The Cosmopolitan 1900-11: Vol 30 Iss 1
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VoL. XXX KARNAK—COURT OF THEBES: HER RUINS By DULANY cy the great cities of ancient Egypt, Thebes alone the monumental ruins of her former grandeur. All the glories of Memphis, the first capi- has preserved tal, are mingled with the sands of the desert; Heliopolis, the once magnificent fate stately obelisk has suffered a the which stood before her proudest temple is the only stone that marks the place where her throne was spread, and even Alex- Sun,”’ for the cruel, “City of almost as andria, the fair capital which, centuries later, the conqueror of the world founded by the sea to lure the commerce of the THE COSMOPOLITAN. From every man according to his ability: NOVEMBER, RAMESES’ Copyright, 1900, by JoHN Brisnen WalkKrr. to every one according to his needs. Igoo. TEMPLE AND HER HUNTER MEMORIES. subject nations to her port, has like these, her elder sisters in the history of Egyptian greatness, been shorn of her splendors; but Thebes the of time and stands to-day in hoary grandeur. Imagine the great plain of Thebes, green and fertile, bordered by wastes of desert has resisted ravages and barren hills receding from the Nile; Karnak, before imagine the superb temple of commenced two thousand years Christ and added to and embellished by all the rulers of ruin that the world the ruins of other temples inferior only to it, Egypt, the grandest can show; imagine
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THEBES: some approached by long avenues of sphinxes, some guarded by colossal statues of Kings; and, finally, imagine the bare but lovely yellow mountains which serve as royal tombs, casting their majestic shad- ows among these ruined temple-palaces, and you will then form some conception of the remains of the great capital of the Pharaohs. In the presence of her ruins, a vision of HER RUINS AND HER MEMORIES. a score of peerless ruins upon the quiet plain, little heaps of hovels and an Arab village close to the gates of the elegant temple of Ammon, now known as the temple of Luxor. Massive propylons with spirited battle-pictures sculptured upon their broad surfaces rise to a height of one hundred feet. Statues of Rameses_ II., four times the size of life, sit in solemn majesty at the gateway. And in front BAS-RELIEF FROM HATSHEPU' ancient Thebes rises before us, stately and magnificent beyond our dreams of grandeur, the Nile mirroring matchless splendors along full eight miles of its mystic course; on the right, the hosts of busy inhabitants; on the left, the palaces, most of the temples, all the tombs —and, beyond, the great goddess Athor waiting to receive into her arms the setting Such the vision—the reality, half city proper with its sun. S TEMPLE, TEL-EL-BAHIRI. stands a solitary obelisk of pink granite whose lovely fellow now marks a yet more sacred spot—the place of royal martyr- doms at Paris; within the temple, first an immense area surrounded by a peristyle of double columns, many fallen and broken now, and battered statues of Rameses seated at studied intervals against the darkened walls. Then the earlier building of Amenophis III. begins. Past colossal
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THEBES: HER RUINS AND HER MEMORIES. the ruined pylon, two long rows of gi- gantic columns, that have preserved in almost pristine freshness their glorious capitals of full-blown lotus flowers, lead to the great court with its wilderness of taper- ing columns sculptured in the lovely form of lotus buds, and farther on sculpture- covered chambers are grouped around the sanctuary; but the great court is the chief glory of the building. The beauty and purity of its conception, the heroic scale upon which it has been executed, its position on the very edge of the sacred river, entitle it to a fame far greater than has been ac- corded to it owing to the overshadow- ing grandeur of the temple of Ammon at Karnak, situ- ated only two miles beyond and formerly connected with it by a noble avenue of sphinxes. But whe sphinxes no longer gaze fixedly at each other across this royal roadway where the chariots of none but mighty Pharaohs once rolled in solemn state. Now the route is unguarded, ruin-strewn and desolate, save near Karnak where a few of the great stone images still remain in place. And high above them stands the majestic pylon built by a Ptolemy yet not unworthy to serve asan approach to the precincts of the grandest TOMB DECORATION. temple of Egypt’s grandest Kings. This splendid gateway looks out upon the south, but the main entrance to the temple is from the west, and the long sphinx-lined avenue which once connected it with the temple of Gourneh on the opposite bank of the Nile is broken only by the broad waters of the river. Only a master-hand would be equal to describing, fully and without injus- tice to the sub- ject, this the world’s great- temple, though one must see the ruins to realize their grandeur and the mar- velous beauty of their set- ting. Nosight in nature or in art ever so im- pressed the writer as the sunrise he once beheld from the pylon of Kar- nak. The pale gray light of early morn- ing, the un- broken _ si- lence, the warm, still air itself, all seemed charged with mystery, as color gradu- ally came into the picture, and the sun rising in serene grandeur behind the dis- tant mountains revealed a scene of such ex- quisite fairness and serenity that it seemed the spirit had wandered into another world or returned to this world of ours after it had been calmed and purified. But to recall all the memories of Thebes, all the departed glories of Egypt, one must linger est
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THEBES: HER RUINS AND HER MEMORIES. in this temple until the lights of day have faded and the deepening shadows appear to people the deserted halls with the regal figures of their former masters, who pass through them in a stately procession which makes the most truly royal pageant that ever entered the enchanted realm of the imagination. First comes Usurtesen, the mighty builder, who, not content with his great works at Thebes, issued his royal mandate and the glorious Temple of the Sun arose in the desert city of Heliopolis to throw unfading luster upon Egypt. The next figure of mark is another Usur- tesen, great-grandson of the former, and the chief military hero of the Old Empire, who extended the borders of Egypt past the Second Cataract and raised in commemora- tion of the achievement the frowning forts still to be seen upon the precipitous rocks above the Nile at Semneh; who carried his victorious arms to the coasts of the Red Sea and then returned to Thebes to be almost deified by a grateful people. Amenemhat ‘‘the Good’’ follows. He has bestowed upon his country gifts worthy of a Pharaoh, for it was he who made the great Lake Merris, thus placing Upper Egypt beyond the danger of famine, and upon its banks constructed the marvel of his age—the celebrated ‘‘Labyrinth,’’ considered by the ancients to surpass even the Pyramids in wonder. But his immediate successors, whose shadowy forms pass on without leaving an LUXOR FROM THRONE-ROOM, TEMPLE OF RAMESEDd lil impression, were destined to bow in vassal- age to those rude ‘‘Shepherd Kings’’ who almost totally destroyed the ancient civil:- zation in the Delta and paralyzed the ener- THE RIVER.
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THEBES: gies of the Theban monarchs, though they spared their monuments. Then, several centuries later, great Aahmes, who rose up and expelled the invaders, utterly routing the forces of the King of Lower who wide comes the Apepee, celebrated Egypt to Joseph. Egyptian history when Aahmes rode in his war-chariot at the head of a half-million warriors and drove the the ‘*Shepherd Kings’? back into Asia. And intrusted such Surely it was a great epoch in powers followers of yet he hardly looks the dashing military man we should expect to see, his thick, closely curled black hair and small though well-defined features suggesting rather the meditative and astute politician. And Thothmes, grandson of here is TOMB OF HER RUINS AND HER MEMORIES. Aahmes, and the first great Egyptian con- queror, who not only extended the borders of his country southward but swept into Asia and avenged the humiliations that Egypt had suffered during the centuries of the rule of the Shepherds. His daughter Hatshepu. ‘*Queen of the South and of the North,*’ as she proudly styled herself, next. She shared the throne with her renowned father and her yet more illustrious brother, but the greatness of neither has overshadowed Bold and enterprising as those great comes has hers. warriors, she shrank from no conflict; and yet she preferred the fruits of peace above the laurels of war, as that unique temple which she built in successful expedition to the land of Punt commemoration of the RAMESES IV.
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yn - ito iat of THEBES : HER RUINS AND HER MEMORIES. son Ameno- bear solemn witness to the majesty that belonged to the land of Egypt in mighty Pha- the time of the raohs. mes comes his : phis, his royal mee. hands stained t with the blood mof prisoner- kings After Thoth- THE COLOSSAL STATUES OF MEMNON, attests. But her long and glorious reign closed abruptly, and the passing out of history of the greatest Queen who ever ruled over Egypt’s destinies is shrouded still in mystery. Perhaps her brother Thothmes might have been able to throw some light upon her sudden, silent disap pearance, for his unbounded jealousy pur- sued her even beyond the grave and but for the unskilfulness of his workmen the name of Hatshepu would no longer be de cipherable upon her grandest monuments —the temple at Tel-el-Bahiri and those two peerless monoliths before the vener- able temple of Ammon which lift their deep-red beauty almost a hundred feet above the bright green plain of Thebes. Thothmes III. passes now. The great- est conqueror of the Pharaohs, he seems almost a demigod, for his triumphant armies have not only reduced the neigh- boring nations to subjection, but, crossing the mighty waters of the Euphrates, he has struck terror to the distant empires of Assyria and Babylon and now proudly calls their great Emperors his vassals. Then, too, as if by magic, he has raised a marvelous multitude of temples—the most notable of his buildings being the wonder- ful pillared hall at Karnak and the great obelisks which, now standing in Rome, Constantinople, London and New York, —in all the centuries of her existence perhaps Thebes witnessed few spectacles as ghastly as the return of this monarch from foreign victories, his vessel grimly deco- rated with royal heads. Amenophis III. advances next. His fame as a builder is imperishable, for though his grandest temple-palace has fallen to the level of the plain, the twin colossi which he placed before it still sit amid the surrounding desolation in un- moved majesty and silently assert the grandeur of this King. There is a gap in the procession now. The temple of Ammon is deserted. Khu- n-aten, Amenophis’ son, has embraced a strange religion and practises its myste- rious rites not at Thebes, but at Tel-el- Amerna, where the weird worship of the solar disk is performed also by several of his successors. 3ut Rameses I. rises up. The old re- ligion of Egypt is reéstablished and hence- forth the worship of Ammon is conducted at Karnak with even increased splendor. And now comes the imposing form of Setee, ‘‘the Pharaoh of the Oppression.”’ Not tall, but broad-shouldered and of massive build, face and figure alike full of majesty, he sweeps on through his marble halls calmly, grandly, too proud to look even disdainful.
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THEBES: HER RUINS AND HER MEMORIES. Then follows Rameses the Great, his patrician head thrown back in evident sat- isfaction at the magnificence by which he is surrounded. And after him a stricken figure. It is his son Menepthah, who has suffered the seven plagues of Egypt, the last and most terrible of them carrying off his beloved child who he had expected would He has endured all these, and yet humiliation, for those out upon the the flower of sueceed him. one more bleared Sinaitic great looked beheld eyes once desert and the Egyptian army and nobility arrested in their pursuit of the children of Is- rael by the breaking of the flood-gates of the seas, which utterly destroyed them. But Rameses III. comes now. Mark him well, for he has been called ‘‘the last of the great sovereigns of Egypt.’’ Those arms that are so calmly folded as he passes by have been lifted against all his enemies in triumph, and that face now so serene and immobile has glowed so often with the flush of victory that we wonder it should ever become _ pale tranquil again. 3ut, his wars over, this Pharaoh cultivated all the arts of peace, and the last great temple built by an Egyptian King was the one raised by him at Thebes to commemo- rate his military and naval successes cre he—as has been so simply and _ beautifully and BAS-RELIEF, TEMPLE OF KARNAK.
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THEBES: HER RUINS AND HER MEMORIES. recorded—‘over the whole land of Egypt planted trees and shrubs to give the inhab- itants rest under their cool shade.’’ The grand procession is terminated now. AVENUE OF SPHINXES AND The descendants of Rameses go by, but borne on litters, toying with concubines, fanned by slaves, guarded by eunuchs, and upon their prostrate forms the high-priests of Ammon climb to sovereign power. But, finally, a strong man rises and takes into his hands the reins of govern- ment. We note him, not because he comes up to the stature of the old Pharaohs, but because it was he, Sheshonk, who swept into the land of Israel and destroyed the splendid throne of David and of Solomon. Then, last of all, strange figures pass before us as masters of these sacred halls, Ethiopians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Per- sians, but their strange, wild cries of tri- umph seem to turn to thunders of applause in honor of the calm, majestic Pharaohs who have gone on before them—gone on before them and before all other peoples, leading the vanguard of thé nations that have civilized the world. We leave the ruins of the great temple- home of the Pha- raohs to see their empty tombs across the river, PYLON OF TEMPLE, KARKNAK. passing on the way the picturesque ruin of Gourneh, which lies directly opposite Kar- nak and would, excite the wonder of the traveler anywhere except at Thebes, but grandeurs here the Setee and Rameses a charming shadow amid the profusion of fallen temple-palace of seems hardly more than upon the silent plain. And now we enter ‘‘the Valley of the Kings.’’ It is a desolation, but a royal one. No longer the freshness of the plain; no blossom, no blade of vegetation even, springing from the unpolished sides of the great yellow masses of stone that rise and roll and fall in splendid grace around us, the roadway a mere thread winding about their bases. It of a color a king might wear with pride upon his coronation-day. And through this brilliant, sterile chaos, such as might have existed before the world began, the bodies of the Pharaohs were borne to entombment within the cliffs and slopes of the silent is a desolation, but
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12 THEBES: valley. They stand apart, these sepulchers, as if in recognition of the solitude of death, the loneliness of greatness. Always a lofty entrance hewn in the solid rock, always a long-drawn passage descending by slow gradation to the tomb-room, light at first always, then ever-increasing darkness ; the life, the work, yea, sometimes, even the unrealized aspirations of the kingly occupant painted in vivid fresco every where; and in the center of the great chamber a gigantic block of granite hol- lowed to receive the gilded coftin of the HER RUINS AND HER MEMORIES. mediate foreground; Karnak and Luxor beyond the trembling band of blue across the brilliant plain; to the right, in the distance, Medeenet-Aboo; a little nearer, the solemn figures of the ‘*twin colossi*’ and the dismantled walls of the Rame- seum; and back of all the splendid sweep of sun-steeped mountains against which, almost at our feet, the matchless temple of Queen Hatshepu stands revealed—a building of supreme importance, at once preserving the majesty and grandeur of Pharaonic models and foreshadowing the AN INTERIOR COURT, PAVILION OF RAMESES III., MEDEENET-ABOO, dead. Such are the tombs of the world’s most splendid Kings, wherein their bodies, preciously embalmed, had remained undis- turbed for close upon four thousand years, when the vandals of the present day rolled the stones away from the doors of these sepulghers and carried off the royal mum- mies in dishonor. Narrow paths around the mountain-side soon lead us to their summits, and then, for the first time, we behold a view embracing all the ruins of the ancient capital—Gourneh in the im- grace and beauty of the unborn art of Greece. Marvelously posed, against a sheer cliff of yellow mountain, its marble terraces, like cascades thrown by the hand of Nature, fall to the plain below in a poetry of form and color to which the eyes of men have been unaccustomed since the grand but somber architecture of Rome became dominant in the world. Here, as usual, was a pylon at the entrance to the holy precincts, and the long avenue of sphinxes seen so often leading to the The-
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Y; Ry Fey & S S z) S > Re 5 Q = vT Y S ee eo R & a) ~ ~ THEBES : IN THE VALLEY OF KINGS.
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THEBES: HER RUINS 14 ban temples, then the terraces of glisten- ing marbles—marbles of dazzling whiteness against sun-polished stones that seem to have imprisoned the very light of day. Here, too, the walls were scuipture-cov- ered, but no scenes of strife and carnage, no grim warriors flushed with pride of con- quest, no Pharaohs relentless in the hour of triumph, are immortalized, for in this temple built to commemorate the success of the commercial expedition to the distant land Punt, Victory appears unarmed, serene, benign and lovely. Hatshepu has had every detail of the undertaking pict- ured, from the time her vessels sailed from their lonely port on the Red Sea to the moment when her subjects reéntered the joy ous capital laden with gold and silver, ivory and incense, and followed by the earliest and perhaps the most extraordinary embassy recorded in history, an embassy led by the grotesque little hunchbacked consort of the King of Punt, who, it appears, sacrificed and prayed, on terms of equality, with the august daughter of the Pharaohs before the day’s ceremonies were ended. of THE TEMPLE OF LUXOR. AND HER MEMORIES. The golden screen of mountains is, to the this temple, honeycombed with tombs. The great ones of the earth, queens, princes, high-priests of Ammon, all found splendid sepulture here. And within their shadows, on the plain, the magnificent Rameses built his most famous south of temple, known now as the Rameseum. 3ut time and the violence of conquerors have left little of this noble monument. Throughout the second court, the colon- nade before the great hall, the hall itself, and the group of chambers yet beyond, great square pillars and massive columns alike are battered, broken, fallen, but a score of giant statués of the King, with folded and calm poise, still stand erect among them, headless, serenely gazing beyond the massive ruins. To the south of the Rameseum, the ex- tensive pile of ruins called by the Arabs Medeenet-Aboo forms, perhaps, the fairest picture of the plain, for, in the distance, it appears embowered in trees, and some of its walls still rising to a splendid height their crowning arms some some have lost beauties only.
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are ne ff TEL-EL-BAHIRI—VIEW OF Here we find remains of ancient domestic architecture of highest interest and value, for the lofty pavilion of Rameses III., which serves as a stately entrance to the precincts of this group of temples, is match- less even at Thebes as a specimen of the residences of the Pharaohs. A small but exquisite temple built by the illustrious Queen Hatshepu stands on the right. Then we pass to the large and well- preserved temple of Rameses III., bearing upon its walls in marvelously executed sculptures the proud history of the King who built it in honor of the great god Ammon. The Greeks and the Romans also added fair examples of their taste, as two tall columns with rich capitals of flowers yet standing prove. When the jeweled lights of sunset fall upon these precious ruins, and the golden mountains in the background are aglow with the colors of amethysts and sapphires, the dark figures of the twin colossi greaten slowly and grandly in the quiver- ing atmosphere as we approach them, and finally they completely dominate the scene. THEBES; HER RUINS AND HER MEMORIES. TEMPLE OF HATSHEPU. The thirty centuries that have passed over their hoary heads have robbed them of the high crown of an Egyptian King which they bore when Amenophis III. placed them here, but, time-worn as they are, these two mighty blocks of stone yet tower full sixty feet above the surrounding verd- ure, aud even apart from their great age, they are from their size, attitude and po- sition the most impressive images that man has ever fashioned. Ancient Roman trav- elers in Egypt invested one with pecul- iar mystery and charm, claiming for it the marvelous gift of sound—Strabo first, then Pliny, Tacitus, Juvenal, and other writers during the next two centuries, recording that often at sunrise it emitted music. 3ut the ‘*vocal Memnon,’’ as they call it, is silent now—silent perhaps forever— though the great image and _ its fellow still sit erect in awful majesty upon their granite thrones keeping eternal guard over the desert and all the precious secrets buried beneath its sands. Yet what a‘ story they could tell of the grandeur and vanity of human effort !— ey
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16 THEBES: HER RUINS AND they who saw Thebes illumine the world and watched strange nations struggling for do- minion at her gates; who looked on subdued the Hittites, and others— perish; who while Egypt the Cushites, many PYLON OF strove with the Ethiopians, Assyrians and Babylonians—then fell before the arms of the hated Persians, but fell arrayed in such magnificence that the spoils stripped from her were for centuries the glory of the con- queror’s kingdom. They have seen, too, the triumphant armies of Greece pass be- fore them, and the soldiery of Rome busy at their hideous work of destruction. They stood there while the Arabs dreamed their golden dream of civilization and van- ished, and while the Turks followed bring- ing only desolation—but among them rising up and attempting to draw some order out of chaos, yet pathet- ically failing. one great man They still see his descend- PTOLEMY, HER MEMORIES. ants the rul- ers of Egypt. And to them will be known the answer to KARNAK, the momentous question whether the nation that is dominant in the world to-day will succeed where the Assyrians and Babyloni- ans, the Persians, Greeks and Romans, the Arabs, Turks, and others, failed, or if the proud Mistress of the Seas who has brought the most coveted portions of the earth beneath her sway will find that she is un- able to make an impression upon the desert sands. They will know this and a thou- sand other things, but they will not break their silence unless, perchance, some great convulsion of nature gives them voice, and then they will make use of the gift only to utter a solemn greeting to their old friend, the Sun. STATUES OF MEMNON AT OVERFLOW OIF NILE.
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YANK jack-of-all-trades, bearded, open-eyed, and as honest as a TATE was a_ single-minded short, square- human being may be. In spite of his versatility he was a and mechanic, and, helped by his single-mind- edness, a faithful devotee of an ideal which had come to him in childhood and clung to him through the years. It had taken him in early manhood from carpenter and joiner’s work to a shipyard at less pay. It had impelled him to go to sea in the first varpenter’s berth that offered. It had dominated all influences that shaped his wanderings, and finally, after years of ex- perience as a football of Fate, it had brought him to Eastern waters—the nursery of pirates—and left him stranded ‘‘on the beach’’ at Manila, from which he had been rescued by the Rev. Mr. Todd, missionafy, who recognized good material. Mr. Todd had labored and wrestled with his soul, vainly, until Yank learned that he needed a mate in his little missionary brig, whereat, both made _ concessions: master-seaman Yank got a berth, and acknowledged him- FALL J" GRAC BY (Y)oRcAN Rear IM self saved, provided that Mr. Todd would consider the agitation closed and not ex- pect him to pray in his watch below. And the missionary agreed. He knew nothing of the unsullied ambition hidden in Yank’s honest heart to become a roar- ing, bloody-minded, walk-the-plank, skull- and-crossbones the watch below was given up to sleep and secular thought, and Yank’s chances for backslid- ing were a hundred per cent better. But thus far, he had met no pirates, unless the nondescript craft coming out of the west propelled by sweeps was of that secret, buccaneer; so nature. Mr. Todd was palpably anxious. Swelt- ering through six days of dead calm with tar oozing from ropes and pitch from deck- seams, while the barometer dropped steadily to 28.56—sure sign of a typhoon—was troubling enough without this additional menace. Below in his desk was the accu- mulation of seven years’ innocent trading with the innocent islanders—about ten thousand dollars’ worth of little iridescent globules much valued in jewelry manufac- which he had taken in exchange for knives, trinkets, et cetera, from different converts the islands of his route. And here he was in piratical seas with a small crew of non-combative Kana- kas in his forecastle, and only one white man to help him. He was as good a seaman as Yank and a better navigator; yet he could not classify the approaching vessel. She had the hull of a Chinese junk, the mainsail and gaff- topsail of a schooner, and a lateen foresail slung to a heavy yard, while out over the bows was a cocky stump bowsprit and old- fashioned spritsail-yard with sail attached 2 ture Bibles, on
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18 A FALL FROM GRACE. —clearly a hybrid of the high seas, a make- shift of hard times; and as she slopped her way along, her sails flapped ludicrously with the draft of her motion. ‘*Perhaps,’’ said Yank, handing the glass to his superior, his brown eyes glis- tening, ‘‘she’s a pirate. Ten sweeps and two ports to a side? Big crew.’’ ‘‘Let’s hope not,’’ answered Mr. Todd, gravely. ‘‘But if so, let us hope that the other one is a war-vessel.’’ Half a mile to the south, and extend- ing east and west about four miles each way, was the northern face of an atoll, or coral reef inclosing a lagoon. Within this lagoon was anchored the other craft men- tioned, a large, black and rakish brig, whose sparkling guns and generally stylish appearance suggested government owner- ship. Though they had flown their own flag that morning, as a slow current drifted them around the atoll, the signal was not answered, and none of her crew was vis- ible. Close study with the glass had shown them a thickening of the reef on the south side, where the debris of the sea had formed land, and here were a few stunted palms and what looked like tents. The same scrutiny had disclosed an opening in the reef on the east, and another on the northside. Had there been wind, Mr. Todd would have entered for further acquaintance. As it was, with a typhoon coming, the atoll was a place of danger, and he wondered why the brig did not warp out. Early in the morning he had sent down upper spars and stowed all canvas except a storm- spanker and foretopmast-staysail, and now, with nothing to do but watch the ap- proach of the suspect to the westward, he improved the time by hiding his treasure and other valuables and destroying his account-book; but to no avail, for the first remark of a villainous-looking swash- buckler who climbed over his rail an hour later was: ‘*Been a-lookin’ fer you. Hand ober them pearls. ’’ He was a giant mulatto, with bloodshot eyes, fang-like teeth, and a settled grin on a face further distorted by every evil thought and passion. He was followed by a crew of about thirty—cutthroats all-—as nondescript as the craft bumping along- side. They were of every breed of men, black, white and yellow; they were dressed fantastically, each to suit himself, but were armed alike, with short cutlass and heavy pistols. They crowded the wondering Kanakas forward while their leader inter- viewed Mr. Todd and his mate. ‘‘Pearls, Mr. Todd,’’ he _ repeated. ‘*‘Hand ober dem pearls.’’ ‘*What pearls?’’ ‘*No time to hear you lie,’’ he said. ‘*Hear all about you and your pile. Come aft here, four hands,’’ he called to his men. Four came. They seemed to know what was wanted. Quickly and silently they seized Mr. Todd, throttled his angry pro- test, bore him to the deck and bound him; then fastening the end of the mainstaysail halyards to his ankles, they hauled on the other part and swayed him up, feet first, until his fingers cleared the deck. He writhed and struggled to lift his head— successfully; but they fastened his wrists to the life-rail, bowsed him higher, and be- layed. Yank Tate watched in fascinated horror, and the pirate lighted a cheroot. ‘*When you’re ready to tell, I'll lower you,’’ he said, quietly. The unfortunate missionary groaned, and cried unto heaven for help; then he ap- pealed to Yank, then to his crew, huddled near the windlass, lastly to the pirate cap- tain. ‘*Mercy,’’ he gurgled. take them.’’ Flesh and blood could have stood it no longer. He was black in the face when they stretched him out on the deck, and for five minutes was unconscious; then he opened his eyes. ‘*Where?’’ asked the pirate, bending over him. Mr. Todd did not answer. ‘‘Up wid him again,’’ ordered the mu- latto, and they manned the rope; but Mr. Todd lifted his hand. ‘‘Under the cabin,’’ he whispered, hoarsely—‘ ‘starboard side—near the dead- wood—loose plank.’’ ‘*Good.’’ The captain descended the main hatch and returned in a few minutes with a can- vas ditty-bag that bulged with its contents. His mood had changed; he laughed, and waved the bag over the head of the still prostrate missionary. Yes, yes, ar
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‘*All in the sabing o’ souls,’’ he chuckled. ‘‘All fo’ de glory o’ God. Now, I tell you,’’ he added, more seri- ously, ‘‘you go right ‘long an’ git some more. I wait for ’em. I let you keep this little rotten ol’ brig—good ’nough to sabe de heathen wid— no good to me—too small. But—how much money you got down in yo’ desk?’’ Mr. Todd rose unsteadily to his feet and answered brokenly: ‘‘T have a very little—not a week’s pay for my crew. I have provisions—yam, cereals, salt meat, canned goods, coffee Take what you please. Kill us if you like. But, I enjoin you, in the name of an out- raged God, not to torture us.’’ The pirate’s face sobered to its sneering grin. He pointed to his craft alongside. ‘*See dat vessel? What you call her rig? Once she was a mandarin junk—sixty men. Dey all walk de plank. See dat mainsail? Dat belong to a down-east Yankee trader. Cappen an’ six men—all yo’ countrymen. I hang ’em all up to dat gaff ’fore I cut de mast out fo’ myself. See dat fo’sail? Arab dhow. Dey all roast. Wha’ you whinin’ "bout? You’s de goose dat lays Dat’s why I let you go. You money. You keep yo’ brig an’ yo’ men, an’ yo’ grub. Sometime I ketch you agin and git mo’ pearls.’’ ‘*Monster!’’ said Mr. Todd. ‘‘And do you think that I shall be a party to such a compact? Fool. Kill me at once and your chance of continuing your infamous de egg. keep yo’ ’ career is better.’ ‘*Wha’ you do?’’ ‘‘Do you think,’’ went on the enraged missionary, now in command of his voice and vocabulary, ‘‘that you have robbed a weakling, a man who will rest content? You have taken my all. It is mine, gained by honest barter. There are men- of-war in these seas. I have influence. I will see you hanged.’’ For a moment or two the pirate chief seemed to be thinking deeply; then he said to his men: ‘‘Put it roun’ his neck, run him up to de masthead and slack him down.”’ Mr. Todd was not bound—he was simply held tightly in the clutches of three while the fourth knotted a hang- man’s noose in the end of the halyards, A FALL FROM GRACE. 19 and adjusted the knot under his ear. He struggled and fought, crying out inarticu- lately, until the men forward lifted him clear of the deck; then, up he went, wrig- gling and twisting, his long coat-tails and longer legs thrashing out at right angles to his line of ascent and his hands gripping the rope over his head. This saved him. Had he been bound he would have strangled. As he up the block aloft, Yank Tate, wonder and doubt, shock and horror intermingled in his open coun- tenance, stepped up to the captain. ‘*Hadn’t oughter to do this, Cap'n,’’ he went to said, argumentatively, and almost plead- ingly. ‘*There’s a man-o’-war in yonder. She can see; she’ll know, and she’ll follow you.’’ ‘*Wha—who--—”’ yelled the pirate, hilariously. ‘*Bill Swarth—a man-o’-war. Yah-yah, ‘he'll see; he’ll know—but he won’t foller. Hey, dere,’’ he called for- ward, for Mr. Todd was chock-a-block, ‘*slack him down—slack down de golden goose.’’ Yank drew back, Mr. Todd came down. He lay on the deck for a time, as before, then assisted by Yank, arose to his feet, and clung to the life-rail, his breath coming and going in groans, while his dark eyes sparkled luridly. **Now,’’ said the mulatto, in a quiet voice, ‘‘when you see me hanged you'll know how it feels, and ‘joy it much better. I’m goin’ now. I won’t report you to any ’Merican consuls *cause you might be called home to tell why you swindle natives in yo’ missionary brig. So, you jess go ‘long an’ git mo’ pearls fo’ An’ say——’’ he pointed to the atoll and wheezing roun’ here, me. —‘‘don’t make no complaints to dat man- o’-war in dar, or you'll lose de money I lef’ you, an’ yo’ brig. An’ need ’em in yo’ business. ”’ Mr. Todd, his solemn face working con- vulsively and his long frame swaying as he rested his weight first on one foot, then on the other, gave voice to short speech, which, in his honest anger, was a prayer —a supplication—a calling down of the wrath of Omnipotence on the head of the despoiier, but outwardly, with regard to its terseness, explosiveness, and common- you placeness of expression, it was an oath, nothing else; a plain imprecation, and it
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20 A FALL FROM GRACE. moved the pirate to tears—of laughter. ‘*Yah-yah,’’ the mulatto yelled, while he danced back and forth, swinging the bag of pearls. ‘‘ Yah—ho-ho—I better go sabe souls, too. I: cuss most as good as dat myself.’’ Then he sobered, sud- denly, and ordering his crew back to their craft, followed them, singing loudly with mock earnestness: , ‘** Dere is work for all in de vineyard of de Lord——’ He sang only this much. Mr. Todd, with fingers in his ears, had turned his back and was moving aft, which gave Yank Tate the opportunity of his life. He followed the pirate chief and caught him at the rail, interrupting the song. ‘*Got all hands, Cappen?’’ he = said, quickly. Want a good hand—a carpen- ter?’’ For answer he was knocked prone upon his back by a blow of the huge mulatto’s fist; and while lying there, too dazed to rise, and with his pulpy nose spouting streams of blood, listened to this: ‘‘No, you no-account hypocrite—you robber of natives and obtainer of money I don’t want you under false pretenses in my ship. I’m p’ticular who I ’sociate wat’.”” The pirate climbed over the rail, order- ing fastenings cast off and sweeps manned. When ten yards separated the two craft, Yank arose, disfigured, chagrined, and as angry as it was possible for him to be with a fellow-creature. ‘*You come back here, you half-cooked moke,’’ he yelled, shaking his fist. ‘*Come back here an’ fight it out. I kin lick you, big as you are. Come back, you nigger—you nigger—you damn nigger!’’ A derisive laugh rang out, and the strange craft swung around the brig’s bow, making back to the west. Yank drew a bucket of water, swabbed his swollen fea- tures, and went aft, where Mr. Todd was leaning moodily against the rail. ‘*What happened?’’ asked the mission- ary. ‘‘Why did he strike you?’’ ‘*Well, just this,’’ answered Yank, in some confusion, not knowing how to ex- plain—then deciding that an out-and-out lie was best, he said: ‘*‘T went up to him an’ told him that he was wrong, an’ wicked, an’—an’ such like—an’ told him we’d pray fur him. But he didn’t agree to it, an’ plugged me.”’ ‘*You were wrong yourself, if not wicked. No prayer will avail with him. He isa type. Iam an instrument of the vengeance of the Lord. I feel that I have been chosen, perhaps you also. I feel that the Lord will decree, having sorely tried us, that we are to meet that man again.’’ ‘‘Mebbe. I kin lick the stuffin’ out 0’ any damn Ethiopan, stand up an’ knock down, that ever stole a chicken if he’ll only——’’ ‘*Hush. When will you reform your vo- cabulary? Go forward; send three hands aft to the spanker, and stand by the fore- topmast-staysail sheets. There is wind coming. While you are waiting, get all the small chain on deck, and overhaul as much forward of the windlass as you can. We may have to use it—though I doubt that we can clubhaul against a reef rising out of the deep sea.”’ Yank answered and obeyed. And the events of the next twenty-four hours fol- lowed in such quick succession that he was spared the further pain of chagrin and dis- appointment. The typhoon came down upon them with a preliminary darkness to the north followed by a deluge of rain. Then came wind, gentle at first, which enabled them to cast the brig on the port tack with small steerage-way; then a suc- cession of furious blasts, the second of which ripped the storm-spanker to ribbons; then a steady, screaming pressure which bore men against the lee railand flattened the ground-swell of the sea to a milk- white froth. Even with the helm hard- down, the brig would not steer, but payed off toward the atoll. Mr. Todd knew that with the staysail furled to balance the loss of the spanker, the brig would only drift bodily toward the jagged reef to leeward. As there was not a sail on board half as strong as the lost spanker, and as the staysail might go at any moment, he decided that there was but one thing to do, scud on the only track which might be open—through the northern inlet of the reef to a dubious anchorage, or to a jour- ney through the eastern inlet to sea-room and safety. He took the wheel himself—with the 1 ttnaihenr stomp nstcinisanineeasineeseitn
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' i FROM GRACE. Drawn by Vincent A. Svoboda. ‘*HE LAUGHED, AND WAVED THE BAG OVER THE HEAD OF THE PROSTRATE MISSIONARY.”’
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Ny N Kanaka helmsman to leeward to help him —and put it up, roaring orders to Yank regarding ground-tackle. The brig payed off, straightened to an even keel, and roll- ing slightly, more from uneven wind-pres- sure than from the action of the sea, charged down toward the nest of coral. A quarter-mile away on all sides, sea and sky were merged in the cloud of spindrift that rose from the frothy sea; and beyond this was the reef. But he was a wise man, this Mr. Todd, and he had taken the bearings of the inlet while there was still time. He steered a compass- course, and soon distinguished the shad- owy, loftier outlines of the reef to star- board and port on the flat froth ahead of him, and knew that he was right. With a moment’s time now to look around he saw, off on the starboard quarter, the pirate-ship, dismasted, broadside to the wind, and surely doomed. Then the smudge shut her out, and Mr. Todd steered on, with a grim smile on his face; for he was but human, and human beings lately triced up by the heels, hanged by the neck, and despoiled, are apt to forget the Golden Rule and its corollaries. The little brig whizzed through the inlet into the water no calmer than the flat tur- moil without, but lacking, in a measure, the overlying cloud of spume; and Mr. Todd saw, in a hurried look to starboard, the big brig close up to the reef, with cables, taut as iron bars, made fast to projections of coral. The sight decided him. The brig’s commander would never have moored to the reef had he not dis- trusted the holding-ground beneath, and with a shout to Yank Tate to come aft, he shifted the wheel and steered roughly for the eastern inlet. Yank appeared. ‘*Never mind the anchors,’’ shouted Mr. Todd, in his ear. ‘‘Rig a tarpaulin in the port main-rigging to help steer. I’m mak- ing for the east inlet.’’ Yank attended to this, and Mr. Todd soon picked up the opening to the south- east. To allow for leeway he steered a full point higher than the inlet’s direction, and the staysail gave the little brig good headway, with the square of canvas aft to balance it. All might have gone well had not a gun boomed out aboard the large, armed brig hanging to the reef, and A FALL FROM GKACE. a solid shot plunged into the mainmast six feet below the hounds. ‘There was no sail on the mast except the tarpaulin in the rigging; but in that furious pressure of wind no mast weakened in this manner could stand. The topgallantmast was on deck, but the topmast and upper part of the lower mast sagged forward, slowly and steadily; lanyards stretched like rubber strings, then snapped, and down came the fabric amid the roars of Mr. Todd and Yank to ‘‘Lay aft, for your lives.’’ It crashed on the lee rail, balanced a moment, and rolled overboard; then, held by the still intact mainstay, it drifted to the quarter—an embarrassing drag, which pulled the brig’s head off before the wind. The crew, though frightened, were un- hurt. With axes and knives they slashed at rigging until the wreck was astern; then, they set a doubtful fore-spencer—an alleged ‘storm-sail forward, corresponding to the spanker aft. But in spite of its age and weakness, it held together, and the brig sped toward the inlet, rushed through at ten knots, and squared away dead before the wind for at least a ten-hour scud; for there was no heaving-to with all after-sail gone. Mr. Todd plotted his track and when the wind moderated, rigged a jury mainmast and sail of his maintopgallant- gear, then with short head-sail, beat back to the atoll with two dominating specula- tions in his mind—as to whether his pearls were above water or below, and as to why he had been fired at—arriving three days later, by which time Yank’s sore nose was healed and his spirits recovered. They noted the white tent on the south- ern edge of the atoll as they skirted it, and well over to the eastward—as far as where the reef broke up into the maze of frag- ments through which ran the deep, east channel—were moving specks, men un- doubtedly, who seemed to be waving caps. High and dry near the north inlet, un- kempt and forlorn, was the junk-like hull of the pirate ship; but there was no sign of the large brig, within or without. They sailed around until abreast of the wreck; then, with mainyards backed, the brig drifted. Leaving Yank in charge, Mr. Todd lowered a boat and visited the wreck, confident that it was deserted. He was right; it was not only empty of > canta Stow ante er
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china nae living creatures, but stripped and gutted of everything inanimate that was movable. There was not even ballast in the hold; the cabin and forecastle were void of fur- niture and clothing. The sails and gear had, of course, gone with the masts, but guns and carriages, deck-blocks, pump- brakes, hand-spikes, belaying-pins, and all ropes, lines and running-gear, had been removed by the men. The dingy brown hull was a shell, and though he searched high and low, Mr. Todd found no trace of his pearls. He returned to his little brig with gloomy face. ‘*Bothered ’bout somethin’ in yonder,’’ said Yank, as he climbed the rail. ‘Makin’ a big smoke.’’ He pointed south, toward the thickened part of the atoll, where black smoke soared skyward. ‘*We'll go in,’’ answered his chief, de- terminedly, after a look through the glass. ‘‘T am not yet sure of my duty, or of what is required of me; but they are evi- dently in trouble, perhaps hungry, and pos- sibly open to terms.’’ They swung the yards and sailed in across the lagoon to within a hundred yards of the beach, where, after first satisfying himself that the shouting men on the strip of coral had no boats, Mr. Todd dropped anchor and sculled in with his dinghy, stopping at a safe distance. ‘*Come in,’’ yelled a tall, black-eyed, sunburnt man with big mustache, who seemed to be the leader. ‘*Come in. We're all right—only damned hungry and thirsty.”’ Then the rest—hollow-eyed and gaunt—voiced the invitation in unmis- takable sincerity. They were armed to the last man with long knives, and were dressed in red shirts and caps; but they were not .the men who had boarded the brig. ‘*‘Who are you?’’? asked Mr. Todd. ‘*‘Why are you here? You are armed; I am not, and have lately suffered from it. Explain who you are.’’ ‘*Come in. We're all right. We're harmless. Here—look.’* - The leader tossed his long knife toward Mr. Todd. It sank in two fathoms. ‘*Disarm—every man jack of you,’’ he shouted, and a shower of knives fell around the boat. ‘*Now, come in. We're. marooned to A FALL FROM GRACE. starve—that’s all that ails us. We belong to the brig that shot away your mainmast. Damned sorry—thought it was Chink. Had an old war with him, and _ never thought he’d let any one get away from him. So we let go at you.”’ ‘*You mean,’’ queried Mr. Todd, ‘‘that you fired on what you supposed to be a pirate crew who had first disposed of my- self and men? ’ ‘Yes. That's it. We knew his old tub. We knew Chink. And he never spared any one before. Thought he'd taken your brig for himself.*’ ‘*And why are you here?’ ‘*We came in to mend our rudder and had to stay through the blow. We got boats out, took Chink and his gang off the reef, just in time to save ’em alive, and afterward found his mainmast and towed it in here—over yonder, with the guns and dunnage——"’ the leader pointed up the beach. ‘*‘We were going to help him refit, and stripped his craft to launch her; but he put up a job on us when our rudder was fixed—got all hands ashore here but my mate, then rushed for the boats, the lot of them, put off to the brig, killed the mate as we watched ’em, and went to sea. We're supposed to starve, while he gets away with my brig and your pearls. He told me about his haul, and I saw the bag.”’ Mr. Todd turned and hailed Yank, order- ing him to strike out a barrel of bread:and a cask of water. Then he sculled out to receive them, and when Yank had lowered them into the dinghy he invited him to come ashore. ‘‘We have nothing to fear from these men,’’ he said. ‘*They are pirates beyonce doubt—but pirates with a grievance equal to ours. Like us, they are instruments. We can aid each other.’’ Which partly explains Mr. Todd's late: acquiescence to a questionable scheme pro- pounded by Captain Swarth at a conference in one of the tents, the dominant reason being the cnthusiastic approval of tne single-minded Yank Tate. The scheme was, to temporarily change the missionary brig to a pirate brigantine by substituting Chink’s mainmast with its still intac mainsail and gaff-topsail for the jury rig; and thus disguised, to sail in pursuit of
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24 A FALL FROM GRACE. Chink, whom Captain Swarth vowed he could tind, and to recover by law of might the brig and the pearls. Yank stipulated ghoulishly that, in return for his services as carpenter in masting the brig, he be allowed the privilege of prodding Chink along the plank when he walked it, and Mr. Todd stipulated that he be not in- volved in conflict or contact with either side, receiving his pearls merely for the loan of his brig. Captain Swarth prom- ised; and Mr. Todd chided Yank on his bloodthirstiness. ‘*You are ever a backslider,’’ he said, sternly. ‘*‘What will be your future when you no longer have me to guide and ad- vise you?’’ ‘*Don’t know,’’ answered Yank, calmly, as he bit off a chew of forbidden tobacco. ‘*Tt’s the least of my troubles; and this good-for-evil business don’t always work. [I gave him good—promised to pray for him, and he gave me evil—-plugged me in the nose. An’ then, you know, I’m an instrument. ’’ Mr. Todd sighed and turned away, real- izing that Yank’s independence came only of a prospective berth with Captain Swarth, who had taken a strong fancy to him. He was certainly a valuable man to any skipper. He dressed down and short- ened the junk’s mainmast to suitable di- mensions for use in the brig and, finding a split in the lower end, he constructed a forge, and shrank an iron band or two around it; he invented a coral paint to whiten the black brig, of coral powder and boiled oil from Mr. Todd’s paint-locker, fashioning the mill for pulverizing coral with two grindstones and a couple of pump-brakes. He was cheery, industrious and enthusiastic, loving work and his fel- lowmen—and limited only by his unseemly ambition to burn, sink and destroy. - Mr. Todd had a hold full of provisions intended for distribution and sale at the islands on his route; so there was no lack of food for these forty men, though the water-supply was low.
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enencueanaend Al ~ ade oR SR cS Swarth headed for Pauna Lo Island, for water and traces of Chink, and obtained both. A wild-eyed man came off in the boat and told of his being marooned by Chink for a small disagreement, and of Chink’s announced intention to ravage the China seas with his fine, new, ten-gun brig—‘‘fit to thrash a man-of-war.’’ The man was shipped, and the brig sailed west, leaving behind six Kanaka deserters, who, no doubt, could live and die happily on this well-stocked, well-watered island. But Mr. Todd, on hearing this, gently announced a sad suspicion that Captain Swarth and the recreant Yank had com- pounded the desertion—which may, or may not, have been true. Yank was too su- premely happy to deny anything criminal and disgraceful. There were sure signs of Chink here and there in the China Sea—wreckage, drifting boats holding dead men, and an occasional smoldering and derelict hull; but they had cruised three months before early one morning, hove-to in a howling gale off the southern end of Formosa, they sighted craft, hull-down in the west, which Swarth knew for his brig. She was on the starboard tack, under double-reefed topsails, spanker and foretopmast-staysail, and the wind being out of the east, lay almost directly to leeward. ‘‘Our work is cut out,’’ said Swarth to his men, when they had assembled at his call. ‘‘We’ll run down flying a distress- signal to fool him, and we’ll keep out of sight till we get there. Then-—there’s no turning back; for this craft can’t lay alongside in this sea. We'll board our own brig and take her back. We've nothing but knives, but we know how to use them. No quarter, for you'll get none if you lose.’’ They yelled an approving response and flourished their knives. And Yank, hav- ing none, elevated his broad-ax—a murder- ous tool with ten inches of razor-like edge —and yelled the loudest. Yards were squared, reefs taken out, and the little vessel was headed toward the brig, while a British ensign, union down, was fastened in the port main-rigging; then all but Swarth and a couple of men —all three in yellow oilskins—hid them- selves behind the rail, sharpening their A FALL FROM GRACE. 25 knives as they waited. In two hours they could make out the huge figure of Chink on the brig’s quarter, and shortly after were within hailing distance. ‘*Brig ahoy,’’ roared Swarth, through a trumpet. ‘‘Brig ahoy.’’ **Wha’ you want?’’ came back faintly, against the wind. ‘‘Keep off wi’ dat craft in dis big sea.”’ ‘*Brig ahoy,’’ again called Swarth, as though not understanding Chink’s answer. ‘*I’m short o’ grub and water. I'll heave- to to windward o’ you and send a boat.”’ Chink sprang frantically to the top of the skylight, and waving to his helmsman to put the wheel up, sang out thundering orders to his men, plainly distinguishable, for the brigantine was nearly upon him. It was too late. Swarth had gained the time he needed, and now putting his helm hard-down, rounded to alongside the brig —yards catching yards aloft, rigging snap- ping, and Chink’s cosmopolitan crew rival- ing their leader in blasphemous objurga- tion. Then the two vessels crashed to- gether, and a dozen or so of Chink’s men sprang over with their short cutlasses, ready to exterminate the lubberly visitors; but they did not return. Forty red- shirted men arose to receive them, and great was their surprise while it lasted; it was not a fight—merely a killing. ‘* Hurrah, lads, ’’ shouted Captain Swarth, as he sprang over the rail to his own craft. ‘‘Here are the men who left us to starve. Give it to ’em.”’ Yank among them with his broad-ax, they followed; and Mr. Todd, unarmed and dignified, brought up the rear. The little brigantine, with yards square and canvas aback, bumped her way astern and drifted away—a future derelict. Mr. Todd, near the main-rigging of the brig, saw her disappear, but had neither heart nor power to stop her, so new, and horrid, and paralyzing, was the sight before him —a hand-to-hand struggle with knives and cutlasses—the wickedest warfare that hu- man beings ever indulged in. A few single-shot pistols exploded but were not reloaded. The shouting now was done by the mixed crew under Chink. Swarth’s men—trained in sheath-knife fencing— saved their breath. Where one could close with his opponent, he had the ad-
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SA Te Np ian i ? ' 26 A FALL FROM GRACE. vantage—a short preliminary wrestle, an opening, a sudden thrust, a man less. But they could not always close, and those of Swarth’s men who had seized ¢utlasses from the over-supply in the racks it the gun-stations did not need to; so, chere was a nerve-racking jingle of steel added to the uproar, as men fenced for their lives. Forward near the fore-rig- ging, a huge negro of Chink’s crew lay with a divided shoulder—a victim to Yank Tate's broad-ax; and as the fascinated missionary watched he saw the handle of this broad-ax rise and fall—coming down on heads and blades as a club. 3ut it became apparent to Mr. Todd that in this furious mélée, length of steel was telling; there were more red-shirted men prone upon the deck than there were of the others. Yank had become the center of an inclosing circle of flourishing steel, which he was keeping at a proper radius; and on the poop-deck Captain Swarth was engaged with Chink, and hold- ing his own; nevertheless, it was plain that the defenders of the brig were winning. As the missionary looked, Swarth slipped and fell; before he recovered himself Chink had sunk his blade into his shoulder, and sprung to the main deck to join his men. Then it was that the Rev. Mr. Todd took action. Selecting a capstan-bar from the rack near him, he whirled it over his head and walked briskly into the fray, his long clerical coat-tails flapping with his motion. His eyes sparkled in his somber face; his lips were parted ead drawn tightly over his gleaming teeth; he growled incoherently ; he was not pleasant to look upon nor was he pleasant to meet. A man faced him, and fell-——with a crushed head; then another and another. There was no stand- ing before this tall, muscular terror, who ‘whirled, and twisted, and flourished that six-foot club with quicker motion than they could give to their cutlasses. They fell back and left him a path, but he turned upon them. The circle around Yank melted away, and men sprang to meet the new enemy—but only to fall when they reached him. Swarth’s crew took heart and fought harder, while Chink, whom Mr. Todd_was plainly trying to find, called his followers around him at the forward door of the cabin and bade them defend it. Then the pirate entered the cabin and returned with the canvas ditty-bag. ‘*Here,’? he called, as he held it up. ‘‘Here, you humble follower of de meek an’ lowly. Dis what you want? Take it, an’ call off your dogs.’’ ‘*Throw it to me,’’ yelled the frenzied missionary. ‘‘Throw it to me.’’ ‘*Stop fightin’, and make terms. We're not beat yet.’’ And Mr. Todd essayed to oblige him; but the furious men beside him, with their leader fallen, would not desist. . They pressed harder upon the little band at.the cabin-door. Then the bag was thrown—overboard. Mr. Todd became a homicidal maniac. He yelled and shrieked, struck and prod- ded, killing three of ten men surrounding Chink before he met the chieftainface to face. Then these two fought—the one with cutlass, the other with that terrible white-ash capstan-bar. There were fifteen of Swarth’s men beside him when that duel began, and of these five fell before the last of Chink’s followers stretched out in death. The survivors turned, to end the single combat raging along the deck from mainmast to foremast; but they found that in this fight there was no room for their short knives. Early in the fray, Chink’s cutlass had gone in pieces, and he had fled to the mainmast, there to arm himself equally. And now, around the deck, forward and aft, to starboard and port, the two men were contesting, with their ponderous weapons, in a fight which in the nature of things could have but one survivor. The giant mulatto, silent and impassive, whirled his club and retreated ; the equally tall, but thinner, wirier and quicker-motioned missionary, yelling and exclaiming insanely, pressed him hard— striving to bring the six-foot club down on the woolly head dodging before him. The red-shirted victors formed a circle about them, but not one cared to enter within the sweep of those capstan-bars, which, when they met, rebounded with greater force than is usually given a blacksmith’s sledge. The combatants stepped over the dead and living bodies, and upon them; they stooped, endeavoring to lunge; they sprang in the air, and to the right i
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Ae i LL el TR and to the left; they fenced—and their fencing came of no skill acquired by tutel- age but of instincts derived from the Age of Stone, when clubs were the only weap- ons, and victory the only prize of combat —and at last Chink stumbled on the out- stretched arm of a dead man, and the coin- cident sweep of his club lost its initial direction, just enough to admit the de- scending bludgeon of the missionary to strike a glancing blow on his head. He fell, but his head was not injured; it was his crushed shoulder which brought an agonized howl from his throat, and the fight to an end. He dropped his weapon and sat upon the deck. ‘*Bind him hand and foot,’’ ordered Mr. Todd, panting hard, but self-contained now. ‘‘Bind him tight. I made him a promise once.’? The men obeyed him. Chink’s evil face, as they fastened his wrists and ankles, was a composite of all unworthy emotions; yet he made no sound until Mr. Todd ordered the main- staysail halyards overhauled to the deck and a hangman’s noose made in the end of the fall. Then he protested, in a loud, wailing tone. ‘You won't do dat. Oh, Mister Todd, you won't do dat. I gib you pearls. I gib you money to make up. Don’t hang me.’ ‘‘Hush,’’ answered the missionary, sternly, as they slipped the noose around his neck and drew it tight. ‘*‘ You marked yourself for the vengeance of God when you tortured and robbed a man who had not harmed you, but had the courage to follow you. I warned you. Up with him, men,’’ he called; ‘‘hook the bight in the stanchion-sheave and bowse him up.”’ The howling mulatto was lifted upright, his cries troubling the air until the noose stifled them; then, amid the pitiless laughter and shouting of his executioners, he went aloft to the halyard-block, to squirm and strangle until death came to him. As he left the deck Mr. Todd bowed his head and lowered his eyes, re- maining in this attitude until the rope was belayed ; but in this the single-minded Yank Tate took no part. Mr. Todd, hardly hearing the congratu- lations of the men left standing, climbed the poop-steps and looked for his brigan- tine. She was out of sight, behind the A FALL FROM GRACE. blank wall of spindrift raised by the storm. IIe looked vacantly at the red-shirted man at the wheel, who, shouting jubilantly, was pushing his predecessor’s body out of his way with his feet; he looked up to the heavens and groaned hoarsely, and rais- ing his arms high above his head, brought them slowly down with a sweeping motion that might have meant renunciation of heaven or defiance of hell. His eye fell upon Captain Swarth, who was beckoning, and weakly trying to make himself heard. He went to him, bound his wound roughly, placed a coil of rope under his head, talked with him for a moment, then went for- ward. Yank Tate sat upon the deck be- side his victim, the big negro. He had placed his knee beneath the woolly head for a pillow; he was holding a tin pot of water to the thick lips of the dying man, and explaining, while tears welled in his honest, brown eyes. ‘*Couldn’t help it, old man,’’ he was saying, as Mr. Todd stopped before him. ‘*An’ I couldn’t do it again, Lord in heaven! No—never again. I can use a club, but not an ax—never again. You're the only one, old man, and I’m damned sorry.”’ The glazing eyes brightened a moment, then dulled, and the huge, black head rolled to one side. The negro was dead. Yank stood up, and looked into the drawn face of Mr. Todd through his tears. ‘*Yank Tate,’’ said the missionary, in a strained voice. ‘*You left my service against my wishes and engaged with Cap- tain Swarth, refusing to take orders from me. You will take them now; I am your superior officer. My life is wasted, my vessel is lost, and my wealth is in the sea. From the sea will I recover it. Captain Swarth is seriously, though not fatally injured, and I have engaged with him as mate and quartermaster. May the Lord have mercy on our two souls, Yank, on yours in particular, if you ever cross me again. Clear up the decks and throw these carrion overboard.’’ ‘*Aye, aye, sir,’’ answered the astounded carpenter. Mr. Todd went aft, and Yank wiped his eyes. ‘‘And he called me a backslider,’’ he muttered.
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SUCCESSFUL PERSONALITIES SKETCHED FROM REAL LIFE. BY JOHN HOLMS. | PROPOSE to write the story of two boys—brothers: for the benefit of all other boys, whether brothers or not, who There is star- may chance to read this story. nothing very remarkable, nothing tling, nothing so very unusual, to chron- icle; and this is one of the strongest reasons for writing. We have fallen upon times in which sentiment, possibly public sentiment, regards -life as scarcely worth living unless it is so strenuous af to be perpetually attracting attention; while too many persons are only too frequently declaiming about the loss of opportunity to ‘‘the average man,’’ asserting that most of the oldtime avenues to recognition and to promotion are closed, or at least are barred with gates whose locks respond only to golden keys. For thirty years I have been in a position to learn the truth or falsity of these propositions—if these may be dignified by this titl—and I have come into such absolute and entire confidence that they are untrue that I am solicitous that others should share this confidence. It is especially to be desired that young men, those whose future is still before them, should see this matter in its true light; that those who are just coming out of port and are beginning the long and not always pleasant or safe voyage that we call life, should get their correct bear- ings. A man is exceptionally dull and stupid who does not both value and desire appreciation; and he assumes a grave re- sponsibility who confidently assures a young man that he will in all probability fail to receive this. It is difticult to con- ceive that any human being will or can push on and up in this world if he is without hope of betterment, without hope of his fair share of those things which a bread-winner, a father, an American citizen, may reasonably desire; and it is a terrible mistake to destroy utterly this hope. Divine love, divine grace and forgiveness, may cover a multitude of sins, but it is exceedingly doubtful if the sin of pessimism is one of this number. For the people who are ever and by choice in the shadow, and who never walk on the sunny side of the street, there is but little pity. They ought to be left to their own devices, but they ought to be compelled to let other people alone. It is not to be understood that this true story is written to present to young men two models to be closely imitated. Those of whom I write have not always been wise, and it is more than probable that they have not always done that which is right. They have shown themselves very human: this I most freely admit, though I love them both as though they were my sons. Their story will be told with- out comment. It must be its own com- mentator. All the facts are within my own personal knowledge. Names are omitted, and the sketch is made as impersonal as possible, for very obvious reasons. The elder of the two has but just reached his fortieth year, and the younger is thirty-eight; so the probabilities are in favor of still further advancement. There is such a thing as momentum in individual lives—and these men are daily gaining in strength. They are not rich— Fam not sure that they care to be. They never held oftice—I am quite sure they do not particularly desire political preferment. So far as their most intimate friends know, they have no special ‘‘am- bition’’ which is wasting their energies and eating out their hearts. They are simply excellent examples of what most young men in this country may become by honesty, diligence, faithfulness and pluck —that is all, and that is quite enough. I first knew these men when they were boys, twenty-two years ago, in a small town in a Western state. One was eight- een years of age, the other sixteen. They were the only sons of their mother, and she was a widow. Her husband had died, in New England, some years before; leaving her alone, with little money and in poor health. She went West because she had a sister living in that part of the country, and because ‘‘there was nothing else to do.’’ Of the almost desperate struggle for own have
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existence during the earlier years of that Western life it is not necessary to say more, here and now, than that she never became dependent, never for a moment gave up the battle, and never took her boys out of the public schools while these were in session. I recall her as one of the bravest and sweetest examples of the American common people—that most uncommon way, that the These boys were common world has ever poor from the start, as to worldly posses- sions, but they had a rich inheritance in that mother. On the morning that I faced the first by the known. people, college class that I ever taught, the younger brother sat in the front line of seats. It was in one of those state uni- versities so well known in the West—those institutions of higher learning which offer the last four years or grades of a state sys- tem of free, public education; institutions the work of which unite and not to divide society; whose opportunities are so highly prized because in these days this higher learning is a necessity to the poor —even though it may still be considered, This boy is to possibly, a luxury to the rich. could never have gone beyond the high school had it not for generous provision on the part of the state for all its children. Indeed, it is doubtful if he would have gone even through the high school but for the constant incentive which the possibility of a university course placed before him. He is an excellent illustration of the power and efficiency of this system of education—not yet half ap- preciated, even by those who have partici- pated in its benefits; this close articulation of all parts of this generous scheme for the betterment of the state by the intellectual betterment of its citizenry. A few weeks later, I chanced to the elder brother. He was then, and is now, suffering certain physical limitations which give him a halting gait, and which would have been a heavy burden for one less stout-hearted than himself. In all the years that have passed, I have never known him to make the slightest reference —even the most indirect reference—to this trouble, nor has he ever hesitated or flinched because of it. There is a vast deal of courage and grit in this country been this wise and meet SUCCESSFUL PERSONALITIES SKETCHED FROM REAL LIFE. 29 outside of the Grand Army of the Repub- lic and outside the ranks of the men who fought so nobly at Santiago and Manila. This elder brother had (naturally and necessarily) carried the large end of the family load, as between the two boys, since either of them was old enough to lift at all. But in his great heart, then and always overflowing with emotions, he had early determined to give his brother the ‘‘long end of the evener,”’ and as far as lay within his power to see that the brother had ‘*the chances, ’’ what- He was then doing generous ever these might be. roustabout work on a small daily paper—a position he had won and was holding by most continuous effort. His salary had already been twice advanced, and the munificent dollars a week—night-work at that! Early in that first this elder brother met me on the street. In a sud- den burst of in a frank and manly way which at once won my heart, he told me of his hopes and fears, his anxiety for his mother, his ambitions for his brother; of all that he himself was struggling to accomplish, for others rather severe and was then sum of six winter, confidence, and than for himself. From that hour until the last time I met him—a few months ago, when I dined with him at one of the most magnificent hotels in the city of New York, and saw him surrounded by men of fame and station in the business world, sought and respected as a wise and trusted counselor in affairs of great moment —there has been break in friend- ship, nor has he ever forfeited my esteem. Early in the spring I secured for him a position as accountant all-around office man at the University, with an ad- vance in his wages and with the privilege of attending two lectures or classes each day; a position which he filled most ac- ceptably and opportunities which he im- proved most faithfully, for years. Then a general passenger agent of an im- portant Western railway took him as private secretary. In this capacity he soor showed extraordinary aptitude in many di- rections, was continually overflowing his position, never asked about ‘‘hours’’ or ‘*pay,’’ made the interests of his employer his own, anticipated instructions as far as this could be done safely, and gave his no our and two
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30 SUCCESSFUL PERSONALITIES SKETCHED FROM REAL LIFE. whole mind and “heart and strength to his work. There never was, there never can be, a better illustration of the fact that all at it and all the time at it is sure to win; that it -is both wise and necessary to mix perspiration with aspiration; that the good things of this life never of themselves come to the young man who simply stands at the foot of the ladder with his mouth open— longing; that an employee who will take pains to make himself and _ his services ia- dispensable to his employer, holds the whip- hand—and that it is wholly unnecessary for him to lay on the lash. Meanwhile, the younger brother had made a record for himself at the University. The success of the elder did not relieve the younger from the necessity of labor. He ‘*pumped’’ the organ on Sunday in one of the most influential churches in the city. He rose before daylight and carried a news- paper route—often with positive physical suffering and danger in winter. . Once in later years, when asked why as an attorney he had so strenuously defended a woman q@ ho could not repay him, he said, *‘I have not forgotten that she lived at the end of my old paper route, and that more than once in winter her kind heart prompted her to rise very early and have a cup of hot coffee ready for me, fearing that I might perish with the cold.’’ On Saturdays he collected his route, solicited advertising, worked at home, did odd jobs for the neighbors, occasionally wrote some special articles for his paper; and in every way and in all ways pieced out the family in- come. Worn by the earlier struggles. the mother could neither endure nor accom- plish as much as in other years, and so the expenses at home were increased by the need for a maid, for a better table, and for more physical comforts—for the mother’s sake; and to gratify her and to save her both boys wrought mightily. But the younger found time and strength for his University work also; and his heart warmed and his horizon broadened and his insight grew keener and his perceptions quickened into new life. It was all very inspiring to him, this close touch with all that had been and still was great and good and helpful in the world; this constant association with the best men at their best —commonly called books; this close com- panionship with thoughtful, earnest, large- brained and unselfish instructors. Fortu- nately he did not fall into the only too prevalent error of the average collegian, that of considering the faculty as his nat- ural and inevitable and hereditary enemies, determined if possible deftly to secrete about his person some small packages of learning, which he in turn is just as deter- mined not to carry from the college if he can possibly and safely unload before his final commencement-day. And so he daily grew in scholarship and in manliness and in grace and favor. What was the effect of all this labor, and how deep and strong became his final love for learning, may be inferred from a passage in his last public address—a noble oration on good citizen- ship, delivered only a few months since, on the commencement platform of one of our most notable universities :— ‘‘T have not had to ‘unlearn’ what I learned at college. I can remember just where I was and what objects were about me when [ read the concluding passages of Plato’s ‘Apology.’ I can remember as distinctly as if it were yes- terday how toward the end I was able to abandon the lexicon and leap from boulder to boulder, from noble sentence to noble sentence, as by some newly given instinct and power, without aid or staff. ‘Wherefore, O Judges, be of good cheer about death, and know this of a truth—that no evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death; he and his are not neglected by the gods; nor has my approaching end happened by chance.’ I remember how the last words rang in my ears: ‘The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways’: and I remember every detail of the soft May Saturday morning which looked in through the win- dow upon me as I closed the book. ‘*When since then do you imagine I have had a keener intimation of reality, a clearer insight into what constitutes life— when have I had an hour more vital and glorious than that?’’ Already the investment made by the state, by the public, by public taxation, in this young man, had become income-bearing! Great thoughts are of more value than great cities, and lofty ideals tower far above the sky-scrapers of modern architecture ! ~ ads eames
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OS Ae RRR scm em = After graduation he was made a tutor in Greek, and for two years, while working for his master’s degree, continued with us, well beloved by both teachers and taught. Having chosen the law as his profession, he went to Columbia University, in the city of New York, in order that he might not only secure competent instruction and unusual advantages, but that he might come in contact with the systematized ac- tivities of a great city. Those who still clamor for what they call the safe seclusion of the rural village for a college and for collegians, evidently forget that modern education has come out of the cloister, has thrown aside both cap and gown, and stands in its shirtsleeves in the most busy mart, anxious to learn more of life, and to help all to get the truest life, and to get it more abundantly. There is great stimulus and inspiration in the well-ordered and masterful existence of a metropolis for any lad who keeps himself open to all good in- fluences and who is willing and anxious to grow. To the contrary-minded there is safety nowhere, because he is perpetually in the demoralizing and degenerating com- pany of himself. Meanwhile, the elder brother had _ be- come the editor of all advertising matter for the railroad with which he was con- nected ; and had originated the dainty illus- trated pamphlets, with text of more than usual literary merit, now so very common in this line. For two years he was the managing editor of a large and influential daily paper, practically owned by a gentle- man who was both an admirer and a friend. Note—that this was not a family friend, there was nothing of the past in this ad- miration, the friendship was not due to conditions over which this young man had no control, he had not been bornto it. It was the friendship of an older man fora younger man, compelled by sheer merit, by strong personal characteristics, by serv- ice of unusual value. The young man had won his spurs by hard fighting in the thickest dust of the arena. I have known him to work eighteen hours a day, a month at a time. When it was necessary, not infrequently, he would work all night, bathe his eyes at daylight, and push right along as if this were an every-day occur- rence. He would have delighted Edison— SUCCESSFUL PERSONALITIES SKETCHED FROM REAL LIFE. 31 for he never looked at the clock. Yet for all that he was simply an every-day sort of fellow: plus industry, plus en- ergy, plus tireless brain, plus indomitable spirit—qualities that are capable of some development, at least, in even the weakest of us. These two brothers had a very definite plan. They early determined upon their pattern, and then worked to it and ,by it. They did not drift, they were no loiterers in the hungry land of dreams, they were not waiting for something to turn up, they spent no time in wondering how they could secure from somebody, they were not always looking for a place, and assistance were not looking for a ‘soft place.’’ They asked no favors, but they granted favors whenever and wherever they could—and were perpetually strength- ening themselves that they might be able If any young man is look- especially they ‘ to grant more. ing for a game in which he desires to be sure to win out, let him learn this one. Their thought was to form a law part- nership as soon as both could be admitted to the bar. So while the younger brother toiled at his books and gained strength by associating with men at Columbia—room- ing over a milk station near the Grand Central Station, and adding to his mental effort physical labor before daylight, with the returns of which he pieced out the scanty resources he had managed to save while acting as tutor for his alma mater; and later doing all manner of work in the office of an attorney who had been at- tracted by him and to him—the elder at- tached himself as confidential clerk to the general solicitor of one of the most exten- sive Western railroads; and read law while he carried the entire burden of his mother’s care. Three years later, when the younger was but twenty-six years old, the partner- ship was formed—and still exists. It was not long after this that both brothers married. I refer to this briefly. to correct any impressions that may pos- sibly arise later that their present good fort- une and commanding position have been acquired or at least strengthened by these unions: in other words, that they ‘‘married into’’ something. The elder married a graduate in music whose diploma he had himself signed as Regent at the Univer-
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| Setanta | sity, and who brought him only the great dower of her ability, good sense, undaunted courage and serenity of temper. The younger married one equally lacking in this world’s goods, but alike richly endowed in mind and heart. Neither of these four was looking for any greater gain than the doubling of every joy and the halv- ing of every sorrow. Each one of the four most sincerely accepted the golden truth that he who founds a line is at least quite as honored and as honorable as he who simply heirs one. Five or six years ago a cluster of rail- roads forming one of the greatest Western systems went into bankruptcy. Thousands of security-holders in all parts of the world were thrown into consternation. From all the great money centers came financial ex- perts, each representing millions of the dis- credited securities and each seconded by the ablest legal adviser obtainable. For two years or more these men, wise and experienced in law and finance, struggled day and night to adjust the stupendous difficulties before them. Through all this struggle few men played a. more conspic- uous part than the elder brother of whom Iam writing. His information about the thousands of miles of road in the system was full and accurate, his knowledge of the laws and lawmakers which had to be considered was complete, his financial in- stinct was unerring; and though always independent and courageous in his conten- tions, his almost unfailing correctness of position, his frankness, his evenness of temper and his all-round fairness, caused him to be respected by all and followed by most. He is now the skilled and highly accredited director of railroad com- panies owning over ten thousand miles of track. Besides, he is the chief owner and managing director of one of the brightest, cleanest and most admirable daily papers in the country—a paper second only in size and importance to the very largest in New York and Chicago. He is also a director of two national banks, several street-railway and land companies, and of various other important corporations. Whether at his desk in his Western law office, or in the council chambers of the great corporations, or as guardian of the 32 SUCCESSFUL PERSONALITIES SKETCHED FROM REAL LIFE. interests of great educational institutions or in the columns of his newspaper, or in the pages of the leading magazines, or on the lecture platform or political stump, his opinions are sought and respected by those of the highest class in the highest walks of life. I heard the younger brother deliver the commencement oration from which quo- tation was made earlier in this story. In a simple and unaffected manner, yet with evident sincerity of conviction, and with profound earnestness, clothing his thoughts in charming English—he held a_ vast assembly of cultured men and women for more than an hour. They were delighted and warmed and captivated—as frequent and hearty applause, most intense and eager silence, and not infrequent tears, clearly proved. One of the most noted divines of this country, himself speaking through the printed page to thousands of Englishmen and Americans, declared this to be the best commencement address he had ever heard; read it to his congrega- tion on the following Sunday evening, and secured several hundred copies for private circulation. As I listened to this noble effort and heard this well-earned praise, and recalled the remark of a mutual friend in his home city—‘‘The Supreme bench of the state whenever he is willing, and of the United States when he is fifty’’—I thanked God for a country in which there is still right of way and the right of every man to determine which way, in which all avenues are still open to that promotion and recognition which surely follows the ability to render competent and expert service to individuals needing and desiring the same, combined with a willingness to render large and generous service to the commonwealth. My story closes as abruptly as it began. I make no prophecies, draw no conclusions, point out no moral. I hope what has been written here may bring new courage to the heart of some young fellow who may be in doubt and perplexity as to his future. If he turns squarely about, and bravely faces this unknown with the ‘‘I will it’’ of a born autocrat, then I am more than repaid and as long as he is under the flag he may be assured of success.
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THE GALVESTON WRECKAGE NEAR THE BEACH. TRAGEDY. By JOHN Fay. Q* the evening of Friday, September 7th, Galveston was serene, pictur esque and charming. The of glistening white sand, packed as hard as asphalt, which fringed the saffron waters of the gulf, was alive with merrymakers. The soft note of music came pleasing to the ear. Beneath the palms of Broadway men and women in tropic attire chatted famous beach and sauntered. Cottage balconies held thousands eager to catch the soft gulf breeze. Troops of shouting children reveled in the waters that laved the sand. It was the last night on earth for more than five Between on Saturday and midnight, one-seventh of exterminated. Suffocated in angry waters or crushed by crumbling walls, they went to their death, An area equal to one-third of the terri- tory covered by the city was swept clean, the wreckage hun- dred feet back building-line on the beach, four miles. effaced. later to thousand souls. noon the city’s population was piled twelve from up the paralleling the water for landmarks Streets and were Men who attempted two days find sites of* their homes, the the sand. became confused in The prop- erty loss is still a matter of speculation—of speculation in millions. The whole island was submerged. The gulf and the bay, pushed from their beds, rushed through the streets with a hurricane accompani- ment, and struggled for possession. The depth of water ranged from four feet in the higher places to fifteen feet on the lower level. Under normal conditions this city of thirty-eight thousand is but five feet the There is little tide. As one approaches from the sea, the city appears springing from the bosom of the water. Land is not in sight. Like a floating spectacle of fairyland Galveston greets the eye. Not the entered is the long tongue of sand back of the jetties, the treacherous the city, discernible. above sea-level. until harbor is site of Galveston Island is a sandbar twenty-five miles in length east and west, and varying from one to two miles in width. It was settled in 1847, and tradition has it that prior title was vested in the person of pirate Lafitte. There he fled with his buccaneers and the plunder of the Spanish
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34 THE GALVESTON TRAGEDY. main, and held possession until encroach- ing civilization made the pirate business unhealthy and hazardous. There are no cellars in Galveston. One cannot dig four feet without striking water. Toward the western extremity the island approaches within a few miles of the mainland. Here the city grappled the permanent shore with three low bridges constructed on piling. The water to the north of the island is Galveston Bay. To the south is the wide expanse of the Mexican Gulf. At the far eastern end, the United States. The deep-water channel on which the government has expended six and a half millions of dollars comes in on the bay side. The nearest mainland to the city is the site of Texas City, eight miles northwest across the bay. Galveston covers the shifting sands from bay to gulf for four miles. The business district is on the bay side. The residences are on the gulf and along the central avenues. At this point the island is but a trifle more than a mile wide. The streets run at right angles, those from bay ON THE WAY TO GALVESTON, almost overhanging the point where the . waters of the gulf and bay mingle, is the city. Why a city should thrive and develop on a low sandbar eight miles from the nearest mainland, at the mercy of the tropic winds and waves, may be puzzling, but Galveston stands as an example of man’s combat with nature. Even before the government began the work which made Galveston an ocean port, the city was thriving. Last year it was the fourth wealthiest city, per capita, in to gulf being numbered, and from east to west alphabetically lettered. The storm came over the bay from the north before daylight Saturday morning. At 4 a.m. there was a heavy rain and the wind was blowing steadily about thirty miles an hour. When dawn came, the sky was overcast with surging clouds, and the velocity of the wind was increasing. The waters of the bay began to bank up at the wharves. At 10 a.m. the inunda- tion from the bay began. Even then no
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ENCES IN THE alarm was felt. The wind took on new strength, and the waters were carried four blocks through the business section into Market Street. anchors in the channel, and were sent crashing against the wharves. The wind soon reached the hurricane stage, and buildings began to crumble. First the copings would go, then sections of roofs and walls. By this time the bay water Ocean freighters dragged AT EIGHTEENTH THE GALVESTON TRAGEDY. HARBOR, had reached the highest point on Tremont Street. ©The gulf was yet quiescent. Then a remarkable thing happened. The wind suddenly shifted from the north to the southeast. There was no lull, no breathing-spell, during this movement. The hurricane increased in fury, and pick- ing up the waters of the gulf hurled them with crushing force against the four miles of residences along the beach. There was AND N STREETS.
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ints at ete ae RRR RN a eR eae naaeeneereaeenaeeeeemaeeee 36 THE GALVESTON TRAGEDY. AT FOURTEENTH AND N'% STREBTS. no sea-wall, nothing in the way of protec tion, and houses were knocked over like so many card structures. The great life was due to the belief which prevailed that the would waters loss of storm subside before the reached a dangerous elevation. People decided to cling to their homes Had they fled to the district when the waters of the gulf began the first business mad rush across to the bay, many would saved. When thousands later, they have been at- tempted it their in the effort. At three o’clock the gulf had spread over the city and mingled in the streets with the The vio- continued. higher rose the lost lives waters of the bay. lence of the wind Higher and water. Cottages began to col lapse, and shrieks of agony from women in death-strug- gles were heard. “Twas then that many families abandoned their homes for more substan- tial buildings. One family of five took refuge in four differ ent houses, abandoning each in turn just in time to save it- self. streets during this period. Death was busy in the The water was four feet deep, and a shower of deadly timbers, carried on the wings of the wind, was falling. Hundreds struck by the flying wreckage fell When night settled down up- on the city, the whole beach side was in process of destruc- tion. Wreckage thrown with the force of a catapult against houses which still of- The electric- were unconscious in the water. was fered resistance. light flooded, and darkness. The record of the anemometer in the weather bureau registered the velocity of the wind at eighty- four miles an hour. Then the instrument was blown away. Westward on the stood the Catholic Asylum, a long, old-fashioned building, the home of one hundred chil- dren and fifteen Sisters of Charity. The structure was exposed to the full fury of the elements. Between seven and eight o'clock, the building went down, and all but two children perished. Two boys of seven years seized some wreckage and were driven across the island, where they were found Sunday in the sands near the bay. The body of one heroic Sister was found Virginia Point, with and gas plants the city was in last beach Orphan eight miles away at AT TREMONT STREET AND AVENUE P. ooo
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the bodies of six of her charges tied to- gether and attached to her with a rope. The Orphanage tragedy was one of the most deplorable of that dreadful night. The Ursuline Convent, a substantial brick building five blocks back from the beach, was a haven for all the people in the neigh- borhood. of the tumbling waters, using poles and When the thousand The Sisters dragged many out ropes to rescue the drowning. Hood subsided, there were persons who we.e saved by the convent one walls. Far down the beach at Fort Crockett, twenty-seven members of Battery O, First AN OCEAN Artillery U. S. A., Capt. W. C. Rafferty commanding, met death. The battery had been divided. Half the men were at Fort San Jacinto, near the entrance to the har- bor. The rest were in the barracks back of Fort Crockett. At 2 p. mM. Captain Rafferty with a detail was examining the condition of the big ten-inch gun which commands the gulf. The were pombarding the works with much of the effectiveness of shot and shell. The cap- tain became alarmed, and ordered a man to bring Mrs. Rafferty, the children, and a the He had decided to waters servant, to gun. THE GALVESTON TRAGEDY. in a small steel room beneath the gun-carriage. He the man depart and in five minutes saw him knocked off feet The captain stripped to his shirt and trousers, and, half swimming and reached his Ie a warning word to the barracks, and with his family abandoned take refuge watched his and drowned. wading, home. sent his house and began the return journey to the gun. He had supplied himself with an improvised raft, on which he placed the children with their backs to the strangling = spray. The women never flinched, and soon all reached the gun in safety. If the trembling foundation gave STEAMSHIP LIFTED UPON A WHARF. way, or the gun collapsed, it meant death. The room below was low and without ven- tilation. Huge waves pounded and broke the works. The of the room was dashed in, the servant-girl struck over steel door by a wave and carried out to her death before a hand could save her. For hours the family were imprisoned with a deluge and In the end, the soldier's judgment proved correct. roaring over around them. The gun triumphed over wind and sea. In the the lerymen made hasty preparations to leave. When the captain’s message came, Senior barracks big. bronzed artil-
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THE GALVESTON TRAGEDY. ON MAIN STREET. Sergeant George called the men to atten- ‘*Boys, it is every man for tion and said: himself. This building won't stand half an hour. In- stantly a division of opinion developed. Many decided to remain in the barracks. Others decided to to the Denver Re- survey school building, a short distance away. About thirty started for the school- house, swimming and wading. Three were lost on the way, carried with millrace velocity down the island and into the bay. The others reached the school. Of the men who remained in the barracks, seven were lost; five escaped, clinging to wreck- age. Two hours after the men took posses- sion of the school building, the water was five feet deep on the first floor. Then one of the walls fell and killed three men. The question of abandoning the building came up. Sixteen men declared they preferred to take their chances in the water rather than remain and be crushed. Eight de- cided to stick to the building. The six- teen had no plan except to leave and pro- eeced to the nearest buildings. Wreckage was floating about and in some places they could walk but for a moment. Just one of the sixteen escaped. The current swept Iam going to get out.’ go fifteen across the island into the bay, and Tuesday their bodies were buried at Vir- ginia Point. The man who was saved floated on a section of roof to Virginia Point. He was carried two miles inland, and there exchanged his raft for a tele- graph-pole, to which he clung until the waters receded. The men who remained in the school building were saved. No portion of the structure fell except the wall which drove the fifteen to their death. An incident bordering on the marvelous is told by Captain Rafferty. A soldier on detail at Bolivar Point, near the harbor entrance, was carried forty miles on wreck- age and tossed up on the mainland at Cedar 3ayou. He was found by fishermen and brought back to his quarters on Tuesday. While we are on the marvelous, the case of the boy Rutter is apropos. He lost his father and mother, brother and When the house collapsed he found him- self in the water near a trunk. He seized it and hung on until he landed at Hitch- cock, twenty miles from Galveston, the next morning. A butcher named Meyer was met by Father Kirwin Monday morning trudging in from the west. He told the priest he sister.
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THE was carried out in the gulf Sat- urday night, floated on a raft all night, all Sunday and Sun- night, landed that morning at seven o'clock. ‘*The most in- that from an honest fellow, a mem- ber of my parish,’’ said the ‘*He lost his wife and day and just remarkable cident came to me was priest. child and was floating along, half dazed, on a raft, when he saw two children struggling in the water. He seized them and found that their combined weight threatened to sink his raft. He jumped off, and pushed the raft against a sta- ble which had lodged against a telegraph-pole. He placed the children in the wet hay in the upper part of the stable, and going out on his raft, fell asleep. When he awoke, he found him- self on the dry street, and forgetting all about the children came uptown. The next day he remembered the little ones and returning to the stable found them crying. They were his sister’s children.’’ 3etween nine and ten o'clock on Satur- day night the water reached its maximum height. A score of cool-headed witnesses assert that it rose eighteen inches in twenty minutes. The beach wreckage, hurled RUINS OF GALVESTON TRAGEDY. FORT CROCKETT. A LOAD OF DEAD BODIES ON TREMONT STREET. inland in great piles, proved a barrier to much of the destructive force of the waters. The wind, which is believed to have attained a velocity of more than one hun- dred miles an hour, carried off roofs, crushed buildings already weakened by water, leveled poles and wires, and drove the rain almost horizontally and with shot- like effect. Galveston constructed for homes are
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40 THE GALVESTON TRAGEDY. comfort and not on solid lines. Cedar posts, brick columns, and brick founda- tions imbedded a few feet in the sand, are the usual substructure. When the waters rose above the foundations, the houses, driven by the wind and waves, floated off and collapsed. West of Thirty-fifth Street, clear across the isiand, the waters made a clean sweep. The cemetery is in that vicinity. The dead of years were washed from their graves and carried across to the mainland. <A metallic casket weighing two hundred pounds was found at Virginia Point. No one attempts to explain how it was lifted out of the cem- etery, and driven over seven miles of submerged island and two miles of bay. It was there, how- ever, and ex- amined by many per- sons. Scarce- ly less aston- ishing were the gyrations of the huge Huntington dredge. It was driven out of the harbor across the bay to Texas City, over the mainland for a mile, and now rests quietly in the tall grass beside the Southern Pacific Railway. A tramp steamer was carried over to Virginia Point, then sent like a shot through all three bridges. Sections of the two railroad bridges and one wagon bridge were cut out so cleanly that men interested in naval architecture are amazed at the resistance of the sea- tramp’s hull. The steamers *‘‘Alamo’’ and ‘*Red Cross’’ were dropped upon Pelican Flats, and when the waves re- treated they were high and dry in the sand. The English steamer ‘‘Kendal Castle’’ was carried over to the mainland at Texas City, and there she lies in one foot of AT TWENTY-SECOND STREET AND THE STRAND.
water. The ‘‘Gylla’’ was sent toward Virginia Point and stranded. Yachts and sailboats were driven over the mainland and could be seen in the grass far beyond Texas City. Railroad cars, loaded and empty, were carried into the bay, and miles of track torn up and washed away. At 9:30 p.m. the water was four and a half feet deep in the oftice of the Tremont House. The dome had been carried away, and the one thousand or more persons crowding the floors expected every moment to go down with the building. Many were drowned trying to reach the hotel. Wives under the escort of husbands walked in water shoulder-deep only to be swept from , the sidewalks to the deeper water in the street and drowned. Between ten and eleven, the wind fell and the water rapidly re- ceded. Be- fore daylight the streets were clear of water, but covered with a slime from the sea and choked with wreckage. On that Sun- day morning the people did not realize the full pro- portions of the horror. It was not un- til men came in from the beach and the west end, bringing news of the almost total destruction of that portion of the city, and of the heaps of dead in the streets, that full realization began to dawn upon them. It was not necessary to go to the beach to find the dead. They were thick along the business streets. Mayor Jones, Chief of Police Ketcham, John Sealy, and other citizens, called a meeting to discuss removal of the dead and succor for the living. An appeal was sent to Washington, and General McKibben of
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WRECKS OFF THE WHARVES. the Department of Texas received orders ten thou- It was to send one thousand tents and sand rations to the stricken city. believed at that that thousand lives had been lost. time perhaps one A committee all men, white and black, were asked to assist of the dead. The A local military of public safety was organized, and in the removal super- stitious negroes refused. company was called out, armed, and placed under the command of the Chief of Police. Negroes were impressed wherever found, and compelled, at the muzzle of a Win- chester, to gather in the bodies. Father the discover it would be impossible to bury the dead on Kirwin was one of first to Hughes, a longshoreman, suggested Society men, land. barges and burials at sea. clubmen, millionaires, negroes up the bodies on drays and conveying them to the barges. There was a dreadful procession of these drays all Sunday and Monday. Three bargeloads of the dead were towed out to sea and given back to the waves. The weights were not properly attached, and soon the corpses were back in the surf iongshoremen and took work, loading the tossing on the beach. Sunday afternoon the first robbing of the dead was reported. The Galveston men were then on guard. Captain Rafferty had collected his decimated battery, and at the urgent request of citizens, protected the business district. The Galveston Volun- GALVESTON TRAGEDY. 4I teers were ordered to kill any man found plunder- ing the dead. Sunday night, Monday and Mon- day night, many negroes were killed. How many never will be kaown, for a part of the instructions were: *‘Make no report.’ Tuesday, Adj.-Gen. Thomas Scurry, of the State Military Depart- ment, arrived. The Gal- veston company was mus- tered and a Hous- ton company ordered into Thereafter there out, service. was no killing. Galves- ton now affects to be- lieve no negroes were killed, but testimony on the other side is conclusive. Martial law. was proclaimed by General Scurry, and made systematic and regular. The citizens perfected their organization, and general orders were issued to everybody to **clean up.”* Women allowed to leave the city, but men were and children were requested to remain and assist in removing the There was no lack of food. goods and flour were there in plenty. If dead. The public was barred out. Bacon, canned HAULING THE DEAD FOR BURIAL AT SEA.
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42 there was suffering, it was due to the lack of system in distributing the food. The citizens’ committee took charge of grocery stores and gave food to all known to be in want. After the storm, the weather turned sultry. By Monday the city reeked with the smell of a charnel-house. Pestilence was in the air. Dead animals strewed the streets. The waters of the bay and gulf were thick with the dead, both human and animal. All of the lime, carbolic acid camphor in the city was quickly consumed. An urgent ap- peal was sent and to Houston for disinfect- ants. The same appeal was sent all over the coun- try. Tuesday, a general cre- mation of the dead began. Trenches were tirst dug and lined with wood. The corpses were tossed in and covered with more wood, saturated with oil and set on fire. It was found that this method was not so effective as the pyre. Bodies were then collected and placed in piles of wreckage and the whole was given to the flames. Men engaged in this horrible task fre- quently found relatives and acquaintances, and in some instances their own wives and children. One poor fellow examined the teeth of every female corpse in a vain quest for his wife’s body. The men wore camphor-bags under their noses, and fre- quently became so nauseated they were forced to cease work. The fire purified the air as well as the earth, and was a THE GALVESTON TRAGEDY.
A SCENE ON THE BEACH.
factor in saving the city from Disinfectants began to come in and were used with a lavish hand. The streets were with a solution of lime. Carbolic acid was showered every- where. By Friday the waters of the bay and gulf had been partially relieved of the dead. A great pall of smoke overhung the city, telling the story of the incinerations in progress along the beach. The task seemed overwhelming to the fifteen hun- cred men who were employed. <A small street-railway bridge, spanning an inlet in the gulf, gave great scourge. covered up forty-one dead. The bodies had floated in, caught in the timbers and rails, and re- mained there. For fifty miles along the coast, on both sides of Gal- veston, the storm found victims. The waters of the sea were car- ried inland ten miles all along the coast. Bales of cot- ton and wreck- age from Gal- veston were found at Lamarque, where ten persons lost their lives. The island city will never again be pop- ular as a city of homes—not until some engineering genius constructs a sea-wall, or successfully elevates the city ten feet above its present level. These things are not beyond the bounds of possibility. The Southwest requires a port, and Galves- ton is a natural outlet. Millions have been invested there by the government, by cor- porations, by exporters and capitalists. All are of one voice as to the future.
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nary sues By Dr. R. W. SHUFELDT, U.S A. U P to the present time very few photographs of living fishes have been Do produced, and, as compared with the photography of other live ani- mals, attempts or successes in this line are extremely rare. There are, it — ~~ — wee is true, several methods by which such creatures may be photographed in p> SMe! = their natural element, with normal surroundings. For example, it is pos- - egy sible to accomplish it by employing some such contrivance as the subaquatic ~at x — camera used by Professor Boutan, a Frenchman, who has succeeded recently > in taking the only photographs ever made actually in the sea. With a specially constructed instrument, provided with an astigmatic objective, he o ~~... has made snap-shots of fishes in the ocean at a depth of three yards, his x . 4. method being to let down a white sheet, duly weighted, for a background, — and to attract the fishes to the front of the sheet by a judicious distribu- tion of bait. Snap-shots have often been made of fishes leaping into the air, as the sal- mon, or in the act of flight, as the flying-fish, but they amount to little except as curiosities. They illustrate casual incidents in the lives of the creatures, rather than their every-day habits and physical traits. There are species of fishes which, like the goby, walk about on dry land occasionally, thus afford- ee ing an excellent opportunity to the photographer, but these are exceptional. It has been proposed to lower cameras two or three miles down into the depths ra eters of the sea, and to take flashlight photographs of the denizens of the aqueous ~ abysses; but this plan leaves out of consideration the enormous pressure of the —_—— —— water at those levels, amounting to some tons per square inch, which would LONG-EARED SUNFISH.
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FISHING WITH A CAMERA. CATFISH. crush any instrument, though it were made of steel. Conditions in streams and ponds would seem to offer comparatively few difti- culties, such waters being readily accessible and well illuminated by daylight; but even with these advantages there is no method by which the fishes can be kept still and per- to ** pleasant suaded assume a expres- sion’’ while being pictured. The only possible way to force aquatic animals to pose is to restrict their liberty and them such a way that they are obliged to sit for their portraits whether confine in YOUNG they wish to or not. Experience has shown that it is practicable to shut within glass walls a fragment or segment of the great ocean, and, regarding it as an aqueous mi- crocosm, therein to the movements and habits of marine creatures contined by the boundaries. watch transparent It may be—for we know al- most nothing of the psychology of fishes —that the transpar- ency of the glass gives to them the happy illusion of liberty, but, at all events, they seem under such con- ditions, if properly supplied with oxygen, to enjoy themselves and to pursue just about BIG-MOUTHED the same modes of existence as are habitual with them when free. Thus it is possible for the naturalist to study marine animals —the same remarks apply, indeed, to fresh- water creatures—in proper aquaria, and to make instructive photographs of them. It was in this manner that [made my own tish-photographs. © Some comical errors on the subject have crept into print, among that I my snap-shots finny secured of subjects by diving in- which was a statement to the sea, Camera in The work hand. fact is that my mainly done Was in the so-called Marine Grotto of the United States Fish Commis BASS. sion in Washington, where the ocean world is represented by a series of tanks set in the walls of a very long and narrow room. This room has no win- dows, and all the light that enters it comes through the glass fronts of the aquaria, which illuminated from outside and above by sunlight. Thus the tanks ap- pear like many brilliant mural paint- being are by so ings. which, alive with color and might easily the not-too-matter-of- fact beholder the grotto that he was movement, persuade inside BLACK BASS on board of a submarine vessel, journeying along through ocean shallows and look- ing out through many upon varied forms of animal creation in the sur- windows rounding waters. In these tanks are confined many kinds
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WHITE PERCH. of marine fishes and other ani- mals. including eels, crabs, lob- sters, et cetera, as well as some fresh-water species. [ took there, one day, a photograph of four hundred and fifty rainbow trout in a single picture—something I may consider quite unique. Some fishes were Comparatively easy to catch with the camera —for instance, pike and pickerel, which have a way of remaining stationary in the water for a long time, barely agitating their fins, though, when they do move, it is with lightning-like speed. The naked star- gazer IT took in the act of hiding itself in the sand—a most curious habit that it has. For a long-eared suntish I waited two weary hours on a sultry afternoon, at the end of which the beautiful specimen I Was watching swam directly into the op- tical field, and, the focus being perfect. I secured, as an amply compensating result, an absolutely accurate picture of this inter- esting creature. Another of my successes was with white perch. Two of them, with several sea- trout, were in one of the tanks in the Marine Grotto. It was a chance for an FISHING WITH A CAMERA. SNOWY GROUPER. instantaneous exposure, and, an auspicious moment occurring, I caught the finer of the pair swim- ming slowly over the bottom in search of food, while a broad ray of light illuminated the sand just beyond him. The result was most striking, showing that this kind of fish, while feeding, lowers its for- ward back-fin and draws up its belly-fins, while the pectoral fins stand out at right angles with the body. the manner in which this. sort It is an example of of photography may serve to illustrate the habits of fishes usefully for scientific purposes. For the convenience of my pho- tographie work, a special tank of large size, with glass sides, was built in the open air, and into it some of the fishes desired as sub- jects were put. The purpose of this was to obtain conditions under which the greatest possible amount of light should be secured, and perfectly clear days were chosen for making snap-shots. It was always hard to determine exposures with accuracy, and, while some of my pictures were instan- taneous, others were timed for as much as two minutes. The catfish, being sluggish, was one of my best ‘‘sitters.’’ For obvi-
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46 FISHING the water ‘‘took’’ while those near the were clearest and sharpest ir definition. In one of my snap- shots twenty sunfish are shown without the slightest movement in any one. Two of my most successful pictures were of young sea-bass. There were several of them in one of the aquaria, and the light at the time of taking was excellent. Instantaneous exposures were given, and in one in- stance the specimen had assumed the remarkable attitude which it has in NAKED STAR-GAZER. ous reasons, fishes deepest in darkest, surface WITH A CAMERA. nature, of resting upon its pectoral and anal fins. This species has power to change its color at will, varying its tints suddenly, not only for protection, but seemingly in ac- cordance with its humor at the mo- ment. It has beautiful eyes, of a brilliant emerald- green, which unfortunately photograph very dull and pale. Fishes are by far the most brilliantly hued of all animals, colors comes at last to be suc- cessful, it will find its most attractive sub- jects in them. As a help in the study of nature, sub- aquatic camera- work finds its most valuable function. nee It is desir- TE lees at ad and when photography in able that we should know a great deal that is as yet hidden from us respecting the individual history of fishes and other aquatic animals. When, if at all, do YOUNG SEA-BASS,
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FISHING they sleep? How and when do they eat their meals? What do they do with their time, when not en- gaged in feeding? Many other such questions re- main to be answered. The sleeping of fishes, if they may properly be said to have such a habit, is as yet a puzzle. It is alto- gether probable that they do sleep, though they never close their eyes, simply for the reason that they have no eyelids. Often may a tautog in aqua- rium lying on the bottom and _ leaning against the side of the tank. It is cer- tainly resting, and if its eyes were shut, you would say that it was asleep undoubt- edly. Probably many fishes slumber while swimming in the water, reducing the exer- cise of their fins to an automatic minimum, But it would be a mistake to suppose that a fish does its sleeping at night neces- sarily. On the contrary, many species are nocturnal in habit, feeding in the night- time, and among these are the snapper, the pompano, and the catfish of the brooks. All of the catfish, indeed, are night- feeders, and presumably take their cat-naps in the day-hours. It is a very problem, this question of fish-sleep, and for some time to come we are not likely to ascertain anything very definite on the subject. In point of intelligence, fishes rank very low among animals. Of course, they vary in this respect, the highest species struct- you see an curious WITH A CAMERA. GROUP OF YOUNG SUNFISH. urally being also the cleverest, as is the case with birds. The black bass and the perch are smart fishes, relatively speaking, and, notwithstanding the popular notion that sharks are very stupid, members of that tribe appear to be considerably above The of prey, and, like all pred- the average in mental equipment. shark is a beast atory creatures, it requires a superior brain to get a living. diffi- culties in the way of estimating the intelli- The and the carp show symptoms of cleverness, and the latter can be taught to come to be fed when a Salmon exhibit not a little There are obvious gence of fishes. trout bell is rung. ingenuity in getting over dams. The brain of a fish has an enormous de- velopment of the optic lobe, in order that the creature may be able to see well in the comparative gloom of the water. Its bus- iness in life, apart from breeding, consists wholly in the discovery and pursuit of food; hence all other faculties and senses BROOK TROUT.
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FISHING YOUNG BIG-EYE. are subordinated to vision. A voracious creature, it has no regular meal-times, but swallows as much as it can gobble whenever and finds provender. The mackerel’s dinner is ofttimes spread over wherever it many square miles of sea-surface, consisting of a thick broth of minute shrimp-like Of late years have animals called copepods. comparatively few mackerel brought to market, the fishing for them being now reduced to a pitiful figure, and been some naturalists are disposed to ascribe the ruin of this once important industry to the supposed fact that the fishes have learned lowered in the deep sea to surround them. When the nets are put down, they dive beneath them and escape. If this theory be correct, the mickerel must have more thinking power than has usually been attributed to them. As for the moral traits of aquatic ani- mals, it is certain that many of them, like the shark, are very ferocious. A bluefish will swim through a school of menhaden, and cut to pieces fifty times as many as it cares to eat, apparently for sheer wanton- ness and lust of slaughter. Crabs are very and constantly fighting each A troat will de- to dodge the seine-nets, are other. combative, duels with WITH A CAMERA. vour its own young as soon as they are big enough to attract its attention; but, on the other hand, several species of fishes show striking signs of parental affection. In midsummer one may see in any pond the adult male catfish accompanied by a swarm of his young, keeping them from all harm until they are big enough to take care of themselves. A pair of black spring, will clear a circular spot in shallow water a foot or two in diameter, removing all jweeds and stones. Here the female lavs her eggs, and afterward the male stands guard until they are hatched and the ‘try’ inde- pendent. One of the things that excited my in- terest incidentally to this work of ichthy- photography was a cfirious method of fight- ing adopted by the common tautog of the North Atlantic coast. Two fishes of this species will approach one another face to face, opening their mouths, and the one bringing his teeth into contact with those of his antagonist. Each attempts to force his adversary backward, and if he or the opponent be taken off guard for an instant, the more watchful of the two will make an attempt to attack the other. Sometimes this seems to be done in play, but again it is certainly in earnest. The tautog are very peculiar in their habits, and their behavior on occasions has reminded me of a bass, in have reached a_ size to be litter of young pigs. All fishes have ears, and very many of them possess voices, more or less musical. Some evidence there is, indeed, pointing to the conclusion that they enjoy and ap- sounds.’ visited the P.M. on ‘‘concord of sweet famous Humboldt 1803, at about 7 February 20th, an extraordinary noise startled the crew of the vessel. At first it was like the beating of many drums in the distance, and then the sounds seemed to come from the ship itself, near the poop. It was decided at length that they were made by fishes. preciate a When the South Seas in
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Put forth to watch, unschooled, alone ’Twixt hostile earth and sky— The mottled lizard ‘neath the stone Is wiser here than I. What stirs across the haze of heat? What omen down the wind? The buck that broke before my feet, They knew, but I am blind! 66 \ HAT a country to fight for!’’ said / the major of artillery, for the The guns were ambushed scarcely twentieth time. behind white-thorned mitosas, taller than their wheels, that marked the line of a dry wullah, and the camp pre- tended to find shade under a clump of spindling gums planted as an experiment by some zealous minister of agriculture. One small hut, reddish stone with a tin roof, stood where the single track split into a siding. A rolling plain of red sarth, speckled with loose stones and sugar-bush, ran northward to the scarps and spurs of a range of little hills—all barren as the doorsills of Tophet, and monstrously exaggerated in the heat haze. Southward the plain lost itself in a tangle of scrub-furred hillocks, upheaved without purpose or order, seared and blackened by the strokes of the lightning, seamed down their sides with spent water- courses, and peppered from base to summit with stones—riven, piled, scattered stones. Far away to the eastward, a line of blue- gray mountains, peaked and horned, lifted itself over the muddle of tortured earth. It was the only thing that held steady through the mirage. The nearer hills detached themselves from the plain and swam forward as islands in a milky ocean. While the major stared through puckered eyelids, Leviathan himself waded through the far shallows of it—a black and form- less beast. -areless ‘*That,’’ said the major, ‘‘must be the guns coming back.’’ He had sent. out two guns, nominally for exercise—actually to show the loyal Dutch that there was such a thing as artillery near the line if any patriot thought fit to tamper with it. Chocolate smears, looking as though they had been swept with a besom through the raffle of stones, wandered across the levels—unbridged, ungraded, unmetaled. They were the roads to the brown mud- huts, one in each valley, that were officially styled farmhouses. At very long intervals a dusty Cape-cart or a tilted wagon would move along them, and a man, dirtier than the dirt, would come in to sell fruit or scraggy sheep. At night the farmhouses were lighted in a style out of all keeping with Dutch economy; the scrub would light itself on some far headland and the house lights twinkled in reply. Three or four days later the major would read bad news in the Cape Town papers thrown to him from the troop trains. The guns and their escort changed from Leviathan to the likeness of wrecked boats, their crews struggling beside them. Pres- ently they took their true shape and lurched into camp, across the dry water- courses, amid clouds of dust. The mounted infantry escort set about its evening meal; the hot air filled with the scent of burning wood; swearing men rough-dried sweating horses with wisps of precious forage; the sun dipped behind the hills, and they heard the throaty whistle of a train from the south.
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‘*What’s that?’’ said the major, slipping on his coat; the decencies had not yet left him. ‘*Ambulance-train,’’ said the captain of mounted infantry, raising his ‘‘I’d like to talk to a woman again, but it won’t stop here. It is stopping, though, and making a beastly noise. Let’s look !’’ The engine had sprung a leaky tube and ran lamely into the siding. ‘It’s worn out —overworked and ’ glasses. worn out—like the rest of us,’’ said the engineer. ‘‘If we ’ad ‘arf a loyal govern- ment be’ind us, damn ’em, instead o° a gang o’ Dutch rebels, they would ’ave got us decent roll- ing-stock for the war instead o’ spendin’ their time railin’?’ ammu- nition to their Boer friends. Me ’ush?’’— to the guard. 50 THE WAY THAT HE TOOK. ‘‘No—come to our camp. Let the men see a woman again!’’ they pleaded. Sister Dorothy, old in the needs of war, for all her twenty-two years, gathered up a tin of biscuits and some bread and butter new-cut by the orderlies. Sister Margaret picked up the tea-pot, the spirit-lamp and a water-bottle. ‘‘Cape Town water,’’ ‘*Filtered, too. I know Karroo water.’ She jumped down lightly to the ballast. ‘*What do you know about Karroo, Sister?’’ said the captain of mounted in- fantry, indulgently, as a veteran of months’ she said, with a nod. the three standing. She laughed. ‘“*It’smy home. I was born out there—just behind that ' big range of hills—out Oudtshorn way. It’sonly sixty miles from here. Oh, how good it is!” She slipped the nursing sister’s cap from her head, ‘“‘I won't! I ain’t in Cape tossed it Town now. through the I’m among open window, white people. and drew a It'll take an Peo breath of deep ” 2 Drawn hy c * Nan . TF hour to botch Se content. With this tube up Grant. the sinking of —" 2 ’ > 2 s 2 and the ole ““ THAT,’ SAID THE MAJOR, ‘MUST BE THE GUNS COMING BACK.’”’ the un the of the time- dry-dugged tables thrown out “between ‘ere and De Aar! I told ’em at Triangle what she was like——.’’ He kicked the furnace door savagely and went to work. Two doctors and a couple of nursing sisters stood on the rear platform of the staff carriage. The major explained the situation and invited them to tea. ‘*We were just going to ask you,’’ said the medical major of the train. hills had taken life and glowed against the green of the horizon. Red, rust- red, opal, amber, dun and pure cobalt, they rose up like jewels in the utterly clear air, while the valleys between flooded with purple shadow. A mile away, stark-clear, withered rocks showed as though one could reach them with the hand, and the voice of a native herd-boy in charge of a flock of sheep came in clear and sharp over twice
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THE WAY THAT HE 700K. Drawn by Gordon R. Grant “TO SHOW THE LOYAL DUTCH THAT THERE WAS SUCH A THING AS ARTILLERY NEAR THE LINE IF ANY PATRIOT THOUGHT FIT TO TAMPER WITH IT.”
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THE WAY THAT HE TOOK. that distance. Sister Margaret devoured the huge spaces with eyes unused to shorter ranges, snuffed again the air that has no equal under God’s sky, and, turning sud- denly to her companion, said, ‘‘What do you think of it?’’ ‘‘T am afraid I’m rather singular,’’ he replied. ‘‘Most of us hate the Karroo. I used to, but it grows on one somehow. I suppose it’s the lack of fences and roads that’s so fascinating. And when one gets back from the railway——"’ ‘*You’re quite right,’’ she said, with an emphatic stamp of her foot. ‘‘People come to Matjesfontein—ugh !—with their lungs, and they live opposite the railway station and that new hotel of Logan’s, and they think that’s the Karroo. They say there isn’t anything in it. It’s full of life when you get really into it. You see that? I’m so glad. D’you know, you’re the first English officer I’ve heard who has spoken a good word for my country.”’ ‘‘I’m glad I pleased you,’’ said the cap- tain, looking into Sister Margaret’s black- lashed gray eyes under the heavy brown hair shot with gray where it rolled back from the tanned forehead. This kind of nurse was new in his experience. He had met many—at Cape Town—and later at Matjesfontein when he was sick with dys- entery and. Sister Galbraith of Guy’s had dissolved him in homesickness by talking about London and the horrors of old and unimprovable Africa. The average sister did not lightly stride over rolling stones, and—was it possible that this woman’s long, easy pace uphill was beginning to pump him? As she walked, she hummed joyously to herself, a queer catchy tune of one line several times repeated : ‘* Vat jou goet en trek, Ferreira. Vat jou goet en trek.” It ran off with a little trill that sounded like ‘‘ Zwaar draa, al en de ein Kant— Jannie met de hoepel bein !”’ ‘*Listen!’’ she said, suddenly. ‘‘ What was that?’’ ‘‘It must be a wagon on the road. I heard the whip, I think.”’ ‘*Yes, but you didn’t hear the wheels, It’s a little bird that makes just ‘Whe-ew!’ ’’ she duplicated did you? that noise. it perfectly. ‘‘We call it—-——’’ she gave the Dutch name, which did not, of course, abide with the captain. ‘‘We must have given him a scare! You hear him in the early morning when you are sleeping in the wagons. It’s just like the noise of a whiplash, isn’t it?’’ They entered the major’s tent a little behind the others, who were discussing the scanty news, and—for reinforcements had not arrived—the standing miracle of De Aar with her million pounds’ worth of stores then guarded by some four hundred men. ‘*Oh, no,’’ said Sister Margaret, coolly, bending over the spirit-lamp, ‘‘the Trans- yaalers will stay round Kimberley and try to put Rhodes in acage. But of course if a commando gets down to De Aar they will all rise——”’ ‘*You think so, Sister?’’ ical major, deferentially. ‘*T know so. They will rise anywhere if a commando comes actually to them. Presently they will rise in Prieska—if it is only to steal the forage at Van Wyks- Vlei. And why not?’’ ‘*We get most of our opinions on the war from Sister Margaret,’’ said the civil- ian doctor of the train. ‘‘It’s all new to me, but, so far, all her prophecies have come true.”’ A few months ago that doctor had _ re- tired from practice to a country house in rainy England, his fortune made, and, as he tried to believe, his life-work done. Then the bugles blew and, rejoicing at the change, he found himself, his experience. and his fine bedside manner, buttoned up in a black-tabbed khaki coat, on a hospital train that covered eleven hundred miles a week, carried a hundred cases at a trip, and dealt him more experience in a month than he had ever gained in a year of home practice. Sister Margaret and the captain of mounted infantry took their cups outside the tent. The captain wished to know something more about her. Till that day said the med- -he had believed South Africa to .be pop- ulated solely by sullen Dutchmen and slack-waisted women; and in some clumsy fashion he betrayed the belief. ‘Of course you don’t see the others where you are,’’ said Sister Margaret, leni-
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THE WAY THAT HE TOOK. Drawn by Gordon R. Grant, ‘““SISTER MARGARET PICKED UP THE TEA-POT, THE SPIRIT-LAMP AND A WATER-BOTTLE.”’
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54 ently, from her camp-chair. ‘‘They are the war. I have two brothers, and my all at a nephew, and—oh, I She flung her hands outward with a curiously un-English gesture. ‘‘And then, too, you have never off the rail. You Cape Town? All the schel—all the use- less people are there. You should see our beyond the ranges—Oudtshorn way. We fruit and vines. It is much prettier, I think, than Paarl.’’ ‘I'd like to very much. I may be sta- tioned in Africa after the war is over.”’ ‘*Ah, but we know the English officers. They say that this is ‘a beastly country,’ and they do not know how to be—to be Shall I tell you? There was an aide-de-camp at Government House three years ago. He out to dinner to Piet—to Mr. Van der Hooven’s And she had been dead eight years, Van der Hooven-——he has the big sheep-farms round Cradock—he was a hot sister’s son, can’t count my cousins. ”’ been have only seen country grow nice to people. sent invitations wife. and Bond man, but just then he was thinking of changing his politics, you see, and tak- ing a house in Cape Town—because of the Army Contracts. That was why. You see ¢ <3 see,’* said the captain, to whom this was half Hittite. ‘*He was a little angry—not much—but he went to Cape Town, and that aide-de- camp had made a joke about it—about the dead woman—in the Civil Service Club. You So, of course, the Bond men there told Van der Hooven that the aide- de-camp had said he could not remember all the old Dutch vrous that died, and Van der Hooven went away and now he is more hot Bond than ever. If you stay with us you must not be like that. You see? see?’ _ ‘*T won't,’’ said the captain, seriously. ‘*What a God’s own night it is, Sister.’’ He dwelt lovingly on the last word, as all men do in South Africa. The soft darkness had shut upon them and the earth had vanished. There was not so much breeze as a slow motion of the whole dry air under the vault of the immeasurably deep heavens. ‘*Look up,’’ said the captain. ‘‘Doesn’t it make you feel as if we were tumbling down into the stars—all upside down?’ unawares THE WAY THAT HE TOOK. said Sister Margaret, tilting her the camp-chair. ‘‘It is And those are “Yes. head always like that, I know. back on our stars.’ They burned with a great glory, large as the eyes of cattle by lamplight; planet after planet of the mild southern sky. — As the captain said, one seemed to be falling from the hidden earth sheer through space, between them. ‘*Now, when I was little,’’ Sister Mar- garet began very softly—‘‘there was one day in the week at home that was all our own. We could get up as soon as we liked after midnight, and there was the basket in the kitchen—-our food. We used to go out at three sometimes, my two brothers, my sisters, and the-two little ones—out into the Karroo for all the day. All—the —long—day. First we built a fire then we made a kraal for the two little ones—a kraal of thorn-bushes so that they should not be bitten by anything. You see? Often made the kraal before morning—when those———"’ she jerked her firm chin at the stars—‘*were just going out. Then old ones went hunting lizards—wacht-heikes—and and birds and centipedes and all that sort of nice thing. father them. IIe ‘gave us half a crown for a spuug- You see?”’ Snake-hunting and we we snakes Our collected slange—a kind of snake. ‘*‘How old were you?’’ did not strike the captain as a safe amuse- ment for the young. ‘*T was eleven, then—or ten, perhaps— and the little two and three. Why? Then we came back to eat and we sat under a rock all the afternoon—it was hot, you see—and we played—we played with the stones and the flowers. Almighty! You should see our Karroo in spring! All flowers! All our flowers! Then we came home carrying the little ones on our backs came home through the dark— just like this night. That was our own day. Oh, the good days! We used to yvatch the meer-cats playing, too—and the little buck. When I was at Guy’s learn- ing to nurse, how homesick that made me!’ ‘‘But what a splendid open-air life !’’ said the captain. ‘‘Where else is there to live except the open air?’’ said Sister Margaret, looking ones were asleep-
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THE WAY THAT HE iy i. /OR.0ON hy. Oe — tgyoo br Drawn by Gordon R. Grant. “*THE TRANSVAALERS WILL STAY ROUND KIMBERLEY AND TRY TO PUT RHODES IN A CAGE.’ 9 off into twenty thousand square miles of it, Major Devine and Doctor Johnson have with eyes that burned. gone down already.”’ ‘*You're quite right.’’ ‘*Very good, Sister. We'll follow.’’ ‘‘I’m sorry to interrupt you two,’’ said The captain rose unwillingly and made Sister Dorothy, who had been talking to for the worn path from the tent to the rail. the gunner major, ‘‘but the guard says we ‘‘Isn’t there another way?’’ said Sis- shall be ready to go in a few minutes. ter Margaret. Her gray nursing-gown
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REPETITION. glimmered like some big moth’s wing. ‘*Why do you bring the lantern?’ said ‘‘No. I'll bring a lantern. It’s safe.’’ Sister Margaret. ‘‘Can’t you see? Are ‘*T did not think of that,’’ she said, with you afraid of snakes?’’ alaugh. ‘‘Only we never come home by ‘*That’s a rather curious sort of woman, ”’ the way we left it when we live in the said the captain to the major, as they Karroo. If any one—suppose you had smoked a lonely pipe together when the dismissed a Kaffir or got him sjamboked train had gone. and he saw you go out? He would wait ‘*You seemed to think so. I noticed for you to come back on a tired horse and you stuck to her like a leech.”’ then——. You see? But, of course, ‘*Well, I couldn’t monopolize Sister in England where the road is all walled it Dorothy in the presence of my senior is different. How funny! Even whenI officer. Tell me what the other one was was litfle we learned never to come home like.’’ the way we went out.”’ ‘‘Oh, rather fun. It came out that she ‘*Very good,’’ said the captain, obedi- knew a lot of my people in London. She’s It made the walk longer and he the daughter of a chap in the next county ently. ’ approved of that. to us, too.’ (To be concluded.) REPETITION. By ELLA WHEELER WILCOX. OVER and over and over, These truths I will weave in song: That God’s great plan needs you and me, That Will is greater than Destiny, And that love moves the world along. However mankind may question, It shall listen and hear my Creed: That God may ever be found within, That the worship of self is the only sin, And the only devil is greed. Over and over and over, These truths I will say and sing: That love is mightier far than hate, That a man’s own thought is a man’s own fate, And that life is a goodly thing.
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89 Max. ge oe | oS er Fas) . ame , 7 * Tey i HE mind of a child is like wax to receive impres- sions, and parents can _never be too watchful over the company kept by their children. I have always attributed what little success I have met with in life to the friendship of a boy of my own age whom I joined at school when I was twelve years old, and under whose in- fluence I remained until I passed my examinations for the degrees of B.A. and B.Sc. in Paris and left school. I used to look up to him as a marvel, the very embodiment of everything that was clever, right and lofty. I was lazy, and he made a hard-working boy of me, and that without any self-assertion, much less tyranny. Ie criticised my work most searchingly and severely before it was pre- sented to the masters, and always insisted on my criticising his in the same manner. We soon became desperate rivals in class, he being always first and myself generally but our close friendship never suffered from that keen competition. A few weeks before an examination took place, he got up at five o'clock in the morning, and never would fail to wake me and make me get up, so as to have no unfair advantage over me. If he worked late at night, I would work by his side till he was worn out and would retire, then I would go to bed too. This went on for six years, until we left school, he to study and I enter the military second; medicine, to school. In 1865, we were in a batch of twenty- seven candidates for the B.A. degree. FARLY. INFLUENCES: A REMINISCENCE ormy SCHOOL: DAYS rae en tee oe 2 OeRel ay Ae WM pte py’ * 1 agg “rai 8 MND Tr ga ae and he was second. were among thirty- Five passed ; I was first The following year, we two candidates for the B.Se. degree. Eight passed; he was first and myself second. What I am perfectly sure of is that I was overwhelmed with joy at the idea that, as I had beaten him at the B.A. examination, he had beaten me at the B.Sc. He is now one of the medical celebrities of Paris. I have ever since been a little of a rolling stone, yet gather- ing a bit of moss on the way. I felt his influence in the smallest things, and, to this very day, I indulge in a moree or less objectionable trick that I uncon- sciously took up while I was at school by the side of my young friend. If he sawa ticket in a book, a railway label on a trunk, a little loose skin on his fingers, little scraps on a schoolfellow’s coat, he was unable to resist the temptation to take them off. I soon found myself indulging in the same habit. To-day, thirty years later, if I perceive any little bits on any- body’s clothes, in a railway carriage, in an omnibus, in a private house, in front of me at the theater, I have to use all the self- control that I may have acquired by thirty years of contact with the Anglo-Saxon race to refrain from taking them off, and saying to the wearer, like Miggles in ‘‘The Shop Girl,’’ ‘*Pardon me, a bit of fluff!’’ On the platform of a railway-station I have many times felt actually compelled to keep away from passengers’ baggage, in order to avoid the imperative impulse to tear old labels off their trunks, a sort of mild and innocent form of kleptomania. In America with the check system I am safe.
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WHAT COMMUNITIES By JACK LOSE B Y THE COMPETITIVE SYSTEM. LONDON. Epirorian Nore.—Last year Tuk Cosmopo.iran offered the sum of two hundred dollars for the best article on Loss by Lack of Coéperation. London, herewith published, is regarded as the ablest of the many submitted. \ AN’S primacy in the animal kingdom Ay was made possible, first, by his manifestation of the gregarious instinct; and second, by his becoming conscious of this instinct and the power within it which worked for his own good and permitted him toendure. Natural selection, undevi- ating, pitiless, careless of the individual, destroyed or allowed to perpetuate, as the case might be, such breeds as were unfittest or fittest to survive. In this sternest of struggles man developed the greatest vari- ability, the highest capacity for adaptation ; the favored child of the competition waged on the Drawing his strength and knowl- he thus he became keenest ever planet. edge from the dugs of competition, early learned the great lesson: that stood alone, unaided, in a mighty battle wherein all the natural forces and the myriad forms of organic life seethed in one From this he he vast, precarious turmoil. early drew the corollary, that his strength lay in numbers, in unity of interests, in solidarity of effort—in short, in combina- the his environment. His history substantiates it. From the family to the tribe, to the feder- ation of tribes, to the nation, to the (to- day) growing consciousness of the inter- tion against hostile elements of dependence of nations, he has obeyed it; by his successes, his mistakes and his fail- ures, he has proved it. There is much to condemn, much which might have been better, but in the very nature of things, not one jot or tittle could have been other- wise than it has. And to-day, while he may felicitate himself on his past, none the less vigilant must be his scrutiny of the future. He cannot stop. He must go on. But of the various forms of combination or codperation which have marked the prog- ress of man, none has been perfect; yet have they possessed, in a gradually ascend- ing scale, less and less of imperfection. Every working political and social organism has maintained, during the period of its usefulness and in accordance with time and The paper of Mr. Jack place, an equilibrium between the claims of the individual and the claims of society. When the balance was destroyed, either by too harsh an assertion of the right of the single life or the right of the type, the has passed away, and another, to the changed ditions, replaced it. While the individual has made apparent sacrifices in the main- tenance of this equilibrium, and likewise society, the result has been identity of interest, and good, both for the single life and the type. And in pursuance of this principle of the codperation of man against the hostile elements of his environment, social compacts or laws have been formu- lated observed, By the surrender of certain rights, the friction between the units of the social organism has been re- duced, so that the organism might continue to operate. The future and inevitable rise of the type and the social organism, must further reduction in the Internal competition social organism adjusted con- and necessitate a still friction of its units. must be minimized, or turned into channels other than those along which it works to- day. This brings us to a discussion of the present: What the community loses by the competitive system. DIVISION LAND. All things being equal, ten acres of arable land, under one executive, worked en bloc, say for the purpose of growing wheat, utilizing the most improved methods of plowing, sowing and harvesting, OF thousand will produce greater returns at less expense than can an equal number of acres, divided into one hundred plots, and worked indi- vidually by one hundred men. _ If the community, believing this friction of its units to be logical, farms in the latter manner, it must suffer a distinct pecuniary loss. And the effects of this loss—call it lack of gain if you will—though appar- ently borne by the agrarian population, are equally felt by the urban population. Of the many items which at once suggest themselves, consider the simple one of
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WHAT COMMUNITIES LOSE BY THE COMPETITIVE SYSTEM. 89 the is com For the division of land in state of Indiana puted at two hundred million dollars, and if placed in single file at the they would encircle the globe fourteen Under a scientific system of agri- fences. alone, their cost equator, times. culture they could be almost wholly dis- pensed with. As it is, they represent just so much waste of energy, just so much real loss of wealth. And these losses, of which the preceding is but one of a host, may be attributed to a certain asserted right of the individual to private owner- ship in land. To this division viduals, whether in city or in franchises, may be traced nu- indi- of land the country, in the among merous other losses and grotesque features of the community. Lack of combination in the country causes expensive crops; in the city, expensive public utilities and service, and frightful architectural mon- If a street railway corporation dividend of ten per strosities. can issue an annual cent to its shareholders, the community, through lack of the codperation necessary to run that railway for itself, has lost the ten per cent, which otherwise it might have enjoyed in bettering transit service, by the building of recreative parks, by the founding of libraries, or by increas- ing the efficiency of its schools. With architecture, the presence of individuals is its regard to coéperation most notable where it occurs, most where it is absent. Some few of the pub- lic buildings, and many tasteful portions of the select districts, are ex- amples of the one; sky-scrapers and rattle- trap tenements, of the other. A pumpkin between two planks, unable to obtain a proper rotundity, will lengthen out. Want of combination among adjacent property- owners, and the sky-scraper arises. A pumpkin is denied volition; man is not. The pumpkin cannot help itself; man may remove the planks. There is a certain identity in the raison d’étre of the pumpkin and the ‘sky-scraper. Man may remedy either, for to him is given the power of reacting against his environment. OF EFFORT. If one were to hire two men to do his among notorious resident LOSS gardening when there was no more work than could reasonably be done by one, how quickly his neighbor would decry his ex- travagance! Yet in the course of the day, with the greatest equanimity, that same neighbor will fare forth and pay his quota for a score of services each performed by two or more men where only one is re- quired. But he is to this loss to the community, which he, as a member, must pay. On from two toa dozen milkmen deliver their wares, like- wise as many butchers, bakers and grocers; yet one policeman patrols and one postman serves the whole district. Downtown are a dozen groceries, each paying rent, main- taining fixtures and staffs of employees, and doing business within half as many blocks. distributing function performed by these dozen small ones, and operate it more effi- ciently and at far less cost and labor. The success of the great department stores is a striking proof of this. The department wiping out gets greater out of And having destroyed competition, there is no longer any reason that it should exist, save dense his street One big store could operate the competition, less effort. store, in returns as the common property of the community to be operated for the community's com- mon good. It cannot be denied that the community would gain by so operating it, and not only in this but in all similar en- terprises. Take, for instance, because 6f this pre- of friction the units of society as their right, another series of borne by the community. To make it concrete, let the drummer class serve as an illustration. Certainly fifty thousand is a conservative estimate for the drummers or traveling men of the United States. And it is very conservative to place their hotel bills, traveling expenses, commissions and salaries at five dollars a day per man. Since the producer must sell his wares at a profit or else go out of the consumer must pay the actual cost of the article—whether it be the legitimate cost or not—plus the per cent increment necessary for the continued existence of the producer’s capital. There- rogative maintain burdens business, fore the community, being the consumer, must support these fifty thousand five- dollar-a-day drummers; this, aggr« forms a daily loss to the community of a quarter of a million, or an annual loss of
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60 upward of a hundred millions of dollars. Nor, from the economic view, is this the sum total of the community’s loss. These drummers are not legitimate creators of wealth. The cost they add to the articles they sell is an unnecessary one. The function they carry on in society is abso- lutely useless. Their labor is illegitimately expended. Not only have they done noth- ing, but they have been paid as though they had done something. Assuming eight hours to be the normal working day, they have, in the course of the year, tak- ing Sundays and holidays into considera- tion, thrown away one hundred and twenty millions of working hours. The commu- nity has paid for this and lost it. » It pos- sesses nothing to show for their labor, save a heavy item in its expense account. But what a gain there would have been had they devoted their time to the planting of potatoes or the building of public high- ways! And it must be borne in mind that this is but one of a long series of similar burdens which may be assembled under the head of ‘‘commercial waste.’’ Consider the one item of advertisement. To make the advertisements which litter the streets, desecrate the air, pollute the country, and invade the sanctity of the family circle, a host of people are em- ployed, such as draftsmen, paper-makers, printers, bill-posters, painters, carpenters, gilders, mechanics, et cetera. Soap and patent-medicine firms have been known to expend as high as half a million dollars a year for their advertising. All this ap- palling commercial waste is drained from the community. Commercial waste exists in many forms, one of which is the articles made to sell, not use, such as adulterated foods and shoddy goods; or, to travesty Matthew Arnold, razors which do not shave, clothing which does not wear, watches which will not run. Let one other example of the loss of effort suffice: that of competing corpora- tions. Again to be concrete, let the ex- ample be a public municipal utility, A water company has the necessary water supply, the necessary facilities for distrib- uting it, and the necessary capital with which to operate the plant. It happens to be a monopoly, and the community clamors for competition. A group of WHAT COMMUNITIES LOSE BY THE COMPETITIVE SYSTEM. predatory capitalists invades the established company’s territory, tears up the streets, parallels the older company’s mains, and digs, tunnels and dams in the hills to get the necessary commodity. In view of the fact that the other company is fully capac- itated to supply the community, this is just so much waste of effort; and equally so, some one must pay for it. Who? Let us see. A rate war ensues. Water be- comes a drug on the market. Both com- panies are operating at ruinous losses, which must ultimately destroy them. There are three ways by which the strug- gle may be concluded. First, the company with the smallest capital may go under. In this case the capitalists have lost the money invested, the community the labor. But this rarely happens. Second, the wealthier company may buy out the poorer one. In this case it has been forced to double its invested capital. Since it is now become a monopoly, and since capital requires a certain definite rate of interest, the community’s water bills must rise to satisfy it. Third, both companies being of equal strength, and a Kilkenny-cat con- clusion being impossible, they combine, with doubled capital which demands a double return. In one of these three ways the competition of corporations must inev- itably result; nor can the community escape the consequent loss, save by the cobperative operation of all such industries. COSTLINESS OF EFFORT. Because of the individual performance of many tasks which may be done collect- ively, effort entails a corresponding costli- ness. Since much that might have been included under this head has been previ- ously discussed, such labors as may be purely individual shall be here handled. In the field of household economics there are numerous losses of this nature. Of these, choose one. Contemplate that humble but essentially necessary item, the family wash. In a hundred houses, on washing-day, are one hundred toiling housewives, one hundred honies for the time being thrown out of joint, one hun- dred fires, one hundred tubs being filled and emptied, and so forth and so on— soap, powder, bluing, fuel and fixtures, all bought at expensive retail prices. Two men, in a well-appointed “small steam-
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laundry, could do their washing for them, year in and year out, at a tithe the expense and toil. Disregarding the saving gained by the wholesale purchase of supplies, by system, and by division of labor, these two men, by machinery alone, increase their power tenfold. By means of a proper domestié codperation, if not municipal, each of these housewives would save a sum of money which would go far in purchas- ing little luxuries and recreations. Again, consider the example of the poorer families of a large town, who buy their food and other necessaries from at least one hundred shops of one sort and another. Here, the costliness of effort for which they pay is not theirs but that of the people they deal with. Instead of one large distributing depot, these one hundred petty merchants each order and handle separate parcels of goods, write separate letters and checks, and keep separate books, all of which is practically unneces- sary. Somebody pays for all this, for the useless letters, checks, parcels, clerks, book- keepers and porters, and assuredly it is not the shopkeeper. And aside from all this, suppose each shop clears for its owner ten dollars a week—a very modest sum—or five hundred dollars a year. For the one hundred shops this would equal fifty thousand dollars. And this the poorer members of the community must pay. The people have come partially to recog- nize this, however. To-day no man dreams of keeping his own fire-fighting or street- lighting apparatus, of maintaining his own policeman, keeping his street in repair, or seeing to the proper disposition of his sewage. Somewhere in the past his ancestors did all this for themselves, or else it was not done at all; that is to say, there was greater friction or less coépera- tion among the units of society then than now. TRADE AND COMMERCIAL CRISES. At one time our forefathers, ignorant of hygiene, sanitation and quarantine, were powerless before the plagues which swept across the earth; yet we, their enlightened descendants, find ourselves impotent in the face of the great social cataclysms known as trade and commercial crises. The crises are peculiarly a modern product —made possible by the specialization of WHAT COMMUNITIES LOSE BY THE COMPETITIVE SYSTEM. 61 industry and the immense strides which have been taken in the invention of labor- saving machinery, but due, and directly so, to the antagonism of the units which compose society. A competent codperative management could so operate all the im- plements and institut.ous of the present industrial civilization, that there need never be a fear of a trade or commercial crisis. Boards or departments, scientifically conducted, could ascertain, first, the con- suming power of the community; second, its producing power; and then, by an orderly arrangement, adjust these two, one to the other. These boards or depart- ments would have to study all the causes which go to make the community’s pro- ducing power inconstant—such as failure of crops, drouths, et cetera—and so to direct the energy of the community that equilibrium between its production and consumption might still be maintained. And to do this is certainly within the realm of man’s achievement. But instead of this logical arrangement of industry, the community to-day pos- sesses the chaotic system of competitive production. It is a war of producers, also of distributors. Success depends on individual knowledge of just how much and at what cost all others are producing, and of just how much and at what prices they are selling. All the factors which decide the fluctuations of the world’s markets or the purchasing power of its peoples, must be taken into account. A war-cloud in the Balkans, a failure of crops in the Argentine, the thoughtless word of a kaiser, or a strike of organized labor, and success or failure depends on how closely the results of this event have been foreseen. And even then, because of a thousand and one fortuitous happen- ings, chance plays an important part. Even the footing of the wisest and the surest is precarious. Risk is the secret of gain. Lessen the risk, the gain is lessened ; abolish it, and there can be no gain. In- dividual strives against individual, produc- ing for himself, buying for himself, selling for himself, and keeping his transactions secret. Everykody is in thedark, Each is planning, guessing, chancing; and_be- cause of this, the competitive system of industry, as a whole, may be justly char- area es i] ‘3 + aoe eee,
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62 acterized as planless. The effort lost is tremendous, the waste prodigal. <A favor- able season arrives. Increased orders celerate production. Times are prosperous. All industries are stimulated. Little heed is taken of the overstocking of the markets, till at last they are flooded with commod- ities. This is the danger-point. The collapse of a land-boom in Oregon, the failure of a building association in Austria —anything may start the chain of destruc- tion. Speculations begin to burst, credits to be called in, there is a rush to realize on commodities produced, prices fall, wages come down, factories close up, and con- sumption is correspondingly reduced. The interdependence of all forms of industry asserts itself. One branch of trade stops, and those branches dependent upon it, or ac- allied with it, cannot continue. This spreads. Depression grows, failures in- The crisis be observed crease, industry is paralyzed. has come! And then may the paradoxical spectacle of glutted ware- houses and starving multitudes. Then comes the slow and painful recovery of years, then an acceleration of planless pro- duction, and then another crisis. This is friction, the correlative of a disorderly system of production and distri- bution. And the losses incurred by such friction are incalculable. COMMERCIAL SELECTION. The forces of evolution, effecting their ends under various guises, are, after all, one and the same in principle. They are conscious of neither good nor evil, and work blindly. In any given environment they decide which are to survive and which to perish. But the environment they do not question; it is no concern of theirs, for they work only with the material that is. Nor are they to be bribed or de- ceived. If it be a good environment, they will see to it that the good endure and the race be lifted; if an evil environment, they will select the evil for survival, and degeneration or race deterioration will follow. In the world primeval, man was almost utterly the creature of his natural environ- ment. Possessing locomotion, he could change the conditions’ which surrounded him only by removing himself to some other portion of the earth's surface, But inevitable
WHAT COMMUNITIES LOSE BY THE COMPETITIVE SYSTEM. man so developed that the time came when he could change his natural environment, not by removing but by reacting upon it. If there were ferocious animals, stroyed them; _ pestilential marshes, drained them. He cleared the that he might till it, made roads, built bridges—in short, conquered his natural environment. Thus it was that the road- maker and bridge-builder survived, and those who would make neither roads nor bridges were stamped out. But to-day, in all but the most primi- tive communities, man has conquered his nat- ural environment and become the creature of an artificial environment which he him- self has created. Natural selection has seemingly been suspended; in reality, it has taken on new forms. Among these may be noted military and commercial selection. Intertribal warfare, in which farming and fighting are carried on alike by all male members of the community, de- he ground he does not give rise to military selection. This arises only when tribes have united to form the state, and division of labor decides it to be more practicable that part of the community farm all the time, and part of the community fight all the time. Thus is created the standing army and the regular soldier. The stronger, the braver, the more indomitable, are selected to go to the wars, and to die early, without offspring. The weaker are sent to the plow and permitted to perpetuate their kind. As Doctor Jordan has remarked, the best are sent forth, the second-best remain. But it does not stop. at this. The best of the second-best are next sent, and the third-best is left. The French peasant of to-day demonstrates what man- ner of man is left to the soil after one hun- dred years so of military selection. Where are the soldiers of Greece, Sparta and Rome? They lie on countless fields of battle, and with them their descendants which were not. The degenerate peoples of those countries are the descendants of those who remained to the soil—‘‘of those who were left,’’ as Doctor Jordan aptly puts it. To-day, however, more especially among military has waned, but commercial selection has waxed. Those members of the social organism who are or ourselves, selection
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successful in the warfare of the units, are the ones selected to survive. Regardless of the real welfare of the race, those in- dividuals who better adapt themselves to the actual environment are permitted to exist and perpetuate themselves. Under the industrial system as at present con- ducted, in all branches the demand for units is less than is the supply. This renders the unit helpless. Trade is unsen- timental, unscrupulous. The man who succeeds in acquiring wealth, is assured of his own survival and that of his progeny. Much selfishness and little altruism must be his, and the heritage he passes down; otherwise he will not acquire his wealth, nor his descendants retain theirs, and both he and they will be relegated to the middle class. Here the keenest and usu- ally the more conscienceless trader sur- vives. If he be unwise or lenient in his dealings, he wil] fail and descend to the working class. Conditions here change. The individual who can work most, on least, and bow his head best to the cap- tains of industry, survives. If he cannot do these things well, his place is taken by those who can, and he falls into the slum class. Again conditions change. In the slums, the person who brings with him or is born there with normal morals, et cetera, must either yield or be extermi- nated; for the criminal, the beggar and the thief are best fitted to survive in such an environment and to propagate their kind, 3riefly outlined, this is commercial se- lection. The individual asserts its claims, to the detriment and injury of the type. It is well known that the intensity of the struggle has increased many fold in the last five decades, and it is self-evident that its intensity must still further and frightfully increase in the next five dec- ades, unless the present system of pro- duction and distribution undergoes a mod- ification for the better. Retaining it in its entirety, there are two salutary but at the same time absurd ways of ameliorating things: either kill off half the units, or destroy all machinery. But this is as temporary as it is unwise. Only a little while and commercial selection would again prevail. Besides, man must go for- ward; he can neither stop nor turn back. WHAT COMMUNITIES LOSE BY THE COMPETITIVE SYSTEM. 63 Commercial selection means race prostitu- tion, and if continued, race deterioration. Internal competition must be minimized and industry yield more and more to the cobperative principle. For the good of the present and the future generations, certain rights of the individual must be curtailed or surrendered. Yet this is nothing new to the individual; his whole past is a history of such surrenders. The old indictment that competitive capital is soulless, still holds. Altruism and industrial competition are mutually destructive. They cannot exist together. The struggling capitalist who may enter- tain philanthropic notions concerning the conduct of his business, is illogical, and false to his position and himself, and if he persists he will surely fail. Competitive industry is not concerned with right or wrong; its sole and perpetual query is, How may I undersell my competitors? And one answer only is vouchsafed : By producing more cheaply. The capi- talist who wishes to keep his head above the tide must scale his labor and raw material as relentlessly as do his business rivals, or even a little more so. There are two ways of scaling raw material: by reducing quality and adulterating, or by forcing the producer to sell more cheaply. But the producer cannot scale nature; there is nothing left for him to do but scale his labor. Altruism is incompatible with business success. This being so, foul air, vile water, poor and adulterated foods, unhealthy factory work, crowding, disease, and all that drags down the phys- ical, mental and moral tone of the com- munity, are consistent and essential ad- juncts of the competitive system. THE ESTHETIC LOss. As being the more striking, the only form of art here considered will be that which appeals to the mind through the eye; but what is said will apply, subject to various modifications, to all other forms of the esthetic. Art is at present enjoyed by a greatly favored but very small portion of the community—the rich and* those that are permitted to mingle with them. The poor, lacking not only in time and means but in the training so essential to a just comprehension of the beautiful, and having offered to them only the inferior 4 —
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64 grades, and because of all this, reacting upon an already harsh environment, live un- lovely lives and die without having feasted their souls on the real treasures of life. And even to the rich and those that cling about their skirts, only fleeting vi- sions may be had of art. Their homes and galleries may be all the soul desires; but the instant they venture on the streets of the city, they have left the realm of beauty for an unsightly dominion, where the util- itarian makes the world hideous and sur- vives, and the idealist is banished or exter- minated. Art, to be truly effective, should be part and parcel of life, and pervade it in all its interstices. It should be work-a-day as well as idle-day. Full justice should be accorded the artist of the period; to do this the whole community should enjoy, ap- preciate and understand the work of one who has toiled at creating the beautiful. Nor can this be done till the belly-need is made a subsidiary accompaniment of life, instead of being, as it now is to so many, the sole and all-important aim. Present-day art may be characterized as a few scattered oases amid a desert of industrial ugliness. Not even among the rich can all refresh themselves at the founts. The nineteenth-century business man has no time for such. He is the slave of his desk, the genie of the dollar. The artist exerts himself for a very small audience indeed. The general public never attains a standard of comprehension; it cannot measure his work. It looks upon his wares in the light of curiosities, baubles, luxuries, blind to the fact that they are objects which should conduce to the highest pleasure. And herein great injury is done the artist, and heavy limita- tions are laid upon him. But so long as ‘*society flourishes by the antagonism of its units,’’ art, in its full, broad scope, will have neither place nor significance ; the artist will not receive justice for his travail, nor the people compensation for their labor in the common drudgery of life. INDIVIDUALITY. Variety is the essence of progress; its manifestation is the manifestation of in- dividuality. Man advanced to his domi- nant position among the vertebrates because his ‘‘apelike and probably arboreal ances- WHAT COMMUNITIES LOSE BY THE COMPETITIVE SYSTEM. ; variety to an unusual turn, the races of man variability ad- possessed degree. And in possessing the vanced to the center of the world-stage, while those possessing the least retreated to the background or to oblivion. There should be no one type of man. A community in which all men are run in the same mold is virtually bankrupt, though its strong-boxes be overflowing with the treasures of the world. Such a endure only through a process of vegetation; it must remain silent or suffer ignominy. An_ instance of this is afforded by. Spain and her Invincible Armada. The Spaniards were great fighting-men; so were the Eng- lish. But the English could also build ships and sail them, cast cannon and shoot them. In short,the English possessed and utilized variety. Spain, through a vicious social selection, had lost the greater part of the variety which was hers in for- mer times. Nor was this loss due to an innate degeneracy of her people, but to her social, political and religious structures. A people must have some standard by which to measure itself and its individuals; then it must shape its institutions in such manner as will permit its attaining this standard. If the measure of individual worth be, How much have I made? the pres- ent competitive system is the best medium by which to gain that end; but under all its guises it will form a certain type— from the factory hand to the millionaire there will be the one stamp of material acquisitiveness. But if the measure be, What have I made of myself? it can- not be attained by the present system. The demand of the belly-need is too strong; the friction too great: individu- ality is repressed, forced to manifest itself in acquisitiveness and selfishness. And after all, the greatness of a community lies not in the strength of its strong-boxes, nor in the extravagant follies of a few of its members, but in its wisdom, its power for good, and its possibility of realizing in itself the highest and the best. It were well to stand, as Doctor Jordan has said, ‘‘for civic ideals, and the greatest of these, that government should make men by giving them freedom to make them- selves. ’’ tors’ greatest community can
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Drawn by E. Hering. ‘*MENIPPUS: if I appear talking to vou on superterrestrial and aérial topics Three thousand stadia from the earth to the moon. Marvel not, my comrade, The long and short of the matter is that Iam running over the order of a Journey I have lately made.’’—Luctan’s Jcaromenippus. I. MR. BEDFORD MEETS MR. CAVOR AT LYMPNE. A I sit down to write here amidst the shadows of vine-leaves under the blue sky of southern Italy, it comes to me with a certain quality of astonishment that my participation in these amazing advent- ures of Mr. Cavor was, after all, the out- come of the purest accident. It might, I admit, have been any one. I fell into these things at a time when I thought myself re- moved from the slightest possibility of dis- turbing experiences. I had gone to Lympne because I had imagined it the most un- eventful place inthe world. ‘*Here, at any rate,’’? said I, ‘‘I shall find peace and a chance to work!’’ And this narrative is the sequel. I may perhaps mention here that very recently I had come an ugly cropper in certain business enterprises. Sitting now surrounded by all the circumstances of wealth, there is a luxury in admitting my extremity. It is scarcely necessary to go into the details of the speculations that landed me at Lympne. Nowadays even about business transactions there is a strong spice of adventure. I took risks. In these things there is invariably a certain amount of give and take, and it fell to me finally to do the giving. Reluctantly enough. Even when I had got out of everything, one cantankerous creditor saw fit to be malignant. It seemed to me at last that there was nothing for it but to write a play, unless I wanted to drudge for my living as a clerk. I had always had an idea that I was equal to writing a play. I knew there is nothing a man can do out- legitimate has such opulent possibilities, and I had got into the habit of regarding this un- written drama as a convenient little reserve put by for a rainy day. That rainy day had come and so I set to work. I soon discovered that writing a play was a longer business than I had supposed —at first I had reckoned ten days for it— and it was to have a pied-d-terre while it was in hand that I came to Lympne. I reckoned myself lucky in getting that little bungalow. I got it on a three years’ agree- ment. I put in a few sticks of furniture, and while the play was in hand I did my own cooking. My cooking would have $ side business transactions that
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66 shocked Mrs. Bond. I had a coffee-pot, a saucepan for eggs and one for potatoes, and a frying-pan for sausages and bacon. Such was the simple apparatus of my comfort. For the rest, I laid in an eighteen-gallon cask of beer on credit, and a trustful baker came each day. I have had worse times. Certainly, if any one wants solitude, the place is Lympne. It is in the clay part of Kent, and my bungalow stood on the. edge of an old sea-cliff and stared across the flats of Romney Marsh at the sea. In very wet weather the place is almost inaccessible, and I have heard that at times the postman used to traverse the more suctorial por- tions of his route with boards upon his feet. Outside the doors of the few cot- tages and houses that make up the present village, big birch besoms are stuck to wipe off the worst of‘ the clay, which will give some idea of the texture of the district. I doubt if the place would be there at all if it were not a fading memory of things gone forever. It was the big port of Eng- land in Roman times, Portus Lemanus, and now the sea is four miles away. All down the steep hill are boulders and masses of Roman brickwork, and from it old Watling Street, still paved in places, starts like an arrow to the north. I used to stand on the hill and think of it all, the galleys and legions, the captives and officials, the women and traders, all the swarm and tumult that came clanking in and out of the harbor. And now just a few lumps of rubble on a grassy slope and a sheep or two—and me! And where the port had been were the levels of the marsh, sw »p- ing round in a broad curve to distant Dungeness and dotted here and there with tree clumps and the church towers of old medieval towns that are following Lemanus now toward extinction. That outlook on the one of the finest views I have ever seen. I marsh was indeed suppose Dungeness was fifteen miles away ; it lay like a raft on the sea, and farther westward were the hills by Hastings under the settingsun. Sometimes they hung close and clear, sometimes they were faded and low, and often the drift of the weather took them clean out of sight. And all the nearer parts of the marsh were laced and lit by ditches and canals. The window at which I worked looked THE FIRST MEN [IN THE MOON. over the sky-line of this crest, and it was from this window that I first set eyes on Cavor. It was just as I was struggling with my scenario, holding down my mind to the sheer hard work of it, and so nat- urally enough he-arrested my attention. The sun had set, the sky was a vivid tranquillity of green and yellow, and against that he came out black, the oddest little figure. He was a short, round-bodied, thin- legged little man, with a jerky quality in his motions; he wore a cricket cap, an overcoat, and cycling knickerbockers and stockings. He gesticulated with his hands and arms and jerked his head about and buzzed. He buzzed like something electric. You never heard such buzzing. And ever and again he cleared his throat with a most extraordinary noise. There had been rain, and that spasmodic walk of his was enhanced by the extreme slipperiness of the footpath. Exactly as he came against the sun he stopped, pulled out a watch, hesitated. Then, with a sort of convulsive gesture, he turned and re- treated with every manifestation of haste, no longer gesticulating, but going with ample strides that showed his feet—they were, I remember, grotesquely exaggerated in size by adhesive clay—to the best possi- ble advantage. This occurred on the first day of my so- journ, when my play-writing energy was at its height, and I regarded the incident simply as an annoying distraction—the waste of five minutes. I returned to my scenario. But when next evening the ap- parition was repeated with remarkable pre- cision, and again the next evening, and indeed every evening when rain was not falling, concentration upon the scenario became a considerable effort. ‘*Confound > said I; ‘‘one would think he ’ and for pretty the man,’ was learning to be a marionette!’ several evenings I cursed him heartily. Then my annoyance gave way to amaze- ment and curiosity. Why on earth should aman do this thing? On the fourteenth evening I could stand it no longer, and so soon as he appeared I opened the French window, crossed the veranda, and directed myself to the point where he invariably stopped.
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THE FIRST MEN [IN THE MOON. He had his watch out as I came up to him. He had a chubby, rubicund face, with reddish-brown eyes—previously I had seen him only against the light. ‘‘One said I, as he turned. He stared. ‘‘One moment,’’ he said, ‘certainly. Or if you wish to speak to me for longer, and it is not asking too much —your moment is up—would it trouble you to accompany me——?’’ ‘*Not in the least,’’ said I, placing my- self beside him. ‘*My habits are regular. intercourse limited.’ ‘*This, I presume, is your time for exer- cise?’’ ‘‘TIt is. I come here to enjoy the sunset.’’ ‘*You never look at it.’’ ‘*Never look at it?’’ ‘“‘No. I’ve watched you thirteen nights and not once have you looked at the sun- set. Not once.’’ He knitted his brows like one who en- counters a problem. ‘* Well, I enjoy the sunlight—the atmos- I go along this path, through that moment, sir,’ My time for phere. gate’’—he jerked his head over his shoulder s9 —‘‘and round—— ‘*You don’t. You never have been. It's all nonsense. There isn’t a way. To- night, for instance—-—’’ ; ‘‘Oh! to-night! Let me see. Ah! I just glanced at my watch, saw that I had already been out just three minutes over the precise half-hour, decided there was not time to go round, turned——”’ ‘*You always do.’’ He looked at me, reflected. ‘‘Perhaps I do—now I come to think of it. But what was it you wanted to speak to me about ?’’ ‘*Why—this /”’ ‘*This?’’ ‘*Yes. Why do you night you come making a noise ‘*Making a noise?’’ ‘Like this.’’ I imitated his buzzing noise. He looked at me and it was evident that ‘*Do I do it? Every ‘9 do the buzzing awakened distaste. that ?’’ he asked. ‘*Every blessed evening.’’ He stopped dead. He regarded me gravely. ‘‘Can it be,’’ he said, ‘‘that I have formed a Habit?’’ 67 ‘*Well, it looks like it. Doesn’t it?’’ He pulled down his lower lip between finger and thumb. He regarded a puddle at his feet. ‘*My mind is much occupied,’’ he said. ‘And you want to know why! Well, sir, I can assure you that not only do I not know why I do these things, but I did not even know I did them. Come to think, it is just as you say; I never have been be- yond that field. And these things annoy you?’ For some reason I was beginning to relent toward him. ‘‘Not annoy,’’ I said. ‘‘But—imagine yourself writing a play!’’ ‘*T couldn’t.”’ ‘‘Well, anything that needs concentra- tion.”’ ‘*Ah,’’ he said, ‘‘of course,’’ and medi- tated. His expression became so eloquent of distress that I relented still more. After all, there is a touch of aggression in de- manding of a man you don’t know, why he hums on a public footpath. ‘*You see,’’ he said, weakly, habit. I must stop it.”’ ‘But not if it puts you out. After all, I had It’s something of a liberty.”’ ‘‘Not at all, sir,’’ he said, ‘‘not at all. I am greatly indebted to you. I should myself against these things. In Could I trouble you—once ‘it’s a no business. guard future I will. again ?—that noise?’ ‘*Something like this,’’ I said—‘‘Zuz- zoo, zuzz00. But really, you know——”’ ‘‘T am greatly obliged to you. In fact —I know—I am getting’ absurdly absent- minded. You are quite justified, sir— perfectly justified. Indeed, I am indebted to you. The thing shall end. And now, sir, I have already brought you farther than I should have done.’’ ‘*T do hope my impertinence ‘*Not at all, sir, not at all.’’ We regarded each other for a moment. I raised my hat and wished him a good- evening. He responded convulsively, and so we went our ways. At the stile I looked back at his reced- ing figure. His bearing had changed re- markably; he seemed limp, shrunken. The contrast with his former gesticulating, zuzzooing self took me in some absurd way as pathetic. I watched him out of sight.
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68 Then, wishing very heartily I had kept to my own I returned to my bungalow and my play. The next evening I saw nothing of him, nor the next. But he was very much in my mind, and it had occurred to me that as a sentimental comic character he might serve a useful purpose in the development of my plot. The third day he called. For a time I was puzzled to think what had brought him—he made indifferent conversation in the most formal way—then abruptly he came to business. He wanted to buy me out of my bungalow. ‘*You see,’’ he said, ‘*‘I don’t blame you in the least, but you’ve destroyed a habit and it disorganizes my day. I’ve walked past here for years—years. No doubt I’ve hummed—you've made all that impos- sible !’’ I suggested he might try some other direction. ‘‘No. There is This is the only one. now every afternoon dead wall.’’ business, no other direction. I’ve inquired. And at four—lI come toa ‘*But, my dear sir, if the thing is so im- portant to you 3 ‘*Tt’s vital! You vestigator—I am engaged in a research. I live’’ paused peared to think—‘‘just over there,’ said, and suddenly pointed dangerously near my eye. ‘‘The with white chimneys you see just over the trees. I am on the point of completing one of the most important demonstrations, I can assure you, one of the most important dem- onstrations that have ever been made. It requires constant thought, constant mental ease and activity. And the afternoon was my brightest time !—effervescing with new ideas—new points of view.”’ ‘*But why not come by still?’’ ‘Tt would be all different. I should be self-conscious. I should think of you at your play—watching me, irritated! No! I must have the bungalow.”’ I meditated. Naturally I think the matter over thoroughly before anything decisive was said. Iam generally ready enough for business, but in the first place it was not my bungalow, and even if I sold it to him at a good price I might get squeezed about delivery if the current see I’m—I’m an in- scientific and ap- he —he house wanted to THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON. owner got wind of the transaction, and in the second I was, well—undischarged. Moreover, the possibility of his being in pursuit of some valuable invention also ap- pealed to me as an opening. It occurred to me that I should like to know more of this research. I threw out feelers. He was quite willing to supply informa- tion. Indeed, once he was fairly under way the conversation became a monologue. He talked like a man long pent up, who has had it over with himself again and again. He talked for nearly an hour, and I must confess I found it a pretty stiff bit of listening. During that first interview I gathered very little of the drift of his work. Half his words were technicalities entirely strange to me, and he illustrated points with what he was call elementary mathematics, an envelope with a copying- ink pencil, in a manner that made it hard even to seem to understand. ‘‘Yes,’’ I said. ‘‘Yes. Go on!’’ Nevertheless, I made out enough to convince me that he was no mere crank playing at discoveries. Whatever it was, it was a thing with mechanical possibilities. He told me of a workshed he had, and of three assistants, originally jobbing carpenters, whom he had trained. Now, from the workshed to the patent-office is clearly only one step. He invited me to see these things. I accepted readily, and took care by a remark or so to underline my acceptance. The bungalow remained very conveniently in suspense. At last he rose to depart, with an apol- ogy for the length of his call. Talking over his work was, he said, a pleasure en- joyed only too rarely. It was not often he found such an intelligent listener as myself. ‘*So much pettiness,’’ he explained, ‘‘so_ much intrigue! And really when one has an idea—a novel, fertilizing, stealable idea ”? one or two pleased to computing on I am aman who believes in impulses. I made what was perhaps a rash, and cer- tainly an impudent, proposition. ‘‘Why not,’’ said I, ‘‘make this your new habit? In the place of the one I spoiled. At least, until we can settle about the bunga- low. What you want is to turn over your work in your mind. That you have always done during your afternoon walk. Unfort- ‘unately shat’s over—you can’t get things
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sy Aish du Atcha B' = oS S S w = N 2 R) = Nw © N R = w rf ENERGY,’ HE MADE ME UNDERSTAND, WAS ANYTHING LIKE LIGHT OR HEAT OR THOSE RONTGEN RAYS THERE WAS SO MUCH TALK ABOUT A YEAR OR SO AGO.”’
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7oO back as they were. But why not come and talk about your work to me—use me as a sort of wall against which you may throw your thoughts and catch them again? It’s certain I don’t know enough to steal your ideas, and I know no scientific men.’’ I stopped. He was considering. Evi- dently the thing attracted him. ‘‘But I’m afraid I should bore you,’’ he said. ‘*Oh, you've interested me mensely this afternoon.”’ *‘Of course, it would be a great help to Nothing clears up one’s ideas so Hitherto——’’ no; im- me. much as explaining them. ‘*My dear sir, say no more.’’ ‘*But really, can you spare the time?’ ‘‘There is no rest like change of occu- pation.’’ The affair was over. On my steps he turned. ‘‘I am already greatly indebted to you,’’ he said. I made an interrogative noise. “*You have completely cured me of that ridiculous habit of humming,’’ he ex- plained. I think I said I was glad to be of any service to him, and he turned away. Immediately the train of thought that our conversation had suggested must have resumed its sway. His arms began to wave in their former fashion. The faint echo of ‘‘zuzzoo’’ came back to me on th breeze. Well—after all that was not my affair. He came the next day, and again the next day after that, and delivered two lect- ures on physics to our mutual satisfaction. He talked with an air of being extremely lucid about the ‘‘ether’’ and ‘‘tubes of force’’ and ‘‘gravitational potential’’ and things like that, and I sat in my other folding-chair and said ‘‘Yes,’’ ‘‘Go on,”’ ‘*T follow you,’’ to keep him going. It was tremendously dithicult stuff, but I do not think he ever suspected how much I did not understand him. Now and then things gleamed on me clearly for a space, only to vanish just when I thought I had hold of them. Sometimes my attention failed altogether, and I would give it up and sit and stare at him, wondering whether after all it would be better to use him as a central figure in a good farce and let all this sther stuff slide. Then perhaps I would catch on again for a bit. veranda THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON. At the earliest opportunity I went to see his house. It was large and carelessly furnished. There were no servants other than his three assistants, and his dietary and private life were characterized by a philosophical simplicity. He was a water- drinker, a vegetarian, and all those logical, But the sight of his equipment settled my doubts. It looked like business from cellar to attic—an amazing little place to find in an out-of- the-way village. The ground-floor rooms contained benches and apparatus, the bake- house and scullery boiler had developed into respectable furnaces, dynamos occupied the cellar, and there was a gasometer in the garden. He showed it to me with all the confiding zest of a man who has been His seclusion was disciplinary things. living too much alone. overflowing now in an excess of confidence, and I had the good luck to be the re- cipient. The three assistants specimens of the class of ‘‘handy men’ from which they came—conscientious if unintelligent, strong, civil and willing. One, Spargus, who did the cooking and all the metal work, had been a sailor; a second, Gibbs, was a joiner; and the third was an ex-jobbing-gardener and now gen- eral assistant. They were the merest laborers; all the intelligent work was done by Cavor. Theirs was the darkest igno- rance compared even with my muddled impression. I am no scientific expert, and if I were to attempt to set forth in the highly scientific language of Mr. Cavor the aim to which his experiments tended, I am afraid I should confuse not only the reader but myself, and almost certainly I should make some blunder that would bring upon me the mockery of every up-to-date student of mathematical physics in the country. The best thing I can do, there- fore, is, I think, to give my impressions in my own inexact language without any attempt to wear a garment of knowledge to which I have no claim. The object of Mr. Cav substance that should be ‘‘opaque’ used some other word I have forgotten, but ‘*opaque’’ conveys the idea—to ‘‘all forms of radiant energy.’’ ‘‘Radiant energy,”’ he made ime understand, was anything like creditable ’ were *s search was & ’—he
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THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON. light or heat or those Réntgen rays there was so much talk about a year or so ago, or the electric waves of Marconi, or gravi- tation. All these things, he said, radiate out from centers and act on bodies at a distance, whence comes the term ‘‘radiant energy.’’ Now, almost all substances are opaque to some form or other of radiant energy. Glass, for example, is transparent to light, but much less so to heat, so that it is useful as a fire-screen; and alum is transparent to light but blocks heat com- pletely. A solution of iodine in carbon bisulphide, on the other hand, completely blocks light, but is quite transparent to heat. It will hide a fire from you, but permit all its warmth to reach you. Metals are not only opaque to light and heat, but also to electrical energy, which passes through both iodine solution and glass almost as though they were not interposed. Now, all known substances are ‘‘trans- parent’? to gravitation. You can _ use screens of various sorts to cut off the light or heat or electrical influence of the sun, or the warmth of the earth, from anything ; you can screen things by metal sheets from Marconi’s rays; but nothing will cut off the gravitational attraction of the sun or the gravitational attraction of the earth. Yet why there should be nothing is hard to say. Cavor, did not see why such a substance should not exist, and certainly I could not tell him. I had never thought of such a possibility before. He showed me by calculations on paper—which Lord Kelvin, no doubt, or Professor Lodge or Professor Karl Pearson, or any of those great scientific people, might have under- stood, but which simply reduced me to a hopeless muddle—that not only was such a substance possible, but that it must satisfy certain conditions. It »was an amazing piece of reasoning. Much as it amazed and exercised me at the time, it would be impossible to reproduce it here. ‘*Yes,’’ I said to it all, ‘‘yes. Go on!’’ Suffice it for this story that he believed he might be able to manufacture this possible substance opaque to gravitation out of a complicated alloy of metals and something new—a new element, I fancy—called, I believe, helium, which was sent to him from London in sealed stone jars. Doubt has been thrown upon this detail, but I am almost certain it was helium he had sent him in sealed stone jars. It was certainly something very gaseous and thin. If only I had taken notes! But then how was I to foresee the ne- cessity of taking notes? Any one with the merest germ of an imagination will understand the extraordi- nary possibilities of such a substance, and will sympathize a little with the emotion I felt as this understanding emerged from the haze of abstruse phrases in which Cavor expressed himself. Comic relief in a play indeed! It was some time before I would believe that I had interpreted him aright, and I was very careful not to ask questions that would have enabled him to gage the profundity of misunderstanding into which he dropped his daily exposi- tion. But no one reading the story of it here will sympathize fully, because from my barren narrative it will be impossible to gather the strength of my conviction that this astonishing substance was positively going to be made. I do not recall that I gave my play an hour’s consecutive work at any time after my visit to his house. My imagination had other things to do. There seemed no limit to the possibilities of the stuff. Whichever way I tried, I came on miracles and revolutions. For example, if one wanted to lift a weight, however enormous, one had only to get a sheet of this sub- stance beneath it and one might lift it with a straw. My first natural impulse was to apply this principle to guns and ironclads and all the material and methods of war, and from that to shipping, locomotion, building, every conceivable form of human industry. The chance that had brought me into the very birth-chamber of this new time—it was an epoch, no less—was one of those chances that come once in a thousand years. The thing unrolled, it expanded and expanded. I saw a parent company and daughter companies, applications to right of us, applications to left, rings and trusts, privileges and concessions, until one vast, stupendous Cavorite company ran and ruled the world. And I was in it! I took my line straight away. I knew I was staking everything, but I jumped there and then. : ‘*We’re on absolutely the biggest thing
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THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON. that has ever been invented,’’ I said, and put the accent on ‘‘ ‘‘Tf you want to keep me out of this, you’ll have to do it with a gun. I’m coming down to be your fourth laborer to-morrow.”’ He seemed surprised at my enthusiasm, but not a bit suspicious or hostile. Rather he was self-depreciatory. He looked at me doubtfully. you really think—-—?”’ he said. your play! How about that play?”’ ‘It’s vanished !’’ I cried. ‘*My dear sir, don’t you see what you’ve got? Don't we.’’ ‘*But do ** And you see what you’re going to do?”’ And positively he didn’t! At first I could not believe it. He had not had the beginning of the inkling of an idea! This astonishing little man had been working on purely theoretical grounds the whole time! When he said it was ‘‘the most important’’ research the world had ever seen, he simply meant it squared up so many theories, settle@ so much that was in doubt; he had troubled no more about the appli- ‘ation of the stuff he was going to turn out than if he had been a machine that makes guns. This was a possible substance, and he was going to make it! V’la tout, as the Frenchman says. Beyond that he was childish! If he made it, it would go down to posterity as Cavorite or Cavorine, and he would be made an F.R.S. and his portrait away as a scientific worthy with ‘‘ Nature,’ and things like that. And that was all he saw! He would have dropped this bombshell into the world as though he had discovered a new species of gnat, if it had not happened that I had come along. And there it would have lain and fizzled! When I realized this, it was I did the talking and Cavor who said ‘‘Go on!’’ I jumped up. I paced the room, gesticulat- ing like a boy of twenty. I tried to make him understand his duties and _ responsibil- ities in the matter—our duties and respon- sibilities in the matter. I assured him we might make wealth enough to work any sort of social might own and order the whole world. I told him of companies and patents and the case for secret processes. All these things seemed to take him much as his mathe- matics had taken me. A look of perplexity came into his ruddy little face. He given revolution we fancied: we stammered something about indifference to wealth, but I brushed all that aside.. He had got to be rich and it was no good his stammering. I gave him to understand the sort of man I was, and that I had had very considerable business experience. I did not tell him I was an undischarged bankrupt at the time, because that was temporary, but I think I reconciled my evident poverty with my financial claims. And quite insensibly, in the way such projects grow, the understanding of a Cavorite monopoly He was to make the stuff and I was to make the boom. I stuck like a leech to the ‘‘we’ **you’? and ‘‘I’’ didn’t exist for me. His idea was that the profits I spoke of might go to endow research, but that of course was a matter we had to settle later. The great point, as I insisted, was to get the thing done. ‘* Here I cried, ‘‘no home, no factory, no fortress, no ship, can dare to be without—more universally applicable even than a patent medicine! There isn’t a solitary aspect of it, not one of its ten thousand possible uses, that will not make rich, Cavor, beyond the dreams of avarice !’’ ‘*No?’’ he said. ‘‘I begin to see. It’s extraordinary how one gets new points of view by talking over things!”’ ‘*And as it happens, you have just talked to the right man!”’ ‘‘T suppose no one,’’ he said, ‘‘is abso- lutely averse to enormous wealth. Of course, there is one thing—-—”’ He paused. I stood still. ‘*It is just possible, you know, that we may not be able to make it after all!’’ grew up between us. ’ oe is a substance,’ us II. THE FIRST MAKING OF CAVORITE. But on the 14th of October, 1898, this incredible substance was made. Oddly enough, it was made at last by accident, when Mr. Cavor least expected it. He had fused together a number of metals and certain other things—I wish I knew the particulars now—and he intended to leave the mixture a week and then allow it to cool slowly. Unless he had miscalculated, the last stage in the com- bination would occur when the stuff sank
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THE FIRST MEN 1N THE MOON. 73 to a temperature of sixty degrees Fahren- heit. But it chanced that, unknown to Cavor, dissension had arisen among the men about the furnace-tending. Gibbs, who had previously seen to this, had sud- denly attempted to shift it to the man who had the that coal was soil, being dug, and therefore could not possibly fall within the province of a joiner; the been a jobbing gardener alleged, that coal was a metallic or ore-like substance, But Spargus been a gardener, on score man who had however, let alone that he was cook. insisted on Gibbs doing the coaling, seeing that he was a joiner and that coal is noto- riously fossil wood. Consequently Gibbs ceased to replenish the furnace and no one else did so, and Cavor was too much immersed in certain interesting problems concerning a Cavorite flying-machine (neg- lecting the resistance of the air and one or two other points) to perceive that anything was wrong. And the premature birth of his invention took place just as he was coming across the field to my bungalow for our afternoon talk and tea. I remember the occasion with extreme vividness. The water was boiling and everything was prepared and the sound of his ‘‘zuzzoo’’ had brought me out upon the veranda. His active little figure was black against the autumnal sunset, and to the right the chimneys of his house just rose above a gloriously tinted group of trees. Remoter rose the Wealden Hills, faint and blue, while to the left the hazy marsh spread out spacious and serene. And then——! The chimneys jerked heavenward, smash- ing into a string of bricks as they rose, and the roof and a miscellany of furniture fol- lowed. Then overtaking them came a huge white flame. The trees about the building swayed and whirled and tore themselves to pieces that sprang toward the flame. My ears were smitten with a clap of thunder that left me deaf on one side for life, and all about me windows smashed unheeded. I took three steps from the veranda toward Cavor’s house, and even as I did so came the wind. Instantly my coat-tails were over my head and I was progressing in great leaps and bounds, and quite against my will, toward him. In the same moment the discoverer was seized, whirled about, and shot through the screaming air. I saw one of my chimney-pots hit the ground within six yards of me, leap a score of feet, and so hurry in great strides toward the focus of the disturbance. Cavor, kicking and flapping, came down again, rolled over and over on the ground for a space, struggled up and was lifted and borne forward at an enormous velocity, vanishing at last among the laboring, lash- ing trees that writhed about his house. A mass of smoke and ashes and a square of bluish, shining substance up toward the zenith. A large fragment of fencing came sailing past dropped edgewise, hit the ground and fell flat, and then the worst was over. The aérial com- motion fell swiftly until it was a mere strong gale, and I became more aware that I had breath and feet. By leaning back against the wind I managed to stop, and could collect such wits as still remained to me. In that instant the whole face of the world had changed. The tranquil sunset had vanished, the sky was dark with scurrying clouds, everything was flattened and swaying with the gale. I glanced back to see if my bungalow was still, in a general way, standing, then staggered for- ward toward the trees among which Cavor had vanished and through whose tall and leaf-denuded branches shone the flames of his burning house. I entered the copse, dashing from one tree to another and clinging to them, and for a space I sought him in vain. Then, amidst a heap of smashed branches and fencing that had banked itself against a portion of his garden wall, I perceived something stir. I made a run for this, but before I reached it a brown object sepa- rated itself, rose on two muddy legs and protruded two drooping, bleeding hands. Some tattered ends of garments fluttered out from its middle portion and streamed before the wind. For a moment I did not recognize this earthy lump, and then I saw that it was Cavor, caked in the mud in which he had rolled. He leaned against the wind, rub- bing the dirt from his eyes and mouth. He extended a muddy lump of hand, rushed me, once
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74 ; THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON. and staggered a pace toward me. His face worked with emotion; little lumps of mud kept falling from it. He looked as damaged and pitiful as any living creature his remark, there- ‘**Gratulate I have ever seen, and fore, amazed me exceeding. me,’’ he gasped; ‘*’gratulate me!’ ‘*Congratulate you!’’ said I. ‘‘Good heavens! What for?’’ ‘*I’ve done it.’’ You ave. What on earth caused that explosion ?”’ A gust of wind blew his words away. I understood him to say that it wasn’t an explosion at all. The wind hurled me into collision with him, and we clinging to one another. ‘*Try and get back to my bungalow,’*’ I He did not hear me, about ‘‘three stood in his ear. something and bawled and shouted martyrs—science, also about ‘‘not much good.’’ At the time he labored under the impression that his three attendants had perished in the whirlwind. Happily, this was incorrect. Directly he had left for my bungalow, they had gone off to the public house in Lympne, to discuss the question of the furnaces over some trivial refreshment. I repeated my suggestion of getting back to my bungalow, and this time he under- We clung arm in arm and started, and managed at last to reach the shelter of as much roof as was left tome. Fora space we sat in arm-chairs and panted. All the windows were broken and the lighter articles of furniture were in great stood. disorder, but no irrevocable damage was done. Happily, the kitchen door had stood the pressure upon it, so that all my crockery and cooking materials had sur- vived. The oil-stove was still burning and I put on the water to boil again for tea. And that prepared, I could turn on Cavor for his explanation. ‘*Quite correct,’’ he correct. I’ve done it, and it’s all right.”’ ‘*But I protested. ‘All right! Why, there can‘t be a rick standing, or a fence or a thatched roof undamaged for insisted; ‘‘quite twenty miles round.”’ “*Tt’s all right—yeally. I course, foresee this little upset. didn’t, of My mind was occupied with another problem- ‘*My dear sir,’’ I cried, ‘‘don’t you see something” you've done thousands of pounds’ worth of damage?’’ ‘*There, I throw myself on your dis- cretion. I’m not a practical man, of course, but don’t you think they will regard it as a cyclone——"* ‘*But the explosion ‘Tt was not an explosion. It’s perfectly Only, as I say, I’m apt to over- look these little things. It’s that zuzzoo business on a larger scale. Inadvertently I made this substance of mine, this Cavorite, in a thin wide sheet.’’ He paused. ‘‘You are quite clear that the stuff is opaque to gravitation, that it cuts off things from gravitating toward each other?’’ “*¥es,,”” guid... *‘Neat’’ ‘*Well, so soon as it reached a tempera- ture of sixty degrees Fahrenheit and the process of its manufacture was complete, the air above it, the portions of roof and ceiling and floor above it, ceased. to have weight. I suppose you know—everybody knows nowadays—that, as a usual thing, the air has weight, that it presses on every- thing at the surface of the earth, presses in all directions, with a pressure of fourteen pounds to theinch. You see, over our Cavorite this ceased to be so, the air there ceased to exert pressure, and the air round it, and not over the Cavorite, was exerting a pressure of fourteen pounds to the square inch upon this suddenly weight- less air. Ah! you begin to see! The air all about the Cavorite crushed in upon the air above it with irresistible force. The air above the Cavorite was forced up- ward violently, the air that rushed in to replace it immediately lost weight, ceased to exert any pressure, followed suit, blew the ceiling through and the roof off. ‘*You perceive,’’ he said, ‘‘it formed a sort of atmospheric fountain, a kind of chimney in the atmosphere. And if the Cavorite itself hadn’t been loose and so got sucked up the chimney, does it occur to you what would have happened?’’ I thought. ‘‘I suppose,’’ I said, ‘‘the air would be rushing up and up over that infernal piece of stuff now.’ ‘*Precisely,’’ he said. ‘‘A huge fount- ain !’’ ‘*Spouting into space! Why, it would have squirted all simple. Good heavens! the
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THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON. It would would That atmosphere of the earth away! have robbed the world of air! It have been the death of all mankind! little lump of stuff!’’ ‘*Not exactly into space,’’ said Cavor, ‘‘but as good as. It would have whipped the air off the world as one peels a banana, and flung it thousands of miles. It would have dropped back again, of course, but on an asphyxiated world! From our point of view, very little better than if it never came back !”’ I stared. realize how all my expectations had been ‘*What do you mean to do now?”’ As yet I was too amazed to upset. I asked. ‘‘In the first place, if I may borrow a garden trowel I will remove some of this earth with which I am incased, and then, if I may avail myself of your domestic con- veniences, I will have a bath. This done, we will converse more at leisure. It will be wise, I think’’—he laid a muddy hand on my arm—‘‘if nothing were said of this affair beyond ourselves. I know I have caused great damage—probably even dwelling-houses may be ruined here and there upon the countryside. But on the other hand, I cannot possibly pay for the damage I have done, and if the real cause of this is published it will lead only to heartburning and obstruction of my work. I cannot add the burden of practical con- siderations to my theorizing. Later on, when you have come in with your practical mind, and Cavorite is floated—floated is the word, isn’t it?—and it has realized all you anticipate for it, we may set matters right with people. But not now—not now. If no other explanation is offered, people, in the present unsatisfactory state of meteorological science, will ascribe all this to a cyclone; there might be a public subscription, and as my house has col- lapsed and been burnt I should, in that case, receive a considerable share in the compensation, which would be extremely helpful to the prosecution of our researches. But if it is known that J caused this, there will be no public subscription, and everybody will be put out. Practically, I shall never get a chance of working in peace again. My three assistants may or may not have perished. That is a detail. If they have, it is no great loss; they were and this premature must be due to their joint neglect of the furnace. If they have not perished, I doubt if they have the intelli- They will more zealous than able, event largely gence to explain the affair. And if, during the temporary unfitness of my house for a : } accept the cyclone story. of the bungalow of occupation, I may lodge in one unoccupied rooms of this yours———"’ He paused and regarded me. A man of such possibilities, I reflected, is no ordinary guest to entertain. ‘*Perhaps,’’ said I, rising to feet, ‘“‘we had better begin by looking for a trowel,’’ and I led the way to the scattered my vestiges of the greenhouse. And while he was having his bath I con- sidered the entire question alone. It was clear there were drawbacks to Mr. Cavor’'s society I had not foreseen. The absent- mindedness that had just escaped depopu- lating the terrestrial globe might at any mo- ment result in other grave inconvenience. On the other hand, I my affairs were in a mess, and I was in just the mood for reckless adventure, with a chance of something good at the end of it. I had quite settled in my mind that I was to have half, at least, in that aspect of the affair. Fortunately I held my bungalow, as I have already explained, on a three was young, years’ agreement, without being respon- sible for repairs, and my furniture, such as there was of it, had been hastily purchased, was unpaid for, insured, and altogether devoid of associations. In the end I de- cided to keep on with him. Certainly the changed very greatly. at all the enormous possibilities of the sub- aspect of had I no longer.doubted things stance. We to work his laboratory and proceed with our experi- ments. Cavor talked more on my level than he had ever done before, when it came to the question of how we should make the stuff next. Even with my aid we found some little difficulty, and meanwhile we kept at work restoring the laboratory. There was plenty to do, before it was absolutely necessary to decide upon the precise form and method of our second attempt. Our only hitch was the strike of the laborers, who ob- set at once to reconstruct
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THE FIRS? MEN IN THE MOON. jected to my activity as a foreman. But that we compromised after two days’ delay. Ill. THE BUILDING OF THE SPHERE. I remember the occasion very distinctly when Cavor thought of the sphere. I fancy now that he must have had intima- tions of it before, but at the time, it seemed te come to him in a rush. We were return- ing to the bungalow for tea, and on the way he fell humming. Suddenly he shouted, ‘*That’s it!”’ ‘*What’s it?”’ ‘*Space—anywhere! The moon!’’ ‘*What do you mean?’’ ‘‘Mean? Why—it must be a sphere! That’s what I mean!”’ I saw I was out of it, and for a time I let him talk in his own fashion. I hadn't the ghost of an idea, then, of his drift. But after he had taken tea, he made it clear. ‘*It’s like this,’’ he said. ‘‘Last time, Iran this stuff that cuts things off from gravitation into a flat tank with an overlap that held it down. And directly it had cooled and the manufacture was completed, all that uproar happened, nothing above it weighed anything, the air went squirting up, the house squirted up, and if the stuff itself hadn't squirted up, too, I don’t know what would have happened! Suppose the substance is loose and quite free to go up?’ ‘It will go up at once!’’ ‘‘Exactly. With no more disturbance than firing a big gun.”’ ‘*But what good will that do?’’ ‘‘I’m going up with it!"’ I put down my tea-cup and stared. ‘‘Imagine a sphere,’’ explained, ‘‘large enough to hold two people and their luggage. It will be lined with thick glass; it will contain a proper store of solidified air, concentrated food, apparatus and so forth, and as it were, on the outer steel with—— ‘*Cavorite?’’ es.”” ‘*But how will you get inside?’’ ‘‘That’s perfectly easy. An air-tight manhole is all that is needed. That, of course, will have to be a little compli- cated; there will have to be a valve, so he made of steel, water, distilling enameled, 9 that things may be thrown out, if neces- sary, Without much loss of air.’’ ‘‘Like Jules Verne’s thing in ‘A Trip to the Moon’ ?*’ But Cavor was not a reader of fiction. ‘*T begin to see,’’ I said, slowly. ‘*And you could get in and screw yourself up while the Cavorite was warm, and as soon as it cooled it would become impervious to gravitation, and off you would fly = ‘‘At a tangent.’’ ‘*You would go off in a straight line ——’’ Istoppedabruptly. ‘‘What is to prevent the thing traveling in a straight line into space forever?’’ I asked. ‘*You’re not safe to get anywhere, and if you do— how will you get back ?”’ ‘I've thought of that,’’ said Cavor. ‘*The inner glass sphere can be air-tight and except for the manhole, continuous, and the steel sphere can be made in sec- tions, each section capable of rolling up after the fashion of a roller blind. These can easily.be worked by springs, released and checked by electricity conveyed by platinum wires fused through the glass. All that is merely a question of detail. So you see that except for the thickness of the blind rollers, the Cavorite exterior of the sphere will consist of windows, or blinds, whichever you like to call them. Well, when all these windows or blinds are shut, no light, no heat, no gravita- tion, no radiant energy of any sort, will get at the inside of the sphere; it will fly on through space in a straight line, as you say. But open a window—imagine one of the windows Then at once any heavy body that be in that direction will attract us ‘*Oh, I see,’’ I said. ‘*Practically we shall be able to tack Get at- open! chances to ” about in space just as we wish. tracted by this and that.”’ ‘* That's clear enough. Only I don’t quite see what we shall do it for!’’ ‘Surely! For example; one might go to the moon.”’ ‘‘And when one got there! What would you find?”’ ‘*We the new knowledge !"" ‘*Is there air there?’’ ‘*There may be.”’ I shook my head, should see——! Oh! Consider ‘*T don’t like this
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THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON. new development; it’s not practical. I'd much rather try some of the other things first.”’ ’ ‘*They’re out of the question—because of the air difficulty.’’ ‘*Why not apply that blinds—Cavorite blinds in cases—to lifting weights?’’ ‘*It wouldn’t work,’’ he ‘*After all, this is not so much worse, if at all, than a Polar expedition. Men go on Polar expeditions.’ ‘*Not business men. It’s all very well for you, but unless I’m to be a poor devil all the rest of my days, I shall have to fly round on earth for the next few years.’’ ‘*Call it prospecting. ’’ ‘*You’ll have to call it that.’’ No! I did not like it. All my plans of companies and flotations crumbled into dust. Jump- ing off the world did not appeal to me; jumping on it was much more to my taste. ‘‘T have no doubt there will be min- erals,’’ said Cavor. ‘*For example?’’ ‘*Oh! sulphur, ores, gold perhaps, pos- sibly new elements. ’’ ‘*Cost of carriage,’’ I said; ‘‘you know you're not a practical man. The moon's a quarter of a million miles away.’’ ‘*It seems to me it wouldn't cost much to cart any weight anywhere if you packed it in a Cavorite case.’’ ‘*Delivered free on head of purchaser, eh?’’ My imagination was recovering. ‘*TIt isn’t as if we were confined to the moon. There’s Mars—clear atmosphere, novel surroundings, exhilarating sense of lightness. It might be pleasant to go there.”’ ‘*Ts there air on Mars?’’ **Oh, yes!’’ ‘*Seems as though you might run it as a sanitarium. By the way, how far is Mars?’’ ‘‘Two hundred million miles at pres- ent,’’ said Cavor, airily; ‘‘and you go close by the sun.’’ My imagination was picking itself up again. ‘‘After all,’’ Isaid, ‘‘there’s something in these things. There’s travel 9 idea of spring strong steel insisted. Extraordinary possibilities came rushing into my mind. I saw as in a vision the whole solar system threaded with Cavorite liners and spheres de luxe. ‘‘Rights of , preémption’’ came floating into my head— planetary rights of preémption. I recalled the old Spanish monopoly in American gold. It wasn’t as though it was just this planet or that—it was all of them. I stared at Cavor’s rubicund face and sud- denly my imagination was leaping and dancing. I stood up, I walked up and down; my tongue was loosened. ‘*I’m beginning to take it in,’’ I said, ‘‘I’'m beginning to take it in.’? The tran- sition’ from doubt to enthusiasm seemed to take scarcely any time at all. ‘‘But this is tremendous!’’ I cried; ‘‘this is Impe- rial! I haven't been dreaming of this sort of thing.”’ Once the chill of my opposition was re- moved, his own pent-up excitement had play. He too got up and paced. He too gesticulated and shouted. We behaved like men inspired. We were men inspired. ‘*We'll settle all that!’ he said, in answer to some incidental difficulty that had pulled me up. ‘‘ We'll soon settle all that. We'll start the drawings for mold- ings this very night.*’ ‘*We’ll start them now,’’ I responded, and we hurried off to the laboratory to begin upon this work forthwith. I was like a child in wonderland all that night. The dawn found us both still at work; we kept our electric light going heedless of the day. I remember now ex- actly how those drawings looked —I shaded and tinted while Cavor drew—smudged and haste-marked they were in every line, but wonderfully correct. We got out the orders for the steel blinds and frames we needed from that night’s work, and the glass sphere was designed within a week. We gave up our afternoon conversations, and our old routine altogether. We worked, and we slept and ate when we could work no longer for hunger and fatigue. Our enthusiasm infected even our three men, though they had no idea what “the sphere was for. Through those days the man Gibbs gave up walking and went everywhere, even across the room, at a sort of fussy run. And it grew, the sphere. December passed, January—I spent a day with a broom sweeping a path through the snow from bungalow to laboratory—February, March. By the end of March the comple-
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THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON. tion was in sight. In January had come a team of horses, a huge packing-case; we had our thick glass sphere now ready and in position, under the crane we had rigged to sling it into the steel shell. All the bars and blinds of the steel shell—it was not really a spherical shell, but polyhedral, with a roller-blind to each facet—had arrived by February, and the lower half was bolted together. The Cavorite was half made by March, the metallic paste had gone through two of the stages in its manufacture, and we had plastered quite half of it on to the steel bars and blinds. It was astonishing how closely we kept to the lines of Cavor’s first inspiration in working out the scheme. When the bolt- ing together of the sphere was finished, he proposed to remove the rough roof of the temporary laboratory in which the work was done and build a furnace about it. So the last stage of Cavorite-making, in which the paste is heated to a duil-red glow in a steam of helium, would be accomplished when it was already on the sphere. And then we had to discuss and decide what provisions we were to take—com- pressed foods, concentrated essences, steel containing oxygen, an for removing carbonic acid cylinders reserve arrangement and waste from the air and restoring oxy- gen by means of sodium peroxide, water condensers, and so forth. I remember the little heap they made in the corner, tins and rolls and boxes—convincingly matter- of-fact. , It with little chance of thinking. But one day, an odd mood came over me. I had been bricking up the furnace all the morning, and I sat down by these possessions, dead Everything seemed dull and in- was a strenuous time, beat. credible. ‘*But look here, Cavor,’’ I said. all! What’s it all for?’’ He smiled. ‘‘The thing now is to go.’’ ‘*The moon,’’ I reflected. ‘‘But what do you expect? I thought the moon was a dead world.”’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘*‘What do you expect?’’ ‘*We're going to see.”’ ** Are we?’’ I said, and stared before me. ‘*You are tired,’’ he remarked. ‘‘ You'd better take a walk this afternoon.’’ ‘* After ‘*No,’’ I said, obstinately; ‘‘I’m going to finish this brickwork.”’ And I did, and insured myself a night of insomnia. I don’t think I have ever had such a night. I had some bad times before my business collapse, but the very worst of those was sweet slumber compared with this infinity of aching wakefulness. I do not remember thinking at all before that night of the risks we were running. Now they came like that army of specters that once beleaguered Prague, and camped around me. The strangeness of what we were about to do, the unearthliness of it, overwhelmed me. I was like a man awak- ened out of pleasant dreams to the most horrible surroundings. I lay, eyes wide open, and the sphere seemed to get more flimsy and feeble, and Cavor more unreal and fantastic, and the whole enterprise madder and madder, every moment. I got out of bed and wandered about. I sat at the window and stared at the im- mensity of space. Between the stars was the void, the unfathomable darkness——! I tried to recall the fragmentary knowledge of astronomy I had gained in my irregular reading, but it was all too vague to furnish any idea of the things we might expect. At last I got back to bed and snatched some moments of sleep, moments of night- mare rather, in which I fell and fell and fell, forevermore, into the abyss of the sky. I astonished Cavor at breakfast. I told him, shortly, ‘‘I’m not coming with you in the sphere.’ I met all his protests with a sullen per- sistence. ‘‘The thing’s too mad,’’ I said, ‘‘and I won't come.’’ I would not go with him to the labora- tory. I fretted about my bungalow for a time, and then took hat and stick and set off alone, I knew not whither. It chanced to be a glorious morning; a warm wind and deep-blue sky, the first green of spring abroad and multitudes of birds singing. I lunched on beef and beer in a little pub- lic house near Elham, and started the land- lord by remarking, apropos of the weather, ‘*A man who leaves the world when days of this sort are about is a fool!’’ ‘*That’s what I says when I heerd on it!’’ said the landlord, and I found that, for one poor soul at least. ‘his world had
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proved excessive and there had been a throat-cutting. I went on with a new twist to my thoughts. In the afternoon I had a pleasant sleep in a sunny place, and went on my way re- freshed. I came to a comfortable-looking inn near Canterbury. It was bright with creepers, and the landlady wasa clean old woman and took my eye. I found I had just enough money to pay for my lodging with her. I decided to stop the night there. She was a talkative body, and among many other particulars I learned she had never ‘*Canterbury’s as far as ‘*I’m not one of been to London. ever I been,’’ she said. your gadabout sort.”’ ‘*How would you like to take a trip to the moon?”’ I cried. ‘‘T never did hold with them balloon- eys,’’ she said, evidently under the im- pression that this was a common excursion enough. ‘‘I wouldn’t go up in one—not for ever so.”’ This struck me as being funny. After I had supped I sat on a bench by the door of the inn and gossiped with two laborers about brickmaking and motor-cars and the cricket of last year. And in the sky a faint new crescent, blue and vague as a distant Alp, sank westward over the sun. The next day I returned to Cavor. ‘‘I am coming,’’ I said. ‘‘I’ve been a little out of order—that’s all.’’ That was the only time I felt any serious doubt of our enterprise. Nerves purely! After that I worked a little more carefully and took a trudge for an hour every day. And at last, save for the heating in the furnace, our labors were at an end. ry. INSIDE THE SPHERE. ‘*Go on,’’ said Cavor, as I sat across the edge of the manhole and looked down into the black interior of the sphere. We two were alone. It was evening, the sun had set and the stillness of the twilight was upon everything. I drew my other leg inside and slid down the smooth glass to the bottom of the sphere; then turned to take the cans of food and other impedimenta from Cavor. The interior was warm, the thermometer THE FIRST MEN JN THE MOON. stood at eighty, and as we should lose little or none of this by radiation, we were dressed in slippers and thin flannels. We bundle of thick woolen blankets 3y Cavor’s had, however, a clothing and several heavy to guard against mischance. direction, I placed the packages, the cyl- inders of oxygen, forth, loosely about my feet, and soon we had everything in. He walked about the roofless shed for a time, seeking anything we had over- looked, and then after me. I noted something in his hand. ‘*What have you there?’ I asked. ‘* Haven't brought anything to read ?”’ ‘*Good Lord! No!”’ ‘*T forgot to tell you. The voyage We may be weeks!’’ and so crawled in you There are uncer- may last——— tainties- **But——”’ ‘*We shall be floating in this sphere with absolutely no occupation.”’ ‘*T wish I’d known : He peered out of the manhole. ‘‘Look!"’ ‘‘There’s something there!’’ he said. ‘‘Ts there time?’’ ‘*We shall be an hour.’’ I looked out. It was an old number of ‘*Tit-bits,’’ that one of the men must have brought. Farther the corner I saw a torn ‘‘Lloyds’ News.’’ I scrambled back into the sphere with these things. ‘*What have you got ?’’ I said. I took the book from his hand and read, ‘*The Works of William Shakespeare. ”’ He colored slightly. ‘‘My education has away in been so purely scientific———’’ he said, apologetically. ‘*Never read him?’’ ‘*Never.’’ ‘*You’re in for a treat,’’ I said. It’s the sort of thing one must say, though as a matter of fact I never read Shakespeare myself—much. I doubt if many people have. I assisted him to screw in the glass cover of the manhole, and then he pressed a stud to close the corresponding blind in the The little oblong of twilight vanished, We were in darkness. For a time neither of Although our case would not be imper- vious to sound, everything was very still. I perceived there was nothing to grip when outer case. us spoke.
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80 the shock of our start should come, and I realized that I should be uncomfortable for want of a chair. ‘*Why have we no chairs?’’ I asked. ‘‘I’ve settled all that,’’ said Cavor. ‘*We shan’t need them.”’ ‘*Why not?’’ ‘*You will see,’’ he said, in the tone of a man who refuses to talk. I became silent. Suddenly it had come to me, clear and vivid, that I was a fool to be inside that sphere. Even now, I asked myself, is it too late to withdraw? The world outside the sphere, I knew, would be cold and inhospitable enough to me—for weeks I had been living on sub- sidies from Cavor—but after all, would it be as cold as the infinite zero, as inhos- pitable as empty space? If it had not been for the appearance of cowardice, I believe that, even then, I should have made him let me out. But I hesitated on that score and hesitated, and grew fretful and angry, and the time passed. There came a little jerk, a noise like champagne being uncorked in another room, and a faint whistling sound. For just one instant I had a sense of enormous tension, a transient conviction that my feet were pressing downward with a force of countless tons. It lasted for an infinitesi- mal time. But it stirred me to action. I said into the darkness, ‘‘my nerve’s in I don’t think—-—’"’ He made no answer. it!’ I cried; ‘‘I’m:a fool! have I here? I’m The thing’s too risky. **Cavor!"’ rags. I stopped. ‘*Confound What business coming, Cavor. I’m getting out.’ ‘*You can’t,’’ he said. ‘*Can’t! We'll soon see about that!’ He made no answer for ten seconds. ‘*It’s too late for us to quarrel now, Bed- ford,’’ he said. ‘‘That little jerk was the start. Already we are flying as swiftly as a bullet up into the gulf of space.’’ ‘*]—_’’ T said, and then it didn’t seem to matter what happened. For a time I was, as it were, stunned. I had nothing to say. It was just as if I had never heard of this idea of leaving the world before. Then I perceived an unaccountable change in my bodily sensations. It was a feeling not THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON. of lightness, of unreality. I heard a click, and a little glow-lamp came into being. I saw Cavor’s face, as white as I felt my be. We regarded one another in silence. The transparent blackness of the glass behind him made him seem as though he floated in a void. ‘*Well, we’re committed, ’’ I said, at last. ‘Syes.”” ‘‘we're committed.’’ ‘*Don't he exclaimed, at some suggestion of a gesture. ‘*Let your muscles own to he said, move, ’’ keep quite lax—as if you were in bed. We are in a little universe of our own. Look at those things!’ He pointed to the loose cases and bundles that had been lying on the blankets in the bottom of the sphere. I was astonished to see that they were floating now nearly a foot from the spherical wall. Then I saw from his shadow that Cavor was no longer I thrust out my yas leaning against the glass. hand behind me and found that I too suspended in space, clear of the glass. I did not cry out or gesticulate, but fear came upon me. It was like being held and lifted by something—you know not what. The mere touch of my hand against the glass moved me rapidly. I understood what had happened but that did not pre- vent my being afraid. We were cut off from all exterior gravitation—only the at- traction of objects within our sphere had effect. Consequently everything that was not fixed to the glass was falling—slowly because of the slightness of our masses— toward the center of gravity of our little world, to the center of our sphere. ‘*‘We must turn round,’’ said Cavor, ‘‘and float back to back, with the things between us.”’ It was the strangest sensation conceiv- able, floating thus loosely in space—at first, indeed, horribly strange, but when the horror passed, not disagreeable at all, ex- ceedingly restful; indeed, the nearest thing in earthly experience to it that I know is lying on a very thick soft feather-bed. But the quality of utter detachment and independence! I had not reckoned on things like this. I had expected a violent jerk at starting, a giddy sense of speed. Instead I felt—as if I were disembodied. It was not like the beginning of a journey; it was like the beginning of a dream. (To be continued.)
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NOME WOMAN'S EXPERIENCE CITY FROM SNAKE RIVER. AT CAPE NOME. By ELEANOR B. CALDWELL We left Washing- D. C.—my daughter and I May 11, our desti- Cape ton, —don 1900, nation Nome, our ob- ject a fortune. We started with brave feelings, yet I read in my diary: ‘* Washington looked like a paradise as I passed along A NOME HOSTELRY the streets. *’ Practical preparations for the trip were not made until Seattle was reached, thirteen days before the departure of the ‘*Tacoma’’ for the latest Mecca of the fortune-hunter. Of course, we had to take our own roof- tree, household gods and food. Our pur- to start as little burdened A tent, a stove, some chairs pose was firm as possible. and a couple of tables seemed oppress- ive possessions indeed when all was col- lected and measured for disposal in the too limited space of the steamer’s interior. It was not easy to procure anything in the overtaxed and tired city, but the acquisi- tion of a stove was a special and difficult problem of itself. A discouraging sign was conspicuously displayed in the shops, ‘*No more orders taken for Alaska.’’ The process by which I became the owner of the coveted article was a lengthy one; feminine arts and cajolery were not en- tirely left out of consideration; failure seemed imminent, when, lo! my _ pressing needs above all other Nome travelers were recognized, and I had the satisfaction of seeing my treasure, filled with nuts, safely stowed in the hold. The order for grocer’s supplies was not large, ‘*Tacoma’s’’ as I should have no place for storage. At four in the morning of May 31st, the steamer glided from the Seattle wharf. The passenger-list was unique in the his- tory of Arctic travel, for one hundred of the gentler sex were betaking themselves, for one reason or another—one was a pro- gambler—to the City of the The best-represented pro- fessional Golden Sands. fession was that of the sick-nurse—young women starting out to relieve suffering in a cold-ridden, congested community, where 6
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A “'SAMPLE-ROOM.” course the most unsanitary It must be con- come to. strike as a matter of conditions must prevail. fessed that few had claims. There were some women, tempted by the comfortable journey, accompanying hus- bands just for fun, and some to open restau- rants and hotels. They were there, however, and the steamship ofticers didn’t seem to know quite what to do with them. No stewardess had been provided, and all serv- ice was rendered by the lated, the men working their way as waiters. hashers—trans- In a week we were cutting the smooth gray waters of Bering Sea. Many of the passengers were now laid up Starland even with terrific colds. had been left behind; through the heavy fog that had settled the clear daylight filtered at hour of the twenty- Huge icebergs became around us every four. our compagnons de voyage, ‘monsters looming up on all quarters. Sunday, June 10th, dawned bright and beautiful after a snow-storm the day before. We found ourselves in other company than the icebergs. There was a boat ahead—the ‘* Aber- deen,’’ as she proved— black with passengers and heavy-laden. Then together the ‘‘Aberdeen’’ and _ the A WOMAN'S EXPERIENCE AT CAPE NOME. ‘*Tacoma’’ struggled for an entrance into Norton Sound. Thicker and thicker pressed the floes as we struck shallow water. Every one was on the qui vive and expected something to happen, and perhaps this is why when it did come there was not much excitement. But that evening signals of distress were flying from our vessel—we had struck, and remained on bottom. For three days we stayed on the Yukon flats. found diversion in heaving overboard coal worth dollars a ton at Nome. Three hundred tons of the precious carbon went to lighten ship for the highest tide of six months, which was due the next day. With the rising tide next morning the pas- sengers were gathered in the bow. They had an important duty to perform—to rush from side to side to help the motion of the boat. That they were equal to the occa- sion was soon evident, for with steady mo- tion the ship churned its way into deep On the second, passengers and crew seventy water. At 6 p.m. that lucky June 13th, Nome hours later we and a half from In the west the orange-hued full moon was just leaving the horizon, and back of the thickly tented stretch of beach to the eastward were snow-capped peaks was sighted, and eight dropped anchor a_ mile shore. TYPICAL NOME CABIN.
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from behind which the sun, gone too short a while to let darkness fall on the land, was just peeping. The scene beckoned us, but the captain spoke of **light- that must be awaited. This situation when once un- ers”’ derstood was not an agreeable one for impatient folk to face. Every day, steamers, cargo- laden and bearing from three to eight hundred people, came to anchor in front of the town, and to await for lighterage meant an unendur- able delay, so by four o'clock a party had chartered a boat and were put on shore for two dollars and a half a head. One street ran the length of the olis, but even its communal rights were not one’s turn curious canvas metrop- respected, for at one point, quite in the cen- ter, an enterprising merchant had pitched Natur- ally we first looked for a spot which we could a tent and was offering his wares. call our own. The prospect appeared hope- less. There seemed not a square inch on which we could put the little tent that would come ashore that afternoon. The beach for five miles was completely covered. Back of this, a plain of spongy tundra stretching to the base of the mountains pre- sented a uniform and thick floor of mud. HARD AT WORK. A WOMAN'S EXPERIENCE AT CAPE NOME. A DOG-TEAM. It was quite uninhabitable, but even so, im- possible, for it was all somebody's *‘claim.*’ Legally or illegally, every foot of the land had an owner. Most of the original claims had been jumped. redress. Possession was nine points of the law, the tenth had itself into a question of skill in pistol practice. Many an original claimant has returned from the States with an outfit to find his land in other hands, and no use for his expensive machin There claim disputes. For this there was no resolved ery but to let it rust upon the beach. court to settle And still, penniless but hope- ful, men were digging holes ten was no feet deep that brought but ‘‘a fraction’’ for the truth is—the sands contain very little gold. Even as long ago as last spring the more hope- ful and stout-hearted had turned their eves to Port Clarence, thirty miles tothe north. Truth about Nome is just now coming out. for their pains: From our impression of Nome City, we looked to our first meal with apprehension. We sought it in a restaurant, and served with a thin, tough steak, potatoes, poor bread and poor were coffee, for two dollars apiece. We soon learned that all the money Was made in being saloons,
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A WOMAN'S EXPERIENCE AT CAPE NOME. UNLOADING restaurants and lodging-houses. Contrary to usual conditions, the presence of a drink- ing-saloon raised the value of all property around it. One small eating-house, twelve by twenty feet, rented for dollars a day, a large element in this rent being the fact of its juxtaposition to the finest saloon in town. The gambling-houses, as is unusual in such places, were not flourishing. The reason—there was little cash in circulation. Gold-dust, too, was scarce, and what there was had been brought from seventy-five Dawson. The industrial was undoubtedly making money. Labor brought one to two dol- Good cooks class lars per hour. could command ten dollars a day. A freight lighter made a thousand dollars a day Provisions, of course, hig h—bread easily. were very twenty-five cents a loaf and poor at that; butter one dol- lar a pound; chickens four dollars each. Eggs at fifty cents a dozen seemed remark- ably cheap. It may be no- ticed here that ham and eggs three times a day was the average fare of the Nomite. The street was alive with people; there was a din of . traffic, and loud cries of ‘*Mushon!’’ (‘‘Go ahead !*’) A FREIGHT LIGHTER were constantly addressed to the Eskimo dogs, while ‘‘Gangway!’’ was hurled at the loitering pedestrian. Such **chu-cha- ka’’ (tenderfeet) as we, held by the strange sights and novelty of the scene, became a serious obstacle to and we ac- cepted the name as gracefully as possible. I was walking a little in the rear of the party at one point, when suddenly I was seized Sur- prise had not had time to give way to stronger feeling when, ‘*Ping!*’ a bullet progress, and drawn between two tents. ALASKAN DOGS USED FOR HAULING
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A WOMAN’S EXPERIENCE AT CAPE NOME. ROCKING OUT GOLD went past the spot where I had been stand- ing. I saw that a strange man had hold of me, and he lifted his hat. ‘‘I saved you from that,’’ he explained. ‘*The set- tling of a little dispute,’’ he continued, in response to my questioning. ‘*But you are as safe here as on Fifth Avenue, New York; any man would come forward to the protection of a lady.”’ Still, one’s presence out of the trajectory of a bullet is not always a matter that can be arranged for on the spur of the moment. ‘*‘Going gunning,*’ as they term it, was a popular diversion at Nome. One might see the results of this sport at any turn. But all becoming more pressing that we had no roof for our heads, and it was well along in We repaired to the beach this time the consciousness was the afternoon. to watch for our freight. able article, from huge mining machinery pellmell upon Every conceiv- to hen-coops, was strewn the sands; yet the freight agents worked wonders in getting order from chaos. Most of the material was simply stored there, in danger of destruction by the sea if a storm should come. Perched on trunks, we watched in vain until ten o'clock, when we were directed to the Hotel Casco, a smail frame building of one full story and a sloping roof for a second. Here, in a large room under the roof, slowly filling with rough men and negroes, were, in company with two other women, given a shake-down—a skin thrown upon the floor—for one dollar a head. Yet we thankfully rolled our wraps into pillows and lay down. We had no sense of fear, for the white light of day was we MAIN STREET.
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86 always there. The room was never quiet; men were constantly tramping through to the proprietor’s office boarded off at the front. The constant daylight had disar- ranged any methodical apportionment of the twenty-four Men worked, slept and ate as fancy dictated. On our rising in the morning, true hospi- tality was shown us in the gift of some water in which Water sells at Nome three buckets for twenty-five cents. Now came days of anxious watching for the possessions that the lighters failed to They were, in fact, quite the hours. to wash. yield up. FREIGHT PILED UPON last things taken from the ‘‘Tacoma.’’ <A second night was spent upon the skins of the Hotel Casco. Then two nurses, fellow voyagers, offered a part of their tent. Here we stayed for one night, when the steamship pity, portion of their own large tent for our use. agents, in curtained a In a week we had our things, but they were never taken the beach. For ten days we sought one little spot that had from overlooked, but none could be dis- covered. We had not the slightest idea of giving up. had _ be- come to the rough state of affairs, we were been Accustomed as we A WOMAN'S EXPERIENCE AT CAPE NOME. prepared for any of the hardships we saw around us. None of these could dampen the hope and expectation that had drawn us hither. 3ut there are some things that even the most careful of calculators is apt The variety of possibilities is No one ever realized this better known that small- Some forty to neglect. infinite. than I did when it was pox had broken out in camp. passengers of a plague-stricken ship, con- demned to quarantine, had escaped to the shore, bringing the pestilence with them. 3y the next morning the danger had grown. There were more serious problems for me THE BEACH. to face than the mere risk of taking the disease, of which I had little fear; the prospect of being quarantined all winter at Nome was fast becoming a certainty. This I could afford. That day the ‘Tacoma’? was reported returned from Penny River. By night my mind was made We took passage, sold our outfit at a not up. slight loss, and within twenty-four hours had left that wild life with its perils, and its prospects which, as the world now knows, have nearly reached the vanishing-point. As we sailed south into the Pacific, dearly familiar seemed the night and the stars.
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A PROBLEM IN By CapPT. A LITTLE over two years ago, Quartermaster’s Department confronted with the problem of transport- ing horses across the Pacific. At that time it was not thought probable that they could landed alive. Less than eight months ago it was thought to be impossible to transport them that distance without unloading them on some of the mid-Pacitic The question of transportation of an the was be islands. horses and mules was, to say the least, experiment. But, to make warfare in the Philippines effective, it was determined to make that experiment. Cavalry could follow the in- surgents where the infantry was useless, and in order to pursue and break up the army of the was deemed necessary to land horses at any cost. That horses would stand the climate, was not believed. It was exceedingly doubtful, in the minds of many experts, whether or not mules would live more than insurgents it a few months. Not only, however, has the problem been met and solved by the Quartermaster’s De- partment, but it has recently been demon- strated that animals which are not unloaded en route stand the sea voyage better and reach their destination in a stronger con- THE WATER BY STALL. UNLOADING HORSES INTO MEANS OF ARMY TRANSPORTATION. ARCHIBALD WILLINGHAM ButTT, U.S. V. SWIMMING HORSES TO DISTANT. IN THE CAMARINES. SHORE, A MILE dition than those which undergo the ad- ditional fatigue of being hoisted out of the hatches and subjected to the varying climatic conditions of the islands in the mid-Pacific. It has been successfully demonstrated not only that horses and mules can be transported to the Philippines, but also that a majority of them arrive there in a better condition than they loaded on the western of the United States. Having reached the Philippines, shown, were in when coast experience has they stand the climate as well as they do that of our Southern and South- western States, the mules thrive better than they do in the more varying temperatures to be found in America. Next to our splendid and THE PORTABLE
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and the nothing equipment of the men in the field, hardiness of the individual soldier, has done more to impress the natives with the uselessness of their warfare than the spirited- looking horses used for cavalry mount, and the mules and pack-trains which are now to be seen in nearly every town in the archi- pelago. In Manila itself the native stands awe-stricken as the army drawn by four gray mules, rattle over the cobble- wagons, stones in the metropolis. The present pack-mules and cavalry horses has not been success of transporting reached without many disasters, and often- much loss. This was only natural and to be expected. It that had confronted the authorities at Washington to any great extent in the past, and had never been solved even by from time imme- colonial times was a problem never those governments who morial have carried on wars, There was no literature which might throw any light on the subject, and no experi- ence which could be taken as a guide. The Quartermaster’s Department took to grapple with the difficulties, and has so far surmounted them as to make its experiment the basis for all future trans- portation of animals, no matter at how great a distance, and without consideration Never again need under- of climatic conditions. HORSES OF THE ELEVENTH CAVALRY SWIMMING SHORE, A MILE A PROBLEM IN ARMY TRANSPORTATION. LOADING THE ANIMALS AT PORTLAND, OREGON, a nation hesitate to send along with its advance-guard an equal force of horses, or ask the question, ‘‘Can a horse stand on his legs forty days and land alive?”’ The losses which have been suffered were due, not to the length of the voyage, but to the means employed, in the past and at the beginning of the experiment, to the animals. lessen burden of It was a mistaken caution which the trip for the prompted the authorities to sling the ani- mals for the purpose of resting them. TO THE The invention looked practical on its face and every argument seemed to be in its favor. It employed a piece of canvas cut so as to fit under the stom- ach of the animal, its four cor- ners caught up with strings and tied so that when the horse should become tired from standing (his natural position) he could give way on his legs and sleep very much, it was thought, as a sailor might in a hammock. It was harmless- looking, but more deadly than a dozen ordinary typhoons, certainly more disastrous than an average storm, to the life of the stock aboard. Not only was the animal slung in this fashion, but immediately un- der his breast was placed a better known This as the re- board, breastplate. was
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A PROBLEM IN ARMY TRANSPORTATION. S89 garded as necessary to keep the animal from being thrown headlong out of the stall in rough weather, possibly from dash- ing his brains out in the hatchway below. Thus was every precaution adopted and means taken to make the journey for the as easy as possible. Nature and the rights of the animal were An ordinary study of horses on animal was curbed ignored. a stock-farm would convince any one that animals seldom lie down, and then not to sleep. The natural position of the horse is upright, and freedom in the movement of his body is all that he requires. He gets this freedom in an eight-by-three- feet stall, and can be as comfortable there as he can in a ten-acre field. Nothing is more cruel than — sling- ing the horse and attempt- ing to hold him in sition means of a breastplate. Every time the ship rocks, the animal is thrown against the rear of the stall, and on the return m: i0:t t.6-H strikes his breast against the bar which was ordained for his comfort. In po- by A COMMON SIGHT ON THE consequence he tries to get his legs, but is prevented from doing so by the slings, which lift him from his feet at the slight- motion of the The animals become frightened panic-stricken. Some begin to kick violently, and many have, in their frantic efforts to escape from devices of man, turned somersaults killed in the lower deck. All rubbed and their est vessel. and the and been have their tails scraped to the bone. Be it said to the credit of the authori- ties, however, that no sooner did they begin to receive the reports on the slings, which they had adopted with hesitation, chests raw STREETS OF than they countenanced their disuse, and now leave the matter largely to the dis- cretion of the Quartermaster commanding the transport. As a result of experience, the loss is being daily lowered. The Quar- termaster’s Department has now brought the transportation of horses to such a degree of perfection that the average loss on a voyage does not amount to three per cent. Nearly all governments transporting ani- mals count on a loss of fifteen per cent, and commercial shippers even at a short dis- tance expect a loss much greater than is now being experienced by the government. A year ago, a Quartermaster who had lost only thirty animals out of five hundred was considered to be doing excellent work, and he would be warmly con- gratulated should he lose less than fifteen. To lose more than ten now puts the of- ficial mind out of hu- mor, while a loss of five hardly calls for a_ per- sonal com- pliment. The result is prodig- ious when figures There are now on the MANILA TO-DAY are taken into account. islands in: good condition some six thou- sand horses and upward of five thousand mules. As the first to try the experiment of crossing the Pacific without unloading the stock, I had experience that may be of some value. Out of four hundred and fifty- six horses only one was lost, that one dy- ing from a fractured .bone and not from disease. This record, unbroken up to the present time, was due largely to the fact that slings and breastplates were discarded, and that the same method of handling horses was adopted as would be used in private stables or in the transportation 7
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go of animals for commercial reasons and not for the government. The horses, in the first place, were strong and well chosen, having been purchased in Oregon and Washington by Captain Wainwright, one of the best judges of horseflesh in the United States Army. They were carefully selected, and for a month or for with the utmost skill by Jacobs, the Chief Quartermaster at Van- couver barracks, near Portland. The trans- port on which they were loaded had no superstructure and every animal was below deck. In order to get fresh air to them, electric and steam fans were put in the transport, and canvas windsails dropped through the hatchways. They were loaded by means of portable stalls, which is far more injurious than loading them by means of runways. Owing to the pecul- iar construction of the transport, runways were found to be impracticable, and each horse was led into the stall, hoisted in mid-air, and finally lowered, much to the relief of the frightened animal, into the hold of the ship. There were slings pro- vided, but none was used, and in place of the breastplates the horses were tied with ropes long enough to give them three feet leeway from the stall. For the first two days the animals were restless, but encoun- tering a heavy swell when fairly out to sea they became quieted and seemed to fix their attention upon the best means of riding with the movement of the vessel. After six hours of rough weather, the ani- mals worked together as if built of uni- form machinery. They moved: backward and forward with the regulatity of a pen- dulum, not one losing his ‘footing, nor any becoming frightened at the rocking of the ship. Portable troughs were provided for feeding purposes, but none of these was used, the oat8’and hay being’ laid on the floor about two feet in front of the animal. The condition of the animal largely de- pends upon careful attention, though there are certain well-defined regulations which if followed will ‘produce satisfactory re- sults in the transportation of horses. There should be a foreman and an assistant foreman to every hundred head of horses There should and there more cared Colonel or mules. be, usually is, one teamstér to every twenty animals during the day. ' These teamsters A PROBLEM IN ARMY 1RANSPORTATION. water, feed and groom the animals under sare, and each day clean out the stalls. The care of the animals at night presents greater difficulties. They require the strictest watching throughout the long hours from dark to sunrise. Accustomed to sleep standing, they soon get in the habit of sleeping while the ship is in motion or rolling. Some sleep so soundly that they lose their balance and fall. I have seen an animal fall on his knees without waking up, and sleep thus for an hour. Often, however, in falling they become tangled in the halter, and unless discovered and released at once they may strangle themselves and die from suffoca- tion. It is the exception when a horse falls, but it is the exceptional case which mars many a record in the transportation of animals. Often at night an animal in the midships or in the extreme fore or aft becomes overheated. When discovered, he is led out in the hatchway or put directly in front of an electric fan. Dur- ing the daytime animals suffering from ex- cessive heat are easily discernible, but con- stant guard duty is required at night. In order to meet the requirements of the night watch, four men are detailed for each hundred horses. They make the rounds every fifteen minutes. In addition to this, the veterinary makes an inspection at ten, twelve and three o’clock. The matter of feeding is arbitrary, and no two Quartermasters follow the same system. Very few, however, give the animals the full quota of hay and oats allowed, by army regulations. The gov- ernment allowance is fourteen pounds of hay and twelve pounds of oats per day for the horse, and fourteen pounds of hay and nine' pounds of oats for the mule. Experi- ence has-shown that this is far too much ‘for the horse or mule while at sea,'and that if he is fed in these proportions colic will'invariably be the result. I have found that the best results are obtainable from the ‘following system of feeding: Water at. six o’elock in the morning, and anh hour later four pounds of oats. Experi- ence has convinced me that it is better not to feed hay'in the daytime. The animals set nothin® more to eat during the morn- iné hours. They are watered again at four in the’ afternoon, and at five they are fed their
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A PROBLEM IN ARMY TRANSPORTATION. gI four pounds of oats. At six o'clock eight pounds of hay is laid on the floor before each animal, all of which is invariably eaten up before watering-time the next In addition to this, a handful every morning. of salt should be fed each animal other day. It is a good rule to feed a little salt every day to the animal for about a week before loading. This gets him in a good condition for the trip. The usual route taken by transports car- rying horses is what is known as the Southern Route. It runs across the Pa- cific twenty-one degrees north of the equa- tor, which is only two degrees south of the Tropic of Cancer. So the entire route from Portland, Oregon, to Manila, a distance of seven thou- sand three hundred and six miles to all in- tents, lies in the tropics. This is the track laid down by the govern- ment. It was chosen for several reasons, one being that in case of accident or breakdown to one transport, it would in all likelihood be sighted by the next trans- port crossing. Then, too, coming west over this route the transports meet the northwest trade-winds, which follow them to the China This route, while smoother than the Northern, or, as it is called, the ‘‘Great Circle Route,’’ is also hotter and longer, but the Quartermaster’s Department has found from experience that less loss of life occurs over this track than over the one farther north, which sweeps into the China Sea from the coast of Japan. ONLY MODE OF Sea. TRANSPORTATION IN After the first four days at sea, the horses on the transport began to improve so rapidly that by the time they reached Hilo, where I was supposed to unload them, I had determined to push on, thus trying the Pacific without stopping. Even were taking on water in this beautiful little city on the island of Hawaii, the animals re- in their stalls—becoming a little during the last day. experiment of crossing the while we mained restless, however, But as soon as the ship started on its course again and began to roll a few de- grees, the animals brightened up, improved in appetite, and showed in still other ways that they suffered less at sea when when than lying at an- chor. The animals were on board just forty- three days, and, asstated above, when they left the transport weighed seventy-five to a hundred and fifty pounds each more. than when _ they were loaded in Portland. The stock, upon the ar- rival of the THE PHILIPPINES A YEAR AGO. transport in Manila Bay, is unloaded into small steamers and conveyed to the corral. The latter is well chosen, facing the sea on one side and extending upon the Pasig River for about a mile on another. The loading and unloading of trans- ports is directly under the charge of Capt. J. C. Byron, Master of Water Trans- portation, while the corral is under the As each and command of Lieutenant Kossman. animal transport arrives, the horses mules are unloaded and without bridle are turned loose in the corral. They are allowed to roll and run at will for a week
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92 or two, when they are put in the hands of the blacksmiths. After being shod, they are groomed and carefully fed and watered for a fortnight or more. As soon as a horse transport is unloaded, it is at once reloaded with which have been rested and groomed in the corral, and sent to the various ports in the archipelago. The greatest difficulty in distributing animals throughout the islands arises from the fact that very few of the ports are surveyed, and none, with the exception of Iloilo, Cebu, and possibly a few other large towns, has any wharfage or lighterage at all. The southern Camarines, especially, present difficulties which are overcome only with patience and hard The districts of the Camarines all the southern part of the horses work. comprise island of Luzon, and are connected with the northern districts only by a narrow neck of land some eight or ten miles wide. As yet, no trail or road of any kind has been discovered by which cavalry or infantry can go from one district to the other on land. The problem of reducing the Camarines still confronts the authorities at Manila. It was my good fortune to accompany the first cavalry expedition into this sec- tion. The Eleventh Cavalry was chosen for the work, and it was sent under the command of Colonel Lockett. It was the first mounted force sent into the south. The troops were landed at various points, going overland into the interior. The hardship attending the disembarking of such an expedition will be readily imagined when it is known that all the animals in the squadron were unloaded in the water, and the greater majority of them had to swim over a mile to reach the shore. The horses and mules could easily have swum twice that distance, but the hardship fell to the troopers of the Eleventh, who had to tow each animal ashore by means of life- boats belonging to the transport. Six soldiers were detailed to a boat, and each boat could tow two animals. As the horse was lowered into the water, there was a man to pull the bolt and another to open the door of the portable stall. Two hatch- ways were worked at a time, and after taking the first animal the boat was rowed to a second hatchway, where another ani- mal waited. to take the plunge. At the A PROBLEM IN ARMY TRANSPORTATION. port of Pasacao, the nearest seaport to General Bell’s headquarters, over six hun- dred horses and mules were unloaded, be- sides the supplies and property necessary for the expedition. The transport lay a mile from shore, and the entire expedition was transferred to the land in life-boats oared by the soldiers. The men were allowed to row only for an hour, when they would be relieved and other details placed in the boats. At Legaspi, and other ports where cavalry was unloaded, much of the work had to be done through the surf. The Eleventh Cavalry was di- vided: two squadrons, under the command of Colonel Lockett, being placed at Nueva Caceres, an interior city and the largest in the Camarines; the remainder, under Lieu- tenant-Colonel Starr, former inspector on the staff of General Lawton, having its base of supplies at Lagao. This cavalry is now sweeping through the Camarines just as it did through the northern district, and wherever the Eleventh Horse appears, peace follows. As a rule, there is little destruction of property accompanying a cavalry expedi- tion. The squadrons are used to chase the rebels, and often prevent the latter from burning the towns as they leave. The mounted force comes suddenly to a city before the insurgent forces are ap prised of its approach, and little time is given the latter either to drive out of the city the noncombatants or to set fire to the nepa homes. The policy established by General Otis, to protect but not to destroy, is faithfully carried out in the Camarines, and wherever the natives are given the chance to witness the practical side of protection, permanent peace is invariably the result. All the natives ask is that when their homes are once protected, some sort of guarantee will be given that they will continue to be. They fear the wrath of the insurgents, and the robber bands which infest the mountains, far more than they do the American forces. Once they feel assured of permanent occupation and protection, the problem is to a large extent solved. Nothing has done more to insure this protection than the American horse, which to a great extent eliminates distances and brings the outlying towns inta close proximity to the military posts.
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THE LAST OF THE SMUGGLERS. By S. R. CROCKETT HAD been so long away from my own country that when I looked out once more upon the the little way- side station of Dornal, on the Port Mur- doch line, the width and space about me, the loneliness of the hills, and the erying of the moor-fowl, affected me tears. It was not long, however, before I had other things to think about. I had long been an orphan, and, indeed (to tell the truth), had not felt much the worse for it. My father and mother died when I was a boy at school, and the uncle who brought me up and put me into his England must have taken native heather at almost to own business in some permanent distaste to country of Galloway. At any rate, nor, for that matter, encouraged me to do so. Nevertheless, he gave me an_ excellent and trained me well to his own profession of architect and building contractor, with the idea that I should succeed him in Highgate when he should wish to retire to the pretty house he had built for himself on the shores of one of the most beautiful of Eng- lish lakes. But, quite suddenly one morning, when I was twenty-four, my uncle was found dead in his bed, and I, Hal Grierson, came into immediate possession of a good busi- his he never revisited it, education, ness and a very considerable sum in money. Among other things in my uncle’s safe, I found a large number of letters, receipts for money, and private memoranda. From these I learned for the first time that I had a relative living of whom I had never so much as heard. My deceased uncle, Walter Arrol, was, of course, my mother’s brother, and a man singularly reticent in all things Still, it struck me as strange and in a way humorous that not pertaining to business. as a young man of twenty-four I should first to the knowledge that I had a Yet, after many come grandfather stiii Hving. perusals and reperusals of the letters and memoranda, I could come to no other con- clusion. It was now the middle of December, and so lately as the month before, there was a letter dated from the ‘‘Cothouse of Curly- wee.’’ It ran as follows: Herewith I inclose bank- We have had Please ‘**DEAR Son: bill for twenty-five pounds. a good back-end and are well. acknowledge receipt. ‘* Your affectionate father, ‘‘Joun ARROL.”’ I laughed aloud when I came the letter. It that rather late to add a live grandfather to my connections. Then the Had I an unknown grand- several unacknowledged upon seemed to me it Was family Oe" puzzled me. mother uncles? At too—or any rate, my curiosity was highly excited. But so far as correspondence went, I found My uncle had never en- couraged sentiment, and though there were many similar notes, dating at half-yearly intervals for nearly fifteen years back, his ‘‘affectionate father’’ never got beyond the simple and perspicuous statement that it ‘*good’’ or a ‘‘bad’’ year, that that the no clue. had been a the ‘*there yowes.’’ I discovered, however, that fifteen years before, Walter Arrol had bought a little moorland property in Gallo- way which had then come into the market. He paid what, with my knowledge of Eng- lish prices, seemed to me a ridiculously doing fine’? or daiths ‘lambs were were many among inadequate price, for the five or six thou- sand acres it was stated to comprise. The title-deeds there, all in order, and the receipt for taxation; stamps were due and lawyers’ charges. There was-also the memorandum of a loan of a. thousand pounds to ‘‘John Arrol, my father, . to stock the farm of Curlywee with black- faced sheep,’’ together with notes of - pay- ment of interest at four per cent for the first five years. After that I could trace no further receipts on that account. It was just the day before Christmas that I set out from a Midland town where I had had some business, resolved to ‘find out all that I did not know about my Gal-
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94 loway relatives. I might easily have writ- ten, indeed, either to ‘‘John Arrol’’ him- self, who from his style of correspondence would have been the very man to give me exact (and concise) information, or to the firm of lawyers in Cairn Edward whose name was upon the deeds and parchments. But, though it would have ruined me from a business point of view had it been known in Highgate, I have always had a romantic strain in my blood, and the little adventure pleased me. I would take a little climb, so I told myself, into the branches of my family tree. I would go in person to the Cothouse of Curlywee, and make the acquaintance of my grandfather. I wondered if ‘‘John Arrol’’ would turn out to be as ignorant of my existence as I had been of his. At any rate, he was clearly not a person to waste words or squander his sentiment broadcast. Had I been content to my title to my uncle’s property, he would doubtless have continued to sign himself ‘‘John Arrol,’’ to inclose his half-yearly rent, and to re- quire a receipt therefor, to the end of the chapter, without making the least effort to cultivate my acquaintance. So this was the errand upon which I found myself standing in the little wayside station of Dornal. It was a grim and gray- ish winter afternoon, and I had occupied myself in speculating, as the train slowly struggled up the incline, how long this rough, bouldery desolation was to con- tinue, and at what point it would issue forth upon the level strath and kindly hamlets of men, where I had pictured to myself my venerable relative residing in patriarchal dignity. ‘*Can you show me the way to the vil- lage of Curlywee?’’ I said to the station- master, who came suddenly out of his office to take my ticket. In fact, he made a dash at me almost like a terrier at a rat. ‘*The what?’’ he said, sharply, dropping his official manner in his surprise. ‘‘The village of Curlywee?”’ The station-master laughed a short, quick laugh; almost as one would expect the aforesaid terrier to do in mirthful mood. He turned about on the pivot of one heel. prove ‘*Rob,’’ he cried, sharply, ‘‘come ye here !”’ “‘T canna come! I’m at the lamps— THE LAST OF THE SMUGGLERS. foul fa’ them—the oil they hae sent us this time will no burn ony mair than as muckle spring-water !’’ ‘*Come here, I tell ye, report ye!’’ ‘*Report awa’—an’ be thing that I did not catch. The station-master did not further at- tempt to bring his official dignity to bear upon his recalcitrant subordinate. He tried another tack. ‘‘There’s a man out here wants to ken the road to the village of Curlywee!’’ And as he spoke, the little wiry station- master glanced quizzically up at me, as much as to say, ‘‘That will fetch him!’’ I failed to see the humor—then. Immediately I heard a bouncing sound. Heavy feet trampled in the unseen lamp- room, a stool was knocked over, and a great, broad, jovial-faced man came out, still rubbing a lamp globe with a most unclean piece of waste. ‘“‘The village of Curlywee?’’ he in- quired, smiling broadly at me, as it were from head to foot. ‘‘Did I understand ye Rob—or I'll !? Some- to say the village 0’ Curlywee?’’ I nodded I was growing vexed, ‘‘T never heard tell o’t,’’ he continued, slowly, still smiling and shaking his head. ‘‘Is there not a conveyance—an omni- bus, or a trap of any kind—which I can hire to take me there?’’ I was getting more than a little angry by this time. It seemed past belief that I should have come so far to be laughed at by a couple of boors in the middle of a Galloway morass. ‘‘Ow, aye, there’s a conveyance,’’ said the porter, ‘‘a pair o’ them!’’ ‘““Then,’’ said I, tartly, ‘“‘be enough to put my bag in one of them, and let me get off!”’ The big man continued to rub and grin. The station-master watched me as a ter- rier watches a rat-hole, with his gray birse of a head at the side. Then with the piece of dirty waste in his hand ‘‘Rob’’ pointed to my knicker- bockered legs and brown leather shoes. ‘‘Thae’s the only conveyance ye’ll get to Curlywee if ye wait a month at the Dornal!”’ “What,” brusquely. good I cried, ‘‘is there no road?
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THE LAST OF THE SMUGGLERS. 95 There surely must be some kind of a high- way.”’ Again the waste rag pointed. It was waved like a banner across the bleak moorish wilderness upon which the twi- light was settling gray. **Road ?’’ he cried, gleefully, ‘‘high- way? Aye, there’s the hillside—just the plain hillside !’’ He waved me an introduction to it, like a master of ceremonies. ‘*Enough of this!’’ I said, tartly. have come from London——”’ ‘So I see by your ticket. It’s a fine big place—London!"’ interjected the sta- tion-master, with the air of one about to begin an interesting conversation. ‘*‘To see a gentleman in the neighbor- hood, of the name of Arrol, who lives at Curlywee. I would be obliged to you if you would point out to me the best and quickest way of reaching his house !”’ The men looked at each other. There was nothing like a broad grin on the big man’s face now. The _ station-master, also, had lost his alert and amused air, and had become suddenly thoughtful. As neither of the two spoke, I added, still more sharply, ‘‘Do you know the gentleman?’’ ‘*Ow, aye,’’ man !"’ ‘*Well, be good enough to put me on the road to his house!”’ Rob of the lamp and rag turned slowly, as one of my own cranes turns with a heavy load of stone. His arm pointed out over the thin bars of shining steel of the railroad track. ‘*Yonder!”’ oy said Rob; ‘‘we ken the ‘*Keep_ straucht up the gully till ye come to yon nick in he said. the hill. Then turn to the left for three or four mile through the Dead Man’s Hol- low. Syne ye will come to a water; and if ye can get across, haud up the face of the gairy, and gin ye dinna break your neck by faain’ until the Dungeon 0’ Buchan or droon yoursel’ in the Cooran Lane, ye will see the Cothouse o’ Curly- wee richt afore your nose!”’ It was not an appetizing description, but anything was better than staying there to be laughed at, so I thanked the man, asking him to put my bag in the left luggage office, and proffered him a shilling. The fingers. ‘*To gage,’’ I said; self !’’ Slowly he shook his head. ‘‘There’s no sic a thing nearer than Cairn Edward as a left luggage oftice,’’ he said, ‘‘but I'll put the bit bag in the lamp-room. It'll be there if ever ye want it again!’’ ‘*What do you mean?’’ I cried, ously. ‘‘Do you know that I am ‘‘T mean,’’ said Rob, deliberately, ‘‘that ye are like to hae a saft walk and to need a’ your daylicht before ye get to Curlywee this nicht. A guid pair o’ legs to ye! Ye will need them !’’ Upon the details of that weary and ter- rible journey I need not linger. Though when at first I threw my leg over the wire fencing of the railway and stepped out on the moor, the instinct of the heather seemed to come back to me, I lost my way at least half a dozen times. Indeed, if the moon had not been shining about half-full behind the gray veil of cloud, I must have wandered all night without remedy, and most likely frozen to death. My London- made single-soled shoes were soon com- pletely sodden, and presently the uppers began to part company with the welt. I was wet to the waist, or above it, by fall- ing into deep moss-holes, where the black, peaty water oozed through the softest of verdurous green. I was bruised by constant stumbles over unseen boulders, and scratched as to my hands by slipping on icy rocks. A thou- sand times I cursed myself for leaving my comfortable rooms, which looked over to Hampstead Heath. I might have been reading a volume of ‘‘Rob Roy,’’ with my feet one on each side of the mantelpiece. And—at that very moment my foot plunged through the heather into a deep crevasse between boulders, and I wrenched my ankle sidewise with a stound of pain keen as a knife. By this time I had been six or seven hours on the moor. I had, to the best of my ability, endeavored to steer the course set for me by the big-boned genius of the lamp-room. I possessed a little compass at my watch-chain, and my profession had made me accustomed enough to using big man looked at the coin in my ‘*What’s this for?’’ he said. pay the ticket for the left lug- ‘‘and the rest for your- furi- 9 two
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96 it. But in the gray, uncertain light the glens seemed to turn all the wrong way, and what the ‘‘face of the gairy’’ might be I had not the least idea. I only knew that at the moment when I sprained my ankle I had been descending a hillside as lonely as an African desert and apparently as remote from anywhere as the North Pole. I managed, however, by an effort to get my leg out of the trap into which I had fallen, and sat down upon a rock, half dazed with the shock. I remember that I moaned a little with the pain and started at the sound, not realizing that I had been making it myself. When I came round a little, I was look- ing down into a kind of misty valley. The ground appeared to fall away on every side, and I could see shadowy and ghostlike forms of boulders all about me, some standing erect like Breton menhirs, point- ing stony fingers into the gray winter sky; some with noses sharpened took the exact shape of polar bears scenting a prey, as you may see them in the plates of my favorite Arctic explorer. Gradually it dawned upon me there was some sort of a light beneath me in the valley. It seemed most like a red, pulsing glow, as if a nearly extinct smithy fire were being blown up with bellows. A sense of eeriness came I had been educated by my uncle in a severe To be a contract- over me. school of practicality. ing builder in the better-class suburbs of London is destructive of romance. But I have the Pictish blood in me for all that. Aboriginal terrors prickle in my blood as I pass a graveyard at midnight, and never when I can help it do I go under one of my own ladders. But now for the first time in my life I felt a kind of stiffening of the hair of my scalp. 3ut this did not last long. My foot and ankle recalled me to myself. I could not, I thought, be worse off than I was —wet, miserable, hurt. If that light beneath me betokened a human habitation in the wild, I was saved. If not—vwell, I was no worse than I had been before. So, with a certain amount of confidence, I made shift to limp downward toward the strange, pulsing, undulating glow. But though the sweat ran from me like rain, I THE LAST OF THE SMUGGLERS. could go only a few yards at a time. Nevertheless, the ruddy eye grew ever plainer as I descended, winking slowly and irregularly, waxing and waning like a fire permitted to go low and then again re- plenished. At last I was near enough to see that the light proceeded from beneath a great face of rock which sprang upward into the sky, so high that it faded ghostlike into the milky glow of the mist-choked moonlight. Just then my injured foot jarred painfully upon a stone which gave beneath its thrust. The loose boulder thundered away down the declivity, and with a cry I sank upon my hands and knees. When I came to myself, I could not speak. Something had been thrust into my mouth, something that gagged and almost choked My hands also were tied behind The red, pulsing glow had vanished, me and the faintly lit gray sky I could see a tall dark figure which moved purposefully about. Presently I found myself dragged to my feet and thrust rudely forward. I tried to make my captor understand that I could not walk; but as I could not speak, I could do this only by lying down and utterly refusing to proceed. Then my captor drew a lantern from behind a heather bush and flashed it upon my face. As he did so, I held up my foot and endeavored by sign to show where and how it was hurt. But I was utterly un- prepared for what my captor did next. He took me by the arms and laid me over his shoulders, pulling the plaid which he wore about my body as a kind of supporting belt. Then with slow, steady strides he began to descend the hill. I suffered agonies lest we should both fall, and my ankle pained me till I nearly wept with sheer agony. At last, with a fling of his foot, captor threw aside a door, stepped down a short ladder, and I found myself stretched upon some straw. Then a candle was lit, and the flame, sinking to nothing and rising again, presently illuminated a little barn half filled with sheaves and fodder. Upon a heap of the latter I was lying, with my head away from the door. ‘*So,’’ said he who had brought me, ‘‘I 9 hae catched ye, sirrah! me. me. but between my
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THE LAST OF THE SMUGGLERS. I saw my man now—a tall old patriarch with abundant grizzled hair, his face clean- shaven and having a fringe of gray beard beneath the chin. His expression was stern, even fierce, and the bushy eyebrows that were still raven-black, looked out undimmed by years and un- softened by pity. It was a medieval, almost a savage countenance; even so, I thought, might Rob Roy himself have looked in his wilder moments. I had to recur to my wounded foot to convince myself that I had. Jeft a nineteenth-century railway- station.less than ten hours before. Was it possible that this was the reason why my uncle did not visit his Galloway tenants? And did this one wish to square a deficiency in his rent by making an end of his landlord? 3ut the old man did not offer to touch me again, not even to release me from my bonds. He simply threw a few empty corn-sacks over me, removed my picked up the lantern and weut out with these words, ‘‘Bide ye there, my man, till I am ready for you!”’ But whether he went to dig my grave or take his supper I could not make out; though the speculation was not without some elements of interest. At any rate, he locked the door behind him, and I left alone in: the black, blank darkness of the barn. It was poor enough cheer, and I began to shiver with the cold of the moss-hags in my bones. Whether that exercise helped to the bonds about my wrists I know not—perhaps they were hastily tied. At any rate, it was not long before I had my hands Then I could take the knotted handkerchief with its short cross-knuckle of bog-oak out of But I could do no more to make myself easy. My foot and ankle were already terribly painful, and the litter, as I could feel with my hand, had swollen almost to double its usual size. After that I cannot tell very well what may seem eyes, under gag, was loosen loose. my mouth. happened for some time. It impossible, but I think that I slept—at least, certain it is that the night passed somehow, between dozing and shivering. Hot flushes passed over me, with wafts of that terrible feeling of ‘‘falling away’’ which precedes fever. 97 When I awoke in the morning, it seemed that I saw a young girl sitting opposite to the edge of an overturned bushel She had her chin in the hollow of her palm. Yet my head was so whirled about with the that I could not came close to me with a pitying look in her Then I tried to think of something me on measure, was on me trouble which be sure, till she rose and eves. to say to her which might explain who I was, and how I came thither. For I be- be sure there had been some mis- take. However, I could think of nothing but what day it was. SoTI said to her as she approached, in the most commonplace way possible, ‘*I wish you a merry Christ- gan to mas. *’ Yet all the time I knew very well that I was making a consummate fool of myself. The girl seemed checked at my She stopped, and then, touched perhaps by the ridiculous anomaly of my appear- words. ance and my commonplace greeting, she burst into a ringing peal of laughter. I think I laughed too, a little, but I am not sure. When next I came to myself, I was being supported upon clouds, or down, or at least by something equally pleasant and soft, whereat I opened my eyes, and there was the girl, bending over me and trying to get some hot liquid down my throat out of a lone, thin-stemmed glass. As soon as she saw that I was conscious, she said, ‘‘Are you the excise officer from Port Mary who has been watching my great-uncle?”’ ‘*No,’”’ said I, Grierson; I come name is Henry Where ‘*my from London. am [?”’ But horror. ‘*Not the Why, never Hal Grierson—my cousin?"’ she sat up with a face of great exciseman? you are ‘*That is my name,’’ I said, steadied by the situation. ‘‘I came to look for a grand- father I never knew I possessed till a week His name is John Arrol, and ’ or two ago! he lives at the Cothouse of Curlywee!’ The girl smiled a little. ‘*This is the Cothouse of Curlywee, and my great-uncle mistook you for a gager is a mercy he did not I will bring him. an exciseman. It kill you! But He will be sorry !’’ By this time I had forgotten the pain wait !
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98 in my head, and I was none so eager for the presence of my terrible relative. ‘*Please wait a moment. I want to ask your name,’’ I said, looking up at her. ‘*My name is Elsa Arrol,’’ she answered frankly, and in a cultivated manner. ‘‘My father used to live here during the last years of his life, and when he died I had to leave school in Edinburgh and come to Curlywee to keep house for my great- uncle !”’ ‘*Then you are my cousin?’’ I said, with some eagerness. ‘*Yes, a cousin cousin !”’ And even then I was glad, somehow, of so much kinship. ‘*Will you shake hands with your new cousin before you go?’’ I said. ‘‘T will do better,’’ she answered, flut- tering down from the edge of the corn-mow where she had seated herself. ‘‘This is Christmas Day, and the cobwebs on the roof will serve for mistletoe !’’ And soft as a snowflake I was aware of a waft of perfumed air; and something, that might have been a butterfly and might have been a pair of lips, alighted to my forehead for a moment. ‘‘There! You will think I am a bold madam, but you are ill, and deserve a better greeting than a handshake after what you have gone through.’’ Again I was left alone; but not for long. I saw the fierce old man again in the door- way, his brow still gloomy, though it was no longer angry. ‘‘This lass tells me you are not the Port Mary gager,’’ he said, with a hard accent; ‘‘that you come from London. Is this true?’’ ‘*It is,’’ said I, briefly. For I thought of the knuckle of bog-oak between my jaws. ‘‘Then what might you be doing on my hill at midnicht of a winter’s nicht?’ ‘*Well,’’ I returned, with some point, ‘‘it is in a way my hill also. At least, if it be a part of the property of Curlywee, left me by my uncle, the late Walter Arrol, of Highgate.’’ ‘*What!’’ he cried, a little hoarsely, ‘ve are never my Annie’s boy—wee Harry Grierson ?’’ ‘‘The same!”’ of a sort, not a first I said, still curtly, for I THE LAST OF THE SMUGGLERS. wanted to see how he would extricate him- self. He stood frowning awhile, and strip- ping the piles from a head of corn. ‘*Ye will not misunderstand me if I confess that I am grieved for what has hap- pened,’’ he said, with a certain stern and manifest dignity of bearing which became him. ‘‘I am sorry, not because ye are now my landlord and I your tenant and debtor, but because I have made a mistak’ and showed but poor hospitality to the wayfaring man!’’ **Say no more about it,’’ I answered, ‘‘but give me a bed to lie down on and a pillow for my head, for I am very ill.’’ The old man lifted me in his arms like a child and carried me into his own room, where he laid me down. Then with a skill, patience and tenderness I could not have believed possible, he undressed me and laid me on his own bed. When this was done, he called Elsa, and she brought hot water to bathe my swollen ankle, now in girth well-nigh as thick as my thigh. He said not a word more about his rough treatment of me, nor did he mention his son, my late uncle, nor yet the quarrel which had separated them in life. All that strange Christmas Day I was light-headed, and these two gave me brews of a certain herb-tea, famed in Galloway as a febrifuge. I dozed off, waking to find my cousin Elsa still unweariedly pouring hot water over my foot, or coming in with a new poultice of marshmallow leaves in her hands. I suppose I must have talked a great deal of nonsense. Indeed, Elsa told me afterward that I made a great many very personal remarks upon her eyes and hair, which made her blush for shame before her great-uncle. I found myself somewhat better, how- ever, the next morning, and was able to join in the exercise of family worship, which my grandfather conducted at great length, reading two or three chapters of names and genealogies out of the histor- ical books of the Old Testament, in a loud, harsh voice, as if he had a spite against them. Then, reverently laying the great Bible aside, he stood up to pray. I noticed that as he did so he smoothed his gray badger’s brush of hair down on top as if it were a part of the ceremony. When he had finished praying, my grand-
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father stood awhile, and then sat down beside me. ‘*Elsa,’’ he said, ‘‘will you betake yourself to the kitchen for a space? I have something to say to this young man that is only for a man and a kinsman to hear.”’ My cousin obediently vanished. I never heard so light a footfall. ‘*Now, sir,’’ said the old man, ‘‘you have been brought up in another school, and may misunderstand. But I must e’en tak’ the risk of that. Did your uncle give you any religious training?’’ ‘*He never mentioned the subject to me, sir,’’ I said. For my uncle, though a good man, had been neither church-goer nor church-lover. ‘*Are you a true Presbyterian then? Or are ye one of the worshipers of the Scarlet Woman that sitteth upon the Seven Hills?’’ ‘*T have not really thought much about it,’’ I replied. ‘‘I am a Christian—I believe I may say that—though indeed I have no claims to be thought better than my neighbors—indeed, the contrary !”’ ‘*Then,’’ said the old man, frowning, ‘‘T fear ye are no better than a heathen man and a publican.”’ ‘*But,’’? I cried, ‘‘was there not One born this Christmas Day who was partial to the company of publicans and sin- ners?”’ I thought I had him there, but he evaded me. ‘‘That is in the New Testament!’’ he retorted, somewhat disparagingly. ‘‘You will not understand, but listen. Iam an old Cameronian, as my fathers were before me. No one of us has ever owned an un- covenanted King. Arrols not a few have gone to prison and to judgment because we wouldn’t bow the knee to tyranny in the land and prelacy in the kirk. I had never paid a King’s cess or tax till the law dis- trained upon my goods. And I have con- tinued to bake my bread and brew my drink as my fathers did before me. And who shall say me nay? Not any gager that ever tapped a barrel!’’ I certainly had no intention of doing so, but all the same it seemed a curious thing to have smuggling and illicit distil- ling thus put, as it were, upon a religious basis. The old man continued: THE LAST OF THE SMUGGLERS. 99 ‘‘Therefore it was that I mistook ye for the spy of the Queen’s Excise. I had watched the puir craitur nosing about the hilltops for a day or two. I fear I used you somewhat roughly in my haste. For that I ask your pardon.*’ I hastened to assure him that I never bore a grudge. He thrust out his hand at the word. ‘*No more do I,’’ he said; quickly add- ing, however, ‘‘that after it satisfied !”’ It was thus that I spent my Christmas Day in the Cothouse of Curlywee. It was three weeks more before I could leave my chair, and a month before I was able to return south to business. So that it was well my uncle had left competent men in charge. During this time, at all unnatu- rally, I saw a good deal of my cousin. I thought her every day more charming, as she certainly grew more beautiful. As for my grandfather, he used to lie out upon the brae-faces with a long spy-glass, look- ing for the ‘*exciseman from Port Mary.”’ But that gentleman showed the excellence of his judgment by obstinately staying away. When at last I set out over the moor toward the station, I rode upon a strong sheltie. Elsa came with me part of the way, to ‘‘convoy me off the ground,’’ as she said. At our parting-place I asked her a cer- tain question, which at first she refused to answer directly. Afterward she _ stated that she had conscientious scruples about the marriage of cousins and other near relatives. However, I am not without the strongest reasons for hoping that these ob- jections are not insuperable, and that they will be overcome by next year. Already I have observed tokens of waver- is, no is not ing. But in any case, we will not tell my grandfather till the last moment, for where he will get a housekeeper to dwell alone in the Cothouse of Curlywee is more than either of us can tell. Mean- while, I am grateful for all that my search for a grandfather has brought me, and still more for what it promises to bring.
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COURT OF AN ENGLISH COACHING INN. — wv nd THE LITTLE INNS OF FRANCE AND ENGLAND. By ERNEST C. PEIXOTTO Illustrated by the author, | HE coming of the cycle and the auto- vincial towns of France, I know of many mobile has of late worked a great such wayside hotels whose very existence change in the country inn, and the demand beckons an invitation as the spring ap- for good ones has largely increased. Hos- proaches. Though the unpretending ex- telries which, prosperous in the days of terior may not be inviting, do not hesitate \\ the stage-coaches, had been left isolated to cross the threshold and enter the court, YX by the railroads, after years of decay where the plants and flowers always have again blossomed into a second life. bloom, where small round tables and com- \ SSIn America the country hotel leaves fortable chairs are the usual accessories, everything to be desired. A year ago it inviting you to be seated and to rest. If was my duty to travel through you are known to him, Monsieur advances our Eastern States, frequenting smilingly to greet you and Madame out-of-the-way places, all suffi- behind him echoes his ‘‘Comme je suis ciently old to antedate the contente de vous voir!’’ Monsieur’s big railroad. I remember but few hand is stretched forth in welcome and his oases in the desert of fat, good-humored rotundity gives assur- hotels—one in the Mo- ance of the good cheer within. Célestine hawk Valley, one on the now isn't that name enough to give de- Brandywine, one in Vir- light?—Célestine, the dark-eyed bonne, ginia. her soft black ringlets clustering round F O X | This year I have wan- her merry face, will take your bags and AWD dered in France and Eng- show you to Number 19 or 6, or 10 HOUNDS | !and, and the pleasure of perhaps; very few rooms will be occupied, J travel has been doubled and it will be a choice between a corner by satisfactory hotel accommodations. chamber or one with a balcony on the Who shall deny the comfort of a good square. Give me the balcony on the inn? Is it not more than half the pleasure square, with its views of the old town of traveling, after a weary day of sight- climbing up the hillside and the big seeing, to rest and dine at a cheerful chateau above! board? Scattered through the small pro- Soon the bell. hung in a gable in the ,
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THE LITTLE INNS OF FRANCE AND ENGLAND. court, is ringing its gladsome note and we know that dinner is ready. As we the kitchen, with its brave array of copper pots, Monsieur, in dazzling white, wishes us ‘‘Bon appétit.’’ The dining-room is low, and dark in tone, a few old prints upon its walls, an Empire clock and the inevitable can- delabra on the mantel-shelf. The windows are open, and the mull curtains gently move in the soft stir of the summer even- ing. Around the long center-table are gathered six pass or eight men —several unmarried WORE ALAS SMM MAI: AQ AK Set ee a bourgeois of the town, the sous-chef at aie the post-office, the police com- missioner, and a retired army captain, this a real bon viveur, red-cheeked and blus- tery, buttonhole decorated with the red his ribbon of the Le- gion of Honor. The table groans with good things. A great bouquet of variegated flowers and ribbon-grasses decorates the center. On either side are dishes of strawberries, piled high in pyramids, the apex of each formed by a berry of really size. In geo- stretch luscious mammoth regularity bowls of black cherries, of evenly stacked bis- metric SMA AAS WY} = <—i. [Wor E NS
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cuits known to us as lady-fingers—of fresh cream-cheeses made of goats’ milk, while the Roquefort reposes under a shining glass cover. At each place is a quart bottle of red or white wine, the delicious light wine of the country. Louis the garcon bids us be seated at a side-table. We unfold our napkins deliberately. There seems no need to hasten. We are quite con- tent to spend an hour at table. The dinner is good; after the soup, a fish, then perhaps a civet de liévre, artichoke hearts, asparagus; then Louis whispers, ‘*‘Caneton aux petits pois’’—ah, we live well in France! Louis is stout, has long Dundreary whiskers, and his salt-and-pepper hair is parted down to the nape of his neck. Louis will probably wear a flower in his buttonhole. Though past fifty, he has a sweetheart, who comes to the fountain before the hotel— whence the daily flower. They have a chat as_ she draws her pails of water. It may mean a rendezvous by the river, where the village band plays at night. I have spied his whiskers and her white cap as they pass under the flickering oil-lamps that dimly light the way. All breathes content in this inn! Célestine, the black- eyed maid, has been here since her childhood. Al- though the blacksmith has proposed for her hand—and he is no mean man in the village—and other brave country lads have been won by her merry smiles, still she is ‘‘sage.’’ But I saw quickly how the wind blew. Pierre, the boy who carries the trunks and fills the lamps ’ and blacks the boots, Pierre, who is called upon to do ten THE LITTLE INNS OF FRANCE AND ENGLAND. things at once, has won this bright-eyed maiden. There is no task for Célestine that Pierre does not lighten, save per- haps mending the linen, and even then he passes through the court every five minutes just to brush against her gown and the parrot climbing on his perch in the corner screams, ‘‘Célestine—Célestine —Pier-r-re!’’ Not so gay is the English inn. To us the very word ‘‘inn’’ seems to promise good cheer and comfort. Comfort in England, however, usually means clean- liness and a good bed; of cheer there is none. The evenings pass wearily. The bar is a cold-blooded place, filled with tobacco smoke and _ political arguments. The proverbial barmaid has cheeks that are too red and hair that is really too blond. The coffee-room is the only other refuge, and it is occupied by a stately matron with her novel, or two young ladies talking in undertones in the corner. One is really afraid to smile. The center- ork, every Monday, oe o ea AN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY COACH NOTICE.
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*“THE KITCHEN WITH v } ITS RRAVE ARRAY = P~ ee OF COPPER.”’ ‘eT. a sree ‘290, table is adorned with a Bible, the ‘‘Sports- man’s Magazine’’ and Burke’s Peerage. ' §till, these! conservative inns are’ cer- ‘tainly ‘quaint! and ‘interesting.’ “They are in ‘many cases‘ extremely anéient: '« Many ‘still retain ‘their old signboards—replete : with memories of bygone ‘days :' The ‘Falcon, the Stirrup-Cup, the Bird-in' Hand, ‘the Woolsack, the' Boar’s Head, or; as we approach ‘the sea, the Eight Bells, the Mermaid, the Anchor. Under each sign: is ° the legend: ‘‘ Licensed to sell’ by retail Beer, Spirits, and Wines, to be drunk on ~ 9 the premises, and Dealers in Tobacco: A reproduction is here given of the an- nouncement of the four-day coach which ran between London and York. In the Jatter place we stopped at the old Black ote THE LITTLE INNS OF FRANCE AND ENGLAND. Swan in Coney Street, proudly bearing its facade the inscription, ‘‘Under the pat- ronage of H. R. H. The Prince of Wales.”’ It is a fine specimen of an old English ‘provincial’ hotel; ‘stiff and rigid, but really tod large to come into the class of which I am speaking. Huntingdon is one of the on stops alluded to inthe document, and‘still ¢ ‘““THESE CONSERVATIVE INNS ARE CER- TAINLY QUAINT AND INTERESTING.”
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104 Inn at which the coach put up for the night and relayed retains the old George its horses. The entrance is a low carriage- arch giving access to a paved court, large and and with a still larger one in which are the stables and roomy, connected ‘‘loose boxes’’—stalls for the putting up of travelers’ Around the court are the various public rooms, the kitchen and laundry. Accommodations at are arranged in three classes (everything in horses. main these inns England is in classes): sitting-room, coffee- room and If the wayfarer be a mere traveling salesman, he pays for his commercial-room service ; if ladies are of the party, we dine in the coffee-room, a shade more comfortable in commercial-room service. its appointments, and the three courses at dinner are reinforced by a piece of fish. If one is of the gentry and to mingle with the common horde, he rents loathes bedroom The from dining- and his sitting-room adjoining his and his meals are served to his suite. usually far removed the rooms all are carried / { on trays across the court, kitchens are dishes each | dish with a THE BELLS. THE LITTLE INNS OF FRANCE AND ENGLAND. large pewter cover. The maids little who serve the meals an attract- feature, in are ive dressed with and stiffly starched. In Durham we found one quaint 2° Bg inn, where, on your ar- black, aprons caps rival, the | amiable hostess makes it a / practice to |_ send a glass of port to your room, or, if she you in wine greets the doorway, _ bid- ding you enter, she pours the wine her- self. It is a small favor, but in these days of hurried travel it smacked a bit of the good old time when mine host dispensed a large hospitality.
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SOME PLAYS AND THEIR ACTORS. METROPOLITAN ENGLISH OPERA COMPANY. MLLE, RITA ELANDI,
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SOME PLAYS AND THEIR ACTORS. “a Copyright, Aimé Dupont, MLLE, PHOEBE STRAKOSCH. MLLE. ZELIE DE LUSSAN. MISS FANCHON THOMPSON. Some Memoers of the Metropolitan English Opera Company.
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SOME PLAYS AND THEIR ACTORS. Photograph by Byron. MISS RUSSELL AND MR. RICHMAN IN ‘“‘A ROYAL FAMILY.’’ THE MARRIAGE SCENE, ACT III. May oe ( , “ Photograph by Byron. SCENE FROM ACT I OF “CALEB WEST.”
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SOME PLAYS AND THEIR ACTORS. SCENE FROM ‘LOST RIVER,”
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SOME PLAYS AND THEIR ACTORS. ST ee ee eye ee we codon swrees z g L 2 > a ¢ p St Zz Z x > z 0 a ¢ = D Zz Dp» oF SCCC CK SCO wee we mee SUMNONWK AHL,, “AVUWIVYA AO HI LOV ,,
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SOME PLAYS AND THEIR ACTORS. Photograph by Byron. SCENE FROM ‘‘ IN THE PALACE OF THE KING.”’ MISS VIOLA ALLEN. Photograph by Byron. W, 8H, CRANE IN ‘“‘DAVID HARUM.”’ THE HORSE TRADE SCENE, ACT I.
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SOME PLAYS AND THEIR ACTORS. Photograph by Byron, THE DUEL SCENE. MR. JOHN DREW IN “‘ RICHARD CARVEL.” Photograph by Byron. SCENE FROM ‘'THE CHOIR INVISIBLE,”’ ACT III.
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(ONVAUNG S.LHOIN AAWWOASGIN V,, JO NOLLIAGONd S.AAGCIMN NAWHLYM SSIW WONT ANAIS ‘uoaky a ydvadoq0ud ACTORS. AND THEIR é. “nN = a NX key S SS _ ~ Y“) ey Pei % a RS NES org TTS
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NIGHT’S DREAM,” A MIDSUMMER FROM MISS KATHRYN KIDDER’S PRODUCTION OF ** SCENE Photograph by Byron. GREAT EVENTS: HUMOR AND SATIRE. By THE WORLD’S Most FAMOUS CARTOONISTS. Patriots of the Revolution pulled down the statue of George III. to make bullets for American freedom. Hauna and his gang would destroy liberty for the furtherance of commercial greed. HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF WITH A VARIATION: From Verdict. (BEWARE |, | |OF THE DOG: \ HE HAS AURELADT CAUSED THE DRAM OF 2300 Wee a THE PARES, BEWARE OF THE DOG! THE END OF THE STRUGGLE. From the Coiumbus Press-Post. From the Cleveland Plain Dealer. 8
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TEDDY: MR. BALFourR: From the Denver Evening Post. From the Westminster Budget. GREAT EVENTS “Give you a dole? Quite impossible, my poor fellow. I have heavy family claims ’’ -: HUMOR AND SATIRE. A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM OF THE FUTURE. From the Westminster Budget. LEOG ZH 4 THE CONCERT OF THE DEFENDERS OF CIVILIZATION IN CHINA. Off with his head! | Tear out his legs! | Revenge! | Fire and sword! From Wahvre Jacob of Stuttgart. ‘* Wow ! talk about my bad breaks!" Ci tne EARL LI: / .. mR migii iy tt LAN car From the Detrott Journal. Kill! Kill! | Steal and rob! ‘“Nice doggie; pretty doggie!"
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GREAT EVENTS: HUMOR AND SATIRE. = ob CROKER AND HIS MONKEY. 7 CONTENTED AMERICAN WORKINGMAN: “Croker’s monkey is certainly an amusing little cuss, but I haven't anything for him this year.” From judge. Se nae te ee ATRL o Oe ehOT mary r Stee “ CHRISTIANIZING’’ CHINA. RALLY ROUND THE FLAG. PoWERs (to missionary): ‘' You have done well. You have Brvan is 4 : ilippines applied the lotion. We will rub it ig.”’ eee pledged to haul down the flag in the Philippines, Frow the Sydney Bulletin of New South Vikaies From Wasp.
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GREAT EVENTS: HUMOR AND SATIRE. HANNA: ‘ Trustsin America? Dear me,I never heard of them. Those chaps on the porch? Oh, they are merely indus- trial combinations.”’ From the New York Journal. MARCUS SEEKS FAVOR OF THE GODS. From the Cieveland Plain Deaier. “HAVE YOU HEARD OF THE FULL DINNER PAIL? WELL, THIs IS IT.”’ THE QUICK AND THE DEAD. From the New York World From the New Orleans Times-Democvat.
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GREAT EVENTS: HUMOR AND SATIRE. WE 2Q89= eS AUIS H& HANNA: ‘Hey, Tom, can’t you hear me? We need you SCHURZ: ‘‘LET HIM INTO THE CHINA SHOP, UNCLE. in our business. Wake up!” (But Tom says never a word.) You see he can do no harm. He's all tied up.’’ From the Kansas City Times. From the Saint Paul Pioneer Press HARD FOR THE HOLD-UP INDUSTRY. IN THE ELEVATOR, ‘GOING UP”— Millionaire: ‘* Don’t waste your time, boys, Mr. Hanna All but the miners’ wages. has just left me.”’ From the Chicago Record, From the Chicago Daily News.
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GREAT EVENTS: HUMOR AND SATIRE. Ee Pe Te ees ee eS wer ee MILITARISM ———-———-RULES THE WORLD. THE TREE OF MILITARISM IN BLOOM. From Wahre Jacob of Stutigart From Wahre Jacob of Stuttgart. A GERMAN VIEW OF THE BRITISH LION. CHoRUS OF Powers: “ But you are no lion!” From Kladderadatsch of Berlin.