The Taylor-Trotwood Magazine (Vol. IV, No. 6, March 1907)

FATE’S IRONY

HISTORIC HIGHWAYS OF THE SOUTH — CHAPTER XVIII—THE BLUNDERS OF SHILOH

The more one studies Shiloh, the more contradictory it becomes. It will ever remain an incongruous battle. On the Union side it was a battle of unpreparedness—though not of dishonorable surprise—and on both sides a battle of blunders. And never in any battle of any war that I have ever read did Chance—old-fashioned, historic, blind Chance—play a more conspicuous part.

Some of the big chances, standing out in the light of to-day like gray ghosts above the battlefield, are:

First—The chance that cut Buell off one day too late for the Union cause.

Second—The chance that put him there one day too soon for the Confederates.

Third—The chance which Grant took—and which he says in his autobiography he would not have taken with the riper knowledge gained later in the war—of not entrenching.

Fourth—The chance of mud and rain, which delayed Johnston one day in bringing on the fight.

Fifth—The chance of one fateful bullet amid ten thousand harmless ones, striking an artery not hit once in ten thousand times in battle, and striking from the boards the only head on either side which had absolutely a clear conception of the entire battle to be, planned by himself with consummate skill and executed, till stricken to death, like a thunderbolt of Jove in the brain of Mars. He alone, I repeat, of all the host of generals, Federals and Confederates, who swarmed booted and bedecked around the contending hosts of that day, had definite plans, knew what was to be done, and held the doing of it in the hollow of his hand, and his name was Albert Sidney Johnston.

Sixth—The great chance Beauregard had for ending the fight on the first day, instead of calling off the troops until the fatal to-morrow.

Seventh—The chance—ay, the blunder—of Grant in recalling Lew Wallace from a position which a most gracious and generous fate had given him. A chance which gave to Wallace the opportunity for his own fame and the fame of Grant’s army—the chance of falling upon the flank and rear of the eager, neglectful, front-fighting Confederates, of breaking their hearts as Johnston’s death could never have done. This was a greater chance than Jackson had at Fredericksburg when he utterly defeated the Yankee army; it was as great as the chance Blücher had at Waterloo; greater than Bonaparte’s at Austerlitz.

In thinking of Stonewall Jackson and Johnston, did God in His wisdom know it was best that the Confederacy should not be, as we all now know it, and take these two men from life that it might not come to pass?

And there we are at it again: For God’s decision is man’s destiny.

Now, are not these chances enough? Or is it Law, Cause and Effect, Adjustment, Nature—God?

To know—to see clearly—to understand that one paragraph, who would not be willing to go hence to-night? For if it is God and immortality, there would be no fears, doubts, pitiless days of self communion, ending in that pale despair which strikes into the soul of every man whose soul is his own and who thinks. And if it is all Chance (a thought repellant and unbelievable to one who thinks), or even the Great Unchance of fixed, immutable, but unloving and uncaring Law—as many believe—then why suffer to this palsied, dust-turning end?

From the lips of babes, from the humble and the ignorant, what wisdom! Here is some of it:

On a morning after a cyclone where I once lived, amid the death of nearly threescore people, and the wreck of homes, a friend met an old negro, whose wife and children had been killed, and his home blown away. There was the usual compassion and condolence and trust from the learned man, who had lost nothing. But the old negro said: “Marster, the man that you calls God—yo’ God—it ’pears to me that he do about as much harm as he do good!”

I have wondered since—often and often—if our God—the God our little minds have been able to grasp—to whom some people falsely attribute revenge and cruelty and murder—if he is not as the old negro said; and I have prayed that I might live to know the God Which Is, and that he would permit me to understand the things which do stagger me now!

Were these things really chances? Take each one of them and sift it to its very beginning—follow up the broad stream of each till you find the first drop of its water trickling over the blind bluff of the thing unknown which staggers and stops you, and even to that last tiny drop you will stand and find no answer to the question, and before that drop you will stop again, look up at the stars and ask the same question: “Is it Chance, is it Law, or is it God?”

Let us take the first one: Why was Buell a day late? A thousand little things—a march from Nashville to Savannah, planned with ample time, yet delayed. What delays? Hundreds of them—follow up any one of them and it will end in the drop.

Let me give you one which came under my personal recollection: Some ten years ago I stopped one night at a hotel in Chicago, known as the Kuhn House. After registering, the proprietor sought me out. He had been one of Buell’s chief engineers, and upon seeing where I was from—Columbia, Tennessee—he wanted to know if the old bridge across Duck River at that point was still standing. “It was there,” he said, “that we saved Grant’s army and made him President instead of prisoner. I was given two days”—I think that is the time he stated—“to repair the bridge, the flooring of which had been torn up and the structure half burned before we reached it. But we had heard rumors of a great battle pending near Savannah and though we had received messages from General Grant saying there was no need for undue haste, we were marching for all we were worth. I felt, somehow, that great things were at stake, and I doubled my force and worked day and night completing the repairs so that the artillery might pass over in just half the time given me; and that time saved, put us in Savannah twelve hours to our good. I have often wondered what would have happened had I taken my full time to repair that old bridge over Duck River at Columbia.”

Chance. Might-have-been! Tell me what they are and I will tell you what God is!

Grant and Buell threshed out their differences years ago before they both passed into the shadowland, and nothing is more interesting than the grave and dignified controversy between these two men. Grant, great as he was in war, was out of his element with a pen in his hand; and in the written battle, Buell, to my mind, has worsted him. Nor was it Buell’s fault that this controversy arose. It came about from the exaggerated desire of the friends of the Army of the Tennessee to shield Grant and Sherman from the blunders they so clearly made and which should have been acknowledged by them like men, instead of trying to belittle the part that Buell played. For Buell had enough to his own credit.

In his very able article in The Century, Buell demonstrates at least very clearly to his own mind:

First. That Grant and Sherman were neglectful in preparing for this battle.

Second. That Grant’s army was too badly scattered, and he, himself, too far away from the front when the battle opened.

Third. That Grant and Sherman were surprised.

Fourth. That they were whipped.

Fifth. and (Q. E. D.) that Buell saved them.

Here is Buell’s very succinct, graphic and convincing statement in the beginning of his paper and argued throughout with the greatest ability:

It will be seen from the statement in his article that one of the strongest points he made as to the unpreparedness of Grant’s army is the repeated fateful turning of the flanks of the different divisions throughout the day, in one of which Prentiss was captured. He says:

From this alone he argues all the misfortunes of the different divisions acting independently and without a common head. Their flanks turned again and again as each fell back with no warning from the others. And this is his graphic statement of the critical ending of the first day’s fight:

His description of how things looked when he landed at Pittsburg Landing, of the demoralized condition of Grant’s army, is graphic in the extreme:

There lives near me in honor and good name, General Gates P. Thruston, one of the greatest scholars of the South, and perhaps the greatest living ethnologists of this country. He was with Buell, and corroborates his chief, and he refers me to General Lew Wallace’s oration, delivered at Shiloh, April 6th, 1903, in which General Wallace uses the following language:

Of the other great chance or blunder of Shiloh—Grant’s recall of Lew Wallace—let us now speak. Early in my study of this battle I stumbled on this so unexpectedly that it filled me with surprise. It was beyond doubt the greatest opportunity of Shiloh, as I mentioned in a previous paper. The story of it by Lew Wallace himself, is the most interesting paper ever written about that battlefield. For many years the distinguished author of “Ben-Hur” was made the scapegoat of Shiloh. He bore it like the man he was, but history will now vindicate him and nothing has given me greater pleasure than to contribute my share toward his vindication in this series of papers. At the time I arrived at the conclusion I did concerning General Wallace’s brilliant movement during the first day’s fight, I did not know that he had ever explained it himself, but seeing the position I took, and the conclusions I deduced, a friend has sent me the account General Wallace wrote of it himself and turned it over to General James Grant Wilson to be published by General Wilson after the death of the author. This was done last January by the Appletons,[1] and it is useless to add that the author of “Ben-Hur” has told in no usual way the graphic story of that blunder of his superior which made Wallace a scapegoat instead of a hero of that much misunderstood fight. I quote only part of it, but this part bristles with interest, and is enough:

“On the 6th, the memorable Sunday, a sentinel woke me from sleep on the steamboat serving me for headquarters. He reported cannonading up the river. When I reached the hurricane deck dawn was breaking. The air was humid and heavy, but still. The guns were quite audible. Five minutes—ten—and then the irregular pounding, sometimes distinct, sometimes muffled, kept scurrying down the yellow flood of the river. Directly the camp on the bluff became astir.

“My staff officers reported to me. One of them (Lieutenant Ware) I sent to Colonel Smith with directions to form his brigade and conduct it to ‘Stoney Lonesome.’ Another (Major James R. Ross) was dispatched at speed to Colonel Thayer with orders to have everything ready to move; continuing his ride, he bore an order to Colonel Wood of the Third Brigade to break camp, send baggage and property to the landing (Crump’s) and bring his regiments to the rendezvous at ‘Stoney Lonesome.’ The purpose of these orders was to have the division ready for movement when General Grant, who was at Savannah for the night, should pass in his dispatch boat going up the river.

“About 8:30 o’clock General Grant drew alongside, and a conversation, substantially (almost literally) the following, took place:

“‘Have you heard the firing?’ he asked.

“‘Yes, I have been listening to it since daybreak.’

“‘What do you think of it?’

“‘It is undoubtedly a general engagement.’

“‘What have you in your front?’

“‘There is nothing reported.’

“He then said, after thought: ‘Very well. Hold yourself in readiness for orders.’

“‘But, General, I ordered the concentration about daylight. I am ready now.’

“Again he reflected. He seemed uncertain. It afterwards came out that he believed the real attack would be on me. Presently he repeated: ‘Hold yourself in readiness to move in any direction.’ The pilot bell rang, the lashings were removed and his steamer put off up-stream hard as it could go.

“There was general disappointment among my officers. I was disappointed; but without remark I left the boat. My last order at the Landing was to have a horse saddled and bridled and hitched to a tree on the bluff, that a messenger coming down the river with an order for me might bring it without delay. Thereupon I rode out to ‘Stoney Lonesome,’ where Smith and Thayer were waiting, arms stacked. The Third Brigade had not yet arrived.

“The men were clustered together in groups. They were doing little talking. Their faces were turned to the south, listening. Occasionally musketry could be heard accompanying the artillery. Smith and Thayer and their staff officers collected around me, and were surprised when I told them the order General Grant had left me.

“Ten o’clock, and still the air laden with noises of the struggle going on—still no order; 10:30—yet no order. Smith got into his saddle and rode away, saying: ‘I guess Grant sees he can get along without us.’

“Eleven o’clock. The firing was no longer continuous, but at intervals and in outbursts. Thayer suggested that an order might have been started and the messenger intercepted. I thought not; for if the situation on the field called for us, the possibility of an accident to a courier by land would necessitate sending him by boat. So I ordered a staff officer, Major Ross, to ride to the landing and see if anything had come down by the river. About half a mile down the road he met an officer on the horse I had left, who asked him where General Wallace was. Ross told him; then he asked, in turn, if he had orders for General Wallace. The officer said he had, and gave the Major a paper, which the Major read. In a short time Captain Baxter, a Q. U. of General Grant’s, introduced himself to me and placed the paper in my hand, saying: ‘Here is an order.’

“Our watches showed 11:30 o’clock. The officers of my staff and of Thayer’s closed around me while I read. The paper was a half sheet of foolscap, dented with boot heels and soiled with tobacco juice, and it was folded, not enveloped. The writing was in pencil. Strangest of all, no signature was attached. I passed the paper to Thayer to read, and, turning to Baxter, asked: ‘How is the fighting going, Captain?’

“Baxter replied: ‘Very well. We are repulsing them all along the line.’

“The paper was returned to me, and I read it a second time, and, noticing its deficiencies, inquired:

“‘Who is this from, Captain?’

“‘General Grant.’

“‘Why is it not signed?’

“He then explained: ‘I received the order verbally. Not being used to carrying orders, I picked the paper from the floor of the cabin as I came down and wrote what you see. I was afraid I might make a mistake.’

“General Grant, speaking of the order, has several times said that he sent it to me not later than 10 o’clock; that it directed me to march to Pittsburg Landing by the lower or river road; that he gave it verbally to a staff officer, and did not know what it was when delivered to me. Of course, he could not know, but I do; and others, some dead, some living, who read it, have given their accounts of it, so that I can speak with confidence. Here it is—as I received it, mark you—almost verbatim:

“‘You will leave a sufficient force at Crump’s Landing to guard the public property there; with the rest of your division march and form junction with the right of the army, your line at right angles with river, and be governed by circumstances.’

“Observe, if you please, that the words by the lower or river road to Pittsburg Landing are omitted, leaving nothing but a naked direction for me to march and form junction with the right of the army.

“Do I deny General Grant’s version of the order? I believe he ordered me to Pittsburg Landing by the river road because he says he did, and because at 10 o’clock, when the whole army was slowly and sullenly retiring to the river, it was the order logically right and first to present itself. Moreover, by inserting in the body of the order actually brought to me the words ‘to Pittsburg Landing by the lower or river road,’ we have sense in the other direction to ‘form my line of battle at right angles with the river,’ otherwise without sense. At the right of the army, out three miles from the Landing, how was the angle to be ascertained? Why, then, did I not lead my column to Pittsburg Landing? And I answer, because the order Captain Baxter delivered to me contained no mention of Pittsburg Landing or of any road. Satisfied that I comprehended it, I passed the paper to Colonel Thayer; others about us at the moment read it. I gave it finally to Captain Kneffler, my Adjutant-General, who probably stuck it under his sword belt. It was lost during the day. On account of its informality, he attached no importance to it, and, as I shared the opinion, I never blamed him.

“My first thought was, where is the right of the army? Captain Baxter’s good news settled the point. If not where it was in the morning, then Sherman must have advanced. In short, Sherman’s camp was now my goal, and I knew it was just beyond the bridge at the junction of Owl and Snake Creeks, on the road from Pittsburg Landing to Purdy. To get to it by the shortest route and in the quickest time from the corner of the V my brigades were in, I must take the right-hand road. General Grant has said in a footnote of his ‘Memoirs’ that, in the absence of an express direction, if I had been an older soldier I would have marched to Pittsburg Landing, and thence, as from a base, out to Sherman. I think not. He forgot the news I had from Baxter as to the condition of the battle; besides which, by taking the right line of the road fork, the distance of the march would be reduced nearly, if not quite, three miles; in addition to which, again, the column would be on the very road Myers had bridged and corduroyed for me. So I sent word to Myers to lead out for the Owl Creek bridge next to Sherman’s camp.

“I asked myself, to be sure, if we are beating the enemy, and he is on the run, why the want of me? And why the order to form my line at right angles with the river? I could not answer, but rested implicitly on the order. Grant was on the ground—he knew—that was enough. The idea of defeat never entered my mind; and starting, as I was, with intelligence of a victory already won by our army, what ground is there for the imputation that I had the achievement of some special glory in purpose?

“The road we were pursuing had been well repaired. The cavalry had done its work substantially, and we bowled along. By the firing we could tell we were nearing the battle. We took no note of time. Somewhere about half after one o’clock—I remember the head of the column was reported in the vicinity of the Owl Creek bridge—a cavalry officer, quite young and capless, covered with mud, slashed across the forehead, rode up from the rear and asked:

“‘Are you General Wallace?’

“Without pulling rein, I replied.

“‘General Grant,’ he said, ‘has sent me to tell you to hurry up.’

“Up? To the right of the army, of course; so I returned: ‘Give General Grant my compliments, and tell him I will be up in a few minutes.’

“The courier rode off the way he came—a circumstance which, if I had had the slightest suspicion that my movement was in error, would have prompted calling him back for question.

“So, in absolute unconsciousness of mistake, I pushed on. Several times officers came to me and remarked upon the firing so far down on our left. And it was curious. Had we been repulsing the enemy, he should have been in the south, not so nearly in the southeast. But I settled the point, at least to my own satisfaction. ‘The fighting has ceased on front of Sherman; but they are keeping it up away over on our left.’ From the position my column was then in, the left of our army should have been well down toward the river in an almost easterly direction—certainly far enough in that direction to dispose of the only mistake General Grant attributes to me in the footnote corrective of the text in his ‘Memoirs.’

“Finally the revelation overtook me. A second messenger came up from the rear. It was Captain Rowley, well known as of General Grant’s staff. He it was who reported to his chief that he found me marching to Purdy and several miles farther from the battlefield than when I started. From ‘Stoney Lonesome,’ Purdy lies west; whereas the road upon which he overtook me runs almost due south, and Shiloh Church, marking the left of Sherman’s camp, could not have been to exceed two miles from where Rowley and I held the conversation, which I will give very nearly in exact words. The fact is, he was himself out of his reckoning, if not lost.

“‘I’ve had a devil of a time to find you,’ he said, in high excitement.

“‘I am sorry to have put you to trouble,’ I returned, checking my horse. ‘What is it?’

“‘The General has sent me to hurry you up.’

“‘That’s the second message of the kind in ten minutes. I don’t understand it.’

“‘Where are you going, anyhow?’

“‘To join Sherman.’

“‘Sherman!’

“‘Yes.’

“‘Come to one side with me.’ We went a little out of the road.

“‘Great God!’ he said, ‘don’t you know that Sherman has been driven from his camp? And that the whole army is now within half a mile of the landing, and it’s a question if we are not all to be driven into the river?’

“To my exclamations Captain Rowley went into details. There are kinds of fear; but nothing of that nature can shoot one’s marrow so to the core as the dread of making a mistake in a situation such as Rowley then flung me. Yet I could see with astonishing distinctness that I had led my division into the rear of the rebel army, or rather that the whole victorious army was between me and Grant.

“My first impulse was to go on. A vigorous assault upon the enemy’s rear might turn defeat into victory. Two years later, at City Point, General Grant told me that if he had known at Shiloh what he then knew he would have ordered me where I started to go. To which I add, if I had known the moment Rowley was talking to me that General Nelson was on the right bank of the Tennessee, with a possibility of crossing his division to the left bank at Pittsburg Landing before night, I would have continued my march at all hazards. As it was, I did not even know that General Buell was within fifty miles of Savannah. Why, in the morning at Crump’s Landing, General Grant did not tell me that a considerable part of the Army of the Ohio was within supporting distance of the Army of the Tennessee has been a mystery to me from that day to this. It must have been that he did not yet believe there was seriousness in the rebel demonstration at Pittsburg Landing.

“Captain Rowley, it is to be observed, did not estimate that there was a mistake in my movement to the right of the army. I told him it was plain that I was in the rear of the rebel army, and asked categorically: ‘What does General Grant want me to do? Do you bring me an order from him?’

“‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘General Grant wants you to go to Pittsburg Landing, and he wants you there like hell.’

“‘Very well, I shall obey him,’ I said. ‘But it will be necessary for me to back out of this and find a cross road to take the column into the river road. You have just come through the swamps; stay, now, and pilot me.’

“He declined, and presently left me; then, thinking to find a crossing into the river road before the head of the column would lap the foot, I sent Captain Kneffler, who was still with Major Myers at the Owl Creek bridge, intelligence of the altered situation and a desire that he would remain with Myers and help take care of the rear. Thereupon I ordered a counter-march by brigades. The tactics of the movement have been criticised, and I now think justly. I should have resorted to a right-about of column.

“Note, now, please—when we thus changed direction, from the south facing north, it was to march completely around the left flank of the Confederate army. Note, also—when the counter-march was ordered, not only was my cavalry holding the bridges at Owl Creek, scarcely a half-mile from the bluff on which the right of Sherman’s division rested in the morning, but Thayer’s advance guard had been some time turned into the Hamburg-Purdy road, and could not have been to exceed three-quarters of a mile from the bridge. And, marvelous to say, not a sign of the enemy had been seen! The inference is that the rear of the Confederates was unguarded. Indeed, it has been told me by reputable officers of their side that at the time of my approach there were fully as many of their soldiers looting and drinking in the captured camps as there were of ours burrowing under the bluffs down at the landing. Who shall tell the result had I been permitted to go on in my march? Many a time, seeing as we see in dreams, I have beheld Thayer’s deployed regiments moving through those tented streets, a wave crested with bayonets, and heard the demoralized hordes rushing panic-stricken upon their engaged lines. And now, in moments when personal ambition gets the better of me, I hold Rowley’s coming my greatest quarrel with Fortune. Oh, if he had remained lost in the woods an hour longer!”

SOME BEAUTIFUL WOMEN OF THE SOUTH

AUNT HETTY ON THE “WET AND THE DRY”

[The editors feel that they will not be treating their readers fairly unless they call especial attention to this picture of Alabama negro life and the unusual cleverness of the dialect.—Editors Taylor-Trotwood.]

The town of Luckville had been from its very beginning “wet;” that is, there had always been a saloon or “doggery,” at which whisky could be bought by the pint, quart or gallon.

But the discovery of phosphate beds in the river near town had brought in a number of new residents, many of them “temperance folks.” So at the next election the town voted “dry,” and no liquor could be bought there except from the drug store by a doctor’s prescription.

This law remained in force for three years, and now, on the verge of another election, the opposing factions were busily and earnestly at work for their respective sides. It was at this time and under these conditions that Aunt Hetty began loudly to proclaim her opinions on the “wet and the dry.”

“Humph! De whi’ fo’ks is all de time er-gittin’ up some kin’ er ructions er nuther ’long uv deyse’fs! Dat’s des whut mek me say whut I does—dat de whi’ fo’ks is de cuttin’upist an’ de gwineonist fo’ks dat de good Lawd evah made! Dey’s er-votin’, er dey’s er-fightin’, er dey’s er-co’tin’ up teh de cote-house, er dey’s er-doin’ sump’n er-nudder dat-a-way de whole indurin’ resistunce uv dey time! Now dey’s ’scussin’ uv de ’wet an’ de dry’! Humph!

“Hit’s all one teh me! I knows I ain’t er-gwine teh hab no bar-room mahse’f, an’ I ain’t er-gwine teh pestah nobuddy frum habin’ er bar-room ef dey wants one. Dat’s des perzac’ly whar I stan’s.

“I done seen de wuckin’s uv de bar-rooms, an’ ergin, on de yutheh han’, I done seen de wuckin’s uv de drug-sto’. I done study uv ’em bofe thu’ de ’newvehmunts uv dat ole niggah Pomp, whut nomuhnates hisse’f mah husbun’—do’ I ain’t nevah seen no mighty ’mount uv husbun’ ’bout him. He’s des er lazy, biggity, ornerary ole black niggah, whut got hisse’f tied up in de bon’s er macremony des feh teh git his vittles an’ his lodgmunts. But he done bin er-livin’ er-long uv me now er-gwine on a mighty heap uv yeahs, an’ I got so used teh see him er-hangin’ ’roun’ mah house tell hit ’pyears lak I cyarn’ do bedoutin’ him—lak sump’n’s er-missin’ ef he ain’t dar.

“But ’scusin’ all dat, he sho’ is de ontemperatist man, white er black, dat evah wuz bawn! He des natch’ly bleedged feh teh drink ef he knows dar’s enny kin’ uv liquidmunts er-roun’! W’en de whi’ fo’ks had de bar-rooms ole Pomp he got pow’ful pyeart! He tuck’n tuck my ax an’ went all er-bout er-splittin’ an’ er-cuttin’ up wood—but de Lawd knows he ain’t nevah cut an’ split none feh me! An’ den he digged in de blossom patches feh de whi’ fo’ks. An’ let er-lone all er dat, mah hens got teh doin’ mighty cur’s—dey’d cackle lak dey wuz er-layin’ pow’ful, but I nevah could fin’ de fust rudemunts uv er aig. I mought er done a onjustice to de po’ ole niggah, but I ’spicioned him ’caze I hearn tell uv him er-sellin’ aigs, an’ hit don’t ’pyeah natch’l feh er man teh sell aigs w’en he ain’ got no hens uv his own feh teh lay ’em. Dem two ingrejunces—hens an’ aigs—des ’pintedly b’long to one er-nuther. Ef you got hens you’ll git aigs, an’ ef you ain’t you won’t. Dat is, not natch’ly! Uv co’se dey is shawt cuts you kin take feh to git ’em, an’ I ’spicioned mah ole man uv takin’ dem vehy cuts—an’ mah aigs wid ’em.

“Well, dem an’ his wuckin’s fotch him in a little sal’ry, an’ evah night he’d go teh de bar-room. Ef he had fo’ bits he’d buy er fo’-bit bottle; ef he had two bits he’d buy er two-bit bottle; so, ’cordin’ teh his bits wuz de size uv his bottle. Den he’d stan’ er-roun’ an’ tell his ’speriunces an’ notate his tales, an’ sing his chunes, an’ de gen’l’mun would treat him to beeh an’ segahs. An’ des es long es dat bar-room stay open, ole Pomp, he’d stay dar. An’ evah night hit wuz de same thing! Evah regitimate cent Pomp could scrape up stopped slap dar in dat bar-room!

“So I wusht teh de Lawd de whi’ fo’ks ’d shet up dem bar-rooms, an’ bless de Libbin’ Goodness, dey tuck’n done dat vehy thing!

“Den dey made de law dat nobuddy could git er drink ’ceptin’ ef dey wuz sick an’ had de doctah’s subscription feh teh git it by. W’en dat ole Pomp got er clear ondehstan’in’ uv dat ’ar law he des hump hisse’f! De niggah wuck so hahd an’ step er-roun’ so pyeart, an’ look so ’ligious-minded dat I got mighty holped up erbout him. But, umph-umph, honey, dat ole niggah, he sho’ sly! W’en Sat’d’y night come he ties er hank’cheh ’roun’ his ole jaws an’ gits him er stick an’ limps up teh de drug sto’. W’en de doctah notice him he say, ‘O-o-oh, Lawdy-Lawdy,’ lak he mos’ daid. An’ de doctah ax him, ‘Whut’s de mattah wid you, Uncle Pomp?’ An’ dat weekid ole Christyun niggah, whut’s es strong es er natch’l bawn oxen, he ’lowed, ‘O-o-oh, Lawdy, doctah, I feels pow’ful bad, thank Gawd!’ ‘Whut seem teh huht you now?’ sez de doctah, an’ ole Pomp ’spon’s back teh him, ‘Well, suh, I don’t perzac’ly know des whut it is. I got er miz’ry in de off side, an’ I’se afeerd I’se busted de rim outeh mah stomach. I knows I got a achin’ in de pit uv mah back, an’ mah livah’s all gummed up! An’ dis laig—o-o-oh—hit seem lak hit ain’t hung right er sump’n—hit ain’t plum, somehow. So I thought I’d ax you ef you’d be so onscruperlous, suh, as teh gib me er subscription teh git a drap uv whisky teh rub on intun’ly, suh, on dese stiff ole j’ints uv mine, ef you please, suh.’

“So dat ole backslidin’ niggah, he wuck on de doctah’s symphonies tell de doctah gib him de subscription, an’ he gib de doctah fo’ bits. An’ on top uv dat he hatter gib er dollar an’ er quawteh fo’ de vehy same kin’ an’ same remount uv whisky dat he git frum de bar-room feh fo’ bits befo’! Lawzy, chillun, hit wuz des lak I bin er-tellin’ you! An’ evah week hit wuz de same prefawmunts tell hit set me teh studyin’. An’ I done ’pintedly come to dis ’clusion, dat ef er man is got teh hab whisky—des natch’ly boun’ an’ ’bleedged feh teh hab it, hit don’t mek much diff’unce whedder it come frum de bar-room er frum de drug sto’. An’ ef dey calls de bar-room de ‘wet’ an’ de drug sto’ de ‘dry,’ den de mos’ diff’unce is ’twixt an’ ’tween er dollah an’ six bits—countin’ de subscription—an’ fo’ bits. So I tells you dis, honey, w’en it comes to bar-rooms an’ drug sto’s hit’s des nip an’ tuck—mos’ly tuck.”

MY LOVE

By LILLIAN WESTER

OLD HICKORY

The most noted character in American history, one whom the coming ages will number among the truly great, was born at a point so obscure that its exact location is still in dispute. On the remote frontier of the Carolina colony, whose boundary lines were uncertain; far up on the forest-clad banks of the Catawba, whose slopes were just beginning to feel the pioneer’s axe; on the fifteenth day of March, 1767, Andrew Jackson was presented to humanity.

The story of his mother partakes of the tragic, the heroic and the pathetic. The daughter of a fairly prosperous linen weaver of Carrickfergus, she linked her destiny with young Andrew Jackson, a Scotch-Irishman, and, after a few years at home, they left the shores of the Emerald Isle, seeking fortune in the new colonies. Scarcely had they fixed their abode in the Waxhaw Settlement and begun to make a home, when death claimed the young husband, and the bereaved widow was left almost destitute, with two young sons, Hugh and Robert, her sole dependence. Within a few days Andrew was born, and necessity forced her to send her eldest son, Hugh, to live with a relative, while she and the two younger made their home with another.

Here in the primeval forests young Andrew began to imbibe that love of liberty which fitted him later so to bless humanity. His education was obtained in the old field school, but, impatient of its restraints and loving best the rifle and the chase, he spent the earlier years in developing the sinews of a vigorous manhood.

When yet a mere lad the sweep of the Revolution reached the Waxhaw Settlement, and Mrs. Jackson willingly gave her two older boys to the service of the colonies, but clung to her youngest born until the insult of a British officer gave intensity to an inclination that was destined to cost England so dear.

Peace found young Andrew bereft of mother, brothers and worldly inheritance, but with a vigorous constitution, a chivalrous sense of moral duty and a deep, abiding love for his country, he set out resolutely upon an unexampled career, the chief characteristic of which in earlier years was reckless daring, in which he was unconsciously laying the foundations for that intrepid adherence to right principle that later set him apart and above his fellows. Of uncommon mental endowment, he easily acquired such education as was then obtainable and adopted the profession of law, and when but twenty-one years of age he fell in with the adventurous spirit of the times on the frontier and made his way with the pioneers into the Southwest Territory. After lingering in the Watauga settlements a time, he followed the trail still farther into the wilderness until he reached the beautiful basin of the Cumberland, where he took up his final abode.

There, from the first, he took his place easily and naturally as a leader of men and began to work out that great destiny which will link his name indissolubly with liberty and free government as long as men love to be free, the symbol of the soundest and strongest fundamental principle in government ever conceived by man.

Measured by the moral standards now obtaining, many of his acts and habits in those earlier years cannot be justified, although there is little to indicate that they were held to be reprehensible then. His chief characteristic was towering and intolerant mastery of men, his greatest foible was his love for a race-horse, and he left nothing further to be done in following both bents, and yet he was actuated in everything by the highest conception of honor and principle, and imparted dignity and the virtue of his own indomitable character to every transaction in which he engaged.

The annals of men do not afford, and fiction has never conceived, an instance of more sublime devotion to womanhood than Andrew Jackson held for his wife. He loved her with an intensity of tenderness that was the exact antithesis of that fierce and stormy love of adventure and aptitude for arms that possessed him; and if nothing else were known of him but this, it would enshrine his name forever. She could not have been less than a charming, loving woman to have deserved the devotion of such a man and held it to the end, and she sleeps now by his side under a slab inscribed with a tribute by his hand that for entreating tenderness of sweet affection is scarcely paralleled:

Jackson’s character as a warrior and a statesman are so conspicuous as to dwarf by comparison his record as a lawyer. It is said that he filed seventy lawsuits for clients in the first month of his practice, and that out of one hundred and ninety-two cases before the court in 1790 he was counsel in forty-two. Three years later his cases numbered seventy-two out of one hundred and fifty-five, and the next year he increased this to two hundred and twenty-eight out of three hundred and ninety-seven. It was no inconspicuous lawyer who could make such record as this. But for his other resplendent traits, his reputation as a jurist might rest more securely, but it doubtless suffered much by his own indisposition to build his fame upon it.

He was only eight years in Tennessee before being made Major-General of militia, which in those times meant active service in the field. His career as a soldier needs scant recapitulation here to establish the statement that it was characterized by a most unselfish patriotism. He hesitated at nothing when his country’s interests were in jeopardy, creating opportunities and anticipating the power to meet them, daring even to invade a friendly territory, to disobey superior orders, to take fate and destiny in his own hands at any peril to himself.

It was this same unchanging, unconquerable spirit of invincible daring that characterized his administration of the government and nerved him to defy and conquer the money power that was then dominating the country through the United States Bank and gave him power to meet and quell the turbulent and dangerous doctrine of the right of a state to nullify a proper act of Congress.

The most conspicuous service rendered to mankind by Andrew Jackson was the creation and enforcement of the political cult that is expressed in his name. “Andy Jackson Democracy” has no mere partisan significance, but it denotes a principle and power in popular government that is to save to America forever the right of the people to rule themselves—the invincible strength of a central government based upon the supreme power of the separate states acting in harmony.

What was the secret of Jackson’s power? Whence came the attraction that drew men to him as the magnet draws the needle? It is not difficult to find the secret of his popularity with the pioneers. He appealed to them through his devotion to the “sport of kings,” for no man loved a fast horse or would risk more upon its prowess than he, and he led the sport in which the people most delighted. And then he stood first in all the feats of daring to which frontiersmen were addicted—a perfect shot, swift of foot, a mighty wrestler, capping it all off with a spirit of chivalrous gallantry and a gentlemanly bearing that rendered him superb. But what drew the sage of Monticello to him? What gave him such mastery in statecraft and charmed men to his standard? It was his inherent, unswerving love of human liberty, his tense loyalty and stern faith in the institutions of his country, his immaculate conception of right and duty, and the superb fearlessness that possessed him, that made the man convincing.

It is said that Jackson has more biographers than any other national character. His career was so replete with incidents inviting interpretation that writers are drawn to it like flies about the sugar-bowl. Of no other man can historians resort to panegyric in substitute of statement and be justified by public criticism. There are perhaps more anecdotes told of him than any other public man, and never one that does not denote courage and power and strength. Indicative of his intuitive powers of quick decision is the story that when the subject of a site for a new treasury building to replace that burned by the British was broached one day, he was walking on Pennsylvania Avenue. With instant emphasis, he struck his stick upon the ground and said: “Put it here!” And there it stands to-day.

No man has lived who had a simpler human way of loving his friends and hating those who hurt him than Andrew Jackson. His fiercest wrath, however, was reserved for those who dared traduce his wife. In his Florida campaign, when supplies failed the army, he set the example of eating nuts and roots and berries. One of his friends at the other end of a long table at a barbecue became involved in a difficulty, which Jackson no sooner perceived than he cried, “I’m coming!” and, mounting the table, strode its full length to the rescue. He was singularly tender to little folks. How touching is the picture of this grim warrior, the seasoned duelist, the fierce hater, tenderly wrapping a sugar-rag for a ragged papoose found in a Creek village after a battle, and nursing it until he could send it to a friendly woman in Montgomery! Such was his hold upon the affections of his people that a certain traveler, reaching a Tennessee town the day after he was elected President, found the populace engaged in applying tar and feathers to two reckless burghers who had dared to vote against the General! And there is still a happy valley somewhere in remote Arcadia, we are told, where the old men hobble to the polls quadrennially in November and cast a loyal vote for “Andy Jackson.”

His faculty for remembering faces and names was marvelous. In 1832, returning from Washington to Nashville, he was tendered a reception at Cincinnati. A rough-looking fellow was seen trying to make his way past the reception committee. The General’s keen eye spied him and at once he darted forward. “Hello, Ned!” was his hearty greeting, and, turning to his bewildered committee, he explained: “One of my old boys in the Fourth Infantry, gentlemen—had to release him from the guard-house once or twice for fighting or stealing chickens, but he was a good soldier, gentlemen.” “How long since you have seen him, General?” asked one of the committee. “Oh,” was the matter-of-course answer, “it’s about twelve years. I saw him on guard at the Governor’s house the day I left Pensacola.”

Early in the spring of 1845, after his arduous campaign in Polk’s behalf, General Jackson’s health began to fail. He met the idea of death with that same fortitude which nerved him when a lad of thirteen to suffer a sabre cut rather than black a British officer’s boots.

His career, which had been like the blaze of the sun in the fierceness of its glory, melted into a passing away as tranquil as a summer evening. The majestic energy of an indomitable will gave way to the gentleness of a heart rich in the tenderest affections. No man in private life more completely possessed the hearts of all around him; no man ever retired from public life with more complete mastery of the affections of the people. No man was more truly and typically American in his ideas; no man expressed them more boldly or more sincerely. He was always, under all circumstances, wholly sincere and true. I cannot do better, in closing, than to quote from George Bancroft, the historian.

“Up to the last,” he says, “he dared do anything that it was right to do. He united personal and moral courage beyond any man of whom history keeps the record.

“Before the nation, before the world, before coming ages, he stands forth the representative, for his generation, of the American mind. And the secret of his greatness is this; by intuitive conception he shared and possessed all the creative ideas of his country and his time; he expressed them with dauntless intrepidity; he enforced them with an immovable will; he executed them with an electric power that attracted and swayed the American people. The nation, in his time, had not one thought of which he was not the boldest and clearest expositor.

“Not danger, not an army in battle array, not wounds, not widespread clamor, not age, not the anguish of disease, could impair in the least degree the vigor of his steadfast mind. The heroes of antiquity would have contemplated with awe the unmatched hardihood of his character; and Napoleon, had he possessed his disinterested will, could never have been vanquished. He conquered the wilderness; he conquered the savage; he conquered the bravest veterans trained on the battlefields of Europe; he conquered everywhere in statesmanship; and when death came to get the mastery over him, he turned the last enemy aside as tranquilly as he had done the feeblest of his adversaries, and passed from earth in the triumphant consciousness of immortality.”

Notwithstanding the fact of his incomparable successes at the bar, on the bench, in Congress and on the field of battle, which demonstrate his sense and genius, and although his state papers compare well with those of any President, there are yet those living who believe him to have been illiterate. If Colonel Colyar’s masterly “Life and Times of Andrew Jackson” had naught else to commend it, it would deserve the commendation of the American people in its complete refutation of the charge of illiteracy, all-sufficient and incontestable.[2]

His faithful old body-servant remained at the Hermitage and kept his grave green through all the years, and to all visitors who came he talked about “de Gin’ral” as though he were still in the flesh. The story is told that soon after the death of Old Hickory a visitor asked old Alfred if he thought General Jackson went to heaven.

“I don’t know, boss,” promptly replied the old man, “whether de Gin’ral went to heben or not, but dar’s one thing I does know—he did if he wanted to!”

DALE’S HIGHLANDERS

One of the finest examples of what discipline can do in affecting the conduct of soldiers and others whose lives are passed amid dangerous surroundings, is furnished by the charge of Dale’s Highlanders at the battle of New Orleans, January 8, 1815, just ninety-two years ago.

In order to understand just what this charge meant to the brave Scots, it is necessary to summarize briefly the events which preceded the memorable battle, a fight which, as one of General Andrew Jackson’s cannoneers expressed it, “was lost before the fighting began,” for a peace was signed while the preliminary movements were going on.

A powerful British fleet with a large military force under Sir Edward Pakenham, brother-in-law of the Duke of Wellington, sailed from the West Indies to attack New Orleans and arrived in Lake Borgne about December twentieth, 1814. The small American flotilla which opposed their landing was destroyed, and the troops disembarked on Pine Island.

Finding themselves in a swamp, the British floundered through the mud until about nightfall of the first day of the advance, ground suitable for a bivouac was discovered near the Mississippi River, and not far from the position along the Rodriguez Canal, which had been selected by General Jackson for the defense of the city. Here, behind hastily constructed works of mud and cotton bales, were drawn up the defenders, composed of a few United States regular artillery, volunteers from New Orleans and Kentucky, many of the latter unarmed; a force of pirates and smugglers from Baratara Bay, under their captains, Dominique and Beluche; and last, but not least, about twenty-five hundred backwoods riflemen from the Cumberland Valley, in all not above thirty-two hundred men.

Hardly were the invaders established in their bivouac before they were rudely disturbed by a night attack from the Americans, during which they, for the first time, discovered the prowess of the backwoodsman and his long rifle, and during the short fight which followed lost two hundred and thirteen killed and wounded, and seventy captured.

Reinforcements, which increased their number to thrice that of the Americans, having arrived from the fleet, the invaders remained in or near their bivouac until the morning of December thirtieth, 1814, but never for a moment were they permitted to be at peace; for by day their hiding places were sought out by the guns of the gunboat Carolina, at anchor in the river, and as soon as night enfolded them the backwoodsmen took up the bloody work. Sentries were shot down as they walked their posts, and to enjoy the warmth or light of the camp fire was but to court almost certain death from the unerring rifles. Knife and tomahawk also played their parts, until the harassed British were not only panic-stricken at the swift death which overtook so many of them, but bitterly complained of the uncivilized methods of their adversaries.

The situation became so serious that Sir Edward himself came up from the ships to take over the command from General Keane, and plans were at once perfected to relieve matters by attacking the troublesome enemy. The commander in chief could not be made to believe that there was anything to be feared from backwoodsmen and untried militia when they were confronted by the pride of the British army in battle formation.

The Americans had been very busy with their works in the meantime, and had also mounted thereon five small field pieces, so that when, on the morning of the fourth day after Sir Edward’s arrival, a force of about two thousand men advanced to storm their position they were ready and met the adversaries with such a storm of well directed lead and iron that they were repulsed, and being unable to withdraw from the field sought shelter in the ditches and drains until, under cover of darkness, they were able to retreat, leaving over one hundred dead upon the field.

Sir Edward had become convinced that these men behind the mud walls were something different from the militia he had been accustomed to denounce, and therefore called a council of war and erected a battery composed of sugar hogsheads, mounting thirty-five guns within a third of a mile from General Jackson’s works. The attack was then renewed, but it was a repetition of the first one, so far as results were concerned, for the infantry were repulsed and the battery with its thirty-five guns completely dismantled. The British loss in this attack was eighty-odd killed and wounded, beside the thirty-five guns.

Reinforcements again arriving from the fleet. Sir Edward, furious and chagrined, determined, for his honor as well as for his safety, to renew the assault with such a force as would overwhelm the militia by mere weight of numbers, if nothing else, and therefore remained inactive for eight days in order to allow his men to get over the ill-effects of the two former failures, and to bring up every available man for the final effort.

On the morning of January 8th the British were early astir, and it was soon discovered from the American lines that the enemy was about to deliver his assault in three columns. General Keane’s Foot and Colonel Rennie’s Rifles formed the left of the British line; General Gibbs, with three thousand Peninsular Veterans, the right; Dale’s Highlanders, nine hundred and fifty strong, the center, and a force of about two thousand foot, under General Lambert, as a reserve—in all, about eighty-five hundred men.

Over them all hung a silence as of the grave, for none knew better than these men that they were about to march to almost certain death at the hands of the backwoodsmen and their long rifles. At break of day, by rocket signal, the columns moved into position; but some plantation buildings which concealed the advance of the Rifles having been set on fire by the American guns and the attack unmasked, Colonel Rennie promptly ordered a charge, for he had already been discovered by Commodore Patterson in the Louisiana, whose guns were decimating his ranks. The riflemen were immediately met by such a hail of bullets and grape from the breastwork guns and the backwoods rifles that they hesitated, halted, and the few that remained erect finally sought safety in flight, leaving General Keane, Colonel Rennie, and two-thirds of their number killed or wounded on the field.

Owing to some misunderstanding, the attack of General Gibbs’ column was delayed, but, after some hesitation, advanced to within one hundred yards of the works, where they were met by such a storm of American lead as to kill General Gibbs and to cause his men to melt away like snow before the summer sun.

Word of all this came to Sir Edward, who was with the Highlanders, and Colonel Dale was at once ordered to advance ahead of the wreck of General Gibbs’ force, which command was at once obeyed by the Scots, who started forward steadily and with bagpipes playing, only to be engulfed in the rout of the comrades in retreat. Colonel Dale was killed, Sir Edward Pakenham fell pierced by three balls, and, as all that remained of the other columns were in retreat, the fight was lost beyond repair.

The brave and thoroughly disciplined Highlanders alone remained. They could not advance, they would not retreat, so they remained where they were, under the galling fire of the long rifles, until out of the original nine hundred and fifty scarce four hundred remained alive and erect. Lieutenant Lavack achieved the distinction of being the only Englishman over the walls that day. The remaining Highlanders surrendered and no hostile British soldier remained upon the field. The fight was short, sharp and decisive, lasting but thirty minutes.

General Lambert, with the reserves, did not come within range, but of the six thousand British actually engaged, two thousand one hundred had fallen—more than one in every three. Of the fourteen hundred wounded, six hundred died within the week. Seven hundred and thirty dead were buried where they fell.

The American loss was only eight killed and thirteen wounded by artillery fire. The British retreated to their ships and sailed away, and New Orleans was saved, but discipline only could have caused that magnificent charge of Dale’s Highlanders at a time when they very well knew the battle was lost and the way in which they were to go was strewn with the bodies of those who had gone before.

THE FALSE FRANCISCO

Jones felt bad about it. Demurely distant, she sat in the patio of her father’s casa, black of eye and red of lip, the most interesting sight he had seen south of the Rio Grande; and not a decent word could he say to her in her own language.

For Jones had never been in Mexico before—nor did his course at Columbia embrace the study of Spanish. Had his knowledge of baseball, football and highballs been a source of honor, no doubt he would have graduated at the head of his class; but to his everlasting shame be it said, he was sadly deficient in the languages. So he gave vent to a few remarks of some warmth—in English, of course, confident that the little señorita would not detect the quality of his foreign expressions.

Now, Jones was not in Chihuahua for his health, either in the strict or common usage of the word; in fact, his shoulders were rather broad for his height, and the healthy color of his cheek carried no sign of affliction. And as for the other use of the word, Jones had departed from his home in the States with ease and without undue haste—nor had a description of his person been wired to the Mexican officials on his departure.

But Jones was a tourist in the truest sense. He had nowhere in particular to go, and he took his time to get there. In less than three days after his arrival in Chihuahua he was worse than a peon about the sunny side of the house; in less than a week he had caught the spirit of mañana and could lie like a native when the occasion required; in truth, he was an idler in an idle land.

After a few days in Chihuahua Jones had secured apartments at a Mexican hotel of the smaller sort, the better to get in touch with the language and customs of the people as soon as possible. His landlord was one of the wiry, working class of Mexicans, with a genial smile that never called for less than un peso; but it was the landlord’s dark-eyed daughter who caught the eye of Jones.

Now, she was seated on one of the long, low benches in the patio of her father’s hotel, her head slightly shaded by the flowers and foliage behind her, while the sun streamed in spots and showed the clear color of her face and hands. Jones thought he had never seen anything quite so charming as the play of sunshine and shadow—and the pretty head with its black lace mantilla. But how was he to express emotion? or admiration? or anything? Certainly not in Spanish—if so, it must of necessity be a brief and painful expression.

Still, Jones was of a sturdy New England stock that had despised difficulties as far back as the Mayflower, and was not to be deterred by the lack of a common medium. He cleared his throat, shuffled his feet so as to attract attention to his maneuver and crossed the patio to where she was seated.

“Do you habla English, señorita?” he began, bravely enough.

“No, señor,” she said, with a demure droop of the eyes and a little smile.

“The deuce you don’t!” he started to ejaculate, but wisely refrained, aware that its appropriate application would hardly appeal to her. Instead, he began again: “Ahem!—perhaps—er—I might hablo Spanish, then: no sabe mucho myself,” he added, as if with a sudden inspiration.

But the maid merely tapped the stone floor with a small slipper to the distant music of a band in the plaza around the corner, and made no effort to help him in his dilemma, though she sent him a smile of reassurance when he flushed and made a move to withdraw.

And then a glorious idea occurred to Jones. There was Francisco, the remarkably radiant Francisco, all smiles because of his connection with the casa! Francisco was not only chief cook, but enjoyed the distinction of serving his own dishes in the dining room—and washing them afterwards.

Jones remembered with satisfaction the smattering of choice English, with a French flavor, that Francisco was wont to perpetrate on the guests of the house. Francisco’s English was bad enough, thought Jones, but not quite as bad as it might have been—especially in those lucid intervals when he was anxious to see if the Americano’s purse-string pulled con mucho gusto. Certainly Francisco should be given a chance; he should act as interpreter; he should tell the señorita what he (Jones) thought of her, and perchance he (Jones) might find out what she thought of him.

“Eet ees that the señor weeshes that I make the speech for heem?” Francisco inquired, with a polite shrug of the shoulders, when Jones explained to him the emergency of the situation.

“That’s just it,” Jones answered; “you see, neither of us understands the other, and—well, I rather like her looks, you know, Francisco. Sabe?”

“Si, señor,” and Francisco cleared away the remainder of a highly seasoned supper—then the two left the dining-room together. There were no longer any sunbeams to bring out the beauty of the flowers in the patio; but the landlord’s daughter was still sitting there in the twilight.

“Señorita—” Francisco paused with eloquent eyes, then turned to Jones for further instructions.

“Tell her,” said Jones, in a hoarse whisper, “tell her that she’s the most exquisite—no, no, don’t tell her that—tell her that she will catch cold out here in the patio,” he stammered.

“Señor, the señorita will run far eef you espeak like that,” Francisco remarked, with a deprecatory gesture of his brown hands.

“Well, tell her that I am delighted to see her looking so well,” was the next effort of the persistent Jones.

“But yes—that ees more well.” Then Francisco turned to the daughter of the house, indicated Jones with a curve of his thumb and spoke rapidly in Spanish. It might as well have been Dutch for all the good Jones got out of Francisco’s enthusiastic expressions. But the señorita smiled sweetly enough, and gave a glance from under her long lashes that was worth a world of trouble to Jones.

“A-ha!—we’re coming on, eh—Francisco? Now, tell the young lady that I—that she looks like a lovely little—er—rosebud.”

Again Francisco jabbered eloquently, eyes, hands and tongue making his meaning clear, apparently, for the señorita shyly drooped her head and replied coyly.

“Tell her,” prompted Jones, devouring the star-like face, set in its frame of jetty ringlets, “tell her I am going to walk around the plaza. Ask her if she is going.”

“She says she cannot to go this night,” was the translation he received. “She ees painful.”

“Well—er—tell her—er—”

“That you go to dream of her, you theenk of her alone only?” suggested the accommodating Francisco.

“Yes, and—er—tell her that I—that we—will talk again. Tell her that—will you, Francisco?”

After Francisco had conveyed this expression in its proper form, with all the courtesy of the occasion, the two retired—Francisco to the cocina, where the dishes were waiting to be washed, Jones to promenade in the plaza and swing his cane to the music of La Paloma. Visions of further conversations with the distracting beauty flitted before him as he strolled under the orange trees—visions wherein the useful Francisco figured not at all; wherein he saw himself holding a little rose-leaf hand and uttering sweet nothings which needed neither bad Spanish nor broken English for their interpretation.

Jones was shocked, to say the least; and for a moment he could hardly catch his breath, much less command the attention of the lovers. There they were, two of them—in fact, it usually takes two to complete such a scene. The young Romeo was leaning against the bars of her casement window, his face upturned to hers; their hands were clasped through the grating, their heads were close together, and every now and then Jones thought he saw—

It was an ideal scene—to the participants—re-acted there in the moonlight from some Shakespearean play, till Jones rang down the curtain with a laugh of ominous portent. For one of the lovers was Francisco and the other—well, the other was the landlord’s daughter.

“Hello, there, Francisco, you rascal—what are you doing there?” Jones demanded. It was eleven o’clock and Jones had just returned from the plaza.

Francisco turned quickly, dropped the little hand held in his own, said something of sinister sound in Spanish which could hardly be translated into English, then—“Eet ees you, ees eet, señor?—so surpreesed am I! I—I was—how the Engleesh?—hold hands weeth the señorita, ees eet not?”

“It is,” commented Jones, rather emphatically: “but I would like to know what right you—you—”

“You see,” interrupted Francisco, cheerfully conscious that explanations were in order, “the señorita have made the promeese to marry weeth me. We have eengaged—ees eet not?—to marree us if the papa of the señorita wills.”

“Ah, I see!” and Jones gave a low whistle of dawning discernment. Then a sarcastic smile spread over his face.

“But may I be so bold as to inquire, Francisco,” he resumed, “what part you played in that interesting conversation of ours this evening? Why didn’t you tell me you were engaged to her?”

“Eet was thees way, señor. Eet was the leetle trick of mine to see the señorita and say the speech for myself. When you say to me to tell the señorita that you are delighted to see her look so well, I say the Americano ees deelighted to see you look so well, señorita—and Francisco lofe you!”

“Well, I’ll be hanged! You infernal—” but Jones checked himself.

“And when the señor say to tell the señorita that he will be glad to say the speech some other time, I tell the señorita that Francisco will be glad to meet her to-night at her weendow on the Calle Aldama. For I love the señorita—ees eet not so, queridita?”

For answer a small hand found its way through the bars of the window to the false Francisco, and Jones heard a low laugh of love and music.

THE STATE HOUSE OF MARYLAND

The most historic building in Maryland is the State House at Annapolis, the present one having been preceded by two others. The first was built in 1696, and a curious account of its condition is to be found in Volume 20, of the Maryland Archives. This building had a short but somewhat tragic history.

In the Journal of the House of Delegates for 1699, it is recorded: “Memorandum that on thursday, July 13, about four or five of the clock in the afternoone a violent flash of Lightning broke into the State House at Annapolis, the house of Delegates being there sitting, which Instantly Killed Mr. James Crauford one of the members for Calvert County & hurt & wounded Severall other members and Shattered & broke most part of the Dores and window Cases belonging to the said house & sett the said State house on fier in one of the upper Chambers & Severall other Damages but the fire was presently Quenched by the Diligence & Industry of his Excy. Nathaniel Blakistone his Majtyes. Govr.”

In the Journal of 1702 it is referred to as a “Stadt House.”

In 1704 the State House burned down, but how the fire originated neither the records nor tradition show.

The second State House was finished in 1706, and stood where the present one now stands. It was in the form of an oblong built of brick, and entered by a hall, opposite to the door of which were the judges’ seats, for this building seems to have been used as a courthouse as well as a State House. Over the judges’ seats was a full length portrait of Good Queen Anne.

A cupola or dome surmounted the building, and was surrounded with a balustrade and furnished with seats for those who wished to view the scenery.

On the north of this State House an armory was built, in which the arms of the Province were arranged, and when the room was lighted up by the wooden chandelier, the effect must have been brilliant.

Portraits of Queen Anne and Lord Baltimore hung in this room, which was often used as a ballroom.

On the west stood the famous King William School, established under an act of 1696, and afterwards succeeded by the well-known St. John’s College.

In 1769 £7,000 sterling was appropriated to erect the present State House, the corner stone of which was laid by Governor Robert Eden on March 28, 1772.

David Ridgely, the annalist of Annapolis, tells us that “there is a tradition that on Governor Eden’s striking the stone with a mallet, which was customary on such occasions, there was a severe clap of thunder, although not a cloud was to be seen, the day being clear and beautifully serene.”

In 1773 a copper roof was put on, but was blown off in 1775 during a violent gale.

The dome was not added till after the Revolution, and is built of wood.

The height internally to the top of the dome is 113 feet, externally to the tip of the spire is 200 feet. The length of the building is 120 feet, the depth 82 feet. The architect was Joseph Clark.

An excellent view of the State House with grounds, plans, etc., with surrounding buildings as they then stood, is given in the Columbian Magazine for February, 1789.

Its magnificent site, fifty-eight feet above sea-level, with its simple architecture, has at all times excited the admiration of strangers and citizens alike.

From time to time various additions have been made, the latest being the addition ordered by the Legislature of 1902, in order to accommodate the General Assembly.

Through the efforts of Governor Warfield, an ardent lover of all that is patriotic, the old Senate Chamber in which Washington resigned his Commission in 1783, has been restored to its original condition. The scene of this act is depicted in the well-known picture by Trumbull.

The treaty of peace with Great Britain, and the convention of 1786 were both held in this building, which is especially sacred to all Marylanders, on account of the associations which cluster around it.

MEN OF AFFAIRS

Of the younger classical scholars in America, one of the best known is Professor Mitchell Carroll, of the George Washington University, Washington, D. C. Mr. Carroll was born in North Carolina and reared in Virginia. His father was Rev. John L. Carroll, D.D., a prominent Baptist minister. He received the degree of Master of Arts from Richmond College at the age of eighteen, being the youngest student of the college ever to attain this distinction. After some experience in teaching, he entered the Johns Hopkins University for the pursuit of graduate studies in Greek and Latin, where he was successively scholar and fellow, and in 1893 received the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. He has since passed some years in study abroad, one at the Universities of Leipsic and Berlin, the others in the American schools at Athens and in Rome. He was for two years Professor of Greek in Richmond College, and since 1899 has been head of the classical department in the George Washington University. He has taken a prominent part in the recent development of the University, especially in the promotion of scientific publications, of which he is Director.

Professor Carroll is also one of the national secretaries of the Archaeological Institute of America, and has traveled extensively in its interests, founding affiliated societies of the Institute in St. Louis, Cincinnati, Salt Lake City, San Francisco and in the Northwest. He holds membership in the American Philological Association and in many other learned societies.

Mr. Carroll is an official in the Calvary Baptist Church, of Washington, and is the teacher of the celebrated Vaughan class for young men, which is one of the largest and best organized young men’s classes in the world.

He is also a lecturer and an author. In addition to his contributions to the literature of classical philology, he has published two volumes on the history of Greek women, and was one of the editors of the “World’s Orators.”

In September, 1897, Mr. Carroll married Miss Caroline Moncure Benedict, daughter of Major E. D. Benedict, of Brooklyn. Their home, “Belair,” is in Cleveland Park, one of Washington’s loveliest suburbs.

Mr. Buffington is an excellent example of the generation that was born after industrial conditions in the South had been altered by the Civil War. He was born in 1863, in Huntingdon, West Virginia, his father belonging to a prominent family there, and his mother being a member of the Nicholas family, of Culpeper County, Virginia. After the close of the war, Mr. Buffington’s father moved his family to Covington, Kentucky, and he spent his youth in that city, studying in the public schools and at Chickering Institute, Cincinnati. In the year 1881 he entered Vanderbilt University, where he remained for two years, returning to Covington to engage in the manufacture of wire and nails. Close application to business, earnestness and an unlimited capacity for pushing his work along, built up the business, and in 1890 his company moved to larger quarters in Anderson, Indiana. After eight years of telling work in this new and enlarged field, Mr. Buffington was called to assume the directorship of the American Steel and Wire Company in Chicago, and a year later was made President of the Illinois Steel Company, the largest concern of its kind west of Pittsburg.

Mrs. Buffington was Miss Drucilla Moore, daughter of Judge Laban T. Moore, of Catlettsburg, Kentucky. Their handsome home is in Evanston, where may be found quite a colony of Kentuckians.

It was eminently fitting that the most intimate friend of the late Sam Jones should succeed him as mayor of Toledo. Mr. Whitlock, while understanding better than any other man in Toledo the political beliefs of “Golden Rule Jones,” is, like him, a man of marked individuality, and will not be bound by the traditions of any man or party. Like Mr. Jones, he owes his nomination and election directly to the people and pays no allegiance to any political machine, boss or party. Like Jones, his only ambition is to make Toledo a city where the Golden Rule is really the governing principle and not merely an empty phrase; and to make the men of the city realize and live up to the liberty and independence of their manhood. At the death of Jones, the corruptionists flocked to the city hall and endeavored to resume their old-time control of municipal affairs, but the common people, whom Jones had taught to recognize the rights and duties of citizenship, went unorganized, but solidly, to the polls and elected Brand Whitlock.

We know Mr. Whitlock by his literary work. He has been a newspaper man for years, and has published three successful novels—“The Thirteenth District,” a novel of politics; “Her Infinite Variety,” and “The Happy Average,” the last said to be autobiographical. He is also a lawyer and is a close student of current affairs. He is an idealist who believes in the present fulfillment of his dreams, and believes that all the problems of life, whether social or political, depend for their solution on the intelligence of the individual. To him the people are the foundation of public power and public officials but their hired servants. He maintains that the people can and should conduct their own government without the aid of political machines, and that representative government is possible in the present day. His only message to the people is that the power is theirs and that they should never allow any man or set of men to take it away from them. He makes no promises, simply pledging himself to represent the whole people.

There is one thing of which Mr. Whitlock allows himself to be proud. It is the Juvenile Court Bill, of Ohio, which he drew and was greatly instrumental in having passed by the legislature. It provides for a separate court for the hearing of children under sixteen, and it is Mr. Whitlock’s earnest hope that a state “junior republic” may be the final outcome of the work.

Dr. W. M. L. Coplin is another Southerner who has attained distinction in the city of Brotherly Love. He was born in Bridgeport, West Virginia, in 1864. He was educated at Lindsay Military Academy, Fairmont State Normal School, Mt. Union College, and later at Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia, from which institution he graduated in 1886. After practicing his profession for nine years, he accepted the position of Professor of Pathology and Bacteriology in the Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, where he remained one year. He then returned to Philadelphia to assume the duties of a similar chair in the Jefferson Medical College and to become Director of the Laboratories of the Jefferson Medical College Hospital, positions which he still occupies. He has held professorships in three medical colleges and a number of national, state and municipal positions. For the last ten years he has devoted his entire time to teaching and departmental organization, in which he has shown peculiarly successful capabilities.

Dr. Coplin is an ardent research worker, and has conducted numerous investigations along scientific lines; his experiments have rendered the medical world invaluable aid in solving some of its most difficult problems. He is a voluminous writer on subjects connected with Pathology, Bacteriology and Sanitation, and is widely known by his contributions to magazines. The fourth edition of his Manual of Pathology has just been issued, and the Manual of Practical Hygiene is in process of revision.

In November, 1905, the mayor of Philadelphia bestowed upon Dr. Coplin the highest honors which his adopted city could tender a physician—the appointment of Director of the Department of Public Health and Charities, a position for which he is peculiarly fitted, on account of his rare administrative qualifications.

Probably the most uplifting tendency of the times is that looking towards the nationalization of instruction in the universities of the chief countries of the world, shown by the Rhodes scholarships at Oxford; the Roosevelt Chair of American Institutions at the University of Berlin, endowed by an American banker; Mr. Stillman’s million-dollar gift to the Beaux Arts in Paris and the American Academy of Art at Rome; the Hyde foundation for Harvard professors at the Sorbonne; the Baron de Coubertin’s prizes at Princeton, Leland Stanford and Tulane Universities; the Duc de Loubat’s foundation for the study of American Antiquities at the National College of France; and the opening, in the University of Paris, of a department for the study of the History and Outlines of American Law.

The Paris Law School has five thousand students—about seven times as many as our largest law schools—and they are drawn from every country in Europe. The effect of such instruction on such a large and influential body of opinion can scarcely be estimated. The lecturer chosen for this course by the University was Mr. Charles Fisk Beach, Jr., who had already discharged similar duties in an American law school and whose writings on American economic topics have been widely quoted. Mr. Beach was born in Kentucky, fifty-two years ago, and is a graduate of Centre College. After completing a law course at Columbia University he went abroad and studied at the University of Paris. He then returned to his native country and began the practice of law, paying especial attention to railway and corporation law, and acting as counsel for various corporations and lecturing on Civil Law and Equity Jurisprudence.

In 1896 he established himself as consultation lawyer counsel in London and Paris, this experience further adding to his fitness for the post to which he was chosen by the French university. Mr. Beach’s first year’s work proved so successful that the university extended its scope to include American institutions as well as the history and general outline of our legal system. His field of efforts has been extended also to include alternate lectures at Paris and Lille the first half of the term and at Bordeaux and Toulouse the latter half.

At the time of the great expansion of American commercial, financial and political influence in Europe, and especially just now, when efforts are being made to induce trading in American securities on the Paris Bourse and to influence French investment in America, this phase of educational reciprocity, conducing to a better understanding of our institutions, promotes the welfare of the world, and particularly our own special interests abroad.

INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH — II COLLEGE OF INDUSTRIAL ARTS, DENTON, TEXAS

The history of a nation is determined by the home life of its people. Just as the prosperity of the individual home depends upon the efficiency and care of the partners in its making, so does the welfare of a nation hang on the ability and earnestness of the individual citizens. The rise of our own nation is due to the determination of our forefathers to found a government which, from the national down through the state, county and city forms, should be based upon the simple principles of upright family life. Our ideas of social life and social equality could not have been conceived under the influence of European institutions. Here, where those in the humblest walks of life may be the nobility, and where honor is conferred for merit alone, we have developed social customs to correspond with our American spirit, and, proceeding on independent and original lines, we have made our industrial and commercial system to control the busiest marts, to break the records of history, to fairly alarm the world.

The chief element of the American spirit is the appreciation of high ideals, not only in the national life, but in the education, the culture and the industrial life of the individual. When we see new openings on already established lines, it is characteristic of us as a people to pursue these openings, even though they lead in directions directly opposed to those which we have hitherto followed. Thoroughness and earnestness are the keynotes of American progress, and these are the characteristics which to-day give us our commanding position among the nations.

Is it not fitting and necessary that a nation of such religious, social, political and commercial originality and progress should develop co-ordinate with these a system of education? The free public school system is among the purest and most effectual of our democratic institutions. It has fostered the American spirit, it has laid the foundation for an American culture; it has, in large part, made possible the present success in American industrial life.

Although it is many years since the doctrine of learning through doing was first promulgated, it has remained for the present generation to make the general application. Educators have been slowly, but surely, arriving at the conclusion that the university ideals of Europe, which naturally dominated our higher educational institution during the first century of our history, and which still hold sway in certain of our colleges, are not sufficient for our needs. Present-day conditions demand an education which will afford culture and practical preparation for the common duties at the same time. There is a loud and emphatic call for our schools to cultivate the executive quality in our young men and women and to prepare them for immediate, well-directed action in the affairs of life. Many of our states have answered nobly the call for schools where boys can be trained along practical lines which make for success and usefulness. Nearly every state has its Agricultural and Mechanical College. This is all very well for the boys, but how about the girls?

In past years institutions which were organized primarily to meet the needs of men for their professional or business training have, largely from a spirit of chivalry and esteem, been opened to women. Also, largely from a spirit of social concern, some of the best friends of womankind have, in a degree, popularized the typical woman’s college. In both cases much good has been accomplished, but in neither case have the needs of the education of women been fully met. Men’s colleges that have been opened to women have given them the same training as is provided for men, and the majority of the women’s colleges have patterned their curricula after the same assumption. This theory leads women to contemplate man’s occupations and professions as their only field of action, and, while it may be the best in many individual cases, it does not provide for the mass of women the kind of higher education mostly needed. From a social standpoint, I believe in the co-education of the sexes, for education is but a preparation for life, and it seems the plain plan of creation for men and women to mingle, but from a practical standpoint co-education is not always advantageous, resulting too frequently, as stated, in making woman the competitor of man, instead of fitting her to work on her own peculiar lines.

The young woman whose education has been based upon efficient scholarship, together with domestic and industrial training of a practical type, brings into the marriage relation a comradeship which grows out of her ability to sustain her part of the partnership. It is a womanly instinct to want to enter her legitimate realm—the home. Equipped with the training which gives her a righteous sovereignty, the integrity of that home is assured. Is it not worth our while to promote as many such homes as possible?

What is a rational education for the home-maker? If the ideal mother must have, in addition to a literary education, a knowledge of kindergarten, general needlework, including dressmaking, art in at least its elementary forms, bookkeeping, the chemistry of foods and practical cooking, house cleaning, first aid to the injured and nursing, and yet have the time and strength to be a comfort and companion to her husband and a teacher to her children, is it not asking too much of women?

The answer is plain. While many of our household industries must necessarily be placed in outside hands, the power controlling these industries must remain in the hands of the home-makers. These demands are not more than a woman can meet, for the same training that enables her to know all this teaches her the laws governing her physical self, how to control and conserve her energies so that they may be expended to the best advantage. It prepares her for making and maintaining a good home, the highest and best profession that a woman can enter; and the mother in the home, teaching, as she does, by precept as well as by example, during the greater part of the twenty-four hours, has need of a scientific training for her lifelong occupation.

There are many women who do not surround themselves with the security of home, there to peacefully work out life’s problems. Many find it necessary to enter the industrial and commercial fields, and a preparation which commands for these a living salary is imperative.

Texas, one of the youngest states, but already outstripping many of her elders in the spirit of progressiveness, has taken up the question of the industrial training of her girls with characteristic vigor. With a system of state public schools provided for by the allotment of public lands, whose revenues furnish a magnificent school fund, with a State University in the first rank among its kind, with State Normal Schools in every district whose population warrants it, with an Agricultural and Mechanical College second to none, and with manual training in practice in city schools all over the state, she established, by an act of the Legislature in 1901, the school known as the College of Industrial Arts. Denton, situated about midway between Dallas and Fort Worth and somewhat north of them, was selected as the site of the school. The idea met with hearty support all over the state, and it opened in September, 1903, with one hundred and eighty-six students, representing eighty-eight out of the two hundred and thirty-four counties of the state.

These girls come from the country, town and city; from the homes of bankers, lawyers, real estate men, mechanics, contractors, stockmen, teachers, druggists, farmers, ministers, merchants and physicians. Some are the daughters of widows and some are orphan girls. Some have earned, in whole or in part, the means by which they maintain themselves, while some are contributing to their own support by working while in school. Some of them entered on teachers’ certificates, some on high school diplomas, but the great majority entered on examination.

The student body is not only thoroughly democratic, but it is composed of earnest, conscientious, hard-working students, who appreciate their opportunity of obtaining a thorough, practical education.

The college is situated on the outskirts of Denton, in a campus of seventy acres of rising ground overlooking the city and surrounding country. It is well supplied with large, shady trees, and is covered with Bermuda grass. In the rear is a fine grove of oaks, where it is proposed to erect additional dormitories and class-rooms when the financial growth of the school admits of it. At present only the main building has been finished.

In the basement of this is found the creamery, equipped with churns, separators, cream ripeners, butter workers, cream testers, bottling apparatus and scales. All is deliciously clean and dainty, and visitors are allowed to enjoy the products as they are finished. Here the girls are given a scientific, practical knowledge of butter and cheese-making and the care and handling of dairy products for the market, including pasteurization and sterilization; the use of hand and power separators and testers, acid testing and churning, beside instruction in dairy bacteriology and the composition and good value of milk, butter and cream.

In another well-lighted apartment, with cement floor, is the laundry, with complete outfits for hand and machine work. Here again the practice is supplemented with lectures showing reasons for washing—sanitary and aesthetic; study of fibres and how to cleanse each, illustrated by practical work in cotton, linen and silk; the effect of soft and hard water and how to treat them; the preparation and use of different cleansing agents.

The basement also contains the manual training rooms, where wood carving, wrought-iron work and modeling are taught. In a broad sense, all of the manual and laboratory work in the curriculum is in the nature of manual training, but especial attention is given to the branches mentioned and to weaving and basketry and other work which prepares students for positions as manual training teachers in the public schools.

On the first floor are the President’s, Secretary’s and other offices, and the art room. This department provides technical courses in drawing, applied design and painting. The work is designed to develop the imaginative and creative faculty from the first, and to give thorough training along industrial lines. Lecture rooms and the library occupy the rest of the first floor, while the second is devoted to the chemical and photographic laboratories and the commercial school.

This department is always well attended, and the course is exceptionally interesting, including, as it does, a study of the routes and growth of commerce, the production centers and markets of the world, the relative value and importance of staple articles and where they are obtained; bookkeeping, including household accounts; business correspondence; penmanship; filing and other clerical work; reporting; stenography. It is intended to meet the demand for more broadly intelligent and more accurate office workers in commercial lines.

On the third floor are the cooking and sewing schools. An electric program clock in the main office automatically calls off the time for changes of classes in the corridors on all the floors.

One of the most thorough departments, and one which opens up new avenues for woman’s work, is that of the Rural Arts. The spring term of the first year is devoted to a study of the principles of fruit, flower and vegetable growing. Each student has a garden for practice, and the care of the products until maturity and their packing for shipment are shown. Bee culture is another branch of this department. The students set up hives, examine bees, select queens and learn how to manipulate swarms and take the honey. Poultry keeping belongs to the list of popular studies. Nearly every woman has a natural interest in the care of chickens. The class has incubators and brooders, and looks after the houses and runs, feeding and improvement of stock and preparation for cooking or market.

In all of the courses literary work has a prominent place. Industrial training is most valuable, but, taken by itself, it is not sufficient. The work at the College of Industrial Arts is arranged in proper proportions for the best, all-round, practical training for life’s work. In the early part of the course the literary feature naturally receives emphasis, connecting with school work previously done by the students, and preparing them for the deeper appreciation of the scientific features of the industrial courses.

Nor are the lighter arts neglected. Vocal music, physical culture, expression and modern languages—all find a place in the curriculum.

The health of the girls is a first consideration. The college physician teaches physiology and hygiene, and renders his services to the sick. With pure water from a deep artesian well and the delicious home products of the school, however, combined with the exercise and regular life of the students, there is a minimum of sickness.

Tennis and basketball seem to be the most popular games. A student Glee Club furnishes a social feature, while there are several literary societies and a flourishing Young Women’s Christian Association.

Who may attend the college? All white girls of good morals who have attained the age of sixteen years, who have a fair knowledge of the common school subjects, who wish to continue their education, including a thorough, practical training, and who come to the college with the clear and earnest purpose of doing their best work.

The living expenses are small, there being a number of co-operative clubs in the town, and all expenses being reasonable. The college has no appropriation for paying the way of pupils without means, but there are a number of ways by which the cost of living may be reduced or made by extra work.

President Work thus summarizes the mission of this institution: “We want to meet the need of our times in training women who will be competent, intelligent and refined; well fitted for self-support, if this should be necessary; thoroughly prepared for woman’s work in the industrial and commercial world, if they so choose to labor; well trained for companionship with worthy manhood and for motherhood.”

THE MEASURE OF A MAN — CHAPTER VII

It was early in December, 1814. It had been a hot summer in New Orleans, and the fall had brought little frost, scarcely enough to kill the vegetation. A sallowness lay over the landscape, a callousness and an unknown dread.

All the fall this dread had lain over the city—the dread of the British. And strange rumors had been mingled with that dread—rumors which shook the fair Creole city to its depths, for they were a gallant and romantic people, and the things which touched their women touched them; and never before in all their history had any such foe threatened them in any such language as came mingled with the rumors of the approaching British—this threat which they had sent of “Beauty and Booty.”

And never had any threat so stirred a people to desperate resistance; for the French Creole is chivalric and his woman is his god. And the Southern-American—who was fully one-half of the people at that time in New Orleans—is more than chivalric—he is a fighter.

At first, in the sallow, stagnated city, they had heard vague things with scarcely any confirmation—of the British landing at Pensacola and Mobile, and the Creole city gave a sigh of relief, for it was higher up the coast the dreaded British would land, and not in their fair town.

Then came a rumor which thrilled them and threw them into a fervor of patriotic enthusiasm—they were wild in rejoicing—it was too good—it could not be true! But it was, and they knew of it the next day—positively, surely, from Lafitte, the Baratarian pirate, whom Jackson had pardoned and given the rights of an American citizen. It was Lafitte who told them that for the first time in this war the British had been whipped and driven out, both from Pensacola and Mobile, and that by a backwoods fighter who was already headed for New Orleans and with the same troops which had annihilated the Indians and driven the British from Pensacola.

There were bonfires and rejoicings that night. And Lafitte also was a hero, though his crimes had been many and his robberies more.

And they had pictured great things of this Jackson in the interval; surely he was a man magnificent, in gold tinsel and booted and in velvet and stars—a new Napoleon, a Louis the Fourteenth, armed cap-a-pie, in a new land to avenge their old foe. They would now defy the British—let them come!—long live Jackson!

It threw them into renewed spasms of exertion. Things had been dead, but now they were alive again; and Major Planché, the intrepid, rushed around to harangue his brave guards and call upon them to defend their country to the last!

It was several days later before they saw him, and then their enthusiasm went the way of all French ebullition. For it was a small party of horsemen who came in on the road leading from old Fort St. John to the city, a gray-haired, sallow, emaciated, gaunt, but terribly in earnest man, riding at their head. One glance from the Creoles and they knew he needed treatment for malaria, and they wondered how he sat his horse at all. And his dress—this proud Napoleon—it was absurd! Great boots, too big for his feet and legs, threadbare uniform and a little leathern cap on his head!

But his eyes—his way of going at things, his quick cut to the heart of things, his quiet assurance to the people who crowded around him—so sure that it carried absolute certainty and so bravely said that it fired them to the fighting pitch: “They’ll not enter New Orleans save over my dead body!”

Juliette had been in New Orleans long enough to love the place—as all who live in it long enough do—when one morning she received a note from Mrs. Edward Livingston to come over and help her entertain General Jackson and his staff at dinner.

“My husband,” the lady wrote, “has been appointed his aide-de-camp, and we shall give them a royal welcome. But I do confess, my dear, that I scarcely know how I shall be able to entertain this wild General from Tennessee—so do come and help me.”

Juliette smiled and flushed indignantly. “A wild General from Tennessee! Mother,” she said to the older lady, “listen! Is there not a surprise in store for her?”

The Livingston mansion, the most fashionable home in the city, had been lighted with many candles when Juliette arrived. From its wide-pillared portico a negro butler ushered her in where a hum of feminine voices greeted her and a beautiful sight met her eyes. Besides herself, a dozen of the most beautiful society women of New Orleans had been asked to help receive the noted Indian fighter.

“Oh, what does he look like?” cried one, as soon as she saw Juliette and greeted her, “and how shall we do to please him? I am told you know him well, ma chérie—does he wear coon caps, and, O, what do you call it?—furs?”

Mrs. Livingston came up, smiling: “Now, my dear, you must act as my aide-de-camp. You must introduce me and all these girls to the General and his staff, and do taste the punch and see if I have put enough whiskey in, for they say he drinks it straight out of a dipper!”

There were sounds of footsteps on the portico and the clatter of swords against spurs. The bevy of pretty women fell back in line behind their hostess, with:

“There they are, now!”

Juliette fell back with the others, her face pale, for just as they came into the door her quick eye had seen them, Major Livingston ushering them in—and Trevellian among them.

Then her heart began to thump so loudly—her breath to come so quickly that she felt as if she should faint.

She had heard of his deeds and his rapid promotion. Mrs. Jackson herself had written her over a month ago—how he had led the troops into Pensacola, taking a battery which was threatening them with a squad of men. How he had helped at Ft. Bowser, driving the British out and (for Mrs. Jackson would not omit this, since she had written the letter for no other purpose)—he had been promoted to the colonelcy of the Tennessee regiment in place of Bristow, captured by the British and taken off in their man-of-war as it ran out of Pensacola: “And Mr. Jackson says,” she wrote, “that he had met them secretly and was acting without authority at a critical time.”

All this had gone through her mind as she saw them advancing. She smiled when she saw General Jackson’s magnificent bow to Mrs. Livingston, and that lady’s look of surprise, as with courtly grace, he turned and introduced to her each of his officers. In turn she introduced him to the ladies and when he reached Juliette he stopped, raised and kissed her hand, saying:

“I am delighted to see you so soon after my arrival, my dear, for I was just going to look you up,” and then with a wonderful memory for French and American names, he turned and introduced each of his officers to the younger hostess and the younger ladies, pronouncing their names as if he had been familiar with them always. Taking Mrs. Livingston by the hand he conducted her to a sofa and seated her amid the hum and hubbub of younger voices mingling. Juliette turned. It was a pretty girl whispering in her ear.

“Is this your backwoodsman? He is a prince.”

She turned, looking for a corner—anywhere to be rid of Trevellian’s eyes. She saw him coming towards her, led by General Jackson. Seizing her by the arm as if to prevent escape and holding Trevellian also for the same purpose: “I wish you to greet and congratulate Colonel Trevellian, my dear,” said the general, his eyes flashing proudly.

“I am happy to congratulate you, sir,” she said, her face paling, her knees trembling.

He took her hand, pressed it and turned away.

But in that pressure she knew he loved her yet and she—never had hated herself more, for she loved him.

The evening was nearly over. It had been a memorable one for all, for Jackson’s assurance had made them all assured.

“Oh, he will whip them,” said Mrs. Livingston to Juliette; “he can do anything. Backwoodsman?—he is a prince. What reserve power, what force—what natural leadership! And do you know,” she pouted, “he has not touched any of my fine dishes—he is sick—he eats only a little rice and milk. Oh, I wish I could keep him here and nurse him! But I know, dear, I feel the city is safe.”

Trevellian had talked to each of his hostess’ guests; he had spent the evening seemingly satisfied with the chattering, jolly beauties around him, but his thoughts were continually with Juliette. For it had been many months since he had seen her, and he, too, had yearned. And then when she shook his hand—that pressure, ever so slight, but it meant, and he knew it—that she loved him.

Could he seek her and speak to her again? Had she not said and done enough to cause a renewal of his advances?

While she was thinking he walked over mechanically, but his heart beating as it never had before. She was alone, near the window on the vine-covered veranda looking over the cooling, dew-gathering landscape of the mild December night.

“I hope you have found it pleasant living here,” he said, “and that you will suffer no fright from the fear of the British.”

“I am not in the least afraid,” she said, smiling toward General Jackson, who, fatigued, was stretched out on a sofa before a small fire, while a number of young people listened to his talk.

Trevellian shook his head. “It is a terribly serious thing. Half our troops are still in the woods marching here. The Kentuckians have not yet arrived. We have only 2,000 troops of all kinds yet in the city, and Lafitte places the English he met on the sea at 10,000 alone, to say nothing of their sailors and marines and ships of war. But the General,” he went on proudly, “I believe he thinks he could whip them himself, and he would try it. I do not say this to frighten you, but I wish you to be prepared. If the British were to land before our other troops come, God only knows how we could stop them. I think we should all have to die here.”

She looked up at him quickly and in that look he saw all the sorrow of love in her eyes.

“I, myself,” he said, “do not expect to live through this fight. I do not want to, and that is why I have come to speak to you for the last time.”

He saw her frame quiver and tears spring to her eyes, but he went on:

“I shall leave with General Jackson a letter my father wrote to me before he died, and which I found among his papers a few days after I first met you. After this fight is over I want him to deliver it into your hands—then you may think differently,” he added, “and I should not want you to think evil of me after I am dead.”

“Tell me now,” she said, and turning she came up and stood looking into his face, her eyes moist and yet afire with love and hope. “Tell me now. I do so wish to hear you say.”

He could not restrain himself. He stooped and laid his lips on hers.

“It is my first—my last,” he said, and though she clung to his neck for one brief moment and he heard her sob, he shook her quietly off, and answered the call to horse that was sounded in the yard where his commander and his aides had mounted and were ready to go.

“Goodbye, my darling,” he whispered. “I shall go on, knowing I have your love and if I fall know that you were mine—forever.”

[To be continued.]

A VISION

THE FIRST CAMP MEETING IN AMERICA

How and when did the now familiar camp meeting originate? Very few among us can answer that question. Very few know that this unique means of attracting the masses, especially those who, from necessity or choice, rarely enter a church door, took its rise in this country in the year 1799. Those were early days, and primitive customs, and quiet, rural simplicity were the rule, for the population of the young republic was still small and scattered, but for the most part, that very simplicity made the people all the more susceptible to any unusual religious influences.

In the eastern part of the country, in the last year of the eighteenth century, a remarkable revival spread from hamlet to hamlet, from town to town, but the tidal wave of religion was not long confined to that section. It quickly flowed westward and southward. Kentucky and Tennessee, which were then attracting many home seekers, were especially affected by the wave of religious enthusiasm that swept with resistless power all over the United States. Veritable cyclonic centers of religious forces appeared at the same time in many parts of the country, north, south, east and west. Everywhere the power was seen and felt. Escape from its overwhelming presence was impossible. “The great revival” was the universal subject of conversation, and of wonder. Wherever a few houses were clustered together, wherever a single pioneer’s hut arose in the wilderness, there would soon be tethered the horse of the itinerant preacher.

An apt illustration of this truth is given in an anecdote related by Dr. Abel Stevens, the historian of Methodism. An itinerant preacher once hailed one of these solitary pioneers, and asked permission to preach in his cabin.

“What,” exclaimed the astonished pioneer, “are you here, too? I lived in Virginia and a Methodist preacher came along and my wife got converted. I fled into North Carolina, where I had hardly got settled before another preacher came along and part of my family were converted. I went to Kentucky, and they followed me there, but I thought this time I would get beyond their reach. And now I have hardly got to this settlement till here comes another preacher, wanting to preach right in my cabin.”

“My friend,” said the itinerant, “I advise you to make terms of peace with the Methodist preachers, for you will find them everywhere you go in this world. And when you die, if you go to Heaven, you will find plenty of them there, and if you go to hell, as you will if you don’t repent, I fear you will find some of them there, too!”

The pioneer thought it best to surrender.

In this great religious outburst, strict denominationalism was swallowed up, and lost to sight. The discussion of mere creeds was forgotten in the deeper demonstration of true Christianity. In the Southern States, more particularly in Kentucky and Tennessee, the movement was particularly strong. The sturdy Scotch-Irish element which was there in force, came together at the meetings with skeptics, and non-professors of all shades and degrees. All-day services were held on week days as well as on Sundays. Throngs gathered from far and near, until their numbers became so great that no building could shelter them. Still there was no thought of camping on the spot. After the conclusion of each service, the people sought their respective stopping places remaining there until time for the next meeting.

It was late in the year 1799 that two brothers, John and William McGee, the first a local Methodist preacher, the other a Presbyterian, started on an evangelistic tour from Tennessee into Kentucky. On their way they attended a sacramental service held by a Presbyterian minister named McGreechy, on the Red river. The events that followed were a new experience to the brothers, and were never forgotten. William McGee, who was a personal friend of McGreechy’s, and, also, as we have noted, a Presbyterian, introduced his brother, John, and the latter was invited to “address the congregation from the pulpit.” He accepted the invitation.

“I do not know,” he writes of this incident, “that God ever favored me with more light and liberty than He did each day while I endeavored to convince the people that they were sinners, and urged the necessity of repentance, of a change of nature to one of grace, and held up to their view the greatness, freedom, and fullness of salvation which was in Christ Jesus, for lost, guilty, condemned sinners.”

There were five preachers present, taking part in the daily services by rotation. Four of these were Presbyterians, McGreechy, Rankin, Hodge and William McGee, the fifth being John McGee, the Methodist. The effect of their earnest exhortations was marked, and the frequent tears of their hearers gave evidence of their power in awakening sleeping consciences. On the last day of these revival meetings, during the “useful discourse of the Rev. Mr. Hodge a woman in the east end of the house got an uncommon blessing, broke through order and shouted for some time, then sat down in silence.” Thus writes the Rev. John McGee.

This woman, whose name has not been recorded, thus has the doubtful honor of being the pioneer shouter at an American revival meeting. As we all know in these days, she was but the first of thousands. But at that time it was altogether so new and out of order that during the interim that soon followed, after which it was John McGee’s turn to preach, McGreechy, Rankin and Hodge went out of the house, their sense of ecclesiastical propriety having suffered a severe shock at the violent demonstrations during the services. They felt compelled to withdraw their countenance from what they considered an exhibition of irreverence.

The two McGees were thus left alone to address and guide the aroused congregation. For a time they sat in perplexed silence, the people remaining in their seats. All over the house there was a subdued sound of moaning and weeping. Everyone seemed to be waiting for something more to happen, though no one knew what the something might be. William McGee, who, as we have noted, was a Presbyterian, presently quitted his seat on the platform, and deliberately seated himself on the floor, evidently too absorbed in thought to be conscious of this odd proceeding. Yet no one smiled, or seemed to wonder at his act. The strain of waiting was too severe, too intense, for smaller matters to intervene.

As for John McGee himself, he tells us that “a power which caused me to tremble was upon me.” He told the story of that unique experience in a letter written on June 23d, 1820, to the Rev. Thomas L. Douglas, presiding elder of the Nashville district of the Tennessee conference of the Methodist Episcopal church.

“Having a wish to preach,” he says, “I strove against my feelings. At length I rose up and told the people that I was appointed to preach, but that there was a greater than I preaching.” Then followed, instead of the usual form of sermon, a recital of experiences effected by the power of the spirit. McGee’s words were so earnest and impassioned that of his hearers many broke silence. “The woman at the east end of the house again shouted tremendously. I left the pulpit to go to her, and as I went along through the people it was suggested to me ‘You know these people are much for order. They will not bear this confusion. Go back and be quiet.’ I turned to go back and was near falling. The power of God was strong upon me. I turned again, and losing sight of the fear of man, I went through the house shouting and exhorting with all possible ecstasy and energy, and the floor was soon covered with the slain. Their screams for mercy pierced the Heavens and mercy came down. Some found forgiveness and many went away from that meeting feeling unutterable agonies of soul for redemption in the blood of Jesus. This,” concludes the letter of the Rev. John McGee, “was the beginning of that glorious revival of religion in this country which was so great a blessing to thousands, and from this meeting the camp meetings took their rise.”

In this quaint narrative, therefore, we see the inauguration of the great revival meetings which soon came to be so largely attended that it was necessary to build open arbors to accommodate the attendance. The movement gathered strength as it spread north, south, east and west, and camping on the spot followed as a natural result of the sustained enthusiasm. From its first inception the plan and idea of camp meeting life was to lift the mind for a season out of, and beyond all worldly cares, and thus to permit the soul to feast on things spiritual. The idea appealed at once to the primitive people of the rural communities even more than to those of the cities. The simple life of the camp was something they could understand and were used to. It was a mode of life that they loved as well. Its popularity was such from the very outset that it was no uncommon thing for the farmer who could not provide for the attendance of all his family at the meetings, to load his big wagon with cots, bedding, provisions and his family, and live in it, and under it on the camp grounds, if he could not procure a tent, contented with any sort of a shelter, so long as the meetings continued, which was sometimes for several weeks.

The early camp grounds were attractive, yet very simple in their arrangements. A thickly wooded site was always chosen, preferably on the banks of a river or lake. Always, of necessity, there was water near by, even if the camp could not be directly on its shores. Willing hands cleared away the underbrush, made rude benches of logs, the ground under them being strewn with new mown hay, fresh straw or pine needles. Other willing workers marked off the boundaries for the circle of tents and prepared the place for the preachers, building a platform and a rustic pulpit. Then there was the “mourners’ bench”. This was an important point, and was never omitted. It was a big log supported by stout forked branches driven into the ground in front of the pulpit.

Gleaming through the dark, flickering shadows of the dense foliage overhead, were seen the white-tented temporary homes of the people, while behind them rose the blue smoke of the many outdoor kitchen fires, where green branches and twigs served for fuel. Iron kettles on rustic cranes hung over the fires, and in the hot ashes the savory odor of roasting potatoes or apples rose on the air, mingling with the aroma of coffee, the smell of roasting or stewing or frying meats and fish.

The program for each day was varied, although almost continuous. First came a sunrise prayer service, at which the young people were most in evidence, as also at the vesper service, which preceded the regular evening sermon. At 9 o’clock were held “tent meetings,” preparatory to the general service and morning sermon at 10:30. At 2 o’clock was held the second service of the day, with a sermon. Before the evening service began family prayers were held in the tents, while out of the twilight, from tent and woods, resounded various hymns blending in a wild harmony of praise. Then came a short period of restful silence, while the call of the horn, or a voice from the pulpit, was awaited. At the sound tent doors were thrown open and the eager throngs hurried to the place of “the preaching.”

The night scenes at these camp meetings were really awe-inspiring. The congregation was literally surrounded by a circle of fire. Even the trees back in the shadows were festooned with candles, while small fires, the remains of the supper-getting, smouldered in their midst. On each side, and to the rear of the seated throng, were half a dozen or more large platforms, eight or ten feet high, supported on heavy tree trunks. They were covered a foot deep with damp earth, and on this roaring fires were built of full length logs. The fierce crackle and thunder of the flames, the clouds of sparks that flew up to be lost in the overhanging foliage, the dense smoke that mounted to the skies, and the weird, uncanny shadows that seemed to be instinct with life as they crept out of the inky darkness beyond the flickering circle of light, united to make the scene eloquent of awe.

After each of the three sermons of the day, the preachers “exhorted” and urged the penitent, sin-convicted soul to kneel at the altar, and to seek the mourner’s bench. These “after meetings,” as they were called, were really the most strikingly characteristic features of the camp. So mighty was the power at work in individual hearts, so great the effect of mental and physical exhaustion, that many fell prostrate in the straw before the mourners’ bench, and lay there as if dead. Others, again, were differently affected, and uttered wild shouts of “hallelujah” and “amen,” which, so far from disturbing the preacher, seemed rather to urge him on to use yet more force in the delivery of his message of salvation for the penitent sinner.

The singing at these camp meetings was in charge of a regular chorister, but he was often unable to guide the great volume of sound that broke out again and again from the hearts of the excited people, who sang with more spirit than knowledge or rhythm. The leaders who guided and supported the meetings were sincere and devout, and many of them were of social and political prominence. Men and women of the first respectability were constant in attendance, and many of them joined in the work as earnestly as the preachers themselves. The peculiar manifestations of the “after-meetings” are thus referred to by John McGee in the letter previously mentioned to his Presiding Elder:

“The nights were truly awful. The people were differently exercised, some exhorting, some shouting, some weeping, some praying, and some crying for mercy, while others lay as if dead on the ground. Some of the spiritually wounded fled to the woods, and their groans could be heard all through the grounds, like the groans of dying men. From thence many came into the camp rejoicing and praising God.”

Such scenes prevailed wherever camp meetings were held, the people, ministers, laity, saints and sinners yielding miraculously, as it seemed, to the sway of some strong spiritual influence. That many wild and eccentric things were done and said, and that the borderland of fanaticism was often overstepped, cannot be denied. But, in spite of these extravagances of speech and action, which were certainly hindrances rather than the opposite, the good effects of the camp meeting were almost universally acknowledged. The moral transformations that followed it in many communities were conspicuous, although, alas! such is human nature, they were not always permanent in all cases of sudden and violent “conversion.” But, in spite of backslidings, many and often, the camp meetings of early days, as well as those of the present, were, and are, productive of good, and serve their purpose of awakening the slumbering conscience. The eccentric manifestations of feeling so characteristic of the earlier meetings have, as a rule, toned down in these modern and more repressive times, but they are not yet wholly subdued.

The Shadow of the Attacoa — SYNOPSIS OF PRECEDING CHAPTERS — CHAPTER XLVI— Continued — CHAPTER XLVII — CHAPTER XLVIII — CHAPTER XLIX — CHAPTER L

By Thornwell Jacobs

Commenced in the April number.

Ervin McArthur, bearing the nickname of “Satan” on account of his ungovernable temper, learns printing at the office of the Dunvegan (N. C.) Democrat and loves Colonel Preston’s daughter. The colonel, objecting to a love affair between his aristocratic daughter and a son of “poor whites,” shifts the youth to a place on the Charleston Chronicle. Here, the Civil War coming on, he distinguishes himself by his journalistic ability and by his inventions of war-engines. In these last he is ably assisted by Helen Brooks, a Boston girl visiting Charleston relatives. She learns to love the inventor and his cause, and he struggles between his allegiance to Helen Preston and his newly awakened love. He returns to Dunvegan on furlough and in an altercation with his old time chum, Henry Bailey, the latter meets his death. Ervin escapes, and another friend, Ernest Lavender, is tried and convicted. Ervin confesses and is tried, but cleared on proof discovered by Helen Preston that the crime was committed by Mack Lonovan, who, wishing to marry Helen Brooks, destroys the only living witness to his secret marriage with half-witted Nance West.

Ervin returns to Charleston and invents the ironclad torpedo, destined, when copied by the Federals, to destroy the Confederate Navy. He also constructs a submarine torpedo boat, and while preparing for his initial trip has an interview with Helen Brooks.

He decides to attack the Housatonic instead of the New Ironsides, as Helen has confessed that one whom she loves is on the latter. The Housatonic is sunk, also the torpedo, Ervin alone being rescued and captured. Sent to the stockade on Morris’ Island, he finds Tait Preston, who is about to be exchanged on account of a wound. Ervin determines to escape.

After some weeks he does so, being wounded in the flight. At this time his dragoon pigeon being accidentally loosened by Mrs. Adams, returns to Dunvegan and Helen Preston leaves her father, who is at home on sick leave, to nurse her lover. Arriving at Charleston, she learns that his friends there suppose him to have been destroyed in the sinking of the Housatonic, but the faithful girl continues her search until she finds him on James’ Island and nurses him back to health.

In the meantime Mrs. Corbin and her family have fled to Columbia and are among the sufferers when that city is burned. Charleston surrenders and the Chronicle is confiscated.

Their officers, captains and colonels, stood by them and watched the doomed city burn. A woman with her clothes on fire rushed screaming from the door of her home. Hoarse cries for help came in the darkness. A lost child called piteously, “Mother! Mother!” Drunken negroes fired pistols into the faces of the women. As they bore Bessie on, seeking for a quiet place, some drunken men, thinking they were bearing treasures, flashed their firearms in the women’s faces and cried:

“Stop—hand over your silver and gold!”

Like the spring of a tiger, a blue arm shot out and a pistol flashed. One of the men sank, stunned, on the sidewalk, and another with a shattered arm rolled backward.

“The brutes!” “Old Secesh” muttered, “and to think that these boys wear the blue!”

They were passing a graveyard, and Mrs. Corbin touched Helen’s arm. “Look!” she exclaimed, in amazement. They were opening the graves.

They laid Bessie down on the grass, not far from the old convent, and as they looked up they saw nuns and girls filing sadly out, the priest, with uplifted crucifix, leading the way. The convent had been fired.

“I must see General Sherman!” Helen cried. “Auntie, stay here. I will go for a doctor and get aid, too.”

“I will stay and guard the lady,” said “Old Secesh.”

“I’ll go wid Miss Helen.”

They turned and looked. Old Joe had found them. So they went in search of aid and a physician. They had gone scarcely a block, when Helen recognized Mandy, a neighbor’s cook. She was sitting on top of a great wagon full of furniture and household goods—mahogany chairs, china, paintings—and the coachman was driving the wagon. Thinking that Mandy had bravely rescued her mistress’s goods, Helen cried:

“Mandy, where are you going?”

“Laws a-massy,” came back the answer of the fat negress from over the top of the pearl-handled fan she was using, though it was the dead of winter. “Laws a-massy, chile, I sholy is gwine back into de Union.”

And almost simultaneously Helen heard a moaning voice call to a neighbor in the darkness:

“They have broken the chimes of St. Michael’s! What will Charleston do?”

As they went on, scenes of horror were on every side. Stores were being gutted and their contents strewn into the streets. Hose, pierced with bayonet holes, lay over the sidewalks. Flaming camphine balls were firing every house that the wind had spared. Suddenly they were stopped by a crowd of men which blocked their pathway. In their midst was a reverend gentleman, and by his side was his wife. It was Mr. Shand, pastor of the church.

“Open that box,” a soldier said.

“Gentlemen, I have not the key,” the minister replied.

“What’s the use o’ lyin’? What you got in there?”

“It is the communion service of our church.”

“Ach, mein Gott,” another broke in. “Vat a pious shentlemen!” A coarse, loud laugh followed.

“Look here, hand us that key.” One of them took him by the collar.

“I have told you I have not the key.”

“Well, your watch, then.”

“It is in the ashes of my home.”

“Search him!”

But they found nothing.

Then the Dutchman spied old Joe, dressed in his best suit.

“Hello, you tam plack nigger! Vot for you haf some fine shoes on your tam plack feet?”

Old Joe looked bewildered.

“Zhuck off dem poots.”

“Marster, sholy you ain’t gwine ter take mah onliest pair o’ boots?”

“Zhuck off dem poots, I tell you. Look at dees!” and his bayonet came alarmingly near Joe’s head. So the darky sat down regretfully and pulled his boots off.

“Ach, py tam, vot for a nigger haf zocks, dagleich? Zhuck dem off oncest!”

“Laws a-massy, you sholy ain’ gwine take mah socks, too, is you, marster?”

“Ach, you plack pup, vere did you get dem goot glozes already? Come away from the ladies already oncest. Py tam, I vants dem zoots, too!”

So he drew the reluctant darky aside, and in a few moments old Joe came back a soldier, lugubrious enough in his baggy trousers and short-armed coat. By that time the men, failing to open the chest of communion vessels, had borne it off in triumph on their shoulders.

“Mr. Shand, oh, sir, can you tell me where General Sherman is?” Helen asked.

“I saw him a moment ago, Miss Brooks, just around the corner,” the outraged pastor declared.

They fled on, and as they turned the corner they suddenly heard loud cries, and saw a group of men in front of them. A negro lay dead in the center, and General Sherman was asking of the mob:

“Men, who did this?”

“He slacked us,” one of the soldiers replied.

“Well, men, it is bad. Don’t let it occur again.”

By this time Helen reached them and stood near to the General.

“Are you General Sherman?” she asked.

“I am, madam,” he answered, stepping over the dead body of the negro to her side.

“General Sherman, I am Helen Brooks, sister of Captain Henry Brooks, whom you know.”

“I am happy to know—”

“General, this is no time for pleasantries. In the name of the lowly Jesus, I beg of you stop this horrible outrage!”

“It is not my doing, Miss Brooks. I would stop it if I could, but it is beyond my power.”

“Beyond your power, General Sherman? Do you think these men would dare to do these things without your assent? Do you mean that your captains and colonels and lieutenants would rob, and loot, and pillage, and murder, and allow their men to do it, if you said it should not be done? Is this the power you have over your army? Look at those men throwing their firebrands on that house here under your very eyes! Do they fear Sherman’s anger or court Sherman’s favor?”

“Do you want a guard, Miss Brooks?”

“Want a guard! What mockery! General, I have just come from a house where the guards you sent set fire to the house they were guarding and burnt it down over the head of a young mother while she was giving birth to her first-born. Shame, shame on you, sir, and yours!”

“Madam, this is war! We did not commence it.”

“General Sherman, you know my family, or you would not have listened to me so far. You know how my father has sacrificed half his fortune for the Union cause, and how my brother well-nigh gave his life. And now—mark my words, sir—this is not a deed of war or necessity, but of infamous, vindictive hate, and the time will come when even in our loved Northland men will repudiate your deeds!”

There was a crash as a house near by fell in. A great mass of sparks and smoke belched upwards.

They passed through the burning streets, past squads of drunken soldiers, and at last found the little group gazing sadly at the sick woman.

“How is Bessie?” Helen asked.

“She—is—dead.”

“And the child?”

“It is unborn.”

The gleam of the burning houses lit up her pale face and tinged the brown locks with gold. Helen knelt and kissed the lips cold in death, and “Old Secesh” turned away with a groan.

There are those who think that they have seen the face of her whom men call Tragedy. They see an old man, and his quivering lips are still whispering the name of her whom they used to touch so passionately. In his trembling hand is a letter, faded, brown, tear-stained. He reads and reads, though he might have thrown it away thirty years ago, and not a word would have been lost, so deeply are they cut in his heart. “Look!” say they, “he is praying still for her return,” and the colonel would start in fright, so sure would he be that they had seen him. “Surely,” say they, “this is Tragedy.” It is not. It is her cousin, Hope.

They see a woman, and she, too, is waiting, but the man stands by her side. Each of her myriad dreams used to fly to him; now they cannot; they are dead. They are dead, and so is he—the man she loved—tho’ many years after she is buried, his pulse will be strong and his step elastic. A catafalque, gilded, perhaps, but within a dead thing lies—a human heart, and it is her husband! It used to beat for her joyfully in the days when she needed it sorely, but, oh, not so sorely as now! It will never thrill for her again. Then these wise men look up and say: “Love has died, and yet his body remains unburied. Is not this Tragedy?” It is not. It is but an older sister.

They follow the tracks of one who has fled far back into the blackest cavern of the darkest woods, fled with a little babe in her arms, fled to hide her shame. Its father is not there, though he swore never so faithlessly to be a loyal lover, and then a loving husband to her who holds the little one in her arms, kissing it, and then despising it, and then kissing it again and again. She loves this child of shame while he—he breaks the vows which once he intended to keep. Then the wise men turn and say: “Truth is dead and will not live until God awakes and asks Lucifer who defiled this lily of His own garden in the pool of his passion. Is not this Tragedy?” It is not, but it is her shadow. She is near now. Come and see her form.

Runs a boy, blowing kisses to the butterflies, and teaching the honey bees where to search for the flowers, whence the sweetest nectar may be drawn. Thus clearly has he discovered all else save her who is seeking him. Lo! He is a youth now, and daily he hears her whisperings in his ears, and sometimes so close does she come that her gentle touch may be felt on his cheek, and her soft fingers rest lightly on his shoulder. Many years he lived, but love came not into his life. At last he is white-haired and knows—that he is old. His gasp and his heavy breathing, his pulse—they are feeling it anxiously. They know that it is taking two steps backward and one forward. They need not feel his brow nor his feet. They, too, at last are cold. Then they say: “This is Tragedy! A man dying who has never seen love—surely this is Tragedy!”

It is.

Such were the thoughts of Colonel Masters as, with a slow and halting gait, he had wandered down to the burnt district and reached the Battery, now overgrown with weeds. The great game was over! With the hand of a past master, he had played his cards—and lost. Was it his fault?

So now, when his plans were in ruins and his eyes in tears, when his heart was breaking, and his back bending low beneath the burden of accumulating toils, he murmured slowly:

“Return ye, O memories; return ye and quickly come like a whisper of God from His far off garden of joy! Die not in all the years that shall elapse before I shall burn new kisses upon new lips—kisses long feigned and passion-wrapt, nor let your spirit of love grow dim, nor your spirit of power abate! Come ye, as in time past, ye have come—sweeping away the clouds that gather over the head of earth’s lonely pilgrim, stilling the breakers that form in madness on life’s reefs, hushing the storms that roar and howl and threaten in the darkness! Still may ye come, ye echoes of the voice of God, bidding me be true, pleading with me to hope and trust, gently lifting my thoughts to the blue empyrean above, where there shall be no more night!”

“Colonel Masters!”

He looked up in astonishment.

“I have been looking for you all over the city, sir,” the young telegraph boy explained.

With trembling hand the white-haired editor took the brown message. His lips quivered as he tore it open. Would it be some new sorrow?

“Oh, God, it is not true—it cannot be true!” The massive form of the great man shook as a tower that is falling, and his face seemed to be fast taking on the lines of the ghastly few who survived the black hole of Calcutta.

“Forgive me, Colonel, but we read the message at the office!”

In his soul, the rosy-lipped dawn was kissing away the dewy tears of a long, weary night, and Ioskeha had claimed Attacoa.

But the boy was looking at him in amazement. Great wells of joy were evidently springing up in his heart. A new man was being formed before the lad’s eyes. Slowly the stature increased; the stoop of the shoulders that had labored despairingly disappeared. Only a deadly pallor told of the past.

“Go!” he cried to the lad. “Quick, go!”

Then he leaned heavily against the twisted iron rail of the Battery promenade, that some cannon ball had struck spitefully.

“It is a lie,” he said, slowly, but his face was burnished with joy. “It’s too good to be true!”

How long had seemed the waiting till God should shift the scene! And how vain the straining of the eyes for the faintest movement of the proscenium! He had used to think as a student that he understood how slow the Unchanging One was in doing things, but he had not then put it away in his heart, nor meditated over it in sorrow. He had almost ceased to expect another act, though he believed in it, and it hurt him when the curtain quivered as if it were lifting at last.

Sometimes he wished he knew that the play was over altogether and that he was on the untrodden way homeward; but when the melancholia passed he heard distinctly the rumble of the scenery behind the curtain, and it was as if the footlights were already aglow. Once there had been music while he waited. It was when Helen, her daughter, came to visit Charleston. Yet her coming would only add tragedy to the denouement. It introduced another complication into a play already tangled, but it lightened the burden of his accumulating toils.

Now at last the curtain had risen and the final scheme stood revealed. The old actors who had begun the play with him had all vanished save one, and the stage was almost empty. The chairs were there—vacant—chairs that other playgoers had loved in previous acts. He, almost alone, had been chosen by the great Playwright, to live and be, and perhaps triumph.

By the window of Beacon Street, that looked over toward the west and the south, there sat a lonely woman. “After all,” she said to herself, as the bitterness of her thoughts puckered her heart more and more, “this world is but one of the seventy-four comedies with which the Eternal amuses himself.”

The deep tragedy of her life had embittered her soul and of late she had grown more and more to tell herself alone her thoughts. Now that her husband was dead, each wound would re-open. Yet memory came with little pictures of the Ashley, of the golden rice fields, of one who had loved her there. And these pictures made the dull gray of the Boston evening slowly light up with glory. A mocking bird swings in the orchard bough at Camellia-on-the-Ashley, the mellow notes of the cotton pickers are wafted softly, lowly—

Thus her thoughts were gentle, sweet, like the cooing of a mother’s first-born, winsome as his first smile, which makes her forget her hour of travail.

A dog bays in the distance, a deer bounds again into the forest—a young man comes from the chase—a smile, a kiss—an—

She waked suddenly from her dream. Some one was coming up the street, staring earnestly at the numbers. He was an elderly man, who moved as softly toward the grave as the gentle notes of the flute sinking along the last octave. Yet there was life in his step, and she could see that he handled himself well on the slippery pavement, where the half-melted snow had frozen again. There was a look about his face that touched a chord down in her heart, and the expression he wore as if he, an old man, were almost a youth again, set her once more to dreaming.

The bell rang. “A gentleman to see you, ma’am,” said Hilda, entering. “He will not give his name. He says he is from Charleston.”

A man in whose eyes an infinite fire seemed burning, entered close on Hilda’s heels.

“Mrs. Brooks,” he said, and his voice made her think of the notes of a passion swept violin, “I trust you will pardon my intrusion in this manner, and I scarcely know how to explain it so that it will seem less rude.” He was staring intently at the woman before him. His deep eyes took in the details of her mourning garments, her face with its fine lines of settled sadness and the abundant threads of white sprinkled through the thick brown braids, gathered under her widow’s cap.

Her mother’s heart prompted the swift question:

“You come from Charleston? Helen—is she—?”

“Your daughter is quite well, madam, and safe in the little hamlet of Dunvegan, in North Carolina, whither I—whither she and her aunts were conveyed after the burning of—.” He paused, knowing the thoughts that the name of Columbia would awaken.

Sighing deeply, Mrs. Brooks motioned her visitor to a chair and looked at him inquiringly. “I am pleased to see you, sir,” she said courteously; “I knew and loved Charleston well in my girlhood.”

“You were, before your marriage, Miss Lezare? Forgive me if I seem rudely inquisitive.”

“Yes, sir, Lezare was my maiden name.”

“Ah, yes—Lezare of Camellia? While you were living there was there a man—Masters, Charles Masters?”

“Stop, sir!” she interrupted. “What right have you to bring back that name into my life—what—?”

“Has it then left your life?” he asked, with a touch of fear in his voice. “Forgive me if I have given you pain, madam. My honor is my pledge that I mean no wrong. It is necessary—do you understand?—absolutely necessary for me to proceed.”

She was silent and seemed as one lost in a deep forest who seems to see a face in the darkness about.

“This man Masters was among those who went to Texas in her struggle for independence, was he not, madam? And after the battle of San Jacinto was reported among the killed? He loved a young lady of Charleston, one whom you may know—a young lady whose proud family were opposed to her union with one who had come to Charleston a penniless youth and had been the architect of his own fortunes—they preferred a wealthy young Bostonian, who brought letters to every family of influence in the state. You knew this, madam?”

His eyes asked pardon for this direct question and his voice was low with tenderness.

“Yes, yes, I knew this,” she responded, lacing and interlacing her slow, slender fingers. “What—what more?”

“You doubtless know, too, madam, that the report of his death was false and that he returned after peace was declared, to find his sweetheart had wedded his rival and gone to Boston to live. What you do not know”—here his voice took on a deep, full ring of joy—“is that he never, for one moment, never did and never has, doubted his sweetheart’s truth. To many men it is given to pass with unseeing eyes the holy worth of a woman’s love, but to Charles Masters it was given to know, when he had plighted his troth in the garden at Camellia, the sacredness of the gift that was his. Never once since then has his reverence for it or his belief in it failed.”

Colonel Masters was doing more than telling a harrowing story—he was reading his own fate in her eyes.

“Sir,” Mrs. Brooks started from her chair, “I will give you all I have in this world, I will give you all God gives me in Heaven to say those words again!”

Word by word her voice had risen, growing stronger under the intense passion of her soul till it touched the highest note of her life, till it quivered like the tremulous tones of the flute thrilled at the holy reaches of the Infinite Beyond.

“He still believes!”

“Then where is he? Has he—”

She shrank back from him, for there was a smile on his features, and though faces grow old, smiles never do.

Reading her thoughts, he lifted her hand to his lips, and it was to her as when the mute touches the chords of the violin. The music was deep and plaintive, and the strain was one that makes all things possible.

“He is here!”

A cold, sleety rain was falling on the street outside, and the ice was forming on the elms of Beacon street. The shadows which sprang from the window that looked toward the west and the south lengthened themselves along the floor. Men hastened homeward in the gathering night, and a damp darkness settled down over the bleak landscape.

But they sat by the window that looked toward the west, and though they faced the sunset, they saw it not, for the morning had come.

Far, far away in the Silver Creek Valley the sun was setting, and the purple shadow of the mystic Attacoa lay like a mighty altar upon the land. The Spring had come, and in her bosom she bore myriads of beautiful flowers wrapped in mantles of living green, as though she would make less bare the way for the shattered soldier in gray as he wearily wended homeward; as though she would make less bitter the sight of blackened chimneys or rotting doorsteps. Scarlet flowers sprang from the red earth of a thousand battlefields, and the deep periwinkle grew rich on the bodies of sunken heroes. Slowly and wearily the tattered men turned again homeward.

And of an evening, when all was so still in the valley that the wood thrush took heart to flutter to the azaleas by the piazza of Sunahlee, a young woman walked up the long, red hill that led to the house. Dreamily she gazed toward the west, where the mighty Attacoa reared its dark bulk. Something she knew of the legends attached to it. For Ervin, in the fullness of their sympathy, had told her lovingly of his highland home, and it gave her a thrill of sweetest pain to fit his descriptions to the landmarks around. She had been in such close attendance upon her aunt, who, since Bessie’s death, had been prostrated, that her observations had been made for the most part from the balcony of the old hotel; but to-day, for the first time, she walked along the road she knew Ervin had trod many times and looked out over aspects once familiar to his eye. She paused before a large gate. Inside she saw a weed-grown driveway leading up to a dilapidated house, plainly handsome in its prime. As she looked she heard the sound of something coming up the long, red hill. There was no sound of hoofs, but as she peered into the gathering twilight she made out the forms of a number of shaggy dogs drawing a rattling old buggy.

It was Uncle Ben. He did not see her until he had alighted stiffly to open the rusty gate.

“Howdy, Mistis, howdy!” His old voice, though feeble, had a hearty ring to it that encouraged Helen to ask him who lived there.

“Dis is S’nahlee, Mistis, Cunnel Tom Preston’s place. I would ax you to come in, Mistis, ’cause de Prestons dey sholy always wuz hospitable—but dey ain’t none of ’em lef’ now, ’ceptin’ of de ole Cunnel, an’ he don’ know nothin’ that’s goin’ on—hasn’t even reelized Miss Helen’s death. This war’s bin awful hard on we-all.”

He sighed, and Helen, who recognized the name, asked:

“Is there no hope for Colonel Preston’s recovery?”

“No’m, I don’t reckon so. Me’n Miz McArthur—she useter live ’cross de road dar in dat little ole log cabin—we nusses him careful all day an’ all night. But he thinks I’m Marse Tait—he died jes’ ’fore Miss Helen did—an’ he thinks she’s Miss Helen, an’ he keeps tellin’ us whut a big hero Marse Ervin wuz wid his battlementary injines, an’ now he’s willin’ fer him to marry Miss Helen an’ take charge of the Dimocrat—but, Lawd, Lawd, whut does people do dese days to put in de paper?”

His dogs had walked through the gate and he now drew it carefully to, taking off his shabby old hat in response to Helen’s “good-night.”

She turned to the cabin across the road. Standing at the small gate, now off its hinges, she took in all the surroundings and tried to imagine Ervin at home amid them. She could fancy the whole story of his youthful love for the patrician girl at the big white mansion. Perhaps it was a burning ambition to make a name worthy of her which had led him to Charleston. Perhaps—but no! Deep in her heart Helen Brooks knew that, whatever fancies he had known, Ervin McArthur had given all his heart to but one woman, and that woman herself.

She stood long in regretful self-questioning, yet somehow a spirit of deep peace pervaded all her being. Twilight had fled before the coming of the moon, and she drank in eagerly its gentle glory on the scene about her. In the distance she heard the swift rattle of wheels, this time with quick hoof-beat accompaniment. At the parting of the roads the vehicle stopped and she heard the tones of men.

“Good-night, old fellow!” called a cheery voice.

“Good luck to you. We must all do the best we can to build up our country again.”

Helen turned to leave the gate. A figure came toward her in the dim light. She drew back again, but as he seemed about to turn in at the gate, she stepped forward.

“Do you seek Mrs. McArthur, sir?” she asked, thinking it must be a comrade coming to tell Ervin’s mother some news of her boy’s last hours.

“Yes, madam, I do. Do you know her? Is she well?” He leaned against the gatepost and Helen could see, despite the deep shadow cast by his broad hat, the pallor of his face.

“Oh, yes,” she hastened to reassure him, “she is quite well. I do not know her. I am refugeeing here, but I have just heard that Mrs. McArthur had been nursing Colonel Preston across the way for some months. You will find her there.” She hesitated a moment, then asked: “You bring news of her son’s death?”

“Death? Is he dead? I did not know he was dead.” He had stepped back into the shadow as though to conceal his emotions, and she could not see the joy in his eyes, and mistook the heaving of his breast for sorrow, and, because she could not longer conceal her tears, she bowed her head upon the gatepost.

“Pardon me, madam,” he said, at length, “but would it be rude in me to ask you—”

“It is my oversight—Brooks is the name, Helen Brooks. I and my two aunts and an old negro servant are refugees.”

“Ervin—poor boy—do you know—do you mind telling me how—he died?”

“In the defense of Charleston—have you heard of his wonderful inventions? He went out one night to sink a ship with his new submarine and his boat sank, and all were lost.”

“All?”

“Yes, all.”

He was bowed like one in grief, and neither spoke for a while.

“And, Miss Brooks—he—I used to hear regularly from Ervin, he had some friends—a Mrs. Corbin, I believe.”

“She is my aunt, and is here now.”

“And a Colonel somebody—I—”

“Colonel Masters. He was the editor of the paper where Mr. McArthur worked.”

“Ah, he loved the old man well. You knew him, too, did you not? Why would he go in that torpedo boat—why did not some one stop him?”

She was silent while the tears sprang to her eyes again.

“You must pardon my speaking of this,” he continued. “There was a girl who lived in Charleston—he did not write her name—I only know he loved her—do you—could you tell me?” He leaned forward, watching her face. “Do you know who she was?”

There was no concealing it any longer.

“Oh, sir,” she said, “I—he—loved—”

“He loved you! Ah, tell me no more! Then we are brother and sister in sorrow.”

And Attacoa, the mount where the light had conquered the darkness, looked down on them as fateful, as inscrutable, as mercilessly silent as the enigmatic Croatan.

He bowed his head and covered his eyes with his hands, all the while looking at her intently through his fingers.

“Only one thing may I ask,” he said at length, “did Ervin—did he know you loved him—when he died?”

“Yes—he—knew—it—only—”

“Only he—”

“Thought there was another—”

“Another?”

“There were reasons why I could not tell him.”

“And those reasons?”

“I cannot tell you.”

“I beg a thousand pardons—from what I know, I judge he must have thought you loved a man in the Northern army—”

“Yes.”

“And you did not?”

“No, I did. I loved him with all my heart—but—”

“But he didn’t love you?”

“But he was my brother!”

The man quivered as though a thousand arrows had suddenly been drawn from his bosom, and then quickly came out of the shadow and took her hands. “Helen!”

With a scream of joyous surprise, because in a moment all the world had been changed, she threw her arms around his neck.

“Oh, dear God!” she cried. “It is he!”

There is a quaintly pious inscription in Dunvegan graveyard, chiseled as if by a hand that trembled, upon the gray tombstone farthest back of all those by the side of the Little Church in Under the Oaks. It reads:

ERVIN McARTHUR,
From Whom the Daemon Was Cast Out.
A General in the Army of God.

It was only the last line which was not so directed to be inscribed by the will of him who lies beneath it.

The visitor smiles as he reads until he hears of the prowess of the youth who won fame and honor and glory in the city by the sea and meditates upon how great his after life must have been to have merited so pleasant a comparison. The story is still easy to hear in Dunvegan, where his name is often coupled with Dr. Allerton’s, but not to the curious and gossiping. One must first have left the parlor and have become a boon companion of the living-room—and one must be a lover of Dunvegan. Then if the night be dark, so dark that Tawiskara may seem to have come back to Attacoa, the story is his, the story of Ervin McArthur, out of whom the Daemon was cast.

They say in Dunvegan that somewhere in the heart of every man there dwells Tawiskara, the Daemon of Darkness. According to his own way and in his own time, he manifests his power. To one he suggests, to another he promises, and the third he compels—and he must needs go whom the Daemon drives. At the wrong moment, the psychological moment of weakness, he takes hold of a man and a deed is done, a tiny indiscretion or a horrible crime, as the Daemon wills.

They believe in Dunvegan that McArthur was but a type of all men, that the evil heritage of the Shadow of the Attacoa came upon him in exaggerated form because it was needful that the works of God might be manifested in him. They still speak with such pious quaintness in the dreamy village. And they tell their child who shows the evil heart of how Ervin McArthur fought in his awful death-struggle on Attacoa with Tawiskara, the Dark One, and endured unto blood, striving against his sin; of how he, as all men may do, in the strength of Ioskeha, cast the Daemon out.

It is thus that they apologize for the horror with which his life-story was laden, it being in their eyes like the black, ill-odored ink of the press which is yet needful to make the page of each story perfect. They shudder in the telling of it, as the reader must have shuddered in hearing—these are they who hear the mutterings of Tawiskara in their own hearts. And there must be those who dwell in Dunvegan who call the story precious because that through it they have been delivered from much tribulation and anguish of spirit which comes to all those who would perfect the light of their souls by exorcising the Daemons that infest it. These consider that in the horror of the story lies its true meaning and value, and they discountenance the softer versions which have sprung up with the newer generation in the village. If their souls have known deeper night than that of Ervin McArthur, let them love the parable of how they were delivered.

So there are pilgrims who sometimes visit the little graveyard where the shadows are dense at noonday, and where Ervin McArthur lies. They tread lightly upon the blue periwinkle, and there are those who loose reverently the sandals from their feet for fear that God may be near in some wayside bush.

The End.

HISTORY OF THE HALS — CHAPTER XVIII—HOW THE BISHOP BROKE THE RECORD

(Old Wash is a Baptist and it was with great difficulty and many misgivings that I induced him to go out to the Episcopal church recently and hear the Bishop of Tennessee preach. The old man went wild over the sermon and this is the peculiar way he took to tell about it.)

“Wal, sah, I went in dar an’ sot down in dat part of de gran’stand set off fur de colored folks. I look erroun’ an’ seed leetle bannisters an’ things runnin’ ’roun’ ’bout de pooties’ an’ neates’ mile track you eber seed, wid de fence all painted wid gold an’ lit up wid ’lectric lights. B’utiful pictures hung up in de club house gallery an’ de soft light cum in through de painted winders. I tell you, sah, dese yere Piscolopiums kno’ how to keep up dey church track, if dey do stick to de high-wheel sulky, an’ kinder think dat er record made dar, at dat way ob gwine, will ’title ’em to registration in de final year book quicker’n enny yudder track. An’ it wuz er good un—for it run erroun’ es smooth es er widder’s courtship, an’ it hed bin harrered an’ scraped an’ rolled till it wus es slick as er carpet ob banana peels.

“You ain’t nurver noticed how dese church tracks differ frum one ernudder, hes you, Boss?” asked the old man, with a sly smile. “Wal, dey do. Now, ef dat hed bin er Mefodis’ track it wouldn’t er had no fence erroun’ it, kinder free fur all, no money to be paid at de gate, and free lunch fur ebrybody. If it hed er bin a Baptis’ track it would er bin out in some big medder bottom, an’ stid ob bein’ roun’ it would jes’ foller de meanderin’s ob de ribber, handy fur spungin’ off de horses. An’ dey wouldn’t ’low nuffin’ to go on dat track but pacers, either, an’ dey must all be ob de Hal fambly—kinder close kin, yer kno’. De Presberterians would er hed dey track es roun’ es it cu’d be, an’ sech er high, whitewashed fence ’roun’ it dat nobody cu’d see ober it, an’ ’bout ebry ha’f hour dey would run out er big fo’-hoss sprinkler, furever sprinklin’ it, eben fur de yearlin’ races. Oh, it’s funny ter see how dey all differ!” he said.

“But dar dis one wuz, es pooty es it cu’d be, an’ free fur all. An’ jes’ off to de lef’ dey hed de nices’ leetle jedges’ stan’, all painted in silver an’ trimmed wid gold, while de timers’ box sat on de right, wid leetle peep-holes in it an’ pictures ob flyin’ things wid wings jes’ erbove—hosses dat hed broke de records, I ’spec. Jes’ den de ban’ in de ban’ stan’ struck up de sweetes’ music I urver heerd. It went all through my soul an’ made me feel like I wus er chile ergin an’ my good ole mammy, long dead an’ gone, wus singin’ me ter sleep at de cabin on de ole plantashun to de tune ob ‘De Ole Folks at Home.’ Den de perfume floated out like de smell ob de jess’mins I useter smell by de cabin do’, an’ de candles flickered on de quarter posts like de fireflies in de dusk ob my childhood days, an’ all dese things jes’ made me hongry to heah sum gospil ergin. Bimeby sum leetle angel boys, all dressed in white, wid shinin’ collars, cum marchin’ in, singin’ an’ bringin’ programs fur de races in dey han’s—leastwise dat’s whut I tuk ’em to be. I tell you, sah, it wuz gran’, an’ es I sot dar an’ tuck it all in an’ looked at dat shinin’ track wid de golden fence, I sed to myself:

“‘Great Scott! but ef dey can’t go fast on dis track, I lakter kno’ whut de yuse ob tryin’ enny yudder!’

“When de music stopped, de feller in de jedges’ stan’ made some ’nouncements, an’ den he ’lowed dat de Bishop ob Tennessee would go er exerbishun mile ergin time, an’ den I heerd de bell ring tingerling, tingerling, an’ de ban’ struck up lively lak, an’ de Bishop cum pacin’ in. Soon es I looked at ’im, sez I:

“‘He’ll do—he’s er good un! Got mos’ too much riggin’ on ’im to suit my taste, but den ebry man knows whut’s bes’ fur his own hoss. Ef he wuz mine I’d take off dat sweater an’ white blankit wid red embroidery, dem knee boots an’ dat obercheck. His gait’s all right an’ true es clockwork, an’ he don’t need nuffin’ but er pair ob quarter boots an’ fo’-ounce shoes. But dat’s all right,’ I said ergin, ‘eberybody knows whut’s bes’ fur his own hoss, an’ dem fancy riggin’s am pooty, ter-be-sho’.’

“Graceful? He wus es graceful es er swan on er silver lake, an’ es he paced up de quarter stretch to sco’ down I seed dat he wuz gwinter gib de recurd er close call. Down he cum so smooth you cudden’t see his riggin’, an’ es nachul es er eagle draps frum his mountin’ peak in de valley belo’. Dey didn’t hafter say ‘go’ to him but onc’t, an’ den he went erway lak er winged angel on de top spar ob er flyin’ yot.

“‘He that loseth his life for my sake shall save it,’ he said, an’ ebry lick he hit went home to de ole man’s hart. Oh, hit wuz er clip. He tuck up Greek art an’ literachure an’ he painted it so beautiful you cu’d see de statue ob Diana beam outen his eyes an’ de grace ob Apollo fall frum his hands. Away he went at dat pooty clip till he sud’n’y shifted his gait an’ struck de follies ob dis wurl, an’ den I seed whut all dat riggin’ wus fur, fur he turned it into er toga an’ he looked like Jupiter es he shook de roof wid his speed an’ his stride.

“‘He’s gwine too fast fur de fus’ quarter,’ I sed, as I sot holdin’ my bref; but befo’ de wurds wuz out he seed it, too, an’ he check up er leetle, an’ he cum down es gently es de summer winds play—but er-gittin’ dar all de time!—an’ den he tell us how all dis art an’ all dis interlect wa’nt nuffin’ ef we didn’t lub God an’ do right an’ lib pure libes, an’ his voice wus lak de music ob de winds in de valley, an’ ebrything he say jes’ peer to be dat way an’ no argyment—and all de time he wuz jes’ er-gittin’ dar—an’ es he passed de fus’ quarter I cudden’t help it, I jes’ tuck out my ole watch an’ snapped it, an’ dar it stood—thirty seconds, holy Moses!

“But dat didn’t wind ’im, fur he started in de naixt quarter so fas’ I tho’t sho’ he gwine fly in de air. But he didn’t. He fairly burnt up de track ob sin an’ folly an’ littleness an’ meanness, an’ he made de leetle rail birds ob selfishness fly to de woods, an’ de touts ob scandal slunk erway, an’ de drivers of trick an’ cheat hunted fer ernuther track, an’ de timers of folly throwed erway dey watch—an’ all de time he wus er-gittin’ dar—an’ he nurver teched hissef nur struck er boot nur missed his clip, an’ he made de ole high wheel sulky trimble all over lak er leaf in de storm, an’ he showed how ebrybody reap whut dey sow; how de artis’ lib in art, an’ de poit in poltry, an’ de patriot in de harts ob his countrymen, all arter dey dun dead an’ buried. An’ ‘Oh,’ he ses, so sarchin’ lak I see de folks trimble, ‘ef you lib fur de wurl you’ll die wid de wurl; but ef you lib fur God you’ll nurver die!’ An’ I cu’d see it all so plain an’ so quick an’ so terribul an’ so true I jes’ pulled out my ole timer ergin es he passed de ha’f, an’ click! dar she stood—59½!

“‘By de horn ob de tabbernacle,’ sez I, ‘he can’t keep up dat clip! Dat’s de ha’f dat burnt up Joe Patchen!’

“But I tell you, Boss, his name was P’inter—he had no noshun ob quittin’. He spun erlong on de straight stretches lak he had er runnin’ mate, an’ you’d wonder whut hilt ’im to de yearth. Den he ease up gently on de turns ob de track—whar he hit de doubters an’ de ’siety an’ de fools dat grasp at de bubbles ob wealth an’ folly on de ribber, an’ let de mighty stream wid all its depth an’ grandeur pass onnoticed to de ocean’—as he sed, he ease up dar an’ ketch his bref so gently lak, an’ sorrerful, you’d think he gwine stop an’ weep fur ’em, an’ you feel lak weepin’ yourse’f, fur yore own follies an’ de follies ob de wurl—but all de time he wus gittin’ dar!—an’ ef he did ease up es he went up de hill, it wus only jes’ long enuf ter let de light shine down on ’im frum heben, an’ he seemed ter linger jes’ er minnit in de sweetnes’ ob its glory.

“I wiped erway a tear an’ snapped my ole timer ergin—1:30½! ‘Dat’s good Baptis’ doctrine,’ sez I, ‘ef it am a trifle speedy. Lord, ef he do bust de recurd I hope you’ll gib ’im de Atlantic Ocean to spunge off in—sumpin’ in keepin’ wid his own nachur.’ An’ I sing sof’ly to myse’f dat good ole hymn, sung by Moses an’ de profets so long ergo:

“But bless you, honey, he wus jes’ playin’ on dem yudder quarters; he commenced ter pace now. He got right down on de groun’, an’ dough he didn’t make no fuss an’ you cudn’t see er moshun, nur eben de spokes ob de sulky, he talked lak er dyin’ muther to her wayward boy. He scorned de track ob dis wurl an’ seemed ter be pacin’ in de pure air ob God, an’ yit he didn’t rouse er angry wind, nur bring out de loud shouts frum de wurldly gran’ stan’, nur de hoozars of victory, nur de wild frenzy ob delight—but des tears, sweet tears. I cried lak er baby. I furgot ter time ’im. De sof’ light cum in frum de winder ob God an’ got inter de winder ob de ole man’s hart. De smell ob de yearthly flowers wus turned to heabenly ones, an’ when his sof’, ’pealin’ voice died away an’ de sweet, ’pealin’ music commenced, I cudn’t tell whar de sermin ended an’ de music begun, dey run togedder so. I sot in er sort ob er dream; I wanted ter go ter heaben; I heerd de white folks all pass quietly out; I heerd de notes ob de organ die erway, but I sot in de cornder, way off by mysef, an’ thanked God dat I’d seed de light an’ heerd de recurd ob salvation busted.”

THE QUEST OF POAQUITA

“Traditions?” repeated Buck Eye Pete with inimitable scorn, as he deftly balanced a battered coffee pot over the camp fire, “them was once the bane an’ joy o’ my life. I fair radiated with dreams o’ romance, hidden treasure, an’ sich like. Why, there was a pre-historic time in my credulous natur when I was looney on Pirate Morgan an’ babbled o’ Montezuma’s sarcophagus o’ buried valuables an’ heagern wives with unholy an’ covetious eye. An’ that’s what sent me an’ Chinook Bill on that foolhardy adventcher into darkest Sonora in the quest o’ the fabled city o’ Poaquita.”

Buck Eye Pete went back to his seat beyond the hot glare of the camp fire, puffed tentatively at a villainous looking pipe and gazed mournfully and with lack-lustre eye into the surrounding wall of darkness. Then, seeing no objection, he continued:

“An’ if this hyere august body votes a majority I’ll be the wag es wags a tale, es Shakespeare said.”

We settled ourselves in divers comfortable positions and nodded a unanimous consent.

“To begin, this deed o’ valor, gents an’ fellow mavericks,” pursued Buck Eye Pete, “was committed in the year of our Lord 1880, an’ me an’ Chinook Bill deserted the peaceful path o’ cow-punchin’ an’ chucked the fair dame o’ nameless peril under her purty chin. But be the consequence o’ that deed o’ valor on my own head, fer Chinook Bill was one o’ them trustin’ children es would turn an indignant rattler from a devilish purpose. Chinook Bill had that ca’m eye o’ the poet, the voice o’ the south wind an’ a hankerin’ fer the beauties o’ virgin natur an’ was gifted with a most marvelous arrangement in his inside which would belch information, mediaeval er otherwise, like a heifer’s cud, which he would afterwards masticate with great an’ convincin’ effusion. So this is how it come about. We had been grazin’ a bunch o’ cattle on the Bear Paw Plateaus, an’ was some seven weeks out an’ sure lonesome fer company when in a fit o’ desperation I made a suggestion to allay the fevered angwee o’ our fettered sperits. An’ Chinook Bill fell to with a spontaniety an’ enthusiasm es was plum disgustin’ in a man es had full possession o’ his mental faculties. But that ain’t sayin’ es how I was took with the dreams o’ averice myself. It was one fair day, the name an’ date o’ which has been lost in the remorseless flight o’ time, we come upon a Mexican’s cabin down in the El Raso Pass, which is still an unknown quantity in them beautifully colored railroad posters. This Mex had a helpmate, two ragged urchins in the way o’ off-spring with a mixture o’ mangy sheep an’ a pack o’ dawgs es would back ’emselves agin a convenient angle o’ the hut, scratch their ears an’ growl while me an’ Chinook Bill held forth in intellectual conversation with the Mex. They was ha’f Injuns an’ had lived there since they didn’t know when, but it was some time conjoinin’ that mystic period when the Jesuits evacuated suddent from their mission, the noble ruins o’ said mission still liftin’ majestic columns o’ doby brick in the purple haze o’ a poetic twilight a little ways down the valley. Well, whilst we was enjoyin’ our repast o’ tortillas an’ goat’s milk in the main dinin’ room Chinook Bill’s artistic eye discovered a incongruous dis-sim-oo-larity in the Mex’s selection o’ household furnitcher, which was sure marvelous to look upon to the unconverted eye o’ good taste, which consisted o’ sacred emblems in onyx, a gilded throne chair which was fit for a pope, a carved mahogany altar table an’ a stately array o’ books bound in stained sheep skin. Chinook Bill takes down one o’ them tomes o’ learnin’ an’ grows exultant yet arful perplexed at the contents thereof. An’ on the cover o’ every one o’ them books was a mouth with two fingers placed over it, which Chinook Bill opines was meant to convey their secret import an’ was forbidden knowledge excep’ to them es wore the cassock an’ paced the sacred patio o’ righteous an’ worldly exclusion.

“‘Where you get these?’ says Chinook Bill, polite.

“‘Mission,’ says the Mex.

“‘Buy,’ says Chinook Bill, ‘five dollars’.

“‘Bueno,’ says the Mex, an’ we peel him a fiver. Then we packed our purchases on a burro an’ hikes fer the range.

“It was that night before the camp-fire I was translatin’ the Spanish in one o’ them tomes o’ learnin’ when I ups suddent like with a yell an’ slaps Chinook Bill a ponderous blow o’ enlightment.

“‘Attention!’ says I, ‘here is an unexpurgated account o’ the mysterious city o’ Poaquita which lies in the far interior o’ the Sonora wilderness an’ was once ruled by the descendants o’ Montezuma an’ to which some monks was led captive in that distant time when the mind o’ man runneth not to the contrary! Then I read the glowin’ account, and Chinook Bill waddles his cud an’ looks attentive.

“‘Well’, says he, final, ‘what’s the color in yer pan?’

“‘Gold and hidden treasure’, says I, an’ I read some more from the forbidden book.

“‘Do you believe it?’ says Chinook Bill arter a pause an’ a long breath, like a woman.

“‘Believe?’ says I. ‘Is there anything to dispute it? Have you happened to peroose anything in the way o’ discursive literatchure es would substantiate the impunity o’ a bitter denial?’

“‘I cyaint say es I have,’ says Chinook Bill.

“‘Well, then,’ says I, ‘it stands that Poaquita is a potent factor es regyards conjective research, an’ I’m the man es would re-continue that search with joyful alacrity.’

“Then Chinook Bill, the trustin’ child, rose up an’ voiced to the impassioned stars a like sentiment.

“‘Here’s the map an’ general directions’, says I, ‘an it’s left fer the valorous to finish a chapter in this splendid drama es was enacted under the opalescent skies o’ a new world.’

“So the next sun seen us pushin’ fer headquarters with them long horns, an’ with our resignations in our pockets.

“Ol’ Señor Mendez meets us ten mile off, demandin’ explanations abundant an’ sooperfulous forthwith.

“‘What’s this?’ says he, when I hands him the resignations, pompous.

“‘Them es read may run,’ quoths I sweetly.

“‘Then run, in the name of a goat, you Americanos sin verguenza! I keel you, dogs, beasts for bring here back my cattles to starve!’ Then he outs with a gun an’ begins to punctuate his wrath with methodic cracks at my boot heels.

“‘This is a shame,’ says Chinook Bill, ‘an’ a arful breach o’ ediket,’ an’ he prompt starts in to retaliate; then I picks up courage an’ adds my relay o’ lead an’ fluent invective.

“Ol’ José Mendez sets up a howl, an’ says:

“‘How much I owe you Americanos?’

“‘Three months apiece,’ says I, ‘which is two hundred an’ forty dol’ fer the two o’ us, an’ mighty quick.’

“‘Caramba!’ says he, ‘I pay you, then you skeep inmediatamente.’

“‘We’re arful obliged,’ says I, sarcastic. Then we mounts an’ makes trail fer Carbola, which was situate about forty miles away, due south. We hit terra firma only where elevation was considerable an’ generally porphyry rock, an’ rode into that little unsanctified hamlet in a hooricane cloud o’ dust.

“‘Whew!’ says I, ‘a golden sunset an’ sich a ’ristocratic quietoode! One would natcherally concloode they was arful stuck-up.’

“‘Maybe they don’t happen to remember us,’ says Chinook Bill, ominous an’ his feelin’s hurt.

“‘It sure is a insult,’ says I.

“‘An’ nobody to give us a ovation,’ says Chinook Bill, almost tearful.

“‘It’s a snub,’ says I, ‘an’ Greasers at that!’

“It’s too quiet to be real,’ comments Chinook Bill, still ominous.

“‘Terrible oppressive,’ I agrees.

“Then we stops at the edge o’ town an’ shakes hands solemn like. Chinook Bill gets poetic an’ weeps copious.

“‘Maybe it will be the last chance,’ says he in a small voice, ‘an’ we will be eat up by cruel Injuns. We cyaint let the opportunity pass,’ says he. Then he recites some poetry es says opportunity never knocks but oncet. ‘An’ it ’ud be a shame not to do it.’

“‘A arful shame,’ concedes I, then we shakes hands again.

“‘Are you ready?’ says Chinook Bill.

“‘I’m dancin’ with suppressed hylarity,’ says I.

“Then we put spurs an’ whoops her up, shootin’ promiscuous. When we come to a halt an’ the smoke cleared, I says:

“‘Did you see anything, Bill?’

“‘Nope,’ says he, ‘but things is lightin’ up.’

“‘Folks is so curious,’ says I.

“‘Plum disgustin’,’ says Chinook Bill. ‘Al’ays interruptin’ an’ no privacy fer a healthy, robust body.’

“‘It’s a second insult,’ says I, an’ we whoops her up again.

“We uncovered aguardiente an’ keno sommers an’ anchored fer the night. We played fast an’ keerless, but somehow we couldn’t get shet o’ any o’ our wealth. So we give it up es a bad job an’ apologized fer shuckin’ the dealers. It was arful unsocial, an’ I was fer layin’ over next day to show ’em we was gentlemen, but Chinook Bill was fer findin’ Poaquita. So we laid in a stock o’ provisions an’ packed ’em on some burros. Then we held a conference back o’ the liquor shop with the alcalde o’ the town. This gent plentytentiary carried a small-sized totem pole in one hand which was called in Mex a official staff, an’ exoodes a treatise on the statutes es he wipes the perspiration from his aesthetic brow. We leans back agin our assortment o’ Chicago tins an’ listens grave. Final he ceases his harrabaloo an’ says:

“‘The señores will kindly consider theirselves under arrest.’

“‘Fer what?’ asks Chinook Bill, with a snap o’ his baby blue eyes.

“‘Fer disturbin’ the peace,’ says the aesthetic one, wavin’ his totem pole.

“‘What’s the penalty?’ says I.

“‘Imprisonment er twenty pesos,’ says the alcalde.

“‘Nixey,’ says Chinook Bill, ‘here’s a fiver.’

“‘Mil gracias,’ says the aesthetic one, an’ he bows to the earth humble an’ kisses his fingers coquettish. ‘An’ may I inquire fer where the señores mean to depart?’

“‘Sure,’ says Bill, with a wink, ‘Africa.’

“‘Bueno,’ says the alcalde. ‘Var good. A beautiful country I hear, señores. Adios. Now git, pronto!’

“So we mounts, gives a last partin’ salute, an’ hits them burros up. We druv constant fer ten days, an’ it was sure a God forsooken country we pushed into. First it was mesquite an’ cactus, then cactus and mesquite, an’ a few deflections in the way o’ hills. Then we begun to climb devious into regions o’ supernal ca’m, an’ the beautiful panorama changed its garment ... right in the middle o’ day, gents, an’ there we was with the tropics below us an’ a numerous supply o’ strange fauna in the way o’ monkeys an’ green parrots an’ yaller panthers. Then we started down devious on tother side and hit the deep timber, an’ us cow punchers. Imagine! An’ every day Chinook Bill got more an’ more worrit an’ turrible reticent.

“‘You ain’t a-skeered?’ says I, tauntin’.

“‘Huh, me?’ says he. ‘No, suh, but it’s sure annoyin’, this. Here we are in a natcheral temperate latitoode an’ hotter’n South Ameriky. It’s Chinook Bill who’s been up agin all the varyin’ shades o’ topographical insanity, but this is the infinitism o’ phantasy. It will get me nervous yet, an’ I hate to get nervous. But, in defiance o’ my cringin’ natur I’m bound to view the ancient glories o’ the fabled city o’ Poaquita.’ Then he takes another swag at that aguardiente an’ shrinks into a state o’ pensive isolation, fightin’ stegomyia as big as yer fist with meek fortitoode. Then there come a earthquake, which seismic convulsion yanked one o’ our pack mules down a chasm, our coolinary implements attached. Me an’ Chinook Bill sits down on the brink to listen to the musical cantinkerlations o’ tin kitchen ware fer ha’f a hour afterwards.

“‘If there be any Injuns within a radius o’ fifty miles,’ says Chinook Bill, ‘that infernal racket will start ’em on the war path.’ An’ we sure soon come across the immegiate signs o’ them savages, an’ Chinook Bill got more reticent an’ lookin’ arful pale under the gills an’ wild in the eye, a drinkin’ o’ that aguardiente an’ the chills. Oncet we was lyin’ in the shade o’ some rocks tryin’ to get some sleep. Chinook Bill dozes off an’ his pipe tilts between his teeth an’ the ashes burns a hole in his jeans. When it struck the sensitive tissue he ups with a wild screech, both guns cocked, an’ fires promiscuous. I see the light o’ the fever in his eye an’ the tremblin’ frenzy an’ I rolls over behind a convenient boulder. It was sure distractin’ to witness sich a waste o’ energy an’ precious ammunition, an’ I begins to yell frantic. He glares tragic in my direction, flops on his stummick an’ begins to wiggle, them Colts barkin’ tuneful. Then I has a arful presentment o’ homicide an’ shies down the mountain with becomin’ velocity, Chinook Bill in hot an’ lusty pursuit. But it wasn’t no use to run. So I intrenches an’ lets him burn powder. Arter he’d gone through his cartridge belt I bombarded him with capsules de quinine an’ demanded him to partake.

“‘Are you the chief?’ says he.

“‘Shame on you, Chinook Bill,’ says I, ‘to want ter assassinate yer bosom friend.’

“Bill looks sheepish an’ says, defiant:

“‘I been shot in the laig by a atrocious vision what sneaked up from behint me.’

“‘Shoo!’ says I, ‘it was the fire of yer pipe.’

“Chinook Bill looks at the hole in his jeans an’ grows absent.

“‘If you’ll never tell on me, Pete,’ says he, ‘I’ll bless yer ol’ age with my gratitoode. Come out an’ shake hands.’

“‘Have another capsule de quinine,’ says I, doubtful.

“‘You don’t trust your bosom friend,’ says he, reproachful.

“I put a hand to my heart an’ repeats:

“‘Your sad plight bereaves me much, dear friend, but I am guided by the light o’ a deeper understandin’. Have another capsule de quinine an’ rest yer tired bones in yon cool shade.’

“‘Well, all right,’ says Chinook Bill, meek. ‘I shore do feel like I swallowed a horned toad frog with a hoss collar adornin’ his neck. I’m a sick man haunted by turrible hallucinations. But it ain’t the fire water, Pete, er cowardice. Maybe it’s the curse that visits the avaricious. I’m sore perplexed,’ an’ Chinook Bill taps his forehead sorrowful.

“‘You been readin’ that forbidden book too much,’ says I.

“‘It’s been a great revelation to me,’ says Chinook Bill, ‘the sufferings o’ them captured monks es went crazy with the fever an’ tried to manslaughter one another.’

“‘Suppose I got took down?’ says I.

“‘It’s what been troublin’ me,’ says Chinook Bill, ‘an’ es a matter o’ precaution I vote we fill our shootin’ irons with blanks before we retire.’

“‘Chinook Bill,’ says I, ‘that was the voice o’ genius what spoke.’

“‘Arter that we made vows o’ constancy an’ took a swag at the aguardiente to seal the compact. Then we courted the arms o’ Morpheus. But it wasn’t long afore I woke up suddent, feelin’ light in the top o’ my head an’ grabbed my brace o’ pistols. I begun to stare wild, same es Chinook Bill, an’ seein’ Chinook Bill sleepin’ sound an’ a little elephant sittin’ on his nose I rose up an’ fired, indignant. Then a whole lot more little elephants jumped down from the trees, an’ there was some es played jews-harps an’ others es blowed trombones, an’ I grew speechless and frantic. Chinook Bill wakes up out of a unpleasant nightmare, an’ takin’ in the sitchooation at a glance, joins in the fusillade afore inquirin’ politely what might be the natur o’ the disturbance. An’ it soon oozes through my gray matter that Bill ain’t taking no notice o’ them little elephants, but makin’ deadly an’ sinister skirmishes at my sacred person.

“‘You infernal idjit,’ yells I, ‘shoot the elephants!’

“‘I knowed you was the chief,’ says he, ‘but you won’t fool me no more.’

“‘Chinook Bill,’ says I, ‘I have fer you a deep an’ all absorbin’ compassion.’

“‘You was that atrocious vision what sneaked up from behint and shot me in the laig,’ says he.

“‘Shame on you, Chinook Bill,’ says I. ‘I was only tryin’ to save you from the vicious tusks o’ them elephants.’ Then there was some more skirmishin’ an’ parley an’ we agreed to shake hands over a glass of aguardiente and quinine.

“About sundown we discovered ancient ruins in the side o’ a cliff with heagern idols in shockin’ dissabille sittin’ on their hams a-grinnin’ pleasant from their pedestals. We passed the time o’ day with them, then Chinook Bill, like the great Balboa, poured aguardiente on the haid o’ one an’ dedicated our discovery in the name o’ the Society o’ Natural History and Palezoic Research. We proceeds thence deeper into the unknown by the pallid light o’ the moon. Ruins an’ heagern idols was now plentiful, an’ Chinook Bill opines we was nearin’ our goal fast, an’ the while the topography was gettin’ queerer. Chinook Bill, still with the fever in his eye, recites Shakespeare blatant an’ called to the wilderness to deliver his Desdemona to his grievin’ heart. I laughs scornful, an’ whilst we was rejoicin’ thus we was suddenly confronted by a pack o’ ha’f naked Injuns es rose up out o’ the cañon an’ begun to chunk poisoned arrows at us. Chinook Bill bids me stay my wrath an’ lifts a imperious hand.

“‘Hold!” says he, ‘noble red men. Do I address the illustrious descendants o’ the Montezumas?’

“‘Ickle-hickle-juicy-woosy, eat ’em alive,’ says one what wore a Queen Anne collar o’ his ancestor’s teeth an’ dances fantastic on his painted toes. Then a big fat one takes the boards an’ shows a covetable row o’ white molars in a kingly grin. Him an’ Bill swap secret lodge signs, then his Nibbs approaches an’ pinches Chinook Bill on the arm, then he dances on his toes like the one with the Queen Anne collar.

“‘Iggle-woggle-plenty-good-fer-soup,’ says he, an’ makes some more goo-goo eyes at Chinook Bill while Bill gets out that forbidden book an’ reads some heagern Sanscrit therefrom. His Nibbs rolls on the ground joyful, then he waves his spear an’ holds a animated confab with his faithful subjects.

“‘You maverick,’ says I to Chinook Bill, ‘what you givin’ these pore benighted sons o’ the forests?’

“‘I’m repeatin’ the golden text o’ the god Itchlatichlahoola,’ says Chinook Bill, ‘an’ they are plumb skally-dasted at my marvelous display o’ heagern eridition. We’re the children o’ the sun due to make a visitation to this world every hundred years to deliver the compliments o’ Itchlatichlahoola. Now we shall be conveyed into Poaquita with pomp an’ eat o’ the fat o’ the land.’

“After a hurried confab his Nibbs dances back an’ says es how glad he was to see us an’ pinches Chinook Bill on the arm again. Bill does the spine curvitoore an’ says es how glad he was to be back jest fer the sake o’ ol’ lang syne, but allowed it didn’t do his dignity no credit to be sampled as a special kind o’ eatable an’ wouldn’t be pinched no more, then elaborated es how he wouldn’t stand fer it, no how, he bein’ a natcheral high-strung, free American durin’ them decades es when he wasn’t employed by Itchlatichlahoola as a winged Mercury, an’ lived in the more temporal clime o’ Arizona by choice, all of which was evident mistook by his Nibbs who shies up to me an’ takes a pinch at my biceps. I succumbs to consumin’ wrath immegiate an’ lands the high chieftain between the eyes unceremonious. Then there was revolution an’ carnage in the air, an’ me an Chinook Bill went down before the heagern horde, but to show our bravery Bill recites Horatius at the Bridge an’ annihilates a portion o’ his Nibbs’ faithful subjects in his dramatic gesticulations o’ same. We was tied to a chariot which had no wheels but was drug like a snow-scrape over the ground an’ conveyed into Poaquita. We reached that metropolis about sun-up where we was tied to a stone pillar in the square an’ exhibited to a pack o’ screechin’ hags es played May-pole around us an’ jabbered worse nor green parrots. Of all wild things es live next to the bosom o’ natur there ain’t anything es beats the make-up o’ the gentle sex. They’re a four-flush always.

“‘What’s up?’ says I to Chinook Bill, who was gazin’ mournful on the heagern rites.

“‘We’re the blumdest idjits es ever roped a stray maverick, that’s what,’ says he. ‘Why didn’t we think of it?’

“‘Think o’ what?’ says I.

“‘That them messengers from Itchlatichlahoola must in course be sent back from whence they come ... ergo, we perish on the sacrificial altar like them pore priests did.’

“‘You move me to expostulation,’ says I.

“‘But there shines the glimmer o’ hope,’ says Chinook Bill.

“‘Eloocidate,’ says I.

“‘His Nibbs, the king, has discovered the rejuvenatin’ properties o’ that remainin’ jug o’ aguardiente. From my place o’ vantage I observe that he retires to the rear o’ his palace an’ is fast lubricatin’ his system with that highly soperiferous nectar. The harem is in an uproar an’ the foundation o’ a great nation is totterin’ an’ his women folks is desolvin’ rapidly in the ether landscape. The chamberlain, the secretary o’ war an’ the House o’ Lords is holdin’ special session. I think the whole city is contemplatin’ a ignominious flight. His Nibbs is a regular Nero an’ is callin’ fer Rome to be burnt to banish the monotony o’ his moody reflections. Such is the potency o’ the Greaser’s mescal!’

“‘Then there is indeed hope,’ says I, es the next moment his Nibbs, the king, gives a bibulous war whoop an’ emerges into the open with that jug o’ aguardiente strapped to his middle, a bloody spear held aloft an’ a glitter in his eye. The special session o’ the House o’ Lords adjourns immegiate an’ takes to the tall timber, the noble kinsman o’ the great Montezuma givin’ obligin’ chase. Then a new inspiration o’ sacrilege an’ carnage hatches in his Majesty’s volatile brain an’ with a turrible war whoop he wheels right about an’ charges into the temple o’ Itchlatichlahoola es the high priest an’ his retinue o’ lesser lights bolts from another door with the sacred emblems o’ that gracious divinity tucked under their arms, an’ they went the way o’ the House o’ Lords likewise. His Nibbs re-appears snortin’ in triumph an’ circles like a vexed steer, a-lookin’ fer something to dispute the bloody laurels o’ his victory. When he sights us he is shaken by a great felicity an’ his attitoode is one o’ blandishin’ uncertitoode, es if he entertained a fearful idee we was tantalizin’ visions an’ would melt at the touch. The agony o’ his suspense was something prostratin’ an’ I lets out a yell o’ ‘Whoa, Buck!’ just to relieve his mind, an’ then hyere he come, fust on one side the square, then the other, dancin’ mad. Chinook Bill gives another encouragin’ whoop, an’ his Nibbs cuts the pigeon wing an’ begins to circle, that jug o’ aguardiente cuttin’ heraldic devices in the much disturbed atmosphere, his fat arms pluggin’ chaos an’ his feet comin’ down an’ combustin’ with terra firma like the rattle o’ a ore chute, an’ a-lookin’ fer the world like one o’ them hell vultures es picked our trail through the Sonora Mountains.

“‘What’s the natcheral sequence o’ these French ballet fantastics?’ says I.

“‘It’s the unconscious promptin’s o’ great mental endowment,’ says Chinook Bill. ‘Jest at present he’s executin’ the Circle o’ Archimedes an’ formin’ a planetary tablet o’ the high heavens; incident’ly he’s performin’ our heagern rituals which precedes a quick an’ horrible despatch o’ the soul from the mortal coil.’

“‘Then, alas! It’s death!’ says I.

“‘But we might divert his mind,’ says Bill.

“‘Eloocidate,’ says I again.

“Fer answer Chinook Bill draws forth with his free hand a bottle o’ Arizona Snake Bite to be took in drops diluted with much water an’ swallowed instant so es to lessen the convulsions o’ agony.

“‘I been tryin’ fer the last two months to get strong enough to ease the cork an’ enjoy the heavenly odor o’ this, but I ain’t been robust enough,’ says he, sorrowful. ‘So let them es are more agile an’ spry inherit what the gods bequeath to the valorous.’

“‘It ’ud be cruelty to animals,’ says I.

“‘I ain’t offerin’ it es a nerve tonic,’ says Chinook Bill, snappish, ‘an’ I ain’t dilatin’ on its many virchores, but if there is any heagern about es would defy the components o’ this devilish concoction o’ ancient alchemy let him beware,’ says he.

“His Nibbs no sooner sets his eye on that bottle o’ yaller perdition liquified afore he wants it, an’ licks his lips voracious.

“‘I cyaint endoore that look o’ deep reproach,’ says Chinook Bill; ‘he must have it.’

“‘It ’ud be cruelty to animals not to,’ says I, ‘an’ we ain’t runnin’ no Keely cure, fer a fact. Besides, he’ll resort to physical violence if we don’t hand over the dream maker prompt.’

“‘An’ whilst he is pluckin’ purple poppies from sweet fancy’s lurid canvas,’ says Chinook Bill softly, ‘we’ll leave our respects to the House o’ Lords an’ depart instant. It’s me who’s pinin’ fer the range.’

“‘The dream o’ avarice no longer disturbs the tranquillity o’ my peace-lovin’ natur’,’ says I. ‘Me fer the sweet alfalfa of the cowland.’

“Thereon, we viewed the mad potations o’ his Nibbs in anxious silence, an’ when he begun to fight invisible cobras an’ pluck bits o’ poetic thought from space we took opportunity by the forelock an’ broke fer sweet freedom, an’ was soon lickin’ time out o’ the landscape. After we’d chucked two days behind us we slowed up fer observation an’ to get our bearin’s by the water shed. Ten more moons an’ we sights Californy Gulf an’ civilization. We sold antique relics an’ old Chippendale furnitchur, with the forbidden books throwed in fer good measure, to a private expedition headed by a Harvard professor. Then we got a full supply o’ the paraphernalia o’ railroad travel, takes forcible possession o’ the rear coach an’ begins a long deferred celebration. It ’ud be trivial to say es how we blowed in to Phoenix, it bein’ said the dust ain’t settled there yet—exceptin’ in the extreme sooburbs o’ that thrivin’ town. But I know we found white man’s whiskey an’ was shucked clean—exceptin’ to our irreproachable character—in a protracted game o’ monte, an’ was chiefly delayed by them indispensable altercations es come up in the course o’ one’s sojourn through them deludin’ hazes an’ prismatic colorin’s o’ a magnificent jag. After we’d drowned the contagion o’ heagernism in our orthidox constitutions we mounts the broncos bought previous to that little escapade an’ hikes fer the range. We follers our noses across the El Pinto country until we struck the Bar Y outfit, implores a ice-bound individgooal es was chef and bottle washer fer a hand-out an’ incident’ly asks the foreman fer a job. We gets both, an’ fer two months pursooes the quiet paths o’ temperance an’ thrift until a worldly maverick by the name o’ O’Hooley drifts into camp an’ tells how he’d struck it rich in the Little Pecan country an’, guided by a impulse of philanthropy, was ridin’ cross territory a-tellin’ o’ his great discovery—. But that’s another story,” said Buck Eye Pete, “an’ it’s me fer a cup o’ Mocha-Java an’ a siesta.”

NAPOLEON — PART VII—NAPOLEON III

The year 1848 came bearing revolution on its wings. Again France cast aside the Bourbon dynasty, and declared for a republic. Once more began the exile of King Louis Philippe; driven from his native land in old age, as in youth.

The man of Boulogne and Strasbourg waited and watched his opportunity. A republican, a great minister, a member of the provisional government declared, “The renown of Napoleon remains as one of those immense souvenirs which extend over the history of a people, and cover it with an eternal splendor. All that is popular in this glory we accept with eagerness; the proscription of his family by the France of to-day would be a shame.” France gave heed to these words and the National Assembly declared: “Article 6 of the law of April 10, 1852, relative to the banishment of the Bonaparte family is abrogated.”

Another republican leader made the following assertion: “The Republic is like the sun. Allow the nephew of the Emperor to approach it, I am sure he will disappear in its beams.” Events proved that it was not the nephew of the emperor who was to disappear. But, in fact, the real antagonist of the republic was not the living nephew—it was the dead emperor himself, the ever-living name—Napoleon. Living or dead, France belonged to him.

After thirty-three years of proscription and exile, Louis Napoleon was elected by his native city of Paris to a seat in the National Assembly.

On December 20, 1848, Charles Louis Napoleon was declared President of the Republic of France. The question arose, “Will he take the oath of office wearing the costume of Napoleon as First Consul, or appear in military dress?” Upon taking his oath the Prince-President wore a black coat with the star of the Legion of Honor.

During the year 1852, the vote of the people of France was taken as to whether or not the imperial dignity should be re-established in the person of Prince Louis Napoleon. And “by the grace of God and the National Will” Charles Louis Napoleon became “Napoleon III, Emperor of the French.” On the night of December 1, 1852, the dignitaries of the new Empire went to the Palace of St. Cloud carrying the Imperial Crown, and the next day the proclamation of the empire was made in Paris with stately ceremony. The Emperor Napoleon III rode from the palace of St. Cloud to the Tuileries. The procession marched between lines of soldiers with arms presented; the cannon roared, the bells rang gaily, and the military bands played “Partant pour la Syrie,” the stirring air composed by Queen Hortense.

Mrs. Jessie Benton Fremont (whom it is scarcely necessary to mention as being the daughter of Thomas H. Benton and the wife of John C. Fremont) says in “Souvenirs of My Life”: “We saw the official entrance into Paris of the Emperor, our position on the Champs Elysées being about midway between the Arc de Triomphe and the Tuileries. On that 2nd day of December, 1852, the courage of Louis Napoleon was tested. The republicans who had put him in power, had warned him that he should die if he altered the republican form of government. Whether he had courage or not I do not know. What I do know is that I saw him ride, alone, no troops, not a single officer within forty feet of him to his front or rear, and open space on either side of him, along the broad avenue densely lined by crowds. Quite separated and alone, his head bare, holding in one hand the reins, in the other his hat. Only his horse was to share any harm that might come to him. To us the thrill of response to such evident courage came with sudden conviction and the applause from our balcony was strong and sincere.”

England hastened to recognize the new Emperor, and the other Great Powers promptly followed her example. Immense sums of money were voted by the National Assembly to be placed at the disposal of the Emperor in order to maintain the splendor of his position. The prisoner of Ham had become the absolute ruler of the foremost nation of continental Europe.

In the hour of triumph, in the midst of his state and magnificence the friends of his years of adversity were not forgotten. Charles Thelin, the devoted valet, became Treasurer of the Privy Purse—a purse much heavier than the one from which Thelin had paid for the workman’s costume at Ham! None of the adherents of the evil days of Louis Napoleon were forgotten; in his heart there seemed to rest a grateful memory of every kindness.

To most men comes love’s young dream, and then ambition. To this, which is the common fate, this man of strange destiny, Louis Napoleon, was to offer a contradiction. His life was now passed under triumphal arches, listening to words of adulation. It was at Fontainebleau that the great Emperor had signed his abdication and taken leave of his guard as he departed for his first captivity upon the Island of Elba. And it was at Fontainebleau that Napoleon III sat unmoved and listened to these words: “Our single wish is that, having been the last to salute Napoleon I, we may be the first to salute Napoleon III.” But it is with emotion which he could not control that on the spot where he and his mother had stood together, sad pilgrims (1831), he heard these words in her honor: “Crowned artist, queen of grace and genius, mother of a glorious child, preserved by her through exile and danger to give repose to France.”

With his wildest dreams realized, he felt that to be admired is nothing; the thing is to be loved. His heart was filled with reveries and longings; he aspired after the greatest happiness in life—love in marriage. His words were: “Until now my position has prevented me from marrying; amidst the cares of government, I have, alas! at this hour, in my own country, from which I have so long been absent, neither intimate friends nor acquaintances of childhood, nor relatives who could give me the sweetness of family life!”

After the coup d’état the friends and ministers of Louis Napoleon greatly desired that he should form an alliance with some princess of royal or imperial blood. The daughter of his cousin, the Grand Duchess of Baden, had married Prince Gustavus Vasa of Sweden, son of King Gustavus IV. The daughter of this marriage, Princess Caroline Vasa (afterwards Queen of Saxony), was the person selected to become the wife of Napoleon III. It seems that the Emperor of Austria had to be consulted, and his refusal was positive, in consideration of the fate of the two Archduchesses, Marie Antoinette and Marie Louise, who had been placed by Austria upon the throne of France. Louis Napoleon seemed to feel no regret as to the failure of the negotiation, as his heart was by no means engaged in it.

There was at this time in Paris a young Spanish lady of noble birth and high position and of very extraordinary beauty, Mademoiselle de Montijo, Comtesse de Teba. Like all foreigners of distinction, she and her mother, the Comtesse of Montijo, were received at the Elysée Palace by the Prince-President with the attention due their rank. When first he met her, in 1849, he was very deeply impressed by her great beauty, elegance and grace, and this feeling seemed constantly to increase. Although he treated her with the most marked reserve and dignity, his happiness was in being at her side. He inaugurated a series of sojourns at his palaces at Compiègne and Fontainebleau, where she and her mother were among his guests.

Her manner was full of charm and grace, and her nature of enthusiasm and poetry. Her conversation was bright and glowing, and the Emperor could not conceal the joy he felt in listening to her, nor the admiration aroused by her graceful and intrepid horsemanship. He was himself a bold and elegant rider, and in the forests of his country palaces he ordered that hunts should be given with the most brilliant surroundings.

Although her radiant beauty attracted the attention of all, none dreamed that in Mademoiselle de Montijo they saw their future Empress. The Emperor never departed from the most correct reserve; accustomed, as he was, to master and conceal his emotions, although softened, subdued and fascinated, his attitude throughout towards his lovely guest was irreproachable. Possibly his projected marriage was already settled in his own mind. Although an Emperor, and a man who wore a mask of gentle calmness in most trying moments, he was, at this time, above all else, a lover.

One bright autumnal morning, as they walked in the park, the beautiful Spaniard, full of poetical fancy, admired the magical effect of the dewdrops upon the clover leaves. The Emperor quietly drew aside one of his courtiers, who left in a few moments for Paris. The next evening there was a lottery drawn, and it was managed that Mademoiselle de Montijo should draw a clover leaf sparkling with superb diamonds. Simply, the Emperor was desperately in love; to him, as to any other man of deep sentiment, above all things earthly, even crowns and sceptres, was a beautiful face, the most beautiful sight of all, and the sweetest harmony was the tone of voice of the woman he loved.

On January 1st, 1853, he asked her in marriage, and on January 22nd, he summoned before him, in the throne-room of the Tuileries, the great constituent bodies of the empire to receive his announcement. In a clear and emphatic manner and voice he spoke:

“Gentlemen, I comply with the wish so often manifested by the country by coming to announce to you my marriage.... For the last seventy years foreign princesses have ascended the steps of the throne, only to see their offspring scattered by war or revolution. One woman alone has seemed to bring happiness and to live longer than others in the people’s memory; and this woman, the good and modest wife of General Bonaparte, was not the issue of royal blood.” This homage paid to his grandmother, the Empress Josephine, was greeted with applause and cries of “Long live the Emperor!” After speaking at length with regard to matters of state, with great emotion he expressed all his affection for his betrothed: “She who has become the object of my preference is of lofty birth.... Gifted with all the qualities of the soul, she will be the ornament of the throne, as in the hour of danger she would become one of its courageous supporters.... Catholic and pious, she will address to Heaven the same prayers that I do for the welfare of France; gracious and good, she will, in the same position, I firmly hope, renew the virtues of the Empress Josephine.”

He ended with these heartfelt words: “I come, then, gentlemen, to say to France, I have preferred a woman whom I love and respect to an unknown person, the advantages of an alliance with whom would be mingled with sacrifices. In placing independence, the qualities of the heart, family happiness above dynastic prejudices, I shall not be less strong, because I shall be more free. Very soon, in betaking myself to Nôtre Dame, I shall present the Empress to the people and the army; the confidence they have in me will assure their sympathy for her whom I have chosen, and you, gentlemen, in learning to know her, will be convinced that this time also I have been inspired by Providence.”

As soon as the announcement was made Mme. de Montijo and her daughter were installed in the Elysée Palace, where they were to reside until the marriage should take place, and where the Emperor went every day to pay court to his betrothed and to carry her bouquets. He laid not only his crown, but his heart, at her feet. This man, daring in deeds and gentle in feeling, had undergone deep pangs of suffering. Venerating his father, devotedly loving his brother and idolizing his mother, he had, one by one, been bereft of all near and dear to him. He seemed to long to take in his protecting arms and in his loving heart a woman whom he could love and honor and cherish as his wife, one worthy to be at his side upon a throne.

The Municipal Council of Paris had determined to offer to the Emperor’s betrothed a magnificent set of diamonds. The Prefect of the Seine received the following letter:

The money was employed in founding an establishment where poor young girls should receive a professional education, and which they would leave only when provided with suitable positions. This establishment was to bear the name of the Empress and be placed under her protection.

With Bob Taylor — SENTIMENT AND STORY — THE PARADISE OF FOOLS PART XII

Oh, what a wonderful magician and what a tyrant king is Love, the King of Kings!

Look at the care-worn faces in the offices and counting rooms and on the business marts of the world. Look out yonder at the millions in the factories and fields, with beaded brows, and knotted muscles, and calloused hands, coining thought into gold, and sweat into silver. There is a mighty power moving on those restless tides; they are sowing and reaping for the helpless and the innocent; Love hath written his name in every heart, and in every life there is a love story. Now look yonder in the purple glow of eventide, how the millions dissolve and vanish among the shadows. The law of the King has been obeyed, and labor finds its sweet reward in the palace of love, by the brawling brook of laughter, on the brink of the river of song.

But, Lord, how soon the palace crumbles! And how surely the vibrant streams run dry when labor leaves his task undone, or toil takes his gold to other shrines!

If you would keep the loom of love in motion, you must be a flying shuttle of industry by day and spend your evenings at home. The shuttle delivers the thread; you must deliver the bread and grease the bobbins with butter.

The shuttle is always in its place. Art thou, O King? When the light is smiling through the window out into the darkness, and thy home is ringing with the laughter and song of children within, art thou there to laugh and sing with them? And when the baby cries in the dead hours of the night, dost thou meekly wear thy yoke of love and walk the floor and sweetly sing to thy screaming progeny?

Alas! too often thou art found where sherry glows and champagne flows and the night is very, very merry, O King!

I saw a truant old gentleman vanish from his labors to a carousal one evening, and that night he went home as drunk as a lord, with unsteady steps and slow, dreading the storm within, and softly singing to himself as he went:

The queen of the household, who had been nursing her rage, met him at the door with a face like a drawn tomahawk; and the clock struck one, and she struck, too, as he entered.

“How dare you come home to me at this hour of the night?” she shouted in her anger.

“Why, my dear, it was jis’ ten o’clock when I left prayer meetin’, an’ I come right straight home.”

“Yes, prayer meeting! You look like prayer meeting! Look at the hands on the dial of that clock; it has just struck one.”

“Well, now, madam,” he said, “if you propose to believe a durned little dollar-and-a-half clock before you’ll believe your husband, that’s all right; but I shall certainly think that I have not found the amiable spirit in this palace of love which I expected to find on my arrival.”

And the threads of love popped, and the loom stopped for several hours.

An uncrowned old King went to his little palace one night under the influence of King Alcohol, as usual. His unhappy wife let him in at the door and burst into tears and said:

“Husband, why do you come home every night in this drunken condition?”

“Why,” he said, “my dear, you are so pretty that I jist naturally love to look at you double!”

Did you ever see a tramp tramping by and pausing at your door to beg a benediction—not of love, but of bread? What cared this wandering boy for love? His heart was in the grave; he was the “somnambulist of a shattered dream;” he was a romance in rags, a seedy poem, a tattered song, crumpled by the hand of fate and thrown into the waste-basket of oblivion.

He halted at a farmhouse one rainy day and proposed to kill all the rats on the place for his dinner. “Very well,” said the farmer, “it’s a bargain.” He called his neighbors in to see the killing. The tramp ate for an hour, and when he had finished he called for a spade. Seating himself in the middle of the room, he raised the spade over his shoulder and shouted: “Now fetch on your rats!”

He stopped at an old fellow’s door and told him he was a dentist, and smilingly proposed to put a good set of teeth in a fresh apple pie for nothing.

I saw love enter the gubernatorial door to plead for love one day, and the old mother sat and wept in the presence of the Governor, while the aged father told the story of a love that was wrecked long ago, a life that was ruined, and a lover that wandered away with the death wound in his heart. Then I heard him tell the story of a tramp whose journey had ended at last within the prison walls; and I went out with them and stood at the gate of hell. I looked in and saw the ghastly stripes of shame and the pallid faces of crime moving to and fro, laboring under the lash of justice and shrinking from the scorn of their fellow man. I entered and looked again; there was not a smile nor a single peal of laughter, but melancholy’s ghost of song still lingered behind the iron bars to comfort languishing love.

I saw children of tender age in that vortex of living death, and I said, “Hell was not made for children;” and I dragged them out and delivered them to their mothers. I saw youths who had committed crime in the heat of passion, dying in disgrace, and I dragged them out and sent them home, some with a new hope and some to die. I saw repentant men who had suffered long enough, and I dragged them out and gave them to their wives and their children. I saw the erstwhile tramp, the romance in rags, the tattered song, now the striped doxology of a misspent life; two trembling hands pointed to him. I turned to the old folks and said: “His crime was not great, and you are old and feeble;” and I dragged him out and left them weeping upon his bosom.

An overbearing lawyer once shouted to an old lady whom he was examining on the witness stand:

“Madam, please confine yourself to the facts!”

The old lady turned around to him and said:

“Well, sir, you are no gentleman; that’s a fact.”

An old doctor examined his patient one afternoon and coldly said to him:

“You are dying, sir; have you any wish to express before you pass over the river?”

“Yes,” said the patient, feebly, “I wish I had employed another doctor.”

The world loves us if we succeed; it despises us if we fail; it piles ice around its benefactors, and gives the meed of praise to genius only when genius is in the grave. But what do words of praise avail to lift the shadows from a path no longer pressed by weary feet? Why fill the hands of the dead with flowers which you have withheld from the living? Who would not rather have one smile, one tender word to-day, than to know that a million roses would be heaped upon his coffin? Who would not rather live and dream among the flowers of love than to sleep the dreamless sleep beneath a wilderness of flowers?

Then why not let the Gulf Stream of love flow on? For its warm current breathes upon the icy shores of mortal life and makes them blossom with laughter and song. Love is the soul of the beautiful, the true and the good; it is all there is of happiness.

But “the course of true love never did run smooth.” Listen to my tale of woe. An absent-minded old bachelor once fell in love with a beautiful girl and instantly prepared for battle with the flounced and powdered enemy. At first his plans worked well, and he was about to win a great victory over all the swells in town; but an accident happened which changed his destiny and wrecked his hopes of conquest and happiness. The church bell rang one bright Sabbath morning, and he knew that his idol would be there; and he diked himself in faultless style and curled his sorrel moustache till it looked like the tail of a pug. The excitement of the occasion made him more absent-minded than ever, and he waited until the worshipers had assembled, and then walked down the aisle in triumph, the observed of all observers, with his overcoat hanging on his arm; but the maiden looked at his overcoat and blushed; the preacher looked at it and smiled, and the congregation looked at it and broke into laughter; and the old bachelor looked down, and it was his every-day pantaloons. His hope exploded like a bubble in the air, and he dropped the garment and flew.

We have stepped over the threshold of the twentieth century. What greater wonders will it unfold to us? It may be that another magician, greater even than Edison, the “Wizard of Menlo Park,” will rise up and coax the very laws of nature into easy compliance with his unheard-of dreams. I think he will construct an electric railway in the form of a huge tube, and call it the “electro-scoot,” and passengers will enter it in New York and touch a button and arrive in San Francisco two hours before they started!

I think a new discovery will be made by which the young man of the future may stand at his “kiss-o-phone” in New York and kiss his sweetheart in Chicago with all the delightful sensations of the “aforesaid and the same.”

I think some Liebig will reduce foods to their last analyses, and, by an ultimate concentration of their elements, will enable the man of the future to carry a year’s provisions in his vest pocket. The dude will store his rations in the head of his cane, and the commissary department of a whole army will consist of a mule and a pair of saddlebags. A trainload of cabbage will be transported in a sardine box and a thousand fat Texas cattle in an oyster can.

Power will be condensed from a forty-horse engine to a quart cup. Wagons will roll by the power in their axles, and the cushions of our buggies will cover the force that propels them. The armies of the future will fight with chain lightning, and the battlefields will be in the air.

Some dreaming Icarus will perfect the flying machine, and upon the aluminum wings of the swift Pegasus of the air social, civic and military parades will be held.

The rainbow will be converted into a Ferris wheel; all men will be bald-headed; the women will run the government—and then I think the end of time will be near at hand!

A great many youths think that if a man has brain-power he can accomplish anything. So he can, but a study of the men who are failures, the men who fill our penitentiaries and our sanitariums, will show that unless ability is ballasted with character, its possessor is unstable and untrustworthy. There is a tremendous power in ability, boys, when added to character.

I saw a poor old bachelor live all the days of his life in sight of paradise, too cowardly to put his arm around it and press it to his bosom. He shaved and primped and resolved to marry every day in the year for forty years. But when the hour for love’s duel arrived, when he stood trembling in the presence of rosy cheeks and glancing eyes, and beauty shook her curls and gave the challenge, his courage always oozed away, and he fled ingloriously from the field of honor.

Far happier than the bachelor is old Uncle Rastus in his cabin, when he holds Aunt Dinah’s hand in his and asks: “Who’s sweet?” And Dinah drops her head over on his shoulder and answers, “Bofe uv us.”

A thousand times happier is the frisky old widower with his pink bald head, his wrinkles and his rheumatism, who

He “toils not, neither does he spin,” yet Solomon in all his glory was not more popular with the ladies. He is as light-hearted as “Mary’s little lamb.” He is acquainted with every hog path in the matrimonial paradise and knows all the nearest cuts to the sanctum sanctorum of woman’s heart. But his jealousy is as cruel as the grave. Woe unto the bachelor who dares to cross his path!

An old bachelor in my native mountains once rose in church to give his experience, in the presence of his old rival, who was a widower, and with whom he was at dagger’s points in the race to win the affections of one of the sisters in Zion. Thus the pious old bachelor spake: “Brethren, this is a beautiful world. I love to live in it just as well to-day as I ever did in my life. And the saddest thought that ever crossed this old brain of mine is, that in a few short days at best, these old eyes will be glazed in death and I’ll never get to see my loved ones in this world any more.” And his old rival shouted from the amen corner:

“Thank God!”

Oliver Wendell Holmes says:

“Our brains are seventy year clocks. The angel of life winds them up once for all, closes the case, and gives the key into the hand of the resurrection angel.” When I read this I thought, what a stupendous task awaits the angel of the resurrection, when all the countless millions of old rickety, rusty, worm-eaten clocks are to be resurrected, and wiped, and dusted, and repaired, for mansions in the skies! There will be every kind and character of clock and clockwork resurrected on that day. There will be the Catholic clock with his beads, and the Episcopalian clock with his ritual. There will be an old clock resurrected on that day wearing a broadcloth coat buttoned up to the throat; and when he is wound up he will go off with a whizz and a bang. He will get up out of the dust shouting, “Hallelujah!” and he will proclaim “sanctification!” and “falling from grace!” as the only true doctrine by which men shall go sweeping through the pearly gates into the new Jerusalem. And he will be recognized as a Methodist preacher, a little noisy, a little clogged with chicken feathers, but ripe for the Kingdom of Heaven.

There will be another old clock resurrected on that day, dressed like the former, but a little stiffer and straighter in the back, and armed with a pair of gold spectacles and a manuscript. When he is wound up he will break out in a cold sepulchral tone with, firstly: “foreordination!” secondly: “predestination!” and, thirdly: “the final perseverance of the saints!” He will be recognized as a Presbyterian preacher, a little blue and frigid, a little dry and formal, but one of God’s own elect, and he will be labeled for Paradise.

There will be an old Hard-shell clock resurrected, with throat whiskers, and wearing a shad-bellied coat and flap breeches. And when he is wound up a little, and a little oil is poured into his old wheels, he will swing out into space on the wings of the gospel with:

“My Dearly Beloved Brethren-ah; I was a-ridin’ along this mornin’ a-tryin’ to study up somethin’ to preach to this dyin’ congregation-ah; and as I rid up by the old mill pond-ah; lo and behold! there was an old snag a-stickin’ up out of the middle of the pond-ah; and an old mud turtle had clim up out uv the water and was a settin’ up on the old snag a-sunnin’ uv himself-ah; and lo! and behold-ah! when I rid up a leetle nearer to him-ah, he jumped off of the snag, ‘ker chug’ into the water, thereby proving emersion-eh!”

Our brains are clocks, and our hearts are the pendulums. If we live right in this world, when the Resurrection Day shall come, the Lord God will polish the wheels, and jewel the bearings, and crown the casements with stars and with gold. And the pendulums will be harps encrusted with precious stones. They will swing to and fro on angel wings, making music in the ear of God, and flashing His glory through all the blissful cycles of eternity!

The mornings are the rapturous thoughts of God; the evenings are His glorious dreams. We think within His thoughts, and dream within His dreams. The sun and stars are His mighty looms on which he weaves the lights and shadows that tint the earth and sky with colors divine. But let those looms of light for a moment stop; let their blissful shuttles cease to fly, and instantly, this beautiful world of ours, with all its bloom and beauty blighted, with all its mirth and music hushed, would lie naked and dead on the cold bosom of eternal night.

So it is with human life. It hath its spirit looms, and its throbbing shuttles forever delivering to the warp and woof of hope and memory, the shining threads of human kindness, and weaving them into gossamer webs of love around our hearts and in our homes. Every tender word we speak; every blessing we bestow is a thread of sunshine woven into somebody’s life; and all the smiles and sympathies which come to us from other hearts are threads of light and love woven into our own. But let the loom of love for a moment stop; let its blissful shuttle cease to fly, and that moment happiness will lie dead on the hearthstone, and laughter will perish among the roses at the door.

All men are Kings, but love is King of Kings. His imperial chariot rumbles over the cobblestones of human hearts, and the sighing millions are his worshipers. Wealth bows its haughty head before his throne, and pays penance with jewels and gold; labor bends the reverent knee and counts its beads of sweat; commerce folds its snowy wings and kneels on the billows in mute but eloquent adoration, and art chisels down the cold white prison walls of shapeless marble and leads dumb beauty forth, a breathless prayer to love.

Love is the only despot against whose tyranny no nation ever rebels; his yoke is the twining of tender arms, and the crack of his whip is a guileless kiss. Love is a regal anarchist; he climbs the ladder of laughter and throws bomb shells of mirth into the palace of the heart. Love is a royal minstrel; he scales the harp strings of song and serenades the soul. Love rides on the wings of butterflies, and, with his silken lariat, lassoes strolling lovers, and leads them down among the golden rod and clover blossoms. The dimples in the chin of mirth are the tell-tale tracks of love; and he lurks among the roses that bloom on beauty’s cheek.

With Trotwood — THE RIGHTS OF CHILDHOOD

[This address, delivered January 18th, 1907, before the convention of the Tennessee County Superintendents and Teachers, is compiled from notes by Mr. Settle of the Daily American, and from memory after delivery by its author, Mr. Moore having made no notes at the time, the speech being the occasion of extemporaneous talks at the close of an educational rally. From many sources has come the request that it be reproduced here.—Editor.]

I thank you, Mr. Chairman, for your very kind introduction concerning my “Bishop of Cottontown,” and the fact that you see in it an appeal for the childhood of the land. And I thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for the privilege of addressing you on this subject, so full of great and far reaching interest. And in the beginning permit me to say to you that I, myself, have been a teacher, and that I consider it the grandest profession of all those which make for the uplifting of the human race, save, perhaps, one. If you doubt that I have been there—to use the pungent vernacular of the times—if you doubt that I am familiar with the hardships, trials, ay, and the triumphs of the average teacher, permit me to relate this anecdote as the stamp of the coin, the chip of the block of the profession.

In my younger days, when the Alabama law required that a teacher should teach hygiene and physiology along with other studies—the object being to show the effects of alcohol on the human body—there came to my school a big, double-jointed plow boy, whose opportunities for education had been few, but he was of that stuff from which many of the great men of the republic have been made. After six months of grammar and hygiene, when the class was required to write a composition on the human anatomy, this is the marvelous work of art handed into me by the man of the plow:

“The human anatermy is devided into three parts, the Head, the Chist and the Stummic. The Head contains the brains, if any. The Chist contains the lights and the liver. The Stummic contains the bowels. There are five bowels, a, e, i, o, u and sometimes w and y.”

Have I not been there, my friends?

The rights of childhood—that is the subject you have given me, Mr. Chairman. Why, you might as well have asked me to speak upon the rights of God. You know, and I know, and all within the sound of my voice know, what are the rights of childhood—the right to an education, to health, to play, to work in proportion to its age and strength, to a fair chance and a square deal in this greatest country of the world’s greatest age.

We know, I say, what are the rights of a child. The question I wish to put to you is, are they getting those rights?

The distinguished gentleman and ex-Governor who has just preceded me, has said most eloquently much that I myself do most heartily endorse. And while I dislike to sound in this assembly one discordant note—to strike one chord of the minor here—where all seem so satisfied, I feel that I shall not be true to the great cause of childhood if I fail to say what I do know. It is good for us, now and then, to be shown our shortcomings. It is well for us to see at times into our soul of souls. It is progress to search after better things. Self-sufficiency is retrogression; self satisfaction is decay, and contentment is the sure messenger of degeneracy and death. There is no god as great as the God of Discontent. False glory is the masque of ignorance and self-conceit is the gaudy mantle of the king’s fool.

In telling you then, as the collected teachers and county superintendents of this state, that you have done nobly and performed your solemn duties, the distinguished gentleman has used an hyperbole which strikes me with ironical exaggeration and which has aroused in me this flow of bitterness and gall which I shall now pour out upon your complacent heads. And I do if with this amendment—that if you are doing your duty, if you have fought for the rights of childhood as you should and failed, then the law makers of this state, and the people of the state who send that kind every two years to this capitol are fearfully, wonderfully and criminally derelict in their duty to the children of their own firesides. For I have it from the lips of your chairman himself, in a speech he delivered in Columbia last fall, that in all the forty-five members of the great United States, in numbers of natural born illiterates, North Carolina stands at the very bottom and Tennessee, your own Tennessee, in which you are doing such noble, uplifting work, stands next to her, holding in her hand the black flag of illiteracy.

Does the full force of this get into your peripatetic souls to ruffle the feathers of your immaculate conceit? Great God, it hurts me to think of North Carolina, the birthplace of my father and all his fathers before him that I know anything of, the birthplace of Polk and Shelby and Robertson and a host of others as great sons as ever God gave to the republic, the land of the Anglo-Celt, of patriotism and tar-heel gameness—it hurts me, I repeat, to learn that she stands at the foot, and Tennessee, her daughter and her equal in past grandeur, patriotism and principles, stands next!

Don’t look at me as if you did not want to hear it! Neither do I want to hear it, but it is sometimes good for us to hear the truth—the truth even to crucifixion.

You may be ignorant, but God knows you will fight! Then fight for the white children of your state—fight these laws and the politicians who made them with strings to them—made them to be evaded. Fight for more and better schools and the abolition of child labor until your state stands in the column where its pedigree and its past record entitles it to stand!

For you will fight, thank the Lord!

I journeyed last spring to New Orleans just to see the plain upon which Tennesseans stood and fought to a bloody finish the bullies of beef-eating England and secured by their victory to our nation the Louisiana Purchase and a century of foreign peace, which the memory of that battle strengthens yet in the minds of their children. The old ditch was a swamp of water lilies; the breastworks had gone back to the plain; but the great Mississippi flowed on to the sea, unhampered by Spaniard or Briton, the great artery of a boundless, unbroken and undivided country. And I stood upon a soil made American by the blood of Tennesseans; I looked up at a sky purple, blue and beautiful, thrown over the landscape by the God of our fathers, even as a king of old would throw his royal purple over the masterpieces of the great master. And on the sky and on the land and on the bosom of the mighty river I read: JACKSON—JACKSON—JACKSON!

As I stood there the fighting spirit of my Irish sires came back to me as I saw the ghosts of those long-haired Tennesseans standing behind that bloody ditch fighting for the country which God had ordained should belong to them and the oppressed of the world. The hot blood surged in my cheek as I thought of the 60,000 little white children of the South and the 2,000,000 in the cotton mills and factories and mines and sweatshops of the nation, robbed of their rights of childhood by the greed of gold, the graft of politicians and the low ignorance and lazy debasement of their own parents, stealing from them not only the rights of an education, but even the right of life! And as the blood surged in my head, beating drumbeats in my brain and marshalling in the fine frenzy of prophetic visions the gray host that stood shoulder to shoulder there, I saw again that sallow-faced leader, with the form of a battle spear and the eyes of a god, riding up and down the long lines—bloody, blasphemous and brave—and forever settling with the invaders the issue they had postponed, but not abandoned, at Yorktown. And, seeing him, I saw again that pitiful picture in the Waxhaw Settlement—the Irish immigrant mother, her husband but a week ago buried in a poor white’s grave, two babes at her knees and this one at her breast, with no money and no home and no bread for their mouths, and I said: “Thank God, there were no cotton mills in South Carolina then, or Andrew Jackson would have died there before he was grown, in the lint and the dust and the grind of them, robbed of his childhood and of his chance in life!”

For he also was a poor white, just the meat for a nice, religious director of a cotton mill!

I thought of another Tennessean, and this time I stood in the Alamo, and again I saw ghosts—for who that has blood in his veins can stand there and not see them? And this was another poor white who died there before he would pull down the flag that floated above him, or could notch on the stock of his rifle the dead Mexicans who were piled up before him—dead—giving to his country an empire and to her coming children an inspiration that is greater than land and gold, “yea, than much fine gold.” And I thanked God again that in his youth there had been no cotton mills in Tennessee to do for Davy Crockett what the bear and panther and Indian could never do.

For he, too, was a poor white, and in his day would have been as good for a cotton mill as a coonskin for a pint of whiskey. And his little life would have gone out behind their shuttles of steel instead of the invader’s bayonet, and the mention of his name would have brought no trumpet-blast from the lips of fame: “Thermopylae had her messenger of defeat. The Alamo had none!”

Again I thought of a fighting Tennessean, also a poor white, in his youth, and the legitimate prey of the cotton mills—running his gunboats up Mobile Bay in spite of the bellowing forts and the broadsides of death and the hell of the hidden torpedo. And suddenly the engine stopped and a faint heart shouted from below: “Back—back—torpedoes!” But Farragut, from the greatest post of danger, shouted down: “Damn the torpedoes—go ahead!”

My friends, a man who would steal from a child his childhood, that which makes all his after life worth living, who would filch from it its body, brain and soul, is a human torpedo—a torpedo of hell. And, in the language of Farragut, I say unto you: “Damn them and go ahead!”

There was Forrest, another fighting Tennessean and a poor little white trash, one with fifteen brothers and sisters—just the ideal family made for the maw of a cotton mill—for upon such families do they declare their dividends. And if there had been mills in his day there would doubtless have been no Fort Donelson, Tishomingo Creek and Streight’s Raid. He also, like all his fighting predecessors, was a swearing Tennessean. And so I thank heaven for a good, honest, mouth-filling oath in a noble cause. And again I say unto you: “By the Eternal, stand up for the children of your land!”

They tell me that certain animals in the lower forms of life eat their young—a form of disease which we recognize in the sick hen which eats her egg and the swine which devours its young. Good God! Has our boasted civilization reached the sick and abnormal stage of its existence that it would live upon its young? Has too much wealth and too much glory and too much selfishness and high living made again of some men the man-eater that lived before Adam, except that the hair of his body and his tusks and his claws are gone, and now he is the clean-looking, well-fed, well-groomed son of hell that would fatten on the blood of his own breed? Talk not about his being a Christian, a follower of the sweet and beautiful Savior—the Christ, who, when he had hunted in all the mystic chambers of his God-like mind for some simile to express perfect purity and what we might hope to see in heaven, took the little poor ones in his arms and said: “This is what you must become—this is the kingdom of heaven.”

Once Sargent S. Prentiss, the greatest orator who ever saw the light of day in this country, because his speech was poetry and fire and reason, made a speech in New Orleans in behalf of the starving poor of Ireland. It was only ten minutes’ long, but it sent a shipload of food to Ireland. And he used in that speech a thought which Shakespeare has never surpassed. “He who is able and will not contribute to such a cause as this is not a man and has no right to wear the form. He should be sent back to the mints of nature and there reissued out of baser metal, a counterfeit on humanity!”

THE TESTER-BED AND ITS OLD-TIME COVERINGS

Just now, when everyone who can has a “tester-bed,” the subject of these relics and their coverings is an interesting one.

The days of mahogany and rose-wood were also the days of handicraft of both needle and loom; and many were the beautiful articles of needlework and textiles that added grandeur and dignity to the tester—the chef d’oeuvre of the mechanic’s art.

For every-day wear there were the hand-spun and woven white counterpanes in a variety of patterns: “The Honey-comb,” “Snowball,” “Walls of Jericho” and “O and N” were the most common designs. These were finished around three sides with a hand-tied or woven fringe, in depth from three inches to that of a hand’s length; they were very large, and hung down all around almost to the floor, that the trundle-bed under the big bed might not be visible.

For the “company room,” to be used on “grand opportunities”—as an Icelandic friend designated the special occasions on which the writer was to wear her gift of a hand-embroidered silver bullion belt—was the tufted counterpane, of most intricate and elaborate design. This was the outcome of some magic knowledge possessed by only the weavers of that bygone day. It had the design or pattern thrown up by little loops of the thread, quite short, that gave it the name of “tufted,” and a cameo effect—a flat background, with a raised design. The pattern most liked was “The Star.” This was an eight-pointed star in the center, smaller ones surrounding it, with an elaborate border of the “Greek Key,” finished with the always accompanying fringe.

The “Stuffed Spread” was another favorite covering, and the most prized of all except the silk quilt. The “Stuffed Spread” was made of a fine, closely woven white cambric and “back-stitched” (in stitches as even and close as those of the sewing machine of to-day), in lines of the width of a large knitting-needle apart, thus tracing the patterns of grapes and leaves, birds, baskets of flowers, bowls of fruit and geometric designs.

These little cases were stuffed with bits of cotton, by using a goose quill with which to push the cotton in, until the spread came forth a thing of beauty in its risen cords, and to be cherished by many generations for its exquisite needlework, ingenuity and patience, as exemplified by “Great-grandmother” or “Father’s Aunt Sallie.” Then there were the knitted and crocheted counterpanes, which have been revived in our day: the “Oak-leaf,” the “Shell,” “Heart” and “Star;” the crocheted ones to be used over a colored “comfort” of such color as the taste dictated.

The “Applied-work” was another prized covering. The background of this was white cambric or domestic, with lovely roses and leaves, or morning glories in their natural colors, cut from “painted cambric” or “chintz calico,” and applied to the spread in a central design and border. The spaces of white were most beautifully quilted in intricate patterns of every description. We have seen one such spread, made by a Kentucky woman, quilted in the center with the arms of the United States.

The patch-work quilts were made of or “pieced” in the favorite patterns of “The Rose and Bud,” “The Swamp Lily,” “The Sunflower,” “The Tree of Paradise,” “The Kentucky Feather,” “The Rising Sun,” “Log Cabin” and other designs displaying equal ingenuity in their origin and in their execution. These were in as natural colors as could be gotten in the “oil calicos,” which consisted of reds, yellows, blues and greens and the “fast pinks.” Some really beautiful and artistic effects were achieved by those who had artistic taste.

There were the silk quilts—not usual, as silk was not so easily obtainable as to-day—that were used only on bridal and festive occasions, when kindred and friends from afar were expected, and for whom the “fatted calf” was killed and all the best possessions brought into use. Some of the designs for these were the “Lone Star,” “Small Stars,” “Pickle-dish,” “Hexagon” and “Block” patterns. These were the joy and pride of the thrifty, beauty-loving housewife. For winter wear, the wool or cotton, sometimes mixed, home-dyed and home-woven coverlets, were used; in patterns of the “Rose of Sharon,” the “Walls of Troy” and many now forgotten names and designs. The colors were combinations of red, white, blue or green, with an introducing of black here and there.

Flat feather bolsters were used on these beds, the ends of the slips hanging down, and ornamented with eyelet embroidery or netted lace.

Nowadays the coverlets are frequently used as portieres, and they are quite artistic and handsome for this purpose.

The word tester is of curious origin, coming down to us from the Norman testere, a head covering. The English speedily contracted this to “tester,” which name they gave to helmets. Chaucer speaks of “the shieldes brighte, testers and trappures” of the Crusaders, and later the word came to apply to the canopy placed over the bed to support the draperies which protected the sleeper from wandering draughts, so plentiful in those old stone castles. Sir Horace Walpole writes early in the eighteenth century of a visit to a friend’s seat, where he found “no tester to the bed and slept with the saddles and portmanteaus heaped on me to keep off the cold.” Our colonists brought the tester-bed with them, but in this balmy climate they were able to dispense with the curtains; they did not, however, leave off the mountainous feather bed, which necessitated the aid of “a pair of steps” to reach its downy heights. By its side was placed the candle-stand, with its brass candle-stick and snuffers; and in the days “when grandma danced the minuet” with grandpa, brave in satin knee-breeches and buckled shoon, they dreamed of no possibility of rest more hygienic than that obtained on the home-cured goose feathers, with the home-spun sheets, blankets and counterpanes which covered their tester-beds.

AUNT JANE’S MOCKING-BIRD

“De sassy little deb’l, if dat jes’ don’t beat anything I eber seed,” Aunt Jane was saying, as she vigorously knocked the well-worn breadtray against the windowsill, if a hole two by four cut in the side of the little log cabin can be said to have a window sill, to dislodge the fragments of dough left from the preparation of the morning meal. After a few more well-intended knocks she dried the tray and hung it and the dishcloth on their own nail back of the small stove, and grasping the corner of her apron she dried her hands and was mopping her face as she turned and saw me in the doorway.

“Laws a-massy, Missus, whar’d yer drap from? Come in, dat is, ef yer can find de way wid so much trash strowin’ roun’.

“Git out in de yard, niggers,” she said to a group of dirty, half-naked little negroes, who were investigating the mysteries of a sardine can under the table. In their effort to obey their seemingly irate mother, they nearly upset the rickety old table, one leg of which was propped up with a broken brick that Aunt Jane had brought from the sidewalk of the town four miles away for that very purpose. “Bricks is sca’ce in dese parts,” she had said to a neighbor, who had “ax’d her what in de world she wuz gwin’ter do wid dat brick?” And so the vanquished pickaninnies with timorous backward glances, disappeared, rubbing their heads as they went.

“Viney, do git dat cher fer Miss Annie. Jes’ lay dem clothes on de bed. My soul alibe, Missus, dese here niggers nearly runs me ’stracted.” And she turned to me with the air of one whose last hope was gone.

But I knew how to take Aunt Jane’s moods, for she would have torn anyone else literally to pieces had they dared to intimate anything detrimental to the “life and charuc’ter of her chillun.” And so I seated myself comfortably in Aunt Jane’s only rocker, which she declared no one ever sat in “’cept her white folks.” Meanwhile she busied herself with the pots and pans of the stove, talking as fast as she could, asking me a hundred questions about the members of my family. I had come to see her about taking my laundry. My present washwoman had rubbed all the buttons off my husband’s shirts, and insisted on starching the nether parts of them, while my own cambric ones and linen dresses were as limber as Aunt Jane’s proverbial dishrag. Aunt Jane had been in our family when a girl and I felt that I could depend upon her.

“Law, Miss Annie, dat nigger don’t know de fust rudermints erbout washin’ an’ irun’n.” And she gave her pan a telling scrape by way of emphasis.

“Talk ter me ’bout dese town niggers,” and she went to the same little window to empty her dish-pan into the pig-trough placed beneath it, for convenience Aunt Jane had said.

“Well, ef he ain’t dar agin,” she exclaimed, turning to me as if I knew who “he” was.

“What is it, Jane?” I asked, going to the window myself, wondering what was outside of the window to call forth all these exclamations.

“Oh, it’s dat sassy little deb’l, dat yander rascal ob a mocking-bird—er-mind out, Missus, don’t tech dat table wid putty white dress o’ yourn. Dis here hole ain’t fit fer yer ter come in no how—but dat bird, he do beat all I eber seed. He ain’t skeered o’ nothin’, and sing! My, tain’t nothin’ like it! I do b’leve he sings all de night long. Why, de tother night ’bout twelve er’ clock, Jake come in ’bout half drunk. Jake’s alright when he’s sober, but jes’ let him git drunk, he’s de deb’l hissef, dat’s all’s to it. So when he git dat way I gits out, me an’ de chillun’.

“Well, we went out yander under dat Cherokee rose yer see by de fence dar, and laid low. We wuz skeer’d purty nigh ter death. Ever’thing wuz jes’ as quiet an’ still, ’cept Jake blusterin’ roun’ wid de pans in de cabin, when all ter wunce dat bird jes’ broke out, mos’ like a brass-band, right over our heads. I tell yer, Miss Annie, it made me feel creepy. Seem’d like hev’un wuz right over us, while dar wuz de bad place purty close by, ’cause Jake wuz a raisin’ a terrible roukus wid de pans try’nter find somp’in ter eat.

“So, dat’s de way ’tis, Missus,” and she nodded her head meditatively, “when de deb’l is try’nter raise a roukus wid yer hearts an’ souls, de angels is right over yer singin’ all de time, ef we’ll be still an’ listen.” And she stopped in a thoughtful attitude.

But her reverie was rudely broken up by such din of screaming and yelling as only half-starved African youngsters are capable of making.

“What on de top side er creashun ails dem yunguns?” she exclaimed, as we both went to the door. There we saw Viney armed with a long dog-fennel, followed by the others similarly equipped, in a wild dash for a lanky black cat. We both laughed at the pursuit. But, suddenly, above their yells Aunt Jane caught the distress call of the mocking-bird. That was enough for her. She seized her battling stick and flew after them, coming quickly to where they were gathered in a fence corner.

“Lemme in here, git erway niggers,” as she breathlessly tumbled two of them over one another, and with a terrific whack came down upon the fastened cat, who was still tenaciously gripping the dying bird.

I stood transfixed, not realizing what had taken place, until I saw them returning to the house. Viney was dragging the lifeless body of the thief tied by his hind leg to her apron string, while the boys were meting out vengeance to him in no unstinted terms, slashing him vigorously with one hand, the other busily engaged holding up their disjointed pantaloons.

In the lead was Aunt Jane. The little pile of grey feathers on the corner of her apron, resting tenderly on her hand, was all that was left of her “sassy little deb’l,” the beautiful mocking-bird.

SOME SOUTHERN WRITERS — JAMES RYDER RANDALL

As a rule all national airs have been composed rapidly, under the strong inspiration of some moment of intense and enthusiastic feeling, and their writers little dreamed at the time of the power and influence their passionate appeals would have. National lyrics play an important part in every country’s history. What has moved and held the army of France like “The Marseillaise Hymn?” Nothing rouses the Southern soldier like our glorious “Dixie,” and since the hour when the notes and words of “Maryland, My Maryland” first sounded on the air, the noble song has always started the pulse-beat higher and faster in every Southern heart.

It is a pleasant fact for all Southern people, of Irish descent, to remember that the four grand lyric poems of the South were written by Irishmen, or men of Irish parentage. “Dixie” was the work of Dan Emmet, “The Bonnie Blue Flag” that of Harry McCarthy, “The Conquered Banner” came from Father Ryan, and “Maryland, My Maryland,” whose beauty has thrilled the souls of thousands, was, as we know, written by James Ryder Randall. In a letter received by the writer not long ago, Mr. Randall says that on his father’s side he is of Irish descent, thus giving us in our Southern airs a quartette of Irish talent. Mr. Randall was born in Baltimore in 1839, received the principal part of his education at Georgetown, D. C., where he went to school from his tenth to his seventeenth year. Here he obtained a fine classical education, but owing to delicate health could not entirely finish his course. His work in life has been chiefly editorial, and at different times he has been connected with the newspapers of Augusta, New Orleans and Baltimore, and has never devoted himself exclusively to literature. In 1861 James Ryder Randall was, though very young, a professor at Poydras College upon the Fausse Rivière of Louisiana. Only a stripling, just from school, with a soul full of poetry and romance, the condition of the South, the first gun at Fort Sumter, the scent of the battle afar, thrilled his ardent heart, and “one sleepless night in April, in a second story room of Poydras College, seated at a little old wooden desk,” he wrote the lyric poem that has been called the “Marseillaise of the Confederacy.” The song, set to music of an old college melody, “Lauringer Horatius,” by its passionate appeal, caught the attention of the Southern heart, and was sung in field and camp, in cottage and palace. It was first set in print in the New Orleans Delta.

Mr. Randall wrote also a number of other beautiful poems, among them being “The Sole Sentry,” “Arlington,” “John Pelham,” and “The Cameo Bracelet.” “The Unconquered Banner” was written in reply to Father Ryan’s “Conquered Banner,” and its beauty and spirit can be seen by even a few lines:

Hardly less noted at the time of publication than “Maryland, My Maryland,” was the poem “There’s Life in the Old Land Yet.”

In a late paper from Columbus, Ohio, we find the following from Atherton Hastings:

“It was my good fortune to meet recently in New Orleans Mr. James Ryder Randall, the author of ‘Maryland, My Maryland.’ He is an old man now, but vigorous in mind and body. He talked freely and without prejudice of the one-time sectional differences. Individually, he had no apologies for the part he played in the great conflict. His sentiments on the basic principles that once divided the South from the North were perhaps mellowed by age, but not materially changed. I could scarcely realize that this mild-mannered old man, with the soft Southern voice, was the same who, nearly half a century ago, lighted and held aloft the wildly flaming torch of Southern patriotism.”

Modestly and with quiet dignity Mr. Randall still pursues his editorial work, publishing in New Orleans, The Morning Star, a paper of great purity and strong high purpose. Shall we wait, holding silently our alabaster boxes of love and praise till the green sod covers the author of “Maryland, My Maryland,” the song which, Atherton Hastings says, “did more to unite the Confederate States than any other one force?”

The state of Maryland is thinking of having a homecoming of her sons and daughters, and will ask James Ryder Randall to be her guest of honor. Why should not the writer of “Maryland, My Maryland” be thus honored by all our Southern states at various reunions? Colonel J. Frank Supplee, of Baltimore, says he has “never found any section of this country in which this noble song is unknown.” We can in no better way instill love of country into the hearts of our young people than through our national songs, and we should see to it that “Maryland, My Maryland” be sung, and that the memory of its author be kept fresh and green in the heart of every child.

SOME QUAINT OLD BALLADS

Mammy used to sing them to us—those quaint, old ballads. Now, there are mammies and mammies, and our mammy considered herself a “quality lady.” She and all her family had always been house servants, and, as such, looked with utter contempt upon the “field hands.”

Mammy tried to live up to her exalted position; and while she had many of the characteristics of her race, she had tried to imitate “Ole Mistis” until her manners were almost ludicrously dignified and prim. As a result of this, the songs with which she entertained us were those she had heard from the grandees of old Virginia, when she was young. I am growing old myself, and Mammy was an old woman when I was a child, so her songs belong to many generations past, being, most of them, evidently from England.

I can only give them as I remember them, having never seen one of them in print; and as they are but a child’s recollections of an ignorant old negro’s songs, it is to be presumed that they are very faulty. However, even as we heard them, they seem worth preserving.

The mind can easily call up the picture—the locusts and catalpas clustered around the back porch of our old plantation home—Mammy in her low chair under our favorite tree—the baby in her lap—the group of children all around her, all waiting impatiently for her to croon the baby to sleep and go with us to gather the jasmine flowers for “Miss ’Gusta’s” pomatum, or the raspberries for “Ole Mistis’s” lunch.

We must have been of a sentimental turn, for the chief favorite was a doleful ditty, called

The tune is even more ridiculous than the words, and the repetition in each stanza is positively ludicrous.

Next in our esteem was a comic hunting song, of which I recall these stanzas:

This irreverent mention of His Satanic Majesty was, to our childish ears, almost an unpardonable sin, and we went to our little beds shuddering and confessing ourselves “miserable sinners,” even to have listened to such a word.

A third ballad seems to belong to old colonial times. It went thus:

There were many others, but I do not remember them well enough to write them out. Barbara Allen was a great favorite, but with that all are familiar.

Occasionally, as a great treat, Mammy would unbend sufficiently to let us have some of the little negroes from the quarters come down to the house and sing for us, and while we loved Mammy’s old-fashioned ditties best, we were always vastly entertained by such coon songs as

And this, with accompaniment of patting and shuffling:

Books and Authors — Don Q in the Sierra. By K. and H. Prichard. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co. Price, $1.50. — Saul of Tarsus. By Elizabeth Miller. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co. Price, $1.50. — A Child’s Book of Abridged Wisdom. By Childe Harold. New York: Paul Elder & Co. Price, $1.50. — Over in the Meadow. By Olive A. Wadsworth. New York and San Francisco: Morgan Shepard Co. Price, $1. — The Romance of John Bainbridge. By Henry George, Jr. New York: The Macmillan Co. Price, $1.50. — Romance Island. By Zona Gale. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co. Price, $1.50. — Highways and Byways of the Mississippi Valley. By Clifton Johnson. New York: The Macmillan Co. Price, $2. — The Upper Hand. By Emerson Gifford Taylor. New York: A. S. Barnes & Co. Price, $1.50. — Famous Actor Families in America. By Montrose J. Moses. New York: T. Y. Crowell & Co. Price, $2. — Blind Alleys. By George Cary Eggleston. Boston: Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co. Price, $1.50.

LILLIAN KENDRICK BYRN

The thousands of admirers of “Don Q,” the crafty bandit, elusive and fearless, with claws under velvet that tear with merciless fury when roused to action, will be delighted with these new chronicles of further thrilling adventures of that mysterious character. The joint authorship of the “Don Q” stories is the rather unusual combination of mother and son, who, having traveled extensively in Spain and Spanish America, are able to put the local color into their stories with sure hands. It would, perhaps, be saying too much to declare that the portrait of the bandit is drawn from acquaintance with the original character, but no one can doubt that the authors have met with many adventures and heard many stories at first hand which have suggested the polished outlaw.

This story presents Saul during the time of his persecution of the Nazarenes and the death of St. Stephen of Galilee, before he became St. Paul of the Christian Church. The period immediately succeeding the crucifixion is the most stirringly interesting of any in the world’s history. Never before or since has there been such a wave of deep feeling, of psychological uplift and high thought, mingled with the warring of the fiercest passions and the basest corruption. Miss Miller has given us, as in “The Yoke,” a skillful weaving of heart-stirring incidents and a love story of the purest and noblest type.

A delight to the beauty-loving soul is this little book for the amusement of the children, bound in heavy gray boards, with quaint, corded back and heavy hand-pressed paper. The drawings and marginal decorations are in true Childe Harold style, which is a guarantee of their worth.

Mrs. Wadsworth has elaborated and improved an old nursery classic. The first eight topics are in their original form, but she has added four others in the same style, and Mabel Wood Hill has set them to appropriate music. Each full page is prefaced by another verse on the same subject, but in different meter, and the whole is beautifully bound in brown boards, with line decorations of birds and beasts in colors, the drawings being the handiwork of Marguerite Wood and Harold Sichel.

A big factory for art stained glass is not a likely place to look for romance, but Mr. George has laid in such a scene a story of fascinating interest. The action covers also the great West and mining, timber cutting and the practice of law in those regions. The central theme of the story, however, is a study of municipal government under existing methods of election and maintenance. Conspiracies, lobbying, bribery, blackmailing and other concomitants of present-day government politics are laid bare in a convincing manner, while the love story keeps and holds the reader’s interest in these questions.

The discovery of a fourth dimension is surely a very interesting thing and no one can give a more thrilling account of the consequences of such a discovery than the gifted Zona Gale, whose Pelleas and Ettarre stories are so widely known and loved. The adventure, the mystery and swift rush of events are so thrilling in this island of Miss Gale’s discovery that the reader loses himself in the absorbing account, and it is only when the book is laid down with a sigh when finished that he realizes that he has been filching time from his usual rest or occupation for a sojourn in the regions of enchantment.

This is a thoroughly excellent and descriptive account of the many lovely nooks and corners that dot the great valley of the “Father of Waters.” It is also a study of the types of the inhabitants of the section and contains much interesting and valuable historical matter. The illustrations are from the author’s own camera and add greatly to the interest of the chronicle.

In the ’squire’s house, in a New England house, there has been a tragedy in the night. Later a piratical seafarer appears and the village becomes the scene of strange adventures. The mysterious bringing of a little girl to the squire’s house, her subsequent bringing up and the winning of the old man’s reluctant affections, her love affair, complicated with the reappearance of the sailor, whose power over the ’squire only adds to the mystery, and the final adjustment of all the puzzling questions, bringing happiness and justice to all, makes a readable story.

A rare value attaches to this book from the fact that it is not only a succinct account of the actors who have made a name on the American stage and transmitted to their children their talent, but also reproduces a number of interesting old portraits, which are of the greatest value to the student of the beginnings of the American stage. The histories of such well-known families as the Jeffersons, the Drews and Barrymores, the Booths and other favorites will find readers everywhere. The whole matter is well treated and beautifully illustrated.

The titles of Mr. Eggleston’s previous books, “A Carolina Cavalier,” “Evelyn Byrd,” “A Daughter of the South,” etc., show the chosen field of his work to be the painting of Southern romances. In “Blind Alleys,” however, he has selected an entirely different field and has given us a significant and typical study of social conditions in New York. There is a sweet and wholesome love story, of course. Indeed, there are two of them, and altogether the novel is one of exceptional interest.

WITH OUR READERS — FRANCE AND THE CHURCH — A DUCK HUNT IN KANSAS — THE DREAM AND THE BUSINESS

This department is open to our readers for the expression of their opinions on questions of public interest. The editors, while inviting contributions bearing on measures and events of general interest, reserve the right to exclude such matter as is not deemed suitable, and are not responsible for opinions expressed.

A great epoch is transpiring in the republic of France—greater, in fact, than the triumphant continuance of the French democracy. The passing of the power of the Roman Catholic Church in that country presents a more marvelous condition or situation than the continued perpetuation of the republican form of government.

The Church of Rome, saving a few years of Huguenot power, and the short-lived revolution preceding the advent of Napoleon, has, for more than ten centuries, linked its history with that of France. In fact, the latter has, since the days of Charles Martel, been known as the “eldest daughter of the church.” And what a history! A Roman pope crowned King Pepin in the eighth century and Napoleon in the nineteenth. Not a line of history, of romance, of tradition, of public or private right, or public or private wrong, but through the ages has been mingled with her name. From Flanders, on the English channel, to Provence on the Mediterranean, from Lorraine, on the east, to Gascoigne in the west, it was all Catholic, and Roman Catholic. The counts of Paris, Flanders, and of Anjou; the dukes of Burgundy, Normandy, of Guise; and the Bourbon Princes, were all originally Roman Catholics.

Who is there that has not in the morning of life read with delight of the martial prowess and religious fervor of Jeanne d’Arc, the Maid of Orleans? Her love of her church, and her love for her country, ought to be remembered by men who are now playing fast and loose with the fortunes of both. Who but will admit that their Excellencies, Cardinals Richelieu and Mazarin, with their imperious sway, did more to extend the glory of France than either of the great Louises under whom they ministered? What student of French history could forget the names of La Valliere, De Montespan, and Maintenon, brilliant, charming, but dissolute, who, losing royal favor, sought and found solace in the sacred precincts of the cloister? The grand cathedrals at Rheims, at Rouen; Nôtre Dame and the Madeleine at Paris; the many rare and splendid chapels to the famous chateaux of monarchs, and princes, that line the Loire, the Seine, the Rhone, and Garonne—do they not speak in ancient protest to the late separation and sequestration? Who but that remembers the sweet, dignified bearing, and devout humility of the peasant husband and wife bowed in prayer, in the field, at the ringing of the angelus, as portrayed by Millet? Typical of religious France! Can such things be swept away and become a mere memory at the beck of secular and temporal power?

The French Revolution of 1789 with its consequent vulgar excess brought about in 1801 the so-called “Concordat,” it being a carefully drawn agreement between Pius VII and Napoleon, which restored, with material restrictions, the power of the church in France. When one writes of the church in France he means the Roman Catholic Church, for ninety per cent of the communicants of religion there belong to that denomination. There is little or no doubt but that Napoleon overreached the Pope in that agreement. Only divinity itself could have coped with the masterly genius of that most wonderful man—the “man of destiny”—who, in changing the map of the world by his sword, wrought a greater change in its human affairs through his policies. Much church property had been confiscated during the revolution, and had passed from the state to other hands. The titles, so acquired, to that property were to be left undisturbed by the restoration of the church. Again, the government reserved, in the Concordat, the right to nominate the archbishops and bishops of the church, and assumed and asserted the right to determine their attitude between the Vatican and the state.

The law of “Separation,” as it is called, was passed December 5th, 1905, by which annual stipends, previously guaranteed by the state to bishops and priests were abolished, and the churches, parochial residences, and buildings used for religious purposes, including monasteries, convents, seminaries, all, should fall under the authority of the state to be regulated by civil corporations known as “associations of worship.” The law provided twelve months from its passage, that it should be ratified by the church.

The civil associations are to hold the church property and have the right to dictate the mode and manner of the worship therein, even the uses for which the property shall be employed.

Is it any wonder that Pius X, speaking for Rome, should have rejected such a law? To confiscate one’s property is one thing—to have the power to dictate one’s form of worship is quite another thing. Any gendarme with the order in his hand issued by any upstart official could disperse at pleasure the worshippers at any sanctuary in the republic. The French law is not a mere separation of church and state; far more, it is a subjection of the church to the state.

In France the seats of the mighty in the main are filled now by the disciples of Voltaire—men of the type of Jaures, Delpech, and Clemenceau. M. Briand, the Minister of Education, the reputed author of the “Associations” bill, is charged with declaring in a public speech to the educational authorities under him:

“The time has come to root up from the minds of French children the ancient faith which has served its purpose, and replace it with the light of free thought. It is time to get rid of the Christian idea. We have hunted Jesus Christ out of the army, the navy, the schools, the hospitals, the insane asylums, the orphan asylums and the law courts; and now we must hunt him out of the state altogether.”

In such a fight Christendom itself ought to have a sympathy. The chief Rabbi of France, M. Lehmann, one of a religion long persecuted, of this action of the French Assembly, says:

“How could one think on the one hand that the state should suppress establishments which had been guaranteed by nearly every constitution since 1791, and protected by every law, and, by means of the same act, should seize the property they have acquired with its approbation?... What we want is that places of worship should belong to those who have built them and who pray in them, and that every religious denomination should preserve the form of organization which is the most conformable to its traditions and aspirations.”

Surely a member of a so-called Protestant communion may say amen! to the foregoing quotation. Surely, any American stands for freedom of religious belief, as well as that private property shall not be taken for public use, without just compensation. Think of the millions in value sequestrated under the French law of 1905, aside from other considerations! What a beautiful and dignified protest has the world recently heard from Archbishop Ireland, not only intellectually the foremost churchman of his faith, but almost unparalleled among orators of this or any other land. Of the rape of the French church, among other things, he says:

“For the moment the situation is, undoubtedly, serious—and serious for the one as for the other of the contestants. Yet, seen more near, it reveals no coloring of despair, either for France, or for the Church of France. A bright morning, I dare predict, will at a not distant time dawn over the field of battle, dropping from the skies sunshine and peace and begetting both in the Church and in France, joy and exultation that the passage-at-arms, angry as it once was, has opened the way to a clearer understanding of mutual interests, to a warmer glow of olden mutual love.

“The Catholic Church,—of course I love her, and I champion her cause with delight. And France, too, I love. While I shall blame her, I shall not forget all that she has been, during her storied centuries, to mankind and the Church, and I now bid my hearers to nurture no rancor against her, and if I beckon her to defeat, it is that she rise from defeat greater and more glorious than victory could have made her.”

Those who have followed with discerning eyes this oldest of human institutions among the works of the ages, will look forward with hope to a speedy and healthy reconciliation between the government of France and a religious institution which for longer than a thousand years has been part and parcel of it; which has conserved in great degree its morals, contended for the peace of its citizens, and especially, during the monarchies, added glory and renown, wherever opportunity offered. The Roman Church has ever been an hierarchy, believing in hallowed or consecrated authority, in what concerns religious order or government, and too often, doubtlessly, extending this idea to secular or state affairs—yet, on the whole, who is so wise as to declare what better results had been to us now had other influences dominated at the many great and appalling crises in history which that ancient organization has had to face? This aside, however, will the Christian governments of the world lie by without a protest to this wholesale confiscation, and avowed determination to uproot religion in the very heart of Europe, when it is their custom to make formidable protests against the action of Turkey in Armenia, and against atrocities of every nature repellant to civilization?

As a humble communicant of a Protestant Church, personally an unworthy Christian, I have taken the pains to give a very abridged history of what is passing in France, and registering a feeble public protest against it.

John Francis Lockett.

Henderson, Ky., Jan., 1907.

Cedar Vale, Kans., Nov. 18, 1906.

Dear Trotwood: I have read your Christmas goose hunt and think it great. Let me take you a duck hunt in this territory, the land of the Osages, the richest tribe in America. Their pasture lands lie some fifteen miles to the south, and extend for forty to fifty miles to the south and west of here, a vast tract of rich grazing land settled along the larger streams. Beaver Creek heads in the state and flows in a general direction nearly south. Salt Creek, some eight or ten miles east of Beaver, also flows nearly south. In order to secure a supply of water for their herds of Texas cattle, the cattlemen that hold leases on the grass land between the two creeks have constructed ponds, or tanks, in the heads of the draws and ravines that start off in either direction, and carry the surplus water of early spring. By throwing up a bank of earth across a draw near its head a pond from 150 to 200 yards in length and from 50 to 75 yards wide and eight to ten feet deep is secured, and this usually lasts the year round.

In the spring and latter part of our winter the ducks, and sometimes geese, stop for several weeks to pick up corn after the cattle that are fed along the creeks, and it is then that the ducks use these ponds as a roosting place. Situated, as they are, five or six miles from any human habitation, back on a high prairie, not even a bush or tree in sight, the lay of the country sloping to the east and west, the ducks appear to think they have found a safe retreat from the merciless hunter. Not so, however. It is here that the pot-shot hunter is in his glory. Sometimes, in early spring, just after a northwester has blown itself out, and we get a few warm days, I have seen these ponds full of ducks; yes, and sitting out in the grass on each side for a good hundred yards in each direction. It was just such a time as this, during the first days of March, 1903, that I and my good Swede friend, Norling, found ourselves camped about a mile below one of the tanks in a small draw that ran off in the direction of Beaver Creek. We had selected this particular pond for our night’s sport because we knew that a bunch of some 2,000 head of cattle was being fed over on Beaver about five miles away, and then we had stopped at the pond before going into camp to see if there were any signs. It did not require an old hunter to see the signs there. The damp ground around the edge of the pond was strewn with loose feathers and stamped and patted where the ducks had roosted along the water’s edge until it looked like the floor of a large poultry yard.

The sun had just set and there was a bank of red in the west, the wind was coming in little gusts from the north and the night promised to be clear. The moon would be up in about an hour.

“There they come,” said Norling, in a low voice, and then, just across the narrow draw, a bunch of a dozen or so passed, flying close to the ground and headed straight for the pond. It was still light enough to see them when they reached the pond. They did not circle, as is usual with ducks about to light, but raised slightly just before reaching the pond, and then, poised for a second, appeared to drop in, and so still was the evening and the wind blowing from the pond toward us, we could hear the water splash as they struck it.

So intensely had our interest been fixed on the first bunch we had not noticed others that were coming. Scarcely had the first ones settled before another flock began to drop in, and now they seemed to be coming in a steady stream. There was a continuous splash, splash, splash, as one after another they settled in the water. For at least an hour they came in this way.

“By Jimminy, George, I believe already there is so many in there as we could with us home take! Let us see how many we could rake down for the first shots,” said Norling. The moon was up now and cast a dark shadow from one side to the other of the draw. Taking a piece of white chalk from my pocket I drew a heavy white line between the barrels of my gun from sight to sight.

“What is that for?” asked Norling.

“Well, you see, if you are aiming too high you see a long white mark, if too low you cannot see it at all, and when just right you only see a small white spot, and when shooting by moonlight this enables you to shoot with a good deal of accuracy,” I replied.

“Come on, now, and be careful. A step in this dry grass would make noise enough to send every duck out of that pond. Follow this cow path and keep down low so they won’t see your head over the dump. The pond is nearly full of water.”

We were nearly half way, now, and it would not do to talk, not even to whisper, as a duck has very sharp hearing. The sharp whistle call of the sprig tail seemed to nearly drown the quack, quack of the mallard, and the splash, splash of the water against the dam told us we had but a few yards farther to go. At the foot of the dam we crawled on hands and knees until by stepping to our feet our heads and shoulders were above the dump. And then such a sight! The slight noise we made as we rose to our feet caused every duck in the water and on the banks to turn in our direction, and the rays of the moon fell on their white breasts and was reflected back here and there by an open patch of water. But only for an instant did this scene remain. Just one quick glance and then our guns came to our shoulders, a long white streak, then a small white dot in line with a thousand white breasts, a flash and a sharp report, followed by the greatest quacking, splashing and whirr of wings I had ever heard. So great was the noise made by the immense flock taking wing that I could not hear the report of the second barrel of my own gun. A few more shots were fired at crippled ducks that were still able to swim, a short wait for the wind to drift the dead ones to the bank, and then we picked up thirty-one dead ducks, all stopped by our first four shots. Sport and meat enough for one night?

Just write me a line a few days before you come and I will meet you at the train; and, by the way, I have some colts three years old by The Peacher, 2.17¼, pacing at two years old, and by the summaries the best sire of the season owned in Kansas. These colts are out of mares by Bertran, 2.20, and Capitalist, 2.29½, and they can step some, too. Better come about the 10th of March.

Yours truly,

George Beuoy.

(Hobbes)

The year 1906 was pre-eminently a year of the so-called fiction of psychology. This is hardly a passing fad. The more enlightened and cultured a people, the more are they interested in character study. Men and women and motives are more entertaining than mere beauty of description, or complicated plot. And the really successful novels of the year are written by women, and seem to be concerned with the intricate workings of the feminine mind.

Not since the appearance of “Lily Bart” in “The House of Mirth” have we had such a striking character as “Sophy Firmalden” in “The Dream and The Business,” by John Oliver Hobbes.

This, Mrs. Craigie’s last work, is certainly one of the cleverest productions of the year.

A very unusual feature of this book is a letter from the Hon. Joseph H. Choate to the publishers expressing his appreciation of Mrs. Craigie as woman and author.

The refined atmosphere that permeates all her works—the delicate touch peculiarly Mrs. Craigie’s own—are compelling features of this brilliant book.

Clever dialogue there is in abundance.

Conservatism exists in America “only in Webster, side by side with the word pre-historic.”

That radical nature inherent in all Americans seems to have been toned down by Mrs. Craigie’s English education and environment. The conservative English spirit, just blended with a certain amount of American radicalism to add flavor, presents some most attractive views of life and living.

It was pathetic, as well as a sad blow to the literary world, that Mrs. Craigie should die just as this book went to press.

James Firmalden was full of illusion, impetuous and enthusiastic. He started out in life with the mistaken idea that the “most important acts in a man’s life—the choosing of a career and of a wife—are accidents.” There is always a youthful affair. James Firmalden’s was with Nannie Cloots. As Lord Marlesford said, “This is always the way with women, sooner or later they make you play the fool exceedingly.” “The Cloots family were already on his shoulders.” He developed with age; broke their engagement and had the manhood to tell the “loyal lie.” Ever afterwards he led a single, uncompleted life.

Dr. Firmalden, the Oxford minister, was one of the many who tried to believe he had gained wisdom with age, but, like numerous elderly persons, he had only lost the power of wondering.

His sermons usually contained many “shiny, well-worn platitudes which are always tedious.”

Sophy Firmalden, one of the leading characters, endowed with good looks and native wit, was never very happy. One is never wholly satisfied. “The child wears the mother’s skirts enviously while the mother mourns her youth.”

“There was that fastidious and elusive instinct in Sophy which always makes for suffering.”

Inclined to fanaticism and moody, an over developed conscience kept her from marrying the one man she loved because he was irreligious. They were never at ease together for their relation could never degenerate into common comradeship.

Sent abroad to forget Lessard, she thought she had done so, and married another. “What a charred trail she left in her path!” Becoming cynical, she said “she would never again allow herself to care much for anybody—it was always so disappointing.” She declared there were two kinds of men, “Those who were born to protect us, and those who were born to understand us”—her husband belonged to the former.

She knew little of the world—had not even seen “Fedora.” One of her friends said it could not harm her—she could not possibly understand it.

She had a passion for good clothes. “A girl who is satisfied with her wardrobe can bear many privations.” “Sophy’s silk dresses were the source of much fortitude in her domestic philosophy.”

James Firmalden’s first love, Nannie Cloots, was of obscure origin—her mother having once been an ornament of the ballet. Reared with a fanatical regard for appearances, she was “picturesque, artless and fresh in her absurd ideas.”

“She was a chaser after celebrities—and wore claret-colored silk at ten o’clock in the morning. Her chief delight was to associate with frumpish Philistines.” “She saw the world; and found it stuffed with sawdust.”

Henry Firmalden was ruled by his wife. “In the city, he was a man who could show great decision and force of will—but at home he was docile, silent and often hungry.”

Lady Burghwallas, one of the minor characters, belonged to the class “who must have their social illusions nourished by the newspapers.”

Lessard belonged to the Bohemian set. Of Huguenot extraction, he was of a defiant mood, accompanied with melancholy characteristic of the sect from which he sprang.

An “aristocratic vagabond,” he was a man of the world with a wayward heart. Spontaneous and unconventional, he was disposed to quarrel with the established order of things.

He was a singer and also a mediocre dramatist, who was admired by certain “long-haired men who should have been born women, and by short-haired women who should have not been born at all.”

Gloriana Twomley is an overdressed woman, but clever after a fashion. She had tact to manage her husband in such a way as to keep him happy, and at the same time make him entirely satisfied with her work. He never realized it, “for the less wit a man has, the less he knows that he wants it.” Her relationship was large. There were many “in-laws” and she was kept busy trying to regulate their affairs.

The most entertaining character in the whole book is Lady Marlesford. Vivacious, tactful and pretty, her highly disciplined mind could bear agitation, pain or anything better than being bored. She and her husband were of a violently different temperament. He, selfish, exacting and unresponsive, could not appreciate her brilliant mind. Her keen sense of humor made him nervous. Whenever he said anything but the obvious, she invariably asked, “Who said that?” In conversation, she always kept him “mentally out of breath.” “The pair having exhausted their dislike, were almost attached to each other by a common bond of suffering.”

It is impossible to read “The Dream and The Business” understandingly and fail to be entertained.

Mark Harwell Pettway.

THE FAMILY SCRAP BOOK — L’ENVOI — “STONEWALL JACKSON’S WAY” — SOME TIME — LARK — WEARY OF MYSELF — THE JULEP — HOW WE RISE — A FABLE.

We have begun this department expecting our readers to make it. It has been suggested by a number of our readers, and there is no department that should be more popular. There are few of us who have not in old scrap books, or elsewhere, something—in prose or poetry—that we cherish; that has become part of our souls. Send them in, thus preserving them and permitting others to enjoy them.

The following is poetry—every line of it—and infinitely good. It is by Matthew Arnold.

DICKSON COUNTY, TENNESSEE

Probably there is no county in the state that is attracting as much attention at the present time as the County of Dickson. It lies on the meridial line that clearly defines the mineral and gas belt forming one of the earth’s great arteries connecting the oil fields of Pennsylvania with the oil fields of Texas, and is rich in every constituent that contributes to the material wants of mankind.

Dickson County contains an area of 650 square miles. The county forms a great watershed, draining into the Cumberland river on the north and the Duck river on the south. It is watered by many confluents of these streams. Thus the county is cut up into innumerable rich and productive valleys, fringed by fruitful uplands that are in turn crowned by great forests of virgin timber. Talk to any lumberman and he will lament the decadence of the timber production. Yet it is a fact that nature’s storehouse still contains a vast reserve supply of this product, and that the present generation will not live to see it exhausted.

The soil of Dickson County is very diverse. Any crop produced in the temperate zone can be grown with profit in this county. Corn, wheat, oats, barley, rye, tobacco, sorghum, peanuts, melons, and all kinds of small fruits thrive to perfection. The northern side of the county is within the Clarksville dark tobacco district, while other sections produce a long leaf tobacco, rivaling in its quality and fibre the famous Sumatra wrapper. The conditions of soil and climate seem especially favorable to this industry, and it is quite certain that tobacco growing will be one of the future staples of Dickson County. The conditions are ideal for the cultivation of Irish and sweet potatoes, tomatoes and that class of fruits and vegetables.

Lands in Dickson County range in price from $2 to $200 an acre. This is a wide range, but it is so. In Bell’s Bend, where the Harpeth river sweeps in a broad semi-circle and doubles back on itself, hugging on either side a long, narrow bluff, the land is priceless. Here it was that Montgomery Bell swayed the rod of empire in the palmy days of yore. He has long since been gathered to his fathers, but his name and fame are traditional in this state, and Montgomery Bell Academy at Nashville is a monument to his generosity and philanthropy.

Montgomery Bell was a thrifty Vermonter who settled in Tennessee about the beginning of the eighteenth century. He acquired vast tracts of land in Dickson County, and laid the foundations of his prosperity in the manufacture of pig iron. He was either directly or indirectly interested in not less than six of these furnaces in Dickson County. They were all operated by water power, steam being an unknown quantity at that time. It is written down in the book of chronicles that Dickson County and Montgomery Bell helped Old Hickory win the battle of New Orleans. For it was the old Cumberland Furnace, on Barton’s Creek, now known as the Warner Furnace, and owned by the Tennessee Iron & Coal Company, that moulded the cannon balls for that memorable battle, and helped repel the proud British invader. Any school boy in Dickson County can tell you this, and it is a bit of history of which the citizens are justly proud.

To-day there exists in Bell’s Bend the strangest monument to Montgomery Bell that ever man had to perpetuate his memory. This man was a builder of iron furnaces. He built them wherever he could find water power. To him water power meant useful opportunity. I have spoken of the narrow bluff that divides the Harpeth in its magnificent sweep through Bell’s Bend. This bluff is so narrow that a man can stand on its ridge and easily cast a stone into the river on either side. Right here Montgomery Bell had a tunnel blasted through the bluff, and by means of a wing dam drew the waters of the Upper Harpeth through this opening in a mighty, resistless current that afforded unlimited water power for the operations of a blast furnace. And there it is to-day, singing its stormy requiem to the memory of a man and age that have passed into the shade, but yet inviting in its prodigal waste and riotous power the hand of capital and enterprise to harness it anew.

In timber, soil, minerals and climate Dickson County is well dowered. Many of these industries are yet in their infancy. It has been demonstrated that its phosphates are as good as those of Hickman County, and only wait on the capitalist. As for oil, at the present time the Standard Oil Company is preparing to sink two wells near Dickson. It is well known that this section is underlaid by the best of illuminating oil, equal to the Pennsylvania product. The Brown oil wells, on Jones’ Creek, twelve miles northwest of Dickson, have been opened for many years and have pumped as high as twenty barrels a day of fine illuminating oil. This territory is nearly all under lease, and the indications are that the time is ripe for its exploitation.

One of the most interesting towns in Dickson County is Ruskin. Ruskin was founded a number of years ago as a Socialist colony. Here was to be exemplified the truth of the doctrine that all men are created free and equal. It was to be a practical demonstration. It will take another story to tell how and why it failed. About a year ago the property was acquired by some earnest, ambitious school men. To-day Ruskin is the seat of Ruskin-Cave College, with a faculty of eleven teachers and students from twelve states. The village is owned and controlled by the school board. The full college course compares well with state institutions. The college presents some very remarkable features that entitle it to favorable consideration. W. A. Hughes is business manager and R. E. Smith president.

Dickson is the chief commercial town in Dickson County. Charlotte is the county seat, but it has a population of only a few hundred. The population of Dickson numbers about three thousand. Within five years it has almost doubled its inhabitants. It has a chancery and circuit court and a larger and costlier courthouse than the county seat. Being accessible by three railroads, it is the logical commercial and political center of the county. It is also the educational center. In addition to a good public school system, it is the seat of the Dickson Normal College. This is a co-educational institution. The college building is modern and commodious in its every appointment. It is situated in a beautiful grove of native oaks, on a broad table land overlooking the town of Dickson. A corps of trained teachers is in charge of the work. The curriculum embraces a four-years’ course, beginning with an exhaustive study of the common school branches and including a comprehensive course in language, science and mathematics. T. B. Loggins, A.M., is the principal of the college. The enrollment includes students of both sexes from all parts of the state.

The Hudson Business College is also located in Dickson, and is doing a fine work in fitting young people for the business world.

Dickson is a plucky town. Twice within a decade it has risen from its ashes. In 1893 the town was practically destroyed by fire, not over half a dozen business houses remaining. Nearly all the buildings destroyed were of frame and were replaced by substantial brick structures. In November, 1905, another disastrous fire broke out, eating the heart out of the business section and entailing a loss of $200,000. With characteristic energy, the work of rebuilding was immediately begun, and to-day the burned district is covered by even handsomer buildings than those destroyed. In addition to this new buildings are going up in every direction, and the town is experiencing a building boom unprecedented in its history.

Dickson is on the main line of the N., C. & St. L. railroad, forty-two miles from Nashville. It is the terminus of the Centreville branch of the same road, and also the Clarksville branch of the L. & N. These roads tap many small towns that are tributary to Dickson, and in addition it has a fine interior trade.

Socially and morally Dickson is abreast of the best towns in the State. Every religious phase of evangelical faith is represented. The personnel of the pulpit is much above the average. Fraternal and social organizations flourish. The town has three banks and there are six in the county. The aggregate deposits amount to nearly half a million dollars. In all the essentials of life Dickson and Dickson county are in the forefront of progress.

Dickson county has a well organized Farmers’ Institute. N. R. Sugg is president and R. H. Hicks, of Dickson, secretary. The association meets once a month and is doing a good work in stimulating interest in agricultural pursuits.

To write of Dickson County without making special mention of “Beulah” would be omitting one of the most interesting features connected with the development of this county. Beulah is designed to be Plato’s Ideal Republic on a small scale.

It is a colony of home seekers who have been attracted thither by the salubrious climate and the remarkably low-priced lands of this section. It is located six miles from Dickson, on the Centreville branch of the N., C. & St. L. R. R. It is not far from the line that divides Dickson and Hickman Counties, and within a few miles lies Bon Aqua, a summer resort famous for its healthgiving waters and resinous atmosphere.

Rev. A. N. Kelly is a man of remarkable personality. He is an evangelist and Christian scholar of national reputation. He is an idealist and a man of practical affairs. This is an unusual combination and yet a very useful one when it exists. For it is the man behind the gun who wins the battles.

These are some of the things Reverend Kelly has accomplished in two years:

He found Beulah almost a wilderness. Hundreds of acres of land could be bought for from $2 to $4 an acre. An occasional settler eked out a scanty livelihood in a primitive way, for the lands in this immediate neighborhood were known as the “Barrens,” and it had never entered into the mind of man to give them a practical test. To-day a thriving colony, ever increasing in circumference, marks the spot. Cosy cottages dot the landscape. A comfortable schoolhouse and church building have been erected. The land is being rapidly cleared and is found productive beyond expectation. Much of the land is fast increasing in value, but as compared with more thickly populated sections is still ridiculously cheap. For families of small means, who are looking for a pure, healthful environment, where they may cultivate their own vine and fig tree under comfortable and easy circumstances, this section offers unusual advantages. Only the better class of citizens is desired, for this is designed to be a community of Christian people. Not fanatics, mind you, with visionary and impractical ideas of life, but clean, wholesome people, honest and honorable in their dealings, and with high ideals that propel them constantly upward in the battle of life.

I spent a pleasant day at Beulah, and Rev. Mr. Kelly unfolded to me some of his plans. He is a man of great faith and very useful and noble purposes. It was interesting to talk with the man, to note his fine optimism and invincible energy and courage. He is a college graduate, with a roomy brain and a dynamic spirit. He knows no such thing as the impossible.

Small fruits and vegetables grow to perfection here. The soil is a sub-clay, and, being virgin, retains its pristine strength and vigor. Apples and peaches, and all kinds of vegetables, grow to perfection. A canning factory is in course of operation to utilize these products. The growing of cantaloupes on a large scale will be undertaken this season. Large tracts of land adjacent to the railroad between Beulah and Hohenwald, a stretch of thirty miles, have been secured for this purpose, and a contract has been entered into with the railroad for the marketing of the crop.

Within the limits of this article it is impossible to more than touch on Beulah, its many desirable features, its splendid possibilities. To those more than casually interested, a letter addressed to Rev. A. N. Kelly, Burns, Rural Route No. 2, will bring full information.