McClure's Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, June 1893

 

 

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When I was requested to furnish a dramatic biography of Mr. Howells, I was confronted with what seemed an insuperable difficulty. The more I thought of William Dean Howells, the less dramatic did he seem to me. The only way that occurred to me of introducing a dramatic element into our proposed interview was for me to assault him with tongue or pen, in the hope that he might take energetic measures to resent my intrusion; but as, notwithstanding his unvarying kindness to me, and many unforgotten benefits, I cherished only the friendliest feelings for him, I could not persuade myself to procure dramatic interest at such a price.

My second objection, I am bound to confess, arose from my own sense of dignity which rebelled against the rôle of an interviewer, and it was not until my conscience was made easy on this point that I agreed to undertake the present article. I was reminded that it was an ancient and highly dignified form of literature I was about to revive; and that my precedent was to be sought not in the modern newspaper interview, but in the Platonic dialogue. By the friction of two kindred minds, sparks of thought may flash forth which owe their origin solely to the friendly collision. We have a far more vivid portrait of Socrates in the beautiful conversational turns of “The Symposium” and the first book of “The Republic,” than in the purely objective account of Xenophon in his “Memorabilia.” And Howells, though he may not know it, has this trait in common with Socrates, that he can portray himself, unconsciously, better than I or anybody else could do it for him.

If I needed any further encouragement, I found it in the assurance that what I was expected to furnish was to be in the nature of “an exchange of confidences between two friends with a view to publication.” It was understood, of course, that Mr. Howells was to be more confiding than myself, and that his reminiscences were to predominate; for an author, however unheroic he may appear to his own modesty, is bound to be the hero of his biography. What made the subject so alluring to me, apart from the personal charm which inheres in the man and all that appertains to him, was the consciousness that our friendship was of twenty-two years’ standing, and that during all that time not a single jarring note had been introduced to mar the harmony of our relation.

Equipped, accordingly, with a good 4 conscience and a lead pencil (which remained undisturbed in my breast-pocket), I set out to “exchange confidences” with the author of “Silas Lapham” and “A Modern Instance.” I reached the enormous human hive on Fifty-ninth Street where my subject, for the present, occupies a dozen most comfortable and ornamental cells, and was promptly hoisted up to the fourth floor and deposited in front of his door. It is a house full of electric wires and tubes—literally honeycombed with modern conveniences. But in spite of all these, I made my way triumphantly to Mr. Howells’s den, and after a proper prelude began the novel task assigned to me.

“I am afraid,” I remarked quite en passant, “that I shall be embarrassed not by my ignorance, but by my knowledge concerning your life. For it is difficult to ask with good grace about what you already know. I am aware, for instance, that you were born at Martin’s Ferry, Ohio, March 11, 1837; that you removed thence to Dayton, and a few years later to Jefferson, Ashtabula County; that your father edited, published, and printed a country newspaper of Republican complexion, and that you spent a good part of your early years in the printing office. Nevertheless, I have some difficulty in realizing the environment of your boyhood.”

Howells. If you have read my “Boy’s Town,” which is in all essentials autobiographical, you know as much as I could tell you. The environment of my early life was exactly as there described.

Boyesen. Your father, I should judge, then, was not a strict disciplinarian?

Howells. No. He was the gentlest of men—a friend and companion to his sons. He guided us in an unobtrusive way without our suspecting it. He was continually putting books into my hands, and they were always good books; many of them became events in my life. I had no end of such literary passions during my boyhood. Among the first was Goldsmith, then came Cervantes and Irving.

Boyesen. Then there was a good deal of literary atmosphere about your childhood?

Howells. Yes. I can scarcely remember the time when books did not play a great part in my life. Father was by his culture and his interests rather 5 isolated from the community in which we lived, and this made him and all of us rejoice the more in a new author, in whose world we would live for weeks and months, and who colored our thoughts and conversation.

Boyesen. It has always been a matter of wonder to me that, with so little regular schooling, you stepped full-fledged into literature with such an exquisite and wholly individual style.

Howells. If you accuse me of that kind of thing, I must leave you to account for it. I had always a passion for literature, and to a boy with a mind and a desire to learn, a printing office is not a bad school.

Boyesen. How old were you when you left Jefferson, and went to Columbus?

Howells. I was nineteen years old when I went to the capital and wrote legislative reports for Cincinnati and Cleveland papers; afterwards I became one of the editors of the “Ohio State Journal.” My duties gradually took a wide range, and I edited the literary column and wrote many of the leading articles. I was then in the midst of my enthusiasm for Heine, and was so impregnated with his spirit, that a poem which I sent to the “Atlantic Monthly” was mistaken by Mr. Lowell for a translation from the German poet. When he had satisfied himself, however, that it was not a translation, he accepted and printed it.

Boyesen. Tell me how you happened to publish your first volume, “Poems by Two Friends,” in partnership with John J. Piatt.

Howells. I had known Piatt as a young printer; afterwards when he began to write poems, I read them and was delighted with them. When he came to Columbus I made his acquaintance, and we became friends. By this time we were both contributors to the “Atlantic Monthly.” I may as well tell you that his contributions to our joint volume were far superior to mine.

Boyesen. Did Lowell share that opinion?

Howells. That I don’t know. He wrote me a very charming letter, in which he said many encouraging things, and he briefly reviewed the book in the “Atlantic.”

Boyesen. What was the condition of society in Columbus during those days?

Howells. There were many delightful and cultivated people there, and society was charming; the North and South were both represented, and their characteristics united in a kind of informal Western hospitality, warm and cordial in its tone, which gave of its very best without stint. Salmon P. Chase, later Secretary of the Treasury, and Chief Justice of the United States, was then Governor of Ohio. He had a charming family, and made us young editors welcome at his house. All winter long there was a round of parties at the different houses; the houses were large and we always danced. These parties were brilliant affairs, socially, but besides, we young people had many informal gayeties. The old Starling Medical College, which was defunct as an educational institution, except for some vivisection and experiments 6 on hapless cats and dogs that went on in some out-of-the-way corners, was used as a boarding-house; and there was a large circular room in which we often improvised dances. We young fellows who lodged in the place were half a dozen journalists, lawyers, and law-students; one was, like myself, a writer for the “Atlantic,” and we saw life with joyous eyes. We read the new books, and talked them over with the young ladies whom we seem to have been always calling upon. I remember those years in Columbus as among the happiest years of my life.

Boyesen. From Columbus you went as consul to Venice, did not you?

Howells. Yes. You remember I had written a campaign “Life of Lincoln.” I was, like my father, an ardent Anti-slavery man. I went myself to Washington soon after President Lincoln’s inauguration. I was first offered the consulate to Rome; but as it depended entirely upon perquisites, which amounted only to three or four hundred dollars a year, I declined it, and they gave me Venice. The salary was raised to fifteen hundred dollars, which seemed to me quite beyond the dreams of avarice.

Boyesen. Do not you regard that Venetian experience as a very valuable one?

Howells. Oh, of course. In the first place, it gave me four years of almost uninterrupted leisure for study and literary work. There was, to be sure, occasionally an invoice to be verified, but that did not take much time. Secondly, it gave me a wider outlook upon the world than I had hitherto had. Without much study of a systematic kind, I had acquired a notion of English, French, German, and Spanish literature. I had been an eager and constant reader, always guided in my choice of books by my own inclination. I had learned German. Now, my first task was to learn Italian; and one of my early teachers was a Venetian priest, whom I read Dante with. This priest in certain ways suggested Don Ippolito in “A Foregone Conclusion.”

Boyesen. Then he took snuff, and had a supernumerary calico handkerchief?

Howells. Yes. But what interested me most about him was his religious skepticism. He used to say, “The saints are the gods baptized.” Then he was a kind of baffled inventor; though whether his inventions had the least merit I was unable to determine.

Boyesen. But his love story?

Howells. That was wholly fictitious.

Boyesen. I remember you gave me, in 1874, a letter of introduction to a Venetian friend of yours, named Brunetta, whom I failed to find.

Howells. Yes, Brunetta was the first friend I had in Venice. He was a distinctly Latin character—sober, well-regulated, and probity itself.

Boyesen. Do you call that the Latin character?

Howells. It is not our conventional idea of it; but it is fully as characteristic, if not more so, than the light, 7 mercurial, pleasure-loving type which somehow in literature has displaced the other. Brunetta and I promptly made the discovery that we were congenial. Then we became daily companions. I had a number of other Italian friends too, full of beautiful bonhomie and Southern sweetness of temperament.

Boyesen. You must have acquired Italian in a very short time?

Howells. Yes; being domesticated in that way in the very heart of that Italy, which was then Italia irridente, I could not help steeping myself in its atmosphere and breathing in the language, with the rest of its very composite flavors.

Boyesen. Yes; and whatever I know of Italian literature I owe largely to the completeness of that soaking process of yours. Your book on the Italian poets is one of the most charmingly sympathetic and illuminative bits of criticism that I know.

Howells. I am glad you think so; but the book was never a popular success. Of all the Italian authors, the one I delighted in the most was Goldoni. His exquisite realism fascinated me. It was the sort of thing which I felt I ought not to like; but for all that I liked it immensely.

Boyesen. How do you mean that you ought not to like it?

Howells. Why, I was an idealist in those days. I was only twenty-four or twenty-five years old, and I knew the world chiefly through literature. I was all the time trying to see things as others had seen them, and I had a notion that, in literature, persons and things should be nobler and better than they are in the sordid reality; and this romantic glamour veiled the world to me, and kept me from seeing things as they are. But in the lanes and alleys of Venice I found Goldoni everywhere. Scenes from his plays were enacted before my eyes, with all the charming Southern vividness of speech and gesture, and I seemed at every turn to have stepped at unawares into one of his comedies. I believe this was the beginning of my revolt. But it was a good while yet before I found my own bearings.

Boyesen. But permit me to say that it was an exquisitely delicate set of fresh Western senses you brought with you to Venice. When I was in Venice in 1878, I could not get away from you, however much I tried. I saw your old Venetian senator, in his august rags, roasting coffee; and I promenaded about for days in the chapters of your “Venetian Life,” like the Knight Huldbrand, in the Enchanted Forest in “Undine,” and I could not find my way out. Of course, I know that, being what you were, you could not have helped writing that book, but what was the immediate cause of your writing it?

Howells. From the day I arrived in Venice I kept a journal in which I noted down my impressions. I found a young pleasure in registering my sensations at the sight of notable things, and literary reminiscences usually shimmered through my observations. Then I received an offer from the “Boston Daily Advertiser,” to write weekly or bi-weekly letters, for which they paid me five dollars, in greenbacks, a column, nonpareil. By the time this sum reached Venice, shaven 8 and shorn by discounts for exchange in gold premium, it had usually shrunk to half its size or less. Still I was glad enough to get even that, and I kept on writing joyously. So the book grew in my hands until, at the time I resigned in 1865, I was trying to have it published. I offered it successively to a number of English publishers; but they all declined it. At last Mr. Trübner agreed to take it, if I could guarantee the sale of five hundred copies in the United States, or induce an American publisher to buy that number of copies in sheets. I happened to cross the ocean with Mr. Hurd of the New York firm of Hurd & Houghton, and repeated Mr. Trübner’s proposition to him. He refused to commit himself; but some weeks after my arrival in New York, he told me that the risk was practically nothing at all, and that his firm would agree to take the five hundred copies. The book was an instant success. I don’t know how many editions of it have been printed, but I should say that its sale has been upward of forty thousand copies, and it still continues. The English weeklies gave me long complimentary notices, which I carried about for months in my pocket like love-letters, and read surreptitiously at odd moments. I thought it was curious that other people to whom I showed the reviews did not seem much interested.

Boyesen. After returning to this country, did not you settle down in New York?

Howells. Yes; I was for a while a free lance in literature. I did whatever came in my way, and sold my articles to the newspapers, going about from office to office, but I was finally offered a place in “The Nation,” where I obtained a fixed position at a salary. I had at times a sense that, by going abroad, I had fallen out of the American procession of progress; and, though I was elbowing my way energetically through the crowd, I seemed to have a tremendous difficulty in recovering my lost place on my native soil, and asserting my full right to it. So, when young men beg me to recommend them for consulships, I always feel in duty bound to impress on them this great danger of falling out of the procession, and asking them whether they have confidence in their ability to reconquer the place they have deserted, for while they are away it will be pretty sure to be filled by somebody else. A man returning from a residence of several years abroad has a sense of superfluity in his own country—he has become a mere supernumerary whose presence or absence makes no particular difference.

Boyesen. What year did you leave “The Nation” and assume the editorship of “The Atlantic”?

Howells. I took the editorship in 1872, but went to live in Cambridge six or seven years before. I was first assistant editor under James T. Fields, who was uniformly kind and considerate, and with whom I got along perfectly. It was a place that he could have made odious to me, but he made it delightful. I have the tenderest regard and the highest respect for his memory.

Boyesen. I need scarcely ask you if your association with Lowell was agreeable?

Howells. It was in every way charming. He was twenty years my senior, but he always treated me as an equal and a contemporary. And you know the difference between thirty and fifty is far greater than between forty and sixty, or fifty and seventy. I dined with him every week, and he showed the friendliest appreciation of the work I was trying to do. We took long 9 walks together; and you know what a rare talker he was. Somehow I got much nearer to him than to Longfellow. As a man, Longfellow was flawless. He was full of noble friendliness and encouragement to all literary workers in whom he believed.

Boyesen. Do you remember you once said to me that he was a most inveterate praiser?

Howells. I may have said that; for in the kindness of his heart, and his constitutional reluctance to give pain, he did undoubtedly often strain a point or two in speaking well of things. But that was part of his beautiful kindliness of soul and admirable urbanity. Lowell, you know, confessed to being “a tory in his nerves;” but Longfellow, with all his stateliness of manner, was nobly and perfectly democratic. He was ideally good; I think he was without a fault.

Boyesen. I have never known a man who was more completely free from snobbishness and pretence of all kinds. It delighted him to go out of his way to do a man a favor. There was, however, a little touch of Puritan pallor in his temperament, a slight lack of robustness; that is, if his brother’s biography can be trusted. What I mean to say is, that he appears there a trifle too perfect; too bloodlessly, and almost frostily, statuesque. I have always had a little diminutive grudge against the Reverend Samuel Longfellow for not using a single one of those beautiful anecdotes I sent him illustrative of the warmer and more genial side of the poet’s character. He evidently wanted to portray a Plutarchian man of heroic size, and he therefore had to exclude all that was subtly individualizing.

Howells. Well, there is always room for another biography of Longfellow.

Boyesen. At the time when I made your acquaintance in 1871, you were writing “Their Wedding Journey.” Do you remember the glorious talks we had together while the hours of the night slipped away unnoticed? We have no more of those splendid conversational rages now-a-days. How eloquent we were, to be sure; and with what delight you read those chapters on “Niagara,” “Quebec,” and “The St. Lawrence;” and with what rapture I listened! I can never read them without supplying the cadence of your voice, and seeing you seated, twenty-two years younger than now, in that cosey little library in Berkeley Street.

Howells. Yes; and do you mind our sudden attacks of hunger, when we would start on a foraging expedition into the cellar, in the middle of the night, and return, you with a cheese and crackers, and I with a watermelon and a bottle of champagne? What jolly meals we improvised! Only it is a wonder to me that we survived them.

Boyesen. You will never suspect what 10 an influence you exerted upon my fate by your friendliness and sympathy in those never-to-be-forgotten days. You Americanized me. I had been an alien, and felt alien in every fibre of my soul, until I met you. Then I became domesticated. I found a kindred spirit who understood me, and whom I understood; and that is the first and indispensable condition of happiness. It was at your house, at a luncheon, I think, that I met Henry James.

Howells. Yes; James and I were constant companions. We took daily walks together, and his father, the elder Henry James, was an incomparably delightful and interesting man.

Boyesen. Yes; I remember him well. I doubt if I ever heard a more brilliant talker.

Howells. No; he was one of the best talkers in America. And didn’t the immortal Ralph Keeler appear upon the scene during the summer of ’71 or ’72?

Boyesen. Yes; your small son “Bua” insisted upon calling him “Big Man Keeler” in spite of his small size.

Howells. Yes, Bua was the only one who ever saw Keeler life-size.

Boyesen. I remember how he sat in your library and told stories of his negro minstrel days and his wild adventures in many climes, and did not care whether you laughed with him or at him, but would join you from sheer sympathy, and how we all laughed in chorus until our sides ached!

Howells. Poor Keeler! He was a sort of migratory, nomadic survival; but he had fine qualities, and was well equipped for a sort of fiction. If he had lived he might have written the great American novel. Who knows?

Boyesen. Was not it at Cambridge that Björnstjerne Björnson visited you?

Howells. No; that was in 1881, at Belmont, where we went in order to be in the country, and give the children 11 the benefit of country air. When I met Björnson before, we had always talked Italian; but the first thing he said to me at Belmont, was: “Now we will speak English.” And when he had got into the house, he picked up a book and said in his abrupt way: “We do not put enough in;” meaning thereby, that we ignored too much of life in our fiction—excluded it out of regard for propriety. But when I met him, some years later, in Paris, he had changed his mind about that, for he detested the French naturalism, and could find nothing to praise in Zola.

Boyesen. I am going to ask you one of the interviewer’s stock questions, but you need not answer, you know: Which of your books do you regard as the greatest?

Howells. I have always taken the most satisfaction in “A Modern Instance.” I have there come closest to American life as I know it.

Boyesen. But in “Silas Lapham” it seems to me that you have got a still firmer grip on American reality.

Howells. Perhaps. Still I prefer “A Modern Instance.” “Silas Lapham” is the most successful novel I have published, except “A Hazard of New Fortunes,” which has sold nearly twice as many copies as any of the rest.

Boyesen. What do you attribute that to?

Howells. Possibly to the fact that the scene is laid in New York; the public throughout the country is far more interested in New York than in Boston. New York, as Lowell once said, is a huge pudding, and every town and village has been helped to a slice, or wants to be.

Boyesen. I rejoice that New York has found such a subtly appreciative and faithful chronicler as you show yourself to be in “A Hazard of New Fortunes.” To the equipment of a great city—a world-city as the Germans say—belongs a great novelist; that is to say, at least one. And even though your modesty may rebel, I shall persist in regarding you henceforth as the novelist par excellence of New York.

Howells. Ah, you don’t expect me to live up to that bit of taffy!

It lay in the sharp angle of a wooded shore near Pontiac. When the river was high it had all the temper of a maelstrom, but in the hot summer, when the logs had ceased to run, and the river wallowed idly away to the rapids, it was like a molten mirror which, with the regularity of a pulse, resolved itself into a funnel, as though somewhere beneath 13 there was a blowhole. It had a look of hunger. Even the children noticed that, and they fed it with many things. What it passed into its rumbling bowels you never saw again. You threw a stick upon the shivering surface, and you saw it travel, first slowly, then very swiftly, round and round the sides, till the throat of the eddy seemed to open suddenly, and it ran straight down into darkness, and presently the funnel filled up again. It was shadowed by a huge cedar tree. If you came suddenly into the thicket above it, you were stilled with wonder. The place was different from all others on the river. It looked damp, it was so strangely green; the grass and trees showed so juicy; you fancied you could slice the fallen logs through with a penknife. Every sound there carried with a peculiar distinctness, yet the air was almost painfully still. Through the stillness there ran ever a sound, metallic, monotonous, pleasant—a clean cling-clung, cling-clung. It never varied, was the river high or low. If you lay down in the mossy grass you were lulled by that sing-song vibration, behind which you heard the low sucking breath of the eddy. The two sounds belonged to each other, and had a peculiar sympathy of tone. The birds never sang in the place, not because it was gloomy, maybe, but as though not to break in upon other rights.

There was nothing mysterious about that unceasing cling-clung, it was merely the ram of a force-pump. If you followed the pipe that led from the ram up the hill, you came to a large white house.

Many a summer day, and especially of a morning, a young girl came dancing down to the eddy, to sit beside it. She and it were very good friends; she used to tell it her secrets, and she made up a little song about it—a simple, almost foolish little song such as a clever young girl can write—Laure had been to the convent in Montreal, so she was not a common village maid.

It was very foolish. But she had such a soft, thrilling voice that you would have thought it beautiful. She was young—about sixteen—and her hair was so light that it fell about her like spray. But suddenly she ceased to be quite happy.

Armand, the avocat’s clerk, was a Protestant, and she had been meeting him at the eddy secretly. What did she care about the Catechism, or the curé, or an unblessed marriage, if Armand blessed her? She was afraid of nothing; she would dare anything while she was certain of him. But the curé discovered something—she ceased to go to confession, and, though he was a kind man, he had his duty to do.

There was trouble, and the ways of Laure’s people were devious and hard. It was said that she must go to the convent again, and they kept her prisoner in the house. One day they brought her a letter which, they said, was from Armand. It told her that he was going away, and that he had given her up. She had never seen his writing—they had trusted nothing to the village post-office—and she believed that the letter was from him. She had wept so much that tears were all done; her eyes only ached now. At first she thought that she would get away and go to him, and beg him not to give her up—what does a child know of pride all at once? But the pride came to her a little later, and she tried to think what she must do. While her thoughts went waving to and fro, and she could make nothing of them, she heard all the time the long, sighing breath of the eddy and the cling-clung of the force-pump. She never slept, and after a time it grew in her mind that she never would sleep till she went down to the cedar tree and the eddy; they seemed always calling her. She had said her Ave Marias over and over again, but they seemed to do her no good. Nothing could quiet her, not even the music of the twelfth mass, played on the little reed organ by the organist of St. Savior’s, when they took her to church against 15 her will—a passive rebel. The next day she was to go to the convent again.

That night she stole from the house into the light of the soft harvest moon, and ran down through the garden, over the road, and into the cedar thicket. She did not hear behind her the footsteps of a man who, night after night, had watched the house, hoping that she would come out. She hastened to the cedar tree, and looked down into the eddy. From far up the river there came the plaintive cry of a loon; but she heard no other sound in the night, save this and the cling-clung of the ram muffled by fallen branches, and the loud-breathing eddy which invited—until an arm ran round her waist and held her fast.

A minute later he said: “You will come, then? And we shall be man and wife very quick.”

“Wait a minute,” she said, and she picked up handfuls of leaves and dropped them softly into the funnel of water.

“What’s that for?” he asked.

“I am a cock-robin,” she said with her old gayety. “There’s a girl drowned there. Yes, but it’s true. She was a good Catholic and unhappy. I’m a heretic now, and happy.”

But she said her Ave Marias again just the same; being happy, they did her more good. And she says that the eddy is spiteful to her now. It had counted on a different end to her wooing.

To give to the world a collection of the successive portraits of a man is to tell his affairs openly, and so betray intimate personalities. We are often found quarrelling with the tone of the public press, because it yields to what is called the public demand to be told both the private affairs of noteworthy persons and the trivial details and circumstances of those who are insignificant. Some one has said that a sincere man willingly answers any questions, however personal, that are asked out of interest, but instantly resents those that have their impulse in curiosity; and that one’s instinct always detects the difference. This I take to be a wise rule of conduct; but beyond lies the wider subject of our right to possess ourselves of personal information, although we have a vague remembrance, even in these days, of the belief of old-fashioned and decorous people, that subjects, not persons, are fitting material for conversation.

But there is an honest interest, which is as noble a thing as curiosity is contemptible; and it is in recognition of this, that Lowell writes in the largest way in his “Essay on Rousseau and the Sentimentalists.”

“Yet our love of minute biographical details,” he says, “our desire to make ourselves spies upon the men of the past, seems so much of an instinct in us, that we must look for the spring of it in human nature, and that somewhat deeper than mere curiosity or love of gossip.” And more emphatically in another paragraph: “The moment he undertakes to establish ... a rule of conduct, we ask at once how far are his own life and deed in accordance with what he preaches?”

This I believe to be at the bottom of even our insatiate modern eagerness to know the best and the worst of our contemporaries; it is simply to find out how far their behavior squares with their words and position. We seldom stop to get the best point of view, either in friendly talk or in a sober effort, to notice the growth of character, or, in the widest way, to comprehend the traits and influence of a man whose life in any way affects our own.

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Now and then, in an old picture gallery, one comes upon the grouped portraits of a great soldier, or man of letters, or some fine lady whose character still lifts itself into view above the dead level of feminine conformity which prevailed in her time. The blurred pastel, the cracked and dingy canvas, the delicate brightness of a miniature which bears touching signs of wear—from these we piece together a whole life’s history. Here are the impersonal baby face; the domineering glance of the school-boy, lord of his dog and gun; the wan-visaged student who was just beginning to confront the serried ranks of those successes which conspired to hinder him from his duty and the fulfilment of his dreams; here is the mature man, with grave reticence of look and a proud sense of achievement; and at last the older and vaguer face, blurred and pitifully conscious of fast waning powers. As they hang in a row they seem to bear mute witness to all the successes and failures of a life.

This very day, perhaps, you chanced to open a drawer and take in your hand, for amusement’s sake, some old family daguerreotypes. It is easy enough to laugh at the stiff positions and droll costumes; but suddenly you find an old likeness of yourself, and walk away with it, self-consciously, to the window, with a pretence of seeking a better light on the quick-reflecting, faintly impressed plate. Your earlier, half-forgotten self confronts you seriously; the youth whose hopes you 17 have disappointed, or whose dreams you have turned into realities. You search the young face; perhaps you even look deep into the eyes of your own babyhood to discover your dawning consciousness; to answer back to yourself, as it were, from the known and discovered countries of that baby’s future. There is a fascination in reading character backwards. You may or may not be able easily to revive early thoughts and impressions, but with an early portrait in your hand they do revive again in spite of you; they seem to be living in the pictured face to applaud or condemn you. In these old pictures exist our former selves. They wear a mystical expression. They are still ourselves, but with unfathomable eyes staring back to us out of the strange remoteness of our outgrown youth.

It is somehow far simpler and less startling to examine a series of portraits of some other face and figure than one’s own. Perhaps it is most interesting to take those of some person whom the whole world knows, and whose traits and experiences are somewhat comprehended. You say to yourself, “This was Nelson before ever he fought one of his great sea battles; this was Washington, with only the faintest trace of his soldiering and the leisurely undemanding aspect of a country gentleman!” Human Documents—the phrase is Daudet’s, and tells its own story, with no need of additional attempts of suggestiveness.

It would seem to be such an inevitable subject for sermon writing, that no one need be unfamiliar with warnings, lest our weakness and wickedness leave traces upon the countenance—awful, ineffaceable hieroglyphics, that belong to the one universal primitive language of mankind. Who cannot read faces? The merest savage, who comprehends no written language, glances at you to know if he may expect friendliness or enmity, with a quicker intelligence than your own.

The lines that are written slowly and certainly by the pen of character, the deep mark that sorrow once left, or the light sign-manual of an unfading joy, there they are and will remain; it is at length the aspect of the spiritual body itself, and belongs to the unfolding and existence of life. We have never formulated a science like palmistry on the larger scale that this character-reading from the face would need; but to say that we make our own faces, and, having made them, have made pieces of immortality, is to say what seems trite enough. A child turns with quick impatience and incredulity from the dull admonitions of his teachers, about goodness and good looks. To say, “Be good and you will be beautiful,” is like giving him a stone for a lantern. Beauty seems an accident rather than an achievement, and a cause instead of an effect; but when childhood has passed, one of the things we are sure to have learned, is to read the sign-language of faces, and to take the messages they bring. Recognition of these things is sure to come to us more and more by living; there is no such thing as turning our faces into unbetraying masks. A series of portraits is a veritable Human Document, and the merest glance may discover the progress of the man, the dwindled or developed personality, the history of a character.

These sentences are written merely as suggestions, and from the point of view of morals; there is also the point of view of heredity, and the curious resemblance between those who belong to certain professions. Just what it is that makes us almost certain to recognize a doctor or a priest at first glance is too subtle a question for discussion here. Some one has said that we usually arrive, in time, at the opposite extreme to those preferences and opinions which we hold in early life. The man who breaks away from conventionalities, ends by returning to them, or out of narrow prejudices and restrictions grows towards a late and serene liberty. These changes show themselves in the face with amazing clearness, and it would seem also, that even individuality sways us only for a 18 time; that if we live far into the autumnal period of life we lose much of our individuality of looks, and become more emphatically members of the family from which we spring. A man like Charles the First was already less himself than he was a Stuart; we should not fail in instances of this sort, nor seek far afield. The return to the type compels us steadily; at last it has its way. Very old persons, and those who are dangerously ill, are often noticed to be curiously like their nearest of kin, and to have almost visibly ceased to be themselves.

All time has been getting our lives ready to be lived, to be shaped as far as may be by our own wills, and furthered by that conscious freedom that gives us to be ourselves. You may read all these in any Human Document—the look of race, the look of family, the look that is set like a seal by a man’s occupation, the look of the spirit’s free or hindered life, and success or failure in the pursuit of goodness—they are all plain to see. If we could read one human face aright, the history not only of the man, but of humanity itself, is written there.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES TO ACCOMPANY THE “HUMAN DOCUMENTS” GIVEN IN THIS NUMBER.

General Lew Wallace was born in Brookville, Indiana, in 1827. After receiving a common school education, he studied law. He distinguished himself in the Civil War, and was made a brigadier-general. After the war he practised law in Crawfordsville, Indiana. A few years later he was for a time Governor of New Mexico. From 1878-81 he was Governor of Utah, and from 1881-85 Minister to Turkey. His first book, “A Fair God,” appeared in 1877. “Ben Hur,” published in 1880, has reached a sale of several hundred thousand copies. General Wallace’s home is in Crawfordsville, Indiana.

William Dean Howells was born in Martin’s Ferry, Ohio, March 11, 1837. His father was the editor of a country newspaper, and young Howells learned the printer’s trade. He began to write at an early age. At nineteen he was Columbus correspondent of the “Cincinnati Gazette,” and at twenty-two, news editor of the “Ohio State Journal.” A campaign “Life of Lincoln,” gained him the consulship at Venice, where he seriously devoted his leisure hours to literature. “Venetian Life” gave him reputation. On his return to America in 1865, he wrote for newspapers and magazines. In 1866 Mr. Howells joined the editorial staff of “The Atlantic.” In 1872 he became the editor. About this time the success of “Their Wedding Journey” determined his career as a novelist.

Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen was born at Frederiksværn, Norway, September 23, 1848. When twenty-one years of age he came to the United States. In 1874 he was appointed professor of German at Cornell University, and is now professor of Germanic languages and literature at Columbia College, New York. It was in the early seventies that Professor Boyesen’s name began to appear in the magazines. In 1873 he published his first long romance, “Gunnar,” and other novels followed, well known to the reading world.

Alphonse Daudet was born at Nîmes, May 13, 1840. His early life was full of hardship and deprivation. In 1857 he arrived in Paris, with some manuscript poems and no money. He almost starved, but kept on writing and hoping. His volume of verse, “Les Amoureuses” (1858), attracted some attention. He persisted, took to writing novels, and achieved greatness. The story of his life and struggles, as told by himself, will be given in an early number of McClure’s Magazine.

GENERAL LEW WALLACE.

Born in Brookville, Indiana, April 10, 1827.

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WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS.

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HJALMAR HJORTH BOYESEN.

Born September 23, 1847, Frederiksværn, Norway.

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ALPHONSE DAUDET.

The greatest wild animal trader in the world is Karl Hagenbeck of Hamburg. To hear, therefore, how he captures and transports the brutes that compose his stock in trade, how he trains them, and some of the peculiarly strange adventures which have befallen him in dealing with them, cannot fail to be of interest. A few days ago I went to his Hamburg menagerie, where, on opening a door, I found myself in a great shed full of caged wild beasts. As visitors, except those on business, are not allowed within those notable precincts, my unexpected appearance excited the cages’ occupants to set up a grand concerto of roars and howls. Awestruck at the sight and sounds, I stood dazed until suddenly recalled to myself by a Nubian lion, who laid hold of my cloak-flaps with unsheathed claws. At once I leaped forward, while the beast retired snarling to the farthest corner of its cage, where in the dark shadows its eyes glared like two living coals. At this moment Mr. Hagenbeck came forward and gave me a hearty welcome, coupled with a word of warning against venturing too near the cages. He is a tall man, singularly pleasant looking, with keen eyes and a decisive manner. Later we sat in his office, and there I heard many incidents of the interesting life which he has led for so many years.

“My father,” said he, “who started in life as a fish dealer in this very town, never dreamed that he would one day be the founder of the greatest menagerie in the world. But it chanced that, in the year 1848, some fishermen, who usually traded with him, brought 27 him some seals which they had caught in their sturgeon nets. They were fine animals, and he could not help being delighted with them, and straightway resolved to take them to Berlin. There he opened a small exhibition in Kroll’s Gardens, charging an admission fee. But there came a revolution; business was at a standstill, and he was glad enough to get rid of the seals for a small sum of money, and to return to his fish-dealer’s shop in Hamburg. But he was bitten with the wild-beast fever; live animals had more attractions for him than dead fish, and so he told the fishermen that he would always be ready to buy any queer animals they might choose to bring him. A short time after that a sailor from a whaling vessel brought him a polar bear; this he exhibited here in Hamburg. It was a great novelty, and the people flocked in crowds to see it. From that time forward, sailors from all parts of the world would bring him animals for sale—monkeys, parrots, deer, snakes, and so on; once a young lion. Gradually he got together quite a small menagerie, but I am bound to say that at first there was not much profit in the business. When I left school in 1859, at the age of fifteen, father asked me which of his two callings I would rather choose as mine. Of course, being a boy, I chose the wild beasts. He gave me a hundred and fifty pounds to spend as best I could in buying animals. Fortune favored me from the start. I made some capital bargains, increased the business rapidly, and in 1866 father handed the whole business over to me.”

HAGENBECK AND BARNUM.

At this moment my eye fell upon a large photograph of the celebrated Mr. P. T. Barnum, which hung upon the wall. Mr. Hagenbeck, noting the direction of my gaze, said: “I suppose you know who that is?”

I replied, “Why, it’s P. T. Barnum.”

“Exactly,” said he. “I was walking about the menagerie one day in 1872, when Mr. Barnum was announced. He said: ‘I’ve just come to have a look round. I’ve got an hour or two to spare, and I thought I might as well spend it here as anywhere else.’ Well, sir,” continued Mr. Hagenbeck, smiling at the recollection of his first momentous interview with the great showman, “he stayed fourteen days, and he filled two big note-books before he left me. He was delighted with all he saw, and still more so with all I told him. I spoke about ostrich riding, suggested that it would be a splendid thing if he got up a regular wild-beast hunt in his hippodrome. He was immensely taken with the idea, and wanted me to join him as partner, but this I was not able to do. For many years I supplied him with his animals.”

“Why,” I said, “Mr. Hagenbeck, that opened up quite a new field.”

“Exactly,” he replied. “The training of wild animals is now one of the most important parts of my business. I also undertake the establishment of menageries all over the world. I supply people with their buildings, with their animals, with their keepers, with their trainers. Take, for instance, the Zoölogical Gardens at Cincinnati. I filled them from top to bottom. I recently made one in Rio Janeiro.”

THE PRICES OF WILD ANIMALS.

“And can you tell me anything about the prices of wild animals, Mr. Hagenbeck?” said I.

“Well,” he replied, “prices differ from time to time, according to the fashion; for I can assure you that there is as much fashion in wild animals as there is in ladies’ dresses. Prices are also rising and falling, according as the market supply is high or low. I can remember that once I sold in one day a cargo of African beasts for thirty thousand dollars. A full grown hippopotamus is now worth £1,000. A two-horned rhinoceros, which was worth £600 in 1883, cannot now be obtained 29 at any price. An Indian tapir costs £500, an American tapir £150. Elephants vary according to size and training, from £250 to £500. A good forest-bred lion, full grown, will fetch from £150 to £200, according to species. Tigers run from £100 to £150, according to their variety. Do you know,” he continued, “that there are five varieties of royal tigers? And, besides them, there are the tigers which come from Java, Sumatra, Penang, and even from the wastes of Siberia, Snakes are very much down in the market at present. Those which formerly fetched £5 or £10, you can now get for £2. Very large ones sometimes run up to £50. Leopards £30. Black panthers £40 to £60. Striped and spotted panthers £25. Jaguars run from £30 to £100. A good polar bear will fetch from £30 to £40. Brown bears from £6 to 10£. Black American bears from £10 to £20. A sloth from Thibet £25 to £30. Monkeys run from six shillings apiece. They are most expensive in the spring, when they will sometimes fetch as much as £1 6s. Giraffes are altogether out of the market,” continued Mr. Hagenbeck with a sigh, “for there are none now to be obtained. I have sold one as low as £60, whilst the last one which I sold, four years ago, to the Brazils, I was paid upwards of £1,100 for.

“And now you might just have a look round at some of the animals. Here,” said he, as we stood before a cage of very charming monkeys, “are some very clever little animals. They can ride horses in a circus, they jump through hoops; in fact, they are trained exactly like human beings, and can do almost everything but talk. I have just sent people to Abyssinia to fetch me some big silver-gray lion-monkeys, sometimes called hamadryads. I said just now,” continued Mr. Hagenbeck, with a laugh, “that monkeys can’t talk; and yet I must believe in Professor Garner, for you give me any monkey, you like to name, and I’ll guarantee I’ll make it talk. But you can only do it by imitating them closely. Take, for instance, that chimpanzee over there,” continued the clever trainer, pointing to a little animal fast asleep on a crossbar. “Now listen,” he went on, making a peculiar noise with his lips. At once the animal woke up, jabbered a reply in chimpanzee, flew to the bars of the cage, put his tiny paw out ready for the nuts which he knew were forthcoming. “There,” said Mr. Hagenbeck, “don’t tell me monkeys can’t talk.”

A little farther on we came across a tiny baby elephant, two feet nine inches in height. It was as black as coal, and had just arrived from Singapore. It was very playful, but when I began pushing it about, as one might roll a big beer barrel, it indulged in a fretful growling, which much amused us. Seven beautiful elephants stood in one big stable together, and as I admired their huge proportions and wondered at their entire gentleness, I said to Mr. Hagenbeck, “Is it true, as the great English circus proprietor George Sanger told me last summer, that the Asiatic elephant is far more intelligent than its African brother?”

“Certainly not,” replied Mr. Hagenbeck. “The African elephants are just as clever, just as gentle, just as intelligent as the Asiatic elephants. There’s no difference between them; and I ought to know, for I have had to do with them for thirty years, and in only one year I have imported as many as seventy-six of them.”

HOW WILD BEASTS ARE CAPTURED.

Karl Hagenbeck and I stood in his beautiful gardens, beside the enclosure in which the lions and tigers spend the long, hot summer days so frequent in Hamburg. Most artistically this enclosure has been made to resemble an African desert. In the foreground there are bushes and a few small palm trees, whilst in the far-off distance there rise, towering to a blue tropical sky, grim mountains and sun-stricken rocks. There is thus conveyed to the mind an impression of the great Nubian deserts—an impression whose force and reality is strengthened by the appearance of the wild beasts themselves, basking in the heat of the sun, or restlessly prowling about the enclosure.

“I should very much like to hear, Mr. Hagenbeck,” said I, “everything you can tell me of the way in which your wild beasts are captured.”

“Well,” he replied, “I will tell you as much as I can. Let us begin with the animals from the deserts of Nubia, for I have hunting parties all over the world. I send out a special messenger, who goes provided with a lot of silver coin. Nubians know my courier, who goes on ahead of this special messenger. When the courier reaches Suakim, it is announced that my messenger is coming, and a great fête is proclaimed. Guns are fired off, tom-toms are beaten, and for at least two days before he arrives there are the greatest rejoicings. Then the people go out to meet him, and conduct him with great state to a place on the borders of the desert where they have built a zereba. My messenger then gives advance money to the hunters, who go into Abyssinia to buy horses for the great hunt. As soon as the whole party is collected, business begins. They are armed with assegais and long hunting-swords like the old German swords. They are as broad as your hand, sharp at both ends, and two handled. Men upon fast horses hunt up the animals. Large animals, such as elephants and rhinoceroses, with sucklings, are the best game. The hunters, forming a circle, follow them. Having caught a rhinoceros with its young one, a man jumps down from his horse and cuts the old beast in a vein, whilst some of the other men chase another animal in front to distract attention. Then the black fellow lets go the big rhinoceros, catches the little one, ties its legs, and after it has calmed down brings it to my collector, who is waiting for him in the zereba. The old one is killed, skinned, and eaten. The natives make their best shields from the hide. Elephants and giraffes are hunted in the same manner. 31 I have been describing to you chiefly the old method of hunting animals in Nubia. Of late years they generally use guns. The young animals are always brought up with goat’s milk.”

At this moment we were passing a large cage full of the finest lions I had ever seen. As soon as they caught sight of Mr. Hagenbeck, they began to purr loudly, and when he spoke, came up to the bars of the cage to be stroked and petted.

“There,” said my host, “these are some very beautiful lions from Nubia. You can see that they are in perfect condition, and this is chiefly owing to the fact that they are being trained for their performances. There is nothing that keeps them in good health so much as constant exercise; that, I think,” added Mr. Hagenbeck, with a laugh, “is a very good argument in favor of training wild beasts, and goes a long way to prove that there really is very little cruelty in it. Now, I’ll tell you how lions are caught in the Nubian desert. The Kauri negroes, when my messenger arrives, form parties to go in search of young lions. When they discover the spoor of a lioness, they creep about the bush until they find the animal’s lair. It is usually one man alone who does this, and he has only a bundle of assegais under his left arm. Before the lioness can spring upon him, she has these spears in her body. Look at this skin,” continued Mr. Hagenbeck, pointing to a magnificent tawny skin hanging up in the hall. “There,” said he, “that skin has no less than twenty-four holes in it. The poor mother made a brave fight for her young ones. Well,” continued Mr. Hagenbeck, “when the old lioness is killed he takes the young ones to the zereba. The little lions are suckled by goats three times a day, and get quite fond of their foster-mothers.

“Leopards and hyenas are caught in Nubia in traps which are made out of wood or cut out of stone in the mountains. These traps are baited with meat, and catch the big cats precisely as a mouse-trap catches a mouse. Once trapped, the hunters can tie the creature’s legs, and bear it in triumph to the zereba.”

“And how are the Asiatic animals caught?” I asked Mr. Hagenbeck.

“Well,” he replied, 32 “very much the same method is pursued there that we adopt in Africa. For instance, in Borneo and Java, animals are caught in trapfalls and pitfalls, and some in huge mouse-traps. In these we often catch full-grown tigers, black panthers, and leopards. In the pitfalls we find two horned rhinoceroses and saddlebacked tapirs. The animals, running through the forest, run over these pitfalls and drop in. The greater part of these unfortunately die directly after they are caught; some kill themselves in their excitement, others won’t feed, and so pine away. A rhinoceros or a tapir dies because it is often hurt internally, although we frequently do not discover that they have been hurt until they have been with us for one or two months. I can remember that I once imported seven big rhinoceroses, and I sold only one of them, as the other six died. Bengal tigers are caught young, brought up by the natives in much the same way as the young lions in Africa, on milk and fowls. Most of these come by way of Calcutta.”

Standing in front of a great glass cage full of snakes, I said to Mr. Hagenbeck: “Now, how do you manage to get hold of these reptiles? They must be very dangerous.”

“Ah!” he replied, with a thoughtful look, “I’ll tell you later on one or two stories of dreadful adventures that I myself have had with snakes. In the meantime this is the way they are caught in India. In the dry season the jungle is set on fire. As the snakes run out in all directions, they are caught by the natives with long sticks having a hoop at the end, to which is attached a big bag, a sort of exaggerated butterfly net. After that the reptiles are packed in sacks made of matting, which are fastened to long bamboos, and carried to Calcutta on the shoulders of the natives. When Calcutta is reached, they are packed in big boxes, from twelve to sixteen in a box, that is when they are only eight or ten feet long; big snakes, from fourteen to sixteen feet in length, are only packed from two to three in a box. They are then sent direct to Europe without food or water on the journey, for they require neither. The principal thing is to keep them warm. Cold gives them mouth disease, which is certain death. I remember once,” continued Mr. Hagenbeck, “that I had one hundred and sixty-two snakes reach London in perfect condition; a violent snow-storm then came on, and when the boxes were opened in Hamburg every snake was dead.

“The majority of my Asiatic elephants come from Ceylon, although a few of them are exported from Burma. I remember one year there was a great demand in the American market for Asiatic elephants; Barnum and Forepaugh 33 each wanted twelve. I couldn’t get enough from Burma, so sent direct to Ceylon, and got no less than sixty-seven elephants, all of which I disposed of in the next twelve months. Most of these were caught by noosing. This is done by Afghans who take out a license from the Ceylon Government. They go out with dogs, find a herd, follow it up, and drive the elephants into different flights; they then give their attention to the younger elephants. Each man has a long raw-hide rope with a noose in the end of it. He chases an elephant, throws the noose round its hind legs, and follows it until a tree is reached, round which the line is fastened. When the elephant drops down in despair, the rope is fastened round its other legs, and it is left for several days until calmed down; it is then taken and easily tamed. I can well remember,” said Mr. Hagenbeck, “how interested Prince Bismarck was when I told all about the capture of my elephants.

“I was sitting in my room one day, when a servant came in and told me that he believed that Prince Bismarck was in the menagerie. I went out, and as soon as I saw his tall, erect figure and white moustache, I knew it was the great man himself. I never came across so intelligent a man, or one who asked so many questions. I should think he must be something like your Gladstone.”

“And how did you first start buying animals on such a big scale, Mr. Hagenbeck?” said I.

“Well,” he replied, “it was in this way. In 1863 the first big lot of animals that ever appeared in Europe at one time were brought over by an Italian named Casanova. He couldn’t sell them, and we had not the money to buy them, so they were sold to a menagerie at Kreutzburg, then the biggest in Germany. Next year Casanova came over with a few from Egypt, which I bought for the Dresden Zoo. This was the beginning of the African business. I then gave Casanova a big order, and arranged that he should bring over elephants, giraffes, and young lions at a fixed price. It’s always cheaper,” added Mr. Hagenbeck, with a laugh, “to get your dinner at the table d’hôte than by the card, and I thought it would be cheaper and better to get all these animals in one lot. Well, in 1866 he returned with a large cargo, in which there were seven African elephants. At that time an African elephant was a great novelty, both in Europe and in America. I sold these elephants to America, where they excited great interest, as they were the first African elephants that had ever been seen in that country.” As we were going back to Mr. Hagenbeck’s office he pointed out to me some very beautiful zebu bulls which he was going to send out to South America to be used for agricultural and breeding purposes. “There,” said he, “you can see those animals nowhere else in Europe except in my place. I got them from Central India; I have been after them for ten years, and succeeded in getting them only two years ago.” Just then we passed a slaughter-yard, where a couple of horses were being cut up for the carnivorous animals.

“It must be a very difficult matter,” said I, “to know how to feed all these animals properly.”

“I should think it was,” he replied. “Animals are most dainty and delicate as regards their food. Now, for instance, those lions and tigers which were exhibiting at the Crystal Palace last year were fed on such bad food that they were quite ill when they came back here. Besides, a number of young animals were seized with what appeared to be cholera. I lost three thousand pounds’ worth of them in three weeks. It is a very anxious business, indeed, I can tell you.”

Note.—In the July number will be published an article on “The Training of Wild Animals,” which includes a description of a special performance given by Mr. Hagenbeck, at which Mr. Blathwayt, the writer of the articles, was the only spectator.

By mandate of law, Rick wore a muzzle, not often on his nose, but generally hanging under his chin. It was not because his present character was a vicious one that Rick was thus distinguished, but owing to an awkward circumstance in early life. For Rick had been tried in a court of law for the crime of murder, convicted, and sentenced to death. I believe Canton Grison is the only province in Switzerland where the law enforcing capital punishment has not been repealed; and in Canton Grison it applies to beasts as well as men.

Rick first appeared, a starveling puppy with a large frame and weak, shambling legs, before the windows of a charitable Scotswoman, who was a lover of dogs and a person of sensibility. Rick, whatever his intellectual shortcomings, was a shrewd judge of human nature, and knew where to find a sure welcome. Naturally he soon discovered the hour for meals, and seldom failed to be on hand in good season. Once he found the glass door shut through which he was accustomed to enter. Spectators on the other side saw his discomfiture, but, before they could reach the door, Master Rick had lifted the latch and was walking triumphantly in. A later friend of his declared that, when he asked, “What has become of that enormous dish of meat?” Rick tipped him an arch wink and touched his corpulent stomach with a hind paw. Another instance of his supposed intelligence was his habit of accompanying intending customers to the confectioner’s shop, where he gorged himself at their expense. This indulgence in sweets, and his visits to adjacent villages, where he dined at the hotels à la carte, his bills to be sent 35 to the Belvedere, induced early obesity, which was particularly observable in his great tail. I always thought the general belief in Rick’s mental capacity rested on insufficient grounds. I have lived too much with dogs not to know a dull fellow, though kindly, when I see him; but, as an individual, I loved Rick, and could not deny him a certain charm. The fact that one day Rick (who at that time belonged to a butcher) did not put in an appearance simultaneously with the ringing of the luncheon-bell caused the charitable Scotswoman misgivings. She should have known him better. Fortunately she happened to glance out of the window in the nick of time, for there was poor Rick, flat on his side, his head turned piteously towards the door of his friend, being dragged along the road at the tail of a terrible cart—the cart of a man who bought dead and living cats and dogs for the sake of their skins. A maid was hastily despatched to the rescue, and Rick was bought for the price of his hide. His trials were over (it was little he cared for the trial and sentence), for he was now adopted by the Hotel Belvedere.

Here he passed several uneventful, greedy years, until the day when the Belvedere was startled by the appearance of the officers of the law with an official document—a summons for Rick. How it was served I cannot imagine, but Rick was cited to appear, on a given date, at the Rathhaus, under the appellation of Tiger Hund. Tiger Hund was a fine, dashing name, but hardly applicable to Rick, who had more of the characteristics of the sheep than of the tiger. The two leading hotels, the Belvedere and the Bual, were shaken to their base by the threatened danger to Rick. Foreign counsel was appointed to plead his cause; I cannot now remember whether the chosen advocate was Herr Coester of the Belvedere, or Mr. J. Addington Symonds of the Bual. One, I know, appeared for Rick at the trial; while the other, after conviction, got up a petition for his pardon.

The eventful day arrived; the learned gentleman, honest Rick at his heels, took his way to the ancient Rathhaus, the gloomy aspect of whose exterior, with its narrow, barred, windowy and high-pitched roof under the eaves of which were many a row of wolves’ heads now dried into mummies, should have thrilled with apprehension the heart of the 36 least imaginative dog. But Rick, poor innocent, trotted through the portals as he would have trotted into the confectioner’s, and curled himself up for a nap at the feet of his counsel.

His affection for the accused, and the sympathy of the large audience assembled to hear his pleading, inspired the learned gentleman with unwonted eloquence. The only creature unconcerned was Rick, who, having finished his nap, thought it a fitting occasion to make a little excursion into the next canton.

After a brilliant peroration in which he dilated on the fidelity of the accused, who, he asserted, never left the Hotel Belvedere except in company with some of the guests, Rick’s advocate wound up with these words: “Behold at my feet the Tiger Hund!” But, alas! Rick was not at his feet, nor could he be found in any of his usual haunts, though eager searchers beat the precincts for him. And so, through Rick’s own fault, his case was lost and his friends put to open shame. Sentence of death was passed in the absence of the culprit, and things for a time looked black for Rick. Strenuous efforts, however, were made to secure a pardon; and finally, after the presentation of a petition pleading for mercy, numerously signed by the foreign and native residents, the magistrate was induced to commute the sentence to muzzlement for life. I cannot myself believe that Rick had the courage to attack a sheep, even in company. I know that his first meeting with a donkey threw him into such fits of terror that his reason was despaired of for days.

I.

Thomas A. Edison, when he was congratulated upon his forty-sixth birthday, declared that he did not measure his life by years, but by achievements or by campaigns; and he then confessed that he had planned ahead many campaigns, and that he looks forward to no period of rest, believing that for him, at least, the happiest life is a life of work. In speaking of his campaigns Mr. Edison said: “I do not regard myself as a pure scientist, as so many persons have insisted that I am. I do not search for the laws of nature, and have made no great discoveries of such laws. I do not study science as Newton and Kepler and Faraday and Henry studied it, simply for the purpose of learning truth. I am only a professional inventor. My studies and experiments have been conducted entirely with the object of inventing that which will have commercial utility. I suppose I might be called a scientific inventor, as distinguished from a mechanical inventor, although really there is no distinction.”

When Mr. Edison was asked about his campaigns and those achievements by which he measured his life, he said that in the past there had been first the stock-ticker and the telephone, upon the latter of which he worked very hard. But he regarded the greatest of his achievements, in the early part of his career, as the invention of the phonograph. “That,” said he, “was an invention pure and simple. No suggestion of it, so far as I know, had ever been made; and it was a discovery made by accident, while experimenting upon another invention, that led to the development of the phonograph.

“My second campaign was that which resulted in the invention of the incandescent lamp. Of course, an incandescent lamp had been suggested before. There had been abortive attempts to make them, even before I knew anything about telegraphing. The work which I did was to make an incandescent lamp which was commercially valuable, and the courts have recently sustained my claim to priority of invention of this lamp. I worked about three years upon that. Some of the experiments were very delicate and very difficult; some of them needed help which was very costly. That so far has been, I suppose, my chief achievement. It certainly was the first one which made me independent, and left me free to begin other campaigns without the necessity of calling for outside capital, or of finding my invention subjected to the mysteries of Wall Street manipulation.”

The hint contained in Mr. Edison’s reference to Wall Street, and the mysteries of financiering which prevail there, led naturally enough to a question as to Mr. Edison’s future purpose with regard to capitalists, and he said:

“In my future campaigns I expect myself to control absolutely such inventions as I make. I am now fortunate enough to have capital of my own, and that I shall use in these campaigns. The most important of the campaigns I have in mind is one in which I have now been engaged for several years. I have long been satisfied that it was possible to invent an ore-concentrator which would vastly simplify the prevailing methods of extracting iron from earth and rock, and which would do it so much cheaper than those processes as to command 38 the market. Of course I refer to magnetic iron ore. Some of the New Jersey mountains contain practically inexhaustible stores of this magnetic ore, but it has been expensive to mine. I was able to secure mining options upon nearly all these properties, and then I began the campaign of developing an ore-concentrator which would make these deposits profitably available. This iron is unlike any other iron ore. It takes four tons of the ore to produce one ton of pure iron, and yet I saw, some years ago, that if some method of extracting this ore could be devised, and the mines controlled, an enormously profitable business would be developed, and yet a cheaper iron ore—cheaper in its first cost—would be put upon the market. I worked very hard upon this problem, and in one sense successfully, for I have been able by my methods to extract this magnetic ore at comparatively small cost, and deliver from my mills pure iron bricklets. Yet I have not been satisfied with the methods; and some months ago I decided to abandon the old methods and to undertake to do this work by an entirely new system. I had some ten important details to master before I could get a perfect machine, and I have already mastered eight of them. Only two remain to be solved; and when this work is complete, I shall have, I think, a plant and mining privileges which will outrank the incandescent lamp as a commercial venture, certainly so far as I am myself concerned. Whatever the profits are, I shall myself control them, as I have taken no capitalists in with me in this scheme.”

Mr. Edison was asked if he was willing to be more explicit respecting this invention, but he declined to be, further than to say: “When the machinery is done as I expect to develop it, it will be capable of handling twenty thousand tons of ore a day with two shifts of men, five in a shift. That is to say, ten workmen, working twenty hours a day in the aggregate, will be able to take this ore, crush it, reduce the iron to cement-like proportions, extract it from the rock and earth, and make it into bricklets of pure iron, and do it so cheaply that it will command the market for magnetic iron.”

Mr. Edison, in speaking of this campaign, referred to it as though it was practically finished; and it was evident in the conversation that already his mind turns to a new campaign, which he will take up as soon as his iron-ore concentrator is complete and its work can be left to competent subordinates.

He was asked if he would be willing to say what he had in mind for the next campaign, and he replied: “Well, I think as soon as the ore concentrating business is developed and can take care of itself, I shall turn my attention to one of the greatest problems that I have ever thought of solving, and that is, the direct control of the energy which is stored up in coal, so that it may be employed without waste and at a very small margin of cost. Ninety per cent. of the energy that exists in coal is now lost in converting it into power. It goes off in heat through the chimneys of boiler-rooms. You perceive it when you step into a room where there is a furnace and boiler; it is also greatly wasted in the development of the latent heat which is created by the change from water to steam. Now that is an awful waste, and even a child can see that if this wastage can be saved, it will result in vastly cheapening the cost of everything which is manufactured by electric or steam power. In fact, it will vastly cheapen the cost of all the necessaries and luxuries of life, and I suppose the results would be of mightier influence upon civilization than the development of the steam-engine and electricity have been. It will, in fact, do away with steam-engines and boilers, and make the use of steam power as much of a tradition as the stage-coach now is.

“It would enable an ocean steamship of twenty thousand horse-power to cross the ocean faster than any of the crack vessels now do, and require the burning of only two hundred and fifty tons of coal instead of three thousand, which are now required; so that, of course, the charges for freight and passenger fares would be greatly reduced. It would enormously lessen 39 the cost of manufacturing and of traffic. It would develop the electric current directly from coal, so that the cost of steam-engines and boilers would be eliminated. I have thought of this problem very much, and I have already my theory of the experiments, or some of them, which may be necessary to develop this direct use of all the power that is stored in coal. I can only say now, that the coal would be put into a receptacle, the agencies then applied which would develop its energy and save it all, and through this energy electric power of any degree desired could be furnished. Yes, it can be done; I am sure of that. Some of the details I have already mastered, I think; at least, I am sure that I know the way to go to work to master them. I believe that I shall make this my next campaign. It may be years before it is finished, and it may not be a very long time.”

Mr. Edison looks farther ahead than this campaign, for he said: “I think it quite likely that I may try to develop a plan for marine signalling. I have the idea already pretty well formulated in my mind. I should use the well-known principle that water is a more perfect medium for carrying vibrations than air, and should develop instruments which may be carried upon sea-going vessels, by which they can transmit or receive, through an international code of signals, reports within a radius of say ten miles.”

Mr. Edison believes that Chicago is to become the London of America early in the next century, while New York will be its Liverpool, and he is of opinion that very likely a ship canal may connect Chicago with tide water, so that it will itself become a great seaport.

There is a common impression that Mr. Edison is an agnostic, but he denies it; and he said, in closing the conversation, “I tell you that no person can be brought into close contact with the mysteries of nature, or make a study of chemistry, without being convinced that behind it all there is supreme intelligence. I am convinced of that, and I think that I could, perhaps I may some time, demonstrate the existence of such intelligence through the operation of these mysterious laws with the certainty of a demonstration in mathematics.”

II.

Professor Graham Bell is not like some pedantic wise men who talk as if they believed that the end of knowledge in their particular line had been already reached. On the contrary, this distinguished inventor is convinced that the discovery and inventions of the past will seem but trivial things when compared with those which are to come. Nor does he think that the day of man’s greater knowledge is so very far distant.

THE AIR-SHIP OF THE NEAR FUTURE.

“I have not the shadow of a doubt”—these are his own words, spoken to me quite recently at Washington—“that the problem of aerial navigation will be solved within ten years. That means an entire revolution in the world’s methods of transportation and of making war. I am able to speak with more authority on this subject from the fact of being actively associated with Professor Langley of the Smithsonian Institution in his researches and experiments. I am not at liberty to speak in detail of these experiments, but will say that the calculations of scientific men in regard to the amount of power necessary to maintain an air-ship above the earth have been strangely erroneous; I may say ridiculously so. According to these, Nature would have given the birds and insects a muscular 40 force vastly greater and superior in its qualities to that bestowed upon man. That seems unreasonable in the first place, when one reflects that man is at the head of creation, and we have found practically that such is not the case. The power required to lift and propel an air-ship is very much less than has been supposed; indeed, Professor Langley concludes that when the air-ship has once been lifted above the earth to the proper height, it will be possible to maintain it there with proportionately no greater effort than that expended by hawks and eagles in sailing about with extended wings. The air strata will do the bulk of the lifting, if a small propelling power is provided. Of course, a greater power will be necessary to lift the air-ship originally, and it may be some time before the art of managing an air-ship is discovered; but the final result, I am convinced, will allow men to sail about in the air as easily and as safely as the birds do. I predict that we will see the beginning of this modern miracle by the end of the nineteenth century.

“Of course the air-ship of the future will be constructed without any balloon attachment. The discovery of the balloon undoubtedly retarded the solution of the flying problem for over a hundred years. Ever since the Montgolfiers taught the world how to rise in the air by means of inflated gas-bags, the inventors working at the problem of aerial navigation have been thrown on the wrong track. Scientific men have been wasting their time trying to steer balloons, a thing which in the nature of the case is impossible to any great extent, inasmuch as balloons, being lighter than the resisting air, can never make headway against it. The fundamental principle of aerial navigation is that the air-ship must be heavier than the air. It is only of recent years that men capable of studying the problem seriously have accepted this as an axiom. Electricity in one form or another will undoubtedly be the motive power for air-ships, and every advance in electrical knowledge brings us one step nearer to the day when we shall fly. It would be perfectly possible, to-day, to direct a flying machine by means of pendant electric wires which would transmit the necessary current without increasing the load to be borne. Perhaps a feasible means of propelling such an air-ship would be by a kind of trolley system where the rod would hang down from the car to the stretched wire, instead of extending upward. This is an idea which I would recommend to inventors.”

It is most interesting to watch Professor Bell as he talks about the great inventions which he sees with prophetic eye in store for the world. He has the happy faculty of expressing great ideas in simple words, and there is nothing ponderous in his speech. He is as enthusiastic as a school-boy thinking of the kite he will make as big as a barn-door. His black eyes flash, and they seem all the blacker contrasted with his white hair; the words tumble out quickly, and those who have the good fortune to listen are carried away by the magnetism of this great inventor.

SEEING BY ELECTRICITY.

The mention of electricity brought up new possibilities for future discovery, some of them so amazing as to almost pass the bounds of credibility. He said:

“Morse taught the world years ago to write at a distance by electricity; the telephone enables us to talk at a distance by electricity; and now scientists are agreed that there is no theoretical reason why the well-known principles of light should not be applied in the same way that the principles of sound have been applied in the telephone, and thus allow us to see at a distance by electricity. It is some ten years since the scientific papers of the world were greatly exercised over a report that I had filed at the Smithsonian Institution a sealed packet supposed to contain a method of doing this very thing; that is, transmit the vision of persons and things from one point on the earth to another. As a matter of fact, there was no truth in the report, but it resulted in stirring up a dozen scientific men of eminence to come out with statements to the effect that they too had discovered various methods of 41 seeing by electricity. That shows what I know to be the case, that men are working at this great problem in many laboratories, and I firmly believe it will be solved one day.

“Of course, while the principle of seeing by electricity at a distance is precisely that applied in the telephone, yet it will be very much more difficult to construct such an apparatus, owing to the immensely greater rapidity with which the vibrations of light take place when compared with the vibrations of sound. It is merely a question, however, of finding a diaphragm which will be sufficiently sensitive to receive these vibrations and produce the corresponding electrical variations.”

THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE BY ELECTRICITY.

After he had spoken of this idea for some time, Professor Bell stopped suddenly, and, with an amused twinkle in his eyes, exclaimed: “But while we are talking of all this, what is to prevent some one from discovering a way of thinking at a distance by electricity?”

Having said this, the genial professor threw himself back and laughed heartily at the amazement his words awakened. Was he joking? Apparently not, for he proceeded seriously to discuss one of the most astounding conceptions that ever entered an inventor’s mind. Thinking by electricity! Imagine two persons, one thousand or ten thousand miles apart, placed in communication electrically, in such a way that, without any spoken word, without sounding-board, key, or any bodily movement, the one receives instantly the thoughts of the other, and instantly sends back his own thoughts. The wife in New York knows what is passing in the brain of her husband in Paris. The husband has the same knowledge. What boundless possibilities, to be sure, this arrangement offers for business men, lovers, humorous writers, and the police authorities!

Preposterous as such an idea appears in its first conception, it certainly assumes an increasing plausibility when one listens to Professor Bell’s reasoning.

“After all,” he says, “what would there be in such a system more mysterious than in the processes of the mind reader? You substitute a wire and batteries for a strange-eyed man in a dress suit, that is all.”

The logical basis of Professor Bell’s scheme is clear, and its details quite beautiful in their simplicity, when you admit his major premise. That premise is that the human brain is merely a kind of electrical reservoir, and that thinking is nothing more than an electrical disturbance, like the aurora borealis or the sparks from a Holtz machine. The nerves are the wires leading from the central battery in the head. The reasonableness of this assumption is increased when one remembers that electricity may be made to act upon the nerves, even in a lifeless body, so as to produce the same muscular contractions which are produced by the brain force, whatever that may be. We talk of animal magnetism. What if it were the same as any other kind of magnetism? If these two forces are identical in one respect, why may they not be so in all respects? So Professor Bell reasons, and granting that the human brain is merely a store-house of electricity for our bodily needs, of electricity not essentially different from that which we know elsewhere, it must be possible to apply the same electrical laws to the brain as to any other electric apparatus and to get similar results.

“Do you begin to see my idea?” said Professor Bell, growing more and more enthusiastic as he proceeded. Then he gave a rapid outline of what might be a system of thinking by electricity.

Everyone knows, who knows anything about the subject, that an electric current passing inside of a coil of wire induces an electric current in that wire. Now, if the human brain be taken as a battery, then currents are constantly passing from it to various parts of the body, and the head may be considered in a state of constant electrical excitement, the intensity varying with the character of the thought processes. Now, suppose a coil of wire properly prepared in the shape of a helmet, and 42 fitted about the head of one person, with wires attached and connected with a helmet similarly fitted upon the head of another person at any convenient distance. Every electric current in the one human battery must induce a current in the coil around the head, which current must be transmitted to the other coil. This other coil must then, by the reversed process, induce a current in the brain within helmet No. 2, and that person must receive some cerebral sensation. This cerebral sensation might be a thought, and probably would be, if it turns out to be true that brain force is identical with electricity. In that case, the thought of the one person would have produced a thought in the other person, and there is, if we go as far as this, every reason to believe that it would be the same thought. Thus the problem of thinking at a distance by electricity would be solved.

So much for a curious theory of what might be, if so and so were true; but Professor Bell has not stopped with theories, but has actually begun to put them to the test. Not that he is over-sanguine as to the result, but he believes the experiment worth the making, and that seriously. He has actually had two helmets, such as those described, constructed, and has begun a series of experiments in his laboratory. Thus far, the results have been for the most part negative, but not so much so as to prevent him hoping that more perfect appliances may lead to something more conclusive. It is true that the thought in one brain has produced a sensation in the other, through the two helmets, but what the relation was between the thought and the sensation could not be determined.

MAKING THE DEAF HEAR BY THE USE OF ELECTRICITY.

By quick stages the conversation ran into another channel with new wonders possible in the future. Professor Bell has conceived of a method of making the deaf hear, which is certainly startling. He proposes to do away with ears entirely, and produce the sensations of hearing by direct communication with the brain, through the bones of the head. As a matter of fact, the brains of deaf people are usually in a perfectly healthy condition, and the only thing which prevents them from hearing is some defect in communication with the vibrating air. If their brains could be excited artificially in the same way that the brains of ordinary persons are excited by vibrations communicated through the various chambers and passages of the ear, then the deaf would hear in the same way that other persons do.

It is, of course, a fact, that hearing in every instance is merely an illusion of the senses, a sort of tickling of the brain. This tickling of the brain is ordinarily accomplished by the nerve force passing from the third chamber of the ear to the brain itself. If this nerve force is nothing more or less than ordinary electricity, and if science can train electricity to tickle the brain artificially in the same way and at the same points that the nerves from the ear usually do, then the ordinary sensations of hearing must result, whether the person has ears or not. The problem here is to discover the proper way of tickling the brain. The gentlemen who seat themselves in electrocution chairs have their brains tickled in a way which would not be generally satisfactory.

THERE IS DANGER IN SUCH EXPERIMENTS.

In his desire to bring relief to the deaf—and his whole life has been devoted to that object—Professor Bell has begun a series of remarkable experiments in this line. Some time ago, he determined to study the effects produced upon the brain by turning an electric current into it through the side of the head. With this end in view, he arranged a dynamo machine with a feeble current, giving a varying number of interruptions per second, and attached one of the poles to a wet sponge which he placed in one of his ears.

“I risked one of my ears,” he said simply, “in making this experiment, but I could not risk them both, so I held the second pole of the machine 43 in my hand and turned on the current.”

Fortunately no harm resulted, but immediately Professor Bell experienced the sensation of a pleasant sound whose pitch he was able to vary by increasing or diminishing the number of interruptions in the dynamo machine. His assistant standing beside him could detect no sound at all, so that what Professor Bell heard must have been the effect of the electric current upon his brain. This effect he found could be varied by varying the character of the current. Now he argues that greater variations might be produced in the sounds heard by the brain if the current turned into it were varied in the proper manner. For instance, suppose the current from a long distance telephone to be turned through the head of the deaf mute, a sponge connected with either pole being placed in each ear. Then let some one talk into the telephone in the ordinary way, the infinite variations in the current produced by the voice vibrations being passed into the brain directly. Is it not conceivable that such a variety of brain sensations or tones might then be caused in the head of the deaf mute as to make it possible to establish a system of sound signals, so to speak, which would be the equivalent of ordinary language? Indeed, is it not possible that the deaf mute might actually hear spoken words?

Professor Bell’s experiments upon himself have been so encouraging as to make him disposed to try more complete experiments in the same line upon persons who have lost all sense of hearing, and who would doubtless be willing to take the inevitable risk for the sake of the great blessing which a successful issue would bring to them.

We talked a long time about these strange fancies, and finally I said to Professor Bell:

“But on this principle of brain tickling, what is to prevent a blind man from seeing by electricity?”

“I do not know that there is anything to prevent it.”

By permission from “The Works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Poet Laureate,” Macmillan & Co., New York and London, 1893.

I am often asked what is the secret of Mr. Gladstone’s extraordinary length of days and of the perfection of his unvarying health. It may be partly attributed to the remarkable longevity of the Gladstone family, a hardy Scottish stock with fewer weak shoots and branches than perhaps any of the ruling families of England. But it has depended mainly on Mr. Gladstone himself and on the undeviating regularity of his habits. Most English statesmen have been either free livers or with a touch of the bon vivant in them. Pitt and Fox were men of the first character; Melbourne, Palmerston, and Lord Beaconsfield were of the last. But Mr. Gladstone is a man who has been guilty of no excesses, save perhaps in work. He rises at the same hour every day, uses the same fairly generous, but always carefully regulated, diet, goes to bed about the same hour, pursues the same round of work and intellectual and social pleasure. An extraordinarily varied life is accompanied by a certain rigidity of personal habit I have never seen surpassed. The only change old age has witnessed has been that the House of Commons work has been curtailed, and that Mr. Gladstone has not of late years been seen in the House after the dinner hour, which lasts from eight till ten, except on nights when crucial divisions are expected. With the approach of winter and its accompanying chills, to which he is extremely susceptible, he seeks the blue skies and dry air of the Mediterranean coasts and of his beloved Italy. With this exception his life goes on in its pleasant monotony. At Hawarden, of course, it is simpler and more private than in London. In town to-day Mr. Gladstone avoids all large parties and great crushes and gatherings where he may be expected to be either mobbed or bored or detained beyond his usual bed-time.

HIS PERSONALITY.

Personally Mr. Gladstone is an example of the most winning, the most delicate, and the most minute courtesy. He is a gentleman of the elder English school, and his manners are grand and urbane, always stately, never condescending, and genuinely modest. He affects even the dress of the old school, and I have seen him in the morning wearing an old black evening coat, such as Professor Jowett still affects. The humblest passer-by in Piccadilly, raising his hat to Mr. Gladstone, is sure to get a sweeping salute in return. This courtliness is all the more remarkable, because it accompanies and adorns a very strong temper, a will of iron, and a habit of being regarded for the greater part of his lifetime as a personal force of unequalled magnitude. Yet the most foolish, and perhaps one may add the most impertinent, of Mr. Gladstone’s dinner-table questioners is sure of an 45 elaborate reply, delivered with the air of a student in deferential talk with his master. To the cloth Mr. Gladstone shows a reverence that occasionally woos the observer to a smile. The callowest curate is sure of a respectful listener in the foremost Englishman of the day. On the other hand, in private conversation the premier does not often brook contradiction. His temper is high, and though, as George Russell has said, it is under vigilant control, there are subjects on which it is easy to arouse the old lion. Then the grand eyes flash, the torrent of brilliant monologue flows with more rapid sweep, and the dinner table is breathless at the spectacle of Mr. Gladstone angry. As to his relations with his family, they are very charming. It is a pleasure to hear Herbert Gladstone—his youngest, and possibly his favorite son—speak of “my father.” All of them, sons and daughters, are absolutely devoted to his cause, wrapped up in his personality, and enthusiastic as to every side of his character. Of children Mr. Gladstone has always been fond, and he has more than one favorite among his grandchildren.

MR. GLADSTONE’S MORNING.

Mr. Gladstone’s day begins about 7.30, after seven hours and a half of sound, dreamless sleep, which no disturbing crisis in public affairs was ever known to spoil. At Hawarden it usually opens with a morning walk to church, with which no kind of weather—hail, rain, snow, or frost—is ever allowed to interfere. In his rough slouch hat and gray Inverness cape, the old man plods sturdily to his devotions. To the rain, the danger of sitting in wet clothes, and small troubles of this kind, he is absolutely impervious, and Mrs. Gladstone’s solicitude has never availed to change his lifelong custom in this respect. Breakfast over, working time commences. I am often astonished at the manner in which Mr. Gladstone manages to crowd his almost endlessly varied occupations into the forenoon, for when he is in the country he has practically no other continuous and regular work-time. Yet into this space he has to condense his enormous correspondence—for which, when no private secretary is available, he seeks the help 46 of his sons and daughters—his political work, and his varied literary pursuits. The explanation of this extreme orderliness of mind is probably to be found in his unequaled habit of concentration on the business before him. As in matters of policy, so in all his private habits, Mr. Gladstone thinks of one thing and of one thing only at a time. When home rule was up, he had no eyes or ears for any political subject but Ireland, of course excepting his favorite excursions into the twin subjects of Homer and Christian theology. Enter the room when Mr. Gladstone is reading a book; you may move noisily about the chamber, ransack the books on the shelves, stir the furniture, but never for one moment will the reader be conscious of your presence. At Downing Street, during his earlier ministries, these hours of study were often, I might say usually, preceded by the famous breakfast at which the celebrated actor or actress, the rising poet, the well-known artist, the diplomatist halting on his way from one station of the kingdom to another, were welcome guests. Madame Bernhardt, Miss Ellen Terry, Henry Irving, Madame Modjeska, have all assisted at these pleasant feasts.

HIS AFTERNOON.

Lunch with Mr. Gladstone is a very simple meal which neither at Hawarden nor Downing Street admits of much form or publicity. The afternoon which follows is a very much broken and less regular period. At Hawarden a portion of it is usually spent out of doors. In the old days it was devoted to the felling of some giant of the woods. Within the last few years, however, Sir Andrew Clark, Mr. Gladstone’s favorite physician and intimate friend, has recommended that tree-felling be given over; and now Mr. Gladstone’s recreation, in addition to long walks, in which he still delights, is that of lopping branches off veterans whose trunks have fallen to younger arms.

AS A READER.

Between the afternoon tea and dinner the statesman usually retires again, and gets through some of the lighter and more agreeable of his intellectual tasks. He reads rapidly, and I think I should say that, especially of late years, he does a good deal of skipping. If a book does not interest him, he does not trouble to read it through. He uses a rough kind of memoria technica to enable him to mark passages with which he agrees, from which he dissents, which he desires to qualify, or which he reserves for future reference. I should say the books he reads most of are those dealing with theology, always the first and favorite topic, and the history of Ireland before and after the Act of Union. Indeed, everything dealing with that memorable period is greatly treasured. I remember one hasty glance over Mr. Gladstone’s book table in his town house. In addition to the liberal weekly, “The Speaker,” and a few political pamphlets, there were, I should say, fifteen 47 or twenty works on theology, none of them, as far as I could see, of first-rate importance. Of science Mr. Gladstone knows little, and it cannot be said that his interest in it is keen. He belongs, in a word, to the old-fashioned Oxford ecclesiastical school, using the controversial weapons which are to be found in the works of Pusey and of Hurrell Froude. In his reading, when a question of more minute and out-of-the-way scholarship arises, he appeals to his constant friend and assistant, Lord Acton, to whose profound learning he bows with a deference which is very touching to note.

MR. GLADSTONE’S LIBRARY.

Mr. Gladstone’s library is not what can be called a select or really first-rate collection. It comprises an undue proportion of theological literature, of which he is a large and not over-discriminating buyer. I doubt, indeed, whether there is any larger private bookbuyer in England. All the book-sellers send him their catalogues, especially those of rare and curious books. I have seen many of these lists, with a brief order in Mr. Gladstone’s own handwriting on the flyleaf, with his tick against twenty or thirty volumes which he desires to buy. These usually range round classical works, archæology, special periods of English history, and, above all, works reconciling the Biblical record with science. Of late, as is fairly well known, Mr. Gladstone has built himself an octagonal iron house in Hawarden village, a mile and a half from the castle, for the storage of his specially valuable books and a collection of private papers which traverse a good many of the state secrets of the greater part of the century. The importance of these is great, and the chances are that before Mr. Gladstone dies they will all be grouped and indexed in his upright, a little crabbed, but perfectly plain, handwriting. By the way, a great many statements have been made about Mr. Gladstone’s library, and I may as well give the facts which have never before been made public. His original library consisted of about twenty-four thousand volumes. In the seventies, however, he parted with his entire collection of political works, amounting to some eight thousand volumes, to the late Lord Wolverton. The remaining fifteen thousand or so are now distributed between the little iron house to which I have referred, and the Hawarden library. Curiously enough, Mr. Gladstone is not a worshiper of books for the sake of their outward adornments. He loves them for what is inside rather than outside. He even occasionally sells extremely rare and costly editions for which he has no special use. In all money matters, indeed, he is a thrifty, orderly Scotchman. He has 48 never been rich, though his affairs have greatly improved since the time when in his first premiership he had to sell his valuable collection of china.

AT THE DINNER TABLE.

Dinner with Mr. Gladstone is the stately ceremonial meal which it has become to the upper and upper-middle class Englishman. Mr. Gladstone invariably dresses for it, wearing the high crest collar which Harry Furniss has immortalized, and a cutaway coat which strikes one as of a slightly old-fashioned pattern. His digestion never fails him, and he eats and drinks with the healthy appetite of a man of thirty. A glass of champagne is agreeable to him, and if he does not take his glass or two of port at dinner, he makes it up by two or three glasses of claret, which he considers an equivalent. Oysters he never could endure, but, like Schopenhauer and Goethe and many another great man, he is a consistently hearty and unfastidious eater. He talks much in an animated monologue, though the common complaint that he monopolizes the conversation is not a just one. You cannot easily turn Mr. Gladstone into a train of ideas which does not interest him, but he is a courteous and even eager listener; and if the subject is of general interest, he does not bear in it any more than the commanding part which the rest of the company invariably allows him. His speaking voice is a little gruffer and less musical than his oratorical notes, which, in spite of the invading hoarseness, still at times ring out with their old clearness. As a rule he does not talk on politics. On ecclesiastical matters he is a never wearied disputant. Poetry has also a singular charm for him, and no modern topic has interested him more keenly than the discussion as to Tennyson’s successor to the laureateship. I remember that at a 49 small dinner at which I recently met him, the conversation ran almost entirely on the two subjects of old English hymns and young English poets. His favorite religious poet is, I should say, Cardinal Newman, and his favorite hymn, Toplady’s “Rock of Ages,” of which his Latin rendering is to my mind far stronger and purer than the original English. When he is in town, he dines out almost every day, though, as I have said, he eschews formal and mixed gatherings, and affects the small and early dinner party at which he can meet an old friend or two, and see a young face which he may be interested in seeing. One habit of his is quite unvarying. He likes to walk home, and to walk home alone. He declines escort, and slips away for his quiet stroll under the stars, or even through the fog and mist on a London winter’s night. Midnight usually brings his busy, happy day to a close. Sleeplessness never has and never does trouble him, and at eighty-three his nights are as dreamless and untroubled as those of a boy of ten.

IN THE HOUSE.

His afternoons when in town and during the season are, of course, given up pretty exclusively to public business and the House of Commons, which he usually reaches about four o’clock. He goes by a side door straight to his private room, where he receives his colleagues, and hears of endless questions and motions, which fall like leaves in Vallambrosa around the head of a prime minister. Probably steps will be taken to remove much of this irksome and somewhat petty burden from the shoulders of the aged minister. But leader Mr. Gladstone must and will be at eighty-three, quite as fully as he was at sixty. Indeed, the complaint of him always has been that he does too much, both for his own health and the smooth manipulation of the great machine which, as was once remarked, creaks and moves rather lumberingly under his masterful but over-minute guidance. During the last two or three years it has been customary for the Whigs to so arrange that Mr. Gladstone speaks early in the evening. He is not always able to do this while the Home Rule Bill is under discussion, but I do not think he will ever again find it necessary to follow the entire course of a Parliamentary debate. He never needed to do as much listening from the Treasury Bench as he was wont to do in his first and second ministries. I do not think that any prime minister ever spent half as much time in the House of Commons as did Mr. Gladstone; certainly no one ever made one-tenth part as many speeches. Indeed, it requires all Mrs. Gladstone’s vigilance to avert the physical strain consequent upon overwork. With this purpose she invariably watches him in the House of Commons, from a corner seat in the right hand of the Ladies’ Gallery which is always reserved for her, and which I have never known her to miss occupying on any occasion of the slightest importance.

SPEECH-MAKING.

I have before me two or three examples of notes of Mr. Gladstone’s speeches; one of them refers to one of the most important of his addresses on 50 the customs question. It was a long speech, extending, if I remember rightly, to considerably over an hour. Yet the memoranda consist purely of four or five sentences of two or three words apiece, written on a single sheet of note paper, and no hint of the course of the oration is given. Occasionally, no doubt, especially in the case of the speech on the introduction of the Home Rule Bill, which was to my mind the finest Mr. Gladstone has ever delivered, the notes were rather more extensive than this, but as a rule they are extremely brief. When Mr. Gladstone addresses a great public meeting, the most elaborate pains are taken to insure his comfort. He can now only read the very largest print, and careful and delicate arrangements are made to provide him with lamps throwing the light on the desk or table near which 51 he stands. Sir Andrew Clark observes the most jealous watchfulness over his patient. A curious instance of this occurred at Newcastle, when Mr. Gladstone was delivering his address to the great liberal caucus which assembles as the annual meeting of the National Liberal Federation. Sir Andrew had insisted that the orator should confine himself to a speech lasting only an hour. Fearing that his charge would forget all about his promise in the excitement of speaking, the physician, slipped onto the platform and timed Mr. Gladstone, watch in hand. The hour passed, but there was no pause in the torrent of words. Sir Andrew was in despair. At last he pencilled a note to Mr. Morley, beseeching him to insist upon the speech coming to an end. But Mr. Morley would not undertake the responsibility of cutting a great oration, and the result was that Mr. Gladstone stole another half hour from time and his physician. The next day a friend of mine went breathlessly up to Sir Andrew, and asked how the statesman had borne the additional strain. “He did not turn a hair,” was the reply. Practically the only sign of physical failure which is apparent in recent speeches has been that the voice tends to break and die away after about an hour’s exercise, and for a moment the sound of the curiously veiled notes and a glance at the marble pallor of the face gives one the impression that after all Mr. Gladstone is a very, very old man. But there is never anything like a total breakdown. And no one is aware of the enormous stores of physical energy on which the prime minister can draw, who has not sat quite close to him, and measured the wonderful breadth of his shoulders and heard his voice coming straight from his chest in great bouffées of sound. Then you forget all about the heavy wrinkles in the white face, the scanty silver hair, and the patriarchal look of the figure before you.

One of the most humorous sights in nature, less common in America than Europe, is a snail wandering about with a shell on its back. The progenitors of snails once lived in the sea, and when they evolved themselves ashore they carried this relic of the water with them,—an anomaly which, seen to-day, seems as ridiculous as if one were to meet an Indian in Paris with his canoe on his back. But there are more animals besides snails that once lived in the water. If embryology is any guide to the past, nothing is more certain than that the ancient progenitors of Man once lived an aquatic life. As the traveller, wandering in foreign lands, brings back all manner of curios to remind him where he has been—clubs and spears, clothes and pottery, which represent the ways of life of those whom he has met, so the body of Man, returning from its long journey through the animal kingdom, emerges laden with the spoils of its watery pilgrimage. These relics are not mere curiosities; they are as real as the clubs and spears, the clothes and pottery. Like them, they were once a part of life’s vicissitude; they represent organs which have been outgrown; old forms of apparatus long since exchanged for better, yet somehow not yet destroyed by the hand of time. The physical body of Man, so great is the number of these relics, is an old curiosity-shop, a museum of obsolete anatomies, discarded tools, outgrown and aborted organs. All other animals also contain among their useful organs a proportion which are long past their work; and so significant are these rudiments of a former state of things, that anatomists have often expressed their willingness to stake the theory of Evolution upon their presence alone.

Prominent among these vestigial structures, as they are called, are those which smack of the sea. At one time there was nothing else in the world but water-life; all the land animals are late inventions. One reason why animals began in the water is that it is easier to live in the water—anatomically and physiologically cheaper—than to live on the land. The denser element supports the body better, demanding a less supply of muscle and bone; and the perpetual motion of the sea brings the food to the animal, making it unnecessary for the animal to move to the food. This and other correlated circumstances call for far less mechanism in the body, and, as a matter of fact, all the simplest forms of life at the present day are inhabitants of the water.

A successful attempt at coming ashore may be seen in the common worm. The worm is still so unacclimatized to land life that instead of living on the earth like other creatures, it lives in it, as if it were a thicker water, and always where there is enough moisture to keep up the traditions of its past. Probably it took to the shore originally by exchanging, first the water for the ooze at the bottom, then by wriggling among muddy flats when the tide was out, and finally, as the struggle for life grew keen, it pushed further and further inland, continuing its migration so long as dampness was to be found. Its cousin the snail, again, goes even further, for it not only carries its shell ashore but when it cannot get moisture, actually manufactures it.

When Man left the water, however,—or what was to develop into Man—he took very much more ashore with him than a shell. Instead of crawling ashore at the worm stage, he remained in the water until he evolved into something like a fish; so that when, after an amphibian interlude, he finally left it, many “ancient and fish-like” characters remained in his body to tell the tale. Now, it is among these piscine characteristics that we find the clue to where Man got his ears. The chief characteristic of a fish is its apparatus for breathing the air dissolved in the water. This consists of gills supported on strong arches, the branchial arches, which in the Elasmobranch fishes are from five to seven in number and uncovered with any operculum, or lid. Communicating with these arches, in order to allow the water which has been taken in at the mouth to pass out at the gills, an equal number of slits or openings are provided in the neck. Without these holes in their neck all fishes would instantly perish, and we may be sure Nature took exceptional care in perfecting this particular piece of the mechanism. Now it is one of the most extraordinary facts in natural history that these slits in the fish’s neck are still represented in the neck of Man. Almost the most prominent feature, indeed, after the head, in every mammalian embryo, are the four clefts or furrows of the old gill-slits.[1] They are still known in embryology by no other name—gill-slits—and so persistent are these characters that children have been known to be born with them not only externally visible—which is a common occurrence—but open, through and through, so that fluids taken in at the mouth could pass through them and trickle out at the neck. This fact was so astounding as to be for a long time denied. It was thought that when this happened, the orifice must have been accidentally made by the probe of the surgeon. But Dr. Sutton has recently met with actual cases where this has occurred. “I have seen milk,” he says, “issue from such fistulæ in individuals who have never been submitted to sounding.”[2]

In the common case of children born with these vestiges, the old gill-slits are represented by small openings in the skin on the sides of the neck and capable of admitting a thin probe. Sometimes the place where they have been in childhood is marked throughout life by small round patches of white skin. These relics of the sea, these apparitions of the Fish, these sudden resurrections, are betrayals of man’s pedigree. Men wonder at mummy-wheat germinating after a thousand years of dormancy. But here are ancient features bursting into life after unknown ages, and challenging modern science for a verdict on their affinities.

When the fish came ashore, its water-breathing apparatus was no longer of any use to it. At first it had to keep it on, for it took a long time to perfect the air-breathing apparatus which was to replace it. But when this was ready the problem was, what to do with the earlier organ? Nature is exceedingly economical, and could not throw all this mechanism away. In fact Nature almost never parts with any structure she has once made. What she does is to change it into something else. Conversely, Nature seldom makes anything new; her method of creation is to adapt something old. Now when Nature started out to manufacture ears, she made them out of the old breathing apparatus. She saw that if 54 water could pass through a hole in the neck, sound could pass likewise, and she set to work upon the highest up of the five gill-slits and slowly elaborated it into a hearing organ.

There never had been an external ear in the world till this was done, or any good ear at all. Creatures which live in water do not seem to use hearing much, and the sound-waves in fishes are simply conveyed through the walls of the head to the internal ear without any definite mechanism. But as soon as land-life began, owing to the changed medium through which sound-waves must now be propagated, a more delicate instrument was required. And hence one of the first things attended to was the construction and improvement of the ear.

It has long been a growing certainty to Comparative Anatomy that the external and middle ear in Man are simply a development, an improved edition, of the first gill-cleft and its surrounding parts. The tympano-Eustachian passage is the homologue or counterpart of the spiracle, associated in the shark with the first gill-opening. Professor His of Leipsic has worked out the whole development in minute detail, and conclusively demonstrated the mode of origin of the external ear from the coalescence of six rounded tubercles surrounding the first branchial cleft at an early period of embryonic life. Haeckel’s account of the process is as follows: “All the essential parts of the middle ear—the tympanic membrane, tympanic cavity, and Eustachian tube—develop from the first gill-opening with its surrounding parts, which in the Primitive Fishes (Selachii) remains throughout life as an open blowhole, situated between the first and second gill-arches. In the embryos of higher Vertebrates it closes in the centre, the point of concrescence forming the tympanic membrane. The remaining outer part of the first gill-opening is the rudiment of the outer ear-canal. From the inner part originates the tympanic cavity, and further inward, the Eustachian tube. In connection with these, the three bonelets of the ear develop from the first two gill-arches; the hammer and anvil from the first, and the stirrup from the upper end of the second gill-arch. Finally as regards the external ear, the ear-shell (concha auris), and the outer ear-canal, leading from the shell to the tympanic membrane—these parts develop in the simplest way from the skin-covering which borders the outer orifice of the first gill-opening. At this point the ear-shell rises in the form of a circular fold of skin, in which cartilage and muscles afterwards form.”[3]

Now bearing in mind this account of the origin of ears, an extraordinary circumstance confronts us. Ears are actually sometimes found bursting out in human beings half way down the neck, in the exact position—namely along the line of the anterior border of the sterno-mastoid muscle—which the gill-slits would occupy if they still persisted. In some human families where the tendency to retain these special structures is strong, one member sometimes illustrates the abnormality by possessing the clefts alone, another has a cervical ear, while a third has both a cleft and an ear,—all these of course in addition to the ordinary ears. This cervical auricle has all the characters of the ordinary ear, “it contains yellow elastic cartilage, is skin-covered, and has muscle-fibre attached to it.”[4]

Dr. Sutton further calls attention to the fact that on ancient statues of fauns and satyrs cervical auricles are sometimes found, and he figures the head of a satyr from the British Museum, carved long before the days of anatomy, where a sessile ear on the neck is most distinct. A still better illustration may be seen in the Art Museum at Boston on a full-sized cast of a faun belonging to the later Greek period; and there are other examples in the same building. One interest of these neck-ears in statues is that they are not as a rule modelled after the human ear but taken from the cervical ear of the goat, from which the general idea of the faun was derived. This shows that neck-ears were common on the goats of that period—as they are on goats to this day—but the sculptor would hardly have had the daring to introduce this feature in the human subject unless he had been aware that pathological facts encouraged him. The occurrence of these ears in goats is no more than one would expect. Indeed one would look for them not only in Man, but in all the Mammalia, for so far as their bodies are concerned all the higher animals are near relations. Observations on vestigial structures in animals are sadly wanting; but they are certainly found in the horse, pig, sheep, and others.

That the human ear was not always the squat and degenerate instrument it is at present may be seen by a critical glance at its structure. Mr. Darwin records how a celebrated sculptor called his attention to a little peculiarity in the external ear, which he had often noticed both in men and women. “The peculiarity consists in a little blunt point, projecting from the inwardly folded margin or helix. When present, it is developed at birth, and according to Professor Ludwig Meyer, more frequently in man than in woman. The helix obviously consists of the extreme margin of the ear folded inwards; and the folding appears to be in some manner connected with the whole external ear being permanently pressed backwards. In many monkeys who do not stand high in the order, as baboons and some species of macacus, the upper portion of the ear is slightly pointed, and the margin is not at all folded inwards; but if the margin were to be thus folded, a slight point would necessarily project towards the centre.”[5]

Here then, in this discovery of the lost tip of the ancestral ear, is further and visible advertisement of man’s Descent, a surviving symbol of the stirring times and dangerous days of his animal youth. It is difficult to imagine any other theory than that of Descent which could account for all these facts. That evolution should leave such clues lying about is at least an instance of its candor.

But this does not exhaust the betrayals of this most confiding organ. If we turn from the outward ear to the muscular apparatus for working it, fresh traces of its animal career are brought to light. The erection of the ear, in order to catch sound better, is 56 a power possessed by almost all mammals, and the attached muscles are large and greatly developed in all but domesticated forms. This same apparatus, though he makes no use of it whatever, is still attached to the ears of Man. It is so long since he relied on the warnings of hearing, that by a well-known law the muscles have fallen into disuse and atrophied. In many cases, however, the power of twitching the ear is not wholly lost, and every school-boy can point to some one in his class who retains the capacity and is apt to revive it in irrelevant circumstances.

One might run over all the other organs of the human body and show their affinities with animal structures and an animal past. The twitching of the ear, for instance, suggests another obsolete or obsolescent power—the power, or rather the set of powers, for twitching the skin, especially the skin of the scalp and forehead by which we raise the eyebrows. Sub-cutaneous muscles for shaking off flies from the skin, or for erecting the hair of the scalp, are common among quadrupeds, and these are represented in the human subject by the still functioning muscles of the forehead, and occasionally of the head itself. Everyone has met persons who possess the power of moving the whole scalp to and fro, and the muscular apparatus for effecting it is identical with what is normally found in some of the Quadrumana.

Another typical vestigial structure is the plica semi-lunaris, the remnant of the nictitating membrane characteristic of nearly the whole vertebrate sub-kingdom. This membrane is a semi-transparent curtain which can be drawn rapidly across the external surface of the eye for the purpose of sweeping it clean. In birds it is extremely common, but it also exists in fish, mammals, and all the other vertebrates. Where it is not found of any functional value it is almost always represented by vestiges of some kind. In Man all that is left of it is a little piece of the curtain draped at the side of the eye.

When one passes from the head to the other extremity of the human body one comes upon a somewhat unexpected but very pronounced characteristic—the relic of the tail, and not only of the tail, but of muscles 57 for wagging it. Everyone who first sees a human skeleton is amazed at this discovery. At the end of the vertebral column, curling faintly outward in suggestive fashion, are three, four, and occasionally five vertebræ forming the coccyx, a true rudimentary tail. In the adult this is always concealed beneath the skin, but in the embryo, both in man and ape, at an early stage it is much longer than the limbs. What is decisive as to its true nature, however, is that even in the embryo of man the muscles for wagging it are still found. In the grown-up human being these muscles are represented by bands of fibrous tissue, but cases are known where the actual muscles persist through life. That a distinct external tail should not be still found in Man may seem disappointing to the evolutionist. But the want of a tail argues more for the theory of Evolution than its presence would have done. It would have been contrary to the Theory of Descent had he possessed a longer tail. For all the anthropoids most allied to Man have long since also parted with theirs.

It was formerly held that the entire animal creation had contributed something to the anatomy of Man, that as Serres expressed it “Human Organogenesis is a condensed Comparative Anatomy.” But though Man has not such a monopoly of the past as is here inferred—other types having here and there emerged and developed along lines of their own—it is certain that the materials for his body have been brought together from an unknown multitude of lowlier forms of life.

Those who know the Cathedral of St. Mark’s will remember how this noblest of the Stones of Venice owes its greatness to the patient hands of centuries and centuries of workers, how every quarter of the globe has been spoiled of its treasures to dignify this single shrine. But he who ponders over the more ancient temple of the human body will find imagination fail him as he tries to think from what remote and mingled sources, from what lands, seas, climates, atmospheres, its various parts have been called together, and by what innumerable contributory creatures, swimming, creeping, flying, climbing, each of its several members was wrought and perfected. What ancient chisel first sculptured the rounded columns of the limbs? What dead hands built the cupola of the brain, and from what older ruins were the scattered pieces of its mosaic-work brought? Who fixed the windows in its upper walls? What forgotten looms wove its tapestries and draperies? What winds and weathers wrought the strength into its buttresses? What ocean-beds and forest glades worked up the colors? What Love and Terror and Night called forth the Music? And what Life and 58 Death and Pain and Struggle put all together in the noiseless workshop of the past and removed each worker silently when its task was done? How these things came to be Biology is one long record. The architects and builders of this mighty temple are not anonymous. Their names, and the work they did, are graven forever on the walls and arches of the Human Embryo. For this is a volume of that Book in which Man’s members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.

FOOTNOTES

The following letters were written in 1888 and 1889, by James Parton to the Honorable Alfred R. Conkling of New York City. In December, 1888, Mr. Conkling wrote to Mr. Parton, making him a formal offer to assist in the preparation of the “Life and Letters of Roscoe Conkling.” Mr. Parton generously declined to accept payment, but took a great interest in the work, and during the following year corresponded frequently with Mr. Conkling, advising upon specific points and setting forth the general principles of the art of biography.

We are indebted to Mr. Conkling for permission to print these letters, which are full of wise suggestion to the literary “recruit,” and of genuine human interest to all lovers of good reading. They give us glimpses of Mr. Parton, not only as a conscientious writer of biography who had acquired a rare mastery of his art, but also as a man of aggressive interest in public affairs, of broad mind, and a singularly wholesome nature.

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Newburyport, Mass., Dec. 8, 1888.

Dear Sir: I am glad to learn from yours of yesterday that we are to have a biography of so interesting and marked a character as the lamented Roscoe Conkling, and I should esteem it a privilege to render any assistance toward it in my power.

The great charm of all biography is the truth, told simply, directly, boldly, charitably.

But this is also the great difficulty. A human life is long. A human character is complicated. It is often inconsistent with itself, and it requires nice judgment to proportion it in such a way as to make the book really correspond with the man, and make the same impression upon the reader that the man did upon those who knew him best.

Your difficulty will be to present fairly his less favorable side; but upon this depends all the value, and much of the interest of the work.

My great rules are:

1, To know the subject thoroughly myself; 2, to index fully all the knowledge in existence relating to it; 3, to determine beforehand where I will be brief, where expand, and how much space I can afford to each part; 4, to work slowly and finish as I go; 5, to avoid eulogy and apology and let the facts have their natural weight; 6, to hold back nothing which the reader has a right to know.

I have generally had the great advantage of loving my subjects warmly, and I do not believe we can do justice to any human creature unless we love him. A true love enlightens, but not blinds, as we often see in the case of mothers who love their children better, 60 and also know them better, than anybody else ever does.

With regard to New York, I am always going there, but never go; still, I may have to go soon, and I will go anyway if I can do anything important or valuable in the way you suggest—but not “professionally,” except as an old soldier helps a recruit.

Very truly yours,

James Parton.

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Newburyport, Mass., Dec. 24, 1888.

Dear Sir: I have examined with much interest and pleasure your work upon Mexico, with a title so extravagantly modest as almost to efface the author. Let us accept our fate. It is our destiny to live in an age when all human distinctions are abolished, or about to be abolished, except the advertiser and his victim. Your work appears to me to be quite a model, and I wish I were going to be a tourist in Mexico that I might have the advantage of using it.

One word more with regard to your biography. In the case of a person like Mr. Conkling, whose vocation it was to express himself in words, and whose utterances were often most brilliant and powerful, I think you should make great and free use of his letters and speeches. Is not a volume of five hundred pages too small? Could you not make a work in two volumes, and get Mark Twain to sell it by subscription?

Another: I hope you feel the peculiar character and importance of that part of New York of which Utica is the central point. It does not figure much in books, but there are many strong and remarkable families there. I should like to see it elucidated. The first questions to be asked of a man are: Where, and of whom, was he born?

Very truly yours,

James Parton.

P. S.—For example: If you know fully what a Corsican is, you have the key to the understanding of Bonaparte. He was a Corsican above all things else, and not in the least a Frenchman.

So of Andrew Jackson: He was a Scotch-Irishman. Alexander Hamilton: a Scotch-Frenchman.

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Newburyport, Mass., March 26, 1889.

My dear Sir: You can give a sufficiently “complete account” of an event without giving a long one. Now, the duel between two such persons as Burr and Hamilton may be long, because it can also be interesting. Readers are interested in the men, in the time, in the scene, and the whole affair is surcharged with human interest. In that Elmira trial, the chief interest will centre in your uncle’s tact and success. I should give enough of the trial to enable the reader to see and appreciate his part in the affair. My impression is: Do not expend many pages upon it, but pack the pages full of matter. You want all your room for other scenes in which he displayed his great power in a striking way.

Many qualities are desirable in a book, only one is necessary—to be interesting enough to be read. The art is, to be short where the interest is small, and long where the interest is great.

Your uncle’s speeches do not need much “comment.” Most speeches contain one passage which includes the whole.

I fear I shall not be able to visit New York this spring.

Very truly yours,

James Parton.

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Newburyport, Mass., April 3, 1889.

My Dear Sir: As often as possible I would insert the bright things where they belong, as they seem to enliven the narrative. If you have an inconvenient surplus, or a number of things undated, you might make a chapter of them, or reserve them for the final chapter. It is a good rule, though only a rule, not to have breaks in the continuity, like the “Bagman’s Story” in “Pickwick.” Readers are apt to skip them, however good they may be in themselves. You have doubtless often done so. A good thing is twice good when it comes in just where it ought. The modern reader is very shy, and easily breaks away from you, if you only give him a pretext.

I merely send my impressions. You alone can really judge.

Very truly yours,

James Parton.

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Newburyport, Mass., April 17, 1889.

My dear Sir: The description of your uncle’s oratory will be so sure to interest the reader, that it may come in almost anywhere, but best, perhaps, where you mention his first notable speech. Remember, too, that the author has, in his last chapter, not only a chance to “sum up,” but also an opportunity to slip in anything he may have omitted. An interesting thing it is always to know how a strong man grew old, what changes occurred in his manner, methods and character.

By all means, use the personal pronoun sparingly, and allude unfrequently to your relationship. It is not necessary wholly to avoid either. Deal with the reader honestly and openly. There may come moments when calling him “my uncle” would be fair, and in the best taste—but not often.

The ladies have the privilege of skipping. Make your late chapter about the law practice in New York very full and clear. It will very greatly interest everybody who will be likely to read the book. It is the intrinsic worth of a book that is to be considered before all things else.

I fear you are making the book too short. Mind: It cannot be what is called “popular.” It must appeal to the few. Ought it not to be two volumes at five dollars?

Very truly yours,

James Parton.

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Think of Blaine’s book and its sale by subscription.

The difference between one volume published in the ordinary way, and two volumes by subscription, may be the difference between a profit of two thousand dollars and one of two hundred thousand dollars.

Blaine’s book, sold over the counter, might have gone to the length of five thousand copies. Sold by subscription, it made him rich.

On this point, however, Mr. Appleton’s opinion is worth ten of mine.

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Newburyport, Mass., April 26, 1889.

My Dear Sir: The pamphlet has only just arrived.

So far as the comments are necessary to elucidate the text, and to explain why and how the text came to be uttered, they are justified—no farther. Your uncle was such a master of expression that almost anything placed in juxtaposition must suffer from the contrast.

Let him have the whole floor, I say, and just give the indispensable explanations. It would be impossible to enhance the effect of his characteristic passages. They need, like diamonds, a quiet setting.

Very truly yours,

James Parton.

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Newburyport, Mass., June 4, 1889.

My dear Sir: I return your paper of questions. Give plenty of the “light matter” to which you refer, and I hope you will extract many passages that show your uncle’s horror of corruption. The pamphlets you were so good as to send me are valuable and interesting. I do not wonder at his great success before a jury. He was an awful man to have on the other side. Is there any one who could describe for you some of the noted scenes in which your uncle figured, but which you did not witness yourself? There may be available interviews in the newspapers. I remember hearing Thomas Nast talk about him very enthusiastically after returning from a visit to him in Washington. You could make a nice chapter about the Senate—its ways and occupations, traditions and tone—viewed merely as a club of gentlemen.

I am glad that Mark Twain is going to publish the book. Give all the pictures you dare.

Very truly yours,

James Parton.

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Newburyport, Mass., Aug. 5, 1889.

Dear Sir: Would not those “undated anecdotes” come in well to illustrate and brighten your summing-up chapter? If not, then the plan you suggest might answer very well.

I am glad to hear that you are so near to the end of your labors, and that the work is to be published by the ever victorious firm of Mark Twain. If I have been able to render 62 you the smallest service I am glad, and you are heartily welcome.

Very truly yours,

James Parton.

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Newburyport, Mass., Dec. 28, 1889.

Dear Sir: Your solid volume reached me several days ago, and some time after, your letter of Dec. 20. I have now read the work pretty carefully, and shall no doubt often return to it. Considering the restraints you were under, as nephew and as Republican, you have executed your task well and given to the world the most pathetic of the tragedies resulting from the system of spoils. Never again, until that blighting curse of free institutions is destroyed, will a man of Roscoe Conkling’s genius, pride and purity remain long in the public service, if ever he enters it. He was the last of the Romans. My great regret is that he did not consecrate his whole existence to the reform of the civil service. I have such an acute sense of the shame, the cruelty and the childish folly of the present system that I sometimes feel as if we ought to stop all our other work and enter upon a universal crusade against it.

You must not expect the public to remain satisfied with the omissions and suppressions of your book. Sooner or later, somebody will supply them, and you might just as well have told the whole story.

I am glad to hear of the success of the book with the public.

Very truly yours,

James Parton.

Paris, April 20, 1893.

Let me say, at the very start, that it is imperative not to forget the date which heads this article. This date has a significance of the highest importance, for it marks the opening of a new era. The political situation of Europe is to-day widely different from what it was only yesterday. Yesterday the entire world turned an eye feverishly intent towards Belgium, upon the spectacle there of the decisive struggle between an established government and an unestablished proletariat. There was to be seen in Belgium the constitutional authority of an entire realm, backed by the force of arms, opposed by a militant labor democracy. On the one side, law, authority, armed force; on the other, lack of authority, of capital, and of arms; in a word, vague nothingness struggling against omnipotence. Yet it is the former that has won the day. Omnipotence has belied its name, and has been driven to the wall; the defeat has been crushing. But more than this, it has been significant. I repeat, it marks the opening of a new era.

For the world-wide association of laborers now comprehends that it holds the Old World in its hands. It has discovered the invincible power of the strike, in obedience to the watchword emanating from its irresponsible leaders. Here is a force which is negative, perhaps, but one against which nothing henceforth can prevail. Lo, a silent word of command, and the towers of Jericho fall! Before a general strike of this sort the Old World is to-day powerless, like the child at the breast to whom the mother refuses to give suck.

This is a fact so big with suggestion, so sudden, so almost terrifying, that it changes all our former points of view. I could not have written yesterday what I can write to-day; for when I saw unexpectedly breaking out “the troubles in Belgium,” I could not but postpone till all was over the writing of the article for which I had been asked. No one has as yet fairly grappled with the meaning of the new social pact prepared in mystery, a pact of which the dark elaboration had been only suspected, but which has just become so startlingly revealed. The idea of the strike as applied to political problems upsets all preconceived notions. What has hitherto been regarded as the only real force is now as if paralyzed; instead, sheer, silent will-power remains the only sovereign. In such circumstances who would venture to draw the horoscope of the Europe of to-morrow?

For consider the situation. Recognized constitutional government has actually thought itself fortunate in treating with “strikers,” and in attempting to conceal the reality of its defeat behind the vain show of an arrangement, the actual significance of which deceives nobody. The face of Europe has changed in an instant. The Old World is conquered. Socialism bestirs itself, and begins its conquering march. The dangerous problems, hitherto so vague, become instantly pressing. Yet no one is ready with a solution, and few care even to discuss these problems. Even the leaders of the hostile army, the strike generals, do not, can not, measure all the consequences of their orders. Drunk with their new power they forget for the moment its unseen bearings. When first, more used to the sensation of omnipotence, they look about them to see what their action may have precipitated, they will draw back in horror.

The phrase, “the present situation of Europe,” therefore, can have reference 65 now only to a very indefinite and a future thing. The present is big with uncertainties for the morrow, and the prospect would be really distressing, if the established wielders of power did not realize—what now is inevitable—the imperative necessity of coming to some understanding with this fresh force; the hopelessness, henceforward, of playing with theories of repression, and the duty of negotiating with this great amorphous army, which, once it is on the march, may drink dry the cisterns at which human society is accustomed to assuage its thirst. And it is in the light of these events in Belgium, that I do not hesitate to say, that Europe for a long time still will not be menaced by war. The social problem is now too pressing. It requires the entire attention. Woe to the blind! The hour of rest is past; a new world awakes. It knows its strength. It has everything to gain, nothing to lose. Follow it with anxious eye, ye who sleep now in possession, for if ye sleep too long, ye will awake in chains!

But apart from this event, which is the prelude of a social struggle to be of long duration, yet absolutely inevitable, it is possible at this moment, when the European world is preparing to turn westward beyond the Atlantic, there to entrust to the proud loyalty of the United States immense and untold treasures, to predict for this continent a prolonged peace—a peace, however, which is as the uncertain tranquillity of an old man heavily dozing on a bed where there is no real rest. It is alone one of those incidents, impossible to anticipate, which seize whole nations as with madness, driving them to arms and carnage, and leaving them at the end of the disillusion of the struggle stupefied with their victory, or terrified in their defeat, that can break the uncertain spell of this restless sleep. But incidents such as these, which bring to naught all human calculation, can, indeed must, be left out of account, when considering the character of a given moment, and the prospects of peace or war.

Europe, just now, is divided up rather arbitrarily, but none the less really. This is partly due to a premeditated combination, partly to chance, partly also to the bungling or ignorance of rulers. The Triple Alliance, due to the decisive action of Prince Bismarck, is the only truly scientific conception of the sort, the only one possessing a stable and seriously laid foundation. It includes Austria, which relies on Germany to shield it from Russia, as its directly menacing foe, or to bar against Russia the route to Constantinople whenever Russia shall appear fatally dangerous to the existence of the combined empire of Austria-Hungary. It includes Germany, which, as careful organizer of the Alliance, is thus protected against any possible simultaneous action of France and Russia. It includes Italy, which, otherwise weak in the presence of the disdainful hostility of France, is thus assured a certain security and repose. Aside from this great Triple Alliance, the European states have no real collective organization; there are only affinities badly defined, private interests, or uncertain situations from which they do not venture to think of extricating themselves. What is called the Franco-Russian understanding is limited at the moment to an exchange of notes which might serve as the basis of a military convention; to demonstrations at once noisy and platonic, in which France is playing a sort of Potiphar role; and to the chance eventuality of Russia’s one day finding herself engaged in some formidable struggle when she could count on the irresistible and unthinking enthusiasm of France, who would place blood and treasure at her disposal.

When has human history ever afforded such a spectacle?

No real alliance exists between Russia and France, but no French government could resist popular pressure, were the question to come up of helping Russia in the case of a war direct or indirect against Germany. Yet at a single gesture of the autocratic czar, Russia would shoulder arms and fight in whatever deadly combat France found itself involved. The Emperor of Russia is to-day, perhaps, the most formidable monarch who has ever existed. 66 He has at his unchecked beck and call the vastest empire in Europe, but an empire without gold, sunlight, or liberty. Stop! It is a force, blind and brutal, and capable of a frightful impact; a force which the finger of a single man can set in motion, and which may be made to fall crushingly at the exact point designated by the imperious and imperial gesture. To this force which does not reason, the czar can, with a gleam of his sword, rally the power of France. France, the country of sunlight and liberty, where gold flows in rivulets, where every citizen thinks and wills, and where every soldier would fight to the death, conscious that it is only with Russia, in common struggle against common enemies, that a great conflict may be undertaken. The spectacle of such power, dormant in one human brain, is almost overwhelming; and the psychologist who portends that every man disposing of autocratic power, whether czar, sultan or pope, must inevitably go mad, utters a thought perhaps not so paradoxical after all.

However, this autocrat so formidably armed is well known to be absolutely pacific. He turns a constantly listening ear to the counsels of an experienced queen, herself full of the spirit of peace, the Queen of Denmark. This queen loves Germany; she adores the young emperor whom she calls “an angel.” She has already smoothed down many rough places. It was she who brought about the Kiel interview and the visit of the czarevitch to Berlin. She has strengthened the idea of peace in the brain of this emperor, whence, instead, war might spring full-armed; war fin de siècle; the new, mysterious, unprecedented form of it; the war of infinitely multiplied murder, covering the Old World with corpses of the slain. The special factor of armed explosion most to be dreaded in Europe is thus held in check by an all-powerful hand gently directed. It is nothing less than the work of God that has made him who holds the chief of the arsenals of power, pacific, and thus reassuring to the world.

Turn your vision from this tacit though vague understanding between France and Russia, and look beyond the regularly organized Triple Alliance; the eye falls on three great isolated powers, directed by various motives, and the action of which, determined upon only at the last moment, is constantly in the thought of the other ruling nations. Of these three the first is England. No minister of foreign affairs in any country would ever think of committing towards the English nation the crime of supposing its policy subservient to that of any other nation. The dream or the fear of a quadruple alliance has haunted only the crudest brains. England remains free in its movements, and it will preserve this liberty to the last. This is, moreover, for the happiness of all; for, except in those accesses of madness, a sort of factor of which, as I said, no account can be taken, no power will think of taking up a struggle in which the intervention of England, on one side or the other, can determine the issue.

The second great power which remains free of all entanglement is that which dominates the Bosphorus. A strange power, indeed! It has no friends. There it remains alone on this European soil, of which it occupies certain extreme points, like a bit of abandoned booty tempting the cupidity of the Christian world. The whole of Europe looks thither with dull hate, and each power would willingly bear away a bit of the trappings and the hangings that render soft and resplendent the gilded cage where lies the sick lion of Yildiz Kiosk. If ever the war which appears to me so distant breaks out, Abdul Hamid, or his successor, will have his hands free; and at the supreme moment when the conqueror, whomsoever he may be, cannot reject them, will impose his conditions. If the then sultan neglects to seize the event, it is not at all sure that the crescent will cease to mark its silhouette on the firmament of Europe; but at all events, until then European peace is the surest safeguard of the Ottoman Empire, and this Abdul Hamid well knows.

The third of the great isolated powers of which I speak is personified to-day 67 by the grand old man whom an heroic pertinacity, henceforward to be traditional, keeps a prisoner at the Vatican. No one can have any idea of the life and movement which reigns in this voluntary prison which lies over against the Quirinal. Thither flow innumerable missives from every corner of the world, and could I only tell some of them, it would be seen how long still is the arm extending from the shadow of St. Peter’s; how dreadful still are the lips that speak in the shade of the Vatican. I should show the Holy Father and his cardinals writing to the Emperor of Austria, directing him by counsel and advice, and sometimes almost by their orders. I should show Prince Bismarck continuing, since his fall, to hold before the eyes of the pope, glimpses of the more or less partial restoration of the temporal power. I should show Leo XIII. now trying to unite, now to alienate, France and Russia, according as at the moment this or that policy seems to him most propitious for his own cause or the cause of peace; and I should show, at the same time, the Vatican divided within itself, and Cardinal Vauncelli working, in secret letters addressed to powerful sovereigns, against the policy of Cardinal Rampolla, and acting on the mind of Leo XIII. to detach him from his secretary of state, and wean him from the democratic policy on which he is now launched. I should show, also, all the leading politicians of France, whether in power or out, soliciting the support, the protection, the favor of Leo XIII., and the latter working with astounding insight for the fusion, more and more complete, of the liberal monarchical party with the Republic. I should show again how, owing to mysterious action, instability has become the normal state of France; and how the action of Russia, driven by the double current from the north and the south, not only has been not a source of strength for M. Ribot, but even forced him to his fall. Not only did the czar refuse to send the Russian fleet to France, and to let the czarevitch pass through Paris under pretext of going from Berlin to London, but he has just of late imposed on the French prime minister exigencies of such a nature that the latter has preferred to lay down the power rather than to submit. When M. Ribot, minister of foreign affairs, committed the political stupidity of carrying to the tribune the name of Baron Mohrenheim in connection with the Panama scandal, the Emperor of Russia showed that he was much irritated and wounded. M. Develle, minister of foreign affairs, hurried to the baron with excuses. But the czar declared these excuses unsatisfactory. M. Ribot then went himself to see the ambassador and give him certain explanations and excuses. Still the czar was not satisfied. He demanded a letter written by the prime minister and addressed to the Russian minister of foreign affairs, M. de Giers, who was then stopping at the gates of France. M. Ribot could not accept this demand. He had already endured the insult of M. Stambouloff during the affair of the Chadourne expulsion. He did not wish to leave behind him a letter of excuse addressed to M. de Giers. He preferred to fall, and he fell.

This is a fair instance of the hidden forces which sweep through the side-scenes of international European politics. In the preceding rapid summary of the present state of politics in the Old World, the conclusion must come irrefutably, and that is the ground of these remarks, that no war is in sight, nor will be for yet a long time. The Triple Alliance wishes, and necessarily wishes, peace. The young German emperor, from whom people have affected to anticipate some mad and irresponsible conduct, has no doubt uttered some imprudent words, but he has never committed any dangerous action. Really, his mouth seems a sort of safety-valve for the boiling steam within. So far he is satisfied with the conquests already secured. He is trying to bring back to him the Emperor of Russia. The meeting which he is now having with the pope is intended to bring about a formal rapprochement between the Quirinal and Vatican. Leo XIII., in turning his face towards the democracy, disquiets all thrones; but he disquiets especially the throne of Italy, since he 68 is showing the Italians that the Papacy is not only not an enemy of republics, but that it might be the protector of future republics in Italy, if the Italian fatherland, dreaming of the former brilliant prosperity, tried to found a democratic federation, with the pope as the centre and beneficent father. But at the same time Leo XIII. will whisper peace in the ear of William II. The young emperor wishes for a long era of peace. The new military law, with its far-reaching bearings, proves this. Even to-day he would never think of undertaking a war which left Prince Bismarck out of account, and he will never undertake a war which might cause his return.

So, too, the Emperor of Austria, King of Hungary; he too is inclined to peace. He cannot risk a war. The bonds which link the different portions of the empire are too fragile to be exposed to the rude strain of armed strife. Italy, perhaps, by a fortunate war might be a gainer; but it is not strong enough to provoke one, or even to carry one on. It would regard the Papacy at the Vatican as too great a danger at its back; and, with little hope of conquering anything without its borders, it might legitimately fear to find Rome no longer intact on its return.

As for the Emperor of Russia, he is moderate at once in his love for France and his hatred of Germany. So far, a man of genius has been wanting to cement the bonds of alliance between France and Germany. There is already an understanding, vague, platonic, and with no morrow assured to it. The French Republic will recoil before the thought of war, so long as Russian action does not precipitate an explosion. The Republic knows that war would be at its peril; that vanquished it is submerged under floods of anarchy, that victorious it brings forth a Cæsar, and it wishes peace.

England, rich, industrial, devoted to its own internal problems, preserves an attitude which is an earnest of peace. So that, when one casts a steady glance over the Europe of the present hour, one is minded to say to the world about to repair to the great centre of industry, of letters, and of art, which Chicago is so soon to be: “Go in peace. War is distant. Gather in peace the fruit of your peaceful victories.”

Blowitz.

I.

ON THE UNION SIDE.

Private O’Halloran, detailed for special duty in advance of the picket line, sat reclining against a huge red oak. Within reach lay a rifle of beautiful workmanship. In one hand he held a blackened brier-root pipe, gazing on it with an air of mock regret. It had been his companion on many a weary march and on many a lonely day, when, as now, he was doing duty as a sharp-shooter. But it was not much of a companion now. It held the flavor, but not the fragrance, of other days. It was empty, and so was O’Halloran’s tobacco-pouch. It was nothing to grumble about, but the big, laughing Irishman liked his pipe, especially when it was full of tobacco. The words of an old song came to him, and he hummed them to himself:

What with the singing and the far-away thoughts that accompanied the song, Private O’Halloran failed to hear footsteps approaching until they sounded quite near.

“Halt!” he cried, seizing his rifle and springing to his feet. The newcomer wore the insignia of a Federal captain, seeing which, O’Halloran lowered his weapon and saluted. “Sure, sor, you’re not to mind me capers. I thought the inimy had me complately surrounded—I did, upon me sowl.”

“And I,” said the captain, laughing, “thought the Johnnies had caught me. It is a pleasant surprise. You are O’Halloran of the Sharp-shooters, I have heard of you—a gay singer and a great fighter.”

“Sure it’s not for me to say that same. I sings a little bechwane times for to kape up me sperits, and takes me chances, right and lift. You’re 70 takin’ a good many yourself, sor, so far away from the picket line. If I make no mistake, sor, it is Captain Somerville I’m talkin’ to.”

“That is my name,” the captain said.

“I was touchin’ elbows wit’ you at Gettysburg, sor.”

The captain looked at O’Halloran again. “Why, certainly!” he exclaimed. “You are the big fellow that lifted one of the Johnnies over the stone wall.”

“By the slack of the trousers. I am that same, sor. He was nothin’ but a bit of a lad, sor, but he fought right up to the end of me nose. The men was jabbin’ at ’im wit’ their bay’nets, so I sez to him, says I, ‘Come in out of the inclemency of the weather,’ says I, and thin I lifted him over. He made at me, sor, when I put ’im down, an’ it took two men for to lead ’im kindly to the rear. It was a warm hour, sor.”

As O’Halloran talked, he kept his eyes far afield.

“Sure, sor,” he went on, “you stand too much in the open. They had one muddlehead on that post yesterday; they’ll not put another there to-day, sor.” As he said this, the big Irishman seized the captain by the arm and gave him a sudden jerk. It was an unceremonious proceeding, but a very timely one, for the next moment the sapling against which the captain had been lightly leaning was shattered by a ball from the Confederate side.

“Tis an old friend of mine, sor,” said O’Halloran; “I know ’im by his handwritin’. They had a muddlehead there yesterday, sor. I set in full sight of ’im, an’ he blazed at me twice; the last time I had me fist above me head, an’ he grazed me knuckles. ‘Be-dad,’ says I, ‘you’re no good in your place;’ an’ when he showed his mug, I plugged ’im where the nose says howdy to the eyebrows. ’Twas no hurt to ’im, sor; if he seen the flash, ’twas as much.”

To the left, in a little clearing, was a comfortable farm-house. Stacks of fodder and straw and pens of corn in the shuck were ranged around. There was every appearance of prosperity, but no sign of life, save two bluebirds, the pioneers of spring, that were fighting around the martin gourds, preparing to take possession.

“There’s where I was born.” The captain pointed to the farm-house. “It is five years since I have seen the place.”

“You don’t tell me, sor! I see in the Hur’ld that they call it the Civil War, but it’s nothin’ but oncivil, sor, for to fight agin’ your ould home.”

“You are right,” assented the captain. “There’s nothing civil about war. I suppose the old house has long been deserted.”

“Sure, look at the forage, thin. ’Tis piled up as nately as you please. Wait till the b’ys git at it! Look at the smoke of the chimbly. Barrin’ the jay-birds, ’tis the peacefulest sight I’ve seen.”

“My people are gone,” said the captain. “My father was a Union man. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear of him somewhere at the North. The day that I was eighteen he gave me a larrupping for disobedience, and I ran away.”

“Don’t spake of it, sor.” O’Halloran held up his hands. “Many’s the time I’ve had me feelin’s hurted wit’ a bar’l stave.”

“That was in 1860,” said the captain. “I was too proud to go back home, but when the war began I remembered what a strong Union man my father was, and I joined the Union army.”

“’Tis a great scheme for a play,” said the big Irishman solemnly.

“My mother was dead,” the captain went on, “my oldest sister was married, and my youngest sister was at school in Philadelphia, and my brother, two years older than myself, made life miserable for me in trying to boss me.”

“Oh!” exclaimed O’Halloran, “don’t I know that same? ’Tis meself that’s been along there.”

Captain Somerville looked at the old place, carefully noting the outward changes, which were comparatively few. He noted, too, with the eye of a soldier, that when the impending conflict took place between the forces then facing each other, there would be a sharp struggle for the knoll on which the house stood; and he thought it was a curious feat for his mind to perform, to regard the old home where he had been both happy and miserable as a strategic point of battle. Private O’Halloran had no such memories to please or to vex him. To the extent of his opportunities he was a man of business. He took a piece of white cloth from his pocket and hung it on the broken sapling.

“I’ll see, sor, if yon chap is in the grocery business.”

As he turned away, there was a puff of smoke on the farther hill, a crackling report, and the hanging cloth jumped as though it were alive.

“Faith, it’s him, sor!” exclaimed O’Halloran, “an’ he’s in a mighty hurry.” Whereupon the big Irishman brushed a pile of leaves from an oil-cloth strapped together in the semblance of a knapsack.

“What have you there?” asked Captain Somerville.

“Sure, ’tis me grocery store, sor. Coffee, tay, an’ sugar. Faith, I’ll make the devil’s mouth water like a baby cuttin’ his stomach tathe. Would ye mind comin’ along, sor, for to kape me from swindlin’ the Johnny out of all his belongin’s?”

II.

ON THE CONFEDERATE SIDE.

Three men sat in a gully that had once been a hillside ditch. Their uniforms were various, the result of accident and capture. One of them wore a very fine blue overcoat which was in queer contrast to his ragged pantaloons. This was Lieutenant Clopton, who had charge of the picket line. Another had on the uniform of an artilleryman, and his left arm was in a sling. He had come out of the hospital to do duty as a guide. This was Private John Fambrough. The third had on no uniform at all, but was dressed in plain citizen’s clothes, much the worse for wear. This was Jack Kilpatrick, scout and sharp-shooter. Happy Jack, as he was called.

How long since the gully had been a ditch it would be impossible to say, but it must have been a good many years, for the pines had grown into stout trees, and here and there a black-jack loomed up vigorously.

“Don’t git too permiscus around here,” said Happy Jack, as the others were moving about. “This ain’t no fancy spot.” He eased himself upward on his elbow, and made a swift but careful survey of the woodland vista that led to the Federal lines. Then he shook down the breech of his rifle, and slipped a long cartridge into its place. “You see that big poplar over yonder? Well, under that tree there’s a man, leastways he ought to be there, because he’s always hangin’ around in front of me.”

“Why don’t you nail him?” asked Fambrough.

“Bosh! Why don’t he nail me? It’s because he can’t do it. Well, that’s the reason I don’t nail him. You know what happened yesterday, don’t you? You saw that elegant lookin’ chap that came out to take my place, didn’t you? Did you see him when he went back?”

Lieutenant Clopton replied with a little grimace, but Fambrough said never a word. He only looked at Kilpatrick with inquiring eyes.

“Why, he was the nicest lookin’ man in the army—hair combed, clothes brushed, and rings on his fingers. He was all the way from New ’leans, with a silver-mounted rifle and a globe sight.”

“A which?” asked Fambrough.

“A globe sight. Set down on yourself a little further, sonny,” said Happy Jack; “your head’s too high. I says to him, says I, ‘Friend, you are goin’ where you’ll have to strip that doll’s step-ladder off’n your gun, an’ come down to business,’ says I. I says, says I, ‘You may have to face a red-headed, flannel-mouthed Irishman, and you don’t want to look at him through all that machinery,’ says I.”

“What did he say?” Fambrough asked.

“He said, ‘I’ll git him.’ Now, how did he git him? Why, he come down here, lammed aloose a time or two, and then hung his head over the edge of the gully there, with a ball right spang betwixt his eyes. I went behind the picket line to get a wink of sleep, but I hadn’t more’n curled up in the broom-sage before I heard that chap a-bangin’ away. Then come the reply, like this—” Happy Jack snapped his fingers; “and then I went to sleep waitin’ for the rej’inder.”

Kilpatrick paused, and looked steadily in the direction of the poplar.

“Well, dog my cats! Yonder’s a chap standin’ right out in front of me. 73 It ain’t the Mickey, neither. I’ll see what he’s up to.” He raised his rifle with a light swinging movement, chirruped to it as though it were a horse or a little child, and in another moment the deadly business of war would have been resumed, but Fambrough laid his hand on the sharp-shooter’s arm.

“Wait,” he said. “That may be my old man wandering around out there. Don’t be too quick on trigger. I ain’t got but one old man.”

“Shucks!” exclaimed Kilpatrick, pettishly; “you reckon I don’t know your old man? He’s big in the body, an’ wobbly in his legs. You’ve spiled a mighty purty shot. I believe in my soul that chap was a colonel, an’ he might ’a’ been a general. Now that’s funny.”

“What’s funny?” asked Fambrough.

“Why, that chap. He’ll never know you saved him, an’ if he know’d it he wouldn’t thank you. I’d ’a’ put a hole right through his gizzard. Now he’s behind the poplar.”

“It’s luck,” Lieutenant Clopton suggested.

“Maybe,” said Kilpatrick. “Yonder he is ag’in. Luck won’t save him this time.” He raised his rifle, glanced down the barrel, and pulled the trigger. Simultaneously with the report an expression of disgust passed over his face, and with an oath he struck the ground with his fist.

“Don’t tell me you missed him,” said Clopton.

“Miss what?” exclaimed Kilpatrick scornfully. “If he ain’t drunk, somebody pulled him out of the way.”

“I told you it was luck,” commented Clopton.

“Shucks! don’t tell me. Luck’s like lightnin’. She never hits twice in the same place.”

Kilpatrick sank back in the gully and gave himself up to ruminating. He leaned on his elbows and pulled up little tufts of grass and weeds growing here and there. Lieutenant Clopton, looking across towards the poplar, suddenly reached for the sharp-shooter’s rifle, but Kilpatrick placed his hand on it jealously.

“Give me the gun. Yonder’s a Yank in full view.”

Kilpatrick, still holding his rifle, raised himself and looked.

“Why, he’s hanging out a flag of truce,” said Clopton. “What does the fellow mean?”

“It’s a message,” said Kilpatrick, “an’ here’s the answer.” With that he raised his rifle, dropped it gently in the palm, of his left hand, and fired.

“You saw the hankcher jump, didn’t you?” he exclaimed. “Well, that lets us out. That’s my Mickey. He wants tobacco, and I want coffee an’ tea. Come, watch me swap him out of his eye teeth.”

Then Kilpatrick went to a clump of broom sedge and drew forth a wallet containing several pounds of prepared smoking tobacco and a bundle of plug tobacco, and in a few moments the trio were picking their way through the underwood towards the open.

III.

ON NEUTRAL GROUND.

Matters were getting critical for Squire Fambrough. He had vowed and declared that he would never be a refugee, but he had a responsibility on his hands that he had not counted on. That responsibility was his daughter Julia, twenty-two years old, and as obstinate as her father. The Squire had sent off his son’s wife and her children, together with as many negroes as had refused to go into the Union lines. He had expected his daughter to go at the same time, but when the time arrived, the fair Julia showed that she had a mind of her own. She made no scene, she did not go into hysterics; but when everything was ready, she asked her father if he was going. He said he would follow along after a while. She called to a negro, and made him take her trunks and band-boxes from the wagon and carry them into the house, while Squire Fambrough stood scratching his head.

“Why don’t you make her come?” his daughter-in-law asked, somewhat sharply.

“Well, Susannah,” the Squire remarked, “I ain’t been a jestice of the peace and a married man, off and on for forty year, without findin’ out when to fool with the wimen sek an’ when not to fool wi’ ’em.”

“I’d make her come,” said the daughter-in-law.

“I give you lief, Susannah, freely an’ fully. Lay your baby some’rs wher’ it won’t git run over, an’ take off your surplus harness, an’ go an’ fetch her out of the house an’ put her in the buggy.”

But the daughter-in-law treated the courteous invitation with proper scorn, and the small caravan moved off, leaving the fair Julia and her father in possession of the premises. According to human understanding, the refugees got off just in the nick of time. A day or two afterwards, the Union army, figuratively speaking, marched up, looked over Squire Fambrough’s front palings, and then fell back to reflect over the situation. Shortly afterwards the Confederate army marched up, looked over the Squire’s back palings, and also fell back to reflect. Evidently the situation was one to justify reflection, for presently both armies fell back still farther. These movements were so courteous and discreet—were such a colossal display of etiquette—that war seemed to be out of the question. Of course there were the conservative pickets, the thoughtful videttes, and the careful sharp-shooters, ready to occasion a little bloodshed, accidentally or intentionally. But by far the most boisterously ferocious appendages of the two armies were the two brass bands. They were continually challenging each other, beginning early in the morning and ending late in the afternoon; one firing 75 off “Dixie,” and the other “Yankee Doodle.” It was “Yankee Doodle, howdy do?” and “Doodle-doodle, Dixie, too,” like two chanticleers challenging each other afar off.

This was the situation as it appeared to Squire Fambrough and his daughter. On this particular morning the sun was shining brightly, and the birds were fluttering joyously in the budding trees. Miss Julia had brought her book out into the grove of venerable oaks which was the chief beauty of the place, and had seated herself on a rustic bench that was built around one of the trees. Just as she had become interested, she heard a rifle-shot. She moved uneasily, but fell to reading again, and was apparently absorbed in the book, when she heard another shot. Then she threw the book down and rose to her feet, making a very pretty centerpiece in the woodland setting.

“Oh! what is the matter with everything?” she exclaimed. “There’s the shooting again! How can I read books and sit quietly here while the soldiers are preparing to fight? Oh, me! I don’t know what to do! If there should be a battle here, I don’t know what would become of us.”

Julia, in her despair, was fair to look upon. Her gown of striped homespun stuff, simply made, set off to admiration her strong but supple figure. Excitement added a new lustre to her eye and gave a heightened color to the rose that bloomed on her cheeks. She stood a moment as if listening, and then a faint smile showed on her lips. She heard her father calling:

“Jule! Jule! O Jule!”

“Here I am, father!” she cried. “What is it?”

“Well, the Lord he’p my soul! I’ve been huntin’ for you high an’ low. Did you hear that shootin’? I ’lowed may be you’d been took prisoner an’ carried bodaciously off. Didn’t I hear you talkin’ to somebody?”

Squire Fambrough pulled off his hat and scratched his head. His face, set in a fringe of gray beard, was kindly and full of humor, but it contained not a few of the hard lines of experience.

“No, father,” said Julia, in reply to the Squire’s question. “I was only talking to myself.”

“Jest makin’ a speech, eh? Well, I don’t blame you, honey. I’m a great mind to jump out here in the clearin’ an’ yell out my sentiments so that both sides can hear ’em.”

“Why, what is the matter, father?”

“I’m mad, honey! I’m jest nachally stirred up—dog my cats ef I ain’t! Along at fust I did hope there wouldn’t be no fightin’ in this neighborhood, but now I jest want to see them two blamed armies light into one another, tooth and toe-nail.”

“Why, father!” Julia made a pretty gesture of dismay. “How can you talk so?”

“Half of my niggers is gone,” said Squire Fambrough; “one side has got my hosses, and t’other side has stole my cattle. The Yankees has grabbed my 76 grist mill, an’ the Confeds has laid holt of my corn crib. One army is squattin’ in my tater patch, and t’other one is roostin’ in my cow pastur’. Do you reckon I was born to set down here an’ put up wi’ that kind of business?”

“But, father, what can you do? How can you help yourself? For heaven’s sake, let’s go away from here!”

“Great Moses, Jule! Have you gone an’ lost what little bit of common sense you was born with? Do you reckon I’m a-goin’ to be a-refugeein’ an’ a-skee-daddlin’ across the country like a skeer’d rabbit at my time of life? I hain’t afeared of nary two armies they can find room for on these hills! Hain’t I got one son on one side an’ another son on t’other side? Much good they are doin’, too. If they’d a-felt like me they’d a fit both sides. Do you reckon I’m a-gwine to be drove off’n the place where I was born, an’ where your granpappy was born, an’ where your mother lies buried? No, honey!”

“But, father, you know we can’t stay here. Suppose there should be a battle?”

“Come, honey! come!” There was a touch of petulance in the old man’s tone. “Don’t get me flustrated. I told you to go when John’s wife an’ the children went. By this time you’d ’a’ been out of hearin’ of the war.”

“But, father, how could I go and leave you here all by yourself?” The girl laid her hand on the Squire’s shoulder caressingly.

“No,” exclaimed the Squire, angrily; “stay you would, stay you did, an’ here you are!”

“Yes, and now I want to go away, and I want you to go with me. All the horses are not taken, and the spring wagon and the barouche are here.”

“Don’t come a-pesterin’ me, honey! I’m pestered enough as it is. Lord, if 77 I had the big men here what started the war, I’d take ’em an’ butt their cussed heads together tell you wouldn’t know ’em from a lot of spiled squashes.”

“Now, don’t get angry and say bad words, father.”

“I can’t help it, Jule; I jest can’t help it. When the fuss was a-brewin’ I sot down an’ wrote to Jeems Buchanan, and told him, jest as plain as the words could be put on paper, that war was boun’ to come if he didn’t look sharp; an’ then when old Buck dropped out, I sot down an’ wrote to Abe Lincoln an’ told him that coercion wouldn’t work worth a cent, but conciliation——”

“Wait, father!” Julia held up her pretty hand. “I hear some one calling. Listen!”

Not far away they heard the voice of a negro. “Marse Dave Henry! O Marse Dave Henry!”

“Hello! Who the nation are you hollerin’ at?” said Squire Fambrough as a youngish looking negro man came in view. “An’ where did you come from, an’ where are you goin’?”

“Howdy, mistiss—howdy, marster!” The negro took off his hat as he came up.

“What’s your name?” asked the Squire.

“I’m name Tuck, suh. None er you all ain’t seed nothin’ er Marse——”

“Who do you belong to?”

“I b’longs ter de Cloptons down dar in Georgy, suh. None er you-all ain’t seed nothin’——”

“What are you doin’ here?” demanded Squire Fambrough, somewhat angrily. “Don’t you know you are liable to get killed any minute? Ain’t you makin’ your way to the Yankee army?”

“No, suh.” The negro spoke with unction. “I’m des a-huntin’ my young marster, suh. He name Dave Henry Clopton. Dat what we call him—Marse Henry. None er you-all ain’t seed ’im, is you?”

“Jule,” said the Squire, rubbing his nose thoughtfully, “ain’t that the name of the chap that used to hang around here before the Yankees got too close?”

“Do you mean Lieutenant Clopton, father?” asked Julia, showing some confusion.

“Yessum.” Tuck grinned and rubbed his hands together. “Marse Dave Henry is sholy a lieutender in de company, an’ mistiss she say he’d a done been a giner’l ef dey wa’nt so much enviousness in de army.”

“I saw him this morning—I mean—” Julia blushed and hesitated. “I mean, I heard him talking out here in the grove.”

“Who was he talking to, Jule?” The Squire put the question calmly and deliberately.

There was a little pause. Julia, still blushing, adjusted an imaginary hair-pin. The negro looked sheepishly from one to the other. The Squire repeated his question.

“Who was he talking to, Jule?”

“Nobody but me,” said the young lady, growing redder. Her embarrassment was not lessened by an involuntary “eh—eh,” from the negro. Squire Fambrough raised his eyes heavenwards and allowed both his heavy hands to drop helplessly by his side.

“What was he talkin’ about?” The old man spoke with apparent humility.

“N-o-t-h-i-n-g,” said Julia, demurely, looking at her pink finger-nails. “He just asked me if I thought it would rain, and I told him I didn’t know; and then he said the spring was coming on very rapidly, and I said, ‘Yes, I thought it was.’ And then he had found a bunch of violets and asked me if I would accept them, and I said, ‘Thank you.’”

“Land of the livin’ Moses!” exclaimed Squire Fambrough, lifting his hands above his head and allowing them to fall heavily again. “And they call this war!”

“Yessum!” The negro’s tone was triumphant. “Dat sholy wuz Marse Dave Henry. War er no war, dat wuz him. Dat des de way he goes ’mongst de ladies. He gi’um candy yit, let ’lone flowers. Shoo! You can’t tell me nothin’ ’tall ’bout Marse Dave Henry.”

“What are you wanderin’ ’round here in the woods for?” asked the Squire. His tone was somewhat severe. “Did anybody tell you he was here?”

“No, suh!” replied Tuck. “Dey tol’ me back dar at de camps dat I’d 78 fin’ ’im out on de picket line, an’ when I got dar dey tol’ me he wuz out dis a-way, whar dey wuz some sharp-shootin’ gwine on, but I ain’t foun’ ’im yit.”

“Ain’t you been with him all the time?” The Squire was disposed to treat the negro as a witness for the defence.

“Lor, no, suh! I des now come right straight fum Georgy. Mistiss—she Marse Dave Henry’s ma—she hear talk dat de solyers ain’t got no cloze fer ter w’ar an’ no vittles fer ter eat, skacely, an’ she tuck’n made me come an’ fetch ’im a box full er duds an’ er box full er vittles. She put cake in dar, yit, ’kaze I smelt it whiles I wuz handlin’ de box. De boxes, dey er dar at de camp, an’ here me, but wharbouts is Marse Dave Henry? Not ter be a-hidin’ fum somebody, he de hardest white man ter fin’ what I ever laid eyes on. I speck I better be knockin’ ’long. Good-by, marster; good-by, young mistiss. Ef I don’ fin’ Marse Dave Henry no wheres, I’ll know whar ter come an’ watch fer ’im.”

The Squire watched the negro disappear in the woods, and then turned to his daughter. To his surprise, her eyes were full of tears; but before he could make any comment, or ask any question, he heard the noise of tramping feet in the woods, and presently saw two Union soldiers approaching. Almost immediately Julia called his attention to three soldiers coming from the Confederate side.

“I believe in my soul we’re surrounded by both armies,” remarked the Squire dryly. “But don’t git skeer’d, honey. I’m goin’ to see what they’re trespassin’ on my premises for.”

IV.

COMMERCE AND SENTIMENT.

“Upon my sowl,” said O’Halloran, as he and Captain Somerville went forward, the big Irishman leading the way, “I’m afeard I’m tollin’ you into a trap.”

“How?” asked the captain.

“Why, there’s three of the Johnnies comin’, sor, an’ the ould man an’ the gurrul make five.”

“Halt!” said the captain, using the word by force of habit. The two paused, and the captain took in the situation at a glance. Then he turned to the big Irishman, with a queer look on his face.

“What is it, sor?”

“I’m in for it now. That is my father yonder, and the young lady is my sister.”

“The Divvle an’ Tom Walker!” exclaimed O’Halloran. “’Tis quite a family rayanion, sor.”

“I don’t know whether to make myself known or not. What could have possessed them to stay here? I’ll see whether they know me.” As they went forward, the captain plucked O’Halloran by the sleeve. “I’ll be shot if the Johnny with his arm in the sling isn’t my brother.”

“I was expectin’ it, sor,” said the big Irishman, giving matters a humorous turn. “Soon the cousins will be poppin’ out from under the bushes.”

By this time the two were near enough to the approaching Confederates to carry on a conversation by lifting their voices a little.

“Hello, Johnny,” said O’Halloran.

“Hello, Yank,” replied Kilpatrick.

“What’s the countersign, Johnny?”

“Tobacco. What is it on your side, Yank?”

“Tay an’ coffee, Johnny.”

“You are mighty right,” Kilpatrick exclaimed. “Stack your arms agin a tree.”

“The same to you,” said O’Halloran.

The Irishman, using his foot as a broom, cleared the dead leaves and twigs from a little space of ground, where he deposited his bundle, and Kilpatrick did the same. John Fambrough, the wounded Confederate, went forward to greet his father and sister, and Lieutenant Clopton went with him. The Squire was not in a good humor.

“I tell you what, John,” he said to his son, “I don’t like to be harborin’ nary side. It’s agin’ my principles. I don’t like this colloguin’ an’ palaverin’ betwixt folks that ought to be by good 79 rights a-knockin’ one another on the head. If they want to collogue an’ palaver, why don’t they go som’ers else?”

The Squire’s son tried to explain, but the old gentleman hooted at the explanation. “Come on, Jule, let’s go and see what they’re up to.”

As they approached, the Irishman glanced at Captain Somerville, and saw that he had turned away, cap in hand, to hide his emotion.

“You’re just in time,” the Irishman said to Squire Fambrough in a bantering tone, “to watch the continding armies. This mite of a Johnny will swindle the Government, if I don’t kape me eye on him.”

“Is this what you call war?” the Squire inquired sarcastically. “Who axed you to come trespassin’ on my land?”

“Oh, we’ll put the leaves back where we found them,” said Kilpatrick, “if we have to git a furlough.”

“Right you are!” said the Irishman.

“It is just a little trading frolic among the boys!” Captain Somerville turned to the old man with a courteous bow. “They will do no harm. I’ll answer for that.”

“Well, I’ll tell you how I feel about it!” Squire Fambrough exclaimed with some warmth. “I’m in here betwixt the hostiles. They ain’t nobody here but me an’ my daughter. We don’t pester nobody, an’ we don’t want nobody to pester us. One of my sons is in the Union army, I hear tell, an’ the other is in the Confederate army when he ain’t in the hospital. These boys, you see, found their old daddy a-straddle of the fence, an’ one clomb down one leg on the Union side, an’ t’other one clomb down t’other leg on the Confederate side.”

“That is what I call an interesting situation,” said the captain, drawing a long breath. “Perhaps I have seen your Union son.”

“Maybe so, maybe so,” assented the Squire.

“Perhaps you have seen him yourself since the war began?”

Before the Squire could make any reply, Julia rushed at the captain and threw her arms around his neck, crying, “O brother George, I know you!”

The Squire seemed to be dazed by this discovery. He went towards the captain slowly. The tears streamed down his face and the hand he held out trembled.

“George,” he exclaimed, “God A’mighty knows I’m glad to see you!”

O’Halloran and Kilpatrick had paused in the midst of their traffic to 80 watch this scene, but when they saw the gray-haired old man crying and hugging his son, and the young girl clinging to the two, they were confused. O’Halloran turned and kicked his bundles.

“Take all the tay and coffee, you bloody booger! Just give me a pipeful of the weed.”

Kilpatrick shook his fist at the big Irishman.

“Take the darned tobacco, you red-mouthed Mickey! What do I want with your tea and coffee?” Then both started to go a little way into the woods. Lieutenant Clopton following. The captain would have called them back, but they wouldn’t accept the invitation.

“We are just turnin’ our backs, sor, while you hold a family orgie,” said O’Halloran. “Me an’ this measly Johnny will just go on an’ complate the transaction of swappin’.”

At this moment Tuck reappeared on the scene. Seeing his young master, he stopped still and looked at him, and then broke out into loud complaints.

“Marse Dave Henry, whar de namer goodness you been? You better come read dish yer letter what yo’ ma writes you. I’m gwine tell mistiss she come mighty nigh losin’ a likely nigger, an’ she’ll rake you over de coals, mon.”

“Why, howdy, Tuck,” exclaimed Lieutenant Clopton. “Ain’t you glad to see me?”

“Yasser, I speck I is.” The negro spoke in a querulous and somewhat doubtful tone, as he produced a letter from the lining of his hat. “But I’d ’a’ been a heap gladder ef I hadn’t mighty nigh trapsed all de gladness out’n me.”

Young Clopton took the letter and read it with a smile on his lips and a dimness in his eyes. The negro, left to himself, had his attention attracted by the coffee and tobacco lying exposed on the ground. He looked at the display, scratching his head.

“Boss, is dat sho nuff coffee?”

“It is that same,” said O’Halloran.

“De ginnywine ole-time coffee?” insisted the negro.

“’Tis nothin’ else, simlin-head.”

“Marse Dave Henry,” the negro yelled, “run here an’ look at dish yer ginnywine coffee! Dey’s nuff coffee dar fer ter make mistiss happy de balance er her days. Some done spill out!” he exclaimed. “Boss, kin I have dem what’s on de groun’?”

“Take ’em,” said O’Halloran, “an’ much good may they do you.”

“One, two, th’ee, fo’, fi’, sick, sev’n.” The negro counted the grains as he picked them up. “O Marse Dave Henry, run here an’ look! I got sev’n grains er ginnywine coffee. I’m gwine take um ter mistiss.”

The Irishman regarded the negro with curiosity. Then taking the dead branch of a tree he drew a line several yards in length between himself and Kilpatrick.

“D’ye see that line there?” he said to the negro.

“Dat ar mark? Oh, yasser, I sees de mark.”

“Very well. On that side of the line you are in slavery—on this side the line you are free.”

“Who? Me?”

“Who else but you?”

“I been hear talk er freedom, but I ain’t seed ’er yit, an’ I dunner how she feel.” The negro scratched his head and grinned expectantly.

“’Tis as I tell you,” said the Irishman.

“I b’lieve I’ll step ’cross an’ see how she feel.” The negro stepped over the line, and walked up and down as if to test the matter physically. “’Tain’t needer no hotter ner no colder on dis side dan what ’tis on dat,” he remarked. Then he cried out to his young master: “Look at me, Marse Dave Henry; I’m free now.”

“All right.” The young man waved his hand without taking his eyes from the letter he was reading.

“He take it mos’ too easy fer ter suit me,” said the negro. Then he called out to his young master again: “O Marse Dave Henry! Don’t you tell mistiss dat I been free, kase she’ll take a bresh-broom an’ run me off’n de place when I go back home.”

V.

THE CURTAIN FALLS.

Squire Fambrough insisted that his son should go to the house and look it over for the sake of old times, and young Clopton went along to keep Miss Julia company. O’Halloran, Kilpatrick, and the negro stayed where they were—the white men smoking their pipes, and the negro chewing the first “mannyfac” tobacco he had seen in many a day.

The others were not gone long. As they came back, a courier was seen riding through the woods at break-neck speed, going from the Union lines to those of the Confederates, and carrying a white flag. Kilpatrick hailed him, and he drew rein long enough to cry out, as he waved his flag:

“Lee has surrendered!”

“I was looking out for it,” said Kilpatrick, “but dang me if I hadn’t ruther somebody had a-shot me right spang in the gizzard.”

Lieutenant Clopton took out his pocket-knife and began to whittle a stick. John Fambrough turned away, and his sister leaned her hands on his shoulder and began to weep. Squire Fambrough rubbed his chin thoughtfully and sighed.

“It had to be, father,” the captain said. “It’s a piece of news that brings peace to the land.”

“Oh, yes, but it leaves us flat. No money, and nothing to make a crop with.”

“I have Government bonds that will be worth a hundred thousand dollars. The interest will keep us comfortably.”

“For my part,” said Clopton, “I have nothing but this free nigger.”

“You b’lieve de half er dat,” spoke up the free nigger. “Mistiss been savin’ her cotton craps, an’ ef she got one bale she got two hundred.”

The captain figured a moment. “They will bring more than a hundred thousand dollars.”

“I have me two arrums,” said O’Halloran.

“I’ve got a mighty fine pack of fox-hounds,” remarked Kilpatrick with real pride.

There was a pause in the conversation. In the distance could be heard the shouting of the Union soldiers and the band with its “Yankee Doodle, howd’y-do?” Suddenly Clopton turned to Captain Fambrough:

“I want to ask you how many troops have you got over there—fighting men?”

The captain laughed. Then he put his hand to his mouth and said in a stage whisper:

“Five companies.”

“Well, dang my hide!” exclaimed Kilpatrick.

“What is your fighting force?” Captain Fambrough asked.

“Four companies,” said Clopton.

“Think o’ that, sir!” cried the Irishman; “an’ me out there defendin’ meself ag’in a whole army.”

“More than that,” said Clopton, “our colonel is a Connecticut man.”

“Shake!” the captain exclaimed. “My colonel is a Virginian.”

“Lord ’a’ mercy! Lord ’a’ mercy!” It was Squire Fambrough who spoke. “I’m a-goin’ off some’rs an’ ontangle the tangle we’ve got into.”

Soon the small company separated. The Squire went a short distance towards the Union army with his new-found son, who was now willing to call himself George Somerville Fambrough. Kilpatrick and the negro went trudging back to the Confederate camp, while Clopton lingered awhile, saying something of great importance to the fair Julia and himself.

His remarks and her replies were those which precede and follow both comedy and tragedy. The thunders of war cannot drown them, nor can the sunshine of peace render them commonplace.

Seated in an arm-chair, now feebly turning over the leaves of his “Souvenirs of Forty Years,” now letting his dimmed eyes wander listlessly over the broad expanse of fields and woodlands outside the windows, Ferdinand de Lesseps, the great Frenchman, drags out the agony of his old age.

The visitor to him in his retreat arrives at La Chesnaye to some extent attuned to melancholy, for the long diligence ride from the nearest railway station, twenty-four kilometres away, is across a most desolate country. This part of the ancient duchy of Berry is one of the districts in France which has most suffered by the ruin of the vine-culture; the lands seem deserted and abandoned; the roads are neglected, and little life is seen anywhere till the sleepy burgh of Vatan is reached. From Vatan, which is a market-town on the old and now disused high-road from Paris to Toulouse, to the chateau of La Chesnaye, there are four more kilometres of road across an equally desolate country to be taken. The buildings of the home farm are the first human habitations that one sees all the long way. An oppressive sense of desolation imposes itself on even the casual wayfarer, and prepares for the sorrowful sight that awaits him who goes to La Chesnaye to salute the fallen greatness of the old man who but two years ago was the greatest Frenchman in France.

The chateau of La Chesnaye, a modest country-house of irregular shape and flanked at the angles with towers, has been in the possession of M. de Lesseps for fifty years. Except for a large modern wing, it stands just as Agnes Sorel, its first occupant, left it. In her days it had served as a hunting-box for her royal patron and the Berry squires, and at present is still surrounded with fields scantily timbered. There is no well-kept lawn, but the fields of grass are full of violets, and there is a trim look about the stables. On a bright day the white of the stone, contrasted with the green of the grass, gives a cheerful look to the scene, but it is indescribably mournful of aspect in the days of rain and snow and wind.

About half a mile on the road before the chateau is in sight, an avenue of trees is reached. “Those trees were planted by M. de Lesseps himself, forty years ago, and every time that he passes this way he relates the fact.”

So spoke to me the English governess 84 of the De Lesseps children, whom Madame de Lesseps had despatched to meet me with the pony-carriage at Vatan.

“The countess is terribly busy to-day with her papers, for she is expecting a barrister from Paris, who is to receive some instructions in view of the new trial; but she will manage to give you an hour, and wants you to drive to church with her, so that you can talk on the way.” As we entered the courtyard the countess’s carriage was in waiting at the front entrance. It was the landau of the days of triumphant drives in the Champs Élysées, and the horses were the same pair which excited the admiration and envy of the connoisseurs of the Avenue des Acacias, “Juliette” and “Panama,” which latter is now never called by that name. It is talked about as “the other,” for the ill-fated word, Panama, is never even whispered, lest any echo of it should reach the ears of him to whom this word has meant ruin and disgrace and a broken heart. I waited for the countess at the bottom of the spiral stair-case, and presently saw a lady descending, who greeted me in a familiar voice, but whom I failed to recognize. “But, yes,” she said, holding out her hand, “I am Madame de Lesseps. I have changed, have I not?”

When I last met Madame de Lesseps in Paris, though at that time the shadow of the present was already upon her, she was in the full of her matronly beauty, large, ample, and flourishing. It was a wasted woman who addressed me, pinched and thin. “If I were to remove my veil,” she added, “you would see an even greater change.”

“It is a sad moment that you have chosen to visit us, and you find us in terrible circumstances,” she said as we drove away. Then turning to the lady who accompanied her, she remarked, “This is the first time I have been out for three weeks, and I ought not to have gone out to-day, except for the fact that I can’t miss going to church again. It is the only comfort I have left to me. All my days and most of my nights, when not attending on my husband, are taken up answering letters and telegrams which keep pouring in upon me from all parts of the world. And then I am in constant correspondence with the lawyers in Paris as to the prosecution of my son for corruption, and the revision of the last judgment of the Court of Appeal.”

The church which is attended by the La Chesnaye party is situated in a village about three miles off, which is called Guilly, “the mistletoe hamlet,” as all the trees around are covered with this parasite. We were passing a fine old oak tree, the upper part of which was loaded with mistletoe, when the lady who was with us laughed scornfully, and, pointing, said: “One would say Herz, Arton, and the rest,” referring to the Panama parasites. “Would you believe me,” said Madame de Lesseps, “that until these recent revelations I had never even heard the names of 85 either Arton or Herz or the Baron de Reinach?”

Outside the church was standing a char-à-banc drawn by two horses, and it was in this that, after service, I returned to La Chesnaye with the children and the governesses. It was interesting to see how devoted the people of Guilly seem to be to the De Lesseps family, and how the men and women bowed and courtesied as the countess came out of church. Here, as at Vatan and in all the district, the love and respect for “Monsieur le Comte” have been increased rather than diminished by the persecutions to which he has been subjected. It was on the great fair-day at Vatan that the news of his condemnation was made public, and at once the villagers, in sign of mourning, stopped the public ball which is a fête to which the young people of the district look forward for months beforehand. Sturdy Berrichon lads have been seen to flourish their sticks and heard to say that the Parisians had better keep their hands off “Monsieur le Comte.” Nor is it surprising that in his own country M. de Lesseps should be loved and venerated. Always delighting in acts of kindness, his generosity towards his poor neighbors throughout the district has been constant and large-handed. Never a marriage takes place in any of the surrounding villages but that a handsome present from La Chesnaye is thrown into the bride’s corbeille. The children are dressed for confirmation at the expense of the chateau; layettes are found for poor mothers, and no case of distress is allowed to pass unrelieved. Since the heavy losses which the Panama failure has entailed on the family, no change nor diminution in these liberalities has been made. But perhaps what the people in the district like the best in the La Chesnaye folk is their extreme simplicity. Chateau folk are not generally very popular in France, and certainly not in republican circumscriptions, because republican electors of the peasant class have inherited prejudices about them; and if the De Lesseps family is so very popular, it is because of the extreme simplicity of their manners and of the way in which they live the lives of the people around them. For instance, not the children alone, but even the elegant Madame de Lesseps herself, are dressed in clothes purchased and made in Vatan. Nothing is got from Paris, and the Vatan people are highly pleased with the unusual compliment thus paid to them. By the church at Guilly is 86 an orphanage, which was founded by the De Lesseps, and is entirely kept up at their expense. It is a rule with Madame de Lesseps to pay a visit to this orphanage each Sunday after mass, and, accordingly, as she left church she asked me to return home with the children. Of these there are now seven at home; Matthew, who has just returned on sick leave from the Soudan, being in Paris near his stepbrother Charles. Ismail is serving in the army as a soldier in a regiment of chasseurs at St. Germain; and the eldest daughter, the Comtesse de Gontaut-Biron, is in Nice, whither she has been sent by her doctors. Lolo, aged eighteen, is the eldest girl at home; and Paul, a handsome lad of twelve, with long ringlets down his back, is the eldest boy. The youngest children are mere babies. There is Zi-Zi, a tiny little boy, with fair curls and dark eyes; and Griselle, a charming little mite, who on that Sunday was dressed in a Kate Greenaway bonnet and gown, and looked sweetly pretty. The char-à-banc, spacious as it was, was quite filled. Besides all the children from Lolo down to Zi-Zi, there were the English and German governesses, Paul and Robert’s tutor, the niece of Madame de Lesseps who for many years past has lived with the family, and an intimate friend, Mademoiselle Mimaut.

It was a merry party, and yet whenever the name of the poor old father at home was mentioned, silence came over the prattle of the children. “They all feel it deeply,” said Madame de Lesseps to me later on, “though their youth often gets the better of their feelings. And what grieves them all most is, to know that their brother Charles, whom they all love and respect like a second father, is in prison, whilst they can run about. Zi-Zi and Griselle write to him every day at Mazas or the Conciergerie, and send him violets, and little stories which they compose for his amusement, spending long hours inking their fingers over their paper.”

About half-way home the carriage passed the rural postman trudging along on his daily thirty-mile round. The children would have the carriage stopped, and, though it was quite full, place was made for him. Father Pierre seemed quite a favorite with the children, for is it not he, as little Griselle said, who brings letters from brother Charles? Charles, it seems, writes every day, and his letters, to judge by what every member of the family told me, are admirable in their manly unselfishness. There is never a word of complaint about the wretchedness of his position; his only anxiety is about his father, and he is ready to undergo everything so that the old man may be spared a moment’s pain. Ruined, disgraced, though not dishonored, having to face a long period of imprisonment, which at his age and in his physical condition may kill him, he affects in his letters the greatest cheerfulness. Nor is his heroic unselfishness without its reward. He is the idol of everybody at La Chesnaye and for miles around. Only one complaint has escaped him since his confinement, and that was when, during his hurried visit, under guard, to his father, he went with the children for a favorite walk to a neighboring wood. Here, as he was walking along the avenue which runs through some magnificent timber, he looked around at the detectives behind him, and said with a sigh: “And to-morrow I shall be again within four gray walls.” But immediately he added, that if he could only be allowed to come and pass an afternoon in the wood with his brothers and sisters every month, he would not mind his confinement in the least, and could resign himself to the prospect of imprisonment for the rest of his days. Yet he is past fifty-three, and his health has suffered terribly from what he has undergone.

The half hour before lunch was spent by the children in showing their pets. A prime favorite with them just now is a little Newfoundland puppy, which has quite dethroned in their affections an old shepherd dog, who, as Zi-Zi relates, “came one day and liked us so much that she has never left us.” Another pet of whom a great deal is made is an African monkey which Matthew brought home from the Soudan. It is called Bou-Bou, and when it is scolded it hides its face in its hands. It is quite tame, and runs about without a chain.

Just before lunch the children set about picking violets, each a bunch. This they do every day. One is for Charles at Mazas, another for Madame de Lesseps, but the sweetest is for the old father to wear in his buttonhole at lunch, which is the only meal he takes with the family. The child whose bouquet is worn by the father is the proudest child in Berry that day.

I could not refrain from a movement of the most painful surprise when, after a few moments spent in the drawing-room, I was invited by Madame de Lesseps into the room where her husband sat. I have known M. de Lesseps for many years, and though the last time that I saw him he was already under the influence of the sorrow of defeat—it was just after he had been called before a magistrate, for examination—my recollection of him had always been as of a man full of the most surprising vitality and high spirits, keen, bright, energetic, defying the wear of time, a man of eternal youth in spite of his white hairs. I remembered him last, erect, with clear voice and flashing eyes, and now I saw him huddled together in a chair, a wrap about his knees, nodding his head as under sleep, pale, inert, and with all the life gone out of his eyes. Behind him stood a large screen tapestried with red stuff, against which the waxen whiteness of his face and hands stood out in strong relief. How old he looked, whom age had seemed to spare so long! For the most part the head drooped forward on his chest, but now and then he raised it listlessly and let his eyes wander round the room, or across the panes on to the fields beyond. There was rarely recognition in his glance; mostly a look of unalterable sadness—of wonder, it may be, at the terrible hazards of life. Yet, when now and then one of the children, who were crowding about his chair, pressed his hand or kissed his cheek or said some words of endearment to him, the smile which was one of his characteristics came over his face, and for a brief moment he seemed himself again. Himself again—that is to say, in the goodness and great-heartedness which more than all he has ever done for France merited for him the name of the great Frenchman. For greatness of heart has always been the keynote of the character of Ferdinand de Lesseps. It was the secret of the indescribable seduction which he exercised over everyone who came near him, from emperor to laborer. It was to this quality of his that M. Renan, albeit a sceptic himself, rendered such signal homage in the speech in which he welcomed M. de Lesseps to the French Academy on the day of his admittance.

“You were good to all who came,” said M. Renan; “you made them feel 88 that their past would be effaced and that a new life lay before them. In exchange you only asked them to share your enthusiasm in the work which you had devoted to the interest of France. You held that most people can amend if only one will forget their past. One day a whole gang of convicts arrived at Panama and took work at the canal. The Austrian consul demanded that they should be handed over to him; but you delayed giving satisfaction to his request, and at the end of some weeks the Austrian consulate was fully occupied in remitting home to Austria, to their families, or, it may be, to their victims, the moneys which these outcasts whom you had transformed into honest workmen were earning with the work of their hands. You have declared your faith in humanity. You have convinced yourself and tried to convince others that men are loyal and good if only they have the wherewithal to live. It is your opinion that it is only hunger that makes men bad. ‘Never,’ said you in one of your lectures, ‘have I had cause for complaint against any of the workmen, although I have employed outcasts, pariahs, and convicts. Work has redeemed even the most dishonest. I have never been robbed, not even of a handkerchief. It is a fact which I have proved, that men can be brought to do anything by showing them kindness and by persuading them that they are working in a cause of universal interest.’ Thus you have made green again what seemed withered for ever and aye. You have given, in a century of unbelief, a startling proof of the efficacy of faith.”

A thousand instances of this kindness of heart might be cited to show that M. de Lesseps ever remained a chivalrous gentleman in the best sense of the word. A trifling experience of my own may suffice. A few days after my first visit to him, at the office of the Suez Canal, I was dining at a house in the Cours-la-Reine. It was my first visit to that house, a fact which somewhat contributed to my embarrassment in what was one of my first experiences in Parisian society. Amongst the guests was the editor of one of the principal French papers, and being anxious to make his acquaintance, I asked our host to introduce me to my confrère. The editor in question had no courtesies to waste upon an insignificant foreigner, and acknowledged my bow with a reverence of exaggerated profundity, bowing almost to the earth, and then swinging round on his heel to continue a conversation with another journalist, which had been interrupted by the introduction. I was left standing in the middle of the room, with my eyes on the editor’s back, suffused with shame and mortification. M. de Lesseps saw the slight thus inflicted on a young man, and from kindness of heart immediately did what he could to efface it. From his place at the fire, where he had been standing surrounded by the usual crowd of courtiers, he had noticed the incident, and I saw him making his way across the drawing-room towards me, exclaiming to those around him: “Oh, there is a young man with whom I must have a few words!” He then took me by the hand, drew me aside, and remained conversing with me until dinner was announced.

In view of the awful change that, within so short a time, has been made in this gentleman, I cannot but think that it must be attributed to the shock produced in a very old man by an experience which shows him that he has been mistaken all his life long. It is terrible to wake up at eighty-five and find that things are not what one has believed during his past life, and that the men whom one has loved and respected are unworthy. I believe that what has struck Ferdinand de Lesseps down in his chair, in full vitality, is an immense disappointment, not at the failure of his hopes, for he has always been indifferent to money, and has never had the wish to leave his children large fortunes, but at the falseness of a creed which was optimistic to the point of blindness. I believe that Ferdinand de Lesseps is dying of a broken heart, broken by the immense ingratitude of men. And if the loss of all the money that has been sunk in the Panama mud and the pockets of the intrigants of the Third Republic adds to his sorrow, it is certainly not for himself nor his family, but for all those who are suffering because they shared his belief in his star, and who blindly followed him to ruin. He knew that they were of the humble, and often told me so. “Panama will be carried out with the savings in woollen stockings of the peasant and of the workman,” he used to say. He has never been self-seeking. He presented France with a concession, that of the Suez Canal, estimated at one hundred millions of francs, and with lands worth another thirty millions, and fought heroically for years to render to his gift its greatest value. In the words of M. Renan, the courage, the energy, the resources of all sorts expended by M. de Lesseps in this struggle were nothing short of prodigious. In exchange he took for himself enough to enable him to lead the life of a gentleman and to do good around him. Each of his children he endowed with not more than seventy thousand francs, the revenues from which, together with his wife’s private fortune, are now all that remain to the family. I firmly believe that all his life he acted only from feelings of philanthropy and from patriotism of the most chivalrous type. He never had any desire to leave a large fortune, and I can remember his saying to me, very emphatically, that his children must do as he had done; and that they would do so if they were worthy of his name; and that he never wished to leave them large fortunes, but an honorable name, a love for their country equal to his, and an example which he hoped they would follow. “Let them work as I have done,” said this most tender of fathers.

It seems that not even this heritage of an honored name is, if the persecutors of the old man can have their way, to be left to his family. Since he has been down the number of his adversaries has of course increased tenfold. Even those who owe him all—many officials at the Suez Canal Company, for instance, who owe their positions and fortunes to his genius—seem glad to revenge themselves for their obligation. De Lesseps has done too much good to men not to be hated, and it is to be regretted that poor De Maupassant cannot wield his pen in analysis of the motives which are actuating his former dependents in their endeavors to renounce all solidarity with the dying octogenarian of La Chesnaye. I visited the offices of the Suez Canal Company a few days ago, and, prepared as one is for human ingratitude, it was distressing in the extreme to see how poor a thing to charm with was the name at the sound of which, as I can well remember, all the flunkeys of the 90 place in livery or black frock coat doubled up in the days that are past. The lion is down, and every ass of Paris has a heel to kick him with.

On the other hand, the adversities of the De Lesseps family have revealed to them the immense number of friends which they possess in all parts of the world. Letters and telegrams keep pouring in from all sides to La Chesnaye, and all the available pens are kept busy most of the day and night in answering the kindest expressions of sympathy, many from utter strangers. “This is the only thing that gives me courage to bear it all,” said Madame de Lesseps. Helene told me, with some amusement, that a Spanish banker had the day before written to Madame de Lesseps to offer her a present of a million, and that there had been many similar offers of pecuniary assistance from people who believed the family to be totally ruined. When Charles was down at La Chesnaye, and was walking in the woods with his escort behind him, a serious offer was made to him by friends who had gathered around him, to effect his rescue if he would but give the word. As for tokens of sympathy from all the country around, they are unending. The farmer at the home-farm, which was built by M. de Lesseps, and which has been in the occupation of the present tenants from the beginning, was at dinner when the paper containing the news of Charles’s conviction and sentence reached him. “He turned quite white,” said his wife to me, “and rushed out of the house and went roaming about the woods like a demented man until late at night. And I have cried every time I have thought of M. Charles, whom I knew when he was a baby not higher than my knee.” But perhaps the most devoted friend that remains to the family is M. de Lesseps’s valet, who since his master’s fall has never left him for more than ten minutes together, sleeping on a mattress in his bedroom, and waiting on him patiently all day and all night. “Don’t let anyone, I don’t care who it may be,” he says, clenching his fist, “come near my master. I will be killed before any offence shall be put upon him.” And though one is rather sceptical as to such professions, I fully believe that in this case they are sincere. It was touching to note with what reverence, when lunch was served, this valet approached his master, and, mindful of old formalities of respect, bowed and said that Monsieur the Count was served; to note with what womanly gentleness this strong man lifted his feeble master up and guided his tottering steps into the adjoining dining-room.

What a beautiful family it was, to be sure, that gathered round that table! Paul with his girlish ringlets, Robert also in curls. Helene, who sat next to her father, with her jet-black hair loose down her back, and her bright eyes contrasting with the ivory pallor of her face, worn out as the poor child is with care and sorrow and hard work as her mother’s penwoman. Then there was Lolo, a young lady of eighteen, roughly dressed, but of great elegance, who looked even sadder than the rest, but who tried to be bright and gay; and on the other side of her, Solange, who though she is quite a woman in appearance, hates to be considered so, and wants to be treated as a child, and refuses to wear long dresses, and loves to climb trees in the park and to give picnics to her little brothers and sisters in a mud hovel which she has constructed in the garden. Then there is Zi-Zi and Griselle—more than twenty in all around the long oval table. Every now and then one of the children rises from its seat, and runs up to the old father and kisses him on the cheek, or presses his hand; and I think all envied Helene who sat next to him and could caress him when she liked. I was seated just opposite the old man, and I am afraid my presence disturbed him; for he seemed to listen to what I said, and to wonder who I was, and what I might want. I shall never forget the sight of him as he faced me, sunk down in his chair, with one trembling hand holding his napkin to his breast, and feebly with the other guiding the morsels to his mouth. He seemed to eat with some appetite, though under persistent drowsiness, which was only shaken off for a moment when his wife, who came in late, took her seat at the table. Then his head was lifted, and a bright look came into his eyes, as if of salute to the comrade of his life. Whatever Madame de Lesseps may have suffered, I am sure that she feels herself repaid each time that those eyes are so lifted to hers. The dejeuner was a simple though ample one, the menu being in keeping with the manner of life at Chesnaye, which is that of comfort without ostentation. The wine is grown by Madame de Lesseps herself, on vineyards of her own planting, and is that “gray wine” which is so much appreciated by connoisseurs. It has a beautiful color in a cut-glass decanter. The conversation was a halting one. Each tried to be gay, each tried to forget the deep shadow that lay over that family gathering. 92 When the old man’s eyes wandered around the table as if in quest of some one whom he desired but who was not there, a silence imposed itself on all, for all knew whom he was seeking, and where that dear one was.

In his buttonhole was Helene’s bouquet of violets, underneath which peeped out the rosette of the grand officer of the Legion of Honor, alas, in jeopardy!

We took coffee in the drawing-room. It was served on a table which stood underneath a fine portrait of Agnes Sorel, once the mistress of the house. Facing us were two pictures of the inauguration of the Suez Canal. The furniture was covered with tapestries mostly from the needle of the countess.

It was here that Madame de Lesseps told me of the old man’s present life. “He has the fixed idea that the Queen of England will come and make all things right. He often rises in his chair and asks if Queen Victoria has arrived, and when any visitor comes he thinks that it is she at last.”

Then blanching the countess added, “You think, sir, do you not, that he is in ignorance of what has happened? You do not think that he has any suspicion? Sometimes the dreadful thought troubles me that he knows all, and that, great-hearted gentleman that he is, he lends himself to this most tragic comedy that we are playing. I sometimes doubt. Would not that be terrible? And again there are times when I am convinced that our efforts to hide all that is, are successful. We give him last year’s papers to read. I have had collections sent down. Formerly we used to cut out or erase parts which we did not want him to see, but he seemed to notice the alterations, and so we ordered down papers of a year ago. And it is quite pathetic to hear the remarks he occasionally makes. Thus a few days ago he called me to his side in high glee, and said how happy he was to hear that his old friend M. Ressman had been appointed Italian Ambassador to France, an event of more than a year ago. There are times, too, when he gets very impatient at being kept down here, and what he misses chiefly is the French Academy. He is constantly telling me how anxious he is to attend, and I have to invent the sorriest fables to explain to him that the Academicians are not holding any meetings; as, for instance, that they are all old men, and that they are taking a long holiday.”

The countess sighed and said: “I do what I can, but that terrible doubt pursues me often. You see, he did know that the Panama affair had resulted in ruin. It is since he was called before that examining magistrate, M. Prinet, that he has been as you have seen him. He must suspect something. How much, we shall never know.”

Then she added: “He is constantly asking after Charles. He knows that he is in trouble, but we hope that he does not suspect what the trouble is. Before he was taken as he is, Charles had, to his knowledge, become involved in that Société des Comptes Courants bankruptcy, which ruined him; and perhaps his father thinks that his son’s troubles are in connection with that affair.” Then the stepmother broke out into impassioned praise of the stepson: “The noblest heart! He will suffer all, rather than let the slightest harm come to his father. He is a hero, a gentleman, a hero, a hero! When he was here he told us what he had undergone, and said that he was willing to undergo ten times as much, so that his father be left unmolested.

“It is strangers who send us expressions of their sympathy. Those whom De Lesseps has enriched have forgotten him. And yet I am unjust. I have had letters from people who risked their positions, their daily bread, in writing to me as they did. But not a single political man has written a word to express condolence with the great patriot or with his family. They dare not. None of my letters are safe. Many of my friends have received my letters open. Many letters addressed to me have gone astray. It is dangerous to-day to be the friend of the man who gave a fortune to his country.

“He sits there all day,” she continued, “and reads his ‘Souvenirs of Forty Years,’ the ‘Souvenirs’ which he has dedicated to his children. And at times he is quite his old self again, but 93 drowsiness is always coming upon him. Mon Dieu! that he may be spared to us a little longer!”

Helene just then passed through the room. “There is a paper in papa’s room,” she whispered, “which I must take away. There is the word Panama upon it.”

Our conversation was with bated breath, and the ill-fated word was scouted like an unclean thing.

And whilst we were talking, the sunny, curly-headed Paul ran into the room and cried out: “Oh, do come and see papa! Bou-Bou has jumped onto his shoulder and is picking his violets.”

We moved towards the door, and this was the last that I saw, or may ever see, of Ferdinand de Lesseps. Against the red background of the twofold screen he sat sunken, asleep, in his arm-chair, with the two volumes that tell the story of his heroism in his lap, and on his shoulders perched a grinning Barbary ape, pulling at and munching the violets which Helene had picked for him, and which hid in his buttonhole his jeopardized rosette of the Legion of Honor. Around him stood his children, and it was sad to see, and sadder still to think, that, his family excepted, what holds this great heart and splendid gentleman in dearest affection is not the millionaire grown rich on his achievements, but a witless, speechless thing, that perhaps has feeling what a great and generous heart is here.

---

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The work done in the most Notable Physical Laboratories will be reported upon. In these laboratories the subjects connected with electricity are studied and experiments are made that often have far-reaching results.

Another subject of great interest is the work of Famous Astronomical Observatories, explaining “How Discoveries are Made,” etc.

The recently established Psychological Laboratories, where the action of the mind is scientifically investigated, will furnish material for a paper of novel interest.

Special articles will be furnished on The Physique of the American Student, describing gymnastics, outdoor sports, the effect of training, etc.

A tour of investigation of this kind cannot fail to bring to light a great deal of material that cannot be anticipated.

The articles secured in this way will supplement the material announced in other parts of this prospectus.

TIMELINESS.

In the various fields which this magazine will cultivate, a constant effort will be made to secure articles of timely interest. The newest book, the latest important political event, the most recent discovery or invention—in fact, what is newest and most important in every department of human activity, will be set forth by specially well-qualified writers, in the form of essays, biographical articles, interviews or contributions by the men most closely identified with the subjects in hand.

THE PRESENT HOUR

will be the subject of a series of articles, published month by month, dealing with men and measures that are making current history. The first one is by M. de Blowitz, and appears in this issue.

STRANGER THAN FICTION

is the title of a department which will contain a number of short articles; true tales of adventure; striking bits of biography; interesting and curious facts in science; stories of travelers and explorers; picturesque short articles gathered from every field of human activity and investigation.

IN GENERAL.

The magazine will not only furnish the best literature, but will make a serious attempt to report the marvelous activities and developments of modern civilization, and especially of the United States.

TERMS, $1.50 A YEAR; 15 CENTS A COPY.

S. S. McCLURE, Limited,
743 and 745 Broadway, New York City.

McClure's Magazine

World

Hellenica World - Scientific Library

Index