The Cosmopolitan 1889-02: Vol 6 Iss 4

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THE COSMOPOLITAN. FEBRUARY, 1889. A RUSSIAN APOSTLE OF By VALERIAN GRIBAYEDOF! *-it had no other claims to re- membrance, the winter season of 1888 will at least be recalled for many years to come as theepoch of Vassili Verestchagin’s advent in New York. Brief though has been his stay here, the evidences are many that the seed sown by him with liberal hand is not al- together scattered to the winds. His theories on art and social problems may have taken root as little as Tolstoi’s doctrine of im- passibility. But, like Russia's foremost novelist, Verestchagin has set our peoplethinking. We look upon Tolstoi as an amiable dreamer, an ideal reformer, woe- fully lacking practicality; yet we all acknowledge that as « writer he has struck chords that vibrate in every human breast. His flowers are culled from na- ture’s own garden, and lose none of their fragrance by being fash- ioned into fantastic wreaths. As our novelists and poets have bowed to Tolstoi, so will our LYDIA ANDREYEVSKAYE. artists bow, ina measure, to Verestchagin. Many whoat first inclined to hypercritism are now among his most ardent admirers, agreeing with Clarence Cook that his exhibition was ‘an, intellectual feast, such as none other presented to the public for the past twenty-five years."’ In other words, it was an education in itself, and one not to be lost on the present ULZ OS a LIST (Pianist at the Verestchagin Exhibition.) generation of American artists. No explanation of Verestchagin’s work would be comprehensible without a sesumé of his career, so thoroughly interwoven are the two. His paintings are the history of his own experiences. Before being works of art they are documents and records, for he has always maintained that the artist, even more than the writer, should be the historiog- rapher of his own times. From different conversations I have held with him, I gather Entered at the New York Post Office as second ciass matter. Copyright, 1888, by JOHN BRISBEN WALKER, ,

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312 that his earlier associations were those of the average youth in Russia, that is, of the sons of landed proprietors--an existence devoid of other elevating influences than such as emanate from well-meaning but narrow- minded relatives. It is almost proverbial that genius ever enters the list handicapped in this manner. Following the footsteps of the typical father, Verestchagin, senior, a practical man in the old-fashioned sense of the word, strongly opposed his offspring’s artistic proclivities. No scribbling or daub- ing for him. His son should bea sailor in the Czar's service and should work his way upto high honors. The son had a will of his own, however, and so when they sent him to the naval school at St. Petersburg he took advantage of its proximity to the Academy of Design to pass his spare hours studying at the latter institution. His capacity for hard work may be summed up in the state- ment that he left the naval school as the first scholar to win a silver medal at the Academy of Fine Arts. His stay in the marine corps was of short duration, and at the age of seventeen he abandoned the service alto- gether to devote his entire time to the muse. The following two years were occupied by traveling. After Paris and London had been visited he went to the Caucasus, a region at that time unexplored, where wild mountain liordes were holding the Czar's well-dis- ciplined troops at bay. Pen and pencil in hand, Verestchagin traversed its rugged roads and mountain passes, and on his return fur- nished the Zour du Monde with a set of capital sketches illustrating his trip. At the age of twenty-two, the young man, now conscious of his latent powers, arrived in Paris, that Mecca of all aspirants to artistic fame. This was in 18602. Gerome was then making a name, and under him the green foreign youth, with the fragrance of Russian pines still clinging to his person, began to study. It is well known that and pupil greatly varied as to Gerome counseled working from master methods. the antique, Verestchagin preferred flesh and blood to marble or bronze. Hence constant friction between the two. Still the elder man could not but admire the youth's enthusiasm and perseverance. Even his vacations were in no sense holidays, but were dedicated to exploring ‘‘ fresh fields and pastures new,”’ not alone to him but to the entire artistic A RUSSIAN APOSTLE OF ART. world. His trips to the Orient were frequent, and each one proved fruitful of results. On one journey he would penetrate the steppes of the Karakum,on another the wastes of Northern Persia, picturing all the while, in black and white, the strange nomads who crossed his path, and who from sheer aston- ishment at his foolhardiness refrained from molesting him. But the grand opportunity came in 1867. Russia was fitting out an expedition against the Central Asian Khanats, and General Kaufmann, the commander-in-chief, invited our hero to acompany him as ‘‘art volun- teer.’’ He was to use his brush instead of a musket, and his sketch-book was to be his only target. The situation suited Verest- chagin precisely, and to the tune of fifes and drums he started from Orenburg, with the general's personal staff, on the great march southward. This campaign proved to be a huge rattling of dry bones. The ancient cities and holy shrines of Central Asia, one after the other, fell into Kaufmann’s hands. Even Samarcand, the great capital of Ti- mur’s Tartar Empire, opened its gates to the conquerer. This last desecration was more than the Asiatics could suffer, and when the bulk of the Russian army had departed they swooped down on its battlemented walls, twenty thousand strong, breathing death and destruction on the small garrison of five hundred men, including no less a personage than the ‘‘art volunteer’’ himself. In his recently published memoirs Verestchagin depicts, with graphic pen, the episodes of this terrible struggle, which lasted eight days and nights, and bears comparison for the valor displayed on both sides with the mem- orable siege of Lucknow. The boom of cannon and smell of powder seem to have effected a metamorphosis in the artist, and forgetting paints and canvas he fought in the front ranks of the defenders, a revolver in each hand. He has since illustrated the incidents of the defense on several striking canvases in which the characteristics of the Russian soldiers are photographically portrayed. The painter's own valor on this occasion earned for him the St. George’s cross. Not content with these first experiences, he accompanied a second Central Asian ex- pedition, and again escaped without a scratch. Early in the seventies, at last, he

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A RUSSIAN APOSTLE OF ART. THE WINDOW OF SELIM SHISTI’'S MONUMENT. settled down in Munich, and for the next three years devoted his time to throwing on to canvas the impressions of the preceding lecade. At the end of that period the passion for travel seized him anew, and together with his young wife he set off for British India. We will speak of the artistic results Suffice it to say of this journey further on. that here, as elsewhere, his star reserved for him adventures usually denied to ordinary Learning that the Tibetan frontier lands were least known to Europeans, he decided to extend his explorations thither. a mountain towering twenty- mortals. Kanchinga,

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A RUSSIAN APOSTLE OF ART. VERESTCHAGIN’S STUDIO. eight thousand feet above the sea level, tempted him. ‘‘Kanchinga, in January, covered with ice and snow, who would at- tempt to scale it?’’ said the astounded Britishers at Darjeeling. ‘‘I will,’’ replied Verestchagin. Hewished to study effects of light and shade on the mountain’s summit, the snow and clouds, and the vegetation, such as there was. So this Columbus of art, accompanied by his wife and several coolies, began the awful ascent. The cold was in- tense, and soon their attendants began to fall off, unable to endure it. Before long but one man, he who carried the color-box, remained. They were wading in the snow to the waist, shelter there was none, and the fatigue be- gan to tell on the artist’s iron nerves. The trio halted, and the coolie was sent back for assistance while Verestchagin and his wife cowered over a small fire which they had made with great difficulty. The falling snow extinguished it, however, and for twenty-four hours they fought for life with- out food or warmth. As a last desperate effort Verestchagin started down the moun- tain for succor, leaving his wife exhausted in the snow. Fortunately he met the coolie returning with food, fuel, and several com- panions, who carried the almost frozen man back, and after some exertion succeeded in reviving both him and his spouse. In spite of the hardships he had undergone, Verest- chagin persisted in remaining on the spot several hours to make a series of sketches from which he has since painted the wonder- ful mountain scenes familiar to those who have visited his exhibition at the American Art Association’s rooms in New York city. Upon his return to Europe, after a pro- longed stay in Hindostan, Verestchagin’s enthusiasm was aroused by Russia’s decla- ration of war against Turkey. Not that he loved war—much to the contrary—but that here at last was a great national subject which would test his capabilities to their utmost. He once more followed the army as an ‘‘art volunteer,’’ and was often seen in the thickest of the fight. Turkish monitors were trying to hinder the passage of the Danube by the invading army. The Rus- sians brought over torpedo boats from Odessa and blew up the enemy’s craft, one after the other. Verestchagin obtained permission to take part in oneof these enterprises, but this time the Turks were prepared for the attack, and Russia came near losing her greatest

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mee oy THE KREML.

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316 artist. A musket ball imbedded itself in his leg, and only weeks of medical care restored his former vigor and permitted him to be present at the closing operations of the war. Verestchagin’s last journey of importance was undertaken four years ago, when he visited Palestine and gathered the material for perhaps the most interesting works of his life. His paintings of religious subjects have, at all events, aroused more discussion than all the rest put together. With the same characteristic ardor and tireless energy that marked his previous explorations, he delved deep into the artistic treasures of the Holy Land. Months and months were passed amidst the crumbling ruins and among the pilgrims of all nationalities, until he had secured data, not simply for the crea- tion of his subsequent masterpieces, but also to support his religious and artistic con- victions. That the leading merit of a painter with so vast a range of experience behind him as Verestchagin should be strong individuality need occasion no surprise. The student who could pass his vacations risking his very life in search of new worlds to conquer must necessarily eschew the beaten track in all things artistic—in methods as well as in choice of subjects. I had the good fortune to see his Central Asian pictures some years ago, and their remembrance is still present tomy mind. What character, what strength, what virility in every stroke of the brush ! His dervishes are strangers to us, but we feel that they are living, breathing men, transplanted from the heart of Asia. His Turcoman mosques, with their extraordinary lattice work and arabesques, are reproduced with photographic preciseness, but also with a perfection of technique and poetic feeling, It has been remarked that his Central Asian war scenes are his only works expressing movement. Ever since that first expedition he has dealt mainly with inert nature. Why this should be is not very clear, for his ‘* Before the Attack,’’ ‘‘ After the Attack,”’ and ‘‘ Forming a Square,’’ all episodes of the siege of Samarcand, are, as far as vim and action go, fully worthy of a De Neuville. Critics have disapproved of the strong con- trasts of light and shade peculiar to these pictures, forgetting that such effects are natural in countries overwhelmed by the sun’s rays. So also have his Central Asian A RUSSIAN APOSTLE OF ART. lakes, with their intense blue, aroused com- ment from those acquainted only with the cold gray or greenish hues of northern waters. Even in the days when but fresh from Gerome’s studio, Verestchagin appears to have neglected the rules of composition as taught in the French capital. Starting on the principle that Nature only occasion- ally composes, he presented her in all her ruggedness, going at times as far as to leave in uncertainty what she had left undefined. This, perhaps, has been the most serious reproach made against him, at least the one on which most artists have agreed. The great charm of all of Verestchagin's work will ever lie in its happy combination of realism and poetry. His Indian paintings are brilliant examples in this respect. Our interest in them increases when we learn of the details of his stay in the great country of the Moguls. His presence there apparently annoyed the British officials. That tall, bearded Russian, who avoided European so- ciety, to move around among the Hindoos of all castes must certainly be a Russian spy. His intimacy with the down-trodden race, his visits to their mosques and private dwellings, caused the government to keep a sharp eye on him, but to no avail. Verestchagin was only acquiring the wealth of light, color, and character afterwards so gloriously utilized. He was not thinking of international pol- itics. All his great Indian scenes, he told me, were painted from finely finished oil sketches made on the spot, some of which involved days and days of hard labor. The window of Selim Shista’s monument, perhaps the best specimen of architectural work in the collection exhibited in New York, was, how- ever, painted entirely from nature. To ob- tain the desired texture in the clothing of the Hindoos seated on the window ledge, the artist splashed the white pigment on to the canvas in large flakes, and afterwards pared off the surface with a palette knife. From a distance the effect is extraordinarily true. The great canvas representing the Prince of Wales entering Jeypore was completed in Moscow, all the preliminary material having been obtained on the scene of the affair. The Prince was sufficiently pleased with the paint- ing to suggest its purchase by the Queen, Sir Frederick Leighton, President of the Royal Academy, however, put a damper on

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’ ETN OD BFS ry ‘ wr, Sf * fe EXECUTION OF NIHILISTS

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THE CONQUERED, the project, and this handsome, though somewhat gaudy picture, found its way to New York with the rest of the collection. Superior to it, as a work of art, is the general view of Mount Kachinga, the result of the artist’s terrible experience related above. This is an imposing canvas, twenty by fif- teen feet, which, for beauty of color, diversity of effects, and strong atmospheric qualities, constitutes a revelation in itself. Rarely, if ever, has it been the lot of any artist to attain the point of vantage Verestchagin’s courage secured for him on that particular occasion and rarely, if ever, has the opportunity been so brilliantly utilized. As if to ‘‘ get even”’ with the over-officious Anglo-Indian officials, Verestchagin has also painted‘a canvas en- titled ‘‘ Blowing from Guns in India,’ in which the executioners are British soldiers and the victims Hindoo insurgents. The painting gave rise to much adversecriticism, and, in fact, to a general denial on the part of the English authorities that blowing from guns had ever been resorted to excepting in a few isolated cases. A fitting pendant to this picture is his ‘‘ Execution of the Nihil- ists,’ a dramatic subject, dramatically handled, as may be inferred from the accom- panying cut. To what extent the artist’s realism in art could reach did not really become apparent until the Russo-Turkish war. Many another man in his place would have hailed the event as a stepping-stone to high favors—a means of attaining to the dignity of imperial court painter with all its attendant advan- tagesandemoluments. Not so Verestchagin. His guiding stars had hitherto been Truth and Nature, and he did not propose to deviate one inch from the ideal. I once asked him whether it was true, as often stated, that his object in depicting the horrors of war had been to awaken a sentiment of opposition to that bloody institution. He replied that such was not precisely the case.. His idea had never been to pose as a reformer. He had merely decided to paint subjects that interested him, and to paint them as he saw them. If they pointed a moral, it was due to the truthfulness of his impressions. It is in this particular that he differs so greatly from the average modern French battle painter, who strives mainly to give us theatrical poses and picturesque ensembies Verestchagin happened to see the Czar sit- ting comfortably on a knoll at a safe distance from the Plevna redoubts, under whose fire eighteen thousand Russians were being

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A RUSSIAN APOSTLE OF ART. ‘he dtc eee THE SPY. down. The scene impressed itself the painter, and he transferred it to He earned the Czar’s displeasure, igs and emperors are usually portrayed oes, cantering in the front ranks of victorious hosts, the sword in one ind the other hand pointed toward Yet the picture contains more bit- ny and teaches a sterner lesson than ps anything ever written on the subject In another painting, entitled ‘‘ After the Battle,’’ the unfortunate of the wounded and dying is rendered with a mas- ter hand. No attempt is made at composi- tion. We come upon the scene as were it in real life. Maimed, bleeding, suffering mor- tals are lying indiscriminately around in front of a row of hospital tents. figure is a picture by itself, however, a frag- ment snatched from nature. Still another painting is so replete with pathos and still condition Every

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A RUSSIAN APOSTLE OF ART, THE EMPEROR ALEXANDER II. BEFORE PLEVNA. so terrible in its realism, that full-grown men have been known to turn away from it with blanched and saddened faces. It is called ‘*The Conquered,’’ and represents the field of battle of Telisch, in Bulgaria, strewn with the mutilated Russian dead. Inthe one cor- ner of the canvas stands the Russian priest, with tear-dimmed eyes, swinging his censor to and fro, while beside him the acolyte in- tones the death chant with mournful mien. The enemy has stripped the dead of their belongings, and their blanched forms almost blend with the heather and faded shrubbery, while the lowering heavens form a harmo- nious background to the scene of desolation and woe. The authenticity of the event itself has often been questioned. At Buda Pesth, the Turkish envoy openly declared the picture a slander on his nation, inasmuch as the dead were pictured with severed heads. Verestchagin had been present on the occa- sion, and so he openly met his detractors with a written statement, signed by the very priest who had performed the last religious rites. High military officials seem to have taken a special aversion to these war scenes, and one of them—a Prussian officer of dis- tinction—actually advised the Czar to have them all burned. Fortunately for the world of art, his pious counsel was not followed. Verestchagin’s war pictures form only one phase of his progress toward an ideal in His religious works are another It is only fair to relation to this realism. step in the same direction. quote his own words in momentous subject. ‘While in all other regions of intellectual life,’’ says he, ‘‘ it is admitted that new ideas arise, and with these the means of realizing and perfecting them, yet, in art, especially in sculpture and painting, and to a degree also in music, the old phrase still asserts itself—‘ The great masters have done thus, and therefore miust we also do the same.’ In the handling of every subject an advance in thought may be remarked. Our view of the world is far from being what it was a few centuries ago; our handiwork itself, in its execution, has changed and improved. Under such circumstances one would think that in the region of art—for instance in painting—either a new idea or a more truth- ful and natural style might be possible; but no! one is always met by the sameassertion —that, ‘ Not only in the perfect construction of their pictures, but also in the sublimity of conception, the old masters stand on an unapproachable height, and that we can only strive after them.’ ‘‘In the art of painting, this excessive veneration and imitation show themselves to a certain degree in representations of the nude, and in portraits, for both these branch- es of art reached a high stage of development among the old masters. But, even here, we are struck by the onesidedness in the execu- tion—the effect is always one and the same : a very bright light on a very dark and some- times black ground—an effect often start- ling, but artificially produced, unnatural, and untrue. ‘*In the so-called religious painting,’’ he says, ‘‘imitation of the old masters is near- ly as great as in portraits. But this is fully explained by the gradual disappearance of religious perception, and the consequent preference for an old ideal, rather than the creation of a new one without the strong faith of olden times. ‘‘ Nevertheless the new school finds it

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A RUSSIAN APOSTLE OF ART. THE MAN-EATER, only possibie, but even necessary, to chairs and stools, and not substances whose inherited ideas, though hallowed by physical condition is well known to us. nd custom, when they evidently con- Second: the custom of representing Christ the artistic eye and feeling of our andthe holy men and women as a Roman First : the mannerof placing God and patrician surrounded by his slaves. Third: Saints on clouds, as though these were the representation of God in the style of our

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A RUSSIAN APOSTLE OF ART. MH al alpth / JESUS BY LAKE GALILEE. kings, in robes of state, seated on a throne of gold, silver, and precious stones, with a crown on his head and a scepter in his hand, all suspended in clouds. Fourth: the rep- resentation of the Virgin Mary in the costly robe of a lady of high. rank, covered with jewels. Possibly religious painting will not now rise to a second renaissance, but it may nevertheless be assumed that the advance in technical knowledge may even be useful in Church paintings, if the painter, in his representation of the Deity and the Saints in their manifestation in heaven or upon earth would replace the dim, poor, and mo- notonous light of the studio by a brilliant clear, sunny atmosphere, and delicate, trans- parent, airy shadows. ‘‘In like manner we can not suppose that another short-coming in the artistic concep- tion of such masters could have escaped their acuteness. For instance, in the repre- sentations of the Apostles, whose personali- ties are so clear and convincing in the Gospels, we recognize in their forms, faces, and attitudes— particularly in Titian’s pic- tures—not modest, humble fishermen, but fine Italian models of athletic appearance. This error was evidently acknowledged even then by the artists themselves, with their usual tact and good sense ; and Rembrandt went so far as to introduce into his religious subjects Dutch market-figures. But there is still a long stride from this to the true rendering of the types and costumes recog- nized at the present day as indispensa- ble.”’ Verestchagin’s pictures of the Holy Land certainly are true tohis precepts. They cer- tainly lack neither light nor atmosphere. His sandy hillocks and deep blue lakes are scorched with an Oriental sun that creates lights and shadows in startling contrast. Americans who have visited the banks of the Mediterranean will be strongly reminded of these peculiar atmospheric effects, un- known touschildren of the North. But the realism of the painter’s work lies mainiy in his treatment of the biblical personages hallowed by legend and pictured by conven- tion. His ‘‘Jesus in the Desert’’ is the typical sandy bearded Oriental Jew with the disheveled hair and careless mien of a

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A RUSSIAN APOSTLE OF ART. = WAILING PLACE OF THE JEWS AT SOLOMON’'S WALL. dreamer and enthusiast. The same figure though more strongly marked appears in the painting entitled ‘‘ The Holy Family”’ a cut of which was published in the Cosmo- POLITAN Christmas number in an article on ‘‘ National types of Christ.’’ This work together with the painting of the resurrec- tion of Christ were the two subjects that created the storm of indignation among the devout Catholics of Vienna, two years ago. It was bad enough, they thought, to give the Saviour Semitic features and to show himin the act of crawling out of his tomb as were he an earth rat ; but to place him in company with brothers and sisters, was, they considered, a direct attack on the theory of Immaculate Conception. Cardi- nal Ganglbaur issued a pastoral against the exhibition, and only the painter’s per- sonal assurance that his object had never been to upturn religious beliefs of any nature, that he had merely intended to paint things as he saw and understood them, somewhat quieted the clergy and their flocks. According to his own account, the paint- er’s studies and explorations in the Holy Land were of a most painstaking kind. ‘‘I literally ransacked the place from top to bot- tom,’’ he told me. He had made up his mind to portray Christ as nearly as possible in accordance with historical fact, based on conscientious research. The Holy Writ, sup ported by other contemporaneous writings, justified him in placing brothers and sisters by the Saviour’s side. A study of Oriental tombs—caverns with a single hole gs a means of egress—justified him in placing the resurrected Christ in the crouching atti- tude at which so many good people took umbrage. He was greatly aided in his studies by the Jewish rabbis and Russian monks from whom he gathered much inter- esting and authenticdata. Hislarge canvas of the crucifixion contains numerous evi- dences of this. The scene is laid directly under the walls of Jerusalem, and not at some distance away, as is usual in other paintings. It appears that at the time of Verestchagin’s stay in the Holy City, the Russian Archi- mandrite Antonin discovered, on the road leading to Golgotha, ruins of the ancient basilica of the Emperor Constantine, a structure known to have been erected

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A RUSSIAN APOSTLE OF ART. on the site of the cross. Not a hun- dred yards from here, traces of an ancient city gate were afterward found, showing, almost beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the place of execution had been situated within a stone’s throw of the ramparts. The costumes in this great painting are also strictly historical ; some of them exist to the present day among the orthodox Jews, others are based on historical records, an- cient carvings, etc. People as clannish as these Palestine Hebrews seldom change their mode of life, their habits or general appear- ance, in the march of ages ; and the painter felt pretty safe in taking as models the pil- grims whom he encountered on the ancient Roman road to Jericho. ‘‘Solomon’s Wall,’ a painting reproduced in this article is one of the gems of the Palestine collection, in- deed of the artist’s entire work. It ischarm- ing in drawing, color, and feeling. In this painting, like in many others, the artist has shown his love for the abrupt perspective, the majority of his architectural pieces run- ning into angles more or less sharp. No unbiased person who has digested the painter’s art theories will, after viewing the Palestine series, be backward in acknowl- edging that he has made at least an honest effort to live up tothem. The majority will even agree that this effort has been eminently successful. His exhibition, has set our artists thinking. It has shown them that convention is not everything in art; that true talent, and originality, can never thrive when cooped within the narrow limits of fashion or tradition. When he has told them that their artistic energies should be expended in this country instead of abroad, that they should seek inspiration from American life, and nature, they have listened respectfully ; and some, no doubt, have taken the lesson to heart. I cannot conclude this sketch more appro- priately than by presenting to the reader probably the last sentiments committed to paper by this great though eccentric genius before his departure for Europe. We were discussing ‘‘ Robert Elsmere ’’ one day and in the course of the conversation he expressed views on the subject ofreligion, which struck meas worthy of preservation. The follow- ing is from his own manuscript in English, a language which he has acquired with a tapidity unusual even for a Russian. 23 325 ‘*T have come to the conclusion that there are very few real Christians in the world. ' The old Jewish law, ‘eye for eye and tooth for tooth,’ everywhere holds the day. The most popular statesmen are those who apply it in its strictest sense, and in private life the successful career of the ‘well-inten- tioned’ and the sober-minded is also due to its observance. The number of those who return good for evil, and bless those that curse them, is so very small that it is not worth while mentioning them. ‘* Are we then to believe that Christ’s relig- ion has had but little influence on the manner of life, character, and mental development of men? Not at all; its influence has been immense, and for a long time to come will still be immense over all those who can not do without threats and intimidation and punishments, or a voice speaking to them from on high. On the other hand, the present religion has lost much of its influence with those who stand in no need either of miracles or revealed words, who look for- ward neither to future rewards nor to future punishments. Faith in God, the terrible judge, is shaken ; faith in one’s self and in one’s own conscience is not yet grown firm. Such being the state of things, is it to be wondered at if human society is ruled by its own animal passions, and often suffers from the influence of atavism? Probably this must continue so until the day comes when a new life-giving idea takes root in the civilized world, appealing straight to the minds of men. From where is this appeal to come? Are we to look for a new revelation, or will the practical experience of life work out a higher code of social and moral principles, applicable to all? ‘‘ Whatever is in store for us, be it a newly- revealed word or an entirely human code for social regeneration, we may be sure that the Christian religion in its pure primitive form and the religion of Auguste Comte will not remain dormant. ‘‘T find that nothing is so ridiculous as the passion for imposing our ideas, habits, and still worse our religious views on others, and that not only on people whose minds are totally unprepared for their reception, but even on people over whom they may have an obviously injurious effect. I can more or less understand a Christian missionary try-

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A RUSSIAN APOSTLE OF ART. ing to convert a Chinese domiciled in New York, but to spend a mass of money and energy on turning to Christianity the Arabs of the desert is simply unjust. ‘‘The Moslem religion adapts itself to the every-day wants of life, and obliges the Arab, under pain of divine punishment, to observe certain elementary hygienic rules, without which the spread of disease and even, in course of time, the degeneration of the race would be inevitable in such aclimate. The True-Believer is ordered, in the name of God, to wash himself three times a day. In the name of God, he is ordered to drink no wine and eat no pork, for the consumption of wine and pork in his sandy deserts will bring on all manner of sickness. An Arab converted to Christianity first and foremost leaves off his three daily ablutions and drinks wine. Often, on my inquiry as to the well-being of some native who was known to me, have I received the reply : ‘Oh, he’s aruined man! He has turned Christian and drinks !’ invariably expresses his strong feeling of disgust by spitting energetically on’ the ground. ‘*When a reverend English missionary, Mr. P., in one of his discourses to the Buddhist lamahs whom he was endeavoring to con- vert, made use of the words: ‘ your gods,’ they politely begged to inform him that they had only one God, and that what he called ‘their gods’ were only different forms and manifestations of one and the same divine power. When he spoke of the sublimity of the Christian idea, of the unity of the God- head, and made a disparaging comparison between it and their own pagan ideas, they answered: ‘It is you who are the pagans, you have three ‘Gods !’ and when the cler- gyman tried to explain in his turn how the three persons of the Trinity are all one God, they answered as Buddhists, Mahometans After which words the speaker _ and Jews always do answer: ‘It is you who are pagans, for you have three Gods !’ ‘‘It is an easy matter to proclaim oneself the possessor and guardian of Truth, but it is hard to persuade others of this. ‘‘Surely it is a thing to be wondered at, that up to the present day, the art of slaying our fellow-men interests, and often even absorbs the attention of the most intelligent part of our society. ‘In the interval of peace between two wars, men certainly do take an interest in dis- coveries of an abstract and scientific charac- ter, or in events and novelties in the world of art ; but—let the smell of gunpowder once get into the air,—the question of manslaugh- ter throws everything else into the back- ground, and people willingly throw up their own special professions for the honor of ap- pearing in person in the fray. Society cares then for nothing but news from the battle- field, news of the wounded and slain. By- the-bye, I here note down a sad and silly little fact, noticed during the war,—the more society sympathizes with the wounded, the less interest does it take in the sick. All the enthusiasm is for the former, and but little care or nursing is voluntarily bestowed on the latter. A sanitary train, for instance, enters the station ; a crowd is there to meet it, solemn deputations, and ladies with flowers for wounded heroes press eagerly forward. ‘How many wounded? In what battle were they?’ The sanitary officer answers : ‘« “These are not the wounded ; these are the sick from the fever wards.’ On which the enthusiasm cools down, and the greater part of those who had arranged this trium- phal meeting, get into their carriages, and drive home. ‘* How such and many other things can be made to agree with the spirit of Christianity is inconceivable.’

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WU CHIH TIEN, THE CELESTIAL EMPRESS.

A CHINESE HISTORICAL NOVEL.

TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL BY WONG CHING Foo. CHAPTER I.

TUNG r <n , KO SUNG.

) Dh, UNG KO SUNG* was the fourth emperor of the great Tong dynasty. When he was twenty and four years of age he ascended the throne of the Middle Flowery Kingdom ; and the fame of his fathers and the story of his empire’s splendor brought travelers from Japan and Corea, and from Anam, Siam, and Burmah, and from the tea island of Formosa, and from the plains and moun- tains of Manchooria, whence come the swift- est horses and the spearmen of greatest skill. And the capital of the Middle Flowery Kingdom was the most wondrous city of Chung Ang. Herein a palace of such grand- eur as the sun saw not in all the other lands beneath, the emperor dwelt with his four wives—all the daughters of great kings—and all were as beautiful as the children of Kish, the flower god. A million bowmen stood ready to face death at the word of the emperor, but their quivers remained full and their swords slept SS in their sheaths, for Peace was in all the — realm. And Plenty poured out her treasures from hill and field and sea; and the workmen wrought with song and laughter, for there was happiness in their homes; and Labor was rewarded, and Want and Crime fled from the land. One of Tung Ko Sung’s wives came from the East and another from the West, and one from the North and the fourth from the South; and, according to the custom of his fathers, his chief empress was she who came from the home of light in the East. But Tung Ko Sung, the envied and the worshiped, was not happy; and when the people saw the cloud on his brow, they whispered, one to the other: ‘‘The heart of our ruler is darkened because none of his wives has brought him an heir ; and he sorrows to think that with him will end the dynasty of the Tongs.”’ The wise men, who read the future in the stars, consulted the heavens each night, and they caused it to be told throughout all the land that in due time an heir should be born, who in beauty and glory would excel all who had gone before, and under whom the empire would extend till all the kingdoms round about, for love of his goodness and greatness, would pay him tribute. : And this promise came to the ears of the mighty counselors who stood near to the throne, and they knelt before their master and told him what the wise men said, but he shook his head and made answer :

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* Tung Ko Sung reigned about 140 B.C.

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328 ‘‘My fathers have angered the gods, and they visit their wrath upon me, even as has been told by Po Foo Chee in the book of Good and Evil; therefore must we offer sacrifice in every temple, and on every altar the sacred fires must burn night and day and go not out till the prayers of the empire be granted.”’ And even as Tung Ko Sung commanded, so was it done in every temple and in every pagoda, in every palace and hut of the Middle Flowery Kingdom. CHAPTER II. THE BEAUTEOUS WU CHIH TIEN. WITHIN two hours’ travel of the City of Chung Ang, and on the side of the tree-clad Neko San Mountain, there was a famous convent, in which lived five hundred maid- ens, who vowed their lives to singleness and to the doing of good; and when men passed by the convent, they uncovered their heads and looked not up, that they might not see that for which it would be sin for the heart to yearn. It was the custom of the emperors of the Middle Flowery Kingdom, from the earliest recorded times, to visit once each year the convent in the Neko San Mountains, and to kneel before the altars, and to lay thereon rich offerings. After the manner of his fathers, Tung Ko Sung paid hisvisit to the Daughters of Light on the fifteenth day of the eighth moon. For this last visit great preparations were made, for he wanted to appease the gods; and so he worshiped and fasted for three days before the shrine of Nee Goo Nion Neon, the goddess of virtue. When the morning came, the emperor with all the counselors of state, and a hundred handsome youths to bear his sedan, set forth for the mountain, but there went not with them any armed men nor any players of musical instruments. The road to the convent was called the Path of Peace and Silence; for though banked with stately trees, the birds sang not in the branches ; and though bordered with flowers, no hum of bee disturbed the odor- ous air. And when the emperor was borne through the white gate, called Purity, set in the heart- shaped wall that surrounded the convent, WU CHIH TIEN, THE CELESTIAL EMPRESS. there came to his ears the sound of many sweet voices blending in a song of welcome ; and looking up he saw on either hand the five hundred nuns of Neko San. Not the daughters of the kings at Chung Ang, were so beautiful as these. Their fans fluttered like the glad beating of song bird’s wings ; like pearls in caskets of red jade were their teeth ; and the glory of the stars, in the season when birds are mat- ing, was dimmed before the wondrous beauty of their eyes. And the emperor knelt before the flam- ing altar and laid his offerings at its foot; and when he had done this, he looked up, and with much joy he felt that the shadow had left his heart and that his prayer would be answered, for his eyes rested on the glow- ing face of the young priestess, Wu Chih Tien. Where all were fair to gaze on, she was fairest; and she shone bright among her sisters like the full spring moon among the stars. And the heart of Tung Ko Sung was lifted up, like the heart of a sleeper in a vis- ion of bliss. Wherever he looked the beau- teous Wu Chih Tien met and filled his eyes. But though she saw she had found favor in the sight of her master she raised not her eyes, but stood before him with lips parted and bowed head, like the golden lily when it droops before the ardent gaze of the sun. At length the emperor returned to Chung Ang, and the people met him with music at the gates; but he saw them not, neither did he hear them, for he was thinking of Wu Chih Tien. CHAPTER III. THE EMPEROR ISSUES A DECREE. THE day following his visit to the Neko San Mountains the emperor remained in his chamber, refusing food and buried in deep thought. And the doctors came and examined him, and after much consultation they said one to the other: ‘‘ It is his heart.” Tung Ko Sung heard that which they said, and he cried out : ‘* Ting hao. It sounds well. It is my heart that troubles me ; now ye are wise men, tell me what can drive the sweet pain away.”’ And they spoke of pills and powders, of

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WU CHIH TIEN, THE CELESTIAL EMPRESS. 329 poultices and draughts; but the emperor bade them begone, saying : ‘‘He who can cure himself needs not a doctor.”’ Thereupon he issued a decree and caused the same to be posted up at the palace gates and to be read in all the temples, and this decree annulled the sacred vows of the beau- tiful Wu Chih Tien. Now when the father of Wu Chih Tien a / learned what the emperor had done, and that +} his daughter had been brought to the harem at Chung Ang, he hastened thither, in great grief, and threw himself on his face at the foot of the throne. And Tung Ko Sung called out to him : ‘‘Who is he, and what brings him here?”’ And the old man raised not his eyes, but groaned : ‘Thy slave is the unhappy father of Wu Chih Tien.” ‘“‘And is he unhappy because the emperor has looked with favor on his daughter and made her his? ’’ asked the emperor with anger. ‘“Nay, my great master,’’ said the old man, ‘*that thy ugly servant, my daughter, is now thy wife rejoiceth my heart ; and her father would be the happiest wretch in thy empire were it not for his vow.”’ ‘* What is this vow?’’ asked Tung Ko Sung. ‘*May it please thee, oh mighty master,’’ said the old man, ‘‘two years since my only son was taken sick, and when it seemed that he must die, I made a vow to the gods that if they saved my son, I would dedicate the life of my daughter to their service. Then he got well and waxed strong, and I sent Wu Chih Tien to the Neko San convent, even as I had promised.”’ Then the emperor lifted him up and said: ‘*Be not alarmed, for I will make offerings to appease the anger of the gods, and I will send the mothers of all my wives to take the placeof Wu Chih Tien, at Neko San. And as for thee, I shall make thee chief of my pal- ace, and hereafter thou canst wear a peacock’s feather in thy cap.”’ And when the father of Wu Chih =Tien heard this he was filled with a great joy, for he had j WEN aay | THE EMPEROR PRAYS FOR AN HEIR.

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330 been a poor man, and he knew that the chief of the palace could possess himself of much coin and many honors. So Wu Chih Tien was installed in the palace at Chung Ang, and she became the favorite of Tung Ko Sung ; but she was liked notby the four empresses. To this she gave no heed, but at once began to plan plans and to dream dreams. CHAPTER IV. THE CRAFTINESS OF WU CHIH TIEN. In the convent at Neko San, Wu Chih Tien was the mildest and most beautiful of all; but when she. found her vows an- nulled, and that she was the favorite of the emperor, then ambition entered her heart and all her nature became changed. She was skilled in music, and the songs of the poets and the learning of all the books were on her lips, so that the wisest were charmed and confounded when they heard her speak; but to her master she took care to seem ever as a sweet and guileless child. And as the days flew by the emperor for- sook all his wives save Wu Chih Tien, whereat the great counselors of state shook their heads, and whispered one to the other: ‘‘There is danger to the Middle Flowery Kingdom, but our master sees it not.”’ In due time, Wu Chih Tien bore the em- peror a son; then his heart was full of joy, and throughout all the land there were seven days of rejoicing, for the people now believed that the gods had answered their prayers and that the dynasty of the Tungs was not to end with this reign. The name of the chief empress, she who came from the land of light in the East, was Wong Tai Ho. She was the daughter of a king, and her husband had loved her; but now her heart saddened with neglect, yet she hid her sorrow and the world knew not her grief. By the laws of the Middle Flowery King- dom the children of the younger wives belonged to the chief empress, and she was known as ‘‘the legal mother,’’ to distinguish her from the natural mother. Against this, Wu Chih Tien rebelled in her heart; but she kept her own counsel, and always received the empress with an abject kow tow,* as if she honored and loved her. WU CHIH TIEN, THE CELESTIAL EMPRESS. The empress, Wong Tai Ho, was very fond of children, and she rejoiced to think that even though this little one were not her own, now she could bear the title of ‘‘ Tai Ho,”’ or royal mother, which she so much desired. Every evening, and always one hour before the sun set, the empress would go to the place where the child was, and she would sit and hold it in her arms; and its cooing was music to her ears, so that at length she came to feel that she was the child’s true mother. Wu Chih Tien saw all this with increasing anger, till at length she came to hate the empress even more than she loved her own child. Day by day she wove the net of her influ- ence about the emperor, and the great coun- selors saw with alarm that their master always consulted with his favorite youngest wife before deciding on any public matter, and in their hearts they wished she had remained a priestess at Neko San. CHAPTER V. WHEREIN IT IS SHOWN THAT A WOMAN'S HATE IS STRONGER THAN A MOTHER’S LOVE. EVEN greater than his love for his empire, and for all the rest of the world, was the love of Tung Ko Sung for his infant son, and this love Wu Chih Tien used to ruin those whom she thought her rivals. One day, just before the visit of the em- press, Wu Chih Tien ordered all the servants to leave the chamber in which the child lay. Then she took from her breast a tiny golden vial and waited, bending over the cradle. And when the beating of drums announced the approach of Wong Tai Ho, the cruel mother opened the lips of the helpless child, and she poured into its mouth, from the golden vial, seven drops, that were like liquid fire; then she stole silently away and hid behind a curtain, from which she could watch the working of her plot. Presently the empress came in, and finding the child crying, as if in great pain, she took it up in her arms, and with kind words and fond kisses she sought to soothe it. *The kow tow is the salutation of an inferior toa superior, and is performed by kneeling and touching the forehead to the ground.

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WU CHIH TIEN, THE CELESTIAL EMPRESS. But she had not held the child many min- ates when it stretched out and lay dead in her arms. And when the empress saw that the little one was dead, she sent up a cry of agony that rang through the palace, and then Wu Chih Tien and her attendants came running in. ‘‘You have murdered my child! you have murdered the son of the emperor!’’ This Wu Chih Tien cried aloud, and she wrung her hands and would have torn the empress into pieces had not the servants come between them. Wong Tai Ho could not reply, but sat frozen with terror, still holding the dead child in her arms. For crime is ever bold in asserting its innocence, but innocence ac- cused sits dumb and covered with confusion. Then Wu Chih Tien flew to the emperor, and throwing herself at his feet, she cried out: ‘Vengeance! Vengeance against thecruel woman who has this day slain the son of Tung Ko Sung, and the heir to his throne !”’ ‘‘ Who has done this thing ?’’ shouted the emperor, when he had come to the chamber in which the dead child lay. The empress moaned, but did not dare to look up, nor could she make reply till Wu Chih Tien pointed to her, and said: ‘‘ Behold the jealous murderess !”’ Then the spirit returned to the’ breast of the empress and unbound her lips, and she raised her hands and said : ‘‘T call the gods to witness that I am inno- cent of this crime!”’ But the emperor believed her not, for he said : ‘‘ Those who murder will not stop for a lie to hide it. Away with her to the Lun Goon prison, for Wong Tai Ho is no longer a wife of the emperor! ”’ And that night the empress was cast into the darkest dungeon of the Lun Goon prison, and two slaves were sent to guard her. CHAPTER VI. WU CHIH TIEN GAINS THE THRONE. In all the Middle Flowery Kingdom, Wong Tai Ho was loved not less than the emperor himself: so, when it became known that she was cast into prison, the people were much 331 distressed, and they refused to believe that she was guilty of the murder with which Wu Chih Tien had charged her. Now the commander of all the armies in Northern China was General Wong,* the brother of the unhappy empress; and when he heard that his sister was in the Lun Goon prison, he ordered the swiftest horses, and rode through the light and through the darkness to Chung Ang. Through her spies Wu Chih Tien learned of the coming of General Wong, and fearing his power, she hastened to the emperor and fell weeping at his feet, nor would she rise nor cease her moaning until he had prom- ised to grant her request. The emperor lifted her in his arms and said, as he looked into the beautiful face : ‘*The death of our son binds me closer to thee ; fear not to test my love.’’ ‘‘T am but thy youngest wife,’’ whispered Wu Chih Tien, and she clung to him as if fearing he might cast her off. ‘‘I am but thy youngest wife, oh my master ; Iam weak and my kinsmen are without power, and behind them stand no soldiers to do their bidding.”’ ‘Say but the word,”’ said the emperor, ‘‘and every soldier in the Middle Flowery King- dom shall be placed under thy command, and they will rush to death at thy bidding.’’ ‘‘Ah,”’ she cried, and she clung the more fondly with her rounded arms about his neck, ‘‘I am but a weak woman, strong in nothing but my love for thee. But General Wong has come to Chung Ang, breathing vengeance against me because his sister did kill my child, and now I fear to leave the pro- tecting shadow of my master lest this fierce soldier will slay me.’’ When the emperor heard this, anger burned in his eyes, for until now he heard not of the coming of General Wong. Forthwith he summoned the chief of the palace, and when the man had come in he said : ‘You will find in Chung Ang, General Wong, the commander of my northern armies, and you will place him in the Lun Goon prison and there keep him till to- morrow’s sun rises.”’ ‘‘It shall be as my master commands,’’ said the chief of the palace, about to rise. * The Chinese always place the family name first and the “ given’ name last.

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332 But the emperor spoke on as if he had not heard him : ‘‘And when to-morrow’s sun rises, let the light fall on the headless body of General Wong. Fail not in this or your own head shall fall.’’ So the chief of the palace went out, and finding General Wong, he bound him and cast him into the Lun Goon prison; and when the light of another day came to Chung Ang the great soldier was taken into the hall of execution and his head was severed from his body, even as the emperor had commanded. CHAPTER VII. THE FATE OF WONG TAI HO. Srx months after the death of her infant, Wu Chih Tien was made the chief empress, and when the people learned this they said in hushed voices : ‘She will soon be the sole empress.”’ When Wong Tai Ho was cast into prison it was not known to any one but herself that she was about to give birth to a royal child. It had been her fond hope to surprise the emperor when the time should come; but now she feared to make known her condition, for she dreaded the power of Wu Chih Tien. With much cunning, Wu Chih Tien sur- rounded herself with spies and young men sworn to serve her, and one evening, as she was in her private hall with some of these, a slave in the garb of an attendant at the Lun Goon prison came running in and fell at her feet. When the man recovered from his fear she urged him to speak, and he said: ‘*O Star of Heaven, this night, in her dun- geon at Lun Goon, a son was born to Wong Tai Ho!”’ ‘* And do the child and the mother live,’”’ asked Wu Chih Tien. ‘They do, O Daughter of Light !’’ replied the slave. Then Wu Chih Tien commanded that the man’s tongue be cut out, so that he could not repeat the news, and this was done at once. Among the most faithful of all her servants, and the one whom Wu Chih Tien most trusted, was a giant eunuch named Ta Teen. Him she summoned at once to her chamber, and placing a heavy chain of gold about his neck and a heavy purse in his hand, she said : ‘‘Is Ta Teen, the eunuch, true to me ?”’ WU CHIH TIEN, THE CELESTIAL EMPRESS. ‘*As the rivers go ever to the sea and turn not back, so was I ever in thy most gracious service,’’ replied Ta Teen. ‘‘And you will do my bidding ?’’ “Tf I fail, let the light of thine eyes never bless me again."’ ‘* Better death than life if there are none left to trust,’’ she said; then she lowered her voice, laid one little hand on his powerful arm, and with eyes of fire burning into his frightened face, she whispered : ‘‘Hasten to the Lun Goon prison, and see that Wong Tai Ho and her child die this night. Take the body of the child and bury it apart, for the hearts of the people will be stirred against me if it comes to their ears that she died a mother. Do this, and there will be no limit to the power which I can use for the lifting up of those who are faithful to me.’’ Promising that he would obey her in all things, Ta Teen set out from the palace, with all speed, and soon he was at the gate of the prison, and the guards let him in, for the eunuch was a man of much power in the palace of Tung Ko Sung, andrich men sought his favor and poor men kow-towed at his approach. And he was conducted to the dungeon wherein on a pallet of rice straw lay Wong Tai Ho, with the child sleeping in her arms. When he entered and she saw him bending over her, she moaned out as if it were her soul that spoke : ‘*Ta Teen, I know who sent you and why you have come. Slay me, for to my fevered brain the cool hand of death will be a bless- ing ; but spare the son of Tung Ko Sung. Redden not your hands with royal blood. Save the sole heir to the throne of the Middle Flowery Kingdom.” CHAPTER VIII. THE WILL AND THE SEAL. THE pitiful sight of the fallen empress, and her prayerful pleading for the life of her little one, touched the heart of Ta Teen, and when he had sent the attendant from the cell he lifted up his hands and cried out: ‘‘ Before the gods, I can not do this thing ! Ta Teen, the despised eunuch, will save you both !’’ Then she took his great fingers and laid them on the head of the child, and pressed them to her own cold lips, and said :

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WU CHIH TIEN, THE CELESTIAL EMPRESS. ‘‘Death’s hand is on me; leave me here, and fly at once with the child. Take him to the Tedo* of Paou Ting Fu, who is my cousin ; tell him the secret, and leave the rest to the gods.”’ Then she asked for ink and paper, and as they were not to be had, she took a white silk kerchief from her throat, and biting the forefinger of her right hand till the blood flowed, she wrote these words : ‘To my dearly beloved son, Tung I Lung: ‘‘ Thou art the only son of Tung Ko Sung, emperor of the Great Middle Flowery King- dom. Thou wast born on the seventh day of the fifth moon, in the seventh year of thy father’s reign, in the horrible Lun Goon dungeon, where I was cruelly confined and died of starvation, by the order of Wu Chih Tien. Thou art saved by Ta Teen, the man sent to kill you. Live to avenge my wrongs and the wrongs of thy people, and rest not till thou reachest the throne of thy fathers. ‘Written with thy mother’s blood, on the ninth day ofthe fifth moon, and the seventh year of Tung Ko Sung. ‘“Wone Tar Ho.”’ * Tedo is the title given in China to the governor of a province, 333 Ta Teen placed the kerchief against the window that the writing might dry; then the empress took from her breast a small casket of purple jade, with the imperial dragon in gold on the lid, and she gave it to the eunuch, and said : ‘‘In this box is the royal seal which the emperor entrusted to me the day he made me his wife. Keep it until my son is old enough to seize the crown and wear it, then show it to the people that they may know he is the rightful heir.’’ And when she had said this, she closed her eyes and was dead. Ta Teen hid the writing and the seal next his heart, then he took the child to his breast, and went out into the night. When Wu Chih Tien found that the eunuch did not return to the palace, where she awaited him, she became greatly alarmed, and she called other of her servants and she bade them find Ta Teen and slay him. The servants, dreading her wrath, came back after two days, and one of them said to her : “OQ Daughter of Light, we found the eunuch, Ta Teen, and with him was a young child; and we slew them, and left their bodies to the vultures in the dark forest.”’ THE EUNUCH AND THE INFANT PRINCE,

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332 But the emperor spoke on as if he had not heard him : ‘*And when to-morrow’s sun rises, let the light fall on the headless body of General Wong. Fail not in this or your own head shall fall.’’ So the chief of the palace went out, and finding General Wong, he bound him and cast him into the Lun Goon prison; and when the light of another day came to Chung Ang the great soldier was taken into the hall of execution and his head was severed from his body, even as the emperor had commanded. CHAPTER VII. THE FATE OF WONG TAI HO. Srx months after the death of her infant, Wu Chih Tien was made the chief empress, and when the people learned this they said in hushed voices : ‘* She will soon be the sole empress.”’ When Wong Tai Ho was cast into prison it was not known to any one but herself that she was about to give birth to a royal child. It had been her fond hope to surprise the emperor when the time should come; but now she feared to make known her condition, for she dreaded the power of Wu Chih Tien. With much cunning, Wu Chih Tien sur- rounded herself with spies and young men sworn to serve her, and one evening, as she was in her private hall with some of these, a slave in the garb of an attendant at the Lun Goon prison came running in and fell at her feet. When the man recovered from his fear she urged him to speak, and he said: ‘*O Star of Heaven, this night, in her dun- geon at Lun Goon, a son was born to Wong Tai Ho!”’ ‘* And do the child and the mother live,”’ asked Wu Chih Tien. ‘‘They do, O Daughter of Light !”’ replied the slave. Then Wu Chih Tien commanded that the man’s tongue be cut out, so that he could not repeat the news, and this was done at once. Among the most faithful of all her servants, and the one whom Wu Chih Tien most trusted, was a giant eunuch named Ta Teen. Him she summoned at once to her chamber, and placing a heavy chain of gold about his neck and a heavy purse in his hand, she said : ‘‘Is Ta Teen, the eunuch, true to me ?’”’ WU CHIH TIEN, THE CELESTIAL EMPRESS. ‘*As the rivers go ever to the sea and turn not back, so was I ever in thy most gracious service,’’ replied Ta Teen. ‘*And you will do my bidding ?”’ ‘Tf I fail, let the light of thine eyes never bless me again.”’ ‘* Better death than life if there are none left to trust,’’ she said; then she lowered her voice, laid one little hand on his powerful arm, and with eyes of fire burning into his frightened face, she whispered : ‘‘Hasten to the Lun Goon prison, and see that Wong Tai Ho and her child die this night. Take the body of the child and bury it apart, for the hearts of the people will be stirred against me if it comes to their ears that she died a mother. Do this, and there will be no limit to the power which I can use for the lifting up of those who are faithful to me.’’ Promising that he would obey her in all things, Ta Teen set out from the palace, with all speed, and soon he was at the gate of the prison, and the guards let him in, for the eunuch was a man of much power in the palace of Tung Ko Sung, andrich men sought his favor and poor men kow-towed at his approach. And he was conducted to the dungeon wherein on a pallet of rice straw lay Wong Tai Ho, with the child sleeping in her arms. When he entered and she saw him bending over her, she moaned out as ifit were her soul that spoke : ‘Ta Teen, I know who sent you and why you have come. Slay me, for to my fevered brain the cool hand of death will be a bless- ing ; but spare the son of Tung Ko Sung. Redden not your hands with royal blood. Save the sole heir to the throne of the Middle Flowery Kingdom.” CHAPTER VIII. THE WILL AND THE SEAL. THE pitiful sight of the fallen empress, and her prayerful pleading for the life of her little one, touched the heart of Ta Teen, and when he had sent the attendant from the cell he lifted up his hands and cried out : ‘‘ Before the gods, I can not do this thing ! Ta Teen, the despised eunuch, will save you both !”’ Then she took his great fingers and laid them on the head of the child, and pressed them to her own cold lips, and said :

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WU CHIH TIEN, THE CELESTIAL ‘‘Death’s hand is on me; leave me here, and fly at once with the child. Take him to the Tedo* of Paou Ting Fu, who is my cousin ; tell him the secret, and leave the rest to the gods.”’ Then she asked for ink and paper, and as they were not to be had, she took a white silk kerchief from her throat, and biting the forefinger of her right hand till the blood flowed, she wrote these words : ‘‘ To my dearly beloved son, Tung I Lung: ‘‘ Thou art the only son of Tung Ko Sung, emperor of the Great Middle Flowery King- dom. Thou wast born on the seventh day of the fifth moon, in the seventh year of thy father’s reign, in the horrible Lun Goon dungeon, where I was cruelly confined and died of starvation, by the order of Wu Chih Tien. Thou art saved by Ta Teen, the man sent to kill you. Live to avenge my wrongs and the wrongs of thy people, and rest not till thou reachest the throne of thy fathers. ‘Written with thy mother’s blood, on the ninth day ofthe fifth moon, and the seventh year of Tung Ko Sung. ‘“Wone Tar Ho.”’ * Tedo is the title given in China to the governor of a province. EMPRESS. 333 Ta Teen placed the kerchief against the window that the writing might dry; then the empress took from her breast a small casket of purple jade, with the imperial dragon in gold on the lid, and she gave it to the eunuch, and said : ‘‘In this box is the royal seal which the emperor entrusted to me the day he made me his wife. Keep it until my son is old enough to seize the crown and wear it, then show it to the people that they may know he is the rightful heir.”’ And when she had said this, she closed her eyes and was dead. Ta Teen hid the writing and the seal next his heart, then he took the child to his breast, and went out into the night. When Wu Chih Tien found that the eunuch did not return to the palace, where she awaited him, she became greatly alarmed, and she called other of her servants and she bade them find Ta Teen and slay him. The servants, dreading her wrath, came back after two days, and one of them said to her : “QO Daughter of Light, we found the eunuch, Ta Teen, and with him was a young child; and weslew them, and left their bodies to the vultures in the dark forest.’”’ THE EUNUCH AND THE INFANT PRINCE,

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334 LAST LOVE. And Wu Chih Tien believed them, and small, and while my blood flows thou shalt was content. live.”’ But they had not slain Ta Teen, neither And he set apart a finger each day for the had they seen him. child, and he had himself only roots and Away from the roads and the paths beaten green berriestoeat. Butonthrough thelight by the feet of men he fled; and the howling andthe darkness he went, till he had crossed of the grey wolves in the mountains was as many rivers and climbed many hills, and on music to his ears, for it told him of solitude the evening of the tenth day he staggered and safety. into the city of Paou Ting Fu. And when hunger made the child cry, Ta The people followed him, wondering at Teen cut one of his own fingers and let it the weakness of so large a man; and he nurse the blood ; and he laughed at his plan _tottered to the gate of the Tedo’s palace, and when the little one was again hushed to fell. And those who saw him thought him sleep, and he said to hintself: dead till they were called to his side by the “IT am large, and thou, princeling, art sobbing ofa child in his breast. (7o be continued.) aN Ny wr Min, \ LAST LOVE. By ELLA WHEELER WILCOx. The first flower of the spring is not so fair Or bright as one the ripe midsummer brings. The first faint note the forest warbler sings Is not so rich with feeling, or so rare, As when, full master of his art, the air Drowns in the liquid sea of song he flings Like silver spray from beak and breast and wings. The artist’s earliest effort, wrought with care, The bard’s first ballad, written in his tears, Set by his later toil seems poor and tame, And into nothing dwindles at the test. So with the passions of maturer years ; Let those who will demand the first fond flame, Give me the heart’s last love—for that is best.

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——~, MANAGER CAMP AT HIS DESK. THE NEW YORK CLEARING HOUSE. By ALEXANDER IL. KINKEAD. A PART of the routine of banking busi- ness is the collection of the amounts named in checks, bills and drafts deposited by the patrons of the bank and payable atother banks. To aid the city banks in making these collections the New York Clearing House was established. Bank collections are facilitated by what is known as the making of exchanges. For instance, a bank receives from a depositor a check drawn upon some other bank and pre- sents it at that bank for payment. If, how- ever, the bank upon which it is drawn holds a check that is payable at the first-mentioned bank, a balance between the amounts of the checks is struck and the difference set- tled in cash by the debtor bank. This is called making an exchange. One payment settles thé transaction, whereas if each bank was compelled to present the check it held at the counter of the other bank two pay- ments of money would be necessary. If there are but two banks in a place the mak- ing of exchanges is only a matter of a few minutes, but in a city where banks are nu- merous and there is no Clearing House, it requires many visits and occupies much val- uable time. This was demonstrated in the city of New York in the days before the establishment of

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336 the Clearing House. The territory that the bank messengers were compelled to traverse in going their rounds was of sufficient ex- tent to occupy most of the banking hours of every day in traveling from bank to bank, and as the nature of their duties involved the transportation of large amounts of mon- ey, they were exposed to the attacks of thieves. Finally, to avoid as much walking as possible and at the same time to expedite the exchanges, the messengers began to assemble on the steps of the Bank of Amer- ica. Thus was formed a sort of a Clearing House that was under no control, subject to no system and without regulations. The messengers transacted business with each other as the jostling of the crowd brought them into proximity. Their knees, on which lay their wallets, were used by them as desks, and the satchel between their feet, or guarded by another messenger from the same bank, was the temporary vault in which was stored the cash for the payment of balances. Professional thieves haunted these meetings, and the messengers were ex- posed to great risk. There was no safe- guard against error, and frequently disputes gave rise to quarrels. In 1853 the New York Clearing House was established ; and when it began opera- tions the bank messengers ceased to assem- ble on the steps in front of the Bank of America. The Clearing House plan was suggested by Mr. Albert Gallatin, President of the National Bank until 1839, and was adopted by a meeting of the representatives of various banks. The object of the Clear- ing House was to reduce the making of exchanges to a system that would render less arduous the duties of bank messengers, prevent waste of time, provide protection from error, and guard against loss from thieves, and its operations have fully met the expectations of its founders. It ‘is called Clearing House because through it the daily indebtedness of the banks is cleared up. The Clearing House is under control of the Clearing House Committee, elected an- nually by the banks members of the Clear- ing House. Its supervision has been dele- gated to the manager, Mr. William A. Camp, who has for his assistants, the assistant manager, a secretary and two proof clerks. The work of the Clearing House is done THE NEW YORK CLEARING HOUSE. principally by the representatives of the several member banks, each of which sends at least two men to act for it, a settling clerk and a delivery clerk. The rooms of the Clearing House are located in the second and third stories of a brown stone building on the corner of Nassau and Pine Streets. Here every week-day, except holidays, an indebtedness averaging one hundred millions of dollars is settled with the greatest possible speed. The per- sons engaged in the work are the manager, the assistant manager, the proof-clerk, the settling and delivery clerks and messengers from the several banks. At a few minutes before ten o’clock, the settling and delivery clerks begin to arrive at the Clearing House. Some of them carry satchels — others hand-trunks that are sus- pended from their shoulders by straps. These are-the delivery clerks, and in the satchels and trunks are the checks, bills and drafts to be presented for payment that day. The settling clerks usually go to the Clear- ing House empty handed. The clerks are young men, middle-aged men and old men. They greet each other gayly and troop noisily past the uniformed guardian of the Clearing House up the stairs into the clearing room, which resembles the interior of a business college, where the clerks seem to be going to a class rather than to engage in an exacting and impor- tant undertaking. Three long desks, sepa- rated by wire railings, run the length of the room. Each desk is divided into spaces by partitions. These subdivisions are num- bered, and each one bears the name of the bank using it. At each subdivision is a stool for the settling clerk, whose business it is to receive the checks, bills and drafts to be paid by the bank he represents, and to make out the account with the other banks and the Clearing House for the day. The delivery clerk’s duties are outside the long desks and are principally peripatetic, it being his office to deliver to each bank the paper held against it by the bank he represents. Benches are placed against the railings for the use of the delivery clerks and the ac- commodation of their satchels. Hooks are provided in the railing for hats and coats. At the west end of the room is a raised platform, which during the making of ex-

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THE NEW YORK CLEARING HOUSE.

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changes, to which the morning session is devoted, is occupied by the manager and his valuable assistant the proof-clerk. The manager directs the operations of the morning in person and does not leave the platform until proof is made. Upon the proof-clerk devolves the most INTERIOR OF THE NEW YORK CLEARING HOUSE. important task of the session. He 1s the keeper of the balance sheet of the Clearing House, which is, by virtue of its position, either debtor to or creditor of the banks that are members of the Clearing House associa- tion. The proof-clerk’s sheet can not be correct if a mistake is made by any of the

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338 settling clerks during the transaction of the morning session. When the session is ended the proof-clerk’s sheet must balance. The amount of the debtor side must equal the amount on the creditor side, when the footings are made ; because the Clearing House assumes no liabilities and can not pay out more than it receives. So, if the total amount brought for collection by the banks does not equal the total amount to be paid by all the banks, there is a mistake somewhere on the floor of the Clearing House, and the session can not end until it is discovered. This is called making proof. The amount brought for collection by each bank is written on a slip of paper, which, on entering the clearing room, the settling clerk lays on his desk. These slips are col- lected by a utility boy and by means of a belt line sent to the proof clerk, who pro- ceeds at once to enterthem on his sheet on the debtor side, because the Clearing House must pay these amounts. The belt line is a strip of leather resem- bling the belting over the small wheels of machinery. It is drawn over two wheels— one near the floor of the clearing room and the other on the baluster of the platform— and armed with hooks. The slips are placed on these hooks, and by turning the wheels brought within reach of the proof-clerk. A few seconds before ten the manager steps to the front of the platform and taps a gong twice. Note the effect upon the clerks. Hitherto a lack of seriousness seemed to characterize them. Many were out of their places, some had gathered to- gether in groups for conversation, and all had worn an air of indifference to the busi- ness on hand. At the sound of the gong there is a momentary confusion. Papers are rustled, and quick footsteps are heard. The settling clerks hurry to their stools and spread out their sheets before them. The de- livery clerks hasten to their posts and swing their satchels and hand-trunks into position overthe left arm. Thus for a moment three double files of men face each other in pose ofattention. Thesettling clerks sit on their stools and lean, pencils in hand, gracefully over their desks. Their left hands, as if ready to receive the receipt sheet of the de- livery clerks as they pass, have an advanced position, probably lying on the top of the THE NEW YORK CLEARING HOUSE. desk. The delivery clerks hold in their right hands a sheet of paper, their receipt for the envelopes arranged in order in their sat- chels, and to be delivered by them to the sev- eral settling clerks. The delivery clerks are awaiting the signal to march as earnestly as soldiers listen with leveled guns for the or- der to fire. ‘Ready,’ calls the manager, and the left foot of every delivery clerk is advanced in response. The gong sounds once. The delivery clerks advance to the left. There arises a sound of rustling paper laid with the blows of many hands upon the desks, and the daily procession has begun. The delivery clerks have set out upon a se- ries of financial calls, which are formal and conducted by regulation. The delivery clerk of the bank first on the listjof membership heads the procession and visits first the desk of the bank lowest on the list. When his business with the set- tling clerk of that bank is transacted he passes on to the bank next lowest on the list. Thus in order he visits the settling clerks all the banks, members of the Clearing House. Behind him follows the delivery clerk of bank number two and just before him is the delivery clerk of the bank he first called upon. Every delivery clerk and every settling clerk observe the same formula. First the delivery clerk lays on the desk his receipt sheet on which is written the amounts he holds against the banks. Opposite the name of the bank he represents the settling clerk writes a receipt. While the settling clerk is doing this, the delivery clerk takes an envel- ope from his satchel and lays it on the desk. The envelope contains the checks, bills, etc., that are held by the bank which is repre- sented by the delivery clerk and to be paid by the bank for which the settling clerk acts, and is indorsed with the amount of its con- tents and the name and number of the paying bank. The delivery clerk also carries with him a lot of slips of white paper. One of these he drops into a hole in the desk of the settling clerk. On it is written, as an addi- tional memorandum, the amount contained in the envelope left at the desk by the deliv- ery clerk. Thus, with automatic move- ment the procession files around the room. In ten minutes from the time it started, it comes to a halt. Every delivery clerk has returned to his post, before the desk of the

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THE NEW YORK CLEARING HOUSE. THE TELLERS’ OFFICES. bank he represents. His satchel is empty and his receipt sheet is full of signatures. The precision with which the business is transacted in so short a time is really won- derful. While there is celerity, there is no haste, and the clerks who were so full of lightsomeness before the two strokes of the gong sounded are engrossed by their work, like men who feel that they are engaged in an important labor. Arrived at his post, the next duty of the delivery clerk is to compare the endorse- ments on the envelopes with the slips left by the other delivery clerks at the desk of the bank he represents. Finding that the amounts written on a slip and on the envel- ope that was delivered with it are the same, he leaves the slips with the settling clerk. The envelopes he places unopened in his satchel, and takes them to the bank for which he acts. His work for the day in the clearing room is done. Meanwhile, every settling clerk proceeds to strike a balance on his sheet. First he enters on the debtor side from the memoran- dum slips left by the delivery clerk, the amounts the bank he represents must pay to the other banks, and then foots the column. The difference hetween the total, the indebt- edness to the Clearing House of the bank for which he acts, and the amount sent by that bank for collection, which is its credit with the Clearing House, makes that bank eithera debtor or creditor bank for that day. Ifthe total of the sums it must pay is less than the amount brought for collection, the bank is a creditor of the Clearing House; if it is greater, the bank is a debtor to the Clearing House. The proof-clerk on the platform awaits the totals, and the utility boy is on the alert to collect and send him the slips of paper on which they are written. The settling clerks work rapidly, noiselessly, and the silence of the room is impressive. The scene during the striking of balances on the settling clerks’ sheets presents a marked contrast to the one of a few minutes before, in which the procession of delivery clerks with their rust- ling sheets was the prominent feature. Presently a settling clerk lifts his head and, with a smile of satisfaction on his face,

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340 places a slip on his desk. The utility boy hastens for it. By the belt-line it is sent to the proof-clerk, and the most difficult of his day’s work is begun. Rapidly the settling clerks are sending up their debit totals, and deftly the fingers of the proof-clerk enter them on the creditor side of his sheet. He does his work so easily and quickly that a beholder would not think it a hard task that has been set him. Yet the mental strain of his position, because of the demand upon him for accuracy, is so great that the associa- tion employs two proof-clerks, one to per- form the duties one day and the other to re- lieve him the next day. By this alternation each proof-clerk is given at least thirty-six hours’ rest from the exactions of the brief time required in making proof. When he has entered all the debit totals he foots the columns. Then, if his sheet balances, proof is made. While he is testing the accuracy of the settling clerks they assume positions of ease. Some read, others write letters, and others enter into conversation. However, notwith- standing their apparent indifference, there is an air of expectancy about them, and they are on the gui vive for any announcement If that statement is from the platform. ‘‘proof is made,’’ they, with a feeling of self- congratulation, prepare to leave the room. If the manager says there is a difference, announcing the amount, they knowan error has been made by some one, and each clerk takes up his sheet and goes over its footings to discover if he is the guilty one. It may happen that a settling clerk will find a mis- take in a footing or in an entry of an amount. This is at once sent to the proof-clerk, who immediately corrects his sheet accordingly. Then, if it balances, the settling clerks need search no further for errors. On the con- trary, if there is still a difference on the proof-clerk’s sheet, the manager gives the order, ‘‘ Change sheets from left to right for examination of footings.’’ There is a mo- mentary rustle of paper, and then each clerk begins the task of proving his neighbor’s work. Soon, perhaps, without any show of triumph, a clerk writes on a slip of paper and places it on his desk. The utility boy sends it to the proof-clerk, but because an error has been discovered the work of exami- nation does not cease. Few of the clerks know that a mistake in addition has been THE NEW YORK CLEARING HOUSE. found. Others may be revealed, and they may bring the balance on the proof-sheet. If after this investigation there is still a dif- ference on the proof-sheet, the manager says, ‘* Change sheets from right to left for exami- nation.’’ Again the sheets change hands and are submitted to impartial eyes. If the error remains undiscovered after the second examination, the settling clerks compare amounts with each other, every clerk calling from his sheet the amounts due to and from every other bank, when the mistake is sure to be found. This comparison rarely occurs, the error being usually discovered on the first exchange of sheets. When proof is made the settling clerks prepare to return to their banks. Yet they remain. They wait a call. Presently the manager announces ‘‘ Balances.’’ The set- tling clerks are ready, pencils in hand, and he calls off the amounts due to and from the Cleazing House on the day’s business. Al- though he speaks very fast the clerks keep pace with him, and in a minute the record is made. Then the work of the morning ses- sion is finished, and the settling clerks fol- low the delivery clerks to their several banks. What has been accomplished in that hour? An indebtedness of over one hundred millions of dollars has been settled. That may in these days of great things seem nothing wonderful tothe reader. Look at it this way. The distance from Battery Place to the Harlem River is nine and one half miles. From the East River to the North River Manhattan Island is four miles wide at its broadest point. Within this area and scat- tered over it are the banks of New York City. Suppose every bank made its collections direct—sent out messengers to make ex- changes if they should meet the messengers ofother banks, or, if not, to present the checks, notes and drafts at the counters of the banks on which they are drawn—the banks would be compelled to employ a large force of mes- sengers, who in making their rounds would be exposed to attacks from thieves. Again, if the method of direct collections was pursued, the banks would have to carry a tremendous capital, coin and legal tenders, in their vaults. Their active capital would have to be equal to double the amount of the daily indebtedness. If the amount of the collec- tions to be made is one hundred millions of

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THE NEW dollars, to meet it the banks would have to carry two hundred millions of dollars. The law of banking being payment on demand, every bank would have to draw on the cash in its vaults to meet the demands of other banks, without waiting for its messengers to return with the money obtained by their collection. So, merely for the payment of its debts to other banks, every bank would be forced to carry currency equal to double the amount of its indebtedness to them, in order to have on hand the amount of cash neces- sary for the transaction of other counter business. By the perfect system of the Clearing House, the time of making the calls is reduced from a banking day—ten A.M. to three P.M. in New York—to ten minutes. That is the daily unvarying record of the time required for the procession of delivery clerks to make its circuit, and in that brief period every bank in the city has made its collections. The callsare made and, although thestriking of balances consumes the greater portion of an hour, the time that would be occupied in going from bank building to bank building is saved, thus enabling the banks to carry a small force of messengers and leaving their currency in the vault, where it is safe from outside thieves. The bulk of money needed is reduced from two hundred millions of dol- lars to a daily average of five millions, all that it is necessary to move from the vaults to pay in full the daily indebtedness of one hundred millions—the debtor banks bringing this sum to the Clearing House and the creditor banks taking it away. And it is this payment that occupies the assistant manager and the acting proof- clerk during the time from the morning session to three P.M. The daily debtor of the Clearing House is the Treasury of the United States. Pension drafts, money orders from paymasters and other vouchers for demands on the Treasury are passed through the Clearing House and by the assistant manager presented at the counters of the Sub-treasury a few minutes after eleven. Payment is made in legal tenders, and the money thus obtained is the first item in the resources of the Clearing House for the payment of its indebtedness to the creditor banks for that day. The second item is the payment by the debtor banks of the amounts they owe. At 24 YORK CLEARING HOUSE. 34t half past twelve the assistant manager is at his post in a little wire-fenced room on the first floor of the Clearing House apartments. The desk at which he stands resembles the desk that confronts one in all city banks, when standing at the window of the receiv- ing or paying teller. There are two little windows in the French-plate glass. Through one of these the debtor banks pay the amounts they owe, and from the other the creditor banks receive what is due them. A detective in uniform and long in the service, protects this room from intruders—no per- sons being allowed in it but the representa- tives of the banks members of the association. The assistant manager acts first as receiv- ing teller and then as paying teller for the Clearing House. First as receiving teller he receives the amounts from the debtor banks. They make payment in gold, legal tenders, and certificates that are denominated number sixes, and in the following manner: All amounts of even one hundred thousands are inclosed in envelopes, which are indorsed with the name of the bank paying, its num- ber in the Clearing House, and the amount contained in the envelope. All amounts under one hundred thousand dollars are handed to the receiving teller loose. Take thisinstance. Number one, the Bank of New York, owes to the Clearing House the sum of seven hundred and forty-three thousand, six hundred and seventy-five dol- lars and sixty-five cents. The envelope handed by number one’s messenger to the receiving teller contains seven hundred thousand dollars, and is properly indorsed. Unopened it is passed to the credit of number one, and the amount entered on the back of the receipt lying before the receiving teller. Next, the forty-three thousand, six hundred and seventy-five dollars and sixty-five cents are passed in loose. This the receiving teller counts, and on the back of the receipt jots down, under the seven hundred thousand dollars, the amount, and then adds both amounts. Ifthe total agrees with the sum written on the face of the receipt, which is made out by the proof-clerk, it is handed to the messenger of number one, and that bank has made payment. The proof-clerk records in a large book kept for this purpose the amount indorsed on num- ber one’s envelope and the thousands in num- ber sixes handed in by number one’s messen-

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342 ger. The receiving teller passes to the proof- clerk's custody the envelope and the number sixes and puts the other money in a drawer. The change in sums less than a dollar are left in a case on the desk. This formula is observed after payment by every bank of its indebtedness. At half past one payment must be made by the debtor banks, and then, after making of the proof of cash on hand by the receiving teller and the clerk, the assistant manager acts as paying teller. Before a description of the making of cash proof and the payment of Clearing House obligations to creditor banks, an explanation of the term number sixes would seem in order. A number six is a certificate of the deposit by a bank, a member of the Clearing House association, of a certain amount of gold with the Bank of America, whose number in the list of members is six, hence the name of the certificate. As it was deemed advisable by the association to have a depository for gold outside of the Sub- Treasury, the Bank of America was selected as the custodian of coin, and empowered to issue certificates for the amounts of gold intrusted to it by the member banks. The number sixes are of three denominations, one, five and ten thousand dollars, and negotiable only by banks members of the association. Bearing the indorsement of the bank to which they are issuied, these certificates are used in the settlement of Clearing House obligations. Being con- vertible into gold on demand, they represent it. Should they by robbery or mistake fall into the hands of persons who have no legal right to them, no actual loss occurs, as the Bank of America will not pay the gold on their presentation unless they bear, besides the indorsement of the bank to which they are issued, that of the bank, a member of the Clearing House, demanding payment. The making of cash proof is quickly done. The proof-clerk, having on his record the sums received in envelopes and number sixes, foots these accounts, while the receiv- ing teller counts the loose cash in the drawer and the small coin on the desk. This amount is added to the amount on the record, and, if the total is equal to the sum due to the Clearing House on that day’s business, proof in cash is made and the Clearing House pays the creditor banks. The assistant manager, acting as paying THE NEW YORK CLEARING HOUSE. teller, disburses his funds as follows: The Clearing House owes Bank number eight the sum of one million seventy-five thousand three htindred and ninety-three dollars and thirty-seven cents. The paying teller uses: 1. The envelope brought by bank number one, containing $700,000 «x« . The envelope brought by number fourteen. containing 300,000 00 SO eer . Legal tenders and small coin 25,393 3 50,COO OO / / $1,075,393 3 The proof-clerk enters on the creditor side of his record that the envelopes brought by number one, number fourteen, and fifty num- ber sixes (the fifty indieating thousands, have been paid to number eight). These records are kept for the purpose of tracing the envelopes and number sixes. This formula is observed throughout the payment, a re- ceipt being taken from every creditor bank. By three o’clock the banks are paid and the day’s work of the Clearing House is done. The clerks, from long practice in the de- tails of the system, have become as nearly automatic in discharging their duties as it is possible for the human machine to be- come. The task set them is very difficult, requiring the expenditure of much brain force, yet it is performed by them with apparent indifference. Nervousness and seeming effort are visible at no time, except when a new man is undertaking the duties of either settling or delivery clerk. The proof-clerk, upon whose accuracy so much depends, works without display of haste, and yet with the rapidity of a telegrapher. A very important feature of the Clearing House association is the Loan Committee. This committee exercises its functions only in times of money stringency or for the re- lief of a member bank that is solvent, but temporarily embarrassed by an unexpected call for money. In the panic of 1873 the Loan Committee came to the rescue of seve- ral embarrassed banks and issued a large amount in certificates upon which the em- barrassed banks realized ready money. And in the short panic of 1884 the prompt action of this committee prevented a widespread disaster. Thus the Clearing House not only expedites the routine of financial operations, but it forms a bulwark against monetary panics.

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OVER THE COSSACK STEPPES. By DAVID KER HE first time that I ever saw the Cos- sack of the Don in his native wilds was in the Fall of 1869, when Hepworth Dixon and I were working our way southward through Eastern Russia toward the Sea of Azof and the Crimea. We had passed from the Volga to the Don by the tiny railway that links the two great rivers together at their nearest point, between Tsaritzin and Kalatch ; and early next morning we started from the latter place by steamer down the Don itself. Our river-voyage would have just suited the famous Irishman who vowed to do all his water traveling by /avd. Between Ka- latch and Rostoff—the port at the mouth of the Don—there lie no fewer than ¢hirty-nine sand-banks, and we seemed to run aground upon them all in succession, till it appeared to me that we might just as well have turned away from the river altogether, and gone straight ‘‘ across country.’’ In fact, we were little more than a mile from our starting- point when we gota pretty clear idea of what was in store for us, by seeing a Cossack coolly riding across the stream just in front of our bows with a dog following him. As the horseman passed, he let fall a few criticisms upon the steamer and its occu- pants, much more candid than polite, which were answered by our Russian captain in a style that reminded me of a college essay where the author, discussing the secret so- cieties of the Middie Ages, observed that ‘the members of these societies were bound together by the most horrid oaths,’’ and then left a blank of half a column, witha bracketed note in the middle of it, ‘‘ here fol- low most horrid oaths.’’ But just as the captain’s cursory remarks were at their best, a tremendous shock made the whole vessel quiver from stem to stern, and we suddenly found ourselves hard and fast upon the first of the thirty-nine sand-banks. \t that moment two more Cossack horse- men came rushing over the boundless plain, like vultures on the wing, their gaunt sinewy figures thrown so far forward as to be almost on the horse’s neck, their long, shaggy hair streaming in the wind, their piercing eyes gleaming hungrily from be- neath the shadow of the sheep-skin cap, and their lean, dark, wolfish faces stamped in every line with the ineffaceable brand of the born marauder—the hereditary stamp of those grim, tameless, untiring guerrillas who swept the whole shore of the Black Sea as with a whirlwind of destruction ages ago. Asthey swooped past us, I thought I could read in their keen black eyes a look of fierce and hungry desire, as if they were saying inwardly, ‘‘ What ? a ship in distress, and we not allowed to rob it! What do we live for, then, if we may not fulfill the great end of our being ?’’ These wild figures, however, harmonized only too well with the gloomy region in which they dwelt. Dante himself could have imagined nothing more terrible than the grim, eternal desolation of those ghostly solitudes which the Russians expressively call ‘‘the bad steppes.’’ The sea, with all its loneliness, has boundless life and motion. The great plain of the Dnieper, though lack- ing life and motion, is gifted with an inex- haustible wealth of coloring by the varied beauty of its countless wild-flowers. Even the mighty deserts of Africa and Central Asia have a certain delusive animation in their spectral mirage, and the dizzy whirl of their wind-tossed sands. But all these are wholly wanting to the voiceless wastes of the Don. The ‘bad steppe’’ has no dimpling surface, no varied color, no sight orsound of life. An immense loneliness, an awful silence and desolation; a gray, blank, unending level, over which broods the gaunt and ghastly dreariness of an un- peopled world--the awful solitude which haunts a region where life has not become extinct, but where it has never existed. Amid that tomb-like stillness, your own voice sounds unnaturally loud and incon- gruous. Here Nature shows herself in her sternest mood, confronting the restless activity of man with the might of that tre- mendous inaction against which all human skill and human energy are as nothing.

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344 Unchanged and unredeemed, it confronts the men of the nineteenth century with the same sullen frown with which it met the first pioneers that crossed it in the days of the world’s childhood—-the same yesterday, to- day, and forever. Who the Cossacks originally were, and whence they came, is still an open question. The earliest mention of them in European history finds them settled on the great prai- rie of the Ukraine (chiefly known to Western readers as the birthplace of Byron’s Cossack hero, Mazeppa), which then formed part of the kingdom of Poland. The Slavonian traditions, preserved and amplified hy the genius of the great Cossack humorist, Niko- lai Gogol, give us a picture of the medizval Cossack which carries us back at one stride to the days of Homer—an overgrown child with all the virtues and all the vices of bar- barism, sharing his last crust with a stranger one minute and cutting his throat the next, shuddering at a sinister dream while plunging singly amid a host of armed enemies, now sweeping over the waste like a whirlwind and now snoring in the dust like a hog, equally ready to inflict or to suf fer death, laughing at peril and defying tor- ture, capable of every virtue but mercy and every crime but cowardice. The Ukraine Cossacks remained vassals of Poland till 1647,when their ‘‘hetman’’ (chief), Bogdan Khmelmitski, avenged the affronts which he had received from the haughty Polish nobles by kindling a rebellion which ended in uniting against Poland the whole of Eastern Europe (Turkey included), trans- ferring to Russia the entire Cossack country, and commencing the work which was ended by the triple partition of Poland more than a century later. But we were destined to see the Cossack in his medizeval aspect for ourselves, before our voyage down the Don was half com- pleted. On the second evening we halted for the night at the village of Semi-Karakor- skaya ; and Hepworth Dixon—who, having already got well into the writing of his book upon ‘‘Free Russia,’’ was naturally eager to learn as much as possible of the Cossacks and their ways—at once proposed that we should go ashore, and visit the ‘‘ ataman’”’ (local chief ). ‘‘T want to find out something about the way in which the election of their koshevoi OVER THE COSSACK STEPPES. (commander-in-chief) was managed in the old times,’’ said he, ‘‘and whether it’s true that—as I’ve read somewhere—one of the ceremonies was to smear the head and face of the successful candidate with mud, and then wipe it off again.’’ ‘‘An interesting contrast,’’ answered I, ‘‘to the customs of the free and independent electors of our own day, who, although still prone to cast dirt upon those who govern them, are much more apt to rub it zz than to rub it of.”’ Ordinary Cossack villages are all of one regular type—little islets of rough-hewn timber floating in a sea of liquid mud in the spring, half buried by drifting dust in the summer, and peeping out of a mountain of piled-up snow in winter. Even the largest houses are nothing more than log-huts, big- ger or smaller according to the rank and wealth of their owners. All the windows are furnished with strong wooden shutters to keep them from being blown right in by the terrific wind-storms of the unsheltered steppe, and the whole house-front is usually painted with broad stripes of green, red, and white; for the Russian is as fond of gay colors as the negro himself, and his very word for ‘‘ beautiful ’’ (prekrasni) means lit- erally ‘‘ bright red.’’ Of the smaller and less pretentious dwell- ings, not a few are mere shells of wicker- work daubed with mud, and looking at a distance very much like overgrown lunch- baskets left behind by a monster picnic. But every house, whether large or small, whether built of logs or of osier, has a tiny garden-patch in front of it ; for the Cossack of the Don, fierce and restless as he is, has preserved to a surprising extent the simple, patriarchal tastes of his mediaeval fore- fathers. Each of these little gardens (which remind one very much of the microscopic plantations in the Himalaya, where I once, when sliding down a hill-side after a false step, trespassed upon eleven Hindu farms in succession before I could stop myself) is surrounded with a ‘‘zagorodka’’ (palisade), which is usually—as the English tourist said of Pom- peii—‘‘ shockingly out of repair;’’ for, as no sane man ever dreams of venturing out after dark in a Russian village without a big stick in his hand to defend him against the dogs (which are quite as savage as wolves,

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OVER THE COSSACK STEPPES. and a good deal Jarger), the usual thing is to pull up a stake either from one’s own fence or that of one’s next neighbor, till, little by little, the whole palisade melts away. As we neared the village where we were to halt, the universal desolation of this ghostly river became intensified a hundred- fold. The blank, sullen waters, overshadowed by thick beds of giant reeds, from which a flight of wild-fowl flitted spectrally athwart the darkening sky—the sinking of the red sun over the vast treeless plain, which looked vaster and drearier than ever beneath the fast-falling shadows of night—the dead, grim silence, broken only by the steady beat ofour paddle-wheels, or the shrill cry of some passing bird—all combined to enhance the weird and unearthly feeling that was gradu- ally creeping over us. By the time we reached Semi-Karakorskaya, the darkness had become so intense that, but for the friendly aid of the ship’s lanterns, we should both have marched right down into the river instead of going ashore, and so ended our voyage of discovery before it had _ well begun. Even the Cossack officer who had been our fellow-passenger from Kalatch, and who had kindly offered to pilot us through the village, found himself quite at fault the moment we lost sight of the steamer’s lights. ‘‘ How on earth’s a man to find his way on a night like this?’’ said he, savagely, as he plunged ankle-deep into a puddle; ‘‘one might as well have one’s eyes knocked out !”’ ‘‘Which is just what I seem to be doing now,’’ growled Hepworth Dixon, who at that moment ran his head against a tree as fiercely as if it had hit him first. « ‘*But where on earth ave we?’’ asked I, as we suddenly came out upon the brow of a steep, broken ridge, on one side of which there yawned at our feet aseemingly fathom- less gulf of blackness, while on the other the lights of our vessel twinkled faintly through the gloom more than fifty feet below. ‘‘ This would be just the place for that compound suicide of Burnand’s in Punch: ‘ And with a wild cry the wretched man buried the dagger in his heart, discharged the revolver through his brain, swallowed the deadly poison, and leaped into the fathomless gulf below. But his hour was not yet come.’ ’’ The last words of my quotation, however, were drowned by a tremendous hullabaloo 345 from Captain Kostenko as he went flying down the slope into the darkness, having incautiously stepped upon the crumbling earth on the brink of the incline. ‘“*Tet' me like a soldier fail,’’’ quoted Dixon, as we scrambled down the treacher- ous incline to the assistance of our Cossack friend. ‘‘I hope you are not hurt, Captain.” ‘‘Just what a tourist said,’’ remarked I, ‘‘when he saw the inscription on the rocks at Quebec, ‘Here Montgomery fell.’’ ‘ Poor fellow !’ said the visitor, ‘did he really fall off the top of that rock? I hope he wasn’t very much hurt !’”’ But hardly had we got Kostenko on his feet again, and resumed our blind-man’s- buff march toward the invisible village, when a sound began to strike our ears which was as ominous of mischief in such a place as on the outskirts of Jerusalem or Constan- tinople, viz., a furious barking of large dogs, which seemed to be coming nearer and nearer every moment. ‘*We're in for it now,’’ said I, groping about in the darkness fora stone. ‘‘ Byron has told us that ‘’Tis sweet to hear the watch-dog’s honest bark ;’ but it strikes me that, when there seéms to be every chance of his honest bark being followed up by his equally honest bite, the sweetness is not quite so apparent.’’ Luckily for us, the arrival of the steamer, and the sound of her signal-whistle, had put the village on the alert, and brought down along with the dogs at least a dozen sturdy Cossacks, to whom Kostenko at once ap- pealed for guidance to the house of their ataman. Just at that moment, too, the full moon broke forth in all her glory, and I inwardly echoed Paddy’s famous apostrophe to her : ‘* Good luck to the moon ! she's a fine noble crayture, And gives us the daylight all night in the dark !”” A Cossack is always at home among his own countrymen, and Capt. Kostenko had scarcely spoken when (as an Irishman would phrase it) they formed him into a procession and marched him off, Dixon and I following humbly in the rear. The road having been apparently made by a mad elephant and repaired by the earthquake of Lisbon, our walk up to the village consisted chiefly of a series of abortive efforts to turn head over heels ; but we got there at last, and zig- zagged among the quaint little hovels with

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346 their huge overhanging thatches (which gave them very much the look of a small boy with his father’s hat on), halting at length in the full splendor of the moonlight before a log-house somewhat larger than the rest, with a kind of small veranda in front of it. At the door stood the ataman himself, a fine-looking man of middle age, the evidence of whose grizzled hair and beard was almost belied by his erect bearing, keen, bright eye, and strong, sinewy figure, which was well set off by his picturesque Cossack dress. He greeted us with the usual ‘‘zdravstvuite”’ (be happy), and ushered us into his house with the natural dignity of a veteran soldier who had smelled powder on many a hard- fought battle-field during the twenty years’ war with the Circassians of the Eastern Caucasus. The house itself was a good specimen of the ordinary country cottage of Southern Russia. Cross-beamed roof, plank floor, dark walls of rough-hewed logs, mortared together with a paste of clay and withered leaves ; a tiled stove at one end of the room, with the usual sleeping-place on the top of it; a rude picture of the ataman’s patron saint in the farther corner, with a tiny lamp burning in front of it, and a pious roach mak- ing a laborious pilgrimage around its gilt frame ; an enormous bed just beneath it, the party-colored quilt of which, with its huge red and white squares, looked like an over- grown chessboard or a monster map of the United States; and a larger lamp on the rough deal table in the center, casting a fit- ful light upon the bowed, nerveless figure, sunken features, and filmy eyes of an old, white-haired man, evidently in the last stage of decrepitude, whom the ataman presented to us as his father. ‘*T hope,’’ said Dixon to me in an under- tone, ‘that this old fellow is not reserved for the same fate as a man of whom I heard when I was out West the other day, getting together the facts for my book on ‘ New America.’ An inspector was overhauling the wagons of an emigrant train to see that all was in order; and in the last wagon of all he came upon a shriveled old man of about a hundred, half deaf, half blind, and wholly idiotic. ‘ And what is ¢h7s old gentle- man going to do in the Far West?’ asked he. ‘Wal,’ answered a big teamster, ‘I OVER THE COSSACK STEPPES. guess he’s my grandfather, and we're going to open our new cemetery with him !’”’ ‘* He must have been a relation,’’ answered I, ‘‘ of those two men in Massachusetts, who were so old that they had forgotten who they were, and there was no one left alive that could tell ’em !’’ Meanwhile the hospitable ataman hast- ened to cover the table with a huge trencher of black bread, a basket of those splendid Crimean grapes, which every one who visits Sebastopol eats by pounds ata time, anda big earthen jar of some dark, thick, half- liquid stuff, which I guessed at once to be the famous Cossack ‘‘nardek,’’ of which I had heard so often. This is a kind of thick, luscious treacle extracted from the rind of the water-melon, and still as popular now as it was in the fifth century before the Christian era, when old Herodotus jotted down in quaint Ionic Greek, upon one of the blank leaves of his inexhaustible note-book, a full description of this curious sirup, as being one of the pet dainties of the ‘‘ Tauric Scyth- ians.”’ Last, but certainly not least, in this primi- tive bill of fare, came two enormous bottles of vodki (Russian corn-whiskey) which the Cossacks, thanks to their open-air life and constant exercise, are wont to drink like spring water. ‘*Rather hard upon you, Ker, who drink nothing stronger than tea,’’ whispered Dixon. ‘‘The ataman will be very much shocked when you refuse.’’ ‘*Like an English sailor that I met among the ruins of Constantinople just after the great fire,’’ rejoined I, in the same tone, ‘‘who, when I told him that I’d never drunk greg, answered in accents of the deepest pathos, ‘ Well, sir, you may thank God that you don’t know how much you've lost !’”’ The worthy ataman was indeed over- whelmed with astonishment at my refusal of the proffered treat, and remarked with true Cossack frankness that I was the only Eng- lishman whom he had ever seen that would not get drunk when he got the chance. But his aged father—who had been cowering be- side the stove to warm his poor old limbs as best he might—seemed to kindle into new life at the first taste of the powerful spirit, and began to pour forth reminiscences that would have been of priceless value to any historian ; for he had seen the French retreat

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OVER THE COSSACK STEPPES. from Moscow in 1812, and the Russian ad- vance on Paris in 1814, and his recollections of the final struggle against Napoleon, told in the quaint, picturesque language of the genuine Cossack, had a weird impressiveness of their own beside which the cold and meas- ured details of history seemed tame and barren indeed. But all at once the talk was interrupted by a wild strain of barbaric music just outside the house, drawing us all to the door, where we were met by a very strange and startling spectacle. The full moon was rising in all its glory over the dark river and the vast shadowy plain, and lighting up with its cold splendor a band of thirty Cossacks who stood ranked in front of the house, arrayed in all the bar- baric picturesqueness of their native dress, and with their unsheathed sabers glittering in the spectral moonlight. One glance at them carried me back four hundred years to the days of Tarass Boolba and Demid Popo- vitch, for these tall, sinewy figures and swarthy, brigand-like faces, with the fierce restlessness of wild beasts in their large black eyes, and a savage fullness of untamed life quivering through every fiber of their long, gaunt limbs, reproduced in every feat- ure those terrible guerrillas who were the dread of Turkey in the fifteenth century with their hereditary vow of ‘‘ eternal war to the infidels.’’ ‘“Any photographer who couldn’t make something of a group like that,’’ muttered Dixon, eying them admiringly, ‘‘ would not be worth his salt.’’ ‘Not worth his nitrate of silver, you mean,’’ said I; ‘‘but now listen—they’re going to sing their war-song.’’ As I spoke, the whole thirty voices broke forth at once, with a marvelous power of time and tune (for the ordinary Russian, though untaught, is naturally as musical as the Italian himself), chanting in measured cadence the great deeds of their ancestors against the Tartars of the Crimea and the Turks of the Black Sea coast. \t first the song was pitched in a deep, mellow recitative, slow and solemn as a dirge. But, little by little, as their hot southern blood kindled into living fire at the deepen- ing swell of the stern battle-music and the thought of the grim deeds and bloody com- bats which they were celebrating, the song 347 waxed louder, quicker, wilder, the motions of the singers more rapid and more fierce, till at length they rushed together as if mad- dened by the frenzy of war, striking their sabers furiously together till the sparks flew out in showers, while above all the din of clashing steel and trampling feet rolled out like a peal of thunder the wild chorus of their war-song : ‘* Our horses have trodden the steep Kavkaz (Caucasus), Of the Crim (Crimea), we have taken our share ; And the way that we went is dabbled with blood, To tell that we have been there !” And then broke out the harsh, ear-piercing, terrific scream of the Cossack, ‘‘ Hour-r-ra !”’ which was in 1812 the death-knell of many a poor French soldier who was dragging his half-frozen limbs painfully through the deepening snow on the fatal retreat from Moscow. The universal frenzy was now at its height, and this whirl of wild faces and tossing arms, flashing swords, and gaunt lifhbs in furious action, seen by the fitful moonlight amid that great waste, in the silence and loneliness of midnight, was a sight never to be forgotten. Suddenly one of the dancers flung down his saber, and with one smashing blow of his fist felled his nearest comrade like a log. This was the signal for a general battle, fisti- cuffs being as favorite a sport with the Cos- sacks as shillalah-play with the ‘ brisk boys’’ of Ireland. There seemed to be no sides, no order, no method of any kind, but each man hit out with all his might and main at every face or body that came within reach. In a trice the whole band, save two or three, lay sprawling on the earth, with blackened eyes or bleeding noses ; and then the fight ceased as suddenly as it had begun, and the fallen men jumped up and began to laugh heartily, as if all this pounding and bruising were merely a good joke. But the excitement did not end even here. Scarcely had the combatants scrambled to their feet again, when they rushed in a body upon Hepworth Dixon and myself, and, seizing us bythe wrists and ankles, flung us high into the air six times running, catching us again as we descended—a high native compliment, probably suggested by their ancient custom of raising their newly- elected chief upon a shield. Having wit- nessed this curious ceremony before, in other parts of Russia, I was enabled to face it with

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348 tolerable coolness ; but Dixon (to whom it was quite new) shouted lustily to his captors to set him down at once, and amused them not a little with his undisguised trepidation. But the Cossack flourishes in Asia as well as Europe, and in an equally picturesque form. During my journey through Central Asia in 1873 to join the Russian expedition against Khiva, I halted on the bank of a small stream that ran into the Syr-Daria just beyond Fort Perovski, and sallied forth from the post-house to look about me while the wagon-wheels were being greased and fresh horses brought round, the ordinary way of getting fresh horses in Tartary being to send out and catch them on the steppe, very often at a distance of twelve or fifteen miles. Evening was just beginning to deepen into night, and I could see a few hundred yards away scores of camp-fires glittering like stars through the deepening darkness along the bank of the stream, while a murmur of hoarse voices mingled with the rush and babble of the waters. It was a detachment of Cossacks on their way to Tashkent, the capital of Russian Turkestan. I instantly recalled my first introduction to these fa- mous guerrillas on the Lower Don, and re- solved to try whether I still retained the smattering of their peculiar dialect, which I had picked up there. For some time after I had strolled into the camp, my white tunic and forage-cap, red goatskin pants, and knee- high boots (the dress worn by the Cossacks themselves), saved me from recognition. But at length some of them began to stare and point at me ; and when I saw that they had recognized me as a stranger I sat down on a stone, took out my Russian military map, and pretended to be absorbed in the study of it. I had hardly done so when—just as I had expected, for the ordinary Cossack is as in- quisitive as a child—a shadow fell across the paper, and I became aware that one of these wild horsemen of the wilderness had stolen up behind me, and was peering wonderingly over my shoulder at the mysterious map, which doubtless appeared to 47m a mere un- meaning cobweb of strange colors and strag- gling lines. Feigning unconsciousness of his presence, OVER THE COSSACK STEPPES. I continued my studies; but the visible amazement of my visitor soon drew to the spot three or four of his comrades, and these in their turn were followed by others, till at length I found myself hemmed in by a per- fect ring of dark, lean visages, and gaunt, wiry frames, and small, glittering, rat-like eyes. As I looked up at them, with the air of having just become aware of their presence, one of the foremost men laid his finger on the map, and asked : ‘*What’s that picture about, father? we can’t make it out.’’ ‘*Tt’s not a picture, brothers,’’ said I ; ‘‘ it’s the thing by which I’m finding my way through your country, and I can tell, by just looking at it, exactly what way you've come in marching from Holy Russia, and all the places through which you’ve passed. Now here, you see,’’ I went on, pretending not to notice the grin of open unbelief that went round the ring at this last assertion, ‘‘is the place where you passed the Ural River. You crossed the border at Orsk, and then struck down tothe southeast, and came to Fort Karabutak. Isn’t that so?”’ ‘‘True enough,’’ replied half a dozen voices, in tones of undisguised astonish- ment. : ‘‘Then you passed the frontier of Central Asia at Terekli, crossed the desert, and skirted the edge of Lake Aral at Ak-Djulpass; and then you got down to the Syr-Daria River at Kazalinsk, and went along the bank past Fort No. 2 to Fort Perovski.”’ With every fresh mention of one of these familiar names, the general astonishment grew more and more overwhelming; and when I paused, there was a universal silence of blank bewilderment, broken at length by a voice asking eagerly : ‘“‘But, father, tell me, for the love of Heaven, if we’ve marched a thousand miles since leaving Holy Russia, how does it all go down on that little bit of paper?’’ I attempted to explain the miracle, but the explanation seemed to leave my hearers just as wise as before; and I suspect that they still think of me as a great magician, who crammed the whole breadth of Central Asia into ‘‘a bit of paper no bigger than an Easter cake.”’

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THE AMERICAN NOBLEMAN AT MOUNT VERNON. AN AUTOGRAPHIC STUDY OF WASHINGTON. By MoncvureE D. Conway UR presidential centenary finds the nation relieved of a considerable quantity of dem- agogic cant. We have discovered that it is not snobbery alone which values good breeding. Fifty years ago it was politic to hide a candidate’s gentle birth under a heraldic log cabin : that candidate’s grand- son is aided in his way to the White House by his famous ancestors. And, it may be added, by some not his,—the Princess Poca- hontas, for instance.* Nathaniel Haw- thorne suggested that an original American architecture might some day be developed from the pioneer’s log cabin. The tendency seems to be in the direction of the English castles to which our belles now aspire, as in the days when Sally Cary and Mary Phil- lipse preferred such to the humble abode offered them by Washington. Without moralizing on that liability to snobbery which is the attendant shadow of a cosmo- politan culture, the better side may be dis- covered in an increasing freedom from pro- vincial prepossessions concerning our great SILVER BADGE GIVEN TO WASHINGTON By Governor men. It is admitted that they were made of DINWIDDIE. clay, and the historical student is no longer compelled to surround their lives with a traditional halo. I am thus able to state some results of my own researches, which once might have been deemed heretical, into the life and character of Washington, and to publish some letters which others have passed over,—in some cases, I suspect, because they did not quite conform with foregone conclusions. . Though Washington’s father, Augustine, owned lands, they were poor, and he was too poor to cultivate them profitably ; possibly because he had ventured too much in Governor Spottswood’s scheme of iron mining and furnaces. When Augustine died (1743) his widow and children were looked on as “ poor relations’’ by their high connections. Mary Washington tells much of her own mind and character in the letter which Dr. Emmet per- mits me to give in fac-simile. The Washingtons were sufficiently clannish for George to be quartered on one and another of his more fortunate relations. In this way he got a little schooling, grew precocious, and made some acquaintance with the gentry. Then, at seventeen, he fell in love,—‘‘ above his station.’’ A fair descendant of Lord Falk- land amused herself with him, then married a wealthy scion of the house of Fairfax. From this and the like humiliations the youth would have sought refuge at sea, but was dissuaded by his mother. Near their small abode in Stafford, opposite Fredericksburgh, SS N * The longing of some to derive our Centennial president from the only American princess must submit to the facts. The president-elect’s great-great-grandfather Benjamin H. married a Carter; his great-grandfather Benjamin (the ‘‘ Signer’) married a Bassett; his great-grand-aunt, the latter’s sister, married Peyton Randolph, without issue; his grand-uncle Benjamin married a Randolph, without issue; his grandfather (the President) married a Burwell. In none of these flowed the blood of Pocohontas.

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35° resided an admirable gentleman, William Strother. He was an agent of the king in negotiations with the Indians, and no doubt from him George heard many interesting stories about the tribes. Through William Strother, medals were distributed to the chiefs. One of these, preserved by the Vir- ginia Historical Society, is pictured on the preceding page. After a time such silver badges were bestowed by Governor Dinwid- die on white as well as red servants of the king. When Washington, withheld from the sea, had plunged into the wilderness and returned a hero, the Governor decorated him with one of these medals. On June 2, 1754, Dinwiddie writes him: ‘‘I have sent you some Medals for Y’r Self, Colo. Fry, the Half-King, Monacatoocha, the Chiefs of the Delawares and Shawnesse, to wear as Tokens of His Majesty’s Fav’r. Colo. Fair- fax, Colo. Corbin, Colo. Ludwell, and my- self being alike adorn’d.’’ By this time the ‘‘King of Patomeck’’ had passed away before ‘‘ King Carter,’’ viceroy of Lord Fair- fax. It was to be some years yet before Lord Fairfax, hearing that England had sur- rendered its sword to the man who began life as his surveyor, should say, ‘‘ It is time for ime to die’’—and die. Long before that, all the above decorated breasts were at the hero’s feet,—also some fair jewelled breasts which once had no sigh for the pleading youth. There were probabilities that Dinwiddie’s darling would be made a baronet, like Sir William Pepperell in the north. The only difficulty in Washington’s case was, he was already too American to be made into an English baronet. He cared,’ indeed, more for rank than the representative of royalty did; to the Gov- ernor it was a ceremony, to Washington the stamp on a man's metal. He speaks with contemptuous italics of the ‘‘ gentlemen vol- unteers’’ in the Indian wars. He refused all pay rather than be paid less than British officers, and at length resigned the service because he and other American officers, really doing the work, were ranked by mili- tary popinjays from abroad who held com- missions from the king. That resignation (October, 1754) was the first Declaration of Independence. Ultimately Washington had to be taken on his own terms, though, by the logic of events, the corollary of those terms was an American nationality. But, even at THE AMERICAN NOBLEMAN AT MOUNT VERNON. middle age, there was no theoretical democ- racy implied in Washington’s American feeling. He anticipated Paine's ‘‘ Common Sense,’’ which he much admired, but not the speculative ‘“‘Rights of Man.’’ When, in the course of human events, it became neces- sary for this American nobleman to assist the Fairfaxes in reaching their own country, and to assume the local state from which they had to retire, Mount Vernon surpassed the shooting boxes deemed good enough for their American estates, and the world saw there something like a baron, though of the new and American type. This will fully appear when the important collection of Mount Vernon letters, belong- ing to the Long Island Historical Society, are brought to light. Besides these letters, whose near publication by the Society own- ing them I am permitted partly to anticipate, there are others before me of much signifi- cance which have not hitherto been printed. One was lately secured by Mr. Dreer of Phil- adelphia. It is dated at Mount Vernon, August 17, 1785, and addressed to Mr. Tench Tilghman in Baltimore. Washington men- tions having seen a ship from China and its goods advertised in Baltimore, and desires Tilghman to purchase for him ‘‘a set of large blue China Dishes—say half a dozen more or less—1 dozen small bowls, blue and white— 6 Washhand Englets and Basins About 13 yards of good bla: Paduaroy. A p* of fine muslin plain. A p% of silk Handker- chiefs.’’ I select from the list the articles to which Washington adds asterisks ; these re- fer to the following marginal note: ‘‘ With the badge of the Society of the Cincinnati— ifto be had.’’ We learn by Martha Wash- ington’s bequest to her grandson of ‘‘the sett of Cincinnati tea and table china,’’ that her husband was not disappointed. A few years later Washington came to the conclu- sion that it was not quite congruous for Cin- cinnatus, on returning to his plough, to set up a semi-military Order on a basis of pri- mogeniture, and was only retained in the Society by its promise to eliminate the latter feature—a promise not fulfilled. cn The design on page 357 representing part of a bed-curtain from Mount Vernon (in Dr. Emmet’s collection) represents the arras of a new nobility. It was probably a present from some manufacturer in Holland, who added the storks, and some other details, to

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THE AMERICAN NOBLEMAN AT MOUNT VERNON. wpa a cee pve YZ BO crt wit Zoec po ood jp” a frccz0s WHeH ltd (Goce op geese [RLOT “2 Ae Legttor orotate 4 gootine Aad tetas “Ce Sef oral KZ wl g ET in mre Eni 22 one ( LP; pegedige® byt hir a Lear LL wie le yp (tLe LETTER FROM WASHINGTON’S MOTHER TO HER BROTHER. (From the Collection of Dr. Thomas A, Emmet. a design sent from America with the cotton on which it is printed. The portraits are from those of M. Dusimitier, madein America, and published in 1783: Washington, Franklin, Adams, Robert Morris, Jay, Huntington, Dickenson, Steuben, Charles Thompson, Dayton, Reed, and Yates. America kneeling ata Roman altar (for everything Roman was in the ascendant) offers incense to her divin- ities. Washington stands between Fame, who crowns him, and Peace with her olive- He has dismounted from his horse, his sword is replaced by branch, which now grazes ; i farmer’s staff. It does not appear that Mount Vernon was decorated with thecurtains, imported by anti- slavery Virginians, representing Grenville Sharp striking fetters from a kneeling negro. My aged mother remembers such in the windows of gentlemen who yet owned many slaves. Instead of Washington’s negro ser- vant, the bed-curtain shows a turbanned Dutchman holding his horse. But notwith- standing this euphemism, and notwithstand- ing the eventual liberation of slaves by Washington’s Will, he does not appear to have shared the strong anti-slavery senti- ments of other leading Virginians. He expressed an opinion in favor of gradual emancipation, but neverurged it on his State.

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352 The Mount Vernon letters, when published, will show Washington’s attention to the cabins and the comfort of his negroes, and his anger at any maltreatment of them. In one he complains that some of his overseers ‘* seem to consider a negro much in the same light as they do the brute beasts on the farm ; and often treat them as inhumanly.’’ But he insists that the slaves shall work, and they are hunted when they run away. (Though I can find but two instances of such escapes.) As for their morality, Washing- ton, who never rolls his eyes, but levels them straight at facts, did not look for all the virtues among those who had no social posi- tion to lose or aspire to. ‘‘ Is it Sarah that was among the spinners at the Mansion house that is now in child-bed? If so she seems to have begun in time.’’ But he is rigid with regard to his white retainers—his over- seers, brewers, distillers, carpenters,—of which there were at least a score on his estates.* He remorselessly dismissed the drunken and debauched. In establishing a superintendent over all of these, during his absence while President, Washington gives him the following general instructions : ‘*To treat them civilly is no more than what all men are entitled to, but my advice to you is, to keep them at a proper distance, for they will grow upon familiarity in pro- portion as you will sink in authority if you do not. Pass by no faults or neglects (espe- cially at first), for overlooking one only serves to generate another, and it is more than probable that some of them (one in particular) will try, at first, what lengths he may go. A steady and firm conduct, with an inquisitive inspection into, and a proper arrangement of everything on your part, will, though it may give more trouble at first, save a great deal in the end—and you may rest assured that in everything that is just and proper to be done on your part, [you] shall meet with the fullest support on mine.—Nothing will contribute more to effect these desirable purposes than a good example—unhappily this was not set (from * The work of building public edifices on the site of the federal city made it difficult to procure skillful hands elsewhere. Washington sought far and wide for such. He-was chiefly assisted in this by his nephew, Col. William Augustine Washington, of Westmoreland. A note introducing this gentleman to Hamilton is given as a characteristic autograph of Washington. It may be THE AMERICAN NOBLEMAN AT MOUNT VERNON. what I have learnt lately) by Mr. Whiting [deceased] who, it is said, drank freely— kept bad company at my house and in Alex- andria—and was a very debauched person. Whenever this is the case it is not easy for a man to throw the first stone, for fear of having it returned to him; and this I take to be the true cause why Mr. Whiting did “not look more scrupulously into the conduct of the Overseers, and more minutely into the smaller matters belonging to the Farms —which, though individually [they] may be trifling, are not found so in the aggregate : for there is no addage more true than the old Scotch one, that ‘many mickles make a muckle.’ ’ It is satisfactory to find that the superin- tendent to whom this was written, Mr. Wil- liam Pearce, proved entirely satisfactory. In this he was an exception. During his long absences from Mount Vernon, at the time of the Revolution and after, Washing- ton’s interests suffered a good deal through trusted agents. ‘‘ Pray what has become of that superlative villain Posey?’’ he asks a neighbor (1786). ‘‘It has been reported here that he has gone off to Georgia. By a letter I have just received from Mr. Hall I find that the whole produce of my estates below from the year 1774, together with the monies which Hall received from others on my ac- count, has got into that abandoned wretches hands, not one shilling of which I presume will ever be got out of them.’’ Another neighbor appropriated his lottery tickets, and in a letter thereon is a good specimen of Washington’s humor. It is addressed to his lawyer, Edmund Randolph, September 8, 1789, just before he was ap- pointed Attorney-General. ‘‘The list of Associates who purchased one hundred tick- ets in the lottery of the deceased Col. Byrd is all the memorandum I have of that transaction. To the best of my recollection Mr. —— (deceased) was one of these associ- ates, and was either authorized or assumed (I do not know which) the management of the business. He did it so effectually, it mentioned, however, that this brief note (in Dr. Emmet’s possession) shows its writer’s private friendliness to Hamilton, which some have questioned ; and’ also a notable alienation of some of the Washingtons from Wi!- liam and Mary College,—probably on account of a sur- vival of aristocracy about it; possibly on account of its reputation for rationalism.

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THE AMERICAN NOBLEMAN AT MOUNT VERNON. Rs -°4 fount Vergo 2 lyr VI9Ot” 353 LETTER FROM WASHINGTON TO ALEXANDER HAMILTON, (From the Collection of Dr, Thomas A. Emmet,) seems, as to monopolize the interest. Some of the prizes, it has been said, are valuable, but whether there is any clew by which Mr. ’s conduct in this business can be developed I am unable to say. Your uncle (the Honorable Peyton Randolph) was one of the associates. But if neither Mr. Fitz- hugh, nor any of the others who are living, * The writer possesses a “List of the numbers that came up prizes in the Delaware Lottery, for the use of New Jersey College, the Presbyterian Church at Prince- can give such information as would avail in an enquiry, we must, I presume, set down with the loss of the money and prizes.’’ Washington’s tickets reappeared only as relics, and one or two have found their way into Dr. Emmet’s collection. The essen- tially fraudulent character of lotteries had not been discovered in those days.* Teeto- town, and the united congregations of Newcastle and Christiana Bridge, which began drawing at Newcastle on Monday, May 23, and ended on Thursday, June 9, 1774.”

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354 talism was also a good many years distant. I find another bit of Washington’s humor which the saintly theory of the man has suppressed. When on his way to suppress the Whisky Rebellion he instructs his sec- retary, Dandridge, to answer General Knox’s question about provisions: ‘‘ As the Presi- dent will be going, if he proceeds, into the Country of Whisky, he proposes to make use of that liquor for his drink ; and pre- suming that beef and bread will be furnished by the contractors he requires no supply of these articles from you.’’ Still, I do not think Washington had a great deal of humor ; otherwise he would not have written so naively to Dinwiddie: ‘‘We should have been four days without provisions if Provi- dence had not sent a trader from the Ohio to our relief, for whose flour I was obliged to give twenty-one shillings and eight pence per hundred.’’ This manna in the wilder- ness was rather costly, but Washington’s trust in Providence was proof against its most exorbitant agent. His smile is most frequently apparent in dealing with the tricks and sham ailments of his negroes. ‘*I perceive that for every day Betty Davis works she is laid up two.’’ ‘‘Is Cesar a runaway? If so, it is probable he will es- cape altogether—as he can read, if not write.’’ ‘‘ Paschal seems to be pretty regu- larly reported sick six days in the week.”’ (Paschal is evidently all right on Sundays.) His shepherd (white) having reported some lambs as having died, the President writes : ‘*Davy’s lost lambs carry with them a very suspicious appearance. He ought to be able to produce the bones.”’ At the time when the letters just quoted were written, the Northern Neck of Virginia was the great center ofthe country, in a social sense. It was the land of the Washingtons, Fairfaxes, Masons, Mercers, Fitzhughs, Mad- isons, Lees, Peytons, Graysons, Strothers, Taliaferros, and many another famous fam- ily. They lived in grand style, in noble mansions of which the desolations of two wars have left little trace. At the head of them all was Mount Vernon, both in dignity and hospitality, and an immense sum was required to support its adequacy to world- wide demands. Moreover, Washington had a host of relatives, and his wife a large num- ber. Not one of these was ever neglected. Many of them depended on him for help, THE AMERICAN NOBLEMAN AT MOUNT VERNON. some forsupport. Mount Vernon was rarely without visitors. Toward the close of his life the great man, finding himself physi- cally unable to do all the honors of his house, and unwilling to alter its quasi-national character, sent for his handsome and cul- tured nephew, Lawrence Lewis, of Fred- ericksburg, aged twenty-two, to undertake the duties of entertainment. ‘‘ As both your aunt and I’’—so he wrote to the youth, son of his only sister—‘‘are on the decline of life and regular in our habits, especially in our hours of rising and going to bed, I re- quire some person (fit and proper) to ease me of the trouble of entertaining company, par- ticularly of nights, as it is my inclination to retire (and unless prevented by very partic- ular company I always do retire) either to bed or to my study soon after candle-light. In taking these duties (which hospitality obliges me to bestow on company) off my hands, it would render mea very acceptable service.”’ This was the Lawrence Lewis to whom his grandmother, Mary Washington (in her will preserved at Fredericksburg), bequeathed, ‘‘my negroe wench Lydia ;’’ and on whom Martha Washington bestowed the hand of her beautiful daughter, Nelly Custis. I am able to lay before my reader (again through Dr. Emmet’s kindness) a pretty and naive letter from Nelly, showing how smoothly things moved after Lawrence’s arrival, and how swiftly time with herself—between her harp- sichord (for which Washington paid a thousand dollars, returned to him in strains that soothed his closing years) and her lover: ‘*Mount Vernon. Dec. 28th 1797. My Dear Madam.—My sister Law will, I expect, hand you this letter, as she intends visiting Philadelphia very shortly. We have anx- iously wished to hear from you, and to be assured of your health, Mr. Wolcott’s, and the children’s. I wrote to you in the Sum- mer, and directed my letter to Hartford ; per- haps it never reached you, as I have not had the pleasure of an answer. I hope soon to hear that yourself and family enjoy good health. You are now no doubt in Philadel- phia. I congratulate you that the late epi- demic has at last left that unfortunate city. For its distressed inhabitants I have felt sin- cere sorrow, and hope they will never again be visited with that dreadful fever. We have spent our Summer and Autumn

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THE AMERICAN NOBLEMAN AT MOUNT VERNON. Lb Serer oe 3? ~Bi cas _ Sout — heat, own at —- Meee K Ie Fuinid with AG Baas & -Wnrd et ale ail fe ’ Hemp. nthe AE Setar! 6 W ee na a Pia ria dowd h a A PAGE FROM WASHINGTON’S MOUNT VERNON DIARY. (From the Collection of Dr. Thomas A. Emmet.) very happily here, have in general been blessed with health, have had many agree- able visitors, and are now contentedly seated round our Winter fireside,—often speaking of and wishing to see again our good friends in Philadelphia, but never regretting its amusements, or a life of ceremony. I stay very much at home, have not been to the City for two or three months. My grand parents [Washington and his wife], Brother |G. W. P. Custis], a nephew of the General ‘Lawrence Lewis], and your humble servant, compose the family at present. I never have a dull or lonesome hour, never find a day too long ; indeed time appears to fly,—-and I sometimes think the years are much shorter for some time past than they were ever be- fore. Iam not very industrious ; but I work a little, read, play on the Harpsichord, write, and find my time fully taken up with the several employments. My Mother and her young family are all well. My sister Peters has lately presented us with another little relation, a very fine girl, who and walk,

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356 is thought to be very like her Mother. I have never seen my sister since that event, but hear she is quite well. I send by my Sister Law a cotton cord and tassels, which I lately made on purpose for you. I learnt last summer to make them. I hope you will like it ; and you will gratify me very much by wearing it in remembrance of me. Our friend Mrs. Harrison is still in Alexandria, and proposes spending the winterthere. She is quite well, and I believe expects shortly to increase her family. Mr. G. W. Craik is at present very much indisposed from a violent cold, which was occasioned by his going out and exposing himself too much some severe cold weather that we have had lately. Poor young man! I fear he is not long for this world, and his father probably will live to see all his children buried. I believe no parent ever had children more dutiful and better disposed than his are. He is much to be pitied, and Mrs. Craik also, unless they can comfort themselves with re- flecting that their children were very deserv- ing, and are gone to that Being who never fails to reward merit. But I believe, when our feelings are so much hurt by. the loss of a worthy object, it is impossible to reason with ourselves ; we are wholly occupied with our present affliction, and can not immedi- ately recollect any circumstances to alleviate or remove it. Alexandria has been very gay—Balls in abundance. I have never yet attended any of them ; I expect soon to be at one. When in a city, Balls are my favorite amusement, but when in the country I have no inclination for them ; and‘am too indolent in Winter to move to any distance from home for any species of amusement. I shall thank you to remember me affec- tionately to those Friends who may enquire about me—particularly Mrs. Gatliff. My beloved grandmama joins me in love and best wishes to you and your children, with all our compliments to Mr. Wolcott. As the New Year is almost here, I will conclude with wishing you and yours many very happy New Years,—each succeeding one happier than the last. And be assured, dear madam, that I am with perfect esteem and affection, Yours, ELEANOR P. Custis.”’ THE AMERICAN NOBLEMAN AT MOUNT VERNON. I quote this letter in full because Nelly Custis nestled near Washington’s heart, which may be felt in every sentence she writes. He had parted from his old friends for reasons impressively indicated in this new intimacy with the Wolcotts. In expressing her relief from the “life of ceremony”’ at Philadelphia, Nelly says one word for herself and two for the Gen- eral,—who was heartily sick and tired of it. ‘* What we vainly sigh for in youth comes in heaps on our old age.’’ So says Goethe, and it wastruein Washington’scase. In the mean dwelling of his boyhood he sighed for the state of the grand folk, such as the Fair- faxes, one of whom had charmed away his sweetheart. He had eclipsed them all. He had become the Baron of the Northern Neck. Then he had expanded into the father of his country.. He had sounded all the depths,— and, alas, the shoals—of honor. He shrank from the presidency. In a little note (un- published) to a friend (Wilson Miles Cary), written shortly after his inauguration, he includes him among those who ‘‘ know me well enough to do justice to the motives which induced me once more to embark on the ocean of public life.’’ It had proved an ocean stormier than that from which his mother withheld him when a boy. When leaving the presidency he wrote to a rela- tive—‘‘ No consideration under heaven, that I can foresee, shall again withdraw me from the walks of private life.’’ So the heart- weary helmsman reached his haven. Here he could forget the anger of which he had become the object. In the delightful diary of Gouverneur Morris, just published, there is a London entry ;—‘‘ Dine at Mr. Pinckney’s [Feb. 22, 1796]. It is Washington’s birth- day. He is sixty-four years of age. Dr. Romaine tells me that he [Washington] is determined to resign his office, and attri- butes it to his conviction that he would not be unanimously re-elected.”” It is, indeed, doubtful whether he could have been re- elected at all; but that had nothing to do with Washington’s resolution to retire. His second term had been a prolonged torture. Though he had lost old friends, there re- mained his earliest intimates,—the sunshine and rain, the corn and wine, the flowers and fruitsof Mount Vernon. There once more moved nature’s nobleman in the garden he

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THE AMERICAN NOBLEMAN AT PART OF WASHINGTON’S BED CURTAIN, (From the Collection of Dr. Thomas A| Emmet.) won from the wilderness,—his velvet | gold laid aside; his plain drab, his white roadbrim, his long staff, resumed. The ill pages of Washington's diary at Mount ron are poetic in their simplicity. y the elements leave their autograph in oc 25 his little book. No cloud floats, no wind blows, nor rain nor sunbeam falls, but is dialled on this observant eye as surely as it is registered in the opening or closing flower in his field. It reminds one of the passing of King Arthur.

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ALL AROUND LAKE SUPERIOR. By WM. Hosea BALLOv. ELDOM have civilization and commerce been seen winning their way against the wilderness with faster and more firmly planted footsteps than in the neighborhood of Lake Superior. Thisis especially true of the Wisconsin and Minnesota shores, but the development of resources and means of access to the hitherto remote shores, : and the building up of towns along the eastern DULUTH, and northeastern border have been nearly as remarkable. Until a few years ago this great body of fresh water—the largest on the face of the earth, and one of the earliest known districts of this continent—had only a few ports, where fish, lumber, mining products, and the Indian trade sustained a comparatively insignificant commerce. But now populous cities, important ports, the terminus of rail- way systems, and the seat of an enormous commerce in grain and merchandise, as well as in raw materials, are rising and flourishing upon its picturesque margin. An exceptionally rapid progress of this kind has taken place, as has been mentioned, along the southwestern shore, where forests of valuable timber cover a hilly and rocky region, whose declivities conceal deposits of iron and other ores, whose glades are fertile and only await the plow to be made agriculturally useful, all of whose rivers can exert a water power; and where shooting and fishing, invigorating air and delightful land- scapes, add enjoyment to utility. The principal elevations in this rugged region is a line of wooded and rocky summits, which stretch from Wisconsin into Michigan along a line somewhat parallel with the south shore of the lake, and are called the Gogebic Mountains—an Indian word, to be pronounced

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ALL AROUND LAKE SUPERIOR. 359 with both g’s hard, and the accent on the middle syllable. In 1873 Captain Na- thaniel Moore, a strolling miner, wandered across these mountains, prospecting. He came to a place where a cyclone had pre- ceded him, and denuded a great scarp on the face of the hills. Following its path he saw rich ores clinging to the roots of upturned trees, and the flooded streams which swept down the ravines were crimson with the blood of the richest Bessemer iron in an almost pure state. It took ten years to con- vince the cold world of capital that wealth lay on the surface of the Gogebic Range awaiting the advent of labor to gather it ; uh Ye iE AA Z eS 1 (al but when once this conviction was en- forced by those interested, capital flowed in, railways were built into and through the hills to the lakeports, and settlements sprang up everywhere. All this stimulated the shore towns, and under itsinfluence, com- bined with other causes, struggling ports, like Duluth, Ashland, Bayfield, and others, throve and increased; while new towns of the interior, Hurley, Bessemer, Wakefield, and Washburn, rose from nothing to great local importance. Duluth has now acquired a population of forty-five thousand. Ashland has now about twelve thousand people. In brief, the influx into the region surrounding MAIN STREET, DULUTH.

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ALL AROUND LAKE SUPERIOR. ORE DOCKS, Lake Superior since 1882 amounts to fully two hundred thousand people. Duluth, having the unrivaled prestige on Lake Superior, demands first mention. It is no farther from New York, by water, than Chicago, while it is three hundred miles nearer the grain-producing regions of Da- kota, and five hundred miles nearer to the Pacific Ocean. The harbor of Duluth is the most remarkable on the Great Lakes. A long narrow sand dune, seven miles in length, land-locks a magnificent bay, which has suf- ficient depth and area to accommodate the combined merchant marine of the lakes ; it is called Minnesota Point, and offers extraor- dinary facilities as a site for factories. On the mainland side of the harbor there rises abruptly a long chain of rocky projections, at the base of which, and clinging to its sides, is the city, in whose name is perpetuated the fame of one of the very earliest of French exploring traders in the Northwest. Thus the city is protected on the west from great storms, while its harbor is shielded from severe easterly gales. Duluth originated so recently, and under such auspicious circumstances, that it had the benefit of the experience of other cities, and could conduct its growth on correct prin- ciples. From the outset, provision was made for expansion. Terminal facilities have been so arranged that all railways may enter with- out hindrance or limit as to number. Such great railway corporations as the Northern Pacific, the St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Man- ASHLAND. itoba, the Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Omaha, the Duluth and St. Paul, the Canadian Pacific, the Wisconsin Central, and the Milwaukee, Lake Shore and Western, al- ready have termini here, while several lesser roads are in active existence or in immedi- ate prospect. It is said that nearly fifty companies have been incorporated, whose railroads already reach Duluth or expect to ; and each of these railroads implies a ship- ping traffic and port-service corresponding to its pretensions, for it is as the best harbor at the western end of the lake, and the most western point of navigation in the Union, that Duluth finds a reason for its existence, and a promise of permanence. There are miles of slips, along which warehouses and coal-bins are arranged so that vessels may be unloaded and loaded simultaneously. The many elevators occupy a district of their own and are arranged in rows. In fact each commercial product has a distinct wharf- area of its own, and is classified for shipment in aspecial locality. The elevator capacity is no less than twenty-five millions of bushels, and twenty millions of bushels of grain are now shipped annually, besides two million barrels of flour. The lumber exports alone amount to three hundred mil- lion feet annually. Some seventy-five miles east of Duluth, at the head of the beautiful Chequamegon Bay, stands Ashland, Wisconsin, the second in importance of the port-cities of Lake Supe- rior, and which owes its rise and strength to

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ALL AROUND LAKE SUPERIOR. THE COLBY MINE. the development of the iron mines in its neighborhood, and to the harbor facilities, which have invited railways to make it their shipping point for ores, lumber, etc. Here are three of the largest ore-docks in the world. One of them is one thousand four hundred and five feet in length, including nine hun- dred and fifty feet of trestle approach. Its width is fifty-two feet and ten inches ; height above water, forty feet; and it required one thousand three hundred and twenty-five miles of timbers to construct it. It has two hundred and thirty-four ore-pockets, with a storage capacity of twenty-six thousand tons, but it can carry one hundred and six thousand tons. The ore is discharged into vessels, either from the ore-cars on the dock or from the ore-pockets, by means of sheet-iron troughs. The two other docks are scarcely less capacious, and all are a scene of intense activity day and night. Trains of ore are arriving on two or three -different roads every few minutes, and the wharves are lined with steamers and sailing vessels re- ceiving their cargoes. Ashland has also a large blast furnace where the local ore is smelted into some thirty-two thousand tons of pig annually, suitable for the manufacture of Bessemer steel. This furnace eats up every year as much charcoal as the clearing of five square miles of forest will yield. The lum- bering and manufacturing interests of Ash- land, also, are large. Finally, its admirable situation upon the bluffs overlooking the lake and island dotted bay, its proximity to the many lakes and rivers, where good sport may be had, and its bracing climate during the warm months of the year, have brought Ashland into great prominence of late as a summer resort. An immense hotel, The Chequamegon, faces the very large bay, and is crowded both summer and winter with health and pleasure seeking guests, In front are the Apostle Islands, with beautiful shore lines? rich in picturesque views, and daily accessible by a pleasure steamer. Here are

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SHUTES FOR RAISING ORE.

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ALL AROUND LAKE SUPERIOR ASHLAND many antiquities, remains of the civilization established by Pére Marquette. Here, too, are remnants of the Chippewa Indians, who have a reservation twelve miles from Ash- land, and are largely civilized. The ores and iron which dominate business in Ashland are all the product of the mining district thirty miles, or less, south of the city, and known in general as the Gogebic Rangecountry. This range is about seventy miles long, half in Wisconsin and half in Michigan. Double veins of iron-ore have been traced along its whole length, and claims have been ‘‘ located ’’ from one end to the other ; but actual operations have never been conducted on more than twenty miles of the veins. Out of some two hundred and ninety-five ‘‘mines ’’ incorporated, with over three hundred million dollars of capital stock, only nineteen were in actual operation in 1888, and experts regard no more than thirty- one as capable of profitable working. Such is the outcome of the most extensive iron- mining ‘‘boom’’ the world ever saw. At first every prospect-hole was superlatively capitalized, and stock with a par value of over two hundred millions of dollars was sold to widows, working girls and business men, many of the latter of sufficient practi- cal knowledge to have saved themselves from the dreadful wreck of fortunes which termi- nated the boom of 1885-6. At one time there were sixteen thousand laborers at work on the Range, but they melted away with the hopes of the capitalizers, until to-day there are prob- ably less than two thousand miners at work. After the collapse desperate efforts were made to form several trusts to control the output of the Range, regulate railway freights, and build steamers of large capa- city to transport the ore. The effort to form trusts in this locality failed, but the legiti- mate mines have gone on producing from seven hundred and fifty thousand to one mil- lion tons annually of the finest Bessemer ores. Out of the forty millions of tons of iron-ore which the Michigan mines have produced, the Gogebic Range has yielded nearly one-tenth in one-tenth of the time that the remaining mines of the State have been operated. Through this iron region run the Wiscon- sin Central and the Milwaukee, Lake Shore and Western Railroads, the latter of which was the pioneer of the present civilization, and has reaped a large and justly earned reward from its early pluck and foresight. I was present when the ‘‘ army of occupation,”’ hurrying thither at the beginning of the ‘‘boom,’’ marched in. The forest that cov- ered a thousand square miles of territory succumbed to their steel. Five thousand buildings were erected in an incredibly short time. Some were surrounded by acres of stumps, others by gigantic trees, spared PERE MARQUETTE'S CHAPEL.

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OR | PO OES 2 gs THE ASHLAND MINE

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366 until they had to be destroyed. Some were made of hewed logs and others of rough boards. Some were large and commodious, others mere shanties. In many places the entire hillside would be alive with nascent homes, clinging to its precipitous face like barnacles to the coast rocks. These collec- tions of dwellings, often having only the camp-name of some mine, lay so near one another as to blend together. One of the most sudden in its rise, and still the largest municipality of the Gogebic region, is Hurley, on Montreal River. It has been burned several times, but each time has been rebuilt better. To-day it has many costly residences, business blocks, and con- veniences of town life, while good order and assured prosperity have superseded the ear- lier roughness and uncertainty. Bessemer, Wakefield, Watersmeet, Mellen, Gogebic and other centers are growing and solidifying. Until last year the wilderness of woods ALL AROUND LAKE SUPERIOR. and rocks which covered the northern penin- sula of Michigan, was penetrated by only one line of railroad—that running from St. Ignace, on the Straits of Mackinaw, to Ontanogan, whose copper mines have long been famous. Now two east-and-west lines connect the Mississippi Valley with the Sault Ste Marie, where a new bridge joins them to the Canadian Pacific system of rail- ways, and furnishes an important through line between St. Paul and the Atlantic Coast. The noted copper ledges of Lake Superior seem confined to a comparatively small strip along its southern shores. A few years ago the mining was mainly at the surface or near it. Lately important changes have taker place. Over two million tons of copper have been added to the sum total excavated, and all from lesser to greater depths under ground. Many of the mines are now so deep that the interior heat of the earth makes it THE APOSTLE ISLANDS.

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ALL AROUND LAKE SUPERIOR. 367 BAYFIELD. necessary to use ice for the comfort of the laborer confined in the heated atmos- phere. As soon as it has been raised to the surface, the ore is passed through the rock crushers, then taken to a stamp-mill and pounded into fine mud and sand. It then runs through a system of sieves and jiggers and over slime tables, where, by an elaborate mechanical process, the copper is separated. It is then taken to a smelter, cast into ingots and sent to market. Asa ton of rock con- tains about fifteen pounds of copper, it requires the treatment of one hundred and , -4 thirty-three tons of rock to produce one ton of pure refined copper. As the workings have descended further down into the earth, invention has found means of facilitating the excavation of ore by steam drills and costly hoisting and other machinery. There has been an addition of electric lighting, ponderous engines and hoisting apparatus, compressors of air, vertical shafts and cages. The civilization of the mining settlements has kept pace in improvement, until now it is a pleasant, as well as a profitable place to spend one’s life. At the eastern extremity of the lake, on the right bank of its outlet over the rapids of St. Mary’s River, has stood for two centu- ries some kind of a settlement. First it was a French mission station and trading house ; then an American fur-trading post and sta- tion fortroops. Then the canal and splendid locks were built by the United States Gov- ernment, at an expense of two million dol- lars, by which the largest vessels could easily pass from lake to lake. Sault Ste Marie, however, was never much more than an in- significant village, matched by a still poorer village on the Canadian side, until 1887, when the building of the new roads eastward from St. Paul, and westward from the Cana- dian Pacific’s main line at Sudbury, Ontario ; and the construction of the great steel bridge spanning the rapids, caused the stagnant towns to spring into new life, and attracted there a combined population of several thou- sands. A large amount of building of vari- ous kinds has gone on, and ‘‘ The Soo”’ is destined to become of much importance as a commercial point not only, but as a pleasure resort. Here is one of the headquarters of the ex- tensive fishery of Lake Superior, though this business is more systematically conducted, perhaps, at the western end of the lake, whence some fifteen thousand tons of fresh water trout and whitefish are annually sent to Chicago and other markets. (The catch

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368 at the eastern end of the lake goes mainly to Detroit and Eastern cities.) One day I made a trip in the tug which collects the catch in the environs of the Apostle Islands. We started at Bayfield, the most northern port of Wisconsin and a pretty summer re- sort. From this point we traveled sixty miles through the largest netting district. Here I witnessed the hauling of a three- mile net, and also its casting. This enor- mous net extends entirely across the widest channel among the islands along the bot- tom. The fish, in attempting to pass through it in schools, are entangled in its fine meshes —become literally wound in linen—and then give upthe battle. A man stands on the rail of the tug with a gaff to hook those which are not sufficiently entangled or which are so large and powerful as to threaten escape. Two men grasp the fish as the net comes over the rail, and toss them to other men, who dress them. About a ton and a half of whitefish and trout were taken from it on this occasion. The gill net is the most com- mon snare in use, while the pound net is set near the shores. Thus it happens that the entire water among the Apostle Islands is snared with gill nets in the channels, and ALL AROUND LAKE SUPERIOR. with pound nets near the shores. Thesame is also true of the watery region around Isle Royal. The tug which I boarded spent most of the day operating the great gill net, after which it visited all the lesser fishing camps and collected the catch of the day. The whole fishery of this bay is under control of a Chicago firm, which has ice- houses at Duluth, Bayfield and elsewhere, and regulates the price of fish to suit its convenience. The firm also has many power- ful fishing tugs and one large steamer, engaged in the trade exclusively. At Duluth is a government hatchery, which annually turns loose into the lake hundreds of thou- sands of young fishes to supply the great drain for market. The north shore of Lake Superior remains almost wholly in its primitive wildness, but is no longer inaccessible by land. Themain line of the Canadian Pacific Railway strikes the lake at Heron Bay, its northeastern angle, and then runs close along the rock- bound coast, in the midst of scenery of striking magnificence, and by means of in- genious and costly engineering, until it reaches Thunder Bay, one hundred miles westward. Thunder Bay is a deep indentation a meek 4 $e oped te dks | CANOEING ON THE NORTH SHORE, Dee Ser in the rear of the romantic and beau- tiful headland called Thunder Cape, and protected by the huge break- water of Isle Royal. Silver Islet, which was formerly a marvel of rich- es in silver mining, is a tiny mass of rock outside the Cape, which fur- nished only room for the buildings at the mouth of the dangerous mine- shaft. East of the Cape are a lot of islands ending in the great Michi- pocoten, which abound in various minerals, but are not occupied ex- cept by occasional fishermen and hunters. Through these islands, along the north shore, lay the route of the fur-trading canoes which came and went between Montreal and the fur-trading headquarters at Fort William, on Thunder Bay, where an extensive trade was conducted more than two centuries ago. Fort Wil- liam is at the mouth of the Kamin- istiquia River, up which the canoes and batteaux began their further voyage along the series of lakes and halts Ba a

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ALL AROUND LAKE SUPERIOR. AT THE Soo. streams which stretch between there and Lake Winnipeg. Around the old fort, parts of which still stand among the shops of the railway company, and overshadowed by a huge grain elevator and coal-bins, a large settlement of farmers and artisans has now arisen ; while a few miles inland the highly productive silver mines of Rabbit Mountain and its neighborhood support a considerable population. Four miles east of Fort William is Port Arthur, now containing about four thousand inhabitants, and the seat of an immense commerce, since it is the lake port of Can- transcontinental railway, and the terminus of two regular lines of steamers, besides the American traffic. Forty miles east of Port Arthur the Nipigon River comes down from Nipigon Lake. This river has a.9 ada’s long been famous for the abundance and extraordinary size of the trout and whitefish contains, and it is a favorite resort for it fishing and camping parties. Jackfish Bay, Sturgeon River, and many other landings along that shore, afford good fishing and shooting to the sportsmen, while the whole neighborhood of Fort William is attractive in that respect. A railway has been surveyed from Port Arthur, through the silver-mining district, and past Rainy Laketo Duluth, but little has been done yet toward building it. It would pass through the Vermilion Iron Range, a line of hills about fifty miles in length, lying sixty miles north of Duluth. This country, which is rich in lumber, has wild scenery, and offers an almost untouched field for sport, is already reached by the Duluth and Iron Range Railway. The output of this range is about five hundred thousand tons per annum. The principal town is Tower City, which has several thousand inhabi- tants, while the natural outlet for the ore is at Two Harbors, about twenty miles north of

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ALL AROUND LAKE SUPERIOR. oS eS = SEE ae FISHING IN THE Duluth, where the Minnesota Iron Company has built large ore-docks. Lake Superior is a favorite cruising-ground for yachting parties, one of whose prime sports is trolling for lake trout in the early dawn. There is much to interest the voy- ager in every part of the lake. Along the WHITE RAPIDS. southern shore are the Pictured Rocks, and many more beautiful in my estimation, that are not pictured but are tall and stately, overhanging the lake by hundreds of feet. Some of these have great arches excavated by the waves, and some have quaint forms in imitation of cathedrals and other structures.

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VALENTINE OF BIRDS AND ROSES. By ARIEL SIEGFRIED. IGH o’er the meadows, the mountains and sea, Fly wingéd words like storm-tossed birds Roaming the heavens wistfully, Denied of rest till they find their nest In a heart that is all the world to me. Reddening the snow-hills, flaming the night, Shine thoughts of love, like roses wove In Time’s rich robes by Troth’s deft might ; But they bloom in vain until they gain The heart of one who is my Light. The words are so rare that they’re never told, (Naught can express Love’s mightiness,) And the roses so fair that they grow not old, But every day new charms display, And they go in a casket of sunset gold. ‘Tis an airy, shadeless Valentine, Unseen, unheard, as a spirit-bird, Like all the other gifts divine. I wish ’twere more, but it’s all my store: My heart and life have long been thine.

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ELSIE LESLIE LYDE AS “ LORD FAUNTLEROY.” MY STAGE LIFE. By ELsI£ LESLIE LYDE. WAS such a very little bit of a girl when I first played with Mr. Jefferson, that I had to stand on my tip-toes to kiss him while he was sitting down. I was then five yearsold. The first day Mr. Jefferson said to us, ‘‘ Come, ladies, let us go and see Buffalo Bill.” That was four years ago. My first remembrance of the stage is in this afternoon at Columbus, Ohio. I was so frightened, but I enjoyed it. When I went to dinner in the hotel, we saw Mr. Buffalo Bill. That was the first evening I played, in Rip Van Winkle. I was Meenie, in a little blue skirt witha red petticoat and a black Gretchen waist, buttoned in front with one button, and all the other buttons off, because I was supposed to

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MY STAGE Li/FE. be very poor ; and my dress was torn in the skirt, with a great big black patch on it. I played for two seasons with him. We had one night stands then. When we were travelirtig, Mr. Jefferson would read me funny things he found in the papers, and I would take a sleep in his arms. We would take those corner seats in the cars. Aunt Connie was in the company. She was Mr. Jeffer- son’s little sister, and we all called her Aunt Connie, because she was such a little lady. Her son, a great big boy, could pick her up in his arms and carry her, she was so little. She wore the same size shoes I wear now, No. 11. Mr. Julius Kaher was in the com- pany, and he used to tell me beautiful stories about Jeanne d’Arc, Queen Elizabeth and Mary Queen of Scots, and Barbara Freitchie. The first day we went to Cincinnati, Mr. Jefferson took my sister and Aunt Connie and myself to see Mr. Weber, an old artist. He had the greatest lot of Indian things hung up in his studio,—tomahawks, war- whoops and things like that. We hada cute little lunch of home-made pumpkin pie, be- cause Mr. Jefferson was very fond of it, with claret. Mr. Weber water-colored painted me while I was modeling little clay cups and saucers, and Mr. Weber said he would have them baked for me when I came to Cincin- nati again. The next season Mr. Charley Jefferson came and asked me to play Hendrick, and I didn’t feel as if I could play it, because it was a boy’s part and I liked girl’s parts best; but Mr. Jefferson said he could not find any little boy to play Hendrick, and he could get a little girl to play Meenie. I wore a little Dutch suit with tags on the knees. Mamma and my sister were talking with Mr. Frohman one day, and he said he wanted a little girl to play the part of Editha in ‘‘Editha’s Burglar,’’ by Mrs. Burnett, dram- atized by Gus. Thomas ; and mamma said she had a little girl, which was me, who had played with Mr. Joseph Jefferson for two seasons, and she thought I could take the part ; and the next day he sent me the part, and I had lots of fun in studying it. I used to go out on the veranda with my Maltese kitten, and she used to go to sleep in my lap while I was studying my part. She liked to lay on the soft bear rug—the skin of anold grizzly which we brought from Denver while we were with Mr. Jefferson— 26 373 which I used to take out on the veranda. I used to take an umbrella and put it over my head and make a little tent, because it was so quiet there. Then we used, mammaand I, - to go out to take a walk in the park, and she would go over the lines with me. I suppose some of the little girls who will read. this do not know the story of Editha’s Burglar, so I will tell them about it. It was a very short play. It was only in one aet: First I will tell you who played the parts. I played Editha. Mr. E. H. Sothern played the Burglar, and Mr. Herbert Archer played my adopted father. The play began with Editha,* who had been toa party and had just come home. I must tell you that my mamma was supposed to have died when I was a very little girl, and that my vea/ father had deserted her; and when she died she left me to Paul Benton, my adopted father, and I did not know anything about it. I thought he was my real papa, and I had lived with him in a beautiful home all my life. All of this time my real papa had become a burglar, and been put in jail two or three times, and had escaped. This very night that I came back from the party, it was rather late, and I had to go to bed right away. On the stage with me at that time was my adopted father. I had been rather nervous about burglars all that day because my governess had been telling me about a burglar who stole some very valuable things from a lady next door, and so I had a per- fect horror of burglars. After I went to bed I came out again, to make sure there were no burglars in my house, and that nobody would hurt papa. Everything is all right ; I go back again, and then I hear a noise and come back again. Then I find a burglar—a real live burglar! He is going to kill me at first. He pulls out a pistol—the burglar is Mr. E. H. Sothern—to kill me, and he sees it is only a little girl in a plain white night- gown ; and I say, ‘‘ Please don’t be afraid, sir, / won’t hurt you. I am only a little girl, and I am not going to scream or makea noise, because that would waken papa ; and that’s just what I don’t want to do.”’ Then the burglar goes on stealing things, and I give the whole thing away. I tell him where all the silver is. I ask him to leave one silver spoon and fork for my papa. Mr. * The dramatization varies somewhat from the book.

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MY STAGE LIFE. Sothern has a funny piece of business when he says, ‘‘There’s one for your pa, and there’s one for you, and there’s one for your ma.”’ I say, ‘‘Oh, mamma is dead!’’ And what a funny part Mr. Sothern used to put in right there, when he heard that my mamma was dead. He would take the knife, fork and spoon that he had taken out for her, and put it back again in his pack of stolen articles ; and how the audience would laugh! I enjoyed playing Editha very much ; for I liked every one in the company, and I think they all loved me. The dear little Lyceum, how I wish I was there now ! I think it is just the cunningest little thea- ter in the world. After we played at the Lyceum, we traveled, but with another com- pany. This time Mr. William Gillette was ‘‘ Burglar Bill,’’ and such nice times we used to have. Mr. Gillette would read to me and tell me nice stories, and we were very close friends. He is the most trustable friend I have, for he never says he will do anything unless he surely does it, and he never shows any one any of the letters I write with the bad spelling ; for I am not a very bright lit- tle girl, for I spell very badly, and I am nine years old. But I think I will learn some day, for I like to write very much. I asked them to spell my words right for me in this article, or I am afraid you would smile at my spelling. I also played Editha for the Progress Club. I must tell you what the Progress Club is. It has some very nice gentlemen in it— nearly three hundred, I think—and all of the members are bachelors, and they never ex- pect to marry. But sometimes one of them does get married, and all of the other bache- lors feel very sad about it, and they have their note-paper edged with black, and their handkerchiefs with a black border, and wear crape on their arm; and when they go up to shake hands at the wedding with the lost bachelor, they say, ‘‘ Brother, we sympathize with you,”’ instead of saying, ‘‘ We congratu- late you ;’’ and the married bachelor has to give adinner at Delmonico’s. This does not happen very often, for dinners at Delmonico’s cost ever so much money ; and although they are a very rich club, this dinner quite fright- ens them, and they are very careful not to get married very often. When I played Editha for them, they gave me a lovely little gold watch with my monogram and a diamond pendant, and one hundred dollars. ! wasa very proud little girl that night. They also gave me some very beautiful flowers. The bachelors are very good boys, and I think ever somuch of them, and they love me very much.* The lovely gold beads I wear about my neck also came from one of them. And now I am going to tell you about Lord Fauntleroy. I borrowed the book from a dear little friend of mine, Ruth Miller. I thought it the most beautiful book I had ever read. I read*it through once, and then again, until I knew it in some places by heart, just as I do ‘‘ Tom Sawyer.’’ Then we heard that Mrs. Burnett was going to dramatize it, and even then she expected me to play the part, but I did not know this then ; and I wanted to play it very much, and when Mr. Sanger and Mr. French engaged me to go to Boston, I was delighted. I played the first night at the Boston*Museum on the anniversary of the night when Edwin Booth, thirty-five years before, made his first appearance in public on the same stage. I think that is the reason it has been such a success. We had a very nice company. I used to like Mr. Pitt very much: he was always very gentle and kind to me, even if he was such a gruff old earl. One evening Mr. Edwin Booth and Mr. Lawrence Barrett were in the box to see me play, and afterwards I received a pretty little letter from Mr. Booth, telling me how pleased they were, and wished me suc- cess, wealth, and happiness. I think more of that letter than any one that I have. I played in Boston nine weeks, and had packed houses every night. I also played for Coquelin and Hading, and Oliver Wendell Holmes. He is the author of the ‘‘ Autocrat of the Breakfast Table,’’ and was also one of the pioneers of the Aflantic. I think he was a very beauti- ful old man with white hair and beard. I enjoyed playing at the old Boston Museum, every one was so kind ; and all the members of it except myself had been there for a great many years. I don’t think I will ever forget any of the people I have played with ; and if I ever have a company of my own, as I hope to some day, I am going to choose from them all those who have been kind to me, and give them good salaries, and have them travel with me. I have the names of those I would like to take with me written off on a piece of paper. Mr. Pitman,

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MY STAGE LIFE. 375 the prompter of the Boston Museum, had a little boy who was lame and could not come to hear me play Fauntleroy, and I felt very sorry forhim. I used to send him books to read, and it made him very happy ; for it is very hard to sit day after day and not be able to go out in the beautiful sunshine and run about. And this dear little boy was a great sufferer also. Someone gave him a printing press, and he sent me some cunning little cards with Elsie Leslie Lyde printed on them. I shall always keep them. His name was Arthur. After I had played Fauntleroy for quite a long time, I received a letter from Mrs. Burnett; and it was such a beautiful letter I have it yet, and shall always keep it. She said she was coming to hear me play the piece she had written. She told me in the letter the box she would be in, and that when I saw a little lady who smiled upon me I would know who it was. I played that night, and I don’t think I gave as good a performance as usual. One never does when they wish to. But after all was over Mrs. Burnett came with some of her friends to my dressing-room, and kissed me an@ told me how pleased she was. I thought her very sweet, and after that we became close friends. She told me to call her ‘Dearest,’ and I have always done so. When we came to New York the arrange- ment of the play was changed, and I had to learn it over again. When I went into my dressing-room at the Broadway Theater, it was not like the old one in Boston; but I think the one in Boston had morte associa- tions, because William Warren and Edwin Booth and Mrs. Vincent had all dressed in that room from time to time. I used to sit in the old Boston rocker that Mrs. Vincent used tosit in. She left it to Miss Annie Clark when she died. I liked Miss Annie Clark very much; she gave me a beautiful silver bonbonniére with my monogram. At the Broadway I have the star room, and it isa very pleasant one. Some of the business in the second act is all my very own. No told me to do it. For instance, where I drop the hat. It was my idea first of wearing the hat,and Mrs. Burnett liked it so much that I now wear it all the time. I put in the part of the hand- kerchief over the earl’s head. Also, when I strike the bell to call Higgins, all the acting there is my own. Also about the bootblack, one when he gives the strap a pull on his shoulder. I read when I have to wait for my cue. I have my favorite books, Ainsworth’s ‘*Tower of London,’’ ‘‘ Huckleberry Finn,”’ by Mark Twain, and ‘‘ Nan,”’ by Mrs. Lucy C. Lillie. In the last act it is different here from what it is in Boston. The tenants used to all come on when I say my last speech, and here I say it on the balcony to the tenants who are standing outside. I like to play Fauntleroy very much—I have had so many good times and have met so many nice people. I like the second act of Fauntleroy best, for in that act I forget sometimes that I am little Elsie Leslie Lyde, and I feel as if I was little Cedric, and dear Mr. Gilmore was really my grandpapa. I love Mr. Gilmore very much, he is so kind. He never gets angry with me; but when I sit on the arm of the chair talking to him, I sometimes forget that he wears a wig, and I pull it nearly off, twisting it up into queer little curls. Mamma says that some people would be very angry, but he only says, ‘* Be careful, my dear, and not pull my wig off.’’ I suppose you will get tired of my telling you all of these little things, but you know the little things go with the great ones. The night I went to the Charity Ball I met Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt, Mrs. Sloan, Mrs. Eugene Kelly, Mr. Astor, Mrs. Elliott Roosevelt, Mr. Gurney, Mr. Colt, Mr. Kelly, Mr. Gerry. Everything has to come to an end,—even this great world will have to come to an end sometime ; and so I must end my stage story. Your little friend, ELsIE LESLIE LYDE.,. I have been asked to supplement ‘‘ Elsie Leslie’s’’ article by something about the child as I know her—and as I hope to know her for many years. The future of any child, however full of genius she may seem, is always problematical; but Elsie has, it appears to me, nearly every- thing in her favor. She works hard, but has redundant vitality, and above all things no self-consciousness, so that the profession she has entered upon so very young in life need not injure her. The intellectual side of her art appeals strongly to her—another preventive of the ‘‘spoiling’’ process which must seem to the public to be constantly going on. She is happy over everything—

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376 MY STAGE LIFE. her work, her daily life, her friends ; the sun- shine of the world, which she was telling me yesterday ‘‘seemed so deautiful, beautiful.’’ The mere fact of living and breathing, being parts of God’s generous plan in nature and life, is source of enjoyment to her ; and while she was writing her article she said a dozen things which went to prove her innocence and yet curious intuitive wisdom. Some discussion came up about rich presents made her, and the attentions of the fashionable world. Someone present remarked, ‘‘ Well, money is a great power.'’ Elsie looked up from an illustration she was busy upon to remark, ‘‘It isn’t health or success or hap- piness ;’’ and when we laughingly discussed it with her, she was able to give reasons worthy of a philosopher ! It was hard work to get her to write this article, because she could not understand that the details of her life would be interesting to the public. But I assured her that her friends who are the readers of the COSMOPOLITAN would be very glad to know how her “‘ creer,”’ as she calls it, impressed her. Her home life has always been most happy and tranquil ; fortunately, indeed, when we compare it with the lives so many children are forced to lead! Everything is regulated with kind and judicious system for her physical and mental well being. Her sleep is never disturbed in the morning ; her meals are simple and reg- ular ; she exercises every day, and her rosy, blooming looks put to the blush any of those who deplore her being overworked. Some sort of mental activity is necessary to this little creature. She must have a vent for her constantly moving thoughts, her varying impulses; and in her art she finds this, with the natural grace and abandon of true genius. Literary talent is part of her inheritance. Her mother’s sister would have been one*of the most brilliant writers of the day had she lived ; but just as she was entering upon a promising literary career, under the auspices of Mr. Peterson,—that most generous and wide-minded of publishers,--she died, a mere girl in years. To see this dear little person in her own home, totalk to her, to draw out her ideas on various subjects, is a captivating occupa- tion. She obtrudes in no way ; she is easily silenced, and with a little ‘‘ hop, skip, and a jump,”’ is ready enough, at a suggestion from her mother or sister, to withdraw to her own especial corner of the room, where she has her desk, her dolls, and her birds. But now and then come sentences from the child, as the conversation takes for her an interesting turn; quite sage they are, and always original. As she assured me so solemnly that Mr. Weber, her Cincinnati friend, ‘‘ kept war-whoops hung on his walls,’’ we had to let the sentence stand, as well as some other of her idiosyncrasies of style—too naive and characteristic to be altered. Just as she tells you, she is nine years old, and began her stage life with dear Mr. Joe Jefferson, traveling into the Far West with his Rip Van Winkle company. I have a sweet remembrance of her as little Meenie : active, sparkling, interested as she is to-day, although then a mere baby in years. As she says, ‘‘it is hard to remember more than spots in that ’sperience.’”’ Then came Editha, then Little Lord Fauntleroy, and afterwards—who shall say ? The sunshiny character of her nature, as bright as her golden hair and beaming face, comes to the front at every opportunity. In her little diary, where every evening she records the events of the day, are many queer and laughable comments upon people and things. The pages are crowded with her opinions of those she meets, and her heart’s secrets are there preserved for her own recol- lection, every page concluding with ‘‘ Good night.’’ A few Sundays ago she visited the studio of the artist F.S. Church. When she was told where she was going, she remained quietly thinking for a few moments, and then she showed what she had been cogitat- ing by saying, ‘‘ To-day we are to be very good, aren’t we?’ ‘‘ Yes,’’ replied her companion ; ‘‘ but aren’t we always good ?"’ ‘‘Oh, of course,’’ said Elsie, ‘‘ but to-day we are going to Church!’ In the studio she revelled among the piles of draperies, and at last came forth wrapped in a long strip of white, with the train she is so fond of masquerading in, and throwing one hand high in an emphatic gesture recited in solemn tones, ‘‘I am She that must be obeyed,’’ and so on, in clever imitation of ‘* She.” Her theatrical work nas interfered some- what with her usual course of Sunday duties ; but she is resuming her regular attendance

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MY STAGE LIFE. at church and Sunday school, in which she is as much interested as her parents are. The restless activity of her mind has led her parents wisely to deprive her, in a large measure, of books and of school routine. Something about the author of the play in which Elsie is now charming the public will probably be of interest to ger friends. Fran- ces Hodgson Burnett is an English woman by birth. She was born in Lancashire of a family called ‘‘ middle class’’ in England, a term representing professional people and those of large manufacturing interests. When Mrs. Burnett was a child, her father, having lost heavily in the mines, came to this country, and soon after it became neces- sary for her to support several members of her family. Her first impulse was to write. She sent a story to Mr. Peterson, the owner of Peterson’s Magazine, when she was fifteen years old. Mr. Peterson paid her well for it, and engaged her upon his magazine as a regular contributor. Her first stories were published in that periodical. But her in- stincts were toward dramatic work, as is shown in her play ‘‘ Esmeralda,” written with the collaboration of Mr. W. H. Gillette, the well-known dramatist. ‘‘ Little Lord Faun- tleroy’’ was the result of a suggestion from one of her own children. Having finished a very tiresome piece of writing, she turned toward one of her boys who needed her attention, and threw down her pen with an expression of fatigue. The child had in his hand a new pen and handed it to her, asking her to write a story with that pen all about him. She promised him that she would do so, and after putting him to bed took up the pen with the intention of writing something which would please him in the morning, in- cluding in it his own little funny speeches. Before the next day, however, the idea of the book ‘‘ Little Lord Fauntleroy ’’ was devel- oped in her mind, and as a matter of fact it was written, accepted, and published within six weeks. No anticipation of its success, either in the literary or dramatic world, occurred to her. The best lines of the char- acter of the little Lord were suggested by her younger son Vivian, all the curious say- ings and traits being taken from his childish life. The enthusiasm attending its recep- tion in book form induced her to dramatize the story. It was first brought out in Eng- land, where the public think more of a play than they do of a cast. In London a “‘ first night’’ means a criticism on a drama and not upon the actors. A week or two later, if the play continues for a long run, the per- formers receive their meed of approbation. When “ Lord Fauntleroy ’’ was produced in London there was a furore over its literary merit, but very soon the child part in it be- came famous. The children of the Princess of Wales had read the book and were much interested in the character. One evening at the London performance the Prince was in his box and sent a card to Mrs. Burnett, ask- ing to see her. She could not leave her own box at that moment, although she had no idea of violating any rules of etiquette. A few moments later the Princess and her children appeared in their box and then came into Mrs. Burnett’s, the boys being very anxious to talk over the story with her. When she arranged with the American management for the play, she cabled that Elsie Leslie must take the part of the little Lord, and Mrs. Burnett herself worked inde- fatigably over all the rehearsals. A friend of the great Rachel was telling me the other day, that when a mere child her art dominated her, just as Elsie’s does hers to-day. Some one in her hearing remarked, ‘‘That child will never amount to any- thing.’’ Rachel’s dark eyes blazed. ‘‘I will,’’ she answered. ‘‘ It is zz me.’’ Seven years later, after one of her most artistic and marvelous performances, she returned to the same gentleman a bouquet of roses he had flung to her, keeping one, and writing on a card: ‘‘The cht/d whose art you despised keeps one flower in remem- brance of the two occasions with which Monsieur is associated.’’ Some one asking him what remnant of the past he saw in the woman who thrilled nations as Medea and Adrienne, he said: ‘‘ Her grace—it was always there—and her unconsciousness.”’ This story was told me apropos of the same effect produced by Elsie Leslie in her rendering of the dear little Lord. But let us hope that a future very different from that of the tumultuous, avaricious, although brilliant Frenchwoman is in store for our little American artiste. Lucy C. LILLIE.

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A VISIT TO HOLY MESHED. By THOMAS STEVENS. HE keen infatuation of Oriental travel and the pleasurable anticipation begot- ten of the first distant glimpse of a place toward which one has been journeying for weary weeks is a frequent experience of the traveller. It came over me as I stood at length on the brow ofthe Sherrifabad hills and saw the golden dome of Imam Riza’s mesjid glimmering in the evening sun at Meshed. Meshed is the holy city of the Shiah Mo- hammedans, the Mecca of the Persians. Imam Riza is one of the greatest saints in the Shiah Mohammedan calendar, and his sanctuary at Meshed makes that far-away city a place of great sanctity. A pilgrim- age to this shrine gives to the pilgrim the coveted privilege of appearing hence- forth before all men as a ‘‘ Meshedi.’’ Just as a pilgrimage to Mecca imparts the title of Hadji, and insures its owner the deference due to a holy person, so does the pilgrim to Meshed become a Meshedi and a holier per- son than he was before. All summer long thousands of pilgrims in search of the benefits to be derived bya visit to Imam Riza’s sanctuary string along the camel-paths of Central Asia to Meshed from all points. On the road I had passed strange companies of Arabs, Bedouins from the lower Tigris and Euphrates plains, Per- sians from the far-off Mekran Coast as well as from nearer provinces ; wealthy Khans traveling in great state on camels in gay trappings, with baggage mules and kajavehs full of veiled women and plump brown-faced children with big black eyes, and dervishes traveling afoot, and subsisting upon the charity of people along the route. For the last two days my traveling com- panion had been a well-to-do dervish from the Province of Mazanderan, journeying to Meshed on an angular sorrel horse. The hill from which the first view of the city could be obtained on the great Teheran- Meshed pilgrim road was but about six miles away. As I stood for a few minutes waiting for my dervish companion to finish his devotional prostrations, a party of pil- grims appeared upon thescene. They caught sight of the yellow gleaming dome ahead, the object they hag been yearning for half a lifetime to behold, and they lifted up their voices in loud praise to Allah. Sincerity, pure and sublime, was in the tones they uttered; their ‘‘ Allah-il-Al-l-a-h,’’ their prostrations and fervid mutterings of thank- fulness at being permitted to gaze upon the holy sanctuary, were the actions of true fanatics. Before descending into the valley, or plain of Meshed, the dervish and the pil- grims all searched around, and found each of them a stone. These they carried and added to a heap of stones that had been piled up on a rock. It is a time-honored custom for pilgrims from afar to do this when they first obtain a glimpse of their goal ahead. This is supposed to insure them the full benefits of which they are in search. The holy city stood on a level plain, and was surrounded by a crenelated mud wall about thirty feet high and a dry moat. Be- side the golden dome, Imam Riza’s mesjid had two graceful minarets, also golden- sheeted on the top. Other minarets and domes of blue glazed tiling rose high above the mud-brown city ; but most conspicuous of all objects was the golden dome and mina- rets, glowing like yellow lamps as the setting sun cast across the plain its horizontal rays. The gold on Imam Riza’s mesjid is not merely gilding, but consists of thin sheets of beaten gold, like tin. The gold was pro- vided for the purpose by Nadir Shah from the sixty million pounds’ worth of plunder he brought back with him from his filibus- tering conquest of India, at the same time he carried off from Delhi the famous peacock throne. So holy is this mesjid considered, that no person is allowed to shoot or injure the flocks of half-wild pigeons that frequent the city, for fear some of them should have settled on the dome and thereby acquired sanctity. By touching foot or wing to the sacred edifice, these birds themselves become objects of veneration, and the slaughter of one of them within the city would bring

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A VISIT TO HOLY MESHED. down the vengeance of an enraged populace on the sacrilegious head of the offender. Passing right through the center of the city is the Bast-rah, a street conspicuous by its straightness and breadth from any other street within the walls. Down its cen- ter runs a ditch of water, in which women wash clothes, children wade and disport, ducks and geese swim and forage, slops are thrown, vegetables washed and freshened of a morning. Big chenars line the ditch and make this Bast-rah resemble slightly the celebrated Chandui Chouk of Delhi. Midway down its length the way is barred by ponderous wooden gates shutting off the sacred enclos- ure of the gold-domed mesjid from the outer world. Within those sacred portals no Christian foot may dare to tread. News that a Chris- tian had desecrated the das¢ of Imam Riza with his presence, would raise a tumult not only in the city itself, but all over Central Asia. The. worst criminal in Persia, if a Mussulman, is safe from molestation so long as he remains inside the sanctuary grounds. The highest official would bring down upon himself the anathemas of the whole popula- tion should he arrest a man inside the bast. Mohammedans alone may remove their shoes and enter the mesjid ; even the outer gate is inaccessible to Christians and four- footed animals. Through a quarter mile of narrow, crooked side-streets, the mule, the mouse-hued jackass, and the stray Ferenghi traveler has to make his way, and regain the Past-rah on the other side. Little open- ings connect the das¢ with these side alley- ways; but stout iron chains are stretched across to guard against the intrusion of ani- mals, and only at intervals of years does this distant Khorassani city know the presence of a Ferenghi. To step over one of those chains would be to forfeit his life; but his near approach to one would bethe signal for every Mussulman observer to rush forward and prevent the sacrilege. Beside gratui- tous offerings and revenue from land dona- ted tothe mesjid, the priests derive no incon- siderable revenue from the sale of praying- stones to pilgrims. Every pilgrim carries home with him a little tablet of stone or hardened clay made from the sacred soil of Meshed and inscribed with a text from the 379 Koran. Hereafter, when he prostrates him- self the orthodox five times a day toward Mecca, he places the little Meshedi tablet before him on the ground, and touches his forehead to that instead of to the common- place soil of his native village. Close observation from the roof of an ad- jacent house revealed the golden plates of the dome in a somewhat dilapidated condition. Many of the sheets have become loosened, and big bunches of barley were growing green and rank between, where here and there accumulated dirt permits of vegetable growth. Dust-storms and rain provide the necessary nourishment to sustain this va- grant vegetation, and the afore-mentioned pigeons were responsible for the sowing of the barley. Year after year the loosened gold sheets will flap in the wind and become more and more dilapidated; but, after the manner of the procrastinating East, no rep- arations will be made until absolutely nec- essary. Perhaps Imam Riza’s sanctuary will never be repaired again. The Russians have long had a covetous eye on the fat fields of Khorassan. If Meshed falls into their hands, the halo of sanctity will soon grow dim around the Imam Riza Mesjid, and no more gold plates will crown Mohammedan shrines in Meshed the Holy. The Russians are not ‘built that way.”’ Squatting on mats on all the street corners and conspicuous positions on the approaches to the sanctuary, were holy mendicants. Beside them were spread sheets, on which charitable passers-by might toss their coins. These mendicants were often mere animated bundles of filth and rags and loathsome ver- min. Sometimes these fakirs of the East register a vow never more to apply water to their bodies, or comb their hair, or pay any attention to their personal appearance. Their condition after years of this sort of thing may better be imagined than described. A few lonesome-looking copper coins of picayunish value were usually reposing on each sheet. The absence of anything above these mere molecules of wealth would seem to indicate that the wily mendicants remove at once any coin of value, and allow only one or two diminutive coppers to repose on the big sheet, to tempt the pity of incoming pilgrims by their meager value. Bands of these pilgrims would occasionally promenade the Aast-rah, chanting the praises

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380 of Imam Riza as they moved down toward the gold-domed mesjid. Some of these peo- ple had traveled a thousand miles, and more than that, afoot, and begged their daily bread from people already poverty stricken and already overrun with pilgrim mendi- cants and dervishes in search of food. Many of them have spent a good part of their lives making pilgrimages to holy cities and the tombs of Mohammedan worthies scattered throughout the broad realms of Islam from Stamboul to Delhi, and from Mecca to Sam- arkand. Some of them have been to Mecca, to Koom, Kerbela, and Stamboul, and now they have come to Meshed. They arrive su- premely happy ; all the hardships and pri- vations of the long journey through desert lands are nothing. Their visit to Imam Riza’s tomb takes them another stage toward the land of the Xara ghuz Kiz, the beautiful paradise of the Koran and the Mussulman’s faith, the material heaven where cool foun- tains, shady gardens, marble palaces, and a harem of lovely black-eyed houris await the faithful. All this these Mohammedan pil- grims fully, implicitly believe ; and conscious of the efficacy of their now accomplished pilgrimage to Meshed, they sing the praises of Allah, the Prophet, and the chief Imams as they enter the holy city. Stranger and more picturesque and inter- esting still than these, are bands of der- vishes. The appearance of these Persian THE SINGING THE SINGING HEART. dervishes is most striking and extraordin- ary. A prominent feature of their make-up is a panther or leopard skin thrown over their shoulder. Their heads are sometimes covered with an embroidered conical head- dress, decorated with quotations from the Koran; and sometimes their only covering is their long, unkempt hair, that dangles wildly about their shoulders. Every dervish carries a huge spiked club or a little steel battle-ax and a big gourd alms-receiver. This latter is usually made out of an oval gourd or the outer shell of a cocoanut, highly polished and suspended on tiny brass chains. When passing through the towns and villages ex route, or meeting people on the road, the dervish holds out his alms- receiver and shouts ‘‘huk yah hak.’’ They stalk through the streets of Meshed, how ever, in bands, with majestic tread, gracefully brandishing their clubs or battle-axes, and, gazing fixedly at vacancy, recite aloud from the Koran with a peculiar and impressive intonation. Crowds of people follow behind these dervish bands, for they are held in great reverence by the common Persians, and respond with shouts of approbation to their recitations. Meshed the Holy is a strange city for a lone ‘‘ infidel ’’ to visit, full of strange sights and stranger sounds. Un- like Mecca, however, there is little danger incurred there, unless one wantonly tampers with the people’s fanaticism. HEART. By DANSKE DANDRIDGE. WE ramble on, the stream and I, Both singing, both companionless; We run to find, beneath the sky, Some arid spot, some life to bless. The stream is dreaming of the sea, But I, fond spirit, dream of thee. The brook’s bright waters flow and flow, And lush and green his track appears ; But it is given me to know Some concord of the silver spheres. Our lives are tuneful as the birds, With rippling chant and gentle words. And if sometimes we lurk apart In secret grot or covert dale To bide a space and gather heart, Anon we’re laughing down the vale. Though rain or tears our forces swell, We find the sun, and all is well.

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THE KOREANS AT HOME. By FRANK G. CARPENTER. all isolated nations Korea has best earned its name as ‘tthe Hermit King- dom.’’ Within two days’ sail of Japan and only twenty-four hours distant from the harbor of Chefoo in China, almost in the track of the lines of steam- ships which trade with Tientsin, it has for cen- turies kept itself aloof from ali other countries. It has shut out the hordes from North China and Siberia by devastating a strip of its territory sixty THE KING OF KOREA. miles wide; and though the land is most fertile, this portion to-day has no settlers. For generations there was a great wall of stakes along the edge of this strip, and even now the lands of Korea which lie nearest the coast are but little tilled, in order to give strangers the idea that the soil is not good. The coasts them- selves are forbidding. They rise in bluffs from the sea, and the west shore of the Korean Peninsula has so many ragged, rocky islands that the ruler of the kingdom has been called ‘the King of Ten Thousand Isles.’’ The navigation of the Korean waters is dangerous. If you will look at the map of Asia you will see that little Korea juts out from the north- east edge of China. It hangs down in the same shape as Florida, and it contains as much territory as our Western State of Kansas. Between it and China is the great Yellow Sea, the ocean currents of which are such that along the coast of Korea the tides rise from thirty to forty feet. At Chemulpo, the leading port of the country, many Korean junks lie half the day far inland, left by the tide on the mud; and during my stay our naval vessel, Zhe Essex, which was there stationed, was anchored several miles from the shore. This fall and rise of tides makes navigation to and from Korea uncertain ; and when it is remembered that these seventeen hundred miles of rocky coast line are unpro- vided with a system of light-houses, and that at certain seasons of the year dense fogs and shifting channels are common, it will be seen that the guards of seclusion about this nation are many. Still Korea is one of the older nations of to-day. Korean art was the father of the art of Japan, and the country was known to the Arabs in medizval times. The present king of Korea belongs to a family which ruled the country as far back as 1392, and Korean scholars boast of their people having lived for more than four thousand years. Still up to six years ago the land was unknown to the world. It was down on the maps, but foreigners were not permitted to enter its borders, and it was Uncle Sam’s key which first unlocked its gates to the world. 27

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THE KOREANS AT HOME. CHEMULPO, THE PORT OF KOREA. (The last treaty with the United States was signed in the house nearest the hilltop.) One of the brightest and ablest of our naval officers is Rear-Admiral Shufeldt, who is now leading a retired life in Japan. He was one of the first naval officers to sail along the Korean shores, and it was he who, in May, 1882, as our diplomatic representative, signed the treaty of peace and friendship between the United States and Korea. I met the admiral at Nagasaki, Japan, and he told me the circumstances of the signing. He said : ‘‘T had been in Korea some years before to settle the trouble in regard to the massacre of the troops of our ship, General Sherman, and had written a letter to the king, asking an explanation of the matter. I was told that I must wait twenty days for my answer. It was then late in the autumn, and I feared to be frozen up, with few provisions, in this out-of-the-way and untraveled land. I hadto set sail without hearing word from the king. Upon my arrival in America I received orders for a three years’ cruise, and immediately left the United States for the voyage. In the mean time the King of Korea had answered my letter, and finding that I had gone he sent the message overland to our minister at Peking. From here it was for- warded to the United States without being opened, and it was several years before I received it. It was full of friendship from the king toward the Americans, and it explained the killing of the crew of the General Sherman in such a way as to show that the king was not to blame. In that letter lay the seeds which grew into the Korean Treaty, and the country would have been opened sooner had the letter been addressed to the diplomatic agents of the United States and not to me in my private capacity. It would have thus been opened by our minister at Peking, and Korea might have been ten years further advanced in its acquaintance with the world of to-day. As it was, the letter caused my appointment as the diplomatic agent for the bringing about of the treaty. I was sent by the Secretary of State to Peking, with the rank of Naval Attaché of the Legation there, and with full powers to negotiate with Korea. I bore at this time in my pocket, though no one knew it, acommission from the President of the United States appointing me Minister to Korea ; and I found upon my landing in the country that the people and the king had not forgotten my letter of nearly ten years

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THE KOREANS AT HOME. before. The treaty was signed near Che- mulpo, and our ships fired a salute at the time, in response to a signal which I waved from theshore. An American cottage now stands on the spot where the treaty was signed, and it is the residence of Mr. Schoenicke, the German who acts there as the Chinese Com- missioner of Customs. ‘‘The Americans also opened Japan,"’ Admiral Shufeldt went on, ‘‘and had our people pushed their claims to that trade, as have the other nations who came in later, we would now be the greatest foreign nation in connection with the Japanese Empire. It is the same with Korea. Americans are now in the lead in that country, and they can, if they will, be the predominating power. It is true that Korea is still wrapped in the dark- ness of its thousands of years of seclusion. Its people are, however, no further back than were the Japanese at the time Commodore Perry lay at anchor in Mississippi Bay. I have lived some months in Korea, and I know something of the king and the people. I consider them a very bright race, and I expect to see a growth of civilization among them which will develop their country and put them upon a high plane among the nations of Asia.’’ It will be long, however, at least it seems so to the traveler, before such expectations as these last of Admiral Shufeldt will be realized. Korea is sunken up to its neck in the mire of feudalism. Its legs are clogged with the chains of the Asiatic customs of a century ago, and the people know not what civilization is. Ht is true that three ports have been opened, and these tap, as it were, the leading parts of the country. They are Fusan on the south, where there is - a Japanese village of perhaps five hundred houses; Gensan on the east, reached by the steamers on their way to Vladivostock, in Rus- sian Siberia ; and Chemulpo on the west, which is the port of the capi- tal. The country has, however, little to export; but its material resources are great, and its mines produced last year more than three million dollars’ worth of gold dust and nuggets. These are almost en- tirely undeveloped, and gold is found in every part of the country. 383 the kingdom is well fitted to produce great yields agriculturally, but the state of society is such that there is no incentive to work. The lands are owned by the king and the nobles. They are farmed out to the peasants or serfs, and the farmers are given only enough of the crop to keep them alive. The bigger the crop, the bigger the profit of the owner, with no corresponding increase on the part of the man who does the work. The chief taxes are the land taxes. The government officials are salaried by giving to each a certain tract of land, and from the owners and workers of this land the official has to squeeze out his income. He has his agents watch each little strip until the har- vest is ripe; and when it is ready to cut he swoops down upon it, and he leaves the farmer just enough to keep himself and his family until the next crop. The result is, Korea is only half farmed. I rode through the interior, along the main highway to the capital, which runs between Seoul and the leading seaport, Chemulpo. The distance was twenty-eight miles, and the country was as rolling and rich as the best lands of the States of Ohio or New York. There were but few workers in the fields, and much excellent land was not farmed at all. The fields were irregular and unfenced, and the farmers lived in villages of one-storied thatched huts. These huts were of mud, about nine feet high. They had little win- dows of paper, framed in roughly made lat- tice, and the doors of the huts were as rude as those of a shanty or stable. The huts stood close to the road, and the filth of the households was spread on the street. There were no improvements of any kind visible, ut a oe The mountainous or rolling face of A KOREAN NOBLEMAN AND HIS RETINUE.

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384 and the chief business of each village seemed to be restaurant-keeping and loafing. The restaurants were simply these mud-thatched huts, with a kettle or pan cooking over a fire, which often burned in the open air. Outside of each hut squatted its owner and sons, all smoking their pipes, and most of them too lazy to even look at us as we passed. Curious-looking people they were! Brown- skinned, almond-eyed, and black haired; the locks of the men were combed up in a cue, which was wound round and round in a knob on the crown of the head, where it stood out like a handle. Their clothes were all white, and more or less dirty. They consisted of a pair of full pantaloons, the legs of each of which contained enough cotton to have made a night-gown for a man, and which, I am told, are so long that they reach to the neck when stretched out. These big pantaloons are tied at the ankles, and they end in white stockings of padded cotton cloth, so thick that the feet of the men seem to be suffering from gout. The shoes are of straw, rudely woven, and somewhat like sandals. Above the pantaloons comes a short sack coat with large sleeves, tied with strings at the neck; and the whole costume is usually topped off with a broad-brimmed sugar-loaf hat, three sizes too small, which sits on the crown of the head. These are the clothes of the cooly, or peasant, and this was the dress of the sixteen coolies who bore the sedan chairs of myself and wife from Chemulpo to Seoul. Ten cents a day is good pay for such men in the country, and they receive only twenty cents a day at Chemulpo. These coolies are remarkably strong, and they carry upon their back what would be a good load fora pony. I saw at the port men who, I was told, could carry bales of goods weighing five hundred pounds for two miles at a stretch; and in coming to the capital my trunk full of photographic plates and heavy material, which weighed, all told, at least three hundred pounds, was carried these twenty-eight miles on the back of one man. The road went over amountain pass. It was up hill and down. He made the distance in about twenty-four hours, and his charge was less than one dollar. Human muscle is the cheapest meat sold in Asiatic countries, and these coolies take the place of the carts and pack-horses of other lands. They do the work of our railroads and THE KOREANS AT HOME. wagons, and we met a number of them carry- ing goodsto Seoul. The Koreans are physic- allya fine nation. They are tall, well formed, and the brown skin of these coolies covers muscles like iron. They are intelligent, too, though the lower classes do not seem to have the phenomenal brightness of the Japanese. They have not the assertiveness nor business ability of the Chinese, but it is probable that the lack in both instances comes from their stagnant civilization and the oppression by which mind and soul is ground out of them. It is a nation asleep. It has good faculties, but they all lie dormant. What the result of the awakening will be, time alone will tell. The country is remarkably poor. Where the coin of a land is measured by a unit, of which it takes about sixteen hundred to make our golden dollar, you may be sure the people are poor. The coin here used is the cash. It is of about the size of the big American copper cent, and it has a square hole in the middle as big as the head of a ten- penny nail. These coins are round. They are rudely made, and some of them are so poor that you can break them in two with your fingers. It is impossible to use them without a servant to carry them for you; and inasmuch as the people of the interior will take nothing else in making atrip, one has to have an extra horse or two to carry his money. Thirty dollars, worth of these cash are a load for a donkey, and I have seen hun- dreds of coolies whose backs were loaded with such burdens. The cash are strung upon straw strings of one hundred each, and the merchants often cheat the unsuspecting by putting only ninety-six or ninety-eight on the string. The fortunes of Koreans are estimated in cash, and there are men here who are worth from fifty to one hundred millions of cash. Fifty million cash, however, represents less than thirty five thousand gold dollars, and the surprise of one of the Koreans on being told of the wealth of Jay Gould is still cur- rent here. This man was asked how much the wealthiest man in his province was worth. He replied, as he opened his eyes and threw up his hands, that his town had a great yang bang, or noble, whose fortune was so great that the mind could not grasp it. He was worth fifty millions of cash. The American, to whom he was talking, then described the

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386 wealth of Jay Gould, whom, he said, was worth three hundred and twenty billions of cash, and whose income was every day half as much as the whole fortune of this richest Korean. It was long before the native could be made to believe this story, and as the great fact finally became fixed in his mind he shook his head emphatically and said: ‘* Alas ! Korea must be a very poorcountry.”’ The next day the American found him at the door of his house, when he opened it in the early morning; and the man said he had come back to ask whether the big story he had been told yesterday about the American yang ban, Jay Gould, was true. The yang ban are the nobility of Korea. They are like the lilies of the field, ‘‘ They toil not, neither do they spin ;’’ and the words of the Scripture might be added, ‘‘ Yet Solo- mon, in all his glory, was not arrayed like one of these.’ They dress in long gowns of fine silk or satin, and the colors are of the most delicate shades of pink or sky blue. Under these gowns they wear the same zouave pantaloons as the coolies, except the material is finer, and their feet are clad in cushioned stockings. They wear su- gar-loaf broad-brimmed hats of fine horse-hair with mesh- es of about the same size of those of a piece of fine mos- quito netting. These rest on the crown, and they plainly show the knot inside which lies on the top of the head. Theirsleeves are very long and very full, and they are sewed up so that each forms a pocket big enough to carry a half bushel of apples. The yang ban, how- ever, carries nothing. He would lose caste if he did the least stroke of work, and his servants and retainers are taught that it would be a disgrace to them if he did so. I have seen here some of these yang ban going along the roads to the capi- tal; each usually had one man to carry his pipe, and another behind to carry his . fan. At the royal school, some of the noble pupils A KOREAN COOLY. THE KOREANS AT HOME. think it a disgrace for them to carry their books or their pencils from one part of the building to another. One of the poorer nobles among the young men expressed last week a great desire todo something for himself. He said he was anxious to earn some money, but that he had nothing to do. He wasasked by the foreigner to whom he applied, what he coulddo. He rejoined, that he was willing to do anything; but when told that he would be paid for car- rying a pint bottle of milk twice a day from one house in Seoul to another, he hesitated, and said he could carry the milk if the bot- tle would go into his sleeve. In this way his people would not see him, and he would not be disgraced by carrying a burden. These yang ban are the officers of the country, and there are said to be three thou- sand officials at the capital alone, whereas, those in the rest of the country are only eight hundred. These men are to be met with everywhere, and they are the drones of the Korean hive. No one calls them anything else but the curse of the country. Their life is one of eating, talking, smoking, and sleeping. They gorge them- selves to repletion; and, in fact, a large stomach is in Korea a sign of prosperity. The Korean swagger is the peculiar property of these yang bans. They swing their arms as they walk, in their white clothes, along the muddy streets; and the richest of them are always supported by servants, who, wearing big hats and white gowns, hold up their arms and push them from behind when they go up a hill. The generals of the Korean army are helped in this way to and from the drills of their troops, and when they ride on horseback they have a servant in front who leads the war-steed—a pony. The pommel of the saddle is high, and they hold to this with both hands, disregard- ing the reins. Oneach side of the horse walk two other servants, who steady the

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THE KOREANS AT HOME. A GROUP OF KOREANS. general on horseback; and thus, I am told, he goes into battle. Is it any wonder that the Korean army needs re-organization, and that the king should send to America for officers to drill his soldiers, and to teach them how to fight? The Korean army, all told, now consists of about twelve thousand men, and of these four thousand are on guard at the capital city. There is a barracks near the gates of the palace, and five or six hundred are on guard there day and night. The American generals find the material exceedingly raw. The troops have been drilled heretofore by Chinese officers; and their evolutions, though they serve very well to develop the frame, are not based on modern military tactics. One trouble is that the generals belong to this great yang ban class. They are above doing work, and they do not themselves come into personal contact with theirtroops. The men are armed with guns of various patterns, though the best of them have two thousand Remington rifles. They get no pay, but have an allowance of so much rice, and their uni- forms come from the king. It is a question in the minds of some foreigners as to whether the reluctance on the part of the generals to allow the Ameri- cans to re-organize the army does not come from the profits which they receive in the squeezing the money given them for the feeding thesoldiers. It must be remembered that here such methods are common, and that stealings, to use a rough word, make up the incomes of most of the officials. The uniform of the soldiers reminds one of the ‘‘Mikado,’’ the dress is so strange. A round-crowned sugar-loaf felt hat of black rests on the crown of the head. This hat has a red band about it, and on its top is a button of red. There is then a loose sack vest, with big sleeves, purple pantaloons of rough cotton, padded feet, straw shoes, and a belt around the waist. Add a yellow face, almond eyes, and straggling mustache and beard, the facial hairs of each man not num- bering over one hundred, and you have some idea of a Korean soldier prepared for parade, or for battle. He is by no means dangerous looking, and as to how he will fight but lit- tle is known. In the few skirmishes our naval troops have had with them, the Kore- ans have always fought well as long as they were behind walls: when these have been broken down, they became panic-stricken and

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388 A KOREAN TRADER. have been easily routed. The army lacks organization, and there is no doubt but that if the king could have his army well under the control of American officers, his power would be much stronger, and he could put down rebellion. Korea needs a good army. She has been a fighting-ground for centuries for the Chi- nese and Japanese forces in their wars with each other, and she lies in a curious position as to her relations with China, Japan, and Russia. These three countries each fear that the other may get a hold upon Korea, and it is in this fear that the country’s chief strength lies. About a year ago reports were circulated in Seoul that Korea had been bought by Russia. This report went to China, and the orders were sent out from Peking that troops and gunboats should be at once forwarded to Korea. Li Hung Chang, the viceroy of China, however, telegraphed at once to St. Petersburg to find out if this story was true. He found it was not, and thus Korea was saved from being the battle- ground of another war between China and Japan. The sending of these gunboats would have been a breach of the agreement between China and Japan, and Japan would THE KOREANS AT HOME. have sent her gunboats as well. China is very jealous of Japan. Shehas long received tribute from Korea. But it is only lately that she has put forth the claim that the King of Korea is a vassal of the Emperor of China. The troubles between the two countries have grown very serious during the past few months; and Judge Denny, the talented American, who acts as the foreign advisor to the King of Korea, charges that China is trying to destroy Korean sover- eignty by absorbing the country. I met Judge Denny in Seoul, and he told me the story of how the Chinese minister had KOREAN WOMEN, plotted about a year ago to dethrone the king, and how a riot was to be excited by firing the palace of the ex-regent. This fire was to be the signal of an uprising of the ex re- gent’s following, who hate the Queen and her party. The rioters were to attack the palace, and then the Chinese minister, or commis- sioner, as he is called, was to have appeared on the ground with Chinese troops, to have captured the king, and to have declared the son of the king’s elder brother heir apparent to the throne, and to have made the ex- regent, who is the king’s father, regent. The Chinese minister gave forty-five hun-

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dred dollars to a certain Korean general for his aid and that of his troops in this scheme. The plot was, however, exposed through Prince Min Yong Ik, who had been let into it, and who reported its various phases to the king. The same commissioner who was engaged in this plot still represents, Iam told, the Chinese Emperor in Korea, and the underhanded fight forthe gaining of Chinese control still goes on. The Chinese already have charge of the customs duties of the country, though, I am told, the service is a dead loss to China, and though it is prob- ably continued by the Chinese only because KOREAN SOLDIERS. they wish to retain their hold on Korea. The Japanese, the Russians and the Ameri- ins are among the foreign nations who have acknowledged the independence of the kingdom. The Korean Legation at Wash- ington stands on the same footing as does that of China, and our minister to Korea nks with the diplomats whom we send to other nations. The Hon. Jacob Childs, the present min- ister of the United States at the court of Siam, is reported as saying: ‘‘ That if he hould, in his future career, after the termina- n of his present mission, be again offered THE KOREANS AT HOME. 389 the choice of going as minister to Siam or of being hung, he would perhaps go to Siam. But if the question of hanging lay between him and Korea, he would jump at the halter.’’ It is evident that the Hon. Jacob Childs does not know Korea. The climate is certainly preferable to that of Siam. The country is probably fully as good, and it offers a much better opportunity for diplo- matic distinction. Our minister to Korea is one of the brightest of the Southern men who now occupy many of our foreign posts. His name is Hugh A. Dinsmore, and he was an able young Arkansas lawyer when Presi- dent Cleveland appointed him minister of the United States and consul-general to this little kingdom, I find that his relations between the court and the nobles are good. He is strongly in favor of the advance of Korea, and he has much more faith in the progress of the people than some other for- cigners I have met. His residence at Seoul is the house of a Korean noble, which the United States lately bought, and it consists of about three acres filled with a labyrinth of one story buildings, and it is fully as comfortable as any American home. The king has furnished him twelve soldiers, who guard the legation, in European uniform, A KOREAN MARKETMAN.

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39° and who form his body-guard when he.rides to the palace in his sedan chair of state. The capital of Korea has quite a foreign colony, made up of missionaries, doctors, diplomats, the Americans teaching in the royal school, and the American generals who have come to re-organize the Korean army. These live very nicely in houses which were built for noble Koreans. They have more and better servants than they could have at home, and their provisions, much of which come from China, are as good as you will find in the Washington markets. Their amusements are riding, lawn tennis, and shooting. There are some good musi- cians among them, and the colony is noted in Asia as being one of the most harmonious and best dressed in the East. The American girls are everywhere the best dressed in the world, and the fact that Americans here pre- dominate may be the basis of this reputa- tion of the colony at Seoul. It sounds strange to talk of fine dressing in Korea, and especially so in its: capital, Seoul. But the Koreans themselves are a nation of finedressers. The poorest thatched hut may contain a man clothed in white as immaculate as though hecame out of a band- box, and I have seen gorgeous silks of pink or sky-blue emerging from hovels. Korean dressing is costly, and the hats of the nobles are much more expensive than the high silk tiles of New York. Sixteen dollars is not a high price for one of these horse-hair head-coverings, and some of the yang bans have several hundred dollars invested in head-gear. Korea is the land of hats, and the hat hasto do here with man’s social condition and feeling. The bull drivers wear hats made of coarse splints like those which cover our splint-vottom chairs. Their hats are as big as umbrellas, and they entirely cover the shoulders. When a Korean goes into mourning he dresses in sack-cloth, and he wears a hat much like that of the bull drivers, save that its material is finer. He holds upa curtain before his face, and he mourns for three years for his father or mother, and a much less time for his wife. The unmarried boys of Korea are usually bare-headed, and they look for all the world like girls. They wear their hair long, and they part it in the middle, and it is twisted into a braid which hangs down the back. It is only upon marriage that they have the THE KOREANS AT HOME. right to put it up on top of their heads, and the Korean bachelor of forty ranks as a boy. The social conditions of both sexes are en tirely different from ours, and the land and the people are packed full of strange things. What a curious city is Seoul ! Thatch the rudest sod huts of our Western plains with swamp grasses. Find if youcan sixty thousand and crowd them down in a hollow, surrounded by ragged, rough moun- tains. Puta wall of stones thirty feet thick and twenty-five high around them, and let this wall climb along the sides of the moun- tains. Bisect the’ whole plain of thatched huts with a street, unpaved, one hundred feet wide, and cut up the remainder in alleys. At the end of this street plant an enclosure with a roofed wall of good masonry of about the area of a hundred and sixty acre farm, and fill this with heavy, one-storied, tiled build- ings so scattered that they form, what Korea considers, a labyrinth of palaces, and you have the bones of Seoul. The city is, however, by no means a skeleton. It is a body, both living and breathing, and its breath is most foul. The smells of the Korea capital surpass those of Naples in foulness, and the sanitary condi- tions are such that in another climate epi- demics must be very common. Along the side of each of these winding alleys, close to the edge of which the mud huts are built, runs a ditch about a foot deep, into which the sewers ofeach hutempty. These ditches are unpaved and uncovered, and the filth within them is removed only semi-occasion- ally. These narrow streets are always muddy with filth interspersed with night- soil, and it is through such surroundings that the gaudy Koreans swagger in their immaculate costumes. Each house, however, tries to keep about a square yard of alley clean enough for the family squatting, and here on their heels, big-hatted, white-gowned men sit for hours and smoke and chat with their neighbors. Every one smokes in Korea, from the king and crown prince down to the poorest of coolies. The queen is especially fond of American cigarettes, and most Korean women smoke pipes. Boys learn to smoke tobacco as soon as they are able to walk, and the Korean without his pipe would be as lost as he would be without his hat. The pipes used are of metal, with a stem of reed from

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SEARS EASA: ~s > Se ROR ~> ee eGo Sesees

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THE KOREANS AT HOME. three to four feet in length. The bowls hold about one-half as much as a common Ameri- can clay pipe, andthe Korean is the laziest smoker on the face of the earth. As he squats on his heels and gossips, he rests the bowl of his pipe upon the ground, and after a draw he does not removethestem from his lips. He merely opens his mouth and lets it rest against his lower teeth ; and a more idiotic, lazy action I have never yet seen. This universal habit of smoking may produce some part of the foul breath of Seoul; and when to it is added the smoke and the smells of the cooking, its existence becomes quite apparent. These Korean huts are all heated by what is known as the kang. This is a series of flues which run under a part of the floor of the hut, which is usually raised about two feet from the ground, and which, in some cases, comprises the whole floor. The chim- ney comes out through the wall about three feet from the ground, and the smoke has its outlet thus into the street. At night or morning when all of these little houses are being fired for the day or the night, the smoke rolls out into the street in volumes, and Seoul is wrapped in a fog. The fuel used is of twigs or grass, which blazes up quickly and makes the floors of the kangs almost red hot ; then upon these the whole family squat to keep themselves warm, and at night they here lie andsleep. The richer have skins or mats tosleepon, but the poorer lie on the bricks or the mud. The fire goes down as quickly as it rises, and after a few hours these beds become as cold as stones. Seoul has three hundred thousand people, and, if the sexes are even, its women should number at least one hundred and fifty thou- sand. Still you see a hundred men to one woman in the throngs on its streets, and Korean women are never seen by other men than their husbands and brothers. Even the poorer women wear a cloak over their heads, which they hold at the chin with one hand to hide their faces from the men. This cloak is as long as a waterproof. It is made of green silk, and its sleeves hang down like a pair of big ears. These sleeves do not seem to have ever been used. They are per- fectly flat, and are faced with white. In the country the women who worked in the fields ran away from the road as I came near them, and in one case a girl pulled up her dress to cover her face. The few cooly girls that I saw were not handsome. They had yellow faces, almond eyes, and black hair, which they combed in a knot at the neck, and which they fastened with white metal hair-pins as big around as your finger, and in most cases at least one foot long. Their dress consisted of a skirt coming nearly to the ankles, below which peeped out very full pantaloons, gathered tight at the foot. Their feet were remarkably small, and the poorest were clad in slipper-like shoes of straw, These skirts are bound around the waist, just below the bust, and the waist bands are about six inches deep. These bands uphold the breasts, and the shoulders and neck are covered with a short Zouave jacket. The cloth is of white or blue cotton, the more delicate the shade the better; and the fash- ions, I am told, are the same throughout the whole of Korea. The ladies dress in silks of much the same shades as the men, but the inten wear the costliest clothing. Korean women are as much secluded as any women of the East. They have their quarters at the back of the house, and the

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THE KOREANS AT HOME. sexes of a family are separated after the age of eight or ten years. The girl then goes to the woman's quarters. She is seen by the men of only her own family until marriage, and after her wedding she belongs almost body and soul to her husband. She con- siders it disgraceful for herself to be seen by other men, and if touched by a stranger her husband can make this a ground of divorce. Her marriage is arranged by her father, and the Koreans have go-betweens, or match- makers, such as exist in both China and Japan. The wedding consists of the giving of presents, a feast, and of the signing of a sort of marriage contract ; and when the woman is unable to write, it is said that she makes her mark by laying her hand on the paper and tracing with a brush the exact outline of her wrist, palm, and fingers. One of the most important of the presents at the wedding is a white goose, which represents conjugal fidelity. The servant of one of the foreigners, who was married last summer, rode to his bride on a white pony, carrying a live white goose, ornamented with bright rib- bons. After marriage the wife becomes the 393 servant of her husband, and, if she belongs to the lower classes, she does the work of the household. One of the chief duties of a Korean wife is the ironing the clothes of the family. The noise of this work is the most common street sound of Seoul. It is a sort of a musical rat, tat, tat, produced by the pounding of the clothes with a paddle, as they lie upon a piece of wood, or are wrapped around it. No starch is used in Korean washing, and it is wonderful what a gloss can be produced by long continued paddling of this kind. Where the city is so dirty, and the men are so immaculate, the keeping of their clothes clean and well ironed is no small affair. The leading authority on Korea, who, by the way, has never visited the country, states that the women of the capital are al- lowed to go on the streets only at night. If this is so, they did not take advantage of the privilege while I was at Seoul. The gates were closed promptly at sundown, and it seemed that only foreigners were allowed to go about at night. When we went out we had soldiers with us, and we carried Korean NEAR SEOUL.

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THE KOREANS AT HOME Ry Sle. A CORNER OF SEOUL. lanterns, made by the stretching of a gauze veil over a frame containing a candle. This city of three hundred thousand people has no street lights of any kind. The Koreans know not the enjoyment of sitting out the evening at a theater or concert, and such Korean men as are caught by the police on the streets after dark are whipped. Itis im- possible to get in or out of the city after sun- down. The high wall which surrounds it has three great gates, each of which has heavy iron-plated doors. As the sun sinks behind the great mountains which look down on city, the huge bell in its center is pounded with a great beam, and the sound announces to the people that the day has come to an end. A band of soldiers now starts forth from the palace and marches from gate to gate of the city. The band which accom- panies them gives out a weird music, as shrill and as piercing as the bagpipes of the Highland Scots. To this music they swing to the gates, which can then not be opened till morning without an order from the king. I shall not soon forget the exciting ride we had in coming to Seoul about sundown. We reached the gates just as the soldiers were closing them, and came within an inch, as it were, of being left to spend the night among the mud huts outside the wall. The only night life of Seoul is that con- nected with the king and the court. His majesty does all his business at night, and his palace is blazing with electricity from Edison’s burners up until three or four o'clock in the morning. The electric lights of the palace were put in a few months ago by an American firm in Korea. It requires two engines to run them, and they are of the pear-shaped globes and incandescent wire burners which you see in many American houses. The king begins his day at three o’clock in the afternoon, and this custom of holding the court at night is almost as old as Korea. The king’s power is despotic, and he is, in fact, the government. He has a cabinet and prime ministers, and the ser- vants and officials of the palace number

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THE KOREANS AT HOME. nearly two thousand. Inside of the palace walls live the king, the queen, and the crown prince, each of whom has a separate establishment and hundreds of retainers or servants. There are many eunuchs, and at the audiences which I had with the king and crown prince, two of these dull-eyed eunuchs stood at the side of each during the presenta- tion. They wore horse-hair hats, with big ears or wings at the back, and they were dressed in long gowns of black, with big sleeves. The cabinet officers of the king wear gowns, and they come into his maj- esty’s presence with their hats on. Noone but a foreigner ever takes off his hat in Korea. The hats of these officers are much the same as those of the eunuchs, but they have on their breasts and shoulders a piece of embroidery about six inches square, upon which is the figure of a stork in case they belong to the civil branch of the government, and of a tiger ready to spring where they are generals of the army. No Korean is sup- posed to ever look at the king. His officers bow their heads when they come into his presence. They prostrate themselves first 395 before him when they enter his audience chamber, and, rising, they stand with heads bowed over and eyes cast down while they remain. Their tones must be low in address- ing him, and they are supposed to never glance up at his face. During my audience our interpreter, who was a noble Korean, stood bent half double while he translated our conversation and the king’s answers ; and during an examination of the royal school, not long ago, at which the king was present, the scholars kept their hats glued to the floor, and answered their questions while thus bending over. A Korean interpreter was delighted, not long ago, at seeing a picture of the king, in whose presence he had several times been, but whose face he had never yet seen. The king of Korea seldom comes out of his palace, and his life is almost entirely within this quarter of a section of walls. When he does come forth, however, it is with a grand procession. The streets of the capital are swept for the occasion, and the people are warned to remain within doors. The foreigners are, however, exempt from this restriction, and the king always — pS — 7

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396 bows to the foreign ladies when he sees them upon such occasions. It is only a short time since that the king visited his ancestral tombs, riding to them upon horseback. During these rides, his majesty gives his people the right of appeal; any man who has a grievance can hold upa brass bowl, and bytapping on this can call the attention ofthe king. The procession then stops and the king hears the man’scause. His com- plaint is investigated, and if well grounded the wrong is righted ; if not, however, the petitioner is apt to lose his head for troub- ling the court with a lie. This system of justice was put forth by the king last June in quieting the excitement of the Koreans as to the stories that the missionaries were eating Korean babies, and were grinding their eyes up to make medicine and photo- graphic materials. The king sent forth a proclamation offering forty thousand cash to any one who would show that the mis- sionaries had stolen Korean babies. The second clause of the ‘notice stated that, in case any one brought a charge and it was not proven, he should pay to the king a like sum of forty thousand cash. It is needless to say that no such information was lodged. The King of Korea is now thirty-six years old. He is bright and progressive, and he is anxious that American methods should, to some extent, be introduced into his king- dom. His royal school is taught by Amer- ican professors, and the aim is to fit pupils, the most of whom are boys of rank, for posi- tions in the government offices, and for diplomatic service abroad. They have shown themselves very bright scholars. They learn the languages easily, and they have a remark- able tenacity of memory. It will be long before there is a royal school for girls in Korea, though Japan has had one for several years under the patronage of the empress. The women of Japan are far in advance in civilization of those of the hermit kingdom, and the Queen of Korea has not yet aspired to foreign clothes, nor has she attempted to break the iron band of social customs which bind in her sex. She has, THE KOREANS AT HOME. however, the reputation of being a very bright woman, and it is whispered at Seoul that she sometimes reads his majesty a cur- tain lecture decidedly strong. She attends some of his conferences with his ministers, sitting behind a screen, and putting in her word now and then as to whether a thing shall be or not. Her family are the leaders of one of the parties of Korea. They are very strong, and the queen’s influence is great. No one pretends to call her a weak sister, and in China it is supposed by some political thinkers that she rules the king. I do not believe this to be so, but her enemies, fearing her power, in the revolution of some years ago attempted to kill her, and they were only frustrated through the loyalty of one of the soldier servants of the king. This man’s action should go down in the history of the worship of sovereigns. He had a daughter whose features and form were much the same as the queen’s. He caused the queen and his daughter to exchange cloth- ing during the attack on the palace, and in this way the queen was slipped past the guards and escaped. The poor girl who wore the queen’s clothes was killed by the mob. The father was, of course, rewarded by office when the king regained his ascend- ency, and he is, I believe, still in the service of the king. The king and the queen are the most pro- gressive of the Korean people, and it is due to them that Korea has made her first advances toward the adoption of modern civilization. The continuance of the work depends much upon the settlement of the question as to the suzerainty of China, and whether Korea shall be considered an inde- pendent kingdom or not. Ifso, the amount of leaven which is now working will be increased from year to year, and it may in time leaven the whole lump of this very stubborn piece of Asiatic civilization. If not, the change will be contemporaneous with that of China, and it will at all events be a generation before the hermit kingdom reaches the present state of the civilization of Japan.

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TO M. B. By RICHARD HENRY STODDARD. I SHALL behold, I hope I shall behold Before the rainfall of to-morrow night, A woman loved of old, who is not old, To whom before I was my heart was plight. My name with hers in Fate’s great book enrolled, Shines, as it ought to, in supernal light, Twins, slumbering, smiling, on the arm of might, The mystery of one being still untold. I know this woman—no one half so well— Your love as well as mine, diviner powers ! Whose currents, shifting always, seldom vary ; For she was born beneath a gracious spell, Somewhere and somehow in the countless hours Before I Richard was, or she was Mary ! S1TT1InG alone within this dusky glow, Where shadows wavering in the fitful flame Cheat me with likeness, yet are not the same As those we watched together, days ago, My heart is full of memories that throw Their light upon a time before your name Meant what it means to-day ; or I could claim The well-beloved friend that now I know. A lonely child beside the lonely sea, I found your foot-prints ; followed where they led ; And thus unconsciously was born and bred The love—and simple art—of song in me; Which now—of all its sweet the sweetest part,— Has proved the royal road to your true heart.

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. nea" ws ‘AN Fi THE MARK IN THE BIBLE. FROM THE FRENCH OF A. DORCHAIN, By J. HENRY HAGER. F a verity, Herr Magistrate,’’ said the Private Counselor, ‘‘ you have just given a striking proof of the possession of those powers of induction and deduc- tion that characterize the born judicial in- vestigator. If this infinitesimally small detail, so easily overlooked by a mind less keen, had escaped your attention, there is little doubt that the culprit would have remained forever undetected. But who knows? Since we are on this subject, I could tell you a strange story, stranger even than the one you have just related, in which I chanced to play a réle that it is your duty to assume officially. I, too, once discovered a culprit, and under circumstances so ex- traordinary, by means of a clue so slender, and improbable, that the more I think of it, the more the whole affair seems to me like a genuine miracle. I don’t refer to it to exalt myself, for I should have discovered nothing without the direct interposition of Chance —or, Providence, if you prefer the term.”’ ‘‘ Your preamble,’’ replied the Magistrate, ” “has already greatly excited my curiosity. I hope you will relate the incident.’’ ‘‘Willingly. But let us first adjourn to the library. I know you are an admirer of rare tomes, and I must first show you mine. Don’t be afraid that they will take me away from my tale; on the contrary, they will lead us directly toit, and in the most natural manner possible.”’ The two men passed from the dining-room where the above conversation had taken place into a well-filled library—four walls of shelves bristling with formidable folios. Every collector of books has his specialty, and that of Private Counselor Otto Grotius was Bibles. He boasted of being the pos- sessor of several editions not owned by the richest theological library in Germany—that of ‘‘ Georgia Augusta,’’ in the ancient uni- versity of Gottingen. The Magistrate, anx- ious to get to the story, did not, perhaps, admire as they deserved to be admired, the venerable illustrated edition of the Holy Scriptures issued about 1456, by Gutenberg

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THE MARK IN THE BIBLE. and Fust; Luther’s first Bible; the poly- glott edition of Plantin; that of Aldus Manucius, and many others. At last the Private Counselor took from his shelves two shabby, though modern-looking volumes, and said with a sarcastic smile: ‘‘T have kept these for the last ; they are the bright, particular jewels of my collec- tion.”’ ‘‘What ? Call this cheap reprint of the last century a jewel?’”’ ‘Just so, my dear guest, and for a double reason. In the first place, the edition was given to my father by the great Frederick himself, who had condescended to ornament one of the two volumes with marginal notes, more witty, indeed, than reverential, as might be expected from the illustrious friend of Voltaire. In the second place—and to this, Herr Magistrate, let me call your espe- cial attention—because the other volume bears between its leaves, as a mark, this bit of yellow paper, commonplace looking enough, by itself, but with which nothing would induce me to part, since it gave me the clue to the terrible and mysterious trag- edy to which I have referred.’’ ‘This time,’’ interrupted the Magistrate, “I trust you will not keep me longer in suspense.”’ The Private Counselor sat down and thus began : In the spring of 179- I married, and the Frau Private Counselor, my beloved de- parted wife, brought me as her dowry this little estate of S——, which we readily chose as our home, seeing that it is equally distant from the capital and the summer residence of his highness, the Grand Duke. You have been kind enough to admire our old garden, laid out after French models, with its box-bordered walks, its yews trimmed pyramid-wise, and its marble deities preten- tiously clothed in operatic costumes ; but I have not ventured to lead you further a-field to show you the useful after the beautiful— the commonplace vegetable garden after the ornamental park! I now regret it, for it is probable that you have never seen a haunted house, and I could have shown you one there, or, at least, one reputed to be such. There is nothing forbidding in the aspect of this insignificant structure where my valet assures me that he meets souls in 399 pain. It is a one-story cottage whose thatched roof is starred with stone-crop, and whose front is entirely hidden by honey- suckle, jasmine and Bengal roses. If one happens to enter one sees that the windows are no longer glazed, that the fire-place is filled with fallen plaster, that the inside par- titions are so worn as to show the lath, and that the walls are crumbling under the com- bined action of mildew and saltpetre. This queer structure has for a long time only been used as a convenient storage place for potted plants and garden implements. None of my servants would consent to live in it, or even to go near it after nightfall. When we moved to S—— this cottage was occupied by the gardener and his wife. His name was Josias. He was an old Pommeranian cuirassier whom my father-in- law had taken into his service, and whom we retained in ours. Should I live a thou- sand years, Josias’s features would never fade from my memory. He was about fifty, tall, with a strong muscular body, and with what is called a ‘‘square’’ head. His ‘ heavy eye-brows met, making a straight line across his face. He wore no beard, but had thick red hair. If there is any truth in physiognomy he was ambitious, obstinate, and not at all sensitive. It seems that he had several times tried to improve his world- ly condition, but had always failed—a cir- cumstance of which he was accustomed to complain bitterly. ‘* Still Iam bound to be rich,’’ he would add; ‘‘I can’t tell how, or when, but some day fortune will come—it will come! ’’ He was a hard master to those employed about the place, and seemed to take delight in tormenting animals, beating the dogs, for example, not apparently out of anger, but because it’ gave him pleasure. On two oc- casions, when interlopers had climbed over the garden wall, he had broken their legs with his gun. The servants hated him, and the peasants declared that he cast spells on the cattle, and that if he looked at a young girl in a certain way she would from that moment fall under his diabolical influence. Josias had married late in life. His wife was younger than he, and, without being aware of it, increased his unsavory reputa- tion. Not that she was suspected of doing anything wrong, but she was believed to be the victim of her husband’s occult practices.

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400 Blonde, pale, with light blue eyes and soft cheeks, she trembled before her spouse as a poor bird trembles that has been fascinated by a serpent. Besides, she was subject to lethargic fits. Sometimes she would remain for days wrapped ina strange slumber so closely resembling death, that when she was first attacked they came near burying her alive. Such were husband and wife. Not having any special charge to make against Josias, who was active and honest, we never thought of discharging him, and attached but slight importance to the reports that had gained currency concerning him. Josias, besides his work in the garden, had certain tasks assigned him in the house. One Saturday, the day of the week he usually devoted to waxing the floor of my library, I happened to enter the room sud- denly, and surprised him standing near these shelves in the act of reading this Bible. On hearing me come in he closed it hastily, but, as the passage seemed to interest him greatly, not before marking the place with a © bit of paper he had in his hand, the very piece you are now looking at, and which has on it an expense account for the first week of the month of July, 179-. I said nothing, seeing from his agitation that he thought he had been indiscreet. He put the volume back in its place, and as it was not this one that had been annotated by the great Frederick, I never thought of taking out the mark. And it is just here, Herr Magistrate, that the mystery begins. The next day being Sunday—take notice of the date—the cook not having seen anything of the Frau Josias, and becoming alarmed, went over to the cot- tage in the kitchen garden. She’ found the unfortunate woman stretched on her bed, white and rigid, her eyes wide open and the pupils dilated. ‘‘A lethargic attack,’’ remarked Josias without the least emotion. The advisability of calling in a physician was suggested, but Josias would not hear of it. ‘‘No, no! I haven’t any money to throw away. She'll come to all right, as usual.’’ Three days later, when the body began to decompose, he at last consented that a doc- tor should be sent for. The latter said at THE MARK IN THE BIBLE. once that the woman was dead, which did not seem remarkable considering the pre- carious condition of her health. A month before—note this fact also—Frau Josias had fallen heir to quite a nice little sum of money and had at once willed it to her husband. You will no doubt ask, Herr Magistrate, what connection there is between these events and the Mark in the Bible. Have patience. The Counselor stopped a moment to enjoy the interest manifested by his auditor in the narrative, and then proceeded : After the death of his wife, Josias, rich to the amount of several thousand thalers, left us and set up on his own account in the District of F——. We subsequently learned that Fortune, so long waited for, continued to smile upon him, and that he had become burgomaster of his village. He was never seen again at S , and never visited the burying-ground where the body of his wife rested. In fact, the burying-ground itself soon disappeared. It was so damp that miasma arose from it night and day, invading the neighboring houses, and feeding the wander- ing fires that after dusk misled and fright- ened belated travelers. It was first ordered to be closed, and ten years later was alto- gether obliterated, a new strategic road having been surveyed across it. In the month of July, 18—, the mattock was first used, and some bones brought to the surface. One morning when the diggers were about getting to work, they noticed an old beggar woman who had got into the graveyard through a hole in the wall, and was engaged in picking up the dead branches of trees, or worm-eaten pieces fallen from the wooden crosses that marked the graves. Suddenly she sprang backward in affright and gave a terrible scream. They ran upto, and questioned, her. She could only suc- ceed in making them understand by gestures and a few disjointed sentences, that she had seen a skull moving along the ground. ‘* Look, it moves! ’’ cried the terror-stricken woman. Everyone started back instinctively. True enough, on a heap of human remains and stones a skull came bouncing along, pro- pelled by some strange energy.

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fLHE MOVING SKULL.

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402 One workman was of the opinion that the rector should be notified. Another—a more virile intellect—ran for a doctor. I was also sent for, and reached the spot as soon as the physician. He first ridiculed the cowardly supersti- tions of the by-standers, then stooped down, picked up the skull, and inside it found a toad, that, having got into the cerebral cavity through a narrow opening, was vainly trying to get out of its prison. ‘** You see,’’ he said, laughing, ‘‘ the ——, But he did not finish the sentence. A second discovery checked the words on his lips, and froze the smile on his face—a long steel spike, slender as an _ upholsterer’s needle, was imbedded in the occiput, and must at some time have passed entirely through the brain. ‘‘Hoh ! hoh!’’ he exclaimed, ‘‘a clever assassin, that! Death instantaneous, no effusion of blood, and, thanks to the hair, no visible trace. My predecessor no doubt attributed it to the rupture of an aneurism.”’ How to find out the name of the mur- derer and that of his victim ? In this portion of the cemetery the labor- ers had demolished four graves and thrown the remains in a single heap. The tomb- stones were the only means of identifica- tion left. One of them bore the inscription : ‘* Here lies Cornelia Jostas.”’ How to find out, for find out I was re- solved I should ! Suddenly a thought flashed through my brain like lightning. Two names stood be- fore me as if printed in letters of fire. How- ” THE MARK IN THE BIBLE. ever, it was only a personal conviction ; proofs were necessary. I ran and shut myself up in my library— the very room in which we now are. I opened a book—this Bible. The proof was there. I no longer sus- pected. I no longer merely believed—I knew. The next day the representatives of the law presented themselves at the residence of Josias, whom they found alone eating his supper. A police officer accosted him, placed his hand on his head, on the very spot, in fact, in which the nail had been driven through his victim’s brain, and said : ‘*Josias, you have killed your wife.’’ The wretch shuddered, and with chatter- ing teeth replied : ‘“Yes, yes, God has avenged her—the book—the book—I am choking——”’ and fell dead, struck by apoplexy. And now, Herr Magistrate, open the Bible at the place where I opened it on my return from the cemetery—to the page that Josias himself marked the day before the crime. Here—Judges, Chapter IV., verse 21 ; read. The Magistrate took the volume and read as follows : ‘Then Jael, Heber’s wife, took a nail of the tent, and took an hammer in her hand, and went softly unto him, and smote the nail into his temples, and fastened it into the ground, for he was fast asleep and weary. So he died.”’

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WHEN THEY MILKED THE BEARS. By EMMA P. GREENOUGH. HE day’s work was done and Aunt Dinah and Uncle Lijah sat oppo- site each other at the old deal ta- ble. Uncle Lijah had the big Bible open before him and seemed to be lost in its study, but Aunt Dinah would evidently have preferred that he should have a little gossip with her, as she sat mending the holes in a pair of enormous socks whose original color and substance had almost entirely disappeared under a sort of grafting process of many darns of various hues. ““T’s ’fraid yo’ mind’s sot on things o’ this worl’, Dinah,’’ said Lijah, gravely, as she interrupted his study for the fourth or fifth time. ‘‘Do’ know ’bout dat,’’ said Dinah, ‘‘ but ’pears like I might hab mo’ time fer ter con- sider hebinly t’ings ef yo’ didn’t make sech obstrepalus holes in yo’ socks, Lijah. ‘Pears .ter me es how dem heels o’ yorn jes kep’ on growin’ when de res’ yo’ body don’ got fro’,’’ she added, reflectively. Lijah calmly waived the personality conveyed in her speech, and only said : ‘‘ Kiner seems ter me es yo’ wouldn’ be jes happy up in hebin ’thout dat ar ball er yarn an’ er darnin’ needle.’’ But Aunt Dinah never meant to come off second in a contest of this sort, and she re- torted briskly: ‘‘ An’ I jes reckon es how I might manage ter git long ’ith plenty er yarn fer ter knit new socks; guess hebin ’ud be more chirky like doin’ er little knit- tin’ ’stid er stannin’ roun’ all day holdin’ on ter dem yer harps er gol’, yo’ so fon’ o’ tellin’ ‘bout !”’ Uncle Lijah shook his head at this fresh proof of Dinah’s levity, and gravely resumed his study of the Scriptures. This was by no means a lightsome task at any time, for he spelled out the words slowly and laboriously, and his interpretations were apt to be of a sort not countenanced by any school of theology. He was in the habit of making a study of some especial text for a while, and then of exhorting the brethren in weekly prayer-meeting assembled, from this portion of Scripture, quite regardless of the context. Just now he was deeply pondering, with more than usual interest, some passage in the book of Genesis. More than once he pushed up the old horn-bowed spectacles from his nose and looked about the room with a certain degree of satisfaction upon his shining, wrinkled face. At last he closed the book, and, pushing back his chair, he said with emphasis: ‘‘ Dinah, we don’ none ob us mo’ ’n half ’preciate de blessin’s ob dis day and generation !”’ The next evening was the one of the weekly meeting. Lijah was there, and by the time it was half over it became apparent that he was ‘‘ moved to speak.”’ Rising to his feet, he took a good grasp of the chair in front and began: ‘‘ My frens, I ben thinkin’ mighty powerful ’bout a tex what I foun’ in de book of Genesis. Yo’ may fin’ it, my frens, in de twenty-secon’ chapter an’ de twenty-third verse—but yo’

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404 don need fer ter look it up now ’’—as a dis- position to do so became manifest among his hearers—‘‘’cause I’s gwin fer ter ’sponed it ter yo ’uns. ’Tis mighty curis tex, my frens, an’ it needs mighty heap er rastlin’ fer ter unnerstan’ it, an’ I don rastle long time fo I unnerstan’ de whole meanin’ ob dat tex. No use tryin’ fer ter unnerstan’ dat tex thout er powerful heap er rastlin’,’’ said Uncle Lijah with calm conviction. ‘*Good many o’ yo’ po’ niggars, yere tink yo’ hab powerful hard time scratchin’ long ter git yo’ libin ; but la! ’tant nothin’ ter what ‘twas in dem days whar ob de tex tells. ‘*Some o’ yo here got hens what lays eggs an’ has chickins what grows ter be hens, ’thout theys killed, or (with sudden thought) stole! An’ some o’ yo’s got goats what goes nibblin’ ’roun’ an’ picks up dey libin HYMN OF FAITH. out o’ jes nothin ’tall, an’ gibs yo’ milk for de chillen’ ; an’ some o’ yo’,’’ said he with emphasis, ‘‘some o’ yo’s got cows what comes home ebery night from de parster’, gentle an’ patient, a-waitin’ ter be milked. Ah! my frens, yo’ don’ haf ’preciate de blessin’ ob de ’havior ob dem cows! In de times whar ob an’ concernin’ which de tex am speakin’ dar was no cows ter be milked, an’ de people had ter go out on de mountin side an’ inter de wilderness ob de forest an’ milk de dars / ‘*How’d I know deys no cows? ’Think people gwine be sech fools go out an’ milk de bars when deys got cows fer ter milk? An’, my frens, dat aint all, fer it took eght ob ’em ter milk one er dem critters ! ‘‘Fer, my frens, de solemn words ob de tex am, ‘ Des eight did milk a bar /’”’ HYMN OF FAITH. By ELI SHEPPERD. No matter what people do say, Rough rocky road most a done trabblin’ ! Faith gwine ter roll trouble away, No matter what people do say. O sinner cease dancin’ and babblin’, Sin’s gittin’ ole an’ feeble an’ gray; No matter what people do say, Rough rocky road most a done trabblin’ ! O dat faith dat heaven gib me, Brother, it shine like a mornin’ star ! Dat Eye of Faith wharwid I see, O dat faith dat heaven gib me! Hit show me nigh, an’ hit show me far, Hit show me whar I’m gwine ter be; O dat faith dat heaven gib me, Sister, it shine like a mornin’ star! No matter what people do say, Rough rocky road most a done trabblin’! Golden ban’ an’ a robe so gay, No matter what people do say. Sinner-man cease yo’ grumblin’ an’ grabblin Golden harp fer de seeker ter play ; No matter what people do say, Rough rocky road most a done trabblin’! ,

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SOCIAL PROBLEMS. By EDWARD EVERETT THE COSMOPOLITAN MAGAZINE would not deserve its name if it did not devote consid- erable space to information and discussion regarding questions of social order, such as arise in our time in every country. Every article in the magazine, indeed, though it were a light story of gay life, would involve more or less directly one or another of these questions. Because this is so, and all the more because we suppose that the authors who work with us are of that line of genius which looks forward to the larger life of the twentieth century, the editor of our maga- zine wishes that there should be in every number a special department for the consid- eration of such ‘‘social problems.’’ Of this department he kindly gives me the direc- tion. I shall make the department rather a record of progress than a symposium for discussion. Inthe long run every tree will be judged by its fruits, and only so. True, it is interesting enough to know what Rob- ert Owen hoped for, what St. Simon dreamed of, and what Fourier planned. But what the world rightly considers of more import- ance is what came to pass. It is tomeet our readers in any wishes which they have to know what has been done once, and what can be done again, that we shall bring to- gether the articles which they will find here from month to month. That is to say, they will be matters of information rather than of speculation. Thus, while we shall be glad to show how some plan which has succeeded in Hamburg can be applied in New York, it will be our first business to teach the reader in New York how far the Hamburg plans succeeded and in what they failed. It is but fair to add that we believe it to be of far more use to print in detail the records of success than those of failure. Let me also say, once for all, again, that this department will be conducted specially with reference to American readers, the position of American society, and our needs in maintain- ing our social institutions. THE COSMOPOLI- TAN MAGAZINE, indeed, addresses itselfto the affairs of the whole world ; but we do not for- get that the greater proportion of our read- HALE. ers are in America, and that we shall be of more use in inspiring the institutions of the United States than for many years we can hope to be by our advice to those persons who regulate the institutions of the other continents. It is necessary to say this be- cause, very naturally, the influence of Euro- pean literature in our affairs is very large. Young people, in particular, are misled by the analogies of England, France, and Ger- many. Many a young girl, in her first essays in charity, is disappointed because she can not be a Lady Bountiful on the pattern of one of Miss Sewall’s or Miss Yonge’s nov- els. Many another person who tries to work out the suggestions derived from Tolstoi or from the close students of Parisian life finds in America no emancipated serf and no ‘‘Bloused’’ workman corresponding to the hero of his imagination. If, indeed, we can succeed in making our young men and women study the strange and unknown country in which they live, we shall have achieved much of what is needed for making them do their duty by the people of the country. So many of the writers for the American press have been trained under the institutions of absolutism or oligarchy that it is the more necessary that in the Cosmo- POLITAN pages we shall write as Americans for America. There is a great deal of nonsense written and talked in our day about state socialism. Whenever Count Bismarck makes a proposal looking toward the better treatment of old men and old women, some ignorant writer enters upon a half-alarmist stream of gossip as to whether Count Bismarck is or is nota state socialist. All this is absurd enough in Europe ; it is ridiculous in America. The American commonwealths were started, some of them more than two hundred and fifty years ago, by people who meant to do the best thing for the state in the best way. They were absolutely indifferent as to the theories under which they did this. The consequence is that our public bodies have the dominion over a vast number of institu- tions which, in the old world, would belong

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406 to private associations, to individuals, or to the Church. Asa perfect matter of course, the American states, and since there was a nation the American nation, have taken the oversight of the lighthouses, which, also, as a perfect matter of course, were managed in England by a medizval power called Trinity House. Or again, as a perfect matter of course, the American states establish their institutions for the insane, where again, in Europe, these fall, as a perfect matter of course, into the hands of certain orders of the Roman Catholic Church. These are convenient enough instances of the way in which here, by an easy and happy-go-lucky system, our state governments, and more lately our national government, do the thing which is to be done, without a great deal of unnecessary speculation as to the abstract principle on which they enter into the enter- prise. It happens thus that the principal duty of an American governor is the oversight of a large number of charitable or philanthropic institutions. It will be safe to say, that, in the greater part of the American states, nine- tenths of the practical work of the governor in the state capital is in his oversight of the institutions of charity and reform. The rest of the government really takes care of itself. One may say, in passing, that here is shown the absurdity of our habit of frequent changes of governors. In truth, the governor is a practical man, at the head of a great practi- cal concern. After four or five years he be- gins to know something about it. He knows which prison is well conducted and which is not ; he knows which board is honestly run and in which there is some piratical adven- turer. It is just at this moment, alas, that we are apt to turn him out and put in an- other man. There is no reason which can be assigned why such a governor should not be kept at the head of his administration, just as at Washington, in all changes of par- ties, they keep at the head of certain bureaus certain men who understand the business, and whom they know perfectly well that they can not dispense with. Just at this season of the year the reports of the different boards of charity and reform are presented in the different state govern- ments, and it is ordered that they shall be printed. From time to time it will be our duty and pleasure to give to the readers of SOCIAL PROBLEMS. the CosMOPOLITAN the most important re- sults contained in these reports. They are, generally speaking, the work of hard-work- ing men, and sometimes of hard-working women, who are enthusiastic in their busi- ness, who work with very little pay, and who have very little of the credit which belongs to them in the direction of affairs. Some of these reports contain information and suggestion of the very first value in social reform, yet it is very difficult to get at them. They are never on the counters of book-shops ; they are apt to be given away by members of the state legislatures in quar- ters where they are of no sort of use; and a complete collection of such reports, even for the last twenty years, does not exist in the world. Weare in a position in this office to receive the most important of them, as they are finally collected by the state authorities ; but we venture in this place to ask the sepa- rate authors of such reports if they will not be kind enough to send us early copies, even proof-sheets, of their work, in anticipation of the slower compilation by the authorities of the state. This will enable us frequently to give to the readers of the CoSMOPOLITAN at least a hint of the place where they are to apply for full information on subjects of the first importance. Looking upon the theoretical side of the questions regarding the reform of society, the improvement of the criminal classes and the abolition of pauperism, one great question which has found its way into public notice is the tendency of men to consolidate in their work, which reveals itself in a remarkable way in all our modern civilization. The very words syndicate, co-operation, trades- union, pool, ring, and fifty others, which were scarcely in the dictionary half a century ago, show how definite and strong is this ten- dency. The only wonder is that it has not shown itself before as itdoes now. Forman is a gregarious animal; he can not livealone, any more than a bee can live alone, or a wild horse, or a wild goose. Whenever he succeeds he succeeds by his co-operation with his breth- ren: so true is it that God has made of one blood all races of men. How this co-operation shall work most simply, and with the truest regard to the infinite value and absolute right of the individual, is the question now before us all. As I write, some very remark-

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SOCIAL PROBLEMS. able statements have been made before the Boston Merchants’ Club, a conservative body of the very highest character, by Professor Ely, by Judge Cooley, Mr. Dodd, Mr. Seth Low and Mr. Thurber, which will do a great deal to give definiteness to the thought of intelligent people, and clearness to the more careless statement of the journals. Professor Ely says, good-humoredly, that he finds that what was the rankest radicalism a few years ago, is now the most approved conservatism. This is undoubtedly true. The view which he sustains is this: that we must admit the tendency of all strong effort tocombine. The States of America became a law under an absolute law of human nature. The half-dozen railways between Albany and Buffalo became one under the same law. We must not undertake to resist it; but we have the right, by virtue of this very law, to oversee the combinations which are made, to provide the general regulations for them by the general intelligence, and, in a word, to see that the government of the coun- try shall be superior to them all. If any nation has been taught this lesson, it is the nation of America, which sprang into being because, for the moment, the corporation called the East India Company led by the nose the ministry which was called the gov- ernment of Great Britain. It does not be- come America, with as striking an instance as that in the very history of her birth, to permit any corporation, however dignified, to handle or direct the administration of her government. POOR LAW ADMINISTRATION. A PRACTICAL solution of endless diffi- culties of administration has been wrought out in Massachusetts by what they call in New England ‘‘ horse common sense.’’ It is exactly the sort of good sense which, with- out any theorizing, has created in turn juries, parliaments, and courts of arbitration. Once a month, without any statute requi- sition, the secretaries of all the boards of over- seers of poor in all the large towns and cities of Massachusetts meet in Boston. They dine together at the same hotel, and spend two or three hours in familiar conference. As their duty requires, the men who hold these posts are men of wide business training, 407 while they are, so far as I have seen, men of sensitive and friendly disposition. The meeting becomes, from the nature of the case, a monthly clearing-house, in which suggestions can be made and discussed, and an endless number of details adjusted, such as would require acres of correspondence. All those intricate matters regarding the ‘settlement ’’ of some old man or old woman who has gone astray, may, perhaps, be determined in five minutes’ talk better than by five years of litigation. The expe- rience of one intelligent officer may be invaluable to another. And simply the knowledge which is gained in such a con- ference of the general drift of commerce and industry is of great value to every one who comes there. For the relief of poverty and the prevention of pauperism in America is very largely a question of occupation, and the present condition of the labor market. It will be seen at once that the practical suggestions of such a board, whether made formally or informally, are of the first value to the executive and the legislature. TEMPORARY DWELLINGS. GEORGE SmiTH, of Coalville, England, who has already been successful in urging legislation of laws for the protection of the poor, is now pressing the ‘‘ Temporary Dwellings’’ bill. This bill immediately concerns some thirty thousand poor chil- dren of a class not much known in America, but common in England—a class whose parents live in vans or tents, and who travel from place to place, hanging about fairs and markets, and picking up what little suste- nance they can. In 1871 Mr. Smith published the ‘‘ Cry of the Children from the Brick-yards of Eng- land,’’ and the result was a bill providing that no child under ten years of age should be employed in making bricks and tiles. In January, 1872, twenty thousand children had been withdrawn and sent to school. Mr. Smith next turned his attention to remedy- ing the existing evils of canal-boat life, in which nearly one hundred thousand men, women and children were engaged; but it was not until 1884, after repeated defeats, that a bill was passed which promised to better their condition. This last bill, known as the ‘‘ Temporary

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408 Dwellings ’’ bill, provides that movable and temporary habitations shall be registered and numbered, and that a certain number of cubic feet of space shall be allotted to each person, varying according to age, and that traveling children shall attend school a given number of times up to the age re- quired by the Education Code. CRIME IN ENGLAND. THE report of the directors of the convict prisons in England and Wales shows only half as many women in the prisons and penitentiaries as there were five years ago. There are fewer men and women in custody under sentence of penal servitude than ever before in modern times. Mr. Hutton, a magistrate of North Rid- ing, has been making investigations, with regard to the imprisonment of children, that are of public interest. Forty boys and girls under the age of sixteen years were in one year consigned to Northallerton Gaol. Many of these children were committed almost when they were infants, to be recommitted soon after their sentences expired. Often- times the offence is very small. One lad of fifteen found himself sent to Northallerton Gaol, ‘‘ without the option of a fine,’’ only for ‘‘lodging in the open air,’’ and yet two others were sentenced for seven and fourteen days for playing ‘‘ pitch and toss.’’ It is in- teresting to know that one magistrate, whose name is withheld, sentenced seventeen out of the forty children who were sent to North- allerton Gaol. The chairman of the Quarter Sessions thanked Mr. Hutton in the name of the jus- tices and the public for the great services he had rendered in bringing to light such gross injustice. VEGETARIANS, THE London Vegetarian Society is active in promoting an interest in the question of vegetarianism. Vegetarianism is, in their words, ‘‘ humanity, health, purity, temper- ance, thrift, happiness.’’ : During the cotton famine in England, twenty-five years ago, when there was great distress among the working people, Profes- sor Newcome made some investigations with regard to reducing the expense of living. SOCIAL PROBLEMS. He proved by experiments that the cost of food was greatly increased when meat was used, and that improvement in general health was the consequence of a vegetarian diet. Since that time he has dispensed with meat in his own family. The present vegetarian simply refrains from the flesh of warm-blooded animals, and eats eggs and fish. Attractive methods in the preparation of food make the absence of meat less noticeable. There are several vegetarian restaurants scattered through London, and the practice of such diet seems to be growing in popu- larity. In the Strand, not far from Charing Cross, is one of the largest and best of these restaurants. It is frequented by gentle- manly people, and is quite as well patron- ized as its neighbors where meat is Served. It is said that, with eyes closed, the hungry diner would not know that he was feeding entirely on vegetables, were he ignorant of his whereabouts. CHARITY ORGANIZATION. Ir is a great mistake to think that Asso- ciated Charities can come full-fledged into successful existence. It is necessary that there should be a demand for association, and that the organization may extend in answer to the demand. Once organized, the officers of the Associated Charities can not make it successful exeept as the people who compose the Society stand behind them and do their share of the work. The Associated Charities of Boston was formed, because the charitable societies were hampered in their efforts by the overlapping of each other. The necessity of an organiza- tion came and was met. The plan of regis- tration has proved excellent, and conduced to more systematic help, and a greater de- gree of self-respect to the recipients. The Friendly Visitor was not inaugurated until about two years after the formation of the Association, when it was found that some of the visitors of the societies were overworked, and the system of ‘‘ Friendly Visitors’’ was instituted. One great secret of success of the Boston Associated Charities is that the society steadfastly holds to its own work and does not go outside. Members may in connec- tion with other charities form societies and

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SOCIAL PROBLEMS. do outside work, but the ‘‘ Asseciated Chari- ties’’ keeps within its own clearly defined boundaries. The great number of Friendly Visitors, as well as the fact that the office is in the same building as the offices of many of the charitable societies, has without doubt contributed largely to the success of the undertaking. ‘* CHRISTIAN WORKERS.”’ Two years ago last June the first conven- tion of Christian Workers was called in Chicago. Since then a convention has been held in New York, and also in the city of Detroit. It is desired to bring together the people who are interested in ‘‘ Christian work”’ in its various forms, from Canada and from all parts of the United States. The conventions are remarkable for the breadth of discussion and the wide range of topics brought before them. The best methods of the work of the churches, ministers and people, are thoroughly canvassed; and from the few days meeting, workers go North, South, East and West to apply the plans and ways which have proved successful. The persons who report at these conven- tions are not mere theorists, but experienced men and women. Mrs. Barney, national superintendent of prison, jail and almshouse work of W. C. T. U., always opens the eyes of the blind as to the department and the help that is needed. Such names as Rev. Lyman Abbott, Miss Grace Dodge, Rev. Graham Taylor of Hartford, Rev. John C. Collins of New Haven, are suggestive of fresh life and renewed endeavor. These workers are but a few in the many who bring their best experiences to these con- ventions to aid and strengthen others in their efforts to uplift the world. Itis rather a delicate thing to say, but if one may speak English very distinctly, the great part of the delegates at this conven- tion is not made up from the distinguished preachers, who have earned deserved regard by their bearing, their study and their rhetoric, but rather from another class, equally admired, and much loved at the office of the Recording Angel, whose special hob has been to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to visit the prisoner, and to preach the gospel of love to the poor. BOYS’ CLUBS. In connection with the Convention of Christian Workers, mention should be made of the Boys’ Clubs instituted by the Rev. J. C. Collins of New Haven. At the conven- tion held in New York, in 1887, Mr. Collins read a paper on this subject, and the methods employed to interest and hold the boys of a large city. At Detroit, he announced that a State committee of three had been appointed in Connecticut, for this work. Rooms had been opened in several large cities and towns, and great interest had been awakened throughout the State. Over ten thousand dollars has been provided for national, State and local work. At the present time about ten clubs are in full operation in Con- necticut, with about five or six thousand members. The system has succeeded so well that a national organization has been formed and a committee appointed. At present, Mr. Col- lins has the general superintendency. The committee hope to raise a fund of one hun- dred thousand dollars for the purpose. Any practical, common-sense plan for the saving of our boys appeals to the heart of the whole community, and there is no reason why this project should fail financially. TEMPTATIONS TO GIRLS. THE Boston Young Travelers’ Aid Society was organized a little more than a year ago. It sent, last year, an agent on a train daily to Newburyport to meet the second-class car from the British Provinces by which the girls come to the city to look for work. They are perfectly ignorant of the tempta- tions of a city; and without money or friends, they start out to seek their for- tunes. At the station, in the street, even on the train, people are waiting to lure them from virtuous lives. The agent sent out by the Society is known to the car officials, and she also wears a badge to pre- vent any mistake. It is her duty to talk with the girls, to direct them, even to go with them herself, and oftentimes to take them to her own home over night, and if need be, find proper work for them. Nine hundred girls were thus cared for last year. This year the work has been extended, and two agents are now employed.

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ERE is a book which calls itself ‘‘ The Confessions of a Young Man.’’ It is by George Moore, a handsome, lean-faced young Englishman, who is known as the author of ‘‘ The Mummer’s Wife’’ and one or two other stories, all of a youthfully auda- cious and erotic nature, much condemned by the censor of the circulating library, and much affected by other intense young per- sons of his own immature years. The heal- thy-minded man in the library will fling the book in the waste-basket, or read one chap- ter, lay it down and forget to take it up again. But women will take it up with a smile and glance from its cover to the shelf where George Meredith’s ‘‘ Egoist’’ turns its gold-lettered back upon the world. Watch a woman read the ‘‘ Egoist.’’ See how she will embrace herself in malicious, self-congratulatory glee. In the ruthless pillorying of Sir Willoughby Patherne she is avenged of the whole race of egoists, against whom she has not dared raise a hand, and who have found her attitude of round- eyed, sympathetic attention so soothing, so stimulating to self-revelation. Women are not given to the garrulousness of confession. ‘The Confessions of a Frivolous Girl’’ was written by aman. She listens to: them in- stead. When egoism becomes a devouring dis- ease it will no longer be satisfied with the complacency of attentive women, but must have all women, the whole world, as its au- dience, to which to detail every minute symptom of its abnormal self-consciousness. Rousseau was the first victim to the com- plaint in this aggravated form ; it has not lacked for victims since. Like all the confessors Mr. Moore is a very naughty young man ; otherwise, why con- fess? He has no mercy upon himself; he piteously exposes to us what a very extraor- dinarily naughty young man heis. Hedoes not keep back the story of even one countess or duchess ; he makes no attempt to deny those two satin slippers nailed to the wall at the head of his bed and used as match-safes ; he makes a clean breast about ‘‘ that curious, febrile, subtle little creature ——.’’ All, all is confessed to the python in his rooms— those rooms, ‘‘ strange debauches of color,’’ where ‘‘a faun in terra-cotta laughed in the red gloom,’’ where were cushions, and cano- pies, and candlesticks, and the smell of flow- ers and incense. He admits that his wick- edness was tremendously picturesque, and he speaks of himself always as ‘‘ Edward Dayne,’’ of course, because there is some oc- cult affinity between false taste, chromo-lit- erature and proper names spelled with a y. Women will recognize all the features of this confession, they have heard so many just like it ; naive and so deliciously young. This part of the book is, though amusing, too commonplace to deserve attention ; its value lies in some very excellent and epi- grammatic bits of criticism scattered through

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IN THE LIBRARY. its pages, as this upon Victor Hugo for ex- ample: ‘‘ Having composed more verses than any man that ever lived, Hugo can only be taken in the smallest doses ; if you repeat any pas- sage toa friend across a café table, you are both appalled by the splendor of the imagery, by the thunder of the syllables: but if I read an entire poem I never escape that sen- sation of ennui which is inherent in the gaud and the glitter of the Italian or Spanish im- provisatore. There never was anything French about Hugo’s genius. Hugo was a cross between an Italian improvisatore and a metaphysical German student. there is in all Hugo’s work a sense of fabrication that dries up emotion in my heart. He shouts and raves over poor humanity, while he is gathering coppers for himself; he goes in for an all-round patronage of the Al- mighty in a last stanza; but of the two im- mortalities he evidently considers his own the most durable.’’ Or this estimate of James and Howells. ‘‘ What Mr. James wants to do hedoes. I admit that an author may be great and lim- ited ; by one word he may light up an abyss of soul ; but there must be this one magical and unique word. Shakespeare gives us the word; Balzac, sometimes after pages of vain striving; Turgeneff gives it with miracu- lous certainty ; but Henry James, no; a hun- dred times he flutters about it, his whole book is one long flutter near it, but the word is not spoken, and for want of the word his characters are never resolved out of the haze of nebulz. I have read nothing of Henry James’s that did suggest the manner of a scholar; but why should a scholar limit himself to empty and endless sentimentali- ties? I will not taunt him with any of the old taunts—why does he not write compli- cated stories? Why does he not complete his stories? Let all this be waived. I will ask him only why he always avoids decisive action? Why does a woman never say ‘I will’? Why does a woman never leave the house with her lover? Why does a man never kill a man? Why does a man never kill himself? Why is nothing ever accom- plished? In real life murder, adultery, and suicide are of common occurrence ; but Mr. James’s people live in a calm, sad, and very polite twilight of volition. Suicide or adul- tery has happened before the story begins, 411 suicide or adultery happens some years hence, when the characters have left the stage, but bang in front of the reader noth- ing happens.” Of Howells he says, contrasting him with James : ‘‘He is more domestic ; girls with white dresses and virginal looks, languid mammas, mild witticisms, here, theze, and everywhere ; a couple of young men, one a little cynical, the other a little overshadowed by his love ; a strong, bearded man of fifty in the back- ground ; in a word, a Tom Robertson come- dy faintly spiced with American. Henry James went to France and read Turgeneff, W. D. Howells stayed at home and read Henry James.”’ There is room for no more quotation, but there is much more of the same sort in the book. Roberts Brothers have wound up their new edition of George Meredith’s works—which includes three volumes of his rugged poems with their harsh measures and masculine strength of tone—by the publication of a sheaf of epigrams gleaned from his books, and entitled ‘‘ The Pilgrim’s Scrip.’’ These ‘‘Wit and Wisdom ’”’ books are not of much value to any but those of the author’s ad- mirers who need an indexed list of quota- tions which shall be easily at hand, they being sufficiently familiar with the entire works to supply from memory the setting from which the gem has been snatched. Shakespeare and the Bible are almost the only books from which volumes of quota- tions can be made without showing the splintered edges of the context. There appeared one summer, six or seven years ago, three successful novels withiu a few weeks of each other. Two of them were American, one English. ‘‘ Mr. Isaacs’’ was written with scarcely a thought of its publi- cation. Marion Crawford was a young man ofscholarly tastes and literary environment. The immediate relatives of successful actors usually drift into the dramatic world, the kinsfolk of artists and musicians make shift to strum and sketch a bit, and the birds all sing in the literary arcady. Crawford’s aunt, Julia Ward Howe, had written the ‘‘Battle Hymn of the Republic,’’ his cousin Maud had written ‘‘A Newport Aquarelle.’’

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412 The summer days by the sea were long, he had been told an odd story, pens and paper were convenient, and ‘‘ Mr. Isaacs’’ came into being and was an instant and tremend- ous success. His career was fixed. But the seed fell among the thorns and cares of this world ; Crawford has never since done any- thing better than his first book, though fairly agreeable and commercially available volumes have been produced by him every year. The fiction crop does not fail, he is able to produce so many thousand dollars’ worth each season. ‘John Inglesant’’ was the voice of the religious reaction in England against the iconoclasm of science, reverent souls who, driven from the intrenchments of dogma by the incontrovertible assertions of the mate- rialists, found refuge in the unassailable, intangible citadel ofmysticism. John Short- house stood on the threshold of the House of Dreams and preached of the glories within, but while we listened to him he plunged into the mists, and since that time the liv- ing, breathing world has heard his voice only as an echo, thin and faint, and prating of vague mysteries which have no kinship with earth. The birds of the air seem to havecaughtawaythisseed. ‘‘ The Countess Eve,’’ his latest book, is even more remote than its predecessors. The scene is laid in France long prior tothe Revolution, and the figure more in a pale, melancholy haze of unearthliness which links the quick with the ghosts and demons who appear and vanish through its pages. The style is beautifully pure and grave, as in all of his work, and while Shorthouse has no contri- bution to make to the vital problems of his generation, the covers of his books are portals to him, pure mystical gardens of phantasy where no sounds of the world penetrate. The third novel of that year was Arthur Sherburne Hardy’s ‘‘ But Yet a Woman,”’ IN THE LIBRARY. and was the least interesting of the three ; but the author was a scholar, not to be tempted by either money or mysticism, and he of the trio is the only one who is produc- ing sixty and an hundred fold out of the good ground of literature. His latest story, ‘* Passe Rose,’’ has very nearly every one of the virtues in the calendar of fiction. Frank Barrett isa new name among the story tellers, but deserving of honorable men- tion by reason of being attached to a certain chronicle of ‘‘The Admirable Lady Biddy Fane”’ and ‘‘ Her surprising curious advent- ures in strange parts and happy deliverance from pirates, battle, captivity and other terrors: together with divers romantic and moving accidents as set forth by Benet Pen- gilly (her companion in misfortune and joy), now first done into print’’ by this same Barrett. ’Tisa brisk and gallant tale, and no deceit to describe the adventures of dear and lovely Lady Biddy as ‘‘ romantic and surprising.”’ Another on the list of the month’s novels is Cassell’s reprint of Elisabeth Stoddard’s ‘*Temple House,’’ which followed her ‘‘ Two Men,”’ and is to be followed by a revival of the rest of her books, which were all out of print. These novels are not pleasant ; harsh in style, of a sententious manner that fails of epigram, there is a certain strength in them which, too anxious for virility and the concealment of feminine origin, becomes merely grotesque ruggedness and self-con- scious brusqueness. BOOKS RECEIVED. ‘*Old Songs ”’ (Harper Bros.), a collection of the sweetest and most famous of the old English catches and ballads, illustrated by perhaps the best work Abbey’s pencil has ever produced. ‘‘ Andersonville Violets”’ (Chas. T. Dillingham), a story of the civil war, by Herbert W. Callingwood.

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