The Cosmopolitan 1889-03: Vol 6 Iss 5

Page 1

THE COSMOPOLITAN. VoL. VI. MARCH, 1889. THE RING OF THE NIBELUNG. By JOHN P. JACKSON bh a Cas WI N the year 1872 I paid my first visit to Bayreuth, to attend the ft ceremonies connected with laying - the foundation stone of Richard Wag- ner’s Festal Nibelung Theater. Two years later I was again in the quiet old Fran- conian capital, and spent a week in wander- ing about the place, visiting the spots fa- mous as the haunts of Jean Paul, and having several opportunities of conversation with the great composer. Again, in 1876, I was fortunate enough to be able to witness many rehearsals and entire performances of ‘‘The Ring of the Nibelung’’ at Bay- reuth, then heard in its completeness for the first time. In 1881 I had secured my tickets for the first performances in London of the entire ‘‘Ring,’’ to be given under the conductorship of Mr. Anton Seidl, but a new mission prevented my attendance. Perhaps a few words from Mr. Wallis Mackay the famous English captious critic, may give the explanation why I was not present. ‘‘ Across the snow-wastes of Siberia speeds a sled; a man wrapped in furs hums out of his covering some snatches of the chorus Entered at the New York Post Office as second-class matter. Copyright, 1888, by JoHN BRISBEN WALKER.

Page 2

THE RING OF THE NIBELUNG. EDMUND C. STANTON. (Director of the Metropolitan Opera House.) of the Rhine Maidens from Wagner’s great work, ‘The Nibelung’s Ring.’ A lady in the stalls of the opera house is closely con- sulting a gray bound book, with a medallion portrait of Richard Wagner on thecover. It is the story of ‘The Nibelung’s Ring.’ The lady says to her companion, ‘ It is quite fasci- nating ; the author must be a perfect enthu- siast. Iam sure he is here every night.’ And my thoughts wander away to the Siberian traveler, who ishumming the Rhine Maiden’s chorus.’’ Strange to say, I was probably not humming that particular chorus, beauti- ful as it is, because the only book I had with me on a long sled journey, made by day and night over many thousand miles of Siberian snows, was a copy of the text-book of Wag- ner’s ‘‘ Meistersinger,’’ a large portion of which I translated on the tundras and on the borders of the Polar Ocean, and some songs of which I may have been the first to sing to the native Yakuts and Tungoose, who dwell on the lonely and dreaded delta of the Lena. Two years later, in the winter of 1884-1885, I was once more in New York, and was one of the great audience that saw the first drama of ‘‘ The Ring ’’ produced at the Metropolitan Opera House by the late Dr. Leopold Dam- rosch, with Madame Materna, the famous Briinnhilde of Bayreuth, in the title-rdle. Two years later I saw the first production of the second drama, ‘‘ Siegfried,’’ under the direction of Anton Seidl, with Max Alvary as the hero, Frl. Lili Lehmann as the heroine, and Emil Fischer as the Wofan. In 18871 saw the first production of the third drama, ‘‘Die Gotterdammerung,’’ also under the ba- ton of Herr Seidl, when Albert Niemann, the famous Wagner singer from the Berlin Opera House, sang the réle of Szegfried, and Fri. Lehmann made her great success with her wonderful impersonation of Priinnhilde in the closing scenes of the great music-drama. And on the 4th of January, 1889, I assisted at the presentation of ‘‘Das Rheingold,”’ with which Wagner’s great music-drama was revealed as a complete work to the New York musical public. And not even in Bay- reuth have I seen more genuine enthusiasm revealed for Wagner’s gigantic work, nor more true appreciation of the beauties of what was once called by a French critic in jest the music of the future. In watching the growth of public taste in New York for Wagner's operas and especial- ly his great music-dramas, I have been fre- quently reminded of Wagner’s own words to me at Bayreuth, regarding his selection of the old Franconian capital as the site of his Nibelung Theater and the future of his music in non-German lands, especially in the United States. The composer had se- lected Bayreuth as the site for his festal theater first, because he believed that, for the perfect appreciation of the highest achievements in opera and music, people should be taken out of their every-day sur- roundings, and enter the theater with a mind purified by the bracing fresh air and with full capacity for reception of what is beautiful. He had come to the choice, also, because he was convinced that the operatic public of the larger capitals of Ger- many were musically blasé, and that the impressions left upon the minds of an audience specially gathered to listen to his great work would be permanent, and that the majority of his audience hearing his music-dramas produced under such con- ditions would become enthusiastic apostles of the new gospel of music. He believed, too, that his music would eventually find its warmest welcome in America, where, he said, the operatic audiences kad not yet become sated with the old operas, but were still open to the reception of the new and beautiful in art and in music. At that time Wagner was well informed of the progress of his music in the United

Page 3

re TE | | 4 [ Goodman. Sule | Arthur Drawn by DAS RHEINGOLD,” z, w x = RHINE AND THE ALBERICH

Page 4

THE RING OF THE NIBELUNG. ANTON SEIDL, (Conductor of the Metropolitan Opera House Orchestra.) States, and expressed his gratefulness for the work done, especially in the concert-rooms in his cause, by Theodore Thomas and by Dr. Leopold Damrosch, the then leaders of the Wagner crusade. At that time Wagner did not expect that many Americans would purchase the so-called patrons’ tickets for the Nibelung performances at Bayreuth. Some, he thought, might come out of curi- osity. But there would, he said, be to him something of humiliation in the thought of having his audience made up of strangers, because he had projected his theater as a national German undertaking. The fact that at the time he could count among his royal and princely patrons the rulers of Germany, the Sultan of Turkey, and the Khedive of Egypt, did not appear to give him any special delight, for the reason that they had no deep interest in the perform- ances or in his music, because they had subscribed only at the instance of some friendly German prince or ambassador. Yet he rejoiced in the growing sympathy that had sprung up for his cause in the United States. At that time somebody in Chicago had offered to build him a theater and pre- sent it to him, if he would only come and take up his residence there. The grand generosity of Americans pleased him. In- dividuals there, he said, gave a million dollars for a college or a university and thought nothing of it. This trait of in- dividual generosity was lacking in Ger- many. At the time of which I am speaking, the ‘‘ Lohengrin ’’ performances in New York had just then caused an animated discussion for and against Wagnerism. ‘‘ It seems so strange to us,’’ Wagner remarked, ‘‘ that you should just be commencing in America the conflict which was fought out here over ‘Lohengrin’ twenty years ago. The same objections from opponents, the same misunderstandings from friends and ad- mirers. The ‘Lohengrin’ conflict has been fought and won in our favor here. We are now engaged in the Nibelungen fight, which is of far greater scope.” Fortunately we have no large class of peo ple who seriously refused to receive music simply because it was new, and _ because other nations like France and England had refused to accept it. Weare accustomed to use our good judgment on all occasions, and Wagner and his music, from ‘‘ The Flying Dutchman ’”’ to ‘‘ The Ring’”’ and ‘‘ Tristan and Isolde,’’ readily found with us a per- manent place in our musical life. When the ‘‘ Trilogy ’’ was presented, there were already alarge number of people familiar with it, from repeated visits to Bayreuth. The num- ber of Wagner’s lovers had grown steadily, while the so-called Wagnerite enthusiasts had been kept down to moderate figures, and had been able to do comparatively little harm to a great cause by injudicious and fanatical support, such as in Germany called out a stressful opposition. rf. THE ‘‘ American bees swarm with every year in greater numbers about the Bayreuth hive,’’ said Ludwig Kirschner, in his Wagner Jahrbuch for the year 1886, and then goes on to remark that, ‘‘in spite of Metropolitan Opera House enthusiasm for Wagner's music- dramas, the American public has, neverthe- less, to draw bills upon the future,’’ whatever thismay mean. This little point may, how- ever, be recorded here, that the appreciation of Wagner’s music has been quite as thorough among the American public as among the Germans in Germany ; in fact, it was from Germans and in Germany that Wagner met the most violent and vicious opposition, which he certainly would have escaped had he produced his ‘‘ Tannhiuser’’ at the Grand Opera in Paris, with a ballet in the second instead of the firstact. It isa singular thing to say, but it is nevertheless a fact, that by refusing to pander to public taste in France, Wagner delayed the appreciation of his genius by the world at large for at least a quarter of a century.

Page 5

THE RING OF THE NIBELUNG. At the time I have already spoken of, Wagner was deeply grieved at the con- dition of operatic matters in the great German cities. He had just returned from a tourin Germany, where he had been in search of singers for G his Nibelung performances. He returned to Bayreuth sick at heart and disgusted with the frivolities, nay, sacrilegious wickedness, as he expressed it, carried on with German opera by directors, singers and Kapellmeisters. He became more than ever con- L® vinced of the necessity of reform in German opera, of establishing a permanent home for music-drama at , Bayreuth, and building a theater there, where not only his own works but the classic works ofthe 4 German repertory, and modern creations of the highest class, should be performed at an annual summer festival season. As 4 we know, he had a hard struggle to get the Germans themselves to contribute funds toward carry- ing out his project, and had it not been for the young, enthusiastic, and high- minded King Ludwig II. of Bavaria, who advanced him two hundred thousand thalers loan, to make a_ be- ginning, and for Herr Emil Heckel, of Mann- heim, who was. the founder of the Wagner Societies in Germany, and who through them gathered i. * large subscriptions for patrons’ > tickets, who knows how many years F Wagner would have had to wait before ‘ he could have seen his wonderful dreams F se * brought to reality even at Bayreuth ? At the time, therefore, when the Nibelungen Theater was in the course of building, Wagner had s «> -S - . . . = a comparatively small circle of adherents (including a Me 7 ° =" of course Liszt), and the German public was no further XS ~ . . . . . . a . _& advanced in its admiration and appreciation of Wagnerism ” than the American. If we had had a man with the personal ' energy of Emil Heckel, he could have established as many Wagner Societies in the United States as were in Germany. Grand work had already been done by Theodore Thomas and Dr. Leopold s ~~ c

Page 6

7HE RING OF THE NIBELUNG. WALTER DAMROSCH. Damrosch in making the musical public in New York and elsewhere acquainted with Wagner's music; and German and Italian companies had met with unusual success in their presentations of the com- poser’s earlier operas. Wagner festivals were numerous, now under the conduct- orship of Thomas, now under that of Dr. Damrosch, the one charming with the rich tonal color, the other with the dreamy, imparted to his in- poetic beauty he terpretations of the great master’s works. Dr. Damrosch had, in fact, a truer compre- hension of Wagner’s works than most men, because he grasped the beauty not only of his music but of his poetry, without an un- derstanding of which no perfect rendering of his works is possible. The lamented musi- cian also dreamed that in good time he would be able to introduce Wagner’s operas to the American public in English. But fate decided otherwise. In the year 1882 the Metropolitan Opera House was built, and Mr. Abbey gave his great season of opera in Italian, which resultedin a loss of over a quarter of amillion ofdollars. With the cer- tainty of deficits from Italian opera, with a big mortgage debt to meet every year on the magnificent house, the directors of the Met- ropolitan began to cast about to see what could be done. They were in a dilemma, and here a little bit of musical history may be recorded. As conductor of the Symphony Society, Dr. Damrosch had had many con- versations with Hilborn Roosevelt, the pres- ident of the society, and had expressed his earnest conviction that grand opera in Ger- man, if given on the same scale of splendor as at the great German houses, would prove a success in New York. The Doctor had a splendid musical education. As a young man he was famous as a violinist, had played before Liszt at Weimar, and by him had been offered the position of solo violinist in the ducal orchestra, of which he was conductor. With Liszt he assisted in the battles of the new German school. Tohim Liszt dedicated his symphonic poem ‘‘ Le Triomphe Funébre de Tasso,’’ a compliment conferred by the pianist-composer upon only two others— Wagner and Berlioz. Dr. Damrosch’s ac- quaintance with Wagner dated from that period,and thelast token of thefriendship then begun was the gift to him by the Bayreuth master ofthe famous finale ofthe first act from ‘* Parzival’’ in manuscript, which he received shortly before the great composer’s death. Dr. Damrosch was asked to proceed to Europe with the idea that he should see if a first-class company of singers could be got together, and then, if the directors should be still of the same mind, con- tracts for a first season in German opera were to be signed by them. With these instructions Dr. Damrosch went to Ger- many, and there made a provisional con- tract with Mdmes. Materna and Hanfsling], Herren Schott, Robinson, and others, and then waited after reporting what he had done, expecting hourly a cable from the directors, empowering him to close the contracts ac- cording to the conditional agreement. Dr. Damrosch had by superhuman energy, and through his position in Germany as a musi- cian and gentleman, succeeded in overcom- ing the prejudice among great artists at the time against coming to America. All that was wanting was the acceptance of his con- tracts by the board of directors. Suddenly in New York, doubts began to be raised about the possibility of success with German opera, and all seemed in danger of falling through. The artists refused to wait any longer, and Dr. Damrosch sent cable after cable presenting to the directors the absolute necessity of immediate action, but without avail. At this point, when it seemed as if Dr. Damrosch’s mission would prove a fail- ure, as a last resort Mr. Walter Damrosch, the son of Dr. Leopold D., went to see one of the directors who remained obdurate in oppo- sition to the plan, and during an anxious half-hour succeeded in representing the situ-

Page 7

oe ta ee Drawn by Arthur Jule Goodmar RIDE OF THE VALKYRS . E VALKURE.”

Page 8

THE RING OF THE NIBELUNG. EMIL FISCHER. ation to him so clearly and convincingly that he withdrew his opposition. Walter Damrosch was then able to send a cable dis- patch to his father the same afternoon, that the fate of German opera had been decided favorably. A long story, but one that ought to be told, as it gives the true history of how German opera was introduced to New York, and how it is that American audiences have been able to enjoy the splendid performances of Wag- ner’s ‘‘Ring of the Nibelungen’”’ at the Metropolitan Opera House. And, as we know, the rehearsals for and the production of ‘‘Die Valkiire’’ brought the devoted musician to his grave. He died on February 24, 1885, just as he had attained success, after years of struggle and conflict. In dying Dr. Damrosch was sustained by the thought that beyond his work accom- plished he left hostages to the perpetuation of his name and the pursuance of his high endeavors. It was then decided by the di- rectors of the Metropolitan that the dead leader’s son, Walter, who had conducted sev- eral of the operatic performances with great skill and power during his father's brief ill- ness, should be his successor. The baton that had slipped all too soon from the father’s hand should be taken up by his son, to whom he had left the legacy of his uncompleted work. An hour before his death he called him to his side and asked that an opera scene be brought in, in order that he might suggest a few things for the concluding representa- tions in the city. He was assured that all would go well, and then in disjointed phrases he asked that the great work he had com- menced should go on as if he were in life, and then, calm and composed, undisturbed by approaching death, he breathed his last. And well the son has carried out the father’s wishes and work. Besides conducting the concerts of the Oratorio and Symphony So- cieties, acting as assistant to the director and co-conductor at the Metropolitan, he has become one of New York’s musical leaders. After Dr. Damrosch’s death the work of conducting the music of Wagner’s great music-drama fell to the lot of Herr Anton Seidl, who was selected by Mr. Edmund C. Stanton and Mr. Walter Damrosch to fill the vacant chair, and under his baton have been heard the ‘‘ Siegfried,’’ ‘‘Die G6tterdaim- merung,’’ and, last of all, ‘‘ Das Rheingold,”’ produced, respectively, November 9, 1887, January 25, 1888, and January 4, 1889. Herr Seidl came to us well fitted for the work. He was born in Buda-Pesth in 1850, and completed his studies at the Leipsic Conservatory, which he left to become the pupil of Hans Richter, then Kapellmeister at Pesth. There he studied the works of Wagner and Beethoven, and the art of con- ducting. In 1872 heaccompanied Richter to Bayreuth, and became acquainted with Wag- ner, with whom he then spent some years, with three or four other talented young mu- sicians, among whom was Felix Mottl, acting as musical secretary, and thereby becoming familiar with the master’s ideas and inten- tions. Afterward he was the musical director of the Neumann traveling Wagner Theater. Like all men artistically gifted, Herr Seidl has given evidence with every year that he is an earnest, conscientious conductor, and especially in his interpretations of ‘‘ Tris- tan and Isolde,’’ ‘‘ Die G6tterdammerung,”’ ‘‘Das Rheingold,’’ and ‘‘ Die Meistersing- er,”’ he has proved his right to the name of one of the most eminent Wagnerian leaders. III. THE love of Wagner’s music is deeply rooted in New York. Not only do the great music-dramas draw immense audiences, but society itself, that is, the intelligence of the city, is interested in the Wagnerian move- ment. New York audiences are not demon- strative in approval or disapproval, but they

Page 9

THE RING OF THE NIBELUNG. Drawn by Arthur Jule Goodman. THE DEATH OF SIEGMUND, IN “ DIE VALKURE.” make their influence felt nevertheless, They have a true feeling for what is true and per- fect in art, and do not hesitate to put their stamp of approval upon such when found. They care little or nothing for what may have been said by Europe on the merits of any particular artist. Lili Lehmann, who for many years was ‘‘sat upon’’ at Berlin very heavily, learning and watching and improving all the time, came to us and found immediate recognition as a great singer of the dramatic Wagnerian rdles. Max Alvary came to us an unknown singer, and under the appreciative influence of his New York audiences he has grown to be the almost ideal impersonator of the lyrical Wagnerian figures. Others like Schott and Stritt, who came over with fame as Wagner- singers, were steadily refused acceptance. When it was determined to produce ‘‘ Sieg- fried,’ the second music-drama of ‘‘ The Ring,’’ the idyllic fairy-land story in music, Director Stanton wisely decided that Alvary should create the rédle of the youthful hero, and with the tenor’s appearance as Siegfried in New York, all the traditions of German stages in respect to that imper- tt I \ sonation were upset, and a Siegfried was file Bon GT y given us such as no other operatic audience aes , | ever had. It was feared that he would be too youthful, too undramatic for the part, but he proved himself fully worthy of the confidence placed in him by Mr. Stanton, and again successfully defeated tradition in

Page 10

THE RING OF MAX ALVARY. giving us an impersonation of Svegfried that was at once poetically beautiful, heroically handsome, youthfully courageous, and truth- ful in the poetic interpretation of Wagner's words. New York audiences had not been prepared for so great a revolutionary imper- sonation, but its beauty and artistic correct- ness grew with every presentation, so that to-day the announcement of Alvary’s appear- ance as Siegfried is sure to draw a crowded house. And writing as late as January 28th, the most conservative and conscientious of New York critics wrote: ‘‘ What an enthu- siastic singer and actor Alvary is! Noth- ing in the score, the stage directions, or the suggestions which lie in his conception of the dramatic figure is too small for his atten- tion. No wonder that he carries the atten- tion captive from the beginning and holds it to the end; and even after the opera is over still excites the imagination.”’ Alvary’s success was not a mere matter of accident. The young singer had art blood in his veins. He is the son of Andreas Ach- enbach, the celebrated Dusseldorf painter, and the artistic instincts which he inherited were fortunately directed to music instead of to painting. Alvary had, too, the advantage of an Italian training, having studied under Lamperte in Milan, and once again proved that the best tenor voices are those which, on a German basis of strength, have taken on the finer polish of Italian methods. But Alvary had that which no teacher can im- part—intelligence and poetic feeling ; and he gained the inspiration of what became an 7HE NIBELUNG. ideal impersonation, not because he studied Wagner's music alone, but, beside, the words and the music together, as Wagner intended his artistsshoulddo. One has only to listen to him in the idyllic second scene of ‘‘ Sieg fried ’’ to understand how great is the signifi- cance of Wagner's poetry, or theinterpreta tion of Wagner's music. The poetry of the words and situation, borne up by the broad, rich wealth of orchestrations, carry an artist through a Wagner opera with delightful ease, whereas any singer not grasping the beauty of the words, not understanding the glory and significance of the orchestration, is simply a vocal machine whose abilities can never rise to artisticheights. The scene of the welding of the sword, the talk with the forest bird, as done by Alvary,’ have been acknowledged as the finest achievements of Wagnerian operatic work in New York. As Briinnhilde in ‘‘ Siegfried,’’ Madame Moran-Olden, though vocally not as gifted as Lili Lehmann, has a deeper comprehen- sion of the poetic beauties of Wagner’s work, and her reading is, as a whole, a beautiful piece of poetic and dramatic work, touching in its tender beauty and subdued dramatic strength. Frl. Lehmann, on the other hand, with her vast reserve of dramatic strength, proved to be a wonderful Brinnhilde inthe great clos- ing scene of the opera, in ‘‘ Die G6tterdim- merung,’’ when she commands a_ funeral pyre to be built on the banks of the Rhine, and immolates herself with her famous Val- kyrian steed to follow Lord Siegfried to Walhalla, after restoring the ravished gold to the Rhine, and leaving the legacy of love to the world. No finer impersonation of this scene could possibly be imagined than that given by Lehmann. It was made so because the singer herself became at last awed by the majesty of the situation, and thrills her audience by the intensity and awed beauty ofher singing. The joyous crea- ture who first won the hearts of her audience by her exalting shout of the joyous Yo/oyoho as she appeared on the rocks, in the second scene of the opera of the ‘‘ Valkiire,’’ had de- veloped through calamity to a heroine. Frl. Katti Bettaque, whogained much fame in the Bayreuth performances in the summe! of 1888 as the va in ‘‘ Die Meistersinger,”’ takes several leading parts in these operas with remarkable strength, and Frl. Traub-

Page 11

OEP oc Drawn by Arthur Jule Goodman. SIEGFRIED’S SWORD SONG, IN “ SIEGFRIED.”

Page 12

THE RING OF THE NIBELUNG. MME. LILI LEHMANN-KALISCH. mann is particularly graceful in the réle of a Rhine maiden. The other singers whose portraits are given here, Herren Fischer and Beck; are remembered in the parts of Wotan and A/berich. IV. THE performances of ‘‘ The Ring ’’ at the Metropolitan have been, as a whole, splen- didly done, though there are yet shortcom- ings in them that need to be remedied. These are mainly in the stage managerial and scenical departments, in the management of lights, and in the non-production of the many scenic effects that make the Bayreuth performances supremely interesting. The scenic curtains in ‘‘ Rheingold,’’ for instance, have to be omitted, because to work them properly would require alterations in the structure of the stage that would cost many thousands of dollars. But enough has been done at the Metropolitan in scenic work to impress upon the audience very surely the broad extent of Wagner’s genius. The scene of the Rhine maidens guarding the Slumbering Gold, Walhalla, the gathering of the Valkyrs, the forge, the forest scene in Siegfried, the awakening of Priinnhilde, the death of Stegfried, the self-sacrifice of Priinn- hilde—all are stage pictures which are beau- tifully given in New York, and which reveal Wagner's mighty power in stage work, and show us what stress he placed upon a com- bination of the beautiful arts in opera. Four arts are combined in Wagner’s music-drama—music, drama, painting, and poetry. First and foremost, the very basis of Wagner’s work is poetry, the study of which is the first essential to a perfect understand- ing of the music-drama. It is, unfortu- nately, the one branch most neglected. Wag- ner was not what the world would describe as a genius, that is to say, he was not di- vinely inspired. Music did not flow forth from him with easy spontaneity. His won- derful achievements are the result of earnest study and constant striving. With the ‘*Flying Dutchman,’’ he says: ‘‘I entered upon a newcourse. From this time forth I became, with regard to all my dramatic works, a poet, and only on the ultimate completion of the poem was my faculty as musician restored to me.’’ This poetic ca- pacity goes through a regular development, reaching its highest achievements, perhaps, in ‘‘ Die Meistersinger’’ and ‘ Parzival,’’ and in portions of the alliterative verse of ‘* The Ring.”’ But Wagner could not sing when he had nothing to sing about. But when his whole nature was filled with his subject, how di- vinely he sang in word and music, the twain wedded in indivisible strength and beauty. From the subject came the poem ; from this, while in process of production, sprang the leading musical motives or themes; and when the substructure and framework were done he entered upon the musical compie- tion of his work. Once having begun the composition of one of his poetic texts, then the music flowed in a continuous stream, in MME, FANNY MORAN-OLDEN.

Page 13

THE RING OF THE NIBELUNG. chants of love and conflict, of the glory of manhood and of the ennobling influence of splendid womanhood. How divinely he sang then, in soul-stirring phrases descrip- tive of the splendid lives of the world’s high- est and purest heroes, in undying melodies breaking with every note the worship of the ideals found in his operas, and which will always remain the embodiments of the most beautiful types of Das ewig’ Weibliche (the highest womanhood) ! Anton Seidl once told the writer a charac- teristic story about Wagner's inability to gain inspiration from a subject of which he knew nothing. After he had accepted the commission to write the ‘Centennial March” for the Ladies’ Committee of the Philadel- phia Exhibition, he wandered, puzzled to distraction, about the streets of Bayreuth for days, trying to think of leading themes on which to build his musical structure. He often expressed his regret that he had under- taken the commission, because, as he ac- knowledged, he could not grasp the spirit of THE AWAKENING OF BRUNNHILDE, IN * SIEGFRIED.’ 427 the subject he wished to illustrate in music. Mr. Seidl said: ‘‘He was astonished and flattered at the magnificence of the sum offered to him, which was more than he had received up to that time for the whole of his operas from German music publishers. But he determined to compose the march. Fora long time, however, he was unable to get any musical themes to work upon. He knew nothing of American history or of the national melodies of the country, with the exception of ‘America,’ which he knew was the same as the Prussian and English national hymns. But something came to him at last. One day, after taking his ac- customed walk in the beautiful surroundings of the old city, he was returning to the city, when he had to pass through a very narrow and gloomy alleyway which ends in a cov- ered archway and leads into the great square or market-place. Walking through the darksome alley, his thoughts were occupied with a theme for the march which should represent the condition of the country in the Drawn by Arthur Jule Goodman, ’

Page 14

‘apumpooD ynf Anyjip Ag uavigg « DNOAANNVOAALLOD Ale NICHLYUC S 41MM OTS bral Wi a II ‘wl (Mh 7 B - gl / 4 lj, Mb

Page 15

THE RING OF THE N/IBELUNG. dark days when the Revolution broke out and when the people were engaged in the daily struggle against the British. This he had in hismind. Suddenly, while buried in thought, he came out through the archway upon the broad market-place, which was bathed in clear, soft afternoon sunlight. All at once the contrast of the two scenes struck Wagner, and another theme came into his mind. It was as if he himself had left the bonds and fetters of gloom and uncertainty behind and had come into the full radiance of the light of freedom and victory. The contrast he afterward worked out in the ‘Centennial March.’ Wagner often spoke of this walk and its results as a ‘lucky accident.’ To his friends, when the work was finished, he often expressed the fear that the ‘March’ would not be thoroughly understood, especially if the people had not the ‘Ideengang’ beforethem. He had,’’ said Herr Seidl, ‘‘ certain musical phrases that signified the struggle for freedom—Wash- ington’s call to arms, the incessant battling, and finally the triumph, and at one passage he would always exclaim, ‘ Now comes the society of Philadelphia ladies in festal dress, strewing palm branches before the great Washington.’ ”’ Wagner wrote most of his dramatic poems in his early years, that is, from 1840 to 1853, when the original draft of ‘‘ Der Ring des Nibelungen’’ was published in Leipsic. ‘Tristan,’’ ‘‘Meistersinger,”’ and ‘‘ Parzival’’ are of later date. In the Nibelung poem Wagner adopted the system of alliterative verse, which, though at first difficult for mod- ern readers to scan, soon grows in beauty. In a way itis, of course, as artificial asrhymed verse, but its most successful use is undoubt- edly in combination with the latter. Itis admirably adapted for the musical setting of highly dramatic situations, though not so thoroughly to those of a lyrical and poetic character; and Wagner himself in his later work, ‘‘ Parzival,’’ though retaining the strength of alliteration, glides into rhymed verse for his broader phrases and his less passionate love scenes. The German poem of the Nibelungen Noth, from. which the dramatic episodes of Die Gdtterdimmerung are taken, is in ordinary verse; while the Icelandic skalds who recorded the Sagas from which Wagner drew his subject matter for the Siegmund and Siegfried stories wrote in 30 429 unrhymed alliterative, as did the early Anglo-Saxon poets, as Beowulf. But Wag- ner did not follow the rules or traditions for the construction of staff-rhyme, as found especially in the Elder Edda and other antique remnants of Scandinavian and Ger- man poetry; he used the alliterative only sufficiently to give force and beauty to the words and the situation. An example of it may here be given in the translation of the beautiful song of Loveand Spring, in the first act of “‘ Die Valkiire,’’ which in its setting has been described by the late Dr. Hueffer as a perfect union of words and music. ‘‘A song,’’ he says, ‘‘ sweeter, perhaps, than ever music and poetry combined to bring forth.”’ Alliterative verse and musical tones are here blended in marvelous welding. It is the perfect union of thought and word and music, as few but Wagner have given us. Winter storms awane At the wiles of May ; In wondrous splendor Wakens the spring ; On balmy breezes Bending sweetly, Wonders weaving On his way. O’er field and forest Floats his fragrance, Wide and lustrous Laughs his eye ! In gladsome song of birds He blithely sings, Sweetening breath He breathes all around ; From his blood outbloom and blossom Beautiful! flowers, Leaf and spray Upspring from his strength. JOSEPH

Page 16

THE RING OF THE NIBELUNG. FRL. SOPHIE TRAUBMAN, With gentle weapon's sway He conquers the world. Winter and storm wane at His wondrous war. And with dint of his dreadless stroke well given The strongest doors are driven. It would be easy to fill pages with the many beautiful poetic passages found in Wagner’s dramatic poems, and even from ‘““The Ring.’’ It may suffice here to say that the conclusion students of Wagner’s works arrive at must be that, if the poet composer had not been a great musician, he would have taken high rank in Germany as a dramatist and poet. As a dramatist Wagner reveals a mighty genius in ‘‘The Ring.’’ Yet, from begin- ning to end, what a slender dramatic thread it is that binds together the gigantic struc- ture! As a matter of fact, Wagner allots to his orchestra duties usually given to the acting personages in dramas. With the system of J/eitmotifs or leading musical themes, he is enabled to give to the orchestra the character of a wonderful dramatic organ- ism which, like an invisible Greek chorus, explains to the auditor the psychological significance of the scenes upon the stage, and carries him along with the story. No opera in the entire list of Wagnerean operas is, apparently, less dramatic than ‘‘Siegfried.’’ In it onescene of idyllic beauty follows the other, each complete and beau- tiful in itself. The gods and goddesses, who began the dramatic ring in ‘‘ Das Rheingold,’’ have disappeared, with the exception of Wofan, and the dark gnomes Hagen and Alberich only appear occasion ally ; but their dramatic impulsation is still preserved in the orchestra, and the conflict is fought out, outside and beyond them, in the orchestra. But for this mysterious and beautiful application of the thematic system, each scene, each drama, would be in itself complete. A little forest bird carries the action of the second act of ‘‘Siegfried’’ to the third, from the slaying of the dragon to the awakening of Arinnhilde, and when that scene is revealed, the necessity for dra- matic advance is not apparent. The audi- ence has simply to allow itself to sink in the wondrous beauty of the love scene. But the orchestra is here made again the expres- sion of dramatic principle. Ordinarily Hagen and Alberich should be allowed to rise upon the horizon threatening death to Szeg/ried, as the wearer of the ring, yet their actual existence in the world, and their dark plot- tings, are sufficiently indicated by the em- ployment of the ominous motive character- istic of their designs amid the beautiful harmonies of the love music. Wagner's /ez¢ motives impress themselves stongly upon the mind by their connection . KATTI BETTAQUE.

Page 17

THE RING OF with words, scenes, and incidents. The raison d’étre of the prelude, or vorspiel, to the music-drama of “The Ring’’—Das Rheingold—is to impress upon the mind the pri- mary leading themes or motives, all of which afterward take on the dramatic or psychological signifi- cance already spoken of. These leit motives are really the parental musical themes, as Schuré has so well expressed it, ‘‘les harmonies et les mélodies méres, les sen- timents primordeaux des forces génératives de tout le drame.’’ By THE NIBELUNG. means of them—of the characteristic musical expression attached to per- sonages and ruling psychological ideas of the drama—Wagner gives to the orchestra, as he himself says, the char- acter of an illustrative organism, making it, as we have said before, occupy the place of the ancient Greek chorus-—‘‘ a high, invisi- ble language appealing constantly to the audience, revealing, recalling, expounding. They may be considered the musical alpha- bet of ‘‘The Ring,’’ and without some knowledge of them the beauties of Wag- ner’s marvelous polyphonous orchestration would pass unheeded. Hans von Wolzogen has given a catalogue of them amounting to no less than ninety in number, of which some thirty rise in ‘‘ Rheingold,’’ twenty are developed in the ‘‘ Valkyr,’’ and the rest in the two other dramas. It would take too much space to fully explain the significance of each—even the names of them are multi- tudinous—the Rheingold, the Curse, the Volsung, the Valkyr, the Nibelung, the Love, the Walhalla, the Slumber motives, the Sword, the Heroic, the Dragon, the For- est Bird, etc., etc. They appear in a thousand variations, singly or blended. Some of them may be noted. In the first scene in the ‘‘ Rheingold,’ where the three Rhine daughters are seen swimming about in the river, their song in praise of the gold, with its beautiful refrain of ‘‘Rheingold, Rheingold, purest gold,’’ is strongly impressed upon the attention, and ill through the music-drama it is heard rain and again, as, for instance, when any {the acting personages tells the story of its bery, and the evil that came into the rid thereby. It is heard when Sveg/ried THE MONUMENT TO SIEGFRIED, IN ODENWALD, WHERE SAID TO HAVE BEEN SLAIN, comes out of the cave after slaying the dragon, a plaintive wail from the moaning maidens telling the audience once more the story of the ring, and the necessity that it be returned to its original owners. The Rhein- gold motive is heard again in ‘‘ Die Gét- terdammerung,’’ in the scene where the three mermaidens appear to Sveg/fried, and for the last time at the grand finale of the drama, when #riinnhilde casts the fatal ring back to the Rhine, when it is at last merged with other motives, to be heard no more. Another motive heard first in ‘‘ Das Rhein- gold,’’ and frequently recurring, is the Wal- halla, and it is strongly impressed upon the mind by the revelation at the same time of the glorious bourg of the gods in the second and fourth scenes of the prelude. This mo- tive constantly recurs in all the music- dramas. Thus in ‘‘ The Valkyr,’’ when Stegmund tells Sieglinda how he lost his father, how in battle he was separated from him, and never saw him again, the Walhalla theme breaks in felicitously, explaining the fact that Svegmund’s father was Wotan the Wanderer, the Lord of Walhalla. The Val- kyr motive—which culminates in the famous ‘‘Valkyr Ride’’—is a picture in music of the most exulting character, descriptive of the wild riding through the air, the rushing to the conflict, the neighing and whinnying of a thousand steeds, the gladness and laughter of merry voices, intermingled with the shouts and cries of the Va/kyrs greeting each other in their wild ride through the

Page 18

432 sky. The Loki or Fire motive is first heard in Rheingold, and is repeated in manifold changes whenever fire is employed on the stage. Thus in the beautiful scene when Wotan leaves Briinnhilde to her long sleep in the last act of ‘‘ The Valkyr"’ he invokes the aid of Zoki to help him surround the rock with a sheltering fire, so that none but the greatest of heroes may have the courage to awaken the slumbering maid. And with the first burst of fire, there comes from the orchestra the most surprising effects, the ‘sparkling, springing, exulting, flaming, dancing play of sound,’’ that grows in in- tensity and wildness with every fresh flame that shoots up into the sky, until the whole scene is framed in a circle of fire. Then, as if the work of the fire-god were completed, the orchestra calms down, the tender strains of the Slumber motive, with the charm of its wonderful orchestration, seem to spread over the scene the halo of peace and calm, like a musical rainbow of peace, as some German writer expressed it. The Slumber motive it is that is heard again in the scene before Briinnhilde is awakened by Siegfried. This scene is preceded by the one in which Siegfried passes up the mountain and through the fire, when the Fire motive is heard, and amid and above it the trumpet blast of the Siegfried motive, marking the youthful hero’s progress up the mountain side. A very beautiful motive is that which is heard first of all in the long narrative by Loki in the second scene of ‘‘ Rheingold,’’ when he tells of his adventures in the world where he has been sent out by Wo/an to search for a ransom for Freya, pledged to the giants for the payment of their work in building Wal- halla. With the alliterative words, ‘‘ Wom- an’s Wonder and Worth,”’ a beautiful /ez/ motive is born that is easily remembered, and is frequently employed by Wagner in later scenes when he describes the beauty and goodness of women. A reflection of it is in the orchestral accompaniment to Szeg/ried's query as he sits under the fruit-tree and wonders how his mother looked when in life. The enthusiastic Wolzogen thus describes the mingling and working of motives in the closing scene of ‘‘ Die Gotterdimmerung”’ : The Curse motive has been heard for the last time; it has ceased for ever. Two of the THE RING OF THE NIBELUNG. mermaids have seized the gloomy traitor Hagen, and he is dragged down to the depths, while the other sister of the waves holds up the ring in triumph. With the melody of atonement we hear the overpower- ing strains of the Walhalla theme, in calm majestic movement, free from the motive of the Curse and the Divine Need, which had so long troubled its majestic tones. The ball of the Sibichungs has fallen to pieces ; the flood has subsided, and on the distant horizon, through the halo of the northern lights, a glorious vision is revealed—the tragic picture of the last assembly of the gods. There Wo/an sits awaiting the end, the two ravens perch gloomily upon his shoul- ders ; around the hall are hung shields and spears of the warriors ; at the gods’ feet kneel the Valkyrs and the elect, and Lo stands near by announcing that his work is finished. Then around the hall we see the flames burst forth, and men and women on the Rhine stand gazing in mute astonishment and terror at the wondrous picture. The old Teu- tonic godsare no more. The glorious Wal- hallatheme subsides in the orchestra, and as the curtain closes the melody of Atonement through Love, like the sweet sound of a thousand harps, is heard in the sky, a glorious requiem to the departed divinities. A few words on Wagner’s methods of com- position while at work on ‘‘ The Ring ’’ may fittingly close this article. The particulars I gained from Felix Mottl, who, with Seidl and other young musicians, assisted the Master to prepare his operas for production in 1876. Wagner was an early worker, rising usually at four or five o’clock in the morn- ing; in winter somewhat later. When he had an opera on hand, he worked almost in- cessantly till two in the afternoon. He loved to do his work amid bright, spacious sur- roundings, generally in the large salon of his villa, with its wealth of ornament, bric- a-brac, paintings, sculpture, and art treasures. In the midst of his artistic confusion, at a large marble table near the window, seated in a comfortable arm-chair, he composed the greater part of the ‘‘Gétterdammerung,’’ the last opera of the ‘‘ Ring.’’ From this sanc- tum, whenever the composer was writing, visitors were always excluded, but the work of composing was by no means regular He worked by fits and starts. Sometimes he would not put a pen to paper for two weeks

Page 19

THE RING OF THE NIBELUNG. at a time ; then would come a day when the ideas would begin to flow again, and then the composer would sit from morning till night, day after day, working unceasingly, casting off sheet after sheet, until the floor was half an inch thick with music all about him and all quite ready for the copyist. Dur- ing these spells meal-times would have no charms for him, but finally the source and the strength would be exhausted, and he would then give himself up entirely to along period of rest and recreation. In these periods, however, Wagner’s brain was never idle. It was a brooding time of musical thoughtsand motives. After a mid- day dinner he would take a nap till three or four, and then, after a cup of coffee, sally forth, accompanied by two large Newfound- land dogs, his constant escorts on his wan- derings about the lovely suburbs of the old city. Sometimes he would wander out on the long linden-shaded avenue that leads out to the Rollwenzel House, where Jean Paul wrote many of his works, and then across the fields to the little paradise of the Hermit- age, which the old Margraves of Bayreuth created, where the Court, severely troubled with exnuz, used to play at hermits, each having a little cell in some cozy nook about the park and grounds. Sometimes he would take the opposite direction, going along the lovely valley leading tothe park and chateau of the Fantaisie, which Jean Paul used to style ‘‘the first heaven in the vicinity of Bayreuth.’’ Then, toward dusk, he would return to the city and find his way to Anger- mann’s, where the best beer in town was to be had, and where, smoking a cigar, he would converse with officers and_ officials until seven, when he would return to his home. The evenings were always devoted 433 to his family and to the friends who dropped in to see him. When Wagner commenced work in earnest, after one of his resting spells, the results were marvelous. Every- thing seemed to be in the composer’s brain stored up ready for use. I have often thought that Wagner’s walks about the lovely scenes around Bayreuth, with his Newfoundland dogs, must have been very productive of musical and scenic ideas for his great music-drama. ‘‘ Die Valkiire’’ was written while the composer was an ex- ile in Switzerland, living near Lucerne, and there is perhaps a reference to his surround- ings there, in the wild, wierd scenes of that opera, in the mountain fastness, whither Hun- ding pursues the fleeing lovers, and where the fight with Stegmund takes place amid the clouds, and especially on the rocky eyrie, where Wofan’s beautiful Valkyr maid- ens gather, stopping to rest awhile on their flight from the battle-field, taking with them across their saddle-bows the chosen dead warriors to Walhalla. But Wagner's walks among the lovely vales and parks about Bayreuth must have supplied him with many happy inspirations, and many a charming musical motive may have been born during these quiet saunterings, and there and then carefully noted down for future use. The moonlight scene outside Siegmund’s hut in the first act of the ‘“Valkyr’’ might have been copied from tlie lovely valley leading from Bayreuth to the Fantaisie. There, too,could have been caught, under the grand elms of the Hermitage, the dancing effect of the sunlight falling through the foliage upon the greensward—so won- derfully reproduced in the idyllic scene, where Siegfried holds converse “with the Forest Bird. 1) a Wet

Page 20

EDWARD EVERETT HALE. By Mrs. BERNARD WHITMAN. B lire traits of a patriotic, progressive and intellectual ancestry may be found in the character of Edward Everett Hale. The older residents of the city of Boston remem- ber with gratitude the public-spirited ser- vices of his father, Hon. Nathan Hale, to whom, indeed, the whole community is in- debted for services in surveying and plan- ning the earlier railroads, and in financial matters of the utmost importance intrusted to his care. History tells us (but in few words) of his great uncle, Captain Nathan Hale, who suf- fered death, with every indignity heaped upon him, in return for the most perfect un- selfishness and devotion to his country. Even his grave is unknown,though posterity has erected a monument to his honor. Young, and with the brightest prospects before him, he willingly offered his life in his country’s cause. It is an easy study to trace the same patriotism and self-forgetful- ness in the subject of our sketch. His mother, Sarah Preston Everett, herself a daughter of a clergyman, was a woman of much more than ordinary talent. The writer well remembers a bright little poem sent to her for a fair, written 1n advanced age, and when blind. The same ‘public spirit,’’ to use one of Dr. Hale’s favorite expressions, characterized her and herson alike. Edward Everett, our statesman, orator and man of letters, was the uncle of Edward Everett Hale for whonr he was named. Dr. Hale was born in Boston, April 3, 1822. He is pre-eminently a Boston boy. There is not a nook or corner of old Boston that is not his. Its legends, its traditions are clear to him from the very foundation. In the younger days of his ministry in Bos- ton it was his delight to guide a group of boys from his parish in long tramps to places of historic interest, and no onecan transform the Boston of to-day to the Boston of a hun- dred years ago so readily and so clearly as can he in a half hour's talk. Those boys of his parish, now men of middle age, date their interest in the welfare of their native city to these walks so brimming full of.anec- dote and reminiscence. The pastor was lost sight of in the friend and companion. From his earliest years, a strong sense of justice and protection of the weak character- ized his daily life. The family stories of the nursery and the growing brothers and sisters touch and rest upon this, and it must have followed him in his school life, of which he, himself, gives us but brief records. In his childhood Dr. Hale had the advan- tages of association with brothers and sis- ters older than himself, the teachings of his father, who had had great success in prepar- ing boys for college, and of his mother, who was intensely interested in every phase of education. As soon as he could walk, he begged to go to school with the big brothers and sisters, and was allowed to do so. Here he learned, not lessons from books, but les- sons in the daily conduct of life, which have been invaluable. His mother’s rule, ‘to get along as well as you could each day,”’ could not be practiced too early. He was never urged to study, but that to ‘‘ behave well’’ was of importance. But he must have learned his letters and to read early. When he was six years old he held a Latin primer, and studied more or less of it until he was transferred to the ‘‘ Latin School,’’ to take the course there which should pre- pare him to enter Harvard College. The course was then a course of five years, but at thirteen he graduated and entered Har- vard, having accomplished in four years the work of five. Francis Gardner, for nearly forty years teacher and master in the Boston Latin School, gave Dr. Hale his first instruction in Greek, and gained his gratitude thereby. He liked it better than he did Latin, but it was not until he began to teach them both him- self, after leaving college, that the beauties of the languages appeared to him, and he be- came the lover of Greek and Latin literature that he now is. The rule which he is so fond of giving to young people first entering life was here tested and proved. In trying to help others he found himself helped. A

Page 21

EDWARD EVERETT HALE. natural quickness for languages, inherited from both parents, was greatly in his favor. He did not go to school in summer, but read at home a few hours each day, making more rapid progress than when in his class. There was a swimming school in Boston then and he attended that. He took long walks, and, though he joined in the active games of his companions, he did not care for them as he did for country walks or the com- panionship of older people. His father pub- lished a newspaper and often gave to the children bits of writing or translation to be done for it. Reposing such confidence in them assured its being well done. He was also at that time president of the Boston and Worcester Railroad and was much occupied in making the preliminary surveys. The boys often accompanied him, and he would talk tothem of the plans and matters of interest connected with the road. We see then this boy, ten or eleven years old, riding often back and forth to Newton on the first engine im- ported from England, and gaining what in- formation he could from the engine drivers. He says: ‘‘At that time there were few details of railroad construction in which I was not personally interested.’’ Dr. Hale has always said that a thorough knowledge of vulgar fractions was sure to create a love for mathematics. This he pos- sessed. Colburn’s Arithmetic, which he still thinks the best book for the purpose, though now discarded, had thoroughly done its work. His father, too, was a distinguished mathematician. His elder brother, after- wards distinguished in the same branch, was of the utmost use in clearing away the per- plexities of figures. So, armed, as we see, by a thorough knowledge of mathematics, a love for languages and a good groundwork of Greek and Latin, he entered college with a most excellent preparation for its course. At thirteen, this boy, not tall for his years, slender, but with a head noticeably large and developed, entered college. An old college friend writes : ‘‘ When Mr. Hale entered col- lege in 1835, he was one of the smallest, as he was the youngest member of the class. He was, however, always active and fond of long walks, especially ifany botanizing could be donein the course of them. He was a mem- ber of one of the Class Cricket Clubs and played the game with as much zeal then as he preaches now. Asa scholar he stood high 435 always, with very little effort, and took, I think, the second honor in the class.”’ Dr. Hale speaks of entering college at thir- teen as simply no unusual occurrence. He cites Dr. Peabody, now the senior of the Emeritus Professors at Cambridge, Mr. Ed- ward Everett and Mr. Alexander Everett as examples; but no one of these three, or any others that he mentions, have ever held a mediocre position in the world afterwards. He was not disposed to associate freely with his classmates at first ; perhaps his age had something to do with that, but he made warm friends there who have remained friends ever since. Mr. Alexander Wash- burn, the eminent patent lawyer, Mr. Benja- min Watson, the well-known botanist, Sam- uel Longfellow, poet and preacher, George Hayward, physician, his school-fellow in the old Latin School, Nathaniel Morison, the provost of the Peabody Institute, Samuel Eliot, afterwards president of Trinity Col- lege, Francis Hayes and Samuel Guild, both lawyers in Boston, were among his intimate friends. The old home, first in Franklin Street and afterwards in Hamilton Place, now given over to business purposes, was.always open to the boys and girls and their friends. Not a night passed that some of the brightest young men and women, college students, and girls fresh from lessons and lectures, in the city of Boston, did not meet in the ever hospitable home of Mr. and Mrs. Hale. We find James Russell Lowell, inthe college class with Dr. Hale’s older brother, and William Story perfectly at home in this house. We see Charles Sumner with a fresh letter from Europe hastening to read it to the ever young mother. His brother George, too, was one of the members of this bright set. Here it was that difference in age was unknown. A lady member of the household tells me how well she remembers the bright, interesting talks on books and the youthful enthusiasm of the discussions. It was to such a school as this, directed by parents whose interests were never separated from their children, that Dr. Hale is indebted as much as to Harvard College for the education of that period. Josiah Quincy was president of Harvard College when the young man entered. Ed- ward Tyrrell Channing taught English, and Dr. Hale always expresses the deepest grat-

Page 22

436 itude to him for the training which he gave them. Dr. Joseph Lovering, who has just celebrated his fifty years of teaching, and Dr. Peirce made mathematics a pleasure. Longfellow came to Harvard in 1835, and the leaders of this class had the advantage of the first lessons in German from him. These were given in parlor interviews three times a week, when he met the students as friends. Pietro Bacchi, an Italian refugee, taught Italian and guided Hale in Italian literature. Professor Lovering lectured in physics. Electives were not then invented and all men dipped into all the varied walks of physical science. The students learned enough of electricity, acoustics, processes of steam, etc., to take an intelligent interest and part in conversations on the subjects. A littleastron- omy, too, was taught, and young Hale was among a group of boys who, led by William Francis Channing, watched, night after night, the observations afterward edited and published by Professor Lovering on the num- ber of shooting stars observable. He was an officer in the chemical club, called the ‘‘ Davy Club,’’ and if not one of the founders was early connected with the Natural History Society. With a little knowledge of botany, gained from his mother, the college boy made his collections of plants and even had alittle garden in the open land about Divinity Hall, where, with Longfellow and some of the studenis, he passed much time in weeding and tending the plants. Boating and base-ball were not known in Cambridge at that time. Neither was the more modern foot-ball game called ‘‘ Rug- by.’’ But young Hale joined in the rough and tumble foot-ball, and was a member of the Cricket Club, as his old friend stated. At seventeen years of age Edward Hale graduated from Harvard, the second in his class, and had one of the parts at Com- mencement. Says a classmate in speaking of him, ‘‘He never seemed to care for honors.’’ The class poem was assigned to him. The first celebration of Class Day, as now observed, was this year. It was the year before, when the band of music was playing, which was provided for the day’s festivities, that the ladies, led by Nathan Hale, Edward’s older brother, then in col- lege, had danced upon the green for the first time. But tis year music and dancing were a part of the programme and have since con- EDWARD EVERETT HALE. tinued one of the popular features of the day. ; In 1839 Prescott, the historian, who had already published ‘‘ Ferdinand and Isabella ” and was at work upon a second book, asked Mr. Hale to become his reader. This was an incentive to perfect himself in Spanish. He had already undertaken to write upon so complicated a subject as South American politics for his father’s paper, and his friends used to jokingly call him the ‘‘ South Amer- ican editor.’’ These two things were the beginning of his interest in Spain and South America, on which countries he is now an authority. Although he did not receive the position, owing to some mistake, the pleas- ure of Prescott’s acquaintance and friend- ship compensated for this loss. Let me quote, in ending the account of his college life, again from his old classmate: ‘‘ Mr. Hale never attempted to become what was called a ‘ popular man,’ but won easily the love and respect of his classmates, and at the end of our college life was chosen class poet without opposition. ‘* Since he graduated he has always taken a cordial interest in class affairs and in the welfare of individual classmates, while they, in turn, have watched his career with an honest pride in his well-deserved success.”’ From college Dr. Hale went back to the Latin School as ‘‘ usher,’’ where he passed two years teaching and preparing for the ministry. Here he learned to love Greek and Latin, and began the study of Hebrew. After leaving the Latin School he attended lectures and did a good deal of literary work. But he never attended any theological school regularly. He was always more or less in the office of the Advertiser, his father’s newspaper, and from the setting of type to the writing of the leading editorial he was at home. Excellent training this for a young man of twenty. He drew up bills, he posted ledgers, he conducted correspondence. He had been trained to write short-hand from a boy, and if an extra reporter was needed he could fill that position. He re- ported Mr. Choate’s eulogy on Harrison in full. He reported Mr. Webster when he announced the Bunker Hill Monument as completed, and also his famous Faneuil Hall speech, when he declared that he was not going to leave Mr. Tyler’s cabinet. The Hales and the Websters were very intimate,

Page 23

EDWARD EVERETT HALE. and Dr. Hale speaks of the influence of such men as Daniel Webster and Edward Everett, with whom he was in frequent correspond- ence, in the preparation for his after life. The young divinity student was licensed to preach a year after leaving the Latin School, and did so, supplying vacant pulpits and preaching in Washington the whole of one winter. Here he made valued friends from all parts of the United States. Sucha life tended to broaden his horizon, if such an extension were necessary. His whole train- ing, as the reader must have seen, was to give him intelligent knowledge of the whole country and people. We are permitted to copy from an auto- biographical sketch prepared by Dr. Hale for some of his friends, his own ideas of this preparation : ‘‘Any average doctor of divinity would say that this was a very preposterous course of preparation for the modern pulpit, for the general drift of modern habit in America almost compels young men of college train- ing to follow it up by three years more of scholastic life, at a theological school, if they mean to be preachers. Perhaps they are exactly the persons who need to look at life more in its active relations. However this may be, the six months’ training which has proved of most value was spent as the hard working private secretary of my father, who was then engaged in Pennsylvania in im- portant work regarding the railroads and canals, bearing on the resumption of pay- ment of the interest on the Pennsylvania debt.”’ Some one who has seen Dr. Hale’s note- books of that time says that ‘‘ they show the oddest intermingling of notes on the strength of wire cables, of memoranda on Ammon, Ra and Thoth, of accounts of visits to prisons and the briefs of newspaper articles on tax- ation.’’ It is one of Dr. Hale’s sayings, that ‘‘the man who is to preach to men of affairs must live among them, read what they read, ind, to a certain extent, know what they know.’’ However this theory of prepara- tion might work in general, it certainly had its good effect in this case. When the young minister went as a temporary supply’ he always looked upon himself as the minister of the place, though he were to occupy the pulpit but for two Sun- 31 437 days. He improved his opportunities, and often an economical ‘‘ parish committee’’ found that the young man engaged for Sun- day continued his work during the week, examining schools, visiting mills, reading Greek and assisting at tea parties, instead of departing Sunday night to return the next Sunday morning. We quote again from the private papers : ‘‘ Unless a young clergyman travels at this period of his life he does not see his own country at all. I visited in this way Albany, Philadelphia, Washing- ton, Western New York, Baltimore, and almost all parts of New England.”’ In the spring of 1846 this wandering life ceased and he was ordained as minister of a new church in Worcester, Massachusetts, then a town of about six thousand inhabitants. The Boston and Albany Company had built a railroad as far as Worcester, and the town bid fair to become the great railroad center which it now is. Frederick Greenleaf, the Harry Wadsworth of ‘‘Ten Times One is Ten,’’ was living in Worcester, and with his own hands he threw the switch which opened the way to Springfield for the small four-wheeled car which contained all the freight which Boston had to send to the West on that day. Such atown as this, with the influx of young men, commended ‘itself tothe man who always supposed himself the ‘‘minister of the town as well as the min- ister of one particular parish.’’ His views of the ministerial profession were practically then what they are now. While he recog- nized the necessity of the study of books, the responsibility of a society as its pastor in its manifold duties, yet the idea of the Chris- tian ministry was to him something broader and more extended than that. ‘‘ Active work for the improvement of the people around him ’’—this was his definition of his duties, and no man has held more stead- fastly to this doctrine than has he. He is not a man to be confined to a church, a so- ciety, a town, and this is why people thou- sands of miles away, strangers to him, look to him for the religious guidance and help that belong to a pastor and rarely to so public a character. The reader will see by this that Dr. Hale has always considered whatever work he has done in helping the world to be a part of his work as a Christian minister. Somewhere Dr. Hale states that he was

Page 24

438 disappointed at the end of a year to see how little acquainted he was with the young fire- men and other young men of the town. To this day he expresses the same regret, for- getting that hosts of other duties crowd him on every side and that it is impossible to have a personal acquaintance with all men. It was the habit in Worcester, and all our New England towns, to place the clergyman in the school committee, and he had not long been settled there before he was approached on the subject. He refused and said very frankly that he would much prefer to be an overseer of the poor, The nominating com- mittee took him at his word and he was elected. This was just the place for the enthusiastic young clergyman, balanced as he was by strong good sense. Massachusetts was not quite clear as to her position with regard to foreign paupers. Everything was in a tangle, and it was in the winter of 1851- 52 that he wrote and published the letters on Irish Emigration, at a time when he had unusual facilities for studying the question. These papers suggested the foundation of the State legislation. The present system of State almshouses was also based on these suggestions. On very muchthesameground he refused toally himself with the Abolition- ists, but in the Kansas Emigration move- ment he was greatly interested and active in its behalf. He was active in the formation of the Natural History Society and the Public Library. He was also one of the founders of the Antiquarian Society of Worcester. His interest in history has led him to write two or three historical works of value, the last of which, ‘‘Franklin in France,’’deserves special mention. Theauthor has managed, without impairing the value of the book as a truthful picture, to cover the dryness of historical detail with the interest of a novel. In this work, Dr. Hale was assisted by his son Ed- ward Everett Hale, Jr., now an instructor in Cornell University. Mr. Eli Thayer, of Worcester, made wise plans for emigration to Kansas which saved Kansas as a free State. Mr. Hale was close at his side and of vast assistance. His father's paper, the leading one of New Eng- land, was open to them, and Mr. Greeley in New York published their articles as edito- rials. Great sympathy in the cause was aroused. Mr. Hale traveled almost every- where in New England, addressing audiences EDWARD EVERETT HALE. on Kansas and the way to it. Hewas one of the executive committee ofthe Emigrant Aid Company, which for a long time was in Close connection with the new State. In 186: Kansas was admitted as a free State. The pastorate in Worcester continued for ten years. During his residence there he married Miss Perkins of Hartford, who is still living. From this life of broad activity he was called to Boston by the South Con- gregational Church of that city. Bishop Huntington, the former pastor, had organized the society into a strong working force. The regular church work in education, in charity, in hospitality and in worship was quite as much as one minister could venture to over- see. Mr. Hale tried faithfully for four years the experiment of keeping within the usual circumscribed lines of work of a pastor, with the one exception of the Kansas Emigration Company, which still required more or less of his attention. But Fort Sumter was fired on, and the man who had bound himself for four years broke his fetters and escaped, never to be the minister of one set of people alone again. From that time on the whole country has claimed him and with right. What was the church ifthere was no nation, and selfish indeed was the man who could not take a broader outlook. In 1860 he joined Salignac’s drill corps, the first mili- tary organization in Massachusetts (outside the old militia) of men preparing for active service. Before twelve months had passed he became an officer in the organization, and men, now major-generals, are indebted to him for their early drill. His church, full of enthusiasm like its pastor, never stopped to question the lines of its work. With the minister it heard the call and obeyed. Sol- diers from Missouri who first fell at Shiloh wore shirts made by the women of his church. The young men offered their ser- vices and were sent to the front, and the first teachers employed by the United States to teach the freed negroes were teachers from his Sunday-school. He was lately chosen a member of the Loyal Legion of Massachusetts in recognition of his services during the war—a recognition which gave him great satisfaction. In an unpublished article of Dr. Hale's, he says, ‘‘I have steadily enforced the theory that our churches are not separate religious clubs for the special benefit of those who

Page 25

EDWARD EVERETT HALE. meet in them, but rather that they are cor- porations organized for bringing in the Kingdom of God. That is to say, in the Protestant scheme an organized church has the same duty which a priest has in the Catholic scheme. It represents Jesus Christ to the community where it is. It manifests God in. his present love and his present will. Its minister, then, is not to consider himself as working merely for the congrega- tion, more than any one of the congregation does. He and they are all working together to uplift the world. Dr. Andrew Peabody says: ‘‘ Every man must have a vocation and an avocation.’’ Dr. Hale’s vocation is the ministry, and literature is his avocation. He likes to say it would be hard to find a story or an essay of his which has not the purpose of a ser- mon, so completely do the two work to- gether. It was as natural as to breathe that this absorbing interest in the national af- fairs should call forth more or less published articles. He had always written for his father’s paper. He had been a regular con- tributor to the North American Review, and sub-editor of the Christian Examiner under Dr. Hedge. So in the summer of 1862 he wrote the story of ‘‘A Man without a Coun- try’’ for the Atlantic Monthly. The story of itself was of absorbing interest and power- fully written, but no one could calculate the deep impression it made at such a time. Possibty it did more than any other written article to rouse and stimulate the patriotism of the reading men, and particularly the young men of the time. The story has been translated into several languages, and numberless editions have been issued. From this time on the South Congrega- tional Church did not lose its pastor, but the country gained a preacher. With remarkable rapidity he has been sending out his stories, magazine articles, andsermons. It is impossible to touch upon them all. ‘‘My Double, and how he undid me,’’ has a depth of humor which shows a new side in every perusal. In 1870 Dr. Hale wrote the story of ‘‘ Ten Times One is Ten.’’ The year before, the Unitarian Conference, wishing to direct the publication of a literary review, selected him as the editor. The magazine was called “Old and New,’ and for six years he re- 439 tained the editorship. At the end of that time it was united with Scribner's Monthly. It so happened that this magazine lacked a serial. Dr. Hale had often sketched the life of Frederick Greenleaf to his young friends, and he was urged to write it at length for OLDAND NEw. This he did, calling the hero ‘‘Harry Wadsworth,”’ and in this book he introduces the now famous Wadsworth mot- toes : “Look up and not down ; Look forward and not back ; Look out and not in ; Lend a hand.” The story is a story of the possible refor- mation. One pure, good life influenced ten, the ten one hundred, and soon. In twenty- seven years the whole world had accepted the mottoes, and the kingdom of God had come. Such is the outline of this story. It created great interest, and Wadsworth clubs, Lend a Hand clubs, and Tens began to form all over the country. Any club that accepts the mottoes is at once a Lend a Hand or Ten Times One club. There are many branches of this work at the present time, numbering thousands of people—people who have never seen the author of their mottoes, but who recognize his kinship, and bridge the dis- tance that separates them. ‘‘ In His Name,”’ a story of the Waldenses, contains the badge and watchword ofall theseclubs. This touch- ing little story has passed several editions, and is translated into many languages. In 1886 the charitable organizations, in which Dr. Hale has always interested him- self, as well as the Ten Times One clubs, felt the need of a magazine devoted to organized philanthropy and work of the clubs. LEND A HAND was then started, with Dr. Hale as its editor. This magazine is an active helper in works of reform and charity. He has served several years as one of the counselors of the Chautauquan Association, enjoying to the full the work of that great enterprise, and giving his time and talent in its aid as to many other public enterprises. This article is not written to sound the praises of Edward Everett Hale. It is rather written to show how his education and train- ing, with natural abilities, have aided in making him the man he is to day—a ‘‘ min- ister of the people.’’ May he long continue as such, for the people need him !

Page 26

WINTER DAYS IN MONTREAL By ERNEST INGERSOLL. INTER days in Montreal ! What keen and pleasant experiences shape them- selves before the mind’s eye as the words are uttered! How bright the sunlight flashing from the new snow! How deeply blue the sky, springing from Mount Royal to those sentinel peaks beyond the river! How tingling and stimulating the frosty air as each morning you tramp sturdily down St. Catherine Street,, perhaps cut diagonally through Phillips Square, dodge the reckless sleighs on that perilous corner at the top of Céte Beaver Hall, and then go hurrying down the hill, nodding to acquaintances and admiring for the hundredth time the surging volumes of sun-gilded steam hang- ing over the tall buildings beyond Victoria Square ! Or perhaps it is evening. The sun has been eclipsed by masses of clouds, themselves lost to view in the myriads of flakes they shed. Turn down St. Peter’s into Craigie Street, and brace yourself against the gale sweeping eastward along that windy thoroughfare. Then breast it up Bleury Street. The crowd is hastening home. It pays no attention to the odd architecture of this old French road—can hardly breathe in the snow which is dry and sharp. You leave your eyelids the least possible crack ajar, and in a few moments discover that the congealed breath in your beard will scarcely let you open your mouth. Here the snow has drifted, and you walk over it without sinking, as though it were sand. Then a gust sweeps round a house-corner and wraps everyone in a whirling garment of white. But your struggles make you warm, your rubber-clad feet take firm hold of the icy path, innumerable sleigh-bells, and the laughter of children, and jolly young clerks and shop-girls, make a pleasant tumult in your ears, and the blaze of electricity brightens your eyes as wellas your thoughts. You have walked a mile—maybe two—and are athome. The youngsters are whisking your overcoat and shaking your cap, and saying that dinner is ready, and you have forgotten a storm that would make New York talk for a week. But enough of exclamations. Winter begins when the double windows are put up. These belong to every house, however humble, as a matter of course. The lingering of autumn has fadedtoan end. It has been a lovely season. Day after day we have driven and strolled in the tender warmth of a mist-veiled sunshine, watching the for- ested face of Mount Royal change from glory to glory of color. Each Sunday we have climbed it, choosing some by-path where we kicked the rustling leaves and plucked rose- haws and berries, and gathered bouquets of brilliant leaves ; and each time as our eyes drank in the fair landscape of the broad city, the shining St. Lawrence, the pale blue, hill-studded distance where the glamour of heroic history glorified the radiant haze, we feared that another Sunday would bring a different and drearier picture. Then, as October closed, comes one day a tempest of rain ; and when it has passed, Mount Royal's slopes of russet and crimson have been cleaned of their color, as a palette might be sponged, and aresodden and gray. The rain becomes a wet snow, which clings heavily to the evergreens and weighs down the weeds, and when this weather changes with the advent of acold north wind, we put up our double windows and start the steam heaters. Ordinarily, bare ground is not seen after the middle of November, though for perhaps a fortnight later, the street cars continue to run upon wheels. Finally, some all-night storm buries the rails beyond recovery, and next morning creaking and comfortless covered sleighs take their place. With the first frosty weather the skating rinks are flooded, and by the time real cold begins, a musical opening night at the Vic- toria begins the season. Perhaps a cold closes the Lachine Canal, before much snow falls, affording a few days of skating, and it ison record that it has been possible once or twice to skate all the way from Montreal to Quebec, but as a rule this amusement can only be had under cover of the rinks. Every afternoon they are thronged with school- children, and each evening thronged again by older persons, as well as a crowd of

Page 27

WINTER DAYS youngsters, who skate round and round and cut figures, and play games, and flirt under the white glow of arc-lamps and the inspira- tion of a brass band. Family tickets are issued, and almost every householder sub- scribes as regularly as to his newspaper. Twice a week a band plays at the Victoria, and on Saturday afternoon, five o’clock tea is furnished to adult patrons. At the same early season, too, before the snowshoes and the toboggan clubs can get out, the curling-rinks are put in order, for when once the ice has fairly frozen under their long, low roofs, it will not easily melt, even though a warm spell of weather should follow. Here night after night may be heard the sibilant slide and the metallic jar of the ‘‘stanes’’ in Caledonia’s national game, played by gray-headed merchants and law- yers with all the eagerness of boys ; and the American visitor looks on, understanding little of what he sees and nothing at all of the strange cries he hears, as the excited curlers brandish their brooms and shout their instructions from end to end of the long alley. After the first of December, in a typical winter, such as that of 1887-88, more or less snow falls every day or two, and sometimes several inches at once. This is constantly cleared off the sidewalks, of course, and huge piles soon accumulate along the curb. In addition roofs are frequently swept. But if this were allowed to goon, all the houses would soon become barricaded and the nar- rower streets completely obstructed. So the Public Works Department keep a large force of men busy shoveling these heaps down and spreading the snow evenly across the road- To assist them, ponderous cutting machines or plows dragged by many horses, slice down the curb-stone heaps ready for the shovelers. This process, while it makes the road passable, does nothing to diminish the total amount of snow, none of which melts or is carried away, though a good deal evapo- As a consequence the roadway of the broadest avenues is soon elevated three or four feet above the normal level, while in many of the antique, narrower ones,eastward, it is often impossible for a person to see who is on the other side of the street. In Quebec, where the snowfall is greater, and many streets even narrower, than in Montreal, the roadway will often become, by March, way. rates. IN MONTREAL. 44! almost as high as the eaves of the old French cottages. Of course everything movable goes upon runners, fire engines, funerals, catafalques, and all kinds of vehicles down to doll- sledges. The levelness of the road is there- fore a matter of great importance, and gangs of men are continually at work upon them, filling up hollows and cutting down ridges, using in many places a sort of harrow or mul- tiple-plow which turns half a dozen shallow furrows at once. But in spite of all this work, there are always great heaps of snow here and there in the side streets, and these are the delight of the children. I wonder if anywhere else in the northern hemisphere are the little ones as hardy, red- cheeked, and merry as in Montreal! The degree of cold or the rage of the storms has no terrors for them. Days when the mercury is away below zero, and has been so for a week, and the wind is filling the air full of powdered ice-dust, you will come upon group after group of young natives as care- less of cold as chickadees, and uproarious with sport. See this toddler of five. She has two pairs of woolen stockings and Indian moccasins to keep her feet and legs warm. A red /uke is pulled down over her ears and forehead, a long coat made out of a blanket is belted closely round her waist, and lined mittens protect her little paws. She is wrestling over the possession of a toboggan, at the summit of a snow-mound, with a pygmy friar whose head is lost in a peaked capéte. Suddenly a mischievous mate gives them a push, and down they go, both to- gether, head over heels to the bottom, to rise completely covered with floury snow. Mind it? Not a bit! Cold? Warm as toast! I have seen them racing and chas- ing, playing an imitation of lacrosse, sliding headforemost down the side of some great mound upon theirtiny toboggans, half bury- ing one another in the crystal drift and cut- ting all possible pranks, when the tempera- ture was far below zero, and the milkman was serving his customers by the pound in- stead of by the quart. It is not always so cold as that, for even in mid-winter Lower Canada is not the Frigid Zone, but for weeks together the mercury will rarely get more than ten de- grees above zero at noon, and often sinks to twenty below at midnight. Most of the

Page 28

442 time the sun shines brightly and the air is still. Last winter I do not think anyone could have made a snowball between the first of December and the first of April. An umbrella is never thought of, but rub- bers must constantly be worn, both for warmth and sure-footedness. Now and then comes a blinding storm—a regular blizzard— heaping up great drifts where they are least . wanted, exploring every crevice around win- dow and door, defying the shovelers and impeding the railroads. The air will be thick and dense with fine crystals of ice, whirling in a Walpurgis-night dance, sting- ing your cheek and blinding your sight. You twist your sash more tightly, and pull your fur cap down over ears and forehead, while the women swathe their faces in knitted scarfs. Nevertheless every one goes about his business and pleasure. If the blizzard howls, you shut your ears with sealskin. If the drifts heap up, you climb over them. The mercury sinks and you walk the faster. That is all. I remember going out with a lady on one such night to call upon some friends a mile or more away. It wasa long fight with the gale, but we enjoyed it, and found our friends preparing for a party where the scantiness of ‘‘full’’ dress was not departed from on account of the weather. After a few moments, therefore, we tramped back home again, and read seventeen degrees below zero on the thermometer at my door. In short, no severity of weather interferes with one’s customary pursuits in Montreal, nor in Quebec or Winnipeg, where it is much colder. Itis simply the truth that the air is so dry that the intensity of the cold is not felt to anything like that degree which it would be in a damp climate, where the moisture of the air forms a rapid conductor of heat away from the body ; while through- out Ontario, winter-weather scarcely differs from that of New York State generally. Healthy persons go out every day in Mon- treal regardless ofsnow and ice. The women always wear heavy over-stockings with In- dian moccasins or rubbers outside. Many ladies, in severe weather, adopt fur caps too, a favorite style being a high mushroom- shaped one of bear skin, or of the fur ‘‘ of ze leetle American monkey called ze schkunk,”’ which makes them look like sisters to Robin- son Crusoe ; but with most, the pretty bon- net keeps possession of the pretty head all WINTER DAYS IN MONTREAL. through the winter, and the small ears have in consequence acquired astonishing tough- ness. It is not uncommon, however, for an observant person to stop a lady in the street to tell her that her ear or cheek has frozen— fact of which she would be quite unconscious. This is the kindly etiquette of the latitude. She is sure to thank you, and will walk on, vigorously rubbing the part with snow until the blood resumes its course. The pictur- esque blanket suits, worn in the outdoor sports, are of course never seen upon the street in daylight, except upon the backs of children, though the fondness English and American strangers have of being photo graphed in them, has spread the absurd im- pression that this is the ordinary attire of Canadians generally. Never are the streets of this brilliant town more brilliant than in midwinter. The splendid length of Sherbrooke and the Cote de Niege is filled every afternoon with gay equipages and high-stepping horses, rush- ing to the music of innumerable bells. Tan- dems and four-in-hands break the stream of spans and single cutters, with now and then an old-fashioned low sledge on solid run- ners. Ladies are fond of driving here, and handle the whip with a grace much more rare south of the St. Lawrence. Tall and proper British lassies, plump and sprightly demoiselles from France, stylish daughters of the United States, trip past every corner ; but best of all is the Canadian girl herself. All the brightness of these northern skies is in her eyes ; all the lissome grace of the canoe-birch and the straightness of the pitch-pine are in her mien. She has, in part, the sweetness and submis- sion of her English cousins, the vivacious charm and clear complexion of the Scotch or Irish maiden, the vivacity of the Norman, combined with American self-reliance and wit. Montreal has three districts: first, the older French part east of Bleury Street, which includes a large majority of the population, and a fair share of the wealth and influence of the city ; second, the English ‘‘ west end ”’ occupying the plateau at the base of the mountain ; and, third, the lowlands along the river, out to Point St. Charles, where the laboring population, largely Irish, lives, and where the factories, warehouses and railway tracks stand.

Page 29

WINTER DAYS IN MONTREAL. Take a sleigh at Victoria Square, where an endless procession of them are slowly circ- ling about that ridiculous monument to her Majesty, and tell the carter to drive you out Dorchester to Céte St. Antoine and back by Sherbrooke Street to the park. You will first climb up Beaver Hall hill, which recalls in its name the time when at its top stood the fur-warehouse of the old French trader- colony. Now three of the many stately churches of the city stand close together upon its site. Then you pass the Metropol- itan Club, the Fraser Public Library, the swell St. James Club, and some fine old- time estates where massive stone houses are guarded by high walls and great iron gates, and so emerge into Dominion Square. Three Protestant churches touch the square on the west and north, while at the south- eastern corner towers the mighty, yet in- complete, pile of St. Peter’s—a replica of St. Peter’s in Rome on a smaller scale—and the palace of the Archbishop ; while the south- western corner has St. George’s beautiful house of worship and the new headquarters of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Here rise the crystal walls of the ice-pal- ace, where is witnessed the mimic warfare by which, amid a blaze of rockets,-Roman candles, and red fire, it is stormed and de- fended by regiments of snowshoers—a scene fit for that fairy land of Arctic imagination, where spirits at play are beheld in the vivid pulsations of the northern lights. The build- ing of this palace or castle is worth watch- The ice is cut from the canal in flaw- less blocks of even thickness, and hewn into the shapes required by the design. Each block is hoisted by a derrick, and after its surface has been roughened with hatchet- strokes it is set in position, and freezes to its neighbors ; or perhaps a sprinkling of water is put in the place of mortar—only a sprink- ling, since too much would be followed by swelling enough to throw the wall out of plumb. At an expense of a few hundred dollars, a real castle, with battlemented walls, keeps, turrets and minarets of purest ice, rises opalescent in the sunshine, changeable with every alteration of light, exquisitely graceful and romantic. But drive on. A mile of costly and beauti- ful houses stretches ahead along Dorchester Street—the older ones built huge and square, of stone, by old Hudson’s Bay Company ing. 443 officers, and the families of men who grew rich in the Indian trade or early commerce, the newer showing the modern variety of architecture, and placed in ‘‘ terraces ’’ flush with the sidewalk. Turn now, and pass briefly through the wooded hill-roads of Céte St. Antoine, which is almost the only distinctively English sub- urb, and then back along Sherbrooke Street. Here you find the roadway suddenly rising to a bridge—a temporary viaduct built in winter across the slide of the Montreal To- boggan Club, which comes down the hill with a steepness and length (nearly a mile, when all is used) exceeding that of any other slide in the city. This slide does not begin upon an arti- ficial inclined plane of timbers, as do the rest, but is laid out upon the natural ac- clivity. It is pleasanter of course to be specially invited, but strangers seem always welcome, and are sure to be asked to slide, as soon as they appear, by some well- blanketed youth, who will gladly steer for you. Suppose your visit is on a night crisp with, say, fifty degrees of frost. The stars project like electric torches from the inky canopy—many morethan you ever saw be- fore, so absolutely clear is the atmosphere. From an open shed at the top of the slide a few lanterns cast a feeble light upon the group of muffled men and maidens, who stand with toboggans poised upright, await- ing their turn. The trees can scarcely be seen, but are heard creaking in the light breeze and crackling with frost. Ahead of you dips a long groove-like pathway of pol- ished ice between two lines of hanging lan- terns, curving downward, and stretching on and on till the silver line and its gold edgings converge in the shadowy level beyond Sher- brooke Street. The multitudinous lamps of the city sparkle off at the left, and in front and beyond them is the plain of the river. As we drive on, the vast gloomy buildings of the Sulpitian Seminary are soon at hand, with those two round towers near the gate, which were built as a defense against the Indians, and those magnificent elms, planted when Montreal was Ville Marie, and men yet lived who had been companions of Mai- sonneuve. Splendid homes adorn this avenue from the Sulpitian monastery all along the base of Mount Royal, and beautiful streets cross it,

Page 30

444 leading up the hill and filled with handsome houses and grounds. Midway is McGill University, in the midst of a great park. Then the street narrows, quaint old-fash- ioned mansions appear. The names of the saints and heroes of New France are written in bilingual labels upon the lamp-posts, and presently we turn to the left and make our way up to the main entrance of Mount Royal Park. Then for an hour we saunter through one of the most interesting and naturally beautiful public pleasure-grounds in Amer- ica, resembling closely East Rock Park, in New Haven. The road passes almost contin- uously through woods, now leafless, where the snow lies three feet deep, and past rocks half concealed under cascades of ice. When the harbor authorities have declared that the ice, which stretches from shore to shore, is safe for traffic, a surveyor marks across it roads leading from the city to La Prairie, St. Lambert, Longueil and other villages on the southern bank. These tracks are defined by two lines of cedar bushes, lest in a snow storm or at night one should get astray, and are maintained as public roads, along which you see passing, morning and evening, the low sledges of the habitants who bring their produce to mar- ket orcome shopping. Now and then a gay pleasure party rushes swiftly over the icy track, exhilarated by the space and freshness around them. Now and then a somber fune- ral car is noted, coal black against the snow, while the broad river plain seems a dreary expanse, and the wind from Lake St. Louis doubly freezing to the sad hearts that follow. One year, as everybody knows, a railway was laid upon the ice, and for several months trains passed and repassed. The river-roads all converge upon the foot of Jacques Cartier Square, near which is the great Bousecours Market—one of the most interesting places in the city. Here gather the French farmers from across and up and down the St. Lawrence, with messes of pot- tage, herbs and market truck to sell, eggs, butter, etc. Here, too, may be seen Indians and half-breeds from the Huron town of Caughnawauga, offering moccasins, la- crosses, snowshoes and a great variety of trifles in birch-bark and bradwork. The market takes its name, for instance, from the little Bousecours church, which is the oldest ecclesiastical edifice in the city, but WINTER DAYS IN MONTREAL. which has lately been so ‘‘restored’’ and renovated that scarcely anything but the walls of the original structure remain. This church is opened before daylight, and a mass is sung every morning at five or six o'clock, I believe, for the benefit of the market men and wharf laborers. All day you may see kneeling there tired women with baskets, and men who have just snatched a minute from trading, to turn their thoughts to treas- ures in heaven. Eastward of Jacques Square French pre- vails. The streets are narrow and set with little low browed houses, which curiously re- mind you of the Rues Royal and Bourbon in New Orleans ; you hearthe clipped Cana- dian dialect all about you. One public char- acteristic strikes a stranger—the apparent candor of all these French citizens. They talk to one another in loud open conversa- tion, oblivious of possible listeners ; often bawling at one another as they stride arm in arm down the street, as though they were ablock apart. This simple-minded candor is especially striking by contrast when observed in the narrow Rue St. Francis Xavier (the Wall Street of Montreal), where if you meet two Englishmen, they are pretty sure to be whispering into one another’s ears some affair of great secrecy. The number of priests—always clad in the souéanne—met in the streets is another thing noticeable to an American. A variety of orders is betokened by the dress, the rarest of which are the bearded Carmelites and the ascetic trappists, the latter having a prison-like monastery on top of one of the Two Mountains, ten miles up the Ottawa. Nuns, too, are numerous— the Sisters of St. Joseph, or, as they are usually styled, on account of the drab dress, the Gray Nuns, being the commonest seen. These have an immense convent on Dorches- ter Street, West, where about one hundred and forty now reside and care for their youth- ful charges, besides which several schools and houses of charity in the city are main- tained by them. These women go out nurs- ing, officiate in hospitals, etce., with great freedom, are wide awake, cheerful and uni- versally respected. Stroll out some evening when it is snowing, and the electric lights and yel- low gas jets are clouded by gem-like flakes. The retail shop windows are ablaze from Dominion Square to the Champ

Page 31

WINTER DAYS IN MONTREAL. de Mars, and far up St. Lawrence Main, the principal shopping street of the French quarter, while throngs of merry citizens jostle one another upon the narrow and slippery pavements, and the roadway is ringing with the hoof-clink of excited horses and the jingle of countless bells. Here stalks a gigantic policeman, his height increased by the fur helmet and the long- tailed coat. Here shuffles a thin priest, the skirt of his gown flapping about his ankles beneath his astrachan overcoat, and his head lost in an immense cap of mink skin. Then passes an erect and gaudily dressed soldier, or a hurrying postman in his ugly half-military uniform of black and red. Here a party of misses chattering French, and throwing flirtations with their eyes; then a stalwart band of young Britons clad in striped blanket suits, some white and blue with blue tukes, others black and red with scarlet tukes, and a third kind in brown. Each man has a pair of snowshoes over his shoulder and a straight briar pipe in his mouth. We turr and follow them. Sud- denly round a corner comes a sleighload of laughing girls. The snowshoers are joined by others and guide us to the large club- house and gymnasium of the Athletic As- sociation, where scores of young fellows are preparing for a tramp up the moun- tain. One more street scene comes vividly to my recollection. It is eight or nine P.M., and I am sauntering across Dominion Square. Suddenly the scream and drone of bagpipes, softened by distance, strikes my ear, and I stop to listen. They are marching down Peel Street and presently come into view, while the wild music grows louder and plainer, shaping the familiar Scotch airs. It isaregiment in kilts. Ahead of it strides the line of proud pipers, their cap ribbons floating out behind, and their bass-drummer doing his part with that wonderful whirl of the sticks at arm’s length, which is like no other drumming in the world. Then follow the ranks of scarlet and green, their tall bear- skin shakos piled with snow, their bare legs keeping perfect, though noiseless step, their accouterments gleaming amid the fast-falling flakes, as they defile under the cluster of electric lamps and wheel up Dorchester Street. The sidewalks are lined with cheer- ing people, the windows of the great hotel 445 frame scores of fair faces, the officers salute with flashing blades, the pipers blow with awful energy, and I have caught such a glimpse of Bonnie Scotland as I never ex- pected to see this side the Atlantic. At Quebec one finds a quainter life, at Ottawa a peculiar official gayety, at Toronto and Hamilton practically the duplication of one of the American lake-side towns. But Montreal is not only the best known, but perhaps the most representative city of Can- ada. Lying in the border land between On- tario and Quebec, or what we used to call Upper and Lower Canada, it combines the two great social elements of the colony—the French first comers and the English super- seder, who, with Saxon push and pertinacity, is elbowing his more easy-going neighbor at every turn. In Montreal their character- istics and institutions are closely mingled now as well as in the relics of the past—in language and a duplex legal system, English common law being yoked with the Napo- leonic code ; in architecture, in social forms, in literature, in religion, in politics—in everything. While there are marked dis- tinctions, there is a mutual reaction of influ- ence which is observable and interesting to a studious eye. Then among the English-speaking people there is a sufficient variety. Canadians sprung from early settlers, ruddy English- men who still say ‘‘at home’’ when they mean England, broad-faced Scotchmen, thin- visaged Yankees, Irish, Germans, Indians, half-breeds and Orientals, mingled in the crowd. And it isa dusy crowd. Nothing is farther from the truth than the popular idea that Canada is an ice-bound land where people are wrapped in furs like Esquimaux, and have a ravenous craving for pemmican. Instead of the cold of winter being objection- able, it is the excessive heat of summer that is dreaded and that interferes with business and pleasure. Winter is the busiest and most enjoyable portion of the year ; but here, again, the popular idea is wrong, that the Montrealers spend pretty much all their time sliding down hill. Out-of-door sports are en- joyed and encouraged to a greater degree than in the United States, but after all it is only a limited class that goes tobogganing and snowshoeing, and this is made up almost wholly of young people, who spend a part of their evenings in that way.

Page 32

IN THE HEADSMAN’S ROOM. By OCTAVE THANET. ** TF you care to risk your neck on the Mont d’Azi, turn in fora rest at St. Ferréol.”’ This is what my friend, Maurice de Chagny, said to me, on the eve of my start- ing for a sketching tour in Haute Savoy. My sketches, I may explain, are of no earthly account to any one save the artist ; all the same, I like to make them. “The chdteau,’’ Maurice went on, ‘is a queer old barracks ; but the old furniture may interest you, and there used to be some china to make your eyes shine, Henri Deux cups and a Palissy and Rouen dish or two and a lot of Meissen—but it is more than likely that Constance has had to sell all her bimbelots, poor child !’’ ‘*Does the chéteau belong to the Countess Constance? ’’ said I; and to save my life, I could not help a queer little shake in my voice. To tell the truth, I was desperately in love with the countess, and she had made an end of me only three days before. ‘Why, yes,’’ said Maurice, ‘‘but she is here, and the chdé/eau is there; and I'll give you a card to old Michael—if you want a figure for an ancient retainer, Monty, there’s one!’’ He was so busy scrawling over his card that he did not see my face. I felt my- self growing hot ; but it was easier to take the card than to explain why I could not avail myself of the countess’ hospitality. ‘* There was a talk of selling the chdteau,”’ said Maurice, ‘‘ but Constance prefers to go out as a governess, first. Ah, my friend, I don’t wonder. She is the last of her name, and they have owned that rock among the eagles for five centuries ; and there are the old servants, Michael and Solange: bleak as the old chdteau is, at least it is a roof over their heads, and the vines give them a pit- tance for their living. Constance shares what she has with them.”’ He spoke with a kind of bitter emotion ; I knew that he had no money with which to keep his cousin, and his words, somehow, made more of a picture in my mind than he may have intended. I answered on impulse: ‘She might rent the place, though.”’ ‘*Who would want it?’’ ‘*T know a fellow that will—maybe—”’ De Chagny may have suspected me, but the countess’ polite and frigid sentences were not sticking in his brain (like icicles) as they were in mine; he wished well to my suit, the good Maurice, and would forward it ifhe could. I know he pressed me in his chubby little arms with true brotherly fervor when we parted. After this the business arranged itself. In the person of William Grant (my London attorney) I leased the chdé/eau St. Ferréol for one year. Were the countess ever to discover my duplicity—I wriggled under the bedclothes when that awful vision came to me, some- times, at dead of night! However, there was very little danger; and the conscious- | ness of my useless and transient ownership was acomfort. Decidedly I needed comfort at that time. Imagine a young man of twenty-eight who has had a very good time with his youth and his money, and considers himself mightily experienced and beyond the reach of emotions ; imagine this fellow flung out of all his imbecile vanities by meeting a young woman,—tall, beautiful, wearing the invisible but none the less sen- sible aureole of noble blood and nurture (he is the grandson of an honest American butcher, mind you), yet simple as a child and with a child’s grand beliefs and exactions. There you have my case. My father left me a great fortune ; for the rest, I was a little fellow, with those odious good looks that re- mind one of the busts in a barber’s window, almond-shaped dark blue eyes, long lashes, a low forehead, a straight nose, an oval face, and a moustache which, at this period, I had the incredible folly to wax at the ends. Really I am a muscular little man and tough as a wildcat ; but my poor mother and my sister, whose husband had died of consump- tion, were forever loading me with top-coats and cautioning my man about me. I swear Francois, himself, was an affectation forced on me by those two. He was to look after my health, confound him !

Page 33

IN THE HEADSMAN’S ROOM. To see a fellow thus guarded, like a tame mouse, was enough of itself to prejudice any woman of spirit. And to complete my dis- advantages, I had trivial tastes: I sketched, I played (atrociously) on the violin, I was a connoisseur in china and cimque cento furni- ture. Often I felt that Constance might have forgiven positive vices; but she sup- posed me a creature devoid the commonest virile instincts. Therefore I buried myself in the Savoy Mountains, ready to tempt an avalanche. Of course I had not the remotest idea of ever visiting the chdteau, yet I explored Mont d’Azi. No harm in seeing the place. One day something happened. I got lost. Night was coming on; indeed, when, after an hour’s wondering, I ran against a weather beaten finger-post, it was necessary to light a match to read the direction. The words were 4 St. Ferréol. A kind of thrill ran through my nerves. How could she ever be the wiser if I went there to her house—why, it was my house—for a night, as Maurice’s friend? There was no name on the card, I was simply his ‘friend.’ I could, of course, go as William Grant ; but, in that case, I might be described, and my The choice precious secret would be lost. lay between St. Ferréol and a night on the rock, half frozen, with the owls, foxes, and such gentry forcompany. I took the path. After all, the idea was not without a cer- tain charm. ‘‘ Her house—and mine,’’ I muttered to myself, climbing up the moun- tain side. Suddenly the dense pines ended, and I saw the vineyard stepping up the mountain, the bare rock topping the vines, and perched on the rock, the chdéfeau St. Ferréol. Lichens had stained the stone, richly, and ivy wrapped the walls, and swung banner- wise over the capitals. So well had those old Romanesque architects builded, that the dark pile with its round towers and pointed roofs loomed against the sunset as if of yes- terday ; but there were a hundred scars of poverty and time about the grounds, and the chdéteau itself, did one draw nearer. My heart beat fast as I entered the gateway, where the stone griffins frowned in vain. One had dropped his head, which frowned up out of the weeds. I crossed the court. No creature was visible. Approaching the more modern portion of the house, an addi- 447 tion in the later gothic style (really a blot on the plan), I found the door. It was of oak, the usual design, barred with iron. Rust had eaten into the bars, as it had into the brass of the curiously wrought serpent biting its tail, which served for*a knocker. My summons brought a gaping young Savoyard to the door. He ushered me into a noble vaulted hall, where an old man, on his knees, was rubbing the brass-work of an ancient saddle. A reddish brown Roman nose, and a few locks of silver white hair were all the features which his attitude revealed. ‘This must be Michael, the Countess de St. Ferréol’s faithful—ah—steward,”’ said I, struggling after a polite term for his ambig- uous position. At once the old man rose, and made me a bow that would have done credit to a retainer of the great Louis. ‘‘T am the countess’ servant Michael,’ said he in very pure French; ‘‘ how can I serve Monsieur ?’’ I handed him De Chagny’s card. Instantly, the man was transformed ; the wrinkles in his old face shifted out of their knots into smiles, and his eyes beamed, while he welcomed me volubly : ‘‘ Mon Dieu, Monsieur, I was afraid you were the new master, a rich English gentleman who rents the house—he has never been here. But a friend of M. Maurice, it would be a dark day, indeed, that we could not welcome /zm. Ah, but it is a poor place now, not like in the old count’s time. All the house has is at your service, Monsieur.’’ Here the old servant drew himself up with as much stateli- ness as if he were glittering in the gold-laced livery of ‘‘ the oldcount,’’ instead of wearing the breeches woven and made by Solange and a ragged jacket trimmed with moth-eaten fur. ‘‘Toby,’’ he proclaimed, ‘‘thou idle young beast, see that Solange makes haste with the best supper she knows how to cook ; and light a fire in the Headsman’s chamber !”’ Toby, whose mouth had been agape ever since my arrival, dropped his jaw lower still and rolled his eyes ; but he said no word. ‘* Va ten /’’ cried the old man, sharply. Toby got as far as the door: here some in- ward power twisted his head and his staring eyes back on us, again. Michael making a furious gesture, he disappeared. Ina moment he returned, puffing. Between the

Page 34

448 puffs came the words, ‘‘ Solange says—a sin and a shame—Christian soul—Ow /’’ The last word was nearer a scream, for a hand with no apparent body swooped from behind the door and dragged the unfortunate lad off into outer darkness. ‘Figure of a pig that thou art!’ saida woman’s voice in a fierce whisper. The rest was lost in a noise very like a slap, and loud sobs. ‘*She boxes his ears,’’ remarked Michael calmly. ‘‘Solange has a heavy hand. I see you wonder at us, Monsieur, and as- suredly there is reason. But I would have arranged—however, I believe in the truth, I. Though Solange is a fool, still, perhaps, it is better. Listen, then, Monsieur. The Heads- man’s chamber has a bad name, that is alli. But I assure Monsieur that he will not be disturbed. On the word of a St. Ferréol.’’ He bowed again with his grand air. ‘‘ What for, ghosts ?”’ Michael fidgeted with the bit of chamois skin in his hand ; he almost wiped his brow with it. “If you have a ghost, Michael, pray let me have a chance to see him,”’ said I. ‘*Well, Monsieur, it is the Headsman’s He has his picture on the tapestry.”’ ‘*Does he haunt the room, walk and groan and wring his hands comme les autres ?”’ ‘‘Not exactly, Monsieur, no, he does not —he does not appear—at least—not in the root, room, Monsieur.’’ Michael was visibly em- barrassed; this time he did wipe his brow, distributing the brass polish impartially in streaks. ‘But really, Michael,’’ said I, growing in- terested, ‘‘if the ghost does not come into the room, where’s the harm of sleeping there? ’’ Michael’s sigh was deep enough for a groan: ‘‘He comes to the room below, Monsieur, and you hear him. You hear him all night !”’ ‘* What does he do?”’ ‘*He moves the furniture, Monsieur.’’ It was impossible not to smile; yet the poor old man was so desperately in earnest. ‘*T see Monsieur does not believe. But read. In a moment.’’ He bowed and retired. Presently he returned. He had procured a strange old-fashioned salver on which was laid a folded paper. I opened it and read what purported to be the experience of a certain Réné de—somie- IN THE HEADSMAN'S ROOM. thing, who decidedly wrote the worst hand in the world. But I managed to make out that he had spent the night in the Heads- man’s room ; that he had been awakened by noises in the room below, so it appeared to him ; that he had descended the stairs lead- ing to this room (the noises continuing all the while) ; that he had opened the door of the room, and there was nothing ; though, the second before, the noises had been like one moving all the furniture in the room. He had searched the room thoroughly, but he discovered nothing. Baffled, he returned to his chamber. No sooner did he cross the threshold than the noises recommenced. They were just as before, the scraping, roll- ing sounds, as of heavy furniture being moved. He took his pistol in one hand and his candle in the other, and again he stole down-stairs. The noises were the same. He opened the door. The room was still. He flashed his candle about, and then a stray blast of wind, through the open door, had extinguished the light ; and instantly the noises were all around him, and the room shook. This was too much for Réné. He expresses it more decorously ; but Michael told me that they heard him yell all over the castle; he shot off his pistol wildly and came plunging down the hall—“‘ like a mad bull,’’ said Michael. ‘* Certainly a thrilling narrative,’’ I said, ‘*but why do you give all the credit to the Headsman? Who was he, anyhow?”’ ‘*Monsieur,”’ said Michael, ‘‘it is a long story, not a jest.’’ It was plain Michael dis- approved of my light tone. Still he was prevailed upon to sit down and tell the story while supper was preparing. Unconsciously the old man’s language took a savor from the quaint speech of the ancient chronicler who had first reported the sin and doom of the Headsman. Some of the phrases cling to my ear ; what I can not give is the quaver in Michael's voice, the gleam of his eye and the look of the ribbed and gnarled old hand that would waver in the air to emphasize the weirdest passages. The Headsman, Michael said, was the most powerful noble of the house of St. Ferréol. He had amassed a vast store of jewels and gold before he came to his barony, as a gentleman pirate, preying on the Spanish ships in company with other gentle pirates, French and Eng- lish. After he became count, the story goes,

Page 35

IN THE HEADSMAN'S ROOM. that he used this treasure to buy a great store of arms. At any rate, he rebelled against his liege lord of Savoy and had the misfortune, being defeated and wounded, to fall into the enemy’s hands. With him, also wounded, was his sworn brother in arms, a neighboring noble, to whom he bore ‘‘a most marvelous affection.’’ This noble had an only child, a daughter, betrothed to the Count de St. Ferréol’s on]y son, and the day of their marriage was set. Being in such sad case, however, the two gentlemen made up their minds for death, since they were in the hands of their bitterest foe ; but he, ‘‘ wickedly choosing to intlict greater pains,’’ said to St. Ferréol : ‘‘ Life and lands and lordship shalt thou save, do thou this one thing. Die this man shall”’ (he pointed his mailed hand at the other noble knight, bound, and with blood on his armor), ‘‘whether or no; but ‘hou mayst. go free, do thou strike his caitiff head from his body !”’ At first, the Count de St. Ferréol would not; but when his friend had pleaded with him, with tears, to do him this last good office, because thus he should succor and protect his daughter and perchance save the lives of many, nor, in the end, shorten his life no whit, since die he needs must, then, after a long while, the count, in great sor- row, and weeping very bitterly, consented. The two friends kissed each other, after which, the one who must die laid his head on the piece of log provided, and the count, with asingle mighty stroke, ‘‘did give him release.”’ The miserable Headsman was free. Ac- cording to Michael, his foe made a bitter gibe: ‘‘Let him go. There is no further fear of him, no knight will follow him, now /’’ His first step was to go to the daughter of his friend and bring her (‘‘ nothing knowing of her father’s case ’’) to St. Ferréol. There he married her presently to his son. He enforced silence on the men-at-arms who had been with him that evil day ; and all the young couple knew was that the bride’s father had been slain in the battle, ‘‘ for the which the damsel made great moan,’’ and vhich was sufficient excuse for absence of nuptial merry-making. On the wedding night, Monsieur, the count blessed the young pair, weeping much, and went away with his head hanging on his breast. 449 ‘* That night '’—Michael’s lifted hand kept time with his solemn tones lixe the swing- ing of a church bell—‘‘ that night there was such a thunder storm as never was known, and in the morning they found the count hanging half out of his window killed by a thunderbolt. No, Monsieur, that is not all the story. There was a cup of poison on the table, and a letter begun to his son telling him how to preserve him his lands and wife, he, his father, had fallen into such sin ; and so Father Gaspard, the priest at the castle, then said how it was plain that the good Lord, seeing that the poor count, unable to endure his suffering, was about to make a wicked end, had mercifully preserved his soul from the crime of self-murder.’’ ‘*But the ghost ?”’ ‘*Monsieur, #e is the ghost; but this is the strange thing, my father had heard him, but /#zs father knew nothing of him. But he came often enough, I know, in the late count’s time.’’ ‘*But why does he walk down here instead of in his room ?”’ Michael shrugged his shoulders. ‘‘ Only he can tell. He began to walk here and to make noises in my father’s time, and they have been growing worse ever since. But I hear Solange. Will Monsieur permit me to serve him ?’’ Michael’s tale had produced an impres- sion on me for which I can not account; I felt an inexplicable personal interest in this unfortunate ghost. At least the Headsman was a real human being who had sinned and suffered and been of such vivid and genuine quality that long after he was dust in the consecrated grave, which good pére Gaspard doubtless secured for him, he still existed to his descendants as a ghost. We were in the room where his ghostly revels were kept. Here, actually, he walked his rounds, not in the chamber above. Yet this was the every-day dining-room of the chéteau. There was the same antique and decayed magnificence about this apartment as in all I had seen of the place. A worn Turkey carpet covered the floor. The em- bossed leather of the chair seats had cracked in holes, but their gabled and croeketed backs were beautiful specimens of cingue cento. ‘The buffet was in the ugly and heavy style of the seventeenth century. Of all the treasure of plate and china which had

Page 36

450 shone from its deep shelves, only a pair of brass candlesticks remained. The wall, which was wainscoted in oak, bristled with antlers, rusty armor and stuffed birds. There was a single picture in the room, a portrait in oils of a young girl. Too well I knew that charming poise of the head and those dusky eyes, though they were meeting mine with a kindlier welcome than they had ever given me before. ‘“You observe the portrait, Monsieur,’’ said Michael; ‘“‘it is my young mistress, painted in the old count’s time. Ah, he spent the money royally while it lasted. Now, the last St. Ferréol is glad to rent the house of her fathers to a rich Englishman.”’ He glanced mournfully down the board, yet his old eyes involuntarily glistened, con- templating Solange’s flats. ‘* Justice to all,’’ he muttered, ‘‘ the Eng- lishman has sent quantities of provision to us, and bids us be always ready for him, with cooked victuals.”’ I persuaded Michael to help me with a bottle of wine. The more he drank the more doleful he grew. He explained to me why the dining-room was not shunned ; it ap- peared that the ghost never did anything unless some one were sleeping in the cham- ber above. ‘‘ Ah, many and many a fine young gen- tleman has slept there in the old count’s time,’’ said Michael, ‘‘ but never a one staid the whole night through. The only person who ever did it was the countess.’ ‘‘ The countess !’’ I exclaimed. ‘*My young mistress, Monsieur. Ah, she has the courage of the St. Ferréols! She will have it that the ghost means something by these noises—that he is trying to attract attention. The first night she slept there I watched outside in the hall. She did not know. The noise came, Then she comes out with her candle, pale, but calm, like the stars. I follow. She opens the door. All is quiet. Every chair is in its place. She stands there, and looks so sad, so kind and pitying, like the pictures of the saints. And, then, while I, pig that I am, am like to scream for fear, she blows out her candle. ‘Now,’ she cries, ‘ poor ghost, see, the light is out, come; I am a St. Ferréol, tell me why you come—I pity you.’ But nothing came but the same noises, and Solange rushed in, screaming, with alight. That gave me an IN THE HEADSMAN'S ROOM. idea. The rest of the time there was a light burning for J/. /e Conte. The countess never suspected anything. She slept there four nights longer, but he did not stir, nor will he for you, Monsieur. The light will burn.”’ She, alone, had spent night after night in that ghastly chamber for a ghost’s sake, my high-hearted darling. Her sweet credulity seemed to bring her nearer to me, and, in- deed, was there not a chance for me in the adventure? She would not despise the man who fathomed the mystery of the Heads- man’s room. Besides, in that case, it would be more than decent for me to write her the particulars. -My brain went spinning down a vista of splendid possibilities. ‘* Michael,’’ said I, ‘‘I don’t want the light. I want to see the Headsman.”’ It was some time before Michael could believe that I was in earnest; when he did I was conscious that he regarded me with fur- tive compassion. ‘‘They can not tell what it is,’’ he said, ‘‘ nor can I, but it freezes the blood in one’s skin to hear!’’ By this time, Solange’s excellent supper was dispatched and I was exploring the room—finding nothing. The wall gave out no hollow sound, the windows were grated. Michael obediently trotted at my heels, perking his nose over my shoulder and dropping tallow grease in my hair. Occasionally he shook his head and the candle in unison, assured me that the dead would mock at my precautions. Had he a key? Yes, Monsieur. A young gentleman had tried that, a brave young man—but he jumped out of the win- dow. The fireplace? There was always a fire there. M. Réné had talked of some- thing coming down the fireplace, but he did not talk so now. Could the windows be locked? Without doubt, Monsieur; he thought that it was the young Breton cap- tain, he with the red hair, who climbed up to lock them himself; anyhow it was the one who fell on his knees and called on all the saints. Gloomier and gloomier Michael became, until I asked to be conducted to my cham- ber. He took me up the turret stair ; and, I observed, remained modestly on the thresh- old. The room was large, bare, of an irreg- ular octagon shape; and a musty odor ex- haled from the faded tapestry on the walls. Michael whispered that the tapestry had

Page 37

IN THE HEADSMAN’S ROOM. been woven for ‘‘the count,’’ and repre- sented the sea fights of his comrade and himself. He stretched a trembling finger towards the Headsman’s shape. Then he crossed himself, promised me that his slum- bers would be ‘‘of the lightest,’’ bade me adieu, casting at the same time a sorrowful glance over my insignificant person, and bowed himself off into the shadows. His footsteps echoed quaveringly down the un- carpeted hall. They made a hollow, lone- some sound. My first care was to examine my revolver, blessing my American fancy for the weapon. Next I flared my candle over my new quarters, inch by inch, with the result of knowing that they had a fire- place, a broken buhl table, two Louis Qua- torze chairs, and a bed uncomfortably like a sarcophagus, with its carved testers and purple velvet curtains, draped through the tarnished coronet at the top. There were no nooks or crannies and no wardrobe, where a fraudulent goblin might hide. A fire blazed on the hearth. I went close up to the tapestry and studied the vari- ous portraits of the Headsman careering about the walls. The hangings were so faded and worn that I was only able to dis- tinguish that the figure was in armor, and that the one head without a helmet had long hair. Again that strange sensation of belief in the ghost’s existence, and pity for him, swept over me. I could understand Con- stance’s feeling. Dressed as I was, I threw myself on the bed. I had not the least intention of going to sleep; I was revolving the dreadful di- lemma of the Headsman ; I was wondering if there was any clue to these ethical conun- drums ; I was marveling over the gulf be- tween our manners and codes and those of the dim past; I was very gravely demand- ing Azs opinion of the Headsman, who cour- teously lifted his indistinguishable face, while the slaughtered friend—or somebody else—turned somersaults on a beat keel—in short, I was asleep before I knew my drowsi- Even ghosts can not keep a man iwake who has climbed mountains all day. I was awakened—I do not know the hour, but my candle was sputtering in its socket— ind sat upright, clutching my revolver. Simply a noise, the kind of noise which one would make, naturally, moving a chair. listened. The noise ceased. It came ness. 451 It came the third time. said I, ‘‘Good again. It ceased. ‘*There are three chairs,’’ Lord !”’ I do not know why this fact or coinci- dence must set iny pulses drumming, but it did. Presently came the noise again, a long, creaking jar. Then a succession of bumps. I thought to myself that it was as though some one were moving the table and strain- ing at the buffet. No sooner did this last noise cease than the same order was repeated. ‘“Here goes,’’ I thought, flinging off my shoes. Pistol in one hand and candle in the other, like M. Réné, I crept down-stairs ; all the while, chairs and table and side-board were pushed and flung and hurled, apparently, about the room below. Surely Michael and Solange, wherever their rooms, could not fail to hear this uproar ! In the hall outside I paused a second to combat the overpowering feeling of reality about the thing. And now the din on the other side the door swelled into a chaos of blows and thuds. It was exactly as if some one inside were hurling the furniture about the room. I flung the door wide open. The room was utterly still. My candle made an arrow of light across the carpet. There stood the three chairs close to the table; there was the buffet in its place. I had care- lessly left my hat on the edge of the buffet. A motion would have dislodged it ; there it lay unmoved. I edged into the room. I thoroughly ex- plored it, keeping my back well to the wall. There was absolutely no change in the posi- tion of anything. I went back to my room. ‘Before I could lie down I heard the scraping of the chairs. Then came the noises as before, the chairs pushed back, the table moved, the tugging at the buffet. This time I went down in the dark, but I was carrying a candle and a match. I had put my pistol in my pocket. The noises increased in fury, exactly as before. I opened the door. They were louder than ever. Honestly, I did not dare stir lest I should be knocked over by the flying furni- ture. I scratched my match. As suddenly again I saw the quiet room, and the only noise was the beating of my own heart. I may or may not be believed, it is no

Page 38

452 matter ; I know that what I felt at that mo- ment was neither fear nor excitement: it was an intense, uncontrollable, awe-struck sympathy for the ghost. Even while I jeered at myself, the feeling which twice be- fore had overcome me partially now con- quered everything else. ‘‘I will help you,”’ I cried ; ‘‘tell me what you want !”’ But only the silent room and the flicker- ing light athwart the table came for answer. An idea occurred to me. I removed one of the chairs. Then I took a log lying in the chimney corner, and placed it directly in front of the duffet. And then I returned to my roon. My foot was hardly over the threshold be- fore the chair scraped against the carpet, first one, then the other, then—it was not the noise of a chair drawn away, it was the clatter of a log of wood hurled against the hearth. I raced down the stairs and flung the door open. I had nomore doubts: the ghost was trying to move the buffet ! My lighted candle was still in my hand; and I saw the chairs in their place, the log lying against the duffet/ ‘‘M. de St. Ferréol,’’ I said solemnly, ‘‘#f I am not right give me sign!’’ And with that, placing my candle on the table, I put my shoulders to the great hulk of oak and strained and tugged as lustily as ever the ghost had seemed to do. A shiver first, then a totter, and then— whether it was that some secret prop gave A CATCH. way beneath, or a leg broke, or that I simply lifted the top-heavy monster out of balance ~-there was a crash which shook the solid walls as the buffet fell and broke asunder. Michael got to the room before I could clear my eyes from the dust of centuries which seemed to be released. He rushed in, scared but faithful, and (determined to run no risks) armed with /wo candles. ‘“Oh mon Dieu, des choses argent!” (‘‘ Heaven's, look at the pieces of silver !’’) screamed Michael, tumbling on his knees with a loud cry. He fell on two of the candles and knocked the other out of my hand. We stood breathless in the darkness. It was very still. ‘*Michael,’’ said I, ‘‘do you believe the poor count was trying to show this silver?”’ For answer Michael embraced my knees and kissed my trousers and wept, incoherently ; for there, out of the secret drawers with which the wretched, artful old buffet was crammed, had tumbled the gold and silver plate, worth a prince’s ransom. My explana- tion is that the poor Headsman, who killed his best friend that he might save his estates to his family, must have seen this plate stowed away, during the French Revolution perhaps, and have been trying, ever since, to attract the family attention. Perhaps it is not the true clue. However, I know that the Headsman has rested in peace ever since, and will grudge him no ghostly hon- ors, since I owe him my dear wife. A CATCH. By RICHARD HENRY STODDARD. I sarip to Fate, Let be, Since I have done with thee, Or heap upon my head The ashes of the dead,— And huddle out of sight The thing that once was me. For when his head is white, And he is poor and old, ’Tis time his grave was made ; Fetch mattock then, and spade, And let the bell be tolled. And so, sweet fool, good night !

Page 39

“OAK VIEW,” THE SOME By Lizzi a city of \V ASHINGTON is essentially A stranger driving through the fashionable quarter will keep his coach- busy answering such questions as: homes. lan ‘“Who lives there?’’ ‘Whose house is that?’’ so numerous are the striking res- idences. At every turn new architectural triumphs and delights will meet the eye. After seeing all, one can not help regretting that the pet idea of Chief Justice Chase was not adopted. It was his darling project to have the insignificant residence now pro- vided for the President turned into an office building for the Chief Executive, a really handsome and suitable residence built for him at the head of Sixteenth Street (across the foot of which the White House stands) and the property along that beautiful street secured by the government so that suitable residences might be erected on it for the members of the Cabinet and judges of the 220 Je HOME OF WASHINGTON A. PRESIDENT CLEVELAND. HOMES. TOMPKINS. Supreme Court, and the street called Ex ecutive Avenue. Considerable interest has been manifested in the suburbs since the President and Sec- retary Whitney provided themselves with country homes to which they could retire when wearied with the cares of state. The President’s place, Oak View—famil- iarly called Red Top on account of the color of its irregular roof—is a small, pretty brownish-gray stone house with cool, pleas- ant verandas, surrounded by about thirty acres of rolling land covered with clover. It is a modest little place. The rooms are small and are prettily and comfortably fur- nished. Mrs. Cleveland takes great delight in her little home, and one of the pleasant sights on summer mornings was this fair young woman coming across the hills through the long grass, with her arms full of daisies and

Page 40

SOME WASHINGTON HOMES. ** GRASSLANDS,” THE COUNTRY é wild flowers she had gathered. People driv- ing past on drowsy summer afternoons could see her swinging in the hammock hung across the end of the porch, working indus- triously at her French, the study of which she took up shortly after her marriage. The President, too, is a different man after reaching hisown domain. He takes a gen- uine pleasure in everything pertaining to the improvement of the place, and is not at all averse to going birdnesting with his page, a fourteen or fifteen year old boy. He has had a small frame building erected a short distance from the house, which he uses as an office, and very often during the summer his work was done in that quiet retreat. About half or three quarters of a mile farther on is Grasslands, the place Secretary and Mrs. Whitney have made famous by their boundless hospitality. Its name is most appropriate, for almost the entire hundred acres is an undulating bed of velvety turf. There is a bit of woodland, too, anda slight, a very slight, attempt at farming. It is oneofthe old places. The house was built in 1806 by Admiral Loughborough, and is of the colonial style. Did its yellow walls but possess the powers of a phonograph there could be told some jolly stories by the gouty HOME OF SECRETARY WHITNEY. admiral with powdered queue, silk stockings and knee breeches, who was first sheltered by them ; and mayhap some state secrets, ponderous views and spicy gossip of ante- bellum days—for Marcy lived there and made merry with such boon companions as John Randolph, while he was a Cabinet officer. Seventy-five years ago Captain Lough- borough was born in the room Secretary Whitney now uses as.a library, and, as a boy, attended a small school taught by Salmon P. Chase when he first gripped For- tune by the wrist and told her he would have no coquetting. Two years ago the last de- scendant of the jolly old admiral applied for admission to the Louise Home, there to end her days. During the early summer Mrs. Whitney holds weekly levees on her lawn to which people crowd like flies about a sugar barrel. Light chairs, and tables laden with dainties, are dotted here and there, with visitors grouped around them, making a picturesque scene. Every afternoon finds a number of Mrs. Whitney’s intimate friends there, among them very often Mrs. Cleveland. One’s sense of fitness is never offended in this house. The furniture is all of the colo- nial style, and the moment you cross the

Page 41

SOME WASHINGTON HOMES. footworn threshold you feel as though you were living in the time of sweet Dame Carver and Miles Standish, and you half expect to see demure maidens in scant-skirted, short- waisted gowns tripping over the dark pol- ished floors. Even in the room occupied by little Dorothy, the ‘‘ Cabinet baby,’’ there is a diminutive chest of drawers in the mirror of which some Puritan baby may have ad- mired its pretty face. In the drawing-room there is an empire mantel that was brought from beyond the sea many years ago. It is white and prim and dainty with green-tinted medallions that look like cameos. Long before Secretary Whitney bought the house he had picked up and stored away in his New York home an old brass mounting for a fire-place ornament- ed with eagles, and when Grasslands came into his possession he noticed a resemblance to this brass in the mantel decorations. He had it unearthed and brought over, and curiously enough the eagle in medallion and the eagle in brass were counterparts. The house is kept open the whole year ef a7 i ite \ id bd THE HALL OF ‘ CALUMET PLACE,”’ MRS. LOGAN’S HOME. 455 round, whether the Whitneys are there or not, and every one whocalls is treated with as much hospitality as though the master and mistress of the house were at home. In fact, it is quite the thing for parties of equestrians to stop there and partake of the good cheer prepared by the dark-skinned Priscilla when they know the secretary and his wife are in town. On the other side of town, just a mile from the Capitol as a bird flies, is another old yel- low brick house not unlike the one at Grass- lands, except that the rooms are larger and more lofty, and there is an air about it that seems to impress you with the idea that it has been occupied as a home for ages. It is probably a hundred years old, and is built of imported brick laid in the Flemish fashion, end and side alternating. When Salmon P. Chase was a boy cf nineteen he visited at this place, which was then owned by Gen. Berry. Young Chase conceived a fondness for the place, and declared, half in earnest, half in jest, that some day it should be his. More than a quarter of a century later, when he

Page 42

456 SOME was made chief justice, he bought it. Then the original plantation had been divided up, and only about thirty acres of land went with the house, which was at the edge of a thick wood. Gen. Berry had named it Metropolis View, but Judge Chase called it Edgewood, the name it now bears, although the wood has almost disappeared, with the exception of a particularly pretty grove where wander- ing bands of gypsies often pitch their tents. After securing the object of his boyish de- sires he occupied the house but two years ; but before his death he was often brought here and enjoyed sitting in his library among his books and under the great trees on the lawn looking toward the city. Mrs. Kate Chase now makes her home there during her visits to this country, and on the lawn where her illustrious grand- father sat and dreamed of the future greatness of the city spread out before him, her little daughters con their lessons with their gov- erness, or romp with their dogs and play ten- nis. Theinterior of the house is exceedingly interesting and beautiful, filled, as it is, with art treasures gathered by Mrs. Chase during her travels, and many things of historical WASHINGTON HOMES. interest. The drawing-rooms arecharming, but it is on the opposite side of the wide hall oneisapt to linger. There is the library—a room with dull, quiet tones, with low book- shelves lining the walls, a bust of Judge Chase on one side and a portrait of him opposite. It is essentially a student’s room, with restful, wide-armed chairs and cheerful wood-fire in the large fireplace. Beyond this is astately dining-room. This is a splendid square room with a mantel of creamy-tinted marble that came out of one of the old Knickerbocker mansions in New York. At one side of this is a great mahogany side- board, on the other a cabinet, and above it a beautifully-framed mirror, all antique caryings from Rome. The chandelier is a copy of the famous fuchsia chandelier at Versailles. The most noted men in the late history of our country have been enter- tained here. All the great questions of the day have been discussed under its roof over rare old wines, and the fate of many an important measure definitely settled there. Holly Hill is the home of Hon. Hugh McCulloch, and the place where he wrote HE LIBRARY OF MRS. CHASE'S HOME.

Page 43

Page 44

SOME WASHINGTON HOMES. ‘* BELMONT,’’ THE HOME OF CHIEF JUSTICE FULLER. ‘*Men and Measures of HalfaCentury.’’ It is about eight miles from thecity, and would be the permanent home of Mr. and Mrs. McCulloch if they could keep their servants out there in winter. The house is an ideal country house, built of wood, large and roomy, with a flood of sunshine pouring in through open doors and windows. There is a grapery, a spring house with running water gurgling about cream-coated jars of milk, and a garden where you can pluck bachelor buttons, larkspur, marigolds, pan- sies, and all the other dear, old-fashioned flowers that used to go to make up a genuine posy. Mr. McCulloch says he bought the place because he thought it would be a pleasant home at which to end a long and eventful life, such as his had been. He and his wife had seen as much of the world and society as they cared for in the past fifty years, and he was looking forward to a pleasant period ofrest. His wife is a plump, motherly little woman with silvery hair and dark eyes, and just a suggestion of pink in her cheeks. Mr. McCulloch has grown old with equal grace. His figure is tall and straight, and his loose coat refuses to meet across the waistband. The thin locks are snowy white, but his complexion is clear and ruddy as a boy’s, and his eyes as bright. He has a daughter, Mary, who is the apple of his eye, and who resembles him as closely as a young girl can. Enjoying the finest ad- vantages socially, she is anything but a society girl. She is fond of outdoor sports, has a figure straight, supple, and slender as an Indian lad’s, fences well, and is an expert rider. Coming back to the city we find, on the heights just a little beyond the boundary, a low, rambling mansion of red brick, called Calumet Place, the home of Mrs. Logan. On entering the house you recognize that you are in the home of a statesman and a soldier. Decorating the walls of the hall (which is fitted up for a lounging-place) are Indian relics, swords, sabers, powder-stained battle-flags, and corps badges. One of the most striking things is the head and antlers of a monster elk killed by Ed. S. McCook, one of the ‘‘ fighting McCooks.’’ Mrs. Logan has a fondness for antiquities and things of historical interest. Among the things she has collected are a tiny candle- stand that belonged to Henry Clay, a dress-

Page 45

SOME WASHINGTON HOMES. er used by Buchanan, a book-case that belonged to Daniel Webster, which Mrs. Logan uses for a china cupboard, an old- fashioned jointed dining table bought at a sale of the Carrolls of Maryland, a set of china that really did come over in the May- flower, a sofa that belonged to the Slidells, of Mason and Slidell fame, and ever so many other things that I will not, with the excep- tion of one, attempt to mention. This isa dower chest of black oak, with ponderous brass bands, that has sportive cupids carved all over it. It is what in ye olden time was filled with household linen and given toa bride on her wedding day. Mrs. Tucker, who is in charge of her mother’s house dur- ing her absence abroad, bought it at the Halliday sale that so shorta time since formed the closing chapter in the sad history of that family. The most noticeable thing about the house, however, is the loving care with which every- 459 thing belonging to the dead master is pre- served. Within a stone’s throw of this place is the home of Chief Justice Fuller. It is a pictur- esque structure of rough gray stone, with wings and towers and arches. When it was built there was some talk of the government buying it as a residence for the President, but the price was too high for our alarmingly empty treasury. Continuing on your way through the city you come to Dupont Circle and catch sight of Stewart Castle—the home of the Chinese embassy. It was built by Senator Stewart, of Nevada, when that now fashionable region echoed with no gayer sound than the tinkle of the cow-bell. Nearly all of the furniture, which is superb, was purchased abroad, and it was rumored that it contained among other things the bed of a queen. When Senator Stewart entered the Senate Chamber he was proudly pointed out to visitors by the pages MR. BLAINE’S HOUSE.

Page 46

460 SOME as ‘‘ the man who sleeps in a queen’s bed.’ Some years ago the building was partly destroyed by fire, and the stone of which it is built was found to be so badly stained as to require painting. Since the representa- tives of the Flowery Kingdom have occupied it it has been the scene of many elaborate entertainments. A little farther west is a solid-looking house of red brick that seems to declare itself the abode of wealth. It has a hospitable main entrance, and on another side a car- riage entrance. It occupies the greater part of a square, and on three sides is bounded only by streets. In the center of each frosted glass door is a monogram that un- raveled reads ‘‘J. G. B.’’ The house was built by Mr. Blaine and occupied by him while he was Secretary of State. WASHINGTON HOMES. Mr. Z. L. Leiter, of Chicago, now occupies it, but it is very probable that the Blaines will themselves occupy it next year. It is especially adapted for holding large enter- tainments, and is said to be one of the most complete houses in the city. Not far from here, near the Circle, is Sun- set (it should have been Sunshine) Cox’s new house, that looks inside as if a bit of the Orient had been transplanted. Mr. Cox declared, when the house was being built, that his wife should be comfortable in her new home if he had to spend her entire for- tune to make herso. The house is built of red sandstone ; inside, the prevailing colors are Moorish, there are Turkish tea and coffee tables, olive-wood tables from Jerusalem, and mother-of-pearl inlaid stands from the banks of the Nile. There is acurious brass pitcher THE HON. SUNSET COX’S LIBRARY.

Page 47

SOME - HEA EE Ml Ning ; WASHINGTON HOMES. THE BRITISH LEGATION, that belonged to Hobart Pasha, the Sultan’s cipher is embroidered on the portiéres, water- color scenes of the East adorn the walls, and prayer rugs cover divans. But the Oriental ideas are not completely turned loose and reveled in until you reach Mr. Cox’s study. There everything is of the East. An extract from the Koran, ‘‘ The Conqueror still lives. There is but one God,”’ is repeated again and again on the frieze. The hangings are em- broidered in red and gold and black, and are a:i exact copy of the designs in the old green mosque of Broussa. The low desk or shelf or table, whichever you choose to call it, that Mr. Cox works at, is covered by a thickly embroidered prayer rug taken from a mosque, and the dilapidated mummy of a jackal that Mr. Cox himself extracted from its tomb grins at him from the chimney-corner. But two of the foreign powers have built houses here for their representatives—the British and the Mexican. The British Legation is a comparatively old building. It is on Connecticut Avenue (Washington’s Fifth Avenue) and is an im- mense house, as dwelling-houses go here, containing over thirty-five rooms. The lamp-posts at the gates are surmounted by crowns. All the rooms for entertaining are very large and eminently fitted for the pur- pose. The ball-room is the largest in the city, so long that it requires the light from three chandeliers and numerous side-lights. When the Legation was built it contained the only private ball-room here. The din- ing-room is nearly as large, but it is a gloomy place, the wood being walnut. The hall is the feature of the house. The great tiled vestibule is separated from the house proper by columns of gray granite upholding a carved block of red granite. The inside hall is square with wide stairs running, up from the center and branching. At the head of the wide flight is a portrait of the Queen

Page 48

SOME WASHINGTON HOMES. THE MEXICAN LEGATION. when she was a young girl. Around the hall are chairs and small tables, and there is quite room enough to dance, so spacious is it. The Mexican Legation has not been long completed, and is occupied this season for the first time by Minister Romero and his family. It is alsoa large house, containing thirty-two rooms, and was built with special reference to holding large entertainments. There is nothing national about it, the architecture, furnishings, and even the mis- tress, Mme. Romero, being American. It was decorated by Tiffany, and is delightfully bright and cheerful. The woodwork is light oak, and there are numbers of large mirrors set in the walls at every available place. It is heated by steam and lighted by electricity. It has a beautiful salon parlor about thirty feet long ; a dining-room almost as large with buffet of oak built in ;, a ball-room decorated in green, gold, and cream, with walls lined with mirrors, presenting a scene of almost dazzling splendor when there is a ball or evening reception in progress, the many mirrors multiplying again and again the fair faces, white shoulders, sparkling jewels and lovely costumes of the ladies. The legation offices are in the rear, and the billiard and smoking rooms below. Governor Alexander Sheppard, to whom we owe our good streets, built a row of three houses on K Street between Seventeenth and Connecticut Avenue. The one on the Con- necticut Avenue corner is occupied by the Russian Legation. It is another house that lends itself well to entertaining on a large scale. There are five large rooms that can be thrown open forming almost one apart- ment. One of these is a grand salon the length of the house, another a roomy ball- room, with wide stairs that form a back- ground for effective grouping. But when an entertainment is given there the crush is so great that there is scarcely room to turn. From this, one can form some idea of the proportions of official society. For several seasons the house has had no mistress, and the unused ball-room was fitted up as a fencing gallery by Mr. Greger, the secretary of the legation. The house adjoining the Russian Legation

Page 49

SOME WASHINGTON HOMES. was occupied by millionaire Wm. L. Scott of Pennsylvania until he bought a house, and the one on the Seventeenth Street corneris the home of one of the richest men in the country, and the scene of the most magnificent and lavish hospitality. About ten o'clock any morning you can seea slender man of me- dium height, with a kindly smile and short gray beard, come down the stone steps, and it will be hard to suppress a little gasp of as- tonishment when informed that he is Senator Leland Stanford. Thinking of all those millions one rather expects a rolling, pom- pous person with a double chin and a great girth. But after crossing the threshold there is nothing disappointing. There's an air of affluence that is positively exhilarating. The drawing-room is gorgeous with gold embroideries, crimson hangings and up- holsterings, anda profusion of flowers. Mrs. Stanford’s taste runs to fine laces and em- broideries, and of the latter she has a fine collection that is used to decorate the walls, thrown over chairs and sofas, and used on the draperies. There are several portraits of the beloved son they so sincerely mourn, 463 and over one that rests on an easel is thrown a real lace scarf that is worth as much as an ordinary man can earn in a year, and before it there is always a vase filled with fresh flowers. Mrs. Stanford loves to surround herself with gorgeous things that fill the eye, and she likes fine jewels. She has one of the finest collections of diamonds in the country. So numerous are the calls on her charity and so large is her correspondence, that for five years she has been obliged to keep a secretary. ‘ On K Street, not far from Senator Stan- ford’s, is a white stone house built after the style of a French chateau, that looks as though it should be entailed and have a ghost and all the other equipments of a baro- nial castle. It has a low, arched entrance, in which swings a heavy oak door with bars and bolts of thick black irgn, that reminds one of the descriptions of feudal castles. It belongs to Mr. B. H. Warder, formerly of Cincinnati, and ever since its completion has been the legitimate prey of all the ama- teur photographers. Senator Palmer of Michigan lives on K THE HOME OF B. H. WARDER.

Page 50

SOME WASHINGTON HOMES. SENATOR PALMER’S HOME, Street also. His is a brown-stone mansion of a distinctly city styler of architecture. The entrance is a noble one; the steps are of brown-stone, with a stone balustrade that seems to throw open its arms with a hearty welcome. The house was designed and fur- nished by Mrs. Palmer, and is a triumph in its way. The kitchen is on the top floor, to do away with the odor of cooking through the house. The servants’ rooms are also on the top floor, and they have a little parlor that is much nicer than the best room in many avillager’scottage. Their rooms, too, are cleaner, prettier and more com- fortable than the average room one can get in a New York boarding- house for fifteen or twenty dollars amonth. The house has four stories and a basement, and has an ele- vator ; rather a large house for just two people, but Senator and Mrs. Palmer are rarely without guests. Mrs. Palmer has spent a good deal of time abroad, and during her so- journs obtained many art treas- ures. She has Launt Thompson’s ‘*Elaine,’’ and ‘‘ Nydia fleeing be fore the Volcanic Eruption.’’ Her pictures are many and valuable, in- cluding many excellent canvases by American artists. The walls and ceiling of the din- ing-room are of mahogany, and it has an exquisite inlaid floor. There is a bow-window of stained glass that makes the light a subdued, rosy hue. Around the room at different points are silver candelabra, abundance of silver and cut-glass glitter on the sideboard, and over the table hangs a bell-shaped light with finely wrought metal covering theglobe. The mantel is high, and, like the rest of the room, of richly colored mahogany. Without a mention of the ball- room in Secretary Whitney’s town house, this sketch would be incom- plete. This room always recalls to my mind Poe’s description of a per- fect room. The prevailing color is a deep, rich, dull red; there are some excellent paintings on the walls, mostly of the French school ; at the end of the room there is a fire- place that must have been born in the brain of an artist, and at one side there is a recess with raised dais, which, when used by mu- sicians, is screened by palms. It is aiso used by the readers, elocutionists, singers and others Mrs. Whitney secures to enter- tain her guests. When the cheeks that here glowed rosy with pleasure are faded and wrinkled, when those with the lightest feet are gouty and crusty, when many are dead and some for- gotten, this ball-room will be remembered, described and gossiped about.

Page 51

MRS. WHITNEY’S BALL-ROOM

Page 52

FROM THE SEA TO THE DESERT. By DAVID KER. I. A CITY IN THE AIR. sia AKE up, Monsieur Ker, wake up! In another moment we shall be on the brink of the worst precipice in all North Africa !"’ This cheering announcement (made by the French officer who sits facing me) recalls to my mind how a nervous old gentleman once awoke me just at the height of a furious gale in the Atlantic, to ask whether I thought he would have time to put on his clothes before the ship went down! Captain D—’s encouraging remark (and more especially the ominous word ‘* precipice’) causes a visible sensation among our fellow-passengers, and draws a faint shriek from a timid old lady in the far- thercorner ofthecar. But before any one can speak or move, the locomotive answers Mme. G—’s cry with a scream like the death-cries of a thousand pigs, and there come a rush and a rattle and a roar, and we find ourselves hanging in mid air above a black and fright- ful abyss, worthy of Dante himself. Well may the pious Mohammedans of the Sahara Desert, when they flit across this air- hung arch for the first time in the ‘‘smoke- breathing chariots of the unbeliever,’’ think of their own fabled Bridge of Al-Sirat, span- ning the gulf between this world and the next with a pathway as narrow as the edge of a scimitar, over which the souls of all mankind must pass into the presence of Allah (God) at the last day. As the cloud- less African moonlight streams down into the black depths of the abyss in a flood of glory, the jutting crags that start out of the darkness below, and the gaunt, distorted, skeleton trees that cling to them with clawed, twisted roots, might well pass for demons breaking forth from the regions of eternal night ; and the shadowy towers and battle- ments of the town of Constantine itself, seen thus amid the gloom and silence of midnight, far up against the moonlit sky, perched like an eagle’s nest on the lonely crag, cut off by this awful chasm from the living world of men, look so weird and ghost-like beneath that cold unearthly splendor, that it is quite a relief to hear our French conductor’s cheery voice come echoing through the dark- ness : ‘*Vos billets, Messieurs, s’il vous plait— nous voila arrivés!’* (‘‘ Tickets, please, gentlemen—we' ve arrived.’’) But when viewed at daybreak next morn- ing from a projecting angle of the ramparts (which zigzag along the very brink of the tremendous chasm that severs this outlawed town from the solid earth), the ‘‘ City in the Air,’’ as its Arab inhabitants poetically term it, loses all these supernatural terrors, and assumes its true character of the grandest and most picturesque among the many splendid views in the magnificent panorama of North Africa. See how the long lines of trees along those wooded ridges stand up like soldiers ranged for fight, while the morning mist rolls away on either side like the smoke of a battle. Already yonder highest peak has caught the first glow of sunrise, and now hilltop after hilltop deepens from gray to crimson, and then flashes sud- denly into living fire. As the light grows stronger, the last wreaths of hovering mist flit away like belated ghosts from the valley below,and rock and river, field and wood, start forth in their beauty. Turning to watch a bare-limbed Arab goat-herd among the cliffs below, who is leaping from crag to crag as nimbly as the black dwarfish goats that he tends, I catch a momentary glimpse of the far-off sea, as a shining streak along the northern horizon. Suddenly a shrill bugle-call echoes along the silent ramparts, and then the roll of a drum and a measured tramp of many feet tell that the day has begun. See! there is a sudden stir in the encampment of that native caravan beneath the walls, which came up last night just too late to enter the town— for this miniature Gibraltar shuts its gates at sunset, and does not open them till dawn. Watch how lazily the cameis raise their long necks and huge gaunt limbs from the dusty

Page 53

A. Acaster. THE CITY OF CONSTANTINE.

Page 54

468 earth on which they have lain all night, while to and fro around them, in bustling preparation for the early market, flit the wild forms of their masters, whose dark, bony faces and flapping white mantles give them the look of having risen from the dead in such a hurry as to have not even thrown off their winding-sheets. i On the flat roof of a tall white house beside me, a stately Mohammedan is standing like a bronze statue, with his face turned toward Mecca, repeating his morning prayer. Luckily for him, he is too high up to run any risk of sharing the fate of that ill-starred Brahmin who, while standing immovable on the bank of the Ganges, deep in silent prayer to Brahma, was espied by a short-sighted English tourist, who, mistaking his motion- less brown body for the stump ofa tree, came up and began to carve his name on him ; and as it would have been a deadly sin to move before the prayer was finished, it was “‘rough ’’ on that Brahmin ! The approach to this extraordinary place from the edge of the great North African table-land is as striking as itself; and as we look down from this lonely pinnacle upon the countless zigzags traced by the dark-gray seam of the railway, over the long succession of bold rocky ridges that tower between us and the sea, we are at once reminded of the famous ‘‘ road of seventy-three twists ’’ along which we rode up the ‘‘ Black Mountain ”’ into Montenegro. In truth, were any one to write a book upon “ Strange Railways of the World,”’ the Constantine-Philippeville line —that steep little iron stair that climbs at once from the sea to the desert—would cer- tainly have a chapter to itself. It does not, indeed, rival the eccentricities of the Entre Rios Railway in Southern Brazil (upon which I counted seven tunnels in three and a half miles) nor those of the Pietermaritzburg- Durban Railroad in South Africa, where the train simply trundles down the whole seventy-two miles by its own weight, with- out any steam at all, merely putting on the brake at one or two awkward corners. Nor does it, like the Colombo-Kandy line in Ceylon, run along the brink of a sheer preci- pice of more than a thousand feet—nor (like the Darjseling track in the Eastern Himalaya) make at one point so sharp a curve that the passengers in the foremost car can exchange looks with those in the FROM THE SEA 70 THE DESERT. hindmost, across an unfathomable gulf. But, nevertheless, this queer little connecting link between two different regions and two perfectly distinct climates has ove advantage peculiar to itself, which sets it high above them all. With a touch of unconscious poetry hardly to be expected from a railway company, the one afternoon train has been timed so as to pass through the rich and fertile region below while the sun is still high in the sky, and all is bright and beautiful, whereas the bleak, craggy mountains, among which this strange journey ends, are seen beneath the cold gray dimness of evening or the deepen- ing gloom of night. In fact, the whole ascent might serve a painter or a poet as the emblem of human life itself—bright and joy- ous at the outset, darker and drearier toward the close. All the soft and voluptuous beauty of an Italian landscape surrounds us as we glide along the sunny valley of Stora, with its clustering palms and dainty white villas, and trim plantations, just behind which—nestling like a shy child in the shadow of a projecting bluff—the charming little town of Philippeville watches the re- flection of its own beauty in the blue shin- ing sea. But as we ascend, a grim and ghastly change begins to creep over that fair landscape. Little by little, all its freshness, and brightness, and beauty fall away, like life withering at the approach of death The smooth green plains, the rich tropical vegetation, the countless tokens of man’s presence and man’s industry, are one by one left behind ; and the fast-falling shadows of night add tenfold dreariness to the gloomy desolation of the bare stony uplands, and dark moors, and craggy ridges, among which our course now begins to wind. Upward, ever upward, while the gloom and chilliness of the grave seem to close around us, and the jagged rocks that start out on either side take monstrous and unearthly shapes in the fitful lamp-light as we flit by, till all culmi- nates at length in one vast, black, broken ridge which surges up against the pale moonlight like a mighty wave, crested with the ghostly whiteness of the new-fallen snow. ‘‘Fancy taking four hours and a half to fifty-seven miles!’’ growls a dashing young French subaltern, who has all but overstayed his leave of absence. ‘‘It is like your tale

Page 55

FROM THE SEA of the wooden-legged soldier who refused a lift from the engine-driver because he was ‘jin a great hurry.’ ”’ ‘‘ Well,’”’ answer I, ‘‘ I took four hours to forty-seven miles on the Isthmus of Panama, and there were no hills to climb ¢here. Be- sides, Constantine itself is well worth the trouble, after all.’’ It certainly is. Meissonier himself might have loved to paint its gray, crumbling ramparts ; its quaint, flat-roofed houses ; its queer little three-cornered market-place ; its graceful palms and frowning precipices ; its headlong, ladder-like streets, where (as in Siloam, Abu-Gosh, and other mountain vil- lages of Palestine) you step off one man’s door-sill right down another man’s chimney. Nor are the people themselves less pict- uresque than their town. Slim, black-eyed Kabyles; bulky, woolly-headed negroes ; gaunt, fierce-eyed Moors; dapper little French soldiers in jaunty scarlet pants and snow-white gaiters ; veiled women in long blue robes; white-cloaked Arabs, desert camels, Barbary horses, Moorish goats, and Egyptian donkeys, make the narrow streets as gay as an operatic procession all day long; and a New York boot-black would stare to see the familiar box and brushes in the hands of bare-limbed little brown fellows in red Turkish caps, who call each other ‘‘ Hussien Ali’’ and ‘‘ Baba Ab- dalla.”’ But the most striking feature of this out- lawed city is the terrific chasm that severs it from the surrounding hills (encircling it like the moat of a Norman castle), far down in the black depths of which you dimly descry a gray, sullen stream creeping amid vast masses of fallen rock like a serpent shrink- ing from the light. If you explore its gloomy windings—which is only possible from one point, where a narrow isthmus of rocky ground links this airy island to the world of men—you will find yourself grop- ing your way in a cheerless twilight betwixt two damp, green, slimy walls of rock, be- tween which you can just see far overhead a tiny ribbon of pale blue sky. Presently even this disappears, the narrowing walls seem to shut you in, and from the black tunnel that yawns before you comes the hollow roar of an unseen waterfall, and the crash of falling stones. There is nothing for it but to retreat, for to press on till a 33 TO THE DESERT. 469 stone knocks out your brains will only prove conclusively that you have very few to be knocked out. So completely does this ghostly abyss en- circle the isolated crag on which the town stands, that only this one narrow neck of land connects it with the surrounding coun- try. This strange natural bridge is famous in thé traditions of French camp-fires as the scene of one of the many gallant deeds that cast a halo of glory around the checkered life of one of the bravest men and greatest scoundrels that ever lived. When the place was assaulted by the French during the Al- gerian war, the storming column, jammed together on that narrow isthmus, and blasted back again and again by the murderous fire that poured from every window and house- top, had just recoiled for the third time, strewing each step of its retreat with the dying and the dead. Already the day seemed lost, and lost it would indeed have been but for the presence of one man, then known as ‘‘Colonel Leroy,’’ but one day to call himself ‘‘ Marshal St. Arnaud.’’ Just behind him stood ranged a body of rogues and cut-throats out of every nation from Britain to Transylvania, politely called ‘‘the British Legion,’’ from the predominance of English over foreign rascality in its ranks. The Colonel, a skillful mimic, sprang forth with a ‘“‘ hurrah !"’ of true British ring, in- stantly echoed by the hoarse hungry roar of countless throats, as the human tigers of the Legion, fired by the well-known battle-cry, came bursting through the deadly gateway like a mighty wave, aud hacked and slaugh- tered their way into the town over the corpses of half their own men and all the Arabs still left alive. But this African Montenegro has its mem- ories of ancient as well as modern warfare. On the rock where the trim white houses of Constantine are now perched in mid-air, stood, in the first century B. c., Cirta, the capital of Numidia, where the fierce King Jugurtha—having assassinated one of his brothers and put the other to death by slow tortures, according to the kindly family cus- tom of the period—held his ground against the best soldiers of Rome for six years, and was only overmatched at last by a rough, unwashed, harsh-featured colonel of Roman infantry, named Caius Marius, that dreadful man who has sat like a nightmare ‘‘ amid

Page 56

470 FROM THE SEA the ruins of Carthage”’ upon the weary souls of sixty unoffending generations. This great tragedy is now a mere shadow of the far past. A massive railway bridge of stone and iron spans the gulf across which the Libyan bowmen showered their fire- tipped shafts upon the doomed fortress. A snug little hotel stands on the spot where Jugurtha gloated over his brother’s dying agonies ; and upon the plain on which the grim Numidian fought his last battle for crown and life, French officers now swagger, cigarette in mouth, along the trim boulevards of the neat little garrison town of Batna. But time has spared oze memento of those evil days, which might be studied with ad- vantage by many who now scurry past it along the new railway from Constantine to Batna—a vast improvement upon the break- neck Arab road over which I stumbled all night long when I was last here ten years ago. A six-mile tramp along a flat, dusty road (rendered more rather than less dismal by an endless row of stunted, bilious-looking trees on either side) brings you to the queer little fort of Lambessa, standing amid its clustering white houses like a motherly tea- pot in a ring of cups and saucers. Just be- yond it stands a noble Roman gateway, in perfect preservation, though the brushwood grows thick and high around it. The two smaller passages for the soldiers, the great central arch for the chariots, the smooth, even masonry in which Rome’s stern dis- cipline seems embodied—all are there ; and there are even traces of an inscription, now as illegible as Carlyle’s plainest handwriting. Time has not been so merciful to the forti- fied camp itself as to its splendid vestibule. Where the long lines of symmetrical in- trenchment once stretched from gate to gate, there is now nothing to be seen but an indistinguishable chaos of broken pillars, crumbling foundation-stones, and shapeless mounds of dust. But to this universal ruin there is one startling exception. Within the gateway, and almost in a direct line with its great central arch, rises a small Roman altar, still as perfect ds when the white-robed augurs stood beside it twenty centuries ago, searching with their keen black eyes the entrails of the slaughtered victim, to see whether ‘‘ the owens were favorable”’ or not. TO THE DESERT. And around it stand secure in the “ irresist- ible might of weakness,’’ the tiny images of Roman gods, relics of a dead religion, lin- gering here in the midst of a dead world. This was once the sacred ‘‘ Preetorium,’’ and here the grim General Marius sat in his tent planning new campaigns, while his bearded veterans outside, as they fought their Nu. midian battles over again around the watch- fires kindled to scare the hyena and the lion, little dreamed that on this spot the Numi- dians of the nineteenth century would grap- ple to the death with warriors from the sunny plains of Gaul, armed with strange fire-breathing weapons, as swift and deadly as the thunderbolts of their own fabled Jupiter. Those who have read in the French history of that famous struggle, how, on this very plain, less than fifty years ago, Christian generals were destroying at one blow the food of a whole nation, and stifling with smoke hundreds of helpless men, women and chil- dren, in the caves whither they had fled for refuge, will doubtless think that in some re- spects modern civilization has not improved much upon ancient barbarism after all. But this place of fearful memories is haunted by the shadow of another tragedy, gloomier even than these. When that black Decem- ber night, which Victor Hugo’s fiery words have branded with eternal shame, gave a crown to the imperial garroter who throttled France in her sleep, many of the ‘‘ rebels,”’ who had dared to defend their liberties, and had remained unconvinced, even by the cogent Bonapartist logic of grapeshot and musketry, were sent hither to return no more; and the stony African hills, which had seen so many brave men die in battle, looked down upon the lingering agony of other men, braver even than they. But the ery of that innocent blood, though drowned upon earth by the applause of bribed jour- nals and fawning courtiers, was not unheard by Him who, ‘‘ when He maketh inquisition for blood, forgetteth not the cry of the hum- ble’’ ; and His vengeance came in full meas- ure upon guilty France, nineteen years later, when the butchery of Gravelotte and the shame of Sedan told to a startled world that the Second Empire had been weighed in the balance and found wanting.

Page 57

A WIND SONG. By ARIEL SIEGFRIED. WHEN the wild gale lashes the sea’s black face To a frenzy that whitens in mad grimace, When it frightens the solemn sphinx mountain-tops, And the forest giants bow low their compliance, As heavenward are driven the tortured rain-drops,— There’s a song that sweeps through the roaring skies And these are the words that its cadence implies : The source of the hurricane flows From the force of Love’s passionate woes, And I writhe with the sum of the world’s heart-sighs. When the rich breeze marches with golden cloud-fleece To spread its elixir of bounteous increase, When the hills spread their arms to its jewels and wine, And it stirs all the trees to glad melodies That herald the pomp of processions divine,— " There’s a thought on its tide that circuits the earth To nourish the soul that knoweth its worth : The wealth of the mines and the seas Is a jot of my treasuries And Love is the pulse of my throbbing girth. When the mild air drifts through the rushes and brakes To softly fondle the morn as he wakes, When it whispers a lullaby all through the wood, ' And cozens the fairies to start their vagaries By stroking earth’s brow to a traumerei mood,— , There's a thrill in its brooding that bears me away B Toa heart that’s my heaven, as I list to its lay: Beyond all the tempests and toils And the torrent of trying turmoils Will blow the sweet zephyr of Love’s fair day.

Page 58

BIRDS.—(Part I.) By OUIDA. AM tempted to think that nothing places mankind in so odious a light as the treatment which these children of air receive at their hands. Of all gracious creations of Nature birds are surely the most charming. Birds with their friends and mistresses, the flowers, are the fairest form of earthly life. The very mystery which overshades bird-life, the miraculous and untraceable instincts of migration, the exquisite grace and har- mony of flight, the wondrous skill and art displayed in the construction of their nests, the extreme beauty of their plumage and their shape, and beyond all the melody of those amongst them who make vocal the woods and fields of spring, these should surely have rendered them a sacred gift of the gods in the eyes of that human race which is in so many ways thei: inferior. Where birds are protected and beloved their familiar presence lends the most poetic charm to country houses. The sweet clear song thrilling through dusk of morn or eve, or falling from high tree-tops through golden sunlight, is a delight so great, a beauty so pure, that were it only rare and costly the whole world would esteem it a treasure beyond price. As itis who cares?—a poet here and there, now and then a woman with quicker sensibilities and finer ear than most. For the most part the feverish, greedy, hurrying, purblind, stone-deaf human multitudes have no heed of all that divine music pouring out from those small throats through the green shadows of the leaves. The great lady wears the sunbirds of Mexico on her ball dress, and the servant ee of all ranks wears the robins from the croft on her bonnet, the — bird-fancier coops up his miserable captives in their cages, and the soulless public buys them, the nurseryman throws poison under his fruit walls, and the farmer fires his small shot in his orchard, and boys tear down the nests which are greater marvels of ingenuity than Brunelleschi’s or Michael Angelo’s cathedral-domes ; and the naturalist and the taxidermist pride themselves on specimens stuffed under glass cases; and bird-life is destroyed by one and all brutally, ruthlessly, senselessly. In a report of a museum by its curator a brief time ago there was this single line: ‘‘ Forty thousand skins are lying unstuffed awaiting classification.”’ What ruin of sweet lives; what lovely music mute forever; what glad, busy, joyous, innocent existence ended uselessly and barbarously, are depicted in that one short sentence What will the numerous labeled cases of the ornithological department of a museum teach to youth of such love of the birds as pulses through every line of verse penned by that lover of all birds, Alfred Austin? Is it better to know that there is a bird named Alanda Arvenses by naturalists, belonging to the genus of the Passeres, distinguished by bones hollow or pneumatic, etc., etc., or to hearken on a May-day morning to the skylark with a shepherd’s ear? When wheat is green, when hawthorn buds appear, nothing is so soothing, so reposeful, so suggestive of peace and joy, as the still- ness of a day in early summer when all the various voices of the woodland and the gar- den birds come through the lily scented stillness of a cool chamber to the ear. No

Page 59

choral will soothe so well the ruffled mind and _ harassed nerve ; no philosophy will so well render the impatient se- rene, the tired refreshed, the soul at war with itself willing to dream and smile and lie lulled and still at the feet of Nature. Nightingales are accounted shy by naturalists and so de- scribed in all treatises upon them, but on the contrary when the nightingale is happy he is a trustful, bold, gay bird, and he sings throughout the daytime; he will sing at night also, and indeed when the weather is warm the lute in his throat is seldom quiet. But at the risk of quarreling with all the naturalists, I affirm, after many years abundant and intimate acquaintance with nightingales, that they sing most in the daytime, and never more gloriously than at high noon. As I write these lines it is an hour after noon by the sundial, on the sixth of June, and a dozen nightingales are singing their loudest under the elderberry blossoms and the bay leaves and the walls of ivy and the ame- thyst colored flowers of the rhododendron and the odorous heights of the far-reaching honeysuckle. There is one who for many years has made his nest in the same place, a thicket, growing against the house, of arbutus and laurel with ivy and vine and jessamine climbing and leaping all over the boughs. This nightingale bird sings very nearly all the day, and often at night also; his voulades and /fioriture are very brilliant. There is a great difference in the powers of different nightingales, caused by the difference in their ages, but in all of them the daylight song is more brilliant than that of the night time, and this I distinctly affirm, all statements of conventional accept- ance and tradition notwithstanding ; and the song of the nightingale is joyous, not sad--it is an epithalamium hosanna, a song of passion, and ecstasy, and triumph. When one remembers that two thousand years ago Ro- mans were killing these divine songsters for the banquet, id that all through the intervening centuries war has en waged upon them, and yet still hear the liquid love- iness of their melo- pour in torrents ugh thesunlight the moonlight, is filled with rvel at power of terieeeteantateeen ia rr cielidiediedalineauninl

Page 60

resistance in nature and at the soulless, bestial egotism of man. By many writers both of prose and poetry the personal plainness of the nightingale is spoken of in contrast to the splendors of his song, but this idea is also inaccurate: he is a handsome, slender bird, elegantly shaped, with beautiful large eyes, and of a bright plumage rather brown than gray. When all ornithological books tell us that he is of the tribe of the Humicoloe, and in the great genus of the Oscines, and of a family which is divided into Luscinia philomela and Lucinie major, it seems as clumsily unreasonable as most scientific classifications do ; he is a night- ingale; Sappho’s ‘‘dear angel of the spring,” the idol of every poet since the days of Sappho, and he sang in the dewy freshness of an infant world. The nightingale loves a garden which is some- what wild; he wants mossy and rich ground where the fallen leaves lie year after year ; left alone he will fill your days and nights with music throughout April, May, and June. Weather affects him little. I have heard one sing raptu- rously all through the violence of a thunder- storm which frightened men by the terror of its peals and the fury of its sheet and forked light- ning ; he did not care—he sang on sheltered by the branches of a white flowered acacia tree. No song of any bird is so expressive of rapture as the nightingale. Beethoven has written it down in his Pastoral Symphony, but no instrument made by man can render the ecstasy and melody of the bird’s throat. There is an old reproach against poets that they appreciate the pleasures of the table ; ‘‘ Les poets aiment les bonne chére,’’ isa saying of ancient date. Nightingales are not exempt from the weakness. With a plate of meal worms you may make them friendly very quickly, but even without this temptation they will become quite familiar and nest close to the house if left undisturbed from year to year. They know strangers too in an instant, and usually suspend their song if persons to whom they are unused approach their

Page 61

haunts. : They generally keep silence un- til the unknown people are gone’ out of sight and hearing. The finches are far shyer birds than the nightingale. It is very hard to see the chaffinch, goldfinch, bullfinch, etc., singing or nesting; songs may be heard all around you, but the swift flight from bough to bough of the songster is usually all that is seen of him. The blackbird, on the contrary, is always willing to approach you if you have never forfeited his confidence in any way. He is a very dear and pleasant bird, with a bright bold BIRDS. 475 music which does one’s heart good, and like the nightingale’s is seldom silent from dewy morn to dusky eve. When the arbutus and bay flourish to give him his favorite food he flourishes too and grows fat and of great size. He ought to be carefully protected by vine growers, for I have seen him constantly hovering on the wing over a bunch of grapes and dexterously taking out the insects hid- den between the grapes. Alas! too often he is killed by the selfish fools who want his melodious little body for their kitchen When he is unmolested he stays and is both faithful and fa- miliar, earliest I think of all the birds to rise, and turning over the _masses of lawn and 4 ~’ meadow whilst day- “* break is still but a faint gleam in the eastern heavens. He does not migrate either, but is a joy forever with us, and though he ceases to sing as June ends, begins to tune his lute with pretty trills and a shrill chattering, like the chink- ings of silver coins, even in the autumn when linnet and woodlark deem that they ought to have the concert of the gardens and woods all to themselves. With me, the bunting, a delightful little bird, is very numerous in autumn, and the diminutive wren and titmouse are both to be often seen haunting the old walls where the creepers and ivy climb. Nothing can be more interesting than to observe the habits and the haunts of birds ; the very fugitiveness and secretiveness of these graceful lives, with their screen of leaves drawn between them and us, add to their attraction, and the sounds of their glad voices, for even the sparrow’s twittering is cheerful, is a litany to open the day with, and should scare all dullness and unkindness from its course. I confess then I care for nothing in created nature as I care for birds. To know them well, you must wade in their midst for many a season. You must let them woo, and win, and breed, and feed, and be fully at home around you, and then their glad whir of wings, their flashing flight, those boisterous voices, those swift soundless movements will be an inexhaustible source of purest pleasure ; and these lives, so near your own and spit.

Page 62

yet so completely apart from you in their mysterious and self-sufficing simplicity, will grow more dear to you with every suc- cessive year which brings back the swallow and the nightingale to their spring-time haunts, and fills the air with the call of the cuckoo and the coo of the wood-dove. Even the destruction of what are called birds of prey (though they ‘“‘prey’’ no more than man does when he eats his dinner) is deeply to be deplored. The greediness of sport hunts down the eagle of the mountain, and the hawk of the moor, and the owl of the for- est with insatiableand undiscerning rapacity. In the trees of home-wood, a falcon has lived for many years and never seems to alarm or injure the small birds ; this is I suppose a strange fact, but it is a fact. I have heard that these hawks or falcons can feed largely on rats and mice; they will not molest the birds ; and as these rodents are numerous this falcon may content himself with them. I have seen him at war with a rat, but never with a bird. How beautiful is the oriole! Beautiful in plumage and in shape; extremely shy, fly- ing usually in pairs; and ofsuch ornament to gardens and to grounds that the stupidity and malevolence of man which makes such a fairy creature persecuted and driven into solitude is one of these many crimes against WS nature which lie so heavily upon the human race. In the high pine tops and amongst the foliage of the tall white poplars which fringe my meadow wild doves coo and build and flit all sum- mer long. They area great joy, for their voices are soothing and melodious as any cadence of Beethoven or Schumann, and give the forest sense of solitude to the gardens they frequent. The thrush to my great regret is never here except in winter, Ofallthe mysteries of creation what mystery is so profound as that of migration? I watch every year these tiny travelers take these long journeys southward and northward, passing over sea and mountain and desert in their flight. I have seen here larger wanderers too, the wild ducks and the storks of the north, passing straight-steered as piloted vessels, in the thin buoyant air of autumn. The former in a long line, the latter in a triangular-shaped flock, their strange harsh cries as they fly come through the air to earth and seem to call for help upon their pilgrimage. Alas! the only heip they ever get from man is a shot which breaks their wings or a net which entraps their tired bodies if they pause and descend to drink and rest.

Page 63

WU CHIH TIEN, THE CELESTIAL EMPRESS. A CHINESE HISTORICAL NOVEL. (PART II.) TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL BY WONG CHIN Foo. CHAPTER IX. WU CHIH TIEN’S AMBITION GROWS WITH HER POWER, AND SHE DECIDES TO RULE THE EMPIRE. +e (\\ Lega ‘ eZ i! MBITION feeds on power. Once proud to be LR acs the humblest wife of Tung Ko Sung, Wu Soy 5 Chih Tien now made herself his chief em- . press, and this done she set about banishing all the other wives ; and the emperor yielded to her wishes, and so from being her master he became her slave. The great counselors of state and all the people in the empire saw the change that had been wrought in the palace at Chung Ang, and they felt that a great danger threat- ened the Middle Flowery Kingdom, but fear sealed their lips, and the dread of the heads- man’s sword made them suspicious one of the other. Tung Ko Sung, like his fathers, had been a temperate man, and he found no delight in the wines that came from the hills of the sun where the grapes are picked by the dainty fingers of the most beautiful of the Mandarins’ daughters ; but Wu Chih Tien mixed a potent drug with his wine, and he drank it till his soul was burned out, and daily the craving increased for that which was destroying his mind and body. So Tung Ko Sung appeared no more before the people, but lay slowly dying in his cham- ber, from which he had issued an order that the people must obey Wu Chih Tien. Now in a palace set in the midst of a great forest near to Chung Ang there lived a man named Chin Kow Yin, one hundred and nine years old. Chin Kow Yin had been a great soldier and the chief counselor of the present emperor and of his father. And some of the chief men in Chung Ang, knowing of his wisdom and believing in his influence, besought him to come to the palace and to point out to the emperor the danger that threatened the Great Middle Flowery Kingdom. Then Chin Kow Yin called his sedan bearers, and accompanied by his son, who was ninety years old, he set out for the palace at Chung Ang. Wu Chih Tien heard of the coming of the old patriot, and knowing that she could not refuse him admission to the palace, she made up her mind to receive him in the throne- room and to stun him by her daring. So she dressed herself in the emperor’s royal robes of vermilion and gold, and she velted to her slender waist the jeweled sword of Tung Ko Sung. And when word was brought that Chin Kow Yin was at the palace gate, she seated herself on the throne and dered that he be at once shown into her presence. Leaning on his crutches the old man hobbled near, for the clouds of many years had limmed his eyes ; but when he saw Wu Chih Tien, anger fired the ashes of age on his heeks, and he called out in a loud voice : 34

Page 64

478 ‘What stranger is this on my master’s throne ?’’ And she made answer : ““You see on the throne your master’s master !’’ ‘* But you are his wife! ’’ cried the old man. ‘‘And it is my wish,” she said, ‘‘that henceforth in the Great Middle Flowery Kingdom, the wife shall be the master.’’ Then the old man groaned and said : ‘*Woe, woe to the land when this thing comes to pass! But I have only one master under the gods. Where is Tung Ko Sung, him whom I cherished as a youth and loved while a man ?’”’ ‘*He lies in his chamber, death !’’ said Wu Chih Tien. ‘*T will find him and speak with him,”’ said Chin Kow Yin, and he spurned her with his hand, and turned angrily away from the throne. She would have stayed him, or slain him, but for fear of the people: so he tottered toward the chamber, to reach which he must cross the court of roses. And when he reached the center of the court, where of old the women of the house- hold played, he heard simpering laughter, and he stopped and rubbed his eyes. About him there crowded many young men, dressed like girls, and they ogled and tittered, and made eyes behind one another’s shoulders. When the old general saw this, he forgot his grief, forgot the danger to the empire, and broke into a loud laugh that rang through the palace, and for the moment roused the emperor from his lethargy. Then the laugh stopped, and Chin Kow Yin fell, and from his lips his life-blood poured redder than the roses. That hour the news of the old general’s death was brought.to the emperor ; and when he heard it, he hid his face ; and when the servants removed the cover, they saw that their master was dead. sick unto CHAPTER X. WU CHIH TIEN DECLARES HERSELF EMPRESS AND SETS ABOUT SHOWING HER POWER. Wu Cur TIEN did not long wear robes of white and yellow as mourning for the death of her husband, but after three moons, dur- WU CHIH TIEN, THE CELESTIAL EMPRESS. ing which time she perfected all her plans, she killed or banished all the counselors of state and the Tedos of all the provinces not favorable to her; and then she showered gifts upon the soldiers, from the greatest to the humblest, and had herself proclaimed Empress of the Middle Flowery Kingdom. Her father was chief of the palace; her uncle, Wu San Quay, she made grand master of ceremonies ; and she placed her brother, Wu San Li, at the head of the army. Through the reigns ofall the Tung emperors although the people never complained of the taxes—for being prosperous they did not feel them—great sums of money were gathered into the public treasury. And when Wu Chih Tien had slain or exiled all those who did not please her, and placed in power all her relatives, and ele- vated all who praised her acts, she opened the great vaults of the treasury, and seeing therein vast heaps of gold and silver she said to her officers : ‘*Money is the seed of pleasure; it is wrong to keep this locked up from the world. We must make Chung Ang the house of Music, and of Beauty, and of Laughter.” And the officers of state praised her great wisdom and said they would aid her to take care of the surplus. In all the lands under the sun there was not a more beautiful city than Chung Ang, but Wu Chih Tien the empress said: ‘‘ We shall make it the most beautiful capital that ever was or ever will be,’’ and she summoned skilled artisans from all the world to execute her plans. And she issued a decree, ordering the people who lived within the city walls and who wrought in wood and metal, and in fabrics for beauty and for warmth, and the makers of porcelain and lacquers, and those who dyed or were skilled in painting, and all men who followed trades, to move forthwith, with their wives and children and their household goods, to villages at a distance from Chung Ang. , The merchants who owned junks and cart trains, and who sold teas and spices and rice, and whose storehouses were full of jewels and silks, of paintings and perfumes, and of all things for barter, she sent from the city, and they found refuge in the towns round about. And the houses of the artisans she de- stroyed, and on their site great parks were

Page 65

WU CHIH TIEN, THE CELESTIAL EMPRESS. CHIN KOW YIN SPURNS THE EMPRESS. made, and artificial seas were dug and mount- ains built ; and huge forest trees were brought without hurt from the sacred mountain of Neko San and planted in the parks, till at length, where the houses of the workers had been thickest, the place looked like the wilderness where the wild beast cries at night, And on the sites of the great storehouses she caused to be built theaters for plays and grand halls for music and dancing ; and the temples of Buddha and the pagodas erected to the gods of her fathers she turned into places of revel. The old, the deformed, and young children were not permitted within the walls of Chung Ang; only gracefulinen and beautiful women could be seen in the paiaces, and in the gardens and in the pagodas of pleasure. The flash of gems, the sheen of silks, the

Page 66

480 WU CHIH TIEN, THE glow of jeweled fans, and the waving of many-hued plumes met the eye wherever it turned, and the air throbbed with sensuous music and was stirred with continual song. Nor did night bring regret for the sun. From ten thousand perfumed torches set on pillars of golden marble, fountains of flame shot up through the night, and from the trees hung festoons of colored lanterns like luminous fruit, and the senses of the revelers reeled and became drunk, and the strongest shriveled and grew old inthe riot of pleasure ; but Wu Chih Tien grew even more young and beautiful, for pleasure never palled on her tastes. And from the land of furs to the north, and from the land of gems and spices to the south, and from the sea and the Great Wall, and from the homes of the Black Flags, the seekers of pleasure swarmed to the won- drous city of Chung Ang ; and there by night and by day, as the moons rolled on, there was held and continued the feast of the Great Red Dragon. CHAPTER XI. WHERE THE RICH LIVE FOR PLEASURE, THE POOR GROAN WITH PAIN. AND now that the Middle Flowery King- dom was at her feet, and all the world ring- ing with the glory of her name, Wu Chih Tien felt stronger than the gods, in that she did all these things in defiance of their edicts. So she ordered the sacred fires to be extin- guished, and the temples to’ be turned into places of pleasure ; and she commanded that the priests go no longer shaven, but let their hair grow and take unto themselves wives. And she turned the convents at Neko San and at other sacred places into camps for her soldiers, and she gave to them the nuns for wives. Hitherto promotion to office had been the reward of merit, and only those succeeded who were skilled in the teachings of Con Fu Chi and in the knowledge that comes of patient study, and fits men for place. But she said : ‘* Learning works discontent among the people ; therefore you must close the schools. The empress alone should be the judge of those fitting to serve her; therefore there CELESTIAL EMPRESS shall be no more examinations.” And it was done with the schools and the offices as Wu Chih Tien ordered ; and learning fled the cities, and hid with the wise men in caves. But great as was the treasure gathered by the Tungs, it had a limit, and this was reached before the wasteful schemes of the empress were well begun. Seeing this, she called her counselors to- gether, and said : ‘* How did the money, that is gone, come here ?’’ And they replied : ‘*Oh, Daughter of Light, it came from the taxation of the people.”’ ‘* And the people remain in the empire ?”’ ‘* They do, oh, glorious Mistress !”’ Then she said : ‘*Send forthwith the collectors of taxes among the people; and if you would con- tinue to wear your heads, see that the treas- ury is kept full, no matter what may be taken out.’’ And the counselors kissed the ground at her feet, and said it should be as the Daugh- ter of Light commanded. So the tax-gatherers went among the people throughout all the Great Middle Flowery Kingdom, and they robbed the rich and tortured the poor ; and the groans of the suffering were heard, and the pinched faces of starving children were seen in all the villages and by-ways of the land. When the people raised their voices and cried out against the empress, she sent her soldiers and killed thousands of those who wrought at trades and tilled the land. And the merchants, who revolted, she ordered to be seized, with their wives and children, and brought to Chung Ang. Here she caused great black pits to be dug, and in them she placed wild beasts and huge serpents, whose teeth distil poison, and she caused the merchants and their wives and their children to be stripped and thrown into the pits. And this torture of the discontented be- came the pleasure of Wu Chih Tien and her court; for they would gather about the pits at the hour of execution, and laugh and clap their hands when the serpents wound about the forms of women and children, and the white teeth of the tigers were fastened in the throats of gray-haired men.

Page 67

10 SHHDIAAO AHL GNY,, ILV.LS x > = x x - < < St Zz @INOM AYHL GIVS GNYV UAH AGi¥ auvV) ANVIL OL « SAT44NS AHL AO

Page 68

WU CHIH TIEN, THE CELESTIAL EMPRESS. CHAPTER XII. HOW IT FARED WITH THE CHILD AT PAOU TING FU. Time borrowed the wings of Pleasure, and fourteen years flew swiftly by at Chung Ang ; but among the groaning poor, time dragged like a wounded snake. Meanwhile, all had gone well with the son of the dead Wong Tai Ho. The eunuch, Ta Teen, delivered the infant and his message to the good Tedo of Paou Ting Fu; then, when he had himself gained strength, he fled south to the Kingdom of Annam. And to the people, the Tedo said that the child, whom he called Li Sing Ming, was his nephew, and this also the child believed. In all the schools of Paou Ting Fu, there was not for his years so bright a scholar as Li Sing Ming, nor one more beloved of old and young. On the young prince the gods had show- ered all their graces. He was tall for his years, and fair to the eye as the bud of the golden rose breaking into bloom. His voice was sweeter than the music of the flute at the lips of a skilled player ; and his manner to the great showed respect, but to the poor it showed sympathy and love. Now the Tedo of Paou Ting Fu liked not Wu Chih Tien, the usurper, but sighed for and hoped for the return of one of the royal blood to the throne of the Great Middle Flowery Kingdom; yet, fearing for the safety of the prince, he kept his discontent hidden in his heart. At length General Mah, who had been a great soldier, but who had fled to the San Soo Mountains to save his life, gathered about him one hundred thousand brave men, who would not bow to Wu Chih Tien. From his stronghold in the mountains, General Mah sent letters to his friends by means of trusty spies, and one of these friends was the good Tedo of Paou Ting Fu. And at times the Tedo of Paou Ting Fu wrote to General Mah, always assuring him that a son of Tung Ko Suitg the Fourth lived, who, in due time, would appear to lead the oppressed people to victory, and to drive the usurper from the throne she had disgraced. But though much care was taken by the enemies of Wu Chih Tien, her guards were watchful, and so it came about one day that a messenger, bearing a letter from the Tedo of Paou Ting Fu to General Mah, was cap- tured. That very night the Tedo heard of the misfortune that had befallen him, and he knew that the life of the prince, as well as the lives of his own wives and children, de- pended on his flight from the city and from the province over which he ruled ; so he said to himself : **T will tell Li Sing Ming all, and he will know why this night we fly from Paou Ting Fu.”’ So the Tedo sent for the prince, and when the youth appeared, the Tedo threw himself at his feet, and he called out : ‘*Oh, royal master! I have deceived thee to save thee ; but give ear to that which thy servant has to say.”’ At this the prince was much surprised, for he feared that the demon, who scatters thoughts and dims the words as they fall from the tongue, had touched the brain of his uncle. Lifting the Tedo from the ground, the youth kissed his forehead, and said : ‘“‘Tam thy nephew, beloved, and not thy master. Let me help thee to bed, and to- morrow it will be better with thee.”’ But the Tedo took a seat beside him, and said : ‘*T do not dream. What I tell thee is true. Bare thy left breast, oh my master.’’ Then the prince opened his silken vest, and there appeared above his heart the red imprint.of the seal of Wong Tai Ho. ““Knowest thou what that is?’’ asked the Tedo. ‘*A strange mark which I brought into the world with me,’’ replied the prince. ‘*No,’’ said the Tedo, ‘‘that mark was made by the private seal of Tung Ko Sung, thy father, held in the dying hand of thy mother, his wife.’’ Then the breast of the youth heaved quick and fast, as if his heart would leap out through the brand of the royal seal, but his tongue lay stunned within his mouth. And the Tedo told the story of the child’s escape through the faithful Ta Teen, and when he had finished he drew from his breast a silken bag, and from the bag he took a piece of white silk, on which were traced characters in blood, and he said :

Page 69

WU CHIH TIEN, THE “This is thy mother’s will, written in the Lun Goon prison the night of her death. Read it, oh my master, and be convinced.”’ The hands of the prince trembled as he took the silk, and when he had read the last word, he fell to the floor and lay as one dead. Then the slaves came in and bathed the face of the prince, and when he had opened his eyes, the Tedo motioned for them to leave. At once the prince became strong again, and into his face, that had ever been so gentle and calm, there came the fierce light that burns in the eyes of brave men when their swords fall ringing on the shields of the foe. Taking a sword from the wall, he raised the gleaming blade above his head and cried out : ‘The spirits of the millions slain by the monster Wu Chih Tien, shriek in my ears for vengeance! But, high above them all, I hear the cry of my murdered mother call- ing me to avenge her! Oh, ye Powers of the world unknown, ye who have yielded this kingdom to the demons of vice, return and give me strength to make the throne of the Tungs pure and strong as of old, and worthy of your approval ! ”’ ‘‘The time to act has come!’’ said the Tedo. ‘Tell me how! ’’ said the prince, and he returned half the sword to its scabbard. ‘‘To-night we must fly from Paou Ting Fu, and join the patriots under General Mah in the San Soo Mountains. One of my letters to him has fallen into the hands of Wu Chih Tien, and, even as I speak, her horsemen are speeding hither to bear me pris- oner to Chung Ang, where the headsman’s sword is ever athirst for blood. This night the gates of the city of Paou Ting Fu were closed against me by order of Wu San Li, brother of the usurper and the commander of her armies. But another faithful messenger has been sent to General Mah, telling him all; and there is one part of the wall where our friends are on guard, and I have ladders of ropes by which that point can be scaled.”’ Then all became hurry in the palace of the Tedo. Sedan chairs were prepared for his wives, who could not walk fast because of their small feet, and the money and jewels were CELESTIAL EMPRESS. 483 placed in bags of skin and given to the care of faithful slaves. When all was ready, and all the dwellers in Paou Ting Fu, but the watchmen in the streets and the guards on the walls, were buried in sleep, the Tedo, with the prince close by his side and his family and slaves close behind him, in silence moved through the darkness, and without the light of any torch, till he had come to the place where friends awaited him and the walls were to be crossed. The prince would have remained till the last, had not the Tedo begged on his knees that he should go before; then after long waiting, because the women who could not trust themselves to the ladders had to be lifted over by means of ropes, all were safely outside the city, and the march for the camp of General Mah in the San Soo Mountains began. CHAPTER XIII. THE PATRIOTS BECOME CONVINCED THAT A ROYAL PRINCE LIVES. For years the people of the Great Middle Flowery Kingdom whispered one to the other that a son of Tung Ko Sung the Fourth lived, and would in due time appear to free them from the oppressor. And this story was told by the soldiers of General Mah, about their camp-fires in the mountains ; but their leaders did not believe it, even when they had read the letters of the Tedo of Paou Ting Fu, saying that of his own knowledge he knew that the son of Wong Tai Ho, the beloved, was in the kingdom. One day when General Mah was sitting in his great tent wondering and wondering if the story were true, and asking himself how all his great effort was to end, there appeared before him a number of his captains, and one of them, who had been chosen because he feared not to speak, said : “Oh, general, we grow weary of living like hunted wolves in the mountains.”’ Then the general looked up and asked : ‘“ What would ye have ?’’ And the captain said : ‘*We know not that a prince of the house of Tung may be alive, and, while we wait here for his coming, our swords are eaten with rust, and our soldiers lose heart, in a cause that is hopeless without effort.’

Page 70

484 WU CHIH TIEN, THE ‘* Know you how many men are with us?”’ asked General Mah. ‘‘Pull one hundred thousand,’’ said the captain. ‘* And the soldiers of Wu Chih Tien, how many are they ?’’ ‘“Ten times our force, and still many as the leaves on the trees, or the locusts in time of plague,’’ said the captain. ‘*And yet, you would march to Chung Ang?”’ ‘* Better die trying than die waiting,”’ said the captain. ‘* If it be true that our emperor lives,’’ said the general, ‘‘he will come to us in good time ; then the Tedos of all the provinces in the Middle Flowery Kingdom will join our standard, and the reign of Wu Chih Tien will be at anend. In him is all our hope.” Then the captains went out with eyes cast down and the slow feet of men who have heavy hearts. But the men were yet within hearing when another came in and stood before the chief, who, looking up, saw bending over him a giant soldier with a stern face, and hair that had been bleached in the tear-filled baths of sorrow. ‘*Who are you?”’ asked the general. ‘‘I am Ta Teen, the eunuch,” replied the soldier. ‘* Where come you from ?”’ ‘* After long years of hiding in the jungles of Annam, whither I fled to avoid the wrath of Wu Chih Tien, I have come to fight with your army,”’ said Ta Teen. ‘“Where dwelt you while our emperor lived ?’’ - ‘In the palace at Chung Ang.”’ ‘‘And what had Wu Chih Tien to fear from you?” ‘‘Nothing, had I remained and obeyed her orders. She sent me to the Lun Goon prison, where a son had been born to the empress Wong Tai Ho, with orders to kill the mother and child. But when I saw the true empress dying, my heart was touched, and I swore by all the godsto save the child, which she bade mecarry to her kinsman, the Tedo of Paou Ting Fu. ~On a kerchief of white silk and with her own blood, she wrote her will ; then heating the royal seal given her by the emperor, she stamped it above the heart of the child, and with it I fled to Paou Ting Fu.”’ CELESTIAL EMPRESS. ‘** And the royal seal you left back in the prison,’’ said the general. ‘‘ Without that we can not prove the claim.’’ ‘Nay, I obeyed the commands of the dying empress and carried the seal away with the child,’’ said Ta Teen. ‘* And you left both with the Tedo of Paou Ting Fu?” ‘*T left the child, but the seal remains with me,’’ which having said, Ta Teen drew from his breast the little casket of jade, and open- ing the lid, he held before the eyes of the chief the private seal of Tung Ko Sung. Then a cry of joy burst from the lips of General Mah, and when the captains, who had tarried near by, heard it, they came run- ning in, and great was their surprise to see their leader kneeling at the feet of the eunuch, and kissing something that glistened in his trembling right hand. ‘‘Our emperor, Tung Ko Sung the Fifth, lives !’’ cried General Mah. Then hetold Ta Teen’s story ; and the sol- diers shed tears of joy, and pressing about the eunuch, they kissed his hands, and laid them on their heads. Now, while they were rejoicing, a messen- ger, covered with dust, ran into the tent and handed the general a letter, which he read aloud. It was from the Tedo of Taou Ting Fu, saying that he and his family were fleeing to the mountains, and that with them came the royal prince. The glad news flew through the camp, and the cheering soldiers seized their arms, and poured like a torrent about the general’s tent. At once the order went forth for ten thou- sand horsemen to mount their steeds, and go out to meet the prince. Soon they were ready ; the royal standard of vermilion, with its golden dragon, in their midst, and General Mah, with Ta Teen by his side, at their head. And so with glad cries, and the music of sword blades on bronzed shields, they rode down from the mountains to meet their prince. CHAPTER XIV. CHIH TIEN HEARS OF THE TEDO’S FLIGHT. wu THROUGHOUT all the empire Wu Chih Tien had her spies, who often brought cruel charges against the innocent, which she was

Page 71

ever ready to believe ; but doubt never en- tered her heart as to the loyalty of the Tedo. So when the Tedo’s letter to General Mah was brought to her, and she read of his trea- son, and that the son of Wong Tai Ho still lived, her anger knew no bounds. Calling her brother Wu San Li, who com- manded all the armies, she said to him : ‘‘ Gather your best horsemen, and hasten to Paou Ting Fu, whose Tedo has shown himself to be a traitor. Seize him and his household, and bring them to Chung Ang, for it is days since the royal tigers have tasted aught but common people.”’ Wu San Li kissed the dust at her feet, for this homage she demanded even of her father, who was still the chief of the palace ; then he went out and called all the horse- men in the capital about him, and they rode to Paou Ting Fu. But when they had come to that city they were told by the people that the Tedo had fled ; then Wu San Li knew that he had gone to General Mah in the mountains, and he at once led the pursuit. Now it was slow traveling with the Tedo, for he had no horses, and to avoid detection he was forced into the thick woods and rocky by-ways; and then his wives must be car- ried, for they could not walk. The Tedo’s party were yet two days’ march from the mountains, and were encamped one morning in the forest, when all were alarmed by the jingling of chains and the rattle of scabbards, and looking about them, they saw that they were surrounded by the soldiers of Wu San Li. Then, amid the wailing of the children, the weeping of the women, and the groan- ing of the slaves, the Tedo and all who were with him were bound with strong cords, by order of Wu San Li. And they placed the pris- oners in bullock carts that were gathered from the tillers of the soil round about. When the men came to bind the prince, Wu San Li asked : ‘‘ Who is this young traitor? ’’ And the prince replied : ‘It is you who are the traitor, and the tool of a traitor !”’ Then Wu San Li drew his sword, and would have slain the youth, had not the Tedo called out : ‘*Strike him not, for he is innocent. The youth is not of my party, but joined us last night, and he is going to the village of Luz, where his grandmother lies dead.” When Wu San Li heard this, he put up his sword, and said : ‘* Yet he goes not to Luz, but with me to Chung Ang, where he will make a dainty morsel for the tigers, or die of joyin the embrace of a serpent.’’ Then he shouted to his men, and with cries of victory, the horsemen drew their swords, and formed about the carts in which the prisoners lay crowded, and so the march to Chung Ang began. (7o be continued.) (END oF Part II.)

Page 72

great po- lar whale, or the ‘‘bow-head ”’ as the whalers familiarly call it, the Balena mysticetus (Linn.) of scientists, from once being of but commonplace im- portance in the animal products of the sea, has steadily risen in value until it now over- shadows every other marine mammal known, taken as a single animal. When whaling was at its height, that is, employed the greatest number of ships and sailors, some ten to twenty years ‘‘ before the war,’’ the main incentive to the chase was in the oil that was to be had from these monsters of the deep, and whalebone, often as low as twenty-five cents a pound, cut but a small figure in the value. The sperm whale caught in warmer waters, with none of the Arctic dangers of the pursuit of the ‘‘ bow-head ”’ in the frozen seas of the far north, giving much more oil worth double the amount per gal- lon, was, naturally, more sought for than his boreal brother. petroleum in America decreased the value of the oil products of the sea toa point that threatened destruction, singularly enough the value of the whalebone began to increase as a sort of compensation, until it reached a value of ten, and in exceptional cases fif- teen times its original price when oil was the main object, and thus the ‘‘ bow-head”’ still remained worthy of pursuit for the ‘‘baleen’’ or bone in his jaws ; the sperm whale still being caught if he was found When the discovery of © while on the way to the ‘‘bow-head”’ grounds, or in places where they were known to be so numerous as to justify the chase for the oil, the sperm whale having no bone. The ‘‘bow-head’’ is the prince of bone-bearing whales, although there are other kinds, as the ‘‘hump-back,’’ the ‘‘right’’ whale, and a few more which carry baleen or bone in their jaws, and which, according to the amount they have, are val- uable ‘‘catches’’ to the enterprising whale- man, The other title of the ‘‘bow-head,’’ ‘she great polar whale, shows his size and habitat; for it is only among the ice-packs and along the ice-floes of the frozen seas, and in the chilled waters which emanate from such sources that this leviathan of the deep is found, and is profitably pursued by the hardy and adventurous whalemen. Along the Arctic coast of America but one native race is found—the Eskimo—and that the dangerous calling of the seamen from New Bedford, New London, and other whal- ing ports, should bring them in close contact with these polar people, and that they should be greatly assisted by them would be noth- ing more than would be expected. It is to describe the part taken by the Eski- mo in giving this assistance, as far as I know and have heard, and which I might here add, is the most interesting part of all to the uninitiated, that this article is intended. To do this clearly it would not only be meet and proper, but probably the most in-

Page 73

ESKIMO ICE-WHALING IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. teresting of the descriptions, to briefly dwell upon the native Eskimo method of capturing such huge game, before the white men came among them, or, at least, before they adopted their system of whaling, tempered by their own previous expefience among these ani- mals. Whoever the first white man may have been who captured the whale, it is certain that the Eskimo have had this huge animal on their game list as far back as their tradi- tions reach, and it is fair to presume for centuries before white men even dreamed of such an undertaking. Nine-tenths of the sustenance of these people, who live almost wholly along the coast, is drawn from the sea, generally in the form of fish, walrus and seals. That the whale should have at- tracted their attention is very likely, for in one of them alone is enough meat to sup- ply a fair sized village, men and dogs, the whole winter, while the blubber, tried into oil, would be sufficient to keep their lamps burning foradecade. Another quality among these northern nomads would naturally lead them to such an adventurous undertak- ing, and that is their great personal bravery in the presence of dangerous game. They slay the polar bear in close combat, with the lance and spear, and never hesitate so far as personal risk is concerned. They had no method by which the great creature could be overcome by appliances such as the white men afterwards used, but they had the resource of numbers, as the prehistoric man is supposed to have attacked the mammoth, oras a pack of wolves will slay the huge buffalo bull. They had methods by which the huge walrus, weighing about a ton, could be easily captured by their com- paratively puny strength, and it was a mere matter of multiplying it until even the mighty whale would have to succumb. This method, briefly, was by spearing the animal with a barbed weapon to which was attached a huge float of inflated seal hide, that the animal could only pull under the water with the greatest difficulty, and that finally exhausted it in its struggles so that it became an easy prey to thrusts of lances or long knives in the hands of the alert hunter. The Eskimo of my acquaintance informed me that the place they usually select for the capture of a whale, isa deep inlet-like 487 arm of the sea, in and out of which the tide rushes with considerable velocity, car- rying with it the broken ice-packs that have formed from the spring breaking up of the ice. After the tide has turned to flow out, this open drifting mass of ice-cakes usually ‘‘bunches’’ as a ‘‘ pack,’’ and be- tween this ice-pack and the shore whales may be seen occasionally playing, spouting, ‘‘breeching,’’ ‘turning flukes,’’ and indulg- ing in all the other recreations which the cetaceans love, among which feeding is a leading one. The food of the northern whale is nowhere in proportion to the size of the creature that devours it. The sperm whale of warmer waters ‘‘tackles something of its size’’ in eating the giant squid of that region, but the cold-water cetacean contents itself with de- vouring millions of the minute life that abounds in the frozen seas. This the whal- ers call the ‘‘ whale-brit’’ or ‘‘ whale-grit,”’ and it is often in such quantities as to give the surrounding sea a distinct olive-green tinge, although the little animal producing this effect is only about an inch in length. These minute beings are also carnivorous, and at the mouths of inlets, especially those fed by sediment-bearing rivers, they find their best feeding-ground; though by no means confined to such places, for they are often found in dense swarms far out to sea. Through this ‘‘ whale-brit ’’ the whales rush with open motths, straining the water through the hairy fiirze on the inside of the baleen or whalebone, which retains the mi- nute food like a sieve, and then His Marine Majesty, Knight Commander of the Big Bath, proceeds to leisurely demolish the small fry, somewhat after the manner of crowned heads and ‘‘ bow-heads’’ in general. When hungry whales first find a feeding- ground, an old whaling captain told me that they go slashing and bolting backward and forward through it like so many hungry pigs across a troughful of food suddenly put before them, and the sea-water is lashed into a foam with their efforts to appease their ravenous appetites. If a whale is seen to enter in the lane of water between the ice-pack and the shore of an inlet, it will probably make the complete circuit before coming out on the opposite shore, and it will thus be under observation for quite a long while, this being the main

Page 74

488 advantage gained by the native whalemen in their rude way of attacking, as a long time is needed to disable the huge beast. The attack may be made in large or small boats, the latter being the more exciting and consequently more interesting. The small boat of the Eskimo, the &zaé in his own parlance, is nothing but a little skin canoe, the frame-work of wood, and the armor and deck of dressed sealskin, so sewed as to be practically water-tight. It is so light that even the dwarfed Eskimo can put it under his arm and run like the wind, its weight and bulk detaining him but little in his progress. On the deck, in front and be- hind, he keeps the weapons of the chase he ESKIMO ICE-WHALING IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. As soon as a whale enters the inlet the nearest Eskimo paddles out in his &7ak, and at the first opportunity that presents itself he manages to get a walrus-spear with a float attached buried under the hide of the huge creature. The whale and its companions, if there is a school of them, go scurrying along, but, as they must come up to breathe, or ‘‘ blow,’’ they are watched from the shore as a fleet of whale- boats would watch them in the open sea, and every opportunity is taken to get another spear and float attached to the victim. When any whaleman has put in his spear, or even if he has failed to do so as the game passed him, he paddles to the ice-pack, THE GREAT POLAR, OR ‘*‘ BOW-HEAD,” WHALE. may need—his duck-spear, seal-spear, walrus- spear, lance, and possibly a great inflated sealskin bag which he ties to his spear whenever he ‘‘fastens’’ to a seal or wal- rus. This ‘‘ float’’ is intended to delay and fatigue the animal as well as indicate its position. A double-bladed paddle completes the armament, and with it the native canoe- man can make about as good time as the Indian in his birch-bark boat or even the best canoemen of civilized clubs. The assailants are strung along one side of the inlet with their Acaks and walrus-spears. The side is determined by the one the whale is most likely to enter, for they generally show a preference for one side in this matter, owing no doubt to certain conditions of tides and currents which open the ice in it the sooner. drags or carries his zak over the ice, then launches the little craft and is ready for the whale when it comes down on the opposite shore on its way out. Thusa double gauntlet is formed for it torun. The first spear is the easiest to fasten to the creature, and future success depends on whether succeeding as- sailants are able to duplicate the assault. The chances of finally securing the whale increase in geometrical proportion accord- ing to the number of impeding floats at- tached. If by the time the whale has nearly completed the circuit of the inlet’s shores it has two or three floats streaming out behind it, it is so maddened and irritated by the wounds and harassed by the Eskimo that it will probably retrace its course, break from the school if there is one, or go rushing

Page 75

ESKIMO ICE-WHALING IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. A WHALE PURSUIT IN KIAKS. aimlessly anywhere that its anger may carry it, and thus be more at their mercy than ever. At the first opportunity a lance is driven into the floundering animal, and two or three such thrusts, well delivered, are usually fatal, the whale bleeding to death in a little while. Every one familiar with the rudiments of anatomy knows that, if a vein in a human being is severed, the pocket-like valves along the course of these vessels prevent, to a great degree, the bleeding from the proxi- mate end, and consequently any serious re- sults unless the vein be an unusually large one. The whale, although a warm, red- blooded mammal, has no such protecting valves in the venous system, and whether a lance sever a vein or artery it is equally destructive. The most exciting part of the chase comes when all the Eskimo in their £zaks close in on the creature trying to give it its death- thrust with a lance. The long strung-out line of skirmishers, as we might call them, now closes en masse, each vying with the other to obtain a blow at the doomed victim. Though hitherto as silent as the dead, they are now as noisy as a district school just out, shouting to each other at the top of their voices, and fairly splitting their throats open with wild yells at each lucky stroke of some adventurous hunter and alert lance- man. This, too, is the dangerous period, for a single stroke with the whale’s flukes may send a &iak with Eskimo attachment flying through the air and describing those peculiar curves known only to science and Eskimo whalemen. The native hunter, though half his occupied time is spent on the water in search of food, is a stranger to the art of swimming, and when he makes his aérial ascent it is absolutely necessary to have a companion near by to see that the aqueous descent which follows does not become permanent. If the assault is successful and the whale finally turns belly up, the next thing is .to tow him to the land, and in doing this not only the &zaks are used but also aid is sought in the larger boats—oomiaks—each rowed by from half a dozen to adozen women. With such a huge raft of meat and blubber in tow the Eskimo take advantage of every wind, tide and current to help them reach the shore, and when this is accomplished they keep all their lines taut until high tide is reached, when they are made fast to the shore, and as the water recedes the capture is left high and dry until next high tide. Before this time, however, they generally manage to cut away the most valuable parts, and secure the rest so that the ebbing tides can do it no damage. Only the smaller whales of a school were captured in this way, ‘‘those a little longer than a &ak being the largest,”’ the old men of the Eskimo told me,—or those of from twenty to thirty barrels capacity, as a whale- man would reckon. This method is now one of the past in the northern part of great Hudson Bay, where my limited experience was cast, and I learned it only of those who had once been participants in the exciting scenes. Now these same people are fairly well supplied with civilized whaling implements from American ships that annually visit those waters, and know

Page 76

490 about as well how to use them as those from whom they come. In fact, they are most valuable assistants to the visiting whalers, and there are few of the ships that do not de- pend on having a crew or two of these fisher- men of the frigid zones, and especially for the hardest and most difficult work among the ice-packs and ice-floes, where they are ‘‘ more at home’’ than the white men, and surpass them in effective work. It should be said here that the civilized method of capturing a whale is taken wholly from that of the Eskimo; stolen, so to speak, almost bodily, in fact, from their crude system by attaching a few immaterial improvements thereto, and, most of all, in- creasing them in size somewhat in propor- tion to the huge mammal that is to be over- come. The harpoon of civilized whalers is nothing in the world but the walrus-spear of the Eskimo in almost every detail, and in proportion to the work it is required to do not nearly so effective. The walrus-ivory spear-head and shaft are, of course, replaced by steel and iron, but the harpoon-head turns under the skin of the whale when thrown, the same as the spear-head of the Eskimo weapon, and the latter probably holds on the better. The inflated float of the Eskimo’s weapon is replaced by the whaleboat itself, which is nothing but a huge ESKIMO ICE-WHALING IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. float, and has the advantage of allowing the line of many fathoms in length to be skill- fully ‘‘ payed out’’ or “‘ slackened up’”’ with the increasing or decreasing resistance of the whale, as a practiced angler ‘‘ plays’? with a bass, trout, or grayling from his reel. More than one whaleboat is needed, that a spare one may lance the animal when it is ex- hausted with its dragging the first boat around. The only improvements are com- paratively recent ones, by which the harpoon and the lance, either or both, may be thrown from guns instead of by hand, although this improvement is not universal with our Yan- kee whalemen. But when the two methods of the savage and civilized fishermen meet we have the most novel and interesting system now extant. As I have said, the Eskimo is par- ticularly valuable when the whaling has to be done amidst the ice-packs that are met with in these districts throughout the sum- mer. I have had an enthusiastic and suc- cessful whaling captain, who had spent many years with these people, tell mein glowing terms how his Eskimo allies had pursued a harpooned ‘‘fish’’ for hours across the ice- packs, the animal going underneath the ice, and the natives with their whaleboat glid- ing over the top, and splashing into the lanes of water beyond, alternately rowing PURSUING A HARPOONED WHALE ACROSS THE PACKS.

Page 77

ESKIMO ICE-WHALING IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. and using the boat as a sledge on a single runner—its keel. When it becomes necessary to cast off the line from the bow of the whal- ing-boat, the ‘‘ boat-header ’’ fastens it to an inflated skin-float, which passes under the ice and bobs up in every lane of water, and this with the “‘blowing’’ of the whale plainly indicates his course and position from time to time. When these lanes of water are wide every effort is made to fasten to the float with the whaleboat, as it is the dragging of this great obstacle that is used to exhaust the animal more than anything else. It is consequently not until the boat’s bow has almost touched the edge of the ice- pack to which it is rushing like the wind, with the water boiling at the bow’and leav- ing behind a streak of white, that the Eski- mo will let go their hold of the line and trust it to a sealskin float. My enthusias- tic informant said, in fact, that the onward movement of the boat will hardly slacken, for as its bow rides up on the nearest cake of ice the Eskimo will tumble out of the craft as if a shell had exploded among them, and, quickly grasping the gunwales, row- locks, thwarts, bow-rope, or anything handy, take advantage of the inertia to slide the boat on the ice and keep it in motion across the pack, the launching into the water beyond being done with quite as much alacrity, and all of them at the oars before the boat can stop. As I have said, the whaleboat, in passing over the ice-pack, is simply a sledge with one runner—the keel—and some of these boats are shod by the Eskimo with bone, somewhat as they shoe the sledge-runners. The only material difference is, that the bone y+ &> of the runner projects beyond the wood (see B) so as to hold a coating of ice that is put on to facilitate: travel over the hard arctic snows, while the bone on the keel (see A) is flush with the sides, as any pro- jections would do little good, and might en- danger its being ripped off in the rough usage among hummocky ice. I have seen the Eskimo in a fairly-loaded whaleboat, double the load they would carry on a whale-chase, make their way across an ice-pack at a gait that was surprising—fully 4gt two miles in about an hour and a half— and this, too, almost directly after a fully equipped boat-load of hardy New Bedford whalemen had sheered off from the attempt as ‘‘impossible,’’ when their object was no less imperative than fresh water for the ship, to be had only on the land. I think I am perfectly safe in saying that this crew of about six strong natives launched and landed the boat on the ice fully a hundred times, but with as little effort as a swimmer would have had in plunging in and pulling himself out. A quarter of a minute would have covered the time consumed in any launching or landing, and ten seconds would have been nearer the average. When weread of the numerous cases where retreating arctic crews, with not even the experience of whale- men, have run against impassable ice-fields with their small boats, it seems that the im- passability is of the same kind as that of the Eskimo in solving an astronomical problem. Both are out of their elements. I have also said that the Eskimo, when whaling on their own account, sometimes used their large skin-boats, or oomiaks, asthey callthem. According to Captain Scammon, the best authority on the Pacific coast on Alas- kan arctic whale-fishery, this kind of whaling is used nearly altogether by the Eskimo of that part of our country. He says: ‘‘ The implements are one or more harpoons, made of ivory, with a point of slate-stone or iron ; a boat-mast, that serves the triple purpose of spreading the sail and furnishing the staff for the harpoon and lance; a large knife, and eight paddles. The knife lashed to the mast constitutes the lance.”’ The chase here, as he describes it, is a sort of cross between &iak and oomiak whaling among those of North Hudson’s Bay, with this singular exception, differing decidedly from the silence preserved by the Eastern Eskimo. ‘‘ When the animal is approached near enough to throw the harpoon,’ he says, “*all shout at the top of their voices. This is said to have the effect of checking the animal’s way through the water, thus giving an opportunity to plant the spear in its body, with line and buoys attached.’’ The chase continues in this wise until a number of weapons are firmly fixed, causing the animal much effort to get under water, and still more so to remain down; so it soon rises again, and is attacked with renewed vigor.

Page 78

< SAQv SS S S SS ESKIMO CUTTING UP A WHALE. The preceding cut illustrates the Eskimo fashion of cutting up or ‘‘ flensing ’’ a whale that they have found along the beach and towed to high-water mark, and are now try- ing to dispose of before the tide comes in again. The man and woman on top are both supplied with the ancient style of saw and knife, while the best implements for the purpose they have are only common knives, which shows that the party was not prepared for this business, and that the whale, there- fore, must have been an accidental catch. Large slabs of whale blubber are seen in the foreground, which will ultimately reach the stores of the Danish traders, but among the wilder tribes would have been used for their own comfort in heating their snow-houses in the winter. The flukes have been cut off, and before the tide reaches them they will be dragged beyond its reach, for the flukes, with the flippers, are considered the delicate parts for their cooking purposes ; the mere fact that the whale has been dead a few days not especially injuring it for the Eskimo market. I must say from my own experi- ence with seal and walrus flippers that those parts of marine mammals make a very deli- cious dish, compared with ‘‘ all thedelicacies the market affords.’’ They taste not unlike pickled pigs’ feet cooked to a jelly. Another favorite part of this enormous carcass is the skin, about an inch thick, and a dozen shades darker than the proverbial ace of spades. The Eskimo name for it is muk-tuk, which is also their name for black ; and nothing could be blacker. It is called ‘‘black-skin ’’ by the whalemen, and is only a part of the true skin, which comprises all the blubber, often a foot thick. The civil- ized whalers, too, are quite fond of ‘‘ black- skin,’’ and, after a successful capture, and they are ‘“‘4rying out’’ the blubber into oil, they often leave a piece of this jet-black skin adhering to a piece of blubber, and the proc- ess of boiling out the oil cooks it, when it is devoured with much relish. But to the civilized man the most appre- ciated part of the northern whale is the bone in its mouth, and which increases its value in an average 1oo-barrel fish from $1,500 to about $7,000 or $8,000; and how he is assisted in capturing the object of his appreciation, by the help of his Arctic al- lies, we hope we have made tolerably clear. HARPOONING A WHITE WHALE.

Page 79

A CITY OF SEA-SHELLS. By ALLAN FORMAN. HE City of St. Augustine, in addi- «. tion to its historical interest as the = oldest city in the United States, is , rapidly coming into importance as a winter resort, not alone for invalids who seek the balmy air of Florida, but for people of good health and abundant means who go there to escape the snow, slush and ice of our Northern winters. The erection of the new hotels which, in combina- tion with the climate, attract the luxuriously disposed tourist, has, to a certain extent, modernized the an- cient appearance of the town, but whole streets of the old houses still remain, and the new buildings have been designed in such perfect har- mony with the atmosphere of the place that they add to, rather than detract from its picturesqueness. Even the old cathedral, which was built in 1790 and was partially destroyed by fire in 1887, has been so cleverly restored that few can tell where the original leaves off and the new structure begins. There is a delightful mellowness of color in the coquina cement of which the cathedral, the sea wall, the old fort, and indeed most of St. Augustine is built, that lends a pleasing air of antiquity to the buildings even while they are in the first flush of absolute newness. It is a color, or rather the town has a tone of color, which is peculiarly its own. You may catch a suggestion of it in some of the old adobe missions of Spanish California, but there is the difference between the two which must always exist between mud and the delicate sea-shells of the ocean beach. No words can describe it; there is no tint known in our language which exactly ex- presses the color tone. It shines from myriads of points as if encrusted with diamonds, yet it is as soft as the finest velvet. Perhaps a description of how it is made will convey the most adequate idea of this elusive color. Across the blue bay where the white sails of the pleasure-boats swell in the warm breeze and the graceful steam yachts lie at anchor, there is a sandy strip of island about a mile wide and some seventeen mileslong. The middle ridge of this island is topped with a growth of azalias, stubby oaks and palmettos, and standing in the midst is the round tower of the Anastasia Island light-house, painted in spiral stripes of black and white, and adding such a striking feature to the landscape that some irreverent wag dubbed it ‘‘the Ponce de Leon barber's shop,”’ a name which has clung to it with some persistency ever since. But the backbone of Anastasia Island is not of sand, as the careless observer might suppose. It is made up of myriads of tiny sea-shells worn smooth and brown by the ceaseless wash of the ocean for centuries. They are neither white nor brown nor yellow but a combination of all three, just that delicious creamy brown that one sees on the crust of a freshly baked Vienna roll. The simile is a homely one, but it comes more nearly to the truth than 35

Page 80

494 anything else I can think of. In these shells we have one ingredient of the coquina composition. The other is the cold gray, Portland cement of commerce, such as we line our cellarsand cisterns with. Thecom- bination of the two gives a warm, soft, liv- ing gray, which for lack of better name might be called *‘ St. Augustine gray.”’ It may seem that I am over particular as to exact hues and shades, but that is a characteristic of St. Augustine ; its color is as much a part of its attractiveness as its balmy air, its orange groves, or its rose-gar- dens. Nowhere in the world, except in Southern Spain or Northern Africa, can such blue skies be seen ; and the red tiled roofs capping the coquina walls, the whole rising above the shining green of the orange and lemon trees and standing out against the sky in graceful gables, towers and minarets form a picture which is as pleasing to the eye as the soft southern breeze laden with the perfume of roses and orange blossoms is to the other senses. There is a harmonious combination of color and atmosphere about this city built of sea-shells which is impos- sible to describe in cold type; there, more readily than anywhere else in America, does one learn the meaning of dolce far niente. The regulation ‘‘sights’' of the town are soon got through with ; then come the days of perfect rest and the nights of unbroken sleep, varied with just enough leisurely strolls about the town or sails on the bay to sharpen the appetite. Fishing parties, ten- nis tournaments, yacht races, horseback riding and dances in the evening serve rather to break the monotony than to ex- haust the participants as watering-place amusements are too apt to do. A forenoon spent in fishing on the bay only serves to make an afternoon in the loggia of the hotel, listening to the fountain and bathing in the air and sunlight, the more delightful. One is never at a loss for something to do, yet one is never tempted to do too much ; there is not that ever present effort after a ‘*good time’’ which makes watering-place life a snare and a delusion. After the first few days the visitor realizes that existence in St. Augustine is sufficiently delightful without the adventitious aids to enjoyment which are required in less favored locali- ties. There is nothing which is calculated to A CITY OF SEA-SHELLS. make the Northern tourist more thoroughly satisfied with his surroundings in this quaint old city than reading his home papers. Tosit under a tree, clad in summer flannels and read about the snow, slush and blizzards of the North gives one a curious feeling of contentment mingled with doubt as to the correctness of the date of the news- paper. It is hard to realize, as youtake your first walk through the St. Augustine orange groves and rose gardens, that only two days before you were shivering in the streets of a Northern city. The first attraction to the Northern visitor, after the great hotels, is the old fort of San Marco. It is a queer old structure, built of the ever-present coquina, full of secret pas- sages, underground dungeons, and the center ofa perfect network of historical associations. Built by the Spaniards in 1592, it has suc- cessively passed into the hands of the Eng- lish and the United States, and at one time it is related that that enterprising freebooter, John-Davis, landed at St. Augustine in search of plunder and left his black flag floating over its ramparts. It is not supposed that Davis was much profited by his venture however, for there was nothing for him to take except the fort, Sir Francis Drake hav- THE ANASTASIA ISLAND LIGHT-HOUSE.

Page 81

OOUYN NYS 4O L4O4A GZHI i | sa)

q \y RY

ote ream OO ay a Fes ome WO FOLPG Dy, nite ULE npr A “paar ap cu page ™ TMT Oty OP _ > ee VER aa megane SS. Be = ie for Mee = | oh ep ¥. 4 Cb Xi a Wr tus fo” “btw “~ nagecenn «cerca fi 2 ye COG x ) f hp eA v0, ar AMA MMW WW AOLMY PL LMM ~~ —_ ~ —_ a ~ SS Ry] Ve J N \ \ { \ N Va cote -<f £ taetiaeetateenatianaen atitiiennenee aa a —__ <_EZZ = Ys - lene’ one f, ) ee + PP f j poe fe Y Wh, (7 « iy ino { 4 "

Page 82

A CITY OF SEA-SHELLS. Oia Sink ing been there before him. To-day it stands on the list of our nation's coast defenses under the name of Fort Marion, and is gar- risoned by a corporal from the military post just beyond the town. The citizens of St. Augustine have petitioned to the War De- partment for the privilege of changing the name back to the original Spanish, San Marco, but the rules of the War Department do not take into account such a little matter as appropriateness, and the petition was denied. Happily the good common sense of the people came tothe rescue, and the quaint old structure is known by its historical name, while as Fort Marion it appears on the offi- cial records. The only wonder is, that in the iconoclastic fever which swept over the country, for renaming everything, and, so far as possible, eradicating all traces of ro- mantic or historical interest, St. Augustine itself was allowed to retain its name. It surely was some oversight on the part of our lawmakers which permitted it, otherwise we might have seen the picturesque old Spanish town masquerading on our records as Smithtown or Jonesville, presenting the incongruous appearance of a cavalier of the Sixteenth Century, clad in his full armor and wearing a plug hat. I have been told by military engineers that the old fort is one of the finest specimens of military architecture of its period, now ex- tant, and I can well understand how, with its excellent position commanding the bay and the town, its high, thick walls, and its broad, deep moat, it should have been looked upon as well-nigh impregnable against the clumsy artillery of the day. Even now, I fancy, that it would last longer than some of our more modern forts which are con- structed of granite or other brittle stone. The spongy coquina will receive a cannon- ball like a bale of cotton, and it is probably largely owing to this peculiarity that the fort is in its present excellent state of pres- ervation. I will not usurp the prerogative of my friend, the garrison, by attempting to describe the fort in detail. I have already filled his honest soul with assorted varities of woe by my endeavors to ‘‘ take”’ the fort with my camera, and it would be little short of cruelty to rehearse here the grewsome

Page 83

CREME ach Pn anne cage ’ Mae ae THE PONCE DE LEON, Drawn by E. J. Meeker,

Page 84

498 tales of the dungeons, the skeletons, the treasure crypt and the secret passage, over a half a mile in length, which leads to the cathedral. All of which are the personal property, or at least among the perquisites, of the ‘‘ garrison.’’ Apart from its historical interest it is a most delightful place to lounge in. Take a book on a warm February morn- ing and select a shady corner on the ram- parts, where yoy will catch the salt breath of the ocean borne upon the balmy Southern breeze, and see the graceful sail-boats dart- ing up and down the bay; the chances are that you will not read very much, but you should take a book with you nevertheless and thrust your fingers between the leaves as if you had just stopped reading. Every- body else does so, and, moreover, there is something in our American natures which rebels against going anywhere for the avowed purpose of day-dreaming. Yet day-dreaming will be the probable result. The very walls of the fort are so thoroughly saturated with ghostly memories of the past that the mind naturally wanders back to the time when in 1740 King George II., of England, sent a fleet by sea and an army by land, under com- mand of Governor Oglethorpe, to test the strength of the coquina walls, which the Spanish king, some hundred years before, had declared had ‘‘ cost him their weight in gold.’’ Oglethorpe planted his guns on Anastasia Island and on North Beach, up- wards of three thousand of the inhabitants of St. Augustine sought refuge in the fort and for two months British cannon-balls were hurled against the sturdy walls of San Marco. The summer came with its rains, and the English forces exposed to the broil- ing sun, the storms and the mosquitoes of Anastasia Island were forced to raise the siege. Thesoft breeze as it whispers through the deserted casemates seems to bear the echoes of the G/orias sung by the Franciscan monks as the last British soldier was seen leaving the harbor. Further back the imag- ination carries us, over all the chequered history of the little town until the buildings seem to melt away, and are replaced by In- dian huts, a structure thatched with palmetto leaves stands where, but an hour before, we saw the ruins of the old market, and in front of it, looking eastward, is the stuffed figure of a great stag, the symbol of the ancient Indian village of Seloy. The stag is gazing A CITY OF SEA-SHELLS. toward the sea, and as we turn our eyes in the same direction we perceive three high- pooped vessels just coming over the bar. There is a commotion among the dark- skinned natives, but they greet the strangers kindly as they land, and here in June of 1564, we see the first tourists to St. Augus- tine—the French Huguenots, under Réné de Laudonniére.. For some reason not ex- plained they did not settle in Seloy, but sailed farther up the coast to the mouth of the St. John’s River, which they called the River May, and where they built Fort Caro- line. Seloy was again left to the Indians until 1565, when that cultured Spanish gen- tleman and blood-thirsty villain, Don Pedro Menendez d’Aviles, sailed into the harbor with a fleet of some thirty vessels with the laudable intention of converting the Indians and exterminating the Huguenots. How well he succeeded in both designs is recorded in the darkest pages of Floridian history. Matanzas, the place of slaughter, commem- orates the spot where nearly five hundred of the Huguenots were stabbed in the back, in companies of ten, after being made prisoners by Menendez’ soldiers. The friendly Indians were driven out or made slaves. Then follow reprisals by the French, the uprising of the Indians, the attacks of Drake and Davis, and we are brought back again to the siege of Oglethorpe in 1740. But the Spanish vic- tory over Oglethorpe did not last long, for in 1763, Spain and England entered into a deal which exchanged Florida for Cuba, and the cross of St. George floated over the walls of San Marco. Under the British rule the Minorcans were ennobled, and their descend- ants still constitute the aristocracy of the old town. During the Revolutionary war St. Augustine was intensely loyal to the English, and furnished a haven of refuge for Tories from the Northern colonies. As a re- ward for this loyalty, in 1783, when King George III. of England and King Charles III. of Spain became possessed with a desire to ‘‘trade,’’ Florida was retroceded to Spain in exchange for the island of Jamaica. Forty years of dreamy Spanish indolence followed. lazy years of hunting, fishing, cock-fighting and bull-baiting, broken by the quarterly visits of the supply ships from Spain. In 1821, Florida was ceded by Spain to the United States, and the pushing, ruffianly ad- vance guard of American civilization pro-

Page 85

HaISNI aint % 4 AONOd ada ‘NOW! ‘uuag AAADE AQ umvaAg

Page 86

A CITY OF SEA-SHELLS. THE OLDEST HOUSE IN THE OLDEST TOWN. voked the Seminole war. From then till now is but astep. We look out over the ancient city which was founded forty-nine years earlier than the little Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam, and fifty-five years before the May Flower came laden with chairs, spinning-wheels and cream jugs to Plymouth Rock. The red roofs of the Ponce de Leon and the Alcazar rise above the oranges and palms, the book drops from our fingers, and we realize that we have been dreaming on the battlements of San Marco. There are guides and guide-books galore which will point out to the tourist the oldest house, the king’s forge, the convent and all the regulation ‘‘sights’’ of the sea-shell city. Yes, and will tell you stories about them too, more or less authentic but all worth the price charged; to the curiously inclined tourist, they are not hard to find. Dr. Vedder's collection of Florida birds and animals, on Bay Street opposite the sea- wall is, so far as I know, not mentioned in the guide-books, yet it is well worth a visit. Here Constance Fennimore Woolson got her idea of the dancing crane which she works in so effectively in East Angels, and here I have spent many a lazy half hour feeding the pelican and listening to the comical singing of the doctor’s pet owl. The great- est attractions of the town are not the old fort and city gates with their historical memories; not the sea-wall which was erected in 1837, by a considerate and pater- nal government, and was made just wide enough for two persons to walk abreast, and just narrow enough, so that the thoughtful young man is compelled to take such pre- cautions as may seem to him necessary to prevent his fair companion from falling into the bay; not the old coquina houses, nor the rose gardens and orange groves, but the new hotels. It is Northern energy, liber- ality and enterprise which has made St. Augustine unique in the world as a watering- place. The San Marco, the Magnolia, the St. George and the Florida House are all above the average of winter resort hotels. Until two years ago, the San Marco, with its broad piazzas and magnificent sea view, was

Page 87

etd ye : ee ie ] , 7 sa fe | vie a a 4 . saat! Sa Drawn by E. Blum. THE ALCAZAR.

Page 88

502°. the finest hotel south of Washington. Mr. Henry M. Flagler came, and under his con- juring rod of gold sprung up three of the finest hotels in the world. The Ponce de Leon, the Alcazar and the Cordova. Mr. Flagler’s work for St. Augustine did not stop with building these palaces ; he drained the town, he built churches and repaired the roads; the antiquities he has touched with a loving and reverent hand, restored them where restoration was necessary. He has made it the healthiest town in the United States. When the terrible yellow fever was desolating Jacksonville, St. Augustine did not have a single case. He put on the ves- tibuled trains which run from New York in thirty-six hours, and single handed he has infused Northern push and enterprise into the sleepy old city of sea-shells. It is not our province to inquire into Mr. Flagler’s objects in this immense outlay of time and money. Gigantic as the scheme may seem it is a mere ‘‘ flyer’’ in compari- son to the Standard Oil Company, in which Mr. Flagler is one of the leading spirits. If he succeeds in making St. Augustine a win. ter Newport, and the indications are that he will succeed, he will reap a profit as mag- nificent as his investment. Even should he fail, the Ponce de Leon will stand not only a monument to his enterprise, but a means of art education for generations to come. Let us take a glance at this hotel, which the Duke of Newcastle pronounced the most magnificent building in the world. It cov- ers a space of about two of our New York avenue blocks in width, and the depth is equal to the distance between Fifth and Sixth avenues, at the upper side of Madison Square ; in other words something over six acres. It has three hundred and seventy- five rooms, and the grand dining-hall will seat eight hundred persons ; but these sta- tistics of dimensions give but little idea of the building itself, and a detailed description is impossible, for the reason that, being such a harmonious whole, every minutest detail is related to the entire general effect. The hotel is built around three sides of a court- yard or garden one hundred and fifty feet square, with an elaborate fountain in the center, surrounded by flower-beds of tropical plants. The architects, Messrs. Carrere & Hastings of New York, chose the style of the Spanish Renaissance for the building, A CITY OF SEA-SHELLS. and they have closely followed the best mod- els of that period throughout the work. The selection was peculiarly happy, not only be- cause of its inherent beauty and its adapt- ability for the purpose, on account of the historicai associations of the town but the certain impalpable yet perfectly apparent Spanish atmosphere which clings to St Augustine. Moreover, it allows a wide lati- tude, for the style was the old monastic Gothic, strongly tinged by a long and close contact with the Moors. The material of which the Ponce de Leon is built is the ever present coquina cement, relieved with bold masses of terra-cotta trim- mings. It is really a monolith, the walls being cast in the cement, not built block by block. Two square towers one hundred and fifty feet in height, with heavy terra-cotta balconies and innumerable little dormer windows and Spanish turrets, break any tendency toward monotony which the gen- tly sloping roofs of the curved Spanish tiles might have. The terra-cotta is not of the ordinary brick-red hue, but has a rich, warm, yellowish tinge, very pleasing to the eye. The immense front gateway which gives entrance upon the garden, and the clois- tered walk around, has the effect of some old monastery, while the graceful balconies and rich central doorway are worthy of a king’s palace. Passing through this doorway, which is in the form of a broad Spanish arch, one enters the rotunda which runs up through all four stories of the hotel. The basic shape is a square, which, by means of groined or coved ceilings, is changed to an octagon, and above again to a circle. This rotunda, with its carved oaken columns, its tesselated pavements, and the elaborate decoration of the coved arches, is in itself sufficient to furnish material for a week’s study. Every detail is appropriate to the style of architecture, and has some direct bearing upon the story of the old town and the romantic old Spanish knight for whom the hotel is named. The eight massive carved oaken columns which support the first floor are each composed of four laugh- ing Spanish girls standing back to back, and supporting the great weight of the sec- ond floor with apparent ease. Here are the office, the news-stand, and all the offices of the hotel. Everywhere is a vista of magnifi- cent distances. Standing in the center of

Page 89

{ bia | t \ f ‘ \ \ \ | | yy. $ iH vAodad¥uoo LOS, mew, %2 On Whiz Y bie LEED ORE WO i x Ss uojvgy ‘WH @ unvad

Page 90

504 the rotunda a broad hall extends down through the hotel on either hand; behind is the garden through which we have just passed ; in front is a flight of eleven marble steps leading to the great dining-hall, while above are the frescoed coves and the old ivory dome of the rotunda sixty-eight feet above our heads. These eight coves are worthy of especial description, each con- taining a fresco which is in itself a study. The four seated female figures, representing Adventure, Discovery, Conquest, and Civili- zation, and the four standing figures be- tween typifying the elements, Earth, Air, Water and Fire, would,. if exhibited by themselves, be considered worthy of a col- umn of critical analysis. Between these the stag’s head, the emblem of the old Indian town of Seloy, is used with decorative effect. The entrance to the din- ing-room is under fully carved arch of Verona marble, with a font-shaped balcony project- ing above it and giving support to a musi- cians’ gallery, which overlooks the dining- hall and the rotunda. The dining-room is bewildering in the A YELLOW FEVER NURSE. A CITY OF SEA-SHELLS. beauty and intricacy of its decorations. The coats-of-arms of the various Spanish prov- inces, rich with argent, gules, azure, and or, are worked in with telling effect. The main hall is about ninety feet square and forty- eight feet from floor to ceiling, and is flanked on either side by two great rounded bay windows projecting about thirty feet, and divided from the main hall by massive oak columns. Around the main hall runs a clere-story pierced by eight stained-glass windows. Between these windows, on each side, are four female figures, beautifully painted and representing two different con- ceptions of the four seasons. Great high- pooped Spanish galleys of the time of Ponce de Leon are utilized in decorations, and a frieze of laughing cupids bearing cups of wine, to welcome the guests. An ingenious feature is an epitomized history of Florida which is worked in on silver panels on the ceiling of the bays. It would require a draw- ing to convey any very accurate idea of these panels, which are a civilized imitation of the Indian picture writing. A partial explana- tion will suggest the general scheme. For example, the first line is Ponce de Leon, a single Spanish galley with all sails set, and the date 1512 signifies that Ponce de Leon came safely in one ship that year and discov- ered Florida; in 1528 Pamphilio de Narvaez with one ship. When the sails are set, a successful voyage is indicated, while bare masts tell of ashipwreck. A ship reversed means that the explorer returned to his home again, a bloody sword signifies fights with the Indians, spear-heads, massacres of the settlers by the natives, the arms of Spain, the fleur de lis of France, and the cross of St. George indicate the nationality of the explorers ; conventional castles mark the erection and completion of San Marco, while the United States shield and the figures 1821 record the date when Florida was admitted to the Union. But it is worse than useless to attempt an adequate description of the artistic beauties of the Ponce de Leon in the space of a maga- zine article. It would require a book with many illustrations to do it justice, and even then the exquisite harmony of color is lost in black and white reproductions. The grand parlors, one hundred and four feet by fifty- three, divided by portiéres, and containing a beautiful carved mantel, in which is set a

Page 91

A CITY OF SEA-SHELLS. Drawn by Harry Fenn. A FLORIDA HOME clock of transparent Mexican onyx; the ladies’ entrance, with its groined ceiling of small shingles resembling fish-scales ; the tropical garden on the roof, the many fount- ains which charm the ear with their musical splashing deserve much more accurate de- scription then I can give them here. In an- other house any one would be a feature which would command unbounded admiration ; here they are but integral parts of a perfect whole. The new beauties, as they attract notice day by day, excite no surprise ; they belong where they are. It took the architects and decorators over two years to elaborate these details, and it is not in reason that they should be grasped by the unprofessional visitor in a day and written up in a maga- zine page. Moreover, the climate and surroundings have somewhat to do with the charm. In Madison Square, which, by the way, would not hold the hotel, the Ponce de Leon would be outré, almost bizarre. Here in St. Au- gustine it is as much a part of the land- scape as the glossy orange trees with their golden fruit, or the graceful palmettos and tropical flowers which bloom in the court- yard. I fancy that a great part of the artistic success of the building is due to the fact that the architects and decorators worked in per- fect unison, and it is impossible to detect where the work of the one left off and the other began. There is nothing which strikes one as being out of place or superfluous. Across the street is the Alcazar, built in much the same style of architecture and of the same material yet thoroughly character- istic and distinct. It has a rather more decided Moorish tone than the larger house, its minarets are lighter and it is less ornate in decoration. It stands well back from the street with a large garden, in the center of which is a great fountain, between it and the roadway. In the Alcazar is the amusement hall, the swimming bath, which is the largest in America, the sulphur water plunge, the Turkish and Russian baths, and a num- ber of stores. In addition to all this the Alcazar contains about fifty bachelor apart- ments and as many suites of rooms for fam- ilies. Diagonally opposite to the Ponce de Leon is the Cordova, which follows the Spanish style as the Alcazar does the Moorish, many of its features being directly copied from buildings in the ancient Spanish city from

Page 92

506 which it takes its name. Standing alone it would attract admiration, in its present position it is but anatural supplement to the other two houses. The fact that it is able to stand the comparison proves its artistic worth. All the appointments of the three hotels for the comfort of their guests are as perfect as their artistic harmony, With a mag- nificence worthy of the unspeakable climate and their superb architectures they set tables and provide for the enjoyment of their guests in a way not equaled in this country outside of New York City. I should like to goon and describe the fairy-like effect of an illumina- tion of the hotels, when the gardens and fountains glisten with myriads of Chinese lanterns and electric lights, but the subject is an interminable one; at every turn new beauties are disclosed and every day brings new pleasures. Some time when a large A CITY OF SEA-SHELLS. stock of admirational adjectives have been added to our language and some new process of illustration has been discovered -vhich can reproduce color and atmosphere as well as form, I may attempt the alluring task of writing a detailed description of St. Agustine. In the mean time I must be content to hint at its attractions in the indolent fashion which is engendered of the atmosphere of the town. With the growing energy of the } .ace some chronicler may spring up who has the skill to catch the blue of the sky, the verfume of the breeze, the marvels of modern art and the fascinating mist of historical fact and fancy and transfer them all to the printed page. I freely confess myself unequal to the task, and most modestly retire to my chair on the porch and eat oranges, waiting for the writer to make his appearance, who can do justice to this city built of Sea- Shells.

Page 93

Page 94

I MUST beg the readers of this department to bear in mind one or two elementary principles, even in our consideration of spec- ialties or details in the reform of social order. A great deal is said by careless people about a ‘‘ glut of labor,’’ as if, in the world, there could be more men creating than were needed. It is true, that if they create what is not wanted, itis a pity: as when a little village has created twice as many potatoes as it wanted, and has not facilities for sending them where people are hungry. But, really, the difficulty here is not that there are too many laborers ; it is that their labor has been spent that year on the wrong thing. If, then, the stuff and nonsense which is written, sung and said about an “ overplus of labor,’’ could be silenced ; and if, instead of thinking of it, men and women would try to think where work is needed, and how the work-people could be employed who are wasting their energy, something would be gained. In point of fact, speaking a little roughly, the work of one man, one day, in Dakota, manufactures about as much wheat as a man in England or France or New York will eat in a year. The work of another man, for one day, is enough to carry to market this year’s food for one. And one more man, at work one day, would grind it into meal, make it into bread, and carry it to the eater’s table. Of three hundred and thirteen work- ing days, then, only three days’ work are needed forthe keeping alive ofa man who is reasonably near one of the great centers of distribution. Ifthe eateris far away from such a center, it may take four days or even five to keep him alive. So far has Christian civilization removed us from the state of a Digger Indian, who, being alone, and having hardly any tools, has to spend three hundred and sixty-five days in the year in collecting the snakes, snails, acorns, tubers, and other food which keep his body alive. How will you use the work of working- men for the other three hundred and ten days? It is a very absurd solution which says, ‘We will select one per cent. or two ofthem, and make dudes or dudesses out of them. We will havea little fraction of people who really know how to do nothing except to put on their clothes and take them off, to eat their meals and to go to sleep.’’ In fact, that fraction of one or two per cent. is quite too large. These people, also, are very wretched. And the ‘‘ Society for Providing Occupation for the Higher Classes’’ has no more difficult work on its hands than dealing with such people. An excellent use is made of the three hundred and ten off days when the work-

Page 95

SOCIAL PROBLEMS. man devises methods of freeing the world from the hateful necessities of brute labor, and substitutes intelligent work in its place. This process has made most of the victories of the nineteenth century. Let it never be forgotten that ‘‘labor,’’ which is the mere physical effort of matter upon matter, is always hateful. But ‘‘ work’’ pure and simple, being the action of mind upon matter, is always God-like and agree- able. ‘‘ My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.’’ The demagogue who says that labor is honorable, and that he is a laborer himself, does not know how to use language, —or says what he does not think—prob- ably the latter. Work, on the other hand, is always honorable, and might be always agreeable. The great effort, therefore, of this century has been to substitute work for labor. Mr. Corliss, of Providence, did so much in this way, that, by the Corliss cut-off, he added twenty-seven per cent. to the working force of the steam engines of the world. The night after that invention was perfected, the working world had gained more than one- quarter part of the time it needed the day before, if its work were done by the station- ary steam engines. In proportion as the workmen of the world set themselves to such problems is the work of the world made more God-like, more easy and agreeable. Next to the gain thus added, it is clear enough that everyone gains, as communica- tion from place to place becomes easier. Government, therefore, deals very early with problems of transportation. It is a sad waste to have these potatoes rot because there is no one to eat them. It is a great advantage to have that wheat from Dakota carried so cheaply over the world. The schoolmistress, friend of Mr. Tangier, who built a sidewalk, or Robert Stephenson, when he invented the locomotive, or Alderman Jaehne, when he built the Broadway street railway,—are, all of them, so far, adding to the working force of the world. It is not wonderful that governments should do all they do to throw open such transportation, so that landroads shall be as cheap as the sea is, which is a great water- road. You pay no toll when you walk down the Fifth Avenue, and one day you will pay none on the Brooklyn Bridge, which cost less than the Fifth Avenue. 36 5°99 IF, in the next place, the reader will look around him and see what makes his daily life comfortable and happy, then what does most for this, he will be able to see in what channel he would best like to employ these people whom the world does not need for its potatoes or its wheat. A list of these things for the people who read the COSMOPOLITAN, would probably be something like this. It will be remembered that they have their bread—the staff of life—already. 1. Clothes. 2. Houses. 3. Fuel. 4. But- ter and milk. 5. Meat and salt. 6. News- papers. 7. Books or music. 8. Music or books. (The last two will vary with indi- vidual tastes.) 9. Pictures, statues, etc. Io. Travel. It will not do to say that we will divide our people who are not engaged in producing wheat into ten classes, and have one-tenth for tailors, one-tenth builders, one-tenth en- gaged in the mining of coal and in the cut- ting of wood, one-tenth engaged in dairy work, and soon. This would give us a tenth of the number for newspaper men, a tenth for writers and printers of books, and a tenth for writers, printers, and performers of music, And when we had done, we should find out that there was no man to insure our lives for us, and soon, and so on. But the prepara- tion of such a list, and a little thought of it, will help the reader to answer the question, which is not always very wisely answered, as to the effort which he shall make if he wants to improve social order in placing the round peg in the round hole, and the square peg in the square hole. Let him remember, first of all, that he does aman no good unless he makes him better. In any effort which he makes toward social order, this is really funda- mental. It is not enough for him to try to keep things along as they are. By giving a hundred loaves of bread to a hundred hungry people, if he leaves them in just the condi- tion the next day that they were when he be- gan with them, he has really done nothing. Let him see that one of those hungry people is in a better condition to earn his own living, which means to improve and simplify the social order, than he was before. Let him see that a man can use tools better, or that he can read better, or that he can write better, or that he can drive a locomotive engine

Page 96

510 better. Let him in some way improve the man who falls into his care, and then he has done something toward improving the social order. The rivalries between different occupations, or men in the same occupation, teach us a good deal of what is needed and what is not needed in our social order. But no true man means to leave the problem to what modern civilization call$ the survival of the fittest, which older proverbs spoke of in amore profane way.. There is a great deal which may be done to smooth the rival- ries of trade ;'a great deal may be done to prevent the antagonisms which add so much to human misery. At the present moment the world has found out that Industrial Ed- ucation can be pressed, on system and with public oversight, in a hundred ways in which it has never been pressed before. The result of this is that you have a happy and cheer- ful workman, enlarging and improving the whole of the social order, instead of a tired and disgusted laborer, measuring his weak muscle against the strong earthly forces, and really at the bottom of the social scale. Every step taken forward in such ways is a real advance, and a million of such steps are going to bring in the civilization of the twentieth century. THE question is constantly asked and never answered, whether, on the whole, crime is increasing in America. When I say it is never answered, I mean that it is never an- swered satisfactorily. Theanswer isa preju- diced answer, depending very largely upon the man who makes it. It is a sadly complicated inquiry, and no tolerable results will be reached without the co-operation of many more clear-headed men and women than have yet engaged them- selves in it. In the first place, there is a steady arrival in America of the criminal class of Europe and perhaps of Asia, who have ‘‘left their country for their country’s good.’’ If any- body had any doubt in that matter, that doubt is entirely relieved by the first report of the congressional committee, which is but just now in our hands. And in all the grat- ification Americans feel, which is certainly real, that the number of prisons in England is diminishing, and the aspect of their criminal prosecutions is as favorable as it is, there SOCIAL PROBLEMS. comes in the very sad reflection that a very large number of the criminal class, not now found in the English prisons, are at this time carrying on their profession, what- ever it may be, in the United States. It will be easily seen that the presence of the factor in our calculation, which expresses the amount of crime committed by the people who have been bred to crime abroad, makes a very great difficulty in all computation. A still greater difficulty, however, arises from the variety of legislation in the several states, and from the fact that the materials in any such inquiry are to be collected from thirty-nine different sets of public reports, no two of which are made on the same prin- ciple. It would be hard enough to find out how many people were in prisons, in all the American states, territories, and in the Dis- trict of Columbia, on the 1st of January, 1880, and to compare this number, say, against the number in prison on the 1st of January, 1860 or 1850. But if any one should bring together this mass of figures, and place them in reliable form, he would find, when he had done, that he had only deceived himself by the results, and that they did not express the amount of crime at one period or at the other. The doubt arises principally from the dif- ference in legislation between one period and another. Thus, if a certain state deter- mine to punish drunkenness, for instance, with a fine, the persons so punished pay their fines, and do not appear in any list of prisoners. The next state, very probably, may punish the same offense by imprison- ment, and, of course, in the tables it appears to have a much larger number of ‘‘crimi- nals’’ than the otherstate has. Butin point of fact, there may be no difference between the two. The ‘criminal returns”’ are, thus, entirely misleading. The difficulty is greater when the same state changes its legislation, as we all know our states do. Suppose for a period of years drunkenness is punished by a fine ; suppose that after that time the legislature determine to punish it by imprisonment ; suppose that the returns of criminality are based, as they usually are, simply upon the number of prisoners—the impression is then given that there has been a great increase of criminality in that state. Another cause of difficulty is the calcula-

Page 97

SOCIAL PROBLEMS. tion of results from the different classification of penal institutions and institutions which are penal, perhaps, in fact, but not in name. In one state persons who have committed minor crimes are committed to what is called the ‘‘ poor-house’’ or ‘‘alms-house.’’ The maker of a census goes around, and he re- turns this institution as being a charitable in- stitution, and not as a penal institution. In the next state an institution, with perhaps exactly the same purpose, is called a ‘‘ house of reform,’’ or has some similar name given toit. The authorities who make the census there class it among penal institutions, and the number of criminals who appear in the statistics is larger on that account. It will probably prove that the only useful studies on the subject will be those conducted from the other end. It will be necessary to attempt, in a single county, or perhaps in a single city, an inquiry, carried into a good deal of detail, as to the number of cases tried incourt. This must include even those cases tried before ‘‘ magistrates,’’ in many states, of which, unfortunately, it is very difficult to procure statistical returns. One good ex- ample of such a study carefully wrought out, would attract the attention of persons inter- ested in other communities, and from well wrought studies of this sort we might be able to advance to a view sufficiently com- prehensive of thecondition ofthings through- out the whole country. WHEN Canon Blackley presented to the English world, some years ago, his plan for compulsory insurance, which would result in giving to every Englishman a pension after he passed the age of sixty-five years, he was met with a general lack of faith. But this careful student of social economics has not lost confidence in his idea, and he has enlisted more sympathy in England than, perhaps, at the time, he expected. He found an ally, where, perhaps, he least expected it,—when Count Bismarck, in 1882, brought forward and carried through his law for the compulsory insurance of factory ope- ratives in cases ofillness. In 1884 the princi- ple of compulsory insurance against accident was adopted. In later years the statutes were so enlarged that not only workmen in factories, but persons engaged in transporta- tion, in mining, and most agricultural SII branches, were included under their pro- visions. Every German, that is, is obliged to takecertain precautionary measures, which will result in his being well cared for in case of illness or accident. Such systems are by no means new in Ger- many. We have many readers who will recollect how carefully, when living in Ger- many, their servant girls watched over the the arrangements by which a part of their wages was regularly paid toa sort of guild or sodality which would assume the care of them in case ofsickness. The German maid, who is protected by such a system, goes in sickness to the hospital maintained by her particular society, not as a dependent or in any sort as a person who is receiving alms. On the other hand, she has herself been con- tributing, her life long, to the maintenance of the institution, and she goes there with a feeling of satisfaction that by her own fore- sight she has obtained care and shelter while she is unable to earn her bread. The reader will understand that Canon Blackley’s plan goes farther yet. He takes the view that old age is itself a disease, which is to be provided for quite as much as the breaking of a leg or the losing ofan eye. It is, indeed, the only certain disease which comes upon men—if, indeed, that phrase may be used, for it is by no means certain if men will live long enough to suffer under it. Under his plan, then, men and women alike, from the time that they could be called men and women, would pay to the state a regular insurance fee in advance. It is not difficult for experts in the matter of insurance and an- nuities to say precisely what this fee should be. The state would receive it and would invest it, precisely as in England it receives the funds which are paid in postal savings- banks,—only, under this proposal, the pay- ment iscompulsory ; it is a poll-tax assessed upon every person residing in England. With such a fund in hand the state is ex- pected to be able to pay to the survivors of those who have paid, since the age of eigh- teen, a regular pension after they shall have passed the age of sixty-five. The state, of course, has the advantage which results from the death of those who fall by the way ; it is also fairly entitled to the advantage which results from the emigration of those who leave its care after they have begun their payments. It has also the advantage of the

Page 98

512 accumulated compound interest upon each payment which has been made. In practice, of course, after the thing is once in running order—that is, after these payments have been made by thgse first as- sessed for a period of forty-three years—there would be no investment of any considerable sum. The annual receipts would go to the annual pension, and only the balances would need to be accounted for. In the timid discussions which we have seen of this bold plan of Canon Blackley’s, and of the plan, not quite so bold, of Count Bismarck, the matter is generally spoken of as if it were wholly new to our administra- tions. So far is this from being true, that it is but the expansion of the plan which has been carried out in the merchant marine for well-nigh a hundred years. When Ameri- can seamen receive their wages, a deduction is always made from the nominal amount agreed upon, which is invested for Jack’s benefit in a hospital fund. This fund is administered by the general government of the country. The consequence is that you never see a sailor in any of the ordinary in- ° stitutions of charity. A sailor, if he is sick, goes to the sailors’ hospital, which is main- tained by the general government; and, as we said of the German maid, he does not go as a pauper, or in any sort as a person who is receiving favors from the government. He is, on the other hand, simply receiving the result of a payment which he has been making month by month, since he was a seaman, for his own benefit or for the benefit of others. Prince Bismarck calls this the application of the Christian religion to man- ufacture. He says that no wage-earners in Europe are so well cared for by the state as those of Germany. It is quite sure that the experience of the merchant marine is such as togive great encouragement for any such systems when they may be extended. As our readers know, the great railway companies of this country are very desirous to extend such systems to the care of their own workmen, and have far-reaching plans which make it easy for the workmen to in- sure themselves against sickness, accident, or old age. OnE of the greatest triumphs of modern civilization is the education of the blind. In Mr. Anagnos’s latest report of the Perkins SOCIAL PROBLEMS. Institutioh at South Boston, we find much of interest with regard to Helen Keller, a little blind girl who is also deaf and dumb, and whose remarkable development is the wonder of the age. Sheis not yet nine yearsold and has had the training of a teacher for less than two years. Up to the time when Miss Sul- livan, her teacher, went to her in her home in Tuscumbia, Ala., she had received no in- struction whatever. She had lived the ordi- nary life of a child, striving to gain health and strength after the illness which had robbed her of these senses. It is the opinion of specialists that she has not the s!‘ghtest perception of either light or sound. Her other senses are developed to a most extraor- dinary degree. The mental condition, whether sad or happy, of the person with whom she is conversing is known to her at once. She often recognizes-people and calls them by name, before coming in contact with them. After four months of study she wrote a letter of eighty-two words, perfectly spelled, and with no assistance. In a year and a half she has gained a vocabulary of about three thousand words, which she uses easily and correctly. Though a well child, she is of nervous temperament and it was found necessary to abandon a regular course of instruction. But her mind is inces- santly at work. Her memory is unfailing, and the clearness with which she understands the forms of objects she can not touch, is a matter of wonder to all who have seen her. Curiously enough she has a great taste for lan- guages, and having found out that there was such a language as Latin, she was eager to learn some of the words, which she did at once. German and French followed, and Greek also. In her letters to Mr. Anagnos, she uses phrases in all these languages perfectly well. As she expresses it, ‘‘I do want to learn much about everything.’ She already knows more history than many children of her age. She knits, sews a little, and has learned to crochet. She is most anxious to touch every object, and after having had the privilege of examining some statuary, she afterward assumed the positions per- fectly. While mentally she excites the widest interest, she is at the same time a sweet, lovely little girl, active and childish, full of fun, fond of playmates, affectionate and obedient.

Page 99

PUDENT Decameron—so one might - label ‘‘Count Lucanor: or The Fifty Pleasant Stories of Patronio,’’ mined out of ancient Spanish literature by a certain Dr. James York, a Londoner who did these pleasant tales into English some years back, and whose work is now presented to Ameri- can readers. With the exception of ‘‘ Don Quixote’’—which by the way used to be held a humorous book, until Mr. Shorthouse, voicing modern consciousness, declared it sobbed under the sound of its laughter—and some few resounding ballads whose lines clanged of the loud swords of the Cid and Bernardo el Carpio, we have been very igno- rant of Spanish literature, until the late revival of interest in its history, awakened by the good savor of the recent fruit grown on this knarled and ancient tree. To Howells is due the honor of having attracted American attention to the Spanish renais- sance of letters, and therefore, remotely, also to these republications of older and valuable work, of which we have been, for the most part, ignorant heretofore. These ‘‘Pleasant Stories of Patronio”’ were written in the early part of the four- teenth century by Don Juan Manuel, a nephew of Alphonso the Wise. A typical Spanish Don he was too ; in the field against - the Moors at the age of twelve, insanely haughty, either serving the king, his cousin, with passionate ardor, or in arms against him for some wound to his sensitive But always noble, generous, brave and gallant. In his idle moments he wrote down these stories, half ashamed of so clerkly a pastime, and now ‘‘ voicy la fin de tous mes faicts d’armes /—"’ the fruit of Don Juan Manuel’s wars, and deeds against the Moors has died into the silence of forget- fulness—and these idle, pleasant tales keep his memory alive—Ars /onga /—an aphor- ism, of which doubtless it had been hard to convince the fighting men of the days of the Etruscan tomb carvers, or the makers of the Tanagra figurines. The age of any tale is beyond computa- tion ; begin to trace it to its source and you find the original of it a sun myth some- where back in the dawn of time. So the Spanish hidalgo is not to be credited with pure invention, it seems, having borrowed from the Moors—who borrowed from some one else—and there is, it must be confessed, a strong flavor of the ‘‘ Thousand and One Nights ’’ in the stories told to el Conde Lu- canor by that male Scheherzade, Patronio, the count’s wise counselor, who was sum- moned in all cases of social or ethical diffi- culty, and who was invariably reminded by his patron’s quandary of some preternatu- rally applicable anecdote, containing a sug- gestive moral and beginning in this pleasant, time-honored fashion : ‘‘Count Lucanor,’’ said Patronio, ‘‘ it appears to me that what has occurred to you with this man resembles much that which pride.

Page 100

514 happened to the King, Ben Abit, of Seville, with the Queen Romaquia, his wife.”’ And being pressed to relate this thirteenth tale he tells a pretty story of a certain uxo- rious king who, because his wife wept at be- ing deprived of the sight of snow-clad moun- tains, planted all the surrounding hills with the white blossomed almond trees, and who even went so far, when she manifested a desire to make mud pies, as to fill a tank with rose water and cinnamon dust, and got no thanks at all, after the manner of over in- dulgent spouses. The count is not without his ability too, as well as the counselor, for he listens, digests and acts upon the moral of each tale and condenses its essence into an appended distich such as this, for ex- ample : ‘* Waste not your kindness on one Who heeds not the good you have done.” The stories contain the germs of the plots of half the later Spanish plays and romances, the book having first been published in Seville in 1575, and was doubtless known in London, in Shakespeare’s day, it being just possible that he got the suggestion for ‘‘ The Taming of the Shrew ”’ from the forty-fourth tale of ‘‘ What Happened to a Young Man on His Wedding Day.’’ The pleasantest feat- ure of these pleasant tales is that they are each and every one sufficiently pure and proper to pass even the rigid censorship of the editor of an American magazine in good standing. The month’s tide of fiction has tossed up some queer and ill assorted flotsam upon the library shelves. In the Roberts Handy Library series—forever honorable because of having begun with so unique and remark- able a book as Olive Schreiner’s ‘‘ Story of an African Farm ’’—the latest issue is Ar- thur Helps’ novel ‘‘Realmah.’’ Mr. Helps has written so much of the sort of literature that is recommended to the perusal of young people, that one always approaches his liter- ature prepossessed with rebellious suspicions of the pillin his apparently delectable jam. ‘* Realmah "’ seems innocent enough on the face of it ; the story of the discovery of iron by the lake-dwellers of the south of Europe, and the consolidation of tribes into a coher- ent kingdom, is told in the manner of a mod- ern novel, with a love story of considerable IN THE LIBRARY. pathos interwoven. It is dignified and in- teresting, but the very impression of agree- ableness left on the mind confirms that cark- ing fear of the pill, and half convinces the reader that there is some allegory concealed in its pages which, if diligently unearthed, might taste of rhubarb and senna. The commonplace American and com- monplace English novel are both represen- ted, the latter by L. B. Walford’s ‘‘A Stiff- Necked Generation,’’ and the former by ‘* His Two Wives,”’ the author of which was the well known female journalist, Mary Clemmer, who must have put something into her pages that the commonplace people want, for this is the tenth edition of the book. L,. B. Walford once wrote a story with the plebeian title of ‘‘ Mr. Smith,’”’ which had so much promise that criticism at once set down the name under the list of probation- ers which is headed Possible Futures, and waited to see what was forthcoming. Un- fortunately he—or she—put neck under the yoke of the three-volume purveyors to the circulating-libraries’ young person, and thus weighted never reaches the goal of ex- cellence in these later mechanical and mer- cantile efforts. Apparently the young person of the English circulating library is like the wonder-hungry child on the nurse’s knee, who will hear with undiminished relish the magical adventures of the beauty loved by a beast, and the lucky cinder-wench with a fairy godmother as many consecutive times as the narrator’s complacency will compass, for she never tires of the identical situations under changed names. Here is the same eligible hero whom the heroine defers accept- ing until she has aided in the formation of Plot, here is the young man with irreproach- able morals, but guilty of unpardonable neck- ties and loud tones which unfit him to be the heroine’s true mate, who thickens the Plot ; and here is the heroine herself, who might have married the hero at once and been happy had she not been filled with a sense of the hard necessity laid upon heroines of heroically making the three volumes of story at any cost. Naturally after her duty is done to the uttermost tithe of tears, fainting fits, and severe illnesses, she marries the hero and lives jocundly forever and a day. The commonplace American novelist has wider scope ; unshackled by the circulating library, and limited only by a misty sense

Page 101

IN THE LIBRARY. of literary ethics. ‘‘ His Two Wives’’ is one of these untrammeled efforts which really lack only the sense of literary form to be extremely clever. There is much keen discernment in it of some of the elements that make the affirmative answer to the question whether marriage is a failure, but all put in the fashion that sets the critic’s teeth on edge and inspires the ex- clamatory book-marking fiend to pencil, Ps the margins. It is ‘How true! on grievous, being so clever, that it could not have been just a bit cleverer, and be thus raised altogether out of that uninspiring atmosphere. Two more of the American novels are laid amid mountain scenery. The air of the hills seems less inspiring to Sally Pratt McLean than were the keen salt minds that vivified her first book ‘‘Cape Cod Folks.’’ That book had much of the quality which made Charlotte Bronté’s successful, which gave sudden and tremendous popularity to a recent novel by a young Virginian It is a quality found probably only in the books of women, and of women who have lived somewhat secluded lives until their imagination and impressionability be- come abnormally developed. They are en- abled thus to project themselves into fan- cied situations and to feel in these situa- tions with an intensity quite impossible in normal life and inconsistent with any of its ends; but the world, plodding in its round of dull duties, will stop and seize eagerly the momentary intoxication of this tingling draught which is brewed from the vital es- sences of fresh and unexhausted natures: a draught is seldom to be repeated from the same source. Mrs. McLean’s ‘‘ Last Chance Junction is exaggerated from intensity into contortion. The story is that of a woman married to a brilliant, seductive, and irredeemable scoundrel, but in consideration of the fact that her choice f him seemed to be the result of his having strange light hair,’’ and being able to ride extremely well, the reader’s sympathies are not as entirely with the heroine as they might otherwise be. The scene of the story is laid in the wild mining camps of the West, and the management of the dialect, with which it is only flavored and not weighted, is extremely skillful. There is 515 pathos in it too, not so much where the author meant it to be, in the anguish of the ill-treated wife, but rather in the adventures of the jovial Colonel Bloomer and his impul- sive Irish wife. Charles Egbert Craddock’s latest, ‘‘ The Despot of Broomsedge Cove,’’ has been run- ning serially in the A//antic for many months past and is now collected in book form. There is almost nothing to say of this book that has not been said of all her previous stories. It is a picture of life among the Tennessee mountaineers, which contains all the merits which have dignified her work from the first. The same exquisite felicity of the phraseology, the same fine humorous- ness and a talent for landscape painting never surpassed by any brush. There is the same deep, healthful male tone which de- ceived the publishers and public so long as to the author’s sex, and an atmosphere of clean simplicity that is as healthful to the mind sickened with the malarial atmos- phere of our late departure of ‘‘literary frankness,’’ as the winds of the mountains of which she writes. But these are gener- alities which will apply equally well to any one of her books. The author of them has so many and such rare gifts that the world ha a right to demand of her a wider range in the use of them. She was wise no doubt to begin her work among the scenes with which she had greatest familiarity, but there is greater work, and more worthy of her powers, awaiting her in the study of natures more complex than those of the isolated mountaineers. ~ . ‘ Don Juan Manuel wrote beside the pleas- ant stories, a few poems as well, and these are included in the new edition of Lockhart’s ‘Spanish Ballads,’’ issued by G. P. Putnam in the pretty, dainty Knickerbocker Nugget series. Unfortunately, Spain never had so wise and sensible a bishop as that English Percy who gathered up the ballads of his country and preserved them in their original form. And yet, the Spanish genius flowered richly in these rhymed chronicles of their history and the manners of their middle- aged period. They had, too, much from the Moors in poetry as well as every other branch of art and learning, and the Jews also con- tributed to the great mass of cancioneros and vomanceros in which Spain is richer than

Page 102

516 all other European nations. The first col- lection of these cancioneros was made in the low countries in 1555 and more have been made since, but not one of them all is com- plete, annotated, or in any way satisfactory. Lockhart, Walter Scott’s son-in-law, first translated selections from them in English. The translator of poems is born far less fre- quently than the poet, and he is never made, so that while one has cause to be grateful to this one in that he gave the English speak- ing world some suggestion of the richness of the stores from “which he drew, he still leaves us to sigh for another Fitzgerald who will do for the Spanish Jongleurs what still waits to be done for Heine’s Songs. One or two of these poems were done into our tongue by Sir Walter himself, and a few are familiar through their place in the school readers where most children have grown familiar with the deadly struggle between Don Pedro and Don Henry, Zara’s plaint for her ear- rings, and the marriage of the false Andalla. Lockhart made no effort to preserve in his translations the verisimilitude of the rude, idiomatic originals, transposing them all into the smooth, monotonous verse made fash- ionable by his famous father-in-law. Another translation, or attempted transla- tion, is Ivan Panin’s attempt to render énto English, from the Russian, Alexander Push- kin’s poems. Mr. Panin is not a translator, nor has he even a clear sense of the meaning of poetry. There are unfortunates of this sort as there are musical Gideanites, unable to distinguish their right hand from their left. The larger half of the volume is occu- pied by a preface setting forth the trans- lator’s views on the art of poetry in general —a preface which is characterized only by the flippancy of ignorance and the arrogance of shallowness. Some account of Pushkin’s would have been a very welcome prelude, but this the translator promises in another volume and unwisely occupied his space in airing opinions and theories which are value- less and unimportant. In his eager eulogy and defense of Pushkin, he decries all Eng- lish poetry, and finds Shakespeare very nearly Voltaire’s ‘‘drunken savage,’’ and Shelley's ‘‘Cloud’’ an example of false metaphor and meretricious sentimentality. The weight of his judgment can easily be in- ferred from this. He declares Pushkin to have the simplicity and charm of Heine, and IN THE LIBRARY. as far as one is able to form an idea of the Russian’s work from his bungling version this is probably true, but fancy any one's undertaking to translate Heine literally from the German! And this is what he has undertaken with a language, the genius of which is even more foreign to ours than the tongue of the lyric Jew. His expressed in- tention is to give us Pushkin’s own wine with the flavor unmixed by decanting, and the result of the attempt is a farrago such as this : ‘*** Papa, papa, oh, our nets Out a corpse has dragged.’ “Ye lie, ye lie, ye little devils,’ Upon them father grumbled. ‘I declare, those wicked brats ! Corpse now, too have they must [’” A part of the first verse of the ballad named ‘‘Drowned,’’ upon page ninety, this being only one of many as bad or worse; which can hardly be called translating, since it by no means is done into any English known to Anglo-Saxons. As far as it is possible to judge, Pushkin's note is like that of the mel- ancholy folk melodies of the Russians ; varia- tions upon a few simple keys, whose wild and yearning iterance and re-iterance produce an effect of plaintive pleasure, and when some one capable of giving an adequate English version of his poems undertakes the task, his wor!_ will no doubt increase our constantly growing respect for the genius of the Solar. NEW BOOKS RECEIVED. Published by Brentano - ‘*Romance of an Alter Ego,’’ Lloyd S. Brice. ‘‘ Fred Struther’s Romance,’’ A. Ull- man. ‘‘ Where the Trout Hide,’’ Kit Clarke. ‘‘The Seldens in Chicago,’”’ S.D. ‘‘ Will,”’ George Ohnet. The Bankside Shakespeare, vol. 3, ‘‘Merchant of Venice."’ Published by Lee & Shepard : ‘‘The Julia Ward Howe Birthday Book,”’ Laura Richards. ‘‘ Incidents of a Collector’s Rambles,’’ Sherman F. Denton. ‘ Pasa- dena,’’ Charles Frederick Holder. ‘‘An Hour with Delsarte,’’ Anna Morgan. “ Es- says,’’ David Atwood Wasson. Published by Scribner's Sons : ‘‘Memories of Fifty Years,’’ Lester Wal- lack. ‘‘Among Cannibals,’’ Dr. Carl Lum- holtz. ‘‘ Mexican Guide,’’ Thomas Janner. ‘‘Bermuda: An Idyl of the Summer Isl- ands,’’ J. C. R. Dorr.

Page 103

Page 104

Ba Vi : it MG) Ys PANS A y 44 é \