Bob Taylor’s Magazine, May, 1905

THE SPINNER.

BY ELOISE PICKETT.

Wearied to death of my thoughts!

Is there none, in this epoch of wondrous wares,

Will sell me a fair, sweet dream?

I summoned my spirit, this morn, to be chid

For her endless weaving of gloom;

But she lifted me retrospective eyes,

Burning and dry (for the tears, dammed back,

Have found them a pool in my heart);

Her face was wan, and her mouth was set

In the hard, thin line of resolve.

And I left unsaid my stern rebuke,

But her answer cried loud in her mien:

“I weave; but the warp and the woof are thine;

Thou madest them yesterday.”

And so I watch, with sickening hope,

As her busy fingers ply

’Mongst threads from the throbbing Other Days,

And wisps from the ominous Days to Come,

And skeins from the stagnant Now.

Wearied to death of my thoughts!

Is there none, in this epoch of cunning skill,

Can weave me thought-fabrics fair?

MEN OF AFFAIRS — Joseph W. Bailey. — James D. Porter. — Joseph W. Folk. — Warren A. Candler.

134

One of the most youthful members of the government’s gravest and most august legislative body is Senator Joseph W. Bailey, a typical representative of the biggest, the breeziest and the most untrammeled, if not the most patriotic and progressive commonwealth in the Union. A natural leader, an orator of plausibility and power and a politician of resource and acumen, he is besides admittedly one of the ablest constitutional lawyers in public life.

Though a native of Mississippi and a legal product of Cumberland University, Tennessee, Senator Bailey is a Texan seemingly to the manner born. He looks, speaks, thinks and feels Texas, and having won his spurs so creditably in the congressional jousts his people have gratefully recognized his talents by entrusting him with the higher responsibilities of senator.

While Senator Bailey is a virile product of the present and coming generation in the South he has not been inclined to relinquish the habits, dress and thought of the passing regime and his picturesque personality is doubtless as readily recognized by resident of and visitor to Washington as any other public character of the times. In no particular do his old-school propensities more emphatically display themselves than in his native love for rural life and natural objects. His chief hobby comprises the maintenance of an expansive estate whereon he rears the sportive thoroughbred, so dear to the heart of the rural Southerner, and whereon he spends in the open very much of his leisure time.

Senator Bailey is a close student of men, politics and affairs, and is of the South, social, though he has no taste for the conventional society of the city.

For nearly half a century has the Honorable James D. Porter figured eminently but modestly as a public servant politically, civilly and commercially. A native of Tennessee, in which State he has spent nearly all of his eventful life, he was born at Paris, in 1828, and was admitted to the bar in 1859. With a disposition toward the public service, from a State legislator he became a circuit judge, and from the bench he ascended to the gubernatorial chair, which he was twice called upon to occupy. His large and worthy talents coming to the notice of President Cleveland, he was invited during his first term to serve as Assistant Secretary of State, which he did with such satisfaction as to receive during the President’s second term his credentials as the government’s official representative to Chili, in which capacity he attracted attention by his tactful reestablishment of friendly relations between the two countries.

In the active commercial affairs of life he has been likewise prominent, being sometime president of the Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis Railroad Company, and as a soldier of the gray he gallantly participated in many of the fiercest conflicts of the war as Adjutant General under General Frank Cheatham.

HON. JOSEPH W. BAILEY.

In 1901 he was selected by virtue of his wide experience in affairs, executive ability, character and attainments, as the most suitable head of the great Peabody benefaction to the cause of Southern education, and he is successfully135 rounding his period of long and devoted public service to the administration of this popular munificence as President of the Peabody Normal College and University of Nashville. With every assurance of early success he is now engaged in raising from the State of Tennessee, the City of Nashville, and by popular subscription, $250,000 which, when attained, will carry with it a permanent endowment of a million dollars from the Peabody136 estate. President Porter is a man of distinguished bearing and impressive address.

JAMES D. PORTER.

Missouri’s young governor has received probably more free and favorable publicity than any other citizen of the Republic, and the public is so well informed as to his life and record that anything said of him here would be merely cumulative and by way of favorable repetition. It is gratifying to command the approval of friends and partisans, but it is a delicate and trying obligation to have to live up to the encomiums of non-partisans and erstwhile opponents. With nothing but good said of his ability and integrity, Governor Folk’s position in politics, which now has a decided national aspect, presents a most interesting field of speculation to the student of politics and affairs.

First coming into local prominence in St. Louis as an able and fearless criminal prosecutor whom a powerful and never-before-thwarted partisan political machine could not influence or intimidate, Governor Folk developed into national prominence through his relentless warfare upon the local boodling regime, his successes influencing municipal reforms throughout the country and rendering him so strong with the masses of statesmen regardless of political complexion, that they triumphantly elevated him to the gubernatorial station in the face of an otherwise astonishing landslide in the other direction.

JOSEPH W. FOLK.

Governor Folk is a native of Brownsville, Tenn., where he was born about thirty-seven years ago, and is a product of purely Southern environment, rearing and education. Graduating from the Vanderbilt University law school fifteen years ago, he started at about the lowest and roughest rung of the ladder, a struggling young country lawyer in his native town. In quest of opportunities more in keeping with his talents and ambitions, he soon joined the large Tennessee colony in St. Louis, not long thereafter attaining to some local notice as a political leader by being elected president of the representative Democratic organization.

WARREN A. CANDLER.

It is truly said that all great human successes are a combination of fortuitous circumstance, and the genius to take advantage thereof. Governor Folk’s mastery of a complicated local situation wherein he represented a supposed hopeless political movement, turned seeming defeat into a brilliant victory, and he was elected District Attorney, since which time his record is known to the country at large.

A virile and dominant figure in Southern religious life is Rev. Warren Akin Candler, youngest bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. Of a family probably second to none in Georgia from the standpoint of the prominence of its sons in public life in that State to-day, Bishop Candler was born forty-eight years ago in Carroll County. Educated at Emory College, from which he graduated with first honors in 1875, he immediately entered the ministry, ascending rapidly the ladder of ecclesiastical promotion from the humblest rural circuit to the most influential urban charge. From presiding elder of the Dahlonega and Oxford districts he served for two years in the editorial field as assistant editor of the Christian Advocate in Nashville. In 1888 he was called to the very large activity of presiding over the destinies of Emory College, his alma mater, which institution enjoyed during the decade of his administration its highest period of strength and usefulness.

With a distinguished record in all vital departments of his church labors, Bishop Candler’s early elevation to the bishopric when barely past forty years of age was a merited and logical testimonial to his eminent capacity for religious leadership and organization. This exalted promotion came to him at the hands of the Baltimore Conference of 1898.

Besides being a pulpit orator of vigor and lucidity, Bishop Candler is a luminous expositor of secular themes and has rounded out a very busy career by producing several well-known religious and general publications, including a “History of Sunday Schools,” “Georgia’s Educational Work,” “Christus Auctor,” “High Living and High Lives,” and “Great Revivals and the Great Republic.”

Bishop Candler’s official residence is Atlanta.

RICHMOND PEARSON HOBSON.

Richmond Pearson Hobson, who contributes the following thoughtful paper to the Magazine, is so well known to our readers that it is hardly necessary to say anything here by way of comment upon his eventful history. Since his retirement from the navy, Captain Hobson has devoted much attention to political affairs, and it is safe to predict that his services to the public will be marked by the earnestness and devotion to duty which brought him his well-merited fame as an officer in the United States navy.—Ed.

COTTON AND WAR.

The price of cotton, like other prices, is settled by the relation of supply and demand. In face of the sudden depression, due to the increased volume of supply in the large crop, we are liable to overlook and underestimate the importance of the factors influencing the demand. Sojourning about the world has convinced me that the factors of demand are more pliable and more accessible than those of supply. In truth, a single factor reducing demand, the war in the Orient, is responsible for depression amounting to from 7 to 8 cents a pound, while the total depression due to the big crop is scarcely more than 3 cents a pound.

Furthermore, the question of adjusting the supply for the next year, cannot be intelligently settled until after investigation of the probable demand.

Therefore, I invite your attention for a few minutes to the question of demand, and especially to the factor of war, since we are now in the presence of the great struggle in the Orient.

The old sources of demand, Europe and America, have gone on slowly increasing with the increase of population, and the rise of the standard of comfort, though a check was sustained by the outbreak of the Boer War, which saw a falling off of over one million bales in the consumption of the united commodities. This slow increase in demand has been more than balanced by the steady increase in supply, coming chiefly from the larger acreage and larger increase of commercial fertilizers in the South. Consequently, for several decades the price of cotton has had a steady trend downward. It was only when new demands came from new markets that the price started upward. The chief of the new markets are those of the Orient. Japan has made great strides in the cotton mill industry, until at the outbreak of the present war, she was consuming over $50,000,000 worth of cotton annually.

But more important even than Japan, has been the new market of China, which, when the present war came, amounted to $90,000,000 annually, chiefly coarse cotton goods, of which a large part has been furnished by Southern mills.

These two markets have come to consume more cotton than is produced by Alabama and Mississippi combined. It is not surprising, therefore, that in spite of the steadily increasing production, the price has steadily risen. The rise has been especially marked since the Boxer disturbances that were followed by a new impulsion in the opening up of China.

As great as this new market has become, it is only in its infancy.

If China were opened up, free to the commerce of all nations, its four hundred and thirty millions of industrial people, would rise from a five cent wage basis to a 20 cent, 30 cent, or even 40 or 50 cent basis, and the average man, instead of having his present outfit of about a half suit of cotton clothes, would have four or five whole suits, which are pulled on in multiple numbers, according to the coldness of the day. This would so increase the world’s demand for cotton that even with a 20,000,000 bale crop, the price could be hardly kept down to 20 cents per pound.

The picture here disclosed is not visionary. Thousands of Chinese141 worked under my inspection for months reconstructing gun-boats at Hong Kong. The above estimates of their industrial capacity are conservative. Knowing both peoples, I do not hesitate to say that the industrial capacity of a Chinaman is far greater than that of a Japanese, while there are over ten times as many Chinese as Japanese. Moreover, the facilities for communication are advancing. The eyes of the world have been thrown upon China, and the point of the wedge has been entered. A few decades can see marvelous growth in this young giant of a market. I estimate that before this century is half turned, China, properly opened up, will add more than $5,000,000,000 annually to the world’s commerce, and one of the chief staples of this commerce will be cotton, first the goods, then the raw materials, creating a consumption as great as that of all Europe combined.

But this greatest of all coming cotton markets is the most sensitive and the most exposed. When war broke out in the Orient last year, it was clear that Japan and Russia, under the exhaustion, would decline in buying power, and that the thriving cotton trade of Manchuria would be cut off entirely, while the fate of China might become involved and endanger the whole Chinese market. Consequently, the day after war was declared, cotton slumped 5 cents a pound, and started on its downward path, going off nearly 8 cents a pound before indications came in of the large crop, which brought about a further decline of about 3 cents a pound.

The grievous depression we are passing through must be attributed to the war in the Orient. Without war cotton would now be from 12 to 15 cents per pound, even with the big crop. Think what prosperity this would have meant. Can anyone contend that the United States should be indifferent to this war? It may be pointed out that our diplomatic moves were masterful, both in getting the powers to commit themselves to limiting the war zone, and to preserving the integrity of China, and also in negotiating, by cable, treaties with China, not Russia, opening up Mukden, Dalny and Antung, in Manchuria, thus recognizing Chinese sovereignty, and placing the United States in the same attitude as Japan, in standing for the evacuation of Manchuria. Unfortunately, our diplomatic moves had but little deterrent effect, not being backed by an adequate navy. Had we possessed an adequate navy, I am bold to say that Manchuria would have been evacuated and the war would not have come to disturb the earth and bring the present depression over the Southern people.

It is hardly necessary to point out that our losses already incurred would have covered many fields over the cost of such a navy.

But as great as are these losses they cannot compare with the greater losses that may lie ahead, if the present drift of events should go unchecked and lead to a general war over the division of China.

Naturally, the Continental powers of Europe do not wish to have to compete with our industrial nation on the basis of an equal footing in this great market. They have, therefore, combined to seize China by force, and partition it among themselves, leaving the industrial nations out.

The first step taken in this direction came at the conclusion of the war between China and Japan, when the Continental powers intervened to despoil Japan of the fruits of victory, preventing the consummation of the treaty of Shimonosoki, that would have ceded to Japan part of Manchuria, including the Liaotung Peninsula with Port Arthur. Soon Russia came to occupy the same territory wrested from Japan, Germany seized Kiaochao, and part of the Shantung Peninsula, Italy attempted to seize a Chinese port, and France became active on the frontier of Indo-China.

The next step in the seizure of China is planned for the present war. Indeed, the seizure of China is the very purpose of the war, and to this end Russia is conducting her war operations.

The chief aim of this year’s campaign142 has been to change the public opinion of Europe. Thus it is that Russia has conducted a pre-arranged system of retreats, and that the inspired press of Europe has raised the hue and cry of “Yellow Peril,” with such success that the peoples now stand with their governments on the side of Russia. The combination is ready to move, and we can expect renewed reports of Chinese violation, of neutrality, of Chinese disturbances and Japanese intrigues in China, Russia reporting upon the affairs in Mongolia, France upon the affairs in Kwangsi, and Germany in Shantung and Chili. The agents of these powers will probably facilitate and exaggerate the Chinese disturbances, and then upon the pretext of preventing massacre and a general Chinese uprising, the armies by pre-arranged program will enter and occupy the Provinces of China, never again to leave.

Opposition on the part of Great Britain is evidently anticipated, and the inexplicable seizure of British ships, followed later by the inexplicable firing upon British fishing vessels, appears as part of a plan to excite British indignation, so that at the opportune moment, the British may be the more easily provoked to commit an act of war which would at once put into operation the Russian treaty of alliance with France, and this would be the signal for Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy to join Russia and France.

Thus the present war is producing a grouping that imperils the balance of power, placing a heavy preponderance on the side of the military as against the industrial nations or on the side of war as against the peace forces. No thoughtful observer can fail to see here all the elements for a world war; nor can we look except with alarm upon the declination by the military powers of the interstate to the proposed second convention of The Hague, and the Russian note complaining of alleged violation of neutrality by China. It is idle to imagine that the United States, the foremost industrial power, with more at stake in the Orient than any nation, could look on with indifference.

We should awaken to the full significance of the events gathering in the Orient. The two antagonistic systems, militarism and industrialism, are gathering for a death struggle. The Orient is the battle ground—China is the objective.

If militarism succeeds in intrenching itself upon the yellow race, securing the myriads upon which to levy for men and for means, then it will perpetuate its harsh reign for centuries yet to come.

On the other hand, if thwarted in obtaining the spoils of war and left simply to a fair competition, militarism will be unable to hold its own, and will be driven to the wall, and be compelled to disarm by the great economic forces of commerce and industry, and we can then confidently expect the establishment of general and enduring peace long ere this century is gone.

What would be the effect upon cotton?

If peace is restored and maintained, cotton will start again upon its upward course and in a few years, with such a vast demand as China would create, I am conservative in saying that the price would pass the 20 cent mark, and remain above this mark, no matter how large the crop.

On the other hand, if events are allowed to drift on and a general war comes, cotton would become a drug on the market, even though reduced acreage, calamity and distress would spread over the South. Indeed, with militarism uppermost, wars and rumors of wars would continually disturb the world, nations would be exhausted and lose in their buying capacity, and the myriads of helpless peoples would pass under the military yoke and remain unable to buy clothing. The greatest source of Southern prosperity would be permanently blighted, and a serious blow would be struck at the general prosperity of America, and at the happiness of mankind.

Under these circumstances, when it is a question of 3½ cent cotton or 25 cent cotton, I do not hesitate to say that the solid influence of the South should be felt for having our country act promptly and vigorously, to use143 every proper means to restore the balance of the world on the side of peace, and to bring about the ending of the present war and the restoration of Manchuria to the commerce of the world.

It only remains for us to refer summarily to the factors of supply. It is practically certain that the South will continue to produce the bulk of the world’s cotton. During the Civil War, when cotton was over $1.00 a pound, persistent efforts were made all over the world to develop cotton growing, but in vain. The Gulf Stream on one side, and a vast continent on the other, produce climatic conditions for cotton culture not duplicated anywhere else in the world. We may expect some increase in the output of Egypt on account of developing irrigation, and possibly a temporary increase in the output of India, and other secondary sources due to the recent high price, but the present depression will tend to check this movement. Therefore, the South may be expected to continue to produce over 80 per cent of the world’s supply so that the question of supply lies in our own hands.

The two factors in determining the supply are the seasons and the acreage. While the general law of the average holds, history shows that the temperate zone is liable to wide fluctuations in seasons, which it is impossible to foresee. The recourse to offset the unhappy consequences of wide fluctuations is a reservoir or fly-wheel, into which the fat years can pour their supplies for making up the deficit of the lean years. The uncertainty of cotton demand, hinging upon war or peace, is now added to the uncertainty of the cotton season. Recourse to storage is therefore absolutely necessary, and a wide system of warehouse storage should be created. I will not endeavor to go into the details of such a system, but venture to suggest that it should be organized on bedrock principles, and operate on the securest lines, so that a warehouse certificate would be absolutely safe and universally negotiable. Lessons could probably be learned from the systems in use in pig iron storage, where the market is also subject to wide fluctuations. The American Pig Iron Storage Warehouse Co. would probably be the best pattern.

The factors of acreage should be carefully investigated before any radical action is taken.

I know it is best for a farmer to have a diversified crop as it is best for a city to have diversified industries, and it is wise for a farmer, like a nation, to produce the necessities required for home consumption. The present fearful depression will doubtless have a partial benefit in this direction, but I fear too much importance is now being given to this question. While I would urge the farmers to diversify their crops, I would hesitate to recommend a sweeping reduction in the world’s production. In fact, as an economic principle, there can be no such thing as over production at this stage of the world’s progress, particularly in the great world’s staples, like those of food and clothing. For generations to come mankind, on the whole, will go hungry and half naked. The true principle is not to try to reduce the product but to provide for a general increasing buying capacity and particularly for the case of the undeveloped peoples of the earth, by increasing their opportunities to work for the world’s market, and to make the wages necessary to purchase the products. If we could only be sure that peace is to prevail, so that the market of China would be restored, and could go on increasing, I would not hesitate to urge against any reduction in acreage. On the contrary, I would urge a steady increase, for no matter how great the increase, the supply would never keep up with the growth of demand. As conditions now stand, however, I believe conservative action is advisable—action that would lean rather toward the side of preparation to store up for future use the surplus, if war should come, than to materially reduce the acreage, and my advice to the individual farmer is to become independent and diversify his crop, and then plant his usual acreage in cotton.

It may be pointed out that one effective way to offset the losses from144 low-priced cotton is for the South to invest more and more in cotton mills, that benefit from these prices, and the logic of the situation would have cotton growers invest their available capital and saving in cotton manufacture. The true aim of the South should be not only to produce the cotton, but the clothing for the world. And every country in the South should have cotton mill industries organized with local capital and should develop and educate its labor for the high grades as well as coarse.

Summing up, the general conclusions and recommendations are as follows:

1. The cotton growers should have a wide, permanent organization with a general convention once a year.

2. A standing committee composed of, say, two members for each cotton growing state, should be appointed to investigate and report each year upon the existing and prospective conditions of supply of cotton.

3. A similar committee should be appointed to investigate and report each year upon the existing and prospective conditions of the demand for cotton.

4. There should be established a comprehensive and carefully organized storage warehouse system.

5. The great agents for increasing the price of cotton are peace, prosperity and civilization.

6. The arch-enemy of the cotton growers is war. The permanent cause of cotton must look to the peoples beyond the sea, especially China. The fate of China hangs upon peace or war—peace or war depends upon America—America’s influence depends upon her navy.

THE MASTER-HAND.

THE BOY IN GRAY.

One day in midsummer I went to visit the old plantation of the Lansdale family. The moment I entered the cooling shade of the tall trees on the lawn something seemed to tell me that I was on a spot hallowed by human suffering and misfortune.

The house had two stories and an L. There was a long veranda in front, the roof of which was supported by large white columns. My interest in the place was due to the fact that prior to the Civil War it had been the rendezvous of the aristocracy for miles around it. The wide halls and spacious rooms had once rung with gay laughter, sweet music and the tripping of feet in merry dances.

Behind the uninhabited dwelling the shrubbery had grown into a riotous tangle. Choice rose bushes had been dwarfed and choked to barrenness by an army of interlopers—Jamestown weeds, hollyhocks and giant sunflowers. Only here and there might be seen a pale-leaved geranium or a dandelion in the edges of the gravel walks, now almost completely overgrown. Here, bent to the earth, lay a decayed lattice, pulled down by a fragrant jasmine; in another place stood the rotten remains of what had once been a graceful summerhouse.

As I wended my way further from the old mansion the silence and shade seemed to thicken and blend into the pervading melancholy. When about two hundred yards from the house, I suddenly came upon a log cabin almost hidden from view behind a close growth of gnarled and twisted apple trees. In the door sat an old negro man. His face was pinched and wrinkled and his eyes, peeping through their brown slits, looked like blue beads. With his old bell-shaped hat on his knee, he glanced up in surprise, and, rising quickly he hobbled towards me, bowing politely.

“Who dis heer?” he asked, as he shaded his eyes with his hand and peered up at me. “It seems like I don’t know you, but you may know who I is. Most white folks knows me, dough, thank de Lawd! I carn’t see you good, suh; my sight is failin’ me powerful fast.”

“I’m a stranger in this part of the South,” I told him. “I have heard so much about the Lansdale family that I wanted to see their old home; that’s all. I hope I’m not intruding.”

“Lawdamussy, bless you, no, suh!” he replied quickly. “You is welcome to roam ’round all you want. Ef ’twuz des in de ol’ time, suh, my young marster, er my ol’ marster, would done met you down de carriage drive an’ ’scort’ you in an’ took yo’ hat an’ pass roun’ de wine an’ cigars, but” (a long sigh escaped his lips, and he shook his head sadly), “but dat time done gone, suh—dat time done gone.”

“Tell me something about your master’s family,” I said, taking a chair near his own at the cabin door. “I have heard that Mr. Lansdale’s only son was killed during the war when he was hardly more than a child.”

“Dat so, suh,” the old man answered in a tender tone, as he sat down in his chair and leaned it back against the wall. “Dat was Marse Eddie. He wasn’t fifteen year old when he ’listed. It all come o’ him actually itchin’ ter be a soldier from his cradle up. Long ’fo’ de war was ever start up, when he wasn’t ten year old he had soldierin’ in his head, an’ nobody couldn’t stop ’im. His maw say he wouldn’t study his school books lessen dey tell ’bout wars146 an’ bloodshed. Away back den Marse Eddie’s soldierin’ was de chief talk ’mongst de slaves.

“He wasn’t fifteen year old when he ’listed.”

“He didn’t keer fur hosses, ur fishin’, ur huntin’ like other boys, but ef you des mention soldierin’ he would pick up his ears an’ open his eyes. He used to had his army, an’ what you reckon dat army was made out’n, suh? Nothin’, ’cept ten ur ’leven pickaninnies in deir shut-tails an’ bare laigs. But, suh, dey would march round dis plantation tell dey raidy to drap in deir tracks to please dat boy. An’ dey didn’t know no mo’ ’bout what a rail army was dan a blind kitten. But ’fore he got thoo wid um, Marse Eddie had um trained so dey will march straight in er breast-line, ur wheel round, double-quick step, an’ charge bayonets when he give de command des de same as reg’lar troups.

“Des as soon as he had his breakfust in de mawnin’ Marse Eddie ’ud tramp out’n de house wid his hat pinned up on one side an’ his pants stuck in his red-top boots an’ old Miss’ shawl flung acrost his shoulder to make ’im look like a general.

“He would al’ays find his army at de front do’ pushin’ an’ kickin’ one ’nother, all um tryin’ to be haid in de row. But when dey see ’im dey stand mighty quiet kase he done whacked deir laigs too often wid his stick sword. Den Marse Eddie ud stand on de veranda wid his maw ur Miss Grace long side o’ him while he call de roll. It uster sound mighty funny ’fo’ any of us know how it was gwine to end.

“James Lansdale! Heer! Thomas Lansdale! Heer! Abrum Lansdale! Heer! Tobe Lansdale! Heer! an’ so on dey all answered deir names. Old Marster listen to ’em one day while he was smokin’ on de veranda an’ low to ’im, he did—des jokin’: ’Son’, he say, smilin’ like he al’ays did, ’I do hope an’ pray you won’t have no diverses in battle, kase it would be too bad to had we-all’s kin-folks in Firginny read in de papers dat so many Lansdales is kilt in war. Seem like dey is a sight of um in yo’ army.’

“Young Marster didn’t say nothin’ but it sorter made ’im mad. He got raid in de face, an ordered de string o’ darkies to shoulder deir stick guns an’ march off todes de spring-house, whar he say he count on campin’ out an’ ’rangin’ ’bout buildin’ abridge cross de branch so dey kin git at de enemy prowlin’ round. Dat’s de way he carried on, an’ all de darkies in his crowd held deir haids so high147 dey wouldn’t speak to de niggers on de place j’inin’ we-all’s plantation, an’ dey got so triflin’ dat dey wasn’t fittin’ fur anything but fightin’ under Marse Eddie.

“Miss Grace cert’ney did keer mo fur her brother dan she did fur anything in de worl’, even de young mens dat come to see ’er. Anything Marse Eddie do is des right. She made ’im his newniform, an’ flags, an’ his raid sash, an’ gloried in ’im.

“He was off in Firginny at his uncle’s when de sho-nough war broke out. Old Marster had done made up his company in we-all’s settlement an’ was most raidy to go. De very same day dat de guns come dat dey was waitin’ on, who shall ride up on a hoss des reekin’ wid sweat but Marse Eddie. He lef’ de hoss in de front yard an’ run in de dinin’ room whar his maw an’ sister was. He kissed um mighty quick an’ strange like an’ den say, ‘Whar is father?’

“Old Miss an’ young Miss bofe turn pale an’ trembly, but dey ain’t say a word at fust. Den Marse Eddie say powerful impatient, ‘Grace, whar is father?’

“‘He’s down in de quarter,’ she say an’ den when de boy done lef’ de room most as quick as a skeerd rabbit kin jump, de two women look one ’nother in de face fer a long time powerful still an’ troubled. Den old Miss say, mighty husky in ’er throat:

“‘He must not go, Grace; I carn’t stand it; he’s too young—I carn’t stand dat!’

“De tears was comin’ in young Miss’ eyes an’ she left ’er maw an’ went an’ stood in de kitchen do’ to meet Marse Eddie an’ his paw as dey was comin’ up de garden walk, talkin’ low an’ arm in arm. Somehow young Marster looked like he was all at once as old an’ ’sponsible as his paw. When dey was bofe in de house, Miss Grace tuck ’er brurr by de arm an’ led ’im off to one side, an’ I heer ’er say:

“‘Brurr Eddie, father is goin’ off to fight de Yankees an’ me’n mother carn’t live by ourse’ves. You must stay wid us—one is enough to lose.’

“‘Oh, sister,’ Marse Eddie say, very impatient. ‘Don’t talk nonsense at sech a serious moment. Father, did you say all yo’ men gwine be raidy in de mawnin’? We must not had no mistakes. I’m not tired. I believe I’ll git a fresh hoss an’ ride round mongst ’em.’

“Well, suh, dat was de end o’ de women folks tryin’ to ’fluence ’im. It seem to me dat he was every bit an’ grain as sensible as his pa. It look like Marster was too backward ’bout tryin’ to make ’im stay at home. De next day all marched off an’ dey tuck all de men slaves ’cep’ me. Dey lef’ me kase I was too lame to march an’ somebody had to stay at home.

“Den a whole year went by. Sometimes letters ud come an’ sometimes word ud reach us in one way an’ another. Den old Miss tuck down sick, an’ Miss Grace kept all de bad news from ’er ’bout de war. Den come a letter from Marse Eddie hisse’f. He writ dat he is a little wounded in de arm an’ dat he got a furlough to come home an’ will be wid us as soon as he kin git thoo de lines. But de time went by, day in, day out fur a week an’ no mo’ news ’cep’ old Marster writ dat de boy is done put out fur home some time back; so dar we is—old Marster say he ain’t in de war, an’ he ain’t got to we-all.

“While we-all in dis fix an’ worriment, de Yankee army des swoop down on us lake a swarm o’ grass-hoppers. Dar wasn’t a single Rebel ’cep’ women folks an’ me anywhars around. Den we know dat Marse Eddie is cut off fum us. While de Yankees is camped round us as thick as fleas, a old man come to us, he did, an’ said he’d met up wid Marse Eddie one day up in de mountains what you kin see over dar, an’ ’at he was mighty nigh starved to death an’ unable to git stuff to eat.

“Marse Eddie tol’ de man ’at he’d started home on his furlough but was tuck down sick at a house on de way, an’ when he got so he could travel an’ come nigh home de Yankees done s’round us so he earn’t git home nur back to his regiment nuther. So he was des obleeged to stay hidin’ out in de woods like a wild animal. Dis148 news got, to ol’ Miss, an’ it made her wuss an’ we ’lowed she gwine die sho’.

“One night I woke up kase I heerd somebody walkin’ on de porch, an’ when I went to de do’ dar is young Miss standin’ dar lookin’ to’ds de Yankee camp what you could see fum de’r fires dey kept burnin’ so we couldn’t slip up on um an’ throttle um in de’r sleep.

“‘Don’t tell mother, Ham’ she say; ‘po’ thing, she’s very sick, an’ we mustn’t ’sturb ’er. I carn’t sleep wid all dis on my mind. How do we know, Ham, but my po’ brother may be dis minute in gre’t danger? I must keep watch kase I know in reason he’ll try to pass thoo de lines some night to get to we-all’s, an’, Ham, somebody must be up to receive ’im an’ hide ’im less’n dey catch ’im an’ try to kill ’im.’

“She was alraidy a-cryin’, an’ I didn’t have de heart to tell ’er how dangersome it was to try to pass guards on picket duty, kase I had heerd ’bout one po’ feller gittin’ daylight let thoo ’im while he was tryin’ to do it on his all-fours.

“It was as still, suh, dat night as a graveyard. De wind wasn’t blowin’ ’nough to move a blade o’ wavy grass. An’ all of a sudden I heerd a sound way down de road like somebody’s feet—pit-pat, pit-pat, comin’ nigher an’ nigher. Den we heer somebody a-pantin’ mighty nigh out’n breath.

“Young Miss laid ’er han’ on ’er breast an’ breathed hard. De sound kept gittin’ closer an’ closer tell all at once somebody sprung over de fence into de yard. My Gawd, it was Marse Eddie, an’ no dead white pusson could look paler’n he did an’ so thin an’ raggety.

“‘Grace,’ he say, blowin hard, ‘is dis you? My Gawd, sister, dey is atter me. I started to slip thoo de lines an’ dey seed me an’ so I had to run fur my life. Do you heer um?’

“We all listen an’ sho ’nough we heerd de Yankees comin’ as fast as dey kin lick it. Young Miss carn’t speak; she des throwed ’er arms ’roun ’er brurr’s neck an’ tried to pull ’im in de house. But he say, ‘No, no; I mus’ run furder; dey gwine s’arch dis house fust place, kase we-all fur de Souf—good-bye!’ an’ ’fo’ Miss Grace could open ’er mouf he’s off thoo de woods an’ out o’ sight in de dark, dough he wasn’t runnin’ out’n a slow dog-trot kase he was too broke down. In a minute ’bout ten men jump de fence an’ come to us.

“‘Here he is!’ one of um say, an’ he stuck a pistol in my face fur de worl’ like he gwine blow my brains out. Dis was a sho ’nough s’prise to me, I tell you, fur it was a powerful good chance fur young Miss ter tell um, yes, I was de one, an’ git um to stop runnin’ after her brurr. I didn’t know what she was gwine to do ’bout it, but it didn’t suit me one bit. I never seed de line o’ pickets I’d try to run thoo, an’ my time hadn’t come to die nohow.

“But one of de men say, ‘No, it was a white man, an’ a reb to boot kase I seed his face an’ his newniform. Dis is des a’ ol’ nigger dat stays ’roun’ dis house.’ Den he up an’ ’dress young Miss. ‘Young lady,’ he ax ’er, ‘is a man pass heer des now?’

“Well, suh, I ’lowed she wouldn’t find ’er tongue, she was so bad put out, but she up an’ say: ‘No, suh, not sence I been standin’ here,’ an’ she say it as cool as ef she was des givin’ ’im a passin’ s’lute. But I reckon dat officer seed thoo ’er kase he said: ‘Some o’ you fellers run down dat way an’ fo’ of us will s’arch de house. Miss,’ he say to Miss Grace, ‘we all know you is fur de downfall o’ de republic, an’ you mus’ ’scuse me fur not takin’ yo’ word, but we is been fooled so many times by you women in de Souf dat we got to be partic’lar.’

“Wid dat, fo’ of um go thoo we-all’s house fum bottom to top an’ ol’ Miss was mighty nigh ’stracted. She riz bodily fum ’er bed an’ fronted um. It was a big wonder to me dat dem Yankees ain’t shot ’er daid in ’er tracks fur de way she belittled um.

“‘You dirty gang o’ raid-hand murderers an’ cut-th’oats,’ she say, ‘I hope an’ pray high heaven will fall down on you an’ crush you in everlastin’ punishment. You ain’t satisfied wid takin’ our sons an’ husbands fum us, but you must go an’ tromple our houses wid yo’ muddy feet an’ fo’ce yo’ ugly149 se’ves into de sick rooms o’ yo’ betters. Dat shows yo’ raisin’; no Southern gen’man ain’t gwine be so brutish.’

“‘Now, madam,’ de leader say as cool as a watermelon in a deep spring, ‘des keep on yo’ jacket. You ketch yo’ death wid cold, A sudden change fum a warm bed is a bad thing whar doctors is so scarce, anyhow. You better not ’cite yo’se’f—’twon’t do a speck o’ good, an’ in fact you ain’t lookin’ well. You act sorter s’picious. Ef dar is a spy in yo’ house we gwine have ’im fur our meat, an’ all yo’ rampageousness won’t stop us. Dough, I make bold to say, madam, dat we-all ud like to have you on we-all’s side. At close range dat tongue o’ yo’n ud beat a grape-gun all holler.’

“Ol’ Miss didn’t say anything back. She looked out’n ’er eyes, dough, like you seed a balkin’ mule ’fo’ now, mebby, when his laigs is been tied together to break ’im fum kickin’ an’ you stan’ hind ’im wid a whip an’ sorer tap ’im in de flank atter he found out he earn’t kick ’nough to skeer a hoss-fly off’n his back.

“Well, dey all go plumb thoo de house widout a speck ur luck, ’cep’ what dey come acrost in de cupboard. When dey et all dey want an’ is raidy to go, de head man say to ol’ Miss: ‘Madam,’ he say, lookin’ at me kinder ’chievous, ‘we got some work in de camp to be done an’ dis ol’ nigger mus’ go an’ tend to it. We’ll sen’ ’im back in de mawnin’ sho ef he gits thoo.’

“Dat ain’t de fust time I had to do odd jobs fur um, an’ I ain’t s’prised. I had to march back wid one lill swivelly white man dat I could a-mashed twixt my fingers like a skeeter, an’ I would a-tried it, too, ef he hadn’t kep’ a musket level’ on me de whole time. De other soldiers went on after Marse Eddie.

“He’s a spy,’ I heer um say, as dey went off, ’an’ he carn’t git away, nuther, kase he is s’rounded on all sides an’ day is breakin’.’

“By de time we got to de camp de sun was ’ginnin’ to rise an’ a kettle drummer was out wakin’ um all up wid his clatter. I had to he’p wash dishes at de officer’s tent, an’ all dat mawnin’ I heerd um axin’ one another is de spy done kotch. To’ds dinner de men all come back an’ wid um was po’ Marse Eddie. He was so weakly dey had to mos’ drap ’im along. Pon my word, I don’t b’lieve de boy know who had ’im; he looked so wild out o’ his raid eyes.

“Dey tuck ’im to a big tent an’ all de officers got in it and held a court martial—dat’s what dey called it. I couldn’t heer a word dat passed, but de Lawd know I seed Marse Eddie was in a bad fix, kase dey was makin’ sech a big to-do.

“Terrectly dey all come out de tent. De haid man ’mongst um give a order an’ ’bout ten men come up wid deir guns an’ formed a line o’ battle. Den dey marched Marse Eddie out wid his back to a tree. You know, suh, I kin ’member when young Miss an’ ’im used to go to dat selfsame sweetgum when dey was lill. He used to take his knife an’ gouge out de gum an’ put it twixt ’er white teeth an’ she’s say, ‘Quick, Brurr Eddie, give me some dat’s hard ’fo’ my teeth stick together—dis heer is too saft.’

“Den young Marster ud take some o’ de dry gum in his fingers, kase it wouldn’t lay on de knife-blade, an’ when he’d make ’er shet ’er eyes he’d drap it in ’er mouf. Yes, suh, I kin ’member dat as plain as ef ’twas yesterday.

“Well, when dey got de po’ droopy young man agin de tree, an’ yell at ’im to hold his haid up, all de big, strappin’ soldiers stand in front an’ de captain drilled um. All deir clothes looked so blue an’ deir buttons an shoulder straps flashed in de sun like a lookin’-glass in de light. Seem like I kin heer de same locust a-singin’ in de woods right now dat was singin’ den. De sky was blue, an’ wide open, des like Gawd Almighty done tore de clouds apart so Marse Eddie’s white soul could git away fum dat measly crowd o’ blood-thirsty cowards. I knowed I couldn’t do a thing to help ’im, an’ I tried to hold steady an’ take one las’ look at my young Marster, but I couldn’t see any plainer dan you kin thoo a frosty window. But when de captain say, ‘Raidy, take aim!’ I150 looked away. De guns all went off wid one crack, an’ when de smoke is ris’ a lill, I seed Marse Eddie settin’ on de groun’ agin de tree wid his haid down des fur de world like I seed ’im one day when he’d been watchin’ us cut wheat an’ got drowsy an’ fell asleep in de shade.

“Dey tuck ’im off to bury ’im, an’ I went back to work; but I couldn’t do it jestice, an’ kept drappin’ de dishes an’ pans, I was so outdone thinkin’ ’bout de folks at home. Den de captain pass me an’ say: ‘Look heer, what you snifflin’ ’bout? Did you know dis young man?’

“An’ when I told ’im yesser, dat captain got mighty serious in de face an’ yell out to de rest um, ‘Why didn’t you-all had dis man testify?’

“But nobody wouldn’t answer. Den de captain set down nigh me an’ I could see his hands was tremblin’ powerful. He talked low like he was sorter ashamed. An’ he ax me: ‘Who is de young man? Whar do he live?’

“I told ’im Marse Eddie was my young Marster an’ at he was s’rounded in de mountains when he was tryin’ to git home on his furlough, wid his so’ arm, an’ sick an’ hungry.

“Well, suh, I hain’t never had too much use fur Yankees, but dat one’s face cert’ney did look troubled.

“‘Gawd furgive us,’ he say, dat’s what he said, ‘and we-all thought he was lyin’ to git free;’ an’ he most stagger as he walked off. Den I heer ’im order um not to bury Marse Eddie yit but to wait. Dey fixed ’im as nice as dey kin on a litter an’ put a new gray blanket on ’im an’ send ’im off to we-all’s place, kase I reckon dey lowed dey had done all de damage dey kin an’ thought it would be a kindness to old Miss to bury ’er own child.

“After dey done gone, I heer de captain say: ‘Dis is a mistaken duty. I’d ruther myse’f lie on dat litter. Heaven is gwine to curse dis bloodshed, Lieutenant,’ he say to a spry young man. ‘Lieutenant, you know’ what we-all shot dat po’ boy fur? We shot ’im kase he come home wounded to see his fair-faced sister back on dat plantation, an’ his old bedridden mother. Lieutenant, let dat be a lesson to you. Dat letter in his pocket wasn’t no spy-letter. It was des to his pa back in de army of de Souf tellin’ ’im he was nigh his home. When he writ he was tryin’ to git thoo de lines it wasn’t to spy. Yo’ maw’s a-livin’, ain’t she, Lieutenant?’ De young man nodded his haid, an’ den de captain went on agi’n: ‘Well, des put yo’se’f in dis young man’s place an’ den you gwine see how yo’ maw ud feel to had you sent home dat away.’

“Wid all de ’sturbance, it seemed like dey done furget dat I ort to be at home wid my white folks at sech a’ awful time, an’ dey kep’ me till long atter dinner. Den who shall come right in de camp ’cep’ young Miss? I never in all my days seed sech a look as was in her face. Seemed like she was in ’er sleep, ur out’n ’er mind, ur suppin another. It looked like all de officers in de camp wanted to hide out, but de captain was man enough to face ’er an’ went right up to whar she was.

“‘I come to see de spot whar de young Confederate died dis mawnin’, if you please,’ she said, as cool as I ever seed young Miss in my life, dough ’er eyes was flashin’ like diamonds in de sun.

“‘Young lady,’ de captain say, mighty white in de face, ‘dis is a po’ time to ’spress regrets, but Gawd knows dis is a gre’t mistake. I’d ruther be daid myse’f. I pray Gawd to furgive us. We acted too quick. De evidence showed dat yo’ brother was a spy, an’ we never knowed no better till it was all over.’

“‘I did not come to discuss his death,’ young Miss said mighty haughty. ‘I des want to see de spot whar he fell. We-all is grateful fer his remains—sometimes it ain’t done, I believe.’

“‘Young Miss,’ I said to ’er, ‘come, le’s go back home; dey will let me go wid you.’

“Den she looked at me fur de fus time. ‘Was you heer, Ham?’ she say; ‘den you’ll do; you kin show me ’dout troublin’ dese gentlemen. Show me whar my brurr fell, an’ den I’ll go back to mother. I was des afraid de army would march off an’ I never would know de exact spot whar de outrage happened.’

“When she passed ’im she tuck out a copper piece an’ drap it in his hat.”

“Den I led ’er to’des de sweetgum an’ p’int it out. She des took one look at it, an’ den she put ’er han’ over ’er face an’ said in a awful low voice: ‘Le’s go quick, Ham,’ an’ I knowed she was afeerd she’d break down ’fo’ dem low-lived soldiers, an’ dat she’d druther be daid ’an to do it. All de way home she ain’t open ’er lips.

“Well, to close my tale, when old Marster come home after de war was over ol’ Miss was daid. It seems a long time ago. Young Miss an’ ’er pa went to Richmond to live, whar he had a lill property dat ’scaped de Yankee’s hands. She turned out to be a gre’t lady an’ had big men—governors an’ congressmen runnin’ atter her to git ’er to marry um. De funniest thing of all was de way dat Yankee captain did after de war was over; I heer some o’ my white folks say he writ two dozen letters to young Miss. He told ’er in um dat she was the onliest woman he ever laid eyes on dat completely tuck his heart and he say ’twas all kase she had so much pride and fine sperit. He begged ’er to let by-gones be by-gones an’ let ’im come down to Richmond an’ ’splain, but she didn’t so much as answer de letters an’ got so she sent um back to ’im dout openin’ um. Dey say he managed to meet ’er at a big dinner somebody give up in Richmond an’ was introduced to ’er. Of co’se, young Miss was too much of a lady to ’suit ’im when dey bofe visitin’ de same house, so she bowed to ’im an’ ’changed a few words, but she left de house an’ called her carriage. Dat’s what my white folks done tole me; I dunno, but it cert’ney was like young Miss. Dey say dat treatment didn’t faze dat captain, he was so dead bent on gittin’ ’er fur his wife; so one day, some time atter dat, he follered ’er to a big chu’ch in Richmond, whar she went to worship. Dey say it had high steps to it, an’ when she come out’n de do’ she seed ’im at de foot o’ de steps waitin’ fur ’er, wid his hat helt out in his hand. Well, suh, what you reckon young Miss did? She had her purse in ’er hand wid some small change in it, an’ when she passed ’im she tuck out a copper piece an’ drap it in his hat widout so much as lookin’ at ’im, des as ef he was a begger. Dey say dat settled ’im. He went off an’ never bothered ’er again.

“Did she marry? Yes, suh, she did, fer she had pickin’ choice o’ de whole country, Norf an’ Souf. She married a big rich man in Richmond, an’ she’s got some o’ de likeliest childern in de world. Her pa is dar doin’ well, too; dey send me money every now an’ den an’ wish me well. Dey is folks right, suh, an’ ef you ever run across um you’ll know I’m tellin’ you de trufe.”

SONG.

THE PEOPLE OF THE SOUTHERN MILLS.

While the political economist knits his brows in perplexity over the immoderate increase of cotton mills in the Southern States, and the social reformer cries vehemently against their child labor and low adult wages, these problems are solving themselves by natural processes which man’s economics or sociological theories can neither hurry nor retard.

Cotton manufacturing has traversed the road to its base of supply, and can no more be severed from it again than the descending rivulet can turn and run up hill. Child labor is only a complicated error of new conditions, and will in due process fall to inevitable decay. The wage problem mutates everywhere, yet optimism assures us that it bears steadily towards solution.

But the mill people of the South are a new and picturesque labor class. Some glimpses of their homes and family life will, we believe, afford interest to the reader for entertainment as well as to the student of sociology.

There are points of distinct difference between the factory operatives of the South and those of any other section of our country or of Europe.

In the first place, there are no urban instincts in these Southern mill communities. Whatever virtues they lack at least they have not the vices of cities. The good and the evil in them are still such as belong to a strictly rural people. But no one must expect, after another decade and a half, to find the same thing true; for, with the passing of the present generation, this unique characteristic must of necessity be largely lost. Gregariousness of living is potent to efface such a mark even when deeply stamped.

It may be asked, What are the indications of this quality which, for want of a better name, is termed rusticity? The signs are many and easy to read. No observant person can miss the plain evidence even in his first day with the mill people. He walks past the cottages, row on row, and sees prince’s feather and bachelor’s button growing in the tiny yards, patchwork quilts sunning from the windows, and strings of red pepper festooned on the back porches. The boys are quite often chewing tobacco, but they are not smoking cigarettes. Often, alas! the girls dip snuff, but they do not lace in their waists, nor attempt handkerchief flirtations. The women are given to quiet, and a profound reserve usually marks their social intercourse. The festive gatherings in the entertainment halls on Saturday nights are either stiff parties or genuine country dances. The “barbecue” is common on a general holiday and the “all day singing” of a Sunday still remains the acme of enjoyment, affording the perfect blending of sociality and devotion.

A second quality differentiating our people from the Northern factory communities of to-day, is what may well be called their unmodified Americanism. Up to the present time there is an entire absence of the foreign element of population among them, and the effect of such absence is very marked. Not only do better manners prevail in this people sprung from our own soil, but better morals, greater social purity, less turbulence and lawlessness. Remember, that observance of law is easier, more natural, even to154 illiterate Americans, than to other nations, because Law has typified to them from childhood the majesty of right, not the tyranny of might.

MILLS 1, 2 AND 3, PELZER, S. C.

The finer respect for women which marks American manhood, extends also to these toilers. Except among their very lowest, motherhood inspires the regard it meets with in other social strata. And while in many of the mills the number of female employees exceeds that of males, yet in few of the better kind are there any mothers of young children at work.

These considerations lead at once to the questions, Where does such a class of labor come from? What are its antecedents?

The first is easily answered: The operatives have poured into the new factories, not from town or city, but from the country, direct from the cotton fields, we may say, to the mills. It was certainly not an anomalous movement when cotton was bringing 4¾ cents per pound. But as the staple moves back to its old prices, 10 and 12 cents, some reactionary phases must be looked for and provided against.

The antecedents of this class of labor deserve attention. A great majority of the operatives come from the agricultural class known as tenant farmers; that is, men who farm the land for others, paying as rent a considerable portion of each year’s crop. The tenant system was adopted in the South during the period of disorder and chaotic ruin following the Civil War, when our old system of labor was dissolved and no better base remained on which to build anew the fabric of agricultural life. Unfit as it is for a country of such institutions as ours, and the source in itself of very sore evils, the tenant system still had a necessary part in the last half century.

Many of the tenant farmers of the155 last generation had indeed “seen better days.” Not a few had been freeholders before the war, although usually of the little farms interspersed here and there among the great plantations of the aristocrats. Many others had been overseers, factors, agents of various sorts. A very small proportion came from the class of decayed gentlemen. The rest were made up from those strata usually lumped together in our designation, “crackers,” or, in the South Carolina term, “poor Buckra.”

HOMES FROM WHICH THE MILL PEOPLE COME.

Such are the antecedents of the mass of operatives in the new mills of the South. Bearing in mind this derivation, you will not find it difficult to account for many qualities, traits and habitudes that might otherwise appear anomalous. For example, their extravagance is a characteristic almost without parallel among other classes of toilers. But it is simple of explanation.

The transition from a dollarless past to a many-dollared present would render any class of untutored human beings extravagant. Through a long period of tenant farming, these people scarcely saw a piece of money from Christmas to Christmas. Each year’s supplies were either furnished by the owner of the land, or bought on credit at a nearby store, to be paid for when the cotton was picked. The harvest came, sometimes good, sometimes bad; but good or bad, it seemed uniformly to take it all to pay the merchant and the landlord. The tenant rarely enjoyed even the sorry pleasure of selling his cotton and paying the hard cash to these creditors; instead, he usually hauled the raw product of his toil directly to them, then turned apathetically away to begin his half-hearted preparations for another year’s crop. His wife and children shared his labors, sharing also his empty-handedness.

This went on through the dragging years of the South’s agricultural prostration, until the last decade came, with its mills and its industrial revolution, when the moneyless and landless ones drew into the new communities, to try bread-winning under unfamiliar conditions. The mothers and daughters had often worked on the farms, so they did not hesitate at the factory door, except when very young children claimed the care of the former. In most instances, indeed, the women’s fingers proved the readiest for the new occupation.

THE MOUNTAIN TOP CABIN

But neither women nor men acquired dexterity without a period of laborious effort, such as all workmen must struggle through when, possessed of only the inherited instincts of generations of bucolic ancestors, they set themselves to some form of mechanical156 labor. That period being done with, a certain amount of skill began to appear in all fairly intelligent operatives, and shortly they found themselves bringing home each Saturday night, or alternate Saturday night, according as pay day fell, an amount of money that to them seemed an amazing treasure-pile.

A TYPICAL MILL COTTAGE.

Cases such as the following are found in every prosperous factory community: The father, mother, and six or eight boys and girls, ranging from twelve to twenty odd years, are at work in one mill. Large families are the rule in this class, remember. Now, the adults, if fair weavers, easily average $22.99 apiece per month. The younger members of the family are probably spinners, and average about $14 each. This family, then, that in the old life of the farm thought themselves fortunate indeed to handle $100 in cash throughout a year, now bring home something like $175 every month!

Is it strange to you that extravagance seizes upon this metamorphosed household? If the sudden transition from pennilessness to plethoric pocket-books did not lead in itself straight to spendthrift living, the precedents of their neighbors would speedily teach the trait.

So the housewife loads the table with luxuries hitherto unknown; the pretty girl is tempted into all the caprices of dress that her little Vanity Fair may flaunt, while the father and brother can scarcely tell whither their dollars speed on such swift wings.

THE LYCEUM, PELZER, S. C.

Yet this wastefulness, too, is but a phase, destined to gradual elimination in the development of the process by which an agricultural people are converted into a manufacturing one. With all their illiteracy this class is not devoid of understanding; and when a157 certain bewilderment of these early years is past, it will be borne in upon them in countless ways, by their school privileges, their larger experience, their clearer views of the outside world, by their own innate manhood, indeed, that there are far other uses for hard-earned money than to be lavished on mere food, clothing and shelter. Many of them are already opening their eyes to the fact that for an abundance of things to eat and wear, they have bartered a certain independence and manliness which are fostered by agricultural pursuits, even the lowliest, and which breed sturdier virtues than mere factory dependents can hope to transmit to their children. Awakening perceptions such as these are leading to different results: to a rescinding of extravagance always; sometimes a return to the farm; occasionally to the laying aside of money or investing it in a home just outside the factory property. But in most cases I find a steadfast purpose growing,—to work straight on where they are for the present, and save every cent possible to educate the coming generation and set their feet in the path that leads to freedom. I have even found several young men and women putting aside money to go to school on when enough is saved, and many go to school and work through alternate half years.

But how can they save money? clamor those who have been studying the comparative wage-scale of Northern and Southern factories, without acquaintance with the actual conditions of the latter. By reasonable economy, is the answer in this case as others.

From $20 to $30 per month is paid good weavers throughout this section, while the average spinner draws from $10 to $16. These are regarded as158 good living wages in a country where the prices of necessaries range much lower than in the East or the West. Houses are to be heated only about four months in the year, and fuel is comparatively cheap, in many places less than $1.50 per cord for wood, while coal averages less than half the price it brings in Northern markets. Clothing in this warm climate costs far less than in a colder region. Farm and garden supplies are purchased for what seems to the Northern mind an absurdly low price, and dairy products are never high. Besides, in all the rural mill communities, which are now counted by the score to every one in a city, a garden patch always and often pasturage for one cow can be counted on with every cottage.

House rent is not a considerable item. The mill cottages rent by the month on the basis of 60 cents to $1 per room, and the houses range in size from three to eight rooms, four, however, being the rule. With few exceptions, these cottages are fairly comfortable, and built with due regard to sanitation. Outside of cities, each one has its ground space where the inmates may grow flowers and vegetables, thus fostering a form of local attachment that is by no means weak.

From this brief survey, it may be deduced that while the one-time tiller of the soil has surrendered something in becoming a factory operative, he has also come into new privileges and potentialities. When you strike your balance between gain and loss, do not overlook the weighty consideration of the school advantages and other educational facilities which such people have acquired by coming from sparse and remote settlements into their present community life.

During a recent cold snap the young and tender editor of this youthful publication accompanied the blizzard to a small Tennessee town. The office of the little hotel was full of commercial travelers trying to keep warm around a single grate. A half-frozen Italian organ grinder, with his monkey, entered, but was crowded away from the fire by the traveling men. He found a chair away back in the corner of the room and soon fell asleep. But suddenly he woke with a scream; the traveling men rushed to him and asked him what was the matter. He said he dreamed he was in hell and was freezing to death. “Freezing to death in hell! How is that?” asked one of the boys. “Well,” replied the Italian, “the drummers crowded around the fire so I couldn’t get to it.”—Robert. L. Taylor.

THE MERRY LADY. — I. — II. — III.

The poplar groves were gemmed with diamond frost, and they stood in a fairy circle surrounding a glade of snow. Beyond lay all the immensity of the Canadian Plains, above rode the sun in a heaven of cloudless blue, but within the glade there was war. Jets of sharp flame flickered from all the groves, giving birth to clouds like pearls, which drifted on the serene air and made a bluish film of smoke above the waves of the snowdrift. Across the foot of the glade some sleighs were drawn up for defence, each giving shelter to a knot of men, though the woodwork shattered in splinters about their ears. Lying with carbines at rest underneath the sleighs, they watched for the smoke pearls in the woods, then sighting low to clear the combs of the snowdrifts, they fired steadily at hidden enemies. A shower of diamond dust would fall from some fairy tree while the marksman swore thoughtfully, and loaded to try again. So rifles blazed and crashed, so bullets whined or sang, but all this was merely a twittering as of summer birds amid that mighty silence of the plains, which filled the vault of heaven sun-high with peace.

Yesterday a village of retired buffalo-hunters, French-Indian half-breeds, sorely annoyed with the Canadian government, had set up a toy republic, and persuaded some Indian tribes to come out on the warpath. To-day a troop of the Northwest Mounted Police, assisted by a handful of volunteers, had come out from Fort Carlton to make enquiries—and been neatly ambushed. The party of the first part numbered three hundred and sixty-one and the party of the second part only ninety-six, as witnessed this Disagreement, dated near Duck Lake, in the District of Saskatchewan, in the Northwest Territory of Canada, this 26th day of March, 1885.

The trooper farthest to the left of the sleigh rampart was a man of giant girth and stature, with an ugly face. Officially he was Regimental Number 1107, Constable la Mancha, J., but his pet name was the Blackguard, presumably because of his manners and customs. When the fighting began he had been much alarmed, then displeased because a bullet whipped some fur from his buffalo overcoat, and in another minute full of cheerful fury, boiling hot with a frantic appetite for trouble. Moreover, the very moment he began pumping lead into the nearest clump of bushes a naked Indian was seen to leap into the air, and fall headlong. “My meat!” cried the Blackguard, and took a ferocious interest in getting more. A few minutes later he heard the man next him on the right utter a little grunt, and gave his hot carbine a rest while he looked round to see what was wrong. A gallant young Canadian, Corporal Buck McCannock, had been hit, and rolled over on his back beside la Mancha. The Blackguard felt rather sick, watching the red flush fade beneath the tan while the man’s strong features became wan and pinched.

“Say, Buck, old chap, can I help?” Buck’s eyes were closed, and he did not seem to hear. The sunlight glowed on the scarlet serge of his jacket, the glittering buttons, the bright accoutrements, as he lay with his buffalo coat spread wide upon the snow. Only his face was in shadow.

“Buck, old man!”

His eyes opened, his right hand160 moved out, his fingers plucking at la Mancha’s sleeve, then very slowly his left hand groped at the breast of his jacket, and drew out a paper until it caught between the buttons. La Mancha saw that Buck’s lips were moving now, and bending down he heard a broken whisper, “Take this—tell her—tell her—”

The clay-white face relaxed, and the Blackguard saw a bluish shadow come up like rising water over it, over the glazing eyes. Then the lips parted. He wrenched the letter from the clutch of a dead hand, which slid away down the breast of the scarlet jacket, and dropped to the ground.

It was the shattering blow of a bullet in the sleigh box above his head which roused la Mancha to turn and fight again. Hitherto he had merely disliked those men behind the snowdrifts, but now he wanted to skin, and burn a few of them slowly, and prayed to the saints that each bullet should inflict a painful and mortal wound, followed by a disagreeable hereafter.

Then he heard footsteps in the creaking snow, and knew that the troop surgeon had found the corpse beside him. He heard the doctor whisper: “Buck? Poor Buck!”

When la Mancha looked round again Dr. Miller was gone and a red-haired trooper was busy stripping the ammunition from the dead man’s belt.

“Down, fool,” said the Blackguard; “that scalp of yours draws fire—you ruddy oot.”

Red lay down on the edge of the dead man’s coat, and threw his feet across the Blackguard’s legs lest the snow should wet them. Then he grunted with content.

“Happy?” asked the Blackguard.

“’Ungry—gimme blood! Look there!”

Red jerked his thumb backwards over his shoulder and showed his chum how one of the officers, Inspector Sarde, lay near them. Sarde was hiding behind the next sleigh on the left, making an abject display of cowardice. “The lantern-jawed, swivel-eyed, white-livered, scarehead, misbegotten, jumped up son of a dog’s wife,” was the Blackguard’s comment.

“I kicked ’im,” Red grinned in ferocious joy, “cruel ’ard, too.”

“Red, help me to clear that bluff in front there; sight at one hundred yards, and fire low.”

“Low it is.” Red settled himself to work, fired, and pumped a cartridge while he watched results.

“What makes you sing, eh, Blackguard? I’m in a funk, I am—” he fired again.

“Was I singing?” La Mancha let drive at a smoke puff. “I bagged a buck Indian just now—aim low—got ’im.

“Nice and cheerful, ain’t yer!” cried Red sarcastically, but la Mancha enjoyed himself.

“’Ere, stop that!” Red howled at him, then wiped his eyes with his sleeve, as the Blackguard went on in a broken voice, revelling in grief.

“Oh, shut up!” Red wailed, but la Mancha grinned at him. “Blackguard, got any more ammunition?”

The Blackguard chuckled: “For my self? why, plenty!” and he fired at a pearly gust of smoke among fairy trees of diamond. Then he heard the death scream of a horse at the rear, the shouting of orders, and a bugle crying, “Cease firing! Retire!”

The horses were bought up from the rear, bucking, fighting, breaking away, or falling in their traces as the teamsters took them in charge. Then the enemy charged, the rear guard held them back, and confusion verged161 towards panic under a galling fire. La Mancha, with Red for his off man, was lucky enough to get a team away unharmed, but, as his horses plunged through breast-high drifts, he heard the outcry of two wounded men. Their sleigh, with one horse killed, and the other dying, had been abandoned.

“All right, Gilchrist!” he called. “Keep your hair on, Smith!” then swung his team about—“Drive on!” yelled Inspector Sarde, jumping directly in his path.

For answer the Blackguard drove straight over him to the rescue. In another moment willing helpers had carried the wounded men to la Mancha’s sleigh, and half a dozen jumped in to defend them, as the teamsters swung away towards the trail.

When he had tailed in with the retreat he turned, “What became of Sarde the Coward?” he called back over his shoulder.

“In your sleigh, constable!” answered the officer. “Sergeant, put this man under arrest.”

“Yes, sir,” the sergeant saluted. “Constable la Mancha,” he called, “for charging an officer with cowardice in the field, consider yourself under arrest.”

The charge was made, and only la Mancha could withdraw that now. Sarde looked from face to face and all eyes accused him; all these men were witnesses against him on a charge of cowardice in the field. He set his teeth.

“Sergeant,” he said, “when we reach the Fort you will put this constable under close arrest.”

The Blackguard was singing gaily as he drove, singing in vengeful triumph, forgetting the dozen or so of his comrades whose bodies lay on the bloody snow, abandoned. Then he remembered and was silent, while the crackle of musketry dwindled away astern, as the men of the rear guard fell back. Only the lope of the horses, the creaking of the runners, and occasional sobbing gasps of a hurt man in the sleigh, disturbed the silence of the wilderness. La Mancha handed the reins to his off man:

“Take the team, Red; I want—”

He took a letter from his pocket, and sat, all humped up, reading gloomily.

Eight miles away the fellows down in the Fort were waiting for news, the news of victory. Red’s heart, as he drove, was aching; his face burned with shame as he thought of the Outfit thrashed—the Greatest Regiment on Earth disgraced—the dead left in the field, the sleighs full of wounded men in their agony—then the settlements! What could save the far-strung, lonely settlements now from being sacked and burned, the men tortured to death, the women—the children! He dared not think of them at the mercy of Red Indian tribes at war. And Buck was dead; poor old Buck, who had rooked him last night at cribbage—dead!

“Dearest,” the Blackguard read, “I can’t bear him any longer. Meet me behind the stockade at dusk. Your poor Polly.”

Who the deuce was Polly? What had he to tell her anyway from Buck? He put away Buck’s letter, and drove on, climbing the hillocks, swishing down the hollows among lakes and groves, until the deep valley of the Saskatchewan opened ahead, and far down beside the river he saw the old Hudson’s Bay Company’s post, Fort Carlton, where the Union Jack flamed out above the stockade, and the garrison waited for news of victory.

Away to the right, upon the eastern trail, a string of loaded sleighs was sweeping down long slopes toward the Fort, covered by mounted men with all the glitter and pageantry of war—the reinforcement which had come too late—B Troop, triumphant after a tremendous forced march to the rescue. The Blackguard grunted his disparagement, and spoke to his off man:

“Who’s poor Polly?”

Red laughed: “Sarde’s wife, of course.”

The Blackguard whistled softly. “So she’s poor Polly—oh, you sly dog! Oh, Buck!”

The Blackguard slept in the cells a prisoner—“Pretty well, thank you!” as he told Red, through the window,162 afterwards. All day he lay at ease while the rest of the fellows made dismal lamentations about overwork. That soothed him, also the aftertaste of a nice fight, while in his cheery soul he gloated on things to come, the war, the downfall of Sarde, and meetings with that officer’s merry lady. No wonder she could not bear any more Sarde—small blame to her, for he was dismal and the lady gay, with a sense of humor, an engaging laugh, a dimple or two, and a pert eye for any fun in sight. Poor Polly! And so she let Buck hold her hand of an evening? Poor Buck! The Blackguard sighed. “But I’m rather nice”—he felt that Buck would approve—“and disengaged, too! I’m grateful, refreshing, comforting, well broken, docile, with the sweetest manners, the dearest little ways.” He chuckled as he thought of other merry ladies whom he had fondly loved, two or three at a time, charming girls by swarms down the perspectives of nice memory. “I did my duty.” He crooned, and composed himself for a nap.

Red came in the afternoon with news. The fort was to be abandoned, evacuated at midnight, and the garrison was to fall back, defending the settlements eastward. The boys had been turned loose to loot the Hudson’s Bay store—and here was the Blackguard’s share, flung in through the bars: a box of cigars, a mouth organ, a fine revolver, a baby’s bottle, some chocolate creams, and a family Bible which caught him full in the eye and floored him.

The Blackguard found that he could not play the mouth organ while he was eating chocolates and smoking, but had to take them by turns. The shadow of night stole softly in through the bars before he was bored.

Later on he began to get hungry, and as supper was delayed some hours he clamored at the door. To his amazement he was at once let out by a half-breed washerwoman, and looking round saw that the guardroom was full of civilian refugees. For a minute he stood watching them as they sat around a glowing stove, whose naked iron flue went red-hot through the wooden ceiling. “You’ll have the place on fire soon,” he said, and they only smiled at him. Where was the Guard? Away relieving sentries, he supposed, as he reached his sidearms down from a peg, belted on his revolver, and strolled outside. He found himself in the covered entry of the fort, under the gate house. On his right the great courtyard was littered with sleighs, and swarming with men at work preparing for the retreat. On his left the gates swung ajar. To look more business-like he swung an axe across his shoulder, and marched out, explaining to the sentry that he was on duty. The riverside meadows lay silver below the moon and the fresh night allured him as he skirted the stockade, answering a challenge from the bastion, then turned towards the rear side of the fort. He was thinking of the merry lady who might have been there had he come last night. She was there!

He drew near to the cloaked and silent woman, and lifted his cap; “Mrs. Sarde, I think?”

She shrank back against the upright posts of the stockade, thrust out white hands against him, and barely repressed a scream. “Who are you? What are you?” she cried.

He saw that her face was pale, touched by the moonlight into a spiritual delicacy. “The Blackguard, madam,” he answered.

“Oh, how you frightened me! What is it, la Mancha? You’ve brought a message for me?”

“You thought I was a ghost,” he whispered; “you thought I was—”

“Buck? Yes.” He saw a tear run down her cheek. “Yes, I thought so.”

“I am his messenger.” The Blackguard’s voice was soft and low, he leaned towards her, his hand against the stockade, as he bent down. “His last thought was of you, he tried to give me a message, but his voice failed then.”

“My brother! My poor brother!” The Blackguard started back.

“The deuce!” he stammered, “what a beastly sell! Your brother, madam?”163 He uncovered his head. “I beg your pardon, Mrs. Sarde; I beg your forgiveness.”

“Nobody knew,” her voice was broken with tears; “not even my husband. Poor boy—things had gone wrong down East. He had to change his name, and when he joined the Force—for my sake, he wouldn’t say that he was my brother. He was in the ranks, you see, and I—”

“You are in trouble, madam”—a new reverence had come into la Mancha’s manner. “I was your brother’s friend—may I take his place and serve you?”

“How kind of you to think of that, Mr. la Mancha. But then, you see, my husband—you understand?”

“Has the right to protect you; yes, he has that great honor.”

“Oh, don’t mind me!” came Sarde’s sarcastic interruption, and both of them turned round, startled, horrified, to face the officer of the guard, visiting round unattended. “You may well start—the pair of you,” said Inspector Sarde, his eyes glittering with rage, then with bitter sarcasm he went on; “A husband’s rights? Moonshine! Myths! Lies! Woman, get back to the fort at once, or I’ll have you arrested for being out of bounds.”

“But, Cuthbert,” she pleaded, “you don’t understand. This gentleman—”

“Go, I say; go! Leave me to settle with this—this gentleman!”

Poor Polly crept away, and the two men watched her in silence until she had turned the corner of the stockade.

“Ah!” the Blackguard laid his axe against the wall. “At last!”

“And now, mister gentleman, may I venture to ask what you’re doing outside your cell?”

“You may.”

“Stand to attention; call me ‘sir’ when you address an officer.”

“Dear, dear! I would shout, I would screech if I were you. Then everybody will hear.”

“The Commissioner shall hear.”

“What? That I’m here to defend your wife’s honor, which you have insulted, you—you poached cat!”

“Right about turn, quick march for the guard room, or—”

“Or what?”

The officer was silent.

“That’s right. Now be good. I want to point out,” said the Blackguard with yearning sweetness, “that although I am tempted, without witnesses, I have not kicked you. No. I have denied myself even calling you names, you—you mule-foaled outrage on nature’s modesty; you stridulating, splay-footed, pop-eyed mistake of Providence; you supercilious brass-mounted, misdirected Excuse. I will not shock myself by speaking the truth about your appearance, origin, or destiny as a spatchcocked and fried Sin, but I daresay you’ll understand this—”

He flicked his glove across the officer’s face, and stood back, smiling blandly.

“How dare you!”

“With my glove, so—” he struck again, lightly, gracefully, tigerishly. “You see there are the snipers in the hills, taking the pot-shot, eh? which will explain your death, without my inconvenience; eh? It will account for all—we have revolvers—and so! Carramba! What more does the fool want?”

“Sir! I’m an officer, a gent—”

“Exactly—gent. Something less than a gentleman, eh? Well, I waive that. I waive the matter of rank—I accommodate you with every kindness; eh, what?”

Sarde hesitated.

“Come, I know you’re a coward, but never mind that. Brace up! You shall be a man for once. There now; at fifteen paces, eh? No? Don’t disappoint me, please,” the Blackguard pleaded. “I spoil for it—I beg you—have you no inside? Are you a shadow in trousers? Nombre de Dios! It’s for your wife’s honor!”

“I tell you that officers can’t fight with—”

“With me, Senor? I waive that, I tell you—I, Jose Santa Maria Sebastian Sant Iago Nuñez Ramiro de Guzman, de la Mancha, Marques de las Alpuxarras, Conde del Pulgar, a peer of Castile, am ready to waive my rank and fight a scrambled skunk! Draw! Stand back! At the word164 three I fire—one—two—Sangre de Cristo!”

Sarde had fired.

“What the deuce do you mean by firing before I give the word, eh? I’ll punch your head for that!” The Blackguard clutched at a burning pain on his shoulder, his hand was dyed with the blood of a spurting artery—and yet this seemed to concern him less than the red glare from within the fort which had flushed the face of his adversary. He reeled backwards now, staring up at the stockade, whose timbers loomed black against a fiery glow, which was rapidly mounting to heaven above Fort Carlton.

“Sarde,” said la Mancha, gravely, “you see that?”

“Had enough?” asked Sarde; “I’m going to kill you now. I fire when I count three—one—two—defend yourself—”

“Presently, my good man, presently,” la Mancha waved his hand to Sarde. “Don’t you see that the fort is on fire?”

“On fire—what? On fire! By the living—”

“Hush, don’t gabble, Sarde. You’ve played the man at last; I forgive you for firing too soon—I let you off the charge of cowardice in the field. Oh, you needn’t thank me—it’s for your wife’s sake. Yes, I let you off—I ask your pardon, sir. Oh, yes, why not?”

Within the fort a bugle was crying the terrible monotonous repetitions of the General Assembly, and men were yelling, as they ran, of wounded patients shut up in the blazing house. “The fort’s on fire. The fort’s on fire,” Sarde moaned.

La Mancha clutched Sarde’s arm to steady himself as he reeled backwards faint with pain from his wound.

“Those refugees,” he explained; “half-breeds in the guard room with a red hot stove. I warned them. Look, the gate house is on fire, the gate is blocked with flames, the only gate, and the fire will spread all round the buildings! All those people going to be burned to death unless we can cut a road through the stockade—you’ve hit my shoulder—I can’t use the axe. But you”—he shook the officer with frantic violence—“a Canadian, a born axeman— Do you hear? Save the garrison or they’ll burn to death! Take that axe!”

The Canadian sprang forward, the axe became a live thing in his hands; the gleaming blade flamed in red air, buried itself in quivering timber, then swung again, and lit, and swung again in a whirl of splinters.

La Mancha sat down in the snow, his blood-drenched hand upon the wound, his body rocking to the steady swing of the axe, though he could hardly see his enemy now, because of the red smoke curling between the timbers.

“Good man!” he gasped, “you are a man at last! You’ll save the garrison, you’ll get promoted, you’ll win back that lady’s love-you’re winning back your honor! Strike, man—strike!”

It is well known to the two hundred thousand readers of this magazine that its bald-headed editor often pulls his hair on the platform. He boarded the cars one day and slung his big valise between two seats and sat down by a drummer. The drummer looked at the valise and then at the bald-headed man and bluntly asked, “Are you a traveling man, sir?” “Yes, sir,” was the reply. “What line of goods are you selling?” queried the drummer. “Sweetened wind,” was the answer. “Oh, you are!” said the drummer; “preacher or lecturer?”—Robert L. Taylor.

A ROYAL RESIDENCE.

One morning the Professor, whom I had not seen since I left Tennessee, accidentally unearthed me in London and proposed that we should visit Windsor. Now, I may as well confess to defective initiative, in regard to sight-seeing, for I had been within reach of Windsor on several former occasions and had not yet seen the home of the most gracious queen the world has ever known. This, too, in face of the fact that a German professor had assured me that Windsor was “himmlisch.” When a German so far forgets himself as to say that anything English is “heavenly,” be assured he has great provocation.

WINDSOR CASTLE FROM THE THAMES.

Of course, I acceded without hesitation to the Professor’s proposal and we selected a train, appointed a rendezvous, and agreed to go the following morning.

The Professor’s traveling companion was a “blue grass” doctor of divinity, while I was courier, guide, and advance agent to the “delegate,” sent by his admiring countrymen and brethren to unload some ecclesiastical “thunder and lightning” on their conservative confrères in the old land. The “delegate’s” wife was traveling with him as a sort of balance wheel on his too impetuous energy and to see that he was not imposed on by the overbearing foreigner; she was not averse to a little vigorous sight-seeing when otherwise unemployed. They also joined the party, which was completed by “Wee McGregor,” as the eight-year-old was called, who looked to me for his traveling expenses.

Having visited London before, and being possessed of an unearned reputation as a dragoman, I felt it was incumbent on me to show the party the best and quickest way to reach Windsor. Accordingly I hailed one of those obsolete conveyances which the London City Fathers provide for the traveler, to whom the conservation of energy is of more moment than arriving at a destination.

In due time, somewhat shaken but still in good humor, for the day was yet young, we arrived at King’s Cross station on the Metropolitan Railway, better known by the more modest and suggestive title of the “Underground.” “Here,” I had said to the prospective sightseers, “we shall get a train that will connect direct and without change at Paddington station with the train for Windsor.” This was all true except the “without change” clause. For this slight deviation from strict veracity I have no apology to make. Indeed, I doubt whether I am entitled to play the role of guide while so generous with the truth.

I kept my tourists “rounded up” and prevented them from embarking in various directions. As there were trains passing every two or three minutes it seemed a waste of time not to take one and I had, as a consequence, a very busy quarter of an hour. At last our train came, and, after rushing madly up and down the platform the entire length of the train, we found places, though in different “stalls.”

When an American train arrives at a station you go in and find a seat. When an English train, especially of the old style which is now happily disappearing, arrives, you must first find a seat and then go in. You trail up and down the platform and poke your nose into every compartment answering to the class for which you have purchased tickets. Here is one with two or three places vacant, but you have a party of four, and as they are strangers in the country, you must keep them together to ensure their alighting at the right place. Besides you naturally want to be within speaking distance of one another. So you start back again to the other end of the train, terrified every moment lest the engineer grow weary of your bootless explorations, and decide to start. Ah! Here is a vacant apartment at last, but just as you are about to step in with a light heart you notice that it is marked “first class” and unfortunately you are not a millionaire. You continue your search and find eventually a vacant apartment of the class in which you are entitled to ride. Your troubles are now ended; your party is seated; your impedimenta are laboriously stowed away in the racks, when, with envious nonchalance, enters a smoker armed with a little cigarette that vomits smoke like a factory chimney. The ladies are indignant; you rack your brain for something sufficiently withering to say, and just as you are ready to deliver, you notice, faintly etched on the window, the word “smoking.” Now, if you were traveling in Austria, you would give the “guard” a quarter to remove the label with the offensive word, and would settle back virtuously into the leather cushions, but here, while the English guard would be equally obliging—for a like “bakshish”—it is a more serious matter to remove the door or window. In the meantime you have left the smoker in quiet possession to fill the vacant space with clouds of the fragrant weed. In despair you apply to the guard and when you appropriately recognize his importance, he finds you a place in a moment.

The stations on the “Underground” are open to the surface and are light and airy, but when the train plunges under London, and the compartment fills up with the gases, that have been accumulating down here for the past thirty years, you realize that traveling on the “Underground” does not differ widely from suicide by slow asphyxiation.

The “delegate” put his silk handkerchief to his nostrils and looked suspiciously at me. It requires some ten minutes to make the distance between King’s Cross and Paddington, so he was unable to hold his breath all the way. Every time he breathed I felt as if I had murdered a man. My167 Tennessee friend and the Kentucky parson were not yet disposed to be critical, so they chatted merrily, breathed regularly, and acted as though these sulphur laden fumes were their “native air.”

But after we had quitted Paddington station, and the train had taken its last few plunges under ground; when we had actually shaken off the dust and grime and roar of London, the beauty of the incomparable English landscape began to make us glad. Patchwork hillsides, where tiny fields are partitioned off by greenest hedges, lovely valleys, where brimming streams shimmer their length along, came, one by one, into view. The English streams have no visible banks. The turf, green as an emerald, grows clear to the water’s brink and dangles its luxuriant growth into the quiet brook, as a barefoot boy, playing truant, cools his feet in some wayside stream, while the master’s wrath grows warm. These rivers—for rivers I must call them, though a good athlete might almost leap from side to side—are always full and seem as though the accidental dropping in of a pebble would make them overflow.

As hill and valley, hedge and garden, country home and quiet hamlet, all of surpassing loveliness, swept past us, my entire party began to fall under the spell of this exquisite beauty, and I felt that there had arisen the unanimous, though unexpressed, conviction that now, at last, the self-appointed guide was earning his salary.

WINDSOR CASTLE FROM THE THAMES.

As Windsor is distant from London by about forty minutes ride, the tourist arrives at his destination fresh and “fit,” to use an expressive English phrase. When we issued forth from the station we encountered, as a matter of course, the ubiquitous hackman who, in all lands, stands ever ready to drive you to all the places you especially do not want to visit. The object of our pilgrimage was the Castle, distant a stone’s throw from the station, so there was no occasion to provoke an unnecessary and futile dispute with the “cabbie.” We next encountered an army of small boys distributing handbills, on which were set forth, in eloquent terms, the merits of the various “tea rooms” of the city, which unselfishly cater to the comfort of the stranger. We accepted this service as a matter of course, first, because it was gratuitous; second, because it was the easiest way to get rid of the boy,168 and third, because, though a sight-seer may pull through the day without the assistance of a hansom or a “growler,” I have never known one who was not ready to take a little refreshment, especially when he was traveling abroad. After we had become thoroughly tired out, with climbing the steps of the Round Tower and general sight-seeing, we found a cosy, clean and restful upper room, where the actual bill of fare was not badly out of harmony with the promises of the card.

The town of Windsor, itself, possesses nothing of special interest to the traveler. The Castle, situated in a commanding position on the Thames, dominates the town from every point of view, and is, with its environs, the sole reason for a visit.

The group of buildings enclosed by the walls is nearly a mile in circumference and has been the favorite home of most of the sovereigns of England since the days of William the Conqueror. Each one has continued the lavish expenditures of his predecessor to enrich and beautify it. It fascinates, therefore, not only by its great beauty, the romance suggested by wall and tower, but also, and especially, by the variety of its architecture. Here we can study the master-builder’s art, as gate, chapel, and tower step forth, in quick succession, to instruct us. The space, enclosed by the walls of the castle, is divided into two wards—the lower and the upper—by the great Round Tower, which occupies the brow of a hill, or mound, commanding the upper ward, which is level, and looking down upon the lower ward, which is situated on a gradual incline. The walls are pinched together at the Tower, but swell out around either ward, suggesting somewhat the figure eight.

We arrived at Windsor by the Great Western Railway, and after walking up a little hill, High Street, passing on the left the beautiful Jubilee statue of Queen Victoria, we found ourselves at the main entrance of the lower ward, Henry VIII’s gateway. Notice this splendid example of Tudor architecture, built about 1510. Either side of the gateway is flanked by a mighty tower, which you will notice has three sides to make more effective the defence. Over the gateway, in a row, may be seen the badges of Henry: the fleur-de-lis, suggesting the English claim to the French crown; the Tudor Rose; and the portcullis, used so frequently after the twelfth century to protect the gateway from sudden assault.

My readers will remember that Henry was rather indulgent to himself in the matter of marriages. He experienced, all told, six wives, of whom Providence removed two, divorce set aside two more, and the executioner’s axe cut short the career of the remaining pair.

His second wife, Anne Boleyn, the most charming of the lot, whom Henry first married, afterward divorcing her rival, paid the penalty of her attractiveness, or coquetry, at the executioner’s block in the Tower of London. She, with a gorgeous retinue attending her, was met at this gate by Henry and welcomed to the place with the assurance that she would shortly be its real mistress. All this, however, to the great regret of the “delegate’s” wife, took place before our arrival.

How different is the architecture of the Norman gate with its graceful round towers! Here, in these chambers which you may see above the entrance, and in the rooms of the towers themselves, were kept, during the struggle between Crown and Parliament, many famous prisoners.

As we entered the lower ward, by Henry VIII’s gateway, the beautiful proportions of St. George’s Chapel rose before us on the left. Adjoining, on the east, is Albert Memorial Chapel, the gem of the entire group. Still traveling east and ascending the hill, we come first to the residence of the Dean and Chapter, and then to the famous Round Tower. Directly across from St. George’s the group of buildings is the residence of the Military Knights, who date from the founding of the order of the Garter, when Edward III established this to provide for the relief of poor knights. It was called by Elizabeth, “Poor Knights of Windsor,” but William IV took away169 its reproach by giving it the present name.

These are the main features of the lower ward, the buildings being grouped around a large balloon-shaped court.

WINDSOR CASTLE, NORMAN GATEWAY.

Beyond the Round Tower lies the upper ward, perfectly level, with stately buildings on three sides of a square which contains a splendid example of artistic gardening. The buildings on the north are the State apartments, and those on the south and east the royal suites. This group has twenty-four towers, seventeen state apartments, forty-eight rooms, seventy-nine bedrooms, sixty-five sitting rooms, and rooms containing two hundred and thirty-one beds for servants.

Our first objective point was St. George’s Chapel. The exterior of this building is very beautiful and singularly in harmony with the surrounding structures. This effect the architect accomplished by avoiding the use of the conventional church tower, while at the same time preserving the ecclesiastical appearance.

We found, within, a group of people in charge of a verger, who was explaining to them the various objects of interest. We went our own way and when we had finished, found that the verger and his flock had departed and the door was locked. It felt, at first, a trifle like being in jail, but conscious of our rectitude, we waited till the door opened again and then passed out. As we had found the door open when we arrived and had entered in unchallenged, it did not occur to us that the verger considered it necessary to personally conduct us through the building and bid us farewell when we left; nor did we think that we had in any way slighted him till the Kentucky parson, who had remained behind to ask a few questions, later reported that the ecclesiastical pathfinder had enquired of him, with fine scorn, if “that aristocratic party belonged to him.” The “aristocratic party,” was the professor, the “delegate” and myself, who were now safely out of reach, while the verger’s fee jingled merrily at the bottom of our pockets.

On every hand, at Windsor, are posted notices forbidding the servants to receive any gratuities, but we170 learned, that notwithstanding the seemliness of such a regulation in such a place, none but a novice took it seriously. Consequently, when we later visited the Royal Stables, we emerged proudly from the ordeal after having deposited a shilling in the ever ready hand of the guide.

But to return to the chapel. It was begun by Henry I and mutilated as usual by the soldiers of the Puritans, and restored again by Charles II and his successors, but Victoria has perhaps done most for it.

HENRY VIII GATEWAY.

There are many tiny chapels around the various walls, in the fashion of the churches of Europe. We noticed, especially, the Braye chapel to the right of the entrance. On the walls hung a sword and swordbelt, showing evident marks of service in the field. An inscription explained that they belonged to Captain Wyatt-Edgall, who recovered the body of the Prince Imperial, in Zululand. He, himself, was also killed in South Africa. The same chapel contains the monument to Prince Imperial—son of Napoleon III and Eugènie,—who fought with the English in South Africa, and there died.

A translation of the inscription at the foot of the marble figure—a figure of the recumbent prince, grasping his sword which lies along his body—reads: “The well-beloved youth, the comrade of our soldiers, slain in the African war, and thence carried to the tomb of his fathers, and represented in funereal marble in this holy domicile of kings, Queen Victoria receiveth as her guest.”

There is also an interesting extract from the will of the prince, which reads: “I shall die with a feeling of profound gratitude for her Majesty, the Queen of England, and for the royal family, and for the country in which, during eight years, I have received so cordial a hospitality.”

The choir, a church within the church, is situated in the center of the chapel and at the east end. A passage runs the entire way round the sides and rear. It is raised some four feet above the level of the floor and is a long gallery with two rows of lateral seats, and an organ, said to be the finest choir organ in Europe, at the farthest end. The seats, on either side, are the stalls of the Knights of171 the Garter. They are most elaborately carved from floor to ceiling, decorated with crests and emblems.

The remains of Henry VIII and Lady Jane Seymour, who was neither divorced nor beheaded, since she lived only a year after her marriage, are buried beneath the center of the choir. Under the entire chapel a royal vault was constructed by George III, cut out of the chalk rocks below. It is seventy by twenty by fifteen feet and designed for eighty-one bodies.

THE ROUND TOWER, WINDSOR CASTLE.

Directly in the rear of St. George’s is Albert Memorial Chapel, the most interesting feature, as well as the most artistic and costly creation at Windsor. The chapel was begun by the pious, though much married, Henry VIII, who soon abandoned it for Westminster. Constancy was, perhaps, not one of Henry’s strong points. Wolsey, who was Henry’s pope and aspired to be the real one, begged and obtained the chapel for himself, but fell from Henry’s favor, as the ladies had done, before he could finish it. When the Parliamentary forces obtained possession of Windsor, they desecrated it as usual, and sold its plunder for $3,000. Wolsey’s sarcophagus, which escaped, was removed by George III, three hundred years later, to St. Paul’s, where it now holds the dust of Nelson.

It is well known that Victoria decided to convert this chapel into a memorial for the Prince Consort after his death. No expense was spared, and when it was completed in 1874, its interior rivaled the most splendid ecclesiastical structures in the world.

The fourteen windows, with panels beneath thirteen of them, are dreams of art. The windows contain portraits and arms of various kings, queens and princes, and some symbolical figures. The panels beneath picture scenes from the Old and New Testaments, suggestive of various virtues and religious truths. The chapel contains in the center, besides the Prince’s cenotaph, the tombs of the Dukes of Albany and Clarence.

The Round Tower is the most picturesque feature of the castle. Nothing is so interesting as a tower. Not a modern tower—a mere imitation—but a real tower, with dungeons, where prisoners have clanked their chains in172 despair, with great halls where knights in armor foregathered, with secret passages and musty mysteries in every corner—a tower that has lived on to see this age of civilization superimposed upon its own rough, ready and bloody past.

VICTORIA TOWER AND SOUTH SIDE.

The tower is over three hundred feet in circumference and is built on the top of a high mound in a most commanding situation. It is reached, after one passes through the Norman Gate, by a long flight of steps, which is continued up through the structure till the base of the turret is reached. This flight is commanded by a cannon placed at the head of the stairs. The turret, a good-sized tower itself, is built upon the top of the old tower of George III. Within the turret, the stairs wind around a massive bell, brought from Sevastopol.

Finally the top is reached, three hundred and twenty-five feet from the ground, and we walk round the ample promenade—the turret is twenty-five feet wide—dumb in the presence of the loveliness before us. How beautiful is an English landscape, with its living green, threaded here and there by the silver sparkle of a stream. West and south we looked out over Windsor forest and parks, while in the north Eton College was plainly visible with the inevitable cricketers, dressed in white flannel, moving to and fro over the matchless sward, or facing the “crease,” which is, I believe, the “correct” name for the “pitcher’s box.”

How much history and mystery might not the walls of this old tower, built by Edward III, teach us, could they but speak! This tower once contained the great round table of the Knights of the Garter and was the home of the constable-governors, who were responsible for the safe keeping of the state prisoners, among the most famous of whom have been John, of France, and David, of Scotland.

As illustration of the possible mysteries that may still lurk about the tower, I will mention a recent discovery. While investigating a stone cover with an iron handle, the mouth of a well was uncovered. It was found to descend one hundred and sixty-four173 feet, to the level of the Thames, and was lined up with masonry most of the way.

From the turret a fine view is obtained of the state and private apartments of the castle. These contain magnificent collections of rare bric-a-brac and art objects of all kinds. Paintings, tapestries, and ceramics of priceless worth, are kept in the various rooms and galleries. The Van Dyck room recalls the fact that this Dutch artist was brought to England, knighted and pensioned by Charles I. There are also a Zuccarelli room and a Rubens room, with famous paintings from the artists whose names they bear.

Our next visit was paid to the Royal Stables. Here we were received at an office, and after registering our names and nativity were put in charge of guides. Words cannot do justice to the splendid appearance of the well-matched horses, a large proportion of which were greys, and the cleanliness and order of the stalls. Even the straw beneath the horses’ feet was unruffled. At the foot of the stall was laid a nicely plaited braid of straw, forming a pretty border, and on either side stood little sheaves of straw, daintily bound, and presenting the appearance of a row of sentinels down the long line.

We were conducted through stable after stable, and shown horses for all sorts of uses, and horses that were no longer of any use but were pensioners of His Majesty, for services already rendered the State. Then came the carriages. Carriages for royal purposes, and for State purposes and for “breaking in” purposes.

What impressed me most was an old chair on wheels—such as one sees invalids moved about in. It was as commonplace looking as one could well imagine. To it were attached a pair of shafts, and I recognized it at once as there rose before me the vision of the Queen, with broad brimmed straw hat, and accompanied only by a little child, usually one of her grandchildren, while a humble donkey ambled through the grounds of Windsor and pulled the improvised carriage. Such was the picture I had seen in the Sunday school papers, and now the sight of the actual carriage gave the much needed air of reality. This mode of taking exercise emphasized at once both the Queen’s independence and simplicity of manner.

The Great Park, adjoining Windsor Castle, contains 18,000 acres. Within it is located Frogmore House, another royal residence, near which is the Royal Mausoleum. Everyone must have been impressed, at some time or other, with the faithfulness of the late queen to the memory of the Prince Consort. Throughout her long widowhood, she seems to have lived in the presence of his death. The monuments, that perpetuate his name, unless one looks at their artistic value, seem an extravagant waste of money. Certainly he rendered no conspicuous service to the State, so that we are justified in regarding these costly memorials as tributes of the loyal and undying love which the Queen cherished for her husband.

Royal marriages, that are so frequently the result of political exigencies, are not always happy. Perhaps it would not be wide of the mark to say, are not often happy. All the greater reason, therefore, that this one, which was conspicuously congenial, should iterate its testimony.

On the fourteenth of December, the anniversary of the Prince’s death, the Dean of Windsor regularly held a memorial service at the mausoleum, during the lifetime of the Queen. Those who had obtained tickets were admitted to the mausoleum after the service, but this was the only date in the year when it might be seen.

The foundation stone of the structure was laid by the Queen, herself, and contains the following words:

Windsor Castle has had a long and varied history; it has been associated closely with many of the kings of England and with stirring scenes of English history, but for many, many years to come, its mention will call to memory the good and universally beloved woman—Victoria.

THE FINEST HOTEL.

“Boys, is there a hotel in this place?” the traveler asked of two youngsters lounging near, as he stood, suit-case in hand, on the cinder path by the track, looking inquiringly about him, while the train pulled off down the road.

“What place?” putting answer and inquiry into one. It aroused their interest and surprise to hear Montvale called a “place.”

“This village, or hamlet, or station, or whatever you call it—is there a hotel hereabout?” he replied, a little impatient and determined to make himself understood.

“A hotel? Yes, sir,” answered the larger of the boys.

“Then I’ll thank you and pay you to show me to it,” the stranger said, as he brightened up, throwing off the lost look that had struck his face at the same moment his foot had struck the cinders, when he stepped from the train.

“All right; up this a-way,” the larger boy answered, as he turned into the path, and the smaller fell in behind him. The traveler and his suit-case, side by side, brought up the rear. The boys were agreeable, but not over-polite, neither thinking to say, “I’ll take the baggage.”

When they had gone perhaps a hundred yards, the traveler’s eyes all the while seeking sight of a hotel and finding none, the leader stopped suddenly, raised his arm, pointed his finger back down the railway, and remarked, “The finest hotel is ’way down hyander.”

“Very well,” said the stranger, an experienced traveler, therefore past the “kicking” stage; “take me to the finest.”

The procession faced about, headed down the track, retraced its steps, passed the depot, and continued on its way.

But we are not yet to “the finest hotel.” In fact, there is time to “view the landscape o’er” before we arrive, especially as the boys are quiet, remarkably quiet for Kentucky boys—“mighty say-nothin’ shavers,” as the landlady afterwards described them to her guest.

It was dusk, on a Sunday evening in September. The rain had just begun falling gently—the prelude to the first cool snap of the autumn. The stranger had left the train to spend the night, preparatory to his cross-country trip on the following day.

Montvale is a station on the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway, in the mountains of Kentucky, seventy-five or a hundred miles east of Lexington. It is of consequence chiefly because it is on the road to somewhere else—the point of departure from the railway to the country lying beyond. Contrary to the rule, its inhabitants seemed to realize its urban limitations, especially the meagerness of its population. The two boys, unprepared for such compliment, were surprised to hear it called a “place.”

At that time, less than a decade ago—and doubtless ever since,—Montvale straggled around over a wide expanse of flat woods and weedy fields, between ranges. Space to spare was the most striking thing about it. The land, too swampy for tillage, except after elaborate artificial drainage, was “good to fill a hole in the ground and hold the world together.”

The houses, after the “boxed” style of carpentry, seemed not to have175 been built, but to have grown up, like the weeds. They had never peeped into a paint-bucket; their complexion was that of the crawfish land on which they stood. Most of the doors, off the hinges, whether they ever had any or not, stood leaning against the inside wall, ready in case a storm or other emergency arose.

There was little direct communication between the homes, partly because the weeds overhung the pig-trails of travel; partly because it was about a Sabbath-day’s journey from each house to its nearest neighbor; partly because all paths led to or through the depot yard, as the literal and figurative center of the hamlet. The railway station was at once the market, the park, the amusement hall, the shipping center, the business section, the social resort, the lounging place, the nursery and playground of all Montvale. The railway track, with the path beside it, was the main and only street of the “place.”

Just as the traveler was wondering if they were going to tramp down to the next station, the leader said, “Out this hyer way,” turning off to the right, through a sea of white-topped weeds. The rain was still falling, and night had come on. A few pale rays of the moon, struggling through the clouds, showed the boys’ heads now and then bobbing above the watery weeds, like porpoises at play on the surface of the ocean.

At last, the little procession reached a plank fence with a gap in it. The boys stopped, confronted the traveler, and the leader said, “This is the finest hotel anywhar about hyer.”

“Where?” the stranger asked.

“Right yander—go through this gate,” tapping with his hand a piece of frame-work standing across the path.

The boys took the proffered pay, dropped it into their pockets, thrust their hands down to keep it from getting out, and plunged again into the depths of the weedy sea.

The traveler peered through the rain and fog into the yard, where the weeds had lost so much of their stature that he thought he must be nearing the shore. He picked up the gate leaning across the path, from panel to panel of the fence, and set it out of the way, remarking, “Everything about here is off its hinges—I’m nearly off myself.”

He approached the “hotel,” consisting mostly of “boxed” lean-to, and rested one foot upon the sill of the shed—by courtesy known as the “porch.” He paused; in the language of eastern railway danger signs, he thought he would “Stop, Look and Listen.” Silence and the clouds reigned. No sound but the patter of the drops on the roof. No light gleamed from the skimpy window, nor crept through the generous cracks in the wall.

He rapped at the door; no answer. He rapped again—louder; still no answer. There must be nobody at home in “the finest hotel.” So he hammered the rickety, raky, crazy shutter just because there wasn’t, till it shook, rattled and shivered, and the boards on the rear wall creaked and groaned in sympathy.

A cracked, rasping, whining voice from the inner depths called out, “Well!”

“Madam”—for that voice could belong to none but a crone—“I want to get to stay over night.”

“This is a purty time o’ night to be a-prowlin’ ’round, a-draggin’ uv honest, hard-workin’ folks out’n the bed ter wait on ye,” the landlady replied. The reprimand came mixed with the rattle of straw-ticks and the rustle of bedclothing.

“I am sorry,” the traveler answered, “but I came as early as I could. Really, I am neither the conductor, engineer, nor superintendent of that train. Don’t you keep hotel?”

“Yes, sorter, a leetle, sometimes, when I feel like it. But can’t ye wait tell a body gits on her cloze; ur will ye jist come in anyhow, whether ur no?”

“Oh, certainly, I’ll gladly wait,” the traveler said; “take your own time—mine, too.”

“Whar air you frum?” asked the voice from within, somewhat muffled as it poked its head up through a calico dress.

“I don’t see what that has to do with it, but I came directly from Lexington.”

“Yes, I ’lowed so;” she answered. “I jist thought it ’uz some o’ them Bluegrass fellers what sets up all night and sleeps all day—what hain’t nothin’ to do but keep awake them that has to work.”

After taking time enough to have arrayed herself for presentation to the queen, Madame Calico now approached the door, holding a little sputtering brass lamp—apparently the model of the first invention—in one hand, while she vainly tried to tie her apron strings with the other. She knocked up the wooden latch with her elbow and a clatter, and the door swung open. Holding high her lamp—a rustic model for “Liberty Enlightening the World”—she waited for the stranger to speak.

“Madame, I’m very sorry—,” he began.

“Yes, I know it,” she snapped, cutting him off from the remainder of his sentence. “’Bout ever’ thing ’at comes frum Lex’n’ton’s sorry, mighty sorry. Guess they’s some good people down thar, but I hain’t never seed ’em. They don’t never come up hyer. I reckin you kin stay, but I can’t give ye no bed all to yerself; an’ I tell ye now, ye needn’t to ax it.”

Meanwhile, Madame Calico had admitted him and led the way through a side door into an adjoining room which served as a lounging hall for guests, whether “by the day” or “by the week.” Having learned how to make allowances for the moods of hotels, landlords and landladies, he had followed meekly, without invitation.

By “the dim and flaring lamp,” he now caught the outlines of a half-finished stairway winding up to the garret. There was no railing to this gangway; safety consisted in keeping away from the brink. Madame Calico stood on the third step, her countenance and kerosene jet beaming contemptuously down upon the upturned face of the hesitating guest at the bottom.

“Madam,” he asked, hearing, as he thought, a chorus of snores winding down the gangway, “does anybody else sleep up there?”

“No, they hain’t nobody hardly now, sence the mill ’uz shot down.” Rather an evasive answer.

“How many?” he inquired.

“The mill is shot down, an’ most uv the hands has quit work, an’ they hain’t many stays hyer now.”

The guest, growing insistent, asked the third time, as he took a single, hesitating step upward, “Well, who are they—can’t you say just how many?”

Madame Calico, now on the defensive, grew more amiable—rather, less hostile—, but again took refuge in “the mill” and its shutting down: “Sence the mill wuz shot down, the’ve mos’ly all went away; they’s hardly any ub ’em left now.”

The guest was growing impatient, as she could readily see. Not liking the outlook, he stopped, turned as if to descend, and once more demanded, “Well, Madam, will you tell me just how many or not?”

She was loath to lose her guest and his pay, “after a-bein’ drug out’n” her bed. So she at last came to the point, but in her own roundabout way: “Sence the mill ’uz shot down they hain’t nobody sca’cely sleeps up hyer—nobody but Sam Thompson, an’ Tim Turney, an’ Joe Alley, an’ Bob Redford, an’ Jack Johnson, an’ Bill Ed Jeckley—I b’lieve them’s all—oh, yes, an’ Less Wilson. You kin sleep with Bill Ed, but he won’t sleep nowhar exceptin’ the fore side uv the bed.”

“Well,” the traveler muttered to himself, “in an adventure, even a formidable certainty is better than a gloomy doubt.”

They had now reached the landing at the angle in the wall. Madame Calico handed the little lamp to the guest, and turned to go, saying, “You kin bunk up with Bill Ed.”

“But how shall I know Bill Ed from the others?” he asked.

“W’y, he’s in the empty bed by hisself; t’others is a-sleepin’ three an’ four tergether. Bill Ed won’t sleep177 ’ith none uv ’em, ’caze, he says, he ruther sleep ’ith a meal-sack uv augers an’ hammers then ’ith a man. Sometimes I jist have to slip a stranger like you in terhin’ him, an’ Bill Ed don’t know nothin’ about it tell mornin’.”

As she clambered down the gangway, hugging the wall, and the new guest crept up into the garret, he called out, “What time do we rise in the morning?”

“Oh, most any time,” she answered. “Sence the mill ’uz shot down, ever’ feller jist suits hisself about crawlin’ out.”

“About what hour?” he asked.

“Well, when the mill ’uz a-runnin’ we used to git up purty soon, but sence hit ’uz shot down we’re all sorter lazy-like, so we purty giner’ly al’ays have late eatin’.”

“But, Madam, please name the hour for breakfast,” he insisted.

“Well, you kin do purty much to suit yerself sence the mill ’uz shot down. Jest sleep ez late as yer please. We al’ays eat late when comp’ny’s hyer, sence the mill ’uz shot down. So you git yer hands an’ face washed an’ ready by four o’clock’ll do.”

No wonder the mill hands went to bed before nightfall! They had to, in order to get in in time to get out.

Till now, the sounds coming down from the garret had blended into something like harmony. When the new guest neared the top of the gangway, it seemed to him like poking his head into a den of infuriated wild beasts. The roaring, growling and groaning made “confusion dire and dreadful din.”

A glance around caused him to wonder how many slept in that one room before “the mill ’uz shot down.”

The bedsteads were made from pieces of undressed scantling, nailed together; not one of them had ever felt a plane or seen a chisel. The little forest of posts and frames looked like a railway trestle; and the groans and sighs issuing from it sounded as if an express train had just plunged over, mangling passengers and crew. The mill “hands” lay uncovered in that stifling atmosphere, tumbled and tangled into all shapes and attitudes, looking like a band of contortionists struck dead, each in the midst of his favorite trick. There lay Bill Ed—two hundred fifty pounds of mountaineer—spread along the front railing, his arm thrown out and hanging over, to keep him from rolling back and wedging himself under the rafters of the roof. His was the “empty bed”—fairly on the way to occupancy!

The new guest, lifting his lamp and peering over huge Bill Ed to the sleeping place beyond, observed to himself, “In the language of the sweet girl graduate, ‘Beyond the Alps lies Italy.’ The ‘valley’ is all right, if I can ever scale the mountain.”

But he found an easier way. He undressed, sneaked into the “valley” from the foot of the bed, and taking care not to thrust his nose against the roof, he stretched himself out, but not to sleep—to listen! His entrance had not disturbed the snorers. In fact, it had seemed to give them a new inspiration, for the expiration grew louder. They might have supplied steam enough to keep the mill from shutting down. They made up a whole band of wind instruments, each blowing a different horn. The listener now had time to analyze and classify them.

One sounded like a March gust whistling through the splinters on the end of a hickory rail. Another had the hiss of the air-brake under a passenger coach, when the train is about to start. There was one gasp like the continued tearing of brown domestic, and another that made you look around for a stream of broken stones pouring into a tin bucket. One long-winded horn, out of tune with all others, hissed like a jet of steam escaping from the steam-chest when a heavy freight engine is beginning to move. Bill Ed, evidently the sawyer of the mill, had a long-drawn snort like the sound of a circular saw ripping through a seasoned oak, closing with the confused ring of the steel as it clears the end of the log, combined with the clatter of the “carriage” rushing back for a fresh start.

To sleep amid such a din was a178 problem. By and by the traveler dozed off, but not out of reach of that roar—it lingered in the distance. At last it ceased—the snorers had risen and gone!

Just when well asleep—so it seemed to him—, a bell—it must have been first cousin to the little lamp—tinkled on the gangway. The traveler withdrew from the crevice between rafter and railing—where he had literally lodged,—and turned over.

By and by a cow-bell bellowed, not rang, in the lounging hall below. The traveler turned over once more, yawned, slumbered again.

After a time—the clock knew how long—, a conch-shell thrust up the gangway roared; and the sleeper, thinking it a through freight, pushed on, making for the next station.

Another silence. At last, behold, Madame Calico stood at the foot of the gangway, and shouted: “Air you a-gona git up to-day? Ur do ye want me to git yer breakfas’ and then drag ye out’n the bed, an’ put yer cloze on ye, an’ wash ye, an’ chaw yer victuals fur ye?”

“I’ll be down in a moment, Madam,” the traveler answered.

“Ever’body but you has eat an’ gone, an’ done furgot hit, by this time,” she replied. “You’ll fin’ the wash-pan a-settin’ on the porch.”

He arose, dressed hurriedly, made his way down, and by raking around on the “porch,” finally stumbled against the wash-pan. The morning was still dark, but a gray spot was in the eastern sky—daylight was on its way to “the finest hotel.”

Toilet finished, with the aid of his handkerchief in place of a towel, he began wondering where the dining-room could be. He heard no footsteps about the “hotel,” and search revealed neither kitchen nor fire. Peering around, he at last caught sight of smoke curling up from a stick-and-clay chimney some hundred yards away, beyond a bay of the weedy sea he had crossed the evening before. Parting the weeds overhanging the path was much like swimming across.

Breakfast—varied, wholesome, well-cooked—was on the table—had been for an hour or more. Madame Calico, first seeing him seated and busy, then remarked, “You’ll jist have to wait on yerself, but I reckin ye ain’t noways bashful. I’ll have to go back to the hotel to clean up atter ye. It’s a blessed thing the mill’s shot down, fur we couldn’t a-had no sich layin’ up in the bed a-soakin’ an’ a-sobbin’ this time o’ day, ’way hyer might’ nigh dinner.” He was not sorry to make his meal in silence, peace and the landlady’s absence.

Breakfast finished, the guest made his way back toward his lodging place. Turning the corner and confronting the entrance, he read, on a board over the shed, the name of “the finest hotel,” “Traveler’s Rest;” and immediately, by the law of contrast, his memory reverted to the garret, the snoring, Bill Ed and the “empty bed,”—to the hand-bell, the cow-bell and the conch-shell.

Just before he paid his bill and left, in quest of a turnout for the day’s drive, Madame Calico, still in the act of cleaning up, favored him with her views on affairs in and about Montvale, and divers and sundry bits of information—some of a startling kind. “No,” she said, “the hotel business don’t amount to nothin’ much sence the mill ’uz shot down. Wunst in a while some feller comes stragglin’ along way hyander in the night, when all honest white folks is asleep, but the trouble o’ waitin’ on ’im an’ cleanin’ up atter ’im’s more’n the pay.

“Them revenue men an’ marshals an’ sich rakin’s an’ scrapin’s uv the yearth has might nigh ruint Montvale. A passel uv ’em comes here t’other day—jist week afore last—an’ axes me ’bout Sam Ben Jeckley’s ’stillery, whar it wuz. Sam Ben is Bill Ed’s brother. An’ I up an’ tells ’em I don’t know nothin’ about it—hain’t never seed it, nur smelt it, nur tasted it, nur been about it, nur had nothin’ to do with it, in no shape, size, form, nur fashion.

“They said they knowed it ’uz around hyer somewhar. An’ sir, they rummaged over this lan’ an’ country a-s’archin’ fur that ’stillery—hit uz the mill the hands worked at. Atter179 cavortin’ aroun’ two ur three days, like a lot o’ male-cows a-tarrin’ up a paster, they afinally finds the mill—’stillery, as they called it—about two miles frum hyer.

“An’ they taken axes an’ smashed the whole thing tell they wuz nuther ha’r nur hide uv it left. An’ they spilt out three tanks o’ sour-mash byer, an’ we hain’t had none fur the table sence. It beats all uv yer sasafac tea, yer spicewood tea, an’ yer Californy byer.

“They poured out five barl’s uv the best whisky—’cordin’ to what’s said uv it—that ever went to town on ’lection day. They say jist one drink ’ould run a man wil’ enough fur the ’sylum, an’ one drap ’ould make a rabbit pick a qua’rl with a bull-dog, ef he had to spit in his face to do it.

“It’s all sech ez that has ruint the country—stark-nater’ly wiped business out’n Montvale. The dirty, low-flunged, lazy good-fur-nothin’ imps uv the devil, prowlin’ aroun’, ’stroyin’ what other people’s sweat has earnt!

“But still they wuzn’t satisfied! Then they went up above the mill—’stillery, as they called it—, an’ drawed the’r Winchesters an’ Smith & Westerns, an’ farred bullets all through the ruff, an’ poked the door ez full o’ holes ez a sifter. They jest blowed the whole thing bodyaciously all to flugens an’ flinderations, with the’r guns an’ pistols.

“An’ that’s how the mill come to be shot down,” she added, as her parting guest once more lifted the gate aside.

“Good day, Madam,” he said, as he lifted it back.

“Wush ye well,” she answered. “Ef ye’re ever hyer agin, come to see us—I reckin we kin stand ye, an’ Bill Ed won’t know nothin’ about it tell he’s up an’ out. He may be gone by that time any way, fur he’s speenied to Feder’l Court up at Louisville purty soon, fur a witness ’gin the government, to swar Sam Ben an’ tother ’shiners out’n trouble.”

“Yes,” said the traveler to himself, “when I put up again at ‘the finest hotel,’ Bill Ed will be gone—to Federal Court, or some lower or higher tribunal.”

INDEFINITELY POSTPONED.

[During the period immediately following the Civil War, many former slaves, after living in matrimonial harmony for years, were “married over again.” The writer recalls several such instances on her father’s plantation in Tennessee.]

Mr. Josiah Crabtree, gentleman of color, Grand Master of the Lodge of Colored Masons and holder of various other offices of emolument and trust, had, metaphorically speaking, run against a snag. Being a plain and simple man of direct methods, the ornate made small appeal to his mentality. However, Mr. Crabtree had consented to argue the matter; and, in differences matrimonial, the husband who argues is lost.

“But, Penelope,” he began—he always called his wife Penelope when they disagreed, possibly because she disliked the name—“Penelope, what’s de use ob it? Here we is been libin’ togedder, happy an’ contented wid de few words Uncle Jake said ober us dat ebenin’ in de cabin on de ol’ plantation. Dey tuk us all fro’ war times, an’ we ain’t nebber fit yit; an’ what in de name o’ peace you want t’ hop up an’ git mahried all ober agin at dis late day fur, beats my time! You ought t’ know by now dat I ain’t gwine quit you; an’ effen you ain’t pleased wid me, all you got t’ do is t’ say de word.”

Mrs. Crabtree tossed her comely black head, and said petulantly: “’Pears lak I can’t git no notion o’ style or keepin’ up wid de pussession in yo’ nigger haid! You don’t seem t’ hab no mo’ ambitions dan a mole! You t’ink jes’ ’case we-alls had suttin’ ways in slave times, dem ways gwine fit de presen’ suckumstances. In cose it were ’missible for us t’ g’long satisfied wid de few words from Uncle Jake den; but dat don’t prove it’s de propper t’ing now! We’se innerpennant ’Merican citterzens dese days; we’se got as good a right t’ go t’ de Cote house as de next un.”

“Fo’ de Lawd, Penelope! you ain’t gwine trot me t’ de Cote House effen I gib in t’ you ’bout dis mattah, is you?”

“You got t’ go t’ de Cote House fo’ de license, you po’ fool nigger you! All de ladies an’ gemmens in our S’ciety is bein’ mahried ober agin, wid a license an’ a ring, an’ a preacher, an’ flowers an’ sech! It make me feel reel slavish, it sho’ do, t’ go on libin’ lak we is been. I’m de Seccertary o’ de Good S’maritans, an’ Sist’ Hapgood ain’t nothin’ but a privit member; yit her an’ Brer Hapgood done been mahried agin las’ mont’ wid a gol’ ring an’ dat beutiful piece writ about ’em in de paper. It make me feel pintedly lef’ out in de col’—it suttinly do;” and a few self-pitying tears fell on the shirt bosom Mrs. Crabtree was ironing.

“I’m de Seccertary o’ de Good S’maritans.”

“But what you gwine do ’bout Orleeny an’ Cato?” asked Mr. Crabtree, referring to the ebon-hued pledges of their conjugal love.

“Do? Nothin’ ’tall; ain’t nothin’ t’ be did! Des let ’em come ’long t’ dere Ma’s an’ Pa’s weddin’, an’ unnerstan’ dat effen we wuz bawn in slavery, an’ got mahried by jumpin’ de broomstick, we’se keepin’ up wid de pussession now. Mis’ Hapgood had her Aleck as one o’ de ushers when her an’ he’s pa got mahried las’ mon’; so we’ll des let our Orleeny be de maid o’ honnah. Dat’s de berry lates’ style.”

So, despite his perfect content with matters as they were, Mr. Crabtree listened to the siren voice, and finally consented, after twenty years of apparent matrimony, to have the entire thing done over again according to post-bellum methods, and in a style befitting American citizens living in the full blaze of an amended constitution. Yes, Mr. and Mrs. Crabtree were to be married again; by a preacher, with a license, in a church, with a gold ring. Orleeny was to be maid of honor, and Cato, in all the glory of white cotton gloves and other festal accessories, was to be usher in chief. In his honest soul Mr. Crabtree thought the whole thing unmitigated nonsense; but, like many a man with a lighter skin, concluded that, if nothing else would make his wife happy and give her proper éclat before the members of her S’ciety, he would consent to be a reluctant victim on the altar of matrimonial precedent!

“Effen you gwine do the t’ing, you might ez well do it right”—was his conclusion, in which his progressive wife fully coincided. A tidy little sum that had gradually accumulated in the bank was drawn out; and preparations for the belated nuptials went on apace. It was to be not only a church wedding, but a S’ciety wedding likewise, where the various “Orders” with which Mr. and Mrs. Crabtree affiliated were to appear in full regalia and lend spectacular glory to the occasion.

A few self-pitying tears fell on the shirt bosom Mrs. Crabtree was ironing.

“Dere ain’t nothin’ fitten to be bought in dis heah measly little town,” argued Mrs. Crabtree. “We’ll des git on de cyars an’ go ober t’ de county seat an’ lay in de trosso; you’ll hatter go dere for de license anyhow.”

By the time they had purchased a “trosso” befitting a sixteen-year-old bride, Mr. Crabtree’s arms were heavy-laden. The bride-to-be, radiant with visions of her coming loveliness, beamed upon him and insisted that an entire suit of black broadcloth for the groom was indispensable.

“Why, Pennie, it ’pears lak dat las’ blue suit dat ol’ Mas’ gin me ’ud do berry well. We could shine up de brass buttons an’ freshen it up wid182 benzine—” protested Mr. Crabtree, with prudent consideration for his fast diminishing exchequer.

“Now, honey,” insisted Mrs. Crabtree in her most coquettish manner, “you don’t ’spose I’m gwine ’low a good-lookin’ man lak you t’ ma’ch up de ile in dat ol’ blue suit, an’ me des ez fresh ez de mawnin’ jew in dat white swiss an ’dat long veil! An’ you de Master o’ de Lodge, too? It ’ud be scan’lous!”

So the broadcloth suit was added to the multitudinous bundles; and, at the suggestion of Mrs. Crabtree, deposited with their grocer for safe keeping. Then the bridal pair hastened towards the courthouse to procure the license. When this priceless document had been filled in with due solemnity, Mr. and Mrs. Crabtree felt their ante-nuptial arrangements were well-nigh perfected. As, arm in arm, and at peace with all the world they ambled towards the grocery store to reclaim their relinquished packages, Mrs. Crabtree exclaimed:

“Lawsee, Si! we done furgit de ring!”

The selection of the golden circlet that was to bind them in renewed wedded security was so momentous a question that the sun was slipping behind the hills before it was satisfactorily accomplished. At this juncture the absorbed bridal party recalled the fact that it must be nearly train time.

“We’ll des race ober t’ de grocery sto’ an’ grab up our bundles an’ scoot t’ de depo’—” urged Mr. Crabtree as he impelled his panting companion onward.

“Your bundles? Ah, yes; to be sure,” said the custodian of the “trosso;” “they’re all right. The colored man you sent after them carried them to the station some time ago.”

“De cullud man whot I sont atter em?” ejaculated Mr. Crabtree, with bulging eyes.

“Yes, he said you had been delayed, and would go straight to the train from the courthouse. Isn’t that all right?”

“Golly! I should say it wan’t all right!” cried the prospective groom, forgetting in the stress of the moment the dignity becoming the Master of the Lodge. “I ain’t never sont nobody atter dem bundles; I wouldn’ a trusted ’em wid de preacher hisse’f effen he’d a been a dark-complected genterman! What for looks was dat thievin’ nigger?”

The grocer’s face wore a look of puzzlement:

“Why, I couldn’t tell for my life. I didn’t notice him specially; I just supposed of course you sent him. Better go over to the station—maybe you’ll find your stuff there all right.”

But this cheerful prophecy failed of fulfillment, as no clue to the missing “trosso” or its mysterious purloiner could be gained.

“Dem Jingo mines closed down yistiddy, an’ dis heah town’s full o’ loafin’ thievin’ niggers—” Mr. Crabtree explained to his wife after two hours’ diligent search had failed to disclose any clue to thief or packages; “some ob ’em is hyerd us ’scussin’ our plans, an’ has followed us an’ swiped dat trosso.”

Which very plausible solution did credit to Mr. Crabtree’s powers of discernment.

Weary, footsore, with blighted hopes and flabby pocket-book, a disgruntled colored gentleman and lady boarded the midnight train for Ducktown. On the lady’s finger a golden circlet gleamed in mocking irony; from the gentleman’s coat pocket a superfluous marriage license protruded.

“What you gwine do about it?” the gentleman finally took heart of grace and demanded of his sulky spouse.

“Don’t ax me what I’m gwine do! Effen I tole you, you’d be sho’ t’ put in an’ do sumpin t’ spile de whole puffommance. You might a knowed sumpin gwine happen t’ dat trosso when you tuhn it loose.”

With true feminine logic Mrs. Crabtree entirely overlooked the fact that the relinguishment of the packages was her own suggestion.

“I can tell you one t’ing,” she resumed with asperity, “dere ain’t gwine be no weddin’ wid dat trosso gone a glimmerin’! You can des put dat in yo’ pipe an’ smoke it!”

Later, as Mr. Crabtree extinguished183 the candle before retiring, he observed that his wife took a vial labelled “Ipecac” and stealthily deposited it beneath her pillow. But for this timely observation, the violent illness with which Mrs. Crabtree aroused the household the next morning would doubtless have caused graver concern in Mr. Crabtree’s kindly soul.

For some days Orleeny, whose epistolary attainments were the pride of the Crabtree household, was closeted with her suffering parent; and later, each individual who had been bidden to the intercepted nuptials received the following announcement:

“Owing to the suddent illness of the Bride, the marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Josiah Crabtree have been indeffanately bosboned.”

TO ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

TRAINING SCHOOLS IN TENNESSEE AND THE SOUTH.

It is the purpose of this paper to describe an educational movement that has grown largely out of the influence of Vanderbilt University. In its relation toward secondary schools this institution has been impelled by the necessity of securing students. At the opening of the University there were two methods of procedure open. One was to put the requirements for admission at a point where they could easily be met even by untrained pupils; the other was to adopt a high standard, exclude unprepared students, and accept the burden of getting them ready to meet these requirements. It has been this latter policy that has brought about the vital connection between Vanderbilt University and a large number of preparatory schools.

Southern educational conditions are bad enough now, but they were far worse in 1875, the year Vanderbilt University opened its doors. At that time the public school systems of the South were striving to get under way and make some impression on the mass of illiterates. Nothing could be attempted outside a few favored cities in the way of public high schools. The common schools were running ninety-three days in the year, spending 81 cents per capita of population and meagerly educating 45 per cent of the school population. Clearly it was useless to await the coming of the public high school. The old antebellum academies for the most part had passed out of existence. Here and there a few survived, preserving charters that antedated the war and memories of happier and more prosperous existence. If the early copies of the reports of the Commissioner of Education are consulted there will be found few secondary schools having any historic background. The Episcopal High School near Alexandria, Va., has a charter dating from 1854. The Abingdon Male Academy was organized in 1822, and the Bingham School at Mebaneville, N. C., in 1793. These and quite a number of others opened again after the end of the Civil War, but most of them had a brief and uncertain career. In the report for 1877, the earliest one at hand as this is written, we find also mentioned the old Mt. Zion Institute of Winnsboro, S. C., then in charge of R. Means Davis, who was afterwards prominently known in the educational history of that state. Others are the Hanover Academy, Taylorsville, Va., the Yeates School, Belleville, Va.; Fletcher Institute, Thomasville, Ga.; Dawson Institute, White Plains, Ga. The Madison Academy, Rutledge, Tenn., has now become a public high school, the Sam Houston Academy at Jasper, Tenn., has given place to Pryor Institute, and Green River Academy at Elkton, Ky., to the Vanderbilt Training School at the same place. Of all those mentioned only two, the Episcopal High School and the Bingham School, seemed to be really taking up the task of preparing students for college. Each of these sent ten students to college from the class of 1877.

As an attempt to meet the educational needs of the South, quite a large number of new schools sprang into being between 1870 and 1880. These were generally considered academies185 or secondary schools, but undoubtedly most of their pupils were of an elementary age. In many cases the teachers were unprepared for their tasks. They were doing the best they could, trying to instruct according to the needs of their pupils and trying to make a living for themselves. Many an old soldier and many a good woman, whose property was gone and whose natural supporters had fallen on the battle field, took up these opportunities to earn a scant subsistence. From such schools, few if any students went to college. The preparation was insufficient, the atmosphere of school life was not such as to awaken a desire for a college education, and the colleges made no effort to get in touch with the schools. In the report just mentioned, of 1877, about forty such schools—male academies—are enumerated in Tennessee, yet it was a rare thing for one of their pupils to go to college.

In general the preparation for college was done by the colleges themselves. Practically all established preparatory departments; in many cases the college professors taught these departments, and frequently they contained more students than the college classes proper. As endowments had been swept away and state appropriations hardly begun, the faculty had to be supported from the fees alone. In 1877 East Tennessee University, now the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, Tenn., is credited with 195 preparatory students and 90 college students; the University of Mississippi with 257 preparatory and 174 college students; South Carolina College with 95 preparatory and 89 college students. Where some other institutions give no reports of preparatory students, we are inclined to believe it was because these had been fully incorporated with college students, under a most injudicious system of grouping, rather than that they were altogether lacking. From that system with all its faults we have not yet recovered. The best Southern colleges and universities have tried to eliminate this preparatory work, and186 where this could not be done, they have established independent academies, dissociated from all connection with the college proper. But quite a large number have not been able to take this step and still maintain the confused practice of reconstruction days.

Worse than the evils above enumerated was the creation of a number of chartered colleges and universities that were really nothing more than high schools, and in many cases did not furnish as good an education as an honest academy. Such institutions of course never sent students to college, but rewarded with baccalaureate and master degrees attainments insufficient to grace a freshman. Instead of being friends and fosterers of education, these institutions have often been its worst foes. They have served to transform ignorance into conceit, and make impossible true progress on a substantial basis. Boom towns have started universities as an advertisement; local high schools are called colleges in order to gratify local pride, and college degrees have become a farce. Thus we have in every Southern State colleges whose libraries contain less than a hundred volumes, whose scientific apparatus could be hauled away in a cart and cost less than $100, and whose endowment is nothing.

When Vanderbilt University opened its doors in 1875 it had no intention of receiving preparatory students; indeed, its first plan was to receive only such students as had completed half of their college course. Hence, preparation was made for two college classes and two university classes. But with the coming of the first class the ideals of the faculty were rudely shattered. A crowd of earnest but untrained students poured into the college halls. A large number of the courses that had been provided was found to be unsuitable and uncalled for, while there was an imperative demand for elementary classes in English, mathematics, Latin and Greek. In his report on the first year’s work187 Chancellor Garland stated that if the University had stood firmly by its rules it would have rejected fully two-thirds of those who had presented themselves for matriculation: “few had any power of fixed and prolonged attention or any practical knowledge of the modes of successful study.” In this way, then, Vanderbilt University found itself compelled to begin preparatory classes. These were continued for twelve years under protest. They were not advertised, no effort was made to secure students for them, but there were always enough candidates to make them a necessity. This continued until 1887 when they were finally abolished and the task of preparing students for the freshman class was boldly thrown upon the schools of Tennessee and the South. The immediate result of this step was alarming. Many prospective students saw it was needless to apply for admission, and of those that did apply a large per cent had to be rejected. The number of literary students fell to 112 in 1889-90; only 29 students finished the year in freshman English, and only 16 had been enrolled during the whole year in freshman Greek. But slowly the situation began to improve; schools arose to do the work demanded by the University and the number of students surpassed even the totals of former years. Gradually, too, it was seen that the University had not merely furthered its own interests, but had been the means of building up a whole system of training schools, thereby directly influencing for good the educational development of Tennessee and setting an example to the whole South. The results of this movement are worthy of special consideration.

Perhaps the University would not have dared to make the experiment it did if it had not felt sure of at least one strong school on which entire reliance could be placed from the very beginning. This was the Webb School, which had then been in operation seventeen years and which had recently been moved from Culleoka to Bell188 Buckle, Tenn. Shortly before Vanderbilt University was founded Mr. W. R. Webb came to Tennessee from North Carolina to engage in school work. Educated at Bingham School and the University of North Carolina, he had become familiar with the best methods of school work and realized the great need of such work in the South at that time. The establishment of a university in close reach of his school gave him an objective point for his labors, and his students were very promptly turned in that direction. So successful was the Culleoka school, from the very beginning, that in a few years Mr. John Webb, a younger brother, was brought in as partner. It would be hard to overstate the value of the work of these two men for Tennessee and the South. For thirty-five years they have labored, and have put their stamp for good on at least 2,500 Southern boys. Their patronage has come from every Southern State and the size of their school has been limited only by the number they were willing to receive. Their old students are scattered over all the world. A year ago when this writer was in Constantinople without an acquaintance, as he supposed, within a thousand miles, he was surprised to receive a call from the resident physician of Robert College, who was an old Webb boy, delighted at the chance of seeing some one he had known while at school. The Webb School has always been considered unique. Its buildings are plain and its furnishings are of the simplest kind. It has no scientific apparatus, for it is strictly a classical school. But it has a good library, the doors of which stand open winter and summer, day and night, and the books are used. Life is keyed to a high tone in the schoolroom, and the boys feel it. Form counts for little—perhaps too little—but substance counts for much. Professional students of pedagogy, visiting the school, go away surprised—and grieved, for they do not find much respect shown their pet theories. The whole school189 is wrapped up in the personality of the two men who have made it. Some of the Tennessee training schools could not have come into being or could not now continue without the support of Vanderbilt University, but the Webb School would have been a success under any circumstances. When the surroundings at Culleoka did not seem to be suited at one time to the success of school work, Messrs. Webb quietly informed the citizens that they would move the school, and they did. The success of the Webb School, as well as the demands of Vanderbilt University, have made it easy for other schools to come into being.

The Mooney School deserves mention next on our list. In 1886 Messrs. S. V. Wall and W. D. Mooney took charge of the school at Culleoka. After three years they removed to Franklin, Tenn., where they built up the well-known Battleground Academy. About eight years ago Mr. Wall removed to Honey Grove, Texas, where he still has a large school. Mr. Mooney continued the work at Franklin. In 1902 his school building was destroyed by fire, and he was induced to move to Murfreesboro, where handsome grounds and buildings had been provided for his use at an expense of about $30,000. The Mooney School has furnished many students to Vanderbilt University and they have frequently carried off the honors of the University for high scholarship. The Wallace University School was opened in Nashville, in 1886. The principal, Mr. C. B. Wallace, impressed himself so strongly on his pupils and patrons that a building was soon erected for his use in order to fix his school at Nashville. The Wallace School has sent more pupils to Vanderbilt University within the past ten years than any other school except Webb’s, and in proportion to its enrollment it is far ahead of any in University attendance. Fourteen of its graduates of June, 1904, entered Vanderbilt a few months later.

But it is necessary that our sketch proceed more rapidly. The popularity190 of the training school idea began to be manifest in many quarters. In McKenzie there had been established an institution known as McTyeire College—a college doing the work for an academy. Later this was transformed into McTyeire Institute, and Joshua H. Harrison, a Vanderbilt graduate, was put in charge. At present this school has for its principal James A. Robins and is growing in strength and influence every year. In 1892 the Louisville Methodist Conference established the Vanderbilt Training School at Elkton, Ky. This action was taken against the efforts of many who wanted a college, and is another proof of the recognition of sound educational values.

Quite a large number of other schools can be enumerated that owe their origin more or less directly to the policy of Vanderbilt University. Among these are the Branham and Hughes School, Spring Hill, Tenn.; the Peoples School, Franklin, Tenn.; the Morgan School, Fayetteville, Tenn.; the Smyrna Fitting School, Smyrna, Tenn.; Pryor Institute, Jasper, Tenn.; Union City Training School, Union City, Tenn.; Dresden Training School, Dresden, Tenn.; McFerrin School, Martin, Tenn.; Howard Institute, Mt. Pleasant, Tenn.; Jonesboro Training School, Jonesboro, Ark.; Fordyce Training School, Fordyce, Ark.; Bridgeport Training School, Bridgeport, Ala.; Luna Training School, Franklin, Ky.; Smith Grove Academy, Smith Grove, Ky.; Weatherford Training School, Weatherford, Texas; Hawkins School, Gallatin, Tenn.; Fitzgerald School, Trenton, Tenn.; Cornersville Training School, Cornersville, Tenn.; Training School, Anniston, Ala.; Bowen School, Nashville, Tenn.; Training School, Thomasville, Ala.; Culleoka Academy, Culleoka, Tenn. Not all of these schools have been equally successful; some of them, perhaps, have ceased to live, but the training school idea is stronger to-day than ever before. In some communities this kind of work finds little support or encouragement. Consequently, no training school can live or succeed there. Honesty and thoroughness are the qualities that have marked Vanderbilt training schools, and some people wish neither of these in educational work. Educational shams and fake universities and colleges still command the admiration and patronage of many.

Special attention should be called to the Branham and Hughes School at Spring Hill, Tenn. Though one of the youngest, this is now the largest and one of the most flourishing of the Tennessee training schools. Recently $15,000 has been spent for improvements of property. The enrollment for the present year is 316, and nine teachers are employed. The Peoples School at Franklin, Tenn., and the Morgan School at Fayetteville, Tenn., are also meeting with great success. Both of these have strong local support, having been provided with splendid new buildings, with dormitories and gymnasium; both have strong men at their head and more than 200 students apiece.

The result of this movement is that Vanderbilt University now receives a majority of its incoming class from the best schools in the South. In the fall of 1903 seventy-five students entered the University from schools more or less directly affiliated with Vanderbilt and imbued with Vanderbilt ideals. In September, 1904, four schools furnished the University fifty students. Within the past ten years ten schools have furnished the freshman class with more than five hundred students—that is, more than fifty every year.

Greater still is the result that has been accomplished for the general cause of education. While the Webb School has furnished the University about one hundred students in ten years, it has in that same time assisted in educating seven or eight hundred. Many of these did not finish their course at school, some finished and attended other universities, more finished and went to work. But on all the influence of those years of earnest, thorough school work will be an incalculable benefit. Similar is the record of all the other schools.

Still another outgrowth of this movement has been that training191 schools, owing no allegiance to any particular university, have sprung up in many points and are contributing largely to the intellectual development of our people. Excellent schools of this character may now be found in Memphis, Chattanooga, Atlanta, Birmingham, Montgomery, Mobile, and many small places.

Stimulated by Vanderbilt’s example, the Association of Colleges and Preparatory Schools of the Southern States has been formed, an organization that is devoting itself to the upbuilding of good preparatory schools, whether public or private, and the enforcement of a respectable standard of admission to college.

Finally, we may ask the question whether this work will be permanent. Will not these schools disappear before the advance of the public high school? Perhaps so, to some extent, but never entirely. The public high schools have made great progress in Mississippi and Texas, stimulated by the demands of the state universities, but elsewhere in the South their progress is still slow. A recent article by Commissioner Harris gave a most cheering account of the growth of public high schools in the South. In that he records one hundred public high schools for Tennessee, with more than 5,000 students. But the records of the Commissioner himself will show that not as many students go to college from all this number as from half a dozen Vanderbilt training schools. In fact, one is forced to doubt the accuracy of many returns. For example, twenty-five of these hundred schools report a four year high school course; but only three years are reported for the high schools at Nashville, Knoxville, Jackson, Murfreesboro, and Columbia. Only Chattanooga and Memphis, of the larger cities, claim to have a four year course. The twenty-three other superior high schools are in many of the most unexpected localities. White’s Store reports a four year course, with one teacher and twenty-five pupils; Piney Flats, a four year course, with one teacher and twenty-one pupils; Dancyville, with one woman teacher and twenty-two pupils; Chuckey City, with one woman teacher and six pupils. From statistics such as these it is dangerous to make hasty generalizations.

Let the public high school come as rapidly as possible. Vanderbilt University will be its friend and fosterer, as it has been in the city of Nashville. But in any event it will ever remain true that a great work for education has been accomplished in its relation to private secondary schools. It was truly said by President H. N. Snyder, of Wofford College, some years ago; “If ever Vanderbilt University has had a mission, and has fulfilled it greatly and even gloriously, it is in the way it has helped to form what we understand as training or fitting schools.”

THE FOREIGN WIFE. — CHAPTER I.

It was the last of January, 1815. The harbor of the city of Charleston was enveloped in a cold gray fog, that rose above the ramparts of the sea wall and advanced its phantom cohorts upon the houses facing the Battery, capturing their outposts one by one, gradually submerging gable-end and piazza, surmounting tiled roof and overtopping chimney, until at nightfall the city, like a second Germe Ishausen, although resting upon the surface of one ocean, was buried in the impalpable profundity of another.

Invisible to the eye, even at the distance of a few yards, the street lamps were mere ineffectual points of light in the dense and watery atmosphere.

The solid wooden shutters of the Battery houses were tightly battened so that they presented an impenetrable front to the fog, which nevertheless insinuated itself beneath threshold and window-sill and made its ghostly presence felt upon the very hearths where fires of pitch-pine and seasoned ash were lighted to dispel the dampness.

At the conjunction of the South and the East Battery, the mansion of Governor Grantham occupied the right angle of the corner, its stone steps encroaching upon the narrow sidewalk. Overhanging them, at the second story, the iron balcony bore upon the middle panel of its rail the entwined “G. G.” of the eldest son of the house of Grantham from time immemorial.

A visitor admitted beyond the front door would have found himself in a dark and somewhat cramped hall, or entry, from the center of which mounted a flight of carefully waxed stairs, leading to an upper hall of dimensions more in keeping with the outward aspect of the building. Turning to the right and guiding one’s steps warily over its icy surface, converted into a mirror by the daily brush of the slave, one would have been ushered into the drawing room, an apartment high of ceiling, scant of furniture, also slippery of floor, extending perhaps fifty feet along the west side of the mansion. On this account it was easily convertible into a ball room.

Although it was half an hour since the conclusion of the last meal of the day, this room was unoccupied—at least at first glance. Then in its extreme end appeared a pleasing tableau in the blazing firelight—a tableau that in the fifty feet of polished perspective might have been mistaken for an oil-painting by a master-hand for mural decoration.

A divan of turquoise-blue damask had been rolled up to the chimney-piece and upon the soft white fur of an immense cloak thrown over one end of it, reclined a woman. Her white draperies were scarcely distinguishable against the fur, in which she sank luxuriously. Closer inspection would have remarked the rise and fall of her bosom but partially concealed—one might say almost entirely revealed—by the transparent material of her bodice; for she was attired a la Grecque, in an Indian muslin embroidered in silver lama, whose diaphanous skirt clung to her lower limbs as the wet sheet clings to the sculptor’s model.

The short puffed sleeves of her Josephine waist left her beautiful arms entirely naked save for the cameo medallion in white and rose-color, set in thin gold, at her wrists. Her figure so openly displayed was of sufficient elegance to excuse the frankness, but beautiful as were its proportions, attentive admiration would have been first bestowed upon her face, oval,193 ivory-tinted, under a superb quantity of pale red hair confined by a classic fillet of gold with a pendant of pearl upon her white forehead. Her elongated eyes, half closed in reverie, were apparently dark grey, with heavy lids whose lashes cast crescented shadows upon her cheeks.

Her full, red lips were slightly open, disclosing the even edges of milkwhite teeth, giving a luxurious, sensuous and somewhat cruel expression to her vivid countenance. Her languid head leaned upon one fair hand, whose long fingers were embedded in the thick mass of hair, the elbow supported by the curved shoulder of the divan. The other hand, dazzling with jewels, held in her lap an ivory-handled fan of flamingo feathers, rose-colored like her cameos and the knot of velvet ribbon at the depression between the soft elevations of her bosom.

Occasionally she surveyed the foot resting upon the blue damasked hassock; it was slim and arched, encased in a heelless white satin slip-shoe which barely covered the toes and was strapped about the ankle and visibly halfway up the leg by narrow white ribbons. The flesh-colored stockings met skin-tight silk under-garments of the same hue, conveying the impression of a body clad in a single dress, according to the fashion of the day for those whose perfection of figure permitted or excused it.

When the contemplation of the foot lost interest, the young woman—for she was hardly more than twenty-three—would draw from its hiding-place behind the rose-colored velvet loveknot a medallion set in brilliants attached to a slender gold chain of exquisite workmanship, whose fine thread fell upon her delicate shoulders from the necklace of spinel rubies which embraced her swan’s throat like linked pomegranate seeds or tiny drops of transparent blood.

An East Indian screen with numerous painted silk panels framed in ebony, stood in fantastic zigzags behind the divan, and the thick, blue-flowered damask curtains of the shuttered casements had been carefully drawn; nevertheless she shivered now and then and pulled up about her arms her yellow scarf of Canton crepe heavy with silk embroidery and fringe.

Wax candelabra in silver-gilt were reflected from the paneled mirrors and in the shining floor of polished rosewood, pervading the apartment with a light at once soft and lustrous.

Just above the mantelpiece, dominating the entire mise en scène, hung an oil painting, a portrait by Copley of the master and mistress of the mansion. The lady in becoming a Grantham could not forget that she had been a Vizard, and therefore closely related to the last of the Royal Governors of the Province.

The two figures were represented seated at a table engaged in a game of chess, the position of the pieces indicating a decided “check” on the part of the lady, whose haughty countenance appeared somewhat flushed with anticipated victory.

The motive of the composition had evidently been at her suggestion, for her husband’s face expressed polite resignation either to superiority of skill or the triumph of accidental good fortune, giving him a position of secondary importance more or less unmerited.

His daughter-in-law half asleep before the fire, glanced up at the two figures for the hundredth time and yawned as one—even a pretty woman—yawns in the freedom of solitude: that is to say, open-mouthed.

The tap, tap of a cane came across the desert of waxed rosewood.

“My dear Nadège, I sympathize most cordially with you,” said a voice at the young woman’s elbow.

Nadège turned her ruddy head languidly and opened her sleepy grey eyes upon the fantastic figure before them.

“Why do you sympathize with me, my dear cousin?” she inquired. Her English was perfect, with, perhaps, a slight foreign precision rather than accent.

The dear cousin sat down upon the divan beside her. She was an ancient dame whose much wrinkled face, surmounted by the mingled purple and yellow dyes of an extraordinary turban,194 was still alive with a pair of malicious, sparkling black eyes. She grasped a tall cane at arm’s length in her skinny left hand, confronted the yawning beauty sharply, pressing a pointed forefinger of her equally skinny right claw upon the middle of the loveknot.

“You were stretching your mouth in the very face of Madam and the Governor. I saw you. It was done openly, without so much as the interposition of fan or finger. How often have I done it myself!” She chuckled at the thought. “You are bitterly regretting that you ever left St. Petersburg to bury yourself alive in this provincial capital of a republican colony. Is it not so, ma chère?”

“Perhaps you are right,” admitted the accused, “but it is only because Geoffrey is away. I declare, you people are so amusing.”

“Amusing? Then why do you yawn at us?”

“Ah! If I were only in Paris! How I hate the English.”

“Sh!... Reflect! Madam Grantham is English” (with an upward glance of deviltry), “the Governor, my cousin, is English, I am English, Geoffrey is English, you are—”

“No, no! I am not. Not in the very least bone of me. That is why I find you so amusing. You cherish English blood, you boast loudly of your English connections, you cultivate English manners—which God knows thrive without much cultivation—! You emblazon your English coats of arms with their bastard French mottoes, on your carriage doors, your silver plate, your slaves—”

“One would think we branded them, to hear you,” interpolated the old lady, with amusement, “but go on—go on. Let us have the full extent of the indictment.”

“And where is Geoffrey now?” continued Geoffrey’s wife; “and where were the Granthams in 1719, in 1749, in 1775? Why, fighting the English for dear life.”

“That is more English than anything else,” retorted her cousin-in-law. “What would you have Geoffrey do? Stay at home?”

“By no means. I encouraged him to go. But then I thought he would take me with him since he was so absolute of victory.”

“Take you with him? On board a privateer?”

“There were other modes of transportation.”

“My dear child! He could not be willing to have you exposed to danger.”

“Ah!—so he said.”

“Surely you do not blame him for that? Why do you not amuse yourself in his absence?”

“With whom, pray?”

“If the gallants of the city could but hear you!”

“Perhaps I would endeavor to find amusement in any other place than this. Truly I am dazed with ennui.”

“I know, I know! I have not lived elsewhere myself for nothing. These ridiculous provincials forget that the Nevsky Prospekt and the Boulevards were ancient ways when King and Queen streets were Indian trails and the Battery a sandbank.”

She gazed into the glowing fire and fell into a retrospection; the path of memory led from the past to the present, so she said after a time:

“I heard something to-day that may interest you.”

“I thought there was scandal in the wag of your turban, and gossip in the tap of your cane.”

“Oh, you did? Well, you are an impudent baggage, madam. This is neither the one nor the other, yet, inasmuch as recounted to an indiscreet ear it might cause both, I think I should not repeat it.”

“I assure you, cousin, you may rely upon my discretion. Since Leonora’s absence there is no one but yourself to talk to.”

“Thank you, madam, for the implication,” retorted the old lady, rising and executing an extraordinary courtesy with her most witchlike expression, then sitting down again: “The Governor, my cousin, is of your mind. Poor man, he confides in me, and I would not betray his confidence. But you are a foreigner—forgive the phrase, as it only means that you will understand without being prejudiced—and I195 run no risk in telling you what he said to me. It was more to ease his mind than to obtain advice; for which I was properly grateful, as I had only sympathy and not counsel in the simples of my pharmacy.”

While she discoursed in this illustrative strain the listener said to herself:

“Lord, will she never come to the point? What a garrulous old parroquet.”

Then aloud:

“Your introduction is perfumed with interest. I am more curious to hear than ever. What has happened, or is going to happen, that excites your sympathy, or would justify advice? (I will let her see that I can turn an English period as glibly as herself!)”

“Well, then, to be brief, Mistress Geoffrey, Captain Grantham is coming home. Hence the arrival, post-haste, of the Governor at a time that affairs of state should have detained him in the capital.”

“Captain Grantham? Who is he?”

“A well-known officer in the French army. A personal friend of Prince Eugène de Beauharnais.”

“Ah, yes; I saw him once in Paris. A very young man at that time. But handsome, gallant and dashing. Altogether the Frenchman.”

“Geoffrey should hear you,” replied the old lady dryly. The other laughed:

“Seeing that Geoffrey is an officer in the American navy I do not think he would have any fault to find with my eulogy of French gallantry. I am rejoiced to hear that this flower of chivalry is coming home. Now that the Bourbons are in power again I suppose he finds his occupation gone.”

But Miss Anne was looking into the fire, the ghost of a smile puckering her bloodless lips disagreeably.

“You might be rejoiced to hear it in Paris or Petersburg, but not in this place; no, not in this place.”

“You are right, I daresay. In Charleston I have discovered that a brother-in-law is a blood relation, not a flimsy connection by marriage. Flirtation with one is therefore robbed of all its venom—of all its fascination, also. Still, as I remember Captain Grantham—”

“This is not the one you remember.”

“You said Geoffrey’s brother?”

“Sans doute! But Reginald’s brother also.”

“Reginald’s brother? You speak in riddles; you have just said it was Reginald’s self. Is he not Captain Grantham?”

“No; I should have said his alter ego. Reginald is now Colonel of artillery.”

“Another Grantham!”

“Truly; and about the same age.”

“Oh, a twin.”

“By no means. You saw one brother in Paris, but I do not think you saw the other. Yet, very likely you did; they are, I am told, wonderfully alike. They were at the Ecole Militaire together. The relationship is unmistakable except to those who will not see.”

The old gossip laughed aloud, enjoying the other’s mystification.

“What singularity!” exclaimed Nadège. “Pray go on. I am no longer bored. I can even regard this portrait without a yawn. Who is this Captain Grantham? And why should I not know him here or see him in Paris? You tell me he is famous and the companion of princes.”

“He has a name of his own. It is descriptive and picturesque, besides being symbolic.”

“Ah? Pray pronounce it.”

“Brugnon.”

“What then? Where is the symbolism?”

“Well, then, this Monsieur Brugnon is like his brothers Reginald, Garrick, and Geoffrey in all respects save one; unfortunately, the most important one of all.”

“What is it? Why have I been kept in ignorance of this, since it is evidently a family affair? What is this difference of such vital importance?”

“His color.”

Mistress Geoffrey sank back into her furry nest, her expression of lively curiosity and irritation instantly effaced by one of bland indifference.

“I see. Why does he not remain in Europe? He is a fool to come here.”

“So he is,—but he does not know it. He wrote to his father, the Governor,196 your father-in-law and my cousin, to say that since the abdication of the Emperor and the enforced residence of Prince Eugène in Vienna, he revolts from the service of a lackey at court after the activity of the battlefield, and now desires to see his own people once more and his home—the home of his childhood, the plantation, the other Court hardly less celebrated than—”

“Yes, yes, I know,” exclaimed Nadège hastily, “named for the English estate of the Granthams near Twickenham, Middlesex, which contains ‘fourteen hundred acres of land, and gardens, fishponds, hedges, terraces and fountains unsurpassed by anything in the South.’ My memory, you see, is excellent.”

“You have been reading the family annals of late?”

“Oh, no; it was not necessary! Tell me, cousin, is this petite histoire generally known?”

“Yes: the Governor was much censured for sending the boy to France, and his rapid promotion has been a sore on the foot of those who will tread him in the very mire when he comes to see his own people, poor devil.”

“Why does the Governor permit his return?”

“He cannot help it. Brugnon wrote that he would take ship at once.”

“Who is his mother?” was the next question.

“Ah, who knows?” And Miss Ann peaked up her sharp shoulders under their gay flowered silk covering and wagged her oriental headgear until the filigree silver ornaments in the lobes of her large ears jingled audibly.

“I think I could guess,” she added, with a wizened smile at her companion, “but what difference? Society here, my dear Nadège, as you have already discovered, is in the hands of the men. We women are the vases on the mantelpiece.” She grinned in Mistress Geoffrey’s face: “Some of us are particularly decorative. Mistress Grantham, for example.”

The younger woman eyed meditatively the sharp yellow face under the resplendent turban.

“One has a good view from the mantelpiece,” she began, when a young man entered the room and advanced to the fireplace.

WHEN NELLIE SMILES.

SERIOUS PROBLEMS OF SCIENCE TO-DAY

Dr. Charles Baskerville, whom we present this month to our readers, belongs to the younger generation of Southern men who are giving evidence of their capacity for leadership in fields other than political and forensic. Born in Mississippi in 1870, he is now, at the age of thirty-five, head of the Department of Chemistry in the College of the City of New York. After his graduation at the University of Virginia, he spent some time studying in Germany, and was called upon his return to the University of North Carolina, where he occupied the chair of chemistry. He is the author of a text-book on chemistry, and has written numerous articles on scientific, educational and technological subjects. He has distinguished himself in the field of original research and experiment, and belongs of right to the select band of scientific men who in these latter days, are so eagerly bringing to the light the laws that govern phenomena in the wonderful world of Nature.

The world to the human interpreter appears as a paradox of complexes. Scientific progress, during late years, has not been along the lines of the least resistance. One who has to do with the problems of nature is fascinated by the difficulties. Lord Rayleigh attached this motto to his recently issued, but already famous, “Collected Papers:”

To be sure, the gratification of overcoming obstacles is often the only compensation.

Science has a wide range in the size and nature of the things with which it deals. With the microscope, it enlarges for vision the unseen world of bacterial life; with the telescope it draws the celestial bodies near and interrogates them with the spectroscope; it drags the lifeless element from the inanimate world, curiously plays with it and then puts it to man’s use, while seeking his origin and forcing him ever to show cause for his existence and right to question.

Much of the very recent work in physical science has distinct leanings towards metaphysics. It is scarcely to be wondered at, when the experimental198 data obtained appear to question tenets which devotees have become accustomed to regard as immutable. Facts are stubborn, however. When they cause the giving away of the least portion of the boundaries of our cherished systems, the imagination is unchained. The discovery and development of our knowledge of the wonderful phenomena of radio-activity, about which much that is true and more that is false have appeared in reputable journals of a not remote date, ensample the groping of our restlessness. These marvels, according to those who have worked with them most and whose opinions deserve the first consideration, spontaneously and continuously give out energy appreciable to the senses.

Where does this energy come from? Where does it go? One mudsill of science is the law of the conservation of energy. This division of science has a host of investigators busy with the problem of sustaining this fundamental. The harvest, which is not all grain but contains some tares, indicates that substances, which we have been pleased to regard as elemental constituents of nature, undergo voluntary alterations. Some appear to be breaking down into simpler matter, while others are building up. This virtually carries us back to the days of the alchemist.

It is a long story, which may not be related here, the deep-seated belief of most chemists in the unity, hence transmutation, of the elements. It is a far cry to its accomplishment, however. We need not go back to the time of the black-art for other examples of efforts to transform one element into another. Victor Meyer sought to build up thallium shortly after Crookes found it. Winkler dissipated Fittica’s transformation of phosphorus to arsenic. So chemists will be busy asking questions of Ramsay’s formation of a body like lead, through the agency of penetrating rays of radium.

Another foundation stone of science is the law of the conservation of matter. J. J. Thompson, from experimental work, explains certain observations by the existence of substances called electrons, a thousand times smaller than hydrogen, which we have regarded the lightest chemical element. The electrons appear to carry an electric charge. One farther step is then taken by the Cambridge professor, who says these corpuscles are electricity. They are attenuated matter. Electricity is a form of energy. We need no law for the conservation of the matter. Ostwald has taught that when one struck his shin on a chair in the dark, it was not the solid wood, but the force involved which produced the sensation. One would not have been conscious of the existence of the obstacle, but for the energy. Matter is energy.

Here one is on the boundary lines of experimental science and dealing with a metaphysical problem. It must not be forgotten, however, that two hundred years ago any suggestion of the Röntgen rays could well have been placed in a similar category.

Whether the explanations be accepted or not, it may be noted that Lodge has already illustrated, by beautiful lecture experiments, the possibility of a practical utilization of the facts of some of the observations. Fog is easily dissipated through the agency of electricity. The application of the principle on a gigantic scale, to a city like London, may yet be realized.

There are in the world, as is well known, numerous organisms belonging to the vegetable kingdom that do not resemble at all any of those things we are accustomed to look upon as plants. These bacteria are extremely small. They are from .00002 to .00004 inch in diameter. They are studied, not by ordinary vision, but by means of microscopes and by microscopes of only the very best kinds. They are, also, studied by their effects. They propagate very rapidly. Starting with one organism they may grow, within twenty-four hours, to 281,470,000,000 individuals. This rapidity of growth does not actually take place in nature; it is checked through natural conditions, or through excretions of the organism inhibiting such propagation.

We hear a great deal as to the production199 of virulent diseases through the agency of bacteria; but, while there are evil bacteria, there are, also, bacteria that are good. In short, we may understand, that all good bacteria are not dead bacteria. These bacteria exist in very large numbers in the soil. The upper portion of rich garden soil may contain, on an average, from one to five millions per cubic centimetre. This number may be very much greater, depending upon the amount of decomposed matter that is present and the favorable conditions for their propagation.

We are accustomed to think of bacteria as living only on the richest food and being the cause solely of putrefaction. This is not true. There are bacteria that live on the bare rocks and get their sustenance from those rocks and the surrounding air. Under these conditions they actually store up food material. They are really miracle workers. They render the soil fertile and the farmer is largely dependent upon them for the growth of his crops. They reduce mineral substance to the powdered form, assist in storing up organic matter for the soil and thus render it suitable for the growth of higher plants.

Under the influence of sunlight the green portions of plants, by absorbing carbon dioxide from the air and water from the soil, produce starch, which is one of the important foods for animals. This is not the work of bacteria, yet some of these organisms are capable of accomplishing similar work in the dark. It has been suggested that they derive their energy directly from the oxidizing processes that they set up. This is one of the problems of the soil bacteriologist.

Many micro-organisms act upon nitrogenous matters and destroy them, in that the substances are rendered less available for higher plants. These are denitrifying agents. There is another class of these micro-organisms, however, that takes nitrogenous food, which is only a little or not at all utilized by higher vegetables, and makes it available plant food. These micro-organisms thus contribute to the fertility of the soil. They oxidize ammonium compounds, from whatever sources they may be had, and form nitrites first and then nitrates. The nitrates are used by common plants. The nitrifying bacteria are composed of two groups of active agents: one group serves to make the first change, namely from ammonium compounds to nitrites; and the other, to change the nitrites to nitrates. The conditions most favorable for their activity are just the opposite for most other micro-organisms. In a soil having much organic matter already decomposed, these bacteria may be practically inactive until the decomposition has passed certain stages. During this transition, the soil is barely suited for crops. Nitrification requires the oxygen of the air; denitrification can go on in a compact soil with the least portion of the atmosphere. So really the soil is cultivated largely to favor the growth and propagation of the nitrifying bacteria. The result of experimentation has shown that this may be facilitated in some cases by denitrification first, and in other cases by stirring the soil for the penetration of the air, and again by applying lime to the soil to overcome the acidity. Professor Burrill recently said, “Some day farmers will come to understand that specialists working in the laboratory, and for years gazing through microscopes, are gaining knowledge for them.”

While many bacteria do not necessarily render food available for plants, they are most valuable in putting useless matters out of the way. One of the absolutely essential chemical elements for the growth of plants is nitrogen. It is most expensive. It is present in the greatest unavailable abundance, constituting three-fourths by weight of our entire atmosphere, and it is, also, the one element most likely to be deficient in the soil. It constitutes an essential constituent of albumenoid material. Under the influence of the denitrifying bacteria, it is converted into ammonium compounds, which are converted then through the nitrifying agents into nitrates. The nitrates are extremely soluble in water; consequently, there is200 no tendency towards the accumulation of the valuable food matter in the soil, as the same is leached out. The growing green plant is surrounded by the food that it wants but, as with the Ancient Mariner, there is not a drop to drink. Green vegetation cannot, or only to a limited extent can, absorb and utilize directly the free nitrogen of the air.

As a result of a long series of experiments, it has been learned that there grow excrescences, somewhat similar to galls, on the roots of certain plants. These natural structures have a character peculiar to the species of plants on which they occur. In a manner not understood, these tubercles, inhabited by bacteria, are capable of securing sufficient nitrogen from the air for their own growth, when the soil is practically able to furnish none. Other plants, next door, without these nodules, will die of starvation.

The number of bacteria in these nodules is very great but, although countless, they are insignificant compared with those in the soil outside. Those within the nodules, however, are specifically different from those without, perform different functions, and appear to be characteristic of the particular plant in which they exist. The leguminous plants, as peas, beans, clover, have these peculiar nodules. Other plants, however, like maize, cotton, wheat, are devoid of these assistants.

It has been known for a long time that the fertility of the soil could be augmented by rotating the crops and thus adding nitrogen to the soil by means of these leguminous plants. One of the problems engaging the attention of scientific agriculturists at present is to learn whether or not these leguminous organisms may be made to form tubercles on other plants, as for example corn or wheat. The importance of the successful issue of such experimentation requires no emphasis. While successful results have not yet been reported, something has been learned: namely, the fruit of corn may be very much modified in its chemical composition by breeding. Grain very much richer in nitrogenous matter has been grown by changes in the breeding. Such grain is a better food.

This is indeed a day of almost excessive specialization in science: Great things have been accomplished by the intense method. Some have thought, and spoken their thoughts, that such tended to carry men of science away from the contemplation of a unit or the system as a whole. Not a few have argued, perhaps with reason, that the great generalizations, as for example Darwin’s theory of evolution, were no longer to be hoped for. It is impossible for any single brain to follow the details of the varied branches of science. It is rare that one man pretends to know the detail of that division of science to which he gives attention. It is equally true, however, that many systematic minds are gathering, collating and publishing in readable form accurate summaries of details in the several branches. Men of broader vision are gathering these authentic digests and offering concepts, which encompass the phenomena of the Universe.

Such have been hinted at as the efforts of some to do away with what we have been pleased to term axiomatic truths. Whether this be desirable, is really of no moment. The facts point to the present movement of efforts to simplify matters. The most beautiful things after all are the simplest. This idea, of course, should not convey the impression of being boldly plain.

“THE MESSAGE OF THE VIOLET.”

Down the long corridor swept the theater-goers, men in the sober black and white of evening clothes, women in the brightest of theater gowns. Debutantes paused to chat with college men as they found their way to boxes and orchestra chairs; bachelors stopped to talk of the affairs of the day before taking their places in the front rows. The old playhouse was fast filling, for it was “The Princess of Tyrolia” that night.

With the first notes of the orchestra a young man hurried down the aisle and dropped into a seat far back in the shadow of the balcony. His eyes swept hastily over the audience and then became fixed on a box near the stage.

“I knew she would be here,” he murmured softly; “she could never keep away from this music.”

It was a pretty picture he found to gaze upon and it was little wonder that he looked but seldom at the stage. More attractive even than the rows of gorgeously dressed girls in the chorus was that box near the stage. Seated toward the front was a young girl, just rounding into the beauty of the woman—while retaining all the freshness of girlhood. Behind her laughed and chatted a few companions of her own age, but she kept her eyes fixed upon the stage and seemed to fairly revel in the beauty of the ringing chorus. To her the music seemed everything, and the great bunch of violets in her hand was beating unconscious time to the march.

Far back in the shadow the boy, for he was little more, leaned forward and watched the rapidly changing expression on her face. He followed the action of the play only through the varying moods which found a reflection in her eyes. Many times had he watched her thus, haunting the theaters only to sit unobserved and gaze longingly at her every moment that he could, then slipping quietly away before the curtain dropped to avoid meeting her in the throng. Never once, in all the long months, had their eyes met, and if she had been conscious of his presence she had given no sign.

“It has been a long time,” he muttered, moving restlessly in his seat. “What a fool a man can be when there is a woman in the case.”

He had met her only the summer before, a summer filled with little excursions to nearby resorts where city folk threw off the burden of formality in the jolly little dances and moonlight strolls. How it all came back to him now—the open pavilion with the negro musicians, the rapturous waltzes and the swinging two-steps and the long talk on the broad veranda afterward, talk of nothing of great importance but which now seemed to him to be worth years away from her.

Then had followed the autumn and the return to the city. The long evenings at her home, where the soft glow of the candles behind a crimson shade had lent a new beauty to her clearly moulded features. She had loved the soft light of the candles as she had loved the moonlight. It had seemed that everything about her had breathed of softness and quiet. Changing moods she had shown—he had often called her his “Maid of infinite variety,” but each new mood had given her a new attraction in his eyes; every new phase of her character had brought her closer to him.

It all passed in rapid review before him. Now he sat in the old lawn swing beside her, now he turned her music as she sang the old songs they202 both loved. He remembered the good-byes at the gate and the long walk to the city afterward. There had never been cigars with so sweet a flavor as those which kept him company on the long way home. Just the moonlight and the blue smoke and thoughts of her.

But it had ended at last. Only a misunderstanding which caused a growing coldness and then a sudden interruption of his dream. He had been too proud to ask but once for an explanation—she was as proud as he. It had been months since the two had met—months when the city seemed to be as lonely as only a great city can.

“It’s hard,” he muttered, and though his lips kept their stern, almost defiant expression, his eyes had a half appealing look as they rested upon the girl in the box.

As the music broke into a new strain the girl leaned suddenly forward in her chair and her face showed a new interest. Then her eyes dropped and she seemed to be in a deep study. It was “The Message of the Violet” now, and as the lovers on the stage began the song the audience was hushed into silence. Over the footlights came the strains, mellow, vibrant, charging the very air with the smell of violets and of spring. The girl saw instead of the picture on the stage a vision of a summer night, a quiet corner on the old veranda. The music floated toward them while the dancers swept over the floor and he was repeating to her the story of his love. She had listened half in joy, half in fright, and tears had mingled with smiles before a bevy of laughing girls had called them back to the dance.

The song ended and a great burst of applause awoke the girl from her reverie. Her eyes turned instinctively toward the audience and far back in the shadow she saw him, his eyes half covered with his hand. Over her swept a new feeling, a sudden resolve. She fingered the violets on her lap as the song rose once more into the chorus:

The young man felt a tap on his shoulder. A boyish usher was dropping a tiny bunch of violets into his hand.

“From the young lady in the third box,” he said.

WHOSE TEMPLE YE ARE.

Lyrical and Satirical — WHAT’S THE USE? — AN INTERESTING PLOT. — HARD LUCK. — WHY NOT BE SENSIBLE? — THE NORTHERN VIEWPOINT.

203

CONDUCTED BY VERMOUTH.

The rumored threat of President Castro of Venezuela to overrun and lay waste this fair land of ours is not creating the popular interest that such a dread announcement might be supposed to arouse. Possibly public sentiment is not entirely convinced that His Presidency would act the bully merely because it is in his power to do so. So far only a single element has exhibited jingo propensities, but there is no telling how far it may go to embroil the nation in a sanguinary entanglement that could have but one possible termination. The lone disturbing element in question consists of a party of intrepid soldiers-of-fortune fictionists, comic opera librettists, pure humorists and promotors of high-class vaudeville who are keen to feel the possibilities of so much rich material being imported to their very doors. Richard Harding Davis is reported to be mobilizing a bunch of bold buccaneers, ably assisted by Mr. Dooley, George Ade, Dinkelspiel, O. Henry and other intrepid spirits, to meet the incoming hosts and apply for syndicate privileges. That the situation demands finesse and diplomacy, however, is obvious, for all would be lost should some irreverent band of roving cowboys round up and rope the outfit before they could get at it, or should some thoughtless and lacking-in-humor police squad run amuck and confine the layout in some local bastile. The amusement loving public might be expected to at least stand between this patriotic movement and such a dread contingency.

The following may be reasonably conceived as the final preparation for the impending invasion: President Castro: “Are the choruses well drilled and are the comedians and soubrettes in good voice?” Leader of the Orchestra: “Si, Senor.” President Cas.: “Are the costumes new and up-to-date,204 and is scenery in good order and packed for shipment?” Master of Properties: “Si, Senor.” President Cas.: “Has the vanguard of press agents and bill posters taken the field?” Booking Agent: “A most formidable array, your Augustness.” President Cas.: “Then on the road! And may your performances prove so meritorious that you will carry everything before you till you reach the great Metropolis itself. This feat your proud people expect you to accomplish in time for the fall openings.” After which labored and patriotic outburst the president lit a cigarette and called for a demi-tasse with which to restore his depleted energies.

It was his sixtieth birthday and in times agone he had fondly anticipated the arrival of that occasion as marking a happy fruition of his talents and a mature mellowing of his energies. Instead, however, he found himself summoned to appear before the public executioner with the family Bible and prove its records false or be humanely extinguished in the interest of modern enlightenment. “This is too hard,” he murmured, “but it would be infamous as well as futile to question the authority of the Good Book, and besides I am too young to die. Though I appreciate theoretically the demands of civilization, as a practical proposition the idea has its limitations.”

It was with difficulty that he was enabled to restrain a tear when he thought of the young wife whom he had taken unto himself just prior to the enactment of the regulation for the removal of the innocuously obsolete, and whom he now felt that he had procured under false pretences. His pessimistic misgivings were accentuated by a picture of her after he had gone to his reward striving for sustenance wherewith to nurture the innocent infant cooing at her breast. But every remedy was exhausted. The President had declined to interpose with as much as a temporary respite, regretting his painful obligation but tactfully reminding him of the majesty of the law, the interests of society and the demands of the strenuous life. In due season he was led face to face with the public chloroformer, who humanely inquired of him if he had aught to observe by way of valedictory. Not anticipating such courteous consideration, he was temporarily abashed, but recovering his dormant speech, feebly but feelingly observed: “Only a single request. When I shall have yielded up and taken flight to that somber realm whence no traveler has as yet returned, spare my modest memory from the obituary paragrapher, who would chronicle the lamented departure from our midst of another consistent church member and well beloved citizen.” Saying which he inhaled deeply and peacefully passed into the big slumber while his fair young wife adopted the proud profession of a laundress and his innocent babe was carefully safe-guarded in a local institution for the homeless progeny of those who had they been permitted to ramble at large would have been “only in the way.”

It is not to be presumed that in the present age of popular enlightenment people do not know better than to trifle with germs. It is, therefore, alarming to note that with light they will continue to practically commit suicide by a failure to observe the most ordinary rules of hygiene. In the mad pursuit of pelf and position little heed is being given to the omnipresence of bacilli, bacteria and other mischievous, pernicious and fatal agencies. Why will people supinely continue to court death in street cars, theaters, churches and at crowded entertainments, where the most casual movement sets into motion myriads of germs that are inhaled, eaten and absorbed by those present? And why will they disregard common caution by eating food in hotels, cafés, restaurants, Pullman cars and at home, when all food is known to be gorged with murderous molecules of one sort or another? And why perpetuate the dangerous habit of washing when both205 soap and water are teeming with baleful bacteria? There are still a few who continue to take water into their system in full realization that it contains something more than a million germs per drop. And is there no way of impressing the public with the fatal consequence of sleeping in beds and sitting in chairs, and of riding and walking through streets surrounded by air which is composed largely of corrosive sublimate—a deadly poison? And as for kissing? Only Igorrote, Hottentots and Russians can be forgiven for not knowing better. So deathly does modern research recognize this primitive and all but obsolete practice to be, that it is being seriously considered of adoption as a pleasing and more humane substitute for chloroform as an antique exterminator. Why not conform to the simple necessities and observe the rational precaution of doing nothing without first being sterilized and aerated? And let those determined to drink remember to recognize as sanitary only those fluids commonly known to be strongly germicidal. It would seem that the present generation will never reach a true realization of its peril until it has already become extinct.

EDITORIAL — FRENZIED POLITICS. — A TALE OF A LECTURE TOUR. — FOOLISH DREAMERS.

206

There are thousands of men in politics who are the very salt of the earth. Indeed, the majority are honest and true. But it is rapidly becoming fashionable for clans of bold, political schemers to put their heads together and capture the floating vote and thus defeat the will of the people; and to such these lines are dedicated.

Modern machine politics is the most subtle and exquisite art that ever crushed a hope or shattered a dream. It is the beautiful art of chloroforming public confidence and stealing the reins of power from the hands of the sleeping sovereigns. It is the mysterious art of political hoodoo, which works shady miracles in every theater of government, from the county courthouse to the national capitol.

The jugglers of this art slip into conventions, caucuses and legislative halls, and whisper a magic word, and lo! in the twinkling of an eye, majorities are changed to minorities, and minorities to majorities; oft expressed opinions and deep rooted convictions upon vital principles and policies of government are reversed in an hour, and the enchanted floating solons, forgetting old hickory shirt and copperas breeches at home, forgetting the men with cheeks of tan who walk in the furrow, forgetting the sturdy toilers at the anvil, the workbench and the drill, losing sight of the confiding multitudes who but yesterday twined the laurel wreath of honor about their brows,—fall down upon their faces before the golden Combine, in that sacred temple of free government which is dedicated to righteousness and the liberty of the people, crying with a loud voice both night and day, “Great is Diana of the Ephesians!” That whispered word, so full of the music and the dream, is “Pie.” O, wondrous word of marvelous power! O, sweet and juicy symbol of perfect happiness. O, ravishing synonym of golden eagles and the goddess of liberty! In it are reflected the bewildering glories of a thousand heavens of pure delight; golden slippers and laurel wreaths to burn; heaving seas of “sour mash” whose amber surfs forever break on fragrant shores of mint; sweet journeys on Pullman palaces of rosewood and mahogany to the land of the orange and the palm. In it are the stolen fires of the stars, flashing in diamond shirt studs, and the crimson glow of sunset skies imprisoned in rubies set in gold on lily white hands that will toil again never more. In it are visions of mansions in spreading groves where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest. Is it any wonder, then, that opinions so suddenly change and promises and pledges so swiftly dissolve into a puff of wind and leave not a rack behind? Is it any wonder that Samson is shorn of his locks while yet he slumbers, and only wakes to find his window up, his strength and piety gone and his breeches pockets turned wrongside out? Is it any wonder that when, at last, the Rip Van Winkle of Public Confidence rises up from his trance he finds only the skeleton of Fidelity at his feet and the gunstock of safety rotted away from the rusted barrel of sovereignty by his side? And is it any wonder that he exclaims, in the language of old Rip of the Adirondacks, “Am I so207 soon forgot?” Is it any wonder that the bewildered Commonwealth, like poor old Rip, so often looks around, and failing to recognize the little pile of bones near by, asks with tearful eyes, “Vare iss mine leetle dog Schneider?”

Scheming lobbyists of mighty combines juggle together and whisper into the listening ears of shrewd politicians, “You’ve got the power and we’ve got the pie. We are willing to swap pie for power. What we want is legislation or no legislation, as our interests may require. What you want is office.” Then the politicians juggle and honey fuggle the floating vote, and there is a mighty shuffling of political cards and soon they all join hands behind closed doors and the soft whisper passes round the ring, “We are one and inseparable for power and for pie; we are the flowers that bloom in the spring, tra, la! Let the word be mum.” Then follows the secret banquet of bargain and intrigue under the very dome of liberty. It is quite exclusive, even more so than a banquet of the four hundred in the great metropolis. Old Copperas Breeches is not invited nor Brother Hickory Shirt, nor Dr. Honesty, nor ’Squire Patriotism, nor any of the old folks at home. There is no room around the festive board for Professor Pedagogue, of Purity High School, nor Deacon Righteousness, of Churchville. The public welfare is lost in the shuffle. After a short blessing is whispered by the Rev. Judasio Iscarriotis, the sumptuous feast begins, the menu consisting alone of pie: senatorial pie, sweetened with ring syrup; gubernatorial mince pie, flavored with moonshine; speakership pie, highly seasoned with the sunshine of spicy promises of favors to come; clerkship pie, dripping with the honey of fat and succulent salaries; and on down, to a little half moon dried apple pie of a free pass to oblivion.

Then the band begins to play, and the elephant moves around, bearing on his spacious back the anointed high priests of Pie and Power, followed by a great procession of worshipers, and heralded by a flourish of trumpets in the hands of the jugglers, who alternately blow and shout, crying out, as with one voice, “Great is Diana of the Ephesians, who hath the world by the tail and a down-hill pull! Clear the way for the most high priest of power! Clear the way for the priestly priest of Pie! Hail, all hail!!”

Thus the dismal tale of history runs; hopes of free government are crushed; dreams of liberty are shattered; blind Samson nurses his wrath until his shorn locks grow out again; and then, with giant strength and insane rage, he lays hold of the pillars of the temple,

This is the shady side of politics. But the burnished crest of the darkest cloud reflects in golden arcs the splendors of the sun, and the angels of hope hang a rainbow on its bosom. All power is inherent in the people, and there are patriotism and courage enough in their bosoms to weather the storms that rise dark o’er the way, if they do not get lost in the Adirondacks of Prosperity and drink from the jug of indifference and sleep too long on their rights.

Combined capital is digging its own grave when it becomes the Diana of modern machine politics. And combined Labor is driving the nails in its own coffin when the spirit of anarchy directs its blows for the redress of its grievances. Until recently the South has maintained its integrity and its immunity from the hoodoo art of machine politics; but the methods of destruction208 have found their way into Southern capitols, and, unless Samson wakes, he will soon find himself utterly powerless to use his favorite jaw-bone, or any other kind of a weapon, on the Philistine combines who are plotting against him in the temple.

God speed the day when Capital and Labor shall combine under the banner of arbitration and of peace, and when the battle cry of the Republic shall be, “Equal and exact justice to all, with special favors to one.”

I entered the car, threw my grip between two seats and sat down by a drummer. He looked at my valise and then at me and dryly asked, “Are you a traveling man?” “Yes,” was my reply. “What is your line?” asked he. “Sweetened wind,” quoth I. A smile lighted his face as he quickly asked, “Preacher or lecturer?” And then there was a laugh and a lull.

After an all day’s travel which wore me into a frazzle, I reached my destination at 8.30 p.m. It was a cold, drizzling evening. The skies were leaking spray, and in the language of Mrs. Partington, the street was a perfect “lullaby” of soft and sticky mud. The little freckle-faced dreamer who had bought me for a hundred and fifty caught me by the arm with one hand as I stepped off the cars and seized my grip with the other and literally pushed me head foremost into a Jim Crow hack drawn by one old spavined horse,

until we reached the hall where I was to lecture. I found a little cold and shivering crowd seated there, waiting to be warmed by my eloquence, and without a chance to make my toilet and don my little “swallow tail,” I was ushered on the stage and introduced as the greatest orator, philosopher, poet, musician, statesman, scientist, actor and artist that ever came down the pike, whereupon I began to shake my jaw and pour out my metaphors; but somehow or other my eagle wouldn’t soar that night. He flopped his cold and flabby wings and rose and fell for an hour and a quarter. The audience departed like mourners from a funeral; but one good old lady lingered in the hall till I came off the stage and in her pity she sidled up to me and whispered, “I liked your little talk right well.” I found the freckled-face dreamer waiting at the door, and, cold as it was, the sweat was rolling down his cheeks. His face was the picture of despair when he handed me a hundred dollar bill and ten fives. I knew that his castle in the air had fallen. “How did you come out?” I asked. “Well, Governor,” he said, with a tremulous voice, “I’m out just eighteen dollars.” I took the roll he had given me out of my pocket and skinned off four bills in the light of the lamp dimly burning and said, “There are twenty dollars, my boy, and my blessing upon you.” He almost shouted and pressed my hand continuously as we walked through the mud to the little hotel on the starvation plan. Then there were a brief sleep and an easy conscience. I crossed the Father of Waters in triumph next morning and tarried in Memphis till the next train out. I went to the bank to buy New York exchange, took out my roll and lo! I had given old freckle-face the one hundred dollar bill and three fives. Then again there was a laugh and a lull—he laughed and I lulled. I pocketed my laugh and my loss and climbed into the pouch of a Southern Kangaroo on wheels and with a single hop I cleared the state of Mississippi and lit in Alabama. I climbed out and got into the ’bus in a beautiful little town among the blushing hills. Before I had washed the dust of travel from my brow, a spider-legged dude, with ambrosial locks curled and parted in the middle, came strutting like a clean-shaven and musk-scented dream into the dingy and time-honored little room where my valise and I were safely deposited, and with Chesterfieldian bow and a fluted voice announced that he had been designated by the ladies to introduce me that night to the audience. He shook his curls and said, “Governor, I have209 never delivered a speech in my life, but I have been at work on this one for about two weeks; and pardon me for saying that I think she’s a daisy.”

“Well, my friend,” I said, “I am fond of daisies.” With another shake of his locks he said, “The society people are all coming out to-night to hear me introduce you.” I shook my scanty locks and said, “I am glad there is something bringing them out.”

The clock struck 8. An elegant carriage stopped at the hotel door where I was waiting, and the sweet-scented dream in full evening dress, emerged, and gently took me by the arm and ushered me into it. We went whirling to the stage entrance of the theater, but as we walked up the stairs I observed that he tottered like a man ascending the gallows and his lips were colorless and quivering. We took our seats side by side behind the curtain. I motioned to the curtain man that all was ready, and with a whiz and a bang the curtain went up, and, sure enough, there in front of us, in the brilliantly lighted auditorium, was a breathing bouquet of youth and beauty and old age which greeted us with a storm of applause—the society folks had indeed come out to hear him introduce me. I nudged my friend and said, “Shoot.” He never budged. I nudged him again and said, “Go ahead!” He never budged. I looked around and his face was as white as a sheet and great drops of perspiration like beads of pearl were standing on his pallid brow. I said again, “Go ahead!” and in his agony he mumbled with muffled voice, “Governor, she’s gone.” There was a lull and a laugh, and in about two seconds he was gone. Before I had delivered half my sweetened goods I observed a number of yawns and stolen glances at watches and increasing signs that my crowd wanted to go. There is no anguish like that which a lecturer feels when his listless audience turns to frost and nips all his flowers of speech. The saddest spectacle in all the tide of time is a frost-bitten orator. He gathers up his little withered tropes and similes and vanishes, and all that saves him from suicide is the dream that he will blossom again in a more congenial garden. I collected my tribute money in the Alabama town and mounted a grasshopper train and went hopping and stridulating from rail to rail until I found a patch of clover in a rich and aristocratic Georgia town where I lounged and exchanged anecdotes with traveling men and with the natives until the lights were turned on and I stood all robed in my “swallow tail,” in the midst of as delightful an audience as ever listened to a sap-sucker speech or laughed at the unwinding of my little ball of yarns. A tall and handsome Georgia lawyer rose to introduce me and thus he spake:

“Ladies and Gentlemen: I have traveled a great deal in my life and on one of my journeys I took in the mountains of East Tennessee. I paused in that peculiar country to study the customs of that peculiar people. They make maple sugar in East Tennessee. They have great sugar orchards there, and one of the customs of the people is to tap the sugar trees in the spring when the sap begins to rise and they give the children in the family a tin cup and turn them out into the sugar orchard and never see them any more for six weeks. I have the pleasure to introduce to you to-night a sap-sucker from East Tennessee!”

I settled with the secretary of the treasury and mounted a March hare train and sped away through many a cotton patch, from town to town, out of Georgia into the Old North State, and, flanking Charlotte, squatted at the State University at Chapel Hill, that classic spot of earth so rich with memories of the glorious past and still teeming with joyous student life, like those who have gone before, dreaming of the glorious future. There I met Dr. Battle, that grand old man who has fought a thousand battles for enlightenment and human happiness. There I met Alphonso Smith, one of the South’s foremost young men in the210 field of educational endeavor and whose soul is in tune with Southern progress and Southern development.

There, too, I met Eben Alexander, a brilliant star from the sky of Tennessee, shedding the soft light of Grecian literature upon the youthful brain of Carolina. I met a score of other stars in the faculty of this great University. I stood on the platform of its splendid auditorium and tossed bouquets at as refined and cultured an audience as ever sipped sap from a sugar tree. And when I packed my grip and started Southward I could not repress the sweet old song:

Finally, I landed in Charleston, South Carolina, where I played Beauregard, but instead of firing bomb shells at Ft. Sumter, I fired soap bubbles at the heads and hearts of a magnificent audience of representative Charlestonians; and whether I pleased them or not, they were so generous and hospitable as to flatter me with occasional bombs of laughter and a few volleys of applause.

I swung back through Alabama to my home in Nashville, on hearing the news that the political sap was rising; but, alas! only to find that the Tennessee sugar tree was already tapped, you see, and that the senatorial sugar-trough was full of sap-suckers holding a snap caucus, and there was a lull and a laugh—I lulled and they laughed. When I awoke from my lull I kissed my wife and children good-bye, and broke for Texas, the queenly young sister of Tennessee, who took me in her arms, and brushing away my political tears, pressed me to her loving heart.

There is no state in the Union that gives a Tennesseean a warmer welcome than Texas, because her lap is full of Tennesseeans, and, moreover, she is naturally hospitable and kind. There is a place on her fat knee for every troubled soul, a kiss of sunshine on her lips and a lump of sugar in her hand for every weeping wanderer.

O, glorious empire state of the sun-kissed South, with thy hundred and seventy-five thousand square miles of as rich a country as was ever tickled by the plow or the pick, and as ever laughed a harvest of cotton and grain for the comfort and happiness of man! With thy cattle on a thousand hills, thy countless flocks, thy gushing wells of oil, thy fields of rice and sugar cane stretching far away like the sweet fields of Eden on the other side of Jordan! With thy fatness thou canst feed and warm the world! I wonder why the poor huddle in the smoke and filth of crowded cities when Texas smiles and beckons them to her landscapes of beauty, where the prairie flowers bloom and the sunshine plays with the zephyrs from the Gulf and sometimes scuffles with a cyclone. I wonder why toiling millions dwell amid blackened walls only to be slaves to heartless masters, when untouched fields invite the happy home and virgin soil still waits for the plowman and his merry song. I wonder why helpless children are doomed to die by thousands in polluted hovels and crowded alleys, when the green meadows of Texas bid them come and chase the butterflies among the bluebells and the daisies, and the blossoming hills call them hither to romp and play where the happy birds sing and the cows come home in the evening fragrant with the breath of alfalfa and the sweet wild grasses of the plains. Texas is a Paradise for the poor, it is a third heaven for the rich.

But I am about to forget that I was talking about my lecture tour. Let me see!—O, yes!—“All aboard for Nashville!” the conductor cries. Well, the rest of my story I will tell around the happy hearthstone of home.

It is a marvelous truth that this golden era of the world’s history has inspired no great poets that rank with Byron and Burns and Tom Moore and a long list of other immortals who have enriched literature with their songs;211 and it has developed but few prose writers worthy to wear the mantles of Blackstone and Kent in law, of Gibbon and Macaulay in history, and Scott and Bulwer in romance and fiction.

It is well we call it the golden era, for it is an era of commercialism, when men are trampling literature and art and music under their feet in the mad rush for gold and the gilded glory that it buys. To be a millionaire is greater in the estimation of modern worshipers of mammon than to be a Goldsmith; and a multimillionaire is greater in their gold-jaundiced eyes than a William Shakespeare. The highest aspiration of these nervous and strenuous generations is the acquirement and hoarding of gold. Religion is tinged with it. Politics is its ally—and alloy in the ratio of sixteen of gold to one of Patriotism. And most of the business and social relations of this enlightened age are purely golden and measured only by the circumference of a dollar. The English poet sounded the keynote of true philosophy when he sang:

The true wealth of a nation rests not so much on bricks of gold as upon golden thought—the riches of brain and heart—the treasures of truth and the pure and beautiful sentiments of life. In the wild scramble for sordid gain and the golden reins of power in these wing-footed days of avarice and materialism, the angels of happiness no longer beckon from the landscape and the stream nor call from the sweet solitudes of the forest; but they stand tip-toe on the burnished domes and glittering towers of the city and the town, with crowns of gold in their hands. And the brain and brawn of the land gather there from the hills and hollows to climb after them on a thousand ladders of dreams. But the environments of domes and towers, while they stimulate the brain to grasp great financial problems and to weave the web of glory around the thrones of money kings, contract the nobler and better ideals and impulses of the heart to the gilded forms of artificial pleasure.

Did you ever watch a bevy of city swells and society belles swinging and whirling under flaming chandeliers until the coat-tails of the swells popped like whip crackers and the skirts of the belles flapped like the sails of a schooner in a high wind? That was a piping gale of pleasure in high life in the town. Did you ever attend a great reception in the heart of the metropolis? It was a gorgeous scene of icicles and spectacles, of broadcloth, and jewels arrayed in white slippers and costly gowns of richest colors; and the icicles and spectacles bowed to the jewels, and the jewels bowed to the icicles and spectacles and they held sweet converse on the subject of their bicycles and tricycles and various and sundry articles and drank champagne and sherry and all got very merry and wound up with oysters and dill pickles. And then the tipsy icicles and spectacles got in their elegant vehicles and went home with the jewels in the morning. That was the cream of urban civilization. Did you ever gaze on a gaudy throng of bald-headed Apollos and painted Minervas walling their eyes in speechless rapture before the garish lights of the grand opera? How the fans and ribbons fluttered and the side-whiskers swayed and spluttered amid the inscrutable harmonies of Wagner! That was the tuneless pandemonium of urban music. Did you ever watch the bulls and bears of finance turn the stock exchange into a howling wilderness of confusion in the struggle to raise or lower prices? That was the third heaven of artificial pleasure and excitement in the city.

But what is a thrill of victory in the gambling hell of frenzied finance compared with the joy a fisherman feels down on the farm when a game trout strikes his baited hook in the darkening eddy of a crystal stream and the good reel sings as he gives him line and the fishing rod bends and the waters splash? What is the gilded club room where the wizards of finance meet to sip and smoke and shuffle the cards of fortune compared with a fisherman’s212 tent and a fisherman’s luck on the bank of a moonlit river where hearts are trumps and souls overflow with song and story?

Did you ever hear the tale of Mark Antony, the funeral orator of Rome and the Romeo of the Nile? He went angling in Egypt one day on the royal barge with the beautiful Cleopatra and he fished and fished and fished, unrewarded by a nibble, until the hours grew dull and heavy. But the cunning queen conceived a plan to change her lover’s luck and unfolded the scheme to a slave; and the slave secretly dived from the larboard side of the boat and hung a dried herring on the General’s hook and then gave his line a vigorous pull. “By Jupiter!” shouted Mark Antony, “I have hooked a monstrous fish.” “Take care, my lord, and give him line lest he drag thee into the sea,” cried the dark-eyed queen, as she chuckled behind her fan.

“By the gods! that fish shall flounder on thy deck, or I shall flounder beneath the waves!” cried the impetuous Roman. He squared himself and gave a mighty jerk, but fell sprawling on his back at the feet of the laughing queen, and when he looked up and saw nothing but a little dried herring dangling among the ropes above him, he blandly smiled and dryly said: “He was a monstrous fish while biting, but between his bite and my jerk, he has wonderfully shriveled. But he’s the oldest looking fish and has the loudest smell of any that ever perfumed the royal barge.”

And so many an ambitious Antony sits in the stock exchange of the great city and drops his hook in the sea of speculation, and he fishes and fishes with his little wad of hard earned cash, until some shrewd manipulator, just to change his luck, takes the little wad off and gives the line a heavy pull, and when our guileless Antony thinks he has hooked a million, he jerks and falls at the feet of fickle fortune, and finds dangling in the air above him only the dried herring of a shrivelled hope, and there is nothing left but the aged look of an empty purse and the smell of a dream that is vanished!

LEISURE HOURS — Industrial Energy and Enterprise of the Old South. — “LOCAL COLORING.” — IN TENNESSEE. — A People Peculiar. — The Mosquito.

213

For Conference Between the Magazine and its Readers.

When The Taylor Publishing Company made its announcement of the forthcoming appearance of Bob Taylor’s Magazine, its statements were received with interest by all, with enthusiastic approval by many and with predictions of disaster by sundry Jeremiahs and Thomases. For the last named class the fact that a Southern magazine had not succeeded, though many had been projected, was sufficient reason for the conclusion that none could succeed, and possible success versus probable failure was discussed throughout the length and breadth of the land.

Meanwhile, Governor Robert L. Taylor and his co-laborers in the enterprise, imbued with a belief in the feasibility of the venture, with the idea of the vital necessity to the people of the South of a literary periodical which might adequately and fittingly represent the literary life and customs and romance and ideals of the South, and with an indomitable intention of firmly establishing such a useful vehicle of thought and expression, proceeded with their organization. Literature in regard to Bob Taylor’s Magazine was prepared, a campaign of publicity was inaugurated, articles and stories were secured for the first number, paper was bought, and an issue of 10,000 copies was determined upon, as amply sufficient for the first number.

But herein the projectors of the enterprise underestimated the demands of their friends. No sooner was the prospectus issued which indicated the character of the magazine and gave a partial list of the contents of the first number, than the mails were congested with correspondence; agents were appointed by the hundred; subscriptions poured in; and it was decided to print 15,000 copies instead of 10,000 copies.

The size of the magazine, too, grew rapidly in the hands of the staff, until, instead of the 116 pages originally planned, it was found desirable to give 164 pages. This was rendered necessary, in part, by the large amount of advertising secured; and this is one of the best indexes of the faith of the people in the success of Bob Taylor’s Magazine. Hard-headed men of business do not give up their money for mere sentiment or out of compliment to even so eminent and widely loved a man as Governor Taylor. No. They look upon Bob Taylor’s Magazine as a valuable advertising medium—and they are right.

At last, on the 21st of March, the eagerly awaited magazine appeared, and far surpassed the most sanguine expectations of its readers. In the intrinsic merit of its articles, stories and departments, in its dainty and appropriate cover, in its numerous and handsome illustrations, in its excellent typography and press-work, and equally in its well displayed and interesting advertisements it fully satisfied the most critical. The realization of a literary magazine worthy of the South was apparent.

And yet the Jeremiahs, silenced as to the initial number, muttered sotto voce: “Well, you can’t do it again.” Nevertheless, the present number bears internal evidence that we have “done it again.” And we shall “do it” every time. This we promise. We shall no longer pay heed to that (fortunately small) class which experiences a melancholy pleasure in making direful predictions.

The avidity with which the first number of Bob Taylor’s Magazine was greeted was astounding even to the editor-in-chief and his staff, notwithstanding the thousands of encouraging letters, the enormous influx of subscriptions, even before a type had been set, and the fact that the interest was not confined to the South but was manifested with especial earnestness by the people of the North. Letters of congratulation by the bushel, and complimentary editorials, reviews and press notices have told the tale from Androscoggin to San Jose. Space, of course, precludes the reproduction of them here, even if it were desirable, but the following selection from a letter of the senior member of one of the largest advertising agencies in the United States is so significant that it is felt that its insertion will be pardoned:

“I thought it was hardly possible there could be a place for another magazine, and consequently took little interest in your first announcements. When your first number came to hand, however, I was so attracted by the dainty cover showing the ‘fiddle’ with which the name of Bob Taylor is so intimately associated in the minds of those who know anything of the South, and especially of Tennessee, that I carried it home last night, and did not lay it aside until every word in it by Bob Taylor had been read and several of the articles re-read.

“Heartiest congratulations on the merit of the first number, the character of which, if maintained in succeeding numbers, will surely make a place for this new apostle of sunshine.

“Only give us more of Bob Taylor, if possible. Why not let him have a page between each other article each number may contain. Why restrict him to a department or departments? John Brisben Walker wrote the entire September, 1904, Cosmopolitan unaided. It is believed Bob Taylor could write an entire number without any assistance if he would make up his mind to do so, and it would be certain to prove a hummer.”

Fifteen thousand copies is a large number for the first issue of any magazine; yet they were exhausted within one week after the magazine came from the press, and thousands of copies have since been ordered by agents and dealers, while an ever increasing army of new subscribers demand, like so many Oliver Twists, with vehemence and iteration—MORE, MORE. And yet every copy is sold!

It is a situation that pleases while it embarrasses, and it gives the valuable pointer that we must provide larger issues, which we shall do, that no one may miss a single number.

Considering these facts, so briefly outlined, we would not be human were we not elated and happy and thankful. And yet we have not, we trust, been spoiled by lavish praise, but rather spurred on to greater efforts to measure up to our opportunities, to the expectations of the Southern people, and to our mission to exploit the virtues, resources and capabilities of this section, while bringing every month more sunshine and happiness into the heart of every reader of Bob Taylor’s Magazine.

For the information of new subscribers we repeat that we invite, for insertion in 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 admit.

There is little danger that the glories and beauties of the Old South, as reflected in its social life and ideals, will be forgotten in the industrial progress and prosperity of the New, for these215 things have been made immortal by the sure touch of tradition and literature, but there is another phase of the old regime well worth our pride and attention, which seems to have well nigh faded out of popular impression and consideration. We refer to the industrial and commercial activity achieved by the South before the war, of which the general idea takes so small and disparaging account. It is tacitly assumed and loosely declared that previous to 1860 the South lived in ease and sloth upon slave-labor and the cotton crop, paying no heed to manufactures or industrial development, and that before the wonderful business progress of the last decade commercial enterprise and ability were unknown qualities in this section. There were heroes before Agamemnon, however, and the truth is that long before the New South existed in phrase or fact, the Old South was holding its own in wealth-producing industries with other sections of the country.

In a pamphlet, published some years ago, Mr. Richard H. Edmonds, of Baltimore, first drew attention to these facts, and in so doing performed a unique and important service to historic truth, no less than to sectional pride. “Facts about the South” is the title of Mr. Edmond’s brochure and he prefaces his summary of present prosperity and prophecy of future development by a somewhat novel presentation of Southern industrial conditions previous to 1860. He boldly challenges the assumption that the South during that period was not fully abreast of the times in all business interests and quotes indubitable statistics and historic records to prove his case. In the decade between 1850 and 1860 the growth in Southern railroad and manufacturing interests was especially marked, the government reports showing a greater percentage of gain in the South than in New England and the Middle States, or, indeed, the whole country at large. Moreover, the popular idea crediting the Old South with producing only cotton, rice and sugar, is clearly disproved by Mr. Edmonds, who gives the figures of Southern crop production for 1860, showing a condition of agricultural diversity and prosperity unsurpassed in any part of the country.

This vigorous protest against a prevailing delusion should be read in its entirety by every Southerner who, as he reads of the thrift and energy of the Old South, will be inspired with a firmer faith in the growth and strength of the New, recognizing in the industrial development of to-day, as Mr. Edmonds expresses it, “not a novel creation” in this section, but “the result of evolution.”

Mr. Editor:

After all the flowery speeches and kind words that have been showered upon Bob Taylor’s Magazine, all of which I heartily endorse, I am afraid you will not appreciate what I am going to say, but I’ll say it, nevertheless; it will be as good as a corrective; too much sweets are always cloying.

I have read the magazine through from cover to cover, even to the advertisements, and found everything good, better, best, yet I was disappointed and will tell you why. There was no smallest fraction thereof devoted to women. Why is this thus? It cannot be that you do not think women of enough importance as to be worthy some part of it especially fitted for her eye alone. I know our editor-in-chief doesn’t feel that way, at least he does not talk that way, as every woman knows who ever talked to him for five minutes by the clock. I don’t mean a page devoted to Housewives, Motherhood, Cooking Recipes, or Fancy Work, altogether. These are all good, every one of them, and we are all more or less interested in them, but a page, pure and simple, devoted to things that women are specially interested in. Will you rise and explain, and satisfy several women?

E. A. C.

The above communication is self-explanatory and is published for what it is worth. Possibly others of our friends may have something to say along this line. At any rate, whatever is worthy of space, pertaining to women, can, at least for a time, find expression in this department.

Twenty years or more ago, riding through the flat, palmetto-fringed pine woods of east Florida, before Standard Oil Flagler built his coast railroad to Miami, sundry lean, swarthy, active people of both sexes, were frequently to be met with, more especially in and about St. Augustine, and to the southward towards New Smyrna. They are doubtless to be found there yet, though the great influx of miscellaneous strangers renders their racial traits less noticeable than formerly.

Ask one of the large-framed Swedes, Germans, or other scions of a more pronounced North-of-Europe type, who and what these Latin looking peasantry are, the chance is you will be answered, or at least would have been at the time I alluded to above:

“When folks want to be civil they call them Minorcans; when they don’t they are mighty apt to say something about Doc. Turnbull’s niggers. So, there you are—take your choice.”

As a matter of fact, they are a really worthy and industrious element of our composite population, not unlike the descendants of Longfellow’s Acadians, the “Cajuns” of southern Louisiana. Though of a hybrid sort of Spanish ancestry, from the Balearic Isles in the Mediterranean Sea, they have Americanized themselves through several generations of quiet usefulness in an humble, unobtrusive way.

What is their history? How came they here?

That takes us back to the year 1767. The Floridas had only recently been217 ceded by Spain to England, when some fifteen hundred colonists, mostly from Minorca, one of the Balearic group, were landed at Musquito Inlet, one hundred miles south of St. Augustine.

Many think that the only people held as slaves in the South prior to the Civil War, were negroes, or possibly in very early colonial times, a few spiritless tribes of Indians. Yet these colonists (ancestors of the present Minorcans now strung along the lagoons and bayous of the east coast, intermittently for many leagues) were made, willy-nilly, for nine long, weary years, to toil amid the swamps and hammocks of what is now Volusia County, as the virtual slaves of a British Trading Company of that era, headed by Sir Wm. Duncan and a Dr. Andrew Turnbull, shrewd Scotchmen of wealth and social position, who operated their scheme from London; Sir William being the resident manager there, and a financial magnate on the Stock Exchange himself.

Turnbull, the immediate head of the colony in Florida, was hard-hearted, energetic, indomitable and persevering—one of that unconscionable, never-give-up sort of task masters, who worked the helpless peasants mercilessly in the malarious swamps embraced within the area of the immense land grant held by the Company’s charter.

Tradition avers that he founded the original town of New Smyrna, dug drainage canals, built stone warehouses, cleared several thousand acres of dense forest, and began to raise indigo on a large scale.

The contracts of the colonists, under which they were to receive allotments of land, proper wages and maintenance, were ruthlessly and systematically violated. The region was then remote and inaccessible, and the poor, ignorant peasantry, helpless to a degree hard to realize, in our own day, outside of, perhaps, Siberia, or Tibet, in far-off Asia.

So isolated was that section from all connection with the outside world that this sort of thing went on for years without its being known, even at St. Augustine. The lands were not divided, nor the wages paid. Instead the Minorcans were compelled to work like the Israelites in Egypt, under harsh overseers, amid all the discomforts of a semi-tropic wilderness, environed by savage tribes to the west and south, trailed by bloodhounds to prevent escape, punished like convicts, and wretchedly housed and fed. Guarded also by armed men, their condition was, indeed, most forlorn and miserable.

It was said that our own Revolution against Great Britain had been going on for a year or more, before these long suffering Minorcans heard that such a thing had been even considered by the more northerly colonies. Then, however, the worm turned. There was a great uprising, for such a life, now tinged with a ray of hope, was unendurable.

Harsh measures were resorted to by Turnbull, who also evoked the aid of the civil law, claiming that the Minorcans had violated their contracts as a sort of “Redemptioners,” bound to serve for a stipulated period, etc. Some of the ring leaders were taken to St. Augustine by soldiers, and five actually condemned to death. Of these, two were pardoned; one was reprieved, on condition that he act as executioner of the remaining two; a number of others were, for a time, imprisoned.

The wretched colonists, however, continued to run away in larger numbers, either defying or defeating recapture, so that Turnbull eventually found himself without labor. The town, the plantations, and the various public works were deserted, and the vast enterprises thus despotically inaugurated, were at last stranded.

In vain did he, in the name of the now semi-defunct London Trading Company, make most liberal offers of land and wages to his recalcitrant and vanishing slaves. They wanted no more of Turnbull, his methods, or his works. The entire scheme fell through; Dr. Andrew Turnbull went back to England a ruined man; the town crumbled into ruins, the indigo plantations lapsed into a second forest growth; the labyrinth of ditches filled218 up, until only the remains of the old canal, some crumbling coquina ruins, and the name of the chief despot himself, now given to the ancient land grant which was the scene of his cruelties, and known generally as Turnbull Hammock, are left as mementoes of one of the gloomiest pages of our by no means untroubled colonial annals.

Instead of a natural increase in numbers during ten years of bondage and escape, not more than seven or eight hundred of the immigrants were left. But they were naturally thrifty and economical. Once scattered out and doing for themselves, unburdened by the incubus of Turnbullism, their numbers and resources gradually increased. Probably several thousand of their descendants, more or less intermixed with alien blood, still occupy the land of their forefathers’ adoption. These are small farmers (engaged in truck, and semi-tropic fruit growing), fishermen, boat sailors, and petty traders. A few have risen to social and political eminence as well as wealth. But these cases are rather exceptional.

As a whole, they are patriotic American citizens. The late war with Spain, for the relief of Cuba, proved that. Many of the younger men volunteered for service. Some even went to the Philippines.

“Free America vur beeg contree,” said a returned soldier to one of his home folks who had never seen a hill higher than some of the great shell mounds on the eastern shore of the Matanzas River. “Mountains higher than clouds, lakes wide like sea. Minorcans vur small people. Room for ever’one here. Home best place after all.”

And so it is, even for the posterity of those so woefully misused by the British Trading Company’s George the Third methods, as to be miscalled five generations later by local detractors, “Turnbull’s slaves.”

Wm. Perry Brown.

There are more than three hundred and fifty tribes belonging to the mosquito race. These have been classified by the detectives of science into twenty-two families, and all placed in the same category with gnats, which are looked upon by most people as suspicious characters. These families are known by names of such “learned length and thundering sound” that it is thought safest to abstain from giving a list of them here; but like man, they may be known better by their color, habits and eccentricities than by name.

The mosquito is cosmopolitan, for he has explored and settled many parts of the arctic regions, including Alaska, Greenland and Iceland, and established his home on the continents of Europe, Asia and Africa, and in the remotest islands of the sea. He had very probably discovered America before Christopher Columbus set sail for the new world, and it is now pretty certain that he first colonized New Jersey.

He has figured extensively in the history of the world, yet he wears no laurel wreath of glory for valor in war. All martial victories and renown of his race belong to the gentler (?) sex of the family. She is a kind of Joan of Arc, of a fierce, restless and war-like spirit; but it is consoling to know that she is less savage in the temperate than in the torrid zone; for, we are informed by travelers that in the tropics she often leads her legions in a charge with fixed bayonets directly upon a sleeping man’s face, when they fall upon him in myriads, like pelting hailstones out of a storm-cloud.

There are instances of record in which her furious armies have filled the air for many miles, darkening the heavens like dense columns of flying cloud, and attacking man and beast like blood-thirsty demons. A Greek historian relates that such an army once swooped down upon ancient Greece and drove the inhabitants from their homes.

Besides being thus famous as a soldier, she enjoys the unique distinction of being a queen of song. Strange to say, in this gift she has a complete monopoly, while the male has been left to regret the sad fate of being forever songless and silent. However, he has been well compensated for this privation. Some tribes219 of his race have less musical talent than others; but those who have studied his anatomy, habits and genius declare that in tribes in which there are queens of song, he is, without doubt, the king of listeners, since nature has provided him with many hundreds of ears, no doubt to enhance his pleasure from vocal music. These curious ears are small hairs located on his antennæ, or feelers, which, like the strings of harp or violin under the touch of a virtuoso, tremble in unison with the harmony that flows from the living melodion of his queen, until his soul is on fire with melody. Not one of these delicately attuned ears ever seems to be shocked by a falsetto note from the vocal chords of his charmer. To him her song, like that of Wynomoinen, the magical singer, or the sirens of mythical story, is full of the power of enchantment; and the eavesdroppers of science who watch him and listen, tell us that he draws near her whenever she pours out her soul in song. The manner in which she produces her buzzing tones is very wonderful: The lower or contralto note is the result of the rapid vibration of her wings at the rate of three thousand per minute. It is not remarkable, then, that her flight is so swift from her enraged human pursuer. But when she trills and yodles and sings her high soprano, her fantastic music flows from stridulating organs which resemble tiny drums at the openings of minute air tubes. These higher runs thrill Monsignor Mosquito into ecstacies of pure delight. His ravished soul is borne out upon the silver sea of song as he sits on a honeysuckle sipping nectar, listening the while to the wooing voices of his divine inamoratas—the Pattis, Nilssons and Nordicas of his race. But not so with the human auditor of the mosquito prima donna who lies peacefully on his bed at night under the hypnotic spell of sweet sleep. Perchance it is midnight’s holy hour when he is suddenly awakened by a still small voice more pricking than the voice of conscience. He springs up and lights the gas or lamp and tries to draw nigh unto lady mosquito as did her enchanted knight with wings; he is thirsting for her life while she is thirsting for his blood.

But not only is our heroine celebrated in history as a warrior and a vocalist, but as a most dangerous enemy of mankind. Nature has seen fit to give her a long nose, or proboscis, which, according to the Darwinian theory, might prove her to be related to the elephant. She does not hesitate “to stick her nose into other people’s business,” and this is precisely the thing which, in the case of mosquitoes as of men, leads her into irreparable injury to humanity and very frequently to her own instant demise.

Those versed in the origin and evolution of the Culex (a nickname for the mosquito) teach us that his ancient grandmothers did not have the blood-sucking habit, but acquired it in later ages. Whether in acquiring this habit she was beset, like Mother Eve in Eden, by the power of a mighty temptation through the wily arts of his Satanic majesty, we are unable to say with certainty; but we are informed by her anatomists that alongside her formidable proboscis with its suction pump fixtures, are from two to six keen lances or spears, admirably adapted for making the necessary incisions in the skin of man and beast. Armed with such weapons for drawing blood, it is easy to guess how, during some of her nightly wanderings as a minstrel, temptation might have won an easy victory over her by giving her a taste of blood. It is probable that while on one of these lonely serenades she became enamored of some sleeping Apollo, and, stooping down to snatch a sweet warm kiss from his lordly brow, accidentally stuck her bill through the rosy cuticle and drew blood—taking another sip she said it was good, and thus she contracted the blood-sucking habit.

It is interesting to note that as with many other nations of the air so with this one, there is a sort of national anthem to which the Culex patriots seem more devotedly attached than human patriots are to theirs. Its divine strain, to the chivalrous male,220 is the very keynote of love, and he is charmed by its resistless power and drawn toward it as a beetle to a beacon light, or a boat to a whirlpool; for when its clarion note is sounded, like the weird, wild melody of Orpheus of old that thrilled dumb brutes and drew them in myriads around him, he is caught up and borne onward by its powerful pull to the spot whence the music comes.

While experimenting with harmonic telegraphy, a scientist of the South who resides at Jackson, Miss., happened to strike this key, and he reports that the mosquito came toward the “sounder” in great swarms. He soon afterwards devised a machine for electrocuting every mosquito that should respond to the magical note. Upon the very first trial they came teeming to the “sounder,” and when he turned on the electric current by pressing a button, they fell dead by the scores at his feet.

What a boon to humanity this novel application of electricity is destined to be. With such an instrument having a “sounder” attached, the disturbed sleeper of the future, who is not overly fond of mosquito song, can touch a button, by his bedside, to set the “sounder” to going, and then press another button to turn on the deadly current, and thus instantly electrocute every mosquito that disturbs his slumbers without ever moving from his pillow. Now, it has been urged by some that only the male mosquitoes will answer to the note made by the “sounder,” and thus only they would suffer death by the device. But this is by no means established, and even if shown to be true, it is evident that upon the males being thus dispatched the females would soon all withdraw or pine away with grief.

How vastly different and superior is the male Culex to the female from an ethical standpoint. He is opposed to war and is a harmless vegetarian and honey-sucker, while the female is a dangerous savage. He does not find his happiness in sucking the blood of his human or other neighbor, but in the contemplation of the beautiful. He may well be called the poet of his race; for he ever lives among the nectar drips and the paradises of color and perfume of the waiting flowers. He soars aloft into the sweeter, purer air to bathe his pinions in seas of radiant sunshine. He roams among the beauties of nature, seeking its sweets from every bud and leaf. All thoughts that flit across his microscopic brain are free from blood and war. He loves the beautiful wherever he finds it in the visible and tangible world and even in the fascinating buzz of his mosquito prima donna. But as ideally good as he seems to be, he, like man, has his faults and frailties. He is fond of travel and has been caught with many of his female companions stealing long rides on Pullman palace cars and ocean steamers. He is also very fond of beer, wine and whisky, and has been found “dead drunk” on sundry occasions. In this taste for intoxicants the female Culex does not indulge.

The mosquito has been recently charged with murder, arrested and brought to trial before a competent tribunal composed of medical men and others, and convicted. They have proved that his spouse is the principal and he the accomplice. The evidence shows that they belong to a family of mosquitoes, known by the infamous name of Anopheles, and they have used malaria, yellow fever and several other diseases with which to slay man; that the female is the entertainer of a very small creature, a kind of Jonah, whom she swallows, and after a time he gets down from her stomach into her proboscis, and when she bites her human victim he leaps into the wound where he remains and eats red-blood corpuscles, and when grown he breaks up into from six to ten pieces, each piece making a new animal life like the original; that they go on multiplying in this way into millions in the blood upon which they feast, and thus produce these dreadful maladies and consequent death.

Watauga.

BOOKS AND AUTHORS

221

CONDUCTED BY GENELLA FITZGERALD NYE.

Prison Life of Jefferson Davis. By Bvt. Lt. Col. John J. Craven, M.D. G. W. Dillingham Company, New York. Price, $1.20.

The recent controversy concerning General Miles and the shackling of Jefferson Davis while the latter was a prisoner of war at Fortress Monroe, makes this new edition of Dr. Craven’s book, originally published in 1866, of timely value and importance. Dr. Craven was the medical adviser of Mr. Davis during most of his imprisonment, and his notes, taken from daily and intimate intercourse with his patient, form the basis of this volume. While written with professional reserve and military discretion, it is a most satisfactory and reliable account of the facts concerning the imprisonment of Mr. Davis, and throws an interesting and significant light on his character as viewed on close range by a political enemy at a time when prejudice and passion so generally usurped the place of judgment. Dr. Craven frankly expresses his original prejudiced and bitter attitude toward his patient, even to naming the precise occasion on which a kindlier sentiment was aroused in his breast. A stronger, sincerer tribute to Mr. Davis’ character could hardly be conceived than this plain and unadorned record of the change effected in the attitude of an honest enemy toward the man whom he abhorred as a kind of moral monster. Dr. Craven was not only impressed with the learning and ability of his distinguished prisoner, but again and again bears impartial witness to his modesty, fortitude, and unselfishness, relating conversations and incidents which particularly impressed him at the time. The strength of that impression is sufficiently evinced by the fact that Dr. Craven had the courage to publish such a book at a time when sectional feeling ran so high.

The facts in regard to the shameful treatment of Mr. Davis by General Miles are fully confirmed by copies of the official reports bearing on the matter, and the account is a painful commentary on the injustice and cruelty of the policy allowed to rule in regard to a conquered people. Mr. Davis was sick and feeble; moreover, he was closely guarded night and day, in an impregnable fortress. Under the circumstances his shackling was a wanton and unnecessary humiliation of a helpless man, and the bare relation of the incident as witnessed by Dr. Craven, though set down without comment or criticism, is enough to make the blood of any generous reader boil with indignation and revolt. It is impossible to doubt the honesty and accuracy of such a record, and it must remain a heavy indictment against those responsible for the outrage here detailed. Dr. Craven’s son, who republishes this book, is fully justified in so doing, not only for the satisfaction of a present interest, but for the consideration of future generations.

The Marriage of William Ashe. By Mrs. Humphrey Ward. Harper and Brothers, New York. Price, $1.50.

Mrs. Ward in her latest novel works very much the same combination which proved to so exactly fit the public taste in “Lady Rose’s Daughter,” and if the result is not the same success, it will be only because the popular impression will be dulled by repetition. Again we have a heroine nurtured in a scandalous menage in Paris and shadowed by a criminal heredity, and Lady Kitty, like Julie in the earlier novel, has two lovers, contrasted in character much as were Delafield and the caddish young soldier to whom Julie so nearly yielded. The crucial moment of temptation, however, comes to Lady Kitty after her marriage, and the hand of fate which snatched Julie from danger plunges the later heroine into the abyss of ruin and disgrace. William Ashe, like Marchmont, is of a noble house and high in political circles,222 but he is not quite so much of an archangel, though he, too, exhibits a patient and tolerant forbearance toward the indiscretions and errors of the woman he loves, which, however philosophical, somewhat removes him from the normal human type and its sympathies. Geoffrey Cliffe, the objectionable lover, is a poet instead of a soldier, but he, too, woos Kitty to disgrace and finally meets a violent death. Both novels are elaborate studies of heredity, and in each the final decision between irretrievable error and duty hangs upon an unforeseen incident which turns the scales like a fate.

Again Mrs. Ward has drawn on real life for her characters and plot. The Byronic inspiration of Geoffrey Cliffe is sufficiently obvious and the suggestion of Lady Caroline Lamb’s story is plainly to be read in Lady Kitty and her obsession. More than one prominent political figure of a generation ago has been promptly identified by the English reviewers.

Of the two heroines, Lady Kitty is a better realization than Julie, who, to our mind quite failed to keep the novelist’s promise of intellectual brilliancy and social magnetism. It is really a wonderful and poignant impression conveyed by Mrs. Ward’s elaborate picture of Lady Kitty, frail and fair, passionate and weak, poetic and frivolous, sweet and perverse—with a lack of moral and mental balance which spells for us nothing less than insanity. For after all, we are disposed to question whether such a character is not properly a study in alienism rather than in feminine psychology. That she was not a responsible agent, but merely the unfortunate creature of her own impelling fancies and passions, is the view stressed by every implication of the author, and indeed, against the very shady record of Lady Kitty’s life can only be pleaded temperamental insanity and hereditary sin.

An equally elaborate, but not so successful, piece of work is the presentation of William Ashe. He is depicted as a kind of Admirable Crichton—handsome, learned, amiable—a scholar, a statesman, and a social lion. “Religiously he was a skeptic, enormously interested in religion. Politically he was an aristocrat, enormously interested in liberty.” But with all the author’s keen analysis and clever descriptive phrases, this versatile and philosophical hero never becomes very real to our perceptions or sympathies. It would seem that his creator had fashioned and molded him carefully and perfectly, but had failed to breathe into him the breath of life.

Mrs. Ward’s rich literary equipment is no less manifest in this novel than in her previous works, and her power to deal with the larger interests of life is undiminished. The old time English society novel in her hands has been expanded, dignified, transformed, into a serious and significant presentation of life and its problems. Her outlook on the world of thought, of affairs, and of men and women is technically informed and philosophically impartial; her talent is enormously efficient. Perhaps her remarkable ability was never better demonstrated than when she made in “Lady Rose’s Daughter” a deliberate bid for a wider and lower kind of popular favor. The new appeal, so marked in that book and in “The Marriage of William Ashe,” was so skilfully turned and has been so successful in enlarging the writer’s clientele, that as a literary tour de force, it challenges a kind of unwilling admiration. There seem to be lacking to her marvelous gifts and powers only the touch of spontaneity, the flash of dramatic fire.

The Georgians. By Will N. Harben, author of “Abner Daniel,” “The Substitute,” etc. New York: Harper and Brother. Price, $1.50.

The plain people of the South, the sturdy common folk who made no pretensions to aristocratic grandeur but who in self-respect, prosperity and character, formed in this section, as elsewhere, the backbone of civilization and society, have not received their due representation in Southern fiction, generally speaking. Baronial splendors, “po’ white trash” peculiarities, and darky picturesqueness have been the favored themes of most Southern story-tellers, moving in the lines of least resistance to romantic and dramatic interest, while the great middle class has been made to occupy a disproportionately small place in their pictures of Southern life. It is not mere accident that the Georgia writers have given us the fullest and best treatment of this class, for in Georgia pre-eminently it dominated and colored the political and social body to a marked degree. Richard Malcolm Johnson, Joel Chandler Harris, and Watson have all given us stories with a strong flavor of the soil and the people who chiefly owned and cultivated it, and Mr. Harben’s tales of north Georgia have been notably successful in this line of fiction.

In “Abner Daniel,” Mr. Harben achieved one of the rarest things in modern fiction—a genuine creation. Typically, sympathetically, imaginatively, Abner Daniel rings true; in spirit and letter he is a perfect presentation. Broadly human as he is unmistakably North Georgian, he may be described as a Southern David Harum; but of the two characters Abner Daniel seems to us far more vital, far less dependent on his make-up and gags for reality. In “The Georgians,” Abner reappears, this time as the deus ex machina of a mysterious murder case, involving the love affair and various other interests of the story. The little village of Darley is sketched faithfully and sympathetically, and it is peopled with folk, whom we either know, or instinctively recognize as real. Under the not very deceptive alias of Tom P. Smith, Mr. Harben pictures a certain noted evangelist of Georgia and his revivalist methods, while as a companion piece he presents Jack Bantram, of another ecclesiastical type, who makes a simple and direct appeal to conscience and manhood. The religious ideals and customs of such communities have never received fuller or more sympathetic treatment than in this story, and, indeed, we may find here in simple, but effective narration, a most truthful picture of plain, provincial Georgia life in all its phases and forms. Among the real historical novels—those which are recording the vanishing social history of our nation—“The Georgians” deserves place and consideration.

Mysterious Mr. Sabin. By E. Phillips Oppenheim, Author of “A Prince of Sinners,” “Anna, the Adventuress,” etc. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. Price, $1.50.

A most remarkable as well as mysterious individual is the villain of Mr. Oppenheim’s latest yarn. He appears in London with a beautiful girl who turns all the men’s heads and inspires young Lord Wolfenden with a sudden and serious passion. By a curious coincidence this young man’s father is a retired admiral, with a mania for writing up the coast defenses of England, while Mr. Sabin’s mission in England is to get possession of these papers to sell to the German Emperor. A political intrigue is involved, in which Mr. Sabin, as agent for the French Bourbons, has conceived the brilliant scheme of buying Germany’s aid with naval secrets of England, fully set forth in the maps and notes of the naval monomaniac. The success of these plans would be followed by war between England and Germany, and the coronation of Princess Helene—the mysterious young lady, of course—as Queen of France. There are all sorts of complications and sensational happenings, and just as things begin to look rather dark for the lovers and the peace of England, a nihilistic order checks Mr. Sabin’s operations and crushes his hopes and ambitions. This winds up the troubles of Wolfenden and his Princess, and prefaces the most remarkable and exciting adventures of Mr. Sabin as he flees incognito to America to escape the wrath of the disappointed war lord of Germany. Greatly to the reader’s relief, this most engaging villain arrives safely in Boston Harbor and we leave him settling down to a peaceful obscurity with his first love, to whom his bitterest enemy had rather inconsequentially directed him before he left England.

To the critical eye, the machinery of Mr. Oppenheim’s story is somewhat too evident, and occasionally it rattles and creaks, but it goes at a rapid rate, and the result is just what is intended—an interesting and exciting story, to be read with easy and pleasurable interest and forgotten immediately.

The Monks’ Treasure. By George Horton, Author of “Like Another Helen.” Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company. Price, $1.50.

Walter Lythgoe, the nephew of Erasmus Lythgoe, head of the great Lythgoe Baking Powder, is sent by the firm to Greece to lay in a supply of crude cream of tartar, and is dispatched on his errand with the admonition, “Keep out of all scrapes and complications with women.” Naturally the first thing done by the young man as he arrives on the island of Andros is to fall in love with a fair maiden and to immediately involve himself in the most gratuitous scrapes and astounding complications ever concocted for a novel hero to wriggle out of. Of course the fair maiden whom he loves so artlessly and chivalrously as the servant of the missionary turns out to be a duchess, and equally, of course, the treasure discovered by Walter and his friend in the vault of the monastery is her stolen patrimony. Walter conceives the brilliant scheme of carrying off the bags of gold, and after a series of incredible adventures, in which he and his Scotch crony pit their wits and courage against a jealous224 Greek lover and some murderous monks, the hero sails out triumphant from the island of Andros with his lady love and a trunk full of treasure.

The local coloring of the story is confined to the adjectives “rosy” and “purple,” sprinkled plentifully throughout the book, and despite the often stressed conjunction with the “amphora,” the beautiful Polyxene seems not widely differentiated from any unsophisticated heroine of more familiar climes. In fact, Mr. Horton has not succeeded in galvanizing a very mechanical series of adventures into real vitality by transporting his puppets and wheels to Greece.

The River’s Children: An Idyl of the Mississippi. By Ruth McEnery Stuart. New York: The Century Co.

In her “Sonny” stories Mrs. Stuart struck the note of original and homely humor to which the popular taste is so quick to respond and for that reason achieved therein her greatest success, but her tales of Creoles and negroes in the Lower Mississippi region have distinctive merit in their vivid and poetic pictures of the great river and its children. To her imagination the Mississippi is not the Father of Waters, but “Old Lady Mississippi,” a witch, a siren, a queen—to fear, to propitiate, and to worship, and to the strength of this conception “The River’s Children” bears striking testimony. The slender thread of story runs almost unnoted among the poetic and picturesque descriptions of the river and the quaint and charming patois of the river people. The great stream sweeps supreme through the book, its poetry, beauty and tragedy looming up larger upon our impression than the magnificence of the Le Ducs or the rather highly colored sketches of Israel and Hannah. Wonderful is the account of Brake Island in its days of fatness culminating in the glories of the famous house-party long ago; and a clever bit of reproduction, at once keen and kindly, is the talk of “Felix” and “Adolphe” on the peril of the rising waters. Not even Cable has caught more perfectly the foreign idiom and softened English of these foreign Americans, or their pleasure-loving, childlike temperament.

Mrs. Stuart’s imagination and poetry, like her beloved river, sometimes overflow unhappily, as may be noted in some of the talk between Uncle Israel and Mammy Hannah, where instead of the flash of poetic imagery so characteristic of the negro, Mrs. Stuart gives us sustained and elaborate rhetoric and sentiment. To our perception, too, the story should have ended with the death of the old negro couple, and what follows seems a decline to an anti-climax.

Mrs. Stuart is fully imbued with the traditions of the lordly, lavish life of the old Creole days, and she knows and loves the land of the Lower Mississippi. The result has been seen in some charming and vivid sketches of which “The River’s Children” ranks among her best.

Return: a Story of the Sea Islanders in 1739. By Alice MacGowan and Grace MacGowan Cooke. L. C. Page and Company, Boston. Price, $1.50.

This is an extremely hollow piece of literary labor, with seemingly no other inspiration than Mary Johnson’s romances. There is no atmosphere wherefrom incident or characters could draw any vital semblance, and the style is the thinnest and stalest decoction of Miss Johnson’s manner and diction. It is to be hoped that the writers will once for all forswear the field of colonial history and romance, and return to their own—the life they know and can describe so well in Texas and Tennessee.

THE FIDDLE AND THE BOW. — PART SECOND.

What is this life but a whirling tide of pleasure and pain—glowing with gladness, darkening with grief, leaping with rapture, eddying with tears, now kissing the smiling cliffs of hope, now dashing against the frowning crags of fear and then vanishing in the darkness! What would it all be worth to us unblessed by love and mercy and the milk of human kindness? What would it all be worth to us bereft of music, that noblest gift of the soul?

The spirit of music, like an archangel, presides over mankind and the visible creation. Her afflatus, divinely sweet, divinely powerful, is breathed on every heart and inspires every soul to some higher thought, some grander sentiment.

I heard a great master play on his wondrous violin. His bow quivered like the wing of a bird. In every quiver there was a melody, and every melody breathed a thought in language sweeter than was ever uttered by human tongue. I was conjured, I was mesmerized by his music. I thought I fell asleep under its power and was rapt into the realms of visions and dreams. The enchanted violin broke out in tumult, and in its music I thought I heard the rustle of a thousand joyous wings and the burst of song from a thousand joyous throats; mocking-birds and linnets thrilled the glad air with warblings; goldfinches, thrushes and bobolinks trilled their happiest tunes and the oriole sang a lullaby to her hanging cradle that rocked in the wind. I heard the twitter of skimming swallows, the scattered coveys’ piping call. I heard the robin’s gay whistle, the cawing of crows, the scolding of blue-jays and the melancholy cooing of a dove. The swaying tree tops seemed vocal with bird song while he played, and the labyrinths of leafy shade echoed back the chorus.

There was a shifting of the bow, and I heard a flute play and a harp and a golden-mouthed cornet. I heard the mirthful babble of happy voices and peals of laughter ringing in the swelling tide of pleasure. Then I thought I caught glimpses of snowy arms, voluptuous forms and light, fantastic slippered feet all whirling in the mazes of the misty dance. The flying fingers now tripped upon the trembling strings like fairy feet dancing on the nodding violets, and the music glided into a still sweeter strain. The violin told a story of human life: Two lovers strayed among the elms and oaks and down by the river side where daffodils and pansies bend and smile to rippling waves, and there, under the bloom of incense-breathing bowers, the old, old story—so old and yet so new, conceived in heaven, first told in Eden, then handed down through all the ages,—was told over and over again. Ah! those downward drooping eyes, that mantling blush, that trembling hand in meek submission pressed! How well they told of love’s victory won and Paradise regained! And then he swung her in a grape-vine swing:

But the violin laughed like a child and my dream changed again. I saw a cottage among the elms and oaks and a little curly head toddled at the door. He toddled under the trees, prattling to the birds and playing with the ripening apples that fell upon the ground. He toddled among the roses and plucked their leaves as he would have plucked an angel’s wing, strewing their glory upon the green grass at his feet. He chased the butterflies from flower to flower and shouted with226 glee as they eluded his grasp and sailed away on the summer air. Here I thought his childish fancy had built a Paradise and peopled it with dainty seraphim and made himself its Adam. He saw the sunlight of Eden glint on every leaf and beam in every petal. The flitting honey bee, the whirling June bug, the fluttering breeze, the silvery pulse beat of the dashing brook, sounded in his ears notes of its swelling music. The iris-winged humming bird darting like a sunbeam to kiss the pouting lips of the upturned flowers was to him the impersonation of its beauty. And I said, truly childhood is the nearest approach in this world to the Paradise of long ago. Then I saw him skulking like a Cupid in the shrubbery, his face downcast with guilt, his skirts bedraggled and soiled. He had waded the Atlantic ocean in the mud puddle, and stirred up the Mediterranean sea in the slop bucket. He had shipwrecked the young ducks, capsized the goslings, and drowned the kitten, which he imagined a whale. And I said, there is the old original Adam coming to the surface.

“Lawd bless my soul, jis look at dat chil’! Look at dat face and dem hands, all kivered wid mud and mulberry juice! You’s gwine to ketch it! Jis ’zactly like your fadder,—always gittin’ into some scrape or nudder—always breakin’ into some kind uv debilment! Gwine to brek into Congress some uv dese days, sho! Dey can’t keep you out’n it! Come along wid me dis instinct to de baf tub! I’se gwine to wash dat face uv yown an’ lucidate some uv dat dirt off’n dem han’s an’ dem clo’es, you triflin’ rascal, you!” and so saying she carried him away kicking and screaming like a young savage in open rebellion.

And I said, there is some more of the original Adam. Then I saw him come forth again, washed and dressed in spotless white like a young butterfly fresh from its chrysalis, and when he got a chance, I saw him slip on his tiptoes into the pantry, and there was the clink of glassware as though a mouse was playing there among the jam pots and preserves. There two little dimpled hands made trip after trip to a rose-colored mouth, bearing burdens of mingling sweets that dripped from cheek and chin and skirt and shoes, subduing the snowy white with the amber of the peach and the purple of the raspberry as he ate of the forbidden fruit. Then I saw him glide into the library and soon there was a crash and a thud in there which brought a frightened mother into the room only to find the young rascal catching his breath while streams of cold ink trickled down his drenched bosom. And as he wiped his inky face, which grew blacker with every wipe, the remainder of the ink was pouring from the bottle onto the carpet and making a map of darkest Africa. Then the rear of a small skirt went up over a curly head and the avenging slipper in lightning strokes kept time to the music in the air. And I said, there is Paradise lost! The sympathizing, half angry old nurse bore her weeping, sobbing charge to the nursery and bound up his broken heart, and soothed him to sleep with her old-time lullaby:

“Dar now, dar now, he’s gone! Bless its little heart! Dey treats it like a dog. Ole black mammy’s de best friend de chile’s got in de world!” And then she tucked him away in the Paradise of his childish slumbers.

SOUTHERN PLATFORM DEPARTMENT

Southern Platform — The Humorous, the Pathetic and the Dramatic. — The Mysteries — Thomas Jefferson and the Average Man. — The Lyceum Platform. — Echoes from the Field. — A Great Lecturer.

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These are the ruling elements of the platform. Around them are built all the successes of the Lyceum, and the lack of them is responsible for all the failures that stand like tombstones, along the route, as we journey with the truly great.

We are all agreed on the efficacy of humor, and we join without dissent in lauding the man who has the power to make the world laugh. He is as much our benefactor as the man whose scholarly and laborious research solves for us some great scientific problem which sets civilization forward; for, does he not unlock for us the gates of mirth, and climax a day of toil with an hour of restful merriment? His side-splitting joke pays the Doctor’s bill in advance by keeping us well and hearty; it settles pro tem. the grocer’s bill by making us forget it. His clever story charms and fascinates us, and we follow him down sunny lanes of laughter, and through sighing groves of pathos until the cares and vexations of our busy lives recede from us like a troubled shore. With the God-like power of genius, he leads us out of the thorn-hedged paths of everyday life, into the happy garden of the ideal where the flowers of sentiment bloom perennial, and the song of every bird is a lilted fragment of the universal chorus of love. This magic garden on the margin of the dusty field of reality from which we dig our daily bread, is an oasis to which we may not long repair, but to linger for an hour rests us from toil and refreshes us for labor. From behind its roses no venomous serpent is privileged to strike, and from its peaceful skies no hurricane may swoop down to lay waste. ’Tis there that the eye of despair is kindled with hope, the brow of care is smoothed with forgetfulness, and the lips of melancholy are curled with a smile.

All hail to the man of humor and pathos! (He cannot possess one without possessing the other.) Pathos is but the gentle sister of humor. Her emotions229 have no kinship with sorrow; her tears are the trembling jewels of tender memories, and she has only to dry her eyes to disclose a smile.

Next to humor and pathos, the most important requisite to a successful career on the platform, is the dramatic element which enables a man to “suit the action to the word,” and by the subtle power of the actor’s art, bring us to worship or despise, at his will, the character he portrays, or the principle he advocates. We hang at highest tension on the words of such a man, when the same words spoken in a commonplace way, would send us to sleep in our seats. How often have we seen the beauty of the Lord’s Prayer marred by some guttural-voiced exhorter who delivered it as coldly as he would have read a report of the mule market, or the price of pumpkins! and yet it is said that the great Booth with his incomparable rendition of this sacred prayer could lead an audience into the very presence and smile of God. Since time began, the dramatic in art and literature has received the homage of all people and all nations. This love of the dramatic sits enthroned alike in the heart of the savage and the man of letters, the highwayman and the clergyman, the ignoramus and the intellectual Titan. This strange attribute in the make-up of humanity is at once a dangerous and a glorious element. Too often it has nerved the murderer’s hand and steeled the heart of cruelty, but civilization is the master which is taming it.

In the long gone ages of heartless kings and fawning subjects, when fierce gladiators met in the death struggle, and the cruel ruler and his multitudes cheered the ending of a human life, they were but satiating their unholy love of the dramatic. Before such a picture, the great common heart of to-day turns sick with horror, but there is another picture dimmed also with many centuries, which makes the blood leap with different emotions, and which the future will guard with jealous pride. It is the dramatic picture of a little band of Christians in the center of a vast arena, awaiting the approach of the wild beasts which are to tear their limbs apart, and quietly kneeling in their last prayer. The dramatic effect of that prayer sent a thrill through all the ages, and nerved the hearts of the millions who were to follow the martyrs, as no common incident could have done.

We worship tragedy, and find satisfaction only in thrilling climaxes, and out of the multitudes of the passing years, history hands us the names of only a few who have paid the price of deathless fame. The tragic death of Julius Cæsar magnified his mighty deeds a hundred fold, and the dramatic but inglorious climax of St. Helena sent the great Napoleon thundering into history.

GUY CARLTON LEE, Ph.D., LL.D.

Dr. Guy Carlton Lee, Literary Editor of the Baltimore Sun, and formerly of the faculties of Johns Hopkins and Columbia Universities, is the latest acquisition of the platform among the strong literary men of to-day. He is the most distinguished of our younger school of historians, and as an orator he belongs to the vigorous, dramatic type so ably represented by Wendling and Gunsaulus, who have long been familiar figures on the American platform. Dr. Lee’s first lecture tour will include the South the coming season, under the direction of The Rice Bureau of Nashville.

The early sunlight filtered through the filmy draperies to where a wondering baby stretched his dimpled hands to catch the rays that lit his face and flesh like dawn lights up a rose. His startled gaze caught and held the dawn of day in rapturous looks that spoke the dawn of Self, for with the morning gleam out came the greater wonder. It was the mystery of Life.

Across a cradle where, sunk in satin pillows, lay a still, pale form as droops a rose from some fierce heat, the evening shadows aslant, and spoke of peace. The twilight calm enclosed the world in silence deep as Truth, and on the little face the wondering look had given place to one of sweet repose. It was the mystery Death.

At head and foot the tapers burned, a golden light that clove the night as Hope the encircling gloom. Across the cot where lay the fair, frail form, his hand reached out to hers and met and clasped in tender burning touch. Into the eyes of each there came the look that is the light of life; that spoke of self to each, yet told they two were one. It was the mystery to which the mysteries, Life and Death, bow down—the mystery of Love.

The epitaph on the monument of Thomas Jefferson, written by himself, reads thus:

These three deeds he doubtless regarded as the greatest of his life. But the real greatness of Thomas Jefferson, and his value to his country, cannot be comprehended in any recital of specific deeds. His influence is of a broader scope and flows in a deeper current. He stood for a principle which to-day constitutes the very bulwark of this nation, and is not only her strength but her pride. That principle is the right of every citizen to have a part in the government of the nation—to direct its policy—to be responsible for its errors—to share in its triumphs.

Thomas Jefferson recognized the value and stood for the rights of the average man, in a time when those rights were in great jeopardy. In this he displayed his characteristic political foresight, for the average man is the backbone of the nation. He has achieved the triumphs of her past and holds the key to her future destiny.

In my mind’s eye I scan the history of our nation as one might view a panorama.

I see a company of stern-faced men land on the bleak New England shore and kneel in prayer upon a rocky beach. They have crossed a stormy ocean to engage in the hard task of establishing a colony in the New World, where they may worship God as they desire—the earnest, stalwart, heroic Pilgrim Fathers. But who are they? Average men.

Yonder is a company of men standing at Concord Bridge awaiting the advance of British regulars. They fight and some fall in the battle and by that sacrifice become immortal—the first martyrs to American liberty. Who are they? Volunteer soldiers—farmers and tradesmen—average men of the community.

I see a caravan of crude and picturesque conveyances wending their way across the Western plains—each wagon containing a family of pioneers—the advance-guard of civilization—enduring hardships and performing mighty labors of which we reap the benefits. Who are they? Average men and women.

Here are two armies drawn up in battle order—hundreds of thousands of young and valiant men; fighting for what they regard their rights and duties; suffering unspeakable privations and performing deeds of matchless valor—the army of the North and the army of the South—whose conflict demonstrated to the world the extraordinary resources of this nation, the exceptional qualities of the American soldier and the absolutely unconquerable strength of a united country. Who are these soldiers? Fathers and sons from farm and store and factory. Average men.

I see a half-dozen regiments charging a Cuban hillside to dislodge a fortified enemy—strong, alert, confident soldiers—their courage born of the consciousness that they are fighting for right and justice against wrong and oppression. Who are they? A strange conglomeration of militia men, regular army soldiers, nabobs from New York, rough riders from the plains—but all of them average men.

So through all the years of our nation’s history, in the hours of her peril and of her achievements, she has been saved from shame and has been crowned with glory by the deeds of her average men.

Great men have arisen from time to time to lead her armies into battle or233 to defend her principles of liberty and justice, but, after all, these leaders had been powerless and, indeed, impossible except for the rank and file—the host of average men, who followed them and put into effect their teaching; not as slaves, but as free men doing their duty as intellect and conscience had directed.

Who is it that will determine the future policy of this nation and write success or failure above her gates? Not her millionaires, nor her statesmen, nor her scholars, nor her soldiers, but the average men whose votes count millions in the aggregate and whose will is law.

Thomas Jefferson understood this and read the future with unerring mind. Therefore he made it his chief concern and his great political work to protect the rights and enlarge the privileges of the average man—the bone and sinew of the state.

HON. ALF TAYLOR,
One of the most eloquent and scholarly contributions to the intellectual menu of the coming season will be the new lecture of Hon. Alf Taylor, “If Columbus Should Wake.”

SAMUEL SIEGEL.
Samuel Siegel, the great mandolinist, who is known to more people than any other player of this instrument, is very popular throughout the South. He is the originator of the system used by the Siegel-Myers Correspondence School of Music, and is also exclusive mandolinist for the Edison, Victor and Columbia Phonograph Companies. Mr. Siegel will tour the South next season at the head of the Siegel-Meyer-Reed Concert Company.

The Lyceum Platform is one of the world’s evangels. It has its teachers, heroes, apostles and prophets. It has had a wonderful history, and is still making history. It is a marvellous power for intellectual, social and moral good, and never more so than to-day. Its lecturers are strong not only in their ability to entertain, but in all those attributes which make for the best in human character. It goes without saying that such men come to the people with a message. Whether it be Watterson or Graves, or De Motte, or Conwell or Wendling, or Willitts; whether Dolliver, Gunsaulus, Hillis, Miller, Bain, McIntyre, McClary, or delightful Bob Taylor, the minds, hearts and consciences of men are turned in the direction of right things, and there is an impetus and an uplift which blesses all who hear.

How wide the influence, and how great the responsibility of the lyceum lecturer! In a general way, at least, all men concede the power of oratory. The close student of the sources of human influence fully recognizes that power, in all its good and evil possibilities. Eloquently spoken words produce more immediate and fully as permanent results as eloquently written ones. When Demosthenes delivered a patriotic oration, the people who heard him said at once, “Let us go and fight Philip!” A little child after listening to George Whitefield’s beautiful and impassioned pictures of Heaven and the Deity, sobbed, “Let me go to Mr. Whitefield’s God!” There are hundreds in our country to-day who are what they are, not only in the success and happiness of their own lives, but as factors toward the wise solution of the profoundest problems of being because of the spoken words, the messages of the present-day lyceum.

The Lyceum Platform thirty and forty years ago could boast of a score of thinkers, some of whom were orators; they served well their day and generation; products of the “form and pressure of the time,” they met its requirements, and left behind them evidences of work nobly done, and no man can say the memory of them shall perish. In far greater measure, because of the infinitely greater number of superior lecturers, the common people to-day are being educated in every phase of thought and purpose worthy earnest consideration. When one considers all this, the faint cry occasionally heard from those who do not take wide views of existing conditions, as to the “decay of the lyceum” is not warranted. Wherever and whenever the true lyceum idea is conserved in the work of the platform, the evidences of strength, wisdom and beauty are at once evident and undeniable.

Since the earlier days, the Lyceum has taken on an entertainment phase, which, while not wholly related to the lyceum idea, serves admirably in meeting and filling the desire there is and ever will be in the human heart for the joyous pleasures of life. The entertainment side of the Lyceum belongs to the realm of the heart paramountly, if not wholly, while the work of the lecturer appeals to the intellect and the conscience, and so the “three thirds” which make men up—the Mind, the Heart and the Conscience—are accorded that which strengthens and enriches. Herein have we all of life’s philosophy, brought to us with mental conviction, with emotional delighting, and spiritual moving. We get glimpses of what may be called the Trinity of Man. There is no side of us which does not respond. Let all this triune service of the Lyceum be clean and high; let not the desire for financial gain hush one worthy voice, or turn aside from the straight path a single lofty purpose, and the Lyceum shall be maintained so long as time endures, because it shall be of the blessed things which are not born to die. Lecturers and entertainers may come and go as individual factors of236 lyceum work, but the Lyceum as an idea, a force, an inspiration, shall go on forever.

The traveler looking upon Niagara sees the onward rush and surge of countless drops of water. They sweep by and pass on, and return not again. Still other countless millions of drops follow them, and forever follow, and so in spite of separateness, there is perpetuity and permanence. Niagara is immortal. The teachers, heroes, apostles, prophets, singers and entertainers, come and go, and pass out to the great sea beyond, but others come with word and song and smile, and forever shall they come, and so as with Niagara, there is perpetuity and permanence. The Lyceum Platform is immortal.

WARD BAKER.
“Music is God’s voice heard in a language without words.”
Among the strong popular companies which will visit the South next season, is the Boynton Concert Company, and one of the leading performers of this Company is Ward Baker. Mr. Baker is one of the few musicians who play to the soul and the heart, as well as to the technical ear.

Frederick Warde opens his Southern tour May first.

Alton Pachard, the popular chalk talker, is entertaining Southern audiences with his unique and excellent program.

“Standard attractions,” is the decree the committees are pronouncing, and “the survival of the fittest” will be the result.

Ida Benfey is adding to her laurels in the South. She recently gave George Eliot’s beautiful story of “The Mill on the Floss” before an audience of nearly four thousand people, in Nashville, as one of the numbers of the Lyceum Course.

W. G. Escott, the popular secretary of the Hillsboro, Texas, Y. M. C. A., writes the following report of the recent state convention held at Hillsboro:

The Twenty-second Annual State Convention of the Texas Young Men’s Christian Association was held in Hillsboro, Texas, March 18-21. The Hillsboro Association made preparation for three hundred delegates but only about two hundred were in attendance. It was said by all to be one of the best conventions in every respect that has been held in years in Texas. The prominent speakers of the convention were Dr. Ira Landrith, of Nashville; Rev. Dr. Carroll, of Dallas, Texas; Dr. T. S. Clyce, president Austin College, Sherman, Texas; Judge John C. Townes, of Texas State University, and Dr. S. P. Brooks, president Baylor University, Waco, Texas. The program was very strong in every particular. The delegates all expressed themselves as being royally entertained by the citizens of Hillsboro. The only thing that could have added to the pleasure of the gathering would have been better weather.

The Texas Lyceum Association met during the convention and met the different Bureaus represented and considered their talent. The following237 were represented: New Dixie Bureau, Midland Bureau, Slayton Bureau, and The Rice Bureau. After considering all the talent offered, the decision was in favor of the Rice Bureau. The Associations of the state have dealt with the Rice Bureau for several years and their attractions have been first-class and according to representation and the service so satisfactory that the members felt that there could be nothing gained by making a change, so the Association business will be with The Rice Bureau again the coming season. The new officers of the T. L. A. are Samuel Warr, Cleburne, President; J. L. Hunter, Waco, Secretary and Treasurer.

GEO. C. MILN,
Of International Fame.
It is a matter of much interest both North and South that Geo. C. Miln, the great orator-actor, after many years of absence from America, will make a tour of the United States next season, presenting his great lecture, “The Story of a Strolling Player.” Mr. Miln has played the plays of Shakespeare in almost every civilized country under the sun. He will be remembered by Americans as the brilliant orator who succeeded Robert Collyer in the pulpit of Unity Church, Chicago. His oration on the death of Garfield is considered one of the modern classics.

I wonder whether many of the people of Nashville remember a newspaper printed in that city in 1876? To the few it was known as the Evening Mail. To the many it was not known at all. We had not advocated municipal ownership, we who conducted the enterprise, but the sheriff somehow took it into his head that we did; and as he could not turn the property over to the city, he kept it for the county. I don’t know what was finally done with it. I suppose it became but an echo of dust.

The paper was “established” by a number of printers and newspaper men who had nothing else to do. As we were to share alike in the profits we went alike to the free lunch counter. It was a pure democracy and the man who owned fifteen shares of stock received no more than the man who owned one. The paper was edited with longing and printed with hope. We were all of us optimists. If a cloud arose in our sky we looked upon it as a balloon ascension. I remember but one day of reproof and censure. The foreman came into the “sanctum” and said to the editor-in-chief: “There is trouble in the composing room, sir.”

The editor, an old gentleman who loved to write and who vaguely believed that eventually one of his editorials might be read from beginning to end, looked up and sighed.

“Trouble?”

“Ah, and serious trouble, sir.”

“What is it?”

“Why, Ewing says that he’s got to eat.”

“Eat!” echoed the editor. “What can he mean by such impudence? Did you reason with him?”

“I did, sir; I told him he ought to be ashamed of himself.”

“And was he?”

“No, sir; he forthwith gave me an example of insubordination. He accused me of hiding a sandwich in my desk.”

The editor thought a long time. He had written on the situation in Europe and had given advice to England,238 France and Germany—he had told the Powers what to do with Turkey, but this sandwich required deeper meditation. “How many shares of stock does Ewing hold?” he inquired.

“Ten, I believe, sir.”

“Well, it seems to me that a man holding so many shares ought to be possessed of more dignity. Let him transfer his stock to some one who stands not high in his regard, and resign. You may go. But, wait a moment, foreman. If you should happen to have a sandwich hidden in your desk, don’t forget me. We have always been good friends, you know.”

It was about this time that Major DeMaine made his appearance in Nashville. He came with a heavily-worded recommendation from the Boston School of Oratory. It was declared that he was the greatest orator of the day or night. He had talked in Faneuil Hall. It appeared in the paper Flanel Hall, but that made no difference. He would have been the greatest of all actors but that he was religiously inclined and deplored the thought of giving up his earnest life to the trivial mimickry of the stage. He was not well dressed but we ascribed this lack of duds to his individuality. But some of us questioned his greatness until he came around to the office and put into the Mail a full page advertisement. Then we knew that he was great. This full page was an announcement together with the press notices of his great lecture on Humanity. Beecher said that it was profound and in an autograph letter Mark Twain swore that it was funnier than Artemus Ward among the Mormons. We were possessed of a small job press, and on this machine the tickets were printed. We were to receive so much a hundred and we looked forward to a time when we might eat, sitting down. One man, a pampered youth named Billings, said that he must have a pair of shoes. At first we took this for badinage, for one of this fellow’s whimsical jokes, but soon we discovered that he meant it. We called a meeting of the faculty. The editor sighed. For a man who possessed all wisdom he was the most sighing man I ever knew. With him a sigh answered for declaration and for epigram. He was never at a loss for sigh. So he sighed and asked Billings if he had well considered the situation. Billings answered that he thought he had.

“And you must have shoes, you Beau Brummel! Just at this time of dawning prosperity you must come forward to swamp our hope with needless extravagance. Transfer your stock, Billings, and resign.”

The lecture was to be given in a building which stood somewhere in Summer Street. We were to sell the tickets to our friends and were to share in the profits. And with what will we went forth! A stranger might have thought that the city had been invaded by a gang of hold-up men. Well, the night came. We were present, eighteen of us. The editor and the business manager were absent, having been invited to attend a luncheon given by a politician. But eighteen of us were there to hear that great out-rush of the human mind. It may have been that the learning was too deep for us, that the humor was too skilfully hidden. There was a large audience and at first there was much applause, but it dropped off along about the second round. At the close, however, there came something to arouse our interest. Upon the table the lecturer emptied about a bushel of cubes wrapped in paper. “Each one of these cubes contains a piece of soap,” said he. “It is the finest that has ever been made. And this is the offer that I shall make to you: I shall sell these cubes at twenty-five cents each, and in at least half of the papers is contained a yearly subscription to the Evening Mail, a paper which Mr. Watterson declares is the freest and best-written journal in America. He himself is thinking of taking the editorship of it on the first day of next July. Let us open a few of these papers. Ah, we here have a subscription, here is another—another—why, there are no end of them. I will now pass out among you.”

They bought his soap. He was239 giving our paper a boost and none save a great man could do that. Surely, the day of our prosperity was about to dawn. “I will be around early in the morning to settle for the advertisement, the tickets and the many subscriptions,” he said to one of us. “And now don’t think me presumptuous in what I said. Watterson has his eye on this paper.”

He did not come around the next day. We called on the business manager and he said that no arrangements for subscriptions had been made with him. We spoke to the editor and he sighed. Then, and for days afterward, there came broken streams of people with orders for yearly subscriptions. It was difficult to explain. The most of our stockholders had been present and had heard the promises made by Major DeMaine. So we dozed off into the bed prepared by the sheriff.

The last time I saw the editor he took my hand with a sigh and said: “It was a great pity that I went to that political luncheon. Ah, politics, ruination of mighty empires!”

Years afterward, in company with Col. Zeb. Ward, I was going through the Arkansas penitentiary. Near the wall I observed an oldish man washing a buggy. He had a familiar look, in spite of his stripes, and I spoke to Colonel Ward concerning him. “He is known as Commodore Sassafrac,” said the Colonel. “He got up a great land scheme down in the bottoms—told the negroes that he had the management of the great Mexican war land claim. Seventy million acres were set aside for the colored citizens, and all they had to do was to show an order from the Commodore, which he gave for five dollars apiece.”

I went up to him and spoke. He looked at me. I reminded him of the Nashville Evening Mail. “Ah,” said he, “I am pleased to meet anyone from the glowing past. Back upon that time I look with fondness. Your great journal made life worth living.”

DAVID BISPHAM,
One of the great stars of Grand Opera, who devotes a few weeks of his time each season to lyceum work. The fact that an artist of Bispham’s standing can be brought to the platform, is one of the strong evidences of its phenomenal development.

DR. THOMAS E. GREEN.
Dr. Thomas E. Green, whose lecture, “The Key to the Twentieth Century,” has been so widely and favorably commented upon by the Press of the Country within the last year, will add a few Southern cities to his platform itinerary, the coming season.

MISS CLYDA B. REEVES,
of Whitewright, Texas,
one of the brightest and most promising aspirants for platform honors, among Southern young women.