The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, Vol. VOL. LXXXV, No. 1, November, 1912

MR. WELLAWAY’S HOST — I — II — III — IV — V — VI — VII

BY ELLIS PARKER BUTLER

Author of “Pigs is Pigs,” “The Man Who was Some One Else,” etc.

“NO, sir,” said Mr. Wellaway, positively, “this is not the club at all. This is not the sort of club. The club I mean has a heavier head—heavier and flatter.”

The clerk looked here and there among the racks of golf-clubs, but his general manner was that of hopelessness. There seemed to be thousands of golf-clubs in the racks, and he had shown Mr. Wellaway club after club, each seeming to fit the description Mr. Wellaway had given, but in vain. Mr. Wellaway looked up and down the shop.

“If I could remember the name of the clerk,” he said, “he would know the club. He sold one of them to Mr. ——” He hesitated. “Now I can’t remember his name. A rather large man with a smooth face. He has a small wart or a wen just at the side of his nose. You didn’t wait on such a man last week, did you?”

“I can’t recall him by the description,” said the clerk.

“Pshaw, now!” said Mr. Wellaway, with vexation. “I know his name as well as I know my own! I would forget my own if people didn’t mention it to me once in a while. It is peculiar how a man can remember faces and forget names, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is,” said the clerk. “If you just look through these clubs yourself, you may be able to find what you want. Was the name of the clerk you had in mind Mills? Or Waterson? Or Frazer?”

“It might be Frazer,” said Mr. Wellaway, doubtfully.

“If it was Frazer,” said the clerk, “he left here last Saturday.”

“But couldn’t you look up Frazer’s sales and see what kind of driver he sold? But of course you can’t if I don’t remember the name of the man he sold it to, can you?”

“Not very well,” admitted the clerk, with a polite smile. “Now, if you like a heavy club—”

He was interrupted by another customer. The golf goods were on the basement floor, and a short flight of steps led to the basement from the main floor, and the new customer had come down the stairs. He was a big, bluff, hearty man, with a cheerful manner and a rather red face, and Mr. Wellaway immediately remembered having met him sometime and somewhere. He nodded his head with the ready comradeship of a fellow-golfer.

“Hello!” exclaimed the new-comer, heartily. “Well! well! so you are at it too, are you? Got the golf fever?” Then to the clerk: “Got my brassy mended?”

“What name, sir?” asked the clerk.

“Didn’t leave any name,” said the big man. “It’s a mahogany brassy, the only real mahogany brassy you ever saw. I had it made to order,” he said to Mr. Wellaway, as the clerk hurried away to the repair department. “So you’ve taken up golf, have you? It’s a great game.”

“It is a great game,” said Mr. Wellaway; “but I’ve been at it a long time. Not that I’m much good at it.”

“No one is ever any good at it except the crack players,” said the other. “I’m as bad as they make ’em; but I love it. Where do you play?”

“Van Cortlandt,” said Mr. Wellaway.

“Ever play Westcote?”

“No,” said Mr. Wellaway. “I’ve been in the village, but I didn’t know there was a course there.”

“Best little course you ever saw,” said the hearty man. “Nine holes, but all beauties. I want you to play it sometime. Look here,” he added suddenly, “what have you got on for this afternoon?”

“Well, I was going up to Van Cortlandt,” said Mr. Wellaway, hesitatingly.

“That’s all off now! You’re coming out with me and have a try at our Westcote course. Yes, you are. You know I never take ‘No’ for an answer when I make up my mind. And, look here, we have just time to get a train.”

Mr. Wellaway’s host beckoned violently to the clerk.

“But my clubs—” protested Mr. Wellaway.

“That’s all right, too. Our professional can fit you out.”

“I ought to telephone my wife.”

“Oh, do it from the club.”

The temptation was too much for Mr. Wellaway. It was a hot day, and he knew the public links at Van Cortlandt would be crowded to the limit. He imagined the cool green of the little course at Westcote and let himself be persuaded, and in four minutes he was aboard the commuters’ train, being whirled under the East River.

It was not until the train was out of the tunnel and speeding along over the Long Island right of way that he felt the first qualm of uneasiness; but it was a very slight qualm. He was ashamed that he could not remember the name of his host. The man’s face was certainly familiar enough, and the man evidently knew Mr. Wellaway well enough to invite him to play golf, or Mr. Wellaway would not have been invited; but the name would not make itself known. But, after all, that was an easily remedied matter. The first friend they met would call Mr. Wellaway’s host by name.

At Woodside they left the electric train and boarded the steam train, but no one had spoken to Mr. Wellaway’s host on the platform. One or two men had nodded to him in a manner that showed they liked him, but none mentioned his name. Mr. Wellaway smiled. He would use a little very simple Sherlock Holmes work when the conductor came through for the fares.

Mr. Wellaway had noticed that his host used a fifty-trip ticket-book when the conductor asked for the fare on the electric, and now he waited until the new conductor tore the trip leaves from the book and returned the book to its owner.

“I see you use a book,” said Mr. Wellaway. “Do you find it cheaper than buying mileage?”

He held out his hand for the book. It was an ordinary gesture of curiosity, and his host surrendered the book.

“No, I don’t, not usually,” he said. “And a commutation-ticket is cheaper than either. Now, a commutation-ticket costs—”

He entered into the commuter’s usual closely computed average of cost per trip, and Mr. Wellaway nodded his acquiescence in the figures; but his mind was elsewhere. He read as though interested the face of the book, and then turned it over. There on the back, in a bold hand, under the contract the thrifty railroads make book-holders sign, was the signature, “Geo. P. Garris.” Mr. Wellaway stared at the name while he ransacked his memory to recall a George P. Garris. He not only could not recall a George P. Garris, but he could not remember ever having heard or seen the name of Garris. If the second “r” was meant for a “v,” the name might be “Garvis,” but that did not help. He could not recall a Garvis. At any rate, it was some satisfaction to know his host was George P. Garris or George P. Garvis. When and how he had met him would probably soon appear.

Drawn by Henry Raleigh

“‘LOOK HERE,’ HE ADDED SUDDENLY, ‘WHAT HAVE YOU GOT ON FOR THIS AFTERNOON?’”

“I see you are looking at that name,” said Mr. Wellaway’s host, “and I don’t wonder. Matter of fact, I have no business to have that book; but Garvis was a good fellow, and he needed the money, so I bought it of him when he left Westcote.”

“Oh,” said Mr. Wellaway, blankly, and then: “So that’s why you are not using a commutation-ticket this month.” He had to say something.

“That’s the reason,” said his host; “and this is Westcote.”

THE Westcote Country Club was all Mr. Wellaway’s host had boasted. The greens rolled away from the small club-house in graceful beauty, small groves of elms and maples studded the course, and picturesque stone walls and sodded bunkers provided sufficient hazards. Everything was as neat as a new pin. It was a sight to make any golfer happy, but when the station cab rolled up to the club-house door, Mr. Wellaway was not entirely happy. He was beginning to feel like an interloper. The more he studied the face of his host, the surer he became that he had no business to be a guest. As a word in print, when studied intensely, becomes a mere jumble of meaningless letters, so the face of his host grew less and less familiar, until Mr. Wellaway had decided his familiarity was with the type of face and not with this particular face. One thing alone comforted him: his host seemed to know Mr. Wellaway.

As they left the cab, Mr. Wellaway made a desperate effort to learn the name of his host; for he felt that if he did not learn it now he was in for a most unpleasant five minutes. Mr. Wellaway was a small, gentle little man, but he was almost rude in his insistence that he be permitted to pay the cabby.

“Yes, I will,” he insisted. “I certainly will. If you don’t let me, I’ll be downright angry. You paid my fare, and you offer me an afternoon’s sport; but I am going to pay this cabman.”

“But this is my party,” said his host.

“You go right into the club-house, and let me pay,” said Mr. Wellaway. “I want to do this, and you ought to let me.” With a laugh the host turned away. Mr. Wellaway fumbled in his pocket until he was alone with the cabman.

“What is the charge?” he asked.

“Quarter,” said the cabby, briefly.

“Here’s a dollar,” said Mr. Wellaway. “Now, can you tell me the name of that man—the man who drove up with me?”

“No, sir,” said the cabman; “I don’t know what his name is.”

“I just wanted to know,” said Mr. Wellaway.

When he entered the club-house his host was alone.

“You wanted to telephone,” he said to Mr. Wellaway. “There’s the booth. It’s a money-in-the-slot machine. I’ll get a greens-ticket and a bag of clubs for you while you are in there, and we will not lose any time. When you come out, come up to the locker-room.”

Mr. Wellaway entered the booth and closed the door. He called for his number and waited while the connection was made. It was hot in the booth with the door closed, but not for the world would Mr. Wellaway have opened it.

“Hello, is that you, Mary?” he asked, when he had dropped the requisite coins in the slot at the request of the central. “This is Edgar. Yes. I’m out at Westcote, on Long Island. I’m going to play golf. I met a friend, and he insisted that I come out here and try his course. I say I met a friend. Yes, a friend. An old acquaintance. He lives out here.”

For a few seconds Mr. Wellaway listened.

“No, listen!” said Mr. Wellaway. “I don’t know what his name is, but I’ll find out. I just met him, you know, and he asked me, and I couldn’t say, ‘Thank you, I’ll accept; but what is your name?’ I couldn’t say that, could I? When he knew me so well? Oh, nonsense, Mary! I tell you it’s a man.”

As he listened to what Mary had to say to this, Mr. Wellaway sighed deeply.

“No, it is not funny that I don’t know his name,” he said. “You know I can’t remember names, and I know thousands of men, and speak to them, and can’t recall their names. Listen! There’s no reason in the world for your jealousy to get stirred up. Not the least. I’ll know his name inside half an hour, and if you are going to act that way about it, I’ll telephone you the minute I learn it. Yes, I will! Well, that’s all right, too; but since you take that attitude, I’m going to telephone you. Good-by.” He waited half a minute for an answering “Good-by,” and then hung up the receiver softly. Mary’s jealousy was a real annoyance. Mr. Wellaway stepped out of the booth and wiped his forehead.

The small sitting-room of the club was deserted. In the adjacent butler’s pantry he could hear the steward at work, and above the low ceiling he could hear his host changing his shoes. On the bulletin-board, among the announcements of competitions and new rules, was a list of members posted for dues or house-accounts. It was a very short list, and Mr. Wellaway recognized none of the names. On the opposite wall was a framed list of the club-members, perhaps one hundred and twenty-five, and Mr. Wellaway ran his eye down them. Only one of the names was familiar, that of George C. Rogers, and the host was not Rogers, for Mr. Wellaway knew Rogers well. Not another name was even faintly familiar. Mr. Wellaway was still poring over the list when his host descended the stairs.

“I see,” said Mr. Wellaway, “that George Rogers is a member of the club.”

“That so?” said his host. “I don’t know him. I don’t know many of the fellows yet. Rankin and Mallows are putting me up for membership, but I’m playing on a temporary card until the next meeting of the board of governors. They say there’s no doubt I’ll be admitted; but I don’t take chances. I pay as I go until I’m a full member. When I’m in, I’ll sign checks like the rest of them; but until I am in, I’ll pay cash. Now, you run up and shuck your coat, if you want to, while I get you a bag of clubs and a greens-ticket. I left my locker open—Number 43.”

Mr. Wellaway ascended the stairs. All about the locker-room were the lockers, two high, and on each was the name of the holder. The door of 43 stood open, and Mr. Wellaway darted for it, and looked for the name of his host. There was no name on the locker.

Drawn by Henry Raleigh

“‘NOW, CAN YOU TELL ME THE NAME OF THAT MAN—THE MAN WHO DROVE UP WITH ME?’”

IN the locker was the usual accumulation of golfer’s odds and ends. A few badly scarred golf-balls lay on the floor, along with a pair of winter golf-shoes. A couple of extra clubs stood in one corner. A sweater hung from a hook, and from another hook hung the coat and waistcoat his host had just removed. From one pocket, the inside pocket, of the coat protruded the tops of three or four letters. Mr. Wellaway stared at the letters and perspired profusely. He had only to put out his hand and raise the letters partly from the pocket to know the name of his host. Then he could make an excuse to telephone his wife again. Assuredly there was nothing dishonorable in merely glancing at the address of the letters. But he stood very still and listened intently before he put out his hand. He could hear the soft tread of rubber-soled shoes on the floor below. Very gently Mr. Wellaway raised the letters from the pocket just as he heard the rubber-soled shoes touch the zinc treads of the stairs. He slid the letters back into the pocket in a panic, and jerked off his coat, but he had seen the address of the outermost letter. It was an unmailed letter, and it was addressed to “Mrs. Edgar Wellaway, Rimmon Apartments, West End Avenue, New York.”

“All ready!” said his host, cheerfully.

“Just a moment,” said Mr. Wellaway. He was taking his papers from his coat-pockets and putting them in the hip-pocket of his trousers. A man cannot be too careful.

MR. WELLAWAY’S host used a Scotch-plaid golf-bag, without initials painted on it, and when the two men issued from the club-house the bag was leaning against the wall immediately under the outside bulletin-board. One list on the board was headed “Applications for Membership,” but there were no names entered later than a month and a half old, and all these had the word “Elected” written after them. When Mr. Wellaway caught sight of the other list his face brightened.

“My handicap is eighteen,” he said, looking through the list of members with the handicaps set opposite the names.

“Two better than mine,” said his host. “I play at twenty.”

“Twenty?” said Mr. Wellaway, running his finger up and down the handicap list.

“But I haven’t been given a handicap here yet,” said his host. “They don’t give you a handicap here until you are a member.”

“Oh,” said Mr. Wellaway, and turned away. He had no further interest in the handicap-list.

The course was clear for the entire first hole. Mr. Wellaway got away with a clean drive, but sliced his second into the rough, while his host sliced his first into a sand-pit, got out with a high niblick shot, and lay on the putting-green in three. Mr. Wellaway wasted a stroke chopping out of the rough, and put his ball on the green with a clean iron shot in four, close enough to putt out in one, making the hole a five. His host took two to hole out, doing another five, but winning the hole on his handicap, which gave him one stroke on the first hole. It was good golf, par golf, and Mr. Wellaway was elated. To do a hole in par on a strange course, after getting into the rough, was better golf than he knew how to play, and the loss of the hole after such playing made him only the more eager to play his best. He forgot Mary’s jealousy and his annoyance at not knowing the name of his host, and played golf as he had never played it before. The professional’s clubs seemed to work magic in his hands. At the ninth hole he was still one down, but his host did the first hole on the second round in eight, to Mr. Wellaway’s seven, and it was seesaw around the course the second time, with all even when eighteen holes had been played.

“I guess we can play it off before the storm hits us,” said Mr. Wellaway’s host, and for the first time Mr. Wellaway noticed the black clouds piling up in the west. They started the nineteenth hole with a rush of wind whirling the dust from the road across the course, and before they had walked to where their balls lay after their drives, the forward edge of the storm-clouds, low, ragged, and an ugly yellow, was full over them, and a glare of lightning, followed by a tremendous crash, blinded them both. Mr. Wellaway’s host threw his bag of clubs on the grass as though it were red hot, and started at a full run for the club-house. Mr. Wellaway followed him.

Except for the steward and his wife, the club-house was already deserted, the last automobile tearing down the club roadway as Mr. Wellaway reached the veranda. The lightning exceeded anything Mr. Wellaway had ever seen, and crash followed crash in deafening explosions, as though the electrical storm had centered near the club-house. A fair-sized hickory-tree, half dead from the depredations of the hickory-bark beetle, fell crashing across the sleeping-room annex of the club-house. For half an hour after the rain began to fall in sheets the lightning continued, while Mr. Wellaway and his host stared at the storm through the windows of the club-house; but about six o’clock the worst of the storm had passed on, and the rain had become a steady, heavy downpour.

“There’s one thing sure,” said Mr. Wellaway’s host: “there’s no going home for you to-night.”

“But I must go home,” said Mr. Wellaway.

“If you must, of course you must,” said his host; “but there would be no sense in going in this rain. We will have dinner right here. I suppose you can get us up a couple of chops or something?”

“Yes, sir,” said the steward, who had returned from a survey of his sleeping-quarters. “Chops or steak.”

“Then I’ll just ’phone my wife that I’ll not be home,” said Mr. Wellaway’s host, and he entered the telephone-booth. In a few minutes he came out again. “Can’t get central,” he said with annoyance. “The thing is either cut off or burned out. Probably a tree has fallen across the wires. I hate to drag you out through all this rain, but my wife will be distracted if I don’t get home. She’ll imagine I’m killed. You will have to come home with me and take pot-luck.”

Drawn by Henry Raleigh

“VERY GENTLY MR. WELLAWAY RAISED THE LETTERS FROM THE POCKET JUST AS HE HEARD THE RUBBER-SOLED SHOES TOUCH THE ZINC TREADS OF THE STAIRS”

“Why, that’s very kind of you,” said Mr. Wellaway, “but I could not think of it. My own wife will be worrying. I’ll just scoot through the rain to the station and get the first train home.”

“Of course, if you think best,” said the host. “We have to pass the station on the way to my house. But Sarah would be glad to put you up for the night.”

The station was not as far as Mr. Wellaway had feared, for it was not necessary to walk to the main station; there was another nearer, and they reached it a few minutes before a train for the city was due. Mr. Wellaway’s host walked to the ticket-window.

“I presume the train is late,” he asked.

“You presume exactly right,” said the young man in the ticket-office. “She’s not only late, but she’s going to be later before she ever gets to New York. The lightning struck the Bloom Street bridge, and the bridge went up like fireworks. It will be about twenty-four hours before anybody from this town gets to New York.”

“Twenty-four hours!” exclaimed Mr. Wellaway, aghast. “But I can telegraph.”

“If you can, you can do more than I can do,” said the young man. “I’ve tried, and I can’t do it, and I’m a professional.”

“Well!” said Mr. Wellaway.

“All right,” said his host. “Now there’s nothing for you to do but accept my invitation, and I make it doubly warm. Sarah will be delighted. You are the first guest we’ve had for the night since we moved out here. She’ll be delighted, I tell you. And so will I.”

Drawn by Henry Raleigh

“‘A TALL, THIN FELLOW, WITH SANDY SIDEBURNS. PROBABLY A FLOOR-WALKER IN SOME SHOP, WITH A PERPETUAL SMILE’”

“But I ought to go home,” insisted Mr. Wellaway.

“But you can’t go home,” laughed his host. “Come right along. Sarah will be delighted. She’s—she’s fond of company. Perhaps our ’phone will be working. You can telephone your wife from our house. Really, Sarah will be glad—she’ll be delighted, I tell you.”

So Mr. Wellaway accompanied his host. The house to which he was led was an average suburban dwelling, a frame house of ample size, with wide verandas, a goodly lawn, and the usual clumps of shrubbery. At the screen door the host paused.

“If you don’t mind,” he said, “I’ll let you wait here while I step inside and tell Sarah we are coming. Sarah is the most hospitable of women, and that’s the reason I want to tell her. She’ll welcome you with open arms, but—you know how these hospitable women are, don’t you? They like a minute or two to get into a more than casual mood. It will be all right. Only a minute.”

“Certainly,” said Mr. Wellaway, feeling rather uncomfortable, and his host opened the door with a latch-key and entered. If Mr. Wellaway could have heard what passed inside that door, he would have turned and run.

“Darling!” exclaimed his host’s wife when she saw him. “How wet you are! Go right up-stairs and get into a hot bath this minute! You’ll die of cold!”

“In a minute, Sarah,” said her husband; “but, first, I’ve got a man out there. He’s going to stay for dinner and sleep here.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Sarah, letting her mind jump to her larder. “But we didn’t expect any one. Really I don’t know. Perhaps I can make what I have do. Is—is it any one important?”

“Don’t know,” said Mr. Wellaway’s host, hastily. “I’ll tell you all about it when I’m dressing. I don’t know the fellow’s name, but he knows me as well as I know you. I ought to know his name as well as I know yours, but I don’t. I met him somewhere, and I remember he was a good fellow. We’ll get his name out of him somehow before he’s in the house very long, but, for Heaven’s sake! don’t let him know I don’t know. He may be some one important. He looks as if he might be somebody. I’ll bring him in. Don’t give me away.”

“But you don’t know who he is. He may be a thief—”

“Hope not. I can’t let him stand out there any longer, anyway. Be pleasant to him.”

He threw open the door.

“Come right in!” he exclaimed heartily. “I’ve bearded the lioness, and told her the story of our lives. I don’t believe you have met before.”

“I have not had that pleasure,” said Mr. Wellaway, making his best bow, “but I am delighted, although I’m sorry to come unannounced.”

“Announced or unannounced, you might know you are always welcome,” said Sarah, charmingly. “And the first thing is to get on some dry clothes. You’ll both of you take cold. Run along, and I’ll see what we have for dinner.”

The garments given him by his host did not fit Mr. Wellaway specially well. They were considerably too large, but he was glad to get into anything dry. What dissatisfied him with them more than aught else was that they were the sort of garments of which the newspapers remark, “There were no marks of identification.” The spare room into which he was put offered no more aid. Three or four recent magazines lay on the small table, but bore no names except their own titles. For the rest, the spare room was evidently a brand-new spare room, fresh from the maker. For purposes of identification it might as well have been a hotel bedroom. Mr. Wellaway dressed hastily and hurried down-stairs.

The parlor, to the right of the stairs, stood open, and Mr. Wellaway entered. A large fireplace occupied one end of the room, and the furnishings and pictures bespoke a home of fair means, but no great wealth. Magazines lay on a console table, but what attracted Mr. Wellaway was a book-case. The case was well filled with books in good bindings, and Mr. Wellaway stepped happily across the carpet and laid his hand on the book-case door. It was locked.

MR. WELLAWAY’S host and his host’s wife descended the stairs together just as the maid issued from the dining-room to announce dinner, and once seated, the conversation turned to the storm, to the utter disruption of the telephone service, and to the game of golf the two men had been unable to finish. In the midst of the conversation Mr. Wellaway studied the monogram on the handles of his fork and spoon. It was one of those triumphs of monogrammery that are so beautiful as to be absolutely illegible. The name on the butter-knife handle was legible, however. It was “Sarah.”

The soup had been consumed, and the roast carved when Mr. Wellaway’s host looked at his wife and raised his eyebrows. She smiled in acknowledgment of the signal.

“Don’t you think some names are supremely odd?” she asked Mr. Wellaway. “My husband was telling me of one that came under his notice to-day. What was it, dear?”

“Oh, I shouldn’t have noticed it but for the circumstances,” said Mr. Wellaway’s host; “but it was a rather ridiculous name for a human being. Can you imagine any one carrying around the name of Wellaway?”

Mr. Wellaway gasped.

“Imagine being a Wellaway!” said Sarah. “Isn’t it an inhospitable name? It seems to suggest ‘Good-by; I’m glad you’re gone.’ Doesn’t it?”

“I can see the man with my mind’s eye,” said Mr. Wellaway’s host. “A tall, thin fellow, with sandy sideburns. Probably a floor-walker in some shop, with a perpetual smile.”

“But tell him the rest,” said Sarah, chuckling.

“Oh, the rest—that’s too funny!” said Mr. Wellaway’s host. “I had a letter this morning from this Mrs. Wellaway—”

Mr. Wellaway turned very red and moved uneasily in his chair.

“I ought to tell you that—that I know Mrs. Wellaway,” he stammered. “I—I know her quite well. In fact—”

“Then you’ll appreciate this,” said his host, merrily. “You know the business I’m in. Every one knows it. So you can imagine how I laughed when I read this letter.”

From the inside pocket of his coat Mr. Wellaway’s host took a letter. He removed the envelop and placed it on the table, address down.

“Listen to this,” he said: “‘Dear Sir: Only the greatest anguish of mind induces me to write to you and ask your assistance. It may be that I am the victim of an insane jealousy, but I fear the explanation is not so innocent. I distrust my husband, and anything is better than the pangs of uncertainty I now suffer. If your time is not entirely taken, I wish, therefore, to engage you to make certain that my fears are baseless or well founded. Please consider the matter as most confidential, for I am only addressing you because I know that when a matter is put in your hands it never receives the slightest publicity. Yours truly, Mrs. Edgar Wellaway.’”

When he had read the letter, Mr. Wellaway’s host lay back in his chair and laughed until the tears ran from his eyes, and his wife joined him, and their joy was so great they did not notice that Mr. Wellaway turned from red to white and choked on the bit of food he had attempted to swallow. When they observed him, he was rapidly turning purple, and with one accord they sprang from their chairs and began thumping him vigorously on the back. In a minute they had thumped so vigorously that Mr. Wellaway was pushing them away with his hands. He was still gasping for breath when they half led, half carried him to the parlor and laid him on a lounge.

“By George!” said his host, self-accusingly, “I shouldn’t have read you that letter. But I didn’t know you would think it so funny as all that. Do you feel all right now?”

“I feel—I feel—” gasped Mr. Wellaway. He could not express his feelings.

“Well, it was funny, writing that to me, of all people, wasn’t it?” said Mr. Wellaway’s host. “‘Not the slightest publicity.’ I suppose she looked up the name in the telephone directory, and got the wrong address. I know the fellow she was writing to. Same name as mine. Same middle initial. Think you can finish that dinner now?”

“No, thank you,” said Mr. Wellaway. “I think I’d like to rest here.”

“Just as you wish,” said his host. “Hello! There’s the telephone bell. You can ’phone your wife now, if you wish.”

“No, thank you,” said Mr. Wellaway, meekly. “I’ll not. It’s of no importance—no importance whatever.”

“WELL, what do you think!” exclaimed Mr. Wellaway’s host’s wife a few minutes later, as she entered the parlor. “Of all the remarkable things! You would never guess it. Who do you think just called me on the ’phone? That Mrs. Wellaway!”

“No!” exclaimed Mr. Wellaway’s host, and Mr. Wellaway sat straight up on the lounge.

“But she did,” said Sarah. “And she’s hunting that distrusted husband! She telephoned the country club, and the steward told her there had been no strangers there except your guest, so she telephoned here! Imagine the assurance of the—”

She stopped short and stared at Mr. Wellaway. He was going through all the symptoms of intense pain accompanied by loss of intelligence. Then he asked feebly,

“What—what did you tell her?”

“I told her he wasn’t here, and hadn’t been here, of course,” said Mr. Wellaway’s hostess, “and that we did not know any such man, and that I didn’t believe he had come to Westcote at all, and that if I had a husband I couldn’t trust, I’d keep better track of him than she did.”

“Did you—did you tell her all that?” asked Mr. Wellaway with anguish.

They stared at him in dismay.

“See here,” said his host, suddenly, “are you Mr. Wellaway?”

For answer Mr. Wellaway dropped back on the lounge and covered his face with his hands.

“Now, I’ll never, never be able to make Mary believe I was here,” he said, and then he groaned miserably.

“OH, I’m so sorry!” said Mr. Wellaway’s hostess in real distress. “We were absolutely unaware, Mr. Wellaway. We meant no harm. Roger did not know your name. But you can fix it all right. You can telephone Mrs. Wellaway that you are here. Telephone her immediately.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Wellaway. “I’ll do that. That’s what I must do,” and he went up the stairs to the telephone. He returned in ten minutes and found his host and hostess sitting opposite each other, staring at each other with sober faces. They looked at him eagerly as he entered. His face showed no relief.

“She says,” he said, “she says she don’t believe I’m here. She says I could telephone from anywhere, and say I was anywhere else. She says she just telephoned here, and knows I’m not here. And then she asked me where I was telephoning from, and—”

Mr. Wellaway broke down and hid his face in his hands.

“And I didn’t know where I was telephoning from!” he moaned. “I didn’t know the street or the house number, or—or the name!”

“You didn’t know the name!” cried Mr. Wellaway’s host. “You didn’t know my name was Murchison?”

“Murchison?” said Mr. Wellaway, blankly. “Not the—not the Murchison? Not Roger P. Murchison, the advertising agent, the publicity man?”

“Of course,” said Mr. Wellaway’s host. For a full minute Mr. Wellaway stared at Mr. Murchison.

“I know,” said Mr. Wellaway. “You eat at the Fifth Avenue! You sit by the palm just to the left of the third window every noon.”

“By George!” exclaimed Mr. Murchison. “I knew your face was familiar. And you sit at the end table right by the first window. Why, I’ve seen you there every day for a year.”

“Of course you have,” said Mr. Wellaway, cheerfully. “That explains everything. It makes it all as simple as—” His face fell suddenly. “But it doesn’t make it any easier about Mary.”

Mr. Murchison might have said that Mary was none of his concern, but he creased his brow in thought.

“Sarah,” he said at length, “run up-stairs and telephone Mrs. Wellaway that her husband is here. Tell her he means to stay over Sunday, and that he wants her to hire a taxicab and come out immediately and stay over Sunday. Tell her our game of golf was a tie, and I insist that Mr. Wellaway play off the tie to-morrow afternoon.”

Mrs. Murchison disappeared.

“And now,” said Mr. Murchison, genially, “you know my name, and you know my business, and I know your name, and everything is all right, and I’m mighty glad to know you as long as you are not a floor-walker. Oh, pardon me!” he added quickly, “you are not a floor-walker, are you? You didn’t say what your business was.”

Mr. Wellaway blushed.

“Names,” he said. “I’m a genealogist. My business is looking up names.”

Drawn by Henry Raleigh

“MR. WELLAWAY’S HOST THREW HIS BAG OF CLUBS ON THE GRASS AS THOUGH IT WERE RED HOT, AND STARTED AT A FULL RUN FOR THE CLUB-HOUSE”

STELLA MARIS — CHAPTER XXII — CHAPTER XXIII

BY WILLIAM J. LOCKE

Author of “The Beloved Vagabond,” “The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne,” “Septimus,” “The Glory of Clementina,” etc.

THEY found him lying on the sofa, a pitiable object, the whole of his head from the back of his neck to his eyebrows swathed in bandages. His clothes were mere limp and discolored wrappings. They looked as though they had been wet through, for the red of his tie had run into his shirt-front and collar. The coarse black sprouts on pallid cheek and upper lip gave him an appearance of indescribable grime. His eyes were sunken and feverish.

Unity uttered a little cry as she saw him, but checked it quickly, and threw herself on her knees by his side.

“Thank God you’re alive!”

He put his hand on her head.

“I’m all right,” he said faintly; “but you shouldn’t have come. That’s why I didn’t go straight home. I didn’t want to frighten you. I’m a ghastly sight, and I should have scared your aunt out of her wits.”

“But how, in Heaven’s name, man,” said Herold, “did you get into this state?”

“Something hit me over the head, and I spent the night in rain and sea-water on the rocks.”

“On the rocks? Where? At Southcliff?”

“Yes,” said John, “at Southcliff. I was a fool to go down, but I’ve been a fool all my life, so a bit more folly doesn’t matter.” He closed his eyes. “Give me a drink, Wallie—some brandy.”

Herold went into the dining-room, which adjoined the library, and returned with decanter, syphon, and glasses. He poured out a brandy and soda for John and watched him drink it; then he realized that he, too, would be the better for stimulant. With an abstemious man’s idea of taking brandy as medicine, he poured out for himself an extravagant dose, mixed a little soda-water with it, and gulped it down.

“That’ll do me good,” said John; but on saying it he fell to shivering, despite the heat of the summer afternoon.

“You’ve caught a chill,” cried Unity. She counseled home and bed at once.

“Not yet,” he murmured. “It was all I could do to get here. Let me rest for a couple of hours. I shall be all right. I’m not going to bed,” he declared with sudden irritability; “I’ve never gone to bed in the daytime in my life. I’ve never been ill, and I’m not going to be ill now. I’m only stiff and tired.”

“You’ll go to bed here right away,” said Herold.

John protested. Herold insisted.

“Those infernal clothes—you must get them off at once,” said he. John being physically weak, his natural obstinacy gave way. Unity saw the sense of the suggestion; but it was giving trouble.

“Not a bit,” said Herold. “There’s a spare bedroom. John can have mine, which is aired. Mrs. Ripley will see to it.”

He went out to give the necessary orders. Unity busied herself with unlacing and taking off the stiffened boots. Herold returned, beckoned to Unity, and whispered that he had telephoned for a doctor. Then he said to John:

“How are you feeling, dear old man?”

“My head’s queer, devilish queer. Something fell on it last night and knocked me out of time. It was raining, and I was sheltering under the cliff on the beach, the other side of the path, where you can see the lights of the house, when down came the thing. I must have recovered just before dawn; for I remember staggering about in a dazed way. I must have taken the road round the cliff, thinking it the upper road, and missed my footing and fallen down. I came to about nine this morning, on the rocks, the tide washing over my legs. I’m black and blue all over. Wonder I didn’t break my neck. But I’m tough.”

“Thank God you’re alive!” said Unity again.

He passed his hands over his eyes. “Yes. You must have thought all manner of things, dear. I didn’t realize till Ripley told me that I hadn’t let you know. I went out, meaning to catch the 7:15 and come back by the last train. But this thing knocked all memory out of me. I’m sorry.”

Herold looked in bewilderment at the stricken giant. Even now he had not accounted for the lunatic and almost tragic adventure. What was he doing on the beach in the rain? What were the happenings subsequent to his recovering consciousness at nine o’clock?

“Does it worry you to talk?” he asked.

“No. It did at first—I mean this morning. But I’m all right now—nearly all right. I’d like to tell you. I picked myself up, all over blood, a devil of a mess, and crawled to the doctor’s—not Ransome; the other chap, Theed. He’s the nearest; and, besides, I didn’t want to go to Ransome. I don’t think any one saw me. Theed took me in and fixed me up and dried my clothes. Of course he wanted to drag me to the Channel House, but I wouldn’t let him. I made him swear not to tell them. I don’t want them to know. Neither of you must say anything. He also tried to fit me out. But, you know, he’s about five foot nothing; it was absurd. As soon as I could manage it, he stuck me in a train, much against his will, and I came on here. That’s all.”

“If only I had known!” said Herold. “I was down there all the morning.”

“You?”

“I had a letter from Julia, summoning me.”

“So had I.” He closed his eyes again for a moment. Then he asked, “How is Stella?”

“I had a long talk with her. I may have straightened things out a bit. She’ll come round. There’s no cause for worry for the present. Julia is a good soul, but she has no sense of proportion, and where Stella is concerned she exaggerates.”

When a man has had rocks fall on his head, and again has fallen on his head upon rocks, it is best to soothe what is left of his mind. And after he had partly soothed it,—a very difficult matter, first, because it was in a troubled and despairing state, and, secondly, because John, never having taken Unity into his confidence, references had to be veiled,—he satisfied the need of another brandy and soda. Then Ripley came in to announce that the room was ready.

“Ripley and I will see to him,” said Herold to Unity. “You had better go and fetch him a change of clothes and things he may want.”

“Mayn’t I wait till the doctor comes?” she pleaded.

“Of course, my dear. There’s no hurry,” said Herold.

The two men helped Risca to his feet, and, taking him to the bedroom, undressed him, clothed him in warm pajamas, and put him into the bed, where a hot-water bottle diffused grateful heat. Herold had seen the livid bruises on his great, muscular limbs.

“Any one but you,” said he, with forced cheeriness, “would have been smashed to bits, like an egg.”

“I tell you I’m tough,” John growled. “It’s only to please you that I submit to this silly foolery of going to bed.”

As soon as Ripley was dismissed, he called Herold to his side.

“I would like to tell you everything, Wallie. I couldn’t in the other room. Unity, poor child, knows nothing at all about things. Naturally. I had been worried all the afternoon. I thought I saw her—you know—hanging about outside the office. It was just before I met you at the club. I didn’t tell you,—perhaps I ought to,—but that was why I was so upset. But you’ll forgive me. You’ve always forgiven me. Anyway, I thought I saw her. It was just a flash, for she, if it was she, was swallowed up in the traffic of Fleet Street. After leaving the club, I went back to the office—verification in proofs of something in Baxter’s article. I found odds and ends to do. Then I went home, and Julia’s letter lay on my table. I’ve been off my head of late, Wallie. For the matter of that, I’m still off it. I’ve hardly slept for weeks. I found Julia’s letter. I looked at my watch. There was just time to catch the 7:15. I ran out, jumped into a taxi, and caught it just as it was starting. But as I passed by a third-class carriage,—in fact, I realized it only after I had gone several yards beyond; one rushes, you know,—I seemed to see her face—those thin lips and cold eyes—framed in the window. The guard pitched me into a carriage. I looked out for her at all the stations. At Tring Bay the usual crowd got out. I didn’t see her. No one like her got out at Southcliff. What’s the matter, Wallie?” He broke off suddenly.

“Nothing, man; nothing,” said Herold, turning away and fumbling for his cigarette-case.

“You looked as if you had seen a ghost. It was I who saw the ghost.” He laughed. And the laugh, coming from the haggard face below the brow-reaching white bandage, was horrible.

“Your brain was playing you tricks,” said Herold. “You got to Southcliff. What happened?”

“I felt a fool,” said John. “Can’t you see what a fool a man feels when he knows he has played the fool?”

Bit by bit he revealed himself. At the gate of the Channel House he reflected. He had not the courage to enter. Stella would be up and about. He resolved to wait until she went to bed. He wandered down to the beach. The rain began to fall, fine, almost imperceptible. The beacon-light in the west window threw a vanishing shaft into the darkness.

“We saw it once—don’t you remember?—years ago when you gave her the name—Stellamaris. I sat like a fool and watched the window. How long I don’t know. My God! Wallie, you don’t know what it is to be shaken and racked by the want of a woman—”

“By love for a woman, you mean,” said Herold.

“It’s the same thing. At last I saw her. She stood defined in the light. She had changed. I cried out toward her like an idiot,”—the rugged, grim half face visible beneath the bandage was grotesque, a parody of passion,—“and I stayed there, watching, after she had gone away. How long I don’t know. It was impossible to ring at the door and see Oliver and Julia.”

He laughed again. “You must have some sense of humor, my dear man. Fancy Oliver and Julia! What could I have said to them? What could they have said to me? I sat staring up at her window. The rain was falling. Everything was still. It was night. You know how quiet everything is there. Then I seemed to hear footsteps and I turned, and a kind of shape—a woman’s—disappeared. I know I was off my head, but I began to think. I had a funny experience once—I’ve never told you. It was the day she came out of prison. I sat down in St. James’s Park and fell half asleep,—that sort of dog sleep one has when one’s tired,—and I thought I saw her going for Stella—Stella in her bed at the Channel House—going to strangle her. This came into my mind, and then something hit me,—a chunk of overhanging cliff loosened by the rain, I suppose,—and, as I’ve told you, it knocked me out. But it’s devilish odd that she should be mixed up in it.”

“As I said, your brain was playing you tricks,” said Herold, outwardly calm; but within himself he shuddered to his soul. The woman was like a foul spirit hovering unseen about those he loved.

Presently the doctor, a young man with a cheery face, came in and made his examination. There was no serious damage done. The only thing to fear was the chill. If the patient’s temperature went down in the morning, he could quite safely be moved to his own home. For the present rest was imperative, immediate sleep desirable. He wrote a prescription, and with pleasant words went away. Then Unity, summoned to the room, heard the doctor’s comforting opinion.

“I’ll be with you to-morrow,” said John.

“You don’t mind leaving him to Mrs. Ripley and me just for one night?” asked Herold.

“He’s always safe with you,” Unity replied, her eyes fixed not on him, but on John Risca. “Good-by, Guardian dear.”

John drew an arm from beneath the bedclothes and put it round her thin shoulders. “Good-by, dear. Forgive me for giving you such a fright, and make my peace with auntie. You’ll be coming back with my things, won’t you?”

“Of course; but you’ll be asleep then.”

“I shouldn’t wonder,” said John.

She made him cover up his arm again and tucked the bedclothes snugly about him, her finger-tips lingering by his cheeks.

“I’ll leave you, too. Try and get to sleep,” said Herold.

They went together out of the room and back to the library.

“Has he said anything more?”

He stood before her trembling all over.

“What is the matter?”

He burst into an uncontrollable cry. “It’s that hellish woman again! He saw her spying on him outside his office, he saw her in a railway carriage on the train he took. Because she disappeared each time, he thinks it was an hallucination; and somehow he was aware of her presence just before the piece of rock came down.”

Unity’s face beneath the skimpy hair and rubbishy tam-o’-shanter was white and strained.

“She threw it. I knew she threw it.”

“So do I. He saw her. She disappeared as she did that night in the fog. A woman like that isn’t human. She has the power of disappearing at will. You can’t measure her cunning.”

“What did he go down for?”

He told her. Unity’s lips twitched.

“And he sat there in the rain just looking at her window?”

She put out her hand. “Good-by, Mr. Herold. When you see Miss Stellamaris, you’ll tell her I’m a good girl—in that way, you know—and that I love her. She has been a kind of beautiful angel to me—has always been with me. It’s funny; I can’t explain. But you understand. If you’d only let her see that, I’d be so happy—and perhaps she’d be happier.”

“I’ll do my utmost,” said Herold.

He accompanied her down-stairs, and when she had gone, he returned to the library and walked about. The horror of the woman was upon him. He drank another brandy and soda. After a while Ripley came in with a soiled card on a tray. He looked at it stupidly—“Mr. Edwin Travers”—and nodded.

“Shall I show the gentleman up?”

He nodded again, thinking of the woman.

When the visitor came in he vaguely recognized him as a broken-down actor, a colleague of early days. As in a dream he bade the man sit down, and gave him cigarettes and drink, and heard with his outer ears an interminable tale of misfortune. At the end of it he went to his desk and wrote out a check, which he handed to his guest.

“I can’t thank you, old man. I don’t know how to. But as soon as I can get an engagement—hello, old man,” he cried, glancing at the check, “you’ve made a funny mistake—the name!”

Herold took the slip of paper, and saw that he had made the sum payable not to Edwin Travers, but to Louisa Risca. It was a shock, causing him to brace his faculties. He wrote out another check, and the man departed.

He went softly into John’s room and found him sleeping peacefully.

Soon afterward Ripley announced that dinner was ready. It was past six o’clock.

“Great Heavens!” he cried aloud, “I’ve got to play to-night.”

After a hurried wash he went into the dining-room and sat down at the table, but the sight and smell of food revolted him. He swallowed a few mouthfuls of soup; the rest of the dinner he could not touch. The horror of the woman had seized him again. He drank some wine, pushed back his chair, and threw down his table-napkin.

“I don’t want anything else. I’m going for a walk. I’ll see you later at the theater.”

The old-fashioned Kensington street, with its double line of Queen Anne houses slumbering in the afternoon sunshine, was a mellow blur before his eyes. Whither he was going he knew: what he was going to do he knew not. The rigid self-control of the day, relaxed at times, but always kept within grip, had at last escaped him. Want of food and the unaccustomed drink had brought about an abnormal state of mind. He was aware of direction, aware, too, of the shadow-shapes of men and women passing him by, of traffic in the roadway. He walked straight, alert, his gait and general demeanor unaffected, his outer senses automatically alive. He walked down the narrow, shady Church Street, and paused for a moment or two by the summer greenery of Kensington Churchyard until there was an opportunity of crossing the High Street, now at the height of its traffic. He strode westward past the great shops, a lithe man in the full vigor of his manhood. Here and there a woman lingering in front of displays of millinery recognized the well-known actor and nudged her companion.

The horror within him had grown to a consuming thing of flame. Instead of the quiet thoroughfares down which he turned, he saw picture after shuddering picture—the woman and Stellamaris, the woman and John Risca. She attacked soul as well as body. The pictures took the forms of horrible grotesques. Within, his mind worked amazingly, like a machine escaped from human control and running with blind relentlessness. He had said years ago that he would pass through his hell-fire. He was passing through it now.

The destroyer must be kept from destroying or be destroyed. Which of these should be accomplished through his agency? One or the other. Of one thing he was certain, with an odd, undoubting certainty: that he would find her, and finding her, that he would let loose upon her the wrath of God. She should be chained up forever or he would strangle her. Shivering thrills diabolically delicious ran through him at the thought. Supposing he strangled her as he would a mad cat? That were better. She would be out of the world. He would be fulfilling his destiny of sacrifice. For the woman he loved and for the man he loved why should he not do this thing? What but a legal quibble could call it murder? Stellamaris’s words rang in his ears: “You say you love me like that?”

“Yes, I love you like that. I love you like that,” he cried below his breath as he walked on.

He knew where she lived, the name by which she passed. John had told him many times. There were few things in John’s life he did not know. He knew of the Bences, of Mrs. Oscraft, the fluffy-haired woman who lived in the flat below. Amelia Mansions, he was aware, were in the Fulham Road. But when he reached that thoroughfare, he stood dazed and irresolute, realizing that he did not know which way to turn. A passing postman gave him the necessary information. The trivial contact with the commonplace restored in a measure his mental balance. He went on. By Brompton Cemetery he felt sick and faint and clung for a minute or two to the railings. He had eaten nothing since early morning, and then only a scrap of bacon and toast; he had drunk brandy and wine, and he had lived through a day in which the maddening stress of a lifetime had been concentrated.

One or two passers-by stared at him, for he was as white as a sheet. A comfortable, elderly woman, some small shopkeeper’s wife, addressed him. Was he ill? Could she do anything for him? The questioning was a lash. He drew himself up, smiled, raised his hat, thanked her courteously. It was nothing. He went on, loathing himself as men do when the flesh fails beneath the whip of the spirit.

He was well now, his mind clear. He was going to the woman. He would save those he loved. If it were necessary to kill her, he would kill her. On that point his brain worked with startling clarity. If he did not kill her, she would be eventually killed by John; for John, he argued, could not remain in ignorance forever. If John killed her, he would be hanged. Much better that he, Walter Herold, whom Stellamaris did not love, should be hanged than John—much better. And what the deuce did it matter to anybody whether he were hanged or not? He laughed at the elementary logic of the proposition. The solution of all the infernally intricate problems of life is, if people only dared face it, one of childish simplicity. It was laughable. Walter Herold laughed aloud in the Fulham Road.

It was so easy, so uncomplicated. He would see her. He would do what he had to do. Then he would take a taxicab to the theater. He must play to-night. Of course he would. There was no reason why he shouldn’t. Only he hoped that, Leonora Gurney wouldn’t worry him. He would manage to avoid her during that confounded wait in the first act, when she always tried to get him to talk. He would play the part all right. He was a man and not a stalk of wet straw. After the performance he would give himself up. No one would be inconvenienced. He would ask the authorities to hurry on matters and give him a short shrift and a long rope; but the length of the rope didn’t matter these days, when they just broke your neck. There was no one dependent on him. His brothers and sisters, many years his seniors,—he had not seen them since he was a child,—had all gone after their father’s death to an uncle in New Zealand. They were there still. The mother, who had remained with him, the Benjamin, in England, had died while he was at Cambridge. He was free from family-ties. And women? He was free, too. There had only been one woman in his life, the child of cloud and sea foam.

Stellamaris, star of the sea, now dragged through the mire of mortal things! She should go back. She should go back to her firmament, shining down upon, and worshiped by, the man she loved. And he, God!—he should be spared the terrifying agony of it.

Thus worked the brain which Walter Herold told himself was crystal clear.

It was clear enough, however, to follow the postman’s directions. He took the turning indicated and found the red-brick block, with the name “Amelia Mansions” carved in stone over the entrance door. The by-street seemed to be densely populated. He went into the entrance-hall and mechanically looked at the list of names. Mrs. Rawlings’s name was followed by No. 7. He mounted the stairs. On the landing of No. 7 there were a couple of policemen, and the flat door was open, and the length of the passage was visible. Herold was about to enter when they stopped him.

“You can’t go in, sir.”

“I want Mrs. Rawlings.”

“No one can go in.”

He stood confused, bewildered. An elderly, buxom woman, with a horrified face, who just then happened to come out of a room near the doorway, saw him and came forward.

“You are Mr. Herold,” she asked.

“Yes; I want to see Mrs. Rawlings.”

“It’s all right, constable,” she said in a curiously cracked voice. “Let this gentleman pass. Come in, sir. I am Mrs. Bence.”

He entered the passage. She spoke words to him the import of which he did not catch. His brain was perplexed by the guard of policemen and the open flat. She led him a short distance down the passage. He stumbled over a packed kit-bag. She threw open a door. He crossed the threshold of a vulgarly furnished drawing-room, the electric lights turned on despite the daylight of the July evening. There were four figures in the room. Standing and scribbling in note-books were two men, one in the uniform of a sergeant of police, the other in a frock-coat, obviously a medical man. On the floor were two women, both dead. One was John Risca’s wife, and the other was Unity. And near by them lay a new, bright revolver.

IN after time Herold’s memory of that disastrous night and the succeeding days was that of a peculiarly lucid nightmare in which he seemed to have acted without volition or consciousness of motive. He ate, dressed, drove through the streets on unhappy missions, gave orders, directions, consoled, like an automaton, and sometimes slept exhaustedly. So it seemed to him, looking back. He spared John the first night of misery. The man with his bandaged head slept like a log, and Herold did not wake him. All that could be done he himself had done. It was better for John to gather strength in sleep to face the tragedy on the morrow. And when the morrow came, and Herold broke the news to him, the big man gave way under the shock, and became gentle, and obeyed Herold like a child. Thereafter, for many days, he sat for the hour together with his old aunt, curiously dependent on her; and she, through her deep affection for him, grew singularly silent and practical.

In her unimaginative placidity lay her strength. She mourned for Unity as for her own flesh and blood; but the catastrophe did not shake her even mind, and when John laid his head in her lap and sobbed, all that was beautiful in the woman flowed through the comforting tips of her helpless fingers.

From Herold he learned the unsuspected reason of Unity’s crime and sacrifice; and from Unity, too, for a poor little pencil scrawl found in her pocket and addressed to him told him of her love and of her intention to clear the way for his happiness. And when the inquest was over and Unity’s body was brought to Kilburn and laid in its coffin in her little room, he watched by it in dumb stupor of anguish.

Herold roused him now and then. Action—nominal action at least—had to be taken by him as surviving protagonist of the tragedy. The morning after the deed the newspapers shrieked the news, giving names in full, raking up memories of the hideous case. They dug, not deep, for motive, and found long-smoldering vengeance. Unity was blackened. John responded to Herold’s lash. This must not be. Unity must not go to her grave in public dishonor; truth must be told. So at the inquest, John, wild, uncouth, with great strips of sticking-plaster on his head, told truth, and gave a romantic story to a hungry press. It was hateful to lay bare the inmost sacredness and the inmost suffering of his soul to the world’s cold and curious gaze, but it had to be done. Unity’s name was cleared. When he sat down by Herold’s side, the latter grasped his hand, and it was clammy and cold, and he shook throughout his great frame.

Then Herold, driven to mechanical action, as it seemed to him afterward, by a compelling force, dragged John to an inquiry into the evil woman’s life. It was Mrs. Oscraft, the full-blown, blowzy bookmaker’s wife, the woman’s intimate associate for many years, who gave the necessary clue. Horrified by the discovery of the identity of her friend and by the revelation of further iniquities, she lost her head when the men sternly questioned her. She had used her intimacy with Mrs. Risca to cover from her own husband an intrigue of many years’ standing. In return, Mrs. Risca had confessed to an intrigue of her own, and demanded, and readily obtained, Mrs. Oscraft’s protection. The women worked together. They were inseparable in their outgoings and incomings, but abroad each went her separate way. That was why, ignorant of the truth, Mrs. Oscraft had lied loyally when John Risca had burst into her flat long ago. She had thought she was merely shielding her fellow-sinner from the wrath of a jealous husband. Thus for years, with her cunning, Mrs. Risca had thrown dust in the eyes both of her friend and of the feared and hated wardress whom John had set over her. Under the double cloak she had used her hours of liberty to carry out the set, relentless purpose of her life. To spy on him with exquisite craft had been her secret passion, to strike when the time came the very meaning of her criminal existence.

“And for the last two or three years she gave no trouble and was as gentle as a lamb, so how could I suspect?” Mrs. Bence lamented.

“It’s all over,” said John, stupidly; “it’s all over. Nothing matters now.”

To Herold, in after time, the memories of these days were as those of the doings of another man in his outer semblance. His essential self had been the crazy being who had marched through the mellow Kensington streets with fantastic dreams of murder in his head. At the sight of Unity and the woman lying ghastly on the floor something seemed to snap in his brain, and all the cloudy essence that was he vanished, and a perfect mechanism took its place. When John with wearisome reiteration said: “God bless you, Wallie! God knows what I should have done without you,” it was hard to realize that he had done anything deserving thanks. He was inclined to regard himself—when he had a fugitive moment to regard himself—with abhorrence. He had talked; Unity had acted. And deep down in his soul, only once afterward in his life to be confessed, dwelt an awful remorse for his responsibility in the matter of Unity’s death. But in simple fact no man in times of great convulsion knows himself. He looks back on the man who acted and wonders. The man, surviving the wreck of earthquake, if he be weak, lies prone and calls on God and man to help him; if he be strong, he devotes the intensity of his faculties to the work of rescue, of clearing up debris, of temporary reconstruction, and has no time for self-analysis. It is in reality the essential man in his vigor and courage and nobility and disdain who acts, and the bruised and shattered about him who profit by his help look rightly upon him as a god.

It was only after John had visited the house of death, where, according to law, the bodies both of slayer and slain had to lie, and had seen the pinched, common face, swathed in decent linen, of the girl who for his sake had charged her soul with murder and taken her own life, and after he had driven away, stunned with grief and carrying with him, at his feet in the taxicab, the useless kit-bag packed by the poor child with Heaven knows what idea of its getting to its destination, and had staggered to the comfort of the foolish old lady’s outstretched arms and received her benediction, futilely spoken, divinely unspoken—it was only then that, raising haggard eyes, all the more haggard under the brow-reaching bandage he still wore, he asked the question:

“What about Stella? She is bound to learn.”

“I wrote to her last night,” said Herold. “I prepared her for the shock as best I could.”

A gleam of rational thought flitted across John Risca’s mind.

“You remembered her at such a time, with all you had to do? You’re a wonderful man, Wallie. No one else would have done it.”

“Are you in a fit state of mind,” said Herold, “to understand what has happened? I tried to tell you this morning,”—as he had done fitfully,—“but it was no use. You grasped nothing.”

“Go on now,” said John. “I’m listening.”

So Herold, amid the fripperies of Miss Lindon’s drawing-room, told the story of his summons to the Channel House some time ago—Good God!—He caught himself up sharply—it was only yesterday! and of his talk with Stellamaris in the garden, and of her encounter with the evil woman, and of the poison that had crept to the roots of Stella’s being.

John shivered, and clenched impotent fists. Stella left alone on the cliff-edge with that murderous hag! Stella’s ears polluted by that infamous tale! If only he had known it! Why did she hide it from him? It was well the murderess was dead, but, merciful Heaven, at what a price!

“Listen,” said Herold, gravely, checking his outburst; and he told of his meetings with Unity,—it was essential that John should know,—of her almost mystical worship of Stellamaris, of their discovery of the revolver—

“Poor child!” cried John, “I bought it soon after I went to Kilburn. I took it out the other day and played with a temptation I knew I shouldn’t succumb to. I should never have had the pluck.”

Herold continued, telling him all he knew—all save that of which he stood self-accused, and which for the present was a matter between him and his Maker. And Miss Lindon, fondling on her lap a wheezy pug, the successor to the Dandy of former days, who had been gathered to his fathers long ago, listened in placid bewilderment to the strange story of love and crime.

“I’m sure I don’t understand how people think of such things, let alone do them,” she sighed.

“You must accept the fact, dear Miss Lindon,” said Herold, gently.

“God’s will be done,” she murmured, which in the circumstances was as relevant a thing as the poor lady could have uttered. But John sat hunched up in a bamboo chair that creaked under his weight, and scarcely spoke a word. He felt very unimportant by the side of Unity—Unity with whose strong, passionate soul he had dwelt in blind ignorance. And Unity was dead, lying stark and white in the alien house.

After a long silence he roused himself.

“You wrote to Stella, you said?”

“Yes,” replied Herold.

“What will happen to her?”

“I don’t know.”

John groaned. “If only I had protected her as I ought to have done! If only I had protected both of them!”

He relapsed again into silence, burying his face in his hands. Presently Miss Lindon put the pug tenderly on the ground, rose, and stood by his chair.

“My poor boy,” she said, “do you love her so much?”

“She’s dead,” said John.

Herold shook him by the shoulder. “Nonsense, man. Pull yourself together.”

John raised a drawn face.

“What did you ask? I was thinking about Unity.”

THAT day, the day after the tragedy, Stellamaris faced life in its nakedness, stripped, so it appeared to her, of every rag of mystery.

She had breakfasted as usual in her room, bathed and dressed, and looked wistfully over her disowning sea. Then, as she was preparing to go down-stairs, Morris had brought in Herold’s letter, scribbled so nervously and shakenly that at first she was at a loss to decipher it. Gradually it became terribly clear: Unity was dead; the woman was dead; Unity had killed the woman and then killed herself.

“Details of everything but the truth will be given in the morning papers,” Herold wrote; “but you must know the truth from the first—as I know it. Unity has given her life to save those she loved—you and John—from the woman. She has laid down her life for you. Never forget that as long as you live.”

She sat for some moments quite still, paralyzed by the new horror that had sprung from this false, flower-decked earth to shake her by the throat. The world was terrifyingly relentless. She read the awful words again. Bit by bit feeling returned. Her flesh was constricted in a cold and finely wrought net. She grew faint, put her hand to her brow and found it damp. She stumbled to her bed by the great west window and threw herself down. Constable, lying on the hearth-rug, staggered to his feet and thrust his old head on her bosom and regarded her with mournful and inquiring eyes. She caressed him mechanically. Suddenly she sprang up as a swift memory smote her. Once she lay there by the window, and the dog was there by the bed, and there by the door stood the ungainly figure of a girl of her own age. Was it possible that that ungainly child whom she had seen and talked to then, whom a few weeks ago she had kissed, could have committed this deed of blood? She rose again to her feet, pushed the old dog aside blindly, and hid her eyes from the light of day. The girl was human, utterly human, at those two meetings. Of what unknown, devastating forces were human beings, then, composed?

She took up the letter again. “Unity has given her life to save those she loved—you and John—from the woman. She has laid down her life for you. Never forget that as long as you live.”

Walter Herold said that. It must be true. Through all of yesterday’s welter of misery, after he had left her, she had clung despairingly to him. There was no God, but there was Walter Herold. Her pride had dismissed him with profession of disbelief, but in her heart she had believed him. Not that she had pardoned John Risca, not that she had recovered her faith in him, not that she had believed in Unity. Her virginal soul, tainted by the woman, had shrunk from thoughts of the pair; but despite her fierce determination to believe in neither God nor man, she had been compelled to believe in Herold. She had stood up against him and fought with him and had bitten and rent him, and he had conquered, and she had felt maddenedly angered, triumphantly glad. The whole world could be as false as hell, but in it there was one clear spirit speaking truth.

She went to the southern window, rested her elbows on the sill, and pressed the finger-tips of both hands against her forehead. The soft southwest wind, bringing the salt from the dancing sea, played about her hair. Unity had laid down her life to save those she loved. So had Christ done—given his life for humanity. But Christ had not killed a human being, no matter how murderous, and had not taken his own life. No, no; she must not mix up things irreconcilable. She faced the room again. What did people do when they killed? What were the common, practical steps that they took to gain their ends? Her mind suddenly grew vague. Herold had spoken of newspapers. She must see them; she must know everything. Life was a deadly conflict, and knowledge the only weapon. For a few seconds she stood in the middle of the room, her young bosom heaving, her dark eyes wide with the diamond glints in their depths. Life was a deadly conflict. She would fight, she would conquer. Others miserably weaker than herself survived. Pride and race and splendid purity of soul sheathed her in cold armor. A jingle, separated from context, came into her mind, and in many ways it was a child’s mind:

“‘’Fore God, I am no coward,’” she repeated, and with her delicate head erect she went out and down the stairs and entered the dining-room.

There she found Sir Oliver and Lady Blount sitting at a neglected breakfast. The old faces strove pitifully to smile. Stella kissed them in turn, and with her hand lingering on the old man’s arm, she gave him Herold’s letter.

“Is it in the newspapers?” she asked.

“What, what, my dear?” said Sir Oliver, adjusting his glasses on his nose with fumbling fingers.

She looked from one to the other. Then her eyes fell on the morning papers lying on the table. They were folded so that a great head-line stared hideously.

“Oh, darling, don’t read it—for Heaven’s sake don’t read it!” cried Lady Blount, clutching the nearer newspaper.

But Stella took up the other. “I must, dearest,” she said very gently. “Walter has written to me; but he could not tell me everything.”

She moved to the window that overlooked the pleasant garden, and with steady eyes read the vulgar and soul-withering report, while the two old people, head to head, puzzled out Herold’s scrawl.

When she had finished, she laid the paper quietly at the foot of the table and came and stood between them, revolted by the callous publication of names, almost physically sickened by the realistic picture of the scene, her head whirling. She caught hold of the back of Sir Oliver’s chair.

“The newspaper lies,” she said, “but it doesn’t know any better. Walter tells us why she did it.”

Sir Oliver, elbow on table, held the letter in his shaking grasp. It dropped, and his head sank on his hand.

“It’s too horrible!” he said in a weak voice. “I don’t understand anything at all about it. I don’t understand what Walter means. And all that old beastly story revived! It’s damnable!”

He looked quite broken, his querulous self-assertion gone. Lady Blount, too, gave way, and stretched out an imploring and pathetic arm, which, as Stella moved a step or two toward her, fell around the slim, standing figure. She laid her cheek against Stella and cried miserably.

“O my darling, my precious one, if we could only spare you all this! Walter shouldn’t have written. O my darling, what are we to do! What are we to do!”

And then Stellamaris saw once more that Great High Excellency and Most Exquisite Auntship, for all their love of her, were of the weak ones of the world, and she looked down with a new and life-giving feeling of pity upon the bowed gray heads. Once,—was it yesterday or weeks or months or years ago? She could not tell,—but once, to her later pain and remorse, she had commanded, and they had obeyed; now she knew that she had to comfort, protect, determine. And in a bewildering flash came the revelation that knowledge was a weapon not only to fight her own way through the evil of the world, but to defend the defenseless.

“I wish Walter was here,” she whispered, her hand against the withered, wet cheek.

“Why Walter, dear?”

“He is strong and true,” said Stellamaris.

“Why not John, darling?”

Yes, why not John? Stella drew a sharp breath. Sir Oliver saved her an answer.

“John has enough to look to, poor chap. He has got everything about his ears. Stella’s right. We want Walter. He’s young. He’s a good fellow is Walter. I must be getting old, my dear,—” He raised his face, and, with a sudden forlorn hope of dignity, twirled his white mustache,—“A year ago I shouldn’t have wanted Walter or anybody. It’s only you, my child, that your aunt and I are thinking of. We’ve tried to do our duty by you, haven’t we, Julia? And God knows we love you. You’re the only thing in the world left to us. It isn’t our fault that you are drawn into this ghastliness. It isn’t, God knows it isn’t. Only, my dear,”—there was a catch in his voice,—“you’re not able to bear it. For us old folks who have knocked about the world—well, we’re used to—to this sort of thing. I’ve had to send men to the gallows in my time—once twenty men to be shot. The paltry fellows at the Colonial Office didn’t see things as I did, but that’s another matter. We’re used to these things, dear; we’re hardened—”

“If I have got to live in the world, dear Excellency,” said Stella, feeling that there were some sort of flood-gates between the tumultuous flow of her being and the still waters of pity in which for the moment her consciousness acted, “it seems that I’ve got to get used to it, like every one else.”

“But what shall we do, darling?” cried Lady Blount, clinging pathetically to the child of sea-foam, from whom all knowledge of the perilous world had been hidden.

“Anything but worry Walter to come down here.”

“I thought you wanted him?”

“I do,” said Stella, with her hand on her bosom; “but that is only selfishness. He is needed more in London. I think we ought to go up and see if we can help in any way.”

“Go up to London!” echoed Sir Oliver.

“Yes, if you’ll take me, Uncle dear.”

The old man looked at his wife, who looked helplessly at him. Through the open window came the late, mellow notes of a thrush and the sunshine that flooded the summer garden.

“I am going to send Walter a telegram,” said Stella, moving gently away.

She left the room with the newly awakened consciousness that she was absolute mistress of her destiny. Love, devotion, service, anything she might require from the two old people, were hers for the claiming—anything in the world but guidance and help. She stood alone before the dragons of a world, no longer the vague Threatening Land, but a world of fierce passions and bloody deeds. Herold’s words flamed before her: “Unity has given her life for those she loved.” Had she, Stellamaris, a spirit so much weaker than Unity’s?

She advanced an eager step or two along the garden walk, clenching her delicate fists, and the fiery dragons retreated backward. She could give, too, as well as Unity, her life if need be. If that was not required, at least whatever could be demanded of her for those she loved. Again she read the letter. Underlying it was tenderest anxiety lest she should be stricken down by the ghastly knowledge. With the personal motive, the intense and omnipotent motive of her sex, unconsciously dominating her, she murmured half articulately:

“He thinks I’m a weak child. I’ll show him that I am a woman. He shall see that I’m not afraid of life.”

SO when Walter Herold went home late that night,—the theater being out of the question, he had stayed at Kilburn until John had been persuaded to go to bed,—he found a telegram from Stellamaris.

“Coming to London to see if I can be of any help. My dear love to John in his terrible trouble. Tell me when I had better come.”

The next day, when they met before the inquest, he showed the telegram to John, who, after glancing at it, thrust it back into his hand with a deprecating gesture.

“No; let her stay there. What is she to do in this wilderness of horror?”

“I have already written,” said Herold.

“To keep away?”

“To come.”

“You know best,” said John, hopelessly. “At any rate the news hasn’t killed her. I feared it would. I had long letters from Oliver and Julia this morning.”

“What do they say?”

John put his hand to his head. “I forget,” said he.

(To be concluded)

Drawn by Frank Wiles

“SHE LOOKED DOWN WITH A NEW AND LIFE-GIVING FEELING OF PITY UPON THE BOWED GRAY HEADS”

THE CENTURY’S AFTER-THE-WAR SERIES — THE HUMOR AND TRAGEDY OF THE GREELEY CAMPAIGN — I — II — III — IV — V

GREAT EVENTS IN AMERICAN PROGRESS

DURING THE HALF-CENTURY FOLLOWING THE CIVIL WAR

DESCRIBED BY AMERICAN JOURNALISTS AND BY WRITERS HAVING PERSONAL AND SPECIAL KNOWLEDGE OF IMPORTANT INCIDENTS

PREFATORY EDITORIAL NOTE

Two generations of readers have entered on the field of action since the Civil War marked the end of what may be called the formative era of American life. Twenty-eight years ago THE CENTURY began its memorable Civil War Series, which gave the surviving leaders, Joseph E. Johnston, Beauregard, Longstreet, and their valiant colleagues on the Confederate side, a chance to be read with calm appreciation by the people of the North, and brought to the reviving people of the South dispassionate accounts by Grant, Sherman, McClellan, Porter, and their fighting coadjutors on land and sea, of the motives and deeds which shaped the heroic contest and resulted in a reunited country. Through the medium of personal recollection, with fairness and without feeling, the brave men of both sides fought their battles over again before an open-minded audience of all the people, and for the first time since slavery became the cause of strife, both parts of the country shook hands over “the bloody chasm” in mutual admiration and respect.

The forty-seven years which have elapsed since Appomattox have also had their conflicts, though most of them have been waged in the ways of peace. They have resulted, however, in forcing the republic, shaped by the aims of the fathers, into the wider domain of empire required by the expanding purposes of the sons. In order to bring the great happenings of this period vividly before the new generations of readers, THE CENTURY has organized an After-the-War Series. It will treat of such compelling and lasting influences as the attempt to “recall” Andrew Johnson, seventeenth President, by impeachment; the acquisition of Alaska, with its great promise for the future; the settlement of the Alabama Claims, which brought about a new status for the United States with Europe; the memorable attempt to make Horace Greeley President, which in a way may be compared to the present campaign of the “Progressives”; the near ship-wreck of the Hayes-Tilden contest; the chain of measures and financial disasters from “Black Friday” and the Crédit Mobilier to the time when the nation kept its faith by the resumption of specie payments; the large features of Reconstruction, still being worked out in the South; the victory of civil-service reform, beginning with Cleveland’s election over Blaine; the solidifying of the Monroe Doctrine in the Venezuelan dispute, which prepared the way for the Panama Canal; the diplomacy of the war with Spain, by which the republic became an empire; and also articles describing the remarkable Bryan conventions, the progress of conservation, the battle with the trusts, and the gigantic problem of organized labor. In its total effect the series will reveal the drift of life in the United States.

Each of these commanding subjects will be treated by a prominent American journalist having particular acquaintance with the theme, and also, where supplemental articles are necessary, by writers having special knowledge of these historic dramas of American progress and personal contact with the actors. In this year of political conflict Colonel Watterson’s article, which begins the series, has a timely as well as a distinct personal interest.

BY HENRY WATTERSON

AMONG the many misconceptions and mischances which befell the slavery agitation in the United States and finally led a kindred people into actual war, the idea that got afloat after this war, that every Confederate was a Secessionist, best served the ends of the radicalism which sought to reduce the South to a conquered province, and as such to reconstruct it by hostile legislation supported, wherever needed, by force.

Andrew Johnson perfectly understood that a great majority of the men who were arrayed on the Southern side had taken the field against their better judgment through pressure of circumstance. They were Union men who had opposed Secession and clung to the old order. Not merely in the Border States did this class rule, but in the Gulf States it held a respectable minority until the shot fired upon Sumter drew the call for troops from Lincoln. The Secession leaders who had staked their all upon the hazard knew that to save their movement from collapse it was necessary that blood be sprinkled in the faces of the people. Hence the message from Charleston,

with the response from Washington, precipitated the conflict of theories into a combat of arms for which neither party was prepared.

The debate ended, battle at hand, Southern men had to choose between the North and the South, between their convictions and predilections on one side and expatriation on the other side, resistance to invasion, not secession, the issue. But, four years later, when in 1865 all that they had believed and feared in 1861 had come to pass, these men required no drastic measures to bring them to terms. Events more potent than acts of Congress had already reconstructed them. Lincoln, with a forecast of this, had shaped his ends accordingly. Johnson, himself a Southern man, understood it even better than Lincoln, and backed by the legacy of Lincoln, he proceeded not very skilfully to build upon it.

The assassination of Lincoln, however, had played directly into the hands of the radicals, led by Ben Wade, in the Senate, and Thaddeus Stevens in the House. Prior to that baleful night they had fallen behind the marching van. The mad act of Booth put them upon their feet and brought them to the front. They were implacable men, politicians equally of resolution and ability. Events quickly succeeding favored them and their plans. It was not alone Johnson’s lack of temper and tact that gave them the whip-hand. His removal from office would have opened the door of the White House to Wade, so that strategically Johnson’s position was from the beginning beleaguered and, before the close, came perilously near to being untenable.

From a photograph taken about 1872, owned by Mr. F. H. Meserve

LYMAN TRUMBULL

Grant, who, up to the time of his nomination for the Presidency, had had no partizan conviction, not Wade, the uncompromising extremist, came after, and inevitably four years of Grant had again divided the triumphant Republicans. This was the situation during the winter of 1871–72, when the approaching Presidential election brought the country face to face with an extraordinary state of affairs. The South was in irons. The North was growing restive. Thinking people everywhere felt that conditions so anomalous to our institutions could not last.

JOHNSON had made a bungling attempt to carry out the policies of Lincoln and had gone down in the strife. The Democratic party had reached the ebb-tide of its disastrous fortunes. It seemed the merest reactionary. A group of influential Republicans, for one cause or another dissatisfied with Grant, held a caucus and issued a call for what they described as a Liberal Republican Convention to assemble in Cincinnati, May 1, 1872.[1]

A Southern man and a Confederate soldier, a Democrat by inheritance and conviction, I had been making in Kentucky an unequal fight for the acceptance of the inevitable. The line of cleavage between the old and the new South I had placed upon the last three amendments to the Constitution, naming them the Treaty of Peace between the sections. The negro must be invested with the rights conferred upon him by these amendments, however mistaken and injudicious the South might think them. The obsolete black laws instituted during the slave régime must be removed from the statute-books. The negro, like Mohammed’s coffin, swung in mid-air. He was neither fish, flesh, nor fowl, nor good red herring. For our own sake we must habilitate him, educate and elevate him, make him, if possible, a contented and useful citizen. Failing of this, free government itself might be imperiled.

I had behind me the intelligence of the Confederate soldiers almost to a man. They, at least, were tired of futile fighting, and to them the war was over. But there was an element, especially in Kentucky, which wanted to fight when it was much too late—old Union Democrats and Union Whigs—who clung to the hull of slavery when the kernel was gone, and proposed to win in politics what had been lost in battle.

The leaders of this belated element were in complete control of the political machinery of the State. They regarded me as an impudent upstart, since I had come to Kentucky from Tennessee as little better than a carpet-bagger, and had done their uttermost to put me down and drive me out.

I was a young fellow of two and thirty, of boundless optimism and with my full share of self-confidence, no end of physical endurance and mental vitality, and having some political as well as newspaper experience. It never crossed my fancy that I could fail. I met resistance with aggression, answered attempts at bullying with scorn, generally irradiated by laughter. Yet I was not wholly blind to consequences and the admonitions of prudence, and when the call for a Liberal Republican Convention appeared, I realized that, interested as I was in what might come of it, if I expected to remain a Democrat in a Democratic community, and to influence and lead a Democratic following, I must proceed with caution. Though many of those proposing the new movement were familiar acquaintances, some of them personal friends, the scheme was, as it were, in the air. Its three newspaper bell-wethers, Samuel Bowles of the Springfield “Republican,” Horace White of the Chicago “Tribune,” and Murat Halstead of the Cincinnati “Commercial,” were specially well known to me; so were Horace Greeley, Carl Schurz, and Charles Sumner. Stanley Matthews was my kinsman; George Hoadley and Cassius M. Clay were next-door neighbors. But they were not the men I had trained with—not my “crowd,”—and it was a question how far I might be able to reconcile myself, not to mention my political associates, to such company, even conceding that they proceeded under good fortune with a good plan, offering the South extrication from its woes and the Democratic party an entering wedge into a solid and hitherto irresistible Republicanism.

From a photograph taken about 1872, owned by Mr. F. H. Meserve

CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS

Nevertheless, I resolved to go a little in advance to Cincinnati, to have a look at the stalking-horse there to be offered, free to take it or leave it, as I liked, my bridges and lines of communication still open and intact.

A LIVELIER and more variegated omnium-gatherum was never assembled. They had already begun to pour in when I arrived. There were long-haired and spectacled doctrinaires from New England, and short-haired and blatant emissaries from New York, mostly, as it turned out, friends of Horace Greeley. There were brisk Westerners from Chicago and St. Louis. If Whitelaw Reid, who had come as Greeley’s personal representative, had his retinue, so had Horace White and Carl Schurz. There were a few rather overdressed persons from New Orleans brought up by Governor Warmouth, and a motley array of Southerners of every sort, who were ready to clutch at any straw that promised relief to intolerable conditions. The full contingent of Washington correspondents was there, of course, with sharpened eyes and pencils, to make the most of what they had already begun to christen a conclave of cranks.

From a photograph taken in 1872

HENRY WATTERSON

Bowles and Halstead met me at the station, and we drove to the St. Nicholas Hotel, where White and Schurz were awaiting us. Then and there was organized a fellowship of the first three and myself which in the succeeding campaign went by the name of the Quadrilateral. We resolved to limit the Presidential nomination of the convention to Charles Francis Adams, Bowles’s candidate, and Lyman Trumbull, White’s candidate, omitting altogether, because of specific reasons urged by White, the candidacy of B. Gratz Brown, who, because of his Kentucky connections, had better served my purpose. The very next day the secret was abroad, and Whitelaw Reid came to me to ask why, in a newspaper combine of this sort, the “New York Tribune” had been left out.

From a photograph taken in 1872

HORACE WHITE

To my mind it seemed preposterous that it had been, or should be, and I stated as much to my new colleagues. They offered objection which to me appeared perverse, if not childish. To begin with, they did not like Reid. He was not a principal, like the rest of us, but a subordinate. Greeley was this, that, and the other; he could never be relied upon in any coherent, practical plan of campaign; to talk about him as a candidate was ridiculous. I listened rather impatiently, and finally I said: “Now, gentlemen, in this movement we shall need the ‘New York Tribune.’ If we admit Reid, we clinch it. You will all agree that Greeley has no chance of a nomination, and so, by taking him in, we both eat our cake and have it.” On this view of the case Reid was invited to join us, and that very night he sat with us at the St. Nicholas, where from night to night until the end we convened and went over the performances and developments of the day and concerted plans for the morrow.

As I recall these symposiums, amusing and plaintive memories rise before me.

The first serious business that engaged us was the killing of the boom for Judge David Davis of the Supreme Court, which was assuming definite and formidable proportions. The preceding winter it had been organizing at Washington under the ministration of some of the most astute politicians of the time, mainly, however, Democratic members of Congress. A party of these had brought the boom to Cincinnati, opening headquarters well provided with the requisite commissaries. Every delegate who came in that could be reached was laid hold of and conducted here.

From a photograph by Sarony, taken in 1872

SAMUEL BOWLES

We considered this flat burglary. It was a gross infringement upon our preserve. What business had the professional politicians with a great reform movement? The influence and dignity of journalism were involved and imperiled. We, its custodians, could brook no such defiance from intermeddling office-seekers, especially from brokendown Democratic office-seekers.

The inner sanctuary of our proceedings was a common drawing-room between two bedchambers shared by Schurz and me. Here we repaired after supper to smoke the pipe of fraternity and reform and to save the country. What could be done to kill off “D. Davis,” as we irreverently called the eminent and learned jurist, the friend of Lincoln, and the only aspirant having a “bar’l”? That was the question. We addressed ourselves to the task with earnest purpose, but characteristically. The power of the press must be invoked. It was our chief, if not our only, weapon. Each of us indited a leading editorial for his paper, to be wired to its destination and printed next morning, striking “D. Davis” at a prearranged and varying angle. Copies of these were made for Halstead, who, having with the rest of us read and compared the different screeds, indited one of his own in general comment and review for Cincinnati consumption. In next day’s “Commercial,” blazing under vivid head-lines, these leading editorials, dated “Chicago,” “New York,” “Springfield, Mass.,” and “Louisville, Ky.,” appeared with the explaining line, “‘The Tribune’ of to-morrow morning [or the ‘Courier-Journal’ or ‘Republican’] will say,” etc.

Wondrous consensus of public opinion! The Davis boom went down before it. The Davis boomers were paralyzed. The earth seemed to have arisen and hit them amidships. The incoming delegates were stopped and forewarned. Six months of adroit scheming was set at naught, and little more was heard of “D. Davis.”

From a photograph by Gutekunst

ALEXANDER K. McCLURE

Like the Mousquetaires, we were equally in for fighting and foot-racing; the point with us being to “get there,” no matter how; the end—the defeat of the rascally machine politicians and the reform of the public service—being relied upon to justify the means. I am writing this forty years after the event, and must be forgiven the fling of my wisdom at my own expense and that of my associates in harmless crime. Reid and White and I are the sole survivors. We were wholly serious, maybe a trifle visionary, but as upright and patriotic in our intentions and as loyal to our engagements as it was possible for older, and maybe worse, men to be. For my part, I must say that if I have never anything on my conscience heavier than the massacre of that not very edifying, yet promising Davis “combine,” I shall be troubled by no remorse, but to the end shall sleep soundly and well.

In that immediate connection an amusing incident throwing some light upon the period thrusts itself upon my memory. The Quadrilateral, with Reid added, had finished its consolidation of public opinion just related, when the cards of Judge Craddock, Chairman of the Kentucky Democratic Committee, and of Colonel J. Stoddart Johnston, editor of the “Frankfort Yeoman,” the organ of the Kentucky Democracy, were brought from below. They had come to look after me, that was evident. By no chance could they have found me in more equivocal company. In addition to ourselves, bad enough from the Kentucky point of view, they found in the room Theodore Tilton and David A. Wells. When they crossed the threshold and were presented seriatim, the face of each was a study. Even an immediate application of whisky and water did not suffice to restore their lost equilibrium and bring them to their usual state of convivial self-possession. Colonel Johnston told me years after that when they went away they walked in silence a block or two, when the old judge, a model of the learned and sedate school of Kentucky politicians and jurists, turned to him and said: “It is no use, Stoddart. We cannot keep up with that young man or with these times. Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace!”

From a photograph taken in 1861, owned by Mr. Frederick H. Meserve

CARL SCHURZ

The Jupiter Tonans of reform in attendance upon the convention was Colonel Alexander K. McClure of the Philadelphia “Times.” He was one of the handsomest and most imposing of men; Halstead himself was scarcely more so. McClure was personally unknown to the Quadrilateral, but this did not stand in the way of our asking him to dine with us as soon as his claims to fellowship in the good cause of reform began to make themselves apparent through the need of bringing the Pennsylvania delegation to “a realizing sense.”

As he entered the room, he looked like a god, nay, he acted like one. Schurz first took him in hand. With a lofty courtesy that I have never seen equaled, he tossed his inquisitor into the air. Halstead came next, trying him upon another tack, but fared no better than Schurz. Then I hurried to the rescue of my friends. McClure, now looking a bit bored and resentful, landed me somewhere near the ceiling.

It would have been laughable if it had not been ignominious. I took my discomfiture with the bad grace of silence throughout the brief, stiff, and formal meal which followed. But when it was over, and the party had risen from the table and was about to disperse, I collected my energies and resources for a final forlorn hope. I was not willing to remain so crushed or to confess myself so beaten, though I could not disguise from myself a feeling that all of us had been overmatched.

“McClure,” said I, with the cool and quiet resolution of despair, drawing him aside, “what in the —— do you want, anyhow?”

He looked at me with swift intelligence and a sudden show of sympathy, and then over at the others with a withering glance.

“What? With those cranks? Nothing.”

Jupiter descended to earth. I am afraid we actually took a glass of wine together. Anyhow, from that moment to the hour of his death we were the best of friends.

Without the inner circle of the Quadrilateral, which had taken matters into its own hands, were a number of persons, some of them disinterested and others simple curiosity- and excitement-seekers, who might be described as merely “lookers-on in Vienna.” The Sunday afternoon before the convention was to meet, we, the self-elect, fell in with a party of these in a garden “over the Rhine,” as the German quarter of Cincinnati is called. There was first general and rather aimless talk, then came a great deal of speech-making. Schurz started it with a few pungent observations intended to suggest and inspire some common ground of public opinion and sentiment. Nobody was inclined to dispute his leadership, but everybody was prone to assert his own. It turned out that each regarded himself, and wished to be regarded, as a man with a mission, having a clear idea how things were not to be done. There were civil-service reform protectionists and civil-service reform free traders. There were a few politicians, who were discovered to be spoilsmen, the unforgivable sin, and as such were quickly dismissed. The missing ingredient was coherence of belief and united action. Not a man of them was willing to commit or bind himself to anything. Edward Atkinson pulled one way, and William Dorsheimer exactly the opposite way. David A. Wells sought to get the two together; it was not possible. Sam Bowles shook his head in diplomatic warning. Horace White threw in a chink or so of a rather agitating newspaper independence, while Halstead, to the more serious-minded, was in an inflamed state of jocosity.

From a photograph by Sarony

MURAT HALSTEAD

All this was grist to the mill of the Washington correspondents, chiefly “story” writers and satirists, who were there to make the most out of an occasion in which the bizarre was much in excess of the conventional, with George Alfred Townsend and Donn Piatt to set the pace. Hyde of the “Republican” had come from St. Louis to keep special tab on Grosvenor of the “Democrat.” Though rival editors facing our way, they had not been admitted to the Quadrilateral. McCullagh and Nixon were among the earliest arrivals from Chicago. The lesser lights of the gild were innumerable. One might have mistaken it for an annual meeting of the Associated Press.

THE convention assembled. It was in Cincinnati’s great music-hall. Schurz presided. Who that was there will never forget his opening words, “This is moving day.” He was just turned forty-two; in his physiognomy a scholarly Herr Doktor; in his trim, lithe figure a graceful athlete; in the tones of his voice an orator.

Even the bespectacled doctrinaires of the East, whence, since the days the Star of Bethlehem shone over the desert, wisdom and wise men have had their emanation, were moved to something like enthusiasm. The rest of us were fervid. Two days and a night and a half the Quadrilateral had the world in a sling and things its own way. It had been agreed, as I have said, to limit the field to Adams, Trumbull, and Greeley, and Greeley being out of it as having no chance whatever, the list was still further abridged to Adams and Trumbull. Trumbull not developing very strong, Bowles, Halstead, and I, even White, began to be sure that it would require only one ballot to nominate Adams—Adams the indifferent, who had sailed away for Europe, observing that he was not a candidate for the nomination, and otherwise intimating his disdain of it and us.

Matters being thus apparently cocked and primed, the convention adjourned over the first night of its session with everybody happy except the “D. Davis” contingent, which lingered, but knew its “cake was dough.” If we had forced a vote that night, as we might have done, we should have nominated Adams. But, inspired by the bravery of youth and inexperience, we let the golden opportunity slip. The throng of delegates and the vast audience dispersed.

In those days it being the business of my life to turn day into night and night into day, it was not my habit to go to bed much before the presses began to thunder below. This night proved no exception: being tempted by a party of Kentuckians, some of whom had come to back me and some to watch me, I did not quit their agreeable society until the “wee sma’ hours ayant the twal.”

Photograph by Pearsall, taken in 1872

HORACE GREELEY

This portrait, unusual for the absence of spectacles, is owned by his daughter, Mrs. F. M. Clendenin.

Before turning in, I glanced at the early edition of the “Commercial” to see that something—I was too tired to decipher precisely what—had happened. It was, in point of fact, the arrival about midnight of General Frank P. Blair and Governor B. Gratz Brown of Missouri. I had in my possession documents which would have induced at least one of them to pause before making himself too conspicuous. The Quadrilateral, excepting Reid, knew this. We had separated upon the adjournment of the convention. I, being across the river in Covington, their search for me was unavailing. They were in despair. When, having had a few hours of rest, I reached the convention hall toward noon, it was too late.

HORACE GREELEY AND WHITELAW REID

From a photograph taken in the editorial rooms of “The Tribune” shortly before the opening of the Greeley Campaign.

⇒
LARGER IMAGE

From a cartoon by Thomas Nast in “Harper’s Weekly”

NAST’S CARTOON, “‘THE PIRATES’ UNDER FALSE COLORS—CAN THEY CAPTURE THE ‘SHIP OF STATE’?”

At the left Sumner is reading a book; Andrew Johnson is behind the capstan; August Belmont in the gangway with a knife in his mouth; Fenton in the background; Whitelaw Reid on a keg of powder playing a violin tagged, “This is not an organ”; David Davis is behind Archbishop Hughes with the cross; Manton Marble is hiding behind his newspaper “The World”; Senator Tipton is bawling near Greeley; Carl Schurz is waving his hat to friends on the Ship of State and Theodore Tilton is embracing him; Governor Hoffman holds a parasol; Horatio Seymour kneels to Jeff Davis lying on the Confederate flag, behind him a group of Confederates with Wade Hampton standing near Greeley; John Kelly holds the Tammany knife, and above his head are faces of Tweed, and Mayor Oakey Hall with eye-glasses.

⇒
LARGER IMAGE

I got into the thick of the session in time to see the close, not without an angry collision with that one of the newly arrived actors whose coming had changed the course of events, and with whom I had lifelong relations of affectionate intimacy. Recently, when I was sailing in Mediterranean waters with Joseph Pulitzer, who, then a mere youth, was yet the secretary of the convention, he recalled the scene: the unexpected and not over-attractive appearance of B. Gratz Brown, the Governor of Missouri; his not very pleasing yet ingenious speech in favor of the nomination of Greeley; the stoical, almost lethargic indifference of Schurz. “Carl Schurz,” said Pulitzer, “was the most industrious and the least energetic man I have ever known and worked with. A word from him at that crisis would have completely routed Blair and squelched Brown. It was simply not in him to speak it.”

From a photograph by Sarony, taken in 1872

THOMAS NAST

The result was that Greeley was nominated amid a whirl of enthusiasm, his workers, with Whitelaw Reid at their head, having maintained an admirable and effective organization, and being thoroughly prepared to take advantage of the opportune moment. It was the logic of the event that B. Gratz Brown should be placed on the ticket with him.

The Quadrilateral was “nowhere.” It was done for. The impossible had come to pass. There arose thereafter a friendly issue of veracity between Schurz and me, which illustrates our state of mind. My version is that we left the convention hall together, with an immaterial train of after incidents; his that we did not meet after the adjournment. He was quite sure of this because he had ineffectually sought me. “Schurz was right,” said Joseph Pulitzer, upon the occasion of our yachting cruise just mentioned, “because he and I went directly from the hall with Judge Stallo to his home on Walnut Hills, where we dined and passed the afternoon.”

The Quadrilateral had been knocked into a cocked hat. Whitelaw Reid was the sole survivor. He was the only one of us who clearly understood the situation and thoroughly knew what he was about. He came to me and said: “I have won, and you people have lost. I shall expect that you stand by the agreement and meet me as my guests at dinner to-night. But, if you do not personally look after this, the others will not be there.” I was as badly hurt as any; but a bond is a bond, and I did as he desired, succeeding partly by coaxing and partly by insisting, though it was uphill work.

Frostier conviviality I have never sat down to than Reid’s dinner. Horace White looked more than ever like an iceberg; Sam Bowles was diplomatic, but ineffusive; Schurz was as a death’s head at the board; Halstead and I, through sheer bravado, tried to enliven the feast. But they would none of us, nor it, and we separated early and sadly, reformers hoist by their own petard.

THE SAME TUNES BY ANOTHER FIDDLE WILL SOUND AS SWEET.
IT IS TOO BAD TO HAVE THE NEW YORK WORLD PLAY SECOND FIDDLE TO ITS OWN FAVORITE TUNES.

From a cartoon by Thomas Nast in “Harper’s Weekly”

NAST’S CARTOON OF WHITELAW REID OF “THE TRIBUNE” AND MANTON MARBLE OF “THE WORLD” PLAYING IN CONCERT

THE reception by the country of the nomination of Horace Greeley was as inexplicable to the politicians as the nomination itself had been unexpected by the Quadrilateral. The people rose to it. The sentimental, the fantastic, and the paradoxical in human nature had to do with this. At the South an ebullition of pleased surprise grew into positive enthusiasm. Peace was the need, if not the longing, of the Southern heart, and Greeley’s had been the first hand stretched out to the South from the enemy’s camp,—very bravely, too, for he had signed the bail-bond of Jefferson Davis,—and quick upon the news flashed the response from generous men eager for the chance to pay something on a recognized debt of gratitude.

Except for this spontaneous uprising, which continued unabated in July, the Democratic party could not have been induced at its convention at Baltimore to ratify the proceedings at Cincinnati and formally to make Greeley its candidate. The leaders dared not resist it. Some of them halted, a few held out, but by midsummer the great body of them came to the front to head the procession.

Horace Greeley was a queer old man, a very medley of contradictions, shrewd and simple, credulous and penetrating, a master penman of the school of Swift and Cobbett, even in his odd, picturesque personality whimsically attractive and, as Seward learned to his cost, a man to be reckoned with where he chose to put his powers forth.

What he would have done with the Presidency had he reached it is not easy to say or to surmise. He was altogether unsuited for official life, for which, nevertheless, he had a longing. But he was not so readily deceived in men or misled in measures as he seemed, and as most people thought him.

His convictions were emotional, his philosophy experimental; but there was a certain method in their application to public affairs. He gave bountifully of his affection and his confidence to the few who enjoyed his familiar friendship; he was accessible and sympathetic, though not indiscriminating, to those who appealed to his impressionable sensibilities and sought his help. He had been a good party man and was temperamentally a partizan.

To him place was not a badge of bondage; it was a decoration, preferment, promotion, popular recognition. He had always yearned for office as the legitimate destination of public life and the honorable reward of party service. During the greater part of his career, the conditions of journalism had been rather squalid and servile. He was really great as a journalist. He was truly and highly fit for nothing else, but, seeing less deserving and less capable men about him advanced from one post of distinction to another, he wondered why his turn proved so tardy in coming, and when it would come. It did come with a rush. What more natural than that he should believe it real instead of the empty pageant of a vision?

After the first shock and surprise of the Cincinnati nomination, it had taken me only a day and a night to pull myself together and to plunge into the swim to help fetch the water-logged factions ashore. This was clearly indispensable to forcing the Democratic organization to come to the rescue of what would prove otherwise but a derelict upon a stormy sea. Schurz was deeply disgruntled. Before he could be appeased, a bridge found in what was called the Fifth Avenue Hotel Conference had to be constructed in order to carry him across the stream which flowed between his disappointed hopes and aims and what appeared to him an illogical and repulsive alternative. Like another Achilles, he had taken to his tent and sulked. He was harder to deal with than any of the Democratic file-leaders; but he finally yielded, and did splendid work in the campaign.

Carl Schurz was a stubborn spirit, not readily adjustable. He was a nobly gifted man, but from first to last an alien in an alien land. He once said to me, “If I should live a thousand years, they would still call me a Dutchman.” No man of his time spoke so well or wrote to better purpose. He was equally skilful in debate, an overmatch for Conkling and Morton, whom, especially in the French Arms matter, he completely dominated and outshone. As sincere and unselfish, as patriotic and as courageous, as any of his contemporaries, he could never attain the full measure of the popular heart and confidence, albeit reaching its understanding directly and surely. Within himself a man of sentiment, he was not the cause of sentiment in others. He knew this and felt it.

During the campaign the Nast cartoons in “Harper’s Weekly,” which while unsparing to the last degree to Greeley and Sumner, and treating Schurz with a kind of considerate, qualifying humor, nevertheless greatly offended him. I do not think Greeley minded them much, if at all. They were very effective, notably the “Pirate Ship,” which represented Greeley rising above the taffrail of a vessel carrying the Stars-and-Stripes and waving his handkerchief at the man-of-war Ship of State in the distance, while the political leaders of the Confederacy, dressed in true corsair costume, crouched below, ready to spring. Nothing did more to sectionalize Northern opinion and fire the Northern heart, or to lash the fury of the rank and file of those who were urged to vote as they had shot, and who had hoisted above them “the bloody shirt” for a banner.

In the first half of the canvass the impetus was with Greeley; the second half, beginning in eclipse, seemed about to end in something very like collapse. The old man seized his flag and set out upon his own account for a tour of the country. And right well he bore himself. If speech-making ever does any good toward the shaping of results, Greeley’s speeches surely should have elected him. They were marvels of impromptu oratory, mostly homely and touching appeals to the better sense and the magnanimity of a people not ripe or ready for generous impressions, convincing in their simplicity and integrity, unanswerable from any point of view of sagacious statesmanship or true patriotism, if the North had been in any mood to listen, to reason, and to respond.

I met him at Cincinnati and acted as his escort to Louisville and thence to Indianapolis, where others were waiting to take him in charge. He was in a state of querulous excitement. Before the vast and noisy audiences which we faced he stood apparently pleased and composed, delivering his words as he might have dictated them to a stenographer. As soon as we were alone he would break out into a kind of lamentation, punctuated by occasional bursts of objurgation. He especially distrusted the Quadrilateral, making an exception in my case as well he might, because, however his nomination had jarred my judgment, I had a real affection for him, dating back to the years immediately preceding the war, when I was wont to encounter him in the reporters’ galleries at Washington, which he preferred to using his floor privilege as an ex-member of Congress.

It was mid-October. We had heard from Maine. Indiana and Ohio had voted, and Greeley was for the first time realizing the hopeless nature of the contest. The South, in irons and under military rule and martial law sure for Grant, there had never been any real chance. Now it was obvious that there was to be no compensating ground-swell at the North. That he should pour forth his chagrin to one whom he knew so well and even regarded as one of his “boys” was inevitable. Much of what he said was founded on a basis of fact, some of it was mere suspicion and surmise, all of it came back to the main point that defeat stared us in the face.

I was glad and yet loath to part with him. If ever a man needed a strong friendly hand and heart to lean upon he did during those dark days—the end in darkest night nearer than any one could divine. He showed stronger mettle than had been allowed him; bore a manlier part than was commonly ascribed to his slovenly, slipshod habiliments and his aspect in which benignancy and vacillation seemed to struggle for the ascendancy. Abroad, the elements conspired against him. At home his wife lay ill, as it proved, unto death. The good gray head he still carried like a hero, but the worn and tender heart was beginning to break.

Happily the end came quickly. Overwhelming defeat was followed by overwhelming affliction. He never quitted his dear one’s bedside until the last pulse-beat, and then he sank beneath the load of grief. “‘The Tribune’ is gone and I am gone,” he said, and spoke no more.

The death of Greeley fell upon the country with a sudden shock. It aroused a wide-spread sense of pity and sorrow and awe. All hearts were hushed. In an instant the bitterness of the campaign was forgotten, though the huzzas of the victors still rent the air. President Grant, his late antagonist, with his cabinet, and the leading members of the two Houses of Congress, attended his funeral. As he lay in his coffin, he was no longer the arch-rebel leading a combine of buccaneers and insurgents, which the Republican orators and newspapers had depicted him, but the brave old apostle of freedom, who had done more than all others to make the issues upon which a militant and triumphant party had risen to power. The multitude remembered only the old white hat and the sweet, old baby face beneath it, heart of gold, and hand wielding the wizard pen; the incarnation of probity and kindness, of steadfast devotion to his duty, as he saw it, and to the needs of the whole human family. It was, indeed, a tragedy; and yet, as his body was lowered into its grave, there rose above it, invisible, unnoted, a flower of matchless beauty—the flower of peace and love between the parts of the Union to which his life had been a sacrifice.

The crank convention had builded wiser than it knew. That the Democratic party could ever have been brought to the support of Horace Greeley for President of the United States reads even now like a page out of a nonsense-book. That his warmest support should have come from the South seems an incredible, and was a priceless, fact. His martyrdom shortened the distance across the bloody chasm; his coffin very nearly filled it. The candidacy of Charles Francis Adams or of Lyman Trumbull would have meant a mathematical formula, with no solution of the problem, and as certain defeat at the end of it. Greeley’s candidacy threw a flood of light and warmth into the arena of deadly strife; it made a more equal and reasonable division of parties possible; it put the Southern half of the country in a position to plead its own case by showing the Northern half that it was not wholly recalcitrant, and it made way for real issues of pith and moment relating to the time instead of pigments of bellicose passion and scraps of ante bellum controversy.

In a word, Greeley did more by his death to complete the work of Lincoln than he could have done by a triumph at the polls and the term in the White House he so much desired. Though only sixty years of age, his race was run. Of him it may be truly written that he lived a life full of inspiration to his countrymen, and died not in vain, “our later Franklin” fittingly inscribed upon his tomb.

COMMENTS ON COLONEL WATTERSON’S PAPER — I—BY WHITELAW REID — II—BY HORACE WHITE

IS THE NEGRO HAVING A FAIR CHANCE? — THE NEGRO TREATED BETTER IN AMERICA THAN ELSEWHERE — LITTLE IMMIGRATION OF NEGROES — UNEQUAL LAWS THE CAUSE OF RACIAL TROUBLE IN AMERICA — THE NEGRO AS A DEPENDENT RACE — SKILLED NEGRO LABOR BETTER TREATED IN THE SOUTH THAN IN THE NORTH — THE DIFFICULTY OF OBTAINING UNIFORM TREATMENT — THE SHIFTING OF OCCUPATIONS — BETTER OPPORTUNITY FOR EDUCATION IN THE NORTH — THE UNCERTAINTY OF TREATMENT OF THE RACE IN THE NORTH — THE GREATEST SOURCE OF DISSATISFACTION TO THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH — LACK OF A “SQUARE DEAL” IN EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH — THE NEGRO PAYS MORE THAN HIS SHARE TO EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH — CONVICT LABOR A GREAT EVIL IN THE SOUTH — THE BALLOT TO THE INTELLIGENT NEGRO — THE CRIME OF LYNCHING

BY BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

IF I were asked the simple, direct question, “Does the negro in America have a fair chance?” it would be easy to answer simply, “No,” and then refer to instances with which every one is familiar to justify this reply. Such a statement would, however, be misleading to any one who was not intimately acquainted with the actual situation. For that reason I have chosen to make my answer not less candid and direct, I hope, but a little more circumstantial.

ALTHOUGH I have never visited either Africa or the West Indies to see for myself the condition of the people in these countries, I have had opportunities from time to time, outside of the knowledge I have gained from books, to get some insight into actual conditions there. But I do not intend to assert or even suggest that the condition of the American negro is satisfactory, nor that he has in all things a fair chance. Nevertheless, from all that I can learn I believe I am safe in saying that nowhere are there ten millions of black people who have greater opportunities or are making greater progress than the negroes in America.

I know that few native Africans will agree with me in this statement. For example, we had at Tuskegee a student from the Gold Coast who came to America to study in our Bible Training School and incidentally to learn something of our methods of study and work. He did not approve at all of our course of study. There was not enough theology, and too much work to suit him. As far as he was concerned, he could not see any value in learning to work, and he thought it was a pretty poor sort of country in which the people had to devote so much time to labor. “In my country,” he said, “everything grows of itself. We do not have to work. We can devote all our time to the larger life.”

IN the last ten years the official records show that 37,000 negroes have left other countries to take residence in the United States. I can find no evidence to show that any considerable number of black people have given up residence in America.

The striking fact is, that negroes from other countries are constantly coming into the United States, and few are going out. This seems in part to answer the question as to whether the negro is having a fair chance in America as compared with any other country in which negroes live in any large numbers.

By far the largest number of negro immigrants come from the West Indies. Even Haiti, a free negro republic, furnishes a considerable number of immigrants every year. In all my experience and observation, however, I cannot recall a single instance in which a negro has left the United States to become a citizen of the Haitian Republic. On the other hand, not a few leaders of thought and action among the negroes in the United States are those who have given up citizenship in the little Black Republic in order to live under the Stars and Stripes. The majority of the colored people who come from the West Indies do so because of the economic opportunities which the United States offers them. Another large group, however, comes to get education. Here at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama we usually have not far from one hundred students from South America and the various West Indian Islands. In the matter of opportunity to secure the old-fashioned, abstract book education several of the West Indian Islands give negroes a better chance than is afforded them in most of our Southern States, but for industrial and technical education they are compelled to come to the United States.

In the matter of political and civil rights, including protection of life and property and even-handed justice in the courts, negroes in the West Indies have the advantage of negroes in the United States. In the island of Jamaica, for example, there are about 15,000 white people and 600,000 black people, but of the “race problem,” in regard to which there is much agitation in this country, one hears almost nothing there. Jamaica has neither mobs, race riots, lynchings, nor burnings, such as disgrace our civilization. In that country there is likewise no bitterness between white man and black man. One reason for this is that the laws are conceived and executed with exact and absolute justice, without regard to race or color.

REDUCED to its lowest terms, the fact is that a large part of our racial troubles in the United States grow out of some attempt to pass and execute a law that will make and keep one man superior to another, whether he is intrinsically superior or not. No greater harm can be done to any group of people than to let them feel that a statutory enactment can keep them superior to anybody else. No greater injury can be done to any youth than to let him feel that because he belongs to this or that race, or because of his color, he will be advanced in life regardless of his own merits or efforts.

In what I have said I do not mean to suggest that in the West Indian Islands there is any more social intermingling between whites and blacks than there is in the United States. The trouble in most parts of the United States is that mere civil and legal privileges are confused with social intermingling. The fact that two men ride in the same railway coach does not mean in any country in the world that they are socially equal.

The facts seem to show, however, that after the West Indian negro has carefully weighed his civil and political privileges against the economic and other advantages to be found in the United States, he decides that, all things considered, he has a better chance in the United States than at home. The negro in Haiti votes, but votes have not made that country happy; or have not even made it free, in any true sense of the word. There is one other fact I might add to this comparison: nearly all the negro church organizations in the United States have mission churches in the islands, as they have also in Africa.

Does the negro in our country have a fair chance as compared with the native black man in Africa, the home of the negro? In the midst of the preparation of this article, I met Bishop Isaiah B. Scott of the Methodist Episcopal Church, one of the strongest and most intelligent colored men that I know. Bishop Scott has spent the greater part of his life in the Southern States, but during the last seven years he has lived in Liberia and traveled extensively on the west coast of Africa, where he has come into contact with all classes of European white people. In answer to my question, Bishop Scott dictated the following sentence, which he authorized me to use:

“The fairest white man that I have met in dealing with the colored man is the American white man. He understands the colored man better because of his contact with him, and he has more respect for the colored man who has accomplished something.”

Basing my conclusions largely on conversations which I have had with native Africans, with negro missionaries, and with negro diplomatic officials who have lived in Africa, especially on the west coast and in South Africa, I am led to the conclusion that, all things considered, the negro in the United States has a better chance than he has in Africa.

IN certain directions the negro has had greater opportunities in the States in which he served as a slave than he has had in the States in which he has been for a century or more a free man. This statement is borne out by the fact that in the South the negro rarely has to seek labor, but, on the other hand, labor seeks him. In all my experience in the Southern States, I have rarely seen a negro man or woman seeking labor who did not find it. In the South the negro has business opportunities that he does not have elsewhere. While in social matters the lines are strictly drawn, the negro is less handicapped in business in the South than any other part of the country. He is sought after as a depositor in banks. If he wishes to borrow money, he gets it from the local bank just as quickly as the white man with the same business standing. If the negro is in the grocery business or in the dry-goods trade, or if he operates a drug store, he gets his goods from the wholesale dealer just as readily and on as good terms as his white competitor. If the Southern white man has a dwelling-house, a store-house, factory, school, or court-house to erect, it is natural for him to employ a colored man as builder or contractor to perform that work. What is said to be the finest school building in the city of New Orleans was erected by a colored contractor. In the North a colored man who ran a large grocery store would be looked upon as a curiosity. The Southern white man frequently buys his groceries from a negro merchant.

Fortunately, the greater part of the colored people in the South have remained as farmers on the soil. The late census shows that eighty per cent. of Southern negroes live on the land.

There are few cases where a black man cannot buy and own a farm in the South. It is as a farmer in the Southern States that the masses of my race have economically and industrially the largest opportunity. No one stops to ask before purchasing a bale of cotton or a bushel of corn if it has been produced by a white hand or a black hand.

The negro now owns, as near as I can estimate, 15,000 grocery and dry-goods stores, 300 drug stores, and 63 banks. Negroes pay taxes on between $600,000,000 and $700,000,000 of property of various kinds in the United States. Unless he had had a reasonably fair chance in the South, the negro could not have gained and held this large amount of property, and would not have been able to enter in the commerce of this country to the extent that he has.

AS a skilled laborer, the negro has a better opportunity in the South than in the North. I think it will be found generally true in the South as elsewhere that wherever the negro is strong in numbers and in skill he gets on well with the trades-unions. In these cases the unions seek to get him in, or they leave him alone, and in the latter case do not seek to control him. In the Southern States, where the race enters in large numbers in the trades, the trades-unions have not had any appreciable effect in hindering the progress of the negro as a skilled laborer or as a worker in special industries, such as coal-mining, iron-mining, etc. In border cities, like St. Louis, Washington, and Baltimore, however, the negro rarely finds work in such industries as brick-laying and carpentry. One of the saddest examples of this fact that I ever witnessed was in the City of Washington, where on the campus of Howard University, a negro institution, a large brick building was in process of erection. Every man laying brick on this building was white, every man carrying a hod was a negro. The white man, in this instance, was willing to erect a building in which negroes could study Latin, but was not willing to give negroes a chance to lay the bricks in its walls.

Let us consider for a moment the negro in the professions in the Southern States. Aside from school teaching and preaching, into which the racial question enters in only a slight degree, there remain law and medicine. All told, there are not more than 700 colored lawyers in the Southern States, while there are perhaps more than 3000 doctors, dentists, and pharmacists. With few exceptions, colored lawyers feel, as they tell me, that they do not have a fair chance before a white jury when a white lawyer is on the other side of the case. Even in communities where negro lawyers are not discriminated against by juries, their clients feel that there is danger in intrusting cases to a colored lawyer. Mainly for these two reasons, colored lawyers are not numerous in the South; yet, in cases where colored lawyers combine legal practice with trading and real estate, they have in several instances been highly successful.

HERE again, however, it is difficult to generalize. People speak of the “race question” in the South, overlooking the fact that each one of the 1300 counties in the Southern States is a law unto itself. The result is that there are almost as many race problems as there are counties. The negro may have a fair chance in one county, and have no chance at all in the adjoining county. The Hon. Josiah T. Settles, for example, has practised both criminal and civil law for thirty years in Memphis. He tells me that he meets with no discrimination on account of his color either from judges, lawyers, or juries. There are other communities, like New Orleans and Little Rock, where negro lawyers are accorded the same fair treatment, and, I ought to add, that, almost without exception, negro lawyers tell me they are treated fairly by white judges and white lawyers.

The professional man who is making the greatest success in the South is the negro doctor, and I should include the pharmacists and dentists with the physicians and surgeons. Except in a few cities, white doctors are always willing to consult with negro doctors.

The young negro physician in the South soon finds himself with a large and paying practice, and, as a rule, he makes use of this opportunity to improve the health conditions of his race in the community. Some of the most prosperous men of my race in the South are negro doctors. Again, the very fact that a negro cannot buy soda-water in a white drug store makes an opportunity for the colored drug store, which often becomes a sort of social center for the colored population.

From an economic point of view, the negro in the North, when compared with the white man, does not have a fair chance. This is the feeling not only of the colored people themselves, but of almost every one who has examined into the conditions under which colored men work. But here also one is likely to form a wrong opinion. There is, to begin with, this general difference between the North and the South, that whereas in the South there is, as I have already suggested, a job looking for every idle man, in the North, on the contrary, there are frequently two or three idle men looking for every job. In some of the large cities of the North there are organizations to secure employment for colored people. For a number of years I have kept in pretty close touch with those at the head of these organizations, and they tell me that in many cases they have been led to believe that the negro has a harder time in finding employment than is actually true. The reason is that those who are out of employment seek these organizations. Those who have steady work, in positions which they have held for years, do not seek them.

As a matter of fact, I have been surprised to find how large a number of colored people there are in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago who hold responsible positions in factories, stores, banks, and other places. In regard to these people one hears very little. There is a colored man, for example, in Cleveland who has been for years private secretary to a railway president. In St. Paul there is a colored man who holds a similar position; in Baltimore there is still another colored private secretary to a railway president.

IN recent years there has been a great shifting of employment between the races. A few years ago all the rough work in the mines, on the railway, and elsewhere was performed by Irish immigrants. Now this work is done by Poles, Hungarians, and Italians. In cities like New York, Chicago, and Pittsburg one finds to-day fewer colored people employed as hotel waiters, barbers, and porters than twenty years ago. In New York, however, many colored men are employed in the streets and in the subways. In Pittsburg thousands of colored men are employed in the iron mills. In Chicago negroes are employed very largely in the packing-houses. Twenty years ago in these cities there were almost no colored people in these industries. In addition to the changes I have mentioned, many colored people have gone into businesses of various kinds on their own account. It should be remembered, also, that, while in some trades and in some places discrimination is made against the negro, in other trades and in other places this discrimination works in his favor. The case in point is the Pullman-car service. I question whether any white man, however efficient, could secure a job as a Pullman-car porter.

IN the North, as a rule, the negro has the same opportunities for education as his white neighbor. When it comes to making use of this education, however, he is frequently driven to a choice between becoming an agitator, who makes his living out of the troubles of his race, or emigrating to the Southern States, where the opportunities for educated colored men are large. One of the greatest sources of bitterness and despondency among colored people in the North grows out of their inability to find a use for their education after they have obtained it. Again, they are seldom sure of just what they may or may not do. If one is a stranger in a city, he does not know in what hotel he will be permitted to stay; he is not certain what seat he may occupy in the theater, or whether he will be able to obtain a meal in a restaurant.

THE uncertainty, the constant fear and expectation of rebuff which the colored man experiences in the North, is often more humiliating and more wearing than the frank and impersonal discrimination which he meets in the South. This is all the more true because the colored youth in most of the Northern States, educated as they are in the same schools with white youths, taught by the same teachers, and inspired by the same ideals of American citizenship, are not prepared for the discrimination that meets them when they leave school.

Despite all this, it cannot be denied that the negro has advantages in the North which are denied him in the South. They are the opportunity to vote and to take part, to some extent, in making and administering the laws by which he is governed, the opportunity to obtain an education, and, what is of still greater importance, fair and unbiased treatment in the courts, the protection of the law.

I have touched upon conditions North and South, which, whether they affect the negro favorably or adversely, are for the most part so firmly entrenched in custom, prejudice, and human nature that they must perhaps be left to the slow changes of time. There are certain conditions in the South, however, in regard to which colored people feel perhaps more keenly because they believe if they were generally understood they would be remedied. Very frequently the negro people suffer injury and wrong in the South because they have or believe they have no way of making their grievances known. Not only are they not represented in the legislatures, but it is sometimes hard to get a hearing even in the press. On one of my educational campaigns in the South I was accompanied by a colored newspaper man. He was an enterprising sort of chap and at every public meeting we held he would manage in some way to address the audience on the subject of his paper. On one occasion, after appealing to the colored people for some time, he turned to the white portion of the audience.

“You white folks,” he said, “ought to read our colored papers to find out what colored people are doing. You ought to find out what they are doing and what they are thinking. You don’t know anything about us,” he added. “Don’t you know a colored man can’t get his name in a white paper unless he commits a crime?”

I do not know whether the colored newspaper man succeeded in getting any subscriptions by this speech or not, but there was much truth in his statement.

ONE thing that many negroes feel keenly, although they do not say much about it to either black or white people, is the conditions of railway travel in the South.

Now and then the negro is compelled to travel. With few exceptions, the railroads are almost the only great business concerns in the South that pursue the policy of taking just as much money from the black traveler as from the white traveler without feeling that they ought, as a matter of justice and fair play, not as a matter of social equality, to give one man for his money just as much as another man. The failure of most of the roads to do justice to the negro when he travels is the source of more bitterness than any one other matter of which I have any knowledge.

It is strange that the wide-awake men who control the railroads in the Southern States do not see that, as a matter of dollars and cents, to say nothing of any higher consideration, they ought to encourage, not discourage, the patronage of nine millions of the black race in the South. This is a traveling population that is larger than the whole population of Canada, and yet, with here and there an exception, railway managers do not seem to see that there is any business advantage to them in giving this large portion of the population fair treatment.

What embitters the colored people in regard to railroad travel, I repeat, is not the separation, but the inadequacy of the accommodations. The colored people are given half of a baggage-car or half of a smoking-car. In most cases, the negro portion of the car is poorly ventilated, poorly lighted, and, above all, rarely kept clean; and then, to add to the colored man’s discomfort, no matter how many colored women may be in the colored end of the car, nor how clean or how well educated these colored women may be, this car is made the headquarters for the news-boy. He spreads out his papers, his magazines, his candy, and his cigars over two or three seats. White men are constantly coming into the car and almost invariably light cigars while in the colored coach, so that these women are required to ride in what is virtually a smoking-car.

On some of the roads colored men and colored women are forced to use the same toilet-room. This is not true of every Southern railway. There are some railways in the South, notably the Western Railway of Alabama, which make a special effort to see that the colored people are given every facility in the day coaches that the white people have, and the colored people show in many ways that they appreciate this consideration.

Here is an experience of R. S. Lovinggood, a colored man of Austin, Texas. I know Mr. Lovinggood well. He is neither a bitter nor a foolish man. I will venture to say that there is not a single white man in Austin, Texas, where he lives, who will say that Professor Lovinggood is anything but a conservative, sensible man.

“At one time,” he said to me, in speaking of some of his traveling experiences, “I got off at a station almost starved. I begged the keeper of the restaurant to sell me a lunch in a paper and hand it out of the window. He refused, and I had to ride a hundred miles farther before I could get a sandwich.

“At another time I went to a station to purchase my ticket. I was there thirty minutes before the ticket-office was opened. When it did finally open I at once appeared at the window. While the ticket-agent served the white people at one window, I remained there beating the other until the train pulled out. I was compelled to jump aboard the train without my ticket and wire back to get my trunk expressed. Considering the temper of the people, the separate coach law may be the wisest plan for the South, but the statement that the two races have equal accommodations is all bosh. I pay the same money, but I cannot have a chair or a lavatory and rarely a through car. I must crawl out at all times of night, and in all kinds of weather, in order to catch another dirty ‘Jim Crow’ coach to make my connections. I do not ask to ride with white people. I do ask for equal accommodations for the same money.”

IN the matter of education, the negro in the South has not had what Colonel Roosevelt calls a “square deal.” In the North, not only the Jew, the Slav, the Italian, many of whom are such recent arrivals that they have not yet become citizens and voters, even under the easy terms granted them by the naturalization laws of the Northern States, have all the advantages of education that are granted to every other portion of the population, but in several States an effort is now being made to give immigrant peoples special opportunities for education over and above those given to the average citizen. In some instances, night schools are started for their special benefit. Frequently schools which run nine months in the winter are continued throughout the summer, whenever a sufficient number of people can be induced to attend them. Sometimes, as for example, in New York State, where large numbers of men are employed in digging the Erie Canal and in excavating the Croton Aqueduct, camp schools are started where the men employed on these public works in the day may have an opportunity to learn the English language at night. In some cases a special kind of text-book, written in two or three different languages, has been prepared for use in these immigrant schools, and frequently teachers are specially employed who can teach in the native languages if necessary.

While in the North all this effort is being made to provide education for these foreign peoples, many of whom are merely sojourners in this country, and will return in a few months to their homes in Europe, it is only natural that the negro in the South should feel that he is unfairly treated when he has, as is often true in the country districts, either no school at all, or one with a term of no more than four or five months, taught in the wreck of a log-cabin and by a teacher who is paid about half the price of a first-class convict.

This is no mere rhetorical statement. If a negro steals or commits a murderous assault of some kind, he will be tried and imprisoned, and then, if he is classed as a first-class convict, he will be rented out at the rate of $46 per month for twelve months in the year. The negro who does not commit a crime, but prepares himself to serve the State as a first-grade teacher, will receive from the State for that service perhaps $30 per month for a period of not more than six months.

Taking the Southern States as a whole, about $10.23 per capita is spent in educating the average white boy or girl, and the sum of $2.82 per capita in educating the average black child.

Let me take as an illustration one of our Southern farming communities, where the colored population largely outnumbers the white. In Wilcox County, Alabama, there are nearly 11,000 black children and 2000 white children of school age. Last year $3569 of the public school fund went for the education of the black children in that county, and $30,294 for the education of the white children, this notwithstanding that there are five times as many negro children as white. In other words, there was expended for the education of each negro child in Wilcox County thirty-three cents, and for each white child $15. In the six counties surrounding and touching Wilcox County there are 55,000 negro children of school age. There was appropriated for their education last year from the public school fund $40,000, while for the 19,622 white children in the same counties there was appropriated from the public fund $199,000.

There are few, if any, intelligent white people in the South or anywhere else who will claim that the negro is receiving justice in these counties in the matter of the public school fund. Especially will this seem true when it is borne in mind that the negro is the main dependence for producing the farm products which constitute the chief wealth of that part of Alabama. I say this because I know there are thousands of fair-minded and liberal white men in the South who do not know what is actually going on in their own States.

In the State of Georgia, negroes represent forty-two per cent. of the farmers of the State, and are largely employed as farm laborers on the plantations. Notwithstanding this fact, Georgia has two agricultural colleges and eleven district agricultural high schools for whites, supported at an annual cost to the State of $140,000, while there is only one school where negroes have a chance to study agriculture, and to the support of this the State contributes only $8000 a year. When one hears it said that the negro farmer of Georgia is incompetent and inefficient as compared with the white farmer of Minnesota or Wisconsin, can any one say that this is fair to the negro?

Not a few Southern white men see what is needed and are not afraid to say so. A. A. Gunby of Louisiana recently said: “Every one competent to speak and honest enough to be candid knows that education benefits and improves the negro. It makes him a better neighbor and workman, no matter what you put him at.”

Every one agrees that a public library in a city tends to make better citizens, keeping people usefully employed instead of spending their time in idleness or in committing crime. Is it fair, as is true of most of the large cities of the South, to take the negro’s money in the form of taxes to support a public library, and then to make no provision for the negro using any library? I am glad to say that some of the cities, for instance, Louisville, Kentucky, and Jacksonville, Florida, have already provided library facilities for their black citizens or are preparing to do so.

One excuse that is frequently made in the South for not giving the negro a fair share of the moneys expended for education is that the negro is poor and does not contribute by his taxes sufficient to support the schools that now exist. True, the negro is poor; but in the North that would be a reason for giving him more opportunities for education, not fewer, because it is recognized that one of the greatest hindrances to progress is ignorance. As far as I know, only two men have ever given thorough consideration to the question as to the amount the negro contributes directly or indirectly toward his own education. Both of these are Southern white men. One of them is W. N. Sheats, former Superintendent of Education for the State of Florida. The other is Charles L. Coon, Superintendent of Schools at Wilson, North Carolina, and formerly connected with the Department of Education for that State.

IN his annual report for 1900, Mr. Sheats made a thorough analysis of the sources of the school fund in Florida, and of the way in which it is distributed between the white and negro schools. In referring to the figures which he obtained, he said:

Mr. Sheats shows that the amount paid for negro schools from negro taxes or from a division of other funds to which negroes contribute indirectly with the whites, amounted to $23,984. The actual cost of negro schools, including their pro rata for administration expenses, was $19,467.

“If this is a fair calculation,” Mr. Sheats concludes, “the schools for negroes are not only no burden on the white citizens, but $4525 for negro schools contributed from other sources was in some way diverted to the white schools. A further loss to the negro schools is due to the fact that so few polls are collected from negroes by county officials.”

Mr. Coon, in an address on “Public Taxation and Negro Schools” before the 1909 Conference for Education in the South, at Atlanta, Georgia, said:

He also brought out the fact that in Virginia, if, in addition to the direct taxes paid by negroes, they had received their proportion of the taxes on corporate property and other special taxes, such as fertilizers, liquor, etc., there would have been expended on the negro schools $18,077 more than was expended; that is, they would have received $507,305 instead of $489,228. In North Carolina there would have been expended $26,539 more than was expended, the negroes receiving $429,197 instead of $402,658. In Georgia there would have been expended on the negro schools $141,682 more than was expended.

In other words, Superintendent Coon seems to prove that negro schools in the States referred to are not only no burden to the white tax-payers, but that the colored people do not get back all the money for their schools that they themselves pay in taxes. In each case there is a considerable amount taken from the negroes’ taxes and spent somewhere else or for other purposes.

IT would help mightily toward the higher civilization for both races if more white people would apply their religion to the negro in their community, and ask themselves how they would like to be treated if they were in the negro’s place. For example, no white man in America would feel that he was being treated with justice if every time he had a case in court, whether civil or criminal, every member of the jury was of some other race. Yet this is true of the negro in nearly all of the Southern States. There are few white lawyers or judges who will not admit privately that it is almost impossible for a negro to get justice when he has a case against a white man and all the members of the jury are white. In these circumstances, when a negro fails to receive justice, the injury to him is temporary, but the injury to the character of the white man on the jury is permanent.

In Alabama eighty-five per cent. of the convicts are negroes. The official records show that last year Alabama had turned into its treasury $1,085,854 from the labor of its convicts. At least $900,000 of this came from negro convicts, who were for the most part rented to the coal-mining companies in the northern part of the State. The result of this policy has been to get as many able-bodied convicts as possible into the mines, so that contractors might increase their profits. Alabama, of course, is not the only State that has yielded to the temptation to make money out of human misery. The point is, however, that while $900,000 is turned into the State treasury from negro-convict labor, to say nothing of negro taxes, there came out of the State treasury, to pay negro teachers, only $357,585.

I speak of this matter as much in the interest of the white man as of the black. Whenever and wherever the white man, acting as a court officer, feels that he cannot render absolute justice because of public sentiment, that white man is not free. Injustice in the courts makes slaves of two races in the South, the white and the black.

NO influence could ever make me desire to go back to the conditions of Reconstruction days to secure the ballot for the negro. That was an order of things that was bad for the negro and bad for the white man. In most Southern States it is absolutely necessary that some restriction be placed upon the use of the ballot. The actual methods by which this restriction was brought about have been widely advertised, and there is no necessity for me discussing them here. At the time these measures were passed I urged that, whatever law went upon the statute-book in regard to the use of the ballot, it should apply with absolute impartiality to both races. This policy I advocate again in justice to both white man and negro.

Let me illustrate what I mean. In a certain county of Virginia, where the county board had charge of registering those who were to be voters, a colored man, a graduate of Harvard University, who had long been a resident of the county, a quiet, unassuming man, went before the board to register. He was refused on the ground that he was not intelligent enough to vote. Before this colored man left the room a white man came in who was so intoxicated that he could scarcely tell where he lived. This white man was registered, and by a board of intelligent white men who had taken an oath to deal justly in administering the law.

Will any one say that there is wisdom or statesmanship in such a policy as that? In my opinion it is a fatal mistake to teach the young black man and the young white man that the dominance of the white race in the South rests upon any other basis than absolute justice to the weaker man. It is a mistake to cultivate in the mind of any individual or group of individuals the feeling and belief that their happiness rests upon the misery of some one else, or that their intelligence is measured by the ignorance of some one else; or their wealth by the poverty of some one else. I do not advocate that the negro make politics or the holding of office an important thing in his life. I do urge, in the interest of fair play for everybody, that a negro who prepares himself in property, in intelligence, and in character to cast a ballot, and desires to do so, should have the opportunity.

In these pages I have spoken plainly regarding the South because I love the South as I love no other part of our country, and I want to see her white people equal to any white people on the globe in material wealth, in education, and in intelligence. I am certain, however, that none of these things can be secured and permanently maintained except they are founded on justice.

IN most parts of the United States the colored people feel that they suffer more than others as the result of the lynching habit. When he was Governor of Alabama, I heard Governor Jelks say in a public speech that he knew of five cases during his administration of innocent colored people having been lynched. If that many innocent people were known to the governor to have been lynched, it is safe to say that there were other innocent persons lynched whom the governor did not know about. What is true of Alabama in this respect is true of other States. In short, it is safe to say that a large proportion of the colored people lynched are innocent.

A lynching-bee usually has its origin in a report that some crime has been committed. The story flies from mouth to mouth. Excitement spreads. Few take the time to get the facts. A mob forms and fills itself with bad whisky. Some one is captured. In case rape is charged, the culprit is frequently taken before the person said to have been assaulted. In the excitement of the moment, it is natural that the victim should say that the first person brought before her is guilty. Then comes more excitement and more whisky. Then comes the hanging, the shooting, or burning of the body.

Not a few cases have occurred where white people have blackened their faces and committed a crime, knowing that some negro would be suspected and mobbed for it. In other cases it is known that where negroes have committed crimes, innocent men have been lynched and the guilty ones have escaped and gone on committing more crimes.

Within the last twelve months there have been seventy-one cases of lynching, nearly all of colored people. Only seventeen were charged with the crime of rape. Perhaps they are wrong to do so, but colored people in the South do not feel that innocence offers them security against lynching. They do feel, however, that the lynching habit tends to give greater security to the criminal, white or black. When ten millions of people feel that they are not sure of being fairly tried in a court of justice, when charged with crime, is it not natural that they should feel that they have not had a fair chance?

I am aware of the fact that in what I have said in regard to the hardships of the negro in this country I throw myself open to the criticism of doing what I have all my life condemned and everywhere sought to avoid; namely, laying over-emphasis on matters in which the negro race in America has been badly treated, and thereby overlooking those matters in which the negro has been better treated in America than anywhere else in the world.

Despite all any one has said or can say in regard to the injustice and unfair treatment of the people of my race at the hands of the white men in this country, I venture to say that there is no example in history of the people of one race who have had the assistance, the direction, and the sympathy of another race in all its efforts to rise to such an extent as the negro in the United States.

Notwithstanding all the defects in our system of dealing with him, the negro in this country owns more property, lives in better houses, is in a larger measure encouraged in business, wears better clothes, eats better food, has more school-houses and churches, more teachers and ministers, than any similar group of negroes anywhere else in the world.

What has been accomplished in the past years, however, is merely an indication of what can be done in the future.

As white and black learn day by day to adjust, in a spirit of justice and fair play, those interests which are individual and racial, and to see and feel the importance of those fundamental interests which are common, so will both races grow and prosper. In the long run no individual and no race can succeed which sets itself at war against the common good.

PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR

BY JAMES D. CORROTHERS

THE NEGRO SINGER

EXHORTATION (A NEGRO SERMON)

WORDS BY ALEX. ROGERS

MUSIC BY WILL MARION COOK

Copyright, 1912, by G. Schirmer

Re-mem-ber, if a brudder smotes dee on de lef’ cheek,

Turn roun’ and’ han’ him de od-der!

Kase, — ef you kaint ’turn good fu’ e-vil,——

What’s de good o’ bein’ a brudder?

Sez’ — when de an-gry pas-sions ris-es wid-in dee,——

Say, “Sat-an,— go!—git dee be-hin’ me!”

Den stop! an’ count a hun-dert,—— den go on ’bout yo’ bus’ness!—

Be keer-ful,—— be cau-tious,—— al-ways look be-fo’— you leap,——

Be sho’ you do— some pray-in’— be-fo’ you goes-a to sleep.——

To fight is wrong,—— it’s wrong to fight,——

An’ no two wrongs-a kaint make-a one right,

So try an’ be right unto de en;—

Dat’s right, all right! A-men! A-men!

Dat’s right, all right! A-men! A - A - A - A - A - A - men!——

⇒
LARGER IMAGE

⇒
LARGER IMAGE

⇒
LARGER IMAGE

⇒
LARGER IMAGE

LISTEN

Scamps of Romance

Scamps of Romance

by

William Rose Benét

I

E’RE off across the hills to-day with merriment agog,

With pipe and timbrel ribboned gay, with fiddle-scrape and clog.

Then, Nolly Goldsmith, here’s to thee!

Send Villon’s soul no ill!

But all hail that Prince of Vagabonds, Sir John Maundeville!

Oh, Sir John Maundeville, Sir John Maundeville,

Saw more Golcondas in the west than e’er another will!

Brave Marco Polo pales to naught,

Aladdin’s boast is still,

Before the gallant glory of Sir John Maundeville!

So we march—tramp! tramp!—and the ringing of our tread

Hales forth the highway swaggerers of lusty times long dead.

When so the glad world’s purple clad, it’s hail the romance scamp,

With the zesting of our jesting, and our march—tramp! tramp!

II

III

IV

V

A CLEAN SHAVE

Drawn by Oliver Herford

BY GRACE MAC GOWAN COOKE

Author of “Mistress Joy,” “The Machinations of Ocoee Gallantine,” etc., etc.

WITH AN ILLUSTRATION BY F. E. SCHOONOVER

THERE was a storm brewing. The sun had gone down in splendor over Big Bald; heat lightnings laced the primrose of its afterglow. Now the air trembled to a presage of thunder; the world panted for its outburst of elemental rage.

The camp-meeting was in a brush arbor; the dry leaves on the boughs with which it was roofed rustled faintly when breathings of the coming tempest whispered across the highlands. The congregation, seated on backless puncheon benches, seemed to crouch beneath the uncertain illumination of a few torches and lanterns. Protracted meetings in the mountains are always held in midsummer, when the crops are laid by, so that perhaps the rising generation comes to associate their souls’ salvation and hot, breathless nights like this. Fleeing from the wrath to come no doubt gets hopelessly mixed in some minds with running for adequate shelter from the sudden passionate thunder-storms of the season.

There were six exhorters at work, swaying on their feet, shouting, two of them singing, the mourners’ bench partly filled, a promising tremor of excitement abroad in that portion of the congregation which had not yet come forward or risen for prayer—and the shower was almost upon them.

Vesta Turrentine, who always came up from the riverside store kept by her widower father at Turrentine’s Landing to stay with her Aunt Miranda during protracted meetings, had withdrawn to the end of a bench, where she sat with bowed head, watchful, agonizedly alert, letting her attitude pass for that of a penitent, hoping to be undisturbed. She was a slim, finely built young creature, already past the mere adolescence at which the mountain girl is apt to seek a mate. As she sat, chin on hand, dark eyes staring straight forward, her salient profile, a delicate feminine replica of old Jabe Turrentine’s own eagle outlines, relieved against the lights of the meeting, a man who crawled through the bushes found her very good to look upon. So absorbed was he in staring at her that he did not notice another man, deeper in shadow, who stared at him. Careless of observation, certain that the meeting was fully occupied with itself, Ross Adene, the first man, crept forward to the girl’s knee, touched it, laid his yellow head against it with a murmured greeting.

Drawn by F. E. Schoonover Half-tone plate engraved by H. C. Merrill

“HE WORKED WITH THE AIR OF A MAN WHO HAS COME AT LAST TO SOME DECISION, TURNED TO REACH FOR THE TOWEL—AND LOOKED INTO THE MUZZLE OF HIS OWN GUN, WITH HIS DAUGHTER’S RESOLUTE EYES BEHIND IT” (SEE PAGE 69)

⇒
LARGER IMAGE

“Ross?” The whisper was strangled by terror; her hand went down against his hair, spread protectingly to conceal its shine.

“Who did you reckon it was?” whispered the young fellow. “Anybody else hangin’ round hidin’ to get sight of ye and a chance to speak with ye?”

“Didn’t you get my word?” Vesta breathed. “Pappy’s on the mounting—unless’n the storm’s turned him back.”

“I reckon it has,” Ross answered, settling himself comfortably in the deep shadow beside her. “It’s shore goin’ to be a big one.”

As he spoke there was an instant’s breathless hush of the voices in the meeting, a dying down of the lights. It was followed by a white flash so blinding, so all-enveloping, that in it one could see nothing. Close after came a crash which seemed to rend earth and menace heaven. The young fellow leaped to his feet, regardless of all concealment, pulling the girl up beside him, flinging an arm about her. After that lightning-flash the torches and lanterns seemed darkness. Women were screaming, mothers calling to their children, men shouting hoarsely, and running toward plunging teams hitched in the grove.

It would have seemed that in such confusion even the rashest intruder might go unchallenged, unrecognized, yet Vesta pushed her companion from her and into the shadow again before she looked around for her people. Her Aunt Miranda was puffing ponderously down the aisle toward a shrieking infant which had awakened from its nap on a back bench.

“Aunt ’Randy,” Vesta called, “I’m goin’ home with—somebody. I’m all right. I’ll be thar afore ye.”

She could see Mrs. Minter’s lips shape themselves to some words which her vigorously nodded head suggested were those of assent. She dipped into the dark; Ross swept his sweetheart up on a capable arm, and they set off running down the wood path which led across the fields to the Minter place.

The noises of the meeting behind them diminished as they ran. Other people were hurrying through the forest, calling, assuring themselves of the whereabouts and safety of members of their parties. Here and there lanterns or torches flickered.

“Hadn’t we better go through the bushes?” panted the girl. “Somebody’s apt to see ye—an’ then—”

“No,” returned Adene, half lifting her along; “nobody’ll take notice in a storm like this; an’ if they should, I’m about tired of dodgin’. We got to marry sometime, girl. How about then? Yer pappy’ll know then, won’t he?”

Thereafter they ran in silence. Twice the lightning illuminated their way, diminishing peals of thunder following. It was after the second of these that a shot rang out, startling Vesta so that she clung to Ross’s arm and screamed. The young fellow made the usual dry comment of the mountain-born, “They’s a man standin’ somewhars right now with an empty gun in his hand.” Then they fled breathlessly under the cover of a projecting ledge in the small bluff among the bushes which had been Adene’s objective point. The heavens opened, and the floods descended.

There is something cozy and delightful about standing sheltered and dry, while the whole world falls down in rain, the elements themselves seeking all in vain to reach and destroy you. Vesta put out a hand to let the great drops strike on it, pushing back her hair and lifting her face to the keen, sweet coolness of the downpour.

“Don’t you love it?” she asked again and again. “Hit ’minds me of playin’ when I was a child, and just goin’ crazy hollerin’ ‘Rain flag’ when hit come down this a-way.”

“You an’ me used to play that together,” Ross reminded her. “That was in the days before your dad took up the feud again.”

At this the girl turned and clutched him.

“Oh, Ross, I sent ye word not to come to-night,” she said, “but I wanted to see ye an’ warn ye, too. Pappy’s actin’ quare. He’s bound I shall marry.”

“Well, so ’m I,” assented Ross, half humorously. “Him an’ me won’t fall out over that.”

“Don’t make a joke of it,” said Vesta. “Hit’s as much as your life’s worth, an’ you know it. Hit’s as much as your life’s worth to be here to-night. We ort never to meet again.”

She added the concluding words in a lower tone not intended, perhaps, for her lover’s ears.

“Has he picked out a man for ye?” The young fellow returned to what she had first said.

“U-m—h-m,” assented Vesta, reluctantly.

“Who?”

“Sam Beath.” She spoke very low.

“Sam Beath.” The young fellow repeated her words louder. “That feller that come up from the Far Cove neighborhood to stay in the store?”

“Pappy don’t like him—for me—so very well,” Vesta faltered, “but he’s kin to kin of ourn, an’—you know, he’ll keep up the feud. Pappy says I’m gittin’ awful old; an’—”

“If what he wants is to see his gal married, you an’ me’ll wed to-morrow night after meetin’,” Ross declared.

Vesta laid hold of the lapels of his coat. She even slipped an arm about his neck in entreaty, a tremendous demonstration for a mountain girl, who feels that she must always be in the shy, reluctant attitude of one who is besought, whose scruples are overcome.

“Ross, I know ye don’t mean it, honey, but, oh, for any sakes! walk careful! Three years you an’ me has been promised to each other, a-meetin’ wherever we could, me scared to death for ye all the time; but pappy ain’t never found it out. Ross, give me yo’ word that you’ll be careful.”

A fleeting glow showed Adene his sweetheart’s pale, entreating face, and then came darkness and the steady drumming of the rain on the leaves.

“You an’ me are a-goin’ to be married to-morrow night after meetin’ at Brush Arbor,” he repeated doggedly. And Vesta, used to the men of her world, with whom action follows the word swiftly, if it does not precede, began to cry, leaning weakly against his shoulder.

“Ross, I’ll run away with ye, I’ll go anywhars you say. I’ll work my fingers to the bone for you. I’ll never look on the face of my kin again—for your sake.”

In her pleading she raised her voice until it was almost a cry. The storm had died down; the lisp of falling water scarcely blurred the sound of their words.

“Not for my sake you won’t,” returned her lover, sturdily, putting a strong arm about her, bending to cup her cheek in his hand. “Why, I like your daddy fine. I picked him out for a father-in-law same’s I picked you out for a wife. I ain’t never had any dad of my own to look to. Yourn suits me. I’ll make friends with him.”

“And why ain’t you got no father?” inquired Vesta, tragically. “’Ca’se my uncle shot him down when you was a baby in your mother’s lap—and there all the trouble began.”

“Hit’s a long time ago,” said Ross, philosophically. “I ain’t bearin’ any grudge till yet. I reckon if your uncle hadn’t ’a’ got my father, my father’d ’a’ got him. I aim to marry ye, here in Brush Arbor meetin’, an’ make friends with your daddy an’ put an end to the feud.”

As a spectacular conclusion to the storm, and apparently to Ross’s speech as well, there blazed through the woods a sudden greenish-white radiance of lightning. It flickered on the wet leaves, giving them a phosphorescent glow; it lit with an infernal illumination a face peering between those leaves, looking squarely into Adene’s own—a dark face, full of the strong beauty of age and courage, vivid yet with the zest of life. The young fellow’s hand went up to cover Vesta’s eyes, to press her head in against his breast.

“What is it?” she breathed.

“You said you was scared of lightning,” Ross answered close to her ear, as the thunder reverberated through a darkened, wet world.

Evidently she had not seen. Certainly he would not tell her. As the detonations died down, he stood rigid, waiting for the bolt of death, weighing with instant clearness the chance of whether old Jabe would kill only him, or slay as well the daughter who had proved treacherous.

Nothing came. A light wind sprang up and set drops pattering down from the boughs. The storm-clouds were rent, torn, scattered, rolling sullenly away to the north. A few drowned stars began to make the sky lighter.

All at once, as he waited for the death that came not, Ross remembered the shot they had heard as they ran through the woods. That was Jabe Turrentine’s gun. Turrentine had been the man standing with an empty weapon, without another cartridge to reload. When he was certain of this, Adene felt momentarily safe. The old panther had missed his spring; he would not try again to-night. Ross laughed a little softly to himself as he imagined Jabe skulking quietly between the dripping trees to the horse that must be tied somewhere near the timber’s edge, getting on the animal and riding down the river road to his store. Yes, that’s what the old man would do. And, after that, Ross Adene knew that the next move in the game was his.

“I reckon I’d better take you on home,” he said at length. “If we’re a-goin’ to be married to-morrow night, I’ve got some sev-rul things to do.”

Hand in hand they went through the drenched leafage, speaking low, Vesta trying feebly to remonstrate. When they came to where the lighted windows of the Minter cabin made squares of ruddy light in the blue-black darkness, Ross said his farewells.

“You put on whatever frock it is you want to be married in to-morrow night and go to meetin’,” he concluded. “For wedded we’ll shorely be at Brush Arbor church. I’ll speak to the preacher, an’ mebby your daddy’ll come to the weddin’ hisself.”

Vesta wept. She kissed her lover farewell as we bid good-by to the dead. In the dim radiance streaming out from the dwelling she watched his rain-gemmed, yellow head as he walked away, hat in hand, shoulders squared, moving proudly.

“O Lord,” she sighed to herself, “why can’t men persons take things like women does—a few ill words and no harm done?”

The night sky refusing answer, she went silently in and to bed.

NEXT morning Ross Adene put his house in order, as might a man on the eve of a duel. His day was busily spent. He notified the revivalist who was conducting meetings at Brush Arbor church of an intention to wed Vesta Turrentine directly after sermon that night, and, late in the afternoon, took his dugout canoe and dropped thoughtfully down the river toward Turrentine’s Landing. There was money in his pocket, but no weapon on him. He had not traveled the road, for he knew that even in daylight some wayside clump of trees might hide an ambush. He put his canoe into the current, crossed the stream, going down the farther bank, out of rifle-shot of the leaning willows that dipped long, green tresses to the water, offering a veil for a possible foe. When he was opposite the landing he came squarely across, his eyes searching the prospect ahead.

There was nobody about as he beached his boat, pulling it well up out of reach of the current, and walked deliberately toward the store. The landing had no village, the only buildings being the store, Turrentine’s dwelling, and barns. He approached the former by the front way, and stopped in the door, offering a glorious target to any hostile person who might be within; for he stood six feet tall and broad-shouldered against the westering light. The interior of the room was at first obscure to him, but almost immediately he made out old Jabe behind the counter and Sam Beath sitting humped in a chair at the back of the store.

For a moment no word was spoken. There was no exclamation, though there was a mental shock of encounter, evinced by not so much as the tremor of an eye upon the part of either of the principals. Beath it was who glanced stealthily toward the corner where Turrentine’s loaded rifle stood.

“Howdy,” said Ross in the even, musical monotone of his people.

“Howdy,” responded old Jabe’s deep bass.

Beath did not speak. Ross remained in the doorway until he considered that he had given quite sufficient opportunity for any gentleman who desired to pick a vital spot in his frame. When he felt he had been amply generous in this way, he came stepping slowly into the building, walked to the counter, and laid his empty hands upon it.

“And what can I do for you to-day?” inquired old Jabe with a sardonic exaggeration of the shopkeeper’s manner.

“I want to buy me a right good suit of clothes,” returned Ross, mildly.

The man in the back of the store, staring at the two, began to wonder when old Jabe would take advantage of the opening offered him.

“Err-um,” grunted Turrentine. “Somethin’ to be buried in—eh?”

“Well—no,” demurred the customer, amiably. “Somethin’ to be married in. A weddin’ suit is what I’m a-seekin’.”

Beath’s eyes went without any volition of his own to a bolt of fine white muslin on the shelf. From that Vesta had chosen a dress pattern the day her father bade him ask her in marriage. His proposal had been bafflingly received, but she had chosen the dress and taken it with her to her Aunt Miranda’s to finish.

Meantime, as though his customer had been any mountain man of the district, the storekeeper calmly estimated Ross’s height and breadth, turned to his shelves, and pulled down a suit. The two immersed themselves in a discussion of fabric and cut. The assistant, used to old Jabe’s browbeating, could scarcely believe his eyes as he noted the glances of approval his employer gave to the goodly proportions he was fitting. Beath’s ears seemed to him equally unreliable when Turrentine, a big man himself, remarked with apparent geniality on the chance of a wrestling-bout between them.

“I ain’t backin’ off,” responded Adene, “but I’d ruther stand up to you when I didn’t have somethin’ else on hand.”

“Aw, I’m gittin’ old,” said Turrentine, deprecatingly. “Time was when you might have said such of me; but I’m gittin’ old.”

The blue eyes of the younger man looked ingenuously into the face so like Vesta’s.

“Well, we’re all gettin’ older day by day,” Ross allowed, “but yet you don’t look as though you was losin’ your stren’th, an’ that’s a fact.”

Turrentine folded the suit and laid it on the counter.

“I think them clothes’ll fit ye,” he said. “An’ I’ll th’ow in this hyer necktie you looked at. I always th’ow in a necktie with a suit. That all?”

“Well—no,” Ross repeated his phrase. “I want to buy the best razor you’ve got in the shop.”

With a sudden movement that might have been excitement or even rage, Sam Beath took off his hat and cast it on the floor beside his chair. Turrentine bent down to get from under the counter a tray of razors, setting it on the boards and inviting his customer’s attention. Beath could scarcely bear to look at the two men facing each other across these bits of duplicated and reduplicated death, so tremendously did the juxtaposition excite him. He felt as he had sometimes on the hunting trail when the kill was imminent—as though he must cry out. Jabe and Ross were oblivious, trying, choosing, drawing their thumbs lightly over edges.

“I believe I like that un,” Ross said finally. “What say?”

“You’ve got a good eye for a blade,” old Jabe agreed, taking the razor in his fingers. “That thar’s by far the best un in the lot.” He opened and held it up, so that a stray gleam of sun winked wickedly upon the steel. “You could cut a man’s head off with that, slick an’ clean, ef ye had luck strikin’ a j’int—an’ I allers do have luck.”

“I wasn’t aimin’ to put it to no such use,” Ross commented gently. “An’ yit, when you’re a-buyin’ a tool, hit’s but reasonable to know what its cay-pacities may be. I’ll take that un.”

“Now—is that all?” Jabe put his query with the half-smile of a man who might easily suggest something else. He laid the razor with the other purchases.

“Is it honed, ready to use?” inquired Ross.

“Why, yes,” agreed old Jabe in a slightly puzzled tone. “A few licks on a strop or your boot-laig’ll make it all right.”

Ross was rubbing a rough cheek with thoughtful fingers, looking sidewise at the storekeeper.

“I’m a-goin’ to git married to-night,” he murmured. “Looks like I need a clean shave. They tell me you’re a master hand at shavin’ folks. Will ye shave me?”

Beath’s chair dropped forward with a slam, but neither of the men started or turned. The black eyes burned deep into the blue; the blue were unfathomable. Behind a mask of primitive civility the two men interrogated savagely each other’s motives. Jabe was the first to speak.

“Why, shorely, shorely,” he said with what seemed to Beath ominous relish. “Set down on that thar cheer that’s got a high back to it, so’s you can lean yo’ head right. Sam,”—Beath leaped as though he had been struck,—“bring me the wash-pan an’ soap an’ a towel. I’ll git the lather-brush.”

Beath finally arrived with the required articles. His shaking hand had spilled half the water from the basin; his eyes gloated. He put the things down on a box and retired once more to his chair, seating himself with the air of a man at a play.

Ross leaned back, found a comfortable rest for his head, and closed his eyes. The strong, brown young throat exposed by the turned-down collar of his shirt fascinated Beath so that he could not look away from it.

Jabe took the towel and put it about his customer’s neck with expert fingers. As he did so, Beath’s hand began to play about his own throat, and there was a click as it nervously contracted. Turrentine dipped his brush in the water and whirled it on the soap-cake, lathering Ross’s face silently and with a preoccupied manner. Beath’s glance flickered from the man in the chair to the man who worked over him. When Jabe took up the razor, passed it once or twice across the strop and approached it to Ross’s cheek, Beath swallowed so noisily that the sound of it was loud in the silent room.

Suavely—the old man was grace itself—the operation of shaving the bridegroom was begun. Placidly it progressed, with a murmured word between the two men, the deft turning of the inert head by the amateur barber, an occasional deep-toned request.

Yet always the onlooker shook with anticipation of the sweep of old Jabe’s arm which must come. Continually Beath figured to himself the sudden jetting out of crimson from that artery in the neck that was beating evenly and calmly under old Jabe’s touch. Perhaps the end might have arrived then and there, and swiftly, had those fingers felt the swell of excitement in the blood of a possible victim. But Ross had closed his eyes and seemed to be dozing. Jabe made an excellent job of it.

“Thar—I believe that’s about all you need,” he remarked at length.

The low sun came through the door between piles of calico, heaps of ax-handles, and glinted on Adene’s yellow head. Suddenly Beath felt the light for a moment obscured. He glanced up to see a woman’s figure, black against the glow, yet unmistakable in its slim alertness, and clothed, as his eye accustomed to fabrics told him, in the white muslin he had believed to be selected for a wedding-dress. Neither old Jabe nor his customer appeared to mark as Vesta Turrentine slipped like a shadow through the doorway and stole to the corner where her father’s rifle stood. Sam watched as she lifted the weapon in practised fingers. His mouth was open, but he did not cry out.

Ross unclosed his eyes lazily, raised his thumb to his cheek, close by the ear, very near indeed to the great veins and arteries Beath had looked to see the razor sever.

“Ain’t they a rough place right thar?” he inquired with a half-smile.

The ultimate spark of daring was in the eyes that gazed up into those of the man Ross had chosen for a father-in-law. Old Jabe, with a portentously solemn face, muttered an assent, dabbed the lather on, and made a pass with his razor.

“U-m-m—looks like they was a little more to do in that direction. Maybe I ain’t quite finished ye up yit,” the old man’s voice had a lilt of laughter in it, and it seemed that the end had surely arrived. Turrentine’s devil was always a laughing fiend. He worked with the air of a man who has come at last to some decision, turned to reach for the towel—and looked into the muzzle of his own gun, with his daughter’s resolute eyes behind it.

There was no start, no outcry; the old fellow only stood, scowling, formidable, checked midway in some spectacular vengeance, Beath was sure. The clerk crept, stooping behind the piles of merchandise, toward Vesta.

“Put down that thar razor.”

The girl’s tone had a ring of old Jabe’s own power.

“Ye say,” drawled Jabe, making a jest of a necessity, as he laid the blade on the counter. “What else?”

“You let him walk out o’ that door with me, same as he walked in,” Vesta’s air was resolute, her aim steady.

At the first word Adene had turned his head merely, showing no disposition to get beyond Jabe’s reach. But in the instant of her demand Beath rose up from behind some boxes, grasped the gun, twisting its barrel upward, and disarming Vesta. Ross sprang toward his sweetheart, hit out at the clerk’s unguarded side, and sent him staggering across the room, to fall sprawling at his employer’s feet. For a long moment while Beath was scrambling to hands and knees, life and death seemed to hang in the balance as old Jabe studied the two opposite; mechanically he had taken the gun Beath thrust into his hand. When Vesta saw it in his grasp, she flung herself upon her lover’s breast, clasping her arms about him, protecting his life with hers.

“Me first,” she screamed. “You’ll have to kill me first.” She waited for the bullet.

Jabe interrogated the pair with remorseless eye; he moved forward a pace, though Sam Beath on all fours thought it was plenty close to shoot. His gun was not raised. Instead, the old man and the young were studying each other once more, speeding messages from eye to eye above Vesta’s bent head. At last Jabe seemed to find that for which he sought. He looked long at the daughter who defied him in words, and her lover who braved him in action. Adene read the look aright.

“You’re bid to the weddin’ at Brush Arbor church, father-in-law,” he said in the tone of one who finds a satisfactory answer to a riddle.

The gun-butt rattled on the puncheon floor.

“Will your dugout hold three?” asked Jabe.

Vesta stirred, but still feared to look up.

“Shore; five, by crowdin’,” came the answer.

The girl raised her head, glanced incredulously from father to lover, and a light of comprehension dawned in her eyes.

“An’ me,” yammered Sam Beath. “What about me?”

“You can keep sto’ or come along to the weddin’, accordin’ to yo’ ruthers,” allowed old Jabe, generously; “ye hearn my son-in-law say his boat would hold five.”

Drawn by Oliver Herford

TO ANY ONE

THOROUGHBREDS AND TROTTERS AS SADDLE-HORSES

Drawn by Joseph Clement Coll

EVER since the employment of an English judge of saddle-horses at the New York Horse Show, a few years ago, a lively discussion has been going on between the advocates of thoroughbreds and of our American saddle-horse, which is for the most part trotting-bred, upon the subject of their respective merits as saddle-horses. The English judge had of course an Englishman’s preference for a thoroughbred. He has shown this in his awards, and he has established a class of thoroughbreds under saddle. His view has naturally not found favor with the friends of the American saddle-horse, an animal usually a cross between the trotter and the Kentucky saddle-horse, which is a registered family, and is itself largely of trotting ancestry. The discussion, however, has not been confined to the merits of these two animals as saddle-horses, but has covered the whole subject of their respective characteristics.

Against the thoroughbred it is charged that he is unsound, wanting in stamina, flighty and excitable, and has not the trotting action to make a comfortable hack under the saddle or to become a good harness-horse, and even that he is inferior to some other horses in style and beauty. There is a certain truth in these accusations; but they contain also a great deal of untruth.

It is not possible to say that there is a want of stamina in a family of horses to which belong all runners, virtually all steeplechasers, and from which are directly descended all hunters and nearly all cavalry horses. Nearly all steeplechasers are thoroughbreds, and these horses do their four miles like old-fashioned runners, besides going over the exhausting jumps. And how can blood be said to want stamina which is the basis of the blood of all the cavalry horses in Europe? In 1870 the German cavalry horses of this breeding could do their thirty-five miles a day for three months during the roughest winter weather. And taking it nearer home, do any horses surpass in toughness the half-bred horses of Canada and tide-water Virginia? The old Virginians say that Kentucky can show a better head and tail than can be found in Virginia, but that for everything between Virginia is better, and the assertion is not without a color of truth. My observation is that, as a rule, trotting and saddle-bred horses have not the stamina of the best horses descended from the thoroughbred.

When we come to speak of gaits under the saddle, it will of course be admitted that thoroughbreds can walk, canter, and gallop. Their deficiency is in the trot. Most thoroughbreds do not show good hock action. They do not give one that definite rise and fall which one should have when riding at a trot. But there are thoroughbreds that have good hock action. Where, for instance, can one find better hock action than in the thoroughbred mare Jasmine, which has lately been seen about New York? There are many thoroughbreds with such a trot.

When we come to speak of disposition, the case against the thoroughbred is rather stronger. It cannot be denied that he is hot-tempered. That an animal should be used for generations for an exciting employment, and that employment an artificial one, must result, one would expect, in some eccentricity of temper. And the bad effects are rendered worse by certain necessary concomitants of the employment. It cannot be good for the temper of an animal two years old to be an hour getting away at the start, and to be whipped and spurred for the last hundred yards of every race. As a matter of fact, they are frequently as excitable and often as vicious as one might expect animals to be which had been subjected to such an experience. There is a thoroughbred stallion in Kentucky that has killed two grooms. It is said that an attempt, which for some reason was not successful, was made to put out his eyes in order that he could be handled with safety. A few years ago at Lexington I was told that a thoroughbred stallion at a stable near by had just taken two fingers off a groom’s hand. I went to the stable, had the animal brought out, and studied his countenance from a respectful distance, and he looked to me as though he could do it. The eye was somewhat ruthless, perhaps, but I should not say that the countenance was vicious or ill tempered. It had rather the opaque look of faces one will see behind the bars of a menagerie—faces unrelated to kindness or unkindness, and expressive only of the wish to survive and the readiness to perish in the struggle for existence. A few years ago we had in my native county, Greenbrier County, West Virginia, a celebrated performer on the turf, King Cadmus, which had killed at least one person. Once, when racing, he seized with his teeth a jockey on a horse that was passing him, threw him under his feet, and killed him. He was a lop-eared, rough-made brute, and if a man did not know him and took him for some harmless old screw, which might easily be possible, without any sign of ill temper he would allow the man to approach till he was in reach of his teeth, when he would try to seize him and throw him under his feet. Some of his colts are still about Greenbrier, and, strangely enough, do not seem to have inherited his vicious disposition,—an instance, I suppose, of failure to transmit acquired characteristics. I remember when a boy seeing Rarey leading about his celebrated Cruiser, which must have been very much such a horse as Cadmus. Possibly the animals I have mentioned might have been reformed if they had had such a handler as Rarey.

But these horses are exceptions, as it is hardly necessary to point out. A few years ago in Kentucky I rode for some weeks a four-year-old thoroughbred stallion that a child could have ridden, a very handsome bay, sixteen hands high, very fashionably bred (half-brother to Foxhall). He had been raced, but had not been found fast enough for the track. He was perfectly gentle. His only fault was not one of temper at all. He was a little sluggish, sluggishness being sometimes a fault of thoroughbreds. This fault affected his trot. A certain ambition and steady force in a horse are necessary to a comfortable trot.

But apart from the subject of gaits and disposition, it is claimed that the thoroughbred is inferior in style and beauty to certain other horses, such, for instance, as the Kentucky saddle-horse. That, of course, is a matter of taste, and tastes differ and change from time to time. I prefer the Kentucky horse myself, and believe him to be the handsomest horse in the world, and yet I find that when I go to England and live among people to whom the thoroughbred type seems perfection, I begin insensibly to see it as they do, and so I think will almost any one. There is no doubt that the type at its best is very beautiful. I have now in mind a chestnut mare, Miss Trix, which I saw at a pretty little show in the west of England summer before last and which afterward took the first prize at the international in London. A more beautiful creature it would be hard to find, or one better gaited or better mannered. And even when one sees this type in this country, where the taste and feeling are mostly on the side of the Kentucky horse, it is impossible to deny that it is beautiful. Three years ago at the State fair at Lexington I saw a class of thoroughbred stallions judged very early before the crowd was on the grounds. It was an extraordinary display of equine beauty that was gaily paraded before the stand on that bright and fragrant September morning, and, difficult as the choice seemed, the blue ribbon went deservedly to the most beautiful, a brown horse named Jack-pot. Later in the day I saw Jack-pot judged for the championship against the superbly handsome and universally accomplished chestnut stallion Bourbon King, the champion saddle-horse of Kentucky. The prize went to Bourbon King, and I myself should have so voted; but surely no one would propose that such a type of beauty as Jack-pot should be allowed to disappear from the earth.

ATHLETE. A COMBINATION TROTTING AND SADDLE BRED HORSE FROM GREENBRIER COUNTY, WEST VIRGINIA

There is one point in which the thoroughbred is doubtless superior to the Kentucky saddle-horse. I mean the shoulder. The fault of the Kentucky saddle-horse often is that he is thick in the shoulder. The Kentucky horse would be about perfect if one could give him the shoulder of the thoroughbred; yes, and if one could give him a little heavier bone. No doubt the Kentucky men would say that the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and since the Kentucky horse, as he now is, is about perfect in gaits, there is no occasion to change him. There is reason in this, and yet there are practical advantages in the thoroughbred shoulder. The rider grasps it with his knees more easily than a thicker shoulder. And for women who ride with a side-saddle a deep and slender shoulder and high withers are a necessity; they are needed to hold a side-saddle in place. If the horse is thick-shouldered, the groom must be continually getting off to tighten the girths, which thus have to be made so tight that the animal can scarcely breathe. And then, quite apart from its utility, there is no doubt of the beauty of the thoroughbred shoulder. It is beautiful whether you see it in Jack-pot or Miss Trix, or in some old screw of thoroughbred ancestry that pulls a grocer’s wagon. You will sometimes see about a stable a half-starved, uncared-for animal with a shoulder the memory of which will remain with you for years. That shoulder is entirely the property of the thoroughbred. You never see it except in a thoroughbred or a descendant of thoroughbreds. I do not know whence it comes. It does not appear to come from the Arab, from which are derived most of the characteristics of the thoroughbred. It can come only from the thoroughbred. For this reason I cannot agree with those critics who have opposed the recent action of the Kentucky saddle-horsemen in admitting to registration the product of Kentucky saddle-horses crossed with thoroughbreds. Of course it is to be hoped that breeders will choose those thoroughbreds that are without certain thoroughbred faults.

Drawn by Joseph Clement Coll

AWARDING THE BLUE RIBBON

There is one purpose for which thoroughbreds are certainly necessary. Hunters must be of thoroughbred blood. There are horses not of thoroughbred blood that can be taught to jump, but a hunter must also be able to run. It is often said that hunting in this country is not serious, and that is probably true. Hunting over timber is too dangerous to be widely and generally practised. It is different from hunting over hedges, which can be broken through. A horse must clear a wood fence if he is to get over it safely. If he strikes the fence with his knees, he may turn a somersault and fall on his rider, and horses cannot be relied upon to clear fences. The most celebrated of English hunters, Assheton Smith, who had made a study of falling and had learned how to fall, had sixty falls the year he was eighty. (By the way, one wonders what kind of horses he rode; they could have done better for him than that in Virginia.) We may be sure he did not have those falls over timber.

But it is not certain that hunting has no considerable future in this country. Knowing what the spirit of sport has accomplished here within the memory of most of us, there is no saying what it may yet do. I have sometimes wondered why some such large preserves of land, stretches of forest and meadow as are taken by clubs for shooting and fishing, are not set apart for hunting, in which it would be possible to hunt the stag and the fox or even to revive sports more old fashioned.

I lately found a hunting-man in Virginia, a nice fellow and a gentleman, who has a whole valley to himself in which to pursue the fox. He has his own pack of hounds, and as his business is training hunters, he has always in his stable half a dozen animals he can use. To be sure he does not own the valley, a beautiful one; but he is quite as well off as though he did, for there are no wire fences, the timber fences are not too plentiful, and he tells me he can always start a fox. He hunts entirely alone, and does not mind the lack of company. He happens to be afflicted with an infirmity of speech, which makes the society of all but a few of his fellow-creatures irksome to him. This kind of sport was a new idea to me, who had always thought of hunting as done in company and with the accompaniment of red coats and blowing horns and the like. It struck me as a pretty idea, quite like Fitz-James’s pursuit of the stag in the first canto of “The Lady of the Lake.” This gentleman rides mostly thoroughbreds. He told me that he found it more and more necessary to ride thoroughbreds, or, at any rate, horses as clean bred as he could get them, for the reason that they are now breeding faster hounds than formerly. I wondered why they should breed faster dogs unless at the same time they bred faster foxes.

From a painting by Richard Newton, Jr.

THE MASTER OF FOX HOUNDS, ORANGE COUNTY HUNT (NEW YORK), ON HIS THOROUGHBRED HUNTER, GREEK DOLLAR

I may add that the evidence in favor of fox-hunting is pretty strong, to judge from the testimony of those who know most about it. A celebrated hunter has expressed the opinion that all the time that is not spent in hunting is wasted, and that is what men like Assheton Smith and Anstruther Thompson really thought and have thought for two hundred years. If that view is the correct one, the sport will probably continue to exist and grow in this country. In the end Americans are likely to have whatever is good.

With regard to the questions of type and taste, I may say here that a certain deference is due to the opinion which the world’s best horsemen have long entertained. We should not dismiss too lightly the views of such men as Admiral Rous, Assheton Smith, and Mackenzie Grieve. The last-named famous horseman, who lived in Paris and was a member of the well-known Jockey Club there, I once saw in his old age in Rotten Row. One afternoon in Hyde Park I noticed an acquaintance on foot in conversation over the railing with some one on a black horse. The horse, which had not a white hair, was a beautiful creature, of the kind not usual in Rotten Row, having the graceful curves of the haute école, preferred on the Continent, and attractive to the finer Latin perceptions rather than the straight lines of the half-bred English hack. The horse of the haute école is very thoroughbred in type, however, as this animal was. But perfect as the horse was, I was even more interested in the man in the saddle. All he was doing was sitting on a horse that was standing still, but there was a singular grace in his manner of doing this. The pose and attitude were beautiful. An old dandy, much made up, and dyed to the eyebrows, there was in every detail of his dress, from his silk hat to his patent-leather boots, a correctness and thoroughness that argued great courage and spirit in a man of his age. The tight trousers of some dark color were worn over Wellington boots, which a good London tailor will tell you is the only way to have them set well. The frock-coat showed the slender waist essential to good looks in the saddle. I wondered if this waist might not be the result of pretty severe banting, being sure that the plucky old fellow would have preferred death to abating one jot his pretensions to the character of a perfect horseman. Greatly interested in this survivor of the dandies, it pleased me to think that he might in his youth have been the model from which Bulwer made his sketch of Pelham riding in the park in Paris. Some days later, happening to meet my acquaintance, I asked him who his friend was, and he told me that he was Mr. Mackenzie Grieve. Before forming a final opinion of the thoroughbred from the point of view of taste and beauty, I should like to consult the shade of Mackenzie Grieve. His opinions, whatever they were, he no doubt held strongly.

When we come to speak of horses partly thoroughbred (and that is of course the subject most interesting to breeders), I can say that I myself have known numbers of them that were neither flighty nor weedy nor wanting in physical stamina nor deficient in gaits or in looks. I may take occasion to mention one or two of these. There was a big roan mare, nearly thoroughbred, in my native county, which was sent to New York and was for some years ridden by an eminent lawyer. She was a most distinguished horse. No matter how many good horses this gentleman has ridden or may ride, he can never forget Betsey, nor be in danger of confusing her with any other horse. She was sixteen hands high, and in condition would weigh nearly twelve hundred pounds. She had been a favorite runner at county fairs and of course could gallop. She could walk like a storm, she had a single foot that was a lullaby, she had a perfectly square trot, she was excellent in harness, and she could be ridden or driven by anybody. A little plain in the quarters, she had as fine a neck, head, and shoulders as I ever saw. “She has a grand front on her,” said the owner’s young Irish coachman, who knew the type. I had at first some misgivings as to the appearance she would make by the side of New York prize-winners; but when I went to the Riding Club and she was brought out with the saddle on, her fine head carried high, her large, prominent eyes awake, with her deep shoulder and sweep of neck looking as though she had just descended from one of the classic engravings of the eighteenth century, I wondered that I should have had any doubts as to the appearance she would make when put in competition with the equine upstarts of the present day.

Another of our mountain horses, also nearly thoroughbred, went to the Riding Club. He was perhaps a little eccentric in temper, if one was rough with him, and I think once he did run up the steps into the Plaza Bank; but for gaits, sureness of foot, and physical endurance he was remarkable. All his gaits were perfection, and, as for strength, I can only say that I first rode him in 1890, then a full-grown horse, and I believe he is still living, a pretty good horse yet. His purchaser, a well-known New York specialist in nervous diseases, said to me, “I am nervous, and he’s neurotic,” but he admitted that his trot was, as he said, “the poetry of motion.” The animal came fairly by his eccentricities of temper and his tenacity of life and strength. His mother died not long ago at the age of twenty-five, and up to the day of her death she would run away if you struck her.

Drawn by Reginald Birch. Half-tone plate engraved by R. Varley

A MORNING CANTER IN CENTRAL PARK

⇒
LARGER IMAGE

It should not be forgotten that, whatever faults modern thoroughbreds may have, there is a lot of good old-fashioned thoroughbred blood behind such horses as I have mentioned—such blood as that of Diomed, the winner of the first English Derby in 1780. Diomed, one of many good horses imported here from England, was the ancestor of perhaps three fourths of the horses now running in this country. Mr. Moses Green, of Warrenton, Virginia, a man widely learned in pedigrees, whose grandfather imported Diomed, writes me, “I have often heard my grandfather say that he did not consider a race-horse one that could not run four miles in good company in fast time and repeat.” One little story of Mr. Green’s I may mention in passing. He once told me that he had passed a considerable part of his childhood on the back of Diomed, and the story is in a sense true, notwithstanding the fact that Mr. Green, although by no means a young man, was of course born long after the death of Diomed. It was the custom to spread the skin of an animal under a mattress to keep the mattress from sinking in between the cords of the bedstead, and the skin of Diomed served this purpose on the bed on which Mr. Green slept when a child.

Drawn by Joseph Clement Coll

AT A COUNTRY HORSE SHOW

The objection urged by thoroughbred men against American saddle-horses is that they are of harness rather than saddle type. The objection most commonly made to trotting-horses in general is, however, from the breeder’s point of view. It is claimed that they do not breed true. Of course, trotters can scarcely be said to be a family as thoroughbreds and hackneys are. A thoroughbred[2] must be the progeny of animals themselves thoroughbred. Trotters may become “standard” by performance. Any animal that has trotted a mile in 2:30 at some recognized fair is entitled to registration as standard. The offspring of parents that are themselves standard by performance and not by birth are entitled to registration as standard by birth. There are thus many standard animals whose pedigree cannot be traced. Nevertheless, although we may not know the pedigree of an animal that is standard by performance, we know that he must be trotting bred, since no horse can trot a mile in 2:30 that is not trotting bred. It must be admitted, however, that trotters cannot be bred with the certainty with which you can breed thoroughbreds and hackneys.

DELHI. An ideal type of thoroughbred saddle-horse. Owned and bred by Mr. James R. Keene.

SIR EDWARD. A fine type of thoroughbred hunter. Owned and bred by the Hon. Adam Beck.

TENERIFFE. An ideal standard bred roadster. Owned and bred by Mr. W. M. V. Hoffman.

MAHLI. A fine type of Kentucky saddle-horse. Owned by Mrs. Thomas J. Regan.

Thoroughbreds and hackneys, being, as families, older than trotters, hold their qualities more intensely and are more capable of reproducing them. In the matter of speed, however, you cannot breed a Derby winner any more certainly than you can breed a two-minute trotter. But the trotter’s inability to reproduce himself with certainty is not altogether without its advantages. One would be sorry to lose the variety in types thrown off by the trotter, which is a result of this inability. There is no family which produces animals that have such various uses as trotters, and in which a single animal will be found to have so many good qualities. He will be a good saddle- and a good harness-horse, and he will combine spirit with the best manners and the kindest disposition. For instance, that wonderful animal sought for with such avidity by ladies, a combination of opposite, if not irreconcilable, qualities, “a bed by night, a chest of drawers by day,” if he exists anywhere, can surely be found only among trotters. In horses for use in harness one will get in the same animal, besides speed, action nearly as good as that of the best hackneys, with a vigor and endurance greater than theirs, and a head and neck that for quality and fineness one will rarely see in hackneys, and will not often find surpassed among thoroughbreds. We in this country are so used to that head and neck that the English, who send us their best hackneys, are careful not to send us animals that are deficient in quality. Two years ago I saw at Bath, which has the best show in the west of England, a pair of hackneys that won there and had been winning all over England, very fine movers, but with plain heads and necks. They would have been sent to this country had it not been for their want of quality. Furthermore, a trotter will have, with the quality of a thoroughbred, a sense and kindness, to find which among thoroughbreds you must pick and choose.

1 ROSALIND

A famous saddle-horse and winner of many blue ribbons. Owned and ridden by Mrs. W. A. McGibbon.

2 HERO

A fine type of heavy-weight Virginia trotting bred hunter and jumper. Owned by Mr. Paul D. Cravath.

3 KENTUCKY’S CHOICE

One of the most famous registered saddle horses in the world. He was sold for $7500, the record price for a Kentucky saddler. Owned by Mrs. Richard Tasker Lowndes.

⇒
LARGER IMAGE

A critic who objected to the trotter on account of his inability to breed true has lately proposed to get a coach-horse from the Kentucky saddle-horse, a suggestion which, if somewhat novel, seems to me a good one. I fancy that this writer must have had in mind the pair of Forest Denmarks I saw at the Lexington Fair three years ago. These horses were by Forest Denmark, a registered Kentucky saddle-horse. One of them, Tattersall, was not only a saddle-horse, but had been the champion gaited saddle-horse of Kentucky. They were undoubtedly the best pair in the State. They were afterward bought by an ardent adherent of Christian Science from Texas for presentation to Mrs. Eddy, and were sent to her. Mrs. Eddy, after trying them and finding them not entirely amenable to influence, requested her Texan admirer to take them back, which he did. I know the Forest Denmarks well. They are largely trotting bred. One of them, the champion heavy-weight saddle-horse in a recent New York Horse Show, the Cardinal, was originally a harness-horse. The official spelling of the name of these horses, by the way, is probably incorrect. The founder of this branch of the Denmarks was a horse called Ned Forrest and must have been named after Edwin Forrest, the actor.

The saddle-horses brought to New York are largely of mixed saddle and trotting stock, and are often pure trotters. Trotters have the hock action necessary to a comfortable trot under the saddle much more generally than thoroughbreds. They have this action till they get down to their very fast gait, when they are likely to begin to roll, which is unpleasant. This does not always happen, however. There is now in New York a gentleman who rides only trotters that have a record of 2:10 or thereabouts, and who finds such a trot the best of gaits. I can believe that, from some such experiences of my own. About forty years ago I used to ride, on the road from Madison, New Jersey, to Morristown, a big trotter of Kimball Jackson stock that was fast for those days, and was, besides, a powerful and particularly honest and friendly horse. Going at a slow trot, he was perhaps the roughest horse I ever was on. But when he got down to his fast trot, one did not leave the saddle at all. I have never obtained such pleasure from any action in the saddle as from that horse going at that gait. A thoroughbred galloping on turf, measuring the earth like an animated pair of compasses, with a succession of leaps and bounds, and going at the rate of an express-train with scarcely more shaking to the rider than a walk would give him,—so smoothly, indeed, that he might almost carry a glass of water,—will of course give one delightful sensations. But that trotting-horse was even better. You will notice in a trotting race in harness that a horse, when put to top-speed, will now and then give a leap forward of perhaps fifteen or eighteen feet, still holding his trot. It was at the moment when the Kimball Jackson trotter, with one of his powerful hind-quarters, assisted perhaps with an extra shove off from the other, would propel himself forward through the air in this occasional leap that I experienced the keenest delight that I ever got from any kind of locomotion. I cannot forget those morning rides in that pretty country on sunny October days, the air a golden fluid, and the distant hills lying in cameo clearness, over which were chasing the thick, sharply defined shadows cast by the clouds.

A very great merit of the trotter is his sense and kindness. His education is happier than that of the thoroughbred. As a harness-horse, he is nearer to everyday use than the thoroughbred. He is raced at a more mature age, and he does not receive the cruel treatment of the thoroughbred. Whip and spur seem to be inseparable from running races. But a trotter may break if he is whipped severely, although one sometimes sees the whip laid on pretty well in a trotting-race. People in Europe, who have used our trotters, and even those who do not like them, have told me that they found them remarkably sensible and kind as compared with their own horses. Sense and kindness, I am sure, are not only among the most useful, but among the most attractive, qualities a horse can have. A certain trotting-bred horse of my acquaintance has a soul such as I never knew in any other horse. I have tried hard to trace his pedigree, because I wanted to know where that soul came from, and to see it bred into other horses. But I have never been able to find it. Perhaps some one who reads this may help me to some information about it. He was a black gelding, 16:2 hands high, very handsome, and was bought by Hudson from Bayless and Turney of Paris, Kentucky, and sent to New York in 1896, at that time five years old. I suppose he was bred in Bourbon County. I say I never saw such a mind in any other horse. Horsemen have many best horses they ever knew. It is not their way to be off with the old love before they are on with the new. But I am sure he was, on the whole, the nicest horse I ever knew. High-lifed as he was, he was full of sweet intelligence. In his dark, melancholy eyes one read that “sad lucidity of soul” mentioned by the poet. And he was so kind and considerate. A horse of great ambition, his one fault was that he pulled; but he consented without the least show of ill temper to the use of a pretty severe curb.

Drawn by Joseph Clement Coll

READY FOR THE PARK

I could cite many examples of his sweet intelligence. Once when a young woman upon a bicycle in Central Park was trying to ride us down, and going, as an unskilful bicyclist will do, in just the direction she wished to avoid, his efforts to keep out of her way, while at the same time putting me to as little inconvenience as possible, were charming—the horse evidently wondering whether a woman was a reasoning animal. One could teach him something one day in fifteen minutes, and the next day one could teach him as quickly just the contrary. When he first came on from Kentucky, where he had been single-footed, I found it hard to suggest a trot to him. I took him to a big mud-hole in the bridle-path in the park, and for some time worked him back and forth through it, evidently much perplexed as to what I wanted of him. In mud six inches deep he could not throw his foot out laterally, and had to bring it up vertically, and soon struck a trot. I patted him on the neck, and he stepped out cheerfully with an expression of, “Oh, is that what you want? I’d rather do that than the other.” He could trot in much less than three minutes, and so must have been trotting bred, but no thoroughbred had a better canter or gallop. And with all the qualities above enumerated, he was magnificently handsome. I gave the lady to whom I sold him the choice of two names, Casabianca, in allusion to his docility and devotion and because he would stand without hitching; and Solomon, because, as regarded his sense and intelligence, she would discover that the half had not been told her.

I think I have given pretty fairly the points of contrast between these two families of horses. In harness there can be no question that the trotter is the better. For use under saddle there is no doubt also that the American preference is for the trotter. But we have seen that the thoroughbred has his points of superiority as a saddle-horse. We should preserve the thoroughbred, improve him, if one likes, eliminate his undesirable qualities, but still preserve him. The saddle-horse of the future will combine the good qualities of the thoroughbred with those of the trotter.

SECRET WRITING

THE CIPHERS OF THE ANCIENTS, AND SOME OF THOSE IN MODERN USE

BY JOHN H. HASWELL

THE art of transmitting information by means of writings designed to be understood only by the persons who have especially agreed upon the significance of the characters employed was known and practised by the ancients long before the Christian era. It has many high-sounding names, among which will be found cryptography, cryptology, polygraphy, stenganography, cipher, etc. The first is what might be styled its scientific name; the latter the one commonly used by the foreign offices.

The oldest example of secret writing is the Spartan scytale. According to Plutarch, the Lacedæmonians had a method which has been called the scytale, from the staff employed in constructing and deciphering the message. When the Spartan ephors, who, in the fourth century B.C., were the supreme power of the state, controlling alike its civil and military administration, wished to forward their orders to their commanders abroad, they wound slantwise a narrow strip of parchment upon a staff so that the edges met close together, and the message was then written in such a way that the center of the line of writing was on the edges of the parchment. The parchment was then unwound and sent to the general, who, by winding it upon a similar staff, was enabled to read the message.

Various other devices of secret writing were practised by the old Greeks and Romans. All served their purpose, and some of them were remarkably ingenious. One, by reason of its being not only very ingenious, but at the same time highly ludicrous, seems worthy of mention. It was the one which Histiæus, while at the Persian court, employed to advise Aristagoras, who was in Greece, to revolt. As the roads were well guarded, there seemed to Histiæus only one safe way of making his wishes known. He chose one of his most faithful slaves, and, having shaved his head, tattooed it with his advices; then keeping him till the hair had grown again, Histiæus despatched him to Aristagoras with this message: “Shave my head and look thereon.”

Among the Greeks many systems of cipher were employed to transmit messages during war-times. To illustrate one, let us suppose that the English alphabet, by omitting the letter j, consists of twenty-five letters; then arrange these thus:

Represent every letter by two figures, by the intersection of a vertical with a horizontal row. Thus we find that 11 represents a; 34, o; 52, w; 14, d; and so on.

During the Middle Ages secret systems were employed in the operation of telegraphic, military, and naval signals. Torches placed in particular positions at night, flags held in position by day, guns fired at particular intervals, drums beaten in a prearranged way, musical sounds to represent letters, lamps covered by different-colored glass, square holes diversely closed by shutters, levers projecting at different angles from a vertical post—all these were adopted as signals; but secret writing was in most cases a transposition of alphabetical letters.

Schemes of cryptography are endless in their variety. Bacon lays down the following as the “virtues” to be looked for in them: “that they be not laborious to write and read; that they be impossible to decipher; and, in some cases, that they be without suspicion.” Bacon remarks that though ciphers were commonly in letters and alphabets, yet they might be in words. Upon this basis codes have been constructed, classified words taken from dictionaries being made to represent complete ideas. In recent years such codes have been adopted by governments, merchants, and others to communicate by telegraph, and have served the purpose not only of keeping business affairs private, but also of reducing the excessive cost of telegraphic messages to distant points. Obviously this class of ciphers presents greater difficulties to the skill of the decipherer. Figures and other characters have been also used as letters, and with them ranges of numerals have been combined as the representatives of syllables, parts of words, words themselves, and complete phrases. Shorthand marks and other arbitrary characters have also been largely imported into cryptographic systems to represent both letters and words. Complications have been introduced into ciphers by the employment of “dummy” letters or words. Other devices have been introduced to perplex the decipherer, such as spelling words backward, making false divisions between words, etc. The greatest security against the decipherers has been found in the use of what might be called a double code. One of the double-code methods is that after the message has been put into, say, a figure code, to recode it in one in which only words or consonants appear.

Variety is also of great importance. All the world might know the principle upon which a cipher is constructed, and yet the changes may be so numerous as, like those of the Yale lock, to be almost infinite. No cipher can ever be perfect where the same letter, figure, or character is always represented in the same manner; some mode must be adopted by which an endless variety may be secured.

During the time of the Great Commoner, Sir John Trevanion, a distinguished cavalier, was made prisoner, and locked up in Colchester Castle. Sir Charles Lucas and Sir George Lisle had just been made examples of as a warning to “malignants,” and Trevanion had every reason for expecting a similar bloody end. As he awaited his doom, indulging in a hearty curse in round cavalier terms at the canting, crop-eared scoundrels who held him in durance vile, and muttering a wish that he had fallen sword in hand facing the foe, he was startled by the entrance of the jailer, who handed him a letter:

“May’t do thee good,” growled the fellow; “it has been well looked to before it was permitted to come to thee.”

Sir John took the letter and the jailer left him his lamp by which to read it:

Now this letter was written according to a preconcerted cipher. Every third letter after a punctuation mark, was to tell. In this way, Sir John made out: “Panel at east end of chapel slides.”

On the following evening the prisoner begged to be allowed to pass an hour of private devotion in the chapel. By means of a bribe, this was accomplished. Before the hour had expired, the chapel was empty—the bird had flown.

An excellent plan of indicating the telling letter or word is through the heading of the communication. “Sir” might signify that every third letter or word was to be taken; “Dear Sir” that every seventh; “My dear Sir” that every ninth was to be selected.

A system very early adopted, known as the “grille” was the use of pierced cards, through the holes of which the communication was written. The card was then removed, and the blank spaces filled up. As for example:

There were other and very complicated systems based on arithmetical calculations for the transposition of letters of the alphabet, illustrations of which would be very prolix and possibly not interesting.

At the close of the sixteenth century, when the Spaniards were endeavoring to establish relations between the scattered branches of their vast monarchy, which at that period embraced a large portion of Italy, the Lower Countries, the Philippines, and enormous districts in the New World, they needed some method to correspond with their agents. They accordingly invented a cipher, which they varied from time to time, in order to disconcert those who might attempt to pry into the mysteries of their correspondence. The cipher, composed of fifty signs, was of great value to them through all the troubles of the “League” and the wars then desolating Europe. Some of their despatches having been intercepted, Henry IV handed them over to a clever mathematician, Vieta, with the request that he would find the clue. He did so, and was able also to follow it as it varied, and France profited for two years by his discovery. The court of Spain, disconcerted at this, accused Vieta before the Roman court as a sorcerer and in league with the devil. This proceeding only gave rise to laughter and ridicule.

The manner in which the French took possession of the republic of Strasburg, during the reign of Louis XIV, while peace prevailed, is very interesting. At that time the city had acquired great privileges, it being a free town, and was governed as a republic.

In 1680, when M. de Louvois was the French Minister of War, he summoned before him one day a gentleman named De Chamilly, and gave him the following instructions: “Start this evening for Basel, in Switzerland; you will reach it in three days; on the fourth, punctually at two o’clock, station yourself on the bridge over the Rhine, with a portfolio, ink, and a pen. Watch all that takes place, and make a memorandum of everything in particular. Continue doing so for two hours; have a carriage and post-horses awaiting you; and at four precisely, mount and travel night and day till you reach Paris. On the instant of your arrival, hasten to me with your notes.”

De Chamilly obeyed; he reached Basel, and on the day and at the hour appointed stationed himself, pen in hand, on the bridge. Presently a market-cart drove by, then an old woman with a basket of fruit passed; anon a little urchin trundled his hoop by; next an old gentleman in blue top-coat jogged past on his gray mare. Three o’clock chimed from the cathedral tower. Just at the last stroke, a tall fellow in yellow waistcoat and breeches sauntered up, went to the middle of the bridge, lounged over, and looked at the water; then he took a step back and struck three hearty blows on the footway with his staff. Down went every detail in De Chamilly’s book. At last the hour of release sounded, and he jumped into his carriage. Shortly before midnight, after two days of ceaseless traveling, De Chamilly presented himself before the minister, feeling rather ashamed at having such trifles to report. M. de Louvois took the portfolio with eagerness and glanced over the notes. As his eye caught the mention of the yellow-breeched man, a gleam of joy flashed across his countenance. He rushed to the king, roused him from sleep, spoke in private with him for a few moments, and then hastily despatched four couriers who had been in readiness since five o’clock on the preceding evening. Eight days after, the town of Strasburg was entirely surrounded by French troops, and summoned to surrender; it capitulated and threw open its gates on the thirtieth of September, 1681. Evidently the three strokes of the stick given by the fellow in yellow costume, at an appointed hour, were the signals of the success of an intrigue concerted between M. de Louvois and the magistrates of Strasburg, and the man who executed this mission was as ignorant of the motive as was M. de Chamilly of the motive of his. This unjustifiable action of France received formal recognition at the Peace of Ryswick in 1697, and she continued to hold the place until it was wrested from her by the Germans during the late Franco-German War.

The mysterious cards employed by the Count de Vergennes, who was Minister for Foreign Affairs under Louis XVI, in his relations with the diplomatic agents of France, exhibit great ingenuity in their arrangement and show what the political condition of Europe must have been at that time to require such precautions. The count was a great friend of America, and it was largely through his influence that the treaties of amity and commerce and alliance of 1778 were concluded. These cards were used in letters of recommendation or passports which were given to strangers about to enter or depart from France; they were intended to furnish information without the knowledge of the bearers. This was the system. The cards given to a man contained only a few words, such as,

The card told more tales than the words written on it. Its color indicated the nation of the stranger. Yellow showed him to be English; red, Spanish; white, Portuguese; green, Dutch; red and white, Italian; red and green, Swiss; green and white, Russian, etc. The person’s age was expressed by the shape of the card. If it was circular, he was under 25; oval, between 25 and 30; octagonal, between 30 and 45; hexagonal, between 45 and 50; square, between 50 and 60; an oblong showed that he was over 60. Two lines placed below the name of the bearer indicated his build. If he was tall and lean, the lines were waving and parallel; tall and stout, they converged; and so on. The expression of his face was shown by a flower on the border. A rose designated an open and amiable countenance, while a tulip marked a pensive and aristocratic appearance. A fillet round the border, according to its length, told whether the man was bachelor, married, or widower. Dots gave information as to his position and fortune. A full stop after his name showed that he was a Catholic; a semicolon that he was a Lutheran; a comma that he was a Calvinist; a dash that he was a Jew; no stop indicated him as an atheist. So also his morals and character were pointed out by a pattern in the angles of the card. So at one glance the minister could tell all about his man, whether he was a gamester or a duelist; what was his purpose in visiting France; whether in search of a wife or to claim a legacy; what was his profession—that of a physician, lawyer, or man of letters; whether he was to be put under surveillance or allowed to go his way unmolested.

When the Chevalier de Rohan was in the Bastille in 1674, his friends wanted to convey to him the intelligence that his accomplice was dead without having confessed. They did so by passing the following words into his dungeon, written on a shirt: “mg dulhxcclgu ghj yxuj; lm ct ulgc alj.” In vain did he puzzle over the cipher, to which he had not the clue. It was too short; for the shorter a cipher letter, the more difficult it is to make out. The light faded, and he tossed on his hard bed, sleeplessly revolving the mystic letters in his brain, but he could make nothing out of them. Day dawned, and with the first gleam he was poring over them; still in vain. He pleaded guilty, for he could not decipher “Le prisonnier est mort; il n’a rien dit.”

The following mystic message is very difficult to decipher: “Tig C f p w y w e. i t ao eovhvygnvrxr mbiddutl.”

Take the first word, Tig, and under the second letter place that which precedes it in the alphabet, namely, h; then under the third letter, in succession backward, the two preceding letters, thus:

In like manner arrange the second word and the connecting letters, and we obtain the following:

By following the oblique line of letters, we get the words “THE CENTURY.” When all the words are so adjusted, we read, “THE CENTURY is an entertaining magazine.”

I cannot refrain from adding one more method which has been proposed for the transmission of secret messages. Let a man, says the ingenious author, breathe his words slowly in a long hollow cane hermetically sealed at the farthest end, then let him suddenly and closely seal the end into which he breathed. The voice will continue in the tube till it has some vent. When the seal is removed at the end which was first sealed, the words will come but distinctly and in order, but if the seal at the other end be removed, their inverted series will create confusion. This happy conception seems to have been proposed in all good faith by its author.

The first attempt at secret writing by the United States was made by Silas Deane, who was the first agent sent abroad by the Continental Congress. He was despatched to France for the purpose of purchasing arms and ammunition and to sound that country as to the probabilities of her recognizing the colonies if they should be forced to form themselves into an independent state; and whether their ambassadors would be received; and would France be disposed to enter into any treaty or alliance with them, for commerce or defense, or both; and if so, upon what principal condition. His instructions stated: “It is scarce necessary to pretend any other business at Paris than the gratifying of that curiosity which draws numbers thither yearly, merely to see so famous a city.” His mission being confidential, it was necessary to have great secrecy attached to his correspondence. For this purpose he was furnished by John Jay with an invisible ink and a chemical preparation for rendering the writing legible. As letters apparently blank might excite suspicion and lead to experiments that might expose the contrivance, the communications were written on large sheets of paper, beginning with a short letter written with common ink, respecting some fictitious person or business and under a feigned name, and the balance of the paper was used for the real or intended letter written in the invisible ink. Mr. Jay was the only one intrusted with the secret, and the letters were consequently addressed to him as “John Jay, Esq., Attorney at Law.” When a single sheet was insufficient to contain the secret despatch, Mr. Timothy Jones, or some other imaginary gentleman, requested the favor of Mr. Jay to forward the inclosed letter according to its directions; and the inclosed letter, with the exception of a short note on some fictitious business, was filled with the residue of the despatch in invisible ink.

Robert Morris, a member of the Committee of Secret Correspondence, writing to Mr. Jay, from Philadelphia, says:

The letter of Mr. Deane written in common ink and at the top of the page was as follows:

Under this apparently innocent letter was written in invisible ink the following public and important letter to Robert Morris:

The letter with its secret companion was received by Mr. Jay, who, having applied the necessary chemicals, brought out the hidden intent of the writer, transcribed both letters, and sent them to Robert Morris, in order that the information conveyed might be presented to Congress for the consideration of that body. Mr. Morris acknowledged the receipt of Mr. Jay’s letter as follows:

Congress responded, however, by giving orders for a supply of blankets, clothing, flints, and lead to be shipped in armed vessels, and these were to enter the service of the United States.

Shortly after this another cipher was adopted by the Government, which continued to be used by the Department of State after the inauguration of the Government under the Constitution, down to as recent a date as 1867. It was very seldom used, however, after the War of 1812. It was constructed upon the principle of a combination of numbers ranging from 1 to 1600, each number representing either punctuation-marks, letters, syllables, or in some few instances complete words. It was a cumbersome, laborious cipher, suited, perhaps, to ordinary correspondence, with the merit of being easily deciphered by an expert. It was found not only very inconvenient for corresponding by means of the cable, but exceedingly expensive. A similar cipher, however, is now being used by at least one of the principal powers of Europe.

In 1864 the French government under the Emperor Napoleon III, taking advantage of the Civil War in the United States, occupied Mexico and placed Maximilian on the throne as emperor. As soon as the war was over, Mr. Seward took steps to force the French to retire from that country, and by that means enabled the people to choose between Maximilian as emperor and Juarez as president, without being influenced by the presence of the French military forces. A cabinet meeting was called, at which General Grant was present by invitation. The result of the conference was that an instruction was prepared by Secretary Seward to our minister at Paris that plainly stated the sentiments of the United States, which was to the effect that the French must evacuate Mexico at once, or the United States would send her troops into that country and help the forces of the republic. The Atlantic cable had only just been completed, and the president of the company wanted the patronage of the Government to aid the enterprise. He called upon Mr. Seward and requested him to use the cable, promising that the rates should be entirely satisfactory to the Government, notwithstanding those to the public were ten dollars per word. In addition to the ordinary charge, the cable company imposed double rates upon all messages in which a cipher code was used. The instruction was given to the writer to put it in cipher, when he called the attention of the secretary to the great expense that would attend its transmission by cable, as each syllable in the instruction would be represented by four figures, and the cable company considered each figure as an equivalent for a word, and charged double rates accordingly. Having in view the assurances of the president of the company that the charges would not be excessive, Mr. Seward gave directions to have the instruction put in cipher and sent by cable, which was done. The instruction would occupy in print about a page and a quarter of an ordinary congressional document. The bill of the cable company was afterward submitted, and it amounted to over $23,000, which Mr. Seward, not considering it reasonable, refused to pay. The rates were soon reduced to the public one half, and several other reductions followed, but the bill which Mr. Seward refused to pay was never paid.

During the occupation of Mexico by the French, cipher telegrams were sent to General Bazaine, commander of the French forces. Some of these coming into the possession of the authorities of the United States were deciphered by an army officer and much valuable information was obtained.

The value and importance of secret writing is of course obvious, but the advantages which have accrued from it, while easily surmised, have become known only in a vague and general way. A specific illustration of a particular benefit derived from it by the United States in a very important matter and at a very critical time relates to the treaty of 1871 between this country and Great Britain, whereby the so-called “Alabama Claims” were to be adjusted by a Tribunal of Arbitration at Geneva, and which came very near being nullified in consequence of our presentation to that tribunal of what was known as “indirect claims,” namely, claims not for actual losses, but for the deprivation of prospective profits, etc. Great Britain sought to use the presentation of these claims as a ground for setting aside the jurisdiction of the tribunal, and consequently subverting it. Our agent before the tribunal, Judge J. C. Bancroft Davis, devised a plan for saving the case of the United States and preserving the tribunal. The nature of this plan was such as to require the approval of the President before it could be put into operation, and had to be communicated to him quickly as well as secretly. In anticipation of some such emergency, the writer, at Mr. Davis’s request, had prepared for him, just before his departure for Geneva, a cipher which, while perfectly secret, could be easily managed and the key of which could be memorized. Mr. Davis and Secretary Fish had recourse to this cipher for the purpose of the important correspondence above referred to, which could not have been conducted openly and which resulted in the maintenance of the Geneva Tribunal. An amusing feature of this correspondence was the perturbation it caused our minister at London, General Schenck. The messages were relayed through his office, and he, not being in the secret of the cipher, insisted upon having them repeated, because, as he said, he found them to be only “a jargon of unmeaning words.”

The Government, as such, has no distinct cipher, but each of the three departments, State, War, and Navy, the only departments really needing methods for secrecy of correspondence, is provided with a cipher of its own.

During the Civil War the Navy Department devised a cipher which was simply a substitution of one letter of the alphabet for another, and this was operated by a mechanical contrivance consisting of disks, one of which was stationary and the other movable. The stationary disk contained the letters of the “true reading,” and the movable disk the cipher substitutes. The process of its operation was tedious and awkward, but it was continued in use until the middle of the eighties, when several naval officers were designated to prepare a more convenient code. The new system is a combination of numerals and cipher words to represent words and phrases, following the general principle of most commercial codes. While not as full as it might be, it answers its purpose very well. Through overcaution, however, its operation has been made unnecessarily complicated, two translations being required to decipher a message, while one should be sufficient. Words have to be translated into figures and the figures then translated into the true meaning.

The code-book of this cipher is always kept in a canvas bag lined with zinc and heavily weighted. The bag is in the personal custody of the commanding officer, whose orders are, that in the event of danger of capture by the enemy, it is to be thrown overboard. Hence there is little likelihood of the code ever falling into improper hands.

The cipher of the War Department is very simple in its nature, and by virtue of its simplicity, easiness of operation, its inscrutability, and above all the readiness with which, in the event of its capture, a new and entirely different key can be substituted, commends itself as possessing a superiority over all others for military purposes. It may in a general way be described as an ingenious method of distorting the order of the words in a message, and further obscuring the sense by the systematic interpolation of irrelevant words and the introduction of meaning and meaningless names. The variety of distortions is great, and whenever a copy of the cipher is captured, another can be supplied and communicated to all parties interested in a very short space of time. This cipher is an elaboration of one that was designed for the governor of Ohio, at the beginning of our Civil War, to facilitate secret correspondence between him and the governors of Indiana and Illinois. Its effectiveness soon became recognized, and it was generally used during the war for the direction of military operations and the correspondence between our generals and the War Department.

In this connection it may be stated that during our Civil War the telegraph and the cipher system for the first time in history became important factors in the matter of tactics and strategy. The telegraph was first utilized as a military aid during the Crimean War (1854–55), but its use was confined to being merely a means of communication between the headquarters of the allied forces. But in our Civil War the telegraph and cipher were the principal channels for the direction of military operations, embodying, as they did, all the elements of celerity and secrecy, and rendering the signal corps picturesque but very ancient fire or flag system, in general, of very little practical value. By way of illustration, the fact may here be stated that during the siege of Petersburg, General Meade received and sent in five hours over three hundred telegrams, being more than one in every three minutes. Such a feat is readily seen to be far beyond the capacity of any system of wigwagging, fire, or flag signals, no matter how ancient or modern. It must be admitted, however, that these signal systems are at times of great and essential value, especially when telegraph lines cannot be established. The victory of the Federal troops at Lookout Mountain was mainly due to the skill of our signal corps in deciphering the signals of the Confederates and advising our generals accordingly.

For military purposes, telegraph operators were looked upon as possessing the best qualifications for enciphering and deciphering secret communications, but the sense of self-importance or esteem which seemed to attach to the person intrusted with these operations caused the staff-officers eagerly to seek such employment. As the war progressed, however, the work gradually devolved entirely upon the telegraphers, but not until after some discomfiting experiences on the part of some distinguished officers. General Grant undertook to send from La Grange, Tennessee, a cipher message to General Hamilton, who was at the front. Hamilton could not understand it, and had it repeated, but all to no purpose. Grant insisted that the message was correctly enciphered, but very soon afterward he gladly abandoned the cipher business to his operators. On another occasion General Grant, upon leaving his headquarters at Chattanooga to go to Knoxville, failed to take his telegraph operator with him. While at Knoxville he received several telegrams from Washington which he could not understand, and being consequently much annoyed, he directed his operator to turn over the cipher-key to his chief of staff, so that he would not be troubled with unintelligible telegrams in the future. For doing this he was reprimanded by General-in-Chief Halleck, who, in a letter, dated January 22, 1864, said:

General Grant replied that he had regarded the whole matter of the cipher management as merely an exhibition of departmental bureaucracy, and that he had considered himself as capable as the director of the bureau of telegraph matters in Washington to select a proper person to intrust with the cipher, but he was no stickler for forms and was always ready to obey any order or even wish of the Secretary of War, or any of his superiors, no matter how conveyed, if he only knew or thought it came from him. This ended the episode, and in a few hours the new cipher was ready for use.

Copies of our military cipher messages frequently got into the hands of the Confederates by means of tapping the wires, but they never succeeded in deciphering them, although they went to the extent of advertising them in their newspapers for decipherment, and it may be added, to the credit of our corps of military telegraph operators, that no operator ever proved recreant to his trust.

As compared with the simplicity of complexity and celerity of operation of the Government’s military cipher, that of the Confederates was very crude and clumsy. All their methods of secret communication were unraveled by our signal corps and telegraph operators. In addition to their signal system, the Confederates had a cipher for use in telegraphing and one for sending secret information through the mail. The first telegraph cipher message captured by our forces was the following:

After translation it read:

This code was merely a system of transposition or substitution of letters, which was effected by the use of either one of the three following keys, “Manchester Bluff,” “Complete victory,” or “Come retribution,” in connection with a square formed by twenty-six alphabets, the letters of each being written horizontally, one alphabet under the other, the first beginning with “a,” the second with “b,” the third with “c,” and so on, following the regular sequence of the letters. In the foregoing despatch the key “Manchester Bluff” was used, and by placing those letters over the enciphered letters of the message and applying the squared alphabets and beginning with the letters oaavvr, we look for “o” under the letter m in the top alphabet and find it in the alphabet which begins with c, and translate it c. Then we look for “a” under the letter a (the second letter of Manchester), and find that it means a; then we look for “a” under n (the third letter of Manchester) in the top alphabet, and find it in the alphabet which begins with n, and we translate it n, and so on. This system has no special merit except its age. The ancients used it, and it is generally the plan adopted by tyros in cryptography. The tediousness of its process makes it impractical.

The mail cipher consisted of substituted letters; telegraphic characters; parts of geometric figures, like the inscription on one of the tombs in Trinity churchyard

(meaning “Remember death”); and a few hieroglyphics. A letter from a Confederate agent which was intercepted in 1863 by the postmaster at New York was written in this cipher. Notwithstanding its puzzling appearance, it was deciphered readily, and the information obtained enabled the Government to seize a large quantity of bank-notes and the machinery for printing them which had been prepared for the Confederacy in that city. The lack of ingenuity and skill and the great crudity and cumbersomeness displayed by the Confederates in their ciphers must be regarded as surprising.

The cipher of the Department of State is the most modern of all in the service of the Government. It embraces the valuable features of its predecessors and the merits of the latest inventions. Being used for every species of diplomatic correspondence, it is necessarily copious and unrestricted in its capabilities, but at the same time it is economic in its terms of expression. It is simple and speedy in its operation, but so ingenious as to secure absolute secrecy. The construction of this cipher, like many ingenious devices whose operations appear simple to the eye but are difficult to explain in writing, would actually require the key to be furnished for the purpose of an intelligible description of it.

Ciphers are now more generally used than at any other period of the world’s history. Introduced for the first time by the United States in connection with the telegraph as a war factor, telegraphic ciphers have now become incorporated in the military systems of all nations. But it is in peaceful pursuits that the largest field for their operations has been found. They are now an essential element of all financial, commercial, and industrial enterprises. In former times they were employed for purposes of evil and cruelty, and were consequently looked upon with horror and aversion. Their functions now, however, are chiefly to benefit humanity by facilitating commerce and industry, and hence they merit public interest and favor.

THE GRAPES OF ESHCOL

⇒
LARGER IMAGE

BY EMILY HUNTINGTON MILLER

WITH DECORATIONS BY FRANK VINCENT DU MOND

Original page

⇒
LARGER IMAGE

THE FRATERNITY IDEA AMONG COLLEGE WOMEN

WHAT DOES IT STAND FOR?

BY EDITH RICKERT

A TRIFLING device of Greek letters in gold and enamel is a potent badge of social distinction in our democratic country, a hallmark of a certain sort of aristocracy.

The college fraternities are aristocratic in that they are self-perpetuating. Their privileges are not to be won through the conquest of adverse conditions and opposing forces; they are handed down by the older generations. Theoretically, admittance depends upon congeniality of spirit; virtually, clanship of race is coming to count more than kinship of soul. The chapters to-day show an increasing proportion of brothers, daughters, cousins, and friends. “If we build a chapter-house, Mrs. Vangoelet will allow her two sisters to come in with us; otherwise not,” expresses this attitude.

The Pan Hellenic Society is an organization of nearly fifty thousand college women, which is spreading enormously. Sixty chapters were established between 1890 and 1900, and two hundred between 1900 and 1910. It has a foothold in seventy-five of our leading coeducational institutions (that is, in all but about three), and several of the large women’s colleges. It is elaborately inspected and regulated by Pan-Hellenics, national and local.

The fraternities are aristocratic in that they are destructive to freedom of intercourse. The fraternal spirit is the great modern separator. It builds first a high wall between the Greeks and the barbarians, and then a maze of social distinctions between fraternity and fraternity. Are there not Attic Greeks and Doric, and Greeks from the far Ionian Isles?

The women’s fraternities began as sororities, and the change of name is significant. It means, they claim, that women as human beings have as much right to be included in the word “fraternity” as in the phrase “the brotherhood of man.” It means more than that. Consciously or unconsciously they have been moved by the aristocratic impulse to attach the early traditions, to create the social atmosphere, of the men’s fraternities; in other words, to lengthen the pedigree of their organization.

Is this unjust? The fraternity women have responded most generously to my inquiries; they have heaped upon me a small mountain of manuscript in explanation and defense of their theories and their practice. How shall I get at the truth? It is almost impossible to say anything that is not true of one fraternity or one chapter and at the same time untrue of others; but I have tried to understand their ideals and to follow up and judge the tendencies of their practice.

With college men the fraternity is frankly a social privilege which may become an invaluable business asset in after life. With women it is theoretically a means of completing individual development: “The university endeavors to graduate a student; the fraternity a significant, unselfish, gracious woman.”

The fraternity idea, however, reaches about one student in ten!

But forget for a time the nine tenths, the heterogeneous mass of the “barbarians,” and look at the system as it develops the elect few; and, to be just, consider it in its ideal form, toward which all the chapters are striving. Here is a group of between fifteen and thirty girls living in a dignified, well-appointed chapter-house near the campus, with a “house mother,” or chaperon. They are good-looking, well-dressed, all-round girls; athletic, dramatic, social-minded, rarely given to overstudy, almost always popular with men. They are not all rich, and not all of patrician family. One is a governor’s daughter, one a milliner’s; one spends all her summers abroad, one earns next year’s fees by teaching in a vacation school; one has always helped with the housework at home, another has never touched a duster or a broom until she takes her turn in polishing the chapter-house floors. If they have one common quality, it is this, as an observant college officer says, that they “do not have to be explained; they are so instantaneously attractive as to make the reason for their selection immediately evident.”

These girls make a happy family of elder and younger sisters, the elder feeling strongly responsible for the physical, intellectual, and spiritual welfare of the younger, the younger bound to heed the precepts and to follow the examples of the elder. They are closely linked by observance of a ritual which is said to be beautiful and uplifting. One enthusiast writes me: “That mere girls could have written our rituals, given expression and symbol to our creeds and initiation ceremonies, seems almost impossible, yet a proof of the divinity of clear-eyed womanhood.”

They are said to be outspoken in criticizing one another in the light of their ideals, meek in accepting criticism. One chapter even went to the length of establishing after its service a special meeting in which members were subjected to the fire of anonymous criticisms from their fellows, and so set to cure dominant faults. They manage their own household and business affairs with a precision and technic alarming to read about. They learn independence and self-reliance, on the one hand; self-control and a graceful yielding to the will of the majority on the other.

Their friendships are more loyal than the outsider can well imagine. Pushed to extremes, this loyalty even led, in one instance, to a concealment of theft and a levying of contributions to make up the loss; in two other cases cited, to expulsion from a chapter for “loose morals,” with, however, a rigid silence in the presence of outsiders as to the cause.

Indeed, life in the chapter-house seems to call out most of the virtues—unselfishness, neatness, tidiness, promptness, and general efficiency. In this college home, which to the fraternity girls is far more the vital center of their college experience than the classroom or the laboratory, there is much exchange of hospitality between chapters and individuals. Members of the faculty and distinguished guests are entertained. The girls are at the opposite pole from the poor student who cooks her own breakfast in her room, from the unfortunate “barb” who is left to the promiscuous friendships of the cheap boarding-house. They learn to plan a successful dinner, to pacify an enraged cook, to distinguish between porterhouse and sirloin, to lay out money to the best advantage in entertainment, to undertake without a quiver a reception for a thousand guests with only an afternoon of actual preparation. They learn to preside and to receive with grace and charm, to deal tactfully with many temperaments, to shuffle guests. Briefly, they become skilled in the complete art of the social game.

To sum up, according to the claims made for the fraternity girl in the handbook of her organization; she develops individuality and the power to lead; she acquires invaluable business training and womanly charm. She is given a wider outlook over the field of collegiate education than her less fortunate sisters; she is blessed with congenial friendships that amount almost to a continuance of family relationships, and “whatever the line of service to which she may consecrate herself,” she “will always be a success.”

This is a composite picture, made up from scores of glowing accounts of the benefits of the system. Is it true?

Certainly the shield has a reverse side. Over against the select fraternity of the pillared porch, let us place that which, during a severe winter, had to go outside the pale and take in new members in order to pay the coal bill. Let us also remember the chaperon who is also the cook, and does not appear at functions.

“Good-looking?” Yes, I have heard of a would-be chapter that was almost excluded from the national organization because the photograph sent on showed that they did not do their hair becomingly; and they were solemnly admonished to this effect in a type-written letter!

“Well-dressed?” One would scarcely believe the difference it makes to a “rushee” whether she is wearing a smart fall hat or a summer left-over; and if her belt pin should one day fail to do its duty, her cause might as well be lost. One method of choosing likely members is to send delegates to the station to observe the new girls as they arrive. There is witnessed the triumph of the tailored suit over the dowdy frills of the country dressmaker, of the suitcase that has lived abroad over the bulging valise that is packed with home-grown apples and home-made cookies.

“All-round?” Yes, with possibly a slight depression on the side of scholarship. I have heard of a good many cases in which girls were dragged out of the mire of conditions and hauled through their college course by the zeal of fraternity sisters pulling all together for the glory of the chapter. They have ideals of scholarship, indeed they are trying to establish a standard for admission, and they even carry off a share of the honors; but, on the whole, their social mind interferes with the scholastic attitude, and prevents over-application to mental effort.

“Rich?” Not necessarily; yet would not the girl who drives her own automobile have some advantage over the one who works her way through college, and the girl whose parents have a delightful home most suitable for “rushing” purposes near the campus be preferred to any sweet madonna-of-the-boarding-house? I heard only the other day how an initiation fee was raised to five times its original amount on the plea, “The girls will appreciate it so much more if they have to pay a lot!”

“Family?” Not at all, yet I know of a girl who was rushed hard and as suddenly dropped because it was discovered that her father had been a butcher; of another, who was regarded as eligible until it was found out, what neither her name nor her features suggested, that her really distinguished family was of Jewish strain.

These instances must be set over against the ideal picture of the governor’s daughter and the milliner’s child, the mother’s helper and the patrician of the South, scrubbing floors together.

Family jars, I am told, are beneath the dignity of the fraternities. It is difficult not to be skeptical as to the power of the ritual or of the pin to keep twenty healthy girls from splitting into factions over nothing at all; but even if outer harmony is maintained, is it conceivable that there should not very often be discomfort and even actual suffering among the minority? Suppose a chapter one year includes twelve students and eight butterflies, and the next year changes to three students and seventeen butterflies? What of the occasional “mistake”? I know a Theta girl whose mother was a Beta, but this fact was not discovered by the Betas until she was pledged. “What a pity!” they lamented; but “What an escape!” said she. As it happened, she felt entirely at home with the Thetas and could not bear the Betas; but suppose the situation had been reversed! She would have had no remedy except to withdraw, which would have made her painfully conspicuous and set everybody to wondering about the reason, or to change her college. But a girl out of harmony with a crowd and obliged to live with them in intimate association, is greatly to be pitied, whether she conforms or holds her own. What is to be said of the ethics of forcing an Episcopalian to dance in Lent against her strong religious scruples? Can it be doubted that such a minority often yields its own convictions to keep pace with the others, or, not yielding, is painfully out of step?

As to the wonderful ritual devised by “clear-eyed womanhood,” I have heard it also described as “childish,” “poppycock,” “bunk.” The ideals are necessarily those of immaturity, and have all the vagueness and some of the wrong-headedness of youth. “They are not harmful,” writes a dean, a fraternity woman who is familiar also with a college where no fraternities exist, “except that they are sentimental.” I take this to mean that they are more suited to discourses at fraternity banquets, as a kind of leaven to reminiscences of good old times, than to practical application outside the fraternity world.[3] That they may “have a dynamic force upon character” is doubtless true of the persons who do not develop beyond the stage at which they are propounded; that they lead to much real kindness among fraternity sisters in time of illness and trouble need not be doubted. But a loyalty which hides a thief and turns her loose in the world without warning may be a dangerous thing, and when it expels a girl for “loose morals,” and gives no further explanation, it is cruel, if the term means cigarettes or slight indiscretions with men, and dangerous if her character is such that she ought not to be allowed to remain on the campus.

“Manage their own households and business affairs?” Yes, but a peep behind the scenes reveals a case of cutting out breakfast to save up for a tea, of giving a formal dinner and living on bread and potatoes for a week to make up the expense. An inspector’s story hints that this business management is not unlike the average amateur performance. A dean, herself a fraternity woman of many years’ experience, writes: “Usually ... the accounts of such an organization are not so well looked after as those of the more general women’s organizations in which less of the ‘family’ idea prevails,” and “the business training of these undergraduates” ... is “probably inferior to that gained by officers in such bodies as the Women’s League, the Young Women’s Christian Association, the Student Government Association, or the boards of college publications.”

Then are the conclusions quoted by the handbook as to the influence of the fraternities on their members warranted by the facts? Do they cultivate individuality? How is it possible? In the first place, the fraternity girl is essentially “clubable”; and by the statute of limitations in personality she is bound to be more conventional, yes, even more superficial in her attractions, than the girl who is strongly individual. The fraternities are admitted to be groups in which like seeks like, and the whole flock aims to induce still greater likeness to the pattern of the group. The girl with a streak of genius cannot easily find her like, so she flocks not at all; the poor, proud girl fears patronage, and will not; the awkward, ill-bred country girl can’t; the dig dare not for fear of missing some intellectual good thing. All these must develop more or less as individuals; but the fraternity girl, unless she enters as an individual strong enough to dominate her companions, must herself be dominated by them.

“Cultivate leadership?” Probably, in that they give to all their members in some measure the poise that comes only from an assured social position; and poise is the first requisite for leadership. Again, the fraternity girl who takes a leading part in outside college activities has always an advantage in that she does this with the backing of her group, who are all prepared to do team-work when occasion demands.

In the same way, it is only the few that from the first show executive and business ability who get much training in these directions through fraternity membership.

As to the wide outlook over the field of collegiate education, it is limited in two ways: first, in that the fraternity women are more or less segregated from the other students, and second, in that they do not come into contact at all with the great women’s colleges, Vassar, Wellesley, Smith, Radcliffe, and Bryn Mawr.[4]

A GROUP OF WOMEN’S FRATERNITY HOUSES (UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN)

⇒
LARGER IMAGE

Then is the fraternity woman bound to be a success? Few of them, even while they claim inestimable benefits inexplicable to the outsider, say this. Some of them think that when the admitted defects in the system are removed, when rushing is prohibited, when pledge-day is postponed until the new students have had time to find themselves intellectually and socially and to make their friends, when a uniform scholarship standard and uniform house-rules are enforced, it will make for the finest type of womanhood.

Drawn by J. Norman Lynd

“ONE METHOD OF CHOOSING LIKELY MEMBERS IS TO SEND DELEGATES TO THE STATION TO OBSERVE THE NEW GIRLS AS THEY ARRIVE”

Doubtless there is need of these things. When rushing reaches the point of tying a girl in the rooms of a fraternity house until she puts on the fraternity-badge, it is time to take measures. When of two girls who are intimate friends, one is pledged because she knows better how to make use of her good points, while, with the breaking up of their friendship, the other, made of equally fine stuff, is left forlorn because she lacks an intangible something that attracts all the girls in a chapter, or has an intangible something that repels one member of it, a remedy should be found. When a popular girl has an engagement for five nights in a single week, or averages from sixty to eighty “dates” in a year, it almost looks as though scholarship needs attention. When the chaperon exerts her influence from the kitchen, and social events are untrammeled as to numbers and hours and expense, it is almost time for a reform. In other words, while there are chapters that are almost wholly admirable in their constituency and conduct, there are also others that reflect in the miniature college world the pace of the civilization about them.

But if all these reforms were accomplished,—and it is difficult to see how enough pressure can be brought by the National Pan-Hellenic to do this except sporadically,—the evils of the system remain as before, inherent and ineradicable. As regards those within, the fraternity idea means type; as regards those outside, it means caste.

“You’d never think Caroline was a Chi Chi, would you? She ought to have been a Tau Tau!” is overheard on the campus. What does this mean but type?

“The girl who sits next to me is an Alpha; I knew it before I saw her pin.” What does this mean but type?

Drawn by J. Norman Lynd

A NOVEL METHOD OF EXTRACTING A PROMISE TO WEAR A FRATERNITY-BADGE

“I knew a chapter that was made up of three distinct types, digs, butterflies, and Y. W. C. A.’s.... To be sure, it rather slumped for a time.” Why?

When a shrewd member of the faculty can forecast that certain freshmen will make Gamma Gamma, and certain others Omicron Omega, it must be admitted that not only is there a general fraternity type, but there is a tendency to type for each combination of Greek letters that is worn on a pin.

A TYPICAL SITTING-ROOM IN A GIRL’S WELL-APPOINTED FRATERNITY HOUSE

No doubt in the leveling up to type, many individual faults, such as selfishness, self-distrust, laziness, frivolity, lack of initiative, lack of self-control, bad temper, bad manners, and so on, are corrected; but in so far as the system is artificial, it is bound to develop conventionality. It is artificial because it chooses and restricts friendships. Close intimacy with outsiders is almost always made impracticable by circumstances and the mutual attitude of the elect and the non-elect; and in some cases it is held to be disloyal to the chapter. It is artificial because it strives to eliminate from a girl’s experience all incongruous and hostile elements, and these are often conducive to growth. The fraternity girl’s position is comparable to that of the child who is fed on soft foods.

That is, the trouble is that she is cultivated instead of being allowed to grow freely. She is rushed, pledged, initiated; she is studied, counseled, criticized, disciplined, drawn out, molded. Her power of initiative is developed only in that she “is made to go out and do things.” Even as an upper classman, when it is her turn to uphold the fraternity ideals and to mold her younger sisters, she still lives in the rarefied atmosphere of an artificially selected community, where there is no chance for the free play of the individual. The fraternity girl, with all her initiative, her poise, her charm, her efficiency, is crippled by the fact that she is not allowed to come to grips with all sort of conditions and people, by which alone is gained the personal, as opposed to the group, attitude toward life.

Does the fraternity idea mean caste? Are fraternity girls snobbish? This question brought an emphatic denial from fraternity women on all sides. The existence of snobbery here and there, in chapters and in individuals, is admitted; but the attitude of the organization, I am told, is to root it out, and by all means to encourage democracy. The only difficulty here is that snobbery is the foundation-stone of the system, and when it goes, the system topples. This is the way of it. If you and I have a secret, and we talk together in the presence of a third person who does not know it, by no means in our human power can we avoid a snobbish attitude toward that third person. We ourselves may forget the secret; but the person outside, by the very fact that he is shut out from it, magnifies its importance, and no equality of dealing is possible between him and ourselves. Extend the picture to a houseful of girls, linked together by a common knowledge, a common family, and a common social life, and give these girls the right to say who shall be privileged to join them, what chance for equal dealing has the outsider, or even a less closely organized group of outsiders, against their united social attitude? The fraternity girl may not feel snobbish, but if the barbarian is snubbed, the result is much the same. What though the “frat” girl claims that the “barb” will not meet her half-way? As long as there is consciousness of effort to bridge the gap, the gap is plainly there.

Drawn by J. Norman Lynd

MEETING DISTINGUISHED GUESTS AT A FRATERNITY HOUSE, AND—

Where there is a gap, there is caste, and where caste is recognized, snobbery is inevitable. When the fraternity woman disclaims snobbery, she means that she is careful not to emphasize the distinctions between herself and others. She is like the teacher who, in order to preserve strict impartiality, takes off her fraternity-pin when she goes to class. No, the fraternity woman, aware as she is of the “greater blessings of her lot,” does not snub those less fortunate than herself; she either ignores them or is kind to them. Sometimes she manages both attitudes at the same time, as in the case of a party given to all the students, in which the programs of the fraternity members are filled weeks ahead. And if the outsiders who go feel like parasites, it is surely their own fault. Admit, on the one hand, a fund of common knowledge and common acquaintance, extensive social experience, and the assurance of social standing, and, on the other, instead of these things, the ever-present sense of having been passed over as negligible, or, what is yet worse, of having been tried and found wanting. Can the gap be bridged?

PREPARING HER OWN DINNER

Nor do the attempts of the fraternities to bridge the gap bear out their claims of democracy. In a recent report on social customs made by a committee of the Pan-Hellenic, only three chapters mentioned any effort to be “nice” to the whole student body. One spoke of a spring picnic; two, of attempts at occasional “open houses,” in one case dubbed a failure by some members; and the third, “prospects of a party for all college women and a freshman scholarship”! I am afraid it is impossible to deny that the fraternities live in a world by themselves, shut off by an insuperable barrier from those who are not “their sort.” And if this is not caste, what is?

The system, however, does create a sort of noblesse oblige, which in some cases makes the fraternity girls leaders in the class and student organizations, Young Women’s Christian Association, and various other college activities, although in this they are sometimes thwarted by inter-fraternal rivalries and jealousies, and by the combined hostilities of the barbarians. Further, they are said to coöperate earnestly and efficiently with deans and presidents in coercing refractory members of their own body, and in helping put through reforms and other measures for the good of the whole student body. They are the most loyal part of the alumnæ, and through their permanent connection with their chapters, continue to come back and show interest in their alma mater long after other students have broken the tie.

Drawn by J. Norman Lynd

“THE UNFORTUNATE ‘BARB’ WHO IS LEFT TO THE PROMISCUOUS FRIENDSHIPS OF THE CHEAP BOARDING-HOUSE”

So far I have said little about the girl who is left out. To many of the fraternity women she seems the most deplorable feature of the system. Except in the college where the societies contain all but a very few of the students, her case does not seem to me serious. To be sure, she misses a great deal of fun and social training; but if she is worth saving, she saves herself in the end; and if she gives up in despair and goes home because she does not “make a frat,” she is not of the stuff that the college needs. Probably some sensitive girls are embittered for a long time by the slight, but the finer ones conquer, even though the sting lingers throughout their course. A large number in the great mass of the students are unaffected by the fraternity problems. They do not expect or wish to get in, and they have virtually very little to do with the fraternity girls except as they work in the same student organizations. They have their own sets, their own social life, averaging more good times, perhaps, than they are credited with by their pitying superior sisters. What the university fails to do to counteract the effects of poverty, ill breeding, bad preparation, and inexperience is another thing altogether. Individual tragedies settle themselves, and those who win come out stronger, finer women for their victory over adverse conditions than any fraternity girl for whom the way has been made smooth.

But the fraternity idea must be judged not so much by those whom it shuts out from special privilege as by the results that it produces in those whom it fosters.

The Pan Hellenic Society believes itself specially chosen and trained for service. And what has it done? Aside from a vague and general interest in alumnæ activities, this service is reduced to scholarships, some isolated attempts in education and philanthropy, a certain “dynamic force” upon the character of its members, scarcely apparent to outsiders, and continued perfection of organization, thus far for no more evident purpose than the reform of its own body.

“‘WORSHIPING AT THEIR OWN LITTLE SHRINE’”

In other words, the fraternity system seems grotesquely out of proportion in the general scheme of things. Why should this one feature of undergraduate life be magnified by means of publications, council meetings, and conventions, if it is to fulfil no other purpose than the perpetuation of itself? How does it stand in relation to the many needs of the world? Is it not rather like a crystallization of an immature stage of development? Why should a fraternity woman go about the world seeking only her own kind, like the missionary to China who wrote to her fraternity paper of the various social advantages that came to her through her encounters there with Greek sisters? It looks to me very much like an actual limitation of growth. Take the case of the country girl whom college has unfitted for her home environment. It was cited as one of the inestimable blessings of the system that her sole interest now lies in her fraternity literature and friends. To my mind this relationship is rather a handicap that retards the shifting of focus that must take place in her before she can make her life a success.

For these reasons I believe that the fraternities, notwithstanding individual benefits, are hastening on our “French Revolution”; they are creating a type that rules by habit rather than by individual power and wisdom; and by their inflexible system of caste they are emphasizing the gap, already more than sufficient for women as for men, between privilege and the working world.

A college president recently said to me in substance: “I always think of the fraternity men as in a circle, hand in hand, facing outward; but of the women as turned the other way, worshiping at their own little shrine, with their backs to the winds of the world.”

“‘WITH THEIR BACKS TO THE WINDS OF THE WORLD’”

DAVY

BY LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY

Original page

⇒
LARGER IMAGE

OUR GREAT SHAKSPERE CRITIC

Copyright by Amy Otis

HORACE HOWARD FURNESS

FROM A PENCIL PORTRAIT BY AMY OTIS

⇒
LARGER IMAGE

THE LATE HORACE HOWARD FURNESS

NOVEMBER 2, 1833—AUGUST 13, 1912

BY TALCOTT WILLIAMS

ONLY a great man can accomplish a great task. For fifteen of Shakspere’s most familiar plays, Horace Howard Furness condensed the criticism of three centuries for each play in a single volume, save “Hamlet,” which has two.[5] From 6000 to 8000 works have been published on Shakspere. All on each play is brought within the compass of its volume. Who holds this volume holds the fruits of all past criticism and comment on the play.

Mere industry can do much, but mere industry could never build the monument of these volumes. I confess I never look at the impressive row without amazement at the labor for which they stand. It would be much, if this were all. Long labor of this order grinds like a glacier over a writer’s style and individuality. Textual criticism saps men. There is a certain form of stupidity never found except in “notes.”

Nothing saves a man from this but personality. The first great tonic is humor. Dr. Furness, man and work together, brim with it. Who else would have made a merry mark of the one word in Shakspere—in “The Tempest,” “young scamels from the rock”—for which no one has even suggested a convincing or even plausible meaning? The humor needed to salt these barrels and barrels of Shaksperian pemmican is much more than the capacity to see a joke. This is to humor what a pocket-dictionary is to an encyclopedia. What is needed for adequate comment on Shakspere, the most English of all figures in the world of letters, is that numberless capacity to see the broad laugh in all things which lies so near to tears that when the coin of fate is flipped no man knows which is to be uppermost. This gives sanity. It enables the editor of a variorum to know from time to time what a fool a German scholar can make of himself and his author. I suppose no man could see Horace Howard Furness, that solid figure, that sturdy step, that firm face of roomy planes and liberal modeling, those twinkling eyes, that air of benignant wisdom and general good-nature, without seeing that the worst joke of all, life itself, could not daunt this resolution or dull this humor.

There is a look we all know on the face of the judge—a detached habit of thought. It comes on the bench, and it comes, too, let me assure you, if a man has had before his bar for forty years all the culprits who for two centuries have been writing about Shakspere. His beam will stand sure and he will “poise the cause in justice’s equal scales.” There are scholars whose lives are given to the great in letters who become surfeited with honey and “in the taste confound the appetite.” Nothing saves from this but the incommunicable capacity for the perception of the best. This capacity grows by what it feeds upon. Through these volumes there has grown certainty of touch and serenity of judgment, but from the first issue there was apparent, as in the man, the norm which is not to be corrupted even by the Elizabethan extravagance of the greatest of Elizabethans.

Dr. Furness came to his life task through the Kemble tradition. The Kembles, who succeeded Garrick, first gave dignity to Shakspere. Three critics of the contemporary stage, dramatic critics all, Coleridge, Lamb, and Hazlitt, two of them working journalists, began the present attitude. It has since been impossible for any scholar to say, as Samuel Johnson did, that a passage in a third-rate play, Congreve’s “Mourning Bride,” was better than anything in Shakspere.

The stage was dear to him, and he believed that no play could be adequately understood unless it was heard. The foremost players of his day he knew, and each had counseled with him, and he had gladly learned from them. With Fanny Kemble and her light touch and perspicuous, penetrating interpretation as a model, he read the familiar plays himself to many audiences, interspersing comment. To all who read or act he was a living proof that lines are “read” by the mind and that he or she who fully understands will fully express, and he or she alone. Deaf as he was, stress, cadence, emphasis, intonation, and expression were as manifold, accurate, and illuminating as his comment. All was suffused with the cheer and glow of strength, and had behind that incomparable organ of interpretation, a mind that knew, loved, and voiced the inner meaning of the uttered word.

It is now sixty-five years since Dr. Furness, a boy of fourteen, received from Fanny Kemble a season ticket for her readings. In her readings she sat at a green baize-covered table still cherished in his library. She made him a Shaksperian for life. He was living in a city which, until Boston took its place a little over twenty years ago, as Chicago is doing to-day, gave the stage a more serious, steady, intelligent, and consistent support than any other.

To a local stage possessing this tradition the Philadelphia of threescore years ago added through his father, William Henry Furness, for fifty years head of the Unitarian Church founded by Joseph Priestley, a more intimate contact with the romantic movement in England than fell to other young Americans of the period. It was in Philadelphia that Wordsworth was first appreciated at his full value by an American. It was there that Coleridge was first printed. There, in a commonwealth for two centuries nearer Germany than any other American State, German translation began. William Henry Furness early addressed himself to this field. His daughter, Mrs. Annis Lee Wister, continued the task through thirty years, her last work appearing in a volume of her brother’s variorum series. Where other commentators in our tongue, in either home of our race, have looked to English comment, Dr. Furness from the first significant dedication of his “Hamlet” (1877), written in personal exultation over German triumph as proving Germany no longer the “Hamlet of Nations,” has seen Shakspere as a world poet, has come close to German authority and research, and equaled its thorough and exact character without falling into its pedantry or its far-fetched gloss.

From many causes he knew all it is to be a gentleman, and when every year he rose as dean of the Shakspere Society on St. George’s day to give the solitary toast, “William Shakspere, gentleman,” it was on the last word that his sturdy accent fell. Beyond all the other great voices of our tongue, Shakspere was “gentle.” The author of “Coriolanus” loathed the general mass. He scarce mentions it without touching on its evil smell. Its sweaty nightcap ever stank in his nostrils. Certain sympathies are needed for full critical appreciation of the poet who was the last word of the feudalism of the past to the democracy of the future, and these sympathies Dr. Furness had.

The Shakspere Society first began his study. For sixty-one years its fortnightly meetings have gathered a group of men foremost in Philadelphia. One has read Shakspere there with a cabinet-minister, a chancellor of the bar association, a judge of the first rank, a great physician as well known in the art of letters as in the letters of his art, and a novelist whose best seller has not had its total exceeded. It was in a like practical atmosphere that, a young man not yet thirty, Dr. Furness was stirred half a century ago to try to compare texts by the aid of a scrap-book. Out of this grew the Variorum, first with the first folio for a basis and later the Cambridge text. He had leisure, a perilous gift. He early collected, until 7000 volumes were at hand in a building for their use; but most collectors are swamped by their apparatus. “A Concordance of Shaksperian Poems,” 1874, by Mrs. Furness, bespoke a common bond in a perfect union. In 1883 she was taken. After a generation, those who then saw his grief from without will not adventure to speak of it. A sense of loss was never absent from him. It drove him to arduous labors, which the years made a habit of life. Save a single volume of his father’s intimate friendship with Emerson, he wrote nothing but the Variorum. His prefaces, his addresses, and his letters should, now that he is gone, make a volume. He preserved the epistolary gift, lost in our day. His simplest note had style, charm, and weight.

In his research he was to the end a firm believer in the study of the plays and the plays alone. The order in which the plays were written did not interest him. For “weak endings,” “incomplete lines,” and all the newer apparatus of Shakspere study, he had an unconcealed disregard. It was not for him. He would have questioned his personal identity as soon as question the personal authorship of Shakspere’s plays.

The happy fortune befell me once at his side and over his ear-trumpet to say of him that which greatly pleased. It was at the luncheon when the New Theatre gave him a gold medal and he monopolized the affectionate attention of every woman in the room. His appreciation gave whatever value there was to my words, in which I said that it was not as a scholar unrivaled and a critical authority unequaled that he would be most loved and remembered, but because his work had made accurate study possible to the wandering player, given the solitary teacher on the frontier the best of past criticism, and armed the smallest village club with a library of learning, making the best of Shakspere the general possession of all. It was for this he labored. It was this American ideal that inspired him. It was in the service of this ideal that he renounced all royalties.

It is only as a friend I write of Horace Howard Furness, as one of those that loved and knew. It is ever ill writing of one’s friends when they are gone, but his going changed the very horizon of life for us all, robbed of its landmark the landscape of the years, and left a gap where once we all looked up and learned and had new sense of the fashion in which long purpose, fulfilled and never forgotten, shapes character and carves cliffs from which men see afar.

For forty years he sat at a desk and worked to make books from books on a book. In all our American life there is no other, few in any land, who so encysted himself in a task wholly of letters. There goes with this for most, as all know, the bent figure, the absent-minded or the self-conscious gaze, aloofness from the actual. Not he. To the last there was the sturdy, erect figure, the ruddy, full face, shaped and blocked as of a man of many tasks, the resolute mustache, the solid chin, the stiff, short, aggressive hair, early whitened by tears and tasks—“your white-haired son,” as he wrote in an inimitable acknowledgment to his father in one of his volumes. Even a year from eighty his very step was decision. He bore down Chestnut Street in his weekly visit from his country home like “a royal, good, and gallant ship, freshly beheld in all her trim.”

There is in Philadelphia a little group which has dined together just short of four decades every three weeks for eight months of each year. He was of the first that met, and the last of the first to go. To one who began thirty years ago as the youngest of those who sat at this board, and now, alas! finds himself among the elder at a table peopled with the past, nothing so bulks in all the round of a manifold social contact as this dominant figure, alert, awake, clear-visioned, felt through all this gathered group of men. Each of them was himself felt in all the various walks of life, on the bench, in law, in medicine, in letters, in art, in journalism, and in affairs; yet he the center, stone-deaf. How did he do it? I do not know. I only saw. He alone had the secret. Gay, responsive, indomitable, flashing sheer personality, and with a big silver ear-trumpet moving here and there, into which some one at his side poured a reversion of the passing talk, who is there whom you know, or whom you have known, who could have done it? None other that I know. Yet he so did it that one felt that the best recipe and assurance of unflagging talk, of explosive, masculine laughter, of a perpetual source of the dearest and most precious thing on earth, the easy interchange, conflict, and contact of friends with friends—the best recipe for all this was to have there a great scholar, unable to hear a word until it was dropped into the silver trumpet, yet giving edge, guidance, direction, and inspiration to all the flow of mutual utterance that has run in this well-worn channel for twoscore years.

To do this was more like his very self than all his throned volumes; and I am not sure but that, in the great chancery of existence, it is better worth while to have made friends gay, high-spirited, and ready to give a frolic welcome to all the years as they came than to be known ever after, as he will be, as foremost in his great field. It was like him to concentrate all his social life on this one group. Elsewhere he was always sought and scarcely seen, though his house was graced by an open hospitality the loss of which in time he made up by night work. How wise to know your friends in your forties, and to gather them and to be with them to the very threshold of the eighties! How far wiser than the wandering way in which, like children, we fill our hands so full that we can neither use, nor give, nor leave, nor enjoy! It was like him resolutely to keep this dinner of high talk and plain fare, with men who dined much and well elsewhere, to a dollar apiece, as a constant protest against a lavish age which kills all by gilding it, as with the luckless boy in the Medicean festival.

Life was compounded by him of simples; but they were “collected from all simples that have virtue under the moon.” He lived in one city and loved it. Two homes housed all his years.

He sprang of a goodly ancestry and was justly and openly proud of it. He held high the long descent of men given to the works of the mind. His father was known before him, and his sons were known with him and will be known after him.

His heart visibly and frankly warmed, though without word or bruit, when in a narrow span of years he and his son Horace Howard Furness, Jr., published each his volume which garner the comment of all the years on a play of Shakspere. Another son, Dr. W. H. Furness, in the same span, wrote an authoritative volume on the Dyaks of Borneo, placing in the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania the best existing monographic collection on the region he studied. A daughter, Mrs. Horace Jayne (Caroline Furness Jayne), issued the one most important book ever published on the perplexing, fascinating, and almost unknown field of cat’s-cradles, a mine of patient research and accurate, skilful description. His sister, Mrs. Caspar Wister, published the long series of translations from German novels the success of which, among a score of failures in this field, was wholly due to the skill with which the “translator” adapted this fiction “made in Germany” to the English-speaking world. Five years ago this brother and sister were at work side by side, Mrs. Wister on the proof-sheets of her fortieth German translation, “The Lonely House,” by Adolph Streckfuss, and he on the proof-sheets of “Antony and Cleopatra,” the twelfth in his monumental march. Her first translation, “Seaside and Fireside Fairies,” from George Blum and Louis Wahl, had appeared forty-three years, and his “Romeo and Juliet” thirty-six years, before. His brother, Frank Furness, whose death preceded his by so short a span, was, when a mere lad, in Rush’s Lancers, and all his life looked the cavalryman, with his drooping, yellow mustache and his seamed face. He retained to the end the walk of a man who, for years together in his youth, has felt the saddle-leathers between his legs. Like Lever’s hero, he once escaped capture by taking a barn-yard fence no other man would have dared or persuaded his cavalry mount to venture. By carrying powder to a battery not only under fire, but through burning woods, he won a medal of honor. At Cold Harbor he risked life openly and flagrantly by walking out between two firing-lines a few rods apart to give a wounded Confederate a drink of water. Years later, when there came to this dauntless soul heartbreaking grief, he solaced himself by finding through a newspaper friend, who sowed the strange and moving tale broadcast in Southern papers, the man whose life he had saved, bringing him to Philadelphia and filling a month with mutual memories for both. To the world Frank Furness was known as an architect, a pupil of Richard Morris Hunt.

It could be only in such a family that, as a family lark at a family dinner, a novel was written, the first chapter by Horace Howard Furness, the others in turn by the rest, three sons, a daughter, a son-in-law, and a daughter-in-law, no author to kill a character without the consent of its creator, and all printed in seven copies as “Grace Auchester.” I foresee a pretty penny for this volume in catalogues of Shaksperiana a century hence.

It is the odd blunder of a dull world that social buoyancy and the notable mind seldom march together; but, as an acute thinker has said, a man with a strong pair of legs can walk east as easily as he walks west, and our great Shaksperian had all the mirth that rang under the rafters of the Mermaid. He made the Hasty Pudding Club at Harvard. He was the dancer of his year and led in the play of more than sixty years ago. I like it that after his death there were found, preserved through all the half century, the pink tights and the spangled skirt which the toil-worn commentator had worn in glad youth as Mlle. Furnessina. In the world of silence in which he lived so long he seemed to know laughter by instinct. His speech on the “Miseries of Old Age” at a Harvard dinner four years ago swept the tables. He presided over a dinner or a meeting marvelously. His instinct, his attention, his capacity to interpret a look as easily as a word, carried him through all. Nor was humor ever far from the ceremonial surface of things. For example, at the lunch given at the opening of the Bryn Mawr College library—it was on the hottest of June days, and he was sweltering under the crimson trappings and beef-eater hat of his Cambridge degree of Litt.Doc. (1899), when a young friend spoke a consoling word to him. He replied, “Ah, Mademoiselle, il faut souffrir pour être swell.”

The world narrowly missed in him a great Arabic scholar. His trip abroad after his graduation at Harvard carried him far afield. He was in Damascus when the Crimean War set the East ablaze. He saw Richard Burton, imperious-souled, a vision of masterful will, holding his consular court; and to the vision he recurred again and again. He had a week or two in the desert. He became enamoured of Arabic and its study, of which relics exist in a grammar and reader that he owned. But his brief days over Semitics had this strange by-product. In the polychrome Bible, projected by Professor Haupt of Johns Hopkins, and halted midway for lack of support, Dr. Furness, perhaps the only man alive so versed in Elizabethan English that it was as the tongue to which he was born, and knowing enough of Hebrew, furnished the translation of the revised text. In the Hebrew lyrics and psalms translated for this edition of the Old Testament he reached the summit of his style, an incomparable mingling of nice scholarship and exalted utterance. How fit it was that the Bible and Shakspere should attract the same critical capacity!

If I were to sum by a single inanimate object the temper and tradition of Dr. Furness, I would turn to the gloves, in his unrivaled collection, which one is glad to believe were Shakspere’s. They are manifestly the gloves of an Elizabethan gentleman not too large in build, gold-embroidered, and shapely. They were treasured as genuine by the descendants of Shakspere’s son-in-law, the physician who attended him in his last illness, and were handed down in that family. They passed to Garrick, who gave them to Philip Kemble, and so by descent again they passed from Fanny Kemble to their recent owner. There again is the double line of grace, the descent both of line and of genius, to make precious the gloves that rested on Shakspere’s hand, took its shape and knew its strength and beauty.

THE HUNGRY SHEEP

BY WILLIAM LYON PHELPS

Lampson Professor of English Literature at Yale University

ONE of to-day’s favorite questions, both in private speculation and in public debate, is this, “Why do not more men go regularly to church?” Like all questions of real interest, it is much easier to ask than to answer. The pews undoubtedly contain more women than men, though this fact by itself need occasion no alarm. It does not prove that the church has “lost its hold” or that the habit of going to church is relatively unimportant. Women have always taken more interest in religious organizations than men, both because they have more leisure for contemplation, and because public worship appeals more to a woman’s nature than it does to a man’s. If the mere fact that the minister sees in front of him more brilliant hats than bald heads be a sign that the church does not appeal to the solid intelligence of humanity, then the symphony concert and the art museum fail even more signally. The masculine proportion of listeners at a high-class musical entertainment or among the visitors at an art gallery is even less than it is at church. Indeed, it is rather interesting to observe that at almost any public spectacle the number of men is in inverse ratio to the intellectual value of the performance. At a vaudeville the men vastly outnumber the women, and amid the enormous throng at a prize-fight there are hardly any women at all. Thus the fact that the seats at a prize-fight are crowded with men, while the pews are filled with women, does not in itself indicate that the church is on the down-grade.

Still, it is unfortunate that more men do not attend church, and it is more unfortunate for the men than it is for the church. Men need the church more than the church needs men. The real difficulty is not a fundamental one; it does not lie in the nature of religion or in the nature of man. Next to questions of sex and means of subsistence, the average man is at heart more interested in religion than in any other one thing. The ordinary man is a natural theologian. He takes keen interest in constructing his God, his scheme of the universe, and the problem of life after death has always had, and probably always will have, an irresistible fascination.

The main trouble with the church to-day is not in the pews; it is in the pulpit. There is more Christian faith in the average congregation than there is in the average preacher. During the short period of Emerson’s pastorate, he was obliged to call on an old man who was dying. The young minister murmured apologetically a number of confused and clumsy commonplaces, and finally his aged client cried sharply, “Young man, if you don’t know your business, you had better go home.” Emerson, who came to give advice, took it, like the honest and sincere man that he was; and he had no peace until he left the church for good and all. He was totally unfitted to be a minister because he had no Christian faith, and as soon as he realized his unfitness, he sought another occupation, and became enormously useful to humanity in other ways.

A United States senator met three clergymen in three different parts of the country, and each complained that he could not get a large audience. The senator asked the first man if he believed that the Bible was the word of God; the cleric smiled pityingly, and said that of course he did not in the crude and ordinary sense, and then he launched a mass of vague metaphysical phrases. The senator asked the second man if he believed in the future life, and the reverend gentleman said that he did not believe in personal immortality, but that the essence of life was indestructible, or some such notion. The senator asked the third man, a pastor of an orthodox evangelical church, if he believed in the divinity of Jesus Christ; the shepherd of souls replied that all men were divine. The three clergymen had themselves supplied abundant reasons why their audiences were small. They had nothing to offer them but wind. The hungry sheep looked up, and were not fed.

A vital Christian faith is the prime essential for a man who wishes to succeed in the ministry. It is worth more to him than all the learning in the world. If an honest man cannot believe, we surely ought not to blame him or quarrel with him; but he has no business in the pulpit. Christian faith is just as necessary a prerequisite for a clergyman as a knowledge of mathematics is for a civil engineer. Without it, he is not merely ineffective; he is futile and absurd. I remember being present once in a vast audience where Mr. Moody was talking, and at the end of his remarks he said that he would be glad to answer any questions. Some one asked, “What, in your judgment, is the best work a modern minister can do?” Before Mr. Moody had time to reply, there was a voice from the throng, which cried out, “This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom He hath sent.” The great evangelist hesitated a moment, and then said that he had nothing to add.

The Protestant clergy of to-day are sadly weakened by a spirit of compromise. They are afraid to preach Christianity, partly because they do not believe in it, and partly because they are afraid it won’t “draw.” They attempt to beguile men into the church by announcing secular themes, by the discussion of timely political and literary topics. As a matter of fact, the ungodly respect heartily a Christian minister who is absolutely sincere and who confines his sermons to religion, and they despise a vacillating and worldly minded pastor, who seems to apologize for his religion, and who substitutes lectures on politics and socialism for the preaching of the gospel. No mistake is greater than the mistake of the minister who conceives it to be his duty to preach politics from the pulpit. To an audience who have read the daily papers all the week, and the Sunday paper that very morning, nothing is more superfluous than a political discourse in church. I remember the case of a prominent clergyman who, during a whole Presidential campaign, preached Sunday after Sunday against one of the candidates, to a constantly diminishing audience. On the night when the returns came in, the object of his attacks was apparently successful, and he cried out in despair, “What can be done now?” He was effectively answered by one of the ungodly who happened to be present. “I don’t see that there is anything left for you now, Doctor, except to preach the gospel.”

The tremendous strength of the Roman Catholic Church lies in its fidelity to principle, in its religious vitality, and in its hatred of compromise. It should be an object-lesson to all Protestant ministers. They may not believe its dogmas, they may not accept any theological dogmas at all; but they ought to learn that the chief duty of a preacher is to hold forth Christianity, and not to discourse on sanitation, political economy, or literature. People everywhere are eager for the gospel, and always respond to it when it is convincingly set forth, whether by men like Phillips Brooks or men like Billy Sunday. The great Boston bishop never had any trouble in getting an audience; and although he was a man of the highest and broadest cultivation, interested in every modern movement in literature, politics, and art, he never preached anything but the Christian religion. He used all his remarkable gifts in that one direction. The result was that his congregations were enormous, and that he was beloved and respected by all classes of men.

The pastor should be a leader, not a follower. If he has less conviction than his audience, how can he lead them? What would be thought of the general of an army who had no definite ideas as to where he ought to take his men, and no conviction that his cause was good? If the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself for battle? The main difficulty with the church to-day is that the people in the pews do not have the gospel preached to them. The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed.

THE FEMINIST OF FRANCE — I — II — III

BY ETHEL DEAN ROCKWELL

FEMINISTS include as many different kinds of women in France as elsewhere. The term can be applied equally to a George Sand or a Marguérite Audoux. We find the movement as marked, too, in France as in other countries. But the interesting thing about it is that though similar to all the others in basic principles, the French feminist is instinctively individual, always French. Compare her, for instance, with her sister across the channel. In England she bends all her energies to winning the suffrage, to carrying reforms by act of Parliament; in France she takes no part in political campaigns, cares not at all for the vote. In England the ladies of the aristocracy are the prime movers; in France, with few exceptions, the women of the upper classes look on the movement with indifference, and the leaders come from a small group of intelligent and ambitious women of the bourgeoisie. In England women are working for the cause of all women rather than for individual advantage; in France they impress one as working for their own benefit, not for humanity. In England, throwing off their feminine garb, they often become blatant, clamorous, unwomanly; in France, believing that woman’s deadliest weapon is her womanliness, they never withdraw the battery of their feminine charms. In England the feminist is still a conformist to moral law; in France, unfortunately, she is too often a rebel against moral as well as social restrictions.

The tendency has existed in many brilliant women since French history began. We naturally think of the women of the salons, for instance. But they were only sporadic examples of cleverness. A general “woman movement” was not known till the French Revolution.

“Since when have women occupied themselves with politics?” asked Napoleon of Mme. de Staël.

“Since they have been guillotined,” was her reply.

But the Revolution brought them no recognition, for upon its heels came Napoleon, who took from them even that which they had. Two other movements also came to naught: followers of St. Simon, the Socialist, who believed in the complete emancipation of woman and in her entire equality with man, owed their failure to the extravagance of some of their doctrines, and to lack of organization. The other attempt was snuffed out in 1851 with the coup d’état of Napoleon III. Through the twenty years of political reaction succeeding that event, there were always women, often famous, who fought valiantly, if not always wisely, for emancipation; and since the establishment of the republic, their efforts have made uninterrupted headway.

WE speak of steady advance. Yet measured by American standards, or those of other Northern countries, Frenchwomen must yet travel far to reach the point where these were fifty years ago. Americans accept as a matter of course liberty of thought and action, equal opportunities for study and work, and the respect of men. Frenchwomen are not generally possessed of these blessings. Why this difference? Among many causes, three stand out preëminent—social, civil, and religious reasons.

Socially, France belongs with the Latin races. In these countries man has generally treated woman with gallantry, but not respect, and has received her attempts at higher life in a spirit of mockery which it has been almost impossible to overcome. Because her happiness depended on his good will, her one aim in life has been to please him. As Pierre de Coulevain expresses it, “She is entirely absorbed by man and maternity.” The moral standard of both men and women has been low, and the well-known bargaining about the dowry has added sordidness. The case of the jeune fille serves as an example. Her carefully guarded, restricted life, her interests, and her education, not fitting her to think or to be of service to her community, are too well known to need amplification. It well illustrates how, in Southern countries, their Latin heritage has been a strong social factor in the retarded awakening of women.

In France these conditions were fixed still more immutably by Napoleon’s civil code, which thus becomes the second, or civil, reason. Napoleon’s only use for women was as producers of more men for his wars. “Make them believers, not thinkers,” was his command. In legal status he classed them with children, imbeciles, and criminals. A married woman could possess no property; her husband owned what she brought him in marriage and what she inherited or earned thereafter. The pitiful plight of Balzac’s Eugénie Grandet and her mother was not an exceptional case, but the rule. Furthermore, she could not testify in civil suits, or be a witness to any legal document, or have any part in the family council for the government of her children. Yet this Frenchwoman, a nullity in the eyes of the law, is respected by all the world for her marvelous common sense and managing ability. So marked is this that virtually all the petty retail business in the country is in her hands, and she manages her business, her children, and her husband as a matter of course.

This principle of the subjection of woman to the higher authority of man, installed by immemorial custom, fast bound in civil law by Napoleon’s code, has in general also been emphasized by the church. It has consistently developed the passive virtue of sacrifice and the cheerful acceptance of things as they are. Therefore, although conditions have changed, to-day, and there are many noble Catholic feminists, it has in the past been the exception rather than the rule; and Frenchwomen of the upper classes have been led by their convent training to accept without question the position assigned them by social custom and the Napoleonic code. Two of these three conditions are aptly summed up by Pierre de Coulevain when she says, “France is the land of femininity, not of feminism: femininity is Latin and Catholic; feminism is Anglo-Saxon and Protestant.”

Against these germs of arrested development have sprung up other germs which have almost killed the first and have produced the present epidemic of feminism. World forces which affect even China are of course felt in France. One of these is economic pressure. By the introduction of machinery and the constantly increasing cost of living, women of the lower classes have been forced into industry in France as everywhere else, until it has been stated that sixty per cent. of the women of France are now wage-earners. Naturally, then, industrial conditions have compelled them to demand recognition on the same basis as men. In the middle classes this same pressure postpones the age of marriage for the man, thus throwing the burden of support for a longer time on the girl’s father; at the same time it makes it increasingly difficult for the father to provide the necessary dot. It therefore sends girls into professions to ease the family burden, instead of into the convent. “To ease the family burden,” I say, for she seldom works, as do so many American young women, for her own enrichment. Her earnings go to her parents.

Photograph by T. T.
MME. MARGUÉRITE DURAND
Editor and journalist.

Photograph by Chéri-Rousseau
MME. DIEULAFOY
Lecturer and archæologist.

Photograph by Henri Manuel
MME. CURIE
The joint discoverer of radium,
who succeeded her husband
in a chair of physics and
chemistry at the Sorbonne.

From the portrait by Gandara
COUNTESS MATHIEU DE NOAILLES
Novelist and poet.

Photograph by Touranchet
MME. BLANC (TH. BENTZON)
Novelist and journalist.

⇒
LARGER IMAGE

Then, too, the tradition that every girl must marry or retire to a convent has left too many women unaccounted for in the social scheme. Four and a half million women in France have no home or children—unmarried women, widows, divorcées, or mothers whose children are grown. Olive Schreiner says that the woman movement is the endeavor on the part of women to find new fields of labor as the old slip from them—a demand for a continued share in the work of the world. And these millions of Frenchwomen with no home ties are clamoring for their share. They claim the privilege of employing their hitherto ingrowing energy in useful work, and in whatever field they wish.

To these economic and social stimuli a third factor should be added—the result of the separation of church and state in 1905; and with time this change will be increasingly felt. Since the convents exerted a conservative influence, their dissolution minimizes that tendency. The convents had been almost exclusively the schools of the girls of the higher classes; they had been the refuge of unmarried and unfortunate women; the sisters had had charge of the hospitals, nursing, and nearly all other charities. But since girls must now follow the nuns to the border countries for their education, not so many go; and those who stay at home receive a more modern and less conservative training. Since the unsought in marriage must leave France in order to take refuge in a convent, more stay in the world. And since the hungry and sick were left without caretakers, other women had to take up the works of charity discontinued by the nuns. Thus perforce, since the separation, new fields of activity, new occupations, new responsibilities have been thrust upon the women of France. The withdrawal of the nuns created a vacuum into which others have rushed.

They are ready for these fresh fields and pastures new. They see women of other nations so engaged, and example is contagious. A gain for feminism in Sweden gives impetus in France; a rebellion against long-established custom in Constantinople gives courage for one in Paris. Above all, the several international women’s conferences that have met in Chicago, Berlin, London, and Paris in the last fifteen years have been great educators, great awakeners. Then, too, Parisians never lack for foreign examples, for Paris is cosmopolitan, and Americans especially she has always with her. The Frenchwoman, who, when her children are grown, is inclined to lose all interest in life, and settle down to old age, sees American grandmothers making a tour of the world, and tries to find the secret of their eternal youth. Thus it may be that as French diplomats have won half Africa by the skilful use of American inventions and institutions, so Frenchwomen may yet win all France by clever adaptation of the American type of woman.

Englishwomen also furnish examples in their interest in sport. “Sport” is fashionable. Bicycling was once a fad; tennis, riding, and swimming are popular. The girls’ schools are now advertising swimming-pools and tennis-courts. For one woman that you met skating thirty years ago, you now meet five hundred. We long ago learned, if we ever had to learn, the moral and intellectual value of exercise. The French, both men and women, are only now discovering it. We find, therefore, that the hothouse products are vanishing, and with them, morbidity, unhealthy thoughts, overstimulated emotions, sluggish brains. In their stead we find healthy bodies, healthy minds, initiative, organizing ability, development of the dormant will power, and last, but not least, natural and unrestrained meeting with men in all sorts of games.

Certain classes of men have been strong and active supporters of the feminist cause. Indeed, this is one of the most characteristic features of the movement in France. It seems sometimes as though the men were more ardent and intelligent feminists than the women themselves. The little band of French Protestants is naturally in the forefront of sympathy for the movement. There are fewer Protestants in all France than there are Jews in New York City, but they exercise an influence for progress far out of proportion to their small number. Almost all literary men, no matter what their creed, and lawyers, teachers, professional men in general, as well as a few deputies and senators, are on the side of the feminists. The constant pounding away on the question by playwrights and poets such as Brieux, Lavédan, Mirbeau, and Jules Bois, has done much to break down prejudice and widen the point of view. The Odéon and Comédie Française have struck sounding blows against the old order of “The Doll’s House,” and novelists like Victor Margueritte, and Marcel Prévost have done their part in arousing sympathy for the Noras of France. Socialists, too, espouse the women’s cause.

IN the combination of all these causes, then, economic, industrial, cosmopolitan, social, religious, and literary, the awakening has come to the women—and men—of France. The successive steps, seeming slow as they were laboriously gained, become rapid in retrospect. In professional studies, since 1868, when the first woman was admitted to a medical school, one after another all barriers have come down, till to-day all doors are wide open, and in the University of Paris alone there are over two thousand women students. After permission to study and take a degree was obtained, came the more arduous struggle to be allowed to practise their profession, for prejudice acted as a complete boycott. The prejudice was of two sorts. One was that of friends and family, who considered a woman utterly disgraced if she worked. This attitude is still general, and is the cause of untold unhappiness and estrangement. The other prejudice, and a strong one, was from her competitors, the men. Women medical students could obtain their degree, but had no opportunity to attend clinics or to be internes in hospitals. Law students, likewise, could not take the bar examinations or practise. It is owing to the unflagging efforts of two or three able women that this competitive struggle is also now a thing of the past. Mlle. Jeanne Chauvin was the test case in law practice. She won after a long and bitter struggle only ten years ago. In the profession of university teaching women have been on a par with men since Mme. Curie, having twice won the Nobel prize for her benefits to mankind through her chemical discoveries, was appointed to succeed her deceased husband in the chair of physics and chemistry in the Sorbonne. Three years ago she became the test case in yet another contest—a contest over the right of women to public recognition of their attainments by admission to the Academy. In this first engagement, like most pioneers, she lost; but the decision raised such a storm of protest and discussion that there is scarcely a question of the ultimate victory in this also. We shall yet see women taking their honored place among the seats of the famous Forty.

The struggle to change woman’s legal status has been particularly long and hard, and is still in progress. This cause owes much to Mlle. Maria Chéliga, a Pole, who has lived most of her life in Paris, and by her essays, lectures, stories, and plays has awakened public sympathy; and to Mlle. Jeanne Schmahl, editor of “L’Avant Courrière,” who succeeded after many years of effort in getting a bill through the Chamber of Deputies giving to married women the control of their own earnings. At first it failed in the Senate. Undaunted, she worked for eleven years more until, in 1907, she wrested from an unwilling Senate the vote in favor of the bill. For the last five years, therefore, a married woman has been able to spend what she earns, and to have her own bank-account. Within the last four years women at the head of large business houses have been able to vote for the judges of the tribunals of commerce, and thus see that their business interests are not unfairly dealt with by this powerful body. Women teachers have for some time been allowed to vote for the members of the board of education, though women are not eligible for office in either of these bodies. A married woman can now testify, and act as a witness in legal documents. She still has no voice in the family council, a vital institution in France; and if she invests her earnings in furniture or other portable property, these possessions belong to the husband.

Photograph by Henri Manuel
JEAN BERTHEROY (MME. LE BARILLIER)
Poet and historical novelist.

Photograph by Henri Manuel
MME. HENRI DE REGNIER
(GÉRARD D’HOUVILLE)
Poet and novelist.

Photograph by Ogerau
MME. SÉVÉRINE
A fervent and eloquent
public speaker, whose
conférences at the
Odéon are a feature
of Parisian life.

Photograph by Nadar
JUDITH GAUTIER
Daughter of Théophile Gautier.

Photograph by Boisonnas and Tapouler
MARCELLE TINAYRE
Author of “La Maison du Péché.”

⇒
LARGER IMAGE

Another sign of the times is the ever-present discussion over the education and training of the jeune fille. Thirty years ago there was not a public school for girls in the country. To-day there are many, though five for the whole of Paris seems insufficient. The inadequate curriculum is a constant bone of contention, and has already been much widened and strengthened in both state and Catholic schools to meet the demand for vocational training. The jeune fille is gaining slowly in independence, and we find her in novels, spoken of as looking forward quite naturally to activities and spheres of usefulness outside of, as well as within the home. “A whole woman is too much for a man,” one heroine declares.

Owing to the gap left by the nuns’ departure, we find one important movement of humanitarian interest in the attempts to reorganize and strengthen the profession of nursing. It had been left either to the sisters, who were not always as modern in their methods as could be desired, or to an outside class of Sairey Gamps, lower in intelligence and decency than domestic servants. Now they are trying to interest girls of the better classes in the profession, founding training-schools and studying American methods.

The fact that the international professional-women’s club of London, the Lyceum, has now a branch in Paris, and that there are many other women’s clubs, is significant. Till recently the club movement has found no response in France. The woman has been too much occupied in her own household, too much claimed by an army of relatives, to be drawn outside by clubs or anything else for the sake of her own development. Then, again, the Frenchwoman of leisure and ability has been content with her own lot and oblivious of her duty to her less fortunate sisters. She has therefore not felt the need of united effort through club organization for a common humanitarian cause. And even when she has felt this call of duty, she has always shown an astonishing lack of appreciation of the value of system and organization for attaining the desired results. Sixty years ago the feminist pioneers might have succeeded if their efforts had not been scattered and individual. Indeed, even now French feminism gives one an impression of ununified restlessness. That there is now a “club movement,” therefore, shows that at last there is in France desire for individual development, a sense of duty to one’s neighbor, and an appreciation of the value of organization. There are still countless activities that American women are habitually engaged in—municipal improvement, efforts to improve labor conditions, child-labor laws, social settlements, etc.—that have not yet reached France to a noticeable extent. But now that a beginning has been made, we shall look for all these and more.

Marked as is this general leavening of the lump, art and literature show the most complete conquest. The art prizes are all open to women, and at one time or another most of them have been won by women. To say nothing of their success in painting, sculpture, and architecture, women absolutely own the field in illustrating, arts-and-crafts work and in making innumerable small art objects. They also nearly monopolize literature: in essays, poetry, novels, journalism, their name is legion, their influence unbounded.

Journalism in France is an influential literary profession, with strong leaders that no other country can surpass. Women hold responsible positions on the staff of most of the leading French reviews, and contribute an astonishing number of articles, generally under men’s names. Beginning with Mme. Juliette Adam, the line is unbroken. She was the last of the old school, the first of the new, wielding high political influence at first through her salon, then through the pages of the “Nouvelle Révue,” which she founded in 1879. She also wrote novels, essays, and reminiscences. Mme. Sévérine, a fervent and eloquent public speaker, with rather a permanent instinct for revolt, shouts her war-cry in the “Echo de Paris.” The “Révue des Deux-Mondes” and the “Journal des Débats” include on their staff, among other women, Mme. Arvède Barine. Three times has the Academy crowned a work of hers, and she wears the cross of the Legion of Honor, as did Mme. Thérèse Bentzon, who died five years ago. Mme. Blanc, as she was better known, was on the staff of these two periodicals. This estimable woman also wrote novels and essays, some crowned by the Academy. She was especially loved in America, to which she made several visits, because she was the most faithful interpreter to the French of American literature, social customs, and educational methods. She was an ardent Roman Catholic. Mlle. Maria Martin edits the “Journal des Femmes,” and Marguérite Durand, “Les Nouvelles.” The latter is perhaps the most popular woman in France, and charmingly and essentially feminine.

Photograph by Eug. Pirou
MME. PEYREBRUNE
Novelist and poet.

Photograph by Chéri-Rousseau
YVONNE SARCEY
Writer and feminist.

Photograph by Ogerau
MME. ADAM (JULIETTE LAMBER)
Founder of the “Nouvelle Révue.”
One of the most influential of
modern Frenchwomen.

Photograph by Henri Manuel
MME. LUCIE DELARUS-MARDRUS
Dramatist and poet.

Photograph by Chéri-Rousseau
MME. LUCIE FÉLIX-FAURE GOYAU
Daughter of Félix Faure.

⇒
LARGER IMAGE

Novelists and poets have much in common. They are rather too apt to be feminists of most advanced type, drowned in a noxious wave of free-thinking, swinging too far in their revolt, and disregarding moral laws.

GEORGETTE LEBLANC MAETERLINCK, ACTRESS, SINGER, AND WRITER; THE WIFE OF MAURICE MAETERLINCK

This epidemic of free-thinking seems to be most evident in the upper classes, leaving the women of the bourgeoisie untouched. But perhaps all this is only the fledgling trying its wings, a phase of development, an ugly stage of self-consciousness, which the French temperament, essentially one of harmony, will sooner or later adjust. In poets this characteristic manifests itself in a tendency to reveal without restraint the inmost secrets of their woman’s soul. Mme. de Noailles, though admitted by men critics to be in the first rank, is no exception. She is also a novelist and is on the staff of the “Révue des Deux-Mondes.” Gérard d’Houville is another poet as well as novelist; and Lucie Delarus-Mardrus another, seeking unusual and exotic effects by travels in Eastern lands. The novelists confine their plots for the most part to studies of feminists. Thus, Marcelle Tinayre’s “La Rebelle” is a beautiful young journalist; her heroine in “Hellé” is a charming example of the noblest type of emancipated young womanhood; Colette Yver’s “Les Dames du Palais” deals with women lawyers and the divorce question; her “Princesses de Science” takes up scientific women. Gabriel Réval’s “Ruban de Venus” shows us artists; and women interested in sociological questions are the heroines of Renée and Tony d’Ulmès. But the inevitable underlying theme of them all is the irresistibility of passion, “the impossibility of woman’s escaping the brutal laws of her own temperament,” as one commentator expresses it. Moreover, the heroines are all selfish in their feminism; they are in search of their individual happiness.

Of the novelists and essayists, more than a passing word should be given to Marcelle Tinayre, conceded by men critics to be the most vigorous and virile of women writers, and even classed by one above George Sand. Her works have been crowned by the Academy, and she has won the cross of the Legion of Honor. Daniel Lesueur and Mme. Peyrebrune are both important, and have been distinguished with many honors. Mme. Maeterlinck is opera-singer, essayist, and lecturer, as well as novelist. Jeanne Bertheroy and Judith Gautier, daughter of Théophile Gautier, are famous, as are also Mme. Dieulafoy and Mme. Félix-Faure Goyau, daughter of the former president of the republic. Colette Yver, with her “Princesses de Science,” was the first to win the prize offered by the woman’s paper, “La Vie Heureuse.” (This is the prize that was awarded to the seamstress Marguérite Audoux for “Marie Claire.”) Pierre de Coulevain, remarkably cosmopolitan, and with a wonderfully wide point of view, is read more by foreigners than by the French. Mme. Yvonne Sarcey is exceptional in appealing to a sense of duty as the controlling force in life.

Much as we should like to linger over this long literary list, we must pass on to other topics. In the matter of the suffrage, progress is not so marked. Small suffrage societies here and there have existed for twenty-five years, but the National French Woman’s Suffrage Association was formed only three years ago. It has converted many teachers and employees of the post, telegraph, and telephone service, but has not made any impression on the women of the working-classes. In 1911 it had a membership of 3000 out of a total female population of 20,000,000. So it can be seen that the suffrage movement in France is still in its swaddling-clothes. The most encouraging thing for the suffrage supporters is the number of “hommes-femmes”; that is, influential men who give devoted service to the suffrage cause. We have already spoken of the broad-minded men who have done much to educate public opinion to more enlightened views on women. They generally go further still, and are suffragists. About three years ago they formed a men’s association, called “The Voters’ League for Woman Suffrage,” which counts among its members two senators and nine deputies. This league holds itself in readiness to push forward whatever legislative measures it considers worth while. It has been working on a bill for women’s vote in municipal elections, and it is stated as a possibility that it may be passed. Socialists also favor the suffrage, both because from the anti-reactionary nature of their doctrines they must, to be consistent, and because they want the women’s vote. But their help is of little practical value, for the labor party and the unions control the socialist party, and these two powerful organizations are bitter and formidable enemies of women’s entrance into the economic and political field. Opposition is strong from the politicians in power. Having brought about the separation of church and state seven years ago, they fear that all the old clerical question, which has been the cause of many years of most bitter wrangling, would be reopened by the women at the first opportunity, under the instigation of the priests. It is asserted, moreover, that there is no decided Catholic opposition, as such, to woman suffrage.

It must have become evident from the foregoing pages, however, that feminism in France is not a matter of the suffrage. There have been other conquests to make, in the realm of thought rather than action; old prejudices, old traditions to be removed, rights of moral and intellectual equality to be established. Indeed, French feminism can well be defined as “a state of mind, not yet crystallized into aggressive agitation for reform.” After all, in the last analysis, we see that for the realization of the feminist ideals must come, and is coming, a change in man—in his moral standards, in his attitude toward women, in his whole Latin conception of the social basis of society. Olive Schreiner says that the new woman is accompanied by the new man, or there would be no new woman. We see this development in France to-day. Says Marcel Prévost: “The new college youth cares more for sport, is more robust physically and is more healthy-minded. He is less sentimental, more athletic; he does not think of woman.” In this one statement lies more hope for the ultimate complete emancipation of woman than in all her literary and professional achievements.

The newer type of Frenchwoman, breaking away from tradition, strong-willed, earnest, Maeterlinck is striving to depict in his later heroines, like Aglavaine and Ariane. His talented wife thus interprets them for us:

THE SCARBOROUGH SPOONS

A STORY FOR ENGLISH AND AMERICANS

(DOINGS ON PERILOUS)

BY LUCY FURMAN

Author of “Mothering on Perilous,” etc.

DURING their talks in the Eastern States one winter, the head workers of the Settlement School on Perilous met Emily Scarborough, the distinguished essayist and college professor, and one of them said to her casually:

“In our work in the mountains we come across numbers of good, even aristocratic, English names, and are always wishing we might trace the families back through their century and more in Kentucky, and their previous residence in Virginia, to their old English homes.

“Your own name, Scarborough, is well known to us.”

A look of instant interest succeeded the polite but weary smile on Miss Scarborough’s face. This expression of weariness was the one flaw in the satisfying beauty of the essayist, one of those rare celebrities the sight of whom is not a shock to admirers. “Tell me about them,” she said.

“The only thing to tell is that all the males of the family perished in a feud twenty-five years ago—a feud so fierce that ‘the Scarborough-Bohun War’ is still referred to with horror. The climax came when Guilford Scarborough and his five sons were ambushed one day by twenty of the Bohuns, and with their backs against a rocky cliff fought until the last fell, a dozen Bohuns paying for victory with their lives. That cliff to-day is called Scarborough’s Doom. One daughter of the race survives.”

But Miss Scarborough seemed not to hear the last sentences.

“Guilford Scarborough!” she exclaimed.

“It was the name of the founder of our family, a poor knight who won renown and an earldom by saving the king’s life at Agincourt. From that day it has been the favorite name for our sons.

“The present earl, the head of our family in England, bears it; my great-great-grandfather—a second son of the twelfth earl—who left England and settled an estate in Virginia the middle of the eighteenth century, bore it.”

She spoke simply, rapidly,—evidently descent from and kinship with earls was only one of the many fortuitous circumstances of her brilliant life.

“This Guilford of Virginia,” she continued, “had two sons who at the outbreak of the Revolution took opposite sides. Lionel, my great-grandfather, remained a stanch Tory, Guilford joined the Continentals, and when last heard of, though a mere boy, was a captain in Washington’s army. Afterward he disappeared as completely as if the earth had swallowed him. Surely it cannot be that—”

“Many Revolutionary officers received land-grants in Kentucky for their services,” interrupted the school woman, “and those who entered into the isolation of the mountains were afterward lost to the world.”

“Then your mountain family may, nay, must be descended from the lost Guilford,” exclaimed Miss Scarborough. “You will understand my excitement when I tell you I have always supposed myself the sole representative of the American line. You say that one woman there also survives?”

“Yes, Dosia Vance. Her little girl—by the way, she has your name, Emily—is in our school.”

“Theodosia and Emily,—how the old names come down through the centuries!” said Miss Scarborough, adding, “You must put me in communication with this Dosia Vance at once.”

“Oh, she is unable to write,” was the reply.

Miss Scarborough’s face paled. “A Scarborough not write!” she cried incredulously.

“What possible chance could she have, sixty miles away from a school or a church? One remarkable thing, however, she accomplished after her marriage. With the help of an old blue-back speller and the family Bible, she taught herself and her husband to read. Writing was less possible. She is a woman of great natural intelligence, and is ambitious for her children.

“Her two eldest sons are at Berea College; we have Emily, and shall take the younger ones. Emily shows remarkable home-training; on the day she came to us she was a perfect lady.”

The result of this casual talk was that Miss Scarborough began an immediate correspondence with Dosia Vance through little Emily.

Of its progress the school women knew little, for soon after their return in the spring, vacation began, and all the children, including Emily, went home to hoe corn.

In June, however, a letter came to the school from the essayist. She wrote:

The spoons at last arrived, and were sent on to Dosia. The school women had much curiosity as to their reception; but when they made inquiries of Emily on her return the first of August, the child only replied, with her usual dignity, that “Maw was proud to get them.”

In early October another letter came from the essayist. “I have a growing desire,” she wrote, “to follow up the Scarborough spoons and see my new-found relatives. Emily’s letters interest me a good deal. This being a sabbatical year with me, I purpose visiting your school and the Vance home before going abroad for the winter.”

LATE October found Miss Scarborough journeying across the mountains on her way from the railroad. To a woman accustomed to luxurious motor-cars, a ride of fifty miles had not seemed formidable; but as the heavy road-wagon crashed, thumped, and banged along its difficult way at the rate of two miles an hour, she decided differently. Also, as she saw women weaving and spinning in porches of lonely log-houses, men felling timber in virgin forest, whole families gathering corn in precipitous fields, some conception of the primitive hardships of the life dawned upon her.

Although at forty-seven Emily Scarborough was as vigorous as she was beautiful, before the two-days’ trip was ended, weariness possessed her, every bone seemed dislocated, and on her arrival at the school she had to be assisted to bed by the trained nurse.

The next morning the visitor was half awakened by a tap at the door and by the entrance of some silent-footed person, who set down a tray. Stillness followed; but increasingly aware that she was an object of scrutiny, Miss Scarborough at last opened her eyes.

A small girl of twelve stood by the bed, gazing with grave, controlled eagerness at the face on the pillow. When the eyes opened, she smiled ever so slightly, and said quietly:

“Will you have your breakfast now, Cousin Emily?”

Miss Scarborough sat up in bed so suddenly that the masses of her spun-silver hair fell in a cloud about her face and shoulders.

“Are you Emily?” she asked.

“Yes,” replied the child. Very gravely she extended a hand. “I am proud to see you,” she said.

Miss Scarborough took the small hand.

“You know we are of one blood, Emily,” she said; “may I offer you the salute of kinship?” She brushed the child’s delicate cheek with her lips.

The little girl as calmly returned the salute, and then stepped back.

“I was glad when I heared you was coming,” she said.

“Why?”

“Well, I craved to see a ginuwine Scarborough, I have heared maw tell such a sight about them.”

“I hope you did not expect so much that you are sadly disappointed in me?” Although Miss Scarborough smiled, there was a tone of real anxiety in her voice.

Emily’s gaze swept her slowly, critically, for some seconds.

“I was powerful afeared you wouldn’t be a pretty woman,” she said at last; “but you are. I like your looks.” She sighed, as though from relief, then made a more minute appraisement. “I like them big black eyes,” she said; “I like that tender skin. I like that quare hair; it favors the Scarborough spoons. I allow,” she summed up solemnly, judicially, “that you are the pine-blank prettiest woman ever I seed.”

Miss Scarborough laughed, but her face flushed deeply with pleasure. Then she in her turn scrutinized the slender figure in the checked homespun dress, the small face with its lines of purity and look of race, the well-carried head, smoothly plaited hair, and austere blue eyes.

“I like your looks, too,” she said.

At this the child again smiled the rare smile.

“I am glad,” she said; “now you must eat before it is cold.”

Miss Scarborough reached for the negligée of pink-flowered silk that hung beside her bed, and drew it over her delicate, embroidered gown, Emily looking on large-eyed.

“You dress up in blossoms, don’t you?” she exclaimed, with another joyous sigh.

“Emily,” said Miss Scarborough, “I do believe that you have the artistic temperament. You love beauty, don’t you?”

“Ugly things they hurts me here in my breast,” replied the child, solemnly, pressing both small hands upon her stomach.

For two days thereafter the distinguished guest remained in the school, visiting its departments, talking graciously with its workers; but she lingered longest in the classrooms where Emily recited, or at the table or loom where Emily worked, and the attraction between the two was plain to be seen.

On Friday morning the nag sent by Dosia arrived, and at noon Miss Scarborough and Emily set out for the Vance home, formerly that of the Scarboroughs. The last two miles the trail followed the summit of a ridge, with glorious views on each hand of mountains in autumnal splendor. At the highest point Emily reached around her cousin’s waist and stopped the nag.

“I allus take a far look from here,” she said. After both had drunk their fill of beauty, Emily pointed eastward, where against the horizon a great blue wall was dimly visible, remarking, “Yan side of them is where you lived at when you was little, maw says.”

Miss Scarborough looked once, then turned almost violently away, cutting the horse with her whip.

Going down the ridge, Emily pointed out her home in the valley below. Very lonely and remote it seemed, folded away here in the hills, with never another habitation in sight. No wonder that here a branch of the Scarboroughs had been swallowed up and lost. Drawing nearer, the visitor saw a large log-house in a strip of bottom-land, with corn-fields stretching up the mountains on all sides.

Dosia awaited them at the stile, and her greeting was full of kindness and dignity.

“Cousin Emily Scarborough,” she said with emotion, “it gives me the most gratefulest pleasure of my life to welcome you to my home and my family.”

Edwin Vance, her tall husband, lifted the guest down, and she was conducted into the principal room of the house.

Here, when there was opportunity, she looked about. It was a huge room, with bare floor, log walls, and massive beams of hewn timber. The furniture—all home-made—consisted of three bedsteads, a chest of drawers, and a number of splint-bottomed chairs. On the beds were beautiful woven coverlets, and a pitcher of rich dahlias adorned the “fireboard.” Nothing was ugly, nothing useless; and any effect of bleakness would have been obviated either by the great open fire, or by the presence of Dosia, sitting with her four youngest children crowded against her, her kind face, warm brown eyes, and auburn hair radiating light and cheer.

After a while Edwin and the two small boys left the room, and soon the lowing of cattle, whinnying of nags, squealing of hogs, and excited clatter of fowls announced the joyful hour of feeding, while melodious calls of “coo-nanny, coo-nanny, coo-sheep, coo-sheep,” echoed back from the mountain-tops. Then Dosia went, followed by the five little girls. Miss Scarborough heard her giving quiet orders out in the open hallway that separated the two large rooms of the lower story. Later Emily returned, to say with awe in her voice:

“Cousin Emily, we are aiming to eat out of the Scarborough spoons to-night.”

“You have never used them before?” inquired Miss Scarborough.

“No, indeed. Maw she wouldn’t hardly let us look at them.” After gazing into the fire a moment, the child spoke again. “Being as we are fixing to use the spoons to-night, I thought maybe you might want to put on that pretty dress that matches them so good.”

“Why, of course,” smiled Miss Scarborough. She had brought with her to the school a simple dinner gown of soft, silvery satin, as lustrous and shining as her own hair, and seeing Emily’s delight in it, had put it into the “poke” on starting to Dosia’s.

“You can get over in yan corner to change,” said Emily. She came again in a few moments, and, after pinning a splendid pink dahlia in the lace on her cousin’s bosom, stood back with clasped hands and an ecstatic sigh.

At last supper was ready, and the guest was taken into “t’ other house” and seated at Dosia’s right. This room, too, was huge and bare, with a long table in the middle. On the table was a handsome hand-woven cloth, and, at the guest’s place, a napkin. A second napkin was spread over an oblong object beside Dosia’s plate.

When all were seated, Dosia reverently lifted this napkin, displaying a small leather case, the lid of which at a touch flew open, revealing a dozen teaspoons of thin old silver. Dosia then rose in her chair.

“Beloved offsprings and husband,” she began impressively, “we are gathered around this board to-night on a solemn occasion, not only to celebrate the coming of our honored kinswoman, but likewise to remember ourselves of past generations and dead-and-gone forefathers.

“You will one and all bear me witness, children, that never have I give you a chance to forget that you was Scarboroughs on your maw’s side, not casting no reflections on your paw’s, which is good as far as it goes. But many’s the time I have heared my paw relate, which he got from his paw, and so on back, that the Scarboroughs has been brave folk and faithful folk and gentle folk for five hundred year’, and has poured out their blood like water for the glory of Old England before they come over and poured it out for this present land. You have heared me tell all I know of their doings here—how your great-great-grandpaw fit under Washington, and had this land we now stand on, two thousand acre’ of it, granted him for his deeds; how his sons and grandsons kept right on fighting spang down through the century, Indians, and Mexicans, and then for the Union, dying mostly with their boots on, and before they was good grown; how, when there wa’n’t no more wars on the outside, they raised one here at home, for justice, and being few again’ many, died a-fighting, down to my little brother of fourteen. Never have I forebore to tingle your years with the braveness of our men and the honorableness of our women, and what you was bound to live up to.

“But little did I ever look to hear the history of them ’way-back forefathers of ours that flourished allus-ago in Old England. On which text Cousin Emily Scarborough is now raised up for to enlighten us. She knows ’em from lid to lid, and has writ me some of the marvelousest tales ever I heared, especially the antecedents of these here Scarborough spoons, which come down from a man that saved his king that was felled in battle five hundred year’ gone. These spoons, as you know, has been kindly sont us at this present time by another far-away relation in Old England. Him Cousin Emily speaks of as a’ earl, which entitlement I don’t rightly know the meaning of, but I take it to signify that he is a’ extry brave and God-fearing man, and one you would not be ashamed to claim kin with.

“I will now ax Cousin Emily Scarborough to rise and relate such glimpses of ancient history as she thinks befitting. Following which I will pour the coffee. Then I request all and singular—you too, Edwin, sence you may rightly be called a blood-relation—to rise in your chairs whilst I pass around the Scarborough spoons. And then, in solemn silence, I charge you to take, all together and simultaneous’, a sup of coffee with them spoons, being careful not to chaw down on them with your teeth, or so much as mumble them with your lips. Having done which, lay them back in your saucers and don’t touch another finger to them till Emily can gather and wash and restore them to their case. And my onliest regret is that our two boys Guilford and Lionel hain’t here to keep the feast, too.”

Miss Scarborough rose and related salient points in family history—the story of Guilford of Agincourt; of Austin, the bishop burned at the stake by Mary; of Lionel, the famous admiral of Elizabeth’s day; of later Scarboroughs great in war or peace.

Then came the solemn moment when the case was passed, and every member of the circle drew forth a spoon; then the still more awful instant when, hanging breathless upon Dosia’s movements, the family took the simultaneous sup of coffee.

Silence reigned until the spoons were collected, washed, and returned to the case, after which the meal proceeded with subdued cheer.

As Emily Scarborough sat there, another scene rose before her—the great old dining-room of Scarborough Castle, with its carved ceiling, splendid plate, and elaborate service. But she rejoiced in the fact that in log-house as in castle voices were gentle, manners kind, spirits simple and earnest. “Ah, the old blood runs virile and pure in whatever environment!” she said to herself with pride. But her next breath was a sigh. Was it that she herself should have no part in handing down such a heritage?

Bedtime came soon after all had returned to the first room, and Dosia said:

“Now, Cousin Emily, I have got four good, warm beds in the loft, every grain as nice as these. But they are purely for strangers and sojourners; I couldn’t have the heart to send blood-kin that far off from me to sleep. And I take it you feel the same, and would be better pleased to sleep right here with me and Edwin and the children, in the bosom of the family.”

“Certainly,” replied Miss Scarborough, repressing a smile. “Any arrangement that suits you, Dosia.”

Edwin considerately left the room during the undressing. Miss Scarborough and Emily had one bed, three of the little girls another, Dosia, Edwin, and the smallest child a third, while the two little boys occupied a pallet on the floor. There was general conversation for a while, and it was all very sociable. Miss Scarborough felt that she was indeed in the bosom of a family.

Days of large peace followed. With all the manifold, unceasing activities of the household,—everything eaten and worn was produced upon the land or manufactured in the house,—there was no stress or strain, hurry or worry. Dosia herself had saved up what she called a “good listening job” against Miss Scarborough’s visit, and while Emily and the smaller girls carded, reeled, knitted, or sewed, she herself, a picturesque figure in brown homespun and red yarn stockings, walked back and forth across the floor in that most ancient and graceful of all the occupations of women, spinning. At other times they ascended to the huge “loft,” where on a great loom Dosia wove awhile on winter clothing. Always the spirit of the home was perfect; the children hung reverently upon their mother’s every word, and the visitor noticed that Edwin never looked upon his wife without pride.

Dosia asked endless questions. “This great, unthinkable world of which I have seed nothing, I crave to l’arn about it, now I may,” she would say; and Miss Scarborough would tell tales, old and new, of the countries she had visited, the family listening spellbound.

As the two women talked and listened there day after day, one the typical woman of the past, with all her ancient duties and burdens, the other the most admired and brilliant product of the new day, it was the woman of the past whose eyes were clear and unclouded, whose step as she spun was buoyant, whose smile was assured and calm. In the other, with all her achievements and culture and beauty, a spring seemed to be broken, a profound sadness at unguarded moments seemed to brood. Only when little Emily brought knitting or sewing and sat at her kinswoman’s feet, or when the two started off for a walk together, did an expression of refreshment come into the beautiful, tired eyes.

IT was not until the last afternoon of her stay that Emily Scarborough broached the subject nearest her heart. The day was a perfect one in early November, after a night of frost. The children were all in the fields helping their father, Dosia had moved her wheel to the porch, and the guest was with her there. After sitting silent for some time, Miss Scarborough said abruptly:

“I have a boon, a great boon, to ask of you, Dosia: I want Emily.”

Dosia’s yarn snapped, and the loose end whirled about the spindle.

“You mean to visit?” she asked.

“No, I mean to keep, all the time, for my own.” Miss Scarborough’s voice vibrated strangely. Then she said more calmly: “I will give her all she ought to have; the best possible education, travel, culture, opportunity to develop her artistic instincts. She shall take my full name and inherit my possessions. The old Virginia plantation after long years has become a valuable property, and there is more beside.”

Dosia listened silently, a line of painful thought in her forehead.

“And not these alone; better things shall be hers,” continued Miss Scarborough. “I have long been weary of teaching; I shall stop now and make a home for Emily. And as my adopted daughter, the best social life of two continents will be open to her. My very first act shall be to take her to Scarborough Castle; I have the greatest desire to show her to our kinsman the earl before she is in any way changed. All this, Dosia, I can do for her, and you never can.”

Dosia listened, troubled and pale.

“I desire that my children shall get l’arning and see the world,” she said slowly. “I feel as Scarboroughs they ought to. But has payrents ever a right to lay down their responsibilities? I allow not. I allow that me and Edwin is the ones accountable for Emily, and her proper guardeens. I would gladly send her to visit with you a spell; but to stay, that is different.”

“No,” interrupted Emily Scarborough in her imperious way; “it must be for all time. I must have her for my own.”

Dosia deliberated for a long while, then she answered quietly, but firmly:

“Well, then, Cousin, if all the time it must be, I can only say that is more than I can consent to—that, as her mother, I don’t feel called to part with my child.”

Miss Scarborough’s face flushed with sudden anger and resentment.

“But with all you have!” she exclaimed. “Nine children—nine!” Her voice trembled.

“Twelve I have,” corrected Dosia, quietly, “nine living and three dead,”—she lifted eyes and hand to a near-by hill-shoulder, where three small grave-houses were plainly visible,—“but not one to spare. I love the children God has give me, and I don’t aim ever to part with them till I have to. If things was different with us, I might feel it my duty to give up one; but my man is the workingest in this country, and being not far behind him myself, we prosper and have plenty, as you see. And now the women’s school has come, our young ones can get l’arning and still be under our admonition. No, Cousin Emily; I am greatly beholden to you for your kindness, I thank you from the deeps of my heart; but, as her mother, I cannot give up my child.”

Miss Scarborough had been leaning forward, body tense, face flushed, eyes feverishly bright. At Dosia’s final words she sank back in her chair, her face suddenly paled and aged, and her eyes sought the mountain-sides yesterday so glowing, but to-day dimmed as by a prophecy of death.

“It is ever the way,” she said at last slowly and bitterly. “‘From him that hath not shall be taken even that which he thinketh he hath.’ You women who have everything never consider those of us who have nothing.”

Dosia lifted startled eyes upon her kinswoman.

“Have nothing,” she repeated. “You!”

“Yes, I,” exclaimed Emily Scarborough. Her voice rang sharply.

“You, that the school women said was the knowingest and most-looked-up-to woman in all the land!”

“I that have knowledge, temporary fame, and what the world calls success, still lack the one thing necessary: I have no life for my heart,” cried Emily Scarborough.

Dosia gazed at her kinswoman, fascinated, dumb.

“Do you think a woman can be just a mind?” demanded the essayist, passionately, “that such husks as honors, flattery, success, can feed one’s real life? Do you not see that I am hideously alone, without a tie to link me to the race, and that the loneliness and isolation are killing me?”

After this outburst, Emily Scarborough sat a long while fronting the dimmed mountains, struggling for calmness. When she spoke again, it was with controlled utterance:

“You know, Dosia, that I was an only child, born at the close of the Civil War, and brought up by my father, a general of the Confederate army. Broken in health and spirit by the war, he found his chief solace afterward in handing down to me a portion of his ripe scholarship. On the next plantation lived a boy, a year or two older than I, of whom my father was fond, and whom he taught along with me. As we grew up, the comradeship between Godfrey and me became love. My father planned for me a college education. To this Godfrey could not look forward. Not only were all the old families land-poor in those days, but, as eldest son, he must stay and run the plantation and provide for a widowed mother and his sisters and brothers. When I left home, it was with the hope of marrying him on the completion of my course.

“I arrived at college just at the time when there came to the women of America, especially to the little band then receiving the higher education, the first thrilling realization of their own possibilities. To stand alone, to achieve, to prove to the world what woman’s unaided strength could do, seemed to many not only a worthy ambition, but a sacred duty. One of my professors, a brilliant woman and a leader in the new movement, hailed my gifts with joy. ‘Assuredly, Emily, if your development is not interfered with, you will one day be a torch-bearer of the new womanhood,’ she declared. ‘Marriage,’ she would say at other times, ‘is for the ungifted, the uninspired. Let the drudgery of home-making and child-bearing be performed by women incapable of higher things.’ When I ventured to tell her of my engagement to Godfrey, she was horrified. ‘Bury your talents, your gifts for speaking and writing, in the mud of a Virginia plantation!’ she exclaimed; ‘never shall you be guilty of such weakness!’”

Drawn by F. R. Gruger. Half-tone plate engraved by G. M. Lewis

“‘YAN SIDE OF THEM IS WHERE YOU LIVED AT WHEN YOU WAS LITTLE, MAW SAYS’”

“Under influences of this kind my ideals and purposes gradually changed. I came to believe sincerely that my duty, as she said, was to develop and perfect my gifts, and that the pangs I should feel in renouncing Godfrey would be small in comparison with the lifelong regret consequent upon the burial of my talents.

“On my father’s death in my last college year, two courses lay open to me, one, marriage to Godfrey, the other, freedom to pursue my studies in foreign universities and fit myself for a career. And although I cared for Godfrey, and knew the gallant, unselfish struggle he was making and the need of me in his daily life, I chose self instead of him, freedom instead of love, a career instead of a life. He was too wise to reproach me; he only said, ‘Some day, Emily, the woman’s heart in you will awake, and you will know your need of me.’

“I hurried abroad, and threw myself absorbingly into study. Six years passed almost with the swiftness of as many months; I had the coveted degrees, the sense of power marked success brings, and at twenty-eight I was called home to fill an important professorship. During this time I kept up a correspondence with Godfrey. I said to myself I had a right to his friendship, though I stifled as weakness any regrets or longings for him and the eagerness I felt to see him again.”

Drawn by F. R. Gruger. Half-tone plate engraved by R. C. Collins

“DOSIA LISTENED SILENTLY, A LINE OF PAINFUL THOUGHT IN HER FOREHEAD”

⇒
LARGER IMAGE

“The first news I received on the landing of the ship was that of his sudden death. It came as a shock—a shock the nature of which I did not comprehend, however, so quickly was it overlaid by the noise and excitement of my life, the glow of instant success, the thrill of power, the adulation of thousands of women. In such a swift and glittering current did my life sweep on during the ensuing years that I was thirty-five before I realized the shallowness of it, knew that I had not a real tie in the world, saw that I was poor, empty, selfish, and, above all, horribly alone, and that not my life alone, but my art, was starved and barren; for how could I, who had never known the elemental emotions of my kind, hope to touch with my pen the quick of feeling? Here, too, in saving my life, I had lost it.

“I awoke to suffering, to hunger, to knowledge that I had sold my birthright. In other words, I knew at last that I was a woman, with a woman’s deep and eternal needs. Love, home, children,—ties that grapple one to life, experiences that, whether in the white flame of joy or the seven-times heated furnace of suffering, weld one with the race,—these inalienable rights of woman I awoke to desire and crave. Too late, too late! For although even then I might have ended the mere solitude,—other men beside Godfrey have wanted me,—I knew that he alone was my mate, and, knowing it, nothing but loyalty was possible. You remember the Scarborough motto, ‘Keep Troth.’ I had broken it with him living; I would keep it with him dead.

“But, oh, the loneliness, the detachment, the need of something vital in my days, of some creature to live for and call my own! If I had had the man of my love for even a short while, and, dying, he had left me a child, how different all would have been! Let them say what they will, the deepest, most fundamental craving of every woman’s heart is for children of her own; nothing else fulfils or satisfies. Missing this, we only half live in our youth and not at all in our age. Knowing my great need, I have many times considered the adoption of a child; but in every case a selfish fastidiousness has held me back.

“When I heard of Emily, a child of my own blood, and already bearing my name, my thoughts turned at once to her; when I saw her, small embodiment that she is of the dignity and simplicity of our race, I knew she was the one thing necessary. Everything in her appealed. She drew me out of myself, warmed my cold heart; her admiration was like wine to me; my very flesh rejoiced at her touch. With her to love and be loved by, I could now set up the long-desired home. In my busy plans, my happy absorption, my belief that blessing was at last to crown my days, I did not even think of your refusal!”

Again Emily Scarborough sat silent, with stricken eyes fixed upon the waning colors of the season.

“I was wrong, presumptuous, wicked,” she broke forth bitterly, “as usual, absorbed in self, careless of the suffering of others. The door of hope is closed; I shall never see another child I want. Nothing remains but a return to the desolation of a life thrown back upon and hating itself.

“But you, Dosia, so rich in love and duties and burdens, so necessary to many, your children about you, your husband beside you, pity a lonely woman with starved heart and barren body!”

Flinging out her arms in a wild gesture, she dropped them on the porch railing, and bowed her head heavily upon them.

Scarcely breathing, and with wide, wet eyes, Dosia drew slowly nearer, and stood a moment with hands outspread above the beautiful, bowed head. Then laying them upon it, she said tenderly:

“Emily is yours, dear cousin. You have the better right, the greater need; I give her to you gladly.”

THE TRADE OF NORTHERN AFRICA

(“THE TRADE OF THE WORLD” PAPERS)

BY JAMES DAVENPORT WHELPLEY

Author of “The Commercial Strength of Great Britain,” “Germany’s Foreign Trade,” etc.

AS the Atlantic liner enters the Mediterranean through the western straits, the port rail is generally crowded with passengers on the lookout for Gibraltar, that symbol of British power in the control of the high seas. Before the great rock is reached, however, there is to be seen plainly the little Spanish coast town of Tarifa, from which in olden days the boats of its feudal lord sallied forth to demand toll of every passing ship. This action was only the forerunner of what happens now in every harbor the world over; for the word tariff, derived from the name of this Spanish town, has come to mean the toll demanded of foreign goods before they may enter domestic markets.

Among all the people who pass through the Strait of Gibraltar, few take the trouble to sweep with their glasses the horizon to the south of the strait. It presents a long, low coast-line, appearing and disappearing from view as its promontories or indentations are passed; but it is well worth looking at, for the land of which this coast is the northern boundary, Morocco, has played a big part in the game of European politics in the last few years. In the near future it will hold the eyes of the world by reason of its own interest, wealth, and commerce, and it will not be long before no vessel of importance carrying freight or passengers to or from the Mediterranean will fail to make a port of call somewhere along its coast.

There is little of novelty for the blasé traveler between Gibraltar and Naples on the north side of the Mediterranean, but between Tangier and Suez, on the south, everything can be found to excite the most jaded interest, be it of ancient or modern civilization or a remoteness which up to the present time defies the white man to enter except at peril of his life. Northern Africa is one of the new-old spots of the earth now in the making of its regenerated political and economic life, and while from one end to the other it is within easy view or even reach of the casual passer-by, the repellent hand of nature and the native are raised most effectively against the foreigner, except in places where the powers of Europe have made travel possible, in many cases at a cost of lives and money beyond the scope of easy estimate.

To-day this continent of Africa is the most striking example of non-resident landlordism in the history of the world. It is a stretch of territory approximately 5000 miles north and south, and the same east and west, presenting all possible variations of climate, unlimited in the extent and range of its natural resources, inhabited by 150 million people, a tenth of the earth’s humanity, of all colors known to the human race, and speaking with polyglot tongue. Its civilization is ancient and modern; its barbarism the same. The ruins of Memphis speak eloquently of glories existing in the days when Europe and America were the haunts of wild men; the modern cities reflect the present-day life of the rest of the world; and yet from the jungle, distant only a few days’ journey, naked savages still peep for their first look upon a white man.

In all this land and among all these millions of people not one community has yet been found equal to the task of intelligent self-government on modern lines. Hence it is that this great domain has passed, peacefully in most cases, under the sway of the overlords of the world, and the flags of far-away nations float above the homes of the people from Cape Good Hope to Cairo, south and north, and from Sokotra to St. Louis, east and west. The apportioning of Africa has been accomplished in the foreign offices of Europe by men who know naught of wind-swept plains or jungle heat, but who are experts in this great paper game, the finals of which have not been played even yet. The state of the game is the billion dollars’ worth of foreign commerce which to-day flows through the African ports, and the billions more which will materialize as fast as soldiers and pioneers can conjure into actualities with sweat and human life the treaty agreements and understandings arrived at by the master minds in the great game.

On the west coast, under the flag of Liberia, flickers a feeble flame in the torch of liberty, but the country it illumines presents only the scene of a pathetic failure at self-government and the mockery of a republic. The flame itself is kept alive only through the jealous ministrations of the absent overlords of the adjacent lands. On the east coast, close to the heart of the desert, lies Abyssinia, with an independence purely nominal. Hemmed in on all sides by watchful foreign legionaries, her king can keep his crown so long as his own people are willing and no harm comes to foreigners or foreign interests. A false step—and the path is narrow—and the crown itself will become as a vassal to those in the North who rule intelligently, but with a purpose and a power that brooks no resistance. We can eliminate these independencies, therefore, as they exist only on sufferance, and the fact remains that the government of Africa is accomplished at long range by those who have a purpose of their own to serve. That purpose is to increase the trade of the world, with the hope that their share may be the larger.

From a photograph by the Detroit Publishing Co.

A MARKET-PLACE IN TANGIER

In the past, trade has followed the flag in Africa, but now as elsewhere, in these days of open doors, favored nation treaties, and equal trading, the exclusive right to buy and sell lies less within the hands of the landlord than it did of old. In the first flush of occupation, the landlord even now takes the large percentage; but to the degree in which he administers his estate successfully, so do opportunities for others present themselves, and are quickly taken advantage of. In southern Africa, and to a great extent up and down the east and west coast, it is now a free-for-all game. The same may be said of Egypt in the north.

From a photograph by the Detroit Publishing Co.

THE ENTRANCE TO THE SUEZ CANAL AT PORT SAÏD

At present France is still gathering her harvest of trade in Algeria and Tunis by virtue of military control. The same will be her lot in Morocco for a few years to come; but in this latter case the period of undisputed gain will be shorter, for the German eagle is hovering along the Moroccan coast with eye alert for opportunity to alight upon the land. Once at rest, his free participation in the commercial spoil is now assured through the foresight of those who play the game in Berlin. The French traders will then need to look well to their profits, for in this war for trade Germany has no superior in resourcefulness or tenacity of purpose. As soon as France completes her self-imposed task of policing the African coast from Tunis to Agadir, the only practical advantage which will remain to the landlords of Africa because of their holdings will lie in the fact that a great number of foreign purchases are due to foreign enterprises, and in the conduct of these the purchasing power is naturally more subservient to purveyors of like nationality.

The conquest of Africa, as shown by the political map of to-day, was achieved in the first instance without an appeal to arms except in the case of the Boer republic and the Italian occupation of a portion of Tripoli. Annexations, protectorates, and spheres of influence generally follow conquests at arms. In Africa this method has been largely reversed. Under the plea of establishing stable and peaceful conditions, wars, generally of the bushwhacking variety, have followed the political map-making; but by the time the real fighting began, each one of the overlords was accredited by the world with fighting for his own already established rights and for the ultimate good of the native defenders of the soil. The latter have generally been converted into rebels or outlaws by a decree written in London, Berlin, or Paris before they fired their first arrow or gun at the foreign invader. Italy is almost the only country which has done open violence to this peculiarly African method of territorial aggrandizement, and by way of contrast her action appears brutal, inexcusable, and bungling, and, as many diplomats aver, she is demonstrating its amateurishness by the questionable success achieved. This is specially true in view of the known inherent and acquired leanness of the prize, a plucked bird despoiled of its scanty trade feathers by Egypt on the east, Algeria on the west, and the Kongo development on the south, long before Italy moved to acquire the prize presumably for her own exclusive profit.

Photograph by the Detroit Publishing Co.

A PANORAMA OF ALGIERS

Of the total foreign trade of Africa, fully one half is conducted through the ports of Egypt, Tripoli, Algeria, Tunis, Morocco, and the Kongo, and in these countries will take place the greater part of the development of the future. In south Africa development of industry will proceed, but the pace has been set, and for one reason or another it may be added that, contrary to the expectations of the world thirteen years ago, it is not rapid. On the other hand, in northern and specially northwestern Africa, the gates are not yet fully open, the trail of the trader does not yet reach far into the hinterland, and from what is already known of the possibilities, the next twenty-five years will witness an exploitation of northwest Africa which will produce astonishing results. International effort is more concentrated than in years gone by. The unknown spots on the earth’s surface have shrunk to within comparatively small and well-defined boundaries. The eager trader, looking for new markets, is now early on the ground when the way is clear. Trade development in the twentieth century is far more rapid than ever before; the attack upon a new field is sharper, fiercer, more international, and more overwhelming. The new field soon becomes an old one, and quickly makes the pace natural to its geographical, social, and economic limitations.

The part the United States has played in northern Africa is not considerable. The first official appearance was about one hundred years ago, when American naval vessels chastised the pirates on the Mediterranean coast. Our last was about ten years ago, when for some reason yet to be discovered the United States Government sent a mission to King Menelik of Abyssinia. The less said about that mission the better. The chief commissioner met a tragic death before Africa was sighted, and from that moment the mission trailed off into nothingness, its disappearance marked by a succession of inexcusable and appalling diplomatic blunders, to say nothing of an attempted duplication of the mission by one bureau of the same government department acting independently of the others. The foreign offices of the overlords of Europe were considerate, and hid their amusement at this amateur performance under the cover of a sympathetic demonstration.

From a photograph, copyright by Underwood & Underwood

LEOPOLDVILLE ON STANLEY POOL (KONGO RIVER). THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT TRADE CENTER OF THE KONGO FREE STATE

As a nation holding a neutral position in the affairs of all continents except the Americas, the United States has been looked to on several occasions to furnish experts to help out young or old, but weaker, nations struggling in the coils of inter-European jealousies. Almost invariably Washington has made the mistake of taking the request at its face-value. Experts have been sent, the best in their line in the world, men full of enthusiasm for the task set before them, but, after all, it was found that a knowledge of the big game was even more essential than knowledge of finances or tariff, and the experts, through no fault of their own, have shortly trailed back home again, their only accomplishment having been, unwittingly perhaps, to eliminate another “exceptional American opportunity”; and again the foreign offices of Europe have condoled and regretted the necessity, etc., and the old hands at the game have smiled among themselves at the ease with which the “open door” had been closed without a sound of protest from its hinges.

Of the billion dollars in foreign commerce which ebbs and flows through African ports, about half is to be found in northern Africa, distributed as follows:

The trade of Abyssinia, the Kongo, Liberia, and other political divisions which might be included in what is known as northern Africa, does not amount in its total to a sufficient sum to make any important change in the significance of the above figures. With an area of, say, two and a half million square miles and a population of fifty millions, the density of population is about twenty to the mile; but this calculation is valueless, owing to the vast areas virtually uninhabited. The real density ranges from the 931 to the square mile in the lower valley of the Nile to that found in the great stretches of desert, where in the course of a week’s travel one may meet perhaps a single caravan of Bedouins with their scanty outfits.

Up to the present time the foreign commercial intercourse of these north Africans has been largely confined to Europe, and this state of affairs will continue for some time to come. There are two reasons for this: first, because of the flags of the European powers, which float over this country and which are emblematic of the administration control within the far-flung shadows they cast on the earth about. Second, the Europeans are better traders than others, who would be their competitors if they knew how to go about it. Of the quarter of a billion dollars and more worth of merchandise the people of north Africa buy from foreigners, the United States furnishes about one per cent. Of the two hundred millions or more in goods sold abroad by these same people, the United States buys considerably less than two per cent. In this last statement is found another reason as well why the trade of the United States is so small in northern Africa. Freight both ways is a requisite of international trade. Commerce is not so much a matter of gold as it is of barter. He who buys can sell, and so long as the buyer and the seller are one and the same person, he will dominate the situation. This is one of the stumbling-blocks in the path of American commerce abroad. American traders go with their hands full of goods to sell, but with ears closed to the offers of other wares in exchange. Our home markets do not want them, hence we will not buy them. The European will take them even if he has later to find a second market to dispose of what he cannot use at home. It is admittedly easier for him to do this, however, because of the geographical location of his own base of operations.

Africa sells food-stuffs and raw materials. She wants staple manufactured goods and novelties in exchange. The figures of her trade show that she can buy little more than the equal of what she has to sell; hence the advantage to the seller who can distribute with one hand and collect with the other. It is a transaction with two profits, so that both margins can be made smaller, and competition with the single-handed salesman is made easier.

The more primitive these African peoples are, the more they are dependent upon and controlled by the administrative power. The more developed the country and easy of access, the more enlightened and advanced the people, the wider and less restrained is their market. To Egyptians and Algerians the people of the United States sell goods of the kind imported to amounts reaching into seven figures, while virtually nothing is sold in Tripoli, and only a few thousand dollars’ worth in Morocco, countries credited with at least two thirds the population of the first named.

The entire civilized world is vitally interested in the progress made by the European powers in their development of trade in northern Africa, for the time is coming when the benefits to the outside trader will not be apportioned according to nationality, control, or interest, but will be measured by competitive power alone. To bear this in mind is manifestly the greatest feature of modern statesmanship in the making of commercial treaties, for it is necessary to safeguard the future so that when the door opens by reason of pressure from within, there shall be equal chance for all. It was an insistence upon this principle which nearly brought war to Europe through the making of the Moroccan agreement between France and Germany. The latter won her point; she won it not only for herself, but for all others, including the United States, and the importance thereof justified the seriousness of the pourparlers which preceded the actual agreement.

It might be said with apparent justice that those who have borne the burdens of the pioneer should have preference as their reward, but such is not the lot of pioneers in these days of the new internationalism. The commerce and finance of the world is assuming a solidarity that admits of no nationality or preference, no matter what apparent claim one or another people may have upon it by reason of pioneer work in the earlier stages of development and organization.

Not long ago an English acquaintance of mine stopped me in the street in London and asked me what I thought of things in Morocco. He was a man of average intelligence and information, and in business for himself in a small way. The German war-ship Panther was then at Agadir, and there was much talk concerning this bold move on the part of the Kaiser.

“If I was not old,” he said, “I would go to Morocco. I was there fifteen years ago and saw something of the country. There is nothing between the valley of the Nile and Cape Verd that will compare with the wealth and productiveness of Morocco, and with opportunities for trading when Europeans are free to come and go in safety. This Agadir business is the beginning of new days for the land of the Moors. It is a very different country from what we know as northern Africa.”

That is the opinion of “the man in the street” in Europe, and it is the knowledge of the few venturesome traders who have prospected the country as widely as the Moors have permitted. They are a most exclusive people. Four years ago the American consul at Tangier wrote to his Government:

Foreign adventure has obtained a slight and precarious foothold along the northern and western coasts, where there are excellent harbors. Tangier is the best known to the north, while on the west lie El Araish, Rabat, Casablanca, Mogador, Mazagan, and Safi; but the influence of these places extends barely forty or fifty miles inland. The great inland Northern trade capital Fez, and Marrakesh to the South, are as remote from foreign influence as the customs of the people differ from those of Europeans. Notwithstanding all this, the foreign trade of Morocco last year was over $20,000,000, or seven times that of Tripoli, for the possession of which two European powers calling themselves great are now at war.

The isolation of Morocco to the day, this year, that the French established themselves in Fez, is due absolutely to the self-sufficiency and hostile pride of the Moors, for their country lies in sight of Spain and is only three days from London. In the midst of the stirring affairs of the modern world Morocco has remained in truth a terra incognita. The pressure has been too great, however. Such isolation could not last; the advance-guards of the trade army of the world have penetrated the barriers, and with eyes glistening with eager lust of gain have told of what lies beyond. The future is no longer a matter of doubt. The French soldiers now bivouac in Fez, and changes are coming to Morocco even beyond the wildest fears of the warlike and gloomy-eyed Moors. As a rule, a strong foe makes a strong friend. In the degree with which they have so long successfully fought modernization, it is probable they will in time accept the inevitable with equal strength of character, and, aided by the natural wealth of their land, become the strongest and wealthiest of all the countries that bound the continent of Africa on the north, not excepting even that most limited but most fertile of all places on the earth, the valley of the Nile.

It is in Egypt that an effective demonstration has been made of what can be accomplished by an intelligent landlord on a great estate. Here was a country the people of which were living on its ancient monuments and the erratic rise and fall of a great and uncontrolled river. These people have only just learned to laugh, and how could they have done so before, living as they were in the shadows of countless centuries of slave-driving by rulers who took everything from them and did nothing in return?

“What do you think of the British rule?” I asked an Egyptian farmer.

“We pay our taxes only once now,” was the reply he made.

But in that he summed up the evils of past administrations and one of the greatest benefits of the present. The Turkish flag flies over Egypt, but the Khedive is an intelligent man, so he does not take his position very seriously. “England can have Egypt any time she wants it,” say the European diplomats at home. Those on the ground say: “England has Egypt now. Why should she take it twice?” That is the truth. England has Egypt. The Egyptian nationalists would like to have it for themselves, but they will not get it as things are going now. The noisy and talkative politicians who crowd the cafés of Cairo can plot and scheme to their hearts’ content, but there is a force at work apparently beyond their power of comprehension. Mistakes are sometimes made through the stupidity of subordinates, but a quiet and commanding impulse is behind the finances of the country, is applied to the industrial regeneration of the people, and the army is its complaisant ally. Millions of money have been spent to regulate the Nile, and millions more are constantly being added to this fund to bring the land up to the highest point of its marvelous productive power. Here it must be watered and there drained. Thousands of tourists annually visit the monuments and bewail the gradual disappearance of the temples of Philæ as the crest of the Assuan dam rises higher and higher; but for every foot it submerges the temples, it adds thousands of acres to the green fields of Egypt, from which the granaries are filled to running over. It is a symbol of the decline of the old and the coming of the new régime.

Those who come from the centers of civilization elsewhere find it hard to reconcile themselves to this new order of things, for the treasures bequeathed by ancient to modern Egypt are like unto no others in the world, a wonderful and enviable heritage; but they were built at the expense of the people of long ago, and now, when Rameses II lies in the Cairo museum, the descendants of the starved and whip-driven slaves who built his monuments are coming into their own under the paternal eye and assisted by the guiding hand of a new civilization. It was not without a sign, however, that this Egyptian king yielded to the spirit of the present, for, as the story goes, when his mummy was taken from its tomb, the wrappings undone, and the remains placed in temporary position in the museum, one of the horrified attendants saw him slowly raise his arm, as if in protest, from the position it had occupied for centuries. The curator attempted to quiet the fears of the attendant by a scientific explanation as to change of temperature and humidity causing a relaxation of the time-bound muscles, but to this day the more superstitious move with cautious tread in the neighborhood of the glass case in which rest the bones of this builder of wonderful monuments to himself, his wives, and his patron gods. In all of Egypt there is nothing left to tell of anything done for the people. From one end of the land to the other monuments good, bad, or indifferent were built to the glorification of the living when they should come to die. “Tombs of sorts,” as a weary tourist expressed it, but tombs they are, and as the history of Egypt unfolded itself they proved to be in reality more the graves of the hopes and aspirations of a nation and of the hundreds of thousands who died in the building than of the rulers they were meant to glorify. It was not until the Romans came fresh from the oratory of the Forum that a temple was built to the gods of all the people; but even these are few and far between.

Far out in the desert on a still and glorious night I talked with my Arab guide as to the stars and his knowledge of the trail through their guidance. He was struck dumb when I told him I had traveled countless miles in other lands by the same guiding lamps that then looked down upon us.

“I knew you had a moon,” he said, “but I did not know it was the same moon,” and as I looked far out into the silvery desert with its fleeting cloud shadows, and the remoteness of all things elsewhere was borne in upon me, I almost believed with him that it was a moon that shone for Egypt alone, and that he was wise and I was ignorant; for this land, its history, its people, and their problems are like unto no others.

To stand on the edge of the ocean of sand that reaches to the westward hundreds upon hundreds of miles and view the brilliant green meadows of the Nile Valley at one’s feet, watered as it is by the floods generated in the tropic torrents which fall somewhere in the heart of darkest Africa almost beyond the ken of man, is to realize what water means to the twelve million people of Egypt in their struggle for existence. Without it, land is to be had for the asking; with it, the most fertile farm in the corn belt of the Mississippi Valley is to be bought acre by acre, for half the price.

The foreign commerce of Egypt has grown apace as the country has come under the sane and regulating influence of the Anglo-Saxon. The landlord has reaped, and will long continue to reap as his reward, a golden harvest of profitable trade and investment; but he takes none but a natural advantage to himself. The German, the American, the French, and all the other traders of the world are free to come and go and to compete in supplying the wants of Egypt. The growth of the Egyptian trade of other nations has been coincident with that of the British, and the United States trade is no exception to this rule.

In 1911 the United States imported from Egypt $21,700,000 worth of merchandise, or about one sixth of what Egypt has to sell. In the same year the United States sold to Egypt $2,114,000 worth of goods, or about one and a half per cent. of what was purchased. These figures of import and export show a gain in gross amount of nearly one hundred per cent. over the commerce of two years preceding. The producing and absorptive power of the Egyptian people is steadily increasing. They have yet far to go before they reach modern standards, but since their release from the weight of ungoverned Turkish misrule they have shown a recuperative power almost equal to that of the wonderful soil upon which they live. Their trade will increase from year to year, and as it grows larger, the share of the overlord the sultan and his sub-tenant the Englishman will decrease in proportion, and thus it is that in these days of internationalism the welfare of one community is the concern of all even in a most narrow and practical sense—that of markets for the handiwork of man.

On the northwest corner of Egypt is the Gulf of Solum, an indentation of the Mediterranean. A reinforced garrison of Egyptian troops officered by Englishmen is quietly camping there to see that in the excitement of the Italian-Turkish war the eastern boundary of Tripoli shows no sign of advance beyond a certain point. West of that boundary-line two non-resident African landlords are at war for the possession of Tripoli without consulting the wishes of the one million inhabitants of the land, or the millions of their fellow-Mohammedans to the south, west, and east. Turkey was the landlord in possession, Italy the aggressor. The bird in hand this time was loosely held, and will probably be lost to its erstwhile captor; but the bill of damages, only a small instalment of which has yet been paid, to be assessed against the invader will be heavy and the subsequent retention expensive, unsatisfactory, and unremunerative.

To the onlooker the prize does not seem to be worth the price. Setting aside all high-flown expressions such as “control of the Mediterranean” and the like with which the Italian politicians keep up the spirits of the people at home and justify the conduct of the war, expressions which mean nothing, owing to their lack of foundation in truth, the test as to the wisdom of the conquest of Tripoli narrows down to the value of the land itself as a colonial possession.

Tripoli contains over 400,000 square miles of territory on which live about one million people, a population of two and a half to the mile. Most of these people, however, live on a narrow strip along the 1100 miles of coast-line, and the rest find abiding-places in scattered groups among the oases of the desert. As a matter of fact, the entire population of the country lives upon 19,000 square miles, or about one twentieth of the territory of Tripoli. Along the coast, on which there are no very good harbors, with the possible exception of Tobruk, is the low plain of Jefara, about forty miles wide. To the south of this rises the Jebel range of hills, and still farther south extends a plateau over 40,000 square miles in extent, absolutely barren, rocky, and uninhabited. This reaches to Hammada-el-Homra. To the south of Hammada lies the land of Fezzan, a collection of oases in a vast region of sand-dunes and desert. To the eastward lies Tobruk, whose people trade with Egypt. Still on toward the Sahara is Murzuk, formerly the great caravan station between the Mediterranean and Lake Chad, but now, since the trade of this part of the world has been diverted from the north to the mouth of the Kongo, the northern terminal of the great caravan route. Only three European travelers have visited Murzuk in the last twenty years. The green banner of the prophet flies throughout this country, and the brotherhood of the Senussiya is bound together in anti-foreign tenets. Its headquarters are at Kufrah, in the Libyan Desert, and it sends a mission of its own to the sultan at Constantinople, so independent of the government of Tripoli does it regard itself.

There are legends as to the richness and prosperity of Tripoli in the time of the Roman occupation, but that this prosperity has been grossly exaggerated is now well known. The sand-dunes have been creeping over the coastal plain of Jefara until they have reared their dreaded crests within sight of the city of Tripoli. The sultan’s nominal authority has extended even to the Tuaregs, near Ghat, but with the advent of Europeans in the Niger Valley and Hausa Land, the southern portion of Tripolitania, might as well be across the Sahara Desert, so far as the northern coast is concerned. And Tripoli is no longer the gateway to the Sudan or to black Africa. The trade that formerly flowed north and south now goes to Egypt on the east or to Algeria on the west, or, in some instances, to the west coast of Africa.

For the last ten years this quiet but effectual disintegration of commercial Tripoli has been going on until there is little left for the new landlord even should he succeed in establishing his rule and secure acknowledgment thereof. There are no mineral resources, no possibilities in agriculture, and the desolation of the vast, unfertile, rainless area daunts the most intrepid adventure. The problems of centralized government are many and apparently impossible of solution, certainly by the Italians, who know naught of colonial science. To the north the city of Tripoli, with its 50,000 population, is an inharmonious community of Jews, Berbers, Arabs, Maltese, and Levantines, with probably fewer than two hundred genuine Italians among them. Hundreds of miles to the south, separated by rock and desert now seldom traveled, are the Tuaregs, where the women own all property and take plural husbands much for the same economic and social reasons that the Turk has several wives.

Naturally the exports of a country like Tripoli are of the most primitive character, exporting grass, hides, fruit, and a few other things that are found wild or are grown in limited quantities. Her imports are food-stuffs, cotton, and woolen goods, fuel, iron, and steel. Of the exports, half a million dollars’ worth find their way to the United States, and in return a few thousand dollars’ worth of cloths and other manufactures are sold. Of the total foreign commerce, amounting to less than five million dollars, the United States participates to only a fractional per cent., and there is little hope of improvement in the future. English merchants do the largest part of the trading, with France second, Italy third, and Turkey fourth, and both exports and imports hold in about the same proportion as to destination and origin.

It is a relief to cross the Tripolitan border into Tunis and Algeria, the French possessions. Here everything has been done by an intelligent landlord to develop the country and encourage the industry of the people. With an area only half again as large as Tripoli, and even so the larger part desert, a population seven times as great finds a living and occupation. A foreign commerce of 225 million dollars nearly equally divided between export and import slightly exceeds even that of Egypt, and the exchanges of the United States, although a comparatively small trader, amount to nearly two million dollars’ worth of goods. The administration of Algeria and Tunis has cost France many millions of francs, but the task has been well done. In return, however, the people of France have benefited largely, for they supply over eighty per cent. of the imports of these African possessions, and take about seventy per cent. of the exports. The United States sends machinery, oils, and tobacco, and takes the raw products of the country in exchange. Trade is on a stable and safe basis, and the consuming power of the country is increasing rapidly in the direction of manufactured goods and the conveniences of civilized life.

It requires a certain form of genius and a certain temperament to be a successful landlord, and this is even more requisite when governing a far-distant community of foreign people. These qualities have been demonstrated by the French in their control of northern Africa, and, it may be added, to the surprise of the rest of the civilized world, for in their government at home the French people have not shown equal genius or been as successful as they have in Africa. To allow the exercise of autocratic power is perhaps the best way to utilize the virtues of the French temperament.

In general the African continent is in good hands, English, French, and German alike. The natives, as a rule, get justice; their religions and their customs are respected, and they are benefited materially, socially, and even politically as dependencies. In the days of a recent British agent in Egypt who believed in a larger degree of local government than had been allowed by his predecessor, some confusion resulted and things got rather out of hand. Proof was promptly given in the trouble that quickly arose that this was a mistake. When Lord Kitchener arrived on the scene he had many loose ends to pick up and weak spots to reinforce, but he was not long in the mending. His administration has been notably successful so far, and with all the firmness with which he is credited he has also developed a tact not expected even by some of his greatest admirers. He came to Egypt at a difficult time, and to keep his Mohammedan friends neutral, which he has done, while their coreligionists are waging what they term a “holy war” against the Italians to the west of Solum Bay, is not easy. It is told of him that shortly after the beginning of the Italian-Turkish war some of the Arab chiefs of Egypt and the Sudan were keen to go to the assistance of the Tripolitans, and signified their wish to the British agent. Lord Kitchener replied that of course they could go if they wanted to, but whereas they were now free from compulsory military service in the Egyptian army, it would be impossible for him to overlook the value as soldiers of Arabs who had served in actual modern warfare, and that on their return he would have to draw upon them for military service. As this freedom from service in the Egyptian army is one of the much-prized Arab privileges and exemptions, the sheiks, recognizing the possibilities involved, promptly gave up their idea of participating in the war, and have remained neutral, at least so far as not to render assistance to Tripoli openly.

In all northern Africa no invader has attempted suddenly to change the customs of the people, and the local religions have been recognized and their tenets respected. Italy did not seem to profit by this example, for her troops have shown scant regard for the feelings of the Mohammedans, and it will take many years to live down the situation created by the violation of mosques and other injudicious and unnecessary vandalism. Northern Africa would not be what it is to-day if the same policy had been followed by others, and it is fortunate for the world at large that the Italian attack has been made upon the most worthless and most sparsely inhabited part. Less harm can be done there than elsewhere, and with the firm hand of Egypt to the east and France to the west and the physical limitations to the south, the evil effects of this ill-judged attempt at conquest may be confined within present boundaries.

The United States has entered into the field of world politics too late in the day to secure trade by other than competitive power. The earth is now mapped out, and few boundaries will be changed in the future except as it may be deemed wise or advantageous to create more or less self-governing communities. Participation in the financing of new or new-old governments will prove of little avail, for money is now international, and the New York firm which underwrites its allotted portion of an international loan has its branches or even its parent house in Europe, and cannot use its power to draw trade to America without giving offense elsewhere. It really makes no difference in modern times which nation furnishes the money to take up a large issue of securities, for in the end they find their resting-place where there is money willing to be tied up, and this is generally in France, England, or Germany. A debtor nation like the United States, especially one whose people can find active employment for surplus funds at more profit than is offered by government loans, cannot be rated as an international money-lender.

The demand for an international or equal participation in any great money transaction comes in reality not from keen and equal competition for the privilege of investment, but from the machinations of international money, which desires the backing and security of a harmonious group of powerful governments to enforce its terms and insure the collection of the debt without friction on the day it may become due. With this backing the underwriters are assured of their great profits as it decreases the difficulties of unloading the securities upon an investing public at an advanced figure. The modern international loan carries with it no special trading rights, for all governments must now insist upon and obtain for its citizens abroad treatment like unto those accorded other nationalities.

To reduce the cost of production, facilitate the shipping of goods, and meet the local needs of foreign markets, or in other words to conduct foreign trading on an intelligent and scientific basis, is the one hope of the people of the United States in the world expansion of their industries and the profitable employment of labor. In the long run no nation stands a better chance of holding its own by reason of the self-contained character of material resources, the climatic stimulus to work and invention, the so-called unsophisticated enthusiasm of the people for practical accomplishment, and the mixture of racial strength in the make-up of the community. When the home market strikes a balance between production and consumption, and a surplus for export can be relied upon every year, it is reasonable to assume that the same genius will be applied to conquering the foreign market that has been developed at home. In no place in the world is there opportunity for greater gain for American trade than in Africa even to-day, while the future presents no such limitations as are met with in more highly commercially developed areas.

VIOLENCE IN THE WOMAN’S SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT

A DISAVOWAL OF THE MILITANT POLICY

BY MILLICENT GARRETT FAWCETT

President of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (Great Britain)

I WRITE from the standpoint of those who regard the women’s movement for political freedom as incomparably the most important political fact of the present day; and who look upon the women’s movement, as a whole, in its social, economical, political, industrial, and educational developments as one of the most remarkable events which have ever taken place in the history of the world. I do not know where one could look for another so nearly universal in its operation, making itself felt in every country in the world, in all civilizations, whether eastern or western, and affecting the well-being of such masses of men and women of all races and nations.

Men’s political movements toward freedom have nearly always been accompanied by “confused noise and garments rolled in blood.” No great emancipating evolution for men has taken place without violence and bloodshed. One of our most learned historians, Lord Acton, wrote: “It seems to be a law of political evolution that no great advance of human freedom can be gained except after the display of some kind of violence.” Yet notwithstanding all precedents to the contrary, but just because men are men and women are women, the women’s movement toward freedom did progress and progress marvelously for the first half of the nineteenth century till about six years ago without the use of any kind of violence. We shot no one, we exploded no bombs, we destroyed nothing; but we have been building up and creating a new social order in which the women of to-day occupy a wholly different and better place from that occupied by the women of preceding ages. The universities have been opened; girls’ schools have been made over again, and made different; the medical and, in many countries, the legal, professions have been opened; municipal and all other local franchises in Great Britain and her colonies have been won; women have been made eligible for election on all local governing bodies; the civil service has been opened; the barbarity of medieval laws founded on the absolute subjection of women in marriage has been modified; full parliamentary suffrage has been won for women in New Zealand and Australia, in Finland and Norway, in Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Washington, and California, and women’s suffrage amendments have been recommended to the electorate by the representative governing bodies of six other of the United States. All these actual victories and indications of further victories in the near future have been won (Lord Acton notwithstanding) without violence of any kind. The American humorist Mark Twain, with his keen practical insight into the essence of things, remarked this strange feature of the women’s movement. He wrote in “More Tramps Abroad,” p. 208:

All these great and indeed immense victories for the cause of human freedom have been accomplished by moral force and not by physical force. Physical force as a means of promoting women’s freedom was never even heard of till about six years ago, and for the first two and a half years of their activity the so-called militant suffragists did not use physical violence toward their adversaries; they suffered violence far more than they inflicted it.

At the outset, so long as they confined themselves merely to sensational and eccentric means of propaganda, they could hardly be looked upon as a physical force party; they undoubtedly did service to our common cause by making the claims of women more widely known; there is probably hardly a village, hardly a family in which the claims of women to share in the representative system of the country has not been eagerly discussed. This to a very large extent we owe to the activities of the “militants.” But when they departed from the attitude they first adopted, of suffering violence but using none, in my judgment they put themselves in the wrong morally; and if judged from the point of view of practical success have put back the cause rather than promoted it. For twenty-six years from 1886 to 1912 women’s suffrage was never once defeated in the House of Commons. The Conciliation Bill, which had been carried in second reading in 1911 by a majority 316 to 143 after a truce from militancy of nearly eighteen months, was defeated in 1912 by a narrow majority. This was very largely due to the intense indignation and resentment caused by the window-smashing outrages which had taken place a few weeks earlier.

The carrying of a women’s suffrage amendment to the government Reform Bill is the next stage either of victory or defeat which awaits us. If militancy is renewed, defeat is almost certain. The average man is not convinced of the value of conferring full citizenship on women by hearing of tradesmen’s windows being broken, or of attempts to set houses and theaters on fire. The militants often claim that a display of physical violence is the only way to success. This, I maintain, is a wholly mistaken reading of the facts. Our victories have been won through convincing large masses of quiet, sensible, average men and women that the citizenship of women would be good for women themselves and for the State as a whole. We can point to the activities of such women as Julia Ward Howe and Jane Addams in the United States, of Florence Nightingale and Josephine Butler in Great Britain, and can more and more convince our countrymen of the futility and absurdity and the loss to the community of excluding such women, and women at large, from the rights of citizenship. I regard the militants as misguided enthusiasts, and believe that at this moment they are the most dangerous obstacles in the way of the immediate success of our cause in England. But when I compare the degree of violence they have used with the excesses of, say, the French Revolution or the destructive fury which swept over our own and other countries, in connection with the Reformation, or with the awful violence which has occasionally been associated with the Labor movement both in this country and in the United States, we may feel that there is no cause for panic and still less for despair. The political emancipation of women has made immense strides toward complete realization in the English-speaking countries on both sides of the Atlantic. Every victory scored by either of us helps the other. The latest honors are with America. We do not grudge them; but hope soon to vie with them.

TOPICS OF THE TIME — A WAY OUT OF THE CANAL BLUNDER: REPEAL THE EXEMPTION — WANTED: STRAIGHT THINKING ABOUT MILITANT SUFFRAGISTS — THE NEW WAY OF FINANCING A CAMPAIGN — IF LINCOLN COULD RETURN

ANY one who knows how little consideration is given to the preparation of political platforms can readily understand how both the Democratic and the Progressive parties were “committed” to the blunder of advocating the exemption of our coastwise shipping from the tolls to be charged for the use of the Panama Canal. It is this sort of inside arrangement of party policies—which usually, in the last hours of fatigue, restlessness, and excitement, there is never time to discuss on their merits—that has cast discredit on platforms and has justified many a candidate in disregarding or modifying a given “plank.” The overwhelming judgment of our people, as reflected in the press, that nothing is so important to us as a strict observance of our plighted faith,—just as nothing is so important to a merchant as his credit and reputation for honorable dealing,—shows how easy it is for half a dozen men in a hotel parlor, at the suggestion of some “good fellow,” to lead a convention to the indorsement of a disastrous policy.

To claim that we have not broken our pledge that there shall be no discrimination in the tolls and conditions when we thus favor our own coastwise trade, as against that of Canada, Mexico, and Colombia,—each with an Atlantic and a Pacific coast,—simply does not rise to the dignity of a quibble. Already by misrepresentation of the sense of fair-dealing which pervades American commercial life, incalculable injury has been done to our standing abroad—an injury which cannot be measured in money. After all our honorable diplomacy—the return of the Boxer indemnity, the open door policy in the Far East, and the strict observance of our promise to withdraw from Cuba, which foreign sneerers at America said we never would observe, “and never meant to observe”—it is shameful to have to drop to a lower plane of national conduct.

As if our cup of humiliation were not already full, it is argued that we are at liberty to refuse to submit the question of the breach of the Panama Treaty to the Hague Tribunal, if Great Britain should make the appeal. “Nicht zwei dumme streiche für eins” (Not two stupid strokes for one), says Lessing’s character in “Minna von Barnhelm.” Unless we desire to become the welsher of the nations, it is time that the good faith of the people should find an adequate expression in the good faith of the Government. All the money saved (to whom?) in tolls in a hundred years by the exemption could not compensate for the loss in money—not to reckon honor—which will result from the loss of credit and of great commercial opportunities all over the world. A strange way, indeed, to promote American commerce!

But there remains for us another chance—or will, if Great Britain shall a little longer pursue her friendly and forbearing course of waiting for our public opinion to assert itself. The coastwise exemption should be repealed. And, our obligations aside, why should we enter upon a policy of subsidizing our ships just at the time when apparently we are giving up the policy of subsidizing our manufactures? Are we never to get away from the inequality of privilege, that has already corrupted the sources of government by the “vicious circle,” creating and feeding by legislation agencies whose natural interest it thus becomes to destroy the principle of equality? Why subsidize ships any more than subsidize railways, or newspapers, or authorship? But if we must subsidize our ships, let it be done outright, in bills for that purpose, and not through the violation of the plain words of a solemn treaty.

Not only should the exemption be repealed, but, if we are to recover the ground that has been lost, it should be done in the first week of the December session of Congress. We feel sure that President Taft, whose misgivings tinctured his message of assent, now that the Canal bill has provided for a modus operandi, would not interpose his veto to the sober second thought of Congress. If the repeal is not accomplished, and if we refuse the appeal to The Hague, the great cause of Arbitration—the substitute for war—will be set back for unreckonable years. And it is the championship of Arbitration, together with his far-sighted and consistent defense and extension of the Merit System, which will give the President his highest claim to the respect of posterity. The object of the latter is to keep politicians from gambling with the resources of office; the object of the former is to prevent governments from gambling with the lives of men.

Should the repeal not be promptly made, it will become the duty of the people to organize to bring it about. We much mistake the temper of the country if within another six months its servants do not remove this blot in the national escutcheon.

APROPOS OF THE RENEWAL OF VIOLENCE IN ENGLAND

ONE of the startling signs of the times is the recrudescence of violence among the militant suffragists in England. The physical attacks by women upon members of the government, including the hurling of a hatchet at the Prime Minister’s party; the attempt to set fire to a theater in which he was about to make an address, and other outrages, are in themselves a sufficiently deplorable symptom of lawless impulses, with which the government, as it was obliged, has dealt promptly and vigorously. As we have recognized in previous articles, this course of action has been disavowed in England by other prominent bodies of suffragists, who deserve honor for their refusal to be deflected from their “appeal to reason” to a policy which can only end in disaster. In this number of THE CENTURY we give place to an article by Mrs. Fawcett, President of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, of Great Britain, written at our request for a disavowal of this policy. If, besides the editorials in the New York “Evening Post,” there has been any similar official disavowal in America, it has escaped the attention of one careful reader of the daily news. Already many men in this country must be asking themselves whether it is wise to add to the electorate a body of voters who do not see the perilous influence of tolerating such actions—the influence not only upon women, but upon other impressionable classes having a real or fancied grievance.

And now comes another test of the wisdom and patriotism of these ladies. Before these lines shall be published, Mr. and Mrs. Pethick Lawrence, two convicted lawbreakers of England, are to be honored by a reception by the National Woman Suffrage Association in New York, as Mrs. Pankhurst was received at Carnegie Hall after a similar conviction. We cannot conceal our sympathy with any person willing to suffer for opinion’s sake, but in these instances the punishment was inflicted not for opinion, but for deliberate violation of the elementary principles of civilized government—by the destruction of property (usually of unoffending persons) and the creation of public disorder. Of what use is it for conservative agencies to address themselves to the discouragement of lynching in the South, or in Pennsylvania, or of hired assassination in New York City, or the lawlessness of capital or of labor, or the lawlessness of brutal students, fashionable smugglers, bribed officials, or “fixed” juries, when the sentiment of so large and estimable a part of the community as the advocates of woman suffrage—teachers of the young—fail to see their responsibility toward their followers and the public? The defense that “no class has ever obtained its rights except by violence” is both false and insidious, and sets an example which will rise to plague the women themselves if they ever obtain a measure of responsible power. Deeper even than this vicious idea is the world-old delusion—which has its strongest exponent in politics—that the end justifies the means. The drift toward the employment of this standard is a hard blow to those who believe that women are to show us a more excellent way in government.

Admitting that this policy of terrorizing one’s opponents is valuable as advertising a movement, it seems never to have occurred to the advocates of woman suffrage that as effective a presentation of their cause could have been obtained without violence. Ruskin said that war would cease in Europe if on the declaration of hostilities Englishwomen would put on mourning. Ingenuity certainly could devise some form of réclame more worthy than the precipitation of delicately minded young women into the program of a New York vaudeville theater. Something must be allowed to the instinctive protest of human nature that everything shall not be thrown into the melting-pot of agitation.

A NOTE OF POLITICAL HEALTH AND PROGRESS

WE called slaveholding and Mormon polygamy “twin relics of barbarism,” persisting in our modern civilization, and we put an end to them long ago. We have now made an end of those twin evils of our politics, the spoils system and secret campaign funds. Ten years of agitation put the merit system into our laws, the movement for publicity of campaign contributions, actively urged on after 1904, became effective in less than six years. The Federal act bears date of June 25, 1910. The spoils system and the secret campaign fund have the likeness of twins. Both are a fraud upon the people, both are illegitimate devices for perpetuating party power, both are indefensible save by frankly and cynically immoral arguments.

Perhaps the greater evil of the two, as a betrayal of the interests of the people, is the acceptance by campaign committees of large gifts of money from persons or corporations who expect, and who have usually received, much more than the worth of their money in legislative favors or valuable privilege. There have been many indiscreet revelations of the theory and practical working of the system. Indignantly protesting that the highly protected manufacturing interests had been too niggardly in their giving, one politician gave instructions to “fry the fat” out of them; and it is notorious that in the field of tariff legislation the covenant between the party in power and the corporations that gave bountifully to keep it in power was faithfully kept. The hand that gave the fund guided the pen that wrote the schedules. It is equally notorious that with these great sums the suffrage was corrupted. In one of the States where directions were given to marshal the “floaters” in “blocks of five,” a distinguished beneficiary of that process humorously admitted the efficiency of “soap” in achieving the victory. It was bad, wholly bad; in a republic no political evil could be much worse.

The completeness of the reform is astonishing. The statute enacted two years ago and amended last year commands campaign committees to keep accurate accounts of receipts and expenditures, and sworn detailed statement of contributions received, with contributors’ names and the objects for which the money was spent, must be filed with the Clerk of the House of Representatives fifteen days before the day of election and every sixth day thereafter; thirty days after election a final statement must be so filed. The statements are open for inspection and publication.

This law of publicity has been complied with in this campaign with such alacrity that two of the party committees “rushed into print” with their statements of contributions more than a month in advance of the date fixed by the statute. The Democratic committee gave out the names and the figures on September 9, and on September 10 the statement of the Progressive party was given out.

It was then that the public suddenly became aware that this Presidential campaign is unlike any other in our recent history. The first striking fact observed was that the total of the contributions was pitifully meager compared with the royal profusion with which, according to the prevailing belief, former campaign committees have been put in funds. The Wilson and Marshall Committee acknowledged the receipt of $175,000 up to the date of publication, and there were only three gifts as large as ten thousand dollars; the Roosevelt and Johnson Committee had received $55,199, and the largest contributions were two of $15,000 each. Comparison was at once made with the Republican campaign fund of 1904, amounting to $1,900,000 as stated in testimony and with old-time individual contributions of $50,000 and $100,000. The total of the Republican fund in 1896 is not accurately known, but it was certainly much larger than in 1904.

The second point of unlikeness of this campaign to all others within any man’s memory is the fact that the fortunes of all three candidates are committed to the management of men who are amateurs in “big politics.” The “Zach” Chandlers, the Mark Hannas, the Arthur Pue Gormans, where are they? If these men have successors in our day, they are watching and waiting, it may be; certainly they are not in the strife, they are not at the heads of the committees, they are not the chief men in the work.

It means that our politics, our political campaign methods, have in good faith been changed and reformed. As a part of what in the broad sense, not in any party sense, we may call the progressive movement, this change is of impressive significance. The machines and the bosses may devise ways to retain much of their old power under the conditions of what is called “direct government” of the people in the States, but now that their dominance is destroyed in respect to the great quadrennial contest of the parties, it is not easy to see how they can regain control. They carried on the war of politics with money; they bartered, when they could, government policies for cash. We have put an end to all that. The qualities of the candidates, the merits of the argument, the decision of the people for or against promised measures and policies, are now to be determining. That is as it should be, it is the ideal way, in a government by the people. For a government by the “interests” and the politicians the old way was ideal.

In very truth the publicity of campaign contributions is a reform of far-reaching vitality and importance, and it is immensely gratifying that it has been ungrudgingly accepted by those upon whom this ordinance of great self-denial has been imposed. But the people, the voters themselves, must understand that their emancipation brings its duties and responsibilities. It costs a great deal of money properly to enlighten the electorate upon the issues of a Presidential campaign, as it is of the very essence of good government that the voter should make his choice with understanding. Knowledge is necessary, it is to his interest that he have it, and he should pay the cost of putting it within his reach. The corporations and the “interests” have been relieved of this burden of expense. Let the men of the parties assume it, willingly, for their own benefit, for the benefit of all. Campaign committees must spend money, yet if at the close of the campaign they are left with heavy debts, it will not be long before we lapse into the old, bad conditions. Campaigns can be “financed” with the money of the voters. A multitude of small individual contributions will fill the campaign chest, and candidates and party will be under no obligations save to the people, and those it will be their highest duty to fulfil.

(FIFTY YEARS AFTER EMANCIPATION)

ON Sunday, September 22, in negro churches everywhere, men and women of dark skin celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the first Emancipation Proclamation. It was an occasion which might well have been made a day of heart-searching, to ask ourselves whether, in our treatment of the negro, the nation as a whole is honoring the memory of Lincoln himself, and of those who labored, fought, and died to abolish slavery. Are we, as a nation, dealing fairly with the negro? Or is “The Independent” correct when it declares that of all our ninety millions there are none to-day so oppressed as the race that Lincoln freed?

In this number of THE CENTURY we group examples of the work of four members of the race,—in prose, poetry, art, and musical composition, the first being a paper of entire authoritativeness and singular moderation of tone. In it Dr. Washington, with the dauntless faith and courage which have carried him so far, sets forth his answer to the question whether the American negro is having a fair chance. Discouragement he will not admit; he fixes his eyes ever upon the hopeful signs. When he goes abroad it seems to him the working-classes of Europe are worse off than our own colored people, whose accessions from abroad are proof to him that the negro fares nowhere else so well.

That Dr. Washington serves a useful purpose in ever presenting the cheerful side, is obvious. But he who fifty years after Emancipation would stop there would see but one side of the question. The shadows upon the race which the head of Tuskegee glides over so lightly lie heavily upon ever-growing numbers of intellectual colored people, who are moved but little by figures of increased negro farm holdings, by statistics about negro grocers, lawyers, physicians, and teachers. Grateful as their hearts may be that they are to-day in possession of their own bodies, they regard the future with troubled eyes.

Looking upon their children they ask with panic fear if these are to be the children of the ghettos now being established, set apart as though leprous, with one avenue of advancement after another closed to them, denied the participation in government guaranteed to them by law, and in some States put beyond the pale of law. They read that the American Bar Association has virtually drawn the color line. They read almost every week of men of their race burned at the stake, North and South; of their women, done to death, ruthlessly shot out of semblance to their Maker, by the mobs that destroy them in the name of the purity of the white race! They read that even Northern communities where the mob rules, like Coatesville, Pennsylvania, and Springfield, Illinois, once the very home of Lincoln, fail to punish those who defy the laws and slay the accused or the innocent with barbarities known in no other land. They see themselves left out of account in the South by a leader of a new political party that boasts its desire for “social justice.” If their children, deprived of school by the thousands, and depressed and ignorant, without a single influence to uplift, go wrong, the imputed shame is that of the whole race. Every negro criminal becomes a living indictment of his people. Bitterest of all, they cannot defend themselves against official wrong-doing, for having only a phantom ballot in their hands, the vilest sheriff is beyond their reach. Moreover, to the injury of the whole body-politic, no adequate education through self-government is provided for them in this Republic of Lincoln.

This is the reverse of the picture and its pathos is beyond description. What would Lincoln say? Would he, if reembodied, declare that the negro, for all his progress, is having a fair chance, North or South, to-day?

OPEN LETTERS — ON THE RELATIVE CLAIMS OF SWEETNESS AND LIGHT

To One who Thinks Women “Movement-Mad”

Dear Helen:

A cowardly fear of being funny silenced me last night, but, now, refreshed by sleep and by your absence, knowing that you are well on your road, I mount my slow nag, and, armored to be dull, come pricking after. I know that words are creatures of chance, subject to jeopardy from all the winds that blow, and that in writing I am only increasing the hazard of misunderstanding, “harnessing for a yet more perilous adventure,” but despite this I follow soberly behind, your own words upon my lips.

You said, in part, you may recall, that our little group, and especially the women among us, are movement-mad; that peaceful, esthetic conversation has been done to death by furious talk on wrongs and reforms; that the amenities of civilized society, so you said, have fallen beneath the ax of chop-logic; that even at dinners we women grow red and shrill over astonishing topics—eugenics, political nominees, prison menus, and woman suffrage; that art, “the world’s sweet inn,” has become a house of brawlers; that to speak of dancing is to bring up in a dance-hall, and to discuss a play is to become entangled in a wreckage of commandments. All of Pan’s gay world is silenced, you declared, shut off with a cordon of linked question marks; that the very laughter in our throats has become brazen and controversial—the derisive laughter of the Hebrew Scriptures; that, oh, dreadful climax, you will open your purse to no more reforms, unless it be to a Society for the Reformation of Manners.

When you quote Falstaff’s plaint that “It were better to be eaten to death with rust than scoured to nothing with perpetual motion,” I understand what you mean—that is my misfortune in debate. But are you really enamoured of rust? You, who would keep all talk in low relief, sweet, level, and cool as the heads on a Greek frieze, are you not turning from a world that is alive and alight to wander in a land of shades?

Esthetic ideals were shaped for us by the centuries that lie between us and Myron. What wonder that talk moves smoothly upon such age-worn ways! Slave-owning Greeks and subtle Italians wrought out, in sweat and toil, arts that were old when a social conscience was an amœba. In sweat and strife men and women are blazing new trails to-day; and the overcoming of inertia still generates heat. But, once more, something comes forth, shining, from the lustration of fire.

Smile down upon us from your tranquil bleacher! It is quite true that we are ravished by the dazzling, many-sided iridescence of what we take for a new Truth, hailing its radiance with our uncouth cries. We buffet hotly the ideas that each is driving toward his goal, but when, out of the rush and turmoil, some one scores a touchdown the whole field cheers.

When a new country is discovered—though it be a desert—the explorer plants his flag with a shout; and there is as high authority, in the authentic tribune of men’s hearts, for our passion as for your calm. The “lark of aspiration” must sing as it mounts.

A modern master of friendship has said that, after all, there are only two real subjects of conversation—love and conduct. As love is best in tête-à-tête, that leaves us morals. Thinking of it in cold blood, it seems as though we might be calmer talkers, but when have morals not been associated with heat, here or hereafter? The part of your charge that I find strangest is that this noisy super-heatedness, that you impute to us, is a new evil. Where is your memory, Girl? Mine takes up the thread about the year that you were born, when people were still talking back over the questionable morality of one set of men freeing the slaves of another set, and of the political right of the Southern States to secede. I see a room, a hollow square of books, the air blue with smoke, torn by lightning-jags of talk. Voices—raised voices, dear Lady—talked of Predestination and Free Will. They talked as we poor weaklings of this Laodicean age may never hope to talk, hurling Eternal Damnation at each others’ heads and imputations of blasphemy, in horrid whispers. Goethe’s Elective Affinities and the doctrine of one Thomas Paine were discussed; Darwin, in relation to the osteoplastic romance of Eve. Apostolic Succession, Infant Damnation, Predestination—these are some of the live-wires of another day. I never hear the echo of raised voices, down the long vista of my past, without realizing that real talk is going forward—morals, preferably with a dash of love.

To-day, we, true children of those senior wranglers, have inescapably, in our blood, the passion for moral research; “the invisible masters that reign in our innermost cells” have predetermined our choice. The names of all the protagonists have changed; the battleground has shifted from skyey metaphysics to the slum street; from Infant Damnation to Certified Milk for Babies; but we, too, are doing battle for our realities. In the hospitals and the settlement houses are the children and grandchildren of our old circuit-riders and militant bishops. The children of those who warred for righteousness still seek and serve.

Your quarrel is not with our little group of noisy talkers; your quarrel, Madam, is with the leaven of the world, that froths and foams and stirs because it is working. In the stormy schools of religious controversy—in that old, warm talk on morals, when the souls of men were the stake—we learned that we are our brothers’ keepers, and that idea, once generated, will be conserved, generation by generation, and the force of it will not be lost. As they strove to insure to men eternal life, their children strive that men may inherit the earth.

Our contention, yours and mine, is the old Hellenic-Hebraic clash of ideals.

“Beauty and Light!” you cry.

“Justice and Right!” comes the response.

We are both right, but my right is deeper and more elemental than yours. Yours exists for a few, happy, chosen spirits; mine for the whole, wide travailing world. Yours rests upon mine; mine does not rest upon yours.

“Rest!” you jeer. “You people never rest, and you let no one else rest.”

“‘Restfulness,’” I cry, with inky vivacity, “Stevenson told us long ago that ‘restfulness is a quality for cattle.’”

“Ah, Chantecler! Chantecler!” I hear you murmur, “when will you learn the secret of the dawn.”

Well, you see I have given you the last word, at least.

As ever yours,
Louise Herrick Wall.

IN LIGHTER VEIN — BEARDING WHISTLER IN HIS DEN — “RULES ARE MADE TO BE BROKEN” — SERVICEABLE FRENCH — THE PLAINT OF THE SOREHEAD — APE OWE ’EM — THEN AND NOW — LIMERICKS — XVII—THE FINANCIER FOX — XVIII—THE FASTIDIOUS YAK

AFTER-DINNER STORIES

BY SYLVESTER MENLO

THE following anecdote of Whistler was told by the painter himself.

One day when Whistler was absorbingly busy in painting the portrait of a prominent American gentleman, a ring was heard at his studio bell, and his man-servant appeared with the cards of a certain rich American lady and her husband, saying they would like very much to see him. He sent word that he was closely occupied with a sitter, and begged them to excuse him. But the servant brought back word that the lady had come from America for the distinct purpose of having him paint her portrait, and that it was necessary for her to have an interview. He immediately sent word down that interviews could be had only by appointment, and he regretted that he could not receive her. But despite this rebuff, the lady and her escort succeeded in passing the guard, and were soon heard mounting the stairs; whereupon Whistler said to his sitter:

“Oh, Jack, for heaven’s sake, do go and send her away!”

At the top of the landing the sitter found the lady and her husband. He expostulated with her on her intrusion, but was unable to make any impression upon her, and so reported to the painter, who finally came out with a handful of wet brushes between his fingers and advanced upon the enemy with a determined manner, and, as he went toward her, pushing his hand in front of him, to the imminent danger of spoiling a very beautiful costume arranged for an effective portrait.

It was very amusing to see Whistler punctuating his remarks with the jerks of his hand in which he had put two or three pencils to illustrate the situation.

“My dear Madam,” he said [forward gesture], “you must know [gesture repeated] that an artist [another gesture] cannot be interrupted in his work [deprecatory gesture], and I must ask you kindly to desist from this intrusion [forward gesture]. It is impossible for me to make arrangements [gesture] except by appointment, and I am obliged to ask you [gesture] to be so good as to excuse me.” As he approached her, the lady was obliged to retire a few inches, until she reached the top of the landing, when Whistler, seeing that she acknowledged her discomfiture, bade her good morning as she took her leave. The painter did not mention the lady’s name.

On the conclusion of the anecdote, one of his auditors said, “You must have a great many such experiences with the nouveaux riches, Mr. Whistler.”

“Ah, yes, ah, yes,” he said; “and it takes them a long time to grow up to the portraits we make of them.”

IN the early days of a certain club of New York, when it was rather harder sledding for the club than it is at the present time, in a meeting of the council the question came up as to the arrears of members’ dues, and the treasurer reported that one man was particularly recreant in this regard. It was in the winter, and the club was then maintaining throughout the day and evening beautifully heated and lighted quarters. At this time the only person in the club who frequented it every day was this delinquent, who, in addition to doing a large portion of his writing there, was accustomed to make considerable inroads upon the stationery of the club for home consumption.

At the meeting of the council referred to, there was protest against this state of affairs, and a determination was manifest to put an end to it, and after discussion the secretary was instructed to notify the member in question that his name had been dropped from the rolls of the club.

The question then arose whether there was anybody else who was in arrears, whereupon the treasurer reported that this was true of another member.

“Who can that be? Let us make an example of them both,” remarked one member, bringing his fist down on the table for emphasis. The reply was that it was Mr. X——, the poet.

“Oh, heavens!” replied another. “We can’t let X—— go. He’s too important to the club.”

Whereupon the resolution was amended to read as follows: “Resolved, that the secretary be instructed to drop the name of Mr. Q—— from the rolls of the club for non-payment of dues, and to retain the name of Mr. X—— for the same reason.”

SOME years ago a young American woman, Miss G——, met at a Paris pension a compatriot, a spinster. One evening the conversation turned upon the study of languages. Miss G——, though she had lived some time in Paris, expressed an indifference to acquiring French, and said, with an air of concluding the matter, that on the whole she thought a knowledge of French took away very much from the feeling of strangeness which one had in the country, to which Miss G—— warmly assented.

“But, Miss S——,” she said, “you certainly know some French; otherwise it would be very difficult for you to find your way about the city.”

“Oh, yes,” responded the older lady, “I know some French—quite enough for all practical purposes.”

“For instance,” pursued Miss G——, who herself spoke French very beautifully, “what do you do when you wish a cocher to drive faster?”

“Oh,” was the response, “that’s easy enough. I simply rise, poke him in the back with my parasol, and”—shaking her hands, palms forward, nervously—“I say, ‘Rapidilly, rapidilly!’ Oh, I know French enough for that.”

BY JAMES D. CORROTHERS

BY DEEMS TAYLOR

BY CAROLYN WELLS

AMBIDEXTROUS

“Oh! Jack, I’m so sorry you’ve hurt your arm.”

Copyright, 1912, by John T. McCutcheon

“WHEN IMMORTAL MEETS IMMORTAL”

A PROPHETIC CARTOON. BY JOHN T. McCUTCHEON

(Both Mr. Woodrow Wilson and Colonel Theodore Roosevelt are members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.)

This drawing, made for the Chicago “Tribune,” before the nomination of either candidate, is here reprinted by permission.

TEXT AND PICTURES BY OLIVER HERFORD

 THE DE VINNE PRESS, NEW YORK 

“Why it was easy enough. I tried the new way that I found in my Libby’s recipe booklet. Here it is—”

Libby’s Evaporated Milk

For pies and all baking, for soups, coffee, tea or cocoa Libby’s milk gives an added richness and a delicious flavor.

Libby’s milk is evaporated in clean, sanitary condenseries, located in the heart of the greatest dairy regions in the world. It is always pure and when open will keep sweet longer than raw milk.

Buy Libby’s milk for convenience and satisfaction. It’s the brand you can trust.

Send for a copy of Libby’s Milk Recipe Booklet

Libby, M^c̣Neill & Libby
Chicago

Original Advertisement

⇒
LARGER IMAGE