political enemies of the party in power, and thus contributed very largely to the enslavement of the Southern States, was not that an act of “intense and abounding patriotism,” as well worthy of your praise as some others for which you have bestowed it? Those who give credit to you will find it perfectly logical to believe the worst that has ever been said of him. Sejanus has passed for about the worst specimen of ministerial depravity whom we have any account of ; but nothing is recorded of him which might not be believed of Stanton, if you are regarded as credible authority ; for you have made ita labor of love to paint him as a master in the loathsome arts of treachery, dissimulation, and falsehood—unfaithful alike to private friendship and to public duty. With the talents he possessed and the principles you ascribe to him, he might have made an invaluable Grand Vizier to a Turkish Su!tan—provided the Sultan were in the prime of life and had no powerful brother near the throne ; but in a free country such a character cannot be thought of without disgust and abhorrence. In your eyes the “‘intense and abounding patriotism ” of Stanton is sufficient to atone not only for all the faults he had, but for all the offences against law and morals which the utmost fertility of your imagination can lay to his charge; and patriotism in your vocabulary means devotion to the interests of that political sect which has you for one of its priests. This will not suffice. You cannot safely blacken a man with one hand and neutralize the effect by daubing on the whitewash of patriotism with the other. Patriotism, in its true sense, does indeed dignify and adorn human nature. It is an exalted and comprehensive species of charity, which hides a multitude of sins. The patriotism of Washington, which laid broad and deep the foundation of free institutions and set the noble example of implicit obedience to the laws; the patriotism of John Hampden, who voluntarily devoted his fortune and his life to the maintenance of legal justice ; the patriotism of Cato, who resisted the destructive madness of his countrymen and greatly fell with a falling State; the patriotism of Daniel O’Con- nell, who spent his time and talents in constant efforts to relieve his people from the galling yoke of clerical oppression ; the patriotism of the elder Pitt, who, speaking in the cause of universal liberty, loudly rejoiced that America had resisted the exactions of a tyrannical Parliament—to such patriotism some errors may be pardoned. When men like these are found to have committed a fault, it is well that history should deal with it tenderly, And, sad as angels for the good man’s sin, Weep to record and blush to give it in. But the loyalty that tramples on law—the fidelity which stabs the liberties it ought to protect—the public zeal which expends itself in gratifying the vindictive or mercenary passions of one party by the unjust oppression of another—this kind of patriotism has less claim to the admiration of the world. It is a cheap thing, readily supplied to any faction unprincipled enough to pay for it. Itis entirely too “intense and abounding ;” and its intensity and abundance are always greatest in the worst times. It does not sanctify evil deeds. If it be not
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1870.] SENATOR WILSON AND EDWIN M. STANTON. 831 a sin in itself, it certainly deserves to be ranked among what Dr. Johnson calls “the rascally virtues.” Mr. Stanton’s reputation is just nowin acritical condition. He took no care of it while he lived; and he died, like Bacon, leaving a vulnerable name “to men’s charitable speeches.” He needs a more discriminating eulogist than you, and a far better defence than I am able to make. I have not attempted to por- tray his good qualities ; I intended only to protest against your shameless parade of vices to which he was not addicted, and crimes which he never committed ; and this I have done, not only because it is just to him but necessary for the vindication of others. | J... BLACK, HOSTAGES. I, Ped cnaa hand in hand and face to face, Sat friend and friend. Like royal race Of messengers their swift words went And came; and like proud kings that leant From thrones to greet, their souls that day Leagued life to life, and gave away, Smiling and trusting, each to each : Realms which the messengers of speech Scarce knew by name, to mark with bound, And set apart from common ground. II. Warm hand in hand and face to face, Those friends heard not the evil pace At which came messenger base-born Of unbelief. Hid from their scorn, Biding his time, close side by side With Faith, and in her voice, he lied. Oh! swift sweet words of royal race That with such music filled the place, Could nothing warn, no sight, no sound, While in such fetters ye were bound, While cruel loss took shape of gain, And trust by promises was slain ? III. Still hand in hand and face to face, The friends ; and like a royal race Of messengers, still come and go Swift words of all they do and know. The peerless realms which each to each Their souls in league of kingly speech Surrertdered, still they hold and claim ; And neither questions bond or name: But, in their hearts they know, that day Fulness of freedom passed away. Their joys kneel down bond slaves to pains, The hostages clank endless chains.
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EARLY INCIDENTS OF THE REBELLION. A CHAPTER FROM MR. THURLOW WEED’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. HE first and only inauguration of a President I ever attended was that of Mr. Lincoln in 1861. It was known that designs upon his life, while on his way from Springfield to Washington, were providentially averted. It was also known that. the question of seizing upon the Government and its archives had been contemplated. The few troops in Washington were therefore stationed around the Capitol. During the ceremony of inauguration, I walked about the grounds, encountering Major-General Wool, with a detachment of United States troops ready for action, and two pieces of cannon posted so as to rake an import- ant avenue. I soonafter found Lieutenant-General Scott, with the’same number of cannon (on one of which the veteran was resting his elbow), posted in an equally advantageous position. This, in a country so long exempted from seri- ous internal collisions, occasioned painful reflections. General Scott assured me that these precautions were not unnecessary, and that they had not been taken a moment too early. All, however, passed without either an attack or an alarm. But it was not long before unequivocal symptoms of rebellion were mani- fested. When in Washington a few days afterward, I was awakened early one morning by Horace H. Riddell, formerly a resident of, and representative from, - Alleghany County, N. Y., but then living at Harper’s Ferry, who informed me that, unless immediately reinforced, the arsenal and armory at that place would be attacked and taken by enemies of the Government, who were banding to- gether for that purpose ; adding that there was not an hour to lose. I went in- mediately to the Secretary of War with this information. He thought the dan- ger could not be so imminent, but said that the subject should have immediate attention. I went from the Secretary of War to General Scott, who promptly said that my information was confirmatory of that which he had received the ‘evening previous. ‘ But,” he added, “what canI do? My effective force, all told, for the defence of the capital, is twenty-one hundred. Washington is as much in danger as Harper’s Ferry. I shall repel any attack upon this.city, but I cannot hazard the capital of the Union, as I should do by dividing my force, even to save Harper’s Ferry.” My friend Riddell’s information was but too re- liable. The next day brought us intelligence of the loss of Harper’s Ferry. Soon after this, our first taste of rebellion, I received information from an equally reliable source that Gosport, with its vast supply of munitions of war, was in danger. Of this I informed the Secretary of the Navy, at the breakfast table of Willard’s Hotel. Believing from his manner that he attached but little importance to my information, I reiterated it with emphasis, assuring him that it would be occasion for deep regret if Gosport were not immediately strengthened. Meeting the Secretary at.dinner the same day, I renewed the conversation, and was informed that the matter wou/d de attended to. This did not quiet my solicitude ; and, leaving the Secretary to the placid enjoyment of his dinner, I re- paired to the White House. Mr. Lincoln, however, had driven out to visit some fortifications. I made another attempt in the evening to see him, but he was again out. Early the next morning, however, I found him, and informed him what I had heard of the danger that threatened Gosport, and how, as I feared,
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1870.] — EARLY INCIDENTS OF THE REBELLION. 833 I had failed to impress the Secretary of the Navy with the accuracy of my in- formation or the necessity of immediate action. ‘ Well,” said Mr. Lincoln, “we can’t afford to lose all those cannon ; I’ll go and see Father Welles myself.” As he did immediately. The result was that Admiral Paulding, who was then de- spatched to Norfolk, arrived just*in time to enjoy an illumination, occasioned by the burning of Government property, and witness the capture of Gosport. I left Washington on the morning of the day that the Massachusetts Sixth regiment was attacked at Baltimore, meeting that regiment entering Baltimore as our train was leaving it. The railroad bridges over the Gunpowder and Bush rivers were burned soon after we crossed them; after which there was no rail- way communication between Baltimore and Havre de Grace. Late that night I received, at the Astor House, the following telegram from the Secretary of State: WASHINGTON, April 18, 1861. The danger is imminent. Hasten the movement of steamers with troops, via Annapolis. (Signed) WILLIAM H. SEWARD. An hour later, I received the following telegram from the Secretary of War: Charter steamers and despatch troops to Annapolis. - (Signed) SIMON CAMERON. This, as I learned in the morning, was the last despatch that came over the wires, the line having been destroyed during the night. Early the next morn- ing, I chartered from Messrs. Spofford & Tileston, M. O. Roberts, Messrs. Mitchell & Co. and H. B. Cromwell & Co., the steamers belonging to their respec- tive lines. Meantime, colonels of regiments and commandants of companies were astir, the city resounding with martial music. Citizens came spontaneously together and appointed a Union Defence Committee, composed of the most wealthy, influential, and patriotic among us. On the following day (Sunday), the Eighth and Twelfth regiments were ready to embark. While the Twelfth regi- ment was going on board the: steamer Columbia, the danger of an attack in the Chesapeake Bay was suggested. I despatched the late Captain Joseph J. Com- stock (who was rendering voluntary, but efficient, aid and advice in arranging charter parties and fitting out steamers) with a note to Colonel Scott, the United States officer in command here, requesting him to give an order to the officer on Governor’s Island to placé a cannon, etc., on board the steamer Columbia. That officer, who received Captain Comstock as he was preparing for church, replied that he “could not attend to business on Sunday.” Learning, on Cap- tain Comstock’s return, that Major Heintzelman, an old friend, was in command at Governor’s Island, I wrote a hasty note to him in pencil, asking him for a cannon, which came without a moment’s hesitation or delay. On the following day Major H. came to me to sign the proper voucher. It seems hardly necessary to remark that Colonel Scott, a petted officer of the army, and son-in-law of the patriotic and loyal veteran, Lieutenant-General Winfield Scott, was unworthy of the commission he held, and that before the conclusion of the war his name was stricken from the “ Army Register; ”’ nor that the readiness of Major Heintzelman to do his duty, without waiting for red tape, did not set him back in the subsequent promotions deservedly awarded him. Some months afterward, when Congress had authorized a large increase of the army, dining one day with General Scott, I availed myself of a break in the conversation to say that I hoped Major Heintzelman was well known to him. “ And why,” asked the General, “do you hope ~~ I know Major Heintzelman
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834. EARLY INCIDENTS OF THE REBELLION. [JUNE, well?” “Because,” I replied, “I am about, if you will permit an outsider to take that liberty, to ask a great favor.” ‘ And what is the favor, sir?” “A regiment for Major Heintzeiman.” “Major Heintzelman, sir, assuming that the Secretary of War and the President will accept my designation, will get a regi- ment, not as a favor, but in justice to his merits as an officer. Heintzelman, when a lieutenant in command of his company, then stationed at a wilderness post, was aroused in the night by a sentinel’s cry of fire. The alarm. proceeded from the powder-house, a slight, temporary building, some distance from the encampment. The company was immediately formed and moved to the scene of conflagration. The Lieutenant's order was to fod/ow him into the powder-house, each one seizing and bringing out his keg of powder. Lieutenant H. entered first and brought out the first keg. You will see, therefore, that, however pleas- ant it may be for an officer to have friends at court, Major Heintzelman does not need them.” In the disastrous battle of Bull Run, Colonel Heintzelman received from a musket shot a severe wound in the arm, which the surgeon dressed hastily, the Colonel remaining in his saddle and continuing at the head of his regiment throughout the battle. The New York Sixty-ninth (Irish) regiment, for refusing to turn out on the occasion of the visit of the Prince of Wales, was deprived of its colors. Though never actually disbanded, it had net since been doing duty. While occupied in getting other regiments off, Colonel Michael Corcoran brought me a letter of introduction from Archbishop Hughes. The Colonel said that the murder of Massachusetts men in the streets of Baltimore had greatly excited his men, and if the colors of the Sixty-ninth were restored and the services of the regiment accepted, he would be ready to march, with one thousand rank and file, in twenty-four hours. I informed Governor Morgan, at Albany, by telegraph, that the Sixty-ninth regiment, if restored to its former status, would immediately take the field. A few hours brought me a despatch, accepting the services of the Sixty-ninth, and warmly thanking Colonel Corcoran, his officers and men, for their promptitude and patriotism. The Governor’s despatch was read in the evening to the regiment, and received with great enthusiasm. True to his prom- ise, Colonel Corcoran marched through Broadway, amid enthusiastic acclama- tions, on the following day, to embark for Annapolis. ‘Simultaneously, I was accosted on the steps of the Astor House bya stranger, who informed me that he desired to raise a company of cavalry, which, if he could obtain the authority, should be organized and ready to march in three days. I was so favorably impressed with his bearing and manner that I imme- diately telegraphed Governor Morgan, earnestly asking his authority for Thos. C. Devin to organize a cavalry corps. Captain D. remained at my room until a favorable response from the Governor, two hours afterward, was received ; and he also was faithful to his promise, for in three days, with a full company of men, he was on his way to the front. Captain Devin immediately attracted the attention of his superior officers, not less by the efficiency and discipline of his men than by his own gallantry in battle. He fought bravely through the whole war, rising by merit, first to the command of a regiment, and then of a brigade ; and obtained the rank of brevet major-general at the conclusion of the rebellion. In the reduction of the army my friend Devin was retained as lieutenant-colonel of a United States cavalry regiment. I left for Washington as soon as the number of troops required were on their way; but, as the railroads were still obstructed between Havre de Grace and
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1870.]_ . EARLY INCIDENTS OF THE REBELLION. 835 Baltimore, we took a small steamer at the former place for Annapolis, arriving early in the morning. General Butler, who was in command, invited me to breakfast with him, where I met the late General James S. Wadsworth, who had just arrived in the tug Dunderberg, loaded with provisions. While we were with General Butler he invented, so far as the word is applicable to escaped slaves, the very expressive term “contraband.” At Annapolis I found Colonel Corcoran with a part of his Sixty-ninth regi- ment, several companies having been disposed along the line of the railway for its protection between the city of Annapolis and Annapolis Junction. With this regiment I found my friend Charles G. Halpine (Miles O’Reilly) and the present Judge McCunn, acting as volunteer commissaries, or sutlers. The train was bountifully supplied with provisions from General Wadsworth’s steamer, and left for Annapolis Junction about midday. I took position with Messrs. Halpine and McCunn ina baggage car loaded with provisions, which were distributed to small detachments of troops stationed two miles distant from each other. The abun- dant supply of bread, hams, butter, cheese, etc., thrown out by the acting com- missaries whom I have named, was received by men who had been twelve, eigh- teen, and twenty-four hours without rations, with an avidity not unlike that wit- nessed in menageries when the animals are being fed. During this visit to Washington, Generals Lee and Johnston, both esteemed as valuable officers of the army, abandoned the Union cause. The defection of General Lee, who was a favorite with General Scott, occasioned him surprise and regret. Many other officers of experience and capacity had previously joined the rebellion, or had gone, as they expressed it, with their States. General Scott, then seventy-three years old, with impaired health, could not himself take the field. General Wool, though in good health, was about the age of General Scott. The President and his Cabinet were talking anxiously on the subject of officers qualified to lead our armies. I inquired of General Scott—who ha@ kind, ly asked me to call frequently and familiarly at his headquarters—who, among his junior officers, were best fitted for the work that he had been doing in our wars since 1812. He reflected for some time, and then replied that I had asked him an exceedingly embarrassing question. He said that we had lost some valu- able officers in the Mexican war, and that others, equally valuable officers, had since died of diseases contracted in Mexico, naming Generals Riley, Belknap, Worth, and others whose names I do not remember; adding, with excited feel- ing, that there were others for whom he would have cheerfully been responsible a month ago, but they were now deserters. The question evidently pained him, and I changed the conversation. From General Scott I went to Colonel Joseph P. Taylor, brother of the late President Zachary Taylor, an old officer of the army, then in the Commissary Department, asking him the same question. He replied that the Mexican war had deprived us of all or nearly all of our best army officers. “ Are there not,” I inquired, “colonels, lieutenant-colonels, or majors qualified to fill the places of those whom we have lost?” He took the “ Army Register,” and looked care- fully through it, without finding what was desired, but remarked that some of the best and most promising officers of the army had resigned and were now occu- pying civil offices. On my inquiring who they were, he replied McClellan, Sher- man, and Dan Tyler. I reported the interview with General Scott and Colonel Taylor to President Lincoln and Secretary Seward. McClellan was then con- nected with the Illinois Central Railroad, and Sherman was President of the University in Louisiana. Measures were promptly taken to bring the two gen- »
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836 EARLY INCIDENTS OF THE REBELLION. [JUNE, tlemen into the service. On the following morning a Connecticut regiment ar- rived at Washington on board of two New Haven steamers, under the command of Colonel Dan Tyler, to whom I repeated the remark of Colonel Taylor. Colo- nel Tyler observed that he fully indorsed the opinion of Colonel Taylor as to the military qualifications of McClellan and Sherman, but that he was distrust- ful of himself, though he would endeavor to do his duty. During the fortnight preceding the battle of Bull Run, I was much in Wash- ington, and had frequent interviews with the President, Secretary of State, Sec- retary of War, and General Scott. It was apparent in all their conversations that a series of disasters from the outbreak of the rebellion had greatly discour- aged and mortified the Northern people. Efforts were made, therefore, to con- centrate a force sufficient to encounter the enemy, who awaited an attack. The pressure in Congress and by the press hastened the movement. On the Friday preceding the battle—that occurred on Sunday—I dined with General Scott. Two of his aids, Generals Hamilton and Van Rensselaer, and General Stone were the only other persons at the table. Nothing but the approaching battle was talked of. General Scott lamented, as was his constant habit, that his age and infirmi- ties prevented his taking the field. He did not seem to be satisfied with the in- formation he had obtained of the geographical position of the two armies, or of the general face of the country. After dinner, but before we left the table, Gen- eral McDowell with two or three members of his staff were ushered in. They had come from the front, and General McDowell had called to take his final or- ders. Secretaries Seward and Cameron dropped in soon afterward. Conver- sation was then conducted by Generals Scott and McDowell, Secretary Cameron occasionally asking a question or making aremark. General McDowell left, ap- parently in good spirits and confident of success. General Scott became thoughtful and, as I thought, anxious. Messrs. Seward and Cameron left soon afterverd ; I followed, overtaking them at Mr. Seward’s door, whence I walked home with Mr. Cameron. On the way, I remarked that so far as I could learn from the conversation at General Scott’s room, there was no apprehension of a movement by General Johnston, and asked whether, in the event of a junction of the two armies, General McDowell was to give them battle? Secretary Cam- eron was no better informed than myself on that point, but assumed that General Patterson would hold Johnston in check. But Mr. Cameron, as we continued the conversation, became so much disturbed, that he said he would ride himself out to General McDowell’s headquarters the next morning, and be governed by in- formation he might obtain there. On Saturday I put the same question to Gen- eral Scott, who replied that General Patterson had a force superior to that of General Johnston, and had his orders to watch his movements. I inquired if McDowell was strong enough to engage two armies, to which the General re- plied, “Johnston cannot get away from Patterson.” This made me very despond- ent all that day and night. On Sunday, when the battle was going on, I was ex- cited and nervous, and could not help looking and feeling that it was to be a day of disaster, if not of dishonor, to our cause. It was, of course, a day of anxiety to every one. In the evening all were breathlessly waiting for intelligence. About eleven o’clock, standing alone on the sidewalk in front of Willard’s Hotel, I saw a horseman dash around the corner, down Pennsylvania Avenue. He alighted within two feet of me. It was Colonel Burnside, of Rhode Island. His looks imparted the intelligence I had dreaded. Iasked no question and he made no sign. Others followed soon afterward, and the painful news circulated - through the city, giving secret satisfaction to a large majority of its inhabitants. ° 5
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1370. ] EARLY INCIDENTS OF THE REBELLION. 837 General Patterson had zo¢ held General Johnston, nor did he make the least movement to obstruct his rapid march to Bull Run. Early on the morning after the battle of Bull Run, I started with wine, fruit, and other articles suited to the condition of invalids, and visited the different hospitals about Washington, relieving, as far as I could, the wounded ot our own State, As I was leaving the hospital at Georgetown, the surgeon invited me into a ward which we were passing, to see a patient who had shown extraordinary energy and endurance. I founda young man uponacot, The surgeon lifted a sheet and removed some lint saturated with ice-water from a musket-ball wound. He then asked the young man to raise himself, so that, while resting upon his elbow, I saw that the ball had passed through his body, avoiding in some miracu- lous way any vitalspot. The patient, the surgeon informed me, had, after being the last to leave the field, re-formed the thinned ranks of his company and marched at their head from the battle-ground to their former encampment near Washing- ton, and then reported himself as a wounded officer. Notwithstanding this fear- ful wound, he was calm and hopeful. He came, as he informed me, from Min- nesota, and was in command of a company ina Minnesota regiment. Though born in New Hampshire, his parents removed in his early youth, first to Indiana and then to Minnesota. He gave me his name, and I left, strongly impressed with the idea that such a man was not only entitled to promotion for services al- ready rendered, but that, if his life was spared, he was destined for future useful- ness. I went directly to the Secretary of War, who, before I had half finished my relation, directed a commission to be issued for my frozégé. I went from Secre- tary Cameron to President Lincoln, who not only cheerfully approved the com- mission, but was only prevented by pressing duties from taking it over to George- town himself. Returning with it to the War Office, Secretary Cameron despatched a messenger to the hospital, and in less than three hours after I left him, Captain Putnam of the Minnesota Volunteers found himself designated as Captain Put- nam of the United States Army. This incident, though an impressive one, was, among the exciting events which followed each other so rapidly, soon forgotten. During the sanguinary riots of July, 1863, I was in New York, witnessing scenes which I hope may never occur again. When sitting at the Police Head- quarters, while Commissioner Acton and Superintendent Kennedy were issuing their orders and receiving their reports, a United States officer came in, who had been directed to disperse the rioters who had murdered Colonel O’Brien. He had promptly performed that duty and came for further orders. As he was about to leave the office, Mr. Acton, introduced him to me as Captain Putnam. Our recognition was mutual, as was the surprise and the gratification. Captain Put- nam, with much feeling, but very modestly, informed Messrs. Acton and Ken- nedy where and how I found him and the questions I asked him, adding that while I evidently sympathized with him, he had no idea that the questions I asked him had any particular meaning. He said that when his commission came, he could not imagine who had interested himself in his favor or what influence had pro- cured it, and that it was several months before he learned how much he was in- debted tome, Captain Putnam, as I learned from the Commissioners and their Superintendent, continued active and vigilant, making thorough work wherever he went, until the riots were over. I have not seen or heard of him since; but that he is discharging his whole duty faithfully and honorably, as an officer and a gentleman, I have no doubt. Several weeks afterward, but during that disastrous summer, I was again in Washington, when the news of that appalling defeat at Ball’s. Bluff was received. Coming as it did when we were disheartened by repulses in other quarters, it \
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338° EARLY INCIDENTS OF THE REBELLION. [JUNE, had a sickening effect upon the public mind. I was sitting, about 9 o’clock in the evening, alone with Mr. Lincoln, endeavoring to find encouragement or hope from intelligence received from the operations of the army in other places, when a messenger announced an officer from Ball’s Bluff. That officer proved to be a brother of Colonel Baker, who had fallen in that battle. He was accompanied by a young son of Colonel Baker, the brother and son having been both engaged in the fight. An impression had already reached Washington that Colonel Ba- ker had imprudently engaged a superior force and was therefore responsible for the disaster. The Colonel’s brother handed to the President the order from General Stone under which Colonel Baker acted. That order was found in the Colonel’s cap, so saturated with blood (the Colonel was shot through the head) that it was scarcely legible. The President, however, succeeded in reading the whole of it. Its preservation, fortunately for Colonel Baker, was a perfect vindi- cation of his conduct. He had acted in strict obedience to its letter and spirit. I left the brother and son of Colonel Baker with the intention of informing the Secretary of War that Colonel Baker had lost his life in the gallant discharge of his duty and in obedience to the orders of his superior officer. Near the resi- dence of Secretary Seward I met Colonel Thomas A. Scott, the Assistant Secre- tary of War, who informed me that he was on his way to the office of the agent of the Associated Press, with a despatch in relation to Ball’s Bluff. I informed him that I had information which might change the character of his despatch. He replied that he had just left General McClellan (whose house was but a few ‘rods off), who had made up the despatch from the latest information. He went with me, however, into Secretary Seward’s library, where, on reading the de- spatch, I found that it threw the responsibility of the battle and the defeat upon Colonel Baker, though expressed in kindly language and with mitigations. Colo- nel Scott, at my suggestion, went immediately to the White House, and, I be- lieve, from there back to General McClellan’s, where the despatch was so modi- fied as to relieve the memory of a gallant officer of the greatest injustice. The body of Colonel Baker was rescued from the field by Louis Bierrel, a sol- dier from the city of New York, who stood by his gun until the enemy were upon him, when, with a comrade, he bore away the lifeless body of his commander. At the close of the war I obtained a situation for this faithful soldier in the Cus- tom House; but I regret to say that some two years ago, for no fault of his own, he was discharged. During the summer and autumn of 1863, the rebellion assumed aspects which not only discouraged many loyal men, but occasioned very general solici- ‘tude. The Union army, frequently repulsed and almost everywhere held at bay, required to be largely reinforced. Volunteers no longer rushed to the field, and recruits could only be obtained by the payment of large bounties ; and yet it was apparent that the Government could only be sustained by a large increase of its army. After long and anxious reflection, I worked out a plan, by the adoption of which I believed that the war could be not only more vigorously prosecuted, but which would certainly and speedily end the rebellion. Having explained it to two or three experienced and enlightened friends, whose approval of it was very earnest, I proceeded to Washington and submitted it to the President, who, after discussing its prominent features, requested me to commit them to paper ; and in the afternoon of the same day I handed him the following letter: WASHINGTON, D. C., Nov. 7, 1863. DEAR Mr. LINCOLN: The plan for “A MORE VIGOROUS PROSECUTION OF THE WAR,” which I submitted to you this morning verbally, and which I now commit to paper, is briefly this:
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1870.] EARLY INCIDENTS OF THE REBELLION. 839 First: To avail yourself of our first decided military success to submit a proclamation as broad in terms and as beneficent in spirit as language can be made to express the objects, offering free, full, and explicit pardons and amnes- ties to all persons engaged, whether in civil or military capacities, in making war upon the Federal Government. Second: Anarmistice or cessation of hostilities for ninety days, during which time all persons should be permitted and protected in travelling to and from the Southern and Northern States. Third: That if, within the ninety days aforesaid, the citizens of the Confed- erate States, or any of them, embracing the terms offered in the proclamation, shall return to their allegiance and duties, they shall, as a State or States, or as citizens of such State or States, be restored in all respects to the status, rights, privileges, and prerogatives which they enjoyed before their secession ftom the Union. Fourth: That if, after the expiration.of ninety days, the citizens of all or either of the States now engaged in making war upon the Government of the Union, rejecting these offers of pardon and amnesty, persist in denying the au- thority of the Federal Government, and continue their warfare against the Union, then you should submit a proclamation, announcing that in the future prose- cution of the war, the maintenance of the Government, and the preservation of the Union, all territory, whether it be farms, plantations, villages, or cities, shal] be PARTITIONED equitably between and among the officers and soldiers by whom it shall have been conquered. The advantages of this plan are: First: That in exhausting the highest and last attribute of humanity, in an unavailing effort to restore peace, it makes our record so clearly right, that you stand justified in the eyes of the whole world for permitting war to assume its severest aspects. Second: The armistice, occurring when the season interrupts active army movements, occasions little practical delay, but gives ample time, with uninter- rupted facilities of travel through the Confederate States, for the widespread cir- culation of the proclamation. Third: In offering to restore the Union as it was, you will, when that offer has been rejected, secure a united North in favor of war to the knife. Fourth: That in partitioning rebel territory, as fast as it may be conquered, among the officers and soldiers of the armies by which such territory is con- quered, the question will.not be how many troops can be raised, but how many can be equipped, organized, and advantageously employed in the field. The de- moralizations and desertions consequent upon large bounties will immediately cease. Your armies will be voluntarily and promptly recruited, and their ranks filled with enterprising, earnest yeomen, who have an intelligent reason for en- tering the army, and who know that the realization of their hopes depends upon their zeal, fidelity, and courage. And by thus providing homes and occupations when the war is over for our disbanded soldiers, you leave scattered over rebel territory an element that may be relied upon for the reconstruction of civil gov- ernment in the seceded States. In answer to those who may object to the sanguinary feature of this plan, I think it quite sufficient to say that in maritime wars this feature has long been * recognized and practised by all civilized nations. Argosies of merchant vessels, laden with untold millions of the wealth of non-combatants, captured in time of war, are divided as prize money among the officers and sailors by whom they were
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840 EARLY INCIDENTS OF THE REBELLION. [JUNE. captured. This, therefore, in all wars upon the ocean and seas of the world, be- ing a part of the laws of nations, cannot, with reason or common sense, be ob- jected to, whereas, in this case, the sufferers are in rebellion against their Govern- ment, and have been warned of the consequences of rejecting the most liberal offers of restored peace, protection, and prosperity. I have, acting upon your suggestion, submitted this plan to the Secretary of State and to the Secretary of War. It did not, if I may judge from his silence, strike Governor Seward favorably. But Mr. Stanton, after listening attentively to the plan, asked me to repeat it to him, and then expressed his unqualified ap- proval of it. In talking it over, he became very much animated, saying that it would greatly lessen his labor and anxiety, save hundreds of millions of dollars to the Government, and put an early end to the rebellion. He said he would see you on the subject to-day. I also explained it to Senator Wilson of Massachu- setts, at the Astor House, in New York, who was favorably impressed, and said that unless it should be found defective or impracticable, he would sustain it. Before I left New York, as I remarked to you this morning, I had a long con- versation with Dean Richmond on the subject. Mr. Richmond took the same view of it that occurred to Mr. Stanton, and was equally anxious that it should be adopted. Mr. Richmond authorized me to say to you that, in his opinion, this plan, fully and fairly carried out, would make the North a unit in support of the war, that it would immediately give us as many good soldiers as the Govern- ment wanted, and that the rebellion would be crushed out within six months after the expiration of the armistice. Truly yours, . WEED. Mr. Lincoln, when I next saw him, said that he had read my letter attentive- ly, and that he was still more favorably impressed with the programme. He said that he had not yet made much progress with his annual message, but was soon going earnestly to work at it, and that he was hesitating whether to submit my plan to Congress or to wait for the victory we so much needed, and then come out with the amnesty proclamation. I left Washington confident that something embracing the leading features of my plan would be adopted. But instead of this came, along with the Presi- dent’s message, a confiscation proclamation, which, as far as I am informed, failed to accomplish even the partial advantages anticipated from it. And now, after we have had time to calmly look over the whole ground, I am quite as con- fident that the practical effect of this plan would have been to shorten the war and diminish the amount of treasure and the loss of life it occasioned as I was when it was presented to President Lincoln. THURLOW WEED.
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THE GALAXY MISCELLANY. THINGS OF THE DAY THE WOMAN QUESTION. F there is any matter emphatically entitled to be considered a “thing of the ] day,” itis this ‘‘ Woman Question.” That it hasa large number of ridiculous features about it, that it bears a plentiful crop of reductiones ad absurdum, that its principal promoters and agitators are not exactly persons of the highest wis- dom—these facts do not hinder it from assuming a prominent position among the problems to be forced upon that much-threatened personage, the Coming Man. Indeed, considerations of want or benefit seem to have very little connection with the creation of a popular question. It is only necessary that the subject should be of a nature to afford convenient topics for declamation, to furnish catchwords which will come readily into the largely receptive category of “ dem- ocratic,” and to combine itself easily, by help of these catchwords, with other more or less popular movements. Thus, there are many symptoms of the Pro- hibitionists taking up Female Suffrage as a promising ally in their crusade against all stimulants—including, I suppose, air and sunshine, which certainly, on the theory of Protection (a near relative of Prohibition), do interfere with the claims of anthracite. There is, to my mind, one short, intelligible, and decisive way of dealing with the proposed “reform.” It is as simple as the simplest sum in algebra. There are certain physical differences between the sexes. These are ineradicable ; we will therefore represent them by aconstant quantity, P. There are certain polit- ical and social differences ; let us represent these by the factor S. Then the whole expression of difference stands thus, PS. It is proposed to abolish the latter class of differences. You eliminate S from the expression and P remains. That is, when the two sexes have been made politically and socially one, the difference of sex is the only difference left between them. I don t claim that this is an original view of the subject. On the contrary, it is as old as Plato. -In the fifth book of his ‘ Republic,” he urges this result, not as a condemnation but as a recommendation of political and social equality between the sexes. But our modern Christian civilization ddes not permit us to see the matter in his light, any more than it would allow us to print a literal translation of the very strong and primitive words in which he expresses his idea. We shall hardly be expect- ed to prove by elaborate argument that woman would not be specially elevated by a new social organization which recognized only a sexual difference between her and man. : To me this argument appears unanswerable, which, of course, does not mean that there have been no attempts toanswer it. Such attempts depend on a fallacy which has no name in the books of logic, but which I should like to call the 4/au- dine fallacy, or the fallacy of the falling sky. When the sky falls we shall catch larks; we shall catch them ready roasted, too, for motion is a cause of heat. The only objection to which is that we have no reason to suppose the sky z2/ fall in our time. The would-be answer is a pretension to eliminate P also from our expression and reduce it to zero. The Good Time that is Coming (we are told) will be a time of universal lectures and water-gruel, when men and women will be
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842 THE GALAXY MISCELLANY. [June, passionless, and ruffianism (as in the Jarley wax-works) disarmed by a smile. Unfortunately, there is just enough historical precedent of a particular class to give this pretension a vague prima facie plausibility. Small communities, nearly homogeneous, under governments nearly or quite arbitrary, have eliminated the P after a fashion. Armies, orders of priests and monks, Shakers, and other re- ligions, have all, in a measure (for there is some kicking over the traces even among the Jesuits), subjugated the sexual element. But to argue thence toa similar possibility in a large and diversified country with a heterogeneous popula- tion under a free government, is a most Quixotic jumping at conclusions. Re- move all the existing political and social distinctions between the sexes, ask the average man, as he is and is likely to remain, what difference is left, and his an- swer (without his knowing it) will be Plato’s. As to the probable practical result of the “ Woman’s Rights” agitation, name- ly, the grant of suffrage to women, I am unable to discern any chance of good in it. In many places it will make no difference; where a change will occur, that change will be for the worse. We may, I think, assume that, despite the many attempts made to subvert le- — gitimate matrimony, the institution will hold out for some time,'and the majority of grown women continue to be wives. Now, if the wife votes, she must either vote with her husband or against him. In the former case, you are merely giv- ing the man two votes; in the latter, you are making a grave addition to the al- ready too numerous causes of dissension in families. As things now stand, a man may, with some proper preliminary precautions, marry a woman of different politics, or even of a different religion. With female suffrage, such a step would be rash and dangerous in the extreme. There is, indeed, one class of women whose exclusion from the suffrage must strike every considerate observer as inequitable, namely, single women possessed of taxable property. Yet even these ladies must not flatter themselves that they are unjustly treated merely on account of their sex. It is rather because they are a small class without political influence. Such a class is liable to get less than its full share of justice under any form of government, the’ republican not excepted: witness the treatment of negroes at the North before, and to some extent even since the war. Putting aside this anomaly (which might, moreover, be remedied without touching the general question), I am at a loss to see which of “ woman’s wrongs ” would be redressed by giving her the suffrage. Could their legislation, for in- stance, make the existence of a drunken, or cruel, or neglectful husband an im- possibility, any more than the legislation of men renders the existence of a spendthrift or an ill-tempered or unfaithful wife impossible ? The great shame and scandal of modern society in relation to women is that thousands of them in our large cities are obliged to work for a pittance hardly sufficient to hold body and soul together, and are thus placed in a strait between vice and starvation. But when we come to ask why the poor sewing women suffer thus, we are met by the apparently paradoxical fact that, not only in New York but in London, the good seamstress is a rare article, much sought after by careful housewives, and com- manding high wages. A little more examination dispels the paradox. The poor women are badly paid because they only know how to do the lowest kind of work. Would the gift of the ballot to these women, or any women, make them first-class seamstresses or enable their inferior work to obtain the best price? What they want is industrial knowledge, not political power. Even in a country like England, where women confessedly suffer from unequal legislation, their worst suffering is one which cannot be reached by legislative action.
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1870.] THE GALAXY MISCELLANY. 843 On the other hand, I do see very positive evils certain to result from female suffrage. Here, we stumble upon one of those irrelevancies with which the question abounds—with which every public question will abound until our peo- ° ple and their guides have learned to reason a little better. Much breath and ink have been wasted on the comparative intellectual powers of the sexes. Dis. putants have thought they made a great point by citing the names of Mrs. Som- erville or Rosa Bonheur, or a triumphant answer by asking, Where are the female Mozarts and Meyerbeers? All which has really no bearing on the dis- pute. Even if we could here accept the somewhat doubtful logic of the usually logical Aristotle, and argue that “if the best man is superior to the best woman, then the average man is superior to the average woman,” it would help us very little. That the greatest men excel the greatest women in imagination and genius, in creative and inventive power, I consider a pretty safe proposition ; but it is not at all contradictory to or incompatible with the other proposition—that an ordinary woman has quite intelligence enough to make an ordinary voter ina democracy. The real issue is different and more complicated. Intellect is not the only thing to be considered. A Frenchman, an Italian, probably even a Spaniard, is sharper, cleverer, more zzfedlectual than a German, a Dutchman, or a Belgian; yet the Teuton has decidedly more capacity for political organiza- tion and free government than the Latin. If [had to state the difficulty to a scholar, I should say: It is not that woman has not zous enough, or that she cannot yet epzsteme enough, or that she has not the precise combination of ous — and efisteme requisite to form sophia, since for our purpose nothing so high as sophia is needed ; it is rather that she lacks phronesis, which may be freely ex- panded into familiar English thus: Woman’s unfitness for the suffrage is no intellectual, but moral and emotional. What is the greatest danger of our uni- versal suffrage as it exists? A tendency to hasty, inconsiderate, superficial leg- . islation, which does not reach or even approach first principles ; which, in its eagerness to meet real or fancied wants, to redress real or fancied wrongs, does not stop at any means, including Arzvélegéa (or enactments against individuals and ex post facto (or retrospective) laws ; in short, a Jack-Cade legislation, which decrees that the three-hooped pot shall have ten hoops, and water shall run up-hill. And it is exactly this dangerous tendency that female suffrage would aggravate. Women are often called angels, and however fiercely the strong-minded may repel such a compliment, these very strong-minded ones have one quality which in the Middle Ages would have been deemed peculiarly angelic. Some of the schoolmen held that azgels could go from one place to another without passing through the space between. This seraphic method of progress—jumping ata desideratum without thought of the interval—is the almost inevitable bent of the female politician. Hence a legislation based on female suffrage would be full of instances like these: A drunken man has maltreated his wife, therefore we decree drunkenness a felony, and the sale of liquor, even for medicinal pur- poses, a felony ; a sewing-girl is supposed to have starved to death, therefore we fix the price of plain-sewing by law; a branch of industry complains of distress, therefore we will protect it by an internal bounty and an external prohibitory duty. And this impulsive character of woman leaves her more a prey to catchword and claptrap; so that, great and mischievous as is the influence of a demagogue on a crowd of male voters, it would be greater and, therefore more mischievous, on a crowd of female voters. ‘i ‘Again, women are more aristocratic than men. I don’t state this as any- thing against them, for I have not that horror of the adjective which so many have and so many more pretend to have; I only state it as a fact, and a fact
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844 THE GALAXY MISCELLANY. [JUNE, that has a strong negative bearing on our question. Not merely will female suf- frage give us some five Biddies as voters for every Mrs. Percy St. John (as Gail * Hamilton has remarked), but it is a great chance if Mrs. St. John votes at all ; and when we consider some of the classes of women likely to be prominent around the polls, we find some palliation for her neglect of duty. Of course, the answer to all this is the old Alaudine fallacy. With the new system a new education will render woman less impulsive and less aristocratic, and obliterate all her inferior points of difference from man while preserving her superior. Very well; let us make sure of this new education first. There is nothing in the present legal or political position of women which prevents their Jearning Greek and Latin, physics and metaphysics, politics and metapolitics (as Munger used to call it); if there is anything in the unwritten code of Mrs. Grundy, ¢#a¢ is an obstacle depending on women themselves. The most eager advocates of female suffrage will hardly maintain that its inauguration would make the piano an obsolete instrument, or send:crochet and croquet off together “avay in de Ewigkeit,” or cause the cotillion, a/éas the “German,” to descend into the tomb of the polka. “First catch your hare,” as Mrs. Glass didn’t say. Let us wait till our larks fall before we set the table and ask our guests to supper. ACCIDENTAL SUICIDE AND LEGAL INFANTICIDE. THE death of Anson Burlingame, “in consequence of a slight cold,” .re- minds me how recklessly lives are thrown away in other places besides the bate tle-field. The loss of a conspicuous character attracts more particular attention to what goes on every day in the circle of every man’s acquaintance. It must be very discouraging to the social reformer who is trying to ameliorate the physical condition of the poor and their children, if he ever stops to reflect how often the rich go out of the way to destroy themselves and their children. - When a man drinks or smokes himself to death, when a young woman dances herself out of existence, we may say that the unfortunate deceased preferred a short life and a merry one. When a child is wholly intrusted to the careless- ness of a hireling with doubtful antecedents, and consequently perishes of a fall or a drug, it is tolerably obvious that the mother values her fashionable amuse- ments more than the life of her offspring. But there are other cases when peo- ple throw away themselves or their babies without getting any return forit. A lady, knowing well the importance of care for others, and herself a very able nurse, is cut off in her prime for want of the most ordinary precautions, or from declining to follow a course of medical treatment in no wise disagreeable or irk- some. A false pride, a morbid fear of being supposed to “coddle” herself, is all the explanatory hypothesis we can offer. A mother and a nurse sit stupidly together, and let an infant die by inches for want of such attentions as we might suppose mere instinct would suggest. How shall’we account for this? Is it an exaggerated want of presence of mind? an impossibility to escape from routine ? A spectator’s sorrow and vexation are aggravated in the presence of such facts, by a sense of his own helplessness to do good. The most advanced votary of interference would hardly propose that every article’of dress as well as of diet should be regulated by law, or the doctor’s prescription forcibly administered by a constable, or children brought up in public nurseries and hospitals lest their parents should neglect them. And the more important a person is, the less pre- text can we find for meddling with his disposition of himself or his family. If our countrymen and countrywomen could be taught that a proper care of health con sists, not in the last development of athleticism on the one hand, or asceticism on the other, so much as in minute precautions against minute injuries, our na tional standard of longevity would be raised. CARL BENSON.
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DRIFT - QUILL AND CROSIER, | CARDINAL DE BAUSSET tells us that Bos- suet very much disliked to print his dis- courses: “ He placed no value on the vani- ty of authorship, and held that only duty or a clear public advantage could justify an ec- clesiastic in publishing his works.” But nowadays, some of our New York Bossuets hob-nob like Congressmen or judges with the knights of the quill, and the Bishop of the Black Crook is charged with treating a pair of Bohemians to liquor on’ Sunday in a drinking-shop. Think of that! the pastor who railed at the dancing-girls, and, shin- ing in reflected light, became as great a sens sation as they, rivalling in the crowd under - his pulpit the throng before the footlights— «this estimable gentleman is now defending himself from the charge of tampering with newspaper men, and of using that form of bribe they are least able to resist. I know of another New York Bossuet who, one Sunday, in passing up the aisle to mount his pulpit, slipped a greenback into the hand of the reporter, sitting as usual, note-book in hand, to take down the sermon, accompany- ing his doxatio in pios usos with a look that said, “ Treat me well in to-morrow’s ‘ Toc- sin,’ and don’t condense me.” The press has matched the preacher in power, and miuisters to a larger congrega- tion. Beecher, with his great church on Brooklyn Heights, seeks through the press a wider auditorium. Hyacinthe’s discours- es in Notre Dame culminated in power only when echoed by the press through the hum- blest hamlets of France, Germany, and Can- ada. Spurgeon, with leathern lungs, and a vast tabernacle, and a school of young Spur- geons in training to succeed him, yet scat- ters his sermons by millions through the press. Lately a club of pious and practical men of business in America projected a scheme of advertising the Gospel piecemeal through the daily newspapers. They pro- posed to sow short Scripture texts and warnings throughout the advertising col- umns, so that whoever looked for auctions, or amusements, or dentistry, or drugs, or houses to let, or cooks wanted, would fall upon a religious maxim; and so with the reader of personalities, or accidents, or as- WOOD. saults, all of whom would stumble unex-: pectedly on Biblical texts. ‘The scheme was abandoned from some cause, possibly be- cause it may have been regarded, on matur- er reflection, as conducing rather to profan- ity than piety, and as being likely not only to bring the reproach of unveracity on the journalistic promise of “ classifying adver- tisements,” but to exasperate unduly the hurried reader. However, the project showed the value attached to the newspaper press as a means of religious exhortation ; and one lesson from the subject is that the press and pulpit should regard themselves as allies and not as natural enemies ; as fel- low-teachers and brother-preachers, not with the Demetrius spirit of rival tradesmen, put- ting each other’s craft in danger. The notices of the Sunday services in Saturday’s paper prove that, to the thinking of vestrymen and clergymen, the press rings from its belfry as loud a bell to gather the people as the meeting- house from its steeple. The divine who gave a fee to the reporter knew that he was preaching to but a thousand hearers, and the quill-driver un- der him to a hundred thousand. I think his zeal outran discretion, and that he obeyed too literally the injunction to culti- vate the mammon of unrighteousness; but the modern preacher is not to blame for bor- rowing the broader pulpit of his lay brother. Time was, however, and not long ago, when parishes looked with distrust or dis- like on the efforts of their ministers to preach in type, lest their parochial duties should suffer, and the pulpit be made secondary to the press. Now, the religious press vies in © prowess and prestige with the sacred desk. Its hearers are more in numbers, and nod less. Its corps of ‘writers embraces usu- ally the cream of the clergy, while it con- ceals all their personal defects of nature and education, as of crooked features or nasal twang, and presents their sermons in the “dry light” of the press. I venture to say their discourses are all the more candid, cogent, and every way able and entertaining for having to undergo an ordeal of cool criti- cism, and for being exposed to that chance of a reply which the etiquette of pulpit service does not permit. The battles now
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846 waging between the religious papers of New York are fairer as well as more spirited than some of the editors would have made them in their own unimperilled pulpits. And the daily press, also, is a week-day, street- corner preacher, in its fashion. Any moral question, as of temperance, or teetotalism, or opening public libraries on Sunday, or reading the Bible in schools, or licensing gambling-houses, or educating children, or religious intolerance, or sometimes ecclesi- astical discipline, is likely to be decided not so much the way the majority of the pulpits go, as the way the majority of the presses go. As some writer insists that a truth will be found at the bottom of every true jest, however grotesque, so even the mad and mocking absurdities of the ‘‘ Herald” in its cap-and-bell claim to marshal the religion of the age, has a film of meaning, namely, that the press is a tremendous lever of opinion, whether in morals or in politics, and that a newspaper may overturn more than a clergy- man. What is senseless is the hostility declared between press and pulpit, of late, in sundry quarters. During the McFarland trial we saw the press denouncing two famous and estimable clergymen, and one of them retort- ing violently from his pulpit upon the press. We find the scissors reviling the gown for political preaching, and the gown berating the scissors for giving a low tone to public morality. The sanctum arraigns the sanctuary for fanaticism, and the sanctuary indicts the sanctum for devotion to pelf, Now, “ political preaching,” if a vice at all, is one of remote antiquity. The further we go back in our history—to the war, to the Kansas troubles, to the Missouri Compro- mise, the more political our preaching ap- pears ; and more yet as we retrace to the good old colony times, when we lived under the king, and when communities were governed by the church. Or, if we cross to mother country for earlier records, we find in South and Knox, for example, those great pulpit orators, partisanship as strong as in any sermons of equal repute in our day. Editors should. remember this when they bewail “introducing politics into the pulpit” as a new-fangled idea, and proceed to abuse clergymen for treating of practical, social morality asif they were trenching on ground preémpted by the press. Clergymen, on the other hand, must not warn off the news- papers from moral, ecclesiastical and re- ligious topics, as if these latter were their DRIFT-WOOD. [JUNE, exclusive prerogative. I admit that a part of the press sometimes handles them with levity or blasphemy ; but it is, perhaps, part- ly out of a mischievous desire to horrify the pulpit, whereas, if habitually fixed by both people and pulpit with that responsi- bility which belongs to it, even this fraction of the press might be decorous and consid- erate. One special lesson is taught in our day by the reporter to the clergyman, namely, that of habitually weighing well his language. Some “chiel” is always near him, taking notes ; and in the fervor of the moment, and surrounded by sympathy, words and ideas may be tolerated which do not look well in print. A careless phrase, used during the “Astor House marriage ceremony,” has passed as a jesting byword into the language, and been coined into the mintage of the brothel. We have heard the changes rung on it by McFarland’s lawyers, and yet, save for the inevitable reporter, it would have passed unnoticed. Extempore preaching has its merits, and so, but less con- spicuously, has extempore prayer. This last seems better fitted to private than public places, or, at least, better to the pulpit than to the press, unless, as frequently happens, the petition to Heaven is actually “revised for the press” by the maker, after being lodged in less careful language on high, The press has also attacked, and very pro- perly, too, the practice in public bodies, like Congress and State Legislatures, of chap- lains taking grounds in their prayers for one party or the other, or Avo and coz some pending bill. Members hear offensive ar- guments used to the Almighty in these pe- titions. Their sense of justice is outraged by not being able to respond, and yet de- corum prevents them from replying. But the press, recognizing the unfairness of this sort of praying in a mixed assembly, de- mands that a chaplain shall be the mouth- piece or representative of all, “leading in the prayer,” and framing a common suppli- cation. Whenever the press finds a chap- lain praying for “impeachment,” while a majority of his hearers ask for nothing of the sort, but would pray the other way, were praying instead of voting to decideit ; when be beseeches for Cuban recognition, and Congress lays it on the table; when, in short, he turns his prayer to God into a spread-eagle speech, the press rebukes him, as it ought. I think there is a fair distinc- tion to be drawn on this subject. Much of
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1870] DRIFT-WOOD. 847 the objection raised by newspapers to “ pop- ular” or ‘ political” preaching—meaning thereby thoughtful and fervent discourses on practical duties—is drivel. Objections to casual illustrations from topics of the hour, as being “sensational,” is still more idle, because the best and most effective pulpit oratory has never shunned such illustrations, and to them exclusively we owe much infor- mation of old customs, domestic life, and historic events, from the days of the Jewish Prophets, through those of the early Chris- tian Church, down to our own. But when it comes to political praying, the affair is different. If a preacher has the bad taste to drag ward-room politics into his sermon, and turn his pulpit into alobby, it is at worst only one man addressing his fellows; but it is otherwise with the ceremony of prayer. “A bill with a stump-speech in its belly,” as Benton phrased it, is bad enough, but a prayer with a stump-speech in its belly is worse. Under the guise of addressing Heaven, the partisan chaplain is only pray- ing for buncombe. It is clear enough that press and pulpit can find in each other something to criticise and something to commend. If blasphemy is the danger of one, buncombe is the peril of the other. What is most fruitless, unjust, and injurious, is their late sweeping denunci- ation of each other, which has sprung from the conduct of the McFarland case. THE TEXAN LAW-MAKERS. His Majesty, the King of Brobdingnag, after hearing Gulliver’s long panegyric on the English Parliament, graciously re- plied that his little friend had ‘clearly proved that ignorance, idleness, and vice are the proper ingredients for qualifying a legislator.” Notso in Texas. There, wis- dom, industry, and sobriety are the distinc- tive attributes of law-makers ; and we know this must be true, because the two Texan Senators have said so to the Texan Legis- lature itself. Sometime since, as Houston papers reported, a meeting of this Legislature was held in the House of Representatives, and was addressed by the two newly-elected United States Senators. First came Sena- tor Morgan Hamilton, who said that “but for the provisions inserted in the new con- stitution, we should have had any amount of money and lobbyists here this winter to test the strength of the Legislature of Tex- as ; but,” he proudly adds, “I believe their strength would be wasted if they came.” And lest a purist should find something ambiguous or Delphic in this last, as to whose strength would be wasted, the speaker adds, “I think this body is proof against bribery and treachery (applause).” However, it was reserved for United States Senator Flanagan to pay the larger tribute to Texan law-makers. ‘‘ Permit me to say in candor,” he began, “that if I said I was not excited, I should state that which was untrue. I have often addressed audi- ences of all grades and upon all matters that have been common to our State. Yet this, to me, is the proudest moment of my life. (Applause.) To whom am I address- ing myself on this occasion? I already observed at the outset that it was to you, Senators and Representatives. Who are they, and what are they? I feel proud, I could not but feel so, from the first moment I made your acquaintance.” What was it that made the Senator proud, what inspired him with confidence, and how knew he that that confidence was not misplaced? He shall tell us: I love to study man. It has been a fond study of mine from my youth. I love to look at the faces of humanity. I observe the walk of an individual. I draw conclusions from these observations. I have necessarily mingled with many legislators from year to year. I am grateful that I was enabled to do so, and if I live, and I expect to say it again, I declare that this is the most sober and best-behaved represen- tation that Texas has ever sent to the city of Austin. (Applause.) I have seen intoxication on the part of members of either the one or the other branch of the Legislature in years gone by, though I say itin no disparagement to former colleagues with whom [ have spent many pleasant hours. It is curious by what quaint association of ideas the Senator went on to speak of ‘“‘internal improvements,” yet such was the topic that followed the paragraph just quoted. ‘ Nothing,” he remarked, ‘ad- ministers to the comforts of civilized man, or tends to develop the interests of any «country so readily as internal improvements. Permit me to remark just in this connection that I was raised as an advocate of internal improvements.” With this digression, how- ever, the Senator swung back on the old subject. “I have spoken,” he said, “ of the sobriety which has characterized the session of this Legislature. . . Iam told by my respected friend that notwithstanding he has been in Texas nearly thirty years he has never taken the first drop of intoxicating spirits. (Applause.) Your humble ser-. vant can tell you that he, too, has not taken
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848 the first dram in this State. (Applause and laughter.) We never chew tobacco nor smoke cigars. (Applause and laughter.) I hope these coincidences will be evidences that we have at least acted with sobriety so far.” : A man with these ideas on internal im- provements could hardly fail to be sound on question of the frontiers ; and, indeed, Sena- tor Flanagan presents this topic with much felicity and force. He said: “Upon the subject of our frontier, I have to say, it will be one of the fondest subjects of my life that I have ever participated in, to aid the helpless woman and tender babe—nay, but to see unmistakably that ample force is placed upon our frontiers to protect the last individual’s life that exists there. It must and it shall be done, (Applause.) The residents of our frontiers must and shall be protected by the laws of the land. (Ap- plause.)” With this, and a fervent benediction, and a request that “every Representative here in both branches of the Legislature should at a convenient period give me their photo- graphs—let him be a colored member, or be he who he may, I want them all. (Ap- plause.) I want your names and I want to know you when I am far away,”—Mr., Flan- agan closes, and, as we may Say, the curtain drops on a bucolic landscape. We must thank him for this picture of the exquisite simplicity of Texan law-making and of life at Austin. We sadly fear he finds far less sobriety at Washington, and that the latter capital contrasts painfully with the one he lett. THE INKPOT WAR. TELL, Muse, who first began the wordy strife still raging ’mongst the warriors Goth- amite, that pluck their weapons from the sacred bird worshipped of tailors? And what the name of that insatiate fowl the hiss and cackle of whose natural life prolongs ® through posthumous plumage? Oh, anser ! In truth, a mighty war of inkhorns is now raging on Manhattan Island, and verbal boomerangs cloud the air, together with polysyllables more fearful than those which the scholar flung at the fisherman. Pray Heaven, says the alarmed Public, they have not hurt one another. Peace, good Public— those warriors were not born to be drowned in inkpots or skewered on goose-quills. Cham once drew a picture of the Parisian editors in blacked eyes and arms tied in _DRIFT-WOOD. [JUNE. scarfs ; but in New York we do not go to bruised eyes and bandages. Editors “ make faces’”’ and call names, but lose no sleep thereby, and respect each other and the pro- fession too much to tamper with fists or fire- arms. Like a Congressman, the editor does not expect his rival to answer elsewhere for words spoken in debate ; like a clergyman, his mission as a public teacher is too high and sacred to risk his person in petty quar- rels. It is only the lawyer’s duty (with his fee) that compels him to paint the opposite counsel in his true Satanic colors ; and so it is only the journalist’s duty (with his in- come) that makes him unmask his rival as the “unmitigated viper” that he iss We must remember to -take everything said, while discharging this sacred duty, in a Pickwickian sense; for whether Jefferson Brick is at large in New York is matter of doubt, but Mr. Potts is here. Let the public be calm. Thereis no dan- ger. The wars between the Winkles of the press will not draw so much blood asia doz- en No. 3, medium-size Newark mosquitves, Half the combatants are distinctively advo- cates of ‘impersonal journalism ;” and how can an article be “personal” if it be con- tained in an impersonal journal? The other half consider that persons guilty of such and such language have “already put them- selves beyond the pale of social considera- tion among gentlemen ”—which, of course, disposes at once and forever of vengeance, pistols, and coffee. Besides, such is human magnanimity, after all, that journalists who have been imbruing their fingers in hostile ink, sometimes leave their black deeds to join ina friendly chop or rarebit at Crook & Dufi’s, or to drain foaming pewters to each other’s health at Schalk’s, even as loy- al and Confederate soldiers shared rations in a brief truce, or as lately-glaring lawyers chuckle together over their fees. The Paul de Cassagnacs of New York journalism are, luckily, few, and seldom molested. Their revolting notions on the subject of personal, resentment cannot but be disapproved, but they are respected. In New York, the chances are always good that one party at least to a journalistic quarrel is a Quaker, a casuist, or a clergyman, whereby disagreeable consequences are avoided, the public is re- assured, and meanwhile writing can be made as “ vigorous” as the dictionary will permit. The New York editor’s motto is Hamlet’s— “TJ will speak daggers, but wse none.” PHILIP ()UILIBET,
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LITERATURE AND ART. a ee AMERICAN AND ENGLISH LITERATURE. Dr. DRAPER has brought to a close his “ History of the American Civil War.” The third and last volume has just been publish- ed by Messrs. Harper & Brothers. In this closing instalment of his work, the historian tells the history of the war and the politi- ‘ cal movements belonging to it from the issue of the proclamation emancipating the slaves down to the surrender of Lee and the assassination of Lincoln. All the great events, military and political, which took place from the moment when the tide of for- tune began to turn in favor of the North, are told in this volume. Dr. Draper’s attempt is an ambitious one, for it is an effort to ac- complish not a mere narrative, but a com- plete philosophic history of a great civil war, the smoke of whose battles can hardly yet be said to have wholly cleared away. Dr. Draper is a believer in the science of his- tory: in his mind the progress of human events unfolds itself in obedience to certain influences and in compliance with certain laws, which it is the business and within the capacity of the historian to trace out. He has endeavored, therefore, in this history, or perhaps we should rather say this elaborate philosophical essay, to assign the struggle itself and each of its great events to the im- pelling causes which existed in the material and moral conditions of things around. Two great results, he contends, were brought about necessarily by the war: first, the de- struction of slavery, and next, the creation of American nationality. Before the war a man had his State, not his country ; the war has done what Mr. Gladstone, in his cele- brated and unfortunate outburst of mistaken enthusiasm, declared that Jefferson Davis had done: it has made a nation. Such, at least, is the moral of Dr. Draper’s book. The style of the work is always clear, precise, and forcible. Dr. Draper paints no brilliant war-pictures and delights in no elaborate analysis of character. He is not of the fash- ionable school of historians at all; he has none of the glowing, many-colored descrip- tions of Motley, none of the Titian-like por- trait painting of Froude. Where he has to describe a character he is always impartial, and impulses of individual men. clear, and vigorous; but he is naturally more concerned with the march of great events and their causes than with the natures Yet the book will be found by all but the very dullest or most, superficial an intensely interesting and even fascinating study. The mere strangeness of the sensation which one feels when he sees the great civil war of the other day thus calmly relegated into the cold and distant region of philosophical investigation, and its causes as coolly analyzed as if they were those of the Punic Wars or the Achaian League, must in itself have a peculiar at- traction and even a sort of piquancy about it. In any case, this work, now brought to a close, must undoubtedly be pronounced a literary success, even by those who absolutely deny the whole theory and groundwork of the principle of historical evolution. It is the very last sort of book which one might have expected to see produced in America ims mediately after the close of such a domestic war ; and on this account, as well as on so many others, it reflects the highest credit on the impartiality, the industry, and the pene- trating intelligence of the author. Let us add that it is exactly the kind of book which ought to be commended to the attention of European readers who really wish to un- derstand the causes and the consequences of our Civil War. Nor much has to be said about the fic- tion of the past month. We had, to be sure, Arthur Helps’s “ Casimir Maremma” (Roberts Brothers, Boston), a story mould- ed somewhat after the fashion of ‘ Real- mah,” or, at least, told to the same group of listeners—the Milvertons and Maulev- erers and Ellesmeres—but not so uncom- fortably broken up as “ Realmah” was by the incessant interruptions and commenta- ries of the audience. The story, however, is not much of a story at best. Its funda- mental idea is one which has furnished a groundwork for several English novels of the semi-philosophic class lately—that of a philanthropic and eccentric hero who de- votes himself to the service of his fellow- man by organizing some scheme of colonial
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850 emigration or phalansterian settlement at home, or other such project under new and original conditions. Mr. Helps’s book is very charming because of its style, its re- flections, its occasional brightness, its easy thoughtfulness (sinking, indeed, every now and then to the level of platitude) ; but as a story-teller he is naught. Most of us would have read the book with equal or greater pleasure if it were all Arthur Helps, and made no pretence of telling a tale at all, Miss ELLEN FROTHINGHAM’S translation of Goethe’s ‘‘ Hermann and Dorothea” (how elegantly it is brought out by Roberts Brothers, of Boston !) is probably as good a translation, on the whole, as any one not a great poet is likely to make of this incom- parable idyl. It has, to begin with, the merit of an almost complete fidelity.. The hexameter is skilfully managed, and the spirit of the original verse is for the most part faithfully preserved. It is to be ob- served, too, that the work grows better as it goes on. Perhaps the three lines which open the poem are the most awkward and constrained of the whole : Truly, I never have seen the market and street so de- serted ! How as if it were swept looks the town, or had per- ished! Not fifty = Are there, methinks, of all our inhabitants in it re- maining ! " This is indeed literal, but with a very rugged literalness. Here is the original : Hab’ ich den Markt und die Strasse doch nie so ‘einsam gesehn ! Ist doch die Stadt wie gekehrt! wie ausgestorben ! Nicht fiinfzig, Daiicht mir, bleiben zuriick, von allen unsern Be- wohnern ! As the translation progresses this rugged- ness gradually disappears, and towards the close there are some remarkably smooth and graceful passages. The great difficulty of the translator lies in the fact that Goethe’s language is of the most exquisite simplicity, and Miss Frothingham has, we fancy, a lit- tle tendency towards the rhetorical. Some- times, therefore, the rendering is unsatisfac- tory and disappointing, until one begins to reflect upon the immense difficulty of repro- ducing the peculiar characteristics of Goethe’s style in any sort of translation. Our old friend the Apothecary appears in Miss Frothingham’s version as the “ village Doctor,” the word “apothecary ” being ex- LITERATURE AND ART. [June, cluded, we presume, for the reason which compelled Horace to leave out the name of Equotuticum in the poetical account of his journey to Brundisium, because it could not conveniently be expressed in hex- ameter. We observe one little piece of fool- ishness in Miss Frothingham’s translation — which is worth notice, not for any impor- tance in itself, but because it illustrates a false and entirely objectionable notion of propriety too common among American writers. In the charming, simple, picturesque descrip- tion given by Hermann, and several times repeated, of the neat and comely Dorothea, we are told that Sauber hat sie den Saum des Hemdes zur Krause gefaltet. Thus Miss Frothingham translates the line : Neatly the edge of her kerchief is plaited into a, ruf- fle. - Now of course Miss Frothingham knows that ‘‘ Hemd ” is no more a “ kerchief” than it is a bootjack; but she is, we presume, too modest to put into English the name of the innocent undergarment which had a neat ruffle round its neck. Really a woman of culture and education ought to be above this silliness. The translation, as a whole, is de- cidedly the best we have ever seen of “ Her- mann and Dorothea,” and those who, not acquainted with the German, are induced to read this volume, may rely upon it that they will have acquired a better idea of the orig- inal than is given by five out of every six translations. This poem, too, is a severe test of a translator’s skill, for nearly all its charm depends upon its style, and of that style the principal characteristic is its limpid simplicity and purity. This volume onght to have readers; there can be hardly any better criterion of taste than one’s apprecia- tion of “ Hermann and Dorothea.” ANy reader who can enjoy something fresh, racy, odd, genuine, and, in its way, life-like and true, will appreciate the little volume of Bret Harte’s tales and sketches, which Messrs. Fields, Osgood & Co. have just published. ‘The Luck of Roaring Camp,” the sketch from which the vol- ume takes its name, made quite a little sen- sation when it first appeared in print. The book is simply a series of illustrations of the life of the rough populations of the mines and canvas towns and settlements of California ; .a life which is fortunate in
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1870. | having found so faithful a limner, for it is surely destined to fade very soon before the invasion of railways and civilization. Mr. Bret Harte appears to have had the faculty of steeping his artistic nature and senses in the atmosphere of this kind of life. He may be said to have created for literature the California miner; that is to say, he found the typical man in life, or he found his characteristics scattered about among a va- riety of men, and he created a complete ar- tistic figure and transferred it to literature. Very odd, original, impressive, repulsive is the personage thus created, with his cool, indomitable courage, his coarseness, his naive indifference to or ignorance of all laws of morality and religion, his self-made code of honor and fair dealing, his fitful gleams of kindly feeling, of softness, and even of sen- timent. There is a strong dash of the pa- thetic, and sometimes of the downright sen- timental, in all Mr. Harte’s humor (as those well know who have read that wonderful lit- tle drama of action in two dozen lines of verse called “ Jim”); and perhaps some- times this peculiarity infuses itself too deep- ly and ostentatiously into the story, and so gives it a tone of the theatric and the unreal. But where it is kept within due artistic lim- itation, it refines and even strengthens the general character of the narrative. Mr. Harte is intensely realistic in his descrip- tions of scenery as well as of men, and this odd compound of an almost rigid realism with so much of the poetic and the ideal con- stitutes the special charm of these sketches. We warn the reader of idyllic tastes that he or she will require stout nerves to encounter some of the personages in these stories ; for Mr. Harte throws no veil of poetic peri- phrasis over the astonishing defiance of the moral code which is the daily practice of his heroes. ‘‘Tennessee’s Partner,” for exam- ple ; only think what a pair of scoundrels one is compelled almost to admire, almost to shed tears over! Yet let the rigorous moralist please to observe that it is not the multifarious badness of this par sobile fra- trum we are induced to tolerate or sympa- thize with, but just the residuum of tender- ness, of manhood, of friendship, which the mine, the gambling-tent, the flesh and the devil could not wholly wash away. Can such a soul of goodness live in things so evil ? Could such men as Tennessee’s part- ner or Oakhurst the gambler, such wo- men as Mother Shipton and “ The Duch- ess” and Miggles, make such noble sacri- LITERATURE AND ART. ‘851 fices and recognize such generous im- pulses? Or are these figures as unreal in their way as the glorified Anonymas and an- gelically pure women-of-the-town in whom French romancists of a certain class delight ? We fear Mr. Harte has allowed his vein of tenderness and sentiment, and his love of dramatic contrast, sometimes to prevail too far. But he has made his people, in their worst and in their best moods, to seem life- like and natural, and we are not disposed to test too rigidly the composition of his ar- tistic effects. Certain it is that he has in- terpreted the general life of the California mining settlemeats as no one else has done it; that he has conquered a new region in literature; that he is a genuine humorist with a deep suffusion of the poetic in him; and that he has given to the worlda series of pictures which have as distinct and orig- inal a vitality as anything added during this generation to American art or letters. ALL novelists below the first rank may perhaps be divided into two classes: those who, whatever they may do, cannot tell a story ; 7d those who can tell a story and cannot do anything else. Wilkie Collins, for instance, can tell a story, but that cer- tainly is all he can do; those who want character, or thought, or style must go somewhere else. The same may be said of Mrs. Henry Wood in her degree ; she is a sort of clumsy and stupid Wilkie Collins. She has written a new novel, “ George Canterbury’s Will”—at least, Messrs. Pe- terson, of Philadelphia, announce that they print it from advance sheets ; but it may be added that they also publish what they call an ‘advance copy” of Anthony Trollope’s “MacDermots of Ballycloran,” a novel which made its appearance in English fiction nearly a quarter of a century ago. How- ever, assuming “‘ George Canterbury’s Will” to be really the newest of Mrs. Wood’s new novels, we have only to say that it is very much like most of its predecessors—a “* New York Ledger ” sort of story told with a kind of rough mechanical skill. A much more graceful and artistic writer is Miss Amelia B. Edwards (not “ Susan Fielding ” or “ Dr. Jacob,” mind, but “Half a Million of Money”), who has told a rather melancholy story in “ Debenham’s Vow” (Harper & Brothers), and told it well, although without any pretence at originality of character or profound analysis of human nature, or any of the qualities which make a novel outlast
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852 the season. Debenham is a young man of lordly descent who has been cast under a cloud somehow, and who strives at any cost to restore his family and his name ; and the only novelty about him is that he takes to blockade-running during our civil war for the purpose of making money, and thereby allows the authoress-to draw some rather fresh and spirited scenes. Debenham sac- rifices love and happiness to the object of his ambition ; and the story ends rather un- pleasantly. We like it much better, how- ever, than “So Runs the World Away” (Harper & Brothers), a novel by Mrs. Steele, an English lady whose previous productions were remarkable only for their being unu- sually voluptuous even for the work of a novel-writing Englishwoman, and for their being astoundingly praised and puffed in the London “ Times.” We do not know wheth- er “So Runs the World Away” has had the customary two or three columns of praise in the Thunderer’s pages or not; but it is cer- tainly quite voluptuous enough for the most ardent taste: far too much so for our taste, we being a little old-fashioned in that re- spect, and liking women when they write novels to remember that they can do even that and yet be modest. PROFESSOR SCHELE DE VERE’S transla- tion enables us to speak in this column of “The Hohensteins,” a novel by the Ger- man romancist Friedrich Spielhagen, the English version of which is published by Messrs. Leypoldt & Holt. There is a great deal of power in this book, but its emotions are given out, like the tears in Mrs. Brown- ing’s “ Bertram,” “in hot and heavy splash- es.” Coarse, lurid effects are found almost everywhere, and there is quite as much to repel as to attract in the book. The Faus- tina of the story is now a familiar and com- monplace sort of character: this glowing, throbbing, voluptuous, soul-seducing wo- man, the Lust of the Flesh typified in fe- male form, is almost as regular a figure in a modern novel as the clever slave or the din- ner-hunting parasite in one of Plautus’s plays. But there is a great deal of genuine power and originality in “The Hohen- steins,” and, although Spielhagen has been absurdly overpraised in this country, he has in him elements of success as a romancist which it would be impossible to ignore. The time spent in reading one of his books is, at all events, time not wholly wasted LITERATURE AND ART. (Jung, “THACKERAY’S MISCELLANIES” — his short stories, essays in “ Fraser,” and bal- lads—are collected in a volume by Messrs. Fields, Osgood & Co. This volume com- pletes the edition of Thackeray’s writings, and professes to contain, we believe, all that could possibly be collected of his miscella- neous writings. Indeed, we are sorry to say that it contains in one instance some- thing which has no business there, for’ the ballad called “ The Idler” is not Thacke- ray’s at all. It is an imitation of Thacke- ray’s style, and not by any means a good im- itation ; and it belonged to a little London magazine, called ‘The Idler,” which flour- ished for a brief moment and then died— years ago. In “The Idler” appeared this ballad, and it was taken au sérieux by one of the London weekly papers and quoted as Thackeray’s ; whereupon the real author, who only meant a joke, and had no idea that any one could fail to see it, wrote to ex- plain the origin and ownership of the verses. Indeed, nobody ought to have believed for a moment that Thackeray wrote such lines as With the London hubbub Overtired and pestered, I sought out a subbub Where I lay sequestered . or descended to such vulgarity as These uprooted daisies Speak of useless trouble ; Cheroots that burn dike dlazes Show that life’s a bubble. It is a pity that such a mistake has been made as to include them in this collection. The volume contains “‘ Catherine,” the story written in “‘ Fraser” of the murderess Cath- erine Hayes, Thackeray’s subsequent allu- sion to whom, in “ Pendennis,” brought down on him the anger of so many Irish ed- itors, who assumed that, in denouncing Cath- erine Hayes, he must of course have meant the sweet young Irish singer then in her blooming prime, now dead. It also has the Christmas books —“ Kickelburys on the Rhine,” “ Rose and the Ring,” and the rest—and the criticisms of books and pic- tures which used at one time to delight the reading world in the pages of “ Fraser’s Magazine.” One reads these criticisms now with a peculiar interest. How true, and just, and manly they were for the most part ; and yet how oddly limited, very often, by the purest British Philistinism! Most of Thackeray’s estimates of painters then only rising into celebrity have been justified by results ; most of those whom he dismisses contemptuously the world has long since *
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1870. ] dismissed and utterly forgotten. He was a far truer and more liberal critic of pictures — than of books ; and, indeed, the narrowness | of his critical faculty only shows itself when he comes to deal with literature. A sug- gestion which he makes to an imaginary French friend in one of these almost-forgot- ten criticisms, has been successfully realized more than once since that time. “I men- tion it to hint an idea*to your worship, which only could come from a great mind like that of Titmarsh, to have, namely, some day a great European congress of paintings, which might be exhibited in one place— Paris, say, as the most central.” We have most of us seen such a congress in Paris and in London since that time. Observe the shrewd little bit of prophecy contained in the sentence that follows—all this was written in the days when Louis Philippe was King of the French: “If you will men- tion this to Louis Philippe the next time you see that vot czfoyen (mention it soon ; for, egad! the next émenute may be success- ful, and who knows when it will happen ?)— if you will mention this at the Tuileries, we will take care of St. James’s.” Time has naturally spoiled the savor of many of the allusions which told so effectively when they were written, and perhaps a good deal that is collected in this volume might have been left where it was. We come here and there upon passages which must be absolutely un- intelligible to the average Londoner of to- day, to say nothing of the American. Where, for instance, is the American reader who can explain the meaning of the following bit of humor, contained in one of the “ Fraser ” criticisms: “ Also in the Irish pictures may be included Mr. Solomon Hart’s Persian gentleman smoking a calahan—a sly hit at the learned sergeant, member for Cork, who has often done the same thing.” Come, American admirer of Thackeray, explain what ‘hat means!- We know, of course ; like true critics, we profess to know every- thing; but we shall not tell, preterring rather to leave it as a puzzle for the inge- nious. Much of this kind of thing might have been left out; and, on the other hand, were there not some essays of Thackeray’s in the “ Quarterly Review” which might have been included in this collection? We think so; but on the whole we are well inclined to be thankful for what we have got, and to declare this volume, with what- ever defects of compilation, a-welcome and delightful gift and companion, LITERATURE AND ART. 853 Two or three specimens of Cockney hu- mor have been recently imported into this country. We have “The Story of a Honeymoon,” by Charles H. Ross and Am- brose Clarke (Carleton), a prose drollery ; and “The Bab Ballads,” by W. S. Gilbert (Porter & Coates, Philadelphia). The verse is better than the prose. ‘There is occasion- ally a fantastic originality about the rhymed fun which makes it worth glancing at, but the prose “‘ Story of a Honeymoon ” is dull, dreary, worn-out, stupid, old buffoonery. We cannot imagine why this sort of thing should be imported here at all. If any reader of taste should be induced to go through this dull and vulgar little story, he will probably be scarcely disposed to believe that the prin- cipal author, Charles Ross, is a young man who really has talent and can do decent things ; yet it is so, for all this weary buf- foonery. The Cockney buffoon is one of the most tiresome of his class. It is, however, a comfort to think that we have at last got down to the very dregs of the draught which Cockneyism has been forcing on us for years back, and perhaps even the dregs may soon be spilt upon the ground. : WE are glad to be told that Fields, Os- good & Co. are about to publish a new edi- tion of “The Butterfly Hunters,” by Mrs. Helen S. Conant. This delightful little book introduces a bevy of butterfly hunters, with whom the author’s young readers take a long and pleasant summer ramble, wherein boating and botany, walks and talks, inci- dents and boyish adventure, mingle with butterfly lore. The book tells children just what children want to know about the way to catch and preserve butterflies, dragon-flies, and other insects, how to construct nets, and arrange the whole apparatus of capture. It is beautifully illustrated with drawings from butterflies in the author’s collection. CURRENT FRENCH LITERATURE.* Norice.—Notwithstanding the announce- ment accompanying all reviews of French and German literature in this magazine, to the effect that the works noticed may be had of certain designated book importers in New York, letters of inquiry as to these works “are constantly addressed to the editors or publishers of THE GALAXy. The attention of readers is therefore requested to the an- nouncement in note appended to the review- ing notice. * Works noticed may be had of F. W. Christern, foreign bookseller, No. 77 University Place.
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854 THE career of Napoleon—we mean, of course, Napoleon the Great—was closed in 1815. He died in 1821. Only half a cen- tury later we begin to obtain something ap- proaching a correct history of himself and of his times. In the English language there is none worthy the name, Sir Walter Scott’s work, looked for in its day with such feverish anxiety, was written for the sake of freedom from creditors and impecuniosity, and for historical purposes is now of no more value than an old novel. As an in- stance of the manner in which all proper preparation for it was neglected, the follow- ing incident was related to the writer of this article by General Count Montholon, the well-known companion of Napoleon at St. Helena. Sir Walter Scott visited Paris for the declared purpose of obtaining materials for his history of Napoleon, then in pre- paration, and met General Montholon at a reception. Manifesting much gratification at the opportunity thus afforded, he expressed himself desirous of obtaining from the Gen- eral a relation of his St. Helena experience, General Montholon replied that it would ‘give him great pleasure to devote several days to the subject if necessary, and placed himself and his time at Sir Walter Scott’s disposition for that purpose ; but although the distinguished author remained in Paris for some time after this conversation, Gen- eral M. never again heard from him. Due allowance made for its trenchant tone and severity of judgment, the best history of Napoleon thus far written is, undoubt- edly, that by Lanfrey—‘ Histoire de Napo- léon ter, par P. Lanfrey.” M. Thiers’s work, “The Consulate and the Empire,” is more elaborate, and gives with greater fulness military movements and diplomatic negotiations. The interest of M. Lanfrey’s work cen- tres on Napoleon himself. The campaigns are given with precision unencumbered with detail, and the leading events are sketched with sharpness of outline; but the reader follows the great central figure step by step, and is initiated as never before in all his movements and designs. Two more vol- umes will complete the-work. The volume just issued, the fourth, covers the period from November, 1806, to May, 1809, and includes many of the greatest events of the Napoleonic period—Eylau, Friedland, Tilsit, the affairs of Spain and Portugal, the treach- erous detention of the royal family of Spain at Bayonne, the Peninsular war, the Erfurt LITERATURE AND ART. [JUNE, ~ interview, hostilities with Austria, and the battles of Aspern and Essling. M. Lan- frey’s style is clear and even incisive. He is sober of rhetoric and generally accurate in statement. Free and effective use is made of Napoleon’s own letters, but lately pub- lished. ‘The author has been, by several English critics, spoken of as a military man, as a former colonel of the French army. We have reason to believe they are in error, M. Lanfrey is a civilian, and these writers have been partly misled by the accuracy and spirit of his military pages, which are ad- mirable. His laconic account of the cele- brated charge of Lannes upon the Austrian centre at Aspern is a model of a battle sketch, It fills but one duodecimo page, and we could not help contrasting it with a description of the same movement written by a well-known American author of flurid and exuberant style, commencing thus: “Two hundred cannon were placed in front, and advanced like a rapidly moving wall of fire over the cumbered ground. Behind was the cavalry—the irrepressible horsemen that had swept so many battle-fields for Napo- leon, and before the onset of which the best infantry of Europe had gone down ”— and so on through four octavo pages for quantity. While rendering all due justice to Napo- leon’s supereminent. military genius, our French author is merciless.in his moral esti- mate of the man. As an instance, we translate the following passage (vol. 1V., p. 375); he is commenting on the military disasters to the French army in Spain following Napoleon’s treacherous conduct at Bayonne: ‘ This de- feat, so painful to his pride, has been called an expiation. Let us think and speak like men, and avoid adulation even in censure. It is a profanation of all the ideas of justice to say that Napoleon was punished because he ignominiously failed in one of the most wicked enterprises ever sought to be carried out by a crowned villain. No; so much in- nocent blood shed, so many families immo- lated, so many mothers reduced to despair, so many inoffensive men for years driven to the frenzy of murder, so many crimes conceived, perpetrated, and persisted in with cool premeditation, cannot be easily ex- piated, and the long immobility of St. Hele- na was but a trifling penalty compared with the enormity of the crime. Talk not of punishment with regard to this man, or else boldly elevate him above all the rest of hu- manity, in which case we will but do simple justice in looking upon ourselves as beings ?
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1870. ] of an inferior nature, created to be eternally the prey and the plaything of a few privileged monsters.” M. CHARLES MONSELET, devoted friend that he is, writes a sparkling and eulogistic notice of his fellow-author, Angelo de Sorr, by way of preface to a collection of novel- ettes by the latter, entitled “ Jeanne et sa Suite.” M. de Sorr’s publisher also does the handsome thing by the author in issuing in handsome style his volume, and orna- menting the same with an excellent steel- plate engraved portrait of M. de Sorr, who, if the artist tells the truth, is a fine-looking fellow. Notwithstanding all these advan- tages, ‘Jeanne et sa Suite” is not worth reading. A VERY curious book is “ Etude sur les Rapports de l’Amérique et de l’Ancien Continent avant Christophe Colomb, par Paul Gafiarel.” The author is of opinion that investiga- tion of the subject is in its infancy; that Humboldt (Alexander) has done much to promote it ; that, thanks to him, the prob- lems of the past in the history of the New World now begin to attract serious and pa- tient research. But how much remains un- decided! Until the hieroglyphics of Peru and Yucatan shall have found their Cham- pollion, until the Pharaohs of Izamal and Palenque shall have yielded the secrets of their dynasties, the historians of America will be reduced to conjecture and hypothe- sis for the whole series of ages that preceded the arrival of Columbus. All of which we think highly probable. Beginning with Herodotus, Ptolemy, Strabo, and Plato, and ending with Captain Cook and Professor Maury, there is scarcely a name more or less known in history and geography left uncited by our-author. One would think that he had been at a gigantic cosmographical banquet and brought away an immense booty of scraps. The foot of every page of his work is formidable in its learned aspect, and presents to the eye a thick and tangled chaparral of recondite reference. M. Gaffarel has firm faith in the former: existence of the far-famed Atlantides, which, he says, was an immense island in the mid- dle of the Atlantic, in proof of which he quotes Plato profusely. Our author is very much inclined to favor the pretensions of his countrymen LITERATURE AND ART. 855 of Dieppe, who, it is claimed, in two differ- ent maritime expeditions, somewhere about 1488, discovered Brazil and the river Ama- zon. Unfortunately for the Dieppois, but fortunately for Columbus, the documentary proofs of these discoveries were destroyed when Dieppe was bombarded by the Eng- lish in 1694, These good people of Dieppe are certainly entitled to great credit for the admirable manner in which they preserved their American secret for two whole centu- ries. One of the expeditions mentioned was commanded, says M. Gaffarel, by a French captain named Cousin, and his lieutenant was a Spaniard known as Vincent Pinzon. By some mysterious means our author has discovered that, when the Pinzons of Palos —the same Lieutenant Vincent being one of the brothers—agreed to accompany Co- lumbus on his first voyage of discovery, it was not through enthusiasm but from calcu- lation, inasmuch as this Vincent Pinzon was perfectly familiar with the route to America, and showed it to Columbus; for, concludes M. Gaffarel (p. 323), ‘‘ Vincent: Pinzon avait découvert l’Amérique en 1488, alors qu’il servait sous les ordres de Cousin.” As a collection of all the wild theories and extravagant stories concerning American discovery before Columbus, this work of M. Gaffarel really has some merit. ‘“ ENQUETE sur les Incendies de Foréts dans la Région des Maures et de 1’Es- terel” is a work on a subject of no general interest at present in the United States, but one which we regret to know must become of great importance at no dis- tant day. Some one hundred thousand acres of mountainous forests in the De- partment of the Var (France) are period- ically destroyed by fire. In a _ country where wood is so scarce the loss is necessa- rily enormous, and the work above named treats of the causes and the remedies of the calamity. In such cities as New York, peo- ple have long ago felt the increasing scarcity of wood in its constantly enhancing price; but as a general thing throughout the United States, and especially in many parts of the West, the forest is merely looked upon as something to be got rid of. The early pio- neer in Ohio and Kentucky wanted a patch of cleared ground around his cabin for his corn, and, moreover, wanted to deprive the Indian of too. close a lurking place to his habitation. So the Western tradition runs
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856 —cut down, clear up. Governor Worthing- ton of Ohio left standing about his hand- some residence, near Chillicothe, a large number of fine forest trees. An old pioneer who visited him complimented him on his big cabin, but asked, with some surprise, why on earth he didn’t make a clearing about his place and improve it. Something of this feeling remains, and the forests are disappearing with a rapidity that seriously alarms the few persons who have given any attention to the subject. In like manner, but little is generally known of the enor- mous destruction of woods in other parts of our country, particularly in such mountain chains as the Alleghanies, the Catskills, and the Adirondacks. Portions of some of the ranges of these mountains have been swept by fire several times within the last ten years. The buffalo is nearly gone; the In- dian is fast going. Let us look to it, and save, what is far better worth preserving, the forests while it is time. “LA Science de la Société Humaine, par Dimitry de Glinka.” In a typographi- cal point of view this work is a curiosi- ty. It is written in the French language, its author is a Russian (Minister Plenipo- tentiary of Russia in Brazil), and it is print- ed in Rio Janeiro. The book is well com- posed, well distributed, and is mainly an ex- cellent resumé of the author’s extensive range of reading on the subject of public and private rights and duties, M. EMANUEL GONZALEZ gives us “La Belle Novice,” an historical romance. The scene is laid in Germany, at the period when the operations of the Vehm Gericht were ‘said to be most flourishing. The historical portion of the work is worthless, the - plot absurd, and the characters improbable. - HERE is that rare book, a well-prepared, well-written account of travel: ‘“ Java, Siam, Canton. Voyage autour du Monde, parle Comte de Beauvoir.” An excellent map of the Eastern Archipelago, and four- teen admirable woodcuts from photographs, embellish and enrich it. The author is no ordinary traveller. He appears to have been one of a large party of distinguished French gentlemen—the Dukes of Alengon and Penthiévre being among them—who made the Oriental jour- ney together, LITERATURE AND ART. [JUNE, The princely station of the dukes seems to have secured for our explorers unusual aids and facilities wherever they went. The colonial governors and native princes everywhere exerted themselves in extending to them every attention and politeness, so that the advantages of our author in sight- seeing were altogether extraordinary. From rhinoceros hunts to bayadere dances, from native huts to harems and temples, nothing appears to have been withheld from them. One slightly unpleasant reflection, however, was frequently thrust upon their unwilling attention through the waiveté of the Indian princes, who could not understand how it was that the French dukes, being members of a deposed royal dynasty, had not long since been decapitated, poisoned, or bow- strung. The ways of Europeans, they sagely concluded, were past finding out. Commencing at Batavia, Count de Beau- voir gives us an animated description of that remarkable city, and of several long excur- sions made in the interior, diversified with crocodile and rhinoceros hunts, the ascent of a volcanic mountain, and fétes and recep- tions by the native sovereigns, in which all their barbaric magnificence was displayed. The sixth chapter presents a most instruc- tive exposition of the Dutch system of colo- nial government over the immense region (28,923 square miles) comprised in Java, Su- matra, Borneo, etc., etc., and the wonderful spectacle of the absolute submission of four- teen millions of natives to twenty-five thou- sand Europeans. Then follow Bangkok, Singapore, and a visit to the kingdom of Siam, where the party are received by Sia- mese royalty, and have the advantage of freely inspecting many things never seen by the ordinary European traveller—the tem- ple of Buddha, the interior of the palace, the Bonzes, the white elephant, the corps of eight hundred Amazons. While the French party were at the pal- ace, the Siamese King allowed two French ladies and the wife of an American .captain to visit the harem. His Majesty himself escorted the fair expedition, and on return- ing the de//e Américaine to her maritime hus- band, who was compelled to wait her return at the outside gate, Siamese royalty express- ed to him great regret that so beautiful a woman should be spoiled by her white teeth. The work closes with a description of Hong Kong, Macao, and Canton. On India and Palestine we have so many
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1870.] works of travel that we would be loath to take up room uselessly in noticing an aver- age book on the subject. Three large oc- tavo volumes lately published in Paris, with the title “Description géographique, his- torique, et archéologique de la Palestine, par Victor Guérin,” contain really valuable matter, aptly and eloquently presented, on the history, geography, and archeology of Palestine, with special reference to its bibli- cal period. The author was charged, in 1863, with a scientific mission by the French government in that most interesting of the so-called “cradle-lands,” and fulfilled his task ably and conscientiously, as these volumes show., For the title and subject of a book, a sin- gular one is found in the juxtaposition of two such names as “ Madame de la Valliére et Marie Thérése.” The use of the word madame for Louise de la Vallitre is rather a stretch of French politeness; M arie Thérése is the wife of Louis XIV., that Grand Mo- nargue Without an peti of true greatness, The work is not one of scandal and gos- sip, but of serious, delving, painstaking his- tory. The author correctly thinks that too much admiration has been accorded to La Valliére while she went wrong, and not enough bestowed on her heroic rehabilita- tion. Of course, both contemporaries and :pos- terity have always been so dazzled by the brilliant procession of sparkling mistresses, that they scarcely ever bestowed a glance on the silent, virtuous wife in the background, neglected by the volatile Louis notwith- standing her beauty, her intelligence, and her piety. A NEW work by M. Renan, on “ Consti- tutional Monarchy in France,” has attracted much attention. It originally appeared in the “Revue des Deux-Mondes” (Nov. 1, 1869), and is, in spirit, a formidable indict- ment of the French Revolution, “ HIsTOIRE d’un Paysan—1794-1815— Le Citoyen Bonaparte, par Erckmann-Cha- trian.” But a few months out, this volume, the fourth part of the work, has already reached a fifth edition in Frange, where, between the hammer and the anvil of the books of Lanfrey and of Erckmann-Chatrian, LITERATURE AND ART. 857 the myth of Napoleonic grandeur and glory | is rapidly being beaten into small and ugly shreds. Béranger’s poetic prophecy, On parlera de sa gloire longtemps, has reached a singular realization. The glories of the First Napoleon are yet talked of in France. But how? Instead of the pomp, the pride, the victories and con- quests of the Empire, historians, poets, and novelists are busy telling us of its treasures of money, blood, and youth poured out like water, solely for the elevation of one man, and in recounting the poverty, misery, grief, and humiliation of a long-suffering nation, In place of glory, the French people of to- - day see only ambition ; instead of victory, the bloody battle-sacrifice of rising genera- tions ; instead of liberty, an abject despot- ism ; instead of conquest, humiliating de- feat, and the Cossack riding through the vineyards of Champagne. Times have changed indeed, when a Frenchman, reading Napoleon’s celebrated proclamation to the Army of Italy in 1796— “Soldiers, you are badly fed and almost naked., The Republic is deeply in your debt and cannot pay you. I am about tu lead you into the most fertile plains of the world, where honor, glory, riches await you. Soldiers, I count upon your bravery ”—can comment upon it thus: “ Itis precisely sucha proclamation as Schinderhannes might have made to his band of robbers, and means simply this : ‘Soldiers, you like to be well clothed and well fed ; you are fond of wine and pretty women; nobody will give you credit ; the treasury is empty. Well, come with me. I know a rich farm in Alsace where the people have labored and econo- mized, from father to son, for two hundred years ; we'll take it and pillage it. Com- rades, I count upon your bravery.’” The story is supposed to be related by an old soldier who had served in the early wars of the French Republic and then re- tired to his native village. In his quiet re- treat he watches events, sees soldiers going to or returning from the army, describes military operations, and recounts what goes on at Paris, As in all the Erckmann-Cha- trian works, there is a strong vein of natur- alness that makes the fiction read like auto- biography.
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MEMORANDA. By MARK TWAIN, A COUPLE OF SAD EXPERIENCES. WHEN I published a squib recently, in which I said I was going to edit an Ag- ricultural Department in this magazine, I certainly did not desire to deceive any- body. I had not the remotest desire to play upon any one’s confidence with a practical joke, for he is a pitiful creature indeed who will degrade the dignity of his humanity to the contriving of the witless inventions that go by that name. I purposely wrote the thing as absurdly and as extravagantly as it could be written, in order to be sure and not mislead hurried or heedless readers : for I spoke of launching a triumphal darvge upon a desert, and planting a ¢vee of prosperity 7 a mine—a tree whose fragrance should slake the thirst of the zxaked, and whose branches should spread abroad till they washed the shores of, etc., etc. I thought that manifest lunacy like that would protect the reader. But to make assurance absolute, and show that I did not and could not seriously mean to attempt an Agricultural Department, I stated distinctly in my postcript that I did not know anything about Agriculture. But alas! right there is where 1 made my worst mistake—for that remark seems to have recommended my proposed Agriculture more than anything else. It lets a little light in on me, and I fancy I perceive that the farmers feel a little bored, sometimes, by the oracular profundity of agricultural editors who “know it all.” In fact, one of my correspondents suggests this (for that unhappy squib has deluged me with letters about potatoes, and cabbages, and hominy, and vermicelli, and maccaroni, and all the other fruits, cereals, and vegetables that ever grew on earth; and if I get done an- swering questions about the best way of raising these things before I go raving crazy, 1 shall be thankful, and shall never write obscurely for fun any more). Shall I tell the real reason why I have unintentionally succeeded in fooling so many people? It is because some of them only read a little of the squib I wrote and jumped to the conclusion that it was serious, and the rest did not read it at all, but heard of my agricultural venture at second-hand. Those cases I could not guard against, of course. To write a burlesque so wild that its pretended facts will not be accepted in perfect good faith by somebody, is very nearly an impossible thing to do. It is be- cause, in some instances, the reader is a person who never tries to deceive anybody himself, and therefore is not expecting any one to wantonly practise a deception upon him ; and in this case the only person dis- «honored is the man who wrote the burlesque. In other instances the “nub” or moral of the burlesque—if its object be to enforce a truth—escapes notice in the superior glare of something in the body of the burlesque itself. And very often this “moral” is tagged on at the bottom, and the reader, not knowing, that it is the key of the whole thing and the only important paragraph in the article, tranquilly turns up his nose at it and leaves it unread. One can deliver a satire with telling force through the insidi- ous medium of a travesty, if he is careful not to overwhelm the satire with the ex- traneous interest of the travesty, and so bury it from the reader’s sight and leave him a joked and defrauded victim, when the honést intent was to add to either his knowledge or his wisdom. I have had a deal of experience in burlesques and their unfortunate aptness to deceive the public, and this is why I tried hard to make that agricultural one so broad and so perfectly palpable that even a one-eyed potato could see it; and yet, as I speak the solemn truth, it fooled one of the ablest agricultural edi- tors in America ! THE PETRIFIED MAN, Now, to show how really hard it is to foist a moral or a truth upon an unsuspect- ing public through a burlesque without en- tirely and absurdly missing one’s mark, I will here set down two experiences of my own in this thing. In the fall of 1862, in Nevada and California, the people got to running wild about extraordinary petrifac- tions and other natural marvels. One could scarcely pick up a paper without finding in it one or two glorified discoveries of this kind. The mania was becoming a little ridiculous. I was a brand-new local editor in Virginia City, and I felt called upon to destroy this
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1870. | growing evil: we_all have our benignant, fatherly moods at one time or another, I suppose. I chose to kill the petrifaction mania with a delicate, a very delicate, satire. But maybe it was altogether too delicate, for nobody ever perceived the satire part of it at all. I put my scheme in the shape of the discovery of a remarkable petrified man, I had had a temporary falling, out with Mr. Sewall, the new coroner and justice of the peace of Humboldt, and I thought I might as well touch him up a little at the same time and make him ridiculous, and thus combine pleasure with business, So I told, in patient, belief-compelling detail, all about the finding of a petrified man at, Gravelly Ford (exactly a hundred and twenty miles, over a breakneck mountain trail, from where Sewall lived) ; how all the savants in the im- mediate neighborhood had been to examine it (it was notorious that there was not a liv- ing creature within fifty miles of there, ex- cept a few starving Indians, some crippled grasshoppers, and four or five buzzards out of meat and too feeble to get away) ; how those savants all pronounced the petrified man to have been in a state of complete pe- trifaction for over ten generations ; and then, ° with a seriousness that I ought to have been ashamed to assume, I stated that as soon as Mr. Sewall heard the news, he summoned a jury, mounted his mule, and posted off, with noble reverence for official duty, on that awful five days’ journey, through alkali, sage-brush, peril of body and imminent star- vation, to hold an inquest on this man that had been dead and turned to everlasting stone for more than three hundred years ! And then, my hand being “in,” so to speak, I went on, with the same unflinching gravity, to state that the jury returned a verdict that deceased came to his death from protracted exposure, This only moved me to higher flights of imagination, and I said that the jury, with that charity so characteristic of pioneers, then dug a grave, and were about to give the petrified man Christian burial, when they found that for ages a limestone sediment had been trickling down the face of the stone against which he was sitting, and this stuff had run under him and ce- mented him fast to the ‘“bed-rock”; that! the jury (they were all silver-miners) can- vassed the difficulty a moment, and then got out their powder and fuse, and proceeded to drill a hole under him, in order to dlast him | Jrom his position, when Mr. Sewall, “ with that delicacy so characteristic of him, for- MEMORANDA. 859 bade them, observing that it would be little less than sacrilege to do such a thing.” From beginning to end the “ Petrified Man” squib was a string of roaring absurdities, albeit they were told with an unfair pretence of truth that even imposed upon me to some extent, and I was in some danger of believ- ing in my own fraud. But I really had no desire to deceive’ anybody, and no expecta- tion of doing it. I depended on the way the petrified man was szting to explain to the public that he was a swindle. Yet I purposely mixed that up with other things, hoping to make it obscure—and I did. I would describe the position of one foot, and then say his right thumb was against the side of his nose; then talk about his other foot, and presently come back and say the fingers of his right hand were spread apart ; then talk about the back of his head.a little, and return and say the left thumb was hooked into the right little finger; then ramble off about something else, and by and by drift back again and remark that the fin- gers of the left hand were spread like those of the right. But I-was too ingenious. I mixed it up rather too much; and-so all that description of the attitude, as a key to the humbuggery of the article, was entirely lost, for nobody but me ever discovered and comprehended the peculiar and suggestive position of the petrified man’s hands. As a satire on the petrifaction mania, or anything else, my Petrified Man was a dis- heartening failure; for everybody received him in innocent good faith, and I was stunned to see the creature I had begotten to pull down the wonder-business with and _ bring derision upon it, calmly exalted to the grand chief place in.the list of the genuine marvels our Nevada had produced. I was so dis- appointed at the curious miscarriage of my scheme that at first I was angry and did not like to think about it; but by and by, when the exchanges began to come in with the Petrified Man copied and guilelessly glori- fied, I began to feel a soothing secret satis- faction ; and as my gentleman’s field of trav- el broadened, and by the exchanges I saw that he steadily and implacably penetrated territory after territory, State after State, and land after land, till he swept the great globe and culminated in sublime and unimpeached legitimacy in the august ‘ London Lancet,” my cup was full, and I said I was glad [ had done it. I think that for about eleven months, as nearly as I can remember, Mr. Sewall’s daily mail contained along in the
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860 neighborhood of half a bushel of newspa- pers hailing from many climes with the Pe- trified Man in them, marked around with a prominent belt of ink. I sent them to him. I did it for spite, not for fun. He used to shovel,them into his back yard and curse. And every day during all those months the miners, his constituents (for miners never quit joking a person when they get started), would call on him and ask if he could tell them where they could get hold of a paper with the Petrified Man init. He could have accommodated a continent with them. I hated Sewall in those days, and these things pacified me and pleased ames 1 could ‘not have gotten more real: comfort out of him without killing him. MY FAMOUS “BLOODY MASSACRE.” The other burlesque I have referred to was my fine satire upon the financial expe- dient of “‘ cooking dividends,” a thing which became shamefully frequent on the Pacific coast for a while. Once more, in my self- complacent simplicity, I felt that the time had arrived for me to rise up and be a re- former. I put this reformatory satire in the shape of a fearful “‘ Massacre at Empire City.” The San Francisco papers were making a great outcry about the iniquity of the Daney Silver-Mining Company, whose directors had declared a “ cooked” or false dividend, for the purpose of increasing the value of their stock, so that they could sell out at a comfortable figure and then scram- ble from under the tumbling concern. And ~ while abusing the Daney, those papers did not forget to urge the public to get rid of all their silver stocks and invest in sound and safe San Francisco stocks, such as the Spring Valley Water Company, etc. But right at this unfortunate juncture, behold the Spring Valley cooked:a dividend too! And so, under the insidious mask of an invented *‘ bloody massacre,” I stole upon the public unawares with my scathing ‘satire upon the dividend-cooking system. In’ about half a column of imaginary inhuman carnage I told how a citizen had murdered his wife and nine children and then committed sui- cide. the sudden: madness of which this melan- choly massacre was the result, had been brought about by his having allowed him- self to be persuaded by the California pa- pers to sell his sound and lucrative Nevada silver stocks and buy into Spring Valley Just in time to get cooked along with that MEMORANDA. And I said slily, at the bottom, that’ [JUNE, company’s fancy dividend, and sink every cent he had in the world. Ah, it was a deep, deep satire, and most ingeniously con- trived. But I made the horrible details so carefully and conscientiously interesting that the public simply devoured them greedily, and wholly overlooked the following dis- tinctly stated facts, to wit: The murderer was perfectly well known to every creature in the land as a bachelor, and consequently he could not murder his wife and nine chil- dren; he murdered them “in his splendid dressed-stone mansion just in the edge of the great pine forest between Empire City and Dutch Nick’s,” when even the very pickled ‘oysters that came on our tables knew that there was not a “dressed-stone mansion” in all Nevada Territory; also, that so far from there being a “great pine forest between Empire City and Dutch Nick’s,” there wasn’t a solitary tree within fifteen miles of either place; and, finally, it was patent ‘and notorious that Empire City and Dutch Nick’s were one and the same place, and contained only six houses any- how, and consequently there could be no forest detween them; and on top of all these absurdities I stated that this diabolical mur- derer, after inflicting a wound upon himself that the reader ought to have seen would have killed an elephant in the twinkling of an eye, jumped on his horse and rode four miles, waving his wife’s reeking scalp in the air, and thus performing entered Carson Ci- ty with tremendous éclat, and dropped dead in front‘of the chief saloon, the envy and admiration of all beholders, Well, in all my life I never saw anything like the sensation that little satire created. It was the talk of the town, it was the talk of the Territory. Most of the ‘citizens dropped ‘gently into it at breakfast, and they never finished their meal. There was some- thing about those minutely-faithful details that was a sufficing substitute for food. Few people that were able to read took food that morning. Dan and I (Dan was my repor- torial associate) took our seats on either side of our customary table in the “ Eagle Res- taurant,” and as I unfolded the shred they used to call a napkin in that establishment, I saw at the next table two stalwart inno- cents with that sort of vegetable dandruff sprinkled about their clothing which was the sign and evidence that they were in from. the Truckee with a load of hay. The one facing me had the morning paper folded to a long narrow strip, and I knew, without
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1870. } any telling, that that strip represented the column that contained my pleasant financial satire. From the way he was excitedly mumbling, I saw that the heedless son of a hay-mow was skipping with all his might, in order to get to the bloody details as quickly as possible; and so he was missing the guide-boards I had set up to warn him that the whole thing was a fraud. Presently his eyes spread wide open, just as his jaws swung asunder to take in a potato approach- ing it on a fork; the potato halted, the face lit up redly, and the whole man was on fire with excitement. Then he broke into a dis- jointed checking-off of the particulars—his potato cooling in mid-air meantime, and his mouth making a reach for it occasionally, but always bringing up suddenly against a new and still more direful performance of my hero. At last he looked his stunned and rigid comrade impressively in the face, and said, with an expression of concentrated awe: | “Jim, he b’iled his baby, and he took the old ’oman’s skelp. Cuss’d if 7 want any breakfast !” And he laid his lingering potato rever- ently down, and he and his friend departed from the restaurant empty but satisfied. He ever got down to where the satire part of it began. Nobody ever did. They found the thrilling particulars § sufficient. To drop in with a poor little moral at the fag-end of such a gorgeous massacre, was to follow the expiring sun with a candle and hope to attract the world’s attention to it. The idea that anybody could ever take my massacre for a genuine occurrence never once suggested itself to me, hedged about as it was by all those tell-tale absurdities and impossibilities concerning the ‘ great pine forest,” the ‘“ dressed-stone mansion,” etc. But I found out then, and never have forgotten since, that we never vead the dull explanatory surroundings of marvellously exciting things when we have no occasion to suppose that some irresponsible scrib- bler is trying to defraud us; we skip all that, and hasten to revel in the blood-curd- ling particulars and be happy. Therefore, being bitterly experienced, I tried hard to word that agricultural squib of mine in such a way as to deceive nobody —and I partly succeeded, but not entire-. ly. However, I did not do any harm with it, any way. In order that parties who have lately written me about vegetables and things may know that there was a MEMORANDA. 861. time when I would have answered their questions to the very best of my ability, and considered it my imperative duty to do it, T refer them to the narrative of my one week’s . experience as an agricultural editor, which will be found in this MEMORANDA next month, :- THE JUDGE’S “SPIRITED WOMAN.” A CORRESPONDENT quotes an incident in the Pierre Bonaparte trial as “an unusual instance of spirit in a woman”—a young and gentle woman, unaccustomed to tumul- tuous assemblages of strange men, and therefore likely to be the very reverse of spirited in a place like that High Court at Tours, She described the scene between herself and Victor Noir and his betrothed, when Victor was putting on and buttoning his neat new Jouvins. Then, says the cor- respondent : She described how in two hours they brought him back dead. In the evening she asked those about her how the trouble came about, and they told her that the Prince said Victor had given him a blow! ““T went to his body,’’ she said, ‘‘I looked at his gloves, and when I saw them unbroken, unstained. and clean and tightly fitting, buttoned as I had seen them in the morning, I knew the Prince had lied !’’ As she said this, she pointed her finger at the Prince and looked him in the face, but he made no sign. In a moment this little feminine outburst reminded me of the instance which an old Nevada Judge of the early times gave me as being what he sparklingly called “ the most right-up and snappy ebullition of wom- anly git-up-and-git ” that had ever fallen un- der his notice. “I was sitting here,” said the Judge, “in this old pulpit, holding court, and we were trying a big wicked-looking Spanish despe- rado for killing the husband of a bright, pretty Mexican woman. It was a lazy sum- mer day, and an awfully long one, and the witnesses were tedious. None of us took any interest in the trial except that nervous uneasy devil of a Mexican woman—because you know how they love and how they hate, and this one had loved her husband with all her might, and now she had boiled it all down into hate, and stood heré spitting it at that Spaniard with her eyes ; and I tell you she would stir me up, too, with a little of her summer lightning occasionally. Well, I had my coat off and my heels up, lolling and sweating, and smoking one of those cab- bage cigars the San Francisco people used to think were good enough for us in those times; and the lawyers they all had their
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862 coats off and were smoking and whittling, and the witnesses the same, and so was the prisoner. Well, the fact is, there warn’t - any interest in a murder trial then, because the fellow was always brought in not guilty, the jury expecting him to do as much for them some time ; and although the evidence was straight and square against this Span-— iard, we knew we could not convict him without seeming to be rather high-handed and sort of reflecting on every gentleman in the community; for there warn’t any car- riages and liveries then, and so the only ‘style’ there was, was to keep your private graveyard. But that woman seemed to have her heart set on hanging that Span- iard; and you’d ought to have seen how she would glare on him a minute, and then look up at me in her pleading way, and then turn and for the next five minutes search the jury’s faces—and’ by and by drop her face in her hands for just a little while as if she was most ready to give up, but out she’d come again directly and be as live and anx- ious as ever. But when the jury announced the verdict, Not Guilty, and I told the pris- oner he was acquitted and free to go, that woman rose up till she appeared to be as tall and grand as a seventy-four-gun ship, and says she: ** Judge, do I understand you to say that this man is not guilty, that murdered my husband without any cause before my own eyes and my little children’s, and that all has been done to him that ever justice and the law can do?’ «The same,’ says I. ** And then what do you reckon she did ? Why she turned on that smirking Spanish fool like a wildcat, and out with a ‘navy’ and shot him dead in open court!” “That was spirited, I am willing to ad- mit.” “ Wasn't it, though?” said the Judge, ad- miringly. ‘I wouldn’t have missed it for anything. I adjourned court right on the spot, and we put on our coats and went out and took up a collection for her and her cubs, and sent them over the mountains to their friends. Ah, she was a _ spirited wench !” “Vrs, I remember that anecdote,” the Sunday school superintendent said, with the old pathos in his voice and the old sad look : in his eyes.. “It was about a simple crea- ture named Higgins, that used to haul rock for old Maltby. When the lamented Judge MEMORANDA. know — take [June, Bgaley tripped and fell down the court-house stairs and broke his neck, it was a great question how to break the news to poor Mrs. Bagley. But finally the body was put into Higgins’s wagon and he was instructed to take it to Mrs. B., but to be very guarded and discreet in his language, and not break the news to her at once, but do it gradually and gently. When Higgins got there with his sad freight, he shouted till Mrs. Bagley came to the door. Then he said: “Does the widder Bagley live here?” “The widow Bagley? Vo, Sir!” “T’ll bet she does. But have it your own way. Well, does Fudge Bagley live here?” “Yes, Judge Bagley lives here.” “T’ll bet he don’t. But never mind—it ain’t for me to contradict. Is the Judge in?” ** No, not at present.” “*T jest expected as much, Because, you hold o’ suthin, mum, for I’m a-going to make a little communication, and I reckon. maybe it'll jar you some. There’s been an accident, mum. I’ve got the old Judge curled up out here in the wagon—and when you see him you'll ac- knowledge, yourself, that an inquest is about the only thing that could be a com- fort to him /” “ HOGW ASH.” For five years I have preserved the fol- lowing miracle of pointless imbecility and bathos, waiting to see if I could find anything in literature that was worse. Butinvain. I have read it forty or fifty times, altogether, and with a steadily-increasing pleasurable disgust. I now offer it for competition as the sickliest specimen of sham sentimen- tality that exists. I almost always get jit out and read it when I am low-spirited, and it has cheered many and many a sad hour for me. I will remark, in the way of gen- eral information, that in California, that land of felicitous nomenclature, the literary name of this sort of stuff is “hogwash”: {From the “California Farmer.’’] A TOUCHING INCIDENT. Mr. Epiror: I hand you the following for inser- tion, if you think it worthy ef publication; it is a picture, though brief, of a living reality which the writer witnessed, within a little time since, in a luxu- rious city : A beautiful lady sat beneath a verandah over- shadowed by clustering vines ; in her lap was a young infant, apparently asleep; the mother sat, as she supposed, unobserved, and lost in deep meditation, Richly-robed and surrounded with all the outward
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1870.] appearances of wealth and station, wife and mother and mistress of a splendid mansion ard garden around it, it would have seemed as if the heart that could claim to be queen here should be a hapvy one. Alas! appearances are not always the true guide, for— That mother sat there like a statue awhile, When over her face beamed a sad, sad smile ; Then she started and shudder’d as if terrible fears Were crushing her spirit—then came the hot tears. And the wife and mother, with all that was seem- ingly joyous around her, gave herself up to the full sweep of agonizing sorrow. I gazed upon this pic- ture, for a little while, only, for my own tears fell free- ly and without any control ; the lady was so truthful and innocent, to all outward appearances, that my own deepest sympathies went out instantly to her and her sorrows. This is no fancy sketch, but a sad, sad reality. It occurred in the very heart of our city, and witnessing it with deep sorrow, I asked myself, how can these things be? But I remember that this small incident may only be a foreshadowing of some great sorrow deeply hidden in that mother’s aching heart. The Bard of Avon says: ** When sorrows come, they come not single spies, But in battalions.” I had turned away for a moment to look at some object that attracted my attention, when looking again, this child of sorrow was drying her eyes care- fully and preparing to leave and go within— “* And there will canker sorrow eat her bud, And chase the native beauty from her cheek.” A LITERARY “OLD OFFENDER” IN COURT WITH SUSPICIOUS PROPERTY IN HIS POSSESSION. In last month’s MEMORANDA I published a sketch entitled “The Story of the Good Little Boy Who Did Not Prosper,” and closed it with a dreadful nitro-glycerine ex- plosion which destroyed the boy. He had unwittingly been sitting on a can of this compound and got his pantaloons greased with it ; and when he got a reproving spank upon that portion of his system, the catas- trophe instantly followed. There was some- thing so stupendously grotesque about the “situation,” that I was filled with admira- tion of it, and therefore borrowed it. I say “borrowed ” it, for it was not my invention. I found it drifting about the sea of journal- ism, in the shape of a simple statement of the catastrophe in a single sentence, and at- tributed to a California paper. I thought, at the time, that in saying it was Californian unnecessary pains had been taken, for such a happy inspiration of extravagance as that could not well have originated elsewhere. I used it, and stated in a foot-note that I “ bor- rowed it, without the unknown but most in- genious owner’s permission.” I naturally MEMORANDA. 863 expected that so neat a compliment as that would resurrect the “ ingenious unknown,” and bring him to the light of day. Truly, it did produce a spectre, but not the one I was looking for, The party thus raised hails from Philadelphia, and in testimony that he is the “ingenious unknown,” he encloses to me a half-column newspaper article, dated December 22, signed with his name, and be- ing what he says is the original draft of the nitro-glycerine catastrophe. The impulse to make pleasant mention of this person’s name and give him the cred- it he claims, is crippled by the fact that I, or any one else acquainted with his literary his- tory, would feel obliged to decline to accept any evidence coming from him, upon any matter, and especially upon a question of au- thorship. His simple word is worthless ; and to embellish it with his oath would merely make it picturesque, not valuable. This person several of us know of our own personal knowledge to be a poor little pur- loiner of other men’s ideas and handicraft. It would not be just to call him a literary pirate, for there is a sort of manliness about flaunting the black flag in the face of a world, and taking desperate chances against death and dishonor, that .gives.a sombre dignity to the pirate’s calling, but little sug- gestive of the creeping and stealthy ways of the smaller kind of literary rogues. But there is a sort of adventurers whom the po- lice detect by a certain humble look in their faces, and who, when searched, yield abun- dance of spools, handkerchiefs, napkins, spoons, and such things, acquired by them when the trusting owners left the property openly in their company not thinking any harm. The police call this kind of ad- venturer a . However, upon second © thought, I will not print the name, for it has almost too harsh a sound for polite ears ; but the Philadelphia person I have spoken of will probably recognize a long-lost brother in the description. Anybody capturing the subject of these remarks and overhauling the catalogue of what he calls his “ writ- ings,” will find in it two very good articles . of mine, and if the rest were advertised as strayed or stolen,” they would doubtless be © called for by journalists residing in all the different States of the Union. The effront- ery of this person in appearing before me, through the U. S. mail, and claiming to have originated an idea, surpasses anything that has come under my notice lately. I cannot conceive of his being so reckless as
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864 to deliberately try to originate an idea—con- sidering how he is built. He knows him- self that it would rip, and tear, and rend him worse than the glycerine did the boy. This sad person purloins all his literary materials, I fancy. And he spreads his damaged remnants before his customers with as happy an admiration as if they were bright and fresh from the intellectual loom. With due modesty I venture the prophecy that some day he will even ravish a dying speech from some poor fellow, and say with a flourish as he goes out of the world: “ Fel- low-citizens, I die innocent.” I do not print this party’s name, because, knowing as I do upon what an exceedingly slender capital of merit, fame, or public in- vitation, two or three of the most widely popular lecturers of the day, of both sexes, got a foothold upon the rostrum, I might thus help to pave the way for him to trans- fer the report of somebody’s speech from the papers to his portfolio, and step into the lecture arena upon a sudden and comforta- ble income of ten or fifteen thousand dollars a season. I cannot take this person’s evidence. Will the party from whom he pilfered the nitro-glycerine idea please send me a copy of the paper’in which it first appeared, and with the date of the paper intact? I shall now soon’ findout who really invented the exploded’ boy. «° % POST-MORTEM POETRY. In Philadelphia they have a custom which it would be pleasant to see adopted through- out the land. It is that of appending to pub- lished death-notices a little verse or two of comforting poetry. Any one who is in the habit of reading the daily Philadelphia “Ledger,” must frequently be touched by these plaintive tributes to extinguished worth. In Philadelphia, the departure of a child is a circumstance which is not more surely followed by a burial than by the ac- customed solacing poesy in the “ Public Ledger.” In that city death loses half its terror because the knowledge of its presence comes thus disguised in the sweet drapery of verse. For instance, in a late “ Ledger” I find the following (I change the surname) : DIED. Hawxs.—On the 17th inst., CLara, the daughter of Ephraim and Laura Hawks, aged 21 months and 2 days. MEMORANDA. [JUNE, That merry shout no more I hear, No laughing child I see, No little arms are round my neck, No feet upon my knee; No kisses drop upon my cheek, These lips are sealed to me. Dear Lord, how could I give Clara up To any but to Thee? A child thus mourned could not die wholly discontented. From the “Ledger” of the same date I make the following ex- tract, merely changing the surname, as be- fore : BrcketT.—On Sunday morning, roth inst., Joun P., infant son of George and Julia Becket, aged 1 year, 6 months, and 15 days. That merry shout no more I hear, No laughing child I see, No little arms are round my neck, No feet upon my knee ; No kisses drop upon my cheek, These lips are sealed to me. Dear Lord, how could I give Johnnie up To any but to Thee? The similarity of the emotions produced in the mourners in these two instances is re- markably evidenced by the singular similar- ity of thought which they experienced, and the surprising coincidence of language used by them to give it expression. In the same journal, of the same date, I find the following (surname suppressed, as before) : Wacner.—On the roth inst., FerRGuson G., the son of William L. and Martha Theresa Wagner, aged 4 weeks and 1 day. That merry shout no more I hear, No laughing child I see, No little arms are round my neck, No feet upon my knee ; No kisses drop upon my cheek, These lips are sealed to me. Dear Lord, how could I give Ferguson up To any but to Thee? It is strange what power the reiteration of an essentially poetical thought has upon one’s feelings. When we take up the “Ledger” and read the poetry about little Clara, we feel an unaccountable depression of the spirits. When we drift further down the column and read the poetry about little Johnnie, the depression of spirits acquires an added emphasis, and we experience tan- gible suffering. When we saunter along down the column further still and read the poetry about little Ferguson, the word tor- ture but vaguely suggests the anguish that rends us. In the “ Ledger” (same copy referred to
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1870. ] above), I find the following (I alter surname as usual) ; We tcH.—On the sth inst... Mary C. WEtcu, wife of William B. Welch, and daughter of Catharine and George W. Markland, in the 29th year of her age. A mother dear, a mother kind, Has gone, and left us all behind. Cease to weep, for tears are vain, Mother dear is out of pain. Farewell, husband, children dear, Serve thy God with filial fear, And meet me in the land above, Where all is peace, and joy, and love. What could be sweeter than that? No collection of salient facts (without reduction to tabular form) could be more succinctly stated than is done in the first stanza by the surviving relatives, and no more concise and comprehensive programme of farewells, post-mortuary general orders, etc., could be framed in any form than is done in verse by deceased in the last stanza. These things insensibly make us wiser, and tenderer, and better. Another extract : Batt.—On the morning of the rsth inst, Mary E., daughter of John and Sarah F. Ball. *Tis sweet to rest in lively hope That when my change shall come Angels will hover round my bed, To waft my spirit home, The following is apparently the custom- ary form for heads of families : Burns.—On the 20th instant, MicHaEL Burns, aged 40 years. Dearest father, thou hast left us, Here thy loss we deeply feel ; But ’tis God that has bereft us, He can all our sorrows heal. Funeral at 2 o’clock sharp. There is something very simple and pleas- ant about the following, which, in Philadel- phia, seems to be the usual form for con- sumptives of long standing. (It deplores four distinct cases in the single copy of the “Ledger” which lies on the MEMORAND editorial table) : BromMiey.—On the 2gth inst., .of consumption, Puitip BROMLEY, in the soth year of his age. Affliction sore long time he bore, Physicians were in vain— Till God at last did hear him mourn, ’ And-eased him of his pain, © The friend whom death from us has torn, We did not think so soon to part ; An anxious care now sinks the thorn Still deeper in our bleeding heart. This beautiful creation loses nothing by MEMORANDA. 865 repetition. On the contrary, the oftener one sees it in the ‘‘ Ledger,” the more grand and awe-inspiring it seems. With one more extract I will close: ° Dosiz.—On the 4th inst, SAMUEL PEVERIL WorTHINGTON DoBLg, aged 4 days. Our little Sammy’s gone, His tiny spirit’s fled ; Our little boy we loved so dear Lies sleeping with the dead, _ A tear within a father’s eye, A mother’s aching heart, Can only tell the agony How hard it is to part. Could anything be more plaintive than that, without requiring further concessions of grammar? Could anything be likely to do more toward reconciling deceased to cir- cumstances, and making him willing to go? Perhaps not. The power of song can hard- ly be estimated. There is an element about some poetry which is able to make even physical suffering and death cheerful things to contemplate and consummations to be de- sired. This element is present in the mor- tuary poetry of Philadelphia, and in a no- ticeable degree of development. The custom I have been treating of is one that should be adopted in all the cities of the land. eee WIT-INSPIRATIONS OF THE “TWO- YEAR-OLDS.” ALL infants appear to have an impertinent and disagreeable fashion nowadays of say- ing “smart” things on most occasions that offer, and especially on occasions when they ought not to be saying anything at all. Judging by the average published speci- mens of smart sayings, the rising genera- tion of children are little better than idiots. And the parents must surely be but little better than the children, for in most cases they are the publishers of the sunbursts of infantile imbecility which dazzle us from the pages of our periodicals. I may seem to speak with some heat, not to say a suspicion of personal spite; and I do admit that it nettles me to hear about so many gifted infants in these days, and remember that I seldom said anything smart when I was achild. I tried it once or twice, but it was not popular. The family were not ex- pecting brilliant remarks from me, and so they snubbed me sometimes and spanked me the rest. But it makes my flesh creep and my blood run cold to think what might have happened to me if I had dared to utter
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866 some of the smart things of this generation’s “ four-year-olds” where my father could hear me. To have simply skinned me alive and considered his duty at an end would have seemed to him criminal leniency tow- ard one so sinning. He was a stern, un- smiling man, and hated all forms of pre- cocity. If I had said some of the things I have referred to, and said them in his hear- ing, he would have destroyed me. He would, indeed. He would, provided the opportunity remained with him. But it would not, for I would have had judgment enough to taxe some strychnine first and say my smart thing afterward. The fair record of my life has been tarnished by just one pun. My father overheard that, and he hunted me over four or five townships seek- ing to take my life. If I had been full- grown, of course he would have been right ; but, child as I was, I could not know how wicked a thing I had done. I mad« one of those remarks ordinarily called “smart things” before that, but it was nota pun. Still, it came near causing a serious rupture between my father and myself. My father and mother, my uncle Ephraim and his wife, and one or two others were present, and the conversation turned on aname for me. I was lying there trying some India-rubber rings of various patterns, and endeavoring to make a selection, for I was tired of trying to cut my teeth on peo- ple’s. fingers, and wanted to get hold. of something that would enable me to hurry the thing through and get at something else. Did you ever notice what a nuisance it was cutting your teeth on your nurse’s finger, or how back-breaking and tiresome it was try- ing to cut them on your big toe? And did you never get out of patience and wish your teeth were in Jericho long before you got them half cut? To me it seems as if these things happened yesterday. And they did, to some children. But I digress. I was lying there trying the India-rubber rings, I remember looking at the clock and noticing that in an hour and twenty-five minutes I would be two weeks old, and. thinking to myself how little I had done to merit the blessings that were so unsparingly lavished upon me. My father said: “ Abraham isa good name, My grand- father was named Abraham.” My mother said: “ Abraham is a good name. Very well. Let us have Abraham for one of his names.” I said: MEMORANDA. [JUNE, *‘ Abraham suits the subscriber.” My father frowned, my mother looked pleased ; my aunt said; “ What a little darling it is!” My father said : “Isaac is a good name, and Jacob is a good name.” My mother assented and said : “* No names are better. Let us add Isaac and Jacob to his names.” I said : ; “ All right. Isaac and Jacob are good enough for yours truly. Pass me that rat- tle, if you please. I can’t chew India-rub- ber rings all day.” Not a soul made a memorandum of these sayings of mine, for publication. I saw that, and did it myself, else they would have been utterly lost. So far from meeting with a generous encouragement like other chil- dren when developing intellectually, I was now furiously scowled upon by my father ; my mother looked. grieved and anxious, and even my aunt had about her an expression of seeming to think that maybe I had gone too far. I took a vicious bite out of an In- dia-rubber ring, and covertly broke the rat- tle over the kitten’s head, but said nothing. Presently my father said: ‘Samuel is a very excellent name.” I saw that trouble was coming. Nothing could prevent it. I laid down my rattle; over the side of the cradle I dropped my uncle’s silver watch, the clothes brush, the toy dog, my tin soldier, the nutmeg grater, and other matters which I was accustomed to examine, and meditate upon, and make ~ pleasant noises with, and bang and batter and break when I needed wholesome enter- tainment. Then I put on my little frock and my little bonnet, and took my pigmy shoes in one hand and my licorice in the other, and climbed out on the floor. I said to myself, Now, if the worst comes to the worst, Iam ready. Then I said aloud, in a firm voice: | “Father, I cannot, cannot: wear the name of Samuel.” “My son!” “ Father, I mean it. “WW hy ? ee “Father, I have an invincible antipathy to that name.” . “My son, this is unreasonable. Many great and good men have been named Sams uel.” “Sir, Ihave yet to hear of the first ins stance,” I cannot,”
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1870.] “What! There was Samuel the prophet. Was not he great and good?” “* Not so very.” “Myson! With his own voice the Lord called him.” ‘Yes, sir, and. had to call him a couple of times before he would come! ” And then I sallied forth, and that stern old man sallied forth after me. He over- took me at noon the following day, and when the interview was over I had acquired the name of Samuel, and a thrashing, and other useful information ; and by means of this compromise my father’s wrath was ap- peased and a misunderstanding bridged over which might have become a permanent rupture if I had chosen to be unreasonable. But just judging by this episode, what qwozld my father have done to me if I had ever ut- tered in his hearing one of the flat, sickly things these “two-year-olds” say in print nowadays? In my opinion there would have been a case of infanticide in our family. ONE of the saddest things that ever came under my notice (said the banker’s clerk) was there in Corning, during the war. Dan Murphy enlisted as a private, and fought very bravely. The boys all liked him, and when a wound by and by weakened him down till carrying a musket was too heavy work for him, they clubbed together and fixed him up as a sutler. He made money then, and sent it always to his wife to bank for him. She was a washer and ironer, and knew enough by hard experience to keep money when she got it. She didn’t waste a penny. On the contrary, she began to get miserly as her bank account grew. | She grieved to part with a cent, poor creature, for twice in her hard-working life she had known what it was to be hungry, cold, friend- less, sick, and without a dollar in the world, and she had a haunting dread of suffering so again, Well, at last Dan died; and the boys, in testimony of their esteem and re- spect for him, telegraphed to Mrs. Murphy to know if she would like to have him em- balmed and sent home, when you know the usual custom was to dump a poor devil like him into a shallow hole, and ¢kez inform his friends what had become of him. Mrs, Murphy jumped to the conclusion that it would only cost two or three dollars to em- balm her dead husband, and so she tele- graphed “Yes.” It wasat the “wake ” that the bill for embalming arrived and was pre- sented to the widow. She uttered a wild, MEMORANDA. 867 sad wail, that pierced every heart, and said: “Sivinty-foive dollars for stooffin’ Dan, blister their sowls! Did thim divils sup- pose I was goin’ to stairt a Museim, that I’d be dalin’ in such expinsive curiassities ! ” The banker’s clerk said there was not a dry eye in the house. tee eee A CURIOUS incident, and one which is perfectly well authenticated, comes to us in a private letter from the West. <A patriarch of eighty-four was nearing death, and his descendants came from all distances to hon- or him with the last homage of affection. He had been blind for several years—so completely blind that night and noonday were alike to him. But about half an hour before his death his sight came suddenly back to him. He was as blithe and happy over it as any child could have been, and appeared to be only anxious to make the most of every second of time that was left him wherein to live and enjoy it. He did not waste any precious moments in specu- lating upon the wonderful nature of the thing that had happened to him, but dili- gently and hungrily /ooked at this, that, and the other thing, and luxuriously feasted his famishing vision, Children and grandchil- dren were marched in review by the bedside ; the features of favorites were conned eager- ly and searchingly ; the freckles on a young girl’s face were counted with painstaking interest, and with an unimpeachable accu- racy that filled the veteran with gratified vanity ; and then, while he read some verses in his Testament his sight grew dim and. passed away again, and a few: minutes after- ward he died. It seems to be a common thing for long-absent reason and memory to revisit the brains of the dying, but the re- turn of vision is a rare circumstance indeed. THERE is something very touching in this news of Lady Franklin’s setting sail, at the age of eighty years, to go half-way round the globe to get a scrap of Sir John’s writ- ing which she has heard is in the possession of a man who will not deliver it to any hands but hers. Here is a love which has. lasted through forty years of a common lot, then bridged a grave and lived on through twenty years of grief which only such an affection is capable of feeling—and still, at this day, widowed and venerable, is able to mock at the zeal of half the honeymoon- loves in the world.
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NEBUL. — THE GALAXY offers this month two in- teresting contributions to the history of the nation at that most important epoch of transition from’ the old order to the new, when political traditions and precedents were beginning to disappear before the rising tide of civil war. Thereminiscences of Mr. Thur- low Weed reveal some of the circumstances attending the first tentative efforts of Mr. Lin- coln and his Cabinet to deal with the revo- lution which his election had precipitated, and in the letter of ex-Attorney-General Black to Senator Wilson we have a view of Mr. Buchanan’s policy in reference to the events which he has been so severely cen- sured for suffering to get beyond his con- trol. Judge Black’s letter is a valuable con- tribution to the history of the administration with which he was identified. Though it lacks the calmness of temper we should have advised, yet we adhere to our policy of free- dom and allow its author the fullest liberty of expression. It is to be remembered, too, that something is to be excused to a man who is placed at such a disadvantage by the popular sentiment which the circumstances of the last ten years have created. Un- fortunately for him, public opinion deals with men and events as the scene-paint- er deals with his colors—it distributes them wholly with reference to bold effects when viewed from a distance, and does not concern itself with the results of a nearer in- spection. Mr. Wilson can well afford to al- low the fullest liberty of statement to a critic who argues against events ; and we are glad to give so able a writer as Judge Black this opportunity to be heard now, when the pas- sions of the hour have cooled. But not even the argument of so skilled an advocate can reverse the record. — VOLTAIRE, who told the story of “ Miss Fidler” and her lover, and who took a good-humored delight in the eccentric ways of English law and English life, would have rejoiced over some of the humors of a cause lately tried in one of the great provincial towns of England. A married woman chose to elope with a young man. The deserted husband had, according to English law, no way of punishing a man for carrying off his wife. He might, of course, seek for a di- vorce, and under certain conditions might possibly even recover damages from his wronger, but there is no legal way of pun- ishing the seducer as a criminal. They have not in England much sympathy with the more heroic way of finding remedy for such wrongs which are lately so popular in more advanced conditions of civilization and therefore it did not occur to the hus- band to take what English sportsmen call a “pot shot” at the paramour of his wife. But the husband was not a man to be wholly passive, and he thought he saw a way to punish his enemy. The wife, before her flight, had gathered up a bundle of clothes besides the garments in which she stood, and these she gave, as Jessica gave the jew- els, to her lover to carry for her. Now these clothes were apparently the legal, property of the husband, not the wife, and therefore the husband had the lover arrested, sent to prison, and arraigned on a charge of stealing certain articles of wearing apparel. The case came to trial, and there were learned counsel arrayed on both sides. The charge was, that the prisoner, while carrying off the wife, a thing not unlawful to do, had also carried off certain feminine un- dergarments, which is quite unlawful. But the defence was very ingenious. A married woman is entitled in England to have at her husband’s charge, whether he will or no, all articles of food or clothing which are abso- lutely necessary ; and it was contended that the extra garments carried off were needful changes of linen such as no respcctable adul- teress could be expected to do without. Therefore—we are not exaggerating or jest- ing—the whole question for the jury and the court was, simply, whether the articles car- ried off were or were not necessary to the woman’s personal comfort. Each of the arti- cles—they were only a few night-dresses, chemises, and so forth—was brought into court, and a debate took place as to whether it was really necessary for a woman starting on a journey to have such a thing. Finally, the jury held that the faithless wife could not be reasonably expected to elope without a few changes of linen the prosecution broke down, and the lover was set at liberty. We doubt whether, even in England, “ old Father Antic,” the Law ever appeared to more de- lightful advantage than this. Here was an
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1870. ] unfortunate husband wronged: with the deepest wrong that can well be inflicted on man, and the only way by which he could even attempt to punish his wronger, was by averring that the seducer when carrying off his wife had also stolen a couple of calico night-gowns ! And the defence triumphantly made to this charge was that even a false wife has a right to clean linen, and that when a man takes it into his head to carry off a married woman, he is warranted by law in taking her week’s washing at the same time ! — Our illustrated papers seem to be fast converting themselves into mere repro- ductions of their London prototypes. Some- _ times we have one portrait or other illus- tration from a London paper reproduced in three of our American journals. One grows a little weary of seeing comic expositions of certain phases and characters of London life making their appearance, at second hand, in American papers. The humor of them is London humor ; the slang is London slang ; the people, the surroundings, the incidents are all of London, and have hardly any inter- est—nay, hardly any meaning, for the Amer- ican reader. Are we then not capable of filling the few pages of our illustrated jour- nals with the incidents and personages of our own daily life? O’Connell used to be _ fond of saying that a nation of seven millions was too great to be dragged at the tail of any other nation. We mildly submit that a nation of forty millions is rather too great to be dragged at the tail of another nation, as we allow ourselves to be in almost every- thing that appertains to art. Our American life is teeming, overflowing with vivid, new, and original subjects for the pencil of the artist, humorous or otherwise, who is capa- ble of delineating life at all; and yet we are content to have the funeral baked meats of moribund English humor served up to cold- ly furnish forth our tables. What makes it more strange is, that some of the very jour- nals which thus dedicate themselves so often to the mere reproduction of London illustra- tions do frequently show, when they choose to be American and original, that they have artists whose truth, force, and humor can hold their own against almost any competi- tion. Newspapers, illustrated or not, but illustrated especially, ought, above all things, to be local in their general spirit and character; and there are hardly any two cities in the world which have less in com- NEBUL. 869 mon than London and New York. When speaking of our illustrated journals, we may notice the fact that one of them, not a New York paper, had a memoir accompanying a portrait of Charles Dickens the other day, in which it was mentioned that Dickens re- tired from the editorship of the London “Daily News ” when he saw that that paper was put into good working order. That way of putting the matter reminds one of Father Loriquet’s history of France, in which it is gravely stated that the royal Bourbon family retired for a while from the administration of affairs, leaving the gov- ernment of the country to be conducted in their absence by their Viceroy, the Mar- quis of Bonaparte. We always thought that Dickens retired from the editorship of the “ Daily News” when that journal, as originally started, proved a costly and com- plete failure. — A LITTLE love-poem, pretty, sweet gentle, has lately been making the rounds of our papers. It came originally from Eng- land, we think, and it has certainly had a genial reception here. Its sweetness, sim- plicity, and quiet beauty, joined to its ab- sence of vigor or originality, and the certain- ty that it will be forgotten the day after to-morrow, set us off in a train of reflection over the immense number of really beautiful and tender verses, full of quiet, genuine, and gentle feeling, which are floating about the literature of to-day. Surely, there never was an age so rich in minor poetry. Per- haps we are deficient in great poets, al- though the age has Browning and Lowell, Tennyson and Longfellow, Morris and Bryant ; but there never could have been a time when minor poetry was more plentiful. We do not speak of the Hayley or Haynes Bayly kind, but of poems, genuine poems; slight, indeed, and of second.rank, yet, be- yond dispute, belonging to the realm of true song. Take any of our periodicals you will, and you may safely reckon on finding in its pages some verses that, for melody, simplic- ity, and poetic thought, are well qualified to give sincere pleasure. to any one capable of appreciating poetry at all. We read, the other day, a little poem by one of our coun- trywomen—a poem about love and self-de- nial and parting, and that sort of thing— which, in its way, for its purpose, within its range, could hardly be excelled even by a great poet. It certainly was not a great poem, but what it strove to do a great poet
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870 could hardly have done better. Yet it is al- ready gone and forgotten, as are scores of other poems equally true and touching. If this is the day of small things, surely many of the small things have a wonderful charm and meritin them ; the little fishes, to para- phrase Goldsmith’s saying; are sometimes pleasanter to hear than the great whales. — SOMETHING written in these columns, lately, about the disparaging opinion two American physicians had expressed regard- ing the symmetry of the American woman’s ‘lower limbs” has drawn forth an astonish- ing piece of news from a distinguished writer, Mrs. Mowatt Ritchie. This lady de- clares that fashionable English ladies are so proud of the beauty of their legs that they are in the habit of having them moulded in plaster and sold to all admirers who will buy. One English peeress, whose initials . make her identity unmistakable, is described as having her drawing-room table ornament- éd with a plaster cast of her own graceful limb. It is quite the fashionable whim, in fact, we are told, among the fair aristocrats. of England, to resort to the shops of the Italian artists and have casts of their legs taken. May we be excused if, not having seen all this with our own eyes, we venture to doubt the existence of this extraordinary whim among the ladies of England? In the “Memoirs of the Count de Grammont ” there is, indeed, a story told of a certain English court lady who was so proud of the shapeli- ness of her leg that she exhibited it to the whole court circle one evening. But this was in the reign of Charles the Second, not of Queen Victoria, and it was thought quite odd enough to be recorded with wonder even then. We do very much doubt, in- deed, whether many English ladies of to-day are anxious to imitate the indecorum which was thought so strange in one lady in the merry, graceless Court of Charles the Sec- ond. Really, the lively writer on whose au- thority this extraordinary story rests can hardly expect us all to swallow so piquant a fable. Doubtless she believes it ; and doubt- less she has seen several plaster casts: of feminine legs in England. Such things we all have seen ; but who told her that these were models of the legs of noble ladies? Did the ladies themselves say so? Hardly, we think. Is it any wonder that Frenchmen cannot understand Englishmen, that Eng- lishmen write such extraordinary nonsense about Frenchmen, when a cultivated Ameri- NEBUL&. [JUNE, can lady, between whom and England no barrier of language arises, can calmly a:.d in undoubted good faith write such marvellous absurdities as illustrations of English social life ? — Puitie STANHOPE, Earl of Chester- field, was a sincere man when he had no special need to be otherwise. It may bea valuable contribution to the woman’s rights controversy of the present hour to show what this gallant and experienced person really thought of women. Writing to his son, in the fullest sincerity and with the most genuine and honest desire to instruct, this is what he says: “ Women are only children of a larger growth; they have an entertain- ing tattle, and sometimes wit, but for solid, reasoning good sense, I never in my life knew one that had it, or who reasoned or acted consequentially for four and twenty hours together. Some little passion or hu- mor always breaks in upon their best resolu- tions. Their beauty neglected or contro- verted, their age increased, or their sup- posed understanding depreciated, instantly kindles their little passions and overturns any system of consequential conduct that, in their most reasonable moments, they might have been capable of forming. A man of sense only trifles with them, plays with them, humors and flatters them, as he does with a sprightly, forward child; but he either consults them about nor trusts them with serious matters, though he often makes them believe that he does both, which is the thing in the world that they are proud of, for they love mightily to be dab- bling in business (which, by the way, they always spoil), and being justly distrustful that men in general look upon them ina trifling light, they almost adore that man who talks more seriously to them, and who seems to consult andtrust them. Isay who seems—for weak men really do, but wise ones only seem to do -it.” The most amusing thing about all this is its honest and sincere earnestness. No thought of epigram or satire, or purposed cynicism is here! Ches- terfield believed himself to be giving a per- fectly fair and accurate description, not to be disputed by anybody whose opinion is worth having. Yetthere were some women even in Chesterfield’s day—ay, even in Chesterfield’s class—who might have com- pelled him to unsay some of these asser- tions, and there were surely statesmen enough in England to whom his description
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1870.] of women might have strictly applied. . But, ladies, let us give you this plague for your dowry. These opinions, which Chester- field so frankly and vigorously expressed, are the opinions of many a man to-day who would not. have the courage to put them down in black and white, Indeed, asa rule, the Philistine, of whatever class, thinks of women very much as Chesterfield thought. <A good deal of the kind of thing spoken and written about woman’s sphere being the drawing-room and the domestic hearth, and so on, means exactly what Ches- terfield said, and ought to be welcomed by women accordingly, — Rousseau tells a story about a little boy who used to be made to repeat the le- gend of Alexander the Great swallowing calmly the contents of the bowl presented to him by the physician in whom he had faith, although he had received a private warning that the bowl was probably poisoned. The boy was taught to repeat this as an illustra- tion of Alexander’s courage. Something made Rousseau doubt whether the poor little reciter quite understood the meaning of the story he was compelled to parrot, and on pri- vately sounding the depth of the child’s ca- pacity, he found that the boy’s notion of Al- exander’s heroism was that it consisted in his swallowing a cup of nauseous medi- cine without grumble or grimace. An odd instance of a somewhat similar kind of misconception came under our observation lately. In one of the New York hotels is a Swiss waiter, who once saw better days and kept a restaurant in London. A guest late- ly happened to hear him arguing with an American comrade on the relative merits of democracy in Switzerland and in the United States. The Helvetian went in for the superiority of his own country, and in- sisted that there were blots upon the fame of the American Revolution which did not sully the fair name of Switzerland. The guest, becoming curious, intruded so far into the controversy as to ask for some instance of this, whereupon the Switzer assured him, in all sober earnestness, that the spilling of the tea in Boston harbor was a wilful waste of good substance, whereof no Swiss ever could have been guilty. The little boy’s highest idea of heroism was the swallowing of medicine ; the canny Swiss waiter’s high- est idea of crime committed in the name of liberty was the waste of good tea. NEBULZ. 871 — “GRANT IN Paris” is the name of one of Thackeray’s early essays—and a wonder- fully droll and humorous one it is—con- tained in the collection of Miscellanies by the great satirist just published. The Grant who went to Paris and wrote the book whereof Thackeray makes such deli- cious fun, was not Ulysses, or any relative of the latter, but another Grant, very dear to London, of whom we may say something for the instruction of untravelled readers. James Grant—‘ Jim” as Thaekeray calls him—is, and we trust will long be, quite a favorite character in London. Heis evena better butt for the humors of the London press than Tupper. He is the editor of a paper called the ‘Morning Advertiser,” which is the property and the organ of the London whiskey-sellers and _ gin-palace keepers. It is managed by a committee of publicans, with whom “ Jim” is a special pet. It is a furious organ of the fiercest theology of the old-fashioned orthodox and no-Popery school. Some one nicknamed it “Gin and Gospel.” John Bright once al- luded to it in the House of Commons as a literary enterprise which endeavored to combine “religion andruffianism.” “ Jim,” the worthy editor of this delectable sheet, has written a whole library of theological works, and was the man who started the cry of Atheism against Stuart Mill when the latter became a candidate for the represen- tation of Westminster. Cruel wags are al- ways playing sad pranks at Grant’s expense. They send him inscriptions purporting to be Latin legends of awfully Popish meaning, found in this or that public building, and Jim prints them in the ‘ Advertiser,” not knowing, honest fellow, Latin from double Dutch, and the mystic inscriptions turn out to be English words separated after the fashion of the “ Bill Stumps his mark” in- scription in ‘ Pickwick,” only, alas! of far less innocent meaning. Grant actually did print such things more than once in the beery “ Advertiser,” to the laughter and scandal of the town. Quite lately he was sold again with some mock extract from Carlyle. Indeed, his unbrotherly brethren of the press are always “selling” poor Jim, who continues to be as grave as an owl, and advocates the claims of pure orthodoxy and impure whiskey, unmoved and stolid, amid the jeers of a profane and heedless world. — THE following anecdote has not, so far as we know, been in print before, and it has
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872 some humor init. There is a distinguished European statesman who, a few years ago, being no longer young—took it into his head to marry a certain brilliant, too brilliant lady—matre pulchré filia pulchrior—a lady who, following in the footsteps of a dash- ing and fearless mother, made the eyes of Europe to open very wide sometimes. The lady was a widow; the statesman an old bachelor. Friends of the statesman re- monstrated, spoke rather frankly and em- phatically of the lady’s past career, of her mother’s career, of this, that, and the other scandal clinging to the silken skirts of the two ladies. The elderly lover listened un- moved. At last the king of the country (it is a country with a king) sent for the states- man and endeavored to dissuade him from the marriage. blunt majesty, “what was reported about her, and him, and zm, and Aim—and don’t you know that it was all quite true?” “Doubtless it was true, Sire,” replied the statesman calmly, “ but all that happened in the time of‘her late husband. It was all his affair ; J have nothing todo with it!” Need- less to say that all further remonstrance was given up. The marriage took place ; and no doubt the complacent statesman is happy. — THE recent murder of captives by Greek brigands, near the plains of Mara- thon, has awakened a peculiar horror all over the world. But Greece has long been a country in which brigandage flourished congenially and unmolested. For gener- ations the sympathies of the people were rather with the brigand than against him, just as the people of the Scottish Highlands might have sympathized with Rob Roy. It was not always easy to say where patriotism ceased and robbery began. During the Greek war of independence the poetry of Western Europe ran wild with lyrical glori- fications of the A7Zepht. Victor Hugo has some impassioned strains in favor of the Klepht, his bravery, his patriotic devotion, his brilliant weapons, and his _ irresistible love-making. But the Klepht was nothing more nor less than just the sort of mountain robber who has now been murdering his English captives. The Klepht did indeed drop his thievery and his murdering for a little, in order to fight against the Turks, thus unfortunately obtaining a new claim to public toleration and a stronger hold on popular sympathy. Even then, however, the testimony of Finlay and others shows NEBUL&. ‘Don’t you know,” said his’ [JUNE, that the Klepht often amused himself in the intervals of patriotic battle against the Turks by plundering or murdering his own coun- trymen and carrying off his own country- women. The necessity of accepting the services of these scoundrels was a trying thing indeed to men like Byron, and Has- tings, and Leicester Stanhope, and Lord Cochrane. It will take a long time to root brigandage out of Greece, but there can be little doubt that it has for some few years back been growing rather worse than before. The threat of the London Government about holding the Greek Government responsible for this recent outrage is utterly unreasona- ble. As well hold the United States Gov- ernment responsible for the doings of the Ku-Kluxes in Tennessee. Everybody in Athens must have known perfectly well that it was not safe to attempt to visit Marathon without a strong escort of troops; and if rash travellers will run forewarned into dan- ger, it is unfair to talk of holding the gov- ernment of the country responsible for their fate. In this latter case it would have been far better had the Greek Government done nothing. It might have been easily fore- seen that the robbers when driven to bay would murder their unfortunate captives. — A CONTRIBUTOR, who is apparently in despair lest he should never come to shine among the stars in the Galaxy, sends us this poetical inquiry. That he may not wholly lose courage, we introduce him to the Nebulous state, as the first step in the progress toward the full-orbed splendor of a star of the first magnitude : There’s the anvil’s Ring, when the strong smith strikes, There’s a Ring in the sweet church bells, There’s the Ring of the miser’s cherished gold, And the Ring that of true love tells. There’s a Ring when Fisk puts his armor on, A Ring when Morrissey fights, There’s Saturn’s bright Ring, and the Whiskey Ring, And a Ring of Gladstone’s and Bright’s. For none of these Rings do I care one jot: Pray what are these Rings to me? They are circles in water, or circles in air, As fickle and false as the sea. The only Ring that I care to know Is the Ring round the Nebulous chair. O, prithee some sorcerer, tell me what spell, Can Jodéy a fellow in there? — THERE are people so utterly incapable of looking at more than one side of a ques- tion, that we verily believe they do not admit
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1870. ] the possibility of there being two sides to the moon. If you could convince them that the planet has a side we don’t see, they would never more acknowledge the existence of the side we do see, —WHEN the French Ambassador waited upon Queen Elizabeth for the first time after the massacre of Saint Bartholomew, the Queen and court received him in the garb of deepest mourning. That was a fine and sol- emn rebuke, was it not? But when, by Elizabeth’s orders, Essex directed and su- perintended the massacre of the Irish and Scotch fugitives, men, women, children, and sucking babes, in the island of Rathlin, on the north coast of Ireland, why did not the French court go into mourning, and thus receive the English Ambassador? Mr. Froude, who tells the whole story of the Rathlin massacre, states that after the prin- cipal work had been done, it was discovered that several hundred other unfortunates, * chiefly mothers and their little ones,” were hidden in the caves along the shore. “There was no remorse,” says Froude, ‘‘not even the faintest shadow of perception that the occasion called for it. They were hunt- ed out as if they had been seals or otters, and all destroyed.” Queen Elizabeth high- ly commended the executioners of this deed, and called it ‘“‘a well-designed enterprise.” What a sycophant is History! It has toa- died to Queen Elizabeth for three centuries ; even Mr. Froude, while sternly exposing such deeds as this, still toadies to her and her success. So American journalists and others, who ought to know better, write up Louis Napoleon, and sing the praises of his policy and his deeds, just because for the hour he has succeeded. The late Count de Montalembert used to be made especially impatient by English panegyrics on Louis Napoleon and his system—a system which he truly said the English people would not themselves endure for one day. Thus do intelligent and patriotic Frenchmen chafe over the manner in which Americans in Paris make themselves the panegyrists of systems and people such as no amount of force or of fraud could induce any American to tolerate as a ruling influence here. Now one can understand an Englishman vener- ating Queen Elizabeth. She did, with all her crimes, maintain his national and relig- ious cause against the foreigner and the here- tic ; and ifshe massacred, she only massacred Irish, and Scotch, and Papists, and such NEBULA. 873 like. But what on earth does an American find to admire in the crimes of the Bona- partes against liberty and peace? — IT is Bulwer-Lytton, surely, who says somewhere that if each of us will think of the | men of great success in literature, art, or statesmanship he has known, he will find that among his unsuccessful and obscure ac- quaintances there are men who seem en- dowed with gifts that ought to have won the success which the others wear. We are no believers in the mute, inglorious Milton theory ; and when we see that a man has succeeded, we are ready to assume the ex- istence in him, albeit we may see it not, of the peculiar quality, whatever it may be, which alone commands and deserves success. But it is assuredly in the experience of each of us to have known men who seemed to be endowed with far higher gifts than those of the successful, and yet who have not suc- ceeded. For this writer, he can honestly say that the few men and women who have most profoundly impressed him with a sense of the presence in them of genius and great- ness, are persons who have not won fame» and in whom the world recognizes no great- ness. The really great people, indeed, usu- ally seem to grow less great as we become familiar with them. It would almost appear as if when a man finds full expression for the genius that is in him, all the rest of his character is an anti-climax. Lessing lays down the rule, that a painter or sculptor must never try to represent the highest point of human emotion; because the pic- ture or statue which embodies a climax of suffering, or joy, or passion, will grow less and less impressive to every gazer the more he becomes familiar with it. Perhaps it is in something of the same way that the great orator or poet, of whose genius we have felt the highest reach in his eloquence or his verse, is necessarily himself an anti-climax when we come to know him merely as an individual. But it would seem, apart from this consideration, as ifthe qualities of genius and of greatness were sometimes attributes not belonging to the individual character of the man or woman, but external and special gifts of the gods, having little t6 do with the individual nature of the being so favored. Johnson’s phrase, “inspired idiot,” would apply very happily to many besides Gold- smith, We know many great men who seem to be little better than inspired idiots ; or at all events, quite commonplace crea-
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874 tures ZJus certain external gifts of book- making, or battle-winning, or state-govern- ing ; the combination producing success, just as a dull man and a million of money may together become a power in another way, the money not making the soul of the man one whit the greater. On the other hand, many obscure people seem to have all the great qualities of intellect and character ; they have, perhaps, inexhaustible treasure- chambers of thought, and wisdom, and im- agination; they have a moral force which seems as though it were made to govern; and yet they come to nothing—for the gods have not decreed to them the external gift and attri- bute of success. Truly, there are men and women who have the individual greatness and the gift of success too; but these are erar indeed. Julius Caesar must have been a supreme specimen of this limited class ; but Napoleon belonged to the other and far more numerous body. Michael Angelo must have belonged to the small select cir- cle, and probably Milton and Dante; not Shakespeare, we fancy, and not Byron. It would be invidicus to speak of living per- sonages ; but “we could an if we might.” — THIRTY-TWO years ago, almost to this very day, a critic who took the name of Michael Angelo Titmarsh, and who after- ward wrote some books which had quite a success, was describing an exhibition of paintings in London, and undertook to classify the painters according to their de- grees of merit by assigning a fanciful rank to each. He spoke of Edwin, Earl of Land- seer, the Duke of Etty, etc., and then of ‘Daniel, Prince Maclise,” observing of this latter, that “his royal highness’s pictures place him very near the throne indeed.” Daniel, Prince Maclise, was the then young, handsome, and brilliant Irishman who has just died, age sixty, in London ; and Thack- eray assigned the throne of art to another Irishman, “his Majesty King Mulready,” the great painter who died some years ago, In the same article, the critic, proceeding to consider Mr. Maclise’s qualities in detail, observes that he has great defects of color- ing; but says, “Mr. Maclise has for his share humor such as few painters ever pos- sessed, and a power of drawing such as never was possessed by any other; no, NEBULA. men. [JUNE. not by one, from Albert Diirer downward.” Then Thackeray asks, “ What might not this man do, if he would read and meditate a little, and profit by the works of men whose tastes and education were superior to his own?” The question was only fair and reasonable. Maclise started in life with splendid gifts and little education. His pa- rents were poor people in Cork, Ireland— his mother, we think, a pew-opener in a Unitarian church—and his school-training was slight indeed. He flung himself quite a boy into art and into London; and he won early and brilliant victories. He be- came especially “fashionable” as an artist, this poor Irish youth ; and he was probably none the happier in art for that. A more brilliant painter the age did not produce ; but somehow there seemed to us always a, want of heart, or thought, or sincerity, or depth, or something of the kind in his splen- did, showy groupings, and his superb faces and forms. Some marvellous things he did. Never shall we forget the eyes of young Gil Blas, in the picture of the saucy, self-con- ceited actresses and their grandee admirers receiving the poor author. Those wonder- ful eyes—so shrewd, so humorous, so in- quiring, so observant, so lighted up with the spirit which saw all the ways and weak- nesses of whole human nature in a few journeys through a few Spanish provinces ! Maclise’s own face appears in many of his pictures ; a noble, beautiful face it was at one time ; and his sisters were, if we mistake not, the models for many of his heroines. He was an intimate friend of Charles Dick- ens, and perhaps may be said to have min- gled generally with a class of friends who attached less value to pure culture and thought than to brilliancy and success. He was one of the shyest and most retiring of Except among his intimate friends, he was almost as reserved and diffident as our our Hawthorne. Not very long since he. was invited to give evidence on some ques- tion of art before a committee of the House of Commons, and he was so completely overcome with shyness that he could hardly raise his voice to an audible pitch. His place in English opinion had long been fixed; he ranked with the very highest. Where posterity will place him we shall not stop now to inquire. One thing is certain— he was a man of genius,