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Title: Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 17, No. 098, February, 1876

Author: Various

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                Most recently updated: December 18, 2020

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE OF POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE, VOLUME 17, NO. 098, FEBRUARY, 1876 ***




Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Sandra Brown and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team.





Note: The Table of Contents and the list of illustrations were added
      by the transcriber.




LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE OF POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE

February, 1876.

Vol. XVII, No. 98.




TABLE OF CONTENTS

  THE CENTURY--ITS FRUITS AND ITS FESTIVAL.
    II.--AMERICAN PROGRESS.

  UP THE THAMES.
    CONCLUDING PAPER, by EDWARD C. BRUCE.

  THE POET'S PEN, by F.A. HILLARD.

  SKETCHES OF INDIA.
    II.

  FRA ALOYSIUS, by EMMA LAZARUS.

  A FEW HOURS IN BOHEMIA.

  PROFESSOR AND TEACHER, by JAMES MORGAN HART.

  CONTRASTED MOODS, by CHARLOTTE F. BATES.

  THE ATONEMENT OF LEAM DUNDAS, by MRS. E. LYNN LINTON
    CHAPTER XXI. CHANGES.
    CHAPTER XXII. EDGAR HARROWBY.
    CHAPTER XXIII. ON THE MOOR.
    CHAPTER XXIV. THE CHILD FINA.

  LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA, by LADY BARKER.

  ON SANKOTA HEAD, by ETHEL C. GALE.

  AT THE OLD PLANTATION.
    TWO PAPERS.--II, by ROBERT WILSON.

  OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.
    A GERMAN AGRICULTURAL FAIR.
    A PAIR OF WHEELS AND AN OLD PARASOL.
    MEDICAL EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES, by R.A.F. PENROSE.

  OUR EARLY NEWSPAPERS.

  LITERATURE OF THE DAY.
    _Books Received._




ILLUSTRATIONS

  POST-OFFICE DEPARTMENT BUILDING AT WASHINGTON.
  THE CAPITOL AT WASHINGTON AND CARPENTERS' HALL, WHERE THE FIRST
    COLONIAL CONGRESS MET.
  HOE'S NEW PERFECTING PRINTING-PRESS, PRINTING 12,000 DOUBLE
    IMPRESSIONS PER HOUR, AND THE OLD EPHRATA PRESS.
  THE CITY OF TOKYO, THE LARGEST STEAMSHIP BUILT IN AMERICA, AND
    FITCH'S STEAMBOAT, THE FIRST CONSTRUCTED.
  THE COTTON GIN.
  GRAIN ELEVATOR.
  INTERIOR OF A POSTAL CAR.
  PROF. S.F.B. MORSE, THE INVENTOR OF THE ELECTRO-MAGNETIC TELEGRAPH.
  THE SCHOOL-HOUSE OF THE PAST AND THE PRESENT.
  WINDSOR CASTLE, FROM ETON.
  MORTON CHURCH.
  MILTON'S PEAR TREE.
  GRAY.
  BEACONSFIELD CHURCH.
  TOMB OF BURKE.
  HEDSOR AND COOKHAM CHURCHES.
  ETON COLLEGE AND CHAPEL.
  ETON COLLEGE, FROM NORTH TERRACE, WINDSOR.
  STAINES CHURCH.
  NORMAN GATE AND ROUND TOWER, WINDSOR.
  HERNE'S OAK.
  EAST FRONT, WINDSOR CASTLE.
  QUEEN ELIZABETH'S BUILDING, WINDSOR.
  EARL OF SURREY.
  WINDSOR CASTLE, FROM BISHOPSGATE.
  LOCK AT WINDSOR.
  THE THAMES EMBANKMENT.
  ELMS NEAR THE HERONRY.
  HINDU TEMPLES NEAR POONA.
  GÓNDS.
  CENOTAPHS IN THE VALLEY OF THE TONSA.
  THE GAUR, OR INDIAN BISON.
  BANJARIS.



LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE

OF

_POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE_.

FEBRUARY, 1876.





THE CENTURY--ITS FRUITS AND ITS FESTIVAL.

II.--AMERICAN PROGRESS.

[Illustration: POST-OFFICE DEPARTMENT BUILDING AT WASHINGTON.]

From showing the world's right to the epoch of '76, and sketching the
progress of the century in its wider aspect, a natural transition is
to the part played in illustrating the period by the people from whose
political birth it dates, and who have made the task of honoring it
their own. They have reached their first resting-place, and pardonably
enjoy the opportunity of looking back at the road they have traversed.
They pause to contemplate its gloomy beginning, the perilous
precipices along which it wound, and the sudden quagmires that often
interrupted it, all now softened by distance and by the consciousness
of success. Opening with a forest-path, it has broadened and
brightened into a highway of nations.

So numerous and various were the influences, formative and impellent,
which combined to bring the colonies up to the precise ripening-point
of their independence, as to make it difficult to assign each its
proper force. In the concentric mass, however, they stand out sharp
and clear, and the conjoint effect seems preordained. That the event
should have come when it did, and not before or after, is as obvious
as any of history's predictions after the fact. Looking through the
glasses of to-day, we find it hard to realize that the Continental
Congress renewed its expressions of loyalty to the king three weeks
after the battle of Bunker Hill, so distinct before us rises the
completed and symmetrical edifice of separation ready for its
capstone, from its foundations growing steadily through the past.

Thirteen years--one for each State--were occupied in the topping-off.
The Seven Years' War, that created the new central power of modern
Europe, had a great deal to do with creating the new American power.
It taught the colonies their strength, gave them several thousand
native soldiers, and sent them from over the water the material,
some of it completely wrought, for more in the German immigration
consequent upon it. Out of it grew the obnoxious enactments that
brought on the end. So closely simultaneous were these with the king's
proclamation of October 7, 1763, prohibiting all his subjects "from
making any purchases or settlements whatever, or taking possession of
any of the lands, beyond the sources of any of the rivers which fall
into the Atlantic Ocean from the west or north-west," as to support
the suspicion that the British ministry had a premonitory sense of the
coming struggle, and meant to prepare for it by checking the expansion
of the colonies. The pressure applied to front and rear was part of
one and the same movement; and is incompatible with the accepted
view that neither cabinet nor Parliament anticipated, in the first
instance, any American opposition to the Stamp Act and the system of
legislation to which it was the opening wedge. The England of that day
proposed to rule America after much the same fashion with Ireland,
the Alleghanies presenting themselves very conveniently for an
Indian Pale. This line of policy was in harmony with the ideas then
predominant in England, and was fully understood by the colonists.
They could not possibly have been blind to it, in view of the
continuous and repeated claims of absolute legislative supremacy
formally put forth, from the bill to that effect passed coincidently
with the repeal of the Stamp Act down to the alterations made in the
Massachusetts charter in 1774; the latter proceeding being in close
harmony, both in time and motive, with the extension of the province
of Quebec to the Ohio--one of the very rare evidences of sagacity and
foresight discernible in the course of the ministry; for, while it did
not avail to dam the westward flood, it certainly contributed, with
other concessions made at the same time to the Canadians, to save the
St. Lawrence to the Crown.

As apropos to this point, we transcribe from the original
manuscript, written in the round, clear, unhesitating but steady hand
characteristic of all Washington's letters, the following to James
Wood of Winchester, afterward governor of Virginia, but then little
more than a stripling:

    "MOUNT VERNON, Feb'y 20th, 1774.

    "DEAR SIR: I have to thank you, for your obliging acc't of
    your trip down the Mississippi, contained in a Letter of the
    18th of Octob'r from Winchester--the other Letter, therein
    refer'd to, I have never yet receiv'd, nor did this come
    to hand till some time in November, as I was returning from
    Williamsburg.

    "The contradictory acc'ts given of the Lands upon the
    Mississippi are really astonishing--some speak of the Country
    as a terrestrial Paradise, whilst others represent it as
    scarce fit for anything but Slaves and Brutes. I am well
    satisfied, however, from your description of it, that I have
    no cause to regret my disappointment:--The acc't of Lord
    Hillsborough's sentiments of the Proclamation of 1763, I can
    view in no other light than as one, among many other proofs,
    of his Lordship's malignant disposition towards us poor
    Americans, formed equally in malice, absurdity, and error; as
    it would have puzzled this noble Peer, I am persuaded, to have
    assigned any plausible reason in support of this opinion.

    "As I do not know but I may shortly see you in Frederick, and
    assuredly shall before the Assembly, I shall add no more than
    that, it will always give me pleasure to see you at this place
    whenever it is convenient to you, and that with compliments
    to your good Mother I remain, D'r Sir, Y'r most Obed't H'ble
    Serv't,

    "G'o WASHINGTON."

[Illustration: THE CAPITOL AT WASHINGTON AND CARPENTERS' HALL, WHERE
THE FIRST COLONIAL CONGRESS MET.]

This private note, discussing casually and curtly the great river
of the West, and the minister who endeavored to make it a _flumen
clausum_ to the colonists, nearly equidistant in date between the
Boston Tea-party and the meeting of the Assembly which called the
first Continental Congress, has some public interest. The West
always possessed a peculiar attraction for Washington. He explored
it personally and through others, and lost no occasion of procuring
detailed information in regard to its capabilities. He acquired large
bodies of land along the Ohio at different points, from its affluents
at the foot of the Alleghany to the Great Kanawha and below. Now we
see him gazing farther, over the yet unreddened battle-grounds of
Boone and Lewis, to the magnificent province France and Spain were
carefully holding in joint trusteeship for the infant state he was to
nurse. The representative in the provincial legislature of a frontier
county stretching from the Potomac to the Ohio, we may fancy him
inspired, as he looked around from his post on the vertebral range of
the continent, with "something of prophetic strain." If so, he was
not long to have leisure for indulging it. Within eighteen months his
life's work was to summon him eastward to the sea-shore. The Dark and
Bloody Ground must wait. For its tillage other guess implements than
the plough were preparing--the same that beckoned him to Cambridge and
the new century.

The slender driblet of population which at this juncture flowed
toward the Lower Mississippi was due to the anxiety of Spain to get a
home-supply of wheat, hemp and such-like indispensables of temperate
extraction for her broad tropical empire. A newspaper of August 20,
1773 gives news from New York of the arrival at that port of "the
sloop Mississippi, Capt. Goodrich, with the Connecticut Military
Adventurers from the Mississippi, but last from Pensacola, the 16th
inst." They had "laid out twenty-three townships at the Natchez,"
where lands were in process of rapid occupation, the arrivals
numbering "above four hundred families within six weeks, down the Ohio
from Virginia and the Carolinas." The Connecticut men doubtless came
back prepared, a little later, to vindicate their martial cognomen;
and to aid them in that they were met by Transatlantic recruits in
unusual force. The same journal mentions the arrival at Philadelphia
of 1050 passengers in two ships from Londonderry; this valuable
infusion of Scotch-Irish brawn, moral, mental and muscular, being
farther supplemented by three hundred passengers and servants in the
ship Walworth from the same port for South Carolina. The cash value to
the country of immigrants was ascertainable by a much less circuitous
computation then than now; many of them being indentured for a term
of years at an annual rate that left a very fair sum for interest and
sinking fund on the one thousand dollars it is the practice of our
political economist of to-day to clap on each head that files
into Castle Garden. The German came with the Celt in almost equal
force--enough to more than balance their countrymen under Donop,
Riedesel and Knyphausen. The attention drawn to the colonies by the
ministerial aggressions thus contributed to strengthen them for the
contest.

But with all these accessions in the nick of time, two millions and
a quarter of whites was a meagre outfit for stocking a virgin farm of
fifteen hundred miles square, to say nothing of its future police and
external defence against the wolves of the deep. It barely equaled the
original population, between the two oceans, of nomadic Indians, who
were, by general consent, too few to be counted or treated as owners
of the land. It fell far short of the numbers that had constituted,
two centuries earlier, the European republic from which our federation
borrowed its name. The task, too, of the occidental United States
was double. Instead of being condensed into a small, wealthy and
defensible territory, they had at once to win their independence
from a maritime power stronger than Spain, and to redeem from utter
crudeness and turn into food, clothing and the then recognized
appliances of civilized life the wilderness thus secured. The result
could not vary nor be doubted; but that the struggle, in war and in
peace, must be slow and wearing, was quite as certain. It is dreary to
look back upon its commencement now, and upon the earlier decades
of its progress; and we cannot wonder that those who had it to look
forward to half shrank from it. Among them there may have been a
handful who could scan the unshaped wilderness as the sculptor does
his block, and body forth in imagination the glory hidden within. That
which these may have faintly imagined stands before us palpable if not
yet perfected, the amorphous veil of the shapely figure hewn away,
and the long toil of drill and chisel only in too much danger of being
forgotten.

Population, the most convenient gauge of national strength and
progress, is far from being a universally reliable one. We shall find
sometimes as wide a difference between two given millions as between
two given individuals. Either may grow without doing much else. They
may direct their energies to different fields. Compared with the
United States, France and Germany, for example, have advanced but
little in population. They have, however, done wonders for themselves
and the world by activities which we have, in comparison, neglected.
The old city of London gains in wealth as it loses in inhabitants.

[Illustration: HOE'S NEW PERFECTING PRINTING-PRESS, PRINTING 12,000
DOUBLE IMPRESSIONS PER HOUR, AND THE OLD EPHRATA PRESS.]

Yet success in the multiplication of souls within their own
borders--depopulate as they may elsewhere--is eagerly coveted and
regularly measured by all the nations. Since 1790, when we set them
the example, they have one by one adopted the rule of numbering heads
every five, six or ten years, recognizing latterly as well, more and
more, the importance of numbering other things, until men, women and
children have come to be embedded in a medley of steam-engines,
pigs, newspapers, schools, churches and bolts of calico. For twenty
centuries this taking of stock by governments had been an obsolete
practice, until revived by the framers of the American Constitution
and made a vital part of that instrument. The right of the most--and
not of the richest, the best, the bravest, the cleverest, or the
oldest in blood--to rule being formally recognized and set down on
paper, it became necessary to ascertain at stated intervals who were
the most. The lords of the soil, instead of being inducted into power
on the death of their parents with great pother of ointment, Te Deum,
heraldry, drum and trumpet, were chosen every ten years by a corps of
humble knights of the pencil and schedule.

To these disposers of empire, the enhancement and complication of
whose toil has been a labor of love with each decennial Congress, we
owe the knowledge that eighty years, out of the hundred, brought the
people of the Union up from a tally of 3,929,214 in 1790 to 38,558,371
in 1870, and that down to the beginning of the last decade the rate of
increment adhered closely to 35 per cent. On that basis of growth the
latest return falls nearly four millions short. One of the causes of
this is "too obvious" (and too disagreeable) "to mention;" but it
is inadequate. The sharp demarcation of the western frontier by the
grasshopper and the hygrometer is another, which will continue to
operate until, by irrigation, tree-planting or some other device, a
new climate can be manufactured for the Plains. The teeming West, that
of old needed only to be tickled with a hoe to laugh with a harvest,
has disappeared. At least what is left of it has lost the power of
suction that was wont to reach across the ocean, pull Ballys and Dorfs
up by the roots and transplant them bodily to the Muskingum and
the Des Moines. A third cause, operating more especially within
the current decade, is attributable to another mode in which that
attractive power has been exerted--the absorption from the European
purse for the construction of railways of seven or eight times as much
as the thirty-five millions in specie it took to fight through the
Revolutionary war. For a while, Hans came with his thalers, but they
outfooted him--"fast and faster" behind came "unmerciful disaster,"
and he was fain to turn his back on the land of promise and promises.
Similar set-backs, however, are interspersed through our previous
history, and the influence of the last one may be over-rated.

In truth, the Old World's fund of humanity is not sufficiently ample
to keep up the pace; and the rate of natural increase is no longer
what it was when the country was all new, and cornfield and nursery
vied in fecundity. That the former source of augmentation is gaining
in proportion upon the latter is apparent from the last three returns.
The ratio of foreign-born inhabitants to the aggregate in 1850 was
9.68 per cent. in 1860, 13.16, and in 1870, 14.44. In the last-named
year, moreover, 10,892,015, or 28 per cent. of the entire population,
white and black, are credited with foreign parentage on one or both
sides. Excluding the colored element, ranked as all native, this
proportion rises to 32 per cent.

Judged by the test of language, three-fifths of those who are of
foreign birth disappear from the roll of foreigners, 3,119,705 out
of 5,567,229 having come from the British Isles and British America.
Germany, including Bohemia, Holland and Switzerland, sums up
1,883,285; Scandinavia, 241,685; and France and Belgium, 128,955. The
Celtic influx from Ireland, and the Teutonic and Norse together, form
two currents of almost identical volume. Compared with either,
the contribution of the Latin or the Romance races sinks into
insignificance--an insignificance, however, that shows itself chiefly
in numbers, the traces of their character and influence being,
relatively to their numerical strength, marked. The immigrants from
Northern and Southern Europe have a disposition, in choosing their
new homes, to follow latitude, or rather the isotherms; the North-men
skirting the Canadian frontier and grouping themselves on the coldest
side of Lake Michigan, while the Italians, Spaniards and French drift
toward the Gulf States. The Irish and Germans are more cosmopolitan,
each in a like degree. They disperse with less regard to climate or
surroundings, and are more rapidly and imperceptibly absorbed and
blended, thus promoting rather than marring the homogeneity of the
American people. The Germans are, however, more prone to colonizing
than the Irish--a circumstance due in great measure to their differing
in language from the mass of their new neighbors. This cause of
isolation is gradually losing its weight, the recognition of the
German tongue by State legislatures, municipalities, etc. being less
common than formerly, notwithstanding the immense immigratior so
calculated to extend it.

While assimilation has been growing more complete, and a fixed
resultant becoming more discernible, the ingredients of this ethnic
medley do not seem to have materially varied in their proportions
since the beginning of the century. They present a tolerably close
parallel to the like process in Northern France, where Celt and Teuton
combined in nearly equal numbers, with, as in our case, a limited
local infusion of the Norse. The result cannot, however, be identical,
the French lacking our Anglo-Saxon substratum, with its valuable
traditions and habitudes of political thought. The balance between
impulse and conservatism has never been, in this country, long or
seriously disturbed, and is probably as sound now as a hundred
years ago. In the discussions of the twenty years which embrace our
Revolutionary period we find abundance of theory, but they were never
carried by abstractions out of sight of the practical. Our publicists
were not misled by convictions of the "infinite perfectibility of
the human mind," the motive proclaimed by Condorcet, writing in sweet
obliviousness of the guillotine, as explaining "how much more pure,
accurate and profound are the principles upon which the constitution
and laws of France have been formed than those which directed the
Americans." The lack of this equilibrium among the pure, and, as we
may venture to term them, the untrained races, we have occasional
opportunities of noting on our own soil when for a passing cause they
resort to isolated action.

[Illustration: THE CITY OF TOKYO, THE LARGEST STEAMSHIP BUILT IN
AMERICA, AND FITCH'S STEAMBOAT, THE FIRST CONSTRUCTED.]

A race-question of a character that cannot be supplied by
differentiation within Caucasian limits haunts us as it has done from
the very birth of the colonies. Like the Wild Huntsman, we have had
the sable spectre close beside us through the whole run. But, more
fortunate than he, we see it begin to fade. At least its outlines are
contracting. The ratio of colored inhabitants to the aggregate,
in 1790 19.26 per cent., or one-fifth, fell in 1860 to 14.12, or
one-seventh, and in 1870 to 12.65, or an eighth. The next census will
beyond doubt point more strongly in the same direction. If, whilst
dwindling in magnitude, the dusky shape perplex us by assuming
suddenly a novel form, we may yet be assured that it is the same in
substance and in manageability. Its hue is whitening with the fleece
of five millions of cotton bales. The cloud has a silver lining--a
golden one in fact--for ours is pecuniarily a serviceable phantom to
the extent of adding to our annual income a sum equal to eight or ten
times the entire yearly export of the colonies. Should he lead us,
like the Land--und--Wild--Graf, into the pit of ruin, he will have
first bottomed it with an ample and soft cushion of lint whereon to
fall.

Extremes meet, and modern culture, like ancient anarchy, drives its
people into cities. Such is the tendency on both sides of the ocean.
Improvement must result from associated effort, and of that cities are
the last expression. All the European towns are outgrowing the rural
districts. With us the change states itself in an advance, since 1790,
of the city population from 3.4 to 20.9 per cent. of the aggregate.
Broadcloth has gained on homespun in the proportion of six to one,
Giles having thus six mouths to fill where he formerly had but one.
We shall show farther on how gallantly he meets this draft. New York,
with its suburbs, contains more Germans than any German city save
Vienna and Berlin, more Irish than Dublin, and more English-speaking
inhabitants than Liverpool, Birmingham, Manchester, Bristol and
Leeds together. All the colonial towns in a lump would scarce add a
twentieth to her numbers, and her militia embraces nearly twice as
many men as served, first and last, in the Continental army.

[Illustration: THE COTTON GIN.]

But the column that sums the souls does not state the complete life of
the cities. Man has in our day a host of allies that work with him and
at his command--slaves of iron, steel and brass wholly unknown to our
great--grand-fathers--fed also by the farmer, through the miner as an
intermediate. Steam-engines, to the number of 40,191, and of 1,215,711
horse-power--all of the stationary variety, and exclusive of nearly
half as many that traverse the country and may be classed among the
rural population--have succeeded the websters and spinners who were
wont to clothe all the world and his wife, and who survive only in
the surnames of some of our statesmen and financiers. Not that they
confine their labors to textile fabrics. Their iron fingers are in
every pie, including that of the printer, who is answered, when he
calls the roll of his serfs of steam, by 691 whistles. And he is
one of the smallest of the slaveholders--a mere ten-bale man.
India-rubber, a product known a century ago only by some little black
lumps used by draughtsmen to erase pencil-marks, owns enough of them
to equal 4412 horses or 22,000 No. 1 field hands. Boots and shoes not
of the India-rubber variety employ 3212 horse-power or 15,000 steam
Crispins, over and above their Christian fellows who stick solitary
to the last, and who, it must be owned, produce an article more of the
Revolutionary type and more solid and durable. As a cord-wainer Steam
is a failure; but he works cheaply, and will continue to hammer on,
and disseminate his commodity of brown paper throughout the temperate
zone. Three-fourths of the population of the globe still runs unshod,
however, and it is obvious that this crying want cannot be met by
the old system. Steam will perforce keep pegging away till Cathay,
Xipangu, India and all the isles awaken to the absurdity of walking on
cotton or undressed human skin. Could one of our 299 fire-fed cobblers
have been set to work at Valley Forge, backed by one of the 1057
makers of woolen that are similarly nourished!

But we do Mr. Watt's lusty bantling injustice in assigning him
exclusively the tastes of a cit. He is not insensible to pastoral
charms, and often selects a home among the hemlocks and under the
broad-armed oaks, by bosky glen or open mead, wherever the brooklet
brawls or dreams, for he sticks to the waterside like a beaver. Here
he sits down, like an artist as he is, until he has got all the choice
bits of the grove. The large and bustling family of the sawyers, both
top and bottom, he has utterly banished from their ancient haunts.
'There would be needed a million and a half of them to take the places
of 11,199 steam-engines, of 314,774 horse-power, that are devastating
our forests. An equal number is replaced by the 16,559 water-wheels,
of 326,728 horse-power, engaged in the same field of havoc. Armed
with the handsaw, all the Revolutionary patriots and Tories together,
withdrawing their attention entirely from military affairs, as well as
from all other mundane concerns, would not have turned out one-sixth
of the quantity of lumber demanded by their descendants of a period
that boasts itself the age of iron, and has as little as possible
to do with wood. And if we place in the hands of the patriarchs the
ancestral axes, and tell them to get out charcoal for three millions
of tons of iron, to be hauled an average of a hundred miles to
market by oxen over roads whose highest type was the corduroy, the
imagination reels at the helplessness of the heroes.

[Illustration: GRAIN ELEVATOR.]

The paternal thoughtfulness of the home government employed itself in
relieving the colonist from such exhausting drafts upon his energies.
It sedulously prohibited his throwing himself away on the manufacture
of iron or anything else. In 1750 it placed him under a penalty of
£200 for erecting a rolling-mill, tilt-hammer or steel-furnace. Lest
the governor of the colony should fail to enforce this statute
and protect the pioneer from such a waste of time, it held that
functionary to a personal forfeit of £500 for failing, within thirty
days after presentment by two witnesses on oath, to abate as a
nuisance every such mill, engine, etc. As this mulct would have made a
serious inroad on the emoluments of the royal governors, even with the
addition of the inaugural douceur customarily given by the provincial
assemblies to each new incumbent--in Virginia regularly £500, doubled
in the instance of Fauquier in 1758, when it was desired to drive
the entering wedge of disestablishment and razee the parsons--we are
prepared to believe that the iron business was not flourishing. Under
a despotism tempered so very moderately by bribes, a similar blight
fell upon all other branches of manufacture. Among these, wool, flax,
paper, hats and leather are specified in a Parliamentary report as
interfering with "the trade, navigation and manufactures" of
the mother-country. An act of Parliament accordingly forbade the
exportation of hats to foreign countries, and even from one colony to
another.

That, after such a course of repression, the country found itself
wholly unprepared on the attainment of independence to make any
headway in this field, is no matter of surprise. Thirty years elapsed
before the manufacturing statistics of the Union became presentable.
In 1810 they were reckoned at $198,613,471. This embraces every fruit
of handicraft, from a barrel of flour and a bushel of lime to a silk
dress. We had 122,647 spindles and 325,392 looms, made 53,908 tons of
pig iron, and refined about one pound of sugar for each head of the
population. In 1870, after sixty years of tossing between the
Scylla and Charybdis of tariffs, "black" and white, the yield of our
factories had mounted to the respectable sum of $4,232,325,442. They
employed 2,053,996 operatives. Of these, the average wages were $377,
against $289 in 1860 and $247 in 1850, yearly. The advance in the
product of refined sugar may be cited as illustrative of the progress
of the people in comfort and luxury. It reached a value of one hundred
and nine millions, representing nearly ten times as many pounds, or
twenty-eight pounds a head. This exemplification is but one in an
endless list.

Manufactures have come to figure respectably in our exports. They
exceed in that list, by three or four to one, the entire exports of
all kinds in 1790; and they equal the average aggregate of the years
from 1815 to 1824. But the multiplication of the wants of a people
rapidly growing in numbers and refinement will, with the comparatively
high price of labor, scarcity of capital and distance of most of our
ports from the markets supplied by European manufactures, for a long
time to come make the home-supply the chief care of our artisans. They
have, for such and other reasons, in some points lost ground of
late. The revolution in the propulsion and construction of ships, for
instance, has not found them prepared to take the advantage they have
usually done of improvements. Not only do the British screw-steamers
take undisputed possession of our trade with their own country, but
they expel our once unrivaled craft from the harbors of other quarters
of the globe, and threaten to monopolize the most profitable part
of our carrying-trade with all countries. This result is more easily
explained than the inroads made on our more ordinary foreign traffic,
in sailing vessels, by the mercantile marine of second- and third-rate
powers. This is eloquently told by the annual government returns and
the daily shipping-list. While our coastwise tonnage increases, that
employed in foreign trade remains stationary or declines. The bearing
of this upon our naval future becomes an imperative question for
our merchants and legislators. The United States is benevolently and
gratuitously building up a marine for each of half a dozen European
states which possess little or no commerce of their own, and
multiplying the ships and sailors of our chief maritime rival. We have
long since ceased to import locomotives, and have, within the past two
years, almost ceased to import railroad iron. Our iron-workers obtain
coal at nearly or quite as low prices as do those of Birkenhead or the
Clyde. They have recently sent to sea some large screw-steamers that
perform well. No insurmountable difficulty appears to prevent the
launching of more until we have enough to serve at least our direct
trade with Europe and China. That determined, it may be possible
to ascertain whether we cannot assist Norway, Belgium and Sicily in
carrying our cotton, wheat and tobacco to the purchasers of it.

[Illustration: INTERIOR OF A POSTAL CAR.]

This decline in American tonnage is, it must be added, only relative,
whether the comparison be made with other countries or with our own
past. The returns show a carrying capacity in our ships more than
twentyfold that of 1789, and three times that of 1807; when, on the
other hand, it exceeded in the ratio of fourteen to twelve that of
1829, twenty-two years later. This interest is peculiarly subject to
fluctuations; some of which in the past have been less explicable than
the one it is now undergoing. Another decade may turn the tables, and
restore the flag of the old Liverpool liners to their fleeter but less
shapely supplanters. The steamer and the clipper are both American
inventions. Why not their combination ours as well? The centenary of
Rumsey's boat, not due till December 11, 1887, should not find its
descendants lording the ocean under another flag.

The monthly Falmouth packet of a century ago, sufficient till within
the past two generations for the mail communication of the two
continents, has grown into six or eight steamships weekly, each
capable of carrying a pair of the old sloops in her hold, and making
the passage westwardly in a fifth and eastwardly in a third of the
time. Can it be but ninety years ago that the latest dates at New
York (February 14, 1786) from London (December 7, 1785) brought as a
leading item from Paris (November 20) the news that Philippe Égalité
had by his father's death just come into four millions of livres a
year, that six hundred thousand livres paid by the Crown to his father
thereupon devolved to Monsieur (afterward Louis XVIII.), and that the
latter had kept up the game of shuttlecock with the treasure of the
French by "a donation of all his estates to the duke of Normandy, the
younger son of their Majesties, preserving for himself the use and
profits thereof during his life"? That was a short winter-passage,
too--more speedy than the land-trip of a letter in the same journal
"from a gentleman in the Western country to his friend in Connecticut,
dated River Muskingum, November 5, 1785," describing a voyage down the
Ohio from Fort Pitt and the wonders of the country much as Livingstone
and Du Chaillu do those of Africa. The time is less now to Japan, and
about the same to New South Wales, with both which countries we have
postal conventions-i.e., a practically consolidated service--far
cheaper and more convenient than that maintained on the adoption of
the present Constitution between our own cities. Our foreign service
with leading countries is combined, moreover, with an institution
undreamed of in that day--the money-order system. Under this admirable
contrivance the post-offices of the world will ere long be so many
banks of deposit and exchange for the benefit of the masses, effecting
transfers mutually with much greater facility, rapidity and security
than the regular banks formerly attained.

Still in its infancy, the international money-order system has already
reached importance in the magnitude of its operations. The sums sent
by means of it were, in 1874, $1,499,320 to Great Britain, $701,634 to
Germany, and to the little inland republic of Switzerland $72.287.

The dimensions to which this new method of financial intercourse
between the different peoples of the globe is destined to reach may be
inferred from the growth of the domestic money--order service. In 1874
the number of orders issued was 4,620,633, representing $74,424,854.
The erroneous payments having been but one in 59,677, it is plain that
this mode of remittance must make further inroads on the old routine
of cheque and draft, and become, among its other advantages, a
currency regulator of no trifling value.

Our post-office may almost be said to head the development of the
century. The other lines of progress in some sense converge to it. The
advance of intelligence, of settlement, of transit by land and water
and of mechanical and philosophical discovery have all fostered
the post, while its return to them has been liberal. Thus aided
and spurred, its extension has approached the rate of geometrical
progression. Its development resembles that from the Annelids to the
Vertebrata, the simple canal which constitutes the internal anatomy of
the simplest animal forms finding a counterpart in the line of mails
vouchsafed by the British postmaster-general to the colonies in 1775
from Falmouth to Savannah, "with as many cross-posts as he shall
see fit." Fifteen years of independence had caused the accretion
of wonderfully few ganglia on this primeval structure. In 1790 four
millions of inhabitants possessed but seventy-five post-offices
and 1875 miles of post-roads. The revenue of the department was
$37,935--little over a thousandth of what it is at present under rates
of postage but a fraction of the old. New York and Boston heard
from each other three times a week in summer and twice in winter.
Philadelphia and New York were more social and luxurious, and insisted
on a mail every week-day but one, hurrying it through in two days each
way, or a twentieth of the present speed. On the interior routes chaos
ruled supreme. Newspapers and business-men combined to employ riders
who meandered along the mud roads as it pleased Heaven.

When the new government machine had smoothed down its bearings matters
rapidly improved. In 1800 we had 903 post-offices and 20,817 miles of
road. In 1820 these figures changed to 4500 and 92,492, and in 1870
to 28,492 offices and 231,232 miles. Five years later 70,083 miles of
railway, 15,788 by steamboat and 192,002 of other routes represented
the web woven since the Falmouth and Savannah shuttle commenced its
weary way. Of course, neither the number of offices nor extent of
routes fully measures the change from past to present; mails having
become more frequent over the same route, and a new style of office,
the locomotive variety, having been added to the old. This innovation,
of mounting postmaster and post-office with the mailbags on wheels,
and hurling the whole through space at thirty or forty miles an hour,
already furnishes us with gigantic statistics. In 1875 there were
sixty-two lines of railway postal-cars covering 16,932 miles with
40,109 miles of daily service and 901 peripatetic clerks. These
gentlemen, under the demands of the fast mail-trains, will ere long
swell from a regiment into a brigade, and so into a division, till
poets and painters be called on to drop the theme of "waiting for the
mail."

The greater portion of the fifty-odd thousand employés of the
department do not give it their whole time, many of the country
postmasters being engaged in other business. But the undivided efforts
of them all, with an auxiliary corps, would be demanded for the
handling of eight hundred and fifty millions of letters and cards,
and a greater bulk of other mail-matter, under the old plan of
rates varying according to distance and number of sheets, and not
weight--stamps unknown. The introduction of stamps, with coincident
reduction and unification of rates, has been the chief factor in the
extraordinary increase of correspondence within the past thirty years;
the number of letters passing through the mails having within that
period multiplied twenty-fold. The number transmitted in the British
Islands, then three times greater than in the United States, is
now but little in excess, having been in 1874 nine hundred and
sixty--seven millions. The immense difference between the two
countries in extent, and consequently in the average distance of
transportation, is enough to account for the contrast between the two
balance-sheets, our department showing a heavy annual deficit, while
in Great Britain this is replaced by a profit. As regards post-office
progress in the United States, the question is rather an abstract one;
for there is not the least probability of an advance in rates. The
discrepancy between receipts and expenses will be attacked rather
by seeking to reduce the latter at the same time that the former
are enhanced by natural growth and by improvement in the details of
service and administration.

[Illustration: PROF. S.F.B. MORSE, THE INVENTOR OF THE
ELECTRO-MAGNETIC TELEGRAPH.]

Difficult as it is adequately to state or to measure the extension of
the mails within the century, it is far from telling the whole
story of the amplitude and celerity with which the people of our day
interchange intelligence.

Only to the last third of the period under review has the electric
telegraph been known. It is now a necessity of the public and private
life of every civilized spot upon the globe. It traverses all lands
and all seas. The forty miles of wire with which it started from
Washington City have become many millions. Its length of line in the
United States is about the same with that of the mail-routes, and a
similar equality probably obtains in other parts of the world. We have
nearly as much line as all Europe together, though the extent of wire
may not be so great. It is little to say that this continent, so
dim to the founders of the Union, has been by the invention of Morse
compressed within whispering distance, the same advantage having been
conferred on other countries. It is the property of mankind, and
the comparison must be between present and past, not between any two
countries of the present. Strictly, a comparison is not possible,
nothing like magnetic communication having been known forty years
ago, unless to the half imagination, half realization of one or two
scientific experimenters. Steam and stamps wrought a difference in
degree--the telegraph one of kind. Against eighteen hundred miles of
wagon-road we set seventy-three thousand of railway; but two hundred
thousand miles of telegraph are opposed by nothing, unless by
Franklin's kite-string. Looked at along the perspective of poles, the
old days disappear entirely--the patriots become pre-historic. Yet
modern self-conceit is somewhat checked by the reflection that the
career of these two great agents of intercommunication has but just
opened; that their management even yet remains a puzzle to us; and
that the next generation may wonder how we happened to get hold of
implements whose use and capabilities we so poorly comprehended.
So far as prediction can now be ventured, a force and pathway more
economical than coal and the rail will not soon be forthcoming; nor
is Canton apt to "interview" New York at the rate of more words in a
minute over a single wire than she can now. Some day dynamite may be
harnessed to the balloon, which stands, or drifts, where it did with
Montgolfier, and we may all become long-range projectiles; but even
this age of hurry will contentedly wait a little for that.

Possibly the Post-office Department would be less of a valetudinarian,
financially, had it confined itself to its legitimate occupation, the
speeding of intercourse and wafting of sighs, and not yielded to the
heavy temptation of disseminating shoes, pistols and *garden-seeds
over three millions of square miles. Newspapers are enough to test its
powers as a freight-agent. Where these and their literary kindred
of books, magazines, etc. used to be estimated by the dozen and the
ounce, the ton is becoming too small a unit.

West of the Blue Ridge, or the front line of the Alleghany, so called
in most of its length, there was not a newspaper published in
1776. Ten years later, scarcely more than one--the _Pittsburg
Gazette_--existed west of the mountains. The few in the seaboard
towns kept alive the name, and little more. In 1850, '60 and '70 the
periodicals of the Union numbered, respectively, 2526, 4051 and 5871,
with an average circulation, at the three periods, of twenty-one
hundred, thirty-four hundred and thirty-six hundred copies each. The
circulation thus outgrew the numbers in the proportion of nearly
two to one. And both are largely in excess of the increase of the
population, that being in the twenty years but 65 percent. The number
of daily papers (254 in 1850 and 574 in 1870) must now be equal to the
entire number of periodicals in France outside of Paris (796 in 1875),
with an average issue less than half that of ours. The proportion of
readers to the population, certainly in this class of literature, thus
appears to be rapidly growing: and the change is most striking if we
take, for example, that group of periodicals which are most purely
literary and most remote from the mere chronicle. The returns for
the three periods place the monthlies at, respectively, 100, 280 and
622--an advance of sixfold.

The magazine leads us to the door of the library; and here the exhibit
is still more marked, significant and gratifying. The census figures
are, for many reasons, extremely confused, but in the general result
they cannot be outrageously wrong, and they can mislead us only in
degree as to the immense multiplication of books in both public and
private libraries. The returns are manifestly far below the truth.
To give them here without the explanations accompanying them in
the census volumes would mislead; and those explanations, or a fair
synopsis of them, would occupy too much space, and would, after all,
leave the problem unsolved. That the supply of books has fully
kept pace with every other means of culture is patent enough. The
Congressional Library has risen in half the century from the shelves
of a closet to nearly four hundred thousand volumes--an accumulation
not surpassed in '76 by more than two libraries in Europe. It now
demands a separate edifice of its own, fit to stand by the side of
the fine structures which have within a generation recreated the
architectural aspect of the Federal metropolis with the most stately
government-offices in the world. Other public libraries, belonging to
colleges, schools, societies and independent endowments, show similar
progress. While none of them are equal, for reference, to some of the
great European establishments, they are generally better adapted to
the purposes of popular instruction. Their literary wealth is fresh
and available, little encumbered by lumber kept merely because old or
curious. Thus adjuncts, in some sort, of the newspaper and the common
school, their catalogues prove, as do the bookcases of private houses,
that the newest and deepest results of European thought and inquiry
are eagerly sought and used by our people.

[Illustration: THE SCHOOL-HOUSE OF THE PAST AND THE PRESENT.]

Our system of public schools, long classed among the "peculiar
institutions" of the country, is notably gaining in scope and
efficiency, be the English and Prussians right or not in their claim
of greater thoroughness and a higher curriculum. The different States
have engaged in a series of competitive experiments for the common
good, and cities and counties, in their sphere, labor to the same end.
Schools of higher grade are being multiplied, and the examination of
teachers, still lax enough, becomes more exact and faithful, as befits
the drill of an army of two hundred and forty thousand charged with
the intellectual police of eight millions of children--the number said
by the new "National Bureau of Education" to have been enrolled in
1875, against 7,209,938, 5,477,037 and 3,642,694 by the censuses of
1870, '60 and '50. Little more than half this number is estimated by
the Bureau to represent the average daily attendance, which is
quite compatible with the attendance, for the greater part of the
school-year, of nine-tenths of the whole number on the lists. A
comparison of the number enrolled and the entire supposed number
of children between six and sixteen leaves an excess of nearly two
millions and a half outside the public schools. Of these private
schools will account, and account well, for a large proportion.
These are fulfilling indispensable offices, one being that of normal
schools--a want likely to be inadequately satisfied for a long time to
come.

In one respect our public schools are beyond, though not above,
comparison with those of the most advanced European states. An annual
outlay of a trifle less than seventy-five millions of dollars, with
an investment in buildings, ground, etc. of a hundred and sixty-six
millions, implies a determination that should be rewarded with the
most unexceptionable results. It reaches eighteen dollars yearly,
leaving out the interest on the fixed stock, for each child in
daily attendance. Such an expenditure, trebling, we believe, that
of Prussia, ought to secure better teachers and a higher range
of instruction. It must be said, however, that the duties of the
school-boards are as honestly and economically discharged as those of
any other public bodies; that the cost for each pupil is highest
where common schools have been longest established and most thoroughly
studied; and that the statistics certainly show a steady advance in
their efficiency. That is the truest test. Any pecuniary means are
justifiable by the end. If common schools, themselves a means to a
higher education, mental and moral, than they can directly afford,
take some part of the wealth we accumulate to prevent our men's
decaying, it is well used. It helps to purchase for us progress
more genuine than that whereof railways and cotton-factories are the
exponents.

It is thus a guarantee of a brighter century even than the one just
closed that, in the wildest quarter of the still unkempt continent,
the school actually precedes the pioneer. Choose his homestead where
he may, the sixteenth section is staked out before it. From it the
rills of knowledge soon trickle along the first furrows, as strange
to the soil as its new products. It provides the modern settler
in advance with an equipment, mental and material, if not moral,
altogether superior to that of his colonial prototype, that enables
him in a shorter time to impart a higher stamp to his surroundings. He
attacks the prairie with a plough unimagined by his predecessor;
cuts his wheat with a cradle--or, given a neighbor or two, a
reaper--instead of a sickle; sends into the boundless pasture the
nucleus of a merino flock, and returns at evening to a home rugged
enough, in unison with its surroundings, but brightened by traits of
culture and intelligence which must adhere to any ménage of to-day
and were out of reach of any of the olden time. The civilization that
travels West now is a different thing from that which went West a
hundred years ago.

Science has done much for the farmer, though not as much as he has
done for it and its hotbeds, the towns. In one point his shortcomings
are notable. He has not learned how to eat his cake and have it. He
works the virgin soil as the miner does the coal-seam. What Nature has
placed in it he takes out, and, until forced by the pressure of
his friends and enemies, the cities, returns no nest-egg of future
fertility. So it is that many portions of the rural East have to
be resettled and started afresh in the process of agricultural
redemption. A hundred years ago England grew fifteen bushels of wheat
to the acre. Her standard is now thirty-two. Within three-quarters of
the century New York has fallen from twenty-five to twelve; and
half that period, again, has brought Ohio and Indiana from thirty to
fifteen. But this process is a natural part of the sum of American
progress. Land was the only property of the country originally, and
subsequently of different parts of it in succession. It was used like
any other commodity, and worn out like leather or cloth. The original
cuticle of the continent has disappeared for ever. The task, now is
to induce the granulation of a new one. The restorative process may
be complete by the time we have four hundred souls to the square
mile, like England and Flanders. Meanwhile, the exporting of Iowa and
California in the shape of wheat is going on at what must be esteemed
a profitable rate; for our farmers, as a class, do not seem to be
losing ground. Their glebes have risen in value from thirty-two
hundred millions in 1850 to sixty-six hundred ten years later,
and ninety-three hundred in 1870. This has been accompanied by a
diminution of their average extent, the farm of 1870 covering a
hundred and fifty-three acres. This is small enough, considering
the capital necessary for stock in these days of improved and costly
implements, when a farmer can no longer pack his entire kit in a cart.
It matches closely the size of English holdings, where agricultural
science is at its height. The French peasant-farmers, with their plats
of three and four acres, are chained to the spade and hoe, and their
steading becomes a poultry-yard--a consummation we are not yet in
sight of, as is proved by the legions of pigs and beeves, barreled
or bellowing, that roll in from the ancient realms of Pontiac and
the Prophet with a smoothness and velocity unattained by the most
luxurious coach that carried a First Congressman.

Everything that makes a nation, we are told, and the nation itself,
is the product of the soil. But the less immediate, finer and
most delicate fruits cannot usually be garnered until the soil is
thoroughly subdued. The mass of matter keeps the intellectual in
abeyance. Were Europe enlarged one-half, and her population reduced
to one-eighth what it actually is, the spectacle of culture she now
presents would be an impossibility. It is our merit that, thus brought
to American conditions, she would in no way compare with American
achievement. An offset wherewith we must at the same time be debited
is the aid we have, in so many forms, derived from her. Making every
allowance for this, it is a clear credit in our favor that one-tenth
of Christendom should have done so much more than a tenth of its
effective thinking simultaneously with taming the most savage half
of its domain. We have more than our share of laborers in the mental
vineyard, though fewer of them are master-workmen. We utilize for
Europe herself, and send back to her in its first available shape,
much of what her students produce. As between thought and substance,
the two continents interchange offices. We import the crude material
her philosophers harvest or mine, work it up and return it, just as
she takes the yield of our non-metaphorical fields and strata and
restores it manufactured. Much of the social, political and industrial
advancement of Europe within the century she may be said to owe to
the United States. Her governmental reforms certainly and confessedly
found here their germ. These gave birth to others of a social
character. In this manner, as well as more directly by our commerce,
inventions and example, we have stimulated her industry. We have
spread before her the two oceans, and taught her to traverse them with
a firm and masterful mien, no longer

  As one who in a lonely road doth walk in fear and dread.

We have created cities upon her havens, Parliaments in her capitals,
and stronger hearts and quicker hands in her villages. No community on
her varied surface but is the better for America. That our people and
their labors have done it all it would be absurd to say; but the Old
World's progress in the period under review can be but very partially
accounted for by any internal force of its own. None of its rulers or
peoples adventure a reform of any kind without a preliminary, if often
only a half-conscious, glance of inquiry westward. Collectively as
members of a European republic of nations, and internally each
within itself, they have in this way learned, after many recalcitrant
struggles, to recognize and respect local independence. Municipal law
has gained new life. The commune has become an entity everywhere, and
the nations which it informs have established the right to readjust or
recast their constitutions without being hounded down as disturbers
of the peace. The contribution of the American Union to such results
would earn it honor at the hands of history were it to sink into
nothing to-morrow. Had no such tangible fruits hitherto ripened, some
portion of such honor would still accrue to it for having shown that a
people may grow from a handful to an empire without hereditary rulers,
without a privileged class, without a state Church, without a standing
army, without tumult in the largest cities and without stagnant
savagery in the remotest wilds.




UP THE THAMES.

CONCLUDING PAPER.

[Illustration: WINDSOR CASTLE, FROM ETON.]

Let our demonstration to-day be on the monarchical citadel of England,
the core and nucleus of her kingly associations, her architectural
_eikon basiliké_, Windsor. To reach the famous castle it will not do
to lounge along the river. We must cut loose from the suburbs of the
suburbs, and launch into a more extended flight. Our destination
is nearly an hour distant by rail; and though it does not take us
altogether out of sight of the city, it leads us among real farms and
genuine villages, tilled and inhabited as they have been since the
Plantagenets, instead of market-gardens and villas.

We go to Paddington and try the Great Western, the parent of the broad
gauges with no very numerous family, Erie being one of its unfortunate
children. That six-foot infant is not up to the horizontal stature of
its seven-foot progenitor, but has still sixteen inches too many
to fare well in the contest with its little, active, and above all
numerous, foes of the four-feet-eight-and-a-half-inch "persuasion."
The English and the American giants can sympathize with each other.
Both have drained the bitter cup that is tendered by a strong majority
to a weak minority. Neither the American nor the British constitution,
with their whole admirable array of checks and balances, has shielded
them from this evil. In the battle of the gauges both have gone to
the wall, and will stay there until they can muster strength enough to
reel over into the ranks of their enemies.

This relative debility is, at the same time, more apparent to the
stockholders than to their customers. The superstructure and "plant"
of the Erie has lately stood interested inspection from abroad with
great credit, and that of the Great Western is unexceptionable. The
vote of travelers may be safely allotted to the broad gauge. They
have more elbow room. The carriages attain the requisite width without
unpleasantly, not to say dangerously, overhanging the centre of
gravity; and, other things equal, the movement is steadier. Nor is the
financial aspect of the question apt to impress gloomily the tourist
as he enters the Paddington station and looks around at its blaze of
polychrome and richness of decoration generally. As the coach doors
are slammed upon you, the guard steps into his "van," the vast
drivers, taller than your head plus the regulation stove-pipe, slowly
begin their whirl, and you roll majestically forth through a long
file of liveried servants of the company, drawn up or in action on the
platform, the sensation of patronizing a poverty-stricken corporation
is by no means likely to harass you. You cease to realize that the
Napoleon of engineers, Monsieur Brunel, made a disastrous mistake in
the design of this splendid highway, and that, as some will have it,
it was his Moscow. His error, if one there was, existed only in the
selection of the width of track. Whatever the demerits of the design
in that one particular, the execution is in all above praise. The road
was his pet. Once finished, it was his delight, as with the breeder of
a fine horse, to mount it and try its mettle. Over and again would
he occupy the footboard between London and Bristol, and rejoice as a
strong man in running his race at close to seventy miles an hour. He
and Stephenson were capital types of the Gaul and Briton, striving
side by side on the same field, as it will be good for the world that
they should ever do.

[Illustration: MORTON CHURCH.]

Combats of another character--in fact, of two other characters--recur
to our reflections as we find that we have shuffled off the coil
of bricks and mortar and are rattling across Wormwood Scrubs. More
fortunate than some who have been there before us, we have no call to
alight. Calls to this ancient field of glory, whether symbolized by
the gentlemanly pistol or the plebeian fist, have ceased to be in
vogue. Dueling and boxing are both frowned down effectually, one by
public opinion and the other by the police. It is only of late years
that they finally succumbed to those twin discouragers; but it seems
altogether improbable that the ordeal by combat in either shape
will again come to the surface in a land where tilting-spear and
quarter-staff were of old so rife. In France chivalry still asserts,
in a feeble way, the privilege of winking and holding out its iron,
and refuses to be comforted with a suit for damages.

Southall, a station or two beyond, suggests sport of a less lethal
character, being an ancient meeting-place for the queen's stag-hounds.
John Leach may have collected here some of his studies of Cockney
equestrianism. The sportsmen so dear to his pencil furnished him
wealth of opportunities on their annual concourse at the cart's tail.
The unloading of the animal, his gathering himself up for a leisurely
canter across country, the various styles and degrees of horsemanship
among his lumbering followers, and the business-like replacing of
the quarry in his vehicle, to be hauled away for another day's sport,
served as the most complete travesty imaginable of the chase. It has
the compensation of placing a number of worthy men in the saddle at
least once in the year and compelling them to do some rough riding.
The English have always made it their boast that they are more at home
on horseback than any other European nation, and they claim to have
derived much military advantage from it. Lever's novels would lose
many of their best situations but for this national accomplishment and
the astounding development it reaches in his hands.

[Illustration: MILTON'S PEAR TREE.]

To the left lies the fine park of Osterley, once the seat of the
greatest of London's merchant princes, Sir Thomas Gresham. An
improvement proposed by Queen Bess, on a visit to Gresham in 1578,
does not speak highly for her taste in design. She remarked that in
her opinion the court in front of the house would look better split up
by a wall. Her host dutifully acceded to the idea, and surprised Her
Majesty next morning by pointing out the wall which he had erected
during the night, sending to London for masons and material for the
purpose. The conceit was a more ponderous one than that of Raleigh's
cloak--bricks and mortar _versus_ velvet.

A greater than Gresham succeeded, after the death of his widow, to the
occupancy of Osterley--Chief-justice Coke. His compliment to Elizabeth
on the occasion of a similar visit to the same house took the more
available and acceptable shape of ten or twelve hundred pounds
sterling in jewelry. She had more than a woman's weakness for finery,
and Coke operated upon it very successfully. His gems outlasted
Gresham's wall, which has long since disappeared with the court it
disfigured. In place of both stands a goodly Ionic portico, through
which one may pass to a staircase that bears a representation by
Rubens of the apotheosis of Mr. Motley's hero, William the Silent. The
gallery offers a collection of other old pictures. Should we, however,
take time for even a short stop in this vicinity, it would probably be
for the credit of saying that we walked over Hounslow Heath intact in
purse and person. The gentlemen of the road live only in the classic
pages of Ainsworth, Reynolds and, if we may include Sam Weller in such
worshipful company, that bard of "the bold Tur_pin_." Another class
of highwaymen had long before them been also attracted by the fine
manoeuvring facilities of the heath, beginning with the army of the
Cæsars and ending with that of James II. Jonathan Wild and his merry
men were saints to Kirke and his lambs.

Hurrying on, we skirt one of Pope's outlying manors, in his time the
seat of his friend Bathurst and the haunt of Addison, Prior, Congreve
and Gay, and leave southward, toward the Thames, Horton, the cradle of
Milton. A marble in its ivy-grown church is inscribed to the memory
of his mother, _ob_. 1637. At Horton were composed, or inspired,
_Lycidas, L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus_ and others of his nominally
minor but really sweetest and most enjoyable poems. In this retirement
the Muse paid him her earliest visits, before he had thrown himself
away on politics or Canaanitish mythology. Peeping in upon his
handsome young face in its golden setting of blonde curls,

  Through the sweetbrier or the vine,
  Or the twisted eglantine,

she wooed him to better work than reporting the debates of the
archangels or calling the roll of Tophet. Had he confined himself to
this tenderer field, the world would have been the gainer. He might
not have "made the word Miltonic mean sublime," but we can spare a
little of the sublime to get some more of the beautiful.

To reach Milton, however, we have run off of the track badly. His Eden
is no station on the Great Western. We shall balance this southward
divergence with a corresponding one to the north from Slough, the last
station ere reaching Windsor. We may give a go-by for the moment to
the halls of kings, do homage to him who treated them similarly, and
point, in preference, to where,

         in many a mouldering heap,
  The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

They show Gray's tomb in Stoke Pogis church, and his house, West End
Cottage, half a mile distant. The ingredients of his _Elegy_--actually
the greatest, but in his judgment among the least, of his few
works--exist all around. "The rugged elm," "the ivy-mantled tower,"
and "the yew tree's shade," the most specific among the simple
"properties" of his little spectacle, are common to so many places
that there are several competitors for the honor of having furnished
them. The cocks, ploughmen, herds and owls cannot, of course, at this
late day be identified. Gray could not have done it himself. He
drew from general memory, in his closet, and not bit by bit on
his thumb-nail from chance-met objects as he went along. Had
his conception and rendering of the theme been due to the direct
impression upon his mind of its several aspects and constituents,
he would have more thoroughly appreciated his work. He could not
understand its popularity, any more than Campbell could that of _Ye
Mariners of England_, which he pronounced "d----d drum-and-trumpet
verses." Gray used to say, "with a good deal of acrimony," that the
_Elegy_ "owed its popularity entirely to the subject, and the public
would have received it as well had it been written entirely in prose."
Had it been written in prose or in the inventory style of poetry, it
would have been forgotten long ago, like so much else of that kind.

[Illustration: GRAY.]

Not far hence is Beaconsfield, which gave a home to Burke and a title
to the wife of Disraeli, the nearest approach to a peerage that the
haughty Israelite, soured by a life of struggle against peers and
their prejudices, would deign to accept. We know it will be objected
to this remark that Disraeli is, and has been for most of his career,
associated with Toryism. But that was part of his game. A man of
culture, thought and fastidious taste, he would, had he been of the
_sangre azul_, have been the steadiest and sincerest of Conservatives.
Privilege would have been his gospel. As it is, it has only been his
weapon, to use in fighting for himself. "The time will come when you
shall listen to me," were his words when he was first coughed down.
The time has come. The most cynical of premiers, he governs England,
and he scorns to take a place among those who ruled her before him.

Extending our divergence farther west toward "Cliefden's proud alcove,
the bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love," we find ourselves in a
luxuriant rolling country, rural and slumberous. Cookham parish,
which we should traverse, claims quite loudly American kinship on
the strength of its including an estate once the property of Henry
Washington, who is alleged, without sufficient ground, to have been
a relative of the general. But we are within the purlieus of Windsor.
The round tower has been looking down upon us these many miles, and we
cannot but yield to its magnetism.

[Illustration: BEACONSFIELD CHURCH.]

Eton, on the north bank, opposite Windsor, and really a continuous
town with that which nestles close to the castle walls, is on our way
from Slough. The red-brick buildings of the school, forming a fine
foil to the lighter-colored and more elegantly designed chapel, are on
our left, the principal front looking over a garden toward the river
and Windsor Home Park beyond. We become aware of a populace of boys,
the file-closers of England's nineteenth century worthies, and her
coming veterans of the twentieth. We may contemplatively view them in
that light, but it has little place in their reflections. Their ruddy
faces and somewhat cumbrous forms belong to the animal period of life
that links together boyhood, colthood and calfhood. Education of the
physique, consisting chiefly in the indulgence and employment of it in
the mere demonstration of its superabundant vitality, is a large
part of the curriculum at English schools. The playground and the
study-room form no unequal alliance. Rigid as, in some respects, the
discipline proper of the school may be, it does not compare with the
severity of that maintained by the older boys over the younger ones.
The code of the lesser, and almost independent, republic of the
dormitory and the green is as clear in its terms as that of the
unlimited monarchy of the school-room, and more potent in shaping the
character. The lads train themselves for the battle of the world,
with some help from the masters. It is a sound system on the whole, if
based, to appearance, rather too much on the principle of the weaker
to the wall. The tendency of the weaker inevitably is to the wall, and
if he is to contend against it effectively, it will be by finding
out his weakness and being made to feel it at the earliest possible
moment.

[Illustration: TOMB OF BURKE.]

Not on land only, but on the river, whereinto it so gradually blends,
does lush young England dissipate. Cricket and football order into
violent action both pairs of extremities, while the upper pair and the
organs of the thorax labor profitably at the oar. The Thames, in its
three bends from Senly Hall, the Benny Havens of Eton, down to Datchet
Mead, where Falstaff overflowed the buck-basket, belongs to the boys.
In this space it is split into an archipelago of aits. In and out of
the gleaming paths and avenues of silvery water that wind between them
glide the little boats. The young Britons take to the element like
young ducks. Many a "tall admiral" has commenced his "march over the
mountain wave" among these water-lilies and hedges of osier.

Shall we leave the boys at play, and, renewing our youth, go
ourselves to school? Entering the great gate of the western of the two
quadrangles, we are welcomed by a bronze statue of the founder of the
institution, Henry VI. He endowed it in 1440. The first organization
comprised "a provost, four clerks, ten priests, six choristers,
twenty-five poor grammar-scholars, and twenty-five poor infirm men to
pray for the king." The prayers of these invalids were sorely needed
by the unhappy scion of Lancaster, but did him little good in a
temporal sense. The provost is always rector of the parish. Laymen are
non-eligible. Thus it happens that the list does not include two
names which would have illuminated it more than those of any of the
incumbents--Boyle the philosopher, "father of chemistry and brother
of the earl of Cork," and Waller the poet. The modern establishment
consists of a provost, vice-provost, six fellows, a master,
under-master, assistants, seventy foundation scholars, seven lay
clerks and ten choristers, with a cortege of "inferior officers and
servants"--a tolerably full staff. The pay-students, as they would be
termed in this country, numbering usually five to six hundred, do not
live in the college precincts, but at boarding-houses in the town,
whence their designation of oppidans, the seventy gowns-men only
having dormitories in the college. The roll of the alumni contains
such names as the first earl of Chatham, Harley, earl of Oxford,
Bolingbroke, Fox, Gray, Canning, Wellington and Hallam. That is enough
to say for Eton. The beauties of the chapel, the treasures of the
library and the other shows of the place become trivial by the side of
the record.

[Illustration: HEDSOR AND COOKHAM CHURCHES.]

Over the "fifteen-arch" bridge, which has but three or four arches, we
pass to the town of Windsor, which crouches, on the river-side, close
up to the embattled walls of the castle--so closely that the very
irregular pile of buildings included in the latter cannot at first
glance be well distinguished from the town. High over all swells the
round tower to a height above the water of two hundred and twenty
feet--no excessive altitude, if we deduct the eminence on which it
stands, yet enough, in this level country, to give it a prospect of
a score or two of miles in all directions. The Conqueror fell in love
with the situation at first sight, and gave a stolen monastery in
exchange for it. The home so won has provided a shelter--at times very
imperfect, indeed--to British sovereigns for eight centuries. From
the modest erection of William it has been steadily growing--with the
growth of the empire, we were near saying, but its chief enlargements
occurred before the empire entered upon the expansion of the past
three centuries. It is more closely associated with Edward III. than
with any other of the ancient line. He was born at Windsor, and
almost entirely rebuilt it, William of Wykeham being superintending
architect, with "a fee of one shilling a day whilst at Windsor, and
two shillings when he went elsewhere on the duties of his office,"
three shillings a week being the pay of his clerk. It becomes at once
obvious that the margin for "rings" was but slender in those days.
The labor question gave not the least trouble. The law of supply
and demand was not consulted. "Three hundred and sixty workmen were
impressed, to be employed on the building at the king's wages; some
of whom having clandestinely left Windsor and engaged in other
employments to greater advantage, writs were issued prohibiting all
persons from employing them on pain of forfeiting all their goods and
chattels." In presence of so simple and effective a definition of the
rights of the workingman, strikes sink into nothingness. And Magna
Charta had been signed a hundred and fifty years before! That
document, however, in honor of which the free and enlightened Briton
of to-day is wont to elevate his hat and his voice, was only in the
name and on behalf of the barons. The English people derived under it
neither name, place nor right. English liberty is only incidental, a
foundling of untraced parentage, a _filius nullius_. True, its
growth was indirectly fostered by aught that checked the power of the
monarch, and the nobles builded more wisely than they knew or intended
when they brought Lackland to book, or to parchment, at Runnymede,
not far down the river and close to the edge of the royal park. The
memorable plain is still a meadow, kept ever green and inviolate of
the plough. A pleasant row it is for the Eton youngsters to this spot.
On Magna Charta island, opposite, they may take their rest and their
lunch, and refresh their minds as well with the memories of the place.
The task of reform is by no means complete. There is room and call
for further concessions in favor of the masses. These embryo statesmen
have work blocked out for them in the future, and this is a good place
for them to adjust to it the focus of their bright young optics.

[Illustration: ETON COLLEGE AND CHAPEL.]

The monarchical idea is certainly predominant in our present
surroundings. The Thames flows from the castle and the school under
two handsome erections named the Victoria and Albert bridges; and
when, turning our back upon Staines, just below Runnymede, with its
boundary-stone marking the limit of the jurisdiction of plebeian
London's fierce democracy, and inscribed "God preserve the City of
London, 1280," we strike west into the Great Park, we soon come plump
on George III, a great deal larger than life. The "best farmer that
ever brushed dew from lawn" is clad in antique costume with toga and
buskins. Bestriding a stout horse, without stirrups and with no bridle
to speak of, the old gentleman looks calmly into the distance while
his steed is in the act of stepping over a perpendicular precipice.
This preposterous effort of the glyptic art has the one merit of
serving as a finger-board. The old king points us to his palace, three
miles off, at the end of the famous Long Walk. He did not himself care
to live at the castle, but liked to make his home at an obscure lodge
in the park, the same from which, on his first attack of insanity, he
set out in charge of two of his household on that melancholy ride
to the retreat of Kew, more convenient in those days for medical
attendance from London, and to which he returned a few months later
restored for the time. Shortly after his recovery he undertook to
throw up one of the windows of the lodge, but found it nailed down. He
asked the cause, and was told, with inconsiderate bluntness, that
it had been done during his illness to prevent his doing himself an
injury. The perfect calmness and silence with which he received this
explanation was a sufficient evidence of his recovery.

[Illustration: ETON COLLEGE, FROM NORTH TERRACE, WINDSOR.]

Bidding the old man a final farewell, we accept the direction of
his brazen hand and take up the line of march, wherein all traveling
America has preceded us, to the point wherefrom we glanced off so
suddenly in obedience to the summons of Magna Charta. On either
hand, as we thread the Long Walk, open glades that serve as so many
emerald-paved courts to the monarchs of the grove, some of them older
than the whole Norman dynasty, with Saxon summers recorded in their
hearts. One of them, thirty-eight feet round, is called after the
Conqueror. Among these we shall not find the most noted of Windsor
trees. It was in the Home Park, on the farther or northern side of the
castle, that the fairies were used to perform their

    --dance of custom round about the oak
  Of Herne the hunter.

Whether the genuine oak was cut down at the close of the last century,
or was preserved, carefully fenced in and labeled, in an utterly
leafless and shattered state, to our generation, is a moot point.
Certain it is that the most ardent Shakespearean must abandon the hope
of securing for a bookmark to his _Merry Wives of Windsor_ one of the
leaves that rustled, while "Windsor bell struck twelve," over the head
of fat Jack. He has the satisfaction, however, of looking up at the
identical bell-tower of the sixteenth century, and may make tryst with
his imagination to await its midnight chime. Then he may cross the
graceful iron bridge--modern enough, unhappily--to Datchet, and
ascertain by actual experiment whether the temperature of the Thames
has changed since the dumping into it of Falstaff, "hissing hot."

[Illustration: STAINES CHURCH.]

Back at the castle, we must "do" it, after the set fashion. Reminders
meet us at the threshold that it is in form a real place of defence,
contemplative of wars and rumors of wars, and not a mere dwelling by
any means in original design. A roadway, crooked and raked by frowning
embrasures, leads up from the peaceful town to the particularly
inhospitable-looking twin towers of Henry VIII.'s gateway, in their
turn commanded by the round tower on the right, in full panoply of
artificial scarp and ditch. Sentinels in the scarlet livery that
has flamed on so many battlefields of all the islands and continents
assist in proving that things did not always go so easy with majesty
as they do now. But two centuries and more have elapsed since
there happened any justification for this frown of stone, steel and
feathers; Rupert's futile demonstration on it in 1642 having been
Windsor's last taste of war, its sternest office after that having
been the safe-keeping of Charles I., who here spent his "sorrowful and
last Christmas." Once inside the gate, visions of peace recur. The eye
first falls on the most beautiful of all the assembled structures,
St. George's Chapel. It, with the royal tomb house, the deanery and
Winchester tower, occupies the left or north side of the lower or
western ward. In the rear of the chapel of St. George are quartered in
cozy cloisters the canons of the college of that ilk--not great guns
in any sense, but old ecclesiastical artillery spiked after a more or
less noisy youth and laid up in varnished black for the rest of their
days. Watch and ward over these modern equipments is kept by Julius
Cæsar's tower, as one of the most ancient erections is of course
called. Still farther to our left as we enter are the quarters of
sundry other antiquated warriors, the Military Knights of Windsor.
These are a few favored veterans, mostly decayed officers of the army
and navy, who owe this shelter to royal favor and an endowment. The
Ivy tower, west of the entrance, is followed in eastward succession by
those of the gateway, Salisbury, Garter and Bell towers.

[Illustration: NORMAN GATE AND ROUND TOWER, WINDSOR.]

The fine exterior of St. George's is more than matched by the carving
and blazonry of the interior. The groined roof bears the devices of
half a dozen early kings, beginning with Edward the Confessor. Along
the choir stretch the stalls of the sovereign and knights-companions
of the order of the Garter, each hung with banner, mantle, sword and
helmet. Better than these is the hammered steel tomb of Edward IV., by
Quentin Matsys, the Flemish blacksmith. In the vaults beneath rest the
victim of Edward, Henry VI., Henry VIII., Jane Seymour and Charles I.
The account of the appearance of Charles' remains when his tomb was
examined in 1813 by Sir Henry Halford, accompanied by several of the
royal family, is worth quoting. "The complexion of the face was dark
and discolored. The forehead and temples had lost little or nothing of
their muscular substance. The cartilage of the nose was gone; but the
left eye, in the moment of first exposure, was open and full,
though it vanished almost immediately, and the pointed beard so
characteristic of the reign of King Charles was perfect. The shape
of the face was a long oval; many of the teeth remained; and the
left ear, in consequence of the interposition of some unctuous matter
between it and the cere-cloth, was found entire. The hair was thick at
the back part of the head, and in appearance nearly black. A portion
of it, which has since been cleaned and dried, is of a beautiful
dark-brown color. That of the beard was a reddish-brown. On the back
part of the head it was not more than an inch in length, and had
probably been cut so short for the convenience of the executioner,
or perhaps by the piety of friends after death in order to furnish
memorials of the unhappy king. On holding up the head to determine
the place of separation from the body, the muscles of the neck had
evidently contracted themselves considerably, and the fourth cervical
vertebra was found to be cut through its substance transversely,
leaving the face of the divided portions perfectly smooth and even--an
appearance which could have been produced only by a heavy blow
inflicted with a very sharp instrument, and which furnished the last
proof wanting to identify Charles I."

[Illustration: HERNE'S OAK.]

A highly-edifying spectacle this must have been to the prince regent
and his brother Cumberland. The certainties of the past and the
possibilities of the future were calculated to be highly suggestive.
A French sovereign had but a few years before shared the fate of
Charles, and a cloud of other kings were drifting about Europe with
no very flattering prospect of coming soon to anchor. Napoleon was
showing his banded foes a good double front in Germany and Spain.
His dethronement and the restoration of the Bourbons were not as yet
contemplated. The Spanish succession was whittled down to a girl--that
is, by Salic law, to nothing at all. The Hanoverian was in a similar
condition, or worse, none of the old sons of the crazy old king
having any legitimate children. The prince regent himself was highly
unpopular with the mass of his people; and the classes that formed
his principal support were more so, by reason of the arrogance and
exactions of the landed interest, the high price of grain and
other heavy financial burdens consequent on the war, the arbitrary
prosecutions and imprisonment of leaders of the people, and the
irregularities of his private life.

But these sinister omens proved illusory. Leigh Hunt, Wraxall and the
rest made but ineffectual martyrs; the Bourbons straggled back into
France and Spain, with such results as we see; George IV. weathered,
by no merit of his own, a fresh series of storms at home; the clouds
that lowered upon his house were made glorious summer by the advent of
a fat little lady in 1819--the fat old lady of 1875; and we step from
the tomb of Charles in St. George's Chapel to that where George and
William slumber undisturbed in the tomb-house, elaborately decorated
by Wolsey. Wolsey's fixtures were sold by the thrifty patriots of
Cromwell's Parliament, and bought in by the republican governor of the
castle as "old brass." George was able, too, to add another story to
the stature of the round tower or keep that marks the middle ward
of the castle and looks down, on the rare occasion of a sufficiently
clear atmosphere, on prosperous and no longer disloyal London. This
same keep has quite a list of royal prisoners; John of France and
David II. and James I. of Scotland enjoyed a prolonged view of its
interior; so did the young earl of Surrey, a brother-poet, a century
removed, of James.

Leaving behind us the atmosphere of shackles and dungeons, we emerge,
through the upper ward and the additions of Queen Bess, upon the ample
terrace, where nothing bounds us but the horizon. Together, the north,
east and south terraces measure some two thousand feet. The first
looks upon Eton, the lesser park of some five hundred acres which
fills a bend of the Thames and the country beyond for many miles. The
eastern platform, lying between the queen's private apartments and an
exquisite private garden, is not always free to visitors. The south
terrace presents to the eye the Great Park of thirty-eight hundred
acres, extending six miles, with a width of from half a mile to
two miles. The equestrian statue at the end of the Long Walk is a
conspicuous object. The prevailing mass of rolling woods is broken by
scattered buildings, glades and avenues, which take from it monotony
and give it life. Near the south end is an artificial pond called
Virginia Water, edged with causeless arches and ruins that never were
anything but ruins, Chinese temples and idle toys of various other
kinds, terrestrial and aquatic. The ancient trees, beeches and elms,
of enormous size, and often projected individually, are worth studying
near or from a distance. The elevation is not so great as to bring
out low-lying objects much removed. We see the summits of hills, each
having its name, as St. Leonard's, Cooper's, Highstanding, etc., and
glimpses of the river and of some country-seats. St. Anne's Hill was
the home of Fox; at St. Leonard's dwelt the father of his rival and
rival of his father, and at Binfield, Pope, of whom it is so hard
to conceive as having ever been young, "lisped in numbers, for the
numbers came," natural descriptions, ethical reflections, _vers de
societé_ and all, for around him here there was food for them all. To
descend from Pope in point of both time and romance, the view
includes the scenes of Prince Albert's agricultural experiments. Quite
successful many of them were. He was a thoroughly practical man--a
circumstance which carried him by several routes across ploughed
fields and through well-built streets, straight to the hearts of the
English people. His memory is more warmly cherished, and impressed
upon the stranger by more monuments, than that of any other of the
German strain. It might have been less so had he succeeded in the
efforts he is now known to have made soon after his marriage to attain
a higher nominal rank. He possessed, through the alliance of Leopold
and Stockmar and the devotion of Victoria, kingly power without the
name and the responsibility, and with that he became content. He used
it cautiously and well when he employed it at all. His position was a
trying one, but he steered well through its difficulties, and died
as generally trusted as he was at first universally watched. The
love-match of 1840 was every way a success.

[Illustration: EAST FRONT, WINDSOR CASTLE.]

Another figure, more rugged and less majestic, but not less
respectable, will be associated with Victoria in the memories, if not
the history proper, of her reign. This is John Brown, the canny and
impassive Scot, content, like the Rohans, to be neither prince nor
king, and, prouder than they, satisfied honestly to discharge the
office of a flunkey without the very smallest trace of the flunkey
spirit. He too has lived down envy and all uncharitableness.
Contemptuous and serene amid the hootings of the mob and the squibs
of the newspapers, he carries, as he has done for years, Her Majesty's
shawl and capacious India-rubbers, attends her tramps through the
Highlands and the Home Park, engineers her special trains and looks
after her personal comfort even to the extent of ordering her to
wear "mair claes" in a Scotch mist. The queen has embalmed him in
her books, and he will rank among the heroes of royal authors as his
namesake and countryman the Cameronian, by favor of very similar moral
qualities, does with those of more democratic proclivities.

[Illustration: QUEEN ELIZABETH'S BUILDING, WINDSOR.]

We cannot apply literally to the view from Windsor Thackeray's lines
on "the castle towers of Bareacres:"

  I stood upon the donjon keep and viewed the country o'er;
  I saw the lands of Bareacres for fifty miles or more.

[Illustration: EARL OF SURREY.]

We scan what was once embraced in Windsor Forest, where the Norman
laid his broad palm on a space a hundred and twenty miles round, and,
like the lion in the fable of the hunting-party, informed his subjects
that that was his share. The domain dwindled, as did other royal
appurtenances. Yet in 1807 the circuit was as much as seventy-seven
miles. In 1789 it embraced sixty thousand acres. The process of
contraction has since been accelerated, and but little remains outside
of the Great and Little Parks. Several villages of little note stand
upon it. Of these Wokingham has the distinction of an ancient hostelry
yclept the Rose; and the celebrity of the Rose is a beautiful daughter
of the landlord of a century and a half ago. This lady missed her
proper fame by the blunder of a merry party of poets who one evening
encircled the mahogany of her papa. It was as "fast" a festivity as
such names as Gay and Swift could make it. Their combined efforts
resulted in the burlesque of _Molly Mog_. These two and some others
contributed each a verse in honor of the fair waiter. But they mistook
her name, and the crown fell upon the less charming brow of her
sister, whose cognomen was depraved from Mary into Molly. Wiclif's Oak
is pointed out as a corner of the old forest, a long way east of the
park. Under its still spreading branches that forerunner of Luther
is said to have preached. Messrs. Moody and Sankey should have sought
inspiration under its shade.

In the vast assemblage of the arboreal commonwealth that carpets the
landscape the centuries are represented one with another. It is a
leafy parliament that has never been dissolved or prorogued. One hoary
member is coeval with the Confessor. Another sheltered William Rufus,
tired from the chase. Under another gathered recruits bound with
Coeur de Lion for the Holy Land. Against the bole of this was set up
a practicing butt for the clothyard shafts that won Agincourt, and
beneath that bivouacked the pickets of Cromwell. As we look down upon
their topmost leaves there floats, high above our own level, "darkly
painted on the crimson sky," a member, not so old, of another
commonwealth quite as ancient that has flourished among their branches
from time immemorial. There flaps the solitary heron to the evening
tryst of his tribe. Where is the hawk? Will he not rise from some fair
wrist among the gay troop we see cantering across yonder glade? Only
the addition of that little gray speck circling into the blue is
needed to round off our illusion. But it comes not. In place of it
comes a spirt of steam from the railway viaduct, and the whistle of
an engine. Froissart is five hundred years dead again, and we turn to
Bradshaw.

[Illustration: WINDSOR CASTLE, FROM BISHOPSGATE.]

Yet we have a "view of an interior" to contemplate before facing the
lower Thames. And first, as the day is fading, we seek the dimmest
part. We dive into the crypt of the bell-tower, or the curfew-tower,
that used to send far and wide to many a Saxon cottage the hateful
warning that told of servitude. How old the base of this tower is
nobody seems to know, nor how far back it has served as a prison.
The oldest initials of state prisoners inscribed on its cells date
to 1600. The walls are twelve feet thick, and must have begotten a
pleasant feeling of perfect security in the breasts of the involuntary
inhabitants. They did not know of a device contrived for the security
of their jailers, which has but recently been discovered. This is a
subterranean and subaqueous passage, alleged to lead under the river
to Burnham Abbey, three miles off. The visitor will not be disposed to
verify this statement or to stay long in the comparatively airy crypt.
Damp as the British climate may be above ground, it is more so below.
We emerge to the fine range of state apartments above, and submit to
the rule of guide and guide-book.

[Illustration: LOCK AT WINDSOR.]

St. George's Hall, the Waterloo gallery, the council-chamber and the
Vandyck room are the most attractive, all of them for the historical
portraits they contain, and the first, besides, for its merit as an
example of a Gothic interior and its associations with the order of
the Garter, the knights of which society are installed in it. The
specialty of the Waterloo room is the series of portraits of the
leaders, civil and military, English and continental, of the last and
successful league against Napoleon. They are nearly all by Lawrence,
and of course admirable in their delineation of character. In that
essential of a good portrait none of the English school have excelled
Lawrence. We may rely upon the truth to Nature of each of the heads
before us; for air and expression accord with what history tells us
of the individuals, its verdict eked out and assisted by instructive
minutiæ of lineament and meaning detected, in the "off-guard" of
private intercourse, by the eye of a great painter and a lifelong
student of physiognomy. We glance from the rugged Blucher to the
wily Metternich, and from the philosophic Humboldt to the semi-savage
Platoff. The dandies George IV. and Alexander are here, but Brummel
is left out. The gem of the collection is Pius VII., Lawrence's
masterpiece, widely familiar by engravings. Raphael's Julius II. seems
to have been in the artist's mind, but that work is not improved on,
unless in so far as the critical eye of our day may delight in the
more intricate tricks of chiaroscuro and effect to which Lawrence has
recourse. "Brunswick's fated chieftain" will interest the votaries of
Childe Harold. Could he have looked forward to 1870, he would perhaps
have chosen a different side at Waterloo, as his father might at Jena,
and elected to figure in oils at Versailles rather than at Windsor.
Incomparably more destructive to the small German princes have been
the Hohenzollerns than the Bonapartes.

[Illustration: THE THAMES EMBANKMENT.]

We forget these nineteenth-century people in the council-chamber,
wherein reign Guido, Rembrandt, Claude, and even Da Vinci. If
Leonardo really executed all the canvases ascribed to him in English
collections, the common impressions of his habits of painting but
little, and not often finishing that, do him great injustice. Martin
Luther is here, by Holbein, and the countess of Desmond, the merry old
lady

  Who lived to the age of twice threescore and ten,
  And died of a fall from a cherry tree then,

is embalmed in the bloom of one hundred and twenty and the gloom of
Rembrandt. The two dozen pictures in this room form nearly as odd an
association as any like number of portraits could do. Guercino's Sibyl
figures with a cottage interior by Teniers, and Lely's Prince Rupert
looks down with lordly scorn on Jonah pitched into the sea by the
combined efforts of the two Poussins. The link between Berghem's cows
and Del Sarto's Holy Family was doubtless supplied to the minds of
the hanging committee by recollections of the manger. Our thrifty
Pennsylvanian, West, is assigned the vestibule. Five of his "ten-acre"
pictures illustrate the wars of Edward III. and the Black Prince.
The king's closet and the queen's closet are filled mostly by the
Flemings. Vandyck's room finally finishes the list. It has, besides
a portrait of himself and several more of the first Charles and his
family in every pose, some such queer, or worse than queer, commoners
as Tom Killigrew and Sir Kenelm Digby and Venetia his hopeful spouse,
so dear to novelists of a certain school.

[Illustration: ELMS NEAR THE HERONRY.]

Vast sums have been expended on the renovation and improvement of the
castle during the past half century. With Victoria it has been more
popular as a residence than with any of her predecessors since
the fourteenth century. What, however, with its greater practical
proximity to London, due to railways, and what with the queen's liking
for solitude since the death of her consort, the more secluded
homes of Osborne and Balmoral have measurably superseded it in her
affections. Five hundred miles of distance to the Dee preclude the
possibility of the dumping on her, by means of excursion trains, of
loyal cockneydom. She is as thoroughly protected from that inundation
in the Isle of Wight, the average Londoner having a fixed horror of
sea-sickness. The running down, by her private steamer, of a few more
inquisitive yachts in the Solent would be a hazardous experiment, if
temporarily effective in keeping home invaders at bay. Holding as her
right and left bowers those two sanctuaries at the opposite ends of
her island realm, she can play a strong hand in the way of personal
independence, and cease to feel that hers is a monarchy limited by the
rights of the masses. It is well for the country that she should be
left as far as possible to consult her own comfort, ease and health
at least as freely as the humblest of her subjects. The continuance
of her life is certainly a political desideratum. It largely aids in
maintaining a wholesome balance between conservatism and reform. So
long as she lives there will be no masculine will to exaggerate the
former or obstruct the latter, as notably happened under George
III. and William IV. Her personal bearing is also in her favor. Her
popularity, temporarily obscured a few years ago, is becoming as great
as ever. It has never been weakened by any misstep in politics, and so
long as that can be said will be exposed to no serious danger.

We are far from being at the end of the upper Thames. Oxford, were
there no other namable place, is beyond us. But we have explored
the denser portion--the nucleus of the nebula of historic stars that
stretches into the western sky as seen from the metropolis. We lay
aside our little lorgnette. It has shown us as much as we can map in
these pages, and that we have endeavored to do with at least the merit
of accuracy.

EDWARD C. BRUCE.




THE POET'S PEN.

      I am an idle reed;
  I rustle in the whispering air;
      I bear my stalk and seed
  Through spring-time's glow and summer's glare.

      And in the fiercer strife
  Which winter brings to me amain,
      Sapless, I waste my life,
  And, murmuring at my fate, complain.

      I am a worthless reed;
  No golden top have I for crown,
      No flower for beauty's meed,
  No wreath for poet's high renown.

      Hollow and gaunt, my wand
  Shrill whistles, bending in the gale;
      Leafless and sad I stand,
  And, still neglected, still bewail.

      O foolish reed! to wail!
  A poet came, with downcast eyes,
      And, wandering through the dale,
  Saw thee and claimed thee for his prize.

      He plucked thee from the mire;
  He pruned and made of thee a pen,
      And wrote in words of fire
  His flaming song to listening men;

      Till thou, so lowly bred,
  Now wedded to a nobler state,
      Utt'rest such pæans overhead
  That angels listen at their gate.

  F.A. HILLARD.




SKETCHES OF INDIA.

II.


I had now learned to place myself unreservedly in the hands of Bhima
Gandharva. When, therefore, on regaining the station at Khandallah, he
said, "The route by which I intend to show you India will immediately
take us quite away from this part of it; first, however, let us go and
see Poona, the old Mahratta capital, which lies but a little more than
thirty miles farther to the south-eastward by rail,"--I accepted the
proposition as a matter of course, and we were soon steaming down the
eastern declivity of the Gháts. As we moved smoothly down into the
treeless plains which surround Poona I could not resist a certain
feeling of depression.

"Yes," said Bhima Gandharva when I mentioned it to him, "I understand
exactly what you mean. On reaching an unbroken expanse of level
country, after leaving the tops of mountains, I always feel as if my
soul had come bump against a solid wall of rock in the dark. I seem
to hear a dull _thud_ of discouragement somewhere back in my soul, as
when a man's body falls dead on the earth. Nothing, indeed, could
more heighten such a sensation than the contrast between this and
the Bombay side of the Gháts. There we had the undulating waters,
the lovely harbor with its wooded and hilly islands, the ascending
terraces of the Gháts: everything was energetic, the whole invitation
of Nature was toward air, light, freedom, heaven. But here one spot
is like another spot; this level ground is just the same level ground
there was a mile back; this corn stands like that corn; there is an
oppressive sense of bread-and-butter about; one somehow finds one's
self thinking of ventilation and economics. It is the sausage-grinding
school of poetry--of which modern art, by the way, presents several
examples--as compared with that general school represented by the
geniuses who arise and fly their own flight and sing at a great
distance above the heads of men and of wheat."

Having arrived and refreshed ourselves at our hotel, whose proprietor
was, as usual, a Parsee, we sallied forth for a stroll about Poona. On
one side of us lay the English quarter, consisting of the houses and
gardens of the officers and government employés, and of the two or
three hundred other Englishmen residing here. On the other was the
town, extending itself along the banks of the little river Moota.
We dreamed ourselves along in the lovely weather through such of
the seven quarters of the town as happened to strike the fancy of my
companion. Occasionally we were compelled to turn out of our way
for the sacred cattle, which, in the enjoyment of their divine
prerogatives, would remain serenely lying across our path; but
we respected the antiquity, if not the reasonableness, of their
privileges, and murmured not.

Each of the seven quarters of Poona is named after a day of the week.
As we strolled from Monday to Tuesday, or passed with bold anachronism
from Saturday back to Wednesday, I could not help observing how
these interweavings and reversals of time appeared to take an actual
embodiment in the scenes through which we slowly moved, particularly
in respect of the houses and the costumes which went to make up
our general view. From the modern-built European houses to the
mediæval-looking buildings of the Bhoodwar quarter, with their massive
walls and loop-holes and crenellations, was a matter of four or five
centuries back in a mere turn of the eye; and from these latter to
the Hindu temples here and there, which, whether or not of actual age,
always carry one straight into antiquity, was a further retrogression
to the obscure depths of time. So, too, one's glance would often sweep
in a twinkling from a European clothed in garments of the latest mode
to a Hindu whose sole covering was his _dhotee_, or clout about the
loins, taking in between these two extremes a number of distinct
stages in the process of evolution through which our clothes have
gone. In the evening we visited the _Sangam_, where the small streams
of the Moola and the Moota come together. It is filled with cenotaphs,
but, so far from being a place of weeping, the pleasant air was full
of laughter and of gay conversation from the Hindus, who delight to
repair here for the purpose of enjoying the cool breath of the evening
as well as the pleasures of social intercourse.

[Illustration: HINDU TEMPLES NEAR POONA.]

But I did not care to linger in Poona. The atmosphere always had to me
a certain tang of the assassinations, the intrigues, the treacheries
which marked the reign of that singular line of usurping ministers
whose capital was here. In the days when the Peishwas were in the
height of their glory Poona was a city of a hundred and fifty thousand
inhabitants, and great traffic was here carried on in jewelry and
such luxuries among the Mahratta nobles. The Mahrattas once, indeed,
possessed the whole of India practically; and their name is composed
of _Mahu_, a word meaning "great," and often to be met with in the
designations of this land, where so many things really _are_ great,
and _Rachtra_, "kingdom," the propriety of the appellation seeming to
be justified by the bravery and military character of the people. They
have been called the Cossacks of India from these qualities combined
with their horsemanship. But the dynasty of the usurping ministers had
its origin in iniquity; and the corruption of its birth quickly broke
out again under the stimulus of excess and luxury, until it culminated
in the destruction of the Mahratta empire in 1818. So, when we had
seen the palace of the Peishwa, from one of whose balconies the young
Peishwa Mahadeo committed suicide by leaping to the earth in the
year 1797 through shame at having been reproved by his minister
Nana Farnavese in presence of his court, and when we had visited the
Hira-Bâgh, or Garden of Diamonds, the summer retreat of the Peishwas,
with its elegant pavilion, its balconies jutting into the masses of
foliage, its cool tank of water, reposing under the protection of the
temple-studded Hill of Pararati, we took train again for Bombay.

The Great Indian Peninsula Railway's main line leads out of Bombay
over the Gháts to Jabalpúr, six hundred miles; thence a railway of
some two hundred and twenty miles runs to Allahabad, connecting them
with the great line, known as the East Indian Railway, which extends
for more than a thousand miles north-westward from Calcutta _viâ_
Patna, Benares, Allahabad, Cawnpore, Lucknow, Agra and Delhi. Our
journey, as marked out by Bhima Gandharva, was to be from Bombay
to Jabalpúr by rail; thence by some slow and easy conveyance across
country to Bhopal, and from Bhopal northward through Jhansi to Delhi
and the northern country, thence returning by rail to Calcutta.

As one ascends the Western Gháts shortly after leaving Bombay one has
continual occasion to remark the extraordinary resources of modern
railway engineering. Perhaps the mechanical skill of our time has not
achieved any more brilliant illustrations of itself than here occur.
For many miles one is literally going up a flight of steps by rail.
The word Ghát indeed means the steps leading up from pools or rivers,
whose frequent occurrence in India attests the need of easy access
to water, arising from the important part which it plays both in the
civil and religious economies of the Hindu. The Gháts are so called
from their terraced ledges, rising one above another from the shores
of the ocean like the stairs leading up from a pool. In achieving the
ascent of these gigantic stairs all the expedients of road-makers have
been resorted to: the zigzag, the trestle, the tunnel, the curve, have
been pushed to their utmost applications; for five continuous miles
on the Thull Ghát Incline there is a grade of one in thirty-seven,
involving many trying curves, and on nineteen miles of the Bhore Ghát
Incline there are thirty tunnels.

That which gives tone and character to a general view of the interior
of a railway-car in traveling is, from the nature of things, the
head-covering of the occupants, for it is this which mostly meets the
eye; and no one who has traveled in the United States, for example,
can have failed to observe the striking difference between the aspect
of a car in the South, where the felt slouch prevails, and of one
in the North, where the silk hat is more affected. But cars full
of turbans! There were turbans of silk, of muslin, of woolen; white
turbans, red, green and yellow turbans; turbans with knots, turbans
with ends hanging; neat turbans, baggy turbans, preternatural turbans,
and that curious spotted silk inexpressible mitre which the Parsee
wears.

[Illustration: GÓNDS.]

Bhima Gandharva was good enough to explain to me the turban; and
really, when within bounds, it is not so nonsensical a headdress as
one is apt at first to imagine. It is a strip of cloth from nine to
twelve inches wide, and from fifteen to twenty-five yards long. They
are known, however, of larger dimensions, reaching to a yard in width
and sixty yards in length. The most common color is white; next,
perhaps, red, and next yellow; though green, blue, purple and black
are worn, as are also buff, shot colors and gray, these latter being
usually of silk; but this does not exhaust the varieties, for there
are many turbans made of cotton cloth printed in various devices to
suit the fancies of the wearers.

"The _puttee-dar_ (_pugri_, or turban)," continued my companion, "is
a neat compact turban, in general use by Hindus and Mohammedans; the
_joore-dar_ is like the _puttee-dar_, except that it has the addition
of a knot on the crown; the _khirkee-dar_ is the full-dress turban of
gentlemen attached to native courts; the _nustalik_ is a small turban
which fits closely to the head, and is worn for full dress at the
Mohammedan _durbars_ or royal receptions; the _mundeel_ is the
military turban, with stripes of gold and ends; the _séthi_ is
like the _nustalik_, and is worn by bankers; the _shumla_ is
a shawl-turban; and I fear you do not care to know the other
varieties--the _morassa_, the _umamu_, the _dustar_, the--"

"Thank you," I said: "life is short, my dear Bhima, and I shall know
nothing but turbans if this goes on, which will be inconvenient,
particularly when I return to my home and my neighbor Smith asks me
that ghastly question, 'What do I think of India?'"

"It is a more 'ghastly' question as to India than as to any other
country in the world," said the Hindu. "Some years ago, when Mr.
Dilke was traveling in this country, a witty officer of one of the
hill-stations remarked to him that _all general observations about
India were absurd_. This is quite true. How could it be otherwise?
Only consider, for example, the languages of India--the Assamese, with
its two branches of the Deccan-göl and the Uttar-göl; the Bengalee;
the Maithilee, Tirhutiya or Tirabhucti, spoken between the Coosy and
the Gunduck; the Orissan, of the regions around Cuttack; the Nepalese;
the Kosalese, about Almora; the Dogusee, between Almora and Cashmere;
the Cashmiran; the Panjabee; the Mooltanee, or Vuchee, on the middle
Indus; the two dialects of Sindhí, or Tatto, on the lower Indus; the
Cutché, on the west coast of the peninsula; the Guseraté, spoken
on the islands of Salsette and Bombay and the opposite coast of the
Coucan, as well as by the Parsees in the cities, where it is corrupted
with many words of other languages through the influence of commercial
relations; the Coucané, from Bombay to Goa and along the parallel
Gháts where it is called Ballagate; the Bikaneeré, the Marvaré, the
Jeyporé, the Udayaporé, of Rajpootana; the Vraja-bhasha (the cow-pen
language) of the Doab, between the Ganges and the Jumna, which is
probably the parent of Hindi (or Oordú); the Malooé, of the tableland
of Malwa; the Bundelakhandé, of the Bundelkhand; the Mogadhé, of
Behar; the Maharachtré, of the country south of the Vindhyas; the--"

"It gives me pain to interrupt you, Bhima Gandharva," I said
(fervently hoping that this portion of my remark might escape the
attention of the recording angel); "but I think we are at Jabalpúr."

_Apropos_ of Jubbulpoor, it is well enough to remark that by the rules
of Indian orthography which are now to be considered authentic, the
letter "a" without an accent has a sound equivalent to short "u," and
a vowel with an acute accent has what is usually called its long
sound in English. Accordingly, the word written "Jabalpúr" should
be pronounced as if retaining the "u" and the "oo" with which it was
formerly written, "Jubbulpoor". The termination _púr_, so common in
the designation of Indian places, is equivalent to that of _ville_
in English, and means the same. The other common termination, _abad_,
means "dwelling" or "residence": e.g., Ahmedabad, the residence of
Ahmed. Jabalpúr is but about a mile from the right bank of the Nerbadá
(_Nerbudda_) River; and as I wished to see the famous Marble Rocks
of that stream, which are found a short distance from Jabalpúr, my
companion and I here left the railway, intending to see a little of
the valley of the Nerbadá, and then to strike across the Vindhyas,
along the valley of the Tonsa, to Bhopal, making our journey by such
slow, irregular and easy stages as should be compatible with that
serene and philosophic disposition into which the Hindu's beautiful
gravity had by this time quite converted my American tendencies toward
rushing through life at the killing pace.

[Illustration: CENOTAPHS IN THE VALLEY OF THE TONSA.]

It was a little past midday when we made our first journey along the
river between the Marble Rocks. Although the weather was as nearly
perfect as weather could be, the mornings being deliciously cool and
bracing and the nights cold enough to produce often a thin layer of
ice over a pan of water left exposed till daybreak, yet the midday sun
was warm enough, especially after a walk, to make one long for leaves
and shade and the like. It would be difficult, therefore, to convey
the sensations with which we reclined at our ease in a flat-bottomed
punt while an attendant poled us up toward the "Fall of Smoke," where
the Nerbadá leaps out eagerly toward the low lands he is to fertilize,
like a young poet anxious to begin his work of grace in the world. On
each side of us rose walls of marble a hundred feet in height, whose
pure white was here and there striped with dark green or black: all
the colors which met the eye--the marmoreal whites, the bluish grays
of the recesses among the ledges, the green and black seams, the
limpid blue of the stream--were grateful, calm-toned, refreshing; we
inhaled the coolness as if it had been a mild aroma out of a distant
flower. This pleasant fragrance, which seemed to come up out of
all things, was presently intensified by a sort of spiritual
counterpart--a gentle breath that blew upon us from the mysterious
regions of death; for on a _ghát_ we saw a small company of Hindus
just launching the body of a pious relative into the waters of
Mother Nerbadá in all that freedom from grief, and even pleasant
contemplation, with which this singular people regard the transition
from present to future existence. These corpses, however, which are
thus committed to the wave, do not always chime so happily in with the
reveries of boating-parties on the Nerbadá. The Marble Rocks are often
resorted to by pic-nic parties in the moonlit evenings; and one can
easily fancy that to have a dusky dead body float against one's boat
and sway slowly round alongside in the midst of a gay jest or of a
light song of serenade, as is said to have happened not unfrequently
here, is not an occurrence likely to heighten the spirits of revelers.
Occasionally, also, the black, ugly double snout of the _magar_ (or
Nerbadá crocodile) may pop up from the surface, which may here serve
as a warning to the young lady who trails her hand in the water--and
I have yet to be in a boating-party where the young lady did not trail
her hand in the water--that on the Nerbadá it is perhaps as well to
resign an absent-minded hand to the young officer who sits by her in
the boat lest Magar should snap it off.

Leaving the Nerbadá we now struck off northward toward the Tonsa,
intending to pass round by way of Dumoh, Sangor, Bhilsa and Sanchi
to Bhopal. We might have pursued a route somewhat more direct by
following directly down the valley of the Nerbadá to Hoshangabad,
and thence straight across to Bhopal, but my companion preferred
the circuitous route indicated, as embracing a greater variety of
interesting objects. He had procured for our conveyance a vehicle
which was in all respects suitable to the placidity of his temper; and
I make bold to confess that, American as I am--born on the railroad,
so to speak--I have never enjoyed traveling as I did in this novel
carriage. It was what is called a _chapaya_. It consisted of a body
nearly ten feet in length by more than five in breadth, and was
canopied by a top supported upon sculptured pillars of wood.
The wheels were massive and low. There were no springs; but this
deficiency was atoned for by the thick cushionment of the rear portion
of the vehicle, which allowed us to lie at full length in luxurious
ease as we rolled along. Four white bullocks, with humps and horns
running nearly straight back on the prolongation of the forehead line,
drew us along in a very stately manner at the rate of something like a
mile and a half an hour.

We were now in the Góndwana, in some particulars one of the most
interesting portions of the country. Here are the Highlands of Central
India; here rise the Nerbadá and the Tapti--which flow to the westward
in a generally parallel direction, and empty into the Gulf of Cambaye,
the one at Broode and the other at Surat--as well as the Sôn, the
Keyn (or Cane) and the Tonsa, which flow northward into the Jumna. The
valley of the Keyn and that of the Tonsa here run across the Vindhyas,
which are known to the eastward of this as the Kyrmores, and afford
communication between Northern and Southern India. It is along the
depression of the latter stream that the railway has been built from
Jabalpúr to Allahabad.

The eight hundred thousand Gónds of the Góndwana are supposed to be
members of the great autochthonal family of ancient India. These hills
of the Góndwana country appear to have been considered by the incoming
Aryans for a long time as a sort of uncanny land, whose savage
recesses were filled with demons and snakes: indeed, in the epics of
the Máhábháráta and Rámáyana this evil character is attributed to that
portion of India lying south of the Vindhyas. The forest of Spenser's
Fairy Queen, in which wandering knights meet with manifold beasts and
maleficent giants, and do valorous battles against them in the rescue
of damsels and the like--such seem to have been the Góndwana woods to
the ancient Hindu imagination. It was not distressed damsels,
however, whom they figured as being assisted by the arms of the errant
protectors, but religious devotees, who dwelt in the seclusion of the
forest, and who were protected from the pranks and machinations of the
savage denizens by opportune heroes of the northern race. It appears,
however, that the native demons of the Góndwana had fascinating
daughters; for presently we find the rajahs from the north coming
down and marrying them; and finally, in the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries, the keen urgency of the conquering Mohammedans sends great
numbers of Rajpúts down into the Góndwana, and a considerable mixture
of the two bloods takes place. With this incursion of Hindu peoples
come also the Hindu gods and tenets; and Mahadeo, the "great god,"
whose home had been the Kailas of the Himalayas, now finds himself
domesticated in the mountains of Central India. In the Mahadeo
mountain is still a shrine of Siva, which is much visited by pilgrims
and worshipers.

[Illustration: THE GAUR, OR INDIAN BISON.]

The Gónd--he who lives back in the hills, far off from the
neighborhood of the extensive planting districts, which have attracted
many of those living near them to become at least half-civilized
laborers in harvest-time--is a primitive being enough.

"Only look," said Bhima Gandharva, "at that hut if you desire to see
what is perhaps one of the most primitive houses since ever the banyan
tree gave to man (as is fabled) the idea of sheltering himself from
the elements artificially." It was simply made of stakes driven into
the ground, between which were wattled branches. This structure was
thatched with grass, and plastered with mud.

The Gónd, like the American Indian, has his little patch of grain,
which he cultivates, however, in a fashion wholly his own. His sole
instrument of agriculture seems to be the axe. Selecting a piece of
ground which presents a growth of small and easily-cut saplings--and
perhaps, by the way, thus destroying in a few hours a whole cargo
of teak trees worth more than all the crops of his agricultural
lifetime--he hews down the growth, and in the dry season sets fire to
the fallen timber. The result is a bed of ashes over a space of two or
three acres. His soil is now ready. If the patch thus prepared happens
to be level, he simply flings out a few handfuls of grain, coarse
rice, kútki (ponicum) or kódon (paspalum), and the thing is done. The
rest is in the hands of the god who sends the rains. If the patch be
on a declivity, he places the grain at the upper part, where it will
be washed down by the rains over the balance of the field. Next year
he will burn some more wood--the first burning will have left many
charred stumps and trunks, which he supplements with a little wood
dragged from other parts of the forest--on the same spot, and so
the next year, by which time it will become necessary to begin a new
clearing, or _dhya_. The _dhya_ thus abandoned does not renew the
original growth which clothed it, like the pinelands of the Southern
United States, which, if allowed to run waste after having been
cleared and cultivated, clothe themselves either with oaks or with a
wholly different species of pine from the original growth. The waste
_dhya_, which may have perhaps nourished a splendid growth of teak,
becomes now only a dense jungle.

The Gónd also raises pumpkins and beans; and this vegetable diet
he supplements with game ensnared in the _dhyas_, to which peafowl,
partridges, hares and the like resort. Many of the villages, however,
have a professional huntsman, who will display the most incredible
patience in waiting with his matchlock for the game to appear.

Besides these articles of diet, the aborigines of the Góndwana have
their mhowa tree, which stands them in much the same multifarious
stead as the palm does to its beneficiaries. The flowers of the mhowa
fall and are eaten, or are dried and pressed, being much like raisins:
they also produce a wine by fermentation and the strong liquor of the
hill-people by distillation. Of the seed cakes are made, and an oil is
expressed from them which is an article of commerce.

In addition, the poor Gónd appears to have a periodical godsend
resulting from a singular habit of one of the great Indian plants.
The bamboo is said to undergo a general seeding every thirty years: at
this period, although, in the mean time, many individual bamboos may
have passed through the process of reproduction, it is said that the
whole bamboo growth of a section will simultaneously drop its leaves
and put forth large panicles of flowers, after which come great
quantities of seeds much like rice. These are gathered for food by
the inhabitants with all the greater diligence in consequence of a
tradition--which, however, does not seem to be at all supported by
facts--that the general seeding of the bamboo portends a failure of
the regular crops. The liberal forests of the Góndwana furnish still
other edibles to their denizens. The ebony plums, the wild mango,
the seeds of the sál tree, the beans of the giant banhinia creeper, a
species of arrowroot, and a wild yam, are here found and eaten.

[Illustration: BANJARIS.]

It is not long since the Gónds had arrived at a melancholy condition
under the baleful influences of the kulars, or liquor-dealers, who
resided among them and created an extraordinary demand for their
intoxicating wares by paying for service and for produce in liquor.
The kulars have, however, been thrown into the background by wise
efforts toward their suppression, and matters have improved for the
poor autoch-thones.

We spent our first night in our chapaya, my companion having so
arranged matters that we were quite independent of the bungaloos which
the Englishmen have erected at suitable distances along the great
roads for the convenience of travelers. The night was clear; betwixt
the corner pillars which upheld our canopy a thousand friendly
salutations from the stars streamed in upon us; the tranquil
countenance of my friend seemed, as he lay beside me, like the face of
the Past purified of old errors and calm with great wisdom got through
great tribulation, insomuch that betwixt the Hindu and the stars I
felt myself to be at once in communication with antiquity and with
eternity.

Thus we pursued our ambulatory meditations through the Góndwana. If
we had been sportsmen, we should have found full as varied a field for
the bagging of game as for that more spiritual hunt after new ideas
and sensations in which we were engaged. Gray quail, gray partridges,
painted partridges (_Francolinus pictus_), snipe and many varieties
of water-fowl, the sambor, the black antelope, the Indian gazelle or
ravine deer, the gaur or Indian bison, chewing the cud in the midday
shade or drinking from a clear stream, troops of _nilgaé_ springing
out from the long grass and dwarf growth of polás and jujube trees
which covered the sites of abandoned villages and fields,--all
these revealed themselves to us in the most tempting situations. But
although I had been an ardent devotee of the double-barrel, the large
and manly tenderness which Bhima Gandharva invariably displayed toward
all animals, whether wild or tame, had wrought marvels upon me, and
I had grown fairly ashamed--nay, horrified--at the idea that anything
which a generous and brave man could call _sport_ should consist
wholly in the most keen and savage cruelties inflicted upon creatures
whom we fight at the most unknightly odds, we armed, they unarmed.
While I knew that our pleasures are by the divine order mostly
distillations from pain, I could not now help recognizing at the same
time that this circumstance was part of an enormous plan which the
slaughter of innocent creatures in the way of "sport" did in nowise
help to carry out.

The truth is, although I had been for some days wavering upon the
brink of these conclusions in a quiet way, I found the old keen ardor
of the sportsman still burning too strongly, and I had started out
with a breech-loader, intent upon doing much of the Góndwana route gun
in hand. It was not long before a thoughtless shot operated to
bring my growing convictions sharply face to face with my decreasing
practice, and thus to quite frown the latter out of existence. It
happened in this wise: One day, not far from sunset, I was walking
idly along behind the chapaya, in which Bhima Gandharva was dreamily
reclining, when suddenly a pair of great _sáras_ cranes rose from the
low banks of a small stream and sailed directly across the road. Quick
as thought--indeed, quicker than thought; for if I _had_ thought, I
would not have done it--I fired, and brought down one of the monstrous
birds. As I started to approach it, Bhima Gandharva said, in a tone
just a trifle graver than usual, "Stop! wait a moment," and at the
same time halted the chapaya. The mate of the bird I had shot, seeing
him fall, alighted on the same spot, then flew up, then returned,
flew up again, returned again, with an exhibition of sad and lingering
affection of which I had not dreamed, and which penetrated me beyond
expression; so I stood half stolid outwardly and wholly ashamed
and grieved inwardly. "The sáras," said my friend, "is the type of
conjugal affection among the Hindus. The birds nearly always go
in pairs; and when one is killed, the other invariably makes those
demonstrations of tenderness which you have just seen."

As we journeyed along in the dusk came notes from another pair of
feathered lovers, "chukwa, chukwi," "chukwa, chukwi," in a sort of
mournful alternation. They were the branning ducks, he on one side,
she on the other side of the stream, as is their habit, whence they
are fabled to be a pair of lovers who must yearn unavailingly through
the long nights from opposite banks of the river.

That night, when Bhima Gandharva was asleep, I gently arose, took my
double-barrel--thou dear Manton! how often has not Jonesville admired
thee returning from the field at late evening slanting at a jaunty
angle high above my bagful of snipe or of quail as the case might
be!--yes, I took this love of a gun, together with the cartridges,
accoutrements and all other rights, members and appurtenances
thereunto belonging or in any wise appertaining, and slid the whole
lot softly into a deep green pool of the very stream from which had
flown my sáras.

The taste of gypsy life which I was now enjoying contributed to add
a sort of personal element to that general interest which hangs about
the curious Banjaris, whom we met constantly, with their families
and their bullocks, along our road. _Banjara_ is literally
"forest-wanderer." The women were especially notable for their tall
stature, shapely figures and erect carriage; which circumstances are
all the more wonderful from the life of hardship which they lead,
attending as they do at once to the foraging of the cattle, the
culinary preparations for the men and the cares of the children. From
the profusion of ornaments which they wore, one may imagine, however,
that they were well cared for by their lords in return for their
affectionate labors; and the general bearing of the tall Banjara who
bore a long two-handed sword gave evidence of a certain inward sense
of protection over his belongings which probably found vent in many an
affectionate gift of rings and bracelets to his graceful partner. It
must be confessed that the gypsying of these Eastern Bohemians is not
so free a life as is popularly supposed. The _naik_ or sovereign of
each _tanda_, or camp, seems to be possessed of absolute power, and in
this connection the long two-handed sword suggested much less gentle
reflections. The Banjara, however, though a nomad, is a serviceable
one, for he is engaged in trade. With his bullocks he is the carrier
of Central India, and is to be met with all over that section,
bringing salt and other commodities and returning with interior
produce.




FRA ALOYSIUS

  Fra Aloysius, vexed with skeptic fears,
    Nigh crazed with thought to all the saints did pray
    For faith in those mysterious words that say,
  "One day is with the Lord a thousand years,
    A thousand years with Him are as a day."

  An erudite and holy monk was he,
    And yet his brethren trembled lest his brain
    Should lose its poise, so long he dwelt in vain
  On that perplexing verse to find its key,
    And strove to make its hidden meaning plain.

  Racked by a sleepless night, one fresh spring morn
    Forth from the cloister Aloysius strolled.
    The wood was dewy-bright, clear beams of gold
  Illumined it, and to his heart was borne
    A sense of freedom, peace and joy untold.

  Beside a laughing brook he sat to rest,
    Above whose wave did long-haired willows weep;
    Midmost the dense green forest, still and deep,
  Lulled by the trickling waters and possessed
    By tranquil thoughts, the friar fell asleep.

  And, overworn, he slept the livelong day,
    Nor waked until the twilight shadows fell,
    That flung a brown night o'er that leafy dell.
  Then up he rose refreshed and went his way,
    And, half ashamed, he heard the vesper-bell.

  Back to the convent fared he; at the gate
    A stranger gave him entrance, but he passed
    Into the chapel with meek eyes downcast,
  In truant guise returning home thus late,
    And toward his wonted seat made seemly haste.

  Too late! a stranger filled it. Looking round,
    Amazed, he could discern no face he knew.
    The abbot's self had changed; his wonder grew,
  When, after the familiar chant, he found
    These crazy monks held him for crazy too.

  They gathered round with curious, eager eyes.
   "What cloister's this?" he asked. They named its name:
    The one he left that morning was the same.
  His name he gave; with many a wild surmise
    They guessed who he might be and whence he came.

  He asked them where the abbot was at last,
    From whom he parted but the night before.
   "He hath been dead three hundred years and more!"
  They answered with a single voice, aghast.
    Then spake a friar versed in monkish lore:

  "Brethren, a miracle! This man I know:
   'Tis Aloysius, who, as I have read,
    Beset with doubts, forth from this convent fled,
  And vanished, some three hundred years ago,
    And all the world hath counted him as dead."

  Then Aloysius felt the blessed tears
    Fulfill his eyes, whence dropped the scales away.
    Kneeling, he cried, "Oh, brethren, let us pray.
  One day is with the Lord a thousand years,
    A thousand years with Him are as a day."

EMMA LAZARUS.




A FEW HOURS IN BOHEMIA.


The beauty of this country is that no turbulent sea confines its
borders, nor are martello-towers needed to guard its coast: no jealous
neighbor threatens its frontier, no army oppresses its citizens, and
no king can usurp its throne. Its locality is hard to define: like the
Fata Morgana, it is here to-day and gone to-morrow, for its territory
is the mind of men, and in extent it is as boundless as thought.
Natives of every clime are enrolled among its freemen, and all lands
contain its representatives, but it is in the picturesque streets of
the older continental cities of Europe, where rambling lodgings and
cheap apartments are many, that the invisible mother-country founds
her colonies. I will tell you how I went and what I saw there.

Afra was a cosmopolite, and consequently knew Bohemia, its byways and
thoroughfares. If any one could fill the office of guide thereto,
Afra could, and when one evening she rushed into my room saying, "Come
along if you want to go to Bohemia," I did not hesitate a moment, but
made ready for the journey, with the simple precaution of putting on
my bonnet and shawl.

"A cab?" I asked as we moved from the door.

"Who ever heard of entering Bohemia in a cab?" laughed Afra dryly.
"People have been known to drive _out_ in their own carriages, but
they always make their first appearance there on foot, or at best in
an omnibus."

"As you please," I replied, trying to keep pace with her rapid step,
which showed constant practice.

"I wonder you did not propose a balloon," she continued pettishly.
"The gods don't give everything to one person: now, they give us
brains, and they give other people--money."

"If you would understand, I--"

"No, you wouldn't. I sha'n't ride in cabs until I can pay for them
myself; meanwhile, I have gros sous enough in my pocket for an omnibus
fare, and if you have the same we will stop here." At this she entered
a bureau, and as I followed I saw her get some tickets from a man who
sat behind a small counter, and then composedly sit down on a bench
while she said, "We shall have some time to wait for our luxury:" then
showing me the tickets, "Twelve and thirteen: it is a full night, and
all these people ahead of us."

"Is it a lottery?" I asked ignorantly.

"Very much of a lottery," Afra replied grimly--"like all the ways of
Bohemia, remarkably uncertain. You get a ticket for something in the
giving of the Muses, and you wait until your number is called. The
worst of it is, the most unlikely people are called before you, and
some get disgusted and leave: there goes one out at the door at this
moment. Well, he may be better or he may be worse off than those who
finally win: who knows if any race is worth the running? Still, if you
have courage to hold on, I believe there is no doubt that every one
ultimately gets something." Seeing my perplexity, she twisted the
round tickets between her fingers and added, "Do not be alarmed: these
are only good for a seat in the first empty 'bus that comes up. The
conductor will call out the numbers in rotation, and if ours is among
them we shall go. It is frightful that you have never ridden in a 'bus
before. I wonder where we should get ideas if we shut ourselves up in
cabs and never walked or were hungry or tired, and thought only of our
own comfort from morning till night? You don't know what you miss, you
poor deluded, unfortunate rich people. I will tell you of something
I saw the other evening; and, as it is worthy of a name, it shall be
called 'The Romance of an Omnibus.' Listen! isn't that our numbers I
heard? Yes: come quick or we shall lose our chance."

"Well," said I when we had successfully threaded the crowd and were
seated--"the romance."

"You have no idea of the fitness of things. My story is pathetic: it
will look badly to see you drowned in tears--people will stare."

"I promise not to cry."

"Oh, if you are one of those stolid, unemotional beings who are never
moved, I sha'n't waste my tale upon you. Wait until to-morrow: we
will get Monsieur C---- to recount, and you shall hear something worth
listening to. He is a regular troubadour--has the same artless vanity
they were known to possess, their charming simplicity, their
gestures, and their power of investing everything with romance. One is
transported to the Middle Ages while he speaks: no book written on the
subject could so fully give you the flavor of the times. He recalls
Froissart. If you are not affected by C----'s stories, you had better
pretend to be. But that, I am sure, will not be necessary: a great
tragedian was lost when he became a great painter."

"Might I ask how and when and where I am to meet this wonderful man?"

"At the garden-party."

"In what way am I to get there?"

"By strategy. There is a little reunion to-night of what may be called
female Bohemians. They are going to settle the preliminaries of this
party, and if you happen to be present they will invite you; not that
they particularly care for your company, but because, as I said, you
happen to be there. Only don't get yourself into a mess by tramping on
any one's toes."

"Have they corns?"

"Yes, on every inch of surface: they are dreadfully thin-skinned. But
they hate sham even more than a hard knock, and are quicker than
a police-officer in detecting it; so be careful not to talk about
anything you are ignorant of."

"Give me a few rules, and I promise to conduct myself properly."

"Well, don't be snobbish and patronize them, and don't look shocked
at any strange opinions you hear, nor act as if you were at an animal
show and were wondering what would happen next. Be sure not to assent
when you see they wish to argue, and don't argue when they expect
acquiescence. If any of them speak in broken English, and you can't
for the life of you understand, don't ask them to repeat, but answer
immediately, for you can imagine when one has taken pains to learn a
foreign language one likes it to be appreciated, and don't--But here
we are. In short, make yourself at home, as if you had been there all
your life."

"Afra," I said, laying my hand on her arm as she took to her swift
pace again, "perhaps I had better go home: I am afraid I can't--I
think--that is--"

"Nonsense! as if you could not get on after all those hints! Anyway,
you cannot return alone, and I am unable to go with you. Make up your
mind to blunder, and do it. There was an amateur visited the studio
about three months ago: her absurdities have lasted us for laughing
material ever since. As she is getting rather stale, you can take her
place. This is the house: come in."

With this doubtful prospect in view I followed my peremptory guide
from the narrow street into what appeared to be a spacious court, but
as the only light it received was from a blinking candle in the window
of the conciergerie, I could not determine. After exchanging some
cabalistic sentences with a toothless old woman, the proprietor of the
candle, Afra turned to the right, and walking a few steps came to a
door opening on a stairway, which we mounted. I can think of nothing
black enough for comparison with the darkness surrounding us. At last
a faint glimmer showed an old lamp standing in a corner of a hall bare
and carpetless. A series of doors flanked the place, looking to my
unaccustomed eyes all alike, but Afra without a moment's hesitation
went to one of them and knocked. It was opened by a lady, who smiled
and said, "Enter. You are just in time: school is over and the model
about going."

I found myself in a high-ceiled room, at one end of which was
suspended a row of perhaps a dozen lamps. Here, at least, there was-no
lack of light: it required some moments to accustom our eyes to the
sudden contrast. The yellow blaze was directed by reflectors into the
space immediately beneath the lamps, which left the rest of the room
pleasantly tempered. Some easels, a few chairs and screens, plaster
casts on shelves, sketches in all stages of progress on the wall,
a tea-kettle singing over a bright fire in a stove, and a curtain
enclosing a corner used as a bedroom, completed the list of furniture.
It was a night-school for lady artists. The class had finished for the
evening, and a number of the students were moving about or seated near
the fire, talking in an unlimited number of languages.

I was given several random introductions, and did my best to follow
Afra's directions; but there was an indescribable quaintness about the
appearance and manners of my new acquaintance that made it difficult
not to stare. I found, however, that little notice was taken of me,
as a lively discussion was being carried on over a study of an arm and
hand which one of them was holding up for inspection.

"It is a style I should call the lantern," said she. "The redness of
the flesh can only be accounted for on the supposition that a light is
shining through it."

"I should call it raw beef," remarked another.

"It is a shame, mademoiselle!" began the model in an injured tone.
She had been tying on her bonnet before a bit of looking-glass she
had taken from her pocket. "Does my arm look like that?" Here she
indignantly drew up her sleeve and held out that dimpled member,
meanwhile gazing wrathfully at the sketch. "It ought not to be
allowed. The silver tones of my flesh are entirely lost; and see how
you have caricatured the elegance of my beautiful hand. Will not some
one help mademoiselle to put it right before my reputation is ruined?"

"Jeanne, a model is not a critic," said the author of the drawing,
coming forward and grasping the canvas with no gentle hand.--"Ladies,
if you wish to find fault, turn to your own studies. That proportion
is frightful"--she pointed to different sketches as she spoke--"that
ear is too large; and, madame, if you take a crust of paint like yours
for freedom of touch, I pity you."

This dispute was by no means the last during the evening. Opinions
seemed to be plentiful in Bohemia, each individual being furnished
with a set of her own on every subject broached; and as no diffidence
was shown in putting them forth, the company quarreled with great
good-nature and evident enjoyment. A pot of tea was then brewed by the
owner of the studio, who had been English before she became Bohemian,
and the beverage was handed round in tea-cups which, like the opinions
of the guests, differed widely from each other. In the silence that
attended this diversion Afra took the floor and said, "How about the
garden-party to the country? Who is going?"

Several spoke, and one asked, "Shall we take lunch with us?"

"No, something will be provided for us there."

"So much the better. When are we to meet, and where?"

"Twelve o'clock, midday, at ----."

"What messieurs are going?"

"Quite a number--a tenor from the Grand Opera, and the leader of the
orchestra, who is a magnificent violinist; that new Spanish painter
who plays the guitar divinely; a poet--that is, he has written some
pretty songs--besides plenty more."

"That promises well."

"You will bring your friend?" and the speaker nodded her head toward
me.

"I shall be delighted: I am so curious to see those eccentric--" Here
a warning glance from Afra stopped me.

But the lady only laughed and said, "You will see eccentricity enough
to-morrow, if that is what you want. People who devote their minds to
great objects have no time to think of little things. You had better
see that Afra has on her bonnet or she will go without one."

"Nonsense!" replied Afra.--"Miss," this to the owner of the studio,
who was so called in honor of her English birth, "are you ever
troubled by the ghost of that young painter who hung himself up
there?"

"Those who have occasion to commit suicide are not likely to come
back: they have had enough of this world," said the Englishwoman.

"Did some one really die here?" I asked.

"Yes, really;" and Afra mimicked my tone of horror. "You know, a
Bohemian is at home anywhere, so a change of country don't affect him
much. If we find a place disagreeable, we travel."

"Was he insane?"

"Not more than the rest of us, but _you_ can't understand the feeling
that would induce a man to do such a thing. This young fellow painted
a picture: he put his mind, his soul, himself, into it, and sent it to
the Exhibition. It was rejected--that is, he was rejected--and he came
here and died. They found him suspended from that beam where the lamps
hang now."

"I thought your Bohemia was so gay?"

"So it is, but the brightest light makes the deepest shadows."

The conversation went on. These ladies discussed politics, literature,
art and society with absolute confidence. One of the topics was Alfred
de Musset. The Englishwoman was praising the English Alfred, when
a pale-faced girl, who up to this moment had been intently reading,
oblivious of all about her, closed her book with a snap (it was a
much-worn edition of one of the classics, bought for a few sous on the
quay) and broke out with--"Your Tennyson is childish. His King Arthur
puts me in mind of our Louis Philippe and his umbrella. Did you know
Louis carried an umbrella with him when he was obliged to fly from
Paris? One would have looked well held over Arthur's dragon helmet
that disagreeable night he left the queen to go and fight his nephew.
But perhaps Guinevere had lent it to Launcelot, and even the best
friends, alas! do not return umbrellas. Your poet writes in white
kid gloves, and thinks in them too. Imagine the magnificent rush and
struggle of those ancient days, the ecstasy of battle, the intensity
of life, and then read your Tennyson's milk-and-water tales, with
their modern English-ménage feelings. Arthur would have been much more
likely to give his wife a beating, as did the hero of the _Nibelungen
Lied_, than that high-flown lecture; and it would have done the
Guinevere of that time more good."

"And what is your Alfred, Anita?"

"He is divine."

"After the heathen pattern. He dipped his pen in mire."

"What is mire?--water and earth. What are we?--water and earth. Mire
is humanity, and holds in itself not only the roots of the tree,
but the germ of the flower. A poet who is too delicate to plant
his thought in earth must be content to give it but the life of a
parasite: it can have no separate existence of its own."

"But one need not be bad to be great."

"Nor need one be good to be great," returned Anita sarcastically.
"Alfred de Musset was a peculiar type of a peculiar time. He did not
imagine: he felt, he lived, he was himself, and was original, like a
new variety of flower or a new species of insect. Tennyson has gleaned
from everybody's fields: our Alfred gathered only from his own. The
one is made, the other is born."

"Come away," said Afra impatiently: "no one can speak while Anita
is on her hobby. Besides, I must get home early to trim a bonnet for
to-morrow;" and without more leavetaking than a "Good-evening," which
included every one, we found ourselves in the street.

"Who is Anita?" I asked.

"She is nobody just now: what she will be remains to be seen. Her
family wish her to be an artist: she wishes to adopt the stage as a
profession, and is studying for it _sub rosa_. Did you ever see a more
tragic face?"

"Poor thing!" I involuntarily exclaimed.

"Don't pity her," said Afra, more seriously than she had yet spoken.
"The best gift that can be bestowed upon a mortal is a strong natural
inclination for any particular life and the opportunity of following
it. The man or woman who has that can use the wheel of Fate for a
spinning-wheel."

The next morning at the appointed time I met Afra at the station.
"How do I look?" she asked, standing up for my inspection as soon as I
appeared in sight, at the same time regarding as much of her dress as
it was possible for her to see. But before I could reply the satisfied
expression of her face changed: an unpleasant discovery had been
made. "I have shoes on that are not mates," she exclaimed--"cloth and
leather: that looks rather queer, doesn't it? Do you think it will be
noticed? I could not decide which pair to wear, and put on one of each
to see the effect: afterward I forgot them. Now, I suppose that would
be thought eccentric, though any one might make the same mistake. It
shows I have two pairs of shoes," she added more cheerfully, "and they
are both black. How is my bonnet?"

The bonnet was black velvet, and we were in midsummer. The material,
however, was skillfully draped with a veil, and a profusion of pink
flowers gave it a seasonable air. A crimson bow was also tied at
her neck; she complacently remarked that "pink and crimson harmonize
beautifully;" and others of the party arriving at that moment, I was
saved the trouble of making a polite answer.

The ride through ripening grain-fields and moss-thatched hamlets
need not be described; suffice it to say, it was France and June. An
omnibus was waiting at the station where we dismounted: it carried us
near, but not to, our destination. After leaving it we walked through
the streets of a low-roofed village, then followed a path bordered
with wild mignonette and apple trees that wound up the side of a hill
covered with vineyards. A couple of chattering magpies ran before
us, an invisible cuckoo was heard between snatches of Italian melody
warbled by the tenor _sotto voce_ and the little company overflowed
with gayety.

The house we arrived at looked as if it might be a castle in the air
materialized--pointed windows hidden in ivy, through which you saw
the chintz-covered walls of the interior; turrets on the roof and
a stair-tower; odd nooks for pigeons and cattle; the color a
weather-toned red, met by gray roofs, green trees and blue sky. We
passed through it to the quaint garden: rows of dwarf pears bordered
its paths, and trellises and walls supported nectarines and vines,
with sunshine and shadow caressing the half-ripe fruit.

The shady spaces were occupied by guests who had arrived before us,
and we saw with pleasure that ceremony had not been invited to attend.
The host's kindly manner was sufficient to put the company at once
at ease. We wandered at will from group to group, listening or
conversing: introductions were sometimes given, but more often not.

At one table some ladies and gentlemen were playing the artistic game
of "five points." A more difficult pastime was never invented. The
materials necessary are simply a piece of paper and a pencil: it is
their use that is extraordinary. A person puts five dots on the paper
in whatever position fancy may dictate: on this slight foundation
another is expected to design a figure, the puzzle being to include
all the marks given. One that I saw had four of the dots placed
unusually close together, and the fifth in a distant corner:
this latter, in the opinion of the lookers-on, would surely prove
refractory. After some moments of consideration, with pencil suspended
and eye attentive, the artist commenced drawing. In ten minutes the
sketch was finished. It was an angel: her upturned head took in the
highest of the group of dots; one hand hanging by her side the next;
a knee the third; and the flowing hem of her robe the fourth; but the
fifth in the corner--what could reach it? With a touch of the pencil
the angel's other hand appeared flinging up a censer attached to
a long chain, which struck the solitary dot like a shot amid
acclamations. To show that he did not consider the feat a _tour de
force_, the artist turned the paper, and taking the same marks drew
a devil in an entirely different attitude, the difficult point being
reached by his pitchfork. This gave rise to a learned discussion as
to whether the devil's emblematic pitchfork was not a descendant of
Neptune's trident, which I did not stay to hear, as Afra whispered she
wanted to present me to Monsieur C----, and I was taken to a gentleman
of no great height, but of such wondrous width that Nature must have
formed him in a most generous mood.

"You are American?" said this wide man to me as I was introduced, and
without waiting for a reply went on: "I like your country-people:
they admire frankly. Show them a picture, they exclaim, 'Beautiful!
magnificent! lovely! exquisite! name your price;' and they buy it.
Here the public look and look. 'Not bad,' they say, 'but the color is
from Veronese, and that attitude is surely Raphael's. What a mine that
man's genius has been to ambitious but less gifted artists!' and so
they go on. I wish they would let the dead rest in peace. Are you
acquainted with Mr. B---- of New York?"

I was obliged to say "No."

"I wish to send a message to him," he continued grandly: "tell him
that I paint now for him alone."

"You are court-painter to Mr. B----," I remarked laughingly.

"Don't speak of courts," he exclaimed pettishly. "I was to have
painted the baptism of the prince imperial for the state: it gave me
no end of annoyance, and in the end was never finished."

"I understood that you insisted on painting the little prince nude,
after the Rubens manner, and that was one ground of objection to the
design," said Afra.

"The baby would have had on plenty of clothes: one of his dresses was
sent from the Tuileries for Monsieur C---- to paint, and I sewed a
rosette on it myself." This from the painter's wife.

"A countryman of yours sat for the head of a young priest at the
ceremony. He had a fine countenance: he was studying art with me
at the time, and has since been professor of drawing at your Naval
Academy. Teaching is a sad trade--Pegasus dragging the plough."

"At least, your other great picture brought you nothing but praise."

"The public have since repented of being so good to me. Then, they
could not say enough in my favor: now, if a person asks what I am
doing, every one repeats like a parrot, 'C---- doesn't paint, C----
doesn't paint.' I have heard it so often that I begin to believe
it myself, and when I am asked join the general cry, 'C---- doesn't
paint.'"

I laughed, thinking this a joke, but I soon found that though
C---- might be cynical, sarcastic or bitter, though he might excite
unintentional laughter by his remarks, he was too sensitive a man to
take any but a serious view of life. The imperfections of the world
excited his disgust, his anger, never his mirth.

"Ah but, monsieur," said Afra, "you should be satisfied, and leave
some little honor for the rest of us to gather. The stories one hears
of your youth are like fairy-tales."

"And they are true," replied the artist with evident enjoyment. "In
those days I was pointed out to people when I walked the street;
which, by the way, gave rise to an odd incident. A gentleman thought
he had seen me in a crowd, but he had taken an older and taller man
for the great painter. He believed big pictures were painted by big
men, and I had not then my present circumference. This gentleman sent
me an invitation to dine with him. On the day appointed I arrived at
the house, and was met at the door by my host, a look of surprise and
annoyance on his face which he tried to conceal by a low bow, at the
same time asking politely, 'How is your father?'--'Very well, thank
you,' I returned, although I could not understand why my father's
health should be a matter of interest to him.--'You have come to
tell me of some catastrophe which prevents his attendance here
to-day?'--'Not at all: I have come to dine with you, according to this
invitation.' Here I pulled out the card, which I happened to have in
my pocket.--'Are you the person here addressed?' he said, staring at
me.--'I am'.--'I beg your pardon, there is a mistake: I meant it for
your father, the painter of the "Décadence des Romains."'--'I am the
painter of the "Décadence," but I am not my father.'--'You ought to
be an older man.'--'I should have been, monsieur, had I been born
sooner.'--At that moment a friend, overhearing the conversation and
divining the cause, came and explained to my wonder-struck host that I
was really the artist in question. With many apologies I was led into
a hall adorned with floral arches in my honor, next to a beautiful
salon, likewise decorated, and finally we reached the dining-room,
which was arranged to represent my picture. Columns wreathed with
flowers supported the roof; flowers festooned the white table-linen
and adorned the antique vessels that covered it; couches of different
colored silk were laid after the Roman fashion for the guests to
recline upon; and lovely women dressed in costly Roman costumes, their
heads crowned with flowers, were placed in the attitudes that you
will see on my celebrated canvas. Was it not a graceful tribute to my
genius?"

"If a Frenchman wants to pay a compliment, he never uses one that has
done duty before, but invents something new," said Afra emphatically.

"What are you painting now, monsieur?" I asked.

"A series of pictures called 'Pierrot the Clown.' He succeeds in
tricking the world in every station of life. I am just finishing his
deathbed. All his friends are weeping about him: the doctor feels
his pulse and gives some learned name to the disease--doctors know so
much--while hidden everywhere around the room are empty bottles. The
drunken clown plays with even death for a mask."

"I thought he painted such romantic pictures," said I to Afra as we
turned from the master.

"So he does: there is one in his studio now. A girl clad in gray and
shadow--open-air shade which in his hands is so clear and luminous.
She walks along a garden-path, her head bent down, dreaming as she
goes, and unconsciously nearing a half-open gateway, through which the
sunshine is streaming. Above the rustic gate two doves are billing and
cooing. You feel sure the girl is about to pass through this typical,
sunshiny, invitingly half-open door; and--what is beyond?"

Just then we were called to lunch, a plentiful but not luxurious
repast. There was no lack of lively repartees and anecdotes, and
we had speeches and songs afterward. I wonder if I ever heard "'Tis
better to laugh than be sighing" given with more zest than on that
day? One could easily imagine that it was such an occasion as this
that had inspired it.

Lunch being over, Monsieur C---- was asked to relate one of his own
stories. I cannot give it entire, but the plot was this: A pilgrim,
whom he called poor Jacques, hearing much of heaven, set out to find
his way to the blessed abode, with only a little dog to accompany him
on the journey. As he went he met many of his contemporaries, who
had made what a walker would style but poor time. The allusions to
well-known peculiarities in the various people and their occupation in
the other life caused much amusement. For instance, Ingres the painter
was seated by the roadside playing Rossini's music on the violin, on
which instrument he was a great proficient. But he was known to detest
the Italian's music before he started heavenward: his taste must then
have grown _en route_. (Critics might object to this supposition.)
However, Jacques was anxious to push on, and spent little time
listening. But he was a good-hearted man, and, though he would
not delay for his own amusement, he could not refuse to stop when
fellow-pilgrims asked him for assistance. Little children were
continually straying from the path, and without Jacques and his little
dog would inevitably have been lost. Feeble old people were standing
looking with despair at some obstacle that without Jacques's friendly
arm they would have found it impossible to pass. Young men who never
looked where they were walking were continually calling on him for a
hand to help them out of the ditch where they had fallen; and young
girls--well, one would have supposed they had never been given feet
of their own to walk with, from the trouble they were to poor Jacques.
The worst of it was, that when all these good people were well over
their troubles they called Jacques a simpleton for his pains, and
refused to have any intercourse with him, giving him the worst side of
the road and laughing at his old-fashioned staff and scrip, and even
at his little dog, to which they gave many a sly kick. Nor was it
any wonder, for there were many in the company robed in silk, wearing
precious stones and with well-filled wallets by their sides. Jacques
was but human, and often he wished he had never set out for heaven at
all in such company; but even in their bitterest moods neither
Jacques nor the little dog could ever hear a cry of distress without
forgetting all unkindness and rushing at once to the rescue.

These labors exhausted Jacques's strength: the little dog, too, was
worn to a shadow, and so timid from ill-treatment that it was only
when some great occasion called out his mettle that you saw what a
noble little dog-heart he had. He did his best to comfort his master,
but when Jacques's sandals were worn out and his cloak in rags, and
when he looked forward and saw nothing yet of the holy city in view,
though he still tried to go forward, Nature gave way: he sank to the
ground, and the little dog licked his hands in vain to awaken him.

There is a band of angels who each night descend the holy mount
whereon is built the city, in search of such pilgrims as have failed
through fatigue to reach the gate. They are clothed in robes woven of
good deeds, which never lose their lustre, for they are renewed every
day. It was this company which found Jacques in his swoon by the
roadside. One gently touched his tired body, and more than the vigor
of youth leapt through his veins. Another whispered "Come," and he
rose and walked with them. As he moved on with eyes abashed, thinking
of the rents in his garments and regretting their poverty, he noticed
that they too were changed, and were as bright as those of his
companions. "Who has done this?" he said, venturing to address the
one that walked at his right hand. "You wore them always," he answered
with an angelic smile, "but it is this light which shows their
beauty;" and he pointed to that which streamed from the celestial
walls.

There was much applause. I saw Afra wipe a tear from her eye; only, a
thin-faced individual who sat near me whispered that it was too long.
The delicacy and pathos of expression and language it is impossible
to give, and, though old in form, the story was skillfully new in
incident; nor must I forget that the little dog slipped through the
eternal gate with his master. Some one asked the troubadour why he
did not write it out. He shook his head and threw up his hands as
he replied, "I wrote one book and gave it to a literary man for
correction. You should have seen the manuscript when he sent it home:
not a page but was scarred and cut. He called that 'style.' Now, what
did I want with style? I wanted to write as I talked."

"Certainly," said one. "What did you do?"

"I quickly put Monsieur le Rédacteur's style out of my book; then
I published it. George Sand promised to write the preface, but some
busybody told her that I was attacking the whole world, so she would
have nothing to do with it. She was misled: I blamed nothing in my
book but what deserved censure."

Having heard this excellent representation of the ancient minstrel,
we were shortly given a touch of the modern usurper of the name. A
gentleman was present who in the many turns of Fortune's wheel had
once found himself a follower of the burnt-cork persuasion. He gave us
a negro melody with a lively accompaniment on the guitar. A melancholy
Spanish song followed. The company again dispersed into congenial
groups, and in the long twilight you heard the murmur of voices broken
by occasional snatches of melody or the nightingale's song.

       *       *       *       *       *

"And what do you think of Bohemia?" asked Afra as we returned that
night.

"It is different from what I expected. They are refined, and, though
frank, never rude. I think--"

Afra laughed: "You had unconsciously thought them a set of sharpers;
but there is a great difference between living by your brains and
living by your wits. My dear, you have broken bread with giants
to-day: such men live in another world that they may rule this one."

ITA ANIOL PROKOP.




PROFESSOR AND TEACHER.


The two words that recur most frequently perhaps in the discussion of
matters of education are "teacher" and "professor;" yet there are
no two that are used so carelessly and loosely. It seems as if the
thought that they may not be synonymous seldom, if ever, occurs to
those using them. If one of our writers or speakers upon education
were suddenly called upon to state exactly what he meant by a
"professor" in distinction from a "teacher," he would be at a loss for
an answer. He might reply, after some hesitation, "Why, a teacher is
a man who teaches at a school or an academy, and a professor is a man
who teaches at a college." If he were pressed still more closely, and
asked to give the precise difference between a "school or an academy"
and a "college," it is safe to assume that he would find himself
nonplussed. There are colleges in the country, some large and others
small, some old and others young, some good and others poor; but aside
from the fact that they provide a curriculum of four years and teach
a certain amount of Latin, Greek and mathematics, they do not possess
features enough in common to enable us to define with exactness "a
college." It is not in the power of language to devise a formula so
elastic as to embrace Harvard, Brown, Princeton, Trinity, Cornell
and Michigan University, without at the same time ignoring the
characteristic features of one or the other. Even if we admit that
there is a vague ideal unity underlying the so-called college system,
by virtue of which it is a system and not a mere aggregate, we shall
not make much progress in our search after the proper definition
of the term "professor." The utmost that can be said of our college
system, as a system, is that it stands on a somewhat higher plane than
the schools, that it is supposed to finish a young man's education,
and consequently that the men whom it employs for such a purpose--its
professors--are, or at least ought to be, abler men than the teachers
proper. The difference, then, between professor and teacher is one of
degree, and not of kind. Both teach, and both teach in great part the
same subjects and in substantially the same way; that is, by means
of textbook and recitation. Herein lies the explanation of the
disposition evinced by some of our best schools to call their teachers
"professors." An institution like Phillips Exeter or Andover can
scarcely be said to assume more than it is entitled to in putting
itself on an equality with Hobart College or Racine.

On turning to Germany, we observe no such laxity in the use of the
term "professor." He, and he only, is professor who "professes" to
have made himself eminent in his special branch, and whose claims have
been allowed officially by a university or by the government. He is
not even a teacher in the English or American sense. He is a scholar
and investigator who has produced results worthy of distinction, and
it is upon the strength of those results, and not because of his real
or supposed ability to impart knowledge and stimulate industry among
students, that he receives his call to a university chair.[1]

[Footnote 1: The circumstance that some of the gymnasium-teachers in
Germany have the title of "professor" does not affect the above view.
The title has been expressly conferred upon them by the government as
a mark of special distinction, either for long services or for unusual
scholarship--in most cases for the latter. Where schools of the
highest order are so numerous as they are in Germany, it is not
surprising that they should count among their teachers men of profound
scholarship. The official recognition paid to such men is only an
additional proof of the care with which the title is used. It is given
to the teacher, not so much because he is a good teacher, as because
he has done something over and above school-room work.]

The words of one who is himself a leading professor in one of the
most renowned universities are so explicit upon this point that they
deserve to be translated and carefully studied. Heinrich von Sybel, in
his academic address delivered at Bonn in 1868, says: "The excellence
of our universities is to be found in the fact that they are not
mere institutions where instruction is given, but are workshops
of science[2]--that their vital principle is unceasing scientific
productivity. Hence it is that the state assembles the best men of
all Germany as professors at its universities, so that the phenomenon,
common enough in England and France, of a distinguished savant without
a university chair is with us a very unusual exception. Hence it is
that in appointing to such a chair the first and last demand is for
published evidences of such activity. As for the so-called ability to
teach _(Lehrtalent im formellen Sinne),_ we are satisfied if it is not
utterly and notoriously wanting. The question upon which everything
turns is, Has the candidate given evidence of his capacity for
original investigation and production? Whoever has this capacity
is sufficiently qualified, according to our German notions, for
fulfilling the essential function of university instruction."

[Footnote 2: _Science_ is used here in the broad German sense to
denote any study, whether in the direction of natural phenomena,
history or philosophy, which is pursued systematically and with a view
to eliciting truth.]

In other words, a German professor is a man who has devoted himself
to special and original research--to "science" as Von Sybel uses the
term--and whose discoveries and works give strength and increase of
dignity to the university with which he is connected. He is
appointed upon his merits as a discoverer or an author. The further
consideration--namely, whether he is what we Americans style a "good
teacher"--was not so much as an afterthought in the minds of those who
gave him his call. The explanation of this disregard of the personal
element in the professorial character is obvious. The professor is not
called upon to teach. It does not constitute any part of his vocation
to spur up the sluggish, to keep the idle busy, to give each student
enough to do, and make first principles perfectly clear to all. So far
from coming down to the level of the students, the professor expects
that the students will make every possible exertion to rise to his
level, while he himself can scarcely be said to lend a helping hand.
To the sentimentalist, then, he might appear a very selfish mortal.
But by going beneath the surface of the relation between professor and
student, and examining into its essence, we shall find that it is an
eminently healthful relation, because it is based upon the recognition
of mutual rights and duties. The professor, as a man of science, has a
right to the free direction of his talents. The student has the right
to develop what there is in him without supervision or interference.
He is to make a man of himself by seeking diligently after the truth
in a manly, independent spirit. All that the professor can do for him
is to point out the road to the truth.

This view of the functions of a professor may appear obscure and
exaggerated to one who has not studied at a German university. But it
gives the clew to the entire German system of university education,
and accounts in great part for the high standard of scholarship. Only
in part, for the innate proneness of the German mind to research must
be credited with some share in the result. It is safe to say that
Germany, under any system, would be a land of erudition.

However pleasant it might be to go into the details of the
professional position and character in Germany, it will be more
profitable, and certainly more practical, to compare this fundamental
German idea, as already given, with the salient features of
professional life in America. The American professor, then, is a
teacher. Unless he is the fortunate occupant of an exceptionally
favored chair, his chief, and even his sole, function in the college
body is to teach, in the strictest sense of the term. He has to
prescribe textbooks, assign and hear lessons, grade recitations, mark
examination-papers, submit carefully prepared term and annual reports
to the faculty. When the question of conditioning or dismissing a
student on the ground of defective scholarship comes up for decision,
his opinion must be given and weighed in connection with that of
others, in order that the faculty may strike a fair general average.
The number of hours that he is compelled, by the college curriculum,
to pass per week in the recitation-room is seldom less than fifteen,
and may be as high as twenty. The classes themselves are ill-sorted
and often troublesome, and are usually unwieldy by reason of their
size. The professor's mind must be continually on the watch to prevent
disorder and enforce attention. Besides, as every one knows full well
who has tried it, there is nothing so exhausting as to supply "brains"
to those who either have not received their portion from Nature or
else have squandered it for a mess of pottage. Every professor-teacher
can bear witness to the truism that one hour in the recitation-room
is fully equal, in its drain upon the vital energy, to two passed in
private study or authorship. The sense of responsibility, we might
say, is omnipresent. It does not cease with the recitation: it follows
him to his study, and haunts him with the recollection of absurd
blunders made by young men who should have done better--the
dispiriting reflection that despite his best efforts the stupid and
indifferent will not learn. If to this normal wear and tear and these
every-day annoyances we add the participation in what is
pleasingly styled enforcement of discipline--that is, protracted
faculty-meetings, interviews with anxious or irate parents,
exhortations to the vicious to mend their ways--we shall probably come
to the conclusion that the professor's burden is anything but light.
We all have heavy burdens. But while admitting the universality of the
adage, we are nevertheless at liberty to ascertain if we cannot make
the burden of a particular man or class easier to bear by fitting it
to the back.

Editors, essayists, college presidents and reformers assure us that
we are on the verge of a change, and perhaps a great change, in our
system of higher education. They dilate upon the indisputable fact
that most of our older colleges have made rapid strides within
the past ten years, augmenting their endowments, erecting handsome
buildings, establishing new departments of study and increasing the
number of students. Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, Amherst, Princeton,
Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania, were never so well off, in
point of money and men, as they are at this day. The inference is, of
course, if so much has been done in ten years, what may we not expect
by the end of the century? The University of Virginia holds its own,
notwithstanding the desolation wrought by the late civil war, and Ann
Arbor and Cornell have shot up with extraordinary vigor. There can be
no doubt that our institutions of learning are full of robust life.
And it is no less certain that this growth of resources is due to
private enterprise. Our colleges have grown because graduates, and
even non-graduates, have taken an interest in them, and endowed them
with a munificence which seems incredible to a Frenchman or a German.
But in studying the aspect of higher education it behooves us not to
lose sight of the fundamental principle that education is something
spiritual in its nature, and that it cannot be gauged by buildings,
by endowments, by the trappings of wealth--in short, by anything
material. Endowments and buildings are only the means; unless the
end to which these means are subservient be clearly perceived and
persistently followed, the means themselves may prove a hindrance
rather than a help. Of this Oxford is a notable proof.

Have, then, the end and aim, the method and agencies, of college
instruction changed essentially within the past fifteen years, or are
they likely to change essentially within the coming twenty-five? In
the year 1770 the greatest genius of Germany entered the walls of the
old university-town of Strasburg, there to complete his education. He
has bequeathed to us a faithful record of his studies, his amusements,
his daily life. Connecting this Strasburg experience with the previous
experience at Leipsic, we know what it meant in the eighteenth century
to be a German student. We know that the professors in those days were
pedagogues in the Anglo-American sense, and that university-life stood
little if at all higher than our own present college-life. But when
Goethe died, in 1832, the universities of Germany had reached their
prime. Since then they have made no gain. It may be doubted if the
professors, on the whole, rank quite so high to-day for originality
and vigor of research as did their predecessors forty years ago.
Wherein lies the secret, then, of this wonderful change wrought in
the brief span of two generations, between 1770 and 1830, and amid
the dire confusion of the great Revolution and the Napoleonic era? The
change was twofold. It consisted, first, in allowing to the professor
the free play of his individuality; second, in providing him with a
properly trained body of students. From the practical recognition
of these two principles, which have nothing to do with wealth and
buildings, proceed the power and glory of the German universities.
Viewed from the English, or even the American point, some of these
universities might be pronounced poor, not to say starvelings. The
buildings are old and out of repair, the professors are scantily paid,
the students are needy, there is a general atmosphere of want and
discomfort. But the work they do is noble, and its nobility consists
in its freedom, its heartiness, its strict devotion to truth.

We are not concerned in this place with the study of the growth of the
German school system that prepares the German student. We have to do
with the professor. Although the gymnasium and the university are
not to be dissevered in actual practice, the one being the necessary
prelude to the other, still we can discuss either one of them
separately with a view to ascertaining its salient features.

The German university allows to the professor the free play of his
individuality. By this is meant that each professor has his specialty,
which he teaches as a specialty and after his own fashion. He has been
appointed because of his specialty, and to the end that he may teach
it. His salary is paid to him, not so much for what he does as for
what he is. It is in a measure the reward for having made for himself
a name. His standing in the university is based, not so much upon the
number of students that he may attract to his lectures as upon the
quality of scholarship that he exhibits and his general repute in
the world of letters. He has the satisfaction of feeling that his
researches, even the most abstruse, can be brought to bear directly
upon his official intercourse with his students. A discovery that he
makes is usually communicated to them in the first instance, before it
finds its way into print. The neglect to take account of this element
of originality in the lectures of a German professor has led to an
unfair estimate of the lecture-system. Americans and English are apt
to regard it as merely the oral inculcation of established truths.
Were that the case, we might be right in questioning its superiority
over our method of teaching by textbook. But it is not the case.
The lecture is the vehicle for conveying the latest discoveries made
either by the professor himself or gleaned by him from the labors of
his colleagues. So far from merely repeating established truths,
it rather promulgates truths in process of establishment. German
university lectures, taken all in all, represent the most advanced
stage of thought. The instances are not infrequent where a professor
refrains from publishing his lectures, lest he should lose his
hearers, who are attracted to him by reports of his originality and
thoroughness.

The evident tendency of such a system is to encourage productivity
and the highest degree of accuracy. A man who has to teach only one
subject, and teach it to such students only as are ready and anxious
to receive it, can afford to take the time for being thorough. The
tendency of the American system, on the other hand, is to beget a
spirit of routine and to check productivity. The professor falls
into a way of contenting himself with meeting the requirements of the
college curriculum. The effects of this curriculum upon the professors
are deeper and farther-reaching than is usually perceived. It is
in accordance with facts to call American professors, as a class,
unproductive. But it would be unjust and inconsiderate to ascribe this
want of productivity to the disposition called laziness. Laziness is
not a national fault of Americans. On the contrary, we are pushing,
active, restless: we yearn, Alexander-like, for something new to
overcome. Our professors are of the same stock as our business-men,
our lawyers, our doctors, our politicians. But the spirit of progress,
if we choose to call it by that name, has been repressed in them. The
spirit of emulation, of aggressive competition, which marks our trade,
our banking, our manufacturing interests, our railroads, and even our
professions, stops at the threshold of our colleges. There is rivalry,
true, between Harvard and Yale, for instance. If the former erects a
handsome dormitory, the latter must have one larger and finer. If the
former establishes a new professorship, the latter must do likewise.
The colleges compete among themselves. But we see no signs of
competition among the professors of a college, or between the
professors of different colleges--competition, be it observed, in the
sense that the individual professor regards his attainments and views
as a proper subject for comparison with the attainments and views of
another professor in the same branch. Once established in his chair,
his individuality is merged in the general character of the college.
His time, his knowledge and his energy are subordinated to the
curriculum. He can teach only so much as may be fitted into his share
of the time and may be suited to the capacities of a mixed audience.
It matters little whether the curriculum be good or bad, whether it
take in a wide or a narrow range of subjects, whether it be behind
or up to the times: so long as it is a real curriculum it tends to
prevent the full assertion of his individual excellence. He may study
for himself, but he cannot teach more than the regulations permit.
However advanced he may be in his specialty, however sincere and
earnest his wish to impart the choicest fruits of his research, he
must admit to himself that there is a point beyond which he is unable
to carry his students. They are borne off to something else; they have
no more time for him; they slip from his hold, perhaps at the very
moment when he flatters himself that he has acquired some formative
influence over them.

If this view of the necessary effect of a curriculum is correct,
it will enable us to set a more accurate value upon the so-called
improvements that have been introduced of late years in our colleges.
These improvements, stripped of the éclat with which they are
invested, will be found to amount to little more than expansions
and slight modifications of a system which remains unaltered in
its fundamental features. New studies have been introduced, such as
physics, chemistry, geology, the share of attention assigned to
modern languages has been increased, a higher standard of admission is
enforced, and the salaries of professors have been raised. But in
all this there is no radical change of the method of instruction. The
establishment of a chair of physics, for instance, can scarcely be
said to enable the professor of Greek to exhibit his attainments
more fully. The professor of Latin does not perceive that his pupils,
because they are now instructed in physical geography, can be carried
by him to a more advanced stage of Latin scholarship. In fact, so far
as the older studies are concerned, those which made up the curriculum
thirty years ago, they seem to be slightly the worse for the recent
improvements. The college course of 1840 or 1850 was a comparatively
simple thing. It covered only a few studies, and those of a
general nature; it taught more thoroughly and with less pretence to
universality; in short, it did its work more after the fashion of a
good school. At the present day the curriculum embraces a much wider
range of subjects--we need only recall to our minds the introduction
of general history, chemistry, physiology and the modern
languages--but the time has not been lengthened by a single year. The
student's time is more broken up than before: the direct influence
exerted by the professor is less. Our recognition of these and kindred
facts, however, should be something more than a vain regret for the
good old past. All these changes are concessions made to the spirit
of the age. Our generation demands--and very rightfully, too--that the
sphere of knowledge be enlarged, that the sciences of Nature receive
sufficient attention. To attempt to undo what has been done, to
restore the curriculum to the antiquated cadre of Latin and Greek,
trigonometry, mental science and rhetoric, would be a reaction as
senseless as hopeless.

Let us be just to ourselves and just to our colleges. We, the public,
clamored for new studies, and the colleges had to meet the demand,
because, by force of circumstances, they were the only places where
the changes could be effected. But in our praisworthy desire for
progress we have not considered sufficiently whether the colleges were
in truth the proper places for innovation; whether we were bringing
in our innovations in the right way and at the right time; whether
we were in a fair way of making our colleges what we seek to make
them--namely, centres of learning. To discuss all these points would
be equivalent to discussing the question of education in all its
phases, from the primary school to the university. For the present
we must limit ourselves to understanding and appreciating fairly the
position of our professors.

That position is not only a trying, but a discouraging one. The
greater part of the professor's time is spent--from the point of
view of pure science we might almost say wasted--in teaching the same
things over and over again. After a few years' practice his round of
hours becomes mechanical. Familiarity with the textbooks and with the
uniformly-recurring blunders of each successive class begets a feeling
of weariness that is not remote from aversion and contempt. So far
as his prescribed official duties are concerned, he feels that he has
nothing more to learn. There being, then, no stimulus from without, he
is open to one of two temptations--either to rest on his past labors,
or, which is far more likely, to keep on studying for himself, but
to keep the results to himself. It is not only more soothing to our
pride, it is juster to our professors, to regard them thus as men who
have hid their lights under a bushel, and also to confess that we, our
institutions and ways of thinking, have made the bushel for them
and held it down over their heads. It is not every man who has the
persistency and stamina of Professor Whitney, for instance, who can
toil for years with beginning classes in French and German, never
losing sight of his real aim, never neglecting an opportunity of
bringing it forward, until at last he achieves the success he has
especially desired, and is acknowledged to be one of the foremost
comparative philologists and Sanskrit scholars in the world. Where a
Professor Whitney may succeed in spite of untoward circumstances, a
dozen will probably fail because of circumstances. We naturally look
to our colleges for the evidences of learning, of enlightenment and
culture. We think of the capital invested in them, of the part they
play in moulding the character of our young men, and we deem it a
matter of course that they should be continually producing something
original and independent. But when we compare them with the German
universities--and the comparison is forced upon us whenever one of our
graduates goes abroad to complete his studies or whenever we look into
a recent German publication--we are forced to exclaim, "What are our
colleges about? Are they incompetent, or asleep?" Neither one nor
the other. Most of our professors do the best they can. But they are
fettered by routine: they are not stimulated and sustained by
the consciousness that their private studies may be made directly
available in the classroom. They lead two lives, as it were--one
as professor, the other as thinker and reader--and there is not the
proper action and reaction between the two.

The remedy is as easy to propose as it would be difficult to apply.
We have only to convert our colleges into universities, our college
instructors into professors after the German model. Let us relegate
all teaching, so called, to the schools, and let us give our
professors permission to expand into veritable scholars discoursing to
young men of kindred spirit. Any one can see at a glance that from
the wish to the accomplishment is a long way. Upon some of us the
consciousness is beginning to dawn that perhaps we have not even taken
the first decisive step. The best that can be said of our colleges is
that they are in a state of transition. We have increased the number
of studies, as well as the number of colleges; we have established
schools of law and schools of science, sometimes independent of,
sometimes co-ordinate with or subordinate to, the college. We have
also established post-graduate courses, in the hope of inducing our
young men to complete their studies at home. Yet every year we see a
larger number going abroad. In those days of golden memory, both for
Germany and for America, when Longfellow was gliding down the
Rhine with Freiligrath, and Bancroft and Bismarck were comrades at
Göttingen, an American in Germany was something of a rarity. In most
instances he was a man of wealth and high social standing, who
looked upon his semester or two as a romantic episode. But now every
outward-bound steamer carries with it one or more who, emerging from
obscurity and poverty, have saved up a few hundred dollars and are
bent upon plain, hard, practical business. "We go," they can be
imagined as saying, "because we can get in Germany what we cannot get
at home. Your schools of science and your post-graduate courses may be
well enough in their way, but they do not give us what we are after,
and we cannot afford to wait until they may be able to give it. Some
of the professors are first-rate men--perhaps just as good as any
we may meet in Germany--but what does their learning, their science,
avail us, so long as they are obliged to withhold from us the best
that they know? They trained themselves in Germany, and if we are ever
to rival them we must do the same."

It is not pleasant to listen to such reasonings, much less to see them
carried into effect. But the defect which they bring to light will not
be cured by closing our eyes to it and trusting to time, the sovereign
healer. Time is a negative factor: it only enables the forces of
Nature to do their positive work. But schools and colleges are not the
product of the elemental forces of Nature: they are distinctively
the work of man as a free agent. If we are free to shape any of our
institutions to suit our needs, we are certainly free to shape our
educational institutions. By having a definite result in view, and
willing its attainment, we may succeed; but if we fail either in
clearness of vision or persistency of will, we cannot expect the
result to come of itself. The present university system of Germany,
which might seem to a careless observer the natural outgrowth
of German life, is the result of hard thinking and strenuous,
well-directed effort. We should not commit much of an exaggeration
were we to call it the deliberate creation of Frederick the Great, Von
Zedlitz and Wolf, who dragged with them Prussia, and the other
German states in her wake. They and their associates and followers,
Schleiermacher and William von Humboldt, clear-headed, iron-willed
men, perceived what was needed, and bent all their energies to the
task. They emancipated the schools from the control of the clergy,
and established the principle that teaching is a distinct vocation,
requiring special training, over which the state has supervision;
furthermore, that the state should pronounce who is fit and who is
not fit for university education, thereby abolishing
entrance-examinations, and putting an end to the ignoble practice on
the part of the universities of lowering the standard for the purpose
of increasing the number of students. They abolished the last vestiges
of the scholastic system by raising the faculty of philosophy from its
position as a quasi-preparatory course to the others, and placing it
on a footing of perfect equality with law, theology and medicine.[3]
They removed all restrictions from the _Lehrfreiheit_, or professional
freedom of instruction, while at the same time they preserved the
right of the state to control indirectly the quality of university
instruction by means of state-examinations for pastors, teachers,
lawyers, physicians and officeholders. Ever since then the university
system of Germany has rested upon a secure and lasting basis.

[Footnote 3: The subordination of the philosophical faculty as a sort
of preparatory course to the others remained in force in Austria until
1850. It is not surprising, then, that Austria should have compared
so unfavorably with Germany in philology, history, philosophy and
literary criticism until within our own times.]

Is the course pursued by Prussia to be regarded as a mere incident in
history, or may it serve as an example and model for us? Prussia is a
monarchy, clothed with some constitutional forms but at bottom a
state where the personal will of the sovereign has always made,
and continues to make, itself felt in the final instance. We are
a republic, or rather a cluster of republics under an imperfectly
centralized national government. It is evident that the agencies and
mode of reform with us must differ from those that have been employed
in Prussia and in the rest of Germany. But it does not follow that
the reform itself is impossible. What has elsewhere sprung from the
autocratic will of a single man and his cabinet may be effected here
through that other force, equally great and perhaps more pervasive,
to which we give the vague name of "popular opinion." We know that
popular opinion in our country is irresistible. It makes everything
bend to it. It broke up the Tweed Ring, seemingly impregnable, in a
single campaign. But this popular opinion is not a natural product: it
is the work of a few men who devote themselves to awakening the sense
of right and wrong and guiding the understanding of their fellows.
But for popular leaders like Mr. O'Conor and Governor Tilden, the
late Tweed Ring might be in power at this day. Education is not
so different from politics but that we can regard it as subject to
similar laws of cause and effect. Our present common-school system is
an off-spring of popular opinion, as that opinion was created and led
to action by a few men. And whether our common schools are to stand
or fall is again becoming a question of the day, and will be decided
according as popular opinion may be swayed by a few zealous friends or
enemies. Our colleges, it may be said, do not occupy the same
relation to the state that our schools do. They are nearly all private
corporations, enjoying vested rights which the state is powerless to
touch. Undoubtedly true, but it is no less true that what cannot be
done directly may be done indirectly. The state need not make so much
as the attempt to lay hands upon college property or to interfere with
college studies. It has only to say, "I, the state, exact such and
such qualifications of all who seek to practice law or medicine within
my limits or to become my officeholders. I establish my own free
colleges and schools of law and medicine, and I proceed to tax
all others at their full valuation." There is not a college in the
country, not even Harvard, that could compete upon such terms. The
state need not even express its sovereign will so precisely. It
can content itself with establishing a university of its own, and
facilitating the direct influence of this university over the public
and private schools. We see the operations of such a system very
plainly in Michigan. Not only does the university at Ann Arbor
overshadow completely the private colleges, but the "union schools,"
administered under its auspices, are--to borrow the expression of one
of its graduates--"killing" the private schools. We may rest assured
that whatever the people of a State or of the United States is
earnestly bent upon having, will come.

Whether all our States are to act as Michigan has done--whether we are
indeed ripe for thorough change--whether a change is to be effected
by direct State action or indirectly by the mere pressure of public
sentiment--whether we have real need of a body of professors and a set
of universities such as Germany possesses--whether we are to make
our higher as well as our primary education non-sectarian,--are all
questions which may rest in abeyance for a long time to come. It is
also possible that one or the other of them may, in legal phraseology,
be sprung upon us at any time. Not to be taken unawares, we have
to bear steadily in mind several fixed principles and to disabuse
ourselves of one misconception.

The misconception is this: that what Germany accomplished in the
eighteenth century we cannot accomplish in the nineteenth, because
circumstances are so very different, chiefly because Germany is an old
country and we are a young country. The circumstances are not so very
different, and the difference, however great it may be estimated, is
in our favor. We are a union of thirty or forty States: in the Germany
of the eighteenth century there were three hundred. Ever since the
adoption of our Federal Constitution we have enjoyed common rights of
citizenship, common laws of commerce, common legal protection. Will
it be necessary to remind the student of history that the Germans have
acquired these blessings only within our own day? We are a nation of
forty millions, rich and prosperous, free to develop our resources.
The Germany of 1775 could count barely twenty millions, its soil was
poorly tilled, its mineral wealth undeveloped, manufactures in an
embryonic state, trade fettered in a thousand ways, the peasantry
brutally ignorant and servile, the national character--to all
appearance--ruined by cruel religious wars, the sense of national
unity blunted by the recollections of a hundred petty feuds reaching
back to the gloom of the Middle Ages, the national taste dominated by
poor French models to an extent that now seems incredible, learning
either dry pedantry or shallow cox-combry. We are indeed a young
country, but we are young in hope; Germany was old, but it was old in
weakness, in poverty, in despondency. Whoever doubts our ability to do
as much as Germany did one hundred years ago, fails to profit by the
teachings of history--overlooks the fact that Germany in 1840 was
only where she had been in 1618. That we should take Germany for our
standard of comparison, rather than England or France, is a postulate
which has one circumstance unmistakably in its favor. Although we are
connected with England by common descent, institutions and language,
although the politics and philosophy of France have exerted
considerable influence over our own, we do not observe our young
men going in numbers to England and France to receive their final
training. Their instinct leads them to Germany. For one American
graduate of Oxford or Cambridge or of the French _écoles_, it would
be easy to count ten doctors of Göttingen or Heidelberg. Our young
men are not attracted to the German universities by such factitious
considerations as cheapness of living or the acquisition of the
language, but by sympathy with German methods and academic liberty.

Some of the most important fixed principles have been already touched
upon, but only one can be developed in this place. It is, that if
we are to establish a system of higher education, we must begin by
recognizing freely and fully the distinction between teacher and
professor. We must perceive the importance of having two sets of
men--the one to teach, the other to investigate; the one engaged in
training boys to learn, the other in showing young men how to think.
When and how this distinction is to be established, in what special
form it is to be embodied, is a secondary matter. The chief thing is
to admit that it is essential and feasible. The young man who returns
after a three years' absence in Germany, exhibiting with dignified
pride his well-earned doctor's diploma, looks of course upon the
institution that conferred it as the _ne plus ultra_. But riper
experience, contact with the sharp corners of American prejudices
and peculiarities, renewed familiarity with our social, political,
commercial and literary life, will gradually convince him that a
German university is not a thing to be plucked up by the roots and
transplanted bodily to American soil. We have rather to take our
native stock as we find it, and engraft upon it a slip from the
German. One trial may fail, another may succeed. Our first efforts
will be like those of a man groping about in the dark. More than
one department in a German university will be of little avail in an
American, and conversely we shall have to create some that do not
exist elsewhere. For instance, in view of the great power exerted by
the newspaper press, it might be desirable to have a course of study
for those who think of taking up journalism as a profession. In such
a course, political economy, constitutional and international law,
English and American history, and the modern languages and literatures
should constitute a full and serious discipline. It is not probable
that the study of philology will ever attract the same attention here
that it does abroad. Our needs lie in the direction of the natural
sciences rather than in the direction of history and linguistics. But
we should be derelict to our duty were we to sacrifice these sciences
of the spirit, as the Germans call them, to the sciences of Nature.
A culture without them would be the bleakest and most repulsive
materialism.

The practical recognition of the difference between teacher and
professor would be a decided step. By the side of it those which
we have already taken would appear insignificant. The addition of
chemistry, geology, or physiology to the previous curriculum does
not change its character, so long as the professors of those branches
instruct after the fashion of the professors of Latin and Greek. The
advantage that the men of natural science have over their colleagues
is one which the nature of the subject brings with it. In order to
teach at all, they must come in close personal contact with their
pupils, and to escape falling behind in their department, where
new theories succeed one another with such rapid bounds, they must
continue a certain amount at least of original research. Supplementing
the present curriculum by post-graduate courses will hardly suffice.
Such courses are open to serious objections. If conducted by the
regular professors, they impose additional burdens upon men who have
already more than enough. If conducted by special professors, they
will tend to raise those professors at the expense of the regular
faculty. A lecturer to graduates must necessarily appear, in the eyes
of the undergraduate, superior to the man who hears recitations and
prepares term-reports. Besides, young men who have passed four years
at one college need "a change of air:" they will develop more rapidly
if brought into contact with new ideas and new instructors. Every
institution has an atmosphere of its own, which ceases after a time to
act upon the student as a stimulant.

There is one additional point that should not be overlooked. A careful
discrimination between the functions of the professor and those of the
teacher would benefit both classes of men. Such has been the effect in
Germany. The gymnasium-teacher has a high sense of the dignity of
his vocation and a keen sense of its responsibilities, because he
perceives that he must bring his labors to a well-rounded conclusion.
He knows that the university does not supplement the gymnasium--that
the university professors do not undertake to make good his
shortcomings. The gymnasial course is a completed phase of training.
It aims at giving the pupil all the general knowledge that he requires
previous to his professional studies. What is lost or overlooked in
the gymnasium cannot be acquired at the university. Hence the peculiar
conscientiousness of the German teacher, his almost painful anxiety to
make sure that his pupils master every subject, his unwillingness to
let them go before they are "ripe." With us the change from school
to college is not an abrupt transition, like that from gymnasium to
university. The college course, certainly during the two lower years
at least, is a continuation of the school course: the same or
similar subjects are taught, and taught in the same way. Hence the
school-teacher is tempted to regulate his efforts according to the
college standard of admission. If he can only "get his men into
college," as the saying is, he thinks that he is doing enough. To say
this of all schools and all teachers would be flagrant injustice.
Not a few of our older schools compare favorably with the best German
gymnasiums, and in the large cities we find schools of even recent
origin that endeavor faithfully to give a well-rounded discipline. But
it remains nevertheless true that our schools, taken as a whole, give
no more than the colleges require, and that only too many of them
give less, trusting to the colleges to be lenient and eke out the
deficiency. Moreover, when we read in the daily papers advertisements
like the following, "Mr. Smith, a graduate of Harvard (or Yale or some
other college, as the case may be), prepares young men for college,"
what inference are we to draw? Simply, that Mr. Smith, having gone
through Harvard or Yale, knows exactly what is required there, and
will undertake to "coach" any young man for admission in two or three
years. Such coaching, if the young man is dull or backward, will
consist in cramming him with required studies, to the neglect of
everything not required. Teaching is not easy work. In many respects
it is more difficult to be a good teacher than to be an original
investigator. Whatever operates to strengthen and elevate the
teacher's position, therefore, must be a gain. The highest
incentive would be the consciousness that his school is not a mere
stepping-stone to another school of larger growth, but the place where
he must in truth prepare the youthful mind for independent study.

JAMES MORGAN HART.




CONTRASTED MOODS.

            WANT.

  Where is the power I fancied mine?
    Can I have emptied my soul of thought?
  In yesterday's fullness lay no sign
    That to-day would be a time of drought.
  What if thought fail me for evermore?
    The world that awaits a well-filled plan
  Must, railing, cry at my long-closed door,
    "He cannot finish what he began."

            PLENTY.

  Thought dashes on thought within my soul:
    Time will not serve for the bounding-line.
  I think it would fail to mete the whole
    If old Methuselah's years were mine.
  Like the famous spring that is sometimes dry,
    Then flows with a river's whelming might,
  The current of thought now runs so high
    It covers the earthy bed from sight.

CHARLOTTE F. BATES.




THE ATONEMENT OF LEAM DUNDAS.

BY MRS. E. LYNN LINTON, AUTHOR OF "PATRICIA KEMBALL."


CHAPTER XXI.

CHANGES.


Four years had come and gone since Mr. Dundas had laid his second
wife in the grave beside his first, and the county had discussed
the immorality of taking cherry-water as a calmant. For it was to
an overdose of this that the verdict at the coroner's inquest had
assigned the cause of poor madame's awful and sudden death; though why
the medicine should have been found so loaded with prussic acid as
to have caused instant death on this special night, when it had been
taken so often before with impunity, was a mystery to which there was
no solution. Not a trace of poison was to be found anywhere in the
house, and no evidence was forthcoming to show how it might have been
bought or where procured. Alick Corfield, who understood it all,
was not called as a witness, and he told no one what he knew. On the
contrary, he burdened his soul with the, to him, unpardonable crime
of falsehood that he might shield Leam from detection; for when his
father, missing the sixty-minim bottle of hydrocyanic acid, asked him
what had become of it, Alick answered, with that wonderful coolness
of virtue descending to sin for the protection of the beloved which is
sometimes seen in the ingenuous, "I broke it by accident, father, and
forgot to tell you."

As the boy had never been known to tell a falsehood in his life, he
reaped the reward of good repute, and his father, saying quietly,
"That was a bad job, my boy," laid the matter aside as a _caput
mortuum_ of no value.

To be sure, he thought more than once that it was an odd coincidence,
but he could see no connection between the two circumstances
of madame's sudden death and Alick's fracture of that bottle of
hydrocyanic acid; and even if there should be any, he preferred not
to trace it. So the inquest was a mere show so far as getting at the
truth was concerned, and madame died and was buried in the mystery in
which she had lived.

Meantime, Leam had been sent to school, whence she was expected
to return a little more like other English girls than she had been
hitherto, and Mr. Dundas shut up Ford House--he went back to the
original name after madame's death--and left England to shake off in
travel the deadly despair that had fallen like a sickness on him and
taken all the flavor out of his life. He had never cared to search out
the real history of that fair beloved woman. Enough had come to his
knowledge, in the bills which had poured in from several Sherrington
tradesmen on the announcement of her marriage and then of her death,
to convince him that he had been duped in facts if not in feeling. For
among these bills was one from the local geologist for "a beginner's
cabinet of specimens," delivered just about the time when he,
Sebastian, had spent so many pleasant hours in arranging the fragments
which madame said represented both her knowledge and her lost
happiness; also one from the fancy repository, which sold everything,
for sundry water-color drawings and illuminated texts, a Table of
the Ten Commandments illustrated, and the like, which sufficiently
explained all on this side, and settled for ever the dead woman's
claims to the artistic and scientific merit with which Mr. Dundas and
the rector had credited her.

Also, certain ugly letters from a person of the name of Lowes, in
London, put him on the track, had he cared to follow it up, of a
deception even worse than that of pretended art or mock science. These
letters, written in the same handwriting as that wherein Julius de
Montfort, her brother-in-law, the present marquis, had told her of
the defalcations of the family solicitor and trustee, called Virginie,
Madame la Marquise de Montfort, plain Susan bluntly, and reminded her
of the screw that would be turned if the writer was not satisfied;
and were letters that demanded money, always money, as the price of
continued silence.

But Sebastian had loved his second wife too well to seek to know the
truth, if that truth would be to her discredit. He preferred to
be deceived; and he had what he preferred. He stifled all doubts,
darkened all chinks by which the obtrusive light might penetrate, kept
his love if not his faith unshaken, caring only to remember her as
beautiful, seductive, soothing, and mourning her as deeply, doubtful
as she had proved herself to be, as he had loved her fondly when he
believed her honest. It was a curious mental condition for a man to
cherish, but it satisfied him, and his regret was not robbed of its
pathos by knowledge.

Now that the four years were completed, the widower had to return to
his desolate home and make the best he could of the fragments of peace
and happiness left to him. Leam was nineteen: it was time for her to
be taken from school and given the protection of her father's house.
It went against the man's heart to have her, but he was compelled, if
he wished to stand well with his friends, and he hoped that the girl
would be found improved from these years of discipline and training,
and be rational and like other people. Wherefore he came home one
dry dull day in October, and the neighborhood welcomed him, if not as
their prodigal returned, yet as their lunatic restored to his right
mind.

During these four years a few changes had taken place at North Aston.
Carry Fairbairn had married--not Frank Harrowby: he had found a rich
wife, not in the least to his personal taste, but greatly to his
profit; and Carry, after having cried a good deal for a month, had
consoled herself with a young clergyman from the North, whom she loved
quite as much as if she had never fancied Frank at all, and spoilt in
the first months by such submission as caused her to repent for all
the years of her life after.

The things of the rectory were much in their old state. Little Fina,
madame's child, was there under Mrs. Birkett's motherly care; but
as the child was nearly six years old now, the good creature's
instinctive love for infants was wearing out, and she was often heard
to say how much she wished she could have kept Fina always a baby,
and, sighing, how difficult she was to manage! She was an exceedingly
pretty little girl, with fair skin, fair hair and dark eyes--willful
of course, and spoilt of course; the only one in the house who took
her in hand to correct being Adelaide. And as she took her in hand too
smartly, Mrs. Birkett generally interfered, and the servants combined
to screen her; the result being that the little one was mistress of
the situation, after the manner of willful children, and made every
one more or less anxious and uncomfortable as her return for their
care.

Alick Corfield was the rector's curate. On the whole, this was the
most important of all the North Aston events which had taken place
during the last four years. Soon after madame's death and Leam's
transfer from home to school Alick had a strange and sudden illness.
No one knew what to make of it, nor how it came, nor what it was, but
the doctor called it cerebral fever, and when the families got hold
of the word they were content. Cerebral fever does as well as anything
else for an illness of which no one knows and no one seeks to know the
cause, and to the origin of which the patient himself gives no clew.
It was a peg, and a peg was all that was wanted.

On his recovery he announced his intention of going to Oxford to read
for holy orders. His mother was piteously distressed, as might be
expected. She feared all sorts of evil for her boy, from damp sheets
and unmended linen to over-study, wine-parties and bold-faced minxes
weaving subtle webs of fascination. But for the first time in his life
Alick stood out against her insistance, and his will conquered hers.
The sequel of the struggle was, that he went to Oxford, took his
degree, read for orders, passed, and that Mr. Birkett gave him his
title as his curate.

It could hardly be said that the relations were entirely harmonious
between the military-minded rector, who held to the righteousness of
helotry and the value of ignorance in the class beneath him, and the
young curate burning with zeal and oppressed with the desire to put
all the crooked things of life straight. The one pooh-poohed the
enthusiasm of the other, derided his belief in humanity and assured
him of failure: the other felt as if he had been taken behind the
scenes and shown the blue fire of which the awful lightning of his
youth was made. Mr. Birkett could not quite forbid the greater
faith, the more loving endeavor which the young man threw into his
ministrations, but he was the Sadducee who scoffed and made the
work heavy and uphill throughout. He gave a grudging assent to the
Bible-classes, the Wednesday evening services at the Sunday-school,
the lectures on great men on the first Monday in the month, which
Alick proposed and established. He thought it all weariness to the
flesh and a waste of time and energy; but the traditions of his order
were strong, if he himself did not share them, and he had to give way
in the end. He consoled himself with the reflection that the boy would
find out his mistake before long, and that then he would know who had
been right throughout.

But even zeal and hope and diligence in his work could not lighten the
persistent sadness which was Alick's chief characteristic now. Gaunt
and silent, with the eyes of a man whose inner self is absent and
whose thoughts are not with his company, he looked as if he had passed
through the fire, and had not passed through unscathed. No one knew
what had happened to him, and, though many made conjectures, none came
near the truth. Meanwhile, he seemed as if he lived only to work, and,
the clearer-sighted might have added, to wait.

For a further local change, Lionnet was tenanted again by a strange
and solitary man, who never went to church and did not visit in
the neighborhood. He was in consequence believed to be a forger, an
escaped convict in hiding, or, by the more charitable, a maniac as yet
not dangerous. North Aston held him in deeper horror than it had held
even Pepita, and his true personality exercised its wits more keenly
than had even the true personality of madame. In point of fact, he was
a quiet, inoffensive, amiable man, who gave his mind to Sanskrit for
work and to entomology for play, and did not trouble himself about his
own portrait as drawn in the local vernacular. Nevertheless, for all
his reserved habits and quiet ways, he had learnt the whole history of
the place and people before he had been at Lionnet a month.

At the Hill things remained unchanged for the ladies, save for the
additional burden of years and the pleasant news that Edgar was
expected home daily. Adelaide, now twenty-four, took the news as a
personal grace, and blossomed into smiles and glad humor of which only
Josephine understood the source. But Josephine held her tongue, and
received the confidence of her young friend with discretion. As she
had never dispossessed her own old idol, she could feel for Adelaide,
and she was not disposed to look on her patient determination with
displeasure. The constancy of the two, however, was very different in
essential meaning. With Josephine it was the constancy that is born of
an affectionate disposition and the absence of rival Lotharios: with
Adelaide it was the result of calculation and decision. The one would
have worshiped Sebastian as she worshiped him now had he been ruined,
a cripple, a criminal even: the other would have shut out Edgar
inexorably from her very dreams had not his personality included
the Hill. With the one it was self-abasement--with the other
self-consideration; but it came to the same thing in the end, and the
men profited equally.

All these changes Sebastian Dundas found to have taken place when he
returned to North Aston with gray hair instead of brown, his smooth,
fair skin tanned and roughened, and his weak, finely-cut, effeminate
mouth hidden by a moustache of a reddish tint, mingled with white.
Still, he was Sebastian; and after the first shock of his altered
appearance had been got over, Josephine carried her incense in the old
way, and found her worship as dear and as tantalizing as ever.

Lastly, as the crowning change of all, Leam came home from school;
no longer the arrogant, embittered child, looking at life through the
false medium of pride and ignorance, saying rude things and doing odd
ones with the most perfect unconsciousness; but well-bred, graceful,
sufficiently instructed not to make patent mistakes, and more
beautiful by far than she had even promised to be. Her very eyes were
lovelier, lovely as they had always been: they had more variety of
expression, were more dewy and tender, and, if less tragic, were more
spiritual. That hard, dry, burning passion which had devoured her of
old time seemed to have gone, as also her savage Spanish pride. She
had rounded and softened in body too, as in mind. Her skin was fairer;
her lips were not so firmly closed, so rigid in line, so constricted
in motion; her brows were more flexible and not so often knit
together; and her slight, lithe figure was perfect in line and
movement. Still, she had enough of her former manner of being for
identity. Grave, quiet, laconic, direct, she was but a modification
of the former Leam as they had known her--Leam, Pepita's daughter,
and with blood in her veins that was not the ordinary blood of the
ordinary British miss.

Her father's artistic perceptions were gratified as he met her at the
station and Leam turned her cheek to him voluntarily with tears in her
eyes. Turning her cheek was apparently her idea of kissing; but if not
too intense an expression of affection, it was at least an improvement
on the old hard repulsion, and Sebastian accepted it as the concession
it was meant to be. Indeed, they met somewhat as foes reconciled, or
rather seeking to be reconciled, and Mr. Dundas did not wish to keep
open old sores. Her cheek, turned to him somewhere about the ear,
represented to his mind a peace-offering: her eyes full of tears were
as a confession of past sins and a promise of amendment. Not that he
understood why she was so much more effusive than of old, but if it
augured a happier life together, he was glad.

As they drove up to the door of the old home, crowded with memories
and associations, a shudder passed over the girl: she grasped her
father's hand in her own almost convulsively, and he heard her say
below her breath, "Poor papa!"

He wondered why she pitied him. The place must surely be full of
memories of her mother for her: why did she say "Poor papa!" to him?
He did not see what she saw--that peaceful September evening, and the
bottle of cherry-water on the table, with the little phial of thirty
deaths in her hand; and now the contents emptied into the harmless
draught; and now madame pale and dead. The whole scene transacted
itself vividly before her, and she shuddered at her memories and her
past self, as always with a kind of vague wonder how she could have
been so wicked, and where did she get the force, the courage, for such
a cruel crime?

For all these four years at school the shadow of that dreadful deed
had been ever in the background of her life; and as time went on, and
she came to a better understanding of morality, it grew clear to her
as a crime. Its consciousness of guilt had broken down her pride, and
thus had made her more malleable, more humble. She could no longer
harden herself in her belief that she was superior to every one else.
Those girls, her companions--they had not had an Andalusian mother,
truly; they did not pray to the saints, and the Holy Virgin took no
care of them; they were Protestants and English, frogs and pigs; but
they had not committed murder. If she should stand up in the middle
of the room and tell them what she had done, which of them would touch
her hand again? which of them speak to her? English and Protestants as
they were, how far superior in their innocence to her, an Andalusian
Catholic, in her guilt! But no one lives with remorse. It comes and
goes gustily, fitfully; but the things of the present are stronger
than the things of the past, else the man with a shameful secret in
his life would go mad.

One of these gusty storms broke over Leam as she passed through the
gates of the old home, and for the moment she felt as if she must
confess the truth to her father and tell him what evil thing she had
done. Yet it passed, as other such storms had passed: the things of
the present took their natural place of prominence, and those of the
past sank again into the background, shadows that never faded quite
away, but that were not actualities pressing against her.

The news of Leam's home-coming created quite a pleasurable excitement
in the neighborhood, and the families flocked to Ford House to
welcome her among them as one of themselves, all anxious to see if
the Ethiopian of North Aston had shed her skin, if the leopardess had
changed her spots. They were divided among themselves as to whether
she had or had not. Some said she was charming, and like any one else,
but others shook their heads, and, like experts in brain disease,
professed to see traces of the old lunacy, and to be doubtful as to
her cure. At the worst, however, here she was--one of themselves whom
they must receive; and common sense dictated that they should make the
best of her, and hope all things till they proved some.

There was one among them whom Leam longed yet dreaded to meet. This
was Alick Corfield. She wondered what he knew, or rather what he
suspected, and she was anxious to have her ordeal over. But,
though Mrs. Corfield came, and was just the same as ever, bustling,
inquisitive, dogmatic, before ten minutes were over having put the
girl through her scholastic facings and got from her the whole of her
curriculum, yet Alick did not appear. He waited until after Sunday,
when he should see her first in church, and so nerve himself as it
were behind the barrier of his sacred office; but after Sunday had
passed and he had seen her in her old place, he called, and found her
alone.

When they met, and she looked into his face and laid her hand in his,
she knew all. He shared her secret, and knew what she had done. It was
not that he was either distant or familiar, cold or disrespectful,
or anything but glad and reverent; nevertheless, he knew. He was no
longer the boy adorer, her slave, her dog: he was her friend, and
he wished to make her feel that she was safe with him--known, in his
power, but safe.

"You are changed," he said awkwardly.

He thought of her as Leam, heard her always called Leam, but he dared
not use the familiar name, and yet she was not "Miss Dundas" to him.

"It is four years since you saw me," she said with a grave smile. "It
was time to change."

"But you are your old self too," he returned eagerly. He would have
no disloyalty done to the queen of his boyish dreams: what worm soever
was at its root, his royal pomegranate flower should be always set
fair in the sun where he might be.

"You seem much changed too," she said after a short pause--"graver and
older. Is that because you are a clergyman?"

Alick turned his eyes away from the girl's face, and looked mournfully
out onto the autumn woods. "Partly," he said.

"And the other part?" asked Leam, pressing to know the worst.

"And the other part?" He looked at her, and his wan face grew paler.
"Well, never mind the other part. There are things which sometimes
come into a man's life and wither it for ever, as a fire passing over
a green tree, but we do not speak of them."

"To no one?"

"To no one."

Leam sighed. No proclamation could have made the thing clearer between
them. Henceforth she was in Alick's power: let him be faithful,
chivalrous, loyal, devoted, what you will, she was no longer her own
unshared property. He knew what she was, and in so far was her master.

Poor Alick! This was not the light in which he held his fatal secret.
True, he knew what she had done, and that his young queen, his ideal,
was a murderess, who, if the truth were made public, would be degraded
below the level of the poorest wretch that had kept an honest name;
but he felt himself more accursed than she, in that he had been the
means whereby she had gotten both her knowledge and the power to use
it. He was the doomed if innocent, as of old tragic times--the sinless
Cain guilty of murder, but guiltless in intent. It was for this, as
much as for the love and poetry of the boyish days, that he felt he
owed himself to Leam--that his life was hers, and all his energies
were to be devoted for her good. It was for this that he had prayed
with such intensity of earnestness it seemed to him sometimes as if
his soul had left his body, and had gone up to the Most High to pluck
by force of passionate entreaty the pardon he besought: "Pardon her, O
Lord! Turn her heart, enlighten her understanding, convince her of her
sin; but pardon her, pardon her, dear Lord! And with her, pardon me."

The man's whole life was spent in this one wild, fervid prayer. All
that he did was tinged with the sentiment of winning grace for her and
pardon for both. In his own mind they stood hand in hand together;
and if he was the intercessor, they were both to benefit, and neither
would be saved without the other. And he believed in the value of his
prayers and in the objective reality of their influence.

For the final changes in the ordering of home and society at North
Aston, the week after Leam returned Edgar Harrowby came from India,
and took up his position as the owner of the Hill estate; and the
child Fina was brought to Ford House, and formally invested with
her new name and condition as Miss Fina Dundas, Sebastian's younger
daughter. Mindful of the past, Mr. Dundas expected to have a stormy
scene with Leam when he told her his intentions respecting poor
madame's child; but Leam answered quietly, "Very well, papa," and
greeted Fina when she arrived benevolently, if not effusively. She was
not one of those born mothers who love babies from their early nursery
days, but she was kind to the child in her grave way, and seemed
anxious to do well by her.

The ladies all bestowed on her their nursery recipes and systems
in rich abundance--especially Mrs. Birkett, who, though glad to be
relieved from the hourly task of watching and contending, was still
immensely interested in the little creature, and gave daily counsel
and superintendence. So that on the whole Leam was not left unaided
with her charge. On the contrary, she ran great risk of being
bewildered by her multiplicity of counselors, and of entering in
consequence on that zigzag course which covers much ground and makes
but little progress.




CHAPTER XXII.

EDGAR HARROWBY.


Thirty-two years of age; tall, handsome, well set-up, and every inch
a soldier; manly in bearing, but also with that grace of gesture and
softness of speech which goes by the name of polished manner; a
bold sportsman, ignorant of physical fear, to whom England was the
culmination of the universe, and such men as he--gentlemen, officers,
squires--the culmination of humanity; a man who loved women as
creatures, but despised them as intelligences; who respected socially
the ladies of his own class, and demanded that they should be without
stain, as befits the wives and mothers and sisters of gentlemen, but
who thought women of a meaner grade fair game for the roving fowler; a
conservative, holding to elemental differences whence arise the value
of races, the dignity of family and the righteousness of caste; an
hereditary landowner, regarding landed property as a sacred possession
meant only for the few and not to be suffered to lapse into low-born
hands; a gentleman, incapable of falsehood, treachery, meanness,
social dishonor, but not incapable of injustice, tyranny, selfishness,
even cruelty, if such came in his way as the privilege of his
rank,--this was Edgar Harrowby as the world saw and his friends knew
him, and as North Aston had henceforth to know him.

His return caused immense local excitement and great rejoicing. It
seemed to set the social barometer at "fair," and to promise a spell
of animation such as North Aston had been long wanting. And indeed
personally for himself it was time that Major Harrowby was at home and
at the head of his own affairs. Matters had been going rather badly on
the estate without him, and the need of a strong hand to keep agents
straight and tenants up to the mark had been making itself somewhat
disastrously felt during the last three or four years. Wherefore
he had sold out, broken all his ties in India handsomely, as he had
broken them in London handsomely once before, when, mad with jealousy,
he had fled like a thief in the night, burned his boats behind him,
and, as he thought, obliterated every trace by which that loved and
graceless woman could discover his real name or family holding; and
now had come home prepared to do his duty to society and himself. That
is, prepared to marry a nice girl of his own kind, keep the estate
well in hand, and set an example of respectability and orthodoxy,
family prayers and bold riding, according to the ideal of the English
country gentleman.

But, above all, he must marry. And the wife provided for him by the
eternal fitness of things was Adelaide Birkett. Who else could be
found to suit the part so perfectly? She was well-born, well-mannered;
though not coarsely robust, yet healthy in the sense of purity
of blood; and she was decidedly pretty. So far to the good of the
Harrowby stock in the future. Neither was she too young, though by
reason of her quiet country life her twenty-four years did not count
more to her in wear and tear of feeling and the doubtful moulding of
experience than if she had lived through one London season. She was a
girl of acknowledged good sense, calm, equable, holding herself in the
strictest leash of ladylike reserve, and governing all her emotions
without trouble, patent or unconfessed. Hers was a character which
would never floreate into irregular beauties to give her friends
anxiety and crowd her life with embarrassing consequences. She
despised sentiment and ridiculed enthusiasm, thought skepticism both
wicked and disreputable, but at the same time fanaticism was silly,
and not nearly so respectable as that quiet, easy-going religion which
does nothing of which society would disapprove, but does not break its
heart in trying to found the kingdom of God on earth.

All her relations with life and society would be blameless, orthodox,
ladylike and thoroughly English. As a wife she would preach submission
in public and practice domination and the moral repression belonging
to the superior being in private. As a mother she would take care
to have experienced nurses and well-bred governesses, who would look
after the children properly, when she would wash her hands of further
trouble and responsibility, save to teach them good manners at
luncheon and self-control in their evening visit to the drawing-room
for the "children's half hour" before dinner. As the mistress of an
establishment she would be strict, demanding perfect purity in the
morals of her servants, not suffering waste, nor followers, nor
kitchen amusements that she knew of, nor kitchen individuality anyhow.
Her servants would be her serfs, and she would assume to have bought
them by food and wages in soul as well as body, in mind as well as
muscle. She would give broken meat in moderation to the deserving
poor, but she would let those who are not deserving do the best they
could with want at home and inclemency abroad; and she would have
called it fostering vice had she fed the husbandless mother when
hungry or clothed the drunkard's children when naked. She would never
be talked about for extremes or eccentricities of any kind; and the
world would be forced to mention her with respect when it mentioned
her at all, having indeed no desire to do otherwise. For she was of
the kind dear to the heart of England--one of those who are called the
salt of the earth, and who are assumed to keep society safe and
pure. She was incredulous of science, contemptuous of superstition,
impatient of new ideas--appreciating art, but holding artists as
inferior creatures, like actors, acrobats and newspaper writers. She
was loyal to the queen and royal family, the nobility and Established
Church, bracketing republicans with atheists, and both with unpunished
felons; as also classing immorality, the facts of physiology and the
details of disease in a group together, as things horrible and not to
be spoken of before ladies. She was not slow to believe evil of her
neighbors, maintaining, indeed, that to be spoken of at all was proof
sufficient of undesirable conduct; but she would never investigate a
charge, preferring rather to accept it in its vile integrity than to
soil her hands by attempting to unweave its dirty threads; hence she
would be pitiless, repellent, but she would never make herself the
focus of gossip. She was a human being if you will, a Christian in
creed and name assuredly; but beyond and above all things she was
a well-mannered, well-conducted English lady, a person of spotless
morals and exquisite propriety, in the presence of whom humanity must
not be human, truth truthful, nor Nature natural.

This was the wife for Edgar Harrowby as a country gentleman--the
woman whom Mrs. Harrowby would have chosen out of thousands to be her
daughter-in-law, whom his sisters would like, who would do credit to
his name and position; and whom he himself would find as good for his
purpose as any within the four seas.

For when Edgar married he would marry on social and rational grounds:
he would not commit the mistake of fancying that he need love the
woman as he had loved some others. He would marry her, whoever
she might be, because she would be of a good family and reasonable
character, fairly handsome, unexceptionable in conduct, not tainted
with hereditary disease nor disgraced by ragged relatives, having
nothing to do with vice or poverty in the remotest link of her
connections--a woman fit to be the keeper of his house, the bearer
of his name, the mother of his children. But for love, passion,
enthusiasm, sentiment--Edgar thought all such emotional impedimenta
as these not only superfluous, but oftentimes disastrous in the grave
campaign of matrimony.

It was for this marriage that Adelaide had saved herself. She believed
that any woman can marry any man if she only wills to do so; and from
the day when she was seventeen, and they had had a picnic at Dunaston,
she had made up her mind to marry Edgar Harrowby. When he came home
for good, unmarried and unengaged, she knew that she should succeed;
and Edgar knew it too. He knew it so well after he had been at home
about a week that if anything could have turned him against the wife
carved out for him by circumstance and fitness, it would have been the
almost fatal character of that fitness, as if Fortune had not left him
a choice in the matter.

"And what do you think of Adelaide?" asked Mrs. Harrowby one day when
her son said that he had been to the rectory. "You have seen her twice
now: what is your impression of her?'"

"She is prettier than ever--improved, I should say, all through," was
his answer.

Mrs. Harrowby smiled. "She is a girl I like," she said. "She is so
sensible and has such nice feeling about things."

"Yes," answered Edgar, "she is thoroughly well-bred."

"We have seen a great deal of her of late years," Mrs. Harrowby
continued, angling dexterously. "She and the girls are fast friends,
especially she and Josephine, though there is certainly some slight
difference of age between them. But Adelaide prefers their society
to that of any one about the neighborhood. And I think that of itself
shows such good taste and nice feeling."

"So it does," said Edgar with dutiful assent, not exactly seeing for
himself what constituted Adelaide's good taste and nice feeling in
this preference for his dull and doleful sisters over the brighter
companionship of the Fairbairns, say, or any other of the local
nymphs. To him those elderly maiden sisters of his were rather bores
than otherwise, but he was not displeased that Adelaide Birkett
thought differently. If it "ever came to anything," it would be better
that they satisfied her than that she should find them uncongenial.

"She is coming up to dinner this evening," Mrs. Harrowby went on to
say; and Edgar smiled, pulled his moustaches and looked half puzzled
if wholly pleased.

"She is a pretty girl," he said with the imbecility of a man who ought
to speak and who has nothing to say, also who has something that he
does not wish to say.

"She is better than pretty--she is good," returned Mrs. Harrowby;
and Edgar, not caring to discuss Adelaide on closer ground with his
mother, strolled away into his private room, where he sat before the
fire smoking, meditating on his life in the past and his prospects
in the future, and wondering how he would like it when he had finally
abjured the freedom of bachelorhood and had taken up with matrimony
and squiredom for the remainder of his natural life.

Punctually at seven Adelaide Birkett appeared. This, too, was one
of her minor virtues: she was exact. Mind, person, habits, all were
regulated with the nicest method, and she knew as little of hurry as
of delay, and as little of both as of passion.

"You are such a dear, good punctual girl!" said Josephine
affectionately--Josephine, whose virtues had a few more, loose ends
and knots untied than had her friend's.

"It is so vulgar to be unpunctual," said Adelaide with her calm
good-breeding. "It seems to me only another form of uncleanliness and
disorder."

"And Edgar is so punctual too!" cried Josephine by way of commentary.

Adelaide smiled, not broadly, not hilariously, only to the exact shade
demanded by conversational sympathy. "Then we shall agree in this,"
she said quietly.

"Oh I am sure you will agree, and in more than this," Josephine
returned, almost with enthusiasm.

Had she not been the willing nurse of this affair from the
beginning?--if not the open confidante, yet secretly holding the key
to her younger friend's mind and actions? and was she not, like all
the kindly disappointed, intensely sympathetic with love-matters,
whether wise or foolish, hopeful or hopeless?

"Who is it that you are sure will agree with Miss Adelaide, if any one
indeed could be found to disagree with her?" asked Edgar, standing in
the doorway.

Josephine laughed with the silliness of a weak woman "caught." She
looked at Adelaide slyly. Adelaide turned her quiet face, unflushed,
unruffled, and neither laughed sillily nor looked slyly.

"She was praising me for punctuality; and then she said that you were
punctual too," she explained cheerfully.

"We learn that in the army," said Edgar.

"But I have had to learn it without the army," she answered.

"Which shows that you have by the grace of nature what I have attained
only by discipline and art," said Edgar gallantly.

Adelaide smiled. She did not disdain the compliment. On the contrary,
she wished to impress it on Edgar that she accepted his praises
because they were her due. She knew that the world takes us if not
quite at our own valuation, yet as being the character we assume to
be. It all depends on our choice of a mask and to what ideal self we
dress. If we are clever and dress in keeping, without showing chinks
or discrepancies, no one will find out that it is only a mask; and
those of us are most successful in gaining the good-will of our
fellows who understand this principle the most clearly and act on it
the most consistently.

The evening was a pleasant one for Adelaide, being an earnest of the
future for which, if she had not worked hard, she had controlled much.
Edgar sang solos to her accompaniment, and put in his rich baritone to
her pure if feeble soprano; he played chess with her for an hour, and
praised her play, as it deserved: naturally, not thinking it necessary
to make love to his sisters, he paid her almost exclusive attention,
and looked the admiration he felt. She really was a very pretty young
woman, and she had unexceptionable manners; and having cut himself
adrift from his ties and handsomely released himself from his
obligations, he was not disposed to take much trouble in looking far
afield for a wife when here was one ready-made to his hand. Still,
he was not so rash as to commit himself too soon. Fine play is never
precipitate; and even the most lordly lover, if an English gentleman,
thinks it seemly to pretend to woo the woman whom he means to take,
and who he knows will yield.

And on her side Adelaide was too well-bred for the one part, and too
wise for the other, to clutch prematurely at the prize she had willed
should be hers. Her actions must be like her gestures, graceful,
rhythmic, rather slow than hurried, and bearing the stamp of purpose
and deliberation. When Edgar should make his offer, as she knew he
would, she would ask for time to reflect and make up her mind. This
would be doing the thing properly and with due regard to her own
dignity; for no husband of hers should ever have cause to think that
she held her marriage with him as a thing so undeniably advantageous
there was no doubt of her acceptance from the first. Every woman must
make herself difficult, thought Adelaide, if she wishes to be prized,
even the woman who for seven years has fixed her eyes steadily on one
point, and has determined that she will finally capture a certain man
and land him as her lifelong possession.

Thus the evening passed, with a subtle undercurrent of concealed
resolves flowing beneath its surface admiration that gave it a
peculiar charm to the two people principally concerned--the one
feeling that she had advanced her game by an important move; the
other, that the eternal fitness of things 'was making itself more
and-more evident, and that it was manifest to all his senses
whom Providence had destined for his wife, and for what ultimate
matrimonial end he had been shaped and spared.

A book of photographs was on the table.

"Are you here?" asked Edgar, lowering his bright blue eyes on
Adelaide as she sat on a small chair at Mrs. Harrowby's feet, carrying
daughterly incense to that withered shrine.

"Yes, I think so," she answered.

He turned the pages carefully--passing over his sisters in wide
crinolines and spoon bonnets; his mother, photographed from an old
picture, in a low dress and long dropping bands of hair, like a
mouflon's ears, about her face; Fred and himself, both as boys in
Scotch suits, set stiffly against the table like dolls--with gradual
improvement in art and style, till he came to a page where Adelaide's
fair vignetted head of large size was placed side by side with
another, also vignetted and also large.

"Ah! there you are; and what a capital likeness!" cried Edgar, with
the joyous look and accent of one meeting an old friend, giving that
gauge of interest which we all unconsciously give when we first see
the photograph of a well-known face. He looked at the portrait long
and critically. "Only not so pretty," he added gallantly. "Those
fellows cannot catch the spirit: they give only the outside forms, and
not always these correctly. Here is a striking face," he continued,
pointing to Adelaide's companion-picture--a girl with masses of dark
hair, dark eyes, large, mournful, heavily fringed with long lashes,
and a grave, sad face, that seemed listening rather than looking. "Who
is she? She looks foreign."

Adelaide glanced at the page, as if she did not know it by heart.
"That? Oh! that is only Leam Dundas," she said with the faintest,
finest flavor of scorn in her voice.

"Leam Dundas?" repeated Edgar--"the daughter of that awful woman?"

"Yes, and nearly as odd as the mother," answered Adelaide, still in
the same cold manner and with the same accent of superior scorn.

"At least she used to be, you mean, dear, but she is more like other
people now," said kindly Josephine, more just than politic.

Adelaide looked at her calmly, indifferently. "Yes, I suppose she is
rather less savage than of old," was her reply, "but I do not see much
of her,"

"I do not remember to have ever seen her: she must have been a mere
child when I was here last," said Edgar.

"She is nineteen now, I think," said Mrs. Harrowby.

"Not more?" repeated Adelaide. "I imagined she was one-and-twenty at
the least. She looks so very much older than even this--five or six
and twenty, full; dark people age so quickly."

"She seems to be superbly handsome," Edgar said, still looking at the
portrait.

"For those who like that swarthy kind of beauty. For myself, I do not:
it always reminds me of negroes and Lascars."

Adelaide leaned forward, and made pretence to examine Leam's portrait
with critical independence of judgment. She spoke as if this was the
first time she had seen it, and her words the thought of the moment
resulting.

"There is no negroid taint here," Edgar answered gravely. "It is the
face of a sibyl, of a tragedian."

"Do you think so? It is fine in outline certainly, but too monotonous
to please me, and too lugubrious; and the funny part of it is,
there is nothing in her. She looks like a sibyl, but she is the most
profoundly stupid person you can imagine."

"Not now, Addy: she has wakened up a good deal," again interposed
Josephine with her love of justice and want of tact.

"But do you not see the mother in her, Josephine? I do, painfully; and
the mother was such a horror! Leam is just like her. She will grow her
exact counterpart"

"A bad model enough," said Edgar; "but this face is not bad. It has
more in it than poor old Pepita's. How fat she was!"

"So will Leam be when she is as old," said Adelaide quietly. "And do
you think these dark people ever look clean? I don't,"

"That is a drawback certainly," laughed Edgar, running through the
remainder of the book.

But he turned back again to the page which held Leam and Adelaide side
by side, and he spoke of the latter while he looked at the former. The
face of Leam Dundas, mournful, passionate, concentrated as it was,
had struck his imagination--struck it as none other had done since the
time when he had met that grand and graceful woman wandering, lost in
a fog, in St. James's Park, and had protected from possible annoyance
till he had landed her in St. John's Wood. He was glad that Leam
Dundas lived in North Aston, and that he should see her without
trouble or overt action; and as he handed Adelaide into her carriage
he noticed for the first time that her blue eyes were not quite even,
that her flaxen hair had not quite enough color, and that her face, if
pure and fair, was slightly insipid.

"Poor, dear Adelaide!" he said when he returned to the drawing-room,
"how nice she is! but how tart she was about this Leam Dundas of
yours! Looks like jealousy; and very likely is. All you women are so
horribly jealous."

"Not all of us," said Maria hastily.

"And I do not think that Adelaide is," said Josephine. "She has no
cause; for though Leam is certainly very lovely, and seems to have
improved immensely for being at school, still she and Addy do not come
into collision any way, and I do not see why she should be jealous."

"Perhaps Edgar admired her photograph too much," said Fanny, who
was the stupid one of the three, but on occasions made the shrewdest
remarks.

Edgar laughed, not displeasedly. "That would be paying me too high a
compliment," he said.

Whereat his three sisters echoed "Compliment!" in various tones of
deprecation, and Josephine added a meaning little laugh for her own
share, for which Edgar gave her a kiss, and said in a bantering kind
of voice, "Now, Joseph! mind what you are about!"




CHAPTER XXIII.

ON THE MOOR.


It was a gray and gusty day in November, with heavy masses of
low-lying clouds rolling tumultuously overhead, and a general look
of damp and decay about the fields and banks--one of those melancholy
days of the late autumn which make one long for the more varied
circumstances of confessed winter, when the deep blue shadows in the
crisp snow suggest the glory of southern skies, and the sparkle of the
sun on the delicate tracery of the frosted branches has a mimicry of
life, such as we imagine strange elves and fairies might create.

There was no point of color in the landscape save the brown foliage of
the shivering beech trees, a few coarse splashes of yellow weeds, and
here and there a trail of dying crimson leaves threading the barren
hedgerows. Everything was "sombre, lifeless, mournful", and even Edgar
Harrowby, though by no means sentimentally impressionable to outward
conditions, felt, as he rode through the deserted lanes and looked
abroad over the stagnant country, that life on the off-hunt days was
but a slow-kind of thing at North Aston, and that any incident which
should break the dead monotony of the scene would be welcome.

He had been thinking a great deal of Adelaide for the last four or
five days, since she had dined at the Hill, and making up his mind to
take the final plunge before long. He was not in love with her, but
she suited, as has been said; and that was as good as love to
Edgar, who had now to take up his squiredom and country gentleman's
respectability, after having had his share of a young man's "fling" in
rather larger proportion than falls to the lot of most. All the same,
he wished that her face had more expression and that her eyes were
perfectly straight; and he wanted to see Leam Dundas.

He had made a long round to-day, and was turning now homeward, when,
as he had almost crossed the moor, athwart which his road led, he saw
standing on a little hillock, away from the main track, the slight
figure of a woman sharply defined against the sky. She was alone,
doing nothing, not seeming to be looking at anything--just standing
there on the hillock, facing the north-west, as if for pleasure in the
rough freshness of the breeze.

The wind blew back her dress, and showed her girlish form, supple,
flexible, graceful, fashioned like some nymph of olden time. From her
small feet, arched and narrow, gripping the ground like feet of steel,
to the slender throat on which her head was set with so much grace
of line, yet with no sense of over-weighting in its tender curves, an
expression of nervous energy underlying her fragile litheness of form,
a look of strength--not muscular nor the strength of bulk or weight,
but the strength of fibre, will, tenacity--seemed to mark her out as
something different from the herd.

Edgar scarcely gave this vague impression words in his own mind, but
he was conscious of a new revelation of womanhood, and he scented an
adventure in this solitary figure facing the north-west wind on the
lonely moor.

Her very dress, too, had a character of its own in harmony with the
rest--black all through, save for the scarlet feather in her hat,
which burnt like a flame against the gray background of the sky;
and her whole attitude had something of defiance in its profound
stillness, while standing so boldly against the strong blasts that
swept across the heights, which caught his imagination, at that
moment ready to be inflamed. All things depend on times and moods, and
Edgar's mood at this moment of first seeing Leam Dundas was favorable
for the reception of new impressions.

For, of course, it was Leam--Leam, who, since her return from school,
alone and without companionship, was feverish often, and often
impelled to escape into the open country from something that oppressed
her down in the valley too painfully to be borne. She had never been
a confidential nor an expansive schoolfellow; not even an affectionate
one as girls count affection, seeing that she neither kissed nor
cried, nor quarreled nor made up--neither stood as a model of
fidelity nor changed her girl-lovers in anticipation of future
inconstancies--writing a love-letter to Ada to-day and a copy of
verses to Ethel to-morrow--but had kept with all the same quiet
gravity and gentle reticence which seemed to watch rather than share,
and to be more careful not to offend than solicitous to win.

All the same, she missed her former comrades now that she had lost
them; but most of all she missed the wholesome occupation and mental
employment of her studies. Left as she was to herself, thoughts and
memories were gathering up from the background where they had lain
dormant if extant all these years, and through her solitude were
getting a vitality which made her stand still in a kind of breathless
agony, wondering where they would lead her and in what they would end.
At times such a burning sense of sin would flash over her that she
felt as if she must confess that hideous fact of her girlish past. It
seemed so shameful that she should be living there among the rest, a
criminal with the innocent, and not tell them what she was. Then the
instinct of self-preservation would carry it over her conscience, and
she would press back her thoughts and go out, as to-day, to cool her
feverish blood, and grow calm to bear and strong to hold the heavy
burden which she had fashioned by her own mad deed and laid for life
on her own hands.

If only the ladies had not insisted so strongly on mamma's personality
in heaven! if only they had not lighted up her imagination, her
loyalty, by this tremendous torch of faith and love! How bitterly she
regretted the childish fanaticism which had made her imagine herself
the providence of that beloved memory, the avenger of those shadowy
wrongs! Oh, if she could undo the past and call madame back to life!
She would kiss her now, and even call her mamma if it would please her
and papa. So she stood on the hillock facing the north-west, thinking
these things and regretting in vain.

As Edgar came riding by his large black hound dashed off to Leam and
barked furiously, all four paws planted on the ground as if preparing
for a spring. The beast had probably no malice, and might have meant
it merely as his method of saying, "Who are you?" but he looked
formidable, and Leam started back and cried, "Down, dog! go away!" in
a voice half angry and half afraid.

Then Edgar saw the face, and knew who she was. He rode across the
turf, calling off his dog, and came up to her. It was an opportunity,
and Edgar Harrowby was a man who knew how to take advantage of
opportunities. It was in his creed to thank Providence for favorable
chances by making the most of them, and this was a chance of which it
would be manifestly ungrateful not to make the most. It was far more
picturesque to meet her for the first time, as now, on the wild moor
on a gusty gray November day, than in the gloomy old drawing-room at
the Hill. It gave a flavor of romance and the forbidden which was not
without its value in the beginning of an acquaintance with such a face
as Leam's. Nevertheless, in spite of the romance that hung about the
circumstance, his first words were common-place enough. "I hope my dog
has not alarmed you?" he said, lifting his hat.

Leam looked at him with those wonderful eyes of hers, that seemed
somehow to look through him. She, standing on her hillock, was
slightly higher than Edgar sitting on his horse; and her head was bent
as she looked down on him, giving her attitude and gesture something
of a dignified assumption of superiority, more like the Leam of the
past than of the present. "No, I was not alarmed," she said. "But I
do not like to be barked at," she added, an echo of the old childish
sense of injury from circumstance that was so quaint and pretty in her
half-complaining voice.

"I suppose not: how should you?" answered Edgar with sympathetic
energy. "Rover is a good-old fellow, but he has the troublesome trick
of giving tongue unnecessarily. He would not have hurt you, but I
should be very sorry to think he had frightened you. To heel, sir!"
angrily.

"No, he did not frighten me." repeated Leam.

Never loquacious, there was something about this man's face and
manner, his masterful spirit underneath his courteous bearing, his
look of masculine power and domination, his admiring eyes that fixed
themselves on her so unflinchingly--not with insolence, but as if he
had the prescriptive right of manhood to look at her, only a woman, as
he chose, he commanding and she obeying--that quelled and silenced
her even beyond her wont. He was the first gentleman of noteworthy
appearance who had ever spoken to her--not counting Alick, nor
the masters who had taught her at school, nor Mr. Birkett, nor Mr.
Fairbairn, as gentlemen of noteworthy appearance--and the first of all
things has a special influence over young minds.

"You are brave to walk so far alone: you ought to have a dog like
Rover to protect you," Edgar said, still looking at her with those
unflinching eyes, which oppressed her even when she did not see them.

"I am not brave, and I do not care for dogs. Besides, I do not often
walk so far as this; but I felt the valley stifling to-day," answered
Leam, in her matter-of-fact, categorical way.

"All the same, you ought to have protection," Edgar said
authoritatively, and Leam did not reply.

She only looked at him earnestly, wondering against what she should
be protected, having abandoned by this time her belief in banditti and
wild beasts.

If his eyes oppressed her, hers half embarrassed him. There was such
a strange mixture of intensity and innocence in them, he scarcely knew
how to meet them.

"It is absurd to pretend that we do not know each other," then said
Edgar after a short pause, smiling; and his smile was very sweet and
pleasant. "You are Miss Dundas--I am Edgar Harrowby."

"Yes, I know," Leam answered.

"How is that?" he asked, "_I_ knew _you_ from your photograph--once
seen not to be forgotten again," gallantly--"but how should you know
me?"

Leam raised her eyes from the ground where she had cast them. Those
slow full looks, intense, tragic, fixed, had a startling effect of
which she was wholly unconscious. Edgar felt his own grow dark and
tender as he met hers. If the soul and mind within only answered to
the mask without, what queen or goddess could surpass this half-breed
Spanish girl, this country-born, unnoted, but glorious Leam Dundas? he
thought.

"And I knew you from yours," she answered.

"An honor beyond my deserts," said Edgar.

Not that he thought the notice of a girl, even with such a face
as this, beyond his deserts. Indeed, if a queen or a goddess had
condescended to him, it would not have been a grace beyond his merits;
but it sounded pretty to say so, and served to make talk as well as
anything else. And to make talk was the main business on hand at this
present moment.

"Why an honor?" asked Leam, ignorant of the elements of flirting.

Edgar smiled again, and this time his smile without words troubled
her. It seemed the assertion of superior intelligence, contemptuous,
if half pitiful of her ignorance. Once so serenely convinced of her
superiority, Leam was now as suspicious of her shortcomings, and was
soon abashed.

Edgar did not see that he had troubled her. Masterful and masculine
to an eminent degree, the timid doubts and fears of a young girl were
things he could not recognize. He had no point in his own nature with
which they came in contact, so that he should sympathize with them.
He knew the whole fence and foil of coquetry, the signs of silent
flattery, the sweet language of womanly self-conscious love, whether
wooing or being won; but the fluttering misgivings of youth and
absolute inexperience were dark to him. All of which he felt conscious
was that here was something deliciously fresh and original, and that
Leam was more beautiful to look at than Adelaide, and a great deal
more interesting to talk to.

"If you will allow me, now that I have had the pleasure of meeting
you, I will see you safe for at least part of your way home," he said,
passing by her naïve query "Why an honor?" as a thing to be answered
only by that smile of superior wisdom.

Flinging himself from his horse, he took the bridle in his hand and
turned toward home, looking to the girl to accompany him. Leam felt
that she could not refuse his escort offered as so much a matter of
course. Why should she? It was very pleasant to have some one to walk
with--some one not her father, with whom she still felt shy, if not
now absolutely estranged; nor yet Alick, in whose pale face she was
always reading the past, and who, though he was so good and kind
and tender, was her master and held her in his hand. This handsome,
courteous gentleman was different from either, and she liked his
society and superior ways. And as he began now to talk to her of
things not trenching on nor admitting of flirtation--chiefly of the
places he had visited, India, Egypt, Italy, Spain--she was not so much
abashed by his unflinching looks and masterful manner.

When he entered on Spain and his recollections of what he had seen
there, the girl's heart throbbed, and her pale face grew whiter still
with the passionate thrill that stirred her. The old blood was in her
veins yet, and, though modified, and in some sense transformed, she
was still Pepita's daughter and the child of Andalusia. And here was
truth; not like that poor wretched madame's talk, which even she had
found out to be false and only making believe to know what she did not
know. Spain was the name of power with Learn, as it had been with her
mother, and she lifted her face, white with its passionate desires,
listening as if entranced to all that Edgar said.

It was a good opening, and the handsome soldier-squire congratulated
himself on his lucky hit and serviceable memory. Presently he touched
on Andalusia, and Leam, who hitherto had been listening without
comment, now broke in eagerly. "That is my own country!" she cried.
"Mamma came from Andalusia, beautiful Andalusia! Ah! how I should like
to go there!"

"Perhaps you will some day," Edgar answered a little significantly.

Had she been more instructed in the kind of thing he meant, she would
have seen that he wished to convey the idea of a love-journey made
with him.

She shook her head and her eyes grew moist and dewy. "Not now," she
said mournfully. "Poor mamma has gone, and there is no one now to take
me."

"I will make up a party some day, and you shall be one of us," said
Edgar.

She brightened all over. "Ah! that would be delightful!" she cried,
taking him seriously. "When do you think we shall go?"

"I will talk about it," Edgar answered, though smiling again--Leam
wished he would not smile so often--a little aghast at her
literalness, and saying to himself in warning that he must be careful
of what he said to Leam Dundas. It was evident that she did not
understand either badinage or a joke. But her very earnestness pleased
him for all its oddity. It was so unlike the superficiality and
levity of the modern girl--that hateful Girl of the Period, in whose
existence he believed, and of whose influence he stood in almost
superstitious awe. He liked that grave, intense way of hers, which was
neither puritanical nor stolid, but, on the contrary, full of unspoken
passion, rich in latent concentrated power.

"They are very beautiful, are they not?" Leam asked suddenly.

"What? who?" was Edgar's answer.

"The Andalusian women, and the men," returned Leam.

"The men are fine-looking fellows enough," answered Edgar
carelessly--"a little too brutal for my taste, but well-grown men for
all that. But I have seen prettier women out of Spain than in it."

"Mamma used to say they were so beautiful--the most beautiful of
all the women in the world; and the best." Leam said this with a
disappointed air and her old injured accent.

Edgar laughed softly. "The prettiest Andalusian woman I have ever
seen has an English father," he answered, with a sudden flush on his
handsome face as he bent it a little nearer to hers.

"How odd!" said Leam. "An English father? That is like me."

Edgar looked at her, to read how much of this was real ingenuousness,
how much affected simplicity. He saw only a candid inquiring face with
a faint shade of surprise in its quiet earnestness, unquestionably not
affected.

"Just so," he answered. "Exactly like you."

His voice and manner made Leam blush uncomfortably. She was conscious
of something disturbing, without knowing what it was. She first looked
up into his face with the same expression of inquiry as before, then
down to the earth perplexedly, when suddenly the truth came upon her;
he meant herself--she was the prettiest Andalusian he had ever seen.

She was intensely humiliated at her discovery. Not one of those girls
who study every feature, every gesture, every point, till there is
not a square inch of their personality of which they are not painfully
conscious, Leam had never taken herself into artistic consideration
at all. She had been proud of her Spanish blood, of her mantilla, her
high comb and her fan; but of herself as a woman among women she knew
nothing, nor whether she was plain or pretty. Indeed, had she had to
say offhand which, she would have answered plain. The revelation which
comes sooner or later to all women of the charms they possess had not
yet come to her; and Edgar's words, making the first puncture in
her ignorance, pained her more by the shock which they gave her
self-consciousness than they pleased her by their flattery.

She said no more, but walked by his side with her head held very high
and slightly turned away. She was sorry that he had offended her. They
had been getting on together so well until he had said this foolish
thing, and now they were like friends who had quarreled. She was quite
sorry that he had been so foolish as to offend her, but she must not
forgive him--at least not just yet. It was very wrong of him to tell
her that she was prettier than the true children of the soil; and she
resented the slight to Spain and to her mother, as well as the wrong
done to herself, by his saying that which was not true. So she walked
with her little head held high, and Edgar could get nothing more out
of her. When Leam was offended coaxings to make her forget were of no
avail. She had to wear through an impression by herself, and it was
useless to try for a premature pardon.

Edgar saw that he had overshot the mark, and that his best policy now
was absence; wherefore, after a few moments' silence, he remounted his
horse, looking penitent, handsome, full of admiration and downcast.

"I hope we shall soon see you at the Hill, Miss Dundas," he said,
holding her hand in his for his farewell a little longer than was
quite necessary for good breeding or even cordiality.

"I very seldom go to the Hill," answered Leam, looking past his head.

"But you will come, and soon?" fervently.

"Perhaps: I do not know," answered Leam, still looking past his head,
and embarrassed to a most uncomfortable extent.

"Thank you," he said, as if he had been thanking her for the grace of
his life; and with a long look, lifting his hat again, he rode off,
just escaping by a few hundred yards the danger of being met walking
with Leam by his sisters and Adelaide Birkett. They were all driving
together in the phaeton, and the sisters were making much of their
young friend.

At that moment Edgar preferred to be met alone and not walking with
Leam. He did not stop the carriage--simply nodded to them all with
familiar kindness, as a group of relatives not demanding extra
courtesy, flinging a few words behind him as he rode on smiling. Nor
did the ladies in their turn stop for Leam, whom they met soon after
walking slowly along the road; but Josephine said, as they passed, how
pretty Learn looked to-day, and how much softer her face was than it
used to be; and Maria, even Maria, agreed with kindly Joseph, and
was quite eulogistic on the object of her old disdain. Adelaide sat
silent, and did not join in their encomiums.

It would have been a nice point to ascertain if the Misses Harrowby
would have praised the girl's beauty as they did had they known
that she had grown soft and dewy-eyed by talking of Spain with their
brother Edgar, though she had hardened a little afterward when he told
her that she was the prettiest Andalusian he had ever seen.

During the dinner at the Hill, where Adelaide was one of the family
party, Edgar mentioned casually how that he had met Miss Dundas on the
moor, and had had to speak to her because of Rover's misbehavior.

"Yes? and what do you think of her?" asked Mrs. Harrowby with a sharp
glance.

"I scarcely know: I have hardly seen her as yet," he answered.

"Did she say or do anything very extraordinary to-day?" asked
Adelaide with such an air of contemptuous curiosity as seemed to him
insufferably insolent.

"No, nothing. Is she in the habit of saying or doing extraordinary
things?" he answered back, arching his eyebrows and speaking in a
well-affected tone of sincere inquiry.

"At times she is more like a maniac than a sane person," said
Adelaide, breaking her bread with deliberation. "What can you expect
from such a parentage and education as hers?"

Edgar looked down and smiled satirically. "Poor Pepita's sins lie
heavy on your mind," he answered.

"Yes, I believe in race," was her reply.

"Mother," then said Edgar after a short silence, "why do you not have
Miss Dundas to dine here with Adelaide? It would be more amusing
to her, for it must be dull"--turning to their guest and speaking
amiably, considerately--"I am afraid very dull--to be so often quite
alone with us."

He did not add what he thought, that it was almost indelicate in her
to be here so often. He was out of humor with her to-day.

"She is such an uncertain girl we never know how she may be. I had her
to stay here once, and I do not want to repeat the experiment," was
Mrs. Harrowby's answer.

"But, mamma, that was before she went to school, when she was quite a
child. She is so much improved now," pleaded Josephine.

"Good little soul!" said Edgar under his breath.--"Wine, Joseph?"
aloud, as his recognition of her good offices.

"And I like coming alone best, thanks," said Adelaide with unruffled
calmness. "Leam has never been my friend; indeed, I do not like her,
and you all," to the sisters, with a gracious smile and prettily,
"have always been my favorite companions."

"Still, she is very lonely, and it would be kind. Besides, she is good
to look at," said Edgar.

"Do you think so?" said Mrs. Harrowby with crisp lips and
ill-concealed displeasure.

"Do I think so, mother? I should have no eyes else. She is superb. I
have never seen such a face. She is the most beautiful creature I have
ever known of any nation."

Adelaide's delicate pink cheeks turned pale, and then they flushed a
brilliant rose as she laid down her spoon and left her jelly untasted.

There were no trials of skill at chess, no duets, no solos, this
evening. After dinner Edgar went to his own room and sat there
smoking. He felt revolted at the idea of spending two or three hours
with what he irreverently called "a lot of dull women," and preferred
his own thoughts to their talk. He sauntered into the drawing-room
about ten minutes before Adelaide had to leave, apologizing for his
absence on the man's easy plea of "business," saying he was sorry to
have missed her charming society, and he hoped they should see her
there soon again, and so on--all in the proper voice and manner,
but with a certain ring of insincerity in the tones which Adelaide
detected, if the others did not. But she accepted his excuses with the
most admirable tact, smiling to the sisters as she said, "Oh, we
have been very happy, Josephine, have we not? though," with a nice
admission of Edgar's claims, not too broadly stated nor too warmly
allowed, "of course it would have been very pleasant if you could have
come in too."

"It has been my loss," said Edgar.

She smiled "Yes" by eyes, lips and turn of her graceful head. In
speech she answered, "Of that, of course, you are the best judge for
yourself; but none of us here feel as some girls do, lost without
gentlemen to amuse them. We can get on very well by ourselves. Cannot
we, Joseph?"

And Josephine said gallantly, "Yes," but her heart was more rueful
than her voice, and she thought that some gentlemen were very
nice, and that Sebastian Dundas especially made the dull time pass
pleasantly.




CHAPTER XXIV.

THE CHILD FINA.


Nothing surprised the North Astonians more than what it was the
fashion to call "the admirable manner in which Leam behaved to
the child Fina." If the world which praised her had known all the
compelling circumstances, would it have called her admirable then? Yet
beyond those natural promptings of remorse which forced her to do
the best she could for the child whom her fatal crime had rendered
motherless, Leam did honestly behave well, if this means doing irksome
things without complaint and sacrificing self to a sense of right. And
this was all the more praiseworthy in that sympathy of nature between
these two young creatures there was none, and the girl's maternal
instinct was not of that universal kind which makes all children
pleasant, whatever they may be. Hence, she did nobly when she did her
duty with the uncompromising exactness characteristic of her; but then
it was only duty, it was not love.

How should it be love? Her tenacity and reserve were ill matched with
Fina's native inconstancy of purpose and childish incontinence of
speech; her pride of race resented her father's adoption of a stranger
into the penetralia of the family; and to share the name she had
inherited from her mother with the daughter of that mother's rival
seemed to her a wrong done to both the living and the dead. Naturally
taciturn, unjoyful, and ever oppressed by that brooding consciousness
of guilt hanging like a cloud over her memory, formless, vague, but
never lifting, Fina's changeful temper and tumultuous vivacity were
intensely wearisome to her. Nevertheless, she was forbearing if not
loving, and the people said rightly when they said she was admirable.

Her grave patience with the little one did more to open her father's
heart to her than did even her own wonderful beauty, which gratified
his paternal pride of authorship, or than her efforts after docility
to himself--efforts that would have been creditable to any one, and
that with her were heroic. For Mr. Dundas, being of those clinging,
clasping natures which must love some one, had taken poor madame's
child into his affections in the wholesale manner so emphatically his
own, now in these first days of his new paternity seeming to live only
for the little Fina, and never happy but when he had her with him. It
was the first time that he felt he had had a child of his own; and he
gave her the love which would have been Leam's had Pepita been less
of a savage than she was, and more discreet in the matter of
doll-dressing.

The little round, fair-haired creature, with her picturesque
Gainsborough head and rose-red lips, pretty, pleasant, facile, easily
amused if easily made cross, divertible from her purpose if she was
but coaxed and caressed, and if the substitute offered was to her
liking--without tenacity, fluid, floating on the surface of things and
born of their froth; loving only those who ministered to her pleasure
and were in sight; forgetting yesterday's joys as though they had
never been, and her dearest the moment they were absent--a child
deliciously caressing because sensual by temperament and instinctively
diplomatic, with no latent greatness to be developed as time went on
and the flower set into the fruit. Epitomizing the characteristics of
the class of which her mother had been a typical example, she was the
pleasantest thing of his life to a man who cared mainly to be amused,
and who liked with a woman's liking to be loved.

The strong love of children inherent in him, which had never been
satisfied till now, seemed now to have gathered tenfold strength, and
the love of the man, who had never cared for his own, for this his
little daughter by adoption was almost a passion. If Leam could have
been jealous where she did not love, she would have been jealous of
her father and Fina. But she was not. On the contrary, it seemed to
soften some of the bitterness of her self-reproach, and she was glad
that madame's motherless child was not deserted, but had found a
substitute for the protection which she had taken from her; for Leam,
criminal, was not ignoble.

A few days after the meeting on the moor between Learn and Edgar, Mr.
Dundas drove to the Hill, carrying Fina with him. Leam had a fit of
shyness and refused to go: thus Sebastian had the child to himself,
and was not sorry to be without his elder and less congenial daughter.
He owned to himself that she was good, very good indeed, and a great
deal better than he ever expected she would be; yet for all that, with
her more than Oriental gravity and reserve, and that look of tragedy
haunting her face, she was not an amusing companion, and the little
one was.

Mr. Dundas had begun to take up his old habits again with the
Harrowbys. He found the patient constancy of his friend Josephine not
a disagreeable salve for a wounded heart and broken life; albeit poor
dear Joseph was getting stout and matronly, and took off the keen edge
of courtship by a willingness too manifest for wisdom. Sebastian liked
to be loved, but he did not like to be bored by being made overmuch
love to. The things are different, and most men resent the latter, how
much soever they desire the former.

Edgar was in the drawing-room when Mr. Dundas was announced. He was
booted and spurred, waiting his horse to be brought round. "What a
pretty little girl!" he said after a time. True to his type, he was
fond of children and animals, and children and animals liked him.
"Come and speak to me," he continued, holding out his hand to
Fina.--"Whose child is she?" vaguely to the company in general.

"Mine," said Mr. Dundas emphatically--"my youngest daughter, Fina
Dundas."

Edgar knew what he meant. He had often heard the story from his
sisters, and since his return home he had had Adelaide Birkett's
comments thereon. He looked then with even more interest on the
pretty little creature in dark-blue velvet and swansdown, careless,
unconscious, happy, as the child of a mystery and a tragedy in one.

"Ah!" he said sympathetically. "Come to me, little one," again,
coaxingly.

Fina, with her finger in her mouth, went up to him half shyly, half
boldly, and wholly prettily. She let him take her on his knee and kiss
her without remonstrance. She was of the kind to like being taken on
knees and kissed--especially by gentlemen who were strong and matronly
women who were soft--and she soon made friends. Not many minutes
elapsed before, kneeling upon his knees, she was stroking his tawny
beard and plaiting it in threes, pulling his long moustache, playing
with his watch-guard, and laughing in his face with the pretty
audacity of six.

"What a dear little puss!" cried Edgar, caressing her. "Very like
you, Joseph, I should think, when you were her age, judging by your
picture. Is she not, mother?"

"They say so, but I do not see it," answered Mrs. Harrowby primly.

She did not like to hear about this resemblance. There was something
in it that annoyed her intensely, she scarcely knew why, and the more
so because it was true.

"Poor madame used to say so: she saw it from the first, when Fina was
quite a little baby," said Josephine in a low voice.

She was kneeling by her brother's side caressing Fina. She always made
love to the little girl: it was one of her methods of making love to
the father.

"Is she like her mother?" asked Edgar in the same low tones, looking
at the child critically.

"A little," answered Josephine--"not much. It is odd, is it not, that
she should be more like me?"

Just then Fina laid her fresh sweet lips against Edgar's, and he
kissed her with a strange thrill of tenderness.

"Why, Edgar, I never saw you take so to a child before," cried Mrs.
Harrowby, not quite pleasantly; and on Sebastian adding with his
nervous little laugh, which meant the thing it assumed only to play
at, "I declare I shall be quite jealous, Edgar, if you make love to
my little girl like this." Edgar, who had the Englishman's dislike
to observation, save when he offered himself for personal admiration,
laughed too and put Fina away.

But the child had taken a fancy to him, and could scarcely be induced
to leave him. She clung to his hand still, and went reluctantly when
her stepfather called her. It was a very little matter, but men being
weak in certain directions, it delighted Edgar and annoyed Sebastian
beyond measure.

"I hope your elder daughter is well," then said Edgar, emphasizing the
adjective, the vision of Leam as he first saw her, breasting the wind,
filling his eyes with a strange light.

"Leam? Quite well, thanks. But how do you know anything about her?"
was Sebastian's reply.

"I met her yesterday on the moor, and Rover introduced us," answered
Edgar laughing.

"How close she is!" said her father fretfully. "She never told me a
word about it."

"Perhaps she thought the incident too trifling," suggested Edgar, a
little chagrined.

"Oh no, not at all! In a place like North Aston the least thing counts
as an adventure; and meeting for the first time one of the neighbors
is not an incident to be forgotten as if it were of no more value than
meeting a flock of sheep."

Mr. Dundas spoke peevishly. To a man who liked to be amused and who
lived on crumbs this reserved companionship was disappointing and
tiresome.

"Leam is at home making music," said Fina disdainfully. She had caught
the displeased accent of her adopted father, and echoed it.

"Does she make much music?" asked Edgar with his hand under her chin,
turning up her face.

The child shrugged her little shoulders. "She makes a noise," she
said; and those who heard her laughed.

"That is not a very polite way of putting it," said Edgar a little
gravely.

"No," said Josephine.

"You should speak nicely of your sister, my little one," put in
Sebastian.

Fina looked up into his face reproachfully. "You called it a noise
yourself, papa," she said, pouting. "You made her leave off yesterday
as soon as you came in, because you said she made your head ache with
her noise, and set your teeth--something, I don't know what."

"Did I, dear?" he repeated carelessly. "Well, we need not discuss the
subject. I dare say it amuses her to make music, as you call it, and
so we need say no more about it."

"But you did say it was a noise," persisted Fina, climbing on to his
knees and putting her arms round his neck. "And I think it a noise
too."

"Poor Leam's music cannot be very first-rate," remarked Maria, who
was a proficient and played almost as well as a "professional." "Four
years ago she did not know her notes, and four years' practice cannot
be expected to make a perfect pianiste."

"But a person may play very sweetly and yet not be what you call
perfect," said Edgar.

"Do you think so?" Maria answered with a frosty smile. "I do not." Of
what use to have toiled for thirty years early and late at scales
and thorough-bass if a stupid girl like Leam could be allowed to play
sweetly after four years' desultory practice? "Adelaide Birkett, if
you will, plays well," she added; "but Leam, poor child! how should
she?"

"I hope I shall have an opportunity of judging for myself," said
Edgar with his company manner.--"When will you come and dine here,
Dundas?--to-morrow? You and your elder daughter: we shall be very glad
to see you."

He looked to his mother. Mrs. Harrowby had drawn her lips tight, and
wore an injured air doing its best to be resigned. This was
Edgar's first essay in domestic mastership, and it pained her, not
unnaturally.

"Thanks," said Sebastian. "Willingly, if--" looking to Mrs. Harrowby.

"I have no engagement, and Edgar is master now," said that lady.

"And mind that Leam comes too," said Josephine, sharing her favorite
brother's action by design.

"And me," cried Fina.

Whereat they all laughed, which made Fina cry, to be consoled only by
some sweetmeats which Josephine found in her work-basket.

It was agreed, then, that the next day Leam and her father should dine
at the Hill.

"Only ourselves," Edgar said, wanting the excuse of her "being the
only lady" to devote himself to Leam. It was strange that he should
be so anxious to see her nearer, and in company with his sisters and
mother; for after all, why should he? What was she to him, either near
or afar off, alone or in the inner circle of his family?

But when the next day came Mr. Dundas appeared alone. Leam had been
taken with a fit of shyness, pride--who shall say?--and refused to
accept her share of the invitation. Her father made the stereotyped
excuse of "headache;" but headaches occur too opportunely to be
always real, and Leam's to-night was set down to the fancy side of
the account, and not believed in by the hearers any more than by the
bearer.

Edgar raged against her in his heart, and decided that she was not
worth a second thought, while the ladies said in an undertone from
each to each, "How rude!" Maria adding, "How like Leam!" the chain
of condemnation receiving no break till it came to Josephine, whose
patient soul refrained from wrath, and gave as her link, "Poor Leam!
perhaps she is shy or has really a headache."

In spite of his decision that she was not worth a second thought,
the impression which Leam had made on Edgar deepened with his
disappointment, and he became restless and unpleasant in his temper,
casting about for means whereby he might see her again. He cast
about in vain. This fit of shyness, pride, reluctance--who knows
what?--continued with Leam for many days after this. If she went out
at all, she went where she knew she should not be met; and if Edgar
called at Ford House, she was not to be found. She mainly devoted
herself to Fina and some books lent her by Alick, and kept the house
with strange persistency. Perhaps this was because the weather was
bad, for Leam, who could bear wind and frost and noonday sun, could
not bear wet. When it rained she shut herself up in her own room, and
pitied herself for the ungenial skies as she had pitied herself for
some other things before now.

Sitting thus reading one miserably dark, cold, misty day, the child
Fina came in to her with her lessons, which she repeated well. They
were very small and insignificant little lessons, for Leam had a
fellow-feeling for the troubles of ignorance, and laid but a light
hand on the frothy mind inside that curly head. When they were
finished the little one said coaxingly, "Now play with me, Leam! You
never play with me."

"What can I do, Fina?" poor Leam replied.

She had never learnt to play when she was a child: she had never built
towers and towns, made railway trains and coaches with the sofa and
chairs, played at giants through the dark passages and screamed when
she was caught. She had only sat still when mamma was asleep, or when
she was awake played on the zambomba, or listened to her when she told
her of the things of Spain, and made up stories with her dolls that
were less edifying than those of Mother Bunch. She could scarcely,
however, unpack that old box full of waxen puppets, with the one
dressed in scarlet and black, with fishbone horns and a worsted tail,
and a queer clumped kind of foot made of folds of leather, cleft in
the middle, that used to go by the name of "El señor papa." What could
she do?

"Shall I tell you a story?" she then said in a mild fit of
desperation, for story-telling was as little in her way as anything
else.

"Yes, yes, tell me a story!" Fina clapped her chubby hands together
and climbed up into Leam's lap.

"What shall it be about--bears or tigers, or what?" asked Leam
dutifully.

"Tell me about mamma, my own mamma, not Aunty Birkett," said Fina.

Leam shuddered from head to foot. This was the first time the little
girl had mentioned her mother's name to her. Indeed, she did not know
that she had ever heard of her at all--ever known that she had had
a mother; but the servants had talked, and the child's curiosity was
aroused. The dead mother is as much a matter of wondering inquiry
as the angels and the stars; and Fina's imagination was beginning to
bestir itself on the mysteries of childish life.

"I have nothing to tell you about her," said Leam, controlling
herself, though she still shivered.

"Yes, you have--everything," insisted Fina. "Was mamma pretty?"
playing with a corner of her sister's ribbon.

"People said so," answered Leam.

"As pretty as Cousin Addy?" she asked.

"About," said Leam, who thought neither supreme.

"Prettier than you?"

"I don't know: how can I tell?" she answered a little impatiently.

The mother's blood that ran in her, the mother's mould in which she
had been formed, forbade her to put herself below madame in anything;
but, as she was neither vain nor conscious, she found Fina's question
difficult to answer.

"Oh," cried Fina, in a tone of disappointment, "then she could not
have been very pretty."

"I dare say she was, but I do not know," returned Leam.

"And she died?" continued Fina, yawning in a childishly indifferent
manner.

"Yes, she died."

"Why? Who killed her? Did papa?" asked Fina.

Leam's face was very white: "No, not papa."

"Did God?"

"I cannot tell you, Fina," said Leam, to whom falsehoods were
abhorrent and the truth impossible.

"Did you?" persisted Fina with childish obstinacy.

"Now go," said Leam, putting her off her lap and rising from her chair
in strange disorder. "You are troublesome and ask too many questions."

Fina began to cry loudly, and Mr. Dundas, from his library below,
heard her. He came up stairs with his fussy, restless kindness, and
opened the door of the room where his two daughters, of nature and by
adoption, were.

"Heyday! what's all this about?" he cried. "What's the matter, my
little Fina? what are you crying for? Tut, tut! you should not cry
like this, darling; and, Leam," severely, "you should really keep the
child better amused and happy. She is as good as gold with me: with
you there is always something wrong."

Fina ran into his arms sobbing. "Leam is cross," she said. "She will
not tell me who killed mamma."

The man's ruddy face, reddened and roughened with travel, grew white
and pitiful. "God took her away, my darling," he said with a sob.
"She was too good for me, and He took her to live with the angels in
heaven,"

"And Leam's mamma? Is she in heaven too with the angels?" asked Fina,
opening her eyes wide through their tears,

"I hope so," Sebastian answered in an altered voice.

Leam covered her face in her hands; then lifting it up, she said
imploringly, "Papa, do not talk to her of mamma. It is sacrilege."

"I agree with you, Leam," said Mr, Dundas in a steady voice. "We meet
at the same point, but perhaps by different methods."

[TO BE CONTINUED.]




LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA

BY LADY BARKER.


    CAPE TOWN, October 16, 1875.

    Safe, safe at last, after twenty-four days of nothing but sea
    and sky, of white-crested waves--which made no secret of their
    intention of coming on board whenever they could or of tossing
    the good ship Edinburgh Castle hither and thither like a
    child's plaything--and of more deceitful sluggish rolling
    billows, looking tolerably calm to the unseafaring eye, but
    containing a vast amount of heaving power beneath their slow,
    undulating water-hills and valleys. Sometimes sky and sea
    have been steeped in dazzling haze of golden glare, sometimes
    brightened to blue of a sapphire depth. Again, a sudden change
    of wind has driven up serried clouds from the south and east,
    and all has been gray and cold and restful to eyes wearied
    with radiance and glitter of sun and sparkling water.

    Never has there been such exceptional weather, although the
    weather of my acquaintance invariably _is_ exceptional. No
    sooner had the outlines of Madeira melted and blended into
    the soft darkness of a summer night than we appeared to sail
    straight into tropic heat and a sluggish vapor, brooding on
    the water like steam from a giant geyser. This simmering,
    oily, exhausting temperature carried us close to the line.
    "What is before us," we asked each other languidly, "if it be
    hotter than this? How can mortal man, woman, still less child,
    endure existence?" Vain alarms! Yet another shift of the
    light wind, another degree passed, and we are all shivering in
    winter wraps. The line was crossed in greatcoats and shawls,
    and the only people whose complexion did not resemble a
    purple plum were those lucky ones who had strength of mind
    and steadiness of body to lurch up and down the deck all
    day enjoying a strange method of movement which they called
    walking.

    The exceptional weather pursued us right into the very
    dock. Table Mountain ought to be seen--and very often is
    seen--seventy miles away. I am told it looks a fine bold bluff
    at that distance, Yesterday we had blown off our last pound of
    steam and were safe under its lee before we could tell
    there was a mountain there at all, still less an almost
    perpendicular cliff more than three thousand feet high. Robben
    Island looked like a dun-colored hillock as we shot past it
    within a short distance, and a more forlorn and discouraging
    islet I don't think I have ever beheld. When I expressed
    something of this impression to a cheery fellow-voyager, he
    could only urge in its defence that there were a great many
    rabbits on it. If he had thrown the lighthouse into the
    bargain, I think he would have summed up all its attractive
    features. Unless Langalibalele is of a singularly
    unimpressionable nature, he must have found his sojourn on
    it somewhat monotonous, but he always says he was very
    comfortable there.

    And now for the land. We are close alongside of a wharf,
    and still a capital and faithful copy of a Scotch mist wraps
    houses, trees and sloping uplands in a fibry fantastic veil,
    and the cold drizzle seems to curdle the spirits and energies
    of the few listless Malays and half-caste boys and men who are
    lounging about. Here come hansom cabs rattling up one after
    the other, all with black drivers in gay and fantastic head
    and shoulder gear; but their hearts seem precisely as
    the hearts of their London brethren, and they single out
    new-comers at a glance, and shout offers to drive them a
    hundred yards or so for exorbitant sums, or yell laudatory
    recommendations of sundry hotels. You must bear in mind that
    in a colony every pot-house is a hotel, and generally rejoices
    in a name much too imposing to fit across its frontage. These
    hansoms are all painted white with the name of some ship in
    bright letters on the side, and are a great deal cleaner,
    roomier and more comfortable than their London "forbears." The
    horses are small and shabby, but rattle along at a good pace;
    and soon each cab has its load of happy home-comers and swings
    rapidly away to make room for fresh arrivals hurrying up for
    fares. Hospitable suggestions come pouring in, and it is as
    though it were altogether a new experience when one steps
    cautiously on the land, half expecting it to dip away
    playfully from under one's feet. A little boy puts my thoughts
    into words when he exclaims, "How steady the ground is!"
    and becomes a still more faithful interpreter of a wave-worn
    voyager's sensations when, a couple of hours later, he demands
    permission to get _out_ of his delicious little white bed
    that he may have the pleasure of getting _into_ it again. The
    evening is cold and raw and the new picture is all blurred and
    soft and indistinct, and nothing seems plain except the
    kindly grace of our welcome and the
    never-before-sufficiently-appreciated delights of space and
    silence.

    OCTOBER 17.

    How pleasant is the process familiarly known as "looking
    about one," particularly when performed under exceptionally
    favorable circumstances! A long and happy day commenced with a
    stroll through the botanic gardens, parallel with which runs,
    on one side, a splendid oak avenue just now in all the
    vivid freshness of its young spring leaves. The gardens are
    beautifully kept, and are valuable as affording a sort of
    experimental nursery in which new plants and trees can be
    brought up on trial and their adaptability to the soil and
    climate ascertained. For instance, the first thing that caught
    my eye was the gigantic trunk of an Australian blue-gum tree,
    which had attained to a girth and height not often seen in its
    own land. The flora of the Cape Colony is exceptionally varied
    and beautiful, but one peculiarity incidentally alluded to by
    my charming guide struck me as very noticeable. It is that
    in this dry climate and porous soil all the efforts of
    uncultivated nature are devoted to the _stems_ of the
    vegetation: on their sap-retaining power depends the life of
    the plant, so blossom and leaf, though exquisitely indicated,
    are fragile and incomplete compared to the solidity and
    bulbous appearance of the stalk. Everything is sacrificed to
    the practical principle of keeping life together, and it is
    not until these stout-stemmed plants are cultivated and
    duly sheltered and watered, and can grow, as it were, with
    confidence, that they are able to do justice to the inherent
    beauty of penciled petal and veined leaf. Then the stem
    contracts to ordinary dimensions, and leaf and blossom expand
    into things which may well be a joy to the botanist's eye.
    A thousand times during that shady saunter did I envy my
    companions their scientific acquaintance with the beautiful
    green things of earth, and that intimate knowledge of a
    subject which enhances one's appreciation of its charms as
    much as bringing a lamp into a darkened picture-gallery. There
    are the treasures of form and color, but from ignorant eyes
    more than half their charms and wonders are held back.

    A few steps beyond the garden stand the library and natural
    history museum. The former is truly a credit to the Colony.
    Spacious, handsome, rich in literary treasures, It would
    bear comparison with similar institutions in far older and
    wealthier places. But I have often noticed in colonies how
    much importance is attached to the possession of a good public
    library, and how fond, as a rule, colonists are of books. In
    a new settlement other shops may be ill supplied, but there
    is always a good bookseller's, and all books are to be bought
    there at pretty nearly the same prices as in England. Here
    each volume costs precisely the same as it would in London,
    and it would puzzle ever so greedy a reader to name a book
    which would not be instantly handed to him.

    The museum is well worth a visit of many more hours than we
    could afford minutes, and, as might be expected, contains
    numerous specimens of the _Bok_ family, whose tapering horns
    and slender legs are to be seen at every turn of one's head.
    Models are there also of the largest diamonds, and especially
    well copied is the famous "Star of South Africa," a
    magnificent brilliant of purest water, sold here originally
    for something like twelve thousand pounds, and resold for
    double that sum three or four years back. In these few hours I
    perceive, or think I perceive, a certain soreness, if one
    may use the word, on the part of the Cape Colonists about the
    unappreciativeness of the English public toward their produce
    and possessions. For Instance, an enormous quantity of wine is
    annually exported, which reaches London by a devious route and
    fetches a high price, as it is fairly entitled to do from its
    excellence. If that same wine were sent direct to a London
    merchant and boldly sold as Cape wine, it is said that the
    profit on it would be a very different affair. The same
    prejudice exists against Cape diamonds. Of course, as in other
    things, a large proportion of inferior stones are forced into
    the market and serve to give the diamonds that bad name which
    we all know is so fatal to a dog. But it is only necessary to
    pretend that a really fine Cape diamond has come from Brazil
    to ensure its fetching a handsome price, and in that way even
    jewelers themselves have been known to buy and give a good
    round sum, too, for stones they would otherwise have looked
    upon with suspicion. Already I have seen a straw-colored
    diamond from "Du Zoit's pan" in the diamond-fields cut in
    Amsterdam and set in London, which could hold its own for
    purity, radiance and color against any other stone of the same
    rare tint, without fear or favor; but of course such gems are
    not common, and fairly good diamonds cost as much here as in
    any other part of the world.

    The light morning mists from that dampness of yesterday have
    rolled gradually away as the beautiful sunshine dried the
    atmosphere, and by midday the table-cloth, as the colonists
    affectionately call the white, fleece-like vapor which so
    often rests on their pet mountain, has been folded up and laid
    aside in Cloudland for future use. I don't know what picture
    other people may have made to their own minds of the shape and
    size of Table Mountain, but it was quite a surprise and the
    least little bit in the world of a disappointment to me to
    find that it cuts the sky (and what a beautiful sky it is!)
    with a perfectly straight and level line. A gentle, undulating
    foreground broken into ravines, where patches of green _velts_
    or fields, clumps of trees and early settlers' houses nestle
    cosily down, guides the eye half-way up the mountain. There
    the rounder forms abruptly cease, and great granite cliffs
    rise, bare and straight, up to the level line stretching ever
    so far along. "It is so characteristic," and "You grow to be
    so fond of that mountain," are observations I have heard made
    in reply to the carping criticisms of travelers, and already
    I begin to understand the meaning of the phrases. But you
    need to see the mountain from various points of view and under
    different influences of sun and cloud before you can take in
    its striking and peculiar charms.

    On each side of the straight line which is emphatically Table
    Mountain, but actually forming part of it, is a bold headland
    of the shape one is usually accustomed to in mountains. The
    "Devil's Peak" is uncompromising enough for any one's taste,
    whilst the "Lion's Head" charms the eye by its bluff form
    and deep purple fissures. These grand promontories are not,
    however, half so beloved by Cape Colonists as their own Table
    Mountain, and it is curious and amusing to notice how the
    influence of this odd straight ridge, ever before their eyes,
    has unconsciously guided and influenced their architectural
    tastes. All the roofs of the houses are straight--straight
    as the mountain; a gable is almost unknown, and even the few
    steeples are dwarfed to an imperceptible departure from the
    prevailing straight line. The very trees which shade the
    Parade-ground and border the road in places have their tops
    blown absolutely straight and flat, as though giant shears
    had trimmed them; but I must confess, in spite of a
    natural anxiety to carry out my theory, that the violent
    "sou'-easters" are the "straighteners" in their case.

    Cape Town is so straggling that it is difficult to form any
    idea of its real size, but the low houses are neat and the
    streets are well kept and look quaint and lively enough to my
    new eyes this morning. There are plenty of people moving about
    with a sociable, business-like air; lots of different shades
    of black and brown Malays, with pointed hats on the men's
    heads: the women encircle their dusky, smiling faces with a
    gay cotton handkerchief and throw another of a still brighter
    hue over their shoulders. When you add to this that they
    wear a full, flowing, stiffly-starched cotton gown of a third
    bright color, you can perhaps form some idea of how they
    enliven the streets. Swarms of children everywhere, romping
    and laughing and showing their white teeth in broadest
    of grins. The white children strike me at once as looking
    marvelously well--such chubby cheeks, such sturdy fat
    legs--and all, black or white, with that amazing air of
    independence peculiar to baby-colonists. Nobody seems to mind
    them and nothing seems to harm them. Here are half a dozen
    tiny boys shouting and laughing at one side of the road, and
    half a dozen baby-girls at the other (they all seem to play
    separately): they are all driving each other, for "horses" is
    the one game here. By the side of a pond sit two toddles of
    about three years old, in one garment apiece and pointed hats:
    they are very busy with string and a pin; but who is taking
    care of them and why don't they tumble in? They are as fat as
    ortolans and grin at us in the most friendly fashion.

    We must remember that this chances to be the very best moment
    of the whole year in which to see the Cape and the dwellers
    thereat. The cold weather has left its bright roses on the
    children's cheeks, and the winter rains exceptionally having
    this year made every blade of grass and leaf of tree to laugh
    and sing in freshest green. After the dry, windy summer I am
    assured there is hardly a leaf and never a blade of grass to
    be seen in Cape Town, and only a little straggling verdure
    under the shelter of the mountain. The great want of this
    place is water. No river, scarcely a brook, refreshes one's
    eye for many and many a league inward. The necessary water for
    the use of the town is brought down by pipes from the numerous
    springs which trickle out of the granite cliffs of Table
    Mountain, but there is never a sufficiency to spare for
    watering roads or grassplots. This scarcity is a double loss
    to residents and visitors, for one misses it both for use and
    beauty.

    Everybody who comes here rides or drives round the "Kloof."
    That may be; but what I maintain is that very few do it so
    delightfully as I did this sunny afternoon with a companion
    who knew and loved every turn of the romantic road, who could
    tell me the name of every bush or flower, of every distant
    stretch of hills, and helped me to make a map in my head of
    the stretching landscape and curving bay. Ah! how delicious it
    was, the winding, climbing road, at whose every angle a fresh
    fair landscape fell away from beneath our feet or a shining
    stretch of sea, whose transparent green and purple shadows
    broke in a fringe of feathery spray at the foot of bold, rocky
    cliffs, or crept up to a smooth expanse of silver sand in a
    soft curling line of foam! "Kloof" means simply cleft, and is
    the pass between the Table Mountain and the Lion's Head, The
    road first rises, rises, rises, until one seems half-way up
    the great mountain, and the little straight--roofed white
    houses, the green velts or fields and the parallel lines of
    the vineyards have sunk below one's feet far, far away. The
    mountain gains in grandeur as one approaches it, for the
    undulating spurs which run from it down to the sea-shore take
    away from the height looking upward. But when these are left
    beneath, the perpendicular Walls of granite, rising sheer
    and straight up to the bold sky-line, and the rugged, massive
    strength of the buttress-like cliffs, begin to gain something
    of their true value to the stranger's eye. The most beautiful
    part of the road, however, to my taste, is the descent, when
    the shining expanse of Camp's Bay lies shimmering in the warm
    afternoon haze with a thousand lights and shadows from cloud
    and cliff touching and passing over the crisp water-surface.
    By many a steep zigzag we round the Lion's Head, and drop once
    more on a level road running parallel to the sea-shore, and so
    home in the balmy and yet bracing twilight. The midday sun is
    hot and scorching even at this time of year, but it is always
    cool in the shade, and no sooner do the afternoon shadows grow
    to any length than the air freshens into sharpness, and by
    sundown one is glad of a good warm shawl.


    OCTOBER 18.

    Another bright, ideal day, and the morning passed in a
    delicious flower-filled room looking over old books and
    records and listening to odd, quaint little scraps from the
    old Dutch records. But directly after luncheon (and how hungry
    we all are, and how delicious everything tastes on shore!) the
    open break with four capital horses comes to the door, and we
    start for a long, lovely drive. Half a mile or so takes us
    out on a flat red road with Table Mountain rising straight up
    before it, but on the left stretches away a most enchanting
    panorama. It is all so soft in coloring and tone, distinct and
    yet not hard, and exquisitely beautiful!

    The Blue-Berg range of mountains stretch beyond the great bay,
    which, unless a "sou'-easter" is tearing over it, lies glowing
    in tranquil richness. This afternoon it is colored like an
    Italian lake. Here are lines of chrysoprase, green-fringed,
    white with little waves, and beyond lie dark, translucent,
    purple depths, which change with every passing cloud. Beyond
    these amethystic shoals again stretches the deep blue water,
    and again beyond, and bluer still, rise the five ranges
    of "Hottentots' Holland," which encircle and complete the
    landscape, bringing the eye round again to the nearer cliffs
    of the Devil's Peak. When the Dutch came here some two hundred
    years ago, they seized upon this part of the coast and called
    it Holland, driving the Hottentots beyond the neighboring
    range and telling them that was to be their Holland--a name it
    keeps to this day. Their consciences must have troubled them
    after this arbitrary division of the soil, for up the highest
    accessible spurs of their own mountain they took the
    trouble to build several queer little square houses called
    "block-houses," from which they could keep a sharp look-out
    for foes coming over the hills from Hottentots' Holland.
    The foes never came, however, and the roofs and walls of
    the block-houses have gradually tumbled in, and the
    gun-carriages--for they managed to drag heavy ordnance up the
    steep hill-side--have rotted away, whilst the old-fashioned
    cannon lie, grim and rusty, amid a tangled profusion of wild
    geranium, heath and lilies, I scrambled up to one of the
    nearest block-houses, and found the date on the dismounted gun
    to be more than a hundred years old. The view was beautiful
    and the air fresh and fragrant with scent of flowers.

    But to return to our drive. I could gaze and gaze for ever at
    this lovely panorama, but am told this is the ugliest part of
    the road. The road itself is certainly not pretty just here,
    and is cloudy with a fine red dust, but this view of sea and
    distant hills is enchanting. Soon we get under the lee of
    the great mountain, and then its sheltering arms show their
    protective power; for splendid oak avenues begin to border the
    road all the way, and miniature forests of straight-stemmed
    pines and shimmering belts of the ghostly silver tree run up
    all the mountain-clefts. Stem and leaf of the silver tree are
    all of purest white; and when one gets a gleam of sunlight
    on a distant patch of these trees, the effect is quite
    indescribable, contrasting, as they do, with green of field
    and vineyard. The vines all about here and towards Constantia,
    thirteen miles off, are dwarf-plants, and only grow to the
    height of gooseberry-bushes. It is a particular species, which
    is found to answer best as requiring less labor to train and
    cultivate, and is less likely to be blown out of the ground
    by the violent "sou'-easters" which come sweeping over the
    mountain. These gales are evidently the greatest annoyance
    which Cape Colonists have to endure; and although everybody
    kindly suggests that I _ought_ to see one, just to understand
    what it is like, I am profoundly thankful that I only know it
    from their description and my own distinct recollection of the
    New Zealand "nor'-westers." Those were hot winds, scorching
    and curling up everything, whereas this is rather a cold
    breeze, although it blows chiefly in summer. It whirls along
    clouds of dust from the red clay roads and fields which
    penetrates and clings to everything in the most extraordinary
    manner. All along the road the stems and lower branches of the
    trees are dyed a deep brick-dust color, and I hear moving and
    pathetic stories of how it ruins clothes, not only utterly
    spoiling black silk dresses, but staining white petticoats and
    children's frocks and pinafores with a border of color exactly
    like the ruddle with which sheep are branded. Especially is
    it the terror of sailors, rendering the navigation along the
    coast dangerous and difficult; for it blends land and water
    into one indistinct whirl of vaporous cloud, confusing and
    blurring everything until one cannot distinguish shore from
    sea.

    The vineyards of Constantia originally took their pretty name
    from the fair daughter of one of the early Dutch governors,
    but now it has grown into a generic word, and you see
    "Cloete's Constantia," "Von Reybeck Constantia," written upon
    great stone gateways leading by long avenues into the various
    vine-growing plantations. It was to the former of these
    constantias, which was also the farthest off, that we were
    bound that pleasant summer afternoon, and from the time we got
    out of the carriage until the moment we re-entered it--all
    too soon, but it is a long drive back in the short cold
    twilight--I felt as though I had stepped through a magic
    portal into the scene of one of Washington Irving's
    stories. It was all so simple and homely, so quaint and so
    inexpressibly picturesque. The house had stood there for a
    couple of hundred years, and looks as though it might last for
    ever, with its air of cool, leisurely repose and comfort and
    strength.

    In the flagged hall stands a huge stalactite some ten feet
    high, brought a hundred years ago from caves far away in the
    distant ranges. It is shaped something like a Malay's hat,
    only the peak tapers to a point about eight feet high. The
    drawing-room--though it seems a profanation to call that
    venerable stately room by so flippant and modern a name--is
    large, ceiled with great beams of cedar, and lighted by lofty
    windows, which must contain many scores of small panes of
    glass. There were treasures of rarest old china and delfware,
    and curious old carved stands for fragile dishes. A wealth of
    swinging-baskets of flowers and ferns and bright girl-faces
    lighted up the solemn, shady old room, in which we must not
    linger, for there is much to see outside. First to the cellar,
    as it is called, though it is far from being under ground,
    and is, in fact, a spacious stone building with an
    elaborately-carved pediment. Here are rows and rows of giant
    casks, stretching on either hand into avenues in the black
    distance, but these are mere children in the nursery, compared
    to those we are going to see. First we must pause in a middle
    room full of quaintest odds and ends--crossbows, long whips of
    hippopotamus hide, strange rusty old swords and firearms--to
    look at a map of South Africa drawn somewhere about 1640. It
    hangs on the wall and is hardly to be touched, for the paint
    and varnish crack and peel off at a breath. It is a marvel of
    accurate geographical knowledge, and is far better filled
    in than the maps of yesterday. All poor Livingstone's great
    geographical discoveries are marked on it as being--perhaps
    only from description--known or guessed at all that long time
    ago. It was found impossible to photograph it on account of
    the dark shade which age has laid over the original yellow
    varnish, but a careful tracing has been made and, I believe,
    sent home to the Geographical Society. It is in the long
    corridor beyond this that the "stuck-vats" live--puncheons
    which hold easily some thousand gallons or so, and are of a
    solemn rotundity calculated to strike awe into the beholder's
    heart. Here is white constantia, red constantia, young
    constantia, middle-aged constantia, and constantia so old as
    to be a liqueur almost beyond price. When it has been kept
    all these years, the sweetness by which it is distinguished
    becomes so absorbed and blended as to be hardly perceptible.

    Presently one of the party throws a door suddenly open, and,
    behold, we are standing right over a wild wooded glen with a
    streamlet running through it, and black washerwomen beating
    heaps of white clothes on the strips of shingle. Turtle-doves
    are cooing, and one might almost fancy one was back again on
    the wild Scotch west coast, until some one else says calmly,
    "Look at the ostriches!" Here they come, with a sort of
    dancing step, twisting their long necks and snake-like heads
    from side to side in search of a tempting pebble or trifle of
    hardware. Their wings are slightly raised, and the long fringe
    of white feathers rustles softly as they trot easily and
    gracefully past us. They are young male birds, and in a few
    months more their plumage, which now resembles that of a
    turkey-cock, will be jet black, except the wing-feathers. A
    few drops of rain are falling, so we hurry back to where the
    carriage is standing under some splendid oak trees, swallow a
    sort of stirrup-cup of delicious hot tea, and so home again as
    fast as we can go.


    OCTOBER 19.

    It is decided that I must take a drive in a Cape cart; so
    directly after breakfast a smart workman-like-looking vehicle,
    drawn by a pair of well-bred iron-gray cobs, dashes up under
    the portico. There are capital horses here, but they fetch
    a good price, and such a pair as these would easily find
    purchasers at one hundred and fifty pounds. The cart itself
    is very trim and smart, with a framework sort of head, which
    falls back at pleasure, and it holds four people easily. It
    is a capital vehicle, light and strong and uncommonly
    comfortable, but I am warned not to imagine that all Cape
    carts are as easy as this one. Away we go at a fine pace
    through the delicious sparkling morning sunshine and crisp
    air, soon turning off the red high-road into a sandy, marshy
    flat with a sort of brackish back-water standing in pools here
    and there. We are going to call on Langalibalele, and his
    son, Malambuli, who are located at Uitvlugt on the Cape
    downs, about four miles from the town. It is a sort of
    farm-residence; and considering that the chief has hitherto
    lived in a reed hut, he is not badly off, for he has plenty
    of room out of doors as well as a good house over his head. We
    bump over some strange and rough bits of sandy road and climb
    up and down steep banks in a manner seldom done on wheels.
    There is a wealth of lovely flowers blooming around, but I
    can't help fixing my eyes on the pole of the cart, which is
    sometimes sticking straight up in the air, its silver hook
    shining merrily in the sun, or else it has disappeared
    altogether, and I can only see the horses' haunches. That
    is when we are going _down_ hill, and I think it is a more
    terrible sensation than when we are playfully scrambling up
    some sandy hillock as a cat might.

    Here is the location at last, thank Heaven! and there is
    Langalibalele sitting in the verandah stoep (pronounced
    "stoup") on his haunches on a brick. He looks as comfortable
    as if he were in an arm-chair, but it must be a difficult
    thing to do if you think seriously of it. The etiquette seems
    to be to take no notice of him as we pass into the parlor,
    where we present our pass and the people in authority satisfy
    themselves that we are quite in rule. Then the old chief walks
    quietly in, takes off his soft felt hat and sits himself
    down in a Windsor arm-chair with grave deliberation. He is
    uncommonly ugly; but when one remembers that he is nearly
    seventy years of age, it is astonishing to see how young
    he looks. Langalibalele is not a true Kafir at all: he is a
    Fingor, a half-caste tribe contemptuously christened by the
    Kafirs "dogs." His wool grows in distinct and separate clumps
    like hassocks of grass all over his head. He is a large and
    powerful man and looks the picture of sleek contentment, as
    well he may. Only one of his sons, a good-natured, fine
    young man, black as ebony, is with him, and the chief's one
    expressed grievance is that none of his wives will come to
    him. In vain he sends commands and entreaties to these dusky
    ladies to come and share his solitude. They return for answer
    that "they are working for somebody else;" for, alas! the only
    reason their presence is desired is that they may cultivate
    some of the large extent of ground placed at the old chief's
    disposal. Neither he nor his stalwart son would dream for
    a moment of touching spade or hoe; but if the ladies of the
    family could only be made to see their duty, an honest penny
    might easily be turned by oats or rye. I gave him a large
    packet of sugar-plums, which he seized with childish delight
    and hid away exactly like the big monkeys at the Zoo.

    By way of a joke, Malambuli pretended to want to take them
    away, and the chattering and laughing which followed was
    almost deafening. But by and by a gentleman of the party
    presented a big parcel of the best tobacco, and the chuckling
    old chief made over at once all my sweetmeats "jintly" to
    his son, and proceeded to hide away his new treasure. He
    was dressed exactly like a dissenting minister, and declared
    through the interpreter he was perfectly comfortable. The
    impression here seems to be that he is a restless, intriguing
    and mischief-making old man, who may consider himself as
    having come out of the hornets' nest he tried to stir up
    uncommonly well.

    We don't want to bump up and down the sandy plain again, so
    a lively conversation goes on in Dutch about the road between
    one of my gentlemen and somebody who looks like a "stuck-vat"
    upon short legs. The dialogue is fluent and lively, beginning
    with "Ja, ja!" and ending with "All right!" but it leads to
    our hitting off the right track exactly, and coming out at a
    lovely little cottage-villa under the mountain, where we rest
    and lunch and then stroll about up the hill spurs, through
    myrtle hedges and shady oak avenues. Then, before the
    afternoon shadows grow too long, we drive off to "Groote
    Schuur," the ancient granary of the first settlers, which is
    now turned into a roomy, comfortable country-house, perfect
    as a summer residence, and securely sheltered from the
    "sou'-easters." We approach it through a double avenue of tall
    Italian pines, and after a little while go out once more for
    a ramble up some quaint old brick steps, and so through a
    beautiful glen all fringed and feathered with fresh young
    fronds of maiden-hair ferns, and masses of hydrangea bushes,
    which must be beautiful as a poet's dream when they are
    covered with their great bunches of pale blue blossom. That
    will not be until Christmas-tide, and, alas! I shall not be
    here to see, for already my three halcyon days of grace are
    ended and over, and this very evening we must steam away
    from a great deal yet unvisited of what is interesting
    and picturesque, and from friends who three days ago were
    strangers, but who have made every moment since we landed
    stand out as a bright and pleasant landmark on life's highway.




ON SANKOTA HEAD.


"Yay, Jim, there ain't no doubt but Sairy Macy's a mighty nice gal,
but, thee sees, what I'm a-contendin' fur is that she's tew nice fur
thee--that is, not tew nice egzackly, but a leetle tew fine-feathered.
No, not that egzackly, nuther; but she's a leetle tew fine in the
feelin's, an' I don't b'lieve that in the long run thee an' she'll
sort well tugether. Shell git eout o' conceit with thy ways--thee
_ain't_ the pootiest-mannered feller a gal ever see--an' thee'll git
eout o' conceit with hern. Thee'll think she's a-gittin' stuck up, an'
she'll think thee's a-gittin'low-minded. Neow, Jim, my 'dvice is
good; an' ef thee'll take it, an' not go on with this thing no furder,
thee'll both be glad on it arterwa'ds. 'Spesh'ly 's she ain't very
rugged, an' sickly gals had oughter hev rich husbands."

"But, father, Sairy an' me loves o' 'nother."

"Oh, wal, then it's tew late ter say nothin'," said the old man with
a mingled sigh and smile as, raising his basket of quahaugs to his
shoulder, he walked off, pressing his bare feet into the yielding sand
with the firm but clumsy tread of vigorous old age. The rough hat
of plaited straw was pushed back from a brow that with a cultivated
nature would have been considered as evidence of considerable
intellectual power, but, as it was, only showed the probable truth
of the opinion of his neighbors, that "Stephen Starbuck was a shrewd,
common-sense ole feller."

Jim was of a little finer grade than his father, having inherited some
of the traits of his gentle mother, but the young Hercules could by no
means have been mistaken for an Apollo; neither did his somewhat heavy
features bear the expression of unselfish loyalty which would have
given better promise than any mere refinement of features or manner
for the future happiness of Sarah Macy. But she found nothing wanting
in her lover as she stood on the cliff-head gazing down upon him.
Sarah knew that the man she loved was not considered her equal, but
because she loved him she believed him capable of becoming all that
she or others could desire. There is in the world no faith so absolute
as that of a woman in the possibilities of the man she loves. Had
Sarah read of Sir Galahad--but this was in 1779, and the fame of the
search for the Holy Grail had not reached the popular ear--she would
have said to herself, "My Jim is just so pure and holy." Had "her Jim"
been a Royalist during the English Revolution, Prince Rupert's laurels
would not have been unshared. Had Jim been a Puritan--though the
little Quaker maiden did not love Puritans over well, and did not
fancy her Jim as fighting on that side--England's Protector would
not have borne the name of Cromwell. Or if Jim were not one of the
peace-loving Friends, and would enlist in the present struggle for
liberty, the fame of Commodore James Starbuck should soon eclipse that
of Paul Jones.

Not for the world would Sarah have given voice to the heretical
desire, but in her inmost heart was even now a wish that her dear Jim
held religious opinions that would not interfere with his showing
to the country how talented, noble and valiant he was; while the
fair-haired, sunburnt, indolent young Hercules idly gazing out to sea
was fired with no higher ambition for himself than to be able soon
to erect on the Head another small house like that of his father, to
which he might bring "the sweet little girl who loved him, so much."
For Sarah had committed the common mistake of loving women, and had
let Jim see how dear he was to her. So now, instead of dwelling on his
love for her and scheming how he might be worthy of her heart, he was
fully satisfied with himself, and inclined to grumble at Fortune for
not at once bestowing the trifle he asked at her hands.

"Jim, how long's thee goin' ter stan' there? If the water _is_ pretty,
thee can see it any day, so 't ain't worth while to look at it all day
ter a time."

As, the sweet tones floated down the cliff Jim turned lazily to smile
up at the speaker, and, raising his heavy basket of quahaugs, came
leisurely up the steep sand-path, which seemed to shrink from his
weight at every step: "Wal', Sairy, I wa'n't a-thinkin' much o' the
water: I was a-thinkin' o' thee, an' o' what fayther said a little
spell ago."

"What was that, Jim?" Sarah's tone was a little anxious, for she knew
that there was a jealousy among some of the islanders of the facts
that her father had brought with him a few heavy articles of "real
mahogany furnitur," and that her stepmother had always been able to
hire others to do her spinning and weaving, and even to "help her at
odd spells with the heft o' the housework."

"Oh, nothin'," replied Jim, passing his free arm carelessly round the
girl's waist--"othin', undly th' old story 'beout heow we'd best not
merry, 'cause by'm-by thee'll git ter feelin' better nor me."

"But thee don't believe him, Jim? Thee knows better. Thee knows,"
adding this with the sweet and sincere but often sadly mistaken
humility of love--"thee knows thou art better than me. Thou art so
grand and so noble! If folks only knew thee better they would wonder
at thee fur puttin' up wi' me. I wish I could make thee a better wife.
But, Jim, if I ain't very strong, I'm pretty good at contrivin', an'
I don't believe but what I can manage so's to git along a'most as well
as them that's tougher."

"Git along? O' course thee'll git along," answered Jim patronizingly.
"I telled mother th'other day that I didn't cafe ef thee wa'n't 's
strong as Mary Allen: thee was a good deal smarter, an' I'd be willin'
tu resk but what I'd hev as little waitin' on ter dew fur thee 's fur
her. Besides"--and here a gleam of real if shallow affection sprang
from Jim's eyes as he looked down at the loving creature by his
side--"besides, I'd _like_ to take care o' thee, Sairy--I would
indeed."

It is said that the sky has no color of its own--that the deep blue
we think so beautiful is only owing to the atmosphere through which we
view it. To Sarah this very slight expression of her lover's care
for her bore more weight than the most passionate protestations of
affection could have done to a colder nature, for it was colored by
the glowing tints of her own warm love; and when the two parted that
day she carried with her a sweet, satisfying sense of being beloved by
the "best man on the earth" even as she loved him; while he whistled
cheerily over his net-mending, thinking "what a sweet little thing it
was!" "how pretty its eyes were!" and "how kitten-like its ways!" and
only checked his whistling once in a while to wonder whether the day
would ever really come when "Sairy would feel herself better than
him," and to think it also a little hard that old Thomas Macy was "so
sot agin' the match" that he would give his daughter no portion but an
outfit of clothes and household linen. "He might jest's well's not,"
reasoned Jim to himself, "give us a little lift: I guess he would if
Sairy's own mother was alive; but them step-mothers never wants to
give nothin' ter the fust wives' childern." In which opinion Jim did
the second Mrs. Macy much injustice, for it was owing solely to her
influence that Sarah's father had consented to provide his daughter
with even a new dress in which to be married to "that big, lazy boy
o'old Steve Starbuck's."

Meantime, sad, gentle old Mrs. Starbuck had been turning over
many things in her mind. She felt her son's defects; she knew that
warm-hearted, imaginative Sarah Macy would be doing a foolish thing to
marry Jim--as foolish a thing as in her inmost heart she felt, rather
than acknowledged, that she herself had done when she married Jim's
father. But the mother-heart longed that her son should grow to be
what she desired (and what poor Sarah thought he already was), and she
hoped much from the elevating influence of so good a wife.

So, as she sat knitting, while Jim and his father sat, hats on heads
and pipes in mouths, mending their nets, old Mrs. Starbuck had "made a
plan." "Father," said, she at last, "I've be'n thinkin'--"

"Yay," replied the old man gruffly but not unkindly--"yay, I 'spect
so. Thee's pooty nigh allus a-thinkin' o' suthin. What is it neow?
Eout with it!"

"I've be'n thinkin' that Jim's all the child we've got--"

"Wal, yay. Hain't had no other--not's I knows on. What o' that?"

"Well, I was a-thinkin' that, that bein' so, an' Jim an' Sairy
thinkin' so much o' 'nother, it wa'n't o' no use fur them ter keep
waitin' along year eout an' year in fur a chance tu keep house by
'emselves. They'd best git married right off an' come an' live along
o' us."

"W'y, ole woman!"

"W'y, mother!"

"Yay; I hear both on ye," said the gentle old mother with a half
smile. "I s'posed likely ye'd think strange on't at fust; but ye
h'ain't no need ter, fur it's a sens'ble thing ter dew, an' yell see't
so when ye've thought on't a spell: see if ye don't."

So well was the proposal liked that very soon the simple ceremony of
the Friends made James and Sarah husband and wife; and for a while all
seemed happiness in the humble cottage on the cliff--cottage so humble
that it scarcely deserved even that lowly name.

Sarah Macy's father owned one of the largest dwellings on Nantucket--a
two-story "double house" with two rooms on each side of a broad hall
running through the house from front to rear. On one side of this hall
was the "best bedroom," ghostly with tightly-closed white shutters
and long white dimity curtains to the "four-poster" and shining white
sanded floor, and the "best-room," terrible in its grandeur of cold
white walls, straight hard sofa, "spider-legged" table, grenadier-like
chairs and striped woolen carpet underlaid with straw. In the rear, on
the other side of the hall, was the kitchen with its big brick oven,
its yawning fireplace overhung with corpulent iron pots or shining
copper kettles depending from numerous gallows-like cranes; with its
glittering copper, brass and pewter utensils arrayed on snowy-shelves;
with its spotless tables, Its freshly-sanded floor and its
heavily-beamed, whitewashed ceiling, from which hung many a bunch of
savory herbs or string of red pepper-pods or bunch of seed-corn, or
perhaps even a round-backed ham, to get a little browner in the smoke
that would sometimes pour out from the half-ignited mass of peat. In
front of the kitchen was the "living-room," in one corner of which
stood a carved high-post bedstead--glory of the Macys and envy of
their neighbors--with its curtains of big figured chintz, brown
sunflowers sprawling over a white ground, drawn aside in the daytime
to display the marvelous patchwork of the quilt beneath. Fuel was
scarce even then on the sandy isle; and economy compelled Mr. and
Mrs. Macy to make use of this living-room as a bedchamber also, since
Thomas Macy confessed to "bein rather tender," and to liking a warm
room to sleep In, though his neighbors often insinuated that he was
killing himself by the Indulgence. And indeed the heat must have been
stifling when we consider the size of the fireplace, nine feet wide by
four deep, with a yawning throat, through which the rain poured freely
down on stormy nights, putting out the best arranged mass of coals,
ashes and peat, and, in spite of the little gutter purposely made
round the broad brick hearth, sometimes overflowing and drenching
a portion of the neat rag carpet, in which, with true Quaker
consistency, no gay-colored fragment had been allowed a place.

In striking contrast to all this magnificence was the lowly home to
which James Starbuck brought his happy bride. This little house was
"double" also--that Is, it was entered in the centre by a small square
passage just big enough for the outer door to swing in. On one side
of this entry was a tiny parlor, as dismal as rag carpet, fireless
hearth, dingy paper and dark-green paper shades to the small windows
could make it. On the other side of the entry was the tiny and cold
bedroom of the senior Starbucks. In the centre of the house rose a
massive chimney, big enough to retain all the heat from a dozen fires.
Across the rear of parlor, chimney and bedroom ran the long, low
sunshiny kitchen. At one end of this certain ladder-like stairs
conducted to the loft, which had served Jim for a "roosting-place"
ever since he had grown big enough to be trusted o' nights so far
away from his mother. On Sarah's advent into the family the
dismal "best-room" was made habitable by the addition of a
"four-poster"--which Mrs. Starbuck senior regretted was only of
cherry-wood and not carved--and by sundry little feminine contrivances
of Sarah's own.

I said that for a time all seemed to go on happily in this humble
home. And the seeming would have been reality had Jim possessed the
faith in his wife which she had in him. True, he loved and believed in
her after his fashion, and his mother was a strong ally on his wife's
side; but Jim had one fatal weakness of character. He resented the
slightest look that was anything but simple admiration on the part of
his wife. A strong nature is not afraid of censure, but a weak one,
pleading sensitiveness, is easily roused to small retaliations,
repaying what is good in intention with what is evil. Jim, as his
father had truly told him, was "not the pootiest-mannered feller a gal
ever see," and in the daily home-life this became apparent to Sarah
as it had never been in all the years they had been near neighbors.
Naturally, she wished her husband to be pleasing to her father, and at
last ventured to hint, as delicately as she could, at various little
points in which improvements might be made. At first Jim did not seem
very restless under such reproofs, given, as they were, with many
a loving kiss and winsome look; but as months went on his wife's
caresses were more carelessly received, and her hinted corrections
with more of resentment. One evening stately old Thomas Macy had
"happened in," and Jim had greatly grieved his wife by his curt,
uncivil manner to her father. After he had gone Sarah spoke in a low
tone and kindly as always, but with more spirit than she had ever
before manifested or felt, of her husband's disrespectful ways to the
aged.

For a moment after his wife had ceased, Jim sat with his hat
pulled closely over his eyes, fiercely biting into the apple he was
eating--biting and throwing the bits into the glowing mass of peat on
the hearth. Then he sprang to his feet, exclaiming, "I see! It's all
come true, what ev'rybody said. Thee thinks thee an' thy folks is
better'n me an' my folks, an' keeps all the time a-naggin' on me. I
wish I'd merried Mary Allen! I won't stan' no more o' this talk. If I
ain't to be maaster o' my own house I won't stay in't." (The house was
his father's, but angry men never think of such trifles.) And waxing
pitiful of himself, he continued in a broken and injured tone, "The
bed o' the sea's the bes' place fur a man whose own wife's got tew big
feelin' ter put up wi' his ways."

With this dignified burst of eloquence the angry fellow flung himself
out of the house, letting in at the door as he went a dash of cold,
sleety rain and a gust of wind that put out the flickering tallow dip
that was enabling Sarah to take the last stitches in the tiny
white slip that now fell from her fingers. Too sorely wounded for
resentment, too fond of her husband to wish even his parents to see
him in the light in which he was now revealed to her, Sarah silently
stooped to recover her work, and as she did so her hand was met under
the table by a sympathizing pressure from that of her mother-in-law.
This was too much, and, laying her head in the elder woman's lap,
poor Sarah wept without restraint; while the mother sorrowfully and
tenderly stroked her soft brown tresses. The father, quietly puffing
at his pipe, seemed to take no notice, only now and then glancing with
kindly eye covertly from under his hat-brim at the two grieving women.

Silently, but for the roaring of the wind and surf and fitful dashing
of the rain, the hours passed on till the high clock in the kitchen
corner sharply struck eleven. This was a late hour for those times,
and a faint fear began to come upon them all. Could it be that Jim had
really meant what he said? "Had he--" And the two women looked blankly
at each other. Not a word had been uttered, but each felt the other's
dread.

The father rose and said with a well-affected yawn, "Guess likely
Jim's went deown ter Uncle Will'amses, an' they thought as 't's so
stormy he'd bes' not come back. So guess I'll jest go eout ter the
shed and git some more peat, fur ter keep the fire."

Thus leaving the mother and wife partially reassured, the old
father slipped out and down the track, cut deeply in the sand by the
one-horse carts, to "Uncle Will'amses," as fast as the storm would
permit. But no Jim had been seen there; and still more anxiously the
stout old man fought his way back against winds that seemed strong"
enough to blow him like a feather over the cliff's edge, and against
the spray which shot up from the beach below, smitten by the sounding
surf, clear over the high top of Sankota Head.

Reaching his door during a brief lull in the wind, he heard faintly
but distinctly the booming of guns fired by a ship in distress. "It
mus' be some vessil on the shoals, an' mos' likely Jim's heard her an'
got some o' th' other boys, an' 's went off in 's boat ter help her.
Poor soul!" With this comforting reflection the father cheered the
watchers inside, who had grown fearfully anxious, as the clock had
long ago struck for midnight.

"We mus' build a fire on the Head ter light 'em," said the old man.
"There hed oughter be a light'us here, but 's there ain't none, we
mus' dew the bes' we kin,"

So saying, he harnessed the horse--almost as old as himself--and with
the aid of the two women loaded the sled with dry wood and started
with it to the cliff, while the mother and daughter followed behind as
best they might, struggling to keep alive without being set on fire
by the coals in the iron pot which they carried between them. It was
a weary half mile, wind, spray and rain all contending against the
feeble folk who had come out to help back to land and home the brave
fellows who had gone to succor the distressed. They made all the more
sure that this was the case, because Jim's new boat, the pride and joy
of his life, was not to be found at the spot where he had only that
day drawn, it high above the reach of even such a storm as this, ready
for building over it on the morrow its winter house of pine-boughs and
turf.

At last a fire was kindled; and leaving the women to watch it, old
Stephen took several weary trips back to the cottage after fuel,
making serious inroads upon a stock at the best not too large to meet
the demands of the coming winter. The flame, fanned by the blast even
more than dashed by the spray and rain, sprang upward, casting its
ruddy lances of light backward over the sandy downs, destitute even
then of tree or shrub to break the force of the gale, and forward over
the frothing white tops and deep, black troughs of waves that seemed
to the excited eyes of the watching women like so many separate fiends
leaping upward and stretching out white hands to clutch helpless
victims and hurry them to the hell beneath. And all the while the
surf thundered at the foot of the trembling cliff. No form could be
discovered through the darkness beyond the near neighborhood of the
shore; and but for the flash of the gun, which was seen continually,
though its sound was but seldom heard above the surf and the wind, the
watchers would have thought there was no ship near.

By and by the rain ceased, but there was no moon, and impenetrable
wind-clouds still hid the stars. Out through the blackness of the
night the flame-light quivered in long, bright streams over the
endless lines of ever-advancing waves, but revealed to the watchers
no ship, no boat, no tokens even of wreck, only the ceaseless reaching
upward of the beckoning white hands; and the wind bore no sound, save
at intervals the dull distant boom of the cannon. But ever the solemn
surf thundered on the beach below, and the sand-cliff trembled and
crumbled beneath its resounding blows.

The old man, who, with a seaman's owl-like eyesight, kneeled intently
gazing out through the darkness in the direction of the flash,
suddenly exclaimed, "I don't un'erstan' it! That air ship hadn't
oughter be in 'stress off where she is. She ain't on no shoal, nor
nothin'. She's jest a-lyin' tew. An' I don't see no signs o' no boats
nuther; an's fur's I kin see, them folks is a firin' off that air gun
jest fur the musicalness on't. Blast 'em! Come, gals: we mought as
well be walkin' along hum as ter stop a-yawpin' here in the wind an'
spray, a-burnin' up the winter's kindlin' fur folks 'at's a-foolin' on
us. 'Spesh'ly as I think she's a Britisher. Blast her!"

The old Quaker was not accustomed to use strong language of any sort,
but evidently the human nature in him was so powerful in this instance
that he could not help indulging in the most emphatic admissible
invective.

But the mother and wife were not so easily satisfied. In their eyes
the strange ship and all on board her were not of as much consequence
as the unworthy missing Jim, whose fate they associated with it.
Jim's boat, they said, was gone. No one could have taken her but Jim
himself. He would never have put out on such a night as this save to
go to the help of the distressed ship; and if he was on the water, the
light burning on Sankota Head would guide him safely back. So, in the
midst of spray and wind, the three kneeled on the cliff and kept the
blaze alight till the rising dawn made it useless, when, to the dismay
of the watchers, the ship hoisted sail and bore away. She showed no
colors, but the old islander, once a whaler, declared that she was a
British man-o'-war.

But where was Jim? The unanswering surf still boomed at the foot of
the cliff, though the height of the waves was rapidly diminishing, and
the water was gradually assuming the peculiarly bland expression that
often comes after a storm, reminding one of the cat that has "eaten
the canary," but there was no sign of incoming boat or men.

Chilled to the bone with the wind and cold sea-spray of the November
night, and to the heart with sorrow and disappointment, the three
returned to the lonely house. Running to meet them came Mary Allen,
breathlessly crying, "Where's Eben and Jim?"

Poor Sarah could not answer, but the brave old mother, a veteran in
sorrows, replied with trembling lips, "We don't know anythin' o' thy
brother, Mary; an' Jim hain't b'en hum sence las' night. His boat's
gone, an' we thought he might ha' went out to help the ship that was
a-firin' all night. But she's sailed off this mornin' all right; an'
father, he says she was a Britisher an' undly a-firin' ter fool us
folks. So I don't know nothin' about it," uttering the last words in a
drearily hopeless tone that gave them exceeding pathos.

For a moment Mary stood in dismay; then she cried wildly, "Oh, they're
drowned, they're drowned! Jim come deown ter eour heouse las' night
a-sayin' he'd heard the firin' o' a ship in 'stress, an' askin' Eb
ter go with him an' help him git his boat eout, an' telled me ter run
along deown to Zack Tumnaydoo's An' ax Zack an' Ellery ter go with
'em. An' I did, an' that's the las' anybody's seen o' any one on 'em.
Oh dear! oh dear!" And wringing her hands, the sobbing girl ran back
as quickly as she had come to impart to her mother and sisters the
full extent of her evil tidings.

The cold, sad, desolate weeks and months that now rolled slowly on
are to this day remembered on Nantucket as those of the "hard winter."
Provisions were scarce, fuel was difficult to obtain, the harbor
was frozen over, so that few fish could be taken there, and all
communication with "the main" was cut off by British cruisers. In
January the cherished old horse was killed because there was no longer
hay to feed him, and even oats were "too precious to be fed to dumb
beasts." In February the stalwart old Stephen lay grimly down to die,
saying pityingly, "It's time, gals: I can't dew ye no more good by
stayin'; an' I'm so tired."

The day succeeding the silent funeral, where two women had dropped the
few tears that were left them to shed, good old Thomas Macy came and
took his daughter and her mother to his own home. And in windy, still
frozen March the wail of a tiny baby was heard in the house.

Under all the trouble the two brave women made no moan. Silently
clinging together, never losing sight of each other for more than a
few moments at a time, they yet said nothing of their greatest grief,
that Jim should have disappeared with such unworthy words on his lips
and thoughts in his heart, until, a few days after the baby's birth,
Sarah said to her mother, "I know he's not dead. If he'd ha' died,
he'd ha' come back and told me he was sorry. Fur I dew think he'd be
sorry. Don't thee, mother?" And the mother nodded assent and smiled
through her tears.

But, in truth, they had a more substantial reason than poor Sarah's
wistful fancy for thinking that Jim was living. When the ice broke up,
his boat was found in a little cove, where it had floated right-side
up, without any serious injury except the carrying away of the sails.
Of course this discovery roused new hopes in the homes of the missing
men. It did not "stand to reason" that four big strong, temperate
young fellows, brought up to the hardy, amphibious island-life, had
all fallen overboard, any more than it "stood to sense" that the boat
had upset and then righted of itself. Besides, "none of the boy's
corpuses had ever floated up." So the Tucketers took courage and
felt sure that, whatever had become of the missing men, they were not
drowned.

But still the slow months came and went, till the summer and autumn
and another winter had passed by; and patient old Rachel Starbuck grew
daily a little quieter and a little grayer; and the brave young wife
grew a little stronger to bear, but not a whit less loving or prone to
suffer, and stately old Thomas Macy grew daily more gentle and pitying
in his ways as he looked long at the winsome face of the happy, wee
grandchild, that throve and crowed and tried to utter sweet little
hesitating words as gayly as if the world had never a sin, a sorrow or
a weakness in it.

One day Sarah and her mother had carried the baby down to the small
cottage at the back of the cliff, whither they went to attend to
some little household matter; for, although they did not mention the
subject, even to themselves, they still kept all there in readiness
against Jim's coming home. Here, in the soft May sunshine, the
red-frocked baby was sitting on the green turf step, playing with
some "daffies," first of the season, which Sarah had plucked from the
little garden in the rear. The mother and daughter were in the house,
when both were alarmed by a scream from the usually merry child. A man
had it closely clasped in his arms, kissing it and calling it between
half-choked sobs his "own pretty, pretty baby." The man was thin,
pock-marked, bald, and clad in a ragged uniform of a British sailor,
but to the faithful, longing eyes of mother and wife there was no
mistaking their Jim.

It was long ere the story could be told, but at last they learned that
on that sad November night Jim and his companions had gone out to the
relief of the signaling ship. She was, as old Stephen had conjectured,
a British man-o'-war. Being short of hands, and having on board as
pilot a renegade native of the island, who knew where a ship could
"lay-to" in safety, she had taken advantage of the storm to attract
strong men within the range of her guns, then to command them to
surrender, and thus to impress them into "His Majesty's service" as
"able seamen."

For a long time Jim had managed to keep alive his resentful feelings
toward his wife, accusing of being the source of all his misfortunes
the poor little woman who was loving and longing so sincerely for him.
But when illness came he could hold out no longer. "I made up my mind
then," said he, "that if ever I got hum agin, I'd go deown on my knees
an' ax pardin' o' my Sairy."

But she had never been angry, and was now only too thankful that Jim
and his friends had escaped safely.

"Ah!" said Jim in telling his adventures, "we hed a clus run on 't,
Sairy, but thee'd better believe that air British navy's a fust-rate
place fur larnin' a feller ter know when he's well off. An' Sairy,
when I longed so fur thee an' mother, an' thought o' what a wretch I
was to speak so ter the dearest little woman in the world, I c'u'd see
that I hadn't knowed when I was well off."

Jim's was not an unselfish kind of repentance, but it was the best it
was in his nature to offer, and Sarah had long ago learned that her
Jim was not the saint and hero she had once dreamed, but only a weak
and common-place man; and she asked for nothing higher from him. To
his best she had a right, and with that she was content, smiling on
her husband with eyes full of a love as tender and true as when in the
old days she had gazed down upon her lover from the cliff-head, while
the mother laid her hand softly on his scanty hair, and said solemnly,
"May God keep thee thus, my son!" adding, after a moment's pause,
"But I wish thy fayther was here to see." And a tender silence for
the memory of the rough but kindly-natured old man fell over them all;
while the baby, reconciled to the stranger, poked her little fingers
in the marks on his face, and cried because she could not get them
off.

ETHEL C. GALE.




AT THE OLD PLANTATION.

TWO PAPERS.--II.


The eastern sky is just beginning to assume that strange neutral tint
which tells of the approaching dawn when we open the heavy hall door
and step out into the crisp, frosty air. No moonlight hunting for me,
with the cold, deceitful light making phantom pools of every white
sand-patch in the road, and ghostly logs and boulders of every
wavering shadow. You are always gathering up your reins for leaps
over imaginary fence-panels, which your horse goes through like a
nightmare, and always unprepared for the real ones, which he clears
when you are least expecting it. If the cry bears down on you, and you
rein up for a view, the fox is sure to dodge by invisibly under cover
of some dark little bay, and you get home too late for a morning nap
and too early for the breakfast, which you have been longing after for
the last two hours. Then, too, your horse has lost his night's rest,
and will be jaded for two days in consequence. No: the time to throw
the dogs off for a fox-hunt is that weird hour which the negroes
significantly call "gray-day:" it is the surest time to strike a
trail, and by the time Reynard begins to dodge and double there will
be plenty of light to ride by and to get a good view. If the fox gets
away or the cover is drawn without a find, you are always sure of
having your spirits raised by the cheerful sunrise: by the time you
get home, tired and spattered, the ladies are down stairs ready to
make pretty exclamations over the brush or to chaff you pleasantly
for your want of success; and then there is just time to get your hair
brushed and your clothes changed before the mingled aromas of fried
sausage and old Java put the keen edge on your already whetted
appetite.

A ride across country after a rattling pack of English hounds on
a thoroughbred hunter with a field of red-coated squires is an
experience which few hunters on this side of the water have ever
enjoyed, but with the incidents of which every reader of English
novels is familiar. The chase of the red fox in Maryland or Virginia
has some features in common with the British national sport, but that
of the gray fox in the more southern States differs materially from
both. The latter animal is smaller and possessed of less speed and
endurance than his more northern brother, but he is far more common
and quite as cunning. He makes shorter runs, but over very different
ground, always keeping in the woods and dodging about like a rabbit,
so that a different style of horse and a different method of riding
are required for his capture. There is no risk of breaking your neck
over a five-barred gate or a stone wall, but you may be hung in a
grapevine, or knocked out of the saddle by a low limb, or have your
knee scraped against a tree-trunk. It is true you may catch your fox
in twenty minutes, and three hours is an extraordinary run, but then
you may catch four or five between daylight and ten o'clock of an
autumn morning.

The horses stretch their necks toward the stables and whinny as they
think of the bundles of untasted fodder: the dogs require no notes
of the horn to rouse them, for they know the signs and are already
capering about in eager merriment, throwing their heads into the air
occasionally to utter a long and musical bay. This wakes up the
curs about the negro-yard, and their barking stirs up the geese, the
combined chorus rousing all the cocks in the various poultry-houses,
so that we ride off amid a hub-bub of howling, cackling, neighing and
crowing which would awaken the Seven Sleepers. We are first at the
meet, and the old woods ring with the mellow, winding notes of
our horns--no twanging brass reeds in the mouth-pieces, but honest
cow-horn bugles, which none but a true hunter can blow. The hounds
grow wild at the cheering sound, and howl through every note of the
canine gamut; the echoes catch the strain and fling it from brake to
bay; the dying cadence strengthens into an answering blast, and the
party is soon increased to half a dozen bold riders and twenty eager
dogs. Venus, the beautiful "flag-star of heaven," is just toning her
brilliancy into harmony with the pale light which creeps slowly up
from the eastern horizon, and some wakeful crow in the pine-thicket
gives an answering caw to the goblin laugh of the barred owl in the
cypress, as we leap our horses into a field of sedge and cheer on the
dogs to their work. For half an hour we ride in silence save the
words of encouragement to the hounds, which are snuffing about
unsuccessfully and whipping the hoar-frost with their tails from the
dry yellow stems of the grass. Now and then some eager young dog opens
on the trail of a rabbit which has started from its form, but the
crack of a whip restrains him, and the other hounds pay no attention
to him. Suddenly a sharp, quick yelp comes from the farthest corner of
the field, and the older dogs stop instantly and raise their heads
to listen. Hark to old Blucher! There he is again, and the whole pack
give tongue and dash off to the call which never deceives them. We
catch a glimpse of the old fellow's white throat as he trots about in
a zigzag course, poking his tan muzzle into every clump of tall grass
and giving tongue occasionally as he sniffs the cold trail. Presently
a long, quavering cry comes from old Firefly; again and again Blucher
opens more and more eagerly; another and another dog takes it up, and
the trot quickens into a lope. The trail grows warmer as they follow
the line of fence, and just as we settle ourselves in the saddle for
a run it all stops and the dogs are at fault. But Blucher is hard to
puzzle and knows every trick of his cunning game. Running a few panels
down the fence, he rears up on it and snuffs the top rail, and then,
with a yell of triumph, dashes over it into the woods, with the whole
pack in full cry at his heels. A ringing cheer announces that the
fox has "jumped," and the field scatters in pursuit. Two only, the
subscriber being one, follow the dogs with a flying leap. Some dash
off in search of a low panel, others to head off the cry through the
distant gate, while others stop to pull the rails and make a gap.
For ten minutes we keep well behind the hounds, with a tight rein and
heads bent to avoid the hanging oak limbs. But the fox has turned and
plunged into a brake which no horse can go through, and we draw up
and listen to decide where we can head him off with the greatest
certainty; then turn in different directions and spur through the
young black-jacks. Ah! there he goes, with dragging brush and open
mouth, and the pack, running close enough together to be covered by
a table-cloth, not sixty yards behind him. I am in at the death this
time, for he cannot run a hundred yards farther, and the brush is
mine, for there's no one else in sight. With a savage burst the dogs
dash after him into the thicket and then--dead silence, not a yelp,
as they scatter and run backward and forward, nosing under every dead
leaf and up the trunk of every tree. The fault is complete, and the
young dogs give it up and lie down panting, while the older hounds try
every expedient to puzzle out the trail and take up the scent again.
He certainly has not treed, there is neither earth nor hollow to hide
him, and yet the scent has gone! And it never came back. If any reader
can tell what became of that fox, he is a wiser man than I. Certain
it is that we never heard of him again; and for aught I know to the
contrary, he may have been that identical Japanese animal which turns
into tea-kettles and vanishes in puffs of smoke. It does not take
long, however, to make another find, and we go home after a three
hours' chase with two fine brushes and appetites which would ruin any
hotel-keeper in a week.

After breakfast a walk to the cotton-houses would be in order, for the
successful planter is he who trusts nothing to the overseer which can
have his personal supervision, and he must excuse himself to such of
his guests as prefer a cigar by the library fire to an hour spent in
observing the details of plantation work. In the days of which I write
horse-power was preferred to steam, and negro-power to both; and few
planters of the fine black-seed cotton could be convinced that any
"power-gin" could be invented which would not injure the long, silky
"staple" or fibre of the lint. The old-time "foot-gins" were used
exclusively, and the gin-house was a place of curious interest to all
visitors. In one end of the long room was the huge pile of seed-cotton
which was to pass through the rollers as the first step toward
its preparation for the market. How simply does a sudden stroke of
inventive genius solve a problem which wise men have regarded as
insoluble! Not much more than a century ago a commission of practical
English _savans_ discouraged the cultivation of a textile fabric
which "might be useful but for the impossibility of clearing it of the
seeds!" But the foot-gin appeared on the scene, and indigo went down
before cotton. Ranged along the walls of the room are some twenty
rough wooden frames, looking like a compromise between a straw-cutter
and a sewing-machine, each furnished with two strong rollers operated
by a treadle and acting precisely like those of a clothes-wringer.
Behind each of these machines stands a man or woman with one
ever-moving foot upon the treadle-board, feeding the seed-cotton from
a large bag to the greedy rollers, which seize it and pass the lint
in fleecy rolls into another bag prepared for it, while the seed, like
shirt-buttons touched by the afore-mentioned wringer, rolls off from
the hither side to form a pile upon the floor. Thence it will be
carted to the seed-house to be rotted into manure for the next crop,
there being no better fertilizer for cotton than a compost of which
it forms the base. A portion of it, however, will be reserved to
be boiled with cow-peas and fed to the milch-cattle, no food being
superior to its rich, oily kernel in milk-producing qualities. The
negro mothers use it largely in decoction as a substitute for cocoa,
and the white mothers under similar circumstances having it parched
and ground like coffee, when it makes an exceedingly palatable and
nutritious beverage. The "green-seed" or short-staple variety is far
inferior to the black for this purpose, and produces white, sticky,
cottony-looking butter; indeed, most dairywomen insist that "you
can pick the lint out of it." The ginned cotton is carried to the
platforms, where it is "specked" by the women--leaves, dirt and other
impurities being picked out by hand--and spread out to dry and bleach
in the sun; thence we follow it to the "moting-room," where it is
thoroughly and finally overhauled, every minute particle of dirt or
other foreign matter and every flock of stained and discolored cotton
being picked out. This room is always in the second story, and at one
end of it a circular hole is cut in the floor; through this hole hangs
the bag of strong, close gunny-cloth, very different from the coarse
covering which suffices for the lower grades of "short-staple,"
supported by a stout iron hoop larger by some inches than the hole
in the floor, and to which the end of the bag is securely sewed. The
cotton is thrown into this bag and packed with an iron rammer by a man
who stands in it, his weight assisting in the packing, each bag being
made to contain upward of four hundred pounds.

Everything seeming to go on as it ought and all the necessary orders
and directions being given, we walk out to take a look at the poultry.
There are fowls in abundance and superabundance, but our kind host
is most proud of his flock of three hundred white turkeys; and a
beautiful sight they are, scattered over the grassy lawn. Ranging, as
these fine birds will, over a mile or two of woods abounding in their
wild brethren, convenient mistakes were often made by the pineland
gunners, whose rifles were always ready to pick off a stray gobbler
without waiting to know whether he was wild or tame, and so the old
gentleman introduced the white stock to prevent the possibility of
such errors. For a similar reason no ducks were raised except those
which wear top-knots. It is no unusual thing for wild gobblers and
mallards to come up with the tame stock to the poultry-yard, and
the bronze feathers and shy habits of many of the young turkeys show
evidence of their free parentage.

It is just impossible for a city man to remain indoors in the country
with the broad fields, the shady woods, the bright blue sky and
the merry pipe of birds calling him out to active exercise and
unaccustomed sport. He is sure to think himself a sportsman, even if
uncertain whether the shot or powder should first enter the gun;
and if an old hand at the trigger, his uneasiness while in the house
becomes almost painful. Every article of hunting-gear is
overhauled again and again; boots are greased, shot-pouches filled,
powder-charges remeasured, guns cleaned and ramrods oiled; and I
once had a fine Manton--as sweet a piece as ever came to the
shoulder--almost ruined by an eager friend, who, after going through
all this during a stormy morning, insisted on taking off the locks
and triggers, just to while away the time. The introduction of the
breech-loader most happily obviates all this, since such lagging hours
may now be occupied in charging and crimping cartridges. But there is
nothing to detain us longer to-day: the "Bob Whites" are waiting for
us among the pea-vines, and the snipe among the tussocky grass of the
old rice-field. Di and Sancho have caught sight of the guns, and are
capering about in the wildest excitement, for it is a long time since
they have seen anything more "gamey" than a city pigeon. Birding over
good dogs is the very poetry of field-sports. The silken-haired setter
and the lithe pointer are as far the superiors of the half-savage
hound as the Coldstream Guards are of the Comanches. The hound has no
affection and but little intelligence, and the qualities which make
him valuable are purely those of instinct. The long, hungry cry with
which he follows the deer and the sharp, angry yelp which he utters
when chasing the fox tell plainly that the motives which prompt him
thus to use his delicate nose and unwearying powers of endurance are
precisely those which carry the Indian to the hunt or on the war-path.
He hunts for any master who will cheer him on, has no tactics but to
stick to the trail and give tongue as long as the scent will lie, and
must be whipped off the game when caught to prevent his devouring
it on the spot. The setter, on the other hand, is intelligent,
affectionate and faithful. If properly trained and reared, he loves
his master and will hunt for no one else, learns to understand human
language to an astonishing degree and exhibits reasoning powers of no
mean order. He hunts purely for sport, understands the habits of his
game, and regulates his tactics accordingly, and delivers the birds
uninjured to his master, sometimes controlling his appetite and
carrying the game long distances for this purpose. I have frequently
discovered that my dogs, brought up in the house, understood words
which had never been taught them. My old favorite Di always answers
the dinner-bell and stands near my chair for odd scraps. Being
somewhat annoyed one day by her eagerness, I said playfully, "Go to
the kitchen and tell Annie to feed you." She at once rushed off and
scratched the kitchen door until the girl opened it, and then stood by
the tray of scraps looking at her and wagging her tail. Wanting one of
my little sons one evening, I said, "Di, go find the boys!" She rushed
off, looking and smelling about their usual haunts, but returned
unsuccessful. I scolded and sent her a second and third time, with the
same result: a few minutes after she came quietly behind me with the
_hat_ of my youngest boy in her mouth: she had taken it from a table
in the passage, and her wagging tail said plainly, "Will this answer?
It's the best I can do." The same dog will creep carefully upon
partridges, and stand as if cut in marble lest they should fly, but
will chase turkeys at full speed, giving tongue like a hound, and then
lie still for hours while they are called up and shot, nor will she
ever confound the different habits of the two birds or the different
methods of hunting them.

Such are the highly-bred and intelligent animals which are eagerly
waiting for us to-day--Di, with her white coat, soft as wavy silk, her
chestnut ears and one spot on the back alone marring its snowy purity;
Sancho, jet black, with "featherings" like a King Charles spaniel.
They are over the fence already, and tearing about the field so
recklessly in the exuberance of their joy that they must certainly
startle any game which may be there. The timid little field-buntings
glide away on silent wing through the grass; the meadow-larks rise
with gentle flappings and sail off with that easy flight so tempting
to very young wing-shots; now and then a flock of doves whistle off
too far for a certain shot, and clouds of crow-blackbirds rise with
hoarse chirps and seek less public feeding-grounds; a rabbit dashes
off from a brier-patch and both dogs rush pell-mell at his heels, but
a single note from the whistle brings them to a sudden halt and makes
them look thoroughly ashamed of themselves. Off they go again, as
wild as deer; but suddenly Di's whole action changes: crouching to the
ground and beating her sides rapidly with her tail, she runs hither
and thither, snuffing eagerly in the grass. Now Sancho comes up and
catches the cold trail, for a covey has certainly been in that place
to-day. Most probably they rose from the spot, frightened by the swoop
of a hawk, and made for the nearest cover, for the dogs can do nothing
with the scent. But that little whiff of the exciting effluvia has
brought them down to their work, and a beautiful sight it is as they
quarter the ground with quickly-beating tails and noses high in the
air, crossing and recrossing the wind in zigzag lines and concentric
circles, hunting the ground so closely that no trail, however cold,
can escape their keen sense of smell. A wave of the hand to Sancho,
and the sagacious fellow is off toward the far corner of the field,
when suddenly Di stops in mid-career with a jerk that must try every
sinew in her frame. The birds are right under her nose, and she dares
not move a muscle, but stands as if changed into stone, her eyes
starting with excitement, her nostrils expanded, her feathery stern
quivering stiffly out behind and every line of her figure standing out
like whipcord. "Toho!" The black dog catches the sound and turns his
head: he sees her rigid form, and backs her where he stands as firmly
as if he too had the scent. There is no hurry, for the dogs are true
as steel and will stand there as long as the frightened birds lie,
while the latter, obedient to the instinct of sudden terror, will
cower where they are for an hour, with their heads drawn back, their
mottled breasts pressed to the earth and their legs gathered under
them, ready to spring into the air. We cock our guns, agree to shoot
respectively at the birds which go right or left or straight before
us, and then advance to flush the covey ourselves. The staunch dog
never winces as we pass her: two paces, three, a sudden rush and whirr
as of many wings, five sharp reports in quick succession and four
birds down! Another, wild with fright, rises straight up for twenty
feet and darts off behind us, but his beautiful head droops as the
crack of my last barrel resounds on the air and a cloud of feathers
floats downward. The shot has struck him in the line of flight, and he
goes to the ground with a bounce, some thirty yards away, as if hurled
there by a vigorous arm. The well-trained dogs come to the "Down!
charge!" while we reload our guns, and then seek the dead birds and
bring them carefully in to us.

Leaving the broken covey to be worked up on our return, we push on to
another part of the large pea-field, where, perched upon the topmost
limb of a tall dead pine, we see a red-tailed hawk engaged in quiet
observation. There is no surer sign of birds, but it takes close
hunting to find them, for they dare not move about while their savage
enemy is on the watch. As we approach the hawk stretches out his neck,
jerks his wings two or three times and oscillates his ungainly body,
and then, with a loud scream of angry disappointment, he is off. The
tree stands in a little piece of sedge, not far from a dense growth of
pine-saplings, and we know that the moment the hawk left his perch the
birds started for the cover, and our only chance for shooting is to
head them off and turn them. The dogs have struck the running trail,
and their action is totally different from what it was with the first
covey. Crouching flat to the ground, they glide after the startled
birds with a snake-like movement, now stopping, now running swiftly
in. Suddenly Di leaves the trail and dashes off at full speed to the
right. Making a wide circuit, she skirts the pines, and, turning short
round, comes to a firm stand in the very face of the retreating covey,
while Sancho lies prone with his nose between his paws. It is an
old trick of hers thus to "huddle" running birds, and we follow her
example, come up behind her, and get six with four barrels as the
birds rise in a bunch.

But if the reader follows us too closely, he will have all the fatigue
of a long tramp without the compensation of healthful excitement
and full game-pockets. Thirty-five fine birds in a pile on the
pantry-table offer a capital _raison d'être_ for weary feet and soiled
fingers when we reach home just in time for the supper-bell. There
have been some arrivals while we were gone, for Christmas is near at
hand, and the old house is filling up with guests. To-morrow the "St.
John's Hunting-Club" has its monthly deer-hunt and dinner at Black
Oak, and we need a good night's rest to prepare us for an experience
the omission of which would render imperfect any truthful reminiscence
of life at the old plantation.

During the months spent at the plantation there is little social
visiting among the gentlemen, and, except on Sundays and occasions
of public meetings, the various local clubs offer their only
opportunities for seeing each other, Another object--at least, under
the old _régime_--was to bring together those who occupied somewhat
different social positions. Formerly the clubs were strictly
exclusive, and, indeed, this feature was never lost, but in every
community there would be some _novi homines_, clever men many of them,
whom the old gentry were quite willing to recognize, though a marked
difference in culture prevented family visiting. These could be
admitted to membership, and at the club-house could be met on equal
terms. The hunting feature was always preserved, though few of the
older members ever joined in the sport. Under the rules there was a
place, a day and an hour for the weekly meet; and I remember when it
was a safe thing to be at "the White Bridge" on the Santee Canal any
Saturday morning at nine o'clock. Somebody was sure to be there with
dogs and driver, prepared for a "wallet-hunt"--i.e., an all-day hunt
with wallets at the crupper well filled with hunter's cheer. Once a
month the club met for dinner, each member "finding" in turn, and
on that day a single drive, or at most two, was all that could be
enjoyed. The club-house was a plain frame building in the woods, with
a huge fireplace at each end, heavy stationary pine table extending
the length of the room, and broad soft-pine benches. The dishes,
wines, liquors and cigars were all specified in the rules, the
finder being allowed two extra dishes at will, and supplying all the
crockery, cutlery and glass. The kitchen was a rough shed close to the
cool and shaded spring of pure, clear water. Being myself but a guest,
I have not the privilege of extending an invitation to the reader;
so, by his leave, we will drop the present tense and I will assume the
part of _raconteur_. How vividly do the scenes of that day come back
through the highways of memory, crowded as they are with experiences
of more than twenty varied years! As I rode up to the bridge on that
bright December morning I found a party which promised rare sport.
There was Kit Gillam with his crooked nose, and Tom Clifton with his
deadly Manton and fine cry of dogs, and cheery Jack Parker, who hunted
only for the good company, and whose gun was as likely as not to be
unloaded when the deer came out to him. Two drives were decided on
which might be relied on for shooting, and yet were small enough to
give ample time for reaching the club-house before dinner.

As we rode toward our stands I thought it a good chance to settle
a point which had long excited my curiosity. "Kit," said I, "I have
often wondered how your nose got out of plumb. What caused it?"

"When I was a little bit of a boy I fell down and stepped on it."

This very satisfactory explanation brought us to our ground, and
we were soon at our respective stands and listening eagerly for the
trail-notes of the old hounds. The deer have regular runs, from which
they rarely deviate, and which do not vary in the course of years.
These are guarded by the standers while the game is driven down
from the opposite direction. A large drive may have a dozen of these
stands, by one of which the deer will almost certainly pass, but which
one nobody knows. Quiet is absolutely necessary and a cigar is fatal
to sport, but concealment is useless, as these animals see imperfectly
in daylight.

I had not to wait long before I caught the distant cheering and
hand-clapping of the drivers as they encouraged the dogs to hunt.
In the quiet of the sombre woods every sound was distinctly audible.
Suddenly three or four quick, sharp yelps brought my gun to the
"ready," and the hammers clicked as a burst of music followed. But
above the clamor of the hounds came the crack of the driver's whip,
and his voice, mellowed by distance, was heard in angry tones: "Come
back yah, you good-for-nuttin', wutless lee' rabbit-dog, you! I sway
maussa ha' for shoot da' puppy 'fore he spile ebery dog in de pack!"

Soon, however, came another open, deep and musical, and there was no
mistaking old Drummer's trail-note: then Killbuck joined in, and then
the cry became general. For a while the broken, quavering tongue tells
that the dogs are only trailing and the deer is still cowering in his
bed, or perhaps has sneaked out of the drive at the first sound of the
horn. Hark! what a burst! They had "started" within two hundred yards
of me. The next moment there was a rustle of leaves, and a yearling
doe dashed by. I am not a dead shot, and have nothing to say about
that first barrel, but the second sent her down and over with a roll
that almost broke her neck. The dogs were stopped and the deer
thrown over the pommel of one of the boys, and we rode on to try the
Brunswick swamp. The boy had assured us that "One pow'ful big buck bin
in day (there) las' night. I see all he track gwine in, an' I nebber
see none come out."

We were soon strung along the narrow dam across which the game was to
be forced by the drivers, who had to make their way through an ugly
bog among cypress "knees" and dense brier-patches. Jack Parker stood
next to me, fidgeting about uneasily, because it was against rules to
talk on stand. Jack's prominent feature was his nose, and he had
an incorrigible trick of blowing it "out loud" whenever there was a
particular reason for keeping perfectly quiet. The dogs had begun
to open, and their loose, scattering trail-notes indicated turkeys.
Looking directly before me, I saw seven noble gobblers stepping
cautiously toward my stand. Their glossy breasts glittered with
coppery lustre in the straggling sunbeams as, with drooping wings and
expanded tails, they advanced, looking fearfully about and uttering
their low alarm-notes, "Quit! quit! quit!" Three more steps will make
a certain shot, and--out rang Jack's nasal clarion, loud and clear as
the _morte_ at a fox-chase. I looked round in horror, and there
stood my hunter complacently eying me and flourishing his white silk
handkerchief, while his gun leaned against a tree ten paces distant:
"Expect I'd better go back to my stand, eh? Are those dogs barking at
a deer?"

I jumped to my feet for a snap-shot at the old gobbler which flew over
me, making a clear miss. Bang! bang! went two more guns; a woodcock
whistled up from the bog and two swamp-rabbits dashed into the
brier. The dogs came out, shaking the water from their coats, and the
spattered drivers rode through the creek. There was not a feather to
show, and of course everybody was "down" on Jack, but with an air of
deep injury he put it off on me with the question, "Why didn't you
tell me the turkeys were coming? How can a fellow help having a cold?"

We reached the club-house just in time to take our seats as dinner was
served, and were in capital condition to enjoy the rich mutton, the
fat turkey, the juicy home-cured ham and the rare old madeira which
graced the board. This last was a specialty with the gentlemen of
those days, and probably no cellars in the world could boast choicer
vintage than the "Newton & Gordon" and "Old Leacock" which cheered the
table of that "hunting-club." There were stronger liquors, too, though
these were chiefly used as appetizers before dinner. The moderate use
of brandy was universal, but the drunkenness which blots these days of
prohibitory laws was comparatively rare. Few ever left the club-house
"disguised" by liquor except the young men, who then, as now and
always, would occasionally indulge in a "frolic." With the clearing of
the board came the regular and volunteer toasts, and then an hour of
"crop-talk" and "horse-talk" and hunting-stories over the wine and
cigars. With the departure of the older members came the inevitable
quarter-race, with its accompaniment of riding feats which would have
done credit to a Don Cossack. The equestrian performance was commenced
by Kit Gillam (who now dismounts and leads over every little
ditch) forcing his active chestnut up the wooden steps and into
the club-room, and rearing him on the dining-table. Then came a
leaping-match over a ten-railed fence, resulting in the barking of
some shins and the demolition of sundry panels of rail. Joe Keating,
the wildest rider I ever knew, had emptied his tumbler too often, and
insisted on running his horse home through the woods. An hour after
he was overtaken trudging along the road, perfectly sober, with the
saddle on his shoulders and the bridle over his arm.

"Why, Joe, where's your horse?"

"Dead!" was the laconic reply.

Sure enough. He had run full against a huge pine, and the horse had
gone down with a broken skull. He never tried it again.

Christmas Eve has come at last, and the old plantation is in all its
glory. Carriage after carriage has deposited its freight of blooming
girls and merry-eyed children at the broad, open hall-door. There is
not a vacant stall in the stables, nor an unoccupied bedroom among all
the seventeen of the spacious mansion. The broad dinner-table is
set diagonally in the long dining-room, and to-morrow, at least, the
guests will have to take two turns at filling its twenty seats, while
the children go through the same manoeuvre in the pantry. Where they
will all sleep to-night is a mystery which none can unravel save the
busy, hospitable "lady of the manor;" but it makes little
difference, for there will be little sleeping done. The day passes
in riding-parties and rowing-parties and similar amusements, as
each freely follows the bent of his inclination. "Brass," the negro
fiddler, has been summoned, and "Newport" comes with his stirrup and
steel for the "triangle" accompaniment, and the merry feet of the
dancers are soon keeping time to the homely but inspiriting music. The
"German" and the "Boston" have not usurped the places of the old-time
cotillon, quadrille and Virginia reel, and the dance is often varied
by romping games of "Blindman's Buff," "Move-House" and "Stage-Coach,"
in which old and young unite with equal zest.

But this is not the limit of the fun. From time immemorial Christmas
Eve has been licensed for the performance of all sorts of tricks,
and demure little faces are flitting about convulsed by the effort to
conceal the merry sense of mischief. The stockings are duly hung for
Saint Nicholas, and the holly, with its glossy leaves and scarlet
berries, stands ready to be planted in the parlor, to bloom to-morrow
into all kinds of rich flowers and gift-fruit. At nine o'clock the
work of arranging the Christmas tree begins. The ladies retire, and
after a quiet smoke by the roaring hall-fire the gentlemen follow
suit. To bed, but not to sleep. Jack Parker is the first man ready,
and bounces into the best bed to secure the softest place; but the
bars have been skillfully removed, and he is the centre of a rather
mixed pile on the floor. I feel another, to be sure that all is right,
and slip cozily between the sheets, but some graceless little wretch
has placed a walking-cane "athwart-ships," which nearly breaks my
back. None escape. Some find their sheets strewed with chaff or
cockle-burs, some find no sheets at all. At midnight a fearful roar
comes from the girls' room, followed by pretty shrieks and terrible
confusion; but it is only the old Cochin rooster, which was slyly shut
up in the empty chimney-place before they retired, indulging in his
first crow.

Daylight puts an end to all sleep, for the boys are on the piazza
ready to welcome Christmas with innumerable packages of fire-crackers.
We rise to find our pantaloons sewed up, our boots stuffed with wet
cotton, our tooth-brushes dusted with quinine and our _café noir_
sweetened with salt. These practical jokes are all taken in good
part and made to contribute to the jollity of the season. At
the breakfast-table lumps of cracked marble serve admirably for
loaf-sugar, except that the hottest coffee will not dissolve them, and
boiled eggs tempt the appetite only to disappoint with their sawdust
filling. Then all assemble on the piazza to witness the merriment
of the crowd of negroes who have assembled to claim little gifts of
tobacco and sugar and to receive the annual glass of whisky which a
time-honored custom bestows. The liquor is served in a wine-glass, and
swallowed eagerly by men, women and boys from ten years old upward.
Then they disperse to get their portion of the Christmas beef which
has been slaughtered for their special benefit, and we prepare for
service at the parish church, which stands among the shadows of the
old forest oaks an easy walk from the house. There the solemn services
temper and soften, but do not check or lessen, the joy and good-will
which so well become the season, and which find their appropriate
manifestation in all kinds of innocent amusement. The religious and
the social observances of the day react each upon the other, and
harmonize most admirably in the impressions which they produce. The
interchange of gifts and tokens around the Christmas tree follows
most appropriately, and the Christmas feast is marked by profuse
hospitality and keen enjoyment unmarred by riot or excess.

Ah, well! there are piles of dusty memories in the old cockloft still
untouched, but I shall rummage no more to-night. The scenes which have
floated past me with the wreathing smoke of my cigar are green and
fragrant to me with a freshness which time can never blight, but they
never can harden into reality again for any mortal experience. They
have gone into the irretrievable past with a state of things which
some may regret and others rejoice in, and well will it be if the new
_régime_ shall supply their places with other pictures which twenty
years hence it may be no less pleasant to remember.

ROBERT WILSON.




OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

A GERMAN AGRICULTURAL FAIR.


From the 27th to the 30th of September all Stuttgart flocks to
Cannstatt for the _Volksfest_; and this year every good Würtemberger
was bound to feel an additional interest in the fête on account of
the opening ceremony, the inauguration of a statue to the late king,
Wilhelm I.--and "well beloved," one is tempted to add from the way
in which his people still speak of him. "The old king" and "this one"
they say with an inflection of voice anything but flattering to
the latter. Our landlady assures us that let the weather look as
threatening as it would, the sun always contrived to burst out when in
former times the late king rode into the arena to give the prizes; and
she is evidently by no means certain it will not pour all three days
of the fair this year. However, to judge from the skies, "this one" is
not so bad as he might be: the sun shines propitious on him too, and
consequently on us as we set forth to see what we can see. The second
is the great day, as the prizes are then distributed; but already on
Monday the booths and shows were on the field, and Cannstatt was gay
with banners and wreaths and garlands of green. The carpenters were
still hard at work hammering at seats for us to occupy next day,
but the wonderful triumphal arch stood quite completed and worthy of
sincere admiration. No one knows who has not seen it worked into an
architectural design how beautiful a string of onions can be, how
gorgeous a row of vegetable-marrows, how delicate a cluster of
turnips. It sounds puerile, but it was lovely nevertheless. Imagine a
temple-like construction all composed of odorous pine, with an arched
portal on either hand, and then every line and curve, every niche and
pillar and balustrade, defined with glowing fruit. It was looped in
festoons and hung in tassels of red and white and gold: the arms of
Würtemberg even were traced in yellow corn, while above it all rose
a graceful column, a mosaic from base to summit of every fruit that
autumn can bring to perfection.

That was the great show: after that, mammoth cucumbers and carrots or
rows of agricultural implements did not detain us long. The next best
thing was to see the booths and the crowd on the outskirts of the
exhibition. There the circus was in full blast, and triumphant,
brazen-throated opposition to all smaller attractions that had
ventured into that neighborhood. The performing dogs in red petticoats
were reduced to making an appearance before their tent to entice
spectators, and Harlequin and Columbine had to shout themselves hoarse
inviting people to come in and split with laughter for sixpence. Those
who did not aspire to a seat under painted canvas gathered round a
melancholy bear dancing a _pas seul_ on the grass with heartbroken
gravity. Then came the _Schützhallen_, where the marksmen stationed
themselves three feet from the target and cracked away at it with no
other visible effect than that produced on a monkey doing its tricks
close by: at every shot the poor little creature stopped fiddling and
looked over its shoulder with a distressed air of "If I'm not hit this
time!" Hand-organs, penny trumpets and rattles quite drowned the voice
of a street-songstress with a large assortment of vocal music before
her, from which she was giving the public a selection. Whether the
songs had any reference to the pictures that formed her background we
did not discover, but, at all events, the latter were tragic in the
extreme. "The twenty-four-year-old murderer of his mother and six
brothers and sisters" was there portrayed in a neat suit of black,
with a hatchet in his hand and a very irresolute expression of
countenance, while the various members of his family, seen through
the open bedroom doors, awaited their fate in peaceful slumber. The
booths, with toys, gingerbread, sausages, cheese and light literature
tastefully intermingled, went on and on like the restaurants that
lined each side of the long avenue. Around primitive tables family
parties clinked foaming glasses and hailed with demonstrative
hospitality any stray cousin who chanced that way. In one of the last
of these improvised _Trinkhallen_ we came upon a young man and maiden
who had the place quite to themselves. Her brown parasol kept the
sun off them both, and it was of no sort of consequence that they had
nothing more interesting than the back of a shed to look at. Future
prospects were the only ones they cared for: the present had no need
of anything but a faint beeriness, conducive to day-dreaming.

As we get into the carriage again our coachman says we must see the
new statue. Accordingly, we drive through the town and halt before it
in the square. It is very fine, glowing like gold from the mint.
The king sits his charger well, and gazes majestically at nothing in
particular: still, one must be a little critical, and we imagine the
horse's tail is not quite right. But then is not the whisk of a tail
in bronze almost impossible to conceive of? If the artist suffers no
severer censure than that, he will probably call himself a happy
man. The inscription on the pedestal of the statue reads, "From his
grateful people." High and low have contributed to it, and gladly.
"That was a man!" says our driver. He was a soldier under him, and
knows. And in fact the old king seems to have been always doing
something for the country, so that the gratitude is not without a
cause. The inhabitants of Cannstatt have special reason to remember
him kindly: he himself was grateful to them and showed it. In the
troublous times of 1848 he was sadly in need of money: Ludwigsburg
(another satellite of Stuttgart) refused it, while Cannstatt came
up to the mark handsomely. The royal creditor never forgot that. He
instituted the _Volksfest_ as a sort of memorial, and Cannstatt is
proud and prosperous, while Ludwigsburg is like a city of the dead.
So the coachman affirms; and once conversation is opened between us it
flows without intermission. His head is over his shoulder all the way
as we roll back to the city under the beautiful trees of the palace
grounds. "If the old king had been living, Würtemberg would never have
joined in the last war: he would have told Prussia to fight it out by
herself." Apropos of the war, we ask what he thinks of Bismarck.
He evidently thinks a great deal of him, though not perhaps in the
generally accepted sense of that expression. He states as a fact that
there _are_ limits, leaving it to us to understand that the chancellor
of the empire has overstepped them. He declares further that a
Prussian, and especially a Berliner, is always to him an obnoxious
member of society through his insisting on knowing everything (except
his own place) better than anybody else. "Now, there was the Prussian
general before this last one," he continues, changing from politics
to court-gossip (naturally, since 1870, military matters in Würtemberg
flourish under Prussian auspices): "the first ball he went to at the
palace he asked the queen to dance! _Our_ queen!! And then he took his
whole family, and they sat in chairs that never were meant for them,
so that the king had to say to him next day, "Mr. General, first come
I, and then my ministers, and then this one, and then that one, and
_then_ you." He went back to Berlin soon after. It is pleasanter to
sit one's self down where one doesn't belong than to be set down
by somebody else." Our driver chuckles, and then bursts out afresh,
"Asking the _queen_ to dance!" He certainly has perfect faith in his
own stories.

We saw the successor of that presumptuous military man next day
among the greater and lesser lights that revolve around the throne of
Würtemberg. We ourselves were stationary, crowded into the foremost of
the tiers of seats that rose surrounding the immense enclosure, and
in the best place for observation, close by the royal pavilion.
The hills, bright in the sun and velvet in shadow, made a natural
amphitheatre beyond, a little church with its pretty tower looked
picturesquely down from a neighboring height, and the whole place
was gay with flags and branches, glittering uniforms and gorgeous
liveries. We were to see the _hohe Herrschaften_ come in at the
farthest entrance and drive around directly before our seats. As the
trumpets flourish and the first magnificence sweeps by we hear all
about us, "The princess Vera," and "No, the duchess of Uhra," and "Is
it?" "Isn't it?" "Which is it?" till we finally settle down to the
serene conclusion that it is either one or the other. There is no
mistaking the queen, however, with the outriders, six superb black
horses and postilions in scarlet and gold. The Majesty herself looks
pale and resigned, bending to the right and left in answer to the
bows and _hochs._ Our neighbors "the Weimars" come in full force. A
superfluous prince of that family appears to have drifted to these
regions, and makes our street aristocratic for us. Young Weimar looks
uncommonly well in his hussar uniform, and the old prince and his wife
and daughter are resplendent. We met them later that same day in town,
but they had taken off their best clothes, and truth compels us sadly
to admit that we should hardly have known them.

In the course of time, after various false alarms on our part, the
band confidently strikes up "God Save the King!" and there is a
flashing and prancing in the distance that creates a great stir. The
citizen guard, a stately body of burghers, rides out with the king on
this day of all the year, and comes caracoling by in fine style, he in
the midst bowing and smiling. And now, after the _Herrschaften--hohe_
and _höchste_--come the animals. First, horses haughtily stepping,
and then splendid bulls with wreaths on their horns and garlands round
their--waists shall we say?--are led before the king, standing at the
foot of the steps and handing the prizes to the farmers, who present
themselves, ducking and scraping. It seems a shame to tie up the
creatures' legs so, and put rings through their noses: some have
even a cloth bound over their heads; and if all these precautionary
measures are necessary, it ought to be a relief when the procession of
mild cows begins, They look out amiably from under the floral crowns
that have slipped low on their brows, or turn with half-conscious
pride to the handsome little calves that trot beside them. The sheep,
seeking to attract too early the notice of royalty, dash out in a
flock, and are driven back with jeering and hooting, as they deserve
to be. Then the pigs stagger by: their garlands are excessively
unbecoming. Such of the family of swine as are too young to stagger
are wheeled in handcarts in the rear; and so the ceremonies are
closed, except for a couple of races which take place immediately, and
with no great éclat. The burgher races these are called, while on the
third and last day are the officers' races. The rain prevented our
attending them, and we consoled ourselves, hearing it intimated by
those who had been at Ascot and Longchamps that we had not lost a
great deal.

G.H.P.




A PAIR OF WHEELS AND AN OLD PARASOL.


The threads from which the tissue of history is being woven are ever
in unceasing and rapid motion in the hands of the Fates. But these
deities for the most part love to work unseen, like the bees. It is
only when the spinning is going on with exceptional rapidity and
vigor that the movements of the threads and the characteristics of the
operation can be observed on the surface of social life, Such is
the case in these days at Rome, and it is not necessary to watch the
actions of governments or listen to the discussions of legislative
chambers in order to assure one's self of the fact. One cannot walk
the streets without having the phenomena which are the outward and
visible signs of it thrust in a thousand ways on the observation
of our senses. The other day I read a whole chapter of contemporary
history compressed into the appearance of a pair of wheels engaged in
their ordinary daily duty in the streets. It was in that central and
crowded part of the city which is between the church of the Gesù and
the Farnese palace, a labyrinth of tortuous streets and lanes,
not often visited by foreigners unless when bent on some special
expedition of sight-seeing. There are no sidewalks for foot-passengers
in these streets. They are narrow, very tortuous and very crowded.
Foot-passengers and vehicles of all sorts find their way along as best
they may in one confused mass. It was there I saw the historic pair
of wheels in question. They were attached to the barrow of a
coster-monger, who was retailing a stock of onions, carrots and
"cavolo Romano" which he had just purchased at the neighboring market
of the "Campo de' Fiori." His wares, I fear, had been selected from
the refuse of the market, and he and his barrow were in a state of
dilapidated shabbiness that matched his stock in trade. But not so the
wheels on which his barrow was supported. They were wheels of the most
gorgeous description. The spokes and the circumference were painted
of the most brilliant scarlet, and the entire nave was gilded so as
to have the appearance of a solid mass of gold. It is impossible to
imagine anything more _bizarre_ than the effect of these magnificent
wheels doing the work of carrying such an equipage. Nevertheless,
the apparition seemed to attract very little attention in the crowded
street. The grand scarlet and gilded wheels flamed along among the
crowd of shabby men and shabby vehicles with their load of onions and
cabbages, and scarcely anybody turned his head to stare at them. I
suppose the denizens of the district were used to the apparition of
them. To me they looked as if they had been the originals from
which Guido Reni painted those of the car in which he has placed the
celebrated Aurora of his world-famous fresco. They were solidly and
heavily built wheels--very barbarous an English carriage-builder would
have considered them in their heavy and clumsy magnificence--but they
were very gorgeous. What could be the meaning of their appearance in
public under such circumstances? I was walking with an Italian friend
at the time, who saw my state of amazement at so strange a phenomenon,
and explained it all by a single remark.

"Yes," said he, "there go a pair of His Eminence's wheels. They are
sharing the fortunes of their late master in a manner that is at once
dramatic and historical."

The wheels from a cardinal's carriage! Of course they were. How was
it possible that such wheels should be mistaken for any other in the
world? A few years ago, when pope and cardinals had not yet suffered
the horrible eclipse which has overtaken them, one of the most notable
features of the Roman streets and suburban roads used to consist
of the carriages of the members of the Sacred College taking their
diurnal drive. It was not etiquette for a cardinal to walk in the
streets, or indeed anywhere else, without his carriage following him.
There was no mistaking these barbarously gorgeous vehicles. They were
all exactly like each other, and unlike any other carriages to be
seen in the nineteenth century--heavy, clumsy, coarsely built and
gorgeously painted of the most flaming scarlet, and largely gilded.
They were drawn by long-tailed black horses covered with heavy harness
richly plated with silver, or something that looked like it, and
driven by a coachman whose livery, always as shabby as magnificent,
was as heavily laden with huge masses of worsted lace of the kind that
used to be placed on carriage-linings some five-and-twenty years ago.
Two similarly bedizened footmen always stood on the monkey-board
at the rear, who descended and walked behind His Eminence and
his chaplain when the cardinal left his carriage to get his
constitutional. Ichabod! Ichabod! The glory has departed! Such
cavalcades are no longer to be seen crawling along the Via Appia,
or following His Eminence on a fine and sunny afternoon about four
o'clock as he walks on the footpath between the Porta Pia and the
Basilica of St. Agnes in search of an appetite for his dinner. The
world will never see such carriages and such servants any more. _Fuit
Ilium!_ I thought of the old lines on the "high--mettled racer," and
of "imperial Cæsar, dead and turned to clay, stopping a hole to keep
the wind away." To see such splendor reduced to the service of such
vile uses! Yes, as my Italian friend said, "There go the cardinal's
wheels," and it is impossible not to feel sure that the phenomenon
is symbolical of the way the cardinal is going himself. When an
institution, a dignity, a social arrangement of any sort, has grown
to be purely ornamental, has become so splendid that its splendor has
come to be the essence of it, it will no longer be able to exist shorn
of its splendor, however much it may in its origin have been adapted
for use rather than for show. The wheels were heavy, cumbrous and
ill put together; they were not well adapted for the costermonger's
purpose, and will probably fall to pieces before long. Their fate is
a type of that of their once master. That ornamental individual, shorn
of his ornamental character, is useless. His _raison d'être_ is gone
as entirely as Othello's occupation was. And it will probably not be
long before the fate of the cardinal's wheels overtakes the cardinal
himself.

The second little bit of street incident which recently occurred to me
was in itself less striking, but seemed to me to symbolize changes of
yet higher moment and wider significance. This time what I saw was in
the Ghetto. Many of my readers probably know what the Ghetto at Rome
is, but untraveled stayers-at-home may very excusably never have heard
of it. The Ghetto is the Jews' quarter in Rome--the district in which
they were for many generations compelled to reside and to be locked
in by night, and where from habit the greater part, especially of the
poorer members of the Jewish community, still live. As will be easily
believed, it is the worst and most wretched quarter of the city--the
lowest physically as well as morally--and inundated with tolerable
certainty every year by the rising of the Tiber. The dilapidated and
filthy streets of the other parts of old papal Rome used to look
clean and spruce by comparison with the lurid and darksome dens of
the Ghetto. There are Ghettos in London--streets where the children of
Israel congregate, not in obedience to any law old or new, but drawn
together by mutual attraction and similarity of occupation. And the
occupations there are very much of the same nature as those pursued
in the Ghetto of Rome--the buying and selling of old clothes and
second-hand property of all sorts, the preparation and distribution of
fried fish, and here and there a little usury. But the _genius loci_
here impresses on the trade in discarded odds and ends a peculiar
character of its own. A much larger number of old pictures figure
among the hoards of useless "property" than would be the case
elsewhere. The constant decay of noble and once wealthy families
furnishes to the second-hand market a much more abundant supply of
the remains of articles that were once rich and rare in their day--old
damask hangings torn from walls that have witnessed the princely
revelry of many a generation; rich brocades and stuffs that have made
part of the moving pageant in the same saloons; lace of the finest
and rarest from the vestments of deceased prelates, whose heirs, as
regards such property, have probably been their serving-men; purple
and scarlet articles from the wardrobes of cardinals and princes of
the Church; and odds and ends of various sorts widely different in
kind from aught that could be found in similar repositories in other
cities. And another specialty of the Roman Ghetto is that it is not
altogether easy to obtain a sight of the miscellaneous treasures of
this rag-fair. Partly because the low-lying and narrow lanes of the
Ghetto are too murky and filthy to permit of the advantageous exposure
of the merchandise in question; partly, probably, from an habitual
consciousness on the part of the dealers that the details of their
traffic in all its particulars are not of a nature to be safely
submitted to the public eye; partly from that secretiveness which is
the natural result of living for many generations from father to son
under the tyranny of an alien race, whose bitterly hostile prejudices
were but little restrained by law or justice; and partly also, no
doubt, from the genuine Roman laziness, which in its perfection is
capable of overriding even Jewish keenness of trade,--the Jew brokers
of the Ghetto are often unwilling to show their hidden stores to the
first comer. Some amount of diplomacy and some show of the probability
of effecting an advantageous deal must be had recourse to in order to
attain the purpose of the explorer.

On the recent occasion to which I have referred these difficulties had
been overcome, and I had made my way into the interior of one of
the dens I have described in the company of a lady friend who is a
confirmed and irreclaimable lace-hunter, and who in pursuit of her
game would have confronted worse obstacles than any that we had
to encounter. For, in truth, the exterior appearance and the
entrance-chambers are the worst part of the Ghetto dwellings. One is
curiously reminded of the old mediæval stories of Jewish dwellings,
where the utmost squalor and poverty of exterior was a mere blind for
an interior gorgeous with every manifestation of wealth and luxury. I
will not say that much of the latter is to be found in the dwellings
of the Ghetto, but a degree of comfortable decency and indications
of the possession of capital may be met with which the exterior
appearances would not have led one to anticipate. Well, we had reached
the third floor of one of these sinister-looking abodes, conducted by
a fat old Jewess with a pair of huge black eyes, a large smooth face
as yellow as a guinea, and a vast development of bust clad in dirty
white wrappers of some sort. A door on the landing-place jealously
locked with two huge keys admitted us into a suite of three good-sized
rooms crammed from floor to ceiling with a collection of articles more
heterogeneous than can easily be conceived--far more so than can be
described.

Those who have ever accompanied a lady lace-hunter when she has struck
a promising trail know that the business in hand is likely to be a
somewhat long one. My companion on the present occasion very soon
convinced the Jewess that she knew quite as much about the matter as
she, the dealer, did. But I presume that some of the old yellow stores
produced were "the real thing;" for my friend and the old Jewess soon
became immersed in an eager and, as it seemed to me interminable,
discussion as to qualities, condition and values. Meantime, I had to
amuse myself as best I might by looking at the multifarious objects.
I must content myself with mentioning one article, the appearance
of which in such a place struck me as strange and not a little
significant. It was simply an old parasol, very much faded and a
little tattered, but not such a parasol as your fair hands ever
carried, my dear madam, nor such as the once equally fair hands of any
generation of your ancestors ever carried. The article in question was
more like the shelter which we see represented in Chinese paintings as
carried over the heads of persons of high rank among the Celestials.
It was very large, not much curved into the shape of a dome when
expanded, very clumsily and coarsely put together, but of gorgeous
magnificence of material. It was made of a very thick and rich damask
silk, additionally ornamented by embroidery in gold and silver thread,
and the handle and points of the supports were richly gilt. In a word,
I perceived at once, not being a novice in such matters, that the
article before me was one of the canopies used for holding over the
"Host" when the holy sacrament is carried by the priest through the
streets to a dying person. It needs but a moment's reflection on the
Roman Catholic theory of the sacrament of the "Last Supper" to be
aware of the extremely sacred nature of the uses to which this parasol
had been put, and of the associations connected with it. Nevertheless,
I found this bit of sacred church property in the hands of a Jew
broker, exposed to sale for a few francs to the first comer, heretic,
scoffer or infidel, that might take a fancy to buy it. This would
hardly have been the case when the pope was absolute master of Rome
and of all in it. The thing could not have happened save by the
dishonesty and cynical disbelief of some priest, and indeed probably
of more than one. And, upon the whole, it struck me as a second
curious indication of the somewhat breakneck speed with which the
threads of history are spinning themselves in these days and in these
latitudes.

T.A.T.




MEDICAL EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES.


A great deal of discussion has recently taken place on the subject of
medical education in the United States. To a foreigner, or to one not
acquainted with the influences that have led to and have kept up this
discussion, it might seem to be the result of a spontaneous outburst
of popular feeling, earnestly demanding much-needed progress. Really,
however, the very reverse is the case; and the revolutionists are
those whose _kind_ and _sympathetic_ interest in the welfare of the
community is prompted solely by selfish considerations. The changes
urged by these self-condemning philanthropists are not demanded by the
medical profession nor by the public; neither have they been, nor will
they be, sustained by both or by either. This assertion is clearly
proved by the experience of the University of Pennsylvania, In 1846
the American Medical Association recommended to all medical colleges
certain changes and improvements in their courses of instruction.
In consequence of this recommendation the University of Pennsylvania
extended its session to six months: not a _single medical college in
the country followed_ its progressive lead, and after continuing the
experiment for six years at great pecuniary loss, it was reluctantly
obliged to retrace its steps, and to return to the old standard as to
length of session. During the period of this advance the classes of
the University fell off greatly, and the classes of other medical
schools correspondingly increased. Even medical men sent their sons
to other medical schools, to save the time and money necessary for the
longer course. Indeed, medical men, as a rule, have sought to evade
the restrictions as to length of time of study, etc. more than any
other class; and the statement, that the "student usually dates his
medical studies from the time he buys his first _Chemistry_" applies
more frequently to the sons of _physicians_ than to any others. Hence,
I declare that these proposed changes are not demanded by the medical
profession nor by the public.

The writer of a recent article in _Lippincott's Magazine_ (Dr. H.C.
Wood) on "Medical Education in the United States" seems to have
been so lost in admiration at the methods of instruction followed in
European medical colleges as to be utterly blind to the good in the
system of medical education as it exists in this country--a system the
_necessary_ result of our political, social, financial and territorial
conditions; a system which, though in the abstract may not be the
best, is certainly, judging from its results, the best _possible_
under our peculiar circumstances. This much abused system of
medical education (only greatly improved in its extent and
thoroughness--improvements developed by the constant advances in
knowledge) is the same system which has produced the great medical
men of the United States during the past seventy-five years--medical
practitioners whose success has been surpassed by none in Europe;
surgeons whose skill has been, and is, world-wide in reputation;
authors whose works are standard authorities everywhere. It is the
same system of medical instruction--I quote verbatim (italics mine)
from this article that holds it up to scorn--which "accomplished such
_splendid results_ during the late rebellion." The writer says: "The
great resources of the medical profession were proved during the
civil war, when there was created in a few months a service which
for magnitude and efficiency has rarely if ever been equaled. Indeed,
military medicine was raised by it to a point _never reached before
that time in Europe_ and the results achieved have, in many points,
_worked a revolution in science_." After this frank declaration of the
inestimable value and glorious results of American medical education,
the writer draws the _logical_(?) sequence that it (American medical
education) is responsible for a case of most heartrending malpractice,
which he relates, compared to which the Japanese hari-kari were
merciful mildness, and approaching more nearly the tortures by
crucifixion as administered by this same _kind-hearted_ people. With
about as much reason and justice might he conclude that the _American
system_ of Sunday-school education is lamentably inferior to that of
Great Britain, _because_(!) Jesse Pomeroy was a possibility in that
most respectable town of Boston.

Dr. Wood alludes to the ignorance of the American medical student,
and makes a statement "not founded on the authority of official
publication," in which he endeavors to show that from "six to ten
per cent." of American medical students have an ignorance of vulgar
fractions and rudimentary astronomy that would exclude them from an
ordinary infant-school. Every one familiar with the students attending
our first-class American medical colleges knows perfectly well that
in origin and in culture they compare favorably with the young men
engaged in the study of law and divinity, or with those entering upon
mercantile or manufacturing pursuits. True, there are some imperfectly
educated, but certainly not "six or ten per cent." destitute of
that knowledge taught even in _American_ infant-schools, and without
knowing, and without the statement "being founded on the authority of
any official publication," I _infer_ that in _Europe_, owing to their
"better methods," similar knowledge is communicated to the average
European child many months _before its birth_.

Next follows a comment on the poverty of the American medical student.
Dr. Wood says: "Even worse than this, however, is the fact that the
summer between the winter courses is often not spent in study, but
in idleness, or, not rarely, in acquiring in the school-room or
harvest-field the pecuniary means of spending the subsequent winter in
the city." Alas! this _is_ too true. Providence seems to have ordained
that our young _American_ doctors are not always reared in the lap of
luxury and wealth as the fittest preparation for the trials, hardships
and self-denials of their future lives. It is also true that some
_other_ young American professional men have been compelled "in the
school-room or harvest-field" to acquire the means to prosecute their
professional studies. Daniel Webster, the son of a New England farmer,
taught school at Fryeburg, Maine, "upon a salary of about one dollar
per diem." "His salary was all saved ... as a fund for his _own
professional_ education and to help his brother through college."
"During his residence at Fryeburg, Mr. Webster borrowed (he was too
poor to buy) Blackstone's _Commentaries_." Mr. Webster's great rival,
Henry Clay, also was compelled to resort to the "school-room and
harvest-field to obtain the pecuniary means," etc. etc. etc. The son
of the poor widow with seven children "applied himself to the labor of
the field with alacrity and diligence;" "and there yet live those who
remember to have seen him oftentimes riding his sorry horse, with a
rope bridle, no saddle, and a bag of grain." "By the familiar name
of the Mill-boy of the Slashes do these men ... perpetuate the
remembrance of his lowly yet dutiful and unrepining employments."
American biography is so filled with similar instances, showing how
the great characters of her great men acquired their development and
strength in the stern gymnasium of poverty, even in "the school-room
and harvest-field," that I could fill volumes with the glowing
records. The youngest American school-boy recognizes Abraham Lincoln
and Henry Wilson in this _American_ galaxy. Whose heart has not been
stirred by the life-story of the great Hugh Miller, the stonecutter's
pick earning for him humble means, thereby enabling him to acquire
that learning which made his name a household word even in America.
Truth, then, as I have remarked, obliges me to admit that we have in
our medical colleges some young men who labor "in harvest-fields and
school-rooms" in order that they may honorably pay their way, rather
than eat the bread or accept the gratuities of pauperism.

Last March there graduated at the medical department of the University
of Pennsylvania one of these self-supporting young men. He was the son
of a missionary clergyman: the father was poor in pocket, but the son
was not poor in spirit. During the interval between his winter courses
of lectures, rather than be a burden to his father, rather than accept
gratuitous instruction from the school, he went into the coal regions
of Pennsylvania and worked in a coal-mine, as a common miner, to
procure funds to enable him to complete his professional studies;
and, _strange_ as it may seem, this young miner passed an excellent
examination, and received the unanimous vote of the medical faculty
for his degree. I mention this case, but every year there are several
similar; and we always find that the school-teachers and miners are by
no means at the foot of the graduating class.

Concerning clinical teaching, we have the following statement:
"The clinical teaching in an American hospital is comprised in the
following routine: Once or twice a week, from one to five hundred men
being congregated in an amphitheatre, the professor lectures upon a
case brought into the arena, perhaps operates, and when the hour has
expired the class is dismissed. Evidently, under such circumstances
there cannot be the training of the senses, the acquiring of a
knowledge of the hourly play of symptoms of disease and of familiarity
with the proper handling of the sick and wounded, which is of such
vital importance, and which can be the outcome only of daily contact
with patients." What can the writer of this sentence mean? Certainly,
no one knows better than he does that such _is not_ the practice in
the hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, in Bellevue and in
many other large hospitals, where clinics and dispensary services
are held for _several hours daily_ throughout the year, and where the
student has furnished him abundant opportunities four "acquiring a
knowledge of the ... symptoms of disease, ... of handling the sick and
wounded," etc. etc. That the American medical student profits by these
opportunities, and learns his clinic lessons well, is proved by the
unexpected and evidently unintended testimony which occurs toward the
close of the article, where Dr. Wood says, "The great resources of the
medical profession in America were proved during the civil war, when
there was created in a _few months_ a service which for _magnitude_
and _efficiency_ has _rarefy if ever been equaled_. Indeed, military
medicine was raised by it to a point _never reached before_ that time
_in Europe_, and the results achieved have in many points worked a
_revolution in science_." The italics in this quotation are mine, as
they also are in those which follow.

But (says the article under review) "the largest proportion of our
prominent physicians have educated themselves after graduation." As
if this were an extraordinary or unusual circumstance! Certainly,
they have; and so have all prominent men in all professions and all
pursuits of life, in every age and every country, not even excepting
the much-lauded men of Great Britain and the continent of Europe. What
young lawyer is entrusted with an important cause immediately after
admission to the Bar? And as the young doctor (according to the
aforesaid showing) "gains his first practical knowledge while serving
as a hospital resident, under the supervision of experienced men,"
so the young lawyer, _even in Great Britain_, must gain _his_ first
practical knowledge by constant attention at the courts, and by
diligently following the proceedings of his preceptor's and other
offices. Even the young clergyman, whose business it is to save
_souls_, has to do very much as the young doctor does, and, like him,
is often "thrown at once on his own resources, gaining his experience
without supervision, and at the _expense_ of the _poorer classes_,
who _naturally_ fall to his charge, and whose ignorance precludes them
from an even approximately correct estimate of" his fitness. "It is
one of the saddest features of our system that the famed skill of our
best" _(clergymen)_ "should so often be acquired at such a cost."

What can be more unphilosophical and illogical than to compare the
young doctor, or any other young professional man, to a new piece of
machinery, fresh from the manufactory, complete and perfect in all
its parts? And yet something like this is _attempted_ in the article
before us. Even as Minerva sprang from the brain of Jove the complete
and perfect goddess of learning, so would our Utopian writer have
the young doctors to come from the brains of their medical professors
complete and perfect; only, if his idea be correct, their medical
professors have so little brains that the annual graduating medical
classes of the United States would be immediately reduced from
the frightful army of three thousand "legalized murderers" to the
comparatively small and easily counted number of _one graduate_ (of
course, springing from one head). No; the young doctor, at graduation,
cannot be compared to a new, complete and perfect machine fresh from
the manufactory; rather, let him be compared to the young marsupial
creature at birth, extremely rudimentary, whose natural, and hence
fittest, place is the parental pouch, but which in due time becomes
the vigorous and well-developed specimen. I suppose, if I compare
the young doctor to the young marsupial, I should also say that _his_
protecting parental pouch, in which he acquires growth and vigor, is
the hospital where he goes after graduation, or the practice which he
sees under his preceptor's supervision.

The article continues: "The remarks which follow do not apply to
the medical department of Harvard College or to _one or two other
schools_" (the italics are mine); and farther on it continues: "In
other words, Harvard has copied the European plan of medical teaching
in some of its essential features, and as a consequence its medical
diploma is the _only one_ issued by _any prominent medical American_
college which is a _guarantee_ that its possessor has been well
educated in the science and practice of medicine." Where can we
find meekness and modesty like this?--modesty as becoming as it
is unexpected and surprising, seeing that the writer fills _two_
professorships in the University of Pennsylvania, Does he hang his
head so low in his--I was about to say _singular_--self-abasement
(but, considering, the _two_ professorships, I suppose I should say
_doubled_ self-abasement) that he cannot see? or are his eyes so
blinded by the effulgence of "Harvard" and "European" plans that he
fails to recognize and appreciate the immense advantages offered by
his own home institutions? I do not propose to make any invidious
remarks concerning Harvard, but I maintain that an _honest_ and _just_
comparison of the schools, of their requirements, of the character of
their teachings and the facilities they furnish their students, _must_
show that modesty alone prevented Professor "H.C. Wood, Jr., M.D.,"
also excepting from his sweeping denunciations the two great schools
of Philadelphia, though I only speak for and defend the medical
department of the University of Pennsylvania from an attack unjust,
uncalled-for and untrue.

R.A.F. PENROSE.


The party opposed to any reforms in medical education has, of course,
a right to be heard, and Dr. Penrose is well entitled to represent it
both by his position and by the evident heartiness with which he is
prepared to defend the existing system at every point. In impugning
the motives of those who have attacked it he lays himself open to an
obvious retort; but it is sufficient to remark that the contest is
not of a nature to call for or justify the use of personalities, which
could serve only to divert attention from the real issues.

The arguments put forward by Dr. Penrose may be summarized as follows:
1st, that the proposed changes are not demanded either by the public
or by the profession; 2d, that the present system is the best possible
in a nation constituted like ours; 3d, that the preparatory education
of our medical students is equal to that of law or divinity students,
or of young men entering upon mercantile or manufacturing pursuits;
4th, that in certain cases obstacles in the way of a regular and
thorough training have been overcome and success achieved in spite of
them; and 5th, that it is unavoidable and proper that medical men, as
well as members of other professions, should educate themselves after
graduation.

It will be observed that none of these arguments except the last,
which is based on a mere verbal ambiguity, touches the two subjects
discussed in Dr. Wood's article--namely, the _need_ of reform and the
_methods_ by which, if practicable, it is to be effected. Dr. Penrose
does not venture to assert that the existing system is perfect, or
to deny that the suggested changes are in the nature of improvements.
What he wishes us to believe is that the system, whatever its defects,
is as good a one as Americans have a right to demand, and that it is
so closely interwoven with our political and social institutions as to
admit of no separate handling. Similar arguments are frequently urged
against the desire to raise the standard and widen the avenues of the
"higher education." We are thus taught to regard ourselves as a poor
and struggling nation with no claim to the possession of intellectual
luxuries, or as having bound ourselves to forego any aspirations to an
equality with other nations in respect of culture when we secured the
advantages of popular government and its social concomitants. It would
seem, however, to be a sounder, as it is certainly a more gratifying
belief, that precisely because we have attained these advantages
it will be easier for us to appropriate all the benefits which
civilization has to offer--possible for us to make more rapid strides
than have been made by other nations, impeded by a diversity of
interests and conflicts between the government and the people. No
doubt the comparative youthfulness of the nation will account for
our backward condition in certain respects; but surely it is time to
abandon this and every similar plea as an argument against any attempt
at progress.

We have not space, and for the reasons indicated we see no necessity,
to discuss Dr. Penrose's positions in detail. It will be sufficient
to notice generally what seems to us their inherent weakness. His
assertion that no changes are _now_ demanded by the public or the
profession is, he thinks, "clearly proved" by the fact that thirty
years ago some that were introduced in the University of Pennsylvania
at the suggestion of the American Medical Association ended in
failure. But what this experience really proves is, that the defects
of the system were even then admitted, while the remedies are still to
be applied. At Harvard this has been done; and the question for other
medical schools is whether they are to follow the example or to
be deterred by a bugbear--whether, for example, the University of
Pennsylvania, after raising her scientific and art departments to
a higher level, shall be content to let her medical school remain
stationary. It is the opinion of intelligent physicians who are not
parties to this controversy that the experiment which failed in 1846
would succeed now. The new plan adopted at Harvard, which exacts
three years of study, and embraces lectures, recitations, clinical
conferences and written examinations of the most stringent character,
has, we are informed, attracted a class of very superior men. Compared
with the effort made here in 1846, this change may be described as a
revolution, and it has proved a success.

We are at a loss to understand what Dr. Penrose wishes to prove by his
citation of cases in which eminence has been reached--chiefly, it
is to be noticed, in politics or the law--by persons who have
had insufficient opportunities for study. If the disadvantage was
imaginary, where was the merit of overcoming it? If it was real, as
most people would admit, what is the objection to insisting on it as
such? In the great majority of cases it is _not_ overcome, and the
result is, that the country is overstocked with men engaged in the
practice of professions for which they are inadequately qualified. As
to the skill that is gained by practice, the ripe knowledge that may
result from experience, this cannot without a confusion of terms
be described as "education." It will in general be most surely and
rapidly acquired by those who have received the best training, and
the great object of our higher educational institutions should be
to provide such training--not, by maintaining a low standard, to
facilitate the efforts of those who, from whatever cause, would find
it difficult to meet the demands of a higher one. Such persons may
have a claim to encouragement and assistance in their endeavors to
reach the mark; but they have no right to expect that the distance
shall be regulated to suit their convenience.

Dr. Wood's admissions in regard to the excellence of the army medical
service during the war are seized upon with natural exultation by his
opponent, who draws from them a legitimate inference in favor of the
general status of medical skill and knowledge throughout the country.
If Dr. Wood really intended to say--what his language, we confess,
would seem to imply--that the service attained its high state of
efficiency in a few months, we do not well see how he is to resist the
conclusion thus pressed upon him. But we conceive the truth to be that
either his phraseology or his recollection of the facts was at fault.
It is well known that at the beginning of the war it was impossible to
find competent surgeons in anything like the number that was
needed, and that the examining boards were consequently forced to be
ridiculously lenient. We know of an able surgeon who after a battle
found that he had not a single assistant in his corps who could be
trusted to perform an operation. This state of matters was the direct
result of the imperfect education given in the schools. Not one man in
ten who leaves them has ever been practically exercised in operations
on the cadaver, and the proportion was still smaller before the war.
It is easy therefore to understand, while it would be painful to
recall, the circumstances under which the great bulk of our army
surgeons acquired the requisite proficiency. The ultimate success
of our medical service, like the final triumph of our armies, was
preceded by many woeful blunders and mishaps, and, like that, was due
in great measure to a lavish outlay which would scarcely have been
possible in any European war, and to the general devotion and united
efforts which drew out all the resources of the country, of whatever
kind, and directed them to the furtherance of a single aim.




OUR EARLY NEWSPAPERS.


In looking over the contents of the old newspapers of this country, of
which there was a considerable number as early as the year 1730, one
is specially struck by the number of advertisements of slave sales and
of runaway slaves, apprentices and servants. The following are common
examples:

"To be sold, a very likely Negro woman about 30 years of Age, has been
in this city about 10. She is a fine Cook, has been brought up to all
sorts of House Work, and speaks very good English. She has had the
small Pox, and has now a Young Child. Enquire further concerning
her and the Conditions of Sale of Mary Kippen, or the Printer
hereof."--_New York Weekly Journal_, May 9, 1735.

"Just arrived from _Great Britain_, and are to be Sold on board the
Ship Alice and Elizabeth, Capt. _Paine_ Commander several likely
_Welch_ and _English_ Servant Men, most of them Tradesmen. Whoever
inclines to purchase any of them may agree with said Commander, or Mr.
_Thomas Noble_, Merchant, at Mr. Hazard's, in New York; where also
is to be Sold several Negro Girls and a Negro Boy, and likewise good
_Cheshire_ Cheese."--_New York Gazette_, Sept. 11, 1732.

Here is a notice from the same paper, date 1735, which shows very
clearly the position of the apprentice one hundred and forty years
ago:

"Run away on the 5th. Instant from John Bell of the city of New York
Carpenter, an Apprentice Boy named James Harding, aged about 19 years,
being a tall well-set Lad of a Fresh Complexion, he wears a Wig, he
is spley-footed and shuffles with his feet as he Walks, has a Copper
coloured Kersey Coat with large flat white Mettle Buttons, a grey
Duroy Coat lined with Silk, it is pretty much faded by wearing, a
broad blue striped Waistcoat and Breeches and a pair of blue striped
Tickin Breeches, in warm weather he often bleeds at the nose."
Then follows the offer of forty shillings to any one who will give
information whereby his master, John Bell, can regain possession of
the runaway.

That the women of that time were strong-minded, or at least that they
were disposed to assist in the reformation of bad husbands, is shown
by the following from the same journal, date December 31, 1733. The
subject, or victim, was one William Drinkwater, living near New York,
who had proved quarrelsome with his neighbors and abusive to his wife:
"The good Women of the Place took the Matter into Consideration and
laid hold of an Opportunity, to get him tied to a Cart, and there with
Rods belaboured him on his Back, till, in striveing to get away, he
pulled one of his Arms out of Joint, and then they unti'd him. Mr.
_Drinkwater_ Complained to Sundrie Magistrates of this useage, but all
he got by it was to be Laughed at; Whereupon he removed to New Milford
where we hear he proves a good Neighhour and a loving Husband. _A
Remarkable Reformation ariseing from the Justice of the good Women._"

Another advertisement indicates a toilet article now out of fashion:

"To be Sold by _Peter Lynch_, near Mr. _Rutgers_ Brewhouse, very good
Orange Butter, it is excellent for Gentlewomen to comb up their Hair
with, it also cures Children's sore Heads."

The next sounds quite as odd:

"_James Munden_ Partner with _Thomas Butwell_ from London, Maketh
Gentlewomens Stays and Childrens Coats in the Newest Fashion, that
Crooked Women and Children will appear strait," Same paper, date
February, 1735.

It is a curious fact that the deaths at that time, both in the New
York and New England papers, were announced not by the names of the
deceased, but by the churches to which they belonged. For example:
"Buried in the city last week, _viz._, Church of England 26, Dutch 24,
Lutheran 2, French 1, Presbyterians 3. The number of Blacks we
refer till Next Week."--_New England Weekly Journal_, Nov. 1, 1731.
Sometimes the number is recorded as four or five, or even less:
therefore the record must be very imperfect, and there seems to have
been no notice taken of those who were not buried from any church.

M.H.




LITERATURE OF THE DAY.


    Dante and his Circle; with the Italian Poets preceding him.
    Edited and translated in the original Metres by Dante Gabriel
    Rossetti. Revised and rearranged edition, Boston: Roberts
    Bros.

Dante is so great a figure in Italian literature that he hides from
sight the host of minor poets who preceded him, and throws his own
contemporaries so into the shade that we are apt to think that Italian
poetry began with him, and that its second exponent is Petrarch. Such
a view is to be regretted, not only because it overlooks much that
is in itself valuable, but because it attributes to a period of
slow development a phenomenal character. There were many poets worth
listening to before the great Florentine wrote the _New Life_ or the
_Divine Comedy_, and many whom he listened to and praised, although
his prophetic foresight told him that he would one day bear their
glory from them.

It was to make us acquainted with these forgotten singers that Mr.
Rossetti wrote some years ago his charming book. _The Early Italian
Poets_, which, after being long out of print, he now presents to us in
a revised and rearranged edition. The author's wish is not merely to
give us a glimpse of the quaint conceits of a school that continued in
Italy the waning influence of the Troubadours, but to open to us the
intimate social life of the literary men of that period as reflected
in their vague Platonic rhapsodies, their friendly letters, their
jests and quarrels, their joy and sadness. Interwoven with all this
are stately _canzoni_, and dainty sonnets full of quaint conceits,
like that wherein Jacopo da Lentino (1250) sings _Of his Lady in
Heaven_:

  I have it in my heart to serve God so
  That into Paradise I shall repair--
  The holy place through the which everywhere
  I have heard say that joy and solace flow.
  Without my lady I were loath to go--
  She who has the bright face and the bright hair--
  Because if she were absent, I being there,
  My pleasure would be less than naught, I know.
  Look you, I say not this to such intent
  As that I there would deal in any sin:
  I only would behold her gracious mien,
  And beautiful soft eyes, and lovely face,
  That so it should be my complete content
  To see my lady joyful in her place.

We seem, in turning over these pages, to see the brilliant,
ever-changing current of Italian thirteenth and fourteenth century
life--from Palermo, where Frederick II. held an almost Oriental
court, to the communes of Central Italy, the best type of which is
the merchant-city of the Arno, whose sons in those days could fight as
well as wield the yardstick, and sing in strains that have rarely
been equaled. In the first division of the work the great poet and his
friends are brought vividly before us from the time when, a sensitive
child, his eyes first beheld Beatrice and his new life began, to the
painful hours of bereavement and exile. The poet, it is known, made
a curious sonnet out of a dream he had after his first meeting with
Beatrice, and, in accordance with the fashion of the day, sent it to
various well-known poets, asking them to interpret his vision. The
answers are all given here; and among those whose attention was thus
attracted to the precocious youth was one whom he calls his "first
friend," Guido Cavalcanti--after Dante one of the most interesting
literary personages of the day. Rash and chivalrous, we can follow him
in his poems from the time he made his pilgrimage to the shrine of St.
James, and fell in love on the way with Mandetta of Toulouse, to the
turbulent days of Florentine party strife, when he rides down Messer
Corso Donati, "the baron," and wounds him with his javelin, and then
goes into exile at Sarzana, where he sings his dying song and sends
it to his lady, "who," he says, "of her noble grace shall show thee
courtesy." All the poets were not as constant as their own lines
would have us believe. Dante reproaches the famous Cino da Pistoja
for fickleness, and the latter confesses the charge, and declares he
cannot get "free from Love's pitiless aim." Guido Cavalcanti rebukes
Dante himself for his way of life after the death of Beatrice; and
this valuable sonnet should be read in connection with the beautiful
passage in the _Purgatory_ (xxx. 55-75) where Beatrice herself
upbraids the tearful poet.

In the second part, comprising _Poets chiefly before Dante_, we have
specimens of the Sicilian school--a _canzone_ by the great Frederick,
and a sonnet by his luckless son Enzo, who died in prison at Bologna
after a confinement of nearly twenty-three years. Of more importance
are the poems of Guido Guinicelli, of which the philosophical one
entitled "Of the Gentle Heart" was a nine days' wonder, but which,
even in Rossetti's elegant version, seems cold and formal. The
most natural and pleasing pieces among much that is artificial and
conventional are a ballad and two "catches" by Sacchetti, who died
just after 1400, and properly does not belong to Dante's circle.
Mr. Rossetti's readers will, however, be grateful to him for his
delightful versions of the two catches, one "On a Fine Day," the other
"On a Wet Day," giving the experiences of a band of young girls who
have gone to spend the afternoon in the fields and are overtaken by a
shower.

Poems like these, unfortunately, are rare. The range is a limited
one--Platonic love in its conventional form, or the still more
conventional form of chivalric love, imported bodily from the
Troubadours. Scattered here and there are some noble poems; as, for
instance, the one attributed to Fazio degli Uberti on his lady's
portrait, which begins--

  I look at the crisp golden-threaded hair,
  Whereof, to thrall my heart, Love twists a net;
  Using at times a string of pearls for bait,
  And sometimes with a single rose therein.

Mr. Rossetti has performed his task in a way to deserve the warmest
praise. The difficulties he has overcome are very great, consisting
not merely of intricate rhyme and assonance, which he has faithfully
reproduced, but a text often corrupt and meaning often obscure.
He says himself in his preface that "The life-blood of rhythmical
translation is this commandment--that a good poem shall not be turned
into a bad one;" and this commandment, as far as we can see, he has
not broken in a single case, while in some instances, we are bold
enough to say, the translation is better than the original.

    History of the Army of the Cumberland, its Organization,
    Campaigns and Battles. Written at the request of Maj.-Gen.
    George H. Thomas, chiefly from his private military journal
    and other official documents furnished by him. By Thomas B.
    Van Horne, U.S. Army. Illustrated with campaign and
    battle maps compiled by Edward Ruger, late Superintendent
    Topographical Engineer Office, Head quarters Department of the
    Cumberland. 2 vols. and atlas. Cincinnati: Robert Clarke & Co.

It was natural that General Thomas should make choice of some one to
whom he could entrust the task of writing his military history. For
that purpose he chose Mr. T.B. Van Home, a chaplain in the regular
army, and the work, which was begun in 1865 and finished in 1872, was
subject to Thomas's own examination. The result is now, after this
long delay, presented to the public in a shape that does great credit
to the publishers, whose imprint is almost synonymous with good
workmanship. Of the literary skill, or want of it, on the part of the
author not much need be said: he is evidently zealous in his anxiety
to do honor to the memory of General Thomas, and to do justice to all
who served with him; but he is sadly lacking in the art of suitably
clothing his ideas with fitting words, and much of his elaborate
composition is badly wasted in trying to find extravagant language
for the recital of important events. In some cases, where the official
reports printed at the close of each chapter recite in simple words
the actual occurrences, the text of the book is overlaid with unusual
words and involved sentences, in which the statement of the same facts
is lost in a cloud of phraseology of a very curious and original kind.
"Primal success," "the expression of a stride," "the belligerence of
the two armies," "philosophy of the victory," "palpable co-operation,"
"the expression of an insurrection,"--these are some of the odd
inventions of the author; and for instances of passages just as odd,
but too long for citation, we refer to the description of the battle
of Shiloh--a weak imitation of Kinglake's worst style--where we
are told that "change is the prophecy of unexpected conditions."
Fortunately, the second volume is much less marred by such faults, and
the great event of Thomas's career, the battle of Nashville, is told
with clearness and in full detail.

Although Thomas is the hero of the book from the time when he took
command at Camp Dick Robinson in August of 1861, it was not till
October, 1863, which brings us to page 394 of the first volume, that
he succeeded to the command of the Army of the Cumberland, after
Rosecrans, who had followed Buell and Sherman and Anderson. Under the
other generals Thomas had served with marked ability and fidelity, and
his dealing with them is fairly reflected by the author of this work,
for he rarely criticises either of Thomas's commanding officers--for
the most part merely records the operations of the army, and puts in
most prominence Thomas's own services, just as his military journal no
doubt supplied the material. Of all that long and dreary marching and
countermarching through Kentucky and Tennessee the account is full and
clear, and we find Buell and Halleck saying that they know nothing of
any plan of campaign in the very midst of their operations. At last
with Halleck, and still more with Grant in authority, there were
movements ordered that had some relation to each other and a general
plan of operations, and then the overwhelming strength of the North
began to turn the scale. Thomas was called on by Rosecrans, as he had
been by Buell, for advice, but he was obliged to act independently
too; and then, as at Stone River, he showed an energy and a capacity
that ought to have secured his earlier promotion. At Chickamauga he
was actually left in command by Rosecrans, and while the latter
was looking for new help elsewhere, Thomas at the front saved the
shattered army and led it safely back to Chattanooga, where it
underwent its famous long siege. The measures for its relief were
planned by Rosecrans, approved by Grant, and executed by Thomas, with
large assistance from "Baldy" Smith, whose skill as an engineer was
fully attested then. When Thomas did at last succeed to the command
of the Army of the Cumberland, he showed his superiority to his
predecessors by marked improvement in his method of securing supplies,
in his use of cavalry, and in the increased efficiency of his
infantry. When Johnston, thanks to Davis's unwise interference with
the Confederate armies, gave way to Hood, the latter almost at once
gave token of his inferior skill by being defeated by the Army of the
Cumberland--by less than half of it, in fact--in an attack intended to
destroy three armies of more than five times the number of the Union
force actually engaged. Thomas was in command at this battle of
Peach-tree Creek, one of the sharpest and most significant actions
of the campaign, though no official report is found at the end of
the chapter in which it is described. The events that led up to the
victory of Nashville are always worth the telling, and the account
given in this work may be looked upon as in some respects Thomas's own
version of them. A brief chapter by Colonel Merrill of the Engineers
gives a very good description of three of the leading features of the
work done by that corps in the Army of the Cumberland. To cross great
rivers there was need of pontoon-bridges; to protect the long lines
of railroads it was necessary to provide block-houses; to go through
a country that was often a trackless forest, and always badly provided
with real high-roads, it was all-important to have maps, and to
reproduce them rapidly and plentifully. Colonel Merrill's chapter
is pithy, pointed and to the purpose, showing how well our technical
troops did their share of work, and how large and important that share
was in securing the general result. The maps are also well done, and
therefore useful in enabling a reader to follow out the details of the
narrative.




_BOOKS RECEIVED._


Dissertations and Discussions; Political, Philosophical and
Historical. By John Stuart Mill. Vol. V. New York: Henry Holt & Co.

From Everglade to Canon with the Second Dragoons, 1836-75, Compiled by
Theo. F. Rodenbough. New York: D. Van Nostrand.

Grand'ther Baldwin's Thanksgiving, with other Ballads and Poems. By
Horatio Alger, Jr. Boston: Loring.

Shakespeare Hermeneutics; or, The Still Lion. By C.M. Ingleby, M.A.,
LL.D. London: Trübner & Co.

Minutes of the Ohio State Archæological Convention. Columbus: Printed
for the Society by Paul & Thrall.

Strength of Beams under Transverse Loads. By Prof. W. Allan. New York:
D. Van Nostrand.

The Illustrated Catholic Family Almanac for 1876. New York: Catholic
Publication Society.

Report of the Commissioner of Education for 1874. Washington:
Government Printing-office.

Our Poetical Favorites. Second Series. By Aschel C. Kendrick. New
York: Sheldon &Co.

Camp-Life in Florida. By Charles Hallock. New York: Forest and Stream
Publishing Co.

Lectures on Art. Second Series. By H. Taine. New York: Henry Holt &
Co.

Pretty Miss Bellew. By Theo. Gift. New York: Henry Holt & Co.

Drawn from. Life. By Charles Dickens. New York: E.J. Hale & Son.

The Conquest of Europe: A Poem of the Future. By Confucius.

Cartoons. By Margaret J. Preston. Boston: Roberts Brothers.










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