Bob Taylor’s Magazine, April, 1905

TO HELEN KELLER. — MEN OF AFFAIRS — Richard M. Edmonds. — Jacob McGavock Dickinson. — Samuel Spencer. — James Clarke McReynolds. — Thomas Dixon, Jr. — John Temple Graves. — IN VENICE.

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With the commercial awakening of the South and the increased importance of the section as a factor in the national life, has developed a new citizenship—a sub-structure of the Old South with a modernized superstructure—in which with the sterling and standard traits of the old regime is strongly blended the nervous activity of the new. As a means of paying special tribute to the work being accomplished in the local and general fields by new generation of the South it is the intention of this magazine to devote a department toward setting forth their achievements as well for public information as for acknowledgment of their services, and in offering the initial installment of this special column it is desired to direct attention to the highly representative types herein noticed with the significant intimation that all are yet in the prime of life with greater opportunities ahead of them.

The Manufacturers’ Record, the South’s, if not the country’s, most representative trades journal, had a modest origin less than a quarter of a century ago in a small desk in an obscure business office in Baltimore. Its founder and guiding spirit was Richard M. Edmonds, who from nothing in the way of working capital save sagacity, energy and determination, has developed a magnificent journalistic property, occupying its own seven-story building and has himself become a man of large affairs and wide influence.

In the development of the now admittedly fertile field of trades journalism, no one point may be more emphasized as having been significantly demonstrated than that it holds peculiar and pronounced opportunities for those desirous of actively participating in the vital activities of commerce.

In no less than three distinct phases of Southern development have Mr. Edmonds and his paper conspicuously figured—in the encouragement of industrial and technical education, in the promotion of the cause of immigration from among the most desirable domestic elements and the diverting of the cotton manufacturing business from New England to the cotton fields. It was Mr. Edmonds’ editorial columns that first started the now irresistible southward migration of the mills by pointing out the many and conclusive reasons why the advantages for cotton manufacturing were all in favor of the South.

As a commercial and financial figure it may be noted that Mr. Edmonds is now a member of the executive committee of the International Trust Company, a three million dollar Baltimore corporation, and is chairman of the executive committee of the Alabama Consolidated Coal and Iron Company, with a capitalization twice that of the former. He is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Political and Social Science, the Southern History Association, the Maryland Historical Society, the Southern Society of New York, and other organizations.

Mr. Edmonds was born in Norfolk, Va., in 1857, receiving a common school education in Baltimore, where he started life as a clerk in the office of the old Journal of Commerce.

RICHARD M. EDMONDS.

Successively a teacher, a practitioner of law, a railroad attorney, a teacher of law, Assistant Attorney General of the United States, general counsel for one of the country’s large railroad systems and a leading legal representative of the nation’s interests before the Alaskan boundary tribunal,—this is the record of this distinguished Southerner, yet in his physical and mental prime.

A native of Mississippi and a product of ultra Southern environment, himself a soldier of the gray at the very early age of fourteen, Mr. Dickinson’s evolution into a representative type of national citizenship comprises an interesting study in contemporary American life.

Educated at the old University of Nashville and at the Columbia Law School, New York, with a capstone of extensive travel abroad and special work in law and economics at the universities of Leipsic and Paris, Mr. Dickinson has combined an ideal working equipment with a tremendous energy and a capacity for laborious and sustained mental effort.

As a practitioner his unusual ability was several times recognized by gubernatorial appointments as special judge on the Tennessee Supreme Bench, to which he declined a permanent appointment, shortly thereafter being called to the very high duties of the position of Assistant Attorney General of the United States. After his retirement from this position he became District Attorney for Tennessee and northern Alabama for the Louisville and Nashville Railroad Company, from which he was promoted to his present position as Chief Counsel for the Illinois Central, with headquarters at Chicago.

His greatest public service, as is well known, was his representation of the government in the Alaskan boundary dispute, wherein his presentation of the nation’s claims is admitted to have had a material influence in the successful outcome of that famous piece of international litigation.

JAMES McGAVOCK DICKINSON.

Judge Dickinson maintains a close identity with Southern matters by keeping up his connection with various societies and organizations, among the number being the Isham Harris Confederate Bivouac, at his native town, Columbus, Miss.

In the executive feature of railroad operation Samuel Spencer is a prominent national figure. From an humble position in the ranks, a combination of native ability, splendid equipment and consistent application has resulted in his promotion to the presidency of six large roads, while he is in addition a member of the board of directors of nearly a score of others and of nearly a dozen of the country’s most representative banking and other corporations.

SAMUEL SPENCER.

A native of Georgia, where he was born at Columbus, in 1847, Mr. Spencer entered the Confederate army, serving the last two years and with much credit, after which he graduated from the University of Georgia with A.B., and subsequently from the University of Virginia with his engineering degree.

Since leaving college in 1869 Mr. Spencer has devoted his energies uniformly to his ambition to rise to the highest round of the railroad ladder, with the result that he is now president of the Southern, the Mobile and Ohio, the Alabama and Great Southern, the Cincinnati, New Orleans and Texas Pacific, the Georgia Southern and Florida, and the Northern Alabama, aggregating a mileage of over nine thousand miles and employing more than forty thousand men.

Besides innumerable other roads, in the management of which Mr. Spencer is director, he is also a director of the Western Union Telegraph Company, the Old Dominion Steamship Company, three large New York Trust companies, the Hanover National Bank of New York, and one of Boston’s large street railway systems.

Mr. Spencer is identified with the American Society of Civil Engineers and other representative political, scientific and forestry associations, and is socially very much of a cosmopolite, being a member of New York, Chicago, Cincinnati, Atlanta and Macon clubs, besides that wealthy sportsman’s paradise, the Jekyl Island Club.

One of the very few Southerners who have advanced into the circles of millionairedom, Mr. Spencer resides principally in New York and Washington, but is much in the South and is still in feeling and sentiment very much a Southerner.

JAMES C. McREYNOLDS

In the appointment of James C. McReynolds to be Assistant Attorney General of the United States the President followed his revolutionary precedent in the selection of Judge Thomas G. Jones, of Alabama, as occupant of the Federal Bench. In this instance conventional custom was further ignored in the elevation of a man considerably younger than the age generally considered requisite.

Born at Elkton, Ky., a little over forty years ago, Mr. McReynolds was graduated from Vanderbilt University and the University of Virginia with his academic and law degrees, respectively, in both of which institutions he ranked high in scholarship and character.

His initial experience in public life was gained as the private secretary of Judge Howell E. Jackson of the United States Supreme Bench, which, with his already ample legal equipment, served him in good stead in the general practice in Nashville where his career at the bar was characterized by ability, integrity and a high order of fidelity to the many large interests that he represented.

In civic and political movements Mr. McReynolds’ record was signalized by a notably courageous, independent and unselfish interest.

Since his promotion to the duties of Assistant Attorney General of the United States he has established principles of large governmental significance and his able presentation of the government’s litigation before the Supreme Court has elicited the unanimous commendation of that impartial and august body.

Mr. McReynolds’ appreciation by the President would have been further displayed by his appointment as United States District Judge to succeed Judge Hammond, had not a technicality involving residence interfered.

THOMAS DIXON, JR.

One of the most picturesque and dramatic figures in the limelight of to-day is the Rev. Thomas Dixon, Jr., a man who has at his age probably succeeded in as many different lines of endeavor as any other man of the times.

An intense product of the new South, Mr. Dixon speaks his opinions on his section’s great and peculiar problems with an incisive virility and a fearless conviction, and with his novels, “The Leopard’s Spots” and “The Clansman” has gained a popular audience for the Southern point of view, before unreached. He has also illumined the divorce evil and the subject of socialism in his dramatic story, “The One Woman.”

Born in North Carolina just forty years ago, and educated at Wake Forest, a Baptist denominational school, Mr. Dixon has in rapid succession essayed the fields of law, the ministry, lecturing and authorship, and has been prominently identified with each. He was a member of the North Carolina legislature at one time and is said to have essayed the histrionic for a brief spell.

First attaining more than casual prominence as a Baptist minister in New York, Mr. Dixon felt the opportunity of a non-sectarian evangelist fraught with higher possibilities in the metropolis and more in keeping with his temperament and convictions, founding a popular church wherein as a religious and civic free lance he attracted a large and influential hearing.

On the lecture platform he found a broader and more congenial labor still, and from lecturing he took to literature, to which he is now devoting his time exclusively. He has planned a trilogy of novels in exposition of the negro question, the second of which, “The Clansman,” takes its text from the vital role played by the Ku Klux in the redemption of the South from the triple scourge of the carpet bagger, the scalawag and their irresponsible tool, the ignorant African.

Mr. Dixon’s late successes have constituted him a man of affairs and he now resides upon his extensive Virginia plantation, where he does much of his literary work and incidentally lives the life of the Virginia planter and gentleman of the olden day.

He is proud to admit the valuable assistance rendered him by his wife, not only as literary critic but as a ready helper in the physical construction of his productions.

JOHN TEMPLE GRAVES.

As lecturer, orator and editor, John Temple Graves, of Atlanta, is well known to the country at large. As a lecturer he is classed by George R. Wendling as being in a class with Governor Taylor at the head of the Southern field; as an orator he has had the distinction of presenting his section’s sentiments and peculiar problems to the national ear as has no other man since Henry W. Grady; and as an editor he has by the forcefulness of his personality developed in a brief period of time an extensive business enterprise and a material public influence in his section.

Mr. Graves’ most telling work on the platform has doubtless been his contribution to the enlightenment of the Northern mind on the negro question, while on this and various other subjects he has appeared three times as the orator of the New England Society of Boston, twice of the Merchants’ Club of Boston, once of the New England Society of Philadelphia and twice of the Southern Society of New York. In the capacity of journalist he has officially represented the South as spokesman before the World’s Congress of Journalists at Chicago, in 1893, and also before the World’s Press Parliament at St. Louis, last summer.

As a memorial orator Mr. Graves is entitled to distinguished rank, it having devolved upon him to deliver the funeral orations over the remains of his state’s most eminent sons—Grady and Gordon.

Mr. Graves is still a young man and is a native of Rome, Ga., and a graduate of his state institution at Athens, of which he is a devoted alumnus. He now devotes his time chiefly to his journalistic interests and resides in Atlanta.

Though not a politician Mr. Graves has been twice elector at large in two consecutive presidential campaigns in different states, and has led the Democratic ticket in both instances.

JOSEPH A. ALTSHELER.

Joseph A. Altsheler, whose story, “The Lost Herd,” follows, is a representative type of the new generation of Southerners in contemporary literature.

Born, reared and educated in the South, he has won successive and substantial laurels in both journalism and literature, and is at present the unusual combination of a successful figure in both fields.

Born in Kentucky, that commonwealth that has contributed so many distinguished workers to the literary history of the day, he attended the local schools of his native heath in the southern part of the state until entering Vanderbilt University, where he ranked high in class work, being a Latin scholarship man.

After leaving college, he immediately took up journalistic work in Louisville with The Evening Post, subsequently going with the Courier-Journal, with which paper he remained several years, gaining wide journalistic experience as legislative correspondent, dramatic critic, city editor and editorial writer.

In 1892 Mr. Altsheler followed the almost inevitable ambition of the American with pronounced literary attainments, migrating to the broad and inviting field of the metropolis, since which time he has successively filled responsible positions with the New York World, being at present in charge of its tri-weekly edition.

About nine years ago Mr. Altsheler turned his attention seriously to fiction, since which time he has produced no less than ten novels, in many of which he has drawn largely upon his own extensive personal experiences as a journalist.

His first book was “The Sun of Saratoga,” while his latest is “Guthrie of the Times,” a contemporary romance with a strong political flavor. He has now in press “The Candidate,” also a novel of the day, and likewise treating of political life, this time in the West instead of in Kentucky.

THE LOST HERD.

Redfield parted the twining bushes with both hands, and pushed his body through the cleft, while I stood by to see the issue. He took but a single step and then threw himself back like a soldier who would escape a bullet, his face, now turned toward me, showing a yellowish hue in the moonlight. He raised his hand and wiped his damp forehead, while I gazed at him in silence, seeing fear, sudden and absolute, in his gaze, as if death had faced him, with no warning.

We stood so, for a few moments, until the terror died slowly in his eyes, when he took another step back, and laughing a little, in a nervous way, pointed before him with a long forefinger.

I advanced, but he put a restraining hand upon my shoulder, and bade me take only a single step. I obeyed and, with his hand still on my shoulder, looked down a drop of a thousand feet, steep like the side of a house, the hard stone of the wall showing gray and bronze, where the light of the moon fell upon it.

I saw at the bottom masses of foliage like the tops of trees, and running through them a thread of silver, which I felt sure was the stream of a brook or creek. We were looking into a green valley, and now I understood Redfield’s terror, when instinct or quickness of eye, or both, saved him from the next step, which would have taken him to sure death.

The valley looked pleasant, with green trees and running water, and I suggested that it would furnish a good camp to us who were weary of mountains and ravines and stony paths.

Redfield pointed straight before us, and three miles away rose the mountain wall again, steep and bare, the hard stone gleaming in the moonlight. I followed his finger as he moved it around in a circle, and the wall was there, everywhere. The valley seemed to be enclosed by steep mountains as completely as the sea rings around a coral island.

I said that I had never heard of such a place in these mountains, and Redfield reminded me that there were many things of which neither he nor I had ever heard, and perhaps never would hear.

His retort did not dim my curiosity, in which he shared fully, and, lying down for greater security, we stared over the brink into the valley, which looked like a huge bowl, sunk there by nature. The sky was clear, the moon was rising, and we could see the boughs of the trees below waving in the gentle wind. The silver thread of the brook widened, cutting across the valley like a sword blade, and we almost believed that we saw soft green turf by its banks. But on all sides of the bowl towered the stone walls, carved into fantastic figures by the action of time and mountain torrents.

The green valley below could not remove the sense of desolation which the walls, grim and hard, inspired. My eyes turned from the foliage to the sweep of stone rising above, black where the light could not reach it, then gray and bronze and purple and green as if the moon’s rays had been tinted by some hidden alchemy. I assisted nature with my own imagination and carved definite shapes—impish faces and threatening armies in the solid stone of the walls. I felt the shiver of Redfield’s hand, which was still upon my shoulder, and he complained that he was chilled. I knew it to be the stony desolation of the walls, and not the cold of the night, that made him shiver, for I, too, felt it in my bones, and I proposed that we look no more, at least not then, but build a fire, and rest and sleep.

We did as I proposed, but while we gathered the fallen brushwood, each knew what was in the other’s mind; the mystery of the valley was upon us, and we would wait only until daylight to enter it and see what it held.

Redfield lighted the fire, and the blaze, rising above the heaps of dry sticks and boughs, was twisted into coils of red ribbon by the wind; a thin cloud of smoke gathered and floated off over the valley, where it hung like a mist, while the wind moaned in the great cleft.

Redfield complained that he was still cold, and wrapping his blanket tightly around him, sat close to the fire, where I noticed that he did not cease to shiver. I spread out my own blanket, and by and by both of us lay down on the grass seeking sleep.

When I awoke far in the night, the fire had burned down, the moon was gone, and Redfield’s figure, beyond the bed of coals, was almost hidden by the darkness. Damp mists had gathered on the mountain, and my hand, as I drew the corners of the blanket around my throat, shook with cold.

Not being able to sleep again just then, I rose and put more wood on the heap of coals. But the fire burned with a languid, drooping blaze, giving out little warmth and offering no resistance to the encroaching darkness. Redfield slept heavily and was so still that he lay like one dead. The flickering light of the fire fell over his face sometimes and tinted it with a pale red.

I sat by the coals a little while, looking around at the dim forest, and then the attraction of the great pit, or valley, drew me toward it.

I knelt down at the brink, holding to the scrubby bushes with each hand, and looked over, but I could no longer see the trees and brook below. The valley was filled with mists and vapors, and from some point beneath came the loud moan of the wind.

I stayed there a long time, gazing down at the clouds and vapors, which heaped upon each other and dissolved, showing denser vapors below, and then heaped up in terraces again. The stone walls, when I caught glimpses of them, seemed wholly black in the darkness of the night, and the queer shapes which took whatever form my fancy wished were exaggerated and distorted by the faintness of the light. The place put a spell upon me; if Redfield would not go with me in the morning to explore it, though knowing well he would, I resolved to go alone, and see what, if anything, was there besides grass and trees and water. I felt the strange desire to throw myself from a height which sometimes lays hold of people, and instantly pulling myself back from the brink I returned to the fire. Redfield was yet sleeping heavily and the flames had sunk again, flickering and nodding as they burned low. I lay down and slept until morning, when I awoke to find that Redfield was already cooking our breakfast. He proposed that we begin the descent in an hour, and like myself he seemed to have accepted the conclusion that we had agreed upon the attempt, though neither had said a word about it.

The valley assumed a double aspect in the bright light of the morning, green and pleasant far down where the grass grew and the brook flowed, but grim and gaunt as ever in its wide expanse of rocky wall. The rising sun broke in a thousand colored lights upon the cliffs, and the stony angles and corners threw off tiny spear points of flame. The majesty of the place which had taken hold of us by night held its sway by day.

We had no doubt that we should find a slope suitable for descent if we sought long enough, and we pushed our way through the bushes and over the masses of sharp and broken stone along the brink until our bones ached and our spirit was weak. Yet we encouraged each other with the hope that we would soon reach such a place, though the circle of the valley was soon proved to be much greater than we had expected.

Noon came and we were forced to rest and eat some of the cold food that we had wisely brought with us. The sun was hot on the mountains and the stone walls of the valley threw the light back in our eyes until, dazzled, we were forced to look away. But we had no thought of ceasing the quest; such a discovery was not made merely to leave the valley unexplored, and rising again after food and rest we resumed our task. About the middle of the afternoon I saw a break in the wall which we thought to be a ravine or gully of sufficient slope to permit of our descent into the valley, but it was nearly night when we reached the place and found our opinion was correct.

The ravine was well lined with short bushes which seemed to ensure a safe descent, even in twilight, and we began the downward climb, seeking a secure resting place among the rocks for each footstep and holding with both hands to the bushes and vines.

The sun, setting in a sky of unbroken blue, poured a flood of red and golden light into the valley. The walls blazed with vivid colors, and the green of the trees and grass was deepened. Redfield stopped, and touching me on the shoulder pointed with his finger to the little plain in the center of the valley where a buffalo herd was grazing. Such they were we knew at the first glance, for one could not mistake the great forms, the humped shoulders and shaggy necks.

Neither of us sought to conceal his surprise, and perhaps neither would have believed what his eyes told him had it not been for the presence and confirmation of the other. We knew, as everybody else knew, that the wild buffalo had been exterminated in this region years ago, and that even now the only herd left in the whole United States was somewhere in the tangled mountains of Colorado, and yet here we were gazing upon another herd of these great animals, at least fifty of them, for we could count them as they moved placidly about and cropped the short turf.

We remained a quarter of an hour in that notch in the wall exulting over our second discovery, for we considered the tenants of the valley of as great importance as the valley itself, and exchanged with each other sentences of surprise and wonder. The sun hovered directly over the further brink, and poised there, a huge globe of red, shot through with orange light, it seemed to pour all its rays upon the valley.

Every object was illumined and enlarged. The buffaloes rose to a gigantic height, the trees were tipped with fire, and the brook gleamed red and yellow where the rays of the sun struck directly upon it. Again we said to each other what a wonderful discovery was ours and looked to the rifles that we had strapped across our backs, for seeing the great game of the valley we had it in mind to enjoy unequalled sport. I lamented the speedy departure of the day, but Redfield thought the night would give us a better chance to stalk the big game, and thus talking we resumed the descent. The sun sank behind the mountains, the red and golden lights faded, and the valley lay below us in darkness. The buffalo herd had disappeared from our sight, but feeling sure that we should find it we continued our descent, clinging to the bushes and vines, and wary with our footing.

The twilight was not so deep that the gray mountain walls did not show through it, and as we painfully continued our descent the trees and the brook rose again out of the dusk. Nearing the last steps of the slope we could see that the valley was much larger than it had looked from above, and our wonder at the presence of the herd was equalled by our wonder at the manner in which it had ever reached such a place, as there seemed to be no entrance save the perilous path by which we had come.

At last we left the bushes and stones of the ravine and, standing with feet half buried in the soft turf of the valley, looked up at the sky as if from the bottom of a pit.

The twilight was as clear around us as it had been on the mountain above, and we could see a pleasant stretch of sward, the land rolling gently, with clumps of bushes and large trees clustering here and there.

We did not pause to look about, both being filled with the ardor of the chase, and we walked quickly toward the little bit of prairie in which we had seen the buffaloes, examining our rifles to be sure that they were loaded properly. I felt that sense of unreality which strange surroundings always give.

The night, now fully come, was not dark, the stars were appearing and a pale light glimmered along the edges of the cliffs, which seemed, as I looked up, to overhang and threaten us.

We reached the brook that we had seen from above, a fine stream of clear water, a foot deep and a dozen or more across. We paused there to drink and refresh ourselves, and found it cool and natural to the taste. I supposed that it flowed into some cave through the mountain, since I could not imagine any other outlet; but the matter remained for only a few seconds in my mind, as Redfield began to tug at my sleeve and urge me on to the chase, to which I was nothing loth.

Yet I noticed that there were no other signs of animal life in the valley. Not a rabbit popped up in the grass; the trees were fresh with foliage, but no birds flew among the boughs. All around us was silence, save for the soft crush of our own footsteps and our breathing, now quickened by our exertions. I called Redfield’s attention to this silence and absence of life, and we stopped again and listened but heard nothing. The night was without wind; I could not see a leaf on the trees stir, the air felt close and heavy, and Redfield told me that my face was without color; I had noticed that fact already in his.

Fifty yards farther and we came to the open space in which we had seen the herd, and we felt sure that it was not far beyond us, for the heads of the animals had been turned south and we believed they had continued to move in that direction as they nibbled the grass. We paused to take another look at our rifles, our ardor for the chase rising to the highest, leaving us no thought of anything but to kill.

I had never before hunted such big game and I felt now the thrill which leads men to risk their own lives that they may take those of the most dangerous wild beasts. The twilight had deepened somewhat, and though of a grayer tone in the valley, where mists seemed to be collected and hemmed, it was not dense enough to hinder our pursuit.

Redfield paused suddenly and put his hand upon my shoulder though I had seen them as soon as he. The herd was grazing in the edge of a little grove a few hundred yards ahead of us, but within plain sight. This closer view confirmed our count from the mountain-side that they were about fifty in number, and admiration mingled with our wonder, for they were magnificent in size, true monarchs of the wilderness, grazing, unseen by man, while the rush of civilization passed around their mountains and pressed on, hundreds of miles into the Farther West. Their figures stood out in the gray twilight, huge and somber, surpassing in size anything that I had imagined. I felt a joy that I was one of the two whose fortune it was to find such game, a proud anticipation of the trophies that I would show. I saw the same exhilaration in Redfield’s eyes, and again we spoke to each other of our fortune.

I held up a wet finger, and finding that the wind was blowing from the herd toward us we resumed our advance, sure that we could approach near enough for rifle shot. The herd was noiseless, like ourselves, the huge beasts seeming to step lightly as they cropped the grass, the scraping of the bushes as they pushed through them not reaching our ears. Again the sense of silence, of desolation oppressed me. The grayness over everything, the trees, the grass, the mountains, Redfield, myself even, the unreality of the place and our situation seized me and clung to me, though I strengthened my will and went on, the zeal of the chase directing all else.

Our stalking proceeded with a success that was encouraging to novices like ourselves, and a few more cautious steps would take us within good rifle shot. We marked two of the animals, the largest two of the herd, standing near a clump of bushes, and we agreed that we should fire first upon these, Redfield taking the one on the right. If we failed to slay at the first shot, which was very likely, the chase would be sure to lead us directly down the valley, and we could easily slip fresh cartridges into our rifles as we ran. Nor could the game escape us within such restricted limits; and thus, feeling secure of our triumph, we slipped forward with the greatest caution until we were within the fair range that we wished. Then we stood motionless until we could secure the best aim, each selecting the target upon which we had agreed.

The herd seemed to have no suspicion of our presence. However acute might be the buffalo’s sense of smell, it had brought to them no warning of our presence. Their heads were half buried in the long grass, and as I looked along the barrel of my rifle, I felt again the stillness of the valley, the utter sense of loneliness which made me creep a little closer to Redfield, even as I sought the vital spot in the animal at which I aimed my rifle.

Redfield whispered that we could hardly miss at such good range, and then we pulled trigger so close together that our two rifles made one report.

We were good marksmen, but both the buffaloes whirled about, untouched as far as we could see, and looked at us. The entire herd followed these two leaders, and in an instant fifty pairs of red eyes confronted Redfield and myself. Then they charged us like a troop of cavalry, heads down, their great shoulders heaving up. We slipped hasty cartridges into our rifles and fired again, but the shots, like the first, seemed to have no effect, and, in frightened fancy, feeling the breath of the angry beasts already in our faces, we turned and ran with all speed up the valley, in fear of our lives and praying silently for refuge. I hung to my rifle with a kind of instinct, and I noticed that Redfield, too, carried his. I looked once over my shoulder and saw the herd pursuing, not fifty feet away, in solid line like the front of an attacking square. I shouted to Redfield to dart to one side among some trees, hoping that the heavy brutes would rush past us as we could not hope to outrun them in a straight course, and he obeyed with promptness. We gained a little by the trick, but the buffaloes turned again presently, and then we seized the hanging boughs of two convenient trees, and, managing to retain our rifles, climbed hastily up and out of present danger.

The buffaloes stopped about a hundred feet away, still in unbroken phalanx, and stared at us with red eyes. I was filled with fear; I will not deny it, I felt it in every fiber. I had heard always that these beasts, however huge, were harmless, their first rush over, but they were looking at us now with eyes of human intelligence and even more than human rage; a steady, tenacious anger that threatened us, and seemed to demand our lives as the price of our attempt upon theirs. I felt cold to the bone, and the angry gaze of the besieging beasts held my own eyes until I turned them away, with an effort, and looked at Redfield. Then I saw that he was as white and afraid as I knew myself to be. I told him that we were besieged, and he rejoined that the attitude, the look of our besiegers, betokened persistency.

While we talked, the buffaloes began to move and we hoped that we had been mistaken in our belief, and that they would abandon us, but the hope was idle. They formed a complete circle around us, a ring of sentinels, each motionless after he had assumed his proper position, the red eyes shining out of the massive, lowered heads, and fixed on us. Redfield laughed, but it was not the laugh of mirth. He asked me what we had to fear from the buffalo, which was not a beast of prey; they would turn away presently and begin to crop the grass again, but his tone did not express a belief in his own words.

The night had not darkened, but the curious grayness which was the prevailing quality of the atmosphere in the valley had deepened, and the forms of the beasts on guard became less distinct. Yet it seemed only to increase the penetrating gaze of their eyes, which flamed at us like a circle of watch fires. The sentinels were noiseless as well as motionless. The wind whimpered gently through the leaves of the trees, but there was nothing else to be heard in the valley, and saving ourselves and the buffaloes, nothing of human or animal life to be seen. Redfield said to me that he wished our guards would move, that while they stayed in such fixed attitudes he felt as if we were watched by so many human beings. His voice was at a higher pitch than usual, and I felt a strange pleasure in noticing it, for I knew then that he had been affected as I by our peculiar position. He burst suddenly into a laugh, and when I asked him where he found amusement, he reminded me that both of us yet carried our rifles, though we seemed to have forgotten the use for which they were made. He added that the sentinels were within easy range, and since our object was now self-preservation and not sport, we could sit on the boughs in perfect safety and shoot as many of them as we chose, unless they retired.

It was the power of surprise and fear that had prevented us from thinking of this before, though the weapons were in our hands, and I felt a sense of shame that we had permitted ourselves to be overwhelmed in such a manner. I waited before raising my own rifle, to see the effect of Redfield’s shot. I saw him select his target and look down the barrel of his rifle as he sought to make his aim true. The eyes of the buffalo had seemed so human in their intelligence and anger that I expected to see the animal, knowing his danger, retreat when the rifle was raised. But he made no motion, looking straight into the muzzle of the weapon which was threatening him. Redfield pulled the trigger and fired, and then both of us cried out in surprise and displeasure.

The buffalo did not move, and if the bullet had touched him there was no mark upon him that we could see to tell of its passage. Redfield said it was the bad light that had made him miss, but I believed it was a trembling hand—that the chill, though the night was warm, which affected me had seized him, too. Yet I steadied myself now that my own time to fire had come, and took good aim at the buffalo nearest to my tree. It may have been the strength of my imagination, and in reality the eyes of the brute may not have been visible at all at such a distance and in the night, but I was sure that they were staring at me with human malice, and another expression, too, that I interpreted as defiance. I was seized with a sudden and fierce anger—anger because I had been afraid, anger because there was a taunt in the eyes of the beast.

I pulled the trigger and looked eagerly at the result of my shot; then I cried aloud in disappointment, as Redfield had done. The buffalo, untouched, was staring at me with the same malicious eyes, not even moving his head when I fired.

Redfield laughed once more in a mirthless way, and I told him angrily to hush; that he was afraid but I was not, and I would fire again. I put in a second cartridge but the shot was as futile as the first, and Redfield, who tried once more, had a similar lack of success. But we told each other, and with all the greater emphasis because we were not sure of it, that it was the imperfect light and our nerves strained by the descent of the rough cliff. I noticed that Redfield’s voice was growing louder and more uneven as we talked, and his eyes were gleaming.

At last we exhausted our cartridges without touching the silent ring of sentinels, or making any of them move, and Redfield, throwing his rifle to the ground, laughed in the curious, unnatural way that makes one shiver. I bade him stop and I spoke with anger, but he paid no attention either to my words or my manner. His laughter ended shrilly, and then he said that he understood it all: that these animals had been hunted from the face of the earth except this lone herd, which was left here to hunt any man who came against it. Behold the present as the proof of what he said!

I laughed at him, yet my laughter, like his, sounded strange even in my own ears, and looking at the silent ring of sentinels, I believed his words to be true. When or how we should escape I could not foresee, and I did not feel the fear of death; and yet there was nothing that I had in the world which I would not have given to be out of the valley. The rifle which I had used to such little purpose burned my hands, and I let it drop to the ground.

Redfield laughed again in a shrill, acrid way, and when I asked him to stop, jeered at me and bade me notice how faithful our besiegers were to their duty.

Not one of them had moved from the circle, their forms becoming duskier as the night deepened, but growing larger in the thick atmosphere. The sky above was cloudless, and we seemed to see it from interminable depths; the huge cliffs rose out of the mists, shapeless walls, and the trees became gray and shadowy. Redfield began to talk, volubly and about nothing, varying his chatter with the same shrill, unpleasant laughter, and I, finding it useless to bid him hush, said nothing. Yet I wished that he would cease, and I might hear other sounds, the leap of a rabbit or the scamper of a deer, anything to disturb that horrible chatter, and the equally horrible silence, otherwise. Securing myself in the crook of a bough and the tree I tried to sleep, and I think that at last I fell into a kind of stupor, in which I heard only Redfield’s shrill laugh. But I awoke from it to find a clear moon, and our silent line of sentinels still there. The wind, risen somewhat, was moaning up the valley and the night was cold.

Redfield was silent then, but when I called to him he answered in a natural tone for the first time in hours and asked me if I had anything to suggest, as we must change our present position very soon. I told him that we must descend from the trees, find the path out of the valley and leave by it, at once. He pointed to the sentinels and said nothing would induce him to face them, but I told him we must do it since it was the only thing left for us, though I will admit that my own sense of fear was of such strength that my words were braver than myself.

The moon came out again and the forms of our guards grew more distinct, ceasing to have the shadowy quality which at times in the last hour had made them waver before me. Nevertheless, the light still served to distort them and enlarge them to gigantic size, and my imagination gave further aid in the task.

Redfield became silent again, and I thought he might be asleep, but when I looked at him I saw his eyes shining with the same unnatural light that I had marked there before, and I felt with greater force than ever that we must not long delay our attempt to leave the valley. But I remained for a while without movement or without thought of what we should do. The belief that we had come there to be hunted by the survivors of the millions whom we had hunted out of existence became a conviction, and I felt a reluctance to meet the eyes of the avenging beasts, eyes that I could always see with my imagination if not with my own gaze. The light of the moon struck fairly on the sides of the great cliffs and the grotesque and threatening faces which my fancy had carved there in the rock lowered at us again. I could even distort the trees into gigantic half-human shapes, leaning toward us and taunting us, but I shut my eyes and drove them away. I had not forgotten the curious light gleaming in Redfield’s eyes.

An hour later I told Redfield that we must descend, that we could not stay forever where we were and it was foolish for us to delay, wearing out our strength and weakening our wills with so long and heavy a vigil. He said no, that he would not stir while those beasts were there watching; he could see a million red eyes all turned upon him and he knew that as soon as he touched the earth the owners of those eyes would rush upon him and trample him to death. I felt some of his own reluctance, but knowing that it was no time to waste words I told him that he could stay where he was, if he chose, but I was going; I had seen enough of the valley and certainly I would never come near it again. So speaking I began to descend the tree, and Redfield instantly began to tremble and beg me, like a child, not to go. He said he could not be left there alone and he would not be for all the world. Strengthened in my purpose by his pleadings and believing that my method would compel him to come I again bade him stay if he wished, it was nothing to me; but while I said these things I continued to descend. When he saw that I was in truth going he began to lower himself from his tree, though still begging me not to make the attempt.

My foot struck the ground and I stood there afraid, but resolute. Our guards still gazed at us but made no movement to attack, and I drew courage from the fact.

Redfield was shivering, and perhaps my own courage was not of the best, but I pointed to a dark line in the face of a distant cliff where the moonlight fell clearly, and asked if it were not the ravine by which we had come. He said yes, and not giving him time to think and to hesitate about it I seized him by the arm and pulled him on, telling him that we must reach the ravine as quickly as we could and leave the valley. Then we advanced directly toward that segment of the watchful circle which stood between us and the point we desired to reach.

I retained my firm grasp upon Redfield’s arm and I felt the flesh trembling under my fingers. We did not recall until long afterward that we had forgotten our rifles. As we advanced, the line of buffaloes parted and we passed through it. Redfield cried out in childish delight and said they were afraid of us, but I shook him, more in anger than from any wiser motive, and hastened our steps. Fear rolled away from me and I felt an exhilaration that made me walk with buoyant step. I dropped my hand from Redfield’s arm and we walked on at a swift pace, my eyes fixed on the dark line in the cliff which marked the ravine, our avenue of escape from the valley. Redfield suddenly put his hand upon my shoulder and motioned me to look back. When I obeyed I saw the buffaloes following us in a long line, as regular and even as a company of soldiers. Redfield laughed in the mirthless way which marked him that night and said we had an escort who would see that we did not linger in the valley. I could not say that he was wrong, but I grew impatient with him when he tried to make a jest of it and talked of our bodyguard. I knew that he was trembling, and I asked angrily, though not in words, why they could not let us alone. We were leaving as fast as we could, and as for coming back, nothing could drag me to that valley again; no, nothing, and I said the “nothing” aloud with angry emphasis.

Our guard did not desert us, but followed at fifty or sixty yards with noiseless step. And again I noticed that there was no other animal life in the valley, though the grass was green and the woods abundant, a place that the birds and rabbits should love.

The outlines of the pass grew more distinct, the tracery of bushes and vines that lined it was revealed, and in a few minutes we would arrive at the first slope. I felt like a criminal, a murderer, taken in disgrace from the place of his crime, and this feeling once having seized me would not leave, but grew in strength and held me. Redfield was my brother in crime, and certainly his face, his nerveless manner, showed his guilt.

I hastened my footsteps, eager to leave the place. Redfield kept pace with me, and in silence we reached the first slope. It was a rugged and toilsome ascent, but I thought little of such things, the joy of escape from the valley mastering all other emotions. A third of the way we paused, and, looking back, saw the silent line of sentinels watching at the foot of the cliff, their eyes turned up at us.

Then we resumed our ascent, and, reaching the top of the cliff, left the lost herd, forever.

THE ISLES OF SCILLY.

Do not visit The Scillies. Go to Penzance—a charming spot that has not received the attention from the tourist that it deserves—and see the hopeful passengers take ship in the morning for the “blessed isles;” inspect them again on their return in the evening; if you are still curious go to Land’s End—a drive of eight or ten miles—and look across the sea that lies between you and The Scillies; buy a guide book and a few pictures when you come home, and bless your stars that you did not tempt the deep.

This is the advice which I vowed I would give, when, one day last summer, for three awful hours I “hove” with the heaving deep. I am not usually a poor sailor. Indeed I have generally crossed the Atlantic without making my offering to the gods of the Abyss. Anything in reason I am prepared to do, but the demands of the little steamer that plies between the Islands and Penzance are altogether unreasonable.

It was a beautiful morning and Mount’s Bay, on which Penzance is so picturesquely situated, was as placid as a swimming tank, but I noticed that the wind was blowing fresh from the southeast, and I mentally observed that there was likely to be trouble when we rounded Land’s End. I am proud of that prophecy now, though trouble came sooner than I had anticipated.

Long before we had lost the shelter of the rocky and fascinating coast that girts the shores of Cornwall towards Land’s End, many a swain, who had started off that morning with a light heart and “Arriet,” sadly admitted that “all was vanity.”

When we reached Land’s End I lost interest in the scenery and gave up—among other things—the unequal struggle. The “Lyonesse” was crowded and there was no place to lie down. Indeed one was fortunate to find a seat. I secured a camp stool and a vacant place in the gang-way, and as I watched, or rather was conscious of, the movements of our vessel, she seemed like a fabled sea monster sporting in the deep. Poised for a moment jauntily on the wave’s crest, or plunging her nose beneath a huge billow, she was equally happy. I called to mind the legend of the Lyonesse, the continent that once stretched between Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, and which in the days of “good king Arthur” sunk below the deep at the command of Merlin, engulfing Mordred and his host as they thundered hard after the remnant of the slain Arthur’s army. I thought of this and then I knew that our ship was trying to justify her high sounding title. Just at this moment she made a plunge towards the sunken continent and a huge wave swept in over the bow, most thoroughly drenching a party of ambitious sightseers who were tempting Providence on the ship’s nose. The wave rolled on towards me but I was too busy just at that moment to successfully evade it.

As we passed close by Land’s End I roused up for a moment to look at the celebrated point and again as we came in sight of Woolf lighthouse, a solitary sentinel in the waste of waters, midway between the mainland and the islands, and an eloquent witness for the Lyonesse legend.

As for the rest, I can say I was conscious of existence, but not taking much interest in life, when a sudden cessation of the turmoil within and without re-awakened somewhat my torpid senses, and as we made fast to the dock, I dragged myself ashore and followed the haggard and bedraggled passengers through a narrow street into the town. A short walk brought me beyond the city to a grassy hillside, where, with my camera for a pillow, having cast aside all literary and artistic aspirations as worthless, I was soon blissfully unconscious of the beauty and romance I had come so far and braved so much to see. In the course of an hour or so, I was awakened by a grazing horse on the alert for something green, and, recollecting my mission, started forth to make the tour of the island.

ST. MARY’S AND OLD TOWN.

We landed, as a matter of course, at Hugh Town, St. Mary’s, the largest and most important island of the group, with Star Fort situated on its eastern promontory, and Hugh Town on a narrow isthmus connecting this promontory with the main body of the island.

As I have already intimated, the first thing of interest to me, on coming ashore, was a vacant bit of real estate wherein to lie down and forget my past. So, after shaking myself awake, I walked up a hill and came in sight of the historic little church which is situated at the head of the bay of Old Town, formerly the chief town of the island. The church, a very quaint old structure, stands in an enclosure which rises in successive terraces on the hillside and is filled with a striking mixture of English and tropical vegetation.

Among the many interesting monuments in the churchyard, I noticed a granite obelisk, erected by Mr. Holtzmaister of New York, to the memory of his wife, who perished in the wreck of the ill-fated S. S. Schiller, May 7, 1875. The inscription reads: “In memory of Louise Holtzmaister, born at New York, May 15th, 1851, who lost her life in the wreck of the S. S. Schiller off the Scilly Isles, May the 7th, 1875. Her body rests in the deep. This monument has been erected to her memory as a mark of affection by her surviving husband.”

The memory fain would linger round some spot where the beloved take their last long sleep. Tennyson’s beautiful lines awaken a heartfelt response in every human breast:

THE CHURCH AND THE TOMBS.

The people of these islands have witnessed many a tragedy of the sea in their day, but perhaps none more awful than that which this monument recalls. The Schiller, a staunch boat, built on the Clyde in 1873, was in command of Captain Thomas, an Englishman by birth, but then a naturalized German. She left New York on the 27th of April with fifty-nine saloon, seventy-five second, and one hundred and twenty steerage passengers. She was due at Plymouth on the 8th of May, but for three days previous to the disaster no observations were obtained on account of the weather. Early on Friday, the 7th, a heavy fog came down. Captain Thompson, thinking he was near the islands, ordered the engines at half speed, but about 10 P.M. she ran on the Retarrier Ledges, near the Island of St. Agnes. Few were in bed at the time of the accident; the boats were quickly launched, the sailors behaved splendidly, but the sea was running high, and as the women and children crowded together into the pavilion a heavy sea swept over it and carried all away. About forty-five out of three hundred and forty-five were saved. Mrs. Jones was the only lady survivor. By Saturday evening seventy-eight bodies, nearly all with life-preservers on, had drifted ashore.

The old church, which is now restored and used only as a mortuary chapel, was originally built in the form of a cross. In 1662 it was enlarged. On each side of the communion table ran a long seat, the one for the members of the Council and the other for their wives or the widows of dead councilmen. In 1732 it was decreed that if a councilman died, his wife was entitled to a seat among the wives of living councilmen during her widowhood, but if she married she was deprived of that privilege, unless she married a councilman. This high esteem in which they held their women, and the fact that they used the church as a council chamber, throw an instructive sidelight on the character of these old representatives of the right of the people to govern themselves.

THE LOGAN ROCK.

We leave the quiet churchyard and its tragic story to continue our walk around the island. A tramp on the promontory Peninnis, which stretches out southward into the sea, brings to view many fantastic rock formations. Great boulders are left curiously poised upon each other by the action of wind and wave in ages past. Pulpit Rock, composed of huge flat blocks of stone resting on each other and leaning out to sea, is perhaps the most famous, though why it should be called “Pulpit Rock” is more than one can well guess. It looks more like an hundred other things than it does like a pulpit. Most of all it resembles a great gun mounted on the rock to command the sea at this point. We next encounter the Logan Rock (pronounce loggan). Everyone who has read Baedaker’s “Great Britain” knows of the existence of Logan Rock in Cornwall, a rock of sixty-five tons weight so delicately poised that it can be set in motion quite easily. I was not aware before that the phenomenon had repeated itself, but I learned last summer that there was quite a number of these “loggan,” or rolling rocks to be found at different places.

The Logan Rock at St. Mary’s is quite famous and was discovered somewhat recently by accident. A resident of the town, overtaken by the storm, took shelter beneath a huge rock. The wind was blowing fiercely and to his great surprise, if not terror, he discovered that the rock was moving gently to and fro. He could scarcely believe his senses at first, but on further examination, he found it was so poised that it readily responded to his efforts and could be made to sway back and forth. Its estimated weight is three hundred and sixty tons, and while it requires some energetic effort to put it in motion it rocks with ease afterwards.

Hugh Town, the port and principal town of the island of St. Mary’s, and indeed of the entire group of islands, enjoys a very unique situation. On the southwest a promontory juts out into the sea. This is the site of Star Fort, and one can make its circuit in about half an hour. It is joined to the mainland by a narrow isthmus of sand which separates St. Mary’s Pool, the harbor on the north, from Porth Cressa Bay, on the south. On this narrow strip of land, across which a boy can cast a stone, and over which the high tide threatens to leap, Hugh Town is built. There is no pretension to architecture, no striking buildings, none even that have the interest of antiquity to recommend them. The town is practically contained on the narrowest part of the isthmus, though westward, where the strip of land widens, the houses scatter somewhat. Save for its audacious situation, daring, as it does, the rage of the sea from both sides, it is commonplace and uninteresting.

HUGH TOWN.

Too much cannot be said in favor of the islands as a health resort. They are so small in area, and lie so low, that living on them is practically living at sea. One may here take a protracted cruise with no reeling deck beneath him, and no nightmare of mal-de-mer to threaten his dreaming hours.

There are no manufactures of any kind on the island, nor is anything present to vitiate the air. Sea breezes, from the illimitable reaches of the ocean, sweep at will across these tiny bits of land, from every point of the compass, in quick succession. In winter the mean temperature is 45 and in summer it is 58. The rain fall is very moderate and, with fine consideration for the tourist, the rain generally comes at night, a phenomenon noticeable in Cornwall also.

Here is a fine resting place for men and women, physically or mentally weary. The rush of modern business life is wholly unknown; there are no street cars nor elevated trains to catch; there is no congestion of traffic in the streets; no roar of vehicles nor hum of business to disturb the absolute rest that the place suggests or to chide one who is disposed to take life easy. One lies down at night with the murmur of distant waters echoing through his dreams and wakens in the morning to the song of the surf.

The islands are said to be a “haven of refuge for sufferers from chronic bronchitis, phthisis and consumption in all its terrible forms, insomnia, and the strain of overwork; and for children one vast playground with free and open beaches and sands difficult to surpass.”

Certainly it would be hard to find a more ideal place for overworked humanity seeking rest and recuperation. The climate is all that could be desired, living is cheap, the whole atmosphere breathes rest, and there are ever present the constant sunshine and the eternal sea.

On St. Mary’s Sir Walter Besant lived while engaged on his celebrated romance, “Armorel of Lyonesse,” the home of whose beautiful Armorel Sir Walter located on the now uninhabited island of Samson. Half a century ago Samson had a population of fifty souls, with ten houses, among which “Armorel’s cottage” may still be seen. In 1885, only one family was left, and now nothing remains save the wreck of the houses and the traces of former cultivation, rapidly disappearing. The inhabitants were moved to other islands to insure the better education of their children, and, incidentally, to curtail a little private and untaxed trade which they carried on with their French neighbors.

To trace the history of these fragments of a lost continent through former generations would be most interesting, but it must be here foregone. They have, however, bulked considerably in English history and figured frequently in her relations with her continental neighbors. They remained true to the royal cause after Charles I had been put to death, having been held by Sir John Grenville for Charles II. The garrison was reduced to submission by Ascue and Blake in 1651. Prince Charles was sheltered in Star Castle for a short while after his flight from Cornwall.

The islands were notorious as the scenes of smuggling operations during the eighteenth century, but this was so vigorously dealt with that it proved as unprofitable as the various honest efforts to earn a livelihood that have been successively experimented with in this little world.

It is said that Hamilco of Carthage, a colony of Phœnicia, discovered the islands in 3000 B.C.; at any rate, they have been identified with the Cassiterides or Hesperides of the Greeks, and the Sillinæ Insulæ of the Romans. The Phœnicians traded with them for tin, which was most probably brought from Cornwall, as there is no evidence that tin was ever found on the islands. An allusion in Diodorus Siculus throws light on this custom. He says: The tin “was first refined and then carried to an adjacent island for shipment to Gaul.” The Romans reduced the islands during their occupation of Great Britain and made them a place of banishment, a use to which they were put by Great Britain also during the seventeenth century.

The Danish sea-kings found them a convenient rallying point for raids upon places in the Bristol Channel, but Athelstan drove the Danes out in 927. Subsequently an order of monks settled there, retaining an independent government till Henry I subordinated them to the Abbot of Tavistock. Scilly remained under the jurisdiction of the monks till the dissolution of the monasteries in the reign of Henry VIII. The ruins of an old abbey are still visible on the island of Tresco.

During the reign of Elizabeth, Sir Francis Godolphin built a number of forts and Star Castle near Hugh Town. The latter remains to the present, on the left of the harbor, at Star Fort.

We have noted that the islands were used by both Romans and Britons as a place of punishment, and we learn that in 1637 John Bastwick, M.D., after having been banished there for writing libelous books against church and government, was sentenced to pay a fine of £1,000, to stand in the pillory, to have his ears cut off, and finally to be confined in St. Mary’s castle. After such a generous assignment the story of the “ducking chair” sounds like comedy. The offender guilty of some trifling misdemeanor was tied in the chair at the head of the dock and thrown into the water. One cannot help feeling that this would be fine treatment for the American “hobo,” especially if the salt water was available and it was not necessary to haul him out too soon.

The inhabitants have had a hard fight for existence and have been on the verge of starvation more than once. Farming proved a failure. So likewise did smuggling, shipbuilding, fishing, and other experiments, that for a time seemed to promise success.

Now, however, they are more prosperous than they have ever been. Early potatoes, asparagus, and other vegetables are raised in large quantities for the English market. In this respect Scilly is to London what Bermuda is to New York. Besides the vegetables, flowers are cultivated for the London market, and grow in such luxuriant profusion as to guarantee a handsome return to the gardener. Anyone who has seen an acre or two of lilies abloom in Bermuda knows what a glorious sight a field of flowers is. We cannot judge from a florist’s window how splendid is a flower farm.

During Christmas week wallflowers, marguerites, daisies, narcissi, roses, pinks, marigolds, fuchsias, geraniums and chrysanthemums are found in bloom.

The fields are divided off into little squares of about a quarter of an acre, by high hedges. Here the flowers are protected from the winds and cuddled up to the gracious sun. Under this nurture aloes attain a height of five or six feet, and in blossoming throw up a bloom-spike as high as eighteen or twenty feet.

As London is distant from the islands only about eleven hours it follows that if the inhabitants are prepared to supply the metropolis with its flowers and vegetables they may rest easy about “the wolf at the door.”

The islands number about forty, and are situated some twenty-seven miles west of Land’s End. Five of them are inhabited, and the total population, which increased during the decade by one hundred and four, is some two thousand.

As we steamed out of the harbor a fleet of British war ships, twenty-two in number, was lying at anchor in the bay. When one reflects that these fighting machines are similarly in evidence in almost every harbor round the world, he is convinced that Great Britain’s arm upon the sea is a significant factor to be reckoned with in questions relating to the world’s peace.

I met the captain of our ship as I stepped aboard and besought him, though unbelief was regnant, to assure us of a smooth passage home. I explained to him that I had contributed everything I possessed on the way hither and that since then I had been too busy sleeping and seeing the island to replenish my larder. He replied with cordial good humor that the return voyage would be pleasant. Of course I was sceptical, but to my great surprise, when we rounded the point where Star Fort is situated, I saw at once that the ocean’s wrath was greatly appeased.

Time heals most wounds, and, while she banishes to a merciful oblivion what is sad and unpleasant, she graciously leaves with us the undimmed vision of our happy days. Thus it is that I have forgotten the raging of the sea and the tossing of the ship, and treasure the picture which that August morning brought me, “a small sweet world of wave-encompassed wonder.”

THE LABOR QUESTION. WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO SOUTHERN CONDITIONS.

The writer of the following pages is one of the recognized authorities of the country on labor questions. Born in Kentucky about fifty-three years ago, he has been in his time merchant, manufacturer, banker, editor, traveler and sociologist. He lived in Tennessee for fifteen years and since 1898 has been in Chicago. As commissioner of the Illinois Coal Operators’ Association he has dealt with the perplexing problems of labor face to face, and thus has been obliged to test theory in the crucible of practice. Although a representative, in a sense, of capital, he is the friend of organized labor and is so recognized by its leaders.

Mr. Justi has contributed to the current discussions of economic topics many valuable papers which have been printed in the leading periodicals of the country and it is therefore felt that the following paper, treating a question new to the South, but none the less, of prime and growing importance, will be read with deep interest.—Ed.

In almost every discussion of the labor problem practically the only class of labor taken into consideration is that known as common labor—by which term is meant the labor that is grouped into large bodies. That labor which is known in the North, East and West as common labor is similarly known in the South. Mill, mine and factory hands, workers on streets and highways, employes in railway depots and on wharves are everywhere, for want of a better term, designated as common labor. In this discussion no notice need be taken of highly skilled laborers who can be safely classified among the crafts, and who are seldom found in considerable groups. The craftsmen can take care of themselves and need no union to protect them. They are treated, not like a commodity that can be easily replaced by substitutes from an emigrant ship, but like intelligent human agents, who must be handled with care and respect.

In considering the general subject of labor with special reference to the South, the question of labor in itself, while important, is not complicated with so many difficulties as confront us in the North; and yet the difficulties are many, and some of them, unless intelligently dealt with, may become serious.

For instance, the loss of the black man as a laborer at the South might prove a serious embarrassment, or the loss by the black man of confidence in and respect for the white man’s authority, might necessitate an admixture, by immigration, of races and nationalities which would push the black laborer to the wall, and should be avoided if it is possible to avoid it. To no one is this a matter of so much importance as to the black man.

The labor problem at the North would be infinitely simpler if there were fewer nationalities, all of them speaking and understanding the English tongue. This statement does not imply that those speaking foreign tongues are necessarily inferior in character or intellect to the English speaking laborer, but the troubles arise rather because the non-English speaking laborers are the victims of deception by unscrupulous interpreters who purposely misrepresent what is said to them for their benefit, or what is said by them to their employers.

The fact that the black man speaks a language understood by the white man is a point in his favor, and that is also a reason why he should continue to be the most desirable common laborer obtainable. The negro at the North is discriminated against in all labor organizations as well as in every relation of life, but in the South he still has a fair chance to market his labor, if he will avail himself of it and will realize his opportunity. So far the very abundance of cheap common labor in the South has hindered the growth of the labor union there and has in many instances defeated its purposes when established. The want of ambition, which makes the negro content with low wages and inferior conditions of living, is sometimes found in common labor at the North, but it is by no means so general as among the black race in the South. Particularly is this the case in the cities, to which the negroes have flocked in great numbers, denuding the plantations of needed help while, in the cities, holding down the wages of common labor,—the only labor in which the negro competition has yet been apparent. The employers of labor in the South should do everything in their power to make of the black man all that it is possible to make of him as a laborer; but, as he has his limitations and as the black man will at times leave the South and so leave an opening for new white labor, the South must use her energies to educate this newly acquired immigrant labor up to American standards—and no work that it can do will bring greater returns than teaching the non-English laborer the language of his newly adopted home.

The very fact that union or organized labor is not strong in the South, when compared with the average sections of the North, gives the employer class in the South an opportunity which they may and should utilize in preparing for that time when the contests incident to organization are sure to come. And in this preparation they want to bear in mind the undeniable truth that the quality of the laborer is generally determined by the quality of the employer. In considering the capacity of any body of laborers we are unfailingly considering the capacity and intelligence of the employers in directing their employes. Employer and employe alike have splendid opportunities opening to them in the South, opportunities in many respects unrivalled; and it is of the highest importance that they make a right beginning and understand each other at the start. The union will indubitably grow, and the employer should welcome it if it presents itself as a business body seeking the highest wages compatible with commercial or competitive conditions in return for the best services of which the labor offered is capable.

But in the South labor must come with reason in its request. It need not be servile, but it must be respectful, for it is still, as it has always been, characteristic of the people of the South that they will brook no interference with their individual liberty. The North does not, and never did, understand the strength of this underlying principle of Southern manhood. It is a principle so strong that it does not disappear in a single generation.

A notable instance of this was seen in a recent dispute over the mining scale in Franklin County, Illinois. The southern part of Illinois was settled by Southerners, mainly by Tennesseans and Kentuckians, who poured into that rich country for a few years before the war and for a few years afterwards. There are whole communities now dominated by Southern thought and principles. When the miners’ union was seeking to establish itself in Franklin County, these farmers, either of Southern birth or of Southern ancestry, having heard that the representatives of the miners, whom they described as agitators, were undertaking to interfere with the individual rights of their sons to work without dictation from any one, offered their services to the newly established companies. The newly established companies, however, politely declined the proffered assistance, preferring peaceable adjustment. But the tendered services would have been given just as willingly as they were tendered.

What is needed in the North is also needed in the South; namely, wise and well informed teachers who are able to illumine the great problem of labor to the masses, in order that they may distinguish between anarchy or socialism on the one hand and the accepted political principles of our country on the other. But there is one thing to be truly said about the South that will always commend itself to employers contemplating a change of base or the establishment of themselves for the first time—and it will commend itself to labor whether organized or unorganized—and that is the doctrines of the socialist have found no encouragement there. Such doctrines cannot thrive in the South any more than tropical plants can survive in the polar regions. Labor leaders should rejoice—in fact wise, educated, far-seeing labor leaders do rejoice—that this spirit prevails in the South, for only so can they hold their own against the radical, trouble-making element in their own ranks.

Thinking too much of established institutions and guarding them too zealously may at times be a disadvantage, but as a general thing that community is most law-abiding and most conservative in maintaining the rights and privileges of all where due reverence is cherished for old established institutions; and yet the wisest conservatism is that which steadily, no matter how slowly, prepares itself for changes that are inevitable. Labor conditions in the South cannot endure as they now exist, unless the South is to lose all that she has gained since the overthrow of slavery, and is to stand and view the triumphal march of the country without participating in it.

The South should not seek to rest under present conditions for they cannot continue. If the present labor of the South becomes educated and then improves, it will organize. And if it does not improve, new labor will come in either already organized or to organize immediately on its arrival. I know this view will be contested by many able employers, but, believing it to be true, I deem it best to say it. It is a great deal better to make yourself strong so that you may trust in your strength when the certain change comes than to rely upon the fairness of the other side—and this is equally true of the employer and the employe.

Experience has taught the South much on the question of labor, but so far as a thorough understanding of the matter goes, the South is barely at the threshold. The first and greatest thing that the South has to realize, which as yet is not realized there at all, is this: In the South as elsewhere, it will be found that cheap labor is the most expensive. To secure good results is the desired end of all industry and the experience of older industrial communities has taught that the best results are, have been, and will ever be obtained by the employment of the best labor. The best labor is and will always be that labor which receives the highest wages and which is most nearly satisfied with surrounding conditions. We can therefore set ourselves no more important task, no more sacred duty, than that of finding the most nearly perfect system under which the highest wages can be paid in return for the most efficient service. And, aside from the justice of this course, aside from the material benefit to the employer, there is no investment that brings its returns so quickly to the community at large, as money paid for good labor. Money so paid is at once spent for the necessities of life, for all the comforts that can be afforded by the family receiving it, and so is circulated almost automatically.

Labor organizations have made small headway in the South for other reasons than the preponderance of negro cheap labor; the first to be stated being the advantages of climate and of cheap living possessed by the Southern worker. The winters are short, the summers long. Outdoor vocations can be pursued in comparative comfort almost the entire year. Fuel bills are smaller, the cost of clothing less, and the cheapness of land opens the way for the workman of even moderate means to possess his own home, if frugal and industrious. He can be his own landlord on easier terms than in the North. But on the other hand, while the climatic and other conditions favor the workman of the South, it must also be remembered that the housing of workmen in the sparsely settled communities or in mining camps is not as good as in the North where legislation and the agitation of the labor leaders have brought about greatly improved conditions.

In the cities of the North the conditions and surroundings of the workmen are even more noticeably superior to those of the workmen in Southern cities. The comforts of such flats as workingmen occupy in the large cities of the North, notably in Chicago, are practically, if not altogether, unknown in the South, where conveniences are fewer. This very custom of living without comforts and conveniences has operated to keep wages down and consequently to offer a check to the spread of unionism. The homes of many skilled Northern workmen belonging to the union would be a revelation to the workman in the South equally skilled but not a member of any labor organization, and receiving less pay for his services.

The organization of labor in the South has also proceeded more slowly as compared with the North because of the more rapid growth and development of the North. It is a fact at once apparent that cities where the unions are strong are the cities that are growing most rapidly. Another cause is the scarcity of manufacturing interests in the South and the consequent small demand for skilled workmen, who are therefore not in the South in sufficient number to organize effectively against the mass of unskilled and partly skilled labor. The lack of numerous large manufacturing enterprises, and of enormous mercantile interests, also causes a lack of sharpness in competition and has made employes less ready or able to exact the utmost that could be paid them in wages.

The difficulties of organizing labor in the South are such as always mark the initial efforts at organization. The union men are out of the Alabama mines, just at this time, for instance, and new men have their places. The new men are being trained to their work, and are receiving practically, if not exactly, the wages asked for by the union. As the number of these skilled workmen increases, the necessity of organization will become more apparent to them all, and the larger the number of men trained for the work, the more effective the union will become. The union wins victories for others oftentimes where it is itself nominally defeated.

The question is asked, and with propriety, of the leaders of organized labor, why it is, if organized labor offers or promises the best workmen, that employers constantly resist its encroachment and turn it out and replace it with unorganized labor if they can. There are several reasons why this is so. It is not, as the labor leader frequently answers, because the employer is short-sighted and imagines that when he can get cheap labor he is making money, although it is at times due to the want of discernment and enlightenment on the part of the employer. The objection made to organized labor by its very best friends among the employers is the short-sighted policy of the organization in winking at or permitting the well-known tyranny of the unions, and also that air of proprietorship which petty labor leaders so often assume.

I have never denied the right of labor to organize, nor can I deny the necessity for labor to organize; and, in the very nature of things, it seems to me that it is best that capital deal with labor as a unit. But at the same time I have, in pursuing my duties in adjusting labor disputes, been brought in contact with labor leaders here and there whose insolence and arrogance, whose absurd claim of being labor’s unselfish and only friend,—made me wish the whole world of organized laborers and their leaders at the bottom of the sea. More than one true friend of organized labor has been lost to a worthy and noble cause for no other reason than that they have been grossly offended and outraged by unworthy representatives of labor organizations.

While the slow growth of the union in the South is no doubt a discouragement to labor organizations, it is a benefit to labor in the long run. It is also at the same time an advantage to capital that labor is being slowly organized. Looking to the future it is an advantage both to capital and labor that the growth of the labor organization does not go too far in advance of the education of the laboring classes and that the employer class may, if it has an eye to its own interest, organize in order successfully and intelligently to treat with organized labor when it has become a force to be dealt with in the South.

Experience proves that even the most thoroughly organized labor unions are not all-powerful when the employers stand together, and the paramount importance of organization among the employers has been repeatedly demonstrated. When this organization of the employers shall have been effected, inquiry into cause and effect, careful study of the labor problem, will quickly show the great advantage and profitableness of dealing fairly with labor. It will show that, if the employers are loyal to each other, and if they have an organization in which all of its members have confidence, they, whether dealing with organized or unorganized labor, are certain to obtain their approximate rights. The many labor tangles in which the country has at times been involved were due far more to the disorganized condition of the employer class than to the cohesiveness and power of the labor class. Whenever the labor class has become needlessly strong and where it practices tyranny and oppression, there the employer class will be found to have neglected its duty to itself.

Another result of the study of conditions will be that the employer class will decide to be fair in dealing with labor, because in the long run it will bring the largest dividends. This cannot be accomplished by dealing with unorganized labor, where the employers have the whole matter practically under their own control, and thinking only of immediate returns, will, consciously or unconsciously, take advantage of the worker. Dealing with organized labor is not only more satisfactory, but it is more profitable in its ultimate results.

The question of individual rights has had a large part in Southern labor troubles. It was a question of the employer’s right to manage his property for himself in his own way that defeated an almost universal strike of the Nashville Street Railway employes two or three years ago. The union was formed and made its demands. The management declined to recognize the union or to grant the demands, and successfully resisted the resulting strike. But the management, I am informed, gave careful examination to the facts thus brought to their attention and has voluntarily advanced wages and improved conditions to a point far beyond what was formulated in the union’s demands. There is no union of the street railway’s employes now at Nashville, and so long as the present intelligent and progressive policy is pursued there will be none and there will be none needed. Indeed, the only excuse for labor to organize is that the policy of the employer has too often been unintelligent, unprogressive and not in sympathy with the reasonable rights and needs of labor.

But the organization of labor and the advancement of wages will do more than any other one thing to lend confidence to those who are looking to the South as a field for investment. The Northern capitalist and investor cannot be made to believe that labor as good and efficient as Northern labor will remain unorganized and render its service for one-third or one-half of what the Northern workman receives. Nor does the Southern worker have the same incentive to the high efficiency reached by the Northern workman. One of the most serious mistakes made by many Southern communities in presenting to the Northern investor the advantages at the South is that they put emphasis on the fact that skilled and unskilled labor is “cheap.” Cheap labor that is at the same time efficient is an unknown thing in the North, and Northern men who are familiar with the labor question will not believe that it exists in the South. “If it were as efficient, it would be as well paid,” they say. The proffer of “cheap” labor has done much to retard the industrial development of the Southern states. It is now the universal cry among the employers of the North, particularly among those who oppose organized labor, that they are willing to pay and do pay the highest wages anywhere obtainable and that they are willing to afford and do afford to their employees the most favorable working conditions.

The question of child labor is one which must be determined by humane principles, and yet it is a question on which much fanaticism has been expended and much maudlin sentiment indulged. The child develops earlier in the South, where the average boy of fourteen is as mature as the average boy of sixteen in the North. It is a cause for gratification, a fact to the credit of the South, that recent child labor laws have removed from mills and mines and factories a vast army of child laborers who properly belonged in the nursery or at school. It was the South’s shame that they were ever permitted there under conditions once existing, and still existing to a degree.

But, while believing that the question of child labor should be closely studied and the interest of the child guarded, I know that this is not always accomplished in the case of boys by making it an offense punishable by fine and imprisonment to keep boys of thirteen and fourteen years at work, particularly since in certain classes of society they have no idea of continuing at school after they reach that age. Anything is better than idleness. It is a thousand to one better for a boy of twelve to be at work in mine, factory or mill than to be allowed to remain unemployed and unoccupied. If he is to be forced out of employment, then provision must be made to force him into school. The attention that has been drawn to child labor in the South comes about not so much by the efforts of philanthropists, not so much by the work of earnest students, as by that class of employers in New England who formerly employed children of tender years, but who were forced to desist as the result of legislation, and who for this reason, and not from any high motives, directed attention to child labor in the cotton mills of the South. I do not mean to justify what is injurious to the children, but in considering this whole question trade or competitive conditions cannot be wholly ignored. We know that the advocates of child labor laws are often selfishly influenced and that they aim to reduce the army of workers in the hope thereby to monopolize labor as far as possible. It is often for the same selfish reason that the hours of labor are restricted.

Much of the opposition to child labor has undoubtedly been removed by the course of mill owners in the South, such as the Eagle and Phœnix mills at Columbus, Ga., the Unity Cotton Mills at Lagrange, Ga., and mills in Guilford County, N. C., and Pelzer, S. C. In these the children are required to spend a certain portion of their time in schools ranging from kindergartens to industrial training schools, which are supported mainly,—and in many cases altogether,—by the cotton mills themselves. The press and pulpit unite in saying that in those mills many of the children have much better facilities for improvement than they had before their parents left the farms and brought them to the mills.

The South suffers from poorly paid labor, and continues to suffer despite the fact that conditions are such as make it possible for her to pay higher prices without injuriously affecting any of her industries. As the wealth of the world increases the individual wants more and greater conveniences, and more and more grows the demand for excellence rather than cheapness to be the chief consideration. The era of cheapness is on the decline; the product of mill and factory, of shop and lathe and hand, must be better to-day to be satisfying than at any time in the world’s history. While excellence is sought the more, cheapness is laughed at and passed by.

The Southern states are in an enviable position to-day. The South ought to produce nearly all it consumes, and those things it can economically produce for its own consumption it should certainly be able to sell in Mexican and South American markets in successful competition with the rest of the world. How successfully this can be done will depend upon the ability of the South to produce the best goods for the least money, and it can only do this provided its labor is the best. But its labor cannot be the best unless it is paid the highest wages and is afforded the most satisfactory conditions under which the workmen can perform their services, and under which they and their families can live.

When labor is once organized on business lines and is a fair competitor of unorganized labor, it will not only be the successful competitor but will furnish the best labor obtainable. Nowhere has organized labor under such conditions so fine an opportunity or so fair a chance as in the South. But as I said before, the South is the stronghold of individual rights. The workman must respect the individual rights of the employer and the employer in return will respect the individual rights of the workman.

It is not only skilled, law-abiding laborers that are necessary to the South’s industrial success, but it is first of all necessary that employers be enlightened and abreast of the times in order that they may see clearly what their rivals are doing and what the markets of the world require. And chiefly employers must be just, wise and humane in order that they may enjoy the confidence and respect of their men.

It is indisputable that wherever there are employers who are wise and humane, working in harmony with laborers who are skilled, frugal and law-abiding, the community where the combination is found has a sure guaranty of numerical growth and of substantial material prosperity. Growth in population is gratifying to most citizens, notably so when accompanied with industrial growth as well, but substantial and lasting prosperity has too often been sacrificed in the eager desire of one community to herald to the world a larger population than its rival possessed. Increased numbers and wealth—if they bring in their train an unnatural increase in vice and crime, as we too often find to be the case,—are infinitely worse than if there were no growth. Southerners sometimes lament that the South does not grow fast enough, yet that it makes haste slowly is the South’s good fortune, since the criminal classes have not increased with the population as at the North. The Southern people, conservative always, should be in nothing so conservative as in the determination that this shall still be true; that while it is increasing in population and wealth the South shall also accomplish the more difficult and important duty of diminishing the percentage of vice and crime.

TILDY BINFORD’S ADVERTISEMENT.

The advertising agent had done his worst. He had subsidized the county paper, crowding out valuable editorials to make room for pictures of the yawning hippopotamus and the unconventional summer girl. Every barn within five miles was decorated with big red pictures and big black letters, all telling of the wonders exhibited by the Grand Combination of Railroad Circuses.

Hodges was but an advertising agent—a ruthless purveyor of publicity. Callous to æsthetic emotions, blind to the beauties of nature, his conscience was dead to the vandalism of highway advertising. Having bedaubed the smiling face of nature in the vicinity of Johnsonville, he was ready to advance on Jonesboro.

“Hello!” he said, stepping briskly into Elrod’s livery stable, “have you got a team that can snatch me into Jonesboro in four hours?”

“That’s just what we have,” said old Bill Elrod—“Truthful Bill,” the boys called him.

“Well, I mean exactly what I say,” said Hodges. “Exactly four hours. I know it’s a hard drive, and I’m willing to pay a dollar or two extra if you can do it.”

“That’s all right, stranger,” said Truthful. “You’ve come to the right place. I’ve got a pair of plugs that can put you there to the minute.”

“Well, hitch ’em up,” said Hodges. “I’ve got no time to spare.”

Old Elrod called to a stable boy to harness the grays, while he went out to get old Eli Wetherford to drive. He took Eli off into a corner of the blacksmith shop, to give him his instructions.

“See here, Eli, that lunatic of a bill-poster wants to be took to Jonesboro in four hours.”

“Well,” said Eli, “it’ll take ever’ minute of six hours to make the trip, but if he’s dead set on doin’ it in four, you’d better give him all kinds of encouragement. If he goes over to see Hopkins & Brown, they’ll agree to put him through in twenty minutes.”

“I’ll ’tend to that,” said Truthful. “I want you to drive him. If I send a boy, that feller will hustle him along fast enough to kill my horses, in spite of all I can do. Now I want you to take him and dash away with him like you was goin’ for a doctor. When you git to the first toll-gate, you can be talkin’ so fast he won’t think about the time o’ day no more till he hears the town clock strike in Jonesboro.”

“Jerusalem!” said Eli: “I ain’t no funnygraph, to be talkin’ a man blind for six hours on a stretch.”

“Oh, you’ll make it easy enough,” said Truthful. “I’ll put a pint of good liquor under the seat.”

“Well, now,” said Eli, persuasively, “if you could just make it a quart, so the stranger can take a nip now and then, it would encourage him powerful.”

“All right,” said Elrod. “I’ll put in a full quart of the best in town. And say, Eli, try to make up some yarn about advertisin’. The hotel clerk says this looney ain’t interested in nothin’ else.”

Thus it happened that when they passed the tollgate, old Eli, who is a bachelor, was telling Hodges of an imaginary wife, who kept him poor by reading advertisements and buying patent medicines.

“I do believe,” he said, “my old woman would have a fit any day if she should happen to read a double-column advertisement of a real good fit medicine.”

“What kind of advertisement does she seem to like best?” asked Hodges.

“Well, you see,” said Eli, “they ain’t a blessed thing the matter with her, so she likes advertisements that calls for ever’-day symptoms—You know some advertisements says if it makes you dizzy to stan’ on your head fifteen minutes, and if you feel warm in the summer time and cold in winter, you’ve got the very ailment that their bitters’ll cure. Ever’ time she sees a advertisement of that kind it costs old Eli a dollar,” and the indulgent husband of the extravagant hypochondriac solaced himself with a dose of his own favorite prescription.

“Try to make up some yarn about advertisin’.”

When they were half way to Jonesboro, they met Hank Binford, and Eli thought it would add some personal interest to a romance he had in mind to make Hank its hero. True, the hero must have a wife and a comfortable fortune, while Hank had neither, but that was immaterial, as the listener was a stranger in a strange land.

“Notice that feller we jest passed? That’s Hank Binford. He’s one of our leadin’ citizens. Owns half the houses in town, and a fine four-hundred-acre farm in the river bottom. Well, sir, when he married, five years ago, he didn’t own two shirts, and he was drunk half of the time. It’s a strange thing, but one little four dollar advertisement changed him into a prosperous citizen, with money in the bank.”

“Must have been a pretty good ad. Tell me about it,” said Hodges, moistening his lips with a half pint of whiskey, and settling down comfortably to listen.

Eli took a long pull at the bottle, and began his story. Even with the bottle of inspiration at his elbow, he could not expect to invent his story quite as fast as he could talk, so he told it with due deliberation and great impressiveness.

“When Tildy Maclin married Hank Binford, her folks all said if she didn’t have no more sense than to tie to such a drinkin’, gamblin’ cuss, she would deserve all she got, and mighty apt to git all she deserved. Tildy said Hank would settle down and do all right, and the other Maclins all predicted, mighty confident, that he’d do all wrong. Well, sir, I never did perfess to be no prophet, so naturally of course I couldn’t foresee in advance just what Tildy would make out of Hank. It appeared to me he might turn out as well as Tildy expected, or full as bad as her folks hoped, and neither way, it needn’t surprise nobody that knows what a powerful sight of human nature there is in a average man.

“Well, Tildy she managed to keep Hank tolerable straight for about a year. He’d go for months without so much as takin’ a dram, and when he did start in for a spree she always managed to git him straight before he could manage to git plum heedless drunk, and it begun to look like she had him safe, and would finally land him in old Rehoboth church.

“But, as I was sayin’, you can’t most always tell for certain just what a man critter is goin’ to do, so I wasn’t overly surprised to hear, one day, that Hank had took advantage of Tildy’s visit to her Wilson County kin, and had filled up with red liquor, and was down to Ike Denman’s grocery playin’ poker with Eb Wetherford and Eli Scoggins and Devil Bill Anderson. That is to say, Hank thought he was playin’, though in reality he was only bein’ played; him bein’ plum drunk and the other boys tolerable sober. One or two of Hank’s friends had dropped in, kinder incidentally, and tried to steer him outside, but of course they didn’t have no luck. ’Long about sundown, next day, I saw Tildy drive up to her gate and ’light, and in about a pair of minutes Miss Sallie Kate Slemmons followed her in, lookin’ powerful pleased, and I didn’t feel no sort of uneasiness but what Tildy would hear the news.

Bill just went sailin’ down the road with a armful of ’em, a-strowin’ ’em to the wind.

“Well, early Saturday mornin’ I happened to be goin’ right by the grocery, and I thought I’d jest step in and pass the time o’ day with Ike, seein’ as I wasn’t in no particular rush. I found Ike all alone by hisself, and he invited me to have somethin’, and I excused myself at first, as men will, and after a while I inquired if the game was still on, and what was the prospects for Hank to lose out, and go home and see Tildy, and hear all about his Wilson County kin folks. Ike said he hadn’t kept the run of the game and didn’t know how Hank stood, but he seemed to imagine that Hank wasn’t in no swivet to swap news with Tildy.

“Ike said Bunk Wetherford had come in early Friday night and took Eb home, and for a while it looked like the game was broke up; but Eli had bantered one of the Edwards boys to take Eb’s place, and he went up and took a hand, and the game broke out in a fresh place, and at last accounts, looked like it might last till all the spots was wore off the cards. I told Ike I’d go up and advise Hank that Tildy had come home.

“‘All right,’ says he, ‘walk right up. I don’t git no takeout from the game, and I’m more’n willin’ to see it broke up any time. I don’t like to interfere myself, jest because it would look like the boys wasn’t welcome here, so I jest lets ’em do mostly as they like, so long as they pays for what they gits, and don’t break nothin’.’

“So I went up and looked on a while, and tried to ketch Hank’s eye, but I could see ’twas no use. He was feelin’ his licker, and talkin’ powerful smart, and losin’ good hard-earned money just as cheerful as if money growed on trees and he owned all the timber land. After a while Denman come up to the head of the stairs, a-grinnin’ all over his face, and motioned me to come to the door. I went over and he handed me a printed poster, about two foot square, and containin’ the followin’ advertisement in big, black type:

“‘Gee Whilikins!’ says I; ‘where did you find it?’

“‘Didn’t find it,’ says he. ‘Jest picked it up. Old man Weekly Clarion Johnson’s little boy, Bill, jest went sailin’ down the road with a armful of ’em, a-strowin’ ’em to the wind. The whole settlement’s full of ’em. They’re all over the floor downstairs, and all over the road, fur as you can see in both directions.’

“The boys at the table was so set on the game that they didn’t take no notice of me and Ike, till I steps over, while Hank was tryin’ to shuffle the cards, and lays the paper down right plum in the middle of the table.

“‘Take the blame thing away,’ says Hank, without readin’ a word.

“‘Read it,’ says I.

“‘Read nothin!’ says he. ‘This is no literary society. Take the blasted thing out of the way so I can deal the kyards.’

“‘I see your name on it,’ says I, ‘and I thought it might interest you.’

“Hank laid down the cards and glanced over the paper. * * First he looked kinder dazed. Then he picked the thing up and looked at it a long time. His face got mighty white, and I thought he was goin’ to faint, but he didn’t. He looked around at the boys; all of ’em a-grinnin’ and lookin’ tickled to death. I begins to have my suspicions about the meanin’ of that white look on his face, and I steps back and takes a stand nigh the door. It was mighty plain to me that Hank had misery to spare, and he meant to pass it around promiscuous. He come up with his chair, and before them grinnin’ idiots had time to back off from the table and climb out of their chairs, Hank had raised a knot on every head, and started ’round the circuit to repeat the dose. They closed in on him and mauled him and gouged him till you couldn’t tell who he was, only by the familiar cut of his clothes and the complexion of his hair and moustache. The only way we could know for certain it was Hank, was by takin’ a sort of inventory of them that could be identified. As none of the whole men was Hank, it stood to reason that this remnant must be him. It was also observed that the critter had a voice some like Hank’s, and used his favorite cuss words quite familiar like.

There ain’t nobody in the settlement that will go out of his way to have a difficulty with Ike.

“Now, endurin’ of the row, Devil Bill Anderson had received a tremenjous big lump on his head, which he could not recall that he had done any overt act or said any word to justify any human man to hit him that vengeful lick, and he was by no means satisfied. The more he thought over the details and narrated the circumstances, the more rebellious he felt and the louder he talked; insomuch that it finally became necessary for Denman to assert hisself and preserve order in his own grocery; which he finally said, quite emphatic, that if anybody wanted to hurt anybody, they might try their hand on Ike Denman. Now there ain’t nobody in the settlement that will go out of the way to have a difficulty with Ike; so Devil Bill kinder cooled off, the best way he could, and everything got quiet, and Denman poured a big sluice of raw whiskey into Hank, and put him to sleep under the big tree at the back of the grocery.

Tildy came out to the gate, looking a little pale, but holding her head up.

“I went to dinner, and when I got back Bud Runnels had just come up and was readin’ Tildy’s advertisement. Bud always did love to joke, and this one seemed to tickle him all over. After inquirin’ all about the particulars, he asked where Hank was at.

“‘He’s back there under the big ellum,’ says Denman, ‘sleepin’ sound as a baby.’

“‘What about the four dollars reward?’ says Bud.

“‘Why, I guess that’s jest a part of the joke,’ says Ike.

“‘Well, I don’t see it that away,’ says Bud. ‘The lady has lost her husband, and she wants him found and fetched home. Now, I’m goin’ to take him home, and if she don’t want him, I can easy fetch him back.’

“Ike grinned, and looked ‘round at the boys, and they grinned.

“‘I don’t hear no objection,’ says Ike. ‘You’ll find him back there under the tree.’

“‘Well,’ says Bud, ‘I can easy load him into my wagon and haul him home and unload him in his own yard, but it might be better for you boys that beat him up to jest take holt and come along with me; all a-totin’ of him home in a friendly way. Then if Tildy wants to know how come his face all broke up, you can jest show her the knots on your own heads and it’ll sorter help to explain matters.’

“Nobody didn’t answer right away, and before anybody could think of any objection, Bud added in his insinuatin’ way: ‘It might save trouble to keep Tildy pacified, so she’ll explain to Hank that he was to blame for all that’s been done to him. Now, ever’ body come on and take holt, and I’ll set ’em up to the crowd soon’s we get back.’

“Bud always seems to state a proposition so fair an’ reasonable that you jest can’t turn him down, so the boys jest got up without wastin’ any words, and followed him around to where Hank was. They gathered him up, one at each corner, and Bud holdin’ up his head. They ketched the step, ‘hayfoot-strawfoot,’ and marched up to Hank’s front gate.

“Tildy was sweepin’ off the front porch, and when she saw the crowd she come out to the gate, lookin’ a little pale, but holdin’ her head up, and a stiff upper lip.

“‘What is it?’ says she.

“‘It’s Hank,’ says Bud.

“‘Is he hurt?’ says she.

“‘Oh, no,’ says Bud. ‘That is to say, they ain’t any bones broke. He’s been a-fightin’ ‘round promiscuous, but he’s got no hurts to call for anybody to fetch him home. Fact is I saw a advertisement offerin’ a reward for Hank, and I just discovered him, and rescued him, and fetched him home.’

“‘Didn’t the advertisement say to return him in good order?’ says Tildy.

“‘I b’leeve it did,’ says Bud, ‘but I couldn’t p’form no miracle for four dollars, so I jest fetched him as I found him.’

“‘And didn’t it say bring him securely tied?’ says Tildy.

“Bud was set back considerable at that. ‘That’s a fact,’ says he, ‘and I jest plum overlooked it. It didn’t appear to me to be of no consequence, nohow.’

“‘Well, it’s mighty important to me,’ says Tildy. ‘If he wakes up in a tantrum, and untied, he might be troublesome.’

“‘That’s so,’ says Devil Bill, thinking of the lump on his own head.

“‘So it is,’ says Eli Scoggins, solemnly.

“‘I believe you,’ says Buck Edwards.

“‘Well,’ says Bud Runnels, ‘it ain’t none too late to tie him, but if I was you, Mizzes Binford, I b’leeve I’d jest sew him up, good and snug, in cotton baggin’ or heavy canvas or somethin’ good and stout like that, and leave nothin’ stickin’ out but jest his head.’

“‘Oh,’ says she, ‘I’ve got the very thing!’ and she went ‘round to the shed, and come back with the stoutest, heaviest, widest piece of cotton duckin’ that I ever see.

“‘I bought it at the auction,’ says she, ‘because it was cheap, and Hank said I never would have no use for it but you see he was mistaken.’

“Well, we sewed him up good and tight, and put him on the bed in the spare room and cut a big peachtree limb for Tildy to keep the flies off of him, and she paid Bud the four dollars.

“When Hank waked up, Sunday mornin’, he could hear Tildy fryin’ meat in the kitchen, and he knowed she was cookin’ breakfast. He didn’t seem to want any breakfast, but he thought a cup of strong coffee might be good for his head. He tried to git up, but the sheet seemed to be rolled ‘round him so he couldn’t rise. Then he tried to roll over, so he could git untangled, but he couldn’t even turn over. Then he got mad, and tried to bust the sheet, but he strained at it till he was black in the face, and couldn’t break a stitch. Then he called Tildy. She come in and walked ’round in front of him.

“‘Tildy,’ says he, ‘what’s the matter with this sheet?’

“‘I don’t see nothin’ wrong with it,’ says she.

“‘Well, then,’ says Hank, ‘what in the nation is the matter with me?’

“‘Oh!’ says Tildy; ‘that’s different. If I undertake to stan’ here and tell all that’s wrong with you, my breakfast’ll be burnt to a cinder before I’m half through.’ And with that, she turned ‘round and marched away to the kitchen.

“Well, of course Hank was fightin’ mad, but he wasn’t in no shape to do nothin’ but jest lay still and think, and not in no great shape for thinkin’, so he jest went to sleep again.

“Next time he opened his eyes, Tildy was standin’ over him with a dish of meat and bread, and a cup of hot coffee.

“‘Good mornin’,’ says she, mighty polite. ‘Would you like to have some breakfast?’

“Hank grinned, kinder sheepish, and she propped up his head, and begun to feed him with a spoon. When he tried to speak, she would pour a spoonful of coffee in his mouth, right quick, and he’d have to stop to swaller, and time he’d git that down, she’d have another one ready for him. He was tryin’ to talk all the time, but she didn’t give him a chance to say a word. Finally, she got so tickled, seein’ him swaller so fast, that she spilt a lot of hot coffee down his neck.

“‘Jerusalem!’ he yelled. ‘Woman, do you want to scald me to death?’ And with that he begun to cuss, and bluster about what he would do when he got loose. Tildy set the dishes on the table without sayin’ a word. Then she went to the front door, and called to little Johnnie Martin, in the next yard.

“‘Johnnie,’ she says, ‘is Brother Collins at home?’

“‘Yessum,’ says Johnnie.

“‘All right,’ says Tildy, and she went in and put on her bonnet and started out the front door.

“‘Where you goin’, Tildy?’ Hank asked.

“‘I’m goin’ after Brother Collins.’

“‘What for?’

“‘I want him to talk to you.’

“‘Me?’ says Hank. ‘I don’t want to talk to no preacher!’

“‘I don’t want you to talk to him,’ says Tildy. ‘I want him to talk to you,’ and she walked out the door. When Hank heard her slam the gate behind her, he hollered like the house was afire.

“‘Oh, Tildy!’ She come back to the door and looked in.

“‘Why, Tildy,’ says Hank, pitiful as a baby, ‘you don’t aim to make me the laughin’-stock of the settlement, do you?’

“‘I don’t see why you need to bother about that,’ says Tildy. ‘If it’s no disgrace to git drunk, and gamble, and fight, in a corner grocery, it’s no disgrace to talk to a minister of the gospel.’ She started out again, but Hank called her back.

“‘Hold on, Tildy; I’ll agree to anything you say, if you won’t call in the preacher.’

“‘What you goin’ to do about them circulars I got printed?’ she asked.

“‘Why, I’m goin’ down there and maul the life out of old Goatwhiskers for printin’ them things,’ says Hank. Tildy started out again, and he yelled after her to come back. Promised he wouldn’t say a word to him.

“‘What are you goin’ to say to the boys you had the fight with?’

“‘Fight!’ says Hank. ‘It wasn’t no fight. The whole crowd lit into me and mauled me most to death, and I hadn’t said a word.’

“‘I understand you knocked ’em all down with a cheer, if that’s any satisfaction to you,’ says Tildy.

“‘All right, then,’ says Hank, ‘I’m willin’ to call it square, if they are.’

“‘Not goin’ to say a word to nobody about nothin’?’ she asked.

“‘Not a word,’ says he.

“‘Not goin’ to drink any more?’

“‘Not a drop, Tildy. Now, come on and cut this devilish thing off. I feel like I’ll die if it stays on me another minute.’ Tildy couldn’t think of nothin’ more he could promise, so finally she cut the bastin’ threads and let him loose. Well, sir, he didn’t say a word out of the way to them boys that beat ’em up, and he wouldn’t even take a few drinks to taper off, and it’s my opinion,” said old Eli, solemnly, “that he wouldn’t drink a drop of liquor, right now, if he was bit by a snake.”

They were driving into Jonesboro when the old man finished his story, and the big town clock struck four.

“Great guns!” cried Hodges in amazement, “it’s four o’clock!”

“Egzackly,” said Eli, with an air of innocent triumph. “I’ve drove over this road so often, I can time the trip to a minute. You said you wanted to be here egzackly at four o’clock—”

“Four devils!” Hodges yelled. “I said four hours! I’m two hours late. I’ll have to stay in this jay town a whole day!”

“My, my!” exclaimed old Eli. “Somebody’s made a terrible mistake. I do hope I wasn’t in no way to blame for it. Now, if you’d just mentioned that you was behind time, I could easy have put them grays through two hours earlier.”

“Oh, it’s my fault, I guess,” said Hodges, when his wrath had subsided. “I told old Elrod, but I ought to have told you, too. Then I rode along for four mortal hours sucking that bottle of foolkiller, and didn’t have sense enough to look at my watch once. Well, well! I’ll just charge it up to Hodges, and see it don’t happen again.”

Though Eli was not to blame, he was inconsolable, till Hodges gave him a dollar at parting. Tears of gratitude stood in the old man’s eyes.

“Good-bye, Stranger,” he said. “I do hope old man Elrod won’t find out about you bein’ late. He’d be powerful pestered to know you’d been disappointed. Good-bye.” And as he drove away, he muttered to himself: “Darn the feller! I think he might have offered to fill my bottle.”

The modern lecturer is the alarm clock of civilization wound up to go off with a whiz and a bang at any hour in the evening, according to the whims of his audience. A Northern audience wants to be aroused at 8 P.M. sharp, a Southern audience anywhere between 8.30 P.M. and daylight, A.M. But some time in the night he is sure to wake the natives, for he is a traveling gesture tied to a bell clapper and

THE MAN AND THE MATINEE BY SYBIL STEWART

54

There was a ring at the door, a light tripping of feet up the stairs, a swish of skirts in the hall, then a quick little tap at Mabel’s door.

Mabel had looked up from her book at the first of these sounds with the eager interest an invalid must feel in any interruption to the long day. At each succeeding sound her face grew brighter until she cried a cordial, “Come in,” and, as the door flew open, added, “There, I knew it was you and I’m awfully glad. You are as good as a breath of the blessed out-doors.” And she kissed the newcomer’s glowing cheeks.

There was a general breeziness about Cora that justified Mabel’s words. She sailed into the room, veils fluttering and skirts rustling, kissed her friend swiftly and settled upon the arm of her chair like a bird on a bough.

“But, Angel of Peace, there’s nothing blessed about me. I’m in another scrape.” She opened her big eyes impressively upon her audience. The audience sat up in her chair and asked with interest, “What disagreeable thing has happened now?”

“Oh, I didn’t say it was disagreeable, did I? It wasn’t at all; at least it is not. Quite otherwise, really.”

“Well, Cora, you are the only person I know who can get into a dreadful scrape and have a lovely time there.”

“That’s because I feel so much at home. And then, some way, even if the scrape is personally painful I can enjoy its picturesqueness objectively, you know. That’s the way with this one. Personally it was very painful to be placed in such a position, especially with such people, you know.”

“No, I don’t know, but I’m dying to. I only live to hear your adventures. I never could have stood this sprained ankle if you had not come in to refresh me with your hairbreadth escapes. You are a perfect Sinbad.”

“Now you need not poke fun at me. Queer things do happen to me and I thought you liked to hear about them.”

“Why, I do, I do. I was just telling you how I liked it.”

“Well, you may thank your poor little ankle for preventing you from sharing this adventure, because if you had been able to walk I should have invited you to go to the Valley of Diamonds with me, and then I wonder what you would have done with that conscience of yours?”

“What are you talking about? I suppose you have been entering Tiffany’s vaults?”

“Not exactly—and it wasn’t a Valley of Diamonds, but a Valley of Matinee Tickets, which is quite as remarkable as anything Sinbad saw.”

“Don’t prelude so much. I am harrowed to the last degree.”

“I’ll tell you the whole story.” Cora shook her broad hat back over her tawny hair, dropped down upon a stool and clasped her hands about her knees. Mabel settled herself in the Morris chair with a sigh of satisfaction and anticipation.

“Well, you know this is the 28th of the month. That means I’ve been absolutely broke for a week.”

Mabel accepted this axiom and told her to go on and not be slangy.

“And doubtless you know too that ‘The Golden Quest’ has been running all week at Howards?

“I should think I did know it. I’ve been reading the papers every morning and eating my heart out in bitterness and tears. I’d give my eyes to see that third act. They do say she has the most gorgeous costumes in America, and her voice—”

“Oh, yes, her voice, but lots of people have voices. Not many of us have quarts of diamonds, and I was wild to see those, and I hadn’t a cent except the quarter Uncle Joe gave me when I had my first tooth pulled. That always stands between me and starvation and I like to keep it there; besides, the tickets were two dollars. I could not go to Daddy after the affair of The Gold Buckles, and I felt a certain delicacy in approaching the cook on the subject. I was thinking of selling my new shoes when Laura’s note came saying six of us were to lunch with her Saturday. I thought that would make me forget myself during the worst time and keep me from pawning my gold handled umbrella.

“Saturday came and I rode down to Laura’s, trying to avoid the posters. It was an awfully nice luncheon and Geraldine wore her new green. Beautiful dress but it makes her look bunchy. Well, any way we had just gotten to mushroom timbales—don’t you love timbales? I wonder how they make them—. Well, we were at timbales when the ’phone rang and the maid said someone wanted me. It was Mary, our cook, and she said a messenger boy had just brought some theater tickets and should she send them to me or was I coming back before the matinee. My heart leaped within me, but I calmed myself by considering that they were probably tickets for Stereopticon Views of Palestine, for Aunt Myra is always sending me that kind of thing. So I managed to contain myself sufficiently to ask details. My dear, can you imagine the tumult and wild joy raised in my bosom when Mary read over the tickets and found they were for ‘The Golden Quest’ and there were six of them? I told her to send them to Laura’s and then I tore back to the dining room. You should have heard the shrieks of jubilation. We beat the table with our forks and sang the opening chorus. Six tickets and six girls and all in our happy clothes, the matinee only an hour off and they had all wanted to see it as much as I. When the first wild burst was over, it occurred to me to wonder where the tickets came from. At first they seemed a direct answer to prayer, but I began to think there must be a more palpable source. It wasn’t Daddy. He had not forgiven me enough yet to be so horribly generous. And the only other person was Aunt Myra and she is old fashioned and Presbyterian.”

“What has that to do with it, Cora?”

“Why, it means she regards me as a raging heathen and never shows me any consideration as her niece, but a great deal of attention as a soul to be saved. She sends me little books and a weekly paper, and when a missionary visits her house she invites me over. She hopes to show me the beauties of a Higher Life, but it only sets me against Presbyterianism, because all the missionaries make noises with their soup and it must be awful to belong to a church like that.”

“Cora, you are a disgrace to a civilized family. And besides, it may after all have been your aunt that sent the tickets, hoping to win you through kindness.”

“Mabel, you rave! Aunt Myra regards the theater as the clearest manifestation of the Evil One on earth, and her saintly little Caddie is not allowed to look at a poster. A nephew is visiting them now, and I dare say they are taking him to the midweek lectures on Genesis in the Light of Arabian Topography. I know Aunt hopes to win him to her church, as he has heaps of money and they need a new chapel. As he belongs to her side of the family I suppose he trots along, and perhaps leads the experience meeting. I should not wonder if he wears a lawn tie in the morning,—that is a special mark of sanctity, you know.”

“Cora, I refuse to listen to you. You don’t know a thing about real church life, so leave it alone and go back to your matinee.”

“With gleesome heart, my dear. After I had cut Aunt Myra off my list of possible donors I was absolutely at a loss, and we girls just decided to believe in fairy godmothers, when the boy came with the tickets. How we gloated over that little envelope. I pulled them out, and Mabel—they were box-seats—six seats, box-seats to “The Golden Quest.” Talk about your Valley of Diamonds! We were all dazed and felt as if we were enchanted. It is such a beautiful thing to have your dreams come true in that miraculous way, though to be sure I had no more dreamed of box-seats than I had dreamed of the Koh-i-nor in my new hat. We wondered more than ever, and took turns looking at the tickets for some revealing clue. They were good bona-fide tickets, but that was all. There was no card, no name, no hint; even the envelope was the theater one with just the address scribbled over the ads. on the outside.

“Well, we didn’t care and scrambled into our things and hied us to the theater, while the girls chanted my praises and sang pæans of rejoicing and gratitude. The theater was full when we arrived and everybody was in her most gorgeous things, and we were the haughtiest ever when the usher showed us to our box. Our box! Why, we acted as if we’d always had it for the season. There was a little delay, for some reason, that gave me time to think. The mystery of the tickets puzzled me and was beginning to worry me a little, too. What if there was some mistake and I had rushed into all this with my usual mistaken velocity! The responsibility made me feel a little queer, Mabel, honestly. If it had not been such a frightfully extravagant thing I wouldn’t have thought so much of it. But not many people send thirty dollar tickets around promiscuously among the deserving poor. The girls were as gay as larks, but I couldn’t let myself go some way. They could afford to be gay. They were simply guests, but I,—whose guest was I? It was sort of getting on my nerves when a little diversion came. Six dashing young men came into the theater and stood talking to the usher. They were quite different from the men about here and created a sensation. Any one could see they were strangers and we all wondered where they got their beautiful clothes. One seemed to be the head of the party and he was having quite a lengthy consultation with the usher, so we had a good look at them. We were staring with all our eyes, I dare say, when suddenly that first young man lifted his head from talking to the usher and looked straight into our box—looked not casually and accidentally but deliberately and prolongedly, Mabel, and I began to feel my hat was wrong when he turned back to the usher and shook his head decidedly. Then the usher looked at us and my heart jumped right up into my new stock. It was something about those awful tickets and perhaps there was something the matter and they would come and turn us out of the box. What would the girls do to me and what would the people think and who was that man and who was responsible for the tickets? I was beginning to wish I had never heard of “The Golden Quest” and was sure I couldn’t stand it till the third act, when the usher and the man turned around and went out to the box office. Something was going to happen. What could I do? Here were the five girls at the heights of bliss and anticipation, and here was I in the depths of anxious misery, and there were the five young men staring coolly around, waiting for their friend, and there was the man out at the box office probably demanding that I be seized and turned with my friends into the streets. But what could I do? It wasn’t my fault, for the tickets had been sent to me, surely. Perhaps they had been stolen and sent to me as a revenge from some inhuman enemy. I thought of everything, Mabel, and then the man came back, collected his friends and the whole party with their usher at their head, came down the side aisle toward our box. I had just time to arrange my sad story and be thankful I had on my best hat when they reached the curtains of our box. I started up, but, Mabel, they went right on to the next box and sat down. I breathed again, but not very freely, for surely that man knew something about our box, or was my guilty conscience causing me hallucinations? Yet why guilty? What had I done? Apparently the worst was over now, but I was not at ease and thought the incident might at any moment repeat itself with different results. There was a blare of orchestra and the curtain went up; after one hurried glance at the stage I glued my eye to the door again. Fifteen minutes passed and nothing happened and so I turned around—turned to look into the interested eyes of the man in the other box. Perhaps he was a detective and watching me, but he didn’t look a bit like that, though he had quite a different look from the one a man ordinarily gives a girl in a pretty hat. My hat was very pretty—you remember the big black one—but it didn’t justify, the inquiring interest with which he regarded me. Yet he did not stare. Really he did not, Mabel, but was very decent. I looked at the stage now but sort of felt him there some way, and had a little feeling about the door, too, so I wasn’t very comfortable. When the curtain went down on the first act I expected to have a swarm of irate claimants for the box swoop down upon me, but not a soul appeared, and surely no one would come after that. I took the little envelope out of my bag and looked at it again. Nothing but 1229 Second on it—in pencil—. That was our number all right. Then something struck me. It was just 1229 Second, and ours is 1229 West Second. But after all that could make little difference, as heaps of our things come out marked that way and there is rarely a mistake, as Aunt Myra’s, by some freak of fate, is 1229 East Second, and everybody knows us both and knows which is which. The only accident that ever happened was that awful thing about Mme. Durant and the bridesmaid’s hat—you remember that? That incident made me notice the address, but I could not explain the mystery that way, for no theater tickets like these could ever have been sent to Aunt Myra’s respectable door. These were the things I pondered and puzzled while the play went merrily on. I didn’t see or hear much of it and I don’t believe that man in the box saw much more. He seemed to be pondering something, too.

“At last the thing was over and the crowd trooped out—among them the five young men and the man. You would have called him the man, too, Mabel, for he was quite different from the rest. Such shoulders and such a carriage! He held his head as if he were commanding an army or a yacht. Yet when we passed them in the corridor outside the box he bowed with such respectful humility. He was awfully impressive, but I was too much troubled to consider him long.

“The girls were wild with enthusiasm, so I suppose the play was really good. Anyway the girls were so full of admiration and adjectives that it was very easy to slip away from them a minute. I stepped to the box office and inquired about those tickets. The man was very polite, but didn’t know anything except that they had been ordered by ’phone to be sent to that address. They had been sent, but the man who said he had ordered them arrived shortly before the matinee and said they had not come. The usher assured him they must have been delivered for they had been presented just a few minutes before, and he showed the man the box. Whereupon the man paid for the tickets and procured another box. The man in the box office was very calm about it as he had his money, but I wasn’t. I told him I had gotten the tickets by mistake and must pay for them. He said he had been paid. I tried to show him I must pay, but he seemed to think me very foolish and said if I paid anyone I must pay the man who bought the tickets. I said that was what I wanted to do, but couldn’t he do it for me. He said he couldn’t as he had no idea who the man was or where he could be found. But if I could get the address he would gladly forward the money through the theater. He had begun to look as if he thought it a joke, so I had to be satisfied with that and went back to the girls.”

“But, Cora, what would you have done if he had said, ‘Oh, yes; Mr. Z. is one of our regular patrons. If you will give me the money I’ll give you a receipt and reimburse him.’ You didn’t have your chatelaine full of bills, did you? I suppose you would have passed your gold handled umbrella through the window and given that to the man as a token of your grateful esteem.”

“I haven’t the remotest idea what I would have done if he had asked for the money. As it was, I became from that hour a man-hunter. It has its fascinations as a pastime but is discouraging in its results. My method has its limitations. My only hope is that he can’t escape the girls long and I’ll soon hear of him again. I’m praying I may hear of him before I meet him face to face. Wouldn’t it be ghastly, Mabel, if at a crush some time my hostess should suddenly confront me with this man—and he would cry, ‘This is the young person who defrauded me of thirty dollars worth of matinee tickets?’ Only I know he would never denounce me openly. He would just wither me with silent scorn. Yet he didn’t look withering Saturday. Why on earth didn’t he give me a chance to straighten things out then and there?”

“Yes, it would have been so much more comfortable if he had demanded an explanation as the curtain went down and your guests turned to thank you. No, Cora, I think he did the only thing to do and did it beautifully. His effacement of himself shows he has a heart of gold. Most men would have left some chance to be thanked, any way. Still, it is embarrassing for you. However, I would not look too hard for him till my next allowance came. Your father would never understand this delicate situation.”

“Father! Heavens, no! Not a soul knows but you and the box office man, and I know you understand, don’t you, dear? Isn’t it awful—but isn’t it interesting? I wish you could have seen the man. And I do wish your ankle was well enough to permit of your going about with me, for I know I shall faint when I see him again.”

Cora glanced at her absurd little watch, and jumped to her feet. “Goodness, nearly five, and I’m due at Aunt Myra’s for dinner at seven. It is to meet that nephew of hers and a missionary or two, probably. I hate to waste the time, because if I were somewhere else I might get a clue to my man.”

“So you haven’t met the nephew yet?”

“No, indeed; Aunt wanted to give Caddie a good chance at him first, because she wants Caddie to have what is left after he builds the chapel. As if I would look at the solemn prig.”

“How do you know he is a prig?”

“Because Aunt Myra likes him. Caddie won’t look at him, either, though, because her eyes are full of that downy little theologue, and all Aunt Myra’s talk against worldliness is going to rebound upon her own head. Is that a mixed metaphor? Anyway, Caddie has set her affections on things above and wouldn’t look twice at a million. Good-bye, dear. This burst of confidence has eased my nerves wonderfully, and I’ll come again the instant I find a clue and tell you all about it. You are the only relative I have that does not think me shocking, and I love you—good-bye.” An airy kiss and she was gone, leaving a faint suggestion of violets behind her fluttering veils.

It was half past nine the next morning and Mabel was having coffee and rolls in bed when in rushed Cora, radiant, glowing, and evidently bursting with news.

Mabel rose on her elbow.

“Cora, you have found him!”

Cora settled herself in a fluffy pink heap on the foot of the bed.

“Now, it’s not fair unless you let me tell you the whole affair just as it happened.”

“All right, but do hurry.”

“Well,” began Cora, then paused long enough to remove her hat carefully, toss it beside her on the bed, and pat her little fingers over the most obstreperously crinkly waves around her face. “Well,” she said, “when I got home last night I began right away to dress for Aunt Myra’s. Daddy sent word to tell her he couldn’t come because a business friend had just arrived. Daddy’s friends always arrive just about an hour before Aunt Myra’s dinners. I think he keeps a corps of them just for such emergencies. Then I was nearly late trying to decide whether I’d wear that black chiffon that I can’t afford to throw away just yet, or my sweet new pale green and make the missionaries dream of other worlds than theirs. I finally decided on the green because the other fastens in the back and Jane had a terrible toothache. So I wore the green, and of course that horrid little opal pin Aunt Myra gave me, but it didn’t show much.

“Aunt received me with her usual sanctimonious frigidity and inquired after my health. We sat in stony silence for a few minutes. Caddie was sitting by the window but there were no missionaries about. Finally the clock struck seven. We had waited only three minutes but I was already frozen to my chair. When the clock struck Aunt Myra turned to Caddie and said:

“‘Where is your cousin Robert?’

I should have asked if I were my cousin’s keeper, but Caddie is meek and said he had been detained down town and was dressing, she thought.

“‘Your cousin seems to have no regard for a regular family life,’ said Aunt accusingly, and stalked out, evidently to drag the culprit to his dinner. I knew by the way she shoved the relationship off on Caddie that she didn’t approve of her nephew, and so I thought he might prove a possible person, after all.

“The minute Aunt had closed the door after her Caddie rushed over to me and began to whisper. She is a sweet little thing, but suppressed beyond belief.

“‘Oh, Cousin Cora,’ she said, ‘I have been dying to tell some one and you will be just the one to understand. It is the most exciting thing! Poor Cousin Robert isn’t a bit like us and he has a dreadful time with Mamma. He hasn’t been brought up in our way, but lives in New York in such a worldly family, and he doesn’t think anything of dancing and the theater, and he even plays cards. He seems very nice, though, and as long as that is the way he was taught I don’t know that he is to blame. But Mamma preaches at him all the time and he escapes whenever he can politely, because he is always considerate, even when Mamma is the worst. He has been lovely to me and I told him all about Clifford and he is going to help us. Well, he told me his troubles, too. A lot of his college friends came through here the other day and he couldn’t invite them to the house, because he knew Mamma wouldn’t approve of them, so he gave a little lunch down town somewhere and invited them to go to some play. He ’phoned for the tickets early in the morning and they were to come here, but they didn’t come, so he said he would get them at the theater. Well, Cora, he got home just in time for dinner and was so excited, and afterwards he took me into the library and told me all about it. There was some mistake about the tickets for they had been used already and the people were in the box—,’ Mabel, it would sound awfully silly for me to tell you all she said he said.”

“Go on,” said Mabel, sternly; “I must hear all.”

“Well, Caddie said he said it was the mistake of his life for it showed him the sweetest girl in the world. And then she told me a lot of stuff like that and wound up by asking me if I’d help her find the girl for him, because he had vowed he would spend the rest of his life looking, if necessary, and if she helped him he would see that Clifford had the new chapel. She was explaining it all to me when in came her Cousin Robert. He stopped short, and I was the color of that cushion. Caddie didn’t notice, but introduced us and told Mr. Page that she was sure I could help him in his search, as the girl was probably in my set. He looked hard at me and said he thought I might be able to help him—and, Mabel, I was awfully glad I had on that green. And Caddie said, ‘Tell Cousin Cora what the girl was like, Robert,’—and Mabel, that man had the brazen effrontery to do it. He looked me straight in the eye and told me what he thought of my hair and eyes and nose and even my clothes. And Aunt Myra came in and was displeased. Caddie had told her something of the matinee experience, and Aunt said severely, ‘Are you still discussing that impudent creature at the theater? I should think it would have been enough to have seen her at such a place without her being there on stolen tickets!’ So we dropped the matinee girl, to my infinite relief. When I rose to go home Mr. Page insisted upon accompanying me and told Aunt Myra he hoped to interest me in the plans for the chapel. And on the way home, Mabel, he didn’t allude to the matinee and I hated to drag it in. He kept talking about that chapel and said he wanted me to help him with the architect’s plans, as he wished my opinion on it because I might have to go there some time. He expected to. I suppose he was just talking to kill time. He said he was nearly dead from an excess of virtue that came from staying with Aunt Myra a week, and wouldn’t I please, as one heathen to another, ask him to tea? So he is coming this afternoon, Mabel. What do you think of it all, anyway?”

“I think it is beautiful and just what I always expected, Cora, and I shall order my hat of Mme. Durant.”

“O, you horrid thing!” and Cora buried her rosy face in the counterpane.

THE OLD ORDER PASSETH.

SOURCES OF SOUTHERN WEALTH.

In the undeveloped resources of the South lie dormant the possibilities of fortune that “far surpass the wealth of Ormus or of Ind.” For more than two centuries the incomparable climate and soil of this section have commanded the admiration of the world; and during this period fortunes were amassed purely by agriculture, mainly in the last century by cotton, and were handed down from father to son, until the corner stone of the industrial system was wrenched loose by a fratricidal war, and anarchy for a time supervened. As Henry Watterson pithily puts it: “The whole story of the South may be summed up in a sentence: She was rich, and she lost her riches; she was poor and in bondage; she was set free, and she had to go to work; she went to work, and she is richer than ever before.”

Yet what a change from the happy years of ante-bellum prosperity, when the South was by far the wealthiest section of the country, to the desolation, the poverty and the criminal oppression of reconstruction times! After four years of the most sanguinary strife in the history of the world the Southern soldier took up the battle of existence and of maintenance and of rehabilitation. Let Henry W. Grady tell the situation:

“What does he find when, having followed the battle-stained cross against overwhelming odds, dreading death not half so much as surrender, he reaches the home he left prosperous and beautiful? He finds his house in ruins, his farm devastated, his slaves free, his stock killed, his barn empty, his trade destroyed, his money worthless; his social system, feudal in its magnificence, swept away; his people without law or legal status; his comrades slain, and the burdens of others heavy on his shoulders. Crushed by defeat, his very traditions gone; without money, credit, employment, material training; and besides all this, confronted with the gravest problem that ever met human intelligence—the establishing of a status for the vast body of his liberated slaves.

“What does he do—this hero in gray with a heart of gold? Does he sit down in sullenness and despair? Not for a day. Surely God, who had stripped him of his prosperity, inspired him in his adversity. As ruin was never before so overwhelming, never was restoration swifter. The soldier stepped from the trenches into the furrow; horses that had charged Federal guns marched before the plow, and fields that ran red with human blood in April were green with the harvest in June; women reared in luxury cut up their dresses and made breeches for their husbands, and, with a patience and heroism that fit women always as a garment, gave their hands to work.”

None but people whose civilization has never had its equal in chivalric power and grace, whose ability of mind and strength of heart were derived from the purest Anglo-Saxon blood, could have restored their fortune and excelled the material welfare of its past as have the people of the South within the short expanse of forty years.

In its struggles for advancement the South has known, and still knows, two problems:

First, its duty to an inferior, dependent race; and second, its duty to industrial development.

In its conscious and its unconscious evolution and in its conscious and its unconscious solutions of these problems the South has been favored by certain material and climatic advantages:

It possesses by nature the fairest and richest domain on the face of the earth. Here we find a vast stock of the materials proper for the art and ingenuity of man to work upon; treasures of immense worth, concealed from the ignorant aboriginal red man, unknown or neglected by the planter, and utilized only within the last thirty years. Now the rocks are disclosing their hidden gems; huge mountains of iron and coal and limestone, of lead and zinc and marble and phosphate, are pouring forth vast stores; and more than one-half the timber wealth of the entire country is found within the Southern states conserved in virgin forests and reserved for the present and for the coming generations. The South produces two-thirds of the cotton of the world. The water power is enormous and perennial, and the commercial situation relative to the world is unequalled. Of the four essentials to all industries, therefore, iron, wood, cotton and motive power, the South is abundantly blessed. Add to these a perfect climate and a fertile soil which yields every product of the temperate zone, and who shall deny to the South the primacy in the years to come?

The remarkable results effected in the South since the war between the States have been attained principally in the last twenty-five years. Statistics, which are often dry and uninteresting, in this case prove the argument most conclusively.

The wages paid to factory hands in the South, which in 1880 were $75,900,000, had risen to $249,413,150 in 1900, and are now $350,000,000 annually.

The capital invested in manufacturing in the South in 1880 was $257,000,000; in 1900, $1,153,002,368, and now $1,500,000,000, annually, and rapidly increasing.

The value of its manufactured products in 1880 was $457,400,000; in 1900, $1,463,643,177, and now $2,000,000,000.

In the last twenty-five years the increases of other important products were:

Pig iron from 397,000 tons to 3,000,000 tons.

Coal from 6,000,000 tons to 45,000,000 tons.

Phosphate (since 1890), from 750,000 tons to 3,000,000 tons.

Railroad mileage, from 20,600 miles to 55,000 miles.

Cotton, from 5,757,397 bales to 12,162,000 bales.

The grain crop (corn, wheat, oats and rye), from 431,000,000 bushels to 791,000,000 bushels.

These facts are impressive, convincing and full of hope for the future.

The value of the staple crops—corn, wheat, oats, Irish potatoes, rye and hay—in 1904 was $542,121,000; the value of the other farm crops was $550,000,000; and the value of the cotton not less than $515,000,000, besides the cotton seed, amounting to $50,000,000 more. All this amounts to an aggregate sum of $3,657,121,000, earned annually by the South from the sources indicated, not including the lumber and other raw material, which, amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars, leave the South annually for all the parts of the habitable globe.

No wonder the South is prosperous! And an indubitable proof of its prosperity lies in its increase in the assessed valuation of its property. This increase since 1900 amounts to $1,000,000,000 for the fourteen states of the South. This is partly due to raised assessments, partly to increased prices for its products, but mainly to an increase of customary products and to new products. The increase in the wealth of the South, however, has been steady for the last twenty years, and in that time has aggregated more than $2,300,000,000.

What now is the magic spell which has wrought this abundant prosperity, the sesame by the pronouncing of which is opened the secret hiding place of Southern wealth? Diversification is the word—diversification of crops and diversification of manufacturing and diversification of all industries. Cotton, though a puissant monarch, seated upon a throne, from which for reasons of perfect adaptability of soil and climate he can never be deposed, is not the only king who conducts a beneficent sway for the complex needs of an enterprising people.

The forest king rears his august head and stretches out his hands cornucopia-like from the Potomac to the Rio Grande and from the Gulf to the Ohio, inviting capital and effort to his virgin domains, which, if properly protected, will in the future be a source of perpetual and inestimable wealth; and which even now furnish to the South approximately $400,000,000 per annum.

Phosphate is another king whose sway within his narrow domain is as absolute as is that of cotton. The United States furnishes more than half the phosphate rock of the world, and of this the South supplies all but an inconsiderable quantity. This product, of vast consequences to the agriculture of this section, is a comparatively recent discovery. The active development of phosphate mining commenced in South Carolina in 1868; it was greatly stimulated by the discovery of large deposits in Florida in 1888, and has been attaining greater and ever greater proportions since the exploitation of the immense bodies of rich rock in Middle Tennessee.

And of like importance to cotton and phosphate is that modern industrial triumvirate, coal, iron ore and limestone. These essential elements in the production of pig iron are found in close juxtaposition in thousands of localities from Birmingham, Ala., to West Virginia. In the latter named state are twenty thousand square miles of coal; in Tennessee five thousand; in Alabama still more, besides the smaller fields of Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia and Texas.

A few years ago Henry Watterson was criticised as visionary for his assertion that pig iron, which was then selling at Pittsburg at $20 to $25 per ton, could be profitably produced in the South at $10 per ton. Yet it has been sold on the market at Birmingham and other points at $7 per ton. This is rendered possible by the fact that two tons of iron ore, two tons of coal and one ton of limestone can be bought in the ground for an average of twenty cents a ton, or $1.00 for the whole. And the consequence is that Southern iron is offered in the English markets and on the Continent of Europe in competition with the whole world.

Besides the elements of wealth of prime importance, which have heretofore been mentioned, there are many others, the aggregate of which contributes materially to the riches of the South, such as cotton-seed, tobacco, rice, leather, fruits, vegetables, cattle, wool, fine horses and other live stock. But when all is said it is manufacturing which produces most wealth; it is manufacturing which the South most needs, and it is manufacturing which offers in the South a most attractive avenue for investment. Textiles should accompany and follow the production of cotton and wool. Steel should be made from pig iron and machinery from both. Fertilizers should be manufactured in close proximity to the phosphate rock; and furniture and fine finishing in contiguity to the forests.

In all these directions the South has done and is doing much. Twenty-five years ago Judge Kelley of Pennsylvania, “Pig Iron” Kelley, predicted the coming power of the South in industrial pursuits, and said, “The development of the South means the enrichment of the nation.” What though a cotton mill remove from New England to that region of the South which produces the staple; what though a furniture factory from Michigan seek the incomparable forests of the South, or a boot and shoe factory from any other section depart to the localities abounding in hides and tanning bark; their places will be taken by other industries, conducted by other men with new capital.

And the South has another source of wealth which has hitherto been unsuspected, one which means additional annual income by the hundreds of millions of dollars; one which represents a new industry in the economy of the world, and a new source of supply for an ever-increasing demand. It is the production of sugar from the stalk of the common maize or Indian corn. The inherent interest in such a surprising announcement and the far-reaching effects of the industry primarily upon the fortunes and the commerce of the South and secondarily upon those of the world, warrant, if they do not demand, a brief account of a discovery which means a new departure in several different directions:

Several years ago Prof. F. L. Stewart, the eminent scientist of Murrysville, Pa., discovered that, if the immature ears of corn be removed at nearly the roasting ear period, a physiological change then takes place in the plant. Its life is greatly prolonged and the vigor which was previously expended toward the maturing of the grain is thereafter directed toward the production of sugar, as certainly, as uniformly, and to as great an extent as is the case of the ripening sugar cane. As a consequence from twelve to fifteen per cent of sugar is then contained in the stalk, instead of the five or six per cent which it ordinarily possesses; and the yield is from 140 to 200 pounds of sugar to the ton, while each acre will produce from twelve to seventeen tons of trimmed stalks. And the cost of the production of sugar by the Stewart processes is only one and a half cents per pound, as against two and one-fourth cents from sugar cane and three cents from sugar beets.

And this is not all; the by-products are as valuable as the sugar. These are paper pulp, cellulose, fine charcoal, stock feed and preparations of value in the arts and sciences.

Here is food for thought indeed! How its application to the South enlarges, for it is the South which is destined to be the main beneficiary of this astounding discovery. Sugar cane cannot be grown successfully farther north than thirty degrees of latitude; the sugar beet cannot be grown successfully farther south than forty degrees of latitude. This leaves a broad strip of ten degrees of latitude, mainly in the South, in which sugar from cornstalks can be and will be produced in enormous quantities. The North cannot share in the profits of this industry, because its season is too short for the maturing of the sugar in the juice.

The effect of this industry will be a revolution in the raising of corn in the Southern states.

And what of the future of the South in its dealings with the countries of Central America and of South America? But a few miles of railroad are now needed to unite the two American continents, and but a few miles of canal will cleave them in twain—union and disunion in commercial harmony. Then will the South come into its own in the advantages of foreign commerce which will not be restricted to its trade with the western hemisphere. The Eastern and the Southern nations need everything that we produce. We need nearly everything that they produce, and in the ensuing reciprocity of the new order of things many indirections of the present laws of commerce shall be straightened.

And yet—shall it be said?—there are those who fear that, in the hurrying strife for wealth, the sterling qualities which characterized the old regime may become atrophied, if not entirely lost. Such fears are futile and unfounded. The present generation is not so immersed in its progress that it is unmindful of the patriotism and example of its forbears; it knows that the hope of the nation in former times rested in the South; that its leaders were the bearers of the ark of the covenant and the puissant directors of the policies of an entire country; to them and to their history, biography and traditions do the present leaders turn for inspiration toward the best achievement. And while industrial conditions have changed, the South needs her sons to-day as much as when she summoned them to the forum to maintain her political supremacy and when she called them to the field to maintain her honor. And they will never fail her.

SOCIETY OF THE FOREST. (A STORY FOR CHILDREN.) — At Mrs. Frog’s House. — At Mrs. Rabbit’s House. — Mrs. Frog Returns Home. — Everybody Who is Anybody. — Everybody Who Is Nobody. — Mrs. Rabbit’s Dining.

On the bank of a clear lake that lay near the edge of a great forest lived a family in a house all its own. This family consisted of Mr. Frog and Mrs. Frog and a number of Baby Frogs. They lived very happily. The books say that frogs are tadpoles at first, and the books are right; but this is another family of frogs, as you shall see.

In the rear of their house stretched a marsh in the shallow waters of which grew reeds, rushes, willows and water lilies. Here and there a bulging gnarled and knotty cypress knee raised its head above the water. Here and there rotted an old log, moss-covered and sodden. Here and there lay a block of wood left behind by the hewers, a tuft of grass or a mound of earth.

Mr. Frog and Mrs. Frog and all the Baby Frogs visited this marsh.

Mr. Frog and Mrs. Frog and all the Baby Frogs visited this marsh every night. They were fond of music and they gave nightly concerts. When the sun slipped down behind the distant pines and tamarisks, and when the stars came out to glisten in the heavens, the entire family left their home and sought the marsh.

Mr. Frog always swam out to a cypress knee that rose a few inches above the water. It was broad and flat and he seemed to like to lie on it.

Mrs. Frog used to sit on a log near by and all the Baby Frogs crowded around her and tried to cuddle up to her. There was not room for all, but the tiniest Baby Frog used to hop up on her back and lie there until it was time to go home.

One of the Baby Frogs never mingled with the rest but hid himself away in a tuft of grass. They said he was “odd.” Why he preferred the grass I cannot say. He was morose and taciturn and probably wanted to be by himself.

On dark nights the concert did not begin early. Mr. and Mrs. Frog and all the Baby Frogs remained quiet and watched Will-o’-the-Wisp flash his lamp about; or they listened to the cry of the witch-dog far out in the marsh.

But my story deals with the moonlight nights, and on moonlight nights the singing began early and lasted until midnight. Some people will tell you that frogs sing all night and they sometimes do; but only sometimes. These same people tell you that frogs croak, but I say they sing and you can understand and enjoy their music quite as much as some of the grand operas.

Mr. Frog usually began. He had a deep bass voice of which he was very proud and when he flung out a rich tremolo, every one else hushed. You could hear him ever so far up the lakeside, and Mr. Peckerwood said he heard him on the other side of the lake.

Mrs. Frog once had a well-trained contralto voice of which she was a trifle proud; but of late years she had so many babies to croon for that she got out of practice and could not sing as she once could. She knew how to sing and she knew she couldn’t sing. And this night she sang worse than usual—she seemed out of sorts.

The “odd” Frog who went away to himself sang whenever he wanted to and in the funniest way. He did not try to make music but just rattled like an alarm clock. They let him alone because he was “odd.”

Another little Frog tried to sing, but he couldn’t. You would have laughed, I am sure, to have heard him try. His voice sounded like a piccolo into which someone was blowing who did not know how to play.

Another Baby Frog had a splendid tenor voice, but he was always trying to sing as his papa sang. The result was that he injured his tenor voice without ever learning to sing bass. People very often harm themselves by trying to do what they cannot do and by leaving undone that which they can do.

The other singer was a Baby Frog with a beautiful soprano voice. And she sang, and sang her very best, whenever she was called on. Her singing was the talk of the whole neighborhood and, at night, when all the Baby Frogs were asleep, Mr. and Mrs. Frog used to talk of putting by something with which to send her abroad and have her voice cultivated. Whether they ever did so or not I cannot say.

The night of which I am telling you, Mr. Frog jumped into the water with a plunk and swam ashore, the rest following him. They returned home and Mrs. Frog soon had all the little Frogs tucked away in bed. Mrs. Frog was restless and nervous, for some reason. She would pick something off the dresser and lay it down again, mechanically. She would move a chair there, and in a moment set it elsewhere. She would fold her hands and sit down only to jump up in a few minutes and go hurriedly to do something quite unimportant.

Meantime Mr. Frog, who had been out, came stumbling in quite angry and demanded to know why the children had not brought in the kindling for the morning’s fire, saying that he should not be left everything to do. He did not notice the pained expression on Mrs. Frog’s face—people fail to see these things, sometimes—and he busied himself in closing up the house and fastening the doors and windows, after Mrs. Frog had shown him the kindling wood in the shadow of the ingle. Mrs. Frog retired, but Mr. Frog lay with his head in the doorway until daylight, and some say that he slept with one eye open. How any one found out I cannot tell, because Mr. Frog’s house was dark as pitch and only Mr. Owl could have seen; and Mr. Owl is too wise to tell anyone if he did. The reason Mr. Frog guarded the door is because Mr. Garter-snake lived in the neighborhood and Mr. Garter-snake is a prowler and likes to feast on Baby Frogs whenever he can find them. Mr. Garter-snake goes home at daylight and never ventures out unless it is going to rain, when he crosses the road in front of people to warn them to seek shelter. At daylight Mr. Frog turned in and slept until high noon. A bright fire was blazing on the hearth and Mrs. Frog was fixing breakfast, and the way she handled the skillets and spiders and sauce-pans, and at the same time urged the little Frogs to get ready for breakfast, was a caution.

Breakfast over and the things cleared up, Mrs. Frog was still restless. Sit still she could not. The Baby Frogs irritated her. She would go out and look about her in front of the door a moment, only to hurry back again for nothing. Her face was pale and her eyes shone unusually. Once she thought if she could scream it would do her great good. She was looking and acting strangely, but Mr. Frog did not notice anything. She announced her intention of going to visit Mrs. Rabbit who lived in the briar patch across the lake. Mr. Frog was a little surprised but made no objection, only observing that he hoped she would be home before sunset as he could do nothing with the Baby Frogs when they got sleepy; and that Mr. Moccasin-snake would be on the lookout for his supper as soon as it was dark.

Mrs. Frog put on her things and powdered her face. She looked at herself in the mirror a moment and then feverishly rushed to the bank and plunged in with a ker-plunk that could be heard a long distance. She kept deep under the water and would first swim this way and then that way; now to the right and then to the left, and she came to the surface a good distance from where she entered the water so that Mr. Moccasin-snake, if he had been on a log in the sun waiting for her, could not locate her. She looked back and saw Mrs. Turtle and Mr. Turtle asleep on a half-floating cottonwood stump, and then she struck out across the lake.

—put on her things and powdered her face.

She had not gone far when she began to feel better. Her nervousness and fever left her. She enjoyed a sense of freedom and liberty, and the cool, clear waters were as a health-giving and soothing anodyne to her. The sense of smothering and confinement which she found so oppressive at home had left her, and her spirit expanded and reveled in its new-found independence and she only regretted that Mr. Frog and the Baby Frogs were not with her to enjoy her raptures.

Arriving at the opposite bank, which she clambered up in no time, Mrs. Frog was feeling refreshed; she came to a road that fringed the lake, and, crossing this, she came to the briar patch. She went up and down the road, now entering one opening in the briar patch and then another, only to find that they were “blind” and that they led nowhere. One after another she entered these openings and had to come out again. She was about to give up the task and return home and she was soothing her disappointed feelings with the reflection that while she had not found Mrs. Rabbit and returned her call, she had enjoyed the outing immensely and had been benefited by the trip, when she saw a small opening nearly covered by hanging leaves. After some hesitation she entered this and found, to her great joy, that it was an arched pathway, well beaten by travel, which led to the home of Mrs. Rabbit. She followed this until she neared the house and saw Mrs. Rabbit standing in her front yard. Mrs. Frog saluted her cheerily but Mrs. Rabbit pretended that she was frightened and rushed in her house and hid in a heap in the darkest corner. Mrs. Frog followed her in, exclaiming: “La! Mrs. Rabbit, you need not hide. It is only Mrs. Frog that has come to see you and she is not going to hurt you.”

Mrs. Rabbit came out and said: “Why, Mrs. Frog, I am so glad to see you. I have been thinking of you and wondering if you never would come or if you had quite forgotten me. You are looking so well. I really believe, Mrs. Frog, that you are getting younger every day. I am sure you are getting better looking. How is Mr. Frog and the children—the dear things, how I would like to see them—how are they all?”

“The children,” replied Mrs. Frog, “are just as dear and sweet as they can live; and growing? You never saw the like! Why, they are perfect Jonah’s gourds, one would think, to see how they grow. And they are just as bad! Not mean, you know, but just mischievous and into everything. They run me wild, at times. But with all the trouble they give us, what would life be without them? Dear me! This would be a sad place without children. I needn’t ask how you are,” continued Mrs. Frog, “because your looks speak for themselves and tell the story of your good health and happiness. How are the dear children and Mr. Rabbit? I suppose he is like my old man, grumbledy and fussy, but just as good as he can be. I hope he will come in before I leave because I want to see him.”

There was an undertone of sadness in the forced mirth of Mrs. Rabbit’s voice as she replied: “The children are all well. Now and then one of them gets sick but it is only for a little while and it amounts to nothing. Mr. Rabbit has gone to mill with a turn of corn so that I may have flour to make bread for Sunday dinner. We usually have a good deal of company on Sunday.”

Mrs. Rabbit said this with the faintest suggestion of vanity, and then continued: “I am sure you must be famished after your long trip across the lake. Dear me, how I wish I could swim.” (Mrs. Rabbit was only too sincere in this.)

“Spread this mullein leaf over your dress to protect it. What a pretty dress you have and it is so becoming to you. I always did like green. Your appetite must provide the relish for what I have to set before you, as I have only scraps to offer and it would keep you too long waiting to cook something fresh. Somebody once said something in praise of a dinner of herbs; but for my part, I would prefer something else.”

Mrs. Frog spread the mullein leaf over her lap and fell to with much energy, but her thoughts were on her dress, of which she was very proud. “I am glad you like my dress,” she said. “I like it very much. I got it at a bargain, too, because I bought the goods by the quantity and made dresses of the same material for all children and had quite a lot left for mending. Children are so hard on clothes. This dress like all the rest does not fit me. I suppose I must have an awful figure”—Mrs. Frog said this, but did not mean a word of it; she was really proud of her fine figure—“and the dressmakers never fit me. It is all right around the neck but, you see, it is much too tight and binding across the bust and it is not full enough about the hips; while the waist is baggy—it is so loose, and,—dear me! if I wore corsets it would look like a meal sack on a hoe handle, on me.”

Mrs. Frog asked: “What is the news over this way?”

Mrs. Rabbit could not see the defects mentioned and concluded they were imaginary. People frequently differ in opinion.

The conversation turned to general topics and Mrs. Frog asked: “What is the news over this way?”

Said Mrs. Rabbit: “We never hear anything in this out-of-the-way place. It is so quiet. The overflow has caused some suffering and one of Mr. Fox’s sons, who had been stealing a farmer’s chickens in the clearing, was killed the other night and his skin is going to be worn by the farmer’s daughter next winter to keep her neck and shoulders warm. Mr. Bear’s brother, who had been killing and eating the farmer’s calves in the canebrake, was caught in a trap and shot dead. His skin is stretched on the door of the farmer’s barn and his body is hung up in the smokehouse near by. Mr. Woodpecker brought this news to us and warned us to be on our guard because there are so many hungry animals abroad. I am afraid to let the children out of my sight.”

“Well, well!” exclaimed Mrs. Frog. “That is too bad! But you know,” continued Mrs. Frog, glancing furtively at her reflection in the mirror and comparing her appearance with the appearance of Mrs. Rabbit, the result of which seemed to please her, “you know the way of the transgressor is hard. But really I must go as it is getting late.”

Mrs. Frog jumped up and made ready to take her departure, taking at the same time a mental inventory of everything in the house.

Mrs. Rabbit begged her to stay longer, assured her it was quite early and that she had plenty of time to reach home, and reproached her for hurrying off. Mrs. Rabbit accompanied Mrs. Frog to the end of the path through the briar patch and out into the opening on the bank of the lake.

“You must come and see me again, soon,” said Mrs. Rabbit. “Come early and spend the day and bring the children and I will keep mine home from school and we will have a nice time.”

“I am coming right soon. You cannot keep me away because I enjoy these visits hugely. I am sorry I did not see Mr. Rabbit and the dear children. Now, I will not take no. You must come to see me soon; you must.” Mrs. Frog was very emphatic.

“I’m coming before long,” said Mrs. Rabbit. “I’m coming, sure. I would have been over before this but I cannot take a short cut across the lake, like you, but must go around. And, since his son was killed, Mr. Fox lives up at this end of the lake, which makes me go the long way, around the lower end. And getting through the switch-cane is a job, I tell you. When I brought home the coffee I borrowed from you it took me until evening to make the trip. Mr. Bear has plenty of paths through the switch-cane, but they run all which ways and you are coming home half the time when you think you are going; but there is no way out of it unless you could fly over it as Mr. Jaybird does when he goes over to the deadening to tote down fire-wood for the devil on Friday mornings, and the Cotton-tail family cannot fly nor even jump like the Jackrabbit family. But I’ll manage to get there soon.”

They shook hands and kissed and Mrs. Frog plunged into the lake with a ker-plunk and swimming gaily out a distance turned around and said:

“You must come soon.”

“I will, and you must come soon.”

Mrs. Rabbit watched her guest depart and when out of hearing almost hissed: “Horrid thing! I don’t see what brings her here. I wish Mr. Moccasin-snake or Mr. Hawk would come along and catch her. She just came here to show that green dress because she knew neither myself nor my children have a stitch to wear but these old grey gowns trimmed with fur, and here it is the middle of summer.”

Mrs. Rabbit returned home just as Mr. Rabbit, who had been to mill with a turn of corn to have ground into flour to make bread for Sunday dinner, turned the corner.

Mrs. Frog swam rapidly over the glassy surface and she noticed that a golden pathway led from where she was to the sun that hung low in the west at the other end of the lake. This narrow pathway she could not cross, which alarmed her, as she fancied she was held fast by it, and could make no headway. The ripples caused by her efforts broke this golden mirror into many sparkling fragments; but, farther away, it lay undisturbed and placid. On looking at the trees the other side of her she saw that she was making excellent progress and that, instead of the sun’s pathway detaining her, it was following her. Her alarm gave way to gladness at being accompanied by such a splendid convoy—people sometimes fret over the slow progress which they think they are making, when, in reality, they are traveling very fast. She eluded Mr. Hawk and Mr. Moccasin-snake by diving when near the shore and then hurrying up the bank to the door of her house. On looking back she discovered that the sun’s bright pathway did not follow her but remained below on the lake—there are places into which things that we prize will not accompany us.

On entering she found confusion and disorder. The dishes on which the cold midday meal had been served lay spread on the table. The Baby Frogs were unkempt and disheveled and some of them were crying. The youngest one had cried itself to sleep. Mr. Frog was a sight to behold. He was almost frantic and went about tripping over bits of furniture and clothing that were strewn on the floor. His face was inflamed and he greeted Mrs. Frog hoarsely with: “What on earth kept you so late? I thought you would never come! These children have set me almost crazy with their mischief and carrying-on. I wouldn’t put in another day like this for anything. You shouldn’t inflict on me such misery when I told you to be back before night.”

Mrs. Frog’s cheeriness, gained from her outing, was something abated; but she set about to right matters and put things in order. She reminded Mr. Frog that the sun had not yet set; but he did not hear, or feigned not to hear her. He went out and hopped down the way to Mr. Toad’s house, where he supped and talked about the coming election of a new king of the forest, which was growing smaller every year. Mr. Lion and Mr. Tiger and Mr. Wolf had gone away and it was reported that Mr. Bear intended moving farther West because his only brother was dead. Mr. Wildcat would be a candidate and so would Mr. Fox, but neither was admired.

Meantime Mrs. Frog busied herself about the house. The Baby Frogs came out from their hiding places where they had been driven, in terror, by their angry father. She dried their tears and dressed them for supper which she prepared. Deftly she put everything in place and restored order and soon smiles and laughter returned to her little ones. She waited supper until late and then told the Baby Frogs to eat and be ready to go to the concert in the marsh when Mr. Frog came. She ate nothing. After supper she waited until far into the night and one by one the Baby Frogs fell asleep and were put to bed. When all was still and the fire burned low she sat holding her Baby Frog that was considered “odd” on her knee. She wondered if it were very wrong in her to go away and enjoy herself as she had done when so much unhappiness resulted. The thought came to her that Mr. Frog did not love her else he would have reflected that the crosses and trials borne by him so impatiently for one day were her usual portion and that she had to bear them every day in the year and meet him pleasantly and with smiles in the evening or be charged with ill-temper and making home unpleasant. She hugged her Baby Frog that was considered “odd” closer to her. It had taken cold, because left to sleep without covering while she was away. Then she blamed herself and resolved never to go away again and fell to crying and upbraiding herself.

Very late at night or early in the morning Mr. Frog came home in great spirits. His countenance was beaming. He had tarried late at Mrs. Toad’s house and halted on the way home to hear the songs of Mr. Whippoorwill and Mr. Mocking-bird, and to see the fine display given by Mr. Fire-fly. When he found Mrs. Frog crying he scowled at her and said gruffly: “What’s the matter now? If gadding about has this effect on you, you had better stay at home and not tire yourself out traipsing around seeing people who care nothing for you.” Then he flung himself down to sleep.

Mrs. Frog, with her Baby Frog that was considered “odd” held close in her arms, also went to bed where her tears flowed in secret. She did not know the meaning of those tears; they came unbidden. She fancied she had done something very wrong and she fell asleep only when exhaustion came.

It is most unfortunate that those who make sacrifices for others are never noticed or given credit for them and that they are cruelly reproached when those sacrifices halt, temporarily, or wholly cease. It is most unfortunate that we inflict pain on those we love, in our thoughtlessness, and that they suffer this pain without always knowing its source.

Mr. Squirrel and Mrs. Squirrel were invited and were glad to accept.

Mr. Peckerwood had been abroad early. Mrs. Rabbit was going to give a dining and had commissioned him to invite her friends. Mrs. Rabbit had baked up the entire turn of corn that Mr. Rabbit had taken to mill to provide for Sunday’s dinner. Mr. Squirrel and Mrs. Squirrel were invited and were glad to accept and promised to attend. Mr. and Mrs. Toad were invited but were compelled to decline. In discussing the matter among themselves Mrs. Toad observed: “We have lived long here in our own simple way and have never gone in society. It was a hard struggle for a time and no one thought of us or cared for us. We have always lived at peace with our neighbors and we now have their good will; but, because we have prospered, we have not changed our habits of life. We are old-fashioned and we would be out of place in grand society if it is as those who have been there picture it. Of course those present would be very kind to us and do what they could to make us feel at home; but their efforts would only make us sense the more keenly how unfitted we are for such company. We are unused to gaiety and fine things and we would be at a loss to know what to do and always fearful of making mistakes. We had better remain as we are and where we are. Here we know what to do and how to extract simple pleasure from our surroundings. There, everything would be new and strange and untoward.”

Mrs. Toad said these things not without an effort. In spite of her, she had a curiosity to see the fine sights in the upper and polite world.

Mr. Toad agreed with her and added: “They used to say every Toad, however ugly, had a precious jewel in its head. Of late years this has been disputed by the wise who call themselves scientists. You, my dear, at least, vindicate the truth of the older claim. You have in your head the precious jewel of sound sense and wise discretion.”

Mrs. Toad smiled and her desire to go vanished. The commendation of those we love is always conciliating and soothing.

Mr. and Mrs. Frog were invited and Mrs. Frog accepted for the entire family. She wanted Mr. Frog and the Baby Frogs to have a pleasant outing and she was flattered by the thought that green dresses and white stomachers would look uncommonly well. Frogs could not fly, but they could swim and dive, and that is something the birds of the air cannot do, she mused. She began at once preparing for the event.

Mr. Jaybird and Mrs. Jaybird were invited by mistake and they accepted instantly and Mrs. Jaybird flew over to Mrs. Magpie’s home and told her all about it and how she hated to go to the stupid function and be bored, as she knew she would be; but, as Everybody who is Anybody is to be there, she presumed she would have to attend. Mrs. Magpie received no invitation; neither did Mr. Magpie, but Mrs. Magpie flew about and told Everybody who is Nobody that she would not attend such a meeting or mix in with such company, and Everybody who is Nobody commended her discrimination and solemnly declared that she would not attend such a meeting or mix in such company.

Mr. Beaver and Mrs. Beaver were invited, and Mrs. Beaver said that she would attend to the R. S. V. P. later on. As soon as Mr. Peckerwood was out of sight she came out of her house and slapped the water with her flat tail, producing a sharp sound that could be heard a long distance. Mr. Beaver, who was cutting into convenient lengths a tree he had felled the day previous, so that he could roll it down the bank and use it in strengthening the dam in front of his house, plunged into the water and dived down to the door of his stronghold in alarm, thinking serious danger impended and that the noise was the usual warning given by the sentinels. He was met by Mrs. Beaver, whose face was lit up and smiling, and who exclaimed: “What do you think! We have been invited to a dining at Mrs. Rabbit’s and we are sure to have a good time. Everybody who is Anybody will be there, and I don’t think we will have to take a back seat for any of them. It is rather warm for furs, but it is late in the season, and—furs are always furs.”

Mrs. Beaver was radiant and enthusiastic and she looked proudly at her sleek coat, from which the water had almost disappeared.

Mr. Beaver looked at her for a while before he spoke, loth to lessen the pleasure she found in anticipating so great an event, and then he kindly but firmly said: “I do not like to differ from you. I dislike to. Nevertheless, I do not think it is wise in us to attend Mr. Rabbit’s dining. It is flattering to be invited to the tables of the great, but it is unwise to accept attentions that cannot be returned. To return such a compliment we are in no way prepared. To accept it would put us under an obligation that we could not discharge, and we would be carrying the burden of a debt we could not pay. Mr. Rabbit is wealthy. He has a broad briar patch in which he is safe, and into which not even Mr. Rattlesnake can enter. He has an abundance of clover and sweet grasses and tender buds at his door and his home is spacious. But these he neither created, produced nor builded. They were given him, and he has no other interest in them save possession. With us, what we have we produced by our own efforts. We cut down and hauled trees and fashioned houses and dams. We are our own architect and builder. Unlike some animals who claim to be much wiser than we and who design and build houses for other people, while going homeless themselves, we provided for ourselves and what we have is our own. So long as we guard it and continue our custom of healthy, hard work, we will be happy. As soon as we leave our narrow sphere we will meet trouble. Our bodies are covered with rich fur that is seasonable enough, but our tails are covered with scales, and strange company would not know how to take us. They could not make flesh of one and fish of the other.” As he said this Mr. Beaver felt much pleased with his own fluent rhetoric.

Mrs. Beaver, who had listened glumly, was silenced but not convinced. She puffed up and said nothing. Her heart was set on going to the dining, and no argument could change her. And the misery of it all was her silence. Had she said something or done something; had she talked back, or thrown a billet of wood at Mr. Beaver, it would have been a relief to him. But she merely looked and said nothing, and this was killing.

Mr. Beaver returned moodily to his work, feeling that his philosophy was weak and useless, and that there are times when it is better to be unwisely happy than to be unhappily wise.

Mr. Chipmunk and Mrs. Chipmunk were invited. Mr. Swamp Rabbit and Mrs. Swamp Rabbit were invited. Mr. Otter and Mrs. Otter were invited. Mr. Mink and Mrs. Mink were invited. Mr. Groundhog and Mrs. Groundhog were invited; but Mr. Groundhog excused himself, saying that he was afraid of losing his shadow and becoming like the unfortunate Peter Schlemihl in the story. Mr. and Mrs. Kildee, Mr. and Mrs. Redbird, Mr. and Mrs. Sparrow, Mr. and Mrs. Dove, Mr. and Mrs. Quail were invited and Mr. and Mrs. Humming-bird promised to look in on the company. Mr. and Mrs. Thrush were invited, but announced that they could not sing, as they were under contract, unless paid for it, or unless their manager, Mr. Wildcat, was bidden as a guest, which, of course, could not be thought of. All members of the Mocking-bird family were invited, and Mr. Mocking-bird promised to bring his music, providing Mr. and Mrs. Linnet were not of the party. Mr. Parrot and Mrs. Parrot and Mr. Goose and Mrs. Goose were on the list to be invited; but they were later removed for fear the one would repeat everything that was said and the other would talk and gabble so much that nothing could be said. Mr. Rabbit suggested inviting Mr. Stork and Mrs. Stork, old friends of the family, but Mrs. Rabbit said that while they would be welcome as far as she was concerned, she knew that many of her friends who go much in society would object.

On the day appointed all the guests attended and it was a goodly company.

As the invited guests arrived, some coming by water, some by land, and some through the air—Mr. Squirrel and Mrs. Squirrel came through the tops of the trees, sometimes jumping long distances from the limbs of one to the limbs of another—Everybody who is Nobody crowded around the entrance to the briar patch. Everybody who is Nobody had no tickets of admission, but they surrounded the guests, and would have crowded in, uninvited, were it not that Mr. ’Possum, with a large detachment of his kinsmen, acted as policemen and drove them back. In spite of this and in spite of the harsh means used to keep the crowd back, some of the guests were jostled, crushed and injured.

Mr. ’Possum acted as policeman and drove them back.

Everybody who is Nobody retired a short distance to a little knoll that had been flung up by the uprooting of a great tree that had long since rotted away. Everybody who is Nobody was anxious to appear on the ground by mere accident; but Mr. Owl, who was looking on from a high tree, knew they were all impelled by the same motive.

Mr. Muskrat and Mrs. Muskrat concluded early in the day that they had opened more mussel shells than was really necessary, and that they might as well take a walk and enjoy a holiday. They were the first to climb to the top of the knoll, to dry their clothing, they said. Mr. Polecat and Mrs. Polecat, Mr. Porcupine and Mrs. Porcupine, Mr. Turtle and Mrs. Turtle, Mr. Weasel and Mrs. Weasel, Mr. Hawk and Mrs. Hawk, Mr. Gopher and Mrs. Gopher, and, in fact, Everybody who is Nobody was there. Mr. Buzzard and Mrs. Buzzard started on the way, but they were attracted by the odor arising from a carrion that lay rotting far out on the festering marsh. Mr. Rattlesnake and Mrs. Rattlesnake remained a short distance away—there are exclusive folk in society where Everybody is Nobody—and Mr. Rattlesnake made the buttons on his tail sound like a fire of musketry when things did not suit him. Mr. Magpie and Mrs. Magpie were dressed early and ready to go, but Mrs. Magpie began gossiping with Mr. Crane, who had just swallowed Mr. Garter-snake and prevented him from going, and she forgot all about it until too late. Mr. Fox approached very cautiously to where he could hear and to where he could not be seen. Mr. Tarantula blundered in, but, discovering his mistake, retired at once.

When all were assembled, Mrs. Muskrat observed that she was glad that she was not in the briar patch at the dining. She knew she could have been invited if she had put herself in the way of it as some other folks have done; but she had no use for Mrs. Rabbit. Mrs. Rabbit put on a great many airs. She considered herself better than other people. She shouldn’t forget that she married Mr. Rabbit, who is old enough to be her father, for his property, and that, when she married him, she had nothing but the clothes on her back. And since her marriage she has been given but one new dress a year in spite of all her wealth. Mrs. Muskrat averred that she believed in taking people for what they are and not for what their ancestors were, and for which they should be in no way held accountable; still, it was commonly known that Mrs. Rabbit’s grandmother hired out.

Mrs. Porcupine ventured to say that it might be well enough to be an old man’s darling, if he had money enough; but she did not believe in becoming the slave of a house full of little ones, and the way Mrs. Rabbit was surrounding herself with olive branches was positively scandalous, and the talk of the entire forest.

Mr. Porcupine had been listening to the talk, and knowing that he had to agree with his wife, laughed immoderately and applauded loudly. Other animals have found it wise and expedient to do the same thing. In doing this his quills penetrated the fur coat of Mrs. Polecat, who indignantly exclaimed:

“Sir! I would have you remember in whose presence you find yourself. You should select a more willing target for your murderous weapons.”

“Ah, Mrs. Polecat,” said Mr. Porcupine, not knowing the injury he had done—some people never know the injury they do—“You possess a weapon and wield it so effectively that it is much more cruel and painful than is my poor quill. Mine is a sword stab, but there are torments and sufferings greater than sword stabs.”

As he said this, Mr. Porcupine thought it an uncommonly fine speech with an obvious meaning.

Mrs. Polecat was placated. Her anger was turned to pleasure. She, too, thought it an uncommonly fine speech, and fancied that it meant that her beauty was such as to inspire love and destroy the heart and peace of mind of those who saw her. There are people in this world who are always ready to take a veiled censure of a fault which they possess as a compliment to an assumed virtue which they do not possess.

Mrs. Porcupine frowned and scowled. She knew what Mr. Porcupine meant, but she frowned and scowled because Mrs. Polecat had misunderstood it and had taken it as a compliment.

Mrs. Turtle, who had been waiting for a chance to speak, said she didn’t see how any one could go about without reasonable protection. For her part, she was not afraid of Mr. Porcupine’s quills, and she invited him to come as close to her as he desired.

Mrs. Porcupine frowned and scowled again, and no doubt a pitched battle would have ensued, had not Mr. Rattlesnake sounded an alarm, and slipped away under a huge rock.

Just then two hunters, with their dogs, rode up, and—bang! bang!—Mr. Porcupine and Mrs. Muskrat fell over dead. The younger hunter took out after Mr. Polecat and Mrs. Polecat, but he was warned back by the elder, who said that, like some people, the Polecats had methods of assault against which there is no defense excepting distance, and that the part of wisdom is to keep well away from them.

Mr. Turtle and Mrs. Turtle, in spite of their strong armor, were captured and hung by whang leather thongs to the horns of the hunters’ saddles. Their heads were battered, but of course they did not die until put in the soup-pot the next day. Mr. Hawk and Mrs. Hawk flew away and the rest of the animals escaped with more or less injury, one way and another, with the exception of Mr. Weasel, who was killed and his skin converted into a purse.

Mrs. Rabbit put on a great many airs.

It was many and many a long day before Everybody who is Nobody met again to criticise their neighbors. It sometimes requires a great catastrophe to teach a valuable lesson; but, once learned, this lesson is not soon forgotten.

Mrs. Rabbit’s home was a delight to see when the guests arrived. Mrs. Rabbit was a trifle tired and apprehensive. It was her first formal function and she did not know how many “regrets” were in store for her. (Some she knew would come, but others whom she desired to lionize gave her concern. Their absence would mean disappointment and humiliation. If some benign power would remove all the empty chairs from around the table of a hostess who has made elaborate preparations for the entertainment of guests who do not come, and who is not wholly certain of her approaches, some of the bitterest sorrows would be removed from earth and many a heart-break would be escaped. Such a spectacle, presented to a hostess, not only stuns and stings, but corrodes.)

Mrs. Rabbit was not long in suspense. Her guests came, every one of them, came in a crowd, and each one had something to tell about the escape from Everybody who is Nobody at the entrance to the briar patch, all of which pleased Mrs. Rabbit greatly.

Mr. Toad and Mrs. Toad were not expected. Mr. Beaver and Mrs. Beaver were not missed. They were working people, and working people are seldom much sought after until they cease working and become representatives of working people.

Mr. Peckerwood was seen coming from far away across the lake. He would soar high up in the air, remain poised an instant, and then plunge headlong downward until near the earth, when he would gracefully glide upward again. He moved as a light vessel moves across high billows between which there are great troughs or valleys, now on the crest of the wave, now in the deep chasm. He came on with a freedom and a swing, describing a series of parabolas that were beautiful to behold.

On arriving he informed the party that an important engagement, he was sorry to say, prevented him from remaining; but he would beat the drum on a hollow tree from time to time to let them know where he was in the forest.

Every one was sorry, and Mr. Otter remarked that he always noticed that those who take the most active part in movements for good, and who do most to bring these movements to a splendid result, seldom enjoy the benefits and pleasures of their efforts. They sow and others garner. They build and others occupy. They provide and others enjoy.

After a short silence Mr. Mink said that he had observed the same thing, and, according to his way of thinking, it is small compensation to see that those who take the most active part in movements for evil, and who do the most to bring these movements to a climax, always escape before the explosion comes and leave their followers and dupes to suffer the penalties.

This is all that Mr. Mink and Mr. Otter said until time to bid their hosts good-bye, and it is a great deal for either Mr. Mink or Mr. Otter to say at any time, and especially on this subject, which, perhaps, had better not be discussed on so joyous an occasion.

The evening was a pleasant one. Everyone present was delighted. Mr. Mocking-bird sang his sweetest. He had no rival and few capable critics, and he had the musical program all to himself. Mr. Frog thought and felt secretly that he could furnish a pleasing variation with one of his favorite bass solos, and Mrs. Frog was sure that if her Baby Frog of the soprano voice were given musical advantages she would take the shine out of any singer in the forest; but they were both too well bred to say anything. Mr. Frog, indeed, chimed in with his bass once or twice, with an stave or two, on the last line of the stanza, which he fancied helped matters along famously; but, as he led the applause by crying out “Bravo,” he excited no comment.

The dinner was bountiful and of such variety as to furnish each guest that which he or she most desired—from great fish for Mr. Otter and Mrs. Otter to blooming hollyhocks for Mr. Humming-bird and Mrs. Humming-bird. Curious delicacies were served in tiny buttercups and in pale-tinted morning-glories that had been kept in the dark and had not closed their eyes. Corn was provided for Mr. Jaybird and Mrs. Jaybird from “volunteer” stalks that grew in the farmer’s cotton patch near by. Assorted nuts of excellent flavor were furnished Mr. Squirrel and Mrs. Squirrel, and those who liked this kind of food.

Mrs. Rabbit laid great store by her bread, of which she was very proud. It was not sliced and laid within reach of her guests, as is usually done. Mrs. Rabbit put her left arm around a huge loaf, which she pressed firmly against her breast and, with a knife in the other hand moved about from guest to guest, cutting and serving each in turn with a generous piece. As each guest politely praised her cooking and housewifery her face beamed with pleasure, and she forgot all about her old grey gown with its fur trimmings. The pleasure she felt she communicated to those around her, and all were supremely happy until a becoming hour for departure.

The guests went their several ways after many good-byes and promises to meet again, and each was in the best of spirits. The day was long remembered in the forest.

When the guests had gone and the little ones had cuddled down in bed Mrs. Rabbit confessed that while she was tired, she had never enjoyed herself as much in her life and, she added, “I never thought our neighbors were such charming people. They all seemed delighted and happy.”

Mr. Rabbit had eaten bountifully and was somewhat drowsy and his philosophy may not have been wholly sound. Nevertheless, he said with much gravity and deliberation: “Happiness is what the learned ones call a personal equation. It rests largely with ourselves. Those who selfishly seek it never find it. Those who give it to others find their own store increasing in exact proportion to the amount they dispense. Happiness is like the purse of Fortunatus that could never be emptied. You were proud of your bread and with reason. It proved that you could do one thing well and whoso does one thing well is master of many things. When you sought to make others happy you found no trouble. In making others happy lies concealed the secret of our own happiness. Your neighbors have not changed only as you have changed them. The change is in yourself. Whenever you feel morose, despondent and unhappy, set about to do some one some good and joy will return; because doing good to others is life’s chief luxury, and it never palls.”

By this time Mrs. Rabbit was nodding, but Mr. Rabbit did not notice it, so interested was he in his own wisdom and so charmed by his own eloquence. After a slight pause they both retired to enjoy a sweet and refreshing sleep.

SUNSHINE — GREETING. — Fly in Your Own Firmament. — The Governor. — The Lieutenant Governor. — The Commercial Traveler. — THE GATE IN THE GROUND.

80

CONDUCTED BY THE EDITOR IN CHIEF.

Hope leads the builders of this magazine to believe that its explosion can be prevented by filling it with sugar instead of dynamite.

We propose to gather our cane mostly from Southern fields and run it through Southern cane mills and sweeten as much of the world as possible from Southern sugar barrels; but of course our doors are open to Northern bees, Eastern butterflies, and Western humming-birds, and suckers from everywhere.

We believe that sugar is better for the world than dynamite, and we propose to barrel it in bulk so that every boy and girl who loves to read a sweet story may dive into our columns with both hands and shout as the boy did when he got into the sure enough sugar hogshead, “O, for a thousand tongues!” so that every old literary bug who sighs for the sweeter side of life may gambol among our granulated tropes and pulverized similes and dream that he is the beautifulest ant in the sugar bowl.

The journalistic market is glutted with explosives, it is overstocked with poisoned arrows. We believe in the philosophy that “More flies are caught with sugar than with vinegar.”

But while this magazine shall be a colossal sugar lump, yet its management has a whole squadron of torpedo boats, and a huge quiver of arrows for all the enemies of the South and a stupendous tank of vinegar as large as all the tanks of the Standard Oil Company for the spiteful spiders and blue-bottle flies of sectional journalism. But these weapons shall never be used so long as sugar will melt in the mouths of men and persuade unrighteousness to bridle its tongue.

With these sweet sentiments upon our lips we stand on the tallest tower of our castle in the air and with our politest bow toss a large sugar lump of greeting to every one who is wise enough to subscribe for Bob Taylor’s Magazine.

When downy-lipped youth first begins to peep through the knothole in the temple of knowledge, he is the happiest of all mortals because his vanity is unbridled and free.

He knows it all. When he “orates” on commencement day he robs the gardens of rhetoric and twines their choicest flowers about the beautiful, but hollow and flimsy columns of his speech. He misquotes the classic poets and taxes the old philosophers with things they never said. He twists the tail of history, strangles science, and spouts wisdom never dreamed of by Solomon. His impassioned sentences are chains of gold with blazing diamonds strung, and his tropes and similes cavort like flaming meteors athwart the intellectual heavens. But after he leaves the classic halls of college, and after a few hard bumps against the rock walls of reality, and a few hard falls on the ice pond of experience, his self-conceit springs a leak, his immense learning oozes out, and his dream of kinship with the gods vanishes into the limbo of the forever forgotten like a sweet scent before a high wind.

His vanity is un’ridled and free.

And so runs the endless story of callow youth—a comedy of errors reenacted by each successive generation, in whose quips and cranks and boyish antics we see ourselves repeated as in a mirror, and we only laugh and wish that youth might last forever—we laugh and enjoy its beautiful vanities.

But our laughter melts into sighs as we recall the Persian poet’s plaintive lines:

Time but dissipates each rapturous dream, and the revelation of our ignorance comes with the experience of riper years. Only once are we the proud possessors of all knowledge and all wisdom, and this is in the dreamy days of life’s happy morning. And yet, we never lose our self-conceit as we advance in years; we only adjust our vanity to the knowledge we acquire. We learn how to dodge some of the jagged walls of trouble and to avoid some of the mud holes of calamity; but vanity still lures us on in myriad paths of folly. Its most dangerous form is that which conjures in men the delusion that they know everything, and that they can turn from one field of effort to another without disturbing their equilibrium and gather fruits and flowers with equal success from all alike. This is the snag upon which so many little kites get hung.

As no single honey-bee can rob all the flowers of the land, so no one mind can master all branches of knowledge. Nature has endowed humanity with different aptitudes for different lines of labor. Indeed, she seems to delight in infinite diversity. Ever true to this wonderful impulse of variation she confers on mankind intellectual gifts as multiform as her flowers—flinging them into the hovel as freely as into the palace.

A hard fall on the ice pond of experience.

One individual has the gift of speech, another the gift of thought. One talks without thinking, another thinks without talking. One man sees, hears and notes everything; another sees and hears, but notes nothing. He cannot recall whether he has been alive for the past hour or not; and if his wife asks him what manner of gown Mrs. So-and-so wore last night at the reception, he could not tell for the life of him whether she wore any gown at all. One touches business and it turns to gold; another touches it, and it turns to rags. One touches the button of politics, and the doors of office fly open with a national hymn in their hinges; another presses it, and the doors fly open to his competitor. One youth whispers a magical word into the listening ear of a laughing girl and lo! her little head of auburn curls falls upon his shoulder; another youth whispers the same word to the same girl and lo! his head falls into the sawdust! One fair maiden sings as gloriously as a lark in June skies; another thinks she sings, but doesn’t—she only screams, and her trills are a cross between a fife and a cane-mill as she twists her neck and walls her eyes like a dying swan.

But there is scarcely a human being under the sun who is not blessed with some special gift of mind for the achievement of success in some special field of endeavor.

A good old farmer and his wife had four sons, and they believed that three of them possessed talent which would some day make them great. But when they came to poor John, the youngest of the flock, they agreed that he was a natural born fool. Finally a sudden light beamed in the old man’s face and with melody in his voice he said: “Nancy, I can say one thing for John; he’s the best whistler that ever twisted wind into music—by gum.” Here was nature’s compensation for lack of brains—for John was endowed with a talent which is esteemed, in these modern days, as one of the rarest among men—a talent which might some day make John a sort of Eolian Orpheus whose slightest breath would open to him the door of fame; for have we not recently read in the public prints of a whistling artist in the person of a charming young woman who has taken the music loving world by storm and whistled herself into the choir of a rich and fashionable church?

How the hearts of the young male worshipers must thrill and palpitate when she puckers her pouting lips to join in the sacred anthem. It must be like the nectared melody of the nightingale dripping and tinkling from the heart of a puckered rose.

Many a dull and sluggish youth, blinded by vanity, is to-day frittering away the golden hours in some law college or medical school, who is totally incapable by birth of ever grasping or assimilating the principles of law or medicine, while under the leaf-fat of his stupid brain some talent may lie sleeping, which, if aroused and called into full play, might elevate him to the pedestal of glory as the champion whistler of the world.

The man of one talent, if he develops and uses it intelligently, is always the highest example of success, even in the humblest sphere. The bootblack in the street, who, by his masterful touch, makes your shoes reflect the sun, is as much an artist in his sphere and entitled to as much credit as the man who made the shoes. The difficulty is that we often rebel against Nature’s purpose, which if followed always leads to success.

It is an old saying that “Fortune is fickle,” but there is not much truth in the proverb. The trouble lies in the fact that human nature is fickle and full of vanity; and we dream ourselves into the belief that we can win applause in roles of life for which we have neither talent nor adaptation. This is vanity, and the logical result is—limbs of the law all leafless and briefless and weeping alone; business ventures dodging the sheriff and sighing for a lodge in some vast wilderness; medical aspiration hopeless and patientless in the valley of dry bones; literary spirit with broken wings and tail feathers gone; and political ambition with black eye and broken nose, sighing and singing wherever he goes:

When a young man comes to choose a vocation in life let him buck-and-gag vanity and enter the field for which he is best adapted. Let him analyze and synthesize himself and approximate as nearly as possible the capacity of his mental powers. Let him study his own talent as he would study a book and when he has determined upon his calling let him pursue it without the shadow of turning, and he will surely win.

A good woman is the embodiment of man’s dream of the beautiful; a mean one is a perpetual nightmare. They are the two extremes of melody and discord, of wine and vinegar, of violet and volcano in every station in life. All men stand with uncovered heads in the presence of a good woman. Her prudence and modesty, her gentleness and purity, are her shields from the low and vulgar; they are the heralds of her virtue and innocence; they charm in her voice, they beam in her eyes, they are eloquent in her actions and mingle and shine in the graces of her life. She is the governor of every happy home and her throne is built of human hearts.

A mean woman revels in strife and in the anguish of those around her. She delights in the abuse of others and in mysterious actions that breed suspicion. Treason lurks in her very eyes, the tracks of treachery are in her every smile and her bosom cloaks a dagger.

A good woman often weeps and her soul is sometimes tossed with righteous indignation; but she knows how to pity and to forgive. Sometimes she is compelled to combat a wicked and self-willed husband, and to suffer the stings of his tyranny and injustice; but when her virtues and goodness assert themselves and the governor stamps her foot and demands her rights she can always subdue him and lead him like a lamb.

But let a mean woman be installed as governor of the household, and on the slightest provocation her eyes will flame with fury, an ashy pallor will mantle her funnel face and she will roar like an approaching cyclone; forked lightnings will leap from her frenzied tongue and strike everybody and everything for miles and miles around; her shivering husband is usually the victim, whether guilty or innocent,

The chasm of calamity into which many an unwary lover falls in the leap of matrimony is his ignorance of the woman who takes this leap with him. She conjures him into the belief that she is an angel of light and worthy to govern the world, when in reality she is a ferocious feline from away back, a pussy of despair from the night’s Plutonian shore.

Forked lightnings leap from her frenzied tongue.

Many a good woman, on the other hand, is deceived and cajoled by her suitor into the faith that he is a saint on earth, a sweet spirit of prayer, and fit only for the companionship of the seraphim and cherubim, when, in fact, he is a carrion crow from far away, a beautiful buzzard from Paradise Bay.

Happiness follows in the footsteps of a good woman as the flowers follow in the footsteps of June; and laughter hand in hand with tears greets her every day. All the pure and beautiful ideals of the heart, all the chaste and tender emotions of the soul are her priceless jewels. Her life is a willing sacrifice, and she passes from the morning to the evening with blessings upon her lips and the light of peace and joy in her shining train. She is the star that eclipses every sun and dispels the darkness of every cloud. But it is hard to foretell results in the Monte Carlo of love. He who ventures there is playing a hazardous game and should not bet too high, for it is surely a game of chance. Sometimes hearts are trumps, alas, sometimes clubs! Infatuation often stacks the cards, the intoxication of overweening confidence sometimes dims the player’s eyes, and even what seems to be a winning hand may quickly lose the game. But blessed is the gambler in the perilous game of marriage who wins a good woman for she is the richest stake ever won by man in this world. She is the handmaid of the Lord, establishing his kingdom in the home and linking earth to heaven every day.

Without her, nations would fall and civilizations crumble; without her, all the suns and moons of love would darken and all the stars of hope forget to shine; without her, charity would lose its sweetness, mercy its tenderness and sentiment its very life; without her, the genius of Phidias and Praxiteles never would have glorified the marble; Raphael and Angelo never would have dreamed in immortal colors; Burns never would have written his sweetest lyrics of love, and the dreams of Shakespeare never would have blossomed into song; without her, home, happiness and family ties would be but mockeries and the Christian religion itself would perish among its worshipers.

The brightest stars in the crown of civilization are its pure and virtuous homes. They reflect the wealth, the power and the glory of the state and the nation. They are the culmination of man’s highest ideals of peace and love and perfect happiness beneath the stars that shine above him.

Within the hallowed walls of every home where children dwell, there is a commonwealth of prattling science and toddling art and mewling music in its mother’s arms. Dimpled genius, with heaven in his eyes, is playing around many a hearthstone to-day; and under many an humble roof love is rocking the cradle of a poet or an orator; heroes of the future are fighting cob battles in the barn yard and statesmen of the years to come are ruling republics and empires on the play ground of the public school or in the society hall of the university.

In every well regulated home the governor of each commonwealth wears dresses and the lieutenant governor wears pantaloons. The wife reigns supreme. Her scepter is her slipper, under whose swing and sway juvenile civilization often worms and squirms, firmly held across her lap face downward; and one shake of the scepter thoroughly subdues the lieutenant governor. ’Tis well! for what right has he to butt into policies of home rule and to stick his nose into the prerogatives of petticoat government?

A good husband’s dominion lies beyond the boundary line of the home. He is supreme in the office, the shop or at the plow handles. His province is to provide revenue and to fill the flour barrel. He must receive his reward in the golden coin of kisses and in the exercise of the high privilege of paying all bills, obeying all commands, and acknowledging his eternal loyalty and devotion to the flounced and powdered governor. It is only in her absence from home that he becomes great and seizes the opportunity to exercise his veto power. Instantly all dusting and sweeping cease until he leaves the house for a stroll; all romping and frolicking and sliding down the banisters come to a standstill; all practicing on the piano is suspended; and the changing of sheets and pillowslips and putting rooms in order except once a week, are abolished as nuisances. The acting governor reforms everything but his appetite. He taps the exchequer and every meal must be a banquet at the peril of the cook’s tenure of office. His reign is brief but glorious, and business is dispatched in a hurry with the view of the early return of the slippered and skirted governor. His old cronies flock into his touseled and disordered bedroom every night to share his limitless liberty and his boundless bonhomie. And often the jubilant uproar is punctuated with the popping of corks and the clinking of glasses, while the ceaseless rattle of poker chips emphasizes the ancient proverb that

And so each little domestic commonwealth has its lights and shadows, its ups and downs, and its seasons of mal-administration. But when the real governor again assumes the reins of power, a good husband, if he has been guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors in office during her absence, repents in sackcloth and ashes, and a good wife, after a curtain lecture and a cry, always exercises the pardoning power and restores the lieutenant governor to his former prestige and favor with the powers that be, and again “all goes merry as a marriage bell.”

Wandering in strange and unknown pastures of romance.

A good husband has his faults and foibles, and sometimes falls from grace; but he is the salt of the earth when properly managed.

A mean husband is either a Nero or a zero; he either dethrones his wife in the home and stabs his helpless and innocent little ones with curses and cruelty, or starves them with cold neglect. He rules with sneers instead of smiles—with blows instead of blessings, or strangles laughter and love in his home with drunkenness and debauchery. How many wives walk the floor every night waiting for footsteps they dread to hear! How many children shiver in their rags and watch for brutal and improvident fathers. God pity the home of the man who staggers out of the path of righteousness.

A good man goes out into the world and bears the burdens of life with a willing heart. If virtue sanctifies his home and peace and contentment laugh and sing around his hearthstone, there is no anguish he will not endure for the happiness of his children, there is no agony he will not suffer for the sake of his wife, no sin of hers he will not condone save one, and that is disloyalty.

Many a fortune has been lost in the lottery of love by drawing the wrong ticket. Many a sweet home has been broken up and many a guiltless man has been butted to death by the billy goat of Ananias as a penalty for unwittingly wandering in strange and unknown pastures of Romance.

Commercial travelers are the Eden builders of the world; they are the evangels of human happiness; they carry heavens of pure delight in their sample cases.

There are heavens of music in the rustle of their silks, heavens of the beautiful in their laces and lawns, heavens of rapture in their spring bonnets and jewels.

They are the tidal waves of commerce, the rolling billows of progress, the trade winds of civilization. They touch all shores and never cease to blow.

Many a castle builder presses their fragrant havanas to his lips and his dreams turn to curling castles in the air. Many a dreamer sips their mellow wines and lo! a thousand fairies with jeweled wings flutter in his veins and flit among the flowers in the garden of his dreams.

Wherever the commercial travelers swarm there is honey in the gum and the flowers of prosperity are in bloom. They carry the pollen-dust of business on their wings and the honey of wealth in their grips. And whenever they cease to hum about a town it is a sure sign that prosperity is a withered blossom there and that there are weevils in the gum.

The garden spider weaves her web among the honeysuckles and spins as she weaves without distaff or loom. She stretches her radial warp of silvery filaments and then lays on her woof. From the center outward she glides in one continuous spiral, and as she crosses each radius of the warp she touches it deftly with her foot as if to weld the viscid fiber.

And thus her shining net grows until it hangs suspended in the air, half visible, half vanishing, like some phantom wheel of moonbeams.

The commercial travelers are the spiders of enterprise, spinning and weaving without distaff or loom, swinging from town to town, from city to city, from continent to continent; and they are weaving the golden web of commerce around the world, drawing the nations closer together in the warp and woof of universal love and the universal brotherhood of man.

Lyrical and Satirical — THE RURAL SHEET. — JIU-JITSU. — LAWSON OF BAWSON. — A HEART TO HEART WHISPER TO OTHER MILLIONAIRES. — HER SPECIALTY. — HOW LONG?

87

CONDUCTED BY VERMOUTH.

If newspaper stories relative to this strange and recently introduced Japanese science are to be credited, Munchausen is henceforth the standard Sunday school literature and the Arabian Nights prosy historical narrative.

A squad or so of New York policemen were recently compelled to rescue a Bowery mob from extinction at the hands of a burly young Jap, weighing in the neighborhood of a hundred pounds, while an American, after a few lessons, has solved the long delayed problem of the domestication of the hind leg of a mule.

These things being true—and they are conclusively backed by advertisements in magazines and insinuating approvals from the White House, whose occupant in chief now never uses more than one finger on the most strenuous opponent,—how many presumably settled social institutions are longer secure? What, for instance, of the historic traditions hovering around the revered institutions of mother-in-law and cook lady? And what of the cherished monthly anticipation of the horrific bill collector, the eleemosynary insurance agent and the sad-faced representative of a worthy charity? Consider the epochal iconoclasm involved in the passage of these time-honored social, domestic and civic pests!

On the other hand, however, reflect upon the counter possibilities of the parties enumerated becoming wise to jiu-jitsu before you! Authorities state that the initiated can strangle a victim as readily by a gentle pressure about the waist as by a strangle hold about the throat and that the lower extremities may be hopelessly disarranged by a finger gently exerted midway the spine. With casual instruction sub rosa, a man’s wife might economically elect the tender and twining embrace as an effective substitute for the divorce court, or might at pleasure convert him into a permanent invalid while affecting to innocently scratch his back.

That biblical narrative which has disturbed the faith of many of the credulously reverent, wherein the ant inquires insinuatingly of the elephant if he fully realizes the thoughtlessness of his disposition to overcrowd or shove, in this sidelight of modern criticism, receives a luminous and comforting ray of explanation and reassurance. The erring faith of many honest but superficial doubters is further bolstered by the reputed but till now little appreciated attitude of the elephant in preferring to pass the observation as facetious.

Great is jiu-jitsu but greater still the higher criticism!

The crusade of a few iconoclastic and revolutionary vulgarians to endow libraries, cheap schoolhouses and retreats for cripples, old maids and other unmentionables, should encounter our organized and unanimous resistance. The conservatives and respectables among us are called upon to sweep back the tide of delusion threatening our decent and time-honored prerogative of making wills and having them broken for the benefit of unknown collateral relatives, lawyers, chorus girls and other common law tenements.

It is no less incumbent upon us as Americans and plutocrats to thwart the disposition of meddlesome and impertinent persons of questioning in print the wisdom of the Almighty in constituting us trustees without bond for the great indigent and financial unwashed. Aside from the blasphemous character of such delusions, expressed misgivings do nobody good and actually mislead the public into a complete misconception of the profound contumely of riches.

Those foolishly inclined to consider our lot a bed of roses, hyacinths and Lawson pinks, will please reflect upon the dread uncertainty of not knowing at what moment “one” may be precipitated overboard from a yacht or be hurled to a violent finish from the back of a vicious polo pony or perchance dislocate the spine on the palace stair or the inlaid floor, or superinduce apoplexy by overindulgence in golf or bridge! And reflect for a moment upon the hazard of the auto from infants and common pedestrians getting tangled in the machinery! And how about being written up in the putrid press and being called a congenital money maker with pictures of some exceedingly primitive people called parents! And how about being compelled to worry along without means to buy new hair, new lungs and new stomachs? And how about irritating irregularities in the water supply when the stock is famishing and how about the Sunday school class coming in late after a peevish week in rebates?

Fellow plutocrats, aristocrats and autocrats, let us steel—ourselves—yea, to callousness against the crime of being misunderstood by the molten masses and betrayed from within by the two-faced Tom Lawson!

To the patriotically inclined, the callousness of the public conscience to reforms freely demanded by the popular welfare is indeed alarming.

Consider for example the supine indifference of the country at large over the ignominious defeat in Kansas of a great moral measure to enact the ten commandments into law! And that it was accomplished in the teeth of a united support of a large, active and pious Methodist, Congregationalist and Presbyterian lobby!

And who does not recall the humiliating failure of the Georgia patriot to have passed a bill to protect the long neglected interests of bull bats, turtles and other game birds hitherto and still entirely ignored by that presumably enlightened commonwealth?

And while there was a low and sullen popular rumble in Tennessee against a shameless lobby of centralized bachelors that by bribes, imprecations and cajoleries smothered a pro bono publico measure to tax their immunity from the strenuous life, public sentiment is once more callous and numb.

As a climax in corporate effrontery, however, as well as an extreme illustration of popular lethargy, a Missouri bill to prohibit the criminal practice of tipping waiters in hotels, restaurants and cafés was ingloriously snowed under and that, too, in the face of the lynx-eyed young governor. A cunning realization by the beef trust of the impossibility of getting its unrighteous commodity before the eating public with such a regulation in vogue, is no doubt responsible for this grave popular misfortune.

Hence the inquiry, what of the times when the public continues indifferent and when those who alone have the courage to essay the people’s relief from the thrall of mammon and general unrighteousness are to be derided as freaks or purchased, and nothing done about it!

A CUBAN SKETCH

“Anita, my child, the Alcalde declared last night at the market place that the Americans would come to-day. I want you to braid fresh flowers in your hair as your mother used to do, then take my hand, child, and lead me down by the Plaza de Jesus, close by the fountain, that we may await the coming of our friends.”

“But, father, my dress is all torn and ragged, and you are old and blind; they will not expect such as we are to welcome them. They are soldiers, father, and I am afraid of soldiers since the Spanish guards beat you down at the Palace gate when you asked for alms.”

“Yes, I know, little one, they are soldiers, but they are American soldiers, American volunteers who have come to liberate Cuba; then let us hurry, child, and reach the Plaza before it is crowded.”

The old man was a Cuban reconcentrado, lame and blind and homeless, the miserable creature of Spanish cruelty. The child that led him was his grandchild, whose father was killed at “Royal Blanco,” defending the Cuban flag. She was a typical little creole beauty, with face as sweet as a poet’s dream, yet sorrow and poverty made her beauty pathetic. Leading the old blind man, she entered the crowded Plaza, and whispering to him, said: “Father, we are near the fountain, now, and your seat on the stone bench is vacant.”

“Yes, my Anita,” said the old man, making the sign of the cross, “I hear the gurgling of the water which the blessed Virgin gives to us poor people to drink; now let me sit down and we will wait. There seem to be many people on the Plaza to-day and from their voices they must indeed be happy.”

“Oh! yes, father,” said the child, “I have never seen so many people since General Wilder’s army was here; and all the ladies are dressed in white and carry wreaths of flowers on their arms; and so many, father, have little flags in their hands. I’ve never seen such flags before; they are striped with red and white, and one corner is blue like the sky, all full of silver stars. They are beautiful! and must mean something good for our poor Cuba.”

“Yes, Anita,” said the old man, as a strange light lit up his face, “it’s the flag of liberty, the American stars and stripes. Oh! that I could only see them; but what is the cheering, child? What is the cause of the people’s huzzas? Are the soldiers coming?”

“No, father, no,” said the little one; “but General Gomez is taking down the yellow flag of Spain from the City Hall and putting up your liberty flag—the one of the stars and stripes—in its place.”

“God be praised,” muttered the old man on the stone bench, feebly making the sign of the Cross. He leaned back as if he had fallen asleep, but it was a sleep from which no mortal could awake him. The old patriot’s heart had when he ceased to beat, with happiness, knew that his unhappy land was free.

Anita, thinking that he had fallen asleep, tried to arouse him, and cried out to him, “Father, don’t go to sleep—don’t you hear the music? And listen to the people’s cheer! Let us join in their cry, ‘Viva los Americanos!’ Oh, father, here they come! Look! look! all dressed in blue with that beautiful flag waving over them. See the ladies throw their wreaths of flowers on the ground before them! Wake up, dear father; please wake up. I will take the roses out of my hair and throw them, too.” And holding the hand of the old dead man on the rock bench at the fountain, little Anita threw her only rosebud to our Volunteers in Blue.

One soldier in the ranks saw the child and picked up the flower. It brought to him memories of one back in Tennessee. The next day the city officials reported the death and burial of an old pauper, with many others, but the world never knew that the old man’s heart stopped beating with happiness over his country’s freedom, and none inquired what had become of the dark-eyed child who held his hand. Anita was all alone in the street, but the Tennessean who picked up her rosebud watched after her, and she soon became the pet of the American camp. New dresses, new shoes, new friends, made in her a great change, and she was soon the idol of the boys in blue.

But again Anita stands at the fountain in the Plaza de Jesus all alone. The Tennessee Volunteers have been ordered home, they have done everything in their power to leave the child comfortable and in tender hands, but she follows them to the Plaza. Tears fill the eyes of the boys as they tell her good-bye; the flowers seem to wither in her hair, the smiles die on her lips, the old sorrow comes back in her eyes, her soldier friends are gone, the liberty flag is gone; the old rock bench by the fountain is empty; she is all alone on the Plaza to-night—poor little Anita. How much like Anita is Cuba, and how much like Cuba is Anita.

WITHIN A VALLEY NARROW.

LEISURE HOURS

92

For Conference Between the Magazine and its Readers.

Let us be mutually helpful. In this, the initial number of Bob Taylor’s Magazine, one of the dominant thoughts in our minds is that of friendly reciprocity. You would not have subscribed to this periodical, we take it, were you not friendly to it and to its editor.

We wish not merely to amuse you, but to help you; and we wish you to help us, that, through us, you may help your own people, your own state and section and the whole country. To this end we invite, for the use of this department, communications on all subjects of unusual interest and importance, such as:

Prose and poetry of sentiment, fact and fancy.

Forgotten or unpublished bits of history and tradition.

Anecdotes of famous men and women, and of quaint and curious occurrences.

The best short stories and tales you have heard or read, if unusual or unfamiliar.

Suggestions for the special benefit of Bob Taylor’s Magazine, how it may be improved, what it should contain, what it should omit.

Write us these things that all may profit by something of transcendent interest to each.

Also ask questions of interest and importance on any subject. If we can answer them, we will do so; and if we can’t answer them, we will invite our readers to do so.

Address all such communications to Leisure Hours Department of Bob Taylor’s Magazine.

What a mine of hidden wealth there is in the unrecorded legends of the South and the Southwest! What tales of the cavaliers of the Old Dominion, of the mountaineers, of those modern argonauts who braved in the wilderness more and greater dangers than did the fabled followers of Jason, and whose descendants are now enjoying the golden fleece which eluded their grasp! What of Oglethorpe, and Boone and Crockett, Whitefield and Doak, Jackson and Sam Houston, Lafitte and Bowie and Burr; of Lost Island, Barrancas and the Everglades; of the Creoles and Acadians, and the thousand and one thrilling tales of the treacherous red man! All these, and more, offer to the present and the future story teller an inexhaustible supply of the purest ore for transmuting, fusing genius.

And what gems of prose and poetry lie unnoticed in the literature of the South! While other sections have given wide and constant publicity to their writers and their writers’ productions (and it was their duty to do so), the poets and the masters of prose of the South of former days lie in forgotten graves and the dust of the library gathers thick upon their unopened volumes.

What does the present generation know of Timrod, the “sweetest singer of America?” What of Sims, pronounced by Poe to be the greatest writer of romantic fiction since the time of Cooper? These are but two out of the galaxy of unnumbered stars in the Southern firmament, and they are mentioned merely to give point to the fact that suitable homage is not being rendered to the lights of other days.

For many years has Governor Taylor desired to establish a magazine that should be not only a medium by which to reach an audience as widespread as the country itself, but which should also be a vehicle of Southern expression, for the exploitation and advancement of Southern literature, for the preservation of old time Southern ideals, and for the dissemination of knowledge concerning the material resources and advantages of this section of our country—this primarily. And, secondarily, to breathe abroad a catholic spirit of patriotism, uncramped by a scintilla of sectionalism (opprobriously so termed), of envy, or of ill will to any one; but to carry to every home and to each individual therein personally a message of peace, of harmony and of happiness.

Bob Taylor’s Magazine, like its editor, stands for the South and for the sunshine that smiles on its beauty and ripens the fruit of its rich and fertile soil. Every fair and precious possession of this section will find representation and appreciation in these pages, and every uplift of purpose, every outspreading of energy now working toward the development of the South will receive the encouragement of this publication.

What the past holds in precious memory, great achievement and pure ideals shall be cherished and held. But in a special sense Bob Taylor’s Magazine is working in the present and for the future. The record of the last decade in the South has become the wonder of the industrial and commercial world, but if the spiritual and intellectual development does not keep pace with this material growth, the figures which record our wealth and prosperity will be but the handwriting on the wall, warning us of downfall and ruin.

It is, therefore, the purpose of Bob Taylor’s Magazine to offer each month, stories, poems and articles mined from the rich vein of Southern sentiment and of Southern life; and these riches will be offered to an audience as numerous and appreciative as any to which a Southern writer can appeal.

A momentous change impends in the citizenship of the South, perhaps in character, certainly in number. For the South is vibrant with energy, its commercial interests have never before throbbed with such activity; and never before has the need of intelligent labor been quite so urgent. The negro, indeed, is here, and for certain kinds of work is the best toiler in the world, if he be properly handled. For field labor, for forest work, for outdoor rough work of every description, for numerous kinds of inside work and for porterage and drayage, he is unequalled, provided he be not given authority over others, or an official position of any kind. In such event he becomes spoiled, foolish and useless.

To skilled labor in factories and mills the negro is not adapted, as a rule, and is inefficient; and the manufacturing industries of the South are growing apace. Extraordinary efforts are, therefore, being made to divert to the states south of Mason and Dixon’s line a part of the enormous flood of immigrants which for many years has been directed toward the West and the Northwest.

And these aliens are coming South in ever increasing streams. Railroads transport them; land agents urge them; commercial organizations invite them, and farms and factories employ them—and what will be the result? Let us see!

Until this horde of foreigners began to debouch upon the fertile soil of Dixie, this section possessed the purest Anglo-Saxon blood, not only in America, but in the world. In the area south of the Ohio and east of the Mississippi, there were, and still are, fewer foreign-born inhabitants than are found in the single state of Connecticut.

How will the South be affected by the new trend? Can it preserve its old ideals and the purity of its blood, while utilizing the new elements in the building up of its material welfare?

BOOKS AND AUTHORS

95

CONDUCTED BY GENELLA FITZGERALD NYE.

The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan. By Thomas Dixon, Jr. Doubleday, Page & Co., New York. Price, $1.50.

Bethany: A Story of the Old South. By Thomas E. Watson. D. Appleton & Co., New York. Price, $1.50.

In considering these two books, it is impossible to avoid comparing and contrasting them with each other. Both aim at historical study as well as romantic presentation, and both are conceived from the Southerner’s view-point of the great Civil War. Both writers are famous platform figures, and neither, it may be conceded, is equipped by taste, temperament, or training, for purely literary work. Both Mr. Dixon and Mr. Watson have interests more absorbing than the production of artistic fiction, and the novels of neither can fairly be judged by the higher critical standards. One feels in reading the fiction of Mr. Dixon and Mr. Watson that it is but the vehicle of a purpose other than literary, and furthermore, that that purpose must be the presentation of truth. And here it is that the gap between the two authors begins to widen, for Mr. Dixon’s self-conscious rhetoric and platform appeal give the lie even to unimpeachable history, while Mr. Watson’s narration has the very accent of truth in its homely simplicity and utter absence of pose.

“The Clansman” opens upon the political ferment at Washington just before Lincoln’s assassination, and Lincoln, Stanton, Thaddeus Stevens, and other prominent men of that period are depicted in somewhat daring detail of characterization and narration. With the revolution of the national policy which followed Lincoln’s death, the scene is shifted to South Carolina, where the horrors of reconstruction and the heroic work of the Ku Klux Klan are painted in Mr. Dixon’s most highly colored rhetoric. We have no disposition to belittle the tragedy of that period in the South, and there is no doubt that the secret organization known as the Ku Klux Klan did save the Southern people from much indignity and degradation, but the manner of Mr. Dixon’s narration has not the dignity of truth, and, however true his individual instances may be, the effect of the story is not that of truth. The note of heroic determination and impressive mystery which dignified the mummery of the Ku Klux Klan into a power to save Southern civilization and protect Southern womanhood, Mr. Dixon misses entirely, and his treatment, like a tawdry bit of gilding, vulgarizes what it touches.

“Mr. Dixon, in literature, has repeated his successes of the pulpit and platform,” his publishers’ note informs us, and it is so far true that he has repeated in his novels the methods of his platform and pulpit successes. But save in the commercial sense, it cannot be said that Mr. Dixon’s work in fiction is a success, and it stands justified only by a prevailing bad taste and his own and his publishers’ pocket-book.

“A Story of the Old South”—we may be pardoned for a slightly tired feeling on reading those words on the title page of “Bethany,” but the first chapter is reassuring in its sturdy presentation of middle class Georgia life, simple, unpretentious, plain, and absolutely uncolored with the grandeur, so familiar in “befo’ the wah” fiction. It is refreshing to read such passages as these:

“We Hortons were a family of middle class farmers. We had never been anything else. We never expected to be anything else. Our condition was good enough for us. We had plenty of land. We had always had it.... Yes; we had prospered; and had always been independent. We were not rich, you understand: just comfortable; with good farms, fat stock, and likely niggers We owed no debts; we had a few hundred of dollars in pocket, ready for an emergency—such as a request for a loan to some friend who might have got into a temporary ‘tight’ by betting on the wrong horse, or by trying to make four queens beat a straight flush....

“So far as we came into touch with the outside world at all, we were indebted to Bethany—a little, one-horse hamlet, where we worshiped and got the mail. Bethany had a granite depot on the Georgia railroad. Bethany had a post office. Bethany had a dry-goods store and two doggeries. Anyone who wished to run a horse race, fight chickens, play poker, or throw ‘chuck-a-luck,’ could do so at Bethany.

“The mansion in which we lived was a very modest affair. It did not, in the least, resemble a Grecian temple which had been sent into exile and which was striving, unsuccessfully, to look at ease among corn-cribs, cow-pens, horse-stables, pig-sties, chicken-houses, negro cabins, and worm-fenced cotton fields. It did not perch upon the top of the highest hill for miles around, and browbeat the whole community with its arrogant self-assertion. No; ours was just a plain house and none too large, not built out of bricks brought over from England, but of timbers torn from the heart of the long-leaf Georgia pine.”

In this vein Mr. Watson proceeds to give a picture of the plain Georgian and his environment, which has all the charm of personal reminiscence and the weight of historic truth. One feels in reading these simple annals of the Hortons of Georgia that just so they must have lived and not otherwise, and the last paragraph of the first chapter describes for us the effect of Mr. Watson’s portrayal:

“It all rises before me complete as a picture, vivid as a flash of lightning—a plain, unpretentious, comfortable, happy Southern home of the old regime—and like a castle among the clouds it is gone forever, even while I gaze; just as the republic of our fathers, of which that old home was a typical part, is gone, forever gone.”

In Georgia, perhaps, this sturdy middle class exercised a more potent and pervading influence over social and political life than was the case in other Southern states, and its flavor and quality are reproduced to the life by Mr. Watson. As we read his record we see what was perhaps the most practical realization of the democratic ideal of society which this democracy has yet produced—a community of Anglo-Saxon blood, rugged manhood, gentle womanhood, simple habits and neighborly fraternity. Mr. Watson gives us the picture of this period with no reservation or exaggeration,—its beauties and its blots, its virtues and its vices, its development and its limitation, and throughout his work there is a rare mingling of impartial honesty and the sympathetic touch of close and intimate knowledge and association.

The political agitation of the two years previous to the war in Georgia is reproduced carefully and effectively by Mr. Watson, and the Toombs and Stephens struggle set forth clearly and skilfully. The pen portraits of these great Georgians are sharply and strongly outlined, and may be regarded as of historic interest and importance. A spicy and forcible chapter is that describing a political barbecue at Bethany at which Toombs and Stephens spoke, and of which the festivities were further marked by an eye-gouging affair between two drunken patriots. We see in Mr. Watson’s narrative the various currents of Southern sentiment and their irresistible convergence into the tide of secession, and the Southern attitude is strongly justified as a logical result of the Northern breach of contract in refusing to obey the Fugitive Slave laws. “As to the right of secession,” says Mr. Watson, “no one denied it.... With Adams, Webster, and Calhoun harmonized in favor of secession, it did seem that the principle must be sound.”

The second part of Mr. Watson’s book, and not the more interesting, treats of the war and a rather shadowy love affair, pitched in the key of the sentimental songs of that period, with their faded flowers, mocking-birds, and pathetic partings. The story of the war is told briefly, with no prejudice or passion, from the gallant days of hope and victory to the last sad struggle against the inevitable. There is no swagger of tone, no attempt at glamour in these war pictures, but a faithful and forcible presentation of what that time meant to the common soldier and the South. Indeed, the whole book has a historic value as a truthful study of an interesting period of Southern and national life, and with no pretense of literary art, it has a distinct charm of simple narration and vivid reminiscence.

The Law of the Land. By Emerson Hough, Author of “The Mississippi Bubble,” etc. The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Indianapolis. Price, $1.50.

There is no lack of excitement in Mr. Hough’s latest novel—intrigue, mystery, villainy, a negro uprising, a Mississippi overflow—these succeed each other rapidly and bewilderingly, and there is “something doing” in every chapter. The scene is the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta,—“the richest region on the face of the whole earth,” “the heart of the only American part of America”—and the race question in its intensest and most picturesque form is the theme of the book. From a dramatic and artistic standpoint, the theme and the setting are well chosen, and in the description of the negro gathering in the forest at the call of the savage drum and the half-hinted horrors of the revenge of the whites, there is the unmistakable thrill of literary power and skill.

The conventional hero is a railroad claim agent, rather an original role for a Southern hero of romance, and a thoroughly good fellow he is, but the masterpiece of characterization is that of Colonel Calvin Blount of the Big House,—rough, brave, chivalrous, lordly, ruling over his wide acres with the imperious will and open-handed generosity of a feudal baron. His trial for murder in a lynching case is the culminating point of the book, and Eddring’s speech in his defense presents the author’s solution of the race problem in the South. “The law of the land” must be transgressed sometimes in the letter that it may be kept in the spirit, and Colonel Blount is acquitted of the murder which he committed in view of the horrors which negro rule would bring to Southern civilization. There is nothing new or profound in Mr. Hough’s treatment of the race problem, but in presenting it as it exists in the lower South in its most extreme form, he has availed himself of excellent material for dramatic romance. To the average American the life to which Mr. Hough introduces us in “The Law of the Land” will seem as strange and foreign as a glimpse into the jungles of Africa, but it is real, if exceptional, and Mr. Hough’s vivid picture may disturb the academic theories of New England to some extent. Had the author spared us the treatise on the race problem as embodied in Eddring’s defense of Colonel Blount, the novel would have been lightened by so much dead weight of argument and rhetoric. As it is, “The Law of the Land,” leaving out the tinselly plot on which the heroine’s identity and fortune depend, is a good story of dramatic power, picturesque description, and strong characterization.

The Master-Word. A Story of the South To-day. By L. H. Hammond. The Macmillan Company, New York. Price, $1.50.

This, the first novel, of a Southern woman, bears no mark of immaturity, feminine weakness, or sectional prejudice. The style is notably compact and finished, the handling strong and restrained, and the grasp of philosophic breadth and impartiality. Mrs. Hammond is something more than the clever woman who, in such numbers, is pervading the literature of the day—she is clearly a woman who can think closely and deeply, and her literary work has a real solidity of substance and significance. She has given us in “The Master-Word” a strong and original story, direct from her own thought, experience and observation, though it does not prove always humanly convincing or artistically satisfactory.

“The Master-Word” is a problem novel in a double sense, for though the race question is the theme with which it is chiefly concerned, the sex question figures also in a subordinate way. Both problems are solved by the writer with the master-word, Love, not Law—Love that suffers, sacrifices, and conquers, not Law that judges, condemns and punishes. This idea is wrought out with psychical insight and vigorous reasoning, and as a thesis is eminently satisfactory, but the story which is the medium of its illustration does not always ring true, and moreover is weakest at the crucial points.

Margaret, the young wife of Philip Lawton, a prosperous and aristocratic lawyer and farmer of Tennessee, discovers suddenly the fact of her husband’s criminal relations with a mulatto woman and his fatherhood of the latter’s child, a girl about the age of Margaret’s own daughter. She refuses to forgive and their estranged relations continue till he is stricken with pneumonia. At his deathbed the love she thought dead revives, and she forgives, as she realizes that the master-word is Love, not Law. This scene, by the way, is strongly reminiscent of the concluding chapter of “The Mettle of the Pasture,” where the dying husband delivers himself of his stagy and unnatural monologue.

After Philip’s death, Margaret, as a sort of reparation in Philip’s name, conceives the idea of taking his illegitimate negro child, deserted by its mother, under her protection and care, so the little quadroon girl is brought to the Lawton home and placed in charge of Aunt Dilsey, the old mammy, who proclaims it her grandchild. There Viry is reared, playing with the Lawton children, sharing much of their life, but recognized as a “nigger” and treated on that basis. She is sent, as she grows older, to a negro college, where she learns rapidly, and finally comes back to the Lawtons and Aunt Dilsey, dissatisfied and embittered, frankly hating the race with which she is classed, but attached by the strongest affection to Bess Lawton, her half-sister. She becomes a teacher in a negro school, but holds herself aloof from the negroes, and grows more bitter and desperate. Bruce Carleton, the lover of Bess, is the object of her secret passion, and the savage, bestial strain in her make-up comes out in her plan to attract him and hold him in what to him would be a purely sensual tie. Finding out that Bess really loves him, however, she renounces her purpose, and, hopeless of happiness, tries to commit suicide. Then comes the culminating point of the book in the disclosure to Viry by Margaret of the secret of the former’s birth. Margaret lays bare her own suffering and her husband’s sin and makes a powerful appeal to the girl to accept her maimed and burdened life and make it in some measure an atonement and a redemption. Viry’s heart is reached at last, and she, too, bows to the master-word, Love, which means for her a life of service and loneliness. The race line must not be obliterated—this is made plain, and Mrs. Hammond’s argument is notably strong and unhackneyed. Margaret’s reply to Viry, when the latter, “the red blood burning in her face,” throws up to her the existence of three million mulattos as a proof that instinct is not against the union of black and white, is the most convincing and complete answer to that plea that has yet been presented.

It seems to us unfortunate that Mrs. Hammond should have chosen to base her story on an incident at once so repulsive and so untrue as that of Philip Lawton’s criminal connection with the degraded mulatto. For, under the conditions described and set forth by the author, the case of Philip is so absolutely untypical and strikingly exceptional that its use as the foundation stone of so serious a story seems an amazing blunder of judgment, taste and ethics. Then, again, it is hardly conceivable that a woman of Margaret’s training and temperament, would have found her duty in bringing her husband’s negro child into her own household in constant contact with herself and her children. The step seems forced and unnatural in the highest degree, and no less so appears the wife’s disclosure of her husband’s shame after so many years to the quadroon girl. Nature, womanhood, taste, all revolt against such a situation. Reality is sacrificed to theory, and Margaret becomes the author’s creature, not her creation; her spokesman, not a natural woman. Viry, too, is not quite genuine to our perceptions, and can certainly not be regarded as a typical product of her blood and environment. At best her story is an extreme case, put in its most extreme terms.

The phosphate region of Middle Tennessee is the scene of the story, and its peculiar conditions of labor and the twists and turns of local politics are presented with a keen and trenchant touch. The young people of the book are an extremely natural and agreeable set, and the love affair of Bess and Bruce is as fresh and wholesome as the fine country air that pervades the book. Bruce is really a wonder for a woman’s hero, being neither cad nor prig, but merely a straight and likable young fellow with human faults and failings. Aunt Dilsey is at once a photograph, a phonograph, and a sympathetic sketch of the old-time negro mammy.

There is a looseness of construction, a prolixity of trifling incident, at certain portions of the book which at times weaken its interest, and it is evident that purely artistic ideals were not its chief inspiration. Still, when all is said, its merits far outweigh its faults, and it is well worth the serious criticism it will receive. It testifies strongly to the writer’s brain and skill and arouses interest in her future work.

The Secret Woman. By Eden Phillpotts. The Macmillan Company, New York. Price, $1.50.

The comparison to Hardy has become a commonplace of any criticism of Mr. Phillpotts’ literary output, and the comparison carries an inevitable distinction and disparagement. The distinction is that Mr. Phillpotts is the one writer worthy to be called a disciple of the Wessex chronicler, and the disparagement is in the differentiation at once apparent in the similarity. Primitive nature, physical and human, is Mr. Phillpotts’ theme as it is Mr. Hardy’s, and the primal passions in rustic life are the elements of both novelists’ tragedy and comedy. But though one man may want and try to make from the same material the same things as wrought by another, it is out of his power to do so, and Mr. Phillpotts’ work lacks the strength and seriousness of Mr. Hardy’s. In the first place, the colorless irony of the older writer, epitomized so perfectly in his title, “Far from the Madding Crowd,” is lacking entirely in Mr. Phillpotts, and the latter’s florid descriptions and psychologic analyses fail of the Hardy effect because of this lack. The personal note of Mr. Hardy, ironic, accentless, incisive, is the salt to his magnificent dish of natural elements, without which their strength and freshness would pall upon the taste. And as a literary artist, too, Mr. Phillpotts falls below his master. Despite the wealth of natural description with which he burdens so heavily his narratives, there is nothing that touches the Hardy landscapes in power and artistic truth. The wonderful and haunting picture of the moor in “The Return of the Native” is Hardy at highwater mark, it is true, but there is nothing in the Phillpotts gallery that can even be compared to it.

“The Secret Woman” is a story of human frailty, passion, crime, and soul struggle, set in the rocks and glades of Dartmoor. An illicit love between a married man and a beautiful and pagan-hearted girl is the basis of the plot, and the murder of the man by his wife in a fit of jealous rage is the first act of the tragedy. A touch worthy of Hardy occurs in the interview between husband and wife just after the latter’s discovery of the man’s unfaithfulness, when a sudden gust of wind and rain drowns the wife’s voice as she offers pardon, thus through the blow of blind fate sealing the husband’s doom. The murder is witnessed by the two sons, but is kept secret, though it divides the brothers and fills the mother’s life with a never-dying repentance. The figure of the murderess, Anne Redvers, and the study of her character and soul development, are the most elaborate and striking work of the book, but it is Salome, “the secret woman,” and her intrigue with the dead man, unknown and unsuspected, that furnish the motive for the drama. In striking contrast are the two women, one dark, stern, conscientious, softening and mellowing through sorrow and repentance into sympathy and forgiveness, the other fair, conscienceless, self-indulgent, swayed but by emotion and passion.

Jesse, one of the sons of the murdered man, loves this girl, his father’s paramour, and she becomes his betrothed, driven to this step by poverty, though she never intends to marry him. This intolerable situation is finally ended by his confession to Salome of his mother’s crime which has darkened his soul, and this is followed by Salome’s reckless disclosure of her love and sin to Anne Redvers, whom she denounces as a murderess. Anne goes to prison gladly, Jesse kills himself, and Salome lives on, constant to her dead lover and incapable of repentance. Truly Mr. Phillpotts has not spared us a possible horror.

We have, of course, the rustic comedy beneath the tragedy—the artless peasants, their quaint talk and ancient superstitions; and the figure of Joseph Westaway, the shiftless, tender-hearted incompetent, bravely and unreasonably optimistic amid crowding misfortunes, is very nearly a masterpiece of portraiture.

In this terrible drama, Mr. Phillpotts offers us in succession the various theories of materialism, Old Testament theology, pagan indifference, and simple, unquestioning faith in a divine power. Each is presented with admirable impartiality, its play upon the story being merely an aid to the desired dramatic effect. At the last, the struggle is between Anne and Salome, and the former who has found peace in Christian faith and atonement, makes her appeal to Salome to seek comfort and salvation by the same road. Finally Salome promises to take the sacrament, but as she kneels at the sacred table, her heart is unchanged—

“A man’s voice suddenly ended the silence and—echoes from a far past—his words fell upon her ear strangely. All solemnity has perished from them. The Commandments tinkled like a child’s little prayer at bedtime.... Light rained down and quenched the candles and touched the petals of exotic flowers. The air of the sanctuary was sweet with them; but Salome’s thoughts harboured in the dust.”

America, Asia and the Pacific. By Wolf von Schierbrand, Ph.D. Henry Holt & Co., New York.

The interest of the ancient and of the mediæval world centered around the Mediterranean. Recall the names of the states that fought for and obtained the trade of that sea and you have the history of civilization. Egypt, Phœnicia, Greece, Carthage, Rome, Venice, Spain, one after another, played the leading role. With the discovery of the new world the scene shifted to the Atlantic and England shouldered her way to the limelight. Now, it seems, another new world and a richer has been discovered. It happens also to be the oldest world and the last act of the drama is to be played on the Pacific, the widest stage of all. Before the whole world as audience, the nations are contending for the prize—the trade of China. Which one is to get it?

Mr. von Schierbrand contributes to the solution of this question a very entertaining and instructive volume. From his standpoint, which is a most interesting one, the importance of the trade of the Far East to ourselves is not to be overestimated. The wonderful productive energy of the United States makes the need of new markets imperative. Four hundred millions of Chinese can furnish us such markets. Basing our figures on the precedent of Japan, China, if she would, could buy of the world $35,000,000,000 more. Her mineral wealth, still undeveloped, is greater than that of North America.

The author’s masterly marshaling of the means and the methods necessary to increase our commercial opportunities is the feature of his book. The political school to which he belongs and to which an immense majority of Americans belong, if the recent election meant anything, studies, at the same moment, the tonnage of the battleships and the quality of the cotton blouse on the Chinese coolie’s back. It carries us around the immense circle of the Pacific and calls the roll of the powers and principalities of the future—Canada, America, Java, Sumatra, Celebes, Borneo, Australia, the Philippines, Japan, China, Siberia,—and asks which of the nations shall share with us these riches. England’s claim the writer dismisses with few words. England is conservative and decadent. Russia is more dangerous. She aims to absorb all Asia and close the door in the face of the world. The writer has an interesting discussion of the Russo-Japanese war in the course of which he prods the English again for not choking the Russians while they can.

Germany he pronounces our most formidable rival. German industry, frugality, patience and skill have brought her up since 1870, when she was purely an agricultural state, to the front rank in manufactures and in foreign trade. It may be added, parenthetically, that she is making persistent efforts to free herself from the American cotton monopoly.

Turning to the Japanese, the writer mentions a fact whose significance is little appreciated in America. Japan practically monopolizes now the trade in manufactured cotton with China, and, what is still more significant, she gets nearly all her raw cotton from India.

What is the secret purpose of Japan? Nobody knows. Does she see herself supplanting the wornout Manchu dynasty and leading the millions of the East to the mastery of Asia by the strength of her military genius? Will she then shut the doors to the outside world, as, in the sixteenth century, she shut her own? The writer makes light of the so-called Yellow Peril, arguing that Japan does not wish to exploit the latent military strength of China, but aspires to lead her in the path of industrial progress after the Western models upon which Japan has fashioned herself.

Mr von Schierbrand ignores the underlying spiritual differences that separate the Oriental from the European, differences that will always be the cause of hostility, open or veiled, between them. After all it is not so important who is to get the trade of the East but what are the ideals that are finally to prevail there—the Christian ideals or Oriental fatalism. It could be wished that the author felt more interest in such discussions. One is tempted to quote against him his own words in another connection: “Beside the mad passion for gain there is no charm in rest, lettered ease, travel, still less in labor for the general good—charity, education, the state; the ruling passion must rage on, business must be expanded regardless of profit and with eyes closed to impending loss. Instead of making ourselves more homes and more beautiful things and cultured people in them, we cherish the tenement house and the narrow life, and go on piling up and shoving out what we are pleased to call goods, goods, goods.” It is well enough to chasten ourselves with such reflections as we go on with the author to weigh the claim of the United States to the lion’s share in the trade of the Pacific.

The author bases our claim on the strategic advantage which the Panama Canal is to give us, and this part of the book is unquestionably most interesting to the South. The relation of the richest granary in the world, the Mississippi Valley, to the Canal will rid it of the need of railways. The canal will bring New York closer to the west coast of South America than San Francisco, and New Orleans will be seven hundred miles nearer still. The commercial availability of Southern coal and iron will be immensely increased and the harbors of the South will assume an importance long withheld from them as ports of call.

The book as a whole is well written, and the last chapters, which summarize the author’s conclusions, especially so. What he has to say about public opinion and of the force, more universal still, the primary need of the human race of food, which together share the sovereignty of the modern world, is well said and more philosophical by far than is usual with the books of the imperialists.

The Color Line. By William Benjamin Smith. McClure, Phillips and Co., New York.

It is always a satisfaction when what has been dumbly felt is put at last into a clear-cut scientific concept. This is what William Benjamin Smith has done for us with his book on the negro problem. The South has always felt that the problem was not one involving philanthropy or the rights of man or any sort of altruism. Those are considerations that have to do with individuals. The negro problem is purely a question of race. As Mr. Bagehot pointed out in his clever book, “Physics and Politics,” the differences existing to-day between the Aryan races and the negro are greater than any causes now acting are capable of creating in present-day men. The laws of heredity are not fully known, but it is certain that the descendants of cultivated parents have an inborn aptitude for civilization due to the structure of their nervous systems. The uncivilized races do not improve; they have not the basis on which to build, but instead have inherited natures twisted into a thousand curious habits, a thousand strange prejudices and a thousand grotesque superstitions. The moment it is admitted that the difference between white and black is the product of evolution the hope of bridging the difference by education is gone. That it must be admitted is the thesis of Mr. Smith’s book, which ought to be read by every man and woman in the country who is open to reason. Once admitted, the conclusion follows swiftly and irresistibly. The duty of the white man to maintain in its purity the germ plasm of the white race justifies the denial of social equality to the black man. This is a duty which no sentimentality can excuse for it is a duty to civilization, to posterity, to the country. Neglect it, and mongrelization follows inevitably. We quote from the book: “It is this immediate jewel of her soul that the South watches with such a dragon eye, that she guards with more than vestal vigilance, with a circle of perpetual fire. The blood thereof is the life thereof; he who would defile it would stab her in her heart of hearts, and she springs to repulse him with the fiercest instinct of self-preservation.”

Mr. Smith has brought to his argument a wealth of learning and research which places his book in the rank of an authority on a much misunderstood question.

The Pursuit of Phyllis. By John Harword Bacon. Henry Holt, New York. Price, $1.25.

Tom Mott, a clever literateur of New York, is ordered to take a rest by his physician, and goes abroad to seek recreation and relaxation. At his London hotel, he finds in his dresser drawer some letters addressed to Miss Phyllis Huntingdon in the handwriting of an old chum, and impelled by a Quixotic impulse, he determines to restore them to their owner in person. From London he proceeds to Paris, thence to Marseilles, through the Mediterranean to Port Said and the Orient, very much in the style of an up-to-date Gabriel and Evangeline affair, always finding at each port that Miss Huntingdon’s departure had antedated his arrival by a few hours. Finally his quest is rewarded at Colombo on the island of Ceylon, where he meets Phyllis, a ruddy-haired, winsome young woman, who is likened successively by the imaginative Mr. Mott to a dish of pink ice cream, a rosy-tipped peony, and the summer girl on a magazine cover. They come back together across the world, ending the trip, after the excitement of a misunderstanding and a quarrel, in orthodox fashion. A lively trifle of globe-trotting and philandering is “The Pursuit of Phyllis,” easy to read, and disarming criticism by its utter lack of seriousness and significance.

Daphne and Her Lad. By M. J. Lagen and Cally Ryland. Henry Holt, New York. Price, $1.25.

A story told in letters—the brilliant and showy correspondence so much affected in fiction and so rarely indulged in in real life. The writers, too, are newspaper folk, a man and a woman, each editor of a woman’s page, and we mildly wonder how they ever found time to sacrifice so much good “copy” to private correspondence. At first, the exchange of letters is but a journalistic flirtation between two unknown personalities, and it is maintained and continued to the point of intimate self-revelation and ardent lovemaking before the writers meet in the last chapter. The disclosure and denouement of the conclusion come with somewhat of a shock to the unsuspecting reader who has followed the airy persiflage and sentimental outpourings of these industrious letter writers with no thought of such a tragic ending as that on which the curtain falls. It was Stevenson who said that to give a bad ending to a story meant to end happily, or vice versa, was an unpardonable literary crime, and we must hold the authors of “Daphne and Her Lad” guilty of this offense. The story was not framed along the tragic lines which logically or artistically lead to hopeless misery, and the final impression is disturbing and ineffective.

The Millionaire Baby. By Anna Katherine Green. The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Indianapolis. Price, $1.50.

A startling crime, innumerable clues, the gradual elimination of every reasonable and plausible theory, and the construction of the wildest, most improbable explanation to fit the problem—these are the lines on which the detective stories of Anna Katherine Green are invariably framed, and “The Millionaire Baby” is no exception to the rule. A little girl, heiress to an immense fortune, is kidnapped during a garden fete at her parents’ palatial home on the Hudson, under most unusual circumstances, and the reader is at once lost in a labyrinth of mysterious old men, magnetic ladies, amazing coincidences, and secret chambers. The way out is pointed ultimately by a young detective, and the reader emerges feeling rather “sold.” Despite the writer’s unspeakable rhetoric and crude methods, her stories have a way of getting themselves read, and a large constituency will welcome “The Millionaire Baby.”

Tennessee History Stories. By T. C. Karns. B. F. Johnson Publishing Co., Richmond, Va.

The writer belongs to that loyal band of missionaries who are spreading abroad among the children of the nation the knowledge of the importance of the western chain of settlements on the Tennessee and Kentucky frontiers in the history of the United States. The stories he tells of John Sevier, of James Robertson and Daniel Boone, while written for the children, are well worth reading and the book is sure to earn a place in the curriculum of the primary schools.

THE FIDDLE AND THE BOW.

We dream of a heaven beyond the stars, but there are heavens all around us with beautiful gates ajar to those who have eyes to see and ears to hear. I have seen heavens of delight where the meadows flashed with dew and the crows were on the wing. I have seen heavens of music where the linnet swept her lute and the thrush rang his silver bells in the dusky chambers of the forest.

I once sat on the grassy brink of a southern stream in the gathering twilight of evening and listened to a concert of Nature’s musicians who sang as God hath taught them to sing. The katydid led off with a trombone solo; the cricket chimed in with his E flat cornet; the bumble-bee played on his violincello, and the jaybird laughed with his piccolo. The music rose to grandeur with the deep bass horn of the big black beetle; the mocking-bird’s flute brought me to tears of rapture, and the screech-owl’s fife made me want to fight; the tree-frog blew his alto horn; the jar-fly clashed his tinkling cymbals; the woodpecker rattled his kettledrum and the locust jingled his tambourine. The music rolled along like a sparkling river in sweet accompaniment with the oriole’s leading violin; but it suddenly hushed when I heard a ripple of laughter among the hollyhocks before the door of a happy country home. I saw a youth standing there in the shadows holding his sweetheart’s hand in his. There were a few whispers, tender and low—the lassie vanished in the cottage—the lad vanished over the hill, and as he vanished he swung his hat in the shadows and sang back to her his happy love song:

And the birds inclined their heads to listen to his song as it died away on the drowsy evening air.

I saw a youth holding his sweetheart’s hand.

That night I slept in a mansion

but while I dreamed, I was serenaded by a band of mosquitoes and this is the song they sang above my pillow:

There are heavens all around us with beautiful gates ajar. I have seen a June morning unbar a gate of roses and come forth from her palace in the sky bearing in her girdle of light the keys to a thousand heavens. I have seen her kindle a sun in every dewdrop and touch the waking hills with glory. I caught the odor of honeysuckles and the note of a lark as it rose exultant from the meadow. There were the glimmer of painted wings among the clover blossoms and the hum of teeming bees rich with the spoils of plundered beauty. There were the green trail of a winding river and the low music of its joyous waters dashing among the rocks of distant rapids. I heard the shouts and splashes of noisy boys down at the old swimming hole under the spreading elms. An old time darky went shambling by, with his cup of bait and his fishing pole. The wine of June was in his veins and he tangled his song with the honey song of the bees:

And he cut the pigeon wing in the clover and then sat down on a bumble-bee. It invited him to rise, and he rose; and it was difficult for the old man to tell which was the warmer—the June in his heart or the June in the bumble-bee.

He cut the pigeon wing in the clover.

The convict’s plea for pardon.

A lovesick lad met his sweetheart down in the shady lane and poured out his soul to her under the locust bloom. I saw him push his boat from the shore and dip his oars in the clear heaven of the crystal waters. She was his only companion. And as the painted keel darted away like a bird beneath the bending boughs and went skimming round the bend of the river I heard their voices blending up among the cliffs and shadows singing a sweet love song. To him, she was a full blow’n rose of beauty; to her, he was a daisy. To him her ribbons were streaks of light; to her his fuzzy upper lip was a poem. They floated and fished and fished and floated away the golden hours; and while they fished and floated, he wooed her—he wooed and he wooed and he wooed—until, at length, he won her; and, as they floated homeward in the evening, dreaming of wedding bells and orange blossoms,

I looked upon these scenes of light and love and I walked in the heaven of the beautiful, the somnambulist of a rapturous dream.

O, matchless dream maker, voluptuous June! Enchantress of the sun, Eden builder of the world! There is a magic in thy touch which melts the icicles in the veins of age and makes the tropic blood of youth run roses.

There are heavens all around us with beautiful gates ajar: I have seen October open a gate of opal and I walked in the heaven of autumnal glory. I have seen her splash the forest with the tints of a thousand shattered rainbows, and then draw the misty veil of Indian summer—that mysterious phantom of the air that conjures the sunlight into yellow amber and turns the world into a dream.

I joined the farmers in the jubilee of the county fair, and walked through streets of pumpkins, purple avenues of turnips, and fragrant boulevards of onions, enough to bring the world to tears.

There was the sound of the hunter’s horn at the break of day. I mounted my gallant steed and galloped away to the rendezvous, and every breath of the cool, crisp October air was like a draught of exhilarating wine. The hunters assembled at the appointed place, the eager hounds were unleashed and they scurried away like ghosts in the gloomy woods. They coursed and circled like flying shadows—now and then giving tongue as they took up the scent of some cold and doubtful trail. Faster and faster they circled, until they jumped the fox from his covert and opened in full cry, and it was like a sudden burst of music from a band. Away they bounded, bellowing their deep-mouthed serenade to the wily knight of the red plume, who showed them a clean pair of heels. They pushed him up the rocky steeps and pressed him down the dusky hollows, they swung him through the highland gaps and whirled him round the ridges. Over the hills and round the knob Sir Reynard led the band until the waking echoes caught up the flying melody and sent it pulsing from cliff to cliff and from crag to crag! On fled the fox with tireless leap! on followed the hounds with smoking mouths! On and on, over hill and dale, through forest and field until finally the music died away like the chime of distant bells!

How sweet are the lips of morning that kiss the waking world; how sweet is the bosom of night that pillows the world to rest; but sweeter than the lips of morning and sweeter than the bosom of night is the voice of music that wakes a world of joys and soothes a world of sorrows. It is like some unseen ethereal ocean whose silver surf forever breaks in song. All nature is full of music. There is a melody in every sunbeam, a sunbeam in every melody. There is a love song in every flower, a sonnet in every gurgling fountain, a hymn in every rolling billow. Music is the twin angel of light, the first born of heaven, and mortal ear and mortal eye have caught only the echo and the shadow of their celestial glories.

He wooed and he wooed and he wooed.

The violin is the poet laureate of music—violin of the virtuoso and master, fiddle of the untutored in the ideal art. It is the aristocrat of the palace and the hall; it is the democrat of the unpretentious home and humble cabin. As violin, it weaves its garlands of roses and camellias; as fiddle it scatters its modest violets. It is admired by the cultured for its magnificent powers and wonderful creations. It is loved by the millions for its simple melodies.

One bright morning just before Christmas Day, an official stood in the executive chamber in my presence as governor of Tennessee, and said:

“Governor, I have been implored by a poor, miserable wretch in the penitentiary to bring you this rude fiddle. It was made by his own hands with a penknife during the hours allotted to him for rest. It is entirely without value, as you can see, but it is his petition to you for mercy. He begged me to say that he has neither influential friends nor attorneys to plead for him; and all that he asks is that, when the governor shall sit at his own happy fireside on Christmas eve with his own happy children around him, he will play one tune to them on this rough fiddle and think of a cabin far away in the mountains whose hearthstone is cold and desolate and surrounded by a family of poor little helpless ragged children, crying for bread and waiting and listening for the footsteps of their father.”

Who would not have been touched by such an appeal? The record was examined. Christmas eve came. The governor sat that night at his own happy fireside, with his own happy children around him and he played one tune to them on that rough fiddle. The fireside of the cabin in the mountains was bright and warm. A pardoned prisoner sat with his baby on his knee, surrounded by his happy children and in the presence of his rejoicing wife. And, although there was naught but rags and squalid poverty around him his heart sang,

When I used to play the role of governor of the old Volunteer State, I often felt the stings of criticism for the liberal use of the pardoning power. But I saw old mothers with their white locks and wrinkled brows swoon at the governor’s feet every day. I saw old fathers with broken hearts and tear-stained faces and heard them plead by the hour for their wayward boys. I saw a wife and seven children clad in tatters and rags and barefooted in midwinter fall down upon their knees around him who held the pardoning power. I saw a little girl climb upon the governor’s knee and put her little arms around his neck and I heard her ask him if he had little girls; and then I saw her sob upon his bosom as though her little heart would break and heard her plead for mercy for her poor, miserable, wretched convict father. I saw want and woe and agony and anguish unutterable pass before the gubernatorial door. And I said: “Let this heartless world condemn! let the critics frown and rail, but he who hath power and doth not temper justice with mercy will cry in vain himself for mercy on that great day when God shall judge the merciful and the unmerciful!”

SOUTHERN PLATFORM DEPARTMENT — WAITING IN THE ANTE-ROOM. — UP AND KISSED HER. — THE STORY OF JOSEPH. — THE MOCKING-BIRD. — THE YOUTH OF SHAKESPEARE. — THE MASQUERADER.

The aim of this department is to present to the readers of Bob Taylor’s Magazine, and particularly to those who are directly interested in the Lyceum, all obtainable information with reference to the bright lights of the platform—the men and women of real genius, whose work has contributed to the establishing and development of an interest in that higher and more wholesome entertainment to which all enlightened communities are rapidly turning, from the coarser and more purposeless forms of amusement. This being a department devoted to the particular interests of the platform of the South, it is our desire to give special attention to all worthy attractions which include the South in their field of operation. We shall not “puff” the unworthy for a price, but among those who come to the Southland with the genius and the power to instruct, entertain and uplift us, there shall be none too poor in pocket to command our columns and our full energies for the exploitation of their merits for the benefit of the public. Our people are wide awake, and the South is no field for the marketing of gold bricks and wooden nutmegs, whether they be moulded in Dixie or manufactured in the land of Yankee Doodle. While the Southern tongue is the quickest to condemn a fraud or a fake, the Southern hand is the readiest to place the laurel wreath on the brow which deserves it. As in everything else, the jewels of the platform are very rare. There are too many paste diamonds mixed with the real—too many so-called stars which neither shine nor sparkle. Let us seek out the real and genuine sparklers, and throw the light of our approval upon them, that they may glint and glance on the platform for our pleasure and edification.

THE ROYAL ITALIAN BAND OF TWENTY-ONE MUSICIANS.

This Band is to come South next fall for the first time, and it will undoubtedly be one of the popular hits of the season, and one of the strongest attractions offered.

OPIE READ

Who will tour the South the coming season under the direction of The Rice Bureau, of Nashville.

Opie Read, author, humorist, playwright and philosopher, known and beloved by Americans, rich and poor alike, not only in his own Southland, but all over the great West, and the East as well—his is indeed a name to conjure with. As an entertainer, Mr. Read has been a surprise even to his most sanguine friends. Very few who write clever stories can read them in a way to evoke either tears or laughter, and when an author who has gained his reputation mainly through humorous work appears in a varied program, his path is beset by so many difficulties that failure almost invariably lies in wait for him. Opie Read is the exception that proves the rule. We laugh with him when he “shoots out the moon,” and we weep over the pathetic story of “The Bronsons,” and the “moonlight parting to let her pass.” We are thrilled with the tales of simple heroism and we marvel at the rich mine of romance which lies hidden among the Tennessee mountains whence he draws the quaint characters that figure in his stories and plays.

MME. JOHANNA GADSKI,

One of the great artists of Grand Opera, to be presented by The Rice Bureau of Nashville for a tour of the South next fall.

March 1, 1895, Mme. Gadski made her debut at the New York Metropolitan Opera House in the role of Elsa in “Lohengrin,” and during two more seasons with the Damrosch-Ellis Company, of which Mme. Melba was also a prominent member, she constantly increased her repertoire, progressing from merely lyric to heavier dramatic parts and thereby growing in public favor.

In 1898 Mme. Gadski became a member of the Grau Opera Company, at New York. When Grau retired, in the spring of 1903, Mme. Gadski received and accepted a flattering offer from Heinrich Conried, the successor to Mr. Grau at the Metropolitan Opera House.

Besides her American engagements Mme. Gadski found time to appear at Covent Garden, London, during the seasons 1899, 1900 and 1901. She also sang Eva in the “Meistersinger” performances at Bayreuth in the summer of 1899.

MME. CHARLOTTE MACONDA.

The greatest of American born and American educated singers, who will make a limited tour in the South next fall and winter under the exclusive direction of The Rice Bureau, of Nashville.

Mme. Maconda has received her musical training almost wholly in the United States, and by every right she stands the coloratura soprano par excellence of to-day on this continent. With a vocal organ of richest quality and remarkable range, a charming personality, and that undefinable something called magnetism, this great artist charms her hearers, and has won her way to the very front rank of great artists. Moreover, she sings to the heart and the soul as well as to the ear, and in the clearness and tender pathos of her notes she perhaps more nearly approaches the divine music of the great Patti than any singer of the present generation.

LELAND T. POWERS,

The foremost Impersonator of America, who will make a limited tour in the South next season.

KATHERINE RIDGEWAY,

Who, assisted by her splendid company of artists, will be a strong feature on many of the leading courses of the South, the coming season. She has for several years been the most popular lady entertainer in the North and East.

CAPT. JACK CRAWFORD.

The Poet-Scout.

Capt. Jack Crawford, who has long been prominent as soldier, poet and entertainer, has achieved a new success in his article in the Munsey Magazine of February, entitled “The Last of the Indian Chiefs.” This article is intensely interesting and discloses some astonishing facts with reference to certain supposedly great Indian warriors, who were in reality the creations of sensationalists and dime novel writers. It is so seldom we meet a man with courage enough to deliver facts which turn a hero into a fake, that we are refreshed with the very presence of such a man.

We are glad to have the privilege to present to our readers this tender and beautiful little poem from the pen of the Poet-Scout.

FRED EMERSON BROOKS.

Fred Emerson Brooks, the poet-humorist of the West, who loves the South and is one of the favorites of Southern people. No more beautiful tribute has ever been paid to the valor of the Southern soldier than is paid in Mr. Brooks’ great poem, “Pickett’s Charge.”

SAM JONES.

Rev. Sam P. Jones, the great evangelist and Southern lecturer, who possesses a style of oratory unique and powerful, and a wonderful magnetism.

IDA BENFEY,

Who makes a short tour in the South each season, and who is always welcomed for her high art.

“Out of the fulness of the heart the mouth speaketh,” and just now I find myself almost completely absorbed by the Story of Joseph, which Tolstoi calls the greatest short story ever written. And he adds, significantly, that it would make no difference in telling it to the people of China what the customs were—that the human interest in the story is so powerful it sweeps all minor details to one side.

Joseph is not at all a perfect man. He hasn’t the kind of faults that David possessed, that show clearly to the person that isn’t even looking for them; but he has what seem to be more terrible faults because they are gilded over with success. And I can think of no character in history more magnanimous than was Joseph, for when his father was dead and his brethren came to him and were afraid that he would be avenging, he wept at their doubting him, and then said these significant words: “Fear not: for am I in the place of God?” It seems to me that these are the words that best show the high ideal that ruled Joseph. As far as I can see it is the same spirit which was in Luther, only in another form—that is, that each one of us must settle all our doubts with God alone. Human help is unavailing here. Such a high ideal as this of Joseph fills me with awe and reverent admiration, and when I realize that he was at the head of, and the former and the creator of the most stupendous trust that the world has ever known, I find myself bewildered in trying to reconcile such different elements in one man,—Joseph’s tenderness and magnanimity to his brethren, and Joseph’s creating a trust which forced the Egyptians to sell their land to him and finally their bodies as slaves to ward off starvation. Think of one man combining such opposite qualities. Is it because the golden rule that Christ gave us had not yet come into the world? Of course Joseph did what John D. Rockefeller is trying to do, and has in no small degree accomplished, though perhaps we do not see the slave-chains that he has put upon us. But John D. Rockefeller hasn’t, as far as we know, the godlike nature that Joseph had. He and Joseph are alike in each possessing the inhuman quality of being able to crush out the life of their fellowmen.

I wonder if Joseph created this trust and carried it out merely because he was a man of business, or because he enjoyed the game he was at, as does Russell Sage. Until I began to study this story, I never knew what the parable of the wise and foolish virgins meant, but it seems plain to me now. Joseph was like the wise virgin. The thirteen years which he spent as a slave and in prison he gave entirely to living each moment to the glory of God. He wasted no time in bearing hatred towards his brethren, or thinking how much better he was than the position he occupied, or wishing God wouldn’t forget him quite so long, but would try and be a little more attentive to him personally. No, he simply did each act in the best and sunniest way, and the day when Pharaoh sent hastily for him and they brought him hurriedly out of the prison, he stopped and shaved himself and changed his raiment. Why? Because he was a gentleman and he had been in the habit of daily shaving and of daily caring for his body in the best possible way. And when we read that he came in to Pharaoh we know exactly how he walked, with the calm quietness that belongs to a person that has sufficient self-respect to last through the night and lap over into the next morning.

Gibbon, in his “History of Rome,” says that the hatred between the religions began about the fourth century; that people before that had been willing that people should worship as they thought best, the idea being that all were striving for the same noble end. I wonder if there was something of this beautiful spirit in Egypt. It has made a tremendous impression upon me that Moses, a Hebrew, in telling the story says that the Egyptians would not eat with the Hebrews because it is an abomination for Egyptians to eat with Hebrews. One would have thought that Moses would have put the Hebrew first, naturally caring most for his own. And I keep wondering whether he put them in the inferior position of making them second because of that same exquisite courtesy which Lincoln exercised when he always mentioned the North first, as though they were the more guilty in everything connected with the War; or was it because the Egyptians were the most powerful nation, and, as a matter of fact, should be mentioned first? This, however, is but a side issue to the wonderful fact that though the Egyptians would not eat with the Hebrews, yet Pharaoh and Potiphar immediately saw, and Pharaoh publicly announced, that the Spirit of God was in Joseph. Why, I hardly know anyone who is an enthusiastic church worker that feels that the spirit of God is really and surely in a church worker of another denomination.

MRS. MARY H. FLANNER,

Poet and Entertainer.

FREDERICK WARDE,

the eminent Shakespearian tragedian, who leaves the stage, laurel-crowned, to take up the higher work of the platform.

The mistaken impression that prevails in the minds of many as to the social position and general conditions of the parents of Shakespeare is in a great measure responsible for the doubts that are so frequently expressed as to the authenticity of the works ascribed to that great master. It is erroneously supposed that they were in very humble circumstances, in fact, little more than peasants, and the question is frequently asked: “Is it possible that a man of such humble origin and with such limited opportunities of mental development, could have written a series of plays that indicate such universal knowledge of men and manners and display such transcendent genius?”

Hazlett, in one of his essays, truly says: “No really great man ever thought himself to be one,” and I doubt if Shakespeare in his wildest dreams ever imagined that the world would credit him with the sublime genius that it now justly acknowledges. We find no memoirs or autobiographic notes to enlighten us as to his hopes, his fears, his ambitions, the thoughts that occupy his mind, or the details of his daily life.

It is greatly to be deplored that we have so little authentic information as to the life of Shakespeare. The facts, however, that have been gleaned from the meagre records of the period, conflicting though they be, enable us to arrive, with some degree of accuracy, at the probabilities, if not the actual facts of his history. Supplementing these facts with some imagination, intelligently directed, I think we are justified in the conclusion that there is nothing inconsistent with the conditions of his birth, parentage, education, the environment of his youth, and the universality of the genius subsequently displayed.

The father of Shakespeare was legally a gentleman, by a license from King Henry VII, granting him a crest and a coat of arms, and the privilege of bearing arms for substantial services rendered his sovereign; and it is recorded that this honor was not only bestowed for his own individual services, but was renewed by inheritance from his father and grandfather; so that, engaged in peaceful pursuits himself, he was honorably descended from warriors and fighting men, almost the sole means of obtaining distinction in those days.

We have no means of discovering if John Shakespeare was a man of any education. The fact that he made his mark instead of signing his name to public documents being no evidence to the contrary, for at the period in which he lived, the art of pencraft was almost entirely limited to clerks and scholars; even gentlemen and men of quality holding it “a baseness to write fair.” Yet Sidney Lee assures us there is evidence in the Stratford archives that he (John Shakespeare) could write with facility. The offices held by him in the Borough of Stratford indicate that he was a man of more than average intelligence among his fellows, and of considerable executive ability. After holding several minor offices he was elected successively one of the Chamberlains (1561), Alderman (1565), Borough Bailiff (1569), and Chief Alderman (1571), and by the county records was possessed at various times of considerable property, principally real estate. In the deeds relating to the transfer of this property he is sometimes described as “yeoman,” at others as a “glover,” and it is known that he dealt in cattle, corn and country produce generally.

If asked what was the strongest influence for good in their lives, I think most men of any worth or eminence would reply, “My mother.” In this respect Shakespeare was most fortunate. His mother was Mary Arden, the youngest of seven daughters of Robert Arden of Wilmecote, whose tenant Richard Shakespeare, the father of John, had been; and who, on her marriage to John Shakespeare, brought him a good estate in money and property. The Ardens were an old family of good standing and consequence in the midland counties of England, tracing a long line of honorable ancestry, and worthily representing that substantial and independent class, “the yeoman squires of England.” Rowe asserts that this worthy couple (John and Mary Shakespeare) had ten children, but the parish register of Stratford makes the number only eight. However, William was the eldest son, though not the first child.

There is no evidence that Mary Arden was a woman of any great accomplishments, but it is reasonable to suppose from the position and wealth of her family she was not without education. It is also reasonable to suppose that in spite of the onerous duties of such a large family Shakespeare’s mother should have found time to guide and form the youthful mind of her eldest son, and impart to him the first rudiments of knowledge. His father at that period was well-to-do and abundantly able to provide his family with comfortable surroundings and adequate service.

Thus the first seven years of Shakespeare’s life were passed in comfort and comparative affluence, under the care of a father who was honored and respected for his ability and integrity by his fellow-townsmen, and a mother whose family and connections would indicate a woman of worth and refinement.

In the town of Stratford was a Free School, founded in the reign of Edward IV and subsequently chartered by Edward VI—one of those foundation schools of which a number exist in England to-day, notably, Christ’s (the blue-coat school), made familiar to us by Thackeray, in The Newcombs; the City of London School, St. Paul’s, and The Charterhouse. To the Free School was Shakespeare sent, and it is said attended it until he was fourteen years old.

There are no records of Shakespeare’s life at school to indicate if he were an apt scholar. We have no account of the course of study pursued by him, but from Ben Jonson’s statement that Shakespeare “knew a little Latin and less Greek,” the inference is that it was (in part, at least) a classical one, and the quotations in his plays, imperfect as they are, indicate that he must have studied with some diligence.

At the age of fourteen Shakespeare left school to assist his father, who at this time had met with some business reverses, and we have little or no record of his life until his nineteenth year when, in the autumn of 1582 he married Anne Hathaway, the daughter of a substantial yeoman of Shottery, the village adjoining Stratford. The baptism of his daughter Susanna is next recorded on May 26, 1583; and that of a son Hamnet and a daughter, Judith (twins), on Feb. 2, 1585. His departure for London followed, probably in 1586.

Of Shakespeare’s migration to London and his life in that city I do not propose to speak here, but from the foregoing facts, it will be seen that Shakespeare came of a good family, enjoyed in his infancy tender parental care, and received the rudiments of a sound and substantial education at a period of his life when the youthful mind is most receptive.

To an intelligent observer the influences and experiences of his youth are clearly reflected in the work of his later years.

A mere cursory reading of the plays will show his intimate knowledge of the Holy Scriptures, probably begun at his mother’s knee and continued in his leisure hours—the Bible being one of the few books within his reach at that time.

In the pastoral scenes we cannot but marvel at the knowledge he displays of forestry, botany, the flora of the fields and woods, and the nature and habits of the animals, birds and insects.

It requires but a slight stretch of imagination to see young Shakespeare as a sturdy country lad strolling with his youthful companions by the side of the gentle Avon. Noting the flight of the swallow over its glassy surface, the nodding reeds and grasses on its sedgy banks, and dart of the startled pickerel from its weedy lair, unconsciously absorbing by his yet undeveloped genius of observation the minute knowledge of nature that is so perfectly displayed in “As You Like It” and other silvan plays.

We see him wandering through the meadows listening to the lark rising with its morning song on high; by the little gardens where the primrose, the cowslip and the yellow daffodil grow round the cottage door, and the ivy and the honeysuckle climb the rustic porch; in the green lanes between the quickset hedges where the modest violets lift their purple heads upon the mossy banks. May not the youthful Shakespeare himself have seen in the woods of Charlecote or Shottery “the poor sequestered stag that from the hunter’s aim had ta’en a hurt” augment with his tears the already swollen stream, and himself startled the timid hare and the antlered deer from their leafy coverts, and in those majestic solitudes found “tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything?”

Picture young Shakespeare hand in hand with gentle Anne Hathaway, in their walks in the unfrequented paths of Shottery and Stratford, charming her mind with the poetry of his nature, the glow of admiration deepening into love for her youthful suitor; the bridegroom standing at the altar assuming the responsibilities of marriage before nineteen years had passed over his head, and the pride of paternity when his first child was born; and realize the sense of importance of the departure of the youthful husband and father for London. Whether to better his fortunes or to escape from the anger of Sir Thomas Lucy after his unlucky escapade on that worthy gentleman’s estate at Charlecote, matters not.

These I conceive to be some of the factors in the formation of the mind and character of William Shakespeare: a mother’s gentle influence, a fair mental development at school, an early appreciation of the vicissitudes of fortune and the necessities of labor, a love of nature developed by the surroundings of his youth, a remarkable capacity of observation, and an experience of the sacred mystery of love, marriage and paternity ere he had arrived at years of mature manhood; and they do not appear to be at all incompatible with the life, the knowledge, the friendships, the accomplishments and the genius which the world has conceded to this great and glorious man.

Grasp and constructive ability are the two attributes of genius or of talent absolutely necessary to a novelist. When Katherine Cecil Thurston grasped the results that bound together those two incidents of January twenty-third, incidents so widely different in character, she created novelistic material. To this material she applied the same constructive ability, but maturer, that she evidenced in “The Circle.” And from the first statement in her book, that these incidents were bound by results, the reader’s interest does not flag till the last phase of the complicated result is clearly given, as it is in the final statement of the final chapter. Nor then, for it is a book to hold after it is closed, while the mind reverts to its scenes and its interest in pleasant retrospect.

Self-accusation may follow analysis of the book, for, after all, nothing is actually acquired in the reading. The aggressive, acquisitive attitude of Russia, which is the one historical episode of the novel, has been made so much clearer and so much more forcible in the last twelve months than a mere statement or even a masterful speech can make it that the book is not worth reading for this episode.

To repeat, it is the situation that grew out of the chance meeting in the fog, the interchanging of identities, that holds the interest so absorbingly. This contrast of similarity, if the paradoxical phrase is pardonable, is dramatic in intensity that grows, and when Eve, the alienated wife of Chilcote tentatively accepts Loder, the substitute, the masquerader, this intensity presents a new aspect that quite absorbs all others—political, social, even practical. From that moment the interest centers in the final outcome when she will discover or be told of the substitution. And because of this interest, which lasts even after the book is read, the inconsistency of the situation is forgiven and the impossible accepted as possible.

Reason rejects the position but charm is a matter of the emotions and the charm of “The Masquerader” is such as to put the emotions in the ascendency. It is sufficient to have carried the book to almost twice the popularity of any other recent book and to have kept it there for two months—quite a period in the life of an ephemeral novel. It is sufficient to have kept men at the library lamp late at night and to force itself in upon business through the next and succeeding days. And it has made women break the silence of bridge and whist, even where it has not kept them from the classes altogether.

The inconsistency of the situation is the only inconsistency of the book. The characters are convincing and stand out in flesh and blood.

The palest of these is Lillian, Lady Astrupp, but the paleness is not one of portrayal. It is the paleness of individuality shown in terms to suit the character, just as Fraide’s power and ruggedness is shown in blunt, abrupt allusions and dismissals.

For Chilcote there is only sympathy that deepens into pity mixed with disgust, the sympathy and pity begotten by the spectacle of a man under the power of a habit that has come to be his master.

There is resentment towards Loder for assuming another man’s name rather than for doing another man’s work, which was his only opportunity. To create is to prove one’s kinship to God, and the instinctive feeling is that no strong man would create for another man’s credit. Respect for Loder would have been aroused had he finally made public the masquerade, at all costs; but had he done this the climax of the situation would have been ruined.

Neither is Eve’s attitude in the climax inconsistent. Pride is the dominating characteristic of this woman, who excites admiration in every situation where circumstances place her. If it governed her through years of unhappiness it would be inconsistent to expect her to yield it and happiness together for a convention, though it were the divinest convention of life.

GOV. BOB TAYLOR

Who has long been identified with the platform of the South and whose tours have recently been extended throughout the United States.

Governor Taylor’s new lecture for the coming season will be “The Funny Side of Politics.”